News Blog for social, fiscal & national security conservatives who believe in God, family & the USA. Upholding the rights granted by God & guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, traditional family values, "republican" principles / ideals, transparent & limited "smaller" government, free markets, lower taxes, due process of law, liberty & individual freedom. Content approval rests with the ARRA News Service Editor. Opinions are those of the authors. While varied positions are reported, beliefs & principles remain fixed. No revenue is generated for or by this "Blog" - no paid ads - no payments for articles.Fair Use Doctrine is posted & used. Blogger/Editor/Founder: Bill Smith, Ph.D. [aka: OzarkGuru & 2010 AFP National Blogger of the Year] Contact: editor@arranewsservice.com (Pub. Since July, 2006)Home PageFollow @arra
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics
is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -- Plato
(429-347 BC)
Friday, March 16, 2018
Lawmakers Nearly Voted to Let You Unknowingly Waive Your Right to a Jury Trial?
On Tuesday, legislators convened for a special session of the Arkansas Legislature. Two identical bills that caught our attention were H.B. 1006 by Rep. Bob Ballinger (R-Hindsville) and S.B. 5 by Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson (R-Little Rock).
In a nutshell, these bills made it possible for people to unknowingly waive their right to a jury trial when signing a contract. If a company wanted to, they could include language saying that you waive your right to a jury trial in any contract they make you sign—including contracts for admission into a nursing home or hospital, leases, insurance, loans, and so on.
The bills made the waiver irrevocable—meaning once you signed away your right to a jury trial, you couldn’t get it back.
The bills also said that you could not get your right to a jury trial back by arguing that you didn’t read the waiver, didn’t understand the waiver, or didn’t know you were forfeiting your right to a jury trial.
Our chief concern was that nursing homes would force residents to waive their right to a jury trial in order to live in the nursing home. If a grandmother were injured or killed due to nursing home neglect, she or her family would not be able to take her case before a jury.
The bills were filed at 9:00 AM on Tuesday. An hour later H.B. 1006 was in the hands of legislators on the House Judiciary Committee.
Our staff quickly analyzed the bill and drove to the Capitol. The bill’s ink practically was still wet when I sat down to testify in the committee room.
As politely as I could, I told lawmakers why we opposed the bill. “This affects old people,” I finally said. “How many old people in Arkansas even know this bill is being debated right now?”
Fortunately, the bill narrowly was defeated. Had Family Council not been there to oppose it, I am not sure what would have happened.
Several different lawmakers told me the legislation was prompted by a recent court case regarding a dispute over a loan. Lawmakers wanted to make it possible for borrowers and lenders to settle their differences outside of the jury trial system. Personally, I don’t object to that, but passing a blanket proposal that would let elderly nursing home residents and their families unknowingly sign away their right to a jury trial is just plain irresponsible.
After H.B. 1006 failed in committee, Sen. Hutchinson amended S.B. 5. He narrowed the bill so that it only applied to loans, and he took out the language about people being able to sign the waiver unknowingly and the waiver being irrevocable. We decided we could live with those changes, so Family Council quit opposing S.B. 5.
The amended version of S.B. 5 passed the Arkansas House yesterday and has gone to Gov. Hutchinson to be signed into law.
This isn’t the first time lawmakers have tried to take away Arkansans’ right to a jury trial.
Fifteen years ago Family Council spent almost an entire legislative session battling it out with members of the nursing home industry who wanted to shield themselves from lawsuits. At that time, they wanted to take away nursing home residents’ right to go to court. Our staff attorney, Martha Adcock, spent more hours than I can count working with lawmakers to defeat that bad proposal.
I am glad we were successful this week, and I am deeply grateful to the state legislators who helped defeat H.B. 1006 and amend S.B. 5 to address our concerns.
Sadly, this fight is not over. Rep. Bob Ballinger, a sponsor of the bill, plans to continue advocating for the passage of the portions of the bill that lawmakers rejected. Rep. Ballinger told lawmakers that work needs to continue in order to help the business community.
-------------- Jerry Cox is the founder and president of Family Council and the Education Alliance and a contributing author to the ARRA News Service. Tags:Jerry Cox, Family Council, Lawmakers, Nearly Voted, to Let You Unknowingly, Waive Your Right, to Jury Trial?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 Newt Gingrich: It’s been nearly 14 months since President Trump took office, and the media and the Washington establishment still don’t understand our nation’s 45th President. They continue to criticize, distort, discredit, and ignore his actions and accomplishments, but they’ve made little to no effort to actually understand what he’s doing and the way he operates.
This has been the elites’ pattern since Trump first announced his bid for the White House, and it is actually what prompted me last year to write my #1 New York Times bestselling book Understanding Trump, which was released in paperback this week.
When President Trump withdrew the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris Agreement, the elites could not see how breaking with these bad agreements could possibly be good for Americans. After all, some of the Washington elites had helped draft these deals — which in the minds of the liberal media, meant these deals must be good.
When President Trump imposed direct trade measures on some foreign-made products, including solar panels, steel, and aluminum to protect US industries that were being undercut, the elites reflexively questioned his political-trade-foreign relations acumen. Seemingly, none of the them stopped to consider that President Trump’s decades of success in international business may provide him with an informed opinion and worldview which are simply counter to their own.
As we have seen President Trump make changes to his Cabinet and personal staff, the elites in Washington and the national media have insisted that these decisions are a sign of dangerous instability in the White House. Never mind that the best business leaders and managers routinely make tough staffing decisions to improve their organizations’ long-run initiatives or mission.
It seems the elites simply refuse to think about the Trump presidency through any lens other than that of traditional Washington – despite the fact that President Trump has never been a part of (and represents a departure from) traditional establishment. This confused, square peg-round hole analytical approach is made worse by the fact that the elites then try to use Washington jargon to define and attack the President.
In their minds, President Trump doesn’t fit the post-World War II international mold that regards the United States as the world’s only real super-power that can afford to prop up all its allies – and even some of its enemies. For that, the elites claim President Trump is an isolationist.
Trump doesn’t fit the traditional Republican free-trader mold because he demands that Americans must benefit from trade agreements, too. Therefore, according to the elites, he must be a protectionist.
The President didn’t enter office with a team of politicos and policy wonks who had been with him through a decades-long political career, so to the elites insist the Trump Administration is inexperienced.
Finally, President Trump is not afraid to take decisive action when he’s made up his mind about something, so the elites claim he is unstable.
However, many Americans hear these Washington words (isolationist, protectionist, inexperienced, unstable) and see no relationship to their President or his administration.
Many Americans, who for years watched factories close and American prosperity dwindle as a result of bad multinational agreements and unfair trade deals, regard President Trump’s decision to get out of the TPP and the Paris Agreement as necessary and long over-due. To them, the President has been working to break away from deals that help other countries at the expense of US success – just as any good business executive would.
Similarly, they see the President taking actions to stop foreign countries that are cheating at trade as a sign that he is defending the interests of our country abroad. That’s also what good business leaders do.
When President Trump replaces one of his team members with someone more in-tune with his vision, most Americans see him acting as a typical, goal-oriented executive.
In Understanding Trump, I point out that Trump defeated the media and Washington elite largely because they simply refused to understand him as a candidate. Further, they were profoundly wrong about the 2016 election because they couldn’t comprehend that the American people wanted something other than the traditional Washington elites’ idea of a president.
