Coronavirus Is the Chinese Government’s Curse Upon the World

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The World Health Organization and other sensitive souls have instructed us to stop referring to the new strain of the coronavirus as the “Wuhan” or “Chinese” flu because of the racist connotations.

I’m disinclined to curb my speech to placate Chinese propagandists, and it seems to me the aversion to those terms is less about racism than about averting blame. But in the spirit of comity, and avoiding disparaging an entire nation, I’m happy to call it the ChiCom Flu moving forward.

There are many traditional naming conventions that don’t really make that much sense. Somewhat weirdly, for example, we often name diseases after the people who “discover” them—Hodgkin’s disease after Thomas Hodgkin, Parkinson’s disease after James Parkinson, and so on.

But naming viral diseases after places—Guinea worm, West Nile virus, Ebola, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, etc.—is probably just intuitive. Viruses “come” from someplace, after all, and thus people gravitate to those names. I doubt we came up with “Lyme disease” because of some deep enmity toward Connecticut.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

Anyway, “COVID-19” or “H1N1” don’t exactly roll off the tongue.

The latter was, until very recently, widely referred to as the “Spanish flu,” a virus that killed around 675,000 Americans and tens of millions of others around the world in the early 1900s.

“Spanish flu” has now retroactively fallen into disfavor as well. And to be fair, there is some historical evidence that the virus may actually have originated in China or France, so if we must call it the French flu moving forward, so be it.

But while the Spanish have a good case to be annoyed, the Chinese government does not.

As Jim Geraghty notes, the communist Chinese have been far more effective in stopping the spread of information about the coronavirus than in stopping the spread of the coronavirus itself. Today, for example, China expelled most American journalists from the country.

Early on, the communists destroyed samples and suppressed vital information that could have helped mitigate the damage of this new strain of the coronavirus.

The government also silenced doctors who warned about the disease. Some were censured for “spreading rumors” or sharing test results with colleagues, and some were forced to write self-critical public letters—a Marxist mainstay—admitting that the warning “had a negative impact.”

The Chinese communists probably let 5 million people leave Wuhan without screening, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The Chinese communists, like all communists, hide societal problems. There is no crime, disease, or addiction in the collectivist state. This kind of secrecy and dishonesty can be disastrous, especially in a highly interconnected world.

Though millions of Chinese have been lifted out of extreme poverty through free trade, with modernity comes some basic responsibilities—for instance, not killing everyone in the world with preventable zoonotic diseases.

The Chinese regime is perfectly capable of administering an array of authoritarian policies to suppress the rights of its own people. But it’s apparently unable to exert even mild cultural pressure warning them that their eating habits can be extraordinarily dangerous and hold the potential of creating massive socioeconomic problems.

If reports are correct, it was in Wuhan’s popular “wet markets” that vendors were selling the bats—and possibly snakes—that may have caused the COVID-19 outbreak. “Wet” because the meat sold in its unsanitary stalls was only recently slaughtered.

This kind of thing happens quite often. And not always in China, of course. But the avian influenza was likely transmitted to humans from chickens in a “wet” market.

Scientists have been warning for years that the eating of exotic animals in southern China “is a time bomb.” Acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) also originated in China, and probably jumped to humans through bats. Other coronavirus strains are also likely connected to bats.

I hate to thrust my Western cultural values on anyone, but maybe it’s time to stop eating bats.

It’s important to stress that it’s not the Chinese people who are the problem. Just look at their success in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United States. The ChiComs are the problem.

If the Chinese government spent as much time working on educating its people and regulating dangerous markets as it does on secrecy and propaganda efforts, maybe it wouldn’t have to worry as much about diseases being named after it—or about the catastrophic death and economic pain their negligence helps cause.

COPYRIGHT 2020 CREATORS.COM

COMMENTARY BY

David Harsanyi

David Harsanyi is a senior writer at National Review and the author of “First Freedom: A Ride through America’s Enduring History With the Gun, From the Revolution to Today.” Twitter: .

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A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Senate Bill Would Give $1,200 to Many Americans as COVID-19 Relief

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday that the Senate will not leave Washington before approving an aid package to ease financial problems during the coronavirus pandemic through direct payments to individual Americans.

Other provisions of the package, which has a total cost estimated at up to $1 trillion, would provide loans to airlines and other struggling industries.

Under the proposal, couples earning up to $150,000 a year would get checks for $2,400 in the mail and individuals earning up to $75,000 would get $1,200 checks.

After reaching those income thresholds, relief would scale downward to as low as $600 for some Americans.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

Individuals earning more than $99,000 a year and couples earning more than $198,000 would not get anything from the government under the current bill.

The Democrat-controlled House would have to pass a version of the bill. The Trump administration already has signaled support for many of the initiatives.

“Senate Republicans want to put cash into the hands of the American people,” McConnell said in a Senate floor speech.

McConnell said the goal of the bill—called the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act—is to “get assistance to individuals and families as rapidly as possible.”

“No tangled Washington process with a thousand cooks in the kitchen, no piles of forms for laid-off workers or busy families to fill out,” the top Senate Republican said. “Money for people, from the middle class on down.”

The bill also includes a $500 payment for each child in a household, depending on family income.

This stage marks “phase three” of economic relief packages during the coronavirus pandemic that have gained bipartisan support in Congress.

Congress passed an initial $830 billion relief package in early March focused on medical and emergency relief.

On Wednesday, Trump signed another, $100 billion bill that includes unemployment benefits and free testing for the new coronavirus disease, which health officials call COVID-19.

The proposed CARES Act includes direct payments to Americans, as well as delays in employer payroll taxes and estimated tax payments for businesses.

The proposal also would provide $208 billion in loan guarantees, including $50 billion for the airline industry and $8 billion for air cargo carriers.

The total confirmed U.S. cases of COVID-19 reached 10,442 as of noon Thursday, with 150 confirmed deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Some conservatives, including Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, showed reluctance to support too much spending or large bailouts for industries.

McConnell likely will need support from Democrats to pass the legislation.

In a joint statement from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., the Democrats made other demands. It said, in part:

The number one priority is addressing this health crisis, which requires a Marshall Plan to rebuild our health care infrastructure on a continental scale and ensure the resources are there to test and treat everyone who needs it. To earn Democratic support in the Congress, any economic stimulus proposal must include new, strong and strict provisions that prioritize and protect workers, such as banning the recipient companies from buying back stock, rewarding executives and laying off workers.

COLUMN BY

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Lucas is also the author of “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.” Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

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A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

VIDEO: H1N1 Response VS COVID-19 Response, Why So Different? We Asked Rep. Roger Marshall, M.D.

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Dr. Roger Marshall, who representing Kansas’ first district spoke with the Daily Caller’s Stephanie Hamill about the the latest regarding the coronavirus pandemic.

He also discussed the differences between the 2009 H1N1 pandemic response and coronavirus response.

“First of all it has been sensationalized, so from day one the press has, they really have, the left socialist media has blown it out of proportion, they’ve used this as an attack tool on the president, but unfortunately it is a real virus and it has a higher mortality rate on our senior citizens especially those people with underlying medical problems” said Marshall.  

Marshall went on to discuss what Congress can do to help Americans suffering from COVID-19’s economic impact.

VIDEO BY

Stephanie Hamill

Video Columnist

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller video is republished with permission. © All rights reserved. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.

