Fear and desperation define the Democrats’ election strategy

December 26, 2023

In their never-ending effort to prevent former President Donald Trump from being elected for a second term, the Democrats have taken yet another step. Their fear that Trump will win in 2024 has driven them to levels of desperation likely unseen before of as a weapon against a presidential candidate in our history, or certainly in the last hundred years.

Without listing all of the efforts so far unleashed, suffice it to say that every imaginable contrivance has been used. The most recent is perhaps the most ridiculous.

The Colorado Supreme Court, a panel of seven Democrats appointed by a Democrat governor, has ruled that "President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President" under the 14th Amendment.

There was, of course, much delight from this decision, and much irritation. Let’s focus on the response from those who disagree with the Court’s action.

Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, called the action a “flawed decision.” “This is the most dangerous attack on your constitutional right to vote I have ever seen.”

House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y. commented that "Four partisan Democrat operatives on the Colorado Supreme Court think they get to decide for all Coloradans and Americans the next presidential election. This is un-American and Democrats are so afraid that President Trump will win on Nov 5th, 2024 that they are illegally attempting to take him off the ballot."

 “We trust the U.S. Supreme Court will set aside this reckless decision and let the American people decide the next President of the United States,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Trump attorney Alina Habba commented that “This ruling, issued by the Colorado Supreme Court, attacks the very heart of this nation’s democracy. It will not stand, and we trust that the Supreme Court will reverse this unconstitutional order.”

Attorney and former law professor Alan Dershowitz, a long-time Democrat, appearing on Newsmax "National Report," said the following: "In the 60 years I've been practicing and teaching law, I've never seen a decision that's so anti-democratic and so unconstitutional; it is absurd," 

Dershowitz told National Report co-hosts Emma Rechenberg and Jon Glasgow, "The idea that the 14th Amendment was supposed to substitute for the impeachment provision, carefully drafted by the framers, is wrong."

He added that the 14th Amendment stipulates the process, which clearly says Congress shall have the power to ensure that a person cannot run for office.

"If you want to impeach a president, if you want to make him not be able to run in the future, there's a provision. It requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate," he said. "But the idea that the framers of the 14th Amendment intended to circumvent that carefully drawn provision and simply allow any state to make up grounds for denying him the right to be on the ballot undercuts democracy."

Because Trump allegedly engaged in an insurrection, according to the challengers, he is disqualified by Section 3. There are three major legal problems with that claim, however.

1. Trump didn’t hold an applicable office

2. He was not charged, let alone convicted, for ‘Insurrection or Rebellion’

3.  Section 3 is no longer extant. There is an argument that can be made — and which was already adopted by one federal court — that Section 3 doesn’t even exist anymore as a constitutional matter.

Offering more information on this, attorney Hans von Spakovsky with The Heritage Foundation wrote: “First, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment applies only to individuals who were previously a ‘member of Congress,’ an ‘officer of the United States,’ or a state official. Individuals who are elected — such as the president and vice president — are not officers within the meaning of Section 3. Second, no federal court has convicted Trump of engaging in ‘insurrection or rebellion.’ In fact, the Senate acquitted Trump of that charge in his second impeachment.”

Notre Dame University election law professor Derek T. Muller wrote in a blog last Tuesday, “This is a major and extraordinary holding from a state supreme court. Never in history has a presidential candidate been excluded from the ballot under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. United States Supreme Court review seems inevitable, and it exerts major pressure on the Court.

The Democrats, who loudly defend “our democracy,” are now trying to save it by trying to eliminate their chief political enemy in a manner that is stunningly un-democratic. It is more like what one sees in banana republics.

A recent headline regarding the Colorado Supreme Court action read: “Colorado Saves Democracy By Not Allowing People To Vote For Preferred Candidate.”

It is worth noting that among the seven Democrats on the Colorado Supreme Court, three of them disagreed with this action.

