The Bulwark Embarrasses Itself Further With Attack on Victor Davis Hanson

by Roger Kimball: Being of a charitable disposition, I early on decided that the kindest response to The Bulwark, the NeverTrump redoubt started by Bill Kristol following the implosion of the Weekly Standard, was silence. If this tiny cohort of bitter and unhappy souls was determined to embarrass themselves in public, the best we could do was turn away. Non ragioniam di lor, as Dante says in another context, ma guarda e passa. It would be cruel to let daylight in upon madness.

I said nothing when, for one of their opening acts, editor-in-chief Charles Sykes pronounced anathema upon me and Henry Olsen, the distinguished ethics and public policy scholar, for the sin of supporting the president of the United States on some issue or other. I was planning to continue to follow Wittgenstein’s advice at the end of the Tractatus and pass over in silence the twisted attack on Victor Davis Hanson’s new book on the president, The Case for Trump, by Hudson Institute Fellow Gabriel Schoenfeld, but the ad hominem viciousness of the piece together with its surreal mischaracterization of Hanson’s argument prompts me to weigh in.

Longtime readers will know that I have had my own innings with Schoenfeld over Donald Trump. I hesitate to speak again not only because calling attention to Gabe Schoenfeld is a little like calling attention to the disheveled fellow you find screaming at passersby on the street outside your office but also because Victor Hanson has himself delivered a devastating response to Schoenfeld’s attack. I cannot improve upon Victor’s definitive retort, but it is worth iterating one or two elements of the exchange.

You might think that a fellow of the Hudson Institute, a distinguished Washington think-tank, would hesitate before broadcasting indiscriminate charges of anti-Semitism. But this, as I have reason to know myself, has become Schoenfeld’s go-to rhetorical gambit when he wishes to disparage someone with whose views he takes issue. In the case of his attack on Victor Hanson, Schoenfeld goes so far as to exemplify Godwin’s Law, according to which the person who first brings up Hitler in an internet exchange loses the argument. The title of Schoenfeld’s attack is “Sophistry in the Service of Evil,” but we have to wait until the last paragraph to learn just how heinous is the evil he has in mind.

“This is not to say that Hanson’s book lacks value,” Schoenfeld writes:As a part of a larger phenomenon, it is instructive in its way. Anyone with an iota of historical awareness is familiar with the fact that intellectuals in Europe and the United States lauded Joseph Stalin even as he sent millions to the Gulag and their death. By the same token, Adolf Hitler, one of the 20th century’s other mega-mass murderers, also found his share of admirers in the academy …And they’re off! Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and military historian, has said admiring things about certain of Donald Trump’s policies -- his judicial appointments, for example, his handling of the economy and attention to modernizing our military -- ergo he is an intellectual in the service of evil. Hanson treats this calumny with some portion of the contempt that it deserves.

“Schoenfeld,” he writes:bigotry. For a supposed racist enabler, I have an odd way of living -- in the house where I was raised in an impoverished multiracial rural community, part of an extended family that is far from exclusively “white,” and teaching for over 20 years at a state university attended mostly by minority students, many from communities near my home. If advocating melting-pot policies of assimilation, integration, and intermarriage -- and living in minority neighborhoods and putting one’s children in underperforming but diverse public schools -- is also proof of past “service to a genuine evil,” I plead guilty.That answers the ad hominem part of Schoenfeld’s effusion. What about his estimation of the president’s supposed “evil”? “Trump’s economic agenda.” Hanson points out:… has done far more for minority job seekers than have the policies of past Republican or Democratic presidents. Unlike many of his opponents in the Democratic party, Trump does not deprecate Catholicism. He has been on the forefront in calling out the new generation of progressive anti-Semites in Congress. No president has been more adamantly opposed to abortion on demand, which has devastated the African-American community, and which a number of black leaders have called black “genocide,” and whose effects in the past have earned either at best liberal assent or at worst outright progressive support for eugenics. In 2020, for all those reasons and others, Trump may well receive a higher percentage of the black, Hispanic, and Jewish vote than, for example, Mitt Romney in 2012.The point is, these policies have had a palpable and beneficent effect on millions of people, helping to lift them out of poverty, to secure them against the depredations of criminals and dependency-inducing government intervention. They are, in a word, morally positive policies.

It is a favorite trope among critics of the president, including ones more circumspect and temperate than Gabe Schoenfeld, to argue that Donald Trump is a man of bad character and draw all sorts of dire inferences from that contention. I have had occasion to challenge that trope myself -- here for example, and here -- but Hanson gives a fuller account than any I have seen of exactly how it is that Donald Trump’s presidency, for all its rhetorical bluster and occasional crudity, has been a salubrious and morally uplifting enterprise.

The emotive, moralistic side of Schoenfeld’s argument is the thing that most readers will come away with. He thinks Donald Trump is a bad man, and he believes that anyone who does not repudiate him is a patsy, a collaborator in evil, or both. But he also endeavors to support this torrent of temperament with a bill of particulars. This is where his piece becomes truly embarrassing. Discussing and dismissing the importance of the infamous dossier compiled by Christopher Steele and surreptitiously paid for by the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign as oppo-research against their political opponent, Schoenfeld asserts that it is unimportant because there was no effort to broadcast its smears against Trump before the election. “Why,” Schoenfeld asks, “did [the Democrats] not leak the dossier, already in their possession, to the media before the election when it could have done the Trump campaign serious damage?" Unsurprisingly, this is a question that Hanson opts not to entertain.”

Hanson answers this preposterous claim in great detail, but let me merely recapitulate what the unidentified Twitter maven known as Undercover Huber says about this:

THE CLINTON FUNDED STEELE DOSSIER WASN’T USED IN THE MEDIA BEFORE THE ELECTION says @gabeschoenfeld

Except:
—The Weekly Standard
—New Yorker
—Yahoo News
—Mother Jones
—Slate
—NBC
—MSNBC

And by the Clinton campaign:
—Press release “bombshells”
—Tweets read by millions

THREAD

— Undercover Huber (@JohnWHuber) March 13, 2019

To date, the only response from this fellow of the Hudson Institute is a tweet that links to Victor Davis Hanson’s rebuttal under the rubric “He doth protest too much.” As of this writing, every single response to that feeble rejoinder is along the lines of this pithy but not inaccurate comment: “He destroyed you.”
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Roger Kimball contributes to PJMedia.

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Kentucky Governor Welcomes NRA to Constitutional Carry Bill Signing Ceremony

by NRA-ILA: National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action Executive Director Chris W. Cox joined Gov. Matt Bevin at a ceremonial bill signing on the morning of March 14th for SB 150, an NRA-backed bill that fully recognizes the constitutional right of law-abiding gun owners to carry a concealed firearm.

