The Caravan Attack on America

Honduran migrants marching in a caravan.

by Newt Gingrich: he caravan from Central America that has grown from 3,000 to 4,000 people in the last few days is an attempted invasion and an attack on the United States.

This assertion will almost certainly be denounced by the usual sources as being hateful or offensive, but it is long past time we stop letting the Left prevent us from using words which clearly communicate reality.

The fact is: Thousands of people have openly stated their intention to break American law and invade our country. Other people, some of them Americans, are funding this deliberate effort to invade America.

If you think “invade” is too strong a word, watch this video of the caravan tearing down fences separating Guatemala and Mexico while waving the Honduran flag (the country these people no doubt plan to claim asylum from). How is this not an invasion?

We cannot allow ourselves to be intimidated by the heart-wrenching pictures and misleading words the left-wing media will doubtlessly manufacture if this caravan arrives at our border.

We also must reclaim our narrative from the Left. We cannot allow them to demonize us and distort what we stand for and what we are trying to do.

Let me be clear about where I stand.

I strongly favor legal immigration. I am happy that America remains the most welcoming country in the world for legal immigrants. According to Pew Research, in 2015 there were a little more than 30 million legal immigrants in the country. This is higher than the population of Texas – our second most populous state. I think this is a great thing that makes America stronger. It is simply a lie to say I oppose immigration.

Furthermore, I have worked very hard to get sound, responsible immigration reform for decades.

In October 1986, I voted for the Simpson-Mazzoli Immigration Reform Act, which granted amnesty to about 3 million people (originally estimated to be 300,000). I voted for the bill in return for two commitments: to control the border and to establish a guest worker program. Similarly, President Reagan wrote in his diary that he would reluctantly sign the bill, because as he wrote: “It’s high time we regained control of our borders and [Simpson’s] bill will do this.”

The harsh lesson of 1986 was that liberals took the amnesty for 3 million illegal immigrants and then broke their word on controlling the border and creating an effective guest worker program.

Finally, on a personal level, I spent much of my childhood living in foreign countries (my dad spent 27 years in the infantry, and I now live part time in Rome, Italy).
I outline my record to make clear that I don’t fit any of the nasty stereotypes with which the Left smears those who threaten them (see “the Kavanaugh effect”). And neither do the vast majority of Americans who want a functional immigration system that reflects American values.

The very idea that thousands of people believe (or are being told) they have a right to invade America and demand that we take care of them tells you how sick the system has become.

The time to draw the line and fight for an honest immigration and border control policy is now.

The caravan is the perfect symbol of the arrogance – the organized effort to destroy the rule of law – and the contempt for the American system which the Left exhibits every day.

We have been so conditioned by a half-century of political correctness doctrine (developed and sustained by the liberal news media, college professors, and left-wing politicians) that we have forgotten how to tell the truth about illegal immigration.

The truth is: It has substantially increased the risk for Americans.

MS-13, the vicious El Salvadoran gang, killed 17 people on Long Island in a 17-month period in 2016. The gang has an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 members in the United States. Fentanyl and opioids also come across the uncontrolled southern border. Last year, more than 72,000 Americans died from drug overdoses – more than the number killed during the eight years of the Vietnam War. There is a substantial safety impact of uncontrolled borders and the routine breaking of the law by illegal immigrants.

If America is to survive, we must win some key arguments about facts and prove that much of what left-wing politicians say – and what the liberal news media reports – is simply wrong.

If America is to survive, we must heed George Orwell’s warning in his great essay Politics and the English Language – that “political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.” Nothing could more accurately characterize the Left’s speech about political correctness and their unending effort to shut down language that exposes the hypocrisy and falsehood of their members’ positions – especially when it comes to their animus toward American sovereignty and defending the border.

As I wrote in my New York Times best seller Trump’s America: The Truth About Our Nation’s Great Comeback, the liberal media has actively participated in creating propaganda designed to manufacture sympathy for the lawbreakers and delegitimize those who would defend American sovereignty and the rule of law.

When House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says to Harvard Kennedy School students that Democrats are for controlling our borders, she is simply lying. When she goes on to say, “we do need to guard our borders, and we do need to have immigration reform,” you have to wonder how stupid she thinks we are.

There is no evidence of any Democrat-backed program that would be effective in controlling illegal immigration. They oppose the wall in any form. They would hobble or abolish ICE. They favor so-called sanctuary cities and states in order to shield illegal immigrants from the legal immigration process. Senator Dianne Feinstein has introduced an open borders bill, which every Democratic Senate incumbent has cosponsored. The national vice chair of the Democratic Party campaigns in a t-shirt which says in Spanish “I don’t believe in borders.” Democrats only ever favor complicated, impossible-to-implement legal systems, which create opportunities for people to enter and stay in America illegally.

Not only do Democrats oppose controlling the border and stopping illegal immigration, they welcome illegal immigrants as an offset to legal American voters.

Consider what Pelosi said in El Paso to immigration rights activists: “We believe that we will have leverage when we win in November. And why is that important? Because it gives leverage to every family” who came to America illegally.

Stacey Abrams, a Democratic candidate for governor in Georgia, is even clearer in her commitment to illegal immigrants. In a recent speech, she said the blue wave is comprised of “those who are documented and undocumented.” There could not be a clearer indication of the Democrats’ belief that illegal immigrants are an integral part of their coalition.

The San Francisco Democrats have even adopted a new regulation to allow illegal immigrants to vote in city elections.

The caravan invasion is a useful starting point to insist on an honest debate about our future as a country.

Every Democrat should be forced to answer these six questions before the election:

1. Do you think 4,000 or more people should be allowed to invade the United States whenever they want to, and, if so, how big and how frequent do you think the next caravans will be?

2. Who do you think is paying for these efforts to undermine American sovereignty, break American laws, and impose foreign will on the United States?

3. When you are told it is only a small number of people in this first caravan, how do you respond to the fact that we already have an estimated illegal population of 1.8 million Central Americans, 650,000 South Americans, and 425,000 immigrants from the Caribbean. Does that change the scale of the problem? If caravans are accepted the numbers will grow dramatically in a very short period.

4. When you learn that the Gallup World Poll estimates that 29 percent of people in Latin America and the Caribbean (that would be about 197 million people) want to migrate – and 29 percent of those people (about 57 million) want to come to the United States, does this change your concern about controlling the border?

5. When you learn that beyond our hemisphere, the Gallup World Poll estimates that millions more would come to the United States if they could, does that increase your interest in controlling the border?

