Waste, Fraud and Abuse – Page 2

Barr and Mueller Eradicating Our Fourth Amendment Rights

February 20, 2019/3 Comments/in Courts & Law, News, Policy, Politics, Regulation, Video, Waste, Fraud and Abuse /by Kelleigh Nelson

“No system of mass surveillance has existed in any society that we know of to this point that has not been abused.” – Edward Snowden

“Legal and bureaucratic impediments to surveillance should be removed.” – Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo

“Entire populations, rather than just individuals, now live under constant surveillance. It’s no longer based on the traditional practice of targeted taps based on some individual suspicion of wrongdoing. It covers phone calls, emails, texts, search history, what you buy, who your friends are, where you go, who you love.” – Edward Snowden

The last thing we need is another swamp creature, but it appears that is what we’re getting with our new Attorney General (AG). Bill Barr is a DC insider who praised Comey, Rosenstein and Mueller during his confirmation hearings — how is President Trump going to drain the swamp if Mueller’s best friend is running the DOJ? Barr and Mueller worked together when Barr was Bush’s attorney general from 1991 to 1993 and Mueller oversaw the department’s criminal division.

During William Barr’s confirmation hearings, Senator Lindsey Graham asked the nominee several questions. Barr said he didn’t think Robert Mueller was on a witch hunt, and thought he’d be fair to the country as a whole. He also said he had no reason to stop Mueller’s investigation or terminate it for cause. Barr told Senator Graham that he was committed to allowing Robert Mueller to finish his job, and that he has a very high opinion of Deputy AG (DAG) Rod Rosenstein. Link

Barr has now asked Rod Rosenstein to stay on for a while, and he has said he would. How special. Fired former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and two other people who have testified to Congress, claim Mr. Rosenstein repeatedly offered to wear a wire when meeting with Mr. Trump. McCabe also stated that he and other officials, including DAG Rosenstein, did headcounts of which cabinet officials might vote to declare the president “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” under the 25^th Amendment. Rosenstein never actually denied McCabe’s claims.

The very suspicion of impropriety should be reason for Rosenstein’s termination.

Barr and Second Amendment

William Barr served as the 77th United States Attorney General from 1991 to 1993 during the first Bush administration. He is also a past employee of the CIA. The Bushes represent the establishment globalists in their party and rather than vote for their party’s nominee in 2016, they voted for Hillary Clinton.

As I stated in a previous article, William Barr exhibited anti-Second Amendment policies in his 1991 confirmation hearings. Both Gun Owners of America and Dr. John Lott, President of the Crime Research Prevention Center, shared similar sentiments of worry with Barr’s past confirmation statements.

Video here:

Asset Forfeiture

It is also disturbing that Barr has been a big fan of taking people’s property through civil asset forfeiture without a conviction. Many poor people in our country have cash taken from them and then the government says, “Prove to us where you got the cash and then you can get it back,” the burden is on the individual. Civil Asset Forfeiture is a terrible thing and William Barr is a big fan.

Government Theft of Promis Software

In October 1991, Barr appointed then retired Democratic Chicago judge Nicholas Bua as special counsel in the Inslaw scandal. Few people understand the full ramifications of Promis software, and the undetectable spying apparatus placed in foreign computers. In 1989, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jack Brooks, D-TX, launched a three-year investigation into the Inslaw affair. In the resulting report, the Committee suggested that among others, Edwin Meese, while presidential counselor and later as attorney general, and Democrat D. Lowell Jensen a former assistant and deputy attorney general and former US district judge in San Francisco, conspired to steal PROMIS software from Bill Hamilton’s company, Inslaw.

Bua’s 1993 report found the DOJ of no wrong doing in the matter, despite a 12-year lawsuit by Inslaw, regarding the government theft of their software. One journalist, Danny Casolaro, died as he attempted to tell the story and boxes of documents relating to the case were destroyed, stolen, or conveniently “lost” by the DOJ. Software piracy, conspiracy, cover-up, stonewalling, covert action…just another decade at the corrupt DOJ.

Ruby Ridge

Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for AG nominee William Barr focused heavily on Barr’s views on Special Counsel Robert Mueller. But nobody asked about Barr’s legal crusade for blanket immunity for federal agents who killed American citizens.

Barr was responsible for both the U.S. Marshals Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, two federal agencies whose misconduct at Ruby Ridge “helped to weaken the bond of trust that must exist between ordinary Americans and our law enforcement agencies,” according to a 1995 Senate Judiciary Committee report.

The family had come under federal siege because of Randy’s refusal to become an informant within the Aryan Nation white supremacist group. Randy had been manipulated by an ATF undercover operative named Kenneth Fadeley into selling a shotgun with a sawed-off barrel. Eight months after that transaction, two of Fadeley’s comrades in that detestable organization demanded that Randy become an informant, threatening his home and family if he didn’t cooperate. Ruby Ridge was considered a kill zone.

In a questionnaire by the Judicial Committee, Barr was asked to disclose his past work including pro bono activities “serving the disadvantaged.” The “disadvantaged” that Barr spent the most time helping was FBI agent Lon Horiuchi who slayed an Idaho mother holding her baby in 1992. Barr spent two weeks organizing former Attorneys General and others to support “an FBI sniper in defending against criminal charges in connection with the Ruby Ridge incident.” Barr also “assisted in framing legal arguments advanced… in the district court and the subsequent appeal to the Ninth Circuit,” he told the committee.

U.S. marshals trespassed on Weaver’s land and killed his 14-year-old son, Sammy, and his dog. The following day, FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi killed his wife, Vicki, as she was standing in the cabin doorway holding her 10-month-old baby. Horiuchi had previously shot Randy Weaver in the back after he stepped out of the cabin to collect the body of his son. The suspects were never given a warning or a chance to surrender and had taken no action against FBI agents. Weaver survived.

In August of 1995, the Justice Department paid $3.1 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit from the Weaver family. In 1998, they paid Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt $4.5 million for a 26-year false imprisonment and false testimony against him by an FBI informant.

Government Surveillance

The fourth amendment originally enforced the idea that each man’s home is his castle, secure from unreasonable search and seizure by the government. The Patriot Act was the destruction of American citizen privacy. Both Mueller and Barr are big brothers who love the “all-seeing eye.”

While serving as attorney general under former President George H.W. Bush in 1992, Barr directed the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to collect bulk phone data on millions of people, most of whom weren’t even suspected of a crime. This program laid the groundwork for the National Security Agency’s phone record collection authorized by the Patriot Act a decade later, a misnomer if there ever was one. Barr continued to be a cheerleader for warrantless surveillance even after the PATRIOT Act’s passage. During congressional testimony in 2003, he called the bill a “major step forward.”

He went on to say that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the law that authorizes foreign surveillance and has been abused to surveil, “remains too restrictive” because it “still requires that the government establish probable cause that an individual is either a ‘foreign power’ or an ‘agent of a foreign power.’” In other words, Barr objects to the idea that the government should need a warrant before it can spy on citizens. Link

Surveillance and the Patriot Act

The Patriot Act permits FBI agents to write their own search warrants for business records, and it has been used to induce the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to issue warrants on a made-up basis to read emails and listen to telephone calls in real time. The members of Congress who voted for it were largely unaware of the liberties they were sacrificing. None of them ever read it.

Both the Patriot Act and the USA Freedom Act unconstitutionally do away with the probable cause requirement for warrants. Those two laws permit the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to issue warrants based on the standard of “governmental needs” rather than probable cause. This is a profoundly unconstitutional standard, and one that has resulted in spying on all people all the time.

The Patriot Act vastly expanded the surveillance potential of the FBI, the CIA and the NSA among other intelligence agencies. The US government contracted with Acxiom, Lockheed, Booz Allen Hamilton and many others to build new mass surveillance programs. One program was called Total Information Awareness (TIA), which was an operation where the FBI and other agencies would build profiles, like Acxiom’s, on millions of law-abiding Americans. Link

Mr. Barr strongly supports the Patriot Act which violates every American’s fourth amendment right to privacy. The Constitution provides us with more protection and safety than the surveillance state ever will.

An NSA Whistle-Blower tells all in this video to filmmaker Laura Poitras. She profiled William Binney, a 32-year veteran of the National Security Agency who helped design a top-secret program he says is broadly collecting Americans’ personal data.

Following the June 2013 leak of documents detailing the NSA practice of collecting telephone metadata on millions of Americans’ telephone calls, former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper was accused of perjury for telling a congressional committee hearing that the NSA does not collect any type of data on millions of Americans. He escaped prosecution because the five-year Statute of Limitations ran out.

