Pelosi’s Rigged Game and Hyde-Rodino Rules for Fairness

by Newt Gingrich: If you want proof that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats are creating a rigged game that sets up a coup to destroy the President, simply look at the last two legitimate impeachment efforts — in 1973 and 1998.

Both Democratic Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter Rodino in 1973 and Republican Judicial Committee Chairman Henry Hyde in 1998 set a standard for fairness and operated with a judicial temperament of seeking the truth rather than maximizing partisan advantage.

In 1973, Rodino set the gold standard for fairness. The rights of the minority were protected. The American people’s right to know what was going on was protected. Chairman Rodino himself set a standard for fairness and seriousness as a congressman exercising constitutional oversight.

In fact, the Rodino Rules for bipartisanship were widely considered so fair and legitimate that when we were faced with a Special Counsel Report charging that President Clinton had committed 11 potentially impeachable offenses, our initial response was bipartisan. Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt and I held a joint press conference announcing that we had agreed the entire report should be published so the American people could make up their own minds.

Compare their behavior with the wild lies Chairman Adam Schiff has been telling for two years – first about the Russian collusion hoax and now about the Ukrainian absurdity. If you read the opening statements of Rodino and Hyde, and then look at the profoundly dishonest, totally made up, and entirely false opening statement of Schiff, you can see the difference between people who are trying to uphold the rule of law and people who seek to destroy a president at any cost.

The result of these two very different approaches can be seen in the voting pattern in the House. In November 1973, the House voted to fund the investigation into President Nixon on a bipartisan 367-51 vote. By February 1974, everyone was so convinced that Rodino was being fair and non-partisan that the resolution to conduct a formal investigation passed 410-4.

When we were faced with the Starr Report we were in a more polarized environment. The Clinton team had concluded that they had to run a very partisan defense. Despite the intense efforts of James Carville and others to polarize the Democrats, we continued to push with Henry Hyde in an open way.

The result of our openness was that a substantial number of Democrats continued to vote with us on the procedures despite intense pressure from the White House and outside groups. In September 1998, the House voted to release the Starr Report by 363-63 (9 failed to vote). Among Democrats, 138 voted to proceed in a fair way and only 63 voted against investigating President Clinton.

Think about that. In 1998 we carried House Democrats by better than 2:1 to investigate President Clinton.

In the current atmosphere – with the dishonest, one-sided rigged game, and indeed, an obvious liar as chair of the investigation – can you imagine two-thirds of the House Republicans voting with Pelosi and Schiff for a witch hunt conducted under totally partisan rules?

Everyone who is interested in better understanding how fair people used judicial standards and basic fairness in 1973 and 1998 should read former Congressman and current Judge Jim Rogan’s personal history of the process in an important book: Catching Our Flag: Behind the Scenes of a Presidential Impeachment.

It will make crystal clear that the current partisan actions are a complete sham.
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Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) 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. This commentary was shared via Gingrich Productions.

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Tags: Newt Gingrich, commentary, Pelosi’s Rigged Game, Hyde-Rodino, Rules for Fairness To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Hillaryland

by Daniel Greenfield: They say that Disneyland is the happiest place on earth, but Hillaryland must be the saddest.

What is Hillaryland? It’s a social network “aiming to connect all the people who’ve worked for Hillary Rodham Clinton during her more than 40 years of public service.” It’s run by “volunteers” and offers a plain white $15 Hillaryland tote bag which it claims that it’s selling “at cost” and “not for profit”.

How the might have fallen.

Once upon a time, Hillary and her people gaslit the country on the big issues. Now they’ve gone from Benghazi to trying to convince a declining handful of suckers that $15 is the cost price for a tote bag.

Hillaryland is the sad successor to Clintonworld networks like the Clinton Foundation which connected world leaders, foreign criminals and a prospective president. The alumni network is now a joke. The Clintons will never hold public office again. Hillaryland isn’t an alumni network, it’s a political leper colony run by “volunteers” too dumb to realize that the S.S. Slick Willy will never rise again.

Hillaryland promotes such promising ventures as Nasty Women Serve which holds an annual Hillary Rodham Clinton Day of Service. The highest level of service in Hillaryland is hosting a “house party” on November 8, which is National Hillary Day, also known as the day of Hillary’s downfall and defeat. The party will have, “in the true spirit of HRC — some Chardonnay” and will go on “until the wine runs out”.

Only Nazi war criminals in Argentina have sadder and more pathetic reunions than Hillary minions.

Nazis and potheads have 4/20 to get high. Hillary fans have 11/8 to get drunk on white wine. And both of them even blame the Russians for the defeat of their miserably corrupt murderous regimes.

And where’s Madame Fuhrer?

Hillary stopped by the Venice Biennale, the umbrella organization that includes the Venice Film Festival, allegedly a favorite stalking ground of old Clinton pal, Harvey Weinstein, to attend the exhibit of “HILLARY: The Hillary Clinton Emails."

For an hour, Hillary sat in a replica of the Oval Office pretending to read her own emails as part of an art project. To make her humiliation more complete, HILLARY was staged at the Despar Teatro Italia, a former theater turned into a supermarket. Confused shoppers watched a former American presidential contender pretending to be the President of the United States in an Italian supermarket.

There’s your chicken, your canned tomatoes and your pasta. Upstairs is a crazy lady who thinks she’s the President of the United States. Go easy on the chardonnay, you don’t want to end up like her.

Even Lady Macbeth went mad with more dignity than Hillary Clinton.

The Oval Office recreated in an Italian supermarket is only the second most famous piece of eponymous Hillary art. The National Museum of Women in the Arts also features a 6-foot-tall painting of a black fabric swatch named Hillary gifted to it by Heather and Tony Podesta. Heather and Tony have since split up. And Tony, a Hillarylander, got caught up in the Russia scandal and shut down his lobbying operation.

Sic transit gloria clintonmundi.

Hillaryland and the Italian supermarket presidency cast a dim light on Hillary’s prospects. What do you do when you run out of Chardonnay and ways to market yourself to an audience that no longer cares?

Audiences turned up their noses at Bill and Hillary’s theatrical appearances. The real Bill and Hillary flopped and so did fictional versions of them played by John Lithgow and Laurie Metcalf in Hillary and Clinton. Everyone, including Italian supermarket shoppers, want Hillary to go away. But she won’t go.

After churning out way too many books, Hillary is back with The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience. This one is supposedly co-written with Chelsea, but just sounds like a revamp of Chelsea’s collection of She Persisted books which seem to have the same premise and theme.

This just means another Hillary Clinton book tour that nobody asked for and nobody actually wants.

Nevertheless, Hillary's desperation tour will still be coming to such world-renowned locations as the Women's Club of Ridgewood, NJ (no books will be signed), the United Methodist Church in Denver, CO, and the San Ramon Valley High School gym. Next stop, a random Appleby’s in Great Forks.

