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For safety reasons, fire marshals control the number of people who can occupy a building at any one time. We’ve seen what happens when crowds get too large and a fire breaks out, causing panic and often death. So why not control the crowd illegally entering America?

We control water so that it won’t overflow a bathtub or sink, causing damage requiring expensive repairs, so why not shut off the flow of those illegally entering at the border?

Pick your own analogy, but the U.S. immigration system is worse than broken. It can be fixed, but politicians from both parties refuse to do it. The immediate and long-term damage inflicted on our country as a result of this neglect will be severe.

President Trump has the power to shut off the flow of immigration until those who have entered the country illegally can be accounted for, those without proper documentation can be deported and the ones here legally become U.S. citizens.

The president has the authority under 8 USC1182. The law includes categories of persons “ineligible” to enter the United States. A key section relates to those entering the country illegally whose only motivation is to find a job and make money. The following is taken directly from the law:

“In general, any alien who seeks to enter the United States for the purpose of performing skilled or unskilled labor is inadmissible, unless the Secretary of Labor has determined and certified to the Secretary of State and the Attorney General that (1) there are not sufficient workers who are able, willing, qualified… (and) (2) the employment of such alien will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of workers in the United States similarly employed.”

During the administrations of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, immigration was reduced to a trickle. After leaving office, Coolidge wrote in a December 13, 1930 newspaper column that most immigrants had come to demonstrate loyalty to America, but they must come “slowly” and avoid “city colonies while spreading across the county.” He then explained why, which ought to resonate today: “We have certain standards of life that we believe are best for us. We do not ask other nations to discard theirs, but we do wish to preserve ours. … We reflect on no one in wanting immigrants who will be assimilated into our ways of thinking and living.”

When Coolidge was president, a 2 percent quota was established for immigrants entering the U.S. After July 1, 1927, the 2 percent rule was replaced with an overall annual cap of 150,000 immigrants. Quotas were set according to “national origins” as listed in the 1920 census. It wasn’t until the 1960s that the floodgates were opened and what some call an “invasion” began. It has only gotten worse as anyone with a TV set or who lives along the border can plainly see.

Yes, the quota system discriminated in favor of “preferred” nationalities. The website u-s-history.com confirms its intent: “The clear aim of this law was to restrict the entry of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, while welcoming relatively large numbers of newcomers from Britain, Ireland and Northern Europe.” Mexican laborers were also banned.

If Congress continues to fail in its responsibility to protect our borders — Republicans because they and their U.S. Chamber of Commerce supporters want cheap labor and Democrats because they see potential votes — then President Trump should follow the example of two of his predecessors and the law to shut off the human tidal wave until we can deal with those already here.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/64446?mailing_id=4436&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4436&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

One suggestion that has been floated is to lower the minimum enlistment age from 17 to 16. Proponents note that over a dozen other countries, including the United Kingdom, have already adopted such a practice. The reason for lowering the recruitment age by one year has everything to do with eligibility. As Shane McCarthy, chief marketing officer of Sandboxx, explains, “According to the Department of Justice, there are twice as many arrests of 18 to 20-year-olds as there are arrests of 15 to 17-year-olds.”

However, the idea has drawn a fair share of criticism. Peter Warren Singer, a fellow at the Washington think tank New America, suggests that the idea reveals a “misunderstanding [of] the different brain chemistry of youths and their ability to make informed judgement.” Others point out that there has been little research as to the overall impact of recruiting 16-year-olds into military service.

Rebecca Burgess, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, argues that the U.S. military will need to adapt its recruitment marketing to better compete in a changing market place, “something the military doesn’t do very well.” She adds, “It tells the story of itself that’s very traditional: ‘We’re freedom fighters doing good throughout the world; be part of our team.’ And it expects people to kind of come to them.”

In the end this competition is a good thing, forcing innovation and rethinking, which in turn will produce a better product. The current strong economy provides the military a challenging opportunity for evaluating and innovating its recruiting practices.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/64443?mailing_id=4436&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4436&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Why did this happen? Well, Iran has a long track record of aggression and sponsoring terrorism going back to 1979. The country has repeatedly vowed to wipe Israel off the map. The regime’s Houthi stooges in Yemen fired missiles at a U.S. vessel multiple times. When President George W. Bush put Iran on the Axis of Evil, it was for that and a host of other reasons. This maritime hostage-taking escalation is just the latest on the list of reasons to kick this genocidal regime’s collective rear.

