Cover Story . . .

. . . The Media cover story for the naked truth on Hillary Clinton is “Trump Says Mean Things”, more proof journalism is dead.

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

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Dems v. GOP on New Drugs

by Newt Gingrich: As a leader in the Republican Party for the past 40 years, I’ve been involved in the development of 10 party platforms. Party platforms are important because they are more than a list of policies. Instead, they are a statement of the very different world views that explain those policies.

This year’s Democratic and Republican Party platforms provide a useful example of differing world views on an issue that will dramatically impact the health and well-being of every U.S. citizen: biomedical research.

The GOP platform praises the promise of biomedical research, saying it is “the consequence of marrying significant investment, both public and private, with the world’s best talent.” The Democratic platform says “We recognize the critical importance of a fully funded National Institutes of Health to accelerate the pace of medical progress.”
Notice that the Democratic platform fails to “recognize” the vital importance of private funding. EvaluatePharma estimates the private sector will invest $144 billion this year in biomedical research. That’s more than four times as much as the National Institutes of Health’s $32.3 billion a year in grants and in-house research.

This blind spot in the Democratic Party’s understanding of what it takes to achieve medical breakthroughs explains why their platform can simultaneously call for accelerating the pace of medical progress while proposing destructive policies that would reduce the amount of money available for the research and development of new cures.

The Democrat’s platform calls for de facto price controls in the form of importing prescription drugs from other countries and allowing Medicare to negotiate directly with drug manufacturers. Artificial price control mechanisms like these try to reduce costs today at the expense of continued innovation.

Democrats ignore the fact that while new medicines and treatments may start relatively expensive, they invariably reduce in price over time, increasing their value to society. Meanwhile, the higher revenue generated from the first few years of availability is reinvested into research for the next round of breakthroughs. This is the recurring cycle of innovation that creates lower priced and more effective medications.

Consider statins, a cholesterol-lowering medication. Since statins were introduced in the late 1980s, prices have dropped precipitously. One study published in HealthAffairs in 2012 estimated that the use of statins between 1987 and 2008 generated $1.25 trillion in economic value from the years of life saved for those taking the medicine. During that time about $200 billion was spent on statin drugs, meaning that the use of these medications resulted in a net benefit to society of $947 billion. That is a roughly 4:1 benefit-to-cost ratio.

The Democratic platform also chastises drug companies for the high cost of some new, breakthrough drugs. However, it fails to account for their value relative to their cost.

For instance, while new breakthrough treatments that can cure hepatitis C in a few weeks have large price tags, they save even more money—not to mention suffering—by avoiding the continued hospitalizations and liver treatments associated with the disease. They are also dropping in cost due to competition as more treatments become available. According to Steve Miller, chief medical officer of Express Scripts, the cost of hepatitis C drugs are now lower in the U.S. than in Europe.

Instead of artificial price controls that would reduce medical innovation by choking off the resources needed to develop new cures and treatments, the Republican Party’s platform takes a different approach to lowering drug costs.

It recognizes that it is becoming more expensive each year to bring lifesaving new cures to market. This is because drug developers are unable to take advantage of new technology and up-to-date approaches to doing their research and, especially, their clinical trials. A recent study in the Journal of Health Economics estimated it costs an average of $2.6 billion to bring a FDA-approved medication to market.

Moreover, an analysis published in January 2015 in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that drug manufacturers have shifted resources from early-stage research to lengthy, expensive clinical trials. This kind of resource shift will lead to fewer breakthroughs and fewer cures.

Biomedical research is one of the few areas where there is little doubt that investment pays for itself. Any policies that reduce resources—public or private—available to invest in research and development are akin to killing the proverbial goose that lays the golden egg. As Bill Gates, the world’s top philanthropist when it comes to delivering medicines to the poor, has said, “The drug companies are turning out miracles, and we need their R&D budgets to stay strong. They need to see the opportunity.”

Of the two parties’ platforms, only the Republican Party recognizes the vital role that private research plays in the development of new drugs, and takes an appropriate approach to lowering the cost of prescription drugs that will preserve the research base necessary for medical innovation. This is an approach that will save lives and save money.
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Newt Gingrich is a former Georgia Congressman and Speaker of the U.S. House. He co-authored and was the chief architect of the "Contract with America" and a major leader in the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional elections. He is noted speaker and writer. The above commentary was shared via Gingrich Productions.

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Is Clinton In The Clear, Trump's Promise, Then & Now, Fighting Christian Genocide

Repeal the IRS prohibition, aka
the Johnson legislative amendment
which Violates the 1st Amendment

by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Is Clinton In The Clear? After FBI Director James Comey refused to pursue charges against Hillary Clinton for her "extremely careless" handling of classified information on her private email server, many assumed that she was clear of any legal jeopardy that might hamper her presidential ambitions. That may not be the case.

According to The Daily Caller, "Multiple FBI investigations are underway involving potential corruption charges against the Clinton Foundation. . . The New York-based probe is being led by Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Bharara's prosecutorial aggressiveness has resulted in a large number of convictions of banks, hedge funds and Wall Street insiders."

It is worth noting that Bharara is not afraid of going after big name Democrats. He successfully convicted former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-NY), and is actively investigating the administrations of Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Stay tuned!

Trump's Promise To America's Pastors - Donald Trump addressed a gathering of hundreds of pastors yesterday in Florida. Once again, he promised to repeal the IRS prohibition, known as the Johnson amendment, that has effectively muzzled many of America's pastors when it comes to values issues and politics.

"Your power has been totally taken away. I mean, I don't want to insult anybody, but your power has been totally taken away," Trump said. "So, we're going to get your voice back. We're going to get it back."

Trump promised, "One of the early things, one of the absolute first things I'm going to do is work on totally knocking out the Johnson amendment."

My friends, for all of Trump's flaws, when was the last time a Republican presidential nominee promised pastors he would fight to repeal the Johnson amendment? When was the last time a Republican presidential nominee publicly said he would appoint pro-life judges to the Supreme Court? I couldn't get George W. Bush to do that during the 2000 Republican primary.

Come next January, either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton will be president of the United States. It is inconceivable to me how any conservative voter could sit out this election or not vote for the only candidate who is promising to fight for religious liberty, save the Second Amendment and appoint pro-life judges to the Supreme Court.

Then & Now - More than 40 years ago, the nation was shocked by the leak and subsequent publication of the Pentagon Papers. What they revealed was that the Nixon Administration had been lying to the American people about the Vietnam War and how difficult that conflict truly was.

What was scandalous then -- misleading the public on matters of national security -- is the way Obama and Clinton routinely conduct business now.

When Obama and Hillary negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran, the administration lied to reporters about secret negotiations and misled Congress and the American people.

Every prisoner in the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was subject to a thorough security evaluation conducted by the CIA when they were captured. The terrorists who represented the greatest threat were clearly labeled as unsafe for transfer. Under Obama, those security evaluations are being rewritten so they can be transferred.

