by Jordan Candler:  In just a few days, Donald Trump will officially mark one full year in the Oval Office, during which time his impressive list of accomplishments has blossomed, with conservative policy reforms and judicial nominations. If there’s one area the president is coming up short, however, it’s in neglecting to fill important administrative posts.

          The Daily Signal reports, “Trump has no nominee for 252 of the 633 key positions requiring Senate confirmation, according to the Partnership for Public Service, which tracks presidential appointments. That’s well behind every predecessor going back to at least President George H.W. Bush, each of whom had the bulk of nominees confirmed by this point in their administration, according to the organization.” To name just a few, key appointments are lacking in the Justice Department, Internal Revenue Service and State Department.
          In fairness, spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders last month pointed out, “The president has said before he doesn’t think that every single position in the government needs to be filled. He’s going to cut back on some of those positions. We’ve been focused on some of the top priority places and we’re going to continue filling out individuals. But, we’ve also seen a massive slowdown and obstruction by the Democrats.”
          Here’s the problem with that argument: Every second that ticks by only exacerbates the issue of the deep state, and it actually detrimentally handcuffs Trump’s broader agenda. Why? Because career politicians will jump at the opportunity to continue fulfilling Barack liar-nObama’s statist agenda, or at least blocking Trump’s. As The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Moffit observes, “If you are going to drain the swamp, you need the people to do it. You either control the federal bureaucracy or the federal bureaucracy controls you.”
          In related news, turnover is disproportionately high in the Trump White House. According to a Washington Post analysis, Trump’s first-year turnover rate sits at 36%, which dwarfs that of previous administrations. For example, of the previous five presidents, the second-highest on the list, Ronald Reagan, had a first-year turnover rate of 17%, while George W. Bush had the lowest at 6%.
          Trump is certainly largely to blame for the chaotic atmosphere in the White House, but Steven Bannon, Reince Priebus, Michael Flynn and others hurt themselves and created a lot of their own problems. The bottom line is that Trump needs to get busy filling critical positions. But he also needs to be methodical about it. The wise vetting he deployed to pick Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch should be applied to his entire administration to mitigate turnover and avoid needless distractions.  
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53465

by Todd Johnson:  With its announcement earlier this month that it is freezing security assistance aid worth up $1.3 billion to the government of Pakistan, the Trump administration has once again exhibited an audacity meant to shake up the status quo in the greater Middle East.

          And while the long term, geopolitical ramifications of such a bold move will not be known for years, the short term consequences are already starting to reverberate. A couple of days ago, Pakistan responded to the suspension of aid by halting the sharing of intelligence with the United States, a move meant to hurt the American-led coalition’s ability to execute counter-terrorism operations in neighboring Afghanistan.
          The partnership between Pakistan and the United States has always been a conundrum for occupants of the White House, especially since that part of the world has been in a constant state of upheaval following World War II. As Kevin Williamson put it, “Pakistan’s border with India has been a flashpoint since the 1940s and its border with Afghanistan has been very much on American strategic minds since 2001. But Pakistan also borders Iran and the Arabian Sea, and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir borders China. Everything Pakistan touches is of strategic interest to the United States.”
          Which leads to two important questions. Are President Donald Trump and his team trying to change the behavior of the government of Pakistan in order to get our “allies” to understand that their lax efforts to combat militants within their borders is not acceptable anymore? Or are they sending a stronger signal to Prime Minister Shadid Khawan Abbasi that Pakistan is no longer going to be a partner of the United States in the fight against terrorism?
          If the first question is the objective, then the Abbasi government must prove to the United States that it is taking a hardline, operational stance against terrorists. It seems as if the Pakistani government is already trying to quell U.S. anger as evidenced by yesterday’s meeting between State Department officials and a senior Pakistani envoy. The purpose of the meeting was to show U.S. diplomats that Pakistani law enforcement agencies are actively engaged in counter terrorism operations. Still, it will take more than one meeting to show the Trump administration that Pakistan has changed its stripes.
          However, if the purpose of suspending aid is to radically alter the diplomatic and military landscape of the region and pursue new partners, then President Trump, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and the rest of the national security team really need to think hard about the objectives they want to achieve. More importantly, they need to consider the second and third order effects of implementing such a radical policy change.
          That’s why it is important for Trump to understand that Pakistan will always do what is in the best interests of Pakistan. Pakistan developed nuclear weapons in direct contravention of U.S. law and then the father of the program worked with the governments of North Korea, Libya and Iran on their programs.
          While Pakistan is a nuclear power, it is also a weak state. It’s in America’s best interests to maintain a working relationship with the Abbasi government, and to provide humanitarian aid to the Pakistan people. At the same time, the trick is holding off on giving security assistance resources to the Pakistani government until Abbasi proves he’s actively taking the fight to the terrorists in his sovereign territory.
          Trump’s foreign policy gamble is a brash political move, and if played correctly, it has the potential to fundamentally change the internal policy of Pakistan. Only time will tell if his instincts prove to be correct and give him a significant foreign policy victory.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53457

