Why Young Adults Both Want and Fear Marriage

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When we interviewed Carly, 31, in the summer of 2010, she had been in an on-again, off-again cohabiting relationship with the father of her child for about 12 years. Never married, she called marriage a “piece of paper.”

One year later, however, she had broken up with her longtime boyfriend and was engaged to a different man.

Why did she accept his marriage proposal?

Contradicting what she said a year before, Carly (not her real name) told us: “Everybody says, ‘Oh, it’s just a piece of paper.’ But that piece of paper is … more binding than just really being together.”

She explained that her experience in a long-term cohabiting relationship had taught her that marriage was indeed different.

As we learned in our interviews with over 100 young adults in a mostly white working-class town in Ohio, most young people are neither adamantly opposed to marriage nor completely supportive: They are conflicted about marriage. They hope to get and stay married, providing for their own children the family stability that many of them did not have growing up.

One national study found that in 2001-2002, more than 80 percent of young adults said that marriage was important in their life plan. But many are also uncertain about how to achieve that aspiration and unsure about whether marriage retains the meaning they believe it should have.

Many of them witnessed the separation or divorce of their parents as children, or barely knew their dad or mom. Others saw their parents stay in marriages marked by abuse, drinking, drugs, or misery. Others admired their parents’ marriage but were shaken by the divorces of relatives or friends, or by hearsay about high divorce rates.

The legacy of the divorce culture is trauma and a crisis of trust. A study conducted in the mid-2000s found that of 122 working–and middle-class young people in cohabiting relationships, more than two-thirds expressed concerns about divorce that were related to their views about marriage. Many respondents said that they were reluctant to marry because they wanted to “do it right,” by which they meant marrying only once.

That legacy of divorce is reinforced by the cultural deregulation of sex and dating. As divorce-weary young people form their own romantic relationships, they hear from the culture that “sex is sex, regardless of who it’s with,” love should be “effortless,” and “you got one life to live, and you got to live it the way you want to live it.”

Those messages undermine their pursuit of a trusting and resilient lifelong relationship.

As a result, many young Americans are left on the outside looking in, admiring marriage but paralyzed with anxiety about becoming another divorce statistic or worried that their boyfriend or girlfriend is not trustworthy. Thus, more Americans are delaying marriage longer, and more (though still the minority) are forgoing marriage altogether.

In other words, the declining marriage rate is not so much a reflection that marriage is no longer desired, but that, in a culture of distrust and divorce, it is fragile.

The bad news is that young Americans have less confidence in marriage than their grandparents did and are carrying profound wounds. The good news is that, as one adult child of divorce said of his peers from fragmented families, “They lived it and they want a change.”

As another adult child of divorce told us, “I think my home life as a kid made me more driven to be like, ‘I’m not gonna have a broken home.’”

Many young people are afraid of marriage, but that does not mean they are giving up on it. If anything, they possess a hard-earned understanding about the suffering wrought by family fragmentation. They want a better life for their own children, and they deserve the support of everyone from cultural leaders to policymakers to business leaders as they seek that better way. (For more from the author of “Why Young Adults Both Want and Fear Marriage” please click HERE)

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Social Conservatives Declare Victory on Bathrooms, Marriage in GOP Platform

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After fending off attempts to change the Republican Party’s official position on LGBT issues and traditional marriage, a coalition of social conservatives cautiously celebrated an early victory Monday afternoon.

Before the Grand Old Party picks its presidential nominee formally, a select set of delegates on the platform committee will spend the week staking out Republican positions on everything from domestic to international issues definitively.

On the social issue front of the Republican platform, conservatives maintained a strict definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman. They limited the use of single-sex bathrooms in public buildings to those of the same biological sex. And they defeated efforts to steer the party in a direction more in line with LGBT advocacy groups.

“There are those who are committed to undermining the conservative ideals that this party has long stood for,” said Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Center and a Louisiana delegate to the convention.

“They’re an extreme minority, they’re committed to their view, and I think they will persist,” he told The Daily Signal Monday. “But I don’t believe they will prevail.”

To become a part of the party’s platform, those initial advances still need to be ratified by a majority of the 2,472 Republican delegates that will crowd onto the floor of Quicken Loans Arena next week.

But social conservatives seemed confident Monday afternoon that they had defeated an effort financed by billionaire Republican Paul E. Singer, according to The New York Times. His group, American Unity Fund, along with Log Cabin Republicans, aimed to hammer new gay rights planks into the platform.

The effort ultimately failed in the subcommittee on the family.

“I’m really happy with the way it turned out. I had heard that somebody was spending $6 million to get LGBT stuff into the platform,” Kansas delegate Mary Culp told The Daily Signal. “I would say that the effort fizzled.”

President Barack Obama’s bathroom directive took center stage. In a sweeping May proclamation, the administration instructed local schools to extend Title IX protections, which prohibit sex-based discrimination, to transgender students. The directive suggested that schools that refuse to allow transgender students to use the single-sex bathrooms and locker rooms of the gender they identify with would potentially lose federal funds.

Addressing that policy in the platform is a political miscalculation, according to Anne Dickerson, a New York delegate who argued that the “discussion of bathrooms takes us down a rabbit hole quite a great distance.”

