Has North Korea Reopened an Old Prison Camp?

/0 Comments/in , /by

Recent satellite images reveal that a North Korean political prison camp, former Camp 18, may have been reopened.

It is unclear when and why this may have happened. The time lag in obtaining detailed information from North Korea means this could be somewhat dated information. But even the possibility that the camp has reopened raises red flags—political prison camps in North Korea have been home to some of the most egregious human rights violations in modern times.

Camp 18, also known as Pukchang political prison camp, was approximately 28 square miles and could hold roughly 27,000 prisoners. It used to be one of the five biggest political prison camps in North Korea. Camp 18 was situated just across the Taedong River from Camp 14, a similar prison camp. Combined, the two camps held an approximate total of 50,000 political prisoners and their families.

Camp 18 was supposedly shut down sometime around 2006. But since 2011, satellite imagery has shown substantial housing growth in the area.

Recent imagery from Google Earth provides evidence that the camp has in fact been reopened. Images show that a substantial number of houses have been razed and a new security perimeter with guard barracks has been built. ”Immortality Tower,” a statue dedicated to North Korea’s founding dictator Kim Il-Sung, had long been an essential element of the residential area, but it has now been removed.

All of this points to the likelihood that either Camp 18 has been reopened, or Camp 14 is expanding.

North Korea has long denied the existence of political prison camps in the country, but various reports on North Korea have confirmed they indeed exist and have been the focus of grave human rights abuses.

In 2014, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea (COI) released a report describing “unspeakable atrocities” being committed in North Korea. It attests that the North Korean regime is responsible for crimes such as “deliberate starvation, forced labor, executions, torture, rape and the denial of reproductive rights enforced through punishment, forced abortion and infanticide.”

The North Korean government uses political prison camps as a means of keeping the North Korean people in check, often sending as many as three family generations to the camps for committing alleged crimes against the state.

Since the release of the COI report, the international community—including the United States—has admonished North Korea to “dismantle” its prison camps and release political prisoners. Yet, according to analysis by Amnesty International, Pyongyang “is continuing to maintain, and even invest, in these repressive facilities.” Other new satellite imagery verifies this, confirming “the sustained, if not increased importance of the use of forced labor under Kim Jong-un.”

The United States took a positive step forward in 2016 by sanctioning North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un and other known human rights violators in North Korea, but much more can and should be done. The issue of prison camps must be addressed as both a strategic and humanitarian consideration. The U.S. and the international community should develop a feasible plan to hold North Korea accountable for crimes against humanity. (For more from the author of “Has North Korea Reopened an Old Prison Camp?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Top 4 Homeland Security Issues for the Trump Administration

/0 Comments/in , /by

President-elect Donald Trump and his soon-to-be-selected secretary of homeland security will have a full plate when they take over in January.

Indeed, there are so many areas for reform and improvement that any efforts to fix the Department of Homeland Security could easily get bogged down.

Luckily, The Heritage Foundation has identified four main priorities that the next administration should focus on.

1. DHS Management

DHS management needs to be fixed. Its organizational cohesiveness and central leadership continue to present significant challenges that require more work than the Obama administration’s Unity of Effort initiative.

Additionally, the DHS’ office policy should be strengthened to create intra-agency policy, resolve agency disputes, and, above all, drive structural change so that DHS components can work more efficiently as a cohesive unit.

Luckily, the newly released National Defense Authorization Act conference report takes a step in this direction by upgrading the head of the DHS office of policy from assistant secretary to under secretary.

2. Immigration Laws

Current immigration laws must be enforced. In fiscal year 2015, DHS data show that only 462,463 removals and returns occurred—the lowest number since 1971. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported merely 63,000 criminal illegal immigrants from the U.S. compared to 150,000 in 2015.

President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration enforcement must be rescinded, and the 287(g) program, which trains and deputizes state and local police to help enforce immigration laws, needs to be strengthened.

Rapid-removal authority under Section 235 of the Immigration and Nationality Act should be expanded to discourage surges of illegal immigration. Additional prosecutors, judges, and agents should be requested so that more cases can be heard and illegal immigrants deported.

The U.S. also needs to make sure these criminal illegal immigrants appear at their designated court hearings by expanding effective “alternatives to detention,” such as GPS tracking anklets.

3. Cybersecurity

DHS has a much larger role in domestic cybersecurity due to the passage of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act. The primary purpose of that bill was to make information sharing between private and public sectors more efficient.

This sharing will need to be monitored and improved, together with DHS’ intrusion detection and prevention system known as Einstein.

DHS will also need to play a role in helping the Trump administration respond to state-sponsored and directed cyberattacks. The U.S. should deploy all the tools at its disposal, including diplomatic, legal, visa, financial, and others, to retaliate.

