The 1786 Lesson That Could Save 2021

by Tony Perkins: Now that some of the shock of the last two weeks is starting to wear off, most Americans have the same question: can we actually pick up the pieces and move on? With 80 percent of the country worried the nation is falling apart, there's a lot of concern that nation's days are numbered. These are the times when the only way forward is looking back and rallying around the principles that made America exceptional in the first place. Luckily for us, there's a day this weekend that gives all of us the chance to do just that.

If anyone understood how fragile democracy is, it was Thomas Jefferson. Like everyone else in the country, he experienced some dark days after the revolution. The colonies won, true, but the country was in deep debt -- and even deeper disagreement about the kind of government they wanted. To a man, there were moments when they probably wondered if the experiment they'd staked their lives on would survive. But survive it did, thanks to a document we celebrate Saturday: the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom.

Of all the things Jefferson accomplished in his life, he was never prouder than January 16, 1786 when his vision of giving every American the right to practice their faith became a reality. In an era when the government regulated and monitored churches, liturgy, and doctrine, it was a radical idea to suggest that religion wasn't an issue for the state to regulate -- but a personal matter between an individual and God. In fact, it was such a serious departure from the world they knew under British rule that Jefferson wasn't taken seriously at first. But his persistence paid off, and 10 years later, the statute that paved the way for our First Amendment finally passed the general assembly.

Asked later why he was so passionate about it, Jefferson said his Virginia statute "is a true standard of Religious liberty: its principle the great barrier against usurpations on the rights of conscience. As long as it is respected," he insisted, freedom would be safe. More than two centuries later, Jefferson's words have rung true. "It's a concept," Dr. Daniel Dreisbach insisted on "Washington Watch," "that is deeply woven into the fabric of our nation." And ultimately, the pursuit of religious liberty wasn't just a pursuit of Jefferson's day, but the brave men and women before him who left everything for the new world. And 400 hundred years later, it's still drawing people to America's shores.

Protecting Jefferson's vision hasn't been easy. Even Saturday, as we celebrate Religious Freedom Day and the signing of that world-changing statute, there's incredible pressure on Americans to abandon it. The radical factions in this country would much rather force us back to a policy of "religious toleration," where a government "in its benevolence would say to its people, 'We will allow you to practice your religion so long as we allow you.'" But, Dreisbach warned, "if the government can grant you a privilege of practicing your religion, it can take it away. And Americans in the founding era rejected that idea. They said, 'No, religious liberty is not about mere toleration. It's about liberty. It's a natural, inalienable, fundamental right that's placed beyond the reach of government officials. Government can't take it away from you. And sadly, I think we're losing this distinction in our society today between toleration... and this idea from the founding, which is that religious liberty is a natural, inalienable right that can't be taken away."

Jefferson would have been horrified at what's unfolded in this last decade, when the government decided to crack down on Christians and faith-based groups because of their views on marriage, human sexuality, or life. His belief was that what should be protected isn't simply "thoughts that you have in your head -- it's the ability to act on your beliefs [and] the dictates of your conscience," Dreisbach explained. "And I think what we find when we hear people to say today saying, 'Well, you can worship, but you may not be able to act on your beliefs,' that's a fundamental departure from the literal language of our Constitution and this most important of rights."

The founders often said that "our survival as a republic, our survival as a free people, is dependent on frequent recurrence to fundamental principle. And so I think that on this Religious Freedom Day on January 16th this year, we need to commit ourselves to recurring to first principles. Go back and study the bill for establishing religious freedom of 1786. Go back and study what the First Amendment has to say," Dreisbach urged.

That's especially important now, at a time when so many of our problems are spiritual. Yes, we're in a cultural and political dilemma, but the answer isn't going to come from Washington, D.C. or higher education or Hollywood. The answer is going to come from the church. And if the church loses its ability and freedom to address those problems, then trust me: America will be much worse off than it is now.

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Tony Perkins (@tperkins) is President of the Family Research Council.

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Graham Gets It, Cheney's Crisis, BLM Activist Arrested

Gary Bauer

by Gary Bauer: Graham Gets It

Kudos to Franklin Graham!

One of my great frustrations is that too many of America's church leaders have sat on the sidelines in the culture war. They have not only been AWOL in the battle for the heart and soul of America, but many would not even stand up for the religious liberty they are so blessed to have.

They passively allowed liberal mayors and governors to shut them down last year, as if they need the government's permission to be open!

Thankfully, Franklin Graham has been extremely bold in speaking up for faith, family and freedom, and he did so again yesterday when he excoriated the ten House Republicans who voted to impeach President Trump. Here's a brief excerpt of his statement:

"Shame, shame on the ten Republicans who joined with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in impeaching President Trump yesterday. After all that he has done for our country, you would turn your back and betray him so quickly? . . . It makes you wonder what the thirty pieces of silver were that Speaker Pelosi promised for this betrayal."

Cheney's Crisis
Rep. Liz Cheney has created a crisis for herself. By joining with Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats to impeach President Trump, Cheney turned her back on the 70% of Wyoming residents who voted for President Trump. They aren't happy about it, and they are making their voices heard.

The Wyoming Republican Party has been so overwhelmed by the avalanche of comments that it released a statement this week saying the following:

"There has not been a time during our tenure when we have seen this type of an outcry from our fellow Republicans. . . The consensus is clear that those who are reaching out to the Party vehemently disagree with Representative Cheney's decision and actions."

The idea that Cheney can remain in the House Republican leadership defies all reason. It is inexplicable to me that House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy's office has said that he does not support efforts to remove her from the leadership team.

How can you keep someone in leadership who voted with the left-wing lynch mob to shut down and silence populist conservatism?

Cheney's public statements against the president became the main talking points by the media and the left. Her comments were used as a cudgel to attack conservatives who stood with the president. And as I mentioned before, the left isn't going to stop with Trump. (Here, here and here.) How does she stay in leadership?

My friend Leader McCarthy needs to rethink his position.

BLM Leftist Arrested
At least 70 people have been arrested and charged with various crimes related to last week's riot on Capitol Hill, and the FBI has more than 160 open investigations. So far, many of those arrested appear to be associated with extremist groups on the right.

But there were hardcore leftists in the mix pouring gas on the fire too. And one of them was arrested this week.

Again, I just want to reiterate what the president said in his remarks. None of the people who engaged in violence at the Capitol are representative of the conservative movement. If they were, the last four years would have been marked by right-wing riots. Instead, it has been the exact opposite as multiple American cities, including Washington, D.C., were ransacked by Antifa and BLM supporters.

