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One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics
is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -- Plato
(429-347 BC)
by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Obamacare Games - Well, he did it again. Sen. John McCain killed the previous attempt to repeal Obamacare and he likely killed this one too.
The vote count on the Graham/Cassidy bill is nip and tuck, just like last time. But, honestly, I think a lot of games are being played by some Republican senators, and conservatives voters are increasingly feeling betrayed.
For example, Sen. John McCain said last time that he would not support anything the governor of Arizona did not support. Well, Governor Ducey supports this bill.
Now Senator McCain is obsessing over "regular order" -- process. He wants the legislation to go through the appropriate committees. He wants public hearings. I don't have the words to express my frustration!
Does McCain remember how Obamacare was rammed down our throats? Did he forget how Nancy Pelosi said we had to pass it to find out what was in it?
In a statement this afternoon, McCain said, "I cannot in good conscience vote for the Graham-Cassidy proposal. I believe we could do better working together, Republicans and Democrats, and have not yet really tried."
Good luck with that. Democrats are not moving to the middle. They are running to the left, demanding single-payer socialized healthcare.
We need to get this disaster off the backs of hard-working Americans, and I don't think they really give a hoot about "regular order" or the Senate's arcane rules!
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) voted for the previous repeal effort, the so-called "skinny repeal," which did very little. Yet now he says he is going to oppose this bill, which is much more conservative in that it turns over the funding and direction of Obamacare to the states, where major changes can be made.
The Graham/Cassidy plan at least puts "federalism" at the center of the program. If we're going to be stuck with Obamacare, I'd prefer to give the states, rather than Washington, more control. That should be a high priority for our libertarian-leaning friends.
Senator Paul could become a hero to conservatives if he reversed course and declared, "I am so frustrated with John McCain's repeated betrayals of our party that I am putting my objections to this bill aside for the greater good of the country."
Senator Lisa Murkowski is another holdout. Just to remind you, Republican voters in Alaska were so frustrated with Murkowski that they defeated her in the 2010 primary. But the GOP establishment abandoned the conservative Republican nominee, and Murkowski won as an independent candidate in the general election.
How's that working out for the party now? She is a major stumbling block on perhaps the biggest issue of the past eight years.
Then there's Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who is unreliable on good days. Collins, the most liberal Republican in the Senate, was "leaning no" before McCain's announcement.
Kim's Threat - North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un lashed out at President Trump yesterday in a rare televised speech. He called Trump a "mentally deranged dotard," adding that he would "tame" Trump "with fire." These kinds of insults are nothing new.
What is new is the threat by North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho, who said that Kim might conduct "the strongest hydrogen bomb test over the Pacific Ocean."
Exactly how would North Korea conduct such a test? There hasn't been an atmospheric test of a nuclear weapon since 1980. Tests using ballistic missiles haven't been done since the 1960s -- for obvious reasons.
Several security experts noted that in order to carry out such a test, North Korea would have to fire a live nuclear warhead over Japan. MIT Professor Vipin Narang said that would be "exceedingly provocative," adding "If it ... didn't go exactly as planned ... it could be a world-changing event."
Another Left-wing Jew-Hater Exposed - Remember Valerie Plame? She became a major hero to the left during George W. Bush's Administration after her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, publicly accused the Bush Administration of manipulating evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Plame became a media star when the late Bob Novak "outed" her as a CIA agent in one of his columns. Novak's report triggered the appointment of a special prosecutor to identify the leaker (Richard Armitage). But, ultimately, Scooter Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, ended up going to jail on unrelated charges.
Well, Plame, a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, is back in the news. She circulated a column yesterday written by Israel hater Philip Giraldi in which he promotes raw anti-Semitism. The media, of course, are whitewashing the controversy because they don't want you to know how disgusting the column really is. But just consider this excerpt:
"Those American Jews who are strongly attached to Israel and somehow find themselves in senior policy making positions involving the Middle East and who actually possess any integrity on the issue should recuse themselves. . .
"For those American Jews who lack any shred of integrity, the media should be required to label them at the bottom of the television screen whenever they pop up, e.g. Bill Kristol is 'Jewish and an outspoken supporter of the state of Israel.' That would be kind-of-like a warning label on a bottle of rat poison -- translating roughly as 'ingest even the tiniest little dosage of the nonsense spewed by Bill Kristol at your own peril.'"
Plame is now attempting to do damage control. She apologized, saying she only "skimmed" the article and missed the "gross undercurrents."
Sorry, but I'm not buying it. There's no way she could have been confused by the title -- "America's Jews Are Driving America's Wars."
Moreover in a series of tweets, she told critics, "Read the entire article," implying that she had not merely "skimmed" it. She also defended that trash as "thoughtful."
I urge the Anti-Defamation League and the Anne Frank Center to condemn Plame.
Keep in mind, friends, that Plame was a 20-year career CIA official, inside our government at the highest levels. Just like the late journalist Helen Thomas, you don't harbor this kind of raw anti-Semitism and it just slips out once. It infects everything you do.
You can bet that Plame was pushing the same kind of biased views at the CIA and in the Clinton campaign.
Values Voter Summit - Join me in our nation's capital October 13th - 15th for the 2017 Values Voter Summit!
Vice President Mike Pence said, "The Values Voter Summit [is] the greatest gathering of conservative pro-family Americans in the nation." And he is absolutely right!
That is why American Values, my non-profit public policy organization, has been a proud sponsor of the Summit every year.
This year's Summit features an incredible lineup of top government officials, opinion makers and faith leaders. There will be educational and informative breakout sessions, as well as events honoring those who have made significant contributions to the conservative movement.
Please register today. I look forward to seeing you there!
------------------- Gary Bauer is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families Tags:Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families, Obamacare Games, Kim's Threat, Left-Wing Jew-Hater Exposed, Values Voter SummiTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
. . . More proof emerges that Obama used spy agencies to undermine Trump.
by Matthew Vadum: President Obama’s UN Ambassador Samantha Power was reportedly “unmasking” Americans almost on a daily basis right up to President Trump’s inauguration, which bolsters Trump’s claim that the Obama administration tried to rig last year’s election by spying on the then-GOP candidate’s campaign.