“I think this is a state issue,” she told her colleagues during a subcommittee hearing. “A lot of states, local municipalities, and schools who have transgender students have dealt with this issue rightfully at the local level.”

Though Dickerson declined to comment for this article, the New York delegate argued in committee that Republicans were blindly taking Democrats’ bait by elevating the issue in their platform.

Gregory Angelo, president of Log Cabin Republicans, echoed that sentiment, telling The Daily Signal he’s frustrated by Monday’s development.

“This is a foolish issue to nationalize and talk about within the Republican Party platform,” he said. “It literally drags the platform into the gutter when so many people who are on this committee seem hell-bent with some obsession with bathroom use.”

Social conservatives on the family subcommittee justified their positions by insisting that the White House forced their hand. It was necessary to insert bathroom language in the platform, they argue, to offer a rebuttal and give local school districts guidance on the issue.

“Cowards would say this is not politically expedient, let’s not talk about it, let’s just let the president’s radical agenda go unchallenged,” Perkins told The Daily Signal. “This is not the party of cowards.”

In an interview last week with The Daily Signal, former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said delegates on the platform committee should take up the issue to keep boys and girls in their respective bathrooms based on biology, not gender identity.

“The president had made a federal issue—and it’s amazing to be saying this—of bathrooms,” Cuccinelli said. “The president has done this, we didn’t. But if he’s going to pick the fight, we’re not going to back down.”

The fight over social issues comes as evangelical voters question where Donald Trump, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, stands on social issues.

Trump has been friendly toward former Olympian and current transgender advocate Caitlyn Jenner—who announced she will speak as a “transgender ambassador” at an event in Cleveland during the convention.

But recently the New York businessman announced his support of a North Carolina law that requires individuals to use public restrooms that correspond with their biological gender.

Social conservatives see the platform as a way to tether Trump to their brand of a pro-family platform. And so far, the Trump campaign has demonstrated little interest in challenging the party platform.

That’s good news for conservative groups such as the Susan B. Anthony List that were happy with the 2012 platform position on abortion, which looks unlikely to have significant changes.

“We’re going to remain vigilant, we want it [to] remain rock solid, and then we want to see Mr. Trump embrace this platform once it’s passed,” said Billy Valentine, the pro-life group’s director of government affairs, in an interview last week.

Though the party’s presumptive nominee disagrees with some GOP orthodoxies, coalition members say they’re confident that Republican doctrine on social issues will be conserved in the party platform. (For more from the author of “Social Conservatives Declare Victory on Bathrooms, Marriage in GOP Platform” please click HERE)

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#CIVILWAR: When the Commander-In-Chief Acts as the De Facto Head of a Terror Group Called #BlackLivesMatter

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The ambush-style mass shooting of cops in Dallas, Texas, last week makes it clear that it is time for the dangerous, anti-American insurgency called Black Lives Matter to be designated a terrorist organization for fomenting a war against the nation’s law enforcement officers.

Five officers were killed during a demonstration in downtown Dallas against police brutality that leftists say is directed at black Americans as a matter of government policy. Similar marches and rallies took place in other cities, including New York, Oakland, Calif., and Denver, Colo.

Of course, murdering police officers has long been encouraged by activists with the Black Lives Matter cult, with the support of the activist Left.

A year ago Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who openly advocates the mass murder of whites, called for “10,000 fearless men” to “rise up and kill those who kill us.” Like many radicals, Farrakhan mischaracterizes Black Lives Matter as a rising civil rights movement.

President Barack Obama, who a decade ago promoted inter-racial warfare in Kenya, has long tried to provoke civil unrest here in the U.S. with his hateful anti-cop rhetoric and his relentless demonization of opponents. His goal is fundamental transformation of the United States. A Red diaper baby who identifies violence-espousing communist Frantz Fanon as an intellectual influence, he has also steadfastly refused to condemn the explicitly racist, violent Black Lives Matter movement. In fact Obama has lavished attention on the movement’s leaders and invited them to the White House over and over again.

Members of the Democratic National Committee expressly endorsed Black Lives Matter, throwing their lot in with black racists and radical Black Power militants. The DNC officially embraced a statement that slams the U.S. for allegedly systemic police violence against black people. A resolution passed by hundreds of delegates at the DNC meeting in Minneapolis last year accuses the nation’s police of “extrajudicial killings of unarmed African American men, women and children.”

The Left persists in these lies because, well, that’s what these people do.

According to one analysis, of all the people shot and killed in the U.S. by police so far in 2016, only 24 percent, or 122, were black. Black people are only about 13 percent of the population but they commit around half of all violent crimes. So far this year 47 percent of people shot and killed by police, or 235 individuals, were white.

Only 3 percent, or 13 people shot and killed by police year to date were black and unarmed. The percentage for whites is exactly the same. In other words, police are shooting and killing unarmed blacks and whites at the same rate, Paul Joseph Watson observes.

“There’s no racial disparity,” he says. “Do we have a problem with police brutality in America? Yes, undoubtedly. Is it almost exclusively targeted towards black people as Black Lives Matter claims? No, but the polarizing way in which Black Lives Matter made it all about race has divided the nation and made half of the country completely disinterested.”

