Speaker Pelosi’s Defeat

by Newt Gingrich: The Halloween vote for impeachment was an enormous strategic defeat for Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

She admitted seven months ago, in a March 6 interview with the The Washington Post, that a purely partisan impeachment vote was wrong and dangerous. She was right. Here are her own words:

“I’m not for impeachment. This is news. I haven’t said this to any press person before. But since you asked, and I’ve been thinking about this, impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it.”

Measured by that standard, the Thursday vote was a terrible failure. The House voted in an entirely partisan manner except for two Democrats who split to vote no with the Republicans.

Months of leaks, secret investigations, news media hysteria, and a parade of witnesses failed to move a single Republican to vote yes.

The so-called whistleblower has decayed into a potential liability so much the Democrats are now talking about never bringing him to testify.

Senate Republicans have been so turned off by the House Democrats that Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, one of President Trump’s more outspoken Republican members, has called their effort “a partisan clown show.”

The contrast with the last impeachment vote is striking. In 1998, 31 Democrats voted with the Republicans to create a bipartisan 257-176 majority for moving forward with impeachment.

By contrast not only did no Republicans vote for the Pelosi impeachment, she lost two Democrats despite enormous pressure within the caucus.

The American people understand the difference between a fair and an unfair process. As Ron Faucheux reported in the October 32 Lunchtime Politics, there is an Economist/YouGov poll (October 27-29) which reported that 49 percent of Americans thought the Clinton impeachment proceedings were fair. Only 25 percent thought they were unfair and 27 percent weren’t sure.

Of those who thought the process was fair in the 1990s, 37 percent were Democrats, 42 percent were independents, and 73 percent were Republicans.

In answer to the question: “Do you think trying to impeach Bill Clinton and remove him from office back in the 1990s was a type of coup?” 55 percent of respondents said no (18 percent said yes, and 27 percent were not sure).

When I was Speaker, we followed the bipartisan impeachment rules pioneered by Democratic Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter Rodino in 1973 (see Catching Our Flag by former Congressman Jim Rogan for a detailed day-by-day outline of Rodino’s impact on our efforts in 1998).

The result was that – by 2:1 – the American people thought Republicans were fair in 1998.

Furthermore, because the Clinton impeachment was initiated by Independent Counsel Ken Starr’s report that President Clinton had committed 11 potential offenses – including perjury (which is a felony) – the American people concluded the impeachment was not primarily partisan. By 3:1 people believed the 1998 effort was not an attempted coup.

By contrast, because Speaker Pelosi has allowed her left-wing to drive her into an entirely partisan, secret, and one-sided witch hunt, there is overwhelming belief among Republicans and many independents that this effort is a coup d’etat, which is a sore losers’ effort rather than an impeachment based on the merits.

Just yesterday Ron Faucheux reported on a Suffolk University/USA Today poll (October 23-26) that asserted only 36 percent favored impeaching President Trump.

Speaker Pelosi had seven months with total control of the investigative machinery. During that time, her team should have produced adequate information to convince the vast majority of Americans that impeachment was necessary or they should have confronted their own failure and quietly dropped the impeachment effort.

The Speaker Pelosi of March was strategically correct in her assessment that impeachment is inherently a crisis of government since one branch is seeking to overturn the votes of the American people.

Measured against her own standard, the vote on Halloween was a terrible defeat which is likely to haunt the House Democrats through the 2020 election.

That vote will cost a lot of Democrats their seats next year. When combined with the radicalism of the national Democratic candidates for president, and the continued economic growth under President Trump’s policies, it is likely that Thursday’s vote guaranteed this would be a one-term Democratic majority, and we will be hearing from Speaker Kevin McCarthy in 2021.
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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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Sucking Lemons, Same Gang Same Hoax, Unfounded Concerns

by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: "Sucking Lemons"
Tim Morrison, the senior director of European and Russian affairs at the National Security Council, testified before Rep. Adam Schiff's kangaroo court yesterday. Morrison's appearance before the House Intelligence Committee was newsworthy for several reasons.

First, Morrison was one of the officials who was authorized to listen in on President Trump's call with the Ukrainian leader, so he has first-hand knowledge of what was said. He also announced that he was leaving his NSC position prior to his testimony.

That announcement was treated by the media as a major bombshell. Virtually every outlet ran damning headlines like this one: "Top NSC Russia Official To Step Down Ahead Of Impeachment Testimony."

It seemed as if reporters were expecting Morrison to spill the beans and betray Trump. That's not what happened.

In his testimony, Morrison told lawmakers: "I want to be clear, I was not concerned that anything illegal was discussed." Did you heard that on the evening news?

But Morrison did have concerns about the call. And, of course, the fake news media tried to portray Morrison's concerns as trouble for Trump, reinforcing the testimony of the president's critics. Again, they were wrong.

Morrison was concerned that aspects of the call would leak out (he was right about that!), and he was concerned about "how it would play out in Washington's polarized environment." In other words, Morrison knew that Deep State partisans would leak the classified call and twist Trump's words.

And that's exactly what the so-called "whistleblower" did, which triggered this entire impeachment sham.

Commenting on Morrison's testimony, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), said, "Some of my Democrat colleagues look like they're sucking lemons this morning."

Same Gang, New Hoax
Keep in mind, friends, that this is the same gang who used the Russia collusion hoax for two and a half years desperately trying to take down the president. Adam Schiff said there was "evidence [of collusion] in plain sight." Well, Robert Mueller with hundreds of subpoenas and an army of liberal lawyers couldn't find it.

Eric Ciaramella, the Deep State leaker who filed the initial Ukraine complaint, worked for John Brennan, a vocal Trump critic, and Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice. She was a key player in the Russia hoax.

Remember that bizarre "CYA" memo she wrote to herself on her last day in the White House? She also exposed the identities of American citizens caught up in the Deep State's monitoring of the Trump campaign and lied about it.

The same newspapers that pushed the Russia collusion charge – the Washington Post and the New York Times – are the same papers driving the coverage of the Ukraine hoax.

The same Deep State operatives who were trying to undermine Trump's presidency before he took office – John Brennan, James Clapper, Andrew McCabe – are constantly on TV now promoting the Ukraine hoax.

Former CIA Director John McLaughlin was asked this week about his thoughts on the current impeachment controversy being triggered by members of the intelligence community. His response, "Thank God for the Deep State!"

That remark should send a chill down the spine of every American voter – regardless of party affiliation. He is rejoicing that partisan bureaucrats, many in our intelligence agencies, are attempting to overturn the 2016 election results, defying the will of the American people.

Can you imagine the media's reaction if conservative CIA operatives had attempted to get Obama impeached for his secret dealings with the ayatollah of Iran!

I hate summer repeats. If I have the TV on in the summer and see that the show is a repeat, I'll turn it off and grab a book. Well, this is a terrible repeat. The only thing different about this script is that the country is at stake.

A Fireside Chat?
The White House is brainstorming ways to counteract this nonsense. One idea reportedly under consideration is an FDR-style fireside chat, an address to the nation during which the president would read the transcript of his call with the Ukrainian president.