Fox News is reporting that in the closing months of the Obama administration, Irish-born Power reportedly made more than 260 requests to identify Americans whose names turned up in foreign intelligence collection, a process called unmasking. Why an envoy to the United Nations would be involved in unmasking anyone, in this case focusing on the private communications of hundreds of Americans, has not been explained.
These private communications were intercepted by U.S. intelligence agencies that were surveilling the Trump campaign. Conversations between Trump associates and persons not under surveillance themselves are referred to in the intelligence community as examples of “incidental collection.”
In incidentally collected communications the name of the person whose conversations have been intercepted are supposed to be redacted or “masked,” unless the information is thought to have value as foreign intelligence. Masking is carried out to protect “U.S. persons,” a term of art referring to U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents of the U.S., who may get inadvertently caught up in the electronic dragnet from being falsely accused of crimes or otherwise improper behavior.
The unmasking of a U.S. person is supposed to be reviewed at the highest levels of government because it is a powerful tool that can be abused.
National Security Agency (NSA) Director Adm. Mike Rogers summarized the unmasking review process before lawmakers in June.
"We [the NSA] apply two criteria in response to their request: number one, you must make the request in writing. Number two, the request must be made on the basis of your official duties, not the fact that you just find this report really interesting and you're just curious,” he said. “It has to tie to your job and finally, I said two but there's a third criteria … the basis of the request must be that you need this identity to understand the intelligence you're reading."
Before Power’s tenure, previous UN ambassadors made unmasking requests, but Fox News reported that in total they number in the low double digits.
With this latest revelation of Power’s apparent interference in the democratic process, it is becoming painfully obvious that the unmasking power was serially abused and that undermining Trump was an official Team Obama effort.
Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice was also involved in unmasking individuals in the Trump orbit. At first she lied about the unmaskings she requested, saying she didn’t use the process to conduct opposition research on the Trump campaign. Then, in April, the high-profile pathological liar and apologist for Obama’s chaotic foreign policy claimed unmasking was a routine part of her job, but assured those who would listen that she had not used the process for partisan political purposes. Then CNN reported earlier this month that behind closed doors Rice informed congressional investigators this summer that “she unmasked the identities of senior Trump officials to understand why the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates was in New York late last year.”
The royal visit to the Big Apple took place after the endlessly-hyped, relentlessly-misrepresented meeting between Trump campaign officials and a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower that the media howls proves the Left’s wacky Trump-Russia election collusion conspiracy theory.
Relying on unnamed sources, CNN reported that after the election the UAE began trying to establish a back-channel for communication between Russia and the incoming would-be Trump White House. The crown prince of the UAE reportedly met with top Trump officials in December during the transition period, but apparently violated protocol by not providing advance notice to the Obama administration. At a bare minimum, Rice appears to have unmasked identities of individuals whose names came up in the intelligence-gathering process that sought information about UAE activities.
After the UAE story surfaced in the media, President Trump publicly condemned Rice.
"She's not supposed to be doing that, and what she did was wrong. And we've been saying that and that's just the tip of the iceberg," Trump said of Rice's ethically dubious and possibly unlawful unmaskings. "What she did was wrong. Not supposed to be doing that. You know it. The unmasking and the surveillance [of the Trump campaign], and I heard she admitted that yesterday. Just not right."
Rice’s fellow mischief-maker, Power, is expected to testify in secret before federal lawmakers next month who are investigating Obama administration officials’ extremely unusual mid-campaign and post-campaign efforts to obtain the identities of Trump associates in intelligence reports.
As Fox reports:In a July 27 letter to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said the committee had learned "that one official, whose position had no apparent intelligence-related function, made hundreds of unmasking requests during the final year of the Obama Administration."
The "official" is widely reported to be Power.Power, Rice, and Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan, were reportedly named in congressional subpoenas served on three U.S. intelligence agencies in May. Records were requested regarding Obama speechwriter Ben Rhodes but were not subpoenaed.
Of course, Power denies doing anything wrong. On Thursday her mouthpiece sent out a statement saying, "The anonymously sourced reports about Ambassador Power’s intelligence requests are false. Ambassador Power looks forward to engaging the bipartisan Committee in the appropriate classified forum."
by Newt Gingrich: A recent poll should worry all Americans who care about the quality and availability of health care in our country.
According to POLITICO/Morning Consult, 49 percent of American voters say they would support a single-payer health care system, where the only provider of health insurance in the United States would be the federal government.
Think about that: The same federal government that runs Medicaid and Medicare – both of which lose an estimated $70 billion to $110 billion annually to fraud – would be the sole option for your family’s health insurance.
Not surprisingly, 67 percent of Democrats said they are in favor of having the government completely take over our health insurance system – a figure that is up from 54 percent in April. This shows the growing influence that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who recently introduced a “Medicare for All” bill, continues to exert over the Democratic Party. What’s truly alarming though is that even 33 percent of Republicans polled said they support a single-payer health care system.
These results suggest that in the midst of arguing over ObamaCare and the merits of the various “repeal and replace” bills, some basic truths have been forgotten.
It is time to go back to basics.
The most important principle to understand in the debate over health care is that government-dominated systems lead to scarcity and rationing. It is why we see the same food lines and starvation in Venezuela today that we saw last century in Soviet-run countries.
In single-payer health care systems, scarcity and rationing often take the form of long wait times. The Red Cross recently declared that Great Britain, which has a single-payer system, faced a “humanitarian crisis” of hospital bed and doctor shortages. Two people recently died at a British hospital after waiting more than 30 hours in a hospital hallway for treatment.
If this situation sounds familiar, it is because the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Health Administration, another government-run health care system, faces a similar crisis of long wait times due to years of bureaucratic inefficiency. (Fortunately, under the leadership of President Trump and VA Secretary David Shulkin, this problem is being fixed, in part by offering veterans more non-government health care provider options.)
Other times, scarcity and rationing take the form of government refusing to pay for treatments that you and your doctor think are best for your health.
In Britain’s case, the government – not the patient or doctor – has the final say on what treatments are covered.
