VIDEO: President Trump’s ‘Keep America Great!’ rally in Moon Township, Pennsylvania

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On Saturday, March 10, 2018 Right Side Broadcasting Network‘s Steve Lookner and Liz Willis were at the President Donald J. Trump rally at Atlantic Aviation in Moon Township, Pennsylvania. Lookner and Willis skillfully covered the before, during and after segments of the “Keep America Great!” rally.

Trumpism is alive and doing well in Pennsylvania.

Watch the Right Side Broadcasting Network coverage of the entire event. NOTE: President Trump begins his remarks at the 4:45 minute mark into the video.

RELATED ARTICLES: Policies, not past, fueling evangelical support of Trump

Problematic Women: Owning a Gun and Motherhood Are Not Mutually Exclusive

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In this week’s edition of “Problematic Women,” we break down Ambassador Nikki Haley clapping back at the Palestinian leader who told her to “shut up.” Bumble, the popular dating app, is encouraging its users to report anyone with a gun in their photos. Bethany Mandel appeared on “Fox & Friends” to discuss why as a mother she has chosen to own a gun.

The American Enterprise Institute’s “Factual Feminist,” Christina Hoff Sommers, traveled to Oregon to give a speech at Lewis & Clark Law School. Several disruptors came into the lecture hall, screaming, shouting, and playing music to drown her out. How does this type of behavior benefit any group?

Plus: Did “The Bachelor” go too far, and what does it say about our culture? We discuss in this week’s edition of “Problematic Women,” co-hosted with Bre Payton of The Federalist.

Listen to the podcast below.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Bre Payton

Bre Payton

Bre Payton is the culture and millennial politics reporter for The Federalist. Twitter: .

Portrait of Ginny Montalbano

Ginny Montalbano

Ginny Montalbano is a contributor to The Daily Signal. Send an email to Ginny. Twitter: .

RELATED ARTICLES: 

The Racist Roots of Gun Control

If You’re Trying to Ban Guns, the Least You Could Do Is Learn the Basics

Industry Leaders Defend Violent Video Games in Meeting With Trump

A Note for our Readers:

Trust in the mainstream media is at a historic low—and rightfully so given the behavior of many journalists in Washington, D.C.

Ever since Donald Trump was elected president, it is painfully clear that the mainstream media covers liberals glowingly and conservatives critically.

Now journalists spread false, negative rumors about President Trump before any evidence is even produced.

Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. That’s why The Daily Signal exists.

The Daily Signal’s mission is to give Americans the real, unvarnished truth about what is happening in Washington and what must be done to save our country.

Our dedicated team of more than 100 journalists and policy experts rely on the financial support of patriots like you.

Your donation helps us fight for access to our nation’s leaders and report the facts.

You deserve the truth about what’s going on in Washington.

Please make a gift to support The Daily Signal.

SUPPORT THE DAILY SIGNAL

#StopSocialMediaCensorship: Friends Don’t Censor Friends

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The first social media site was called Six Degrees. It was named after the ‘six degrees of separation’ theory and lasted from 1997 to 2001. Six degrees of separation is the idea that all living things and everything else in the world are six or fewer steps away from each other so that a chain of “a friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps.

Six Degrees allowed users to create a profile and then friend other users. Six Degrees was the seed from which grew social media platforms like Facebook, Google and Twitter.

The idea is that friends may freely share their ideas, beliefs, thoughts and personal lives with other friends. 

Facebook’s slogan is, “Be Connected. Be Discovered. Be on Facebook.” For Google “Don’t be evil” is their informal slogan. But “You can make money without doing evil” is Google’s official slogan. Twitter’s slogan is “Yours To Discover.”

All of these slogans have become untrue as Facebook, Google and Twitter began creating “community standards” and policies that embraced some but censored others. Facebook is actively preventing certain people from being connected. Google is making money by doing evil and some on Twitter cannot be discovered.

Many members of various social media sites use them as a means to distribute their political views, policies and positions (e.g. President Trump’s Tweets) to their followers. Followers become force multipliers in sharing the link, tweet, or web-page, with other friends. The six degrees of separation becomes larger and larger until it can actually change public policy.

How and Why is this happening?

How this is happening:

  • Each of the biggest social media sites, Facebook, Google and Twitter, have refined their community standards and policies.
  • Some of the social media have changed their algorithms which changes how searches on Goggle, for example, appear and which sites come first and which last.
  • Several of the social media sites have partnered with other entities, e.g. the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League, to censor their content.
  • Social media sites restrict certain speech by its members, i.e. shadow banning, on their platforms.
  • Social media sites delete accounts based upon their community standards, when a site is reported and if the site is black balled by their partners as “hate speech.”

Why is this happening?

  • Social media sites have seen growing numbers of organizations with a political position and/or affiliation. These friend organizations are also media outlets and have grow exponentially both in terms of number of organization but also in the number of followers.
  • Facebook began as individuals connecting, now more and more like minded groups are connecting many focused on political and social issues.
  • The founders, senior leadership and/or management of social media sites have their political views, which they want to promote.
  • Those individuals, organizations and institutions that conflict with the political views of the owner/leadership of social media are subject to restricted speech or shut down completely.
  • Social media derives income from advertisements. Some groups are not allowed to advertise on certain social media sites because they are inconsistent with the political views of the social media platform.

Watch this video of Twitter engineers talking about how they “shadow ban” the speech of some members:

What can you do to stop this censorship?

Here are some ways to deal with social media platforms that you believe are stifling your freedom of expression.

  • Tell the social media site about your concerns.
  • Leave the social media site entirely.
  • Stay with the social media site and put up with their multiple ways of censoring freedom of expression, but understand that they are censoring.
  • Find a social media site that does not censor freedom of expression (e.g. social media site Gab.ai and search engine DuckDuckGo.com)
  • Create your own social media site.

