Democrats call Trump ‘racist’ again as he adds six new countries to ‘outrageous, un-American’ travel ban

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The Trump administration contends that the bans are for security reasons, that the countries in question cannot or will not provide adequate information about the people wanting to come in. This is entirely reasonable, but for the Left, concern for national security is “racist” and must be done away with.

“Democrats attack Trump as racist after he expands travel ban to six new countries,” by Victor Rantala, BizPacReview, February 2, 2020:

Democrats criticized the White House announcement that the United States will add six more countries to a controversial travel ban that originally was called a “Muslim ban” by the left, and that Joe Biden on Saturday called a new “African Ban.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led the charge in opposition to the travel ban expansion, describing it as “discrimination disguised as policy.”

“The Trump administration’s expansion of its outrageous, un-American travel ban threatens our security, our values and the rule of law,” her statement reads. “The sweeping rule, barring more than 350 million individuals from predominantly African nations from traveling to the United States, is discrimination disguised as policy.”

To no one’s surprise, she added that Democrats will do all in their power to resist the president. “In the Congress and in the Courts, House Democrats will continue to oppose the Administration’s dangerous anti-immigrant agenda. In the coming weeks, the House Judiciary Committee will mark-up and bring to the Floor the NO BAN Act to prohibit religious discrimination in our immigration system and limit the President’s ability to impose such biased and bigoted restrictions.”

On Friday, Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf told reporters that after a “systematic review” of all countries, six nations were added to the travel ban list: Burma, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Sudan, and Tanzania.

Prior to this latest expansion, restrictions on immigrant and non-immigrant visas were in place for seven countries, to include Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen.

After enduring multiple court challenges to the original travel ban, the Supreme Court upheld its constitutionality in 2018.

According to Wolf, the additional six nations have lighter restrictions than the original seven. “These countries, for the most part, want to be helpful, want to do the right thing, have relationships with the U.S. and are in some cases improving relations, but for a variety of different reasons failed to meet those minimum requirements that we laid out,” he said. “And really the only way to mitigate the risk is to impose these travel restrictions.”…

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

8 Highlights of Closing Arguments Before the Final Impeachment Vote

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House Democrats’ impeachment managers and President Donald Trump’s lawyers made their closing cases Monday to the Senate, two days before the 100 lawmakers are scheduled to vote on whether to remove the president from office.

The day included a proposal from one Senate Democrat to censure the president rather than remove him, and the lead House prosecutor’s dire warning that Trump could give Alaska to the Russians and place his son-in-law in charge of the country.

After the House prosecutors and defense lawyers wrapped up, senators spoke from the floor. They are expected to continue doing so Wednesday after a break Tuesday in the runup to Trump’s delivery of his third State of the Union address.

Here are eight of Monday’s highlights:

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 >>

1. ‘Censure Would Allow This Body to Unite’

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a centrist Democrat, said he is undecided but urged fellow senators to support a bipartisan resolution censuring Trump for his actions toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“It was not a ‘perfect call.’ A newly elected president, Zelenskyy, with no experience in international politics, gets a call from the leader of the free world asking for a favor relating to U.S. domestic political affairs,” Manchin said.

“No one, no one, regardless of political party, should think what he did was right,” Manchin said. “It was just simply wrong.”

Manchin pressed censure, an idea that has surfaced before, as the only reasonable path, given that the Constitution requires a two-thirds majority of the Senate, or 67 votes, to convict and remove a president.

“I see no path to the 67 votes,” Manchin said. “However, I do believe a bipartisan majority of this body would vote to censure President Trump for his actions in this matter. Censure would allow this body to unite across party lines.”

A bipartisan censure could ease the polarization in the country, he said.

“Never before in the history of our republic has there been a purely partisan impeachment vote [against] a president,” Manchin said. “Removing this president at this time would not only further divide our deeply divided nation, but also further poison our already-toxic political atmosphere.”

2. ‘Rush to Judgment’

One of the president’s lawyers, Ken Starr, invoked Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. in making an argument for justice on behalf of Trump’s acquittal.

“Dr. King spoke not only about freedom, freedom standing alone. He spoke frequently about freedom and justice,” Starr told senators.

Starr went on to criticize the impeachment process followed in the House.

“Did the [House] Judiciary Committee rush to judgment in fashioning the articles of impeachment?” he asked. “Did it carefully gather the facts [and] assess the facts before it concluded we need nothing more than a panel of very distinguished professors and the splendid presentations by both the majority counsel and the minority counsel?”

Starr then spoke as if he were the House’s Democratic majority.

“We asked some questions. The Republicans asked some questions. We heard their answers. We’re ready to vote,” he said, framing the Democrats’ actions. “We are ready to try this case in the high court of impeachment.”

“What was being said in the sounds of silence was this: We don’t have time to follow the rules.”

In House impeachment inquiries targeting Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, lawyers for those presidents had the opportunity to cross-examine witnesses and the minority party was able to call witnesses—both part of House impeachment rules.

“Oh, yes, that is expressly provided for in the rules. We’ll break those rules,” Starr said, mimicking Democrats.

He added: “That’s not liberty and justice for all.”

Starr, who as independent counsel played a key role in the unpopular impeachment of Clinton in 1998, talked about the completely partisan aspect of the current impeachment:

In the fast-track impeachment process in the House of Representatives, did the House majority persuade the American people? Not just partisans?

Rather, did the House’s case win over the overwhelming consensus of the American people? The question fairly to be asked: Will I cast my vote to convict and remove the president of the United States when not a single member of the president’s party—the party of Lincoln—was persuaded at any time in the process?

In contrast, when I was here last week, I noted for the record of these proceedings that in the Nixon impeachment, the House vote to authorize the impeachment inquiry was 410-4. And the Clinton impeachment, divisive, controversial, 31 Democrats voted in favor of the impeachment inquiry. Here, of course, [in] a sharp contrast, the answer is none [from the other party].

Moreover, Starr contended, Democrats’ push to remove Trump undermined the rights of voters.

“Your vote in the last election is hereby declared null and void, and by the way, we are not going to allow you—the American people—to sit in judgment on this president and his record in November,” Starr said. “That is neither freedom nor is it justice. It certainly is not consistent with our most basic freedom of ‘We the People’ and the freedom to vote.”

3. ‘Trump Could Offer Alaska to the Russians’

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who has led the House managers in their prosecution, scoffed at defense arguments that a crime is required for impeachment.

During the impeachment process, Schiff became known for what he defended as a parody in mischaracterizing the July 25 phone call and for offering scenarios such as former President Barack Obama seeking Russian dirt on his 2012 opponent Mitt Romney, now a Utah senator.

During the closing argument, he presented another couple of far-fetched scenarios that could occur if Trump isn’t removed from office.

“If abuse of power is not impeachable, even though it’s clear the Founders considered it the highest of all high crimes and misdemeanors, but if it were not impeachable, then a whole range of utterly unacceptable conduct in a president would now be beyond reach,” Schiff said, adding:

Trump could offer Alaska to the Russians in exchange for support in the next election or decided to move to Mar-a-Lago permanently and let [son-in-law] Jared Kushner run the country, delegating to him the decision about whether to go to war.

Because those things are not necessarily criminal, this argument would allow that he could not be impeached for such abuses of power. Of course this would be absurd. More than absurd, it would be dangerous.