by Jordan Candler:  No city in America can function without fossil fuels. Nevertheless, last year a slew of money-grabbing opportunists along the California coastline began targeting BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell in court, where they are trying to compel said oil companies to fund climate change mitigation. Oakland, San Francisco, Santa Cruz and Imperial Beach along with Santa Cruz, Marin and San Mateo Counties argue that they shouldn’t be financially liable for erecting infrastructure to combat sea level rise. Instead, the municipalities contend, the funding should be seized from oil companies, wherein the fault allegedly lies.

          Successfully litigating a blockbuster attack on oil companies won’t be easy, particularly with what Exxon has dug up. While the plaintiffs point to an admonition from November in which, according to The Wall Street Journal, “Moody’s Investors Service flagged environmental disruptions as a ‘growing negative credit factor’ for coastal municipalities and said it would adjust its ratings methodology to take climate change into account,” Exxon has just retaliated with its own court filing by exposing some damning hypocrisy. When it came to persuading their own investors, these municipalities kept their mouths shut and looked the other way. For example, the Journal notes:
          San Francisco’s lawsuit said it faced “imminent risk of catastrophic storm surge flooding,” while a general obligation bond offering last year said the city “is unable to predict whether sea-level or rise or other impacts of climate change … will occur.” Santa Cruz County said in its complaint it was experiencing more frequent and extreme droughts, precipitation events, heat waves and wildfires, and faced a 98% chance of a “devastating” three-foot flood by 2050. Yet a bond offering last year mentioned only “unpredictable climatic conditions, such as flood, droughts and destructive storms” as a risk factor.
          How can these municipalities claim to be under imminent threat and expect oil companies to foot the bill when, in truth, they are lying to their own investors for the sake of business interests? Just another example of “Do as I say, not as I do.”
          Meanwhile, the anti-oil-company bandwagon continues to grow. This week, New York City took legal action against the same oil companies. According to the lawsuit, “In this litigation, the City seeks to shift the costs of protecting the City from climate change impacts back onto the companies that have done nearly all they could to create this existential threat.” Moreover, The Washington Post reports that “officials said they expect to divest up to $5 billion in investments from as many as 190 companies with fossil fuel ties, even as they promised to maintain their fiduciary duty to New York’s pensioners.”
          It’s worth noting that analogous climate lawsuits against corporate entities have failed. And these should too. A New York Post editorial appropriately asks, “Why should the oil companies pay? They’re not actually burning the fuel — that’s the world’s utilities, motorists, etc.” Besides, it would be remarkably hypocritical to punish oil companies when their antagonists demonstrably engage in daily machinations.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53420

by Thomas Gallatin:   As Donald Trump and congressional leaders are ostensibly working toward a legislative solution to the DACA problem created by Barack liar-nObama, it’s important to note exactly who these “Dreamers” really are. They are about 800,000 young adults brought here illegally by their parents, and are called “Dreamers” because of the acronym of the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act, which has never passed Congress. Thus, it’s not surprising that myths abound in the mainstream media’s reporting on Dreamers. Using language designed to blur the distinctions between legal or illegal and child or adult, the MSM paint Dreamers en masse as poor children abused by an “unjust” U.S. immigration system. On top of this all-too-sympathetic and simplistic description is the regularly repeated claim that the presence of these illegal Dreamers equates to an economic benefit outweighing any welfare burden the American taxpayer has been forced to provide. So, what is the reality?

