VIDEO: Just 14 Years Ago, Democrats Supported Cutting off Visas from Dangerous Countries

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When it comes to immigration and national security (and every other policy, for that matter), even many conservative Republicans can’t hold the ground plowed by liberal Democrats just 14 years ago.

Only a handful of Republicans are calling for a shutoff or cooldown of immigration and visas from the Middle East. Trump has made it a staple of his campaign and Sen. Cruz, R-Texas (A, 97%) has for a halt to the refugee program. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. (A, 92%) introduced a bill cutting off visas from countries overrun by terrorists. Yet, outside of a few House members, nobody else wants to pass even a standalone bill enacting this common sense imperative, let alone use the current budget bill to force the issue. All Republican leaders want to discuss is throwing more money at a problem rooted in willful blindness. Those bills will likely strengthen Muslim Brotherhood front groups responsible for training local law enforcement through block grant programs.

And what about Democrats? They don’t even want to discuss the issues of terrorism and insecure borders altogether.

However, it wasn’t always that way. In 2002, Congress passed the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act, which addressed many of the insecurities in our visa tracking system. The bill passed the House and Senate unanimously. The bill was originally sponsored by a group of bipartisan senators, including Ted Kennedy and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. (F, 0%):

SEC. 306. RESTRICTION ON ISSUANCE OF VISAS TO NONIMMIGRANTS FROM COUNTRIES THAT ARE STATE SPONSORS OF INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM.

(a) IN GENERAL- No nonimmigrant visa under section 101(a)(15) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C.1101(a)(15)) shall be issued to any alien from a country that is a state sponsor of international terrorism unless the Secretary of State determines, in consultation with the Attorney General and the heads of other appropriate United States agencies, that such alien does not pose a threat to the safety or national security of the United States. In making a determination under this subsection, the Secretary of State shall apply standards developed by the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Attorney General and the heads of other appropriate United States agencies, that are applicable to the nationals of such states.

The bill also established a program to monitor foreign students in the U.S. As part of that program, the Bush administration created the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), which required visa recipients from countries that represent a security risk to register with an ICE office and report regularly about their plans. Unfortunately, Obama’s DHS abolished the program in May 2011. Now, there are twice as many foreign students in the United States, including well over 150,000 from the very countries originally monitored by the Bush administration program.

(Talk about hypocrisy! Donald Trump should just televise this Bill Clinton speech from 1995 and then simply state, “I’m Donald Trump and I approve this message!”):

Ultimately, the 2002 bill had a lot of loopholes, which voided out its benefits in the long run and allowed Obama to erase what was left of the bill. But the fact that Democrats were even willing to sign onto a piece of legislation advertised as cutting off visas from some Middle Eastern countries demonstrates just how far their party has moved in almost 15 years. Sadly, Republicans have moved on with them.

Less than a generation later, after admitting nearly two million immigrants from the Middle East and hundreds of thousands more on non-immigrant visas, wouldn’t you expect an even greater sense of urgency from our political class? Wouldn’t our leaders be especially concerned about this influx of immigrants given how the jihadist threat has evolved from organized command-and-control attacks to individual jihadists carrying out their own attacks?

The fact that Congress passed that type of legislation in 2002 is just one more indication of how far our political class has regressed in their commitment to America’s security over the past 15 years. The pagan ideal of multiculturalism has crushed any modicum of common sense that remained among our leaders in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. (For more from the author of “Just 14 Years Ago, Democrats Supported Cutting off Visas from Dangerous Countries” please click HERE)

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Separating Fact from Sickening Media Fiction on Trump’s Immigration Executive Order

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There is a lot of confusion swirling around the events that transpired this weekend as a result of Trump’s executive order on immigration. Make no mistake: every word of Trump’s executive order is in accordance with statute.

It’s important not to conflate political arguments with legal arguments, as many liberals and far too many “conservatives” on social media are doing. While the timing and coordination of implementing this order might have been poorly planned, we shouldn’t allow that to undermine the broader need to defend our sovereignty. For courts to violate years’ worth of precedent and steal our sovereignty should concern everyone.

What the order actually does

Among other things, the key provisions at the center of the existing controversy are as follows:

It shuts off the issuance of all new immigrant and non-immigrant visas for 90 days from the following seven volatile countries: Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. Any non-citizen from those seven countries (not “all” Muslim countries) is excluded from entering the country during this time-period (which usually means they won’t be able to board a direct flight to America). After 30 days, the secretary of state and secretary of homeland security must submit a report to completely revamp the vetting process going forward.

Within 60 days, countries will have to submit any information that the administration determines necessary, pursuant to the findings of this report, in order to adjudicate a visa application and ensure they are properly vetted. Any country that fails to submit this information will not be able to send foreign nationals to our country. All the while, the ban can be extended and expanded at any time.

In addition, the entire refugee resettlement program is suspended for four months pending a complete investigation of the program and a plan to restructure it and prioritize those who are truly in danger of religious persecution. After 120 days, the program may resume, but only for those countries Secretaries Kelly and Tillerson determine do not pose a threat. The program from Syria is completely suspended until the president personally gives the green light.

With regards to refugees and those who seek to enter from the seven countries temporarily excluded, the order gave discretion to the State Department and DHS to admit individuals on a case-by-case basis for important reasons, even during the temporary moratorium.

Statement of principles on the right of a country to exclude non-citizens

Those who want to immigrate: There is no affirmative right, constitutional or otherwise, to visit or settle in the United States. Period.