Our Throw–Away Marriage Culture

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Society today believes in instant gratification. We’re encouraged to chase our dreams and do whatever we want. As a result, we’ve changed the way we look at relationships. Couples might shack up together or rush into marriage without giving it a second thought.

Divorce rates are high, and the impact on families is even higher. In this post, we’ll look at how our throw-away attitude toward marriage is affecting family life.

Marriage is a Sacred Institution

What a lot of people forget is that marriage is a sacred institution. That’s not hard to understand. How could it be sacred with shows like The Bachelor being aired? The idea that you can not only find your perfect mate in such a charged setting over such a short period is ludicrous.

Unfortunately, it also gives couples the idea that marriage is easy. Considering that the average marriage lasts just eight years and only 33% of couples make it to their 40th anniversary, this is a false idea.

Unfortunately, getting divorced is as simple as getting married these days. If you don’t like your partner, you get a divorce.

Around 150 years ago, things weren’t quite that simple. If you wanted a divorce, you had to prove that your spouse had done something wrong. Divorce was far less prevalent then. If you were divorced, it caused quite the scandal.

Today, the situation is quite different. Everybody knows someone who is divorced. It’s become something of a social norm. And, unfortunately, it’s the family that suffers.

Why is Divorce Bad?

We’re not suggesting that people should stay in horrible marriages. If there’s abuse or infidelity involved, then it makes sense to remove yourself from the situation. What we’re concerned about, though, is the cavalier attitude toward divorce. We’ll use an example to illustrate the point.

Debbie and Andrew meet and fall in love. Debbie has a son from a previous relationship. Six months later, Debbie falls pregnant, so they get married. Things go okay for a while after the baby’s born. Then things go downhill.

Living with a new-born and a young child isn’t easy. Money is tight, and the couple fights a lot. Eventually, they want nothing more to do with one another and get divorced. Their son is just a year old.

What they’re forgetting is that their decision also affects the lives of both boys. The eldest child is upset because he’s never known his father. The youngest is too small to realize what’s happening.

Now, say that these two marry other people and have more kids. Debbie’s now got three kids with three different fathers. Whose rules do the kids abide by? Who do they see as their father? How do they move on to successful relationships without strong role models to grow up with? How do all the various parents work together for the good of the children?

Final Notes

Our throw-away culture is destroying the very idea of the nuclear family. Perhaps it’s about time that we start teaching our kids that happiness is something that you work toward. It’s not something that’s dropped into your lap.

If we can start to teach our children to honor good, old-fashioned family values and the importance of commitment, we’ll go far.

Click Here for our Divorce Statistics Infographic URL: https://legaljobsite.net/divorce-statistics/

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House Democrats: Let Convicted Terrorists Work for the TSA!

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My latest in PJ Media:

This was utterly predictable in today’s atmosphere of leftist insanity, but it’s appalling nonetheless. As the sage Joe Biden would say, Look, Fat, look, here’s the deal: I’ve been warning for years that it would sooner or later become “Islamophobic” to offer even the mildest opposition to jihad violence and that the “Islamophobia” mongers would become increasingly open about their support for jihad terrorists, and here we are. On Thursday, 174 Democrats in the House of Representatives voted against an amendment to the Rights for Transportation Security Officers Act that would prevent the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) from hiring convicted terrorists.

Yes, that’s right: if these House Democrats had gotten their way, on your next flight, you could have gotten a pat-down from a TSA agent who previously conspired to down the airplane you were planning to fly on. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) explained that the amendment “was pulled back by leadership because the socialist wing of the party did not want to have that amendment go forward on this bill. When it was offered, overwhelmingly the majority of the House would like to see the TSA not hire terrorists or those who have been convicted of sexual misconduct with minors and others. But the socialist wing of the party, that controls now the Democratic Party, said that that could not be offered.”

However, as these prospective TSA employees might have said, Allahu akbar! The whole thing exploded in their faces: enough Republicans and renegade Democrats voted for the amendment to pass it. But among the luminaries who thought it so important to avoid even the appearance of “Islamophobia” that they opposed an amendment barring terrorists from pawing through your belongings as you made your way through security were the infamous “Squad,” Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D, Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), and Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.), along with the supposedly sane and responsible House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D., Md.).

The TSA has always been more security theatre than actual security, but that’s beside the point here: AOC, Omar, Tlaib, and the 171 other House Democrats who opposed this measure didn’t vote against it because it would be ineffective, but clearly because it would offend a key portion of their constituency, which for most, if not all, Democrats today consists of people who believe that terrorists are victims, that American imperialism is the real problem, and that Donald Trump is “racist” for wanting to protect Americans from jihad terror attacks by foreign nationals coming from the countries included in his travel ban and from violent crimes by illegal aliens coming into the country from Mexico.

There is much more. Read the rest here.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Our Civic Duty in the Coronavirus Era

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President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency Friday to deal with the coronavirus pandemic is anything but a sign to panic. Instead, it’s a reassurance to the American people that the federal government, state and local governments, nongovernmental organizations and American industry are working together to stop the spread of the virus.

In many parts of our country, schools are shutting down for weeks. Businesses are sending their employees home to telework when possible. Churches and synagogues are closing their doors. Professional sports events have been canceled. More than 30 governors have declared states of emergency.

There are some who view this response to the coronavirus as an overreaction. After all, millions of Americans get the seasonal flu every year and we don’t take these measures.

But this isn’t an overreaction. On the contrary, this is a commonsense, measured response to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

In the Washington metropolitan area where I live, new cases of people testing positive for the coronavirus are being reported each day. Washington is an international city, with embassies housing foreign nationals from all over the world and people from other countries regularly visiting for business and vacation. Large conventions and conferences, along with packed sports arenas, are a daily occurrence in normal times.

That’s why it makes sense that Washington and the surrounding states of Virginia and Maryland have all declared states of emergency. Maryland has banned gatherings of 250 people or more. In Washington and Virginia, mass gatherings have also been postponed or canceled.

Congress has shut down the Capitol and congressional offices to the public. Schools, colleges and universities are closing. Even major businesses like Capital One are asking employees to stay home and telecommute.

There are lessons to be learned from places like Italy, where currently the health care system is overwhelmed because the coronavirus is spreading faster than the system’s capacity to handle the influx of patients.

The facts are indisputable: social distancing is one of the primary ways to slow the trajectory of the spread of the coronavirus, reducing the number of active cases at any given time.

Slowing the trajectory spreads the cases out over time, giving hospitals and medical personnel the capacity to handle them. Slowing the trajectory also buys time for scientists to develop a vaccine and get more people vaccinated before they contract the disease.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, pointed out the need for social distancing when he told members of Congress that the number of cases will get worse – but how much worse will depend on our “ability to contain and mitigate within our own country.”

Some ask why these actions are being taken when we don’t take similar actions for the seasonal flu that strikes millions of Americans each year. The answer is that COVID-19 – the disease caused by the coronavirus – appears to be deadlier and spread quicker.

Fauci and other health officials estimate that the COVID-19 death rate in the United States is likely somewhere around 1 percent. “The flu has a mortality rate of 0.1 percent. [COVID-19] has a mortality rate of 10 times that. That’s the reason I want to emphasize we have to stay ahead of the game in preventing this,” Fauci told members of Congress.

