News Flash: Michael Bloomberg Not a Fan of the First Amendment, Either

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Michael Bloomberg, former NYC mayor and billionaire patron of the Nanny State, may be gearing up for the presidential race in 2020. He gave the idea of running as an independent candidate “serious consideration” in 2016, but ultimately decided against it.

A recent Washington Post story on Mr. Bloomberg’s potential 2020 bid highlighted what it called his “disturbing attitude toward the First Amendment,” which safeguards, among other things, freedom of speech and freedom of the press from government interference. Mr. Bloomberg, the founder of the eponymous Bloomberg L.P., a privately-held financial information and media company that operates Bloomberg News, indicated in a radio interview earlier this month, that, “[q]uite honestly, I don’t want the reporters I’m paying to write a bad story about me… I don’t want them to be independent.” To ensure that the coverage from his own news outlet would be consistent with these expectations, he added that, should he run for president, one option would be to eliminate any political reporting by his employees. Kathy Kiely, who wrote the Post story, is herself the former politics editor at Bloomberg News who resigned in 2016 over concerns that the media company could not cover its owner’s possible presidential run in the same way that it reported on other candidates.

This authoritarian outlook is hardly a revelation to anyone who has followed Mr. Bloomberg’s activism regarding another fundamental constitutional right.

While professing his support for the Second Amendment and that “no one wants to take away anyone’s guns,” his efforts – through his Everytown gun control group and otherwise – have included advocating for bans on the manufacture and sale of “assault weapons” and “high capacity magazines,” increased background checks, and in Washington State, spending a quarter of a million dollars to push through an initiative in November that bans the purchase and possession of semiautomatic rifles by law-abiding young adults, without an exception for guns lawfully acquired before the law takes effect. In an appearance in 2015, he apparently went so far as to advocate an age, race and gender-based ban, to “get the guns” away from minority males.

In a move evocative of his “bad story” strategy, in 2015 Mr. Bloomberg set up The Trace, an anti-gun news outlet “whose only mission is to write on gun issues from his perspective” and ensure that the “news” on guns and gun control is in line with his own messaging.

Contrary to this record (and perhaps mindful that most Americans take a dim view of any meddling with their civil rights), Mr. Bloomberg appeared on television a few days ago to assure viewers that “the Second Amendment gives you the right to own weapons and there’s nothing wrong with that,” and “if you want to buy a gun and go through a background check process … I’m not opposed, I’m not in favor of taking that away one bit.”

Freedom loving citizens shouldn’t be fooled into thinking Mr. Bloomberg has become much more open-minded about the Second Amendment as part of his possible bid for the White House. After all, we already know that he thinks we’re “pretty stupid” for exercising our constitutional rights.

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission.

Why Our Country Needs the Wall, and Now

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The United States is the most generous, pro-immigrant country in the world. Annually, we take in more immigrants than any other country on the planet.

Couple that with the fact that immigration has been a driving issue in the last two campaign cycles, and it is more than reasonable to demand that the next funding bill include commonsense border security measures.

With only days left before Congress gavels out and the power in the House of Representatives shifts from Republicans to Democrats, we, as members of Congress, must fulfill the promises we made to the American people to uphold the rule of law and secure our borders.

Congress must fund President Donald Trump’s border wall and close the “catch and release” loopholes in the upcoming must-pass spending bill. We must do it now.

The statistics are frightening. This fall, Border Patrol arrested a massive number of people coming across the border, as loopholes in our immigration laws continue to pull illegal aliens into the United States—more than 100,000 people in October and November alone.

These significant illegal immigration attempts are giving immigrants a bad name. Historically, immigrants to America have come here legally to seek a better life and contribute to our economy. In the case of illegal immigrants, their very first act on U.S. soil is to break the law.

That’s why it is critical that we stop the inflow. Doing so will allow us to focus on reforms that prioritize legal immigration and reward law-abiding people for doing the right thing. And we know how to do this: a border wall, and ending catch and release.

Catch and release is the natural result of a series of loopholes in current U.S. asylum laws that encourage lawbreaking. Because of various legal settlements and the unintended consequences of a 2008 law, when families come to the U.S. to claim asylum, they are released out of legal custody into the country to await a hearing. Many never show for their hearings, and simply disappear into America.

Armed with this knowledge, illegal immigrants game the system to get into the U.S. and plant roots, undermining our laws. Fixing this and making it easier for border agents to send illegal immigrants home will discourage illegal immigration and encourage people to immigrate the right way.

We need to pair this with a border wall, so that illegal immigrants cannot physically cross our border in the first place. And we know border walls work. When Israel constructed a barrier along its southern border, it cut down on illegal immigration by 99 percent. Along the U.S.-Mexico border, in the places where we currently have strong barriers, illegal crossings have also been drastically reduced.

Like so many entrenched, partisan issues in our country, the problem of illegal immigration is solvable, but will require compromise.

A good place to start will be with border security measures that Democrats have historically agreed to, and closing loopholes in current laws. Then, we can get back to doing what we have historically done best: welcoming legal immigrants from around the world with open arms.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Ted Budd

Ted Budd

Ted Budd is the U.S. representative for North Carolina’s 13th district. Twitter: .

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column with images is republished with permission. Photo: Pappis Jean Pierre Polaris/Sipa/Newscom.

Here’s the biggest security threat now facing President Trump… and it’s not what you think.

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OBAMA’S WAR IS UPON US

How the ex-Radical-in-Chief created a security vacuum that Iran rushed to fill.

Donald Trump has a name for everything and everyone, from Crooked Hillary to Little Rocket Man, who for a time became his best friend. Will he call the next region-wide conflagration in the Middle East, when it breaks out, Obama’s War?

If he hasn’t thought of that already, he should start considering it now. Because the catastrophic policies of our former president have emboldened the Islamic state of Iran and enabled it to threaten the United States and our allies militarily in ways never before possible.

When Obama took office in January 2009, he inherited a strong U.S. military and diplomatic posture across the Middle East.

The U.S.-Israel strategic relationship was at its peak, with the Bush White House openly supporting Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s latest attempt to stop Hamas terror in Gaza.

The U.S. enjoyed a close relationship with a secular Turkey, that itself had strong ties to Israel.

Egypt was at peace, Qaddafi had come into the Western camp and abandoned terrorism and its nuclear weapons program, and the insurgency in Iraq had been crushed.

Al Qaeda truly was “on the run,” while Iran was beginning to feel the crunch of international sanctions over its previously covert nuclear weapons program.

Obama succeeded in reversing every one of these strong U.S. positions, treating Islamic Iran as a friend and Israel as an enemy while promoting the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and its terrorist spawn.

And while President Trump has taken great strides to reverse the enormous damage to our strategic posture Obama caused, fighting his way out of the spider’s web of Iran deal restrictions Obama enacted against the United States has taken nearly two years, time the Iranian regime has put to good use.

Iran today can bracket Israel with more than 150,000 rockets and guided missiles from the North and the South. That’s more than twenty times what it had available during the 2006 war. In addition to its proxies – Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the recently formed Golan Liberation Brigade in Syria – Iran now enjoys a “land bridge” directly linking it through Iraq and Syria to Israel’s northern border.

Terror chief Qais al Khazali, known for his attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, officially opened the land bridge by leading a military convoy from Iraq into Southern Lebanon in December 2017, where he did a stand-up for an Iranian-backed television network while surveying Israel from the Lebanese side of the border.

Khazali was acting on orders from Quds Force terror-meister, Qassem Suleymani, and met up in Beirut with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah before heading to the South.

At the same time, the Iranians and their local minions have been burrowing tunnels into Israel from Lebanon that the IDF began targeting last week.

From its bases in Yemen, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps has lobbed missiles at the Saudi capitol, Riyadh, and at oil facilities in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Outgoing U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley forced the media to acknowledge these aggressive Iranian actions by unveiling Iranian missile fragments at a press conference at Andrews Air Force base exactly one year ago.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has now revealed that the ballistic missile Iran test-fired last week was capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads to targets as far away as Europe. Even the Europeans finally realize that the Iran deal did nothing to restrain Iran’s nuclear weapons development or tame its aggressive behavior. It was not the U.S. but France that convened the UN Security Council to condemn the Iranian test.

In a nutshell, Iran today is poised to wreak havoc across the Middle East and beyond with military and strategic capabilities it did not possess a decade ago, including the ability to target U.S. aircraft carriers with ground-based missiles.

Short of U.S. military force, the sole limiting factor on Iran’s actions will be the position of Russian President Vladmir Putin. Will Putin seek to restrain Iran? Or give the Iranian regime free reign?

This is one reason why it is so important for the U.S. President to maintain an open channel of communications to the Kremlin, meeting with Putin, say, at G-20 summit meetings and one-on-one.

Why do you think the anti-Israel Left is so eager to hog-tie President Trump in Russia witch hunt investigations, forcing him to downscale relations with the Russians to the point that the two leaders no longer talk, at least not in public? Because they actually favor a strong Iran and see it and Russia as constraints on the evil United States. As Obama put it in his address to the UN General Assembly in September 2016, “We’ve bound our power to international laws and institutions.”