What’s the point of all this?

Jeffrey Epstein is dead, Ed Buck is in jail, and Harvey Weinstein is tapped out. The money has to come from somewhere. Even if it means sitting dead-eyed and drunk in a high school gym while Chelsea launches into an enthusiastic explanation of how Rachel Carson made the world safe for malaria.

But it’s not as if the Clintons really need the money. Their greed is as compulsive as all their vices.

Hillary Clinton loathes other people, but is incapable of existing without them. She can’t do what every other contender did and go away because she has nowhere to go. There’s a mansion in New York, but it has too many mirrors. And at night, she might start wandering and muttering, “Out, damned spot.”

And she won’t be talking about the neighbor’s dog who committed suicide in a local park.

Desperate and malicious, Hillary’s restless spirt wanders the nation and the world, haunting random supermarkets, gyms and colleges. To paraphrase her inspiration, Karl, a specter is wandering D.C. That’s where Hillary showed up to George Washington U to claim that she only lost Wisconsin because of Republican voter suppression. It had nothing to do with her failure to campaign in Wisconsin.

Meanwhile, only 300 people turned out to hear her latest set of pathetic excuses and lies.

“I was the first person who ran for president in more than 50 years without the protection of the Voting Rights Act,” she whined.

The Voting Rights Act had been put into place to stop Democrat voter suppression in segregated states in 1965. Not to protect Hillary. It had nothing to do with why a rich white Democrat lost Wisconsin.

Who actually invited Hillary to rant at GWU? Who else? Hillary Clinton. In Defense of American Democracy, the conference at which Hillary spoke was sponsored by Onward Together. Her own group.

Hillary told attendees that the crisis caused by her defeat requires "national soul searching."

Would you have "risked arrest to demand votes for women or bled on the Edmund Pettus Bridge to demand voting rights for all?" she demanded.

Why would anyone get arrested or bleed for Hillary? They’re not even coming to hear her speak.

Just like they didn’t bother turning out to vote for her.

Hillary wants to fight a war until the last Hillarylander, but nobody would sacrifice a bunion for her, let alone their life and liberty to see that the flag of Hillandia flies proudly over a burning White House.

That’s what happens when you live in your own imaginary echo chamber of wealth and power.

Hillary claimed that Republicans had prevented American Indians on reservations from voting for her. But maybe they were just saving their votes for Elizabeth Warren, the first Cherokee president.

The only thing democracy needs defending from is Hillary Clinton.

The 2016 election was not hijacked by the Russians, Facebook or UFOs. It was nearly hijacked by Clinton operatives who spread false claims that Trump was a Russian agent that her campaign manufactured and paid for, and then passed along to government officials who used it as a pretext to spy on the opposition. Hillary began her rise with Watergate and ended her career by trying to recreate Watergate.

And now it’ll be on to the next stop in her endless self-humiliation world tour.

Hillary’s election hijacking failed and the only way she’ll ever be president is in an Italian supermarket.
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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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Why Impeachment Is NOT Merited

by Ben Shapiro: President Donald Trump is a bull in a china shop. He says inadvisable things to inadvisable people, mainly because he is inadvisable—literally no one can advise him.

The vast majority of things Trump says are ignored or brushed off by those who understand the difference between bloviation and manipulation. Still, Trump’s constant stream of noise can make it difficult to tell the difference between the two.

So when an intelligence community whistleblower came forward with an allegation that, on a call with the Ukrainian president, Trump proposed a quid pro quo with the Ukrainian government—release of military aid in exchange for a Ukrainian investigation into Joe Biden and son Hunter Biden—the allegation didn’t appear absurd on its face.

The timeline, after all, seemed to match up: Trump allegedly suspended military aid to Ukraine personally a week before talking with the Ukrainian president, only to release the aid after the holdup was met with public scrutiny.

Then, the Trump administration released a transcript of the call, in which Trump used the typical New York real estate wheeler-dealer language of favors: favors related to investigations surrounding CrowdStrike, the firm tasked with analyzing the hack of the Democratic National Committee in 2016, an investigation that concluded with allegations of Russian interference; favors related to helping Rudy Giuliani investigate the origins of the 2016 Trump-Russia investigation; favors related to investigating the Bidens. The theory seemed to be gaining credibility.

Then it seemed to fall apart. It turned out that the Ukrainian government apparently had no clue that Trump was even withholding military aid—and without such a quid, there couldn’t be a pro quo. The Ukrainian president publicly proclaimed that Trump hadn’t pressured him.

The whistleblower report turned out to be thirdhand gossip rather than firsthand information. And allegations of a cover-up imploded as the Trump administration released information ranging from the transcript to the whistleblower report itself.

And so, Democrats have begun to move the goalposts. Now Democrats are claiming that the State Department is engaged in obstruction, just minutes after claiming that Trump’s Department of Justice had engaged in obstruction. Democrats allege that Trump’s behavior—without allegations of criminal conduct—is enough to justify impeachment.

Now, after Trump predictably took to Twitter to rail against the whistleblower and the Democrats, Democrats claim his behavior amounts to “witness intimidation.”

As the grounds for the impeachment inquiry broaden, it’s becoming clear that the Democrats’ enthusiasm for impeachment outweighed their supporting evidence. They leapt before they looked—and now they’re trying to backfill an impeachment inquiry that must end with an impeachment vote or lay bare the emptiness of the original attacks themselves.

Perhaps Democrats will come up with something. That’s always possible, given the amount of leaking and loose talk around the White House. But barring some sort of cataclysmic revelation, the impeachment effort seems to be stalling out.

And based on the current evidence, it should.
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Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) is host of "The Ben Shapiro Show" and editor-in-chief of DailyWire.com. He is The New York Times best-selling author of "Bullies." He is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, and lives with his wife and two children in Los Angeles. H/T The Daily Signal.

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Ten Hours Of Testimony, Pelosi's Charade, Trump & China, Values Voter Summit

by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Ten Hours Of Testimony
Kurt Volker, the former U.S. envoy to Ukraine, testified on Capitol Hill yesterday for nearly 10 hours. He was one of the first witnesses deposed in the House Democrats' impeachment inquiry. (More on that below.)

I'm pretty sure that if our brave men and women at Gitmo interrogated a jihadist for ten hours, the left would be yelling that it was torture. But that didn't stop Democrats from interrogating Volker for ten hours.

And, of course, they did it behind closed doors, presumably because they were touching on classified subjects. Or maybe they just didn't want the American people to hear what Volker had to say. I suspect it was the latter because Republicans came out of the hearing unfazed.

Rep. Jim Jordan, the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told reporters that "not one thing [Volker] said comports with any of the Democrats' impeachment narrative. Not one thing."