According to National Health Service Constitution for England: “You have the right to drugs and treatments that have been recommended by NICE for use in the NHS, if your doctor says they are clinically appropriate for you. You have the right to expect local decisions on funding of other drugs and treatments to be made rationally following a proper consideration of the evidence. If the local NHS decides not to fund a drug or treatment you and your doctor feel would be right for you, they will explain that decision to you.” (Emphasis added).
The British government justifies its decisions through “comparative effectiveness” studies. But in modern medicine, which is becoming increasingly personalized, this is extraordinarily dangerous.
If studies show Drug A is 70 percent effective at treating a disease, while Drug B is only 50 percent effective, the government may decide to cover Drug A over Drug B, regardless of what your doctor recommends. Medicine is rarely one-size-fits-all, and if you are a person for whom Drug A does not work, then you may be paying big for Drug B.
Ultimately, single-payer health care suffers from the same problem that former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher identified as the issue with all of socialism: “Eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
In 2014, Vermont tried to pass a single-payer system. The state that gave us Bernie Sanders wanted to be the liberal torchbearer that would show the nation how great a government-run system could be.
Then reality set in.
Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin realized he would have to raise the state’s payroll tax to 11.5 percent and set premiums at nearly 10 percent of people’s income.
According to The Washington Post, Shumlin determined the plan would be bad for Vermonters, saying “the potential economic disruption and risks would be too great to small businesses, working families and the state’s economy.”
Three years after Vermont’s single-payer effort fell apart, California’s state Senate passed a single-payer health care bill in June of this year.
Even upon passage, the Democrats in the state acknowledged it was an incomplete, wildly expensive piece of legislation that had no hope of going anywhere. The plan would cost $400 billion a year. Lawmakers would have to raise the state’s payroll tax to 15 percent in order to raise the additional $200 billion in annual revenue required to afford the plan.
Republicans must remember these examples – and once again get into the habit of regularly communicating conservative principles and policies.
If we don’t focus on winning the basic arguments about the merits of free markets over socialism, the left will continue to try to convince every new generation of American voters that destructive policies like single-payer health insurance are reasonable.
If we let the left win, America will be fundamentally changed in a matter of decades. That new America would be less healthy, less prosperous and less free.
---------------------- 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. Tags:Newt Gingrich, Single-Payer Disaster To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Debbie Pelley, Contributing Author: As the saying goes, there are two sides to every
story. The only side the public hears is the side of the illegal aliens' kids - kids who can be up to 36 years old.
But we must not forget the other side of the story, the negative effects to Americans that no one mentions any more.
While collecting signatures for petitions, I heard hundreds relate the negative consequences they are experiencing because of illegal immigration, like having to close a successful family business, and losing jobs because illegal aliens could work so cheaply.
(Remember these kids can be up to 36 years old). Some people lost jobs because a Spanish speaking person was needed in their position. No one hears their stories of heartache and financial loss.
In states that have passed the Dream Act, every illegal alien student in college is taking the place of an American student and is getting instate tuition (and grants) which are not allowed to students from other states. Every job these illegal aliens have is one less job for an American.
One of the main things we hear today is that we should not punish the kids for their parents' illegal actions. But children always reap the rewards or pay the consequences for their parents' actions. The children of doctors, lawyers, and financially successful parents reap many rewards because of their parents' financial success as well as many other favorable breaks. But, there are millions of children living in poverty because their parents don't get these same breaks.
While collecting signatures for petitions I often heard the statement: "I can't sign because I'm a felon." And I'm sure their children and the children of parents still in prison are facing many very negative consequences because of their parents' illegal actions. Yet, I don't hear a drumbeat of concern for the children of prison inmates.
And there are no stories of the many children of military parents or veterans whose pay puts them in poverty status. These are children of parents who have lost limbs and risked their lives for us. And numerous children now live in fear because their police parents face death every day they leave for work.
I wish we would hear more about how the children of these valiant Americans are hurting instead of concentrating on the pain of illegal aliens who have lived a better life and have received a better education than they would get in their own country, at the expense of American taxpayers.
National Review has noted that the press and politicians have been talking about DACA and the DREAM Act interchangeably, but they are different things, and the difference matters a lot.
To summarize, in the DACA program people don't get ciizenship BUT the Dream Act that has failed in Congress two or three times would give them full citizenship. The ultimate amnesty!
As identified in Wikepedia:The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was an American immigration policy that allowed some individuals who entered the country illegally as minors to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and to be eligible for a work permit.
"The DREAM Act bill, which would have provided a pathway to permanent residency [and citizenship] for unauthorized immigrants brought to the United States upon meeting certain qualifications, was considered by Congress in 2007", 2011 and 2013 but never passed both houses.
"The DACA policy was rescinded by the Trump administration on September 5, 2017, but full implementation of the rescission was delayed six months to give Congress time to decide how to deal with the population that was previously eligible under the policy.------------ 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. Tags:Debbie Pelley, DACA, Dream Act, ImmigrationTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Dr. Walter E. Williams: That the problems of today’s black Americans are a result of a legacy of slavery, racial discrimination and poverty has achieved an axiomatic status, thought to be self-evident and beyond question. This is what academics and the civil rights establishment have taught. But as with so much of what’s claimed by leftists, there is little evidence to support it.
The No. 1 problem among blacks is the effects stemming from a very weak family structure.
Children from fatherless homes are likelier to drop out of high school, die by suicide, have behavioral disorders, join gangs, commit crimes and end up in prison. They are also likelier to live in poverty-stricken households. But is the weak black family a legacy of slavery?
In 1960, just 22 percent of black children were raised in single-parent families. Fifty years later, more than 70 percent of black children were raised in single-parent families. Here’s my question: Was the increase in single-parent black families after 1960 a legacy of slavery, or might it be a legacy of the welfare state ushered in by the War on Poverty?
According to the 1938 Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, that year 11 percent of black children were born to unwed mothers. Today about 75 percent of black children are born to unwed mothers. Is that supposed to be a delayed response to the legacy of slavery? The bottom line is that the black family was stronger the first 100 years after slavery than during what will be the second 100 years.
