The Democratic House, Not President Trump, Will be Permanently Scarred by Impeachment

by Newt Gingrich: Speaker Nancy Pelosi seemed giddy as she announced the impeachment managers who would go to the Senate and attempt to prosecute a case against President Donald Trump.

She said “He’s been impeached forever. They can never erase that.”

However, Pelosi has it exactly backward. The Senate is going to refuse to convict President Trump. He will be exonerated, and she and the Democrats will be condemned by history.

The wide repudiation of the House Democratic betrayal of the Constitution is already beginning. As a historian myself, I think it’s important to document these reactions.

Consider historian Victor Davis Hanson’s analysis for the National Review, which was subtitled: “The new normal: Impeachment as a routine partisan tool, endless investigations, lying under oath with impunity, surveillance of political enemies, zero accountability.”

This is hardly an endorsement of Pelosi’s trivialization of the Constitution.

Abraham Lincoln scholar and highly respected historian Allen Guelzo asserted in The Wall Street Journal:“[Charles] Pinckney and [Rufus] King might have been right in 1787. Americans prefer to choose their presidents with elections, and whenever impeachment is used in an attempt to nullify those choices, the results aren’t happy for anyone. That was true in 1868, and as both Andrew Johnson and his accusers might warn us, it remains true after a century and a half.”Clearly, Pelosi did not know enough history to understand the warnings of Pinckney and King – or the sad end of the impeachment process against President Johnson.

When Interviewed by Arun Rath, Harvard law professor and ACLU liberal Alan Dershowitz commented:“[Alexander] Hamilton said that the greatest danger would be an impeachment that was based on who had the most votes in the House or removal based on who had the most votes in the Senate. And that’s precisely what we’re seeing happen, and the reason we’re seeing it is because of the use of open-ended criteria. Every controversial president since John Adams has been accused of abuse of power. And obstruction of Congress? That’s part of our system of checks and balances. Right now, it seems like Nancy Pelosi is trying to obstruct the Senate by delaying furthering the articles of impeachment. …So I think the House of Representatives violated the Constitution when they impeached him on these two grounds.”When interviewed by Congress, Law Professor Jonathan Turley warned:“One can oppose President Trump’s policies or actions but still conclude that the current legal case for impeachment is not just woefully inadequate, but in some respects, dangerous, as the basis for the impeachment of an American president.”So, from these perspectives, it is Pelosi – not Trump – who threatens to undermine the Constitution.

As former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy pointed out on Fox News, the Pelosi strategy is simply to “bruise President Trump with an unending stream of new impeachment allegations” in order to hurt his chances at re-election. McCarthy added, “[a]fter over 230 years, we have entered the era of partisan impeachment that the Framers feared. This is what it looks like.”

So, McCarthy sees Pelosi behaving in exactly the unconstitutional and narrowly partisan manner the writers of the Constitution hoped to avoid. Again, it is Pelosi – not Trump – who is undermining the Constitution.

As former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy pointed out on Fox News, the Pelosi strategy is simply to “bruise President Trump with an unending stream of new impeachment allegations” in order to hurt his chances at re-election. McCarthy added, “[a]fter over 230 years, we have entered the era of partisan impeachment that the Framers feared. This is what it looks like.”

So, McCarthy sees Pelosi behaving in exactly the unconstitutional and narrowly partisan manner the writers of the Constitution hoped to avoid. Again, it is Pelosi – not Trump – who is undermining the Constitution.

In addition, The New York Post’s editorial board noted that “Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff has been lying to the world for years in his nonstop campaign to smear President Trump.” Their judgement is that it is Schiff – and not Trump – who has been a continuous serial liar.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board summarized the disaster of Pelosi’s bid to delay sending the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, saying her move “further exposes how Democrats have defined impeachment down. The House hearings blocked GOP witnesses and limited cross-examination. Despite selective leaks and a pro-impeachment media, they failed to move public opinion or persuade Republicans that Mr. Trump committed impeachable offenses.”

The WSJ editorial board went on to call Democrats’ actions “an abuse of the impeachment power” and reiterated that the things alleged in the Articles of Impeachment “aren’t close to impeachable.”

Madison Gesiotto in the Hill called this “the flimsiest and most partisan impeachment in history.”

In fact, as Pelosi played games with appointing managers, even senior Democrats began to lose patience. “The longer it goes on the less urgent it becomes,” Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein told reporters. “If it is serious and urgent, send them over. If it is not, do not send it over.”

Republican Senator Susan Collins suggested that the delays were wrong. As she put it, “[d]oesn’t that suggest that the House did an incomplete job, then?”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell neatly summarized the Democrat House-created calamity in his floor statement on Thursday, saying “[i]t was a transparently partisan performance from beginning to end.”

McConnell went on to remind the country of the Founding Fathers’ fears of exactly the kind of narrow bitter partisanship Pelosi has been displaying. Paraphrasing Hamilton, McConnell warned that “blinded by factionalism, the House of Representatives would abuse the power of impeachment to serve nakedly partisan goals rather than the long-term interests of the American people and their Republic.”

Finally, it’s clear the House Democrats have failed utterly to live up to the standard of prosecution set out by former Associate Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson (who served as chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg trials). Jackson cautioned the Conference of United States Attorneys on April 1, 1940:“With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. It is in this realm-in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself.”So, no, Nancy. President Trump does not have to fear the judgement of history on this impeachment effort.

The judgement of history is going to be that a group of scoundrels in control of the US House of Representatives placed partisan interests above the country, undermined the Constitution, weakened America in the world, and lied about the duly elected President of the United States.

This will become Pelosi’s moment of shame, and Trump’s moment of redemption.
----------------------
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.

---

Tags: Newt Gingrich, commentary, Democratic House, Not President Trump, Will be Permanently Scarred, by Impeachment To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

'I'm Afraid Too... but Aren't We Supposed to Fix This?'

Jewher Ilham

by Tony Perkins: There's a day in everyone's life that helps define them. For Jewher Ilham, that date was February 2, 2013. She and her dad woke up that morning, thinking they were on their way to America. "It was supposed to be an adventure." Instead, it was the start of another journey -- the story of a teenage daughter, who China turned into a global freedom fighter.

