Obama’s Mexican Gunrunning Op Could Help Sinaloa Drug Lord’s Defense

/in , , , , , /by

Obama’s scandalous Mexican gunrunning operation could help in the defense of a notorious drug lord on trial in New York and the feds are trying to ban its mention in the courtroom. It’s yet another ripple effect of a shameful Obama experiment known as Fast and Furious that let Mexican drug traffickers obtain U.S.-sold weapons.

The failed program was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) and allowed guns from the U.S. to be smuggled into Mexico so they could eventually be traced to drug cartels. Instead, federal law enforcement officers lost track of hundreds of weapons which were used in an unknown number of crimes, including the murder of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in Arizona.

Now Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, wants to use Fast and Furious to strengthen his defense. The Sinaloa cartel is one of Mexico’s most powerful criminal organizations and Guzman has been charged with a multitude of crimes, including drug trafficking, illegal firearms, money laundering, and conspiracy.

Federal prosecutors say Guzman smuggled enormous amounts of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana into the U.S. and, as the leader of a multi-national criminal enterprise, used violence—including torture and murder—to maintain an iron-fisted grip on the drug trade across the U.S.-Mexico border. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) refers to Guzman as one of the most dangerous and feared drug kingpins. He was extradited from Mexico last year.

In 2016, Judicial Watch obtained Justice Department documents showing that Fast and Furious weapons have been widely used by members of major Mexican drug cartels, including Guzman. The documents reveal that 94 Fast and Furious firearms have been recovered in Mexico City and 12 Mexican states, with the majority being seized in Sonora, Chihuahua, and Sinaloa. Of the weapons recovered, 82 were rifles and 12 were pistols. Twenty were involved in “violent recoveries,” which means they were utilized in several mass killings.

Among them was a .50 caliber rifle seized from Guzman’s hideout in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, where he was eventually arrested. Guzman’s attorneys want to use Fast and Furious as part of the defense strategy, according to a New York newspaper covering the trial, and federal prosecutors are trying to stop it. “They’re asking a federal judge to block any defense questions about the program in which federal agents allowed illegal weapons to flow over the border to Mexico in an effort to gain intelligence on drug cartels,” the article states. Why? Prosecutors assert that, by focusing on the failures of the Fast and Furious (and there are many), Guzman will “distract and confuse the jury.”

The government pulled the same stunt when two of the men involved in Terry’s murder were tried in federal court. A seasoned Border Patrol agent and Marine Corps veteran, Terry was killed by a Mexican gang member in 2010 in Peck Canyon, Arizona. Federal authorities say he was fatally shot when he and other agents encountered a group of men known as a “rip crew” (a criminal gang that attempts to steal from drug and alien smugglers) operating in a rural area north of Nogales.

The guns—assault weapons known as AK-47s—were traced through their serial numbers to a Glendale, Arizona dealer that led to a Phoenix man the feds repeatedly allowed to smuggle firearms into Mexico. Six men have been charged with crimes involving Terry’s murder and earlier this year, the assailant was extradited from Mexico. A few years ago, when two members of the rip crew were tried in connection to Terry’s murder, federal prosecutors asked the judge to ban mentioning Fast and Furious during proceedings.

The judge agreed, ruling that defendants could not refer to or elicit any testimony regarding the failed gunrunning operation. Terry’s brother, Kent Terry, told Judicial Watch the government wants to keep Fast and Furious out of the limelight for political reasons. “It’s upsetting,” Kent Terry said this week. “If I commit a crime with a gun don’t you think it’s relevant to ask where I got that gun? They’re protecting the criminal.”

Even Mexican media has reported that the Sinaloa drug cartel was able to access more weapons thanks to Operation Fast and Furious. One outlet published an in-depth piece titled “Fast and Furious: Arms for El Chapo”  that reveals U.S. intelligence agencies knew from the start that the Sinaloa cartel was the prime recipient of weapons. Regardless, the U.S. continued the operation and lied to the Mexican government, the article states.

RELATED ARTICLE: More Caravan Crime on the Border

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

Here Are The Six Most Corrupt Congressmen of 2018, According To A Watchdog Group

/in , , , , , /by

A conservative-leaning watchdog group says House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are the biggest congressional scofflaws of 2018, for their anemic handling of the settlement slush fund that used an unlimited pot of taxpayer money to pay off congressional staff in exchange for signing legal papers barring them from taking public their claims of sexual harassment and other mistreatment by their congressional employers.

Congress members briefly claimed to be shocked at the victim-gagging slush fund when the media reported on it, but in reality, members of both parties in the House’s leadership oversaw it for years. The Committee on House Administration voted on each settlement and put out statistics that severely understated the scope of the problem. Former Democratic Michigan Rep. John Conyers, whose settlement sparked the initial furor, resigned, and the media moved on from the story.

A bill by then-Rep. Ron Desantis that would have named the congressmen who benefited from these payoffs in past years went nowhere, while the bill agreed to by the administration committee and the Senate is more anemic.

“Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now has an opportunity to act further and we will be encouraging her to finally bring an end to this systematic cover-up. Every day that goes by without releasing the names of Members who have received taxpayer money to settle harassment and discrimination claims is another day of cover-up and another day more innocent people are put at risk of becoming victims,” said Kendra Arnold, executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT).

Here is a photo of Reps. Gregory Meeks and Elijah Cummings. (Photo: Meeks Congressional office)

Rep. Gregory Meeks, right, settled a complaint involving alleged retaliation against a staffer who said she was sexually assaulted by a politically-connected supporter (Photo: Meeks Congressional office)

FACT was once led by now-acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker.

Others on FACT’s list of worst ethics violators of 2018 include:

  • Former Rep. Elizabeth Esty of Connecticut, for her role in the sexual harassment scandal. When the female Democrat learned that her chief of staff was accused of  “physically beating, sexually harassing and threatening to kill another one of the Congresswoman’s staff members, Esty tried to cover it up,” FACT wrote. She continued to employ him for months, then gave him a golden parachute.
  • Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kamala Harris of California, who solicited campaign funds based on their involvement in the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, while they were still ongoing. “Senators are prohibited from campaign fundraising tied to their official duties,” FACT wrote.
  • Former Republican congressional candidate Russell Taub of Rhode Island, for operating an illegal “scam PAC” that raised and failed to distribute $1.5 million to candidates.
  • Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, who claimed that voting machines in Florida were tampered with by Russia. Since there is no public evidence of this, FACT said he either lied or improperly disclosed classified information.
  • New York Democrat Rep. Yvette Clarke, for having 10 percent of her taxpayer-funded office budget go missing in what her own deputy chief of staff believed was a theft scheme between the chief of staff and the IT aide, Abid Awan. Since Clarke failed to take action and refused to discuss the incident publicly, she managed to win re-election by 1,000 votes. The missing funds would be enough to buy 20 iPads for every employee, and the former chief of staff, Shelley Clarke, signed off on the invoices. Clarke later had the missing items removed from the House inventory as if they never existed.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Here Are The Largest Congressional Payments The House Has Admitted

Clarke’s Chief Of Staff Tried To Expose Suspected Theft Ring On Capitol Hill, Was Met With Resistance

Watchdog Group Names Two Top Dems As ‘Top Ethics Violators Of 2018’ For Kavanaugh Antics

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images by The Daily Caller is republished with permission.

VIDEO: Why You Should Be a Nationalist

/in , , /by

It’s undeniable: Around the world, nationalism is on the march, and the media and reigning political elites would have you believe this is a dangerous disaster in the making. So, why is Yoram Hazony, author of The Virtue of Nationalism, unafraid? Watch to understand.

Check out Yoram’s latest book The Virtue of Nationalism. Click Here.

Click here to take a brief survey about this video.

EDITORS NOTE: This Prager University video is republished with permission. The featured photo is by Elias Castillo on Unsplash.

Fact Check: ‘More Republicans Voted for the Civil Rights Act as a Percentage Than Democrats Did’

/in , , , , /by

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro claimed on a Dec. 3 episode of his podcast that, compared to Democrats, a greater percentage of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

“More Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act as a percentage than Democrats did,” he said on the show.

Verdict: True

While the landmark act received a majority of support from both parties, a greater percentage of Republicans voted in favor of the bill. Throughout the 1950s and ’60s, Republicans were generally more unified than Democrats in support of civil rights legislation, as many Southern Democrats voted in opposition.

