Disgraced former Rep. Katie Hill (D-CA), who was the first woman in U.S. history to resign from Congress over a sex scandal, told ABC News on Thursday that she had to resign because of &#8220;biphobia.&#8221;
Hill made the remarks during an interview with &#8220;Good Morning America&#8221; that featured softball questions from host George Stephanopoulos, who used to work in the Clinton administration.
&#8220;Your story exploded,&#8221; Stephanopoulos said. &#8220;How much of it is tied to the fact that, in your mind, that you&#8217;re bisexual?&#8221;
&#8220;I think a lot of it is, and it&#8217;s also partly because I&#8217;m a woman, we haven&#8217;t seen as many of the sex scandals with women, but the bisexuality is a huge part of it, right?&#8221; Hill responded. &#8220;There is a fantasy element of it, there&#8217;s biphobia that is rampant still, and certainly misunderstanding of what bisexuality is, and it&#8217;s sensationalizing, right?&#8221;
Hill resigned after the House Ethics Committee announced that it was opening a formal investigation into the allegations that Hill had a prohibited sexual relationship with a congressional staffer. Hill&#8217;s decision to resign shielded her from being investigated over the allegation.
WATCH:
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TRANSCRIPT:
<blockquote>STEPHANOPOULOS: Was the biggest mistake having a relationship with a campaign staffer?
HILL: Absolutely. When I started to run for Congress, I was a nobody. I was a non-profit director that was 29-years-old when I jumped in. I did not have any political experience and so I was a complete long shot, but my team, which built over time, was, especially the people who were there in the beginning, it never felt like an employer-employee relationship in the way that I&#8217;d been an executive at a large organization before. The boundaries were completely different because you are truly in the trenches with this very small team, where I think I made the biggest mistake was not setting those boundaries from the very beginning.
STEPHANOPOULOS: The photos were released. You&#8217;re also accused, not only of having a relationship with a campaign staffer, but having a relationship with someone on your congressional staff, which obviously would cross all kinds of ethical lines.
HILL: That accusation came from my ex-husband and it launched a&#8211;
STEPHANOPOULOS: It&#8217;s not true?
HILL: No, especially, the person he was accusing me of, was somebody, who was my first hire, right? He was the first person who worked on my campaign and he came with me to Washington and we were friends and it shows you how easy it is to, when you&#8217;re talking about someone, especially a woman being a victim of something like the photos, or cyber exploitation, or revenge porn, or whatever you want to call it&#8211;
STEPHANOPOULOS: What do you want to call it?
HILL: Well, there&#8217;s a problem with the term &#8220;revenge porn&#8221; because it implies, A, that there is something to be taking revenge for, right? That the woman maybe did something wrong in the first place and pornography could imply that it was consensual, and it&#8217;s not.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And how much have you regretted the decision to actually resign? Any part of you that thinks you should have stayed and fought?
HILL: I strongly feel that I made the right call in stepping down, for several reasons. One of which is that I, I did not want to be a liability to my colleagues. We knew from the people who had the photos that had obtained the photos that there were hundreds more images and text messages that were out there that I had no idea what they could be or how they could be taken out of context.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Your story exploded. &#8230; How much of it is tied to the fact that in your mind that you&#8217;re bisexual?
HILL: I think a lot of it is, and it&#8217;s also partly because I&#8217;m a woman, we haven&#8217;t seen as many of the sex scandals with women, but the bisexuality is a huge part of it, right? There is a fantasy element of it, there&#8217;s biphobia that is rampant still and certainly misunderstanding of what bisexuality is and it&#8217;s sensationalizing, right?</blockquote>

Katie Hill

Disgraced Democratic Congresswoman Katie Hill: I Had To Resign Because Of ‘Biphobia’ And I’m A ‘Woman’

Congress

LGBT

Rarely do we see businesses, small or large, voluntarily abandon a tax credit. When those tax credits are used to help low-income and inner-city kids escape failing schools and find a pathway to success, it’s even more surprising.
Several days before President Donald Trump called on Congress during his State of the Union Address to pass legislation providing a million students with an opportunity scholarships, the Orlando Sentinel published a lengthy investigative <a href="https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/education/os-ne-voucher-schools-lgbtq-discriminate-20200123-s5ue4nvqybcgrbrxov5hcb46a4-htmlstory.html">article</a> detailing how corporations support these low-income families by way of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program. Pushing more of an ideological agenda than straight reporting, the Sentinel suggests that the use of these funds by many religious schools is meant to be “anti-gay.”
I went to one of the school (whose mascot, ironically, happens to share a name with the Sentinel) on the list. My parents sent me to Christian school because they believed no education was complete without a thorough understanding of the Bible. If you’ve never been to one of the schools on the list, let me tell you what you will find there.
First, you will see students from every corner of America represented: Black, white, Hispanic, rich, poor, middle income. As a fifth grader, when I started attending Evangelical Christian School in Fort Myers, Florida, it struck me as completely ordinary that my classmates looked pretty much the same as any room I ever entered in America. Selma, my friend of Indian-American descent, was just Selma. We played football together during recess and tried not to get in trouble during lunchtime.
My school was very disciplined, growing out of a religious conservative tradition that valued respect for elders and one another. We stood to answer questions when called upon. We did not talk during the lunch hour or in the hallways. We wore uniforms. Mrs. Dunn, the headmistress, was feared by all, but it was clear she cared for her students.
And there was chapel and prayer and Bible study. In fact, by the time I got to high school, we had an entire class period dedicated to Bible. It was insightful: We studied not only the Scriptures that formed the basis of our faith, but also learned to appreciate and respect the differences of our faith with that of others&#8217; faith.
Of course, we also studied math, science, literature, and the rest. Each class had a distinctive approach of not only mastering the subject at hand, but evaluating what our Christian worldview had to say about it. Before every baseball practice, Coach Kieffer would lead the team in a brief devotion drawn from the Bible and pray for us. I respected that man for his commitment to “the Man in the chair,” an empty chair meant to remind us that God is ever present, a help in time of need.
Florida’s tax scholarship program came about after I was out of school. Thanks to the Sentinel (the newspaper, not our mascot), I know that my alma mater receives scholarships through the Florida Tax Credit program to assist students to attend school. I believe there are families who have always wished to send their kids to a school that unashamedly teaches according to the Christian tradition but, for financial reasons, never could afford to do so.
But because of this newspaper article, fewer low-income families will have that choice. Wells Fargo, Wyndham Vacation Properties, Fifth Third Bank, and others <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/third-company-pulls-florida-voucher-donations-over-anti-gay-school-n1126686">pulled their funding</a>. (Fifth Third, perhaps realizing the error, <a href="https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/02/07/fifth-third-continue-funding-scholarships-anti-lbgtq-florida-schools/4691279002/">reversed that decision</a>). Activists are hard at work trying to convince Waste Management, and others, to do the same.
Rather than let inner-city kids or low-income families from the rural areas of Acadia and Belle Glade pursue private education that meets the needs of their children, they would cancel their scholarship to score “woke” points with the Left. It’s a shame.
In 2018-19, over 104,000 students received scholarships because of this program.  The typical <a href="https://www.stepupforstudents.org/research-and-reports/">student</a> receiving the scholarship lives at the poverty line (roughly $29,000), has only one parent in the home, and struggles academically. Sixty-eight percent of them are Africa-American or Hispanic.
Wells Fargo, Wyndham, and others are literally taking money away from poverty-stricken, minority children and the Left is praising them for doing so. Why? In their mind (and that of the Sentinel), it is less risky to a child’s future to live in poverty, with one parent in the home, and continue to struggle academically than attend a Christian school.
Such hostility toward religion should have no place in Florida, the news room, or a corner office. Businesses are welcome to forgo whatever tax credits they want. If they want to pay more in taxes, I suppose we cannot stop them. Still, they should understand that the price of appeasing the Sentinel and other ideologues is a low-income child’s future.
&nbsp;
Jeremy Dys (<a href="https://twitter.com/jeremydys">@JeremyDys</a>) is Special Counsel for Litigation and Communications for First Liberty Institute, a non-profit law firm dedicated to defending religious freedom for all Americans. Read more at <a href="https://firstliberty.org">FirstLiberty.org</a>.

