Al Sharpton, Donna Brazile Push Dems to Double Down on Harassing Trump Officials

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA)

by Tyler O'Neil: On Tuesday, nearly 200 black leaders — mostly women, but including the Rev. Al Sharpton — signed a letter attacking Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for refusing to support Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) in her call for supporters to constantly harass officials in the Trump administration.

"We, the undersigned, write to express our full support for Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who has recently been unjustly attacked by Republicans and Democratic Party leadership for speaking truth to power," the signatories wrote.

They declared that Waters is an inspiration. "For Black women, who are the most loyal base of the Democratic Party and the Progressive Movement, Congresswoman waters is our shero [sic]," they wrote.

How did Waters inspire them? Late last month, she called for protesters to constantly harass members of President Donald Trump's cabinet. "If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, at a department store, at a gasoline station, you get you and you create a crowd," Waters declared. "And you push back on them, and you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere."

Waters championed reports of "members of this cabinet that are being booed out of restaurants, who have protesters taking up at their house." She praised protesters for chanting, "No peace! No sleep!"

When President Trump accused her of calling for "harm to my supporters," Waters shot back, insisting she only supported "peaceful protest."

"I did not call for harm for anybody. The president lied again," the congresswoman told MSNBC. While Waters did not advocate for violence against Trump cabinet members, she did urge protesters to harass them and deny them sleep and peace — which certainly constitutes harm, as Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders can tell you.

This call for harm has turned Waters into a celebrity among liberals, according to the black leaders who signed the letter this week.

"Millennials of every race and creed revere Congresswoman Waters, whom they affectionately refer to as 'Auntie Maxine.' She has been a foremost catalyst in encouraging a new generation to embrace the Democratic Party as the party that shares their values and speaks to the issues they care about most," the black leaders added. "Not supporting Congresswoman Waters hurts the party and threatens to erode an opportunity to continue to grow the Democratic Party with young leaders and voters."

The signatories went even further, however. "Disparaging or failing to support Congresswoman Waters is an affront to her and Black women across the country and telegraphs a message that the Democratic Party can ill afford: that it does not respect Black women's leadership and political power and discounts the impact of Black women and millennial voters," they wrote.

So how did Schumer and Pelosi carry out this "affront to Black women"? They refused to celebrate the incivility of harassing Trump officials outside their workplaces.

"No one should call for the harassment of political opponents," Schumer declared last month. "That's not right. That's not American."

Pelosi's response proved more indirect. "In the crucial months ahead, we must strive to make America beautiful again," she tweeted with a link to Waters' remarks. "Trump's daily lack of civility has provoked responses that are predictable but unacceptable."

In the crucial months ahead, we must strive to make America beautiful again. Trump’s daily lack of civility has provoked responses that are predictable but unacceptable. As we go forward, we must conduct elections in a way that achieves unity from sea to shining sea. https://t.co/vlpqOBLK4R

— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) June 25, 2018

After the letter from black leaders, the Democrat leader changed her tune. "Congresswoman Maxine Waters is a valued leader whose passionate call for family reunification should be heard without any threats to her safety," Pelosi said in a statement to POLITICO Wednesday.

"Donald Trump has sullied the bully pulpit with reckless disregard for the safety of others," the Democrat leader added. "He should stop his attacks on Congresswoman Waters and all Members of Congress, the free press, and all Americans who have the right and the responsibility to speak their minds."

Even so, Pelosi did not apologize for suggesting Waters' remarks made America less "beautiful." The black leaders declared their belief that "Congresswoman Waters is owed an apology for your public comments insinuating that she is 'uncivil' and 'un- American' for challenging the Trump Administration."

Pelosi should not cave to these demands. Waters did indeed make uncivil comments. Americans should not harass Trump administration officials in their everyday lives. Trump has been far from perfect, but calls to deny "peace" and "sleep" from members of his cabinet are reprehensible.

Last week, Waters received a death threat. This too is reprehensible. Americans need to return to civility, rather than tearing one another apart.

Some have denounced the call for civility, calling it a form of white patriarchal oppression. Perhaps these black leaders use this to justify championing Waters' calls for constant harassment.

The black leaders who defended Waters should be ashamed of themselves, and if Democrats do indeed double down on incivility, it should damage their chances in November.
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Tyler O'Neil is Assistant Editor of PJ Media, Tyler O'Neil is a conservative fundraiser and commentator. He has written for numerous publications.

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Tags: 2018, Democrats, Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, Al Sharpton, Donna Brazile, Push Dems, Double Down, Harassing Trump Officials To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

A Public Health Crisis Driven by Politics

by NRA-ILA: Deeming “gun violence” a “public health crisis” has become commonplace in the efforts to curtail the rights of law-abiding Americans. Comparisons are made to cigarettes and cars, both of which were the focus of public health campaigns. Dr. Daniel Blumenthal wrote in an op-ed that “A public health approach has been used in addressing other causes of death and injury and has not required that the causative instrument outlawed or confiscated.”

The difference between gun violence and fatalities related to motor vehicle accidents or smoking is intent. Traffic accidents are just that – accidents. Developing safer vehicles reduces the number of fatalities, but the safest vehicle possible could still be used to intentionally harm occupants or pedestrians if the driver so chooses. The link between smoking and potentially life-threatening diseases is known but related fatalities are not classified as intentional self-harm. Combining homicides and suicides may generate a more dramatic talking point but does no service to reducing either.

Research on both car accidents and smoking has a clear goal. As Dr. Blumenthal noted, public health approaches to reduce motor vehicle fatalities and smoking-related disease focused on the causative instrument. Motor vehicle fatalities can result from trauma, which seat belts and air bags address. Diseases related to smoking are caused by the chemicals in tobacco products; educational campaigns warn people of the dangers to which they expose themselves when they smoke.

Too often, however, public health research on firearms does not focus on the causative factors that lead to violence, but on policies that would only impact law abiding gun owners. Public health campaigners do not want to warn people of the dangers of being the victim of a felony in progress (25% of all murders for which the circumstances were known and reported to the FBI in 2016), of gang killings (10%), of alcohol- or drug-fueled brawls (3%), of being involved in an argument over money or property (2%) or other arguments (36%), or of being involved in a romantic triangle (1%). Instead, they want to deter people from owning firearms or convince lawmakers to enact ever more restrictions on gun ownership. Many of these researchers design studies to reinforce their own anti-gun opinions, but anti-gun politicians and organizations will happily sacrifice methodologically sound research in the pursuit of better talking points.

