Five Scandals

by Newt Gingrich: The current Mueller-DOJ-Russia mess is almost impossible to understand because it is made up of five parallel scandals.

For months, as I wrote my new book, Trump’s America, I tried to better understand news as it emerged from the Justice Department – and I still am. There are so many moving parts, personalities, and dates that it is difficult to track. However, as a trained historian, I began creating an orderly outline for people, dates, and events.

I realized that the scandal is so big, so complex, and involves so many people with power that codifying it really required me to draw from my experience writing novels. There are so many egos and there is so much manipulative behavior, dishonesty (and dishonesty about the dishonesty) that it is very difficult to explain it as a straightforward history. It could be more easily explained as a narrative of ambition, illegality, and criminal plotting.

Finally, it hit me that the real problem is that there are five parallel and often interlocked scandals going on in concert:

1. The Clintons have been breaking the law and getting away with it at least since Hillary made nearly $100,000 from a $1,000 investment in cattle futures in 1978-1979. For 40 years the Clintons have acted as though there were no laws which applied to them. They have surrounded themselves with lawyers and simply muscled their way through every scandal. The scale of Clinton illegal activity is so large and so widespread that no one has been able to fully describe it – although Peter Schweizer made a pretty good start with his book Clinton Cash.

2. The extraordinary deep state defense of Hillary, combined with the systematic avoidance of exposing and dealing with her illegal behaviors while protecting her staff members when they support and participate in her illegality, is beyond anything we have seen in American history.

3. The calculated effort to undermine and discredit then-candidate and now-President Donald Trump is actually a continuation of a deep anti-Republican bias in the Justice Department. This DOJ tradition is well catalogued in Sidney Powell’s stunning book, Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice. If you have any illusions about the DOJ’s objectivity, keep in mind that employees of this department gave 97 percent of their 2016 campaign donations to Hillary – while the department was supposedly investigating her for illegally using a private email server to send and receive classified information as secretary of state. With each passing week, we are learning more about the extraordinary abuses of power designed to undermine President Trump and punish his supporters (a direct contrast to the treatment of Clinton and her staff). The aggressive abuse of power has led both Alan Dershowitz and former Clinton advisor Mark Penn to warn that limitless police power is a danger to all of us.

4. The scandal of the deep state resistance to accountability and transparency has also been astounding. As a career deep state member, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has consistently resisted inquiries by Congress. Documents requested by the Senate Judiciary Committee were heavily redacted for supposed national security reasons – which turned out to have nothing to do with national security (including the fact that the FBI had spent $70,000 on a conference table). Meanwhile, more than a million documents were withheld from the House Judiciary Committee for so long that the committee had to issue a subpoena. The reason for this deep state resistance is simple. Transparency is going to get a lot of people in trouble – and it goes to the very top. When Lisa Page wrote Peter Strzok in September 2016, “POTUS wants to know everything,” there is good reason to believe President Obama was the one she was referring to as ‘POTUS.’ If President Obama wanted to know everything, given the way his White House worked, it is very likely his senior advisor Valerie Jarrett knew everything. The more we learn, the bigger the scandal web gets.

5. Panic is breaking out among senior people who engaged in illegal activities because they thought President Hillary Clinton would protect them. Suddenly, they find themselves in danger of criminal charges. That is why people like former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan grow increasingly hysterical in their TV appearances.

I did my best to succinctly capture this moment in American history in Trump’s America, but each one of these five scandals is worthy of its own detailed book. Taken together, they are a mound of illegalities, abuses, dishonesty, and manipulation – on a scale that has never before occurred in America.

I suspect when all these scandals are unraveled, a political and cultural reckoning in Washington will follow.
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Newt Gingrich is a former Georgia Congressman and Speaker of the U.S. House. He co-authored and was the chief architect of the "Contract with America" and a major leader in the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional elections. He is noted speaker and writer. The above commentary was shared via Gingrich Productions.

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Judicial Watch Battles FBI for Anti-Trumper Text Messages

by Tom Fitton: Here is a sliver of good news in our efforts to find out the truth about the extent of corruption infecting the senior ranks of the FBI, specifically in our lawsuit to get documents about “anti-Trump” senior FBI officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok. Our legal team was just informed by the Justice Department that, “the FBI plans to send letters to Peter Strzok and Lisa Page asking them to preserve agency records on their personal accounts and personal devices and requesting confirmation that they are doing so.” We made the preservation request to the FBI as part of our Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit for records of the two current and former FBI officials. (Page recently retired, but Mr. Strzok is still at the FBI.)

We’re glad the FBI reversed course. On May 2, the FBI wrote a letter to Senator Grassley saying it had not requested information from the personal email accounts of Strzok and Page:
[T]he FBI has not requested from Ms. Page or Mr. Strzok any information from their personal email accounts, nor as the FBI conducted searches of non-FBI-issued communications devices or non-FBI e ii accounts associated with Mr. Strzok or Ms. Page. The status report also details the FBI’s promise to try to preserve the Strzok-Page records from their personal devices.I’m glad we successfully pushed back on this issue!

What about the documents the FBI does have? A few days ago (May 21), U.S. District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton ordered the FBI to begin processing 13,000 pages of previously undisclosed emails exchanged exclusively between FBI officials Strzok and Page between February 1, 2015, and December 2017. The first 500 pages of records are to be processed by June 29, 2018. The court order requires that:
(1) the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) shall process the 500 pages of potentially responsive records and produce any responsive, non-exempt records to the plaintiff on or before June 29, 2018;
(2) after June 29, 2018, the FBI, on a monthly basis, shall process 500 pages of potentially responsive records and produce any responsive, non-exempt records to the plaintiff; and
(3) on September 1, 2018, and thereafter on a quarterly basis (once every three months), on the first day of the month (or, if the first falls on a weekend or holiday, the next business day), the parties shall file a joint status report advising the Court of the FBI’s progress in processing the request.Just prior to the judge’s order we filed a joint status report in federal court regarding the production of Strzok-Page documents. The report discloses how, between April 5 and May 4, 2018, the FBI processed only 35 pages of potentially responsive records identified as travel requests, authorizations, vouchers and expense reports for Strzok and Page, and less than half that material (16 pages) was released to JW.

The developments came in response to our January 2018 FOIA lawsuit against the Justice Department (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-00154)) after it failed to respond to our December 4, 2017, FOIA request seeking:

• All records of communications, including but not limited to, emails, text messages and instant chats, between FBI official Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page;
• All travel requests, travel authorizations, travel vouchers and expense reports of Peter Strzok;
• All travel requests, travel authorizations, travel vouchers and expense reports of Lisa Page.