4. ‘Enough to Prove Extortion’

Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., a former Orlando police chief, said Trump was clearly guilty of extortion.

The House’s two articles of impeachment against the president do not allege a crime, or any specific violation of the law, which extortion would be.

House Democrats voted Dec. 18, without a single Republican vote, to impeach Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. They based the two articles of impeachment on Trump’s July 25 phone call to Ukraine’s Zelenskyy and the president’s refusal to allow certain executive branch witnesses or provide certain documents for House hearings.

According to a White House transcript of the Trump-Zelenskyy call, released by the president, the two leaders briefly talked about Trump’s interest in Ukraine’s investigating former Vice President Joe Biden’s dealings there and the role of his son, Hunter Biden, on the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.

Trump also asked Zelenskyy to look into whether Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.

Zelenskyy apparently did not know at the time that Trump had put a hold on $391 million in congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine to help it counter Russia’s invasion. Trump would release the funds in September.

House Democrats allege that Trump withheld the military aid to pressure Zelenskyy into initiating politically motivated investigations.

Demings said she was skeptical of the Trump defense team’s assertion that Ukraine’s government did not know the president had put a hold on U.S. military aid until it was publicly reported Aug. 28 by Politico.

Nevertheless, she noted, the Ukrainian government was aware before a United Nations General Assembly meeting in September, when Zelenskyy was expected to use a CNN interview to announce investigations of the Bidens’ connections with Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in a U.S. election.

“No one can dispute, even after the hold became public … on Aug. 28, President Trump’s representatives continued their efforts to secure Ukraine’s announcement of the investigations,” Demings said. “This is enough to prove extortion in court. It is certainly enough to prove it here.”

During the course of the Senate trial, House Democrats also have raised the issue of Trump’s attempting to violate campaign finance laws if the investigations are seen as things of value, as well as a Government Accountability Office report finding that Trump violated a specific federal law in holding the aid to Ukraine.

Neither was included in the two articles of impeachment.

Demings said that reported allegations in a forthcoming book by Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, that Trump pushed him to work on Ukraine with the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was further evidence of a crime.

“Reports about Ambassador Bolton’s account, soon to be available if not to this body, then to bookstores near you, [say] the president also unsuccessfully tried to get Bolton to call the new Ukrainian president to ensure he would meet with Giuliani,” Demings said, adding:

The desire for Ukraine to announce these phony investigations was for a clear and corrupt reason because President Trump wanted the political benefit of a foreign country announcing it would investigate his rival. That is how we know without a doubt that the object of the president’s scheme was to benefit his reelection campaign. In other words, to cheat in the next election.

What Demings called “phony investigations” were of matters widely reported before Giuliani got involved in inquiries on Trump’s behalf.

The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and other news outlets published stories well in advance of Giuliani’s inquiries about a potential conflict of interest regarding Hunter Biden’s role on the board of Ukraine energy company Burisma from 2014 to 2019, which reportedly paid him $83,000 per month.

Politico reported in 2017 about efforts by Ukrainian officials to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to help Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic rival.

5. Invoking Barry Goldwater

Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., one of the seven House impeachment managers, talked about the effort by then-Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., to persuade Nixon to resign over the Watergate scandal.

“In May of 1974, Barry Goldwater and other Republican congressional leaders went to the White House to tell President Nixon it was time for him to resign, that they could no longer hold back the tide of impeachment over Watergate,” Crow said.

Nixon, who was more liberal than Goldwater, resigned that August, months after the Arizona Republican pressed him to do so.

“Contrary to popular belief, the Republican Party did not abandon Nixon as the Watergate scandal came to light. It took years of disclosures and crisis and court battles,” said Crow, a former Army Ranger. “The party stood with Nixon through Watergate because he was a popular conservative president and his base was with him. So, they were too. But ultimately, as Goldwater would tell Nixon: ‘There are only so many lies you can take, and now there has been one too many.’”

In fact, that quote is attributed to Goldwater in discussions with other Senate Republicans, not in a meeting with Nixon.

6. ‘Cheapened Awesome Power of Impeachment’

Trump personal lawyer Jay Sekulow played a video of just over one minute showing numerous Democrats, going back to Jan. 15, 2017—five days before Trump was inaugurated—giving speeches and interviews calling for his impeachment.

They included Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, who said “I’m concerned if we don’t impeach this president, he will get reelected,” and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., who said, “We’re going to impeach the motherf—–.”

“One of the members of the House of Representatives said we’re bringing these articles of impeachment so he doesn’t get elected again. Here we are 10 months before an election doing exactly what they predicted,” Sekulow said, adding:

The whistleblower’s lawyer, Mr. [Mark] Zaid, sent out a tweet on Jan. 30, 2017—let me put that up on the screen: ‘The coup has started. First of many steps. Rebellion. Impeachment will follow ultimately.’ And here we are.

What the House managers have forced upon this great body is unprecedented and unacceptable. This is exactly and precisely what the Founders feared. This is the first totally partisan presidential impeachment in our nation’s history, and it should be our last. What the House Democrats have done to this nation, to the Constitution, to the office of the president, to the president himself, and to this body is outrageous. They have cheapened the awesome power of impeachment. Unfortunately, the country is not better for that.

7. ‘Lives Have Been Put at Risk’

Schiff said his staffers have faced death threats for their work on the case.

“I want to say something about the staff who have worked tirelessly on the impeachment inquiry for months now,” Schiff said. “There is a small army of public servants down the hall from this chamber in offices throughout the House and, yes, in that windowless bunker in the Capitol, who have committed their lives to this effort, because they, like the managers and the American people, believe that a president free of accountability is a danger to the beating heart of our democracy.”

Schiff named more than 20 staffers, including Sean Misko, who reportedly was closely associated with the anonymous whistleblower who complained about the Trump-Zelenskyy phone call.

“Some of those staff, including some singled out in this chamber, have been made to endure the most vicious, false attacks to the point where they fear their lives have been put at risk,” Schiff said.

The California Democrat called for senators to vote to remove Trump from office, which under the Constitution requires the votes of 67 of the 100 senators.

“He has betrayed our national security and he will do so again. He has compromised our elections and he will do so again,” Schiff said, adding: “Truth matters little to him. What’s right matters even less, and decency matters not at all.”

8. ‘Overturn’ and ‘Interfere‘

White House counsel Pat Cipollone opened the defense’s closing argument, stating that the Democrats were attempting to undermine two presidential elections, one in 2016 and one in 2020.

“The key conclusion, we believe the only conclusion, based on the articles of impeachment themselves, and the Constitution, is that you must vote to acquit the president,” Cipollone told senators. “At the end of the day, this is an effort to overturn the results of one election and to try to interfere in the coming election that begins today in Iowa.”

Cipollone stressed an important standard for impeachment.

“We believe that the only proper result—if we are applying the golden rule of impeachment, if we are applying the rules of impeachment that were so eloquently [described] by members of the Democratic Party the last time we were here—the only appropropriate result here is to acquit the president and to leave it to the voters to choose their president,” he said.

Ken McIntyre contributed to this report.