6. If you do not think this caravan should be allowed to illegally enter the United States as an invasion of our sovereign border, what would you do to stop them?

If Democrats really wanted to control the border, how do we have an estimated 11 million-plus illegal immigrants currently in the United States – and a system that can be gamed so easily that people have continued to brazenly and openly break the law?

This caravan attack is the right place to draw the line and say, “no more.”

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy is right. Congress should come back and pass the laws that would enable Americans to re-establish the rule of law at the border and protect our country with dignity and authority.

President Trump is right. Stop the caravan now.

If you want to defend America, let your House member and Senators know how you feel.
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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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Donna Shalala Invites Pro-Castro Dem to Campaign Event in Heavily Cuban District

Demonstrators chant outside a building where House Minority
Leader Nancy Pelosi spoke to volunteers at a get out  the vote
event for Florida Democratic congressional candidates Donna 
Shalala and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, Oct. 17, 2018,
in Coral Gables, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee via PJMedia)

by Debra Heine: Florida Democrat Donna Shalala walked into "an anti-Castro buzz-saw" this week, making her run for retiring Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's seat even more of an uphill climb.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. District 27, which includes Coral Gables, Cutler Bay, Key Biscayne, Little Havana, Miami, Miami Beach, Pinecrest, South Miami, and Westchester, voted for Hillary Clinton by nearly 20 percentage points in 2016. Until recently, national Republicans considered Ros-Lehtinen’s seat to be unwinnable.

Now Shalala is trailing in the polls, and it's not hard to see why.

Besides the fact that Shalala is a dinosaur who served for eight years in the corrupt Clinton administration, her opponent, Republican Maria Elvira Salazar, is an attractive, Spanish-speaking television journalist who appeals to the 57 percent of the district’s voters who are Hispanic -- mostly Cuban-American. According to Fox News, 70 percent of the district's constituents are Hispanic, and that cultural connection can make a big difference:“My opponent is an implant. She doesn’t represent anybody ... she cannot connect because we have a cultural code that we share … we may speak Spanish, but it goes over and beyond that,” said Salazar, a Cuban-American Miami native who at one time was a contributor to Fox News. “You need to be part of this city in order to know how it works and how it feels and how it vibrates. If not, you can’t connect."Indeed, the 77-year-old Shalala doesn't speak Spanish and seems to have a tin-ear when it comes to Miami politics. Florida journalist Marc Caputo explained in Politico (emphasis added):There’s a simple rule in running for Congress in Miami: Don’t campaign with someone who praised Fidel Castro and fought sanctions against Venezuela’s dictatorial regime ...

In addition to Cuban exiles, the district also has Venezuelans who despise dictator Nicolas Maduro’s regime and immigrants from Nicaragua, many of whom oppose socialist Daniel Ortega.Guess what Shalala just did?In a district filled with Castro-hating Cuban-Americans and Venezuelan exiles, Shalala’s campaign committed an egregious gaffe -- and set off a round of Democratic finger-pointing -- by posting an announcement that she would hold a campaign event Wednesday with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Californian, Rep. Barbara Lee.
In 2016, Lee had said Castro’s death should be mourned.“We need to stop and pause and mourn his loss,” Lee said in a phone interview with The Mercury News in November 2016. “I was very sad for the Cuban people," she added. “He led a revolution in Cuba that led to social improvements for his people.”In her eight meetings with Castro over the years, Lee said, she found him to be “a smart man. A historian. He wanted normal relations with the United States but not at the expense of the accomplishments of the revolution.”Shalala had the good sense to cancel Lee's appearance, but the damage was done.

The fact that Shalala even considered having the notorious Castro sympathizer attend her rally had Miami's Cuban community up in arms. Shalala's campaign event with Pelosi at her Coral Gables campaign office turned into a major debacle, with protesters pounding on the doors outside and shouting, “Go back to Cuba!” “Commie!” and “Witches!”

If there has been anything close to a Republican "angry mob" this election season, this was it:What started as a crowd of about 15 mostly Cuban-American protesters grew to about 40 at one point, as they pounded on every door they could find and clamored insults in both Spanish and English like “Nasty Pelosi” and “brujas” -- witches.

Some of the demonstrators also condemned Democrats because they said they ignore how Cubans on the island and other oppressed people suffer -- some lacking basic needs like toilet paper. It’s a charge members of the party, especially those in Miami, strongly deny.

No matter. The protesters denounced Democrats as “commies” and waved signs supporting Republican candidate Ron DeSantis, who is running for governor, and running mate Jeanette Núñez.

I’m in Coral Gables working with @martindvassolo. @NancyPelosi and @RepBarbaraLee were scheduled to campaign for @DonnaShalala and @DebbieforFL here today. About 25 protesters are standing outside, holding signs supporting Republicans and accusing Democrats of being communists. pic.twitter.com/4aStMkFwnx

— Jimena Tavel (@taveljimena) October 17, 2018

Here’s a picture of the protesters outside. Police and Secret Service locked the doors right now and aren’t letting anyone in anymore. pic.twitter.com/WNLtirergC

— Jimena Tavel (@taveljimena) October 17, 2018

This gaffe couldn't have come at a worse time for Shalala, who is now watching the Democratic-leaning seat slip away just weeks before the election.
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Debra Heine is a Catholic, mom of six and long time political pundit. She has written for PJ Media and several blogs including her own, Nice Deb!

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Pelosi Vows Universal Background Checks Will Be Top Priority

by Tom Knighton: If you didn’t already have enough reason to get out and vote during the midterm elections, Nancy Pelosi was kind enough to give you some more.

You see, she sat down with some of the Parkland kids and other gun control activists and vowed to make universal background checks a top priority should Democrats retake Congress after the midterms.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi promised South Florida gun-control activists that universal background checks would be among Democrats’ top priorities if the party wins control of the House in the midterm elections.

Pelosi and U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, D-West Boca, met with students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, local members of the national gun-control group Moms Demand Action and fathers Manuel Oliver and Fred Guttenberg, whose children were among the 17 killed in the massacre at the Parkland school.

Oliver asked Pelosi whether she had children, she told him that she had five, along with nine grandchildren.

“Now I have to save your kids,” he told her, “because it’s too late to save mine.”

Universal background checks would close the so-called “gun show loophole.”

Right now, firearm sales from a federally licensed dealer require a background check, but private sales between individuals — for example, if someone wanted to sell a gun to a family member or neighbor — don’t require a check. This has given rise to a proliferation of firearms sellers at gun shows or online who operate under the rationale that they are selling from a private collection and so do not require background checks.