Strzok and Page were deeply involved in the Clinton email scandal and served on the Mueller investigation team. Strzok was reportedly removed from Mueller’s team in August and reassigned to a human resources position after it was discovered that he and FBI lawyer Page, who worked for FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and with whom Strzok was carrying on an extramarital affair, exchanged stridently pro-Clinton and anti-Trump text messages.

Strzok also reportedly oversaw the FBI’s interviews of former National Security Adviser, General Michael Flynn. He changed former FBI Director James Comey’s language about Hillary Clinton’s actions regarding her illicit email server from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless” and played a lead role in the FBI’s interview of Clinton. Strzok is suspected of being responsible for using the unverified dossier to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant in order to spy on President Trump’s campaign.

The FBI has been slippery when it comes to records about the Clinton and Russia scandal fiascos, so we’re pleased the Bureau is taking steps to make sure government records don’t go missing.

On the other hand, the FBI’s purposeful slow-walking of the Strzok-Page materials shows contempt for both transparency law and the public’s interest in figuring out how and why the FBI was politicized to target President Trump while protecting Hillary Clinton. Director Wray and Attorney General Sessions should step up and speed up the release of these documents.

Federal Agency Known for Fraud, Waste Finances Own Attacks

When Barack Obama promised to “fundamentally transform” the United States, he wasn’t kidding. He wanted everything, including your neighborhoods to yield to the state, and the effects of his wishes are still reverberating in communities across the country a year and a half into President Trump’s term. Our Corruption Chronicles blog zeroes in on one festering sore.
Here’s an amusing—and unbelievable—story about the most overtly communist agency in the U.S. government financing its own attacks with taxpayer money. A nonprofit that receives millions of dollars from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is suing the agency in federal court for suspending a controversial Obama program with far-reaching racial and ethnic housing quotas. Known as Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH), the policy aims to transform nearly all of the nation’s neighborhoods with unprecedented low-income housing quotas and preferred ethnic and racial formulas.

AFFH also requires federal and local governments to spend tens of millions of dollars annually gathering statistics on racial and ethnic concentrations in America’s neighborhoods. In January, HUD Secretary Ben Carson delayed the implementation of AFFH, which he describes as a government-engineered attempt to legislate racial equality. This month, Carson finally suspended the contentious program altogether, revealing in a statement that the tool used to comply with AFFH is confusing, difficult to use and frequently produced unacceptable assessments. In its 18-page Federal Register notice HUD states that it has spent over $3.5 million on technical assistance for the initial round of AFFH submissions from local governments across the nation. “HUD is withdrawing the Tool to produce a more effective and less burdensome Assessment Tool,” the notice reads. “These improvements to the Tool will make it more effective in assisting program participants with the creation of meaningful assessments with impactful fair housing goals to help them plan to fulfill their legal obligation to affirmatively further fair housing.”

A lawsuit was quickly filed against HUD and Carson by a group of leftist organizations and the lead plaintiff is the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), a nonprofit dedicated to ending housing discrimination and fostering diverse, inclusive communities through advocacy. Based in Washington, D.C., NFHA receives a chunk of change from HUD as well as leftwing billionaire George Soros. Records obtained by Judicial Watch show that the NFHA got more than $16 million in funding from HUD since 2009, including a $300,000 grant that was just awarded in March 2018 for fair housing enforcement. In 2016 NFHA received $475,000 from Soros’ Foundation to Promote Open Society specifically for “project support for AFFH work,” documents obtained by Judicial Watch show. In the HUD complaint NFHA claims that killing Obama’s program was “arbitrary and capricious” and “constitutes unlawful agency action.” It also accuses Carson of being hostile towards AFFH long before he was named HUD secretary.

“In an article published in 2015, Secretary Carson criticized the AFFH Rule at length, equating it to ‘mandatory busing’ of schoolchildren,’” the 60-page complaint states. “He condemned both the AFFH Rule and a Supreme Court decision recognizing that the Fair Housing Act bars disparate impact discrimination, stating that ‘based on the history of failed socialist experiments in this country, entrusting the government to get it right can prove downright dangerous.’ In his confirmation hearing, Secretary Carson reiterated his hostility to the AFFH Rule.” The lawsuit was filed a few weeks ago in United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The national law firm representing the plaintiffs specializes in litigating civil rights cases in the areas of housing, lending, employment, public accommodations, education and police accountability. In a press release on its website, the firm demands “immediate reinstatement” of what it calls an “unlawful suspension” of AFFH.

Plagued by a multitude of scandals over the years, HUD was long overdue to deliver good news to American taxpayers and killing AFFH is a good start. Even after the Trump administration took over, HUD has continued funding many of Obama’s wasteful, socialist programs. Among them is a multi-million-dollar experiment that aims to transform slums into desirable middle-class neighborhoods. A few months ago the initiative, known as Choice Neighborhoods, got a $5 million infusion from the Trump administration. Before that Trump’s HUD gave dozens of leftist groups that purport to fight housing discrimination $37 million. The biggest chunk—$999,962—went to NFHA, which had just attacked the president for terminating an Obama program (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals—DACA) that protects hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants living in the U.S.For eight years Washington was a playground for leftists. And they refuse to leave.
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Tom Fitton is president of Judcial Watch.

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Patriot Graves

Soldiers from the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard)
participate in the “Flags-In” mission at Arlington National
Cemetery, Va.. Soldiers placed an American flag at every
grave maker in the cemetery. The Old Guard has conducted
this mission annually at Arlington National Cemetery prior
to Memorial Day. Army photo by Sgt. Nicholas T. Holmes

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

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

As they have done every year since 1948, soldiers of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment placed flags at more than 280,000 gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery. They will remain at Arlington National Cemetery throughout the holiday weekend, making sure that the flags remain upright.

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

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

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

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

As General George Patton said: "It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived."
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Gary Bauer is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

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The Left’s Ruling Ideas . . .

. . . The core motives of their forever war against America.

Below is Mark Tapson's review of David Horowitz's new book, “Ruling Ideas," which is the ninth and final volume of The Black Book of the American Left, a multi-volume collection of Horowitz's conservative writings that now stands as the most ambitious effort ever undertaken to define the Left and its agenda. (Order HERE.) We encourage our readers to visit BlackBookOfTheAmericanLeft.com – which features Horowitz’s introductions to volumes 1-9 of this series, along with their tables of contents, reviews and interviews with the author.

by Mark Tapson: “This is the ninth and final volume of my writings about progressivism, a movement whose goals are the destruction of America’s social contract at home and the defeat of American power abroad.”