Human hand placed on the Bible, pray to God.

DYS: Pulling Scholarship Funds Punishes Low-Income Children

Bible

Christianity

Donald Trump

Florida

Homosexuality

Leftism

Media Bias

Progressivism

On Friday, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, a constitutional attorney by training who has been a <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/11/19/alexander-vindman-condemned-himself-in-his-impeachment-testimony/">frequent</a> <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/11/26/why-trumps-ukraine-demands-werent-remotely-illegal/">commentator</a> on Democrats&#8217; current partisan <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/12/13/obstruction-of-congress-is-an-utterly-ridiculous-impeachment-charge/">impeachment</a> <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/12/19/pelosis-newest-dirty-trick-putting-trumps-senate-trial-on-hold/">effort</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-HnMAHs3-c">joined</a> “Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler” on One America News Network (OANN) to discuss the recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) purporting to show that, by initially withholding the disbursement of foreign aid money to Ukraine last summer, President Donald Trump violated the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA). It is this withholding of Ukrainian foreign aid money that forms the crux of the Democrats&#8217; impeachment push.
As The Daily Wire initially <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/read-it-gaos-report-on-white-house-withholding-ukraine-aid-violated-law">reported</a> last Thursday, the officially nonpartisan GAO claimed that Trump violated the ICA and, by implication, also the <a href="https://www.heritage.org/constitution/articles/2/essays/98/take-care-clause">Take Care Clause</a> of Article II of the Constitution. “Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” the GAO report asserted, as The Daily Wire reported. “[The Office of Management and Budget (OMB)] withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the [ICA]. The withholding was not a programmatic delay. Therefore, we conclude that OMB violated the ICA.”
Hammer penned an <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/01/17/trumps-ukraine-money-holdup-doesnt-make-for-an-impeachable-breach-of-the-law/">op-ed</a> in Saturday&#8217;s New York Post in which he argued that &#8220;Trump likely did not violate the ICA,&#8221; but that &#8220;even if he did breach it, that law itself comes with its own remedy baked in — and it is a far less draconian remedy than impeachment.&#8221; He then elaborated:
<blockquote>
To be sure, expressly directing a subordinate to violate federal law is inconsistent with the Take Care Clause. But the president also has other obligations under Article II of the Constitution. The very first clause of Article II vests the president with “the executive Power.” The doling out of foreign aid is an integral part of conducting foreign affairs, and, according to a 2001 Yale Law Journal article by legal scholars Saikrishna Prakash and Michael Ramsey, 18th-century English common law — which helped form the Framers’ thinking — had an “ordinary &#8230; meaning of executive power” that “included foreign affairs power.”
Similarly, in the 1936 Supreme Court case U.S. v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., the justices describe the president as “the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations — a power which does not require as a basis for its exercise an act of Congress.” &#8230;
[Furthermore,] as my boss at The Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro, quickly observed after news of the GAO report hit, the ICA prescribes a precise remedy for a situation in which the president allegedly violates it. Specifically, 2 U.S.C. § 687 provides for a cause of action by the comptroller general in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. But since the funds have been released, any legal action would be moot.
</blockquote>
On Friday&#8217;s OANN appearance, Wheeler began by asking Hammer whether the alleged ICA violation is impeachable. Hammer strongly opined that it should not be viewed as impeachable, and went on to describe the current Democratic mentality and antics as &#8220;desperate,&#8221; &#8220;reckless,&#8221; and &#8220;borderline dangerous&#8221;:
<blockquote>
The Impoundment Control Act in 1974 actually provides for a precise remedy within the statute. So a lot of people are talking about this as a possible impeachment vehicle, but it is a deliberate, disingenuous, bad faith effort to attempt to impeach as a draconian remedy where the statute itself has the savviness and the foresight to provide for a much lesser remedy.
And let&#8217;s talk about that remedy. It&#8217;s [title] two of the United States Code, then sub-section 687, I believe. The remedy is the Comptroller General of the United States is allowed to file suit in the federal trial court in the District of Columbia to force the president, essentially, to disburse the funds. Liz, here&#8217;s the problem with that: The funds have already been disbursed! They were released and there was barely any delay. So even according to the statute&#8217;s own remedy — according to the statutory structure &#8230; it&#8217;s a moot case. In law school, you learn this is called a moot lawsuit because the funds were disbursed. Ukraine didn&#8217;t even know that the funds were being withheld.
So all of this is starting to remind me a lot of the whole [Brett] Kavanaugh [Supreme Court nomination] fiasco, where they would just throw mud at the wall and see what sticks. You know, we talked about [how] the Democrats first were talking about quid pro quo, [but] that didn&#8217;t poll-test well. Then they were publicly flirting with bribery and they knew they didn&#8217;t have the legal gravitas to make that argument. They are just so desperate, at this point. Swing state poll after swing state poll shows they&#8217;re gonna lose next November — Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, all these voters are starting to turn against the Democrats. And this is really starting to get reckless; it&#8217;s actually borderline dangerous, at this point, I would say.
</blockquote>
Wheeler agreed, saying that the Democrats do routinely &#8220;move the goalposts.&#8221;
WATCH:
<iframe title="The Truth About The GAO Report" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/G-HnMAHs3-c?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Hammer OANN 1.17.20

WATCH: Hammer On ‘Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler’: The Truth About The GAO ‘Bombshell’