4. Proper, Thorough Vetting

There is growing concern over how individuals, whether they are refugees, permanent immigrants, or visitors, are vetted before entering the U.S.

The refugee process takes on average 12-18 months to complete, with background checks being requested through various department databases, including the State Department, DHS, FBI, and National Counterterrorism Center databases.

Interviews are conducted that ask security and country-specific questions. In the case of Syrian refugees, the Syrian Enhanced Review has already started applying additional scrutiny to cases.

Congress needs detailed information from the administration on the nature of the risks incurred in the vetting process, and how it plans to mitigate those risks. Congress and the administration must also work together to begin the much-needed repair of America’s intelligence capabilities.

For regular immigrants and visitors, there is the traditional visa process, which involves a less lengthy but similar vetting process. San Bernardino attacker Tashfeen Malik managed to slip through this system, proving that there is always room for improvement.

Visitors from many countries are able to use the Visa Waiver Program, which does not require an in-person interview in order for the applicant to travel to the U.S.

Instead, VWP countries provide the U.S. with important intelligence on a variety of things, including known and suspected terrorists, serious criminals, and lost and stolen passports, as well as improving their airport security. VWP is a unique tool that is extremely valuable for U.S. security and should be strengthened and expanded.

In order to keep our homeland secure, the next homeland security secretary should prioritize these four issues. These reforms are essential to a cohesive, effective, and efficient Department of Homeland Security that can keep the U.S. safe. (For more from the author of “Top 4 Homeland Security Issues for the Trump Administration” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

One of These 21 Men and Women Will Be Trump’s First Supreme Court Pick

/0 Comments/in , , /by

President-elect Donald Trump is that rare president who will nominate a Supreme Court justice almost immediately after taking office.

Trump is expected to act quickly to fill the seat of Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February.

Two of the remaining eight Supreme Court justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 83, and Stephen Breyer, 78, are older than average for a justice and may choose to retire. One-third of the potential nominees on Trump’s list of 21 contenders are 50 or younger, and four are women.

This could present a historic opportunity for Trump to reshape the Supreme Court, author and presidential historian Craig Shirley says.

“With a vacancy and aging people on the court, just as there was a Reagan court and just as there was a Roosevelt court, we might see a Trump Supreme Court,” Shirley told The Daily Signal, adding:

It is less likely these justices will retire. It’s more likely they will go out feet first. When you’re in your 80s, you might as well show up at the office. You’re not going to take up water skiing.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest told The Daily Signal that President Barack Obama is well aware of coming changes on the high court, though Earnest said he hasn’t heard the president discuss it.

“I’m not aware that the president has spoken to this, either publicly or privately,” Earnest said. “I think the president’s expectation is that President Trump will fill vacancies on the Supreme Court by appointing people who are quite different than the kind of people that President Obama appointed.”

Top Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway has said the president-elect is committed to choosing justices from the list of 21 candidates he released earlier this year.

Trump’s release of the list during the campaign was an unprecedented move, Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director for the Judicial Crisis Network, noted after the election.

“Given the significance of the court to Trump’s voters, I’m confident that he will stand by his campaign promise to appoint someone from his excellent list of constitutionalist judges,” Severino said in a formal statement, adding:

While that still would leave the Supreme Court in a 4-4-1 balance, with Justice [Anthony] Kennedy as a swing vote, Trump is likely to have the opportunity to appoint additional justices, who can ensure that the Constitution is interpreted according to its text and original meaning and isn’t used as a vehicle for political policy goals.

Most on the list are state Supreme Court justices or U.S. Court of Appeals judges. The list include two individuals who have served in Congress and would have a political record to defend. Two brothers also are on the list.

Trump faced some criticism for lack of diversity, with eight white males among the 11 names on the initial list he released in May; his subsequent list in September included one South Asian and one Hispanic.

A Political Trail

At Senate confirmation hearings, Supreme Court nominees who already are judges typically avoid directly answering questions about how they would rule on a policy that might come before the nation’s highest court.

However, three of those on Trump’s list were elected by voters to offices that require taking public stances during the course of a campaign. Two of the three have gone on to become judges:

U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, is a big favorite of conservatives. Lee, 45, was also a strong critic of Trump during the presidential campaign. As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Lee typically would be in the advise and consent role during confirmation hearings for judicial nominees. Before he was elected to the Senate in 2010, Lee served as an assistant U.S. attorney for Utah. He is a graduate of Brigham Young University Law School and clerked for Justice Samuel Alito.