As we know, Adam Schiff read a fake transcript live on national TV. Republicans on the Intelligence Committee rightly called out Schiff, and he admitted it was a parody. But it fooled many people, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi!

While I can certainly understand the president's frustration, there's a danger. The left will have the transcript in his voice. Just like the initial reporting of the transcript, they will cherry-pick lines and leave out hundreds of words to manufacture a quid pro quo between investigating Biden and aid for Ukraine. That selective editing will immediately appear in negative ads, further confusing the American people.

Unfounded Concerns
The so-called CIA "whistleblower" and many of the people who have testified behind closed doors are mostly saying the same thing, according to the leaks. They were deeply concerned that the president was going to withhold aid from Ukraine until he got the information he wanted about corruption in the 2016 election.

Here's what I want to know: Where were all these leakers and "whistleblowers" when Barack Obama was actually withholding aid from Ukraine?

In the spring of 2014, Ukraine had just gotten its teeth kicked in by Vladimir Putin and Russian special forces. But Obama was unwilling to do anything more than send food and socks.

Why didn't these Deep State "patriots," deeply concerned about U.S. national security policy, file whistleblower complaints and leak to the media then?

Well, it has nothing to do with Ukraine or Russia really. Donald Trump sent Ukraine the lethal military aid that Obama never would!

No, these unfounded concerns for Ukraine and national security have everything to do with the Deep State's hatred for Donald Trump and Mike Pence.

Perhaps there was another reason for the Deep State's silence. Whenever the Obama Administration found a leaker, it destroyed them. Reporters who used leaked material related to national security, got "roughed up" too. As the Associated Press noted last year:

"The Obama administration used the 1917 Espionage Act with unprecedented vigor, prosecuting more people under that law for leaking sensitive information to the public than all previous administrations combined. Obama's Justice Department dug into confidential communications between news organizations and their sources as part of that effort."

The notion that this is a bunch of noble civil servants speaking up for truth is fake news. These are partisan hacks pushing their own agenda.

Good News
The latest jobs report shows the Trump economy is chugging along, in spite of various headwinds. Job growth for October shattered expectations coming in at 128,000 new jobs, well above the 75,000 that the "experts" had predicted.

In addition, there were big changes to the August and September figures. The number of new jobs created in August was revised up by 51,000 to 219,000 jobs. September's figures were revised up by 44,000 new jobs.

And here's more good news: The unemployment rate for African Americans fell to 5.4% -- a new record low.

The president the left calls a "racist" has done more to help black Americans in three years than Barack Obama did in eight.
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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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Feeling the Burn . . .

. . . California is suffering from a looney leftist government that restricts logging and brush clearing that could prevent today’s raging wildfires.

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

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Boris Johnson Headed to Big Brexit Victory?

Boris Johnson

by Michael Barone: It has been 1,225 days since an all-time-high turnout of British voters chose, by a 52 to 48% margin, to Leave rather than Remain in the European Union. Now with a general election set for Dec. 12, it looks like Britain is finally about to escape the EU's "ever closer union."
The issue is unfamiliar to most Americans, yet the cleavages it has caused closely resemble our own. American foreign policy elites have long encouraged European unity, on the sentimental principle that it worked well for us in 1776 or the long-obsolete argument that it would prevent another cataclysmic war between Germany and France.

But, as Charles de Gaulle argued when he vetoed British accession to what was then the European Economic Community in 1963, Britain and Europe are not a good fit. European law is built on general principles enunciated in its Napoleonic codes; English common law is built on an accretion of decisions in specific cases. De Gaulle explained: "England in effect is insular, she is maritime, she is linked through her exchanges, her markets, her supply lines to the most diverse and often the most distant countries."

Nonetheless, Britain joined the EU in the 1970s, when it was in the economic doldrums and Europe seemed more modern and dynamic. Since the Margaret Thatcher revolution of the 1980s, Britain has surged ahead economically and Europe has sunk into slow growth. And Britons have increasingly bridled against getting their laws from a politically unaccountable bureaucracy in Brussels.

Anti-EU feeling welled up in the Conservative Party. Facing defections to Nigel Farage's anti-EU party, which won 13% of popular votes in 2015, Conservative then-Prime Minister David Cameron promised a referendum on EU membership. It was held in June 2016, and most major institutions -- the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democratic parties; the BBC and most newspapers; the London financial community; veteran civil servants -- supported Remain and assumed it would win.

Oops. Metropolitan London and ethnically distinctive Scotland and Northern Ireland voted Remain, but the rest of England -- 70% of the nation -- voted 53% Leave. The metropolis versus the heartland: the same cleavage that elected Donald Trump five months later.

What followed were a series of blunders and self-righteous sabotage. Cameron's successor, Theresa May, a Remain supporter, knuckled under to EU demands and called a 2017 snap election that cost Conservatives their majority. Her withdrawal agreements were voted down three times by the House of Commons.

After she extended the March 29 deadline for leaving the EU, in the polls the Conservative Party fell behind Labour and its left-wing, anti-Semitic leader, Jeremy Corbyn. She resigned, and in July, the colorful former London Mayor Boris Johnson became prime minister.

Instantly, Conservatives zoomed ahead of Labour in polls. Johnson was dismissed as a buffoon by establishment press, and an odd-duck coalition of Conservative Remainers, Lib Dems and Labour -- with the help of Speaker John Bercow, who abandoned the position's neutrality -- seized control of Parliament's agenda. Astonishingly, former Prime Ministers Tony Blair and John Major endorsed this contempt for voters they dismissed as bigoted and ignorant. You only get respect if you vote their way.

Nevertheless Johnson, by threatening to leave without an EU agreement, managed to negotiate one and now has delivered the general election Labour was blocking. Current polling has Conservatives leading Labour 35 to 25%, with the newly formed Brexit Party at 11%.

Cautious British analysts warn that in 2017, Conservatives had a similar lead and blew it after the supposedly "strong and stable" May abandoned an ill-advised estate tax increase. The Brexit Party could take hardcore Leavers away from Conservatives. Labour and Lib Dem Remainers could defer to one party or the other to maximize the anti-Johnson vote in different constituencies. In Britain, as here, recent election results have made election prediction hazardous.

All that said, some things seem clear. The Conservative Party, having already lost upscale voters in high-income, high-education metro London and university towns, is aiming at making gains in downscale Midlands and constituencies north of England. Johnson is also abandoning Cameron's economic austerity with promises to increase health and police spending.

Psephologically inclined Americans will recognize this pattern. Results depend, however, on the political skills of the partisan players. If Boris Johnson gets the big parliamentary majority suggested by the polls, he will prove to be the most adept out maneuvering a hostile House of Commons since William Pitt the Younger in the 18th century and the most creative forger of one-nation conservatism since Benjamin Disraeli in the 19th. Impressive.
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Michael Barone is a Senior Political Analyst for the Washington Examiner and a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel  and co-author of The Almanac of American Politics Shared by Rasmussen Reports.

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50 Years Ago: The Day Nixon Routed the Establishment

President Richard Nixon

by Patrick Buchanan: Ten days after the “silent majority” speech, Vice President Spiro Agnew, in Des Moines, launched an assault on the unholy matrimony of media power and liberal bias. Agnew questioned whether the networks near-monopoly over the primary source of information for the American people should be permanently ceded to so tiny and unrepresentative an elite.