Based on the social contract, social compact, sovereignty, long-standing law of nation-states, governance by the consent of the governed, the plenary power of Congress over immigration, and 200 years of case law, our political branches of government have the power to exclude or invite any individual or classes people for any reason on a temporary or even permanent basis – without any involvement from the courts. Congress has already delegated its authority to the president to shut off any form of immigration at will at any time.

Immigrants already here: Those already admitted to this country with the consent of the citizenry have unalienable rights. They cannot be indefinitely detained. However, they can be deported for any reason if they are not citizens. In Fong Yue Ting v. United States (1893), which is still settled law, the court ruled that Congress has the same plenary power to deport aliens for any reason as it does to exclude them and that the statutory procedures and conditions for doing so are due process. Congress has established the process for deportation of those already here. However, as long as a legal permanent resident leaves the country he has no affirmative right to re-enter. Either way, they have absolutely no right to judicial review other than to ensure that statutes are properly followed.

But can Trump prevent those with green cards from re-entering the country?

The statute is clear as day. The Immigration and Nationality Act (§ 212(f)) gives the president plenary power to “by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants.” Clearly, the president has the authority to block any non-citizen – including refugees, green card holders, and foreign students – from entering the country. Also, for purposes of deportation, there is no difference between a green card holder or a holder of a non-immigrant visa. No foreign national who has not yet obtained citizenship has an affirmative right to re-enter the country.

Is this a ban on Muslim immigration?

No, it’s a moratorium on immigration or re-entries from seven individual countries and a temporary moratorium on refugees from all countries, subject to case-by-case exceptions.

Why didn’t Trump place restrictions on immigration/visas from Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries?

That’s probably a good idea. But this was actually a judicious and cautious approach from Trump to start with low-hanging fruit. These seven countries are failed states or enemies of the U.S. (in the case of Iran). As such, there is absolutely no way to share data with the host countries and properly vet them. Somalia has been one of the biggest trouble spots. The other countries are marred in Islamic civil wars. Moreover, these are the countries that existing law targets for travel restrictions, and that Obama’s own DHS listed last year.

Why would Trump include green card holders in the ban on re-entry?

Both liberals and conservatives expressed concern over hundreds of individuals going over to fight for ISIS. We are already limited in how we can combat this growing threat among U.S. citizens. Given that it is completely legal to exclude non-citizens upon re-entry, Trump extended the ban to legal permanent residents as well.

If a Somali refugee is travelling back to Somalia (so much for credible fear of persecution!), government officials should have the ability to prevent that person from coming back when necessary. Obviously, there are some individuals from these seven countries who already have green cards and we might not want to exclude. That is why the order grants discretion to the State Department to issue case-by-case exemptions for “religious persecution, “or when the person is already in transit and denying admission would cause undue hardship.” A CBP agent is always stationed at any international airport from which these individuals would board a direct flight to the United States (Paris and Dubai, for example). That individual would not allow anyone covered by this ban onto a U.S.-bound flight unless he grants them a hardship exemption.

Indeed, it appears that green card holders returning yesterday from those seven countries were all granted entry.

What’s with the chaos at the airports and the courts?

Henceforth, CBP agents will not allow individual aliens from those seven countries to board a flight to the U.S. So the chaos will end.

The problem arose from the 100 or so individuals that were already in transit when the order took effect. When they arrived at American airports, they were detained at customs. Standing at this point is not tantamount to being on American soil.[4] However, a federal judge in New York issued a stay and prevented the feds from sending two individuals back on a flight. Other judges have prevented officials from even detaining such persons. It’s unclear if federal agents might have made a mistake and released some of these individuals before ordering them to leave the country. Once they are released onto American soil, any effort to remove them is treated as a deportation, not an exclusion, and is subject to the due process afforded them by congressional statutes (not the Constitution).

Thus, it’s unclear if the stay even applied to any element of the order or whether it applied to anomalous circumstances or particular actions taken by federal officials that overstepped the order.

It’s also confusing because many contemporary judges have no respect for our sovereignty and have been gradually chipping away at the plenary power of Congress (or the president, pursuant to statute) to exclude aliens re-entering the country, despite years of settled law. If courts are indeed violating our sovereignty, this is the very grave danger I warned about in Stolen Sovereignty. Either way, it should not affect the ability of the administration to enforce the order against those who want to prospectively board flights to return. (For more from the author of “Separating Fact from Sickening Media Fiction on Trump’s Immigration Executive Order” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Hey, CNN, Your Pathetic Contempt for Pro-Lifers Is Showing!

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For the past 44 years, pro-life activists have come to Washington, D.C., in the dead of winter to speak for the millions of unborn children who have been the victims of abortion in America. And every year the mainstream media’s pro-abortion liberal bias is on full display for all to see.

Enter CNN’s Carol Costello. Costello is the host of CNN Newsroom, and today she covered the March for Life. But take a look at how the march was characterized:

“Anti-abortion.” For years, members of the pro-life movement have stressed the concept that this is a positive movement. A life-affirming movement. It is not singularly directed in opposition to a medical procedure, abortion, but rather is a movement to defend human life in the womb. A movement to protect the right to life possessed by unborn children.

Viewers noticed:

And that is an important point. For when Costello’s program went live to CNN’s Brianna Keilar, reporting from the National Mall, the comparisons drawn between the March for Life and last week’s liberal Women’s March should raise eyebrows for conservatives.

