Lock up the Leakers

by Newt Gingrich: The leaking of evidence about the Manchester bombing should be the final straw.

These leaks came from the professional intelligence community – not the Trump White House.

The leaks are proof that the deep state of professional bureaucrats is so out of control it believes it can break the law at will.
This destructive lawlessness is reinforced, fed, and strengthened by the elite media’s hunger for sensational stories at the expense of the safety and security of our country and of our allies.

The number of unnamed sources who now populate front page sensational “scoops” is a sickening commentary on the decline of patriotism, professionalism, and belief in the rule of law.

One destructive result of this kind of illegal behavior is that the number of allies willing to share secrets and intelligence with America will decline. If you think your classified information is going to end up on the front page of the Washington Post or the New York Times, why would you risk sharing it with the irresponsible and unprofessional Americans? Your investigation, your sources, and the very lives of your agents could be endangered by American arrogance and law breaking.

The enabler in this destructive lawlessness is the news media. Fred Friendly, who was Edward R. Murrow’s producer, used to say just because you have the right to say or write something doesn’t mean it is the right thing to do.

The elite media has completely forgotten Friendly’s standard and is using the First Amendment’s freedom of the press as an excuse for publishing unending destructive leaks and smears.

Part of the problem is the elite media’s desperation to undermine and attack President Trump and his team. The growing number of stories based on unnamed or anonymous sources is just further proof of the media’s mania.

President Trump was right to challenge the news media to only print stories they could source by name. He knew that 90 percent of the attack stories would disappear because no one would take responsibility for the smears, lies, and innuendos.

The political attack stories are disgusting, but national security leaks are downright dangerous.

The solution is to start arresting and trying people who violate their oath of secrecy.

Historically, the American government took classified information seriously. Americans who fought in World War II and who defended freedom throughout the Cold War (including in Korea and Vietnam) guarded classified information with their lives. They understood that loose lips do in fact sink ships.

President Trump is exactly right to ask Attorney General Sessions and the Justice Department to begin investigating every leak that contains classified information.

It is time to once again get serious about protecting America’s secrets as a key step toward protecting American lives.
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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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Tags: Newt Gingrich, commentary, lock up, leakers To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Virginia’s Democrat Forum: Who’s The Most Anti-Gun of Them All?

by Rachel Lawrence: After every Presidential election, there is one state that the country focuses on for the off-year cycle: Virginia.

Remember, Virginia is the state that overwhelmingly elected Republican Governor Bob McDonnell a mere year after Barack Obama won the Presidency in 2008. Virginia was the state that showed that the election of President Obama was NOT a referendum on the direction our country was headed, paving the road for the Republican sweeps of 2010.

In 2017, Virginia again stands as the state that will show the direction our country is headed.

This past Sunday, two Democrat candidates for Governor spoke at a forum hosted by Americans for Responsible Solutions PAC, a group best known because it was founded by former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly.

Historically, Virginia is extremely pro-2nd Amendment. Therein lies the difficulty for Democrat candidates. Exactly how anti-gun can a Democrat candidate be in a state that loves its guns?

One of these Democrat gubernatorial candidates, Tom Perriello, knows firsthand the benefits that can be gained by an NRA endorsement, having earned an NRA endorsement as an incumbent in 2010. Former Congressman Perriello is from rural Virginia, one of the few areas where a pro-gun Democrat is fairly par for the course. However, he took his opportunity during Sunday’s forum to distance himself from the NRA. According to the Kingstowne Patch:

[Perriello] says the NRA’s push for guns in schools and college campuses was a “turning point” for many, and he would oppose such legislation as governor.His opponent in the Democrat primary on June 13, current Lt. Governor Ralph Northam, mentioned his time serving in Operation Desert Storm and stated,“I know all too well what assault weapons do to human beings, and I am adamant when I say we do not need assault weapons on our streets and our society.”Both candidates came out in support of universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, and a one-gun-a-month policy, a policy that Virginia Democrats have been attempting to pass for decades.

Both of these candidates have received out-of-state donations totaling over six figures. In Perriello’s case, the out-of-state donations have topped $1 million. This is particularly intriguing because it highlights the problem both Northam and Perriello are facing: how to keep the out-of-state big money donors happy and also gain the votes of Virginians.

In light of their current stances on gun ownership, both Perriello and Northam have received ‘F’ ratings from the NRA.

In direct contrast are the Republican candidates, who are all pro-2nd Amendment. Although they are also facing off in a primary on June 13, Republican Candidates Ed Gillespie, Corey Stewart, and State Senator Frank Wagner have all highlighted their commitment to the 2nd Amendment.

Upon seeing the lengths to which the Democrat candidates will go to appease out of state donors, liberal progressives with an anti-gun agenda, and the left wing media instead of fighting for the constitutional rights that the majority of Virginians hold dear, the choice seems clear in this election for those who advocate for 2nd Amendment rights.

Although Virginia was once a state where candidates were free to think for themselves and support the beliefs of their constituents, the Democrat candidates of 2017 appear to now be merely puppets of a larger outside agenda and should not be supported in this campaign by those who truly appreciate their 2nd Amendment rights.
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Rachel Lawrence writes for BearingArms.com.

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Tags: 2nd Amendment, Americans For Responsible Solutions, Debate, NRA, Virginia, Rachel Lawrence, BearingArms.com To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

When a Dem Congressman Attacked a Student Journalist, the Media Didn't Bat an Eye

Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-NC)

PJ Media: When GOP candidate Greg Gianforte tackled a Guardian reporter this week, the media went nuts. Chuck Todd was surprised that, even with an assault charge against their opponent, the Democrats couldn't win an election; and Don Lemon insisted that President Trump was to blame because of the anti-journalist culture he's ignited. The whole country was aghast.

But in 2010, when a sitting Democrat congressman, Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-NC), attacked a student journalist, the media didn't bat an eye. No wall-to-wall coverage, no nationwide attention. Watch this video of the incident, so you can see the full extent of the partisan double standard.

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Tags: PJ Media, Congress, Journalism, Media, Rep. Bob Etheridge, D-NC,attacked student jounalist 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 Democrats’ Second Secession & America’s New Civil War . . .

. . . How to look at the bizarre turn our political life has taken.

U.S. Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA)

by David Horowitz, Contributing Author: Senator Kamala Harris is a rising star in the Democratic Party, frequently mentioned on the short-list of contenders for the next presidential race. In a recent commencement speech at Howard University Harris issued a call to arms, urging her audience to rally behind the Democrats’ resistance to the Trump administration: “Graduates, indeed we have a fight ahead. This is a fight to define what kind of country we are, and it’s a fight to determine what country we will be.”