They'd gotten their tickets and checked their bags, completely oblivious to the fact that these were the last hours they'd spend together. Her dad, Ilham, one of Beijing's most respected scholars and professors, had been invited to do a residency at Indiana University. He never arrived. Walking through the terminal to the immigration checkpoint, Jewher could tell that something was wrong. As officers pulled them from the line and led them to a small room, she and her dad looked at each other. Her dad, they were told, could not leave.

Alone, without any money or family, a panicked Jewher was put on the plane and sent to Chicago. It was the last time she would see her father -- maybe, forever. A year and a half later, after beatings, interrogations, and the worst kind of torture, her father just disappeared. They found out later that he'd been charged as an extremist and sentenced to life in a Uyghur concentration camp. "I had never imagined that I would be in such a situation," she said. "I never thought that one day my father would be imprisoned in Xinjiang, and I would be on the other side of the world, trying my best to speak for him." Jewher learned English for the sole purpose of telling the world what happened. She was determined: if her father could not be heard -- she would be.

Her best weapon, she explains, is the one her father used: words. She went to Congress, human rights councils, the European Parliament, and NGOs, pleading with them to intervene. The Uyghur people, she warned, are being hunted down and imprisoned. Help them. Her dad had spent years advocating for the persecuted minority, trying to build a bridge between the Chinese and other people. But the government saw him as a threat, and like millions of other Uyghurs, made him pay.

Thursday, Jewher spent the morning at FRC, reliving what's happened to her family -- and so many others. "This isn't just happening to the Uyghurs," she insisted. There are at least a million of them, locked away behind barbed wire -- but there are others. Christians, Tibetan Buddhists, even human rights lawyers. And what do the Chinese say about it? "These are just reeducation centers, meant to train people for jobs." But look at who are trapped in these camps, Jewher argues. "Professors, high school teachers, soccer players, faculty... [A]ll kinds of people who are successful in their careers. And those people do not need vocational train training or job training... [This is] happening. And it's spread to everywhere in China."

When I asked Jewher later, on "Washington Watch," what brought her to this point, she explained how hard it had been. She never imagined becoming the face of the Uyghur struggle, but there comes a point, she explained, when you have to stand up for people who can't. "Six years ago, when I first decided to speak up for my father's situation, I only wanted to speak up for my father. I did not want to get into all the politics and all the other people, because I thought I wasn't the best person to speak up. I didn't think I was knowledgeable enough to educate people on the issue. But as a daughter, I knew that I'm the best person to speak."

There was a turning point, she remembers, about two years ago, when Jewher made a conscious decision to focus on more than her father. Someone, she believed, had to tell the world about the suffering. "It's not that I think I'm an expert," she's quick to say. "It's not that I think I am so knowledgeable about it. [It's] because the people who can educate people on this issue better than me are locked up in concentration camp now." And everyone else, she says, is living in fear. "I am afraid, too. I am so scared that my actions could bring [endanger] the rest of my family members. In fact, one of my cousins has been sentenced to 10 years for having my father's photo and his article on her phone."

This is so common that I feel this is sick. This is not supposed to be happening. And it's not about one person or one group. It's not about the Uyghur people anymore. It's about humanity. These human rights violations [aren't supposed] to be happening in 2020. And aren't we all supposed to speak up? Aren't we all supposed to? No matter if I'm Uyghur or not? And no matter if someone is from [another country], from other religious groups or other ethnic groups, aren't we supposed to stand against atrocities like this? Aren't we supposed to fix this? This is a problem. When we see a problem, aren't we all supposed to fix it?"

Don't miss "One Daughter's Testimony." Watch Jewher's story below and pray for the millions of families just like hers -- waiting for their loved ones to come home.
--------------
Tony Perkins (@tperkins) is President of the Family Research Council . This article was on Tony Perkin's Washington Update and written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

---

Tags: Tony Perkins, Family Research Center, FRC, Family Research Council, Jewher Ilham. I'm Afraid Too, Aren't We Supposed to. Fix This To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Finally: Ilhan Omar Apparently Under Investigation by the Feds — ICE Included

Rep. Ilhan Omar seems to be investigated.

by Michael Van Der Galien: Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you read that right: Ilhan Omar, the single most anti-American and anti-Semitic Democrat in Congress, appears to be under investigation by the Feds. And ICE is part of it since she may have committed, as one journalist puts it, "a breathtaking number of possible immigration-related felonies."

The Blaze's David Steinberg explains that "Minnesota state Rep. Steve Drazkowski (R) had previously filed a complaint on the matter with the Minnesota District of the Department of Justice. That office — headed by U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald, a 2018 Donald Trump appointee — directed the FBI to review the complaint. An FBI SAC formally met with Rep. Drazkowski, and others, in mid-October to receive a prepared file of evidence and related information."

Well, since then, additional steps have been taken. At least two federal agencies seem to be involved in addition to the FBI itself: the Department of Education and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The Department of Education is involved because Omar may have married a UK citizen in 2009 in an attempt to "facilitate federal student loan fraud, or other fraud involving higher education." This suspicion arose because Omar married a UK citizen in 2009, only to separate again from him in June 2011. Those dates correspond with his enrollment at North Dakota State University, where she received her degree.

Additionally, as Steinberg explained last year right here at PJ Media, Omar filed for divorce in 2017. Under threat of perjury, she claimed that she and her NDSU husband had lost all contact with each other since they separated in June 2011. "However, [d]ozens of verified social media posts, photos, and even a 2016 interview with the NDSU husband indicate otherwise. It appears Omar perjured herself eight times answering those nine questions."

As for ICE, Steinberg explained in July 2019 that all the above appears to "give probable cause to investigate Omar for eight instances of perjury, immigration fraud, marriage fraud, up to eight years of state and federal tax fraud, two years of federal student loan fraud, and even bigamy."

Of course, it's rather ironic that ICE is involved because this is the very agency Omar derides every other day or so, calling them militaristic and, in general, a stain on America's image. Or something.

Fox News picked up the story and ran with it -- on Tucker Carlson's show.

Finally. pic.twitter.com/uMC4JWSi5H

— Imam of Peace (@Imamofpeace) January 17, 2020

Oh yes. Justice could very well be served soon.

Don't you just love the smell of Omar's fear in the morning?
--------------------------------------
Michael van der Galien  (@GalienMichael) is Editor-in-Chief of Dutch news and opinion website De Dagelijkse Standard, a freelance journalist and columnist, and a regular contributor to several American websites including PJ Media.  RINO added by ARRA News Service editor.