We have created the following confidential survey to learn which social media site(s) are censoring you and how it has impacted you personally or as a business. Please tell us your story. We will publish another column on this issue of growing concern to all.

RELATED ARTICLES: 

How Facebook, Twitter silence conservative voices online – The Hill

Why should I use DuckDuckGo instead of Google? – Quora

Josh Hawley’s Missouri Senate Bid Could Be a Problem for Google – Bloomberg

Hungarian Minister Censored by Facebook For Claiming Mass Migration Had Raised Crime Levels

Clamp down on big tech’s media bias: ‘Shadow ban’ stifles free speech, conservatives – Washington Times

Swedish Jews Complain Google Searches Returning Anti-Semitic Results

Truth and the Transgender Movement

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In the whirlwind few years since Caitlyn Jenner turned the culture debates on their head, many on the far Left have been so busy pushing radical transgender policies that they haven’t stopped long enough to consider the consequences for the people they’re claiming to help. Fortunately, scientific research has.

New research, the Washington Times reports, is screaming “Stop!” to the forces of political correctness carrying on Barack Obama’s agenda. In the journal JAMA, experts from Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine are leading more people to urge caution in this rush to trans-friendly policies. Despite what the sexual extremists might say, there’s absolutely no conclusive evidence that procedures like gender reassignment are actually helping people. (Even Obama’s CDC admitted as much in 2016.)

Even so, the authors point out, there’s been an almost four-fold increase in the number of patients diagnosed with a gender identity disorder. Despite the rapid growth rate, though, the overall numbers remain small, with only 4,118 gender reassignment surgeries being performed in the United States in a 15-year period. That’s only about one in every 56,000 Americans over the age of 18 (according to the 2010 census). It ought to lead us all to ask why our culture is being turned upside down to appease the desires of such a tiny number of troubled individuals!

FRC’s own Peter Sprigg has studied the effects of these surgeries extensively and knows that sometimes the treatments that promise the most help actually harm patients more. While the LGBT lobby and others want us to encourage this fantasy that gender is a choice, the effects of that thinking can be devastating. And Swedish researchers would be the first to say so.

In their “‘robust’ study, the consequences of gender reassignment surgery are startling, and appear to be uniformly negative. They encompass not only higher rates of mental illness (as indicated by psychiatric hospitalization) than in the general Swedish population, but higher rates of physical illness — cancer (“neoplasm”) and heart disease — as well.”

“Most shocking of all, however, was the rate of completed suicides — which was over 19 times higher than in the general Swedish population. Transgender activists often insist that the reason gender reassignment surgery is ‘medically necessary’ is in order to prevent the suicides which might otherwise occur among those who identify as transgender but are frustrated in their desire to surgically alter their bodies. Yet the Swedish study shows that extraordinary rates of suicide persist after surgery.”

At a time when courts are actually stripping parents of custody for refusing to rush their teenagers into these dangerous procedures, it’s time to stop and consider what’s actually best for the people struggling with this confusion. Children, in particular, are being sucked into a world where “feelings” are the new biology, and it’s destroying them. According to the American College of Pediatricians, gender ideology is child abuse. After all, they point out, as many as 98 percent of gender-confused boys and 88 percent of gender-confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty. That hasn’t stopped a loud and vocal minority from pushing people of all ages on a dangerous and irreversible path.

“There is some evidence that surgical techniques have improved, resulting in fewer or less serious physical complications after such surgery,” Peter explains. “Unfortunately, there is no evidence that such procedures achieve their ultimate goal, which is an improvement in the overall mental health of person who identifies as transgender. In other words, this increase is driven almost entirely by ideology, not by scientific evidence the procedures are ultimately effective.”

For more on what you can do on this important topic, check out Peter’s new publication, “How to Respond to the LGBT Movement.”

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

RELATED ARTICLES: 

Kansas Republicans Are Standing Up to Transgender Lies, Protecting Kids From Harm

For Babies with Down Syndrome, Quality of Life Looks up

Distortion on Abortion at Planned Parenthood

No Fear for the Future at Truett McConnell

RELATED VIDEO:  Dr. Jordan Peterson on Non-traditional Gender Pronouns:

VIDEO: This is why we’re investigating Big Tech

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At CPAC, James O’Keefe and former Google engineer James Damore led a panel on the suppression of conservative views in social media. The panel, sponsored by the American Principles Project, also featured Media Research Center’s Dan Gainor, entrepreneur Marlene Jaeckel, and attorney Harmeet Dhillon.

Facebook is labeling conservative news as “fake”; Twitter has been exposed “shadow-banning” ideas they don’t like; Google has outright fired those who do not share the same viewpoints as their executives. These attempts to silence views and control opinions is what makes social media companies so dangerous.

O’Keefe spoke about the power that social media companies hold today:

“If they can rewire society to prevent people from even talking about things, it’s going to change everything. And we’re not going to let it happen.”

James Damore, who was famously fired from Google for publishing a factual memo, also gave some profound insights during the panel:

“These companies are so ubiquitous and powerful that they’re controlling all the means of mass communication… We really need to wake up to the problem and help raise awareness, because this is a big risk to freedom of speech and democracy in general.”

OSCARS: ‘Interspecies Sex’ Wins Best Picture Surrounded by 500 ‘Assault Rifles’

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Hollywood’s 1% gathered for their 90th annual look at me party, known as the Oscars. I, like millions of others who did not watch the Oscars, decided to tune into something much more interesting, like episodes of the first prime time series on American television which ran from 1950-1963, The Rifleman.