Rep. Adam Schiff left the hearing and told reporters that he had no comment. Schiff's silence speaks volumes. If Volker's testimony had been damaging to Trump, Schiff would have had plenty to say.

Pelosi's Charade
The White House is expected to notify Speaker Nancy Pelosi that it will provide nothing in response to the Democrats' subpoena blitz until there is an actual vote by the full House authorizing formal impeachment proceedings.

Rep. Doug Collins, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, is also telling a federal court that demands by the Judiciary Committee to access grand jury testimony from Robert Mueller's Russia investigation are illegal because the House has not yet authorized formal impeachment proceedings.

As Andrew McCarthy, Mark Levin, Newt Gingrich and others have pointed out, there is no impeachment process going on right now. There is no impeachment process because the speaker of the House refuses to call a vote on the rules governing the process as has been done in every other formal impeachment.

What we have is a political charade where Nancy Pelosi is making up her own rules as she goes along.

The purpose of this charade is to damage the president, demoralize his supporters and scare independent voters into thinking there is something seriously wrong with the Trump Administration.

By avoiding the vote, Pelosi is also shielding 31 House Democrats who hold seats Trump won in 2016 from having to vote on impeachment, which is really a vote to reverse the 2016 election.

The other advantage for Pelosi is that House Republicans don't have the benefit of additional tools that would help them defend the president during a formal impeachment process.

Trump, Biden & China
Yesterday, President Trump said that China should be investigating Hunter Biden's $1.5 billion business deal. Of course, the media immediately went into a complete meltdown. And I know some Republicans were frustrated he said that.

But the reason he said it is very important. He cannot allow the left and the media to convince the American people that it is somehow against the law for the president to pursue corruption that has occurred in the past when those accused are political opponents of the president.

If weak-kneed Republicans allow that idea to become accepted as fact, then the Deep State probe being conducted by Attorney General William Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham must be ended immediately.

Barr and Durham are looking at how the Obama Administration weaponized our intelligence agencies, along with foreign intelligence services, to surveil the Trump campaign and accept dirt from foreign sources in order to take down the duly elected president of the United States.

Consider this: If Joe Biden does poorly in Iowa next year and drops out of the race, would the president then be allowed to investigate corruption in the Biden family? The left's absurd narrative suggests it would be okay to investigate Biden then, but not now. In what world does that make any sense?

Hillary Clinton appears to be deeply involved in the 2016 conspiracy to take down the president with false information. She is not running for anything yet. Can the president investigate Hillary and whether she was working with Brennen, Clapper, the Obama White House and Ukraine?

Candidates routinely run for office on the platform of cleaning up corruption. Trump made "draining the swamp" a central element of his 2016 campaign. It's a very popular position to take.

But are we now supposed to believe that candidates who vow to clean up corruption can't seek information from foreign countries where the corruption extended if the people under investigation happen to be political opponents?

When it comes to Hunter Biden's business dealings, there are a lot questions that demand answers.

For example, Sen. Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, wants to know why the Obama Administration signed off on a deal involving Hunter Biden, Chris Heinz (John Kerry's stepson) and a Chinese government-owned company that had previously stolen technology related to the newest generation of stealth fighters.

Can Fox Be Fixed?
As you probably know, the president has complained recently about what he has seen lately on Fox News. I have also heard from many supporters who are unhappy with the messaging on the supposedly "fair and balanced" network.

While some hosts including my friends Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson remain strong conservatives, it is getting increasingly difficult to distinguish the difference between Fox's daytime hosts and other left-wing networks.

But recently the dean of conservative media, the man who broke the left's stranglehold over the media, Rush Limbaugh blasted Fox, saying, "You know, Fox really ought to change the name of the network from the Fox News Channel to the Fox Never Trumper Network."

Going Strong
Today's obs report shows that the economy is still going strong even as pundits and left-wing politicians keep hoping for a recession. The unemployment rate fell to a 50-year low of just 3.5%. Job growth in September came in at 139,000 new jobs. That was slightly short of expectations, but the previous two months were revised upward by 45,000.

What a contrast: Job creation under Trump versus every progressive/socialist seeking to replace him and their radical job-killing ideas.

Values Voter Summit
The 2019 Values Voter Summit is next week, October 11th - 13th. This year's Summit features an incredible lineup, including:

• Dr. Bill Bennett
• Ken Blackwell
• Ambassador Sam Brownback
• Brigitte Gabriel
• Rep. Louie Gohmert
• Sebastian Gorka
• David Horowitz
• Dana Loesch
• Rep. Mark Meadows
• Eric Metaxas
• Lt. Col. Oliver North
• James O'Keefe
• Dennis Prager
• Rep. Steve Scalise
• Todd Starnes
• And many, many more!

In addition, there will be a gala celebration honoring Pastor Andrew Brunson.

My non-profit organization, American Values, is hosting a special luncheon Saturday, October 12th.

Seats are going fast, so be certain to reserve yours now at valuesvotersummit.org.

I look forward to seeing you there!
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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, Ten Hours Of Testimony, Pelosi's Charade, Trump & China, Values Voter Summit To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Is China the Country of the Future?

by Patrick Buchanan: Under Xi Jinping, the mask of benign giant has slipped and the menacing face of 21st-century China is being revealed, for its people, its neighbors, and the world to see.

With the fall of the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek, the defeat of his armies and the flight to Formosa, that was the question of the hour in 1949. And no one demanded to know more insistently than the anti-Communist Congressman John F. Kennedy:

“Whatever share of the responsibility was Roosevelt’s and whatever share was (General George) Marshall’s, the vital interest of the United States in the independent integrity of China was sacrificed, and the foundation was laid for the present tragic situation in the Far East.”

Tragic indeed was the situation. The most populous nation on earth, for which America had risked and fought a war with the Japanese Empire, had been lost to Stalin’s empire.

A year after Peking fell to Mao Zedong, Chinese armies stormed into Korea to drive the Americans back from the Yalu River and back across the 38th parallel, threatening to throw them off the Peninsula.

In the seven decades since October 1949, millions of Chinese have perished in ideological pogroms like the “Great Leap Forward” of the ’50s, and the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” during which President Nixon came to China.

Yet in terms of national and state power over those 70 years, and especially in the last 30 when America threw open her markets to Chinese goods and Beijing ran up $4 trillion to $5 trillion in trade surpluses with the U.S., a new China arose. It was on display this week in Tiananmen Square.

The China of Xi Jinping boasts land- and submarine-based missiles and bombers that provide a strategic deterrent against the United States. Beijing’s conventional forces on land, sea, and in air and space rival any on earth.

Since Y2K, its economy has swept past that of Italy, France, Britain, Germany and Japan to become the world’s second largest. China is now the world’s premier manufacturing power.

Yet, under Xi Jinping, the mask of benign giant has slipped and the menacing face of 21st-century China is being revealed, for its people, its neighbors, and the world to see.

