If It Ain't Vote, Don't Fix It

by Tony Perkins: Guess what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) made her top priority in this congressional session? If you said rigging the election system against Republicans, you'd be right! The very first bill that was introduced, H.R. 1, would do just that. Worse, it would usurp responsibility for regulating elections from state legislatures and give it to the same group of people who have used the same game plan to cement one-party rule in California (hint: it's not the Republicans).

But even without Pelosi's bill, states have enough problems running elections, as the 2020 election abundantly demonstrated. The Heritage Foundation's Senior Legal Fellow, Hans Von Spakovsky, joined me on Washington Watch to point out how states can improve election security. And unlike the Twitter philosophers, he speaks from experience, having served as a county election administrator in two different states.

His list isn't rocket science. The most shocking part is that many state and local election officials aren't doing most of these things already:

Verify the accuracy of voter registration lists. Von Spakovsky said states can catch "people registering at commercial addresses, pawn shops, casinos in Nevada, etc." by checking for residential addresses with the county tax department, which "has detailed information on every single property in the county for tax reasons." They can also cross-reference the Social Security Administration's master death index to prevent "dead people" from voting.

Verify citizenship of voters. Voter registration forms do ask whether the applicant is a U.S. citizen. But, said Von Spakovsky, unlike employers, "election officials don't do anything to actually check."

Require voter ID. In 1996, while I was campaign manager for a U.S. Senate race, we lost the election to voter fraud, but after we made this reform, we've had fair elections ever since.

Limit absentee ballots. Some people just can't go to the polls. But Von Spakovsky pointed out these are the only ballots cast "outside the supervision of election officials and outside the observation of poll watchers." So states should only give them out for good reasons.

End vote trafficking or harvesting. Nearly half of states allow people to collect and deliver other people's ballots. Von Spakovsky said these operatives could include interested parties, like "campaign staffers, candidates, party activists, political consultants." They could illegally advise or pressure someone how to complete their ballot, or even "lose" ballots they expect to be unfavorable.

Allow election observers complete access to the election process. This was a major issue in the 2020 election. How do we know the votes were counted accurately if we weren't allowed to watch the counting? And we don't mean on the other end of a giant warehouse.

Provide voting assistance. Von Spakovsky noted that some people will inevitably need help to vote. "They may not speak English well. They may be illiterate. They may be physically disabled." Those who assist them should be registered so they can be held accountable.

Prohibit early vote counting. If some votes are counted before others are cast, then at some point they will be leaked, either prompting flagging campaigns to increase their GOTV effort, or discouraging participation among other voters.

Give state legislatures standing. In 2020, state election officials usurped the legislature's authority by essentially re-writing election laws. For the integrity of the election and the law, the state legislature should be able to hold rogue officials accountable.

If you're like me, the items on this list are just common sense. But many states lack these safeguards. And Democrats in Congress are actually trying to remove them. Are they trying to hide something? Election reform, at the state level in particular, is vital to restoring Americans' trust in our elections.
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Tony Perkins addresses voting.

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Lawyers Are Facing Reprisal for Representing Trump. This Is Un-American.

by GianCarlo Canaparo & Hans von Spakovsky: “So … you represented Trump?” That question is unfairly haunting a number of the former president’s lawyers.

Because of his legal counsel to former President Donald Trump, constitutional scholar and law professor John Eastman—the former dean of the law school no less—was pushed out of Chapman University, where he spent his entire, very distinguished academic career.

The same thing happened to Cleta Mitchell, a well-known and highly respected Washington, D.C. lawyer who had practiced with Foley and Lardner for decades.

Now, Michigan lawyers Greg Rohl, Scott Hagerstrom, and Stefanie Junttila, who represented the Trump campaign in election litigation in the state, are being unfairly and unjustly targeted for disbarment by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and state Attorney General Dana Nessel.

These lawyers find themselves in the all-too-familiar position today of being punished for carrying out their professional duties to the best of their abilities—as required by the codes of conduct that govern all attorneys—by representing a client who is politically unpopular with those in power.

This is not just wrong, but un-American—something we don’t say lightly. This country is fundamentally based on the rule of law, which depends on protecting the ability and independence of lawyers to take unpopular clients and unpopular cases, something that has been done by brave, principled lawyers throughout our nation’s history.

This is one of those lessons that people on both sides of the political aisle selectively defend and selectively forget.

Unfortunately, we’ve been here before.

Hillary Clinton was attacked for defending a child rapist as a court-appointed attorney. Lawyers who represented detainees at Guantanamo Bay were also attacked for defending terrorists.

Some progressives deride prosecutors for enforcing laws they view as unjust, and some conservatives deride defense attorneys for defending dangerous or unsavory individuals charged with committing heinous crimes. And just about everyone derides divorce lawyers.

But we are, as John Adams said, a nation of laws and not of men. That means that we insulate our justice system from the fickle whims of human nature with processes and procedures. These are designed to minimize human error and to diminish the influence of the court of public opinion.

The independence of lawyers is one of the most important parts of that system. Adams himself put his famous line into practice when, in 1770, he defended British soldiers accused of killing American colonists during the Boston Massacre. A more unpopular representation could hardly have been imagined, but Adams risked his reputation and career because he believed in the rule of law.

The right to counsel is one of the most precious rights we have because it is essential to an individual’s ability to assert any other right. As distinguished law professor Geoffrey Hazard Jr. once said, the adversarial system “stands with freedom of speech and the right of assembly as a pillar of our constitutional system.”

Harassing or punishing lawyers who represent unpopular clients or take unpopular cases undermines the rule of law.

That is exactly what the governor and attorney general of Michigan are trying to do by calling for the disbarment of several of Trump’s lawyers, who did exactly what rule 1.3 of the Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct directs them to do, which is practice “zeal in advocacy upon the client’s behalf.”

They claim that the lawyers should be disbarred because they “undermine[d] the faith of the public in the legitimacy of the recent presidential election, and lent credence to untruths that led to violence and unrest.”

But a commitment to the rule of law separates a lawyer from the implications of the cases he undertakes. If not, then Clinton “protected a child rapist,” and Guantanamo defense lawyers “undermined our national security and tried to free terrorists.”

Nonsense. In each of these cases, the lawyers upheld the rule of law by playing their proper role in the process. The same goes for Trump’s lawyers. They made legal claims under applicable laws that were reviewed by the courts, which is just as it should be.

That is not only an absurd claim but a dangerous one. Under that bizarre theory, all of the lawyers who represented Al Gore in 2000 in his election contest should have been disbarred.

So too the lawyers who represented Democratic congressional candidate Dan McCready in North Carolina in 2018 in an election contest that the state’s Board of Election overturned due to absentee ballot fraud.

And Democrat lawyer Marc Elias should also be disbarred for claiming that voting machines produced incorrect results that favored Republican Claudia Tenney in the race for New York’s 22nd District.

When lawyers violate their ethical obligations by, for example, filing a meritless lawsuit, the courts already have rules and procedures to deal with them. The justice system is designed to do that. But taking on an unsavory client or a client that state officials don’t like for partisan reasons does not amount to litigating in an unethical manner.

When people intentionally blur that line, as Whitmer is doing, they undermine the rule of law, the fair administration of justice, and access to the protections of our legal system.

Elections are decided at the ballot box and, in some cases, issues arising from an election and potential recounts may require legal resolution. Punishing the lawyers who represent candidates and their campaigns in these cases is not only wrong, it is disgraceful.