[Note: Agnew speech video included below]

What are the roots of our present disorder, of the hostilities and hatreds that so divide us? When did we become this us vs. them nation?

Who started the fire?

Many trace the roots of our uncivil social conflict to the 1960s and the Johnson years when LBJ, victorious in a 61% landslide in 1964, could not, by 1968, visit a college campus without triggering a violent protest.

The morning after his narrow presidential victory in 1968, Richard Nixon said his goal would be to “bring us together.” And in early 1969, he seemed to be succeeding.

His inaugural address extended a hand of friendship to old enemies. He withdrew 60,000 troops from Vietnam. He left the Great Society largely untouched and proposed a Family Assistance Plan for the poor and working class. He created a Western White House in San Clemente, California.

In July, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon.

America approved. Yet the elites seethed. For no political figure of his time was so reviled and hated by the establishment as was Richard Nixon.

By the fall of 1969, that establishment, which had led us into Vietnam and left 500,000 U.S. troops there as of January 1969, had turned against their own war, declared it “an unwinnable war” and “Nixon’s war,” and begun to cheer the huge anti-war protests scheduled for October and November.

David Broder of The Washington Post was one who saw clearly what was happening: “It is becoming more obvious with every passing day that the men and movement that broke Lyndon Johnson’s presidency in 1968 are out to break Richard Nixon in 1969. The likelihood is great that they will succeed again.”

In a cover story titled “Nixon in Trouble,” Newsweek echoed Broder:

“From almost every quarter last week the nine-month-old Administration of Richard M. Nixon was under sustained attack and angry fire, and increasingly the target of the attacks was Mr. Nixon himself and his conduct of the Presidency.”

On Oct. 15, some 250,000 descended on the capital for the largest demonstration in history. A stunned Time declared that, instead of resisting its demands, Nixon should prepare “the country for the trauma of distasteful reversal.”

Time wanted Nixon to declare Vietnam a lost cause.

But by now, Nixon, realizing his presidency was in danger of being broken like LBJ’s — but believing he was reading the nation better than the establishment — had decided to wheel and fight.

On Nov. 3, 1969, Nixon delivered an Oval Office address that was carried live on every network. After reciting the case Ike, JFK and LBJ had all made for resisting a Communist takeover of South Vietnam, Nixon laid out his own policy, the rationale for it, and urged the “great silent majority” to stand by him for peace with honor.

The network commentators almost universally disparaged Nixon’s address as repetitive and unresponsive to the crisis of his presidency.

Washington’s elites, however, had misread the nation.

An instant poll found that 70% of the country supported Nixon’s declared policy. A coalition of 300 House members endorsed Nixon’s stand. Liberal Democrats in the Senate rejected Nixon’s policy, but Southern and conservative Democratic senators backed him.

Ten days after the “silent majority” speech, Vice President Spiro Agnew, in Des Moines, launched an assault on the unholy matrimony of media power and liberal bias. Agnew questioned whether the networks near-monopoly over the primary source of information for the American people should be permanently ceded to so tiny and unrepresentative an elite.


All three networks carried Agnew’s speech live, but were rocked on their heels by the reaction. Scores of thousand of telegrams and letters poured into network offices and the White House, with the vast majority agreeing with the vice president.

The liberal establishment had sustained a historic defeat.

By December, Nixon was the most admired man in America. His approval rating in the Gallup Poll was 68%. Only 19% disapproved of how he was conducting his presidency. Dr. Billy Graham was the second-most admired man, and Agnew third.

Nor was this but a blip in the Nixon presidency. When, three years later, Democrats nominated the most impassioned and articulate of their anti-war senators, George McGovern, Nixon would crush him in a 49-state landslide.

In Watergate, the establishment would get its pound of flesh for its rout by Nixon in November 1969 and its humiliation in November 1972. But that establishment would never recover what it lost — the respect and regard of the American people in the ’60s and early ’70s.

JFK’s “best and brightest,” whose hour of power was “Camelot,” were broken on the wheel of Vietnam. After taking us into Southeast Asia, they had washed their hands of their own war and declared it immoral.

So great was the loss of esteem for the establishment among the silent majority, America’s elite would soon cease to call themselves liberals and change their names to “progressives.”
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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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'Pajama Boy' Outed As John Brennan's 'Whistleblower'

Eric Ciaramella, aka Pajama Boy

Free Press International: The so-called Trump-Ukraine “whistleblower” has been revealed and now “we can expose” him “and everything about him,” radio host Rush Limbaugh said.

“We know the whistleblower’s name. I told you yesterday we knew the whistleblower’s name,” Limbaugh said on his Oct. 31 broadcast.

“The guy was a plant in the White House by the CIA to do exactly what he did. We know his name. He’s one of a dime-a-dozen Yale or Harvard graduates, literally a 30-year-old Pajama Boy doing the bidding of John Brennan in the White House.”

Limbaugh continued: “This whistleblower… He’s not a whistleblower! This is another thing. This guy’s a leaker! He’s not a whistleblower! His name is Eric Ciaramella. He’s 30-some-odd years old. I’ve got a picture. It looks like the Pajama Boy in the Obama ad that they ran back during, I think, the first term.”

Reports on Oct. 30 said Ciaramella, a registered Democrat, is a holdover from the Obama White House.

“Why the hell was he still there? What do you mean, ‘held over’? This guy… I’ve probably seen this guy there. I’ve been to the Oval Office two or three times since Trump’s been president. I’ve been in the West Wing. I’ve probably seen this guy slithering around,” Limbaugh said. “It never even registered. Next time I go, I’m gonna keep a sharp eye for people I think might be John Brennan holdover plants, ’cause they’re obviously slithering all over the place.”

But, Limbaugh added, “that’s not even half the story. The so-called whistleblower, is 33 years old, ‘a registered Democrat [Can anybody say’“partisan’?] held over from the Obama White House, previously worked with former Vice President Joe Biden and former CIA Director John Brennan…’ He is ‘a vocal critic of Trump’ who did you know what else? This guy helped initiate the Russia ‘collusion’ investigation” which was a nothing burger!”

Limbaugh continued: “This guy was involved from the get-go, starting in 2016, doing John Brennan’s bidding from the West Wing on furthering the whole Trump-Russia collusion operation of which there wasn’t one! As per the esteemed Robert J. Mueller XIV or whatever Robert J. Mueller he is. So this Pajama Boy — and they don’t want us to know who he is for these obvious reasons. Now Schiff and his buddies are saying, ‘Well, we don’t need to know the young whistleblower’s identity. We don’t really need to hear from the whistleblower.’

“Of course we don’t now — and everybody has known who this guy is for weeks, folks. Trump has known, Trump’s aides in the White House. Everybody has known who this guy is. For some reason beyond me, his name didn’t leak, and that’s a classic illustration of the swamp protecting itself. There’s another reason. Nobody would be impressed by this guy.”

