Megyn Kelly reported on Sunday night that House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has contacted the president of ABC News and is demanding that the network answer questions about why it killed a bombshell story three years ago on convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein that involved former Democratic President Bill Clinton.
The news comes after James O&#8217;Keefe&#8217;s Project Veritas exclusively reported last month on leaked video footage from inside ABC News that showed anchor Amy Robach admitting that the network had the scandal on Epstein three years ago but that the network spiked it.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
“Then the Palace found out that we had her whole allegations about <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PrinceAndrew?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PrinceAndrew</a>&#8230;threatened us in a million different ways. We were so afraid that we wouldn’t be able to interview Kate and Will&#8230;That also quashed the story.” &#8211; <a href="https://twitter.com/arobach?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@arobach</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/EpsteinCoverup?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#EpsteinCoverup</a> <a href="https://t.co/fPvJc3s1Li">pic.twitter.com/fPvJc3s1Li</a>
— James O&#8217;Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) <a href="https://twitter.com/JamesOKeefeIII/status/1195741556390666242?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 16, 2019</a></blockquote>
In a letter obtained by Kelly, McCarthy asked ABC News President James Goldston the following questions:
<ol>
<li>Will ABC News provide Congress the interview Ms. Robach conducted with the victim?</li>
<li>What did ABC News learn about Jeffrey Epstein after Ms. Robach first presented her story to executives?</li>
<li>Who was involved in deciding this story was not of public interest, and what were their reasons for deciding so?</li>
<li>Can Ms. Robach expand on the &#8220;outside forces&#8221; she mentioned as potentially responsible for the story not running?</li>
<li>Was ABC News ever presented with additional evidence on Mr. Epstein from the time Ms. Robach first brought her investigation to the network and when he was ultimately arrested?</li>
<li>Were authorities alerted at any time after Ms. Robach presented ABC News executives with her reporting? If so, when and what was provided?</li>
</ol>
&#8220;What appears to have been presented to Ms. Robach is first-hand evidence of human trafficking,&#8221; McCarthy wrote. &#8220;I am deeply concerned that this victim, in search of justice, went to ABC News, provided information and an interview, and then ABC News chose to bury the truth. This was a decision that Ms. Robach alluded was due to protecting  powerful people or financial interests.&#8221;
&#8220;Although it is unclear whether anyone thought to alert authorities to further examine these deeply disturbing allegations, it is clear that ABC News&#8217; enabling of Mr. Epstein has consequences: fewer victims willing to come forward to bring perpetrators of this modern-day slavery to justice and, more grievously, the possibility that any number of minors could have been sparred from human trafficking over the past three years,&#8221; McCarthy continued.
McCarthy concluded, &#8220;It is imperative that the public be assured newsroom decisions regarding exposing human trafficking are not tampered by financial interests or outside forces.&#8221;
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<a style="color: #000;font-family: Arial,sans-serif;font-size: 14px;font-style: normal;font-weight: normal;line-height: 17px;text-decoration: none" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B4_HsjCg_L5/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">MK Exclusive: Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy demands answers from ABC News re: Epstein</a>
A post shared by <a style="color: #c9c8cd;font-family: Arial,sans-serif;font-size: 14px;font-style: normal;font-weight: normal;line-height: 17px" href="https://www.instagram.com/megynkelly/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> Megyn Kelly</a> (@megynkelly) on Nov 17, 2019 at 4:13pm PST
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The footage obtained by Project Veritas, which was from August, was released by the organization in October and showed <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bombshell-abc-news-killed-epstein-clinton-story-says-anchor-in-hot-mic-video">Robach venting that the network killed her story and that other organizations were now getting credit for the story</a>.
&#8220;I’ve had the story for three years. I’ve had this interview with Virginia Roberts. We would not put it on the air. First of all, I was told who’s Jeffrey Epstein, no one knows who that is, this is a stupid story,&#8221; Robach said. &#8220;Then the Palace found out that we had her whole allegations about Prince Andrew and threatened us a million different ways. We were so afraid we wouldn’t be able to interview Kate and Will, that also quashed the story.&#8221;
&#8220;And then Alan Dershowitz was also implicated in it because of the planes. She told me everything. She had pictures, she had everything,&#8221; Robach continued. &#8220;She was in hiding for 12 years. We convinced her to come out. We convinced her to talk to us. It was unbelievable what we had, Clinton, we had everything.&#8221;
&#8220;I tried for three years to get it on to no avail and now it’s all coming out and it’s like these new relevant revelations and I freaking had all of it,&#8221; Robach concluded. &#8220;I’m so pissed right now, like every day I get more and more pissed because I’m just like, oh my god, what we had was unreal. Other women backing it up. Brad Edwards the attorney three years ago saying like, ‘there will come a day for we will realize Jeffrey Epstein was the most prolific pedophile this country has ever known.’ I had it all three years ago.&#8221;

Jeffrey Epstein

BREAKING: Congress Cracking Down On ABC News For Killing Jeffrey Epstein Story

Congress

Kevin McCarthy

Sean Parnell

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Burgess Owens.

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Burgess Owens

Congresswoman Katie Hill is finally <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/10/23/20928700/katie-hill-congresswoman-resigns-leaked-red-state">resigning</a> from office after admitting to a sexual relationship relationship with a 22-year-old female campaign staffer. She has also been accused of carrying on an affair with her legislative director, Graham Kelly, though she denies the latter charge.
Despite being guilty of blatant sexual misconduct with a very junior subordinate, and potentially even more blatant sexual misconduct with a different subordinate, Hill has made it clear who the victim is in all of this really: Herself. In her self-pitying <a href="https://twitter.com/RepKatieHill/status/1188591520531779584?s=20">resignation letter</a>, Hill laid the blame at the feet of her &#8220;abusive husband&#8221; and &#8220;hateful political operatives.&#8221; She lamented the &#8220;unprecedented brand of cruelty&#8221; that has brought her to this point. But she doesn&#8217;t explain how the allegedly abusive husband, or the hateful operatives, or the unprecedented cruelty, could have forced her to mine her staff for sex partners.
As The Daily Wire has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/media-tries-to-suggest-katie-hill-did-nothing-wrong-even-though-congress-passed-bill-last-year-banning-what-she-did">covered</a>, the media and many on the Left have gone right along with Hill&#8217;s persecution act. On her <a href="https://twitter.com/KatieHill4CA">Twitter page</a>, the disgraced former congresswoman has been furiously retweeting blue-checked leftists proclaiming that Hill is the victim of a sexist conspiracy. &#8220;She was thrown on a pyre for the benefit of men,&#8221; says one. Another blames Hill&#8217;s critics for being &#8220;the reason more women don&#8217;t run for office.&#8221;
Of course, the sexism in this case runs in exactly the opposite direction. There is simply no denying that if a photo leaked of a male congressman, in the nude, brushing the hair of his 22-year-old staffer, and if leaked text messages revealed that that staffer felt like a &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7609835/Katie-Hill-seen-showing-Nazi-era-tattoo-smoking-BONG-NAKED.html">toy</a>&#8221; for said congressman, none of Hill&#8217;s defenders would be standing in that congressman&#8217;s corner. On the contrary, they&#8217;d be the first ones in line for the public stoning. And if we were talking about someone named Kurt Hill instead of Katie Hill, he would not be able to get away with a resignation letter that saves its half-hearted apology until the very end, after a long diatribe explaining why he is the real victim.
It is worth emphasizing this point: The media are asking that we feel sorry for a member of Congress who had three-ways with her subordinates, kept her sex partners on her staff without disclosing it, and put herself in a compromised position by allowing photos to be taken of her while naked and doing drugs. More than that, the media demand that we see Hill as a casualty of patriarchal oppression. This would be hard enough to stomach in its own right, but its downright vomit-inducing when you consider that Hill&#8217;s defenders are the very same people who have spent the last several years insisting that consent is murky, if not impossible, when one of the people involved in the act holds significant power over the other. But of course, these MeToo crusaders only meant for that principle to apply when it is a man who is in the position of power. Which is another way of saying that it&#8217;s not a principle at all.
Indeed, Jessica Valenti took the hypocrisy a step further. In a <a href="https://gen.medium.com/katie-hill-was-brought-down-by-the-same-forces-that-enable-weinstein-e46ea59d7493">post</a> on Medium (shared by Hill), Valenti argued that the people holding Hill accountable for sexual misconduct are the same &#8220;forces that enabled Weinstein.&#8221; You see, when a man exploits his power and uses his subordinates as sex toys, he&#8217;s doing what Weinstein did. But when a woman exploits her power and uses her subordinates as sex toys, the people who object are doing what Weinstein did. This is the kind of logic that can only possibly make sense in the dizzied brains of left-wing feminists.
But despite all of this hypocritical blathering, the fact remains: Katie Hill violated ethics and possibly the law. She did it for the sake of her own sexual pleasure. She is unfit for office and deserves to lose her job. She is not the victim. This was all her doing. And now she is paying the price.

U.S. Representative Katie Hill (D-CA) speaking at the Ignite

WALSH: Katie Hill Claims She Is The Real Victim Of Her Own Sexual Misconduct. She Isn’t.

