We Must Defeat the Threats to Higher Education

by Newt Gingrich: The United States is home to the world’s highest-ranking colleges and universities. Indeed, our higher education system is one of our greatest assets. Yet, we do too little to defend it.

In 2017, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, more than 20 million students planned to attend U.S. colleges and universities, and the National Science Foundation reported that more than 800,000 international students were enrolled in institutions of higher education.

Most of these international students, faculty members, and researchers are here to capitalize on America’s educational opportunities, however, some are here to exploit the openness of our higher education system.

According to an advisory warning released by the FBI in 2011, foreign intelligence services target American universities to recruit student and faculty to be agents of espionage and attempt to steal technical information and products. The FBI also reported that certain foreign actors illicitly exploit the student visa program and use universities hubs to spread false information and political propaganda.

For example, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified in front of the Senate Committee on Intelligence in February 2018 that China utilizes “the use of nontraditional collectors, especially in the academic setting, whether it’s professors, scientists, students, we see… in almost every field office that the FBI has around the country.” He added that, “[China is] exploiting the very open research and development environment that we have, which we all revere. But they’re taking advantage of it.”

In March 2018, nine Iranians were charged by the Department of Justice after computer systems at 144 American universities were targeted in a cyber theft conspiracy. Additionally, back in 2014, the FBI issued an advisory stating that, “the Cuban intelligence services are known to actively target the U.S. academic world for the purposes of recruiting agents, in order to both obtain useful information and conduct influence activities.”

These are only a few examples. Many other countries are looking to infiltrate and take advantage of the United States, so more must be done domestically to counteract this rising threat – while still maintaining the integrity of America’s higher education institutions.

One path forward is Senator Ted Cruz’s Stop Higher Education Espionage and Theft Act of 2018 (SHEET), which he introduced in the Senate on May 22. If passed, the SHEET Act will give the Director of the FBI the authority to formally designate a foreign actor as a “foreign intelligence threat to higher education.”

In order to receive such a designation, a foreign actor must have exploited the resources of an institution to engage in illicit activities such as espionage, fraud, theft of trade secrets, or interception of communications. The SHEET Act would help by defining and identifying threats to American institutions of higher education, while still ensuring the protection of civil liberties of those suspected or accused. Following the model contained in the Foreign Terrorist Organization statute, the SHEET Act also outlines a specific process whereby the designee can appeal the designation to court for a timely review.

Lastly, to ensure full transparency, the SHEET Act issues stricter reporting requirements for institutions of higher education in disclosing gifts from and contracts with entities who have been designated as foreign intelligence threats.

Congress must pass the SHEET Act to help ensure that American institutions of higher education are no longer infiltrated and exploited by foreign intelligence threats. Doing so will allow such institutions to continue to be worldwide leaders for discovering, challenging, and growing new students, faculty, researchers, and ideas.
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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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Army Chaplain Scott Squires, & SSgt Kacie Griffin Exonerated

ARRA News Service: The Family Research Council anounced today that the U.S. Army announced it would be rejecting the conclusions of an investigation into U.S. Army Chaplain Major Scott Squires, a career soldier with a 25-year history who served multiple tours in Afghanistan, Africa, and the Middle East. The original investigation accused Squires and Chaplain's Assistant, SSgt Kacie Griffin, of "dereliction of duty" stemming from Squires' decision to step down from leadership of a marriage retreat that included a same-sex couple. Despite having followed DOD regulations that require a chaplain to follow their endorsing agency's religious tenets, and despite having found another chaplain to lead the retreat, an Equal Opportunity complaint was filed.

Squires' chaplain endorsing agency, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) prevents its chaplains from facilitating same-sex marriage retreats. In addition, statements made during the investigation cleared Squires of any wrongdoing. Regardless, an investigator recommended that Squires and Griffin be found guilty of "dereliction of duty."

Squires and Griffin were represented by First Liberty Institute and have received congressional support from Reps. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), Richard Hudson (R--N.C.), Jody Hice (R-Ga.), Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.), and Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.).

Family Research Council (FRC) President Tony Perkins, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, commented:"Unfortunately, there are some in our military that have not gotten the word, Obama's war on faith is over. As a result not all of the hostilities toward religious beliefs and convictions have ended. The vast majority of the men and women of faith who serve our nation are grateful for the Trump Administration's commitment to protect and promote our First Freedom, the freedom of religion. As a result, Scott Squires and Kacie Griffin have been exonerated from these false accusations that included the serious charge of dereliction of duty."
FRC's Executive Vice President and founding member of the Army's elite Delta Force, Lt. Gen. (Ret.) William G. Boykin, released the following statement in reaction:"I am grateful that the Army has acknowledged the obvious error in the case of Chaplain Squires and his assistant, Kacie Griffin. To charge a faithful soldier and chaplain like Scott Squires with 'dereliction of duty' is a blatant attempt to deprive Squires of his constitutional right to religious freedom. He and his fellow brothers and sisters in arms are defending these rights all around the world. The military Chaplains Corps has been a critical entity since the American Revolution. Commanders must allow chaplains to be chaplains and to practice their faith. Chaplains have always been spiritual counselors and a source of comfort to the troops. It appears that there are commanders in our military today that see them as social workers. This decision by the Army to exonerate Chaplain Squires and Staff Sergeant Kacie Griffin goes a long way towards reinforcing what a chaplain is," Boykin concluded.
Baptist Press: FORT BRAGG, N.C. (BP) -- The U.S. Army has dropped its investigation against Southern Baptist chaplain Jerry Scott Squires, fully exonerating the major of all charges today (Aug. 24).
"This is great news for both Chaplain Squires and all of the military chaplains who are serving our men and women the U.S. Armed Services," said Gen. Douglas Carver, executive director of chaplaincy at the North American Mission Board (NAMB). "It is a significant victory for all who support and defend the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, especially regarding the freedom of religion."

Squires had been charged with unlawful discrimination and dereliction of duty, and could have faced confinement in a military prison.

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Trump vs. Sessions, Romney & The Rule Of Law, Credit Cards & The Culture Wars, Values Voter Summit

by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Trump vs. Sessions - It is truly unfortunate that President Trump and Attorney General Sessions don't have a better working relationship. Jeff Sessions was the first senator to publicly endorse Donald Trump and he is a solid conservative.

When it comes to immigration, judges and religious liberty, conservatives have no better friend than Jeff Sessions, and I consider the attorney general to be a friend of mine.