Mark my words: Before Obama leaves office, he will do everything he can to empty Gitmo, even if it means more Americans may die.

When we paid Iran a ransom for the release of American hostages, the Obama Administration acted like a crime syndicate -- secretly flying $400 million in foreign currency, loaded onto an unmarked cargo plane, to Tehran in the dark of night. The cash was a portion of $1.7 billion Iran was claiming as its own. The administration has acknowledged that the rest of the money was transferred too, but it is refusing to answer legitimate questions about how it was done.

When Al Qaeda terrorists murdered four Americans in Benghazi, Obama and Hillary blamed it on a video. When Islamists blow us up, they blame work place violence and try to insist it is anything other than radical Islamic terrorism.

When Russia began executing aggressive military maneuvers -- buzzing U.S. ships and flying bombers to the edge of U.S. airspace -- the Obama Administration tried to prevent the public from knowing about it. This really is a serious issue. Obama's weakness is routinely mocked in Russian media.

A congressional taskforce concluded that critical intelligence information related to the war against ISIS was manipulated to paint a far rosier picture than actual events on the ground warranted.

When it comes to our security, Obama and Clinton have constantly lied in a way that puts the country in greater danger. That danger will persist even if Hillary loses the presidential race.

Fighting Christian Genocide - Earlier this week, I joined a coalition of religious leaders and conservative activists in calling upon the national media to devote more attention to the plight of persecuted Christians in the Middle East. We are constantly subjected to stories about alleged bigotry against Muslims in America. Often the reports are as silly as bacon being found at a mosque.

And while the media obsess over pork products, Christians in much of what is called "the Islamic world" are facing genocide. They are subject to rape, torture, beheadings and crucifixion. Churches, homes and schools are bombed and burned. Religious sites are desecrated.

Yet the media rarely report on these atrocities. And, just like the left's aversion to the phrase "radical Islamic terrorism," the media almost never call it what it is -- genocide.

You can read our letter here.
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Gary Bauer is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

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Yes, the System Is Rigged

by Patrick Buchanan: “I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged,” Donald Trump told voters in Ohio and Sean Hannity on Fox News. And that hit a nerve.

“Dangerous,” “toxic,” came the recoil from the media.

Trump is threatening to “delegitimize” the election results of 2016.

Well, if that is what Trump is trying to do, he has no small point. For consider what 2016 promised and what it appears about to deliver.

This longest of election cycles has rightly been called the Year of the Outsider. It was a year that saw a mighty surge of economic populism and patriotism, a year when a 74-year-old Socialist senator set primaries ablaze with mammoth crowds that dwarfed those of Hillary Clinton.

It was the year that a non-politician, Donald Trump, swept Republican primaries in an historic turnout, with his nearest rival an ostracized maverick in his own Republican caucus, Senator Ted Cruz.

More than a dozen Republican rivals, described as the strongest GOP field since 1980, were sent packing. This was the year Americans rose up to pull down the establishment in a peaceful storming of the American Bastille.

But if it ends with a Clintonite restoration and a ratification of the same old Beltway policies, would that not suggest there is something fraudulent about American democracy, something rotten in the state?

If 2016 taught us anything, it is that if the establishment’s hegemony is imperiled, it will come together in ferocious solidarity — for the preservation of their perks, privileges and power.

All the elements of that establishment — corporate, cultural, political, media — are today issuing an ultimatum to Middle America:

Trump is unacceptable.

Instructions are going out to Republican leaders that either they dump Trump, or they will cease to be seen as morally fit partners in power.

It testifies to the character of Republican elites that some are seeking ways to carry out these instructions, though this would mean invalidating and aborting the democratic process that produced Trump.

But what is a repudiated establishment doing issuing orders to anyone?

Why is it not Middle America issuing the demands, rather than the other way around?

Specifically, the Republican electorate should tell its discredited and rejected ruling class: If we cannot get rid of you at the ballot box, then tell us how, peacefully and democratically, we can be rid of you?

You want Trump out? How do we get you out?

The Czechs had their Prague Spring. The Tunisians and Egyptians their Arab Spring. When do we have our American Spring?

The Brits had their “Brexit,” and declared independence of an arrogant superstate in Brussels. How do we liberate ourselves from a Beltway superstate that is more powerful and resistant to democratic change?

Our CIA, NGOs and National Endowment for Democracy all beaver away for “regime change” in faraway lands whose rulers displease us.

How do we effect “regime change” here at home?

Donald Trump’s success, despite the near-universal hostility of the media, even much of the conservative media, was due in large part to the public’s response to the issues he raised.

He called for sending illegal immigrants back home, for securing America’s borders, for no amnesty. He called for an America First foreign policy to keep us out of wars that have done little but bleed and bankrupt us.

He called for an economic policy where the Americanism of the people replaces the globalism of the transnational elites and their K Street lobbyists and congressional water carriers.

He denounced NAFTA, and the trade deals and trade deficits with China, and called for rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

By campaign’s end, he had won the argument on trade, as Hillary Clinton was agreeing on TPP and confessing to second thoughts on NAFTA.

But if TPP is revived at the insistence of the oligarchs of Wall Street, the Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — backed by conscript editorial writers for newspapers that rely on ad dollars — what do elections really mean anymore?

And if, as the polls show we might, we get Clinton — and TPP, and amnesty, and endless migrations of Third World peoples who consume more tax dollars than they generate, and who will soon swamp the Republicans’ coalition — what was 2016 all about?

Would this really be what a majority of Americans voted for in this most exciting of presidential races?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable,” said John F. Kennedy.

The 1960s and early 1970s were a time of social revolution in America, and President Nixon, by ending the draft and ending the Vietnam war, presided over what one columnist called the “cooling of America.”

But if Hillary Clinton takes power, and continues America on her present course, which a majority of Americans rejected in the primaries, there is going to a bad moon rising.

And the new protesters in the streets will not be over privileged children from Ivy League campuses.
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Patrick Buchanan is currently a conservative columnist, political analyst, chairman of The American Cause foundation and an editor of The American Conservative. He has been a senior advisor to three Presidents, a two-time candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and was the presidential nominee of the Reform Party in 2000. He blogs at the Patrick J. Buchanan.

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The Nature Of The War Against Us . . .

. . . Understanding our enemies both secular and religious.

by David Horowitz, Contributing Author: Love death This is the improbable instruction that the founder of an Egyptian sect called the Muslim Brotherhood imparted to his followers in the 1920s. A disciple named Mohammed Atta copied this instruction into his journal just before leading the attack on the World Trade Center three days before my biopsy. Was it a coincidence that this dark creed took root in a country of monuments to the human quest for life beyond the grave? The sentence Mohammed Atta actually jotted down was this: “Prepare for holy war and be lovers of death.”