That blunt statement from Freedom Center founder David Horowitz begins Ruling Ideas, the just-published, concluding volume of his series of collected works titled The Black Book of the American Left. Horowitz, of course, is the red-diaper-baby-turned-conservative-firebrand and the author of many other books, including the classic autobiography Radical Son, the battle plan for political victory titled Take No Prisoners, and the recent New York Times bestseller Big Agenda: President Trump’s Plan to Save America.

In his introduction to this volume, Horowitz notes that The Black Book of the American Left series was conceived as a corrective to the frequent inability of conservatives “to appreciate the anti-American animus of the left and its apocalyptic goals.” As a former radical leftist himself, Horowitz has a deep appreciation for that animus and a unique grasp of the left’s religious fervor for a society built upon the utopian dream of human perfectibility. Ruling Ideas is the latest addition to his ongoing illumination of the left’s often deceptive animating principles.

Part One of the book includes three essays which Horowitz says “have more or less defined my life’s work.” With “The Fate of the Marxist Idea” he reprints two letters to former fellow radicals announcing and explaining his break with the left, one a childhood friend whose father was a cell leader in the local Communist Party, the other his political mentor and friend Ralph Miliband, the father of future British politicians David and Ed. The letters were impassioned attempts to awaken former comrades from their radical intoxication by presenting the undeniable, sobering realities of their failed dream.

“Slavery and the American Idea” addresses the Progressive determination to “destroy the American social contract and the constitutional system that supports it,” primarily by weaponizing the issue of race. Horowitz’s aim in the essay - first published as the closing chapter of Uncivil Wars, Horowitz’s controversial denunciation of slavery reparations, and updated for inclusion here – is to celebrate the vision of American exceptionalism behind this country’s successful ending of the near-universal human practice of slavery. The essay remains as vital today as when it was published, thanks to a revival among black intellectuals and politicians of the demand for reparations.

In the short essay “America’s Second Civil War,” Horowitz discusses the collectivist creed of identity politics as “the antithesis of the principles that are the cornerstones of America’s social contract.” A “reversion to tribal loyalties” and a condemnation of the anti-American mythology of “systemic racism,” identity politics is now the tip of the spear of the Democrat Party’s divisive platform and agenda. In contrast, Horowitz closes the essay by quoting President Donald Trump’s unifying call, “When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.”

“The Two Christophers” is a deeply thoughtful and personal essay about “radical contrarian” writer Christopher Hitchens, whom Horowitz befriended near the end of Hitchens short life. It is not so much about the stretches of an intellectual journey they shared as it is about their divergent paths. To the very end Hitchens clung, writes Horowitz, to “the romantic idea of a revolutionary transformation” that shaped his political choices. Horowitz hopes that the essay will serve as “a useful guide to the great schism of our times.”

“In the quarter-century since I published these reflections,” Horowitz writes about the essays in Part One (and this equally could be said of his work in general analyzing and opposing the left’s totalitarian vision), “there have been no attempts by progressives to answer them.” The left’s usual response to its critics instead has been what he calls “an intellectual omerta,” an attempt not to engage them in reasoned debate but to obliterate them as “un-persons.” In all of the left’s flood of virulent condemnations of Horowitz personally, “[w]hat is lacking is an intellectual argument to refute my views and specifically my reasons for rejecting the left; or reference to a historical record that would provide a critical response to the case I have made.”

That failure exposes the left’s inability – not unwillingness or indifference – to counter Horowitz’s analyses, because he knows the left better than they know themselves. Having been steeped in their Communist ideology and then having become an activist for their cause himself, even working with the Black Panthers, he knows every power-mongering aim, every subversive strategy, every linguistic manipulation, and every thuggish tactic of the Progressive agenda. They know he knows, and that’s why he is their most hated apostate and why they have no choice but to resort to the politics of personal destruction rather than reasoned argument.

Part Two includes “The Writings of David Horowitz,” a bibliography by Mike Bauer of Horowitz’s books, articles, pamphlets, and online writings that runs an astonishing 56 pages; an index for this volume as well as a very useful summary index by David Landau of key terms that span the entire series of The Black Book of the American Left, terms such as academic freedom, black reparations, identity politics, race profiling, and Stalinism, and key figures and groups such as Saul Alinsky, Hillary Clinton, Hezbollah, Huey Newton, and the Weather Underground; and a brief end note in which Horowitz explains that he had decided, early in his conservative career, to leave three aspects of the left’s agenda for other conservative writers to cover: constitutional issues, the market economy, and the environment. Instead, he chose to “focus on dissecting those aspects of the radical agenda which either remained opaque to the conservative perspective, or whose malignancy was not fully appreciated by the conservative temperament.”

Part Two also includes an absolute must-read, 40-page essay by the Freedom Center’s longtime FrontPage Magazine editor and host of the internet show The Glazov Gang, Jamie Glazov. Titled, “The Life and Work of David Horowitz,” Dr. Glazov’s essay spans from Horowitz’s childhood in a Communist enclave in Queens, New York, through his time as the editor of the foremost radical publication Ramparts to his political epiphany and “slow-motion transformation from theorist of the left to its worst enemy.” The essay is, as Horowitz puts it in the book’s introduction, “accurate and insightful,” but more than that, it is compelling reading.

This final volume of the Black Book of the American Left collection is a concise, must-read capstone to David Horowitz’s writing about the destructive utopian delusions – the “mirage,” as Friedrich Hayek put it – of Progressivism. Ruling Ideas, like the preceding volumes, highlights the epic clash between what Horowitz calls the two ideas – the American and the Marxist – that “constitute an ideological thesis and antithesis of the modern world. The resolution of the conflict between them will shape the course of human freedom for generations to come.”
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Mark Tapson, a Hollywood-based writer and screenwriter, is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the editor of TruthRevolt.com

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Should These Cop Killers Get Parole?

by Tom Knighton: The old saying goes, “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.” It’s a fair statement. It’s part of why a lot of people simply don’t commit crimes. They don’t want to be locked up. That’s kind of the point of punishment, after all. It’s to deter people from breaking the law in the first place.

However, part of that “time” is the possibility of parole. Basically, if you behave yourself and say the right things to the board, you get out of prison early.

When that gets ugly is when someone convicted of a particularly heinous crime faces parole, which is happening up in New York right now.
The families of two NYPD officers slain nearly 47 years ago spoke with state parole board officials Friday to oppose any release of Anthony Bottom, one of the Black Panther members convicted of murdering the cops.