Constitution

Impeachment

Congressional Democrats, who seemed <del>willfully naive</del> blissfully unaware of then-President Barack Obama&#8217;s rather expansive interpretation of the War Powers Resolution of 1973 during his strategically disastrous 2011 operation to oust Libyan strongman Muammar al-Qaddafi, suddenly seem to care an awful lot about constitutional norms and separation of powers principles again.
Intellectual inconsistency much?
Specifically, Speaker Nancy Pelosi&#8217;s House of Representatives is <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/08/politics/war-powers-act-explainer-iran/index.html">debating today</a> whether to congressionally impose War Powers Resolution limitations upon President Donald Trump&#8217;s unilateral ability to ratchet up militancy with the Islamic Republic of Iran. In their crusade to hamstring the president&#8217;s conduct of his foreign policy vis-à-vis the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-iranian-revolution-forty-years-old-stand-josh-hammer">jihadist</a> Iranian regime, House Democrats have even found some libertarian-leaning <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mike-lee-senator-utah-lambasts-trump-briefing-soleimani-strike-worst-hes-received-on-military-issue/">Republican allies</a>.
But this exercise is misguided, because the War Powers Resolution is, and always has been, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304186404576389474268093278">unconstitutional</a>.
Let&#8217;s start with what the War Powers Resolution, which was passed during the closing stanzas of the Vietnam War, actually does. The <a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/93/hjres542/text">statute</a> requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces abroad, and it precludes deployed U.S. forces from remaining engaged in &#8220;hostilities&#8221; abroad for more than 60 days without an affirmative authorization for the use of military force that has passed through Congress. At the time, President Richard Nixon vetoed the bill on constitutional grounds, <a href="https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/exhibitions/artifact/president-richard-nixons-letter-house-representatives-regarding-his-veto-war">arguing</a> that the measure would define presidential war powers &#8220;in ways which would strictly limit his constitutional authority.&#8221; Nonetheless, a two-thirds majority in each congressional chamber overrode the veto.
Nixon&#8217;s veto was correct.
The Constitution famously divides foreign affairs powers between the legislative and executive branches. Among other enumerated powers in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei#section8">Article I, Section 8</a>, Congress has the ability to &#8220;declare War,&#8221; &#8220;raise and support Armies,&#8221; &#8220;provide and maintain a Navy,&#8221; &#8220;make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces,&#8221; &#8220;provide for calling forth the Militia,&#8221; and &#8220;provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia.&#8221;
By contrast, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii">Article II</a> of the Constitution provides that &#8220;[t]he President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.&#8221; The very first clause of Article II also vests the president with &#8220;[t]he executive Power&#8221; — meaning a &#8220;residual&#8221; foreign affairs power that encompasses all those powers not expressly delegated to Congress in Article I, Section 8. As legal scholars Saikrishna B. Prakash and Michael D. Ramsey <a href="https://www.yalelawjournal.org/article/the-executive-power-over-foreign-affairs">persuasively argued</a> in a 2001 Yale Law Journal article, 18th century English common law had an &#8220;ordinary &#8230; meaning of executive power&#8221; that &#8220;included foreign affairs power.&#8221;
A careful, line-by-line overview of Congress&#8217;s enumerated powers does not actually provide a legislative means that could feasibly justify the War Powers Resolution. The most likely candidate is the Declare War Clause, but that provision happens to be woefully misunderstood by many lawyers and politicians across the ideological spectrum. As John Yoo <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=426862">compellingly laid out</a> in a 2003 University of Chicago Law Review article, &#8220;[t]he Declare War Clause simply confers on Congress juridical power to both define the United States&#8217;s legal relations with other countries and trigger domestic constitutional authorities during wartime.&#8221; It is the president of the United States, under Article II&#8217;s Commander in Chief Clause, who is actually responsible for initiating and conducting hostilities. Congress can then intervene to halt a president it views as a reckless warmonger using the manifold tools it does have at its disposal: Decreasing the size of the Pentagon&#8217;s budget, going line item-by-line item and removing various offensive-oriented materiel from the Department of Defense&#8217;s arsenal, or using its more general power of the purse to defund a war effort in its entirety (as eventually happened with Vietnam).
This interpretation of the Declare War Clause should not be nearly as controversial as it is. At the 1787 constitutional convention, the Framers actually conscientiously substituted out &#8220;make War&#8221; with &#8220;declare War.&#8221; In so doing, James Madison <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/qasem-soleimani-strike-president-trump-has-constitution-precedent-on-his-side/">famously explained</a> to Elbridge Gerry that it was imperative to leave to the president the &#8220;<a href="http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_11s4.html">power to repel sudden attacks</a>.&#8221; This ought to make a great deal of sense; as Alexander Hamilton would explain only six months after the constitutional convention in <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed70.asp">The Federalist No. 70</a>, &#8220;[d]ecision, activity, secrecy, and despatch will generally characterize the proceedings of one man in a much more eminent degree than the proceedings of any greater number.&#8221;
Finally, in Article I, Section 10, the Constitution precludes a state from &#8220;engag[ing] in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.&#8221; The Framers were therefore aware of multiple verbs — &#8220;make&#8221; and &#8220;engage&#8221; — that could have clearly conveyed the meaning of an initiation of hostilities. But they didn&#8217;t use those words, and they didn&#8217;t use them for a reason. The Framers understood that there was great merit to leaving decisions such as the commencement of hostilities to one man, and not to a fractious Congress.
To reiterate, Congress already has a number of tools at its disposal to push back against a crusading commander-in-chief. As Andrew McCarthy <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/war-powers-resolution-vote-trump-andrew-mccarthy">wrote</a> this week at Fox News, &#8220;No statute is needed to provide Congress with the power to frustrate unauthorized presidential war-making. The Constitution empowers the legislature to do so by simply refusing to appropriate funds for military action.&#8221; But the Declare War Clause means something fundamentally different than what many believe it does.
The War Powers Resolution may or may not be good policy. But it does not matter, because it runs afoul of the Constitution&#8217;s carefully calibrated separation of powers.