COLUMN BY

Fred Lucas

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

RELATED ARTICLE: What to Expect in Trump’s State of the Union Address

Other coverage of the impeachment trial for The Daily Signal by White House correspondent Fred Lucas includes:

4 Big Moments Before the Senate’s Vote Against New Impeachment Witnesses

7 Questions and Answers From Day 9 of Trump Impeachment Trial

6 Scenes From Day 8 of Trump Impeachment Trial

‘Danger, Danger, Danger’: 4 Highlights From Final Day of Defense Arguments in Impeachment Trial

Under Bolton Shadow, 6 Big Moments From Day 6 of Trump Impeachment Trial

5 Big Points by Trump’s Lawyers as Defense Opens in Impeachment Trial

7 Big Moments in Democrats’ Final Arguments to Remove Trump

7 Highlights From Day 3 of the Trump Impeachment Trial

5 Flash Points From Impeachment Trial’s Opening Arguments

What to Know About Democrats’ 7 Impeachment Managers

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.

What Jesus Did Not Say About Hell

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Michael Pakaluk: The evidence is strong that the Lord clearly taught that unrepented sin leads to eternal damnation. Thus, if Hell is invented, it’s Jesus who invented it.

Hell is on my mind, and it is not even November.  Presumably, any one of the Four Last Things can serve as matter for reflection any time of year.  But after my last column, which was on David Bentley Hart’s denial of the traditional notion of eternal punishment, some readers said that they wished I had spent more time on what Jesus said on Hell. So this time I want to oblige them by discussing, paradoxically, what Jesus did not say.

From many years spent interpreting texts, especially Aristotle, I find that people commonly make a certain mistake. They think the only evidence for or against a theory are words or sentences that can be identified in advance.

Here’s what I mean: Suppose the view in question is whether Jesus taught that we’re at risk of being judged worthy of eternal punishment – Hell. Someone bent on denying Hell might go through the New Testament, pick out the twenty or so verses that seem to imply the existence of Hell, and taking these verses to be the only evidence, argue that they don’t really imply that.

This is David Bentley Hart’s approach.  Jesus says in one verse (Mt 25:46) that the unrighteous will be sent away into everlasting torment (kolasin aiōnion).  So Hart expends a lot of effort arguing that the Greek word aiōnios does not necessarily mean “everlasting” and that kolasis need not mean “punishment.”

Jesus also talks a lot about Gehenna: “it is better for you to enter life crippled, than, having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire” (Mk. 9:43); “Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell” (Mt. 10:28).  There are altogether twelve verses that refer to Hell, Gehenna, in the New Testament.

You would think that the meaning of a word is fixed by its function and that twelve sentences suffice for revealing a word’s function.  But, no, Hart argues. By Gehenna Jesus meant a certain place outside of Jerusalem, which may or may not have been a pagan place of child sacrifice, and may or may not have been a garbage dump.

It’s all very unclear, he says.  And all that stuff about “unquenchable fire” and “the worm that never dies”?  Typical Semitic hyperbole.  In any case, we are not obliged to identify this “Vale of Hinnom,” as Hart prefers to call it, with the “opulent” medieval invention of “Hell,” or so he says.

And so it goes.  Except Hart goes farther than interpreters usually do: to deal most definitively with such evidence, he, in effect, annihilates it.  That is, he produced an entire translation of the New Testament so that aiōnios never means everlasting but always “of the Age.” And Gehenna never means Hell, but always “the Vale of Hinnom,” and so on.   In Hart’s Bible, Jesus warns the unrighteous that “these will go to the chastening of that Age.” (Mt 25:46)  Voilà! No more offending evidence.

But the point I wish to urge about interpretation is that so far we have looked at only the smallest portion of the available evidence.  We need to reason not simply from evidence to theory, but also from theory to evidence. That is, we have to ask: on the assumption that a theory is true, does the evidence match what we would have expected or not?   This approach is sometimes called “Bayesian”: Newman dealt with it under the heading of “antecedent probabilities.”

In the present instance, we ask: Suppose the Lord Jesus believed, or rather knew, universal salvation to be true, holding to it with all the conviction of David Bentley Hart.  This would be a highly important truth for him to convey, as Hart clearly holds.  Does Jesus speak, then, as someone who knows this to be true and strongly wants to convey it?  Or does Jesus say things contrary to what we would expect, i.e., is he silent where a universalist would certainly not be?

See now that each verse in the New Testament becomes potential evidence against Hart’s view, and not merely the handful that seems to be speaking about Hell explicitly.

You can start almost anywhere.  You are the branches, the Lord says, and if a branch gets separated from the vine, it is already as good as dead, and these withered branches are then thrown into the fire and burned. (Jn 15:6)   Apart from the mention of fire here, which we realize is so characteristic of Jesus – would someone who affirmed universalism have chosen, for his imagery, the irreversible process of desiccation? When Plato, for instance, wanted to suggest that there are additional chances for souls after death, he provided, as illustrations, cyclical processes.

Or the good thief repents, and Jesus tells him that he will be with him in paradise on that very day. (Lk 23:43)  Wouldn’t a universalist, at that point, turn also to the bad thief, the one who was reviling him, and tell him to have courage, because, when he faces torment after death, it will be merely a “chastening for the Age,” which will lead him eventually to eternal blessedness?  But Jesus fails to teach this.

Or what about the demons?  Demons are persons too, and they experience pleasure and pain.  When a “legion” of them torments the man at the tombs, Jesus sends the demons into a herd of swine, who rush over a cliff into the sea, apparently to illustrate a point about their evil power. (Mk 5:10-20) But wouldn’t a universalist, to make his message perfectly clear, once in a while send a demon or two into Heaven, as a proof that all will be reconciled to God?

This is what I mean: hundreds of verses point to things Jesus did not say, which count against universal salvation in Hart and many others who hold a similar position.

COLUMN BY

Michael Pakaluk

Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. He lives in Hyattsville, MD with his wife Catherine, also a professor at the Busch School, and their eight children. His latest book, on the Gospel of Mark, The Memoirs of St Peter, is now available from Regnery Gateway. He is currently at work on a new book on Mary’s voice in the gospel of John.

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.

DECADENT DEMOCRATS: Biden, Warren and Sanders reject President Trump’s Middle East peace plan

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EDITORS NOTE: This is the nineth in a series titled Decadent Democrats. You may read the previous installments here:

DECADENT DEMOCRATS — From Pedophilia to Sex with Animals

DECADENT DEMOCRATS — From Electing a Dream ‘Queer Latina’ Candidate to No Incarceration For Drug Use of Any Kind

DECADENT DEMOCRATS: The Enemies of America are Our Best Friends Forever

DECADENT DEMOCRATS — From Ricky Gervais’ Golden Globe Diatribe to Abortion to Climate Change [+Videos]

DECADENT DEMOCRATS: From Creating Weak Men and Disorderly Women to Making Sex a Biological Reality Illegal

DECADENT DEMOCRATS: From the Party of Abortion and Allah Akbar to the 2020 Right to Life March and death of terrorist Soleimani

DECADENT DEMOCRATS: The Party of Marx, Mao and Mohammed

DECADENT DEMOCRATS: Their calls for violence created ANTIFA

In a Began-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies’ column titled Democrats, Experts, and Peace Plans by Alex Joffe, a Shillman-Ingerman Fellow at the Middle East Forum and a senior non-resident scholar at the BESA Center, Dr. Joffe writes:

As historian Martin Kramer points out, the [Trump] plan is not so much about peace as about partition. In that sense, the break it represents from the past 50 years of “peace processing” is profound. Equally striking is the plan’s reception.