That said, the statement Sessions released yesterday in response to the president's complaint that he did not have control of the Justice Department was mind-boggling. I sincerely hope that someone else issued that statement in his name and without his knowledge.

Sessions said he would not tolerate political interference at the Justice Department. But with all due respect to my friend, the Justice Department is out of control.

That is why Sally Yates was fired. That is why James Comey was fired. That is why Andrew McCabe was fired. That is why Peter Strzok was fired. I don't understand why this special agent hasn't been fired, but it is yet another example of an agency run amok.

The department's inspector general recently issued a report that found significant bias at the Justice Department.

As a former member of Congress, Jeff Sessions knows that Congress has oversight over the Justice Department. And he surely knows that senior members of his department have desperately tried to avoid and deliberately evaded that oversight. Even under threats of subpoena, contempt and impeachment.

The most egregious acts of obstruction of justice in Washington today are coming from the Justice Department itself!

The situation is so bad that Sessions even had to bring in a U.S. attorney from Utah to help sort it all out. By the way, has anyone heard from Mr. Huber lately?

If Jeff Sessions had simply included these points in his statement, it would have been a 1,000% better. Perhaps it was implied in his remarks about demanding the highest standards.

But that's not how the left-wing media interpreted his statement. They hailed it as a slap at the president.

On Fox News last night, Molly Hemmingway perfectly captured my thoughts on the D.C. swamp. She said:

"There are two groups of people in this country: People who have wanted to get rid of Donald Trump since the moment he won [the] election and people who chose to vote for him because he said he would advance their agenda. That latter group is extremely happy, probably pleasantly surprised with how well things have gone.

"The first group, it doesn't matter what the details are. They're just moving to get rid of him by hook or by crook.

"The fact that people can see this -- that we live in a swamp where if you have the right connections you get away with crimes and if you don't they'll go after anybody, anyway, anyhow, whatever it takes to get rid of the president -- is a credibility problem for those institutions that are supposed to practice the rule of law."

Speaking Of The Rule Of Law. . . Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney tweeted this week that the convictions of Paul Manafort and the guilty plea of Michael Cohen had "confirmed my faith in our justice system and my conviction that we are a nation committed to the rule of law."

Sadly, Governor Romney has it exactly backwards.

Did Manafort and Cohen commit crimes in their personal business dealings? It looks like it.

Did any of it have anything to do with Russian collusion? Not a thing.

The ONLY reason they are being nailed to the wall now is because the Deep State is targeting Donald Trump and trying to overturn the election.

How on earth do these political prosecutions confirm Romney's confidence in the rule of law?

And that is why Republicans couldn't get back into the White House until Donald Trump came along.

There are far too many people in Washington who are abusing the system and getting away with it. For example, there is an entire program in Congress to pay off women alleging sexual harassment and make them go away.

If Michael Cohen and Donald Trump violated campaign finance laws, then every single member of Congress who used this slush fund should be charged with campaign finance violations. And, by the way, that's your tax money!

Mitt Romney is a very decent man. I would be thrilled to have him watch my grandchildren. But in the political arena, he could barely handle Candy Crowley.

Do we really expect him to be the warrior we need right now to take on and defeat the radical left? I don't think so.

Credit Cards & The Culture Wars - Here we go again. . . The Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-wing hate group, has reportedly convinced Visa and MasterCard to cutoff the David Horowitz Freedom Center, essentially shutting down its ability to raise money online.

This is yet another disturbing example of the left turning corporate America into active combatants in the culture wars as it tries to silence conservative views.

Progressives are operating on two fronts. They are using Antifa mobs to shout down conservatives, and they are using corporations, whether it is social media or payment platforms, to lockout conservative organizations and voices from the public policy debate.

The left is fundamentally opposed to free speech and increasingly intolerant. It does not want to win the debate. It wants to stop the debate.

Join Me In D.C. - Join me in our nation's capital September 21st – 23rd for the 2018 Values Voter Summit!

Vice President Mike Pence said, "The Values Voter Summit [is] the greatest gathering of conservative pro-family Americans in the nation." And he is absolutely right!

That is why American Values, my non-profit public policy organization, has been a proud sponsor of the Summit every year.

This year's Summit features an incredible lineup of speakers, including:

David & Jason Benham
Dr. Bill Bennett
Gov. Matt Bevin
Brigitte Gabriel
Dr. Sebastian Gorka
Rep. Mark Meadows
Lt. Col. Oliver North
Dr. Everett Piper
Rep. Steve Scalise
And Many More!

There will be educational and informative breakout sessions, as well as a gala dinner honoring my good friend former Congressman Frank Wolf for his years of leadership on religious liberty issues.

American Values will be hosting a special luncheon Saturday, September 22nd.

I look forward to seeing you there!
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Gary Bauer is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

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Tags: Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families, Trump vs. Sessions, Romney & The Rule Of Law, Credit Cards & The Culture Wars, Values Voter Summit To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

In New Mexico, Terrorists Sign Themselves Out Of Pretrial Detention

. . . The creepy no-cash-bail movement frees a Muslim terrorist cell.

Siraj Ibn Wahhaj

by Matthew Vadum: A potentially catastrophic soft-on-crime reform enacted in New Mexico and now threatening to spread to other states has outraged national security advocates by allowing the alleged leaders of a Muslim terrorist training compound to be granted bail by a Democrat judge.

Excessive bail requirements have long been forbidden by the Eighth Amendment (1791) to the U.S. Constitution. But the no-cash-bail movement that made the recent release of these Islamic militants possible is a subset of the treacherous anti-incarceration movement that’s been sweeping the nation. Changes to New Mexico’s bail laws were approved by voters in 2016. Similar changes are being considering in New Jersey and California. San Francisco already lets accused rapists and kidnappers out on bail.

In a nutshell, leftists like Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), joined by more than a few conservatives and Republicans such as Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, is arguing that the very idea of bail itself is unfair because poor defendants are going to have more trouble raising cash to get released from jail pending trial than wealthier defendants. Whether or not they are actually guilty of the crimes they are charged with, keeping poor people in pretrial detention is somehow unjust, left-wingers claim. Among the notable leftist groups backing this attack on the institution of bail are the ACLU, the ACORN successor group known as Texas Organizing Project, Color of Change, and Black Lives Matter.

Here is a quick recap of what just happened in New Mexico.