Ignore for a moment the impropriety of addressing a class of students as though they were Democratic Party operatives. Focus instead on the statement itself. The call “to define what kind of country we are” is an ominous agenda for America. Compared to other nations, America is absolutely unique in one regard: it is a country defined in its creation. Normally, nations have been formed on the basis of common origins, ethnicities, and languages – a modern form of tribalism. In contrast, America was created by peoples of diverse origins and ethnicities and on principles that were universal. The American union was forged in a set of founding documents that insisted on the equality of citizens – regardless of origins. The idea that creates the identity “American” is summarized in America’s official motto: e pluribus unum – out of many, one.

It took a Civil War and two hundred years of sacrifice and struggle to achieve a polity that approached this ideal. If one political faction is now able to redefine the ideal to conform to its own sectarian beliefs, the country we have known will cease to exist. But that is just what the current creed of the Democratic Party - “identity politics” - entails, and is why the current divisions in our political life seem so intractable. Identity politics is, in fact, the antithesis of the American idea. It is a reversion to tribal loyalties. It regards diverse origins – colors, ethnicities, genders and classes - as primary, and proposes a hierarchy of privilege based on them, which it justifies as a reversal of past oppressions.

It is not the proper role of an opposition party in a democracy to mount a “resistance” to a duly elected government and press for its overthrow at the very outset of its tenure. But that is precisely what the Democrats have done in the first months of the Trump administration. For the second time in its history, the Democratic Party has opted to secede from the Union and its social contract. This time there is not going to be an actual civil war because the federal government is now so powerful that whoever controls it will decide the outcome. The passions of an irreconcilable conflict are still present but they are channeled into a political confrontation over the executive power.

In launching their resistance, Democrats rejected the honeymoon normally afforded to incoming presidents. Until now this tradition has functioned as something of a sacred political rite. Campaigns are by their nature divisive, and they inevitably exaggerate the differences between factions of the electorate. The presidential honeymoon is designed to reunite the contending factions as constituents of a shared constitutional republic. It allows an incoming president to take his place as the chief executive of all the people, to have his cabinet confirmed, and to launch his agendas before the normal contentions of a democracy resume. It ratifies the peaceful transition of power and reasserts the principle that as Americans we are one.

According to the Gallup organization, the normal duration of a presidential honeymoon in recent times has been seven months. The Democrats didn’t give Trump seven seconds. While he was president-elect, they were already attacking him as a racist, a “white nationalist,” anti-immigrant, and anti-Muslim; also an anti-democratic “fascist”- a would-be dictator. His election was called illegitimate, the alleged agent of a Russian conspiracy. This meme swiftly metastasized into one of the most bizarre witch-hunts in our political history, a “red scare” without actual reds, in which Democrat after Democrat stepped forward to allege that Trump had colluded with Vladimir Putin to steal the election.

Trump did not get confirmation hearings for the team he was hoping to put in place. He got a witch-hunt instead - a series of attempted character assassinations directed at his nominees. Most outrageously, his candidate for Attorney General, Senator Jeff Sessions, was smeared as a “racist” by one Democratic senator after another beginning with Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer. Yet, Sessions’ public career reflected values that were quite the opposite. It included service as the attorney general of a deep south state, in which capacity he had prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan and desegregated the public schools. These acts reflected his actual commitment to civil rights. Schumer and his colleagues had served alongside Sessions for ten and twenty years, and knew very well that their accusations were defamatory and false. But they persisted in them anyway.

So that no one would mistake their hostile intent, the Democrats’ attacks were accompanied by calls for Trump’s impeachment, despite the fact that he had hardly been in office. These were echoed in massive street demonstrations, organized and funded by core Democratic groups, which featured chants of “Not My President,” claims by celebrity speakers that Trump’s election was “worse than being raped,” and addled wishes to “blow up the White House.” Each protest – no matter its official organizing premise - was orchestrated to underscore the identity-driven accusations that the Trump regime was anti-woman, anti-black, anti-Muslim, and anti-immigrant. Trump and his supporters were in turn anathemized as members of a hostile tribe – “white nationalists.”

Behind this Democratic rage is the conviction that the Trump administration represents a reactionary throwback to the status quo ante before Obama began “fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” as he promised on the eve of his election. The new order towards which progressives think they are marching is called “social justice.” To Democrats the hierarchy of privileges they offer groups on the basis of ethnicity, skin color, and gender is “social justice.” It defines the society they intend to create, which in their eyes is mortally threatened by the Trump regime and its conservative supporters.

During the second presidential debate, there was a seminal moment illuminating this conflict. It occurred when Trump turned to the fifty million viewers in the television audience, and said, “You have to understand, Hillary has tremendous hatred in her heart.” He was referring to Clinton’s campaign remark that her opponents belonged in “a basket of deplorables – irredeemables,” whom she went on to name: “Racists, sexists, homophobes, Islamophobes, xenophobes…” Trump, she said, had “raised them up,” and that made him “unfit” to be America’s president.

The condemnation of her political opponents is not unique to Clinton but is shared by Democrats generally. There is hardly a conservative in the country who has been in an argument with a so-called liberal who has not also been called a racist, sexist, homophobe, etc. - terms designed to drum them out of decent society. They are expressions of the hatred progressives feel towards anyone who opposes their crusade to re-define America’s identity in the interests of “social justice.”

The theory behind “identity politics” is an ideology the political left refers to as “cultural Marxism.” This is a perspective that takes Marx’s view that society is divided into warring classes, and extends it to encompass races, genders, and ethnicities. It is a vision that regards one group’s success as another group’s oppression. “Social justice” - the proposed remedy for inequality and division - punishes oppressor groups by redistributing their incomes and privileges to the “under-represented,” “marginalized” and otherwise oppressed. It is a vision that disregards the accountability of individuals and ascribes to group identities the inequalities that are allegedly unjust.

The left has created a term of art – “people of color” – to promote its collectivist views on ethnicity and race. “People of color” is not grammatical English - we do not refer to “crayons of color” or “televisions of color.” It is a French construction, reflecting the way French people speak (personnes de couleur). “People of color” is an invention of ideologues to serve an ideological purpose, which is to organize the world into the categories of cultural Marxism - into oppressors and oppressed. To understand its usage one has only to look to Mexico, a country whose illegal migrants have been one of the flashpoints of the war against the Trump administration, as Democrats have rallied to their defense.

