President Trump, Please Pardon Roger Stone Now!

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“Equal and exact justice to all men…freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of the person under the protection of the habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected—these principles form the bright constellation that has gone before us.” – Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural address, 1801

“Justice is indiscriminately due to all, without regard to numbers, wealth, or rank.” –  John Jay

“Natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole human race; and that civil liberty is founded in that and cannot be wrested from any people, without the most manifest violation of justice.” – Alexander Hamilton

While all of us in this twilight zone of totalitarianism wonder if and when things will ever get back to normal, Roger Stone is facing 40 months in prison starting May 1st, 2020.  Literally, this would be a death sentence for the 67-year-old with respiratory problems.  Here is the nightmare of the entire prosecution up until his conviction by a leftist jury.

We need to help Stone by doing two things, supporting his legal defense fund and by using social media and tweeting President Trump to pardon him before he enters prison to save him from certain death.

Stone is a veteran Republican Strategist, New York Times Bestselling author, pundit and longtime consultant to the Trump Organization. Mr. Stone is the grandmaster of 10 Republican Presidential campaigns including his seminal role in Donald Trump’s political emergence. This is detailed in the recent PBS Documentary series on Donald Trump as well as in the award-winning Netflix Documentary “Get Me Roger Stone.” He also served as chairman of Donald Trump’s Presidential Exploratory Committee in 2000 and 2012.

Mueller’s Last Prosecution

In February of 2019, Roger’s home in Florida was raided by the FBI, or as Kitty Werthmann called it, the Gestapo.  Roger stated, “A pre-dawn raid stormed my house with greater force than was used to take down terrorists or drug lords and terrorized my wife and my dogs. It was unconscionable.”  All this for a bunch of process crimes that in the entire history of our country, are rarely charged.

An intensive two-year multi-million-dollar investigation into Stone by the Special Counsel began in 2017.  They turned up no evidence of Russian collusion, no collaboration with Wikileaks, and no evidence that Roger Stone had advance notice of the source or content of any of the Wikileaks disclosures, including the e-mails of John Podesta before their release.  Mueller indicted Roger Stone for lying to Congress.

Stone was ultimately charged with lying to Congress and one count of witness tampering. His contrived indictment was crafted by Mueller Deputy Andrew Weissman.

Robert Mueller was allowed to “Judge Shop” for an Obama judge…and he came up with Amy Berman Jackson who also presided over the case of former Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort. Jackson had Manafort incarcerated prior to and during his trial, even in solitary confinement for nine months, despite the fact that he hadn’t been convicted of any crime.  A motion for a change of judge was requested by Stone’s attorneys, but denied.

Mueller used legal trickery to ensure that Jackson got Stone’s case by falsely claiming that his case was tied to the unproven case against the alleged Russian hackers, but the trial revealed no such link!

Judge Amy Berman Jackson

Judge Jackson is a liberal activist Judge who dismissed the wrongful death lawsuit in Benghazi against Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the suit by the Catholic Church challenging Obamacare’s requirement that employers provide free coverage for contraception and abortion. Jackson’s decision on the Catholic Church was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Judge Jackson immediately issued a gag order on Stone, knowing that his living was made by public speaking.  Although such orders infringe on the First Amendment rights of the persons gagged and (sometimes) of the media, the judges issuing and upholding them claim they are necessary to preserve parties’ rights to a fair trial.

The U.S. Supreme Court expressly approved gag orders on trial participants in the 1966 liberal Warren Court in Sheppard v. Maxwell.  (This is the same court who took prayer out of school in 1962, and destroyed states’ rights regarding slander and libel in the 1964 NYTs v Sullivan case.) In this case, the media wasn’t gagged, but Stone’s ability to defend himself in public and to earn a living certainly was.

Jackson not only gagged Roger from defending himself, she also repeatedly personally attacked him from the bench and then rejected a motion to recuse herself accusing his lawyers of a “publicity stunt.”

Like so many others who supported Donald Trump for President, Roger ended up railroaded via a false prosecution.

During the sham trial, Judge Jackson ruled for the prosecution and against Stone’s lawyers on every motion in the case save one. It was reported that the Judge would smirk and roll her eyes at the jury whenever Stone’s lawyers were speaking in court.

Roger was found guilty, his exculpatory evidence was disallowed, and he was sentenced to seven plus years in prison by an overzealous prosecution team.

Four career DOJ prosecutors, abruptly resigned from their posts on Tuesday, February 10th, 2020 in an apparent dramatic protest just hours after senior leaders at the DOJ said they would take the extraordinary step of effectively overruling the prosecutors’ judgment by seeking a lesser sentence for President Trump’s former adviser Roger Stone.

The Deep State Set Up

There are many in the Deep State who want Roger Stone eliminated, and for many reasons.  The mere fact that Roger is a decades long friend of Donald Trump is enough to want him destroyed.

But they’d also like payback for Stone’s magnificent research in two books, “The Clinton’s War on Women,” which was the definitive expose on Bill, Hillary and Chelsea.  It not only detailed Bill Clinton’s serial sexual assaults on multiple women, but Hillary’s role in intimidating, bullying and silencing them.

Stone was the first person to expose the Epstein-Clinton connection in his book documenting Bill Clinton’s 28 flights to the convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s private Island and Epstein’s role in the founding of the Clinton Foundation.

His other book, one I couldn’t put down, superbly unmasked the entire Bush dynasty, “Jeb, and the Bush Crime Family,” (original title).  Both books exposed the corruption of these two powerful families.  Remember the Bushes openly admitted they voted for Hillary.

And just who oversaw Stone’s case for the Office of Special Counsel?  It was Jeannie Rhee, who represented Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation in the e-mail case and who gave the maximum contribution to Hillary’s campaigns in 2008 and 2016 as well as Obama in 2008. Rhee has no experience as a prosecutor and came out of Mueller’s office and has since returned.

The Stacked Liberal DC Jury

The trial was held in Washington DC.  A venue change was denied despite DC being 99 percent Democrat. Not one republican, veteran or Trump supporter was on the jury.

Former Memphis City Schools Board President, Tomeka Hart revealed that she was the foreperson of the jury that convicted former Trump adviser Roger Stone on obstruction charges, and soon afterward, her history of Democratic activism and a string of her anti-Trump, left-wing social media posts came to light.

Hart even posted specifically about the Stone case before she was selected to sit on the jury, as she retweeted an argument mocking those who considered Stone’s dramatic arrest in a predawn raid by a federal tactical team to be excessive force. She also suggested President Trump and his supporters are racists and praised the investigation conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which ultimately led to Stone’s prosecution.

Meanwhile, it emerged that U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson had denied a defense request to strike a potential juror who was an Obama-era press official with admitted anti-Trump views and whose husband worked at the same Justice Department division that handled the probe leading to Stone’s arrest. And, another Stone juror, Seth Cousins, donated to former Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke and other progressive causes, federal election records reviewed by Fox News show.

The revelations came as President Trump has called the handling of Stone’s prosecution “ridiculous” and a demonstrably unfair “insult to our country.”

How did a federal court judge ever allow a far-left wing activist to sit on a case where a close Trump associate faced trial?  Because there is no justice for anyone who supports Donald Trump.

Justice Denied

Judge Amy Berman Jackson denied a request for a new trial made by Roger Stone following his conviction on charges related to the Russia investigation.  The Stone prosecution is a disgrace, it’s lawless, and it was rigged from the beginning.

Judge Jackson called nearly all jurors back for a hearing, a highly unusual move, after Stone’s attorneys also alleged misconduct after some jurors spoke out publicly following the case.

In her 81-page memorandum, Judge Jackson said the lawyers had not proved the forewoman was biased or that any jurors acted inappropriately. She included details of their juror questionnaires in her explanation.

“The assumption underlying the motion – that one can infer from the juror’s opinions about the President that she could not fairly consider the evidence against the defendant – is not supported by any facts or data and it is contrary to controlling legal precedent,” she wrote in denying the new trial. “The motion is a tower of indignation, but at the end of the day, there is little of substance holding it up.”

The Double Standard

Hillary Clinton’s criminal email investigation was dropped by AG Bill Barr early on in his appointment. To most Americans this was a travesty of justice for a woman who allowed foreign nations to easily gain access to classified American information. Truly, her actions were treasonous.

The DOJ later revealed that it would be closing its investigation of Andrew McCabe, the FBI’s former deputy director, over his false statements to investigators probing an unauthorized leak that McCabe had orchestrated. McCabe was fired in March 2018, shortly after a blistering Justice Department inspector general report concluded that he repeatedly and blatantly lied, or as the Bureau lexicon puts it, “lacked candor” when questioned, including under oath.

And late last August, 2019, the U.S. Justice Department had decided not to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey despite an internal investigation that found he improperly leaked information to the news media.

How about Brennan, Clapper, Strzok, Page, Rosenstein, Bruce and Nellie Ohr, and even Robert Mueller himself…all of them lied to Congress…no prosecutions!

Because of this Chinese virus, Michael Avenatti has been temporarily freed from a federal jail in New York City to ride out the coronavirus at a friend’s house in Los Angeles. Avenatti is awaiting a June sentencing after he was convicted of trying to extort $25 million from sportswear giant Nike. He also faces criminal trials in New York of defrauding Stormy Daniels and in Los Angeles of cheating clients and others of millions of dollars.

The federal Bureau of Prisons has notified Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, that he will be released early from prison due to the coronavirus pandemic.

And Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign manager, who is 71 years old, has requested to serve the rest of his federal prison sentence at home due to risks presented by the coronavirus outbreak.  But I highly doubt this man will be released, since he supported President Trump.

Thousands of criminals have been released by state governors and city mayors, and we’re not just talking drug crimes, we’re talking rapists and murderers…a 26 year old murdered again the very day he was released.  Another man, 77 years old, thought too old to murder again, did just that, he murdered a mother and her twin sons.

These criminals are released to protect them from contracting Covid-19, and they prey on our shuttered society, yet Roger Stone is bound for prison…where is justice???

Conclusion

If Roger Stone is forced into prison, he will most likely die there.  He needs a pardon prior to presenting himself for incarceration.  And please people, don’t write and tell me that Trump will pardon him after he’s re-elected or even after he loses the election.  That will be too late for Roger, he will die in prison.  The same goes for Paul Manafort.  Trump could have pardoned Manafort’s federal charges and helped him out.

A judge last December 2019, dismissed New York state criminal charges filed against Paul Manafort. The dismissal was a blow to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who had brought the case against Manafort right after he was sentenced to a federal prison term earlier in 2019.  Manafort was not in court for the hearing in Manhattan. He suffered a medical issue at the federal prison in Pennsylvania where he is serving his 7½-year term.

Get these men out of prison, don’t let them die behind bars. The DOJ attack on anyone who supported Trump is obvious while the most corrupt within the Deep State are walking free.

Please use social media to ask President Trump to pardon Roger Stone before he spends one minute in a prison.

P.S.  These times of totalitarian control restricting our civil rights has cost so many.  One of them is NewsWithViews.  Donations we used to count on are understandably not there.  This website brings more truth to America than most, and we need your help to stay alive.  So many of us are struggling today, but if you can even spare a few dollars, you will help keep us alive and bringing you daily updates that you won’t find on cable news.  Please help us…and donate here.  Thank you, and Lord bless you!

© All rights reserved.

VIDEO: New York mosque still open for daily prayers while churches across the US face mandatory shutdowns

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If you’re surprised, maybe you’ve been asleep for the last 20 years.

“New York mosque still open for daily prayers while churches across the country face mandatory shutdowns,” by Paul Shiver, The Blaze, April 20, 2020:

A mosque in New York is reportedly still open for daily prayers amid the coronavirus pandemic that has forced Christian churches across the country to close their doors and cancel their in-person gatherings.

While churchgoers in many states have been criticized and even punished for continuing to gather, that same level of scrutiny has apparently not been leveled at the Mosque of Jesus, Son of Mary in Syracuse, New York.

What are the details?

Despite the state’s executive order, which broadly bans all “non-essential gatherings of individuals of any size for any reason,” neighborhood Muslims are still allowed gather together in the mosque’s prayer room for calls to prayer throughout the week.

“About 10 worshippers in masks are allowed in at a time, though rarely do that many show up. They stand far apart from each other as they follow a prayer leader standing on a plastic-covered prayer rug,” a Syracuse.com report notes. (Though in a video of one of the prayers, it appears that the worshippers are not at least 6 feet away, as the Centers for Disease Control recommends).

While it should be noted that the mosque has gone to great lengths to limit attendees’ exposure to the virus by covering the prayer room in plastic and installing a special ventilation system, it is unclear as to how that exempts the mosque from the government mandate.

Yet instead of facing criticism for continuing to gather, the mosque was commended by the news outlet for its efforts to “keep the faith” during the pandemic, especially as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan approaches….

Over the past few weeks, churchgoers in many states have been prohibited from gathering and, in many cases, have been punished for doing so despite government orders.

In Mississippi, some churchgoers received $500 fines for sitting in their vehicles in a church parking lot listening to a radio broadcast of the service. In Kentucky, nails were allegedly scattered at the parking lot entrances to prevent people from attending the Easter service. A northern California county even outlawed singing during church livestreams unless people are in a home.

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio threatened to “permanently” shut down churches and synagogues if they refused to comply with the government’s shelter-in-place order….

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

How to Hold China Accountable for COVID-19

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Americans are understandably upset. Businesses are closed, and people’s lives and livelihoods are at stake.

It makes sense that people would demand the government take action against those responsible for the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic once we’ve made it through.

Here’s how—and how not—to hold China accountable for the new coronavirus.

When can America reopen? The National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, a project of The Heritage Foundation, is gathering America’s top thinkers together to figure that out. Learn more here.

As of right now, for very good reason, the Chinese Communist Party is culprit No. 1. However, it won’t be so easy getting it to fork over restitution.

There’s the reality that nations are generally not able to be sued, under the concept of “sovereign immunity.” While there are some exceptions, it would require the construction of a very tight case, in this case against the Chinese Communist Party.

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 >>

To build such a case, policymakers would need to answer three important questions:

1. Who exactly is responsible for the COVID-19 outbreak? Meaning, who in the Chinese Communist Party is responsible for suppressing the information that heroes such as Dr. Li Wenliang tried to share with the world before COVID-19 grew rampant?

2. What exactly are they guilty of? Meaning, is the Chinese Communist Party simply guilty of the suppression of information? Are they also guilty of not acting soon enough? What else, exactly?

3. How do we even begin to calculate the restitution owed to the U.S.? Some estimates suggest that the coronavirus has generated losses of as much as $4 trillion. That’s roughly one-third of China’s economy.

Perhaps because of the complications with a legal case, folks are talking about ways to make China “pay” in other ways. Many of the ideas are lacking a dose of reality.

Here’s how we should not hold China accountable:

1. Refuse to pay Chinese holders of U.S. debt. As of January, Chinese investors held $1.1 trillion worth of U.S. Treasury securities (debt). Chinese holders of U.S. debt (both private and government entities) account for more than 15% of total foreign holders of U.S. debt, but only a fraction of total public debt.

If there is one thing that would destroy the credibility of the American dollar and the American financial system, it would be to raise any doubts about the American commitment to meeting its financial obligations.

Such a threat would shatter the faith of every holder of American debt, not just the Chinese.

After all, if the U.S. could suddenly decide not to pay Chinese holders of American debt, what would keep us from doing the same to the Saudis? Or the Japanese? And that, in turn, would effectively end the role of the American dollar as the global reserve currency. This is truly one case where the cure would be worse than the disease.

2. Get U.S. companies to leave China and come home. Some suggest COVID-19 is a great opportunity to bring U.S. companies back from China. The problem is that while some companies might leave China (and there could be incentives to encourage them to do so), few would then relocate back to the U.S.

Companies went to China in pursuit of cheaper costs, and COVID-19 doesn’t change that. Most of the companies that are leaving China won’t be coming to the U.S. They’ll more likely be going to Vietnam or Mexico, or many other places.

3. Kick out all Chinese news reporters. This has little to do with China’s suppression of information about the COVID-19 virus, and more to do with China’s overall suppression of a free press.

After all, it wasn’t Chinese reporters in the U.S. that failed to report on COVID-19 developments in China.

Kicking China’s reporters out of the U.S. would simply justify China’s ejection of American journalists, to little effect on the pandemic (other than limiting what unrestricted information is available).

4. Decouple entirely from the Chinese economy. Some suggest the U.S. should have no business with China whatsoever. But China was our fourth-largest trading partner in 2019, with $560 billion worth of traded goods.

Historically, U.S. and Chinese investors have directly invested more than $150 billion in each other (about twice as much U.S. direct investment in China than vice versa). Subsidiaries of U.S. companies sell hundreds of billions of dollars of goods in China every year on top of what they export there from the U.S.

These benefits would be hard to give up. Are there costs of doing business in China? Yes. But businesses are there because there are also benefits.

There are more realistic ways to put the Chinese Communist Party’s feet to the fire and hold it accountable.

1. A human rights approach. Sanctioning specific individuals for specific rights violations can be more successful than trying to punish a nation of 1.4 billion people.

2. An international approach with allies. This includes taking international legal action as another possibility. Legal scholar James Kraska has laid out one such approach. But litigation could take years and still lack the desired effect Americans might want to see this year.

3. Public diplomacy. It will take some patience and not have the visibility of legal action. That is to say, legal action would feel good up front, but would take years to maybe reach results, and then only if accompanied by painstaking diplomatic work.

Diplomacy includes keeping the spotlight on the Chinese Communist Party and the nefarious impact it has on the world. Results may vary, but doing this and letting people and governments around the world take matters into their own hands will have a lasting effect.

The truth is that this virus has given the Chinese Communist Party a big black eye and right now the Chinese are doing all they can to shift the blame or obfuscate the truth.

The Trump administration is likely to continue pushing back against China’s efforts to reshape the international narrative, much like we’ve seen the U.S.-China competition across the international arena.

But the outbreak of COVID-19 doesn’t change that the People’s Republic of China will be our most persistent and consequential U.S. foreign-policy challenge for the next several decades.

There might be right ways to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable for the COVID-19 outbreak and its other misdeeds. But there are also wrong ideas that undermine U.S. long-term interests.

Let’s not mix those up.

COMMENTARY BY

Riley Walters

Riley Walters is a policy analyst in the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation.

Dean Cheng

Dean Cheng brings detailed knowledge of China’s military and space capabilities to bear as The Heritage Foundation’s research fellow on Chinese political and security affairs. Read his research.

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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.

