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Even if you strongly oppose President Donald Trump and want to see him defeated in 2020 or impeached before then, you should hope his presidential campaign succeeds with its legal action against Omarosa Manigault Newman alleging she violated a nondisclosure agreement. And if she broke any laws, you should want her prosecuted.
               Manigault Newman — a fired presidential aide and earlier a member of the Trump campaign staff — has set a dangerous precedent by her secret recording of conversations with Trump and White House and campaign aides. The New York Times reported Thursday that Manigault Newman “is believed to have as many as 200” recordings of such conversations.
               If Manigault Newman suffers no penalty for making her secret recordings — and instead uses the recordings to boost sales of her virulently anti-Trump book “Unhinged,” as she is clearly doing now for maximum media exposure — future White House employees will be tempted to follow in her footsteps.
               While it is common for White House staffers to write books about the president they served after he has left office, it is far less common to see books coming out while a president is still serving. Whether the disclosures and allegations in “Unhinged” violate the nondisclosure agreement Manigault Newman signed while working on the Trump campaign is a matter still to be determined.
               And I know of no previous White House aides who secretly recorded conversations and then released them to the media. Further investigation is needed to determine if any of these recordings violated the law — and if they did, Manigault Newman deserves to be prosecuted.
               There’s no question that Manigault Newman’s disclosures will hinder the ability of the current president, future presidents, and their aides to candidly communicate.
               The issue at stake here is good governance — not politics. If liar-Hillary Clinton had been elected president in 2016 and her aide Huma Abedin secretly recorded conversations in the White House and released them, the action would be just as objectionable as what Manigault Newman did. However, you can bet that dummycrats-Democrats and the media would be far angrier at someone betraying a dummycrats-Democratic president.
               So far, Manigault Newman has released recordings of her conservations with Trump, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, presidential daughter-in-law Lara Trump, and staffers on the Trump campaign. Politico reports that “Manigault Newman has told friends and associates that she has tapes of private phone calls from first daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, according to two sources with whom she has discussed the recording.”
               Manigault Newman recorded Kelly in the White House Situation Room when he fired her. Located in the White House basement, the Situation Room is run by the National Security Council. It is equipped with a secure communications system and used primarily for managing domestic and foreign crises.
               Cellphones and other recording devices are not allowed in the Situation Room — a prohibition Manigault Newman ignored, by her own admission. Even if a staff member does not knowingly use a cellphone as a recording device, hostile forces can hack into the phone and turn on its microphone to transmit conversations that spies can record. This can pose a grave national security risk.
               Now that White House officials know they’ve been secretly recorded, they — and staffers for future presidents — know they can be taped again, and that could have a very harmful chilling effect on their internal discussions.
               Effective management of the White House — or any government office or business — requires frank discussions among all parties. Presidential advisers must feel free to share all information that can help a president assess the nature and severity of a problem, all possible options for dealing with it, and the political, social, and public relations ramifications of every possible action or nonaction.
               The president, in turn, must have confidence that these candid discussions will remain confidential. This is particularly true when it comes to national security and foreign policy threats, where leaks could endanger lives or severely damage our interests abroad.
               No president — dummycrats-Democrat or Republican — should have to worry about secret recordings being made inside the White House. How important is it to preserve the confidentiality of presidential communications? Important enough that it is enshrined in the constitutional doctrine of executive privilege.
               George Washington didn’t have to worry about recording devices. But he first asserted executive privilege in 1792 when Congress demanded internal White House documents about a failed military expedition. Most recently, executive privilege was reasserted by the scumbag/liar-nObama administration to deny Congress access to Justice Department documents regarding Operation Fast and Furious, a failed investigation of illegal gun trafficking.
               In 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court discussed “the valid need for protection of communications between high Government officials and those who advise and assist them in the performance of their manifold duties” in U.S. v. Nixon, the seminal case on executive privilege. This was the case in which the Supreme Court ruled that President Richard Nixon had to turn over tapes he secretly recorded of his Oval Office conversation.
               While that ruling went against Nixon, the high court said in its decision the importance of preserving confidentiality between the president and those he speaks with “is too plain to require further discussion. Human experience teaches that those who expect public dissemination of their remarks may well temper candor with a concern for appearances and for their own interests to the detriment of the decision-making process.”
               The Supreme Court ruling went on to say: The expectation of a President to the confidentiality of his conversations and correspondence … is the necessity for protection of the public interest in candid, objective, and even blunt or harsh opinions in Presidential decision-making. A President and those who assist him must be free to explore alternatives in the process of shaping policies and making decisions and to do so in a way many would be unwilling to express except privately. These are the considerations justifying a presumptive privilege for Presidential communications. The privilege is fundamental to the operation of Government and inextricably rooted in the separation of powers under the Constitution.
               Manigault Newman acted dishonorably and dishonestly in secretly recording confidential White House conversations. But the far bigger problem with this kind of behavior is that it threatens the ability of any president to get the unfiltered information and robust debate among his advisers needed to reach the best possible decisions.
               This violation of protocol and betrayal of trust is on par with the leaks from White House insiders that have come to plague all modern presidents. Future presidential candidates would be well-advised to require nondisclosure agreements from the individuals who assist them as part of their transition teams and who end up working in the White House.
               The perils of modern technology — such as button and pen cameras — combined with Washington’s pervasive “leak culture,” leave would-be presidents little choice. Otherwise, the odds of them getting their advisers’ “candid, objective, and even blunt or harsh opinions” are close to nil. And it’s precisely that kind of input presidents need when making decisions about vital issues that affect the health, safety, and prosperity of our nation and the American people.

