ACTION

The NEA launched the “Fire DeVos Pledge,” declaring her to be the least qualified secretary of education in history. The claims include: “Her education freedom scholarships are ‘degrading’ to public schools, ‘threaten students’ civil rights,‘ 'widen educational inequity,’ are a personal attack on teachers, and are ‘dangerous.’”

Nor are the attacks limited to rhetoric. Thanks to threats from the teachers unions and their thugs, American taxpayers now spend $6 million per year for a security detail to protect DeVos. And she personally covers their travel expenses.

What atrocities have occurred at the direction of Secretary DeVos that warrant such hostility?

She is an enormous advocate for educational freedom, supporting mechanisms like vouchers and ESAs (Educational Savings Accounts) that put power over children’s education back in the hands of parents instead of bureaucrats. This allows poor children in failing schools the same opportunity for a quality education that children of the affluent and politically connected receive.

The ugly truth is that America’s education system is mediocre at best, an anachronism of the industrial age, ill-equipped to develop the minds of our children in the information age. Our children are placed in educational assembly lines, in batches by age, taught the same things in the same way, regardless of the strengths and weaknesses of each child, and regardless of their interests.

Our children suffer as a result, and teacher-union bosses couldn’t care less.

Al Shanker, former president of the American Federation of Teachers, when asked about the impact four teacher walkouts in less than a year would have on the children, famously retorted that he would “start representing kids when they started paying union dues.” Nothing has changed.

DeVos seeks to expand educational freedom and drastically reduce the size, scope, and reach of Washington politicians and bureaucrats, as well as teachers unions, which have an incestuous, symbiotic relationship. Unions provide (almost exclusively Democrat) politicians an army of campaign workers and millions in member dues in the form of campaign contributions, and the politicians block measures that allow parents the ability to move their children out of failing schools.

The politicians and union leaders thrive, but the children suffer.

Yet as noted by Rebecca Friedrichs, founder of “For Kids & Country,” a 28-year public-school teacher, and the plaintiff in a 2016 Supreme Court case that dealt an enormous blow to unions, “Freedom for families means fewer educators paying union dues — a threat to union power.”

All over the country, when “right to work” laws are passed, union membership plummets. While government-sector union membership stands at 37%, private-sector union membership barely registers at just 6%.

Unable to compel workers, union participation falls precipitously. Fewer union members means less in union dues, which means less money to pay off the politicians who give power and taxpayer money to union leaders.

Choice is the death knell for unions, which is why union leaders have long engaged in threats, intimidation, and even violence to protect their power. Those that threaten their power are subjected to character assassination and harassment by union mobs and their willing accomplices.

The federal Department of Education was established in 1979, with a budget of $12 billion. That grew to $70 billion in FY2017, Barack scumbag/liar-nObama’s last year, for a department employing more than 4,000 bureaucrats who do nothing but micromanage the decision-making of countless thousands of schools around the country.

Yet after four decades and hundreds of billions of dollars, the academic achievement of American children is stagnant in math and reading, and worse in science. As Secretary DeVos correctly notes, government can’t fix public schools.

The American people would never tolerate federal bureaucrats and their union cronies dictating where we select our groceries, especially if the stores we were forced to shop at offered no selection, stale bread, moldy fruit, and rotting meat.

Yet that is exactly what government forces us to do with our children, our most cherished possessions: feed them the educational equivalent of stale bread and rotting meat.

President Trump and Secretary DeVos are fighting the unions to obtain quality education and choice for our children. Every American should join them in that fight.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68987?mailing_id=4902&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4902&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

China played a rigged game for the better part of 40 years to tilt the worldwide economic balance of power in its favor. Manipulating its currency, engaging in illegal trade practices, industrial espionage, and other dirty tactics should have isolated the totalitarian regime from global trade. Instead, China was rewarded by convincing many major American and European manufacturers to set up shop there. Furthermore, it used low-paid and sometimes prison labor to manufacture and sell goods in the American market and elsewhere so cheaply that other countries simply couldn’t afford to compete at that level and remain in business.

It wasn’t until Donald Trump became president that the United States finally acted against China’s underhanded tactics. But it will take more than some strategic tariffs to undo the damage done by the communist regime — and previous administrations.

The coronavirus outbreak — which followed China’s three-week New Year break — has all but brought Chinese manufacturing and exports to a halt. U.S. businesses reliant on components from China are facing long wait-times for delivery that range from six to 15 weeks. These major disruptions to the global supply chain will cost American businesses billions of dollars as they work to reschedule construction projects, adjust product orders, and attempt to belay investor concerns. Global tech giants Microsoft, Apple, and Nintendo are all already looking at reduced second-quarter earnings.

One particularly unhealthy aspect of our dependence on China is that country’s dominance of the medical supply chain. Large portions of major American pharmaceuticals are manufactured in China, and we could face a shortage of these products.

Goldman Sachs predicts stagnant earnings growth for the rest of 2020, and best estimates put current investment losses tied to the coronavirus at $2 trillion. Cooler heads on Wall Street still maintain that the stock market is experiencing a course correction and not taking a dive. Of course, Democrats and their Leftmedia propagandists are fanning the flames of panic. They would love nothing more than to see a ravaged American economy because that is the surest way to defeat Trump in November.

It could be, though, that the coronavirus outbreak that has been symbolic of our economic dependence on China could also be the thing that ultimately breaks that hold. Researchers have noted that the virus outbreak comes at a time when China is facing a series of challenges to its economic power. Its economy has been slowing for several years, the country has saturated global markets to the point that expanding exports is quite challenging, and the Trump tariffs dealt it a severe economic blow. And let us not forget that China is a totalitarian regime oppressing its people and seeking hegemony by means of force; it’s not generally considered a model for long-term economic success.

This doesn’t mean that the U.S. has to stand by and wait for China to fall by the wayside, because it may not. Instead, our great nation needs to be more proactive by not only diversifying overseas investments and manufacturing but pushing hard to invest in America First. The United States should lead the world in manufacturing, and moving toward such leadership and care for our own citizens should be paramount in the minds of America’s leading corporations and its elected leaders.  

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68985?mailing_id=4902&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4902&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

In a torturous, twisted interpretation of federal immigration law, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a preliminary court order Friday to block the Trump administration from continuing to implement its Migrant Protection Protocols, known informally as the Remain-in-Mexico policy.