Bottom, 56, who is a serving a 25-years-to-life sentence for the killings of officers Anthony Piagentini and his partner, Waverly Jones, in May 1971, comes up for an interview before the parole board the week of June 11, officials said.

Last month, the board caused a furor when it released — over the objection of NYPD officials and hundreds of thousands of members of the public — Herman Bell, a reputed Black Liberation Army member who was Bottom’s accomplice in the killing of the two cops.

Speaking with reporters outside the parole board’s Manhattan offices, Diane Piagentini said the families of the officers didn’t want a repetition of what happened in the Bell case. She was joined by her daughter Mary and Manny Jones and Gwenna Wright, the siblings of Jones.

“We are here today united, united, the Jones family and Piagentini family, to make sure that Anthony Bottom doesn’t get released,” Diane Piagentini said. “It was atrocious what the parole board did with Herman Bell last month. That man should never have been released.”Basically, Bottom is accused of torturing and killing the two officers explicitly because they were police officers. In other words, it was violence in the name of a political ideology.

We have a term for that. It’s called “terrorism.”

Frankly, the families of the deceased officers have every reason to be upset, and I don’t blame them. Maybe I’m biased as the son of a police officer, having grown up around the police and mourning with them when they lost one of their own, but I can’t blame them in the least.

Bottom reportedly shot the officers multiple times, not due to a lack of accuracy while trying to end their life, but in ways meant to add to and prolong their suffering. This was torture. It’s brutality. It’s terrorism.

And the man responsible may well be out on the streets in a matter of months.

I’m sorry, but no. This isn’t right.

I’m sympathetic to those who have paid their debt to society. I’m not a fan of how they are continually punished for their crimes, often pushing some into recidivism. However, Bottom hasn’t paid his debt to society, in my opinion. He’s a monster who should never breath free air again.

For what it’s worth, there is a petition available. New York Assemblyman Kiernan Lalor has it up on his Twitter account right now.

Sign, Share to Stop @NYGovCuomo’s Parole Board from setting free another cop killer. https://t.co/5uoLw8WQ3J pic.twitter.com/lvDsg15ubh

— Kieran Michael Lalor (@KieranLalor) May 6, 2018

Go and sign it, if you’re so inclined. I suspect you might be.

Watch the latest video:
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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.

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Is US Bellicosity Backfiring?

by Patrick Buchanan: U.S. threats to crush Iran and North Korea may yet work, but as of now neither Tehran nor Pyongyang appears to be intimidated.

Repeated references by NSC adviser John Bolton and Vice President Mike Pence to the “Libya model” for denuclearization of North Korea just helped sink the Singapore summit of President Trump and Kim Jong Un. To North Korea, the Libya model means the overthrow and murder of Libya strongman Col. Gadhafi, after he surrendered his WMD.

Wednesday, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui exploded at Pence’s invocation of Libya: “Vice-President Pence has made unbridled and impudent remarks that North Korea might end like Libya … I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks.

“Whether the U.S. will meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown is entirely dependent upon the decision and behavior of the United States.”

Yesterday, Trump canceled the Singapore summit.

Earlier this week at the Heritage Foundation, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo laid out our Plan B for Iran in a speech that called to mind Prussian Field Marshal Karl Von Moltke.

Among Pompeo’s demands: Iran must end all support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and Hamas in Gaza, withdraw all forces under Iranian command in Syria, and disarm its Shiite militia in Iraq.

Iran must confess its past lies about a nuclear weapons program, and account publicly for all such activity back into the 20th century.

Iran must halt all enrichment of uranium, swear never to produce plutonium, shut down its heavy water reactor, open up its military bases to inspection to prove it has no secret nuclear program, and stop testing ballistic missiles.

And unless Iran submits, she will be strangled economically.

What Pompeo delivered was an ultimatum: Iran is to abandon all its allies in all Mideast wars, or face ruin and possible war with the USA.

It is hard to recall a secretary of state using the language Pompeo deployed: “We will track down Iranian operatives and their Hezbollah proxies operating around the world and crush them. Iran will never again have carte blanche to dominate the Middle East.”

But how can Iran “dominate” a Mideast that is home to Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt, as well as U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and Syria?

To Iran’s east is a nuclear-armed Pakistan. To its west is a nuclear-armed U.S. Fifth Fleet and a nuclear-armed Israel. Iran has no nukes, no warships to rival ours and a 1970s air force.

Yet, this U.S.-Iran confrontation, triggered by Trump’s trashing of the nuclear deal and Pompeo’s ultimatum, is likely to end one of three ways:

First, Tehran capitulates, which is unlikely, as President Hassan Rouhani retorted to Pompeo: “Who are you to decide for Iran and the world? We will continue our path with the support of our nation.” Added Ayatollah Khamenei, “Iran’s presence in the region is our strategic depth.”

Second, Iran defies U.S. sanctions and continues to support its allies in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen. This would seem likely to lead to collisions and war.

Third, the U.S. could back off its maximalist demands, as Trump backed off Bolton’s demand that Kim Jong Un accept the Libyan model of total and verifiable disarmament before any sanctions are lifted.

Where, then, are we headed?

While our NATO allies are incensed by Trump’s threat to impose secondary sanctions if they do not re-impose sanctions on Tehran, the Europeans are likely to cave in to America’s demands. For Europe to choose Iran over a U.S. that has protected Europe since the Cold War began and is an indispensable market for Europe’s goods would be madness.

Vladimir Putin appears to want no part of an Iran-Israel or U.S.-Iran war and has told Bashar Assad that Russia will not be selling Damascus his S-300 air defense system. Putin has secured his bases in Syria and wants to keep them.

As for the Chinese, she will take advantage of the West’s ostracism of Iran by drawing Iran closer to her own orbit.

Is there a compromise to be had?

Perhaps, for some of Pompeo’s demands accord with the interests of Iran, which cannot want a war with the United States, or with Israel, which would likely lead to war with the United States.

Iran could agree to release Western prisoners, move Shiite militia in Syria away from the Golan Heights, accept verifiable restrictions on tests of longer-range missiles and establish deconfliction rules for U.S. and Iranian warships in the Persian Gulf.

Reward: aid from the West and renewed diplomatic relations with the United States.

Surely, a partial, verifiable nuclear disarmament of North Korea is preferable to war on the peninsula. And, surely, a new nuclear deal with Iran with restrictions on missiles is preferable to war in the Gulf.