The Uighurs of west China are being forced into re-education camps to be cured of their tribalist, nationalist and Islamic beliefs. Christians are being persecuted. Tibetans are being replaced in their homeland by Han Chinese. The Communist Party’s role and rule as the font of ideological, political and moral truth is being elevated and imposed.

The Chinese still hold land seized from India 50 years ago. China now claims as sovereign territory virtually all of a South China Sea, which encompasses territorial waters of six nations. It has begun building air, naval and military bases on rocks and reefs belonging to Manila.

China has warned foreign warships to stay out of the Taiwan Strait and has built up its force on the mainland opposite the island, warning that any move by Taiwan to declare independence would be regarded as an act of war. It claims the Japanese-held Senkaku Islands.

In its Belt and Road projects to tie China to Central and South Asia and Europe, China has lent billions to build ports, only to take possession of the facilities when local regimes default on their loans.

But not all is going well for the regime on its 70th birthday.

The people of Hong Kong, who are surely being cheered by many on the mainland of China, have been protesting for months, demanding the liberty and independence for which American patriots fought in our Revolution, not Mao’s revolution.

Nor are the newly prosperous Chinese people fools. They relish the rising power of China and the respect their country commands in the world, but they know it was not Marx, Lenin or Mao who produced their prosperity. It was capitalism. They cannot but be uneasy seeing the freedoms and benefits they enjoy being dissipated in a trade war with the Americans and the new repression issuing from Beijing.

Among the epochal blunders America has committed since the end of the Cold War, three stand out.

The first was our disastrous plunge into the Middle East to create regimes oriented to the West. The second was the expansion of NATO to the front porch of Russia, driving the largest nation on earth, and one of its most formidable nuclear powers, into the arms of China.

The third was to throw open America’s markets to Chinese goods on favorable terms, which led to the enrichment and empowerment of a regime whose long-term threat to U.S. interests and American values is as great as was that of the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

The question for America’s statesmen is how to cope with the rising challenge of China while avoiding a war that would be a calamity for all mankind. Patience, prudence and perseverance commend themselves.

But the first necessity is to toss out the ideological liberalism which proclaims that David Ricardo’s free trade dogmatism is truth for all nations at all times and that John Locke’s ideas apply to all cultures and countries.
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Patrick Buchanan (@PatrickBuchanan) is currently a blogger, 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.

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Angry Planet

by Kerby Anderson, Contributing Author: Why so much anger, fear, and despair? That’s what you see at environmental demonstrations, and that’s what you hear in speeches from environmentalists and politicians. The future is doom and gloom. And we’re the guilty party.

Warnings about global warming and climate change are taking on a religious flavor. A few months ago in a Breakpoint commentary, John Stonestreet said some of the rhetoric came across like the sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” He pointed to some of the apocalyptic excerpts from Bill McKibben’s book, Falter.

If you want to know why people are scared, look at some of McKibben’s scary predictions. By the end of this century, the oceans may become so hot as to stop oxygen production by phytoplankton. We would lose two-thirds of the Earth’s oxygen resulting in mass mortality of animals and humans.

A thawed reindeer carcass in Siberia released anthrax into nearby water and soil. That infected reindeer and some humans. This explains why I’ve been hearing people afraid that melting ice might release smallpox and the bubonic plague into the world.

He argues that melting ice sheets could trigger more earthquakes. And he wonders if the new seawater might start to bend the Earth’s crust. All of this is due to increased CO2 in the atmosphere. But he also warns that we might not be able to think straight because cognitive ability declines in higher carbon dioxide levels.

All of this sounds like something out of the book of Revelation, or perhaps we should call it, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Planet.” But these are exaggerated scenarios based on lots of speculation and are designed to drive people to immediate political action.

As Christians, we are called to exercise good stewardship of the creation. And we should trust in God’s protection and not fall prey to these fearful scenarios.
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Kerby Anderson (@kerbyanderson) is a radio talk show host heard on numerous stations via the Point of View Network (@PointofViewRTS) and is endorsed by Dr. Bill Smith, Editor, ARRA News Service.

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Capital Punishment . . .

. . . The Left has planed to impeach President Trump since before he was elected. It is impeachment in search of a crime.

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

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Twitter Abuse

by Paul Jacob, Contributing Author: “Look,” tweeted Sen. Kamala Harris, “let’s be honest. . . .”

When a politician talks about being honest — presumably “for a change” — it’s gonna be a doozy.

President Trump’s “Twitter account should be suspended.”

“What?” the reader will likely object, “Trump’s Twitter account is the second-best thing about the his presidency!”

The reader wouldn’t be wrong.

We may disagree about the actual best thing, but the presidential Twitter account is indeed one of the things that makes the current chaos bearable. Sure, it is the cause of much of the chaos, but, well, we take our chuckles where we can get them. At least Trump’s tweets are not articulated in standard insiderese.

So, what did Trump tweet that so upset the former California prosecutor?

This: he had come to the “conclusion that what is taking place is not an impeachment, it is a COUP, intended to take away the Power of the People, their VOTE, their Freedoms, their Second Amendment, Religion, Military, Border Wall, and their God-given rights as a Citizen of The United States of America!”

Harris publicly called upon Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO, to “do something” about the tweet.

He did nothing.

Understandably.

Suspending the account of the United States President because a failing opposition candidate was offended by typical Trumpian hyperbole would br idiotic. Mr. Dorsey has a lot to answer for, sure. But complete and utter idiocy? Not that.

For he knows something: Donald Trump has it within his powers to command every federal agency to cease using Twitter. Trump himself could switch to Gab or Minds or even MeWe — perhaps he should.

The federal government is not required to use a particular social media platform over another, is it?

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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Under President Trump Administration Unemployment Rate hits 50-year Low ...

. . . at 3.5 Percent as 6.1 Million Jobs Created Since 2017
by Rick Manning: Almost 1 million more people are employed in the past two months in the household survey, with the unemployment rate now at a 50-year low at 3.5 percent, debunking the political and financial punditry who played Chicken Little just two months ago crying, recession, recession, recession.

A total of 6.1 million jobs created since Jan. 2017 when President Trump was sworn in. With more people employed in America than at any time in history, and fewer unemployed at any time since the year 2000.

It is no wonder that the Democrats are searching the globe for reasons to stop Donald Trump's presidency, because America's economy is strong and they can't run on issues that affect the well-being of the average American.
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Rick Manning is President of Americans for Limited Government.

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The Party of ‘Impeach!’

Larry Elder

by Larry Elder: The Democrats’ purported outrage about President Donald Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky might be taken seriously by the Republicans were it not for the Democrats’ drive to oust Trump from the moment he won the presidency.