---

Tags: Michael Van Der Galien. PJ Media, Finally, Ilhan Omar, Apparently Under Investigation, by the Feds, ICE Included To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Chaos In Europe – It's Tricky Being World's Largest Importer Of Gas, Oil And Critic, Too

Victor Davis Hansen

by Dr. Victor Davis Hanson: Despite its cool Green parties and ambitious wind and solar agendas, Europe remains by far the world’s largest importer of oil and natural gas.

Oil output in the North Sea and off the coast of Norway is declining, and the European Union is quietly looking for fossil fuel energy anywhere it can find it.

Europe itself is naturally rich in fossil fuels. It likely has more reserves of shale gas than the United States, currently the world’s largest producer of both oil and natural gas. Yet in most European countries, horizontal drilling and fracking to extract gas and oil are either illegal or face so many court challenges and popular protests that they are neither culturally nor economically feasible.

The result is that Europe is almost entirely dependent on Russian, Middle Eastern and African sources of energy.

The American-Iranian standoff in the Middle East, coupled with radical drop-offs in Iranian and Venezuelan oil production, has terrified Europe — and for understandable reasons.



In a logical world, Europeans would retake control of their own destiny. That recalibration would entail beefing up their military power, and their navies in particular.
The European Union has almost no ability to guarantee the delivery of critical oil and gas supplies from the Middle East should Iran close the Strait of Hormuz or harass ships in the Persian Gulf.

Europe’s only maritime security is the NATO fleet — a synonym for the U.S. Navy.

Vladimir Putin’s Russia supplies an estimated 30 percent of Europe’s oil needs. In times of crisis, Putin could exercise de facto control over the European economy.

In other words, Europe refuses to develop its own gas and oil reserves, and won’t fund the necessary military power to ensure that it can safely import energy from problematic or even hostile sources.

It’s no wonder that Europe’s traditional foreign policy reflects these crazy paradoxes.

Energy neediness explains why the EU was so eager to maintain the so-called “Iran deal” with the theocracy in Tehran, and also why it was nervous about the anti-Russia hysteria that arose in the United States after the 2016 election.

Past European distancing from Israel reflected Europe’s fear of alienating Arab oil producers in the Middle East and North Africa.

Europeans are also uneasy about the Trump administration. They see the current U.S. government as nationalist and unpredictable. Americans appear not so ready as in the past to enter the world’s hotspots to ensure unimpeded commercial use of sea and air lanes for the benefit of others.

The result is a sort of European schizophrenia when it comes to America and foreign policy in general. On one hand, the European Union resents its military dependence on Washington, while on the other it prays for its continuance. The EU loudly promotes freedom and democracy abroad, but it is careful to keep ties with oil-exporting Middle Eastern autocracies that are antithetical to every value Europeans promote.

Germany agrees with its allies that Russian imperial agendas could threaten European autonomy. But privately, Berlin reassures Putin’s Russia that it wants to buy all the gas and oil that Moscow has to sell. Germany increasingly seems far friendlier with a suspicious Russia than it is with an America that protects it.

In sum, what ensures that Europeans have enough daily gasoline and home heating fuel are not batteries, wind farms and solar panels — much less loud green proselytizing. They count instead on a mercurial Russia, an array of unstable Middle Eastern governments and an underappreciated U.S. military.

In a logical world, Europeans would retake control of their own destiny. That recalibration would entail beefing up their military power, and their navies in particular.

They also would begin to frack and horizontally drill. Europeans would push ahead with more nuclear power, hydroelectric projects and clean-coal technologies — at least until new sources of clean energies become viable.

Europe should applaud U.S. gas and oil development, which has upped world supplies, diversified suppliers and lowered global prices. Europeans should especially remember that the U.S. military keeps global commerce safe for all vulnerable importers such as themselves.

But these remedies are apparently seen in Europe as worse than the disease of oil and gas dependency.

The result is again chaos. Europe lectures about greenhouse gases while it desperately seeks supplies of fossil fuels. Germany usually sets the tone in Europe, and it is the most hypocritical in both denouncing and buying fossil fuels from unsavory sources.

The danger for Europe now is that the charade may soon be over.

Americans are self-sufficient in gas and oil. They have lost interest in Middle East quagmires and petro-regimes. And they don’t like patrolling the world for countries that both count on and ankle-bite the U.S. military. Meanwhile, the more Europeans pander to oil-rich Russia, Iran and various Gulf states, the less respect they earn in return.

It is hard to be both the world's largest importer of gas and oil and the loudest critic of fossil fuels, but Europe has managed to do it.
-------------------
Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) is a senior fellow, classicist and historian and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution where many of his articles are found; his focus is classics and military history. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. H/T Fox News.

---

Tags: Victor Davis Hanson, Chaos In Europe, It's Tricky, Being World's Largest Importer, Of Gas, Oil, And Critic To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

FISA Fox News

. . . David Kris has been appointed by the FISA Court to oversee FBI surveillance reforms. Fox guarding the henhouse?

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

---

Tags: FISA Fox News, David Kris, appointed by the FISA Court, to oversee, FBI surveillance reforms, Fox guarding the henhouse?, AF Branco, political cartoon To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Media Malpractice, Impeachment Collusion, Pence's Profile In Courage

Gary Bauer

by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Media Malpractice
I have often noted that media bias is about more than just how stories get spun. Media bias is also evident in what stories simply don't get told – call them the sins of journalistic omission. And the left-wing media did it again last night.

All the networks wanted to talk about was impeachment, and that's understandable given their obvious Trump hatred. But most journalists understand that this farce is not going anywhere.

But something did happen on Capitol Hill yesterday that is going somewhere. As we told you, the USMCA trade deal to replace NAFTA passed the Senate by an overwhelming margin of 89-to-10.

Remember when Donald Trump campaigned against NAFTA? Predictably, the political establishment opposed him. The media mocked him. They said he would destroy our relationships with Mexico and Canada.

WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!

Allow me to just reiterate that what everyone once said could not be done -- the USMCA -- passed the House last month by a vote of 385-to-41 and passed the Senate yesterday by a vote of 89-to-11. Donald Trump did it, and this new deal will have lasting benefits for the American people.