This partisan action will act as a lesson for the future, as political parties may use this and similar methods to fight political enemies. Will there soon be a movement to remove Joe Biden from the ballot, too?

If this ridiculous, irrational action is allowed to stand, our nation will suffer a foundational transformation at the hands of Democrats.

What happens when professional ethics are replaced by politics

December 19, 2023

Over the last few years, we have heard from federal government agency employees, former and current, telling about their experiences doing and/or witnessing improper things in dealing with serious and sensitive matters.

These whistleblower’s allegations, if true, paint a troubling picture of how federal government agencies often work to the benefit of one group at the expense of another group.

These alleged activities are the epitome of what our government is not supposed to be. The government must be a fair, balanced and just organization that serves the interests all of the people.

Like the government, the news media is expected to perform its duties in a fair and balanced manner, and make certain that opinion and news reporting are clearly separate.

The Founders of this nation thought that a free press was so critical that they granted protection to do its job properly in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, along with the guarantee of free speech, freedom of religion, freedom to peaceably assemble, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

But as with so many of our noble and cherished traditions, the honesty and integrity of the nation’s news media has been abandoned by far too many of its practitioners.

Recently, a news story broke regarding the New York Times. The Times once was regarded as the greatest newspaper in the world. It had become known as the Gray Lady. It has since become regarded as politically biased, and a weapon of the left.

The internal workings of the Times was the topic of a cover story published in The Economist by senior editor James Bennet titled, "When The New York Times Lost Its Way."

Bennet worked at the Times for many years, most recently as its editorial page editor. He was forced to resign in 2020 after he published an article written by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. The article stirred a great deal of emotion among the Times’ staff, due to its non-left content, prompting the paper’s publisher asking him to resign. 

Cotton, who had served in the U.S. Army, had suggested using military troops to protect businesses under assault by Black Lives Matter rioters following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer.

In the story in The Economist, Bennet described how as the Times moved leftward, he was encouraged to attach “trigger warnings” to conservative opinion pieces to alert the paper’s leftist readers about material that may offend them.

"It was a frenzied time in America," Bennet wrote. "It was the kind of crisis in which journalism could fulfill its highest ambitions of helping readers understand the world, in order to fix it, and in the Times’s Opinion section, which I oversaw, we were pursuing our role of presenting debate from all sides."

Comparing the current attitude of Times’ reporters to that of his time as a reporter, Bennet commented that today’s reporters "may know a lot about television, or real estate, or how to edit audio files ... many Times staff have little idea how closed their world has become, or how far they are from fulfilling their compact with readers to show the world ‘without fear or favor.’”

And in citing his former paper’s increasing bias he called attention to the Wall Street Journal, saying that the Times could “learn something” from its rival.

The Journal, he wrote, “has maintained a stricter separation between its news and opinion journalism, including its cultural criticism, and that has protected the integrity of its work," concluding his cover story.

Although the Times’ leftist orientation has been well recognized and discussed for many years, the actual experience of a long-time and ranking former employee adds much credibility to that belief.

It is a further sad commentary on the condition of many of our news media that an editor of a major newspaper lost his job for actually doing his job: presenting all sides of an issue so that readers would be equipped to make sensible, informed judgements about that issue.

Deliberately burying opinions that differ from the chosen narrative, fearing that those opinions will be accepted by your readers, is cowardly. And, it is un-American.

Back in 1997 the Carnegie-Knight Task Force began a national conversation to identify and clarify the principles of proper journalism. After four years of research, a Statement of Shared Purpose that identified nine principles was released. The sixth principle is: It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.

It reads: “The news media are the common carriers of public discussion, and this responsibility forms a basis for our special privileges. This discussion serves society best when it is informed by facts rather than prejudice and supposition. It also should strive to fairly represent the varied viewpoints and interests in society, and to place them in context rather than highlight only the conflicting fringes of debate. Accuracy and truthfulness require that as framers of the public discussion we not neglect the points of common ground where problem solving occurs.”