No matter which candidates you supported in the last election, no matter which political party you believe represents your points of view on how this country should be governed, everyone should agree that the retribution, reprisals, and payback being imposed on lawyers involved in the 2020 election have no place in our civil society.
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GianCarlo Canaparo is a legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Hans von Spakovsky is an authority on a wide range of issues—including civil rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, immigration, the rule of law and government reform—as a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.

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Pompeo Eviscerates Biden's Claim That 'America Is Back' in Foreign Policy

by Tyler O'Neil: On Thursday, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dismantled President Joe Biden’s claim that “America is back” under his administration when it comes to foreign policy. Pompeo defended the Trump administration’s foreign policy accomplishments and noted the Obama administration’s failures, insisting that America cannot afford eight more years of Obama-style failure.

“‘Back.’ Does he mean back to when ISIS controlled a caliphate in Syria that was the size of Britain? I hope not. President Trump and our team took that down,” Pompeo told Fox News Primetime host Trey Gowdy, his former colleague in the House of Representatives.

“When he says ‘back,’ when ‘America is back,’ does he mean back to letting China walk all over us, destroying millions of jobs in places like Kansas and South Carolina, that we know so well, Trey? I hope that’s not what he means by back,” Pompeo quipped. “He talked about allies, when he said go ‘back,’ does he mean back to dissing allies and friends like Israel and treating the terrorists in Iran like friends by giving them $150 billion in pallets of cash?”

“I don’t think the American people can afford to go back to eight more years of Barack Obama’s foreign policy,” the former secretary of State said. “I hope they’ll move forward with a foreign policy look much more like our America-first foreign policy.”

Pompeo condemned the horrific abuses of the Chinese Communist Party and insisted that the Biden administration must fight China as vigorously as the Trump administration did.

“China is behaving in a way that we haven’t seen any nation behave since the 1930s,” he said. “We talk about ‘never again.’ And yet on our watch, on our time, we’re watching the Chinese Communist Party engage in those exact same kind of behaviors.” Pompeo noted that in the final days of the Trump administration, he issued a determination that the Chinese Communist Party was engaging in genocide, effectively another Holocaust.

Gowdy asked Pompeo about the false notion that the Trump administration had gone soft on Russia and allowed the Russian Federation to interfere in U.S. elections.

“If you will remember, Trey, the interference that I think he’s referring to took place when he was the vice president of the United States” in the 2016 election, Pompeo noted. “We worked hard to prevent Russia from interfering in our election. I’m proud of the work we did to push back against Russia. Remember, they took Crimea during the Obama administration.”

The Trump administration did crack down on Russia. In fact, former Obama officials have warned about Trump’s supposedly overly aggressive sanctions. While Trump was friendly with Russian President Vladimir Putin, his administration actually armed Ukrainians fighting against Russia, championed U.S. energy policies that weakened Russia’s oil dominance, denounced Putin’s support for the Maduro regime in Venezuela, slapped sanctions on Russian officials, and condemned human rights abuses.

Gowdy also asked Pompeo about the assassination of Iranian Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani.

“Well, that particular general was plotting to kill Americans,” the former secretary of State noted. He acknowledged that many observers warned the assassination might spark World War III, but it actually “demonstrated the capacity for America to execute deterrents against Iran.”

“Going back to try and cut that deal from 2015 would be a calamity,” Pompeo warned. He said it would be “a calamity for the gulf states, a calamity for our friend and partner the Jewish homeland the state of Israel,” and a calamity for the U.S. America and the world cannot afford the possibility “that the world’s largest state sponsor of terror will once again have the power, the resources, the capacity, to do real harm.”

Pompeo concluded by once again defending his record. He acknowledged that “there were some cold receptions in Brussels and some of the salons of Europe,” but he insisted that his team delivered “good outcomes.”

“So ask [India] Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi. Ask [former Japan] Prime Minister [Shinzo] Abe. Ask Prime Minister [Scott] Morrison in Australia. All of these leaders understood that America had their back. We were their friends. We were their partners. We were working diligently to deliver security. We did that,” he said. “And I am proud of the alliances that this administration built.”
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Tyler O'Neil is Assistant Editor of PJ Media, Tyler O'Neil is a conservative fundraiser and commentator. He has written for numerous publications.

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Biden Rewards Iran, Unity vs. Reconciliation, Cheney's False Choice, Pence's Plans

Gary Bauer

by Gary Bauer: Biden Rewards Iran
Well, that didn't take long. Barely two weeks into office and President Joe Biden is already rewarding Iran.

In a major foreign policy address yesterday, Biden announced that he was ending military support for the campaign against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, who are backed by the Iranian regime. Iran is turning the Houthis into Yemen's equivalent of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

"This war has to end," Biden declared. Sure, that would be nice. But tell it to the ayatollah, who is using Yemen as a launching pad for attacks against Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, many observers noted a glaring omission in Biden's remarks yesterday. He never mentioned Israel once. Not when discussing the conflict in the Middle East or when he listed the "leaders of many of our closest friends" and allies he had spoken to recently.

According to various reports, Biden has yet to speak with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and yesterday's omission was a deliberate message that Israel is once again getting the cold shoulder as yet another Democrat administration reorients our foreign policy away from Israel and toward Iran.

Unity vs. Reconciliation
There's a lot of talk in Washington lately about unity and reconciliation. And while they may have similar meanings for most people, in Washington it's the exact opposite.

President Biden's fake unity rhetoric is being exposed by the Senate Democrats use of the budget reconciliation process to ram through a massive $1.9 trillion spending bill on a purely partisan basis. That process kicked off last night in the Senate with a series of votes that showed who the real extremists are.

As we have reported, there are school districts in big cities like Chicago, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., where teachers are being vaccinated and still refusing to return to their classrooms.

Last night, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) offered an amendment denying additional "emergency" funds to any school district that refuses to reopen. Why give extra money to schools if they are closed?

That commonsense amendment failed on a 50 to 50 vote. All Democrats, including so-called "moderates" like Joe Manchin (WV) and Krysten Sinema (AZ), voted against the amendment and effectively voted to give extra funding to teachers who are refusing to teach your children in class.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) offered an amendment declaring that no federal tax money should go to any city that refuses to cooperate with federal law enforcement in apprehending illegal immigrants. So, if a city decides to be a sanctuary for criminal aliens, it shouldn't expect the federal government to subsidize illegal activity.

That amendment also failed 50 to 50. For all the complaints of Republican weakness, at least every Republican voted for these two commonsense ideas and every Democrat voted against them.

Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) offered an amendment to prevent illegal immigrants from receiving the stimulus checks that we're sending to the American people. Just eight Democrats felt compelled to vote with Republicans to ensure that illegal immigrants did not get emergency cash payments from U.S. taxpayers in the name of the coronavirus pandemic.

There were many other important and revealing votes, too many to list here. But amendments to prevent a ban on fracking and to ensure construction of the Keystone XL pipeline also passed, with a handful of Democrat votes.

Sounds like good news, right?

Unfortunately, those two energy related amendments and the Young amendment to block stimulus payments to illegal aliens were later repealed in a vote engineered by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer with Vice President Harris casting the tie-breaking vote.

That means every Democrat who initially supported these commonsense bipartisan measures had to reverse themselves in order to toe the liberal line on climate change and open borders.