Florida Chief Justice Charles Canady, 62, was a four-term Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1990s. Canady was one of the impeachment managers that acted as a prosecuting team against President Bill Clinton during his Senate trial in 1999. Canady, on the state’s high court since 2008, was elevated to chief justice in 2010. He previously was a state appeals court judge. He is a graduate of Yale Law School.

Judge William H. Pryor Jr., a Bush appointee, has served since 2004 on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Alabama. Pryor, 54, became Alabama’s attorney general in 1997 after his predecessor, Jeff Sessions, was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Republican. (Trump has announced he intends to nominate Sessions as U.S. attorney general.) Pryor was elected in his own right in 1998 as state attorney general and was re-elected in 2002. In 2013, he was confirmed to a term on the United States Sentencing Commission. Pryor received his law degree from Tulane.

State Supreme Court Justices

In recent years, presidents typically have plucked federal appeals court justices to serve on the Supreme Court.

Not since President Ronald Reagan nominated Arizona state appeals court judge Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court in 1981 has a state judge of any kind been elevated to the high court.

Trump’s list includes as many state supreme court justices as federal appeals judges. The inclusion of two district judges, however, means federal judges outnumber state judges:

Georgia Supreme Court Justice Keith Blackwell, named by Gov. Nathan Deal to the court 2012, previously was a state appeals court judge and state prosecutor. Blackwell, 41, was an assistant district attorney for Cobb County before becoming a deputy state attorney general. A graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law, Blackwell also has worked in private practice.

Colorado Supreme Court Justice Allison Eid, named to the state’s high court by then-Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican, in 2006, won 75 percent of the vote to retain the position. Eid, 51, previously was the state’s solicitor general. A graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, Eid clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Michigan Supreme Court Justice Joan Larsen was named to the state’s high court by Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican. Larsen, 48, in 2002 became an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Larsen, who also taught law at the University of Michigan. received her law degree from Northwestern and clerked for Scalia.

Utah Supreme Court Justice Thomas Lee is the brother of Mike Lee, so the list is no small achievement for the Lee family. Both men are the sons of former U.S. Solicitor General Rex Lee. Thomas Lee, 52, began serving on Utah’s high court in 2010, nominated by Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican. (His brother was elected to the U.S. Senate that same year.) Lee previously was on the faculty of Brigham Young University Law School, where he continues to teach in an adjunct capacity. During the Bush administration, he was deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Civil Division from 2004 to 2005. A graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, he clerked for Thomas.

Iowa Supreme Court Justice Edward Mansfield was appointed in 2011 by Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, and voters decided to retain him in 2012. Mansfield, 58, previously served on the Iowa Court of Appeals. He is a graduate of Yale Law School.

Minnesota Supreme Court Justice David Stras, 42, was appointed by Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, in 2010. He was elected to a six-year term in 2012. Before serving on the bench, Stras taught at University of Minnesota Law School. He received his law degree from the University of Kansas and clerked for Thomas.

Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett has served on the state’s high court since 2005, appointed by then-Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, and re-elected twice by voters. Willett, 50, previously was a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. An adviser to George W. Bush’s gubernatorial administrations, Willett later served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy when Bush became president. He also was a deputy attorney general under then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, now the state’s Republican governor. Willett received his law degree from Duke University.

Michigan Chief Justice Robert Young, 65, was appointed to the state’s high court in 1999 by then-Gov. John Engler, a Republican. He previously served as a judge on the Michigan Court of Appeals. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School.

Federal Appeals Judges

Trump could follow the model of most recent Supreme Court nominations by choosing a federal appeals court judge.

Two of President Barack Obama’s nominees were appellate judges—Sonia Sotomayor, confirmed by the Senate, and Merrick Garland, his pick to replace Scalia, who has not been confirmed.

President George W. Bush nominated John Roberts and Samuel Alito, both former appeals court judges who were successfully confirmed.

Obama also successfully nominated Elena Kagan, a former solicitor general who never before served as a judge. Bush nominated and later withdrew White House counsel Harriet Miers, also never a judge.

President Bill Clinton’s two Supreme Court appointees, Ginsburg and Breyer, were both federal appeals court judges.

President George H.W. Bush named David Souter, a former appeals court judge. Reagan’s other two nominees, Scalia and Kennedy, were both federal appeals court judges.

Appeals court judges on Trump’s list are:

Judge Steven Colloton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit in Iowa, was appointed in 2003 by George W. Bush. Colloton previously served as a U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa. The 53-year-old graduate of Yale Law School clerked for the late Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

Judge Neil Gorsuch, 49, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Colorado, was appointed in 2006 by Bush. Before that, Gorsuch was a deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department. The Harvard Law School graduate clerked for both Kennedy and Byron White.

Judge Raymond Gruender, 53, was named by Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit in Missouri in 2004. He previously was a prosecutor and served as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. He received his law degree from Washington University in St. Louis.