"I would like to thank Gov. Bevin for his leadership on this critical self-defense initiative. Today was a celebration of freedom for the law-abiding people of Kentucky," said Cox. "Constitutional carry is a common sense measure that allows law-abiding citizens to exercise their fundamental right of self-protection in the manner that best suits their needs."

Also in attendance were sponsors of the legislation including Senators Damon Thayer, Brandon Smith, and Representative Savannah Maddox.

Kentucky already recognizes the right to carry a firearm openly without a permit. Current law, however, required a state-issued permit to carry that same firearm under a coat or in a bag. This new law simply extends the current open carry rule to concealed carry. Those who obtain permits will still be able to take advantage of the reciprocity agreements that Kentucky has with other states.

Kentucky is now the 16th state to recognize constitutional carry joining Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming.

"NRA members in Kentucky should thank Gov. Bevin, the sponsors of the legislation, and all those who voted to make it easier for law-abiding Kentuckians to protect themselves and their families.

"NRA members and Kentucky’s law-abiding gun owners also appreciate the hard work and leadership of the bill sponsors, Senators Damon Thayer, Brandon Smith and Representative Savannah Maddox. Without their efforts, this bill would not have become law," concluded Cox.

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School Tries Concealing Drag Makeup Day

by Tony Perkins: "You did what?!" Parents across Santa Ana couldn't believe it. In one house after another, the answer to "How was school today?" was nothing like they expected. Moms and dads listened in disbelief as their middle schoolers talked about going to an "LGBT Fair" that no one bothered to ask their permission for. There were even people in drag, their 11-year-olds said, giving make-up lessons -- right there in school.

Townhall's Kira Davis listened as one mom fumed about not knowing about the fair until after it happened. There wasn't even an opportunity to opt-out, she complained at last Tuesday's school board meeting. Unfortunately, that was just one of the infuriating examples the largely-Hispanic community used to explain how fed-up they were with the state's new sex ed law. But the problem is a lot bigger than the law, Davis explained. It's how liberals are exploiting the Spanish-speaking communities to implement it.

In one of the more fiery exchanges of the night, a mom seethed that so many liberals were trying to marginalize California's multi-ethnic communities. "How can a state that claims to be so much for the rights of immigrants and minorities then ignore our concerns on purpose? They are hypocrites!" Although California's law does order schools to offer the curriculum outline in both languages, Santa Ana hasn't made the Spanish materials available to parents. Hardly an accident, Kira argues, since most of the communities like this one are "whole-heartedly opposed to LGBT-based sex-ed."

One thing's for sure: The more radical the social policy, the greater the opportunity for conservatives. Santa Ana's meeting room was bursting with the latest evidence that Democrats have a huge problem on their hands, especially when it comes to abortion and sex ed. What's even more insulting, these parents pointed out, is how liberals are purposefully taking advantage of them -- deceptively leaving families in the dark because they know "this particular community would absolutely not approve of the more graphic elements." Not to mention, Kira goes on, "the unmonitored discussions" on gender and sexuality.

Like a lot of other California districts, these parents have reached their boiling point. Tuesday's meeting was so jam-packed that even the overflow rooms could barely hold the families. Holding signs that read, "No SeXXEd!" moms and dads fended off the ACLU attorneys who'd been farmed out across the state to handle complaints. Later, parents were even more furious to find out that four of the five people who testified in favor of the curriculum didn't even live in the district!

In between emotional testimonies, Kira was appalled at how condescending board members were, firing back hostile -- and at times, demeaning -- answers. "As an outside observer, I was terribly vexed by how dismissive and deceptive school authorities were to this particular group of parents. It was clear they did not believe immigrant Hispanic parents were engaged or informed enough to be welcomed into the process."
"All these people were asking for was a say, a chance to be involved, to be heard and to be active participants in the education of their children. They were asking for respect and instead received nothing but contempt and disrespect from the very people they trust to care for the development of their students." But, she warns, "If you think this is just another case of 'whacky' California paying the price for their 'whacky' voting habits, think again. This is coming to a state and a school district near you."Are you prepared for that day? Make sure you've read FRC's "A Parent's Guide to the Transgender Movement in Education" -- and share it with your friends.
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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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Tags: Tony Perkins, Family Research Center, FRC, Family Research Council, School, Tries Concealing, Drag Makeup Day To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Omar And The Congressional Black Caucus’ Anti-Semitism Problem

. . . From Farrakhan to Jihad.

Louis Farrakhan Sr. formerly known as Louis X,
is an American black nationalist and minister
who is the leader of the Nation of Islam (NOI).

by Daniel Greenfield: "I want to thank Minister Farrakhan for offering up a number of precepts that we ought to adhere to,” Rep. James Clyburn said, at an event featuring the anti-Semitic hate group leader.

Eight years later, to the month, Clyburn, now the House Majority Whip, defended Rep. Omar’s anti-Semitism. “There are people who tell me, ‘Well, my parents are Holocaust survivors.’ ‘My parents did this.’ It’s more personal with her," he argued, dismissing the concerns of Jewish legislators.

Rep. Clyburn is one of the most powerful figures in the House. He’s also one of Farrakhan’s allies in the House who had once rejected a call from Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center to withdraw from an appearance with Farrakhan and declared that he was “not bothered in the least bit.”

After protests against Omar’s anti-Semitism, Clyburn stayed the course by working to ensure that the resolution would not focus on anti-Semitism and would not name Omar.

Before the House resolution, which failed to condemn Omar’s anti-Semitic remarks, Clyburn and the CBC’s newest bigot hugged.

“I am trying to do everything I can to make her journey here a comfortable one,” Clyburn said.

It wasn’t just Clyburn.

The defense of Rep. Omar’s anti-Semitism was led by Rep. Karen Bass: the new chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Last year, Tony Muhammad, Farrakhan’s Western Regional Representative, singled out Bass and Rep. Maxine Waters for their positive relationship with Farrakhan, in contrast to some other CBC members.

“I thank God for Maxine Waters and Congresswoman Karen Bass,” Muhammad said. “I think our Black politicians should stand down. Minister Farrakhan will take a call from a Maxine Waters or Karen Bass.”

Defending Rep. Omar, Bass had warned that she “absolutely would have a problem” if the resolution were to call her out for hate. “I think it's inappropriate to just focus on one person. I absolutely do.”

Was that really true?

Back in January, Bass had demanded that Republicans take away Rep. King’s committee assignments and kick him out of the party. “If Republicans really believe these racist statements have no place in our government, then their party must offer more than shallow temporary statements of condemnation.”

She insisted that, “Republicans should make clear Mr. King is no longer welcomed in their party or Congress. Anything less than these substantive actions is another tacit acceptance of racism from the Republican Party.”

