Well okay, here's a short video of a disgruntled democrat that came into this fast food place expecting free food like he always got when Barrrak was our glorious leader. Back then all one had to do was say they were victims of Republicans trying to force them to work and presto, free food, housing and cash.
But now since the progressive's pride and joy, Hillary Clinton, was thrown under the bus, kicked to the curb and out cheated by amateurs of her rightful place at the seat of power by a ragtag businessman that has no idea how to steal $billions of dollar from across the globe like she does, and to compromise even those with even the best intentions that come in contract with her, all that's left for her supporters is chaos, conflict and violence.
They just don't appear mentally deranged, but are in truth depraved lunatics, criminals without remorse and totally devoid of any semblance of civil bearings. They are after all just democrats adrift in a land that has decided a change was needed. Cast into the outer darkness, no food stamps, free phones, limited unemployment, no free transportation or medical care or cash for drugs and needles.
The people decided it was no longer acceptable to allow unethical, immortal and unscrupulous people to run our country. Criminals running amok in our country had to end.
If it's not some deranged lunatic teenagers playing progressive democrat, or it's this poor soul lost in his former beleaguered life of taking from the productive for survival, suddenly finding the truth about himself, that he sadly knows and now understands his own life as a democrat is totally worthless. Junk. Refuse. Swill. Worse then toe jam.
Little wonder they are out of control and violent.
democrats are if noting else, are liars. It's all they know to do. They have
no positive agenda for success. So lie to the people.
Never believe anything a progressive liberal democrat says. They have no intention of telling the truth as it would expose them as they really are.
Everything they say or do is a game of charades. Con-men and charlatans.
Their intent is for you to use common sense to find out what they are doing, but the accumulated knowledge of most average individuals is no match for the criminal minds of democrats that seek to do us harm.
And to fool the general public they make good use of the technique of ''transference projection''. They point their finder at you saying you are the problem, listing all of your failings, when in reality they are the problem with the failings.
So never believe what democrats say or do and never vote for more democrats. It's harmful for the health of the nation and our general well being as individuals.
The ignorant and easily manipulated will always be with us and vocal in good times demanding the tools for survival in a hostile world be abolished as being unnecessary in modern times. Small people with even smaller minds at work. But allow a situation to arise that threatens these ignorant and self-serving people and watch them leap out from under their collective desks and from under their beds, demanding others sacrifice all for their personal well being. The demands for action will unrelenting.
Right Side of History: The Second Amendment and American Gun Culture
The history of guns, gun control, and the Second Amendment is the topic of this week’s episode of “The Right Side of History,” a podcast dedicated to exploring current events through a historical lens and busting left-wing myths about figures and events of America’s past.
This week, hosts Jarrett Stepman, a contributor to The Daily Signal, and Fred Lucas, The Daily Signal’s White House correspondent, talk about how some states enacted early forms of gun control to disenfranchise black Americans.
Harsanyi recently wrote about calls to repeal the Second Amendment from retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and others. While they have every right to try to repeal the law, he explained, opponents of the right to bear arms should stop distorting history to meet their ends.
“[I]f you think the Second Amendment antiquated, that’s fine,” Harsanyi said. “Repeal it. The history of the Second Amendment, though, doesn’t change to comport with your contemporary positions.”
I think the court does have some standing in this case, in that You Tube can do what eve it wants on it's site. But at the same time it is also we have the freedom to avoid using that platform for PragerU's videos. Still, it should be known that You Tube doesn't have the best interest of the American people at heart. What they are doing, is in my view, uncivil and with criminal intent to limit individual freedom by supporting an ideology that is founded in restricting freedom. For that matter, You Tube appears a willingness to be more or less just a tool for progressive socialist to ''fundamentally change'' civil society. Remember Barrrack said it best. This not just about profits as some claim. This is something that we as citizens should have to tolerate or accept. We need to find a better place to express ourselves and stop being enslaved to a socialist agenda and ideology.
A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit filed by conservative nonprofit PragerU against Google, arguing that subsidiary YouTube did not violate First Amendment rights by partially censoring or limiting the organization’s YouTube videos.
Presiding U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh ruled Monday that, inherently serving as a privacy company, Google has no obligation to equally apply its services, or in this case, its ostensible penalties.
“Defendants do not appear to be at all like, for example, a private corporation that governs and operates all municipal functions for an entire town,” Koh wrote while referencing other cases involving the First Amendment, according to Courthouse News Service, “or one that has been given control over a previously public sidewalk or park, or one that has effectively been delegated the task of holding and administering public elections.”
PragerU attempted to argue that although YouTube is a private entity, Google operates it as a public forum (perhaps due to its apparent ubiquitousness), and thus is liable to First Amendment oversight.
