The Front Page Cover
The Events of the Week -- Featuring:
Intellectual Honesty and Political Indifference
by Judge Andrew Napolitano
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The Great Regulatory Rollback of 2017
By Lewis Morris: Donald Trump ran for president on a promise to rein in government regulation, which under the liar-nObama administration grew to crippling proportions. There were 3,853 new rules added to the regulatory state in 2016 alone. Trump never said it would be easy.
The regulatory stranglehold that federal agencies have on businesses in this country has choked the nation's growth, leaving our nation in economic doldrums for close to a decade. The U.S. economy hasn't topped 3% annual growth since 2005, and the historic post-World War II average is 3.3%.
Since his inauguration, Trump has been ambitious in keeping his promise to roll back regulations. One action that demonstrated his intentions is a January 30 executive order requiring agencies to offset the cost of significant new regulations by eliminating existing regulations or reducing their impact.
The House of Representatives is invigorated by the drive to shrink government reach. They have dusted off the Congressional Review Act, a 1996 law that allows lawmakers to nullify regulations within 60 days of enactment. The House has nullified eight new federal rules and has its eyes on dozens more, many that were snuck in during the final days of liar-nObama's presidency.
The automotive sector is looking to be freed of some of its regulatory bonds, chiefly fuel efficiency standards that are threatening thousands of jobs. The heads of 18 automakers asked Trump in a letter late last week to review fuel efficiency standards that were locked in by the liar-nObama administration through 2025.
Tighter fuel regulations handed down by the EPA in 2012 called for a midterm review in April 2018. In November, after liar-Hillary Clinton lost the election, the EPA decided to move up the midterm review, requiring the American automotive fleet to reach 50 miles per gallon by 2025.
The EPA claims that the rule will save $1.7 trillion in fuel costs over the life of the current automotive fleet. However, with gas close to $2 a gallon instead $4, fuel mileage is a reduced concern for most Americans. And automakers are concerned that the rule will cause great harm to the industry during that term, threatening production and jobs.
If the EPA's so concerned about fuel mileage, how about getting rid of the ethanol boondoggle.
Trump aims to upset the hold that federal agencies have had on business, and his regulatory rollback is being compared to the one that took place during Ronald Reagan's administration. The Left has long used the federal bureaucracy to push its statist agenda onto the American public, making an end run around Congress by using agencies to tap into business directly for their tribute. Now with a business-minded Republican in the White House, that method of meddling with the American economy is not quite as in vogue. ~The Patriot Post
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U.S. Ill Prepared for Convicted Jihadis
Ending Their Prison Sentences
by PATRICK DUNLEAVY
by PATRICK DUNLEAVY
{familysecuritymatters.org} ~ The old adage, "Out of sight, out of mind" does not apply to dealing effectively with the threat of Islamism especially in the case of terrorists who have been captured or incarcerated... Radical Islamic organizations such as al-Qaida and ISIS never forget their members. To them, going to prison is part of the pathway to paradise. Both groups' leaders, Ayman al-Zawahri and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, spent considerable periods of time locked up. It did nothing to diminish their zeal, but rather, fueled their fervor. Often, as in their cases, what comes out of prison is worse than what went in. This is further illustrated by the increased number of terrorists released from Guantanamo who rejoin the fight against U.S. military personnel. Almost one in three released prisoners return to the jihadists' fold. This recidivism can be attributed in part to the admonitions terrorists receive to assist those who are captured or imprisoned. That support may include financial help for their families and for legal fees...When the war is over then release them.
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Iran Warns Trump Against Disclosing
Secret Iran Deal Documents
by Adam Kredo
{freebeacon.com} ~ Senior Iranian officials are warning the Trump administration about disclosing secret deals related to the nuclear deal that have long been hidden from the public by the liar-nObama administration... according to recent comments that prompted pushback from senior sources on Capitol Hill. Iran's warning comes on the heels of a Washington Free Beacon report disclosing that former national security adviser Michael Flynn had been pushed out of office partly due to his intention to release these sensitive documents to the American public. Leading lawmakers in Congress launched multiple investigations last year into the liar-nObama administration's efforts to keep these documents secret and out of public view. Sources who spoke to the Free Beacon about the matter said that the Trump White House is working on ways to publicize this information despite warnings from Iran...Let Americans know President Trump.