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/57735?mailing_id=3688&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3688&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q65KZIqay4E&feature=related

In 1972, Pope Paul VI warned that “the smoke of Satan has entered the Church of God.” We see that smoke throughout the report from a Pennsylvania grand jury, which alleges that more than 300 priests abused more than 1,000 children in six Pennsylvania dioceses — including 99 priests from the Diocese of Pittsburgh, which was led for 18 years by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, now archbishop of Washington.
             How bad was the abuse? The report notes that “during the course of this investigation, the Grand Jury uncovered a ring of predatory priests operating within the [Pittsburgh] Diocese who shared intelligence or information regarding victims as well as exchanging the victims amongst themselves. This ring also manufactured child pornography … [and] used whips, violence and sadism in raping their victims.” According to Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, one victim, a boy named George, “was forced to stand on a bed in a rectory, strip naked and pose as Christ on the cross for the priests. They took photos of their victim, adding them to a collection of child pornography which they produced and shared on church grounds.” Abusing a child while mocking the Passion of Christ is truly diabolical.
               Wuerl, who served as the bishop of Pittsburgh from 1988 to 2006, did discipline some priests — and even went to the Vatican to fight an order that he reinstate one. But the grand jury also wrote that he reassigned other predator priests — including the one who “groomed” George and introduced him to the ring that photographed him. In at least one case, Wuerl required a victim to sign a “confidentiality agreement” barring him from discussing his abuse with any third party as part of a settlement.
               That is a coverup. In addition, the grand jury also wrote that under his leadership the diocese failed to report allegations of abuse to law enforcement, advocated for a convicted predator at sentencing, and then provided a $11,542.68 lump-sum payment to the disgraced priest after his release from prison.
               The grand jury report comes on the heels of the sickening accusations that Wuerl’s predecessor as Washington archbishop, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, sexually abused seminarians and young priests, and spent nearly 20 years molesting a young boy, the first person he baptized, beginning when the child was 11.
               After the McCarrick allegations, Wuerl declared, “I don’t think this is some massive, massive crisis.” Excuse me, Your Eminence?
               It is a massive, massive crisis. How was McCarrick allowed to rise through the hierarchy despite the countless warnings to both his fellow bishops and the Vatican that he was a sexual predator? Who knew? Who helped him? The same conspiracy of silence that allowed sexual predators to flourish in Wuerl’s Pittsburgh diocese for decades also allowed McCarrick to become, until just a few weeks ago, one of the most powerful American cardinals, even in retirement.
               This is not just a matter of getting rid of a few bad apples. There is a ring of abusers and their enablers in the Catholic hierarchy that must be rooted out. Every report of abuse that was overlooked or ignored, every abuse that was covered up with a nondisclosure agreement, must be exposed. The bishops and cardinals who ignored or covered up abuses are complicit and must be removed. The church must be cleansed, and the conspiracy of silence ended.
               The only way to do this is through an independent investigation. The church has proved itself incapable of self-investigation and self-policing — which is evidenced by the fact we are just learning new details of the horrific extent of abuse from a grand jury 16 years after the scandal first erupted. My American Enterprise Institute colleague Michael Strain has recommended bringing back former Oklahoma governor, federal prosecutor and faithful Catholic Frank Keating to lead the investigation.
               In 2003, Keating resigned from a lay-member church-appointed board looking into abuse after he refused to apologize for comparing the coverup by the bishops to the Mafia. That makes him precisely the right man for the job.
               The bishops not only failed the victims but have also scandalized the church, undermined its teaching authority and driven countless people away from Christ. How many failed to go to confession, or left the sacraments, because of their actions — or their failure to act? We will never know. But they should heed Mark’s Gospel, where Jesus warns, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round his neck and he were thrown into the sea.” This must be a time of repentance. Repentance requires accountability. And accountability requires resignations — starting with Wuerl’s.