In addition to the higher death rate, the coronavirus appears to be more infectious than the flu. With the seasonal flu, a single infected person will infect another 1.3 people. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, early estimates point to a single person with the coronavirus infecting another two to three people.

Based on those numbers – the potential for more than double the infection rate and 10 times the death rate of the flu – the coronavirus could result in a horrific number of deaths in the United States this year if mitigation efforts aren’t introduced immediately.

Rather than an overreaction, social distancing and these other measures are prudent. And rather than instilling fear, they should bring some sense of relief to the American people. Because positive measures are being taken, less people may become infected, and we’re working toward ensuring that the American health care system has the capacity to handle new cases.

Mitigation measures like postponing conferences and conventions, canceling sporting events, and having employees work from home may bring a temporary but painful disruption to the economy. But that’s a relatively small price to pay to save the lives of many people in our country.

We would do well to heed the advice the British government offered a fearful nation under much worse circumstances during World War II: “Keep calm and carry on.”

Today carrying on means following the advice of the president and our nation’s leading health care professionals. It means living our lives while at the same time practicing responsible social interaction. That’s not panicking. That’s doing your civic duty to help protect yourself, your family, and your fellow Americans.

Originally published by Fox News

COMMENTARY BY

Kay C. James

Kay C. James is president of The Heritage Foundation. James formerly served as director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and as Virginia’s secretary of health and human resources. She is also the founder and president of The Gloucester Institute. Twitter: .

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A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Southern Poverty Law Center Endorses Labeling National Review and Pro-Israel Organizations as Hate Groups

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CAIR’s Islamophobia reports have been around for a while. And they deserve as much credibility as anything from an officially unindicted co-conspirator Islamist organization ought to.

Here’s the DOJ on the subject.

In 2008, the FBI developed a policy on its interactions with CAIR based in part on evidence presented during the 2007 trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.! The evidence at trial linked CAIR leaders to Hamas, a specially designated terrorist organization, and CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. The policy was intended to significantly restrict the FBI’s non-investigative interactions with CAIR and to prevent CAIR from publicly exploiting such contacts with the FBI.

Expect every media report on CAIR’s new Islamophobia report, Hijacked by Hate, to ignore this minor detail.

The report contains an intro from its executive director, Nihad Awad.

In 1993 Awad, who had developed into an increasingly outspoken advocate for the rights of Palestinians, became the public-relations director of the Islamic Association for Palestine(IAP)—a front for Hamas.

In 1994, then-IAP president Omar Ahmad convened a meeting with Rafeeq Jaber and Awad to discuss the possibility of branching IAP out in another direction. As a result of that meeting, in June of 1994 these “IAP three” incorporated the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)—as Awad put it, “to bridge the chasm of ignorance between Muslims in America and their neighbors.” Awad became the group’s executive director—a post he continues to hold—and Ahmad was named chairman of the board. Awad then solicited his friend and colleague from the Bosnian Relief Committee, Ibrahim Hooper, to serve as CAIR’s communications director. With the help of a $5000 donation from the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF)—yet another Hamas front group—CAIR opened up an office in Washington, DC.

At a March 22, 1994 symposium at Barry University in Florida, he declared: “I used to support the PLO, and I used to be the President of the General Union of Palestine Students which is part of the PLO here in the United States, but after I researched the situation inside Palestine and outside, I am in support of the Hamas movement more than the PLO.”

In an interview that same year with newsman Mike Wallace, Awad was asked if he supported the “military undertakings of Hamas,” to which he replied: “The United Nations Charter grants people who are under occupation [the right] to defend themselves against illegal occupation.”

Again, expect the media not to cover any of this.

But the latest Islamophobia Report breaks new ground in not only going after the expected targets, David Horowitz, Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes, David Yerushalmi, Pamela Geller, and other people who have called attention to the problem of Islamist violence.

This time this supposed review of “Islamophobic hate groups” drags in the National Review. Really? The National Review.

And a laundry list of pro-Israel organizations including CAMERA, EMET, FLAME, MEMRI, aside from the latter, the rest don’t even concentrate on Islam, they just oppose Islamic terrorism against Israel.

While this would be easy enough to dismiss, except that the report comes with an endorsement from Heidi Beirich, the creepy point woman on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s infamously sloppy hate lists.

That means the SPLC has gotten to the point where it’s willing to denounce mainstream pro-Israel groups as hate groups. That’s the direction it went with socially conservative Christian groups. Pro-Israel groups are next.

RELATED VIDEOS: The Ides of March mean Islamophobia awareness day? Links 1, March 15 2020

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Would a Victorious Joe Biden be Removed for Mental Incapacity?

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The Democratic Party is now confronted with a dilemma. Its two possible presidential nominees are perhaps equally unpalatable, though for different reasons. Socialist Bernie Sanders is, the establishment believes from a practical standpoint, ideologically unfit; Joe Biden is a garrulous gaffe machine who is mentally unfit. Yet what if, contrary to popular belief, neither man ends up being the nominee? There are other possibilities.

Prior to the South Carolina primary and Super Tuesday, many were dismayed that the Democrats seemed poised to nominate an unattractive, wizened, charmless avowed socialist. Thus did the Democrat establishment throw its weight behind Biden.

Yet the ex-vice president is clearly in mental decline. I say this in no spirit of cruelty or mockery; most of us have seen an elderly person deteriorate and know it’s the saddest of events. But the reality is that what we’re witnessing this campaign season isn’t just the old gaffe-prone, tall-tale-telling, Walter Mitty-like Biden.

Aside from calling Super Tuesday “Super Thursday,” saying he was running for the “Senate,” thinking he was in Vermont when in New Hampshire and slurring and fumbling words, he also on multiple occasions couldn’t recall Barack Obama’s name. Since this is the president Biden served under for eight years, this is a bit like his forgetting the name of his wife — who, mind you, he recently confused with his sister.

Note here that Biden has had two cranial aneurysms that required surgery. Not only can these conditions cause brain damage, but Biden was told before the second procedure that he had only a 35 to 50 percent chance of emerging from it “completely normal.” Add to this that he’s now 77 years old and, well, do the math.

Of course, the Democrat establishment has to be intensely aware of Biden’s unfitness for office. Yet they’re choosing him to be President Trump’s opponent. Or are they? For there are ways to solve the Biden-Bernie (B&B) dilemma.

First, while the chances of it are now low, there could still be a brokered Democratic convention. If this happens, the delegates — under the sway of the Democrat establishment — could conceivably nominate someone other than Biden or Sanders, such as Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama.

A signal that the establishment desires this outcome could be if, after “evening things up” on Super Tuesday, it appears to ease off supporting Biden. I consider this unlikely, though. Brokered conventions are messy, and it would be difficult shaping the primary voting well enough to reliably effect such an outcome, anyway.

Now let’s discuss what’s perhaps more likely. It’s hard to imagine that Biden hasn’t undergone a neurological exam, especially with his access to the very best health care (though an elderly person can be in denial and refuse such tests). It’s also hard to imagine that such examination would find normal functioning. This can make one wonder what perhaps is being hidden — and what might be revealed when the right time comes.

When might this be? It has been said that the ex-vice president is deteriorating rapidly. If he is in even worse shape come July and party elders and those close to him (e.g., his wife) can persuade him to step aside, he could be replaced. The rules on who’d choose his replacement are clear, too: the Democratic National Committee would, via a meeting of its hundreds of members.