Katie Hill

MeToo

Sex scandal

Sexual Harassment

Sexuality

This past week, the House of Representatives descended into parody, which is hard for it to do. Most members of Congress long ago decided to become parodies of politicians. Now the entire institution is a parody of itself.
The first extraordinary moment was the least noticed. On Oct. 23, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before the House Financial Services Committee. This is where I should make a customary disclosure that this past year, Facebook served as a sponsor for my annual Resurgent Gathering.
There to talk about Libra, a cryptocurrency Facebook intends to create with private sector partners, Zuckerberg instead received a spanking from Democrats upset with his lack of knowledge about how many gay people work for him. One member of Congress demanded to know why Zuckerberg did not know how many women, people of color and gay people worked at outside law firms that work for Facebook. Another wanted to know how many black people use Facebook and was outraged when Zuckerberg said Facebook did not track people by race. It is bad to track people by the color of their skin but also bad not to.
Things took a further bizarre turn when members of Congress asked Zuckerberg why they were allowed to lie on Facebook. Zuckerberg said they should not but he was not going to be the hall monitor stopping them. It is really extraordinary that members of Congress want Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire CEO of a private company, to block these members of Congress from communicating with their constituents.
Zuckerberg&#8217;s position is that a great many things are subjective; what one person views as a lie, another views as truth. He does not want his company to be the arbiter of the issue. If one person believes boys can become girls — which many view as true these days — and someone else says this is not biologically possible, why should Zuckerberg step in? Likewise, if a Democrat says a Republican voted for something he or she did not vote for, why should Zuckerberg ban the ad instead of simply letting the world see the Democrat is a liar?
It is a truly remarkable turn of events that members of Congress want a private corporation to protect the American public from their own politicians. Perhaps the politicians should censor themselves and be loud and vocal about what they believe are their opponents&#8217; lies instead of having Mark Zuckerberg play teacher on the schoolhouse&#8217;s playground.
The other extraordinary scene played out the same day as a group of Republican congressmen stormed the secure room where Democrats and Republicans were meeting behind closed doors to hear testimony about the impeachment. The Republicans want the matter brought out into the public. While I agree with them, there is precedent for this to happen behind closed doors — including their own Benghazi depositions and the initial impeachment inquiry of Richard Nixon, which met behind closed doors for four months before opening up to the public in a formal process.
What was so extraordinary is that about half the Republicans who stormed the room claiming they wanted to know what was happening were Republicans already entitled to be in the room. It raises a question: If these Republicans are so willing to storm the room to disrupt the proceedings, why are they not willing to leak the supposedly exculpatory testimonies from the witnesses?
We should not presume these people are fully respectful of the process. After all, many of them leaked like sieves during the closed-door Benghazi matter. Why were they so willing to leak to damage Hillary Clinton back then but so unwilling to leak exculpatory information to protect President Donald Trump now?
Republicans are right that the process is partisan and flawed. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is a partisan hack who should not be allowed in charge of such a serious investigation. But process arguments will not help. Either the President did demand Ukrainians investigate Joe Biden in order to get money or he did not. Making this about process suggests the Republicans have no real defense to the President&#8217;s behavior.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Mark Zuckerberg.

ERICKSON: Two Extraordinary Moments In Congress

Donald Trump

Facebook

Impeachment

Mark Zuckerberg

Members of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee held a joint meeting with the House Climate Crisis Committee on Wednesday to hear from four young activists, including conservative Benji Backer, about what the country can do to address climate change.
During the hearing, Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL), chairwoman of the Climate Crisis Committee, <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?464405-1/youth-activists-urge-lawmakers-action-climate-change&amp;vod=&amp;start=3109">emphasized</a> the need for Americans to cooperate on the issue and gave a call to action to the public, saying, &#8220;We want the ideas to come from all corners of this country and beyond.&#8221;
But on Twitter, Castor excluded Backer, the lone conservative of the group, from public praise, instead choosing to post a photo, without Backer, with a caption praising only activists Greta Thunberg, Jamie Margolin, and Vic Barrett. &#8220;This is what it looks like when Congress listens to a generation of young people who are growing up in the #ClimateCrisis,&#8221; Castor tweeted.
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">This is what it looks like when Congress listens to a generation of young people who are growing up in the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ClimateCrisis?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ClimateCrisis</a>. Thank you <a href="https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@GretaThunberg</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/Jamie_Margolin?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Jamie_Margolin</a> &amp; <a href="https://twitter.com/vict_barrett?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@vict_barrett</a>! <a href="https://t.co/GsZeTeQNCr">pic.twitter.com/GsZeTeQNCr</a>
— US Rep Kathy Castor (@USRepKCastor) <a href="https://twitter.com/USRepKCastor/status/1174369095019634690?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 18, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Other politicians also excluded Backer from online praise, including Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO) and former Vice President Al Gore, who commended the activists for rising up to speak &#8220;truth to power&#8221; in a tweet published two days before the hearing.
&#8220;I&#8217;m proud to support @ClimateReality leader @Jaime_Margolin, along with @GretaThunberg &amp; Vic Barret speaking truth to power to Congress this week. This generation and its leaders are rightly &amp; justly demanding a better future. #LeadOnClimate,&#8221; tweeted Gore.
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">I’m proud to support <a href="https://twitter.com/ClimateReality?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ClimateReality</a> leader <a href="https://twitter.com/Jamie_Margolin?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Jamie_Margolin</a>, along with <a href="https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@GretaThunberg</a> &amp; Vic Barret speaking truth to power to Congress this week. This generation and its leaders are rightly &amp; justly demanding a better future. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/LeadOnClimate?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#LeadOnClimate</a> <a href="https://t.co/R8jigo6xBx">pic.twitter.com/R8jigo6xBx</a>
— Al Gore (@algore) <a href="https://twitter.com/algore/status/1173625699904544769?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 16, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">If we fail to fight the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ClimateCrisis?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ClimateCrisis</a> now, the next generation will face the consequences of our inaction and they know it.
That&#8217;s why <a href="https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@GretaThunberg</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/vict_barrett?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@vict_barrett</a> &amp; <a href="https://twitter.com/Jamie_Margolin?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Jamie_Margolin</a> have raised their voices bravely and passionately on this issue.
We must listen. <a href="https://t.co/VPbyq6lXBK">pic.twitter.com/VPbyq6lXBK</a>
— Rep. Joe Neguse (@RepJoeNeguse) <a href="https://twitter.com/RepJoeNeguse/status/1174344495460179975?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 18, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Backer, who was invited to testify by Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA), is the president of the American Conservation Coalition, an organization dedicated to promoting &#8220;free-market and pro-business environmentalism,&#8221; according to the <a href="https://www.acc.eco/about">organization&#8217;s website</a>.
During the hearing, Backer criticized government intervention policies such as the Green New Deal as &#8220;one-size-fits-all approaches.&#8221; Those policies would &#8220;inhibit innovations and are not an effective way to reduce emissions,&#8221; said Backer.
Backer also pointed to the atrocious environmental records of countries with high levels of government control, like Venezuela, stating, &#8220;We cannot regulate our way out of climate change.&#8221;
&#8220;If you truly want to address climate change, work with conservatives who want to champion reforms,&#8221; said Backer.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Il) expressed similar views to Backer, saying, we need to &#8220;support market-driven innovations to develop new clean energy technologies that will put the United States at the forefront of environmental technologies.&#8221; Kinzinger also noted the need to support nuclear energy, a divisive topic among climate activists and Democratic politicians.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT), for example, is against nuclear power. His <a href="https://berniesanders.com/en/issues/green-new-deal/">campaign website</a> notes that in order &#8220;to get to our goal of 100 percent sustainable energy, we will not rely on any false solutions like nuclear, geoengineering, carbon capture and sequestration, or trash incinerators.&#8221;
At the CNN climate change town hall earlier this month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) announced that she was against building new nuclear reactors. &#8220;We will start weaning ourselves off nuclear and replace it with renewables,&#8221; said Warren, as reported by the <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/elizabeth-warren-comes-out-against-nuclear-power">Washington Examiner</a>.
But at the same town hall, Sen. Cory Booker said nuclear power is important for reducing carbon emissions. &#8220;My plan says that we need to be at a zero-carbon electricity by 2030,&#8221; said Booker, as reported by <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/09/05/cory-booker-cnn-town-hall-climate-crisis-nuclear-sot-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/climate-change/">CNN</a>. &#8220;People who think that we can get there, without nuclear being part of the blend, just aren&#8217;t looking at the facts.&#8221;

Rep. Kathy Castor

Climate Activists Invited To Congress, Sole Conservative Left Out Of Democrats’ Praise