Again, we cannot make the perfect the enemy of the good.
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Patrick Buchanan is currently a conservative columnist, political analyst, chairman of The American Cause foundation and an editor of The American Conservative. He has been a senior advisor to three Presidents, a two-time candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and was the presidential nominee of the Reform Party in 2000. He blogs at the Patrick J. Buchanan.

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There’s No Such Thing as ‘Free Love’

by Armstrong Williams: At the Museum of the Bible, we recently hosted a live town hall on youth and morality. What is missing from the continuous discussion surrounding youth and violence, suicide, disrespect of parenting, drug addiction, etc., is a discussion about youth and moral striving.

We were joined by a thought-provoking panel that included Charlie Kirk, Shelby Emmett, Candace Owens, and Shermichael Singleton.

The general consensus following the debate was that our young adults felt the discussion was long overdue. They are more prepared than ever to discuss the importance of moral striving and continuous character building in America’s youth.

I often wonder: What does it mean to live a life of purpose and meaning? As I reflect on the experiences that I have had in life, a few recurring themes seem to emerge.

For me, living on purpose has meant creating a wealthy life. I am referring to all aspects of wealth, be it material wealth, enjoying and emoting good physical and mental health, and striving to make a positive difference in the lives of others.

With the many options and paths one could possibly take, how does one stay on the path toward one’s purpose?

The way forward for me has involved constant introspection, observation, and work. I’m not referring to working on my career or business, although that is certainly a part of it. I’m talking about the meta-work that one does even before showing up to the office on a daily basis. That work is the self-sacrifice, working toward strengthening character, and avoiding the pitfalls of temptation and lust. It is the work of self-abnegation and prudence, the daily sacrifices made in service of a higher ideal.

This is the work that ultimately grants us the freedom and true fulfillment that we are seeking. Those things that seem attractive to us in the short term: sleeping in just another hour, giving into the temptation to over-consume food, or to have gratuitous sex for immediate gratification, do not provide long-term happiness.

No, true joy does not arise from the vulgar applause of adoring crowds or from the creature comforts of mediocrity. True joy arises from the fruits of years of labor that has been diligently and consistently applied. The deep joy of working toward a goal and seeing it come to fruition over time is what life can be all about.

This process of spiritual striving and consistent action toward goals—while avoiding immediate, pleasure-seeking behaviors—is the most advanced form of spiritual technology that I have found. It is far more powerful than the magic of compound interest as a builder of wealth because it aligns with the creative forces of the universe.

The most effective way to achieve long-term success in any endeavor, whether it be health, business, or life in general, is to align one’s personal goals with the interests of the whole. Sex is a great case in point. Sex can be both pleasurable to the individual, and, if properly aligned with the purpose of procreation, can also serve the whole.

As human beings, we have been blessed with both the power of intelligence and the gift of choice. This has enabled us to create tools that give us dominion over the earth and other creatures. But if not used properly, they can also lead to our mutual destruction.

We have seen this story repeat itself over and over again, from the Tower of Babel to the mistaken assumption that prompts some to choose abortions over the sanctity of life.

The so-called sexual revolution was brought to us by the technology that enabled us to seemingly forestall the results of sex thorough birth control, or to erase the responsibility created by sex through the abomination of abortion. It supposedly freed women to seek professional careers and cheapened the transaction cost of casual relationships. It freed men to opt out of family formation while doing their own thing.

So-called free love is never, in fact, free. The true cost of love and intimacy is commitment and faithfulness. These are enduring principles, unchanged by any artifice man can possibly engineer.

The truth is, no such bargain could ever be struck. In reality, pleasure-seeking behaviors, like sex outside of the bonds of marriage and abortion, work to thwart the creative process. These behaviors create the mentality that one should have sex without being spiritually, emotionally, and economically prepared to manage the creative force that sex invites and often demands.

Our success here on earth comes from using the creative power of God to manifest iterative creations with the gifts of intelligence and artistry. We tend to pollute this connection when we diverge from pursuing our God-given purpose.

Only when we align pleasure with purpose can we achieve true joy. Self-discipline and living in accord with the laws of God is the only path to freedom in this life and in the next. This is the most powerful spiritual technology known to man.
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Armstrong Williams (@Arightside) is a columnist for The Daily Signal and host of "The Armstrong Williams Show," a nationally syndicated TV program.

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Never-Ever-Trumper . . .

. . . According to Nancy Pelosi, President Trump is never right even when he is and is damned if he does or damned if he doesn’t.

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

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The Ex-Explosion

by Paul Jacob, Contributing Author: When I was a kid, the trendy worry was “the population bomb.” Now we are supposed to worry about a population . . . fizzle?

“The U.S. birth rate has hit a new record low,” writes Peter Dockrill in Science Alert, “with women in nearly every age group giving birth to fewer babies than a year ago.” Titled “U.S. Fertility Rates Have Plummeted Into Uncharted Territory, And Nobody Knows Why,” Dockrill’s article fails to mention that diminishing population by reduced reproduction is an old worry.

It fanned the flames of eugenics and racism in Europe and America in the first half of the 20th century. Progressivism was full of this concern, in its heyday.*

As societies get wealthier, reproduction rates decrease. Economist Theodore W. Schultz called it the swapping of “quantity of children” for “quality of children.” This appears to be a natural, voluntary sort of eugenics — which scares actual eugenicists.

The study that Science Alert focused on fingered a different cause: lead in the environment. Over at Reason, Ronald Bailey sees some plausibility in this Lead Poison Theory. But mostly, Bailey writes, population rates in America (and elsewhere) are declining “largely because Americans are choosing to have fewer children.”

Is this really a problem?

Well, for Big Government it is.** German’s demographic collapse appears to have been one factor prodding Angela Merkel to open the doors to millions of refugees — whom Europe seems to have more trouble assimilating than does America.

I like kids — both making and rearing them. But to each his or her own, of course. Still, maybe if people freaked out less about population explosions, the implosion would prove less serious.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Before progressivism changed its name to “liberalism.” And now back. Oh, and note that the Nazis’ more famous eugenic programs were not identical to progressives.

** Ponzi-based safety-net pension systems worldwide were designed for growing populations. Oops!
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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. Jacob is a contributing author on the ARRA News Service.

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Media Cover Up Texas Killer’s Atheism

Bill Donohue

by Bill Donohue: The news media and the pundits are wading through another fog trying to figure out why the latest serial killer went on a rampage. As a sociologist who has written on this subject before, I can attest that serial killers have much in common, and this is especially true of young killers.

To begin with, let’s dispense with a popular myth about the latest tragedy. Contrary to what most are saying, Dimitrios Pagourtzis, the killer who shot his victims at Sante Fe High School, did evince warning signs.