Fact Check:

Shapiro made the claim in response to a question put forward by Franklin Foer in an article he wrote for The Atlantic. “What if the moderate Republicans of the late 1950s and early ’60s had aggressively owned the civil-rights agenda—and rendered the cause of racial justice a bipartisan concern?” asked Foer.

“By the way, they did,” responded Shapiro.

As the civil rights movement gained momentum in the 1950s and ’60s, the federal government passed a number of civil rights bills, four of which were named the Civil Rights Act.

Of the four acts passed between 1957 and 1968, Republicans in both chambers of Congress voted in favor at a higher rate than Democrats in all but one case. Republicans often had fewer total votes in support than Democrats due to the substantial majorities Democrats held in both the House and Senate.

During this period, the South was a Democratic stronghold that consistently resisted the civil rights movement.

In 1956, many Southern members of Congress signed the “Southern Manifesto,” voicing their opposition to the ruling in the 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, which declared that segregated public schools were unconstitutional. Democrats were geographically divided on matters of civil rights, while Republicans largely represented non-Southern states and were more unified.

The most commonly cited of the Civil Rights Acts is the one passed in 1964. Shapiro told The Daily Caller News Foundation that he was referring to the 1964 act.

Originally proposed in 1963 by former President John F. Kennedy, a Democrat, the bill ended segregation in public places and made employment discrimination illegal.

The House passed the bill after 70 days of public hearings and testimony in a 290-130 vote. The bill received 152 “yea” votes from Democrats, or 60 percent of their party, and 138 votes from Republicans, or 78 percent of their party.

These percentages include four vote categories—“yea,” “nay,” “present,” and “not voting.”

In the Senate, the bill faced strong and organized opposition from Southern Democrats. Influential senators like Richard Russell, Strom Thurmond (who would soon switch to the Republican Party), Robert Byrd, William Fulbright, and Sam Ervin joined together to launch a filibuster that lasted for 57 days.

Russell, a Democrat from Georgia, at one point argued that the bill would lead to the destruction of the South’s “two different social orders” and result in the “amalgamation and mongrelization of our people.”

After some changes were made to the bill and the filibuster ended, it passed the Senate with a 73-27 vote. About 82 percent of Republicans in the Senate voted for the bill, as did 69 percent of Democrats. The amended Senate bill was then sent back to the House where it passed with 76 percent support from Republicans and 60 percent support from Democrats.

A number of powerful Democrats, such as President Lyndon B. Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, played important roles in getting the legislation passed.

Prior to this, Congress had passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first major civil rights legislation to be enacted in decades, which sought to protect the voting rights of black Americans. The bill passed the House in a 286-126 vote. Only 51 percent of Democrats voted in favor of the bill, or 119 of their 235 members, compared to 84 percent of Republicans, or 167 of their 199 members.

The bill was then brought to the Senate where Thurmond, an ardent foe of integration, filibustered the vote for a total of 24 hours and 18 minutes in protest—the longest individual filibuster in history. Thurmond once said in a speech that “there’s not enough troops in the army to force the southern people to break down segregation and admit the Negro race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes and into our churches.”

After the filibuster ended and a number of changes had been made, the bill passed in a 72-18 vote. The bill received 43 of 46 Republican votes, or 93 percent, and 29 of 49 Democratic votes, or 59 percent.

The Senate version was sent back to the House, where it was approved after amendment in a 279-97 vote (75 percent of Republicans voting in favor and 55 percent of Democrats). The Senate agreed to the amendment, with support from 80 percent of Republicans and 46 percent of Democrats. Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill into law on Sept. 9, 1957.

Congress also passed the Civil Rights Act of 1960, which further addressed the voting rights of black Americans and established penalties for those who tried to prevent people from voting. The bill passed the House on a 311-109 vote that garnered support from the majority of both parties. Roughly 87 percent of Republicans voted in favor of the act, as did 64 percent of Democrats.

In the Senate, the bill was then amended and passed with similar levels of support—83 percent of Republicans voted “yea” versus 65 percent of Democrats. The House approved the final bill in a 288-95 vote, with 81 percent of Republicans and 59 percent of Democrats in favor.

Congress later passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, also known as the Fair Housing Act. It initially passed the House in a 327-93 vote, with 68 percent support from Democrats and 87 percent support from Republicans. It then went to the Senate, where it was amended and voted upon, passing in a 71-20 vote in which 42 Democrats (66 percent) and 29 Republicans (81 percent) voted in favor.

The bill was then sent back to the House where it passed in a 250-172 vote. In this final vote, 61 percent of House Democrats voted in favor of the bill, compared to 53 percent of Republicans, marking the only time in all four of the Civil Rights Acts that Democrats voted in favor at a higher percentage than Republicans.

Why a Judge Ruled Obamacare Unconstitutional, and What Policymakers Should Do Next

/in , , , , , , /by

A judge has declared Obamacare unconstitutional—but the case is far from over.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, a George W. Bush appointee, granted a motion for summary judgement in favor of 20 states led by Texas that had filed a lawsuit seeking to strike down the Affordable Care Act on Friday.

Now that O’Connor has ruled, the losing side is sure to appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and ultimately the Supreme Court.

However, as the case continues to wind its way through the legal system, it is imperative that policymakers pursue real health care reform. Obamacare isn’t working for too many American families and individuals slammed with high premiums and few choices. Rather than looking for ways to keep Obamacare in place amid these legal challenges, lawmakers should pursue real solutions.

The Judge’s Reasoning in Striking Down Obamacare

As part of the last year’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Congress repealed the financial penalty associated with failing to comply with the individual mandate, effective in 2019.

In 2012, in NFIB v. Sebelius, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the individual mandate by the narrowest of margins when Chief Justice John Roberts, providing the deciding vote, devised a novel theory construing the penalty associated with violating the individual mandate as a tax that Congress has the power to levy under the Constitution.

Texas argues that once the penalty is reduced to $0, it can no longer be considered a legitimate tax, and that therefore the individual mandate would no longer have a constitutional leg to stand on.

Moreover, Texas argues, in upholding the individual mandate, the Supreme Court appeared to rely on the argument that Congress considered the individual mandate to be a central—indeed, indispensable—component of Obamacare that is not “severable” from the rest of its provisions, and that without it, the rest of the law should be invalidated.

A group of 17 states led by California are defending the law, arguing that even a tax of $0 is still a tax, and that it was never Congress’ intent to get rid of the rest of Obamacare when it repealed the financial penalty associated with the individual mandates as part of last year’s tax bill.

In granting the plaintiffs’ motion, O’Connor stated, showing his agreement with Texas’ argument:

The [Tax Cuts and Jobs Act] eliminated that [individual mandate] tax. The Supreme Court’s reasoning in NFIB—buttressed by other binding precedent and plain text—thus compels the conclusion that the individual mandate may no longer be upheld under the tax power. And because the individual mandate continues to mandate the purchase of health insurance, it remains unsustainable under the Interstate Commerce Clause—as the Supreme Court already held.

Finally, Congress stated many times unequivocally—through enacted text signed by the president—that the individual mandate is “essential” to the ACA. And this essentiality, the [Affordable Care Act’s] text makes clear, means the mandate must work ‘together with the other provisions’ for the Act to function as intended. All nine justices to review the [Affordable Care Act] acknowledged this text and Congress’s manifest intent to establish the individual mandate as the [Affordable Care Act’s] ‘essential’ provision. The current and previous administrations have recognized that, too. Because rewriting the ACA without its ‘essential’ feature is beyond the power of an Article III court, the Court thus adheres to Congress’s textually expressed intent and binding Supreme Court precedent to find the individual mandate is inseverable from the [Affordable Care Act’s] remaining provisions.

What Should Be Next

But the legal fight aside, we need a better health care solution than Obamacare.

One of Obamacare’s core conceits was that what (allegedly) worked in Massachusetts would also work on a national scale. That hasn’t borne out.

Instead, Obamacare led to years of increasing costs and decreasing choices. Premiums doubled in the first four years of the program. Millions lost the coverage they used to have. Americans found it harder to pick the right plan and doctor, as health plan choices declined and provider networks narrowed. Frustrated providers are drowning in red tape and increasingly feeling burned out. Meanwhile, taxpayers are on the hook for the money needed to paper over Obamacare’s flawed structure.

Those who seem to benefit most from Obamacare are big insurance companies that embraced the law and receive a steady stream of taxpayer subsidies and politicians who made endless promises to reform Obamacare but failed to deliver.