But shortly after issuing the ruling, the three-judge panel voted 2-1 to put a hold on it, preventing it from going into force until the federal government can file written arguments by the end of Monday in favor of the Remain-in-Mexico policy and plaintiffs can respond by the end of Tuesday arguing in favor of stopping the policy from being carried out.

Implemented last year by the Trump administration, the policy has proven effective in stemming the flood of illegal crossings at our southern border.

One of the biggest drivers of the crisis at the southern border was the “catch and release” policy of President Barack scumbag/liar-nObama’s administration.

Because the number of illegal immigrants apprehended at the border far exceeded the capacity of federal detention facilities, most of those arrested were simply processed, scheduled for an immigration hearing and then released. The majority then disappeared into the vast interior of our country and never showed up for their immigration hearings.

Naturally, this only encouraged more illegal immigration.

Fighting back, the Trump administration issued a new rule last year that took advantage of the authority granted under 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1225(b)(2). That provision specifies that in the case of immigrants who arrive “on land (whether or not at a designated port of arrival) from a foreign territory contiguous to the United States,” they can be returned “to that territory” while their claims for asylum are pending.

The Migration Protection Protocols (MPP) required that asylum seekers who crossed the southern border had to return to Mexico until immigration officials determined the validity of their claims.

Moreover, the asylum claims of those who failed to cross through an official port of entry would not be considered credible. This is simply common sense.

After all, why would someone with a valid asylum claim sneak across the border instead of coming in legally at a port of entry? The administration provided exceptions to the MPP for unaccompanied children as well as those with a credible fear of persecution in Mexico.

Once word got out about this new policy, the number of illegal crossings plummeted. With the cooperation of the Mexican government, more than 60,000 illegal immigrants were returned to Mexico over a 13-month period.

New immigration courts at key crossing points like Laredo, Texas, drastically reduced the time needed to process asylum claims, so that refugees with legitimate asylum claims had their cases heard much faster.

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said the MPP “allowed us to take control of the crisis” at the border that was overwhelming the Border Patrol and our immigration capabilities. So naturally, those who want open borders and no enforcement of our immigration laws sued and found a friendly audience in federal court in San Francisco and in the 9th Circuit.

Given how clear the statute is, one might wonder how a court could say that the MPP is somehow invalid. But that is what the 9th Circuit did in East Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Trump. It began by ignoring several provisions of federal immigration law that deprive courts of having any say over this issue to begin with.

One of those, 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1252(e)(3), specifically says that regardless of “the nature of the action or claim and without regard to the identity of the party or parties bringing the action, no court may enter declaratory, injunctive, or other equitable relief in any action pertaining to an order to exclude an alien.”

Of course, this is exactly what the lower court and 9th Circuit did in issuing an injunction against the order excluding immigrants from entry into the U.S. while their asylum claim is being evaluated.

The court then held that the MPP is an “arbitrary and capricious” interpretation of the law, even though federal immigration law unambiguously and without any limitation gives the federal government the ability to exclude immigrants who have crossed one of our land borders while their asylum claims are being evaluated.

How can applying the clear text of a federal law be arbitrary and capricious?

The court further held that it was also arbitrary and capricious for the executive branch to consider as not credible the asylum claims of those who cross illegally rather than through an official port of entry. This was despite acknowledging that the courts have long recognized that the method someone uses to enter the country is a discretionary factor that the government can consider in deciding whether an immigrant should be granted relief.

Finally, the court substituted its own foreign policy judgment for that of the president by ruling that enforcing these provisions of federal immigration law was “unreasonable” in light of our treaty obligations under the 1951 U.N. Convention Relating to Status of Refugees and the 1967 U.N. protocols Relating to the Status of Refugees.

In fact, the court seems to be substituting its foreign policy judgment not just for that of the president, but also for Congress. That’s because the president in this case is acting not only under his constitutional authority to conduct foreign policy and secure our border, but under the specific authority delegated to him by Congress to determine which immigrants will be allowed into the United States.

There is no doubt that the Trump administration will appeal the court’s unwise decision. The White House issued a news release saying that if this “hugely successful” policy is stopped, it will “flood the Nation’s immigration system, present unchecked coronavirus entry risk, deeply damage our positive relationship with the Government of Mexico and other regional partners, and reignite the humanitarian and security crisis at the border.”

News releases are often filled with hyperbole. But in this case, that is an accurate assessment of what will happen if this latest nationwide injunction is not lifted.   

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/68973?mailing_id=4900&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4900&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_conte

That said, we also have long thought that Afghanistan had reached a point where there were no good options. As we also have noted, there was no clear idea of what victory looked like and how it would be achieved. Thus, the war effort became a mess that was largely passed off to Special Operations Command (SOCOM).

Even under George W. Bush, who was serious about winning, America pulled punches that should have been allowed to go full-force. Dalton Fury revealed in 2008 that requests to use modern GATOR mines were rejected during the Battle of Tora Bora. These mines would have self-destructed or gone inert within 40 days. But micromanaging from Washington allowed Osama bin Laden to make it into Pakistan, where he hid out for nearly a decade.

The betrayal of Patriots who served — like James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who played crucial roles in getting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to spill his guts — also raised questions about how serious those in Washington were about winning.

Yet we were supposed to let SOCOM send its highly trained operatives on numerous deployments to that region with no clue about how to win or what winning looked like? How numerous were those deployments? Here is one indicator: The first military casualty during President Trump’s administration had been sent on 12 deployments.

We should not dismiss what was achieved: Afghanistan has a freely elected government. We have killed or captured a lot of the senior leadership of al-Qaida. We have not seen anything like another 9/11. We have trained an Afghan military that is capable of defending that country. We should be proud of what our troops, including those who gave the ultimate sacrifice, accomplished.

But we should also keep some things in mind. We have lessons to learn from this war. We should, as a country, resolve that when we do ask our troops to fight and risk being maimed or killed, they be allowed to win.

Whether this peace agreement will hold is an open question. Could the Taliban merely be using this as a chance to re-arm and gain strength to go after the Afghan government? We can’t rule that out. If that should happen, then the Taliban must pay a fearsome price for breaking the deal.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68953?mailing_id=4900&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4900&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

First of all, remember that whenever you’re told that the “free market” led to China’s rise as one of the world’s most dominant economic powers.