Russia signaled a strategic shift in its position toward a potential Iranian-led regional war on September 17, when a Syrian air defense crew downed a Russian Ilyushin-20 spy plane over Syrian air space, killing all fourteen Russian crewmen on board.

Putin could have called it a “tragic accident,” which indeed it was. Instead, he blamed Israel for the attack.

Until then, Israel enjoyed a special relationship with Russia when it came to Syria. The IDF had a hot line to the Russian defense ministry, which it used to give a heads up before Israeli air strikes against Iranian positions inside Syria. The result: not a single Russia missile was ever fired at an IDF fighter jet.

When a particularly large strike was in the offing, Prime Minister Netanyahu would fly to Moscow to brief Putin ahead of time. With Putin’s green light, Israel then decimated IRGC and Hezbollah positions.

All of that changed after September 17.

Today, Putin refuses to meet with Netanyahu and the Russian military has rejected Israeli efforts to deconflict its operations in Syria with the Russians.

Last month, Russia turned over operational control of its sophisticated S-300/400 air defense batteries in Syria to the Syrian military, a clear sign that restraint toward IDF fighter jets was over.

On November 29, Israeli showed that it takes these moves seriously, launching its first-ever major strike on Iranian Quds Force position inside Syria using surface-to-surface missiles and long-range artillery. By using unmanned weapons, Israel avoided the possibility that Syrian air defense batteries could shoot down an IDF jet or that Israel might inadvertently kill a Russian military advisor.

After that attack, Netanyahu met in Brussels with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, where the two pledged to work in tandem to contain Iranian “aggression.”

“As we have been warning for some time, Iran’s missile testing and missile proliferation is growing. We are accumulating risk of escalation in the region if we fail to restore deterrence,” Pompeo said.

Taken as a whole, I believe Iran actually welcomes U.S. and Israeli military action, now that Russia has made clear it will no longer restrain Iran. Seen from Tehran, they have many cards to play, including the activation of Iran’s vast underground terror networks in North America and Europe and an ability to target U.S. military bases in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the region.

Successive U.S. administrations have a bad track record of holding the Islamic state of Iran accountable for its aggression. We never responded to the 1983 attack that killed 241 U.S. Marines in Lebanon, nor did we hit Iran for its direct material involvement in the September 11, 2001 attacks on America.

While Team Trump has reimposed sanctions and escalated the rhetoric, it has yet to take military action against Iran’s Islamic regime. But when that happens, make no mistake: the United States will be fighting Obama’s war.

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine. The featured photo is by Keith Zhu on Unsplash.

PODCAST: Tech the Halls with Google Hearings

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House conservatives have been searching for the opportunity to talk to Google CEO Sundar Pichai — and yesterday, in a packed Judiciary Committee, they finally got their chance. Thanks to a string of leaked emails and videos, most Americans already had a pretty good idea where the tech giant stands politically. But on Capitol Hill, 2,800 miles from his Google compound, it was important to be reminded.

Most Americans had probably never heard of Pichai until yesterday — but every one of them has felt his effect. With 90 percent of the world’s online searches at his fingertips, Pichai and his team have more to do with the information people see every day than almost anyone on the planet. That’s what makes his ideology so troubling. In a company so openly disgusted by half of the country, conservatives are right to wonder if they’re getting a fair shake.

Judging by the company Google keeps, they’re not. Back in February, the company finally admitted that one of the groups it trusts to “monitor” internet content is none other than the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) — a group that’s made a small fortune as political defamation machine. The fact that Google cozied up to Morris Dees’s group was especially surprising since everyone else — from the FBI and U.S. Army to Barack Obama’s Justice Department — backed away from SPLC for either its ties to domestic terrorism or its reckless “hate labeling.” As a growing number of journalists will tell you, the last organization anyone should be relying on for neutrality in the public debate is a group that even Politico called “a problem for the nation.”

Still, Pichai seemed to have no trouble defending the partnership, even when Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) brought up SPLC’s role in inspiring gunman Floyd Corkins to walk in our building armed with enough ammo to kill everyone on staff. Despite that — and the string of scandals from falsely labeling conservatives — Pichai reiterated, “The Southern Poverty Law Center is a trusted flagger.”

Louie couldn’t believe his ears. “The Southern Poverty Law Center,” he argued, “has really stirred up more hate than about any other group I know. They stirred up one guy to the point that he went to the Family Research [Council] — and I know those people and they’re Christians. And they believe — and I believe — that Christianity is really more based on love than about any other religion in history… [a]nd yet they stirred up hate against [FRC] and a guy comes in shooting… Now, you consider them a trusted flagger, yet they keep creating problems for people that are not haters.”

And conservatives aren’t the only ones who think so. SPLC has raised the eyebrows of more than a few major news outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Politico, and most recently, the Washington Post — who are all questioning the group’s credibility. “Researchers at the SPLC have set themselves up as the ultimate judges of hate in America,” the Post points out. “But are they judging fairly?” A growing number of people from both sides said no.

On yesterday’s “Washington Watch,” PJ Media’s Alex O’Neil thought Sundar’s answer on SPLC may be the most compelling evidence that Google is targeting conservatives.

“Sundar Pichai kept denying any evidence that Google has been discriminating against conservative and Christian groups… But I think the SPLC bit is very telling. You had the CEO of Google admit that he considers the Southern Poverty Law Center a ‘trusted flagger’ [even though it] lists mainstream conservative and Christian groups as ‘hate groups’ — along with the KKK. [This is who they] rely upon to determine which speech should or should not be allowed on YouTube.”

To O’Neil, who’s followed Google’s money, the company’s bias isn’t really a surprise. “What we’ve seen with a lot of big tech companies if you look at where their employees give money, it’s very firmly on the Democratic side.” If Sundar Pichai wants his company’s objectivity to be taken seriously, then he needs to walk away from politically-charged groups like the SPLC. Conservatives don’t want regulation, but we do want fairness.

For more on Google’s partnership with SPLC, don’t miss my conversation with Rep. Gohmert.

Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

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EDITORS NOTE: This column with images and podcast is republished with permission.

Media Buries Key Facts to Conceal Migrant Health Threat—TB, Hepatitis, HIV

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Here’s a great example of the mainstream media distorting information to promote a liberal agenda, an act that is especially pervasive when it comes to immigration coverage. A story published by NBC news, and reiterated by various other outlets, claims illegal immigrants don’t bring disease into the United States.

The headline reads: “Migrants don’t bring disease. In fact, they help fight it, report says.” The article focuses on a study commissioned by a medical journal called the Lancet and University College London. The finished product is titled “Global patterns of mortality in international migrants: a systematic review and meta-analysis” and one of the researchers, Dr. Paul Spiegel, proclaims that migrants spreading disease is a “false argument” used to keep them out. The editor of the Lancet said; “In too many countries, the issue of migration is used to divide societies and advance a populist agenda.”

Nevertheless, buried deep in the news article the reporter offers this important nugget from the study, only after writing that migrants are less likely than people in their host countries to die of heart disease, cancer, respiratory diseases and other ills: “The exceptions are hepatitis, tuberculosis and HIV.”

Last we checked those are deadly diseases and Judicial Watch has interviewed medical experts that confirm illegal immigrants do indeed pose a serious public health threat to the U.S. by bringing dangerous diseases into the country. This includes tuberculosis, dengue and Chikungunya. Just last month a prominent physician in a key border state warned that the caravan streaming north from Honduras will undoubtedly bring infectious diseases into the U.S. Among them are extremely drug resistant strands of tuberculosis and mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue and chikungunya that are widespread in the region.

The same week Judicial Watch published the story about the caravan health threat a major newspaper reported on the health crisis created by the influx of Venezuelans fleeing to neighboring countries. The migrants are spreading malaria, yellow fever, diphtheria, dengue, tuberculosis and AIDS throughout South America. Many of the diseases had been considered eradicated in the neighboring Latin American countries, according to government officials cited in the article, which states that “contagion from Venezuela’s economic meltdown is starting to spread to neighboring countries—not financially, but literally, in the form of potentially deadly diseases carried among millions of refugees.”

As an example, the story reveals that “measles reappeared with a vengeance” in a Brazilian city near the Venezuelan border that had declared the highly contagious airborne disease “vanquished” nearly two decades ago. “Measles is already spreading beyond the Brazilian Amazon to other Brazilian states, as well as Colombia, Peru and as far south as Argentina, according to recent Pan American Health Organization reports,” the article states. “Other diseases racing through communities in Venezuela are now crossing borders and raising concerns among health authorities as far away as the U.S.”

Years ago, when Barack Obama let tens of thousands of illegal immigrant minors into the country, health experts warned about the serious hazards to the American public. Most of the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) came from Central America, like the current caravan, and they crossed into the U.S. through Mexico, in the same way that the caravan expects to.

Swine flu, dengue fever and Ebola were among the diseases that the hordes of UACs brought with them, according to lawmakers and medical experts interviewed by Judicial Watch during the influx. At the time, a U.S. Congressman, who is also a medical doctor, told Judicial Watch about the danger to the American public as well as the Border Patrol agents forced to care for the UACs. The former lawmaker, Phil Gingrey, referred to it as a “severe and dangerous” crisis because the Central American youths were importing infectious diseases considered to be largely eradicated in this country.