What happened at the Oscars?

This morning I woke up to learn that the Academy’s best picture was “The Shape of Water.” Since I did not see the film I decided to Goggle it to learn more about it. What I found out is that Shape of Water is about “interspecies sex.”

In a Forbes article titled “Review: ‘The Shape Of Water’ Successfully Depicts An Interspecies Relationship, Somehow” Dani Di Placido writes:

[I]n The Shape of Water, he’s [Director Guillermo Del Toro] managed to accomplish something very difficult indeed. He’s managed to depict a loving, consummated relationship between Sally Hawkins and a slimy fish creature, and not induce the audience into vomiting. [Emphasis added]

I then Googled for the closest definition I could find that represents a human consummating a relationship with a different species. The closest I could come is “bestiality” which is defined as:

  1. savagely cruel or depraved behavior.
  2. sexual intercourse between a person and an animal.

Newsweek’s Emily Gaudette reported this on The Shape of Water:

In the first few minutes of Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water, a mute janitor named Elisa, played by Sally Hawkins, draws herself a bath and masturbates. She completes this quick ritual several times early in the film as part of her daily routine. Elisa is lonely, and efficient.

Eventually, she meets the man—or, rather, the monster—of her dreams: an aquatic humanoid without a name, played by Doug Jones under layers of hand-painted latex. Del Toro is a noted monster visionary (as in, an inventor of creatures), but this is the first time the director has envisioned one that makes love to a woman.

Hollywood has morphed from its #MeToo moment into its #MeBestiality and #MeMasturbate moments.

So a human woman having a “consummated relationship” with an animal (bestiality) is worthy of the Best Picture Oscar? Is this like Hollywood actors having consummated relationships with underage children (pedophilia)? Or multiple women having consummated relationships on the casting couch with a well known Hollywood producer (rape)?

What else happened at the Oscars?

A second headline that caught my eye, no not that this year’s Oscars was the lowest rated in history, was the number of guns, including AR-15s, present at this gala Hollywood event.

This headline was interesting because the cause célèbre, no pun intended, for the 2018 Oscars was support of gun control by wearing orange lapel pins.

In a Breitbart news article titled “Oscars: Celebrities Push Gun Control Surrounded by a Wall of 500 Armed Officers” Jerome Hudson reports:

The Los Angeles Police Department will deploy 500 officers to wrap the Dolby Theatre in multiple barriers of armed security for the 90th Academy Awards on Sunday night, an event at which several of Hollywood’s most celebrated stars will actively push for more gun control in America.

“We have these concentric rings of security that start in the middle and radiate outward,” said LAPD Cmdr. Blake Chow, the man tasked with overseeing the massive operation. “We have a lot of officers in fixed posts and foot beats keeping an eye on the event.”

Several celebrities plan to wear orange lapel pins on the red carpet and during tonight’s ceremony in support of gun control and the Michael Bloomberg-founded gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety.

Tom Trento in a column titled “Hollywood Actor’s Gun Pledge” wrote:

The irony of “Hollywood” deserves its own Oscar.

Here we have a contingent of people who, because they sell tickets, truly believe they have something important to say to us “common-folk.”

So, let’s make an important point with Reductio Ad Absurdum and show the foolishness of “actors” who demand non-actors to change their beliefs and practices while exempting themselves from their own moral standards.

THE  HOLLYWOOD  ACTOR’S  GUN  PLEDGE

As a Hollywood actor I’m a special person with unique insight into life because I get paid a lot of money to make believe I’m other people. Therefore, GUNS are bad and should be BANNED. I stand in solidarity with students across America to tell Trump to change the law and stop the killing.  We know he won’t because the NRA will not let him but this PLEDGE by all of us Hollywood Actors, Directors, Producers, and Investors will change the law, stop the killing and Make America Gun-Free Again!

I (insert real Hollywood name) Pledge to:

  • Never act, produce, direct or invest in any movie that includes a gun in any way in the script, even if it’s a water pistol or one of them guns with the orange thing in the hole in the front.
  • Never hire any bodyguards who carry guns, ever carried guns or thought about carrying guns.
  • Hand in all guns I own to a company that can melt them into plowshares or at least a giant peace symbol.
  • Calculate all the money I have made in movies, TV shows, videos, direct-to-DVD productions and give all that money to groups opposed to the NRA.

Perhaps we can add to Tom’s list:

  • Never act, produce, direct or invest in any movie that includes in any way in the script a “consummated relationship” with an animal (bestiality).

Will Hollywood begin pushing sex with robots? Oops, too late. They already have with the 2017 remake of Blade Runner and the 2015 film Ex Machina. Hollywood deserves a rating of “D” for depraved.

What most impressed you about the Oscars?

RELATED ARTICLES: 

Actors Lectured America (Again) About Gun Control While Men With ‘Assault Weapons’ Protected Them at the Oscars.

Ratings Collapse: Early Numbers Show Oscar Telecast Hit All-Time Low

Paul Kersey Reviews BLACK PANTHER: Not Even A Decent Movie-But An Ominous Warning For White America

See DEATH WISH Remake!-The White American Answer To BLACK PANTHER

Progressive Activists Look to Courts to Undermine the Electoral College

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Having failed to generate enough support to abolish the Electoral College through a constitutional amendment, the institution’s detractors are now looking to the courts to upend it.

A new lawsuit, spearheaded by Harvard University law professor Lawrence Lessig and filed in four states, charges that the “winner-take-all” element of how states divvy up their Electoral College votes is unconstitutional.

The District of Columbia and 48 states use this winner-take-all system.

The only exceptions are Maine and Nebraska, which use a proportional allocation of votes.

