Despite the centrality of rights in American history, it’s readily apparent today that Americans are of widely different views on what a right is, how many we have, where rights come from, or why we have any in the first place.
That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”
“Rights” are in the news these days perhaps as much as they were in George Mason’s time. As a score of politicians prepares to announce their 2020 campaigns for President of the United States, we can expect “rights” to be in the news every day, as they are promised to us one after another. “You have a right” to this or that and “If elected, I’ll make sure you get it” will soon be monotonous refrains.
America is a nation founded on the notion of rights. Our independence was declared in 1776 on a foundation of “unalienable” rights granted to us not by mortal authorities but by the Creator himself. Our ancestors rebelled against the British because they believed that such rights as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” were being thwarted by oppressors in London. Our founding documents were put forth specifically for the purposes of securing and protecting rights. Battles both intellectual and physical were fought in the ensuing decades to ensure that rights remained a priority of government or were extended to people not originally included.
So this business of rights is indistinguishable from the American experience; indeed, it is at the very core of that experience. Remove rights from the equation, and America is just one of countless countries—past and present—in which individuals possess nothing more than what those in power decide to give them or allow them to have.
Despite the centrality of rights in American history, it’s readily apparent today that Americans are of widely different views on what a right is, how many we have, where rights come from, or why we have any in the first place.
Is a right the same thing as a wish? Why or why not? Or if you need something, does that mean you have a right to it? If I require a kidney, do I have a right to one of yours? Is a right something that can or should be granted or denied by majority vote? Does a document such as the Constitution or an executive order or a law of Congress create rights, or do such paper instruments simply acknowledge rights (by either defending or eroding them) that people inherently possess?
If you walked down Main Street America in 2019 and asked random citizens these very questions, I’ll bet you’d hear a plethora of different and conflicting answers. Read over those questions again and think about how you would respond.
This essay doesn’t provide all the answers, nor does it raise all the relevant questions. Its purpose is more limited than that. If it prompts the reader to think of rights in a deeper, more thoughtful way than heretofore and then contribute to the public discourse on the subject in a meaningful way, then it’ll achieve my purposes. I’ll even include a recommended reading list at the end.
I’ve given this subject some thought over the years and feel confident in providing the reader with a couple of lists to consider. The first one itemizes what I personally think you have a right to; the second is a partial roster of things I personally think you don’t have a right to (and I readily grant that you have every right to disagree with me).
You have a right to:
Your life (unless compromised by taking or attempting to take that of another person without a self-defense justification);
Your thoughts;
Your speech (which is really a verbal or written expression of #2) so long as you don’t steal it from another without permission or credit;
Material property you were freely given, that you created yourself, or that you freely traded for;
Raise and educate your children as you see fit;
Live in peace and freedom so long as you do not threaten the peace and freedom of others.
You do not have a right to:
High-speed broadband Internet access;
Cheeseburgers, cheap wine (or even expensive wine, for that matter), or an iPhone;
Somebody else’s house, car, boat, income, business, or bank account;
The labor of another person you’ve not freely contracted with (you can’t enslave somebody, in other words);
Medical care from a witch doctor or a skilled surgeon or anybody in between;
Taxpayer-funded (i.e., coercively-appropriated) child daycare, college education, contraceptives, colonoscopies, or sports stadiums;
Anything that’s not yours, even though you really want it and think you’re entitled to it;
Conscript other people’s children into schools you think they should attend;
Free stuff in general, unless the rightful owner chooses to offer it;
Anything a politician flattered you with by claiming you have a right to it.
Of course, gray areas and reasonable qualifications exist. For example, while I believe you do have a right to raise and educate your own children as you see fit, abuse and neglect are not defensible. But let’s keep our eyes on the big picture, the broad principles here.
Positive vs. Negative Rights
Now, look at those two lists again, carefully. How does the nature of the first list contrast with the nature of the second?
Answer: In the case of the first list, nothing is required of other people except that they leave you alone. For you to have a right to something in the second list, however, requires that other people be compelled to provide that something to you. That’s a monumental difference!
The first list comprises what are often called both “natural rights” and “negative rights”—natural because they derive from our essential nature as unique, sensate individuals and negative because they don’t impose obligations on others beyond a commitment to not violate them. The items in the second are called “positive rights” because others must give them to you or be coerced into doing so if they decline.
The late Tibor Machan, who wrote many articles for FEE in the 1970s and 1980s, elaborated on this distinction in “The Perils of Positive Rights”:
“Positive rights” trump freedom. According to this doctrine, human beings by nature owe, as a matter of enforceable obligation, part or even all of their lives to other persons. Generosity and charity thus cannot be left to individual conscience. If people have such positive rights, no one can be justified in refusing service to others; one may be conscripted to serve regardless of one’s own choices and goals.
If positive rights are valid, then negative rights cannot be, for the two are mutually contradictory.
The existence of “negative rights,” wrote Machan, “means that no one ought to enslave another, coerce another, or deprive another of his property; and that each of us may properly resist such conduct when others engage in it.”
So while I believe neither you nor I have a right to any of those disparate things in the second list, I hasten to add that we certainly have the right to seek them, to create them, to receive them as gifts from willing benefactors, or to trade for them. We just don’t have a right to compel anyone to give them to us or pay for them. If any of us did, then why wouldn’t another individual have a similar right to take them from us?
The Constitution’s Role in Rights
What about “constitutional rights,” a phrase we hear from people on all sides of the political spectrum? I like what Michael Badnarik said about them in his 2004 book, Good to be King:
People are usually surprised to discover that I hate the phrase “constitutional rights.” I hate the phrase because it is terribly misleading. Most of the people who say it or hear it have the impression that the Constitution “grants” them their rights. Nothing could be further from the truth. Strictly speaking, it is the Bill of Rights that enumerates our rights, but none of our founding documents bestow anything on you at all […] The government can burn the Constitution and shred the Bill of Rights, but those actions wouldn’t have the slightest effect on the rights you’ve always had.
If you’re motivated to explore further the nature, origin, meaning, and extent of rights, then you’re on the right website. Over decades, FEE has published many articles by numerous authors on just this matter. I close with a recommendation of 10 of the best:
EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column with images is republished with permission. Image credit: Flickr-Ted Mielczarek | CC BY 2.0
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/billofrights-e1548032613286.jpg398640Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2019-01-20 20:04:152019-01-20 20:04:17Rights and Non-Rights: A Simple Way to Distinguish the Two
A social worker, employed through a contract with Catholic Charities of the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland was supposed to be checking on and protecting the nine children in the Rodriguez home, but instead she had cooked up a deal with the children’s mother to obtain the family’s food stamps.
In exchange she allegedly turned a blind eye to abuse and deplorable living conditions that resulted in the death of a five-year-old boy whose body was buried in the back yard.
The case became known to the police when someone called from PAKISTAN with a tip! WTH!
Estate of Cleveland boy found buried in back yard sues Catholic Charities
CLEVELAND, Ohio — The estate of a 5-year-old Cleveland boy whose body was found in late 2017 buried behind his mother’s house has filed a lawsuit against the social services arm of the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland that employed the worker who was supposed to keep tabs on the family.
The survivorship of Jordan Rodriguez filed the wrongful death lawsuit Tuesday in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court against Catholic Charities, its employee Nancy Caraballo, the boy’s mother Larissa Rodriguez and her boyfriend Christopher Rodriguez.
Nancy Caraballo
The suit accuses Catholic Charities and Caraballo of recklessness, negligence and failing to report abuse the boy suffered in the two years leading up to his death.The estate, administrated by Michelle Rodriguez, seeks to take the case before a jury.
“While we cannot at this time comment on what is alleged in the lawsuit, Catholic Charities protects and advocates for those who are most vulnerable,” the statement said. “All employees undergo thorough background checks and extensive training with regard to ethics and specifically their duties to report child abuse or neglect.”
Jordan’s body was discovered buried in the family’s backyard in December 2017, after Cleveland police received a call from Pakistan that said Christopher Rodriguez confessed to burying the child.
Investigators responding to the call found the home in deplorable condition, and it wasn’t long before they uncovered that Caraballo, a parent educator at an agency contracted with Catholic Charities who was assigned to the Rodriguez family, had been buying Larissa Rodriguez’s food stamps at discounted prices and lying in her reports of her visits.
Caraballo was supposed to conduct monthly home visits to check on Rodriguez’s children and living conditions and file a report each time. But investigators subpoenaed her cellphone records and compared text messages between Caraballo and Rodriguez to the reports and found that, on at least 12 occasions, Caraballo simply showed up to Rodriguez’s house to pick up the food stamp card. She filed false reports that said she inspected the home.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/daiga-ellaby-354484-unsplash-e1547994424401.jpg468640Ann Corcoranhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngAnn Corcoran2019-01-20 09:27:212019-01-20 09:40:58Cleveland: Suit against Catholic Charities in boy’s shocking death
President Trump has decided to not sign off on the federal budget until it includes money for a physical barrier to finally secure the dangerous and highly porous U.S./Mexican border from the un-inspected entry of aliens and cargo.