Keilar listed the litany of issues left-wing activists at the Women’s March last week supposedly protested for, including “immigrants rights, Muslim rights … women’s rights.” She used the term “abortion rights” as well.

But did you notice what was absent? Any discussion at all of the rights of unborn children. The activists at the March for Life are not there to simply oppose abortion. They are their to defend the natural right to life endowed by our Creator possessed by every human being. And make no mistake, an unborn child in the womb is a human being. Fighting for unborn rights is fighting for human rights.

The pro-life, pro-unborn rights participants are labeled with negative language and that leads one to wonder why. But this final exchange from Costello’s program might provide viewers with some insight.

Costello brought on Deana Wallace, staff counsel at Americans United for Life, to discuss what pro-life activists are looking for in President Trump’s pick for a Supreme Court justice. Listen at the end of this clip:

Costello laughed at the notion that a justice who wants to uphold the Constitution should defend unborn children and their right to life.

She laughed! At the thought that unborn children should have the right to life.

The liberal media, ladies and gentlemen. (For more from the author of “Hey, CNN, Your Pathetic Contempt for Pro-Lifers Is Showing!” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Illegal Voting by the Numbers

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How many votes in the past presidential election were cast illegally or fraudulently? Some say none to few. Others, such as President Trump, say a couple of million. The mainstream press insist there is “no evidence” for systemic problems in the electoral process. Yet evidence does exist, only that evidence is disputed or ignored.

Here is the story so far. President Trump lost the popular election by more than two million votes, apparently due largely to the massive number of blue votes concentrated in California and New York. Yet shortly after the election, he said, “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” He later estimated the fraudulent margin to be some 3 to 5 million.

He also said, “I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time). Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!”

Mr Trump’s claims launched waves of horrified apoplexy in the press (who at this early point know no other reaction). The New York Times was reduced to using the L-word, i.e. “liar.” The Washington Post said Trump’s charge “is not supported by any verifiable facts.” Even politicians in his own party, such as Senator John McCain, said, “I obviously have seen no evidence of illegal voting.”

Various rhetorical tricks then played out in the mainstream press to give the impression illegal voting was rare in the extreme, or even non-existent. An academic study which estimated there were some 800,000 illegal votes from non-citizens was excoriated. Much evidence in plain site was just plain ignored. Yet, so far, there has been no systematic attempt to estimate the illicit vote count, and such an estimate is required before dismissing or accepting Mr. Trump’s claims. The best that can now be said is nobody knows the right answer.

Sloppy “Fact” Checking

One writer at the Washington Post “combed through the news-aggregation system Nexis to find demonstrated cases of absentee or in-person voter fraud.” And since this reporter could only find four reported instances, he said, “There is simply no evidence that fraudulent ballots played any significant role in the 2016 presidential election whatsoever.”

But since the point is question is fraud that has (thus far) gone undetected, arguing that since newspaper accounts of fraud don’t exist that therefore actual fraud doesn’t exist is not unlike arguing that since Pravda didn’t print reports of arrests of political prisoners in Moscow under Stalin, that therefore the arrests didn’t happen.

The controversial site FactCheck.org produced, at times, a petulant report, calling Trump’s claims “bogus.” FactCheck.org relied in part on the paper “The Truth About Voter Fraud” published by the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice. It is a remarkable document that takes great pains to suggest that fraud almost never occurs by emphasizing instances where fraud was searched for but was not found. For instance, this bullet point: “In Washington in 2005, an individual asked county offices to investigate the citizenship status of 1,668 registered voters based on their ‘foreign-sounding names.’ There are no reports of which we are aware that any individual on the submitted list was actually a noncitizen.” This is clever because it also brings with it the slight whiff of racism, for which there is no defense.

The Brennan report argues repeatedly that those who break the law to come to the USA would not likely break the law a second time to vote because the “payoff,” i.e. their one additional vote, is so small. But that same logic (as is well known) applies to the legal citizen voter deciding whether to head to the polls knowing his one vote also counts for almost nothing in a general election.

Pew and Actual Fraud

FactCheck.org admits Mr. Trump quotes accurately from the Pew Report “Inaccurate, Costly and Inefficient: Evidence That America’s Voter Registration System Needs and Upgrade“, before downplaying the report because it doesn’t specifically mention fraud. Instead, Pew says things like “Approximately 24 million — one of every eight — voter registrations in the United States are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate,” “More than 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as voters,” and “Approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state.” While none of these are direct indicators of fraud, all are in the direction of fraud.

FactCheck.org does bring up an instance of fraud:

After the 1982 election, in Chicago, 62 people, most of them precinct captains, were indicted by a grand jury for stuffing ballot boxes and buying votes, including a scheme in which they would identify registered voters not voting on Election Day and forge ballots in their name.

Like certain other metropolitan areas, Chicago is, as all know, a Democratic machine town with a long history of electoral shenanigans. In the linked example, the Chicago Tribune reported that a Democratic precinct worker was caught taking a straight-Democrat ballot and running it through a vote-counting machine 198 times. In that same article, “U.S. Atty. Dan Webb repeated contentions previously made by federal investigators that of the 1 million votes cast in Chicago in the Nov. 2, 1982, general election, about 100,000, or 10 percent, were fraudulent.”

Also: Webb “estimated that 80,000 illegal aliens are registered to vote here” and that by that time some had already been convicted for fraudulent voting. Several election officials were also convicted and others awaited trial.

