BRILLIANT: IRS “Security” Program Unable to Stop $3.1 Billion Fraud

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While it’s absorbed persecuting law-abiding conservative groups the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) can’t seem to stop crooks from scamming it to the tune of several billion dollars in one year alone via bogus tax refunds. It’s the latest of many transgressions at the agency that’s doubled as an Obama administration tool to crack down on political adversaries.

A special IRS security feature called Taxpayer Protection Program (TPP) couldn’t prevent criminals from scamming the agency out of an eye-popping $3.1 billion in one year, according to a federal audit.

TPP was implemented to curb an epidemic of identity theft that allows criminals to fraudulently get tax refunds. Supposedly, identity theft fraud is reduced through a verification process but the federal probe, conducted by the investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), found serious loopholes. “TPP uses single-factor authentication procedures that incorporate one of the following authentication elements: ‘something you know,’ ‘something you have,’ or ‘something you are,’” the GAO report states. “TPP’s single-factor authentication procedures are at risk of exploitation because some fraudsters obtain the PII (personally identifiable information) necessary to pass the questions asked during authentication.”

As a result thousands of bogus filers get refunds from the IRS annually, possibly more, the GAO probe found. In fact, investigators determined that the IRS may have doled out an undetermined amount of money to an unknown number of fraudsters so the true figure will never be known. This has been going on for years and the IRS has spent a chunk of change trying to combat it to no avail. In fiscal year 2015 the agency dedicated more than 4,000 full-time employees and spent about $470 million to combat refund fraud and identity theft, the GAO reports. The Obama administration requested an additional $90 million and 491 full-time employees for fiscal year 2017 to reduce improper payments as if throwing more money at the problem will solve it. The reality is that this is part of a much broader security issue at the tax agency. Earlier this year the IRS Inspector General confirmed that hackers gained unauthorized access to 724,000 taxpayer accounts, illustrating that its system is incredibly vulnerable.

The latest GAO audit exposes just one of a multitude of problems at the feared tax agency. Judicial Watch has reported extensively on IRS scandals over the years and has been a leader in uncovering the sordid details of the agency’s witch hunt of conservative groups. Judicial Watch has obtained damaging government records that show the IRS illegally colluded with another federal agency to crack down on conservative nonprofit groups during the 2012 election cycle. The IRS director at the center of the scheme, Lois Lerner, not only broke agency rules—as well as the law—to target conservative organizations, she also lied to Congress in an effort to cover up the wrongdoing.

Judicial Watch has also been a leader in reporting other IRS wrongdoing that’s been largely ignored by the mainstream media. This includes allowing prison inmates to fraudulently receive tens of millions of dollars in tax refunds and illegal immigrants billions by letting them improperly claim tax credits they don’t qualify for. Last summer an embarrassing federal audit exposed the IRS for awarding dozens of tax-delinquent companies with millions of dollars in government contracts. During a two-year period the IRS awarded 57 contracts worth nearly $19 million to 17 corporations that owed federal taxes during that period. This actually violated a 2012 federal law called the Consolidated Appropriations Act prohibiting government agencies from using appropriated funds to enter into a contract with a company that has certain federal tax debt or felony convictions.

As if this weren’t bad enough, IRS employees have been charged with stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in government benefits, including food stamps, welfare and housing vouchers. IRS employees have also been singled out in various government probes as the federal workers with the highest number of tax delinquents that received bonus pay. A few years ago a federal audit revealed that at the IRS alone, staff members with violations received close to $3 million in awards on top of their regular government salary. Some got the extra cash despite being cited for using drugs, making violent threats, fraudulently claiming unemployment benefits and misusing government credit cards. (For more from the author of “BRILLIANT: IRS “Security” Program Unable to Stop $3.1 Billion Fraud” please click HERE)

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Rumors of a GOP Senate Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

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“Extremely careless.” That phrase from FBI Director James Comey about the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee’s mishandling of classified information was immediately seen as a millstone around the necks of Secretary Hillary Clinton and Democrats up and down the ballot.

However, weeks before Comey’s press conference, the June NBC/WSJ poll, which provides apples-to-apples comparisons going back to the 1990s, poured data-driven cold water on the down-ballot wipeout that has been the stuff of Democrats’ dreams for months.

Polling data is one of several stubborn realities undermining the conventional wisdom that the Republican majority is in more trouble than it would be in any competitive election year.

First, Republicans are better positioned in June 2016 than they were at the same point in the past three election cycles.

According to the NBC/WSJ data, the Republican generic presidential ballot was stronger in June 2016 (D +3) than it was in June 2008 (D +16), ahead of the last open election. More germane to the senate map, the generic congressional ballot is the strongest it has been in any of the last four election cycles, with the parties tied at 46 percent. In June 2014, the GOP lagged by two points, one point in June 2012, and nine points in June 2008.