How can one love death? This is a question that is incomprehensible to us unless we are overwhelmed by personal defeats. But it is the enigma at the heart of human history, which is a narrative moved by war between men. For how can men go to war unless they love death, or a cause that is worth more than life itself?

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The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928, but the summons to holy war was planted in Arab hearts more than a thousand years before. The prophet Mohammed created the Muslim faith and claimed he was fulfilling the gospel of Christ. But Mohammed was a warrior and Jesus a man of peace who instructed his followers to shun the path of history and separate the sacred from the profane. His kingdom was not of this world: Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s. Mohammed summoned his followers to make the world a place for God, which meant conquering Caesar himself.

Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian who was executed for treason in 1966, is recognized as the intellectual father of the Islamic jihad. His brother Mohammed was a teacher of its leader Osama Bin Laden and his texts are read by would-be martyrs in madrassas across the Muslim world. The hope that consumed Sayyid Qutb’s life was to establish the rule of Islam throughout the heathen nations and the Islamic umma, to make the world a holy place.

Sayyid Qutb regarded Christianity as a threat to this Islamic redemption. He condemned Christians for their separation of the sacred from the profane, God’s world from Ceasar’s. He called this division a “hideous schizophrenia,” which reflected the very corruption he set out to correct. Christians had created liberal societies, Qutb said, in which “God’s existence is not denied, but His domain is restricted to the heavens and His rule on earth is suspended.” Islam’s task was “to unite the world and the faith.” It was what Jewish mystics called “tikkun olam,” a mission to repair the world by bringing about the rule of God’s law on earth.

Qutb wrote this prescription in one of his most famous texts, which he called Social Justice In Islam. The mission of Islam, he explained, was “to unite heaven and earth in a single system.” To make the world one.

This is the totalitarian idea. When the wave of redemption is complete, nothing will remain untransformed, nothing unholy or unjust. Total transformation is the goal of all radical jihads, including the flight that burned the towers of evil in Manhattan. It is the cause that Mohammed Atta served. Like all revolutionary passions, the totalitarian hope of radical Islam is to redeem the world. It is the desire to put order into our lives and to heal the wound in creation.

But there is no earthly doctor who can cure us. The practical consequence of all radical dreams, therefore, is a permanent holy war.

Inevitably and invariably, the effort to make the world whole begins with its division into two opposing camps. In order to conduct the work of salvation, redeemers must separate the light from the darkness, the just from the unjust, the believers from the damned. For radical Muslims this division is the line separating the House of Islam from the House of War, the realm of the faithful from the world of heretics and infidels, who are impure of heart and who must be converted or destroyed.

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A thousand years before Mohammed Atta left on his fatal mission, a Shi’ite named Hassan al-Sabbah began a holy war to overthrow the Muslim state. In Hassan’s eyes, the Sunni caliphate that the Prophet Mohammed had established to govern Islam had already fallen into a state of corruption. It was no longer holy; it was no longer God’s. To cleanse Islam and restore the faith, Hassan created a martyr vanguard, whom others referred to as the “Assassins,” and whose deeds have bequeathed to us the word itself. The mission of the Assassins was to kill the apostate rulers of the false Islamic state, and purify the realm.

Because their mission was a service to God, it was considered a dishonor to return alive, and none did. The Koran assured the Assassins that the reward for the life they gave was paradise itself. “So let them fight in the way of God who sell the present life for the world to come. Whosoever fights in the way of God and is slain, conquers. We shall bring him a mighty wage.” When the Assassins’ first victim, the vizier in Quhistan was slain, Hassan al-Sabbah said, “The killing of this devil is the beginning of bliss.” Revolutionaries love death because it is the gate of heaven and the beginning of bliss.

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Four years before 9/11, Mohammed Atta traveled to Afghanistan to join the International Islamic Front for the Holy War against Jews and Crusaders, whose leader was Osama bin Laden. Atta was a small, wiry man, the humorless son of a demanding father. After his team of modern Assassins turned the towers in Manhattan into a smoking ruin, his father told reporters, “My son is a very sensitive man. He is soft and was extremely attached to his mother.”

Before the hour of his jihad, on the very page where he had copied the summons to love death, Mohammed Atta acknowledged that it was a call to perform acts unnatural to men. “Everybody hates death, fears death,” he wrote, but then explained why men should love it nonetheless. “Only the believers who know the life after death and the reward after death, will be the ones seeking death.” Mohammed Atta had found a cause that was greater than life itself.

But was Mohammed Atta right? Did his martyrs sign up for death to gain a greater return? This presumes that the only reason people would seek to end their lives in this world is the hope of reward in another. Do they not also run towards what they fear? When we have guilty secrets to hide do we not find ways to end the awful wait before judgment by leaving the clues that betray us? Especially if we are withholding secrets from those we fear and love. Are we not all guilty in the eyes of God, and did not Mohammed Atta fear and love Him?

What if martyrs hate life more than they love death? If we look at the scanty record of Mohammed Atta’s time on this earth, it suggests that escape was always on his mind. “Purify your heart and clean it of all earthly matters,” he wrote in his instructions to his martyr team. “The time of fun and waste has gone. The time of judgment has arrived.”

In his short life, Mohammed Atta does not seem to have had much room for pleasure. His father was a successful lawyer, who was ambitious and austere. The family had two residences but lived frugally and apart from others. “They didn’t visit and weren’t visited,” said a neighbor later. The father agreed, “We are people who keep to ourselves.” An adolescent friend of Mohammed’s described the Atta household: “It was a house of study. No playing, no entertainment. Just study.” Even as an adolescent, to avoid the contamination of the flesh Mohammed would leave the room when Egyptian television featured belly-dancing programs, as it frequently did.

According to those who knew him as a young adult, Mohammed Atta was insular, religiously strict and psychologically intense. The death of an insect made him emotional; the modern world repelled him. A fellow urban planning student remembered how the usually reserved Mohammed became enraged by a hotel construction near the ancient market of Aleppo, which he viewed as the desecration of Islam’s heritage. “Disney World,” he sneered, the Crusaders’ revenge. Mohammed continued to avoid sensual images whether from television screens or wall posters. He hated and feared the female gender, averting his eyes from women who so much as neglected to cover their arms.

Others testified that he could not take pleasure in so basic and social a human act as eating. A roommate recalled that he sustained himself by spooning lumps from a heap of cold potatoes he would mash and leave on a plate in the communal refrigerator for a week at a time. A German convert who hung out with members of the terrorist cell that Mohammed headed, thought it was his morbid seriousness that allowed him to lead others but dismissed him derisively as a “harmless, intelligent, nut.” The people he lived with longed for him to leave. A girlfriend of one of them said, “A good day was when Mohammed was not home.”

Five years before his appointment with death, Mohammed Atta drew up a will in which he admonished his mourners to die as good Muslims. “I don’t want a pregnant woman or a person who is not clean to come and say good-bye to me because I don’t approve it,” he stressed. “The people who will clean my body should be good Muslims… The person who will wash my body near my genitals must wear gloves on his hands so he won’t touch my genitals…. I don’t want any women to go to my grave at all during my funeral or on any occasion thereafter.”