Marissa Streit, PragerU’s CEO, said she doesn’t see the ruling as a defeat—describing it as “far from an unexpected setback”—since other legal avenues remain, such as higher courts. “Already, some headlines in the media would have you believe we have lost our case outright. Quite the contrary, this is only the first step in the process and we join our legal team in its optimism for the future prospects of our lawsuit,” Streit said in a written statement.
“We thank the Honorable Judge Koh for her thoughtful ruling, which allows PragerU, in essence, to continue our efforts,” she said.
PragerU filed the lawsuit in October, accusing Google (through YouTube) of restricting or “demonetizing” its videos on aspects of American government and politics despite their general innocuousness, and apparent compliance with the video platform’s rules.
Demonetization is a less alarming term for revoking sponsorship and thus ad revenue. Other restrictions come in the form of “Restricted Mode,” which means that users who are part of a larger network—like ones operated by schools, libraries, and other public institutions that voluntary turn on the feature—cannot view content deemed inappropriate by YouTube.
The criteria for types of content to be blocked under “Restricted Mode” include drugs and alcohol, sexual situations, violence, “mature subjects,” “profane and mature language,”and “incendiary and demeaning content.” Some observers consider these criteria fairly vague and susceptible to subjectivity, and as a result prone to unequal implementation.
“At first, we thought it might have been an algorithm or an innocent mistake causing our videos to be restricted,” Craig Strazzeri, chief marketing officer for PragerU, told The Daily Caller News Foundation weeks ago. “However, we have it in writing from Google/YouTube that after having their team manually review our restricted videos, they deemed them inappropriate for younger audiences,” Strazzeri said. “If you’ve seen any of our videos, they’re very educational, and are very appropriate for ‘young viewers.’”
PragerU’s videos cover wide-ranging topics such as “Is Gun Ownership a Right?” and “Brexit: Why Britain Left the European Union,” and “Is America Racist?” Guests invited to discuss such subjects in the videos include former and current professors and scholars from Stanford, Harvard, and Yale, among them Alan Dershowitz; prominent athletes; and controversial political commentators such as Dinesh D’Souza.
By demonetizing and restricting a total of 50 videos, PragerU asserts that YouTube is targeting it for relative ideological differences, while also equating the actions to unlawful censorship and discrimination.
“PragerU’s videos weren’t excluded from Restricted Mode because of politics or ideology, as we demonstrated in our filings,” a YouTube spokeswoman told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “PragerU’s allegations were meritless, both factually and legally, and the court’s ruling vindicates important legal principles that allow us to provide different choices and settings to users.”
The Daily Caller News Foundation spoke in February to two professors familiar with the issues. They said that while there does, for the most part, appear to be disproportionate treatment, legal arguments appear incomplete, even dubious or weak.
Nevertheless, PragerU plans to push ahead in the U.S. judicial system, hoping for different legal interpretations.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities for this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
It really is about optics and the marchers are clueless as to what the general public sees and undestnads. One of the most telling signs that I saw stated something like ''do we want freedom or a safe place?'' Now that is totally ignorant of history. Without freedom, no place is safe. But in reality this march didn't have anything to do with freedom or safe places for students. This was about the progressive liberal democrat's well worn agenda to eliminate fire arms in the hands of ordinary Law abiding citizens. A gun in the hands of ordinary citizens that see and understand the threat of government tyranny is unacceptable to progressive liberals. The democrats understand, fire arms in the hands of criminals isn't a problem as there aren't that many of them. But in the hands of more then a 100 million independent people, it becomes a wall for the progressive socialists to have to climb over to take total power.
I's not about the students, it's all about getting and keeping
the power to control others.
Gun Control Movement Is Polar Opposite of the Civil Rights Movement
Covering the pro-gun control March for Our Lives in Washington, CNN ran a headline that read, “They’re marching through the same streets as Martin Luther King Jr. did—hoping for similar change.”
The article then quoted a 16-year-old as saying, “The civil rights movement was started by teenagers.”
How can we expect to properly deal with an issue as serious as guns and the Second Amendment when the media peddle such ignorance? It should be sufficient to point out that King and Rosa Parks were not teenage activists.
But more seriously, it is critical to understand that this current movement to limit the ability of Americans to exercise their Second Amendment right to own a firearm is at total philosophical odds with what the civil rights movement aimed to accomplish. The civil rights movement was about fixing what was broken in America regarding the ideals of individual freedom and dignity.
When King spoke his famous words at the National Mall in August 1963, his appeal was to perfect the American ideal. He called the “magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence” a “promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men … would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
King’s movement shone light on the fact that there was pain and suffering in the country because there were still Americans who were not free. That is what needed to be fixed. Today’s movement against guns and the Second Amendment aims in the opposite direction.