At one time, almost all black families were poor, regardless of whether one or both parents were present. Today roughly 30 percent of blacks are poor. However, two-parent black families are rarely poor. Only 8 percent of black married-couple families live in poverty. Among black families in which both the husband and wife work full time, the poverty rate is under 5 percent. Poverty in black families headed by single women is 37 percent. The undeniable truth is that neither slavery nor Jim Crow nor the harshest racism has decimated the black family the way the welfare state has.
The black family structure is not the only retrogression suffered by blacks in the age of racial enlightenment. In every census from 1890 to 1954, blacks were either just as active as or more so than whites in the labor market. During that earlier period, black teen unemployment was roughly equal to or less than white teen unemployment.
As early as 1900, the duration of black unemployment was 15 percent shorter than that of whites; today it’s about 30 percent longer. Would anyone suggest that during earlier periods, there was less racial discrimination? What goes a long way toward an explanation of yesteryear and today are the various labor laws and regulations promoted by liberals and their union allies that cut off the bottom rungs of the economic ladder and encourage racial discrimination.
Labor unions have a long history of discrimination against blacks. Frederick Douglass wrote about this in his 1874 essay titled “The Folly, Tyranny, and Wickedness of Labor Unions,” and Booker T. Washington did so in his 1913 essay titled “The Negro and the Labor Unions.” To the detriment of their constituents, most of today’s black politicians give unquestioning support to labor laws pushed by unions and white liberal organizations.
Then there’s education. Many black 12th-graders deal with scientific problems at the level of whites in the sixth grade. They write and do math about as well as white seventh- and eighth-graders. All of this means that an employer hiring or a college admitting the typical black high school graduate is in effect hiring or admitting an eighth-grader. Thus, one should not be surprised by the outcomes.
The most damage done to black Americans is inflicted by those politicians, civil rights leaders and academics who assert that every problem confronting blacks is a result of a legacy of slavery and discrimination. That’s a vision that guarantees perpetuity for the problems.
------------------- 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 his website: walterewilliams.com and view a list of other articles and works. Tags:Walter Williams, commentary, Welfare State's LegacyTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Patrick Buchanan: If a U.S. president calls an adversary “Rocket Man … on a mission to suicide,” and warns his nation may be “totally destroyed,” other ideas in his speech will tend to get lost.
Which is unfortunate. For buried in Donald Trump’s address is a clarion call to reject transnationalism and to re-embrace a world of sovereign nation-states that cherish their independence and unique identities.
Western man has engaged in this great quarrel since Woodrow Wilson declared America would fight in the Great War, not for any selfish interests, but “to make the world safe for democracy.”
Our imperialist allies, Britain, France, Russia, Japan, regarded this as self-righteous claptrap and proceeded to rip apart Germany, Austria, Hungary and the Ottoman Empire and to feast on their colonies.
After World War II, Jean Monnet, father of the EU, wanted Europe’s nations to yield up their sovereignty and form a federal union like the USA.
Europe’s nations would slowly sink and dissolve in a single polity that would mark a giant leap forward toward world government — Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.”
Charles De Gaulle lead the resistance, calling for “a Europe of nation-states from the Atlantic to the Urals.”
For 50 years, the Gaullists were in constant retreat. The Germans especially, given their past, seemed desirous of losing their national identity and disappearing inside the new Europe.
Today, the Gaullist vision is ascendant.
“We do not expect diverse countries to share the same cultures, traditions, or even systems of government,” said Trump at the U.N.
“Strong sovereign nations let diverse countries with different values, different cultures, and different dreams not just coexist, but work side by side on the basis of mutual respect. …
“In America, we do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to watch.”
Translation: We Americans have created something unique in history. But we do not assert that we should serve as a model for mankind. Among the 190 nations, others have evolved in different ways from diverse cultures, histories, traditions. We may reject their values but we have no God-given right to impose ours upon them.
It is difficult to reconcile Trump’s belief in self-determination with a National Endowment for Democracy whose reason for being is to interfere in the politics of other nations to make them more like us.
Trump’s idea of patriotism has deep roots in America’s past.
After the uprisings of 1848 against the royal houses of Europe failed, Lajos Kossuth came to seek support for the cause of Hungarian democracy. He was wildly welcomed and hailed by Secretary of State Daniel Webster.
But Henry Clay, more true to the principles of Washington’s Farewell Address, admonished Kossuth:
“Far better is it for ourselves, for Hungary, and for the cause of liberty that, adhering to our wise, pacific system, and avoiding the distant wars of Europe, we should keep our lamp burning brightly on the western shore as a light to all nations, than to hazard its utter extinction amid the ruins of fallen or falling republics in Europe.”
Trump’s U.N. address echoed Clay: “In foreign affairs, we are renewing this founding principle of sovereignty. Our government’s first duty is to its people … to serve their needs, to ensure their safety, to preserve their rights, and to defend their values.”
Trump is saying with John Quincy Adams that our mission is not to go “abroad in search of monsters to destroy,” but to “put America first.” He is repudiating the New World Order of Bush I, the democracy crusades of the neocons of the Bush II era, and the globaloney of Obama.
Trump’s rhetoric implies intent; and action is evident from Rex Tillerson’s directive to his department to rewrite its mission statement — and drop the bit about making the world democratic.
The current statement reads: “The Department’s mission is to shape and sustain a peaceful, prosperous, just, and democratic world.”
Tillerson should stand his ground. For America has no divinely mandated mission to democratize mankind. And the hubristic idea that we do has been a cause of all the wars and disasters that have lately befallen the republic.
If we do not cure ourselves of this interventionist addiction, it will end our republic. When did we dethrone our God and divinize democracy?
And are 21st-century American values really universal values?
Should all nations embrace same-sex marriage, abortion on demand, and the separation of church and state if that means, as it has come to mean here, the paganization of public education and the public square?
If freedom of speech and the press here have produced a popular culture that is an open sewer and a politics of vilification and venom, why would we seek to impose this upon other peoples?
For the State Department to declare America’s mission to be to make all nations look more like us might well be regarded as a uniquely American form of moral imperialism.