Al Gore

Climate Change

Conservatism

On Wednesday’s episode of “The Andrew Klavan Show,” Klavan talks about Congressman Jerry Nadler getting trolled during a pointless hearing. Video and partial transcript below:
The news this week has really been great. I mean really, what we&#8217;re watching is this narrative, the right wing&#8217;s fight back against this narrative and win. We can&#8217;t leave Donald Trump out of the mix here, Donald Trump, I think has taught the Right how to fight back a little bit. He&#8217;s taught the Right that it&#8217;s not okay to let the lie go, that whatever the lie is, whether it&#8217;s a lie about the weather, the hurricane, some stupid lie like that, or whether it&#8217;s an important lie about something else, you know, you&#8217;ve got to fight back.
Just remember that even though the Russian collusion thing has now been exposed as an utter hoax, the [inspector general] report is coming out. It&#8217;s going to talk about how this thing started and we may see people exposed, like James Comey and Clapper and John Brennan. We may see them exposed in bad behavior. But remember, it&#8217;s the Left that will make the movie because we&#8217;re stupid. They&#8217;re smart about this, and they&#8217;ll make the movie “Russian Collusion.” It&#8217;ll be Matt Damon running against the clock to stop the Russians from screwing up our election system while Donald Trump meets with Vladimir Putin in the bathroom.
Then the next generation will think that&#8217;s true. But this week we&#8217;re winning because this week they haven&#8217;t made the movie. It&#8217;s real life, right …
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You know Jerry Nadler, I mean, I don&#8217;t know what he sees when he looks in the mirror but you know, at this point, he is really wasting. We can burn our own money Jerry, you know, we can take our money. I got a lighter, I can take my money out of the bag and just burn it myself. But he&#8217;s going to do it, they&#8217;re not doing anything.
Nancy Pelosi keeps saying, oh we legislate and we investigate. What legislation have they passed that can pass the Senate and get signed by the president? Zippo, none. You know they&#8217;re doing nothing. So it&#8217;s all show, in terms of what they&#8217;re doing.
Politics is not supposed to be like this. Politics is where you sit down with the people you utterly disagree with and, somehow, you work out a compromise always conceding that the majority is going to get more than the minority. That is politics, that&#8217;s democratic politics. And instead we&#8217;re getting these endless stupid investigations.
So they bring in poor Corey Lewandowski, you know he&#8217;s not a guy I&#8217;ve ever had a lot of feeling for, but they bring him on to talk about the Mueller report and he has a letter with him, from the White House, saying he shouldn&#8217;t talk about any private conversations he had with the president because that&#8217;s protected by executive privilege. So he starts out by making this opening statement — here&#8217;s the end of his opening statement:
<blockquote>LEWANDOWSKI: In conclusion, and it&#8217;s sad to say, this country has spent over three years and $40 million taxpayer dollars on these investigations and it&#8217;s now clear that the investigation was populated by many Trump-haters who had their own agenda: To take down a duly elected president of the United States. As for actual collusion or conspiracy, there was none. What there has been, however, is harassment of this president from the day he won the election. We as a nation would be better served if elected officials like yourselves concentrated your efforts to combat the true crises facing our country, as opposed to going down rabbit holes like this hearing.
Instead of focusing on petty and personal politics, the committee focused on solving the challenges of this generation. Imagine how many people we could help, or how many lives we could save. As I stated earlier, I have voluntarily appeared in front of Congress on three separate occasions and spoken to members of the special counsel&#8217;s office for multiple hours. I will continue to be forthright and cooperative and I will be as sincere in my answers as this committee is and its questions.</blockquote>
You know, when you look up at the moral high road and you see Corey Lewandowski, your low road is way, way too low.
Corey Lewandowski is sitting there speaking the truth to these guys, speaking truth to power. You remember that? That&#8217;s a favorite left-wing thing that they never do but talk about a lot. He&#8217;s just making them crazy. So what he does is, every time that — remember each guy only gets &#8230; five minutes to question. So what Lewandowski does is, if they mentioned the Mueller report, he requests a copy of the Mueller report so he won&#8217;t talk until he gets the Muller report and then he keeps referring to this letter from the White House saying he can&#8217;t talk about anything else, and you can see Jerry Nadler and the rest of them just start to go insane. Here&#8217;s a little excerpt of this back and forth.
<blockquote>NADLER: Mr. Lewandowski, is it correct, as is reported in the Mueller report, on June 19, 2017, that you met alone in the Oval Office with the president?
LEWANDOWSKI: Is there a book and page number you can reference me to, please? I don&#8217;t have a copy of the report in front of me.
NADLER: Volume II, page 90.
LEWANDOWSKI: Could you read the exact language of the report, sir? I don&#8217;t have it available to me.
NADLER: I don&#8217;t think I need to do that and I have limited time. Did you meet alone with the president on that date?
LEWANDOWSKI: Congressman, I&#8217;d like you to refresh my memory by providing a copy of the report so I can follow along.
NADLER: You don’t have a copy with you?
LEWANDOWSKI: I don&#8217;t have a copy of the report, congressman.
UNNAMED VOICE: Mr. Chairman, I request that the clock be stopped while this charade is sorted out.
NADLER: Do you not have an independent recollection of whether you met with the president on that date?
LEWANDOWSKI: Congressman, I&#8217;m just trying to find in the Muller report where it states that.
CICILLINE: Mr. Chairman, is it appropriate for a witness to refuse to answer a question and instead demand that we reference and point him to — I ask that that the Mueller report be closed and the witness be directed to answer the question.</blockquote>
So that&#8217;s obviously driving them absolutely crazy.
<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-andrew-klavan-show/id1045171376?mt=2">Listen to full episodes of “The Andrew Klavan Show” on iTunes. </a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/show/andrew-klavan-show">Watch “The Andrew Klavan Show” on-demand!</a>

Jerry Nadler

KLAVAN: Jerry Nadler Gets Trolled In Pointless Hearing

Corey Lewandowski

Jerrold Nadler

Robert Mueller

On perhaps no cultural issue has the Right more clearly waved the white flag than it has on the issue of marriage. The National Organization for Marriage, which for years existed as the leading organization pushing back against the homosexual rights movement&#8217;s ahistorical revisionism and redefining of marriage, is now hard-pressed to galvanize a grassroots movement in favor of restoring conjugal marriage. Never mind that the ludicrous 2015 U.S. Supreme Court case that bastardized the Fourteenth Amendment in an astonishing black-robed power grab to constitutionalize same-sex nuptials and impose it upon a divided citizenry, <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf">Obergefell v. Hodges</a>, had all the jurisprudential heft of the <a href="https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/06/15235/">infamous Dred Scott diktat</a>. Rare is the social conservative, these days, who seems enthused about trying to chip away at Obergefell&#8216;s (il)legal foundation; most pro-conjugal marriage social conservatives resist the temptation to go on the offensive and are instead content to defensively crouch and demand <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47964/hammer-conservatives-must-make-their-arguments-josh-hammer">values-neutral pluralistic religious liberty &#8220;tolerance.&#8221;</a>
But such a defensive posture is unwarranted and, indeed, ultimately unjustifiable. Much like our <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47249/hammer-yes-alabama-legislature-right-openly-defy-josh-hammer">efforts to protect the unborn</a> from Roe v. Wade&#8216;s legal regime of state-sanctioned genocide of an entire sub-class of human beings, marriage as a socially defined one-man/one-woman institution is worth fighting for in both the cultural and legal arena. America was quite conscientiously founded under the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript">natural law tradition</a>, and there is no more natural biological fact than the reality that every child born in this Earth is born to one (non-trans) mother and one (non-trans) father. And to the extent there is nascent social science data on the question of outcomes for the children of heterosexual and homosexual parents, that data is, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/13/there-is-no-harm-caused-by-same-sex-parenting-studies-suggesting-otherwise-are-skewed">at best for the Left</a>, a <a href="https://www.heritage.org/marriage-and-family/report/the-regnerus-study-social-science-new-family-structures-met-intolerance">mixed bag</a>. We will know much more in future decades, as our grand and godless social experiment in marriage revisionism plays out in real-time, but there is already <a href="https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/04/16760/">no shortage of warning signs</a> for the revisionists.
The phenomenon of the broader Right&#8217;s capitulation on the marriage issue has been exacerbated by our debilitating <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/49913/hammer-conservatives-how-much-longer-are-you-josh-hammer">crisis of judicial supremacy</a> — the erroneous and anti-constitutional notion that the idiosyncratic ukases of our unelected black-robed masters in what Alexander Hamilton called the <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed78.asp">&#8220;least dangerous&#8221; branch</a> ought to be treated not merely as ad hoc legal judgments, but as broader political rulings that &#8220;bind&#8221; the populace. The danger of judicial supremacy cannot be exaggerated: How are <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/preamble">We the People</a> to remain constantly vigilant against tyranny if that tyranny comes not in the form of legislators and executives who can be held accountable at the ballot box, but in the form of judicial usurpers who accomplish with the stroke of a pen what the cultural Left could not otherwise accomplish over decades?
The Right cannot unilaterally disarm in the culture war. The Left makes overt moral argumentation to advance a compelling narrative as to their (dystopian, pagan, and positively harrowing) vision of the good life. Why on Earth are <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47964/hammer-conservatives-must-make-their-arguments-josh-hammer">we on the Right not doing the same</a>, as New York Post Op-Ed Editor Sohrab Ahmari <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47839/hammer-limited-defense-sohrab-ahmaris-assault-josh-hammer">asked earlier this year</a> of National Review Senior Writer David French? In what world does retreating to pleas for Anglo-American common law procedural niceties suffice, given the gravity of the cultural task at hand and the totalitarian nature of the contemporary Left?
It seems that longtime Straussian jurisprudential luminary Hadley Arkes agrees, based on a recent <a href="https://americanmind.org/essays/does-the-right-dare-fight/">disquisition</a> published at the indispensable <a href="https://americanmind.org">American Mind</a> online journal. Arkes urges conservatives to aggressively wage the culture war on at least four issues: Marriage, sexual orientation, transgenderism, and abortion. But it is Arkes&#8217; advice on marriage that is most provocative — and which deserves the most careful attention for congressional lawmakers due to its potential to publicly clarify the obvious <a href="https://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/28/the-wild-ideas-of-social-conservatives/">slippery slope</a> upon which the marriage revisionists have so <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/20/opinion/george-gay-marriage/index.html">unabashedly embarked</a> (emphasis added):
<blockquote>What I have in mind is the proposal for a Defense of Monogamous Marriage Act (DOMMA). That would simply enact another version of the Defense of Marriage Act, but with these components: That neither the federal government nor the states would be obliged to recognize as a &#8220;marriage&#8221; a union of more than two people. That proposal made its way to the staff of Paul Ryan when he was Speaker in the last Congress, and I was told that the Speaker would make a decision on bringing the matter to the floor if a sponsor could be found for the bill.
For the leadership the prospect was intriguing, for they couldn&#8217;t guess how Democrats would vote on such a bill. On the one hand, the Democrats don&#8217;t want to come out explicitly for polygamy, but on the other they are reflexively opposed to virtually any measure that would cast a moral judgment on the way that people act out their sexuality. As for the courts, the Supreme Court could not strike down this bill without virtually licensing polygamy. In the meantime, we would establish — in the face of Justice Kennedy&#8217;s dubiety — that Congress does indeed have the authority legislate on this subject of marriage.
There were two conservative congressmen who were willing to consider acting as sponsors of the bill, but both men had other troubles of their own and they didn&#8217;t survive their primaries. Still, the proposal is as sound and as provocative as it ever was in testing the constitutional argument. What remains is finding the conservative congressman with the nerve to introduce it.</blockquote>
I have discussed over the years the marriage debate with many, many people — likely more supporters than opponents of same-sex marriage. I have never once heard an intellectually defensible rationale articulated as to why, once the biological and conjugal element is eliminated from the marriage definition, the definition must be capped at solely two individuals. After all, the only reason we God arrived at two in the first place is because it takes precisely one man and one woman to procreate.
The Defense of Monogamous Marriage Act (DOMMA) is a brilliant piece of legislative mischief that would force Democrats to directly confront the societal hell that they have begun the process of unleashing. And it will force Democrats to ponder the reality that perhaps not all sexual desires and proclivities ought to be treated equally under the law. Perhaps love does not necessarily always &#8220;equal&#8221; love. The DOMMA would also nudge back against the judicial supremacist paradigm and represent a salutary attempt by Congress to check the judiciary. After all, as James Madison told us in <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed51.asp">The Federalist No. 51</a>, our constitutional structure revolves around the notion that &#8220;[a]mbition must be made to counteract ambition.&#8221;
All we need is a few culture-warring congressmen to take the legislative initiative. Any takers?