Cheney's False Choice
As you may know, Rep. Liz Cheney survived a vote to remove her from her leadership position in the House Republican Caucus. National Review has an excerpt of the speech she reportedly delivered to the GOP caucus justifying her vote to impeach President Trump. Here's some of what she said:

"We cannot become the party of QAnon, we cannot become the party of Holocaust denial, we cannot become the party of white supremacy."

How she managed to deliver Nancy Pelosi's talking points and still maintained her leadership position is beyond me.

Cheney has apparently internalized the false narrative of the left. How many times was her own father demonized by the left as a bigot, a white supremacist, a warmonger and who knows what else? Of all people, she should be leading the fight against the left's false charges, not surrendering to them.

By suggesting that she had to vote to impeach Trump to prove she is not a member of "the party of white supremacy" is breathtaking. And if Republicans thought they were putting this episode behind them, they were sorely mistaken.

Her words will be parroted endlessly by the left in the days ahead to smear all conservatives. I can already imagine the ads, "Even Liz Cheney says Republicans are the party of Holocaust denial and white supremacy."

Surely Ms. Cheney understands that the only danger of Holocaust denial becoming mainstream is in the Democrat Party. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib have repeatedly said anti-Semitic things and promoted materials from Holocaust deniers, and they are still on all of their committees.

The last Democrat president sent billions of dollars to "Holocaust Denial Central" in Tehran. The current Democrat president can't wait to do it again.

By the way, who's America's biggest anti-Semite and Holocaust denier? That would be Louis Farrakhan. Maybe Cheney should go lecture the Congressional Black Caucus and ask them to join her in combatting Holocaust denial since several of their members met with Farrakhan and posed for pictures with him.

Remember the "progressive" Women's March? It had to fire three board members over charges of anti-Semitism, including radical Islamist Linda Sarsour. Then it tried to replace them with another rabid anti-Israel activist! And various "gay pride" events have banned Jewish groups. (Here and here.)

Did Liz Cheney ever attend a Trump rally? The president's biggest applause lines often occurred when Trump outlined his economic plans to help ensure minority communities shared in the American Dream.

President Trump pushed criminal justice reform to ensure that minorities were not unfairly sentenced. Donald Trump received significantly more minority votes than Mitt Romney or John McCain, and he won more black votes than George W. Bush.

But now Liz Cheney has embraced the left's narrative, and agrees with Democrats that the GOP is in danger of becoming a party of Holocaust deniers.

It's the same disgusting tactic that so many frauds like Pierre Delecto, aka Mitt Romney, have used over the years, constantly trying to distance themselves, constantly trying to prove that they "aren't like those other conservatives."

And she's in the leadership?

Pence's Plans
Former Vice President Mike Pence announced his reentry into public life yesterday. Pence will be joining the Heritage Foundation as a distinguished visiting fellow. Kay C. James, president of Heritage, said that Pence's activism and leadership will be "an adrenaline shot for the entire conservative movement."

Pence will also be hosting a podcast with Young America's Foundation (YAF). This is a great fit for the former vice president, who was once a radio talk show host. And there's some history here: YAF sponsored daily radio commentaries in the 1970s by Ronald Reagan.

And like President Trump, Pence is laying the groundwork to help elect Republican majorities to the House and Senate in 2022.
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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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150 People Were Shot in Chicago Since Illinois Sent the National Guard to D.C.

Democrats occupy D.C. while their own people die every day.
by Daniel Greenfield: After shooting deaths shot up 75% in Chicago, Governor Pritzker announced that he was dispatching 500 more National Guard troops to fight “the dark forces of racism” in D.C.

Washington D.C. may be suffering from “the dark forces of racism” since it’s currently in the hands of the party of racism, slavery, and segregation, but those National Guard troops would do a lot more good in Chicago where 81%, the majority of shooting victims, are black.

Around 150 people have been shot since Pritzker sent the troops to D.C. instead of Chicago.

After the billionaire governor took a break from working on his Wisconsin mansion to dispatch 200 National Guard troops to protect Joe Biden from being attacked during the inauguration, 29 murders were perpetrated in Chicago. There was nothing for the Illinois National Guard to do in D.C. where the biggest threat to Joe Biden’s safety remains pulling a dog’s tail in the shower, but deploying those troops could have been used to save lives back home in Chicago.

D.C. does not need the National Guard for anything except political theater. If Governor Pritzker wants to protect Joe Biden, he doesn’t need hundreds of soldiers, he just needs a good nurse.

And maybe a dog trainer.

"We must root out the dark forces of racism," Governor Pritzker declared, and, "disinformation".

Soldiers don't root out "disinformation". Except maybe in China, Cuba, and apparently, Chicago.

The latest weekend began with 18 people being shot in Chicago. Instead of fighting Republican political opponents in D.C., the National Guard could actually stop real violence in Chiraq.

Pritzker’s administration claims that the hundreds of National Guard personnel are needed to help secure the Capitol. The Capitol Police have over 2,000 sworn officers, an ‘unscalable wall’ surrounds Congress, and all of that is backed by the D.C. cops, the Park Police, and thousands of National Guardsmen from sleepier states like Vermont and Rhode Island. If all of that isn’t enough to secure Congress from a few hundred protesters, then maybe it’s time to give up.

The Biden banana republic theater in D.C. of soldiers, walls, and razor wire is sending a troubling message to Americans and to the rest of the world. But it’s also costing lives in Chicago and in urban areas that could actually use some National Guard support.

Murder rates have shot up by 50% in major American cities. Police departments are outmanned, outgunned, and are bleeding personnel at record rates as officers head for the exit.

In Michigan, Governor Whitmer sent hundreds of National Guard personnel in January to D.C. to ensure “a peaceful transition of presidential power”. There are now 1,000 members of the Michigan National Guard in D.C. until March because the “transition” still isn’t peaceful.

D.C.’s political arenas in the Imperial City are their usual corrupt and peaceful selves, but Michigan’s troubled urban areas could use some of those 1,000 soldiers on their streets.

In one recent Flint shooting spree, a 57-year-old woman was killed, and four others, including an 11-month-old baby, were wounded. If only Governor Whitmer had cared as much about that baby as she does about bolstering the Democrat military occupation of Washington D.C.

While shootings continue to devastate Philly, Governor Wolf insists on keeping 450 Pennsylvania National Guard members in D.C. after initially dispatching 2,350 members.

Governor Wolf claimed that all those soldiers were needed to "ensure the safe and peaceful inauguration" of Biden. Now that Biden is safely and peacefully banning women’s sports from the Oval Office, why are hundreds of soldiers still there? To protect him from female athletes?

Even as violence surges in New York City, Governor Cuomo sent another 542 members of the state’s National Guard to D.C.

That’s after a year in which shootings rose 97% and murders shot up by 45%.

"Our federal government is facing a host of challenges unlike any in modern history, and it needs to be able to conduct its business safely for the sake of all Americans," Cuomo claimed.

The only federal legislators to be physically assaulted by political extremists have been Republicans who were attacked by Democrats: Including at the infamous baseball charity shooting spree. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who claimed that she was nearly murdered, is perfectly safe. So is the rest of New York’s delegation of grifters, radicals, and crooks.

The same can’t be said for New Yorkers who are under assault by the criminals set loose by Cuomo, De Blasio, and other Democrats who prioritized thugs over law-abiding citizens.