Judicial Watch’s Campaign for Clean Elections

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With the presidential race heating up, election integrity is back in the news. Cheaters gonna cheat and there’s lots of ways to steal an election—dirty voter rolls, mail-in voting, and “ballot harvesting” are three areas ripe for abuse.

Judicial Watch is the national leader in election integrity education and litigation. The very notion of voter fraud is steeped in partisan bickering, but Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton insists electoral abuse is not “a Right-Left issue” at all. The Right may be leading the fight on election fraud, but “if you’re a Leftist Democrat trying to take on an incumbent in a corrupt jurisdiction,” Fitton says, “voter fraud can keep you from gaining traction as well.”

Judicial Watch is cleaning up dirty voter rolls across the nation. States are required by the National Voter Registration Act to remove so-called “inactive voters” from registration rolls if they do not respond to an address confirmation notice and then fail to vote in the next two general federal elections. Many “inactive voters” do this because, well, they’re dead. Or they have moved away.

Why does this matter? Leaving the names of inactive voters on registration rolls creates opportunities for fraud, such as dead people voting or double voting. Critics argue that these concerns are overblown, but sometimes it only takes a few votes to swing an election.

And dirty voter roll numbers are not small. Here’s what we have uncovered:

In North Carolina, a Judicial Watch investigation revealed nearly one million inactive voters on its rolls. That’s about 17% percent of North Carolina’s total voter registration. Earlier this month, we sued North Carolina to clean up its act.

Last week in Maryland, a federal judge ordered Montgomery County to turn over its voter rolls to Judicial Watch for analysis. Judicial Watch asked for the rolls after it determined that county registrations had exceeded 100% of its age-eligible citizenry. Read more about the Maryland case here.

We uncovered 1.6 million inactive voters on California voting rolls. In 2017, we sued California and Los Angeles County to force a cleanup. Our investigation found that Los Angeles County had more voter registrations on its rolls than actual voting age citizens in the county, and that the entire state had a voter registration rate of 101% of age-eligible citizens. Last year, California capitulated, settling our lawsuit and agreeing to remove inactive voters from its rolls.

We’ve been working to clean up Ohio voting rolls since 2012. In 2018, a Supreme Court decision upheld an Ohio voter-roll cleanup that resulted from settlement of a Judicial Watch lawsuit. The lawsuit found that the number of people listed on voter registration rolls in three Ohio counties exceeded 100% of the total voting age population.

We took on Kentucky. Our investigation found that 48 Kentucky counties—40% of the state total—had more registered voters than citizens over the age of 18. Statewide, we noted, the registration rate was higher than 100% of its age-eligible population. We sued and won: a federal court directed Kentucky to clean up its rolls. Indiana also agreed to clean up its rolls after Judicial Watch launched an investigation.

In February, we announced that our investigation in Iowa found 18,000 extra names on voter rolls. Eight Iowa counties had more voter registrations than voting age citizens. “Dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections,” Tom Fitton noted. Iowa was apoplectic, but offered no evidence that our count was incorrect.

And in a major new development, Judicial Watch announced in January that we found at least another 2.5 million extra names on voter rolls across the country. A Judicial Watch analysis of data released by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission found that there are 378 counties in the U.S. that have more voter registrations than citizens old enough to vote. The 378 counties had a combined 2.5 million extra registrants over the 100%-registered mark. We’ve notified 19 counties in five states—California, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Colorado, and Virginia—that we intended to sue unless they take steps to clean up their voter rolls. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, for more on our efforts to clean up dirty voter rolls, here’s a discussion with Tom Fitton and Judicial Watch Election Integrity Initiative Director Bob Popper.

 COLUMN BY

MICAH MORRISON

Micah Morrison is chief investigative reporter for Judicial Watch. Follow him on Twitter @micah_morrison. Tips: mmorrison@judicialwatch.org.

Investigative Bulletin is published by Judicial Watch. Reprints and media inquiries: jfarrell@judicialwatch.org.

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

$66 Mil, Federal Agents, National Guard Wasted on 2,500-Bed Camp That Averaged 30 Immigrants

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Against the advice of frontline agents, the federal government opened a temporary immigration detention facility that was barely used and cost a ghastly $66 million to operate for just five months. During that time the tent encampment situated in a rural west Texas community near the Mexican border housed an average of just 30 detainees, according to a scathing federal audit that blasts the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for the waste. Though it has a 2,500-person capacity, the facility never held more than 66 illegal aliens on any given day, investigators from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found.

Not only did Customs and Border Protection (CBP) pay a private contractor tens of millions of dollars in facility costs, it spent “about $5.3 million for food services—the preparation and delivery of meals and snacks—it did not need,” the congressional probe reveals. In an enraging example, investigators write that, during the first three months, the government paid for about 675,000 meals despite ordering only 13,428 because there were not enough detainees. The U.S. also “leveraged significant federal personnel resources” that added up to an additional $6.7 million. This includes 75 unarmed guards to monitor the camp around the clock and officers from DHS agencies such as CBP, the Border Patrol (BP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as well as soldiers from the National Guard. Investigators did the math and figured that each illegal immigrant detainee that stayed at the camp was guarded by four soldiers, three security guards and at least one CBP agent. The resources “could have been allocated to other missions,” the GAO writes in its report.

Here is a breakdown of the federal officers wasted on this seldom-used immigrant detention camp in addition to the separately paid contract security guards. Twenty-one CBP agents responsible for facility operations, such as detainee intake, welfare checks and transportation, among other things. Eleven BP agents from the El Paso sector, one of the nation’s busiest, 10 CBP officers from the Office of Field Operations and five ICE agents to help coordinate on decisions made about individuals at the facility. On top of all that, 116 Texas National Guard soldiers were deployed to the encampment for logistical support such as meal distribution and monitoring security cameras, among other duties.

The facility in the El Paso County town of Tornillo was once used to detain illegal immigrant minors and was briefly reopened for single adults around the beginning of August 2019. It finally closed at the start of 2020, but not without fleecing American taxpayers. It’s not like the government didn’t have opportunities to shut it down earlier. In fact, initially the camp was only supposed to open for three months at a cost of $47 million and could have been closed based on the numbers—less than 1% of capacity. Instead, the feds extended the deal for two months at a cost of $19 million. “Border Patrol officials in the El Paso sector told us that the sector recommended to Border Patrol headquarters that the facility be closed and resources reallocated elsewhere for other CBP missions, due to the consistently low numbers of individuals held at the facility and the personnel resource requirements to operate the facility,” the GAO report states.

But, as we regularly see in government, there is often little consensus—or cooperation—among agencies, even when they exist under the same umbrella. In this case the DHS, the gargantuan agency created after 9/11 to prevent another terrorist attack. Congressional investigators write that CBP pushed to keep the Tornillo camp open though it was hardly used. The 60,000-employee agency is charged with keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the U.S. while facilitating lawful international travel and trade and apparently it pulled more weight than the frontline BP agents. “In contrast, CBP headquarters officials told us, despite the consistently low numbers of detainees held in the Tornillo facility, they decided to continue operations for the 2,500-person facility because they were operating in an environment with considerable uncertainty related to migrant flow and wanted to prepare for the possibility of increased apprehensions,” the report says.

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

PODCAST: When Democrats Get ‘Handsy,’ Journalists Get Disinterested

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In today’s podcast we talk about the bad journalism that led to the reporting by CNN that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un was clinging to life. We also get into how CNN celebrated Chris Cuomo’s emergence from quarantine while ignoring that he’d broken it a week before when he went to check out a mansion he’s building in the Hamptons and argued with an old guy on a bicycle. Then we talk to the Daily Wire’s Ashe Schow about the difference between how the media covered the sexual assault allegations against Joe Biden and Brett Kavanaugh.

Listen to the show:

Kim Jong Un was reported on the verge of death by CNN, then by MSNBC. The only problem was there was no proof and no one was willing to go on record saying it. Rather than let a crazy little thing like nothing but rumor to go on, those networks ran with the story, retracting some of it quickly. We discuss how the rush to be first has destroyed the necessity to be right when it comes to reporting and why journalists will learn exactly nothing from their latest fumble.

CNN’s Chris Cuomo broadcast the dramatic moment he emerged from quarantine on his show the other day, but it wasn’t really the first time he broke quarantine for coronavirus. A week earlier, while allegedly in the midst of his illness, Cuomo had reportedly gotten into an argument with a man near a new mansion he’s building in the Hamptons. We talk about why CNN would allow him to pretend to be leaving his basement for the first time since his diagnosis on their airwaves.

Then we talk with Ashe Schow from the Daily Wire about how the media covered the sexual assault allegations against Joe Biden compared to how they covered them against Brett Kavanaugh. CNN, for example, has done one story about the charges by former Biden staffer Tara Reade in the 3 weeks since the story broke. In the same time period, during the Kavanaugh hearings, CNN did almost 700 related stories on the future Supreme Court Justice. We get into that and hypocrisy of the “#BelieveAllWomen” movement as well as the destruction of due process rights on college campuses.

Today’s podcast is sponsored by Life Change Tea, check out their website to gain more energy and improve your life! And don’t forget to enter promo code “Derek” at check out to receive free shipping on your order.

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The Daily Daily Caller Podcast is a daily look and mocking of the news from a conservative perspective. Hosted by Derek Hunter, it is available in audio form Monday-Friday and will have a video interview on Fridays.