Judge Thomas Hardiman was appointed by Bush in 2007 to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit in Pennsylvania. Hardiman, 51, previously was a federal district judge for the Western District of Pennsylvania, a position he took in 2003. A Notre Dame graduate, Hardiman practiced law in Washington and Pittsburgh.

Judge Raymond Kethledge was named by Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Ohio in 2008. Kethledge, 50, previously served as judiciary counsel to then-U.S. Sen. Spencer Abraham, R-Mich. He also was in-house legal counsel for Ford Motor Co. The University of Michigan graduate clerked for Kennedy.

Judge Margaret A. Ryan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces was appointed by Bush in 2006. As a military judge and a veteran, she stands out among other contenders. Ryan, 52, served in the Marine Corps in the Philippines and during the Persian Gulf War. She graduated from Notre Dame Law School on a military scholarship and served as a JAG officer for four years. She clerked for Thomas.

Chief Judge Timothy Tymkovich of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Colorado, a Bush appointee, has served since 2003. Tymkovich, 60, previously was Colorado’s solicitor general. He is a graduate of the University of Colorado College of Law.

Judge Diane Sykes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Wisconsin was named by Bush in 2004. Sykes, 58, had been a justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court since 1999. Before that, she was a trial court judge in both civil and criminal matters. She received her law degree from Marquette.

Federal District Judges

Federal district judges are also rare Supreme Court nominees, but Trump’s list includes two:

Judge Federico Moreno of the Southern District of Florida is a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States, the national policymaking body for the federal courts. Moreno, 64 and Hispanic, appointed in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush, previously was a state and county judge in Florida. He is a graduate of the University of Miami School of Law.

Judge Amul Thapar of the Eastern District of Kentucky was appointed by the younger Bush in 2007. He has taught law students at the University of Cincinnati and Georgetown. Thapar, 47, previously served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., and the Southern District of Ohio. He is of South Asian descent. Just before being named to his judgeship, Thapar was U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky. He got his law degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

(For more from the author of “One of These 21 Men and Women Will Be Trump’s First Supreme Court Pick” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

The Diversity Police Went Too Far in Attacking HGTV’s Fixer Uppers

/0 Comments/in , , /by

For years I have said that gay activists and their allies would overplay their hand and that their bullying would backfire. It is happening today in front of our eyes as a Christian couple, Chip and Joanna Gaines, who recently graced the cover of People magazine, is now being attacked simply for attending a Christian church. Oh, the thought of it!

Yes, if you are a public figure and you attend a church that preaches that marriage is the union of one man and one woman and you actually believe that homosexuals can be changed by the power of the gospel, you should be shamed, ridiculed and perhaps even fired.

That is the obvious offshoot of BuzzFeed’s recent article which carried the headline, “Chip And Joanna Gaines’ Church Is Firmly Against Same-Sex Marriage.” How terrible!

Chip and Joanna attend a church that actually believes what the Bible says? They’re part of a congregation that preaches what the church has taught for 2,000 years? Worse still, “Their pastor considers homosexuality to be a ‘sin’ caused by abuse,” although, “whether the Fixer Upper couple agrees is unclear.” Horror of all horrors. What kind of monsters are these two?

And note that the Gaines’ crime was not making a public statement against homosexuality, as Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson did, after which he was promptly (albeit briefly) suspended by A & E.

Their crime was not making ministry-related statements against abortion and homosexual practice, as the Benham Brothers did, because of which they were promptly fired by HGTV (after that network was bullied by radical left activists).

Their crime was not preaching in their own church that homosexuality was a sin, as Dr. Eric Walsh did, because of which he was fired by the state of Georgia as Public Health Director.

Their crime was not writing a book that made passing, negative reference to homosexual practice as did Kelvin Cochran, because of which he was fired by the city of Atlanta as fire chief.

Their crime was not penning an op-ed piece in a local newspaper, taking respectful issue with the notion that gay is the new black, as Crystal Dixon did, because of which she was fired as Associate Vice President of Human Resources at the University of Toledo.

Their crime was not even signing a petition after a church service which called for a popular vote on same-sex “marriage” in the state of Maryland (rather than letting legislators decide this), as Dr. Angela McCaskill did, because of which she was placed on leave by Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. where she served as Associate Provost of Diversity and Inclusion (a position, by the way, which made no reference to sexual issues in its description).

No, the crime of Chip and Joanna Gaines was simply that they attend a gospel-preaching church. How much farther will these witch hunts go?

The Gaines and their representatives have not even issued a statement as to their own beliefs (if they do, I sure hope they affirm what their church teaches), nor has there ever been the slightest hint that anything they said on or off the show has been offensive, mean-spirited or hateful. Still, the very fact that they are popular, conservative Christians has put a target on their backs.