Mexico is composed of two main ethnic groups: the descendants of the Spanish conquistadors who enslaved and slaughtered the indigenous Indians, and the descendants of the Indians. In other words, actual oppressors and actual oppressed. When members of these two groups cross into the United States, however, they both become “people of color,” therefore oppressed; therefore, deserving of special sensitivities, special allowances, special privileges – all without regard to their individual histories and merits. That is why criminal migrants from Mexico, who are here illegally, can commit felonies against Americans, including rape and murder, and become a cause for progressives and Democrats, who create “sanctuary cities” and policies to protect them. Because they are people of color and allegedly oppressed.

Maharajahs in India are also “people of color.” Islamic beheaders and crucifiers in Syria are “people of color” too. The whole world is people of color except … white people – the designated oppressors. Identity politics is both racist and totalitarian. It obliterates the individual in favor of the group. It removes the agency of individuals as subjects and turns them into objects. After this is understood, there is no longer any mystery as to why advocates of identity politics should come into existential collision with the American framework and its defenders, personified by President Trump.

The 2016 platform of the Democratic Party vows “a societal transformation” that will “end institutional and systemic racism in our society.” This is the ideology of cultural Marxism. “Institutional racism” as a systemic American problem is a political fiction. Americans outlawed “institutional racism” half a century ago with the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965. Any incidence of institutional racism today is actionable in the courts – the utra-liberal courts that threw out Trump’s executive orders on extra-legal grounds because of off-the-cuff remarks he made on the campaign trail.

“Systemic racism” and “institutional racism” are anti-American mythologies that drive the Democratic Party’s political agendas. The Democratic platform and Democrats generally, regard every social disparity as prima facie evidence of racial or gender oppression, and attribute such disparities not to individual decisions and performances but to un-named “policies,” which if they actually existed would be illegal. Consider this plank in the 2016 Democratic Party platform:CLOSING THE RACIAL WEALTH GAP

America’s economic inequality problem is even more pronounced when it comes to racial and ethnic disparities in wealth and income. It is unacceptable that the median wealth for African Americans and Latino Americans is roughly one-tenth that of white Americans. These disparities are also stark for American Indians and certain Asian American subgroups, and may become even more significant when considering other characteristics such as age, disability status, sexual orientation, or gender identity.The platform then explains: “The racial wealth and income gaps are the result of policies that discriminate against people of color and constrain their ability to earn income and build assets to the same extent as other Americans.” But if such policies existed they would be illegal under the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965. The disparities, on the other hand, are realistically explained by individual details, for example the presence (or lack) of two-parent families, the degree of education, or whether (in the case of Latino Americans), English is spoken in the home. More generally, the ability to accumulate wealth is determined in large part by genes and by cultural attitudes that guide the choices families and individuals make. Otherwise Japanese Americans, who are people of color, would not be among America’s richest (and therefore most privileged) economic groups.

The same mythology characterizes the Democrats’ claims about gender disparities. The Clinton campaign presented itself as a quest for equality for women. According to candidate Clinton, women across America were being paid only 76 cents on the dollar for the same skills, job experience and work as men. But if this were so, it would also be illegal under the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act passed as long ago as 1963 by a Congress dominated by men. After the election, the New York Times published a column inspired by studies that ratified what conservatives had been saying for a generation: “The Gender Pay Gap Is Largely Because of Motherhood.” The disparity exists because child-rearing takes women out of the work force for extended periods, and also causes them to seek flex-time occupations that pay less.[1]

Similarly, the animus behind Democratic assaults on Republicans and their support for law and order as “racist” is the direct consequence of viewing all social disparities through the distorted lens of oppression politics. Thus, the “over-representation” of African-Americans in the prison system is not because of systemic racism. Police forces have been integrated for decades, along with the entire criminal justice system. African-Americans are “over-represented” in the prison population because they are “over-represented” in the commission of actual crimes. Democrats’ embrace of the Black Lives Matter movement and its efforts to cast career criminals as civil rights victims and law enforcement officials as villains is an inevitable consequence of ignoring the specific circumstances of the incidents under review, and forcing them into the melodramatic framework of “racism” and “oppression.”[2] The “social justice” future to which these attitudes lead can be seen on college campuses, the experimental laboratories of the left, which are now characterized by privileged admissions and tuition scholarships distributed on a racial basis, “safe spaces” for people of color only, and, at Harvard, segregated graduations for blacks.

Trump and his followers not only understand the fateful nature of the conflict triggered by decades of these assaults. Their campaign to “Make America Great Again” is inspired by them. In his inaugural address Trump opposed to the progressive vision and its divisive consequences the American idea – e pluribus unum. Referring to those Americans who had been economically left behind, Trump said, “We are one nation and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny. The oath of office, I take today, is an oath of allegiance to all Americans.” Trump then elaborated on the idea that Americans are united as equal citizens: “Through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other. When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.” And finally: “It’s time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget, that whether we are black, or brown, or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots. We all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same, great American flag. And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the windswept plains of Nebraska, they look up at the at the same night sky, they fill their heart with the same dreams and they are infused with the breath of life by the same almighty Creator.”

In spirit, this echoed the address by the last man to have war declared on his presidency by an opposition party even as entered the office. “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war,” Lincoln said in his first inaugural. “You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ it…. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
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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, Democrats, Second Secession, America’s New Civil War, U.S. Senator, Kamala Harris To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Why Is Debbie Wasserman-Shultz Trying To Commandeer Evidence In The House IT Security Breach Scandal?

by Printus LeBlanc: In early February, five employees of the House of Representatives were banned from the House IT network. The five former House employees are the subject of a criminal investigation by the Capitol Hill Police. They are accused of stealing equipment and accessing House IT systems without lawmakers’ knowledge. The former employees were “shared” IT employees. “Shared” means they worked for several offices, performing IT functions.

The five employees worked for over 20 members, to include members from the Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees and former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Shultz (D-Fla.). You may remember Wasserman-Shultz has had IT issues in the past when she was chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee in 2016.

The salaries of the employees should have been the first clue something was not right. Anyone that has worked on Capitol Hill will tell you, the salaries are not great. Most staffers can expect to start in the $30-40,000 range, not a lot for one of the most expensive cities in America. However, at least three of the staffers in question were making over $160,000 per year, three times the average IT staffer salary. To put that number into perspective, Chiefs of Staff, with dozens of years on the Hill, rarely make that much.

The story gets worse from there. All five employees are related, three of them were brothers, Jamal, Imran, and Abid Awan, with Hina Alvi being married to Imran, and Natalia Sova being married to one of the other brothers. Hina has apparently fled the country with her children, to Pakistan, where her family reportedly has significant assets and VIP protection.