Real Solutions for Pre-Existing Conditions

Regardless of these facts, expect many in Congress to call for immediate restoration of Obamacare in the name of protecting the sick and people with pre-existing conditions.

Some on the left claim Congress must protect Obamacare because only Obamacare allows Americans with pre-existing conditions to get coverage. That’s an irresponsible, false dilemma and Congress should reject it.  

There are steps that states can take right now to ensure people with pre-existing conditions are protected, even if Obamacare ultimately goes away.

Congress should let states review their health care regulations and pursue innovative ways to make coverage more affordable and accessible to Americans—regardless of their income or medical status.  Every state legislature is about to go into session in early 2019, so this is both a desirable and possible approach.

Empower the States

Congress does have a role to play in helping families and individuals get the quality private coverage they want, and helping health care professionals meet their needs. Conservatives have a proposal to achieve this: the Health Care Choices Proposal, which undoes Obamacare’s damage by letting states innovate.

Under Obamacare, insurance companies receive taxpayer subsidies dollar for dollar as they raise prices.  This proposal does away with that flawed spending scheme.

Instead, it would convert existing Obamacare spending into a grant that states would use to ensure chronically-ill patients have access to the health coverage of their choice. Greater flexibility and resources to the states means that all Americans, even those who are chronically sick, would have access to more health plans at better prices.

The Health Care Choices Proposal would lower premiums up to an estimated 32 percent and ensure that everyone can access a quality private coverage arrangement of their choice.

And everyone who gets a subsidy could decide what coverage to use it for, including private or employer-sponsored health insurance.

Individuals and families would be able to decide what coverage arrangement works for them, and decide whether to work directly with a doctor for primary care and buy catastrophic coverage, or get a plan that covers more costs up front. The proposal would be especially helpful to the working poor, who may want to have private coverage but lack the means to pay for it.

For most people, this is a much better option than what happens today: being pushed onto a government-controlled plan a bureaucrat thinks is best for them.

This proposal would build on a promising, emerging trend already happening in the states. When states have been given even a little bit of freedom from Obamacare’s mandates, they’ve been able to lower premiums using tools that ensure that the sick still retain access to care.

Politicians have long promised to replace Obamacare with solutions that help everyone. It’s time to deliver—no matter which way the courts go.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Marie Fishpaw

Marie Fishpaw

Marie Fishpaw is director of domestic policy studies at The Heritage Foundation’s Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity.

Portrait of John G. Malcolm

John G. Malcolm

John G. Malcolm is the vice president of the Institute for Constitutional Government and director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, overseeing The Heritage Foundation’s work to increase understanding of the Constitution and the rule of law. Read his research. Twitter: .

RELATED ARTICLES:

Here Comes Commerce Clause!

The Right Way to Overhaul Our Health Care System

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

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission. Photo: Paul Hennessy/Polaris/Newscom.

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House — The Sequel [Worse than the Original]

/in , , , , , /by

In the movies sequels are usually worse than the original. Since Washington has often been referred to as “Hollywood for ugly people,” it is perhaps appropriate to consider another sequel in the making, not in film but in politics. Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House and soon-to-be Speaker of the House of Representatives, once again was the subject of a video posted on December 7, 2018 by Fox News, in which she rejected the notion of constructing a wall along the highly porous U.S./Mexican border to prevent the entry of illegal aliens, narcotics and other contraband.

Her outrageous statements and positions on immigration law enforcement and border security seemed to strike a new low during her first stint as Speaker. She has yet to resume that position and is already providing a disturbing peek into what America and Americans are in for with her in the position that provides her with a “leadership” role in the Congress and puts her in the chain of succession to the U.S. Presidency.

As my dad used to say, “Nothing is so good it could not be better or be so bad it could not get worse.” As hard as it might be to imagine, bad as Pelosi was the last time she held the position of Speaker, she may actually prove my dad was right.

This is the Fox News video:

It is unfathomable how Pelosi could declare that protecting the United States from threats posed by international terrorists, transnational gangs and the flow of narcotics into the United States is “immoral.”

It is similarly impossible to understand how Pelosi could determine that it is immoral to prevent the illegal entry of foreign workers who all too frequently displace American and lawful immigrant workers and drive down wages and working conditions of American and lawful immigrant workers who are similarly employed.

A wall would not prevent the lawful entry of a single person into the United States. The wall would not block America’s ports of entry but would funnel all traffic destined to the United States through ports of entry where they are subject to inspection by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Inspectors and where a record of their entry into the United States is created. These issues have significant national security implications.

This is comparable to the way that guests who visit us are expected to knock on our front doors to ask permission to enter our homes. It would certainly be unacceptable for a stranger to enter our homes by climbing through a back window. Similarly an effective border wall would prevent aliens entering the United States surreptitiously.

In a very real sense, entering without inspection is, at a minimum, comparable to trespassing and, as I noted in my recent article, “Democrats Stand With Foreign Rioters,” Chuck Schumer’s hypocritical and contradictory position on trespassing on critical infrastructure and national landmarks versus aliens who trespass on America is astonishing.

Here is the relevant excerpt from my commentary:

Aliens who evade the vital inspections process conducted at ports of entry are, at a minimum, trespassing on the United States.  This is a violation of law and poses a threat to national security and public safety.

On October 13, 2014 Schumer posted a press release on his official website which announced that because of dangers created by trespassers, particularly in this era of terrorism, that he had proposed legislation that would make trespassing on critical infrastructure and/or landmarks a federal crime with a maximum prison sentence of five years.

However, Schumer, who actually cited the antics of a 16-year-old boy in his press release, had declared that anyone who trespasses, including “adrenaline junkies,” should face a five-year prison sentence.

However, when aliens trespass on the United States, even where violence is concerned, Schumer and his Democratic colleagues are determined to provide those illegal aliens with U.S. citizenship!

The open-borders immigration anarchists refer to aliens who run our borders as being “undocumented immigrants.” In point of fact, aliens who evade the inspections process conducted at ports of enter the United States without inspection.

Such an entry is in violation of U.S. Code § 1325, a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

Some “journalists” have actually seized upon this linguistic sleight of tongue and have come to refer to illegal aliens as “immigrants who lack documents,” conjuring up the image of a student who went to the bathroom without taking the hall pass. The issue is not a lack of paperwork but legal authorization to enter the United States and remain here. Some of these aliens have no shortage of documents. In my 30-year career I encountered quite a few aliens who had been deported numerous times, some having been arrested and convicted of so many crimes during each of their illegal forays into the United States that their arrest record or “rap sheet” and their immigration files could have provided wallpaper to decorate a moderately-sized house, if you like hanging garbage on walls!

Aliens who seek to evade the inspections process do so because they know that they belong to one or more categories of aliens who are legally ineligible to enter the United States. Race, religion and/or ethnicity do not have any bearing whatsoever on the admissibility of aliens who seek to enter the United States.

In fact, 8 U.S. Code § 1182 enumerates the categories of aliens who are to be excluded from the United States. It is clear that the purpose for this section of law is protect national security, public safety and public health and protect the jobs and wages of American workers.

Among these classes of aliens who are to be prevented from entering the United States are aliens who had been previously deported from the United States, aliens who suffer from dangerous communicable diseases or extreme mental illness, are convicted felons, human rights violators, war criminals, terrorists and spies are to be excluded as well as aliens who would seek unlawful employment, thus displacing American workers or driving down the wages of American workers who are similarly employed and aliens who would likely become public charges, thereby burdening the economies of the towns and cities where they would live.

Pelosi claims that the wall would be “ineffective.” In fact, had a wall been erected the “Caravan of Migrants” (aspiring illegal aliens) would likely have been deterred from streaming to the U.S./Mexican border.

However, more must be done to address the immigration crisis than simply constructing a wall along the southern border. As I have frequently noted, a wall along the border is comparable to a wing on an airplane. Without a wing the airplane will not fly, but a wing by itself goes nowhere. A border wall must be erected and additional enhancements must also be made to the enforcement program of the Department of Homeland Security. Currently ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has about 6,000 agents for the entire United States and they do not only enforce immigration laws but customs laws and other laws that have nothing to do with immigration. (The “C” in ICE is, after all, Customs.) ICE is more focused on those who produce counterfeit Gucci loafers than counterfeit passports. To put things in perspective, the NYPD has about 38,000 police officers, the Border Patrol has about 20,000 agents, and our armed forces have more than one million enlisted men and women.