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/57708?mailing_id=3684&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3684&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             Last year, a Millennial couple, Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan, quit their jobs in Washington, DC, and departed for a year-long biking tour around the world. According The Pluralist, “Austin, a vegan who worked for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Geoghegan, a vegetarian who worked in the Georgetown University admissions office, decided that they were wasting their lives working.”
               Before departing, Austin wrote: “I’ve missed too many sunsets while my back was turned. Too many thunderstorms went unwatched, too many gentle breezes unnoticed.”
               Their biking trip ended in tragedy on 29 July in Tajikistan, when five Islamists drove their car into the group of cyclists, then emerged with knives, killing Austin and Geoghegan and two others.
               Before the naive couple was murdered by the Islamic State adherents, Austin wrote:
               “You watch the news and you read the papers and you’re led to believe that the world is a big, scary place. People, the narrative goes, are not to be trusted. People are bad. People are evil. People are axe murderers and monsters and worse. I don’t buy it. Evil is a make-believe concept we’ve invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own…”
               Regarding Donald Trump, Austin wrote on his trip blog from a location in the Middle East:
               “On the television across the room, Al Jazeera plays softly. Donald Trump has just announced his plans to move an embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and the Muslim world is visibly upset. … As a clip plays of a sullen Trump waddling across the screen, I do my best to disappear into the soft plush of the couch cushion behind me. But American as we may be, no one here seems to mind.”
               Unfortunately for Austin, Geoghegan, and their two friends, there will be no more “sunsets … thunderstorms … and gentle breezes.”