This leads to another point. There are protests being planned all across the country in the coming days. If you are thinking about attending, let me offer this advice: Make sure you know those organizing the event. Renounce violence. Know who the speakers are.

As we saw from Wednesday's impeachment vote, the left-wing media and political establishments are primed to blame conservatives for anything that goes wrong. And, as I just noted, it is likely that left-wing agitators will infiltrate the protests hoping to cause chaos.

In this atmosphere, any conservative who is caught up in any demonstration could easily, no matter how unwittingly, help advance the left's narrative that it's the right that is violent when we all know that it is the left that has been engaging in violence for years. We stand for the rule of law.

We must be discerning. Winning requires strategic thinking and understanding the right time to engage. There will be plenty of opportunities in the weeks and months ahead to speak up and make our voices heard.

Major Progress
Last night, Joe Biden repeated something he has said before, which is that he wants to distribute 100 million COVID vaccinations in his first 100 days in office. That's quite a goal – one million doses a day.

Well guess what? We're already doing that.

For some time now, the United States, under the leadership of President Trump and Vice President Pence, has been averaging more than 700,000 daily vaccinations. And on Wednesday, more than 950,000 vaccinations were administered.

Just keep that in mind when the media praises the Biden Administration, as it inevitably will, for its "tremendous success" in reaching this "milestone achievement."

Beijing & Biden
Communist China's efforts to influence the Biden Administration are kicking into high gear. President Xi Jinping has reportedly asked former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz to help repair the U.S.-China relationship. That Xi would reach out to Schultz is so revealing.

Communist China is stepping up its aggression toward Taiwan. It is consolidating its power over Hong Kong. It is committing genocide against ethnic minorities. It is telling its people to prepare for war.

Meanwhile, Xi is going through his Rolodex of American CEOs looking for corporate titans eager to appease the world's largest communist nation by convincing the Biden Administration to return to "business as usual" with Beijing.

By the way, a top NASA scientist just pleaded guilty to essentially spying for China, and an MIT professor was arrested yesterday.

Communist China is not our friend. Corporate America should instinctively understand that. Clearly, Ivy League business degrees aren't what they used to be.
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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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From Impeaching Incitement To Canceling Conservatism

by Michael Barone, Senior Political Analyst: It wasn't just Donald Trump's detractors who felt a sudden sense of relief when they heard that Twitter was blocking his feed after the storming of the Capitol and the disruption of the reading of the Electoral College results on Jan. 6. While President Trump's exact words to the crowd on the Ellipse didn't constitute a criminal incitement, they were uttered with a reckless disregard for the possibility that they'd provoke violence, which any reasonable person could find impeachable.

But a moment's reflection should have left any believer in free speech feeling queasy about a private firm censoring the president of the United States and preventing him from effectively communicating with citizens over a chosen medium of universal reach. And especially queasy, since a large body of opinion sees this suppression of free speech by Big Tech monopolies not as a one-time exception but as the new rule.

Oliver Darcy of CNN wants the network's cable rivals to be held "responsible for the lies they peddle." Law professors are surprisingly open to speech suppression, as Thomas Edsall reports in his New York Times blog: Yale's Robert Post laments that "the formation of public opinion is out of control"; the University of California, Irvine's Rick Hasen laments, "a market failure when it comes to reliable information voters need"; Columbia University's Tim Wu suggests "the weaponization of speech" makes the First Amendment jurisprudence "increasingly obsolete."

Democratic worthies have been singing the same tune. Michelle Obama took the lead in urging the permanent ban on Donald Trump, which Twitter promptly promulgated.

2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang called for cable news channels to be required to air competing views. The deputy communications director of President-elect Joe Biden's campaign, Bill Russo, apparently wants Facebook to censor "misleading" information.

The law professors leave details about who would "control" information and decide what is "reliable information" ambiguous. But Democrats obviously expect the decisions to be made by folks on their side of the political divide.

The speech restrictions and speech suppression by Twitter, Facebook, Apple and Google, as well as the latter two platforms' expulsion of Twitter competitor Parler from their clouds, are all intended to benefit the political left and penalize the political right. These firms come as close as nongovernment actors could to canceling, if not criminalizing, at least certain strands of conservatism.

Many, perhaps most, Americans think it's legal and praiseworthy to suppress "hate speech." But hate speech, unless it directly and explicitly incites violence, is protected by the First Amendment under longstanding Supreme Court precedent. Europeans, as Harvard law professor Noah Feldman points out, are comfortable banning "hate speech," and it's understandable that post-World War II Germany banned Nazi writing and images.

So it's interesting that German Chancellor Angela Merkel, no pal of Donald Trump, called Twitter's permanent ban of Trump "problematic." And that President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of Mexico, where the dominant TV network, Grupo Televisa, slavishly toed the government line for years, criticized Facebook's blocking of the outgoing American president. Or that Portuguese political analyst Bruno Macaes tweeted, "Time to start a debate in Europe on whether we want to stay tightly connected to a US internet where repression of speech will keep growing."

"Yesterday," wrote The American Conservative's Rod Dreher late last week, "I predicted that the Left and the liberal Establishment would use the failed Beer Belly Putsch as an opportunity to begin to implement the rudiments of a social credit system, and to otherwise marginalize and suppress right-of-center discourse and people. Well, here we go." The reference is to China's system of surveillance and supervision, which uses consumer data, facial recognition, artificial intelligence and GPS tracking to identify regime critics and deny them access to everything from airline seats to bank credit. You don't have to surf very long on your device to find self-described liberals calling for some such restrictions on Trump supporters. Or for major corporation CEOs delighted to go along.

Are such fears exaggerated? Big Tech assures us it stands for free expression. "Access to information and freedom of expression, including the public conversation on Twitter, is never more important than during democratic processes, particularly elections," Twitter tweeted this week. But that was about providing information about an election in Uganda. In the United States, not so much. Twitter joined other Big Tech firms in effectively suppressing the New York Post's now-validated stories about Hunter Biden's dodgy business dealings.

Big Tech suppression of speech, at one party's urging but not government order, technically doesn't violate the First Amendment. But, as CNN commentator Mary Katharine Ham tweets, "It feels creepy & authoritarian." It threatens to be the most effective speech suppression here since Democratic postmasters in the antebellum South deep-sixed anti-slavery material. That speech suppression didn't ultimately prevail. How long the speech suppression by Big Tech and its liberal friends will prevail is unclear.
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Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.

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The Lynch Mob Comes for Citizen Trump

by Patrick J. Buchanan: Trump not only defeated the establishment in 2016. He got 74 million votes for a second term. Then, he defiantly refused to recognize that his defeat was fairly accomplished. Trump is hated because he will not play the role the left has assigned to him in its historic morality play, in which the left is always the triumphant star.