FactCheck.org then pooh-poohs these facts by reminding the reader that “Trump urged his supporters to ‘watch your polling booths…,’” thus suggesting cheating could not have occurred under these watchful eyes, and by citing “experts” who say “the kind of voter fraud Trump is talking about — voter impersonation — is extremely rare.” Rare is might be, but did it happen in 2016?

Major Malfunctions

FactCheck.org forgot (somehow) to mention headlines like this: “Voting machines in more than one-third of all Detroit precincts registered more votes than they should have during last month’s presidential election.” The main discovery: “Detailed reports from the office of Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett show optical scanners at 248 of the city’s 662 precincts, or 37 percent, tabulated more ballots than the number of voters tallied by workers in the poll books.”

How many irregular votes were counted is unknown because of obscure recount rules in Michigan, but it is clearly non-zero. Even with these problems, a recent state audit said there “is no evidence of voter fraud surrounding the presidential election in Detroit.” It was admitted, however, that “87 of the 490 [Wayne County] precinct voting machines malfunctioned”, and that the poll workers were generally old and “tired.”

FactCheck.org also missed a case in Los Angeles where the County Registrar Dean Logan was presented with “more than 80 ballots for Tuesday’s [presidential] election filled out with names and the same address.” Logan has a history with difficult elections, such as in Washington State in 2000:

The Seattle Times documented 129 felons illegally voting in that election; National Review reported nearly 350 provisional ballots were counted without being verified; and The Wall Street Journal noted some 55,000 optical-scan ballots were “enhanced” so the voters’ supposed “intent” could be determined.

There are many other (easy-to-discover yet oddly ignored) instances like these, which proves one thing: that fraudulent or improper votes have been cast in past presidential elections, and that therefore it is rational to conclude fraudulent or improper votes have been cast in this most recent presidential election. The question then becomes how many votes are illicit.

Kinds of Bad Votes

Before investigating a contentious academic study of electoral fraud from non-citizen voting, it helps to list the main sources of fraudulent or improper votes in Presidential elections:

Legal non-citizens; i.e. those who are here legally who are ineligible to vote but do anyway
Law-breaking non-citizens; i.e. those who have broken laws to come here and are not in the formal immigration pipeline and who vote illegally
The dead, including legal and illegal (see below)
The fictional; i.e. names which are entirely made up
The multiple; i.e. citizens who vote more than once
Felons; i.e. citizens barred from voting

The dead requires clarification. Some citizens vote early and legally and then die before the official election date. Searches afterwards might turn some of these folks up as “dead voters.” The culprit is early voting and not fraud or ill intent. Of course, names of the deceased can also be, and have been, used by the unscrupulous.

Direction manipulation, by ballot box stuffing and, if it were possible, by hacking, would largely fit under the fictional category. The Chicago example of running the same ballot through the counting machine, and the example of malfunctioning machines fit here.

In order to come to total illicit votes, estimates are needed from each source.

The Dead and Felons

The dead whose names have been used improperly do not appear to account for a large number of bad votes. Many dead people are registered, as Pew reported, but their names have not been discovered to have been systematically misused. Still, there is substance (and here) to the many Chicago jokes like this: “My father voted Republican all his life. Since he died he votes Democrat.” No one therefore knows the best estimate of dead voters, but the Pew study does give an upper bound.

Laws vary by state whether felons can vote, with most states saying convicted felons are ineligible in some way. One estimate is that just over 6 million citizens are thus restricted. Ballotpedia cites a 2008 study which discovered “33,000 convicted felons who should not be eligible to vote” in Florida; another reports the “Wisconsin Government Accountability Board announced in September 2009 that it had identified up to 195 felons who may have illegally voted in the November 2008 presidential election.”

The total improper number of votes from felons is anybody’s guess, however. That 6 million is another upper bound, with the actual total surely far less than this.

Multiple and Fictional Votes

Pew again gives a clue about multiple voting by citizens; i.e., that 2.75 million people have multiple registrations. And then Alan Schulkin, Commissioner of the Board of Elections in New York City, was filmed by Project Veritas admitting people are “bused around” to vote multiple times, predominately in Democrat-heavy neighborhoods. In 2014, North Carolina identified “hundreds of cases of potential voter fraud,” many of which were likely multiple voters.

Fictional and incorrect names can be “on paper,” as when fraudulent registrations are entered, or virtual, as with ballot stuffing and hacking. For an on-paper example, recall the infamous Acorn voter registration drives in which the group turned in “‘massive numbers’ of duplicate registration cards,” cards for fictional characters and children and others with forged signatures. How many of these faked registrations turned into real votes nobody appears to know.

Ballotpedia quotes from a National Review article in which “undercover agents with New York City Department of Investigations ‘showed up at 63 polling places [in the fall of 2013] and pretended to be voters who should have been turned away by election officials … in 61 instances, or 97 percent of the time, the testers were allowed to vote.’” Other examples exist.

Ballot Stuffing and Hacking

The Chicago example suffices for a ballot-stuffing example, though many say newer voting machines make the practice difficult. Yet computerized machines open the possibility of hacking. The Detroit example with more votes than voters also falls into this category, regardless whether the intent was malicious or due to faulty equipment.

Hacking is more mysterious. A security researcher demonstrated to Forbes the ease which some machines can be tampered with. Others agree. There were claims from some that machines in Texas changed votes from Trump to Hillary, though some of these curious changes could be put down to voter error. But the same mysterious switches from Trump to Hillary were reported in Pennsylvania and other places, too.