I repeat: This kind of shaming and bullying will backfire, and it will backfire sooner rather than later.

That’s why the left-leaning Washington Post already published an article by Brandon Abrosino, himself open and proudly gay, taking issue with the BuzzFeed article and noting that almost 40 percent of Americans are “not on board” with same-sex “marriage.” In response to this Abrosino asks, “Is the suggestion here [meaning, on BuzzFeed] that 40 percent of Americans are unemployable because of their religious convictions on marriage? That the companies that employ them deserve to be boycotted until they yield to the other side of the debate — a side, we should note, that is only slightly larger than the one being shouted down?”

Under no circumstances can gay activists and their allies wave the flag of Equality, Diversity and Tolerance when it comes to the BuzzFeed article. No, this is an overt and explicit attack on equality, diversity and tolerance and is, itself, an example of bigotry and intolerance of the highest order.

So, here’s a word of wisdom for BuzzFeed and those applauding their attack on Chip and Joanna Gaines: The Bible will be here long after you are gone, and the words of Moses, Jesus and Paul will be quoted for generations to come, while articles like the current hit piece on Chip and Joanna will be here today and gone tomorrow.

Put another way, as Bible-believing followers of Jesus, we’re not backing down or cowering in a corner or going underground. We’re here to stay, we are not ashamed, and the more you attack us, the stronger we become.

(For more from the author of “The Diversity Police Went Too Far in Attacking HGTV’s Fixer Uppers” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

House Panel Recommends Criminal Investigation of Planned Parenthood Affiliate

/0 Comments/in , /by

The House of Representatives’ Select Panel on Infant Lives has recommended the Texas Attorney General prosecute a Planned Parenthood affiliate that allegedly, and illegally, sold fetal parts to the University of Texas. The House also approved continued funding for its investigative panel, by a party-line vote of 235 to 176, with just two Democrats voting with the majority.

The Referral

The referral, made earlier today, was formally announced by Rep. Mia Love (R-UT) on the House floor (starting at 3:24 of the video). According to Love, “the Panel learned that Planned Parenthood of Gulf Coast violated both Texas and U.S. law when it sold baby parts to the University of Texas.”

A panel spokesperson confirmed the referral to The Stream. It is the ninth from the Select Panel, which has determined that fetal harvesting company StemExpress, the University of New Mexico and other for-profit and non-profit organizations violated various state and/or federal laws in Ohio, California, New Mexico, Florida and other states.

In California, Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas filed lawsuits against two companies after the panel’s referral. Two other abortion centers have been referred for prosecution in addition to Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast.

The referral is not the first federal controversy for the Planned Parenthood affiliate. In 2013, it settled with the U.S. Department of Justice over allegations that it overcharged Texas and the federal government for various products and services. The $4.3 settlement did not require Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast to admit guilt in the case, which was brought by a former employee-turned-whistleblower.

The Funding

Approximately an hour after Love spoke, the House voted to fund the Panel with up to $800,000 above and beyond the $790,000 already slated for investigations of the fetal harvesting industry. The money comes from taxpayer-funded House reserve funds that have already been appropriated for use by the House, and will fund the Panel until its statutorily-limited existence ends with the start of the 115th Congress.

Democrats have condemned the Panel, calling the money spent on its investigations a waste of taxpayer resources and the investigations themselves “a witch hunt.” The Panel’s Ranking Member, Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky, responded after Love’s speech that “bogus referrals do not a conviction make.”

Panel Chair Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), however, said that the investigation has “reveals that the unethical and potentially unlawful practices of some bad actors may be putting important research at risk. Considering all that our Panel has identified, despite having barely a year to conduct this investigation, it is now up to us to build on this work, to hold our government accountable, and to stop these affronts to human dignity.”

Pro-Life Groups React

The Center for Medical Progress, which provided undercover videos in 2015 that led to the Panel’s creation, said in a statement that the Panel’s findings and Texas referral “confirm the criminal activity at Planned Parenthood that CMP’s videos documented and show that the wrongdoing goes even deeper than anyone first suspected.”

“Law enforcement and elected representatives at all levels must now act quickly to bring Planned Parenthood to justice under the law and prevent any more taxpayer subsidies from flowing to Planned Parenthood’s barbaric criminal enterprise,” concluded the pro-life group.