.Trump Nails Hypocrite Propagandist Who
Never Mentioned liar-Clinton’s Russian Uranium
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ President Trump may have been hoping for a question like this as he certainly made the most of it. It’s a point that should have been made during the debates with liar-Hillary Clinton that wasn’t... It’s okay, he won anyway, and it was quite effective at this point in time, when he was once again falsely characterized by the liar-Clinton Democrat media as being close to Russia. President Trump responded, “But I’ll tell you one thing, she liar-Clinton tried to make a deal. She had the reset. She gave all of that valuable uranium away. She did other things. You know they say I’m close to Russia, liar-Hillary Clinton gave away twenty percent of the uranium in the United States, she’s close to Russia. You know what I gave to Russia? Nothing.” Major Garrett, who is now firmly entrenched in the dark side at CBS, attempts to cut President Trump off with a follow up as he’s getting into topics which make his queen, liar-Hillary Clinton, look bad. Headquarters doesn’t allow that sort of thing. He says, “Can we conclude there’ll be no response to these particular provocations?... http://rickwells.us/trump-nails-hypocrite-propagandist-never-mentioned-clintons-russian-uranium/
.Tillerson Meets With Russian Counterpart
as Mattis Says No to Russia
by Mary Chastain
{legalinsurrection.com} ~ Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during a trip to Germany. Tillerson said the U.S. will only “work with Russia when mutual cooperation is beneficial.”... He promised to put American interests first, though, if the two countries “do not see eye to eye.” At the same time, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis soundly “rejected any kind of military collaboration with Russia.” Russian President Vladimir Putin asked for more cooperation between the U.S. and NATO...
.Pulosi Creates Non-Existent Russia Documents...
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ How absolutely absurd is it for Nancy Pulosi, who defended and supported the criminal liar-Hillary Clinton at every turn, including her run for president, who set up a secret server in her house and then put our secrets on it... who admitted to destroying 33,000 mails and then more that later surfaced to say what she’s saying. It’s the same Nancy Pulosi who, along with Elijah Cummings, defended the destruction of records by the IRS pertaining to Lois Lerner’s criminal activities, just as a few examples. How off the charts can the San Francisco native’s testosterone levels be to allow her to come out and speak to their staff of mainstream media propagandists in such a manner? Pulosi and company, representing the criminal, anti-American cabal disguised as a political party, the Democrats, is attacking the credibility of the innocent Trump White House, projecting, as Democrats frequently do, her own transgressions upon her political opponents. In a mainstream propagandists briefing, Pulosi said, “Secrecy is a tool of an autheratorian government. She clearly meant authoritarian but why should we fix her mistakes and help her hide her mental issues? That’s how she said it, that’s how it should be written... http://rickwells.us/pelosi-creates-non-existent-russia-documents-fear-monger-destruction/
That's exactly what liar-Hillary and liar-nObama did.
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Intellectual Honesty and Political Indifference
by Judge Andrew Napolitano
{townhall.com} ~ Over the past weekend, Trump administration officials offered harsh criticisms of the judicial interference with the enforcement of the president's immigration order. The Jan. 27 order suspended the immigration privileges of all refugees from Syria indefinitely and all immigrants from seven designated countries for 90 days.
After a federal district judge in Seattle enjoined the federal government from enforcing the executive order and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that injunction, President Donald Trump's folks pounced.
They argued that we have an imperial judiciary that thinks it has the final say on public policy -- one that will freely second-guess the president in areas that are exclusively his under the Constitution.
Here is the back story.
The Constitution provides for essentially a shared responsibility in the creation of laws. Congress passes bills, and the president signs them into law. Sometimes bills become laws over the president's veto. Bills are often proposed by presidents and disposed of by Congress.