United States Constitution

HAMMER: The War Powers Resolution Is, And Always Has Been, Unconstitutional

Barack Obama

Federalist

Foreign Policy

Iran

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

Libya

Middle East

Qassem Soleimani

Saturday night’s bloody machete attack in <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/29/us/new-york-stabbing-rabbi-home/index.html">Monsey, New York</a> against a rabbi and his congregants celebrating Chanukah shocked in ways beyond its sheer brutality. This anti-Semitic assault by a man influenced by the “Black Hebrew Israelite” movement comes amidst a spate of crimes against Jews, with the New York Police Department now investigating <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/anti-semitic-attacks-new-york-city-hanukkah_n_5e06227ac5b6b5a713ada7f9">six hate crimes</a> that occurred during the holiday.
Certainly, churches, synagogues, and mosques are under siege in America, from <a href="https://www.post-gazette.com/news/crime-courts/2018/11/10/Robert-Bowers-extremism-Tree-of-Life-massacre-shooting-pittsburgh-Gab-Warroom/stories/201811080165">Pittsburgh</a> to <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mikehayes/jury-sentences-dylann-roof-to-death">Charleston</a>, and from <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/news/los_angeles/220410/synagogues-carry-face-bomb-threats/">Los Angeles</a> to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/13/us/minnesota-mosque-bombing-suspects.html">Minnesota</a>. However, under the pretense of protecting places of worship and faith-based nonprofits, Congress stands poised to spend millions of taxpayer dollars effectively providing pro-jihadist Islamist groups — with documented ties to overseas terrorist organizations — with their own private armed militias.
Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) and co-sponsor Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) have put forth a new bill, the <a href="https://www.portman.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/portman-peters-introduce-legislation-increase-security-resources-faith">Protecting Faith-Based and Nonprofit Organizations From Terrorism Act</a>, which provides <a href="https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/2019/09/as-hate-attacks-on-houses-of-worship-mount-congress-needs-to-do-more-to-help-with-security-rob-portman.html">$75 million annually</a> over the next five years for security to religious groups.
Lawmakers need to address two notable problems as they consider this security bill.
First, <a href="https://www.portman.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2019-05/Protecting%20Faith-Based%20and%20Nonprofit%20Organizations%20from%20Terrorism%20Act.pdf">the proposal</a> provides funding to 501(c)(3) nonprofits. <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2005/05/the-muslim-brotherhoods-american-goals">Muslim Brotherhood</a>-linked Islamist groups such as the <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/3437/cair-islamists-fooling-the-establishment">Council on American-Islamic Relations</a>, the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/swindle-california-islamist-activists-protest-david-m-swindle">Muslim American Society</a>, and the <a href="https://www.investigativeproject.org/732/isna-admits-hamas-ties">Islamic Society of North America</a> would therefore be eligible for funding under the plan, providing security dollars to advocacy organizations that share a common Islamist ideological heritage. Another network of Muslim nonprofits, including the <a href="https://www.meforum.org/islamist-watch/57929/catalogue-of-icna-links-to-jamaat-e-islami">Islamic Circle of North America</a> and the <a href="https://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/84.pdf">Muslim Students Association</a>, would also benefit from the bill despite being tied to <a href="https://www.meforum.org/islamist-watch/59929/jamaat-e-islami-a-threat-at-home-and-abroad">Jamaat-e-Islami</a>, a violent South Asian Islamist movement.
Assuredly, Islamists are not the only extremists exploiting 501(c)(3) laws; <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/white-supremacist-groups-tax-break-educational-2017-8">white nationalists also have a long history</a> of doing the same thing.
Second, the bill fails to adequately limit how grant monies can be spent. It identifies three general types of uses for the funds: “Target hardening,” “security training,” and “any other appropriate activity.” But what is to prevent religious centers and nonprofits from hiring or training armed guards to enforce religious law?
Some Muslim American communities have previously recruited security guards to serve as enforcers of Islamic law. These vigilante patrols have often been less concerned with local security than they are with <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/09/02/a-breach-in-guards-invincibility/d0f9c4cc-4562-482f-9aac-fb9be699d003/">converting</a> their neighbors, enforcing standards of dress, and prohibiting drug and alcohol use.
Sunni Muslim secu͏r͏i͏ty patrols can be traced back to January 1988, when New York City imam <a href="https://www.meforum.org/6576/svcf-hate-speakers-siraj-wahhaj">Siraj Wahhaj</a> — listed as a potential <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/02/blind-sheikh-dies-terrorist-evangelist/">un-indicted co-conspirator</a> in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings — announced his <a href="https://clarionproject.org/clarion-special-report-nys-sharia-patrol/">“40 Days and 40 Nights”</a> campaign to expel crack cocaine dealers from Brooklyn. Armed with guns and nightsticks, Wahhaj’s team of nearly 50 men drew recruits from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/23/nyregion/muslims-start-patrol-to-fight-crack-in-brooklyn.html">homeless shelters</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/16/nyregion/security-guards-vigilantes-special-report-brooklyn-private-police-violent-their.html?mtrref=www.google.com&amp;assetType=REGIWALL&amp;fbclid=IwAR2bJlupgVwbKMXoKgDHADEtNRa5_ZILHylCaZfAnK_IFpa26DzMmfvUEqA">prison converts.</a>
From this “40 Days” event arose a more formalized, permanent, and licensed group of paramilitary guards and enforcers, known as SSI Patrol Services. In 1991, a New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/16/nyregion/security-guards-vigilantes-special-report-brooklyn-private-police-violent-their.html?mtrref=www.google.com&amp;assetType=REGIWALL&amp;fbclid=IwAR2bJlupgVwbKMXoKgDHADEtNRa5_ZILHylCaZfAnK_IFpa26DzMmfvUEqA">headline</a> described SSI as “private police as violent as their enemy” and questioned whether the firm employed “Security Guards or Vigilantes?”
The imam’s foot soldiers had no concept of proportionality: “If they spill one pin drop of our blood, we spill gallons of theirs,” one member promised. And indeed, they <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/16/nyregion/security-guards-vigilantes-special-report-brooklyn-private-police-violent-their.html?mtrref=www.google.com&amp;assetType=REGIWALL&amp;fbclid=IwAR2bJlupgVwbKMXoKgDHADEtNRa5_ZILHylCaZfAnK_IFpa26DzMmfvUEqA">followed through with this threat</a>: One guard received a second degree murder charge, a second was held in a case involving the shooting of a disabled man, and a third faced a lawsuit for a brutal beating.
SSI was not the only Muslim paramilitary group with a questionable record. In 1996, The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/09/02/a-breach-in-guards-invincibility/d0f9c4cc-4562-482f-9aac-fb9be699d003/">exposed</a> how the Nation of Islam’s (NOI) “Fruit of Islam” wing inspired the creation of multiple private security corporations that received “an estimated $20 million in public contracts in 10 cities.” Residents of areas patrolled by NOI security groups claimed “that guards paid with public money were proselytizing for Farrakhan, pestering residents to stop eating pork, go to the mosque or buy subscriptions to the Final Call, the Nation&#8217;s newspaper.”
<a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/03/11/black-muslim-security-firm-makes-false-claims-in-bid-to-secure-port-of-oakland-contract/">BMT International Security Services</a> is another black Muslim security group accused of defrauding the government and lying about its credentials to secure a $450,000 contract patrolling parks at the Port of Oakland. Such behavior was in keeping with the group’s background since “prosecutors have called it a cult that ran a wide-ranging criminal enterprise, committing crimes from real estate and mortgage fraud to murder.”
More recently, last year Wahhaj <a href="https://spectator.org/brooklyns-islamist-vigilantes/">revived his Islamist security group</a> under a new name: The <a href="https://nypost.com/2018/12/24/new-york-muslims-have-a-new-security-patrol-group/">Muslim Community Patrol (MCP)</a>. Just weeks after its founding, MCP members initiated a <a href="https://christianaction.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/The-Secret-Agenda-of-New-York-Citys-Muslim-Patrol-Cars.pdf">conflict</a> when they attempted to stop a group of African-American men from smoking marijuana near a mosque. According to “Abdul,” <a href="https://clarionproject.org/clarion-special-report-nys-sharia-patrol/">an informant who attended an MCP meeting</a>, Wahhaj said, “The mosques need protection and the MCP cars can help stop people who were not following the rules and regulations of the Sharia …”
“Everything is going to be Sharia,” Abdul explained. “That’s Wahhaj’s main thing. He’s working on a ‘one sheikh’ and ‘one government’ system that practices Sharia.”
Portman should  therefore consider one major revision for his bill: Funds must be allocated to increase the presence of trained local police — not dangerous and unprofessional faith-based patrols. The fungibility of funding to Islamist groups must also be considered; every taxpayer dollar dispensed to these groups frees up funding for other extremist activities.
If there’s one thing at which American Islamists are particularly adept, it is exploitation of the good intentions of others. And indeed, the intentions behind this bill are obviously well-meaning, but for such efforts to succeed, Congress must recognize the potential for abuse.
&nbsp;
David M. Swindle is a fellow for <a href="https://www.meforum.org/islamist-watch/">Islamist Watch</a> and the Southern California associate of the <a href="https://counterislamist.org/">Counter-Islamist Grid</a>. He also works as the Director of Research for <a href="https://theisraelgroup.org/">The Israel Group</a>. Follow him on Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/daveswindle">@DaveSwindle</a>.