Well, that’s the readily apparent reason. However, if you want to get to the root cause, it comes down to the fact that evil, genocidal mullahs in Tehran thought they could get away with it. To see why, look at this graphic from the Twitter feed of NavyLookout. This represents the entirety of the Royal Navy’s force of major surface combatants: Six Daring-class guided-missile destroyers and 13 Type 23 guided-missile frigates. The Queen Elizabeth-class carriers are not even ready to deploy.

Loyal Patriot Post readers will note that we have discussed the Navy’s need for hulls in the water on  multiple occasions — not just in terms of the aircraft carriers but also the need for more submarines. Just take a look at that graphic about the Royal Navy again, and you will see why.

Of the six Daring-class destroyers, only two are actively deployed as of this month. Of the other four, two have been undergoing major refits (significant maintenance to address wear and tear), and two others are undergoing minor maintenance). One has deployed to the Persian Gulf on short notice, the other is preparing to operate in the Western Atlantic. In essence, to have one ship deployed, you really need three hulls to account for upgrades and maintenance.

Looking at the baker’s dozen of guided-missile frigates, the British are in the same sort of fix. Five of the ships are undergoing extensive modernization to receive a new surface-to-air missile (among other upgrades). One is inactive, waiting its turn. That leaves seven active frigates, with one deployed to the Persian Gulf, one making a hasty deployment there, one returning from an exercise in the Baltic, and four others in British waters.

This is exactly why the decline in the United States Navy’s ship totals has to be considered a huge problem in need of immediate addressing. The good news is that the Navy’s FFG(X) program offers one chance to do that. Buying the designs based on the Freedom and Independence classes of the littoral combat ship and the Coast Guard’s Bertholf-class national security cutter would help boost the totals. But the real benefit would also be to buy the version of Spain’s Alvaro de Bazan-class guided-missile frigate.

That ship, with many systems similar to those on the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, would be an excellent addition to the Navy’s fleet with a few minor tweaks. But the other real problem is that the Navy needed even more ships built earlier. The Zumwalt-class of destroyers was supposed to be 32 ships. We’re only getting three. It will be even worse as the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers keep aging and need replacement. There seems to be no movement forward there. And a large navy will be needed to help Japan protect the Marcus Island motherlode that could neutralize one of China’s economic weapons.

President Trump is buying time with his policies aimed at China and Russia. However, if the United States does not start building the necessary hulls in the water now, we’re squandering a strategic opportunity.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/64444?mailing_id=4436&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4436&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

President Donald Trump has won the second of three lawsuits alleging he violated the Constitution because foreigners and state officials patronize his businesses, such as the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the claim by Maryland and the District of Columbia that Trump was violating the Constitution’s domestic and foreign emoluments clauses.

The foreign emoluments clause reads:

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

The domestic emoluments clause reads:

The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.

In throwing out this latest suit, the 4th Circuit chastised the plaintiffs for wasting the court’s time with a plainly meritless case.

The court also scolded federal Judge Peter Messitte, a Clinton appointee, for not throwing out the case sooner and for refusing to let the president appeal his erroneous rulings.

Messitte’s faulty reasoning “blinks reality,” the court said, and his actions “amounted to a clear abuse of discretion.”

Messitte’s rulings were so erroneous that the 4th Circuit didn’t even wait for an appeal. It accepted the president’s request for writ of mandamus — a rarely granted procedural tool that allows early review of an otherwise nonappealable issue — to take the case away from Messitte, reverse his rulings, and force him to throw the case out for good, without the possibility of further appeal.

The lawsuit alleged that, because government employees and foreign officials pay for services they receive from Trump’s businesses, payment produces a constitutionally forbidden “present” to the president.

The court held that Maryland and the District’s interest in the case was “abstract” and “simply too attenuated” for the case to proceed.

Maryland and the District argued that they are harmed by the alleged constitutional violation because the Trump Hotel “competes” with conference centers and hotels they own. Which, of course, brings up a question not dealt with in the lawsuit: Why are Maryland and D.C. involved in the conference and hospitality industry to begin with and competing with private industry?

Their claims rested on the speculation (accepted at face value by Messitte) that government officials patronize the Trump Hotel because it distributes profits to the president and not for any other reason.

But there are, of course, two equally plausible competing speculations: that some government officials avoid the Trump Hotel because of its association with the president, and that some government officials stay at the Trump Hotel because it’s a nice place to stay.

Regardless, courts don’t decide cases based on speculations.