“I went back, pressed Trump again. Three times I did this, so then I called one of the women that were working the polls over. And she said you must be doing it wrong. She did it three times and it defaulted to Hillary every time,” Bobbie Lee Hawranko told KDKA.
The key line to the story: “Officials recalibrated the machines and said the issue has been resolved.” Here is a video of an instance of switching.

And, as all know, there were multiple reports that Russia hacked the election, but here it is generally meant that “entities” in Russia provided the emails from the DNC and John Podesta, which is a different kind of thing.

As above, the conclusion is that nobody knows the size of the error or fraud from these categories, except to say that it is not zero. The direction of reports of vote switching is, of course, interesting.

Non-Citizen Voting

In 2014, Jesse Richman, Gulshan Chattha, and David Earnest published “Do non-citizens vote in U.S. elections?” in the journal Electoral Studies. Their study relied on data provided by the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), which is an on-going Internet survey.

The CCES includes a question asking whether the respondent is a US citizen, and others asking whether the respondent voted and for whom. Some respondents who said they were non-citizens also said they voted, which of course is illegal. In the 2008 election, Richman and Earnest calculated that “more than 80 percent” of non-citizens who illegally vote did so for Obama. So pronounced was the Democrat tilt, “we find that this participation was large enough to plausibly account for Democratic victories in a few close elections.”

If extrapolated to 2016, these findings support Mr. Trump’s claim. But Richman’s paper was not well received by Democrats and the mainstream press. How accurate are Richman’s findings?

Not so accurate, say Stephen Ansolabehere, Samantha Luks, and Brian Schaffner, who penned the rebuttal paper “The perils of cherry picking low frequency events in large sample surveys” in Electoral Studies. The gist of this article is that if there is a known error rate in answering the question on citizenship, then, given the observed data, it is possible all the people who responded they were non-citizen voters were in error, and that, in fact, no non-citizens voted.

Yet there is no known error rate, only a guess, a guess which is disputed in turn by Richman (also here). Ansolabehere and the others also fail to consider what errors in answering other questions might mean. And both Richman and Ansolabehere fail to consider the biggest source of uncertainty, which is lying.

Some non-citizens vote because they honestly believe they are allowed to, but others vote knowing of the illegality. Both categories of votes are, however, illegal. A key point of dispute in the CCES is that some people who answered they were citizens in 2010 later said in 2012 that they were non-citizens (and vice versa). This supports the measurement error theory of Ansolabehere. But it also supports the theory that some might have been lying in 2010 and later changed their mind. Even stronger, there were a very large number of folks who said they were non-citizens consistently, and Ansolabehere’s approach would be to toss all these out, a move for which he does not have a solid justification.

How many who were non-citizens who claimed to be citizens, i.e. how many lied, is not known by anybody. This was an Internet survey and people were tracked through time. It is unclear how much trust respondents had in the privacy of their data; plus, the motivation to lie about voting illegally is obvious enough.

Estimating Non-Citizen Votes

Many in the press, and even Ansolabehere, intimate Richman did not consider the effects of measurement error (of mistakenly answering the citizenship question), but this is simply false. In the original paper, Richman gathered as much evidence as they could to support their claim of non-citizen voting. Most of this evidence was indirect, as in comparing demographic and other characteristics of non-citizen voters and non-citizen non-voters. But, really, this is all that can be done short of tracking down the original respondents and investigating (not questioning) them individually.

Supposing Richman is correct, his estimate of some 834,000 votes cast illegally in 2016, and most of these for Hillary, is too precise. That number has substantial uncertainty, even accepting Richman’s analysis. And then we have to add the uncertainty due to the survey itself: how were people gathered, what biases it has, how many lied, and so forth. And even if we could do all that, the result is not observational proof of the number of illegal non-citizen votes. It will be just the number (or a range, really) from some statistical model, which would be disputed until Kingdom come. Richman himself agrees more would be needed.

Lastly, another difficulty is that the CCES data does not distinguish between legal non-citizens and those who broke the law to come here. Since the CCES was an Internet survey, and thus would require access to some kind of (expensive) device, it may be that it is biased toward legal non-citizens. Folks who break the law to come here to work washing dishes or picking crops aren’t, one surmises, as likely to participate in surveys. How likely this latter group is to vote (illegally and encouraged or bused by men like Schulkin mentioned) is unknown.

Final Numbers

It is disappointing, but the answer at this date is that there is no answer, no precise answer. There is more than sufficient evidence to confirm that some illegal votes were counted, however. Much of this evidence is circumstantial, but it is also substantial. (For more from the author of “Illegal Voting by the Numbers” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

A Closer Look at Neil Gorsuch, an Excellent Choice for the Supreme Court

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Tuesday night, President Donald Trump announced his nomination for the Supreme Court vacancy left by the unexpected death of Justice Antonin Scalia last February.

Trump nominated Judge Neil M. Gorsuch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. With this nomination, Trump held to the promise he made on the campaign trail to select a nominee from a list of 21 individuals.

Gorsuch is an eminently qualified and well-respected judge with a record that demonstrates he cares about religious liberty, the separation of powers, and the original public meaning of the Constitution and the laws he interprets. He would be a fine successor to Scalia.

Now, the confirmation process begins for Gorsuch. It can be a harrowing process for a nominee and his family as senators, the media, and others dig into his past—particularly looking for scandals and juicy details that might derail the nomination.