Many migrants lack basic vaccinations such as those to prevent chicken pox or measles, leaving America’s young children and the elderly particularly susceptible, Gingrey pointed out then. To handle the escalating health crisis the CDC activated an Emergency Operations Center (EOC) that largely operated in secrecy.

Even the recent study twisted by the mainstream media acknowledges that illegal immigrants are likely to carry hepatitis, tuberculosis and HIV. Selectively burying the information doesn’t change the severity of the matter. Though not a mainstream media outlet, a popular leftist news and opinion site went so far as to label those who claim migrants pose a threat to public health racist.

EDITORS NOTE: This column is republished with permission. The featured photo is by Fancycrave on Unsplash.

Major Concerns with Florida’s Marjory Douglas Stoneman HS Public Safety Law (SB 7026)

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Florida Senator Kelli Stargel

Winter Haven 912 is meeting with Florida Senator Kelli Stargel on December 17th, 2018 and to say the least, we feel the same way as she does.  We citizens feel totally betrayed by the passage of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Act.  We all feel strongly about this law, but personally I am now and have been outraged since this law was even brought out of committee.

I am providing a pre-meeting discussion sheet (below), which may interest you. 

You are welcome to post it and or send it to your Florida state legislators and other activists to use as they see fit in order to trigger grassroots activism. It is imperative that legislators feel the ire of Floridians who support the U.S. Constitution and the Second Amendment and make serious changes to this law or better yet, scrap it and start over.

Concerns with (SB 7026) Marjory Douglas Stoneman HS Public Safety Law

The citizens of the Winter Haven 912 are extremely concerned about SB7026. We have openly expressed our concerns about this law since it was introduced. This law directly violates the Constitutional rights of citizens and we are frankly amazed that legislators who we knew to be conservatives, voted yes without serious scrutiny/work to make corrections before voting.  When SB 7026 was introduced, we (foolishly) assumed such a blatantly offensive law would never be considered in a strong Republican-led legislature.

The Constitutional rights that have now been compromised for law abiding citizens due to the paid-for riots of high school youth allowed to take over the Capitol in Florida is unimaginable. We now have $400,000,000 added to the Florida budget, ANOTHER bureaucracy that now saddles Florida taxpayers, bad law that will likely be struck down in court, and waste money and time after a law-abiding citizen’s rights are blatantly violated by law enforcement thanks to legislators that were once trustworthy in our eyes.

It has been obvious that something needed to be done about school security and ensuring that law enforcement, school boards and lawmakers do their jobs. The Parkland massacre although unimaginably tragic, provided an excellent opportunity to create a sensible piece of legislation that could TRULY make Florida kids safe in school. Politicians threw this opportunity away like trash.

An organized “movement”, driven and paid for by left-wing activists manipulated and used the children of Florida to move us a step closer to the socialist dream of gun control. The Left had a field day and used our children as tools to achieve their end – to the everlasting shame of Florida. The leftists who paid for this outrage could care less about those kids. They do not care about the children who died or were injured during the Parkland event. They have a political agenda and that is all they care about.

The left demonstrated that organized rioting works with weak politicians in the State of Florida.  Rather than taking charge of the situation and leading, Republicans in Tallahassee bent to the will of socialists focused on the destruction of a Free American Society. It is rumored that the bill was already written by leftists anticipating a horrific event, that educational policies put in place by leftists led to this incident, and the Parkland Shooting triggered the filing of this bill. Republican politicians in Florida bent to the will of socialism.

We are aware that most democrats voted against this legislation. Their reasoning was the bill was not restrictive enough. We were horrified to see this bill even make it out of committee. Law abiding citizens across Florida are now being punished for the failures of government in the egregiously corrupt Broward county. A republican legislature passed SB7026 and a Republican Governor signed it.

Republican legislators correctly assuming they would win the November election, betrayed supporters that believed in them and trusted their judgment but as it turns out conservatives were sadly mistaken. Florida lawmakers could have called a special session to deal specifically with this law and created a model for the nation, instead they abused our trust and failed the citizens of Florida.

It is our contention that this legislation caused the near destruction of the Florida elections in November.  There is no doubt that if Florida Republican lawmakers had voted this law down solidly, taken leadership in this situation and come out with a SERIOUS BILL in special session that would ACTUALLY SOLVE PROBLEMS rather than exacerbate them, Republican support across Florida would have been overwhelming and we would have seen a very different election season.

One can assume that Florida Republican leaders are not truly interested in protecting the rights of law-abiding citizens in Florida given consistent failures of a Republican led legislature to put in place SOLID safety measures for children, failure to expand 2nd Amendment rights in Florida and habitually put people in key leadership positions who block 2nd Amendment measures from reaching the floor.

Florida conservatives are looking for leaders, thinkers, problem solvers with a spine, not politicians who bend to the political will of socialists who have nothing but the destruction of Florida and the nation on their mind. The excuse that the “pressure” was serious to “do something” is simply that – an excuse. Legislators are LEADERS and expected to do their job on behalf of citizens-not work against them because they are “under pressure”.  Politicians that voted yes on this bill had no problem listening to rioting children acting like wild animals, but there was NO legislative request for input from conservative voters, the driving force for putting them into office. Passing this law was a betrayal to conservative citizens, the backbone of support for the Republican party.

Our concerns with this law are as follows:

  1. We are not aware of statistics on the practice of this law although it is quite clear that seizures are taking place especially in Broward and Polk Counties. We would like to know the following:
  • How many RPO seizures to date have occurred across the state?
  • How many seizures have proven unfounded?
  • How many unfounded RPO’s came about as the result of false allegations?
  • How many engaged a lawyer?
  • Did damage occur to defendant’s property during seizure process?
  • How long before weapons were returned?
  • Did they lose work time or experience other damage to reputation, etc?
  • In what condition were weapons returned?

Sheriff Judd provided the 912 group a series of six cases where he saw seizure of weapons as necessary, however there have been 152 seizures to date since this law was enacted in Polk County alone. Polk is outpaced only by Broward County. For the purposes of transparency FDLE website statistics regarding RPO seizures should be available.

  1. We have not heard any updates on progress of the ongoing investigation into the Parkland shooting. We would like to know when the investigation is expected to end, how much it has cost tax payers to this point and who is being investigated.
  2. How has the $400,000,000 been spent thus far and what are plans for this money and the new bureaucracy that is now in place. Citizens apparently have no say so in how this bureaucracy will be conducted.
  3. We are concerned about the Constitutional Violations that are blatant in this bill, including infringing the rights of individuals otherwise considered adults to purchase long guns, privacy rights and due process rights of every gun owner in Florida. We would like to know what plans are in the works for the 2019 Legislative Season to make corrections to these violations.
  4. Who authored this bill? Who introduced it for consideration? Who sponsored it?
  5. Was there discussion regarding the flagrant violation of Constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens during discussion of this bill before voting? How many legislators read this bill before voting for it?
  6. How many County or City entities across Florida have their Policy and Procedure in place for the practice of this law as required by 1/1/2019? Are these entities including measures that protect the rights of citizens who are subject to this law?
  7. In RPO situations, why, if this is a civil action as described by Sheriff Judd, do targets of seizure have their information registered on a national criminal database? How are targets then assured that name has been removed from this database post RPO? It is well known that the federal government collects/ retains information that it is not legally allowed to possess.
  8. Is there opportunity given to targets for a hearing prior to seizure unless the target is openly acting in a threatening manner, has violated injunctions, etc.

We recommend that this law be repealed and re-instituted in a way that will truly protect the children who attend school in the State of Florida, protect the rights of law-abiding citizens and deal effectively with people who suffer from mental illness/become a threat to society. Each of these concerns is better dealt with individually.

Suggested solutions from our group.

  1. The law is written much too ambiguously leaving room for abuse by law enforcement personnel, lawyers, politicians with a grudge against a citizen or political enemy, exes angry with an ex, neighbors who don’t like the politics of their neighbor, etc. The RPO law should be completely re-written with complete protective measures in place for innocent/law abiding citizens.
  2. There should be no seizure of weapons for anyone who has no law violation record without evidence presented by a complainant, an attachment presented to the judge showing absence of any prior law violations on the part of the defendant, statements by requesting officer and supervisor stating why they believe a seizure is necessary in this case and a full hearing before the seizure hearing to determine whether the seizure hearing is necessary, and whether other remedies could be taken into consideration.
  3. There should be penalties in place that are equitable for both complainants and defendants. The law states at this time that a false accusation by a complainant can result in a 1st degree misdemeanor. A violation of a seizure order by a defendant will result in a 3rd degree felony, effectively ruining the defendant’s life. This is NOT equal treatment under the law and another violation of Constitutional rights.
  4. Complainants who provide false accusation, should receive stiff punishment. Complainants including LEO, politicians, and anyone who files false information for RPO seizure should receive a felony charge, up to 5 years in prison and $10,000 in fines. The complainant may also be subject to paying reparations should the defendant lose his/her job, hire an attorney, or otherwise incur damages. The State of Florida should provide settlements for making victims of law-abiding citizens who have their weapons wrongly removed. If a defendant has weapons seized and it is found later that the weapons were wrongly seized, the seizing agents did damage to the location the weapons were seized from or weapons returned are damaged or not properly cared for, the State of Florida should make reparations to the defendant.
  5. There are currently no guidelines in place for jurisdictions throughout Florida to create policy/procedure for the seizure process. This is another ambiguous problem with SB7026 that will create trouble for law-abiding citizens across the state. Policy between jurisdictions should be reasonably similar to prevent unnecessary seizures or the courts will soon be laden with cases of suits by people who had weapons seized when they believed they were exhibiting reasonable behavior. These cases will waste time and resources in overcrowded courtrooms and damage Florida citizens.