Second, Clinton and Trump are polling neck-and-neck in key senate states.

Elections come down to a handful of key states, and many marquee senate races are being fought in states where the top of the ticket is close. Secretary Clinton’s vulnerabilities among Rust Belt voters are a major liability in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and in must-win New Hampshire, a recent Franklin Pierce University/Boston Herald poll had Clinton and Trump tied in the state where she lost to an avowed socialist by 22 points.

The Real Clear Politics polling average has the top of the ticket race within the margin of error in the four presidential battleground states with competitive senate races: Florida (Clinton +3.4), Pennsylvania (Clinton +2.5), Ohio (Clinton +3), New Hampshire (Clinton +2.7).

Clinton coattails are clearly non-existent – hence the resounding silence from most Democratic senate candidates following Comey’s blistering criticism – and her deep unpopularity could even prompt ticket-splitting among reluctant Clinton voters eager to put a check on her potential power.

Third, the Democratic party remains deeply divided.

A recent Bloomberg poll showed a staggering 55 percent of Bernie Sanders supporters saying they would not vote for Clinton in the general election. While that number will certainly decrease before Election Day, Sanders’ expected endorsement of Clinton is reluctant in the extreme, and according to the New York Post, up to one million left-wing protesters are preparing to disrupt the Democratic convention.

In 2010 and 2012, Republicans suffered from a spate of contentious primaries, resulting in unelectable candidates emerging from the fray. That narrative has played out on the other side of the aisle in 2016, with candidates like Ohio’s Ted Strickland and Illinois’ Tammy Duckworth forced to the left on tough general election issues like gun control and energy by liberal primary challengers that cost them time and money to dispatch.

Finally, candidates matter.

Never have supposed star recruits so utterly failed to live up to the hype as the Democrats’ sought-after senate candidates in Florida and Pennsylvania. Establishment groups spent nearly $5 million to drag Katie McGinty, a bureaucrat with a revolving door problem, through another contentious primary, only to have her claim to be the first in her family to attend college immediately exposed as a lie. Another DSCC primary pick, Florida’s Patrick Murphy, has had his inflated resume methodically torn apart by a series of investigative reports, to the point where Salon called him a “disaster candidate.”

Politico recently described the Democrats’ senate-winning strategy as “be boring,” which explains why candidates like Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire and Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada are running dull campaigns that have been criticized for relying on canned talking points. Aside from completely abandoning the “hope and change” mantra, the strategy is an odd one for a field of challengers, as voters looking for a safe or predictable candidate tend to favor incumbents.

Republicans, on the other hand, have a strong slate of candidates built primarily of standouts from the class of 2010 with a record of tangible successes to run on, like passing a five-year highway bill, reforming Medicare’s payment system so seniors can keep their doctors, and combatting the opioid epidemic ravaging rural communities.

No matter how you slice it, the battle for the senate will be extremely competitive. But by all means, Democrats should continue to believe they have it in the bag. (For more from the author of “Rumors of a GOP Senate Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated” please click HERE)

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Since When Does Planned Parenthood Have a Constitutional Right to Taxpayer Funds?

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Once again, we have Republican dominance of a state’s political branches of government rendered moot by the council of revision aka the federal court system.

Utah, like many GOP-controlled states, moved to cut off taxpayer funds to Planned Parenthood after their associates were caught on video discussing the trafficking of fetuses. The liberals in the legal profession have successfully placed temporary injunctions on many of these acts. After the district judge withdrew a stay on Utah Governor Gary Herbert’s action, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals today reversed that decision and blocked the common sense action on the part of the state of Utah.

Writing for the three judge panel (consisting of Reagan, Clinton, and Obama appointees) in Planned Parenthood v. Herbert, Judge Mary Briscoe determined that Planned Parenthood was likely to succeed on the merits because “a reasonable finder of fact is more likely than not to find that Herbert issued the directive to punish PPAU for the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights it has identified in this litigation.”

While one judge disagreed with another constitutional point, they all agreed that the governor violated … you guessed it … the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The Equal Protection Clause was merely designed to reiterate the basic life, liberty and property negative rights that applied to everyone else and ensure that they were granted to freed slaves. As I note in Chapter 4 of Stolen Sovereignty, Rep. James F. Wilson, R-Iowa, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee back in the 1860s who helped draft the 14th Amendment, spoke emphatically that it was “establishing no new right, declaring no new principle.” “It is not the object of this bill to establish new rights, but to protect and enforce those which belong to every citizen,” declared Wilson in 1866.

Yet, we have now moved onto a post-constitutional judicial oligarchy that believes the 14th Amendment not only creates a right to an abortion, but a positive right for a private organization under criminal investigation for trafficking baby parts to secure taxpayer funding.