“Under the winner-take-all system, U.S. citizens have been denied their constitutional right to an equal vote in presidential elections,” said David Boies, an attorney who represented former Vice President Al Gore in the contested 2000 election and is leading the current litigation against the Electoral College. “This is a clear violation of the principle of one person, one vote.”

A number of similar lawsuits have been filed in the past, but all have failed.

According to Ballot Access News, the biggest impediment to overturning the winner-take-all system is Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, which says, “Each state shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.”

This gives states a great deal of leeway in how they choose their Electoral College process.

It is unfortunate to see yet another attempt to end a presidential election system that has been a model of stability and success for hundreds of years.

In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, in which President Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College while losing the national popular vote, there were widespread calls to upend America’s 2-century-old electoral system.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder said “we have to just abolish the Electoral College” in an interview with “Real Time” host Bill Maher.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg also took aim at the Electoral College, telling a group of students in an interview that it is the one thing she’d change about the Constitution while admitting that it would be hard to do.

National Popular Vote, an organization dedicated to moving America away from the current Electoral College process, has worked toward eliminating the Electoral College through an amendment to the Constitution or a state compact.

But these calls for what would be a radical change are misguided.

The Founders designed the Electoral College to give Americans a stable presidential succession process as well as preserve the principle of federalism.

It ensures that the diverse perspectives of people in states across the nation, not just those living in the most populous ones like California and Texas, have a voice in determining who will be the president.

Though many Americans see pure democracy as an unqualified blessing, the Founding Fathers had reservations. They created our republican system of government with a certain amount of democratic control, but with checks on pure majoritarianism.

As Heritage Foundation legal expert Hans von Spakovsky wrote in a paper on the Electoral College:

“In creating the basic architecture of the American government, the Founders struggled to satisfy each state’s demand for greater representation while attempting to balance popular sovereignty against the risk posed to the minority from majoritarian rule.”

Our Electoral College system has become more democratic over time, with all states relying on a popular vote to select electors rather than state legislatures. Yet, we have kept the vital elements of federalism intact.

Despite the constant calls to give the Electoral College the boot, it continues to be a highly successful and useful means of choosing presidents.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman is an editor for The Daily Signal. Send an email to Jarrett. Twitter: .

RELATED ARTICLE: Why We Use Electoral College, Not Popular Vote

A Note for our Readers:

Trust in the mainstream media is at a historic low—and rightfully so given the behavior of many journalists in Washington, D.C.

Ever since Donald Trump was elected president, it is painfully clear that the mainstream media covers liberals glowingly and conservatives critically.

Now journalists spread false, negative rumors about President Trump before any evidence is even produced.

Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. That’s why The Daily Signal exists.

The Daily Signal’s mission is to give Americans the real, unvarnished truth about what is happening in Washington and what must be done to save our country.

Our dedicated team of more than 100 journalists and policy experts rely on the financial support of patriots like you.

Your donation helps us fight for access to our nation’s leaders and report the facts.

You deserve the truth about what’s going on in Washington.

Please make a gift to support The Daily Signal.

SUPPORT THE DAILY SIGNAL

Is Gun Ownership a Right?

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What does the Second Amendment say? Is gun ownership a right for all Americans? Or just for a small militia? Eugene Volokh, Professor of Law at UCLA, explains what the Founding Fathers intended.

RELATED ARTICLE: Relativistic America: Neither Safe Nor Free. That’s the society created by gun-control liberalism.

Is Country Music Going the Way of the NFL?

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Through all of the cultural ups and downs, country music has always been a place conservatives felt welcome. While so many other celebrities started picking up activist causes and shaming fans who held Christian beliefs, American could always count on Nashville to stay true to their values (or at least tolerate them). Not anymore.

Yesterday, in a letter that rocked the country music scene, Governor Mike Huckabee announced that he was leaving his seat on the board of the Country Music Association (CMA) Foundation — a position he’d occupied for less than 24 hours. Despite an impressive background in music and his record on education (the sole issue of the CMAF), Mike became the instant target of a vicious anti-faith attack. A small but vocal pocket of Nashville’s music industry seized on his involvement with a vengeance, demanding that Huckabee go — or their support of the foundation would.

Jason Owen and his husband — both LGBT activists whose Monument Records and Sandbox Entertainment represents some of the genre’s biggest stars — called the selection of Huckabee a “grossly offensive decision. Owen, who counts Midland, Little Big Town, Kacey Musgraves, Dan + Shay, Faith Hill, and others among his clients, claimed Huckabee’s involvement would harm the very kids the foundation was created to help. “Not to mention,” Owen went on, “how harmful and damaging his deep involvement with the NRA is. What a shameful choice.” Others, like Sugarland’s manager Whitney Pastorek, accused Huckabee (and the 53 percent of Americans with natural marriage beliefs like his) of “bigotry, racism, and sexism.” With breathtaking prejudice, she insists, “While Governor Huckabee’s tenure in Arkansas may have resulted in valuable education reform over a decade ago, I find his choice to spend the past 10 years profiting off messages of exclusion and hatred (not to mention the gun lobby) to be disqualifying.”

Huckabee, who penned a powerful letter to the CMA in response, decided to bow out of the board rather than let it become a distraction to the foundation’s core mission. But in doing so, he wanted to make several things clear, including this: he would never apologize for his views.

“I genuinely regret,” he wrote, “that some in the industry were so outraged by my appointment that they bullied the CMA and the Foundation with economic threats and vowed to withhold support for the programs for students if I remained. I’m somewhat flattered to be of such consequence when all I thought I was doing was voluntarily serving on a nonprofit board without pay in order to [continue] my decades of advocacy for the arts and especially music.” All of us, he went on, “have deep passions about our beliefs. I do about mine. But I hate no one. I wish upon NO ONE the loss of life or livelihood because that person sees things differently than me.”