There are efforts underway to reduce homicides and violent crime by targeting the cause instead of an object. Efforts like these, that focus on addressing the impetus for crime, have been effective all over the country. Criminals will find a way even in the face of restrictive laws, so perhaps the public health approach should focus on the causative instrument – the motivation behind assaults, homicides, and self-harm.

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Tags: NRA-ILA,  public health crisis, driven by politics To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Labor shortages? In June, number of working-age Americans WITHOUT a job GREW.

Eric Ruark

by Eric Ruark: The Bureau of Labor Statistics this morning released monthly reports showing increases in jobs and employment. But although the number of employed persons rose in June by 102,000, the number of working-age persons without a job rose even more.

As often noted on this website, job creation must keep pace with the growth of the working-age population. The total working-age population in the United States grew by 188,000 in June. Thus, the number of persons without a job appears to have grown by more than the number of new persons obtaining jobs. So, while it is true that there is a record number of people working in the United States, it is also true that there is a record number of people not working.

This inability of new employment to keep up with population growth (primarily fueled by immigration) paints a far different picture than that commonly portrayed in the news media which provides ample space to employers complaining about labor shortages. Given the lingering effects of the Great Recession, job creation is going to have to occur at two to three times its current rate for the U.S economy to be considered genuinely "healthy."

Working-age population increasing faster than employment is a long-term trend extending back to the 1970s, and the reason NumbersUSA argues for a reduction in overall immigration levels. Immigration is driving U.S. population growth at a faster rate than the economy can produce jobs, resulting in growing unemployment, underemployment, and stagnant wages.

Henry Olsen at the Ethics and Public Policy Center points out that:"Since there are about 126 million 25-54 year olds, that means we need to create another 1.3-2 million jobs above trend just to return the labor market to full employment status....Until that happens, we should expect labor compensation hikes to remain lower than focus just on the unemployment rate might suggest. There are still lots of people who can be attracted to work -- and that's assuming no increase in legal or illegal immigration."There are bright spots in the economic data. While the official unemployment rate has ticked back up to 4.0%, this is due to more Americans seeking work, which means the government again counts them as part of the labor force. There has been steady growth in manufacturing jobs, and indications that employers are increasingly investing in recruitment and retention strategies.

Given the improving (if only slightly) situation for American workers, and a President who has indicated his willingness to eliminate the visa lottery and chain migration categories, there is no good reason for Congress not to take action. And there is no good reason for the Trump Administration not to also push for mandatory E-Verify.

It was very disappointing to see Speaker Paul Ryan sabotage the effort to pass the Securing America's Future Act of 2018 (H.R. 4760). Still, the bill nearly passed, unlike Ryan's own immigration bill, which went down in flames. While we're not celebrating almost passing a bill through the House, the business lobby complaint that there is an "critical labor shortage" in the United States doesn't seem to have the same clout on the Hill as it once did. That's encouraging.

Many employers have gotten used to the fact that the United States hands out one million lifetime work permits, and brings in hundreds of thousands of additional guest workers, every year. They will continue to press Congress not to make any reductions, and will even lobby for increases, in order to depress wages and working conditions for Americans.

Jared Bernstein, the former chief economic advisor to Vice-President Biden, was spot-on in his assessment of the June jobs numbers. He called it a "solid report" but given the slack that still remains in the labor market and no real wage gains, Bernstein says "A lot of working people are legitimately asking when they [will] start to get ahead."

That's a question working Americans should be asking Paul Ryan and Congressional leaders.
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Eric Ruark writes for NumbersUSA.

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Baltimore Sun Letter To The Editor Hits On How To Stop Mass Shootings

by Tom Knighton: In the course of my day, I read a lot of letters to the editor on gun control in various newspapers across the country. I don’t read all by any stretch of the imagination, but I read a lot.

Most I just click away from because the nature of letters to the editor tend to make it difficult for ideas to really be fleshed out to any degree. Further, few people are sufficient enough wordsmiths to do much more than offer a few platitudes–from either side–before they run out of space as many papers have a word count cap for letters.

However, The Baltimore Sun ran one recently that really did a good job, I thought, of breaking down how a recent editorial was flawed.


Responding to the recent editorial, “Is there a law that could have saved the Capital Gazette?” (July 2), I have the following observations: Yes, Maryland does have some of the toughest gun laws in the nation, but the argument that the “fundamental facet of our laws and practices related to guns [in Maryland]” that is in error is not that we allow “some people who shouldn’t have guns to get them,” rather, it is that we keep law abiding citizens from routinely carrying them in public.

The Sun correctly states that “Police arrived on the scene almost immediately.” But five people still lost their lives! The flaw is the reasoning of people who think that the police can protect them from heinous criminals. What could have prevented or lessened this terrible tragedy? Only one thing — a good guy with a gun.

... It is time for Maryland legislators to recognize what 42 other states have already recognized, that lawful concealed carriers, who are seven to 10 times less likely to be involved in a crime than a police officer, are not the problem. Only then will the citizens of Maryland be able to protect themselves before police arrive — even if they are only one minute away.Precisely. (I urge you to read the whole thing.)

Look, I’ve said before that I knew a lot of police officers. I’m not unique in that regard. Almost anyone who has spent much time around them will tell you that these are people who will do whatever they can to protect people. What they can’t do, however, is change the laws of physics.

They can’t be in two places at once. They can’t cross vast distances in an instant. They can’t go back in time.

Without those things, the police can’t be guaranteed to protect you. They just can’t. About the only possibility is if we all had personal officers with us all the time, and that would get old quickly. Believe me.

So that means the only other alternative is to empower people to defend themselves.

Don’t get me wrong. I suspect an armed citizen in the newsroom wouldn’t have stopped the Capital Gazette shooting. Journalists aren’t generally known for being pro-gun, though they do exist. The odds are, though, that no one would have been carrying.

However, that doesn’t matter. The fact that the killer had no reason to suspect anyone was carrying was telling. He had no reason to doubt his plan would be successful.

What we need is more of these killers being put down by armed citizens, so it is something each potential shooter has to calculate. If he can’t, then perhaps he’ll try something else to make a name for himself, like doing stupid stuff on YouTube or something equally inane. While armed citizens won’t put down every potential threat, even if they’re present, they can put down enough of them that you’ll see the rate of these things plummet within no time at all.