In a press release, Texas Right to Life praised the prosecution referral. “The diligent work of the federal House Select Panel under the leadership of Pro-Life stalwart Representative Marsha Blackburn has renewed hopes in Texas that the shocking evidence revealed by the Center for Medical Progress will be thoroughly investigated and those at fault held accountable to the full extent of the law,” said the group.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said that the Texas referral “is the appropriate next step in bringing justice to bear on a group that clearly sees itself as above the law.” He urged Congress to “once again use the reconciliation process to redirect taxpayer dollars away from Planned Parenthood,” as the legislative body did less than a year ago. (For more from the author of “House Panel Recommends Criminal Investigation of Planned Parenthood Affiliate” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Feds Open Another Holding Facility for Migrant Flood at Border

/0 Comments/in , /by

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials announced the opening of an additional holding facility in south Texas to deal with the massive surge of illegal immigrants continuing to flood across the Mexican border.

The facility will provide additional space for holding approximately 500 Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) and Family Unit Aliens (FMUA). The new plant will be adjacent to the Donna-Rio Bravo International Bridge in Donna, Texas, according to information obtained by Breitbart Texas from CBP officials.

Earlier this month, Breitbart Texas reported that CBP officials were moving 150 Border Patrol agents from the Tucson, San Diego, and Del Rio Sectors to the Rio Grande Valley sector to aid in processing the additional illegal aliens.

“Illicit networks facilitate the majority of cross-border activity and smugglers prey on migrants by extorting money, confining them in deplorable conditions, and often physically and sexually assaulting them,” Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Marlene Castro wrote in a statement obtained by Breitbart Texas on November 12. “Despite these risks, migrants continue to entrust their lives each day to these unscrupulous criminals.”

The new facility will hold the women and children temporarily as they are being processed for transfer to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for removal or detention, or to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for relocation elsewhere in the United States, officials stated. (Read more from “Feds Open Another Holding Facility for Migrant Flood at Border” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Cruz and Meadows Introduce Bill to Eliminate Super PACs … the Constitutional Way

/0 Comments/in , /by

Isn’t it funny listening to the people who couldn’t care less about the Constitution and are bought off by special interests lecture us about the need to “get money out of politics?”

Like every other unconstitutional federal regulation, “campaign finance reform” wound up exacerbating the very problem it purported to fix. By placing limits on the amount individual donors can contribute to candidates, it created a market distortion whereby donors funneled unlimited money to Super PACs. So instead of the funds going to the individual candidates who could be held accountable for the veracity of their message, Super PACs — which could receive unlimited funds for independent expenditures — began dominating the political scene.

The result of campaign finance restrictions has empowered special interests and have made it almost impossible to defeat an incumbent. By capping individual donations to specific candidates to just $2,700 per election, but allowing unlimited contributions to Super PACs, campaign finance, like every other government intervention, protects the big guys on the block.

To that end, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas (A, 97%) and Rep. Mark Meadows R-N.C. (A, 93%) introduced legislation to abolish the caps on individual spending. Instead of pursuing further regulation to fix the existing regulations in the perennial cycle of government failure, this bill would open up campaign donations to everyone.

“Restrictions to political contributions are always presented under the guise of preventing corruption and holding politicians accountable, when in fact they accomplish exactly the opposite: protecting incumbent politicians,” said Cruz in a statement. “This bill will put Americans on a level playing field with the media and politicians when it comes to influencing elections and exercising our First Amendment rights.”

During my work on primary challenges, I experienced this first hand. The individual caps cripple upstart candidates because they will never have an arsenal of donors who could give $2,700 at a K Street dinner like establishment incumbents can. However, there might be one or two wealthy patriotic donors who would be willing to give them several hundred thousand dollars to get their candidacy off the ground. With existing unconstitutional limits, it is almost impossible for someone to challenge an incumbent in a primary unless he is a self-funder. By lifting the caps on individual donations, not only will upstart candidates be placed on a more level playing field, but the entire rationale for Super PACs will disappear.

Given the growth of this country, the reality is that it costs a lot of money to disseminate a message and obtain name recognition even in a House primary. Money will never leave politics. It’s a question of whether we respect free speech and the open market or allow the worst of the special interests to game out the system.

Ultimately, the way to “get money out of politics” is to bring the Constitution back into politics in conjunction with enacting term limits. Individuals and trade associations have the right to ask for whatever parochial handouts, regulations, grants, price controls, or tax subsidies they desire. But if our federal government adhered to its enumerated powers, their efforts would be moot.

There is no perfect system, but only adherence to the Constitution and the free market, which eliminates the ability of the federal government to pick winners and losers in the first place, will foster the fairest and most prosperous economy and system of government. Opening up donations to individual candidates while precluding the need for Super PACs will be the only way to empower constitutional conservative candidates to win elections and make the systemic changes that will truly limit the money and influence in politics. (For more from the author of “Cruz and Meadows Introduce Bill to Eliminate Super PACs … the Constitutional Way” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Pro-Life Progress: License of Ohio Abortion Clinic Revoked, Maryland Late-Term Abortionist Quits

/0 Comments/in , /by

An abortion facility in Ohio run by one of the nation’s most notorious abortion doctors has had its operating license revoked by Rick Hodges, director of the state’s Department of Health, CBS News reported.