          The Congressional Budget Office recently released its findings on the cost of granting amnesty to Dreamers, concluding that it would add $26 billion to the deficit over the next decade. So much for the economic benefit regularly parroted by the MSM. Steven Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies, also noted that the CBO “estimated that about one-third of the [DACA] adults … have not even graduated high school, and only about 15 percent have at least two years of college.” Camarota pointed out that “54.1 percent of households headed by native-born Hispanics access one or more of the welfare programs, and they tend to have poverty rates twice as high as the general population.”
          While it is certainly understandable to have sympathy for those who were young children when their parents illegally smuggled them into the U.S., the fault for their current predicament lies not with American citizens, nor U.S. border laws, but with their parents. Where is the condemnation from Democrats and the MSM on those who blatantly broke U.S. law? It’s nowhere to be found; rather it is reserved solely for those Americans who dare to call for the upholding of our laws and national sovereignty. These American citizens are the ones Democrats and the MSM continually decry as heartless, bigoted and racist. Once again, it’s a case of feelings trumping facts.
          Finally, as our Arnold Ahlert writes, “It’s time to cut through the progressive hype with a couple of simple questions: Who doesn’t have dreams, and in what universe should the dreams of those who have no business being here supersede those of American citizens?”  
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53442

by Mark Alexander:  Democrats and their MSM PR outlets have spent the last four days feigning outrage over a report by Jeff Bezos’ tabloid, The Washington Post, regarding an alleged and disputed remark by Donald Trump. You know the one…

          As an update to our Friday post, “The Uncensored President and Press,” here is the real takeaway about that spurious claim, and the intended political result.
          It was CNN that blew up this unverifiable claim, mentioning or displaying the word “s—thole” no less than 40 times last Thursday. Predictably, Anderson Cooper then set up the Democrats’ “racist” claim: “The president of the United States is tired of so many black people coming to this country.” CNN’s Chief Washington Correspondent and anchor, Jake Tapper, then ratcheted up the race-bait rhetoric: “You know who loved the [quote]? Racists. Racists such as David Duke [and] Richard Spencer [and] the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer…”
          The rest of the mainstream media outlets then propagated the report and racist assertion as a matter of fact — just in time to coincide with upcoming MLK Day observances.
          But on Friday morning, Tapper posted a “clarification,” which you have most likely not read: “The president did not refer to Haiti as a ‘s—thole’ country.‘” Tapper now claims, “There was a conflation of two different remarks by the president. When talking about 'temporary protected status’ countries as part of the immigration deal, it was mentioned that Salvadorans, Hondurans and Haitians have that status.” Tapper says his sources now say it was later when Trump allegedly made a remark about “s—thole countries” in a conversation related to Africa. That may or may not be true.
          Of his revision about the alleged Trump remark, Tapper insisted: “This does not make what he said any more acceptable.” Unintentionally, that may be true, because if Trump didn’t say it, the erroneous reports about it are all just that. Of course, what Tapper was really implying is that the truth about what Trump said does not matter — all that matters is the MSM’s transparent promotion of the Democrat agenda.
          As we noted Friday, that agenda is to frame Trump as a “racist” and then cast his immigration and border security plans as racist.