Dr. Joffe notes this about three of the Democrats running in the presidential primary:

  • Former VP Joe Biden was blunt: “A peace plan requires two sides to come together. This is a political stunt that could spark unilateral moves to annex territory and set back peace even more.” He added, “I’ve spent a lifetime working to advance the security & survival of a Jewish and democratic Israel.” True to form, Biden revealed more than he intended, implicitly acknowledging that two decades of American-led negotiations in which he had a key role failed to bring the Palestinians to the table.
  • Elizabeth Warren piled on criticism, saying, “Releasing a plan without negotiating with Palestinians isn’t diplomacy, it’s a sham. I will oppose unilateral annexation in any form—and reverse any policy that supports it.” This appears to ignore the rounds of negotiations under the Obama administration in 2010 and 2013-14. It also ignores the two-year development of the Trump plan, which included consultations with previous American negotiators, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, the UAE, and Turkey, but which was effectively boycotted by the PA from the start.
  • Bernie Sanders demanded that “Any acceptable peace deal must be consistent with international law and multiple UN Security Council resolutions. It must end the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 and enable Palestinian self-determination in an independent, democratic, economically viable state of their own alongside a secure and democratic state of Israel.” This repeats sacred mantras about “international law” and the “occupation,” setting the clock back to 1967, and giving veto power to the UN and hence Arab-Islamic and subservient blocs.

Dr. Joffe asks: Why have the Democratic presidential candidates expressed such antipathy?

ANSWER: A fundamental principle of American politics today is instinctive and absolute rejection of anything connected with Trump, be it word or deed. This childish impulse, endlessly on display, has eroded the critical faculties of politicians and media alike. Even Obama-era policies that are quietly continued under the Trump administration are rejected.

In The Hill article titled Democrats offer mixed reactions to Trump’s Mideast peace plan Laura Kelly noted:

Congressional Democrats offered varying responses Tuesday to President Trump’s Middle East peace plan, ranging from cautious optimism to outright rejection.

On one end, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the Trump administration’s proposed resolution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict provides some areas of “common ground” for Democrats to get behind and support.

[ … ]

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who is seeking the party’s presidential nomination, ripped the administration’s plan, arguing it offered no real future for a Palestinian state.

[ … ]

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) called Trump’s proposal an “anti-peace plan,” arguing it is “one-sided” to the detriment of Palestinians.

Read more.

Dr. Joffe concludes:

Whether these views—which of course still drip with antipathy toward Trump and Netanyahu—will influence Democratic candidates remains unclear. But this partial acknowledgment of reality represents the bargaining stage of grief. The Palestinian leadership appears permanently trapped in the second stage of grief, anger, but the Palestinian people seem to be in a depression. Encouraging them to move forward toward acceptance is critical. Democratic presidential candidates should be encouraged to do the same.

It appears that the Democrats and Palestinian leadership are both “permanently trapped in the second stage of grief and anger.” The Democrats are grieving and angry because President Trump won the White House in 2016. The Palestinians are grieving and angry because President Trump’s peace plan actually gives them their own sovereign state.

© All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Comparing the “Deal of the Century” with Previous Plans

VIDEO: The Myth That the U.S. Leads the World in Mass Shootings

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If you asked me this morning which nation has the most mass shootings in the world, I would have said, with perhaps a flicker of hesitation, the United States.

This is a tad embarrassing to admit because I’m pretty familiar with shooting statistics, having written several articles on gun violence and the Second Amendment. Below is a basic overview of gun violence in America. While gun homicides have been steadily declining for decades in the US, mass shootings have indeed been trending upward.

This fact alone probably would not have led me to believe that the US leads the world in mass shootings, however. An assist goes to the US media and politicians.

“Let’s be clear,” President Obama said in 2015 after a shooting in North Carolina. “At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries.”

Sen. Harry Reid echoed this sentiment. “The United States is the only advanced country where this kind of mass violence occurs.”

Media headlines have left little doubt that the US leads the world in mass shootings. In fact, according to CNN, it isn’t even close.

The comments and data seem to conclusively say that the US leads the world in mass shootings and the violence is unique, a product of “America’s gun culture.”

It’s a slam dunk case except for one thing: it’s not true.

Statistics on global mass shooting incidents from 2009 to 2015 compiled by economist John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center show that the US trails many other advanced nations in mass shooting frequency and death rate.

As Investor’s Business Daily noted on these findings, “Yes, the U.S. rate is still high, and nothing to be proud of. But it’s not the highest in the developed world. Not by a long shot.”

If this is true, how did the narrative that the US leads the world in mass shootings become the conventional wisdom? The myth, it turns out, stems from University of Alabama associate professor Adam Lankford.

Lankford’s name pops up in a montage of media reports which cite his research as evidence that America leads the world in mass shootings. The violence, Lankford said, stems from the high rate of gun ownership in America.

“The difference between us and other countries, [which] explains why we have more of these attackers, was the firearm ownership rate,” Lankford said. “In other words: firearms per capita. We have almost double the firearm ownership rate of any other country.”

Lankford’s findings show that there were 90 mass public shooters in America since 1966, the most in the world, which had a total of 202. But Lott, using Lankford’s definition of a mass shooting—“four or more people killed”—found more than 3,000 such shootings, John Stossel recently reported.

When findings do not mesh, scholars, in pursuit of truth, generally compare notes, data, and methodology to find out how they reached their conclusions. After all, who is to say Lankford doesn’t have it right and Lott is wrong? There’s just one problem: Lankford isn’t talking.

Lankford refuses to explain his data to anyone—to Stossel, to Lott, to the Washington Post, and apparently anyone else who comes asking, including this writer. (I emailed Lankford inquiring about his research. He declined to discuss his methodology, but said he would be publishing more information about mass shooting data in the future.)

“That’s academic malpractice,” Lott tells Stossel.

[Editor’s Note: Lankford has since published his research. It can be found here.]

Indeed it is. Yet, it doesn’t explain how one professor’s research was so rapidly disseminated that its erroneous claim quickly became the conventional wisdom in a country with 330 million people.

For that, we must look to the era of narrative-driven journalism and the politicization of society, both of which subjugate truth to ideology and politics. Media and politicians latched onto Lankford’s findings in droves because his findings were convenient, not because they were true.

This is an unsettling and ill omen for liberty. As Lawrence Reed has observed, the road to authoritarianism is paved with a “careless, cavalier, and subjective attitude toward truth.” Yet that is precisely what we see with increasing frequency in mass media. (Need I reference the Covington debacle and the Smollet hoax?)

More than a hundred years ago Mark Twain noted, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

Twain’s quote remains true even in the age of the internet. Lankford’s erroneous research had free rein for two years and was disseminated to tens of millions of viewers and readers before the truth finally got its shoes on.

If you ask most Americans today which country leads the world in mass shootings, I suspect a vast majority would say the US. And there’s always a price for the erosion of truth.

COLUMN BY

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has appeared in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, and Fox News. 

RELATED ARTICLE: California has most ‘mass slayings’ in 2019 despite stringent gun control – AP

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

Trump Administration Publishes Historic Rulemaking to Modernize America’s Firearm Export Regime

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On Jan. 23, the Trump administration published rules that will be a boon to the United States firearms industry and all who utilize its products. The new regulations will become effective March 9, 2020.