But second, note that the list of companies supplied by these factories includes such “woke” brands as Apple and Nike. The latter in particular might raise your ire, because the athletic-equipment company two years ago paid big bucks to make America-hating ex-quarterback Colin Kaepernick the face of its brand, even yanking a Betsy Ross shoe when he whined about it.

On his refusal to stand for our national anthem, Kaepernick said, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.” But he has no problem taking a huge paycheck from a company supplied by actual minority slave labor in an oppressive communist country.

ASPI notes, “Local governments and private brokers are paid a price per head by the Xinjiang provincial government to organise the labour assignments. The job transfers are now an integral part of the ‘re-education’ process, which the Chinese government calls ‘vocational training.’” More than a million people have “disappeared into a vast network of ‘re-education camps.’” And, the report adds, “A factory in eastern China that manufactures shoes for US company Nike is equipped with watchtowers, barbed-wire fences and police guard boxes.”

Naturally, Nike denies there’s a problem. “We are committed to upholding international labor standards globally,” insisted spokeswoman Sandra Carreon-John. Suppliers are “strictly prohibited from using any type of prison, forced, bonded or indentured labor.”

If there’s one thing the world’s socialists have always had in common — from the Nazis to the Bolsheviks to the Chinese — it’s forced labor and “re-education.” Nike’s response? It’s all about the money, so just do it.   

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68955?mailing_id=4900&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4900&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

My wife and I attended an extraordinary concert on Sunday, Feb. 23, by the brass ensemble of “The President’s Own” (the United States Marine Corps Band), commemorating the 75th anniversary of one of the toughest, bloodiest battles of the Pacific War — the Marine assault on Iwo Jima, which began on February 19, 1945.

The concert took place in the Leatherneck Gallery of the National Museum of the Marine Corps outside of the Quantico Marine Base in Triangle, Virginia, before a packed crowd, including a veteran of the Iwo Jima battle.

Iwo Jima (which translates as Sulfur Island) is a tiny, ugly island of volcanic ash, smoke, and tremors. Marine Corporal E. Hartman said the sand was “so soft it was like trying to run in loose coffee grounds.” The island is a little over four miles long and two miles wide, dominated by the 600-foot-high Mount Suribachi at its southern tip.

But Iwo Jima is only about 650 miles southeast of Tokyo. It had three airfields, along with radar installations that had been alerting Japanese interceptor squadrons and anti-aircraft batteries to American B-29 Superfortresses that were bombing the Japanese home islands from bases in the Mariana Islands.

Seizing the island from the Japanese would destroy Japan’s early-warning system; eliminate Japanese planes that were attacking American bombers; provide a safe base for B-29s low on fuel or otherwise damaged to land; and provide a staging area for P-51 fighters to provide escort protection for the American bombers hitting the Japanese mainland. Three hundred P-51 Mustangs that flew 1,700 sorties were eventually based there.

Prior to the invasion, a U.S. Navy task force hit the island with a massive bombardment. It was carried out for three days from February 16 to February 18 by six battleships, five cruisers, 10 destroyers, planes from 10 escort carriers (using newly invented napalm bombs), and even raids by land-based B-24s. Eventually, hundreds of Navy ships were supporting the Marines. Unfortunately, that bombardment had almost no effect on the 21,000-man Japanese garrison commanded by Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi, a former diplomat and haiku poet.

Iwo Jima was full of caves, deep ravines and rocky ridges that Kuribayashi had fortified with elaborate concrete and steel bunkers, some with as many as five levels, and connected through a labyrinth of tunnels. Many military historians conclude that no other battle area in modern warfare was as skillfully fortified by a combination of nature and human engineering as Iwo Jima. The Japanese safely sat out the bombardment with few casualties.

On Feb. 19, almost 30,000 warriors of the 4th and 5th Marine Divisions of the 5th Amphibious Corps (including Navaho code talkers), with the 3rd Marine Division in reserve, landed on the island with little opposition. Kuribayashi’s strategy was to allow the Marines to land, and then, within half an hour, subject them to massive mortar, artillery and machine gun fire — much of it directed by Japanese observers on Mount Suribachi, which had seven levels of underground fortifications.

By the end of the week, 70,000 Marines were on the island, advancing only yard-by-yard, under such a barrage of interlocking fire that Lt. Colonel Justus “Jumpin’ Joe” Chambers said, “You could’ve held up a cigarette and lit it on the stuff going by.”

It took tanks, flame-throwers, bazookas, mortars, and hand-to-hand fighting by the Marines to defeat Japanese troops who had pledged to die defending their turf. The fleet supporting the Marines with supplies and rolling artillery barrages on the island was also hit by Japanese Kamikaze attacks that sank one escort carrier, the Bismarck Sea, and damaged other ships, including the fleet carrier Saratoga.

Mount Surabachi was taken on Feb. 23, and the Marines planted a flag on the top of the mountain. A second, larger flag was then raised (which is currently displayed at the Museum). The raising of that flag on Surabachi is probably the most recognized and iconic battle photograph ever taken. It symbolizes the valor and dogged perseverance of the Marines in one of the toughest battles they ever fought. It was their bravery that was being commemorated at the Marine Band concert on the 75th anniversary of the raising of the flag. And the architectural design of the Marine Corps Museum evokes that photograph.

But the raising of the flag on the fifth day after the assault began was not the end of the story. The hardest fighting on Iwo Jima was still ahead as the Marines advanced towards the northern tip of the island. There were so many Marine casualties in the fight for Hill 382, one of the fortified Japanese positions, that it became known as “The Meat Grinder.” The Japanese made their last stand in a 700-yard-long canyon known as “Bloody Gorge” that took the Marines 10 days to clear out.

Military planners believed it would take two weeks to capture the island. Instead, it took more than five weeks — until March 26. Even on that day, 300 Japanese were killed after launching a banzai attack.

The Marines suffered their worst casualties of the Pacific War (and in their history) by the time the battle for the island was over, with almost 6,000 dead and over 17,000 casualties, with additional Navy sailors killed and wounded. Out of the 21,000-man Japanese garrison, only 200 Japanese surrendered. The rest fought to the death.

The taking of Iwo Jima by the Marines is credited with saving the lives of almost 30,000 American pilots who would otherwise have been forced to ditch at sea.