How wonderful it would be if the instructors, students, and practitioners of journalism would adopt this concept.

Our government has grown beyond what it was intended to be

December 12, 2023

After the Revolutionary War when the Founders were working on a governing document, they worked hard to not only develop a good design, but a design that protected the people from a government that could control everything they did and thought.

The design they came up with was spectacular, creating a nation governed by a philosophy of limited government and individual freedom. It had three co-equal branches: the legislative branch to pass needed and beneficial laws; an administrative branch to run the country and enforce the laws; and a judicial branch decides the constitutionality of federal laws and resolves other disputes about federal laws.

The design was not perfect, but included a mechanism to amend the Constitution to make it better. Of course, the success of the design depended upon those working in government: the employees and appointed and elected officials. It was expected that everyone involved would understand and support the design.

But, as fate would have it, some politicians and bureaucrats have their own ideas about what should be done, and how. Consequently, the government has grown in size and power, well beyond what the Founders imagined. Still, despite the excesses of the politicians and bureaucrats, many of whom were honestly trying to make things better, the government has grown too big and too powerful.

Columnist George Will in a recent column provided some insight into where we are, discussing a lawsuit before the Supreme Court that could be a start to changing things back toward the original design. The column started with a quote from James Madison in Federalist 47. “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands … may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

He then went on to discuss the case, but used an example of bureaucratic/administrative overreach, and how such behavior weakens what was and could again be the best governmental design ever.

The example he used describes the typical enforcement activities of some federal agencies, in this case the Federal Trade Commission, as published in the Harvard Law Review.

“The Commission promulgates substantive rules of conduct. The Commission then considers whether to authorize investigations into whether the Commission’s rules have been violated. If the Commission authorizes an investigation, the investigation is conducted by the Commission, which reports its findings to the Commission. 

“If the Commission thinks that the Commission’s findings warrant an enforcement action, the Commission issues a complaint. The Commission’s complaint that a Commission rule has been violated is then prosecuted by the Commission and adjudicated by the Commission. This Commission adjudication can either take place before the full Commission or before a semiautonomous Commission administrative law judge. 

“If the Commission chooses to adjudicate before an administrative law judge rather than before the Commission and the decision is adverse to the Commission, the Commission can appeal to the Commission. If the Commission ultimately finds a violation, then, and only then, the affected private party can appeal to an Article III court. 

“But the agency decision, even before the bona fide Article III tribunal, possesses a very strong presumption of correctness on matters both of fact and of law.”

In this case, and many other similar instances, even if the rules in force have been assumed to be appropriate, or found to be appropriate by the courts, the behavior of the government agency in being the only party prosecuting the rule breaking, and deciding whether things are right or not, is more than just a little heavy-handed.

This is precisely what Madison was referring to in the Federalist article. When the government makes the rules, adjudicates the rules, decides the outcome and also the penalties, the people are not being fairly or constitutionally dealt with. 

In a government set up to be fair in its dealings with the people, it is clearly not in the best interest of the people when the politicians and bureaucrats work under the table to increase their power over the people, the very people they are elected and hired to serve.

In the example cited, and likely many others we may not have heard about, what is the difference between life in the United States, and in some third world or authoritarian regime? Realistically, we are not there yet, but have been walking in that direction.

What we find and have observed for a long time is a strong effort on the part of politicians and bureaucrats to engage in what former President Barack Obama promised during his 2008 campaign: “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” 

There have been efforts to pack the Supreme Court; do away with the Electoral College; replace the local and state government control of elections with federal control of elections; move away from dependable energy sources; end our energy independent status; heavily restrict or ban citizen gun ownership; dictate what type of light bulbs and other conveniences and appliances we may have; and effectively open our southern border to all who want to enter, for whatever ends they may seek.

Our country is weaker and further from its original design than in many decades. Or, perhaps, ever.