          For the record, having to walk back the initial claim with the “conflation of the two” excuse would be sufficient grounds for any journalist with an ounce of integrity, and any other media outlet propagating the original claim, to issue a full and unconditional retraction. Of course, no journalist with an ounce of integrity would have reported this alleged remark in the first place, which is why no such retraction has been forthcoming from CNN or any other media outlets, because advancing the Democrat agenda trumps the truth.
          But what is really newsworthy here is how the Leftmedia promotes the Democrat political agenda. This “s—thole” story is a case study in MSM propaganda.
          A day after WaPo’s original report, they led with this “news”: “Trump’s comments about African countries and Haiti drew condemnation from around the world Friday, putting the White House and Republicans on the defensive while casting doubt on hopes of resolving disputes in the coming weeks over immigration legislation.”
          No, MSM reporting of the alleged comments as fact drew condemnation … and cast doubts on immigration legislation — as intended. Mission accomplished!
          This whole charade was orchestrated because the political future of the Democrat Party depends on the wholesale import of immigrants — a population they label as a “victim class,” which they can then exploit as a dependent identity constituency and a dependable voting bloc. As Democrats have veered further left, their working-class base has diminished. Rather than pivot their agenda back to the political center, they have doubled down on legal status for illegal immigrants, which is to say they have just been pandering to blue-collar Americans in order to maintain their power.
          Saturday, Trump posted a comment confirming the obvious: “The Democrats are all talk and no action. They are doing nothing to fix DACA. … I don’t believe the Democrats really want to see a deal on DACA.” Of course they don’t.
          To that end, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) concluded, “You can’t have an immigration compromise if everyone is out there calling the president a racist. They’re actually destroying the setting in which anything meaningful can happen on immigration. … Some people in the media have just gone completely bonkers with ad hominem [attacks] on the president.” Again, of course … that is the intended outcome!
          Two conclusions about the “s—thole” case study: First, I am astounded at the growing number of Americans who absorb MSM hyperbole like sponges — “news” that is patently designed to sell advertising and advance political agendas. As for what Trump did or did not say, nobody actually knows, because nobody in the MSM filling the public opinion troughs actually knows. This is all conjecture being advanced as absolute fact.
          The great danger here is that too many media consumers don’t have the ability to discern what is and, more importantly, what is not genuine and relevant “news.” These media addicts are like pieces of driftwood afloat in the currents of the MSM’s s—tstorms. While there are plenty of ignorant members of Congress and MSM talkingheads, the “s—thole” story and others like it are strategically framed by clever colluding political and media strategists, who are playing the American people for fools.
          Second, it is dangerous when an alleged and disputed remark can be wildly propagated as absolute fact by the MSM across the board, with no regard for what was actually said, and every regard for advancing revenues and political agendas.
          Jeff Bezos has converted the once-respected Washington Post into a cheap fake news tabloid. I personally find this distressing because, even though left of center in its reputable days, WaPo featured outstanding genuine journalism. No longer. In 2015, Bezos converted it into the PR platform for liar-Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, and it is now the Beltway’s Democrat propaganda flagship — a gross affront to the First Amendment that should concern all Americans.  
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53445