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/57718?mailing_id=3684&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3684&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             Leftist heartthrob and prospective 2020 presidential candidate (even though she’s insisted there’s no interest on her part) Elizabeth dinky-Warren (D-Cherokee) was the one stepping into that breach. The senator has introduced what she calls the Accountable Capitalism Act, a measure she detailed more deeply in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week.
               Her bill hasn’t drawn any co-sponsors, and its prospects of getting through the Senate are between slim and none, but that’s not the point of the legislation. To dinky-Warren and her fellow travelers, there’s really no such thing as “too big to fail,” nor can they resist the corollary “too small to control.” But it’s much easier to pile on to the popular perception that large corporations are greedy — a perception gleefully aided by the leftist dummycrats-Democrats who aspire to live like the so-called “One Percent” but try to portray themselves as part of the 99%.
               To throw the tofu equivalent of red meat to that crowd, dinky-Warren complains in her op-ed, “In the early 1980s, large American companies sent less than half their earnings to shareholders, spending the rest on their employees and other priorities. But between 2007 and 2016, large American companies dedicated 93% of their earnings to shareholders. Because the wealthiest 10% of U.S. households own 84% of American-held shares, the obsession with maximizing shareholder returns effectively means America’s biggest companies have dedicated themselves to making the rich even richer.”
               Her solution? “Corporations with more than $1 billion in annual revenue would be required to get a federal corporate charter,” she explained, “The new charter requires corporate directors to consider the interests of all major corporate stakeholders — not only shareholders — in company decisions.” She continued, “Shareholders could sue if they believed directors weren’t fulfilling those obligations.” In other words, this bill would be the Holy Grail for trial lawyers.
               It’s this aspect of Warren’s proposal that rubs National Review’s Kevin Williamson the wrong way: “dinky-Warren’s proposal is dishonestly called the ‘Accountable Capitalism Act.’ Accountable to whom? you might ask. That’s a reasonable question.”
               Williamson has the answer to his own rhetorical question: “The answer is — as it always is — accountable to politicians, who desire to put the assets and productivity of private businesses under political discipline for their own selfish ends. It is remarkable that people who are most keenly attuned to the self-interest of CEOs and shareholders and the ways in which that self-interest influences their decisions apparently believe that members of the House, senators, presidents, regulators, Cabinet secretaries, and agency chiefs somehow are liberated from self-interest when they take office through some kind of miracle of transcendence.”
               Nor does it necessarily have to be government.dinky- Warren’s proposal leaves a low threshold of 25% plus one share to preclude corporations from proceeding with any political activity. Imagine a group of wealthy left-wingers buying up just enough of a minority interest in a conservative-leaning corporation — such as a large gun company — to put the brakes on political advocacy on their behalf. Losing their investment would be a small price to pay for eliminating a company like Remington Outdoor or Sturm Ruger.
               And that’s the main point. Companies sometimes succeed in ways that aren’t politically correct, and the Left hates this with a white-hot passion. Walmart’s non-union stance is a great example, despite Big Labor’s best efforts to overcome it. Amazon is a more recent example, as Scott Shackford argues at Reason. A bill such as the “Accountable Capitalism Act” leaves a corporation two bad choices: either grow sufficiently to come under its auspices and face sanctions from saboteur stockholders, or just stay small and under the threshold, such as a regional homebuilder passing up the opportunity to advance to a national scale.
               Pardon us, then, if we detect within this batty scheme — a scheme, says Shackford, in which dinky-Warren is less concerned about seeing businesses fail than about seeing them succeed in a manner more to her liking — a faint whiff of economic fascism.
               Needless to say, antifa won’t be rioting againstdinky-Warren’s idea anytime soon.