The rules update America’s regulatory regime for the export of firearms, as well as related parts, components, and accessories. They are the result of an intensive, years-long interagency review process, as well as consideration of thousands of public comments.

The changes move firearm-related commerce from an antiquated Cold War paradigm into the modern era of broader international trade and access to information.

No more will small, non-exporting businesses – including gunsmiths – be caught up in an expansive regulatory scheme for manufacturers of “munitions” and their parts that requires a $2,250 annual registration fee with U.S. State Department.

Americans will again be free to publish most technical information about firearms and ammunition – including on the publicly-accessible Internet – without fear of accidentally running afoul of State Department restrictions that could land them in federal prison.

And Americans temporarily traveling overseas with their own guns and ammunition won’t have to register them in a government database or deal with the complexities of completing lengthy forms in commercial exporting software.

Meanwhile, commercial exporters of non-military grade firearms and ammunition will have fewer fees to pay and will benefit from a more flexible, business-oriented regulatory environment. This will enhance their competitiveness in global markets and bring business and jobs that might have gone to unscrupulous foreign companies back to America, which will continue to have unrivaled oversight of its domestic and international arms trade.

To be clear, actual exports of firearms and ammunition will still require authorization by the federal government, including through licenses issued after interagency review to ensure the materiel will not fall into the wrong hands when it leaves the country. End users of the guns in the countries of destination will also remain subject to U.S. monitoring.

But guns and ammunition that can be readily obtained at big box retailers in the U.S. will no longer be treated for export purposes as if they were in the same “inherently military” category as missiles, warheads, howitzers, or other true weapons of war.

This change will additionally ensure that more resources are available to monitor transfers and movement of truly sensitive and consequential military equipment and technology.

The result is an overall win for American business, freedom, and the security of the Free World.

Needless to say, however, those who would ban firearms completely are already seeking to undermine the changes. Attorneys general from a number of anti-gun states have filed suit in a federal district court in Seattle, Wash., falsely alleging the rule changes would allow for the unregulated proliferation of so-called “3D-printed weapons.” Numerous media outlets have uncritically parroted these baseless claims.

In truth, the final versions of the rules specifically address this concern and will treat any computer code allowing for the automatic printing or milling of a firearm as a regulated item requiring prior authorization before being published on the Internet or released to any foreign national.

This latest action is just one more example of how President Trump continues to move forward with his positive agenda to protect the right to keep and bear arms and the businesses that comprise America’s firearms industry.  American manufacturing, as well as lawful firearm ownership at home and abroad stand to make big gains under the president’s export reform initiative.

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“Journalist” Can’t Decide: Slumping Gun Sales or Best Year Ever?

EDITORS NOTE: This NRA-ILA column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

#Expose2020 Part IV: Two More Bernie Staffers Promote ‘Extreme Action’ and Property Destruction

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View our latest video HERE.

This month, Project Veritas Action Fund (PVA) exposed Kyle Jurek, a paid Iowa Field Organizer for the Sanders campaign, and Martin Weissgerber, a paid South Carolina Field Organizer for the Sanders campaign. Both are recorded admitting their radical and violent intentions for the country. Bernie Sanders’ campaign has refused to comment, and the media has avoided covering the stories.

Today’s new video exposes two more paid Field Organizers for the Sanders campaign in South Carolina, Mason Baird and Daniel Taylor, admitting the campaign attracts “truly radical people,” saying they are ready for violent “extreme action,” and hiding their violent intentions from the public. They also praise the Soviet Union and brush off their human rights atrocities.

Some of the key findings of today’s video:

  • Mason Baird, South Carolina Field Organizer, Sanders Campaign: “I’ve Canvassed with Someone Who’s an Anarchist, and with Someone Who’s a Marxist/Leninist. So, We Attract Radical, Truly Radical People in the Campaign…Obviously That’s Not Outward Facing.”
  • Mason Baird: “A Lot of Those People Who Do That Kind of Work, Are…Their Politics Fall Well Outside of the American Sort of Norm. So, They’re Marxist-Leninists, They’re Anarchists, They’re These Types of Folks, and um, and They Have More of a Mind for Direct Action, for Engaging in Politics Outside of the Electoral System.” 
  • Baird: “A Lot of the Stories We’re Told in the United States About, You Know, the Gulags and the Persecution of the Kulaks and Things Like That Are Exaggerated…We Certainly Don’t Have, uh, a Straight Perspective on That Stuff Here in America.”
  • Daniel Taylor, South Carolina Field Organizer, Sanders Campaign: “We Don’t Want to Scare People Off, So You Kinda Have to Feel it Out Before You Get into the Crazy Stuff…More, More Extreme Organizations and Stuff Like Antifa, You Know You Were Talking About Yellow Vests and All That; But, You Know We’re Kinda Keeping That, Keeping That on the Back-Burner for Right Now.” 
  • Daniel Taylor: “It is Unfortunate That We Have to Make Plans for Extreme Action, But Like I Said, They’re Not Going to Give it to Us, Even if Bernie is Elected.”

EDITORS NOTE: This Project Veritas column with video is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

VIDEOS: President Trump’s Super Bowl Interview plus 2 Trump 2020 Superbowl Ads

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The following videos are of the full interview of President Donald J. Trump during the Super Bowl followed by the Trump 2020 ads.

Trump Super Bowl Interview with Sean Hannity

Trump Super Bowl Ad – 1

Trump Super Bowl Ad – 2

© All rights reserved.

Harvard professor’s arrest shows Chinese spying via U.S. universities

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Espionage against America’s universities surfaced again when the FBI arrested a prominent Harvard professor as an alleged part of a Communist Chinese spy operation.

The recent arrests of Harvard Professor Charles Lieber, a Chinese People’s Liberation Army officer, and a second Chinese national in Boston, show that Beijing – among others – uses American academic institutions to steal technology and more.

Some professors seem perfectly willing to collaborate with the Chinese Communist Party.

The FBI arrested Lieber, hairman of Harvard University’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department and prosecutors charged “two Chinese nationals” with being “in connection with aiding the People’s Republic of China,” according to the Justice Department.

Lieber was initially “charged by criminal complaint with one count of making a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement.” Such a charge is usually a placeholder while prosecutors prepare far more serious national security charges.

Lieber is a prominent nanoscientist who received more than $15,000,000 in Pentagon and National Institutes of Health contracts. Harvard said Lieber had an academic rank “bestowed on only the most eminent scholars.”

Professor Lieber allegedly had a secret arrangement with a Communist Chinese institution designed to recruit top Western science and technology talent, and was part of a research program in Wuhan, China, site of the recent outbreak of Wuhan corona virus.

Two Chinese alleged spies at Boston University & Harvard-affiiated hospital

Federal prosecutors charged Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officer Yanqing Ye, and Chinese national Zaosong Zheng, the same day.

Ye, who escaped to China, is a Chinese Communist Party member who studied at Boston University’s Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering from 2017 to 2019, “completing numerous assignments from PLA officers” and “sending US documents and information to China,” according to the Justice Department.

Ye’s electronic devices revealed that the officer was associated with China’s National University of Defense Technology and was being run in Boston by an un-named PLA colonel.