When challenges to the meaning or application of the laws are properly made, the judiciary decides what the laws mean and whether they are consistent with the Constitution. My point is that there are substantial roles for the legislative and executive branches in the process of lawmaking and that there is an exclusive role for the judiciary in interpreting the meaning of the law.
When it comes to articulating and carrying out the foreign policy of the nation, the president is superior to the other branches. Though the House of Representatives and the Senate appropriate money for foreign policy expenses and the Senate ratifies treaties and confirms ambassadors, the president alone determines who our friends and enemies are. Congress has given him many tools with which to make and carry out those determinations.
Among those tools is substantial discretion with respect to immigration. That discretion permits the president, on his own, to suspend the immigration privileges of any person or group he believes poses a danger to national security. Though the effect of his suspension may, from time to time, fall more heavily on one religious group, the purpose of that suspension may not be to target a religious group.
Can an immigrant who has been banned from entering the United States challenge the ban?
In a word, yes. Once an immigrant has arrived here, that person has due process rights, the right to know the law, to have a hearing before a fair and neutral authority and to appeal to a superior neutral and fair authority. This is so because the Constitution protects all persons.
The challenge to the president's exercise of his discretion cannot be based on a political disagreement with him or an objection to the inconveniences caused by the enforcement; it can only be based on an alleged constitutional violation. In the Seattle case, the states of Washington and Minnesota had sued the president and alleged that he had issued his Jan. 27 order to target Muslims, many of whom study or work at state universities.
Can the courts hear such a case?
In a word, yes; but they must do so with intellectual honesty and political indifference. The judiciary is an independent branch of the government, and it is coequal to the president and the Congress. It is answerable to its own sense of scrupulous intellectual honesty about the Constitution. It is not answerable to the people. Yet in return for the life tenure and unaccountability its members enjoy, we expect political indifference -- that judges' decisions shall not be made in order to produce their own politically desired outcomes.
It is the job of the judiciary to say what the Constitution means, say what the statutes mean and determine with finality whether a governmental actor used governmental power consistent with the Constitution and the statutes. When the courts do this with intellectual honesty and indifference to the political outcome, they are doing their job, and we should accept the outcome.
Must the president justify to the satisfaction of judges his exercise of discretion in suspending immigration privileges?
In a word, sometimes; he only needs to do so when a fundamental liberty, such as the free exercise of religion, is at stake -- and not when state universities might temporarily lose students or faculty or the enrichment that those from foreign lands often bring.
This can be a dangerous sea for judges to navigate because judicially compelling the president to justify his development of the nation's foreign policy might expose that development to unwanted eyes and ears who could cause the nation ill in perilous times.
Suppose intelligence officials told the president they believe that Islamic State-inspired lone wolves are about to enter the United States from three of the seven countries but some of them have multiple passports and may leave from one of the other four countries. That would clearly justify the president's executive order, but it would be foolhardy for him to explain in a court how he came to know that and detrimental to then have to await a court's approval while the evildoers arrive here.
In our democracy, the president and members of Congress make promises and then convince us that they have kept them so we will re-elect them. The whole purpose of an independent judiciary is to be anti-democratic -- to protect the life, liberty and property of all people from the unconstitutional behavior of the two political branches of the government. When the judiciary does this, it is not being imperial; it is doing what the Constitution requires. If this were not the case, then nothing would prevent the political branches from trampling the rights of an unpopular minority.
The late Justice Robert Jackson once famously quipped that the Supreme Court is infallible because it is final; it is not final because it is infallible. But that infallibility -- if you will -- must be tempered by fidelity to the rule of law, which demands the intellectual honesty and political indifference that the Constitution requires for the personal freedoms of all of us to survive.
After a federal district judge in Seattle enjoined the federal government from enforcing the executive order and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that injunction, President Donald Trump's folks pounced.
They argued that we have an imperial judiciary that thinks it has the final say on public policy -- one that will freely second-guess the president in areas that are exclusively his under the Constitution.