Soon after 10 innocent persons were shot dead, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said, “the red-flag warnings were either nonexistent or imperceptible.” He was fed the wrong information.

A few weeks before the shooting, there were at least three perceptible signs of trouble: Pagourtzis made two alarming changes on his Facebook page, and, more importantly, he threatened to kill someone.

For example, he posted a picture of a black T-shirt on his Facebook page with the words “BORN TO KILL” on it. On the same day, he posted a picture of a jacket with genocidal symbols on it: the hammer and sickle of the Communist Party, and the Nazi Iron Cross of Germany’s Fascist regime. These two postings were obvious signs that something was wrong.

Then there is the tragic case of Shana Fisher. Two weeks before Pagourtzis shot her, he told the 16-year-old student that he was going to kill her. She told both of her parents. According to her father, who did not live with either his daughter or his ex-wife (he had remarried 13 years earlier), “He [Pagourtzis] had told her himself he was going to kill her. He was walking around planning this in his head for weeks.”

The father blamed Shana’s teachers, saying, “If they are smart enough to teach our kids, they should be smart enough to see when something is badly wrong with someone.” He did not say why he wasn’t smart enough to do something, even though he, unlike the teachers, knew of the threat on his daughter’s life.

When analyzing serial killers, it is important not to miss telltale signs. There are plenty of them. While any one of them, standing alone, may not be cause for concern, they become worrisome when spliced together. The fact is that serial killers evince a pattern of behavior that clearly defines who they are.

Last fall, Stephen Paddock killed 58 people on the Las Vegas strip, wounding hundreds of others (he shot himself as well). He was a loner, played videogames, had no relationship with his gangster father, and had no strong religious beliefs. A better example is Jeff Weise; he was 16 and Pagourtzis is 17. Paddock was 64.

In 2005, Weise killed his grandfather, his grandfather’s companion, and nine of his classmates in the Minnesota massacre; he then killed himself. He was a loner whose father had committed suicide four years earlier, and was hostile to religion. In addition, he posted many messages on a nazi Internet site, loved heavy metal music, and was told by his classmates that he dressed like the Trench Coat Mafia who killed 12 students and a teacher at Columbine. In fact, he wore a black trench coat and combat boots.

What do we know of Pagourtzis? Besides his affection for Communist and Nazi symbols, he was known as a “weird loner” by his classmates; he lived in a mostly elderly neighborhood where children were almost nonexistent. As one young person who knew him put it, “He stuck to himself. He had a few friends but never really talked to many people.” He also loved playing videogames and listening to heavy metal.

Pagourtzis did not see his father too often; he was typically overseas, working in the maritime business. Like Weise, Pagourtzis wore a trench coat (even when it was 90 degrees) and military boots. Similarly, his classmates liked to joke that he looked just like the Columbine shooters. He planned to kill himself but was apprehended by the police before doing so. He was also a professed atheist.

Most Americans do not know that Pagourtzis was an atheist, and that’s because most of the media did not report it. Some reported that he was a member of a local Greek Orthodox Church. That’s what the Associated Press, the New York Times, and USA Today reported, as well as the many newspapers that picked up their story.

The only big media outlets that reported on his atheism were the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.

No television station reported on his atheism. Not ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, Fox News, or MSNBC (ABC and Fox reported that he danced at a Greek Orthodox church).

It goes without saying that if any of these serial killers had been a practicing Christian, the media would make sure the whole world knew about it.

The pattern is there for all to see: young serial killers are loners; they have a dysfunctional relationship with their father; they sport an affection for terrorist symbols; they wear military apparel; they imitate other mass shooters; they are drawn to the solitude of videogames; they love the crashing sounds of heavy metal; and they are either atheists or have no room for God in their lives. Sadly, they also have a wicked desire to kill themselves after finishing their victims.

Why do we have so many mass killers? It is true that they suffer from psychological disorders, which are made manifest in their traits. But unless we appreciate the role that boredom plays in their lives—killing excites them—we will never be able to figure them out.

“Among the forces that have shaped human behavior boredom is one of the most insistent and universal.” That was the conclusion sociologist Robert Nisbet came to in his assessment of human history. “Although scarcely as measurable a factor in history as war, disease, economic depression, famine, and revolution,” he said, “it is far from invisible in either the present or the past.”

Boredom, Nisbet argued, could be relieved by “migration, desertion, war, revolution, murder, calculated cruelty to others, suicide, pornography, alcohol, narcotics.” He added that “the pains and the results of boredom are everywhere to be seen, and nowhere more epidemically than in Western society at the present time.”

He wrote that in 1982. For many sociological reasons, the curse of boredom has only worsened since then, finding relief in murder, calculated cruelty to others, and suicide.
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Bill Donohue is is a sociologist and president of the Catholic League.

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Can The FBI Be Trusted?

by Printus LeBlanc: The FBI is in serious trouble, not just the people in the bureau that lied to the Office of Inspector General, fixed the Clinton investigation, and spied on a political campaign. The American people are losing confidence in the bureau. FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich stated in January, “When I look through the prism of risk for our organization, I find the No. 1 risk for our organization is losing the faith and confidence of the American people.”

The FBI has reason to be fearful because public trust in the institution is headed in the wrong direction. A recent poll by Axios showed that less than half of America had confidence in the FBI, with only 38 percent of Republicans having faith in the bureau. This should be extremely worrying to any prosecutor using the FBI’s evidence or agents as a witness at a trial — and a dream for any defense attorney. Half the jury pool has an unfavorable opinion of the feds, and recent revelations about the once revered law enforcement agency are sure to increase the unfavourability.

The FBI’s treatment of Carter Page was reprehensible. The propaganda outlets never mention it, but Carter Page was a witness for the FBI. Page is an energy expert concentrating on Russia and central Asia, a region rich with oil and natural gas. Page has also never hid his work with or for Russian companies. In 2013, while Page was running a consulting business and lecturing at NYU Russian diplomats and scholars attempted to recruit him. The FBI informed him the people that approached him were, in fact, Russian intelligence, and Page agreed to work with the FBI.

Page passed binders of his work with listening devices to the Russians, which allowed the government to convict one of the three of espionage, the other two were diplomats and could not be charged. One would plead guilty to conspiring to act as an unregistered foreign agent and sentenced to 30 months in prison. Carter Page helped the FBI secure the conviction of a Russian spy, and all he got for it was huge lawyer fees and his privacy invaded by the very people he helped.

Who would want to work with the nation’s preeminent law enforcement agency if doing so would get you investigated yourself?