Limbaugh continued: “When you hear ‘CIA agent,’ ‘embedded CIA agent,’ you think ‘Spy, national security,’ You think ‘grizzled veteran,’ not somebody who doesn’t shave but twice a week. He’d be totally unimpressive as an image witness. He’s a left-wing government leech! Ciaramella is. He hates Trump. He loves Obama. He’s from the Ivy League. They’re a dime a dozen in government. The Ivy League is a factory for these kinds of guys.”

Reports have said Democrats this week blocked Republicans from asking more questions about Ciaramella and intend to redact his name from all deposition transcripts.

“Too late,” Limbaugh said. “Everybody knows who he is. And then Vindman… Vindman is from the same pedigree. They’re all part of the CIA or the John Brennan bunch. John Brennan, Obama’s CIA director, is the puppet master for all of this — and these guys are feeling their oats now. They came out, they sat down, and they had an appearance at the National Press Club last night that C-SPAN televised.

“We have some audio sound bites. They’re really feeling their oats. They’re now bragging they’re from the deep state and they’re doing the Lord’s work, and thank God for the deep state. The deep state is protecting…what? The American people from the American people! The deep state is making sure that when you don’t do what they think you should do, they’re gonna undo it, which is all this is. I don’t mean to minimize it. This isn’t about impeachable offenses.”

Limbaugh added: “It’s just the latest in a never-ending line of efforts the Democrats are making to get rid of Donald Trump by way of overturning the election results of 2016.”
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Free Press International News Service, aka: Free Pressers (@FreePressers).

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Will Our Culture War Become A Civil War?

by Bill Donohue: On October 23, the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service Battleground Civility Poll revealed that two-thirds of Americans believe the U.S. is on the edge of civil war. This was true across the board: sex, age, race, geography, ideology—it did not matter. But why has our culture become so uncivil that it engulfs our national political discourse?

The social fabric began to tear in the 1960s, the decade that celebrated radical individualism. In the 1970s, Christopher Lasch, a man of the left, recounted our maladies in his book, The Culture of Narcissism. There are many reasons why we have become more coarse, more self-absorbed, and more uncivil. Those who craft our culture, especially the pop culture, have played a major role.

Music, dance, theater, art, TV, movies—as well as dress, language, manners, and etiquette—have all gone south. We are now at street level.

It is so ironic to note that now, after trashing civility for a half century, our cultural elites are horrified by the outcome. What else would they expect? Yes, our president is crude. So are his enemies. Big surprise. Having nurtured incivility for decades, the harvest is now upon us.

The New York Times is constantly decrying the incivility that marks the nation’s capital. Yet it calls for more incivility. For example, there is a column in the October 29 edition of the Times by Jennifer Weiner cheering the incivility that greeted Trump at a recent World Series game. “If booing is incivility,” she says, “bring it on.”

Weiner blames Republicans and conservatives for the problem. They need to be more like her side. “For them, cruelty is the point. For us, kindness matters. When they go low, we go high.”

Was it “kindness” that New York Times columnist David Leonhardt was promoting when he recently called on Americans to “take to the streets” over Trump’s policies? He used as a model the Women’s Marches on
Washington. Did he mean the 2017 one that was sponsored by anti-Catholic organizations? Or the 2019 one that was sponsored by anti-Semites?

Three days after Leonhardt’s op-ed, his colleague, Michelle Goldberg, expressed her dismay at Americans for not “taking to the streets en masse.” Her idea of “kindness” was evident when she was in college: she beckoned pro-abortion students to storm a pro-life exhibit and kick the crosses down. She screamed, “do your part and spit at [pro-lifers]. Kick them in the head.”

Just a few days ago, the Washington Post did a news story on left-wing activists and their ideological kin. These extremists predict more people will take to the streets of Washington, tying up traffic. Will they show their “kindness” by getting violent? You bet. Sociology professor Dana Fisher says, “the natural progression is to get more confrontational and, sometimes, to get more violent.”

Antifa is a group of urban terrorists who wear masks while they assault innocent persons. The left loves them. In April, CNN’s Chris Cuomo praised them for their “good cause” (he did not explain why anarchy is a “good cause”). In May, CNN did a show on Antifa that also heralded their “good cause.” In June, journalist Andy Ngo was the recipient of Antifa’s “kindness” when they beat him so mercilessly that they almost killed him.

Incivility was not generated by conservatives in Hollywood or New York City. The left has worked hard to morally debase our society. Now that many who are not in their ranks have adopted their stylebook, if not their support for violence, it’s a little too late to cry foul.
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Bill Donohue is president of the Catholic League.

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Attendant Loss of Life

by Paul Jacob, Contributing Author: Is there an easy way to avoid the insanity of what author and decorated Marine vet Elliot Ackerman calls America’s “two-decade military quagmire”?

Yesterday, I took issue with Ackerman’s idea of a “reverse-engineered draft,” whereby each year about 65,000 young men and women — but only those with parents in the highest federal tax bracket* — would be forced into the military for two years of “service.”

“A draft places militarism on a leash,” he argues. But in reality, select young people lose their freedom and politicians don’t relinquish any powers.

Still, Ackerman maintains that

• “with a draft the barrier to entering new wars would be significantly higher”
• placing these “kids” in jeopardy via military conscription would activate their wealthy and influential parents to lobby Congress and the White House
• “could create greater accountability”

ultimately resulting in a saner military posture around the globe, hopefully allowing us to “avoid . . . a major theater war, the continuance of our ‘terror wars,’ the attendant loss of life.”

Threatening to draft their kids would raise the eyebrows of parents. That’s why when Congress last voted on legislation mandating a draft, even the bill’s author voted NO.

But would having a small drafted force somehow actually save lives?

Let’s look at combat deaths when the United States used a military draft, post-World War II, and compare that to the time-period since 1973, when the draft ended and the All-Volunteer Force began. Those numbers are not close:

• Between 1946 and 1973, with the draft in place, nearly 100,000 American soldiers were killed overseas.
• Over the more than four decades since the draft ended, fatalities remain under 10,000.

That’s a heap-big correlation between the military draft and “attendant loss of life.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* As I noted before, targeting the draft to apply only to top income earners clearly violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
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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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The ‘Lynching’ Hypocrisy

Larry Elder

by Larry Elder: President Donald Trump ignited yet another controversy when, on Twitter, he compared the Democrats’ pursuit of his impeachment to a “lynching.”

His tweet that launched a thousand denunciations read: “So some day, if a Democrat becomes President and the Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights. All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here — a lynching. But we will WIN!”

Immediately, Trump derangement syndrome kicked in. The critics cried: How dare Trump —a white man — trivialize America’s history of blacks lynched by white racists?

NPR’s Tamara Keith promptly fired off this tweet: “This is new rhetoric from President Trump. From ‘witch hunt’ to ‘coup’ to ‘lynching,’ Trump keeps escalating his language. (Clarence Thomas called his confirmation process a ‘high tech lynching’ but there is a big difference between Trump and Thomas).”

Presumably, Thomas, a black man, could acceptably refer to his confirmation hearing, in which he was accused of sexual harassment, as a “lynching,” but, Trump, a white man, cannot.

Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden tweeted: “Impeachment is not ‘lynching,’ it is part of our Constitution. Our country has a dark, shameful history with lynching, and to even think about making this comparison is abhorrent. It’s despicable.”