“If the industry doesn’t want people of faith or who hold conservative and traditional political views to buy tickets and music, they should be forthcoming and say it. Surely neither the artists nor the business people of the industry want that.”

“Until recently, the arts was the one place America could set aside political, geographical, racial, religious, and economic barriers and come together. If the arts community becomes part of the polarization instead of bridging communities and people over the power of civil norms as reflected in the arts, then we as a civilization may not be long for this earth.”

For Nashville, who’s always counted the God-loving, gun-clinging “deplorables” as its strongest base, this is a defining moment. Anyone who underestimates the buying power of patriotic America, especially after the last year and a half, isn’t paying attention. If country music joins Hollywood in its open attack on faithful America — a faithful America mighty enough to send Donald Trump to the White House — they’re sealing their own fate.

Surely the artists aligned with Owen and Pastorek saw what happened to the NFL. Roger Goodell’s refusal to rein in his players and demand respect for the flag cost the league millions of dollars — and even more in brand power and credibility. He lost sponsors, ratings, and worldwide fans when he stood by and let NFL disgrace the anthem and everything it stands for. If country music listens to these fringe voices and walks away from the relationship it’s built with freedom-loving Americans, then look out. They’re about to find themselves on the wrong side of a very determined coalition.

Like so many phony advocates of tolerance, these agents claim they’re battling for “inclusion” while demanding the exclusion of anyone with a different view. Are the artists going to stand by Monumental Records’ attack on the vast majority of Americans who listen to and buy their songs? Reach out to @DanAndShay, @FaithHill, @KaceyMusgraves, @littlebigtown, @MidlandOfficial, @SethEnnis, @zdevin, and @JohnOates and ask.

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

RELATED ARTICLES:

Far-Left in a HUD-on Collision with Trump

Taylor-Made Parent Protections

VIDEO: The Story Behind The Making Of Billy Graham’s Casket

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The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association published a video on the story behind Pastor Billy Graham’s casket. They note:

A seemingly unlikely group made Billy Graham’s casket: These men at Angola State Penitentiary. Watch & share the story behind it all.

RELATED VIDEO: President Trump Makes Remarks at the Lying in Honor of the Reverend Billy Graham.

EDITOR NOTE: Please take the time to watch the coverage of Billy Graham’s funeral at https://billygraham.org/funeral

EXPOSED: Dick’s Sporting Goods’ history of using dead school kids to promote their brand name

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Social media is alive with reports of how Dick’s Sporting Goods announcement of banning the sales of AR-15 rifles is deja vu all over again.

CNN reporter Susan Candiotti in a December 18, 2012 article titled Sporting goods chain suspends sale of certain semi-automatic after shooting wrote:

Dick’s Sporting Goods, one of the largest sporting goods retailers in the world, says it has removed all guns from its store nearest to Newtown, Connecticut, and is suspending the sale of certain kinds of semi-automatic rifles from its chains nationwide.

Dick’s did this after the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting. But it appears that taking these rifles off of their shelves didn’t last very long.

Here’s the problem, Dick’s continues to sell AR-15 rifles in one of its franchises.

Forbes reporter Clare O’Connor in an August 20, 2013 article titled Despite Self-Imposed Ban, Dick’s Sporting Goods Selling AR-15 Rifles At New Offshoot reported:

Dick’s, the country’s largest outdoor sports retailer, responded to the [Sandy Hook Elementary] tragedy by pulling semi-automatic guns – ‘modern sporting rifles’, in industry parlance – off shelves in their 500-plus stores “out of respect for the victims and their families,” per a December statement.

[ … ]

Dick’s has kept its word, though: a search of its website shows semi-automatics like the Bushmaster remain off the menu. The outdoor giant (2012 revenues: $5.89 billion) is, however, selling these modern sporting rifles at its brand new offshoot, Field & Stream. The first of these specialty hunting and fishing stores opened in Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania this past weekend, with Duck Dynasty star Willie Robertson on hand to sign autographs.

Gun news site The Firearm Blog first posited that AR-15 rifles like the kind Lanza used would be available at Field & Stream despite the Dick’s ban on these weapons in a post earlier this month. The team at social news outlet Vocativ attended Friday’s grand opening in Pennsylvania to see for themselves:

We weren’t the only ones looking for an AR-15. The line to purchase these firearms was so long that customers were required to take numbers. And the selection was excellent! So excellent, in fact, that we decided to take pictures. The guns for sale included the Remington AR-15s, S&W AR-15s as well as Stag and DPMS AR-15s. Oh, and don’t forget the Bushmaster used by Lanza.

Dick’s Sporting Goods has now used two school shootings to promote its brand name. You would think they would have learned from their first failure.

As O’Conner reported, “Industry experts say Dick’s has to sell these weapons at its new spinoff to remain competitive. “I’m not surprised,” said James Chartier, an analyst at Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co., Inc who covers Dick’s Sporting Goods and competitors like Cabela’s. “If you want to be authentic to the customer, you have to sell that product. You can’t be seen as caving in to political pressure.”

We expect this Dick’s ban will fade away as soon as do the headlines on the Parkland shooting. Can you say crocodile tears?

Yet Another Naturalized Citizen Sentenced On Terrorism Charges

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Here we go again.  Yet another newly-naturalized United States citizen has been convicted of traveling to Syria to receive terror training, fight on the side of al-Nusrah Front, an al Qaeda-linked terrorist organization, and provide material support to that terrorist organization.  He was additionally convicted of lying to an FBI agent.