What happened to former National Security Advisor Gen. Michael Flynn gives everyone a reason to not talk to the FBI. The conversation the FBI had with Flynn was under dubious pretenses, to say the least. Sara Carter reported, “McCabe had contacted Flynn by phone directly at the White House. White House officials had spent the “earlier part of the week with the FBI overseeing training and security measures associated with their new roles so it was no surprise to Flynn that McCabe had called…. some agents were heading over (to the White House) but Flynn thought it was part of the routine work the FBI had been doing and said they would be cleared at the gate.”

It was only after the agents were in his office talking to him, without his lawyer, did Flynn realize he was being questioned like a suspect. Despite the sneaky tactics by the FBI, the agents did not believe Flynn was lying to them, according to their boss, then Director of the FBI James Comey.

The House Intelligence Committee report details testimony from Comey stating, “They didn’t see any change in posture, in tone, in inflection, in eye contact. They saw nothing that indicated to them that he knew he was lying to them,” when speaking about the interviewing agents. Then FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe echoed Comey’s testimony referring to a “conundrum that we faced on their return from the interview is that although [the agents] didn’t detect deception in the statements that made in the interview.” This begs the question, if he didn’t lie, then why was he charged by Special Counsel Robert Mueller? What changed?

And the most recent example of a reason to not trust the FBI is Stefan Halper. Halper is now at the center of the storm swirling around the 2016 election. Halper is believed to have been a mole, spy, informant, or whatever Clapper wants to call him, against the Trump campaign for the Obama administration.

This hurts the FBI because when the going got tough on the issue of an informant in the Trump campaign, it was likely the FBI and/or DOJ that leaked the information about Halper. Halper believed he was helping the FBI and was expecting his identity to be kept confidential. Regardless if you agree with what he did, the FBI threw him to the curb when it suited them.

Why would anyone want to help the FBI if they know the feds will abandon them and even out them to save their skin?

And all this has happened before the expected release of the Inspector General’s report, which according to reports, paints the FBI is an extremely bad light.

In this disastrous chapter of FBI history, the bureau has given citizens a reason to never talk to them, never help them, and never work for them. If Wray cared about the FBI, as he says he does, he should immediately move to cooperate with House and Senate investigators fully. The bureau’s reputation is beyond tarnished at this point, and only full disclosure of all misconduct can begin the process of rebuilding the FBI brand. Christopher Wray must rip the band aid off, fighting the Congress, which is trying to help you, will only prolong the pain.
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Printus LeBlanc is a contributing editor at Americans for Limited Government.

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School Can Force Students to Share Bathrooms With Transgender Students, Federal Court Rules

Alexis Lightcap

by Rachel del Guidice: A Pennsylvania student said Thursday that her school opening its locker rooms, showers, and restrooms to students of the opposite sex is unfair and wrong.

“There are good ways to make room for everyone, without letting a boy into the girls’ locker rooms, shower areas, or restrooms,” said Alexis Lightcap, a senior at Boyertown Area Senior High School in Boyertown, Pennsylvania, who is also in a lawsuit against Boyertown Area School District, at a press conference.

“That is why I joined this lawsuit, so no other girl has to go through what I went through. It is common sense that boys shouldn’t be in girls’ locker rooms, restrooms, and shower areas. Every student matters and schools should put our privacy, safety, and dignity first.”

Lightcap was joined at the press conference with two of her attorneys, Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom’s legal counsel Christiana Holcomb and Independence Law Center chief counsel Randall Wenger, who argued the lawsuit.

On Thursday, three judges on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia heard oral arguments over the lawsuit, Doe v. Boyertown Area School District.

Judges Theodore McKee, Patty Shwartz, and Richard Lowell Nygaard ruled 3-0 against student privacy, Holcomb said. “We are currently evaluating our options, [but] it is very likely that we will seek en banc review with the 3rd Circuit to ask a full panel of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals to consider the issue of student privacy.”

En banc review would allow more judges to weigh in on the lawsuit rather than just the panel of three.

Students and parents appealed the lawsuit to the 3rd Circuit in September of last year, according to Alliance Defending Freedom.

The school opened its restroom and locker room facilities during the 2016-17 school year to students of the opposite sex without warning, Holcomb said.

“Without notice to parents or to students, Boyertown High School ignored its duties to respect the privacy, the safety, and the dignity of Alexis and her fellow students,” Holcomb said during the press conference, adding:
To her shock, she was told, due to a new and unannounced school policy, she would be sharing the restroom, locker rooms, and shower changing facilities with boys. Today, we asked the court to protect Alexis’ right to privacy, safety, and dignity in her own school.“The Supreme Court has already spoken that the real differences between men and women means that privacy must be protected in the areas that it matters most, in locker rooms, restrooms, and shower changing facilities,” Holcomb said. “Today’s decision is out of step with the long-standing protection for privacy and we will continue to advocate for these young students.”

Aidan deStefano, a transgender student who graduated last year from Boyertown Area High School, said, according to Metro Weekly, “Reversing the practices that have allowed me and other trans kids to thrive at school would have been devastating. I’m glad other transgender students will know the experience of being treated like any other student.”

Lightcap said she was startled when she went into the bathroom one day and saw a man in the women’s room. “One day when I was in school, I walked into the bathroom and immediately when you walk in the bathroom, there is actually a mirror there, and I saw a reflection of a man. My body went into immediate shock,” Lightcap said in a video released by Alliance Defending Freedom. “I immediately ran out and I went to the administration at the school to report what I had seen in the bathrooms.”
Lightcap communicated the concern to her grade level principal but was ignored, Holcomb said in the video.

“After Alexis encountered that guy in the girl’s bathroom, she turned and ran out of the restroom and we actually have video footage of her fleeing the restroom in fear,” Holcomb said, adding:
She went to her grade level principal … and Alexis told Dr. Foley what had happened to her, how scared she was, how concerned she was, but Dr. Foley didn’t seem to care, he didn’t listen, he didn’t fix it, he basically told her, ‘This is the new school policy and this is the way things will be.’
“My voice didn’t matter, I knew that,” Lightcap said in the video. “I wish that the school had protected my privacy somehow, because it felt like a specific group of people were protected, while the greater population was not.”

The Daily Signal requested comment from Foley and the Boyertown Area School District but did not receive a response by publication deadline.

Ryan T. Anderson, author of “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment” and a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal in an email that the Boyertown policy is wrong.