That tough decision has been a long time coming.
With no budget, nonessential sections of the government have been shut down and some federal employees deemed “essential” are working without pay.
As a former federal employee I can certainly empathize with those federal employees. I recall working without pay when prior partial government shutdowns occurred.
Many pundits and “political analysts” have said that the administration should compromise. As things now stand, there is nothing to compromise about. Any “compromise” with Pelosi and company would only compromise national security. That “compromise” has been ongoing for decades and we have all too many dead bodies that prove how dangerous open borders are.
The media is focused on how many days federal employees have gone without pay, but no one is keeping track of how many years our borders have failed to prevent the entry of narcotics, weapons, criminals, terrorists and foreign workers who displace hard-working Americans and drive down the wages of those who are fortunate to keep their jobs.
The mainstream media has reported, as part of coverage about the impact of the partial government shutdown, that some TSA employees have failed to report for duty, thereby causing delays at airports as long lines of travelers wait to be screened by the diminished workforce.
Certainly there is not much that can be done when TSA personnel don’t show up for work. After all, no one would want to board an airliner unless all passengers and their luggage are carefully screened.
However, isn’t it ironic that folks would never willingly fly on an airliner unless all of the passengers and cargo were carefully vetted, and yet because of our corrupt and globalist politicians, because of the multiple failures to secure our borders (including that perilous and porous one we share with Mexico), we are forced to live among millions of aliens who entered the United States without screening?
Yet that is precisely the situation we find ourselves in today and, if anyone complains about this, they are quickly tossed into Hillary’s “basket of deplorables”!
For the first two years of the Trump administration the House and Senate were both controlled by a Republican majority. Nevertheless the President’s call for funding for the border wall went unheeded and ignored.
Let’s be fair and honest: the “leadership” of both the Democrats and Republicans has never wanted secure borders or effective immigration law enforcement.
It is not that America cannot secure its borders; it is that our political elites from both parties don’t want those borders to be made secure. They have come to see the immigration system as a delivery system for an unlimited supply of easily exploited foreign workers from Third World countries who come to America with Third World expectations of meager wages and unreasonable and hazardous working conditions.
Many of the politicians from both parties are attorneys. For them, particularly those who practice immigration law, a tsunami of illegal aliens provides an endless stream of clients for immigration law firms from coast to coast and border to border.
This is why the political leaders from both the Democratic and Republican parties have been insisting that since we cannot deport all of the illegal aliens who are present in the United States, the best we can do is legalize them to “get them out of the shadows.”
This is a thinly disguised game of “bait and switch” with the ultimate goal of getting those millions of illegal aliens into the waiting rooms of immigration law firms around the United States.
The Democrats exclaim that we must be “compassionate” and provide these “immigrants” with a pathway to citizenship while the Republicans insist that they are going to stand strong and “only” provide millions of illegal aliens with permission to work.
Either way, aspiring illegal aliens from around the world are getting the message: enter the United States by any means possible and little will be done to remove (deport) you but eventually you will be granted permission to work in the United States and gain lawful status.
The Democrats have insisted that when illegal aliens enter the United States, if they utter the magic password “political asylum” they will immediately be swept into a massive program that will enable them to remain in the country for many years. This further entices millions more illegal aliens to head for the United States.
In essence, the starter’s pistol has thus been fired for aspiring illegal aliens from around the world and for these aliens the “finish line” is the border of the United States.
That imagery is certainly apparent as we witness yet another “migrant caravan” heading north from El Salvador to the U.S./Mexican border.
The Democratic Party is adamant about not “wasting money” on a border wall or other such “low tech” solution to border security. Instead they would spend hundreds of millions of dollars on drones and sensors that would alert the overwhelmed Border Patrol when aliens run the border.
I have written about this madness in several articles but am compelled once again to make note of what should be obvious but is never reported in the mainstream media: a succession of government reports have shown that drones, which cost hundreds of millions of dollars, have been involved in fewer than one-half of one percent of all Border Patrol arrests.
Drones and sensors should be thought of as a sort of national burglar alarm for America. Drones and burglar alarms cannot make any arrests. All that they do is notify the appropriate authorities that a break-in has occurred or that our borders have been violated and then it is up to law enforcement agencies to respond to that alarm.
Many homes have burglar alarms, but I have never seen a house that is equipped with one that not only did not have strong, secure locks on the front door, but no front door at all!
For decades Americans have been held hostage in their own homes as more drugs and gang members have flowed across our borders and committed violent crimes in towns and cities across the United States.
Now hapless federal employees are being held hostage to the outrageous demands of the Democrats that nothing of meaningful consequence be done to truly secure the dangerous Mexican border.
Even as Chuck Schumer insists that there is no crisis and that President Trump is simply having a “temper tantrum,” not far from Schumer’s own home in Brooklyn, New York, a trial is being conducted at the federal courthouse in downtown Brooklyn (Eastern District of New York).
The defendant in this case is a citizen of Mexico, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the alleged leader of the infamous Mexican Sinaloa Drug Cartel that purportedly smuggled more than 200 tons of cocaine into the United States along with tonnage of other drugs including cocaine, meth and marijuana across the U.S./Mexican border that President Trump is determined to finally secure.
There have been many articles written about the trial but one in particular has managed to capture some of the trial’s “highlights” (lowlights?). That article, “Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán’s trial: Nine crazy moments,” was published on January 10, 2019 by the BBC.
Here is a particularly disturbing excerpt from that news report:
Hi-tech murder room
A trusted hitman for El Chapo kept a “murder room” in his mansion on the US border, which featured a drain on the floor to more easily clean up after slayings.
Edgar Galvan testified in January that Antonio “Jaguar” Marrufo had a room with white tiles that was sound-proofed “so no noise comes out”.
“In that house, no one comes out,” Galvan told jurors.
Galvan said his role in the organisation was to smuggle weapons into the US, so that Marrufo could use them to “clear” the region of rivals.
At the time, he was living in El Paso, Texas, while Marrufo was living in Ciudad Juarez, just across the US-Mexico border.
But both men are now in jail on firearms and gun charges.
Perhaps someone should send Mr. Schumer and his radical cohorts a copy of the article.
During his administration Bill Clinton attempted to redefine the term “is.”
Now Schumer and the Democrats would like to redefine the term “crisis”; however, as John Adams sagely noted, “Facts are stubborn things.”
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/uriel-soberanes-430095-unsplash-e1547899410798.jpg426640Michael Cutlerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMichael Cutler2019-01-19 07:03:442019-01-21 16:18:47Congress Earns ‘Nero Award’ For Fiddling While America is Invaded: Why Democrats’ actions are especially egregious.
The operational word to describe things in the Church these days, to borrow from Pope Benedict, is filth.
And while the filth all comes in a number of different varieties, it is all related. And for the record, we should understand filth in the broad sense of that which leads people either away from the Faith or into sin, or both, but especially away from the Faith, thus essentially destroying their supernatural defense against the diabolical. So let’s examine the various types of filth, remembering that, at the end of the day, it’s still all filth.
There is, of course, the headline filth of homosexual predation on both adults as well as minors. But that’s not the only filth.
There is the theological filth of the past 50 years, and this has many facets to it. From the insanity that we have a reasonable hope all men are saved, to what amounts to a universalism that all religions are essentially the same and lead to God, to the demonic notion that your conscience, even uninformed or even malformed, is the final arbiter of truth.
All these individual pieces of theological filth are interrelated, each one feeding and feeding off the other. Then there is the liturgical filth manifest in nearly every parish: the lack of reverence in Mass; the failure to understand the Mass as a sacrifice, not a mere meal; the emasculation of many priests; the horrible, childish preaching; the non-stop emphasis on emotionalism; the focus on the community as opposed to the worship of God.
Moving down the filth list, we come across the particular filth of the acceptance of heresy. Many converts from Protestantism will tell you that more and more they don’t see that much of a difference between what they converted from and the Church.
That’s been intentional. Whatever the motives, and that depends on who you are looking at, there was and continues to be an intentional push to make the Church appear and sound more and more Protestant.
Protestantism is a heresy, with its emphasis on personal relationship with Christ outside of the Church, the sacraments, devotions, etc. Yet more and more, Church leaders continue to peddle these heretical beliefs as somehow able to be interpreted as Catholic, the Alpha program being the most notable, but by no means the only one.
The distinctions between Catholicism — the one true faith — and the 40,000 different heretical sects which comprise Protestantism are simply downplayed in classrooms, pulpits, writings, you name it.
Wherever a Catholic lives, you will find a Catholic priest short-changing the Faith and handing over spiritual poison to the faithful.