The strangeness of the case does not end there. The brothers also had a car dealership, Cars International A (CIA) they used for supplemental income. The dealership was not doing so well, and fell behind in payments to their vendors. One vendor, Rao Abbas, threatened to sue them, and suddenly he received a paycheck from U.S. Rep. Theodore Deutch (D-Fla.). That payment has yet to be explained.

The brothers then took out a $100,000 loan from Dr. Ali Al-Attar. The brothers were unable to repay that loan, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem, because Dr. Attar is a fugitive from U.S. authorities. Attar was indicted on tax fraud charges after the IRS and FBI discovered he used multiple bank accounts to hide income, in March 2012. The doctor is also believed to have ties to Hezbollah, the terrorist group. Al-Attar has since fled to Iraq.

As the investigation continued, it kept getting worse. Several offices hired new IT staff, and found some of the computers were sending data to an offsite server. It is unknown what type of data or where the server is located yet, but several IT professionals on the Hill now believe members could be subject to blackmail because of the data theft. The violations were so bad, one staffer said, “There’s no question about it: If I was accused of a tenth of what these guys are accused of, they’d take me out in handcuffs that same day, and I’d never work again.”

The case took another turn in a committee hearing on the Capitol Hill Police budget last week. Wasserman-Shultz took the opportunity to confront the Capitol Hill Police Chief about evidence in possession of the police. The Congresswoman wants a laptop computer back that is currently considered evidence by the Capitol Hill Police. The laptop allegedly was assigned to Imran Awan, the ringleader of the group. The laptop was found hidden in a different building from the one Wasserman-Shultz works in. The Congresswoman has an office in the Longworth building, but the laptop was found “hidden in an unused crevice of the Rayburn House Office Building.” The Capitol Police seized it and are treating it as evidence in their ongoing criminal investigation.

While at the committee hearing, Wasserman-Shultz berated the Chief of Capitol Hill Police about procedures for getting the laptop back. The Chief explained what the procedures are, but the procedure changes if the laptop is evidence in a criminal investigation. The Congresswoman did not like that answer, and continued to ask the same question over and over. To his credit, the Chief answered the same way over and over. Finally, the Congresswoman threatened “consequences” for not returning her equipment. The video can be seen here, the exchange begins at 1:24:25.

This brings us to a question being asked a lot in Washington D.C. lately. What is obstruction of justice? The phrase seems to be the latest buzzword of the D.C. establishment since James Comey was fired earlier this month. Did Wasserman-Shultz attempt to “obstruct justice” by demanding the investigating authority hand over evidence in a criminal matter, or suffer “consequences”? Remember, the Congresswoman is on the committee that controls the budget of the very person she threatened “consequences”.

The Congresswoman was singing a different tune earlier this month about “obstruction”. Wasserman-Shultz commented about the Comey firing, saying “If President Trump pressured then-FBI Director Comey to close down an investigation into former National Security Advisor Flynn, it would represent an egregious corrosion of the rule of law.” Does this mean the Congresswoman is representing an “egregious corrosion of the rule of law”, her words not mine?

This latest incident with Wasserman-Shultz has created more questions than answers. Why would the Congresswoman risk “obstruction of justice” to get this computer back? What is Wasserman-Shultz trying to hide? If there was a potential breach of IT security on Capitol Hill, wouldn’t the Congresswoman want that cleared up?

We have a legitimate security breach and a potential blackmail situation occurring on Capitol Hill, but the press is focused on a Russia story still with no evidence. We have an offsite server sucking up Congressional data, with criminal suspects fleeing to Pakistan for protection, but the press wants to focus on a special counsel with no apparent crime to investigate. We have a member of Congress pressuring the Capitol Hill Police on camera, but the press wants to talk about a memo no one has seen.

Where is the call for a special counsel on this scandal? Could it be Congress was breached by a foreign intelligence service, and no one wants to admit it, or did Congress get ripped off by a family of scammers? We need to find out the truth, no matter how unpleasant.
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Printus LeBlanc is a contributing reporter at Americans for Limited Government.

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Tags: Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, Trying To, Commandeer Evidence, House IT, Security Breach Scandal To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Minimum Wage

by Kerby Anderson, Contributing Author: Raising the minimum wage effectively eliminates entry-level jobs. That is conclusion of most academic studies. And the greatest negative impact is on teenage unemployment.

That is why Larry Elder wrote to Jane Fonda before she went to Detroit to campaign for a higher minimum wage. He quoted from economist David Neumark who examined all of the major academic minimum-wage studies from the previous two decades. Of these more than 100 studies, 85 percent found that minimum-wage laws destroy jobs and cause workers to lose jobs.

Larry Elder didn’t mention the other few studies that did not show this, but I will. David Neumark and his colleagues even went back and examined one study sometimes cited by proponents of minimum wage. They raised serious question about the research methods that were used and the conclusions that were drawn.

Teen unemployment has been above 20 percent for years, and it has been above 30 percent for black teenagers. Larry Elder says: “Believe it or not, before minimum-wage laws took effect, a black teenager was actually more likely to have a job than a white teen.”

When he was alive economist Milton Friedman called the minimum wage law “one of the most, if not the most, anti-black laws on the statute books.” He explained: “The do-gooders believe that by passing a law saying that nobody gets less than $2 an hour or $2.50 an hour, or whatever the minimum wage is, you are helping poor people who need the money. You are doing nothing of the kind. What you are doing is to assure that people whose skills are not sufficient to justify that kind of a wage will be unemployed.”

There are many things we can and should do to help black teenagers in Detroit get jobs. But increasing that minimum wage is not the way to do it.
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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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Tags: Kerby Anderson, Viewpoints, Point of View, Minimum Wage To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Just Beat It . . .

. . . The media has beat the Russia Trump collusion theory beyond recognition, and still no evidence.

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

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Tags: Just Beat It, Media, Russia Trump collusion theory, still no evidence, AF Branco, editorial cartoon To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Patriot Graves

Memorial Day 2017

by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Monday marks Memorial Day, a national observance first known as Decoration Day. The first Memorial Day was observed on May 30, 1868, on the orders of General John Logan, commander of the Grand Army of the Republic. Flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.

Initially meant as a time to remember those who fell during the bloody battles of our brutal Civil War, the holiday's significance has been extended to honor all those who paid the ultimate price for our nation.

As they have done every year since 1948, soldiers of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment placed flags at more than 235,000 gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery. They will remain at Arlington National Cemetery throughout the holiday weekend, making sure that the flags remain upright.

Unfortunately, over time Memorial Day weekend has become more of an occasion for relaxation than for reflection about our patriots' graves and the values for which they gave "the last full measure of devotion." This weekend I encourage you to do both -- relax and reflect.