“Schools should protect the bodily privacy of their students,” Anderson said. “The reason we have separate bathrooms and locker rooms for boys and girls is not because of ‘gender identity’ but because of the bodily differences between males and females.”
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Rachel del Guidice (@LRacheldG)is a reporter for The Daily Signal. She is a graduate of Franciscan University of Steubenville, Forge Leadership Network, and The Heritage Foundation’s Young Leaders Program.

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Weasel Of The Week: Educrat Arne Duncan

Arnie Duncan measuring
his brain & other attributes.

by Michelle Malkin: Educrat (ED-yoo-krat) noun, usually pejorative. A government school official or administrator whose primary function is to spend tax dollars telling other parents what to do with their children.

Beltway education bureaucrats abhor families who choose to keep their kids out of public schools – unless it’s to grandstand over gun control.

Behold Arne Duncan, longtime pal of Barack Obama and former U.S. Department of Education secretary, who called last weekend for parents nationwide to withdraw students from classes “until gun laws (are) changed to keep them safe.”

Emotions are still raw after a teen shot 10 classmates and teachers to death in Texas last week. But Duncan has no excuse for his cynical, made-for-cable-TV exploitation of the Santa Fe High School massacre. Existing state laws banning minors under 18 from purchasing or possessing guns didn’t stop the shooter. Neither did laws against possessing sawed-off shotguns or pipe bombs.

And contrary to hysterical early reports, the accused 17-year-old gunman did not use “assault rifles.” So a “common sense” ban on “assault weapons” would not have saved lives, either.

But effective solutions to maximize students’ safety and well-being seemingly aren’t Duncan’s goals. His mission is airtime. Publicity. Entertainment. Provocation for provocation’s sake. Show time – for the children, of course.

School boycotts are a “radical idea,” he admitted to MSNBC. “It’s controversial. It’s intentionally provocative.” Praising teacher walkouts and student protests, Duncan told The Atlantic he supported parent-initiated school shutdowns for gun control because “we are not protecting our kids. … And the fact that we’re not doing that – we’re not willing to think radically enough to do it – I can’t stomach that.”

Ah, the royal, unstomachable “we.”

Here’s another thing I find hard to swallow: Education overlord Arne Duncan now championing the radical idea of parents exercising their autonomy to do what’s best for their children.

As Obama’s meddling power-hungry education secretary, Duncan attacked “white suburban moms” and their children who turned to homeschooling in protest of the top-down Common Core “standards”/testing/data-mining program. Duncan sneered that he found it “fascinating” that the grass-roots anti-Common Core revolt came from “white suburban moms who – all of a sudden – their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”

This elitist control freak revealed his fundamental disdain for rabble-rousing parents who’ve taken educational matters in to their own hands. By characterizing the movement against Common Core as “white” and “suburban,” Duncan also exposed his >bigotry against countless parents “of color,” like myself, who’ve long opposed Fed Ed’s sabotage of academic excellence, local control and student privacy in school districts across the country.

Note that newly minted parents’ rights advocate Arne Duncan never once advocated boycotting Chicago public schools, which he ran for eight years, for their abject failure to quell rampant school violence.

Nor has Duncan called for parents to demand their districts withdraw from the disastrous “PROMISE” alternative discipline program that he helped create. (After Duncan’s protege, Broward County school superintendent Robert Runcie, initially denied that Parkland, Florida, shooter Nicholas Cruz had benefited from the program, he sheepishly acknowledged last week that Cruz had in fact been referred to the program and avoided criminal prosecution for school vandalism as a result.)

Nor has Duncan said a peep about systemic coddling of abusers in the classroom by teachers’ union presidents in New Jersey and Ohio, as exposed over the past month by undercover investigative journalists at Project Veritas.

Instead, Duncan has won high praise and more media interviews for his phony boycott proposal. “My family is all in if we can do this at scale,” he nobly tweeted.

But what his slavering fans in the liberal media won’t tell you is that Duncan’s wife works at and his own children attend the exclusive, private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools in tony Hyde Park, which a Lab Schools brochure brags is “patrolled by the University of Chicago Police Department and private security.”

Armed, of course, for thine and thee, Arne. But not for we.
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Michelle Malkin is mother, wife, blogger, conservative syndicated columnist, and author. She shares many of her articles and thoughts at MichelleMalkin.com.
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Continuing To Produce For The American People

A Growing List Of Achievements By The 115th Congress
SENATE MAJORITY LEADER MITCH McCONNELL (R-KY): “One bill after another, one confirmation after another, the Senate continues to produce major accomplishments that will directly improve the lives of the American people.” (Sen. McConnell, Remarks, 5/24/2018)

With More To Come, Here’s A Look At Some Of The Legislative Highlights Of 115th Congress
ü TAX REFORM: Reformed America’s tax code for the first time in 31 years - putting more money in the American people’s pockets and creating more opportunity for them and their children.

ü JUDGES: Set a record last year on circuit court confirmations. Now up to a total of 21 circuit court confirmations so far, which is one-eighth of all circuit court judgeships, and confirmed Justice Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

ü REGULATORY REFORM: Used Congressional Review Act (CRA) a record-setting 16 times to roll back Obama-era regulations.

ü ENERGY: Opened one of the largest untapped conventional oilfields in North America, in Alaska, to help keep energy affordable.

ü VETERANS: Delivered real reform and real choice to American veterans with the VA MISSION Act, modernized the veterans appeals process, reformed G.I. bill benefits and further improved VA accountability. 

ü DEFENSE: Helped restore America’s defense with the greatest investment in the military in 15 years and largest troop pay increase in 8 years.

ü HEALTHCARE FOR CHILDREN: Enacted the longest S-CHIP extension in history.

ü BANKING REFORM: Provided relief from burdensome Dodd-Frank red tape for Main Street borrowers and lenders for the first time.

ü COMBATING OPIOID ABUSE: Enacted ‘a multibillion-dollar boost’ to combat a nationwide epidemic.

ü HOPE FOR THE TERMINALLY ILL: Provided terminally ill patients access to experimental treatments (Right to Try legislation).

ü SCHOOL SAFETY: Enacted Fix NICS and STOP School Violence Act to help protect America’s children from gun violence.

ü FIGHTING SEX TRAFFICKING: Enacted the Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act (SESTA) to combat trafficking.

ü OBAMACARE: Repealed the individual mandate tax that forced Americans to buy something many didn’t want or couldn’t afford, and ended IPAB.

ü FIGHTING TERRORISM: Enacted the Taylor Force Act to disincentivize payments to terrorists.

ü SANCTIONS: Imposed on Iran, Russia, and North Korea.

ü REINING IN THE REGULATORS: Changed the balance of numerous boards and commissions from Democrat to Republican control, including the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

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