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/57721?mailing_id=3684&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3684&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             Why? Well, the list is long, but allow me to highlight the top three reasons.
               First, scumbag/commie-Brennan is a political hack. During his tenure under Barack scumbag/liar-nObama at the CIA, scumbag/commie-Brennan used his position to provide scumbag/liar-nObama political cover for Benghazi ahead of his 2012 reelection bid, and by extension provided liar-Hillary Clinton cover for her 2016 bid. scumbag/liar-nObama awarded him with CIA directorship in March 2013.
               Second, did I mention he is a political hack? In 2016, scumbag/commie-Brennan and ex-FBI Directorscumbag-James Comey orchestrated the fake Trump/Putin collusion charade to ensure Trump would not be elected.
               Third, he then, to put it kindly, “misled Congress” in testimony regarding numerous issues.
               And finally, after the election of Trump,scumbag/commie- Brennan was elevated to Leftmedia “analyst” with NBC News and MSNBC, and all of his black-bag bias against Republicans and Trump has been spewing out through his social media accounts, effectively betraying him for the political hack he has always been.
               After his security clearance was revoked, dummycrats-Democrats and the Leftmedia howled that the man who got Osama bin Laden deserves to be canonized, not ostracized.
               To that end, scumbag/liar-nObama’s former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, who was central in the Benghazi cover-up, protested yesterday, “scumbag/commie-John Brennan was the point person for the scumbag/liar-nObama White House on the operation that killed Osama bin Laden. He knows a lot more about defending our nation than someone who uses security clearances to punish his political adversaries.”
               Responding to Rhodes and others, Tier 1 operator Robert O'Neill, the Operation Neptune Spear SEAL team member who actually shot and killed bin Laden, responded, “Actually, @brhodes, 23 conservatives went after UBL. No offense, in case you were wondering.”
               I met with O'Neill most recently last month and can assure you this: O'Neill and those “23 conservatives,” who assumed they were on a virtual suicide mission to kill Osama and would not make it out of Abbottabad, Pakistan, alive — not to mention the hundreds of thousands of other Americans who have served our nation in combat — “know more about defending our nation” than scumbag/commie-John Brennan and his ilk.
               For the record, scumbag/commie-Brennon never served a day in uniform. In his CIA application process, he admitted having voted for a communist presidential contender because he was “signaling my unhappiness with the system.” He was and remains an angry, America-hating career bureaucrat, whose most notable field service assignment was under liar-Bill Clinton as CIA station chief in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Under his watch there, 19 U.S. Air Force service members were murdered in the Khobar Towers bombing. And, as you recall, when Brennan was in the Middle East, liar-Clinton red-lighted operations to capture or kill bin Laden long before OBL orchestrated the 9/11 attack.

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/57724?mailing_id=3684&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3684&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             John Stossel says that the program is unsustainable. Young people shouldn’t expect it to cover their retirement.
               Romina Boccia explains the Heritage Foundation’s plan to allow young people to contribute to their Social Security payments via private investment accounts.
               Those private accounts would likely grow faster than people’s contributions to Social Security, and young people could invest in “whatever floats your boat,” Boccia tells Stossel.
               Private investment accounts have been tried in other parts of the world. When Chile started them in 1981, it was poorer than most Latin American countries. Now it’s the very richest.
               Yet mass demonstrations denounce it for being run privately, and for companies taking some of the profit. They miss the fact that Chileans have more money for retirement than most Latin Americans only because of their private accounts.
               Privatization is also unpopular in America, and so are Boccia’s other proposals. She and Heritage would raise the retirement age to 70 to account for rising lifespans.
               “When Social Security was actually founded, life expectancy was below 65,” Boccia tells Stossel. Now it’s 78. Stossel tells Boccia: “What you guys are pushing is the right thing to do, but it’s not popular.” She replies: “It is not popular, but I think people don’t fully understand how these programs work.”
               The good news is that this was the first time that when Stossel went to talk with people on the street, most people understood the problem.
               One man called it a “Ponzi scheme” and asked, “Why not take it and invest it in the stock market and let it grow that way?”
               A woman summed it up well: “The country’s in a deficit; there’s a point where you can’t pay out and go in the negative forever.”

VIDEO:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT9LwoeYJyg

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/57648?mailing_id=3679&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3679&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

https://patriot.imgix.net/f2de55705252fade8dbc4be0d05ebb224c151a21b6cd56d9af177cace2376491.jpg?w=1200" width="454" height="227" />

             John Stossel says that the program is unsustainable. Young people shouldn’t expect it to cover their retirement.
               Romina Boccia explains the Heritage Foundation’s plan to allow young people to contribute to their Social Security payments via private investment accounts.
               Those private accounts would likely grow faster than people’s contributions to Social Security, and young people could invest in “whatever floats your boat,” Boccia tells Stossel.
               Private investment accounts have been tried in other parts of the world. When Chile started them in 1981, it was poorer than most Latin American countries. Now it’s the very richest.
               Yet mass demonstrations denounce it for being run privately, and for companies taking some of the profit. They miss the fact that Chileans have more money for retirement than most Latin Americans only because of their private accounts.
               Privatization is also unpopular in America, and so are Boccia’s other proposals. She and Heritage would raise the retirement age to 70 to account for rising lifespans.
               “When Social Security was actually founded, life expectancy was below 65,” Boccia tells Stossel. Now it’s 78. Stossel tells Boccia: “What you guys are pushing is the right thing to do, but it’s not popular.” She replies: “It is not popular, but I think people don’t fully understand how these programs work.”
               The good news is that this was the first time that when Stossel went to talk with people on the street, most people understood the problem.
               One man called it a “Ponzi scheme” and asked, “Why not take it and invest it in the stock market and let it grow that way?”
               A woman summed it up well: “The country’s in a deficit; there’s a point where you can’t pay out and go in the negative forever.”