The failure to preach on the need for confession, the need to be properly disposed to receive Holy Communion, the need for a vigilant prayer life, a spirituality modeled on the saints and so forth. The majority of Catholics hear none of this the majority of the time. That’s filthy because the lack of this knowledge leaves them defenseless against the attacks of the devil.
But the underlying point is straightforward, all this filth is related, all from the same source, just expressed differently at different times in differing ways.
Be it moral, theological, liturgical, catechetical, it’s all the same filth. And it’s all accomplishing the same end: the destruction of souls.
Ask ourselves why would a Catholic have the slightest idea that the Mass is a sacrifice, a representation of the oblation of the Son to the Father.
How would he draw that conclusion when all he hears is “we are family” and “turn around and greet your neighbor” and lay people run around all over the altar handing out the bread to the community?
Ask yourselves why a Catholic would see any essential difference between the Church and heretical set of beliefs when all he sees and hears in the parish are those same heretical beliefs and notions, just with a thin Catholic veneer. The list goes on and on.
The Catholic faithful have been assaulted from every side and in every way from Catholic leaders for the past half-century, and now, they have been reduced to a remnant, the authentic believers.
Those who still go to Mass but do not either understand or believe the Faith will disappear soon enough as they die off, their parishes continue to close and their children and grandchildren never come into a Catholic parish.
All that will be left from that crowd is some vague memory that “grandma, I think, used to be Catholic, didn’t she? Whatever.”
This has been a master plan to repackage the Faith, to break from Tradition, for the past half-century and give the devil his due — he has been wildly successful. For any Catholics out there who are perhaps coming around to this reality but still aren’t sold on it, who think clapping in Mass and girl altar boys and so-called eucharistic ministers are okay, consider this.
Even if those things — and many others — were well-intentioned — and they weren’t — you have to admit they have been a colossal failure.
There are now fewer parishes in the United States then there were when all this began in 1965. And while owing strictly to overall population increases the raw number of Catholics has increased, there are fewer going to Mass and receiving the sacraments than, again, back in 1965.
Open your eyes, just like we had to here at Church Militant when all this became undeniable to us as well. Do you believe the Church is the means to salvation? Do you believe there is no salvation apart from the Church?
Then, if those doctrines of the Church are correct — notice the word “doctrines” — then wouldn’t Satan want to destroy the Church? If he wanted to destroy the Church, what would he do?
How about introducing, little by little at first, a level of filth and poison so as to corrupt the clergy who are the bearers of the sacred. He went after them at the Last Supper in the upper room and hasn’t stopped since.
All this filth has one goal: your damnation and the same for your families.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/the-filth-e1547862160423.png360640Church Militanthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngChurch Militant2019-01-18 20:42:522019-01-18 20:42:54VIDEO: It’s All Related — The Filth. And your damnation is the goal.
It was supposed to be a day celebrating religious freedom in America. Instead, liberals decided to show everyone just how much our First Freedom is at risk. For Christians, who’ve tried to warn people that these last several years were about a lot more than marriage, the attacks on Second Lady Karen Pence certainly seem to prove their point. Three years after Obergefell, all of the lies about “love” and “tolerance” have been eclipsed by the court cases, articles, and editorial demonizing people of faith. What Americans see now is the truth: the Left is coming for our freedom. And they have no intention of letting up.
Like Joe Biden’s wife, Karen Pence spent years in the classroom. When Mike was in Congress, she taught art at Immanuel Christian School in Virginia — and no one batted an eye. Of course, that was back in the early 2000s, when the Left’s charm offensive on same-sex marriage was still in full swing. We’ll be accommodating, they said. We just want to co-exist, they said. Our relationships won’t affect you, they said. A handful of years later, “affected” doesn’t begin to describe to what happensto conservatives who think differently than the totalitarian Left.
Of course, the Pences are not strangers to the other side’s viciousness. Every time the media is reminded about the family’s faith, they become hysterical all over again — a scene that played out this week when Karen announced she’d be volunteering at Immanuel Christian this spring. “I am excited to be back in the classroom and doing what I love to do,” she said in a statement. “I have missed teaching art, and it’s great to return to the school where I taught art for 12 years.”
She can’t go back there, LGBT activists raged! They reject homosexuality! Yes, well, that’s what orthodox Christian schools do. (Not to mention Jewish and Muslim ones too.) Would it have been headline news if Jill Biden taught at a Roman Catholic school? Probably not. Yet, the Left and their media chums are hurling profanity at the Pences for something that, even five years ago, wouldn’t have been controversial. Frankly, the only thing that would have been shocking is if Karen worked at a Christian school that didn’t act like a Christian school.
CNN’s Kate Bennett was just one of the talking heads who doesn’t get it. “So, lemme get this straight,” she tweeted, “the second lady of the United States has chosen to work at a school that openly discriminates against LGBT adults and children?” “So, lemme get this straight,” Ben Shapiro fired back. “You’re a reporter but you’ve never heard of religious people before? ‘BREAKING: Pence’s wife is working for a Christian school that requires that Christian students pledge to abide by Christian standards of sin that have not changed in 2,000 years.'”
To be honest, the Left’s real problem isn’t that Mike Pence’s wife is working at an evangelical school — but that evangelical schools exist at all. Since they do, the last thing liberals want is for anyone in public office to be associated with them. And despite what you’ve heard from the forces of intolerance, Immanuel Christian doesn’t “ban” anyone from their school. What they do, Chad Greene, points out, “is require a specific set of behavioral and religious belief standards equally applied to everyone. Many in the Christian world make a distinction regarding LGBT people that the left typically refuses to consider, between a person and his actions.” As Christians, our behavior doesn’t define us — we define our behavior.
Immanuel is in the business of teaching Christianity. What would be the point of a religious school if it didn’t? This “immediate, visceral reaction” shows just how far the Left will go to shame people of faith into silence. Worse, it proves the day they told us was coming is finally here. Back in 2015, during the Obergefell arguments, President Obama’s top lawyer, Donald Verrilli pulled back the curtain on the Left’s real goal in one surprisingly candid moment. When Justice Samuel Alito pressed the solicitor general on whether same-sex marriage would give the government a weapon to threaten Christian schools, Verrilli seemed uncomfortable but admitted, “It’s certainly going to be an issue. I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that, Justice Alito. It is — it is going to be an issue.”
We haven’t seen the Left fully implement their plans, because they haven’t had the benefit of another radical president in the White House to build on the liberal legacy of Barack Obama. But we don’t have to guess what they’ll do if they get one. It’s all spelled out in the most recent Democratic National Platform. Religious freedom, as Americans have known it for 233 years, will not be safe in the hands of a movement that is surgically targeting people of faith.
When I talked to the vice president on “Washington Watch” earlier today, he didn’t mince words. “Karen and I have been in and around public life for almost two decades, and so — to be honest — we’re used to the criticism. But the attacks on Christian education by the mainstream media have got to stop. We cherish the freedom of religion in this country. This administration stands four-square for the freedom of religion of people of all faiths. And to see the mainstream media to criticize my wife because she’s choosing to return to the classroom of an elementary Christian school is wrong.”
There used to be a consensus in this country that religious liberty was for everyone. When the Religious Freedom Restoration Act came before Congress, only three members voted against it. Over time, some liberals tried to isolate faith — to churches, Christian schools, or family rooms. You’ve heard me say before that the Left’s hope is to quarantine religion within the four walls of the church. Now, it’s becoming clear — even that won’t satisfy them.
“I have always had a problem with the idea that religion is something we must keep to ourselves,” Matt Walsh writes in the Daily Wire. “Indeed, the Christian faith requires exactly the opposite. But in the case of Karen Pence and her new employer, they are doing exactly what the Left demanded. This school is merely trying to operate by biblical principles within its own walls and on its own property. It is a Christian school simply being a Christian school. It isn’t bothering anyone. It isn’t invading anyone’s home and lecturing them about their sexual behavior. It isn’t preventing anyone from working or living or enjoying their lives. It is just saying, very reasonably, very unobtrusively, ‘We are going to conduct ourselves according to Christian moral tradition. If you don’t want to accept that moral tradition, then by all means go somewhere else.'”
“This is exactly, precisely, the approach that the Left for years endorsed and insisted upon. But suddenly it’s a problem. Suddenly, even Christianity behind closed doors, on private property, in a private school, is a target of outrage and scorn. It was a lie all along. They were never planning to stop outside the walls of our homes and our churches and our schools. That’s just what they said to lull us to sleep.”
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/011719_karen_770x400-e1547859623419.jpg363640Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2019-01-18 20:00:342019-01-18 20:00:36Karen Pence: The Teacher and the Religious Test
Today is the March for Life in Washington, D.C., and we’re joined by Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood employee who had a change of heart and is now a pro-life advocate. Plus: Rachel del Guidice shares why she’s been attending the march for the past 13 years.
We also cover these stories:
A day after Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged the president to delay his State of the Union speech, President Donald Trump delayed Pelosi’s trip overseas.