“A common misconception that a lot of people have is that Democrats want gun control and Republicans don’t,” said Alfonso Calderon, a student at Stoneman Douglas whose activism has led him to Tallahassee and Washington, D.C. “Universal background checks and other bills of that matter are three votes, five votes away from being passed in the House.”In other words, this election is vital. Pro-gun politicians have to maintain at least a partial hold on Congress, though a total hold on both chambers is obviously preferable.

The truth is, we all know that if Pelosi and her ilk get control of Congress, they’re going to keep pushing gun control over and over. If they get enough control, they’ll override any presidential veto because they’re so convinced in their moral infallibility. They don’t think for an instant that they might be wrong because they just feel so hard.

Well, they are. Increased background checks won’t really accomplish anything. States which already have universal background checks have shown us that it is, at most, a mixed bag. Frankly, without knowing who has guns where it’s also impossible to enforce with any degree of precision. That means they would need a registration scheme to make it work, and that’s one of those “cold, dead hands” prospects for many gun owners.

After all, registration invariably leads to confiscation.

That means you need to get out and vote. Vote for pro-gun candidates even if you don’t think they’ll win. Vote for them because, if nothing else, you can turn up the heat on anti-gun politicians and remind them they represent gun owners in their districts. Even if they win, a close margin will make them think twice before supporting a radical anti-gun agenda.

Make sure they know you’re there.
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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.

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Caravan Day 4, Trump On The Trail, The Crazy Left, Stand With Thomas

Gary Bauer

by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Caravan Day 4 - The migrant caravan from Central America has reached Mexico's southern border. So far, Mexico seems to be cooperating with U.S. demands that it stop the caravan from going any further.

Heeding warnings from President Trump, the Mexican government sent two Boeing 727s packed with police officers to the border yesterday. In addition, the Mexican government is requesting support from the U.N. Refugee Agency.

The Mexican Foreign Ministry issued a statement yesterday indicating that Mexico would attempt to identify and process legitimate refugees. But those "who enter the country irregularly" would be sent back to their home countries.

This is a key point to keep in mind.

Anyone from Central America who claims to be a refugee fleeing violence can and should make that claim in Mexico. There is no need to make their claim in the U.S.

By virtue of having reached Mexico, they have escaped whatever violence they were fleeing in Honduras, El Salvador or wherever else they came from.

There are also reports that the director of Pueblo Sin Fronteras (People Without Frontiers), was arrested yesterday as he led some migrants across the Mexican border near Ciudad Hidalgo. That's good. It is unfortunate, but these people are being manipulated for a political agenda.

Trump On The Trail - President Trump was back on the campaign trail last night. Speaking in Montana, where Democrat Senator Jon Tester is facing a strong challenge from Republican Matt Rosendale, Trump said that this election "will be an election of Kavanaugh, the caravan, law and order, and common sense."

He went on to add, "The choice could not be more clear: Democrats produce mobs, Republicans produce jobs."

In any rational calculation, this caravan crisis should help Republicans and the president because it highlights the need for a wall and serious border security. But the people who organized the caravan are not stupid.

They saw how the media and left reacted to the president's zero tolerance policy. They are betting that many voters will not understand why the president has been unable to secure the border. (Hint: Blame Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.)

As the saying goes, the best defense is a good offense. Every Republican congressman and Senate candidate should go on the attack against their liberal opponents who are responsible for blocking the wall and whose party is committed to open borders.

Border security is national security. And commonsense border security policies are not losing issues for the GOP. As I noted yesterday it is the left's agenda that is grossly unpopular:

• 76% of voters oppose open borders.
• 71% of voters oppose allowing illegal aliens to vote.
• 64% of voters oppose sanctuary cities.
• Only 25% of voters want to abolish ICE.

The Crazy Left - Rosie O'Donnell was on MSNBC yesterday speaking with former Bush Press Secretary Nicole Wallace. (That speaks volumes about GOP elites, but I digress. . .) Not surprisingly, Rosie is not a fan of Trump's suggestion that he might use the military to secure the border.

Instead, O'Donnell called for a coup, saying, "I want to send the military to the White House to get him!"

Senator Cory "Spartacus" Booker was preaching from the Gospel of Socialism yesterday. He found it depressing that other countries like Canada were "out-Americaning us." What does that even mean?

Canada is not a world power. When a crisis strikes anywhere in the world, no one's first thought is to call Canada for help. Canada's economy is not driving the world.

But thanks to Donald Trump, the World Economic Forum just ranked America as the most competitive economy once again. That hasn't happened since 2008. (Gee, what's changed since 2008?)

Today's political left simply does not like America. They praise France. They praise Canada. The used to praise Venezuela and Cuba.

What I don't understand is why any well-meaning American would vote for a party that despises America?

Iran Threatens Israel - Fox News reports that U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies this week tracked an Iranian flight from Tehran to Damascus, Syria, that eventually landed in Beirut, Lebanon. The plane reportedly carried GPS devices that would enable Hezbollah to turn "dumb" rockets into precision missiles capable of "striking deep inside Israel."

These missiles have one purpose. They are meant to kill thousands of Israeli civilians. They are financed by a regime that chants "Death to Israel!" and whose leaders routinely vow to annihilate Israel. That is what these missiles are for.

Today's news comes on the heels of reports that Iran has doubled the range of its land-to-sea missiles, posing a serious threat to U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf.

Sadly, I suspect this news will be buried by the media as they continue to obsess over the fate of one journalist who had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and called for Israel to "die by force." This is also the same media complex that also supported giving Iran $100 billion in sanctions relief.

Stand With Thomas - The fallout from the Kavanaugh confirmation battle has spread to Georgia. Left-wing students are demanding that Savannah College of Art and Design remove Justice Clarence Thomas' name from the Clarence Thomas Center for Historic Preservation.

They want the building where he once served as an altar boy to be renamed after Anita Hill.

Clarence Thomas is a personal friend of mine. As you may know, I led the Citizens Committee to Confirm Clarence Thomas during his 1991 Supreme Court confirmation battle. It is outrageous that the left is trying to purge this good and decent man from history.

Please stand with Justice Thomas.
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Sign this petition urging the Savannah College of Art and Design to ignore the radicals and to continue honoring a great African American justice.
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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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McCaskill Tapes: For Your Lies Only

Senator Claire McCaskill (D)

by Tony Perkins: To most people, it seemed odd when Planned Parenthood released its first round of campaign spending back in March, and Missouri wasn't on it. After all, Senator Claire McCaskill (D) is a woman, she's pro-abortion, and Planned Parenthood was one of her biggest supporters when she won the seat in 2012. "Either McCaskill is a lost cause," reporters speculated, or something else is going on. Turns out, there's plenty going on. And thanks to Project Veritas, voters have a front-row seat.