What is further ironic is that we have a legal profession that now agrees that not giving a criminal enterprise taxpayer funding is tantamount to blocking their First Amendment rights, but taking negative action (imprisonment or fines) against private business owners who don’t service gay weddings or transgenderism is the highest order of mankind. Oh, and let’s not forget that the pesky document from 1776 declares that fundamental rights come from natural law and nature’s God, of which the sexual identity movement repudiates.

We have reached a point in time when the judiciary has voided out the elected branches of government even to the point when it must keep taxpayer funding flowing to criminal enterprises that engage in immoral behavior that is well within the historical powers of a state to regulate. We have a judiciary that green lights liberal state officials to infringe upon inalienable negative rights of property, conscience, and self-defense, but impedes conservative state officials from regulating positive privileges.

As I noted last week, this is part of a growing trend from the lower courts tossing out every last regulation of abortion facilities and mandating funding for Planned Parenthood. It’s time conservatives realize that we are not just one election away from winning back the courts. The courts are irremediably broken. Even if we succeed in appointing judges who will never expand upon existing breaches in the Constitution, a task that is dubious at best, there is enough existing post-constitutional precedent embedded just in the bastardization of the 14th Amendment alone to void out every policy initiative we could possibly hope to achieve from a Republican president and GOP-controlled states. That existing “precedent” is respected by most GOP appointees, except for the few in the mold of Clarence Thomas. We will never win the judiciary game a half century into this post-constitutional Gomorrah.

It’s time to ignore the courts and the first step to delegitimizing their ill-gotten power is for Congress to use its existing constitutional authority, pursuant to Article III Section 2, to regulate the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary. They must protect the states in their ability to pass common sense immigration enforcement laws, abortion regulations, define marriage, protect religious liberty and protect the franchise from fraudulent voting.

The lower courts are even worse than the Supreme Court, yet they are created by Congress and can easily be swatted down. The notion that one federal district judge could rule over a state or even a congressional statute fully in the spirit of our Constitution, history, and traditions is absurd, given the fact that Congress can abolish those courts altogether. As for the Supreme Court, Congress can prevent all but a few spheres of original jurisdiction granted to it by Article III from becoming precedent through narrowing their power of adjudication.

Let’s not forgot the timeless admonition of Abraham Lincoln in his first inaugural address:

[t]he candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.

In this spectacularly hyped election season that will determine control of the presidency, Congress and state governments, let’s remember that if we fail to alter the perception of the court’s power, the outcome of every major political and social question of our time will be placed in the hands of that eminent tribunal. Their ill-gotten power as the council of revision, in conjunction with their anti-constitutional ethos used to make those decisions, will ensure that we no longer have individual, state or national sovereignty to be governed by the consent of the governed. (For more from the author of “Since When Does Planned Parenthood Have a Constitutional Right to Taxpayer Funds?” please click HERE)

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RNC Strikes Back Against Delegates Unbound

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A key confidant of GOP Chairman Reince Priebus today fired a shot directly at the #FreetheDelegates and #DelegatesUnbound movements. Priebus’ hand-picked general counsel for the Republican National Committee, John Ryder, forcefully came out against the notion that delegates could be unbound. His remarks constitute legal advice to the RNC Standing Committee on Rules. It was the strongest language to date by an official of the RNC against the effort to deny Donald Trump the nomination here in Cleveland next week.

The key question is will it matter either way?

Earlier today I met with Delegates Unbound cofounder Dane Waters. In a Facebook Live interview, Waters acknowledged that the battle his group is waging is a tough and uphill fight. They fully expected the RNC to align with the Trump campaign to try and stop any attempt to open the convention and stop Donald Trump.

Today’s opinion by Ryder, who also serves as the National Committeeman from Tennessee, confirms that the RNC is gearing up to quash any movement against Trump.

Ryder opened his legal advice by saying, “the Rules of the Republican Party both permit and require the binding of delegates.” Ryder went on to say that the new Rule 16 of the Republican National Committee, as adopted by the 2012 convention, requires that delegates are bound if there is a primary in their state. He further stated that it is his opinion that the decision in Correll v. Heller, issued yesterday, confirmed that rule 16 is in effect.

Conservative Review obtained a statement emailed to all RNC members after the committee meeting. In the statement, Ryder’s office said:

We are pleased that the court correctly found that Rule 16 of The Rules of the Republican Party is in effect and that delegates remain bound in accordance with their states’ presidential preference votes. The court recognized long-standing precedent that gives primacy to national party rules in the selection of delegates to the national convention. This ruling also makes clear that the rules of the Republican Party of Virginia are in conformity with The Rules of the Republican Party regarding binding and allocation. In light of the court’s decision, all party rules regarding binding and all state laws consistent with those rules are in effect.