CNN’s Van Jones, with zero proof, attributed Trump’s victory to “whitelash.” Trump received 57% of the white vote, actually a lower percentage of the white vote than the 59% received by Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate in 2012. In 2008, Democrat Barack Obama received a greater percentage of the white vote than John Kerry did four years earlier. Obama also received 95% of the black vote. None dared call it “blacklash.”

Stunned, angry and bewildered by Trump’s win, some Democrats urged the Electoral College to refuse to certify his victory. In a Washington Post op-ed, John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, said, “The (Obama) administration should brief members of the electoral college on the extent and manner of Russia’s interference in our election before they vote on Dec. 19 (2016).”

Nearly 70 Democratic lawmakers vowed to boycott Trump’s inauguration. Nearly a dozen Democrats refused to attend Trump’s first State of the Union address. In explaining his refusal to attend, Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., said, “This is a presidency that has been built on racism, stupidity and lies, which has already wasted enough of America’s time and I will not waste any more of mine.”

Trump’s refusal to turn over his tax returns provoked claims of corruption. Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., said: “What’s unprecedented is (Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin) refusing to comply with our lawful, Article I request. What’s unprecedented is a Justice Department that again sees its role as being bodyguard to the executive and not the rule of law. What’s unprecedented is an entire federal government working in concert to shield a corrupt President from legal accountability.”

There was the bill introduced in April 2017 by Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., with 67 co-sponsors, to determine whether to invoke the 25th Amendment, under which a president can be removed if “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” About his bill, Raskin told Vanity Fair last month: “It is still very much on my mind and the time will come. I don’t think of it as an alternative remedy for impeachment. They address different problems. The core of the concern of impeachment is high crimes and misdemeanors committed by the president. The core problem addressed by the 25th Amendment is the mental or physical incapacity of the president.”

Then there was the outcry over Trump’s payments to former mistresses. About the payments, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said: “The president is a criminal. … This criminal must be brought up by the Congress of the United States for impeachment.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said from “day one” Trump committed and impeachable for allegedly violating the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits all persons holding federal office from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” Last year, Ocasio-Cortez said about Trump: “I think that there are serious grounds in violations of the emoluments clause from day one. I think that is, first and foremost, one of the basic elements and violations. And then, once again, it’s hard to predict what’s going to happen over the next few months. There are one or more investigations happening. But I think from day one we have had violations of the emoluments clause with the presidency.”

In July, Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, wanted Trump impeached for his “racist tweets” that attacked several Democratic freshman House members known as “the squad.” Green tweeted: “(Trump’s) racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and Islamophobia can no longer be tolerated or ignored. We must impeach.”

One can only marvel at how, with a straight face, Democrats call Trump “racist” while embracing as “kingmaker” the race card-hustling Rev. Al Sharpton and refusing to denounce anti-Semitic Minister Louis Farrakhan.

Of course, for 2 1/2 years, special counsel Robert Mueller investigated allegations of Russian “collusion,” and he drilled a dry hole. On the issue of obstruction of justice, he punted. Before the Mueller report came out, House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., claimed there was “direct evidence (of collusion) but … also abundant circumstantial evidence.”

If Congress impeaches Trump, the Senate will not convict. Meanwhile, all this Ukraine business just places attention on Joe’s Biden’s son. Hunter Biden received a lucrative monthly fee to sit on the board of director a Ukrainian energy company, despite his lack of energy expertise or his inability to speak the local language. Joe Biden’s candidacy will be irreparably harmed, increasing the odds that hard-left Elizabeth Warren will win the Democratic nomination. Trump, post-impeachment, can credibly call himself a victim of a political vendetta and ride that narrative to victory in 2020.

Well played, Speaker Pelosi.
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Larry Elder (@larryelder) is a best-selling author and radio talk-show host, an American lawyer, writer and radio and television personality who is also known as the "Sage From South Central." To find out more about Larry Elder. Visit his website at LarryElder.com for list of other articles.

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The Whistleblower, Impeachment, and New York’s Orwellian Speech Policy

The whistleblower reportedly was in contact
with the staff of Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.,
chairman of the House Intelligence
Committee, before the complaint went public.

by Daniel Davis& Rachel del Guidice: New York City is banning the term “illegal alien”—and what’s more, it says it’ll fine you up to a quarter-million dollars if you say it. Today, we’ll discuss that situation with Heritage Foundation legal expert Hans von Spakovsky. We’ll also have him weigh in on the latest impeachment news, and whether foreign leaders’ staying at Trump International Hotel in D.C. is a problem.

We also cover these stories:

• President Donald Trump urges Ukraine and China to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.
• House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy asks Speaker Nancy Pelosi to stop impeachment proceedings until she answers key questions.
• A doctor in England who lost his job after refusing to use transgender pronouns also loses his legal case.

The Daily Signal podcast can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at letters@dailysignal.com. Enjoy the show!

Daniel Davis: We’re joined now in the studio by Hans von Spakovsky. He’s a senior legal fellow here at The Heritage Foundation. Hans, thanks for being back on. 
Hans von Spakovsky: Sure, thanks for having me.

Davis: We have a lot that I want to get to today regarding a new hate speech policy in New York City, which you say violates the First Amendment, and you’ve written for that at The Daily Signal. Also, Congress getting up in arms about foreign leaders and wealthy business people staying at the Trump hotel in D.C., and whether that constitutes some kind of corruption or violation of the Constitution. But first, because impeachment is so fast-moving and there’s new information coming out, I want to start with that. We’ve been learning more about the Trump-Ukraine conversations, but the latest news is about Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Reports have emerged that his staff was actually in conversations with the whistleblower before the complaint went public. The minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, has now called for Schiff to step down as chairman because of that. Is this damning news about Schiff, that his staff was talking with the whistleblower? 

von Spakovsky: Yeah, I think it is, because what it does is it raises questions about whether this was really a legitimate complaint by an intelligence analyst over things that he thought were being done wrong and in the intelligence agency where he worked, or if he’s having all these discussions with the Democratic representative and his staff, who’s leading the impeachment charge. Was this a coordinated, biased, and partisan political complaint that was being filed for its value in the media and to help spur the impeachment process? It raises a lot of questions about the legitimacy of the actual whistleblower complaint.

Rachel del Guidice: President Trump initially called for the whistleblower to be revealed, although more recently he said that he thinks whistleblowers should be protected if their claims are in fact legitimate. Should this whistleblower’s identity be protected or not? 

von Spakovsky: Well, it’s kind of interesting. The whole purpose of the law is to protect your confidentiality, but the whistleblower didn’t seem to be concerned about members of Schiff’s staff knowing who he is. So if he was really worried, why would he do that? There’s a balancing act here. On the one hand, the whistleblower law is very important and there is a reason why it protects whistleblowers, so we can find out about fraud and government and things like that. But if this forms the basis of impeachment, fundamental requirements of due process require that the president and his lawyers be able to question the person making accusations against him. That’s why in any state and federal court in this land, you have the right to confront whoever is accusing you of wrongdoing. So if this gets to that point of the House about to approve articles of impeachment or if it gets to the Senate, I think the president should be given the right to confront his accuser.