But anti-gunners won’t acknowledge that. They pretend it doesn’t happen, that it can’t happen.

Then they accuse us of wanting dead kids.
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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 also contributes to PJ Media.

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Tags: Tom Knighton, Bearing Arms, Baltimore Sun, Letter To The Editor, Hits On, How To Stop, Mass Shootings To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Will the Odd Couple -- AMLO and Trump -- Narrow the U.S.-Mexico Gap?

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
President of Mexico

by Michael Barone: Will NAFTA survive? Last week, Mexico elected as president longtime NAFTA critic Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (always called "AMLO") by a wide margin. He promptly had a cordial telephone conversation with longtime NAFTA critic President Donald Trump, who remains U.S. president for the next 30 months and, if re-elected, for all of AMLO's six-year term.

The cordiality may have just been a ritual. Not since the 1920s have the two neighboring countries had presidents as critical of the other's country as they will have on AMLO's inauguration Dec. 1.

For it's unclear whether the ongoing renegotiations of NAFTA with Mexico and Canada will result in abrogation of the treaty or just modifications, perhaps overdue after 25 years. NAFTA is not just an economic agreement, though it was sold as that to bipartisan majorities in Congress in 1993.

For the boundary between the United States and Mexico, negotiated after the U.S. defeated Mexico in 1848, has not just been the world border separating the two most economically unequal nations; it has also been the line separating two profoundly different cultures.

For the United States has an almost entirely European culture, leavened by other influences, while Mexico partakes heavily of its pre-Columbian Mesoamerican culture. We have been "distant neighbors," as the journalist Alan Riding titled his 1985 book on Mexico. "I celebrate myself," proclaimed the brash, exuberant 19th-century American poet Walt Whitman. Mexicans, in contrast, inhabit a "labyrinth of solitude," wrote the introverted, fatalistic 20th-century Mexican poet and diplomat Octavio Paz.

The architects of NAFTA had personal exposure to the sharpness of the border and a desire to meld together the two divergent cultures -- to make Mexico economically more like America, mostly, but also to make Mexican political and economic culture more like America's.

NAFTA was a project of two Republican presidents who settled and made their fortunes less than 100 miles north of the border -- Ronald Reagan in southern California in the 1930s and George H. W. Bush in Midland, Texas, in the 1950s. Its chief Democratic advocate was Lloyd Bentsen, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee during the Reagan and Bush presidencies and treasury secretary during Bill Clinton's, born and raised in the lower Rio Grande Valley, less than five miles north of Mexico. And the Mexican president who pushed NAFTA through was Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who grew up in Monterrey, three hours to the south.

Their combined efforts have changed Mexico's political culture. From 1929 to 2000, one party won every national election and outgoing presidents hand-picked their successors -- and then disappeared from public life and became scapegoats for lingering problems after their single six-year terms ended. It was a sort of Aztec system, with elaborate ceremony, calendrical regularity and an element of human sacrifice.

That ended with the election of opposition-party President Vicente Fox in 2000, a close election AMLO narrowly lost in 2006 and a victory for the older ruling party in 2012. Competitive and rigorously honest elections, rotation in office: Mexico has developed something like a conventional Western political culture. AMLO's victory Sunday following the moderation of his radical rhetoric is more evidence of that.

Another such change is the abrupt end of outmigration. Like Japan and China 100 years before, Mexico was exporting millions of low-wage workers from 1982 to 2007. That largely stopped when the U.S. housing bubble burst, and now Mexico is a transit point for Central Americans migrating illegally -- an issue that is perhaps negotiable for AMLO and Trump.

More disturbing is the gang violence raging in Mexico and threatening America. Drug cartels have murdered some 113 election candidates since September and have taken over previously uncorrupt governments in running up toward the U.S. border. Even in northern Mexico, cities like Guanajuato and Queretaro, whose modern infrastructure and clean local government attracted much post-NAFTA foreign investment, have suffered murder waves.

You might argue this is no more dangerous than the organized crime and violence in heavy-immigration zones in the United States a century ago -- unnerving for some years but eventually a manageable problem.

And there's endemic corruption in government and law enforcement -- mostly invisible for years, the distinguished Mexican historian Enrique Krauze argues in The New York Times, but now out in the open.

In his recently published book, "Vanishing Frontiers," Migration Policy Institute President Andrew Selee argues that NAFTA has reduced the economic and cultural gap between the United States and Mexico. Will it be reduced further or widened by the odd couple of AMLO and Donald Trump?

Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.
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Michael Barone is a Senior Political Analyst for the Washington Examiner and a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel  and co-author of The Almanac of American Politics Shared by Rasmussen Reports.

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Tags: Michael Barone, editorial, Rasmussen Reports, Odd Couple, NAFTA critic, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, AMLO and Trump, Narrow the U.S.-Mexico Gap To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Mueller Expands The Witch Hunt

. . . Time to put up or shut up -- and shut down.

by Joseph Klein: Special Counsel Robert Mueller is planning to expand his witch hunt. According to a Bloomberg News report, he is “tapping additional Justice Department resources for help with new legal battles as his year-old investigation of Russian interference with the 2016 election continues to expand.” He already has 17 prosecutors on his staff, many of whom have clear anti-Trump biases. From the investigation’s start in May 2017 through March of this year, Mr. Mueller’s own office has spent $7.7 million, on top of the $9 million spent by permanent Department of Justice units involved in the investigation. Mr. Mueller evidently wants to absorb some of the career prosecutors from the offices of U.S. attorneys and from Justice Department headquarters into his own operation or to outsource some of his work to them. Either way, instead of finishing his investigation “the hell up because this country is being torn apart,” as Republican Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina told Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein during a June 28 hearing, Mr. Mueller is busy growing his empire. The Justice Department has “reportedly budgeted $10 million for Mueller’s team to spend in the next fiscal year, which begins in October,” Time Magazine reported.

The Mueller probe is over a year old. The Special Counsel's office has shown nothing to the taxpayers funding its operation that it has made any real progress in fulfilling its original mandate to uncover evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. The most significant indictment to date, the one against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, is a ridiculous sideshow involving accusations that have nothing to do with the Trump campaign. While Judge T.S. Ellis III, of the Eastern District of Virginia, denied Mr. Manafort’s motion to dismiss an indictment against him on the grounds that Special Counsel Mueller had exceeded his authority, the judge questioned the objectivity of the whole Mueller enterprise. Judge Ellis expressed concern about “the danger unleashed when political disagreements are transformed into partisan prosecutions." The judge further warned, “To provide a special counsel with a large budget and to tell him or her to find crimes allows a special counsel to pursue his or her targets without the usual time and budget constraints facing ordinary prosecutors, encouraging substantial elements of the public to conclude that the special counsel is being deployed as a political weapon.”