Siraj Ibn Wahhaj Jr. of Clayton County, Ga., was arrested after authorities found 11 hungry, filthy children living in squalid conditions in Taos County in a remote part of New Mexico near the Colorado state line. Wahhaj, who has been charged with felony child abuse, had reportedly been training the children to commit school shootings. The remains of a three-year-old disabled boy, since identified as Wahhaj’s son, were discovered on the property which was filled with weapons. Five defendants were arrested but then granted bail, over the objections of prosecutors.

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R) said she "strongly disagreed" with the court’s decision to free the defendants.

"You have a person who is training kids to shoot up schools, they have a compound that is like a third-world country," said State Republican Party Chairman Ryan Cangiolosi. "There's a child's body on the compound — I believe that allowing them to be released is absurd."

Each of the five defendants –Wahhaj, Lucan Allen Morten, Hujrah Wahhaj, Jany Leveille, and Subhannah Wahhaj— has been charged with 11 counts of child abuse. Siraj Ibn Wahhaj Jr. has also been charged with being a fugitive from justice. Morton is charged with harboring a fugitive.

Wahhaj is the son of an influential Democrat-connected jihadist imam who shares his name. The elder Wahhaj, who is deeply involved in Democratic Party politics and is tied to international terrorism, was close to the “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted of orchestrating the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 that left seven people (including an unborn baby) dead. Rahman died in prison last year.

Much to the prosecutors’ chagrin, the state’s request to deny bail to the five terrorists who ought never to see the light of day again was shot down by Sarah C. Backus, a Democrat who is a judge in the Eighth Judicial District of New Mexico. Backus was reelected in 2014 for a term that expires at the end of 2020.

Citing a voter-approved state law she claimed left her no choice but to order the release of the jihadist quintet, Backus set bail at a mere $20,000 per defendant with no up-front deposit, along with a requirement that they be placed under house arrest and wear an electronic monitoring device. They face a financial penalty if they violate the terms of their bail. (Read the bail order here.)

Evidence that a child died at the terrorist training compound and that 11 children were abused there by Muslim fanatics apparently had no effect on Backus who rejected claim after claim presented by prosecutors.

"All this information is troubling and unusual but it is not clear and convincing evidence of dangerousness," the judge determined.

"The state alleges that there was a big plan afoot but the state hasn't shown to my satisfaction and by clear and convincing evidence what that plan was," Backus ruled, adding that none of the defendants has a criminal record.

Judge Backus also played cute, ignoring the role that Muslims played in the terrorist attacks of 9/11 that left 3,000 dead and thousands more injured, as well as the steady stream of Muslim terrorist attacks and attempted attacks in the U.S. that have followed in the years since.

It was as if Backus was attempting to preemptively immunize herself against possible claims at her next ACLU cocktail party that she was an anti-Muslim bigot.

In her bail order she included this baffling digression:“The defendants are apparently of the Muslim faith. Siraj ibn Wahhaj made a trip to Saudi Arabia last year. (The State admitted that observant Muslims by their faith are required to visit Mecca once in their lifetimes.) The Court was asked by the State to make a finding of dangerousness and a finding that no conditions of release could insure the safety of the community. The State apparently expected the Court to take the individuals' faith into account in making such a determination. The Court has never been asked to take any other person's faith into account in making a determination of dangerousness. The Court is not aware of any law that allows the Court to take a person’s faith into consideration in making a dangerousness determination.”After siding with the Islamists, Backus has faced death threats. Her supporters defend her by pointing to the 2016 voter-approved amendment to the state constitution governing the pretrial detention and release of people charged with crimes.

Before the so-called bail reform was enacted, bail could only be refused to a defendant facing a capital felony, one with two or more felony convictions in the state, or one accused of a felony involving the use of a deadly weapon if the defendant had a felony conviction in New Mexico.

The amendment, according to an official legislative analysis, allowed:“bail to be denied for a defendant who has been charged with a felony if the prosecutor can prove to a judge that the defendant poses a threat to the public. The proposed amendment would also provide that a defendant who is not a danger to the community or a flight risk cannot be denied bail solely because of the defendant's financial inability to post a money or property bond.”In other words, the change in the law gave poor people a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card. Even obviously dangerous poor people like Wahhaj and his four fellow soldiers of Allah can’t be kept behind bars while awaiting trial in New Mexico.

New Mexico offered this startling, dishonest rationalization for the new approach to bail:New Mexico, like the federal government and an increasing number of states in recent years, has been changing old dysfunctional practices to better protect public safety and improve the fairness of its pretrial justice system. Every jurisdiction that has seriously studied the problem has concluded that meaningful reforms in the way we distinguish between arrestees we hold in jail pretrial and those we allow to remain free until their guilt is determined at trial can be accomplished only by moving from a money-based system to an evidence-of-risk-based system of release and detention.Of course the old time-honored system of bail doesn’t ignore evidence at all and isn’t actually “money-based.” It merely provides an incentive in the form of potential financial penalties to defendants thinking of absconding before trial. Only a Marxist convinced of the fundamental unfairness of markets would call such an evidence-centered system money-based.

Which must be why Bernie Sanders supports misguided so-called reforms like those in New Mexico that are keeping scary Muslim militants like Siraj Ibn Wahhaj Jr. on the streets.
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Matthew Vadum, senior vice president at the investigative think tank Capital Research Center, an author at the David Horowitz Freedom Center's FronPage Mag, an award-winning investigative reporter, and author of the book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts Are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.

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Tags: Matthew Vadum, New Mexico, Terrorists sign themselves out, preferrential detention, FrontPage Mag To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Russia And The Sunni Muslim Threat

. . . America is ignoring the real danger!

William J. Murray

by William J. Murray: The total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Russia last year was $1.5 trillion. The GDP of California was $2.5 trillion – almost twice as much. Other than having nuclear arms, Russia is a weak nation, financially and militarily. The war in Syria has tied up most of its modern equipment and its trained special forces. So far, Russia has lost at least four military aircraft in Syria that we know of, and that does not include helicopters.

Russia has no blue-water navy. The only smoke-billowing aircraft carrier Russia has is so outdated, it barely made it to the Mediterranean for a tour of duty and then lost one of its aircraft because of a failure to catch it on landing. America has 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers with the most sophisticated aircraft ever built, and nine more small carriers for vertical take-off aircraft.

For every operational armored vehicle and tank Russia has, NATO has four. For every operational war plane Russia has, NATO has three. Most Russian fighters and bombers are decades old and not really war ready. America’s National Guard has better and more modern equipment than the Russian Army.

Russia has 150 million people and a declining population. The United States is the third most populous nation in the world with 330 million people, and more arriving daily. The manufacturing base in Russia is decaying, while America turns out the most advanced technology the world has ever seen.