RELATED ARTICLE: Democrat Who Endorsed Trump Says He’s Stepping Down After Being ‘Harassed’ By Democratic Party

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller podcast is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Bold Pro-Life Catholic Activist visits several Planned Parenthood offices to enforce Florida Governor’s Executive Order 20-72 [Video]

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Let’s see, where do I begin this one? Wow! I still cannot believe what transpired at the Planned Parenthood in Boca Raton, Florida on April 16, especially when I am the one who called Palm Beach Sheriff”s Office the day before and told them exactly what I planned on doing that morning (Thursday). They specifically told me what to do and we all agreed that it was a terrific Game Plan. So, I thought.

To really see what transpired that morning at the Boca Raton Planned Parenthood clinic, you have to watch the video:

I tried to narrate what I was going to do at this abortion clinic; took some photos and video footage of what I could and now allow you all to see for yourself just how our taxpayer dollars are working during this pandemic. Once again, I went to this PP as the President of the P.B.C. Right to Life League and as the Chairman of “Pro-Lifers 4 Trump” as Boca Raton is part of my jurisdiction and part of our beloved county. With the abortion numbers going up in PB County for the first time in my 7 years as the President of P.B.C. Right to Life League (from 5,033 in 2018 to 5,483 in 2019), I am beyond furious for that increase as every single life in our county matters and losing 450 more lives in one year does not sit well with this Christian on a Mission. ALL LIVES MATTER, folks, and many of them are being lost at this PP in Boca Raton, where their business has gone up considerably during this deadly pandemic. In essence, if this country really wanted to be honest with its citizens, they should include all babies killed in abortion clinics during this pandemic as part of their stats – only because the demonic Planned Parenthood have been targeting the most vulnerable during this pandemic (young, pregnant women like Jessica), telling them that they need to get rid of their baby because their immune system is down and they are way more vulnerable to catching the coronavirus. Watch and see how many records PP breaks during this deadly pandemic.

Thursday’s Mission: To go to the P. Parenthood in Boca; pray before I go in; and deliver a copy of Governor DeSantis’ Executive Order 20-72 to the manager on duty at this demonic dungeon as if I was “serving them”. Heck, nobody else will, so I might as well do it. Then, I was going to let the manager read the Executive Order and ask him or her why they are defying the governor’s orders and are still open for business where this Executive Order clearly states that they need to cease and desist during this pandemic,
as everybody in this country knows that “ABORTION IS A NON-ESSENTIAL, ELECTIVE PROCEDURE”. End of story.

But, that’s when things got a little funny as dealing with these deputies was very different than dealing with Sergeant Grisell Liriano, the sergeant in charge at March 21st’s Protest at this same abortion clinic. During that protest, things went smoother than smooth! And, at that Protest, we had 30 Pro-Lifers on hand and everything went very well. Our Team even saved a baby! Today, it was just me, all by myself, and I was not carrying a gun or protective gear – just a document and my rosary beads in my front pocket.

It’s a shame that I was not able to video-tape this entire encounter as I wish I could have caught some of our more intense conversation as the shorter, Latino deputy thought he was The Boss and wanted to show off in front of his peers. I did not appreciate his attitude towards me at all. Very unprofessional…And, to top things off, when I asked the two deputies who were addressing me in front of the PP to please take a minute to look at Governor DeSantis’ Executive Order 20-72, they both looked at me in a most disrespectful manner refused to take the copy from me. I then placed the Order on the grass in front of them by their feet and the little Latino deputy kicked the three sheets in the air that were stapled together, tearing the top sheet. That was as disrespectful as it gets and a slap in the face to our Governor Ron DeSantis.

Everybody should know by now how hard I have been fighting to close all abortion clinics in the state of Florida!

I have never worked this hard in my life as this was the “window of opportunity” that we Pro-Lifers were afforded by GOD and as far as I can see, we missed that golden opportunity mainly because of the State Leaders – our Elected Officials – that you and I put into office. From Governor DeSantis to Attorney General Ashley Moody to RPOF Gutless Gruters to the leaders of A.H.C.A. – not one of them has had the guts and integrity to listen to their constituents (which includes all of you), to even entertain our requests. Hell, not one of them has the guts to enforce Executive Order 20-72 – and that was signed in as law by our own governor!! Go figure!

When our own governor and our own attorney general don’t enforce their own Executive Orders and simply pass the buck to Mary Mayhew and Stefan Grow (A.H.C.A.) – then, we know that they have fooled all of us and that Re-election is their main mission! Once again, I am just stating the facts and telling the Truth and NOT attacking these State Leaders. They should be doing their jobs.

Please take 6 minutes to watch this bold video [above] that will show you exactly how our tax dollars are being spent and what happens when Governor Ron DeSantis’ Executive orders are not being enforced. There were four Palm Beach County Sheriff deputies involved in this encounter. If they would have had a bit more compassion against the killing of unborn babies and would have listened to me right from the beginning, we might have been able to get something done at this Planned Parenthood in Boca Raton. As the President of the P.B.C. Right to Life League, I was simply there to deliver Governor Ron DeSantis’ Executive Order 20-72 while protecting my most vulnerable constituents – The Unborn – only because Planned Parenthood is killing them during this deadly pandemic. You talk about deadly.

The first Planned Parenthood that I hit was the one in Boca Raton, where his team of “Pro-Lifers 4 Trump” held a Protest on March 21st and saved a Precious Baby. Thanks be to God…Thanks be to Jessica. I’d rather die from the Coronavirus from hugging a 19-year old black girl who is about to kill her baby than stay home playing it safe and watching the news telling us how we’re going die.

Protect the unborn at all costs and at all times and God will reward you with a “precious save!” We met at the Planned Parenthood in Boca Raton on March 21st, 2020. I spoke to Jessica in the parking lot, the “Visiting Angels” prayed over her and she decided to keep her baby. She is now living in Tallahassee, is going back to school and is going to church every Sunday.

I sent Jessica this video of me at Planned Parenthood yesterday evening via text message and here is how she responded:

Yessss Willy! I finish watch the video and I must say you’re very brave and I’m proud of you. Because you was there by yourself knew your right stand up for what’s right in great manners. If law enforcement could at least more open minded to read the papers they could prevent that young lady from entering instead help The PP business remain open. Amen! ❤️ the time will come for all abortion clinics to be shut down for good.

Protect the unborn at all costs and at all times and God will reward you with a “precious save!”

RELATED VIDEO: Bold Christian on a Mission visits another Planned Parenthood!

© All rights reserved.

PODCAST: Democrats Will Leverage Pandemic to Delegitimize a Trump 2020 Win!

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GUESTS AND TOPICS:

TOM BASILE

Tom Basile is an Author, columnist, speaker and commentator, Tom Basile has been in the middle of the action on the biggest stories and hottest issues of the two last decades. His work in the worlds of politics, government, media and business have made him a powerful voice in our national conversation and a sought-after lecturer and contributor in the media. Tom is a former Bush Administration official, NYS Republican Party Executive Director and hosted ‘Sunday in America’ on SiriusXM Radio. His new book Let It Sink In: The Decade of Obama and Trump, provides a retrospective on the 2010s to help readers prepare to defend American freedom in the 2020s.

TOPIC: Dems Will Leverage Pandemic to Delegitimize a Trump Win!

MARK WALTERS

Mark Walters is a national board member of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and a broadcast media spokesman for the Second Amendment Foundation. Recipient of the 2015 Gun Rights Defender of the Year Award, Mark Walters is a weekly national columnist for Ammoland, and author of three books. Mark is the host of two nationally syndicated talk radio programs, Armed American Radio, and Armed American Radio’s Daily Defense heard on hundreds of radio stations across the country and seen on the AUN-TV Network!

TOPIC: Gun Group Sues Georgia County!

Harvard Smears Homeschooling Parents and Their Children

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In what has to be one of the most outrageous, misguided—frankly, garbage—pieces of elitist propaganda this year, Harvard Magazine and Harvard Law School have teamed up to attack homeschooling, of all things, in a clearly coordinated one-two punch.

Both attacks are baseless, stereotypical, and fundamentally flawed because they are rooted in the dangerous belief that the state has more authority over a mother’s child than she does.

In the May issue of Harvard Magazine is a piece by Erin O’Donnell headlined “The Risks of Homeschooling.” Sure, on its face, that sounds benign enough. I homeschooled my four children for six years, and I’d grant there are a few risks to that education model, just as there are to public and private schools.

Turns out, the article doesn’t weigh pros and cons to homeschooling, which now is being tried by countless Americans as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, the article lacks any nuance whatsoever and instead acts as a vehicle for a biased onslaught of secular statism against parental rights.

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 >>

O’Donnell launches her hit piece on homeschooling with the premise that children have rights equal to or greater than their parents, and the state actually has more rights than the homeschooled child’s parents do. She begins by quoting Elizabeth Bartholet, an authoritarian, radical professor of public interest law who says she “recommends a presumptive ban” on homeschooling.

Bartholet, also faculty director of  Harvard Law School’s Child Advocacy Program, says that “homeschooling violates children’s right to a meaningful education and their right to be protected from potential child abuse,” and that parents have “authoritarian control over their children.”

Bartholet observes, wrongly, that since there are so few regulations, parents may not teach their children anything, or in fact may be abusive.

Bartholet was one of several professors who organized an anti-homeschooling conference at Harvard Law School scheduled to take place in June. A description of the conference, which is invitation-only, says: “The focus will be on problems of educational deprivation and child maltreatment that too often occur under the guise of homeschooling.”

One solution offered on the conference site for the problems created by homeschooling is, again, simply to ban it altogether.