Obviously many more ICE agents, immigration judges and support staff should be hired, not to deport all of the illegal aliens who are present in the United States (likely more than 30,000), but to imbue the immigration system with meaningful integrity and convince aspiring illegal aliens around the world that the United States takes its laws and its borders seriously.

Finally, as to the issue of the cost of constructing the wall, the wall would pay for itself just as the cost of insulating a house is payed back to the homeowner many times over through savings in the costs of heating and cooling the house. I drew upon that analogy in my article “America Needs A Border Wall Like Houses Need Insulation,” in which I noted that each year tens of billions of ill-gotten dollars flow out of the United States in the form of remittances and other means of moving the money out of the U.S. that is earned by illegal aliens and as the result of the drug trade. Finally securing that border would help to stanch the flow of money and save many, many lives as an added bonus.

Of course, as I have noted in my article “Sanctuary Country – Immigration failures by design,” the multiple failures of the immigration system are not the result of inability to enforce our laws but an abject lack of desire by political leaders of both parties to enforce the immigration laws.

To put it bluntly, while our borders and our immigration laws are America’s first and last lines of defense against transnational criminals and fugitives and international terrorists, to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a laundry list of other organizations and special interest groups including immigration lawyers, they are viewed as an impediment to their wealth.

While Nancy is a highly-visible proponent for open borders, there are precious few members of Congress in either party who actually disagree with her.

That is the real horror show!

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine. It is republished with permission. Photo by DonkeyHotey

Illegal Immigration and the Cost of Stupidity

/in , , , , , , /by

Boggles the mind. I mean really, have a look at the numbers and tell me what I am missing. Illegal Immigration and the Cost of Stupidity. It boggles the mind. Or does it? As you think through this, you may come to realize that they are de-cloaked. The enemy within has been going through a full scale de-cloaking and they are now hidden in plain sight. Check out my recent interview at INFOWARS for a more in depth view about the enemy within and their intentions (Globalization) and vision for America.

Nationalism vs. Globalism

So we can see in the recent transparent exchange between Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and President Trump (with VP Pence quietly and wisely observing) that we are heading for a showdown in a matter of days. Fundamentally, it comes down to this. Nationalism vs. Globalism, a clash of world views. I will tell you this. Trump will get his wall and Mexico in the end, will be paying for it.

I talked about the cost of illegal immigration recently in this interview. The immigration segment begins at time marker 36:10. But before we get into the cost of illegal immigration which is detailed below, I would like to share with you some views with regards to this subject. Why all the attacks and backlash against then candidate Trump and now President Trump? This is an easy one to explain. You see once you come to understand the ruling elite’s goal for a New World Order, a one world government (Globalism), it all begins to make sense.

Stripping away the sovereignty of nations began in Europe. The consolidation became known as the European Union. Border-less neighboring nations, one currency. Ah, kumbaya-not! Can you say BREXIT? So how did that work out? Disastrous. Turn on the evening news. Been to Paris lately? Meanwhile on the streets in Poland, England and France thousands are chanting “We want Trump”. Oh yeah, MSM failed to cover that. So Trump gains global support and is the most loved man alive today. But back on point.

As you stroll through somewhat recent history you find that the globalist’s plan was quite similar for the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. A parallel move to the European Union and the Euro, was to be the North American Union and the Amero. Sure they called it a conspiracy, but as we know many of the conspiracy theories of yesterday have proven to be the conspiracy facts and realities of today in this great awakening that is taking place around the world today.

During George W. Bush’s time in the White House marching to the beat of Globalism just like his Poppy, (may he rest_ _ ), the plan was simply this. The U.S., Canada, and Mexico was to become the North American Union, a border-less nation with one currency called the Amero. Don’t believe me? It was on the floor of Congress.  Look it up. Get some skin in the game. Lou Dobbs, when at CNN at the time had this to say about the North American Union.

So here comes candidate Trump, upsetting the globalists apple cart. You can clearly see now in this de-cloaking stage I referred to earlier, why low energy Jeb, GWB and now deceased Poppy Bush all spoke out against then candidate Trump even after winning the GOP nomination. Nor did they did attend the RNC acceptance event. All three Bush’s also have denounced the now sitting President, President Donald Trump.

So again, here comes candidate and now President Trump. So why all the border backlash then and now? Well besides stripping the sovereignty of the U.S. via the North American Union, that border makes the deep state globalists a lot of money and feeds their goals to over throw America in many ways as well as feeding their sick, evil, demented perverted appetites. It is through this Mexican border where they control and cash in on running drugs, weapons and child sex trafficking.Thus catch and release and open border policies. Well there is a new Sheriff in town and this is about to end.

The Front Door is Closed

We all have a front door wherever it is that we live. It has a lock or locks on it too. Why? Well of course to keep us safe from uninvited intruders. After all you would not just let anyone into your home unless you invite them, know who they are, and why they will be coming into your home. Why? Because you want to protect yourself and your loved ones from being assaulted, raped, or killed. You want to protect the things you own from being damaged or stolen. Same goes for our country. My good friend Dr. Richard Davis, (R.I.P.), contributed this article to my website. Please read it. It is called My Front Door.

And Now The Numbers

Go ahead – have a look. Feast your eyes on these numbers. (then rush to the toilet because it may make you sick). You will never look at Pelosi and Schumer the same again giving our great President a song and a dance for $5 billion! These figures are excerpted from my book “Trump and the Resurrection of America” in chapter sixteen titled, “Immigration”.

1.  $14 billion to $22 billion dollars are spent each year on welfare to illegal aliens (that’s Billion with a ‘B’)

2. 22 billion dollars a year are spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens

3.  $7.5 billion dollars are spent each year on Medicaid for illegal aliens.

4.  $12 billion dollars are spent each year on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they still cannot speak a word of English

5.  $27 billion dollars are spent each year for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.

6.  $3 Million Dollars ‘PER DAY’ is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.  That’s $1.2 Billion a year.

7.  28% percent of all federal prison inmates are illegal aliens.

8.  $190 billion dollars are spent each year on illegal aliens for welfare & social services by the American taxpayers.

9.  $200 billion dollars per year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.

10.  The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that’s two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens.  In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US.

11.  During the year 2005, there were 8 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our southern border with as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from other terrorist countries.  Over 10,000 of those were middle-eastern terrorists.  Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin, crack, guns, and marijuana crossed into the U.S. from the southern border.

12.  The National Policy Institute, estimates that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion, or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period.

13.  In 2006, illegal aliens sent home $65 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin, to their families and friends.

14.  The dark side of illegal immigration:  Over one million sex crimes have been committed by illegal immigrants in the United States!

The Denver Post?

Even the liberal Denver Post ran an article titled “What if They Left“. An excerpt is below,

I, Tina Griego, journalist for the Denver Rocky Mountain News wrote a column titled, “Mexican Visitor’s Lament.” I interviewed Mexican journalist Evangelina Hernandez while visiting Denver last week. Hernandez said, “Illegal aliens pay rent, buy groceries, buy clothes. What happens to your country’s economy if 20 million people go away?”

Hmmm, I thought, what would happen? So I did my due diligence, buried my nose as a reporter into the FACTS I found below. It’s a good question… it deserves an honest answer. Over 80% of Americans demand secured borders and illegal migration stopped. But what would happen if all 20 million or more vacated America? The answers I found may surprise you!

In California, if 3.5 million illegal aliens moved back to Mexico, it would leave an extra $10.2 billion to spend on overloaded school systems, bankrupt hospitals and overrun prisons. It would leave highways cleaner, safer and less congested. Everyone could understand one another as English became the dominant language again.

In Colorado, 500,000 illegal migrants, plus their 300,000 kids and grandchildren would move back “home,” mostly to Mexico. That would save Colorado an estimated $2 billion (other experts say $7 billion) annually in taxes that pay for schooling, medical, social-services and incarceration costs.  It means 12,000 gang members would vanish out of Denver alone.  Colorado would save more than $20 million in prison costs, and the terror that those 7,300 alien criminals set upon local citizens.  Denver Officer Don Young and hundreds of Colorado victims would not have suffered death, accidents, rapes and other crimes by illegals.  Denver Public Schools would not suffer a 67% dropout/flunk rate because of thousands of illegal alien students speaking 41 different languages.  At least 200,000 vehicles would vanish from our gridlocked cities in Colorado.  Denver’s 4% unemployment rate would vanish as our working poor would gain jobs at a living wage.

In Florida, 1.5 million illegals would return the Sunshine State back to America, the rule of law, and English.