Birds of a Feather

Barr and Mueller are birds of a feather. Mueller has claimed one case to validate spying on all of America. It was a Supreme Court case and the tracing of a single phone call to a single robber. Thus, the Supreme Court held that phone metadata is not protected by the fourth amendment. Mueller has repeatedly used this. The case is Smith v. Maryland, which held that people did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy regarding the numbers they call, because they willingly give up those numbers to the company to connect their call.

And so, because the Supreme Court approved the collection of one robber’s phone records in 1979, Mueller insists it meant it was reasonable for FBI and NSA to collect and aggregate the phone records for every American today and forever. Link

Mueller implicitly argues that the perpetual and ubiquitous data collection of the digital and telephonic communications of law-abiding Americans is constitutional. For thorough documentation of same, see Louisiana State Senator John Milkovich’s book, Robert Mueller, Errand Boy for the New World Order.

Conclusion

Rand Paul opposed the confirmation of William Barr. He said, “He’s been the chief advocate for warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens. I think that the Fourth Amendment should protect your phone calls and your bank information. People shouldn’t be allowed to look at it without a warrant.” Perhaps this one Senator knows an inside player when he sees one.

Surely, we’ve all heard foolish folks say, “Well, I have nothing to hide, I’m not a terrorist.” Edward Snowden said, “Arguing that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”

Americans do not understand freedom or the Fourth Amendment of our unalienable Bill of Rights. The Jews of Europe had nothing to hide either, but it didn’t stop the Gestapo, and neither did it stop the East German Stasi. The NSA’s algorithms and extensive databases make it far more effective than the Stasi ever dreamed of being.

S139 reauthorizes the FISA for six years through 2023 which governs electronic surveillance of foreign terrorism suspects. The Senate passed it on January 18, 2018 by a vote of 65 to 34. Although put in place to gather intel on foreign targets, it has been used to spy on U.S. citizens. The bill provides provisions to protect the privacy of American citizens, but given the track record of intel agencies, it is unlikely they will follow these rules. Will our new AG make sure they do?

Attorney Joe DiGenova believes William Barr is going to be the catalyst who will clean out the filth from the DOJ. I hope he is right, and I am wrong. P.S. Remember during the Trump campaign how NewsWithViews articles had virus warnings appear when you opened them? There was never a virus, it was an attempt by google to keep people from reading truth. Now, Google has removed their ads from NewsWithViews because they don’t like the content of the articles. Those ads help to pay for the cost of running the website. They know that, and that’s why they’ve pulled their ads. We need your help now more than ever. Please tell your friends to sign up to receive the daily emails, and remember NewsWithViews when you pay your monthly bills.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is from Pixabay.

In America Today, We Plunder and Call It Good

February 20, 2019/0 Comments/in Economy, News, Policy, Politics, Taxes, Waste, Fraud and Abuse /by The Daily Signal

Frederic Bastiat, a French economist and member of the French National Assembly, lived from 1801 to 1850. He had great admiration for our country, except for our two faults—slavery and tariffs.

He said: “Look at the United States. There is no country in the world where the law is kept more within its proper domain: the protection of every person’s liberty and property.”

If Bastiat were alive today, he would not have that same level of admiration. The U.S. has become what he fought against for most of his short life.

Bastiat observed that “when plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”

You might ask, “What did Bastiat mean by ‘plunder’?”

Plunder is when someone forcibly takes the property of another. That’s private plunder. What he truly railed against was legalized plunder, and he told us how to identify it.

He said: “See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.”

That could describe today’s American laws. We enthusiastically demand that the Congress forcibly use one American to serve the purposes of another American.

You say: “Williams, that’s insulting. It’s no less than saying that we Americans support a form of slavery!”

What then should we call it when two-thirds to three-quarters of a $4 trillion-plus federal budget can be described as Congress taking the property of one American and giving it to another to whom it does not belong?

Where do you think Congress gets the billions upon billions of dollars for business and farmer handouts?

What about the billions handed out for Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, housing allowances, and thousands of other handouts?

There’s no Santa Claus or tooth fairy giving Congress the money, and members of Congress are not spending their own money. The only way Congress can give one American $1 is to first take it from another American.

What if I privately took the property of one American to give to another American to help him out? I’m guessing and hoping you’d call it theft and seek to jail me. When Congress does the same thing, it’s still theft. The only difference is that it’s legalized theft.

However, legality alone does not establish morality. Slavery was legal; was it moral? Nazi, Stalinist, and Maoist purges were legal, but were they moral?

Some argue that Congress gets its authority to bypass its enumerated powers from the general welfare clause. There are a host of proofs that the Framers had no such intention.

James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” wrote, “If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one.”

Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Our tenet ever was … that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated.”

Rep. William Drayton of South Carolina asked in 1828, “If Congress can determine what constitutes the general welfare and can appropriate money for its advancement, where is the limitation to carrying into execution whatever can be effected by money?”

What about our nation’s future?

Alexis de Tocqueville is said to have predicted, “The American republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”

We long ago began ignoring Bastiat’s warning when the federal government was just a tiny fraction of gross domestic product—3 percent, as opposed to today’s 20 percent: “If you don’t take care, what begins by being an exception tends to become general, to multiply itself, and to develop into a veritable system.”

Moral Americans are increasingly confronted with Bastiat’s dilemma: “When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.”

COMMENTARY BY

Walter E. Williams

Walter E. Williams is a columnist for The Daily Signal and a professor of economics at George Mason University. Twitter: @WE_Williams.

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

Google Allegedly Monetizing Child Erotica on YouTube

February 20, 2019/1 Comment/in Courts & Law, Must Read, Policy, Politics, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse /by National Center on Sexual Exploitation

The National Center on Sexual Exploitation is calling on YouTube to remove all pornography from its platform, following yet another disturbing account of apparently monetized child erotica on YouTube. This is one of the reasons Google has been placed on NCOSE’s 2019 Dirty Dozen List which names 12 mainstream facilitators of sexual exploitation.

Prominent YouTuber MattsWhatItIs made a video on February 17^th, explaining his discovery.

In the description, he writes:

Over the past 48 hours I have discovered a wormhole into a soft-core pedophilia ring on Youtube. Youtube’s recommended algorithm is facilitating pedophiles’ ability to connect with each-other, trade contact info, and link to actual CP in the comments. I can consistently get access to it from vanilla, never-before-used Youtube accounts via innocuous videos in less than ten minutes, in sometimes less than five clicks.. Additionally, I have video evidence that these videos are being monetized by Youtube, brands like McDonald’s, Lysol, Disney, Reese’s, and more… Youtube is facilitating this problem. It doesn’t matter that they flag videos and turn off the comments, these videos are still being monetized, and more importantly they are still available for users to watch.

This is not the first time YouTube has come under fire for hosting sexually exploitive content. In April 2018 it was criticized for allowing a pornographic ad to appear on a trending YouTube video, and in November 2017 it was revealed that YouTube’s flagging system to prevent child victimization on its platform was reportedly malfunctioning for a year. Even the YouTubeKids app has been infiltrated with disturbing and often sexual content.

It’s an open secret that Google’s YouTube is a hub for child erotica and is used by pedophiles to network. It’s time for YouTube to make solving this issue their number one corporate priority. Too often, YouTube waits for users or the media to flag degrading and exploitive content on its platform. And then once the media buzz dies down, YouTube reverts to its whack-a-mole approach instead of making sustained improvements.

We know that the technological solutions exist that would be able to prevent this material from being posted and it would save countless man-hours that YouTube currently uses by employing human reviewers.

For instance, Dr. Michael Holm, Chief Data Scientist at Picnix, Inc., asserts “Our team is fully capable of delivering an effective, scalable AI solution for pornographic video detection, building on our seminal patent pending Iris Program (www.meetiris.ai).”

We implore Google and YouTube to collaborate with this company, and others, to find real solutions instead of putting a bandaid on it and waiting for the next blow up.

Tweet at YouTube telling them to remove all exploitative content from their platform.

Sign the petition for YouTube to remove pornographic content from their site.

Story about Unaccompanied Alien Children in Florida Shelter is Humorous and Infuriating

February 20, 2019/0 Comments/in Featured, Immigration, Policy, Politics, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse /by Ann Corcoran

This is a story from UPI last week that has been languishing in my posting queue.

It’s a longish story, but worth reading if you want to know more about life (the good life) in a shelter for the “children” who have come across our border illegally and unaccompanied.

Unaccompanied alien teens — Here come the Unaccompanied Alien Children!

I’m only going to bring your attention to a couple of points, one that made me laugh, the other that should infuriate you as it did me!

The point that makes me laugh is this!

The Office of Refugee Resettlement shelter (never mind that they are not refugees!) houses up to 1,600 youths older than 13. However, in almost every paragraph (there are 53 paragraphs!) in the story the teens are referred to as “children.” In fact, the word “child” or “children” is used a whopping 63 times (twice in some paragraphs) while the word “teen” or “teenager” is never used, not even once!