The federal government is safe. New Yorkers aren’t.

The Democrats are determined to maintain this show of force while proceeding with an unconstitutional impeachment of President Trump to send a message that this is a banana republic in which a usurper tries his predecessor in a trial presided over by his own man while soldiers stand guard to suppress political protests and intimidate political opponents.

The D.C. occupation must end.

If the Democrats want to send troops somewhere, their own cities are in desperate need. Gang violence is claiming the lives of a generation of black youth. Meanwhile the National Guard are also being used to manage the pandemic. Diverting soldiers from that task may also cost lives.

Instead, Democrats have prioritized intimidating Americans over saving American lives.

While their own people, men, women, and children, continue to die in Chicago, Philly, Detroit, and New York City, the only thing they care about is a military show of force in D.C. Their banana republic occupation persists in D.C. while the dying continues in their own cities.

Sadly, even the deployment of the National Guard to D.C. hasn’t made the city any safer.

While thousands of soldiers were deployed to protect Speaker Pelosi and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, an 85-year-old man was violently beaten on the train, a 15-year-old boy was shot and killed, and a mass shooting killed 1 man and wounded 4 others.

But the cops were busy investigating the vandalism of a Bernie Sanders mural as a hate crime.

Just like the thousands of soldiers, they weren’t there to keep ordinary people safe, but to protect the political agendas of the Democrat ruling class with fascist political theater.

The National Guard could have been used to actually save lives in D.C. Instead, Democrats used those soldiers to threaten Americans while making them sleep in cold parking garages.

That’s another reason why the D.C. occupation needs to end.

If the Democrats want to save lives, they can send the troops to Chicago. If they want to threaten Americans with armed force, they can take a trip to Cuba and never come back.
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Daniel Greenfield (@Sultanknish) writes for FrontPage Mag. He is Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

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Biden Funds Program to Block Foreign Religious Leaders Who Oppose LGBT

Joe Biden officiating at a same sex wedding

by Austin Ruse: This week, President Biden signed an executive order that will promote homosexuality and transgenderism as a centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy.

The document directs “all U.S. government departments and agencies engaged abroad to ensure that U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex persons around the world.”

Of most concern to human rights advocates around the world is the provision of $10 million in the upcoming fiscal year to fund the “Global Equality Fund” that will allow the U.S. government to blacklist foreign religious leaders who speak out in favor of the natural family and against the LGBT ascendancy. These human rights advocates could be blocked in the same way certain Russian oligarchs are blocked from entering the United States.

This new Executive Order is part of President Biden’s payback to homosexual elites for their support of his candidacy. In December, thirty wealthy left-wing groups, calling themselves the Council for Global Equality, issued a list of demands, including passage of the Equality Act that would force Christian homeless shelters to place men with women.

The group demanded that Biden strike down Mexico City Policy that forbids U.S. money from going to abortion-friendly groups overseas, which he did in the opening days of his presidency. The group also calls for a global effort to combat what they call “anti-gender” groups around the world. This presumably would include American groups that work overseas, including C-Fam (publisher of the Friday Fax), Alliance Defending Freedom, Concerned Women for America, the Heritage Foundation, and other mainstream conservative and pro-life groups.

The proposed blacklist could affect people like Anne Kioko of Kenya, who has led the fight there in favor of the natural family. It could also affect Ignacio Arsuaga, founder and president of CitizenGo, a grassroots petition organization with millions of followers. Kioko and Arsuaga have worked closely with U.S. groups at the United Nations.

Human rights advocates are additionally concerned that pushing the LGBT agenda in U.S. foreign policy will come at the expense of Christians. President Obama, for instance, changed the State Department Office on Religious Freedom to include homosexual issues. Christians were pushed out of the office, and the annual religious persecution report came to include attacks on Christians and Jews who defend the natural family.

It should be understood that sexual orientation and gender identity are not recognized categories of nondiscrimination in international law. The phrase does not appear in any hard-law treaties. It appears in a few nonbinding documents, specifically documents from the UN in Geneva calling for research into violence against homosexuals. Senior UN bureaucrats and treaty monitoring bodies have said SOGI is a category of nondiscrimination, but their comments are not binding or normative.

The question becomes, will there be a blacklist of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim leaders who will be blocked from entering the United States? Will Biden push for foreign governments to allow boys into female sports? How far will President Biden go to thank the homosexual elite for their money and votes during the last campaign?
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Austin Ruse has headed the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) since shortly after its creation in the summer of 1997. Austin has held the title of President since 2000.

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Climate Hoax Czar

The Irony is lost on Biden’s Climate Czar John Kerry in regard to him traveling the world in a fuel-guzzling private jet.
Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

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'Mostly Peaceful' Violence and Dueling Double Standards

by Michael Barone: Pictures matter. Images convey truths -- and falsehoods -- with an emotional impact that can amplify and sometimes completely overwhelm the messages imparted by words.

Consider the photo of the guy with the buffalo-horn headdress and naked midriff standing at the House speaker's podium in the Capitol on Jan. 6. Or the video shot of a CNN reporter standing in front of fires blazing around burnt-out cars in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last August.

Web surfers could discover that the buffalo horn-helmeted guy was always ready with an articulate line of patter, and television viewers could see the CNN chyron lamely characterizing the Kenosha protest as "fiery but mostly peaceful."

But the pictures are what linger in the mind. The rationalizations and apologies some readily offer for these acts -- the supposed stealing of the 2020 presidential election, the alleged epidemic of police shootings of unarmed black men -- have nothing like the force of those pictures of wackos in the Capitol or rioters in Kenosha and other sites, including Lafayette Square in front of the White House.

These pictures of ebullient violence in symbolic civic space will have reverberations in politics and public life for years to come.

The Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol failed to achieve its apparent goal: preventing the announcement of the Electoral College votes making Joe Biden the 46th president. But that action, following then-President Donald Trump's speech to a crowd he summoned to the Ellipse, led to his impeachment by the House. That was not without justification: His words, as I wrote days later, "were uttered with a reckless disregard for the possibility they'd provoke violence that any reasonable person could find impeachable."

They have also led to the construction of an ugly fence around the Capitol complex and the continued mobilization of thousands of National Guard troops -- a perhaps-permanent militarization of our capital city.

We still need an explanation for why there were too few law enforcement and military personnel deployed to protect the Capitol on Jan. 6. Now there appear to be more than necessary. The sight of the Capitol fenced off from the petitioning and touristic public is not a happy picture.

Neither is life on many streets in America's large cities, particularly in the mostly black neighborhoods. And it hasn't been a happy picture since the video of the death of George Floyd on May 25 prompted multiple and extended "mostly peaceful" protests across the nation -- and not just protests but murders.

With major police departments defunded, as Black Lives Matter spokesmen demanded, and with police officers avoiding the "hot spots" where intensive policing had astonishingly cut violent crime since the mid-1990s, murders skyrocketed from 2019 to 2020 -- up 31%, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

Academics placed some blame on the COVID-19 lockdowns, but there was no perceptible increase until Memorial Day weekend. And it's not just a minor blip; the previous high percentage increase in murders, in 1968, was just 13%.

Multiple increases of that magnitude resulted in the national violent crime rate almost tripling from 1965 to 1976. As a law student, I worked in the mayor's office in Detroit during the 1967 riot, and I can tell you what happens to major cities with sustained increases in violent crime: Very large parts of them are destroyed. That's what I fear could happen again.