newlyweds.jpg

HAMMER: CULTURE WAR: Conservatives In Congress Should Push A ‘Defense Of Monogamous Marriage Act’

Homosexuality

House Republicans

LGBT

National Organization for Marriage

Same-Sex Marriage

Supreme Court

Traditional Marriage

The following is satirical.
Congress is back in session and ready to take on the number one crisis facing America, namely that Congress is back in session. The lawmakers return to Washington facing a full agenda, including financing the government so they can get money to pay for Congress so they can finance the government so they can get money to pay for Congress so they can finance the government.
D.C. residents welcomed the legislature back by running away from the capitol building in a panicked mob, clutching their wallets and screaming as if Godzilla was chasing them. When they found out Godzilla actually was chasing them, they calmed down and said, &#8220;That&#8217;s a relief. We thought it was Congress.&#8221;
On the House side, Democrat Jerry Nadler said he had enjoyed a lazy summer just wasting time and spending money by way of practicing for his return to government work. Nadler&#8217;s list of things to do includes threatening to impeach President Trump, threatening to investigate President Trump, threatening to investigate impeaching President Trump and subpoenaing the last few Americans he hasn&#8217;t interrogated yet including the scary clown from the Stephen King movie and the guy who runs the Dairy Queen in Aspinwall, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was happy to come back from wherever she&#8217;d been to wherever she was now and was looking forward to churning out useless anti-Trump bills that would never become law until she had completely wasted the rapidly dwindling time remaining to her life.
In the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell listed his priorities as getting more judges confirmed, talking very slowly with a dead pan expression, and then getting more judges confirmed and then talking slowly some more. McConnell was asked yesterday why he hadn’t mentioned gun control in his agenda. He should be done with his answer sometime this afternoon.
Meanwhile, though the parties remain sharply divided, Congress hopes to bring the nation together on the issue of giving them more money for their important work of getting more money.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51533/democrat-fired-after-tweets-surface-saying-its-andrew-klavan">Democrat Fired After Tweets Surface Saying ‘It’s A Free Country’ [Satire]</a>

Godzilla

Americans Run Screaming In Terror As Congress Returns To Work [Klavan]

Mitch McConnell

Nancy Pelosi

Satire

What would your “What I Did on My Summer Vacation” essay look like? More to the point, what would Congress’ look like? While the House and the Senate adjourned for all of August (and had little to show for June and July), the White House was hard at work addressing the crisis at the border.
With three initiatives — the Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP), the asylum cooperation agreement with Guatemala, and the interim final rule for migrants requesting asylum at the southern border — the Trump administration has sought to enforce existing law consistently and fairly and to regain control of our borders.
Additionally, the administration has successfully pressed Mexico to step up enforcement of its own laws, a move which <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-border-crossings-continue-to-fall-as-mexico-disrupts-migrant-flow-11567646550">cut illegal border crossings into the U.S. by 30%</a> from July to August.
The MPP, sometimes referred to as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, directly addresses the immigration magnet at the root of our border crisis — the promise of asylum, a way to get to the front of the line for legal immigration.
Our asylum system is designed to help those who are truly fleeing danger — those with a “credible fear” of persecution by their government. It’s not designed for those simply seeking a better job or even a better life. Under the old rules, asylum seekers would be released into the U.S. as they await their court dates (and many would simply not appear for court). By sending asylum claimants back to Mexico — still thousands of miles from the danger they say they’re fleeing — the administration is removing that temptation.
The Trump administration is also working to address asylum claims through its new asylum cooperation agreement with Guatemala — requiring migrants to seek asylum in Guatemala rather than in the U.S. Again, the point of the U.S. asylum system is to protect those who are truly in danger. Once migrants enter into a safe third country, they’re out of danger (though now, many of them undertake the long and dangerous trek to the U.S. southern border, often at the mercy of human traffickers). The agreement with Guatemala will help our migration crisis by discouraging false claims made by those who, when pressed, <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2019/08/09/migrants-seeking-asylum-america-pushed-farther-south-mexico/">admit</a> they’re only coming to the U.S. for a better job.
It will also help curb human trafficking. It will, as President Trump <a href="https://www.apnews.com/23f6b9a087e841188c5484cd5cf04f3d">said</a>, help “put the coyotes and smugglers out of business.”
The administration’s interim final rule — which would declare migrants ineligible for asylum if they passed through Mexico without applying for asylum there — would also help discourage fake claims.
But a federal judge has blocked that rule from going into effect with a temporary injunction, and he’s now indicating <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-05/judge-leans-toward-blocking-trump-asylum-restriction-nationwide">he could make that permanent</a>. That would be a disservice — both to the U.S. immigration system and to genuine asylum seekers themselves.
The judge’s reasoning is that the new rule “<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-24/trump-s-asylum-seeker-restriction-blocked-by-judge">is inconsistent with the existing asylum laws</a>.” It’s not. It’s entirely consistent with the goal of ensuring safety — and fairness — to the persecuted. The current influx of asylum seekers, on the other hand, has completely overwhelmed a system that should be deliberate, thoughtful, and comprehensive.
The Trump administration will fight that ruling — as it should — all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Finally, the administration has convinced Mexico to enforce its own laws and its own borders, and the result has been a decrease in the flow of migrants from Central America. Immigration officials put the decrease at about <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-border-crossings-continue-to-fall-as-mexico-disrupts-migrant-flow-11567646550">30%</a> — at a time of the year when border crossings normally increase, not decrease.
Mexico is simply guarding its border — as all sovereign nations have a right to do — instead of allowing Central Americans to pass through and place a greater strain on the U.S. border. And it’s deporting those who enter Mexico illegally.
Critics of the administration say these measures are heartless — that we are a nation of immigrants, and migrants are only coming for the freedom and opportunities we enjoy.
But these criticisms conflate two things — legal immigration and illegal immigration. If we just stop enforcing our immigration laws because they’re difficult, or unpopular, then we’re setting aside the rule of law — the very thing that makes the United States different from the Central American countries many are fleeing.
Critics also conflate asylum seekers with economic refugees. They’re different, as are the ways that U.S. immigration laws deal with them. The bar for asylum seekers is high; the line for migrants looking for a better life is long. Confusing the two only muddles the debate.
Ultimately, Congress must do its job by implementing immigration reform that’s in the best interest of the United States and its citizens. Until then, the Trump administration is doing what it can, and making a difference.
Summer is over for both the House and the Senate. They’ll return to find that the White House hasn’t been idle.
The Honorable John N. Hostettler is the Vice President for Federal Affairs for States Trust at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. He served in the U.S. House from 1995 to 2007 representing Indiana’s Eighth District.

HOSTETTLER: Congress Has Been On Recess, But The Trump Administration Has Been Busy