“The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled this mob and lit the flame of this attack.”

So alleged Liz Cheney, third-ranking Republican in the House, as she led nine GOP colleagues to vote for a second impeachment of Donald Trump. The House Republican caucus voted 19-1 against impeachment.

House Democrats voted lockstep, 222-0, to impeach in an exercise the solidarity of which calls to mind the Supreme Soviet of Stalin’s time.

But is what Cheney said true?

Undeniably, the huge crowd that assembled on the mall Wednesday did so at Trump’s behest. But that peaceful crowd was not the violent mob that invaded the Capitol.

The mob was a mile away as Trump spoke. It was up at the Capitol while Trump was on the Monument grounds. It could not hear him. And the break-in of the Capitol began even before Trump concluded his remarks. It was done as he spoke. Nor is there anything in the text of those remarks to indicate that Trump was signaling for an invasion of the Capitol.

How then did he light “the flame of this attack”?

At the end of his remarks, Trump said, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Is that a call to riot?

The impeachment resolution charges Trump with an “incitement of insurrection.” Where did he do this? Where is the smoking gun?

The House Judiciary Committee declined to conduct hearings and call witnesses to reveal the links between Trump and the rioters.

What was the imperative that demanded a suspension of the normal process? Urgency, answers House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Trump’s continuance in the presidency is a “clear and present danger” to the republic.

But this is hysterical nonsense that covers up the real motive.

The left wants to stigmatize Trump down through the ages with twin impeachments, and its hatred of him has overwhelmed any commitment they had to due process.

Trump not only defeated the establishment in 2016. He got 74 million votes for a second term. Then, he defiantly refused to recognize that his defeat was fairly accomplished. Trump is hated because he will not play the role the left has assigned to him in its historic morality play, in which the left is always the triumphant star.

The Washington Post is now demanding that the trial, conviction and expulsion of Trump from the presidency begin before Joe Biden takes the oath in five days.

This is a familiar mindset: the spirit of the lynch mob. No time for evidence. No need for a trial where both sides can be heard. No need for reflection. Just declare him guilty and hang him.

Concerning the riot and rampage on the hill, the right has offered no rationalizations or justifications, as the left invariably has ready when its minions go too far. It is not the right, but the left that has, since the ’60s, condoned and excused and called for empathy and understanding of those who use violent means to advance political ends.

It was Martin Luther King who urged us to understand the root causes of riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark and Detroit when he explained, “A riot is the language of the unheard.”

In 1964, Hubert Humphrey, observing the same riots, declared, “if I were in those conditions… I have enough spark left in me to lead a mighty good revolt under those conditions.”

At Colby College in June 1964, Adlai Stevenson, twice Democratic presidential nominee, asked us to appreciate the indispensable role of civil disobedience in advancing social progress:

“In the great struggle to advance civil and human rights, even a jail sentence is no longer a dishonor but a proud achievement. … Perhaps we are destined to see in this law-loving land people running for office not on their stainless records but on their prison records.”

In a retort to President Eisenhower, who had deplored the giving of moral sanction to rioters, Sen. Robert Kennedy said: “There is no point in telling Negroes to obey the law. To many Negroes the law is the enemy.”

In 1970, Justice William O. Douglas described how we should regard leftist demonstrations that turned into violent riots:

“We must realize that today’s Establishment is the new George III. Whether it will continue to adhere to his tactics, we do not know. If it does, the redress, honored in tradition, is also revolution!”

What should Trump’s people do now?

If we are headed for an impeachment trial, force the Democrats to prove that Trump deliberately instigated an “insurrection.”

Then, lay out the history of the American establishment’s endless condoning and justifying of disorders, riots and rampages when done in the hallowed name of the social progress in which they believe.

Then vote down impeachment a second time and leave Pelosi 0-2 in her collisions with President and Citizen Trump.
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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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Biden’s Disastrous Pick to Head DOJ Civil Rights Division

Senate must reject Kristen Clarke’s nomination.

Kristen Clarke 

by Joseph Klein: Kristen Clarke, President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, is a disastrous choice. Clarke has a long record of making racially charged-comments, going back to her time in college and continuing to this day. She also has spoken out in favor of anti-Semites. Back in college, Clarke led a student group that provided an anti-Semitic professor a platform to spew his vile remarks. Much more recently, Clarke supported an advocate of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. If Clarke’s name is not withdrawn from consideration, the Senate must reject her nomination.

Back in the day when Clarke served as the president of the Black Students Association (BSA) at Harvard, she co-authored a letter to the Harvard Crimson asserting that blacks are born with “superior physical and mental abilities.” It’s all due to the chemical melanin, Clarke claimed, which “endows [b]lacks with greater mental, physical and spiritual abilities -- something which cannot be measured based on Eurocentric standards." The Harvard Crimson editors at the time called for Clarke to resign her position at the BSA unless she was “prepared to retract her statements, and apologize publicly for making them.” The furthest that Clarke was willing to go at that time was stating that "The information [contained in the letter] is not necessarily something we believe.” [Emphasis added] There was no public retraction back then.

Clarke also invited the late Wellesley Professor of Africana Studies Anthony Martin to speak at a 1994 Black Students Association-sponsored event. Clarke’s guest used his time to slander Jews with the accusation that Jews had a “tradition” of persecuting blacks. "There was a Jewish monopoly over Blacks being cursed," Martin said during his address.

Clarke defended the choice of Martin to speak after receiving criticism from the Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel. "Professor Martin is an intelligent, well-versed Black intellectual who bases his information on indisputable fact," Clarke said. The real indisputable fact is that Jews have put their lives on the line in the cause of the black civil rights movement. For example, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman served in 1964 as voting-registration volunteers in Meridian, Mississippi and were murdered by Klansmen.

Now that Clarke is craving for the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights position in the Biden administration, she wants a do-over. In a recent interview, Clarke said that she realizes it was a mistake to invite Martin to speak at Harvard. “Giving someone like him a platform, it’s not something I would do again,” Clarke said, adding that “I unequivocally denounce antisemitism.”

Clarke’s recantation comes way too late. If Democrats had an ounce of intellectual honesty, which they do not, Clarke’s invitation to an anti-Semitic professor to speak at Harvard when she was a student would be reason enough for them to “cancel” Clarke now. After all, Democrats in the Senate were willing to throw Trump nominees’ alleged behavior in college and high school back at them when their nominations were being considered. The worst case involved the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. But there were others as well who were targeted by the cancel culture crowd.