A measure pushed by House Republicans that would keep the government closed but would provide pay to affected government employees failed, with only six Democrats voting for it.
Sen. Lindsey Graham re-introduced a bill that would ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
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.
EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column with images and podcast is republished with permission. Photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor/Getty Images
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/190117_abbyjohnson-1250x650-e1547810107324.jpg388640The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2019-01-18 06:15:572019-01-18 06:16:37Podcast: A Former Planned Parenthood Employee Shares Why She Changed
A commenter here at Frauds and Crooks tells me I’m not writing any stories about born and bred American frauds, crooks and criminals while focusing on “new Americans.”
I have written about several American crooks, maybe more than I know because the media and law enforcement never tell us the immigration status of the likes of Mumtaz Rauf, orHaytham “Tom” Fakih.Maybe they were born here?
The caucus of black New York state lawmakers runs a charity whose stated mission is to empower “African American and Latino youth through education and leadership initiatives” by “providing opportunity to higher education” — but it hasn’t given a single scholarship to needy youth in two years, according to a New York Post investigation.
The group collects money from companies like AT&T, the Real Estate Board of New York, Time Warner Cable and CableVision, telling them in promotional materials that they are “changing lives, one scholarship at a time.”
The group — called the Association of Black and Puerto Rican Legislators, Inc. — instead spent $500,000 in the 2015 – 2016 fiscal year on items like food, limousines and rap music, the Post found.
The politicians refused to divulge the charity’s 2017 tax filing to the Post despite federal requirements that charities do so upon request.
Its main activity is holding and selling tickets to an elaborate party each year intended to raise money for its stated mission of providing scholarships for youth. But year after year, essentially all the money simply seems to go to festivities.
Continue reading here, or go to the New York Postfor more of the gory details.
Just realizing what an abundance of stories I might be able to develop in my category on ‘Charity fraud.’
If you have a local charity fraud story (a published story!) send me a link and I’ll see if it fits with my objectives here at Frauds and Crooks.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/rye-jessen-781485-unsplash-e1547745177206.jpg420640Ann Corcoranhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngAnn Corcoran2019-01-17 12:13:092019-01-17 12:13:10Americans ripping off Americans too! NY State Charity Questioned
My new year’s resolution is to expose the hypocrisy of the morally superior politicians whose election strategy was to pretend they cared about crafting policies in the country’s best interest.
Multimillionaire Nancy (“We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it” and if you disagree with me you are sexist) Pelosi is safe in her Napa Wine Country or San Francisco home, far from the drug addicts, dirty needles, feces, gang members and homeless lining the streets of San Francisco. Her voters may be too uninformed or willfully blind to see what she and her ilk have done to this formerly beautiful city. Sadly, the nation will be forced to suffer from her policies that reward scofflaws, patronize the poor, create dependency, and are designed to hustle votes.
Because their lives are so much more precious than ours, the power brokers have their private security and the medical care of their choice. They also have no shame.
My new year’s resolution is to expose the hypocrisy of the morally superior politicians whose election strategy was to pretend they cared about crafting policies in the country’s best interest.
Take “the wall” on our southern border. Ignoring the opinion of the border patrol agents (51 percent of whom are Hispanic) that it would “without a doubt” be a helpful tool, Nancy Pelosi and her people claimed it would be ineffective in stopping everybody. That’s like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stopping its flu vaccination campaign because the vaccine is only 40-60 percent effective.
And sanctuary state California Senator Kamala Harris was quick to the gun control microphone when some people were shot in a brawl but not a peep out of her when a community is in mourning after its brown-skinned legal immigrant policeman is gunned down at a traffic stop by a twice arrested illegal immigrant.
Expanding on the racist meme, the new talking point is that a wall is “immoral.” Where is the morality in enabling 1.5 million pounds of drugs to enter our country through Mexico contributing to the 70,237 drug overdose deaths — over 200 deaths per day—in the U.S. in 2017? Or in turning a blind eye to MS-13 gang members and criminals entering the country? I imagine the Costa Ricans and Panamanians are racist for securing their borders from the flood of illegal immigrants, and the El Salvadorians are immoral for putting razor wire walls around entire neighborhoods.
There is no morality in exploiting the deaths of two children who had endured a trek through an unfriendly landscape to score anti-Trump political points. (Some parents have admitted that their child was “their passport” to a better chance of getting in the United States.).
It is heartbreaking when any child dies. It is frustrating when there is no obvious cause. The CDC reports that in 2015 in the U.S., 393 children in good health between the ages of 1-18 years died suddenly without a clear cause of death, known as Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood (SUDC). One migrant child reportedly died of sepsis. Sepsis and septic shock can result from an infection anywhere in the body, including an open cut or scrape. In the United States, more than 75,000 children develop severe sepsis each year. Almost 7,000 of these children from all socioeconomic groups die – this is more than those who die of pediatric cancers. These families also deserve compassion. I didn’t see these outraged, compassionate legislators listed as co-sponsors to the bipartisan House Resolution to increase awareness of sepsis.
Where are the tears for the children of Chiraq? At about 24 deaths a year, children in Chicago’s deteriorating black neighborhoods are being killed 24 times the rate that Chicago soldiers are being killed in Iraq. From September 2011 to 2016, at least 174 children under the age of 17 have been killed in shootings. I’m still waiting for the Obamas to mention the problem, much less solutions to their hometown tragedy.
Multimillionaire Nancy (“We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it” and if you disagree with me you are sexist) Pelosi is safe in her Napa Wine Country or San Francisco home, far from the drug addicts, dirty needles, feces, gang members and homeless lining the streets of San Francisco. Her voters may be too uninformed or willfully blind to see what she and her ilk have done to this formerly beautiful city. Sadly, the nation will be forced to suffer from her policies that reward scofflaws, patronize the poor, create dependency, and are designed to hustle votes.
Many of the morally superior advocates of government-run healthcare frame the issue as a matter of compassion and social justice for all. The opposite is true. The program will rob every worker of their hard-earned income by doubling their taxes to fully fund Medicare-for-All’s $32 trillion 10-year price tag.
Worse yet, everyone’s liberty will be curtailed. With Medicare-for-All, private insurance is prohibited, doctors will still have to prove that their desired treatment is “medically necessary,” and patients will have longer wait times for services and still get a 7 minute visit with a “provider.” The 63,000 Canadians who left for healthcare in 2017 will have to rely heavily on other medical tourist destinations.
It is highly unlikely that the political elite will be forced to go to the retail clinic at the local drug store or Walmart—certainly not the same southern Virginia Walmart where FBI higher-up Peter Strzok “could SMELL [sic] the Trump support.”
Barely a nanosecond had passed after Speaker Pelosi promised less divisiveness when the newest identity politician shouted from the rooftops (in front of her child), that “we’re going to go in and impeach the mother f—–!”
Because their lives are so much more precious than ours, the power brokers have their private security and the medical care of their choice. They also have no shame.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/nordwood-themes-1066398-unsplash-e1547648682119.jpg427640Dr. Marilyn Singletonhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Marilyn Singleton2019-01-16 09:24:522019-01-16 09:24:54New Years Wish: No More Morally Superior Phonies
And, not only that! The Trentonian, via an opinion piece by David Neese, reminds its readers in blue New Jersey about statements from politicians past that should have earned them (at least) a wrist slap from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
So where was the Southern Poverty Law Center when we needed them?
You have heard the comments repeatedly lately, but I will bet a buck most Dems outside of the DC beltway have no idea both Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders were so vocal in their demands for border security!
Maybe I’m too hard on the mainstream media! Sometimes they come through with the truth!
Provocation: Documented facts about ‘undocumented’
Using at least two words that are now verboten in proper Washington circles, writer Neese begins with a little provocation about the hypocrisy that is driving us nuts these days! (Emphasis is mine)
Surely it was a white supremacist — or at a minimum a xenophobic bigot — who brazenly uttered these words: “We simply can’t allow people to pour into the United States undetected, unchecked, circumventing the people who are waiting patiently, diligently, lawfully to become immigrants in the country.”
But, lo and behold, these were not the words of some slope-browed yahoo driving around in a pickup with a confederate decal on the rear window right by the gun rack.
These were the words of none other than Barack Obama, spoken in 2005.
Okay, but surely the following words, spoken in 2007, were the sentiments of a Klan rabble-rouser:
“I don’t know why we need millions of people to be coming into the country who will work for lower wages than America works and drive down wages even lower than they are now.”
Nope, not Klan words. Those were the words ofBernie Sanders, socialist tribune for the toiling proletariat.
Then he gets to the numbers that no one should ignore:
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) puts out a report called “Criminal Alien Statistics.”The 2018 edition notes 208,800 criminal aliens in state and federal prisons, doing time for an assortment of felonies at a taxpayer cost of $1.4 billion annually.
That seems like a lot of offenders behind bars if immigrant crime is merely, as frequently asserted, a “dog-whistle” term the Know Nothings employ to incite resentment of brown people.