Davis: Right, right. Well, something that the president has also mentioned is that the rules for whistleblowers were changed just days before this complaint went public, which raises real questions about who is this whistleblower and who is behind those rule changes. The previous rules were that you had to have firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in order to get that whistleblower status. The rule change says no, it can actually be secondhand or thirdhand information, basically just hearsay, and you can raise the complaint and get whistleblower status. What does that say to you? 

von Spakovsky: That also raises a lot of questions about the credibility of the inspector general for the intelligence agencies. What this is about is the form, the complaint form that you previously filled out, you had to assert you had firsthand knowledge. And all of a sudden the form was changed recently so that you could check that you either have firsthand knowledge and/or you have secondhand knowledge, which is considered hearsay. That’s the legal term for it. And of course, hearsay is not accepted in any state or federal court anywhere in the country. The inspector general is claiming that, “Oh well, we just changed that because we’ve always accepted secondhand information.” But that’s a little hard to believe. If that’s true, why did the form say you had to have firsthand knowledge? So again, that to me raises some questions about the credibility of the inspector general.

Davis: It’s been said that [former CIA Director John] Brennan, who was at the end of the Obama administration— 

von Spakovsky: Right.

Davis: —left a bunch of his people actually in the intelligence community as career people. Do you think that this could be one of them trying to cover themselves with whistleblower status and try to “get” the president? 

von Spakovsky: Well, look, we don’t know who the person is. So, of course that’s certainly a possibility. We don’t really know. The one thing I can say—this is from my prior experience in the federal government. I arrived at the start of the Bush administration, and I discovered—this happens all the time—that there were all these Clinton political appointees who had been squirreled away into career ranks inside the Justice Department. And, unfortunately, that’s the kind of thing that happens all the time. Those individuals, who I got to know, they basically did everything they could from their current career slot to stop the enforcement priorities, for example, of President Bush and to cause trouble by, for example, leaking stories to outlets like the Washington Post whenever it looked like the administration was going to do things that they didn’t agree with. They, frankly, were some of the most unethical lawyers I’ve ever had to deal with.

del Guidice: Hans, how far do you think this impeachment probe will get? We were talking just a few minutes before we got started here, and do you think this is going to be a situation sort of like the Russia collusion investigation was, where it’s kind of an ongoing thing until it dies down? Or do you think we’re going to see any kind of end to this? What is your forecast here? 

von Spakovsky: Boy, I really don’t know the answer to that. What I will say is we don’t know what we don’t know, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld. But particularly concentrating on the transcript of the phone call that the president had with the Ukrainian president—there’s nothing in that phone call that is a smoking gun. There’s nothing in that phone call that indicates the president violated any federal law, and I don’t see anything in that letter that would warrant impeachment of the president. Maybe there’s other stuff out there. Unless the Democrats can uncover real wrongdoing, serious misconduct by the president, I don’t see how they could justify approving articles of impeachment.

Davis: Shifting to a story out of New York, which you wrote about in The Daily Signal today, the city’s Human Rights Commission, which is not an elected body, has announced that it’s banning the term “illegal alien” from common business usage and threatening to fine people if they use the term. Tell us what this is about. 

von Spakovsky: Yeah. Not just a minor fine. Up to $250,000.

del Guidice: Whoa. 

von Spakovsky: It’s a lot, yeah. They’re banning the use of the term “illegal alien.” They even say the use of the word “alien” instead of “immigrant” is demeaning to illegal aliens.

Davis: But we’re not talking about just people passing on the street using the word, right? It’s like some kind of official capacity? 

von Spakovsky: Right, right. They have an ordinance in New York that, of course, bans discrimination by employers, by people who provide public housing—including, for example, landlords of apartments, hotels, etc. And they can be fined if they use those terms. Now, what’s so bizarre about this is that the term “alien” is the term used throughout federal immigration law. And the term “illegal alien” is not only used in specific federal statutes, but it’s the proper legal term that’s used in Supreme Court cases. So, in essence, New York is trying to say, “Your use of precise legal terminology is discriminatory and we’re going to fine you if you do that.” Like I said, I can’t think of a more fundamental violation of the First Amendment, besides just being totally absurd.

del Guidice: Beyond the official terminology piece, it also seems that this goes against free speech and the First Amendment. 

von Spakovsky: Yeah. 

del Guidice: Do you expect to see a lawsuit brought forth against the city? 

von Spakovsky: I would hope so. The thing about that is, it’s going to take somebody—either a company or a hotel—who’s brave enough to do that, because we all know that they’re probably going to suffer bad publicity because the political orthodoxy today, particularly of the kind of liberal media organizations that exist in New York City, is that, “Oh, you can’t use the word ‘illegal alien.’ You have to use ‘undocumented immigrant.'” Which is a euphemism that was created to hide what’s really going on, which is an alien who’s in the country illegally.

Davis: Yeah. The term kind of assumes that the only problem is you don’t have documents. 

von Spakovsky: Right.

Davis: That documents are just fake and arbitrary and you just need your document, just like the rest of us. 

 von Spakovsky: Right. Or you just don’t happen to have them with you when you’re out and about in the community. This is political correctness to the nth degree and it is just so fundamentally wrong.

Davis: So the city did try to say that this was limited guidance— 

von Spakovsky: Right. 

Davis: — saying that it only applies if you were intending to demean, humiliate, or offend someone. So limiting, are you convinced? 

von Spakovsky: No because, look, they say that in this guidance, which is very long, this legal guidance they’ve issued, but then you read other parts of it and they clearly believe that just the simple use of those words is demeaning '

Davis: Right. 

von Spakovsky: and humiliating. So that’s not really a limitation.

Davis: If you could ask them, can you give me an example of a usage of this term that would actually not be demeaning, in your opinion? 

von Spakovsky: I don’t think they could. 

Davis: Yeah. 

del Guidice: Shifting gears back to D.C., Democrats recently held a hearing that asked the question of whether Trump was in violation of the Constitution by letting foreign dignitaries, wealthy business owners, and others stay at the Trump International Hotel, which is a major five-star hotel near Capitol Hill. They’re saying that Trump partly owns the company that owns the hotel, so he might be influenced by people purchasing rooms there. And more importantly, he could be in violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution. What do you make of these claims?

von Spakovsky: They’re frivolous. I actually testified at the hearing and it shows you just how far gone folks in the House are that the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which you think would be worried about rebuilding interstate highways and bridges, instead they have a half-day hearing on the Trump hotel. The Trump hotel is one of only two five-star hotels in the city, according to Forbes. The GSA, General Services Administration, owns the building. It’s the Old Post Office Building and it was a dilapidated, run-down building. It was built in 1899, and they put it out for bids to redevelop it, and a Trump organization—of which Donald Trump at the time was a majority shareholder, but there were other shareholders, too—put in a bid. They won it in 2013. They rebuilt it.