In life, Mohammed Atta despised women, but on his way to death, he promised his martyrs many, citing the Koranic verse: “Know that the gardens of paradise are waiting for you in all their beauty and the women of paradise are waiting, calling out, ‘Come hither, friend of God.’ They have dressed in their most beautiful clothing.”

Mohammed also wrote down these instructions for the mission ahead: “When the confrontation begins, strike like champions who do not want to go back to this world. Shout, ‘Allahu Akbar [God is great],’ because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers.” Whoever neglected his will or did not follow Islam, Mohammed warned, “that person will be held responsible in the end.”

Like Mohammed Atta we long for the judgment that will make right what is not. We want to see virtue rewarded and the wicked rebuked. We yearn for release from the frustrations and disappointments of an imperfect life. Consequently every God of love is also a God of justice, and therefore a God of punishment and death. If this were not so, if God did not care to sort out good from evil, what would His love be worth?

The emotions of fear and hope spring from the love of self, and therefore make our motives suspect. Are those who claim to be God’s warriors pure of heart and above doubt? Can men serve God if they are really serving themselves? Do martyrdoms like Mohammed Atta’s represent noble aspirations, or are they merely desperate remedies for personal defeats?

Mohammed Atta was a withdrawn and ineffectual man who died without achieving his worldly ambitions. He never realized his goal of becoming an architect or urban planner, never married or had a family. Apart from his jihad, Mohammed Atta never made a mark in life. But in death he was a god, bringing judgment to 3,000 innocent souls.

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If Allah is the maker of life, as Mohammed Atta believed, could He desire the destruction of what he had created? What is suicide but rage at the living, and contempt for the life left behind? Mohammed Atta offered his deed of destruction as a gift to God. In his eyes, his martyrdom was unselfish and the strangers he killed were not innocent. His mission was to purge the world of wasteful pleasures, to vanquish the guilty and to implement God’s grace.

But if God wanted to cleanse His creation, why would He need Mohammed Atta to accomplish His will?

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These are the questions of an agnostic, who has no business saying what God desires or does not. Nonetheless, an agnostic can appreciate believers like Pascal, whose humility is transparent and who is attempting to make sense of the incomprehensible through faith. Why are we born? Why are we here? Why do we die? An agnostic can respect the faith of a skeptic who confronts our misery and refuses to concede defeat. He can admire a faith that provides consolation for the inconsolable, and in a heartless world finds reason to live a moral life.

But murder is not moral and the desire to redeem the world requires it. Because redemption requires the damnation of those who do not want to be saved.

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My father was an atheist, and a progressive who embraced the secular belief of the social redeemers. Along with all who think they have practical answers to the absurd cruelties of our human lot, my father felt superior to those who do not, especially those who take solace in a religious faith. In this prejudice, my father had impressive company. The psychologist Sigmund Freud regarded religion as an illusion without a future. But, like all revolutionaries Freud could not live without his own reservoir of belief, which was science. Progress was his human faith.

Whether they are secularists like my father and Freud, or religious zealots like Mohammed Atta, those who believe we can become masters of our fates think they know more than Pascal. But in their search for truth where do they imagine they have gone that he did not go before them? What do they think they know that Pascal did not? Their bravado is only a mask for the inevitable defeat that is our common lot, an inverse mirror of their human need.

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Like Mohammed Atta, my father was an ineffectual man thwarted in his earthly desires. When he was still young, he gave up his ambitions, and resigned himself to a life without them. But in his imagination he knew no such limits. The hope he no longer had for himself he invested in others. Even though my father prided himself on being a practical man without illusions, he shared with Mohammed Atta and his believers an impossible dream. Their dream was to change the world. What Mohammed Atta and my father wanted was an escape from this life.

If his views had been described to him this way, my father would have rejected the link to theological illusions. He felt as superior to the religious revolutionaries who shared his dreams as they did to secular radicals like him. But while he disdained their God and their paradise in heaven, he never gave up their belief in miracles of faith.

My father’s prophet was Karl Marx, who was himself descended from a long line of rabbis. Like my father, Marx disdained the religion of his ancestors, regarding them as the comforting myths of weak-minded men. But the icon he chose for his secular faith was a mythical figure all the same. His hero was Prometheus, the pagan who stole fire from the gods and brought a piece of heaven to earth.

Like Freud, Marx regarded the belief in heaven as a cry of impotence, a memory from the childhood of the race when men were tormented by forces of nature they could not understand. To cope with their predicament they conjured powers that were divine, who would look after them, and keep them safe. Marx knew the divinities they worshipped were only reflections of themselves on whom they projected powers that might one day be theirs. Marx’s revolutionary message to humanity was this: You shall be as gods.

For Marx, religious belief was not a consolation for human unhappiness but its cause. The God men worshipped, appeared to them as the embodiment of their hopes. But Marx knew that their deity was only a tribal totem whose worship made them passive and denied them their due. There were no unanswerable questions or unattainable powers that determined human fate. Marx was so confident of this truth that he summed up his conclusion in a single sentence: “All mysteries, which lead to mysticism, find their rational solution in human practice.” Marx’s revelation was this: The fire is not in heaven; it is in you. Human beings could achieve their liberation by worshiping themselves instead of gods. This was a flattery so great that it changed the world.

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In Marx’s telling, religious faith was not a passage to heaven but a passion of the condemned. “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world,” he wrote; “it is the opium of the oppressed.” Thus Marx inverted the martyr’s hope. In Marx’s gospel, the dream of a heavenly paradise is no longer the aspiration to transcend human fate. It is the snare that seduces us into accepting our unhappy condition. The dream of heaven is a pitiful perversion of humanity’s desire to liberate itself and make the world one. Marx’s call to revolution is this: Give up the dream of a paradise in heaven in order to create a heaven on earth. In the book he mockingly called The Holy Family, he declared, “The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness.”

These words stand Marx’s proclamation on its proverbial head and show how pathetically human his prophecy was. Having dismissed religion and fantastic dreams, he succumbed to them himself. Having claimed that the world could not be saved by religion, he insisted it would be saved by abolishing religion. In place of the old redemption through the grace of God, the revolutionary offers a secular salvation. In place of the Final Judgment and a world made holy through divine intervention, the revolutionary promises Social Justice, a world redeemed through the actions of ordinary men.

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Like Islamic radicals pursuing their goal of God’s law on earth, Marx drew a line between the House of Faith and the House of War, between those who were chosen for the progressive mission and the reactionaries whose removal was necessary to transform the world.