Looking at a sample of 197,000 criminal aliens, the GAO reports an average 10 criminal offenses per alien among this group. Ten!
For the period roughly 2011-2016, the GAO reports the following number of offenses by illegal aliens:
Thank you Mr. Neese and The Trentonian. (If you are wondering, I don’t know David Neese.)
Looking for something to do? Get Neese’s piece circulating on social media. Not my post, but his original (here) and consider contacting The Trentonian to thank them for publishing it.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/david-von-diemar-745969-unsplash-1-e1547556816810.jpg444640Ann Corcoranhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngAnn Corcoran2019-01-15 07:53:522019-01-15 07:53:54The facts on Immigrant Crime Published in NJ Newspaper
The border crisis is real—and inaction by Congressional Democrats is irresponsible. To protect our communities, the Trump Administration is requesting funds for common sense border security funding.
We must have a secure border in order to:
Reduce illegal immigration.
Protect American lives.
Combat the opioid epidemic.
Protect vulnerable individuals from exploitation by human traffickers.
Background
Insufficient border security is creating a crisis in communities across America and at the southern border. For instance, 90 percent of the heroin in America comes through our southern border, fueling the opioid epidemic and destroying our communities.
America welcomes more than one million legal immigrants every year who go through a long vetting process. However, the current immigration system is broken due to a combination of outdated legal immigration rules and lax enforcement that exacerbates lawlessness.
In 2017 and 2018, roughly 235,000 illegal immigrants were arrested on various criminal charges or convictions within the interior of the United States—including roughly 100,000 for assault, 30,000 for sex crimes, and 4,000 for homicides.
Insufficient border security is creating a crisis in communities throughout America. 90 percent of the heroin in America comes through our southern border, fueling the opioid epidemic, destroying families, and killing thousands of our fellow citizens. In the past two years, more Americans have died from opioid overdoses than died in the Vietnam war.
Furthermore, human smugglers are exploiting our immigration system for profit and putting innocent lives at risk. One in three migrant women are sexually assaulted on the dangerous trek to the border.
The border crisis is real—and inaction is irresponsible. To protect our communities, the Trump Administration is requesting funds for common sense border security. This ask includes:
$5.7 billion for construction of approximately 234 miles of steel barrier along the Southern Border
$675 million to deter and detect dangerous materials crossing our borders like narcotics and weapons
$563 million that would provide for 75 additional immigration judges and support staff who are necessary to reduce the backlog of immigration cases that are sitting right now at the border
$211 million for 750 additional border patrol agents, who DHS officials have deemed paramount to this fight
$571 million for additional ICE personnel
$4.2 billion for detention center materials and personnel
As a first step to combat this crisis, Congress must pass a spending bill that provides the funding that the President has requested. In addition to obtaining increased border security funding today, we must continue to push for real reforms to our legal immigration system. Necessary reforms include ending chain migration, adopting a skills-based immigration system, and closing loopholes in the asylum claim process.
The Daily Caller is taking the rare step of publishing this anonymous op-ed at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose career would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.
As one of the senior officials working without a paycheck, a few words of advice for the president’s next move at shuttered government agencies: lock the doors, sell the furniture, and cut them down.
Federal employees are starting to feel the strain of the shutdown. I am one of them. But for the sake of our nation, I hope it lasts a very long time, till the government is changed and can never return to its previous form.
The lapse in appropriations is more than a battle over a wall. It is an opportunity to strip wasteful government agencies for good.
On an average day, roughly 15 percent of the employees around me are exceptional patriots serving their country. I wish I could give competitive salaries to them and no one else. But 80 percent feel no pressure to produce results. If they don’t feel like doing what they are told, they don’t.
Why would they? We can’t fire them. They avoid attention, plan their weekend, schedule vacation, their second job, their next position — some do this in the same position for more than a decade.
They do nothing that warrants punishment and nothing of external value. That is their workday: errands for the sake of errands — administering, refining, following and collaborating on process. “Process is your friend” is what delusional civil servants tell themselves. Even senior officials must gain approval from every rank across their department, other agencies and work units for basic administrative chores.
Process is what we serve, process keeps us safe, process is our core value. It takes a lot of people to maintain the process. Process provides jobs. In fact, there are process experts and certified process managers who protect the process. Then there are the 5 percent with moxy (career managers). At any given time they can change, clarify or add to the process — even to distort or block policy counsel for the president.
Saboteurs peddling opinion as research, tasking their staff on pet projects or pitching wasteful grants to their friends. Most of my career colleagues actively work against the president’s agenda. This means I typically spend about 15 percent of my time on the president’s agenda and 85 percent of my time trying to stop sabotage, and we have no power to get rid of them. Until the shutdown.
Due to the lack of funding, many federal agencies are now operating more effectively from the top down on a fraction of their workforce, with only select essential personnel serving national security tasks. One might think this is how government should function, but bureaucracies operate from the bottom up — a collective of self-generated ideas. Ideas become initiatives, formalize into offices, they seek funds from Congress and become bureaus or sub-agencies, and maybe one day grow to be their own independent agency, like ours. The nature of a big administrative bureaucracy is to grow to serve itself. I watch it and fight it daily.
When the agency is full, employees held liable for poor performance respond with threats, lawsuits, complaints and process in at least a dozen offices, taking years of mounting paperwork with no fear of accountability, extending their careers, while no real work is done. Do we succumb to such extortion? Yes. We pay them settlements, we waive bad reviews, and we promote them.
Many government agencies have adopted the position that more complaints are good because it shows inclusion in, you guessed it, the process. When complaints come, it is cheaper to pay them off than to hold public servants accountable. The result: People accused of serious offenses are not charged, and self-proclaimed victims are paid by you, the American taxpayer.
The message to federal supervisors is clear. Maintain the status quo, or face allegations. Many federal employees truly believe that doing tasks more efficiently and cutting out waste, by closing troubled programs instead of expanding them, “is morally wrong,” as one cried to me.
I get it. These are their pets. It is tough to put them down and let go, and many resist. This phenomenon was best summed up by a colleague who said, “The goal in government is to do nothing. If you try to get things done, that’s when you will run into trouble.”
But President Trump can end this abuse. Senior officials can reprioritize during an extended shutdown, focus on valuable results and weed out the saboteurs. We do not want most employees to return, because we are working better without them. Sure, we empathize with families making tough financial decisions, like mine, and just like private citizens who have to find other work and bring competitive value every day, while paying more than a third of their salary in federal taxes.
President Trump has created more jobs in the private sector than the furloughed federal workforce. Now that we are shut down, not only are we identifying and eliminating much of the sabotage and waste, but we are finally working on the president’s agenda.
President Trump does not need Congress to address the border emergency, and yes, it is an emergency. Billions upon billions of hard-earned tax dollars are still being dumped into foreign aid programs every year that do nothing for America’s interest or national security. The president does not need congressional funding to deconstruct abusive agencies who work against his agenda. This is a chance to effect real change, and his leverage grows stronger every day the shutdown lasts.
The president should add to his demands, including a vote on all of his political nominees in the Senate. Send the career appointees back. Many are in the 5 percent of saboteurs and resistance leaders.
A word of caution: To be a victory, this shutdown must be different than those of the past and should achieve lasting disruption with two major changes, or it will hurt the president.
The first thing we need out of this is better security, particularly at the southern border. Our founders envisioned a free market night watchman state, not the bungled bloated bureaucracy our government has become. But we have to keep the uniformed officers paid, which is an emergency. Ideally, continue a resolution to pay the essential employees only, if they are truly working on national security. Furloughed employees should find other work, never return and not be paid.
Secondly, we need savings for taxpayers. If this fight is merely rhetorical bickering with Nancy Pelosi, we all lose, especially the president. But if it proves that government is better when smaller, focusing only on essential functions that serve Americans, then President Trump will achieve something great that Reagan was only bold enough to dream.
The president’s instincts are right. Most Americans will not miss non-essential government functions. A referendum to end government plunder must happen. Wasteful government agencies are fighting for relevance but they will lose. Now is the time to deliver historic change by cutting them down forever.
The author is a senior official in the Trump administration.
EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column with images is republished with permission. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/trump-white-maga-hat-e1547506311877.jpg319640The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2019-01-14 17:56:272019-01-14 18:10:13I’m A Senior Trump Official, And I Hope A Long Shutdown Smokes Out The Resistance
This is unlikely to succeed, but it shows widespread dissatisfaction not just with Tlaib, but with the direction the Left is taking.
“This woman is an anti-Semite, a war mongering hate filled Palestinian who has vowed to try and destroy our constitutional rights, hates America, hates American citizens.”
Can those charges reasonably be disputed?
“150,000 Sign Petition to Impeach Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib,” by Anthony Gockowski, Tennessee Star, January 12, 2019 (thanks to the Geller Report):
A Change.org petition calling for the impeachment of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI-13) already has close to 160,000 signatures.