But Bass resisted even a “shallow temporary” condemnation of Omar, let alone removing her from committee assignments, making it clear that anti-Semitism is accepted in the Democrat Party.

"In the Congressional Black Caucus, people were always against anti-Semitism," Bass claimed while defending Rep. Omar. "That is never the question with anybody in the Congressional Black Caucus."

It’s actually quite the question.

The CBC has a long history of associating with Farrakhan, of hosting him and meeting with him.

When Speaker Pelosi conferenced with CBC members on the resolution, Clyburn and Bass, along with Barbara Lee and Sheila Jackson Lee, were there to negotiate with her over how to protect Omar.

Rep. Barbara Lee had repeatedly met with and praised Farrakhan. She was caught on video hugging the anti-Semitic hate group leader who called her, “my sister”.

“The Nation of Islam has always been on the forefront of leadership without embarrassment, shyness or apology,” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee had declared, while appearing at a Farrakhan event.

Farrakhan praised Jackson Lee, stating, “She knows the struggle that the Black and Brown members of Congress have to influence that process.”

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee has since refused to condemn Farrakhan and his anti-Semitic ideas.

When Pelosi brought these four CBC members in to negotiate over the resolution, she turned over the process to four elected officials who were themselves allied with an anti-Semitic hate group.

The outcome, a toothless resolution that failed to condemn a CBC member’s anti-Semitism, was certain.

And the ultimate responsibility for that falls to Speaker Pelosi for allowing Farrakhan’s House fan club to take control of the process and turn a condemnation of anti-Semitism into a cover-up of it.

The media, which cries for Republican accountability, participated in a cover-up for its political allies.

Key CBC members involved in watering down the resolution had participated in, what was described as, an "unpublicized strategy session" with Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.

Can you imagine if Republican members of the House had participated in a strategy session with the KKK and then worked to shut down a resolution condemning one of their own for racist comments?

That story would have been covered very differently than the story of Rep. Omar and her CBC allies.

There is one more part of the story that the media has paid very little attention to because of what it reveals about Omar, Bass, the CBC, its relationship with Islamists and Marxists, and anti-Semitism.

As the controversy burned, Omar joined Bass and another CBC member on what she described as, “the first American delegation to Eritrea in decades.”

There’s a good reason for that.

Eritrea was sanctioned until last year for supplying weapons to the al-Shabab jihadists in Somalia. Al-Shabab is an occasional Al Qaeda ally and was responsible for many brutal terrorist attacks, including the massacre of shoppers in a Nairobi mall in which the terrorists killed anyone who couldn’t name Mohammed’s mother, using that technique to single out non-Muslim targets from Muslim comrades.

One theory has been that the Nairobi mall was targeted because of the presence of Israelis.

Eritrea’s regime has also been accused of hosting an Iranian presence that supplies weapons to Hamas in Israel and to the Houthi jihadis in Yemen whose motto is, “Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse the Jews, Victory to Islam."

Bass and Omar’s surreal visit to Eritrea, a place described as the North Korea of Africa, took place even as its totalitarian regime continued holding American embassy employees and citizens in captivity.

After arriving there, Rep. Bass claimed that she had no idea until then that a member of her own district had been detained.

Why visit Eritrea? It may be an obscure place to most Americans, but its dictator, Isaias Afwerki, was the leader of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, a Marxist armed group popular with black nationalists. When the EPLF took over, Israel had evacuated Ethiopians living in the area who identify as Jewish.

A short time after 9/11, media reports claimed that there was only one Jewish family left in Eritrea.

The troubling issue of Bass and Omar’s visit to a country that no longer has a Jewish population during a scandal about anti-Semitism was widely overlooked.

The problem of Rep. Omar’s anti-Semitism and the CBC’s defense of it is rooted in a larger dynamic of Marxism and Islamism, of black nationalism and terrorism, that has larger implications not just for the Jews, but for Christians, and for Americans, Africans and people around the world.

Anti-Semitism has been called the canary in the coal mine. Its presence reveals a breath of bad air, a totalitarian illness that threatens not only a small minority group of millions, but billions worldwide.
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Daniel Greenfield (@Sultanknish) is Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an investigative journalist and writer focusing on radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

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Tags: Daniel Greenfield, FrontPage Mag, Omar, Congressional Black Caucus, Anti-Semitism Problem, Louis Farrakhan To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Why Covington Teen Could Win His Lawsuit Against CNN

by Hans von Spakovsky: Nicholas Sandmann and his parents have followed up their defamation lawsuit against The Washington Post with one filed Tuesday against CNN. Sandmann, you’ll recall, is one of the Covington Catholic High School students savaged by the left after attending this year’s March for Life in Washington.

Can Sandmann prevail against the Cable News Network? Just as with The Washington Post, the answer is “yes.”

The suit charges that CNN “has maintained a well-known and easily documented biased agenda against President Donald Trump and established a history of impugning individuals perceived to be supporters of the president.” This is significant because his lawyers are alleging that CNN targeted Sandmann simply because he was “wearing a souvenir Make America Great Again cap.”

For seven days in January, says the lawsuit, CNN “brought down the full force of its corporate power, influence, and wealth on Nicholas by falsely attacking, vilifying, and bullying him despite the fact that he was a minor child.”

The lawsuit accuses CNN of at least four defamatory TV broadcasts and nine defamatory online articles falsely accusing Sandmann and his fellow students of “engaging in racist conduct by instigating a threatening confrontation with several African American men (‘the Black Hebrew Israelites’) and subsequently instigating a threatening confrontation with Native Americans who were in the midst of prayer.”

Moreover, CNN asserted that Sandmann and his fellow students displayed a “racis[t] mob mentality” and “looked like they were going to lynch” the Black Hebrew Israelites who were merely “preaching about the Bible nearby” because “they didn’t like the color of their skin” and “their religious views.”

The lawsuit also claims that CNN falsely accused Sandmann and his classmates of surrounding Native American activist Nathan Phillips, creating “a really dangerous situation” that caused Phillips to “fear for his safety and the safety of those with him” as the teenagers “harassed and taunted” him.

Full-length videos of the scene showed that none of this was true. In fact, as the lawsuit points out, it was the Black Hebrew Israelites who “bullied, attacked, and confronted” the students with racist and homophobic slurs and threats of violence.

The videos also show that it was Phillips who forced his way into the student group and then “proceeded to target” Sandmann, not the other way around.

The lawsuit says CNN defamed Sandmann because it “elevated false, heinous accusations of racist conduct” against him “from social media to its worldwide news platform without adhering to well-established journalist standards and ethics, including its failure to take the required steps to ensure accuracy, fairness, completeness, fact-checking, neutrality, and heightened sensitivity when dealing with a minor.”