The claim of this movement is that we have pain and suffering in our nation because we are too free. The marchers and others are telling us we can make a better nation by using the force of government to scale back our freedoms.
In a USA Today column, Obama-era Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Dale Erquiaga, a former superintendent of public instruction for Nevada’s schools, tell us: “Children should not have to pass through metal detectors to go to school. Nor should teachers have to arm themselves to keep students safe.”
Why not?
Is having children walk through metal detectors to go to school too high a price to pay to avoid scaling back our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms? Is having armed guards and/or armed teachers too high a price to deal with the costs and demands of our free society, as opposed to dealing with these challenges by choosing to use government force to scale back our freedoms?
Perhaps metal detectors and other measures to make schools more secure and less vulnerable to attack would play an important role in our educational process to help our young people understand that freedom is not free.
We have a young generation in our country today from whom we ask nothing for the privilege of living in freedom. The idea that part of living free is taking personal responsibility has become a concept alien to many of our young Americans.
We might recall the fall of 1957, when President Dwight Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard, which Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus had used to block nine black children from entering Little Rock’s Central High School to attend school. Eisenhower then sent in more federal troops to protect these black children and their right to attend this school.
Eisenhower, who had served as supreme commander of Allied troops in Europe during World War II, understood force and understood freedom. He said it would be “a sad day for this country … if schoolchildren can safely attend their classes only under the protection of armed guards.”
The nation watched aghast as federal paratroopers were deployed to Central High School. It was an excruciatingly difficult decision for Eisenhower, but in the end, he concluded that he had to do it “to preserve the institutions of free government.”
Republicans might note Eisenhower’s example and recall that in 1956, Republican Eisenhower received 39 percent of the black vote.
Barrack was a little off his game it was said when he congratulated ol' Vlad for winning another election and without eliminating to many of the opposition. None of the bodies have been found to this date.
It's said Barrrack was feeling no pain at the time as he just had a personal indulgent session to relax himself with his favorite water-cooled bong and some fresh 'blow' provided by his closest trusted people to put him in the mood to meet and greet.
It apparently it worked wonders. Barrrack was all smiles.
It doesn't look like this has been photo-shopped, but then it seem everything can be something that it isn't. But non the less, fasten your seat belts real snug. Now watch this video of some tornados and the people that are not smart enough to run for cover but instead head toward these machines of destruction.
Yeah just won't believe the power of these things!!!
This shouldn't be rocket science. But the fact is the progressive socialist liberals are now and always have been, all about making gun ownership illegal. They know instinctively this has to be the first step in their generational effort to take control of the population and establish an all powerful central authority.
They also know they can't begin to take control if the population is armed. History is riff with examples where dictators and tyrants used gun confiscation as a first tactic to take absolute control. And of course we know, for the most part how that ended for those tyrants and their ideological agendas. The Second Amendment to the Constitution is there for a reason, the founding fathers knew and understood people and their need for absolute power. And their reasoning is so clearly explained now by the actions of the progressive socialist liberal democrats that are on the march in the streets demanding the elimination of all firearms in the hands of ordinary law abiding citizens.
It is becoming increasingly fashionable for those who support gun control to compare the post-Parkland, student-driven movement to the civil rights movements of earlier generations. “Young people said, ‘We will not tolerate what our ancestors have tolerated. We’ve had enough and we’re willing to fight for it and we’re willing to march in the streets for it and, if necessary, die for it,’” TV personality Oprah said in comparing the student marches to civil rights demonstrations.
One writer in The New Yorker wrote of the pro-gun control March for Our Lives protest: “The Parkland students seem to instinctively understand that their fight not only crosses racial and class lines but also exists on a historical continuum, as an extension of the civil-rights movement.”
Another recent article in The Washington Post, headlined “Gun rights are about keeping white men on top,” even tried to connect American gun culture and support for gun rights to racism.
However, the author’s historical argument, whether intentionally or not, actually reveals that it is gun control, not gun rights, that generally has been used for the purposes of white supremacy. Gun rights and civil rights, historically, have gone hand in hand.
In a recent interview on “The View,” former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice highlighted the importance of preserving the Second Amendment as an individual right, in some cases the last line of defense in protecting life and liberty. “Let me tell you why I’m a defender of the Second Amendment,” Rice said on the show. “I was a little girl growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s. There was no way that Bull Connor and the Birmingham police were going to protect you.”
“I’m sure if Bull Connor had known where those guns were, he would have rounded them up,” she said. “So I don’t favor some things like gun registration.” ‘The Work of the Abolitionists Is Not Finished’
In the aftermath of the Civil War, a ferocious battle emerged over how to preserve both federalism and the individual rights of citizens in the states. Gun rights, in some cases, were the only safeguard of liberty and personal safety.