The DNC could then choose Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama or someone else. There are complicating factors, such as state laws governing replacing candidates on the ballot, but these could likely be “worked out.”

This solves the B&B dilemma: a DNC-aided Biden takes out Bernie, and then DNC cajoling takes out Biden. A stumbling block is that Biden would have to agree to withdraw, and he may not be amenable to this if in denial. Then again, mentally compromised people are easy to manipulate (“Sign this, Joe; it’s just a routine form!”).

If Biden does remain in the race and somehow wins the presidency — and with media bias, vote fraud and Big Tech meddling this isn’t entirely unimaginable — it’s unfathomable that he could function as commander in chief. If he didn’t voluntarily step down, he could become the first president removed under the 25th Amendment for mental incapacity.

Under this scenario, his vice presidential pick takes on unprecedented significance. (Biden himself acknowledged this in January, undermining his viability by saying that his running mate would have to be able to “immediately” replace him because he’s “an old guy.”)

In fact, we’d have to wonder: Could his VP choice be Hillary Clinton? While her ego would normally preclude her from playing second fiddle to Biden, the opportunity could be irresistible if she’s in on the scheme and knows he’ll be removed and she’ll end up top dog.

For that matter, though, Biden’s pick could be Elizabeth Warren, to try to appease the radical left wing and bolster the women’s vote; or a non-white candidate, such as Stacey Abrams or Andrew Yang (who appeals to the young).

What’s for sure is that the B&B dilemma is real, Joe Biden is unfit to be commander in chief, and the DNC knows it. If he ever did ascend to the presidency, it’s inconceivable that he’d be long for the office.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Gab (preferably) or Twitter, or log on to SelwynDuke.com.

RELATED VIDEO: Joe Biden’s ‘confused crazy rants’ should have discounted him years ago.

© All rights reserved.

National Security Adviser Blames China for Swift Spread of Wuhan Coronavirus

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China’s government initially “covered up” the new coronavirus and delayed global response to the disease by at least two months, White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien said Wednesday.

O’Brien’s remarks come as the communist Chinese government has tried to deny the disease’s origins in the city of Wuhan and pushed internet rumors that the United States created it.

“This virus did not originate in the United States. It originated in the Wuhan, in the Hubei province in China,” O’Brien said in an appearance at The Heritage Foundation.

“It originated some time ago. Unfortunately, rather than using best practices, this outbreak in Wuhan was covered up.”

As of early Wednesday, officials had confirmed 938 cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, across 38 states. There were a total of 29 deaths, all but a few in Washington state.

“There is a lot of open-source reporting from China, from Chinese nationals, from doctors involved [who] were either silenced or put into isolation or that sort of thing, so the report of this virus did not get out,” O’Brien said.

O’Brien, who is President Donald Trump’s top adviser on foreign affairs and national security matters, said the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could have assisted China in early containment and treatment before the outbreak. He said:

It probably cost the world community two months to respond. And in those two months, if we had those and had the cooperation of the Chinese, and a WHO team been on the ground and a CDC team—which we had offered them on the ground—I think we could have dramatically curtailed what happened in China and what is now happening across the world.

In a recent example, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, said March 4: “Some in the media say this coronavirus is a China virus. This is extremely irresponsible and we firmly oppose that. We are still tracing the origin of the virus and there is no conclusion yet.”

Other Chinese diplomats denied the disease’s origins in China and took offense to references of “Wuhan” in describing the virus.

More than just dodging responsibility, the Chinese government reportedly has pushed propaganda that the United States created  the virus.

O’Brien spoke well of the Trump administration’s response in assembling a task force and closing off travel to the U.S. from China.

“Pandemics and epidemics are some of the greatest challenges we face as a country. I think we’ve done a good job responding to it,” O’Brien said. “But look, the way this started out in China from the outset was not right. It should have been handled differently. But we are where we are right now. We are doing our best to work with the Chinese.”

O’Brien, who replaced John Bolton in the key White House post, also spoke about reforms to the National Security Council.

He announced plans in October to streamline the 174-member staff to fewer than 120. This has prompted controversy as Trump has demonstrated distrust of some in the government bureaucracy after the impeachment battle.

“We brought the size down, but we’ve done it for the most part through attrition and holding off on hiring,” O’Brien said.

O’Brien said he was following the model of President George H.W. Bush’s national security adviser Brent Scowcroft by having a leaner staff. He also noted that he has met with his predecessors, both Republican and Democrat.

A high profile removal was Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who had testified during the House impeachment inquiry that aspects of Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president were inappropriate.

Vindman, who was in charge of European affairs, was sent back to work in the Pentagon last month, causing an uproar among Democrats.

“I think that some people decided the NSC was going to be a career for them and they were going to stay there as long they could. And I think there were people who felt they knew better how to conduct the foreign policy of the United States than the elected president of the United States,” O’Brien said, without mentioning any names or specifying the impeachment inquiry.

He added:

If you’re on the president’s staff and you don’t agree with the president, and you can’t put your disagreement aside, and you can’t get on board with the president’s policy, then you’re probably better served and the country’s probably better served if you’re back at an agency doing something where you’re not trying to make policy or create policy or thwart policy or resist policy. Or you’re better off going to run for Congress or state Senate or Senate, where you can be a policymaker. …

We are there to staff the president and make sure he gets the best advice on policy possible and to make sure his policies are implemented. If you’ve got a different view of what you should be doing, the NSC is probably not the best place for you to be serving.

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Lucas is also the author of “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.” Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

In Massachusetts, Resistance to Marijuana Dispensaries

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Although recreational marijuana has been legal in Massachusetts since voters approved it in 2016, the pot industry has experienced some serious pushback against dispensaries at the local level.

More than 90 municipalities in the state have opted out or prohibited commercial cannabis establishments.

The development is the result of a grassroots effort coordinated by local churches partnering with the Massachusetts Family Institute, a group affiliated with Family Policy Alliance and Focus on the Family.

One such church is the Lynn Spanish Seventh-Day Adventist Church, located in Lynn, Massachusetts, a city about 10 miles northeast of Boston.

When the congregation received word that the City Council was voting to give the city’s final marijuana permit to Oregon-based Diem Cannabis for a dispensary directly across the street from their church, they took action.

“We as a church are against this business, because it brings more violence, crime, and addiction to the area, and the pot shop they want to bring in would be 30 feet from our building,” Pastor Ervin Ochoa said. “We don’t want a business selling pot, because we already have a problem with drugs in our community.”

Ochoa said the community was not informed of the Feb. 11 meeting of the City Council. When word got out that the church’s new neighbor would be a pot shop, nearly 200 concerned residents and church members descended on City Hall.

Although council representatives said the permit could not be revoked, Ochoa said he and other community leaders will discuss the issue further with the city’s mayor.

“We are just asking that they relocate, not leave all together,” Ochoa said. “When you make a vote like this, you need to let the neighborhood know.”

That follows a wider pattern of minority communities that oppose marijuana in their neighborhoods. In Lawrence, a city about 30 miles northwest of Boston, the churches that serve the large Hispanic population successfully banded together to oppose allowing retail marijuana into their community.