Ryder’s remarks were pointedly aimed at Curly Haugland, the Republican National Committeeman from North Dakota. Ryder countered Haugland’s assertion that the delegates are unbound due to the longstanding history of the party. He countered that early Twentieth Century language supplanted language from the late 1800s that instituted a so-called “conscience clause.”

Haugland forcefully fired back. Haugland reminded the counsel that there are no current rules for the convention until the delegates adopt them on Monday, an assertion with which Ryder disagreed. Haugland then undercut Ryder’s argument that Rule 16 and Rule 37 were synergistic, meaning that Rule 16 required delegates to be bound through the nominating vote. Haugland recanted a point of order that he brought up during the 2012 Rules Committee debate regarding the two sections.

Haulgland said, “I raised the question of order saying that 16 conflicts with 37 He [2012 Convention Rules Committee Chairman John Sununu] said, ‘are you suggesting 16 conflicts with 37, is that your point of order?’ I said yes. He said, ‘there’s no conflict, rule 16 deals with delegate selection, and rule 37 deals with voting.’ We can only vote in one place, we either vote in the primaries or we vote in the convention. I submit we vote in the convention.”

The reality of what happened today is that it will be tough for the forces who want to both unseat Donald Trump as the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party and replace him at convention. It has been a tough fight for that side from the beginning. Today’s legal advice, offered by a close Reince Priebus confidant shows that the party apparatus is taking the side of Donald Trump in that fight.

It will be a tough floor fight to try and enforce the view that all delegates are unbound and can vote their conscience. Free the Delegates, and Delegates Unbound have a strong floor strategy with 38 state whips, and a robust delegate communication method for the days of the convention. Waters, of Delegates Unbound, also claims they have identified a majority of delegates who do not want to see Trump as the nominee. Will those delegates have the desire to translate that dislike of Trump into action?

That’s the question on everybody’s mind, and today’s proceedings showed that the Trump camp has come to Cleveland ready to take on that fight. (For more from the author of “RNC Strikes Back Against Delegates Unbound” please click HERE)

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As Obama Speaks in Dallas, Police Groups Question His Support

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As President Barack Obama visited Dallas on Tuesday to speak at the memorial service for five slain police officers there, some law enforcement advocates faulted his legacy on the issue as negative.

“It’s a consistent pattern that whenever there is violence, he has repeatedly failed to wait until the facts are known before giving his opinion that implies cops are racists and that pollutes the environment around the case,” Ron Hosko, president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, told The Daily Signal in a telephone interview.

“He has put his thumb on the scales of justice and has simultaneously inflamed matters,” Hosko said. “He is no friend to law enforcement.”

During his remarks in Dallas, the president repeatedly praised police but also asserted that the concerns of peaceful protesters are legitimate.

“We know that an overwhelming majority of police officers do an incredibly hard and dangerous job fairly and professionally. They are deserving of our respect and not our scorn,” Obama said, adding:

When anyone, no matter how good their intentions may be, paints all police as bias or bigoted, we undermine those officers we depend on for our safety. As for those who use rhetoric suggesting harm to police, even if they don’t act on it themselves, they not only make the job of police officers more dangerous, they do a disservice to the very cause of justice they claim to promote.

The president added: “America, we know bias remains. We know it. … No institution is entirely immune. That includes police departments.”

He continued:

When mothers and fathers raise their kids right and have ‘the talk’ about how to respond to a police officer—‘Yes, sir, no sir’—but fear that something terrible may happen when their child walks out the door, still fear that kids being stupid and not quite doing things right might end in tragedy—when all this takes place more than 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, we can’t just simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as troublemakers or paranoid. We can’t simply dismiss it as a symptom of political correctness or reverse racism.

‘Symptomatic’

On Wednesday, the president is scheduled to meet with a group of law enforcement officials, civil rights activists, and local political leaders about rebuilding trust between police departments and their communities, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.

Earnest said It’s time for police departments around the country to implement the recommendations of the White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing. That report called for a greater emphasis on police forces having community-based partnerships with schools, businesses, and neighborhood organizations; greater transparency and oversight; and increased officer training.

Jon Adler, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, on Monday publicly asked Obama to use blue lights to illuminate the White House in honor of the fallen officers in Dallas:

While we appreciate the president’s proclamation to have our flag flown at half-mast in honor of our fallen police heroes, I respectfully request that he demonstrate his full respect for their ultimate sacrifice by illuminating the White House in blue. Actions speak louder than scripted words, and the honorable act of displaying law enforcement’s ‘This Blue Line’ at the White House would demonstrate the president’s sincere commitment to our fallen heroes and their families.

The White House did not respond to The Daily Signal’s inquiry as to whether it would honor the request or is considering the blue lights.

Obama’s remarks at the memorial service in Dallas were his most extensive so far.