In Chicago, Illinois, 2.1 million illegals would free up hospitals, schools, prisons and highways for a safer, cleaner and more crime-free experience.

If 20 million illegal aliens returned ‘home,’ the U.S.economy would return to the rule of law.  Employers would hire legal American citizens at a living wage. Everyone would pay their fair share of taxes because they wouldn’t be working off the books.  That would result in an additional $401 billion in IRS income taxes collected annually, and an equal amount for local, state and city coffers.

No more push ‘1’ for Spanish or ‘2’ for English.  No more confusion in American schools that now must contend with over 100 languages that degrade the educational system for American kids.  Our overcrowded schools would lose more than two million illegal alien kids at a cost of billions in ESL and free breakfasts and lunches.

We would lose 500,000 illegal criminal alien inmates at a cost of more than $1.6 billion annually.  That includes 15,000 MS-13 gang members who distribute $130 billion in drugs annually would vacate our country.  In cities like L.A., 20,000 members of the ’18th Street Gang’ would vanish from our nation.  No more Mexican forgery gangs for ID theft from Americans! No more foreign rapists and child molesters!

Losing more than 20 million people would clear up our crowded highways and gridlock.  Cleaner air and less drinking and driving American deaths by illegal aliens!

America’s economy is drained.  Taxpayers are harmed.  Employers get rich Over $80 billion annually wouldn’t return to the aliens’ home countries by cash transfers.  Illegal migrants earned half that money un taxed,which further drains America’s economy which currently suffers a $20 trillion debt.  $20 trillion debt!!!

At least 400,000 anchor babies would not be born in our country, costing us $109 billion per year per cycle.

At least 86 hospitals in California, Georgia and Florida would still be operating instead of being bankrupt out of existence because illegals pay nothing via the EMTOLA Act.  Americans wouldn’t suffer thousands of TB and hepatitis cases rampant in our country – brought in by illegals un-screened at our borders.

Our cities would see 20 million less people driving, polluting and grid locking our cities.  It would also put the ‘progressives’ on the horns of a dilemma; illegal aliens and their families cause 11% of our greenhouse gases.

Over one million of Mexico’s poorest citizens now live inside and along our border from Brownsville, Texas, to San Diego, California, in what the New York Times called, ‘colonies’ or new neighborhoods.  Trouble is, those living areas resemble Bombay and Calcutta where grinding poverty, filth, diseases, drugs, crimes, no sanitation and worse.  They live without sewage, clean water,streets, roads, electricity, or any kind of sanitation.  The New York Times reported them to be America’s new ‘ Third World ‘ inside our own country.  Within 20 years, at their current growth rate, they expect 20 million residents of those colonies.  (I’ve seen them personally in Texas and Arizona; it’s sickening beyond anything you can imagine.)  By enforcing our laws, we could repatriate them back to Mexico.  We should invite 20 million aliens to go home, fix their own countries and/or make a better life in Mexico.  We already invite a million people into our country legally annually, more than all other countries combined.  We cannot and must not allow anarchy at our borders, more anarchy within our borders and growing lawlessness at every level in our nation.

It’s time to stand up for our country, our culture, our civilization and our way of life.

 Conclusion

Immigration and the cost of stupidity? It’s not about the numbers as you can see. This game from Pelosi and company will backfire. Trump will build his wall. Mexico will pay for it. Oh yeah…follow Q. Carry on my friends, carry on.

It’s no longer about Democrat vs. Republican, left vs. right. This facade is nothing more than a corrupt controlled, contrived divide and conquer. We shall unite for the good of humanity as we strive to resurrect America from this post constitutional republic of utter lawlessness. We are now embarking upon this path.

The ultra left? Forget about them. We will deal with them at a later date. But your friends, neighbors, associates, family members who are Democrats? They are coming aboard. And soon the swamp will be drained both left and right. Share with them this post. Intelligent common people of good will may see the light. There are any fronts where we can help our friends and neighbors to see the light. This article focused on immigration. There are many unifying topics that will bring us together in life and at the ballot box in 2020. Pedophilia for example. I have written about this subject on and off over the past two years as well as in my book “Trump and the Resurrection of America. Here is a link to get you started.

Dangerous and challenging times indeed. But when your children and grand children ask you”What were you doing when the global governance was being thrust upon America and the world?” What will YOUR answer be? Freedom, it’s up to us! Stay safe. Pray for our President. Stay the course. We are winning my friends, we are winning!

RELATED ARTICLE: White House, Congress Gear Up For a Potential Government Shutdown Over Border Wall Funding 

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

Apple CEO Tim Cook Is a Big Fan of Discrimination

/in , , , , , /by

There are few better examples of left-wing hypocrisy than Apple CEO Tim Cook. This is the same CEO who ferociously opposed the very modest HB2 law in 2016 and Indiana’s brief religious liberty law in 2015 because of his beliefs on discrimination…all while cozying up to Iran, Saudi Arabia, and China. Ironically, Cook — whose company supports laws to restrict the rights of businesses when it comes to LGBT issues — declined to donate money to the Republican National Convention in 2016 because of personal beliefs about then-candidate Donald Trump.

Well, now Cook is at it again. The Federalist caught this doozy earlier in December:

Apple CEO Tim Cook said Monday night that not using one’s judgement to kick certain people off of tech platforms is a sin. While accepting the first-ever “Courage Against Hate” award from the Anti-Defamation League in New York City, Cook said that Apple is proud of exercising its judgement to kick certain people off of its platforms.

“At Apple, we’re not afraid to say our values drive our curation decisions,” he said. “And why should we be?”

“We only have one message for those who seek to push hate, division, and violence: You have no place on our platforms,” Cook said. “You have no home here.”

“I believe the most sacred thing each of us is given is our judgement, our morality, our own innate desire to separate right from wrong,” Cook said. “Choosing to set that responsibility aside at a moment of trial is a sin.”

It’s simple, really. Cook is a hypocrite. Given how he and his company attacked conservatives who wanted to ensure that right for business people and their customers in 2016, apparently only some people to have the right “to separate right from wrong.” None of those people are traditional-minded Christians. His company wants to strip the right to live out one’s faith in the public square. They’ll do this while happily doing whatever it takes to improve their bottom-line, even sell iPhones in Iran.

Perhaps we should all take a page out of Cook’s book and get our phones anywhere but Apple? After all, he is definitely pushing division. His company supports the hateful and violent actions of the Iranian regime. And Christians’ “judgement…morality…[and] innate desire to separate right from wrong” is definitely opposed to the left-wing agenda which Apple continues to support.

Many of our better Christmas alternatives have online retail options and all the items in our 2018 Christmas Gift Guide are linked to vetted online retailers. 

Help us continue providing resources like this and educating conservative shoppers by becoming a 2ndVote Member today!

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission. The featured image is from Shutterstock.

They Weren’t Prepared for This

/in , , , , /by

Where does raising a white flag in the battle over your core values lead? Ask the Boy Scouts of America. After throwing up their hands on 103 years of conviction, the group may finally be learning that standing on principle isn’t easy — but it’s a whole lot better than the alternative.The fight to live out your beliefs can be an exhausting one. Until 2000, the Scouts had spent years in court just for the freedom to stick to its moral code. They won, but — to the organization’s dismay — the battle didn’t end. Waves of LGBT activists kept coming, and the pressure built until 2013, when BSA leaders gave into the lie that compromise would be their salvation. Five years later, we all can see: there’s almost nothing left to save.

A half-decade into its LGBT experiment, the Boy Scouts are a step away from bankruptcy. Turns out, their defining moment may also be a fatal one. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the group has been bleeding members since it broke camp and allowed in kids and leaders who openly identify as gay and transgender. Not long after that, one of its biggest backers, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, announced the withdrawal of tens of thousands of young LDS from the program. Then, the paper points out, there was the fallout from recruiting girls, which not only angered its base — but pitted the organization in a legal war with Girl Scouts USA. Now, a program that used to be one of America’s finest is considering Chapter 11.

Friends, if you’re wondering where the road of compromise leads, this is it. This is the future of anyone in the Christian community who exchanges the truth for cowardly conformism. The Boy Scouts dropped their moral mandate to accommodate what they don’t believe. In the current climate, that’s called “inclusion.” But if the Scouts were being more inclusive, why didn’t their numbers grow? Because, when you try to appeal to a conflicting moral viewpoint you only end up attracting the conflict!