Have that picnic, hug your kids and have some fun at the beach. But let's also remind ourselves about what happened at Concord Bridge, on the fields of Antietam and the beaches of Normandy, and that it still requires vigilance and courage to preserve liberty today.

Explain to your children the price that was paid to stop the evil of fascism and the cancer of Soviet communism. Tell them why there was a Berlin Wall, what happened at Okinawa, at Ground Zero and over the fields of Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Explain to them why we still fight in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria against the existential threat to Western Civilization posed by radical Islamic supremacism.

Take a moment this weekend to teach our children and grandchildren to love the things we love, and to honor the things we honor. Finally, let's remind ourselves that liberty is a gift from God and that each generation has paid in flesh and blood to preserve it.

As General George Patton said, "It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived."
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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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Tags: Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families, Patriot Graves, Memorial Day 2017 To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Minimum Shock

by Paul Jacob, Contributing Author: “Three restaurants vacated the Bay this week, with Berkeley’s Bistro Liaison getting the most attention,” the San Francisco edition of Eater informs us. “It’s a bittersweet exit for the owners, who plan to start new careers.”

The week in question was in February. But this was not an isolated event. Sixty-four Bay-area restaurants and fast food joints closed their doors this last winter.

That is a lot of closures.

Why?

Every eatery has a different story, but the entry December 17* provides a big clue: minimum wage hikes.

Citizens should hardly be surprised. They got what they asked for. The minimum wage went up to $13.00 per hour last July, and will go up another two bucks next year. And this was the result of a citizen initiative. “On November 4, 2014, San Francisco voters passed Proposition J, raising the minimum wage to $15.00 by 2018,” the City Office of Labor Standards and Enforcement tells us.

And the thing about minimum wage laws is that they do not — either by magic or by law — directly raise any wages. They, by law and quite directly, prohibit wage contracts below the minimum established.

Businesses then react, struggling to accommodate the newly imposed costs. Sometimes they keep all their employees and economize on other inputs, but often they must re-arrange hours and workers and whole production schemes.

If hemmed in elsewhere, they just go out of business.

Just as one should expect, according to the law of supply and demand.**

Citizens might wish to reconsider. That is, initiate a measure to repeal a previously successful initiative . . . that gave us this unsuccessful policy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The entry reads thusly: “OAKLAND — alaMar Kitchen and Bar as you know it is shuttering on December 17, but will reopen in the new year with a fast casual format. The owner points to minimum wage raises and the cost of doing business in the Bay Area as the reasons cited for the closure/change.”

** It is often said that businesses just “raise prices” and “pass along the costs” to consumers in general, but, for reasons of supply and demand, they cannot do this without decreasing sales and thus revenue.
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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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Trump’s Move to Deter Russian Aggression

 F-15C Eagles from Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England

by Nolan Peterson: KYIV, Ukraine — On Tuesday, President Donald Trump presented a budget request to Congress that would boost spending for an Obama-era buildup of U.S. military forces in Europe meant to deter Russia from military provocations and show NATO and its European partners that the U.S. is committed to their defense.

“Such a request is more reassuring for American allies and partners in Europe like Ukraine than mere declarations from senior Trump administration officials,” Mykola Bielieskov, an analyst with the Institute of World Policy, a Ukrainian think tank, told The Daily Signal.

The Obama administration announced the European Reassurance Initiative, or ERI, in June 2014, three months after Russia illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and launched military operations in eastern Ukraine. The program called for a buildup of U.S. military forces and equipment in Eastern and Central Europe, as well as rotating military exercises throughout the region.

Trump’s 2018 budget calls for a $1.4 billion increase in ERI funds—a 41 percent increase over the $3.4 billion tagged in 2017 by the Obama administration. The move, which U.S. military forces in Europe praised, sent a reassuring message to both NATO’s eastern flank as well as countries throughout Eastern Europe that see Russia as an existential threat and are looking for U.S. protection.

“From the Polish perspective, the deployment of U.S. troops to Poland and Baltic states means a real deterrence since it increases the probability of the U.S. forces engagement in case of potential aggression from Russia,” Daniel Szeligowski, senior research fellow at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, told The Daily Signal.

“The more combat-ready U.S. troops there are, the higher such a probability is,” Szeligowski said.

In Ukraine, Trump’s budget proposal sent a reassuring message to a country that has been in a proxy war with Russia since April 2014 that has, so far, killed about 10,000 people.

“Kyiv is especially pleased as $150 million might be allocated to train, equip, and reform Ukraine armed forces if [Trump’s] budget is approved,” Bielieskov said.

Bielieskov added that Trump’s proposed budget “is the best possible proof that security of Central and Eastern Europe continues to be one of the major priorities for the Donald J. Trump administration despite previous contradictory statements.”

U.S. military forces in Europe also hailed the proposed boost in spending to defend Europe from Russia.

“As we continue to address the dynamic security environment in Europe, [European Reassurance Initiative] funding increases our joint capabilities to deter and defend against Russian aggression,” Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of U.S. European Command, said in an emailed statement to journalists on Wednesday.

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a request for comment.

In Trump’s $4.1 trillion 2018 budget, overall U.S. defense spending is slated to increase by 10.1 percent—from $521.8 billion in 2017 to a proposed $574.5 billion in 2018.

Doubling Down
During a joint press conference with the Polish president on June 3, 2014, President Barack Obama said the European Reassurance Initiative was a “powerful demonstration of America’s unshakeable commitment to our NATO allies.”

“The United States will pre-position more equipment in Europe,” Obama said in 2014. “We will be expanding our exercises and training with allies to increase the readiness of our forces. We’ll increase the number of American personnel—Army and Air Force units—continuously rotating through allied countries in Central and Eastern Europe. And we will be stepping up our partnerships with friends like Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia as they provide for their own defense.”

Ukrainian volunteer paramilitary troops in 2015.

Totaling roughly $1 billion in 2014, the ERI was meant to be temporary. However, Russia’s military brinkmanship in Eastern Europe and its ongoing proxy war in Ukraine have kept the program alive and growing.

Obama’s last budget in 2017 quadrupled ERI funding from $789 million to more than $3.4 billion, including $335 million in nonlethal military aid for Ukraine. That year, Congress also appropriated $75 million as part of a combined State Department and Defense Department fund to train Ukrainian forces.

Today, about 7,000 U.S. military personnel are deployed throughout Europe on a rotational basis under the ERI’s umbrella. Yet, the number of U.S. personnel permanently based in Europe has not increased, according to U.S. European Command.