And the big three networks gave it absolutely zero coverage yesterday. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

For a fleeting moment, Politico appreciated the historic nature of the accomplishment and posted a story with this headline: "Senate Passes USMCA In Major Win For Trump."

After sufficiently flogging Politico's digital editor for his blasphemy – speaking well of Donald Trump – the title was quickly changed to this: "Senate Passes USMCA, But Much Work Remains."

By the way, kudos to Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ)! The former Air Force fighter pilot certainly knows how to handle the liberal media.

As she was walking into the Senate chamber yesterday for the start of the impeachment trial, a CNN reporter shouted a gotcha question at her. McSally responded, "You're a liberal hack. I'm not talking to you."

Perhaps McSally can give her fellow Senate Republicans a few tips on public relations!

Impeachment Collusion
Collusion has been a big buzzword throughout the impeachment drama, and we got a prime example of collusion yesterday.

As I am sure you have heard by now, the "non-partisan" Government Accounting Office (GAO) released a statement yesterday claiming that the president violated the law when he withheld funds from Ukraine. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her media allies quickly pounced.

First of all, Trump didn't withhold the money. He delayed it to ensure it wasn't going to be wasted by corruption, which is the president's responsibility. But the release of that GAO statement on the opening day of the Senate impeachment trial was no coincidence. It was more anti-Trump collusion by the Swamp.

But since we're talking about GAO reports as evidence of impeachable crimes, the Government Accounting Office determined that Barack Obama broke the law seven times. By the left's logic, Obama should have been impeached seven times! Where was Pelosi's outrage then?

Pence's Profile In Courage
If you've ever read John F. Kennedy's book, "Profile In Courage," you may recall that one of the chapters is about Sen. Edmund Ross, a Republican senator from Kansas. Ross bucked his party and prevented the partisan impeachment of President Andrew Johnson in 1868. (Northern Republicans at the time bitterly resented Johnson, a Democrat from Tennessee.)

Vice President Mike Pence, an astute observer of American history, has a great opinion piece in today's Wall Street Journal about the courage of Sen. Ross. You can read it here.

Pence raises Ross's example to ask if any Senate Democrats will have the courage to stand up against this sham partisan impeachment, intended solely to reverse the last election.

Great job, Mr. Vice President!

Speaking of the impeachment trial, the members of the president's impeachment defense team were announced today. They are:

• Pat Cipollone, who currently serves as White House counsel
• Jay Sekulow, Donald Trump's personal lawyer
• Ken Starr, the former Whitewater/Clinton independent counsel
• Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor and renowned defense attorney
• Pam Bondi, the former attorney general of Florida
• Robert Ray, who also led the Whitewater/Clinton investigations
• Jane Raskin, a former federal prosecutor who represented the president during the Mueller investigation.

-------------------
Gary Bauer (@GaryLBauer)  is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

---

Tags: Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families, Media Malpractice, Impeachment Collusion, Pence's Profile In Courage To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Democrat Backing for Anti-Semitism is Killing Jews

by Daniel Greenfield: After a black nationalist attack on a Jewish supermarket in Jersey City, a member of the Jersey City Board of Education defended the murder of two Jewish people and a Latino employee.

"Drugs and guns are planted in the Black community,” Joan Terrell Paige ranted on Facebook.

The two Black Hebrew Israelite killers, the former community organizer wrote, “went directly to the kosher supermarket. I believe they knew they would come out in body bags. What is the message they were sending? Are we brave enough to explore the answer to their message? Are we brave enough to stop the assault on the Black communities of America?"

While some Democrats called on Joan Terrell Paige to resign, others defended her hatred of Jews.

The Hudson County Democratic Black Caucus argued that "her statement has heightened awareness around issues that must be addressed."

“She said nothing wrong. Everything she said is the truth,” declared Carolyn Oliver Fair, the head of the North Jersey Chapter of the National Action Network. The NAN is Al Sharpton’s organization and has been addressed by every important Democrat from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi to Elizabeth Warren.

Virtually every 2020 Democrat has appeared at the National Action Network including Warren, Andrew Yang, Julian Castro, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Bernie Sanders despite its ugly history even before Fair’s support for murdering Jews. Sharpton had been the central figure in the Crown Heights Pogrom, he has a history of anti-Semitic slurs, and the NAN has blood on its hands.

Unlike many contemporary hate groups, the National Action Network has the unique distinction of being the destination of choice for every major Democrat and for its role in the murder of 7 people.

Those were the 7 who died in the Freddy’s Fashion Mart fire, 5 of them Latino women, who were killed when a black nationalist gunman ordered black people to leave before opening fire and burning the store. The worst racist hate crime in New York City was preceded by Sharpton denouncing the store owner as a, “white interloper”.

Morris Powell, who had been on trial for breaking a Korean woman’s head during a previous protest, had headed the National Action Network’s Buy Black committee. Powell had chanted, “Don’t give the Jew a dime”, outside the store and praised the killer as, “A Black Man who struggled for his people to be free.” The New York Times headlined its piece on the black nationalist killer as, “A Life of Resistance.”

The sympathetic profile of a racist monster who murdered seven people would never have been run about Dylann Roof or Robert Bowers. Nor would a racist massacre have been described as “resistance”.

But the New York Times quoted an Imam in the Believers Mosque in St. Petersburg who praised the racist arsonist as "the type of person who would encourage people to get involved." A former senior advisor to the Mayor of Tampa and Democrat campaign consultant described the killer as one in "a long line of people who thought it was up to them to stop talking, stop begging and start acting.”

Those comments closely echo Paige’s justification of the Kosher market attack. It’s why it ought to surprise no one that she has not resigned from the Jersey City Board of Education. And isn’t likely to.

Instead, John Flora, a Democrats running for Congress, defended her and urged other elected officials to “be prepared to demonstrate empathy. Was she still processing the event? Did it traumatize her?”

Flora is running for Congress on a bold platform of the Green New Deal, gun control, legalizing drugs, abolishing the electoral college and hating Jews.

With the backing of local Democrats, it appears that Paige isn’t going anywhere. And Democrats won’t stop appearing at National Action Network events. Not even after the murders of 7 and 3 people.

The underlying problem is that the Democrats don’t oppose racism or racial nationalism. They believe that under circumstances, such as a Jewish store in Harlem or in Jersey City, it might be justified.