In any case, we don’t even have to look back at Clarke’s college days to find proof of her support for radicals who espouse anti-Semitic views. In 2018, for example, Israel denied Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, entry to the country because of his organization’s support for the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. Clarke tweeted, “Incredibly disturbed to hear that @VinceWarren was detained and denied entry into Israel on a trip that was carefully and thoughtfully planned out over the course of several months. #CivilRights Lawyers should not be penalized for their work to promote justice.”

As for the letter to the Harvard Crimson Clarke co-authored, claiming that blacks have “superior physical and mental abilities,” Clarke is now saying that it was all a misunderstanding. She claims that the letter was intended as a satirical response to the book The Bell Curve, which posited genetic differences between whites and blacks. Clarke wants us to believe that her letter’s references to melanin as the cause of black superiority “was meant to express an equally absurd point of view — fighting one ridiculous absurd racist theory with another ridiculous absurd theory.” That’s disinformation. At the time when the letter was written, Clarke said that she was uncertain whether the melanin theory of black superiority was true or not. There wasn’t a hint of sarcasm in the letter.

Putting aside her comments about melanin back in college, Clarke certainly shows no uncertainty today in embracing critical race theory, which posits that America is inherently racist. In her capacity as president and executive director of Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Clarke condemned the Trump administration’s decision to remove critical race theory from federal government training programs. "Our nation stands at an inflection point as communities are grappling with the ongoing threat of racism, white supremacy and police violence," Clarke said in a statement. "President Trump's latest federal directive is an attempt to discredit, condemn and silence important conversations happening in communities and workplaces about anti-racism and about our nation's history of white supremacy. By banning government support for these discussions, he sends a dangerous message to the country that racism is a fallacy."

Last year, Clarke denounced what she claims is “systemic racism that pervades every aspect of our lives, especially when it comes to policing and the operation of the criminal justice system of our country.” She supports defunding of the police. “I advocate for defunding policing operations that have made African Americans more vulnerable to police violence and contributed to mass incarceration, while investing more in programs and policies that address critical community needs,” she wrote last June for Newsweek. She called the concerns regarding the violence that broke out last year in the wake of the George Floyd killing a “distraction.”

Clearly, if Clarke were to become Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and have her way, she would push to put the police on trial all over the country. She would also force-feed critical race theory to all federal employees and beyond. She would support the BDS movement as a civil right.

The Senate must reject Kristen Clarke’s nomination.
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Joseph Klein is a Harvard-trained lawyer and the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom and Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations & Radical Islam.
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Tags: Joseph Klein, Biden-Elect, Kristen Clarke, Disastrous Pick, to Head DOJ, Civil Rights Division 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 Uninvestigated

by Paul Jacob: We have long relied upon journalists in major media to cover actual news. And investigate leads to juicy stories of major import to clear up confusion.

But the mainstream media has become mainly propagandistic: “journalists” today rarely “report,” they propound and pontificate. And help spread disinformation for major political factions.

Is it really that bad?

Well, one way to test how bad is to track juicy news leads that get left unexplored.

In June I commented on Harvard’s Dr. Charles Lieber, arrested and charged with not reporting his activities with the Chinese at the Wuhan labs — which have been associated with SARS-CoV-2. In October, Lieber sued Harvard for not backing him up in his legal troubles with the U.S. Government.

There could be a huge story here. Or maybe a mere bureaucratic snafu.

But it is not “in” the news; I cannot find any decent reporting on it.

From the beginning, the idea that the virus could have been grown in a lab “to help discover new vaccines” (or even as a cultivated bioweapon) has been a real possibility.

A year after its public acknowledgment, there is still disagreement.

While we expect reporters to dig deep, instead we see a plethora of premature declarations — as at egregious “fact-checking” sites — that the matter is settled. “Leading researchers have debunked this notion,” as Snopes confidently stated in February. But since then, the origins of the pandemic have remained murky. And allegations of bioweaponry keep re-appearing.

The World Health Organization is on the ground in Wuhan now, investigating.

Belatedly.

Long past time for American reporters to get on the beat.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Paul Jacob (@Common_Sense_PJ) is author of Common Sense which provides daily commentary about the issues impacting America and about the citizens who are doing something about them. He is also President of the Liberty Initiative Fund (LIFe) as well as Citizens in Charge Foundation. Jacob is a contributing author on the ARRA News Service.

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Goebbels and the New American Terror

by Caroline Glick: What purpose did it serve for President-elect Joe Biden to liken Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) to Adolf Hitler’s top propagandist Joseph Goebbels?

In response to a question about the two Republican lawmakers following remarks on January 8, Biden said, “I was being reminded by a friend of mine…when we’re told [about] Goebbels and the great lie, you keep repeating the lie, repeating the lie.”

Although Biden’s comparison was imperfectly stated, it was clear enough to follow. He was saying that the lawmakers’ efforts to challenge the Electoral College votes from disputed states was a Nazi-like effort.

By speaking this way, Biden did many things at once. First, he whitewashed Goebbels’ barbaric crimes. Goebbels was the chief architect of totalitarianism in Nazi Germany and one of the lead architects of the Holocaust.

In his literary warning about the fragility of freedom and the allure of totalitarianism, 1984, George Orwell demonstrated that total control over a society is achieved through total control over the information its members can see.

Goebbels implemented this in Nazi Germany. As Hitler’s propagandist, Goebbels exerted total control over information. He ensured that Germans would view Hitler as their infallible savior. He conditioned them to view Jews as subhuman vermin, to be exterminated like cockroaches. And he made them believe that all Germans who didn’t accept what they were told were enemies of the people.

Goebbels achieved all of these things by blocking public access to accurate information while inundating the Germans with images and words that repeated and amplified his monstrous lies. Goebbels’ success in controlling information was the necessary precondition for all he and his comrades unleashed on Jews, and on humanity as a whole.

The second thing Biden did by comparing Hawley and Cruz to Goebbels was to whitewash the unspeakable crimes of Nazi Germany. After all, if merely questioning certain election returns is the moral equivalent of Goebbels’ “Big Lie,” then the Big Lie was actually no big deal.

The third thing Biden did by comparing Hawley and Cruz to Goebbels was set them up for what Orwell referred to as “un-personing”—or in today’s culture, “canceling.”

Obviously, if Cruz and Hawley are Goebbels, then all right-thinking people must work to silence them and remove them from positions of influence in the Senate and larger society.

As if on cue, shortly after Biden said what he did, Senate Democrats began debating whether to censure the lawmakers. Senate Republicans, for their part, began discussing the possibility of denying the two members cherished committee assignments. According to Senate officials, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is leaning toward denying the two their subcommittee chairmanships—thereby removing them from the line of seniority.