“This woman is an anti-Semite, a war mongering hate filled Palestinian who has vowed to try and destroy our constitutional rights, hates America, hates American citizens,” the petition states. “She’s a danger to our sovereignty, a detriment to society, and to this country, and is unfit to serve in any capacity within our government.”
The petition also takes issue with Tlaib’s election, claiming that she “lied about living in Detroit” by “using her father’s house address.”
Tlaib made headlines earlier this week when she vowed to “impeach the motherf—” during a party in celebration of her being sworn in to Congress.
“I stand by impeaching the president of the United States. I ran on that,” she said in an interview discussing her comments. She called her promise to impeach President Donald Trump something she “very much” holds “dearly.”
“They love that I’m real, and that I am very much focused on getting the government back up and running, but also making sure we’ve held the president of the United States accountable,” she said.
Tlaib later apologized that her comments caused a “distraction,” but refused to apologize for the explicit remarks….
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Rashida-Tlaib-facebook-page-e1547470577212.jpg407639Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2019-01-14 07:09:352019-04-30 18:16:50190,000 sign petition to impeach Muslim Rep. Rashida Tlaib who called Trump “motherf**er”
With the new Congress, they’ve hailed two new Muslim House members, made accomodations for religious headwear on the House floor, and celebrated record numbers of minorities in their freshman class.
This penchant for diversity makes their growing blind spot all the more glaring. That blind spot is anti-Christian bigotry, seen in the hostile questions that Democratic senators have aimed at Trump nominees that inch dangerously close to a religious test for public office.
Until recently, only Republicans had cried foul.
Senators like James Lankford, R-Okla., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, came to the defense of Amy Coney Barrett in 2017, whose qualifications to sit on a U.S. appeals court were questioned on account of her “dogma.” One senator had the gall to ask her directly whether she considered herself “an orthodox Catholic.”
So it comes as genuine relief this week that a Democrat, finally, is saying enough is enough.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii published a searing op-ed on Tuesday chiding her Democratic colleagues in the Senate for questioning Brian C. Buescher, a Trump judicial nominee, over his affiliation with the Knights of Columbus, the world’s largest Catholic civic organization.
Back in December, Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, used their questioning time to scrutinize the Knights’ “extreme positions” on same-sex marriage and abortion. (Shock: The Knights of Columbus oppose both, in accordance with the Catholic Church.)
Hirono asked, “If confirmed, do you intend to end your membership with this organization to avoid any appearance of bias?”
Harris pried: “Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman’s right to choose when you joined the organization?”
Buescher answered: “I do not recall if I was aware whether the Knights of Columbus had taken a position on the abortion issue when I joined at the age of 18.”
In her editorial for The Hill, Gabbard pulled no punches toward her colleagues for using a man’s Catholic faith and affiliations against him. She wrote:
While I oppose the nomination of Brian Buescher to the U.S. District Court in Nebraska, I stand strongly against those who are fomenting religious bigotry, citing as disqualifiers Buescher’s Catholicism and his affiliation with the Knights of Columbus. If Buescher is ‘unqualified’ because of his Catholicism and affiliation with the Knights of Columbus, then President John F. Kennedy, and the ‘liberal lion of the Senate’ Ted Kennedy would have been ‘unqualified’ for the same reasons.
Gabbard was almost completely alone among progressives. Her side reacted furiously.
But she wasn’t completely alone. Illinois Rep. Dan Lipinski, one of the only pro-life Democrats left in the House, voiced his concern on the matter:
I would never, ever have expected that membership in the Knights of Columbus would be something that would be viewed with suspicion and maybe even worse. It’s terrible to see membership in the Knights of Columbus questioned like that, but at the core this gets back to the question of religious freedom, and it’s something that we have to continue to speak out about because we, our country, can’t afford to lose that freedom that we’re guaranteed in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Senators who dismiss the Knights of Columbus as “extreme” show just how little they know about the organization. The Knights mostly focus on charity work for the poor, disabled, and orphaned, while raising money to educate underprivileged students who come from all religious affiliations.
The Knights of Columbus are, essentially, a Catholic version of the Rotary Club. And the depth of their giving is impressive to say the least.
The Federalist’s Helen Raleigh put it best: “The only thing extreme about [the Knights of Columbus] is their generosity.”
As we have noted before at The Daily Signal, religious tests for public office are clearly forbidden by the Constitution. Senate Democrats’ increasing hostility to nominees who hold deep Christian beliefs is a regression back to a sectarian sensibility we thought we had left behind.
In the 1920s, there was heightened tension between Catholic and Protestant Christians in America. Some, like the Ku Klux Klan, openly questioned whether Catholics could even be Americans—especially in light of the sharp increase of immigrants from Catholic countries.
The Klan painted the Knights of Columbus as a Catholic conspiracy to overthrow the Constitution and install the pope in its place. It also waged a campaign to abolish increasingly popular Columbus Day celebrations, which it considered another dastardly Catholic attempt to normalize their religious beliefs.
Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd was the last ex-klansman to serve in the Senate. But it appears some modern progressives have amnesia and are picking up the anti-Catholic torch yet again.
Certainly, a judicial nominee’s views and legal positions are relevant as to whether they are fit to serve, but attempting to disqualify them for the simple fact that they are affiliated with a specific religious group is corrosive.
The charge against the Knights of Columbus, and Buescher, seems to be that their true religion is Catholicism and not progressivism. That is a religious test in disguise—but they cannot be allowed to get by with it.
The Heritage Foundation’s Joel Griffith recently pointed out that anti-Semitism has gained a new foothold in the 116th Congress. So has anti-Catholicism. But it’s encouraging to see two brave members of the Democratic Party finally pushing back. Let their tribe increase.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Tulsi-Gabbard-e1663161601253.jpg375540The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2019-01-14 06:08:222019-01-14 06:08:23These 2 Democrats Are Finally Standing Up to Anti-Christian Bigotry in Their Party
Former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) official Michael Cutler says the current “crisis” of mass illegal and legal immigration to the United States is the direct result of “globalists going back decades.”
In an exclusive interview with SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Tonight, Cutler argues that the country’s immigration system — which imports more than 1.5 million illegal and legal immigrants a year — is not “broken” as Democrats and Republicans often claim, but actually operating “exactly” how politicians and their billionaire donors intended it to work.
Cutler said:
Both sides of the aisle have been globalists going back decades. And that’s how we’ve gotten ourselves into this mess. [Emphasis added]
[ … ]
When people say ‘The immigration system is broken,’ I’m going to shock you and tell you it’s not broken. It’s doing exactly what the elite want. It is a delivery system and what it delivers is an unlimited supply of cheap, exploitable labor … it delivers an unlimited supply of foreign tourists. That’s why we have 28 visa waiver countries on 9/11, today we have 38 visa waiver countries. There should be zero visa waiver countries if you look at the findings of the 9/11 Commission. [Emphasis added]
It also delivers an unlimited supply of foreign students and for the immigration lawyers … an unlimited supply of clientele. [Emphasis added]
Listen to Cutler’s full interview here:
Cutler also called out Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) record on wanting to increase penalties for Americans who trespass on federal property while opposing the enforcement of immigration law that penalizes illegal aliens for trespassing into the U.S.
“Chuck Schumer in 2014 … wanted a federal law that would make trespassing on critical infrastructure a five-year federal felony,” Cutler said.
“The same Schumer says when you trespass on America, however, you’ve earned citizenship of the highest honor that we can bestow upon a foreign national,” Cutler continued. “It’s outrageous beyond words.”
“This is a crisis that has been festering far too long because you’ve had far too many immoral, greedy politicians willing to sell America to the highest bidder through campaign contributions,” Cutler said.
Currently, the federal government has remained partially shut down as House Democrats block any funding for physical barriers at the U.S.-Mexico border. A handful of Senate Republicans, meanwhile, crafted a plan to give amnesty to illegal aliens that ultimately failed to gain traction.
President Donald Trump has said he is reviewing a plan to deem the border and illegal immigration a national emergency in order to fund a wall along the southern border.
Breitbart News Tonight broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot channel 125 weeknights from 9:00 p.m. to midnight Eastern or 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Pacific.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Border security is once again front and center on the American political scene as politicians in Washington posture in the debate over whether the U.S. should build some sort of border wall or fence on its porous southern border with Mexico.
Whenever the Mexican border is at the top of the news, it serves as a reminder that our southern border is almost completely unsecure. And there have been some reminders mixed in over the years that Washington has ignored this problem about the potential for a terrorist threat from south of the border, such as James O’Keefe of Project Veritas wading across the Rio Grande dressed like Osama Bin Laden.
Some on the Left insist on downplaying the threat from terrorism on America’s southern border, almost to the point that they insist that there is NO threat from terrorists associated with our insecure borders (the reality is that the potential threat exists on our northern border as well).