Under the direction of that colonel, “Ye had accessed US military websites, researched US military projects and compiled information for the PLA on two US scientists with expertise in robotics and computer science,” the Justice Department said.

The third suspected spy, Zheng, had been a researcher at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, from 2018-19. He was arrested in December at Logan Airport and “charged by criminal complaint with attempting to smuggle 21 vials of biological research to China.”

Federal allegations against the Harvard professor include secret work with Wuhan facility

Communist China has targeted the American biotech research sector since the 1990s, the US China Economic and Security Review Commission reported last year.

Professor Lieber appears to have been part of that intelligence operation. The Justice Department laid out its case against the Harvard professor (emphasis added):

“According to court documents, since 2008, Dr. Lieber who has served as the Principal Investigator of the Lieber Research Group at Harvard University, which specialized in the area of nanoscience, has received more than $15,000,000 in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Department of Defense (DOD).  These grants require the disclosure of significant foreign financial conflicts of interest, including financial support from foreign governments or foreign entities.

“Unbeknownst to Harvard University beginning in 2011, Lieber became a ‘Strategic Scientist’ at Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) in China and was a contractual participant in China’s Thousand Talents Plan from in or about 2012 to 2017.  China’s Thousand Talents Plan is one of the most prominent Chinese Talent recruit plans that are designed to attract, recruit, and cultivate high-level scientific talent in furtherance of China’s scientific development, economic prosperity and national security.

“These talent programs seek to lure Chinese overseas talent and foreign experts to bring their knowledge and experience to China and reward individuals for stealing proprietary information.

“Under the terms of Lieber’s three-year Thousand Talents contract, WUT paid Lieber $50,000 USD per month, living expenses of up to 1,000,000 Chinese Yuan (approximately $158,000 USD at the time) and awarded him more than $1.5 million to establish a research lab at WUT.  In return, Lieber was obligated to work for WUT ‘not less than nine months a year’ by ‘declaring international cooperation projects, cultivating young teachers and Ph.D. students, organizing international conference[s], applying for patents and publishing articles in the name of’ WUT.

“The complaint alleges that in 2018 and 2019, Lieber lied about his involvement in the Thousand Talents Plan and affiliation with WUT.  On or about, April 24, 2018, during an interview with investigators, Lieber stated that he was never asked to participate in the Thousand Talents Program, but he “wasn’t sure” how China categorized him.  In November 2018, NIH inquired of Harvard whether Lieber had failed to disclose his then-suspected relationship with WUT and China’s Thousand Talents Plan.  Lieber caused Harvard to falsely tell NIH that Lieber ‘had no formal association with WUT’ after 2012, that ‘WUT continued to falsely exaggerate’ his involvement with WUT in subsequent years, and that Lieber ‘is not and has never been a participant in’ China’s Thousand Talents Plan.”

Critics imply FBI targeting of Chinese spies is racist

The Chinese government has been exploiting Western supersensitivities about racism to its espionage advantage through its “overseas ‘united front’ work,” while careless language on the part of non-ethnic Chinese about “Chinese spies” can sow defensiveness and divisiveness that Beijing can exploit again. The US China Economic and Security Review Commission warned about Communist China’s manipulation of real and imagined “racist” sensitivities in a 2018 report.

Some American news organizations echoed Beijing’s active measures theme. “The US is Purging Chinese Cancer Researchers From Top Institutions,” a Bloomberg Businessweek headline screamed in June, 2019.

Harvard and other colleges like having students from Mainland China, as the parents or proxies usually pay full tuition in cash. Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping’s daughter, Xi Mingze, reportedly graduated from Harvard and returned in 2019 to resume her studies there.

Harvard’s JFK school offered fellowship to espionage convict

Harvard has shown a permissive attitude toward spies and those who release classified information.

The Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government – the nation’s most prestigious graduate school for future diplomats, intelligence officers, and other public officials – extended convicted spy Bradley “Chelsea” Manning a visiting fellowship in 2017. Manning, who was convicted of six counts of espionage for releasing 700,000 classified defense and intelligence documents, received a pardon from president Barack Obama.

Harvard withdrew its offer to Manning only after former CIA director Michael Morell, a senior fellow at the JFK School, resigned in protest.

“Unfortunately, I cannot be part of an organization — the Kennedy School — that honors a convicted felon and leaker of classified information, Ms. Chelsea Manning, by inviting her to be a Visiting Fellow at the Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics,” Morell said in a letter to the Harvard dean.

“Ms. Manning was found guilty of 17 serious crimes, including six counts of espionage, for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to Wikileaks, an entity that CIA Director Mike Pompeo says operates like an adversarial foreign intelligence service,” Morell told Harvard.

After Morell’s public resignation, Harvard withdrew its invitation to Manning and called the offer a “mistake.”

However, JFK School Dean Douglas W. Elmendorff publicly apologized to Manning, and invited the convicted spy to visit Harvard for a day to speak at the school’s prestigious John F. Kennedy, Jr. Forum.

“I apologize to [Manning] and to the many concerned people from whom I have heard today for not recognizing upfront the full implications of our original invitation,” Elmendorf told the Washington Post.

About J Michael Waller

J. Michael Waller is Vice President for Government Affairs at the Center for Security Policy. His areas of concentration are propaganda, political warfare, psychological warfare, and subversion.

Dr. Waller is the former Walter and Leonore Annenberg Professor of International Communication at the Institute of World Politics, a graduate school in Washington, DC.

A former instructor with the Naval Postgraduate School, he is an instructor/lecturer at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg.

He is a founding editorial board member of NATO’s  Defence Strategic Communications journal.

He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the George Washington University, was the first John M. Olin Fellow at the Center for Defense Journalism at Boston University, where he received his Master’s in international relations and communication; and holds a PhD in international security affairs from Boston University, where he was an Earhart Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology, and Policy under Professor Uri Ra’anan.

An adaptation of his doctoral dissertation was published as Secret Empire: The KGB In Russia Today (Westview, 1994), in which he warned of the rise of a KGB-gangster state in Russia and predicted the rise of a KGB officer to control Russia.

View all posts by J Michael Waller

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Fleitz: Ambassador Bolton, withdraw your book

EDITORS NOTE: This Center for Security Policy column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

TENNESSEE: Lawmaker Floats Resolution Branding CNN, Washington Post ‘FAKE NEWS’

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ChurchMilitant.com) – Tennessee’s Republican State Rep. Micah Van Huss proposed legislation to recognize CNN and The Washington Post as “fake news.”

His resolution calls both CNN and The Washington Post “part of the media wing of the Democratic Party.” The text also “condemns” the media outlets for “denigrating our citizens and implying that they are weak-minded followers instead of people exercising their rights that our veterans paid for with their blood.”

“I’ve filed HJR 779 on behalf of a constituency that’s tired of fake news and Republicans who don’t fight,” Rep. Van Huss explained on his Facebook page.

The resolution recalls incidents at both news outlets where a host or editor referred to supporters of President Donald Trump as “belonging to a cult” or “cult-like.”

“To describe the entire Republican Party as a cult led by President Trump is problematic,” reads a portion of the resolution. “If journalists are going to refer to the party as a cult and its supporters as cultists, they must define what ‘cult’ means; otherwise, they are assuming that a cult is some obvious phenomenon and everyone knows what the word means.”