Capitol Hill

SWINDLE: Stop Taxpayer Money From Funding Islamist-Tied Security Agencies

CAIR

New York Police Department (NYPD)

Police

Radical Islam

Radical Islamic Terror

Rob Portman

U.S. Senate

Earlier this month, in the lead-up to House Democrats&#8217; (<a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1207731722995023872">kind of</a>/<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/us/trump-feldman-impeach.html">sort of</a>) formal impeachment of President Donald Trump, the Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)-led House Judiciary Committee convened a panel of three law professors: Pamela Karlan of Stanford, Noah Feldman of Harvard, and Jonathan Turley of George Washington. The ostensible reason for Nadler&#8217;s summoning of this troika was to air a public discussion of what the U.S. Constitution&#8217;s &#8220;high crimes and misdemeanors&#8221; impeachment criterion actually means — a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-todays-judiciary-committee-impeachment-hearing-is-yet-another-waste-of-time">rather curious use of time and taxpayer resources</a>, alas, considering that Alexander Hamilton told us precisely what it meant in <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed65.asp">The Federalist No. 65</a>.
This triumvirate of ivory tower overlords, moreover, was hardly politically or ideologically diverse. Karlan is an unreconstructed leftist so radical that former President Barack Obama did not even consider her for a U.S. Supreme Court nomination. Feldman is a traditional liberal — hardly one to find compelling the notion that a legal text ought to only be interpreted according to its original public meaning. Turley, the Republican-called witness who was <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-12-09/opinion-trump-impeachment-hearings-democrats">most favorable toward</a> Trump&#8217;s impeachment defense narrative, is nonetheless best described as a left-leaning civil libertarian. He is <a href="https://www.newsmax.com/politics/turley-democrats-republicans-gop/2019/12/28/id/947594/">hardly a partisan Trump supporter</a>.
Alas, Turley&#8217;s testimony elicited intensive backlash from fellow liberals and fellow members of the cloistered legal academy. As Turley snarkily tweeted, linking to an op-ed he published over the holiday weekend at The Hill: &#8220;The Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not testify for Republicans.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
The Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not testify for Republicans <a href="https://t.co/AhlGtYMYsC">https://t.co/AhlGtYMYsC</a>
&mdash; Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) <a href="https://twitter.com/JonathanTurley/status/1210938223444267010?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 28, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;Journalist Henry Louis Mencken once observed, &#8216;Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them,'&#8221; Turley began. &#8220;Despite unending respect for Mencken, this is an occasion in which I found him mistaken, after I violated the Eleventh Commandment, &#8216;Thou shalt not testify for Republicans.'&#8221;
Turley&#8217;s piece continued with oftentimes dripping sarcasm. The professor clearly harbors no small amount of disdain for the intellectual and political monoculture that the Left oftentimes attempts to forcibly impose from the heights of academe.
&#8220;What is most striking about this commandment is that it does not matter if your testimony is made in good faith,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;For instance, under the Ninth Commandment, you are only guilty if you give false evidence against your neighbor. But under the Eleventh Commandment, it does matter if your testimony is true or false. A law fearing academic must not give any testimony for Republicans. &#8230; It is the act of testifying for Republicans that is deemed a sin against the legal academy.&#8221;
&#8220;[H]eresy demands condemnation, whether or not it is based in reality,&#8221; Turley concluded. &#8220;This is all meant to get people to not seriously consider the flaws in this impeachment, including the articles that ultimately were dropped. For any academic who is tempted to testify for Republicans in an impeachment, I can only caution that the Bible said, &#8216;Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.'&#8221;
Political and ideological diversity is an infamous and pervasive problem throughout much of American academia — with legal academia among the most grievous of all offenders. Recently, conservative law professor Stephen Bainbridge of UCLA wrote a <a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/ucla-professor-bainbridge-hero-of-diversity/">widely disseminated</a> <a href="https://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2019/12/i-submit-herewith-my-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-statement-for-my-merit-raise-at-uclaw.html">blog post</a> about how he, as a conservative white Catholic, actively contributes to diversity (properly understood) at UCLA School of Law:
<blockquote>At UCLA, we know that the campus as a whole leans substantially to the left. “A study of various university faculties showed that at Cornell the ratio of liberal to conservative faculty members was 166 to 6, at Stanford it was 151 to 17, at UCLA it was 141 to 9, and at the University of Colorado it was 116 to 5.” Conservative students at UCLA have been “harassed, stalked, and threatened.” I recently searched the opensecrets.org donor database for political contributions made by persons who claimed UCLA School of Law as their employer. Thirty-eight of those persons contributed solely to Democratic candidates, the Democratic Party and various affiliates, and liberal PACs. One person contributed to both Republicans and Democrats. Three persons contributed exclusively to Republican candidates, the Republican Party, and various NRC affiliates. Of the faculty members who contributed exclusively to Republican candidates, the most recently hired of the two was hired in 1997. As a monetary matter, 92.67% of all contributions went to Democrats and affiliated groups.
Because conservative students and students of faith often feel alienated and estranged in an environment that is so relentlessly liberal and secular, I have made particular efforts to reach out to and support such students. I have served as a mentor for leaders of The Federalist Society and Christian Law Students Association. I have given talks to both organizations. I taught a Perspectives on law and Lawyering seminar devoted to Catholic Social Thought and the Law, which gave students — whether Catholic or not — an opportunity to consider how their faith (or lack thereof) related to the law and an opportunity to learn about a coherent body of Christian scholarship that might inform their lives as lawyers. I have also tried to lead by example, such as by serving as a volunteer with the Good Shepherd Catholic Church’s St. Vincent de Paul chapter, which raises funds for distribution to poor persons who are in danger of losing their home due to inability to make rent or mortgage payments.</blockquote>