They have one standard for white nationalism and another for black nationalism.

Had Dylann Roof been a black man shooting up a synagogue, we would be reading about his “life of resistance” in the New York Times.

The tragedy of the Jersey City attack taking place on a street named after Martin Luther King is that while there are streets in every major city named after the civil rights activist, civil rights has fallen to identity politics. Where civil rights called for equality, identity politics is nationalism and supremacism.

Democrats have used racial hatred for two centuries to appeal to a fractured electorate convinced of its own superiority and the unfairness of the system. That the electorate shifted races is a minor detail. The truly important thing to understand is that since 1828, the Democrats have gained and held on to power by convincing narrow groups that the deck is stacked against them and that only they can save them.

This poison killed numberless black and white people across two centuries. It also brought countless wealth into the pockets of the politically connected. From slavery and segregation, to the fire at Freddy’s and the shooting in Jersey City, countless acts of racial violence were perpetrated so that Democrats could keep their hands on the pork and graft that really makes government, local, state and federal, run.

Radical politics added an ideological motive. But all politics, whether radical or moderate, from the Dixiecrat to the Communist, is ultimately about the acquisition of money and power. Racism, white or black, is just a means of tribalizing the struggle for money and power by playing on racial fear and hate.

The victims of identity politics, killed and wounded in random lynchings, are the collateral damage of progressive racism. A few dead people, in this case Jews, are a small price to pay for power.

The rise in anti-Semitism is not mysterious. It is what happens when political factions back fringe groups convinced of the fundamental unfairness of society and the need to bring it down, whether it’s black or white supremacists, or Islamists, as weapons in a political war for control of the country.

People are dying in racial violence across the country so that the Democrats can win elections.
--------------
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.

---

Tags: Daniel Greenfield, Sultan Knish, David Horowitz, Freedom Center To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

What We've Learned From the Democratic Race -- So Far

Michael Barone

by Michael Barone: Elections are a form of communication. Voting tells politicians, and the press if they're capable of getting the message, what citizens will tolerate and what they won't. The Democrats haven't voted yet, but they've been campaigning for more than a year and have just had their last debate before the Iowa caucuses two weeks from Monday.

That's time enough to learn some useful things from the majority of the two dozen-plus declared candidates who have already dropped out and from those still in the race.

The first thing we've learned is that voters -- Democratic voters -- have a limited appetite for free stuff. Many candidates have been promising free college and free health care, and offering free Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

Sounds good at first, as when Sen. Elizabeth Warren backed Sen. Bernie Sanders' "Medicare for All" proposal. But the refusal of the I-have-a-plan-for-that candidate to say how she'd pay for it didn't fly. And when she did answer that question, that flopped, too, and she fell back on saying it would be delayed till her second two years or second term.

The second thing we've learned is related: As blogger Glenn Reynolds puts it, "Go woke, go broke." Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, former Rep. Beto O'Rourke, Sen. Kamala Harris, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro and Sen. Cory Booker -- all candidates who have taken some moderate stands -- chose to emphasize how hip they were. They embraced positions like free medical care for illegal immigrants, reparations for descendants of slaves, abortions for men who have transitioned to be women.

These things sound reasonable to fans of Rep. Alexandria Occasion-Cortez. To Democratic primary voters, not so much. All five are now ex-candidates.

Third, identity politics has proved to be a loser, too. Harris and Booker got only single-digit percentages from black voters. Castro made zero progress with Hispanics. Things were quite different in 1988, when Jesse Jackson carried blacks, Michael Dukakis white ethnics, Al Gore Southern whites and Dick Gephardt union members.

Identity politics is big on campus, where you get denounced for wearing a serape on Halloween if you don't have Mexican ancestors. But voters don't care so much. Harris and Booker failed to duplicate the frisson inspired by then-candidate Barack Obama in 2008, probably because you can only elect the first black president once. Catholics were similarly excited by John F. Kennedy in 1960 but haven't been similarly inspired by any Catholic candidate since.

Fourth, the white college graduates -- gentry liberals -- who are, for the first time in history, one of the Democratic Party's largest constituencies, are a fickle bunch. Black and elderly Democrats have consistently given former Vice President Joe Biden large pluralities, and Hispanic and low-income non-college Democrats have shown some affinity for Sanders. That largely accounts for the buoyancy of support for these 77- and 78-year-old candidates.

But gentry liberals have been bouncing around. They were briefly smitten with Harris after she bopped Biden on school busing. They swooned longer for Warren when she kept repeating, "I have a plan for that," and then they were taken charmed by Mayor Pete Buttigieg's crisp and self-assured articulateness.

The gentry liberals' fling with Harris didn't last long, and current polling suggests their crushes on Warren and Buttigieg are over. But there's still plenty of room for these voters to swing decisively in February's first two contests, for they are numerous among those who bother to attend the Iowa caucuses and demographically a large share of the population of New Hampshire.

That's what happened in 2008, when high-education Iowans swung to Obama, which convinced black voters that he, unlike Jesse Jackson, could win whites' votes and the nomination. But gentry liberals are hard to gauge because what they're after is not government aid but morally satisfying reassurances, not substance but style.

Finally, Democrats -- or their many friends in the press and social media -- have an obsessive yearning for "diversity," which turns out to mean racial quotas and preferences. There is moaning about not having any "people of color" on the latest debate stage, as if the party had a responsibility to somehow field a group of candidates who are demographically identical to the population.

Actually, the six candidates at the last debate come from a wide range of American backgrounds, reasonably appropriate for a party that, in its 188-year history, has always been a coalition of out-groups. What's important is not what the field of candidates looks like but who will be the party's nominee, who will inevitably be of one gender and a limited number of ancestries. That is something Democratic voters have not taught us yet.
---------------------
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.

---

Tags: Michael Barone, editorial, Rasmussen Reports, What We've Learned, From the Democratic Race, So Far To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

A Malicious Indictment Mitch Should Toss Out

by Patrick Buchanan: So weak is the case for impeachment that the elite in this city is demanding that the Senate do the work the House failed to do.

About the impeachment of President Donald Trump she engineered with her Democratic majority, Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday: “It’s not personal. It’s not political. It’s not partisan. It’s patriotic.”

Seriously, Madam Speaker? Not political? Not partisan?