-------------------- 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. Tags:Patrick Buchanan, conservative, commentary, President Trump, American GaullistTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Jerry Cox: Last month a public school teacher in Indiana sent notes home informing families that her classroom was not the “appropriate time or place” for students to talk about religion.Drop the “God” talk.
And the “Jesus” talk. And the “devil” talk.
That was the message that went home with a class of McCordsville Elementary first-graders recently.The truth is, students have a constitutionally-protected right to talk about God and share their faith at school as long as they are not being disruptive. That means students can talk about their faith, read the Bible, or pray during free time.
It also means they can tie their faith into class assignments; for example, many students assigned essays along the lines of, “What person has influenced you the most?” have written about Jesus Christ.
Fortunately in this case the school district informed the teacher that the school cannot squelch students’ free speech or religious liberty.
And don’t forget October 5 is Bring Your Bible to School Day. We are partnering with our friends at Focus on the Family to encourage students across Arkansas to take their Bibles with them to school on this day.
This is a simple way students can exercise their religious liberty and celebrate God’s Word at the same time.
Tags:Editorial Cartoon, AF Branco, Poetic Justice, police arresting, ANTIFA terrorists thugs, violent crimes.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 Electoral College Is Not a ‘National Security Threat’
by Jarrett Stepman: Following Hillary Clinton’s electoral defeat and Donald Trump’s ascension to the White House, numerous progressives came out of the woodwork to call for the end of the Electoral College in favor of a national popular vote.
While most of the arguments against our over two-century-old system revolve around it not being purely democratic and being weighted toward smaller states, a recent commentary in Politico has stretched that attack to an absurd limit.
Matthew Olsen, a member of the National Security Agency under President Barack Obama, and Benjamin Haas, a West Point graduate and current student at Stanford University, argued that the Electoral College is antiquated and even dangerous because hostile foreign powers can micro-target populations in certain states to tip the election.
Further, the writers argue that the Founders couldn’t possibly have imagined how new technology, like Facebook, could perpetuate false ideas and that foreign powers would disseminate lies.
This leads them to suggest moving to a national popular vote, which they suggest is somehow a safer way to elect presidents.
Their arguments demonstrate both an amazing amount of hubris in assuming they, our nouveau elite, know better than the Founders, and stunning ignorance in thinking the creators of the Constitution had no experience with “fake news.”
There is a lot to untangle from what seems to be a rather absurd and roundabout excuse for Clinton’s defeat, but it’s worth debunking.
Why We Have an Electoral College
The Electoral College was not just a quirky idea the Framers cobbled together without serious consideration for how it would be used by future generations.
The office of the presidency and the method by which our leaders would be selected are perhaps the most explicit aspects of the Constitution, and they were the products of ferocious debate.
The Founders wanted to create a system by which the country’s only true national leader could be chosen by a process that would contain vital elements of both federalism—or state power—and democracy.
Also, given their vast experience of dealing with foreign powers that wanted to see America fail, and local manipulators who wanted to tip elections, the Framers of the Constitution created a carefully calibrated process that would help create a stable, legitimate system to serve a free people.
The product was a brilliant process, born of design and compromise, that has created over two centuries of stable and virtually uncontested elections.
This accomplishment often goes unacknowledged. But as governments rose and fell through the centuries, ours has steamed along. We have, in part, the Electoral College to thank for this political miracle.
Foreign Intrigues
As the Politico writers noted, Alexander Hamilton defended the Electoral College in Federalist No. 68.
Hamilton believed the indirect method of “electors” choosing a president after the states had voted in their separate capacities would protect America from foreign intrigues that would seek to enable “Manchurian” candidates to become president.
The Politico writers dismiss this reasoning, saying:Hamilton and his colleagues never could have envisioned a year like 2016, when an enemy state—Russia—was able to manipulate America’s election process with stunning effectiveness.Actually, they could.
The late 18th and early 19th centuries were rife with foreign powers meddling in American elections. It was in some ways much easier for the superpowers of Europe to use propaganda in fighting proxy wars to tip the scales of our elections one way or another.
For example, Citizen Edmond Genet, a French diplomat to the United States, tried to tip the American population toward supporting his country in its wars against Great Britain in the 1790s.
He and other French radicals engaged in a massive campaign to turn Americans against President George Washington’s administration to get a pro-French candidate elected. This more or less failed, and Washington served two terms without serious challenge.
The fact is, there is simply no way of entirely avoiding outside influence and the flow of information in a free country.
It is something America has perpetually dealt with, and mostly overcome.
Fake News, Nothing New
The argument that “fake news” is simply a modern phenomenon that the Founders couldn’t have anticipated is absurd.
That fraudulent stories and ideas could be rapidly perpetuated and could change people’s minds was widely understood and acknowledged by the men who created our form of government.
At the Constitutional Convention, curmudgeonly Founder Elbridge Gerry said the following of fake news and democracy:The people do not want [lack] virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots. In Massachusetts it had been fully confirmed by experience, that they are daily misled into the most baneful measures and opinions, by the false reports circulated by designing men, and which no one on the spot can refute.Campaigns then and thereafter were filled with false reports, unsubstantiated rumors, absurd accusations, and a whole lot of lies.
What was the Founders’ solution to this problem? Create a system that fostered a culture of free speech and debate while mitigating the impact of pure democracy.
The answer is not a national popular vote or government censors determining what is real news and what is fake. It’s in supporting the First Amendment and the wisely crafted electoral system that the Founders gifted us with.
Ultimately, fake news, micro-targeting, and “voter suppression” can hardly be blamed for Clinton’s electoral defeat when she couldn’t be bothered to campaign in one of the states that ultimately swung the election.
And simply having the larger, national pool of voters can’t prevent foreign governments from trying to sway votes and tip elections.
The fact that Trump turned solid blue states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania red is a sign that the Electoral College works the way it was intended. It vindicates the idea that regional interests are diverse and that a national candidate should appeal to small and mid-size states, not just the most populous ones.
While the Politico writers bemoan foreign influence in American elections—a worthy concern—pointing to the Electoral College as the problem is barking up the wrong tree.
