It is true that the Republican calculation in 2016 was hardball politics. Almost no one thought Donald Trump would actually defeat scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton, but McConnell’s big gamble paid off, big time. Instead of scumbag/liar-nObama substantively changing the Supreme Court with Garland, or scumbag/liar-Clinton picking him or someone else, Trump chose Neil Gorsuch, an originalist who would follow in Scalia’s large footsteps and take seriously his oath to “support and defend” the U.S. Constitution.

“What can’t be undone,” McConnell said, “is a lifetime appointment to a young man or woman who believes in the quaint notion that the job of the judge is to follow the law.”

And that’s the whole point here. Ultimately, this isn’t just “political.” It’s the essence of the struggle between Rule of Law and rule of men; of Liberty and tyranny. Democrats want justices who will rule according to a “living” Constitution that just happens to comport with current “progressive” sensibilities. Republicans want justices who will uphold the Constitution as written. McConnell’s move in 2016 and his pledge for 2020 are borne of the same strategy — to ensure constitutionalists join the Supreme Court.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/63291?mailing_id=4300&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4300&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the release of self-admitted “American Taliban” member John Walker Lindh “unexplainable and unconscionable.”

Lindh, who was paroled last Thursday from a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, served 17 years of a 20-year sentence for illegally aiding Taliban forces. Lindh had joined the terrorist organization before September 11, 2001. He was in Afghanistan at the time and was also there when a group of Taliban prisoners murdered CIA officer Johnny Micheal Spann.

Spann’s daughter, who was 9 when her father died, called Lindh’s early release “a slap in the face” to everyone who died on 9-11. After his capture and return to the U.S., Lindh struck a plea bargain, admitting to illegally providing help to the Taliban, but denying any role in Spann’s death.

Lindh is barred from traveling and using a cellphone or the internet. He could still borrow a phone and possibly use someone else’s computer and sign-in information, so it is difficult to see how those limitations will be enforced.

Lindh stated he would not have joined the Taliban if he had known what it was about, but that doesn’t stand up given his statements after he was sent to prison.

Foreignpolicy.com, a site that focuses on global affairs, current events and domestic and international policy, obtained a report from the National Counterterrorism Center that stated in early 2017 that Lindh “continued to advocate for global jihad and to write and translate violent extremist texts.”

The document cites Federal Bureau of Prisons “intelligence summaries,” which claim that in March 2016, Lindh “told a television news producer that he would continue to spread violent extremist Islam upon his release.”

The document does not identify the news reporter and Foreign Policy says there is no “public record” of Lindh participating in media interviews. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, but if the interview exists now would be a good time to see it.

Homegrown violent extremists have long been considered the most difficult to detect and monitor. Lindh’s release is likely to give aid and comfort to potential terrorists already in the country and others seeking to enter the U.S.

There is no indication Lindh has repented of his actions, much less changed his ideology, or brand of Islamic extremism.

“Treason” is a word that should be used only in cases where an American citizen betrays his country and goes over to the enemy’s side. Lindh fits that description.

In past American wars, some of those found guilty of treason have been executed. Lindh is a traitor and should have received the death penalty, but because of the plea deal he is now free and is likely to return to his old ways. He will be able to associate with people of his persuasion and encourage their radical beliefs and extreme behavior.

Government officials say he will be “closely monitored” by parole officers and others during the three years remaining of his sentence. What happens after that? Suppose he engages in actions that directly or indirectly result in the deaths of more Americans? Sure, he can be returned to prison and possibly even executed, but the blood of future victims will be on the heads of those who let him out.

An ideology driven by extreme religious views is difficult to combat, much less reverse. Given the ancient history of Islam and the radical behavior of those claiming to conduct terrorist activities in its name, it is not a stretch to say once one has become a terrorist, it is likely he will remain one.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/63249?mailing_id=4298&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4298&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

But when my husband showed me a picture of the tombstone of his Naval Academy classmate, Capt. Gerald DeConto, I was shamed by my selfishness. I also became eager to fulfill the purpose of Memorial Day by writing a tribute to my husband’s fellow sailor.

It is our honor to pay tribute to those who have lost their lives fighting for our freedom — including our right to choose what we do with everything from our finances to our talents to our days off.

Memorial Day is for them — not us.