Law enforcement now has the ability to create whatever RPO procedures they wish without informing citizens of nearby jurisdictions. We can be sure that this problem will mushroom and become a very effective deterrent for law-abiding citizens who have followed every letter of the law in carrying and transporting their weapons. A solution will be to provide guidelines as to what actions different jurisdictions are RESTRICTED to concerning the RPO process. The Polk county process laid out by Sheriff Judd would be a good basis for these guidelines. The process to be Constitutionally based, should provide the highest level of protection for law abiding citizens and place necessary restrictions on LE, Lawmakers and officials to deter them from attempting to use the law as a personal or political weapon, or to further infringe on the rights of citizens because of the personal beliefs of the person/people authoring the policy/procedure.

  1. If RPO is a civil action, then information should not be entered into a federal criminal database. There can be no assurance from the State of Florida that this information is removed from federal databases when requested. RPO information should not be entered into a federal system unless a person having had weapons seized is clearly shown to be a threat to him/herself and/or others. The State of Florida can hold information at the State/FDLE for cases that are resolved within 30 days with no further action necessary. Those who are determined to be a threat after 30 days can have their information entered into a national database until they are deemed safe to operate in society again.
  2. Measures that will truly protect children as they attend school should be enacted into law and NOT left up to School Boards. Specific guidelines on how and what schools will do to provide adequate security should be in writing and enforced by FDLE. School boards that fail to meet these standards should be removed from their seats and/or brought up on charges should a child or school employee be injured or killed because standards set by FDLE were not being practiced as outlined by Florida law.
  3. Teachers and other school personnel should be allowed to be highly trained and armed as they wish. Security guards should be hired at every school in the state and funds should be provided by the FL DOE to pay these guards. Highly trained/armed school personnel in schools during operational hours and hired security teams present during key times, such as opening and closing hours, will minimize the chance of another Parkland type incident.
  4. Money from the $400,000,000 should be dedicated to physical security including fences, locked gates, security measures for classrooms such as bulletproof barriers that can be quickly erected by classroom attendees and training for students including reacting to volatile situations in a calm manner to save lives, effective self defense and reacting to terrorist incidents.
  5. There should be NO students in public schools who have dropped out/are attempting to obtain GED, committed a felony, become a parent, or bullied others. Such students should be relegated to tightly controlled classrooms where parents are required to be heavily involved in the education, discipline and life skills training of their child. Parents should also be required to stand with their child at disciplinary hearings and subject to arrest/prosecution if they are found to have neglected the educational requirements of their child. All students in this environment should undergo periodical mental health evaluations provided by the school system to determine mental state. They should be required to undergo regular drug tests as should their parents. There should, under any circumstances, be NO students in Florida schools who cannot prove citizenship.

Students who engage in problem behavior should be moved from the main population of the school and sent to an environment within the school heavily monitored by security personnel and/or SRO and subject to arrest if they cause problems in class. Parents should accompany them to and from school and stand with them during disciplinary hearings. Should unacceptable behavior continue, the student should be relegated to the environment stated above. Discipline in schools should be reinstated in an effective manner and the rules for such discipline should be outlined by the State Dept of Education NOT local school boards.

  1. Sheriff Judd stated that most of the cases of weapons seizures he encounters could also be considered Baker Act Material. Most of these cases have long histories of mental health problems and long histories of improper attention from authorities. In the Parkland Case, the school system and law enforcement failed at every level to react to a credible threat. Other law enforcement agencies and education systems should be put on notice, in writing that they will be held accountable if they fail these children and the citizens of Florida. Procedures should be put in place for dealing with these cases up to the point where it becomes necessary for procedures such as the RPO to be put in place. If this happens, we will have very few cases become necessary for Baker Act and/or RPO in the future. If we create truly safe and secure learning environments, we will never have another Parkland type incident in Florida.

Those who do not like these standards put in place to protect Florida Citizens who wish to live under the law and provide a safe, good and effective education for their children are welcome to leave the state and go to a State that does not care about these things and REPUBLICAN/CONSERVATIVE lawmakers should be proclaiming this publicly and loudly while they right this wrong they have done to Florida citizens.

For conservative voters across Florida the answers to these questions and attention given to this law in the upcoming legislative session will give considerable weight to who wins primaries and who retains or gains seats in offices that come up for election.  It is a tragedy that citizens in a nation like ours are forced to keep a watchful eye on a government that cannot be trusted to defend our rights. We faithfully elect Republicans because we believe that they will protect our Constitutional rights. We understand inherently that democrats have little to no interest in protecting citizen rights unless the exercise of those rights will cause destruction i.e. paid rioters in the Capitol, destroying property and causing bodily harm, which is the reason they are not in power in the State of Florida.

6 Things to Know About AG Nominee William Barr

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William Barr is a former U.S. attorney general, an advocate of investigating Hillary Clinton, and a bagpipe player for 60 years.

President Donald Trump announced Friday that he would nominate Barr, 68, to serve again as attorney general.

He previously served in the position from November 1991 to January 1993 under President George H.W. Bush, who died Nov. 30 and was laid to rest Thursday.

In confirming to reporters outside the White House that he would nominate Barr, Trump called the lawyer and former business leader “one of the most respected jurists in the country,” a “highly respected lawyer,” and “a terrific man, a terrific person, a brilliant man.”

Already, some Democrats are criticizing Barr for comments he has made in media interviews and op-eds.

If confirmed by the Senate, Barr would succeed acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, who took over after Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

“I did not know him until recently when I went through the process of looking at people, and he was my first choice from Day One,” Trump said of Barr. “Respected by Republicans and respected by Democrats, he will be nominated for the United States attorney general.”

Here are six things to know about the president’s pick to run the Justice Department.

1. Senators Choose Sides

Barr’s first stop is the Senate Judiciary Committee, the scene of brass-knuckles partisanship this fall over the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Trump’s hope is that the Barr confirmation will not be nearly so fraught with partisan rancor.

The senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, didn’t come out with guns blazing, but indicated he had questions. Leahy tweeted:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., slated to become chairman of the Judiciary Committee in January, tweeted that he will do all he can to push through the nomination:

William Barr (Photo: Kirkland & Ellis LLP)

2.  Confirmation and Praise from Joe Biden in 1991

Barr’s first run at a confirmation hearing was anything but controversial.

In 1989, the elder Bush named Barr as an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Bush promoted him to deputy attorney general in 1990.

Like Whitaker, Barr also served as acting attorney general. Just days into that assignment, he impressed Bush with his handling of a hostage crisis at a federal prison in Talladega, Alabama, The Wall Street Journal reported in 1991.

More than 100 Cuban inmates who were awaiting deportation to Cuba took nine hostages. Barr ordered an FBI hostage rescue team to take control of the prison, resulting in the rescue of the hostages without any deaths.

After Bush nominated Barr for attorney general in 1991, the Judiciary Committee unanimously confirmed him, with the approval of then-Chairman Joe Biden, a Democrat from Delaware. (Biden, of course, would go on to become Barack Obama’s vice president in 2009.)

On one of the most contentious issues, Barr was asked about the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 that legalized abortion across the nation. Barr replied that he didn’t believe the right to an abortion was part of the Constitution.

Biden said he disagreed with Barr, but said it was “the first candid answer” he had heard on the topic.

“It’s astounding to me,” Biden said to Barr. “You should be complimented.”

Biden later said: “I know of no one on the Democratic side asking for a roll call vote [by the committee]. I see no need for one.”

The Senate confirmed Barr as attorney general by a voice vote in November 1991.

Barr is a strong choice by Trump and “eminently confirmable,” said John Malcolm, who was an assistant U.S. attorney working in Atlanta when Barr was deputy attorney general and attorney general.

“He is an excellent pick,” Malcolm, now director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal. “He is smart, independent, and knows the Department of Justice’s mission well.”

No one should expect this nomination to go as smoothly as the last time, Malcolm said.

“Very few Trump nominations get through without resistance,” Malcolm said. “The Democrats will want to extract promises from him that he will protect the Mueller investigation.”

For nearly two years, a team led by special counsel Robert Mueller has looked for evidence of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia to secure Trump’s election as president in 2016.

3. Tenure as Attorney General

While serving as the nation’s 77th attorney general, Barr presided over significant events and investigations.

Andrew McCarthy, who was an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York when Barr was attorney general, had high praise. McCarthy tweeted:

According to his biography on the website of the Kirkland & Ellis law firm, where he works in private practice, as attorney general Barr “set significant new enforcement policies in a wide range of areas, including financial institutions, civil rights, and antitrust merger guidelines.”