Let’s take a closer look at Gorsuch.

Background

Born in 1967, Gorsuch sits on the Denver-based 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming. He received his bachelor’s degree from Columbia University, his law degree from Harvard University, and his doctorate of philosophy from Oxford University.

(Read about Neil Gosuch’s personal religious background HERE)

But Gorsuch is not the only credentialed member of his family. His mother, Anne Gorsuch Burford, served as the first female head of the Environmental Protection Agency, under President Ronald Reagan.

After serving as a law clerk to Judge David Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court, Gorsuch joined a prominent D.C. law firm, where he practiced for 10 years.

He then served as principal deputy to the associate attorney general and as acting associate attorney general (the third-highest position) at the U.S. Department of Justice.

In May 2006, President George W. Bush nominated and the Senate confirmed Gorsuch to the 10th Circuit by a voice vote just two months later. His former boss, Kennedy, administered the oath of office.

Before joining the bench, Gorsuch authored “The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia” (2006), a book that, as Princeton University Press described it, “builds a nuanced, novel, and powerful moral and legal argument against legalization [of assisted suicide and euthanasia], one based on a principle that, surprisingly, has largely been overlooked in the debate—the idea that human life is intrinsically valuable and that intentional killing is always wrong.”

After joining the bench, he co-authored “The Law of Judicial Precedent” (2016) with the highly-respected legal writer Bryan Garner (who co-authored several books with Scalia) and 11 other federal appellate judges.

Gorsuch has also critiqued the left’s increasing preference to resort to the courts instead of the political process to advance its policy goals. In a 2005 op-ed, he wrote:

American liberals have become addicted to the courtroom, relying on judges and lawyers rather than elected leaders and the ballot box, as the primary means of effecting their social agenda on everything from gay marriage to assisted suicide to the use of vouchers for private-school education. This overweening addiction to the courtroom as the place to debate social policy is bad for the country and bad for the judiciary … As a society, we lose the benefit of the give-and-take of the political process and the flexibility of social experimentation that only the elected branches can provide.

Gorsuch has criticized the judicial confirmation process and decried treating would-be judges as “little more than politicians with robes.”

Approach to Judging

During the campaign, Trump pledged to nominate an individual who was “very much in the mold of” Scalia.

One recent study singled out Gorsuch as one of the top judges whose approach to interpreting the law was closest to that of Scalia’s approach. Gorsuch ranked second out of 15 judges in “Scalia-ness,” surpassed only by Utah Supreme Court Justice Thomas Lee.

When it comes to interpreting statutes and the Constitution, a Supreme Court justice must keep uppermost in mind that he did not write the text and should not attempt to rewrite that text through creative “interpretation” to mean something quite different from what was intended by its drafters, but which the justice personally considers more fair, wise, or just.

In other words, a justice should interpret the text and structure of a statute, or the Constitution, based on the original public meaning of that text at the time it was adopted, and should not, under the guise of statutory or constitutional interpretation, impose on the rest of society his own policy preferences based on his perceptions of contemporary values.

Gorsuch gives every indication that he will be just such a justice if he is confirmed by the Senate. He has demonstrated that he understands the proper, limited scope of the judicial power.

During his 10th Circuit confirmation hearing he stated, “The independence of the judiciary depends upon people in both parties being willing to serve, good people being willing to serve who are capable and willing to put aside their personal politics and preferences to decide cases and to follow the law and not try and make it.”

He has since written,

… donning a robe doesn’t make me any smarter. But the robe does mean something … It serves as a reminder of what’s expected of us—what [Edmund] Burke called the ‘cold neutrality of an impartial judge.’ It serves, too, as a reminder of the relatively modest station we’re meant to occupy in a democratic society. In other places, judges wear scarlet and ermine. Here, we’re told to buy our own plain black robes.

In a concurring opinion in 2016, Gorsuch wrote that the Constitution “isn’t some inkblot on which litigants may project their hopes and dreams … but a carefully drafted text judges are charged with applying according to its original public meaning.”

Gorsuch leaves his personal views at home. During his confirmation hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., questioned Gorsuch about how his views on assisted suicide and euthanasia would affect his judging.

Each case, Gorsuch said, deserves the “complete attention of the judge without being diverted by personal politics, policy preferences, or what you ate for breakfast.” He later added that he would “follow the law as written and not replace it with [his] own preferences, or anyone else’s.”

In a tribute to Scalia, Gorsuch wrote that “legislators may appeal to their own moral convictions and to claims about social utility to reshape the law as they think it should be in the future,” but that “judges should instead strive (if humanly and so imperfectly) to apply the law as it is, focusing backward, not forward, and looking to text, structure, and history to decide what a reasonable reader at the time of the events in question would have understood the law to be—not to decide cases based on their own moral convictions or the policy consequences they believe might serve society best.”

He quoted Scalia, saying:

If you’re going to be a good and faithful judge, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you’re not always going to like the conclusions you reach. If you like them all the time, you’re probably doing something wrong.

He also wrote that he was “an adherent to the view that outcomes (ends) do not justify methods (means).”

Notable Opinions

Gorsuch has written several notable opinions, some of which are described below, that are likely to be scrutinized during his confirmation hearing.

Gutierrez-Brizuela v. Lynch

Courts will typically defer to an administrative agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statute if that interpretation is reasonable. Known as “Chevron deference,” this practice is controversial and often criticized by conservatives.