Davis: During the heart of the Obama administration. 

von Spakovsky: Heart of the Obama administration. They rebuilt the hotel, the GSA, again during the Obama administration, and entered into a 60-year lease and the federal government went from losing $6 million a year trying to maintain this old property to being paid $3 million a year by the Trump Organization. When Trump became president, he transferred his interest from this company into a trust, so he doesn’t have any management control of anything about it. Here’s the claim that’s being made, the emoluments clauses—there are two of them, very obscure clauses—are clauses that say no federal official, including the president, can receive gifts, presents, or emolument from foreign governments, the federal government, or state government. Emoluments are considered compensation that you receive as you discharge your official duties. So, in other words, if the president signed some bill that provides foreign aid to some country in Africa, Africa can’t send him money saying, “Thank you very much for doing that.” Same thing with state government. If he signed some bill that’s going to distribute money to a state government, the state government can’t pay him anything above and beyond a salary.

Davis: Yeah. von Spakovsky: But emoluments don’t include the business of a president. A business where people are paying the fair market value 

Davis: Right. 

von Spakovsky: — for services in an open market. That’s not emoluments. And in fact, all you got to do is look back. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson kept running their plantations and farms and they sold their agricultural products abroad. What? Was that illegal emoluments? Oh, of course not. The most ridiculous part of this theory—remember you can’t get anything from state governments either—under the view that anything of value that a president gets is a prohibited emolument. Both Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan violated the monuments clause because they received pensions from their respective states from when they were governor while they were president.

Davis: Yeah. 

von Spakovsky: It’s just another way of going after the president. And the claim was made as, “Well, the only reason foreign diplomats and others stay at this hotel is they’re trying to curry favor with the president., Well, that ignores the fact that—look, I’ve been in this town a long time. It’s one of the nicest hotels in the city. 

Davis: Right. 

von Spakovsky: It’s a great place to stay and if you’re somebody with a lot of money, you’re a jet-setter, you’re a foreign diplomat, that’s the place you’re going to want to stay.

Davis: Right, especially if you want to get close to Capitol Hill. It’s the only five-star hotel right there. 

von Spakovsky: That’s exactly right. It’s on Pennsylvania Avenue. It’s within walking distance of the White House. It’s not very far from the Capitol. You couldn’t get a better location.

Davis: Now, some might say, “OK, yeah, state officials can’t give the president money— 

von Spakovsky: Right. 

Davis: —but that’s why you would expect countries like Russia and China to have front companies out or middlemen to funnel the money to the president so that they don’t have their fingerprints on it.” How would you respond to that? Because people might say, “Yeah, you got all these businessmen with Russian names staying at the Trump Hotel. That sounds awful suspicious.” 

von Spakovsky: First of all, it’s not going to the president directly. It’s going to a company that he owns a share in, and he has now put it in a trust and has said that the payments received from any foreign diplomats or foreign government officials for staying in the hotel and paying the market price for a hotel is going to be paid over to the U.S. Treasury. So, he’s not profiting from it at all. I think it’s just a silly claim. There are several pending lawsuits, one of them that was filed by Maryland and the District of Columbia just got thrown out of court by the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

del Guidice: Final question, Hans, if there was some kind of wrongdoing here, some wrongful influence going on that did violate the emoluments clause, what would that look like? 

von Spakovsky: A violation of the emoluments clause would be if a Russian government official said something of value to the president because they’re happy about something he did in his official duties. For example, remember we have sanctions right now against the Russians, right? In fact, we have some of the strongest sanctions that have been put in since the Trump administration came in. If suddenly those sanctions were lifted by the president, which is in his official duties, and the Russian government sent him a payment of $10,000, or sent him a horse as the King of Spain did to John Jay— 

del Guidice: That’s right. 

von Spakovsky: — 200 years ago, that would be a prohibited emoluments. But paying for a room at a hotel, that is not an emolument. 

Davis: How did the horse situation end? Did he keep it? von Spakovsky: Yeah, I think he did. Davis: Did he get prosecuted for that? 

von Spakovsky: No, because that was before Constitution and the emoluments clause.

Davis: Oh, there you go. Off the hook. Hans, thanks for coming in and covering all of the news items. Appreciate your coming in. 

von Spakovsky: Sure. Thanks for having me.
-------------------
Daniel Davis  @JDaniel_Davis  is the commentary editor of The Daily Signal and co-host of The Daily Signal podcast  & Rachel del Guidice @LRacheldG is a congressional reporter for The Daily Signal.

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Trump: China, Ukraine Should Investigate the Bidens

by Melanie Arter: China and Ukraine should investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, President Donald Trump said Thursday.

Speaking to reporters prior to heading to Florida, the president was asked what he hoped Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would do about the Bidens after his phone call with Ukraine.


“Well, I would think if they were honest about it, they'd start a major investigation into the Bidens. It's a very simple answer. They should investigate the Bidens, because how does a company that's newly formed, and all these companies – and by the way, likewise, China should start an investigation into the Bidens because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine,” Trump said.

"So I would say that President Zelenskiy, if it were me, I would recommend that they start an investigation into the Bidens because nobody has any doubt that they weren't crooked. That was a crooked deal, 100 percent. He had no knowledge of energy, didn't know the first thing about it, all of a sudden he's getting $50,000 a month plus a lot of other things,” the president said.

“Nobody has any doubt, and they got rid of a prosecutor who was a very tough prosecutor. They got rid of him. Now they're trying to make it the opposite way, but they got rid. So if I were the president, I would certainly recommend that of Ukraine," he said.

As to whether he asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to help investigate the Bidens, Trump said, “I haven't, but it's certainly something we can start thinking about, because I'm sure that President Xi does not like being under that kind of scrutiny where billions of dollars is taken out of his country by a guy that just got kicked out of the Navy. He got kicked out of the Navy. All of a sudden he's getting billions of dollars. You know what they call that? They call that a payoff."

Asked whether the White House should comply with the subpoenas issued by Congress regarding the whistleblower complaint, Trump said, “Well, I leave that to the lawyers.”

He said House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is a proven “liar.”

“We've known it for three years, because they've been trying to impeach for three years. He's a stone cold liar, so I leave that to the lawyers. That's up to them to decide but the whole investigation is crumbling," the president said.

Trump said the whistleblower’s complaint was “totally inaccurate” because the phone call was “absolutely perfect, and most people that have read it say the same thing.”

“The whistleblower never saw the conversation. He got his information I guess second- or third-hand. He wrote something that was totally fiction, and now when people see that, they’re not happy,” he said.

Trump said he read Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) statement Tuesday, “and he read my phone call, and, as you know, he put out a statement that said that was the most innocent phone call he's read, and I spoke to him about it too.”