Right now, too many churches, Christian colleges, and leaders are dangerously close to making the same mistake. They’re so desperate or fearful — or both — that they’re willing to water down who they are to protect the small space they’re standing on. There’s just one problem: the gospel’s truth isn’t up for negotiation. And in their rush to soften the blow of its confrontation, some believers are losing their identity.

Christians in Paul’s time were no different. Like humans throughout history, they craved acceptance. “I am astonished,” Paul wrote to the Galatians, “that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel — which is really no gospel at all. Evidently, some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ… Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings or of God? …If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

The Boy Scouts wandered so far away from their identity that by the end of 2016, they even dropped their most defining characteristic: boys. In the end, it ruined them. That’s the destiny of any Christian who takes the naïve view that world can be placated. It can’t. True love, I Corinthians 13:6 tells us, is truth. It’s being salt and light in a draining, unforgiving culture. “Come out from them and be separate,” Paul said, because he understands that in the end, it’s not our sameness with the world that transforms people. It’s our distinction. And one of the greatest is standing for truth — even when we’re standing alone.

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

RELATED ARTICLES:

San Francisco Creates First Transgender District

The Boy Scouts of America may file for bankruptcy because of sex abuse suits

Tools of the Trade Deal

Last Call for Liberty

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

Suspected Terrorist Leading Migrant Group Demanding Entry Into U.S.

/in , , , , , , /by

A suspect in a 1987 bombing that wounded six American soldiers in Honduras is leading a group of migrants demanding entry into the United States.

Alfonso Guerrero Ulloa organized a march of approximately 100 migrants to the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana, Mexico, on Tuesday, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. Ulloa delivered a letter to the consulate on behalf of the migrants, asking for either entry into the U.S. or a payment of $50,000 per person.

“It may seem like a lot of money to you,” Ulloa told the Union-Tribune. “But it is a small sum compared to everything the United States has stolen from Honduras.”

Ulloa has lived in Mexico since 1987 after fleeing Honduras in the wake of a bombing that wounded six soldiers. Ulloa was suspected of planting a bomb in a Chinese restaurant, but received asylum from Mexico, whose government described the suspected terrorist as a “freedom fighter.”

An appropriations bill passed by Congress in December 1987 included Congress’s findings that “the bomb was directed at American soldiers and did in fact wound American soldiers and an American contractor.” The report noted that Ulloa was a suspect in the bombing.

Ulloa has posted on Facebook about his role in organizing the migrants in Mexico, which he is open about, and the accusations against him from 1987, which he denies.

Ulloa posted a video on Tuesday of the migrants marching to the consulate. He described the group as a “caravan” of Honduran migrants.

WATCH:

Ulloa posted a lengthy diatribe about the 1987 bombing to Facebook in June 2017.

In the post, Ulloa again denied any role in the bombing, though he admitted to being a member of Popular Revolutionary Forces-Lorenzo Zelaya — a now-defunct left-wing group whose members claimed responsibility in 1982 for hijacking a plane and taking hostages, including eight Americans.

A report published by the U.S. government in April 1990 described the group as one of several “leftist guerrilla groups [in Honduras] that have resorted to terrorist tactics in the past.”

Ulloa also railed against the presence of American military members in Honduras and called on “gringo trash” to leave the country.

COLUMN BY

Peter Hasson | Reporter

Follow Hasson on Twitter @PeterJHasson

RELATED ARTICLES:

Why Our Country Needs the Wall, and Now

Trump: Mexico Is Still Paying For The Wall

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Compares Migrant Caravan To Jews Fleeing Holocaust

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission. 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 our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

VIDEO: Trump Brawls Face-To-Face With Pelosi, Schumer Over Wall Funding

/in , , , , , /by

President Donald Trump sparred with House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, in an extraordinary Oval Office session before TV cameras.

Schumer and Pelosi visited The White House on Tuesday to negotiate with Trump over border wall funding in the next spending bill. The pair offered Trump approximately 1.3 billion dollars in funding for the wall, while the president demanded 5 billion dollars. The impasse could lead to a partial government shutdown.

Pelosi set the tone for the discussion at the beginning of her statement noting that any shutdown would be known as “The Trump Shutdown,” prompting the president to immediately interrupt her. The two continued to spar over whether Trump had the votes for proposed border wall funding in the House of Representatives or the U.S. Senate.

“If we thought we would get it passed in the Senate, Nancy, we would do it immediately,” Trump declared, adding, “It doesn’t matter, though, because you can’t get it passed in the Senate because we need ten Democrats’ vote.”

Pelosi then questioned why TV camera’s were present during budget negotiations prompting Trump to declare, “It’s called transparency, Nancy.”

Trump then turned the floor over to Schumer, who also castigated the president for declaring that he would rather shut the government down than accept the Democrats’ proposals. Trump angrily turned to Schumer and said, “you want to know something? Yes, if we don’t get what we want whether its through you, one way or the other, I will shut down the government.”

“I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck,” he continued. “People in this country don’t want criminals and people that have lots of problems and drugs pouring into our country. I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I won’t blame you for it. The last time, you shut it down. It didn’t work.”

The pair of lawmakers said after the meeting that they had no intention of meeting Trump’s demands and told him they would only offer him the option of passing existing levels of funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Schumer and Pelosi both said Trump would be to blame for any potential government shutdown.

The deadline for spending occurs Dec. 21, with no current breakthroughs on negotiations.

Transcript: The President’s conversation with Sen. Schumer and Rep. Pelosi

COLUMN BY

Saagar Enjeti

White House Correspondent

RELATED ARTICLES:

Illegal immigration costs U.S. taxpayers $155 billion per year… building a wall could pay for itself almost immediately – National Sentinel

Pentagon Confirms: DOD Could Fund Border Wall

Throwback: When Sen. Chuck Schumer believed in securing our border

‘She’s Scared’ — Ted Cruz Criticizes Pelosi For Wanting To Turn Cameras Off During White House Meeting

Get the facts: Democrat-backed policies have created a border crisis.

Trump Says ‘I’m Proud To Shut Down Government’ To Schumer, Pelosi

More than 3,000 illegals caught in one day: DHS

The Cost of Illegal Immigration to US Taxpayers | FAIR

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column with video and images is republished with permission. Video courtesy of the White House.

Obama and the Perpetual Presidency

/in , , , /by

Former President Barack Obama recently continued his series of public broadsides against his successor, President Donald Trump.

Obama’s charges are paradoxical.

On one hand, Obama seems to believe that he, rather than Trump, should be credited with the current economic boom and the emergence of the United States as the world’s largest energy producer. But Obama also has charged that Trump’s policies are pernicious and failing.

Apparently, Obama believes that all of Trump’s successes are due to Obama, and all of Trump’s setbacks are his own.

Obama certainly forgets the old rule: Presidents, fairly or not, get both credit and blame for everything that happens on their watch, from Day One to the last hour of their tenures—even when wars abroad, technological breakthroughs, natural disasters, and market collapses have nothing to do with their governance.

Trump ran on the promise of a “Make America Great Again” economic renaissance. He pledged massive deregulation, fair rather than free trade, and tax reform and reduction.

Trump jawboned against outsourcing and offshoring, and praised rather than lectured private enterprise. He sought to reindustrialize the Midwest and promised to open new federal land to fossil fuel production, complete proposed pipelines, and lift burdensome restrictions on fracking and horizontal drilling.

In contrast, Obama had argued that the U.S. could never drill itself out of oil shortages. He advocated making the use of coal so expensive that it would disappear as an American energy resource. Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar were Obama’s vision of an America energy future.

As late as last year, Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council for two years during the Obama administration, ridiculed Trump’s boasts that he could achieve annualized gross domestic product growth of 3 percent as the stuff of “tooth fairies and ludicrous supply-side economics.”

Summers had also predicted that the U.S. economy would be in recession by now. Instead, it is likely to match or exceed Trump’s promise of 3 percent growth over a 12-month period.

After Trump’s victory, economist and Obama supporter Paul Krugman predicted that the stock market would crash and might “never” recover. “We are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight,” Krugman wrote in November 2016.

In fact, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has climbed about 7,000 points since Trump was elected. Unemployment has hit near-record lows, wage gains are up, and the economy is growing.

Still, after 22 months, no one knows what the final verdict will be on the Trump administration. So it seems wise to wait until Trump’s four-year term is over before weighing in on his legacy, or lack of one.

By the same token, the frenetic Obama should take a deep breath, stop arguing the past, and allow history to adjudicate his own eight-year economic and foreign policy record.