The bio continues:

At the Department of Justice, [Barr] established innovative programs to combat violent crime and set significant new enforcement policies in a wide range of areas, including financial institutions, civil rights, and antitrust merger guidelines. He led the department’s response to the S&L crisis; oversaw the investigation of the Pan Am 103 bombing; directed the successful suppression of the Talladega prison uprising and hostage taking; and coordinated counter-terrorism activities during the first Gulf War.

4. Views on Independent Investigators

Barr hasn’t directly criticized Mueller’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election. However, he has raised questions about Mueller’s vetting of prosecutorial staff.

Mainly, Barr has raised questions about why the staff includes so many donors to Democrat candidates, including Hillary Clinton.

“In my view, prosecutors who make political contributions are identifying fairly strongly with a political party,” Barr told The Washington Post for a story that ran in July 2017.

“I would have liked to see him have more balance on this group,” Barr said of Mueller.

Among the issues that Mueller is believed to be investigating is Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey in May 2017.

Shortly after the FBI director’s dismissal, in a Washington Post op-ed with the headline “Former attorney general: Trump made the right call on Comey,” Barr wrote:

Comey is an extraordinarily gifted man who has contributed much during his many years of public service. Unfortunately, beginning in July, when he announced the outcome of the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state, he crossed a line that is fundamental to the allocation of authority in the Justice Department.

Barr told journalist Bob Woodward, in an interview for the 1999 book “Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate,” that he considered removing Iran-Contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh for “misconduct” in 1992.

He said he believed that Walsh was overtly political.

But, Barr told Woodward, he opted against removing Walsh.

5. The Clintons and Uranium One

Barr has said the Justice Department should investigate the Uranium One scandal, which involves both Bill and Hillary Clinton. He noted that he sees more evidence to warrant an investigation there compared with the suspicion of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

“There is nothing inherently wrong about a president calling for an investigation,” Barr told The New York Times in November 2017, referring to Trump.

“Although an investigation shouldn’t be launched just because a president wants it, the ultimate question is whether the matter warrants investigation,” he said.

The Times reported: “Barr said he sees more basis for investigating the uranium deal than any supposed collusion between Mr. Trump and Russia.”

“To the extent it is not pursuing these matters,” Barr is quoted as saying about the Justice Department, “the department is abdicating its responsibility.”

The mining company Uranium One contributed $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation during Hillary Clinton’s four-year tenure as secretary of state under Obama, The New York Times reported in 2015.

Figures associated with the company also paid $500,000 to former President Bill Clinton to speak in Moscow.

In a 2010 deal approved by a committee including Hillary Clinton and eight other members of Obama’s Cabinet, a Kremlin-connected entity obtained 20 percent of America’s uranium production by acquiring Canada-based Uranium One.

6. Bagpipes, the CIA, and More

Barr has been a bagpipe player since he was an 8-year-old boy, and he was a notable member of the City of Washington Pipe Band.

After leaving the Justice Department in 1993, Barr built a career in corporate law, serving as general counsel and executive vice president of Verizon Communications Inc. from 2000 to 2008.

He was general counsel for GTE Corp. from 1994 until 2000, helping to negotiate a merger of GTE and Bell Atlantic Corp. that produced Verizon Communications. He also argued before the U.S. Supreme Court and the European Commission.

After graduating from Columbia University, he went to work for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1973 to 1977. While at the CIA, he attended law school at George Washington University and was a clerk to Judge Malcolm Wilkey of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Barr also served President Ronald Reagan from 1982 to 1983 as a member of the White House’s domestic policy staff.

Barr and his wife, Christine, were married in 1973. Their daughter, Mary Daly, works in the deputy attorney general’s office as the Justice Department’s point person on the opioid drug crisis.

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COLUMN BY

Portrait of Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission. Photo: Ron Sachs/SIPA/Newscom.

Federal Judge Opens Discovery Into Clinton Email Usage [+Video]

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(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that, in a ruling excoriating both the U.S. Departments of State and Justice, U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth has ordered both agencies to join Judicial Watch in submitting a proposed schedule for discovery into whether Hillary Clinton sought to evade the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by using a private email system and whether the State Department acted in “bad faith” by failing to disclose knowledge of the email system.  The decision comes in a FOIA lawsuit related to the Benghazi terrorist attack.

Specially, Lamberth ruled:

… the Court ORDERS the parties to meet and confer to plan discovery into (a) whether Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email while Secretary of State was an intentional attempt to evade FOIA; (b) whether the State Department’s attempts to settle this case in late 2014 and early 2015 amounted to bad faith; and (c) whether State has adequately searched for records responsive to Judicial Watch’s requests.

Terming Clinton’s use of her private email system, “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency,” Lamberth wrote in his MEMORANDUM OPINION:

… his [President Barack Obama’s] State and Justice Departments fell far short. So far short that the court questions, even now, whether they are acting in good faith. Did Hillary Clinton use her private email as Secretary of State to thwart this lofty goal [Obama announced standard for transparency]? Was the State Department’s attempt to settle this FOIA case in 2014 an effort to avoid searching – and disclosing the existence of – Clinton’s missing emails? And has State ever adequately searched for records in this case?

[ … ]

At best, State’s attempt to pass-off its deficient search as legally adequate during settlement negotiations was negligence born out of incompetence. At worst, career employees in the State and Justice Departments colluded to scuttle public scrutiny of Clinton, skirt FOIA, and hoodwink this Court.

Turning his attention to the Department of Justice, Lamberth wrote:

The current Justice Department made things worse. When the government last appeared before the Court, counsel claimed, ‘it is not true to say we misled either Judicial Watch or the Court.’ When accused of ‘doublespeak,’ counsel denied vehemently, feigned offense, and averred complete candor. When asked why State masked the inadequacy of its initial search, counsel claimed that the officials who initially responded to Judicial Watch’s request didn’t realize Clinton’s emails were missing, and that it took them two months to ‘figure [] out what was going on’… Counsel’s responses strain credulity. [citations omitted]

The Court granted discovery because the government’s response to the Judicial Watch Benghazi FOIA request for Clinton emails “smacks of outrageous conduct.”

Citing an email (uncovered as a result of Judicial Watch’s lawsuit) that Hillary Clinton acknowledged that Benghazi was a terrorist attack immediately after it happened, Judge Lamberth asked:

Did State know Clinton deemed the Benghazi attack terrorism hours after it happened, contradicting the Obama Administration’s subsequent claim of a protest-gone-awry?

[ … ]

Did the Department merely fear what might be found? Or was State’s bungling just the unfortunate result of bureaucratic redtape and a failure to communicate? To preserve the Department’s integrity, and to reassure the American people their government remains committed to transparency and the rule of law, this suspicion cannot be allowed to fester.

“The historic court ruling raises concerns about the Hillary Clinton email scandal and government corruption that millions of Americans share,” stated Judicial Watch Tom Fitton.  “Judicial Watch looks forward to conducting careful discovery into the Clinton email issue and we hope the Justice Department and State Department recognize Judge Lamberth’s criticism and help, rather than obstruct, this court-ordered discovery.”

Read more about benghazi, Department of Justice, DOJ, fbi, foia, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email scandal, Royce Lamberth, State Department

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission.

21 Photos of Pearl Harbor and a Day That Will Live in Infamy

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Seventy-three years ago today, on Dec. 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, an act that plunged the nation into World War II. The surprise attack that Sunday lasted less than two hours but killed more than 2,500, wounded about 1,000 and ruined 318 American ships and airplanes. Today we honor the lives lost and remember the terrible day that, in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s words, will “live in infamy.”

Pearl Harbor naval base and U.S.S. Shaw ablaze after the Japanese attack. (Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)

The USS Shaw ablaze after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)

Aerial photograph, taken by a Japanese pilot, of the destruction of Pearl Harbor, Japanese bomber in lower right foreground. (Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)

A Japanese pilot took this photo of the bombardment. A Japanese bomber is in the foreground. (Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)

Wreckage of USS Arizona. (Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)

Wreckage of the USS Arizona. (Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)

Explosion at Pearl Harbor seen from Hickam Field. Hickam Field suffered extensive damage and aircraft losses, with 189 people killed and 303 wounded. (Photo: Newscom)

Sailors at NAS Ford Island watch as the USS Shaw explodes. (Photo: Newscom)

Three civilians were killed in this shrapnel-riddled car by a bomb dropped from a Japanese plane eight miles from Pearl Harbor. (Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)

Eight miles from Pearl Harbor, three civilians died in this shrapnel-riddled car. (Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)

USS Arizona, at height of fire, following Japanese aerial attack on Pearl Harbor. (Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)

Smoke billows from the USS Arizona during the height of the fire. (Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)

The Japanese bomber, a thin line of smoke trailing in the wake, was struck by anti-aircraft fire during the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)

A Japanese bomber, a thin line of smoke trailing in its wake, after being struck by anti-aircraft fire. (Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)

Pearl Harbor destruction after Japanese 'Kamikaze' attacks. (Photo: Newscom)

Some of the destruction after attacks by Japanese pilots. (Photo: Newscom)