Michael King, the Massachusetts Family Institute’s director of community alliances, said that this kind of grassroots activism counters the narrative pushed by proponents of recreational marijuana, who contend that minority communities benefit from those kinds of establishments.

“The other side will say that it is a form of social justice to allow minorities to open cannabis shops because they’ll benefit from the income,” King said. “But huge minority communities say they didn’t want this in their neighborhood.”

The opposition stems from a fear of increased crime and addiction as the result of increased pot use.

According to statistics compiled by Americans Against Legalizing Marijuana, an anti-pot activist group, there is a strong correlation between marijuana use and crime. Fifty percent of men and 30% of women arrested for a crime test positive for marijuana use.

Ochoa said his church has suffered from crimes that he believes were fueled by an increase in drug use. He said his church was broken into and lost several televisions and a laptop.

“These towns have bought into the farce that towns will get rich off retail marijuana, but the social costs are too high,” Massachusetts Family Institute’s King said. “But some money is just not worth taking.”

The statewide goal, he said, is eventually to have churches included in a 500-foot protected radius that prevents retail marijuana dispensaries from opening near K-12 schools.

“This shop [in Lynn] would be literally right across the street from the church, and would be the first thing young families see when they walk out the doors,” King said.

“Since churches are similar to schools, in that they are places where young families congregate, the same protections should be afforded to them.”

COLUMN BY

Virginia Aabram

Virginia Aabram is part of the Young Leader’s Program at the Heritage Foundation and interns at The Daily Signal.

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

If 90% of people are biased against women, is feminism useless? Or is the UN statistic meaningless?

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Are we bored with gender equality? Does the advent of International Women’s Day not make our hearts race? Just in case, the United Nations Development Programme came up with a sensational statistic for IWD 2020: “close to 90 percent of men and women hold some sort of bias against women,” reported the UN body in a press release.

Ninety percent! Of men and women! I mean, that must leave only the people who work for the UN and women’s studies departments who are not biased. After six decades of second wave feminism, can this be true?

The statistic comes from UNDP’s gender gnomes – sorry, that should be norms, the “new Gender Social Norms Index”, which “measures how social beliefs obstruct gender equality in areas like politics, work, and education, and contains data from 75 countries, covering over 80 percent of the world’s population.”

What data? Well, for example, “about half of the world’s men and women feel that men make better political leaders, and over 40 percent feel that men make better business executives and that men have more right to a job when jobs are scarce. 28 percent think it is justified for a man to beat his wife.”

Now, of course beating your wife, or anybody, is not a mere “bias”, it is straight out wrong. But whether men are better at any particular role in society is a matter of opinion. Call it bias if you like, but that is a rather patronising attitude to half the world’s population – male and female, remember. It sounds very like bias.

Let people change their ideas about social roles in their own time, UNDP, and don’t go around throwing meaningless statistics at us.

As it turns out, new roles for women are proliferating. Just take a look at the BBC 100 Women project. The Beeb names 100 influential and inspirational women around the world every year, and among those featured for IWD is a bioartist who has 3-D printed a beating heart, and several intimacy co-ordinators.

A what kind of co-ordinator, you ask?

Intimacy. As in, “The women helping Hollywood to shoot safer sex scenes”. This is a cutting-edge role created in the wake of #MeToo, and the BBC profile introduces them thus:

“Alicia Rodis walks onto set in New York with a mission: to oversee the shooting of a very complex – and daring – group sex scene for a TV series on a major US network. She’s there to make sure the director observes the intimacy boundaries set by each of the 30 actors taking part.

“She keeps track of the conditions of their consent on a big spreadsheet, to make sure everyone is comfortable when the camera rolls.”

Mind-bending stuff, and one of the fastest-growing professions across the entertainment industry, we are told.

But in the full 2019 list they are all there: athletes, politicians, lady historians revealing the true history of women in ancient times, full-time human rights and other rights – including transgender – activists, a space entrepreneur, Greta Thunberg, AOC, a professional boxer, a monk, a nun…

No national president or prime minister, true, but practically everything other role you can think of – and some you would never have thought of, such as a Japanese woman giving “a voice to women in sumo wrestling”.

Some of the above, at least, will be wives and/or mothers, but apparently none of them have distinguished themselves at that. Perhaps they have closed the power gap in their personal lives and their husbands or partners are looking after the home front.

Indeed, nowadays women seem to be doing pretty much what they want. Feminists have not been idle. Zealously, tirelessly, sleeplessly, day in, day out, year after year, for six long decades, those gals at the UN and their pals in the sisterhood have been preaching, hectoring, exhorting, fulminating, nagging (oops, sorry, slip of the tongue), pontificating that girls can do anything (except have babies).

And what is the result? “90 percent of men and women hold some sort of bias against women”.

If feminism were a business, it would declare bankruptcy.

COLUMN BY

CAROLYN MOYNIHAN

Carolyn Moynihan is a New Zealand journalist with a special interest in family issues. She began her working life as a secondary school teacher but always fancied the life of the scribe. Too late, she realised that the latter is even more work than teaching Shakespeare to 15-year-olds and the pay is generally less. Being a reluctant geek, she has never quite got over the surprise of finding herself the deputy editor of an online magazine—a pleasant sensation for the most part.

She once wrote a book—the history of New Zealand’s own anti-porn movement in its heyday—for which she got mixed reviews and no awards. She lives in the country’s largest city, Auckland, which is three hours by plane from Sydney—the hub of MercatorNet—and too far for comfort from anywhere else of importance. Still, it is a very nice vantage point from which to meddle in the affairs of the world. Carolyn is deputy editor of MercatorNet.

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EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

93% of New Muslim Candidates Won’t Express Support for the U.S. Constitution

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“It is not appropriate to label all, or even the majority of those, who question Islam and Muslims as Islamophobes.” – CAIR Report 2013, Legislating Fear: Islamophobia and its Impact in the United States, p. ix.

In January 2020, I wrote about the results of a survey I had done in which I presented four questions to eighty Muslim public officials across the United States; each question asked the Muslim public official to choose between following the U.S. Constitution/our man-made laws or Islamic Doctrine.  An eye-opening 93% of these Muslim public officials would not express support for the U.S. Constitution or our man-made laws.  Of the six who did express this support, only two allowed me to mention their name.[1]

I also submitted these same four questions to seven prominent Muslim Americans who have been publicly aspiring to reform Islam; I sent four similar questions, based on Canadian law, to six prominent Muslim Canadians who had also been publicly aspiring to reform Islam.  Of these thirteen aspiring reformers, only two Muslim Americans and one Muslim Canadian responded saying they supported man-made laws over the commands of Allah and the teachings of Muhammad.[2]

I then decided to submit the same four questions to 36 Muslim American candidates who appeared to be seeking public office for the first time.[3]

We shall first look at the four questions I used and then examine the variety of responses I received from those Muslims seeking public office.  I then list the Muslim candidates, by State, who did not respond.  This is followed by my concluding remarks.

The Questions

On February 10, 2020, I sent the following e-mail to a group of 36 Muslims who were running, or had been running, for public office at various levels of government across the United States; on February 17th I sent it again to the Muslims who had not initially responded:[4]

I have written extensively about Islam (six books and numerous articles and brochures) and think it important that non-Muslims gain a better understanding of Islam.