My father was a decent man who was not prepared to harm others, even in the service of his radical faith, let alone murder innocents as Mohammed Atta did. But along with millions of decent progressive souls, my father abetted those who did just that. Progressives looked the other way and then endorsed the murder of untold innocents for the same reason that Mohammed Atta and the Islamic martyrs did: to make the new world possible. Their desire for Judgment in this life was so strong that it inspired them to believe that if enough of the guilty were punished, they could actually produce a world redeemed.

I understand Pascal’s religion. I understand his anxious bewilderment at a life of no consequence. I understand his hope for a personal redemption, and his search for an answer. But I no longer understand my father’s faith, his belief that men alone, without divine intervention, can transform the world in which they find themselves and create a paradise on earth.

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Some may regard these speculations as unreasonable. How can a man invoke his father in the same sentence as Mohammed Atta? My answer is, How not? Was Mohammed Atta not flesh and blood; if you pricked him did he not bleed? What did Mohammed Atta hope for but a better world; and what progressive soul does not wish for that?

Like my father, I once thought I knew the answers to unanswerable questions, and allowed myself to dream impossible dreams. But one day these dreams brought tragedy to my door, and I put away the illusion for good. Whoever asks how Mohammed Atta’s awful deed can be linked to decent people has not understood the deed, or who they themselves are. Ask yourself this: Up to the last act of Mohammed Atta’s life, would he have been judged an evil person? No one who actually knew him thinks so.

The act that ended Mohammed’s life and thousands of innocent others was surely evil. But except for the terrible deed itself, there is not an inconsiderate gesture attached to his memory. He appears to have been an ordinary man who was seduced into committing a great crime in the name of a greater good. Is this not the most common theme of the human tragedies of our time?

Excerpted from The End of Time, Encounter Books.
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David Horowitz is founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center (formerly the Center for the Study of Popular Culture), FrontPage Mag, and author of many books and pamphlets published over the last twenty years. Horowitz was a left-minded radical who transitioned over his life into a conservative. Yet despite the effort of the left "to deprecate and diminish him, Horowitz has succeeded in his main task of exposing the left's agenda and decoding the way it seeks to control American culture and politics." (The Life and Work of David Horowitz) He is a Contributing Author of the ARRA News Service and also shared article on Breitbart.com.

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Tags: David Horowitz, Freedom Center, The Nature of The war against us, Jihad, Left, threat To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

It’s Getting Scary . . .

. . . Evan McMullin going third party is scary considering he has no way to win and can only help Trump lose to Hillary.
{Editor Note:  He is too late for 25 states and most likely can only get on a few state ballots due to for deadline signature requirements.  He can buy in for two states.}

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

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Tags: Editorial Cartoon, AF Branco, Getting Scary, Creep Factor, Evan MCMillin, third party, independent, no way to win, helps Hillary To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

The Dumbest Idea

by Kerby Anderson, Contributing Author: Thomas Sowell recently wrote about what he thinks is the dumbest idea in politics. Now when you are talking about politics and public policy, there are lots of dumb ideas, but this one might be top of the list.

He thinks that the most stupid idea you can find in politics is “the assumption that people would be evenly or randomly distributed in incomes, institutions, occupations, or awards.” He argues that this assumption is the basis for so many political crusades and personal careers as grievance mongers.

What set him off were a number of articles that have appeared recently about the fact that females are underrepresented among the highest rated chess players and how women and minorities are under-represented in high tech jobs in Silicon Valley. Are girls who want to play chess finding doors slammed in their face? Are women and minorities who want degrees in computer science being prevented from pursuing that career? There is no evidence of that.

When you get into racial and ethnic differences, there is where this false assumption in the grievance industry really shows up. Differences in outcomes are just naturally assumed to be due to racism or discrimination of some type. Thomas Sowell points out that something as simple as age differences might explain the different economic circumstances.

For example, if every 20-year-old Puerto Rican in America had an identical income of every Japanese American (and identical incomes at every other age), the Japanese Americans as a group would still have a higher average income than Puerto Ricans in the U.S. Why? The median age of Japanese Americans is more than 20 years older. They have more work experience so they have higher incomes.

Perhaps you can now see why Thomas Sowell thinks this assumption about equality is a dumb idea. When you factor in relevant criteria and also recognize people have different gifts and talents, you begin find reasons why there are economic differences in society.
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Kerby Anderson is a radio talk show host heard on numerous stations via the Point of View Network endorsed by Dr. Bill Smith, Editor, ARRA News Service

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Pipeline’s Approved. Environmentalists Angry!

by Marita Noon: Final federal approval for what is being called the “new Keystone” came from the Army Corps of Engineers on July 26 — allowing the pipeline to move forward. The 1,168-mile long Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), also called the Bakken Pipeline, is comparable in length to the Keystone XL. It will cross four states and carry 450,000 barrels of oil a day from North Dakota to a transfer terminal in Illinois where it will connect with other pipelines and be taken to refineries.

The $3.8 billion dollar project has pitted environmentalists against economic interests.

During the Keystone fight, outspoken opponent Jane Kleeb, founder of Bold Nebraska, said: “In America we should be focused on making sure that the oil in North Dakota, Oklahoma, and others, in Montana, that that oil is getting to market.” Now, thanks to DAPL, America’s oil will have a safer way to get “to market” — freeing up as many as 750 train cars a day to transport corn, soybeans, and grain. However, as soon as DAPL came on the scene, they moved the marker, and environmental opposition was mounted. Bold Iowa, a group that shares a website with Kleeb’s Bold Nebraska, says it has members willing to risk arrest in “nonviolent protests.” They are also training monitors to report any environmental violations or hazards.

On August 1, nine pieces of heavy equipment — excavators and bulldozers — were set on fire at three different DAPL construction sites, causing $3 million in damage. At the time of this writing, no arrests have been made. Additionally, protestors have gathered on the grounds of the North Dakota Capitol, calling for Governor Jack Dalrymple and legislators to put a halt to construction of the pipeline until their lawsuits are addressed.

On its “Stop the Bakken Pipeline” page, the Iowa Sierra Club posted: “A new pipeline will delay the US transition to clean and renewable energy and more fuel-efficient vehicles. The United States needs to move away from fossil fuel extractions and to energy sources that have less impact on climate change.”

The Club’s position sounds a lot like Hillary Clinton’s. When she finally came out against Keystone, she said: “We need to be transitioning from fossil fuels to clean energy.” She called the pipeline “a distraction from important work we have to do on climate change.”

Opposition, however, is not as broad-based as the environmental groups had hoped for. At an April meeting of the Bakken Pipeline Resistance Coalition in Iowa, organizers were disappointed. Chairs were set up for 200, but only about 40 “trickled in.” In the four states the pipeline will cross, more than 90 percent, on average, of the landowners signed the voluntary easement agreements.

At its peak, the DAPL’s construction is expected to involve as many as 4000 workers in each state and will require the purchase of $200 million in American-made heavy construction and related equipment from Caterpillar, Deere, and Vermeer.