Speaking Friday from Poland, Obama condemned the police shootings of black men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and in Minneapolis that preceded the deadly attack Thursday on Dallas police officers, saying:

What I can say is that all of us as Americans should be troubled by these shootings because these are not isolated incidents. They’re symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system.

‘Anti-Police Narrative’

Hosko, who was assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division from 2012 through 2014, said he agrees with recommendations from the White House policing task force, including body cameras, more neighborhood-based policing, and better training.

However, he said, too many departments don’t have enough resources.

Hosko and other critics with law enforcement backgrounds say Obama has unfairly criticized police before knowing the facts, beginning with a police officer’s arrest of a Harvard professor that led to a “beer summit” at the White House and continuing with the president’s commentary regarding the deaths of black men after altercations with police in Ferguson, Missouri, and in New York and Baltimore.

However, PolitiFact recently called it “mostly false” to characterize Obama as anti-cop, publishing numerous pro-police statements by the president. Among them was this 2015 remark:

“As president, I am committed to making sure America’s dedicated police officers receive the support and recognition they have earned, and to doing all I can to protect those who protect us.”

Vice President Joe Biden told CNN on Monday that Obama “in fact has, repeatedly, been supportive of the police organizations. He talked about it.”

In 2009, Obama said during a White House news conference that Sgt. James Crowley of the police department in Cambridge, Massachusetts, “acted stupidly” in confronting Henry Louis Gates Jr. as the Harvard professor was entering his house. Crowley arrested Gates for disorderly conduct, a charge that later was dropped.

“There’s a long history in this country of African-Americans being stopped disproportionately by the police,” Obama also said at the time. “It’s a sign of how race remains a factor in this society.”

The Cambridge police union accused Obama of a rush to judgment. The president tried to smooth over the matter by bringing together Crowley and Gates for a beer with himself and Biden.

“How he responded to that right off the bat showed his view of law enforcement was decidedly skeptical,” Scott Erickson, president of Americans in Support of Law Enforcement, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.

“He has been one of many pieces that has helped create an anti-police narrative,” said Erickson, who served as a police officer for 18 years in California, adding:

How he responds is disproportionate because he is the president and it impacts what we see as acceptable. What he should do and should have done is show a shared sense of empathy. Shared empathy will make a person less prone to jump to conclusions.

‘A National Problem’

During a December 2012 interview with BET, the month after he won a second term, Obama said:

The vast majority of law enforcement officers are doing a really tough job, and most of them are doing it well and are trying to do the right thing. But a combination of bad training, in some cases; a combination in some cases of departments that really are not trying to root out biases, or tolerate sloppy police work; a combination in some cases of folks just not knowing any better, and in a lot of cases, subconscious fear of folks who look different—all of this contributes to a national problem that’s going to require a national solution.

Five days following the Ferguson incident in 2014, when officer Darren Wilson shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown after he grabbed at the officer’s firearm, Obama said from Martha’s Vineyard: “There is never an excuse for violence against police or for those who would use this tragedy as a cover for vandalism or looting. There’s also no excuse for police to use excessive force against peaceful protests or to throw protesters in jail for lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights.”

The Obama administration’s Justice Department launched an investigation of the Ferguson Police Department and settled a federal lawsuit with the agency in March.

After drug dealer Freddie Gray, who was black, died last year while in the custody of Baltimore police, Obama criticized both police and voters. He went on to say: “I can’t federalize every police force in the country and force them to retrain, but what I can do is to start working with them collaboratively so that they can begin this process of change themselves.”

In the incidents last week before the Dallas attack, an officer fatally shot Philando Castile during a traffic stop in Minneapolis and officers fatally shot Alton Sterling after forcing him to the floor of a parking garage.

The latest police shootings of black men prompted protests around the country, many organized by Black Lives Matter, including the one Dallas. Near the end of that protest, authorities say, Micah Xavier Johnson shot 12 police officers, killing five.

“Insisting we do more to root out racial bias is not an attack on cops, but an effort to live up to our highest ideas,” Obama said Tuesday in Dallas, adding:

Even those who dislike the phrase Black Lives Matter surely we should be able to hear the pain of Alton Sterling’s family … so that yes, insist that his life matters, just as we should understand the students and coworkers who showed their affection for Philando Castile.

‘We Need to Fight’

Another liberal group, MoveOn.org, criticized conservatives who questioned the president or Black Lives Matter in their treatment of the issue of police shootings.

“The last thing we need is more violent and hate-baiting rhetoric like what we’re seeing from former Congressman Joe Walsh and right-wing pundits,” Anna Galland, the group’s executive director of civic action, said in a statement.

In a tweet he later deleted, former Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Ill., wrote: “3 Dallas Cops killed, 7 wounded. This is now war. Watch out Obama. Watch out black lives matter punks. Real America is coming after you.”