Here is the back story.
The Constitution provides for essentially a shared responsibility in the creation of laws. Congress passes bills, and the president signs them into law. Sometimes bills become laws over the president's veto. Bills are often proposed by presidents and disposed of by Congress.
When challenges to the meaning or application of the laws are properly made, the judiciary decides what the laws mean and whether they are consistent with the Constitution. My point is that there are substantial roles for the legislative and executive branches in the process of lawmaking and that there is an exclusive role for the judiciary in interpreting the meaning of the law.
When it comes to articulating and carrying out the foreign policy of the nation, the president is superior to the other branches. Though the House of Representatives and the Senate appropriate money for foreign policy expenses and the Senate ratifies treaties and confirms ambassadors, the president alone determines who our friends and enemies are. Congress has given him many tools with which to make and carry out those determinations.
Among those tools is substantial discretion with respect to immigration. That discretion permits the president, on his own, to suspend the immigration privileges of any person or group he believes poses a danger to national security. Though the effect of his suspension may, from time to time, fall more heavily on one religious group, the purpose of that suspension may not be to target a religious group.
Can an immigrant who has been banned from entering the United States challenge the ban?
In a word, yes. Once an immigrant has arrived here, that person has due process rights, the right to know the law, to have a hearing before a fair and neutral authority and to appeal to a superior neutral and fair authority. This is so because the Constitution protects all persons.
The challenge to the president's exercise of his discretion cannot be based on a political disagreement with him or an objection to the inconveniences caused by the enforcement; it can only be based on an alleged constitutional violation. In the Seattle case, the states of Washington and Minnesota had sued the president and alleged that he had issued his Jan. 27 order to target Muslims, many of whom study or work at state universities.
Can the courts hear such a case?
In a word, yes; but they must do so with intellectual honesty and political indifference. The judiciary is an independent branch of the government, and it is coequal to the president and the Congress. It is answerable to its own sense of scrupulous intellectual honesty about the Constitution. It is not answerable to the people. Yet in return for the life tenure and unaccountability its members enjoy, we expect political indifference -- that judges' decisions shall not be made in order to produce their own politically desired outcomes.
It is the job of the judiciary to say what the Constitution means, say what the statutes mean and determine with finality whether a governmental actor used governmental power consistent with the Constitution and the statutes. When the courts do this with intellectual honesty and indifference to the political outcome, they are doing their job, and we should accept the outcome.
Must the president justify to the satisfaction of judges his exercise of discretion in suspending immigration privileges?
In a word, sometimes; he only needs to do so when a fundamental liberty, such as the free exercise of religion, is at stake -- and not when state universities might temporarily lose students or faculty or the enrichment that those from foreign lands often bring.
This can be a dangerous sea for judges to navigate because judicially compelling the president to justify his development of the nation's foreign policy might expose that development to unwanted eyes and ears who could cause the nation ill in perilous times.
Suppose intelligence officials told the president they believe that Islamic State-inspired lone wolves are about to enter the United States from three of the seven countries but some of them have multiple passports and may leave from one of the other four countries. That would clearly justify the president's executive order, but it would be foolhardy for him to explain in a court how he came to know that and detrimental to then have to await a court's approval while the evildoers arrive here.
In our democracy, the president and members of Congress make promises and then convince us that they have kept them so we will re-elect them. The whole purpose of an independent judiciary is to be anti-democratic -- to protect the life, liberty and property of all people from the unconstitutional behavior of the two political branches of the government. When the judiciary does this, it is not being imperial; it is doing what the Constitution requires. If this were not the case, then nothing would prevent the political branches from trampling the rights of an unpopular minority.
The late Justice Robert Jackson once famously quipped that the Supreme Court is infallible because it is final; it is not final because it is infallible. But that infallibility -- if you will -- must be tempered by fidelity to the rule of law, which demands the intellectual honesty and political indifference that the Constitution requires for the personal freedoms of all of us to survive.
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