It seems the elites didn’t read my book – or they didn’t take its lessons to heart – because they haven’t changed a bit. They still don’t understand Trump.
---------------------- 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, commentary, Elites, Attack, What They Don’t UnderstandTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Teacher Placed on Leave for Asking if a Pro-Life Walkout Would Be Allowed
by Tom Knighton: While pundits and the media applaud the legions of schoolkids who walked out of class on Wednesday, a teacher in California had a valid question. She wondered if protests of a different sort would receive the support of the school administration.
The teacher asked if it was appropriate for the school to have been providing support for a politically motivated protest, and if such support would be there for other causes.
Said history teacher Julianne Benzel:"I just kind of used the example ... a group of students nationwide, or even locally, decided ‘I want to walk out of school for 17 minutes’ and go in the quad area and protest abortion, would that be allowed by our administration."
If civic engagement and protest are good and noble things -- which we're hearing from schools in support of the student walkouts -- then they're good and noble things. If not, you're showing a preference for certain political positions over others.
"We had a dialogue in class about it in Thursday and Friday. And [Wednesday] I received the call. So I am aghast," Benzel said. She was placed on paid administrative leave.
In other words, the answer to her question is "no." She has a great legal case on her hands.
Students' free expression rights should vastly outweigh the state's interest in locking kids up all day, and letting them peacefully protest gun violence seemed like the right call to me. But if it's OK to protest, it should also be OK to have a discussion about the protest.
As long as no student was unjustly disciplined for political speech, it seems to me like there's little reason for parents to complain or for Benzel to be in trouble.I couldn't agree more.
When a school makes it clear that it is willing to support some political speech but not all, students are learning that some opinions can be silenced in this country. They call it progressive, but that's regression.
--------------- Tom Knighton is a Navy veteran, a former newspaperman, a novelist, and a blogger at Bearing Arms. He lives with his family in Southwest Georgia and contributes to PJ Media. Tags:Tom Knighton, PJMedia, Teacher Placed on Leave, for Asking, if a Pro-Life Walkout, Would Be AllowedTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by George Barna: There is no shortage of emotion on the part of the two-thirds of American adults who harbor strong feelings about the condition and direction of the country. During the past decade, in particular, activist conservatives and liberals have been feverishly pushing their ideals and desires for the nation in full view of the public.
The clash of worldviews represented by those two factions has created something that feels like an angry stalemate in which America is not making any progress. Some have called it a (mostly) non-violent civil war. We are definitely in a time of agitation, desperately seeking resolution.
Recent studies by the American Culture and Faith Institute have noted that no matter how you measure it, people are eager to arrive at new solutions because we are leery of our own government. Six out of ten Americans are angry about the state of the nation. Two out of three contend that the government cannot be trusted to do what is in the best interests of the country. Seventy percent say that government has too much control over our lives. Huge majorities of the people argue that the United States is moving in the wrong direction on at least three important fronts: politically, morally, and culturally.
So if we are in a democratic republic, why aren’t things changing for the better?
One reason is that we lack leadership that is coalescing the people around a positive, shared vision of America. We experience that paucity of leadership everyday, as Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, Christians and non-Christians, Millennials and Boomers, whites and non-whites express their divergent perspectives and refuse to give an inch. Without strong leaders casting a compelling portrait of a superior future and shows us how we can move forward, that existing animosity will not end.
But another crucial component of our national stalemate is the large share of the voting-age population that is disengaged from the multifaceted battle of worldviews. These people are the tiebreakers. But they refuse to show up.
There are two key segments of the disengaged. The first is those who have moderate views – i.e., obstinate ambivalence – on both politics and theology (31% of the adult population). They will not take stands on the important issues of the day, from immigration to abortion, from the veracity of the Bible to the role of Jesus Christ in modern life.
The second segment is people who are not registered to vote and pay little attention to political news and information (21%). There are times when all of us get frustrated with the political system and its players, and harbor ill-will toward the biased media. But rather than work through the garbage and distortions in the pipeline, the disengaged retire from the game altogether.
Obviously, these two groups are kissing cousins. In total, 35% of adults fit one or both of those categories.
Their ambivalence is obvious when you see that:
They are less likely to feel angry about the state of the nation: 47% vs. 70% among other adults
They are less likely to have an opinion about President Trump’s current job performance
They are more than twice as likely as other Americans to give President Trump a middling grade (a “C”) or to have no opinion about his first year’s performance in office
They are much less likely to claim that they are actively working for the positive transformation of American society
Why are such a bland feelings and lack of participation a problem to harp on? Because, unfortunately, this group of absentee citizens may hold the future of our nation in their hands.
We are essentially in a political impasse and they hold the tiebreaking vote. Imagine if the U.S. Senate had an evenly-divided floor vote and the Vice President refused to show up to cast the deciding ballot. What would we call the VP? Irresponsible. Abandoning his civic duty. Wreckless. Uncaring. Derelict in his duties.
Conservatives and liberals want to change America. But the Disengaged, through their apathy and ignorance, are effectively destroying it.
Let me make this even clearer. The latest ACFI survey asked people to summarize their feelings about capitalism, socialism, and democracy.
Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, and liberals agree on very little. But three-quarters of them expressed positive feelings about democracy. The Disengaged? Just 37% of them had positive feelings about the basis of American civic life. A majority said they were either undecided on the matter or had no feelings at all.
When asked to make a choice between capitalism and socialism, conservatives overwhelmingly opted for capitalism, liberals vied for socialism. The Disengaged? A majority of them (56%) said they had no preference.
Part of the challenge may be their lack of information. Whereas two-thirds of the engaged population follows news about politics and governance “a lot” or “quite a bit”, few of those who are Disengaged pay attention to such information.
These are the people who don’t know and don’t care. Their failure to participate in the battle for the nation’s future is paralyzing us all.
On the one hand, I hate to have these cultural sluggards shift the direction of the nation one way or the other. Will they be as irresponsible in their choices as they have been through their disengagement?
On the other hand, if they do not engage, without vibrant leaders suddenly emerging to put the nation on course, we will all continue to suffer. If the Disengaged would man-up and uphold their civic duty to participate in national life, we could break out of our political paralysis. Wouldn’t it be better for the nation to move forward than to continue our agonizing slide into the quicksand of ambivalence and throes of political chaos?
If you are among the one out of every three Americans who fit the description of the Disengaged, would you please invest yourself in your own (and everyone else’s) future by getting involved in the society around you? We know you’re busy and overwhelmed; the rest of us are, too. Hiding from cultural controversies or not “taking a stand” is not helping you or your countrymen. There is no real value in staying neutral. Please, spend a little time studying the state of the union and the opportunities and challenges that lie before us. Figure out what you believe and how to translate those views into positive action.
No, you don’t have to be a brain surgeon or rocket scientist to take your obligation to your country and freedom seriously. Less than one percent of us are in those heady professions yet we’re engaged in the admittedly messy sociopolitical process, trying our ragged best to make the world a better place. We need your help!
---------------- George Barna, Executive Director of the American Culture & Faith Institute& provided the ARRA News Service the above research summary. Tags:The Disengaged, Destroying America, American Culture & Faith Institute, George BarnaTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
This We'll Defend, Summit Ministries, Happy Birthday, Ruth!