Sandmann’s lawyers call CNN’s coverage “agenda-driven fiction” that “created an extremely dangerous situation by knowingly triggering the outrage of its audience and unleashing that outrage” on Sandmann and his classmates with “patently false accusations.” They even cite CNN political analyst Bakari Sellers as “openly” calling for “physical violence on Twitter.”

Moreover, the suit notes that, as of the date of filing, CNN has never “issued a formal retraction, correction or an apology” for its false coverage.

The lawsuit asks for $75 million in compensatory damages and $200 million in punitive damages to “deter CNN from ever again engaging in false, reckless, malicious, and agenda-driven attacks against children in violation of well-recognized journalist standards and ethics.”

The complaint is almost 60 pages long and describes in great detail the disparities between CNN’s reporting and what actually happened on Jan. 18 in front of the Lincoln Memorial. And that is the key to winning a successful defamation suit—showing false factual claims as opposed to expressions of opinion, no matter how unfair or unjustified.

When compared to the mistakes The Washington Post made, Sandmann seems to have an even stronger case against CNN, which seemed to go all out to vilify Sandmann.

Since Sandmann would not be considered a “public figure” under applicable Supreme Court precedent, he doesn’t have to prove that CNN knew the statements were false, just that they were false. Sandmann’s lawyers make a strong case, though, that CNN acted with “actual malice” and that the network’s behavior was so “outrageous and willful” and such a violation of basic journalistic standards that punitive damages should be awarded.

Interestingly, one of the lawyers representing Sandmann is Lin Wood, the same lawyer who represented Richard Jewell. Jewell was the security guard at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics who was wrongly accused by CNN and other media companies of bombing the city’s Olympic Park. When CNN was sued for defamation, it agreed to pay Jewell an undisclosed amount. That settlement came shortly after NBC agreed to pay Jewell a reported half-million dollars.

Pursuing one media giant after another as Sandmann and his family are doing is the very same strategy that Wood followed in the Jewell Olympic bombing case. CNN may lawyer up and spend a great deal of time and money fighting this case. On the other hand, it may decide to quickly settle, just as it did after defaming Jewell.
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Hans von Spakovsky is an authority on a wide range of issues—including civil rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, immigration, the rule of law and government reform—as a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and manager of the think tank’s Election Law Reform Initiative. More ARRA News Service articles by or about Hans von Spakovsky

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Tags: Why Covington Teen, Could Win, His Lawsuit, Against CNN, Hans von Spakovsky, The Heritage Foundation, The Daily Signal To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Murder At The Mosques, Exploiting Tragedy, Left-wing Hypocrisy On Life

Gary Bauer

by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Murder At The Mosques
Like millions of Americans, I woke up this morning to the shocking news that dozens of people -- at least 49 -- had been killed in attacks on two New Zealand mosques.

Any attack against a place of worship -- a church, a synagogue, a mosque, a temple -- is an act of horrific evil. People should be able to pray and seek God in the way their heart tells them without fear.

Sadly, in recent years we have seen too many of these attacks -- the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and today's atrocity in New Zealand.

What many people are sadly not aware of is that in many parts of the world, violent attacks on people of faith, as well as other forms of systematic persecution, are common occurrences.

Over the last decade, Christians in the birthplace of Christianity have been the victims of systematic attacks. The have been driven out of their homes, raped and murdered at such an extreme level that world governments eventually declared a genocide.

And there are attacks taking place today that get virtually no press coverage. The communist regime in China is forcing hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Christians into concentration camps reminiscent of the 1930s.

At every meeting I attend of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, the reports we review and the victims we hear from are a regular reminder of how precious religious freedom is.

Given the age we live in, I urge every house of worship in America to take steps to ensure the safety of its worshippers. We have done so at my church in northern Virginia.

ISIS, which is on the verge of being defeated on the battlefield, was already calling for renewed attacks overseas. Today's atrocity in New Zealand is certain to inspire Islamists who have never needed an excuse to wage jihad.

Exploiting Tragedy
Predictably, elements of the American left were quick to blame the attack on conservatives and President Trump. These are the same people who never blame attacks by radical Islamists on Islam. But they are certain that any attack on a mosque was carried out by a conservative Christian.

It must be pointed out here that radical Islamists are responsible for the vast majority of Muslim deaths.

Sadly, the first reaction of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was to mock people of faith for their prayers.

As of now, we don't know much about the man who attacked the New Zealand mosques, Brenton Tarrant. He left behind a lengthy manifesto, which is being analyzed. But we know this much:

• He was not a conservative. Tarrant wrote, "Conservatism is dead. Thank god. Now let us bury it and move on to something of worth."
• Nor was he a fan of Donald Trump, writing, "As a policy maker and leader? Dear god no."
• According to one report, Tarrant labeled himself an "eco-fascist" after having "previously identified as a communist, an anarchist and a libertarian." Would it be fair to blame someone who wants a clean environment for the attack? Of course not.
• Tarrant was clearly a racist, and claimed to be inspired by Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik.

Reacting to the attack this morning, President Trump tweeted:

"My warmest sympathy and best wishes goes out to the people of New Zealand after the horrible massacre in the Mosques. 49 innocent people have so senselessly died, with so many more seriously injured. The U.S. stands by New Zealand for anything we can do. God bless all!"

Left-wing Hypocrisy On Life
California is certainly one of the nation's most pro-abortion states, right up there with New York. Ironically, Governor Gavin Newsom announced earlier this week that he will no longer enforce the Golden State's death penalty law because in his view the death penalty is immoral.

Here's some of what Newsom has said in various written statements and public remarks in recent days:

"The intentional killing of another person is wrong. And as Governor, I will not oversee the execution of any individual."

"This is about who I am as a human being. . . To me this is the right thing to do."

"I do not believe that a civilized society can claim to be a leader in the world as long as its government continues to sanction the premeditated and discriminatory execution of its people. In short, the death penalty is inconsistent with our bedrock values and strikes at the very heart of what it means to be a Californian."

Clearly, the governor has no clue about what it means to be a Californian, and he doesn't care.

Californians have voted twice in the past seven years to uphold the death penalty. And in 2016, as Hillary Clinton was carrying the state in a landslide, Californians approved a ballot measure to speed up the appeals process for death sentences.

Newsom's arrogance shouldn't surprise anyone. As you may recall, it was then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom who decided to unilaterally ignore the state's marriage laws in 2004.

Today he won't agree to capital punishment for convicted murderers. Yet he has no qualms about the "premeditated and discriminatory execution" of thousands of completely innocent unborn children every year. The hypocrisy is breathtaking!