Maybe, the Washington Examiner said at the time, "Planned Parenthood is keeping its distance to protect McCaskill... whose voters may be less inclined to support lawmakers affiliated with the controversial organization." Well, Planned Parenthood may be keeping its distance publicly, but according to campaign staff, the financial support never stopped. They just moved it off the books and behind the scenes, where voters in Missouri would never know. In a new video from James O'Keefe, voters are finding out that gun control isn't the only thing their senator's lying about.

In the latest undercover footage, McCaskill's staff admits that while "Planned Parenthood refuses to directly support her campaign in order to help her keep up her moderate image among pro-life Democrats, they still donate through other covert means in order to support her campaign." In Wednesday's video, the senator's employees tell Project Veritas's journalist that Planned Parenthood donates to "outside groups that funnel support to Ms. McCaskill, instead of supporting her directly."

Nicholas Starost, a campaign staffer, explains that the country's biggest abortion business, "go[es] through other means to get us that money." It's a well-orchestrated scheme, he says giddily. "It's f***ing beautiful. It's great when it works for us and not against us, let's be honest." Another McCaskill operative, Darcy Becker, chimes in. "It's not that they don't support Claire, it's because they know it's a tough state to win for a Democrat. Even some moderate Democrats are pro-life," she explains, "and even those Republicans that are going to vote for Claire because they're pretty moderate, she could lose them if Planned Parenthood donated money to her." Watch the exchange for yourself below.

And that's not all. Her staff admits that -- contrary to what she tells pro-life Democrats -- McCaskill is "100 percent pro-abortion." So she's openly lying about her position? "Yeah, I think it's like a tactic to... try to get the moderate voters." Now, 24 hours into this latest PR disaster, McCaskill headquarters is scrambling. In a desperate attempt to take the heat off, the senator is demanding an investigation. But into what?

Good question. On last night's "Washington Watch," James couldn't believe the ridiculousness of McCaskill's reaction. "She says we've committed fraud. I don't know what that means by recording the folks. I'm committing fraud by recording what they've said? I think the real fraud is the bait-and-switch when the worker for her says that moderate voters are going to have to 'get over it' after they impeach Trump. After they do what they are not supposed to do -- and what they told voters they would not do. That to me is a better example of fraud -- lying to the constituents. Our cameras just recorded it."

As if that weren't pathetic enough, the McCaskill camp is also going after opponent (and Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley) for somehow infiltrating her office. That's interesting, James told me, since "I've never met her opponent. I've never talked to the attorney general of Missouri... [but] she's on defense because this video shows her staffers saying that one has to mislead moderate voters in order to get elected in a state like Missouri."

For his part, Hawley is pushing back -- and hard. "Let's review last 24 hrs," he tweeted. "1) @clairecmc & staff caught on tape telling the truth 2) McCaskill accuses ME of fraud 3) McCaskill demands Missouri give her special prosecutor to investigate her truth telling. Senator, accusing people of crimes is a serious thing. If you have evidence of a crime, please come forward with it immediately. Otherwise, please stop politicizing the legal process for your reelection."

On the show last night, I asked James why he thought McCaskill and her staff would be comfortable enough to admit they're dishonest. "Part of it is hubris... " he explained. "Because the media doesn't hold any of these red state Democrats accountable, a lot of these guys inside the office were quite open about the deceptions. And it wasn't just one of them. Each and every staffer we met had a different type of deception." Let's face it, he said, "It didn't take a tremendous amount of espionage for me to do this. I just had to walk in and ask questions and get responses, which is what journalists are supposed to do."

The unmasking of McCaskill's campaign reveals a lot more than the deception and potential violation of campaign finance laws. It shows that many in the Democrat Party realize their pro-abortion, anti-God, anti-family, and anti-gun agenda is out of step with the majority of American voters. We can't allow that dishonesty to prevail -- take the pledge to Pray -- Vote -- Stand!
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Tony Perkins is President of the Family Research Council . This article was on Tony Perkin's Washington Update and written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

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Proposed Law Would Mandate Feminist U.S. Foreign Aid Policy

by Stefano Gennarini: The U.S. Congress is poised to codify Obama administration gender policies at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) through the WEEE Act. If signed into law, it would empower USAID bureaucrats to stop USAID from partnering with groups that oppose abortion and contraception.

During her tenure as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton attempted to institute a feminist U.S. foreign policy. She created an ambassador for women’s issues at the State Department to align all U.S. policy with feminist goals and launched the Gender Equality and Female Empowerment policy at USAID with an elaborate suite of other gender policies. Since then, gender integration and gender-analysis have become system-wide requirements. Any policy, grant, or program at USAID must undergo gender analysis at all stages of planning, implementation, and monitoring.

The Women’s Entrepreneurship and Economic Empowerment Act, or WEEE Act, Senate Bill 2347, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives by voice vote in July, and is under review by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, would make these policies permanent requirements of the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act.

Ostensibly, gender analysis and gender integration ensure that all policies and programs focus on women and assess social inequalities between men and women to find ways to eliminate disparities in social and economic outcomes.

Among other things, USAID has interpreted Obama-era gender policies as mandating the provision of reproductive health and family planning for grant recipient organizations as well as requiring LGBT-related programming.

At least one faith-based group has had to turn down USAID funds it was awarded after reviewing the gender requirements. That is because they include sexual and reproductive health and LGBT components which violated their sincerely held religious beliefs.

Requiring organizations to provide sexual and reproductive health counters the President’s Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance policy, since most all organizations involved in sexual and reproductive health promote or perform abortion.

The brevity and vagueness of the WEEE Act leaves USAID latitude to implement it. Codification will make it more difficult for the Trump administration to improve on Obama-era policies and allow groups that oppose abortion to partner with USAID.

According to its authors, the WEEE Act was primarily meant to help women participate in the economy on an equal basis as men. It amends U.S. foreign aid law to expand finance projects for poor women beyond microfinance to include small and medium-sized businesses

These reasons ensured bipartisan support for the bill. But the noble aims may have also obscured the dangers of the gender component of the legislation, which applies to the entire 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, not just microfinance.

Few of the groups that helped draft the legislation and push it through the House work primarily on economic empowerment. The Coalition for Women’s Economic Empowerment, which worked on the legislation in recent months, is made up predominantly by feminist organizations and family planning groups that are known to promote abortion and LGBT rights.