What’s more, Maryland and the District couldn’t explain how prohibiting the president from earning money from the hotel would stop government officials from going there. In other words, even if they had a viable legal claim, there is no possible remedy.

Assuming that foreign officials were trying to curry the president’s favor by staying at his hotel, the hotel is associated with him and would financially benefit his family even if it didn’t benefit him — and the emoluments clauses have no application to the family members of a federal official.

The 4th Circuit found this a fatal flaw in the plaintiffs’ argument and noted that the lawyer for Maryland and the District was “repeatedly unable to articulate the terms of the injunction” that was being sought to remedy the supposed violation of the Constitution.

As the court expostulated, “when plaintiffs before a court are unable to specify the relief they seek, one must wonder why they came to the court for relief in the first place.”

The only other interest that Maryland or the District had in the case was “a general interest in having the law followed.” And a plaintiff “raising only a generally available grievance about government” has no right to do so in court.

So ended the second of three emoluments clauses cases. The president won the first case in 2017 when a federal court in New York tossed out an almost identical lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal advocacy organization.

One emoluments case remains, this one before federal Judge Emmet Sullivan in the District of Columbia. In that case, Democratic members of Congress, including Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., personally sued the president for allegedly violating the foreign emoluments clause.

In an order reminiscent of Messitte’s “clearly erroneous” orders, Sullivan simply accepted the speculation — with no supporting evidence — that foreign officials are staying at the Trump Hotel only because it pays the president part of its profits.

Sullivan then went on to say that congressional Democrats have a personal interest in the case because — and now hang on, because this is wild ride — the president, by accepting the alleged foreign payments, has denied Congress, as an institution, the right to vote on these payments.

You might wonder how Sullivan made the logical leap from the Democrats’ personal interest to Congress’ institutional interest. Sullivan answers that question by calling that distinction “relevant … but not dispositive.”

That case is ongoing, and Sullivan is letting the congressional Democrats subpoena the president’s financial information. Additionally, Sullivan recently denied the president’s request to delay the case while he appeals.

Political fights belong in the political arena. As the 4th Circuit said here, the claims made by Maryland and the District were “so attenuated and abstract that the prosecution of this case readily provokes the question of whether this action against the President is an appropriate use of the courts.”

It isn’t. And in light of the 4th Circuit’s opinion, perhaps the president should seek another writ of mandamus in the D.C. Circuit to overrule what is clearly an erroneous decision by Sullivan.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/64410?mailing_id=4434&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4434&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Mueller had initially insisted he would not testify before Congress, but he eventually reached a deal to do so. He would have been better off not showing up today, because it’s been a slow-motion train wreck.

According to The Federalist’s Sean Davis, “I’m not sure anyone could have done more to discredit Mueller’s report and investigation than Mueller is doing right now. He can’t answer simple questions about his own investigation, fumbles answers about his own report, and seems utterly befuddled by what’s happening.” Specifically, Mueller said he wasn’t familiar with Fusion GPS or Glenn Simpson, its founder, despite Fusion being the firm that produced the phony Christopher Steele dossier — funded by scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton and the DNC — that got the whole collusion hoax off the ground. Mueller said in his opening statement that he would not discuss “the so-called ‘Steele dossier’” because it was “the subject of ongoing review” by the FBI and “it’s outside my purview,” but the appearance of being stumped by basic questions is nonetheless troubling.

Davis also observes, “Mueller just said his deputy, who was the personal attorney for the scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton aide who smashed her Blackberries, was in charge of ‘day-to-day oversight’ of Mueller’s investigation. What exactly was Mueller doing?” For two years and $35 million, we might add. Furthermore, the fact that scumbag/liar-Clinton’s people were the ones composing Mueller’s team exposed it from the beginning as a partisan witch hunt. That those hunters still found no witches is even more telling.

Fox News’s Brit Hume notes, “Mueller stumbles badly on whether ‘collusion’ is a synonym for ‘conspiracy’ in Russian election interference. He says no, only to have his report quoted back to him saying the words are synonymous. He then says he’ll go with what the report says.” Maybe Mueller should have reviewed his own report prior to coming to Capitol Hill.

Democrats, of course, moved the goal posts to “obstruction of justice” — as in alleging that Trump committed it against Mueller’s investigation. Mueller has always been as ambiguous as possible about this. His report specifically did not exonerate Trump, and today he said simply “Yes” when asked if the president could be charged with obstruction after leaving office.