It's all the more likely if liberal mayors and their cheerleaders in the press act as many did during the "mostly peaceful" BLM protests. Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser tweeted that it was "shameful" for federal police to use force to clear Lafayette Square on June 1. Those overrunning it tried to topple the statue of Andrew Jackson and started a fire in St. John's Church, "the presidents' church," just to the north. That civic space was violated just as the Capitol was on Jan. 6.

Two days later, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton argued in The New York Times for sending the National Guard and federal troops into cities where rioting got out of hand, as was often done from 1967 in Detroit to 1992 in Los Angeles. That common-sense suggestion sent young Times journalists into tears, and they demanded -- and got -- the firing of editorial page editor James Bennet.

It's easy to make fun of the double standard here, with Bowser decrying the active duty military being "used on American streets against Americans" in June and having no problem with it in January. Or with then-President Trump decrying rioters in June and spurring them on in January. But I fear we're in for more unhappy pictures in the years ahead.
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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. H/T Rasmussen Reports.

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Tags: Michael Barone, 'Mostly Peaceful' Violence and Dueling Double Standards To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Ideological Imperialism Is Leading to a Bad End

by Patrick J. Buchanan: Yet, when it comes to interfering in the affairs of other nations, how sinless, how blameless, are we Americans?

When it was learned in 2016 that Russia may have hacked the emails of John Podesta and the DNC, and passed the fruits on to WikiLeaks to aid candidate Donald Trump, mighty was the outrage of the American establishment.

If Russia’s security services filched those emails, and a troll farm in Saint Petersburg sent tweets and texts to stir up rancor in our politics, it was said, this was an attack on American democracy and its most sacred of rituals — the elections by which we chose our leaders.

Some called it an “act of war.” Others compared it to Pearl Harbor.

Almost all agreed it was intolerable interference in the internal affairs of the United States which called forth both condemnation and retribution.

Yet, when it comes to interfering in the affairs of other nations, how sinless, how blameless, are we Americans?

During the Cold War, the United States regularly dumped over regimes we believed imperiled our cause — Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, the Congo in the 1960s. After the Cold War, the United States was a major mover in the “color revolutions” that changed regimes in Ukraine and Georgia.

According to Victoria Nuland, then of the State Department, now back again, $5 billion was pumped in to effect the overthrow of the democratically elected pro-Russian regime in Kiev and its replacement by a pro-American one.

This was the triggering event that caused Vladimir Putin to annex Crimea to secure his country’s Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol.

Consider the reaction in this capital to the arrest and imprisonment of dissident Alexei Navalny, following his return from Germany, where he had been treated for chemical poisoning, allegedly by Putin’s security services.

In an editorial, “Nothing But a Poisoner,” The Washington Post thundered:

“Western governments should be doing what they can to help this unprecedented challenge to Mr. Putin’s autocracy survive and grow…

“Mr. Putin has dedicated himself to exploiting the weaknesses in democratic systems. Now is the time to return the favor.”

Consider what the Post is calling for here:

The U.S. and NATO nations should openly side with protesters in Russia’s cities whose goal is the overthrow of Putin and of the internationally recognized government of Russia.

How, one wonders, would Americans react if Putin openly urged worldwide support for the “Stop the Steal” mob that invaded the U.S. Capitol to overturn the results of the Nov. 3 election?

Though Americans are divided over racial, cultural, social and moral issues, liberal interventionists still talk of our “universal values” that represent the future toward which all nations should aspire. Among these are the values of democracy as practiced in the United States.

These are the standards by which other nations are to be judged. And nations that do not conform to these standards are candidates for U.S. interference in their affairs. Ours is an ideological imperialism of a rare order.

Where did we Americans acquire the right to intervene in the internal affairs of nations — be they autocracies, monarchies or republics — that do not threaten or attack us?

When we have intervened in these nations militarily, disaster has most often been the result. It was partly because the regimes of Libya, Syria, Iraq and Yemen did not comport to our ideas of good governance that we went in militarily to change them. Result: millions of dead, wounded and displaced Arabs and Muslims all across the Middle East. A historic calamity.

When the Arab Spring arose, we embraced it. The democratic revolution was here! And what happened in the largest Arab nation that responded as we insisted, Egypt?

An ally of 30 years, President Hosni Mubarak, was ousted. The Muslim Brotherhood was voted into power. It was replaced a year later by a new general, Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, a man more ruthless than Mubarak.

This week, the generals in Myanmar (Burma) ousted the civilian leadership of the country and assumed full power. President Joe Biden reacted reflexively, calling it a “direct assault on the country’s transition to democracy.”

“In a democracy,” said Biden, “force should never seek to override the will of the people or attempt to erase the outcome of a credible election.”

Derek Mitchell of the National Democratic Institute, a subsidiary of the National Endowment for Democracy, explained: “Democracy is one of the pillars of the Biden Administration’s foreign policy agenda. They recognize they have to address this pretty seriously. The question is what to do.”

Actually, the larger question, the basic question is why the internal affairs of Burma, a nation 10,000 miles from the United States, are the business of the United States.

The post-Cold War world, where America stood in moral judgment of the democracy credentials of all other nations, and acted against those that did not sufficiently conform, is coming to an end.

And if we do not give up this ideological imperialism, that end, especially where Russia and China are concerned, could come sudden and soon.
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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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Tags: Patrick Buchanan, conservative, commentary, Ideological Imperialism, Is Leading to, a Bad End To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Fired for Being on Parler

by Paul Jacob: Is the desire to speak freely a bad thing?

In tweets now “protected” from public view, Jennifer De Chiara, president of Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency, professed distress upon learning “that one of our agents has been using the social media platforms Gab and Parler. We do not condone this activity.”

Her agency, she added, works “to ensure a voice of unity, equality, and one that is on the side of social justice.” So “Colleen Oefelein is no longer an agent at The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency.”

This announcement came some weeks after Oefelein reported (on Twitter) that she’s “now also posting on Parler. It’s a great platform with no censorship!”

Tech giants like Twitter and Facebook have become increasingly brazen about banning users for uttering wrongthink. Hence the appeal of pro-free-speech alternatives like Parler and Gab.

De Chiara and Oefelein certainly disagree on the exact reason for the firing. Oefelein says it was for being “a Christian and a conservative.”

Of course, their two explanations are not mutually contradictory.

Anyway, it is significant that De Chiara explains the firing by specifically citing Oefelein’s use as such of a pro-free-speech platform. Also significant is that her explanation includes nothing to the effect that Oefelein expressed anything even so much as politically incorrect . . . or, let’s note, that she was bad at her job.

One apt response to deplatforming is shunning, the boycott of (in this case) the Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency. If you are an author or agent working with the agency and you disapprove of such retaliation against the desire to speak freely, find another agency.

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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Biden’s Drive to War in the Middle East

by Caroline Glick: On Monday, Iran tested a new rocket. The Zuljanah rocket is a 25-meter (82-foot) three-stage rocket with a solid fuel engine for its first two stages and a liquid fuel rocket for its third stage. It can carry a 225 kg (496-pound) payload.

The Zuljanah’s thrust is 75 kilotons, which is far more than required to launch satellite into orbit. The large thrust makes the Zuljanah more comparable to an intercontinental ballistic missile than a space launch vehicle. The US’s LGM-30G Minuteman-III land-based ICBM for instance, has 90 kiloton thrust. The Zuljanah can rise to a height of 500 kilometers for low-earth orbit or, if launched as a missile, its range is 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) – far enough to reach Britain from Iran.