In 2016, Gorsuch authored a separate concurring opinion, explicitly calling Chevron deference into question. He wrote, “ … the fact is Chevron … permit[s] executive bureaucracies to swallow huge amounts of core judicial and legislative power and concentrate federal power in a way that seems more than a little difficult to square with the Constitution of the framers’ design.”

He added, “[m]aybe the time has come to face the behemoth.”

United States v. Ackerman (2016)

When an AOL filter identified what appeared to be child pornography in Walter Ackerman’s email, it forwarded the email to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) (a quasi-governmental body), which then completed an investigation and notified the police.

After being indicted by a federal grand jury for possessing and distributing child pornography, Ackerman filed suit, claiming NCMEC violated the Fourth Amendment when it searched his emails without a warrant.

Writing for the majority, Gorsuch determined that the Fourth Amendment applied to NCMEC since its “law enforcement powers extend well beyond those enjoyed by private citizens” and that NCMEC conducted a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The case was remanded for the district court to determine whether the search was nevertheless reasonable.

United States v. Carloss

In this 2016 case, the 10th Circuit held that police did not violate Ralph Carloss’ Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure when they walked onto his property to knock on the front door, even though there were four plainly visible “No Trespassing” signs.

Gorsuch dissented, writing that the signs revoked the officers’ implied license to walk onto the property and knock on the front door. He emphasized that under the majority’s bold view, “[a] homeowner may post as many No Trespassing signs as she wishes. She might add a wall or a medieval-style moat, too. Maybe razor wire and battlements and mantraps besides. Even that isn’t enough to revoke the state’s right to enter.”

Hobby Lobby v. Burwell

Gorsuch joined the en banc opinion in this 2013 case challenging the regulation issued pursuant to Obamacare that would force employers to pay for contraception and abortifacients as part of their employee health insurance plans—even if they had a religious objection.

The government argued that there were too many steps between the employer paying for coverage and the employee’s decision to use contraception for an employer’s free exercise of religion to be substantially burdened.

The court rejected this argument. Gorsuch concurred in the decision holding that Hobby Lobby was likely to succeed on the merits of its claim. He wrote that “it is not for secular courts to rewrite the religious complaint of a faithful adherent, or to decide whether a religious teaching about complicity imposes ‘too much’ moral disapproval on those only ‘indirectly’ assisting wrongful conduct.”

Gorsuch also joined 11 other judges in dissent when the full 10th Circuit refused to rehear Little Sisters of the Poor v. Burwell, a similar case involving religious nonprofits. The Supreme Court heard the case last term and in an unusual opinion, agreed that the government could not force employers, such as the Little Sisters of the Poor, to violate their faith.

The consolidated cases were remanded for the lower courts to reconsider the claims brought by the Little Sisters of the Poor and others that the regulations violate their religious exercise in light of the government’s admission that it could indeed provide contraceptive coverage without the Little Sisters’ collaboration.

Also in the religious liberty context, Gorsuch joined a dissent from denial of rehearing en banc in Summum v. Pleasant Grove City, a case involving whether a city could put up a privately donated Ten Commandments monument in a city park to the exclusion of another proposed monument.

The Supreme Court ultimately reversed the 10th Circuit in an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, relying in part on the dissent. Gorsuch has also dissented from denial of rehearing en banc in two other cases, criticizing the Supreme Court’s confused Establishment Clause jurisprudence.

Planned Parenthood Association of Utah v. Herbert

After national news broke alleging Planned Parenthood harvested and illegally sold the body parts of aborted babies, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert directed state agencies to stop the flow of federal funds to Planned Parenthood in Utah.

In 2016, the 10th Circuit granted Planned Parenthood’s request for a preliminary injunction and ordered the governor to fund Planned Parenthood.

When the 10th Circuit refused to hear the case en banc, Gorsuch dissented, criticizing the panel for applying the wrong standard of review and for relaxing Planned Parenthood’s burden of proof.

The Coming Fight

Gorsuch has a record that demonstrates his fidelity to the Constitution and a proper understanding of the role of courts.

In his announcement this evening, Trump noted that Gorsuch has “outstanding legal skills, a brilliant mind, tremendous discipline, and he’s earned bipartisan support.” Gorsuch is “a man who our country needs badly to ensure the rule of law.”

While Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and other Senate Democrats have already announced their intention to try to filibuster any nominee, it will be a hard case for them to make given Gorsuch’s impressive record and clear commitment to the Constitution and the rule of law. (For more from the author of “A Closer Look at Neil Gorsuch, an Excellent Choice for the Supreme Court” please click HERE)

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Why the First US Military Raid Under Trump Was in Yemen

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Decorated U.S. Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens was tragically killed this weekend in Yemen. The first publicly acknowledged U.S. raid under President Donald Trump did not go as smoothly as planned, though the Pentagon labelled the mission — which reportedly killed 14 militants — a success. According to Reuters, the U.S. special ops mission targeted Abdulrauf al Dhabab, a senior al Qaeda leader.

The mission hit a snag when the SEAL team’s V-22 Osprey endured a “hard landing,” injuring at least three service members. Additionally, the SEAL Team 6 crew unexpectedly faced resistance from multiple female jihadis, which vastly complicated the mission and may have resulted in the deaths of civilians caught in the crossfire. However, according to U.S. Central Command, the SEALs secured “information that will likely provide insight into the planning of future terror plots.”