The problems with this Harvard Magazine piece and the scheduled conference at Harvard Law School are multifaceted.

O’Donnell’s article peddles stereotypes about parents using homeschooling as a guise for abuse, which is incredibly rare, and paints homeschool parents as incompetent and stupid, which is also incredibly flawed. Statistics show parents who homeschool actually tend to be more educated and wealthier than parents who don’t.

The magazine cover is my favorite part: The illustration shows a boy imprisoned in a “house” made of books as his public and private school friends frolic happily outside. The books are, of course, titled Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and—my personal favorite—the Bible.

Not only did the fantastic illustrators at Harvard Magazine spell “arithmetic” wrong (as “artithmetic”) and later correct it, but the insinuations are obvious: Homeschooled children are imprisoned by religious zealots who educate their kids at home because they fear the outside world, with all its secularization and happy children.

Again, few things could be further from the truth. Statistics show parents who homeschool actually do it so they can provide a more academically rigorous education than the one their kids would receive elsewhere. They don’t do it solely for religious reasons.

And as far as play and exercise: My 13-year-old, who was homeschooled until sixth grade, looked at it the illustration and laughed. He misses the days when he could get school done in four or five hours and play outside the rest of the day.

O’Donnell’s article also insinuates children who are homeschooled graduate dumber, which, again, statistics refute. Homeschooled kids end up with higher grade point averages, score higher on standardized tests, and get accepted into top schools—like Harvard.

In fact, parents homeschool for precisely the reason the article presents: They want to keep their children from progressive indoctrination that’s as biased as it is flawed.

Beyond all of this nonsense is the article’s single largest flaw, which is so obvious it’s hard to believe the thesis passed the inspection of a decent editor: These Harvard elitists don’t bother to hide their disdain for traditional family, parental rights, or the topic of homeschool education, which has increased in popularity in the United States over the past decade.

Despite this increase, by the way, fewer than 5% of children are homeschooled in the United States. From reading this article, though, you’d think homeschooling was the predominant model of education because it’s painted as such a pervasive threat.

Children do not belong to the state, at least not in America. Parents have the right, an inherent gift from God, to care for their little people until they are old enough to care for themselves.

It is the parents’ responsibility, nay, privilege, to teach their children everything from how to use the bathroom to how to do long division to how to process emotions and how to drive a car.

Parents can and should do everything they can to instill their values and pass down their beliefs, whether they choose to send their kids to school, educate them at home, or a mix depending on the year and season of life.

Typically, I’m not surprised by leftist propaganda. But when it comes to Harvard University, I am surprised and disappointed. Harvard should know better. After all, the university accepts homeschool students and expects them to thrive.

It’s humanist garbage to peddle an article and a conference that presume children are the property of the state and that homeschooling is dangerous and must be banned. And the garbage is where this belongs.

COMMENTARY BY

Nicole Russell

Nicole Russell is a contributor to The Daily Signal. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, National Review, Politico, The Washington Times, The American Spectator, and Parents Magazine. Twitter: .

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!

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PODCAST: State, Local Leaders Should Restart Economies ‘as Soon as Possible,’ J.C. Watts Says

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Rep. J.C. Watts, a former Republican congressman from Oklahoma and a member of The Heritage Foundation’s National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, joins The Daily Signal Podcast to discuss how the nation can begin to reopen safely amid the coronavirus, why COVID-19 may be affecting the African-American community more than other demographic groups, and the news channel he founded, BNC. Read the lightly edited transcript below or listen to the podcast:

We also cover these stories:

  • Attorney General Bill Barr said that governors of some states are violating Americans’ rights by policies they have put in place due to the coronavirus pandemic.
  • Governors across the South are beginning to reopen their state economies and lift coronavirus restrictions.
  • President Donald Trump says he will work to save oil companies as oil prices continue to collapse.

The Daily Signal Podcast is available on Ricochet, Apple Podcasts, Pippa, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at letters@dailysignal.com. Enjoy the show!

Virginia Allen: I’m joined by J.C. Watts, former congressman of Oklahoma, founder and Chairman of J.C. Watts Companies, and a member of The Heritage Foundation’s National Coronavirus Recovery Commission. Representative Watts, thank you so much for being here today.

Rep. J.C. Watts: Virginia, thank you for having me on. Looking forward to sharing and visiting with you.

Allen: Yeah, absolutely. Well, you are one of 17 members on Heritage’s National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, and you all have just laid out a five-phase plan for how America can recover economically from COVID-19, and ultimately save both lives and livelihoods.

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 >>

Can you just tell us a little bit about the commission and your role?

Watts: Well, Virginia, and I think you’ve summed it up by saying the commission was established to save lives and livelihoods. I think that statement in and of itself kind of wraps up and tells why Kay James, the president of The Heritage Foundation, thought it was important to do.

People who have lost a loved one, a mother, or father, or a son, or a daughter, or a relative, a close friend due to COVID-19, I understand that they would think that opening up the economy in the next month or two months or three months, I would totally understand if they feel like it’s too soon.

However, the flip side of the coin, a small-business owner who is on the brink of bankruptcy and even some large-business owners who are on the brink of a bankruptcy, but someone who’s put their blood, sweat, and tears, and the children’s education fund into starting a business or sustaining a business, boy, 30 days of downtime, many of them it leaves them one foot in bankruptcy and one foot out.

They probably think you can’t open the economy up soon enough. And so again, when the commission said we want to save lives and livelihoods, we tried to take both of those perspectives into consideration as we made recommendations or will be making recommendations to the administration, to members of Congress, to local and state governments that we didn’t take one or the other into consideration, we took both lives and livelihoods into consideration.

Allen: Yeah. Well, and on Monday you all put out … a much more, even more detailed plan that was 47 detailed steps for how we can achieve the first two phases of that five-phase plan. What are some of the critical aspects or steps in that list of recommendations?

Watts: Well, I think one of the things is that you start by saying governors and local leaders should take the lead in restarting the economy, and should do so as soon as possible. The federal government, Congress, the administration should aid in the recovery by considering flexibility in regulatory leads, funding, which they’ve done, providing equipment and providing information. But, we think it’s critically important that governors and local leaders, that they take charge.

I think we made the recommendation in saying that the social distancing, that should be relaxed, in some cases. Reopening schools and businesses, returning hospitals to normal should be linked to data about where the disease is prevalent. Counties that have low incident rates should open in a way that would be consistent with [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] plans.

And a lot of communities, and I’m from rural Oklahoma, grew up in rural Oklahoma, rural America, a lot of rural communities, they don’t have access to CDC plans, but you can work with your county and your state health officials who tune in to those CDC recommendations and pay attention to what the surgeon general is saying and work with them to make sure that you have a plan in place that would be protective of the most vulnerable, of the least of these.

And so, I think those things, making sure if we start with allowing the governors and local leaders to take the lead in restarting the economy, hopefully, they will do it as soon as possible, but also be mindful of doing it not just expeditiously, but doing that safely. And that’s where the CDC, I think, comes into play. … Johns Hopkins, they’d been right in the middle of this and providing data, but use the federal government to support state and local leaders. And I do think that it could be done in a way that’s healthy, and that’s safe, and that would consider lives and livelihoods, which is how you opened our discussion today.

Allen: Well, you bring such a unique perspective, really, to this conversation, because you do have this background in government, but you also run your own consulting business called J.C. Watts Companies, and you work with large and small businesses to do development and communications and public affairs strategies, and kind of implement those best practices.

So, as someone that does have that background, both in government and in the business world, what are your thoughts on to what extent the government really just kind of needs to get out of the way right now and let individuals and private businesses and nonprofits navigate the situation on their own, versus the state and federal government stepping in to offer assistance?

Watts: Well, I think the government can play a role, and I think the government should play a role. And I think you have to understand in whatever role the government chooses to play, you have to understand the value of teamwork. And it’s not about the federal government, it’s not about the president, it’s not about a member of Congress, it’s not about a governor, it’s not about a mayor. It’s about all of us working together for the common good. And I think government can play a role, but they need to understand what their role should be.

You and I have already discussed or I mentioned in … my opening comments that the federal government should allow governors and local leaders to take the lead.

And the federal government and Congress should, the administration should aid in the flexibility … of regulatory relief. They can be helpful there.

They can play a role in funding, and funding equipment, and providing information. We heard from a couple of, we had some testimony, we had a meeting yesterday, Virginia, and we heard from some people that have pretty good pulse of the economy.

We heard from Steve Forbes, we heard from Art Laffer, and they made suggestions. And they made suggestions. We heard from the National Association of Manufacturers, and we heard from a lady that was with Merck. These people who are in the private sector, who operate in the private sector, they gave recommendations, they gave comments and thoughts that I thought were pretty good.

One of them was to suspend the payroll tax, reducing capital gains. I mean, you think, well, what capital gains … why make taxes an argument in times like these? Well, you’ve got people out there that, they’re invested in the stock market, and if they liquidate stock right now, the stocks might be down, but if they liquidate those stocks, you’ve got to worry about a capital-gains tax.

Well, eliminating the capital-gains tax in a time like this would allow people to keep more of their money to do what they need to do with it. And so there’s a lot of different things that … and in terms of trying to flatten the curve … underneath that curve there’s fear, there’s unemployment, there’s the small-business failures, there’s deaths.