Gary Bauer
by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: This We'll Defend - I know the Super Bowl is over. But one of the highlights of the big game every year is the commercials. Companies spend millions of dollars for 30 seconds of airtime. Those commercials had better be good and they usually are.
Needless to say, the high cost prohibits a lot of great ads from running, and recently I happened to run across just such an ad. It is awesome! And I truly regret that this ad didn't air during the Super Bowl. America needed to see it, especially given the NFL's pathetic handling of the national anthem protests.
The ad was produced by Grunt Style, a military themed clothing company. It features a Hispanic police officer, who as a young boy watched the 9/11 attacks on TV. He grew up and served in the military. Now he's serving on the Thin Blue Line, staring down Antifa mobs. The ad closes with the Army motto, "This We'll Defend."
It is one of the best ads I have ever seen. Judging by the 13 million online views, I'd say a lot of Americans feel the same way. Watch on Facebook or below. Please share it with your friends and family members.
Summit Ministries - Many conservatives are worried about their Millennial-aged children and grandchildren. They should be. Surveys show a strong majority of them identify as "liberal." On values issues, they "out-liberal" their Sixties-influenced parents. Other research finds that they are eight times more likely to accept Marxist or Postmodern views than older generations.
In short, far too many of America's youth are rejecting traditional American values.
That's why I encourage you to send your 16 to 25 year-old children and grandchildren to Summit Ministries this summer. My own daughter attended Summit's life-changing program as a teenager. It inspired confidence in her faith and provided a clear sense of direction.
This summer, Summit will be holding student conferences in California, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. World-class Christian philosophers, economists and ethicists will help students think critically about the issues of the day from a biblical, values-based perspective.
Visit Summit.org to learn more about their critical training programs. And don't delay in registering. Seats sell out quickly, and early bird discounts end March 31st. Tuition assistance is also available.
Happy Birthday, Ruth! Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg celebrated her 85th birthday yesterday. This August she will celebrate her 25th anniversary of service on the Supreme Court and disservice to the plain meaning of the Constitution. I wish Justice Ginsburg a long and happy life -- in retirement.
On July 23rd, Justice Anthony Kennedy will celebrate his 82nd birthday. A few weeks later on August 15th, Justice Stephen Breyer will turn 80.
With one or two more Supreme Court appointments, President Trump could fundamentally transform the court and our country.
We must maintain control of the Senate this year.
------------------- 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, This We'll Defend, Summit Ministries, Happy Birthday, Ruth!To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Larry Kudlow To Become Trump’s Chief Economic Adviser
. . . Strong on tax cuts, deregulation and taking on China’s economic challenge with tough measures.
Larry Kudlow
by Joseph Klein: President Trump chose Larry Kudlow to serve as his top economic adviser, replacing Gary Cohn, the White House said Wednesday. “Larry Kudlow was offered, and accepted, the position of Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Director of the National Economic Council," Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. "We will work to have an orderly transition and will keep everyone posted on the timing of him officially assuming the role.”
"I'm honored to take this position," Mr. Kudlow said on CNBC, where he has appeared frequently as a senior contributor.
The Wall Street Journal, which has had its sharp differences with President Trump on such issues as trade, praised the Kudlow appointment. “The long-time CNBC commentator is an excellent choice to replace Gary Cohn, having helped Mr. Trump craft his campaign tax plan. Mr. Kudlow, a stalwart from the GOP’s growth wing going back to the Reagan Administration, also played a crucial role persuading Congress to support the reform that passed in December.”
Mr. Kudlow, who had served in the Reagan administration as an economic adviser on budget policy, is a self-described Reagan conservative who believes in supply side economics. One of his close friends is Arthur Laffer, called by some “The Father of Supply Side Economics.” Arthur Laffer praised Mr. Kudlow as “a very sensitive man and a very logical man, which is exactly what Trump needs. And if by chance, he doesn’t convince the president of something, he will be a loyal employee. He stays loyal even if the decision goes against him.”
Larry Kudlow has wholeheartedly supported President Trump’s tax cut initiative. “Trump and the GOP are on the side of the growth angels with the passage of powerful tax-cut legislation to boost business investment, wages, and take-home family pay,” Mr. Kudlow wrote in a CNBC op-ed. “The Democrats, meanwhile, are left with stale class-warfare slogans about tax cuts for the rich.”
Larry Kudlow has also been on board with President Trump on other elements of his domestic policies. “He's so good on deregulation, infrastructure. I even like him on immigration,” Mr. Kudlow said March 1st on CNBC. However, during the same appearance, Mr. Kudlow parted ways with the president on his tariffs announcement, which he called “a bad omen." Mr. Kudlow added that, in his opinion, President Trump has “never been good on trade."
Larry Kudlow also wrote, along with Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore, a March 3rd op-ed on CNBC’s site, claiming that while steel and aluminum may win in the short term, “steel and aluminum users and consumers will lose. In fact, tariff hikes are really tax hikes.”
Mr. Kudlow’s predecessor Gary Cohn, who was a strong believer in free trade and globalism, could not persuade the president to abandon his plan to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. As a result, Mr. Cohn resigned his position. Not wanting to start out in the Trump administration on the wrong foot, Mr. Kudlow has more recently pulled back a bit from his opposition to President Trump’s tariffs decision. In a radio interview last Sunday, he tried to finesse the issue by chalking up President Trump’s tariffs announcement to the “Trumpian way of negotiating. You knock them in the teeth and get their attention. And then you kind of work out a deal, and I think that's what he's done. My hat's off to him. He had me really worried. Now I'm not."
As proof in his mind that President Trump is not simply pursuing a blanket protectionist policy for the steel and aluminum industries, Mr. Kudlow pointed out that Canada, Mexico, and Australia are already exempt. He predicted that European countries and our allies in Asia will also wind up being exempt. China could find itself the only major country not getting an exemption when all is said and done.
In his first public interview since President Trump offered him the job Tuesday evening, Larry Kudlow focused his attention on China, a country that, he said, “has earned a tough response not only from the United States." He emphasized that he was only against “blanket tariffs” because he didn’t think “you should punish your friends to try and punish your enemies in international affairs."
Mr. Kudlow proposed “a sort of a trade coalition of the willing" to counter China’s economic pressure. "A thought that I have is the United States could lead a coalition of large trading partners and allies against China, or to let China know that they're breaking the rules left and right," he said. "That's the way I'd like to see.”
President Trump likes such out-of-the-box thinking. “We don’t agree on everything, but in this case I think that’s good,” President Trump said on Tuesday before the official White House announcement of Larry Kudlow’s appointment. “I want to have different opinions. We agree on most. He now has come around to believing in tariffs as a negotiating point. I’m renegotiating trade deals and without tariffs we wouldn’t do nearly as well. But Larry has been a friend of mine for a long time. He backed me very early in the campaign; I think the earliest; I think he was one of my original backers. He’s a very, very talented man, a good man.”
Larry Kudlow will have to get through the security clearance process, which may be hampered somewhat by his acknowledged drug and alcohol addiction more than two decades ago. He said that he has been clean and sober for nearly 23 years and is willing to see how this issue plays out as a White House staff nominee.
Assuming he survives the security clearance process, Mr. Kudlow will have to then deal with the contending voices for the president’s ear, most notably that of National Trade Council Director Peter Navarro who is pro-tariff. Nevertheless, Peter Navarro and Larry Kudlow may well find common ground in dealing with the economic challenges that China presents to the United States and its allies. The quality of economic advice that President Trump will be receiving, including on trade issues, will be enhanced by Larry Kudlow’s presence on the president's economic team.