Japanese suicide pilots who were used to attack Pearl Harbor. (Photo: Keystone Pictures/Newscom)

Japanese kamikaze, or suicide, pilots that were organized and used in the war in the latter half of 1944. (Photo: Keystone Pictures/Newscom)

Severely damaged and beached during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the USS Nevada gets ready to leave her Hawaiian anchorage for permanent repairs at a U.S. port. Temporary repairs made at Pearl Harbor enabled the battleship to make the voyage under her own power. (Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)

After being severely damaged and beached, the USS Nevada makes ready to leave her Hawaiian anchorage for permanent repairs elsewhere. (Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)

One of the 80 U.S. Navy planes wrecked by Japanese bombs and bullets during the air attacks on Pearl Harbor. The plane was an OS2U, an Observation Scout built by Vought-Sikorsky. (Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)

One of 80 Navy planes wrecked by Japanese bombs and bullets, this is an OS2U — an Observation Scout built by Vought-Sikorsky. (Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)

Inspection of what is left of an aircraft at Hickam Field. (Photo: Newscom)

Inspectors survey what is left of an aircraft at Hickam Field. (Photo: Newscom)

Burning ships in the harbor. (Photo: Newscom)

Ships burn in Pearl Harbor. (Photo: Newscom)

Captured Japanese photograph taken aboard a Japanese carrier before the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Photo: Newscom)

This captured photograph was taken aboard a Japanese carrier before the attack. (Photo: Newscom)

President Franklin D. Roosevelt during his first address to the nation after the attack. (Photo: CSU Archives/Newscom)

President Franklin D. Roosevelt makes his first radio address to the nation since the attack. (Photo: CSU Archives/Newscom)

The U.S.S. Neosho, navy oil tanker, cautiously backs away from her berth (right center) in a successful effort to escape the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941. At left the battleship U.S.S. California lists after aerial blows. Other crippled warships and part of the hull of the capsized U.S.S. Oklahoma may be seen in the background. The Neosho was later sunk in the Coral Sea. (Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)

The USS Neosho, a Navy oil tanker, backs away from her berth (right center) in a successful effort to escape the attack. At left, the battleship USS California lists after aerial blows. Other crippled warships and part of the hull of the capsized USS Oklahoma are visible in the background. The Neosho later was sunk in the Coral Sea. (Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)

The U.S.S. Oklahoma lying capsized in the harbor following the Japanesee attack. (Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)

The USS Oklahoma lies capsized in the harbor. (Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)

Ruins of a B-17C aircraft rests near Hickam Field after the attack. Nearly half of the approximately 60 airplanes at Hickam Field had been destroyed or severely damaged. (Photo: Newscom)

Ruins of a B-17C rest near Hickam Field. Nearly half of about 60 airplanes at Hickam were destroyed or severely damaged. (Photo: Newscom)

A San Francisco newspaper stand on Monday morning, Dec. 8, 1941, the day after Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (Photo: Newscom)

The day after: A San Francisco newspaper stand on the morning of Monday, Dec. 8, 1941. (Photo: Newscom)

U.S. Navy tug raises one of eight Japanese 'midget subs' from Pearl Harbor. It was one of five World War 2 Ko-hyoteki-class submarines that entered Pearl Harbor, one of which torpedoed the USS West Virginia. (Photo: Newscom)

A U.S. Navy tug raises one of eight Japanese ‘midget subs’ from Pearl Harbor. It was among five Ko-hyoteki-class submarines that entered the harbor; one torpedoed the USS West Virginia. (Photo: Newscom)

Money, Support for Migrant ‘Caravans’ Flow Through Chicago

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Advocates of open borders quoted in media coverage of the migrant “caravan” moving north through Mexico are part of a network of U.S.-based groups funded in the past by left-leaning foundations, according to tax and financial records.

Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a Chicago-based nonprofit whose name means People Without Borders, is widely credited with organizing the caravans of migrants that traveled from Central America on trains and buses and on foot this year and last.

Two United Methodist churches in Chicago appear to be bases for People Without Borders, which is led by one of the pastors, documents show.

Several organizations are “consistently connected on various websites” and “have overlapping people, most notably Emma Lozano,” said Hayden Ludwig, a research analyst at Capital Research Center, naming the Chicago pastor.

Capital Research Center, a Washington-based nonprofit that examines how foundations and charities spend money, analyzed tax and financial records related to People Without Borders. The Daily Signal reviewed this analysis and related documents and websites.

Information on the website and Facebook page of People Without Borders indicates that the advocacy group played a key role for at least the past decade in forming caravans that typically got started in Honduras or El Salvador before entering Guatemala to the north.

In April, a few hundred migrants traveled north together with support from People Without Borders, but they largely disbanded in Mexico City.

The latest caravan, which originated in Honduras in October before crossing into Guatemala and breaking through barriers to enter Mexico illegally, has ranged in size from a few hundred at its inception to several thousand. Twitter feeds from reporters covering the caravan in person estimated it was about 2 miles long.

When the caravan first arrived in Mexico, U.N. officials estimated roughly 7,000 migrants were heading north. A few days ago, many left Mexico City.

Media reports estimated that 4,000 to 5,000 migrants are heading toward the U.S.-Mexico border. In mid-November, dozens of migrants began arriving by bus near the U.S. border in Tijuana, some climbing the fencing. In the days since, hundreds of migrants have overwhelmed that city’s resources.

Supporting the Caravan

People Without Borders has avoided claiming a leadership role in the caravans, but its Facebook posts make clear that the group was coordinating logistical and financial support for migrants attempting to reach the U.S.

A woman at Chicago’s Lincoln United Methodist Church who identified herself as Cecilia Garcia told The Daily Signal in a phone interview that two different but allied groups are called People Without Borders, one domestic and based in Chicago and the other international.

“Our group has nothing to do with the caravan, but we are very supportive of the migrants,” Garcia said.

People Without Borders lists a “Caravan Support Fund” on Facebook. Several members have been quoted in both the American and Mexican press while traveling with the caravan.

They include Denis Omar Contreras, described in an Associated Press report as “a Honduran-born caravan leader.” Contreras has been quoted widely disputing allegations from President Donald Trump and other U.S. leaders who say the caravan may harbor terrorists and criminals.

Another activist with People Without Borders, Irineo Mujica, is quoted in the same story insisting that the caravan is a benign movement of people fleeing from violence and dire economic conditions in Central America.

Mujica, a Phoenix resident who is a dual citizen of Mexico and the U.S., is director of People Without Borders in Mexico. Last month, Mexican officials arrested Mujica in Ciudad Hidalgo, a town in the southern part of the country. He was accused of property damage and resisting arrest, according to media reports.

Ludwig, the research analyst at Capital Research Center, has kept tabs on People Without Borders, its network of activists, and its relationship with the caravans of migrants. (The Contreras surname, Ludwig notes, sometimes is spelled Contera in media reports, such as one in the Los Angeles Times.)

Other open-borders activists affiliated with People Without Borders and participating in the caravan include Rodrigo Abeja, who has been quoted by NBC News, USA Today, The Washington Post, and other news outlets. In statements to the media, Abeja joined other activists in denying that gang members or terrorists have infiltrated the caravan.

The Daily Signal sought comment from Alex Mensing, listed as a U.S. contact for People Without Borders. At publication time, Mensing had not responded.

In a voicemail, The Daily Signal asked Mensing how the group could say it has no organizational role, since several of its activists are taking part, as well as how open-borders advocates could be certain that criminal elements are not included in the caravans.

History and Funding

Pueblo Sin Fronteras, or People Without Borders, is an extension of another nonprofit advocacy group called La Familia Latina Unida, or the United Latin Family, which advocates on behalf of illegal aliens, according to Influence Watch, a recent project of the Capital Research Center.

Tax records and other public documents show the organizations share the same Chicago address and some staff members. That address, 2176 W. Division St. in Chicago, also is the address of the 13-year-old Adalberto Memorial United Methodist Church.

In 2006, the church provided sanctuary for a year to an illegal immigrant. She was arrested when she left the church and reportedly continues to advocate from Mexico for changes to U.S. immigration law.

Ludwig’s research shows that United Latin Family lost its tax-exempt status in May 2017 after declining to file 990 tax forms.

But even in the absence of its initial benefactor, People Without Borders isn’t suffering from lack of support. It has become aligned with another Chicago-based nonprofit known as Centro Sin Fronteras Community Services Network, or Center Without Borders. Little appears to separate the center from People Without Borders.

Here is how Influence Watch describes the connection:

Emma Lozano, a left-wing activist and pastor at the Lincoln United Methodist Church in Chicago, Illinois, is listed as executive director of Pueblo Sin Fronteras [People Without Borders]. Lozano is also president and founder of the Centro Sin Fronteras.

She is the sister of the late Rudy Lozano, a left-wing activist and community organizer in Chicago, Illinois. [Emma] Lozano is also a pastor at the Lincoln United Methodist Church in Chicago, along with her husband, the pastor Walter ‘Slim’ Coleman.

The Daily Signal requested an interview with Emma Lozano, the pastor, but has received no response.