Outside the Senate chamber, major corporate donors also announced they will cease all political contributions to the two men, and to all 149 federal lawmakers who supported the efforts to challenge election returns from various states. Simon & Schuster canceled its contract to publish Hawley’s forthcoming book about the tyranny of Big Tech.

And this brings us to the fourth thing that Biden did by comparing the two senators to Hitler’s satanic propagandist. Whether one supports or opposes their decision to formally raise questions about the Electoral College vote count, the indisputable fact is that their actions were both legal and widely supported by their constituents. A Rasmussen poll released on January 6 found that 52 percent of politically unaffiliated Americans were less than fully confident about the integrity of the election results. The senators, and their colleagues in both houses who worked with them, noted that they had been flooded by requests from their constituents to question the returns from the states in question—Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada.

Cruz and Hawley incited no riots. To the contrary, they tried to channel the concerns of voters the American way—through constitutional, peaceful deliberations in Congress. Cruz, for his part, denounced the January 6 riot in real time, referring to it as “a despicable act of terrorism.”

By conflating the constitutional, democratic behavior of the senators and their colleagues with Goebbels’ crimes, Biden accomplished a fifth goal. He demonized as Nazis these officials’ voters who had urged them to act—and by extension, threw under the bus the shockingly high percentage of Americans who questioned the election returns.

Of course, Biden’s statement wasn’t made in isolation. He spoke after Twitter, Facebook and Instagram had banned Trump from their platforms and begun a purge of the accounts of his supporters—and as other major private sector actors openly called for the “un-personing” of Trump’s advisers and supporters.

Forbes Editor Randall Lane, for instance, announced he would destroy any business that hires Trump’s spokespeople. In his words, “Hire any of Trump’s fellow fabulists…and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie. …Want to ensure the world’s biggest business media approaches you as a potential funnel of disinformation? Then hire away!”

The Lincoln Project, an influence outfit run by former Republicans now serving Democrats by demonizing Republicans, announced it was working to have all Trump administration officials blacklisted.

“We are constructing a database of Trump officials and staff that will detail their roles in the Trump administration and track where they are now. …They will be held accountable and not allowed to pretend they were not involved,” the group tweeted.

Deutsche Bank and Signature Bank announced they were closing Trump’s accounts. Payment processors such as PayPal, Shopify and Stripe cut off the Trump campaign and Trump merchandising stores.

These actions are of a piece with earlier actions by financial giants like BlackRock, Goldman Sachs and others that announced last month they will require their clients to hire women and LGBT persons to their corporate boards, adopt approved green policies, and reveal their political contributions, lobbying contacts and trade association memberships as conditions for continuing to receive financial services.

All of these repressive statements and actions provided both the impetus for, and the legitimization of, the coordinated action taken last weekend by tech oligarchs Google, Apple and Amazon to destroy Parler, the free speech social media platform launched two years ago.

As law professor William Jacobson documented on his Legal Insurrection website, there is no evidence to support the tech giants’ implicit claim that Parler was in any way responsible for the Capitol Hill riot. Indeed, as Jacobson showed, it was Facebook, not Parler, that the organizers of the violent events had relied upon to mobilize their supporters.

The reason Google, Apple and Amazon destroyed Parler was not because it had done anything wrong. They destroyed Parler because it did everything right. For years, Big Tech oligarchs brushed off criticism that they operated as monopolies by insisting that everyone remains free to create platforms and compete with them. And as their viewpoint censorship of conservatives became more aggressive in recent years and reached new heights during the 2020 election, demand for alternatives continued to grow.

Parler wasn’t a Trump affiliate. It wasn’t a political instrument. It was simply a free speech platform. It was an alternative. And so it was destroyed. The social media users who wish to leave Twitter and Facebook now have no comparable alternative venue. So they are compelled to remain and live within the platforms’ increasingly repressive rules.

A sense of foreboding and fear now grips millions of Americans—and, indeed, conservatives worldwide. Unless something is done quickly by those who wield power to restore freedom, it is impossible to see a happy end to this story.
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Caroline Glick is contributes to numerous publications including Newsweek and the Director of the David Horowitz Freedom Center's Israel Security Project. For more information on Ms. Glick's work, visit carolineglick.com.

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What You Need to Know About Democrats’ 9 Impeachment Managers

Moving through the Capitol's Statuary Hall on Wednesday before the
House's impeachment vote are six of the nine impeachment
managers: from left, Reps. Jamie Raskin, Madeleine Dean,
David Cicilline, Eric Swalwell, Joaquin Castro, and Joe Neguse.
 (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images)

by Fred Lucas Source: One is battling a scandal about his relationship with a suspected Chinese spy. Two pushed for removing President Donald Trump during his first year in office. One built a reputation for trolling Trump, while another is the son of a lawyer for the Mafia.

The sequel to last year’s Trump impeachment trial will feature a new cast of characters leading the House’s prosecution when or if the Senate trial occurs after Trump leaves office Jan. 20.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announced nine House managers to prosecute Trump on a single charge of incitement of insurrection during the Senate impeachment trial.

At least three of the nine House Democrats questioned Trump’s legitimacy as president from the beginning. The leader of the group, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., tried in early 2017 to block Congress from certifying Trump’s election victory the previous November.

The House voted 232-197 Wednesday, with 10 Republicans joining all Democrats, to impeach Trump for the second time with a week left to go in his term after his loss to President-elect Joe Biden in the November election.

The charge of incitement to insurrection stems from some of the president’s words to a rally south of the White House just before rioters broke into the Capitol building. The mob overwhelmed Capitol Police, threatening the safety of Vice President Mike Pence, Pelosi, and other lawmakers in an apparent attempt to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s Electoral College victory.

Although the constitutional purpose of impeachment is to remove a federal official from office, this time a Senate trial would not occur until after Biden is sworn into office at noon next Wednesday. The Senate could, however, vote to prevent Trump from holding another federal office or revoke the benefits of a former president.

Here’s what to know about the nine House managers picked by Pelosi to act as prosecutors when or if the trial occurs.

1. Jamie Raskin: Early Objector, 25th Amendment Advocate
In October, Raskin sponsored legislation promoting a role for Congress in invoking the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which was designed to be used for continuity of government if the president is incapacited. Pelosi supported the legislation.

But Raskin, first elected in 2016, was pushing the 25th Amendment in 2017 as a means to remove Trump from office. He proposed a commission to examine Trump’s mental health. His bill creating the commission gained 56 Democrat co-sponsors, but Pelosi didn’t back it.