------------------- Joseph Klein is a Harvard-trained lawyer and the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom and Larry Kudlow, To Become, President Trump, Chief Economic Adviser. Tags:Joseph Klein, Front PageMag, Larry Kudlow, To Become, President Trump’s, Chief Economic AdviserTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Ann Coulter: On CBS's "60 Minutes" Sunday night, Lesley Stahl asked Education Secretary Betsy DeVos about the "institutional racism" in school discipline.
It was like neither of them had ever heard of Nikolas Cruz. The Parkland, Florida, school shooter is our most recent case study of what happens when liberals start babbling about "institutional racism."
There's never been such an incredible paper trail as there is with Cruz, leading straight from idiotic liberal ideas directly to mass murder. We know that Broward County Public Schools knew about Cruz's felonies. We know that his behavior wasn't reported because it would negatively impact the record of a student of color. The school district bragged about the policy.
Perhaps having no criminal record would have helped Cruz get a good job someday. But it is a fact that one of the consequences of not reporting his crimes was that HE COULD GET A GUN.
Unless liberals are going to say that guns had nothing to do with the Parkland shooting, it was the racial bean-counting in school discipline that unleashed this psychotic on innocent students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School four weeks ago.
Stahl treated as cold hard fact the idea that schools punish "students of color more harshly than their white classmates," citing this real-world example:
"Let's say" -- lots of serious journalism begins with "let's say" -- "there's a disruption in the classroom and a bunch of white kids are disruptive and they get punished, you know, go see the principal. But the black kids are, you know, they call in the cops. I mean, that's the issue: who and how the kids who disrupt are being punished."
I remember this plot on "Law & Order," but there aren't many examples of it in real life.
Teachers in St. Paul, Minnesota, have been hospitalized and permanently disabled by their "disruptive" African-American students, thanks to former St. Paul Public Schools Superintendent Valeria Silva's commitment to ending the "school-to-prison pipeline."
One kid was "disruptive" by punching and strangling a science teacher, John Ekblad, giving him a concussion and permanent brain injuries. The African-American student walked away from Ekblad's body splayed out on the floor, saying, "Did you see me slam that white-ass teacher?"
This "disruptive" rascal was sentenced to 90 days house arrest and probation. Luckily, he wasn't punished more severely, or he might have ended up on the "school-to-prison pipeline." I'm sure he's doing well now.
A popular grade-school teacher, Debbie York, had to undergo repeated surgeries after an 85-pound first-grade student of color assaulted her when she tried to intervene as he was throwing furniture and biting other children. He threw a chair at York, missed her, then body-slammed her, causing permanent injuries.
While on sick leave after the incident, York emailed parents to explain why she was gone. For informing parents about the assault in class, she was promptly cashiered from her 30-year teaching career.
What matters isn't the safety of teachers and students. Nor is it whether anyone is learning anything. All that matters is that no one ever writes down the bad behavior of black and brown students.
When public school teachers -- not a conservative bunch -- in Minnesota -- not a conservative state -- are showing up in a boiling rage at school board meetings to complain about their African-American students having carte blanche to bully and defy them, the problem may not be that our schools are being run by Bull Connor.
One teacher, David McGill, complained that an out-of-control African-American fourth-grader had "significantly compromised an entire year of science instruction for the great majority of his classmates." He said there was nothing he could do about it because of the school's racial quotas on student discipline.
Superintendent Silva's response was to get snippy about the teacher's word choice:
"You said they are 'infecting' other children. I almost fell out of my chair," Silva said.
"I didn't mean it --"
"Doesn't matter. You said it."
Eventually, the school district had to buy off Silva with a $800,000 severance agreement just to get her to leave. It was her or the teachers.
CBS's Stahl is either an ideologue, intentionally painting a picture that is the polar opposite of the truth by implying that students of color are the true victims here -- or else she is so stupid and untutored in the subject that she has no business reporting on it. I could go either way. Your choice. (We need an expression for this sort of broadcast. Something like ... FAKE NEWS!)
A smart Republican would be dying for liberals to bring up the "school-to-prison pipeline." The more it is talked about, the more ripe the insanity becomes.
A kid expelled from high school is twice as likely to end up in prison!
Yeah, because he's a thug. He's a thug when he's in high school and he's a thug a few years later, when he's an adult.
NO! It's keeping a record of his crimes that's the problem! By the time he becomes an adult, he has no choice.
No Democrat should be allowed to run for election this year without taking a position on Parkland's "school-to-prison pipeline" policy.
Worried about suburban moms, Republicans? Make the Democrats defend a toxic ideology that prohibits students of color from being arrested for their criminal acts. They'll either defend it and lose the parents, or they'll oppose it and lose their George Soros funding.
Republicans should pray that the Parkland shooting comes up in debates. You hear "Parkland," and you say: "Let's talk about the 'school-to-prison pipeline.'" You hear, "equity in school discipline," and you say: "Nikolas Cruz."
----------------- Ann Coulter is a conservative author of ten New York Times bestsellers, writes numerous columns and is a frequent guest on numerous radio and TV shows. Her web site is AnnCoulter.com. She is the author of Adios America which she signed and gave to the ARRA News Service editor at the 2015 Eagle Council. Tags:Ann Coulter, Secret Debate Tip, For GOPTo 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: After the victory of Donald Trump in 2016, the GOP held the Senate and House, two-thirds of the governorships, and 1,000 more state legislators than they had on the day Barack Obama took office.
“The Republican Party has not been this dominant in 90 years,” went the exultant claim.
A year later, Republicans lost the governorship of Virginia and almost lost the legislature.
Came then the loss of a U.S. Senate seat in ruby-red Alabama.
Tuesday, Democrats captured a House seat in a Pennsylvania district Trump carried by 20 points, and where Democrats had not even fielded a candidate in 2014 and 2016.
Republicans lately congratulating themselves on a dominance not seen since 1928, might revisit what happened to the Class of 1928.
In 1930, Republicans lost 52 House seats, portending the loss of both houses of Congress and the White House in 1932 to FDR who would go on to win four straight terms. For the GOP, the ’30s were the dreadful decade.
Is the GOP staring at another 1930?
Perhaps.
Unlike 1930, though, the nation has not endured a Great Crash or gone through year one of a Great Depression where unemployment hit 10 percent in June, when the Smoot-Hawley tariff was passed.
Today, the economy is moving along smartly. The labor force is larger than it has ever been. Workers are re-entering and seeking jobs. Black and Hispanic unemployment are at record lows. Confidence is high. Our Great Recession is 10 years in the past.
The problem for Republicans may be found in a truism: When the economy is poor, the economy is the issue. When the economy is good, something else is the issue.
A good economy did not save the GOP in the 18th Congressional District of Pennsylvania, where the party’s tax cut was derided by Democrat Conor Lamb as a wealth transfer to the rich. Nor did Lamb hurt himself by implying Republicans were planning to pay for their tax cut by robbing Social Security and Medicare.
Republican candidate Rick Saccone reportedly stopped using the tax cut as his major issue in his TV ads that ran closest to Election Day.
Other factors point to a bad day for the GOP on Nov. 6.
Republican retirees from Congress far outnumber Democratic retirees.