Illegal Immigration

Immigration

Southern Border

Trump Administration

White House

On July 3, Iraq veteran and Michigan businessman Peter Meijer released a <a href="https://youtu.be/u70P_b_gxGo">video</a> announcing his candidacy for the House of Representatives. He will be facing incumbent Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI) in the 2020 primary.
Meijer is one of five candidates taking on Rep. Amash, who has served in Congress since the Tea Party wave in 2011.
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/u70P_b_gxGo" width="720" height="385" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></div>
On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to speak with Meijer, and discuss a broad range of topics, including his reason for entering the race, his work with veteran organizations, his views on President Trump, and much more.
The following is part one of our interview. Parts two and three will be released Saturday and Sunday on The Daily Wire.
<blockquote>DW: Including Rep. Amash, there are already five people in the race. What made you feel like being number six was something that you should do?
MEIJER: I&#8217;ve always had a very strong service mentality, starting from joining the military after high school and spending time with the Army in Iraq, to serving in the veteran&#8217;s community as an advocate on the education side, to working in disaster response and also serving in humanitarian aid missions overseas. So, I&#8217;ve always been looking to get more involved on the political side. I started getting involved with the veteran&#8217;s Super PAC called With Honor. That was a bipartisan group that was recruiting and supporting principled, post-9/11 veterans on both sides of the aisle, and I also had come out strongly working on John James&#8217; early campaign about two years ago. So, I&#8217;ve been right alongside there, and very involved.
West Michigan&#8217;s third congressional district is where I was born and raised. I&#8217;m a fourth generation West Michigander. It&#8217;s a place I deeply love. And I want to make sure that we have strong, stable, and effective representation.
DW: Do you think that your work with the &#8220;With Honor&#8221; PAC could hurt you with conservative voters because there was advocacy on both sides of the aisle?
MEIJER: I mean, if you take a bipartisan organization, chop it down the middle, and then only focus on the half you don&#8217;t like, it looks negative, right? But I&#8217;m a very firm believer that I don&#8217;t care what side of the aisle you&#8217;re on. I&#8217;m a Republican, and proud that With Honor played a pivotal role in electing conservative combat veterans like Dan Crenshaw, but if I have to be across the table from a Democrat, I would much rather have that Democrat be someone I know has put the country first in the past, understands some of those core military values, and will be, I think, more open and reasonable than a member of &#8220;the Squad.&#8221;
DW: What is your philosophy on foreign policy?
MEIJER: I believe we need to have a strong diplomatic engagement, but I am firmly with the President when it comes to viewing our conflicts overseas right now as wasteful, destructive, and not in the best interests of this country or promoting our national defense.
DW: You&#8217;re an advocate for veterans. How would you go about attempting to fix the VA system? It&#8217;s been in the spotlight since at least 2013, and six years down the line, little seems to have been done that&#8217;s been effective.
MEIJER: The President&#8217;s made some very good progress on the VA Accountability Act. I was actually in the room when that bill was signed. We just need to really keep the pressure up on some of these institutions, like the VA, that have a critical charge, that have the same problems that any large administrative, bureaucratic system has. You have some individuals there who are fantastic and are dedicated to the mission and doing everything they can, but then the more that you take a sort of ruleset and you force everyone within an organization to apply a rule, and not be able to use their best discretion and judgment, then you&#8217;re left with a lot of the incredible frustrations that I know a lot of my fellow veterans have faced when dealing with the VA.
So, I don&#8217;t subscribe to the kind of VA-bashing narrative. I think it&#8217;s never been a perfect organization. We need to keep working on it so that it aims toward perfection, but that&#8217;s going to be a work in progress. I don&#8217;t know that there&#8217;s a silver bullet, but I know this is something the President cares deeply about, and he&#8217;s put a lot of effort into trying to make improvements there. And frankly, I&#8217;m open to all suggestions, and looking forward to helping him continue to improve upon the reforms that have been made.
DW: Are there any specific solutions that you would bring to the table?
MEIJER: I&#8217;ve been mostly involved on the educational side. On the education side, you actually act at the intersection of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Education, and then occasionally with the Department of Labor on a few things. And on the education side there&#8217;s a lot more going well than going poorly. To me, we have a broader need for some civil service reform when it comes to the way that employment is handled within a lot of these bureaucratic organizations.
I hate the idea of any federal government agency having a &#8220;jobs program&#8221; mentality, that their goal is to employ people, and once you&#8217;re in, you&#8217;re golden, and you get insulated from any criticism. To the same extent that the VA Accountability Act introduced more discretion and flexibility at the management level in terms of hiring and firing, promoting and otherwise holding folks to account for their performance, I would like to see that spread more widely. But I don&#8217;t necessarily have any one policy or legislative agenda item on that front. I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s a silver bullet. I think it&#8217;s really in the oversight capacity that the best work is going to be done.
DW: What are your thoughts on the current state of politics? In your announcement, video, you spoke about politicians fighting on social media, specifically Twitter. Do you believe that social media or Twitter should be sort of off-limits? What’s your position on that aspect of politics today?
MEIJER: I think there&#8217;s a strong temptation for a lot of politicians to become talking heads and to build up a personal brand – and I think oftentimes, that comes at the expense of focusing on their legislative and oversight responsibilities. The idea that if you don&#8217;t have a couple hundred-thousand Twitter followers, that you&#8217;re not effective in your job, I mean, it gets back to a saying that I really enjoy, which is, &#8220;there is a difference between heat and light.&#8221; What shines bright and what actually provides warmth are often two very different things, and we need to be focusing on outcomes. We need to be focusing on results. And when we put the rhetoric ahead of actually delivering, or when we discount, as has happened to the President all too often, when you discount results because you don&#8217;t like the rhetoric – I would much rather have a better end state than really give too much credence to folks who complain about how that end was achieved.
It’s that sort of empty focus, howling into the abyss, a simple emotional response rather than actually approaching issues rationally and saying, &#8220;On a lot of these fronts, whether it&#8217;s national security or the economy, we may disagree on some elements of the outcome, but I think we all agree that a strong economy is better than a weak economy; good national defense is better than being in a position where our adversaries have an advantage over us.&#8221; And oftentimes, social media and a 24-hour news cycle just inflames the points of difference and makes it harder to arrive at a point of agreement.
DW: There are a lot of elected Republicans who are conservative and who admire some of the policies and initiatives that the president has implemented, but who are afraid or unwilling to call him out over some of the things that he says or over a policy that he implements that might be antithetical to conservatism. Are you willing to call the president out when he says offensive things or enacts policies that are antithetical to conservatism?
MEIJER: I keep a very open mind. I think the amount of times I&#8217;ve watched a press conference by the President and I&#8217;ve seen the same words get put into completely contrary context, depending on what side someone&#8217;s coming from – I mean, look at the recent press gathering where he was talking about China. He made kind of a joking reference on, &#8220;Oh, I&#8217;m the chosen one when it comes to China.&#8221; And all of a sudden, the left-wing erupts, &#8220;Oh, he&#8217;s a megalomaniac,&#8221; and all this. I mean, it&#8217;s just this absurd obsession with whatever narrative you want to project; you cherry pick words and you cherry pick actions and kind of shove it in there.
I&#8217;m sure the President and I are going to have disagreements. The way that I view it, a representative should be advocating for legislation and policy outcomes that are in the best interests of their district. And when it comes to a disagreement, you handle that with a sense of good faith. You handle that with a sense of having a shared goal and a shared outcome.
For example, the President proposed a budget that took away funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. That&#8217;s something that&#8217;s very important to the people of West Michigan. Michigan has the third largest fishing economy in the country behind New York and Florida. It&#8217;s a $7 billion industry in this state. And instead of taking to Twitter – to the earlier social media point – instead of taking to Twitter and accusing the President of betraying the people of West Michigan, several Michigan Congressman, Representatives Huizenga, Bergman, and Moolenaar, reached out to the President, sat down with him, said, &#8220;Well, here&#8217;s why this funding is important.&#8221; The president listened and he restored it.
I think what we have to have is a spirit of good faith and a spirit of cooperation, not presumption of the worst case insinuation, and then moving from there. Instead, saying, &#8220;We all share the same outcome. We all have the same goal on a broad-picture mind. We&#8217;re all Americans. We&#8217;re all trying to drive for what&#8217;s in the best interest of the country.&#8221; Start from that position of cooperation and good will, and then work together.</blockquote>
Stay tuned for parts two and three of my interview with candidate Peter Meijer, where we discuss China, trade, the border crisis, the rising popularity of &#8220;socialism,&#8221; and more. Part two will go live on Saturday, and part three will go live on Sunday.

Peter Meijer

INTERVIEW (Part I): Iraq Vet Peter Meijer Talks Challenging Justin Amash, Veterans’ Affairs, Trump, And The Current State Of Politics

Republican Party

Former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) criticized members of the United States Congress on Sunday for trying to solve a recent spike in mass shootings with ineffectual legislation rather than evaluating how their own divisive rhetoric has contributed to the heated political environment.
“Our hearts break every time we hear of mass shootings, but I’m afraid though that it’s more symptomatic of a decline in our culture,” DeMint said while appearing on <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/second-amendment-gun-control-red-flag-jim-demint">Fox News</a>. “I’m not sure any new laws are going to help that.”
<div class="embed video fluid-video">Watch the latest video at <a href="https://www.foxnews.com">foxnews.com</a></div>
“Congress could do more than anything else by setting a better example of how to treat people and how to treat each other,” he continued. “They’re probably the biggest instigators of hate and racism and violence in the country right now themselves. So, they need to look inward at just how they behave.”
DeMint’s comments come nearly a month after two back-to-back mass shootings took the lives of more than 70 victims and injured dozens of others. In the wake of the deadly events, President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50246/watch-trump-urges-nation-condemn-white-supremacy-molly-prince">addressed the nation</a> and called for bipartisan cooperation in determining potential solutions to the recent slew of violence.
Democrats swiftly blamed the president for inciting the mass shootings and accused him of promoting white supremacy in the country. They subsequently urged lawmakers to enact a host of anti-gun legislation such as universal background checks, banning magazines above the standard capacity, and even requiring gun owners to turn over their so-called assault weapons to the government.
“As far as laws go, more federal laws are very unlikely to help. We already have background checks,” DeMint said. “Where we see improvement is at the state and community level where states are doing more to protect buildings and facilities, they’re doing more to try to deal with drug use and mental illness.”
“I’m not sure what the president is going to recommend,” he continued. “But, I am confident that Congress is not the one who can solve this problem except by setting a better example of how we should behave and our civility as a nation.”
Trump, however, suggested imposing gun-control measures such as expanding background checks and red flag laws, which allow for temporary gun confiscation for individuals deemed a danger to oneself or others. Red flag laws, however, have been largely unpopular with Republicans for their inherent lack of due process.
“Fifteen states already have [red flag laws] and we see that they’re not working. They actually give someone who has a grudge against you the ability to send police to your house to take your guns away, to drag you into court,” DeMint said. “It costs you thousands of dollars and for the most part, it’s all been against law-abiding citizens who haven’t created any crime.”
“We have background checks as I’ve mentioned. When they say ‘universal background checks,’ what they’re talking about is a national registry so the government knows who owns guns and what guns they own,” he continued. “But we’ve seen how the government can misuse data like IRS information, and it’s not going to affect law-abiding citizens except by taking their rights away.”
“We do need to look at the problem though,” DeMint added. “We cannot ignore it.”

Jim DeMint President of the Heritage Foundation

WATCH: Former GOP Senator Slams Congress: They&#8217;re Probably ‘The Biggest Instigators Of Hate And Racism’