 If you are elected to public office you will take an oath of office that includes swearing, or affirming, to support the United States Constitution.  With that in mind, I am interested in your response, as a candidate who follows the religion of Islam, to the following questions:

No. 1:  Will you go on record now and state that our 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech gives the right to anyone in the United States to criticize or disagree with your prophet Muhammad, and will you also go on record now and state that you support and defend anyone’s right to criticize or disagree with your prophet Muhammad, and that you condemn anyone who threatens death or physical harm to another person who is exercising that right?

No. 2:  Our 1st Amendment guarantees freedom of religion in the United States. As part of that freedom, anyone in the United States has the right to join or leave any religion, or have no religion at all.  Will you go on record now and state that you support and defend the idea that in the United States a Muslim has not only the freedom to leave Islam, but to do so without fear of physical harm, and will you also go on record now and state that you condemn anyone who threatens physical harm to a Muslim who is exercising that freedom?

No. 3:  According to the words of Allah found in Koran 5:38 and the teachings of your prophet Muhammad, amputation of a hand is an acceptable punishment for theft.   But our U.S. Constitution, which consists of man-made laws, has the 8th Amendment that prohibits cruel and unusual punishment such as this.  Do you agree with Allah and your prophet Muhammad that amputation of a hand is an acceptable punishment for theft in the United States, or do you believe that our man-made laws prohibiting such punishments are true laws and are to be followed instead of this 7th Century command of Allah and teaching of Muhammad?

No. 4:  According to the words of Allah found in Koran 4:3, Muslim men are allowed, but not required, to be married to up to four wives.  Being married to more than one wife in the United States is illegal according to our man-made bigamy laws.  Do you agree with Allah that it is legal for a Muslim man in the United States to be married to more than one woman, or do you believe that our man-made laws prohibiting bigamy are true laws and are to be followed instead of this 7th Century command of Allah?

I look forward to your responses.

Support for the U.S. Constitution

Only three Muslim candidates clearly stated that they would support the U.S. Constitution/our man-made laws over Islamic Doctrine; they each gave me permission to use their name:

Deedra Abboudd (D), Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, Arizona

Iman-Utopia Layjou Bah (I), U.S. House of Representatives (AZ-2)

Rashid Malik (D), U.S. House of Representatives (GA-7)

Other Replies

I received various replies from five other Muslim candidates:

Leila Shukri Adan (D), U.S. House of Representatives (MN-5):  On February 17th Adan responded to my second e-mail:

Thank you so much for your email and for the reminder.  I am confirming receipt and will get back to you soon!

I have not heard back from Adan.

Muhammad Arif (D), United States Senate, Arizona:  Arif responded the same day to the February 10th e-mail.  He asked if we could meet for coffee or lunch to discuss the questions.  I explained that I lived too far away for that.  We exchanged several additional e-mails, and on February 11th he wrote:

Since you do not live in Arizona and I’m busy in my campaign because I have limited time … can I email you these answer [sic] next week … I apologize for delay [sic] because the questions I have to read carefully and answer in details [sic]

I replied that would be fine.  The “next week” came and went, and on February 22nd I sent him an e-mail asking when I could expect his responses.  I have not heard back from Arif.

Zainab Baloch (D), Mayor of Raleigh, North Carolina:  Baloch lost the 2019 general election to become the Mayor of Raleigh.  However, her subsequent social postings appeared to indicate that she was in politics for the long haul; she had written: “This isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon.”  On February 17th she responded to my second e-mail:

I didn’t miss it [my first e-mail]. If I have time to respond to your harassing questions, I will. Have a great week!

I have not heard back from Baloch.

Ameena Matthews (D), U.S. House of Representatives (IL-1):  On February 24th, in reply to my second e-mail, I received the following from Dr. La’Shawn Littrice, Matthews’ Campaign Manager:

Hi, Steve. How are you?  I will forward this to Dr. Matthews and get it back to you by Wednesday [February 26th] of this week.

On February 28th I sent Littrice an e-mail asking her for an update.  I have not heard back from Littrice.

Reem Subei (D), Ohio State Senate:   In response to each of the two e-mails I sent Subei, I received the following form response:

Thank you for contacting Reem for Ohio. This campaign is about bringing justice and equality to all. Please click the link below to provide us with your preferred volunteering activity. Let’s build a system that works for everyone, because we all win when we all win. 

The link takes one to a form for volunteers to complete.  I have received no other response from Subei.

No Reply

These Muslim candidates did not reply:

California

Kaisar Ahmed (Nonpartisan) – San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors

Shahid Buttar (D) – U.S. House of Representatives (CA-12)

Fatima Shahnaz Iqbal-Zubair (D) – California State Assembly

Cenk Uygur (D) – U.S. House of Representatives (CA-25)

Colorado

Iman Jodeh (D) – Colorado State House of Representatives

Delaware

Madinah Wilson-Anton (D) – Delaware State House of Delegates

Georgia

Nabilah Islam (D) – U.S. House of Representatives (GA-7)

Illinois

Junaid “J” Afeef (D) – Kane County State’s Attorney

Rush Darwish (D) – U.S. House of Representatives (IL-3)

Mohammed Faheem (D) – U.S. House of Representatives (IL-8)

Sarah Gad (D) – U.S. House of Representatives (IL-1)

Inam Hussain (D) – U.S. House of Representatives (IL-8)

Moon Khan (D) – Circuit Court Clerk, DuPage County

Azam Nizamuddin (D) – Circuit Judge, Circuit Court of DuPage County

Abdelnasser Rashid (D) – Cook County Board of Review

Maryland

Saafir Rabb (D) – U.S. House of Representatives (MD-7)

Massachusetts

Ihssane Leckey (D) – U.S. House of Representatives (MA-4)

Nichole Mossalam (D) – Massachusetts State House of Representatives

Michigan

Solomon Rajput (D) – U.S. House of Representatives (MI-12)

Minnesota

Dalia Al-Aqidi (R) – U.S. House of Representatives (MN-5)

Omar Fateh (D) – Minnesota State Senate

New Jersey

Alp Basaran (D) – U.S. House of Representatives (NJ-9)

New York

Tahanie Aboushi (D) – Manhattan District Attorney

Shaniyat Chowdhury (D) – U.S. House of Representatives (NY-5)

Mary Jobaida (D) – New York State Assembly

Badrun Nahar Khan (D) – U.S. House of Representatives (NY-14)

Zohran Kwame Mamdani (D) – New York State Assembly

Ohio

Mohamud Jama (D) – Ohio State House of Representatives

Conclusion

These 36 Muslim Americans seeking public office would have to, if successful, take an oath of office that includes swearing (or affirming) to support the U.S. Constitution.  In theory then, one would think such Muslim Americans would be quite willing even now to express their support for that Constitution and our man-made laws.  The fact that 92% of them would not take this opportunity to express that support is troubling.

Troubling, but not surprising.  As we saw earlier, 93% of current Muslim public officials and 77% of aspiring Muslim reformers also declined to make such a choice.  This, in spite of the fact that anyone holding a public office in the United States is required to take an oath to support the U.S. Constitution and our man-made laws, and we regularly hear from aspiring Muslim reformers that Islamic Doctrine needs to be modernized and made more compatible with Western laws.  But when faced with specific choices, instead of glittering generalities, 91% of all the Muslims listed in these three categories would not express support for Western laws over Islamic Doctrine.