Newsom's order spares people like Richard Allen Davis, who kidnapped, raped and brutally murdered 12 year-old Polly Klass. The governor thinks Davis deserves compassion but little babies who have never harmed anyone can be torn apart? Or dissolved by salt?

Needless to say, many Californians, such as Tami and Kermit Alexander, are outraged by Newsom's callousness.

The Alexanders have been leading advocates for victims' rights in California. Gang members murdered four members of Kermit's family in 1984. He sued the state in 2015 to force the execution of the thug who executed his mother, sister and two nephews.

"California just became a dictatorship today," Tami lamented.

Whether it is the meaning of marriage, the sanctity of life, securing the border or seeing to it that justice is served, it shouldn't be so hard to find politicians who are true public servants and who respect the will of the people.

Perhaps it is time for a new recall effort. Let's make California great again!
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Gary Bauer (@GaryLBauer)  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, Murder At The Mosques, Exploiting Tragedy, Left-wing Hypocrisy On Life To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Portland Parents Sue Schools For Anti-Gun ‘Indoctrination’

by Tom Knighton: Schools are supposed to be places of learning, where facts take precedence over feelings. They’re not supposed to teach you what to think, only how to think.

What they’re supposed to be and what they are, however, aren’t exactly similar.

Because of that fact, some pro-Second Amendment parents are lashing out at Portland public schools for what they say is an attempt to indoctrinate their children.

Four pro-2nd Amendment parents are suing Portland Public Schools (PPS) over gun control rallies.

Their lawyer, Multnomah County GOP chair James Buchal, says the district violated parents’ and students’ First Amendment rights by promoting gun control following last year’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

“It’s wrong for the schools to essentially hijack public resources to push one side of a controversial issue and to misuse children as puppets in their exercise,” said Buchal.

He also said PPS used district resources to coordinate with outside activists, helped plan political activity, including walkouts, and claims the schools “indoctrinated” students in the classroom.

“It’s a giant scheme of manipulation and it’s not what people want their education dollars spent on,” said Buchal.Unsurprisingly, the school says the lawsuit is baseless.

I’m not so sure about that.

I can’t speak for Portland, but we saw many schools jumping at the opportunity to not just allow students to stage walkouts, but to seemingly encourage them by giving it a stamp of approval. As Portland tends to be a fairly left-leaning city, I suspect that the support was there then too.

There’s another walkout planned for Friday, though students participating in it will reportedly receive an unexcused absence.

Unfortunately for the schools, no one is talking about Friday. They’re talking about last year when a coordinated effort took place to have students walk out of every school in the country. Back then, schools were practically rolling out the red carpet so students could walk out of class. They made it very clear that they believed anyone who disagreed was an evil, vile human being.

Yes. Teachers.

It’s no wonder there’s a lawsuit on this. There needs to be — a lot of them.

Hell, if there was one saving grace to those walkouts, it was how they were practically non-existent here in my neck of the woods despite it being a heavily blue congressional district.

In a lot of places, though, it was different. They were reportedly backed heavily be school administrations and given the stamp of approval. It’s possible many participating in the walkout weren’t proponents of gun control or even those who just saw it as an excuse to get out of class. Some might have been fearful of repercussions if they didn’t participate.

What is that if it’s not an attempt at stifling their First Amendment rights?

Couple that with what I’m sure were endless “discussions” on the Second Amendment–discussions that often had the teacher spouting nonsense like it being a collective right–and what do you have other than indoctrination?

I can’t say if this happened in Portland. Considering the city’s politics, I don’t doubt it, but I can’t say for certain. What I can say is that I know for certain it happened in plenty of other places, and all of them need to have their feet to the fire.
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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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Israel Strikes Hamas After Rockets Fired From Gaza Hit Tel Aviv

. . .First rocket attack against Tel Aviv in five years prompts robust but measured Israeli response.

by Ari Lieberman: Sirens echoed throughout Tel Aviv and its suburbs on Thursday as two rockets, Identified as Fajr-5 missiles, were fired from Gaza at Israel’s second largest city causing no injuries or damage. Five people were treated for shock. The rockets fell in open spaces. Iron Dome, Israel’s point-defense missile system, which calculates the rocket’s trajectory and pre-determines its flight path, did not launch to intercept. It was the first time a rocket was fired at Tel Aviv since 2014.

It’s difficult to say which Gazan group fired the rockets. Hamas, the terror group that governs Gaza immediately denied responsibility and said it would find and punish those responsible. A smaller terrorist group known as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) also denied responsibility. A PIJ spokesman called reports blaming its group for the attack as “baseless lies and claims.” The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine denied involvement of any of its operatives. There are also rogue Salafist and Islamist splinter groups that operate in Gaza and the possibility of their involvement cannot be discounted.

Last month, the PIJ showcased part of its rocket arsenal with boasts that its rockets are capable of reaching Tel Aviv and beyond. The PIJ stated that the rockets were manufactured with technical assistance from Iran.

Regardless of which terror gang fired the rockets, it is Hamas that controls what goes on in Gaza and the Israeli government’s policy is to hold Hamas accountable for belligerent actions originating from Gaza. Israel has applied the same doctrine to Syria’s warlord Bashar Assad, holding his regime responsible for any hostile fire emanating from Syria. It is a sound doctrine and one that deters governing hostile entities from using proxies to attack Israel while simultaneously and disingenuously denying responsibility.

Fearing an imminent Israeli response to the rocket provocation, an Egyptian delegation in Gaza for talks with Hamas, quickly departed. Ironically, the Egyptians were reportedly in town for the purpose of seeking a reduction in tensions with Israel.

Israel’s reaction to the Gaza provocation was swift. Israeli aircraft bombed a Hamas-linked naval commando facility located west of Khan Younis. Hamas propaganda outlets claimed the target was struck multiple times. Palestinian media reported strikes in other locations as well including Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza and Gaza City. The Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry has not, as of this writing, issued any word on casualties. There were reports that Hamas and PIJ members withdrew from their bases in anticipation of an Israeli retaliatory strike. In fact, it would not be surprising if many fled to Al-Shifa hospital, which also serves as a Hamas command center and bomb shelter in times of war.

Neither Hamas nor Israel desires an escalation of hostilities. Hamas knows from previous experience that it will lose any conflict with Israel. On three previous occasions – 2009, 2012 and 2014 – the Israel Defense Forces bested Hamas and pummeled the Islamist group to ash. The terror group’s strategy is to keep tensions simmering while avoiding all out conflagration. In this way, Hamas hopes to maintain relevance while also providing the group with a convenient way to keep Gaza’s population from focusing on Gaza’s many internal woes, including its dire economic condition.