One of the organizations, Smash Strategies, is led by former USAID Senior Gender Coordinator in the Obama administration, who drove the Obama-Clinton policies to their final shape last year. Other groups in the coalition are also led by former Obama political appointees.

If the WEEE Act is to be consistent with the Trump administration’s pro-life foreign policy, it must include a conscience and religious freedom clause in the legislation to amend the Foreign Assistance Act so that no religious organization or group that objects to abortion can be turned down, or be rendered unable, to partner with USAID. The bill must also include a definition of the term “gender-analysis” that respects the common understanding of gender as men and women, a definition agreed to by nations at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women at Beijing.
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Stefano Gennarini, J.D., is the Vice President for the Center of Legal Studies at the Center for Family and Human Rights.

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Tags: Proposed Law, Would Mandate, Feminist U.S. Foreign Aid Policy, Stefano Gennarini, Center for Family & Human Rights To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Wake-up California - The Terror-Reinforcing Primary . . .

. . . Meet the anti-Trump Democrats who are friendly to terrorists.

Ammar_Campa-Najjar

by Lloyd Billingsley: Since the 2016 election Democrats have centered their activism around opposition to President Trump. This furious enmity may have overshadowed some Democrats’ friendliness toward Islamic terrorists, and for the Democrat running in California’s 50th district it’s a family affair.

“Palestinian-Mexican” Ammar Campa-Najjar, also billed as “Latino Arab-American,” is the grandson of Yousef al-Najjar, a leader of Black September, the Palestinian terrorist group that abducted, tortured and murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

In 1973, Israeli commandos killed Yousef al-Najjar, and the king of Morocco adopted his son Yasser al-Najjar, who lived in Egypt until 1981 when he reportedly moved to the United States. How al-Najjar fils was able to enter the USA remains something of a mystery, but in the official account he married Abigail, a Mexican-American woman, and lived in San Diego, California.

The Democrat now contending with Republican Duncan Hunter, who faces campaign finance violations, claims his father Yasser al-Najjar returned to Gaza in the 1990s to help Yasser Arafat form a government and promote “peace between Israel and the Palestinian people.” Yasser al-Najjar served as a de-facto ambassador, defending the Palestinians against charges that they misused money from the government of Norway for anti-Jewish propaganda.

Yasser al-Najjar is regarded as a “legend” among Palestinians and in 2014 his father Yousef al-Najjar received the “Grand Star of Honor” medal from PA boss Mahmoud Abbas. The Black September terrorist also has Martyr Abu Yousef Al-Najjar Hospital, named after him in Gaza.

The California Democrat failed to reveal any of this before he launched his campaign. News that Black September terrorist Yousef al-Najjar was his grandfather only emerged in February from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The Democrat dismissed it as a “quick take” and said that innocent civilians should never be killed, not quite the same as specifically denouncing the Munich massacre. The terrorist attack also failed to emerge in 2012 when al-Najjar worked in the reelection campaign of POTUS 44.

It was only last June that the “progressive” Democrat legally changed his name from Ammar Yasser Najjar to “Ammar Joseph Campa-Najjar.” This was all of great interest but for establishment media, it was “don’t ask don’t tell.”

Several retired generals, friendly to Hunter, wondered if an elected Campa-Najjar would compromise U.S. operations to protect relatives. Defenders of the progressive Democrat said the charge was all about “bigotry, xenophobia and racism,” and so forth. In early October, some polls showed the Democrat within a point of Hunter.

For her part, Arizona Democrat Kyrsten Sinema was formerly with the Green Party and made a name for herself organizing rallies against the war in Iraq. In 2003 she promoted events at Arizona State University featuring Lynn Stewart, attorney for terrorist Omar Abdel Rahman. Stewart had been charged with passing messages from Rahman to his terrorist followers.

Rep. Sinema is one of the Democrats who used the services of IT man Imran Awan, who accessed sensitive congressional computers without authorization and destroyed evidence. POTUS 44 judge Tanya Chutkan recently let Awan off with no jail time.

Sinema has equated the deaths of U.S. soldiers in combat with illegals trying to enter the United States. Republican opponent Martha McSally has charged that Sinema said “it was OK for Americans to join the Taliban to fight against us” and that this was treasonous. Sinema responded that McSally, a U.S. Air Force combat veteran, is “engaging in ridiculous attacks and smearing my campaign.” The Senate race remains close and Sinema is hardly the only terrorist-friendly politician.

Indiana Democrat Andre Carson has been a speaker at numerous Islamist conferences and Islamists have given him generous donations. CAIR proudly lists Carson on their website, along with John Kerry, Keith Ellison and many other Democrats.

Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib, who aims to the first Muslim woman in Congress, supports Rasmea Odeh, convicted of murdering two American students in a Jerusalem bomb attack. Tlaib has also supported Islamic Relief, a group linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and designated as a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates.

Somalia-born Minnesota state representative Ilhan Omar defended nine men who sought to join ISIS, including Abdirahman Yasin Daud, sentenced to 30 years in prison by a federal judge. Omar, of the Democrat Farmer Labor Party, is now running for Congress in Minnesota’s Fifth District.

Meanwhile, in 2012 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dismissed the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack as a protest over a video. The former First Lady said “what difference, at this point, does it make” about the motive for the deaths of four Americans, including ambassador Christopher Stevens.

POTUS 44, formerly known as Barry Soetoro, who attended a “predominantly Muslim” school in Indonesia, refused to link Islam with terrorism in any way. When Muslim psychiatrist Nidal Hasan gunned down 13 Americans at Ford Hood in 2009, the president famously called it “workplace violence,” not even “gun violence.”

As November 6 approaches, voters across the nation may already have some indication how candidates friendly to terrorists would behave in Washington.
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Lloyd Billingsley is an author at the David Horowitz Freedom Center's FronPage Mag and author of Bill of Writes: Dispatches from the Political Correctness Battlefield and Hollywood Party: Stalinist Adventures in the American Film Industry.

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Tags: Wake-up California, The Terror-Reinforcing Primary, anti-Trump Democrats, friendly to terrorists, Lloyd Billingsley, FrontPage Mag, Ammar Campa-Najjar To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Caravan Puts Trump Legacy on the Line

Honduran migrants marching in a caravan.

by Patrick Buchanan: Our mainstream media remain consumed with the grisly killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and how President Donald Trump will deal with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Understandably so, for this is the most riveting murder story since O.J. Simpson and has strategic implications across the Middle East.