Capt. DeConto’s story is a reminder that our armed forces are never truly safe — at home or abroad. I’ll share with you now, in honor of all of America’s fallen heroes, my memory of the day that Capt. DeConto was interred after being murdered nearly 18 years ago in the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

Rifle shots cracked through the sunny, warm autumn afternoon in the 21-gun salute for the fallen naval officer. The lone bugle’s mournful notes of “Taps” rang strong and somber as we stood in silence to honor the man and his country.

It was Nov. 2, 2001, nearly eight weeks after his death, when Capt. Gerald DeConto was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery. His grave is within sight of the Pentagon, where he was murdered by terrorist thugs. At his final resting place all it takes to view his unlikely battlefield is to lift your gaze just beyond the trees.

A memorial now stands there, where sworn enemies of America crashed a plane filled with innocent civilians into the Pentagon. Not since the Civil War have U.S. soldiers been buried beside their battlefields on our own home soil. It is a sobering thought.

As we stood at his graveside, I couldn’t help but marvel at the mystery that is life and how everything seems so uncertain even in places where we think we are safe.

I thought about the many times he had been at sea, had trained to face the enemy, and had said goodbye and hello to his family. Who would have ever believed or even dreamed that he would be killed not during a war but within the borders of our own country — within the very fortress of the Pentagon?

As I watched his stoic mother receive the folded U.S. flag that had draped Capt. DeConto’s gray casket, I wondered at the irony of his death.

The wonderful woman who had raised her son to be a patriot had no doubt beamed with pride at the news of his acceptance to Annapolis, his graduation, and his promotions. She probably had shed tears each time he set off and worried about him during his tours at sea.

But on Sept. 11, 2001, she had no reason to worry: Her son was on shore duty, safe within the walls of the Pentagon as the senior watch officer in the Navy Command Center.

Killed on duty in the Pentagon. Who would have believed it possible? He was murdered by terrorists fewer than 60 miles from the Naval Academy. Until 9/11, such atrocities were attempted only in Tom Clancy novels.

A few hours before the burial, we were in the academy’s majestic chapel attending a funeral that not only honored this brave man but also paid tribute to the civilians who were murdered that day in freedom’s very home — America.

Capt. DeConto would have gladly given his life to save his fellow Americans who died with him that day.

He never knew that he did save the lives of many: Capt. DeConto ordered back to their offices dozens of people who had gathered in the Command Center to watch the television coverage of the tragedy at the Twin Towers.

Minutes after they had dispersed, the plane crashed into the very spot they had been standing, obliterating the watch office and its senior officer.

Capt. DeConto died a hero while doing his job — like all who have given their lives for us.

This is why we must remember.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/63254?mailing_id=4298&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4298&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Now 37 years old, worthless-Omar’s rapid political rise tells part of the story, while then-candidate Donald Trump told another part on a 2016 campaign visit to Minneapolis: “[We] have seen firsthand the problems with faulty refugee vetting,” he said, “with large numbers of Somali refugees coming into your state, without your knowledge, without your support or approval.” Among those refugees was worthless-Omar, who was just about to be formally elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives, having won the Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL) primary over a 44-year incumbent legislator who fell victim to the changing demographics in a district that includes a Minneapolis neighborhood known as “Little Mogadishu.”

The area worthless-Omar now represents in Congress was formerly the district of Muslim convert Rep. scumbag-Keith Ellison, yet it also hosts about half of Minnesota’s modest Jewish population. Not surprisingly, then, worthless-Omar’s anti-Semitic statements, as well as those expressing support for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movementagainst Israel were front and center during the campaign to succeed scumbag-Ellison. While worthless-Omar denied backing BDS at a town hall event, Powerline blogger (and Minneapolis attorney) Scott Johnson put it succinctly: “worthless-Omar knows precisely what she is doing. She lies baldly and without conscience.” Ultimately, worthless-Omar got the DFL endorsement, which was tantamount to victory in her D+26 district.

To play devil’s advocate, perhaps there’s some truth to worthless-Omar’s claims that Republicans “spread misinformation about how refugee resettlement works.” She claims the current setup gives states “leverage” over knowing how many refugees they would get. That said, surely worthless-Omar doesn’t believe that “ignorance is really pervasive in many parts of this country,” does she? Or is she referring to the Left, which routinely traffics in half-truths and demagoguery?