Gun Control

South Carolina

The &#8220;Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions&#8221; (BDS) movement is a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46068/hammer-yes-united-states-was-right-deny-entry-bds-josh-hammer">global Jew-hating endeavor</a> that seeks to economically, diplomatically, militarily, and culturally ostracize, undermine, and (yes) destroy the world&#8217;s sole Jewish state. It is vile and evil and ought to be solemnly and unequivocally renounced by well-meaning people the world over Period.
And so the U.S. House of Representatives did, in fact, rise above the anti-Semites of the so-called House Democratic freshman <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/49515/hammer-aocs-squad-will-destroy-democrats-2020-josh-hammer">&#8220;Squad&#8221;</a> and recently condemned BDS in no uncertain terms. As The Daily Wire has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/49820/squad-splits-anti-bds-vote-media-conceals-how-two-ryan-saavedra">covered</a>, the anti-BDS resolution soared through the House on a 398–17 vote. The seventeen nay votes included a sole Republican, the libertarian-leaning Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who publicly provided a <a href="https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1154414842767400962?s=20">neat and easily defensible rationale</a> for his vote. One of Massie&#8217;s explanatory tweets, in particular, ought to now be highlighted for its prescience.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">In addition, H. Res. 246 calls for Israel to implement a so-called “two-state solution.” Rather than dictate to Israel what the U.S. believes is best for Israel, Congress should instead refrain from interfering with Israel’s own decisions regarding its foreign &amp; domestic policy.
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) <a href="https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1154414846810763264?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 25, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Last week, seemingly glomming onto Massie&#8217;s language, 21 conservative members of Israel&#8217;s parliament (the Knesset) <a href="https://www.jpost.com/American-Politics/Israeli-MKs-to-Congress-Thanks-but-BDS-bill-dangerous-for-Israel-598392">sent a terse letter</a> to thank the House for its anti-BDS resolution but also to chastise the body that the resolution&#8217;s pro-&#8220;two-state solution&#8221; language is a <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/right-wing-mks-to-congresspeople-2-state-solution-far-more-dangerous-than-bds/">&#8220;grave error.&#8221;</a> &#8220;We would like to make our position clear,&#8221; the letter <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/right-wing-mks-to-congresspeople-2-state-solution-far-more-dangerous-than-bds/">reads</a>, &#8220;that the establishment of a Palestinian state would be far more dangerous to Israel than BDS.&#8221; As The Jerusalem Post <a href="https://www.jpost.com/American-Politics/Israeli-MKs-to-Congress-Thanks-but-BDS-bill-dangerous-for-Israel-598392">reported</a>, the letter represented &#8220;a direct appeal to members of Congress to assess the dangers of a Jihadist Palestinian state formed in the heart of Israel.&#8221;
Good for the 21 Knesset members.
The &#8220;two-state solution,&#8221; the misbegotten Oslo Accords-initiated process by which the liberal Jewish state of Israel is expected to carve an Iran/Muslim Brotherhood-funded stronghold out of its tiny New Jersey-sized nation-state, has always been nothing other than a left-wing Ivory Tower fairy tale. According to the (<a href="https://mosaicmagazine.com/response/israel-zionism/2019/07/the-many-incoherences-and-hypocrisies-of-international-law-on-jerusalem/">legally meaningless</a>, under settled international law) &#8220;1967 borders,&#8221; around which Oslo is effectively based, the Jewish state is to be nine miles wide at its narrowest point — a wildly indefensible result that has led many in Israel&#8217;s military and political establishment to deride it as &#8220;Auschwitz borders.&#8221; Moreover, Judea and Samaria — the biblical Jewish heartland which would be transferred to the terrorist PLO (and thereby made fully Judenrein), pursuant to Oslo — is geographically indispensable for the Jewish state&#8217;s security. The hilly terrain of Judea and Samaria provides a direct means to look down upon Jerusalem and Israel&#8217;s Tel Aviv-centric coastal plains alike.
In other words, what the thumb-sucking &#8220;two-state solution&#8221; sycophants really want is for Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas to be able to stare down and fire genocidal rockets down upon Jerusalem and Tel Aviv with impunity. That is hardly an exaggeration.
Moreover, the reality is that the Palestinian-Arabs simply do not morally deserve a state of their own right now. As I <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/48018/hammer-jared-kushner-right-palestinians-do-not-josh-hammer">wrote</a> for The Daily Wire in June:
<blockquote>The simple reality is that the Palestinian-Arabs are not anywhere remotely close to being deserving of their own state. They not only fail to reject jihadism — they actively embrace and inculcate it as a virtuous way of life. They not only fail to recognize Israel as a Jewish state — they seek to destroy it via both the sword and intellectually disingenuous &#8220;right of return&#8221; demographics alike. They not only do not invest in the societal building blocks of rudimentary economic and civil institutions — they actively invest, instead, in the <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/think-tank-terrorists-to-be-paid-as-pa-allots-nis-1-2b-for-inmates-martyrs/">subsidization of Jew-killing jihadi</a> &#8220;martyrs.&#8221;
In truth, the restive Palestinian-Arab populace is among the least sympathetic in the entire world. There is a good reason why so many of the Arab world&#8217;s leading nations, such as Saudi Arabia, are <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/saudi-paper-urges-palestinians-to-look-at-trump-peace-plan/">increasingly unsympathetic</a> to purported Palestinian plight and are instead interested in <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-43632905">forging covert geopolitical ties</a> with Israel. In the grand geopolitical scheme of things, the failure of the Palestinian-Arabs to carve their own terror state out of the Jewish biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria morally ranks somewhere far below the comparably uninteresting sovereignty disputes involving Western Sahara and Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus.</blockquote>
Yishai Fleisher, the spokesman for the Jewish community of Hebron and a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/authors/yishai-fleisher">Daily Wire contributor</a> who helped promote the letter, provided this exclusive comment: &#8220;The pro-Israel community has a big opportunity to move away from the Oslo two-state paradigm which has brought nothing but bloodshed for Jews and suppression for the Arabs under the Palestinian Authority (PA). Things on the ground have changed and so has the political reality. It&#8217;s time to reexamine the failed thinking of the past and to move away from the empowerment of a corrupt and Jihadist PA. Israel&#8217;s friends in Congress need to know that there are better other options, in which Israel will remain the sovereign in Judea, and which will lead to coexistence and security.&#8221;
Indeed, it is not as if alternative solutions do not exist. They <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46653/hammer-mitt-romney-dead-wrong-claim-there-no-josh-hammer">assuredly do exist</a>.
There ought to be no mollycoddling of the kleptocratic Jew-haters of the Palestinian Authority. To the extent the House&#8217;s recent anti-BDS resolution engaged in such unfortunate shenanigans, it ought to be condemned — and the 21 brave Knesset members should be praised for their doing exactly that.

Israeli Flag

HAMMER: Yes, A Palestinian State Is ‘Far More Dangerous To Israel’ Than The BDS Movement

Foreign Policy

Israel

Middle East

Palestinians

Special Counsel Robert Mueller was hit with criticism for his bumbling congressional testimony on Wednesday morning. Politicos from across the aisle highlighted Mueller’s slow draw to questioning and constant need for citations of his own report, sparking frustration from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers questioning him. The awkward moments were quickly compiled into a supercut video from <a href="https://news.grabien.com/story-confused-looking-mueller-repeatedly-asks-questions-be-repeat">Grabien Media</a>, which can be viewed below.
Mueller’s lackluster performance prompted Fox News’ Chris Wallace, who can oftentimes be critical of Republicans and President Donald Trump, to question if Mueller was actually fully “in charge” of the report.
&#8220;This has been a disaster for the Democrats, and I think it’s been a disaster for the reputation of Robert Mueller,” <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/49834/disaster-chris-wallace-rips-democrats-robert-ryan-saavedra">said</a> Wallace.
&#8220;He has been attacked a number of times and you would think that almost anybody else would have defended his own integrity and the integrity of the investigation, and over and over Mueller just sits silent and allows the attacks from the Republicans to sweep over him and says nothing,&#8221; the host continued. &#8220;I think it does raise questions about the degree to which he actually was in charge and in control of this report because he doesn’t seem very much in control or in charge of what the final report was.&#8221;
At another troubling point during the testimony, Mueller said he wasn’t familiar with Fusion GPS, the firm behind the infamous “Steele Dossier” that helped spark the investigation into alleged Russian &#8220;collusion&#8221; with Trump’s 2016 campaign.
“Robert Mueller literally just said he wasn&#8217;t familiar with Fusion GPS. My Lord. My Lord,” said Mollie Hemingway, author and Fox News contributor.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Robert Mueller literally just said he wasn&#8217;t familiar with Fusion GPS. My Lord. My Lord.
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) <a href="https://twitter.com/MZHemingway/status/1154021219970297856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 24, 2019</a></blockquote>
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As noted by The Daily Wire’s Ashe Schow, Mueller was unable to answer why the firm was not mentioned in his report. “Despite the fact that the Steele Dossier was mentioned throughout Mueller’s final report, the origins of that report were not. Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion and a key player in the creating the ‘evidence’ against Trump, was not mentioned once. Fusion’s involvement in the alleged Russia collusion was also not investigated,” she <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/49836/mueller-cant-explain-why-fusion-gps-and-glenn-ashe-schow">wrote</a>.
Moreover, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/robert-mueller-house-testimony-tracker-july-2019-n1033166">according</a> to NBC News, Mueller “deflected or declined to answer questions” during the hearing at least 106 times.
“Mueller was slow to react to questions,” <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-confused-performance-by-mueller-raises-questions-about-handling-of-investigation">commented</a> The Washington Examiner’s Byron York. “He frequently asked for questions to be repeated. He sometimes appeared confused. He did not appear to be conversant with some issues in the investigation. He did not, or could not, put together detailed answers even to those questions he agreed to address.”
York noted that reporters who’ve covered Mueller “for years” noticed a change, too:
<blockquote>“I haven&#8217;t seen a performance quite like this from Mueller,&#8221; the New York Times&#8217; Noah Weiland said in an online discussion. &#8220;In 12 years as FBI director, he gave plenty of clipped responses. But more often than not he was more rhetorically agile than anyone on the committees that were questioning him. And there was rarely a time when he even paused for a second after a question was asked. There was little searching in his eyes for answers. He rarely looked at notes. … This is delicate to say, but Mueller, whom I deeply respect, has not publicly testified before Congress in at least six years. And he does not appear as sharp as he was then.”</blockquote>
WATCH:
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Montage: Confused-Looking Mueller Repeatedly Asks for Questions To Be Repeated <a href="https://t.co/dx9daSuA0l">https://t.co/dx9daSuA0l</a> <a href="https://t.co/762cCukD1f">pic.twitter.com/762cCukD1f</a>
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) <a href="https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1154068013567660032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 24, 2019</a></blockquote>
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WATCH: ‘Confused Mueller’ Supercut Video Hits Internet After Bumbling Testimony