And if they are so worried about what they called vote “hacking,” perhaps they should support the voter fraud commission that could help weed out illegal votes and ensure election integrity in the states instead of laying waste to our time-tested electoral process.
Regardless, the Electoral College is not a danger to the United States. It is instead a critical element of preserving our national sovereignty and the federalism that strengthens it.
------------------------- Jarrett Stepman (@JarrettStepman) is an editor of The Daily Signal. Tags:The Electoral College, Not a National Security Threat, Jarrett Stepman, The Daily SignalTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Kerby Anderson, Contributing Author: Overall it has been a disappointing summer for Hollywood, but one movie recently provided a significant bump in box offices sales. The movie It is an adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 novel and broke many box office records for September.
Why is a scary movie doing so well in theaters? There are many theories. First, there was the buildup to the movie after the first trailer was released in March. It set a record with 197 million global views. Of course, you could point to other movie trailers that did well but didn’t perform when it came time to put people in the seats. Movies like Transformers, King Arthur, and The Mummy with well-known titles and huge budgets flopped this summer.
Second, there is the physiological response. Scary movies increase the heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration. Professor Glenn Sparks explains that frightening films leave a physiological arousal known as the “excitation transfer process.” The rush of excitement keeps them coming back for more.
Third, Joanna Robinson writing in Vanity Fair reminds us that people “tired of being shushed or those tired of shushing,” don’t have that problem in horror movies. People are expected to scream, shriek, and even talk back to the screen (don’t go in there). It is a communal experience of shared terror.
Last month I quoted from Pastor Rick Stedman who argues that superhero movies and horror movies are popular because our materialistic society has repressed belief in the supernatural. Quoting from the book, Monsters from the Id by Michael Jones, Rick Stedman uses the psychological terms of sublimation and displacement to explain our fascination with these movies. As a society we may deny the supernatural, but God has placed eternity in our hearts so we look for the supernatural element in other areas, like fantasy films and horror movies.
-------------- 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 Tags:Kerby Anderson, Viewpoints, Point of View, Scary MoviesTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
More and more peoples around the world these days have the unfortunate misfortune of having adequate food — not merely vegetables either!! — thanks to the ruthlessly profit-seeking food producers and their unconscionable engagement in the division of labor, capital accumulation, and international trade.
It’s right there in The New York Times, which is, as you know, the paper of record.
“DealBook: How Big Business Got Brazil Hooked on Junk Food.”
Dastardly! Those Big American Businessmen must have kidnapped the Brazilians, strapped them into chairs, and pumped Doritos into those poor souls with a syringe. Heaven knows, the fecklessly irresponsible Brazilians can’t be held responsible for their own diets.
How bad is it?
This bad: “As growth slows in wealthy countries, Western food companies are aggressively expanding in developing nations, contributing to obesity and health problems.”
One expert quoted in the story (no hungry people consulted) says, “Part of the problem . . . is a natural tendency for people to overeat as they can afford more food.”
Worse than Hurricane Irma!
Thanks to the Times’s aggressive investigative journalism, we know that these brazenly food-selling companies do not even nag their international customers to be careful about their diets. Ergo, it’s chips and other indiscriminately convenient snacks for everybody, no strings attached.
It’s become all too easy to be well-fed and overfed and mis-fed.
Thanks a lot, capitalism.
Oh for the good old hunting-and-gathering days when human beings spent much of their time starving, and the world had the human population of Binghamton. No problem with anyone gorging on Twinkies and Doritos back then. No problem of epidemics of corpulence.
We’ve lost that swell paradise . . . perhaps forever.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
------------------ 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. Tags:Paul Jacob, Common Sense, Evil Capitalists, Hook Brazil On EatingTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Sen. Kaine Lied To Me About His Own Personal Obamacare Bailout
John Decker
by Jon Decker: Recently Anthem, Virginia’s largest health insurer, reversed course and decided to stay in the individual market. But that hardly solved the state’s Obamacare crisis, because they are back in with massive 42 to 64 percent premium hikes for next year.
But while Virginia residents on Obamacare, including myself, are set to be crushed by rising insurance costs, a small subset of residents will be shielded from this financial pain — politicians such as Senator Tim Kaine.
Yet shockingly, even though United States Senators and Representatives are afforded an annual bailout from Obamacare worth about $12,000 per year, our Senator Tim Kaine thinks Virginia taxpayers are too dumb to notice.
I recently wrote to Senator Kaine urging him to end Congress’s Obamacare bailout, and here is his startlingly dishonest reply:
“There is a misconception that Members of Congress have sought to exempt themselves from the ACA. Section 1312 of the ACA requires Members of Congress and their official staff to participate in the health insurance exchanges created by the ACA. In fact, the law says that plans on the exchanges are the only plans that Members and official Congressional staff can purchase.
An Office of Personnel Management official has said, “Members of Congress will not receive anything that is not available to the public. The law doesn’t allow them to get insurance from FEHB (Federal Employee Health Benefits Program), they are going to get insurance on the market place, just like uninsured individuals and small businesses.”
Misconception? Here are the facts, you can decide for yourself:
Section 1312(d)(3)(D) of Obamacare terminated employer coverage for members of Congress and requires them and their staff receive health insurance from Obamacare exchanges. It authorizes no employer contribution; in fact on March 24, 2010, the Senate rejected an amendment that would have authorized an employer contribution.
Upon realizing that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act wasn’t so ‘affordable’, members of Congress panicked at the prospect of losing their employer coverage, but feared the political consequences of voting to change the law they had passed. They turned to President Obama to bail them out.
President Obama obliged by directing the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to issue a rule that — without any legal authorization — restored employer contributions for Congress and their staff, a bailout from Obamacare worth about $12,000 per year.
Because IRS rules prohibit employer contributions toward individual health insurance policies, OPM directed Congress to sign up on the DC Small Business Health Exchange.
To implement the scheme, Congress filed two documents, one for the House and one for the Senate, certifying under penalty of perjury that they have less than 50 employees. (Earlier reports of individual congressional offices filing as small employers were erroneous; the House has just one EIN and one payroll, and the Senate another.) Then they signed up thousands of people. No other large employer in America would dare attempt falsely certifying itself as a small business.