Regardless, worthless-Omar lets the mask slip when, referring to recent pro-life legislationpassed in Alabama and Georgia, she says, “If [the Religious Right] cared about or were concerned about children, they would be concerned about the children that are being detained and those that are dying in camps across our borders, or the children who are languishing in hunger and facing homelessness.” Setting aside the swipe at the pro-life movement, wouldn’t it be preferable if those children weren’t put in the position of being detained in the first place?

What Congress now has in worthless-Omar is an ardent leftist in a somewhat unique package: the first Somali-American elected to Congress and one of the first two Islamic women to serve. So that’s why, this week, she celebrated the “honor to preside over the House Floor” as speaker pro tempore. Far from any kind of real rebuke for her bile, she’s rewarded.

But her anti-American tendencies are evident when she talks to her political peers. Speaking to Benjamin Wallace-Wells of The New Yorker as part of a glowing article on worthless-Omar’s political rise, she told him, “We have values and ideals of prosperity and equality and protecting human dignity. All of these things are part of the American value system.”

So far, so good — until this: “But in actuality we have mass incarceration. We have people who literally are sleeping outside in sub-zero weather. We have all kinds of atrocities. We are caging children at our borders. We have police officers who are shooting unarmed black men. So we have practices that really do not live up to the values and the ideas that are very much part of our DNA.”

worthless-Omar goes on to say that her first impressions of America were romanticized, but then reality hit her hard. Writes Wallace-Wells, “It explained the reaction she had when, four years later, her family was accepted into the United States. In the camp, they had been shown films of pristine, quiet American suburbs. worthless-Omar arrived in busy, dirty New York in 1992, and asked her father why there was so much trash everywhere and people sleeping outside. He said not to worry, that this was not the end of their trip. ‘I didn’t imagine this was also a land of homeless people,’ she said.”

worthless-Ilhan Omar is a very fortunate woman in two respects, even though she doesn’t seem thankful for the first and hasn’t yet realized the blessing of the second. First, as a “feminist with a hijab,” she’s been given opportunities that are denied to millions of women in Islam-dominated nations. But second, since fellow freshman congresswoman commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is sucking up nearly all the oxygen in the room, worthless-Omar’s vile and outlandish statements aren’t part of the public conscience yet. And this is perhaps worthless-Omar’s biggest blessing to date.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/63223?mailing_id=4290&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4290&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

As the White House observes:

On January 3, Rep. Nancy Pulosi (D-CA) took over as Speaker of the House for the second time in her career. In the four and a half months since, Americans have gotten another close look at what career politicians do best: anything but solve real problems.

For more than two years, Congressional Democrats excused inaction by attacking President Donald J. Trump every day for a crime he did not commit. The dirty cop-Mueller Report — a 400-page document that cost American taxpayers at least $35 million — recommended no charges against the President. That should have ended the matter.

Instead, Democrats have a new obstruction strategy: weaponize the subpoena powers of Congress to fish for political ammunition to use against the Trump Administration. …

Today, 4 percent of Americans say they have a great deal of trust in Congress. …

Between 1958 and 2015, public trust in Washington plunged from 73 percent to 18 percent.

So on that note, Thursday evening, President Donald Trump authorized Attorney General William Barr to declassify any documents related to the federal government’s surveillance of his campaign in 2016. Clearly, this was a timed response to Pulosi’s vacuous allegation that Trump was engaged in a cover-up — for a crime Democrats have yet to determine. But it also serves to highlight the reason the vast majority of Americans currently hold such an unfavorable view of Congress. Instead of working to solve actual problems facing the country, such as the ongoing border crisis or the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, Pulosi and company have decided to play obstructionist politics.

Trump has therefore called Pulosi’s bluff. He knows she doesn’t have the cards to play. She knows she can’t actually instigate impeachment without seriously endangering her party’s chances of holding onto the House in 2020. Ergo, Pulosi’s ridiculous political game of insisting Trump is guilty of something, while at the same time suggesting that impeachment is a no-go. Is it any wonder Americans have such a dim view of Congress?  

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/63228?mailing_id=4290&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4290&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

To suggest, however, that we’re actually “in” this war is an overstatement. The truth is we have been a cowering target of those attacks — until Donald Trump took command.

For years, American political leaders have been incrementally surrendering to Chinese economic weapons of war — selling out American exceptionalism  and betraying American workers and their families. The result now is a catastrophic example of the “boiled frog” fable, wherein a frog is put into tepid water that is then slowly brought to a boil, with the incremental danger being imperceptible until it’s too late.