The segment generated a flood of responses on social media. Van Huss’ bill falls on the heels of a recent CNN segment, during which anchor Don Lemon, author Wajahat Ali and Republican political strategist Rick Wilson mocked President Trump — suggesting he is unable to find Ukraine on a map — and describing Trump supporters as “the credulous Boomer rube demo.”

President Trump fired back, tweeting: “Don Lemon, the dumbest man on television (with terrible ratings!)”

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1222028267865223170?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1222028267865223170&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.churchmilitant.com%2Fnews%2Farticle%2Ftennesee-high-court

Author and columnist Mark Steyn blasted CNN for mocking Trump supporters saying the CNN panel should relabel themselves “Trump’s re-election committee,” adding, “If you want more Trump, this is how you get more Trump.”

“Calling 63 million voters illiterate rubes” represents the height of “bipartisan establishment condescension,” Steyn added.

Examples of CNN’s and The Washington Post’s demonstrably false reporting are legion.

In 2017, CNN congressional correspondent Manu Raju falsely reported that Donald Trump Jr. was offered advanced access to the WikiLeaks e-mail archive.

CNN falsely reported in 2017 that fired White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci was under federal investigation for meeting with a Russian banker prior to President Trump’s inauguration. CNN eventually apologized for its false story after Scaramucci vehemently denied its contents.

When I was a kid, you’d turn on the news to see what was going on, and now, of course, we’ve gotten into premium politics.Tweet

In 2018, CNN also reported that President Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, was prepared to tell then-special counsel Robert Mueller that the president had advance knowledge of the Trump Tower meeting between his son, Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer, and others.

The Washington Post ran a nearly 2,000-word story in 2018 alleging the Trump administration was systematically denying passports to Latin-Americans along the border, accusing them of using fraudulent birth certificates.

CNN and The Washington Post later amended the stories but not until after damage had been done and confusion created.

“News organizations used to report the news,” Rep. Van Huss said. “I remember when I was a kid, you’d turn on the news to see what was going on, and now, of course, we’ve gotten into premium politics.”

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

FEAST YOUR EYES ON THE SPECTACLE: Super Bowl reminds us of what men find edifying

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The feast of the Presentation recalls the old man Simeon chanting thanks for having lived to see the Messiah. His “Nunc Dimittis“—”Let thy servant depart in peace”—is part of the Church’s evening prayers. In 542 in Constantinople, the Emperor Justinian placed it into the Eastern liturgy.

This year the feast falls on Super Bowl Sunday. Human nature instinctively finds entertainment more compelling than edification, but like all things ephemeral, games pass away while the songs of saints will endure until the end of time.

Few today remember the Isthmian games of the Greeks, or the cheers in the Roman circus. But those games also warn thinking people of the dangers in giving sports a cultic status. When the amateur is overwhelmed by professionals who are paid mind-boggling salaries, inflating the cost of tickets, and whose lives and deaths distract from the great events of the day, a culture’s perspective becomes irrational.

Add to this the “ad verecundium fallacy” by which people accept the unqualified opinions of individuals simply because of their celebrity. This applies to sports figures and Hollywood starlets who turn entertainment into political theater.

The aforementioned Justinian had to deal with this problem. He and his empress Theodora were not the only couple who have rooted for opposite teams; however, their situation was serious, since the teams represented political and religious factions. Theodora was a fan of the Greens, who were Monophysite heretics, and the emperor supported the Blues, who were orthodox Chalcedonians.

No one who collects abstruse sports statistics should object that these theological issues are too obscure. Feelings were so intense in 532 that the “Nika Riots” (Nika being the term for “victory,” now adapted for Nike sneakers, made mostly in third-world countries under disputed labor conditions) led to the deaths of 30,000 rioters and the destruction of much of the city.

Super Bowl half-time extravaganzas surpass in their vulgarity only the Field of the Cloth of Gold games in France in 1520 when Henry VIII, 29 years old and an impressive 6’1″ wrestled Francis I, 23 years old and over 6’5″.  Thousands of tents were erected for the crowds, and for refreshments, there were 3,000 sheep, 800 calves, 300 oxen and fountains flowing with wine. Even the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman I donated for entertainment dancing monkeys painted gold.

During the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–164 B.C.) the Greeks built a gymnasium at the base of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Even some Jewish priests of the Herodian temple succumbed to the sports mania. Should any pulpit orator try to beguile his congregation on the feast of the Presentation with banter about the Super Bowl, let him be reminded: “Disdaining the temple and neglecting the sacrifices, [the priests] hastened, at the signal for the discus-throwing, to take part in the unlawful exercises on the athletic field” (2 Maccabees 4:14).

COLUMN BY

Fr. George Rutler

Father George W. Rutler is pastor of St. Michael the Archangel Church in the archdiocese of New York. His Sunday homilies are archived. He has authored multiple books, including Calm in Chaos: Catholic Wisdom in Anxious Times and his latest, Grace and Truth. Individuals may donate to his parish.

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

VIDEO: Child sex trafficking prevention is being undercut by ‘the squad’, elements of the Democrat Party [and some anti-Trump Republicans]

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We received the following comments and video below in an email from one of our readers:

Please watch this video and then send it  to your Church leaders, including my comment that this  greatly enhanced prevention activity is another effort by Donald Trump that  does not get any recognition from the Democrats nor from MITT  ROMNEY.

Romney’s actions in fact,  have undercut the activities of these US  enforcement organizations. The whole pandemonium over separating children from their families was generated by the efforts  of ICE,  Homeland Security, etc. to rescue kidnapped children who were being introduced into the sex trade. The pictures, widely distributed by the Democrats  and the left-wing media, of children in “cages” were taken during the Obama administration and  deceptively used in order to attack the Donald Trump administration.

Many of these child sex activists receive an active defense from George Soros funded organizations. Further, many George Soros organizations are very active in Ukraine under the guise of “good government” and of “reform”.   Unfortunately, former US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, allied herself with, and partially financed some of these Soros  operations  before she was told by her State Department superiors to  stop utilizing US federal resources for these activities. Whether Yovanovitch, did this innocently or with guilty knowledge would have been established  had the Republicans and/or the presidents legal staff been  permitted by Adam Schiff to cross-examine her. Since Adam Schiff has  a significant amount of  George Soros  funding  in his history,  this might have been the reason that Adam Schiff would not permit any questioning of his selected hearsay “witnesses”

© All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: New Documentary Highlights The Direct Link Between Abortion And Human Trafficking

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Blind Eyes Opened

ARIZONA: Al-Qaeda jihadi accused of killing Iraqi police found living in Phoenix

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Remember, anyone who calls for immigration reform or who points out that immigration is a national security issue is a racist, bigoted “Islamophobe.”

“Alleged Al-Qaeda Leader Accused of Killing Iraqi Police Found Living in Phoenix, Arizona,” by Jeffery Martin, Newsweek, January 31, 2020 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

Law enforcement officials in Phoenix, Arizona arrested a man on Thursday who was alleged to be the former leader of an Al-Qaeda terrorist group in Iraq. Ali Yousif Ahmed Al-Nouri is accused of murdering two Iraqi police officers in 2006 in the Iraqi city of Fallujah.

Al-Nouri allegedly participated in the killing of two officers in the Fallujah Police Directorate as part of a division of Al-Qaeda that focused on killing Iraqi police.