Pelosi named Raskin, 58, a former law professor at American University, as the leader of the House impeachment managers. He fills the position held by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., in the previous Senate trial of Trump.

Before seeking to examine Trump’s mental capacity, Raskin joined other Democrats on Jan. 6, 2017, in attempting to block Congress from certifying Trump’s Electoral College victory in the 2016 election. His motion was based on technical grounds.

“I have an objection because 10 of the 29 Florida votes were cast by electors not lawfully certified because they violated Florida’s law against dual office holding,” Raskin said in raising an objection to counting Florida’s electoral votes.

Biden, then President Barack Obama’s vice president and presiding over the joint session in his constitutional role as president of the Senate, asked Raskin if he had a Senate sponsor to his objection.

“Not as of yet,” Raskin answered.

Biden ruled that Raskin’s objection could not be entertained.

Today, some Democrats are demanding that Republicans who signed on to objections to certifying electoral votes for Biden on Jan. 6 this year should be expelled from Congress.

Other House Democrats objected to certifying Trump’s victories in Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. None of those objections gained the Senate sponsor required to be considered.

After failing to block Trump’s victory, Raskin announced that he wouldn’t attend Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017.

“As the hour approaches, I realize that I cannot bring myself to go,” Raskin said at the time. “I do not rejoice in this decision or take pride in it, any more than I would rejoice or take pride in going; the inauguration ceremony is just a fact of life now, and we must all deal with it as best we can.”

Raskin serves on the House Judiciary Committee and the Oversight and Reform Committee.

2. Eric Swalwell and Alleged Spy for China
California’s Eric Swalwell has been in the national spotlight for the past month about the nature of his relationship with Christine Fang, a Chinese national who the FBI suspects of being a spy.

The matter raised alarms especially because the five-term Democrat is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, which makes him privy to national security secrets to which most other members of Congress do not have access.

Swalwell, 40, said he cooperated with law enforcement and cut ties with Fang in 2015 when he learned of concerns she was a spy for China.

Pelosi defended Swalwell and rejected calls to remove him from the intelligence committee.

Axios first reported that Fang met Swalwell when he was a city council member in Dublin, California, and stayed in contact after he was elected to Congress in 2012.

He won a surprising victory over a four-decade incumbent, Rep. Pete Stark, in the Democratic primary in California’s 15th Congressional District.

After Trump’s election as president in 2016, Swalwell was among the most aggressive promoters of the narrative that Trump and his campaign conspired with the Russian government to rig the election. He compared what he called Trump-Russia collusion with the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Special counsel Robert Mueller released a report in 2019 finding no evidence of a conspiracy between Trump or his campaign with Moscow.

Swalwell ran unsuccessfully for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, dropping out of the race in July 2019.

3. David Cicilline: Troubling Connections
Rhode Island’s David Cicilline, a former mayor of Providence who is in his sixth term in Congress, is a member of the House Judiciary Committee. Gay rights activists celebrate Cicilline as the first openly gay mayor of a state capital in the United States.

Cicilline, 59, is also a former public defender in the District of Columbia. Troubling connections surfaced when he ran for Congress in 2010, but he hasn’t faced any major questions of personal ethics.

Cicilline’s father was a Mafia lawyer and his brother was convicted on federal charges in a courthouse corruption scheme, according to the Associated Press.

In 2010, a Providence police officer who was a driver for the then-mayor and married to Cicilline’s executive assistant was charged with soliciting someone to commit a crime. The charge was part of a prosecution of three police officers on allegations they were part of a cocaine-dealing operation.

4. Ted Lieu: Trolling Trump
Trump’s history on Twitter may be unparalleled for any public officeholder, but California’s Ted Lieu also has had a colorful history on the social media platform and even managed to get into some trouble.

The four-term Democrat, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, is a former Air Force prosecutor in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps.

He was born in Taiwan and his family emigrated to Cleveland when he was 3.

At the beginning of the Trump administration, Lieu boycotted the inauguration.

“While I do not dispute that Trump won the Electoral College, I cannot normalize his behavior or the disparaging and un-American statements he has made,” Lieu said at the time.

Despite insisting that he didn’t dispute Trump’s victory, Lieu gained a reputation for trolling Trump in every press release from his office that mentioned the president. The notation in each release said:*** In addition to losing the popular vote, Trump—as of January 20, 2017—is in violation of the Emoluments Clause set forth in Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution due to massive conflicts of interests and his refusal to put his global business holdings in blind trusts. Trump also benefited from Vladimir Putin ordering a multifaceted and brazen Russian influence and cyber hacking campaign with the goals of undermining faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrating Secretary [Hillary] Clinton’s electability, and helping Trump’s election chances. Trump and his press secretary also routinely make stuff up. In explaining why he used the notation, Lieu said it was satire.

“Never before have I had this feeling where our leader is potentially unhinged and has a problem with the truth, and that is highly disturbing for the leader of the free world,” Lieu said. “So I’ve decided I’m just going to point that out as much as I can.”

In October 2017, Lieu attended an event sponsored by the Asian Americans Advancing Justice during which he presented an award to Linda Sarsour, a leader of the Women’s March, on Jan. 21, 2017, who has made numerous anti-Israel comments and called for a “jihad” against the Trump administration.

At the time, Lieu tweeted that he was “honored to join @AAAJ_AAJC tonight & present civil rights activist & leader of women’s march, Linda Sarsour, with the 2017 Changemaker Award.”

Honored to join @AAAJ_AAJC tonight & present civil rights activist & leader of women's march, Linda Sarsour, with the 2017 Changemaker Award pic.twitter.com/lE1n6FiEAW

— Rep. Ted Lieu (@RepTedLieu) October 5, 2017

In January 2019, though, Lieu felt compelled to explain himself.

“I hope to clear up any continued confusion that I selected Ms. Sarsour as the recipient of this award. I did not. I also did not know who Ms. Sarsour was, and met her for the first time at the AAJC event,” Lieu said in a written statement. He added:At that time, I was unaware of Ms. Sarsour’s controversial statements and associations. I was later shown various statements she has made and realized that presenting her with an award for the Women’s March could be construed as an endorsement of her beliefs. It was not. Throughout my career, I have always fought injustice and bigotry, including anti-Semitism and religious intolerance, and I will continue to do so.Lieu lashed out at second lady Karen Pence for taking a part-time job teaching at a Christian school in Springfield, Virginia.

Dear @VP: I'm a follower of Christ. You know what Jesus said about homosexuality? NOTHING. But he did say a lot about love.