Conservatives are rushing to embrace socialist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez&#8217;s latest Republican challenger Scherie Murray, presently making the rounds on Fox News and posing for photos with members of the Trump family. Murray seems to take all of AOC&#8217;s identity politics cards off the table. She&#8217;s black. She&#8217;s female. She&#8217;s an immigrant. All politically helpful qualities — but is she a Republican?
In its rush to identify a suitable opponent for AOC, the Right seems to have neglected an important question: what does Murray actually believe? She admitted to the New York Post that she voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, and she doesn&#8217;t appear to have changed her politics much in the intervening seven years. Last June, Murray congratulated Ocasio-Cortez on her victory over Democratic incumbent Joe Crowley. &#8220;Congratulations Alexandria,&#8221; she tweeted. &#8220;#Queens is headed in a new direction and It&#8217;s [sic] time for new leadership. #Yes.&#8221;
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Congratulations Alexandria. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Queens?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Queens</a> is headed in a new direction and It’s time for new leadership. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Yes?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Yes</a>. <a href="https://t.co/Jsk73JuMGW">https://t.co/Jsk73JuMGW</a>
— Scherie Murray (@ScherieMurray) <a href="https://twitter.com/ScherieMurray/status/1011798370258702343?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 27, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Murray might have pleaded ignorance of Ocasio-Cortez&#8217;s radicalism but for the headline of the CNN news <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/26/politics/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-joe-crowley-new-york-14-primary/index.html">article</a> she posted alongside her congratulations: &#8220;A 28-year-old Democratic Socialist just ousted a powerful, 10-term congressman in New York.&#8221; Murray celebrated the victory of an avowed socialist over a more moderate Democrat just twelve months ago. How does Murray explain her political about-face?
&#8220;I was hopeful when AOC won,&#8221; she tweeted on Friday. &#8220;She took on a Democratic political machine &amp; won. But nothing has changed since. Why? Bc she’s only been focused on fame &amp; politics of division &amp; hate. We deserve &amp; expected better. That’s why I’m running.&#8221; How precisely did Murray &#8220;hope&#8221; and &#8220;expect&#8221; the election of a radical socialist would &#8220;change&#8221; the country? Murray objects to AOC, not for her socialist ideology, but for spending too much time on Instagram and not enough fulfilling her campaign promises. Had AOC succeeded in enacting her radical agenda, might Murray be endorsing her re-election bid rather than running against her?
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">I was hopeful when AOC won. She took on a Democratic political machine &amp; won. But nothing has changed since. Why? Bc she’s only been focused on fame &amp; politics of division &amp; hate. We deserve &amp; expected better. That’s why I’m running. Join us! <a href="https://t.co/Iiuut7nZ8x">https://t.co/Iiuut7nZ8x</a> <a href="https://t.co/CHUxxe9Ekg">pic.twitter.com/CHUxxe9Ekg</a>
— Scherie Murray (@ScherieMurray) <a href="https://twitter.com/ScherieMurray/status/1152284504205213698?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 19, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Murray didn&#8217;t acquit herself any better on Sean Hannity&#8217;s show. &#8220;How would you describe yourself politically?&#8221; asked Hannity. &#8220;How do you feel about President Trump in the two-plus years he&#8217;s been in office?&#8221;
Murray evaded both questions. &#8220;Well, I migrated here from Jamaica,&#8221; she replied. &#8220;And I know firsthand what it is to not just be an immigrant but to go through the process, right? And so what do I think about what the president is doing? I think that the president is delivering on his promises when he got elected.&#8221; She neglected both to offer her opinion of President Trump&#8217;s delivering on those promises and to describe her own political views.
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Perhaps Murray has changed her views in the twelve months since she celebrated the victory of the socialist she now hopes to unseat. If so, she owes voters an explanation of her recently egregious judgment. Until Murray articulates how and why she so suddenly embraced conservatism, conservatives ought to refrain from embracing her.

Is AOC’s Republican Challenger Actually A Republican?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Democratic Party

The following is satirical.
In a fiery congressional hearing yesterday, U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings lambasted Department of Homeland Security Chief Kevin McAleenan for actually enforcing the border laws that Congress has passed.
Working himself up to the sort of extraordinary pitch of righteous indignation usually only seen in Elijah Cummings, Cummings thundered at the DHS Chief, &#8220;How can you sit there in this the people’s house and defend the fact that you are actually enforcing the laws we passed? Do you think the people sent us here to make laws that enforcement agencies enforce? Have you no decency, sir? Have you at last no decency?&#8221;
As if to press home his point in the most dramatic way possible, Congressman Cummings then proceeded to sit on his ass doing nothing, thus demonstrating to a grateful nation exactly how a congressman is supposed to behave.
Congresswoman Alexandria Occasional Cortex also joined in attacking enforcement agencies by releasing pictures of herself sobbing with grief over the border while wearing a sleek white pants suit that accentuated her lovely figure and a pair of high heels that made her legs look fabulous. Speaking to a bevy of male reporters who were standing under her balcony playing Besame Mucho on guitars while holding roses in their teeth, AOC said, &#8220;When we look back in history to when so many bad historical things happened that I don’t even know what they are, we see that Congress has a sacred duty to speak out against all those who would enforce its laws or else there’ll be more bad stuff like Hitler and smallpox.&#8221; Several reporters swooned after her statement and had to be sent home with a souvenir photo.
Reverend Patrick Conroy, the chaplain of the House of Representatives, offered a prayer over the house, saying—and this is a real quote: &#8220;In your most holy name, I now cast out all spirits of darkness from this chamber.”
When he was finished, the House was suddenly empty.

Congress Condemns DHS For Enforcing Laws Passed By Congress [Satire]

Elijah Cummings

It’s spending season in Washington, and once again, funding for the troops is being used as a political bargaining chip.
Congress hasn’t passed any of the 12 spending bills required to fund the government by September 30, and the clock is ticking. Democrats are <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-debt-budget/pelosi-sets-spending-demands-for-two-year-budget-deal-idUSKCN1U900Y">trying to finagle</a> a two-year spending deal that will drastically increase spending and open the door to negotiations on a host of issues where they’d like to confront President Donald Trump. Senate Republicans, in a face-slapping move to the president, are <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/03/republicans-white-house-budget-plan-1398306">inclined to agree</a> with them.
The White House is not as eager to cut a deal with Democrats. Rather, they’ve floated a one-year spending extension (known in Washington-speak as a continuing resolution, or a &#8220;CR&#8221;), which freezes spending at current levels, and doesn’t allow Democrats to block their efforts on deregulation or roll back critical pro-life policies.
Congress and the White House should be cutting spending from last year’s levels, not freezing them. But Senate Republicans, <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/450719-mcconnell-dismisses-one-year-stopgap-bill-floated-by-white-house">led by</a> Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), are using the military as a pawn to spend even more.
A one-year CR, <a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060709805">according to McConnell</a>, will cut funding for the troops by $71 billion. Other Senate Republicans have <a href="https://www.perdue.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/letter.pdf">pointed to</a> the sequester — legally required spending cuts — as a reason to oppose the White House plan.
Even though there is every indication that the White House is taking a reasonable approach to these negotiations, the insatiable spenders in Congress are refusing to even engage with the White House. Moreover, their comments are a misrepresentation of what the White House is proposing and ignorant of how these exact same issues have been handled in the past.
First and foremost, the military pay increase required by law will go into effect, regardless. It’s dealt with in the National Defense Authorization Act, which has already passed both the House and the Senate.
But most importantly, the White House appears prepared to sign a bill that gives the Department of Defense (&#8220;DOD&#8221;) flexibility to spend money where need be — the same way past CRs have provided for bomb-resistant vehicles in Iraq and nuclear submarines moving through the acquisition process.
If appropriators, the members of Congress in charge of spending, are really concerned about defense spending, they’ll give DOD the necessary flexibility in a CR — the same way many of them did in 2011 and 2012, when DOD was under a CR for 279 days.
But there are other critical factors for why a two-year spending strategy is both a negligent and careless way to make policy for Republicans.
The Congressional Budget Office recently <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/publication/55331">released</a> its long-term spending outlook for the next ten years, and it’s a doozy. Spending as a percentage of gross domestic product (&#8220;GDP&#8221;) rises to 20.7% this year and will rise to 28% of GDP by 2049. Only three years (the war-time years of 1944 and 1945, as well as 2000) have had higher spending-to-GDP ratios. Meanwhile, the share of the debt held by the public will rise from 78% of GDP in 2019 to 144% in 2049.
The need for a reduction — or at the very least, a slowdown — in spending is obvious. Unfortunately, the White House isn’t aggressively demanding spending cuts. Rather, the White House’s proposal will freeze spending for one year, which still results in $34 billion in savings as compared to what the House has already passed. Contrast this to the two-year spending strategy pushed by Senate Republicans, which requires a backroom deal with Democrats — who will not agree to anything without a massive increase in spending.
Equally as important, <a href="http://conservativeactionproject.com/conservatives-to-congress-no-two-year-caps-deal/">leading conservatives</a> have pointed to the numerous policy provisions that would be put at risk by opening negotiations with Democrats. Key gains, from deregulatory policies that have saved American taxpayers <a href="https://www.americanactionforum.org/insight/two-months-to-go-regulatory-budget-progress/">millions of dollars</a> and pro-life policies that prevent taxpayer dollars from being spent on abortion, to the <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/05/trump-administration-imposes-new-restrictions-on-fetal-tissue-research-1354165">recent decision</a> to prevent taxpayer funding on research from aborted baby parts, will all be put at risk by a Democratic Party that almost exclusively supports abortion <a href="https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/03/getting-the-party-of-infanticide-on-the-record/">up until, and after</a>, the moment of birth.
With a Republican majority in the Senate and a Republican in the White House, the party is well positioned to force Democrats to the table on their terms — not cede to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), as Mitch McConnell appears eager to do.
“No politician has ever lost office for spending money,” McConnell <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/his-own-fiefdom-mulvaney-builds-an-empire-for-the-right-wing-as-trumps-chief-of-staff/2019/07/14/85c5ebdc-942b-11e9-b570-6416efdc0803_story.html?utm_term=.08d066fc4ed7">reportedly</a> told the president in the Oval Office last month.
This is absurd. Bloated government spending was the cause célèbre that resulted in wave elections in the Reagan Revolution in 1980, the Gingrich Revolution in 1994, and the Tea Party wave in 2010. The 2010 election should be particularly memorable for McConnell — as the election where his consiglieri, big-spending appropriator Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT), lost his primary to a fiscally conservative upstart named Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT).
Once the curtain is pulled back, it’s clear that Senate Republicans are offering the same tired arguments for increasing spending and, in doing so, are giving Nancy Pelosi and House progressives the opportunity to undo key policy gains from a Republican administration.
Once again, the troops are being used as a political football to carry other bloated, unnecessary spending. Who wins with a two-year spending deal strategy? K street lobbyists, establishment Republicans, and progressive Democrats. Who loses? The taxpayers, who get fleeced. Again.
In other words, it’s business as usual in Washington. The Trump administration’s proposed one-year CR doesn’t go nearly far enough, but it’s far preferable to the proposal being floated by the big spenders on Capitol Hill.
Rachel Bovard is policy director at <a href="http://www.conservativepartnership.org">Conservative Partnership Institute</a>.