VIDEO:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT9LwoeYJyg

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/57648?mailing_id=3679&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3679&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             Fein-stein must believe that the thousands in campaign contributions she and dummycrats-Democrats received from foreign entities, specifically China, as well as her husband’s lucrative multimillion-dollar business deals with China have no bearing on concerns over national security. How could they? The Chinese are our friends.
               But when it comes to Russia, Fein-stein, who sits as a ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, only sees a dangerous foreign power seeking to sow discord and corruption into America’s electoral system.
               This is the hypocrisy displayed by manydummycrats- Democrats. Lacking any genuine evidence other than the liar-Clinton campaign’s fabricated dossier, they continue to moan over the influence of Russia and its ongoing threat to the U.S. and the upcoming elections.

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/57644?mailing_id=3679&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3679&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             Dan Bosch, the director of regulatory policy at the American Action Forum, added, “Collectively, executive agencies subject to a regulatory budget remain on pace to double the administration’s overall savings goal. On an individual basis, 12 of 22 agencies have already met or surpassed their savings target.” There’s always more to do, but those deregulation efforts are saving literally hundreds of millions of dollars in budget money. Investor’s Business Daily reports, “All told, the government aimed for savings of about $686.6 million from deregulation so far this year. Right now, the government has saved some $1.308 billion from 47 separate deregulation actions.” And that’s just the budget money saved, not the amount Americans save via the reduced regulatory burden.

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/57647?mailing_id=3679&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3679&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             According to the Associated Press, “Siraj Ibn Wahhaj was conducting weapons training with assault rifles at the compound near the Colorado border where 11 hungry children were found in filthy conditions.” Very tellingly, said person is the son of Siraj Wahhaj — a man who Fox News explains “was named by prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.” Remember that when the inevitable cries of “lone wolf” begin circulating.
               There’s also an extremely grisly revelation involving a deceased child. NBC says, “The young boy whose remains were found … died in a religious ritual conducted because his father believed he was possessed by demons. … [The child] disappeared from his home in Georgia in December. A nationwide search eventually led authorities to the compound in Taos, which was set up by … Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, 40, who authorities allege had kidnapped his son.” And then apparently oversaw his death.
               Judge Sarah Backus, an elected dummycerats-Democrat, set bail at just $20,000 for the five defendants in the case.
               Sadly, the silence regarding the reporting of this case is nearly deafening. Yes, occasional articles appear here and there, but the truth is that the coverage is orchestrated and permissibly limited. As Matt Walsh observes, “This should be the biggest story of the year so far.” But the Islamic angle forbids it from being placed under a needed spotlight, as it most assuredly would be if the perpetrators were non-Muslim and Westerners. Given the media hoopla surrounding a couple dozen “alt-right” protesters over the weekend, it’s not a stretch to reach that conclusion. Consequently, a harrowing fact is being sanitized: The Islamic practices of slavery, brainwashing, and jihad commonly seen in the Middle East are happening right here on American soil. Religion of Peace™ indeed.