The U.S. has about 35,000 total military personnel in Europe. Recently, the U.S. Army deployed an additional heavy brigade to Poland, comprising about 3,500 troops and 87 tanks, as well as a unit of 500 troops to Romania. The U.S. military also has personnel in Ukraine conducting a training mission.

“These significant investments will further galvanize U.S. support to the collective defense of our NATO allies, as well as bolster the security and capacity of our U.S. partners,” Scaparrotti said.

Up North
This week, U.S. F-15 fighters and KC-135 aerial refueling tankers are deployed on the northern edge of Europe as part of a biennial military exercise in a region that has become a hotbed of tension with Russia.

The exercise, called Arctic Challenge, will last from May 22 to June 2, and is being hosted by Norway, Sweden, and Finland—of which Norway is the only NATO country.

The exercise underscores a constant drumbeat of temporary deployments and military exercises undertaken by U.S. military forces across Europe since 2014, which, while not always specifically advertised as a message of deterrence to Russia, have nonetheless been interpreted that way by Moscow more often than not. The temporary deployment of U.S. Marines to Norway this year, for example, drew sharp condemnation from the Kremlin.

“The scenarios are generic in nature, to solve an ill-defined problem in the air,” Lt. Col. Jason Zumwalt, 493rd Fighter Squadron commander, told The Daily Signal in a telephone interview from the Arctic Challenge exercise on Tuesday.

Zumwalt said Arctic Challenge, which comprises more than 100 military aircraft from 11 countries, is not intended to simulate a conflict with Russia.

“We’re not looking at any specific threats,” Zumwalt said. “Yesterday’s mission was defending an area from attack by a superior force—to protect a region of sky from enemy incursion.”

The exercise is taking place totally within the airspace confines of the three Nordic host countries—two of which, Norway and Finland, share land borders with Russia. Yet, Zumwalt said the risk would be “very low” for an unintended encounter between U.S. and Russian warplanes.

“Our pilots are professionals and they’re trained in what to do if they’re intercepted,” the U.S. fighter squadron commander said.

Tripwire
Trump’s budget request to extend and expand the European Reassurance Initiative highlights how the Russian threat to NATO and its European partners has not dimmed in the intervening years.

Since 2014, Russia has aggressively tested NATO’s air defenses in Eastern Europe and the Arctic with warplane flybys while simultaneously building up its military hardware in places like the Kaliningrad exclave and Crimea.

Resultantly, the security situation in Eastern Europe has been upheaved. Due to the Russian threat, the Baltic countries of Latvia and Lithuania, both NATO members, have had the two fastest-growing military budgets in the world since 2014, according to IHS Jane’s. And Poland, also a NATO member, has doubled its military spending since 2006.

Ukrainian soldiers at a staging area near the front lines.

At the NATO summit in July 2016 in Warsaw, Poland, alliance leaders announced the planned deployment of four 1,000-troop-strong combat battalions to Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania on a rotational basis.

NATO also fields a Very High Readiness Joint Task Force, comprising about 5,000 troops, which is tasked to “respond to emerging security challenges posed by Russia,” according to a statement on the alliance’s website.

The deployments are considered “tripwire forces” by many military experts, presumably meant to deter Russia from an attack due to the risk of spurring a massive NATO response to defend its forward units.

“The U.S. rotating armored brigade combat teams currently scattered across Eastern Europe can hardly really deter Russia from starting an overt war against one of NATO’s members—it’s more of a guarantee that such violations of international law would trigger a massive U.S. and allied response,” Bielieskov, the Ukrainian analyst, said.

“Given U.S. nuclear, as well as conventional, capabilities, the risk of potential conflict escalation is high enough so as not to allow any aggressor to achieve its political goals,” Szeligowski, the Polish senior research fellow, said. “That, in the end, should influence any calculations made by third parties, especially Russia.”

Meanwhile, in Ukraine
The war in eastern Ukraine—Europe’s only ongoing land war—has not ended.

Ukrainian forces have been at war against a combined force of pro-Russian separatists and Russian regulars since April 2014.

Despite a February 2015 cease-fire, artillery and rocket attacks still occur daily, as well as small arms gun battles. Soldiers in opposing camps are hunkered down in trenches and in fortified positions along a static 250-mile-long front line in the Donbas, Ukraine’s embattled southeastern territory on the border with Russia.

Civilians and soldiers continue to die on both sides of the front lines. About a third of the conflict’s 10,000 deaths happened after the cease-fire went into effect. And about 1.7 million people remain displaced by the conflict.

According to U.S. and Ukrainian officials, Russia continues to feed the conflict with troops, weapons, and money. The Kremlin says it’s not involved in the war.

To defend itself against Russia, Ukraine has since 2014 rebuilt its once-hobbled military into the second-largest standing army in Europe, comprising about 250,000 active-duty personnel. With about 1 million active troops, and more than 2 million in its reserves, Russia has the only military in Europe bigger than Ukraine’s.

“In the end, general increased U.S. presence in Eastern Europe can indirectly assist Ukraine in its war with Russia as it would force Moscow to take into account new U.S. deployments and ease pressure in the Donbas and around the Ukrainian-Russian border,” Bielieskov said.

He added: “So the next logical step after increasing the ERI budget should be making the U.S. presence in Eastern Europe permanent, plus increasing the number of brigades in the region.”
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Nolan Peterson, (@nolanwpeterson) a former special operations pilot and a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, is The Daily Signal’s foreign correspondent based in Ukraine.

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Tags: President Trump, Deter Russian Aggression, Ukraine, Nolan Peterson, The Daily Signal To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Don't Listen To The Naysayers — 3% GDP Growth Is Possible

Investor's Business Daily: Growth: One of the elements of President Trump's first budget that raises the hackles on economists and financial pundits is the projection that the economy can grow at a rate north of 3% a year. Not possible, they say. Sorry, but we've heard this before.

"If Trump thinks he can get more than 3% economic growth, he's dreaming," a Los Angeles Times headline guffawed.

"3% Growth? Really?!" sputtered FX Street.

Even the august Wall Street Journal got into the act: "Trump's 3% Growth Target Looks Out of Reach."

Do a Google search. Many others have said pretty much the same thing.

But we recall the early days of the Reagan administration, when economists and even some in his own party openly scoffed at the idea that Reagan's plans for broad tax cuts and fewer regulations would lead to strong economic growth, declining inflation and soaring job growth.

The scoffers were wrong.

In the 1990s, again, we wrote frequently about what we then called "The New Economy," which was able to grow much faster than in recent decades thanks to booming productivity growth from the internet revolution, capital gains tax cuts and welfare reform. We were frequently criticized for being Pollyannas when it came to the economy.