Biden’s weak policies increase our risk of terrorist activity

December 5, 2023

No objective person can look at the chaos at the southern border and not be alarmed. Of course, the Biden administration’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, insists that the border is closed.

However, the New York Times reported in October that “Migrants were caught crossing the southern border of the United States more times in the past year than in any other year since at least 1960, when the government started keeping track of the data.

“It is the third record-setting year in a row,” and there were “more than 2.4 million apprehensions in the 2023 fiscal year, which ended in September. That tops the previous record, set a year earlier, of more than 2.3 million, according to government data released on Saturday. During the 2021 fiscal year, there were more than 1.7 million apprehensions.”

Question for Mayorkas: If 2.3 and 2.4 million people can enter the country illegally in two consecutive years, and those numbers have set records for illegal entry going back 50 years, how many illegal entries constitute a situation where the border could reasonably be considered open?

No doubt the response will be: crickets.

And while states on the border are suffering immensely, and illegals are being transported around the country by the federal government, even the sanctuary states and cities are beginning to understand the pain of these lax federal policies, and want action to be taken.

Critics point out that while many or maybe most of these illegal aliens merely seek a better life, many of them have other intentions: trafficking children, women, and drugs; gang violence; and worse. 

In former President Donald Trump’s final 32 months in the White House, Border Patrol agents apprehended 1.9 million illegal aliens. By contrast, in the first 32 months of President Joe Biden’s tenure, the Border Patrol apprehended 6.3 million illegal aliens.

In addition to the millions of illegals apprehended, there have been 1.5 million “gotaways,” illegals that were spotted and counted, but not apprehended. As the number of those apprehended increases, so does the number of gotaways. We don’t know who they are or why they came. And we don’t know where they went.

Illegals on the terror watch list that have been apprehended have increased in number since fiscal year 2017, when two were caught. In 2018, there were six; in 2019 there were none; and in 2020 there were three.

And then the increases began. In 2021 - 15; in 2022 - 98; in 2023 - 169.

If that by itself isn’t bad enough, wait until you see which countries they are coming from.

From October 1, 2021 to Oct. 4, 2023 some 73,000 “Special Interest Aliens” entered the country from places including Afghanistan, Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey and Syria. 

In the first half of October of this year, more than 30 came from Iran and Pakistan each. More than 100 came from Russia. Almost 2,000 came from China.

Are any of these illegals associated with Iranian terrorist proxies, like Hamas or Hezbollah? And many of these illegals are military age males. And what about those from China, our most serious adversary?

This is the reality that the feeble and perilous Biden border policy has produced.

To call on their supporters to conduct attacks on our own soil,” Wray said.

“Terrorists and criminal actors may exploit the elevated flow and increasingly complex security environment to enter the United States,” said the fiscal year 2024 threat assessment by the Department of Homeland Security.

And, FBI Director Christopher Wray told reporters on a call in October that “Here in the U.S., we cannot and do not discount the possibility that Hamas or their foreign terrorist organizations could exploit the conflict to call on their supporters to conduct attacks on our own soil.”

The weakness demonstrated by the Biden administration on the southern border has not gone without notice around the world. Since the butchery carried out in the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, Iranian terrorist proxies have attacked U.S. military installations in the region 75 times. The U.S. response has been meek and scarce. The only good news is that while some military personnel have been injured, none have been killed.

This sort of under-reaction will not deter future attacks; they invite more. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at the end of October, two weeks after the attacks began, “Iran wants to hide its hand and deny its role in these attacks against our forces. We will not let them. If attacks by Iran’s proxies against U.S. forces continue, we will not hesitate to take further necessary measures to protect our people.”

Austin’s words had no effect on Iran and its terrorist proxies; the attacks have continued. And the tough talk threatening “further necessary measures” has not led to one significant retaliatory strike.

Biden hasn’t been moved to stand up to Iran and order an action to exact a substantial price from the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. And until Iran is shown that we will back up our words with significant action, these attacks will continue, and likely get worse.