Watson addresses “black people,” telling them that “Black Lives Matter is hurting you. It’s doing incredible harm. Martin Luther King achieved justice and civil rights by championing equality and building bridges with white America.”

Black Lives Matter, on the other hand, demands racial segregation, keeps whites out of its meetings, and urges the killing of police, he adds. . .

In its intensifying assaults on American law enforcement the Left seized upon a police-involved death earlier in the week of a notoriously violent criminal in Louisiana who had reportedly menaced an innocent by-stander with a gun.

Recidivist felon Alton Sterling, a black offender well known to local law enforcement, was shot to death by police early last Tuesday morning in Baton Rouge following a physical struggle with police in which Sterling may have reached for a weapon. Both officers “believe they were completely justified in using deadly force,” according to the local district attorney.

Although even with graphic video footage of the shooting it’s not entirely clear what happened as the two cops and Sterling struggled, the Left has moved full speed ahead portraying the deceased career criminal as a martyr slaughtered by the evil system that rules a hopelessly racist America.

The Left reveres thugs. It jumped on the bandwagon promoting the lie that Michael Brown of Ferguson, Mo., and Trayvon Martin of Sanford, Fla., were innocent angels unjustly cut down by white executioners. The truth, as we now know, is that both young black men were killed in self-defense by the white men they intended to harm.

It is telling that the Left is paying far less attention to a much more sympathetic figure killed by police this week in Falcon Heights, a suburb of St. Paul, Minn., because the story of his death doesn’t fit its predetermined anti-American narrative quite as well. It’s not merely about racial conflict potentially: it is also about the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

Philando Castile, 32, a black man with no felony convictions who worked in a school cafeteria, was shot by police during a traffic stop. According to Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond “Lavish” Reynolds, who live-streamed video on Facebook of the stricken man in his final moments, Castile was trying to retrieve his wallet after informing an apparently light-skinned attending officer that he was in possession of a concealed weapon and a permit allowing him to carry it. Perhaps Castile made a move the officer considered threatening. Or maybe the cop was nervous and trigger-happy.

“He let the officer know that he had a firearm, and he was reaching for his wallet and the officer just shot him in his arm,” Reynolds said. In the video as the bloodied driver lay dying the policeman could be heard using expletives and screaming, “I told him not to reach for it.”

Reynolds replied, “You told him to get his ID, sir – his driver’s license.”

Because the Castile case appears to involve gun rights and perhaps other issues possibly unrelated to race, it is harder for left-wing activist groups to fundraise off of. This would explain why the Left is giving the case far less play than the marquee Sterling shooting. And to the extent that progressives have taken up Castile’s cause they are treating it solely as a racial incident. Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton (D) said he was “appalled” by the shooting and that it would not have happened if Castile had been white.

But with Alton Sterling, it is as if his supporters hired teams of publicists to get the desired message out to the masses.

Ignoring Sterling’s two decades of criminal activity, Black Lives Matter quickly went to work inflaming racial antagonism while the man’s body was still warm. The movement characterized the incident as an extrajudicial execution by racist cops. It was aided in this public relations offensive by biased saturation coverage of the Sterling saga by the media.

The movement’s most important cheerleader, President Obama, gleefully stuck a shiv in police, crowing that recent fatal shootings of black suspects by police “are not isolated incidents.”

“They are symptomatic of the broader challenges within our criminal justice system, the racial disparities that appear across the system year after year, and the resulting lack of trust that exists between law enforcement and too many of the communities they serve.”

Predictably MoveOn and Color of Change –which was founded by self-described “rowdy black nationalist” Van Jones and MoveOn alumnus James Rucker— didn’t bother waiting for the facts to be known before using the incident to raise money. On Wednesday MoveOn sent out a mass email to members demanding that U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch hold the police officers involved accountable.

In the email Color of Change executive director Rashad Robinson paints Sterling as an upstanding citizen, describing him as “a 37-year-old Black father of five,” capitalizing the B in black as racists do. The police officers involved “have no respect for Black lives and must be held accountable,” he added.

Celebrities weighed in with vapid and condescending observations.

Singer Beyoncé posted what a groveling USA Today called a “powerful letter” about police brutality. “We’re going to stand up as a community and fight against anyone who believes that murder or any violent action by those who are sworn to protect us should consistently go unpunished,” she wrote, presuming that Americans don’t care about murders committed by police.

Chris Long, who makes his living being hit in the head, chose to insert himself into the story. The defensive end for the New England Patriots was happy to convene a lynch mob on Twitter. He tweeted “If you think we need to ‘wait for the facts’ on the Alton Sterling execution after seeing the video, you are an accessory to evil.”

What is clear is that if the Left is serious about moving its race war forward, it is hanging its future on a pretty slim reed by hyping the Sterling killing.

This is not to suggest that Sterling, who had been living in a homeless shelter, deserved to die. Maybe in the end we’ll find out the cops who dealt with him were overzealous, reckless, malicious, or racist, or all of these things. Perhaps this was a suicide by cop. Time will tell.

Let’s go over what we know.