Cory Bryson, Business Agent for Laborers Local 563 reports: “We’ve been inundated with calls from all over the country from people wanting to work on this pipeline project. Mainline pipeline projects like Dakota Access provide excellent working opportunities for our members and tremendous wages. The Laborers excel at this work.” No wonder men and women want to travel to the pipeline’s locale, some workers, most without college degrees, brag about banking $2-5000 a week.

In Illinois, the Jacksonville Area Chamber of Commerce has assembled hundreds of packets with information including restaurants, health-care facilities, RV sites, and Laundromats. Executive Director Lisa Musch reports that her office has been receiving calls for months from people looking for rental properties. Teriann Gutierrez, owner of Buena Vista Farms, a resort-campground, and a retired plastics engineer, says: “I’ve been full since the beginning of April.” She told me the boost in population is bringing a lot of money into the community that has been hit hard with the loss of manufacturing jobs. DAPL is putting a lot of local people to work. Gutierrez is very thankful as the boom means she’ll be able to pay down debt.

“Like any major construction project, the DAPL will create, and more importantly maintain, high paying American jobs throughout the supply chain and throughout the nation,” North Dakota’s at-large Congressman Kevin Cramer said. “I’ve seen the crews that work on building the line and they take great pride in their craft. They spend money in local, usually rural, communities throughout the route. The steel suppliers and equipment manufacturers and distributors are just a few of the links in the chain. Everybody from fry cooks to hotel owners to financers are affected. Perhaps, most importantly, in a low price crude market, the economics of moving oil by the most efficient and safe manner possible preserves jobs on the production side of the equation as well.”

While DAPL is already creating lots of jobs, it is just one of many pipeline projects in the works that could be bringing much needed economic development to other communities and high-paying jobs for American workers. Gutierrez explained that, according to the workers staying at Buena Vista Farms: “The hardest thing is getting the permits. The long process holds up jobs.” Apparently, many of them made reservations but, then, had to delay them—and delay starting to work on the pipeline—because the permits hadn’t been approved as expected. It doesn’t have to be that way. Under President Obama, permitting for oil-and-gas activity has been slow-walked. Jobs have been held up.

Donald Trump has made clear that he’ll support pipelines and said he’ll invite TransCanada to reapply for the Keystone permit. On the other side, Clinton opposed Keystone and supports moving away from fossil fuels. Secretary of State John Kerry, Clinton’s successor, has implied that with “some 300 pipelines” we really don’t need any more. He said: “it’s not as if we’re pipeline-less.” A Clinton administration would likely extend the Obama delay tactic.

Whichever candidate wins in November will appoint agency heads who support his or her views — thus driving the policy direction.

Like Gutierrez, union members are grateful for the jobs. Last week, Dave Barnett, Pipeline Representative for the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry, told me: “We are pleased that the thousands of job opportunities associated with these projects are being decided on their need and merits, not on political pressures by extremists as the Keystone XL was.”

Whether the thousands of additional job opportunities materialize depends on American voters. Will we vote for pipelines that fuel the American economy and transport our natural resources safely and cheaply? Or, will we block job creation and economic development by voting with the environmentalists who want to “keep it in the ground?” In less than 100 days, we’ll have the answer to these important questions.
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Marita Noon is author of Energy Freedom; serves as the executive director for Energy Makes America Great Inc., and the companion educational organization, the Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy (CARE). H/T NextRight Daily.

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Tags: Pipeline’s Approved. new Keystone, Environmentalists Angry!, Marita noon, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Population to Government, “Hello”

by Paul Jacob, Contributing Author: Government "central planning"? I'm against it.

But it's socialism, fascism, and allied isms that I oppose. I'm not against "government planning."

We could use some.

Take population. When government sets up complicated institutions, like Social Security or Medicare, those institutions must match the general trend of the number and make-up of those served.

Or else fail spectacularly.

But as everyone knows, Social Security was set up when the population was growing, and expected to continue . . . at a positive rate. The whole logic of the system depended on population growth.

What if populations shrink?

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now reports that the general U.S. "fertility rate has dropped back to its all time low of 62.5 children per 1,000 American women ages 15 to 44 years," informs science writer Ronald Bailey.

The "total fertility" rate is now "1.84 children over the course of an American woman's lifetime."

A steady-state population replacement rate is thought to be 2.1 children per woman.

Trouble is, if your main institutions depend on population growth, and instead, population declines, things are liable to go catawampus.

No wonder European nations, which are undergoing even more startling negative population growth, flirt with allowing huge influxes of hard-to-assimilate refugees. At the back of governmental minds may be: how do we keep going?

Some of today's social anxiety may have to do with this shift in population growth, and government strategy.

Before politicians try to plan a whole industry -- like, say, "single-payer" medical services -- maybe they should learn how to arrange the existing government, to accommodate the direction society demonstrably wants to go.

This is Common Sense. I'm Paul is Jacob.
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Paul Jacobs is author of Common Sense which provides daily commentary about the issues impacting America and about the citizens who are doing something about them. He is also President of the Liberty Initiative Fund (LIFe) as well as Citizens in Charge Foundation. Jacobs is a contributing author on the ARRA News Service.

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My Source of Frustration

by Dr. Jack Sternberg, Contributing Author: I have been trying to figure out for some time the MAIN REASON for my political frustration. And I think I’ve found my answer and it’s not that complicated. Sure, I don’t like the Democrat's progressive ideology but that’s nothing new or different (just worse). Yes, I don’t like their candidates and elected officials and I would agree these have gotten more progressive and further left. But, all that can possibly change with each election so that’s not my major frustration.

I’ve come to realize it is something much more fundamental and frightening. It comes down to the realization that over the last 7½ years our magnificent American system of governmental checks and balances and judicial fairness has dramatically degraded. It’s the feeling that America is now progressively moving more towards a dictatorship than a true Constitutional Democracy. That the government is no longer playing by the rules of our Constitution and Bill of Rights. They seem to be able to get away with anything they want.

On May 8th, 2013, Hillary Clinton said, “What difference does it make” when testifying about the four Americans killed in Benghazi. I now have come to the realization that this one statement sums up my frustration and most likely yours. Her statement was prophetic concerning how our government has increasingly functioned under President Obama.

No matter what the issue or circumstance, this President, this Administration, this Justice Department and the Main Stream Media acts and has acted as if the statement, “what difference does it make,” embodies how they govern. They seem to know they can get away with just about anything. Lying to the public is now the standard and with little accountability. To add to this problem and our frustration are our elected Republicans. They ran as conservatives and promised to stop this degradation of American governance and ideals. Yet, those who we counted on to stop this travesty have done little to stop President Obama’s “remake” of America.

“What difference did it make” when:
- Obama claimed that the $400 million dollar Iranian ransom payment for hostages was not a ransom. But it has since been proven otherwise and that he lied. Nothing will happen to him or any government official, as usual. Where’s the outrage for what he has done and that he flat out lied to the American people?