But, in fact, the 1990s boomed.

Today, after a decade without a single year of 3% GDP growth, we think the naysayers may once again be wrong.

The critics note — correctly — that the long-term elements of economic growth are 1) labor force growth, 2) productivity growth and 3) capital growth, also known as investment. And, they correctly note, none of them is growing fast enough to yield economic growth of 3%. In fact, they're not even growing fast enough to reach 2%.

Why? Today, the U.S. is in a pronounced productivity slowdown, with just 1% growth or less expected over the next 10 years. At the same time, labor force growth has slowed to just 0.2%, well below the levels of close to 1% during the postwar baby boom. And capital investment is expected to grow just 0.7%, down from 1% historically. Add it all up and it looks pretty grim.

Unfortunately, such an analysis treats labor force, capital investment and productivity as if they are immutable constants set in cement, and can't be altered by new policies. This is the big mistake that's made in every economic cycle.

President Trump has put forward specific policies that we think would break this demographic-economic logjam.

Take his plans for tax reform: In particular, cutting current excessively high corporate tax rates from 35% to 15% or 20% would have a — dare we say it? — "yuuuge" impact on business investment by raising the returns on investment significantly. And so would Trump's proposal to unfreeze all the cash that's now stockpiled in overseas accounts because of high U.S. tax rates.

By providing a one-time tax break on that $2.5 trillion or so now sitting in foreign banks, a flood of investment capital would return to the U.S. And companies that are now not expanding or hiring or investing would have enormous incentives to do so. Hiring would take off. So would training and education, since companies will need greater and greater expertise among their youngish staffs to compete.

Trump has also proposed letting businesses expense investments, rather than write them off over years. This too would encourage investment.

And make no mistake, business investment is the key to growth. Since 2009, real gross domestic investment has increased by just 3.5% a year, less than half the average rate since 1950. By deregulating, cutting taxes and restoring incentives to hire workers, we can restore business investment — the real engine of growth — to something approaching its long-term average.

As for the slowdown in the workforce, the share of working-age Americans age 20 to 64 with a job has fallen from more than 63% before President Obama took office to about 60% currently. For instance, he notes, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that work disincentives built into ObamaCare alone will reduce the number of hours worked over the next 10 years by as much as 2% a year.

We are discouraging, as never before, people from working, while also discouraging businesses from hiring.

With upward of at least 12 million people willing to work but not having a job, the immediate upside potential for the labor force is much bigger than thought. In the long run, there are nearly 95 million adults of working age not in the labor force, but if the economy provided greater opportunities for working, earning and saving, many of those with skills and talents now lying fallow would come off the sidelines and return to work.

Over-regulation is another part of the growth logjam, costing the economy upward of $2 trillion a year, according to recent estimates. Trump's proposals to deregulate the economy will free up resources for companies to hire more workers and pay them more — boosting productivity in the process.

"Combined with often imprudent regulations crafted in the midst of crisis, the engine of American prosperity has slowed," Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told the Senate Banking Committee last week. "I believe that a goal of 3% GDP or higher economic growth is achievable if we make historic reforms to both taxes and regulation."

We agree. Republicans now in control of Congress would be wise to start passing Trump's growth agenda and stop listening to those who say it's impossible. If they don't, 2018 might find some of them out of a job, and another excellent chance for real change squandered.
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Investor's Business Daily shared the above editorial which was recommended by Americans for Limited Government.

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Boozman Convenes First Hearing as Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee Chair

ARRA News Service: Yesterday, U.S. Senator John Boozman (R-AR) led an examination of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Fiscal Year 2018 budget request in an effort to ensure Americans are safe from threats during his first hearing as Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security.

The hearing featured testimony from Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary John Kelly about the department’s funding requests for border security, air travel safety and cybersecurity, among other needs.

“The Department of Homeland Security plays a pivotal role in keeping Americans safe by working to combat terrorism; manage our air, land and sea borders; administer our immigration laws; secure critical cyber-assets; and prepare for and respond to disasters. The tragic events in Manchester, England earlier this week remind us why we must focus on the serious challenge of securing our homeland,” Boozman said in his opening remarks.

Boozman continued his opening statement noting the “smart choices” made by DHS in its budget request including its increased funding for both manpower and infrastructure to continue to reduce illegal border crossings, support for the United States Coast Guard and its prioritized funding for cybersecurity needs.

He applauded the Secretary’s focus on the Department’s workforce, calling it DHS’s “most valuable resource” and noted “that taking care of the people that work to keep us safe each day is a top priority.”

“While this budget proposal makes some smart choices, there are also parts of it that are unworkable. Whether we’re talking about a hard-working Arkansas family or one of the largest departments in the federal government, when it comes time to develop a budget, tough choices have to be made. We ask for your cooperation as we consult with you and your staff to make the necessary adjustments to allow this budget to work despite these significant challenges,” Boozman told Secretary Kelly.

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President Just Made a Titanic Foreign Policy Shift. The Media Missed It.

by Newt Gingrich: This newspaper’s legendary former publisher, Philip Graham, famously described journalism as the business of writing the “first rough draft of history.” This week, as President Trump gave a historic speech in Saudi Arabia before the leaders of more than 50 Muslim-majority nations, journalism’s first draft missed the history almost entirely.

While the media focused on the ephemeral questions — whether the president would use campaign rhetoric in a diplomatic setting, or how the trip would affect the Obama legacy — they largely missed the real drama of the moment: a titanic shift in U.S. foreign policy occurring right before their eyes.

Trump stood before an unprecedented gathering of leaders to do something far more significant than utter a single phrase or undermine his predecessor’s record. He was there to rally the Muslim world, in his words, “to meet history’s great test” — defeating the forces of terrorism and extremism. He did so in a way that no American president ever had before. While extending a hand of friendship to Muslim nations, he also issued them a clear challenge: to take the lead in solving the crisis that has engulfed their region and spread across the planet. “Drive out the terrorists and extremists,” he urged them, or consign your peoples to futures of misery and squalor.

To find a comparably dramatic moment in the history of U.S. foreign policy, we have to look all the way back to 1982. That June, 35 years ago next month, President Ronald Reagan stood in the Royal Gallery at the Palace of Westminster in London and called on the West to rally in defense of freedom and against communist aggression.

In that one speech, Reagan predicted the fall of communism and reinvigorated the Western alliance. “We see totalitarian forces in the world who seek subversion and conflict around the globe to further their barbarous assault on the human spirit,” Reagan said. “What, then, is our course? Must civilization perish in a hail of fiery atoms? Must freedom wither in a quiet, deadening accommodation with totalitarian evil?”