One might wonder if it is fair to ask Muslims to make such a choice.  It certainly is because of the irreconcilable conflict between major tenets of Islamic Doctrine and Western Laws, especially the U.S. Constitution.[5]

Here is an additional consideration.  In its 2020 ‘Muslim Vote Campaign’ the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has included a questionnaire asking non-Muslim candidates and government officials whether or not they support specific “Muslim needs.”  CAIR explained:

CAIR’s 2020 questionnaire is an update to its 2016 questionnaire and provides sample questions for Muslims to ask local city council, mayoral, state legislative, gubernatorial, and congressional candidates running for office and government officials.

Candidate responses to CAIR’s election questionnaire will assist American Muslims in evaluating each candidate’s leadership criteria and their ability to unite and engage the community on policies and programs that meet Muslim needs.

The questions and the issues included in the questionnaire emphasize the American Muslim community’s concerns, as well as those of its civil rights, immigrant rights and worker rights allies.[6]

Here is a sampling of the issues about which the American Muslim community is concerned:[7]

1. Do you plan to address the rise in Islamophobia and hateful rhetoric towards Muslims in the United States?

2. Do you support the right of Muslim inmates to make religious accommodation requests for religious headwear, like hijabs, kufis, and other head coverings?

3. Do you support the right of Muslim inmates to make religious accommodation requests for copies of the Quran and other religious texts, prayer mats, prayer beads, and other religious items?

4. Do you support the right of Muslim inmates to make religious accommodation requests for modified meal schedules while fasting during Ramadan?

5. Do you support the right of Muslim inmates to make religious accommodation requests for daily congregational prayers and Friday religious services?

6. Do you support public school systems with significant Muslim populations in your congressional district and/or state closing for the Muslim holidays of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, when many students or faculty would otherwise be absent?

The focus of CAIR’s questions is on the need for non-Muslims to accommodate certain Islamic religious teachings.  Since CAIR has turned the focus on certain Islamic religious teachings, it is only appropriate that the focus should now be turned on all Islamic religious teachings, especially those that are irreconcilably in conflict with the U.S. Constitution and our man-made laws.  Muslims running for and holding public office need to be asked about these conflicts and expected to publicly, categorically choose between the U.S. Constitution/our man-made laws and those contradictory teachings of their religion.

We need to pay heed to these words of Winston Churchill from 1940:

This is no time for ease and comfort.  It is the time to dare and endure.

COLUMN BY

DR. STEPHEN M. KIRBY

Dr. Stephen M. Kirby is the author of six books about Islam. His latest book is Islamic Doctrine versus the U.S. Constitution: The Dilemma for Muslim Public Officials.

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NOTES:

[1]           Stephen M. Kirby, “93% of Muslim Public Officials Would Not Express Support for the Constitution They Swore to Uphold,” Jihad Watch, January 7, 2020, https://www.jihadwatch.org/2020/01/93-of-muslim-public-officials-would-not-express-support-for-the-constitution-they-swore-to-uphold.

[2]           Stephen M. Kirby, “The Adventures of Asking Muslim Reformers to Categorically Choose between Western Laws and Islam,” Jihad Watch, January 16, 2020, https://www.jihadwatch.org/2020/01/the-adventures-of-asking-muslim-reformers-to-categorically-choose-between-western-laws-and-islam.

[3]           I would like to thank Deplorable Kel for a majority of these names: https://deplorablekel.com/category/u-s-elections/2020-election/.

[4]           These questions were taken from Chapter 10 of my latest book, Islamic Doctrine Versus the U.S. Constitution: The Dilemma for Muslim Public Officials (Washington DC: Center for Security Policy Press, 2019); https://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2019/12/03/csp-press-releases-primer-on-islamic-doctrine-versus-the-u-s-constitution/.

[5]           For details about this irreconcilable conflict see Islamic Doctrine Versus the U.S. Constitution: The Dilemma for Muslim Public Officials.  For ways in which Islamic Doctrine allows Muslims to appear to take an oath to support the U.S. Constitution and our man-made laws, see Chapter 1, “Taking the Oath of Office.”

[6]           “CAIR Launches 2020 ‘Muslims Vote’ Campaign with Release of Candidate Questionnaire, Calendar of Election Dates,” CAIR, January 21, 2020, https://www.cair.com/press_releases/cair-launches-2020-muslims-vote-campaign-with-release-of-candidate-questionnaire-calendar-of-election-dates/.

[7]           “Sample Questions for Candidates and Public Officials,” CAIR, 2020, https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/cairhq/pages/1125/attachments/original/1579621884/2020_Sample_Questions.pdf?1579621884.

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

The New York Times’ 1619 Project’s Outrageous, Lying Slander of Abe Lincoln

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The New York Times’ 1619 Project has aimed at nothing less than a revolutionary reinterpretation of the entirety of U.S. history, “re-centering” African Americans as the sole banner-carriers of America’s principles, even as they have been ruthlessly smashed down, enslaved, and obliterated from memory by more numerous and more powerful whites.

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison come in for bashing. So does Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln? Jefferson and Madison, we know, were slave owners. But Lincoln? The author of the Emancipation Proclamation?

In project leader Nikole Hannah-Jones’ verdict, Lincoln, too, is guilty, largely because of one incident. In August 1862, Lincoln invited a committee of black men to the White House. He read to them a prepared statement, urging them to recruit volunteers for colonization outside the United States.

Colonization meant that once freed, former slaves would have to relocate, preferably for a reservation Congress would purchase in Central America.

On those terms, Lincoln appeared to be asking the once-oppressed to volunteer to remove themselves from the place where they had been oppressed, so their oppressors could breathe more freely. “He believed,” adds Hannah-Jones, “that free black people were a ‘troublesome presence’ incompatible with a democracy intended only for white people.”

Some emancipation, right?

But emancipation is exactly what was hiding behind Lincoln’s colonization statement, although the subtlety of that moment, in the complex political currents of the Civil War, seems to have eluded the 1619 Project.

No president before Lincoln ever dared hint at putting an end to American slavery. Lincoln, however, had never made any secret of his anti-slavery convictions. “I am naturally anti-slavery,” he said. “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think, and feel.”

But he also knew that, as president, he had no power to act unilaterally—until the slaveholding states gave it to him by triggering a civil war. Even then, Northerners like Robert Bennett Forbes, who detested slavery, were also terrified that freed slaves would demand “all the privileges of citizenship” and “tax the working community by lowering wages” among whites.

Colonization served as the great tranquilizer of white anxiety. ­Beginning in 1816, with the founding of the American Colonization Society, opponents of slavery sugarcoated the idea of emancipation for suspicious whites by promising that freed slaves would be no threat, because they would be gone.

This attracted fierce ­denunciations from free blacks and white abolitionists. But it also drew fury from Southern slaveholders, who saw colonization as a ploy to mobilize Northern opinion against slavery. Colonization, raved the pro-slavery advocate Edmund Ruffin, will only serve “to promote new emancipations.”

Lincoln’s colonization project was, as the English observer Frederick Milnes Edge wrote in 1863, “adopted to silence the weak-nerved, whose name is ­legion.”

This is why Lincoln not only invited the African American “committee” to hear his statement, but also the Washington press corps—so that his ­solicitation for colonization volunteers could be read in the newspapers. Meanwhile, he would have the Emancipation Proclamation in his desk, ready for release, little more than a month later.