Just that one little linguistic trick is meant to direct your thinking so that you imagine hundreds of little children missing mommy and daddy and crying themselves to sleep each night.

And it infuriates me to read that 670 of the “children” are 17 and older and as they age-out at 18, a big hunt begins to find them “sponsors” to take charge of them so that they aren’t turned over to ICE.

Here are the opening paragraphs of the UPI story,

Feb. 13 (UPI) — A month after federal officials removed the last child from a facility in Texas, 1,600 unaccompanied migrant children are being housed at a so-called temporary emergency shelter in Florida.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services invited UPI and other media on Wednesday to tour the facility in Homestead, Fla., which is located in a former Job Corps facility near the Homestead Air Reserve Base. It is used as a shelter for what HHS calls “unaccompanied alien children,” or UAC — migrants between the ages of 13 and 17 who have no lawful immigration status and no legal guardians able to provide care in the United States.
Since March 2018 more than 6,000 children have been placed at the site and about 4,450 have been discharged to what the department considers suitable sponsors — generally a parent or some other relative — in the United States, according to HHS.
At the time of UPI’s visit, 1,575 children were being sheltered at the facility — 1,143 males and 432 females.

Now check this out! 43% of the “children” are between 17 and 18 years old! (Or, they could be older, see my next post!)

The south campus houses 905 children between the ages of 13 and 16, including 634 males and 271 females, while all 17-year-olds at the facility live on the north campus, which houses 509 males and 161 females.

In case you wondered what happens when the “children” turn 18:

Three months before a “child” turns 18, the sponsor hunt begins in earnest.

Children who turn 18 while in custody at a shelter are considered undocumented immigrants and are released to authorities, Weber said.
There were 21 such cases at the Homestead facility last month and 90 in the past year, the Homestead program coordinator said.
A team of case managers at the facility focuses on finding sponsors for children within three months of their 18th birthday and the program coordinator receives daily reports regarding their status in the two weeks before those children turn 18.

Read the whole story, it is worth your time.

Remember, YOU are paying for all of this! And, more are on the way! You MUST scream at your elected officials—‘Enough is enough!’—and do it at every opportunity! Today, you might tell the President (again!) by going to the White House comment page and voicing your opinion.

EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column with images is republished with permission. The featured image is by Pixabay.

The Brouhaha Over Plastic Straws

February 20, 2019/0 Comments/in Commentary, Policy, Politics, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse /by Tim Bryce

Over the last few months, the subject of plastic straws has become a political football, brought about by Democrats who contend they are not ecologically friendly. Not surprising, California was the first state to bring it to our attention. Since then, the subject has surfaced in a handful of cities here in Florida, most notably St. Petersburg, a stronghold for the Democrats. Last December, the St. Pete City Council passed a bill banning plastic straws, not the voters. This is related to their ban on Styrofoam which is commonly used by restaurants to save leftovers. As of this moment, you can only get a plastic straw in St. Pete if you ask for one, but the straws will be totally banned by 2020, and replaced by paper straws.

In my youth, I remember paper straws wouldn’t last any longer than a small carton of milk. As to soft drinks, twelve ounces and up, forget it, they’re useless. People would rather drink a soft drink directly out of a can, bottle or glass than using a paper straw.

The big question though, is the plastic straw a genuine problem? St. Petersburg is respectable in size and is listed as the fifth most populous city in Florida. During the winter months the city probably doubles in size due to the influx of “snowbird” tourists who enjoy the beaches and warm weather. St. Pete is also home to the Tampa Bay Rays, our MLB franchise. As such, there is a multitude of dining facilities in the area, large and small, all presumably providing straws to patrons.

The St. Pete council believes the plastic straw is an ecological threat to the beaches, but there is little, if any, proof that this is true. This begs the question, is this a political fad or is there any legitimate science behind it? So far, the answer appears to be “No.” It is reminiscent of Obamacare and the “Green New Deal” legislation introduced by Democrat-Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) which is a laundry list of items to create a Socialist Utopia, but lacking specifics, such as the costs to implement her program and precisely how it will improve the environment.

Because of this, the plastic straw has become an iconic symbol of Democrats pushing their agenda without any science behind it. Such lunacy would not play well in corporate America where you must quantify the return on investment of a proposal. In other words, the Democrats are weak on doing their homework and are acting on impulse as opposed to fact. Instead, they package their ideas and allow the news media to carry the pitch to the public. Even more disturbing is the public is not truly being consulted on this issue which is commonly used by everyone.

Fortunately, cooler heads are prevailing at the state level in Florida where the legislature is drafting bills to prevent cities from outlawing plastic straws. If passed, this will supersede the authority of the municipal level.

This rhubarb over something as simple as a plastic straw is much ado about nothing. The Democrats have simply not made their case and makes me wonder, don’t we have better things to do? It also disturbs me our government officials will entertain any hairbrain idea that comes along, particularly when it is not thought through and articulated properly. They could probably be more productive by counting the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.

We could save a lot of time, money and effort if legislators could learn to draft bills more intelligently, such as how businesses write feasibility studies, but I guess that is too much to ask.

To help in this regard, my next column will be, “The Elements of a Good Feasibility Study,” which is intended to provide insight in the preparation of an intelligible proposal. Until then…

Keep the Faith!

EDITORS NOTE: This Bryce Is Right column with images is republished with permission. All trademarks both marked and unmarked belong to their respective companies. The featured image is by Pixabay.

IIhan Omar & Co. Were Elected Because of Their Racism, Not In Spite Of It.

February 20, 2019/0 Comments/in Commentary, Policy, Politics, Religion, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse /by Robert Heller

If you are wondering why the leadership in the Democrat Party have given Ilhan Omar and Rashids Tlaib important committee assignments in the House of Representatives; or why all of the Democrats running for president are silent in the face of the Antisemitic and even anti American statements of these two Congresswomen; or why they continue to hold their seats in important Congressional committees and will retain them, read the illuminating article below by Caroline Glick.

If you are a moderate Democrat it will bring you to tears.

Caroline Glick: IIhan Omar & Co. Were Elected Because of Their Racism, Not In Spite Of It.

Rep. Ilhan Omar is an antisemite and, as the actions of the congressional Democratic leadership last week made clear, hating Jews is a perfectly acceptable position in today’s Democratic Party.

Consider the chronology of events. Last month, Rep. Steven King (R-IA) was stripped of his committee assignments following a statement he made to the New York Times where he seemed to legitimize white supremacism. (King insists his remark was deliberately taken out of context).

Last week, Rep. Omar tweeted another statement that was inarguably antisemitic. Omar argued that the only reason that Congressional Republicans seek to censure her and her colleague Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) for their anti-Jewish bigotry is because Jewish money dictates their actions.

That is, she defended herself against allegations of antisemitism by proving, yet again, that she is an antisemite.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by Pixabay.

The Abuse Summit: It’s Only the Beginning

February 20, 2019/0 Comments/in Healthcare, Policy, Religion, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse /by The Catholic Thing

Robert Royal: People are happy that McCarrick has finally been defrocked, but now we need to deal with other abusers and enablers.

February is not high tourist season in Rome. Skies are gray and temperatures low. St. Peter’s Square is relatively empty. But journalists filled the nearby Press Office earlier this week – more, according to one veteran, than since the death of St. John Paul II –because of the summit on the sex abuse crisis, which begins this evening with meetings between abuse survivors and participants, and continues Thursday through Saturday with formal sessions, parts of which will be streamed on the Vatican website. A video of the opening press briefing with remarks by Cardinal Cupich, Archbishop Scicluna, and other key figures is available by clicking here.

To be frank, it’s hard to say why so many journalists are here since no one, including Church spokesmen, expects that anything very dramatic will happen over the next few days – at least not in the formal sessions. What happens outside and around them, however, may be a different matter.

When the summit was announced last September, partly because of papal missteps in handling abuse cases in Chile, it seemed that the Church was going to take some large steps forward. There have been many smaller steps for years in many places around the world, everything from easier reporting mechanisms to better human formation in seminaries to the unprecedented laicization last weekend of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

Expectations ran high, not least because the Holy Father asked the American bishops, during their annual November meeting, not to vote on ways to hold bishops accountable – whether they are abusers themselves, like McCarrick, or covered up abuse by people under their authority. They were told to wait until a uniform approach could be developed in February when many of the presidents of bishops’ conferences and heads of religious orders would gather together in Rome.

But Vatican spokesmen have more recently been encouraging people to lower expectations; and the focus this week is quite different: “The Protection of Minors in the Church.” That, of course, is a worthy goal. In many parts of the Catholic world, rules are in place, but there hasn’t been serious follow through. If the next few days bring proven practices to new places, that will be all to the good.