Israel does not wish to get into an entanglement in Gaza since it has more pressing issues to deal with, chiefly Iran and Hezbollah. The latest intelligence reports indicate that the Iranians are continuing to manufacture surface-to-surface missiles in Syria. In addition, Hezbollah with the help of its Shia patron is attempting to establish a presence opposite the Israeli Golan Heights. Israeli intelligence has identified Ali Mussa Daqduq, a long-time Hezbollah operative and former bodyguard to Hezbollah chieftain Hassan Nasrallah, as the mastermind of this initiative.

The instant rocket provocation from Gaza has the potential to spiral into further bloodier conflict leading to full-scale war. But more likely than not, Hamas recognizing its limitations, will not dare venture down a path that will surely lead to its humiliation and defeat for a fourth time 10 years.
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Ari Lieberman is an attorney and former prosecutor who has authored numerous articles and publications on matters concerning the Middle East and is considered an authority on geo-political and military developments affecting the region. He is an author at FrontPage Mag an outreach of the the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

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Is Diversity a Root Cause of Dual Loyalty?

Our Founding Fathers, too, were ever alert to the dangers of dual loyalty.

by Patrick Buchanan: “We can’t be divided by race, religion, by tribe. We’re defined by those enduring principles in the Constitution, even though we don’t necessarily all know them.”

So Joe Biden told the firefighters union this week.

But does Joe really believe that? Or does that not sound more like a plea, a wistful hope, rather than a deep conviction?

For Biden surely had in mind the debate that exploded last week in the House Democratic caucus on how to punish Somali-American and Muslim Congresswoman Ilhan Omar for raising the specter of dual loyalty.

Rebutting accusations of anti-Semitism lodged against her, Omar had fired back: “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”

Omar was talking about Israel.

Republicans raged that Nancy Pelosi’s caucus must denounce Omar for anti-Semitism. Journalists described the raising of the “dual loyalty” charge as a unique and awful moment, and perhaps a harbinger of things to come.

Yet, allegations of dual loyalty against ethnic groups, even from statesmen, have a long history in American politics.

In 1915, ex-President Theodore Roosevelt, at a convention of the Catholic Knights of Columbus, bellowed: “There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism … German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans, or Italian-Americans.

“There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is a man who is an American and nothing else.”

The New York Times headline the next morning:

“Roosevelt Bars the Hyphenated.”

It continued: “No Room in This Country for Dual Nationality, He Tells Knights of Columbus. Treason to Vote as Such.”

What would Roosevelt think of the dual citizenship of many Americans today? If someone is a citizen of more than one country, how do we know where his primary allegiance lies?

Does not dual citizenship, de facto, imply dual loyalty?

Nor was the Rough Rider alone in his alarm. As America edged toward intervention in the European war, President Woodrow Wilson, too, tore into “the hyphenates”:

“The passions and intrigues of certain active groups and combinations of men amongst us who were born under foreign flags injected the poison of disloyalty into our most critical affairs. …

“I am the candidate of a party, but I am above all things else, an American citizen. I neither seek the favor nor fear the displeasure of that small alien element amongst us which puts loyalty to any foreign power before loyalty to the United States.”

In another address, Wilson declared:

“There is disloyalty active in the United States, and it must be absolutely crushed. It proceeds from … a very small minority, but a very active and subtle minority. It works underground but it shows its ugly head where we can see it, and there are those at this moment who are trying to levy a species of political blackmail, saying: ‘Do what we wish in the interest of foreign sentiment or we will wreak our vengeance at the polls.'”

What did Ilhan Omar say to compare with that?

Roosevelt and Wilson had in mind some German and Irish citizens whose affection for the lands and peoples whence they came made them adversaries of Wilson’s war, into which we would soon be dragged by a WASP elite with deep ties to Great Britain.

Our Founding Fathers, too, were ever alert to the dangers of dual loyalty. In his Farewell Address, President Washington warned against a “passionate attachment” to any foreign nation that might create the illusion of some “common interest … where no common interest exists.”

Did FDR fear dual loyalty? His internment of 110,000 Japanese, mostly U.S. citizens, for the duration of World War II, suggests that he did.

Did not the prosecution of American Communists under the Smith Act, begun by Truman and continued by Eisenhower, suggest that these first postwar presidents saw peril in a secret party that gave allegiance to a hostile foreign power?

Where Wilson, TR and FDR distrusted ethnic and racial minorities, Truman went after the ideological enemies within — the Communists.

What defines us, said Joe Biden, are the “enduring principles in the Constitution, even though we don’t necessarily all know them.”

But if these principles, of which many Americans are not even aware, says Joe, are what define us and hold us together, then what is it that is tearing us apart?

Is it not our differences? Is it not our diversity?

Is it not the powerful and conflicting claims of a multiplicity of races, religions, tribes, ethnicities, and nationalities, as well as clashing ideologies, irreconcilable moral codes, a culture war, and conflicting visions of America’s past — the one side seeing it as horrible and hateful, the other as great and good?

“Diversity is our greatest strength!” we are ever admonished.

But where is the evidence for what appears to be not only an inherently implausible claim but a transparently foolish and false one?
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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 adviser 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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Tags: Patrick Buchanan, conservative, commentary, Is Diversity, Root Cause, Dual Loyalty? To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Man-Made Disaster . . .

. . . Throughout the ages, humanity has been arrogant and self-centered enough to believe it had an effect on the earth’s climate.

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

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The God that Failed...Over and Over Again

Lee Edwards

by Lee Edwards: Why do so many of our university professors argue that socialism is a better way to peace and prosperity than capitalism? Because it is, to them, an article of faith. To admit that socialism has failed -- repeatedly, consistently and abysmally -- for over a century would be, for them, to deny their god.

Theirs are the eyes of faith that cannot see.

Venezuela, once one of the wealthiest countries in Latin American, is now on the brink of economic collapse and political anarchy after two decades of Chavez/Maduro socialism.

Cuba has languished under the Communist Party of Fidel and Raul Castro, who promised free and open elections when they came to power. Sixty years later, Cubans are still waiting.

The Soviets tried for 74 years to build a socialist workers’ paradise, killing millions in the process. Their empire wound up on the ash heap of history, so broke that President Mikhail Gorbachev had to borrow a pen to sign the document dissolving the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Some nations experimented with socialism, then came to their senses and reversed course.

India followed the socialist line for the first 40 years of its independence. It was mired in inefficient state-owned enterprises and excessive government regulation. But the country then adopted market-oriented reforms, particularly in technology, that have produced the largest middle class in the free world.

Following World War II, Great Britain was nationalized from top to bottom by the British Labour Party. The resultant economic decline was so serious that Britain was routinely called “the sick man of Europe.” However, with the election of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister, Great Britain denationalized its basic industries and unleashed free enterprise which put Britain back into the first rank of economic powers. According to the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, the United Kingdom has “one of the world’s most efficient business and investment environments” -- a finding that would stun Karl Marx, who wrote The Communist Manifesto while living in England.