Lozano and Coleman also were co-pastors of Adalberto Memorial United Methodist Church, the church that shares the address of People Without Borders. Another pastor recently took over there, a United Methodist Church official told The Daily Signal in an email.

Records compiled by Influence Watch show that between 2000 and 2005, Center Without Borders received $113,000 in grants from the Washington-based Public Welfare Foundation and the Chicago-based Wieboldt Foundation. The Washington-based National Immigration Forum donated $60,000 in 2010.

‘A Lot of Confusion’

People Without Borders worked with a coalition, including four groups that support permissive immigration policies, to organize the caravan that took shape in April, according to Influence Watch.

The Daily Signal requested an interview with Lozano, the Chicago pastor identified as executive director of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, or People Without Borders, but has received no response.

The website and Facebook page for People Without Borders don’t appear to mention two different groups of that name, but show the organization has a presence in Mexico.

But Garcia, who said she is a member of Lincoln United Methodist, told The Daily Signal that two groups “have the same name, but they were founded at different times.”

“There is certainly a lot of confusion out there, because both organizations have the same name, but they were founded at different times,”  she said, adding:

Both groups work together a lot and we cooperate and share social media. They also asked us to share a GoFundMe page. We are told that the caravan developed organically, and that there is no single leader.

People are migrating because there was a lot of U.S. meddling in Central America and now they are fleeing those countries. We support family reunification.

Garcia, who called herself the founder of an organization called Family Reunification Not Deportation, also said she belongs to both United Latin Family and People Without Borders.

Garcia said her own husband was “abducted by ICE,” referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and is now in Mexico.

Interconnected Groups

Ludwig, the Capital Research Center analyst, said he sees no evidence of two organizations called People Without Borders.

Ludwig said Chicago-based groups that Influence Watch describes as “illegal immigration advocacy organizations” appear to be interconnected because they share resources and personnel.

“The Pueblo Sin Fronteras I identified appears to be a project of the U.S.-based 501(c)(3) Centro Sin Fronteras and the 501(c)(4) La Familia Latina Unida, since they’re consistently connected on various websites and they have overlapping people, most notably Emma Lozano,” Ludwig said in an email to The Daily Signal.

The Influence Watch entry for Center without Borders lists the group’s tax identification number and identifies United Latin Family and People Without Borders as affiliated organizations.

The Daily Signal sought comment from Center Without Borders and the United Latin Family at a listed phone number and email address, but has not received a direct response from anyone speaking on behalf of those groups.

“For now we’re treating Pueblo [People Without Borders] as a project [of Center Without Borders] until I get further notice that there’s a foreign group which can take credit for it,” Ludwig said. “Even then, the U.S. Pueblo operates in conjunction with the Centro and La Familia groups, so it’s fair to list them all together.”

Ken McIntyre contributed to this report.

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COLUMN BY

Portrait of Kevin Mooney

Kevin Mooney

Kevin Mooney is an investigative reporter for The Daily Signal. Send an email to Kevin. Twitter: @KevinMooneyDC.

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Cohen, Manafort Developments Don’t Reveal Any Illegal Conduct or Collusion by Trump, His Campaign

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Amid the media hysteria over Michael Cohen’s guilty plea and discussions between the lawyers representing Paul Manafort and President Donald Trump, it’s important to understand from a legal standpoint what this means—and what it does not.

We don’t know what other evidence special counsel Robert Mueller may have that hasn’t yet been disclosed. But the evidence disclosed to date—including in Cohen’s plea deal—still doesn’t reveal any illegal conduct by Trump or his campaign or any collusion with the Russian government to change the outcome of the 2016 election. There is nothing illegal or unethical about discussions and sharing of information between lawyers representing individuals who may be the focus of the same prosecutor.

Cohen pleaded guilty to one count of lying to Congress. What was he lying about? For the past 30 years, the Trump real estate organization has been trying to negotiate a deal to build a marquee property in Moscow. There is certainly nothing unusual or untoward about that.

The criminal information filed by the special counsel describes the false statements that Cohen now admits he made. Cohen originally told Congress that the negotiations he was involved in over that deal ended in January 2016 and that they did not involve Trump himself. He now admits that the negotiations didn’t end until June 2016 (the deal was never consummated), and that he did brief individuals within the Trump Organization, including Trump, about the negotiations.

Cohen also stated that he never planned to travel to Russia for the hotel deal, nor did he ask Trump to travel there. He also swore to Congress that he had reached out to the press secretary for the Russian president, but that he did “not recall” whether he received a response. These statements were also false, thus constituting a federal crime of lying to Congress.

No one should minimize the seriousness of lying under oath to Congress. During the guilty plea before the district court judge, Cohen said, “I made these statements to be consistent with Individual-1’s political messaging and to be loyal to Individual 1.”

So Cohen lied to be loyal to Trump (Individual 1 presumably). But it’s important to understand that the underlying conduct that Cohen was lying about—negotiating a real estate deal—is not illegal or unlawful in and of itself, whether you’re working to get something built in New York City or Moscow.

Furthermore, there is no federal law that tells individuals who own a business and run for federal office, whether it is the presidency or Congress, that they have to stop running their business, negotiating deals, or taking part in the other myriad details involved in being a business owner the moment they decide to run for office.

Yes, they have to avoid conflicts of interest, and cannot enrich themselves unlawfully once in office. But those laws kick in after someone is elected.

All of Cohen’s entreaties to get the real estate deal appear to have been perfectly legal, at least so far as we know.

If we assume that Cohen pleaded guilty this time because he really did lie to Congress, then the underlying conduct—talking to Russian officials about a possible real estate deal in Moscow and briefing individuals within the Trump Organization—is all lawful conduct. Does Cohen secretly have some other testimony that shows illegal activity? We don’t know, and there is nothing in the plea agreement that indicates one way or another.

We also don’t know what Cohen told Mueller during his seven proffer sessions that took place between August 2018 and Nov. 20, 2018, as noted in the plea agreement. We do know that Trump submitted his written responses to Mueller on Nov. 20, and the Cohen guilty plea took place after that, leading one to conclude that Mueller was waiting for the president’s written answers before unveiling Cohen’s latest guilty plea. Where this leads is difficult to tell.

By the way, it should be noted that Cohen faced a maximum of five years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000; the plea agreement with Mueller says that the special prosecutor is recommending no more than six months in prison and a maximum fine of only $9,500.

The media has also been full of stories claiming the special counsel is upset that the lawyers representing Manafort have apparently been briefing the lawyers representing Trump about their discussions with Mueller and implying that there is something nefarious in such sharing of information. There is nothing illegal or unethical about lawyers with different clients sharing such information.

The extensive, 17-page plea agreement that Manafort entered into with Mueller on Sept. 14 has no provision of any kind barring Manafort or his lawyers from briefing the president’s lawyers on their discussions with Mueller. There is an entire page and a half detailing the cooperation that Manafort has to provide to the special counsel, but nowhere does it say that Manafort is prohibited from sharing information about that cooperation.

In fact, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, says he has joint defense agreements with 32 potential witnesses in the special counsel’s investigation, including Manafort. Some legal experts say that agreement should have ended when Manafort pleaded guilty, but as long as Manafort’s lawyer is simply providing information to Giuliani and there is no effort to tamper with a witness or obstruct justice, there is no unlawful behavior in such sharing of information (although it is unusual).

Of course, Manafort, who was convicted for criminal violations of the law related to his consulting business that had nothing to do with his brief participation in the Trump campaign, has more serious problems.

On Nov. 26, Mueller filed a pleading with the federal court in the District of Columbia claiming that Manafort has breached his plea deal by “lying” to the FBI and the special counsel “on a variety of subject matters.” Those “subject matters” are not detailed in the filing; instead, the special counsel says he will outline what those “lies” are when he files a “detailed sentencing” report to the court.

So far, after a year and a half of the special counsel investigation, we’ve had multiple indictments of Russians for trying—with no coordination with any Americans—to use social media and the internet to encourage social unrest in America in 2016. We had various indictments for criminal activity unrelated to the Trump campaign and for lying to Congress and federal investigators over conduct that was itself lawful.

But we still have had no indictments that have revealed any evidence about the issue the special counsel was supposed to investigate—whether there was any collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. The latest developments with Cohen and Manafort add very little to answering that ultimate question. We’re still waiting.

Originally published by Fox News

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Hans von Spakovsky

Hans von Spakovsky

Hans von Spakovsky is an authority on a wide range of issues—including civil rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, immigration, the rule of law and government reform—as a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and manager of the think tank’s Election Law Reform Initiative. Read his research. Twitter: .

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EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission. Photo: Go Nakamura/ZUMA Press/Newscom.

The Left’s Election Day Analysis: If We Lost, They Must’ve Cheated

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A disturbing trend is emerging from the political left: When their candidates lose elections, rather than accept lawful defeat, they denounce the election itself.

In 2016, they explained away President Donald Trump’s victory as the product of Russian meddling. Now, they are blaming election losses in Florida and Georgia on “voter suppression” and other sinister acts.

In Florida, Democrat gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum walked back his election night concession, claiming “tens of thousands of votes have yet to be counted,” and told supporters that a “vote denied is justice denied.”