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/57645?mailing_id=3679&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3679&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             In one of the episodes in season two, Anne, her friend Diana Berry, and a boy named Cole attend a gathering at Diana’s great-aunt Josephine’s home, where a party of cross-dressing men and women have gathered to honor the memory of Josephine’s departed “partner,” Gertrude. BreakingPoint’s Eric Metaxas further describes the scene:
               Looking around her, Anne exclaims to Diana, “Isn’t this the most amazing group of people!” Well, I can’t help thinking that if a sheltered young girl like Anne actually encountered cross-dressing men and women in 1908, she would be shocked and probably frightened — not delighted.
               In a scene that takes place in Aunt Josephine’s bedroom, Anne observes a novel on Josephine’s nightstand. Gertrude was reading it the year before. Josephine tells her the books “sit just where she left them.” Anne processes this remark, and then, enlightened, says, “That’s what you meant by, in your way, you were married,” she says.
               “Yes,” Josephine replies. Diana — who is nonplussed by her discovery of her aunt’s relationship with Gertrude, tells Anne their love affair was “unnatural.”
               But the boy Cole — a character who is invented for the TV series — soon straightens her out. “If your aunt lived her life feeling … that she was broken, defective, or unnatural, and one day she met someone that made her realize that wasn’t true …. shouldn’t we be happy for her?”
               Cole later confesses to Aunt Josephine that he thinks he is “like you and Gertrude.” Josephine tells him, “You have a life of such joy before you.”
               The cultural appropriation of classic stories whose authors never would have dreamed of advocating for what at the time was rightly viewed as vile and deviant behavior has become not only commonplace but even obligatory. Putting this agenda into emotive stories with characters we love is full on entertainment as indoctrination, and it’s a powerful elixir for adults — never mind children. But full acceptance, promotion, and celebration of the “LGBT identity” and lifestyle is fast becoming the only permissible opinions for individuals to hold. Anything less may one day literally become a crime.

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/57627?mailing_id=3677&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3677&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             “The hard truth about our criminal justice system: It’s racist,” Warren told a crowd at Dillard University in New Orleans. “I mean all the way. I mean front to back. This is not just sentencing reform we’re talking about here. We’re talking about the front end on what you declare to be illegal, on how you enforce it, on who gets arrested.”
               In her slanderous attack, Warren would have Americans believe that from the time one is approached by a cop all the way through to the moment one is sentenced and incarcerated, one is in a racist system that targets minorities. For the system to be racist, then by extension wouldn’t most if not all the people who serve it be racist too? dinky-Warren seems to ignore the 27% of the nation’s police officers who are minorities, as well as the 400 black prosecutors, the 383 minority federal judges, and the previous two U.S. attorneys general.
                dinky-Warren’s rhetorical assault is surely meant to stir up some press for her 2020 presidential run. But more broadly speaking, the race card is a key part of the leftist toolkit, and it has been used to rail on the justice system for years.
               It can’t be denied that the criminal justice system needs reform, as we have argued on these pages. There is something wrong when America, with 4% of the world’s population, has 25% of the world’s prisoners. Two-thirds of the 650,000 people who leave prison every year will be back in jail within three years. This is a failure with sentencing and giving inmates the tools they need to turn their lives around. It’s not racism.
               Reforms are already taking place on the state level that have improved the situation in certain areas. President Donald Trump proposed following that example at the federal level and threw his support behind the First Step Act, a House bill with tremendous bipartisan support.
               The bill, which addresses recidivism and allowing prisoners to build “good time” credit, had bipartisan support in the House but was stymied in the Senate.
               The Left has drawn the conclusion that the criminal justice system is racist because of the disparity between the total black population versus the black prison population. Blacks make up 13% of the total population but 30% of the state prison population. It can be said that black incarceration rates for drug offenses are significantly higher, but you can’t blame it all on the drug war. In 2014, the share of the prison population in jail for only drug offenses was 16%.
               One of the biggest culprits in the mushrooming prison population may be the plea-bargaining system. Plea bargains are a popular tool with prosecutors because it allows them the power to send someone to jail without having to deal much with judges. It’s a fast-moving, murky process that has likely scooped up some people who would otherwise be serving less time in jail, or perhaps no time at all.
               Criminal justice reformers would also like to do away with mandatory-minimum sentencing and three-strikes laws that take the sentencing out of the hands of judges and create a sort of automatic sentencing structure that does not consider details of specific cases.
                dinky-Warren makes her accusations, unfounded though they may be, because racism is the red meat of her campaign. In fact, her phony claims of Native American ancestry boosted her career for decades. You can be sure that she, along with other dummycrats-Democrat senators — especially those with plans in 2020 — will pick apart any prison reform proposed by Trump and Republicans. They won’t be specific about what they don’t like about the proposals. They’ll just jump around and yell “racism.” If the GOP were to get even some credit for prison reform, then it’s one less thing the Left can use to attack them.