Democratic turnout has been reaching record highs, while GOP turnout has been normal. And even in the special elections Democrats have lost, they are outperforming the Democrats who lost in 2016.
Relying upon hostility to Trump to bring out the resistance, savvy Democrats are taking on the political coloration of their districts and states, rather than of the national party of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders.
There is, however, troubling news from Pennsylvania for Nancy Pelosi.
Lamb promised voters of “Deerhunter” country he would not support San Francisco Nancy for speaker. Look for Democrats in districts Trump carried to begin talking of the “need for new leaders.”
Trump seems fated to be the primary target of attack this fall, and not only in districts Clinton carried. For an average of national polls shows that disapproval of his presidency is 14 points higher than his approval rating. And this is when the economy is turning up good numbers not seen in this century.
At the national level, Democrats will turn 2018 into a referendum on the Trump persona and Trump presidency. For while the Trump base is loyal and solid, the anti-Trump base is equally so, and appreciably larger.
Lest we forget, Hillary Clinton, not the most charismatic candidate the Democrats have put up in decades, beat Trump by nearly 3 million votes. And while Trump pierced the famous “blue wall” — the 18 states that voted Democratic in every presidential election between 1992 and 2012 — the demographic trend that created the wall is still working.
White voters, who tend to vote Republican, continue to decline as a share of the population. Peoples of color, who vote 70 to 90 percent Democratic in presidential elections, are now nearly 40 percent of the nation.
Mass migration into America is re-enforcing that trend.
Moreover, millennials, who have many elections ahead of them, are more liberal than seniors, who have fewer elections ahead and are the GOP base.
But if Republicans face problems of demography, the party of “tax and tax, spend and spend, and elect and elect” appears to be reaching the end of its tether. Federal deficits are rising toward trillion-dollar levels.
The five largest items in the budget — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, interest on the debt — are rising inexorably. And there appears no disposition in either party to cut back on spending for education, college loans, food stamps, housing assistance or infrastructure.
If the Fed did not retain the power to control the money supply, then the fate of New Jersey and Illinois, and beyond, of Greece and Argentina, would become our national destiny.
-------------------- 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,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 Richard McCarty: Union members deserve to know where their dues money is going. For too long, union members have been largely kept in the dark about their unions’ finances, which has allowed corrupt union bosses to line their pockets with their members’ money and get away with it for years.
Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, who served during the George W. Bush Administration, sought to change that. Of course, union bosses were adamantly opposed to additional scrutiny and spent their members’ money trying to block some of Chao’s reforms in the courts; the courts ultimately sided with Chao. Unfortunately, after Obama won the presidency with the strong support of union bosses, his Labor Department was in no mood to demand much transparency from them; so the agency rolled back Chao’s reforms or simply refused to enforce the law. With Obama long gone, the Trump Labor Department needs to get to work reinstating these critical reforms immediately.
Specifically, the Labor Department needs to reinstate Chao’s reforms of the following filings.
LM-2 filings were supposed to include the full value of compensation packages, including things like free housing and deferred compensation; they were also supposed to include the names of buyers and sellers of union assets of $5,000 or more, and they were to include an itemized listing of receipts.
T-1 filings were supposed to cover trusts such as strike funds, training funds, and building funds.
LM-3 filings are simpler than the LM-2; Chao’s regulation concerning this filing “set the procedure by which a labor organization would lose the privilege of filing a simplified report.”
LM-30 filings, which disclose union officers and employees’ conflicts of interest, were enhanced to include more details, but the Obama Administration announced that it wouldn’t enforce the regulation as long as those required to file the report complied “in some manner.”
For anyone who doubts the importance of union transparency regulations, it should be noted that hundreds of union officials were indicted and convicted on charges of embezzlement, filing false documents, and other crimes during Chao’s tenure at the Labor Department. Additionally, union officials control hundreds of billions of dollars; and unions are some of the most generous and influential political contributors.
While union transparency might seem like a dry, obscure topic, regulations like these can help prevent and reveal corruption by union bosses. If union bosses are tempted to misappropriate funds, they might think twice about it if they know that the union will have to file detailed reports with the Department of Labor. Those union bosses who choose to roll the dice hoping no one will notice their inappropriate expenditures may learn to their chagrin that an eagle-eyed union member or journalist has pored over their union’s reports and spotted the misallocated funds.
Once it’s discovered that union officials have misspent union members’ funds, members can demand that the individuals responsible for the expenditures resign or be fired, or they can vote them out of office. Furthermore, union members can report such offenses to authorities for investigation and potential prosecution. Knowledge really is power.
“Overall, the Trump Labor Department has done a good job of rolling back Obama’s detrimental regulations. Now, we need the Department to seize the opportunity and reinstate Secretary Chao’s union transparency reforms. We’re over a year into the Trump Administration, and the clock is ticking. We know union bosses will likely try to tie these regulations up in the courts. So there’s no time to waste,” said Rick Manning, a member of Trump’s Labor Department transition team.
President Trump was elected with the support of many labor union members, but without the support of virtually any union bosses – nearly all of them supported Hillary Clinton. The Trump Administration should, once again, stand with workers and give them more tools to help determine whether their union’s funds are being spent appropriately. Best of all, the Labor Department doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel; it just needs to reinstate the transparency rules crafted during Chao’s tenure at the Department.
------------------ Richard McCarty is the Director of Research at Americans for Limited Government Foundation. Tags:Restore, Union, Transparency, Richard McCarty, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Trump is Rebuilding American Strength and Confronting Threats
"As we rebuild America’s strength and confidence at home, we are also restoring our strength and standing abroad." President Donald J. Trump
by The White House: FIGHTING TO REBUILD OUR MILITARY: President Donald J. Trump has fought for our military since day one and has sought to provide our troops with the funding they need.
On February 9, 2018, President Trump signed a two-year budget deal raising the military’s budget caps for national defense to $700 billion for Fiscal Year 2018 and $716 billion for Fiscal Year 2019.
Raising the budget caps fulfills the President’s promise to end years of harmful sequestration budget restraints on our military and will help the military rebuild.
The new budget cap increases Fiscal Year 2018 defense spending over the previous year by nearly $70 billion, a 10 percent increase and the largest increase for our military since 2007.
The budget deal provides for funding levels that would support for thousands more troops and billions more in funding for missile defense.
President Trump signed the Fiscal Year 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which authorized important priorities for defense spending.
The NDAA authorized $626 billion of base budget resources for the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy national security programs, providing an additional $66 billion for Overseas Contingency Operations.
The NDAA authorized a 2.4 percent pay raise for our troops, providing a significant improvement in quality of life for the members of our military.
The NDAA included authorization for $146.2 billion for military personnel, including pay, allowances, and bonuses.
The NDAA adds thousands to the size of U.S. forces and provides billions of dollars for the air, land, and sea equipment our military needs.
The NDAA authorizes key investments in readiness across the military, supporting Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force operations and maintenance.
The President has called for a major modernization of our nuclear forces to ensure that the U.S. deterrent is modern, robust, flexible, ready, and resilient.
AN AMERICA FIRST NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY: President Trump has charted a new course for America’s foreign policy, putting the interests and security of the American people first.
President Trump has outlined a national security strategy following four key pillars:
protect the homeland, the American people, and the American way of life;
promote American prosperity;
preserve peace through strength; and
advance American influence.