The Advocate in Baton Rouge reports that on July 5,

“Around 12:35 a.m., Baton Rouge police responded to the Triple S Food Mart at 2112 N. Foster Drive after an anonymous caller indicated that a man in a red shirt who was selling CDs outside the store pointed a gun at someone, telling them to leave the property, Baton Rouge Police Department spokesman Cpl. L’Jean McKneely said.”

Apparently authentic cellphone videos from the scene soon went viral. They showed two police officers scrapping with Sterling beside a car in a parking lot. “Get on the ground! Get on the ground!” an officer is heard yelling in the early seconds of one clip. The sound of what may be a stun gun can be heard.

“He’s got a gun! Gun,” one cop says. “If you f***ing move, I swear to God,” says an officer. It is unclear what Sterling, who reportedly had a gun on his person at the time, is doing with his arms at this point because the officers are on top of him. In audio that is garbled, one of the officers can be heard saying what seems to be “he’s going for the Taser!” Shots ring out at various points in the confrontation and Sterling is mortally wounded.

Some local sources were quoted in the media saying Sterling was a kind, peace-loving, respected member of the community. If that’s true, that doesn’t speak well of his community.

Sterling was a bad actor with a temper who had gotten physical with police before. The incorrigible reprobate’s rap sheet is long. (Heavy obtained 46 pages of court documents from his criminal file.)

Sterling was convicted of aggravated battery, criminal damage to property, unauthorized entry, and domestic abuse battery, among other offenses.

An affidavit of probable cause states Sterling was involved in 2009 in a wrestling match with a police officer. A cop tried to pat down the man and he resisted arrest. The two men ended up on rolling around on the ground and a “black semi auto gun fell from his waistband.” Another affidavit states a cop pulled Sterling over for speeding. He didn’t have proof of insurance and police allowed him to retrieve his belongings from his vehicle. He crossed the street, laid himself on the pavement in a prone position, yelled at the cops and told them to “go ahead and beat him down regardless of the outcome.” Other such affidavits accuse Sterling of home invasion, burglary, threatening with a gun, stealing pet goldfish, and possession of ecstasy and marijuana.

Sterling was also a registered sex offender, Heavy reports. At the age of 20 he impregnated a 14-year-old girl. In September 2000 he was convicted of “carnal knowledge of a juvenile” in Louisiana and released from prison in October 2004. In August 2015 a warrant was issued for Sterling’s arrest after he failed to update his sex offender registration.

In 2011 he was convicted of “knowingly and intentionally possessing a firearm while in possession of a controlled dangerous substance” and sentenced to five years imprisonment. A drug trafficking-related charge was thrown out apparently as part of a plea bargain.

Meanwhile, the Democrat machine in the Pelican State is doing everything it can to turn Baton Rouge into the new Ferguson, complete with race riots and wanton lawlessness.

Kip Holden (D), mayor-president of East Baton Rouge Parish, said Wednesday he was touched to receive a supportive phone call from the buffoonish Baltimore mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D), who helped to exacerbate race riots in her city after the death of black career criminal Freddie Gray in police custody, because “they’ve been through the same thing.”

How reassuring.

The Left’s goal is to polarize and enrage and foment even more racial tension and violence to distract from presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s endless political problems, as well as to energize the party’s base so they vote in droves in November. They may even blame unrest in Baton Rouge on congressional Republicans who refuse to fight back. Blaming Islamic terrorist Omar Mateen’s murderous rampage at a gay club in Orlando on Republicans and law-abiding gun owners worked, so why not.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) invited his friends in the Obama administration to turn this local investigation into a three-ring media circus. The U.S. Department of Justice announced it would open a civil rights investigation after Edwards demanded it. “I have very serious concerns,” he said. “The video is disturbing, to say the least.”

Getting the feds involved means the Obama administration is sure to deploy government-paid community organizers from DoJ’s Community Relations Service to rub raw the sores of discontent.

After Trayvon Martin’s death in early 2012, local police declined to press charges against the eventually acquitted George Zimmerman for a month and a half because they believed the criminal case against him was ridiculously weak. CRS burned through taxpayer cash organizing marches at which participants inflamed racial tensions and –voila!— Zimmerman was prosecuted in what would become a historic abuse of process.

Almost immediately after Michael Brown died in August 2014, CRS operatives arrived on the ground in Ferguson to interview and indoctrinate local members of the community. As Ryan Lovelace reported at NRO paraphrasing Mayor James Knowles III, “DOJ officials talked about underlying racism that people may not perceive, and the issue of white privilege.”

East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Hillar Moore (D) seems not to understand that having the Obama-controlled Justice Department take over the Sterling investigation is a monumentally bad idea. Explaining why the local government refuses to investigate its own police, Moore said feebly at a press conference, “absolutely, we did not want another Ferguson. Baton Rouge is not Ferguson; we have a completely different history,” Moore said.

Good luck with that, counselor.

And just wait until the authority-hating terrorists of Black Lives Matter turn on you. (For more from the author of “#CIVILWAR: When the Commander-In-Chief Acts as the De Facto Head of a Terror Group Called #BlackLivesMatter” please click HERE)

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Rappers Come Together to Express Support for Police, Open Dialogue

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Rappers Snoop Dogg and The Game led a peaceful march on Friday to the Los Angeles Police Department Headquarters, where they expressed their support for work of law enforcement and their desire for an open dialogue.