So, you’ve got to figure out ways, how can we not just get money or get money into the hands of people by sending them a stimulus check, but there’s resources that people have available to them now that eliminating the capital gains [tax] or reducing the capital gains, whatever the case might be, kind of letting up or softening some of the regulatory burdens and trying to get vaccines into the marketplace.

And I just think there’s ways we can do that. And we’ve heard suggestions of ways that could be executed, ways that could be done that it would be helpful and getting resources into the hands of the people that really need it. So, therefore, again, I make the argument that government can play a role, but government needs to be a part of the team, not the team.

Allen: Well, and as you said, some people are … they’re getting really antsy, and they want to get back to work. They need that money. They rely on the income of their small business or working at a restaurant. And we have seen in areas across the country and even in your home state of Oklahoma, that there have been organized kind of rallies or protests in Oklahoma.

There’s one organized groups called “OK Back 2 Work,” which they’d been organizing rallies in cars. So, keeping that safe distance with everyone kind of going along in their cars, but they are really asking for the state of Oklahoma to reopen on May 1st. What are your views of these kind of rallies and protests, and how should state leaders respond to these calls to reopen businesses?

Watts: Well, Virginia, the wonderful thing about living in the United States of America, we can have rallies, and we can have protests, and people can even, as I learned when I was a member of Congress, people can come in front of my office, and they can protest a decision that I’ve made or both that I’ve made, or something that I said, or something that I did, and they don’t get shot, they don’t get limbs cut off, or they don’t get thrown in a furnace, a fiery furnace to burn.

I mean that’s what America’s all about and … I am a small-business owner. I know how that is. And right now, I’ve got one business, I just launched an African-American news channel on February 10th. So a month and a half after launch, we’re having to deal with the coronavirus. I wished the virus, if it was going to show up, my preference would have been that, you show up a year and a half after we launch, not a month and a half after we launch, but it is what it is.

And in my business, actually, I don’t get any help. I’ve got 60-plus employees, and I don’t get any help through the CARES Act, the small-business loans, or the [Paycheck] Protection Act. I don’t get any help there. So, I understand how small businesses understand. Again, I think we can have rallies, and we can protest, and I think we can get the economy going again and also look out for the most vulnerable and not be insensitive to those who have lost loved ones who, I said at the outset, those who’ve lost loved ones, who’s lost a husband or wife or spouse or a child, a close friend. I totally understand, they think that opening up by May 1st, the first week of May, that, that would be too soon.

I totally understand that, but I totally understand that small-business owner—because I am a small-business owner—that says, “Hey, our livelihoods are on the line,” and … I think we can do this in a way that takes both of those perspectives into consideration … . [W]e need to start thinking of ways that we can open up the economy because we at the end of the day, we’ve already seen the serious impact on our future economic-, social-, and foreign-policy challenges.

And the consequences could get even worse soon, due to the poverty problems. People having rent and mortgage payments, utility bills, many businesses are seasonal, and they create their revenue stream that will last them, that they rely on lasting them all year. Their revenue stream is created from about the first to the middle of March until about the middle of September. So, they create a revenue stream in five or six months that has to last them for 12 months.

So we need the government to plan its role to do what they can in order to get us back into a rhythm, into our economy as soon as possible. And again, I continue to highlight that we can, I think we can save lives and be considerate of people’s livelihoods. And again, the recommendations that we’ve made kind of speaks to both of those … both sides of that equation.

Allen: Well, I’m really glad that you brought up your news channel, because my goodness, you’re so right, what a wild time to found a news channel, a Black News Channel, or BNC, is the name of it. What inspired you to start that channel, and how have you all navigated covering COVID-19?

Watts: Virginia, for 10 years we—probably longer than that—about 14, 15 years, we’ve been trying to get this network off the ground, and one of the arguments that I made, that I was making, and that I created is saying that the African-American community is … we create content that is culturally specific to the African-American community. And one of the things I talk about, I would talk about health and wellness.

And it’s just a reality. It’s not politics, it’s not liberal or conservative. It’s not Republican or Democrat, it’s just a reality that in growing up, I ate different foods than you ate. We might’ve eaten some of the same things, but culturally, your culture, but for instance, Thanksgiving dinner by and large, most people in the white community eat pumpkin pie for dessert, by and large, Thanksgiving dinner, most people in the black community eat sweet potato pie.

Now, that doesn’t mean that I can’t eat pumpkin pie, that you can’t eat sweet potato pie, but culturally, there is a cultural difference, in terms of our wellness and diseases. There’s things that the white community or the Native American community, the Asian community, that they have to deal with or the Hispanic community, that the black community doesn’t. And vice versa, with any one of those cultures.

Well, one of the things that I’m pretty active with, sickle cell [anemia] here in the state of Oklahoma, and we do things to create awareness for sickle cell. Sickle cell is a disease that most people, about 95% to 97% of the people that have sickle cell, they’re black, they’re African-American.

And so, as I was talking about this network over the last 12, 14 years, I was saying, we will be talking about things that other networks don’t talk about in wellness. Sickle cell, diabetes, culturally, how you deal with diabetes. All communities have diabetes, and I believe a lot of it is, you can control, 80% of diabetics can control their diabetes through diet and exercise, what you eat, and how active you are.

And so, giving those statistics and that data from an African-American perspective is what our network was designed to do with sickle cell, I mean, with coronavirus, COVID-19. We’ve got a doctor [Corey Hebert] that has a show … called “Doctor for the People.” He was just asked about 10 days or so ago to lead the effort in Louisiana. He was asked by the governor to lead the effort, to the task force concerning African-Americans and COVID-19.

And so, just having a source of information somewhere on a dial with 277 channels, it seems like, somewhere the African-American community to go get and education and information that is culturally specific to them, that’s important, I think.

Women have different health challenges than men. I think it makes sense to have somewhere that women can go and get information concerning health and the same thing with men.

So, hopefully, that gives you a little bit of flavor on why the channel is relevant. And over the last six weeks, the White House has asked us to get involved with the ad council, and the administration created a task force to do PSAs. They reached out to us and said, “Hey, you guys are talking to a lot of people in the black community. We want them to know and be informed about how to be safe during times like these.”

So, we made it an issue throughout our platforms, “Ladies First,” our 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. news hour, our 7 at night to 10 at night, Kelly Wright has a show on our network. Kelly, he’s played an integral role in interviewing the surgeon general, different people in the administration, talking about coronavirus, and African-American communities.

So, yeah, we’ve been pretty active, and we’ve been on the front line and trying to inform our audience that this is real, and these are the ways that you protect yourself and protect your family.

Allen:  And we have seen, percentage-wise, that the black community has been more affected by COVID-19 than other groups in the United States, and we don’t really know why. Do you have any thoughts on what factors could be contributing to this and if the country or states should really be taking measures to help?

Watts: … One of recommendations or suggestions that I made on the [National Coronavirus Recovery Commission] was that I don’t think that we will ever get out of the doldrums of a sick health care system until we make health a part of that.

And one of the things that I think is important, I think any time we find ourselves in a crisis, or like COVID-19, or we find ourselves in a crisis in our personal lives, in our business, in our churches. It doesn’t matter what our association is. We’re going to have crisis. And if you’ve not had a crisis in your personal life, just keep living, as my dad used to say, just keep living. You’ll get there.

I have a little different perspective about crisis. I don’t think crises always comes to tell us what we are. They come to tell us what we are not, so that we know what we need to do to become what we want to be. And that’s a principle in athletics. I learned a whole lot more in my athletic career when I lost the game than when I won a game, because when you lose a game, you’re forced to take a step back, take a deep breath and say, “OK, how do I correct this to where we’ll do it better?” and we put ourselves in a better chance to win.

Well, I think the revelation from this crisis is that we do have a health care system that that is broken, that we can do better. I think we do have, we’ve seen from this crisis that we’ve gotten away from the little things. Wash your hands, cover your cough, cover your sneeze. Virginia, those are things that we learned to do in kindergarten.

Allen: Yeah.

Watts: So, let’s go back to the basics. So, I remember when I was in grade school, I had a health class when I was the third or fourth grade. And so, I said all that to say, we will never solve our health care issues until we make health a part of that equation.

And I don’t care if it’s the black community, white community, red, yellow, or brown community, if it’s man or woman, boy or girl, what we eat, what we put on our body, the fact that we don’t exercise or we don’t exercise enough, we don’t move enough, all of those things I suspect we could look to, to say, or we should be looking to, to say “How much of our lack of exercise, how much of our not moving around, being more sedated, watching more TV, being on Facebook, being on the internet, how much of that is contributing to the weakening of our immune system?” I think that’s a fair question.

So, maybe what we’re dealing with here will make us more conscious, and [the late former Rep.] Jack Kemp, I loved talking to Jack, and Jack was way ahead of most Republicans when it came to opportunity, and creating opportunity for everybody, and targeting underserved communities, or poor neighborhoods for growth and opportunity. And I remember Jack used to say, “We pay people in America to not be healthy.” We say, “Grow old, and grow older and unhealthy, and when you get to 65, we’ll pay for you to … have heart surgeries, and cover all your costs for your stroke, and your diabetes and everything else.”

So, if we, if we take care of people for being unhealthy, why wouldn’t we incentivize people to be healthy? And Jack used to say, I would have conversations with him to say, why not give people a $500 a year, or $300 a year, a $700 a year, whatever the figure was, if you keep your cholesterol under a certain number, if you … watch your PSA numbers or, I mean, I’m just throwing some things out, but we put a man on the moon, so surely, we can design some type of initiative that the federal government or the state governments could play a role to say, “Let’s do some things to encourage people to be healthy,” as opposed to encouraging them to not be healthy.