But ask Democrat or Republican leaders, and they will assure you that Russia is our most immediate threat, while totalitarian Sunni Muslim nations with absolute monarchs (such as Saudi Arabia) are friends and allies.

This question needs to be answered seriously: Has Vladimir Putin’s Russia killed as many Americans as did the Sunni Muslim terrorists from Saudi Arabia on 9/11? Have Russians gunned down innocent people in San Bernardino, Ft. Hood or Orlando – as have Sunni Muslim terrorists with ties to Saudi Arabia? The answer, of course, is no.

Our nation’s leaders are in a state of hysteria, claiming a handful of “Russian trolls” leaving comments on Facebook pages altered the results of the 2016 elections! In that year Democrat and Republican candidates and PACs spent nearly $4 billion! Over $2 billion was spent on the presidential election alone, and the mainstream media reporting was non-stop.

Sunni Muslim Jihad against the civilized world

Currently the Sunni Muslim propaganda machine is everywhere inside the Washington, DC beltway. Money from the rich Gulf states, including the UAE and Saudi Arabia, floods the media and spreads political influence. Public remembrance of the Sunni Muslim attacks that have killed scores of Americans over the last decade or so has vanished, and even the 9-11 attack is hardly mentioned. The almost daily be-headings in Saudi Arabia are forgiven. Our leaders looked away as torture chambers were set up in the Ritz Carlton Hotel in the Saudi capital this year. The slaughter going on in Yemen by Saudi Arabian backed forces is hardly mentioned. (Update: The Arab Coalition supported by the USA to fight the Shea Muslims in Yemen is paying al-Qaeda and recruiting al-Qaeda fighters to help the Saudi war effort there. Read more)

In the Washington area the Saudi Academy, which is a Sunni Muslim school for the children of diplomats from Muslim nations, teaches that democracy is an apostate religion that must be destroyed. It also teaches that Jews are descendants of apes and pigs and that women are the property of men. One former valedictorian was convicted after leaving the school of joining Al Qaeda and plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush. Another graduate was arrested while attempting to board an airliner with a large concealed butcher knife. The school is 100% funded by the Saudi Arabian government. No American officials complain about the hatred being taught at the Saudi Academy. On the other hand, even having a Slavic sounding last name can get an American citizen investigated if they come near Capitol Hill.

Russia is being used as a distraction by the establishment and its instrument, the main stream media. Russian “collusion” conspiracy theory is a tool to turn the attention of Americans away from the devastation caused by Sunni Muslim terror groups such as the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda. The Deep State wants America to forget about the victims of 9-11 and the other Sunni Muslim terror attacks and concentrate on the “friendly oil” that is pumped from Sunni Muslim Gulf States.

The violent Sunni Muslim terrorist groups who are destroying our values and killing Christians worldwide are the true enemies of freedom and democracy and of our way of life.

When Vladimir Putin is dead and buried and no one remembers his name, Sunni Muslim terrorists will still be killing Americans and persecuting Christians around the world.
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William J. Murray is chairman of the Washington, D.C. based Religious Freedom Coalition and ARRA News Service contributing author. He has authored seven books including “My Life Without God,” which chronicles his early life in the home of destructive atheist and Marxist leader Madalyn Murray O’Hair. Having lived the Marxist and the Ayn Rand lifestyle, he has a unique perspective on religion and politics.

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Tags: Russia, The Sunni Muslim Threat, America, real danger To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Democrats Better off Playing by the Rules Than Denouncing the Rules

Michael Barone

by Michael Barone: When you lose a game, particularly a game you had good reason to expect you'd win, do you try to figure out how to play better? Or is your first reaction to demand changes in the rules?

In the case of the Democratic Party, it's the latter. Perhaps that comes naturally to a party that takes some pride in having advocated changes in rules that everyone today sees as unfair (even those they enacted themselves, like racial segregation laws). But sometimes it's wiser to change the way you play than to denounce long-established rules.

The Democrats argue that they've been winning more votes but don't control the federal government. They've won a plurality of the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections but elected presidents in only four of them. That darn Electoral College -- "land," as one liberal commentator puts it -- gave the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, and Donald Trump in 2016.

Of course, the Al Gore and Hillary Clinton campaigns knew that the winner is determined by electoral votes, not popular votes. But that hasn't stopped many Democrats from calling for a change in the rules to election by popular vote.

Or from complaining about the composition of the Senate. A majority of senators, writes ace election analyst David Wasserman, represent only 18 percent of the nation's population. That's because under the Constitution, each state elects two senators, and a majority of Americans today live in just nine states.

It's suggested that the framers didn't expect population to be so heavily concentrated in a few states. Actually, it was similarly concentrated in big states 50, 100, 150 and 200 years ago. And when the framers met in 1787, small states demanded equal Senate representation for fear that big states would dominate.

Moreover, small states today aren't uniformly Republican. Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Delaware and Hawaii currently send two Democrats to the Senate, and Maine, North Dakota and Montana each send one. The 12 smallest states are represented by 13 Democratic senators and 11 Republicans.

Moreover, Article V of the Constitution provides that "No State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of equal Suffrage in the Senate." Changing that would require a new constitutional convention. That's not going to happen.

Democrats are also complaining loudly that, as The Economist puts it, "In the past three elections, Republicans' share of House seats has been 4-5 percentage points greater than their share of the two-party vote."

This is not earth-shaking stuff. Winning parties typically get a higher share of seats than votes in every system, and three elections isn't a whole lot. Republicans enjoyed an advantage in redistricting after the last two Census cycles, but Democrats did in the 1970s and 1980s.

That advantage turned out to be reversible, and the Republicans' looks to be as well. Democrats are favored to gain governorships and state legislature majorities, and some states are setting up supposedly nonpartisan (in practice, always liberal-leaning) redistricting commissions.

Other reforms are being considered. Maine is tinkering with ranked-choice voting, which supposedly encourages the emergence of a moderate candidate. Of course, a proliferation of parties hasn't always produced functional government, even in nations as full of creative and talented people as Italy and Israel, and many reforms have unintended effects.

It's true that the Electoral College works against a party whose voters are geographically and demographically clustered. For the framers, that was a feature, not a bug. They feared domination by a concentrated bloc of voters with no broad support across the country.

A party that wants to win more elections might take note of that, rather than plead for impossible constitutional changes and fiddle with fixes that might produce unanticipated negative consequences.