Stop cloaking your hate in your purported religious beliefs. It's just hate. https://t.co/ydLovTttsx

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) January 18, 2019

In August 2019, Lieu accused U.S. Ambassador to Israel David M. Friedman of having dual loyalties. His accusation came after the ambassador did not object to the Israeli government’s barring of Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., from visiting Israel in a trip paid for by the pro-Palestinian group MIFTAH.

Lieu tweeted at Friedman: “You are an American. Your allegiance should be to America, not to a foreign power. You should be defending the right of Americans to travel to other countries. If you don’t understand that, then you need to resign.”

The next day Lieu removed the tweet, but acknowledged doing so on Twitter, saying: “It has been brought to my attention that my prior tweet to @USAmbIsrael raises dual loyalty allegations that have historically caused harm to the Jewish community. That is a legitimate concern. I am therefore deleting the tweet.”

It has been brought to my attention that my prior tweet to @USAmbIsrael raises dual loyalty allegations that have historically caused harm to the Jewish community. That is a legitimate concern. I am therefore deleting the tweet.

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) August 16, 2019

5. Joaquin Castro: Floated Impeachment in 2017
Texas’ Joaquin Castro, beginning his fifth term, is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on oversight and investigations. Castro, 46, previously served in the Texas Legislature and was a lawyer in private practice.

In 2017, after a federal judge struck down Trump’s restrictions on travel from several Muslim-majority countries in the Middle Eastern, Castro began talking about impeachment. He made the move conditional on Trump’s disobeying the court order.

“There should be a resolution of censure. And if he does it again, there should be articles of impeachment,” Castro said. If Trump didn’t adhere to a judge’s order, he said, it would be like “living in a military junta.”

His brother, Julian Castro, was secretary of housing and urban development during the Obama administration and is a former San Antonio mayor.

6. Diana DeGette: ‘Stupid’ Gun Comment
Colorado’s Diana DeGette, in her 13th term, is chair of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations.

Before her election to Congress from the Denver-based 1st Congressional District, DeGette worked as a lawyer in private practice and was a member of the Colorado Legislature.

In April 2013, DeGette gained national attention for a gaffe on guns and ammunition, The Denver Post reported. She gave an unusual response as to why she wanted to ban high-capacity magazines for firearms ammunition.

“These are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those now, they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high-capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available,” she told the Post’s editorial board.

The newspaper reported that DeGette’s comment went viral and pointed out that the magazines can be reloaded with more bullets and reused hundreds of times.

In response, a DeGette spokeswoman issued a statement that also was erroneous, according to the newspaper.

“The congresswoman has been working on a high-capacity assault magazine ban for years and has been deeply involved in the issue; she simply misspoke in referring to ‘magazines’ when she should have referred to ‘clips,’ which cannot be reused because they don’t have a feeding mechanism,” the statement said.

However as The Denver Post noted, “clips in most guns can be reused as well.”

The National Rifle Association responded with a statement at the time, saying: “Two words: Pretty stupid.”

7. Stacey Plaskett: Nonvoting Delegate
Stacey Plaskett, who represents the Virgin Islands, is serving her fourth term as a nonvoting delegate in Congress.

Born in New York, she serves on the House Ways and Means Committee. Plaskett, 54, was previously a state prosecutor in the Bronx District Attorney’s Office and senior counsel at the Justice Department.

In 2012, Plaskett upset nine-term incumbent Donna Christian-Christensen in the Democrat primary for delegate from the Virgin Islands, but lost in the general election. She then ran successfully in 2014.

During an April 2015 panel at Howard University on the killing of African Americans, Plaskett commented on the lack of outrage over the deaths.

“Some lives are more valuable than others,” she said.

8. Madeleine Dean: Swing State Lawmaker
Pennsylvania’s Madeleine Dean, in her second term, is a member of the House Judiciary Committee.

A former member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, Dean was also a lawyer in private practice.

Pennsylvania is one of the swing states that the Trump campaign disputed.

Some House Republicans objected to certifying the state’s electoral votes in the Jan. 6 joint session, citing eviden

9. Joe Neguse: Climate Crisis Committee Member
Joe Neguse is beginning his second term representing Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District.

Neguse, 36, is vice chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust, commercial and administrative law. The California native also is on the Natural Resources Committee and the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.

Before entering politics, Neguse was a litigator in private practice.
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Fred Lucas (@FredLucasWH) is chief national affairs correspondent for The Daily Signal.

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Team - Work

. . . RINOs join the left to impeach trump again on totally ridiculous frivolous charges.

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

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Twitter Permanently Bans Trump; Why Do Hillary Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Harry Reid Get a Pass?

by Larry Elder: Twitter explained why it decided to permanently ban President Donald Trump: “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

Trump gave a long, raucous speech, in which he claimed election fraud, in front of supporters an hour before a mob stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6. This horrific siege took place during a joint session of Congress. After the violent disruption, former Vice President Joe Biden was officially certified the winner.

Trump said: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. Today, we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity of our elections, but whether or not they stand strong for our country, our country.”

Democrats intend to impeach Trump again because of his pre-Capitol building siege speech.

George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley, a Democrat, wrote: “Like others, I condemned those remarks as he gave them, calling them reckless and wrong. I also opposed the challenges to electoral votes in Congress. But his address does not meet the definition for incitement under the criminal code. It would be viewed as protected speech by the Supreme Court.” Similarly, Democrat and professor Alan Dershowitz wrote: “Nothing the president said constituted unprotected ‘incitement,’ as narrowly defined by the Supreme Court over nearly a century of decisions. His volatile words plainly fell on the side of political ‘advocacy,’ which is protected speech.”

How far does Twitter intend to take its policy designed to discourage “risk of further incitement of violence”?

For four years, Hillary Clinton, the failed 2016 presidential candidate, has called the 2016 election “stolen” while frequently describing Trump’s election as “illegitimate,” only the result of Russian interference. “I believe he understands that the many varying tactics they used,” said Clinton in 2019, “from voter suppression and voter purging to hacking to the false stories — he knows that — there were just a bunch of different reasons why the election turned out like it did.”

Similarly, in 2019, former President Jimmy Carter said: “There’s no doubt that the Russians did interfere in the election, and I think the interference, although not yet quantified, if fully investigated would show that Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016. He lost the election, and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.”

Indeed, according to an August 2018 Gallup poll: “Democrats widely believe Russians interfered in the 2016 campaign and that it changed the outcome of the election (78% say this), presumably by helping Trump defeat Hillary Clinton.” Never mind that Jeh Johnson, Barack Obama’s former secretary of Homeland Security, said in his June 2017 testimony before a congressional committee: “To my current knowledge, the Russian government did not through any cyber intrusion alter ballots, ballot counts or reporting of election results.” Yet, Hillary faces no ban from Twitter, despite promoting a dangerous, divisive 2016 election narrative not supported by the intelligence community.