But it’s also much less than we were hoping for. And in America, we’ve already come a long way towards responding to the part of the abuse crisis that involves priests. We have been expecting – and had been told – that the next phase would be figuring out how to hold bishops accountable. That’s been a continuing problem, not only in America, but in Chile, Honduras, Australia, Europe, the pope’s own Argentina, and the Vatican itself.

People are happy that McCarrick has been expelled from the priesthood, for example, but they want to know how it was possible for a man widely rumored to be an abuser to have moved up in the hierarchy and eventually become cardinal-archbishop of the capital of the most powerful nation on earth. Three popes and dozens of Vatican officials are now part of the story. Pope Francis has promised an investigation into the files. It’s almost a year later and we’ve heard nothing of that, not even whether there’s an active inquiry underway.

Meanwhile, a new book, which will be officially released Thursday, the first day of the summit here in Rome, claims that 80 percent of the upper echelons of the Vatican are gay. Some remain celibate, others act out in various ways, but they form what, in local parlance, is called “the Parish,” a network of people who either cover for one another or, given their own inclinations, look the other way.

Or at least that’s what Frederic Martel, the author, says. Martel is a gay activist in France and his motives in publishing this book at this particular moment are suspect – as are some of his wilder claims. But he seems to have conducted thousands of interviews with various figures from high-placed Cardinals to Swiss Guards, and quotes some by name.

The excerpts that have appeared so far raise as many questions as they answer. But the whole matter of the gay presence in the Church and its role as an enabler – which the summit organizers are avoiding, indeed are denying is a factor – will not go away.

Martel says (and there’s no reason to doubt it since there have been no denials forthcoming) that his access to the Vatican was facilitated by Msgr. Battista Ricca, who is Director of the Papal Residence (i.e., Casa Santa Marta) and an official with the Vatican Bank. Ricca was widely known to have had a boyfriend or two when he was a Vatican diplomat in Uruguay. And he was caught in an elevator with a boy prostitute.

It was in response to a reporter’s question about his past on the plane returning from World Youth Day in 2013 that Pope Francis famously remarked, ““If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”

But it’s partly the pope’s judgment in such matters that has raised further questions. Not only the bishop he wrongly defended in Chile, but even recent appointments like that of Gustavo Zanchetta – a bishop accused of abusing seminarians in Argentina and a friend of the pope’s – to a specially created post at one of the Vatican financial institutions. He had to be removed while investigations are going on.

And then there’s the recent naming of Irish-American Cardinal Kevin Farrell to the position of camerlengo, the official who declares the pope officially dead and then runs the Vatican, with limited powers, during the interregnum, the period between the death of one pope and the election of another.

Farrell lived for six years in the same residence with then-Cardinal McCarrick and claimed – to widespread skepticism – that he had no knowledge of, had never even heard rumors about, McCarrick’s outrages. It’s curious that the pope would pick a potentially questionable figure for such a sensitive post.

All of this suggests that what goes on in the synod hall this week is the merest beginning to what will continue to be a large and troubling process. More on all that in coming days.

COLUMN BY

Robert Royal

Dr. Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing, and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent book is A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century, published by Ignatius Press. The God That Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West, is now available in paperback from Encounter Books.

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column with images is republished with permission. © 2019 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. The featured image is by Pixabay.

Trump Administration Leads Effort To Decriminalize Homosexuality Around The World

February 19, 2019/2 Comments/in Courts & Law, Featured, Policy, Politics, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse /by The Daily Caller

The Trump administration, led by U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, is reportedly launching an effort to decriminalize homosexuality in dozens of countries across the world.

The administration is launching the campaign Tuesday evening in Berlin and will fly in a number of European LGBT activists to discuss how to end laws in countries that make it illegal to be gay, according to officials who spoke with NBC News. The campaign will focus its efforts on countries in the Middle East, Africa, and the Caribbean.

“It is concerning that, in the 21st century, some 70 countries continue to have laws that criminalize LGBTI status or conduct,” a U.S. official said.

The campaign was at least partially launched because Iran recently hanged a man due to his homosexuality — an incident that Grenell, who is openly gay, slammed publicly in commentary for the German news outlet BILD.

“Politicians, the U.N., democratic governments, diplomats, and good people everywhere should speak up – and loudly,” Grenell wrote. “Barbaric public executions are all too common in a country where consensual homosexual relationships are criminalized and punishable by flogging and death.”

In November, Grenell called out the United Nations General Assembly for overwhelmingly voting to accuse Israel of human rights violations, suggesting the assembly should instead vote on whether or not being gay is a crime.

“It will out the human rights hypocrites,” he tweeted.

According to officials, the administration will likely be working with the United Nations, along with other international organizations, in its efforts to abolish the criminalization of homosexuality.

The Daily Caller reported Monday that Grenell is also one of three people being considered for UN ambassador after former State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert dropped out of the running.

Grenell did not return a request for comment for this article.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders launched his 2020 presidential bid on Tuesday by accusing the president of being “a homophobe,” while gay rights organizations have accused the Trump administration of actively engaging in hate against gay people.

COLUMN BY

Amber Athey

White House Correspondent. Follow Amber on Twitter.

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

Here’s A List Of Hoax ‘Hate Crimes’ In The Trump Era

February 19, 2019/0 Comments/in Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Social Issues, Video, Waste, Fraud and Abuse /by The Daily Caller

Liberal actor Jussie Smollett is accused of staging a racist and anti-gay attack on himself, which Smollett blamed on supporters of President Donald Trump.

Smollett’s alleged fake “hate crime” appears to be the latest instance of liberals manufacturing hate crimes for attention in the Trump era.

The Daily Caller News Foundation compiled below some of the most outrageous fake hate crimes since Trump was elected, in rough chronological order:

ANTI-MUSLIM HATE CRIME IN MICHIGAN TURNS OUT TO BE A HOAX (NOV. 2016)

A Muslim woman at the University of Michigan received national attention from national outlets like The Washington Post in November 2016 after she claimed a drunk 20-something man threatened to light her on fire if she didn’t remove her hijab. The university condemned the “hateful attack,” which turned out to be a hoax.

BISEXUAL STUDENT FAKES TRUMP-INSPIRED HATE CRIME (NOV. 2016)

Taylor Volk, an openly bisexual senior at North Park University claimed to be the target of hateful notes and emails following Trump’s election in November 2016. Volk told NBC News that “I just want them to stop.” But the “them” referenced by Volk turned out to be herself, as the whole thing was fabricated.

GAS STATION RACISM GOES VIRAL — THEN POLICE DEBUNK IT (NOV. 2016)

Philadelphia woman Ashley Boyer claimed in November 2016 that she was harassed at a gas station by white, Trump-supporting males, one of whom pulled a weapon on her. Boyer claimed that the men “proceeded to talk about the election and how they’re glad they won’t have to deal with n—–s much longer.” Boyer deleted her post after it went viral and claimed the men had been caught and were facing criminal charges. Local police debunked her account.

WHITE MEN ROB MUSLIM WOMAN OF HER HIJAB AND WALLET — EXCEPT IT NEVER HAPPENED (NOV. 2016)

An 18-year-old Muslim woman in Louisiana claimed in November 2016 that two white men, one of whom was wearing a Trump hat, attacked and robbed her, taking her wallet and hijab while yelling racial slurs. She later admitted to the Lafayette Police Department that she made the whole thing up.

CHURCH ORGANIST VANDALIZES OWN CHURCH (NOV. 2016)

A church organist was arrested in May 2017 after he was found responsible for spray-painting a swastika, an anti-gay slur and the words “Heil Trump” on his own church in November 2016. When the story first broke, media outlets tied the hoax to Trump’s election. “The offensive graffiti at St. David’s is among numerous incidents that have occurred in the wake of Trump’s Election Day win,” The Washington Post reported at the time.

“DRUNK WHITE MEN” ATTACK MUSLIM WOMAN IN STORY THAT ALSO NEVER HAPPENED (DEC. 2016)

Another 18-year-old Muslim woman, this time in New York, was the subject of breathless headlines in December 2016 after she claimed to have been attacked by a group of Donald Trump supporters on a New York subway while onlookers did nothing. The woman, Yasmin Seweid, would go on to confess that she made the whole thing up.

WHITE GUY SETS HIS OWN CAR ON FIRE, PAINTS RACIAL SLUR ON HIS OWN GARAGE (DEC. 2016)

Denton, Texas, resident David Williams set his own car on fire and painted “n***** lovers” on his home’s garage, in an apparent attempt to stage a hate crime. Local police investigated the arson as a hate crime. Williams and his wife, Jenny, collected more than $5,000 from Good Samaritans via a GoFundMe page before the hoax was exposed.