But he also could not provide a single other instance in which the subject of an investigation had to prove his innocence. “Can you give me an example other than Donald Trump where the Justice Department determined that an investigated person was not exonerated because their innocence was not conclusively determined?” asked Rep. John Ratcliffe. “I cannot,” Mueller answered, “but this is a unique situation.” Ratcliffe fired back, “It doesn’t exist.” That’s because “the bedrock principle of our justice system is a presumption of innocence.”

Mueller still must testify before the House Intelligence Committee this afternoon, so stay tuned for more thrilling excitement from the never-ending story.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/64488?mailing_id=4438&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4438&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Negotiations are ongoing between Congress and the White House over a two-year spending deal, but reports indicate that in exchange for raising or suspending the debt limit, everyone will spend more money. Yes, you read that correctly.

To be fair, negotiators for President Donald Trump pushed for minor cuts, but even that was too austere for House Speaker liar-Nancy Pulosi. She rejected cuts of $150 billion over 10 years, during which time the federal government is on track to spend $57 trillion. As Reason’s Eric Boehm notes, “In the context of a $50,000 annual household budget, that’s like cutting about $150 per year — the cost of a single lunch each month. That’s hardly enough to get the federal government out from under $22 trillion in debt.”

Oh, and by the way, The Daily Signal notes the bill for that debt “currently averages $67,000 for every single American.”

On the downside, Trump has essentially yawned as the annual federal deficit once again approaches $1 trillion. He has given vague instructions to aids about looking for big cuts in his second term, but what are the chances of those cuts coming to pass?

Why is the debt problem so intractable? Essentially, there are two reasons. First, the debt apocalypse so many have warned of has yet to materialize. We’ve argued that it’s gradual and then sudden, but few people pay it much mind until they feel the consequences. It’s like the fable about the slow-boiling frog.

Second, corruption in the Swamp is rampant. Political favors and graft for constituents in 435 congressional districts and all 50 states mean that someone is very invested in each part of the federal budget — especially the lobbyists who make sure it stays there. Cuts are only acceptable for the other guy’s priorities, which means those cuts never actually happen. Follow the money.

The House adjourns for a six-week recess Friday, while the Senate hangs around for another week. In any case, as long as Washington politicians — the president included — view the debt ceiling as a bigger problem than the debt itself, the American fiscal train will continue barreling ahead at full steam until it can’t anymore.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/64434?mailing_id=4434&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4434&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

In response to the embarrassing news, commie-Sanders insisted over the weekend that his staffers would now be paid the promised $15 minimum wage, though this announcement came with a significant caveat: staffers’ hours would be cut to pay for it. As commie-Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir explained, “We look forward to continuing those discussions and obviously are disappointed that some individuals decided to damage the integrity of these efforts before they were concluded. As these discussions continue, we are limiting hours so no employee is receiving less than $15 for any hours worked.” Welcome to real-world economics. Yet Shakir and his boss threw those complaining staffers under the bus for the sin of naively believing that commie-Sanders  actually meant what he so loudly preaches.

commie-Sanders himself expressed anger at his complaining staffers, stating, “It does bother me that people are going outside the process and going to the media. That is really not acceptable. It is really not what labor negotiations are about, and it’s improper.” Spoken like any good socialist dictator, “Your time is my time.”

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) quipped, “So does this fall under the category of hypocrisy, irony, or poetic justice? All three? Can’t make this stuff up.”

The Blaze’s Aaron Colen noted the obvious economic problems associated with artificially raising the minimum wage, stating, “This situation is an instructive example of the downside of more than doubling the minimum wage. Companies don’t just suddenly get more money to pay employees. They have to make tough decisions; usually either cutting hours, or worse, cutting staff.”

What will the greater impact of this be upon the rest of the Democrat primary field? Clearly, Sanders would love to force the rest of his opponents into spending their campaign cash to match his expensive virtue signal. Nevertheless, we fully expect Democrats will continue to ignore the Congressional Budget Office’s recent reportwarning that a $15 minimum wage would cost at least 1.3 million jobs, while at the same time raising the cost of living for millions more. Socialism is only for the true believers.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/64435?mailing_id=4434&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4434&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

The Washington Examiner reports, “Border Patrol highway checkpoints in the southern New Mexico region that normally seize seven figures worth of drugs annually have not seized a dollar in nearly four months after being shuttered in late March, allowing drugs to flood into the country. Meantime, with the added supply, prices for illicit drugs are dropping precipitously.”