Why then were all eight House members chosen as managers to prosecute the case against Trump, who ceremoniously escorted the articles across the Capitol, all Democrats? Why did the articles of impeachment receive not a single Republican vote on the House floor?

The truth: The impeachment of Donald Trump is the fruit of a malicious prosecution whose roots go back to the 2016 election, in the aftermath of which stunned liberals and Democrats began to plot the removal of the new president.

This coup has been in the works for three years.

First came the crazed charges of Trump’s criminal collusion with Vladimir Putin to hack the emails of the DNC and the Clinton campaign and funnel them to WikiLeaks.

For two years, we heard the cries of “Treason!” from Pelosi’s caucus. And despite the Mueller investigation’s exoneration of Trump of all charges of conspiracy with Russia, we still hear the echoes:

Trump is Putin’s poodle. Trump is an asset of the Kremlin.

All we want, and what the American people deserve, is a “fair trial,” Democrats and their media collaborators now insist. But can a fair trial proceed from a manifestly deficient and malicious prosecution?

Consider. In this impeachment, we are told, the House serves as the grand jury, and Adam Schiff’s Intelligence Committee and Jerry Nadler’s Judiciary Committee serve as the investigators and prosecutors.

But the articles of impeachment on which the Judiciary Committee and the House voted do not contain a single crime required by the Constitution for impeachment and removal. There is no charge of treason, no charge of bribery or “other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

So weak is the case for impeachment that the elite in this city is demanding that the Senate do the work the House failed to do.

The Senate must subpoena the documents and witnesses the House failed to produce, to make the case for impeachment more persuasive than it is now.

Not our job, rightly answers Mitch McConnell.

The Senate is supposed to be an “impartial jury.”

But while there is a debate over whether Republicans will vote to call witnesses, there is no debate on how the Senate Democrats intend to vote — 100% for removal of a president they fear they may not be able to defeat.

Consider Trump’s alleged offense: pressing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Burisma Holdings and Hunter Biden.

Assume Zelenskiy, without prodding, sent to the U.S., as a friendly act to ingratiate himself with Trump, the Burisma file on Hunter Biden.

Would that have been a crime?

Why is it then a crime if Trump asked for the file?

The military aid Trump held up for 10 weeks — lethal aid Barack Obama denied to Kyiv — was sent. And Zelenskiy never held the press conference requested, never investigated Burisma, never sent the Biden file.

There is a reason why no crime was charged in the impeachment of Donald Trump. There was no crime committed.

Not political, said Pelosi. Why then did she hold up sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate for a month, after she said it was so urgent that Trump be impeached that Schiff and Nadler could not wait for their subpoenas to be ruled upon by the Supreme Court?

Pelosi is demanding that the Senate get the documents, subpoena and hear the witnesses, and do the investigative work Schiff and Nadler failed to do.

Does that not constitute an admission that a convincing case was not made? Are not the articles voted by the House inherently deficient if the Senate has to have more evidence than the House prosecutors could produce to convict the president of “abuse of power”?

Can we really have a fair trial in the Senate, when half of the jury, the Democratic caucus, is as reliably expected to vote to remove the president as Republicans are to acquit him? What kind of fair trial is it when we can predict the final vote before the court hears the evidence?

It is ridiculous to deny that this impeachment is partisan, political and personal. It reeks of politics, partisanship and Trump-hatred.

As for patriotic, that depends on where you stand — or sit.

But the forum to be entrusted with the decision of “should Trump go?” is not a deeply polarized Senate, but with those the Founding Fathers entrusted with such decisions — the American people.

In most U.S. courts, a prosecution case this inadequate, with prosecutors asking the court itself to get more documents and call more witnesses, and so visibly contaminated with malice toward the accused, would be dismissed outright.

Mitch McConnell should let the House managers make their case, and then call for a vote to dismiss, and treat this indictment with the contempt it so richly deserves.
--------------------
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.

---

Tags: Patrick Buchanan, conservative, commentary, Malicious Indictment, Mitch McConnell, Toss It Out To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Schiff Show Gets Underway in Senate

. . . As the Senate trial starts, Dems engage in an underhanded effort to pressure Republicans.

by Thomas Gallatin : Chief Justice John Roberts swore in all 100 senators Thursday as the Democrats’ orchestrated impeachment trial against President Donald Trump officially got underway. “Coincidently,” blocks from the Capitol building, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released an eight-page report alleging that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) had violated the law when it temporarily withheld military aid to Ukraine. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi eagerly declared the report is “new incriminating evidence” that the Senate needed to accept.

So, how serious is this latest “bombshell”? In short, it’s a complete dud, which Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey does a great job of exposing. Furthermore, the GAO, an ostensibly nonpartisan agency that is uniquely an arm of the legislative rather than the executive branch, was urged by Democrat Sen. Chris Van Holland (MD) to state that Trump’s action on withholding aid was in violation of the law. Apparently, GAO General Counsel Thomas Armstrong, a Barack Obama appointee, obliged Holland’s wish and timed the report’s release to bolster Pelosi’s campaign to pressure Senate Republicans into caving to Democrats’ demands that witnesses and any “new evidence” they may come up with be accepted into the trial.

Pelosi sent articles to the Senate Wednesday. The GAO report released Thursday. That is not a coincidence for the party that colluded with the whistleblower to launch this whole charade in the first place.

The GAO’s report conveniently comes on the heels of Lev Paranas’s interview with rabid anti-Trumper Rachel Maddow in which he dubiously claimed that Trump was fully aware of the alleged scheme to pressure Ukraine’s president to investigate the Bidens. But Parnas is hardly a reliable source, as he has an obvious motivation to seek a deal as a means of getting out from under federal charges he currently faces for running a scheme to funnel foreign money to U.S. political campaigns.

Clearly, this is all part of an orchestrated ploy by Pelosi and company to put Senate Republicans on the defensive by claiming they are not interested in finding the truth but only in acting out of a partisan bias to exonerate Trump. Pelosi’s aim is to pressure the Senate into holding an open-ended impeachment trial based not only upon the vacuous charges and evidence the House supplied in its articles of impeachment but also upon any new “evidence” or “witnesses” Democrats may come up with as they continue their ongoing investigation. As Andrew McCarthy observes, “[The Democrats’] goal is to pressure the Senate not merely to conduct a trial but to complete the investigation that the House failed to complete — calling witnesses and gathering evidence, as if a trial were nothing more than an extension of an open-ended grand-jury probe.”