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/57635?mailing_id=3677&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3677&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             Instead, after 22 years at the bureau, Strzok was finally fired Friday — two years too late, albeit one year after being removed from Robert Mueller’s investigation. Moreover, according to Strzok’s attorney, he was fired only after Deputy Director David Bowdich took the rare step of overruling the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which recommended only a suspension.
               After the damning inspector general’s report in June, Strzok gave a contemptuous congressional testimony insisting on his innocence. No one should believe him.
               More than anything else, this lagging timeline — the fact that only now is this bad apple fired — is an indication of what is wrong with government. Entrenched bureaucracy, which sometimes becomes the so-called “deep state,” is cancerous and difficult to remove. Think of the immense effort required to fire Strzok and McCabe in particular, and then ponder how many other liar-Clintonistas remain fixed in the bowels of government.
               Yet much of this comes from the top. Presidential attorney Rudy Giuliani hit the nail on the head, saying, “I’m going to tell you who was the quarterback for all of this. Strzok — he’s a bit of a puppet. Then there’s Mueller — he’s a puppet. … The guy running it is [former CIA Director scumbag/commie-John] Brennan. And he should be in front of a grand jury.” scumbag/commie-Brennan, who once voted communist in a presidential election, was indeed Barack scumbag/liar-nObama’s hatchet man behind the whole Russia fiasco. Removing Strzok is good, but we’re a long way from justice.

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/57637?mailing_id=3677&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3677&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             With dummycrats-Democrat numbers like this, it’s not surprising to hear commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the new socialist face of the dummycrats-Democrat Party, assert, “The whole country is further left than Congress. The whole country. The electorate is way further left than Congress, [but] we have low voter turnout.”
               The most interesting aspect to these latest poll numbers is the change in dummycrats-Democrats’ opinion of capitalism. In 2010, 53% of dummycrats-Democrats had a favorable view of socialism, which increased to 58% in 2016, most likely due to the popularity of Bernie Sanders. But that same year 56% of dummycrats-Democrats also had a positive view of capitalism. That’s dropped by a whopping nine percentage points in just two years.
               What happened? Trump Derangement Syndrome. As Gallup notes, “It’s possible that the drop in dummycrats-  Democrats’ positive views of capitalism is related to Donald Trump’s presidency. Trump is an enthusiastic capitalist, and his administration’s efforts to roll back regulations on business and industry, as well as the tax cut law that is advantageous to businesses and corporations, may have caused dummycrats- Democrats to view the entire capitalist enterprise with less positive eyes.”
               The Gallup poll also notes, “The question wording does not define ‘socialism’ or ‘capitalism’ but simply asks respondents whether their opinion of each is positive or negative.” This is an important caveat given how poorly many Americans, particularly young people, understand what socialism actually is. Again, much of the reason for this is that the Left within media and academia has long preached the myth of socialism as a positive system that brings equity and fairness, whereas capitalism is allegedly a system primarily organized to support only the greedy interests of the wealthy and big business. With the hard-Left’s increasing takeover of the dummycrats-Democrat Party, it’s only logical that support for capitalism would severely wane, as the eventual goal of these leftists is to create a political boogieman out of capitalism that must be overtly opposed and attacked. The more dummycrats-Democrats go down this extremist road, the more average Americans will walk away. Will Republicans be able to capitalize on the dummycrats-Dems’ socialist bent?

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/57640?mailing_id=3677&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3677&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body