PRANKSTER TRICKS LIBERAL JOURNALIST INTO SPREADING ANTI-TRUMP HOAX (DEC. 2016)

As tales of Trump-inspired “hate crimes” were spread far and wide by liberal journalists after Trump’s election, one online prankster decided to test just easy it was to fool journalists. The prankster sent Mic.com writer Sarah Harvard a fictitious story in which a Native American claimed to have been harassed by an alleged Trump supporter who thought she was Mexican. Despite no evidence backing up the claim, Harvard spread the fake story, emails the prankster shared with The Daily Caller showed.

STUDENT WRITES ANTI-MUSLIM GRAFFITI ON HIS OWN DOOR (FEB. 2017)

A Muslim student at Beloit College wrote anti-Muslim graffiti on his own dorm room door. The student was reportedly motivated by a desire to seek attention after a Jewish student was targeted with an anti-Semitic note.

ISRAELI MAN BEHIND ANTI-SEMITIC BOMB THREATS IN THE U.S. (APRIL 2017)

Media outlets didn’t wait to find out who was behind a string of bomb threats targeting synagogues and Jewish schools before linking the threats to Trump. A U.S.-Israeli man was charged in April 2017 and indicted in February 2018 for the threats. A former reporter for The Intercept was also charged in March 2017 with making several copycat threats.

HOAX AT ST. OLAF (MAY 2017)

Students at St. Olaf college in Minnesota staged protests and boycotted classes in May 2017 after racist notes targeting black students were found around campus, earning coverage in national media outlets like The Washington Post. It later came out that a black student was responsible for the racist notes. The student carried out the hoax in order to “draw attention to concerns about the campus climate,” the university announced.

FAKE HATE AT AIR FORCE ACADEMY GOES VIRAL (SEPT. 2017)

The Air Force Academy was thrown into turmoil in September 2017 when horrific racist notes were found at the academy’s preparatory school. “Go home n***er,” read one of the notes. The superintendent, Lt. Gen. Jay B. Silveria, went viral with an impassioned speech addressing the racist notes.

Two months later, authorities determined that one of the students targeted by the notes was also the person responsible for writing them.

K-STATE FAKE HATE CRIME (NOV. 2017)

A student at Kansas State University filed a police report in November 2017 over racist graffiti left on his car. “Go Home N***** Boy” and “Whites Only,” read the racist graffiti, which the the student later admitted to writing himself.

RACIST GRAFFITI CARRIED OUT BY NON-WHITE STUDENT (NOV. 2017)

Another instance of racist graffiti that same month also turned out to be a hoax. A Missouri high school investigated after racial slurs were left on a bathroom mirror in November 2017, only to find that the student responsible was “non-white.”

WAITER FAKES NOTE CALLING HIMSELF A TERRORIST (JULY 2018)

Texas waiter Khalil Cavil went viral after posting a Facebook picture of a racist note that he claimed a customer had left on the receipt, in lieu of a tip. The note described Cavil as a “terrorist.” Saltgrass Steak House, where Cavil worked, initially banned the customers for life, before their investigation revealed that the waiter had faked the racist note. “I did write it,” Cavil later admitted. “I don’t have an explanation. I made a mistake. There is no excuse for what I did.”

WAITRESS FAKES RACIST NOTE, BLAMES LAW ENFORCEMENT (JULY 2018)

A Texas waitress apologized in July 2018 after blaming local law enforcement for an offensive note targeting Mexicans. She later admitted to writing the note herself.

NEW YORK WOMAN’S HATE CRIME THAT WASN’T (SEPT. 2018)

A New York woman was charged in September 2018 after police determined she fabricated a story about white teens yelling racial slurs at her and leaving a racist note on her car.

STUDENT FAKED RACIST NOTES (DEC. 2018)

Several racist notes at Drake University were actually the work of one of the students who had been targeted by them. “The fact that the actions of the student who has admitted guilt were propelled by motives other than hate does not minimize the worry and emotional harm they caused, but should temper fears,” university president Marty Martin said afterwards.

THE COVINGTON CATASTROPHE (JAN. 2019)

National media outlets pounced on a selectively edited video from the March for Life that showed Native American activist Nathan Phillips beating a drum in front of a boisterous group of boys from Covington Catholic High School.

The exterior of Covington Catholic High School Dennis Griffin stadium is pictured in Park Hills, Kentucky, U.S., January 23, 2019. REUTERS/Madalyn McGarvey

Phillips originally told The Washington Post the students swarmed him while he was preparing to leave the Indigenous People’s March scheduled for the same day. Phillips originally said one student, who later identified himself as high school junior Nick Sandmann, blocked his path from leaving as he tried to do so. The extended video shows that wasn’t the case: Phillips approached the high school boys during their cheers, not the other way around. Some of the people with Phillips were directing racially charged language at the students, not the other way around.

Phillips told a second variation of his story to the Detroit Free Press. Phillips claimed he was playing the role of peacemaker by getting between the students and four “old black individuals,” whom he claimed the students were attacking. “They were in the process of attacking these four black individuals,” Phillip tolds the Michigan paper. “I was there and I was witnessing all of this … As this kept on going on and escalating, it just got to a point where you do something or you walk away, you know? You see something that is wrong and you’re faced with that choice of right or wrong.”

“These young men were beastly and these old black individuals was their prey, and I stood in between them and so they needed their pounds of flesh and they were looking at me for that,” he added. Extended video shows that account also isn’t accurate. The four individuals Phillips referenced were members of the Black Hebrew Israelites and they launched racist and anti-gay slurs at the high school students, not the other way around.

WATCH:

BONUS: ANTI-SEMITIC VANDAL EXPOSED AS DEMOCRATIC ACTIVIST (NOV. 2018)

Anti-Semitic vandalism in New York City turned out to be the work of a Democratic activist, according to police. It wasn’t a hoax — the anti-Semitic vandalism was real — but the suspect wasn’t the right-winger some had assumed him to be. The man police arrested, based on surveillance footage, was 26-year-old James Polite, who had actually interned for City Hall on anti-hate issues.

BONUS II: TRUMP-INSPIRED RACIST BLAZE AT BLACK CHURCH WAS CARRIED OUT BY BLACK CHURCH-GOER (NOV. 2016)

This hoax occurred one week before Trump was elected, but TheDCNF is including it as a bonus because it was so egregious. Leftist media outlets ran headlines like “A Black Church Burned in the Name of Trump” after a black church in Greenville, Mississippi, was set on fire and spray painted with the words “Vote Trump.” The Washington Post’s original coverage of the incident read in part,” Greenville Mayor Errick Simmons called the fire a ‘hateful and cowardly act,’ sparked by the incendiary rhetoric of GOP nominee Donald Trump during his presidential campaign.” But the church was set on fire by one of the church’s own congregants, who is black.

Did we miss any hoaxes? Shoot me an email.

Follow Hasson on Twitter @PeterJHasson

RELATED ARTICLES:

Brothers Allegedly Hired To Stage Smollett Hate Crime Break Silence

Kamala Harris Stammers When Asked About Smollett ‘Lynching’ Comments

Don Trump Jr. Slams Instagram After Smollett Post Deleted: ‘Why Don’t You Want The Truth Out There?’

Nathan Phillips Keeps Changing His Story, Keeps Getting It Wrong

RELATED VIDEO: Glazov on “Why Jussie Smollett Lied – And the Left’s Victimhood Cult.”

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

How Democrats Spawned The Border Crisis

February 19, 2019/0 Comments/in Immigration, National Security, Policy, Politics, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse /by Michael Cutler

Sacrificing national security on the altar of open borders.

When I was growing up my mom sagely told me, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

For the past several decades, where actual border security and effective immigration law enforcement are concerned, the political elites of both parties have consistently exclaimed, “No way!”

Rather than devise strategies to effectively enforce our immigration laws, secure our borders and deter massive illegal immigration, our political leaders worked mightily to devise excuses and subterfuges to scam Americans by perpetrating Theft By Deception: The Immigration Con Game.

Politicians from both parties have declared that since we cannot deport all of the illegal aliens in the United States, the best we can do is legalize them to ostensibly “get them out of the shadows.”

That lunacy does not deter illegal immigration but encourages it — in essence, firing the starter’s pistol for aspiring illegal aliens from around the world. That is why a succession of caravans is now heading to the United States.

Indeed, the betrayal of America and Americans by our politicians was the predication for my articles, “Caravan Of ‘Migrants’ – A Crisis Decades In The Making: America is on the edge of forfeiting its sovereignty and security” and “Sanctuary Country – Immigration failures by design.”