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, described the Georgia gubernatorial race as biased against Democrat Stacey Abrams, claiming that if Abrams “had a fair election, she already would have won.” Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, announced that Abrams’ apparent defeat was a sure sign that Republicans “stole” her election.

Sure enough, when the final tally gave the victory to Republican Brian Kemp, Abrams refused to concede, because “concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true or proper.” Instead, Abrams blamed her defeat on Kemp’s supposed “suppression of the people’s democratic right to vote.”

Such pronouncements are creating a dangerous perception within liberal ranks that electoral defeat automatically equals electoral theft. For years, the left has denounced election integrity measures as tantamount to disenfranchisement. Now they are saying the same thing about electoral defeats.

This sort of rhetoric can have profound—and dangerous—consequences. Democracy works only when the people have confidence that the electoral process is free and fair, and the outcome is valid.

Sometimes, to be sure, this is not the case.

The Heritage Foundation election fraud database presently has 1,147 proven instances of fraud. Several of these cases involve elections that were overturned because enough fraudulent ballots had been cast to alter the outcome.

But there is a key distinction between those cases and liberals’ new accusations: proof.

Winning a court case to invalidate an election on the basis of fraud requires gathering significant evidence, and demonstrating, for example, that ballots were tampered with, that voters were bribed or coerced, or that elections officials rigged the results. Convicting someone on criminal election fraud charges requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

It’s a high bar to meet, leagues beyond the reckless and unsubstantiated allegations erupting after the Florida and Georgia elections.

Consider the facts.

After a machine recount, in the Florida gubernatorial race, Ron DeSantis’ 33,683 vote lead over Gillum had hardly moved at all.

And in Georgia, the left’s claims that Kemp was overseeing insidious vote suppression efforts seem nonsensical, given that voter turnout actually skyrocketed.

According to FiveThirtyEight.com, 55 percent of all eligible Georgia voters cast a ballot: “21 points higher than the state’s 1982-2014 average. That was the biggest change from the average of any state.” Exit polls indicate that minority turnout in the state may also have set records.

Still, Abrams declared to supporters that “democracy failed Georgia.”

Not quite. A more apt summation of the election would be that “liberals are failing democracy.”

Telling voters that elections are only fair when their party wins sets up every election to be discounted by one side or the other. It foments distrust and dissension, and it feeds the vitriol that already pervades so many aspects of modern politics.

Some political strategists might hope that de-legitimizing the electoral process will frighten and enrage the liberal base, increase turnout, and pay dividends in 2020. If true, then the left’s cynical gamble on “voter suppression” rhetoric would be a great irony.

But for all the temptations of that approach, we can and should hope that the rhetoric of the last few weeks—overheated, baseless, and reckless as it has been—will fall by the wayside.

Even today, in an age of division and zero-sum politics, there remains something more important than winning elections: keeping our democracy.

Originally published in The Washington Times

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Jason Snead

Jason Snead

Jason Snead is a senior policy analyst in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Read his research. Twitter: .

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VIDEO: Media To Blame For Generation of Paranoid Kids

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How did America end up raising generation paranoia? NRATV’s Grant Stinchfield joins Dana Loesch to weigh in.

EDITORS NOTE: This column with video and images is republished with permission. The featured photo is by Gabriel Matula on Unsplash.

There Is No ‘Surge’ in Right-Wing Violence

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A Washington Post “analysis” of domestic terrorism argues that attacks from white supremacists and other “far-right attackers” have been on the rise since Barack Obama’s presidency and “surged since President Trump took office.”

It’s a familiar storyline meant to assure liberals that yes, Trump-motivated right-wing terrorists are running wild. There are, however, a few problems with this proposition.

For one thing, even if we accept the numbers the Post offers, the use of the word “surge”—meaning a sudden, powerful forward or upward movement—strains credibility. There’s no evidence of a “surge,” either in historical context or as a matter of ideological preference.

That is to say, we have good reason not to accept the numbers.

According to The Washington Post, which relies on Global Terrorism Database data, there were zero acts of right-wing terrorism in the entire nation in 2002. Since then, we have seen a “surge,” to 36 in a nation of 325-plus million people in 2017. Among those acts, there were 11 fatalities.

In other words, fewer homicides were committed by political terrorists of any stripe in the United States in 2017 than were committed by undocumented immigrants in the state of Texas alone—which, I am assured, is an incredibly low number that shouldn’t worry us very much.

If one of these “surges” is scaremongering, why not the other?

Then again, even if we use the criteria offered by the Global Terrorism Database, we need to be exceptionally generous to even get to 36 incidents of right-wing violence in 2017. (I could find only 32.)

For example, although the Post acknowledges that the Las Vegas shooter’s motivations are still unknown, the Global Terrorism Database had no problem categorizing the murderer of 58 people as an “anti-government extremist.” And it takes these sorts of assumptions to get in the vicinity of a “surge” in right-wing terrorism.

Of the 32 incidents I was able to find, 12 featured perpetrators who were merely “suspected” of being right-wing terrorists. Some of these incidents could have been the work of one person, as in the pellet gun shootings of Muslims in New York. In other incidents, we are asked to treat patently insane people as if they had coherent political agendas.

Still other events are even more opaque. In San Juan, Puerto Rico—apparently a hotbed of white supremacy—an incendiary device was thrown into a gay nightclub. No one was injured, thank goodness. Also, no one was caught, and no one claimed responsibility for the act. Yet the episode doesn’t even earn a “suspected” designation from the Global Terrorism Database.

If the definition of domestic terrorism is muddy at best, the definition of right-wing terrorism is often arbitrary and self-serving.

To help bolster right-wing terrorist stats, for instance, we would have to perfunctorily include every anti-Semitic act. The Washington Post even mentions an Anti-Defamation League study showing “a 57 percent surge in anti-Semitic incidents in 2017.”

If anything, the Anti-Defamation League study should be cautionary, as it demonstrates how difficult it is to not only quantify these incidents but also categorize them ideologically. The Anti-Defamation League’s faulty data were self-reported, for instance, and most of the “surge” can be attributed to a single Jewish teen in Israel calling in a number of bomb threats to Jewish centers.

In the real world, a Jewish American is probably likelier to encounter anti-Semitism at a college campus than anywhere else.

Then there is the matter of inconsistently defining terrorism. If throwing a rock through the window of an Islamic center is an act of right-wing terrorism, why isn’t it an act of left-wing terrorism for anti-capitalists to throw rocks through the window of a business in Oregon?

Surely, both fall under the description of terror, which the Global Terrorism Database defines as “the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor seeking to attain a political, economic, religious or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation.”

As far as I can tell, only one of these genres actually makes the cut for the Global Terrorism Database .

This is what happens when reporters work backward from a predetermined premise.

You’ll notice, as well, that these analyses typically begin in 2002, seeing as the 2,977 Americans murdered on 9/11 are inconvenient to the white-supremacy-is-more-dangerous-than-radical-Islam narrative. The reason we don’t have a real-life “surge” of attacks by Islamic extremists since 2001, incidentally, is that the United States has spent billions yearly to stop it.

Of course, political violence isn’t the monopoly of any one group. Although there have been flare-ups of leftist violence in the 1900s and the 1960s and ’70s, for the most part, this kind of violence is still rare.

That could change. And none of this is to say horrible events aren’t happening. Nor is it to say that haters don’t exist.

But exaggerating the problem for political reasons doesn’t help anyone. Covering your partisan work with a bogus veneer of scientific analysis doesn’t make it any more useful.

COPYRIGHT 2018 CREATORS.COM

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COLUMN BY

Portrait of David Harsanyi

David Harsanyi

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist and the author of the forthcoming “First Freedom: A Ride through America’s Enduring History With the Gun, From the Revolution to Today.” Twitter: @davidharsanyi.

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission. Photo: JPA/AFF-USA.COM/MEGA/Newscom.

Statement from President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump on the Passing of Former President George H.W. Bush

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December 1, 2018

Melania and I join with a grieving Nation to mourn the loss of former President George H.W. Bush, who passed away last night.

Through his essential authenticity, disarming wit, and unwavering commitment to faith, family, and country, President Bush inspired generations of his fellow Americans to public service—to be, in his words, “a thousand points of light” illuminating the greatness, hope, and opportunity of America to the world.

President Bush always found a way to set the bar higher.  As a young man, he captained the Yale baseball team, and then went on to serve as the youngest aviator in the United States Navy during the Second World War.  Later in life, he rose to the pinnacle of American politics as a Congressman from Texas, envoy to China, Director of Central Intelligence, Vice President of eight years to President Ronald Reagan, and finally President of the United States.

With sound judgement, common sense, and unflappable leadership, President Bush guided our Nation, and the world, to a peaceful and victorious conclusion of the Cold War.  As President, he set the stage for the decades of prosperity that have followed.  And through all that he accomplished, he remained humble, following the quiet call to service that gave him a clear sense of direction.

Along with his full life of service to country, we will remember President Bush for his devotion to family—especially the love of his life, Barbara.  His example lives on, and will continue to stir future Americans to pursue a greater cause.  Our hearts ache with his loss, and we, with the American people, send our prayers to the entire Bush family, as we honor the life and legacy of 41.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of the White House.

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