Mr. Mueller and his merry band of Trump-haters are preparing the groundwork for, at minimum, a highly critical report that will be used as “a political weapon” by Democrats and the anti-Trump media to try and bring the president down. They are salivating at the prospect of impeachment proceedings, particularly if Democrats regain the majority in the House of Representatives. It is a distinct possibility that the Mueller team is planning an “October surprise” shortly before the November midterm elections by issuing a highly critical report that could provide enough additional impetus for tipping the balance of power in the House, and possibly even the Senate, in the Democrats’ favor. If so, Mr. Mueller would be following in the footsteps of Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh. After investigating the Iran-Contra scandal for several years, Mr. Walsh waited until October 30, 1992, just days before the presidential election, to indict former Reagan defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger on one count of making false statements. Bob Dole called the indictment “the straw that broke the camel’s back” of George H.W. Bush’s re-election hopes against Bill Clinton. Bob Dole added that Mr. Walsh’s operation consisted of a “hotbed of Democratic activist lawyers.” Sounds just like the Mueller team today.

Indeed, the Mueller investigation has been contaminated from the start by political bias that took root even before Mr. Mueller’s appointment as Special Counsel. Department of Justice Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz’s 500 plus-page report, released last month, criticized the conduct of Special FBI agent Peter Stzrok and Lisa Page, an attorney who has since left the FBI. They had exchanged text messages sharply critical of Mr. Trump before and after the election. Strzok played a major role in the FBI investigation and exoneration of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server for government e-mails while she served as Secretary of State, as well as in the initiation of the FBI investigation of allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. The smoking gun uncovered by Inspector General Horowitz was the following text message on August 8, 2016, in which Strzok reassured Page that she need not worry about Donald Trump becoming president. Trump is “not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Page texted Strzok. “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it,” Strzok responded. Mr. Horowitz wrote that this exchange was “not only indicative of a biased state of mind but, even more seriously, implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects.

Strzok operationalized his anti-Trump animus by prioritizing the Russia collusion investigation while helping to deep-six the Hillary Clinton investigation. Moreover, we know that leaders near the top of the Department of Justice and FBI hierarchies misused their authority for political reasons to obtain a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court order to spy on at least one former Trump campaign official, Carter Page. They failed to disclose to the FISA court that the unsubstantiated dossier compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, used as a justification for the warrant order, had been paid for by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The Mueller team is feeding off the fruits of a poisoned tree.

The Mueller team, largely consisting of Democratic partisans, also appears to have engaged in some shady practices of its own. For example, it withheld potentially exculpatory evidence from the defense related to former National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s case in which he pleaded guilty, until ordered to do so by a federal judge.

In sum, Robert Mueller is seeking to perpetuate his tainted investigation in search of crime – any crime, whether or not having any relationship to the allegation of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia – that would justify its expanding budget and staffing. For the sake of the country, it is time for Mr. Mueller to either put up or shut up and move to shut down his operation immediately.
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Joseph Klein is a Harvard-trained lawyer and the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom and Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations & Radical Islam. His article was in FrontPage.Mag, a project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

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Tags: Joseph Klein, FrontPage Mag, Robert Mueller, Expands, Witch Hunt To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Breaking Pruitt, On the Verge in Venezuela

Gary Bauer

by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Breaking Pruitt - After months of controversy, the seemingly inevitable happened yesterday. Environmental Protection Agency Director and Trump cabinet member Scott Pruitt resigned his post.

I like Pruitt. He is a Midwesterner, a straight-shooter, and an across-the-board conservative. Clearly, he made a couple of misjudgments during his tenure at the EPA. Frankly, though, most of what we’ve heard about seems insignificant compared to what went on, routinely, at the Justice Department during the 2016 presidential campaign.

But don’t think for a minute Pruitt’s stepping down has anything to do with cut-rate mattresses or his wife vying for a Chick-fil-A franchise. Scott Pruitt was targeted because he was fighting the tidal wave of EPA regulations that are touted to save lives but instead kill jobs. It is Trump’s agenda, not Pruitt’s finances, that brought on the flood of negative publicity.

What’s worse, many of Pruitt’s “missteps” had to do with his family’s security. To say the least, the media’s concern about the safety of public officials is selective. When Rep. Maxine Waters reported death threats, we heard all about it – as we should. But the same media professed itself mystified that Pruitt and his family wanted extra measures taken to protect them from constant threats and harassment.

The final proof of what is really happening here arrived quickly. The Administration has intimated that Pruitt’s deputy, Andrew Wheeler, will succeed him. Within minutes, opponents of Trump’s growth and reasonable regulation policy jumped on Wheeler, with the predictable Huffington Post labeling him “even worse” than Pruitt.

This is what the Left does. Rather than debate policy, they drive personal slander. Imagine going to a workplace every day where nearly the entire career staff perches on your shoulder digging for flaws and “scandals” they can share with their friends in the press. Talk about collusion.

This is the way Washington is for every conservative. Changing it – draining even one fetid corner of the swamp – isn’t easy. It’s what we’ve signed up for. But if you’re tempted to harsh judgment that one appointee or another has betrayed the public trust, look a little closer and see if it isn’t the rebellion of the swamp monsters instead. They like things just the way they are.

On the Verge in Venezuela - Hard as it is to believe, after a century of economic and political crimes of vast proportions, radical socialism is on the march again. This weekend in Chicago 2,000 dedicated socialists are gathering to celebrate their return to political relevance. If you miss this event, you won’t have the chance to attend sessions like “Socializing with Socialists” and “Capitalism and the Gender Binary.”

The event is intended for everyone interested in “overthrowing capitalism,” and yes of course all the bathrooms are “gender neutral.” No word yet on whether Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will attend. She is the socialist-Democrat who defeated the fourth-ranking Democratic House member, Joe Crowley, in a primary last week.

Meanwhile, a reminder of what radical socialism will mean is playing out across the Caribbean Sea. It seems like a report from another century – or even another planet. The latest news from Venezuela shows fresh protests spreading there due to a new shortage: drinkable water.