In fact, on March 4, the first crippled B-29 landed on one of the landing fields captured by the Marines while the battle for Iwo Jima was still raging. One pilot was quoted as saying that “whenever I land on this island, I thank God and the men who fought for it.”

There were more Congressional Medals of Honor awarded following the battle of Iwo Jima — 27 (including to five Navy sailors) — than in any other battle in U.S. history. The ferocious bravery and determination of the Marines and sailors led Admiral Nimitz to say that on Iwo Jima, “Uncommon valor was a common virtue.”

Nimitz’s memorable words are engraved on the wall of the Marine Corps Museum. Our memories of that uncommon valor have not dimmed and will not dim as long as we continue to remember the gallant Marines who fought that fateful battle 75 years ago.

It is because of them and the sacrifices of so many other American soldiers (and their families) that we live in a free, bountiful country today.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/68902?mailing_id=4898&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4898&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

As I noted earlier this week, the left has nothing to offer on the coronavirus debate but hate and vitriol. The Trump administration is calling the shots, not Chuck scumbag-Schumer, not liar-Nancy Pelosi, not The New York Times.

Of course, that’s not stopping the left from carping, complaining, and offering unsolicited advice. But its progressive prescriptions are absurd. For example: 

• CNN complained about the racial makeup of the administration’s coronavirus task force. Just more evidence of how far the “woke” left has strayed from Martin Luther King’s dream that we should judge people not based on the color of their skin but on their abilities and the content of their character.

• MSNBC is fretting about xenophobia. The left-wing media outlet Vox lectured us on “the history of racism and ‘cleanliness.’”

• “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd suggested that Trump is to blame for the coronavirus panic, saying, “You reap what you sow.” In Todd’s twisted mind, there is panic because no one trusts the government to handle the crisis because Trump has attacked and undermined our vital institutions. Again, this is total nonsense. The Deep State has been doing its best to attack and undermine Trump since before he was elected.

Meanwhile, the left can barely contain its glee over the fear currently roiling the financial markets. It’s not surprising. It doesn’t have much to run on. 

Its radical policies — open borders, abortion on demand, free healthcare for illegal aliens, and much more — are tremendously unpopular. 

Its candidates are not compelling. 

Its convention could turn into a civil war.

But it’s just giddy about coronavirus! 

By the way, Democrats have repeatedly complained in recent days that Trump cut the budgets of critical health-related agencies. This charge came up several times during the South Carolina Democrat debate. The only problem is that it is false.

An Associated Press fact check found that while Trump’s budgets have proposed certain cuts, Congress ignored them and actually increased funding. “The National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aren’t suffering from budget cuts that never took effect.”

The Associated Press also rejected Chuck Todd’s claims that Trump has undermined the government’s response, writing:

The public health system has a playbook to follow for pandemic preparation — regardless of who’s president… Those plans were put into place in anticipation of another flu pandemic, but are designed to work for any respiratory-borne disease.

We Have a Winner!

After 25 days and a partial recount, we finally have a declared winner in the Iowa Democrat caucuses. In a statement Thursday, the Iowa Democrat Party declared, “The recount process resulted in no change to the National Delegate allocation." 

Translation: socialist-Pete Buttigieg wins and will receive 14 delegates. commie-Bernie Sanders finished second and gets 12 delegates.

Except that the Associated Press isn’t buying it. While acknowledging that the results will be certified Saturday, the Associated Press declared that it will not call a winner due to "remaining concerns about whether the results as reported by the party are fully accurate." 

In related news, new polling shows commie-Bernie Sanders with big leads over his closest competitors in upcoming Super Tuesday states. For example: 

• commie-Sanders is up 17 points over Elizabeth dinky/liar-Warren in California (34% to 17%).

• He’s up 12 points over dinky/liar-Warren in Colorado (27% to 15%).

• He’s is up nine points over loose lips liar-Joe Biden in Virginia (28% to 19%).

• And commie-Sanders (26%) is up six points over loose lios liar-Biden (20%) and Bloomberg (20%) in Texas.

Bloomberg and the Mosque

I’ve heard some people suggest that Michael Bloomberg is the "moderate” in the Democrat race, primarily because he’s defending capitalism and calling out commie-Sanders’s socialism. That doesn’t make him moderate. 

Bloomberg is promoting a host of big-government solutions and always sides with the radical left in the culture wars. From banning guns to Big Gulps, Bloomberg is anything but moderate. He’s a left-wing elitist who thinks he knows best how to run your life. 

If you need any more evidence, let’s go back a few years to the great national debate over the proposed Ground Zero mosque. 

A CBS News poll found that 71% of Americans opposed the construction of a mosque just two blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks, where 3,000 Americans were murdered by radical Islamic supremacists. Many 9/11 families led protests against the mosque.

But Bloomberg aggressively defended the Ground Zero mosque when he was mayor of New York City. At the time he said, “I think it’s fair to say if somebody was going to try, on that piece of property, to build a church or a synagogue, nobody would be yelling and screaming.”

Could you be more tone-deaf?!

Actually, there was a church even closer to Ground Zero that was trying to rebuild, and it spent years fighting Bloomberg’s bureaucrats.

And Bloomberg is still unapologetic about his support for the Ground Zero mosque. In fact, he’s campaigning on it, even tweeting about it this week.

By the way, another great American stepped up at the time, hoping to resolve the dispute over the mosque. His name was Donald Trump. 

Trump offered to buy out the mosque’s investors, and he even offered a very generous 25% premium, in order to “end a very serious, inflammatory, and highly divisive situation.”   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/68919?mailing_id=4898&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4898&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

The situation’s pretty simple: Two entities — YouTube (owned by Google) and PragerU — are engaged in communications on a large scale. The former as a platform to reach millions and the latter producing conservative content hoping to reach those same millions. YouTube is the vehicle used to distribute video content; it gains profits via advertisements. PragerU publishes digital content to spread conservative messages as part of the ongoing political, cultural, and religious debate.

The Ninth Circuit’s three-judge panel dismissed the suit, pointing to a Supreme Court ruling just last year noting that while the First Amendment constrains the U.S. government from censoring speech, it doesn’t apply to private entities. The argument that YouTube is operating essentially as a state actor due to massive presence as an open public forum for content, dialogue, and speech was unsuccessful since the video platform is privately owned and not a public utility or government entity.