Jonathan Turley testifying

Liberal Law Prof Turley: Not A ‘Sin’ To Testify For Republicans

academia

Jerry Nadler

Liberalism

Republican Party

U.S. House of Representatives

&#8220;It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.&#8221; – James Madison, <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed62.asp">The Federalist No. 62</a>
&nbsp;
In the year 2019, nine years after the constitutionalist and populist Tea Party wave midterm election of 2010, how many Republicans in Congress actually agree with James Madison?
While all the eyes of political media this week remain fixated upon the dueling melodramas of expected House impeachment later today and the next Democratic Party presidential primary debate tomorrow evening, Congress is gearing up to pass yet another year-end <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/walsh-congress-decides-18-year-olds-are-too-young-to-buy-tobacco-heres-a-bunch-of-things-they-still-arent-too-young-to-do">budget betrayal</a>. To be sure, we already knew that fiscal conservatism was dead and that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-fiscal-conservatism-dead-republicans-killed-josh-hammer">Republicans themselves killed it</a>. But it seems that Republicans&#8217; insatiable desire for fiscal profligacy will not be quenched until they can also spit upon fiscal conservatism&#8217;s proverbial corpse.
Daniel Horowitz of Blaze Media has a <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/trump-signs-omnibus-bills-hell-lose-last-legislative-leverage/">devastating breakdown</a> of the nature of the latest boondoggle — a boondoggle rearing its ugly head, lest we forget, less than two years after President Donald Trump himself <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/trump-signing-omnibus-spending-bill-859148">vowed</a> to &#8220;never sign a bill like this again.&#8221; Over 2,400 pages of legislation. Nearly one and a half trillion dollars of additional spending. Increased funding for the EPA, but no increased funding for ICE. MS-13 trafficking and amnesty loopholes galore. More backdoor <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/citizenship-4000-liberian-illegal-aliens-snuck-3430-page-defense-bill/">amnesty</a> for Liberian nationals. Incentivizing illegal aliens to attempt to enter the federal workforce. Re-authorization of the corporate welfare- and crony capitalism-abetting Export-Import Bank. Raising the national tobacco purchasing age to 21. Tens of millions of dollars toward &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/congress-spending-boondoggle-includes-millions-of-dollars-for-federal-agencies-to-research-gun-violence">gun violence research</a>.&#8221; Zero attention paid to the neo-Confederate nationwide plague of sanctuary city lawlessness. Zero attention paid to the fact that murderous transnational criminal cartels still effectively control large swaths of our southern border. Zero attention paid to our nationwide crisis of revanchist and power-hungry <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-conservatives-how-much-longer-are-you-josh-hammer">judicial supremacism</a>.
And so forth. It&#8217;s enough to make one wonder why we elect Republicans into office, in the first instance. Is there anyone on the Republican side of the aisle who still cares about <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-who-will-stand-for-the-forgotten-american">the forgotten American</a>?
Over the past few years, there has been an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/shapiro-the-problem-with-common-good-conservatism">ongoing</a> and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-government-exists-to-establish-justice-not-promote-liberty">roiling</a> dialogue over the intellectual meaning and political future of American conservatism. It is undoubtedly an important and healthy discussion for us conservatives to air out among ourselves. My <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-path-forward-conservative-movement-josh-hammer">own take</a> is that there will be no going back to the pre-Trump &#8220;<a href="https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/03/against-the-dead-consensus">dead consensus</a>,&#8221; with the only open question being the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-national-conservatism-conference-josh-hammer">proper path</a> <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-on-chick-fil-a-political-tribalism-and-the-need-for-national-solidarity">forward</a>.
But as every card-carrying conservative knows, &#8220;Republican&#8221; and &#8220;conservative&#8221; are hardly synonymous terms. And while the debate over what it means to be a conservative rages on, it is an <a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1207086692416577538">entirely distinct question</a> to ask what exactly it is that contemporary elected Republicans claim to actually stand for. After all, it certainly does not seem to be fiscal restraint. It certainly does not seem to be cultural traditionalism. It certainly does not seem to be national sovereignty.
Instead, the least common denominator that unifies seemingly all elected Republicans, in the year 2019, seems to be a shared hatred of the Left — or &#8220;triggering the libs,&#8221; as my colleague Michael Knowles <a href="https://twitter.com/michaeljknowles/status/1207092532695318529">aptly phrased it</a> yesterday. Indeed, there is actually some historical precedent for this: The <a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1207091426791743488">sole unifying factor</a> among all three &#8220;legs&#8221; of the traditional post-William F. Buckley Jr./Reagan-era conservative &#8220;stool&#8221; — fiscal conservatism, social conservatism, and national security hawkishness — was opposition to the existential threat of Soviet-era communism.
The modern, post-Kavanagh fiasco Left is indeed a vicious and malicious political foe. The Left&#8217;s reckless radicalization and trend toward full-on totalitarian socialism is <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-here-are-three-reasons-why-i-plan-vote-josh-hammer">one of the three factors</a> that fortifies my confidence in voting for Donald Trump next November. But surely it is not too much to ask Republicans to actually stand for something beyond mere hatred of the dreaded enemy.
Or is it?

GOP elephant

HAMMER: What Exactly Do Republicans Claim To Stand For?

Conservatism

Trump Administration

The $1.4 trillion budget currently being rammed through Congress should attract our attention because it&#8217;s yet another massive behemoth monstrosity of a spending bill and it yet again signals that fiscal conservatism, if it ever existed at all, has been <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-fiscal-conservatism-dead-republicans-killed-josh-hammer">dead</a> for many decades. The budget will add $500 billion to our deficits, meaning the government will spend vastly more than the nearly $4 trillion it collects in tax revenue annually. Our leaders in Washington already appropriate the equivalent of the entire net worth of half of the world&#8217;s billionaires every year, but it&#8217;s not enough, we&#8217;re told. Not even close to enough. Thus, deficits and crippling national debt.
If this wasn&#8217;t bad enough — and made all the worse by the fact that Republican voters appear entirely apathetic about this issue, despite all of the Tea Party theatrics a few years ago — consider what else they&#8217;ve jammed into this bill. Despite being at best only vaguely related to spending and budgets, a group of Democrats and Republicans have crafted a plan to raise the age for purchasing tobacco products from 18 to 21, and they&#8217;ve attached it like a barnacle onto this budgetary Titanic. Once the bill is made law, it will be illegal across the country to sell tobacco or vaping products to anyone under the age of 21.
<iframe title="The Myth Of Fiscal Conservatism | The Matt Walsh Show Ep. 393" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OhInq3rr0Zs?start=387&#038;feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
It doesn&#8217;t take much reflection to notice the absurdity of this situation. The law will say that people at the age of 18 lack the emotional maturity or mental competence to decide for themselves whether they want to smoke a cigarette or use a vape pen. Now remember all of the things that the laws says 18-year-olds are mature and competent enough to do. Here&#8217;s a partial list:
– Vote
– Buy a shotgun
– Get a tattoo
– Sign a mortgage
– Take on crippling student loans
– Sign a contract
– Get married
– Get an abortion
– Serve on a jury
– Serve on the battlefield
– Drive
– Be tried as an adult in federal court
– Be executed by the government
There is no theory of human psychology and development that makes any sense of this dichotomy. It seems thoroughly obvious that anyone who can be trusted to wage war on a battlefield, or decide someone&#8217;s fate on a jury, or pilot a 4,000-pound hunk of metal down the highway at 75 miles per hour, or make financial commitments that will affect the course of their lives for decades to come, can certainly be trusted with a vape pen. Another way of putting it: Anyone who cannot be trusted with a vape pen cannot be trusted with any of that stuff. I don&#8217;t know about you, but I certainly don&#8217;t want someone so incompetent deciding my guilt or innocence in a court of law.
If we are grasping for anything resembling consistency, it seems we have a few courses available, and none of them include empowering people to do almost every important and potentially dangerous thing while still depriving them the right to smoke a cigar. The non-arbitrary options would be:
(1) Move the age for almost everything cited above, along with tobacco use, to 21 or older. This would be consistent and coherent. It would also be wrong, in my opinion. We do not instill maturity in young adults by legally infantilizing them. Moving the age of legal adulthood to 21 or older forces people to remain in suspended adolescence, which would seem to accomplish the exact opposite of what we should be trying to accomplish in our culture.
(2) Keep the age of legal adulthood at 18 and include tobacco use and, for that matter, alcohol use in that bundle. This is the approach I favor.
(3) Ban tobacco outright on the basis that it&#8217;s poisonous and dangerous and nobody should be using it. Most of the arguments I&#8217;ve read in favor of increasing the tobacco age have really been arguments for this third option. As dozens of people have no doubt already observed in the comments section, I am not averse to the idea of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/walsh-a-group-of-republicans-want-the-government-to-start-fighting-hardcore-pornography-theyre-right-heres-why">banning</a> harmful things, so I&#8217;m not going to claim that the argument for banning tobacco is incoherent or inherently absurd. But I still don&#8217;t agree with it.
Tobacco is not intrinsically evil or significantly damaging in small doses. Both tobacco and alcohol, in moderation, are nearly harmless. The harm of an occasional cigar at least does not outweigh the harm of an occasional Big Mac. Neither does the harm of immoderate tobacco use outweigh the harm of immoderate fast food consumption. Many more people die from obesity-related causes than from smoking, after all.
That said, at least a call to ban tobacco is defensible. There is nothing necessarily inconsistent with claiming that 18-year-olds are old enough to vote, drive, and get tattoos, but not old enough to smoke because nobody should be able to smoke. There is something inconsistent and incoherent about arguing that tobacco is terrible so  you should have to wait until three years after you become a legal adult to use it.

hand destroying cigarettes &#8211; stop smoking concept

WALSH: Congress Decides 18-Year-Olds Are Too Young To Buy Tobacco. Here’s A Bunch Of Things They Still Aren’t Too Young To Do.