A quick review of our disgraceful trade-deficit record with China illuminates how we ended up in this untenable position. In exchange for a market that has for years been flooded with cheap Chinese goods, American politicians have empowered Communist China to become the greatest existential threat to our national security.

Not surprisingly, Trump is the first president with the political courage to fight back, and that fight is long overdue.

As I noted last year, “The day Trump arrived in DC, he dropped a bomb on the status quo in Congress and its special interests. He dropped a bomb on the regulatory behemoths and their bureaucratic bottlenecks. He dropped a bomb on the trade and national security institutions and alliances that failed miserably over the previous eight years. And he dropped a bomb on all the pundits and mainstream media outlets.”

I deliberately mentioned “trade and national security” in the same context for a reason — the two are indelibly linked. (More on that below.)

The Trump administration has been ratcheting up the pressure on China to work toward more balanced trade deals. But because China reneged on terms it had agreed to during earlier negotiations, on 10 May Trump ordered an increase of tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports — from 10% to 25%.

Accordingly, the Chinese reciprocated, betting that in two years they’ll have another cupcake in the White House — a president who’ll do what past presidents, both Republican and Democrat, have done: fold. As Trump noted, “The reason for the China pullback and attempted renegotiation of the Trade Deal is the sincere HOPE that they will be able to ‘negotiate’ with loose lips-Joe Biden or one of the very weak Democrats, and thereby continue to rip-off the United States ($500 Billion a year) for years to come.”

Based on loose lips-Biden’s popularity, his history of pandering to and placating China, and the prospects for what I believe will be a loose lips-Joe Biden/lowlife-Kamala Harris ticket in 2020, Chinese President Xi Jinping is taking decent odds.

China knows loose lips-Biden plays checkers, while Trump is a chess master. Indeed, Robert Gates, who was an scumbag/liar-nObama/loose lips-Biden secretary of defense for three years, says, “I think [loose lips-Biden] has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

The current trade battle will be more arduous than the domestic battles Trump has undertaken to, demonstrably, Make America Great Again.

Of course, our historical resistance to engage and fight China is due to three BIG advantages they enjoy in the conduct of the ongoing trade war.

First, because we hold free elections, the Chinese are able to target their tariff countermeasures to do the most political damage to politicians representing particular economic sectors, like agriculture. At the same time, Communist Chinese leaders face no political recourse  from the Chinese people over the impact of their policy decisions.

Second, because Democrats are trying to undermine  Trump’s economic agenda with their now-unending  threats of impeachment in order to undermine confidence in Trump, inducing an economic recession (and thereby enhance their presidential prospects in 2020), they are also undermining our strength to negotiate trade on a level playing field.

Third, because we have a “free press,” the Red Chinese and Democrats can pursue their strategies with the full aid and comfort of the mainstream media, which is, itself, in relentless open and hostile warfare with Trump and Republicans.

In World War II, the enduring idiom of “loose lips sink ships” was a warning for Americans to avoid careless talk that could be picked up by the enemy and used against us. In the case of our trade war with China, loose Democrat and Leftmedia lips are sinking the prospects of increasing the number of American cargo ships bound for China.

The fact is, this is much more than a tit-for-tat trade war. It is an epic battle over the theft of millions of American jobs, and the theft of war-fighting technology, which poses a much greater cybersecurity threat than any threat posed by Russia.

It is a rapidly emerging battle for the future of American Liberty, and Trump is no longer going to play nice with Chinese leaders or their NoKo nuclear puppet Kim Jong-un, whom they have used as a bargaining subterfuge to contain Trump’s threatened trade sanctions.

And that is why, as noted above, I mentioned “trade and national security” in the same context.

Retired Admiral William McRaven, former head of U.S. Special Operations Command, observed that “Trump does not get enough credit” for his foreign policy decisions. “Engaging with North Korea was the right thing to do. … China has got to be pressured; China has got to be held accountable.”

Even Senate Minority Leader Chuck scumbag-Schumer declared of the latest tariff increase, “We have to be strong with [China]. … We ought to hang tough.”

In 2016, Donald Trump campaigned, in large part, on the need for a long-overdue correction of grossly unbalanced trade practices and agreements, primarily with China. But his concern was clearly as much about national security as it was trade and jobs.