If Pelosi and company were truly concerned about constitutional fidelity and conducting a fair, nonpartisan trial after having supposedly uncovered new significant evidence, they would immediately request that the Senate hold the articles in abeyance or vote to dismiss the charges without prejudice so that the House could fully complete its investigation. But doing so would undermine Pelosi’s true goal: damaging Trump’s and Senate Republicans’ reelection bids.
-------------------
Thomas Gallatin is a Features Editor at The Patriot Post.

---

Tags: Thomas Gallatin, The Patriot Post, Schiff Show, Gets Underway, in Senate To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

The Fine Print . . .

. . . Pelosi says no one is above the law but it appears this only applies to everyone except Democrats.

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

---

Tags: Editorial Cartoon, AF Branco, The Fine Print, Pelosi says, no one is above the law, but it appears, this only applies, to everyone, except Democrats To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Humanity of Unborn Child Merely “Philosophical,” Human Rights Watch Head Tells Rights Commission

Dr. Susan Yoshihara

by Dr. Susan Yoshihara: The leader of one of the world’s top human rights organizations told the U.S. Commission on Unalienable Rights last week that abortion is a “fundamental right” for “anyone who wants or needs it” and that arguments about the humanity of the unborn are merely “philosophical,” with no place in policy.

Human Rights Watch head Kenneth Roth criticized Secretary of State Michael Pompeo’s basis for founding the commission. Pompeo initiated the expert body to guide the department in response to a proliferation new rights claims that often compete against one another. Roth said that abortion has always been a human right, and only the claims to it are new. He warned against “picking and choosing” among rights.

Roth admitted that abortion is not mentioned in any of the UN human rights treaties, but said it is grounded in fundamental rights such as the right to health. He said there are “millions” of preventable deaths that could be averted by abortion, based on the presumption that women will inevitably seek out abortions, including by extremely dangerous methods, whether it is legal or not.

The reason we know abortion is a right, he said, is because “authoritative interpretations” by UN experts have said so. He said the Human Rights Committee is “not that different” from the U.S. Supreme Court, calling it the “final arbiter” of rights enumerated in the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, to which the U.S. is a party. In fact, the committee can only offer personal views and they are not binding on nations.

Commissioner Katrina Lantos Swett pointed out to Roth that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights article on the freedom of belief is “capacious.” She said rights are rights because they incur duties, that it is because we are free to believe that others must respect that right and not infringe upon it.

Roth said there is no tension between a right to abortion and religious freedom because the only thing protected by human rights is a “freedom of belief” and not the right to exercise it in one’s professional and societal roles. He said that a rural doctor must obey “a different set of rules” from an urban doctor, and must perform abortions even if she is morally opposed lest women have to travel for the procedure.

Commission member Peter Berkowitz said that while Roth referred to the unborn child as a “fetus,” others argue that it is a child and a human being, and a bearer of human rights. Berkowitz asked Roth about the tension, in that case, between the rights of the mother and child. Roth acknowledged that there are differing philosophical and religious views on this subject, but since agreement will never be reached, policy makers must rely on UN expert interpretations of positive international law. Based on the opinions of treaty bodies, Roth added, “we are in no position to take the absolutist position that this is an unborn child.”

If national law is pro-life, Roth told Commissioner David Tse-Chien Pan, then international law trumps. “The whole point of human rights law is to limit governments,” he said.
----------------------
Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D. is Senior Vice President for Research and Director of the International Organizations Research Group at the Center for Family & Human Rights (CFAM) where she advises UN delegations and U.S. policy makers on women, peace and security, maternal and child health policy, population, and human rights.

---

Tags: Susan Yoshihara, Center for Family & Human Rights, Humanity of Unborn Child, Merely Philosophical, Human Rights Watch, Tells Rights Commission To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

NAFTA No More! Trump Wins USMCA Passage in Senate, Puts America First on Trade

Editorial Cartoon by AF  Branco

by Robert Romano: A little more than a year after President Donald Trump promised to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) if Congress did not adopt the USMCA — on Dec. 1, 2018, he said, “I’ll be terminating it within a relatively short period of time. We get rid of NAFTA. It’s been a disaster for the United States… And so Congress will have a choice of the USMCA or pre-NAFTA, which worked very well…” — on Jan. 16, the Senate has overwhelmingly adopted the USMCA 89 to 10.

Senate passage came after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) finally relented and allowed the trade deal to come up on the House floor, followed shortly thereafter by easy House passage 385 to 41 on Dec. 19, 2019.

Pending Canadian ratification of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) trade deal, NAFTA is all but a memory.

None of this is surprising. President Trump won the Republican nomination and then ultimately the election in 2016 in the Rust Belt particularly on the political strength of his trade agenda, uniting conservative and union households and savaging Hillary Clinton as pro-NAFTA.

Now, Trump’s success in reshaping American politics around trade has now been confirmed by the massive bipartisan support for the USMCA.

Key bellwethers on the Democratic side came with pro-union Democrats including U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) all supporting passage. Both Democratic Michigan Senators Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters voted for it. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) stands out as an exception as voting no, but then again, he’s running for President. But so is Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and she supported it.

That tells you everything you need to know right there.

The blue-collar Democrat voters who supported President Donald Trump in 2016 and put him over the top ended up supporting the Trump trade agenda, making passage of the USMCA a political certainty even as Democrats in Congress were itching to impeach Trump and get the Senate trial underway. For those Democrats, there was greater political risk in going against Trump on trade than anything else.

To get the trade agreement done, Trump effectively threatened tariffs on Mexico plus withdrawal from NAFTA to bring all parties to the table, hammered out a deal and got it safely across the finish line — all in time for 2020.

And, as President Trump promised, the deal moves the ball in the America first direction.

Country of origin requirements are being increased to 75 percent, up from 62.5 percent, requiring automobiles will have at least three-quarters of their parts made in North America.

Mexico will recognize the right of collective bargaining and all parties agreed that “40-45 percent of auto content be made by workers earning at least $16 per hour,” according to the U.S. Trade Representative. In 2016, average pay in Mexico for manufacturing was $3.91 an hour. In 2017, the Associated Press ran a report entitled “In Mexico, $2 per hour workers make $40,000 SUVs.” This is a tremendous concession, and most certainly an improvement on NAFTA from a U.S. producer perspective.