Given that Obama was a strong progressive while Trump surprisingly has proven to be a hard-right conservative, their presidencies offer a sort of laboratory of contrasting worldviews.

History will decide whether a more managed or more deregulated economy works best. We will learn whether a focus on traditional energy sources is preferable to an emphasis on subsidized green energy.

In recent times, Republican ex-presidents—Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush—left the limelight upon the end of their tenures. They kept silent about their successors, and they allowed history to be the judge of their relative successes or failures. Reagan and the younger Bush often were ensconced on their ranches in out-of-the-way places.

Obama would do well to buy a ranch, too.

In contrast, progressive ex-presidents such as Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Obama saw the presidency as a sort of never-ending story. Politics were a 24/7, 360-degree, all-encompassing experience. All envisioned their retirements as opportunities to re-litigate their administrations and to politick the present in hopes that future kindred presidencies would be progressive and would continue their own agendas.

Carter frequently warned that the Reagan defense buildup and tough stance toward the Soviet Union were dangerous and would lead to an existential confrontation.

Clinton became a fierce critic of the Iraq War as his wife Hillary prepared to enter the 2008 presidential race as an anti-Bush candidate.

Obama still seeks to convince the country that Trump is “unfit” to be president.

After the recent passing of George H.W. Bush, there are now four living ex-presidents: Carter, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama. There are five living former vice presidents: Walter Mondale, Dan Quayle, Al Gore, Dick Cheney, and Joe Biden.

If all ex-presidents and ex-vice presidents were to weigh in nonstop on the current president and present-day politics, the result would be as chaotic as it would be boring.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and author of the book “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won.” You can reach him by e-mailing authorvdh@gmail.com. Twitter: .

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

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission. Photo: Paul E Boucher/ZUMA Press/Newscom.

VIDEO: Will Seasteading Create the First Non-Violent Nations?

/in , , , , , /by

An ocean-platform community voluntarily funded and organized, if successful, is a monumental event in human anthropology.

Why do the nations rage?

I don’t know. Maybe because they’re out of ammo culturally. As Joe Quirk, president of The Seasteading Institute calls them, “the 193 monopolies on government that control 7.6 billion people right now” could benefit from some peace-loving competition. More importantly, the existence of his planned seasteads, floating platform-based ocean communities, could benefit the ostensible customers of monopoly governments by modeling nonviolent, voluntary community-making.

I interviewed Quirk because I am interested in the cause of liberty and nonviolence from an anthropological perspective. I am curious about why humans group together and assent to monopolies of violence called states. I want to know how humans came to morally condone and even consecrate the violence such entities employ against nonviolent people for disagreeing with majoritarian, might-makes-right rules.

Watch the interview below:

In the news today, we are hearing reports that an elderly pundit, Dr. Jerome Corsi, is likely facing prison time for getting tripped up in a perjury trap during psychologically abusive grillings by grand inquisitor Robert Mueller. Corsi’s actions, whatever the specifics, did not produce a victim. (Robert Mueller did when he helped mislead the nation into the Iraq War, as tens of thousands of wounded or killed soldiers prove.)

Regardless of what you think of his politics, Corsi is facing the prospect of being locked in a cage merely for the impotently cathartic game of DC blood sport. Nearly half the country seems to be foaming at the mouth at the sight of a political writer being caged in his last years just because he favored their rivals’ presidential pick. Who wants to live in a society where its law and liberty are decided by these violent bouts of scapegoat ping-pong?

The Origins of Monopolized Violence

Centralized monopolies that demand the right to initiate violence against any nonviolent misfit are devolving into anarchic schisms of mad groupthink. Where do we get off this ride?

To exit the vehicle safely, we must know how we got on it and why it’s breaking down—making us sick on its way out of commission.

The enigmatic Jewish prophet Habakkuk once wrote, “Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by injustice!”

He wrote it at a time in which evidence suggests the world was filled with societies founded and mediated by controlled acts of bloodshed. Today, we call it ritual human sacrifice and tribal war campaigns for glory. As sophisticated moderns, we are embarrassed to address the seeming fluke of sacrifice so ubiquitous to human history, so we awkwardly shuffle it off to the corners of our museums. At best, the fashionable answer is that sacrifice was a quirk of religion, agriculture, proto-patriarchy, or some other such cultural institution that soiled our primal nobility.

In reality, sacrifice was a safety valve ancient communities used to channel pent-up resentment, fear, and conflict into misfit human vessels of destruction. These scapegoats were marked out from the masses by some arbitrary difference that made them unbearably peculiar to suspicious crowds looking to avert famine, disease, or other harbingers of social in-fighting and disorder. Eventually, the governing authorities streamlined the process of sacrifice to include foreign-captured slaves who first received orgies and feasts to make them tainted enough with the local spirit of the community in tension.

We think we educated ourselves out of human sacrifice, but this is a convenient myth we tell ourselves to justify its continual residue in our daily lives. Every culture that sends state agents to lock up a woman selling unlicensed tamales, a political dissident, an addict, or an Amish herbal salve seller is still very much enthralled by the one-for-all logic underlying our generative sacrificial origins.

Today, we hide our consent for coercion against misfits by telling ourselves it is for the protection of victims and children. As if, for example, another Amish farmer thrown into a violent prison cage would cause the nation to perish if he were left alone to sell his raw milk.

Beyond domestic sacrificial violence in the name of victims, it is difficult to find a single country in existence today that did not have its founding determined by self-justifying war. As another remnant of sacred ritual, war has been a socially binding agent for societies—a means of uniting restless neighbors in righteous self-sacrifice of life and wealth for the defeat of a less-than-human foreign foe. Yet recent years have shown that as the public is more frequently exposed to images of constant intervention in countries like Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Syria, whatever unifying high war has long held is rapidly dissipating.

Our increasing sensitivity to the plight of the other, be it drug-war-ravaged families or drone strike victims abroad, make the governance models built on the initiation of physical violence against nonviolent people increasingly ineffective. No wonder criminal justice reform and ending wars are now the few areas of overwhelming political unity. Yet political systems, always in a lag from cultural trajectories because of structural incentives to maintain the status quo, are dramatically slow to decisively satisfy such popular demands.

A command-and-control economy where medical innovation and scientific reform are bugs to be blocked by bureaucracies simply has too much inertia built on the foundation of sacrificial wars and regulations to change its ways any time soon.

Sovereignty through Seasteading

That’s why Joe Quirk and the seasteading project are such a fascinating case to consider. As sacrificial forms of governance continue to leave their citizens in disunity and internal resentment over who gets what spoils in a supposedly zero-sum economy, we have a real chance to see the first sovereign societies develop free from bloodshed.

An ocean-platform community voluntarily funded and organized, if successful, is a monumental event in human anthropology.

Just having a place where problem solvers and innovators can develop potential breakthroughs in science, medicine, and innovation free from deeply captured regulatory apparatuses could be a tremendous leap forward for mankind. And if these societies can maintain a thriving, non-monopoly state-managed existence, the rest of the world’s governments will be on notice to wean off of sacrificial violence or perish through increased social unrest and decline.

Competition may be a sin to John D. Rockefeller, but when it comes to bloated bureaucracies buoyed by outdated ways of treating human beings, it looks like a big beautiful blue ocean to me.

COLUMN BY

David Gornoski

David Gornoski

David Gornoski is your neighbor – as well as an entrepreneur, speaker and writer. He recently launched a project called A Neighbor’s Choice, which seeks to introduce Jesus’ culture of nonviolence to both Christians and the broader public. A Neighbor’s Choice is also the name of his weekly radio show on state violence and alternative solutions to it. Email him here.

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

How 1 State Fared After Enacting the Criminal Justice Reforms Trump Wants to Implement Nationally

/in , , , , /by

Mississippi implemented its second round of criminal justice reforms this year after touting the successes of a previous package in 2014.

The first installment focused on sentencing, addiction and mental health treatment, and job skills for when inmates leave prison. State officials point to lower crime, fewer inmates, and savings for taxpayers as signs of success.

The new law, which Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant signed in May, focuses on re-entry to society and cutting recidivism. President Donald Trump, visiting the state last month, praised the reforms.

Mississippi’s prison population fell from 23,000 to 19,400 after the Legislature passed House Bill 585 in 2014. The state has saved $40 million, officials say, and is on track to save $264 million over the next 10 years.