Speaking at a historically black college, according to Axios, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris said: “What do we have in Donald Trump? Someone who dares — dares — to use the word ‘lynching’ with the blood that has been poured on the soil of South Carolina and so many (places). And dares to talk about his victimization and compare it to those who have suffered in a criminal justice system in America that has too often been informed by racial bias and by injustice. And he dares to compare himself to the people who have been at the wrong end of a system that is in need of reform.” Harris tweeted: “Lynching is a reprehensible stain on this nation’s history, as is this President. We’ll never erase the pain and trauma of lynching, and to invoke that torture to whitewash your own corruption is disgraceful.”

Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., a black congressman, tweeted: “You think this impeachment is a LYNCHING? What the hell is wrong with you? Do you know how many people look like me have been lynched, since the inception of this country, by people who look like you.”

The left-wing website Slate published an article with the headline “Trump’s ‘Lynching’ Tweet Isn’t Just Offensive. It’s Dangerous.” Slate wrote: “The word lynching conjures the imagery of the 4,000 killed in racial terror lynchings by the 1960s, what Billie Holiday sang as “Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze.” By definition, to be lynched is to be punished or killed (often by a group) without due process or a trial. The president’s claim is facially absurd because he is not being punished without process.”

Here’s the problem: Where were the voices of indignation during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton when his defenders used the very same word? Let’s go to the 1998 videotape:

White male Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., described those pursuing Clinton’s impeachment as a “political lynch mob.” McDermott said, “Find the rope, find the tree and ask a bunch of questions later.”

White male Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said to Clinton, “The lynch mob, though, Mr. President, now has a new leader.”

White male Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said, “It’s a verbal political lynching on the floor of the Senate.”

Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., on the House floor, said: “What we are doing here is not a prosecution, it’s a persecution and indeed it is a political lynching.”

Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., on the House floor, said: “I will not vote for this nightmare before Christmas. I will not vote for this lynching in the people’s House. I will vote against these resolutions.”

Biden, another white male, in 1998 told CNN that history will judge Clinton’s impeachment as a “partisan lynching.” When asked about the apparent hypocrisy of slamming Trump for using the same lynching rhetoric he once used, Biden apologized for using the word “lynching” in the case of Clinton. But Biden argued that when Trump used the word, he did so as a “dog whistle,” meaning Trump did it to fuel his supposedly racist political base.

Biden said: “I apologize for it then, and I apologize for it now. The fact of the matter is it shouldn’t be used at all, but the encouragement of white supremacists, which (Donald Trump has) done his entire presidency, that’s what I was responding to. Because that’s what it was. It was like a dog whistle … he’s done it throughout — from Charlottesville on.” Note that Biden, once again, mischaracterized what Trump said about Charlottesville.

So, when President Trump gets reelected, get ready for four more years of Democrats’ double standards and selective outrage.
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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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Chicago Teachers Strike for $100,000 Salaries

by Daniel Greenfield: Since October 17, the Chicago Teachers Union has banished 361,000 students from their classrooms by going on strike to demand a $100,000 average salary for its members.

The union insisted that taxpayers, “stop short-changing the people who make our schools work”.

4 in 10 Chicago public school students don’t meet national reading standards. Or, as celebratory press releases declared, 61% of Chicago students actually met the national average. Math is obviously not a key skill of Chicago educators except when it comes to demanding obscene pay hikes.

A “record” 57% of Chicago students also met the national average in math.

If 57% doesn’t deserve a $100,000 salary, what does?

Currently, Chicago teachers are living on starvation wages of $78,211 a year. The people responsible for that 57% “record” are shortchanged with a miserly starting salary of $52,958, a beggarly $82,630 10-year midcareer salary, and a $108,242 maximum salary that barely keeps them out of the poorhouse.

They can’t live like this.

Hundreds of thousands of students are left on their own as their educators “fight for the students” by demanding a 15% raise in 3 years, while Chicago’s lefty mayor will only offer them 16% in 5 years.

And that’s not counting the annual cost-of-living increases which make it more like 25%.

5 years from now, the starting salary for a Chicago teacher would be $72,000 while the average salary for a Chicago teacher would be $100,000. That’s the offer that the union claims isn’t good enough.

Waiting 5 years for a $100,000 salary would “short-change” the people who make our schools fail.

67% of Chicago’s school budget already goes to salaries and benefits. Another 33% is left over for the other stuff. Guess where that $2.5 billion that the union is demanding will come from? Not the 67%.

“The fact is there is no more money,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot insisted. “Period.”

Nonsense. There’s always more money. All Chicago schools have to do is put out more junk bonds, borrow another $500 million, pay $70,000 in interest a day (that won’t even cover the average salary of a public school teacher), and add it to the $9 billion or so in debt that it’s already carrying.

That’ll help put a dent in the $850 million in pension contributions this year.

Better make sure that the number of students meeting math averages doesn’t pass 60% or the next generation of taxpayers might figure out what’s going on and run for their lives and their wallets.

CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates previously had lots of ideas for raising money. “Where will the money come from? Rich people."

Ah, those rich people. They really are the answer to everything.

It’s not hard to see why Senator Elizabeth Warren, a rich person, turned up to a CTU protest.

Past tax returns showed that in 2017, a CTU VP had been earning $96,115 from the union. It’s doubtful that there have been salary reductions in the union since then. That would force the union’s management to go on strike against its membership. So, Gates is probably making six figures.

Is the money coming from her, a rich person? Nah, she has other ideas. Like gambling and drugs.

“We have a governor who has committed to legalizing recreational marijuana and putting a tax on it, we can take that as well,” Stacy Davis Gates ranted. “They are also talking about sports betting. We can take that. They’re talking about opening a new casino here in the city of Chicago. We can take that.”

We’ll take the drug and gambling cash… for the children.

Gambling and drugs will be used to help pay the $100,000 salaries of teachers in a city that actually brags that a record 57% of the students met national averages in math. This is what full spectrum failure, moral, economic, educational, political, looks like in this progressive Pottersville.

In Chicago, there’s only one difference between organized crime and organized lefties. Many criminals won’t shake down gamblers and drug dealers for cash, and then steal the money from the children.

There’s a union for that.

Stacy Davis Gates will take the drug and gambling cash, but there are things she won’t take.

"Rich white men tell black women with children in the Chicago Public Schools what to do all the time," she whined, after her name was misspelled in a note from the lawyer of the black female lesbian mayor.

Not only is Lori Lightfoot, Chicago’s mayor, a black woman, but so is Janice Jackson, the CEO of the public school system. But, even when the mayor is a black lesbian, the race card never expires.

In a city and a system run by black women, those “rich white men” keep pushing everybody around.

And those “rich white men” will be paying those $100,000 salaries too. It’s the very least they can do.

It’s all theater.

361,000 students were left without an education, and their parents, most of whom work and earn a lot less than the privileged teachers whining that they can’t live on $100,000, were left to cope with them.

Mayor Lightfoot insists that there’s no money, but that’s silly. There will be money. Rich white men will provide it too. At interest rates that only a Chicago public school graduate would find acceptable.