Some of the first states to pass highly restrictive gun control legislation were, in fact, in the Reconstruction-era South. They implemented so-called “black codes” to restrict the rights of former slaves, including the right to bear arms. One 1866 Alabama law baldly stated that “it shall not be lawful for any freedman, mulatto, or free person of color in this state, to own firearms, or carry about his person a pistol or other deadly weapon.”
The law also made it illegal “to sell, give, or lend firearms or ammunition of any description whatever, to any freedman, free negro, or mulatto.”
Famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass warned about these abuses and said “the work of the abolitionists is not finished” until the Second Amendment and others rights could be protected.
This provoked a federal response, according to historian Stephen P. Halbrook. Congress passed the Freedmen’s Bureau Act of July 1866, which guaranteed to other men “any of the civil rights or immunities belonging to white persons, including the right to … inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to have full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and estate, including the constitutional right of bearing arms.”
President Andrew Johnson vetoed this legislation, but he was overridden by Congress.
These battles over the protection of individual rights culminated in the passage of the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment was designed to prevent states from violating the Bill of Rights, which at the time applied only to the federal government. However, even after the passage of the 14th Amendment, racial conflict and battles over gun rights continued for generations.
As Rice explained, individual firearm ownership was often the only protection black Americans had under some legal authorities that did little to protect them.
As Ida B. Wells, one of the founders of the NAACP and an early civil rights leader, wrote in 1892, a year in which an extraordinary number of brutal lynchings took place: “The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.”
“The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well,” Wells continued, “is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.”
An Inalienable Right
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas noted this history in his concurring opinion in the Chicago v. McDonald case in which the court ruled that Otis McDonald, a black Army veteran, had been deprived of his Second Amendment rights by the city of Chicago. Thomas wrote about how the infamous Dred Scott decision before the Civil War was meant to strip black Americans of citizenship and “the constitutionally enumerated rights of ‘the full liberty of speech’ and the right ‘to keep and carry arms.’”
After the war, former Confederate states attempted to curtail firearm ownership for black citizens, and mob and militia violence against those citizens often went unchecked by local authorities.
“Without federal enforcement of the inalienable right to keep and bear arms, these militias and mobs were tragically successful in waging a campaign of terror against the very people the 14th Amendment had just made citizens,” Thomas wrote.
Thomas concluded that in the opinion of the Founders and authors of the 14th Amendment, “the right to keep and bear arms was essential to the preservation of liberty.”
As Thomas, Douglass, Rice, and others so clearly articulated, gun rights—not gun control—have been an essential buttress to civil rights.
Rest assured that congress, especially the Republicans will find a way to rescue defeat from the jaws of victory. Even so, it is mindboggling to try and understand how dysfunctional our legislators can be even when the people who put them in office demand they do what they said they would do if elected, but can't find the courage to keep that promise. That these proposals to give ''cutouts'' to special interests groups costing $billion of dollars is catastrophic. And assess this stupid and destructive agenda, one has to go back to those memorable words from our former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, 'you have to suspend disbelief'' that our government would actually even attempt such a thing as more taxes after passing the tax cut bill. Who the hell are these people?
Tax Reform Is Boosting Take-Home Pay for Millions of Americans. Here’s the Proof.
For a nation accustomed to instant gratification, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is a winner.
Before President Donald Trump even signed the bill, companies were announcing employee pay raises, bonuses, and increased investments to grow their businesses and bring operations back from overseas.
Among the first out of the gate was AT&T, which said it would give $1,000 bonuses to more than 200,000 nonmanagement employees and make an additional $1 billion investment in the United States. Boeing put $100 million toward training, education, and other workforce development. Walmart expanded paid parental leave and boosted starting wages to $11 an hour.
Then in January, the happiest place on earth got a little happier as The Walt Disney Co. announced it would invest $50 million in an education program that covers tuition costs for hourly employees and would distribute $1,000 cash bonuses to more than 125,000 employees.
Hundreds of smaller, local businesses also joined in. Wisconsin-based Copperleaf Assisted Living handed out $60,000 in bonuses—the company’s entire tax reform savings. Family-owned Jordan Winery in California’s Sonoma County, announced $1,000 bonuses for all eligible employees. “In a tightening labor market, it’s more important than ever for employees to feel valued and acknowledged,” said owner John Jordan. “Take-home pay for most American workers will increase in 2018, but why wait?”
And that was just the beginning. Millions of hardworking taxpayers are now enjoying the boost in take-home pay.
The new tax law lowered rates and raised the income thresholds for most tax brackets. As a result, 90 percent of Americans will get to keep more of what they earn, according to the Treasury Department. For a single taxpayer earning $50,000 annually, this translates to an extra $50 a week—that’s more than $2,500 a year.