In the end, Lincoln only sanctioned one small-scale colonization project, to the Haitian island of Île-à-Vache, and then canceled it after eight months of dreary failure. After that, according to Lincoln’s secretary, John Hay, the president “sloughed off that idea” once and for all as a “hideous & barbarous humbug.”

By then, the Emancipation Proclamation was in full operation, and Lincoln had authorized the arming of black soldiers—and without any mention of colonization. A year and a half later, he was calling for black voting rights, and Frederick Douglass would hail him as “emphatically the colored man’s president.”

Not a single reference to this fierce environment appears in the 1619 Project, which would be akin to explaining the New Deal without a word about the Great Depression.

History—and journalism—are supposed to ask as many questions as the subject demands. But questions are ­exactly what the 1619 Project fails to ask about Abraham Lincoln—and about our history.

Originally published by the New York Post

COMMENTARY BY

Allen C. Guelzo

Allen C. Guelzo, a historian, is senior research scholar in the Council of the Humanities and director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship in the James Madison Program at Princeton University.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Schumer Threatens Gorsuch, Kavanaugh on Abortion Case: They ‘Will Pay the Price’

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Editor’s update: Chief Justice John Roberts issued a statement Wednesday condemning Chuck Schumer’s remarks, saying: “Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned two Supreme Court justices Wednesday that they “have released the whirlwind” and that they “will pay the price,” adding that they “won’t know what hit you” if they rule the wrong way.

Schumer spoke Wednesday at a rally in front of the United States Supreme Court where justices heard June Medical Services v. Russo, a case in which an abortion provider challenges a 2014 Louisiana state law that requires abortion providers to have admitting privileges in a hospital within 30 miles of the abortion facility.

Opponents say the law would hinder and potentially eliminate abortion access in Louisiana. Louisiana lawmakers and pro-life activists maintain that the law protects women from unsanitary or unsafe abortion clinic practices.

Both pro-abortion and pro-life activists gathered Wednesday at the Washington, D.C. rally where the New York senator warned Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Neil Gorsuch against taking away “fundamental rights” related to abortion.

“I want to tell you, Gorsuch,” Schumer said, video from the event shows, “and I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price.”

“You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions,” he added.

The senator’s comments referenced the political price Republicans “will pay for putting them on the court” as well as “a warning that the justices will unleash major grassroots movement on the issue of reproductive rights against the decision,” Schumer spokesman Justin Goodman told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Let me ask you, my friends, are we going to let Republicans undo a woman’s right to choose?” Schumer asked the crowd. “Are we going to stay quiet as they try to turn back the clock? Are we going to give up or waver when things get tough?”

The pro-abortion activists in the crowd responded to each of these questions with a resounding “No.”

“No, we are going to stand together in one voice and take a stand on behalf of women and families throughout the country,” Schumer said. “We are going to stand against all these attempts to restrict a woman’s right to choose and we will win.”

Republican Sen. Ben Sasse slammed Schumer, saying that Schumer threatened Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.

“The Democratic Party is so radicalized on abortion politics that today Chuck Schumer threatened Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh if they didn’t strike down a simple, commonsense, pro-woman law that simply says that abortion doctors need to have admission privileges at a local hospital,” Sasse said in a statement provided to The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Nebraska senator pointed out that if a Republican threatened Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor or Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “it would be the biggest story not just in Washington but all across America.”

“But, Chuck Schumer’s bully tactics aren’t getting much air time right now because there’s so many people in bed with his defense of abortion and his attack on an independent judiciary,” Sasse added. “These bullying tactics need to stop.”

The case marks the first time the Supreme Court has reviewed an abortion case since Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court justice’s confirmation was marked by anxiety from the pro-abortion movement that Kavanaugh would rule favorably for pro-life policies.

He was accused of sexual assault by Christine Blasey Ford, whose lawyer Debra Katz said Ford’s accusations were motivated by putting “an asterisk next to” Kavanaugh’s name before “he takes a scalpel” to Roe v. Wade.

“In the aftermath of these hearings, I believe that Christine’s testimony brought about more good than the harm misogynist Republicans caused by allowing Kavanaugh on the court,” Katz says in a video exclusively obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation in September 2019.

“He will always have an asterisk next to his name,” Katz continues. “When he takes a scalpel to Roe v. Wade, we will know who he is, we know his character, and we know what motivates him, and that is important; it is important that we know, and that is part of what motivated Christine.”

COLUMN BY

Mary Margaret Olohan

Mary Margaret Olohan is a reporter covering social issues for The Daily Caller News Foundation. Twitter: @MaryMargOlohan.

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What You Need to Know About Louisiana’s Pro-Life Law as Supreme Court Decides Its Fate

RELATED PODCAST: The Daily Signal’s Rob Bluey breaks down the case with Louisiana Attorney General Jeffrey Landry and Louisiana Solicitor General Liz Murrill, who argued it.

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Voters on High Alert for Fake News, Ad Fraud, and Misinformation in 2020

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NEW YORK, March 3, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — With the 2020 presidential campaign in full swing, voters still feel stung by the effects of the 2016 election, with more than 77% saying they are concerned about fake news and misinformation this time around, according to a new study by Integral Ad Science (IAS), the global leader in digital ad verification. IAS asked prospective voters to weigh in on their perception of digital media in the midst of the election cycle. Political advertising is skyrocketing in 2020, with Democratic and Republican campaigns already committing an unprecedented $2.8B to digital media.

In the last presidential election, voter engagement with fake news articles on Facebook increased as election day approached, eventually surpassing engagement with mainstream news articles. With digital traffic patterns set to replicate or outperform those from 2016, the possibility of advertising alongside fake news articles presents a challenge for both brands and politicians. IAS found that 76% of voters believe that online advertising will play an important role in determining the outcome of the election, and this is especially true among younger audiences

At the same time, ad fraud spiked around midterm election dates in 2018, corresponding with increased online traffic. It’s no secret that fraudsters follow the money, making the upcoming 2020 election a prime target for fraudulent activity. 51% of respondents in the IAS survey are most concerned about political ad fraud in the 2020 election, and 86% of surveyed voters said that it would be irresponsible for political advertisers not to take measures to prevent online ad fraud. This is especially true among older audiences.

“2020 is poised to be a major year for advertising for both brands and politicians, and there’s no slowing down the boom in news and content around the upcoming presidential election,” Tony Marlow, Chief Marketing Officer at IAS, said. “Our latest political research explores how and where voters give their attention to political news, and what impact advertising will have on an election expected to bring the highest voter turnout in American history.”

For more information, download the results of the study.

About Integral Ad Science

Integral Ad Science (IAS) is the global leader in digital ad verification, offering technologies that drive high-quality advertising media. IAS equips advertisers and publishers with both the insight and technology to protect their advertising investments from fraud and unsafe environments as well as to capture consumer attention, and drive business outcomes. Founded in 2009, IAS is headquartered in New York with global operations in 18 offices across 13 countries. IAS is part of the Vista Equity Partners portfolio of software companies. For more on how IAS is powering great impressions for top publishers and advertisers around the world.

SOURCE: Integral Ad Science, Inc.

© All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Pro-Abortion Joe Biden Wins Big in Super Tuesday States, Finishes Ahead of Bernie Sanders

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