Israeli missile experts estimate that Iran has paid $250 million to develop the Zuljanah project. Monday’s rocket launch itself likely cost tens of millions of dollars.

Iran is in deep economic distress today. Between the COVID-19 global recession, Iran’s endemic corruption and mismanagement and US economic sanctions, 35% of Iranians live in abject poverty today. Iran’s rial has lost 80% of its value over the past four years. Official data place the unemployment rate at 25% but the number is thought to be much higher. Inflation last year stood at 44% overall. Food prices have risen 59%.

When viewed in the context of Iran’s impoverishment, the government’s investment in a thinly disguised ICBM program is all the more revealing. With 35% of the population living in utter destitution and food prices rising steeply, the regime has chosen ICBMs over feeding its people.

Most of the media coverage of the Zuljanah launch failed to register the significance of the project both for what it says about Iran’s capabilities and what it says about the regime’s intentions. Instead, the coverage focused on the timing of the test. The Iranians conducted the test as they flamboyantly breach the limitations on their nuclear activities which they accepted when they agreed to the 2015 nuclear deal.

The Iranians are now enriching uranium to 20% purity – well beyond the 3.67% permitted under the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, (JCPOA). They are using prohibited advanced centrifuges for enrichment in cascades at their Natanz nuclear installation. They are beginning uranium cascades with sixth generation centrifuges at their underground Fordo nuclear reactor in total defiance of the JCPOA. They are stockpiling uranium yellowcake far beyond the quantities permitted in the deal. They are producing uranium metal in breach of the deal. And they are test firing rockets that can easily be converted to nuclear capable ICBMs.

Reportage of Iran’s aggressive nuclear has presented it in the context of the new Biden administration in Washington. It is argued that Iran is taking these aggressive steps to pressure the Biden administration to keep its word to return the US to the JCPOA and abrogate economic sanctions on Iran. In 2018, then-President Donald Trump renounced the JCPOA and re-imposed the economic sanctions that were abrogated in 2015 with the deal’s implementation. Iran’s idea is that out of fear of its rapid nuclear strides, the Biden team will move urgently to appease Iran.

Notably, the Zuljanah test exposed the strategic insanity at the heart of deal, which was conceived, advanced and concluded by then-President Barack Obama and his senior advisors.

The main strategic assumption that guided Obama and his advisors was that Iran was a status quo, responsible power and should be viewed as part of the solution – or “the solution” — rather than the problem in the Middle East. Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism, its proxy wars and its nuclear program were unfortunate consequences of a regional power balance that put too much power in the hands of US allies – first and foremost Israel and Saudi Arabia – and too little power in Iran’s hands. To stabilize the Middle East, Obama argued, Iran needed to be empowered and US allies needed to be weakened. As then-Vice President Joe Biden put it in 2013, “Our biggest problem was our allies.”

A new balance of power, Obama argued would respect Iran’s “equities” in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. As for the nuclear program, which was illegal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran signed, it was totally understandable. Given that Pakistan, India and allegedly Israel have nuclear arsenals, Obama’s advisors said, Iran’s desire for one was reasonable.

With this outlook informing its negotiators, the JCPOA’s legitimization of Iran’s nuclear program makes sense. The purpose of the deal wasn’t to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. It was to “balance” Israel by delegitimizing any Israeli action to block Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

While Israel and America’s other allies would be massively harmed by this new balance of power, Obama and his European partners assessed that they would be more secure. They were convinced that once secure in its position as a regional hegemon, Iran would leave them alone.

The deal reflected this view. A non-binding clause in the JCPOA calls for Iran to limit the range of its ballistic missiles to 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) – taking the US and most of Europe out of range.

Many commentators view the Biden administration nothing more than Obama’s third term. And from the perspective of its Iran policies, this is certainly the case. President Joe Biden’s Iran policy was conceived and is being implemented by the same people who negotiated the JCPOA under Obama.

Aside from Obama himself, the official most responsible for the JCPOA was Rob Malley, who spearheaded the negotiations with Iran. In an October 2019 article in Foreign Affairs, Malley set out what the next Democrat administration’s Iran policy should look like. He claimed that Trump’s maximum pressure strategy was bringing the region to the brink of war because it was based on empowering US allies — first and foremost Israel and Saudi Arabia — to combat Iran’s regional aggression and its nuclear program. In other words, it was based on restoring and reinforcing the regional balance of power that Obama set about undermining to Iran’s benefit and to the detriment of America’s regional allies.

Malley wrote that the only way to prevent war was to go back to the JCPOA and to Obama’s policy of strengthening Iran at the expense of US allies – particularly Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The Zuljanah test Monday demonstrated that Iran doesn’t share Malley’s view of its position. It didn’t spend $250 million on a rocket/missile that can hit Europe because it is scared of Israel and Saudi Arabia. It developed the Zuljanah because it wants the capacity to attack Europe. And it wants to attack Europe because it is a revolutionary, rather than a status quo regime that seeks global domination, not regional stability.

As for the timing, the Zuljanah was tested in February 2021 rather than October 2020 because Iran was deterred by Trump and his maximum pressure strategy and it is empowered by Biden and his maximum appeasement strategy. The prospect of war decreased under Trump. Now it increases with every pronouncement made by the likes of US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. In recent days, both senior officials have warned that Iran is moving dangerously close to independent military nuclear capabilities. And both have made clear that to deal with the problem, the administration intends to go back to the JCPOA.

This policy is irrational even when assessed from within the closed cognitive circle of the Biden/Obama team. They intend to make an irrevocable concession to Iran – billions of dollars of revenue which will flow into its coffers once the sanctions are removed. And in exchange they are asking Iran to make a revocable gesture. Iran reinstated its nuclear enrichment at Fordo and raised its enrichment level to 20% at Natanz at the drop of a hat. If it turns the switches off to get the sanctions relief, it can turn them right back on after the money starts to flow.

This will almost certainly happen in June at the latest. On June 18, Iran will hold presidential elections. President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif will both leave office. All of the current viable candidates hail from the Revolutionary Guards Corps and they can all be guaranteed to abandon the JCPOA. So at best, the JCPOA’s remaining shelf life is four months.

Biden, Blinken, Sullivan, Malley and their colleagues all must be aware that this is the case. The fact that they are moving ahead with their failed strategy all the same indicates that they are ideologically committed to their plan and will stay with it even as it drives the region to war.

This brings us to Israel. During the Trump years, Israel and the US were fully coordinated in their joint and separate actions to undermine Iran’s nuclear program and its operations in Syria and Iraq. As a senior official in Trump’s National Security Council explained recently, “Working together the intelligence agencies of both countries were able to accomplish more than they could on their own.”

Obviously, those days are over now. And as Biden’s team makes its presence felt fully, Israel’s options for blocking Iran from becoming a nuclear power are diminishing.

When IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi announced last month that he had ordered the relevant IDF commanders to prepare operational plans to strike Iran’s nuclear installations, most commentators assumed his target audience was the Iranian regime. Others argued he was issuing a warning to the Biden administration. The former claimed he sought to force Iran back from the nuclear brink. The latter argued he was demanding the Biden administration take Israel’s positions seriously before it moves ahead with abrogating the sanctions.