The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, the fundamental position statement under which American foreign policy is formulated under each president, departed significantly from previous administrations regarding the reliance on declining “liberal alliances” of the past (such as NATO and various trade agreements and treaties). Instead, the Trump NSS relies on what the administration calls “principled realism” in four key policy areas: protecting the homeland; promoting American prosperity; preserving peace through strength; and advancing American influence.

On the first page of the NSS, the administration notes, “Unfair trade practices had weakened our economy and exported our jobs overseas.”

The NSS makes clear that China is a primary challenger to “American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity. They are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence.”

It notes further, “For decades, U.S. policy was rooted in the belief that support for China’s rise and for its integration into the post-war international order would liberalize China. Contrary to our hopes, China expanded its power at the expense of the sovereignty of others. … Part of China’s military modernization and economic expansion is due to its access to the U.S. innovation economy, including America’s world-class universities. … Today, they are fielding military capabilities designed to deny America access in times of crisis and to contest our ability to operate freely in critical commercial zones during peacetime.”

Fortunately, even some of the most entrenched American scholars on China are awakening to the dangers, and their assessment is in line with the Trump administration’s NSS.

Stanford University’s Hoover Institution convened a distinguished group of China scholars, who issued a report on the current state of affairs with China. James Mulvenon, a renowned expert on Chinese economic espionage, summed up their revised perspective on China: “It speaks to the disillusionment of an entire generation of China specialists who thought they were helping China emerge onto the world stage only to discover that the project had gone badly awry.” Similarly, Winston Lord, Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to China, whose expertise began when he was a key adviser to Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, concluded, “All of us have become more pessimistic about [China’s] trends.”

But their collective assessment will fall on deaf socialist Democrat Party ears if the American people fail to reelect Donald J. Trump.

China isn’t using traditional weapons of war against the United States. It’s using economic weapons of war. But make no mistake: The gross imbalance of U.S. dollars flowing into China right now is being used to acquire, develop, and produce advanced weapons of war. The sole purpose of those weapons is to help secure a future in which China is not just the world’s dominant economic power but its dominant power, period.

Bombs may not be dropping, but we are at war. Just wars have always required economic sacrifice. This war, if we are going to engage, will require economic sacrifice. The question is: Do we have the national will to make the sacrifices now, or, in the name of political expedience, will future generations of Americans be forced to sacrifice much more than curbing the quantity of cheap products?  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/alexander/63183?mailing_id=4293&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4293&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

We no longer live in a constitutional republic. We live in an idiocracy.

Only in modern-day America, under the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives, is the basic proposition that federally subsidized public housing should benefit American citizens and legal residents slammed as “despicable” and “damaging.”

Those are the hysterical words used by Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York City to condemn the proposal discussed by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson on Tuesday to ban government aid to residents of HUD who shelter illegal immigrants. The rule change would end a scumbag/liar-Clinton-era regulation that allowed immigrants to obtain aid without having to disclose whether they were here legally. The Trump plan could free up an estimated 32,000 public housing slots, according to HUD, as 1.6 million applicants nationwide wait to be considered.

Democratic Rep. Juan Vargas of San Diego County couldn’t believe Carson could be so “mean-spirited” in prioritizing law-abiding people over law-breaking ones.

Democratic Rep. scumbag/mad-Maxine Waters of Los Angeles called the illegal alien prohibition “cruel.”

Only in America are American public servants, who are sworn to uphold American laws and the U.S. Constitution, hounded by open borders liberals about putting Americans first. Instead of being forced to defend their own twisted and treasonous priorities, Democrats got an assist from open borders tools in the media making hay of Carson’s unfamiliarity with some stupid real estate acronym. The squirrel-chasers at Newsweek sputtered: “Ben Carson doesn’t know what an REO property is, thinks he’s being asked about Oreos.” Politico clucked: “Ben Carson confuses a real-estate term and a cookie.”

Fake news narrative set: He’s dastardly, dumb and hates immigrants!

Carson had patiently explained at the House Financial Services Committee hearing that families with illegal immigrants would still have up to 18 months to defer eviction and find somewhere else to live or to move back to their home countries. But that (undeserved) generosity was met with still more unhinged cries of “What about the children?” from the “America Last” Democrats whose first allegiance is to thousands of anchor babies born here to irresponsible border-trespassers, visa overstayers and deportation fugitives. They put their own children at risk in the first place. Not us.