Once upon a time, Bill Clinton showed Democrats how. He won the presidency, from which his party had been shut out for 16 of 20 years, by adapting its platform to appeal to additional voters. In 1996, he won 174 electoral votes in states his wife lost 20 years later.

Clinton carried California twice by the solid margin of 13 points. In 2016, Hillary Clinton carried it by 30, but by taking stands that antagonized "deplorables" in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa.

Currently, Democrats -- furiously intent on impeaching Donald Trump, enchanted with youthful socialists, in thrall to identity politics -- are spurning Bill Clinton's course and doubling down on Hillary's. Maybe they'd do better by learning to play by the rules rather than railing against them.
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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, Democrats, Better off, Playing by the Rules To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Do Democrats Want an Impeachment Fight?

by Patrick Buchanan: “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer,” said President Donald Trump ruefully, “I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen.” Michael Cohen is no Roy Cohn.

Tuesday, Trump’s ex-lawyer, staring at five years in prison, pled guilty to a campaign violation that may not even be a crime.

Cohen had fronted the cash, $130,000, to pay porn star Stormy Daniels for keeping quiet about a decade-old tryst with Trump. He had also brokered a deal whereby the National Enquirer bought the rights to a story about a Trump affair with a Playboy model, to kill it.

Cohen claims he and Trump thus conspired to violate federal law. But paying girlfriends to keep past indiscretions private is neither a crime nor a campaign violation. And Trump could legally contribute as much as he wished to his own campaign for president.

Would a Democratic House, assuming we get one, really impeach a president for paying hush money to old girlfriends?

Hence the high-fives among never-Trumpers are premature.

But if Cohen’s guilty plea and Tuesday’s conviction of campaign manager Paul Manafort do not imperil Trump today, what they portend is ominous. For Cohen handled Trump’s dealings for more than a decade and has pledged full cooperation with prosecutors from both the Southern District of New York and the Robert Mueller investigation.

Nothing that comes of this collaboration will be helpful to Trump.

Also, Manafort, now a convicted felon facing life in prison, has the most compelling of motives to “flip” and reveal anything that could be useful to Mueller and harmful to Trump.

Then there is the Mueller probe itself.

Twenty-six months after the Watergate break-in, President Nixon had resigned. Twenty-six months after the hacking of the DNC and John Podesta emails, Mueller has yet to deliver hard evidence the Trump campaign colluded with Putin’s Russia, though this was his mandate.

However, having, for a year now, been marching White House aides and campaign associates of Trump before a grand jury, Mueller has to be holding more cards than he is showing. And even if they do not directly implicate the president, more indictments may be coming down.

Mueller may not have the power to haul the president before a grand jury or indict him. After all, it is Parliament that deposes and beheads the king, not the sheriff of Nottingham. But Mueller will file a report with the Department of Justice that will be sent to the House.

And as this Congress has only weeks left before the 2018 elections, it will be the new House that meets in January, which may well be Democratic, that will receive Mueller’s report.

Still, as of now, it is hard to see how two-thirds of a new Senate would convict this president of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Thus we are in for a hellish year.

Trump is not going to resign. To do so would open him up to grand jury subpoenas, federal charges and civil suits for the rest of his life. To resign would be to give up his sword and shield, and all of his immunity. He would be crazy to leave himself naked to his enemies.

No, given his belief that he is under attack by people who hate him and believe he is an illegitimate president, and seek to bring him down, he will use all the powers of the presidency in his fight for survival. And as he has shown, these powers are considerable: the power to rally his emotional following, to challenge courts, to fire Justice officials and FBI executives, to pull security clearances, to pardon the convicted.

Democrats who have grown giddy about taking the House should consider what a campaign to bring down a president, who is supported by a huge swath of the nation and has fighting allies in the press, would be like.

Why do it? Especially if they knew in advance the Senate would not convict.

That America has no desire for a political struggle to the death over impeachment is evident. Recognition of this reality is why the Democratic Party is assuring America that impeachment is not what they have in mind.

Today, it is Republicans leaders who are under pressure to break with Trump, denounce him, and call for new investigations into alleged collusion with the Russians. But if Democrats capture the House, then they will be the ones under intolerable pressure from their own media auxiliaries to pursue impeachment.

Taking the House would put newly elected Democrats under fire from the right for forming a lynch mob, and from the mainstream media for not doing their duty and moving immediately to impeach Trump.

Democrats have been laboring for two years to win back the House. But if they discover that the first duty demanded of them, by their own rabid followers, is to impeach President Trump, they may wonder why they were so eager to win it.
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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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What You Say

by Kerby Anderson, Contributing Author: No doubt when you were growing up, some adult admonished you to “say what you mean, and mean what you say.” That advice should be spread far and wide today when politicians, commentators, and others use words and phrases without any precision.

When the New York Times hired Sarah Jeong, critics pointed to all of her tweets and verbal attacks on “white people” and law enforcement. J.J. McCullough in a recent commentary reminds us that one of the defenses of her horrible statements was that all of this was just done “satirically and hyperbolically.”

Well, using extreme language and hyperbole might get you hired by the New York Times but it won’t work in the real world. While taking a tour of the White House, say that you wish you could kill the president. See how that works out for you. While you are in a police station, say that you wish all the cops would die. I doubt you would get a linguistic pass for that statement.

The term “fake news” used to be applied to websites (like The Onion) that used satire to make a political point. Today the term has been so overused that it is almost meaningless. For most people today, the term “fake news” is used to describe a story or news organization they dislike.

And while we are talking about hyperbole and “fake news,” we need to mention the president’s tweets. Some of his defenders try to defend his indefensible comments by saying that we shouldn’t always take what he writes literally. No, we should always take the words and actions of a president seriously.

We have also heard the term “deep state” used indiscriminately. It used to mean a nefarious group of insiders in a foreign government. Today, it is often used to describe some federal bureaucrat you don’t like and don’t trust.

These are just a few examples of why our elders told us to “say what you mean, and mean what you say.”
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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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Trash Talk . . .

. . . New York’s Governor Cuomo sums up the Democrat’s feelings about how they feel about America when he said: “America was never great”.

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

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Who Benefits From Our Fears?

by Paul Jacob, Contributing Author: “Think of the children!”

I have daughters. And neighbors, nephews, nieces, cousins, friends with children. And friends who used to be children. But when the command to “think of the children” is screamed out by freaked-out paranoiacs demanding more laws, more punishments, more prison time, more surveillance — and consequently less freedom — I try to think responsibly.