What’s more, by nearly doubling the standard deduction—it’s now $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for married couples—the law widened the “zero tax bracket.” For many taxpayers, this eliminates the time-consuming and at times baffling process of itemizing deductions—a giant step toward a fairer, simpler tax system.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has characterized the benefits of tax reform as “insignificant,” and, Ã la Marie Antoinette, “crumbs.” But ordinary Americans see it differently. More than half of those recently polled by The New York Times said they approve of the new law. And that’s sure to grow as long as Congress doesn’t sabotage our newfound tax relief by reverting to business as usual.
Among the ill-advised proposals currently on the table is an extension of $11.3 billion in tax breaks for politically connected special interests. Tax reform was launched in large part to unrig the economy and do away with handouts for a few powerful industries at the expense of hardworking taxpayers. Approving generous tax carve-outs for select groups, like racehorse owners, Puerto Rican rum producers, and green energy companies would be a giant step backward.
Another threat is a 25-cent-per-gallon gas tax hike that some lawmakers are floating as a way to help fund a $1.5 trillion infrastructure modernization plan. This would nearly double the federal gas tax and cost the average family close to $300 a year, snatching back a good portion of the savings from tax reform.
Even worse, increasing gas tax revenue is unnecessary. Right now, a significant portion of federal transportation dollars meant for highways and bridges is diverted to pay for things like bike paths and boardwalks.
Ending this practice along with smarter spending and the elimination of costly, restrictive regulations could provide adequate savings to fund major road and bridge projects throughout the country.
If Congress can avoid these temptations, monumental economic growth is on the horizon.
The reduced corporate tax rate has made our country more globally competitive and many companies are now choosing to stay in the United States rather than take cover in tax havens like Bermuda and Ireland. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell recently told the House Financial Services Committee that “the economic outlook remains strong.”
Small business optimism is at one of its all-time highs, and last year wages grew at the fastest pace since 2009, a trend expected to continue this year thanks to tax reform.
The long-awaited American pay raise has made a dramatic entrance. Hopefully, Congress lets it stay.
Isn't it interesting that the 'freedom from religion' advocates are an extremely small number of individuals demanding all the rest of us, the majority, succumb to their personal agenda. And worse, of course, in this case and many other cases across the country where religious symbols are concerned, the judicial system agrees. This progressive liberal attack on our most sacred artifacts is abomination of rule of law. And it's not just the 4th circuit on the east coast, but also the 9th on the west coast. Both are dominated by progressive socialist and are therefore a real and present danger to our country. But it is heartening to see people are fighting back, especially against what can be termed a calculated destruction of our way of life. What ever happened to 'majority rule and minority right'? Oh wait, I know, it's the promise of socialist liberalism to "fundamentally change America'' from Barrrack in 2008 and decades of progressive democrats appointing judges to the bench so the law can be changed to meet the demands of the new wave politics. What you can't get through legislation, you get by legislating from the bench. Progressive socialist liberal democrats are not there to make life better for the population. Socialist democrats are in power to drive their narrative of a centralized authority that will be all things to all people. They believe having absolute power in the hands of a few people that know what is best for everyone is equitable and legitimate use of power. All that is needed is everyone else must obey or be destroyed. How simple is that. Voting for more democrats will guarantee that outcome.
Obama Judges Rule Cross Monument Must Go, Showing Elections Do Have Consequences
When Republican congressional leaders went to the White House on Jan. 23, 2009—just three days into Barack Obama’s presidency—to discuss legislation, he helpfully reminded them that his policy preferences necessarily had to prevail because “elections have consequences, and at the end of the day, I won.”
Obama is out of office now, but the regrettable consequences of his election remain strewn across the political landscape. Perhaps nowhere is that more consequential than in the makeup of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The 4th Circuit handles cases originating from the states of Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia.
Obama appointed six of the eight judges who, on March 1, refused to reconsider a wrongheaded 2-1 ruling of a 4th Circuit panel last fall. That ruling found the World War I memorial Peace Cross in Bladensburg, Maryland, suddenly “unconstitutional” after more than 90 years without controversy.
Erected with funding from the American Legion and local families in 1925, at what is now the intersection of U.S. Route 1 and Maryland state Route 450, the 40-foot cross features a plaque listing the names of 49 Prince George’s County men who gave their lives in what H.G. Wells dubbed—wrongly, as it turned out—“the war that will end war.”
The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission took control of the land on which the memorial sits in 1961 because of its location.
According to the October ruling, the commission’s paying for the upkeep and repairs of the monument “has the primary effect of endorsing religion and excessively entangles the government in religion”—supposedly in violation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause.
That plaque at the base of the memorial also includes the words “valor, endurance, courage, devotion.” But the only thing the secularists at the American Humanist Association (which filed the suit) is “devoted” to is anti-Christian intolerance.