The court was right to protect both the property rights and the speech rights of the private entity, YouTube. But let’s at least look at YouTube’s selective application of the culture of free speech.

This isn’t YouTube’s first time being accused of censoring conservative content. In 2017, The Daily Signal, supported by The Heritage Foundation, published a video with a reference made by a pediatrician that didn’t support LGBTQ+ indoctrination. Dr. Michelle Cretella’s commentary included this comparison: “If you want to cut off a leg or an arm, you’re mentally ill, but if you want to cut off healthy breasts or a penis, you’re transgender.” YouTube pulled this video. Ironically, the volume of transgender content is so large on YouTube that a study was conducted and published in 2017 supporting the application as an educational tool: “YouTube as Educator: A Content Analysis of Issues, Themes, and the Educational Value of Transgender-Created Online Videos.”

It’s not just “gender fluidity” that’s embraced by YouTube. Last year, Newsweek featured Marc Schulman’s account as a writer who’s worked with Apple, Facebook, and Amazon on content. He recalled having his eight-minute video, entitled “The Holocaust — A Short History,” similarly labeled and restricted by YouTube. Schulman’s own HistoryCentral.com is a website devoted to the education of middle- and high-school students. Yet his educational video about the horrors of the Holocaust (already published elsewhere) was deemed inappropriate and restricted.

Certainly, YouTube is a private entity. But its own screening, labeling, restricting, and blocking of content disproportionately limits the ideological and religious Right. That exposes an unfortunate reality: These private entities are so large and monopolistic in their control over certain avenues of communication that the end result is partisan censorship.

The obvious bias of the content of these social-media platforms reflects the ideology of their owners and many employees. It’s quite interesting that the courts permit privately owned but essentially monopolistic entities like Google and Facebook to limit access to their services but it took the Supreme Court stepping in to permit a small bakery owned by Christians to make the same determinations about a wedding cake based on the First Amendment’s exercise of religion.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68929?mailing_id=4898&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4898&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

“He is a faker. He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego. … How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that.” —Ginsburg again, July 11, 2016

“Claiming one emergency after another, the Government has recently sought stays in an unprecedented number of cases. It is hard to say what is more troubling, that the Government would seek this extraordinary relief seemingly as a matter of course, or that the Court would grant it.” —Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, criticizing the Court’s 5-4 majority for upholding the “public charge” rule in Wolf v. Cook County

“We do not have scumbag/liar-nObama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or scumbag/liar-Clinton judges.” —Chief Justice John Roberts, Nov. 21, 2018, rebutting the president’s assertion that a lower-court ruling against administration immigration policy was made by an “scumbag/liar-nObama judge”

Of the many things Americans are constitutionally entitled to regarding the administration of justice, judicial impartiality goes to the top of the list. And while Ginsburg  subsequently expressed “regret” for her “ill-advised comments,” it remains impossible to believe that her well-publicized animus — animus for which even The New York Times and The Washington Post took her to task — has not influenced her decision-making with regard to the Trump administration’s agenda.

As for Sotomayor? Her criticism of SCOTUS’s conservative wing reeks of hypocrisy. Let’s begin with  why the Trump administration has sought stays in an “unprecedented number of cases.” No one explained that better than U.S. Attorney General William Barr. “Since President Trump took office, federal district courts have issued 37 nationwide injunctions against the executive branch,” he stated in a speech at the American Law Institute on May 21, 2019. “That’s more than one a month. By comparison, during President [Barack] scumbag/liar-nObama’s first two years, district courts issued two nationwide injunctions against the executive branch, both of which were vacated by the Ninth Circuit. And according to the [Justice] Department’s best estimates, courts issued only 27 nationwide injunctions­ in all of the 20th century.”

Thus, activist judges in local jurisdictions have taken it upon themselves to thwart the president’s agenda nationwide, with rulings against an asylum ban, the public charge rule, giving states and counties the option to accept or refuse refugees, building a wall on our southern border, defunding sanctuary cities, or implementing a travel ban against countries with high rates of terrorism.

This activism is purposeful, and a column by the Senate Republican Policy Committee explains how: “A nationwide injunction issued by a district court can be appealed to a circuit court and then the Supreme Court, but while it goes through the process it can interrupt or even dictate federal policy for months or years.”

Thwarting Trump administration policy for months or years is a transparent effort to negate the 2016 election — the one Trump won, largely by promising to implement the very same policies nationwide injunctions are seeking to negate.

Columnist Daniel Horowitz illuminates the consequences. “If we are going to agree as a society that the judiciary now controls every political issue,” he writes, “including issues fundamental to our sovereignty, foreign policy, and national security, that essentially means that foreign invaders and smugglers and cartels control our destiny, regardless of who we elect as president or to Congress. Why? Because of California judges.”

For millions of Americans, the continual usurpation of the legislative and executive branches of the federal government by the judicial branch certainly sounds like “one emergency after another.” Thus the idea that a Supreme Court justice would infer that affirming the president’s constitutional powers — in a timely manner, no less — evinces judicial prejudice by her colleagues is absurd.

Moreover, genuine prejudice was demonstrated by Sotomayor herself in a speech given at the University of California School of Law at Berkeley in 2001. “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” she asserted.

Not quite. One would hope all judges sitting on the highest court in the nation would reach conclusions based solely on the Constitution, irrespective of their sex, ethnic makeup, or irrelevant life experiences.

Regardless, one thing is certain: Roberts’s assertion there are no ideologically influenced justices is absurd. Moreover, Roberts himself made one of the more political decisions of modern times when he ultimately changed his mind and decided scumbag/liar-nObamaCare’s individual mandate constituted a tax rather than an unconstitutional effort forcing people to buy a product.

Roberts’s flip-flop was hailed by leftists, but the irony revealed by columnist Ari Melber regarding why is impossible to ignore. He writes, “Justice Roberts has twice led a coalition to reject conservatives’ attempts to achieve at the court what they failed to do at the ballot box.”

In 2016, conservatives not only prevailed at the ballot box, they elected a president who changed the ideological makeup of SCOTUS to the point where Democrat presidential candidates have promised to pack the court with additional justices if they prevail in 2020. Justices who view the Constitution as a “living” document subject to judicial capriciousness, aimed at validating an agenda Democrats have failed to win at the ballot box.