Tobacco

As a <a href="https://twitter.com/chiproytx/status/1206993171424653314">budget-busting boondoggle</a> of a shutdown-averting spending bill works its way through Congress, there are any number of provisions that ought to give conservatives tremendous pause. For instance, the bill raises the national age to buy tobacco products from 18 to 21 — a seemingly important public policy issue that conscientious citizens might expect their federal legislators to actually debate just a little bit.
But for Second Amendment supporters, there is one particularly troubling item that the D.C. swamp monsters and Congress critters have snuck into this pork-laden 2,000-page legislative monstrosity. If the bill is ultimately enacted into law, then, for the first time in decades, that Congress will have provided federal funding for gun violence research.
&#8220;The $25 million for federal research into gun violence that&#8217;s included in the massive spending bill agreed to on Capitol Hill represents the first time in over two decades that Congress has allocated funding for the issue,&#8221; <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/17/politics/gun-research-congress-spending-bill-cdc-trnd/index.html">CNN</a> reported earlier today. &#8220;The provision maintains the long-standing prohibition on any funds being used to advocate or promote gun control,&#8221; the outlet continued.
No small deal, right?
Progressives have cheered the allocation of $25 million in taxpayer dollars being to gun violence research (but assuredly not the promotion of gun-grabbing policies, we are oh-so-reliably informed). For example, the leftists at New York Magazine <a href="http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/congress-funds-gun-violence-study-for-first-time-in-decades.html">gloated</a> in remarkably tendentious terms about the policy victory:
<blockquote>
Though Republican lawmakers have been able to stymie serious gun-reform legislation following tragic and preventable mass shootings for over two decades, a step toward future progress took place on Monday when House Democratic aides said Congress would allocate $25 million to federal agencies to study gun violence as a fraction of the year-end spending bill. &#8230;
Gun violence is the least studied of 30 causes of death in America; in 2017, it led to almost 40,000 deaths, the highest toll since 1968. As The Washington Post notes, “As many people die because of gun violence, for example, as of sepsis infection, yet funding for gun research is less than 1 percent of that for sepsis.”
</blockquote>
Conservatives, by contrast, have naturally been less than enthused.
Nate Madden of Blaze Media <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/congress-spending-deal-will-put-millions-tax-dollars-toward-government-gun-violence-research/">quoted</a> Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), chair of the House&#8217;s Second Amendment Caucus: &#8220;The inherent bias at NIH and CDC in deciding how this money will be spent will compel left wing researchers to compete with each other to cook up the most anti-gun results possible. As with the climate change research industry and the privately funded gun-violence research industry, this newly christened government-funded gun-violence research industry will work mainly to justify its own existence, and unbiased voices won’t be funded or even tolerated.&#8221;
Similarly, Blaze Media&#8217;s Daniel Horowitz <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/trump-signs-omnibus-bills-hell-lose-last-legislative-leverage/">excoriated</a> the budget bill earlier today for its various profligacies and capitulations of conservative principle, and urged President Trump to veto it: &#8220;There is no reason why Trump can’t demand a clean continuing resolution for six weeks while the nation debates and even discovers the provisions of these bills. At the same time, he needs to use the bully pulpit and the threat of the veto pen to build the case for better immigration enforcement, punishing rebellious sanctuary states, and actually fulfilling a fraction of his promises on spending levels.&#8221;
Earlier today, against the shrieks and howls of the chamber&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-fiscal-conservatism-dead-republicans-killed-josh-hammer">seemingly few</a> remaining <a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1206729083612278784">fiscal conservatives</a>, the bill successfully passed the House. It now heads to the Senate.

U.S. Capitol

Congress’ Spending Boondoggle Includes Millions Of Dollars For Federal Agencies To Research Gun Violence

Gun Control

Guns

Violence

On Tuesday’s episode of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” the Daily Wire editor-in-chief talks about the two impeachment charges against President Trump and why even The Washington Post admits they have no precedent in history or law. Video and partial transcript below: 
There is no obstruction of Congress, because obstruction of Congress is just called the president saying, “No, I&#8217;m a separate branch.” This happens all the time. [However], obstruction of justice is when you refuse a court order — it’s a whole third branch of government. Jonathan Turley was pointing this out in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last week. 
These are now two completely manufactured charges. They are creating charges, out of whole cloth, that have no precedent in history or law. None. There is no precedent. The Washington Post admits there is no precedent in history or law for the idea that you can impeach solely based on, quote unquote, “obstruction of Congress.” It doesn&#8217;t exist because, again, obstruction of Congress, put another way, is just called “the executive branch is unitary, and the executive branch is not subject to all of the whims of Congress unless the judiciary agrees that the executive branch’s privileges are overruled by the ability of Congress to seek information.”
These sorts of battles happen every single day between the legislature and the executive — that is not obstruction of Congress any more than it was obstruction of Congress for Barack Obama to declare privilege over documents regarding Eric Holder and “Fast and Furious.” That was not obstruction of Congress, that was just called how this stuff works.
When it comes to the first charge — the abuse of power charge — again, weak tea. You have now redefined the nature of bribery to avoid the troublesome pitfalls of having to fulfill the criminal elements. That&#8217;s what the Democrats did here. They took “bribery,” the crime [of] bribery, they stripped it of the corrupt intent [aspect] and they stripped it of the requirement that there be a thing of value given an exchange. So they stripped the contents of the law, they called it “abuse of power,” and [then] they said he&#8217;s guilty of that. That&#8217;s amazing stuff. 
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If you&#8217;re gonna charge somebody with first-degree murder, you have to prove intent. That&#8217;s one of the things you have to prove in a first-degree murder, because first-degree murder is typically thought of as murder with malice aforethought. Malice and intent aforethought — you planned it out, you committed the murder. Let&#8217;s say that you didn&#8217;t want to [prove malice aforethought], so instead of charging manslaughter, you just said, “You know what, we&#8217;re not going to have [malice aforethought] as part of the crime anymore. Now, [if] you kill somebody, [it’s a] strict-liability crime — we&#8217;re going to consider it first-degree murder.” You&#8217;ve changed the nature of the law.
The crime itself didn&#8217;t change, you changed the nature of the criminal definition. That is what the Democrats are doing right here. 
You&#8217;re not going to see a single Republican defection along these lines — not one. Democrats are gonna say, “well, it&#8217;s an abuse of power. There&#8217;s precedent for that. I mean, there were abuse of power charges against Nixon and Clinton.” Against Clinton, there were actual criminal charges in the impeachment document; against Nixon, there were actual criminal charges in the impeachment documents. And by the way, the House actually voted down the abuse of power allegation against President Clinton. They voted for the crime, the perjury stuff — and the obstruction of justice stuff, they voted dow. The Republican House voted down the abuse of power allegation against Bill Clinton under Newt Gingrich. 
It&#8217;s a sham, everybody understands it&#8217;s a sham and man, if this doesn&#8217;t blow back on Democrats, I&#8217;d be shocked. They&#8217;ve gone so far over their skis at this point, they are so far beyond what the impeachment process was supposed to do, and this is coming from somebody who is perfectly willing to listen to all the evidence on Ukraine. Again, I&#8217;m not parroting the Trump administration line that everything was “perfect,” I don&#8217;t believe that for a second. [But] this is so far beyond the scope of what impeachment is supposed to achieve, it is so far beyond the scope of normal legality, that it falls directly into the category of abuse of power for Democrats. 
This is a serious abuse of power by Democrats. To use the impeachment process to redefine crimes, and then use that as sufficient as a basis for impeachment, is insane. Every president from here on out is getting impeached, basically, as long as there is a president of the opposite party in power. That is where this is going. Because again, I can [tell] you a half-dozen things off the top of my head that Barack Obama did, that fulfill the Democrats&#8217; definition of abuse of power — he received an improper personal benefit and ignored or injured American interests. 
How about his IRS going after his direct political opponents in 2012? How about that? That seems like [it fulfills] those elements, doesn&#8217;t it? Man, the utter blatancy of it is what&#8217;s incredible, the partisan obviousness of it is what&#8217;s amazing. I thought the Democrats were smarter than this, apparently not. Apparently they&#8217;re just idiots and they&#8217;ve decided we have to go through with this. It doesn&#8217;t matter whether we have the grounds, we&#8217;ll just make up the grounds. Basically, we&#8217;ll create a bill of attainder for Donald Trump, and then we&#8217;ll craft the crime to meet the fact that we want Trump impeached. 
<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ben-shapiro-show/id1047335260">Listen to full episodes of “The Ben Shapiro Show” on iTunes. </a>
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House Investigative Committee Chairs Hold Press Conference To Lay Out Articles Of Impeachment