To the humanists, the decision was “a big win … for the separation of church and state.” Never mind that that’s a phrase and a concept nowhere to be found in the Constitution, the left’s assertions to the contrary notwithstanding.
The vote was 8 to 6 against reconsidering the panel’s ruling, with all six Obama appointees to the 4th Circuit in lockstep (along with an appointee of President Bill Clinton and another, shamefully, from President George W. Bush.)
Two of the “Gang of Eight” judges, Stephanie D. Thacker and James A. Wynn, also made up the 2-1 majority in the October ruling. Both were put on the bench by Obama, for whom judicial appointments were a key component of his 2008 campaign vow of “fundamentally transforming” America.
Writing for the majority in refusing to rehear the case, Wynn held that the plaque commemorating the local veterans’ sacrifice was insufficient to offset the sectarian religious iconography of the cross itself. “We cannot allow it to be the final word,” said Hiram Sasser, deputy chief counsel for First Liberty Institute, the Plano, Texas-based nonprofit public interest law firm representing the American Legion, warning of the slippery slope the 4th Circuit’s ruling will create if it’s not repudiated by the Supreme Court.
“If this decision stands, other memorials—including those in nearby Arlington Cemetery—will be targeted as well,” Sasser warned.
In her majority opinion back in October, Thacker dismissed concerns about how this ruling might affect other monuments, noting that size does, in fact, matter. “The crosses [at Arlington National Cemetery] are much smaller than the 40-foot-tall monolith at issue here,” she wrote.
In his dissent in October, Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory wrote that the First Amendment “does not require the government ‘to purge from the public sphere’ any reference to religion.”
Gregory, initially nominated by Clinton late in his term and renominated in 2001 by Bush, added he could not agree that a monument honoring veterans “violates the letter or spirit of the very Constitution these heroes died to defend.”
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, called the 4th Circuit’s ruling “an affront to all veterans,” and a spokesman for Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, a Democrat, said his office would file a brief in support of the veterans memorial monument when the case is appealed to the Supreme Court, as it will—and should—be.
A reversal by the justices would send a much-needed shot across the bow of an out-of-control 4th Circuit. It would also send a clear signal to the neighboring 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, which will be hearing an appeal by Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, of a ruling against its nearly 75-year-old county seal.
The Lehigh County seal, which dates to 1944, includes a cross among a number of other historical symbols. On March 12, the county filed an appeal of a September ruling in favor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which is demanding a redesign of the county seal without the cross. “In this case, neither the longevity of the seal, nor the secular symbols surrounding the cross detract from the religious message that a cross conveys to the reasonable observer,” wrote District Judge Edward Smith in his ruling.
Not surprisingly, Smith is also an Obama appointee, further underscoring the notion that elections have consequences—in this case, adverse consequences.
That’s why conservatives should be grateful it’s President Donald Trump—and not President Hillary Rodham Clinton—who is appointing federal judges these days.
Why does it seem all of the charges coming from the Mueller team of investigators that just happen to be all progressive democrats, continues to level allegations without any kind of proof of actual collusion?
Again, does the Mueller team seem to be serious about finding the truth or just to find people to attack that are or have been close to the Trump team.
This filing was from an FBI investigation which means it might not be true but just more progressive politics. It is confusing in that the statement does not actually say Gates was involved in willing collusion with a Russian agent to help Trump win the election.
But no matter, it the 'seriousness of the charge' that gets the attention of the media, and puts Gates and everyone else close to him on the defensive. And that's the reason for the charge from Mueller in the first place.
Not that anyone is guilty on charges, but it's enough to make it look like they are.
Special Counsel Says Trump Aide Knowingly Communicated With Former Russian Spy
Former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates was in contact just before the 2016 election with a man he knew to be a former Russian spy, according to a document filed Tuesday by special counsel Robert Mueller’s office.
The revelation comes in a sentencing memorandum filed about Alex van der Zwaan, a London-based lawyer who pleaded guilty in February to lying to Mueller’s investigators about his contacts with Gates and the ex-spy. Mueller is probing Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election, including any collusion with the Trump campaign.
According to the memo, Gates told van der Zwaan he was aware that one of their associates was a former Russian intelligence officer with the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence outfit. The ex-agent, identified as Person A, maintained contacts with Russian intelligence at the time of his interactions with Gates, according to the filing.
The filing from Mueller reads:
Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agents assisting the Special Counsel’s Office assess that Person A has ties to a Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016. During his first interview with the Special Counsel’s Office, van der Zwaan admitted that he knew of that connection, stating that Gates told him Person A was a former Russian Intelligence Officer with the GRU.
The filing also states that Gates and Person A—who has yet to be identified—were “directly communicating” in September and October 2016. The presidential election was held Nov. 8.