“He read my phone call with the president of Ukraine - Mitch McConnell. He said that was the most innocent phone call that I've read. I mean, give me a break. Anybody that reads it says the same thing, and the only people that don't understand is when they look at the false, fabricated, fraudulent statement made by 'Shifty' Schiff,” the president said.

"I think Biden is going down, and I think his whole situation – because now you may very well find that there are many other countries that they scammed, just like they scammed China and Ukraine. And basically who are they really scamming? The USA, and it's not good,” Trump said.

“And that's probably why China for so many years has had a sweetheart deal where China rips off the USA because they deal with people like Biden where they give the son a billion and a half dollars, and that's probably why China has such a sweetheart deal that for so many years they've been ripping off our country," he said.
---------------------------
Melanie Arter (@ladaisia) has been with CNSNews.com since November 2000. She is Senior Editor and White House Correspondent.

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Gun Control, Knife Control, and Glass Control . . .

. . . Only when guns, knives and glass bottles are banned, we’ll be safe.

by Daniel Greenfield: Nobody needs an AR-15. Or a handgun. Or a kitchen knife.

“Historically, we needed a point on the end of our knife to pick up food because forks weren’t invented," a letter from the Church of England in the Diocese of Rochester reads.

Knives with points on them it explains are no longer needed in this modern fork-filled era.

"Research demonstrates kitchen knives are used in a large percentage of homicides due to their availability and lethal nature," it warns.

A University of London researcher explained that pointed knives are obsolete and we don’t need them. Like straws, plastic bags and cars. Not to mention single family homes, trains, cows and freedom.

Once knives with points on them are banned, then the United Kingdom will finally be safe. Unless someone figures out how to somehow put a point on the new round-ended stab-proof knives.

Kitchen knives with rounded edges are being described as “stab-proof”. Rayware, the manufacturer, has touted its kitchen knives as being so impotent and useless that they won’t even puncture a balloon.

But give your average convict 5 minutes with them and they’ll soon be nice and stabby.

Kitchen knives are being banned in the UK under the Offensive Weapons Act 2019. The OWA reads like an NRA parody. It authorizes stop and frisk for corrosive substances in a futile bid to prevent acid attacks. Knife crime prevention orders will force teens to stop using social media or face jail time.

It bans the sale of kitchen knives, bread knives, garden shears, carpenter’s adzes and, scissors to anyone under 18. You can no longer order kitchen knives delivered to your home and many major UK retailers, like Tesco, no longer carry knives. A shopper went into a store, browsed the kitchen aisle, asked for knives and was told that they no longer sell any knives, including fork, spoon and knife cutlery sets.

Assuming that the UK does manage to eliminate all knives and convince the populace to eat all their food with sporks, there are rising numbers of murders being committed with broken bottles.

Or, as a UK government report describes them, “glass offenses”.

Knife control is working so well that UK thugs are turning to “glassing” which is exactly what it sounds like. Jabbing a broken bottle or glass into someone’s face or body. According to The Independent, “glassing”, which it describes as “an act of sickening violence”, was up 10% a few years ago.

"Some researchers estimate up to 80,000 glassings a year – but this includes threats to glass a victim, or last-minute confiscation of the criminogenic implement," the paper claims.

"Hospital episode statistics point to assaults using sharp instrument – usually glass – causing 5,000 serious, life-changing, injuries each and every year. That means every single week: one hundred young adults totally unable to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives because a glass container, first reliably created in the 4th century AD, has shattered or been shattered."

The solution is banning glass.

"Once glass has been accepted as a 'criminogenic material', alternatives to fragile glass need promotion. Such a vexed question: toughened glass? tempered glass? shatterproof glass? plastic glass," it ponders.

4th century glass is outdated anyway. It's time to embrace plastic cups. Except those destroy the planet. Reusable paper cups then. You can't stab anyone with one of those. Meanwhile the UK’s Home Office is funding research into “glass innovation” because clearly the problem here is the glass, not the thugs.

The future British kitchen won’t have knives or glassware. Or forks, another historical relic. And probably not chopsticks either. In the progressive future, everyone will eat their food with their hands.

Enjoy your curry.

Speaking of the fourth century though, while good glassware took a while to produce, we’ve had reliable stabbing weapons for far longer than that. It takes skill to make a good knife. But little skill to make something with a sharp end.

Sarah Hainsworth, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Aston University explained that kitchen knives are dangerous because of their "length and point".

This is exactly the sort of breathtaking insight that requires the services of the "first female Executive Dean of School of Engineering and Applied Sciences". I'm not a pro or amateur chancellor at an engineering school, but I wager that I could turn out something both long and pointy with some common household tools. (Those will have to be banned too.)

Uncontacted tribes in the Amazon have figured out how to make spears that work better than the Tesco kitchenware junk imported from China. That’s because humanity has a passionate interest in weapons. It will go on making them and using them even if you ban kitchen knives and glass bottles.

Every human civilization, even the uncontacted Amazon tribes, understand that you don’t ban weapons.

You ban murder.

The Ten Commandments said, “Thou Shalt Not Murder.” Not, “Thou Shalt Not Possess Weapons.”

That’s not the first commandment. Instead it follows a series of commandments that lay out a moral system of values based on Divine authority. The Church of England could do worse than go back to the original material which focuses not on regulating our physical capabilities, but our moral senses.

The UK’s war on knives and glassware isn’t an intentional parody. It’s what happens when a society completely misses the point. You miss the point by starting with gun control and then trying to ban every single possible object which one person can use to harm another. And that’s every object.

Guns don’t kill people. Knives don’t jump out of the kitchen drawer and stab people. Glasses don’t zoom off into someone’s face of their own accord. The inanimate objects were never the problem.

Gun control embraces an animistic view of the world in which guns, knives and glass bottles are imbued with malicious spirits. If we purge ourselves of the objects, we’ll drive away the evil homicidal spirits.

American gun control activists say that we should be more like Europe. We are more like Europe.

Someone walks into a school or a store and shoots a dozen people and we wonder what we can do to ban the weapon he did it with, instead of trying to understand what’s wrong with our society.

In our past, murder was seen as a moral disease, not a regulatory loophole.

There is something wrong with a society in which mass shootings happen. There’s also something wrong with a society in which acid attacks and glassings happen. The bans don’t address the problem.

Mass murderers aren’t possessed by the animistic spirits of guns, kitchen knives or glass bottles.

They’re evil.

But we don’t believe in evil anymore. And so we summon the shamans of applied sciences to tell us how we can make our knives pointed so that the evil spirits of knife crime will no longer trouble London.

And then someone throws acid in someone else’s face and sticks a broken bottle in their eye.

Maybe we should stop the animistic war on inanimate objects and start fighting evil instead.
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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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