In 2012, then-Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., stood on the floor of the Senate and knowingly, falsely accused Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, of not paying taxes. Reid later, out of office, bragged that he knowingly told this “rich don’t pay taxes” lie to damage Romney’s candidacy. It worked. Reid remains active on Twitter.

Ron Fournier, the former Washington, D.C., Associated Press bureau chief, in 2015, publicly said President “George W. Bush lied us into war in Iraq.” True, the bipartisan Robb-Silberman commission found the intel leading up to the Iraq war “dead wrong.” But co-chair Laurence Silberman said: “It is one thing to assert, then or now, that the Iraq war was ill-advised. It is quite another to make the horrendous charge that President Bush lied to or deceived the American people about the threat from Saddam.” Fournier remains active on Twitter.

For four years, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Jimmy Carter referred to President Donald Trump as illegitimately elected. Risk of violence, Twitter? Reid likely altered the outcome of the 2012 election with his Senate lie about Romney and his taxes. Risk of violence, Twitter? And “reporters” like Fournier insisted that former President George W. Bush sent men and women to face death and injury over a “lie.” Risk of violence, Twitter?
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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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A Looming Question & Coming Litmus Test

Jeremy Beck

by Jeremy Beck: Oren Cass, in what might be the perfect six-word challenge for policy makers heading into 2021 writes ""Worker Power, Loose Borders: Pick One."" For all of us who have been frustrated for years by the media's insistence that immigration policy stands outside the law of supply and demand, it is more than a little cathartic to watch Cass take the expansionist utopians to the mat.This school of thought fascinates me, in the same way an old-timey 'cabinet of curiosities' might capture the attention. 'And in this corner, the man who believes policymakers should strive to tighten labor markets, insists on the imperative of worker power, and also sees unconstrained immigration into the labor market's weakest segments as unconcerning if not downright desirable.' Is it impolite to stare?This form of mockery (as opposed to ad hominem attack) is richly deserved, but credit Cass for acknowledging the nuances of the issue before throwing down the gauntlet:Of course, one can endorse loose immigration policy on non-economic grounds; the issue implicates all manner of moral questions and demands difficult tradeoffs among competing values. That appears to be where the Democratic Party is headed. But as a policy agenda for worker-led growth comes further into focus, and finds champions on the right-of-center, the tradeoff between liberal immigration policies and tight labor markets will only become more obvious, and the choice a litmus test for commitment to American workers and their families.David Leonhardt, meanwhile, sees immigration policy as part of a Democratic message that "is failing to resonate with many working-class Americans":How can Democrats do better with the working-class? It's not an easy question. (Left-leaning parties in Europe are having similar struggles.)

But there are some hints. Many working-class voters, across racial groups, are moderate to conservative on social issues: They are religious, favor well-funded police departments and support some restrictions on both abortion and immigration. On economic issues, by contrast, they tend to back Democratic positions, like a higher minimum wage and expanded government health care.Whether or not Democrats can improve their standing with the working-class "may be the biggest looming question about American politics," Leonhardt writes, and he sees immigration policy as weighing heavily on the answer.
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Jeremy Beck is the Director of the Sustainability Initiative for NumbersUSA.

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Biden Unveils $1.9 Trillion ‘American Rescue Plan’

by Yuval Rosenberg: President-elect Joe Biden is set to unveil an economic relief package that calls for $1.9 trillion in aid, including money for $1,400 direct payments to most Americans as well as $350 billion in funding for state and local governments and billions more to promote coronavirus testing and vaccine distribution.

Biden is proposing a $400-a-week federal boost to unemployment insurance through September, expanded paid leave and an increase in the child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,000 for this year, with another $600 for children under age 6 and "new rules that would let the poorest households get the full benefit," according to The Wall Street Journal.

"Aid for households makes up about half of the plan’s cost, with much of the rest going to vaccine distribution and state and local governments," the Journal’s Richard Rubin and Eliza Collins say.

Here’s a rundown of the elements in Biden’s plan, per Bloomberg News:

• Direct payments of $1,400, on top of the $600 approved in December
• $400 per week in supplementary unemployment benefits through September
• $350 billion for state and local governments
• Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour
• $130 billion to help schools reopen
• $160 billion in funding for a national program of vaccination, testing and other coronavirus containment efforts
• $30 billion for rental and small-landlord support
• $25 billion for childcare providers
• Expanded food assistance
• Expanded child tax credits
• Expanded medical and family leave

Biden’s plan is expected to call for two phases, with an immediate injection of coronavirus-related aid to be followed by a proposal for longer-term economic stimulus focused on jobs and infrastructure as a way to combat climate change.

Biden’s plan doesn’t include cost offsets, relying instead on deficit financing, the Journal reports. "Mr. Biden’s argument is that now isn’t the time to worry about widening budget deficits, given the emergency and low interest rates," the Journal’s Rubin and Collins write.

Pushing for bipartisan agreement: Biden will try to get Republicans to back his plan — and he’ll need at least 10 Senate Republicans to approve assuming that all 50 Senate Democrats support his proposals.

It’s far from a sure bet, given prior Republican opposition to a relief package of this size. The cost of Biden’s plan is more than double that of the hard-fought bipartisan deal passed by Congress last month and approaches the price tag on the Cares Act passed in March. Some Republicans are also likely to resist providing $350 billion in aid to state and local governments and to the minimum-wage hike Biden wants, among other elements, though Democrats reportedly feel confident that they can get 10 GOP votes for a bill that that includes state and local money.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) lauded Biden’s plan. "We will get right to work to turn President-elect Biden’s vision into legislation that will pass both chambers and be signed into law," they said in a joint statement released Thursday. "We echo the President-elect’s call for bipartisan action on his proposal and hope that our Republican colleagues will work with us to quickly enact it." But some Democrats might still object to elements of the plan, too. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) last week suggested that he would want any additional direct payments to be more targeted.

Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) told the Journal that he expects the relief package to be broken up based on what can be passed immediately on a bipartisan basis and what may need to go through a process known as budget reconciliation, which would require only 50 votes in the Senate.

Biden’s strategy "will test the president-elect’s legislative savvy, and will force the Democratic Congressional leadership to navigate razor-thin majorities to deliver the administration an early victory," Punchbowl News says. And the fight over longer-term stimulus may be even more challenging, given that it would involve some tax hikes.
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Yuval Rosenberg write for The Fiscal Times.

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