ENDING THE THREAT OF TERROR: President Trump has made great strides in fulfilling his promise to defeat ISIS and tackle the threat of terror around the world.
ISIS has lost nearly 100 percent of its former caliphate.
More than 50 percent of the territory liberated from ISIS has been liberated under the Trump Administration, freeing another 5 million people from ISIS’s oppression.
The President is committed to destroying ISIS, and the Global Coalition will hunt these terrorists wherever they hide.
President Trump is making clear to our allies that they cannot be America’s friends while supporting or condoning terror.
The President has suspended security assistance to Pakistan, sending a long-overdue message to the recipients of American foreign aid that we expect them to fully join us in combatting terrorism.
In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, President Trump called on representatives of over 50 Muslim-majority nations to do more to combat terror and extremist ideology.
DETERRING THREATS TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE: President Trump has made strong and necessary moves to deter threats to the United States.
The President has led and executed an international maximum pressure campaign against North Korea to compel North Korea to denuclearize and cease its dangerous provocations.
The President has rallied world powers in support of increasing economic and diplomatic pressure.
The global maximum pressure campaign appears to be working—North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has committed to ceasing provocations and expressed willingness to denuclearize.
The President has agreed to meet with the North Korean leader and will use this opportunity to hold the regime to its commitment to denuclearize the Korean peninsula.
The President has taken aggressive action to confront Iran’s threatening behavior, including imposing sanctions on dozens of Iran-linked entities and refusing to re-certify the Iran deal.
The President ordered missile strikes in Syria, in opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad following his use of chemical weapons against his own people. In doing so, the President stood up for the global norms against the use of chemical weapons.
---------------- Tags:President Donald Trump, The White House, Repulding America, strength, confronting threatsTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
My first was in Mrs. Grubb’s third grade class, after a substitute teacher gave us a ton of math homework. During recess we organized and delivered a written statement announcing a student strike against doing the math.
Believe it or not, the assignment was withdrawn, called an April Fools joke . . . but boy did we catch hell when Mrs. Grubb returned.
This week, with the school walkouts across the country to protest “gun violence” and demand “gun control,” some older kids finally got in the game. I may disagree with their public policy shibboleths and disdain their tone, but I would defend to the . . .
Well, you know.
The problem isn’t students or protests. It is the partisan government school system. The system’s taxpayer-paid agents — teachers, administrators — believe they can support student protest movements for changing laws they want changed, but block and punish protests on issues they do not favor.
And, especially, bring the hammer down on anyone who dares notice the double standard out loud.
Rocklin High School teacher, Julianne Benzel, “has been placed on paid administrative leave due to several complaints from parents and students involving the teacher’s communications regarding today’s student-led civic engagement activities,” the California school district said in a statement.
Benzel told CBS in Sacramento that she did not discourage her students from joining the protest — er, I mean, civic engagement activity. But in class, she did raise the issue of whether the school administration would similarly allow (much less facilitate, dare we say, encourage) student protests against abortion, instead of guns.
Let’s protest what we can actually change: public schools engaging in partisan political activity.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
------------------ Paul Jacob 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, Civic Engagement ActivitiesTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
The Christopher Steele Dossier Has Become The Greatest Threat To National Security
by Robert Romano: The past month has seen some of the greatest escalation between the U.S., its allies and Russia since the height of the Cold War, if not in the entire history of relations between the two countries.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has unveiled a new low-flying, high-speed nuclear missile said to be able to defeat U.S. missile defenses. Leaving aside the existence of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle warheads since the 1970s, which overwhelm targets with multiple warheads simultaneously such that they cannot all be shot down, Moscow’s point was to remind us that we are vulnerable. Now, the talk is of a new strategic arms race.
Sergei Skripal, a double agent and associate of former British spy Christopher Steele, and his daughter were poisoned in an apparent nerve gas attack in Salisbury, UK.
It was reported that Skripal might have been one of the sources Steele used in his infamous series of memos accusing President Donald Trump of being a Russian agent in 2016 during the election campaign. The attack then takes on the appearance, whether or not based in fact as being personal retaliation by Putin against Skripal for having had a hand in the Steele dossier.
The UK has since blamed Russia for the attack and expelled Russian diplomats from its country. The U.S. reiterated the assessment that Russia was responsible for the attack.
Since then, the U.S. has issued a new series of sanctions against Russia for allegedly interfering in the 2016 elections.
In short, tensions are rising dramatically.
And it is hard to imagine all this happening without the Steele dossier, which combined with the Justice Department investigation that it inspired in 2016 into Trump-Russian collusion has seemingly tied the hands of the U.S. administration.
Even as it turns out the documents were politically motivated, paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), never corroborated and then used by federal officials to launch a national security investigation into the Trump campaign that never found the object of the investigation.
No matter how discredited the dossier is, or how much dangerous the situation becomes, the more the accusers double down to save face and to keep up the war footing against Moscow.
Any concession offered to Moscow, even ones to pull back from the brink, now become a “crime” against the state, something else for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to investigate, a potential quid pro quo for an arrangement that never existed in reality.
This makes war more likely.
Now, to prove the U.S. administration are not Russian agents, all actions must be cast through a prism of being tough against Moscow. On March 15, the Republican National Committee issued a memo to supporters via email, reading, “Trump’s Tough-On-Russia Record” and “President Trump Has Repeatedly Sanctioned Russia And Supported Our Allies Against Russian Aggressions.”
The memo highlights that the U.S. too expelled Russian diplomats in 2017, closing a consulate in San Francisco and two other diplomatic annexes in New York and Washington.
To its credit, the RNC left out the part where 200 Russians were killed in Syria by U.S. forces. But why not include it? What proves more how tough we are on a country than sending their soldiers home in body bags?
The U.S. and Russia still remain the world’s foremost nuclear powers. Each is an existential threat to the other. But these incidents, coming in such close succession, coupled with the Steele dossier and the Justice Department’s never-ending investigation into Trump and Russia — now Mueller is subpoenaing Trump organization financial statements dating back years before the election — make it next to impossible to engage in diplomacy. Thus making further escalation more likely.
In the meantime, Steele and Fusion GPS CEO Glenn Simpson have cast serious doubts on their own memos’ veracity, especially the outrageous allegation that the Russians somehow possessed blackmail against Trump, some video with him and prostitutes in a hotel room in Moscow in 2013 that most probably never happened. Per Steele, on if the incident ever happened, “It’s fifty-fifty.” He had no clue if it happened. But it prompted him to bring it to the FBI, and the rest is history.
As The Federalist’s Molie Hemingway reported, in reality, “President Trump’s longtime bodyguard Keith Schiller told congressional investigators that on that trip someone offered to send five women to Trump’s hotel room. Schiller said he took it as a joke, and declined. He also testified that he told Trump about it when he escorted him back to his hotel room and that the two had a laugh. From this nugget of reality was spun a pornographic and difficult to believe scene of Trump using prostitutes to defile the Obama hotel bed.”
The rest of the dossier has not panned out either. People were said to be in places they couldn’t be and threads were connected that were too good to be true on behalf of the Clinton campaign.