Appearing at a joint press conference with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Police Chief Charlie Beck, Snoop Dogg said, “We are here to show love and support to the police force and get some understanding and some communication.”

The rapper added, “Our whole mission today was to move in peace and to show that LA can be unified, and not to bash the police, but to come up here and get some dialogue and communication, because we are all angels like [Mayor Garcetti] said. We are all for Los Angeles. We all represent the same cause, and we all want to go home to our families. Today was the first step to many steps.”

The Game, whose legal name is Jayceon Terrell Taylor, said during the press conference, “While I have all these cameras on me … I want to tell everyone that has their eyes on me that I love you — no matter what race you’re from, no matter where you come from, no matter what gang you’re from or what police force you stand for, what badge you put on, what school you teach, whoever you are in the world,” he continued. “If you are a human being … this is a day of change … Embrace yourself in positivity.”

The Game also expressed hope that Los Angeles in coming together could set an example for the country and even the world. The performer said he had no idea when he called his friend Snoop Dogg and suggested they do the march that they would end up meeting the mayor and the police chief.

He also found it meaningful the march coincided with the graduation of a new class of police officers, who they were able to meet.

“Sometimes God works in mysterious ways,” Mayor Garcetti said of the two events converging. Both he and Chief Beck expressed their appreciation for the chance to meet with the rappers and discuss ways for better community relations. (For more from the author of “Rappers Come Together to Express Support for Police, Open Dialogue” please click HERE)

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Officials Piece Together Background of Dallas Sniper

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A 25-year-old black man with no known criminal record and no known ties to any terrorist group has been identified as the sniper who ambushed Dallas police officers Thursday night.

Micah Xavier Johnson of Mesquite, Texas, was identified by officials as the suspect killed after a gun battle with police Thursday night.

ABC reported that Johnson served in the Army as a carpentry and masonry specialist until April 2015.

Wayne Bynoe, a neighbor of Johnson’s, told CNN that Johnson lived with his mother and “keeps to himself.”

The Los Angeles Times, citing a law enforcement official, reported Johnson “belonged to an informal gun club and took copious amounts of target practice.”

During the standoff between Johnson and police Thursday night, Johnson “expressed anger for Black Lives Matter,” Dallas Police Chief David Brown said.

“He said he was upset at white people,” Brown said. “He said he wanted to kill white people, especially white police officers.”

Brown said Johnson told police he acted on his own initiative.

“The suspect stated that he was not affiliated with any groups, and he stated that he did this alone,” Brown said.

The Daily Beast reported that on Facebook, Johnson liked pages relating to Elijah Mohammed, the founder of the Nation of Islam, as well as other militant and black separatist groups including the New Black Panther Party and the African American Defense League.

On Friday, Brown said Dallas police are still trying to determine whether Johnson had help.

“If there’s someone out there associated with this, we will find you,” Brown said. Media accounts have reported three people in custody related to the shootings.

Brown said that the decision to use a bomb affixed to a robot as a means to ending the standoff with Johnson came after negotiations had come to a standstill. The blast killed Johnson after he refused to surrender.

“We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was. Other options would have exposed our officers to great danger. He seemed lucid during negotiations,” Brown said. (For more from the author of “Officials Piece Together Background of Dallas Sniper” please click HERE)

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Tension Occurs During Trump’s Meeting With Senate Republicans

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Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump went to Capitol Hill several days ago to try and unify his party in hopes of beating Hillary Clinton. With the backing of Senate Republicans Trump stands a better chance at garnering more votes during the general election.

However, things got a little tense when Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake confronted Trump on his rhetoric.

“You’ve been very critical of me,” Trump said in his opening statements to Flake.

“Yes, I’m the other senator from Arizona — the one who didn’t get captured — and I want to talk to you about statements like that,” Flake responded. He was, of course, referring to the incident in which Trump made inflammatory comments about Sen. John McCain for not being a war hero.

Flake mostly wanted him to change his tune when it came to immigration and Latino people — specifically to stop attacking Mexicans. The Republican senator did acknowledge, though, that he was not part of the “Never Trump” movement, and would support Trump under the right circumstances.

Various media outlets reported that the meeting was a disaster, making it appear Trump might be dividing instead of unifying. But Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman, dispelled that rumor via a statement.

“Today’s meeting was positive and productive and these characterizations, attributed to unnamed sources, are wholly inaccurate,” Manafort said. “The conversation was very positive and substantive. The Members were in total agreement with Mr. Trump of the need to unite the Party and work together to win the Presidency and keep a Republican Congress. Mr. Trump was pleased with the discussion and looks forward to working together with the Republican Party leadership towards defeating Hillary Clinton in November.”

A number of other Republicans also expressed concern about Trump’s rhetoric during the meeting. But House Speaker Paul Ryan was hopeful about the outcome.