Yet far more critical to the future of our civilization is the ongoing invasion of the West from the Third World.

Consider the impact of the decision by Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2015 to throw open Germany’s doors to 1 million refugees from Syria’s civil war.

Last weekend, in a crushing blow to Merkel, the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party of her CDU, won its smallest share of the vote in half a century, 37 percent. Her coalition party, the SPD, saw its share of the Bavarian vote fall to a historic low of less than 10 percent.

The right-wing Alternative for Deutchland saw its support rise to 10 percent and has become a force in German politics. Some conservatives are urging the CDU to adopt the AfD hardline on illegal immigration.

The message sent by the Bavarian electorate is the message voters across Europe have been sending to their own capitals for years: You are failing in your first duty — defense of the homeland from foreign invasion. Mass migration of unassimilable peoples and cultures from a global South represents an existential threat to our Europe.

As Merkel’s chancellorship approaches its end, French President Emmanuel Macron, her progressive EU partner, has seen his approval fall to below 30 percent.

The U.S.-led NATO alliance may guard the Baltic and Black Sea regions against a Russian invasion from the east. But in Central, Southern and Western Europe, the more feared invaders are the peoples of Africa and the Muslim world, whose numbers are expected to triple or quadruple by this century’s end.

And as their numbers grow, so, too, does their desperation to escape, even at risk of their lives, the poverty, wars and repression of their homelands to cross the Med and fill the empty spaces left by a depopulating Europe.

It also now appears that the U.S. elections, not three weeks away, may be affected by another immigration crisis on the U.S. border.

As of Thursday, a caravan of 4,000 refugees without visas had crossed from Honduras into Guatemala and was heading toward Mexico. By Election Day, it will either have been stopped, or it will be here. And this caravan is a portent of things to come.

According to The Washington Post, during FY 2018, which ended last month, 107,212 members of “family units” crossed over into the U.S., “obliterating the previous record of 77,857 set in 2016.”

Citing DHS figures, the Post adds, “Border patrol agents arrested 16,658 family members in September alone, the highest one-month total on record and an 80 percent increase from July.”

When Trump, under intense political fire, ended his “zero tolerance” policy of separating refugees from their children, this message went out to Mexico and Central America:

Bring your kids with you when you cross the border. They will have to stay with you, and they cannot be held for more than 20 days. Thus, when they are released, you will be released to await a hearing on your claim of asylum. The odds are excellent that you can vanish into the U.S. population and never be sent back.

Enraged, Trump has threatened to cut off aid to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala if they do not stop the caravans and has warned Mexico he will use the U.S. military to secure our border.

Unwanted mass migration is the issue of our time, as there is no foreseeable end to it before it alters America irremediably.

As these migrants are almost all poor, not highly skilled, and do not speak English, most will join that segment of our population that pays no income taxes but qualifies for social welfare benefits like food stamps, medical care and free education in our public schools.

They are thus a net drain upon the resources of a nation that is already, at full employment, running a deficit of $779 billion a year.

These migrants, however, are a present and future benefit to the Democratic Party that built and maintains our mammoth welfare state, and which, in presidential elections, routinely wins 70 to 90 percent of the votes of people whose trace their ancestry to Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Not without reason, Democrats believe that if they can change the composition of the American electorate, they can control America forever.

If Donald Trump was elected on any one issue, it was immigration and his promises to secure the border, build the wall and halt the invasion.

How he deals with the impending crisis of the migrant caravan may affect both the fate of his party in November and his presidency in 2020.
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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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Can Anti-Trump Hatred Carry the House for Democrats?

Michael Barone

by Michael Barone: "I have some thoughts on 'enthusiasm' and the election," tweeted Amy Walter, the Cook Political Report's ace analyst of House races. What I and, I suspect, others expected to follow was a discussion of how voters' enthusiasm, positive or negative, tends to determine who wins elections, especially in off-year elections, when turnout is more variable.

Democrats had greater enthusiasm in 2006 and won both houses of Congress; Republicans had even more enthusiasm in 2010 and gained the largest number of House seats either party had since 1948.

In this off-year election cycle, it's been obvious for months that Democrats have greater enthusiasm, almost entirely of the negative variety. They've been itching to inflict damage on President Trump and on the political party he chose to associate himself with three or four years ago in order to get elected president.

We've seen the results in Democratic-tilted turnout in special elections and in Democratic breakthroughs in polls. Pundits and psephologists have been predicting that Democrats would gain vast numbers of House seats.

But Walter wasn't making this now-familiar point in her tweet. She was saying that the degree of enthusiasm of the very large number of people who may or may not vote appears less decisive, at least this year, than the degree of enthusiasm of the much smaller number of people who may or may not run for elective office.

And that may be the case if, as many analysts have concluded, enthusiasm among Republican voters has risen sharply, up toward or even with the Democrats' level, because of the hearings over the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.

Many of them really didn't like the way Justice Kavanaugh was treated; they seem determined to inflict damage on the Democrats who violated the usual process, and the banshees television viewers could hear shrieking in the hearing room chamber and clawing at the doors of the Supreme Court across the street.

Walter's tweet goes on: "regardless of what turnout looks like in Nov., Dems used their 2017-18 energy to recruit candidates, raise $$. Without that, there is no extended House map. And, House isn't in play."

Walter's implicit thesis that candidates' decisions to do the unnatural thing of running for Congress can, pretty much by itself, change partisan results and public policy is supported by history.

Democrats' 48-seat gain in 1974 resulted from the candidacies of dozens of ambitious young liberals disgusted with the Vietnam War, Watergate and former President Richard Nixon. They cut off funding for South Vietnam, steadily increased Medicaid funding and imposed liberal discipline on what had been a disunited caucus. They cemented Democrats' hold on the House for 20 years.

Republicans' 54-seat gain in 1994, engineered in large part by citizens motivated to run by Newt Gingrich, resulted in similar reforms (election of committee chairmen), and they ended up promoting welfare reform, budget surpluses and a market-driven Medicare prescription drug program. Starting in 1994, Republicans have won House majorities in 11 of 13 elections, a formidable record even if they lose this year.

Republicans' 63-seat gain in 2010 has not been as productive, in large part because of tea partiers' distrust of Republican congressional leaders. Their record in the Trump years has been spotty: unity on tax cuts but division on Obamacare repeal and dithering on immigration.

The odds seem to be declining that 2018 will see such large gains in House seats for the party out of power. Nate Cohn of The New York Times Upshot blog, which has been conducting dozens of House race polls, has noted that he saw a trend of Democrats being "able to do well in red states/districts" that has "abruptly come to an end" in their data since the Kavanaugh nomination fight.