As did one Corey Widen, when she “let her 8-year-old do the most normal, cheerful thing in the world — walk the dog around the block.” Lenore Skenazy tells the tale in Reason. “After the girl returned home, the doorbell rang. It was the police.”

Someone in Widen’s Wilmette, Illinois, community had seen the child and dog walking around “unsupervised” and called 911.

The thing, there was no lack of supervision, here. The child was supervising the dog.

What could be more natural?

The neighbor could have walked outside and smiled at the kid and talked about the dog and, in general, been a good neighbor.

Think of it as a peaceful order of supervision.

Instead: in came the police.

Then, after the police let it go, the Department of Children and Family Services stepped in to “investigate.”

Because nothing says DANGER more than a kid walking a dog.

Skenazy notes that this attitude is commonly justified by crimes against kids. And yet, Ms. Skenazy notes, crime in Wilmette has gone down dramatically over the years. As it has most elsewhere.

The culture has become more paranoid.

Who is served by this?

Authoritarians. Haters of freedom. Demagogues.

Certainly not kids, for kids cloistered from simple responsibilities cannot grow up to take on real responsibilities.

Think of the . . . future adults.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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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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We Pause to Remark

Don Todd

by Don Todd: Like all of the political mass murders of the 20th century Adolf Hitler was a man of the left. Conservatives should refer to his movement by its’ correct name, National Socialism.

Those who oppose tariffs claim they are doing it because they raise prices to the consumer. Many of those same people favor high corporate income taxes which do exactly the same thing.

Our grandmothers used to tell us the cursing and swearing were, “The strong expression of a weak mind.” The left is proving that to be truer than ever.

It is ironic that many of the same people weeping over the proper treatment of young illegal immigrants at the southern boarder support the subsidization of Planned Parenthood child slaughter houses around the nation.

Stormy Daniels is what we used to call, “A woman of ill repute.” She is now reportedly headed to the southern border to help young illegals. We hope they will enjoy the pole dance.

If the left really wanted to stop foreign interference in American elections, they would be opposed to foreigners voting in our elections. They are not.

We see a lot more liberals on Fox News than we see conservatives on the hate stream media. Fair and Balanced. What a concept.

One of the great achievements of President Trump is that he has tricked the Democrats into showing us who they really are.

Anyone who worked for the Trump campaign now has a target on their back. They are targeted for financial ruin and personal destruction by the full force of the federal government.

Like the Klu Klux Klan of the past, Antifa is the modern-day enforcement arm of the Democratic Party. Like the Klan they assault innocent people who do not agree with their anti-American insanity.

The day in day out claim of the hate stream media in regards to the President is, “We’ve Got Him This Time!”

Rodger Ailes was not a friend of mine but he was more than a casual acquaintance. I worked with him on numerous Senate campaigns and one Presidential race. He was a 60’s kind of guy from working class roots who understood and knew how to appeal to the electorate. He created the most watched and trusted cable news network from the ground up. What was done to him by the, “Me Trollop,” movement was a national disgrace.

Whatever President Trump paid national nuisance Stormy Daniels and her creepy porn lawyer to go away was cheap at half the price. Problem is neither she nor he went away. Why they are not being charged with extortion or blackmail is beyond explanation to rational people.

It is clear that the FBI did more to try to influence the 2018 election than any Russian did.

The left is wholeheartedly for the free speech they agree with. Other than that not so much. This was recently demonstrated by the coordinated censorship by Silicon Valley social media giants.
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Don Todd is President of Americans for Limited Government Foundation.

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Trump Haters and Their Double Standards

by Larry Elder: When President Donald Trump revoked the security clearance of former CIA head John Brennan, more than a dozen former high-level intelligence officials fired off a letter that said the president’s decision was “ill-considered,” “inappropriate” and “deeply regrettable.”

The next day, 60 former lower-level CIA officials signed an open letter condemning the act. Their letter read, in part: “All of us believe it is critical to protect classified information from unauthorized disclosure. But we believe equally strongly that former government officials have the right to express their unclassified views on what they see as critical national security issues without fear of being punished for doing so.” About a hundred other former officials have since added their names to this letter.

Where were all these officials, so concerned about “critical national security issues,” when much of the country — then and now — believed President George W. Bush misled the nation about the Iraq war and the assumption that Saddam Hussein possessed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction? Ron Fournier, then the Associated Press Washington, D.C. bureau chief, publicly said, “George W. Bush lied us into war in Iraq.” To this day, a majority of Democrats, according to several polls, still believe that the entry into the Iraq war was based upon a lie.

Where was the intelligence community’s joint letter reminding the country that Bush relied on the unanimous opinion of all 16 of our intelligence agencies? Why didn’t the intelligence community publish a joint letter defending the integrity of the intelligence community and remind the nation that Bush retained the same CIA director, George Tenet, who served under President Bill Clinton, and said that the assumption that Saddam possessed stockpiles of WMD was a “slam dunk”? But President Trump yanks the security clearance of an ex-CIA director who calls Trump “treasonous” — ie. eligible for the death penalty — and much of the intelligence community throws a hissy fit.

The New York Times, for its editorial board, recently hired a tech writer named Sarah Jeong, who in recent years posted anti-white, anti-male and anti-cop messages on Twitter. The New York Times defended the decision by saying Jeong was, in effect, being sarcastic with her caustic posts, simply imitating the hateful nature of her Twitter critics. Call it a form of satire, insisted the Times. But Twitter never banned her, despite her anti-white, anti-cop and anti-male posts.

Conservative pundit Candace Owens tried an experiment. Owens repeated Jeong’s posts — except she replaced the word “white” with either “black” or “Jewish.” Owens, for example tweeted: “Jewish people are bull—t … like dogs p—ing on fire hydrants. … Are Jewish people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun?” “Black people are only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.” As Owens anticipated, Twitter promptly suspended her account.

Here’s another double standard.

President Obama, on several occasions, compared slaves to immigrants. It generated no controversy. But when Trump cabinet member Ben Carson said the same thing, the reaction could not have been more different. At a 2015 naturalization ceremony for new citizens, Obama said: “It wasn’t always easy for new immigrants. Certainly it wasn’t easy for those of African heritage who had not come here voluntarily, and yet in their own way were immigrants themselves. There was discrimination and hardship and poverty. But, like you, they no doubt found inspiration in all those who had come before them. And they were able to muster faith that, here in America, they might build a better life and give their children something more.” Obama, during his presidency, almost a dozen times compared slaves to immigrants whether they “arrived on the Mayflower or on a slave ship, whether they came through Ellis Island or crossed the Rio Grande.” His remarks were often received with applause.