“We clearly have a presumptive nominee who wants to work with us on moving this agenda forward,” he said. (For more from the author of “Tension Occurs During Trump’s Meeting With Senate Republicans” please click HERE)

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A Crisis of Military Leadership as Obama Doubles Down on His Political War in Afghanistan

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Every day brings another fresh scandal or outrageous policy from this administration. Earlier this week, Obama announced his intention to keep most of the 9,800 troops in Afghanistan for the remainder of his presidency. While this story was washed away from the public eye by the Hillary Clinton-James Comey email server saga, it represents one of the bigger scandals of Obama’s presidency. Obama is keeping our troops, mainly elite special operators, in a meat-grinder with no mission, no strategic goals, and the most outlandish rules of engagement imaginable. Sadly, Congressional Republicans and conservative foreign policy establishment gurus are cheering this decision. To them, as long as troops remain in the theater, there is nothing more to discuss and they move onto the next issue. In reality, keeping our soldiers in a meat-grinder is worse than pulling them out.

After 15 years in Afghanistan, 1,856 killed in action, over 20,000 wounded and a trillion dollars spent, we have nothing to show but Al Qaeda being stronger than ever and the Taliban controlling more territory than any time since 2001. Two-thirds of those casualties occurred under Obama’s watch between years eight and 12 of the conflict. We are left propping up a corrupt, sharia-compliant government with a constitution (set up by U.S. officials) which mandates the sort of draconian version of Islam we are supposedly at war with. Shouldn’t all sides agree that at this point we should either identify a strategic mission and outcome that is beneficial to our security interests and pursue it with everything we have – or leave entirely?

As I explained a few weeks ago, to place our soldiers in the most precarious situations but deny them the ability to even defend themselves, much less go on offense, is an immoral affront to our most elite troops. Having them do so for a government that hates us and is not too different from the Taliban is even more vexing.

On the one hand, Obama admitted in his announcement Wednesday that the situation in Afghanistan is “precarious.” n the other hand he is saying that our troops are only there to advise and train the Afghani military. Worse, as the Wall Street Journal reported, the rules of engagement are so bad that even elite special forces have to call a lawyer before taking a shot at the Taliban in the heat of battle. This is a lethal combination. The reality is that they are not advisors and are not just there to train Afghanis. They are some of our best special operators who go behind enemy lines together with Afghani soldiers (who are often unreliable) in the most intense special operations missions. The Afghan government is aware of every operation ahead of time and is rotten to the core. They are placed into combat yet can’t engage in combat. Obama is using them as pawns to keep just enough of Afghanistan intact so there is no Saigon-style fall of Kabul during his tenure.

After 15 years of failure we need to think broader than the binary choice of “pulling out” vs. a “troop surge.” You can never win a war when you can’t define the enemy and understand that enemy’s threat doctrine. The threat doctrine is Sharia, yet somehow our military and government leaders think it is worth our blood and treasure to establish a Sharia-government in Afghanistan all the while refusing to build a broader long-term vision of how to keep that region together and how it fits in with our overall strategic interests. We have a crisis of leadership in the civilian and military leadership in the Pentagon whereby in order to forge a successful career one must completely support the whitewashing of Sharia and social engineering in the military. This entire generation of generals is rotten to the core, as witnessed by not a single leader resigning or protesting what Obama is going to our military, the whitewashing of Sharia-compliant training, and the shocking and disrupting social engineering mandates.

Immediately following Obama’s Afghanistan announcement, Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas (F, 52%), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, blasted Obama for not putting enough troops and funding behind the endless Afghanistan war. It’s time Republican leaders on military affairs understand that the crisis in our military and foreign policy is much more foundational than a lack of resources. It’s a moral crisis that predated Obama, although he certainly exacerbated it to an unconscionable level. We are now seeing scores of GOP foreign policy elites cast their lot with Hillary Clinton. Putting aside legitimate conservative concerns about Trump, these individuals are not opposing the GOP nominee for good reasons. They are opposing him because they are fearful, rightfully or wrongly so, that he will actually reverse the political correctness in the military and the willful blindness to our true enemy. Everyone I know who worked in intelligence or special operations strategic planning circles is very adamant that the willful blindness towards Sharia-based Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood – both domestically and abroad – began during the Bush years.

For Republicans to continue droning on about “staying the course” and increasing funds for Afghanistan while our troops are being used as pawns in a war of misinformation is a disservice to those who are shouldering the burden of the willful blindness, which is embedded in the highest ranks of military and civilian command. It’s time for an entirely new approach on the Right, and that begins with a full understanding of what and who we are fighting. (For more from the author of “A Crisis of Military Leadership as Obama Doubles Down on His Political War in Afghanistan” please click HERE)

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Trump Is Daring the Delegates to Act — They Should Accept the Dare

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(Editor’s disclaimer: the editorial board of Restoring Liberty disagrees with the #NeverTrump approach, believing that it will only serve to elect Hillary Clinton) Now that Donald Trump’s black hole of presidential suckitude has led to the strange cocktail of anti-Semitism mixed with tunes from the “Frozen” soundtrack, not to mention the painting of Saddam Hussein as some sort of Davy Crockett, it is once again time to go over some #NeverTrump math.

Because when it comes to the possibility of a delegate uprising in Cleveland in less than two weeks, all signs point to ‘Make it so.’