Why have so many Western intellectuals -- from George Bernard Shaw to Jean-Paul Sartre to Susan Sontag -- waxed so enthusiastic about Communism, even at its most repressive? Their sympathetic observations often border on the pathological.

An English Quaker wrote that “the Communist view of human nature seems to me far more inspired by Faith, Hope, and Charity than our own.” Dismissing the existence of the Gulag, a criminologist asserted that in the Soviet Union, “the whole idea of punishment has been frankly dropped and the aim of reformation alone pursued.”

About the infamous trumped-up Moscow trials of the 1930s, which sent an estimated 1 million Communist Party officials to their deaths, the New York Times’ Walter Duranty wrote, “It is unthinkable that Stalin… and the Court Martial could have sentenced their friends to death unless the proofs of guilt were overwhelming.” Duranty was an early practitioner of fake news, writing there was no forced famine in Ukraine, although he had personally witnessed skeleton-like children and hollow-eyed women while traveling through the region.

Of China, where at least 50 million Chinese died in socialist experiments like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, John K. Fairbank, America’s leading sinologist, wrote, “The Maoist revolution is on the whole the best thing that has happened to the Chinese people in centuries.” The reason for such blatant pandering? The professor did not want to risk being denied entry to the Middle Kingdom.

Author Paul Hollander has explained that such intellectuals avoid the truth because they are caught in “an intricate web of utopianism, secularization, and alienation, all of which breeds an abiding contempt for the West.” They find the God they need in Marxism just as the Marxist professors do in our universities.

Yet some intellectuals who initially succumbed to the siren song of socialism managed to free themselves. Among the great writers of the early 20th century who joined and then rejected the communist cause were: the black American novelist Richard Wright, the Italian realist writer Ignazio Silone, the French Nobel Prize winner Andre Gide, the Hungarian novelist Arthur Koestler, the British poet Stephen Spender, and the American foreign correspondent Louis Fischer. They chose Communism because they had lost faith in democracy. It was a decision, wrote the British author and editor, Richard Crossman, rooted in “despair, a despair of Western values.”

Desiring an end to poverty and war, they turned to Communism only to discover that its promises were all lies. The words “brotherhood” and “freedom” were only slogans. Truth was whatever the Communist Party said it was. The very things for which these intellectuals had joined the Party were most endangered by the Party.

At first they practiced unswerving obedience to the socialist line, but their commitment was shattered by the 1939 Hitler-Stalin pact. Socialists condemned Adolf Hitler throughout the 1930s until the summer of 1939 when Joseph Stalin and Hitler signed a non-aggression pact. Immediately, all true socialists reversed course and hailed the agreement as a major step toward peace. It was, in fact, a grossly cynical deal that allowed the Nazis and the Soviets to invade and divide up Poland, precipitating World War II.

Scales fell from the eyes of the writers starting with the novelist Arthur Koestler, who wrote, “At no time and in no country have more revolutionaries been killed and reduced to slavery than in Soviet Russia.” After visiting the Soviet Union, Andre Gide said, “I doubt whether in any country in the world… have the mind and the spirit ever been less free, more bent, more terrorized over and indeed vassalized than in the Soviet Union.”

Writing in the mid-1930s, Louis Fischer said, “Nineteen years after the fiery birth of the Bolshevik regime, ubiquitous fear, amply justified by terror, had killed revolt, silenced protest, and destroyed civil courage.” He might have been writing about Venezuela or Cuba or China. It’s always the same with socialism and its ready tanks and troops.

Fischer reflects the anger and revulsion of his once-communist colleagues writing, “I see that I turned to Soviet Russia because I thought it had the solution to the problem of power… I now realize that Bolshevism is not the way out because it is itself the world’s biggest agglomeration of power over man.” The Nobel Laureate F. A. Hayek put it succinctly, “Planning leads to dictatorship.”

And the planners are always planning, trusting we will not notice what they are doing. It is therefore our solemn duty to call out socialism for what it is -- a pseudo-religion posing as a pseudo-science enforced by political tyranny -- a god that has failed each and every time it has been tried.
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Lee Edwards is the distinguished fellow in conservative thought at The Heritage Foundation's B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics and chairman of The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. A leading historian of American conservatism, Edwards has published 25 books, including "Just Right: A Life in Pursuit of Liberty."

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Tags: Lee Edwards, Heritage Foundation, The God that Failed, Over and Over Again To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks! H/T American Thinker.

The Conservative Advantage

by Kerby Anderson, Contributing Author: In a previous set of commentaries, I talked about the interview Nick Pitts and I did with Jonathan Haidt on his book, The Coddling of the American Mind. Then I saw an essay that quoted his earlier book, The Righteous Mind, where he talked about “the conservative advantage.” As a liberal, he wrote the book because he “was convinced that American liberals did not get the morals and motives of their conservative countrymen.”

In one study he did with Jesse Graham and Brian Nosek, they tested how well liberals and conservatives could understand each other. They had the people fill out their Moral Foundations Questionnaire. One-third of the time, they were supposed to fill out the questions normally, answering as themselves. One-third of the time, they were asked to fill out the questions as they think a “typical liberal” would respond. And one-third of the time, they were supposed to fill out the questionnaire the way they believed a “typical conservative” would respond.

The design of the research allowed the researchers to examine the stereotypes that each side had about the other. And this also allowed them to see how accurate their answers were compared to people who were liberal and people who were conservative.

“The results were clear and consistent. Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who described themselves as ‘very liberal.’”

I might add that the study was published ten years ago. I think it is even more likely that the gap in perception by liberals of conservatives has grown even more. Much of what Jonathan Haidt has written about in his recent book illustrates how millennial college students want even more “protection” from ideas they don’t like. They are less likely than before to engage in foreign ideas. This is one more example of why we have such polarization in the political arena.
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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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John McCain’s Aide Spread Steele Dossier Around DC During Trump Transition

David Kramer leaked the discredited Christopher Steele
dossier on President Trump all over
Washington during the presidential transition.

GOPUSA shares the Washington Times: David Kramer, the then-Sen. John McCain aide who leaked the discredited Christopher Steele dossier on President Trump, testified in a libel case that he spread the unsubstantiated anti-Trump material all over Washington during the presidential transition.

Mr. Steele, a former British spy, testified in the same case that he relied on an internet gossip page to try to verify one of his key charges.

Mr. Kramer, a former State Department official and a Trump detractor, leaked the Democrat-financed dossier material to The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt, CNN’s Carl Bernstein, National Public Radio, McClatchy news service and others, he said during his deposition in the libel case.