How can this be in a modern nation, blessed with a resilient people, physical beauty, and massive oil reserves? Much of the media refers to the present leader of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, as a dictator, and he is that. But before his political dictatorship bloomed with the abolition of the National Assembly last year, his economic dictatorship – socialism – was in full flower.

The word “disaster” doesn’t begin to describe the Chavez-Maduro reign of terror. How bad are things in Venezuela? Spurred by stark poverty across a swath of the country, these ideologues imposed policies that ravaged the private economy and delivered:

Hyperinflation at an annual rate of 15,657% (that comma is not a misprint);
A weight loss of 19 pounds per person due to malnutrition (we’re not talking Jenny Craig here);
A national poverty rate of 82%;
Shortages of bread, flour, milk, meat, coffee, rice, toilet paper and other staples, and medicine;
People foraging in garbage for scraps of food and fighting over the empty plastic bags to resell them for cash;
The departure of an estimated 4,000,000 Venezuelans, fleeing the country’s economic collapse.To make matters worse, after implementing the classic socialist policies of nationalization of industries and price controls, the Maduro government has refused all international aid. They dare not risk having their demonization of outsiders disproved, even at the cost of many lives.

Political violence has grown, and opponents of the regime are persecuted or killed, possibly by the hundreds, with the slayings portrayed as fighting crime.

What to do? Reports say President Trump has drawn flak for raising the prospect of military action. Latin American history makes intervention tempting, but clearly unwise. Maduro, like the Castro brothers and other dictators before them, uses any hint of external action to tighten his grip on power.

With enormous suffering worsening by the day, the Trump Administration and our allies could do more to aid the Venezuelan people. It has been a year since analysts started suggesting free nations organize a South American version of the Berlin Airlift to ease the present crisis.

The Venezuelans must know, and will know, who came to their rescue in their hour of need. Whatever happens now, we have one more proof of the criminal nature of socialist dictatorships. Venezuela’s pockets of abject poverty needed attention. But socialism erases the “goods” in the common good. It converts the noble ideal of a social safety net into a mummy wrap.

Venezuela needs an answer soon. Those whose antennae are attuned to the crush of refugees reaching America need to recognize what produces this diaspora – it’s the policies so many of them are making haste to bring to our shores.
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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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College Destruction of Black Students

Dr. Walter Williams

by Dr. Walter E. Williams: Amy Wax, a University of Pennsylvania law professor, has come under attack and scathing criticism because she dared criticize the school’s racial preferences program. In an interview with Brown University economist Glenn Loury, discussing affirmative action, Wax mentioned how racial preferences hinder the ability of blacks to succeed academically by admitting them into schools at which they are in over their heads academically. At Penn’s seventh-ranked law school, Wax said, she doesn’t think that she has ever seen a black law student graduate in the top quarter of his class, and “rarely” is a black student in the top half.

That got her into deep trouble. Penn students and faculty members charged her with racism. Penn Law School Dean Ted Ruger stripped Wax of her duty of teaching her mandatory first-year class on civil procedures. I’m guessing that Penn’s law faculty members know Wax’s statement is true but think it was something best left unsaid in today’s racially charged climate. Ruger might have refuted Wax’s claim. He surely has access to student records. He might have listed the number of black law students who were valedictorians and graduated in the top 10 percent of their class. He rightfully chose not to — so as to not provide evidence for Wax’s claim.

One study suggests that Wax is absolutely right about academic mismatch. In the early 1990s, the Law School Admission Council collected 27,000 law student records, representing nearly 90 percent of accredited law schools. The study found that after the first year, 51 percent of black law students ranked in the bottom tenth of their class, compared with 5 percent of white students. Two-thirds of black students were in the bottom fifth of their class. Only 10 percent of blacks were in the top half of their class. Twenty-two percent of black students in the LSAC database hadn’t passed the bar exam after five attempts, compared with 3 percent of white test takers.

The University of Pennsylvania controversy highlights something very important to black people and the nation. The K-12 education that most blacks receive is grossly fraudulent. Most predominately black schools are costly yet grossly inferior to predominately white schools and are in cities where blacks hold considerable political power, such as Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia. In these and other cities, it’s not uncommon for there to be high schools where less than 17 percent of the students test proficient in reading, and often not a single student in such schools tests proficient in math. Nonetheless, many receive high school diplomas.

It’s inconceivable that college administrators are unaware that they are admitting students who are ill-prepared and have difficulty performing at the college level. There’s no way that four or five years of college can repair the academic damage done to black students throughout their 13 years of primary and secondary education. Partial proof is black student performance at the postgraduate level, such as in law school. Their disadvantage is exaggerated when they are admitted to prestigious Ivy League law schools. It’s as if you asked a trainer to teach you how to box and the first fight he got you was with Anthony Joshua or Floyd Mayweather. You might have the potential to ultimately be a good boxer, but you’re going to get your brains beaten out before you learn how to bob and weave.

The fact that black students have low class rankings at such high-powered law schools as Penn doesn’t mean that they are stupid or uneducable. It means that they’ve been admitted to schools where they are in over their heads. To admit these students makes white liberals feel better about themselves. It also helps support the jobs of black and white university personnel in charge of diversity and inclusion. The question for black people is whether we can afford to have the best of our youngsters demeaned, degraded and possibly destroyed to make white liberals feel better about themselves.

You might ask, “Williams, without affirmative action, what would the University of Pennsylvania Law School do about diversity and inclusion?” I’d say that’s Penn’s problem.
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Walter Williams (@WE_Williams) is an American economist, social commentator, and author of over 150 publications. He has a Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from the UCLA and B.A. in economics from California State University. He also holds a Doctor of Humane Letters from Virginia Union University and Grove City College, Doctor of Laws from Washington and Jefferson College. He has served on the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics, since 1980. Visit his website: WalterEWilliams.com and view a list of other articles and works.

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The Never-Trumpers Are Never Coming Back

by Patrick Buchanan: With never-Trump conservatives bailing on the GOP and crying out for the Party of Pelosi to save us, some painful truths need to be restated.

The Republican Party of Bush I and II, of Bob Dole and John McCain, is history. It’s not coming back. Unlike the Bourbons after the Revolution and the Terror, after Napoleon and the Empire, no restoration is in the cards.