Mueller’s team has yet to produce evidence that van der Zwaan, Gates, or Gates’ business partner, Paul Manafort, were involved in a Russian scheme to influence the election. Instead, Mueller indicted Gates and Manafort on charges related to their consulting work for former Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.
Van der Zwaan, 33, worked for Manafort and Gates while with the international law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Manafort’s firm was paid millions of dollars to rehabilitate Yanukovych’s image in Ukraine. As part of that effort, Manafort and Gates hired Skadden to produce a report that justified the imprisonment of Yulia Tymoshenko, a political opponent of Yanukovych’s.
Gates recently began to cooperate with Mueller’s team. Manafort, who was Trump’s campaign manager for several months, continues to fight the charges.
Van der Zwaan admitted in February that he lied to Mueller’s investigators during a November interview. He initially denied having contact in September 2016 with Gates and Person A. But he acknowledged in a court filing of his own Tuesday that he actually recorded conversations with both men.
Van der Zwaan said Person A made him aware that charges could be forthcoming against them in Ukraine over their report on Tymoshenko. Van der Zwaan, who was fired by Skadden in November, also said he recorded a conversation he had with a partner at the law firm regarding his conversation with Person A.
Van der Zwaan, who pleaded guilty in exchange for no jail time, said he lied about the conversations because he did not want to admit that he recorded Gates, Person A, and the Skadden partner.
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Conservatives on campus have an uphill battle to have their voices heard, but they are doing God's work taking on the progressive socialists that dominate universities and a colleges across the country. These mindless robots that control the narrative on campus are so organized and vocal but in reality are the minority. They do not represent the larger population on campus.
The Trump administration has taken seriously the threat posed by these criminals that have been so easily swayed into believing they are more important then they are, in reality they are nothing, not even students in a lot of cases, but progressive socialist liberal operatives doing the bidding of their betters in the party.
How the Trump Administration Is Protecting Free Speech on College Campuses
Sarah Flores spoke at the White House’s Generation Next forum for millennials Thursday. As director of the Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs, she spoke about free speech on colleges campuses and the opioid crisis. The Daily Signal’s Kelsey Harkness and The Federalist’s Bre Payton also asked her about being a “problematic woman.” An edited transcript of the interview is below.
Kelsey Harkness: We’re coming to you from the White House. There’s an event happening that’s focusing on millennials, so I wanted to start out this interview by asking about a recent action the Justice Department took on behalf of millennials on college campuses relating to free speech. Take it away.
Sarah Flores: We have this crisis across the country that’s just not getting the coverage that it should, frankly, and I’m so glad that you are talking about it, and obviously incredibly grateful to the president for hosting this event today, because I think it is so important.
I think if we were in college right now, we would be having a very different experience, or at least I know I would, because I spoke my mind in college. Right now, you can get expelled for that; you can get shut down for that.
What the Justice Department has done is tried to find those most egregious cases and filed what we call a statement of interest. But think of it as an amicus brief or a friend of the plaintiff, or defendant in some cases, to show that the federal government has an interest in protecting free speech on these college campuses.
The most recent one that’s certainly been a famous school for doing this is Berkeley. In that case, if you want to bring a speaker to campus, you’re the head of College Republicans, and you want to bring a speaker that they deem might be controversial on campus, well, you can’t have it at certain hours, you can’t have it at certain places.
What that means is, if the school thinks that you have a different viewpoint, they can really shut down your speech based on a hecklers’ veto idea. Which is really terrifying, because what’s the point of college if you can’t explore new ideas and challenge your viewpoint that you came to college with?
So, we feel pretty strongly about it. We filed in at least three of these cases. In another one, a student was handing out the U.S. Constitution and the school said he didn’t have a permit to do that, so he can’t hand out the Constitution.
Harkness: Now, are these all public schools that you’re engaging in? Are you engaging with private schools on this issue?
Flores: We have filed in public school cases, but obviously private schools accept a lot of federal dollars as well. I don’t think you’ve seen the end of this issue for public or private schools.
Bre Payton: Yeah, certainly. And with the ongoing opioid crisis that is overtaking the country now, more people are dying of opioids than of breast cancer. What are some of the additional steps that the Department of Justice has been taking under Attorney General Jeff Sessions to combat what’s going on?
Flores: Well, part of the reason I’m here today and you don’t get Jeff Sessions is because he’s actually in Tallahassee right now talking about opioids. Tomorrow, he’s visiting a neonatal unit in Birmingham, Alabama, to visit babies who were born addicted to opioids. The statistics on this are incredibly heartbreaking and they’re growing. The president has told us to take a lead on this as an administration and to end this crisis.