On January 23, 2018 the Justice Department issued a press release, Ohio Man Sentenced for Providing Material Support to Terrorists, Making False Statements to Authorities.

That “Ohio man” was Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud, a native of Somalia.

I have written about this case in two previous articles, A Terrorist and Naturalization Fraud and How DHS Ineptitude Facilitates Terrorist Operations. As I noted in the first of those two commentaries, Mohamud committed fraud when he lied on his application for his U.S. passport by claiming he intended to travel to Greece when, in reality, he traveled to Syria.  Furthermore, lying on his application for U.S. citizenship also constitutes fraud. Under Title 18 U.S. Code § 1425 (Procurement of citizenship or naturalization unlawfully) the punishment for this crime carries a maximum prison sentence of 25 years, when this crime is committed in conjunction with terrorism.  This is a much greater penalty than he faced for lying to an FBI agent.

Of far greater consequence than the potential longer jail sentence than he faced for lying to an FBI agent, is that conviction for committing fraud in his applications for citizenship would have stripped him of his citizenship and subject him to deportation (removal) from the United States.  Yet he was not charged with this crime.<

The flawed immigration adjudications process, by which Mohamud was granted U.S. citizenship, provided him with material support by enabling him to legally obtain a U.S. passport that facilitated his travel to Syria.  In fact, in reviewing communications with his brother, the issue of his becoming a United States citizen, thereby enabling him to obtain that U.S. passport, emerged as an integral part of his plan to travel to Syria, receive training and return to the United States to carry out a deadly terror attack.

Around the world, the U.S. passport is considered the premier travel document. Consider this statement from Chapter 12 of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States:

For terrorists, travel documents are as important as weapons. Terrorists must travel clandestinely to meet, train, plan, case targets, and gain access to attack. To them, international travel presents great danger, because they must surface to pass through regulated channels, present themselves to border security officials, or attempt to circumvent inspection points.

Unfortunately, this case is not unusual and is only one of ever so many other cases where aliens successfully gamed the immigration system to gain various immigration benefits that enabled them to remain in the United States to support terrorism or even carry out deadly terrorist attacks.

All applicants for U.S. citizenship are supposed to undergo a Good Moral Character investigation in accordance with the appropriate provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act.  Mohamud naturalized just months before heading off to terror training in Syria.  Yet the Good Moral Character investigation failed to uncover his involvement with terrorism.  President Trump stated that all DACA illegal aliens who would be provided lawful status and a pathway to citizenship wold have to undergo a Good Moral Character investigation.  How meaningful would those investigations truly be?

Consider that on January 16, 2018 the Justice Department issued a press jointly with the DHS:

DOJ, DHS Report: Three Out of Four Individuals Convicted of International Terrorism and Terrorism-Related Offenses were Foreign-Born. 

That press release noted that:

The report reveals that at least 549 individuals were convicted of international terrorism-related charges in U.S. federal courts between September 11, 2001, and December 31, 2016.  An analysis conducted by DHS determined that approximately 73 percent (402 of these 549 individuals) were foreign-born.  Breaking down the 549 individuals by citizenship status at the time of their respective convictions reveals that:

• 254 were not U.S. citizens;<
• 148 were foreign-born, naturalized and received U.S. citizenship; and,
• 147 were U.S. citizens by birth.

According to information available to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), since September 11, 2001, there were approximately 1,716 removals of aliens with national security concerns.

It is more than a bit disconcerting that 148 naturalized citizens were convicted of terrorism-related crimes.  How many of them had been naturalized even as they went about their nefarious goals, as did Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud?  In the weeks and months after 9/11 we were constantly told by our leaders that for terrorists to succeed they only needed to “get it right” once.  For us to be safe, our government needed to be right100% of the time.  Every application for a visa or an immigration benefit provides the terrorists with that one opportunity they are seeking.

Members of the U.S. Senate are now debating the “solution” to the illegal aliens who were granted temporary lawful status under the illegal DACA (Deferred Action- Childhood Arrivals) program implemented by the Obama administration as an end-run around the Constitution and the legislative process when first Comprehensive Immigration Reform and then the DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act) failed to pass.

President Trump and the members of the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate must consider the irrefutable fact that the adjudications process has frequently failed to uncover fraud about material facts that had a direct bearing on the aliens’ eligibility for the immigration benefits for which they applied.  Indeed, aliens who have been linked to terrorism, including those involved in the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, committed serial immigration fraud.

Before considering a couple of important quotes from the 9/11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel, we need to consider that on January 25, 2017 President Trump issued one of his very first Executive Orders.  In issuing Executive Order: Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States, the president not only kept an important campaign promise but also took a strong, commonsense approach to the enforcement of our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States.

The end of the first section of that executive order ends with these two sentences:

We cannot faithfully execute the immigration laws of the United States if we exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement. The purpose of this order is to direct executive departments and agencies (agencies) to employ all lawful means to enforce the immigration laws of the United States.

DACA aliens certainly qualifies as a huge “class or category of removable aliens” to which President Trump referred in his executive order.  Furthermore there is no way of knowing just how many illegal aliens would apply.  The President has said that 1.8 million illegal aliens would qualify while the Migration Policy Institute pegs the number at twice that, at 3.8 million.

In reality, a multiple of that number might actually apply- with no in-person interviews and no capability to conduct field investigations, fraud would likely permeate the entire program.

Having raised the issue of fraud, it must be remembered that the the official report, 9/11 and  Terrorist Travel included these two paragraphs:

Once terrorists had entered the United States, their next challenge was to find a way to remain here. Their primary method was immigration fraud. For example, Yousef and Ajaj concocted bogus political asylum stories when they arrived in the United States. Mahmoud Abouhalima, involved in both the World Trade Center and landmarks plots, received temporary residence under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers (SAW) program, after falsely claiming that he picked beans in Florida.