Allen: Well, I want to end on a little bit of a lighter question. As someone who played football and played football professionally, what do you think we have on the horizon this fall? Are we going to see an NFL and college football season? What are your thoughts on that?

Watts: Well, I think there’s a serious discussion underway now, that I think we could possibly be into … or we could possibly have an infrastructure or a process in place to resume football season and basketball season. Football season starts in, guess they report to camp in July, early July, start preseason games toward the end of July, 1st of August, and then the regular season starts toward the end of August, or that’s some modicum of their schedule, but I think the regular season usually starts about the end of August.

Hopefully, we would have assembled a plan to get us back into a rhythm. If not, Virginia, let me tell you, if we’ve not done it by then, it’s going to be really, really ugly, and none of us are going to like it.

But I think we will, and even when we do, normal isn’t going to be, and my guess, and this is just my personal opinion, normal isn’t going to be 85,000 people at Memorial Stadium at the University of Oklahoma on a Saturday afternoon for Saturday afternoon football game. And I don’t care if the University of Oklahoma, they’re the No. 1 team in the country, we’re playing the No. 2 team in the country. That’s not going to be normal.

We may get back to that, but I think people are going to ease their way back into stadiums and crowds, and quite frankly, I would encourage them to do that.

But I think the decisions that we make today and why the commission, why The Heritage Foundation led by Kay James, why they put this commission together, was to say, “We can’t wait until August to start thinking about this. We’ve got to start doing things today that will save lives and people’s livelihoods, to get us back into a rhythm in our economy, in our social lives.”

Put ourselves in a rhythm and a model, a process, if you will, that will get us back to normal as quickly as possible. Rubber bands, I understand once a rubber band is stretched, it never goes back to its original form, I’m not so sure we will. We’re not going to get back to our original form overnight in the stretching that we’re experiencing here. But I still think we live in a great nation, and there’s a reason that whether we’re the country that created the light bulb and the streetlights and the internet and the GPS system. We have more Nobel Prize winners than anybody in the world.

And so, the same country that gave us those things is the same country that’ll navigate through this if we all understand we have a role to play. And that the government can play a role, and maybe I’m different than most on my side of the aisle, but I think the government can play a role; that they understand they are a part of the team, they are not the team.

And it’s state, local, federal government, county governments, playing a role. Civil society has a role to play, corporate America has a role to play. The faith community has a role to play. And if we all will chip in for the good of the order, and not concern ourselves with who gets the credit, but just going out there and blocking and tackling and doing our part, Virginia, again, every storm runs out of rain, and this one will as well.

And hopefully we can get us back, get back as close to normal as possible, but no one knows what the normal is going to be after we get in that rhythm that I mentioned.

Allen: Representative Watts, we just so appreciate your time today and all the work that you’re doing on the commission. Thank you so much for being here.

Watts: Well, I’m delighted to be with you, and thank you for having me on.

PODCAST BY

Virginia Allen

Virginia Allen is a news producer for The Daily Signal. She is the co-host of The Daily Signal Podcast and Problematic Women. Send an email to Virginia. Twitter: @Virginia_Allen5.

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Lives and Livelihoods

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Helen Freeh: Sooner or later we must restart American commerce, and Catholic leaders need to avoid casting the decision to do so as a choice between God and mammon.

Michael Pakaluk recently argued on this site that the dichotomy between life and money is false.  The Holy Father in his Easter Monday homily, however, set up just that conflict, stating, “in finding solutions to this pandemic, the choice will be between life, the resurrection of the people, and the god of money.” Pope Francis developed this view further along the same line, “If you choose money, you choose the way of hunger, slavery, wars, arms factories, uneducated children. . . . help us to choose the good of the people, without ever falling into the tomb of mammon.”

This is troubling talk even if it is meant sincerely to be pastoral guidance. But Pope Francis’s good intentions here may require further reflection.

I am not an economist or a moral theologian. So, I speak now from Catholic common sense in responding to this.  Certainly, we live in a materialistic culture in which we witness unbridled greed and lust for money, which comes at great cost to authentic human life.  It is right and proper to call people from the false pursuit of happiness through money to the truth of our existence as sons and daughters of God, recipients and caretakers of our Father’s bounty.

To establish, as a general rule, a conflict between the making of money and the respect for life, however, is both false and dangerous.  Extremes exist and sinful pursuits of money are easily found.  But God has established it as part of our human condition that work, even work undertaken for the sake of making money and providing for one’s own needs and those of others, is intimately connected with life and happiness.

Even a cursory knowledge of Catholic teaching on the dignity of work shows that while the economy must serve human life, it also allows human life to be dignified.  As Pope Francis himself stated in Laudato Si, “Work is a necessity, part of the meaning of life on this earth, a path to growth, human development and personal fulfillment. Helping the poor financially must always be a provisional solution in the face of pressing needs. The broader objective should always be to allow them a dignified life through work.”

To suggest, then, that governments, in considering whether and when to re-open economies, are choosing between life and money, as if they are necessarily opposed to each other, severs the connection between the two – a connection that is not by nature evil. It may be good or bad depending on whether the good of human life remains the central focus of the economic endeavor.

The decision is extremely complicated: our government leaders must weigh the harm that is being done and will be done based on their decisions.  Restarting the economy has consequences for human life – so, too, does not restarting the economy.  The choice does not reduce simply to financial matters.

Catholic moral teaching has a term called the “principle of double effect,” which may help us in our current thinking on the coronavirus and our government leaders’ decisions.  The principle states that in a difficult decision, if two effects may result, one bad and one good, the decision is morally permissible if four conditions are met:

  1. the act itself must be morally good or neutral;
  2. the harmful side effect is not the primary aim of the action to bring about good;
  3. the primary good effect must directly come from the act; and
  4. there must be a sufficiently serious reason for permitting the evil that also will result.

Our government suspended most of our civil and religious liberties for the good of preserving life through slowing the spread of a highly infectious coronavirus.  Yet now our leaders must make the decision of when to allow people to leave their homes, to travel, to pray together in our respective houses of worship, and to work.

Currently, we are intentionally doing harm to all out of a fear that death may come to some.  In restarting the economy, more lives may well be at risk from coronavirus and more people may die from this one disease.  And yet, the human cost will also be great in continuing to suppress our economic life.

Consider for example the effects of loss of livelihood on individuals and families; increased child and spousal abuse; increased rates of suicide and substance abuse; lack of treatment and facilities for mental health; postponement of surgeries for cancer, heart disease, joint replacements, et. al.

The list is long and people who study such problems estimate that there are thousands of deaths per year for every 1 percent increase in the unemployment rate. That rate has grown roughly 15 percent since the shutdown – which gives us a rough sense of what it would mean not to begin opening up commerce again.

So the magnitude of this decision is very great and ought not be reduced to a simplistic formula of life versus money.  The political decision is difficult enough and our Catholic leadership, among other voices, exacerbates the problem by making it an either/or moral dynamic.

Far from taking the lead in expressing clearly the Church’s long understanding of the central importance of economic life, the Catholic hierarchy has not even responded very forcefully to the state-designated role of religious worship as non-essential. One hopes the American bishops will not embarrass themselves and the faithful further by adopting this false dichotomy between life and livelihood.

Helen Freeh

Dr. Helen Freeh received her B.A. and M. A. from the University of Dallas and her Ph.D. from Baylor University. She has taught at Hillsdale College, where she met her husband, John. She is now in temporary early retirement, raising and homeschooling their children in Lincoln, Nebraska.

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2020 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

Holocaust Devotion

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I was asked to write this piece for the annual remembrance of the Holocaust, where more than six million people of the Jewish faith were murdered during World War Two by the Nazi Germany leadership and its military.

This presents a challenge for this chaplain for a couple of reasons. First, I am a Christian, and although I am quite fond of the Jewish roots of Christianity, I am not Jewish. I have friends and family that are Jewish, I have been to synagogue services a few times, and I have been acquainted with a few Rabbi’s over the years; but again, I am not Jewish. This means that the best I can do is to be academically honest and spiritually sound to the best of my abilities in this endeavor.

Second, prior to becoming a chaplain, I spent the majority of my adult life as a member of the military and law enforcement communities; having retired from each of those vocations. My traditional “baby boomer” upbringing, compounded by my career choices, mean that I have the strong belief in equal protection and equal responsibilities under the law.

The atrocities committed during the Holocaust are almost unfathomable to me. Almost, because I have seen what human beings are capable of doing to each other up close and personal; and I have studied my history, and I know these events happened as I have talked to survivors of that time. This is why it is so important that we remember such things. So they never happen again.

Having said all that, let me share some of the history of the remembrance’s origins.

“Establishment of the Holiday (1) – The full name of the day commemorating the victims of the Holocaust is “Yom HaShoah Ve-Hagevurah”— in Hebrew literally translated as the “Day of (remembrance of) the Holocaust and the Heroism.”

It is marked on the 27th day in the month of Nisan — a week after the end of the Passover holiday and a week before Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day for Israel’s fallen soldiers). It marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

The date was selected in a resolution passed by Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset, on April 12, 1951. Although the date was established by the Israeli government, it has become a day commemorated by Jewish communities and individuals worldwide.