The license was revoked after abortionist Martin Haskell’s Women’s Med Center of Dayton failed to obtain a transfer agreement with area hospitals, a requirement for abortion facilities in Ohio, CBS News reported. The clinic also failed to name the required number of physicians to standby as backup for emergencies — the only way abortion facilities can be exempt from the transfer agreement.

The clinic plans to appeal the order and has 15 days to do so, according to Dayton Daily News.

As reported earlier by The Stream, Haskell is credited with being the first to scientifically describe partial-birth abortions, after having carried out 700 of the horrific procedures himself.

The closing of Women’s Med Center of Dayton is being credited in part to the pro-life non-profit Created Equal through its Killers Among Us project, which discouraged area physicians from supporting the abortion clinic. The campaign is “aimed at calling out doctors involved in abortions, which included posters, mailers and vehicles circulating through the doctors’ neighborhoods publicizing their names,” Dayton Daily News reported.

“Other ob/gyn’s in the community saw what was going on and didn’t want to be a part of it,” said Jennifer Branch, attorney for the clinic.

Created Equal celebrated in a news release Thursday, with National Director Mark Harrington saying “Our efforts combined with local activists have had an impact.”

Katie Franklin, spokeswoman for Ohio Right to Life, said the organization is “very grateful to see that action is being taken on this facility, and we are hoping thousands of lives in Dayton are saved in the long run.”

Maryland Late-Term Abortionist Walks Out of Clinic

News of the clinic’s revoked license follows the end of another abortionist’s practice — specifically, his practice of providing late-term abortions.

Operation Rescue, a pro-life activist organization, reported last week that Leroy Carhart of Maryland has officially stopped providing late-term abortions at Germantown Reproductive Health Services (GRHS). According to Operation Rescue, GRHS previously provided abortions through all nine months of pregnancy.

But many abortions performed by Carhart were far from safe. Possibly as many as 12 women were transported from his clinic to emergency rooms after botched abortion attempts, Operation Rescue reported in March. One of his patients died after complications following her abortion procedure at 33-weeks.

Operation Rescue President Troy Newman said Carhart’s retirement from late-term abortions is “something to be grateful for.”

“Carhart’s brand of very late-term abortions are morally reprehensible and very dangerous, having taken the lives of countless viable babies and two of his patients,” Newman continued. “We have worked for years to end this atrocity, and today, Maryland is free from the dangers posed by Carhart.”

Carhart still performs abortions up to 20 weeks at a facility near his hometown in Nebraska, according to Operation Rescue. (For more from the author of “Pro-Life Progress: License of Ohio Abortion Clinic Revoked, Maryland Late-Term Abortionist Quits” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Money to Burn: 5 Things You Won’t Believe the Feds Are Doing With Your Tax Dollars

/0 Comments/in , /by

When President Obama took office in 2009, our national debt was $10.63 trillion. Today, it approaches near $20 trillion. The already colossal number has nearly doubled under the Obama administration. As Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla. (C, 71%) points out, even “if Congress were able to balance the budget, keep it balanced, and create a yearly surplus of $50 billion, it would still take 460 years to pay off our national debt.” Think about that.

And where has your money gone? In his office’s “Federal Fumbles” report, a project to identify the most ridiculous examples of federal waste, Sen. Lankford shows that the Obama administration has wasted your tax dollars on some pretty egregious things in the past few years.

Here are but five of the most ridiculous, wasteful projects your tax dollars have funded:

1. Icelandic Grave Diggers:

The National Science Foundation has bankrolled nearly $500,000 in grants to study the connection between religion and political power in Iceland from 870 A.D. to 1300 A.D. by looking at church graveyards. The NSF also funded two other grants of $46,688 and $26,680 to determine where archeologists should dig for the graveyard study.

2. Really old Tanzanian fish bones

Nearly $200,000 of your tax dollars are funding an NSF study on “Fish as a delicacy and a staple: Social status and the daily meal at the 14th- to 16th-century town of Songo Mnara, Tanzania.” The study will be conducted over several years to determine what “constructions of meaning” the eating of fish had on society in the African nation of Tanzania 600 years ago.