by Mark Alexander:  If you haven’t figured this out yet, Donald Trump tends to be unfiltered and uncensored. While I don’t condone his coarse language or style, and see it as unbecoming the office he holds, the fact is those Trump characteristics resonates with the majority of “blue-collar” Americans. As I noted in my profile on Trump Wednesday, “He is a New Yorker, and he’s always acted like an archetypal New Yorker — brash, boastful, uncensored and unpredictable.”

          In regard to Trump’s alleged “s—thole countries” comment, I would suggest that he should be credited with exercising restraint in his description of those countries by not padding “s—thole” with even more offensive descriptors.
          For the record, most of your Patriot editorial team members have traveled to the countries Trump was referencing (among others), and some of us have lived in them. We can corroborate first hand that the remarks attributed to Trump regarding El Salvador, Honduras and Haiti, and some countries in Africa, are accurate — primarily because those third-world countries have been governed by corrupt regimes for generations. That does not, of course, mean that citizens from those nations have no value, and Trump did not assert that.
          Joe Concha, media analyst for The Hill, noted: “This is how he speaks. He’s inelegant, yes. He’s unfiltered, yes. But what people like about him so much is that he’s authentic. … I don’t think one Trump supporter jumps to the other side because of this comment.” Actually, Trump’s remark will bring more working blue-collar Democrats, those who have been ignored by the Democrat Party for 30 years, onto the Trump train.
          Predictably, Demos and their mainstream media outlets are feigning outrage that such a word was used in the White House. scum-Dick Durbin (D-IL), who confirmed CNN’s report of Trump’s comments, wailed from the fainting couch, “I cannot believe that in the history of the White House and that Oval Office any president has ever spoken the words that I personally heard our president speak.” What planet has he been on?
          liar-Bill and liar-Hillary Clinton’s White House tirades, as described by their Secret Service agents, make Trump’s alleged remarks sound like playground banter. (And recall, it was liar-Bill and liar-Hillary Clinton who exploited the Haitian people for their own financial gain…)
          Of course, all the hyperbolic rhetoric on the Left is all about their effort to paint Trump as a racist.
          Their objective in doing so, is to cast Trump’s plans for immigration reform and border security as “racist” rather than protecting the integrity of our nation’s Rule of Law and the jobs of American workers. Democrats know that their political future depends on importing immigrants — a population they label as a victim class, which they can then exploit for votes. As Democrats have veered farther left, their working-class base has diminished. Rather than pivot their agenda back to the political center, they have doubled down on legal status for illegal immigrants.
          Update: It turns out that CNN’s report was fake news. Though CNN ran the quote repeatedly Thursday, and other Letmedia outlets propagated it, Trump did NOT say it. According to CNN’s Jake Tapper Friday: “The president did not refer to Haiti as a ‘s**thole’ country,‘ though another source is claiming "he did say it about countries in Africa.”
          Tapper says, “There was a conflation of two different remarks by the president.” He claims now, “When talking about 'temporary protected status’ countries as part of the immigration deal, it was mentioned that Salvadorans, Hondurans and Haitians have that status,” and that later, Trump made a remark about “s**thole countries” in a conversation related to Africa.
          For the record, at this point, having to walk back the initial claim with the “conflation of the two” excuse would be sufficient grounds for any journalist with an ounce of integrity, and any other media outlet propagating the original claim, to issue a full and unconditional retraction. Of course, no journalist with an ounce of integrity would have reported this in the first place, which is why no such retraction will be forthcoming from CNN…  
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53408

by Brian Mark Weber:  It’s not looking good for Republicans.