I urge you to take the time to read both of those articles in which I provide an insider’s view of how the leadership of both parties have come to see in the immigration system not so much a law enforcement system that protects America and Americans from aliens, irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity, whose presence would pose a threat to national security, public safety, public health and the jobs of Americans, but rather a delivery system for an unlimited supply of cheap and exploitable foreign workers, an unlimited supply of foreign tourists and, for the lawyers of both parties, an unlimited supply of clients.

This is why the critical interior enforcement mission has always been severely understaffed. TSA, for example, has more than 45,000 employees, the NYPD has more than 36,000 officers just to protect the City of New York, but ICE only has about 6,000 agents for the entire United States of America and half of them are not even doing immigration law enforcement but are engaged in investigating narcotics, financial crimes, kiddie porn and intellectual property theft.

The very creation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as a key component of the Department of Homeland Security (that I have come to refer to as the Department of Homeland Surrender) by President George W. Bush in the wake of the terror attacks of 9/11, was designed to undermine, not enhance, border security and/or immigration law enforcement.

Customs has nothing to do with immigration law enforcement and merging immigration with other non-related agencies and then bifurcating the immigration mission into ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) created what John Hostettler, the former Republican Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims, referred to as “immigration incoherence.”

With all of the threats that America and Americans face from transnational gangs, drug cartels and international terrorist organizations, President Trump has tried to get the funding for a border wall. The Republicans didn’t do anything to help him when they controlled the House of Representatives and the Democrats not only won’t help him but have accused him of creating a false crisis on the border when he declared a “national emergency.”

In response to Trump’s declaration of the national emergency to move money from related programs to fund the border wall, the Democrats are employing the tactic that the ACLU refers to as “lawfare,” filing a blizzard of lawsuits.

Evidence of the dire threats we face have been provided in abundance in a series of Congressional hearings predicated on government reports and threat assessments authored by the intelligence community and DEA.

Democrats created “Sanctuary Cities” and “Sanctuary States” and now the Democrats are calling for the dismantling of ICE altogether and the elimination of America’s borders even though the preface of the official government report, “9/11 and Terrorist Travel, begins with this paragraph:

It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.

While a wall on the border by itself would not ameliorate the threats, it would represent a vital element of what needs to be a coordinated program to address all of the vulnerabilities in the immigration system.

I have come to compare a secure barrier along the southern border with a wing on an airplane: without the wing the airplane won’t fly; however, a wing by itself goes nowhere.

We need to prevent the entry of illegal aliens and contraband by whatever means they are able to enter the United States. I have frequently referred to the multiple means by which aliens enter the United States as the “Immigration Colander.” This is why we must understand that the United States has 50 “border states.”

Here are the cold, hard facts that illustrate the severe threats we face that any rational adult would certainly consider a crisis.

To begin with, I would argue that the flood of narcotics into the United States should be seen as a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD).

Fentanyl is as lethal as cyanide.

Furthermore, Americans pay for the poisons to the tune of tens of billions of dollars that flow into the coffers of drug trafficking organizations and terrorist organizations.

My article, “New York City: Hub For The Deadly Drug Trade: ‘Sanctuary’ policies attract foreign drug traffickers, fugitives and terrorists” was, in large measure, predicated on a November 13, 2017 Washington Post news report“Mexican traffickers making New York a hub for lucrative — and deadly — fentanyl.”

Here is how that Washington Post report began:

NEW YORK — The middle-aged couple in the station wagon went shopping at a New Jersey Walmart on a warm night in August. They stopped for dinner at an IHOP on the way home. And when they arrived at their apartment building in a quiet residential section of Queens, the narcotics agents following them got a warrant to go inside.
They found several suitcases loaded with brick-shaped bundles of what appeared to be heroin. But lab tests determined that most of it — 141 pounds — was pure fentanyl, a synthetic and supremely dangerous opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin.
It was the largest fentanyl seizure in U.S. history. There was enough inside the apartment to kill 32 million people, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Let’s imagine that a terror plot has been uncovered for international terrorists to enter the United States to blow up a football stadium filled with 60,000 fans, as in the 1977 cinematic thriller Black Sunday.

Such a huge attack would be devastating and send fear not just across America but across the world.

However, My article “DEA Reports Record Deaths From Drug Overdoses How a broken southern border allows narcotics to flood America” was predicated on the DEA’s 2018 National Drug Threat Assessment that included the following:

In 1999 drug poisoning in the U.S. accounted for 16,849 deaths, while deaths from suicide, homicide, firearms and motor vehicles accounted for more deaths than did drug poisoning.
In 2009 deaths attributed to drug poisoning moved into first place with 37,004 such fatalities.
Since 2009 drug poisoning has accounted for more deaths than did the other causes of death, with a sharp upward trend in the number of such fatalities. In 2013, 43,982 deaths were attributed to drug poisoning, in 2014 that number increased to 47,055, in 2015 the number jumped to 52,404 and in 2016 that number had skyrocketed to 63,632 deaths.

Because those 63,632 tragic deaths attributed to opiate overdoses did not occur en masse and there was no dramatic explosion, they got very little attention.

Those deadly drugs are pouring into the United States primarily across our southern border and through ports of entry, between ports of entry, as well as through international airports.

A small quantity of fentanyl can kill millions of people, yet the Democrats quibble about whether or not we should construct barriers, not to prevent anyone from entering the United States, but to make certain that all who do enter the country are inspected the same way that passengers who seek to board airliners must undergo a search by TSA.

While the Democrats argue that the wall would be too expensive, not unlike insulation on a house, the wall would pay for itself. That was the premise for my article, “America Needs A Border Wall Like Houses Need Insulation.”

As for the threats posed by international terrorists, my article, “Border Security Is National Security” referenced an April 12, 2017 Washington Times report, Sharafat Ali Khan smuggled terrorist-linked immigrants. My article included the following excerpt:

Khan is a citizen of Pakistan who had established himself as a permanent resident in Brazil and then smuggled numerous illegal aliens from the Middle East into the United States through Mexico. ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) issued a press release about this case, Foreign national extradited and pleads guilty to human smuggling conspiracy.
That Khan first became a resident of Brazil prior to beginning his smuggling operation is of particular concern.
Terror training camps run by Hamas and Hezbollah are to be found in the Tri-Border region of Brazil (where Brazil abuts with Argentina and Paraguay). While there was no specific mention of Khan making use of those camps, given the nature of his crimes, this is a very real and troubling possibility.
It is also entirely possible that members of ISIS and al-Qaeda are present in those terror training camps.
Concerns about the Tri-Border Region were ably reported on in a paper, Islamist Terrorist Threat in the Tri-Border Region that was published by Jeffrey Fields, Research Associate, Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

The U.S./Mexican border is all that stands between America and Middle Eastern terrorists operating throughout Latin America. As I noted in my recent article, “The Impending Alien Invasion,” Latin America has become a hotbed for terrorist activities, a fact that was highlighted at a hearing conducted on April 17, 2018 by the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence on the topic, “State Sponsors of Terrorism: An Examination of Iran’s Global Terrorism Network.”

My article included an excerpt of the prepared testimony of one of the witnesses, Dr. Emanuele Ottolenghi of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies:

In recent years, Hezbollah’s Latin American networks have also increasingly cooperated with violent drug cartels and criminal syndicates, often with the assistance of local corrupt political elites. Cooperation includes laundering of drug money; arranging multi-ton shipments of cocaine to the United States and Europe; and directly distributing and selling illicit substances to distant markets. Proceeds from these activities finance Hezbollah’s arms procurement; its terror activities overseas; its hold on Lebanon’s political system; and its efforts, both in Lebanon and overseas, to keep Shi’a communities loyal to its cause and complicit in its endeavors.
This toxic crime-terror nexus is fueling both the rising threat of global jihadism and the collapse of law and order across Latin America that is helping drive drugs and people northward into the United States. It is sustaining Hezbollah’s growing financial needs. It is helping Iran and Hezbollah consolidate a local constituency in multiple countries across Latin America. It is thus facilitating their efforts to build safe havens for terrorists and a continent-wide terror infrastructure that they could use to strike U.S. targets.

For the Democrats the only crisis that concerns them is not if hundreds of thousands of Americans lose their lives, but if they lose their next elections.

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine. It is republished with permission. The featured image is by Pixabay.

The Left Wants to Transform Our Election System. It’s a Recipe for 1-Party Rule.

February 19, 2019/0 Comments/in Elections, Featured, Policy, Politics, Regulation, Waste, Fraud and Abuse /by The Daily Signal

Democrats intend to save “democracy” by putting themselves in charge of elections.

As absurd as that sounds, it really is a part of the inappropriately named “For the People Act of 2019,” or H.R. 1, moving through the House of Representatives.