“Justice Sotomayor is complaining that the Supreme Court has now enjoined multiple left-wing judges at the trial court level for blocking the president’s entire regulatory reform agenda,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) states. “What’s unprecedented is not what the Supreme Court is doing, it’s what all of these resistance judges are doing around the country when the president is passing regulations and they are trying to stop them nationwide from going into effect. That’s a practice that has to stop. I’m glad the Supreme Court has been stopping it on an ad hoc basis. They need to stop it permanently.”

Indeed. Moreover, as Trump has rightly suggested, both Ginsburg and Sotomayor should recuse themselves from cases involving his administration.

Why? Is there the slightest doubt Democrats and their media allies would have demanded exactly that if any justice publicly criticized Barack scumbag/liar-nObama or the ideology of his Court picks? The same scumbag/liar-nObama who also criticized SCOTUS during his 2010 State of the Union speech, insisting they reached the “wrong decision” in Citizens United v. FEC — and inaccurately stated that it allowed foreign corporations to make massive political contributions?

Where was Sotomayor then?

Last Friday, a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the Trump administration’s capacity to keep asylum seekers in Mexico while their claims are being processed. The same panel also ruled Border Patrol agents must process claims for those who snuck into America illegally.

In short, these judges reopened the border during a reportedly serious viral outbreak, while their leftist allies hammer the Trump administration for its unpreparedness regarding that same outbreak.

Does it get more activist — or absurd — than that?   

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68930?mailing_id=4898&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4898&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

In a move that may help to further boost loose lips liar-Biden’s comeback effort, socialist-Pete Buttigieg surprisingly ended his campaign Sunday afternoon, citing the need for Democrats to quickly coalesce behind one candidate if they hope to defeat President Donald Trump. “The truth is the path has narrowed to a close for our candidacy if not for our cause,” socialist-Buttigieg stated in his announcement. “We must recognize that at this point in the race, the best way to keep faith with those goals and ideals is to step aside and help bring our party and country together.”

Recall that socialist-Buttigieg had effectively attacked both commie-Sanders and Michael Bloomberg as “the two most polarizing figures” in the Democrat primary. He declared that the choice between them was “one candidate who wants to burn this party down and another candidate who wants to buy this party out.” Clearly, socialist-Buttigieg saw no realistic path for him to emerge as the party’s nominee even as he sits with the third-most delegates headed into Super Tuesday. Therefore, he may have been open to working a deal with loose lips liar-Biden. socialist-Buttigieg may also have his sights set on the Democratic National Committee chair, a position he ran for unsuccessfully three years ago. With his success in winning Iowa and a strong second-place finish in New Hampshire, he now has the national name recognition and credibility he lacked three years ago.

Amy Klobuchar likewise dropped out Monday. Her much-hyped momentum after New Hampshire sure didn’t last long. But she and socialist-Buttigieg will both endorse loose lips liar-Biden.

In the race between billionaires, far-leftist Tom Steyer is the first out, as he ended his expensive campaign on Saturday with no delegates to show for the millions he spent. Still, he pledged to continue to use his fortune to defeat Trump. “I of course will be supporting” other candidates, he said. “I’ve said from the beginning, every Democrat is a million times better than Trump.”

Looking ahead, while loose lips liar-Biden is clearly off the schneid, it all may be for naught if he doesn’t pull out some big wins on Tuesday. Since 1988, the winner of Super Tuesday has gone on to secure their party’s nomination, and with commie-Sanders leading in the polls in California and Texas it will be an uphill battle for loose lips liar-Biden to win the day. loose lips liar-Biden will need a strong showing to keep pace or commie-Sanders will run away with the nomination.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68946?mailing_id=4898&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4898&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

President Trump’s White House press conference Wednesday was a striking contrast to the left’s carping and its attempts to politicize the coronavirus. The left politicizes everything — tornadoes, hurricanes, forest fires — so it’s no surprise that it is trying to score cheap political points with a virus.

For example, one reporter pressed the president to justify his appointment of Vice President Mike Pence to direct the government’s coronavirus response when he had previously suggested that a “virus czar” wasn’t necessary. 

Really? That’s the most pressing question on her mind? She was more interested in trapping the president with a “gotcha” question than reporting news. 

Suffice it to say that the president was there with top experts doing their best to protect the country, while there were plenty of reporters doing their best to divide the country.

Trump Takes Charge

At Wednesday’s press conference, President Trump and top officials from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control reassured the American people that we are prepared and taking all necessary actions. As I just noted, Trump also announced that Vice President Mike Pence would coordinate the government’s response efforts. (See next item.)

The American people should be reassured by this move. The vice president is a workhorse who knows how to inspire people. As governor of Indiana, Pence dealt with the first case of MERS in the United States, another form of coronavirus that originated in the Middle East. 

Pence also has a strong relationship with HHS Secretary Alex Azar, a former top executive at Eli Lilly, a major U.S. pharmaceutical company headquartered in Indianapolis. 

Yesterday, Pence announced that he will be assisted by Ambassador Debbie Birx, an expert in immunology who has led America’s global effort to combat the AIDS epidemic.

During his remarks, Trump repeatedly stressed that not one person in the United States has died from the coronavirus. In contrast, the flu kills anywhere from  25,000 to 70,000 Americans every year. 

So far this year, at least 10,000 Americans have died from the flu. Tragically, many more children in America  (105) have died from the flu this year than there are known coronavirus infections. 

But our hysterical media and the political left are accusing the president of moving too slowly. It is absolutely astonishing that this has become such an absurd controversy. 

Speaking of absurd, Sen. Elizabeth dinky/liar-Warren is demanding that funding for the border wall be diverted to efforts to fight the coronavirus. What dinky/liar-Warren doesn’t understand is that the border wall is protecting us from the coronavirus. 

As we have told you, there was a surge of Chinese nationals coming across the southern border just a few months ago. The last thing you want to do is slow down efforts to secure the southern border. 

Coronavirus is now in Brazil. If there is a major outbreak in Central America, there will be caravans of “medical refugees” headed north, especially with progressives like dinky/liar-Warren and commie-Bernie Sanders promising free healthcare for illegal aliens. 

Pence at CPAC

Vice President Pence addressed the annual Conservative Political Action Conference yesterday. He began his remarks by expressing the administration’s commitment to combatting the coronavirus. Here are some excerpts of his remarks:

President Donald Trump has no higher priority than the health, safety and well-being of the American people. Last month, following word of the outbreak of the coronavirus in China, President Trump took unprecedented action to protect the health of Americans. 