It is over. The GOP’s policies of recent decades — the New World Order of George H.W. Bush, the crusades for democracy of Bush II — failed, and are seen as having failed. With Trump’s capture of the party they were repudiated.

There will be no turning back.

What were the historic blunders?

It was not supporting tax cuts, deregulation, conservative judges and justices, or funding a defense second to none. Donald Trump has delivered on these as well as any president since Reagan.

The failures that killed the Bush party, and that represented departures from Reaganite traditionalism and conservatism, are:

First, the hubristic drive, despite the warnings of statesmen like George Kennan, to exploit our Cold War victory and pursue a policy of permanent containment of a Russia that had lost a third of its territory and half its people.

We moved NATO into Eastern Europe and the Baltic, onto her doorstep. We abrogated the ABM treaty Nixon had negotiated and moved defensive missiles into Poland. John McCain pushed to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, and even to send U.S. forces to face off against Russian troops.

Thus we got a second Cold War that need never have begun and that our allies seem content to let us fight alone.

Europe today is not afraid of Vladimir Putin reaching the Rhine. Europe is afraid of Africa and the Middle East reaching the Danube.

Let the Americans, who relish playing empire, pay for NATO.

Second, in a reflexive response to 9/11, we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, dumped over the regime in Libya, armed rebels to overthrow Bashar Assad in Syria, and backed Saudi intervention in a Yemeni civil war, creating a humanitarian crisis in that poorest of Arab countries that is exceeded in horrors only by the Syrian civil war.

Since Y2K, hundreds of thousands in the Middle East have perished, the ancient Christian community has all but ceased to exist, and the refugees now number in the millions. What are the gains for democracy from these wars, all backed enthusiastically by the Republican establishment?

Why are the people responsible for these wars still being listened to, rather than confessing their sins at second-thoughts conferences?

The GOP elite also played a crucial role in throwing open U.S. markets to China and ceding transnational corporations full freedom to move factories and jobs there and ship their Chinese-made goods back here, free of charge.

Result: In three decades, the U.S. has run up $12 trillion in merchandise trade deficits — $4 trillion with China — and Beijing’s revenue from the USA has more than covered China’s defense budget for most of those years.

Beijing swept past Italy, France, Britain, Germany and Japan to become the premier manufacturing power on earth and a geo-strategic rival. Now, from East Africa to Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean, and from the South and East China Sea to Taiwan, Beijing’s expansionist ambitions have become clear.

And where are the Republicans responsible for building up this potentially malevolent power that thieves our technology? Talking of building a Reagan-like Navy to contain the mammoth they nourished.

Since the Cold War, America’s elites have been exhibiting symptoms of that congenital blindness associated since Rome with declining and falling empires.

While GOP grass roots have begged for measures to control our bleeding southern border, they were regularly denounced as nativists by party elites, many of whom are now backing Trump’s wall.

For decades, America’s elites failed to see that the transnational moment of the post-Cold War era was passing and an era of rising nationalism and tribalism was at hand.

“We live in a time,” said U2’s Bono this week, “when institutions as vital to human progress as the United Nations are under attack.”

The institutions Bono referenced — the U.N., EU, NATO — all trace their roots to the 1940s and 1950s, a time that bears little resemblance to the era we have entered, an era marked by a spreading and desperate desire of peoples everywhere to preserve who and what they are.

No, Trump didn’t start the fire.

The world was ablaze with tribalism and was raising up authoritarians to realize nationalist ends — Xi Jinping, Putin, Narendra Modi in India, Erdogan in Turkey, Gen. el-Sissi in Egypt — before he came down that escalator.

And so the elites who were in charge when the fire broke out, and who failed to respond and refused even to recognize it, and who now denounce Trump for how he is coping with it, are unlikely to be called upon again to lead this republic.
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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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Robots and Jobs

by Kerby Anderson, Contributing Author: Will robots destroy jobs and put all of us in the unemployment lines? Some futurists seem to be predicting this scenario. Jay Richards disagrees. He says it is an old argument that is new again. He is the author of the book, The Human Advantage: The Future of American Work in an Age of Smart Machines.

One report predicts that “The future of robots appears to be a dystopian march to rising inequality, falling wages, and higher unemployment.” A number of books warn of the “rise of robots” and even suggest this new technology will lead to the death of capitalism.

Jay Richards acknowledges that we have a coming disruption that could be as abrupt as the Industrial Revolution. But looking back, we can see that previous revolutions didn’t lead to the end of employment. They often provided new jobs without the boredom and danger of the past. At the founding of this country, nearly 95 percent of Americans got by on farming. Today, the American population is ten times larger while only 1 percent of the US population works on farms.

If it is true that technology leads to permanent unemployment of the masses, the history of the last few centuries would be a history of joblessness. That is not true. But some politicians accept the faulty premise that jobs will be scarce, and therefore have proposed the idea of a universal basic income that would essentially put millions more on welfare.

One obvious problem would be money. The government is going broke right now with various entitlement programs. Expanding that is economically unrealistic. And do we really want to pay millions more in this country to not work?

The lesson to government and education is to stop training kids to do jobs that robots will be doing in a few years. The lesson for parents and their children is to focus on developing skills a robot could never take away from you.
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Kerby Anderson is a radio talk show host heard on numerous stations via the Point of View Network endorsed by Dr. Bill Smith, Editor, ARRA News Service

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Ought Implies Cantifornia

by Paul Jacob, Contributing Author: “Strip away the absurdity,” writes Scott Shackford at Reason, “and it’s essentially a very technical ruling.”

Shackford is explaining a bizarre recent judgment of the California Supreme Court.

Politicians in Sacramento had, years ago, passed a gun control measure requiring gun manufacturers to “implement microstamping technology that would imprint identifying information on bullets as they were shot from semi-automatic weapons.” In 2014, Smith & Wesson announced that it would pull some guns from the California market rather than comply. Why? The technology just wasn’t ready yet.*

Since California’s Civil Code contains a section reiterating an old commonsense principle to the effect that the “law never requires impossibilities,” the National Shooting Sports Foundation sued to block the law.

But the group just lost.

The Court did say it could protect citizens from punishment, but it refused to nullify the legislation on constitutional grounds.

Unanimously.

Why do this? Apparently to protect California politicians in their ongoing social engineering schemes.

The dollar costs of trying to comply with impossible demands are huge, of course. But the biggest costs may be more subtle.