Galland’s statement for MoveOn.org continued:

We don’t need fear-mongering calls for more guns or more militarized policing. We don’t need a further crackdown on peaceful, lawful protesters or to cast blame at peaceful movements that are confronting police violence. We need to protect civil liberties and fight for the civil rights of black people and all Americans, while keeping our neighbors and communities safe.

Fox News quoted William Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, as faulting Obama and his administration for their “refusal to condemn movements like Black Lives Matter.” The police group endorsed Obama in 2008.

Johnson said such movements were “actively calling for the death of police officers, that type of thing, all the while blaming police for the problems in this country,” and such rhetoric “has led directly to the climate that has made Dallas possible.”

“It’s a war on cops,” he said. “And the Obama administration is the Neville Chamberlain of this war.” (For more from the author of “As Obama Speaks in Dallas, Police Groups Question His Support” please click HERE)

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Debunking 6 Myths About the First Amendment Defense Act

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The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing Tuesday on the most important piece of religious liberty legislation before Congress in years: the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), introduced by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rep. Raúl Labrador, R-Idaho.

Several Democratic House members and their invited witnesses made some stunning claims about the bill both orally and in written remarks that merit serious fact-checking. Here are six of them.

Claim 1: The bill is cover for discrimination against LGBT people.

Reality: This claim is rebutted by simply stating what the bill actually does—it prevents the federal government from discriminating against individuals and institutions that follow their beliefs about marriage and what it entails. It protects supporters of both sides of the same-sex marriage debate from being stripped of nonprofit tax-exempt status, licenses, grants, contracts, or accreditation. Just as Congress protected people from being punished for declining to participate in abortions after Roe v. Wade, the First Amendment Defense Act protects people from being punished for their beliefs about marriage after the Obergefell decision, without taking anything away from anyone.

Claim 2: FADA prevents enforcement of every single federal law that imposes a “penalty”—be it antidiscrimination, health, retirement, housing for noncompliance—if the person being penalized can claim they are acting out of a belief about marriage.

Reality: The word penalty appears only once in FADA and in a paragraph dealing exclusively with taxation because FADA only prevents discriminatory imposition of tax penalties, not every penalty in federal law. Most of the criticisms of FADA, including the most fantastical ones, vanish once this is understood.

Claim 3: FADA allows businesses to deny employee benefits for same-sex partners in violation of the Family and Medical Leave Act, Employee Retirement Income Security Act, and employment discrimination laws.

Reality: The previous response applies with equal force here as FADA provides no immunity or exemptions from the Family and Medical Leave Act or any employment civil rights laws. As illustrated by the Hobby Lobby decision at the Supreme Court, business owners should not be forced by government to give up their religious beliefs and convictions in order to earn a living. FADA furthers this important right by protecting businesses in limited contexts—such as grants, contracts, tax exemption, and licenses—while leaving our landmark civil rights laws untouched.

Claim 4: FADA protects state clerks who want to opt out of issuing same-sex marriage licenses to gay people.

Reality: FADA does not cover state government employees, so state clerks are not protected. Kelvin Cochran testified at the hearing about being unjustly fired from his position as Atlanta fire chief because of his views on marriage, and how FADA would have protected him had it been the federal government stripping him of his position as United States fire administrator. His story prompted former Rep. (and FADA opponent) Barney Frank to say that he wished there were a law that would have protected the chief. Frank is right: There should be such a law and FADA is it at the federal level.

Claim 5: Under FADA, federal contractors would be able to deny certain government-funded benefits under Title X, such as contraception, to a person because they enter into a same-sex marriage.

Reality: FADA opponents have been forced to imagine outlandish hypothetical scenarios like these because they cannot come up with real world examples where FADA would prevent gays and lesbians from getting government services everyone is entitled to. FADA specifies that for-profit contractors cannot deny services to anyone required to be served under the terms of a federal contract. Additionally, where protection is provided, as with religious nonprofits, FADA does not relieve the federal government of any obligation to deliver government benefit or services “either directly or through a person not seeking protection under this act.” In short, everyone entitled to a government benefit or service will get it before and after FADA.

Claim 6: Under FADA, a hospital could deny visitation rights to people in same sex-marriages.

Reality: FADA states that it does not apply to any “hospital, clinic, hospice, nursing home, or other medical or residential custodial facility with respect to visitation, cognition of a designated representative for health care decision-making, or refusal to provide medical treatment necessary to cure an illness or injury.” It doesn’t get any clearer.

The Supreme Court itself said that the belief in marriage as the union of one man and one woman is grounded in “decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises,” not on discrimination. FADA respects this truth and gives life to the best of our traditions of tolerance and religious freedom.