On agriculture, Canada is allowing in greater access for U.S. dairy products.

On currency, the USMCA “address[es] unfair currency practices by requiring high-standard commitments to refrain from competitive devaluations and targeting exchange rates, while significantly increasing transparency and providing mechanisms for accountability,” according to the U.S. Trade Representative.

Since 2008, the Mexican peso has depreciated against the U.S. dollar by 50 percent, from $0.10 per $1 USD to $0.05 per $1 USD. The new provision will give aggrieved parties an opportunity to target currency devaluation as an unfair trade practices, something that could set a new gold standard for trade agreements. This mirrors provisions in the newly signed executive, phase one trade deal with China, as gaining these provisions in USMCA is what enabled U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to extract them from Beijing as well.

On intellectual property, cross-border copyrights, trademarks and patents will be enforceable to cut back on knock-offs, plus additional protections for pharmaceutical and agricultural producers.

On financial services, U.S. financial services will be allowed to compete with local financial services in Canada and Mexico, getting most-favored nation treatment.

On textiles, the agreement will “[p]romote greater use of Made-in-the-USA fibers, yarns, and fabrics by: [l]imiting rules that allow for some use of non-NAFTA inputs in textile and apparel trade… [and by] [r]equiring that sewing thread, pocketing fabric, narrow elastic bands, and coated fabric, when incorporated in most apparel and other finished products, be made in the region for those finished products to qualify for trade benefits,” according to the U.S. Trade Representative.

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning welcomed news of USMCA’s passage, declaring, “President Donald Trump kept his promise and ended the giant sucking sound that was NAFTA. The overwhelming Senate passage of Trump’s signature trade deal is an affirmation that a President who is determined to put America’s interests first can rewrite the rules for international trade.”

And all the so-called experts, the same ones who predicted Trump couldn’t win in 2016, said that such agreements with Mexico, Canada, China, Japan and South Korea were impossible to negotiate because Trump was threatening to use tariffs, that instead we’d have trade wars and recessions or depressions.

Boy, was that wrong. Instead, Trump levied the tariffs, the trade in goods deficit with China was cut by 13 percent in 2019 and everyone came to the table. It’s the year of the trade deal.

Now all the agreements are in the bag, unemployment is at a 50-year low and U.S. labor participation among working age adults is on the rise. The economy is humming, and USMCA will only help it grow even more as it boosts U.S. exports.

Meaning, President Trump was right all along on trade. His art of the deal to use U.S. leverage in the trade negotiations paid off big time and now the victories are mounting with USMCA and the China deal — all in time for 2020. Watch for trade to continue to dominate the landscape this election year as it reshapes American politics yet again and tells us whether 2016 and President Trump was a fluke — or the future.
------------------------
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.

---

Tags: Robert Romano, Americans for Limited Government, NAFTA No More, Trump Wins USMCA Passage in Senate, Puts America First on Trade To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Trump's Religious Liberty Reforms

Bill Donohue

by Bill Donohue: The public policy reforms governing religious liberty issued by the Trump administration are compelling and much needed. President Trump has proven once again that he is the most religion-friendly president in the modern era.

The Trump administration has provided a much-needed corrective to the draconian directives promulgated by the previous administration: the role of religious liberty under President Obama was diminished to such an extent that it all but neutered the free exercise of religion in public policy programs. Trump has reversed this condition, awarding religious liberty the kind of breathing room it deserves, both morally and legally.

There are three areas of public policy affecting religious liberty that have been targeted for reform by the Trump administration: faith-based programs; higher education; and religious institutions.

While the directives that have been issued are tailored to each of these three sectors, there are two elements that are common to all of them: religious institutions will not be afforded a second-class status any longer and their autonomy will be protected.

The Trump administration wants to end the invidious practices of discriminating against religious institutions and associations that were instituted by the Obama administration. Any institution that does not treat religious institutions as the equal of secular institutions will be faced with the prospect of having federal funds terminated.

Religious autonomy is another feature of these reforms. For instance, the state cannot force religious associations to jettison their religious character as a condition of federal aid. Regrettably, this has been done, the effect of which has been to secularize these entities. What is the sense of having a religious institution if it cannot freely exercise its religious prerogatives?

In effect, the Trump administration is going to continue its efforts to put an end to the animus against religious institutions that characterized the Obama administration.

As is customary, the public is being given 30 days to comment on these proposals. I will submit a detailed account of the Catholic League’s problems with the Obama administration in its handling of faith-based programs, and the need for the kinds of reforms as outlined in the new directives. We will make public our input.
-------------------------
Bill Donohue (@CatholicLeague) is a sociologist and president of the Catholic League.

---

Tags: Bill Donohue, Catholic League, President Trump, Religious Liberty Reforms To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Much Ado in D.C.

by Paul Jacob, Contributing Author: The impeachment trial of President Donald J. Trump began yesterday, after much stalling by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had postponed sending the House impeachment documents to the Senate after the finalization of the impeachment vote a month ago. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts swore in the assembled senators — 99 of 100 signed their oaths — and a schedule was announced.

The question of new documents and testimony remains a bit up in the air. “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says a federal watchdog’s report on President Donald Trump’s freeze of aid to Ukraine makes it more important for Congress to get new testimony and documents,” according to the Associated Press. Seems odd that a trial would require more information than was present in the original indictment, er, impeachment, but I’m no scholar of the legality of this issue.

I do remember the last presidential impeachment.

And it was a real partisan — indeed, all-around — let-down.

Interestingly, that trial was held around the time Bill Clinton was to give 1999’s State of the Union address. And he gave it, indeed, in the midst of the whole brouhaha.

Defiantly.

What will President Trump do? What should he do?

I don’t know. But I know what would be fun: deliver it via Twitter.

The Constitution, as I’ve noted before, does not specify a format of the annual presentation before Congress. Thomas Jefferson wrote it out and had it delivered. No speech at all.

But the idea of the Twitterer-in-Chief tweeting it and even not correcting the spelling errors? Priceless.

He could end with “Covfefe.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
------------------
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.

---

Tags: Paul Jacob, Common Sense, Much Ado in D.C. To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!