But there IS a Jihadist threat from south of the border and it is not new. It has been discussed since well before 9/11. The Jihadist threat on the southern border is real and it is multifaceted.
There is no way to estimate how many jihadists may already have crossed into the U.S. from Mexico. But the time to play politics with the border issue is long past. The shallow sloganeering and race-baiting that have dominated the national debate about border controls should be recognized as what they are: hindrances to sane and sensible national defense measures.
SIA-OTMs
OTM is an acronym for illegal aliens who are ‘Other Than Mexican’ — SIA stands for ‘Special Interest Aliens’ from 34 nations like Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen.
Mexicans trying to enter the U.S. illegally are often simply processed at the border and sent back. But Mexico won’t allow us to send citizens from other countries back through Mexico, and under U.S. law, they’re entitled to a formal deportation hearing. The immigration service lacks beds to hold them, so the vast majority of OTMs are released from custody and asked to voluntarily return for their court date.
From 2008-2010, an estimated 180,000 OTMs (Other Than Mexicans) were believed to have crossed the border illegally. In that same period, 1,918 “Special Interest” OTMs were apprehended on the border.It is generally believed that for every illegal alien apprehended at the border, there are several who elude border security and are not apprehended.
Law enforcement sources in Arizona have told me that it has become increasingly common for Muslims in Mexico to change their Islamic surnames to Hispanic sounding names to facilitate moving across the border. Apologists claim this is simply to avoid discrimination.
Perhaps not coincidentally, there has been a noticeable proliferation of Salafist mosques in Latin America since the early 1990s and an increasing proselytization campaign on the part of Wahhabi and Saudi-funded nongovernmental organizations like the World Assembly for Muslim Youth (WAMY). It is worth mentioning that WAMY’s U.S. operations were shut down by the Justice Department due to the organization’s massive material support for Jihad.
My law enforcement sources tell me that drug cartels have been involved in trafficking Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab and Hezbollah operatives into the US.
The vast majority of the time, the media line is that the overwhelming majority of the people crossing our southern border are just poor innocents looking for work and a meager wage. Evaluated in the most simplistic terms, this is of course, partly true. But the more complex reality isn’t that simple or sanitary.
According to law enforcement personnel I have spoken to, the majority of border crossers are NOT economic immigrants.
An examination of anecdotes about general enforcement conditions on the U.S.-Mexican border paint a picture that indicates that America has not taken the steps necessary to defend itself from terrorist infiltration.
For instance, there are severe constraints on border enforcement personnel. The Border Patrol is forbidden from patrolling on federal land, opening large swathes of territory by default. Demoralized Border Patrol officers also report receiving instructions over the years to avoid detaining and processing illegal aliens.
Against these constraints, our border and immigration enforcement personnel are going up against a robust, sophisticated alliance of drug cartels and Jihadis.
According the law enforcement personnel in Arizona, cartels are buying real estate on both sides of the border to set up staging areas and camps. The cartels employ high-tech communications gear superior to that in the hands of US law enforcement. Cartels and “coyotes” employ scouts and snipers on the high ground along trafficking routes—as far north as Phoenix.
Border enforcement personnel report that the Mexican army has in fact provided surveillance and cover fire FOR traffickers on more than one occasion in the past.
Arizona ranchers report that they are afraid to use their cell phones in the open because cartel snipers might think they are calling in reports to law enforcement and kill them. Even U.S. law and border enforcement personnel are careful about using communications gear in the open on the southern border.
• In an infamous undated video, a Muslim cleric in Kuwait, Abdullah al-Nafsi, in a sermon in his mosque said that “there is no need for airplanes and planning; one man with the courage to carry a suitcase of anthrax through the tunnels from Mexico to the United States could kill 330,000 Americans in one hour.”
• In June 2004, the US Border Patrol arrested 77 “Middle Eastern” men attempting to cross the border from Mexico illegally.
• In October 2004, US intelligence officials received reports that 25 Chechans had illegally crossed into Arizona from Mexico.
• In December 2004, a Bangladeshi Muslim named Fakhrul Islam, was arrested crossing the southern border from Mexico in the company of the Central American gang MS-13.
• In January 2005, two Hamas operatives, Mahmoud Khalil and Ziad Saleh, were arrested as part of a criminal enterprise in Los Angeles. Both had entered the U.S. after paying a smuggler $10,000 each to take them across the border.
• In September 2007, Texas’ top homeland security official, Steve McCraw, told the El Paso Times that terrorists with ties to Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Qaeda had been arrested crossing the Texas border with Mexico in recent years.
• In November 2007, the FBI issued an advisory about a plan by jihadists in league with Mexican drug lords to cross the border via underground tunnels and attack the intelligence training center at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, twenty miles from the border with Mexico. “The Afghanis and Iraqis,” one official explained, paid the Mexicans $20,000 or “the equivalent in weapons” for their help in getting into the U.S., and “shaved their beards so as not to appear to be Middle Easterners.”
• In February 2008, three Afghanis were arrested at an international airport in India for traveling on forged Mexican passports.
• A 2010 GAO report detailed the ease with which WMD might be smuggled across the southern border. In a simulation exercise conducted by intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in three states, investigators were able to cross undetected, successfully simulating the cross-border movement of radioactive materials or other contraband into the United States.
“The Border Patrol nabbed two Pakistani men with ties to terrorism at the U.S.-Mexico border in September in the latest instance of illegal immigrants from so-called “special interest countries” using the southern border as a point of entry to the U.S.
Muhammad Azeem and Mukhtar Ahmad, both in their 20s and from Gujrat, were caught Sept. 20 by agents south of San Diego and just over the international border from Tijuana. When agents checked their identities through databases they got hits on both of them: Mr. Ahmad popped up as an associate of a known or suspected terrorist, while Mr. Azeem’s information had been shared by a foreign government for intelligence purposes.
Both men had been processed two months earlier by immigration officials in Panama, suggesting they took advantage of smuggling networks or other routes increasingly used by Central American illegal immigrants to sneak into the U.S.”
• The recent migrant caravans originating in Central America have included “several SIAs, and potentially” known or suspected terrorists traveling toward the U.S. border.
• The U.S. Department of Homeland Security continues to prioritize the SIA threat as one of the top threats to the homeland because of the consistently “large number” of individuals from special interest countries that travel to the Western Hemisphere using illicit pathways.
• Written ISIS materials and publications have encouraged ISIS followers to cross the U.S. Southwest Border.
• DHS Border Patrol Agents “routinely” encounter SIAs at the border using routes controlled by transnational criminal organizations.
• Statistics on the number of known or suspected terrorists on routes to the border are often classified, but the threat posed by “the existence of illicit pathways into the United States” highlights that “border security is national security” as terrorist groups seek to exploit vulnerabilities among neighboring countries to fund, support, and commit attacks against the homeland.
• The report lists five open-source, unclassified cases representing the types of individuals and threats associated with illicit routes to the homeland. (CIS recently compiled and published a list of 15.) A number of heavily redacted cases are included in which biometric enrollment information uncovered suspected terrorists in 2013, 2015, and 2018.
• The frequency of international flights from special interest regions into Latin America and the Caribbean continues to increase due to economic and governance challenges in those countries that create an attractive environment for illicit SIA travel to the U.S. border.
• ICE Homeland Security Investigations is deeply enmeshed in investigations and operations throughout Central America to counter human smuggling organizations that move SIAs in Panama, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Brazil.
• Abdulahi Sharif, Somalia, detained in Alberta, Canada, September 2017, ISIS (“It soon emerged that some years earlier, in 2011, Sharif smuggled through Latin America and Mexico to the California border.”)
• Ibrahim Qoordheen, Somalia, detained in Costa Rica, March 2017, probable al-Shabaab (Detained in Costa Rica en route to U.S. southern border)
• Unidentified Afghan national, reported smuggled into the United States, between 2014-2016, Pakistani Taliban. (In 2017, federal prosecutors convicted Sharafat Ali Khan, a Pakistani human smuggler based in Brazil, for transporting between 25 and 99 illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan from Brazil to Texas and California over the Mexican border. According to the Washington Times, at least one of Khan’s customers was an Afghan “who authorities said was involved in a plot to conduct an attack in the U.S. or Canada and had family ties to members of the Taliban.”)
• Muhammad Azeem and Mukhtar Ahmad, Pakistani nationals, Mexico-California border, September 2015, affiliation unknown. (U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended Azeem and Ahmad just north of Tijuana after the pair had traveled from their home in Gujrat, Pakistan, through Latin America. Database checks revealed that both migrants were on U.S. terrorism watch lists.)
• Unnamed Somali national, detained at the Texas-Mexico border port of entry, June 2014, probable al-Shabaab. (This Somali entrant told U.S. immigration officials that two months prior to his border entry to claim asylum he had completed training for a suicide attack in Mogadishu but instead went to African Union troops who were able to thwart the planned terrorist operation. He stated that he had trained with 13 other Somalis for 10 weeks to use suicide belts, AK-47s, and grenades.)