One thing that I think your viewers in particular would be interested in is we have a team called the J-CODE team, which I like the name, because it sounds cool. It sounds like we could have a sitcom on it. The J-CODE team, though, specifically targets online darknet elicit fentanyl-type websites that are selling these.
We had a 13-year-old boy die in Utah recently because the drugs that were ordered online, I know, shockingly, weren’t what they said they were. They had fentanyl in them; he overdosed and died. I think it’s really hard to imagine what those parents must have gone through. Did you even know you could order fentanyl on the internet?
Harkness: I didn’t know you could order drugs online. News to me.
Flores: We had two … actually, a prosecution today. One in San Diego, another in Ohio. The Ohio one I think will just blow your mind.
They arrested someone with three pounds of fentanyl and charged them with this. Three pounds of fentanyl is enough to kill everyone in the city of Toledo several times over. That is how powerful this stuff is, so what the president’s message has been is, “Don’t start.”
There’s rehab, and there’s treatment, and there’s all these things that are so important, but the best way to not get addicted and to not end up as one of these statistics: Don’t start.
Payton: I guess he’s taking that example, too, right? Doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, doesn’t do anything. Just not going to risk it. Speaking of the dark web, you and I were talking a little bit earlier about just human trafficking issues. What are some steps that the Department of Justice is doing or what’s a message that the DOJ would like to send to Americans about this issue?
Flores: Well, we have a lot of resources dedicated to human trafficking. It’s one of those issues that really lives below the surface; it’s not something that I think a lot of people see every day as they drive around, but it is every day.
The Super Bowl is probably the No. 1 day for human trafficking in the country. We have this huge sports event and everyone’s watching the Super Bowl and what you’re not seeing is what’s happening behind the scenes. I think it can be a silent crisis. The thing that I would say to you guys and to your viewers when it comes to human trafficking: It is a see something, say something problem. If you think something doesn’t look right—people who are being trafficked don’t wear T-shirts that say, “I am a human trafficking victim”—it’s up to us to all ask questions.
These girls can be young. MS-13, a gang that the president has talked a lot about, they traffic girls as young as 12-years-old. They’re in your junior high school, they’re in your high school. It’s up to all of us to ask questions and raise alarm bells, because while law enforcement does an incredibly impressive job with this, they can’t be everywhere the way that we all can.
Harkness: It seems like, so often, people are looking to the government for the solutions. But on this case, you’re saying the most important thing that members of your local communities is to really be aware that human trafficking is happening and then keep our eyes out for it. We appreciate that message and we will do our part to spread it.
I want to ask, in spirit of our podcast, “Problematic Women,” first off: Is that something you would perhaps identify with? Do you view yourself as, at times, problematic? What was it like coming in to the Justice Department? What’s your experience been like?
Flores: I think other people will have described me as a problematic woman throughout my career. I hope they have, actually. I think that means you’re probably doing something right along the way. So, love being with you; I think that’s really fun.
I came from a campaign background. Political background. Campaigns are startups; it’s why I always tell young people, particularly college-age folks, “Try a campaign.” Just go do it for a summer for a couple months. If you find it addictive and love it, great. If you don’t, you had a cool time in random state whatever.
So, you go from this really startup mentality to … the Department of Justice. It has 115,000 employees, and it does important work. Every day you feel like you’re making a difference in people’s lives, whether it’s reducing crime, or fighting the opioid epidemic, or protecting the border, national security. There’s so much cool, important stuff we do every day.
But, yes, 115,000 people is a large number of people to move into categories, but the most fun part of my job every day is working with Jeff Sessions, who is so much fun. He is really funny behind the scenes. I think he’s pretty funny on camera, too. Last week we watched one of the SNL skits about him and he died laughing.
There’s little moments that you’re going to remember when you’re in these jobs and take with you. Those are the really good days and days you’re really excited to be in this job, even if it’s not quite the startup mentality that you’re used to.
Payton: Something we always like to ask guests, too, is we talk about feminism and what feminism means to you. Do you consider yourself a feminist? Or is that label a little bit troublesome? What do you think about all that?
Flores: That’s tough, because I feel like, as conservative women, of course. I feel like it goes without saying; of course we believe that women should have the same opportunities as men.
Payton: Exactly, right.
Flores: Then it’s just a question of, “Do you wanna take back the term feminist so that that is what it’s supposed to mean?” In that sense, yeah, I’m a feminist.
But that’s not what we use it as in our society anymore. It has been so hijacked. So, I don’t know if I’m on team take back the word or team define your own word. I know what I am and I think I know what we are, and I know what conservative women are. I don’t think we’ve ever been particularly bothered by labels or we probably wouldn’t be here in the first place.
I'm an American citizen and I love this country that has given me everything. I believe that America is the last hope in this world for Democracy and Freedom. She must be defended at all costs!