This suggests Democrats could gain most of the 23 Republican districts Hillary Clinton won in 2016, which would get them near the net gain of 23 seats they need for a majority, but would have a hard time gaining seats that voted for Donald Trump. That's the pattern in the Virginia state legislative races in November 2017.

But all those enthusiastic candidates who stepped forth and volunteered to run, campaigned hard and raised piles of money, Amy Walter suggests, will probably win enough seats to give Democrats at least a small majority.

We'll see -- and we'll see if the young, highly motivated Democrats make a difference on policy, as the 1974 Democrats and 1994 Republicans did, or if their enthusiasm fizzles out in a frenzy of harassment of Donald Trump.
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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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Liawatha . . .

. . . Elizabeth Warren is promising free tuition, Single-payer healthcare, and to save capitalism, but as Trump points out she is proven to be only 1/1024 honest.

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

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Mowing the Lawn in Gaza

by Caroline Glick: Wednesday night, the security cabinet convened to discuss the Hamas regime in Gaza’s escalating war against Israel. The current round of war began seven months ago when Hamas terror bosses ordered Gaza residents to the border with Israel. The declared purpose of the mass gatherings was to destroy Israel in what Hamas referred to as “the march of return.” Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh promised they would hold a press conference on the embers of destroyed Israeli border communities in short order.

The “march,” of course, never happened. What came instead has been seven months of unremitting terror. Tens of thousands of acres of farmland and nature preserves have been scorched and destroyed by arson kites and balloons sent over the border from Gaza. Kibbutzim and townships have been subjected to intermittent rocket and missile attacks interspersed with incendiary kites and balloons that have fallen in school yards, on private homes and in the middle of playgrounds filled with children.

And then, in the early morning hours on Wednesday, Hamas shot a missile into Beersheba and another toward Tel Aviv. The missile in Beersheba destroyed a family home. A family of four avoided death through the heroic efforts of the mother, who dragged her sleeping children into their bomb shelter moments before the missile destroyed their house.

The missile shot toward central Israel landed in the Mediterranean Sea.

For seven months, the government has been subjected to continuous criticism for avoiding any major response to Hamas’s unrelenting aggression. And for seven months, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman have promised to hit Hamas hard while acceding to the IDF General Staff’s position that Israel should do as little as possible militarily and try to bribe Hamas into standing down by increasing humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Why has the government responded so weakly to Hamas’s assaults and what can we expect to happen, going forward in the wake of the security cabinet’s meeting Wednesday night? What does the situation in Gaza tell us about the future of the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria, and about Israel’s options moving forward in relation to both groups of Palestinians?

To understand the government’s dilemma, we need to first understand what we’re dealing with in Gaza and what Israel’s options are, realistically, for shaping the situation on the ground in a manner that will improve the safety and security of Israel.

For the past 13 years, since Israel abandoned Gaza and destroyed its communities in the area, Gaza has been a quasi-independent state. Since January 2006, when Hamas won the elections to the Palestinian legislature, the terror group has been the most powerful and most popular force in Gaza – and arguably in Judea and Samaria as well.

Moreover, if Hamas were toppled tomorrow, it wouldn’t be replaced by a peaceful regime. It has no moderate opponents. As The Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh has reported, the second most powerful force in Gaza is the Islamic Jihad terror group. Hamas is controlled by Qatar, Turkey and Iran. Since it was established in 1988 by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, Islamic Jihad has been a wholly owned proxy of Tehran. Pick your poison.

THERE IS a long-term way to topple Hamas or at least to gut its power. Were Egypt to open its border with Gaza, hundreds of thousands of Gazans would emigrate out of the region. Hundreds of thousands more would work in the underpopulated northern Sinai. Such a situation would leave Hamas with no economic leverage over the population and consequently with much reduced military capabilities to pursue its eternal war against the Jewish state.

Unfortunately, as things stand, Egypt remains adamant in its opposition to any suggestion that it permit the Gaza Strip to merge economically – let alone politically – with the Sinai. Perhaps the US can convince Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to change his mind and integrate Gaza’s economy into Egypt’s economy. But Israel is in no position to do so.

Which brings us back to the security cabinet.

Frustrated by the harsh criticism he has received as a consequence of his feeble response to Hamas’s new round of aggression over the past seven months, and fearful of the electoral consequences of his appearance as weak and flaccid, this week Liberman said the time has come to hit Hamas hard. He reportedly offered a plan to achieve his goal Wednesday night. His colleagues reportedly rejected Liberman’s plan in favor of other options offered by the IDF.

The cabinet ministers’ reported rejection of Liberman’s plan makes sense. Because the fact is that Israel’s options in relation to Gaza are very limited.

If Israel tried to retake control over Gaza, as exasperated politicians sometimes recommend, it would never stop paying the price for the move. Even if Israel had the ground forces to undertake such an operation without leaving northern Israel vulnerable to aggression from Iran and its proxies in Lebanon and Syria, the cost of conquering Gaza in blood and treasure would be prohibitive, and in the absence of any moderate force on the ground that could eventually take over, Israel would be stuck ruling over a hateful population until it finally abandoned Gaza again and another terror group took over.

Israel’s Left, along with its protean chorus of partners in the West, insist that the only way to “solve” the situation in Gaza is to replace the Hamas regime with a regime led by the PLO-controlled Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria. That would be the regime that Hamas ousted in a bloody and swift rout in June 2007.

There are two problems with this claim, and they point to Israel’s larger quandary with regard to the PA regime in Judea and Samaria.

The first problem is that the PA would never be able to take over because it has no power base in Gaza. If Israel or Egypt tried to install them, at best the PA officials would be nothing more than front men for Hamas.

The second problem with bringing the PA into Gaza is that there is no evidence it would be any less extreme than Hamas.

During the two years the PA controlled independent Gaza, following Israel’s abandonment of the area in August 2005, it militarized the Gaza Strip in an unprecedented way. Rocket, mortar and missile attacks against Israel became a daily event. Most of the missiles were shot by Fatah cells loyal to the PA.

In Judea and Samaria, the PA runs an autonomous regime in the Palestinian population centers. Like Hamas, the PA regime has done nothing to develop its economy. It has squandered hundreds of millions of dollars in international assistance to line the pockets of its corrupt leaders and pay off their cronies.

AS IT DID in Gaza between 1996 and 2002, the PA militarized the areas of Judea and Samaria that it controlled. Israel only demilitarized the Palestinian areas in response to the PA-directed terror war that was launched in September 2000.