• Unnamed Sri Lankan national, detained at Texas-Mexico border, March 2012, Tamil Tigers. (This Sri Lankan was with two other Sri Lankans apprehended by Border Patrol agents in McAllen, Texas. He stated that he belonged to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization.)
• Unnamed Somali national, detained at Mexico-California port of entry, May 2011, probable al-Shabaab. (Somali individual crossed the border at the San Ysidro, Calif., port of entry. He had previously been denied a U.S. immigration visa and was on multiple U.S. terrorism watch lists. His mother, father, and four siblings also were on terrorism watch lists.)
• Unnamed Bangladeshi national, detained near Naco, Ariz., June 2010, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami Bangladesh. (One of two Bangladeshis apprehended after traveling together and illegally crossing from Mexico admitted to U.S. Border Patrol interviewers that both had worked in the “General Assembly” for the U.S.-designated terrorist group Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami Bangladesh. Subsequently, one of two detainees was deported, but the other was granted bond on an asylum claim and absconded.)
• Abdullahi Omar Fidse, Somalia, detained at Mexico-Texas Border, June 2008, al-Shabaab. (In July 2013, a U.S. District Judge sentenced Fidse on convictions for lying to the FBI about his terrorism associations after he traveled through Latin America to a Mexico-Texas port of entry in 2008. An FBI counterterrorism investigation found he had served as an al-Shabaab combat operative, crossed the border intending to conduct an unspecified operation, possessed the cell phone number of a terrorist implicated in the 2010 Uganda bombing that killed 70 soccer fans, and laid out details of a plan to assassinate the U.S. ambassador to Kenya and his Marine guard.)
• Mohammad Ahmad Dhakane, Somalia, detained at Mexico-Texas border port of entry, October 2008, al-Ittihad al-Islamiya. (In 2010, Dhakane was convicted at trial in San Antonio, Texas, on asylum fraud charges derived from an FBI terrorism investigation, which began when he was recorded speaking about his work as a terrorist to an undercover informant inside a Texas detention facility. Dhakane had worked as a Brazil-based smuggler of fellow Somalis to the U.S. border )
The Al Qaeda threat in Latin America has been well documented:
• On June 30, 2004 it was announced by the Honduran Security Ministry that high-ranking Al Qaeda operative Adnān Shukrī Jumaʿah (Adnan Gulshair el Shukrijumah) had been in Honduras during the previous month meeting with members of the MS13 street gang. He is also believed to have conducted surveillance of the Panama Canal. He was still one of the most wanted terrorists in the world at the time he was killed in Pakistan in 2014. (He happened to be the son of an Imam from Miramar, FL incidentally)”
• In July 2004, a woman named Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed was arrested at a Texas airport boarding a flight to New York after she either walked or swam across the Mexican border into Texas. According to the Washington Post, she was connected to a Pakistani terrorist group and was believed to be ferrying instructions to U.S.-based Al Qaeda operatives.
• In November 2004, captured Al Qaeda Egyptian Jihadist Sharif al-Masri told US interrogators that Al Qaeda sought to exploit the US’s porous southern border and possibly smuggle radiological material across it from Mexico.
• In February 2005, Porter Goss, the director of central intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Al Qaeda had considered infiltrating the United States through the Mexican border.
• In February 2005, Adm. James M. Loy, the deputy secretary of homeland security testified before Congress that intelligence “strongly suggests” that Al Qaeda operatives have considered using the Mexican border as an entry point. Admiral Loy cited recent information from investigations and detentions as the basis for his concern about the Mexican border. He added, “Several Al Qaeda leaders believe operatives can pay their way into the country through Mexico and also believe illegal entry is more advantageous than legal entry for operational security reasons.”
• Also in 2005, FBI Director Robert Mueller’s congressional testimony indicated that “there are individuals from countries with known Al Qaeda connections who are changing their Islamic surnames to Hispanic-sounding names and obtaining false Hispanic identities, learning to speak Spanish and pretending to be Hispanic.”
• In November 2005, Texas Congressman John Culberson described on national TV how an Iraqi al-Qaeda operative on the terror watch list was captured living near the Mexico-Texas border.
The east African Jihadist organization Al Shabaab has been discovered to have a footprint in Mexico. They are receiving Mexican language and cultural assimilation training, have been discovered to have a relationship of convenience with the Mexican drug cartels, and have been smuggling their operatives into the United States to raise money and to recruit members to their cause:
• In 2010, a man named Ahmed Muhammad Dhakane allegedly secreted “hundreds of people” — including Somalis believed to be associated with Al Shabaab — into the United States. Prior to arriving to Congress, Congressman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) worked as chief of counterterrorism in the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Western District of Texas — part of the Lone Star State that borders with Mexico. McCaul’s statement on this incident is chilling: “To this day we do not know where those 300 Somalis are … We do know they are in the United States.”
• In May 2010, the DHS sent an alert to Texas law enforcement to be on the lookout for a suspected member of Al Shabaab suspected of entering Texas from Mexico.
• In June 2010, Mexican Marines raided a house occupied by an Al Shabaab member in Mexico City, uncovering a large cache of explosives reportedly to be used in an attack on the US embassy, which was less than a mile away.
The Iranian-backed Shia Jihadist terrorist group Hezbollah is probably the biggest threat on the southern border:
• In February 2001, Mahmoud Kourani (the brother of Hezbollah’s security chief in southern Lebanon) came across the border from Tijuana into California in the trunk of a car, after bribing a Mexican embassy official in Beirut to get a visa. He eventually settled in Dearborn, Michigan. Kourani had received training in weapons, intelligence, and spycraft in Iran.
• In December 2002, Salim Boughader was arrested for smuggling 200 Lebanese, including Hezbollah operatives, across the border from Tiajuana into California. Boughader had previously worked for Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV satellite network.
• In April 2006, FBI Director Robert Muller announced that the Iranian-backed Hezbollah had succeeded in smuggling operatives across the Mexican border into the U.S. Mr. Muller claimed the FBI had dismantled the smuggling ring, identified the people who had been smuggled in and “addressed” them. Or at least “addressed” those we knew about. Or something.
• In July 2010, Mexican authorities announced that they had broken up a Hezbollah network operating in their country.
• An indictment was handed down on August 30, 2010 by the Southern District Court of New York that showed a connection between Hezbollah and the drug cartels that violently plague the U.S.-Mexico border. In short, a well-known international arms dealer was trying to orchestrate an arms-for-drugs deal in which cocaine from FARC – the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which works with Mexican drug cartels to take cocaine into America – would be traded for thousands of weapons housed by a Hezbollah operative in Mexico.
• Michael Braun, a former Drug Enforcement Administration chief of operations, has even been quoted as saying, “Hezbollah relies on the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels. … They work together; they rely on the same shadow facilitators. One way or another, they are all connected.” In February 2012, Braun testified before Congress that Hezbollah, had developed strong, sophisticated relationships with Mexican drug cartels: “And by developing those relations it provided them with the ability to operate far from home in our neighborhood and on our doorstep.”
• In September 2012, three members of Hezbollah–including a US citizen named Rafic Mohammad Labboun Allaboun–were arrested in Merida, Mexico and turned over the US authorities. Allaboun was carrying a fake passport identifying him as a citizen of Belize at the time of arrest. Once a prominent Muslim leader in Northern California, Labboun spent over two years in prison for credit card fraud. Authorities suspected that the $100,000 in credit card fraud was linked to Hezbollah’s money laundering activities.
What all this adds up to is that the American people are being sold a bill of goods.
When politicians call for action to “reform” immigration they ignore the reality that the most pressing need for true reform is border security and there has been no Congressional action on that issue whatsoever.
This is despite the fact that there is a true national security threat on the southern border. Our Jihadist enemies have openly discussed this vulnerability and have already exploited it in documented cases. Pundits who go on national television and declare that there has never been a single credible report of a terrorist threat on the southern border are either ignorant or dishonest.
The American people are right to be concerned about the vulnerability of our porous, undefended borders. Open borders in the age of global Jihad amount to insanity.
COLUMN BY
Christopher Holton
Christopher Holton is Vice President for Outreach at the Center for Security Policy. Mr. Holton came to the Center after serving as president and marketing director of Blanchard & Co. and editor-in-chief of the Blanchard Economic Research Unit from 1990 to 2003. As chief of the Blanchard Economic Research Unit in 2000, he conceived and commissioned the Center for Security Policy special report “Clinton’s Legacy: The Dangerous Decade.” Holton is a member of the Board of Advisers of WorldTribune.com. Follow Holton on Twitter @CHoltonCSP
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/AdobeStock_126032922-1024x683-e1547429163879.jpeg427640Center For Security Policyhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngCenter For Security Policy2019-01-13 20:27:512019-01-14 07:31:38The Terror Threat on the Southern Border