In moral philosophy, it is a truism to say that “ought implies can.” In natural law as understood long ago, an impossible law was thought not a law at all, justifiably ignored by anyone and everyone.

In a just state, flouting of maddening regulations like California’s would lead not merely to the defense of the absurdly put-upon citizen — as this court ruling still allows — but also to the nixing of the “impossible” law.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Shackford notes that “a cynic might theorize that this is the law’s actual intent.” I wouldn’t limit that suspicion to folks given to cynicism. Pragmatists and political scientists and almost anyone else would be placing bets on that, too.
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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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Shady Partisan Law Firm Is At The Center Of Another Political Hit Job

by Printus LeBlanc: Over the 4th of July holiday, NBC News published a disturbing article alleging sexual abuse at Ohio State University. The story went out if its way to implicate a high-profile member of the Republican Party, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). The story alleges Jordan knew or should have known about the abuse at the university. The real oddity about this case is the timing and law firm at the center of the case.

For anyone that pays attention to Capitol Hill, Jim Jordan is a name on the rise. He is a member of the Freedom Caucus and has been mentioned by several conservative groups for the next Speaker of the House. Jordan is also at the tip of the spear in uncovering corruption at the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Just last week, he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein got into a heated debate over the DOJ and FBI’s role in Russiagate.

If the timing wasn’t suspicious enough, the law firm involved in the matter is raising eyebrows. Perkins Coie is the counsel of record for the much of the Democrat Party, including the Democratic National Committee, both Congressional Democrat committees (DSCC & DCCC) and numerous democrat presidential committees. This firm has been at the center of many recent events.

Surely everyone remembers the DNC hack? Supposedly Russian hackers gained access to the DNC servers and gave stolen emails to WikiLeaks for dissemination. When the emails came out, it painted a damning picture of the DNC, mostly because it showed a pattern of bias by DNC officials. Instead of the DNC being a neutral party in the primary, it was clear the DNC was pulling for Hillary Clinton, and holding Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) down.

What happened when it was learned there may have been a breach at the DNC is troubling, and Perkins Coie is at the center of it. Did the firm tell the DNC to contact law enforcement and get to the bottom of the problem? Did the firm tell the DNC to hand over the server to the FBI for analysis? These should have been prudent, no-brainer moves by anyone involved in a hack, but we know that did not happen.

Instead of going to the authorities to prove there was a hack, Perkins Coie retained CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm that likes to blame everything on Russia and while being proven wrong later. The firm concluded Russia was behind the hack that led to the leaked emails, not providing any forensic evidence, only a report. This is how the Russiagate story got started.

Perkins Coie role in the Russiagate story doesn’t end with its involvement in the DNC server. The firm was also at the center of the FISA abuse scandal. As the Nunes memo makes clear, the Steele Dossier was the first piece of evidence used in the FISA application used to spy on Carter Page. It wasn’t just a piece of the FISA warrant; it made up the bulk of application. Why is this so bad?

The Steele Dossier was “salacious and unverified” according to former FBI Director James Comey. Yet it was still used to spy on American citizens. What does this have to do with Perkins Coie? The DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign funded the dossier through the Perkins Coie. Fusion GPS was the firm that hired Steele to do the dossier, but the money came from the opposition political party, using the law firm as a cutout. That’s right, the dossier that started the investigation into American citizens has Perkins Coie fingerprints all over it.

Now, Perkins Coie is at the center of the issue, attempting to ensnarl Jim Jordan. When a student came forward earlier this year about the alleged abuse at Ohio State University, the university hired Perkins Coie to handle the investigation. OSU released a statement writing, “To date, Perkins Coie has interviewed more than 150 former students and witnesses and is engaged in further investigative efforts. Ohio State has shared all additional information that has come to the attention of the university with the independent investigators whose work is ongoing.”

The university also notified local police and prosecutors, but it is odd they chose to immediately go to a law firm, instead of letting police investigate. The law firm cannot convene a grand jury and bring charges of perjury. The law firm has no police powers and cannot compel someone to testify. But what the firm can do is strategically leak information about its political opponents, if it chooses to do so. This begs the question, why is this partisan law firm involved?

An investigation is warranted, and hopefully, a proper one is ongoing. But you don’t give the case to probably the most partisan law firm in the country. They are already at the center of multiple scandals involving the trampling of civil rights, and its involvement in this case only complicates matters. They have already proven politics is more important than justice, can any non-partisan really believe anything the firm puts out?
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Printus LeBlanc is a contributing editor at Americans for Limited Government.

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Tags: Shady, Partisan Law Firm, Another Political Hit Job On, Jim Jordan 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 Blamed for Death of Reporters…Did Media Blame Obama for Cop Killers?

Larry Elder

by Larry Elder: A man with a long-standing beef against the Annapolis, Maryland, newspaper Capital Gazette entered the paper’s headquarters with a shotgun and murdered five staffers. It represents the deadliest attack on U.S. reporters in modern history.

Before learning about the suspect’s mental issues and his long-standing feud with the newspaper, some in the media blamed President Donald Trump. After all, critics said, Trump routinely denounces “fake news” as an existential threat to our republic. Connect the dots, they said. Blame Trump! CNN aired a montage of Trump’s attacks on the media. Rob Cox, a Reuters editor, tweeted: “This is what happens when @RealDonaldTrump calls journalists the enemy of the people. Blood is on your hands, Mr. President.” Another reporter, who later resigned, even falsely tweeted that the shooter was wearing a MAGA cap. How do you get that wrong?

How dare the President call out the anti-Republican media for its decades of biased reporting? Pew Research, in 2013, found that only 7 percent of reporters called themselves Republican. How dare Trump attack The New York Times, which has not endorsed a Republican presidential candidate since 1956? How dare Trump go after The Washington Post, which has never endorsed a Republican presidential candidate. And how dare Trump refer to CNN — one of whose “news” anchors, Don Lemon, has called Trump “a racist” – as fake news.

Did the media hold President Barack Obama responsible for the murders of 10 cops in Dallas, Baton Rouge and New York City, all at the hands of black men apparently incited by their belief that cops murder blacks without consequence? After all, Obama frequently criticized the police and bemoaned America’s racism as “part of our DNA.”