The man in charge of Trump’s very own delegate-whipping team told the Wall Street Journal that the Republican immolation-in-chief, I mean prospective presidential nominee, is still almost 350 committed delegates short of securing a victory.

So let’s be clear to those who would like to paint the 2016 election cycle as some sort of fate accompli: Not only isn’t this close to being over, but the momentum in no uncertain terms favors the will and the wisdom of delegates who are free to vote their conscience.

Trump isn’t on the goal line about to punch the ball in. He isn’t even in the red zone with his offense humming along and looking like an inevitable force of nature. He’s at the 50-yard line at best, and the only reason he got that far is because the other side is nominating a hackneyed crime syndicate named Hillary Clinton.

She is laying in a pool of her own legal and ethical bile after the beat down FBI director James Comey took this week in front of the House Oversight Committee. Comey labeled Hillary as “unintentionally criminally negligent” (whatever the Sam Hill that means) and said she likely wasn’t “sophisticated” enough to recognize classified email markings. Because nothing says “forward” and “progress” like the get-off-my-lawn grandmother who just found out they have the inter-webs on computers now.

But Trump can’t close the sale on defeating such a disgrace when her dumb act is mellowed by his drunken Yosemite Sam routine.

Trump was even confronted in a recent interview with the rumor that he might not elect to serve as president if he ultimately won the election. His response, according to the New York Times, and mind you this is coming from a man who is down in almost all of the polls taken in the last two months:

“I’ll let you know how I feel about it after it happens.”

This is the asinine threshold at which the delegates stand. The delegates are being lectured about the supposed improprieties of voting their conscience, while Trump giggles through a question about whether this is all a big game to him or not.

They are being threatened with legal claims that they should face possible civil and criminal penalties if they choose to vote for a candidate other than Trump. Meanwhile, we learned that Hillary’s FBI testimony – during which she should have been asked about e-mails directing her staff to strip identifying markers on classified information and send it non-secure — was not taken under oath nor was it recorded.

Yet Trump, for reasons only Allah knows (and he obviously hates us) barely attempted to capitalize on her corruption, or the ineptness of the system that has let her slip through the cracks yet again. Spending far more time waxing poetic on Chuck Todd’s sleepy eyes, his disdain for mosquitoes, and the efficient virtues of Saddam Hussein’s authoritarianism.

Our allies in this barely surviving Republican form of government grow thin. This is why it is up to the delegates to take the paddles in their hands and shock our nation back to life.

Yes, it is understandable that crossing such a threshold is filled with some degree of uncertainty and trepidation about how the future will unfold and how honestly it will be reported. But none of that should delude the increasingly obvious fact of how clear the path actually is for the delegates to do what posterity demands.

According to the Wall Street Journal, there are already 20 members of the RNC Rules Committee willing to change the rules to unbound the delegates, and it only takes 28 to bring such a rule change to the floor for a vote of the entire delegation. So Trump requires 1,237 to secure the nomination yet his 890 supporters are surrounded by a ring of fire that includes 681 confessed anti-Trump delegates, and roughly 900 uncommitted delegates. Who are no doubt silently praying for anyone or anything to rescue us from the bizarre and horrid sweet meteor of death that is Trillary 2016.

When the undecideds are the largest contingent in a delegation that is less than two weeks away from making a decision about who should be President of the United States, then that delegation really isn’t undecided. No, it is empowered.

The delegates must not make this opportunity more complicated than it is. #NeverTrump is in fact the easiest call to political arms in modern history. The numbers reflect that. It is simply time for the delegates to seize the day and trust, as so many heroes of mankind have done before them, that there is never a wrong time to do the right thing. (For more from the author of “Trump Is Daring the Delegates to Act — They Should Accept the Dare” please click HERE)

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College Professor Calls for Mass Murder at NRA Headquarters

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After the news that eleven Dallas officers were shot and five killed, many have pointed fingers at the rhetoric of the Black Lives Matter movement and at politicians for refusing to draw the proper conclusions. The concern that the police, while protecting the rights of BLM rally-goers, were picked off by a gunman, who clearly stated he wanted to kill white cops, has regular Americans partially paralyzed about what can be done about the crisis.

It’s clear the radicals who seek social change do not care at all about justice, since all of the killed officers were individuals who had nothing to do with any incidents portrayed by BLM as racially motivated killings. But because of the mental sickness that focuses on uniform and skin color, every white cop is in an extremely dangerous position.

So it would be helpful if people started taking rhetoric about murdering people with guns pretty seriously. Law-abiding gun owners don’t go out and buy a gun to murder people, nor do they share plans to do so on social media in order to create “social change.”

Case in point: James Pearce. The FBI is now investigating Professor Pearce’s Facebook post from the middle of June that called for killing everyone at the NRA headquarters. Pearce is an adjunct professor of Southern State Community College in Ohio, and was referred to the FBI and Loretta Lynch told the college head to take no action until the federal government concluded their investigation.

Reports say that a former student alerted local law enforcement of this post and the matter made it to the FBI and Homeland Security.