At least that’s what the mainstream media want you to believe. Then again, haven’t they been saying that during the entire first year of Donald Trump’s presidency? Heck, weren’t they predicting the same gloom and doom for Republicans in 2016? Nonetheless, Democrats are feeling good right now and boasting of their prospects in the next two elections.
          True, Democrats aren’t all talk. Billionaire Leftist Tom Steyer is putting his money where his mouth is. As Ben Kamisar writes in The Hill, “Steyer plans to channel the money in the House effort, which he said would total at least $30 million, toward his advocacy group, NextGen America. Steyer, who has also funded a multi-million dollar ad campaign calling for President Trump’s impeachment, wants to use the $30 million to boost turnout among millennial voters across 10 states.”
          Notably, however, Steyer has reduced his Demo graft — having dumped $74 million into the 2014 midterm when voters gave Republicans control of the Senate and their largest House majority since 1928. He then spent $91 million for Democrats in the 2016 election, when Republicans held their majorities and elected Donald Trump. And his $20 million on a campaign to impeach Trump resulted in only 58 of 435 House members voting to impeach — that’s $344,827.59 per vote.
          Clearly, leftist billionaire bucks alone aren’t enough to win elections. If it were, The Pantsuit would be president. What message are the Democrats going to run on? Taking back your tax cuts? Taking away your doctor? Sending companies back overseas? Dialing the Dow back to 17,000? Pushing for peace with the Islamic State? Let’s face it: Their platform is higher taxes, bigger government and more illegal immigration. And loathing Donald Trump.
          Indeed, Nancy Pulosi scoffed, “In terms of the bonus that corporate America received versus the crumbs that they are giving workers to kind of put the schmooze on is so pathetic. It’s so pathetic.”
          Other issues Democrats face include betting on history (the minority party usually picks up seats in mid-term elections), hoping that Americans will see the election as a referendum on the Trump presidency, and counting on favorable polls. But it’s what Democrats aren’t looking at that could upend their hopes of taking back the Congress.
          As it stands, Democrats lack a compelling message for fixing any major problem facing the country. The utter dearth of any agenda is astounding.
          Yes, they’ve embraced a cynical and convenient crusade against sexual harassment, but they’re otherwise a rudderless opposition party. In the end, Dan Balz of The Washington Post asks a critical question: “As they begin what amounts to a three-year campaign cycle of midterm elections followed by a critically important 2020 presidential race, will Democrats be forthright in assessing and dealing with their own vulnerabilities?” Democrats are still a party in denial.
          They don’t get Trump, they don’t get why he beat liar-Hillary Clinton, and they don’t get the Republican Party. Former Democrat aide Brent Budowsky suggests, “On fundamental issues that motivate voters, the Trump Republicans include the entire upper strata of Republican leadership in the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. There is barely a dime’s worth of difference between the policies of President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Roy Moore of Alabama, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.)”
          Not a dime’s worth of difference? This is why Democrats lose elections. They make assumptions about what Republicans and their voters think, they tell pollsters about their assumptions, and then they come up with every conspiracy theory they can think of to explain their losses. There’s a world of difference between Trump and Ryan and McConnell (and 250 other Republicans). That’s why it took nearly a year for the Republicans in Congress to send a major piece of legislation to the president’s desk. They couldn’t agree on anything.
          Peter Hanby raises some additional concerns for Democrats in stating that “partisan gerrymandering has lowered the number of competitive House seats, that most of the competitive Senate races are taking place in red states where Trump is more popular than the national average, that the economy is actually doing pretty well. All of them are true. The Senate map is particularly difficult terrain for Democrats, who would have to win in places like Arizona, North Dakota, Missouri, and Tennessee to take back the upper chamber.”
          Reading headlines from leftist websites and newspapers is enough to dampen the spirits of any conservative these days, but reading beyond the headlines shows that there’s a lot of wishful thinking going on in Democrat think-tanks and media outlets. Still, Democrats really like their chances in the 2018 midterms.
          Political science professor Eric Smith has projected a Democrat takeover of the House, and possibly the Senate, based on a model he “drew on a forecasting model originally developed by political scientists Michael Lewis-Beck and Tom Rice.” Smith writes, “The model predicts that the Republicans will lose 38 seats in the House, a number that would give the Democrats a majority in the next Congress. But it’s important to note that simple models such as this one produce forecasts with real uncertainty. In this case, you can think of the forecast as having a ‘margin of error’ of 38 seats. Thus, a Democratic gain is likely, but the size of that gain is difficult to predict with confidence. Still, a House majority is very much within the Democrats’ reach.”
          Is that all they can come up with? As for the GOP, the key will be whether they can keep their act together as they did on tax cuts.      
          Larry P. Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, gives credence to this notion, opining, “Trump has addressed this problem more directly than anyone since Ronald Reagan — in some ways, more than anyone including Reagan. He would drain the swamp. He would abolish the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Education. He has rallied the people in direct opposition to their governing elite. He has appealed to the people directly in opposition to their government.”
          But what about the Trump administration’s significant and numerous accomplishments, as outlined by Mark Alexander in “The Trump Effect”? Arnn notes that we now have “a constitutional majority that controls all the popular branches at the federal level, soon to have a profound effect on the judiciary. In addition, his party advanced from a strong position in state legislatures and governorships. The party of Trump, if the Republican Party is that party, is in a position to make changes, as good or better a position as it has enjoyed since the Great Society.”
          Between now and November, the degree to which President Trump is able to realize his bold vision for the country will have a significant impact on the election. That’s why speculation at this point should be taken with a grain of salt.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53407