President Obama’s anti-cop rhetoric started right after he took office. Obama’s friend, a black Harvard professor, was arrested in his home. Professor Henry Louis Gates, back from a trip, couldn’t open his front door and reportedly asked his driver to help. A neighbor, observing two people trying to force open the front door of Gates’ home, called 911. But when the cops arrived and asked Gates to exit the home so he could determine its ownership, Gates mouthed off and was briefly arrested. Obama said, “The Cambridge police acted stupidly.” The Cambridge Police Superior Officers Association and the Cambridge Police commissioner insisted the officer followed protocol. Obama’s statement infuriated officers all across the country and set up a template for the Obama administration: Cops engage in unlawful anti-black racial profiling.

Obama and his attorney general also offered verbal support to the so-called Black Lives Matter movement that argues, without facts, that blacks are regularly and illegally profiled by an institutionally, systemically and structurally “racist” criminal justice system. It did not help that during the first six years of the Obama administration, the anti-police incendiary Rev. Al Sharpton, according to The Washington Post, visited the White House 72 times. What kind of message did that send to the police?

When a Sanford, Florida, neighborhood watch captain, George Zimmerman, shot and killed a black 17-year-old named Trayvon Martin, President Obama promptly sided with the deceased teen, saying, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” A jury found Zimmerman not guilty, and one juror later said that during the deliberations, race never came up.

Then there’s Ferguson. A grim President Obama, at an address before the United Nations, said: “In a summer marked by instability in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, I know the world also took notice of the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri – where a young man was killed, and a community was divided. So yes, we have our own racial and ethnic tensions.”

But the Ferguson grand jury did not indict the officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, and a Department of Justice report exonerated the cop. Contrary to the lies told by his friend who witnessed the shooting, Michael Brown did not have his hands up when the officer shot and killed him. Brown, did not say, “Hands up. Don’t shoot.” Yet before the investigation even began, Obama’s BFF, Sharpton, took to the streets of Ferguson yelling, “No justice, no peace.”

The DOJ’s investigation of Ferguson’s nearly all-white police department criticized its alleged “institutional racism.” But its actual findings do not support that conclusion. Ferguson, the investigation noted, is 67 percent black, but 85 percent of its traffic stops involve black drivers. To the DOJ, this 18-point statistical imbalance equals systemic racism. But in New York City, where the department consists mostly officers of color, 55 percent of traffic stops involve a black driver in a city with a 25 percent black population. This is a 30-point statistical imbalance. Wouldn’t this make the NYPD even more “institutionally racist” than the Ferguson PD?

Trump, say the media, has created an atmosphere that puts reporters in danger. Obama often unfairly criticized the police. But the media did not blame Obama for the murder of officers by angry black men consumed with the wrongheaded belief that blacks are victimized by the “institutional racism” of the criminal justice system.
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Larry Elder (@larryelder) is a best-selling author and radio talk-show host, an American lawyer, writer and radio and television personality who is also known as the "Sage From South Central." To find out more about Larry Elder. Visit his website at LarryElder.com for list of other articles.

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Tags: Larry Elder, commentary, Trump Blamed, for Death of Reporters, Did Media, Blame Obama, for Cop Killers? To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Jahi’s Life Mattered

Nailah Winkfield, mother of Jahi McMath,
sits with her husband, Martin Winkfield, 

by Michelle Malkin: Amid all the raging political headlines and hyperventilating tweets of the Summer of Resistance, a searing ember of news stopped me in my tracks this week.

Jahi McMath has passed away.

I never had a chance to meet the young California teen, but her fight for life gripped me three years ago and was never far from my mind or heart — especially as my own daughter, the same age as Jahi, battled her own health crisis.

Do you remember Jahi? Medical experts declared her “brain dead” after a routine tonsillectomy gone wrong. Children’s Hospital Oakland pushed to have all life-sustaining medical treatment terminated; the professionals predicted quick deterioration. California declared Jahi legally “brain dead.”

But Jahi’s mother, professional nurse Latasha “Nailah” Winkfield, refused to accept their verdict. As a parent, caregiver and believer in Christ, Winkfield was compelled to protect her child. With the help of the pro-life Schiavo Foundation, Winkfield moved with her daughter to a long-term care facility in New Jersey.

Medical ethics scholar Wesley Smith visited Jahi with the Schiavo Foundation’s Bobby Schindler 10 months ago and reported: “At the time of the tragedy, I believed … that Jahi was, indeed, dead. But I now have strong doubts. It’s nearly four years later, and Jahi’s body still has not broken down…She has experienced no visible bodily decline … Disabled is not dead.”

Dr. Alan Shewmon, professor emeritus of pediatrics and neurology at the University of California, Los Angeles, reviewed nearly 50 videos of Jahi moving her fingers on command last year and wrote in a court declaration that Jahi was “a living, severely disabled young lady, who currently fulfills neither the standard diagnostic guidelines for brain death nor California’s statutory definition of death.”

And a team of Harvard researchers recently reported that over the past five years, Jahi was indeed growing, digested food, had menstrual cycles, healed wounds and fought off infections. “We would say that Jahi’s parents were far from crazy in believing their daughter to still be biologically alive,” Dr. Robert Truog, director of the Harvard Center for Bioethics, concluded.

The changed tune of many “experts” came too late for Jahi’s family, which had been fighting in court to bring her back to California. After undergoing several surgeries for intestinal problems, Jahi succumbed to excessive bleeding and liver failure after an operation. Jahi will finally head home to Oakland this week, where the family’s lawyer says her brain will be preserved for further study.

With all the roar these days of keeping families together, why is there so little media attention to the plight of American families of brain-injured children who’ve been forced to separate by medical elites making bright-line mortality judgments based on murky diagnostic criteria for what constitutes life?

Also suffering out of the selective media spotlight: Children with rare illnesses ripped from their homes in medical kidnappings by arrogant medical professionals and child welfare bureaucrats who scoff at parental sovereignty and autonomy.

Jahi’s life and death inspired other families of disabled children to fight back.

Jahi’s life and death raised awareness of patients’ rights, living wills, durable powers of attorney, “do not resuscitate” orders, revocable trusts and advance directives.

Jahi’s life and death resonated beyond ideology, race and class. I’ll not forget the Instagram image of Jahi’s mom clasping her daughter’s hand at her hospital bedside — an enduring symbol of hope, suffering, resilience and abiding love.

Jahi McMath mattered. She defied her California death certificate. She humbled the experts. She brought joy to her loved ones. Her heart and brain may have stopped, but the light she brought in her short time on earth will not be extinguished.
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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. Her article was shared by The Daily Signal

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