- The DNC emails showed favoritism for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. Debbie Wasserman Schultz fell on her sword, was fired as DNC chairman and joined Hillary’s campaign. Where were the Democrats or Main Stream Media’s outrage over this primary election process manipulation or the anti-Semitic and anti-Hispanic statements in the emails? It didn’t make any difference.

- FBI director Comey proved Hillary Clinton’s email scandal potentially jeopardized American security and that she repeatedly lied to the American public. In the end, no indictment or any consequences. Democrats couldn’t care less and the Main Stream Media barely reported it or looked into it. Why let felonious activity get in the way of electing their “chosen one.”

- President Obama keeps signing significant Presidential Executive Orders to circumvent the will of Congress. Amazingly, Congress does little and just lets it happen as if there’s nothing they could do stop or reverse his orders. He’s not King Obama but President Obama. Where are the checks and balances?

- It is proven the IRS targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups and the IRS Commissioner destroyed email records he was instructed to keep and produce. There have been no consequences to anyone in the IRS. No indictment for his illegal act. Those in authority seem not to care (or are complicit).

- There has been a widespread proven VA Hospital scandal and again, no one has paid any price. If anything, there have been promotions and bonuses to those who are incompetent. Our veterans suffer but little has been done to improve the care our veterans receive. There’s been a lot of talk about the veteran’s plight but there’s still long waiting lists and insufficient care.So to sum all this up because I could go on and on, our frustration (and the sense of political hopelessness which then potentially leads to political apathy) stems from my original premise that nothing changes because, it seems as if in America today, “What difference does it make?”
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Jack Sternberg, MD, is a retired medical doctor and  Chairman, Garland County TEA Party Patriots in Arkansas, and a contributor to the ARRA News Service.

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Tags: Source of Frustration, Obama administration, Hillary Clinton, What Difference Does It Make To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

America’s Abandonment of Traditional Values Has Hurt the Black Community

The abandonment of traditional values
has negatively affected the nation as a
whole, but blacks have borne the greater
burden. ~ Dr. Walter E. Williams

by Dr. Walter E. Williams: One of the unavoidable consequences of youth is the tendency to think behavior we see today has always been. I’d like to dispute that vision, at least as it pertains to black people.

I graduated from Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin High School in 1954. Franklin’s predominantly black students were from the poorest North Philadelphia neighborhoods.

During those days, there were no policemen patrolling the hallways. Today, close to 400 police patrol Philadelphia schools. There were occasional after-school fights—rumbles, as we called them—but within the school, there was order. In contrast with today, students didn’t use foul language to teachers, much less assault them.

Places such as the Richard Allen housing project, where I lived, became some of the most dangerous and dysfunctional places in Philadelphia. Mayhem—in the form of murders, shootings, and assaults—became routine.

By the 1980s, residents found that they had to have window bars and multiple locks. The 1940s and ’50s Richard Allen project, as well as other projects, bore no relation to what they became. Many people never locked their doors; windows weren’t barred. We did not go to bed with the sound of gunshots. Most of the residents were two-parent families with one or both parents working.

How might one explain the greater civility of Philadelphia and other big-city, predominantly black neighborhoods and schools during earlier periods compared with today? Would anyone argue that during the ’40s and ’50s, there was less racial discrimination and poverty? Was academic performance higher because there were greater opportunities? Was civility in school greater in earlier periods because black students had more black role models in the form of black principals, teachers, and guidance counselors? That’s nonsense, at least in northern schools. In my case, I had no more than three black teachers throughout primary and secondary school.

Starting in the 1960s, the values that made for civility came under attack. Corporal punishment was banned. This was the time when the education establishment and liberals launched their agenda that undermined lessons children learned from their parents and the church.

Sex education classes undermined family/church strictures against premarital sex. Lessons of abstinence were ridiculed, considered passé, and replaced with lessons about condoms, birth control pills, and abortion. Further undermining of parental authority came with legal and extralegal measures to assist teenage abortions, often with neither parental knowledge nor parental consent.

Customs, traditions, moral values, and rules of etiquette are behavioral norms, transmitted mostly by example, word of mouth, and religious teachings. As such, they represent a body of wisdom distilled through the ages by experience and trial and error.

The nation’s liberals—along with the education establishment, pseudo-intellectuals, and the courts—have waged war on traditions, customs and moral values. Many people have been counseled to believe that there are no moral absolutes. Instead, what’s moral or immoral is a matter of personal convenience, personal opinion, what feels good, or what is or is not criminal.

We no longer condemn or shame self-destructive and rude behavior, such as out-of-wedlock pregnancies, dependency, cheating, and lying. We have replaced what worked with what sounds good.

The abandonment of traditional values has negatively affected the nation as a whole, but blacks have borne the greater burden. This is seen by the decline in the percentage of black two-parent families. Today, a little over 30 percent of black children live in an intact family, where as early as the late 1800s, over 70 percent did. Black illegitimacy in 1938 was 11 percent, and that for whites was 3 percent. Today, it’s respectively 73 percent and 30 percent.

It is the height of dishonesty, as far as blacks are concerned, to blame our problems on slavery, how white people behave, and racial discrimination. If those lies are not exposed, we will continue to look for external solutions when true solutions are internal. Those of us who are old enough to know better need to expose these lies.
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Walter Williams  is an American economist, social commentator, and author of over 150 publications. He has a Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from the UCLA and B.A. in economics from California State University. He also holds a Doctor of Humane Letters from Virginia Union University and Grove City College, Doctor of Laws from Washington and Jefferson College. He has served on the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics, since 1980. Visit walterewilliams.com and view a list of other articles and works. Shared by The Daily Signal.

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Joint FBI-US Attorney Probe Of Clinton Foundation Is Underway

by Richard Pollock, The Dailer Caller: Multiple FBI investigations are underway involving potential corruption charges against the Clinton Foundation, according to a former senior law enforcement official.

The investigation centers on New York City where the Clinton Foundation has its main offices, according to the former official who has direct knowledge of the activities.

Prosecutorial support will come from various U.S. Attorneys Offices — a major departure from other centralized FBI investigations.

The New York-based probe is being led by Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Bharara’s prosecutorial aggressiveness has resulted in a large number of convictions of banks, hedge funds and Wall Street insiders.

The official said involvement of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York “would be seen by agents as a positive development as prosecutors there are generally thought to be more aggressive than the career lawyers within the DOJ.”

Bharara’s official biography notes that he, “has applied renewed focus on large-scale, sophisticated financial frauds by creating two new units – the Complex Frauds Unit and the complementary Civil Frauds Unit.

“The Civil Frauds Unit has collected close to $500 million in settlements since its inception, including multi-million dollar settlements with Deutsche Bank and CitiMortgage for faulty lending practices and other fraudulent conduct.”

Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for Bharara, said he would “decline comment.” Similarly, FBI spokeswoman Samantha Shero said, “we do not have a comment on investigative activity.”