The Chicago Teachers Union will get its insane raises. More money will be borrowed at ruinous interest rates to pay for them. The pension cost will be incomprehensible and won’t actually be paid.

Enrollment in Chicago schools keeps dropping sharply even as the unions howl for more cash. CTU protesters claim that they’re striking for smaller class sizes, but they’re already getting them as the enrollment numbers fall by the thousands. The teachers are running out of students to exploit.

And that’s the real crisis.

Chicago can always borrow more money even if its bonds are rated below those of Puerto Rico, Somalia, and a burning pile of trash below an underpass that somehow talked J.P. Morgan into a bond issue.

But it can’t borrow more students.

Illegal aliens are doing their part. A sizable chunk of Chicago public school expenses is generated by students who don’t speak English. But why would your average illegal go to Chicago when he can stay in California? On a cold winter night, even hardened MS-13 gang members will shudder at the ‘lake effect’.

The Chicago Teachers Union is bulking up salaries and staff sizes for a huge influx of students that isn’t coming. If anything, the students are running the other way. And who can blame them?

The future of public education in Chicago is empty schools, $100K teacher salaries, and fake jobs.

Don’t worry. The “rich” will pay for it. And if that doesn’t work, there’s always gambling and drugs. They won’t pay for the $100,000 salaries, but that’s where plenty of those salaries will be going.
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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, Sultan Knish, Chicago, Teachers Strike, for $100,000 Salaries To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Exposing the Fraud of Socialism

David LimBaugh

by David Limbaugh: People seem shocked that recent polls show millennials are enamored of socialism — an economic system that reasonable and educated Americans have long known is disastrous. They shouldn’t be; this has been a long time coming.

The latest survey by Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation shows that 70% of millennials are likely to vote socialist. Adding insult to injury, only 57% believe the Declaration of Independence “better guarantees freedom and equality” over “The Communist Manifesto.” The worst part of this is that it is real, not a parody piece in “The Onion.”

Now do you finally believe that our schools and universities, Hollywood and the liberal media are brainwashing our kids? Are you taking this seriously?

taking it very seriously, which is why I devoted three of the 16 chapters of my just-released book, “Guilty by Reason of Insanity: Why the Democrats Must Not Win,” to discussing socialism and capitalism. I cite earlier polls showing this same disturbing trend concerning young people’s attitudes toward socialism.

A 2015 YouGov poll showed that 43% of Americans between 18 and 29 years of age had a favorable opinion of socialism and preferred it to capitalism. Then, in 2015, a Pew poll found that 69% of those under age 30 would be willing to vote for a socialist for president. Further, a Gallup poll revealed that only 45% of Americans ages 18 to 29 have a positive view of capitalism, while 51% have a positive view of socialism. No offense, but it’s like a wave of stupid has washed ashore.

Significantly, these kids are not only drawn to socialism but also repelled by capitalism — two distinct but related points. Their attraction to socialism partially stems from their aversion to capitalism. The leftist establishment has bombarded us for decades with socialist propaganda. Former Hillsdale College professor Burton Folsom notes that while America was founded on the idea of preserving individual liberties through limited government, many prominent American history textbook writers are strongly biased against America’s free market tradition and believe that America must be liberated from predatory capitalists. These teachings have now yielded an abundance of poisonous fruit.

A 2018 study by the National Association of Scholars showed that some 40% of colleges in the United States have no Republican professors. “The political registration of full-time, Ph.D.-holding professors in top-tier liberal arts colleges is overwhelmingly Democratic,” writes Mitchell Langbert. “Indeed, faculty political affiliations at 39 percent of the colleges in my sample are Republican free — having zero Republicans.” In the other 61% of schools, the ratio is “absurdly skewed against Republican affiliation and in favor of Democratic affiliation.”

It is astonishing that an economic system that has enslaved and impoverished nation after nation and was responsible for more than 100 million murders in the 20th century is portrayed as utopian, and that capitalism, which has liberated hundreds of millions from poverty, is depicted as evil.

The left works 24/7 to disseminate its destructive ideas. Chrissy Clark writes for The Federalist that Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, two prominent economics professors from the University of California, Berkeley, have been instrumental in designing economic policy for Democratic presidential hopefuls Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Despite their dubious calculations on such socialistic proposals as “Medicare for All,” the liberal media is working hand in hand with them to spread their propaganda — including the oft-repeated canard that the wealthiest Americans have the lowest tax rates. This type of coordinated effort, argues Clark, could “affect the way young people view economics for the rest of their lives.”

Here’s the point: Leftists have to lie to persuade people that socialism works and capitalism is evil. At some point, we must successfully make the case that the left must be judged by its policy failures rather than its supposedly good intentions. Here’s the other point: Leftists are seemingly more committed to their goals of fundamentally transforming America than conservatives are to preserving it.

One of the purposes of my book is to alert our side as to how urgent our situation has become and how critical the 2020 presidential and congressional elections are for us. Evidence abounds that many Americans are losing sight of the unique gloriousness of America’s founding ideas. I try to give patriots abundant ammunition to make our case for preserving these ideas and rejecting the insane ideas coming from the left, from socialism, to gender, to race, to abortion, to immigration, to the Constitution and much more.

If we are concerned, as we claim to be, about bequeathing to our children the free and prosperous America we have enjoyed, we better get to work.
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David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book is "Jesus is Risen: Paul and the Early Church." Follow him on Twitter& @davidlimbaugh and his website at davidlimbaugh.com.

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Tags: David Limbaugh, Exposing, Fraud of Socialism To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Importing Middle East Terrorism

Cliff Kincaid

by Cliff Kincaid: Obama bureaucrats in the CIA are still stinging over President Trump's dramatic decision to both withdraw U.S. forces from northern Syria and take down the leader of ISIS. The decision was a win-win, as the communist terrorist PKK/YPG Kurds in northern Syria were dealt a military defeat by Turkey, and the ISIS terrorist leader was sent to hell, as a result of U.S. military might and canine expertise.

But now, American and other 'volunteers" who went to the Middle East to fight for a Kurdish utopia known as Rojava are coming back to America to continue their revolutionary struggle here.

It never made sense for the U.S. to back one set of terrorists, the PKK/YPG, against another, ISIS. But that was Obama's conscious and deliberate policy. Trump decided he would pursue a pro-American foreign policy that respected our ally Turkey and would leave both terrorist groups in ashes. In another masterstroke, Trump wisely decided to withhold details of the anti-terrorist operation from the leakers and liars on Capitol Hill.

Now, the Kurds are whining to their Obama handlers, many still in the national security bureaucracy. Hence, the same CIA bureaucrats who engineered Obama's no-win policy are now retaliating with smears of Trump in the fake news media. They placed an anti-Trump article in the Tuesday New York Times, under the long title "As Kurds Tracked ISIS Leader, U.S. Withdrawal Threw Raid Into Turmoil." The theme was that Trump betrayed the Kurdish "allies" who had helped locate the ISIS leader by stealing his underwear.

Here's how the Times put it: "...even as the Syrian Kurdish fighters were risking their lives in the hunt that led to Mr. al-Baghdadi's death this weekend, Mr. Trump abruptly shattered America's five-year partnership with them."