As a result, the official inquest into these matters has become tainted to its core. Every day that goes by, more and more misconduct by the Justice Department is revealed in its handling of the investigation into Trump. The bias of investigators has been revealed, the disregard for exculpatory evidence and so forth.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was invoked in federal courts without verified evidence to obtain surveillance against the Trump campaign during the election. It led to the U.S. administration spying on the opposition party, a grotesque abuse of power that did far more to interfere with the elections and the peaceful transfer of power than anything Russia is accused of.
Now, one need not be skeptical about official proclamations such as Russia being responsible for hacking the DNC and putting the emails onto Wikileaks, or even being behind this nerve gas attack in the UK, to be extremely concerned about this turn of events.
Russia could be responsible for those things. And if it were not for the Steele dossier accusing Trump of being involved with Russia and the Justice Department investigation accusing everyone who ever spoke to a Russian of treason, they might have been dealt with via diplomacy. Some of these events might have even been prevented. Unfortunately, windows of opportunity for diplomacy to cool tensions appear to be diminishing.
It’s getting to the point where this could cast a cloud over U.S.-Russian relations for a generation, long after Trump has left office. Each escalation is getting harder to turn back from. Eventually it becomes more to do with national pride than the facts.
Anyone of these flashpoints is extremely dangerous in their own right. Dealing with them is that much more difficult thanks to the Justice Department’s relentless investigation into the false, reckless charge that the President is a Russian agent.
It would be hard enough to repair relations without all this.
The key point is that President is innocent of the basic charge of being a Russian agent, and for everyone’s sake, this witch hunt needs to end once and for all. Look at what is happening.
The lies of the Steele dossier that the President is a Russian agent have become the greatest threat to U.S. national security, a source of escalation and a barrier to diplomacy between the two countries in the world that absolutely need to be talking to one another. It is time to put this dangerous fiction to rest — before we pass the point of no return on the road to a war that cannot be won.
---------------- Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government. Tags:Christopher Steele Dossier, Greatest Threat, National Security, Robert Romano, Americans for Limited GovernmentTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Without the Individual Mandate’s Tax, Obamacare Should Fall Apart in Court
Removal of the individual mandate tax penalty
should make Obamacare unconstitutional,
per the Supreme Court's 2012 ruling.
by Brad Schimel & Ken Paxton: When Congress enacted President Donald Trump’s landmark tax reform plan in December, one media outlet proclaimed: “The GOP Tax Bill Kills Obamacare’s Individual Mandate.”
Turns out, the headline was wrong. The individual mandate—the unconstitutional requirement that most Americans buy health insurance—remains in the law.
The headline should have proclaimed that the tax bill repealed the tax penalty associated with the mandate, thereby rendering every single word of Obamacare unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s reasoning.
Back in 2012, the Supreme Court narrowly upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare in a 5-4 decision. Although the five justices in the majority searched the entire Constitution, the deciding vote—Chief Justice John Roberts—found only one basis for Congress’ authority to enact the individual mandate: the power to levy taxes.
In his opinion, Roberts said that while Obamacare’s mandate is best read as an unconstitutional requirement on Americans—which Congress has no authority to enact—its constitutionality could be salvaged as a “tax” because the mandate’s associated tax penalties raise “at least some revenue.” Roberts cited this raising of “some revenue” as being “the essential feature of any tax.”
Last year, Congress repealed the individual mandate tax penalty, leaving only the unconstitutional mandate. This change rendered the individual mandate unconstitutional under Roberts’ reasoning. After all, the mandate no longer raises “some revenue.”
And without the mandate, the rest of the law falls.
President Barack Obama and the leaders of Congress made it very clear at the time that the individual mandate is the core of Obamacare. Without it, Obamacare cannot function as Congress and the Obama administration intended.
The Obama administration even told the Supreme Court that key parts of Obamacare would be invalid without the mandate. In other words, you cannot constitutionally separate the mandate from Obamacare’s structure. If the individual mandate is now unconstitutional, the entire law must be struck down.
Texas and Wisconsin, joined by 20 states, filed a lawsuit in federal court earlier this month asking the federal courts to obey what the Supreme Court has already recognized and hold all of Obamacare unconstitutional.
Since its passage in 2009, Obamacare has been a colossal failure. It has not lowered premiums for most Americans, and it has not brought down the cost of health care. It has succeeded in imposing billions of dollars in costs on individuals and endangered America itself by far overstepping the bounds of the federal power set by our Constitution.
Everyone except many of the politicians in Washington, D.C., understands that the powers of the federal government are, as James Madison famously put it, “few and defined.” Plainly and simply, the federal government’s authority is strictly limited to the matters spelled out in the text of the Constitution.
The 10th Amendment reserves the authority to do anything and everything else exclusively to the states or to the American people. The Founders did not build our Constitution around federalism for the benefit of law professors and D.C. politicians. They build it to be a castle wall guarding the liberty of all Americans.
We bring this challenge to Obamacare because, as state attorneys general, we took an oath of office to uphold the rule of law and protect the rights of Americans from the unconstitutional, ever-expanding intrusion of the federal government.
Through our multi-state lawsuit, we hope to restore the rule of law to our health care markets. Then the president and Congress can pursue the health care reform it actually has the authority to enact.
------------------ Brad Schimel is the Attorney General of Wisconsin and Ken Paxton is the Attorney General of Texas. Article in The Daily Signal. Tags:Attorney Generals, Brad Schimel, Wisconsin, Ken Paxton, Texas, Individual Mandate, Tax, ObamacareTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Tony Perkins: If there aren’t atheists in foxholes, why should we put them in the Chaplain Corps? Senator Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) can’t imagine. Like most leaders, he’s astounded that the Navy is even considering letting someone who doesn’t believe in God join the chaplaincy. Three years ago, the idea was so absurd that even Obama’s military attorneys went to court to stop it. Now, with Secretary Jim Mattis at the helm, no one can quite understand why the topic is even up for discussion.
The bizarre storyline started in 2015 when Jason Heap tried to sue his way into the chaplaincy. Not surprisingly, the Navy rejected him because he planned to associate with two humanist groups instead of an actual religious denomination. Ultimately, the military ended up in court defending the notion that religious leaders should serve a religious purpose. They won. But this year, Heap is trying again -- and, according to Senator Wicker -- the Chaplain Appointment and Retention Eligibility Advisory Group is actually recommending the Navy accept him.
Wicker, an Air Force veteran and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is doing everything he can to keep the application from moving forward. And he’s enlisted 22 other senators and 40-plus House members to help. In two separate letters to Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, both chambers explain how radically this would alter the Chaplain Corps. Obviously, the dozens of leaders explain, no one is saying that atheists don’t belong in the military. But allowing them to serve and allowing them in the pulpit are two different things.
“The Navy has sufficient authority to create programs for humanist or atheist service members,” the senators write. “The Chaplain Corps is not the appropriate place. The Chaplain Corps serves religious needs, not philosophical preferences. Approving a secular-humanist chaplain would open the door to other applicants representing other philosophical worldviews. Over time, this situation would erode the distinct religious function of the Chaplain Corps.”
The idea is even more ridiculous when you consider that barely three percent of our service members even identify as atheist or humanist. To fling open the chaplaincy to any ideology or philosophy would fundamentally change an institution that’s older than the country itself! Not to mention, the House letter reminds the Navy, that “The Department of Defense’s own guidelines also reinforce the uniquely religious purpose of the chaplain corps, defining ‘religious organization’ as ‘an entity that is organized and functions primarily to perform religious ministries to a non-military lay constituency’ and defining a religious ministry professional as ‘an individual endorsed to represent a religious organization and to conduct its religious observances or ceremonies.’”