But according to Senator Kaine, I should take the word of an Obama OPM official that this Obama OPM scheme is above board.
Shame on Senator Kaine for believing Virginia residents are incapable of seeing through this ridiculous claim. It’s bad enough that Senator Kaine is personally enjoying taxpayer-funded health care when the law says he should be paying his own premiums. His bald-faced denial makes it so much worse.
------------------- Jon Decker is the membership director of American Commitment, a free-market policy and outreach organization. Tags:American Commitment, John Decker, Sen. Tim Kaine, personal Obamacare bailoutTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Leave It To Beaver Now Declared Hetero-Patriarchal White-Supremacists by NH Democrat Party Chairman
by Tom McLaughlin: "That's so bourg," said one of the Saul Alinsky community organizers I was working with forty-five years ago in Massachusetts. Though I didn't know what "bourg" meant, I got that it was a pejorative. "Bourg" meant "bad." Only later did I ask the full meaning. It was short for "bourgeois," she said, as if that explained everything. I still didn't understand but the word sounded familiar and I knew its spelling so I looked it up. Bourgeois meant "middle class," but I was still perplexed. I saw myself as middle class and still do. What was so bad about middle class?
Well, just about everything, I guess. At the ultra-progressive, ivy-league University of Pennsylvania, a law professor named Amy Wax is being vilified as "racist" and "bigoted" by students, faculty, and alumni for daring to write that bourgeois values exemplified in 1950s America are superior to those prized in today's progressive America. She asserted in a Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed that in the 1950s people believed you should:
"Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime."The last straw came when Wax dared criticize mores in sacrosanct sub-cultures: "the single-parent, antisocial habits, prevalent among some working-class whites; the anti-‘acting white' rap culture of inner-city blacks; [and] the anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants." Wax asserted those were, "destructive of a sense of solidarity and reciprocity among Americans."UPenn took all that as a declaration of war and several scorching columns appeared in UPenn's daily newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian. One, signed by fifty-four faculty and doctoral students declared that Wax's bourgeois culture:"stem[s] from the very same malignant logic of hetero-patriarchal, class-based, white supremacy that plagues our country today," and "These cultural values and logics are steeped in anti-blackness and white hetero-patriarchal respectability, i.e. two-hetero-parent homes, divorce is a vice, and the denouncement of all groups perceived as not acting white enough i.e. black Americans, Latino communities, and immigrants in particular." Forty-five years ago bourgeois culture was still acceptable but today it's anathema to the progressive left which rules media and academia. Above her original op-ed, Wax included a picture of actor John Wayne from Director John Ford's 1956 film: The Searchers, the film was depicted as reinforcing bourgeois culture and further enflaming the UPenn establishment.
Other symbols of the bourgeois 1950s like "Father Knows Best" and "Leave It To Beaver" are often derided by progressives. Must we now regard Jim Anderson and Ward Cleaver as hetero-patriarchal white-supremacists? Were baby boomer minds corrupted by their propaganda? Do we need reeducation and sensitivity training? To remedy this, perhaps there could be another remake of "Leave It To Beaver" in which Lumpy Rutherford marries Eddie Haskell. Maybe Whitey Whitney can renounce his white male privilege and transition into a woman. Maybe June Cleaver can organize a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood.
NBC's Chuck Todd invited Dartmouth's Chris Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook onto the August 20th "Meet The Press." Bray argued for Antifa's use of violence in opposition to fascist white-supremacists. Arguing against was Richard Cohen of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Then Dartmouth President Phil Scanlon denounced Bray's remarks, only to be himself condemned by 100 active Dartmouth faculty. Sounds a lot like UPenn's antics.
Thus is political polarization exacerbated. Antifa uses violence not only against real white supremacists, but imagined ones as well. The Marxist left, which seems now to control of the Democrat Party, sees anyone who opposes it as white supremacist. So when Antifa beats up Trump supporters, capitalists, readers of Ann Coulter's columns, and anyone it considers conservative, leftist Democrats either cheer them or keep silent, recent remarks by Nancy Pelosi notwithstanding.
Who knew there were so many white supremacists in NH? Might these disaffected citizens also consider themselves middle class? Bourgeois? Whereas the late Senator Joseph McCarthy saw communists under his bed and everywhere else in the 1950s, it appears today's Democrats are seeing white supremacists everywhere now.
----------------- Tom McLaughlin is a retired history teacher and a contributing editor to Family Secuity Matters. He is a regular weekly columnist for newspapers in Maine and New Hampshire. Tags:Tom McLaughlin, Family Security Matters, ultra-progressive, University of Pennsylvania, a law professor, Amy Wax vilified as racist, bigoted,White Supremacists, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
FBI Wiretap On Manafort In 2016 Can Only Mean . . .
. . . That Almost The Entire Trump Campaign Was Bugged By Obama
by Robert Romano: A Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court warrant was obtained against former Trump campaign manager and chairman Paul Manafort at a time when he had an apartment at Trump Tower and was either actively working on the campaign or still in contact with the campaign, according to the Sept. 19 CNN report.
As a result, it turns out the FBI under former President Barack Obama, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey really were spying on the presidential campaign of Donald Trump in 2016, and that Trump was technically right when he tweeted in March, “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”
How do we know Trump was right?
Because, as noted by the American Bar Association, under Presidential Policy Directive 28, issued by Obama in Jan. 2014, any U.S. person under government surveillance, their contacts, and their contacts of contacts are also swept up: “queries, which begin with an original number or ‘seed,’ may extend two tiers of contacts or ‘hops’ further, thus taking in all of the seed’s contacts (hop one) and all contacts of the seed’s contacts (hop two); and that further queries of the resulting information do not need to be supported by any reasonable articulable suspicion.”
Contacts of contacts. Believe it or not, this was actually a limitation from prior policy, which had allowed up to three “hops” from the original target. Then, once those contacts are queried, per former NSA Director Keith Alexander, testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 12, 2013, “if you want to get the content, you’d have to get a court order” in response to a question from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) about getting to the content of phone calls or other communications the government had collected metadata on, implying everything is pre-recorded and saved.