After an Iraqi judge issued a warrant for Al-Nouri’s arrest, the government of Iraq requested Al-Nouri’s extradition.

According to a news release from the Department of Justice, Al-Nouri’s arrest was carried out by the FBI Phoenix Field Office and the U.S. Marshals Service.

“If Ahmed’s extradition is certified by the court,” the release said, “the decision of whether to surrender him to Iraq will be made by the U.S. Secretary of State.”

Newsweek reached out to the Department of Justice for further comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.

Authorities arrested a man believed to have been the leader of an Al-Qaeda group in Phoenix, Arizona Friday….

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

Free to Succeed: A Brief History of School Choice

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Perhaps it’s the title, but at first glance, Milton Friedman’s 1955 essay, “The Role of Government in Education,” seems unassuming. To many Americans, the role of government in education is self-evident and impregnable. So, given public schools are run by the government, an essay on the government’s role in education seems like it would be both obvious (and boring).

In reality, Friedman’s argument was neither obvious nor boring. In “The Role of Government in Education,” Friedman argued that basic free-market principles—such as competition and consumer freedom—should be reintroduced into the education marketplace.

Friedman’s argument was not necessarily new or radical. For the first eight decades after the American Revolution, parents were the primary drivers of what and how their children learned. According to Market Education, written by the late Andrew Coulson, this “unofficial school choice” later dissolved amidst burgeoning anti-Catholic immigrant sentiment and a massive push for mandatory, state-funded, public education.

By the time Friedman wrote “The Role of Government in Education,” state governments essentially had developed monopolies on education, with children assigned to public schools within the district boundaries where they lived. This iron triangle of public schooling—government administration, compulsion and financing of education—had weakened important market forces and limited parents’ power to control their children’s education. Private schools offered an alternative to public school system, but many low- and middle-income families could not afford to pay both the taxes that support public schools and the tuition required of private schools.

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 >>

So although the history of American education reflects aspects of school choice, education freedom had nearly disappeared by 1955. Children attended their neighborhood public schools even if those schools were a poor fit.

Friedman’s essay argued that parents, not the state, should makes the decisions when it came to their children’s education. Instead of government officials mandating students attend given schools, competition between schools would encourage greater innovation, efficiency, and effectiveness. Parents, untethered from arbitrary school district boundaries, then could vote with their feet. As Friedman put it: “Parents could express their views about schools directly, by withdrawing their children from one school and sending them to another, to a much greater extent than is now possible.”

Friedman’s essay also proposed a voucher program, where the state would take the money that would have been spent to educate students at public schools and give it to parents to cover tuition at a private school of their choice. Fundamentally, he argued to separate the financing of education from the delivery of services.

Friedman’s ideas were first implemented in Wisconsin in 1989 when state Assemblywoman Polly Williams authored the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, —the first modern-day private school choice legislation. The bipartisan legislation enabled low-income minority families to use vouchers to pay for tuition at the city’s private schools.

Later, 18 states and the District of Columbia launched similar voucher programs. The same number of states now offer tax-credit scholarships, which enable individuals and businesses to receive tax credits for donating to nonprofits that fund private school scholarships.

In 2011—dubbed “the year of school choice” because 12 states passed legislation that either created new school choice programs or expanded programs that already existed—Arizona implemented the county’s first education savings account option.

Education savings accounts allow parents to use taxpayer funds to pay for tuition, tutors, textbooks, and other education expenses. Friedman had suggested this as well during a 2003 interview in which he spoke of issuing “partial vouchers.”

Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi, and North Carolina have since followed Arizona’s lead and implemented their own Education Savings Account options.

Around the same time Milwaukee passed the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, public charter schools—another key player in the fight for school choice—started to take off. Public charter schools operate with greater autonomy and at less cost than their traditional public school counterparts. Because they are independent from traditional public school curriculum requirements, charter schools can tailor their environments and curricula to their students’ needs.

Despite these gains, pushback continues. Just last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case that dealt with tax-credit scholarship programs. The case’s ruling, which is expected this summer, could shape the future of the school choice discussion in the United States.

But Friedman’s legacy endures, and this year’s National School Choice Week is a reminder that progress continues, but by no means is the fight for authentic education freedom over yet.

COMMENTARY BY

Jack Rosenwinkel

Jack Rosenwinkel is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.

Lindsey Burke

Lindsey M. Burke researches and writes on federal and state education issues as the Will Skillman fellow in education policy at The Heritage Foundation. Read her research. Twitter: .

Jude Schwalbach

Jude Schwalbach is a research assistant in education policy at The Heritage Foundation.

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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.

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EXCLUSIVE: Google Employees Used Company Resources To Organize Anti-Trump Resistance Events

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EDITORS NOTE: What follows is an excerpt from Peter Hasson’s new book “The Manipulators: Facebook, Google, Twitter, qnd Big Tech’s War on Conservatives” (order here on Amazon).

Google employees interpreted Trump’s election as a terrible outcome that they should have done more to prevent the American people from choosing and something they would work hard to make sure didn’t happen again. Indeed, I obtained documents and communications showing Google employees organizing anti-Trump protests using internal company channels, company time, and company office space.

“If your stomach turns when you consider a Trump presidency, I urge you not to let this moment pass quietly,” one Google employee wrote in an email to coworkers, urging them to attend an anti-Trump protest in San Francisco ten days after Trump’s election.

Another Google employee in March 2017 hosted an anti-Trump resistance event at Google to flood the White House mail room with anti-Trump postcards. “Hi all,” the email began, “I’m participating in #TheIdesofTrump, a national movement to send POTUS a postcard on March 15 expressing opposition to him.” The message stated that employees had reserved a room at Google’s San Francisco headquarters for Google employees to gather and write the anti-Trump postcards. The invitation included the anti-Trump activists’ mission statement:

We the people, in vast numbers, from all corners of the world, will overwhelm the man in his unpopularity and failure. We will show the media and the politicians what standing with him—and against us—means. And most importantly, we will bury the White House in pink slips, all informing Donnie that he’s fired. Each of us—every protester from every march, each congress-calling citizen, every boycotter, volunteer, donor, and petition signer—if each of us writes even a single postcard and we put them all in the mail on the same day, March 15th, well: you do the math.

No alternative fact or Russian translation will explain away our record-breaking, officially-verifiable, warehouse-filling flood of fury.

“I’ll bring the postcards and the stamps,” the employee added. “You just bring your woke selves.” It bears repeating that the employees used their work email addresses, a company listserv, and company office space to organize their anti-Trump activism, because there is absolutely no chance that a Google employee could get away with organizing pro-Trump activism using Google resources on company time. If someone tried, their coworkers would run them out of the company, if their bosses didn’t fire them first.

One Google employee even reported a colleague to human resources for supporting Jordan Peterson’s objection to state-mandated pronoun laws in Canada. “One Googler raised a concern that you appeared to be promoting and defending Jordan Peterson’s comments about transgender pronouns, and expressed concern that this made them feel unsafe at work,” HR told the employee in an email, which noted that other Google employees were also “offended by [your] perceived challenge to our diversity programs.”

COLUMN BY

PETER J. HASSON

Peter J. Hasson is the editor of the investigative group at the Daily Caller News Foundation and the author of “The Manipulators: Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Big Tech’s War on Conservatives.“

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