Carson said the same thing last year in a speech before HUD employees. “That’s what America is about,” Carson said, “a land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder, for less. But they, too, had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-grandsons, great-granddaughters, might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.”

Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., insisted that Carson’s “slave equals immigrant” perspective means he is unqualified to lead HUD. Carson, said Ellison, “doesn’t know how urgent it is to confront racism” in housing. “It’s disturbing to me, and it should be to every American, not just black Americans. … For him, the HUD secretary, to have a stunning misunderstanding of history like that, is really, really striking.”

Talk show host Whoopi Goldberg said: “Were the slaves really thinking about the American dream? No, because they were thinking, ‘What the hell just happened?!’ You know, when people immigrate, they come with the idea that they’re going someplace for a better life. … It’s voluntary. … How does he miss what slavery is?! How does he miss that no slave came to this country willingly? … Ben, ‘Roots.’ Watch ‘Roots.'”

To be a Trump-hater in good standing, one must employ double standards, hypocrisy and selective outrage. The line forms to the left.
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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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A Saudi-Iran Oil War Could Break Up OPEC

by Irina Slav: When OPEC and Russia shook on increasing crude oil production by a million barrels daily to stop the oil price climb that had begun getting uncomfortable for consumers from Asia to the United States, there was no sign of what was to come just two months later: slowing demand in Asia, ample supply, and a brewing price war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Saudi Arabia, Iran’s arch-rival in the Middle East, has been a passionate supporter of President Trump’s intention to pull out of the nuclear deal with Iran and reimpose sanctions. This support is not simply on ideological or religious grounds, it also has a purely economic motive: the less Iran crude there is for sale, the more consumers will buy from Saudi Arabia.

Iran, however, is not giving up so easily. It has more to lose, after all, with the harshest sanctions yet coming into effect in the coming months. The first shots in this war were already fired: Saudi Arabia cut its selling price for oil shipped to all its clients except the United States, S&P Global Platts reports in a recent analysis of OPEC. Iran did the same and has indicated that it is prepared to do a lot more if any other producer threatens its market share. In fact, statements from senior government and military officials suggest that Iran is ready to go all the way to closing off the Strait of Hormuz.

While analysts argue whether Iran’s threats have any teeth, oil demand news from Asia is giving OPEC another cause for worry. Slowing economic growth is dampening oil demand growth and both the Chinese yuan and the Indian rupee are falling against the dollar as a result of the economic developments in both Asia and the United States, whose economy is growing so fast that some are beginning to worry that it will soon run out of steam.

So, OPEC’s internal fractures are deepening and likely to deepen further because Saudi Arabia and Iran are highly unlikely to put down their arms, even if it means cutting prices to uncomfortably low levels. Saudi Arabia could boost its production. According to Platts, it has the biggest portion of OPEC’s combined spare capacity. Iran is not really in a position to do so, what with exports already falling and expected to fall further as the November 4 start of the sanctions approaches. Yet Iran has made clear that it will not stop exporting oil and China, for one, has made clear it will not stop buying it.

China and India, unsurprisingly, are shaping up as the battleground for Saudi and Iranian crude as two of the world’s top oil consumers. While India has suggested that it will try to comply with U.S. sanctions, China has stated the opposite. So, India could up its Saudi oil intake, but whether China will do so will depend on prices. Again, Iran has more to lose, so it might be willing to go further than Saudi Arabia. And the Saudis cannot go too far: they have huge financial commitments under the Vision 2030 reform strategy and they are already extending themselves with major investment projects at home and abroad.

A price war between Saudi Arabia and Iran could effectively put an end to OPEC. Iran has already voiced its strong opposition to the reallocation of individual member quotas suggested by Saudi Oil Minister Khalid al-Falih. According to his Iranian counterpart Bijan Zanganeh, this threatens its market share. Both are expected to attend a meeting of the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee that was set up to monitor the production cut deal struck with Russia in 2016. It’s hard to imagine Saudi Arabia assuring Iran that its market share won’t suffer any consequences from its stated pledge to fill any supply gap left by a cut in Iranian exports resulting from the U.S. sanctions. It’s also hard to imagine Iran shrugging and letting this go. Could OPEC be on the way out? Maybe.
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Irina Slav authored this article contributed by James Stafford the editor of OilPrice.com contributed this article to the ARRA News Service. Irina Slav is a writer for the U.S.- based Divergente LLC consulting firm with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry.

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Democrats Are Leaving Their Party in Droves. . .

. . . Conservatives Should Pay Attention.

by Jeff Walyus: Two thousand years ago, St. Paul found himself blinded by a bright light on the road to Damascus. The dramatic experience led him to stop persecuting his opponents and to take up new beliefs.

Today, many former leftists are taking their first steps on their own road to Damascus, and the right is not doing nearly enough to capitalize on this unprecedented mass exit from the left.

It all began just a few short weeks ago when gay New York hairdresser Brandon Straka posted a hard-hitting video explaining why he is no longer a Democrat or a liberal. Since then, his #WalkAway Campaign Facebook group has attracted more than 172,000 members. A multitude of videos from other WalkAways have been posted online.

Make no mistake, the left has been greatly rattled by all this. The left’s treatment of the #WalkAway Campaign mirrors the way it reacted to the Tea Party movement. First, it ignored it, hoping it would go away. Then it moved on to minimizing and attempting ridicule, which it has done with #WalkAway. Steven Colbert and others claimed that the #WalkAway Campaign is just run by Russian bots.

Having seen that fail, the next step was to try to co-opt it with its own movement.

Bill Scher wrote a piece in Politico inviting Republicans to become Democrats. The suggestion is that Never Trumpers should walk away from the GOP, get themselves elected as delegates to the 2020 Democratic National Convention, and thereby prevent the Democratic Party from going full-blown socialist.

Nearly every WalkAway has a unique reason for leaving the Democratic Party. Some of the most common reasons I’ve encountered are:

• The Democrat Party rejects Christian values.
• Liberal rhetoric on helping the poor does not match up with reality. For instance, Democrat-run Los Angeles now has 55,000 homeless people living on the streets.
• The left frequently denounces the armed services, law enforcement, and the American flag. Many military veterans are outraged by this.

There are countless others. But the wellspring of the #WalkAway movement has less to do with policy than with the realization that Democrats and the left invariably use despicable methods to achieve their goals, and without remorse. To the left, winning is all that matters.