He declared a public health emergency. He suspended travel to the United States from China. He initiated quarantine efforts for American citizens returning, and he established the White House Coronavirus Task Force, which has literally met every single day… 

Yesterday, President Trump directed me to lead a whole of government approach to address the coronavirus in this country. And I promise you: We will continue to bring the full resources of the federal government to bear to protect the American people… 

We’re all in this together. This is not the time for partisanship… This president will always put the health and safety of America first.

More Winning

As you know, the Trump administration is working hard to fight the left’s radical open-borders agenda. A key part of that agenda is the insane “sanctuary” movement where left-wing jurisdictions shield criminal illegal aliens from federal law-enforcement officials. 

The Trump administration moved aggressively in its first days in office to confront this radical policy by cutting off federal grants to cities and states that refuse to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Predictably, Obama-appointed judges issued injunctions blocking the Department of Justice from punishing sanctuary cities.

Wednesday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed the administration’s authority to suspend federal dollars to sanctuary cities. 

This is a huge victory for President Trump, American taxpayers, and common sense. If progressive cities refuse to cooperate with federal law-enforcement officers, they should not get federal law-enforcement dollars!

Religious Broadcasters Honor Israel

I was honored to address a breakfast Wednesday at the National Religious Broadcasters annual convention. The breakfast, dedicated to honoring Israel, was sponsored by the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, Combat Anti-Semitism, and NRBTV. The audience was comprised of hundreds of Christians and Jews, Americans and Israelis. 

My remarks were interrupted several times by applause from the enthusiastic audience. While gratified by the reaction, I was particularly encouraged by the number of radio-station managers and owners who told me how popular my daily radio commentary is in their communities. 

The commentaries air Monday through Saturday on the Bott Radio Network. Click here to find station listings or to listen live online.

A Ray of Hope?

The latest poll from the Sunshine State offers a ray of hope for loose lips liar-Joe Biden. 

Previous polls showed Mike Bloomberg leading in Florida after a $50 million ad blitz. But now loose lips liar-Biden is once again in the lead with 34% to Bloomberg’s 25%. commie-Bernie Sanders is a distant third with just 10%. No other candidate received double-digit support. 

The poll is likely evidence of commie-Bernie’s self-inflicted wound in a state where many people have escaped the evils of communism, and it seems to be evidence that loose lips liar-Biden is getting a second look from many voters after Bloomberg’s disastrous debate performances. 

But this presents a potential nightmare for Democrats. 

Billionaire Bloomberg won’t go away. He’s now run more ads than scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton ran during the entire 2016 campaign! Meanwhile, on America’s Left Coast, commie-Sanders appears to be consolidating his hold on California. Sadly, commie-Sanders’s defense of Cuba’s communist regime, while a burden in Florida, apparently isn’t a big deal to many Democrats elsewhere in the country.

If Bloomberg and loose lips liar-Biden keep battling it out, the anti-commie-Sanders vote will be split, allowing commie-Bernie to continue coming out on top, increasing the chances of a contested convention. 

By the way, the Trump campaign is making an unprecedented bid to attract black voters. It’s opening up 15 Black Voices for Trump Community Centers in key battleground states, including five in Florida alone.   

 ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/68899?mailing_id=4894&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4894&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body 

According to Epstein, “Americans have done so much screaming at each other to avoid panic over the novel coronavirus that they’ve arguably grown complacent.” (Tell that to the equities markets.) He then goes on to affirm the actions being taken in other countries: “China … has locked down tens of millions of people and virtually shut down its economy, the world’s second-largest. Japan has closed schools for a month. In France … the Louvre was closed. Switzerland … won’t allow gatherings that draw more than 1,000 people. … Two decades after 9/11, many Americans once again seem to think ‘it can’t happen here.’ But as we’ve learned more than once, it can.”

So, let’s shut the country down?

Will COVID-19 be the next catastrophic attack on America — “The BIG One”? As I have noted previously, it might be another bad year for U.S. influenza deaths, but nobody can actually project that right now. What is certain, however, is that the “pandemic fear and panic” are great political fodder for Democrats hoping to crash the U.S. economy … and thus President Donald Trump’s reelection.

As House Speaker liar-Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Minority Leader Chuck scumbag-Schumer (D-NY), and their Leftmedia publicists continue to foment fear, it is having the desired dire consequences for the economy. By undermining consumer and business confidence, and thus the equities markets, Democrats are playing fast and loose with the job stability of all working Americans and their families. liar-Pelosi said, “The market drop is disturbing,” but I can assure you that she and her Democrat ilk are high-fiving each other in private, knowing that what is bad for American workers is bad for Trump’s reelection prospects.

The immediate effect of the disgraceful liar-Pelosi/ scumbag-Schumer fear and panic tag team is that the net worth and retirement plans of all middle-income families is taking a big hit, and so is breadwinner job stability.

To put the current viral flu threat into perspective, according to the latest 2020 CDC influenza report, in the U.S. the flu season we are now in has already resulted in 29 MILLION diagnosed cases, 280 THOUSAND hospitalizations, and more than 16 THOUSAND deaths. And this is a good year — in one year this past decade there were 63 THOUSAND flu deaths in the U.S.

So, why haven’t liar-Pelosi, scumbag-Schumer, and Democrats across the country called press conferences to draw attention to each of the other 29 million cases and 16 thousand deaths — and the MSM dutifully reported each one? Because those deaths have no value as 2020 political fodder.

Democrats are proficient at never letting “a good crisis … go to waste,” as they demonstrated back in 2014 with the Ebola pandemic threat. At that time I wrote, “Democrats thrive on manufactured crises, and the current endless loop of hyperbolic rhetoric about the ‘Ebola pandemic’ from all corners of the 24-hour news recyclers” was a good example. Of course, Barack scumbag/liar-nObama was president then, so blaming him was not part of their politicization of the epidemic.

But that was then. It’s a presidential election year and with nothing else to defeat Donald Trump, betting on a flu pandemic and blaming Trump for it seems like an easy sell.