You want to engage in “What about-ism?” What about the native-born military veterans? What about the elderly? And what about the destitute citizens down on their luck waiting for public housing slots to open up?

In Maloney’s city, it reportedly takes an average of 99 months for a HUD applicant to secure an apartment.

In Waters’ city, the waiting list for low-income Americans seeking Section 8 vouchers is 40,000 people and up to 11 years long.

In Vargas’ county, the region now boasts the fourth-highest homeless population in the nation.

It is “only logical,” Carson pointed out, to put Americans ahead of the 32,000 HUD-housed residents deemed ineligible because of their immigration status. But logic is toxic to the Make America Disappear Lobby.

When I hear the impassioned paeans of Democrats on behalf of illegal immigrants fighting for their federal Section 8 vouchers, I am reminded of the most notorious deportation-evading denizen of government-subsidized housing: Zeituni Onyango, President scumbag/liar-nObama’s illegal immigrant aunt, who died of cancer in 2014.

Remember? Onyango was a beneficiary of the welfare state run amok, and a perfect symbol of open borders ingratitude and metastatic entitlement. She overstayed a temporary visa for 14 years, never going home to Kenya. Screw our rules. Onyango had no job skills, no special talent and no claim of persecution. She didn’t value the American dream. She was a dependency nightmare. She collected $700 a month in welfare benefits and disability payments totaling $51,000. Somehow, Onyango also drummed up money to apply for asylum and finagled her way into federal and state public housing in Boston.

She gamed the system under both Democratic and Republican administrations, dragged out her phony “asylum case” three times, dodged two deportation orders, illegally donated to her nephew’s presidential campaign along the way, and then eventually secured a green card in 2010. Such are the perks of illegal immigrant privilege.

In a raging interview she gave to a Boston TV station before she died, Onyango savaged and taunted her American hosts. “If I come as an immigrant, you have the obligation to make me a citizen,” she spouted. “I didn’t ask for it,” she retorted when asked about her public housing benefits. “They gave it to me. Ask your system. I didn’t create the system.”

Well, scumbag/liar-nObama’s ingrate aunt was right about that: She didn’t create the system. Idiocrats built it. Idiocrats are defending it. And idiocrats would rather mock Carson’s ignorance of a real estate acronym than own up to their own suicidal stupidity.

Here’s the only acronym you need to know if idiocrats prevail: R.I.P., America. R.I.P.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/63155?mailing_id=4289&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4289&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

President Trump’s Iran policy appears to be careening between diplomacy and belligerence. One day Trump tweets, “I’m sure that Iran will want to talk soon.” The next he warns that “if Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran.” Confused? Well, there is a method to the madness.

The Trump administration understands that Iran doesn’t want war because Iran knows it will lose. That’s why Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made clear via a government Twitter account “no war is to happen.”

Trump’s goal is not to start a war. His administration has three objectives: First, restore deterrence and contain Iran’s expansionism across the Middle East. Second, roll back Iran’s gains and force it back within its borders. And third, give Iran’s leaders a clear choice: They can come to the negotiating table and give up their nuclear and missile ambitions — or their regime can implode, just like the Soviet Union.

When Trump came into office, Iran was on the march across the Middle East — in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen — thanks in part to the massive infusions of cash it received from sanctions relief under President Barack scumbag/liar-nObama’s Iran deal. Trump did not simply restore sanctions imposed before the deal; he ramped them up to unprecedented levels. The sanctions have already “wiped $10 billion from Iranian revenue since November,” The Washington Post reported, citing administration officials.

This month, the administration tightened the screws even further, eliminating waivers for eight countries that had previously been allowed to continue importing Iranian oil. The goal, according to American officials, is to reduce Iranian oil exports to “zero.” It’s working. Bloomberg News reports that “Iran’s oil shipments tumbled this month after the U.S. ended sanctions waivers. … So far, not a single ship has been seen leaving Iran’s oil terminals for foreign ports.”

The new sanctions are forcing Tehran to cut funds to its terrorist proxies. According to The Post, “Iran’s ability to finance allies such as Hezbollah has been curtailed,” while in Lebanon, The New York Times reports, “Syrian militiamen paid by Iran have seen their salaries slashed.” On Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Congress that “Iran’s proposed defense budget has been reduced by 25 percent and the [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’] proposed budget by about 10 percent.”