3. Embroidered Snuggies

The waste of nearly $2 million by the University of Washington is another profligate example of NSF grants gone wrong. The NSF gave the University of Washington a few million dollars in grant money, and about $1.8 million of that was used to pay extremely high salaries to senior employees. $3,920 was spent on swag, including “custom Snuggies, canvas bags, and mini optical computer mice.” The university also spent an additional $1,179 of NSF grant money on embroidered Snuggies. The National Science Foundation, wasted grant money — are you starting to see a trend here?

4. How does that ruling make you feel?

The NSF is dedicating $120,703 in grant money to a study of 1,000 people, “half of whom will be impacted by a Supreme Court decision, the other half of whom could possibly feel indirectly impacted by a decision.” The study seeks to gauge the “psychological impacts” of Supreme Court rulings. Apart from being a complete waste of money, the potential premise of this sort of study is problematic, as it perfectly jibes with the endless insanity seen on college campuses these days. The law is concerned with justice, not feelings.

5. How do you like your salmonella?

In 2010, salmonella-contaminated eggs sickened 2,000 people because the Department of Agriculture did not alert the FDA about the infected eggs, which entered into the American food supply as a result. Instead of learning from that fiasco, the communication between the two agencies has not improved. In June 2016, the Health and Human Services inspector general determined that the FDA still didn’t have an effective food recall program that would prevent another health outbreak from happening. Sadly, the whole point of the FDA and USDA, and their respectively massive workforce and budgets, is to prevent these exact types of outbreaks from ever occurring. What exactly are the employees doing every day?

So, how does all this waste of your tax dollars make you feel?

The good news is that Sen. Lankford offers two ways to combat wasteful government spending in the “Federal Fumbles” booklet. The Taxpayers Right-to-Know Act, which has passed the House, would allow taxpayers to see what all federal agencies are spending and how the agencies gauge the effectiveness of their programs. The bill awaits consideration in the Senate.

There is also the Grant Reform and New Transparency (GRANT) Act, which would establish a new system for how grants are awarded to stop wasteful grant spending. So far it’s up for consideration in the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee.

Hopefully with Donald Trump as president, both of these bills will get passed by Congress next year and signed into law so that the spigot of wasteful grant spending is stopped. (For more from the author of “Money to Burn: 5 Things You Won’t Believe the Feds Are Doing With Your Tax Dollars” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

3 Ways Ivanka’s Inner Liberal Is About to Go WILD in Trump’s White House

/0 Comments/in , /by

Now that her father, Donald Trump, will soon be President Trump, Ivanka Trump walks the line between her father’s stated conservative positions and the liberal elite society she is a member of.

A new Politico report confirms as much, with regard to the Ivanka-liberal elite connection. Ivanka also has the ears of her father, as we all know.

So what leftist causes will Ivanka champion in the Trump administration? Here are three biggest possibilities:

1. Climate change

“Ivanka wants to make climate change—which her father has called a hoax perpetuated by the Chinese—one of her signature issues, a source close to her told Politico. The source said Ivanka is in the early stages of exploring how to use her spotlight to speak out on the issue,” Politico’s Annie Karni writes.

Is Ivanka’s influence on climate change apparent already? While campaigning for president, Donald Trump stated he would “cancel” the Paris Agreement, a brainchild of the United Nations. Since getting elected, however, Trump has signaled that he’s open to keeping an executive commitment to the Paris climate accord to limit greenhouse gases. He now says that he is “looking at it very closely” and that he has an “open mind” about it.

2. So called “equal pay”

During her speech at the Republican National Convention in July, Ivanka promised that, as president, her father “will change labor laws” to ensure equal pay for women: “He will fight for equal pay for equal work, and I will fight for this too, right along side of him.”

Ivanka hasn’t been quiet about pushing the liberal myth about women being paid less for equal work — thus the need for equal pay laws. And now that her father is to assume the Oval Office, she’ll exert a lot of influence in advancing the cause.

But Congress is the only entity that can constitutionally change labor laws, and the last equal pay bill Congress considered went down in flames in the GOP Senate two years ago. Earth to Ivanka: A GOP Congress isn’t going to pass an equal pay bill in 2017 either.

3. Paid parental leave

In addition, Ivanka promised that her father “will focus on making quality childcare affordable and accessible for all” during her showcase RNC speech. Sure enough, Trump floated a government welfare plan shortly thereafter that would, among other things, establish a six-week national maternity leave policy, paid for by unemployment insurance.

Now that Trump has been elected president, he has a huge and powerful platform from which to advance any cause he likes. He clearly has taken advice from Ivanka before, and it’s likely he’ll continue to be a vector for his daughter’s leftist agenda.

But it would be far better for Donald Trump to shape policy based off a little something called conservatism and more importantly the U.S. Constitution. (For more from the author of “3 Ways Ivanka’s Inner Liberal Is About to Go WILD in Trump’s White House” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.