Over the weekend, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney suggested that the best thing Americans can do to avoid the panic is turn off their televisions and tune out the Democrat and Leftmedia fearmongering. But that would undermine the Demo strategy. Thus Schumer declared, “For Mulvaney to suggest that Americans turn off their TVs and bury their heads in the sand when they’re worried about a global health pandemic is Orwellian, counterproductive, dangerous…”

And then there were the Demo campaign-trail claims that Trump had cut the pandemic budget. Mike Bloomberg claimed, “[Trump] has defunded Centers for Disease Control.” loose lips liar-Biden claimed, “[Trump] has cut the funding for the entire effort.”

Those claims are patently false. According to an  Associated Press fact check, Congress has actually increased funding: “The National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aren’t suffering from budget cuts that never took effect.” Regarding scumbag-Schumer’s claim that Trump has no plan, the AP notes, “The public health system has a playbook to follow for pandemic preparation — regardless of who’s president… Those plans were put into place in anticipation of another flu pandemic, and are designed to work for any respiratory-borne disease.”

Adding to that nonsense was the erroneous claim that Trump had written off the coronavirus flu threat as a “hoax.” According to NBC: “Trump calls Coronavirus Democrats’ ‘new hoax.’” Politico repeated that lie: “Trump rallies his base to treat Coronavirus as a ‘hoax.’” In fact, what Trump called a “hoax” is that the Democrats have shamefully and grossly politicized the threat.

And predictably, the most ardent of the Democrats’ Leftmedia propagandists are the talkingheads at CNN.

Fox Business Network host Trish Regan called that what it is: “Diagnosis: Positive. CNN is infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome. I’m calling out CNN for irresponsibly politicizing something that should be a unifying battle against a virus that doesn’t choose sides. Anti-Trump network CNN doing whatever it can to stoke a national coronavirus panic.”

Of course, panic also keeps people tuned in — which is to say, it sells advertising!

As I have previously noted, to be adequately informed and prepared for what may be a bad flu year, the most current information is on the CDC’s page, “What You Should Know,” which provides updates, preventive measures, travel advice, etc. You can review the CDC’s national pandemic-response plan and basic citizen flu-prevention measures. And if you are interested in country-by-country data on the COVID-19 flu virus, that is being tracked at the Johns Hopkins coronavirus interface. For personal and community preparedness, visit our preparation and response resource page.   

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/alexander/68947?mailing_id=4898&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4898&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

The American Petroleum Institute (API) released a study on the consequences of the Democrats’ desired policy. The API summarizes that a fracking ban “would cost up to 7.5 million American jobs in 2022 alone, lead to a cumulative GDP loss of $7.1 trillion by 2030, slash household incomes by $5,400 annually, increase household energy costs by more than $600 per year and reduce farm incomes by 43 percent due to higher energy costs.”

Why the stunning impact? API notes, “More than 95% of U.S. natural gas and oil wells today are developed using hydraulic fracturing. Technologically, fracking is the chief reason the U.S. is the world’s leading natural gas and oil producer.” Cut off the tap, and everyone suffers.

And yet we have commie-Bernie Sanders and commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sponsoring the Fracking Ban Act. “Fracking is a danger to our water supply. It’s a danger to the air we breathe, it has resulted in more earthquakes, and it’s highly explosive. To top it all off, it’s contributing to climate change,” commie-Sanders insists. “If we are serious about clean air and drinking water, if we are serious about combating climate change, the only safe and sane way to move forward is to ban fracking nationwide.”

Elizabeth dinky/liar-Warren wouldn’t bother with legislation, declaring she would “ban fracking everywhere” on Day One in the White House.

But their claims are false. The U.S. leads the world in decreasing emissions precisely because of fracking. And there is plenty of evidence that fracking does not cause the harm commie-Sanders and his cadre of ecofascists claim.

By the way, we rebuked Barack scumbag/liar-nObama last week for falsely claiming credit for economic growth. What did cause that growth? Energy production through fracking.

Democrats are desperate for recession, however, so their efforts to stoke one through impeachment, coronavirus panic, and various taxes and regulations are not surprising.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68910?mailing_id=4894&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4894&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

These battles include periodic reauthorizations of government programs, one of which is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, better known as FISA. Several provisions of FISA and its younger brethren, the PATRIOT Act, will expire on March 15 unless Congress acts to reauthorize them or grant a second extension. These portions of FISA and the PATRIOT Act were originally slated to expire last December 15, but Congress opted to extend the deadline pending the report of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz regarding the scumbag/liar-nObama administration’s abuse of the FISA process to spy on the Trump campaign, ostensibly for collusion with Russia.

With that voluminous report on the Carter Page saga and the FBI’s 17 instances of abuse now part of the public record, the reauthorization of FISA has set off intra-party bickering on both sides of the aisle.

Democrats in the House reportedly had a carefully crafted compromise, the USA FREEDOM Reauthorization Act of 2020, teed up and ready to go; however, a committee meeting necessary for its passage was scrubbed when Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, a longtime critic of the FISA law, announced she would propose her own amendments to what she termed a “puny reform.” (One key aspect of the proposed bill, however, was the elimination of the call-records data program used to snoop out cellphone data.)

The break on the Republican side, however, is more complex. On one side are civil-libertarian reformers such as Sens. Rand Paul and Mike Lee, and Reps. Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, who have expressed their desire for reform. “scumbag-Comey’s FBI misled the FISA Court 17 times,” Jordan tweeted. “We can’t simply reauthorize the system that allowed those lies and omissions to happen.” Most Republicans, though, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, are open to a “clean” reauthorization, having heard assurances from Attorney General William Barr that he could make the necessary changes internally. Skeptics of that deal argue that Barr “can’t be trusted” and that it would further remove Congress from needed oversight of the executive branch.

In this case, it appears the head of the executive branch is siding with the reformers, in part because he was perfectly willing at one time to eliminate the FISA apparatus entirely. In discussing the pending reauthorization of FISA with Barr last year, President Donald Trump reportedly said, “I trust you, Bill, but if it was up to me, we’d get rid of the whole thing.”

With so many options out there, the most likely outcome will be to kick the can down the road, perhaps eventually hammering out a “reform” too weak to satisfy those lawmakers interested in safeguarding civil liberties.

Absent significant and needed reforms, however, the potential for abuse of the FISA system will remain temptingly close at hand, and the people’s mistrust of their government will increase accordingly.   

 ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68908?mailing_id=4894&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4894&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body