Throughout the years, the Supreme Court has been clear, the House members go on, that “non-religious beliefs may not rely on the Religion Clauses for protection.” Groups like the American Humanist Association, who helped hatched this crazy idea, argue that nonbelievers suffer the same fear and pain that affects every service member. But isn’t that why the military has psychologists? And, as Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), a reserve Air Force chaplain, pointed out, nothing is stopping atheists from visiting the chaplains who are already available.
“No one is arguing that atheists do not have the same First Amendment rights of free expression as their neighbors of Christian, Jewish, Muslim or other faiths,” Wicker explains in a new op-ed on Fox News. “This is not the subject of scrutiny. The central question here is how an atheist chaplain can be expected to fulfill a role that, by its very nature, is supposed to serve the religious needs of our service members.” By definition, a chaplain’s duties are to offer prayer, spiritual counseling, and religious instruction. If that doesn’t disqualify a non-believer, I’m not sure what would!
The Trump administration inherited plenty of messes from the Obama military -- but this isn’t one of them. It’s time for Secretary Mattis to step in and protect the integrity of chaplaincy.
-------------- Tony Perkins is President of the Family Research Council . This article was on Tony Perkin's Washington Update and written with the aid of FRC senior writers. Tags:Tony Perkins, Family Research Center, FRC, Family Research Council,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 Art Moore: Along with concluding the Trump campaign did not coordinate with Russia to influence the 2016 election, the House Intelligence Committee report by the Republican majority confirmed that President Obama’s director of national intelligence, James Clapper, leaked information about the dubious anti-Trump “dossier” that ended up being reported by CNN.
It was CNN host Jake Tapper’s report shortly before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017 – followed by the publishing of the full dossier by BuzzFeed – that ignited the fury in Washington over “Trump-Russia collusion” that led to a now-widening special counsel investigation.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said in an interview Wednesday with the Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom” that it apparently was Clapper who leaked information from a Jan. 6, 2017, intelligence briefing that included then-President-elect Donald Trump and President Obama.
“Here is one of the top intelligence people in the government at the time, leaking information to the press,” said Jordan.
Asked what he would say to Democrats charging Republicans are trying to deflect attention from allegations against Trump, Jordan said the “real concern” is alleged abuse by top FBI officials.
“They took an opposition research document and dressed it all up, made it look like legit intelligence and took it to the FISA court to get a warrant to spy on a fellow American citizen,” he said.
“And the guy who leaked information about that dossier is James Clapper.”
The summary says the investigation found, “Problematic contacts between senior Intelligence Community officials and the media.”
Clapper, Carter noted, was one of four senior Obama administration officials to attend the January 2017 briefing with Trump and Obama.
At the time of the leaks, Clapper issued an official statement expressing his “profound dismay” and warning that the leaks were “extremely corrosive and damaging” to national security.
Giving the dossier ‘legs’
Clapper’s leak is what gave the dossier of “salacious and unverified” material “legs” in the eyes of media, making it “official news” after it had been shopped around to reporters as early as the summer of 2016 by its author, former British spy Christopher Steele, according to a congressional source who spoke to Carter.
Journalists had been reluctant to publish the dossier’s unsubstantiated findings, but when CNN published the first report of the Trump-Obama briefing, other news agencies followed suit.
The House intel panel found evidence that Clapper, now a contributor at CNN, contacted the news channel shortly before the story was published.
Reacting to criticism, BuzzFeed said the CNN report had a role in its decision to publish the document.
When the Washington Post reported last October that the dossier was financed by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, Clapper dismissed the revelation, insisting “it doesn’t matter who paid for it.”
The “key thing,” he said in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, is “what the dossier said and the extent to which it’s corroborated or not.”
As a defendant in several defamation lawsuits contesting the veracity of the dossier, Steele has downplayed the significance of his findings, noted former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy.
In a lawsuit filed in London by Aleksej Gubarev, whom Steele accused of participating in Russian intelligence hacking, the former British spy explained he passed along the information because it “warranted further investigation,” not because he could vouch for its truthfulness.
Truth be told
Clapper’s own veracity was an issue during his service as DNI.
In an April 2017 interview with “Meet the Press,” he unequivocally denied the existence of a FISA court order to wiretap the Trump campaign in 2016.
But in an interview with CNN five months later, he said it was possible that President Trump was recorded as part of the government’s surveillance of Paul Manafort, who served briefly as Trump’s campaign manager.
In the CNN interview, Clapper continued to claim that he wasn’t aware of a FISA warrant against Manafort.
But when asked by CNN host Don Lemon if it was “possible the president was picked up in a conversation with Paul Manafort,” Clapper said, “It’s certainly conceivable.”
“Likely?” pressed Lemon.
“I can’t say. I wouldn’t want to go there. I will say it’s possible,” Clapper said.
A report by the website Mediate pointed out Clapper had made it clear to Lemon that as DNI, he would know of any FISA order to wiretap an American citizen.
That meant that either Clapper wasn’t telling the truth or the order was carried out without his knowledge, which would have been illegal.
The testimony fell apart months later when former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed secret court orders forced phone companies to turn over all U.S. call records on an “ongoing, daily basis.”
In January, the lawmakers were urging immediate action, pointing out the five-year statutes of limitation for perjury and making false statements were to expire March 12.
They argued that not prosecuting Clapper would set a dangerous precedent, hindering their ability to oversee federal agencies.
Brennan warns Republicans
Another former Obama intelligence official was in the news this week, responding to the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee’s finding of no collusion.
Former CIA Director John Brennan warned Tuesday via Twitter that Republicans “who try to protect President Trump” will face consequences in the midterm elections this fall.
He wrote: “Leadership of House Intel Committee has traded last vestige of integrity for politics. With other investigative shoes yet to drop, legislators who try to protect @realDonaldTrump will face November reckoning. Hopefully, bipartisan effort in Senate Intel Committee will endure…”
Meanwhile, in an interview on “Fox & Friends” Tuesday, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said that while the panel’s investigation found no evidence of Trump-campaign collusion with Russia, it discovered links between Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and Russians.
“We need to get our FBI and our intelligence agencies working on real problems and get them away from what they’re doing now, which is, it looks likes, spinning in circles,” Nunes said.
“We spent 14 months on this investigation, looking for collusion. We didn’t find any.”
Nunes accused the ranking member of the intel panel, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and other Democrats of trying to rewrite history and engage in personal attacks because they have failed to find clear evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.
“They’ve said that numerous times, probably hundreds of times, nearly all of them. Yet they never produce their collusion to our committee. So we have interviewed all these folks. We can’t find any collusion. And that’s where we stand now,” Nunes said.
In a separate investigation, focusing on FISA court abuses by FBI and Justice Department officials, Nunes’ intelligence committee verified that the dossier, based on Russian sources, was funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
The congressman told Fox News no one seems to care about the “clear links” between the Clinton campaign and Russians.
“The more that you look at this, the more it is pretty obvious that you have one side that plays by one set of rules, and Republicans are held to a different set of standards,” Nunes said.
-------------------- Art Moore is an editor for World News Daily and its monthly magazine and book-publishing division. Tags:Art Moore, World News Daily, James Clapper, leak, ignited, Russia FlapperTo 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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