Bharara is best known for securing convictions of prominent political figures, including former New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Silver had a seemingly intractable grip on power in the state for decades. He was convicted of accepting $4 million in exchange for helping a cancer researcher and two real estate developers.

He also secured the conviction of New York Republican Majority Leader Dean Skelos, who was sentenced to five years in prison for corruption.

The former official said the investigation is being coordinated between bureau field offices and FBI managers at headquarters in Washington, D.C. The unusual process would ensure senior FBI supervisors, including Director James Comey, would be kept abreast of case progress and of significant developments.

The reliance on U.S. attorneys would be a significant departure from the centralized manner in which the FBI managed the investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server and email addresses.

That investigation was conducted with agents at FBI headquarters, who coordinated with the Department of Justice’s National Security Division (NSD).

The Clinton email probe was considered a “small cell” investigation, with FBI agents and NSD attorneys frequently conferring. Comey short-circuited the effort in early July by announcing that “no reasonable prosecutor” would try Clinton for the “careless” handling of classified material.

“Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” he announced in a July 5 press conference.

Comey, however, wouldn’t answer questions about any ongoing FBI investigation of the Clinton Foundation.

Before a July 7 congressional hearing about his decision not to recommend prosecution of Clinton, Comey told House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz, “I’m not going to comment on the existence or nonexistence of other investigations.”

“Was the Clinton Foundation tied into this investigation?” Chaffetz persisted.

“I’m not going to answer that,” Comey replied.

In its 15 years of operations, the Clinton Foundation, formally known as the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, has collected up to $2 billion from donors, according to The Washington Post. The donors include a wide range of the world’s wealthiest people: Eastern European tycoons, Arab Sheiks, African mining magnates, hedge fund billionaires and Wall Street firms.

The Post reported that the couple brought in $3 billion when campaign contributions are included in the total. “The Clintons’ fundraising operation — $3 billion amassed by one couple, working in tandem for more than four decades — has no equal,” the Post reported in a wide-ranging investigation into the sources of the couple’s funds.

In a related development Thursday, CNN reported that earlier this year, Justice Department officials in three different field offices “were in agreement a public corruption investigation should be launched” of Clinton Foundation activities.

The probe was sparked by a bank notifying the FBI of “suspicious activity” around a foreign donor to the Clinton Foundation, according to Pamela Brown, CNN’s Justice Department reporter.

Had it been launched, that investigation would have looked at conflicts of interest between requests by foreign donors and official acts by Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. CNN did not identify the bank or the foreign donor.

Brown reported the FBI and Justice Department officials met but there was “disagreement” whether to launch such an investigation. In the end, the investigation was killed.

A separate investigation was approved, however, focusing on Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who was a member of the Clinton Foundation’s board of directors for most if its existence.
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Richard Pollock is a senior investigative reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation. Previously, he won an Emmy as the Washington producer for ABC's "Good Morning America," and later served as the senior producer for "Fox News Sunday" and the Washington Bureau Chief of PJTV. Article shared under Daily Caller stated criteria.

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Tags: Clinton Foundation, Department of Justice, Director James Comey, Elections 2016, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney office for the Southern District of New York, Richard Pollock, The Daily Caller To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

86,000 Criminal Aliens Released by ICE Instead of Deported

Debbie Pelley

by Debbie Pelley, Contributing Author: U.S Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) is Chairmain of the U.S. House Oversight & Government Reform Committee. He became chairman in January 2015. He is currently serving his fourth term in the US House of Representatives. In the 114th Congress, he also serves on the House Judiciary Committee.

Their mission statement is to ensure the efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability of the federal government and all its agencies. We provide a check and balance on the role and power of Washington - and a voice to the people it serves. Genuinely good government requires a commitment to expose waste, fraud, and abuse. We ultimately report to hard working taxpayers to ensure their investment in government is spent effectively, efficiently, and transparently. They identify problems, shine light on the situation, and propose reforms to prevent abuses from being repeated.

Below Chairman Chaffetz was addressing the Immigration, and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director, Sarah Saldana. and published April, 2016.

Transcript of Chaffetz's opening comments:

Preparing for this hearing has been - it's hard to keep your cool in preparing for this meeting.
Let me tell you the heart of why we are here today. Immigration, and Customs Enforcement [ICE]. I have met with the men and women who work there, wonderful hardworking, dedicated people who do a hard and difficult job.

But I've got to tell you what's going on in Homeland Security, what's going on with Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] is one of the most infuriating things I think I've seen in this government yet.

In a three-year period immigration customs enforcement has released more than 86 thousand criminal aliens into the American public. These are people that were here illegally, got caught committing a crime, were convicted of that crime; and then instead of deporting them, they were just released back out in the United States of America.

All told they had more than 231 thousand crimes they were convicted of - 86 thousand of these people.

In 2015, 196 of these people were convicted of homicide and ICE released them back into the public rather than deporting them.

124 of those that were released between fiscal year 2010 and 2015 went on to commit homicide.

Let me give you some other stats. In 2013, ICE released 36,007 criminal aliens - criminal aliens - who were here unlawfully and present in the United States.

As of September, 2014, 5,700 of those individuals went on to commit additional crimes.

In March, 2015, ICE Director Sarah Saldana testified before this committee that during fiscal year 2014 that ICE released another 30,000 individuals with criminal convictions. In fact, ICE released 30,558 criminal aliens in 2014 who had a combined 79,059 convictions instead of deporting them. Of those 30,558 criminal aliens, 1,895 were charged with another crime following their release.

Their convictions included sex offenses, assault, burglary, robbery, driving under the influence and ICE told us that in 2016 the agency released 19,723 criminal aliens with a combined 64,197 convictions including 934 sex offenses, 804 robberies, 216 kidnappings and 196 homicide related convictions and that's on your watch.

They were here illegally; they got caught committing a crime; they were convicted of the crime; and instead of following the law and deporting them you released back out into the public and they commit more crimes. How do you look those people in the eyes? How do you go back to a family and say you know they were in our detention but we just thought it would be better to let them out in the United States of America. That is so wholly unacceptable.

I want to show you this football stadium. This is Notre Dame football stadium, You've released more people that were convicted of a crime that should have been deported than you could fit into that stadium. You would still have people waiting outside the line. Those are the criminals that you released instead of deporting. One of the people that is very passionate about this issue and has spent a lot of time with that is our colleague Mr. DeSantis of Florida. I would like to yield time to him.A second video: Criminal Aliens Released by the Department of Homeland Security Part II:
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Debbie Pelley is Retired Arkansas Teacher of 27 years. She is presently a grassroots citizen activist, researcher and writer who advocates for Arkansans and for transparent and limited government. She is a contribution author on the ARRA News Service.

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Tags: Debbie Pelley, Chairman Jason Chaffetz, U.S. House Oversight & Government Reform Committee, 86,000 Criminal Aliens, released, ICE To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!