The day’s official name – Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day – was made formal in a law enacted by the Knesset on August 19, 1953; on March 4, 1959, the Knesset passed another law which determined that tribute to victims of the Holocaust and ghetto uprisings be paid in public observances.” – courtesy of the Jewish Virtual Library.

The encyclopedias Brittanica and Wikipedia also go into some depth about the related observances (one is called Purim – which remembers a similar situation of the Jewish people from the 5th Century B.C.).

What observances should we be doing on this day?

According to the Jewish Virtual Library article cited above, each congregation essentially creates their own remembrance service. Some gather and sing music, others light candles, some read the names of family or congregation members lost; and in years past, some services have read through the entire list of six million plus names.

For 2020, and with a worldwide health challenge at hand, remembrance services in Israel have become creative. According to the English speaking news outlets HAARETZ (4) and the Jerusalem Post (5), public gatherings are still not allowed in Israel because of the COVID-19 situation; so, the people of Israel have created a movement to go out on their porches one evening and light a candle and sing all at the same time, as well as joining together for a virtual “March of the Living”.

So, what does this mean going forward twenty years into the 21st century, and more than seventy-five years since the end of the second world war?

With some insight from another person of faith, this caused me to re-examine Isaiah chapters 55 and 60; which in short state that God’s got this, get back up and to quit feeling sorry for ourselves.

It means that we should not forget our history, less we repeat it; and no, I am not the first person to have said something to that effect. As best as I can research, that citation can best be attributed to one of two people. Either back to Sir Edmund Burke (8), an Irish statesmen and philosopher, who is also credited with the phrase “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”; or to Spanish philosopher George Santayana.

However, from a faith perspective, it means we should not lose hope. Even when it appears that the ghosts of the past are lurking in the shadows of the present. In the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible (what Christians refer to as the Old Testament), there is peace to be found in Psalm 23, and there are blessings in both Psalm 91, and in Numbers 6:22-27.

Please do not fret too much. Should we as a society pay attention to current events?

Absolutely. Should we panic? No! Remember that in the Tanakh alone, the phrase “fear not” appears at least forty times. If God put something in there that many times, maybe we should pay attention to it.

Remember, there is also the promise of hope and the promise God’s love in the following of His plan for our lives found in Ecclesiastes 4, Isaiah 40, and Jeremiah 29. Never forget that.

In closing, this is my prayer for each of you reading:

Almighty God, may You bring healing, peace and comfort to all of those reading this and to their loved ones as well, and all those affected by this worldwide health crisis. May
You watch out over those that are deemed essential and placing themselves in harms way to facilitate our response and recovery. Bring them safely back to their families. Please
watch out over our public officials, both elected and appointed. Give them the courage, wisdom, patience and love to complete their assignments both honorably and according
to Your will. We thank You for our blessings, and we ask that You forgive all of our mistakes; in Your precious name we pray. Amen.

Remember, God loves you. All you have to do, is love Him back.

© All rights reserved.

The Birth Of An American Freedom Movement

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We may be witnessing the birth of a movement that could be the most important result of the COVID-19 nightmare: the anti-lockdown protests sweeping the country.

Per our usual agreement, the media is totally getting it wrong. It’s not about being able to go to restaurants or movies or even only about going back to work. It’s certainly not about a death cult or not taking the virus seriously.

The protests are, at core, about people who want their rights back — rights that have been snatched in just a few weeks time. It’s driven by people who understand the threat of tyrannical government, and that threat is very, very real. It’s happening right in front of our eyes.

Probably the best face of Orwell’s dystopian 1984 is New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. Although the Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is a close second. Mayor de Blasio is calling on residents to report their neighbors to law enforcement for violations of social distancing protocols. And it’s made super easy. Yay! How do you narc out your neighbors who don’t obey government edicts? “It’s simple: just snap a photo and text it to 311-692.” de Blasio said. “We will make sure that enforcement comes right away.”

Wow, wow, wow. Please read 1984. This is *exactly* what Big Brother teaches neighbors and children to do. Everyone is a snitch. People live in terror. In 1984, they disappear if they don’t follow the government line. We’re not there yet. But this is an astonishing step in the Big Brother direction.

Here’s where we are in different places in the country. Governments dumping tons of sand into the skate parks to keep them from being used. Cops patrolling streets with bullhorns to warn people to stay away from each other. Government threatening to turn off the power to your business if you do not close like you’re told. New “laws” that you may not drive from your house, in your car, to another property you own, even if you never leave your car. You may not go to drive-in church services, again even if you never leave your car. You may not go fishing. You may not assemble together in any way. You will be forcefully pulled off a bus without a face mask. Anti-quarantine protests being organized through Facebook in California, New Jersey, and Nebraska, are being removed from the platform on the orders of governments because they violate stay-at-home orders.

These are constitutional affronts of a level not seen since FDR rounded up Japanese-Americans and placed them in internment camps during WWII. Too many Americans have become complacent in our comforts about ceding individual rights to government. Save us! they demand. Take whatever rights you need! Of course if we will not fight for our freedoms, we won’t have them and we won’t deserve them.

So it is heartening to see the respectful, often social-distancing movement of protests across the country, in Seattle, San Diego, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina. These protesters are peaceful and organic, popping up big and small. And while they are demanding the economy be opened back up, they are also demanding that their rights be returned, First Amendment rights such as freedom of religion and freedom of assembly.

The Tea Party was launched over the financial recklessness of the federal government in responses to the financial crisis of 2008. It was at core a fiscal movement, though it broadened some. The fiscal recklessness today is many times larger. But worse are the overall trampling of rights — which is what makes this potential movement so important.

The truth is that a ton of voluntary social distancing and closing was happening long before jackboots like de Blasio decided to crush our rights. Much of the government’s totalitarian response has been unnecessary. And as the virus crests and starts declining, the heavy-handedness is getting worse in areas — such as New York City.

Americans largely don’t need to be told what to do, despite years of schools and colleges teaching us what to think instead of how to think. Common sense still pervades the land. But we need the spine to stand up to an overbearing government.

The anti-lockdown protests are doing just that.

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

Judge Blocks Kansas From Limiting Attendance at Religious Services

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A federal judge blocked Kansas from limiting attendance at religious services during the coronavirus pandemic Saturday.

Wichita U.S. District Judge John Broomes blocked an order from Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, limiting attendance at religious services to 10 people or fewer.

Broomes’ ruling prevents Kelly’s enforcement of the order as long as pastors and congregations observe social distancing, Politico reports. The decision will remain in effect until May 2.

“Churches and religious activities appear to have been singled out among essential functions for stricter treatment,” the judge wrote in his order.

“This is not about religion,” the Kansas governor said in a statement following the decision. “This is about a public health crisis.”

The judge’s order still requires religious services to abide by social distancing recommendations, such as requiring people to stay 6 feet apart. Broomes also has a hearing scheduled for Thursday regarding a lawsuit filed by two churches and their pastors against Kelly, Politico reports.

News of Broomes’ ruling comes after Attorney General William Barr released a statement on religious practices and social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic saying that “even in times of emergency,” federal law prohibits religious discrimination.

“Thus, government may not impose special restrictions on religious activity that do not also apply to similar nonreligious activity,” Barr said.

“For example, if a government allows movie theaters, restaurants, concert halls, and other comparable places of assembly to remain open and unrestricted, it may not order houses of worship to close, limit their congregation size, or otherwise impede religious gatherings.”

He added: “Religious institutions must not be singled out for special burdens.”

Where states have not acted evenhandedly, they must have compelling reason to impose restrictions on places of worship, the attorney general said. They also must ensure that the restrictions are “narrowly tailored to advance its compelling interest.”

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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Tedros Accused of ‘Covering Up Epidemics’ Before WHO Job

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World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, under fire for defending China’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, has a similar history of covering for a government that repeatedly denied cholera outbreaks.

“A leading candidate to head the World Health Organization was accused this week of covering up three cholera epidemics in his home country, Ethiopia, when he was health minister…” the New York Times reported.

The Times reported that Tedros led Ethiopia’s public health at a time when it declared itself free of cholera for a decade by diagnosing patients with the disease as having “acute watery diarrhea” instead.

“In an interview, Dr. Tedros, who was Ethiopia’s health minister from 2005 to 2012 and remains highly regarded for his accomplishments then, denied covering up cholera,” the New York Times reported. “Outbreaks occurring in 2006, 2009 and 2011, he said, were only ‘acute watery diarrhea’ in remote areas where laboratory testing ‘is difficult.’ That is what the Ethiopian government said then and is saying now about an outbreak that began in January.”

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

6 Known Connections

In 2017, Tedros ran for the post of Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), a specialized agency of the United Nations. But at that same time, a report appeared in the Ethiopian News & Views bulletin stating that he stood accused of complicity in the commission of “crimes against humanity.” That charge was related not only to the three aforementioned cholera coverups, but also to allegations  surrounding Tedros’s longstanding political affiliation with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), an organization that: (a) grew out of the Marxist-Leninist League of Tigray (MLLT); (b) was responsible for horrific atrocities in Ethiopia — particularly targeting the Amhara ethnic group in the country’s northwest region; and (c) had become Ethiopia’s principal ruling party. In the 1990s, the U.S. government listed TPLF as a terrorist group. The Global Terror Database continues to list it as such, given the organization’s ongoing commission of armed attacks in rural areas. Meanwhile, the aforementioned Amhara Professionals Union has issued many accusations of systematic discrimination and human-rights abuses perpetrated by TPLF.

To learn more about Tedros, click here.

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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.