BOVARD: GOP Must Stop Using The Military As An Excuse To Justify Massive Spending

Capitol Hill

Congressional Budget Office (CBO)

Department of Defense

The U.S. House proved on Friday that both Democrats and Republicans can indeed set aside political differences to do something good for the country. An overwhelming House majority passed replenishments for the 9/11 Victims Compensation Funds.
&#8220;The House on Friday overwhelmingly passed a bill to reauthorize the compensation fund for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks,&#8221; reports <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house-passes-9-11-victims-fund-bill">Fox News</a>. &#8220;It comes as the $7 billion 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund is being depleted and has cut benefit payments by up to 70 percent. The bill — which passed in the House 402-12 — would ensure the fund can pay benefits for 70 years.&#8221;
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has already agreed to bring the bill to a floor vote once it hits the Senate. In a statement on Friday, he praised the first responders for their intense heroism on that fateful day in 2001.
&#8220;The first responders who rushed into danger on September 11th, 2001 are the very definition of American heroes and patriots,&#8221; McConnell said. &#8220;The Senate has never forgotten the Victim Compensation Fund and we aren’t about to start now. Nothing about our shared goal to provide for these heroes is remotely partisan. We will consider this important legislation soon.&#8221;
The 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund was created to aid the first responders who led the rescue effort on Ground Zero for several months after the Twin Towers collapsed on 9/11 — a tragedy that caused many permanent illnesses. <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/victim-compensation-fund-jon-stewart-lashes-out-at-house-hearing-on-911-responders-bill-you-should-be-ashamed-of/">CBS News</a> provides some background on the fund:
<blockquote>Congress passed the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act in 2010 &#8230; The act was reauthorized in 2015 for 90 years. But a portion of the law — the Victim Compensation Fund — was only funded for five years, through the end of 2020. The fund aimed to provide necessary financial support for the thousands who suffered serious medical issues, including a spate of cancer diagnoses, after the 2001 attacks.
Dr. Jacqueline Moline, Chair of Occupational Medicine, Epidemiology and Prevention at Hofstra&#8217;s School of Medicine, testified before the panel that currently, more than 11,000 types of cancer have been reported since the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/remembering-9-11/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http="">attacks on 9/11</a>, ranging from <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-is-glioblastoma-cancer-john-mccain-diagnosis/" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http="">glioblastoma</a>, an aggressive form of brain cancer, to debilitating lung cancers.
Several members of the New York congressional delegation, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler and Rep. Carolyn Maloney, both Democrats, and GOP Rep. Peter King, have introduced the Never Forget the Heroes Act of 2019 to reauthorize the Victim Compensation Fund.</blockquote>
Former &#8220;Daily Show&#8221; host Jon Stewart has been one of the biggest outspoken advocates of the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund and recently gave an impassioned speech to Congress for playing political football with it — singling out Republicans and Democrats, in the process.
&#8220;As I sit here today, I can’t help but think what an incredible metaphor this room is for the entire process that getting health care and benefits for 9/11 first responders has come to,&#8221; Stewart said. &#8220;Behind me, a filled room of 9/11 first responders, and in front of me, a nearly empty Congress. Sick and dying, they brought themselves down here to speak to no one.&#8221;

House Overwhelmingly Approves Bill To Replenish 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund

News broke last night that former Russiagate special counsel Robert Mueller has agreed to testify next month after a subpoena was issued by the U.S. House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees. As Fox News <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/robert-mueller-agrees-to-testify-before-joint-house-panel-july-17-after-subpoena-nadler-and-schiff-announce">reported</a>:
<blockquote>
Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller has agreed to testify before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees on July 17 after they subpoenaed the special counsel Tuesday, according to the committees&#8217; chairmen, Reps. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., and Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
Congressional Democrats have fought to get access to Mueller and his unredacted report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether President Trump obstructed justice. Weeks of negotiations between House Democrats and the Justice Department ultimately ended with the subpoena.
</blockquote>
Interestingly, as Fox News also notes, the subpoena is best described as a &#8220;&#8216;friendly&#8217; subpoena,&#8221; or &#8220;one that in essence had been planned&#8221; already. 
Famed Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, who has emerged as one of the Trump administration&#8217;s strongest legal defenders in the public square, immediately took Reps. Nadler and Schiff to task for the subpoena. According to Dershowitz, Democrats are &#8220;shooting themselves in the foot&#8221; by calling Mueller to testify. Also per <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/alan-dershowitz-robert-mueller-testify-ingraham">Fox News</a>:
<blockquote>
Democrats will regret issuing a subpoena to former Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who agreed to testify later this summer, according to Alan Dershowitz.
Mueller cannot refuse to answer questions from Republicans not covered by &#8220;privilege,&#8221; Dershowitz claimed on Fox News&#8217; &#8220;The Ingraham Angle.&#8221;
&#8220;I&#8217;m trying to stop them from shooting themselves in the foot,&#8221; he said.
</blockquote>
The Mueller report, which centered on Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible subsequent obstruction of justice allegedly committed by President Donald Trump, was released in April. As The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46498/trump-win-support-impeachment-drops-under-40-emily-zanotti">reported</a> shortly after the release of the report, the generally lackluster nature of the report&#8217;s findings resulted in support for presidential impeachment dropping to under 40%:
<blockquote>
Overall, only 37% of voters across the board now support impeaching the president, down five points from January. But among Democrats, support for impeachment has dropped by double digits &#8212; 12% &#8212; since the Mueller report was published, down from nearly 75% of Democratic voters to 62%. &#8220;Independents,&#8221; who will be key to a Trump re-election victory, responded even better than Americans at large: only 36% now believe Trump should be impeached.
</blockquote>
At the time, I was strongly critical of the warped nature of the Mueller report&#8217;s conclusion that Trump was &#8220;not exonerate[d],&#8221; and elaborated in a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46192/hammer-mueller-reports-flawed-conclusion-warps-josh-hammer">Daily Wire op-ed</a>:
<blockquote>
If a prosecutor does not have the evidence to formally bring forward charges against an individual, then he ought to not equivocate. The prosecutor simply ought to state that he does not, in fact, have that evidence and that there will therefore be no charges filed. Period.
With Kavanaugh, the Left threw away thousands of years of &#8220;innocent until proven guilty&#8221; civilizational norms, but at least it occurred within a context of a political judgment. The extension of that discarding of the &#8220;innocent until proven guilty&#8221; civilizational norm to the legal realm ought to be downright harrowing for anyone who cares about resisting authoritarianism. It amounts to nothing less than the complete inversion of one of the most foundational tenets of our Anglo-American legal order. And it ought to be stridently and unequivocally rebutted, lest it perniciously spread any further.
</blockquote>

robert_mueller_gi_0

Mueller Is Now Set To Testify To Congress Next Month

Alan Dershowitz

Russia

Congress is doing such a bang-up job managing the country that it&#8217;s considering asking itself for a pay raise.
Democrats in the House are beginning to put together budget requests for 2020, <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/04/congress-pay-raise-1353195">Politico reports</a>, and they&#8217;re considering breaking the &#8220;decade-long&#8221; Congressional pay freeze, which has kept Congressional salaries at a modest $174,000 since the time of President Barack Obama&#8217;s tenure.
The request would end the pay freeze and give Members of Congress a $4,700-per-year boost in pay to keep their salaries &#8220;current&#8221; with what the market apparently demands for legislators.
Members of Congress say the pay bump is only fair, and that they&#8217;ve been forgoing cost-of-living increases for a decade, even though they are guaranteed regular bumps in pay to coincide with &#8220;inflation&#8221; and hikes in &#8220;cost of living&#8221; expenses. The team authoring the measure calls the raise &#8220;modest.&#8221;
&#8220;There is strong bipartisan support for these modest inflation adjustments,&#8221; a spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee told Politico, adding that if other Members of Congress feel the raise is unfair or untoward, there are avenues to block the pay increase.
&#8220;If members want to alter or eliminate the [cost-of-living adjustment], they should do so through the authorizing process &#8212; not appropriations bills,&#8221; he said.
The pay increase appears, so far, only in the House version of the budget &#8212; the one authored by a Democratic majority. The Senate is working on its own version of the budget, and coming to a compromise on the issue will likely take months. Budget negotiations are expected to begin when Congress returns from its summer break in September.
Democratic members of Congress have been vocal about the &#8220;privileged&#8221; and many of the 2020 Democratic presidential contenders are taking aim at the &#8220;1%&#8221; of wage earners they say do not pay their fair share in taxes.
The $174,000 Congressional salary isn&#8217;t exactly one-percenter territory, but it does put federal legislators in the top 5% of all wage earning households in the United States &#8212; and for many of them, it&#8217;s just chump change. Longtime members of Congress, like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), have net worths in the millions. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who is running on a platform of making the rich pay their &#8220;fair share,&#8221; has an estimated net worth somewhere between $5 million and $14.5 million, depending on what is calculated into her assets. Even Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), easily the most &#8220;socialist&#8221; member of Congress, has a net worth easily over a million.
But members of Congress have also been complaining about the pittance they&#8217;re receiving for doing what they believe is a tough but important job. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), for example,<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/americans-disagree-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-congress-pay-increase-poll-2019-3"> has routinely called for a bump in pay for federal legislators</a>.
&#8220;Members are paid more than avg &#8211; but job reqs 2 residences + we can&#8217;t take tax deductions for work costs,&#8221; Ocasio-Cortez tweeted back in March. &#8220;No one wants to be the one to bring up increases, so instead ppl take advantage of insider trading loopholes &amp; don&#8217;t close them for the extra cash.&#8221;
Unfortunately for Congress, most Americans don&#8217;t agree that their legislators deserve a higher salary. A Business Insider poll taken at the time Ocasio-Cortez was campaigning for higher wages for the downtrodden in the U.S. Capitol, found that a majority of Americans &#8212; 55% &#8212; believe Congressional salaries should be cut, not raised. Only around 9% of respondents said that they believe Congress makes too little.
A lot of that likely has to do with Congressional popularity. Right now, Congress has barely a 20% approval rating. The group regularly polls lower than cockroaches, Herpes, and Nickelback.

Congress Is Doing So Well, It&#8217;s Trying To Vote Itself A Pay Raise

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