         The bill keeping FISA alive for another six years passed the House on a 256-164 vote Thursday, then survived the first Senate challenge with a 69-26 vote to limit debate later that day. Time is of the essence, as the section’s authorization expires a week from today.
          Things got a little confusing for a time as President Donald Trump took to Twitter twice in the space of a few hours, seemingly taking a position against re-authorization at first before clarifying his remarks and expressing his support. The initial tweet may have come as a result of watching Judge Andrew Napolitano stand in opposition to the bill on Fox News. He said the provision “is the muffled sound of the Trump administration and Republican congressional leaders plotting the enactment of an addition to FISA that would permit the use of evidence of crimes in federal court even when it is discovered during mass surveillance authorized by general warrants.”
          “If enacted,” Napolitano continued, “this radical, unconstitutional hole in the Fourth Amendment would bring the country full circle back to the government’s use of general warrants to harass and prosecute — general warrants so odious to our forebears that they took up arms against the king’s soldiers to be rid of them.” He added that President Trump himself had been the victim of “unconstitutional FISC-authorized domestic surveillance.”  Indeed, that was likely why Trump appeared at first to oppose the bill.
          Reacting to that first tweet, House Minority Leader Nancy Pulosi reportedly urged House Speaker Paul Ryan to pull the Section 702 bill — but voted for it anyway. And once the president was set straight by advisers and legislators, he sent the second tweet calling for passage.
          In another reaction to the bill itself, a countermeasure called the USA Rights Amendment was defeated in the House on a 233-183 vote. This amendment was intended to force the federal government to secure a warrant before using information collected on Americans, as critics claim the current system of collecting massive amounts of data without regard to recipient or sender can be used as a backdoor method of gathering evidence without securing a search warrant first — what Napolitano called a “general warrant.” Senate civil libertarians Rand Paul and Mike Lee, both Republicans, have announced their opposition to the Section 702 re-authorization as it currently stands, meaning at least one Senate Democrat will have to get on board the Trump Train just to have Vice President Mike Pence cast a tie-breaking vote.
          Because various provisions dealing with national security expire from time to time, we’ve had this controversy come up regularly since the PATRIOT Act was passed in the wake of 9/11. Three years ago, there was a stir over metadata collection as Congress rushed to reauthorize law.
          If the American people have become uneasy about the PATRIOT Act, it may have something to do with Barack liar-nObama’s administration having regularly violated government protocols they themselves put in place. Whether one blames liar-nObama holdovers from the Deep State or Russian influence embedded in our intelligence apparatus after Trump’s election, the short answer is that Liberty can too easily take a backseat to security.
          Cato Institute senior fellow Julian Sanchez argues, “Yet when it came to an actual vote Thursday morning, Republican leadership — and ultimately even Trump himself — came down in opposition to the most elementary check imaginable on NSA and FBI’s sweeping wiretap authorities: A requirement that a judicial warrant be obtained before repurposing a foreign intelligence database to scrutinize the private communications of Americans. Instead, most fell back on a more familiar Republican argument: Broad wiretap powers, unhampered by too much judicial oversight, are necessary to keep us safe, and Americans must trust the patriotic employees of the intelligence agencies to use those powers responsibly.”
          The balance here is as tough as anything. After all, our nation is still fighting battles in the Long War against radical Islamic terrorism, and we need the best tools for stopping terrorists, saving American lives and preserving national security. And yet as we’ve seen over the previous eight years, power corrupts and is abused. Constitutional rights must be protected. Navigating some smart reforms for antiterrorism tools is the least we can ask of our elected representatives.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53411

by Political Editors:  In remarks that created quite a stir, President Donald Trump lamented the nation’s lack of strong libel laws as he once again leveled criticism against writer Michael Wolff over his book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. Trump said, “We are going to take a strong look at our country’s libel laws so that when somebody says something that is false and defamatory about someone, that person will have meaningful recourse in our courts.” He continued, “Our current libel laws are a sham and a disgrace and do not represent American values and American fairness. We’re going to take a very, very strong look at that.”

          Trump has taken a slightly different tack with this latest slamming of negative press, seemingly dropping the gauntlet with his call for review of the nation’s libel laws. It’s big talk, but it’s more bluster than business. First of all, Americans rightly enjoy the free speech protections of the First Amendment, the press included. Second, the law has set the bar high for any one to be found guilty of libel against a public official, and the mere spreading of false information certainly does not meet that standard. Third, Trump has no power to change laws, either federal or state. Finally, it’s a good bet that Trump already knows all this. So what is he aiming at?
          Since day one, Trump has been in a battle with the mainstream media. He has regularly called them out for promulgating fake news, while the MSM itself has often accused fake news of having helped Trump win the election. With regularity, Trump has trolled the MSM, and in so doing has helped to expose more of its leftist bias. So it follows that this is merely another salvo in his ongoing war with the MSM. By threatening to send the law after Wolff, Trump is effectively blowing an MSM dog whistle, to which they will respond by jumping to Wolff’s defense. That leaves the MSM caught defending an author widely recognized for his own propensity to engage in stretching the truth. In other words, the MSM has been set up to once again be pilloried by Trump for their defense of fake news. Meanwhile, he has gone a long way in discrediting the book in the eyes of many Americans.  
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53393

by Jordan Candler:  There are two new Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and neither one shares an affinity for the Rule of Law. This week Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker joined the committee, which “handles judicial nominations and appointments to the Justice Department,” The Washington Post explains. But it’s Kamala Harris in particular who should most alarm originalists. For example:

          Harris spent six years as California’s attorney general, a position she utilized to crack down on gun ownership. She oversaw Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2013 firearms proscription in which $24 million was set aside for the purpose of impounding guns. According to a Los Angeles Times report at the time, state officials’ justification for doing so was “to clear the backlog of weapons known to be in the hands of about 20,000 people who acquired them legally [emphasis added]. They were later disqualified because of criminal convictions, restraining orders or serious mental illness.”
          She also advocated for additional firearm restrictions, writes Reason’s Brian Doherty: “As attorney general, Harris tried to ensure that people couldn’t get carry permits for weapons in California merely for reasons as petty, to her mind, as that they felt they needed one. She has fought in court to ensure that only police officials should be able to decide whether a citizen can defend himself outside his home.”
          Harris prefers to use emotional upheaval to advocate policy prescriptions. In reference to the Sandy Hook massacre, she stated: “They should have closed the chambers of Congress, on the House and the Senate side, and said, ‘All you members go in there, only you, and spread out the autopsy photos of those babies,’ and require them to look at those photographs. And then vote your conscience.”
          And according to Doherty, “Harris is so uncomfortable with the Second Amendment she’s willing to jab at the First Amendment while hobbling it, as shown by her support as California’s attorney general for a state law restricting how handgun sellers can advertise. She so delights in pettily bedeviling gun owners that her department in California tried to enforce restrictions on how many guns could be purchased per month by those who hold certain special collectors’ licenses even though both the letter of the law and previous practice said they were exempt, and stuck to her lack of principle on the issue until she got sued over it in 2014.”
          The role of the Senate Judiciary Committee should be to recommend nominees who abide by the Rule of Law regardless of their personal whims. Harris is completely the opposite — she will support nominees who abuse their roles just like she did in California. Her name is being highlighted as a possible candidate for the 2020 presidential election (as is Booker’s). The only thing that could be worse than elevating her to the Judiciary Committee would be putting her in the nation’s highest office.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53367

by Thomas Gallatin:  Reminiscent of a scene from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, like men drawn to the power of the One Ring, Republicans are actively contemplating a return to that corrupting practice of pork-barrel spending known as “earmarks.” It was merely seven years ago that a GOP-controlled House finally banned the practice conservatives had long loathed. But now, Republicans are justifying the practice by highlighting how much good they could do.

          Even President Donald Trump floated the idea, saying on Tuesday, “I hear so much about earmarks and how there was a great friendliness [among lawmakers] when you had earmarks. Of course, they had other problems, but maybe all of you should start thinking about going back to a form of earmarks. One thing it did is it brought everybody together.” Of course for Trump, who is more populist than fiscal conservative, he’s looking at eliminating roadblocks to his bigger agenda. His pragmatic instinct is to make deals in order to get that agenda done, and greasing the skids with earmarks makes deals easier.
          But for congressional Republicans, the consequences of reversing course on such a politically potent issue could be significant, especially in what is sure to be a hotly contested election year. As Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, warned, “The last time the Republicans ran a congressional earmark factory, they lost control of Congress. In 2006, when the Democrats took Congress, the No. 1 issue according to voters was pork and corruption. … It was a political disaster.” Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA) pointedly noted, “We just had a political revolution launched against the swamp [across] the political spectrum all the way from commie-Bernie to Trump voters. I don’t think any of those folks along that entire spectrum would be in favor of earmarks.” Indeed, you don’t drain the swamp by feeding the swamp creatures.
          The reason Republicans are even suggesting a return to earmarks is the fact that it can be an effective incentive for encouraging compromise and garnering votes from across the aisle. Essentially, it’s a legal way to buy votes, but the consequences are overspending, the creation of super-incumbents, bigger government and greater opportunity for waste and corruption. Like Frodo, Republicans need to drop talk of earmarks into Mt. Doom and be done with it forever.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53385