That "partnership" was initiated by the previous Obama Administration, which has blood on its hands for funding various terror groups in an effort to initiate "regime change" in Syria and Libya. Let's remember that Obama's legacy was up to 500,000 dead in Syria, Libya became a disaster as well, and Germany welcomed a Muslim invasion of Europe.

The PBS Newshour ran an interview with Obama's CIA Director, John Brennan, in which he called the outcome "regrettable."

How does Obama's CIA director get away with simply saying that the human misery and suffering in Syria spilling over into Europe are "regrettable?" Where is the accountability for this debacle? And on what legal and constitutional basis did Obama take America to war in Syria anyway?

Perhaps this is why Brennan and his comrades conceived Russia-gate. It was a largely successful effort to divert public attention from the bloody policies they pursued in the Middle East.

It's not as if the media didn't understand what Obama's CIA was doing. The Washington Post and the New York Times both reported that a secret CIA operation to train and arm "rebels" in Syria had cost $1 billion by the middle of 2015. The Post said the CIA program set up in 2013 was "to bolster moderate forces." But according to Brennan on PBS, more radical groups joined the fight, leading to a "regrettable" situation.

Those groups joining the fight included the Kurdish PKK/YPG. But they were supported overtly by the Obama Administration, using the CIA and the Pentagon to create a new nation state of Rojava in northern Syria. Members of Antifa, anarchist, and communist groups in the U.S. went there to fight for this new socialist paradise. They formed an "International Freedom Battalion," a "socialist fighting group of foreign volunteers fighting ISIS and Turkey in Syria."

Like the CIA and Pentagon war in Syria, Obama's intervention in Libya was also illegal and unconstitutional. But the media failed to acknowledge the facts. Under the War Powers Act, a president can go to war on his own only if there is an imminent threat to the U.S., and there is a 60-day deadline for the withdrawal of forces. Obama violated both provisions of the law. There was no direct or immediate threat to the U.S. from Libya or Syria, and Obama ignored the 60-day deadline for approval from Congress.

Back in 2007, then-Senator Obama loudly declared that "The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."

One result of Obama's Libya intervention was the Benghazi massacre of four Americans. Obama's intervention in Syria could result in "blowback" on American soil.

Consider the fact that Americans and others fighting for the PKK in Syria produced a film, "We Need to Take Guns," about their effort. A masked fighter in the film says "this is how internationalism works," and predicted that those who came to the region would take their experiences "back home."

Earlier this year, the Times actually featured an article about some of the "American volunteers." These were among the "hundreds of civilians from Western nations" fighting for the new Marxist state of Rojava in the PKK/YPG military units. "I've always hated capitalism and materialism," said one American from Texas. "What the Kurds are doing fits with what I believe."

In fact, in the wake of the recent PKK/YPG defeat against the Turks, many of these fighters may be returning to the U.S. as hardened communists with military skills, including bomb-making. A "Solidarity With Rojava" organization in the U.S. claims affiliates in several American cities and has announced a "World Resistance Day" against the U.S. and Turkey.

The theme of Trump "betraying" the PKK/YPG terrorists serves to further radicalize left-wingers in love with the mythical state of Rojava. There was never an "alliance" with the Kurds, as the paper claimed. Obama used them against ISIS, based on the expectation they would eventually get their own state in northern Syria. It was a fiction that Obama's CIA dangled in front of them. But Trump was having none of it.

Whatever the Kurds did, they did on their own behalf. But Trump was under no obligation to them. Instead, he had a commitment through NATO to NATO member Turkey, which has been attacked by the PKK/YPG for decades, losing thousands of their citizens to terrorism. In Syria, these units called themselves the Syrian Democratic Forces. Their presence on Turkey's border was a clear and present danger.

Instead of sticking by the Kurdish Marxists, who always had their own terrorist agenda, the United States had and has an obligation to NATO member Turkey to turn over alleged YPG/PKK terrorist leader Ferhat Abdi Sahin, codenamed Mazloum Kobani. The Turkish Embassy says he has killed 41 Turkish civilians and wounded more than 400 in his 28 years in the PKK terrorist organization.

Indeed, Turkey has requested the extradition of Mazloum Kobani under the Treaty on Extradition and Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters between the US and Turkey.

But several U.S. senators are moving in the opposite direction, asking the Trump Administration to expedite a visa for Kobani to enter the U.S. They are Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland), Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee), Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut)

This is a dangerous time, and we can expect more of the same "betrayal of the Kurds by Trump" stories, since they conveniently divert attention from Obama's illegal and immoral policy of arming the Kurds in the first place without congressional approval. Many Obama bureaucrats in the intelligence community and the Pentagon are implicated in this bloody and disastrous policy. They hate Trump for putting a stop to the endless war.

But now, the carnage could come to America.

The February, Times article noted that some of the PKK/YPG volunteers "have returned to the United States, where they are often detained on arrival for questioning about their activities," but that none so far have been prosecuted. However, "that could change if Turkey – a NATO ally – goes to war with the Kurdish forces in Syria," the paper said.

As a result, the communist and anarchist hotheads may now be returning to the United States, to take up arms against Trump, who engineered the perceived "betrayal" of their comrades.

America's new Civil War could be taking an ominous turn.
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Cliff Kincaid is a veteran journalist and media critic and writes for RenewAmerica.

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4 Keys to Understanding a Trump Impeachment Trial in the Senate

Rep. Adam Schiff is leading the House
impeachment against President Donald Trump

by Fred Lucas: The focus of impeachment is now on the Democrat-controlled House and President Donald Trump, but the Republican-controlled Senate and Chief Justice John Roberts almost certainly will clear space on their calendar soon.

The House vote Thursday to formalize the impeachment inquiry against Trump is the first step in a process that likely will lead to the House’s sending articles of impeachment for the Senate to consider. That vote fell along party lines, with just two Democrats voting against the inquiry.

Although most analysts consider reaching the two-thirds Senate vote required for removal of a president virtually impossible, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the Senate would conduct a trial if necessary, even though some conservatives have called for senators to dismiss the charges.

The Senate will decide how a trial moves forward, with discretion about some procedures, hearing from witnesses, length of the trial, and other matters. These issues are spelled out in both the Constitution and in Senate rules.

Here are answers to questions about what a Senate trial, probably in early 2020, would look like.

1. What Do Precedents of Johnson, Clinton Trials Tell Us?
The trial of President Andrew Johnson in 1868 on charges of violating the Tenure of Office Act lasted two months, and involved witnesses testifying on the Senate floor, similar to a regular criminal trial.

The 1999 trial of President Bill Clinton lasted a month, and was a “sham trial,” said former Rep. James Rogan, R-Calif., one of the House impeachment managers and author of the 2011 book “Catching Our Flag: Behind the Scenes of a Presidential Impeachment.”

Rogan was critical of then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, a fellow Repubican, for short-circuiting the trial.

“It wasn’t a trial and Trent Lott told me, he said, ‘It’s going to look like a trial. Everybody’s going to call it a trial,’” Rogan said in an interview with The Daily Signal. “It’s the only trial I know of in American history where the prosecutors were not allowed by the jury to call a single witness to prove their case. The Senate voted in secret, 100 to zero, to prevent the House managers from calling one single live witness to prove their case.”