Terrorists in the 1990s, as well as the September 11 hijackers, needed to find a way to stay in or embed themselves in the United States if their operational plans were to come to fruition. As already discussed, this could be accomplished legally by marrying an American citizen, achieving temporary worker status, or applying for asylum after entering. In many cases, the act of filing for an immigration benefit sufficed to permit the alien to remain in the country until the petition was adjudicated. Terrorists were free to conduct surveillance, coordinate operations, obtain and receive funding, go to school and learn English, make contacts in the United States, acquire necessary materials, and execute an attack.

ICE routinely conducts investigations that involve national security/terrorism. A review of ICE news releases about such investigations provides insight into the challenges these cases create for the beleaguered employees of the DHS.

America is not only facing the threat of international terrorism but the threats posed by transnational gangs.  To gain insight into the scope of the threats and challenges that these gangs pose, review the news releases posted by ICE about gang-related investigations.  A number of “DREAMERS” have been found to have ties to violent gangs such as MS-13.

To truly put America and Americans first, a reliable vetting process and capability must be created before the president and congress even think about providing lawful status to unknown millions of illegal and unvetted aliens.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine.

Too often social media giants reward hatred and penalize those who fight for a tolerant society!

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Canary Mission, a university campus watchdog that exposes hatred and anti-Semitism across the political spectrum, has been outrageously suspended from Twitter.

In the meantime, neo-Nazis, terrorist organizations and those dedicated to the destruction of Israel continue to operate freely. Among them, Hatem Bazian – a repeated offender of anti-Semitism, David Duke – former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and even terror organization Hamas!

The Canary Mission Twitter account, by contrast, has been solely utilized to expose the social media posts and actions of those who spread hate.

The suspension of Canary Mission comes at a particularly sensitive time. In the wake of an overwhelmingly tragic school shooting, we face the the stark reality that social media posts must be taken seriously.

Our database contains hundreds of individuals who have shown support for or openly threatened violence on social media. In fact, many bigots and racists on our site have bragged about their ownership, ability and desire to use firearms.

We have also uncovered individuals studying or working in helping professions, who have posted a desire to injure or even kill Jews!

Exposing these potentially dangerous individual’s posts to the public, who then in turn report them to the authorities, has proven to be a vital tool. Last year, our tweet exposing apreschool teacher who had been spreading violent hatred against Jews, led to her swiftremoval from her position working with small children.

Despite this, Canary Mission according to Twitter, is violating their rule against “hateful conduct,” since we also call out white supremacists, Hamas supporters and anti-Israelactivists, many of whom praise Hitler, who then complain to Twitter that we are acting against them.

This claim is absolutely ludicrous. As clearly laid out in our About page, Canary Mission merely “gathers content from publicly available sources.” Anyone who complains about what Canary Mission said about them on Twitter needs to read the content of the tweet and face the hatred of in their own words.

Hundreds of racists and bigots have taken to Twitter in order to celebrate. Various Twitterusers have even attempted to take the credit. Included in the celebrants was Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) leader Ben Lorber, who expressed his joy in a Facebook with the tagline “Am Yisrael byeeeee.”

This is the true face of hatred.

Much more significantly, we have received an outpouring of shock, concern and desire to help from our supporters across North America and from around the world. We have been inundated with emails and messages through our Facebook page by individuals looking to help. This is a true testament to the positive work we are doing. We are humbled and truly grateful to all those who have reached out to us. We are including an ACTION ALERT at the bottom of this email for specifically for all of you.

If the Canary Mission Twitter account is indeed permanently removed, then hatred has won a temporary victory. Whatever happens, our detractors should realize and our supporters can take to heart, that this will not change a single aspect of the work that Canary Mission does.

We will do our best to get our account reinstated and if not, our mission will not change, we will not falter. We will continue our mission to fight hatred and anti-Semitism.

CONTACT TWITTER SUPPORT

Text to send to Twitter Support:

“I am appalled that you have suspended the account of @canarymission, whose sole purpose is to expose hatred and bigotry! Their account is a vital service to the public, please reinstate it immediately. Thank you”

TWEET IN SUPPORT OF CANARY MISSION

SHARE ON FACEBOOK

Florida Shooting Shows Government Cannot Protect Americans

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In the wake of the Parkland, Florida school shooting and the wave of well-organized and financed protests using emotionally traumatized students, the Florida Legislature is set to vote on a range of legal responses — including a series of gun restrictions.

This, from a state that has some of the strongest Second Amendment protections in the union, should cause some real alarm. The pressure on legislators up for re-election in November is immense, from the demonstrators, anti-gun activists, their media allies, and the public consuming it all. But it is totally and purposely misdirected.

The real blame in this atrocity — after the deranged shooter himself, never forget that — is the total collapse of the governmental institutions charged with protecting the defenseless students collected into an unprotected public school.

Let’s recap how the Parkland shooting has played out politically. Because make no mistake, it is now allpolitical in Florida and nationally, and it is driven by the activist left and the media pursuing their anti-gun agendas — and not by the facts as they are being revealed.

The FBI failed twice to take any steps when informed about the Parkland shooter being a threat to do exactly this, by his own family members. This is hardly the worst, as the FBI gets a lot of bum tips, but it is still a failure.

Worse, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office failed to take any steps when called to his home 39 times, including for violent and threatening behavior, and being told he had guns. That is an extraordinary number of red flags missed or blown off by local law enforcement. The FBI and the Sheriff not only did nothing, but apparently they did not communicate with each other with this information.