The federal government under Attorney General Jeff Sessions has since applied to the FISA Court to change those minimization rules on March 30, which the court granted on April 26. Two days later, on April 28, the National Security Agency issued a statement that it “will no longer collect certain internet communications that merely mention a foreign intelligence target.” But not before they were used by the Obama administration.
So to summarize: Under the constitutionally dubious FISA warrant, if it was directed at Manafort directly, the FBI had access to everyone who Manafort was in contact with, and everyone who Manafort’s contacts were in contact with and potentially the content of those communications and anyone who mentioned Manafort. That would have included almost the entire campaign’s top brass, including Trump himself. How could it not?
As former FBI Director James Comey himself noted in his May testimony, “When the FBI develops reason to believe an American has been targeted for recruitment by a foreign power or is covertly acting as an agent of the foreign power, the FBI will ‘open an investigation’ on that American and use legal authorities to try to learn more about the nature of any relationship with the foreign power so it can be disrupted.” So, the FBI suspected Manafort was acting as a foreign agent, in this case Russia, and so cast a wide net of surveillance to “learn more about the nature of [the] relationship,” ensnaring the Trump campaign in the process.
“It is unclear when the new warrant started,” per CNN, meaning it is not known if the surveillance occurred was while Manafort was still the campaign manager, chairman or after he left the campaign in Aug. 2016.
But as the Wall Street Journal editorial board noted on Sept. 20, “The story suggests the monitoring started in the summer or fall, and extended into early this year. While Mr. Manafort resigned from the campaign in August, he continued to speak with Candidate Trump. It is thus highly likely that the FBI was listening to the political and election-related conversations of a leading contender for the White House. That’s extraordinary — and worrisome.”
It is unclear if all the FISA warrants were rolled into one or were separate, or how many others there might be or have been directed into Trump’s orbit, since the court and its work remains classified.
But it is clear as day the nation’s intelligence agencies were spying on the opposition political party during an election year.
That’s bad enough. But it appears the allegations originated from the dubious Christopher Steele dossier, which implicated Manafort as being at the center of the conspiracy, which began publishing in June 2016, that eventually alleged the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia to put the Democratic National Committee emails on Wikileaks. The memos were originally paid for by GOP and then Democrat political donors.
The dossier had numerous problems, for example, placing Trump Organization lawyer Michael Cohen in Prague for a meeting with Russian officials in August 2016 — supposedly dealing with the fallout from the Wikileaks and Trump-Russia collusion — that could have never happened because he was never in Prague and was in California at the time. If the meeting couldn’t have happened, then neither could the contents of the conversations that supposedly happened there.
At some point, the FBI apparently offered to commission Steele to continue his Russia, Trump reporting, according to a Feb. 28 report from the Washington Post. In a March 6 letter from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to FBI director James Comey, Grassley blasted the agency. “The idea that the FBI and associates of the Clinton campaign would pay Mr. Steele to investigate the Republican nominee for President in the run-up to the election raises further questions about the FBI’s independence from politics, as well as the Obama administration’s use of law enforcement and intelligence agencies for political ends,” wrote Grassley.
Comey testified in May that the dossier was “salacious and unverified,” implying mightily that the agency had not depended on it to launch its investigation into all things Russia. Instead, it was provided, said Comey, to alert Trump of its existence and just in case the content really was an attempt to blackmail Trump: “The IC leadership thought it important, for a variety of reasons, to alert the incoming President to the existence of this material, even though it was salacious and unverified. Among those reasons were: (1) we knew the media was about to publicly report the material and we believed the IC should not keep knowledge of the material and its imminent release from the President-Elect; and (2) to the extent there was some effort to compromise an incoming President, we could blunt any such effort with a defensive briefing.”
NBC News’ Cynthia McFadden reported in January that the reason it had been included in the year-end briefing to outgoing President Barack Obama and then-President-Elect Trump was “they felt they needed to explain to the President-elect the difference between vetted intelligence … and this raw kind of disinformation that’s out there, they had it available.”
After Buzzfeed published the memos, there was almost instantly an effort underway to downplay its significance in the government’s investigation. The official story about the Steele dossier was that it was “salacious and unverified” and a “raw kind of disinformation,” yet it has all the appearance of having been the very basis of the investigation into the supposed collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Particularly, considering the timing of the Manafort FISA warrant. Steele started publishing in June 2016. By July 2016 he thought he had cracked the case on the Wikileaks-Trump-Russia nexus and in August 2016 he shared his information with the FBI, according to a Vanity Fair exposé on Steele published in March. Then, according to Vanity Fair, he began speaking with reporters, including Mother Jones’ David Corn in an apparent effort to get the information into the public domain in the days before the election. That story published Oct. 31, and apparently worked. By Nov. 1, NBC News broke the news that Manafort was under FBI investigation.
The witch hunt was on. And Steele’s material may have been at the very center.
As noted by the Wall Street Journal editorial board, “Mr. Steele was familiar to the FBI, had reached out to the agency about his work, and had even arranged a deal in 2016 to get paid by the FBI to continue his research. The FISA court sets a high bar for warrants on U.S. citizens, and presumably even higher for wiretapping a presidential campaign. Did Mr. Comey’s FBI marshal the Steele dossier to persuade the court?”
At the end of the day, if the nation’s intelligence agencies and the FBI are going to call the legitimacy of the presidential election of 2016 into doubt, and indeed attempt to challenge the duly elected president’s position and impugn he and his campaign as the work of Russia, then the American people have a right to know if it was all originally based on a lie, this bogus dossier funded by Trump’s political opponents.
The stakes could not be higher. If political campaigns only need to hire former spooks to generate false intelligence reports on their opponents, and then it results in national security investigations by the FBI, mass surveillance, special prosecutors and who knows what’s next, the republic is in a very dark place.
---------------- Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government. Tags:Robert Romano, Americans For Limited Government, FBI Wiretap, On Manafort, 2016, Entire Trump Campaign, Bugged By ObamaTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
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