The Examiner further reports, “Officials have also noted upticks in methamphetamine and fentanyl seizures since March. [Otero County, New Mexico, Sheriff David] Black said the cost of a pound of meth has been slashed in half since then, from $4,700 when the checkpoints first closed to $2,500 by late June. The price dropped because the market is saturated.”

Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin explained, “With our checkpoints being closed down, there’s no secondary measure of defense, and [drug traffickers] got a green light to take drugs right into the heart of America.” Police officials noted that fewer seizures generally mean that more drugs are coming in. And the impact of increasing amounts of illicit drugs in the U.S. leads to increased rates of crime, drug addiction, and homelessness.

But hey, open borders — what could go wrong?  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/64371?mailing_id=4430&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4430&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

If you were shocked by the images of the Mexican flag flying over an Aurora, Colorado, immigration detention center this weekend, you’ll be appalled at an even more disgusting spectacle:

One of the top promoters of the so-called Lights for Liberty nationwide protests by Trump-hating, ICE-bashing radicals was a nonprofit religious organization known as the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. As a designated “host,” LIRS played a key role in publicizing, organizing and participating in demonstrations against President Donald Trump’s deportation enforcement actions targeting some 2,000 illegal immigrants and their families who have ignored removal orders or skipped out on court hearings.

Brazen hatred of cops, Border Patrol and ICE agents were on full display at the open borders protests fronted by LIRS and other left-wing groups, including Code Pink, CASA and CAIR. Marchers echoed the “Close the Concentration Camps” rhetoric of Congressional Brat Pack Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). They carried signs declaring “ICE=Gestapo” and “Free the People, Burn the Camps.” It’s not just idle rhetoric. Antifa thug Willem Van Spronsen, armed with a rifle and incendiary devices, attempted to set a Tacoma ICE facility on fire on Saturday before being shot dead. He has been hailed as a “hero” and a “martyr” by fellow “progressive” travelers, while sympathetic mainstream reporters and activists look the other way.

The president and CEO of LIRS, Krishanti Vignarajah, is a Sri Lankan refugee and former Michelle scumbag/liar-nObama policy director who led the Lights for Liberty event in Washington, D.C. She argues that Americans are obligated to open the floodgates at the southern border (since she turned out so great) and vehemently opposes what she calls “militant border enforcement.” To these border-sabotaging radicals, of course, any border enforcement is “militant.”

LIRS sounds like just the kind of extremist group you’d expect to be kept afloat by billionaire scumbag-George Soros’ big bucks. But hold on to your wallets and your American flags, folks: In 2016, LIRS relied on $64.7 million in government subsidies from taxpayers — that’s you and me — to fund a whopping 96.2% of its budget.

LIRS is one of nine agencies that receives tens of millions of dollars to resettle refugees from around the world. The organization brags that it is “a vital arm of the United States refugee admissions program” that has worked with the State Department to import “over 500,000 refugees” to our country. One of LIRS’ most famous clients? Somalian-born Minnesota Democratic Rep. worthless-Ilhan Omar, whose immigration, marriage and tax fraud problems I reported on in my column last month.

If only a fraction of LIRS clients share worthless-Omar’s contempt for our security and self-governance, you can see the trouble we’re in. And that’s just the caseload of one of the nine resettlement giants that together rake in an estimated $1 billion a year.

In addition, the Lutheran nonprofit is one of two specially designated groups (the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is the other) that is contracted by the government to provide social services and benefits (including “psycho-educational support” and “low-cost or pro bono immigration legal assistance”) to sponsor families hosting illegal immigrant children.

Disguised as compassion and Christian morality, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service’s activism is a profit-seeking machine — even as the agency has been plagued by allegations of mismanagement that prompted an external probe two years ago. Last week, the group unveiled yet another initiative: “United Sanctuaries of America.” You should know, especially if you are a citizen of faith who believes in the sovereignty of our country, that the following organizations are partnering with LIRS, possibly to erase our borders:

–New Sanctuary Coalition

–Hispanic Heritage Foundation

–League of United Latin American Citizens

–Washington Office on Latin America

–Mary’s Center and Hispanic Federation

–Gethsemane Lutheran Church

–Good Shepherd Lutheran

–Church of the Reformation

–Christ Lutheran

–Christ the Servant Lutheran

–Our Savior Lutheran

Bottom line: Open borders equals cash flow: more aliens, more grants, bigger paychecks.

Exit question: Will a single American elected official please stand up and challenge the continued public funding of this subversive religious racket bent on hoisting foreign flags and alien interests above our own?  

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/64318?mailing_id=4425&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4425&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body