But in the face of the Biden team’s strategic fanaticism and Iran’s race to the nuclear finishing line, it’s at least equally likely that Kochavi’s intended audiences were neither the Iranians nor the Americans. Instead, he may well have been telling the Israeli public to be prepared for what is coming. And he may also have been telling Israel’s regional partners that the time for joint action is now.
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Caroline Glick writes for Israel Hayom.

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Tags: Caroline Glick, Israel Hayom, Biden’s Drive to War, in the Middle East To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Sen. Rand Paul’s Three-Penny Plan Would Balance Budget in Five Years After Debt Grew $4.4 Trillion in 2020

by Robert Romano: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is offering an alternative budget plan that would cut three cents out of every federal dollar spent every year for five years, bringing the budget into balance by 2026, at a time when the U.S. added more than $4.4 trillion to the national debt in 2020 alone to $27.8 trillion.

Overall, the plan would cut spending by $67.4 billion in 2022, and over 10 years would cut $7.2 trillion. In a summary provided by Sen. Paul’s office it notes that the longer Congress waits to address the fiscal state of the nation, the worse it will get.

The summary states, “When Senator Paul first introduced a, flexible, off the top budget, simply freezing spending was all that was required to balance in 5 year.” That is why, per the summary, “To reach balance, this budget must cut 3 pennies each year for 5 years.”

Sen. Paul is not wrong.

That is just how far spending is ahead of revenues at this time: In Fiscal Year 2020, that is, from Oct. 2019 to Sept. 2020, the government took in $3.4 trillion of revenue but it spent $6.6 trillion, largely in response to the unprecedented Covid pandemic that has left much of the economy shut down for months.

In fact, since 1980, the national debt has grown an average 8.97 percent every single year through Republican and Democratic administrations, according to U.S. Treasury data. Under Donald Trump it grew 8.6 percent a year, under Barack Obama it grew 8.8 percent annually, under George W. Bush it grew 7.4 percent, under Bill Clinton it grew 4.3 percent, under George H.W. Bush it grew 11.8 percent and under Ronald Reagan it grew 14.1 percent. Even before 1980, it grew 10 percent a year under Jimmy Carter, and 7.6 percent a year under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

Unfortunately, the federal government gets away with it because interest rates have been collapsing since the mid-1980s, from double digits down to just 1.1 percent on 10-year treasuries today.

It’s a bipartisan problem. And it is a problem. Since 1980, the economy only grew an average 5.1 percent nominally every year, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data. As a result, the debt swelled from 31 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 1981 to a gargantuan 121 percent debt to GDP in 2020.

So, just taking the average, if the debt continues growing by 8.97 percent a year and the economy only grows 5.14 percent annually, then by 2036 the national debt will top $103 trillion, while the GDP would be $45.2 trillion — a whopping 227 percent debt to GDP ratio in 2036.

And that’s assuming interest rates continue collapsing, but really, how much lower could they really go? The answer, there, sadly is we may go the way of Japan and other countries and pursue negative interest rates to control debt costs, where lenders would actually pay the Treasury interest for the pleasure of holding onto U.S. treasuries. If they do go negative, that would probably mean we were in deflationary territory vis a vis prices and perhaps wages, too.

That’s the path we are currently on. Not as Democrats, or Republicans, but as Americans.

And so far, Sen. Paul is one of the only members of Congress proposing to balance the budget. But I’m not optimistic, and neither should you be.

This week alone, Congress is considering another $1.9 trillion stimulus measure proposed by President Joe Biden to address the economic fallout of the Covid pandemic. It will probably pass even if not a single Republican votes for it as Democrats use the budget reconciliation process which foregoes the Senate filibuster and can pass budgeting bills on a simple majority.

The plan would issue yet more checks to American households, this time totaling $1,400 per individual and an additional child tax credit for $3,600 for children under 6 and $3,000 for children over 6, in addition to $350 billion to states and localities $170 billion to schools and universities, plus $70 billion for Covid vaccine distribution and testing.

That’s on top of the $3.1 trillion we already spent in response to the Covid pandemic.

And then depending on how the pandemic plays out, and how quickly the recovery will proceed in 2021 — 25 million jobs were lost when labor markets bottomed, and 16 million were recovered, still leaving 9 million additional unemployed — will likely determine how much more Congress will likely spend. Probably trillions more.

It’s enough to make your eyes bleed. And yet, barring a sudden realization by our leaders in the Washington, D.C. establishment that we are spending future generations into oblivion, it will almost certainly pass. But there a few, like Sen. Paul, who are still keeping tabs and willing to stop the out of control spending — valiantly trying to right ship of state before it is too late. But is anyone listening?
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Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.

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Tags: Robert Romano, Americans for Limited Government, Sen. Rand Paul, Three-Penny Plan, Would Balance Budget, Five Years. After Debt Grew. $4.4 Trillion in 2020 To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Democrats Want a ‘Return to Civility’; When Did They Practice It? Part 2

Larry Elder

by Larry Elder: Last week, we covered the challenge President Joe Biden faces in his supposed quest to return to an era of “civility.” Democrats never practiced civility. We listed only some of the race- and Nazi-based insults used for decades by Democrats against the very Republicans with whom they now seek “healing.” Here are just a few more examples:

Left-wing actor/singer and activist Harry Belafonte, who marched with close friend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., called President George W. Bush a racist. When asked whether the number and prominence of Blacks in the Bush administration perhaps suggested a lack of racism, Belafonte explained, “Hitler had a lot of Jews high up in the hierarchy of the Third Reich.”

Then-Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., former vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee and now the Minnesota attorney general, compared President George W. Bush and 9/11 to Adolf Hitler and the destruction of the Reichstag, the German parliament building: “9/11 is the juggernaut in American history and it allows … it’s almost like, you know, the Reichstag fire,” Ellison said. “After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it, and it put the leader of that country (Hitler) in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted.”

Former Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., said in 2002: “What we are dealing with right now in this country is whether we are having a kind of bloodless, silent coup. … President (George W. Bush) is trying to bring to himself all the power to become an emperor — to create Empire America.”

About Hurricane Katrina, then-Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said in 2006 that President George W. Bush’s administration engaged in “ethnic cleansing by inaction. … So by simply not doing anything to alleviate this … they let the hurricane do the ethnic cleansing, and their hands are clean.”

Then-Gov. Scott Walker, a Wisconsin Republican who dared to rein in excessive public employee compensation packages, received the full Nazi treatment. The hard-left blog Libcom.org posted in 2011: “Scott Walker is a fascist, perhaps not in the classical sense since he doesn’t operate in the streets, but a fascist nonetheless. … He is a fascist, for his program takes immediate and direct aim at (a sector of) the working class.”

After the 2012 Republican National Convention and the nomination of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, then-California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton said, “(Republicans) lie, and they don’t care if people think they lie. As long as you lie, (Nazi propaganda minister) Joseph Goebbels — the big lie — you keep repeating it.”

Dick Harpootlian, the then-chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party in 2012, compared the state’s Republican governor to Hitler’s mistress. When told that the Republicans were holding a competing press conference at a NASCAR Hall of Fame basement studio, Harpootlian told the South Carolina delegation: “(Gov. Nikki Haley) was down in the bunker, a la Eva Braun.”

During the 2012 presidential race, then-Vice President Joe Biden told a heavily Black audience that Mitt Romney, accused of opposing more Wall Street regulation, is “gonna put y’all back in chains.”