The only reason Israel is not facing the same situation in Judea and Samaria as it faces in Gaza is because its military forces have controlled the areas since 2004.

Which brings us back to Wednesday night’s security cabinet meeting.

In their meeting Wednesday night, as in all their meetings regarding Gaza, the ministers had very limited options. All they can really decide is what level of military force to order the IDF to use against Hamas and what level of humanitarian aid to order the IDF to permit to enter into Gaza.

According to media reports, the cabinet decided Wednesday night to “change the rules of the game” in relation to Hamas, and particularly in relation to its riots along the border every Friday afternoon. What this means remains to be seen.

Perhaps the IDF will assert control over the security perimeter it controlled on the Gaza side of the border until the end of 2012. Israel abandoned its security perimeter, which was 300 meters wide, and permitted Gazans to farm along the border fence, (and so set the conditions for Hamas’s current border aggression) in the framework of cease-fire talks at the end of Operation Pillar of Defense – the mini-war it fought against Hamas in 2012. Such a move would certainly constitute a significant improvement over the current situation.

Perhaps Israel will carry out major air assaults that could destroy a significant number of Hamas’s missile and mortar stocks. Perhaps Israel could retaliate for Wednesday’s missile strike by destroying the homes of Hamas leaders.

Whatever it does, and whatever military moves Israel makes, the fact is that Israel cannot end the menace it faces from Hamas. It can and should weaken Hamas’s war-fighting capability and perhaps intimidate Hamas leaders into cooling their jets for a few months or a year or two. But the next round will come whenever Hamas decides to open one and Israel will be forced to respond again.

As for Judea and Samaria, Israel has no reason to be concerned about who is in charge and to what degree they are in charge in the Palestinian population centers so long as Israel retains overall security control of the area. We don’t have a dog in the fight. None of the possible successors to Mahmoud Abbas or to his kleptocratic PA are any better than he is. And none of them are significantly worse.

The main strategic takeaway from Gaza and from Judea and Samaria is that there is no solution, military or otherwise to the Palestinians’ never-ending war against the Jewish state.

All Israel can do is secure its control over what it already controls by, among other things, applying its law to Area C, and use military force to limit the Palestinians’ ability to attack its civilians and its territory.

The coming days and weeks may and should see a significant escalation in IDF offensive strikes against Hamas targets in Gaza. But no matter how successful they may or may not be, they shouldn’t be seen as anything more than a military version of mowing the lawn. And just as grass grows back, so Hamas will rebuild its strength. Israel’s challenge is not to uproot the grass, but to maintain the capability to keep it as short as possible.

Who knows? Maybe one day the Palestinians will get tired of fighting and there will be peace.
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Caroline Glick is the Senior Contributing Editor of The Jerusalem Post and the Director of the David Horowitz Freedom Center's Israel Security Project. For more information on Ms. Glick's work, visit carolineglick.com.

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Another Judicial Nominee Under Attack

by Bill Donohue: The atheists at the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) are opposing another Trump judicial nominee. Their target this time is Allison Jones Rushing, nominated for the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals based in Richmond, Virginia.

Rushing’s offense is twofold: a law review article on Establishment Clause cases that she co-wrote as a Duke University law student in 2005; and the person she wrote it with, a senior counsel at Alliance Defense Fund, now Alliance Defending Freedom. So let’s compare FFRF’s allegations with the facts.

FFRF says: Alliance Defending Freedom “was designated an ‘anti-LGBT hate group’ by the Southern Poverty Law Center.”

Fact: The ideologically-driven Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is hardly a credible source. It labels as “hate groups” virtually any conservative-minded group that doesn’t embrace its left-wing agenda. It recently had to give a $3.375 million settlement, plus an apology, to former Islamic radical Maajid Nawaz for falsely labeling him an “anti-Muslim extremist.” SPLC also had to apologize to Ben Carson for placing the current HUD secretary, an African American, on its “extremist watch list” along with neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

FFRF says: The article Rushing co-authored, “Nothing to Stand On: ‘Offended Observers’ and the Ten Commandments,” dealing with court challenges to displays of the Ten Commandments on public grounds, evinced “extreme views on religious freedom and the importance of state-church separation.”

Fact: The article actually called for treating Establishment Clause cases the same as “all other areas of the law,” noting that the plaintiffs in the Ten Commandment cases were not held to the same standing requirements, under Article III of the Constitution, that ordinarily must be met for a case to be heard in federal court.

FFRF says: Rushing argued that “‘offended observers’ should never be allowed a day in court” to challenge alleged government violations of the Establishment Clause; and that this “leaves citizens totally unable to hold government accountable for even clear Establishment Clause violations.”

Fact: Rushing clearly explained that “To have standing under Article III, a plaintiff must have suffered a ‘concrete and particularized’ injury”—not simply have been “offended” by a religious display. If they have suffered such injury, they would of course have standing to sue.

FFRF says: “Rushing has demonstrated hostility toward secular Americans.”

Fact: Rushing warned not against all secular Americans, but against “village secularists” who “charge into court with the ACLU and challenge governmental acknowledgements of religion, no matter how passive or benign.” She cited Judge Frank Easterbrook of the U.S. Seventh Circuit, who noted that courts are required to distinguish between “injured and ideological plaintiffs.”

FFRF says: “Rushing reverse-engineers results that privilege religion and violate the Constitution,” as when she warns against allowing the opinions of Establishment Clause plaintiffs to “override those of the rest of the population.”

Fact: Rushing’s point is that, absent “concrete injury,” the plaintiff’s recourse should be through the political process. This holds for religious believers as well. For example, she explained, parents having religious objections to the content of their child’s school curriculum have no standing to sue based solely on exposure to offensive ideas. “A parent’s recourse is to the political process of the school board, just as the political process is the proper place for offended observers of the Ten Commandments to take their complaints.” This doesn’t “privilege” religion, it subjects religious as well as secular plaintiffs to the same standing requirements.

FFRF says: “Rushing fails to grasp the difference between speech and religion,” and that government has no “free speech right to take a stance on religion.”

Fact: The FFRF argument that the government has no “free speech right to take a stance on religion” is plain dumb. The U.S. Supreme Court opens every session with a prayer, “God save the United States and this honorable court,” and “In God We Trust” is our national motto. What are they if not the exercise of free speech by the government in behalf of religion?

When it comes to issues of religious freedom, the facts are seldom as FFRF describes them. That is the case again in their attacks on Allison Jones Rushing.
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Bill Donohue is is a sociologist and president of the Catholic League.

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