But his most momentous meeting was with Ken Bensinger of BuzzFeed. In Washington during the Christmastime holidays, he let Mr. Bensinger read the dossier. He then stepped away.

The reporter took cellphone photos. They ended up on Jan. 10, 2017, on BuzzFeed’s website, forever changing political history.

“He said he wanted to read them, he asked me if he could take photos of them on his — I assume it was an iPhone,” Mr. Kramer told the court in a libel case brought against BuzzFeed by a Russian entrepreneur.

U.S. District Court in Miami unsealed court files Thursday, marking the first time Mr. Kramer’s version of events has become public.

“I asked him not to. He said he was a slow reader, he wanted to read it,” Mr. Kramer testified. “So I said, you know, I got a phone call to make, and I had to go to the bathroom so I’ll let you be, because I don’t read well when people are looking at me breathing down my neck. And so I left him to read for 20, 30 minutes.”

“Were you aware that he had taken pictures?” an attorney asked.

“Not until January 10th,” he answered. “I was shocked.”

A rattled Mr. Kramer asked Mr. Bensinger to take down the dossier and leave his name out of it. Mr. Kramer was identified as the dossier leaker during the libel case’s discovery.

Mr. Kramer said Mr. Steele told him, “This wasn’t supposed to happen this way.” The Wall Street Journal exposed Mr. Steele as the author, sending him into hiding for weeks.

The McCain aide later amended his testimony. In a declaration, he said he had no problem with giving BuzzFeed a copy and provided copies to other journalists.

Mr. Kramer said he was pressed by Mr. Steele, who compiled the dossier, to spread the anti-Trump information to a variety of reporters. Mr. Steele himself was working reporters from London in his attempt to get the FBI to zero in on Mr. Trump before he took office.

Mr. Steele’s 35-page dossier claimed there was an “extensive conspiracy” between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence to interfere in the 2016 election via computer hacking. That charge has not been borne out as special counsel Robert Mueller has not charged any Trump-related person with colluding with Russians to affect the election.

The dossier became a rally cry by liberals and Democrats, especially Rep. Adam B. Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and now its chairman. He went on to read the unconfirmed dossier charges into the committee record in March 2017 as he vouched for Mr. Steele.

Mr. Steele was hired by the investigative firm Fusion GPS with money from the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Republicans believe Mr. Steele’s work is a hoax and possibly Kremlin disinformation. The dossier explicitly cites Russian officials as sources for some of its more salacious details. Democrats rarely refer to the document.

Mr. Kramer told the story of how he came to own a dossier copy.

A Steele associate, Andrew Wood, told him and Mr. McCain about Mr. Steele’s explosive accusations during a conference in Canada.

The next step was for Mr. Kramer to travel to London that fall, rendezvous with Mr. Steele, read his claims and report back to the senator.

Mr. Kramer read the dossier at Mr. Steele’s home outside London. Mr. Steele said the allegations were “raw intelligence” that needed to be confirmed.

“He said that he had been hired to look into Donald Trump’s dealings in Russia, and that in the course of doing so, he came upon material that indicated that there were close ties between the Trump Campaign and various Russians, and the possibility of compromising material on Mr. Trump,” Mr. Kramer testified.

“He explained that what was produced … needed to be corroborated and verified. He himself did not feel that he was in a position to vouch for everything that was produced in this,” he said.

Mr. Kramer said Mr. Steele disclosed his Russian sources to him. He didn’t disclose them during the deposition.

By November, Mr. Steele sent a secure message to Washington that included 16 of the dossier’s 17 memos. Mr. McCain then handed the material to then-FBI Director James B. Comey. By that time, the FBI had obtained the information directly from Mr. Steele and from operatives of the Clinton campaign.

Mr. Steele, whose mission was to sink the Trump campaign and then his presidency, believed Mr. McCain’s involvement would give “the FBI additional prod to take this seriously,” Mr. Kramer testified.

“I shared with [Mr. McCain] the document, and he took some time to review it, he asked me what I thought he should do, and I suggested that he provide a copy of it to the Director of the FBI and the Director of the CIA,” Mr. Kramer testified.

The libel lawsuit was brought by Russian businessman Aleksej Gubarev. Mr. Steele accused him of conducting the hacking into Democratic Party computers — a charge the Russian denied from the start.

Mr. Steele said the charge came from unsolicited information and that he tried to verify it on an internet site called CNN iReport. Mr. Steele testified that he relied on an article on XBT, Mr. Gubarev’s firm, published on July 28, 2009.

Mr. Steele was asked by Mr. Gubarev’s attorney, Evan Fray-Witzer, “Do you understand that they have no connection to any CNN reporters”?

“I do not,” he answered.

The attorney added, “Do you understand that CNN iReports are or were nothing more than any random individuals’ assertions on the internet?”

Mr. Steele: “I obviously presume that if it is on a CNN site that it has some kind of CNN status.”

Mr. Gubarev’s lawsuit was dismissed by Judge Ursula Ungaro, who ruled that BuzzFeed was entitled to report on the dossier under the First Amendment’s free press guarantees — thus shielding it from U.S. libel laws — because the FBI used it in its investigation.
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GOPUSA, Washington Times is edited by Dr. Bobby Eberle. He is a conservative political analyst, writer, commentator and founder of GOPUSA.com as well as an athlete and former aerospace engineer.

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Tags: GOPUSA, John McCain’s Aide, Spread Steele Dossier, Around DC, During Trump Transition To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

There's a Word for It

by Paul Jacob, Contributing Author: The word is “effrontery.”

With shameless boldness, two gentlemen testifying for mandatory “National Service” at a recent hearing of the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service pitched the notion that social dysfunction and directionlessness among the young could be best solved by forcing them to work for government for a year.

I indicated the effrontery — the maximum chutzpah — in a video last weekend. But it is more than “just” the case that forcing labor on people in a free society is a whopping internal contradiction — we can only be free if we are unfree, and we should push servitude for freedom’s sake? It is also astoundingly presumptuous.

Consider the context.

The rap about the young is that they inhabit a gimme-gimme culture, always taking, never giving back. But when was the last time the two parties in Congress took a stand on a difficult issue that required doing something inconvenient, like saying no to their own constituencies? When did they decide not to spend to please their various political interests because going further into debt was perilous for the entire nation?

Spending other people’s money is easy, the ultimate “gimme.”

Meanwhile, Congress bogs down in pointless partisan “investigations,” idiotic virtue signaling, and defense of their own wayward members.

It is absurd to suggest that experts in Washington, D.C., could “fix” a generation of young people, since official Washington is far more dysfunctional than the citizens they think they can remold in their craven image.

Effrontery, indeed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Paul Jacob (@Common_Sense_PJ ) 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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