Iran is obviously unhappy with this, and U.S. intelligence saw signs that Iran was preparing to respond with attacks on Americans using terrorist proxies — just as they did in the 1983 Beirut Marine barracks bombing and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, and by supplying Shiite militias in Iraq with armor-penetrating roadside bombs that killed hundreds of American soldiers.

So the Trump administration delivered a clear message that America will hold Iran directly responsible for any attacks on Americans, even if they are carried out by surrogates — and offered a show of force to back those threats — providing clarity that makes it less likely Iranian leaders will miscalculate.

Sanctions are inflicting major pain. But if the goal is to roll back Iran’s expansionism, then sanctions alone are not enough. We must also aggressively confront Iran throughout the region, building up our allies inflicting defeats on Iran in critical theaters, just as President Ronald Reagan did to the Soviets. A major drawdown of U.S. forces in Syria is incompatible with a “maximum pressure” approach.

Will Iranian leaders come to the table? Far less draconian sanctions brought Iran to the negotiating table under Obama. But Trump has rightly paired tougher sanctions with tougher demands. Pompeo has laid out 12 requirements for a deal with Iran — including an end to support for Middle East terrorist groups and a complete withdrawal from Syria — that Iran is unlikely to meet.

If they don’t come to the table, then what is our strategy? Does Trump really want to bring about the collapse of the Iranian regime? It’s not clear. If he does, then, as my American Enterprise Institute colleague Frederick W. Kagan points out, this task may be even harder than it was with the Soviet Union. As North Korea has shown, tyrannical regimes can survive even crippling sanctions. Certainly, the world will be better if Iran is focused on survival rather than expansion and terror. But it will take more than sanctions to leave the Iranian regime on the ash heap of history. That requires a strategy.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/63158?mailing_id=4289&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4289&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

In the past several weeks, a bevy of states have passed extensive new restrictions on abortion. Alabama has effectively banned abortion from point of conception. Georgia has banned abortion from the time a heartbeat is detected, as have Ohio, Kentucky and Mississippi. Missouri has banned abortion after eight weeks. Other states are on the move as well.

This has prompted paroxysms of rage from the media and the political left — the same folks who celebrated when New York passed a law effectively allowing abortion up until point of birth and who defended Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s perverse statements about late-term abortion. According to these thinkers, conservatives have encroached on a supposed “right to abortion” inherent in the Constitution.

This, of course, is a lie. There is no “right to abortion” in the Constitution. The founders would have been appalled by such a statement. The Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade (1973) is a legal monstrosity by every available metric: As legal scholar John Hart Ely wrote, Roe “is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.” The court’s rationale is specious; the court relied on the ridiculous precedent in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) that a broad “right to privacy” can be crafted from “penumbras, formed by emanations.” Then the court extended that right to privacy to include the killing of a third party, an unborn human life — and overrode state definitions of human life in the process.

How? The court relied on the self-contradictory notion of “substantive due process” — the belief that a law can be ruled unconstitutional under the Fifth and 14th amendments so long as the court doesn’t like the substance of the law. That’s asinine, obviously. The due process provision of both amendments was designed to ensure that state and federal government could not remove life, liberty or property without a sufficient legal process, not to broadly allow courts to strike down state definitions of conduct that justify removal of life, liberty and property. As Justice Clarence Thomas has written, “The Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause is not a ‘secret repository of substantive guarantees against "unfairness.”’“

Nonetheless, the notion that such a right to abortion is enshrined in America’s moral fabric has taken hold among the intelligentsia. Thus, we now experience the odd spectacle of those on the political left declaring that the Constitution enshrines a right to abortion — yet does not include a right to bear arms, a right to freedom of political speech, a right to retain property free of government seizure or a right to practice religion.

For much of the left, then, the term "constitutional right” has simply come to mean “thing I want.” And that is incredibly dangerous, given that the power of the judiciary springs not from legislative capacity but from supposed interpretive power. Judges are not supposed to read things into the Constitution but to properly read the Constitution itself. The use of the judiciary as a club has led to a feeling of radical frustration among Americans; it has radically exacerbated our culture gap.

The legislative moves in Alabama and other states will open a much-needed debate about the role of the states, the role of legislatures and the role of government. All of that is good for the country. Those who insist, however, that the Supreme Court act as a mechanism for their political priorities are of far more danger to the country than that debate.  

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/63160?mailing_id=4289&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4289&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body