Consider these words from one WalkAway, Rebecca Meli, who posted on Facebook:The left only cares about pitting us against each other to keep control and keeping people dependent on them. … This movement has gone right to my core. To have the privilege of watching people think for themselves and recognize the deceitful practices of the left and the manipulation of minorities has been like an awakening.Another WalkAway, Amanda Velásquez, wrote:I am tired of the narrative, tired of people who don’t let you speak even if you have proof of what you are talking about, they attack you and label you as racist, closed-minded, and so on.Many WalkAways have said it was easier to come out as gay than to come out as a conservative or libertarian. Many have even lost friends and been ostracized by family members because they decided to leave the Democrat Party.

One man, Vlad, who grew up in communist Poland, posted a YouTube video in which he compared the methods of today’s American left to the old communist government in his home country.

This is an extraordinary opportunity for conservatives, and it is not likely to come our way again in our lifetimes. Many of these WalkAways come from surprising demographics—gay people, ethnic minorities, and others.

The left worked these communities hard in amassing its power, and it is incumbent on the right to reach out to these same individuals. With the left inching ever closer to total victory, the right cannot afford to shun those who are like-minded just because they previously found themselves on opposite sides of a debate. This is a golden opportunity.

The bright light has shone. The WalkAways are on the move. We at Potomac Tea Party are doing our part to affirm their courageous personal decisions.

What will you do to get other former Democrats to Damascus?
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Jeff Walyus is a contributor to Potomac Tea Party’s Walk Away project. He sahred this article on The Daily Signal.

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Rush Limbaugh: Mueller's Team Proving 'Dual System of Justice at the Highest Levels'

Rush Limbaugh

by Douglas Ernst: Radio host Rush Limbaugh says special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is proving to millions of citizens that a “dual system of justice” exists in America.

The man behind the “Golden EIB microphone” told listeners on Wednesday that a large population of Americans view legal battles surrounding President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, along ex-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, very differently than political pundits.

Mr. Limbaugh said that the U.S. Department of Justice’s handling of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s secret email server, particularly when juxtaposed with law enforcement’s focus on Mr. Trump, demonstrates a dangerous development.

“There is clearly now a double standard, a dual system of justice at the highest levels of our Department of Justice,” the conservative said. “You can see it in the way the DOJ and the FBI exonerated the Democrat presidential candidate when real crimes were taking place for years and years right under their noses, crimes they perhaps even participated in.”

“Those crimes, because they involved the Democrat nominee, were exonerated. The Democrat nominee herself was exonerated,” he continued. “You go to the Trump campaign, the Republican, the opponent, where there aren’t any crimes, there wasn’t any collusion with Russia, there hasn’t been any obstruction of justice, and yet this is where the allegation of crimes is occurring? And it’s occurring with people who are peripheral to the original charge of all this — Russian collusion, stealing the election?”

Mr. Limbaugh added that members of the media are essentially casting Mr. Mueller as a “sitting supreme branch of government who has the power to oversee the Trump administration” on a daily basis.

“What makes it really frightening, and the reason people are losing faith in some of the greatest institutions this country’s ever had, leading with the Department of Justice, is because it’s plain as day what I just pointed out to you: There is a dual system of justice in this country. If you’re a Democrat you’re going to be exonerated or given one hell of a benefit of the doubt. If you’re Republican, you’re gonna be presumed guilty, and a never-ending pursuit to get you will then commence.”

The host’s comments came in the wake of Mr. Cohen’s guilty plea to eight criminal charges in federal court in Manhattan, which include bank fraud, tax evasion and campaign finance violations.

Mr. Manafort was found guilty of eight financial crimes in an Alexandria, Virginia, courtroom. Charges included filing false tax returns, failing to report foreign bank accounts in 2012 and bank fraud charges.

“Robert Mueller, as I said yesterday, and his team are plowing through the Constitution. They’re shredding it as they go,” Mr. Limbaugh said. “None of this is about collusion with the Russians to steal an election. These people have an unlimited charter, Mueller, to go anywhere with the express purpose of overturning the results of the election in 2016.”
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Douglas Ernst Writes for The Washington Times.

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Lanny Davis Blows Up Key 'Dossier' Claim

Michael Cohen

by Art Moore: Longtime Clinton attorney Lanny Davis, now representing former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, said Cohen has never been to Prague, as claimed in the “dossier” of unverified political dirt on Trump funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

“Thirteen references to Mr. Cohen are false in the dossier, but he has never been to Prague in his life,” Davis said Wednesday in an interview on Bloomberg TV noted by the Daily Caller.

Significantly, the 35-page dossier – the basis for the Obama administration obtaining a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign – claimed Cohen was a central figure in a “clandestine” conspiracy of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government.

Cohen, who pleaded guilty Tuesday to tax evasion, bank fraud and campaign finance violations, has turned against his former client, claiming Trump directed him to pay off two women who say they had affairs with the billionaire realtor in 2006.

The dossier, compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele from anonymous Russian sources, states Cohen and three associates visited Prague to meet with Kremlin officials.

The objective of the visit, Steele wrote, was to pay hackers to obtain dirt on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party presidential nominee in 2016.

“The agenda comprised questions on how deniable cash payments were to be made to hackers who had worked in Europe under Kremlin direction against the CLINTON campaign and various contingencies for covering up these operations and Moscow’s secret liaison with the TRUMP team more generally,” the dossier stated.

Cohen also claimed in a June 28 tweet the dossier “misreports 15 allegations about me.”

“I had nothing to do with Russian collusion or meddling!” he declared.

In the interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday, Davis commented further regarding the dossier’s claim that Cohen visited Prague.

“By the way, the number of time that falsehood has been repeated – I’m not accusing you – is the classic example that if you mention something a million times, and you get Google hits and they’re all false, it’s zero-zero,” he said.

In interviews this week, Davis has stirred Washington with claims that Cohen has information of interest to special counsel Robert Mueller’s collusion probe. He has suggested President Trump had prior knowledge of the hacking of Democratic National Committee computers, allegedly by Russian intelligence officers.

“I believe that Mr. Cohen would be able to provide information useful to the special counsel,” he said in an interview with CNN. “I won’t call it a smoking gun information, someone else will have to judge that. I believe that he does relevant information.”

Davis also called Cohen’s payment of the two women a “criminal act.” But legal experts such as Alan Dershowitz argue campaign-finance law requires that intent be proved, and reasons for making the payments apart from the election can be cited.
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Art Moore is an editor for World News Daily and its monthly magazine and book-publishing division.

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