Rogan, now a California Superior Court judge, said Lott, of Mississippi, chiefly had political concerns because the Clinton impeachment was unpopular.

Rogan recalled that Lott said:We don’t care if you have pictures of Bill Clinton standing over a dead woman with a smoking gun. The polls say they didn’t want him impeached. You guys impeached him and for doing that you just lost your majority.

We’ve got a majority of Republicans in the Senate. We have 55 Republicans. Seven of my Republicans are up for election in 2000, are in tough races. You guys have just jumped off a cliff. We’re not jumping off a cliff. We’re … going to put this thing to bed, and you’re going to be sorry.The Senate had the full results of the investigation by independent counsel Ken Starr, so it didn’t need witnesses, said David O. Stewart, author of the 2009 book “Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy.”

“The Johnson trial had testimony, but the Senate probably didn’t need it,” Stewart, who represented U.S. District Judge Walter Nixon in his 1986 Senate trial, told The Daily Signal. “The facts were widely known.”

2. What’s the Process for a Senate Trial?
In preparation for an impeachment trial, the Senate will “issue a writ of summons to the respondent,” in this case the president, for either him or his counsel to appear for the trial on the date established by the Senate, according to the Congressional Research Service.

“Unlike what happened in the House, which was a departure significantly from past precedent on impeachment procedure, I expect the Senate to rely on precedent,” Thomas Jipping, who served as deputy chief counsel to the Senate Impeachment Trial Committee of U.S. District Judge Thomas Porteous in 2010, told The Daily Signal.

Jipping, now deputy director of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation, said a Trump impeachment trial likely would “follow the Clinton model.”

“The Senate is not in an advocacy role, but acts as a judge and jury,” Jipping said. “The House managers and [the] president’s lawyers will likely make motions procedurally to benefit them, and the Senate will vote on how it wants to proceed with the trial.”

After establishing a date, the Senate orders the House managers—members of the House acting as prosecutors—or their counsel to provide the Senate’s sergeant of arms with information about potential witnesses and other evidence to be subpoenaed for presentation during the trial.

“The Senate will determine questions of competency, relevancy, and materiality,” the Congressional Research Service report says.

The House managers, or prosecutors, are the first to make opening arguments and—if needed—examine witnesses. The president’s counsel then has the opportunity to cross-examine witnesses.

Stewart said he has serious doubts witnesses would be called in any Senate trial of Trump over the Ukraine controversy.

“At the end of the day, the goal of the House managers and president’s lawyers will be to sway public opinion to drive the vote,” Stewart said. “I assume neither the House nor the president’s lawyers want live witnesses. The thing about live witnesses [is] you can never be certain what they’re going to say.”

The House managers and the president’s counsel may make motions or objections during the trial.

However, the presiding officer at the trial “may choose to put any such issues to a vote before the Senate,” the report by the Congressional Research Service says, and any senator “may request that a formal vote be taken on a particular question.”

Short of a rules change—itself requiring a two-thirds vote—a trial of Trump would follow the precedent of the Johnson and Clinton trials, both held before the full Senate.

The Senate appoints a committee to try judicial impeachments, Jipping said. However, Senate rules require a presidential impeachment to take place before the full chamber.

Judicial impeachments generally have been of district judges, who are appointed by the president. That contrasts with a president elected by voters in 50 states.

3. Will the Chief Justice Preside?
Chief Justice John Roberts almost certainly would preside over a trial of Trump, despite objections from some of the president’s defenders.

Article 1, Section 3, Clause 6 of the Constitution states: “ … When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.”

Last year, Roberts issued a statement in defense of the judiciary, implicitly responding to a Trump tweet criticizing federal judges. Some Trump defenders now call for Roberts to recuse himself from presiding over a Senate trial.

“There is already a crisis of confidence among the American people that we have a fair system of justice,” conservative radio host John Cardillo told The Washington Times. “When you have a chief justice of the Supreme Court overtly making comments that are derogatory to the president of the United States, take all speculation out of the process.”

The Trump-Roberts dispute occurred after a lower court judge in California temporarily blocked the administration’s bid to revise asylum policies for would-be immigrants. Trump referred to U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar—appointed by President Barack Obama in 2012—as an “Obama judge.”

Roberts, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2005, in response to an inquiry from the Associated Press, subsequently asserted: “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”

As might have been expected, Trump tweeted a response to the chief justice:

Justice Roberts can say what he wants, but the 9th Circuit is a complete & total disaster. It is out of control, has a horrible reputation, is overturned more than any Circuit in the Country, 79%, & is used to get an almost guaranteed result. Judges must not Legislate Security...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2018

....and Safety at the Border, or anywhere else. They know nothing about it and are making our Country unsafe. Our great Law Enforcement professionals MUST BE ALLOWED TO DO THEIR JOB! If not there will be only bedlam, chaos, injury and death. We want the Constitution as written!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2018

“The role of the chief justice in an impeachment trial is largely ministerial, an administrative role,” Jipping said. “He keeps order and a sense of solemnity.”

Such disputes have nothing to do with impeachment, Stewart said.

“It’s ridiculous to complain about Chief Justice Roberts because the chief justice is not a significant figure in the trial anyway; he’s more of a traffic cop,” Stewart told The Daily Signal. “He could rule on objections, but can be overruled by a vote of the Senate.”

In 1999, Chief Justice William Rehnquist presided over Clinton’s Senate impeachment trial. In 1868, Chief Justice Salmon Chase presided over Johnson’s trial.

4. Could the Senate Dismiss the Charges?
Republicans’ 53-seat Senate majority means a simple majority vote of 51 is improbable, much less the 67 votes required to convict and remove a president—short of major revelations in the Ukraine controversy.

Fox News Channel host Laura Ingraham, a lawyer who once clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas, said Wednesday of the Senate majority leader: “McConnell can and should aggressively push for a blisteringly short impeachment trial.”

Constitutional lawyer and former top Reagan administration Justice Department official Mark Levin has said the Senate should go a step further, as it has the authority to stop the trial.

“The Senate must not allow itself to be the plaything of Pelosi and the House Democrats, who are violating every rule,” Levin, a bestselling author, said on his popular radio show earlier this month.

“And only the Senate has the power to police what House Democrats are doing,” Levin said. “No other body. No court, not the executive branch, only the Senate.”

Although the Senate might have the authority to do so, at least for political reasons, senators will want to appear to give the impeachment charges a fair hearing, Stewart said.

“They will be politically sensitive to the appearance of looking unfair,” Stewart said. “They certainly don’t want to run the risk of being accused of ignoring their constitutional obligations.”

Such a move would be similar to a criminal court’s dismissing an indictment before a trial.

From a practical standpoint, it would spare the country a waste of time, argued Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder and national coordinator of Tea Party Patriots, a conservative group.

“[The] Senate should move quickly to vote on a resolution dismissing the House impeachment charges by a simple majority vote,” Martin wrote earlier this month in USA Today. “This would spare the nation the political agony of a drawn-out Senate trial, where the outcome is a foregone conclusion and the only result will be further polarization.”
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Fred Lucas (@FredLucasWH) is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal.

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