The Heritage Foundation created a list of the law’s provisions, which you can read here. The Conservative Action Project also provided this quick rundown of the bill:

• Forces states to implement mandatory voter registration, removing civic participation as a voluntary choice, and increasing chances for error.
• Mandates that states allow all felons to vote.
• Forces states to extend periods of early voting, which has shown to have no effect on turnout.
• Mandates same-day voter registration, which encourages voter fraud.
• Limits the ability of states to cooperate to see who is registered in multiple states at the same time.
• Prohibits election observers from cooperating with election officials to file formal challenges to suspicious voter registrations.
• Criminalizes protected political speech by making it a crime to ‘discourage’ someone from voting.
• Bars states from making their own laws about voting by mail.
• Prohibits chief election officials in each state from participating in federal election campaigns.
• Mandates free mailing of absentee ballots.
• Mandates that states adopt new redistricting commissions.

The bill is more or less a grab bag of progressive priorities, much like the Green New Deal.

Like the misguided movement to abolish the Electoral College, H.R. 1, in the name of democracy, takes a blow torch to the concepts federalism and self-government enshrined in our Constitution.

As the above summary makes clear, H.R. 1 has numerous provisions that would undermine free speech rights, upend the way America conducts elections, encourage voter fraud, and turn election oversight into little more than a partisan weapon to bludgeon foes.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who seems to have positioned herself at the forefront of every piece of radical legislation coming out of the House, dismissed the idea that H.R. 1 is a “power grab” by Democrats.

She had to make an almost immediate correction after that tweet, as the legislation has not yet passed the House. Even if it did, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said it wouldn’t pass in the Senate, where Republicans hold a majority.

Ocasio-Cortez has a penchant for missteps, but she’s a good barometer for where the progressive base in America is.

In this bill, the left has shown it is willing to make a “naked attempt to change the rules of American politics to benefit one party,” as McConnell noted. But beyond that, H.R. 1 is most concerning for the devastating effect it would have on our federal republic.

National Review’s David French summed it up perfectly:

At its essence, the bill federalizes control over elections to an unprecedented scale, expands government power over political speech, mandates increased disclosures of private citizens’ personal information (down to name and address), places conditions on citizen contact with legislators that inhibits citizens’ freedom of expression, and then places enforcement of most of these measures in the hands of a revamped Federal Election Commission that is far more responsive to presidential influence.

Certainly, the effort to get around the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision through a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics is misguided and an assault on free speech. It is at odds with our right to free speech and, in the end, would mostly benefit insiders and incumbents who know how to play the Washington game of navigating arcane campaign finance laws.

Further, it would require donors to disclose their own private information in the name of “transparency.”

This is how democracy descends into mob rule. It’s why the Founders erected barriers to guard against a tyrannical majority. Given the way progressives brazenly attack and shame dissenters on college campuses—and increasingly in public life—it is all the more urgent that individual privacy rights be protected. Privacy is a cornerstone of liberty.

Perhaps the most concerning aspect of H.R. 1 is what it would do to American election laws and how it would not just undermine, but bulldoze any semblance of federalism left in our political system.

H.R. 1 would stop state legislatures from drawing up their own congressional districts and would mandate independent commissions in their place.

As I’ve written in the past, getting rid of legislative redistricting, sometimes known as “gerrymandering,” is a “cure” worse than the disease. Redistricting will always be partisan, no matter who does it. Laws to prevent this would simply drive partisan redistricting underground, where it would be done in secret by an unelected, uncountable commission rather than openly by a legislature.

Again, even if this were good policy, it assumes that the federal government has the right to dictate how states run their elections. It would take away the right of the citizens of a state to make their own choices on these issues.

H.R. 1 contains other violations of federalism—and the Constitution—including mandates to restore voting rights to felons as soon as they are released from prison and stop states from finding and removing ineligible voters.

And it gets worse.

After nationalizing American election laws, H.R. 1 would put them all under the watchful eye of a “revamped” Federal Election Commission. This is perhaps the most brazenly partisan element of the bill.

The Federal Election Commission currently allows six members (though it currently only has four), with a requirement that four members sign on to any decision in order for it to pass. It has an even number of Republican and Democratic appointees—thus, it takes both parties to agree to prosecute a violation of federal law. This prevents the party in control of the White House from enforcing the law in a partisan fashion.

H.R. 1 would change that by making the commission a five-person body comprised of the president’s appointees, with the president’s party able to appoint three of the five. This would make the commission into a partisan body beholden to the president.

Proponents say this would end the current “deadlock,” but in reality it would turn the commission into a partisan tool to be used by the president. It would be an egregious concentration of power, especially given the way the rest of the bill would nationalize American elections.

While the Framers weren’t unanimous about how much power states should have relative to the federal government, none would have thought it a good idea to give near-tyrannical power to an unelected body of five people, which is what H.R. 1 would essentially do.

The “For the People Act” really is little more than a progressive power grab intended to manipulate election rules to favor liberals, and it is an anti-democratic bill that would upend America’s electoral system.

As with the Green New Deal, it is a vehicle for introducing ideas that would fundamentally transform our republic into something we would not recognize at all.

COMMENTARY BY

Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman is an editor and commentary writer for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast.Send an email to Jarrett. Twitter: @JarrettStepman

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column with images is republished with permission. The featured photo is by Arnaud Jaegers on Unsplash.

Smollett Case Could Go to Grand Jury [+Video]

February 19, 2019/0 Comments/in Courts & Law, Must Read, Politics, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse /by The Daily Caller

Jussie Smollett’s case about an alleged attack in January could be headed to a grand jury.

Law official sources reported the case could be headed to a grand jury sometime this week, according to TMZ Sunday. Law enforcement is allegedly making sure Smollett is not in contact with the two Nigerian brothers who were first arrested Wednesday, but then released Friday.

The Daily Caller News Foundation contacted the Chicago Police Department Monday to confirm if Smollett’s case was headed to a grand jury.

“We do not have that information at this point,” Jennifer Bryk of CPD said to The Daily Caller News Foundation over email.

Rafer Weigel of Fox 32 tweeted Monday that CPD said Smollett’s case could go to a grand jury if the “Empire” actor does not “voluntarily come in for questioning.”

“CPD says ‘it’s certainly possible’ #JussieSmollett case could go to Grand Jury but ‘that’s way too premature,’” Weigel tweeted. “May be a last resort if #Smollett doesn’t voluntarily come in for questioning. CPD says #Smollett’s lawyers have given no indication he will despite several requests.”

There have been reports, however, that the attack was staged by Smollett and the two brothers were allegedly paid to help, according to CNN.

Smollett’s attorneys Todd Pugh and Victor Henderson released a statement Sunday saying such claims were “nothing further from the truth.”

“We can confirm that the information received from the individuals questioned by police earlier in the ‘Empire’ case has in fact shifted the trajectory of the investigation,” CPD spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement Sunday to The Daily Caller News Foundation. “We’ve reached out to the ‘Empire’ cast member’s attorney to request a follow-up interview.”

Pugh, Henderson, and Smollett’s crisis manager, Anne Kavanagh, did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment in time for publication.

COLUMN BY

Neetu Chandak

Daily Caller News Foundation Reporter.

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EDITOR NOTE: This Daily Caller column with images is republished with permission. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities for this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. The featured image is from Jussie Smollett’s Facebook page.

Coups, Cover-ups and Context

February 18, 2019/0 Comments/in Commentary, Courts & Law, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse /by Linda Goudsmit

After much media hype and online snippets the prime time CBS News interview of Andrew McCabe finally aired last night 2.17.19. It was a well-choreographed editorial hit-piece masquerading as journalism worthy of study by any legitimate journalism school if any still exist.

60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley interviewed McCabe for the show. Pelley handled McCabe with the deference, tenderness, and soulfulness of a dance partner, completely inappropriate for interviewing the disgraced former acting head of the FBI involved in an unprecedented coup attempt against President Donald J. Trump. CBS entertained America with their well-rehearsed dance sequence.

The stage is set for two. Pelley’s gentle voice leads McCabe as they tango around the political dance floor justifying motivations for removing the president. A dip here, a dramatic pause there.

McCabe, dressed in his best red white and blue dance costume takes the lead and reveals that he ordered an investigation into whether President Trump obstructed justice by firing FBI director James Comey. Dancing McCabe’s Tango Walks naturally curve to the left as he claims he initiated the probe to safeguard and document the ongoing investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election so they could “not be closed or vanish in the night without a trace.”