SHAPIRO: House Democrats Completely Manufactured Both Impeachment Charges

2020 Election

Democratic Party

As the year 2019 comes to a close, many will reflect upon their own productivity and accomplishments over the past 12 months. Fortunately for America’s elected representatives in Congress, they don’t need much time.
Congress has done little to nothing in terms of “major legislation” — so much so that any bill that hits the president’s desk makes national news. Since September, one of President Trump’s <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%22do%20nothing%20democrats%22%20(from%3ArealDonaldTrump)&amp;src=typed_query&amp;f=live">favorite phrases on Twitter</a> has been “Do Nothing Democrats,” thereby blaming the House majority for the lack of meaningful legislation in this calendar year. Given Trump’s tendency to exaggerate, a legitimate question to ask is: Which is actually the worst offender, the Democratic-controlled House or the Republican-controlled Senate?
Knowing they were at a partisan impasse on most topics important to the American people, the House seemed to  largely focus on investigating President Trump and the Senate focused on confirming federal judicial nominees. Ironically, both of these courses of action play well for Trump, who began his year speaking directly to the new House majority. “An economic miracle is taking place in the United States,” Trump said during the State of the Union Address this past February, “and the only thing that can stop it are foolish wars, politics, or ridiculous partisan investigations. If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation. It just doesn&#8217;t work that way!”
The latest debacle in the House over the Ukraine issue, which was preceded by the House investigations over the findings of the Mueller Report, shows that Trump’s words were not heeded. The lack of legislative action has even become <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1143456276044544">a Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) talking point </a>on the Democratic presidential primary campaign trail.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) <a href="https://twitter.com/aoc/status/1198692784930217984?s=11">tweeted at</a> President Trump her list of “accomplishments” after he derided the “Do Nothing Democrats.” “In my first 11 months,” she said, “I’ve cosponsored 339 pieces of legislation, authored 15, took on Big Pharma w/ my colleagues in hearings that brought PreP generic a year early &amp; exposed abuse of power. In 4 years, you’ve jailed kids &amp; made corruption the cause celebré. Try to keep up.” While this may have gotten her Twitter lackeys all fired up, its patently ridiculous. There have been over 8,000 congressional bills introduced this year, so signing your name onto 339 of them is not an accomplishment. Of the “authored 15,” 10 are new bills which have not been brought to the floor to a vote and five were amendments to current bills.
This is par for the course for the House Democratic majority. While the Democrats complain about the lack of a vote in the Senate on such bills as <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/5">H.Res 5</a>, the &#8220;Equality Act,&#8221; or <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/8">H.Res 8</a>, the ironically named &#8220;Bipartisan Background Check Act of 2019,&#8221; both of those bills are largely partisan efforts with little to no compromise attempted. Each bill had a mere eight out of 197 Republicans voting for it.
Legislation introduced in the Senate isn’t going anywhere, either. Unlike the House, though, the major legislative moves that are occurring on the Senate floor do have strong bipartisan support.
Take, for example, <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1321?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22actionCode%3A%5C%2217000%5C%22+AND+billIsReserved%3A%5C%22N%5C%22%22%5D%7D&amp;r=56&amp;s=7">S.1321</a>, the &#8220;Defending The Integrity of the Voting Systems Act.&#8221;  This was introduced by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) in May, passed the Senate unanimously, and has been sitting in the House since July 19th. Or take <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/395?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22actionCode%3A%5C%2217000%5C%22+AND+billIsReserved%3A%5C%22N%5C%22%22%5D%7D&amp;r=27&amp;s=7">S.395</a>, the &#8220;Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act of 2019.&#8221; This was also passed unanimously, sent to the House in June, and has been sitting there since then. <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/488?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22actionCode%3A%5C%2217000%5C%22+AND+billIsReserved%3A%5C%22N%5C%22%22%5D%7D&amp;r=31&amp;s=7">S.488</a>, the &#8220;Justice for Victims of Lynching Act of 2019,&#8221; was introduced by presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and was passed by a voice vote; it has been sitting in the House since March. Then there’s <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22actionCode%3A%5C%2217000%5C%22+AND+billIsReserved%3A%5C%22N%5C%22%22%5D%7D&amp;r=1&amp;s=7">S.1</a>, the &#8220;Strengthening America&#8217;s Security in the Middle East Act of 2019,&#8221; which passed 77-23 — including 27 of 49 Democrats voting for it; it has been held in the House since February 6th.
All of these bills are strong, bipartisan issues that should be brought up in the House for a vote. However, any one of these bills, were they to be signed by President Trump, would be seen as a “win” for both the president and Republicans. Much like the never-ending investigations, House Democrats are more interested in victory during the next election cycle than they are in actually accomplishing anything for the American people.
While it may be a fair accusation to blame Congress, as a whole, for doing nothing in 2019, analyzing the partisanship and the willingness to work across the aisle finds that Democrats are guiltier of unwillingness to govern than are Republicans. So when Trump rants on Twitter that they &#8220;do nothing,&#8221; he certainly has a ground to stand on.
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You can follow Moshe Hill on facebook at <a href="https://facebook.com/aHillwithaView">facebook.com/aHillwithaView</a> and Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/themohill">@theMoHil</a>.

HILL: Who’s To Blame For The ‘Do-Nothing Congress?’

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

Kevin McCarthy

Sean Parnell

Decorated War Hero Launches GOP Congressional Bid, Reveals Goals For Congress

Burgess Owens.

INTERVIEW: NFL Legend Burgess Owens Announces Run For Congress

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.

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

Facebook

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.
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<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>
</div>
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.
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<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>
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<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>
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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

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>
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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’

House Republicans

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>

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