In 2012, Mississippi had the second-highest incarceration rate in the United States, behind only Louisiana. The rate had surged 300 percent from 1983 to 2013.

Of those released after serving their sentences, 1 in 3 nonviolent offenders returned to prison. As a result, in 2013 the state assembled a Corrections and Criminal Justice Task Force that produced a framework for House Bill 585.

“Criminal justice reform is the No. 1 issue of our time,” state Rep. Joel Bomgar, a Republican representing the Madison area, told The Daily Signal.

Bomgar was a co-sponsor of House Bill 387, the Re-entry and Affordability Reforms Act. The bipartisan legislation, which went into effect in July, follows the state’s sweeping 2014 sentencing reforms.

‘An Economic Benefit’

Under the new reform, judges must determine a person’s ability to pay a fine before sending him or her to jail. And if the person’s income is at or below 125 percent of the federal poverty line, a court must grant him time to pay or allow community service in place of a fine.

The idea is that no one can earn enough money to pay a fine if he is locked up, Bomgar said.

The new law outlaws “debtors’ prison,” or incarceration for inability to pay legal and court fees. Bomgar said the focus is on making sure inmates who return to society are employable.

“It’s an economic benefit and the more people who are working, the fewer people who are in prison,” he said. “If someone isn’t employable, it’s more difficult to live a lifestyle to stay out of prison.”

The new law also reduces the likelihood of parolees going back to prison for minor or technical violations by prohibiting a judge from “stacking” technical parole to send someone back behind bars. A technical violation could be not showing up for a parole hearing, or showing up late, as opposed to an actual violation such as committing a crime.

Trump held a roundtable discussion on criminal justice reform Nov. 26 in Tupelo, Mississippi, since he is promoting national legislation now before Congress.

The president hopes the current Congress will pass the bipartisan bill during the lame-duck session before the Christmas break, after which the new Congress—with a Democrat majority in the House—will convene.

Co-sponsored by Reps. Doug Collins, R-Ga., and Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., the legislation is called the FIRST STEP Act (an acronym for the unwieldy Formerly Incarcerated Re-enter Society Transformed Safely Transitioning Every Person).

The bill would allow inmates convicted of nonviolent crimes, if they complete certain education and training programs, to earn credits toward spending more of their sentences in supervision outside prison, in a halfway house or home confinement. The hope is that they would get a job and more easily transition back into society.

‘Smart on Crime’

Trump praised those in Mississippi “who have worked so hard on legislation, and this legislation in particular.”

The president laid out the goal: “Enact reasonable sentencing reforms to ensure fairness while keeping dangerous criminals off the street—so important—and revitalize our criminal justice system to be tough on crime, but also smart on crime.”

Pelicia E. Hall, commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections, said at the roundtable that the state is focused on re-entry, including vocational training for inmates being released, such as learning to get a manufacturing job or gain a commercial driver’s license.

Besides Trump, Bryant, and Hall, those attending the roundtable event included Vice President Mike Pence, the president’s son-in-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner, and Miss Mississippi Asya Branch, wearing a gown and crown. Branch has made criminal justice reform one of her causes.

“We know that anywhere from 90 to 95 percent of the people in our system are coming back to our communities,” Hall, the commissioner of corrections, said. “So we want to make sure that they’re coming back better than they were when they were in our system. So we’re making sure that they get that vocational training that they need.”

Having seen passage of two major bills, Bomgar said he anticipates additional legislation in Mississippi.

“Criminal justice reform is an ongoing issue,” the state lawmaker said. “We still have a long way to go. I don’t think there is any state that is yet past the 50-yard line.”

States Set the Tone

The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi has noted that the state still ranks third in overall incarceration. The ACLU also asserted that black males make up almost two-thirds of those incarcerated, but only one-third of the state’s population.

“There was a significant decrease in incarceration in Mississippi, but also a significant decrease nationwide because of criminal justice reform policies,” Bomgar said. “So Mississippi still ranks high.”

Various states are tackling the matter differently, said John-Michael Seibler, a legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

“There are all kinds of bills at the state level. Some states will do omnibus bills to get everything in one package,” Seibler told The Daily Signal. “Other states do one or two initiatives at a time. Other states do a few things one year and then a few years later take another bite of the apple, like Mississippi.”

States have set the tone for the national discussion, he said.

“We could look at a few states to call national examples. There were successful reforms in Texas and Georgia and other states,” Seibler said. “Mississippi has done things on the sentencing side that are the kinds of things Congress could do.”

The latest rounds of reforms in Mississippi, under HB 387, also make it easier for former inmates to keep their jobs if they can get them, said John Koufos, national director for re-entry initiatives for Right on Crime, a conservative prison reform advocacy group.

“If you’re lucky enough to get a job, but have to leave the job to meet with a parole officer, it will make it tougher to keep the job. This bill allows parole checks to be done by Skype,” Koufos told The Daily Signal.

A Governor Who Gets It

Under the new reforms, instead of incarceration for failure to pay a court fine, a hearing is held to determine the former inmate’s ability to pay. If the person is not able to pay the full fine, a gradual payment system is worked out.

“Who is protected? People on parole ordered to pay restitution to victims’ family will be more likely to do so,” Koufos said. “Also, more people will pay child support. Mississippi would spend more incarcerating the person who owes $300 or $400 before they even get their first meal. That math doesn’t add up, and it’s not going to scare anyone into paying because you can’t get blood from a stone.”

Koufos said Bryant’s experience in law enforcement has given the Republican governor strength on this issue.

“Gov. Bryant gets it from his time in law enforcement,” Koufos said. “Mississippi is a great model and Gov. Bryant is a great leader in taking the bull by the horns in restoring public safety.”

Bryant is a former deputy sheriff who worked undercover in narcotics. Later, as state auditor, he helped put white collar criminals and corrupt state officials behind bars.

During a previous roundtable on criminal justice reform last August at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Bryant spoke about the successes in his state following passage of the 2014 law.

“We used all the things that Georgia has been successful with, and Texas. I called both of these governors and said, ‘Tell me how you did it,’” Bryant said at the New Jersey event.

Bryant said Mississippi focuses heavily on workforce training, addiction services, mental health treatment, and cracking down on drugs inside prisons.

He said that bringing in faith-based communities has been a major help.

“It takes a change of heart,” Bryant said at the New Jersey forum. “I’ve been around a lot of people who are in jail, and if their hearts aren’t changed, their lives will not be changed. So prison ministries—all of those things that government doesn’t like to admit to that works—works.”

COLUMN BY

Portrait of Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas

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

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

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission. Photo: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters/Newscom.

VIDEO FROM 2015: Astroturf and manipulation of media messages by Sharyl Attkisson

/in , , , , , /by

TEDx Talks published the below comments and video featuring Sharyl Attkisson on YouTube in 2015. Fast forward to fake news in 2018.

In this eye-opening talk, veteran investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson shows how astroturf, or fake grassroots movements funded by political, corporate, or other special interests very effectively manipulate and distort media messages.

ABOUT SHARYL ATTKISSON

Sharyl Attkisson is an investigative journalist based in Washington D.C. She is currently writing a book entitled Stonewalled (Harper Collins), which addresses the unseen influences of corporations and special interests on the information and images the public receives every day in the news and elsewhere. For twenty years (through March 2014), Attkisson was a correspondent for CBS News. In 2013, she received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for her reporting on “The Business of Congress,” which included an undercover investigation into fundraising by Republican freshmen. She also received Emmy nominations in 2013 for Benghazi: Dying for Security and Green Energy Going Red. Additionally, Attkisson received a 2013 Daytime Emmy Award as part of the CBS Sunday Morning team’s entry for Outstanding Morning Program for her report: “Washington Lobbying: K-Street Behind Closed Doors.” In September 2012, Attkisson also received an Emmy for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for the “Gunwalker: Fast and Furious” story. She received the RTNDA Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Investigative Reporting for the same story. Attkisson received an Investigative Emmy Award in 2009 for her exclusive investigations into TARP and the bank bailout. She received an Investigative Emmy Award in 2002 for her series of exclusive reports about mismanagement at the Red Cross.

EDITORS NOTE: This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx. The featured photo is by rawpixel on Unsplash.

 

Copyright © 2024 DrRichSwier.com LLC. A Florida Cooperation. All rights reserved. The DrRichSwier.com is a not-for-profit news forum for intelligent Conservative commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own. Republishing of columns on this website requires the permission of both the author and editor. For more information contact: drswier@gmail.com.