Pelley turns and moves his partner in a different direction. McCabe follows for a Reverse Slip Pivot and in a staggering admission that has gone viral on the Internet but being virtually ignored by the mainstream media, McCabe describes how the Justice Department considered enacting the 25th amendment to remove President Trump from office.
Britain’s online newspaper The Independent reported on the admission in its stunning 2.15.19 article titled, “Trump 25th amendment: Justice Department considered attempt to remove president after Comey firing, former FBI chief reveals.”

Section four of the 25th amendment allows the removal of a sitting US president if the vice-president and a majority of the Cabinet declare him unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. There was actually DOJ speculation regarding which tango dancers would sign up for the program and how it could be accomplished.

Pelley slows McCabe in the slow, slow, quick, quick, slow tango pattern and McCabe responds. “Rod raised the issue and discussed it with me in the context of thinking about how many other cabinet officials might support such an effort.”
McCabe quickens and leans in close to Pelley for an Outside Swivel and reveals that deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, another gifted tango dancer, even offered to wear a wire into the White House to record potentially incriminating conversations with the president. WHAT??? There are rules in tango!

Rod Rosenstein should be disqualified.

Law professor and competition judge Alan Dershowitz mocked the DOJ suggesting they must be watching the TV drama “House of Cards” instead of reading the Constitution. On 2.15.19 Dershowitz speaks unequivocally about the 25th amendment to Fox News:

“The Constitution is clear as can be. The 25th amendment is applicable only if you’re incapacitated. It’s not a substitute for impeachment, it’s not suitable for an election and if Rod Rosenstein actually thought about and suggested wiring the president, invoking the 25th amendment, he should be fired before he has the opportunity to resign. He should be disgraced.”

But there is a problem.

The Tango Championships are sponsored by the Deep State and their media outlets CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, and MSNBC so the dancing continues on mainstream media. The Pelley/McCabe tango partnership is now competing in the finals of the Worldwide Tango Championships and must be seen in context. Other dancers include James Comey, Robert Mueller, Rod Rosenstein, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Chris Wray, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and senior tango dancers competing in the elder division James Clapper and John Brennan who have been with the Tango Association since its inception.

The Grand Prize winners receive lifetime achievement awards in political tango for planning and pulling off the most seditious plot in American history – the coup against a sitting president. The key to the coup and the cover-up is its context.

The foundation of the Russian investigation was the infamous 2016 Steele dossier. Christopher Steele, a British tango dancer and former head of the Russia desk for British Intelligence MI6, wrote the dossier for the private investigative firm Fusion GPS. The dossier was opposition research bought by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee for the purpose of smearing and delegitimizing candidate Trump.

The Steele dossier was never legitimate intelligence but it was deceitfully used to acquire the FISA warrants required to spy on the Trump campaign. Robert Mueller, another world-class tango dancer, is now using it to cover-up and legitimize the seditious coup attempt against President Trump.

Spygate is the political dance routine of world champion tango partners Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton first used in 2016 to delegitimize candidate Trump and now being used in the coup attempt against President Trump. Scott Pelley’s tango dance with McCabe was just more steps in the dance.

EDITORS NOTE: This Goudsmit Pundicity column is republished with permission. The featured image is from Pixabay.

Report on Covington Students Finds ‘No Evidence’ of ‘Offensive or Racist Statements’

February 18, 2019/0 Comments/in Courts & Law, Featured, Politics, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse /by The Daily Signal

A report that examined the January encounter between students from Covington Catholic High School and a Native American activist near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington found “no evidence” of “offensive or racist statements.”

“We see no evidence that students responded with any offensive or racist statements of their own,” the report dated Feb. 11 from the detective agency Greater Cincinnati Investigation read. The report was commissioned by the Catholic Diocese of Covington, which is in Kentucky.

Nick Sandmann and other students of Covington Catholic High, who were in Washington to attend the March for Life in January, faced harsh criticism in mainstream and social media based on a video showing a portion of their encounter Jan. 18 with Nathan Phillips, 64, on the National Mall.

“The immediate world-wide reaction to the initial video led almost everyone to believe that our students had initiated the incident and the perception of those few minutes of video became reality,” wrote Bishop Roger Foys of the Covington Diocese in a letter earlier this week.

“In truth, taking everything into account, our students were placed in a situation that was at once bizarre and even threatening. Their reaction to the situation was, given the circumstances, expected and one might even say laudatory,” Foys added.

In the video of the encounter, Sandmann and some of the other boys are wearing red “Make America Great Again” caps. Sandmann stands smiling, facing Phillips as he beats a hand drum and chants just inches away.

Sandmann said his group was verbally attacked by some in a group called the Black Hebrew Israelites.

“We found no evidence of offensive or racist statements by students to Mr. Phillips or members of his group,” the report stated. “Some students performed a ‘tomahawk chop’ to the beat of Mr. Phillips’ drumming, and some joined in Mr. Phillips’ chant.”

The report concluded with a statement that the firm had not been able to get in touch with Phillips.

“Mr. Phillips’ public interviews contain some inconsistencies, and we have not been able to resolve them or verify his comments due to our inability to contact him.”

COLUMN BY

Rachel del Guidice

Rachel del Guidice is a reporter for The Daily Signal. She is a graduate of Franciscan University of Steubenville, Forge Leadership Network, and The Heritage Foundation’s Young Leaders Program. Send an email to Rachel. Twitter: @LRacheldG.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column with images is republished with permission. Photo: Screenshot from YouTube video posted by user KC NOLAND.

The True Meaning of That Green New Deal

February 18, 2019/0 Comments/in Budget and Finance, Energy, Environment, Must Read, Policy, Politics, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse /by The Daily Signal

It would be easy to dismiss the Green New Deal as an impossible progressive dream, but that would be a mistake.

The Green New Deal is not the bucket list of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow travelers, but a blueprint to turn America into a socialist state. It is the culmination of a 90-year campaign, begun with FDR and the first New Deal.

“The first obligation of government is the protection of the welfare and well-being, indeed the very existence, of its citizens,” presidential nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt said at the 1932 Democratic National Convention.

Roosevelt said that in the depths of the Great Depression. In electing him, a panicky American people, faced with 25 percent unemployment, a plummeting stock market, and cashless banks, accepted a new leading role for the federal government after 150 years of free markets and representative democracy.

Since then, successive waves of progressives have worked to expand and extend the government through Harry Truman’s Fair Deal, LBJ’s Great Society, Bill Clinton’s Third Way, and Barack Obama’s transformative Obamacare. The only president who sought to reverse the swing to socialism was Ronald Reagan, and even he said he would not attempt to do away with the New Deal.

Sponsors of the Green New Deal—including Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass.—list these goals: Phase out conventional fuels (that is, oil, natural gas, and coal) by 2030, only a decade from now; implement a federal jobs guarantee; retrofit all U.S. buildings; overhaul transportation with high-speed rail; and provide universal health care.

Scant mention is made of the cost of this radical “retrofit” of America and who would pay for it. It’s easy being green when all you have to do is pick other people’s pockets.

No wonder that, according to one poll, half of millennials say they would prefer to live under socialism rather than capitalism. Entitlement is all they and their parents and their grandparents have known. They think they are entitled to a free education, free health care, a job whether they want one or not, subsidized housing, and (who knows?) free pot.

No one has bothered to teach millennials the lessons of socialism, such as the tragic story of Venezuela. Once one of the wealthiest countries in Latin America, it is now ravaged by runaway inflation and massive government corruption and ruled with an iron fist by a socialist dictator.

No one has bothered to teach millennials about the miracle of India, which has switched from a broken socialist system to an expanding, neocapitalist economy that has created a middle class of 300 million, the largest in the free world.

No one has bothered to teach millennials the first law of socialism—abolish private property. So, millennials, hand over your iPhone and iPad.

No one has bothered to teach young Americans that the second law of socialism is that religion is an opiate of the people and will be terminated. Instead, you will be obliged to worship Big Brother.

No one has bothered to teach millennials that neither Denmark nor Sweden is a socialist country, but have put their industries in the hands of entrepreneurs who live by the rules of a free market economy.

The Green New Deal is a direct threat to the American spirit, which would be transformed irretrievably if it became law. But its introduction as a nonbinding resolution in Congress represents an opportunity to promote the American spirit.

As Ed Feulner and Brian Tracy wrote, in 1776 the American spirit—courageous, optimistic, enterprising, devout, generous, and devoted to liberty—gave rise to a novus ordo seclorum, a “new order for the ages” that allowed ordinary men and women to chart their own destiny.

As it was then so it is now, if Americans are willing to accept their destiny.

COMMENTARY BY

Lee Edwards

Lee Edwards is the distinguished fellow in conservative thought at The Heritage Foundation’s B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics. A leading historian of American conservatism, Edwards has published 25 books, including “Just Right: A Life in Pursuit of Liberty.”

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column with images is republished with permission. The featured image is from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Facebook page.