So let’s look at Pearce’s comments and see if what he is now saying, that it was all just a funny sarcastic joke, and that people need to loosen up and stop being so divided, is true. First of all, the day of the posting, June 13th, the news cycle was saturated with the news of the Orlando terrorist massacre, and the day before, Obama issued a statement about the massacre and included this dog whistle in his remarks.

“The shooter was apparently armed with a handgun and a powerful assault rifle,” Obama said. “This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school, or in a house of worship, or a movie theater, or in a nightclub. And we have to decide if that’s the kind of country we want to be. And to actively do nothing is a decision as well.”

So a comment like this from a professor right after Obama makes the attack about gun control doesn’t sound like a joke. Pearce also seems to be hiding behind “art” as he insists that he was just making “poetry.” He often writes poetry on his Facebook account, and earlier this week drafted a poem complaining that as an American, he should be able to say what he wishes and that he is actually a brave man.

So let’s talk about what would happen to our brave professor if he approached the NRA headquarters with a bunch of armed “anti-gun types” in Fairfax, Virginia.

He’d get shot, and maybe learn a lesson.

The NRA headquarters is staffed by very well trained gun experts, and Virginia is a concealed carry state. Anti-gun types armed with guns they are extremely afraid of using would be pretty easy sitting ducks for those defending themselves. If the Orlando night club held some people with the expert training the folks at the NRA headquarters have, any gunman who showed up to the nightclub and opened fire, would expect to die that night.

And that’s what the anti-gun people don’t get. If law abiding people are allowed to carry guns, non-law abiding people like Mr. Pearce here, would not be able to carry out their terrorist plans in order to create social change.

Even though the professor laughs it off now asserting that only those with low IQ’s could possibly have thought it serious, his post is no small thing because of the times we live in and the dangerous leadership this nation has. Intentionally taking the focus off of lawbreakers and instead hyping hatred has not and will not stop bad people from killing. In fact, it’s creating a mentality that having a gun is a license to kill, rather than a weapon for self-defense against the crazies like the Dallas shooter. Yet the professor’s commentary holds distinctly murderous rhetoric, and what is most despicable, is that his purpose is to make guns illegal through using them illegally, no matter what the human cost.

It may very well happen that Mr. Pearce suffers no consequences for his incitement, but law-abiding gun owners in the area where he lives ought to encourage the college to remove him from their community classrooms. Someone so flippant about killing people for political gain ought to be watched very carefully. (For more from the author of “College Professor Calls for Mass Murder at NRA Headquarters” please click HERE)

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FEDERAL COURTS: Emperor Obama’s Executive Overreach Is Bullsh**

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In another blow to President Obama’s flagrant executive overreach, a federal appeals court smacked down an ObamaCare rule requiring all indemnity health insurance plans to meet essential coverage minimum standards. The decision offered by the three-judge panel included Patricia Millet, an Obama nominated judge, who said the Administration “overreached” when it adopted a 2014 rule that “effectively eliminated” the plans by adding “additional criteria” to previous law.

The courts have repeatedly rebuked Obama for extending his executive pen too far. In May, a federal judge ruled Obama “exceeded his authority” and struck down an Obamacare provision giving billions of dollars to health insurers through subsidies.

Last month, an Obama-appointed federal judge struck down Obama’s overreach when it came to fracking regulations.

In the ruling on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Scott Skavdahl said Congress had not granted the BLM that power, and had instead chosen to specifically exclude fracking from federal oversight. Skavdahl made it clear what he was — and wasn’t — considering in his ruling. ‘The issue before this Court is not whether hydraulic fracturing is good or bad for the environment or the citizens of the United States,’ he wrote. The question, instead, is ‘whether Congress has delegated to the Department of Interior legal authority to regulate hydraulic fracturing. It has not.’”

In June, an appeals court ruled Obama had wrongly bypassed Congress on his temporary government appointments.

“Congress did not want the president to install his chosen replacement unless the Senate approved,” SW General argued. “Allowing the permanent nominee to begin work immediately as an acting official would enable the president to advance his agenda without obtaining the Senate’s advice and consent.”

Last year, the Courts blocked Obama’s water rule not once, but twice for flexing executive power exceeding federal law.

Judge Ralph Erickson of the District Court for the District of North Dakota found that the 13 states suing to block the rule met the conditions necessary for a preliminary injunction, including that they would likely be harmed if courts didn’t act and that they are likely to succeed when their underlying lawsuit against the rule is decided. … Immediately upon the rule taking effect, the rule will irreparably diminish the states’ power over their waters’ he continued, calling the Obama administration’s interpretation of its jurisdiction “exceptionally expansive.”

“In a 2-1 ruling, the Cincinnati-based Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit delivered a stinging defeat to Obama’s most ambitious effort to keep streams and wetlands clean, saying it looks likely that the rule, dubbed Waters of the United States, is illegal.”

The court’s continued rebuke of Obama’s imperial presidency shows that no one is above the law when crafting irresponsible policies that go against the Constitution and hurt Americans. Sadly, the American people must continue to look to the courts to protect them from the damaging policies of the last 7 years. (For more from the author of “FEDERAL COURTS: Emperor Obama’s Executive Overreach Is Bullsh**” please click HERE)

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