Worse yet, the sheriff’s deputy assigned to the school did nothing, standing outside with his gun while the killer roamed the halls killing defenseless people.

And then very worst of all, when three more Broward deputies showed up, all of them stayed outside while the monster continued killing inside. They did nothing until Coral Springs police arrived on the scene, at which point the killer had stopped and was slipping away.

With four deputies all doing this, it is clear it was not cowardice. There are just too many good cops for that to be the case. They were almost assuredly following some sort of policy by the uber-incompetent and morally dubious Broward County Sheriff, a Democrat with a history of corruption charges.

The collapse of law enforcement and school security in the Parkland shooting (such as cameras being on a 20-minute delay, not a live feed, sowing more confusion) is perhaps the worst in modern American history. This shooting was eminently preventable, and should never have happened. The systemic collapse on the part of multiple government organizations failed the students, their families, friends and community.

And it will again.

But the entire media and political focus is on the weapon the killer used. It’s not the killer, not the FBI, not the deputies, not the school. It’s the weapon.

None of these protests are about the utter failure of the law enforcement community in Broward County. That’s because there is an agenda, using impressionable, traumatized youth. What there is not with any of these well-orchestrated protests is any effort to look at cause-and-effect solutions in this shooting. They are staring us in the face, but being ignored for the ongoing anti-gun political agenda.

And finally, the pursuit of gun bans and even gun confiscation, as has been suggested repeatedly in the wake of Parkland — using dubious example of Australia as the success of gun confiscation — means Americans would have to simply trust their defense to the same law enforcement and government systems that failed Parkland students so badly. Even in the best of times, police or deputies are several minutes away from a murderous rampage — or a home invasion. In the worst times, apparently they wait until the murder spree has ended.

Compare and contrast Parkland to the Sutherland Springs, Texas, church shooting last year where a civilian heard the attack, got his semi-automatic rifle and took down the mass killer at the church before cops could get to the scene. What was the gun he used to stop the slaughter? An AR-15, the exact type of weapon that is being aimed at for banning by activists and Democrats.

As the protests and politics continues to play out, remember where the real blame lies — after the evil shooter — when you hear all the calls for gun regulations. And ask how you will defend yourself once all our non-musket guns are confiscated. Because that is the only end-game for the anti-gun activists, protestations to the side.

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EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Revolutionary Act. Please visit The Revolutionary Act Channel.

Important Free Speech Case Filed: Jared Taylor v. Twitter

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And, it all started when Twitter banned Jared Taylor and American Renaissance from its platform.

Breitbart has a long report on the case.  I think Taylor has a good case, but you know how our court system has become (too often these days) the place where Leftwing ideology has found its home and Constitutional protections are lost, so I won’t dare to predict how this could turn out.

Here is Ian Mason writing at Breitbart about the case filed last week in California:

A group of free-speech lawyers filed the most serious legal challenge yet to Twitter’s censorship policies Tuesday in San Francisco County Superior Court, seeking a ruling preventing Twitter from banning users purely on the basis of their views and political associations.

Jared Taylor

Jared Taylor

The 29-page complaint contends that, under a California legal doctrine that recognizes some private facilities as “public forums,” Twitter may not discriminate against speech on their platform based purely on viewpoint. If successful, it would be the first extension of that doctrine to internet social media platforms and could transform the way free speech is treated online. The suit became all the more relevant Wednesday as Twitter stood accused of locking out thousands of conservatives under the guise of cracking down on “Russian bots.”

The genesis of the suit is Twitter’s November 2017 announcement that they would start banning and sanctioning users based on their offline behavior and associations.

On December 18, 2017, Twitter, five years after their top British executive described the company as “the free speech wing of the free speech party,” made good on this threat, “purging” hundreds of mostly right-wing users. Twitter’s new policy refers to association with “violent extremist groups,” and a company blog post claimed, “If an account’s profile information includes a violent threat or multiple slurs, epithets, racist or sexist tropes, incites fear, or reduces someone to less than human, it will be permanently suspended.”

One of those purged is Jared Taylor, founder and editor of “American Renaissance,” a fringe-right journal on race and immigration. He is frequently described as an “extremist” and a “white supremacist” by left-wing groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the latter of which sits on Twitter’s “Trust and Safety Council,” the largely leftist group of activists and non-profits Twitter assembled in 2016 to help decide which speech to censor.

Taylor is a graduate of Yale University and Paris’s Sciences Po, the former West Coast editor of PC Magazine, and author of several books. He describes himself as a “white advocate” or “race realist” and condemns Nazism and antisemitism.

According to the complaint, in his more than six years on Twitter, Taylor never made threats, harassed anyone, or otherwise came under scrutiny for his behavior on the platform. Even the SPLC notes Taylor “scrupulously avoided racist epithets [and] employed the language of academic journals” in his writings, and Taylor once wrote an article urging people to be more civil on Twitter.

[….]

Yet both Taylor’s personal account and that of American Renaissance were permanently banned. The only explanation Twitter gave was that the accounts were “affiliated with a violent extremist group.” Twitter refused to offer Taylor any further details including to which “violent extremist group” he was affiliated.

There is much more here.

The SPLC and me….

You might also want to know that the SPLC has gone on another of its media hit campaigns.  See that the Baltimore Sun has listed me as a “hate group” (taking the SPLC’s word for it!) without ever checking to find out that I am a journalist blogger and have no group!

How many more one-person ‘groups’ are on SPLC’s “hate group” list?

LOL! The Sun says Maryland hate groups are “on the rise” as Maryland gains one “hate group” since the SPLC’s list last year.

The SPLC aimed its big-money guns at me after the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society directed them to my work. Of course HIAS didn’t like anyone questioning their federal funding and their refugee resettlement program.

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