Tuesday’s hearing proved that FADA protects people and institutions from having their beliefs about marriage targeted for discrimination by their own government. It would do nothing more, nothing less. (For more from the author of “Debunking 6 Myths About the First Amendment Defense Act” please click HERE)

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INCREDIBLE: AK Gov. Walker Runs for Cover, Denies Broken Promises on PFD; UFL President Responds

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On September 2, 2014 United For Liberty (“UFL”) was honored to have candidate Bill Walker address a group of United For Liberty members. He met with approximately 50 members from different political parties and associations affiliated with UFL.

In his presentation, candidate Walker made specific statements that he was not a career politician and that if he were elected he would have to go to Juneau and make hard decisions to cut the size and scope of government and this would not be popular. He said this was his first priority. He used the 16% reduction figure often as a benchmark. Additionally, he insisted that he would not raid the PFD or incorporate any sales taxes or income taxes. It is important to note that oil prices were already falling and in October of 2014, prior to the election, prices had dipped below $80.00 bbl. Certainly nobody could predict where oil would bottom out , but it was clear that the price of oil was on a serious downward trajectory at the time Bill Walker made these statements.

The first week of September 2014, candidate Walker was solicited by United For Liberty to submit an article for our October 2014 newsletter. The deadline was September 22 for final submission. A member of UFL accepted the editor’s task to put together the final product. This same member was also working with the Walker team to assist in assembling a narrative to be put in the newsletter. He worked diligently and put the entire newsletter together and submitted to me the entire PFD file to publish on United For Liberty’s website. Following is a letter I sent candidate Walker on October 9th thanking him for the submitted article and asking him to consider submitting one more for a possible additional newsletter before the election (he submitted an additional article on October 15, 2014, but I did not publish it as I did not have one from incumbent Governor Parnell and I wanted to give each candidate fair coverage):

HEADER——> UFL NEWSLETTER SUBMISSION

Dear Bill,

Thank you for submitting an article for our newsletter. I am writing you to solicit one more before the election is upon us. Please consider submitting another article by Friday, October 17th. I do believe it is in your campaign’s better interest to submit as we have a large circulation through our member groups. Governor Parnell has received a request as well.

my regards,
Michael

ps.
Thank you for meeting with us recently. I appreciate your participation and
wish you well.

Candidate Walker also met with a group comprised of the Conservatives Patriot Group (CPG) and the Alaska Republican Assembly, a meeting which he requested and I assembled for his benefit. This private meeting took place on October 5, 2014, and again candidate Walker spoke specifically to protecting the PFD and not incorporating income or sales taxes.

Over the past week, the governor’s wife has sent me a series of emails claiming that the article submitted to UFL in the October newsletter was not authorized by the candidate. These communications were apparently prompted because recent excerpts of Bill Walker’s quotes from this article in our newsletter have appeared in various publications online, including Joe Miller’s Restoring Liberty article: Governor Walker Steals $666 Million From Alaska’s Families, Time to Recall the Liar. She calls the article “bogus,” specifically complaining about the “mass distribution of the bogus article that has wrongly been attributed to Bill.”

It is clear in my letter to candidate Walker that I am thanking him for receipt of his article for the newsletter and asking him to submit a second article (which his team did). Not once did he or anyone on his team indicate to me or anyone at UFL that they did not authorize the article that UFL published to hundreds of Alaskans in 2014. While I respect that the governor has had to make difficult decisions since the price of oil dropped dramatically, the email record definitively shows that the Walker team was aware that his first article was submitted for publication.

Throughout candidate Walker’s campaign, he repeated the same narrative, echoing UFL’s October 2014 newsletter. For example, in an article published in the ADN on October 11, 2014, he stated his opposition to using the PFD to fund state government. He ran his campaign on the same promises described in UFL’s newsletter. There is no sunlight between his campaign’s public statements and his article in UFL’s October 2014 newsletter.

Man Who Wants to Marry Computer Files Suit Against Kim Davis

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A federal lawsuit was filed earlier this month against Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis for denying a man a license to marry his laptop computer.

Mark “Chris” Sevier of Vanderbilt Law School has a history of being litigious, despite the suspension of his law license in 2011.

Sevier previously filed similar suits in Texas and in Florida. He has told reporters that he is trying to prove that marriage between a same-sex couple has the same legitimacy as a human marrying an inanimate object. (Read more from “Man Who Wants to Marry Computer Files Suit Against Kim Davis” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

ISIS Turning to Mass Casualty Attacks, Expanding Network Amid Territorial Losses

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The Islamic State’s territorial losses in Iraq and Syria have been hailed by the Obama administration as evidence that the terror group is failing, but experts predict that the group will continue to instigate large-scale attacks in the Middle East and westward.

According to a report from IHS Jane’s 360 released on Sunday, the terror group’s so-called “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria shrunk by 12 percent during the first six months of 2016 and is now roughly the same size as Ireland or the state of West Virginia. ISIS will increasingly turn toward mass-casualty attacks, the report suggested, to compensate for territorial losses in Iraq and Syria and demonstrate its influence.