Longtime Harlem Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., in 2014, said, “Some (Republicans) believe that slavery isn’t over, and they think they won the Civil War.”

Finally, during the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton famously said: “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And (Republican opponent Donald Trump) has lifted them up.”

When exactly was this era of “civility” when Democrats did not call a Republican president “racist” or “fascist” or, in the case of President George W. Bush, a warmonger who “lied us into war with Iraq”? Maybe Biden’s press secretary can circle back.
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Larry Elder on the Larry Elder Show.

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Tags: Larry Elder, Larry Elder Show, Democrats, Want a ‘Return to Civility’; When Did They Practice It? Part 2 To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Rep. Greene is a Victim of Kevin “McCarthyism”

Cliff Kincaid

by Cliff Kincaid: Back in 2010, my group America’s Survival, Inc. held a news conference urging Congress to revive the House Internal Security Committee, the successor to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Then-Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa was asked if he would support the “re-creation of such committees” and answered, “I would. I think that is a good process and I would support it.” If Republicans had followed his advice, they might not be in the minority and facing a Marxist majority in Congress today.

King was eventually forced out of Congress by current House Republican Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy because King was outspoken in support of saving Western civilization and opposing open borders and multiculturalism. McCarthy is now trying to accede to Democratic Party demands to censor and even expel Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Trump supporter.

McCarthy is under pressure to practice a new form of “McCarthyism” against his own members. This form of “McCarthyism” involves censoring and even destroying the careers of conservative Republicans.

Raising the possibility of a high-level sex ring operating in the world today means that you are immediately attacked as a QAnon conspiracy theorist. That’s what is happening to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. We are told that some of her old social media posts seemed to indicate sympathy for the QAnon “conspiracy theory.” Other controversial statements have also been dredged up.

Tucker Carlson notes, “The media wants you fixated on Marjorie Taylor Greene. You should ask why.” It’s because the Democrats want to divert attention away from other more serious and even sinister issues involving top Democrats.

Greene is really under attack because she has dared to file impeachment charges against Joe Biden, “the Big Guy” in the Hunter Biden emails. The charges include the report that “Hunter Biden paid nonresident women who were nationals of Russia or other Eastern European countries and who appear to be linked to an ‘Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring.…’”

This was based on the report “Hunter Biden, Burisma, and Corruption: The Impact on U.S. Government Policy and Related Concerns,” published by the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and U.S. Senate Committee on Finance.

Meanwhile, John Weaver, a political operative who co-founded the anti-Trump group the Lincoln Project, has been implicated in homosexual/pedophile activity. Even the New York Times has taken note of his alleged role as a sex predator who groomed young men. One victim was a 14-year-old kid.

A married father of two, he now says, “The truth is that I'm gay.” He is clearly sick and an example of the sickness that pervades society.

Former President Trump, during the campaign, referred to people who believe in QAnon as being opposed to pedophilia. Many people recognize this sickness in society and want it investigated and prosecuted.

Is there any reason to doubt that such activities exist or that actual conspiracies of such people are being protected by top government officials? Apart from the John Weaver case, have you ever heard of Jeffrey Epstein? He died under mysterious circumstances in a federal jail and his sex tapes are in somebody’s hands.

Two FBI agents, Daniel Alfin and Laura Schwartzenberger, were just killed executing a search warrant in a child pornography investigation.

Child pornography and human trafficking are some of the worst evils in our society and the world. They exist because they are being protected by powerful people.

Joe Biden’s new open borders executive orders encourage human trafficking into the United States.

What’s more, as my group documented, former President Barack Hussein Obama was mentored by a communist sex pervert by the name of Frank Marshall Davis, who served as a father figure. Davis, who died in 1987, was a heavy drinker and marijuana user who wrote a pornographic novel, Sex Rebel, disclosing that he had sex with children, including a 13-year-old girl. In a poem, Obama wrote about “Pop”—with strange lines about stains and smells on shorts—who Obama biographer David Maraniss confirmed was Davis. Writer Jack Cashill noted the poem has definite “sexual overtones.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is accused of believing in a strange conspiracy theory while the Biden administration and many Democrats believe in a so-called “transgender” theory of human life holding that men can be women and vice versa. Even the liberal pope has rejected this nonsense, a form of DNA denial.

But if you refer to the facts about biology and science regarding men and women, you can run the risk of being censored by Big Tech, a cesspool of odd-ball views.

As I argued in a previous column, Rep. Greene has identified the right enemies, including George Soros. But her critics argue that criticism of Soros is anti-Semitism. This is ridiculous. Soros promotes transgenderism, among other theories designed to undermine our Judeo-Christian civilization.

In terms of high-level sex predators, I noted the following:

• Theodore McCarrick has been identified as the highest-ranking U.S. Catholic leader ever to be removed for sexually abusing a minor and is also accused of sexually abusing seminarians. He was a leading “progressive” in the church who supported homosexual civil unions, a form of marriage, as far back as 2006. Catholic columnist Matt Abbott, who reported on McCarrick’s homosexual activity back in 2005, told me, “I believe the Church establishment and mainstream media protected him, mainly because he’s a prominent liberal cardinal.”
• Harry Hay, founder of the modern gay rights movement, was a supporter of the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA).
• Dennis Hastert, the former Republican House Speaker, pleaded guilty to federal charges of lying to the FBI about a money-laundering scheme designed to cover up the case of an innocent child sexually abused by Hastert when he was a high-school wrestling coach.

Amy Berg exposed the cover-up of pedophilia in the Catholic Church in her 2006 Oscar-nominated documentary, "Deliver Us from Evil," and followed with her film "An Open Secret," about how pedophiles operate in Hollywood and cover up their crimes. The Boston Globe exposed a series of sex crimes committed by Catholic priests in an award-winning series of articles made into a film, “Spotlight,” available on Netflix.

In this context, the Kevin McCarthy brand of “McCarthyism” being pursued against members such as Marjorie Taylor Green looks like a cover-up. Perhaps he ought to revisit the case of Dennis Hastert, now a convicted felon.

McCarthy is being urged to pursue his destructive course by conservative journalists such as Tyler O’Neil of PJ Media and Daniel Greenfield of Frontpage Magazine. I recently confronted O’Neil about this matter on an edition of America’s Survival TV. You can watch the interview here and draw your own conclusions.

CNN, the anti-conservative “news” organization, is gloating over the fact that, in an op-ed in Frontpage magazine, “a Trump-loving publication affiliated with longtime activist David Horowitz,” editor Daniel Greenfield also attacked Greene.

The attacks are based on out-of-context material usually dredged up by left-wing groups from old social media posts.

It’s sad and strange to see conservative journalists play these political games when the Democratic Party tolerates open Marxists in its ranks and nothing is done about it.

Big Tech, of course, is also playing a role. When I posted the video of my interview with Tyler O’Neil, during which we discussed the QAnon theory, YouTube added a Wikipedia entry insisting the theory was disproven and is evidence of “cult activity.” That’s to be expected from Big Tech, which itself functions like a destructive cult.

Perhaps those conservatives joining left-wingers attacking Rep. Greene ought to get to the bottom of what’s happening with international human trafficking and pedophile rings before coming to any firm conclusions about whether aspects of the QAnon “conspiracy theory” are true or not.
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Cliff Kincaid writes for RenewAmerica.

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