Reagan declared his speech a turning point in history — and it was. On Sunday, Trump, too, declared that his challenge would be a turning point, one way or another. And he posed to that assembly in Riyadh an equally dramatic choice. It was, he said, “a choice between two futures” — the path of civilization, or the path of evil and death.

“America is prepared to stand with you” in the fight against terrorism, Trump pledged. “But the nations of the Middle East cannot wait for American power to crush this enemy for them. The nations of the Middle East will have to decide what kind of future they want for themselves, for their countries, and for their children.”

Never before has an American president tried so clearly to unite the civilized world, including the nations of the Middle East and Africa, against the forces of terrorism. Never before has an American president issued so direct a challenge to those nations to do more in the fight. And never before has an American president so plainly put the ultimate responsibility for eradicating terrorism on the nations of the region. In doing so, Trump’s speech implicitly repudiated the approaches of his two immediate predecessors and promised instead what he characterized as a “principled realism,” based on a clear-eyed view of America’s interests, security and limits.

That this decisive shift in U.S. foreign policy occurred on a foreign trip within the first four months of the administration is all the more impressive. Reagan didn’t take his first international trip until well into his second year. And unlike President Barack Obama’s early speech to the Muslim world in 2009, Trump backed up his words with action.

The United States and Saudi Arabia signed a $110 billion arms deal, the largest in U.S. history, which will bolster the kingdom’s ability to contribute to counterterrorism operations across the region. This will reduce the burden on the U.S. military and send a clear message that this administration takes the threat of Iran seriously. The agreements also included a new commitment to crack down on terrorism financing in the Persian Gulf states, as well as hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of Saudi investment in the United States.

Journalists and Washington bureaucrats, who are so deeply embedded in the establishment that they can’t see out of it, may see Trump’s call to action as a distracting sideshow from a status quo they can’t imagine changing. And yet this week, it already has. Foreign leaders and the American people alike can see in this trip the core of a new, reality-based foreign policy.
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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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Tags: Newt Gingrich, commentary, President Trump, speech, Saudi Arabia, foreign policy shift, media To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Budget Director: 'Big Bird Makes More than Everybody In This Room'

by Craig Bannister: Big Bird doesn’t need taxpayer handouts, Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said Wednesday.

Testifying before the House Budget Committee Wednesday, Mulvaney defended the elimination of taxpayer funding for PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting required by the White House’s budget proposal.

Mulvaney said he’s got nothing against “Sesame Street” and that he even watched it as a child:“Regarding the public broadcasting, look, I mean, my mom tells me I saw the very first ‘Sesame Street.’ Okay. In fact, I was curious that there's a printer in the back room here with Bert's picture on it. They've, evidently, named the printers here, Ernie and Bert.”But, Big Bird is doing “extraordinarily well,” so he can support himself – and, in fact, makes more than any of the congressmen who want to keep taking money from American families in order to pad his wallet:“It's a for-profit corporation. And, it does extraordinarily well. I don’t know if Henson Associates is owned by Disney, has a license agreement with Disney.

“I can assure you Big Bird makes more money than everybody in this room.”

“When I go to that family in Grand Rapids and say, ‘Is this what you want your money to go to this?’I think they might tell me, ‘No.’ Maybe, they can afford to do it without us.”What’s more, Big Bird is currently getting a hefty tax cut – and that’s okay Mulvaney said: “Big Bird actually does get a fairly large tax cut. We want him to. Henson Associates that owns Big Bird has been paying the highest corporate tax rate in the world for the last several years. We want them to have money that can create.

“We believe they're more creative than we are and believe that money would be much better invested by a private corporation, by a private individual than it would be by the government.”
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Craig Bannister writes for CNSNews.com and isresponsible for all media relations, public relations, and marketing programs.

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Obama's Spying, Another Obama Scandal, Summit Ministries

Haunted by Obama's Scandals

by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author:    When President Barack Obama reversed course and supported the reauthorization of Bush-era surveillance programs in 2011, people on the left felt betrayed. They thought Obama was going to shut them down. Many on the right applauded the president for doing the right thing for our security.

Well, sometimes people do the right thing for the wrong reasons.

Here's another theory as to why Obama suddenly shifted course and supported programs he once attacked: He realized the power those programs gave him to monitor political opponents.

We know he did it during the debate on the Iranian nuclear deal and during the 2016 campaign. Now there are new reports demonstrating the extent to which the Obama Administration abused our national security programs.

In 2011, the secret FISA court warned the Obama Administration after finding that so-called "safeguards" in the surveillance programs were "statutorily and constitutionally deficient." The court ordered significant changes, but the Obama Administration ignored them.

Five years later, FISA court judges blasted the Obama Administration for an "institutional lack of candor" and "very serious Fourth Amendment issues."

How bad was it? According to an inspector general's report, more than five percent of NSA's Section 702 searches violated privacy safeguards.

This is a huge Obama scandal that demands a massive investigation. So of course big media completely ignored it.

Another Obama Scandal -  One of the main reasons that conservatives have demanded tougher border security -- including a wall -- is that we don't know who is coming into the country or why they are attempting to sneak in illegally. Yes, many come here looking for work and a better life. But certainly not all of them.

Incredibly, however, an investigation by the Senate Homeland Security Committee finds that the Obama Administration knowingly released at least 16 MS-13 gang members into various communities throughout the United States.

These thugs came into the country during the 2014 border surge of unaccompanied minor children. They "freely admitted" to being members of the brutal gang MS-13 and one even told federal authorities that he "was a drug dealer" and "would continue to do the same in the United States with his family."

Some of these gang members were sent to a facility near Suffolk County, New York. Over the past 16 months, there has been a spike in murders in Suffolk County and MS-13 gang members are responsible for 38% of them.

Summit Ministries -  As you know, the left dominates our institutions of higher learning. And since the election, liberal professors are mad as ever and many are aggressively targeting any student who appears to be conservative. Your children need to be prepared for the battle of ideas that rages in colleges and universities around the country.

The best place I know for them to prepare is Summit Ministries. For the past 55 years they have been training young leaders to live courageously for the Truth. Their programs have served Christian leaders like Dr. James Dobson, Josh McDowell, Michele Bachmann and many others who have trusted their own children to the training at Summit.

World-class faculty spend one-on-one time with students and welcome their questions so they can think critically about the issues of the day from a biblical, values-based perspective. Learn more about their critical training program and don't delay in registering your child if they are between 16 and 22 years old. Seats sell out quickly!
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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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Tags: Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families, Obama's Spying, Another Obama Scandal, MS-13 gang, Summit Ministries To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!