The new assessment came one day before Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the deployment of 560 more U.S. troops to Iraq, where Iraqi security forces backed by U.S airstrikes retook Fallujah from ISIS control at the end of June after a month-long offensive. Over the weekend, Iraqi forces took control of Al-Qayyarah air base, located about 50 miles south of Mosul.

“With the retaking of Qayyarah West airfield, the Iraqi Security Forces have once again demonstrated a serious will to fight,” Carter said Monday. “I congratulate them on their recent successes and reaffirm that the United States, along with our coalition partners, will continue to do all we can to support Iraq’s effort to serve ISIL a lasting defeat” . . .

ISIS’ recent territorial losses have been accompanied by a series of mass-casualty attacks in various parts of the globe that evidence shows were either inspired or committed by the terror group. These include high-profile assaults in Dhaka, Istanbul, Orlando, and Brussels. (Read more from “ISIS Turning to Mass Casualty Attacks, Expanding Network Amid Territorial Losses” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Obama and the Most Successful National Subversion in World History

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America is coming apart – not just the United States, the sovereign nation, but our Constitution, our culture, our traditions, all of what “America” has come to mean.

It is not by accident.

What we are witnessing is the product of eight years of Barack Obama and his divisive rhetoric and destructive policies.

Obama’s “transformation” is a euphemism for the crippling and humbling of a great nation he considers racist, oppressive, venal and dysfunctional.

He warned us.

“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” – Barack Obama, October 30, 2008.

But Michelle Obama said it best.

“We are going to have to change our conversation; we’re going to have to change our traditions, our history; we’re going to have to move into a different place as a nation.” – Michelle Obama, May 14, 2008.

And that different place as a nation is fragmentation and collapse.

It is not a conspiracy.

There is, in fact, a deliberate, coordinated and ongoing effort to subvert the United States as a capitalist, Judeo-Christian based republic and replace it with alien political ideologies and cultures incompatible to personal liberty.

None of what is happening is “home-grown.”

There is an alliance between the global political left and radical Islam, two totalitarian philosophies that cannot dominate the world without first destroying capitalist, Judeo-Christian-based democracy, the United States being both the foremost proponent and primary target.

Just as Islamists attempt to impose their religion on the world in a totalitarian fashion requiring unwavering obedience, so do radical leftists strive to create an omnipotent socialist state that will control every aspect of daily life and will enforce a universal brand of “social justice” on all mankind.

I will not mince words.

The Democrat Party now represents, at least philosophically if not operationally, the American subsidiary of that alliance.

The Republican Party is dominated by globalists, obsessed with the acquisition of personal power and profit, and uninterested and willingly impotent in defending the rights, liberties and well-being of American citizens. The GOP leadership has solidified its choice to no longer represent what had been its constituency, but to adopt the identity of junior partners in the ruling class.

To summarize, the crises we are currently experiencing are the direct consequence of the policies pursued by Barack Obama, a coffeehouse communist and Islamic groupie, who leads a lawless cabal of fellow-travelers, financed by domestic anti-American and foreign sources, supported by professional agitators, facilitated by a supine Republican political opposition and cheered-on by a predominately left-wing media.

Societal division and social unrest are tactics used to destabilize and demoralize, to further fundamentally transform the country, which has already been undermined economically, educationally and culturally from within.

It has always been the dilemma of social revolutionaries, whether communist or Islamic, that as long as individuals embraced liberty and had the belief that his or her Divine spark of reason could solve the problems facing society, then that society would never reach the state of hopelessness and alienation recognized as the necessary prerequisite for totalitarianism.

Political correctness is part of that effort. Its aim is to narrow the range of thought in order to make independent thinking literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express those thoughts. It is accomplished through the systematic destruction of words and phrases as “microaggressions” or simply making statements that are patently untrue.

For example, despite exhaustive efforts by the Mainstream Media to paint Black Lives Matter (BLM) as a movement dedicated to “racial equality” or “social justice” and engaging in “peaceful protests;” it is, in reality, a violent, racist, and dangerous domestic terror group funded by rich white men (links to Ben and Jerry’s Foundation and George Soros) devoted to destabilizing American socio-cultural infrastructure, legitimized by Obama with a presidential invitation to the White House, and endorsed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood front group and the unindicted co-conspirator in the prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for providing support to the terrorist group Hamas.

That is a pattern of connected dots, which our hopelessly corrupt political-media establishment, as acts of self-preservation and complicity-avoidance, tries tirelessly to disconnect.

Most of the social chaos and extremism we are currently witnessing in our country is the product of a well-funded and well-organized anti-American, predominately foreign, radical Islamo-leftist agenda – and an administration that enables rather than opposes the aims of our enemies.

It is time for patriots to take America back. (For more from the author of “Obama and the Most Successful National Subversion in World History” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.