So, was it all worth it? And what brought the nation’s most decorated warriors into Yemen in the first place?

The continuing destabilization of the Middle East nation has created a void filled by the world’s most dangerous terrorists, who use the state to plan missions both domestically and abroad.

Civil War

There is an ongoing civil war in Yemen that has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of soldiers, militants, and civilians. Much of the country has become a battleground between a Saudi-led coalition (which includes the United States) and Iran-backed Houthi insurgents. Amidst the chaos, a vacuum has been created that has allowed the local Islamic State and al Qaeda branches to flourish, leaving only the U.S. and its allies to check their vast expansion.

AQAP

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which is headquartered in Yemen, is without a doubt the most dangerous al Qaeda affiliate worldwide. The group has managed to control swaths of territory in Yemen and has a global reach that extends to the United States and Europe.

AQAP, which is tasked with coordinating overseas attacks against America and its allies, was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. in 2010. It has on several occasions managed to infiltrate and carry out terror plots in Western countries. The group urges recruits inside America to “strike at home,” as damaging the U.S. is their most important duty.

Many of AQAP’s devotees are inspired by the late al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, the deceased imam who left America after 9/11 to became the leader of the al Qaeda Yemen branch. Several U.S.-based terrorists, including the shooters at Ft. Hood and Chattanooga drew motivation from Awlaki.

The 2009 Christmas Day “Underwear Bomber” — a Nigerian native who planned on bringing down a commercial jet — carried out his orders directly from AQAP. Thankfully, he failed to detonate his explosives.

Additionally, the tragic 2015 mass killings at the “Charlie Hebdo” offices in Paris was the work of AQAP jihadis.

Islamic State-Yemen

ISIS, like AQAP, also controls territory in Yemen, under the name Wilayat Sanaa — or, the Sanaa Province (of the Islamic State). The group, which seeks to impose a worldwide caliphate under its rule, has successfully conducted massive suicide missions, which have killed hundreds and wounded countless more. Islamic State operations in Yemeni provinces are a relatively new phenomenon, but the terror outfit has shown that it can operate and plan major attacks in the country.

U.S. counterterrorism efforts

America’s counterterrorism strategy in Yemen during the Obama administration relied on drone strikes and small, specialized military raids on jihadi compounds inside the country. In 2015, a U.S. drone strike killed AQAP’s No. 2 in charge. As previously mentioned, al-Awlaki was also taken out thanks to a U.S. drone strike.

Whether the strategy has been a success is a matter of debate. Experts have pointed out that targeted killings of AQAP leaders may temporarily weaken the group, but new leaders will emerge as long as the group has a safe haven in Yemen. Therefore, U.S. officials have expanded the mission to, at times, deploy special ops on the ground for aggressive missions on AQAP strongholds.

As details unfold pertaining to the past weekend’s raid in Yemen, what’s clear is that the country has become the perfect environment to plot jihadi terror against the United States. It appears that President Trump has recognized the threat and dedicated his first mission toward helping to eradicate the menace in the Gulf. (For more from the author of “Why the First US Military Raid Under Trump Was in Yemen” please click HERE)

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US Intel Caught Flat-Footed AGAIN as China Successfully Tests 10 Warhead Nuclear Missile

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China flight tested a new variant of a long-range missile with 10 warheads in what defense officials say represents a dramatic shift in Beijing’s strategic nuclear posture.

The flight test of the DF-5C missile was carried out earlier this month using 10 multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, or MIRVs. The test of the inert warheads was monitored closely by U.S. intelligence agencies, said two officials familiar with reports of the missile test. . .

Estimates of China’s nuclear arsenal for decades put the number of strategic warheads at the relatively low level of around 250 warheads. . .

Uploading Chinese missiles from single or triple warhead configurations to up to 10 warheads means the number of warheads stockpiled is orders of magnitude larger than the 250 estimate. . .

The Chinese state television channel CCTV-4 last week broadcast nuclear threats, including graphics showing new DF-41 missiles deployed in northern China and graphics showing the missiles’ strike path into the United States. The Jan. 25 broadcast included a graphic of a 10-warhead MIRV bus for the DF-41. (Read more from “US Intel Caught Flat-Footed AGAIN as China Successively Tests 10 Warhead Nuclear Missile” HERE)

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A Few Facts About SCOTUS Pick Neil Gorsuch’s Religion

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Judge Neil Gorsuch has been nominated to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court. Here are a few facts about his religious history and commitments, including positions important to religious conservatives.

1) Neil Gorsuch attended a Catholic school, the exclusive Georgetown Preparatory School, while his mother Anne served as head of the EPA under President Reagan. The school is run by the Jesuit order. He was student body president his senior year and graduated in 1985. The school makes a point of noting that it was founded the same year as the Supreme Court was established.

He studied at Oxford under the Catholic philosopher John Finnis. Finnis is one of the world’s leading Natural Law thinkers. One of Finnis’s other students, Princeton professor Robert P. George, wrote on his Facebook page that “Judge Gorsuch, whom I know well, is a faithful constitutionalist and extraordinarily well-qualified. President Trump could not have done better. Kudos to him.” Before the nomination, George had written, “He would be a superb Supreme Court justice. He is intellectually extremely gifted and is deeply committed to the (actual) Constitution and the rule of law. He will not manufacture ‘rights’ or read things into the Constitution that aren’t there or read things out of the Constitution that are.”

2) He’ll be the only Protestant on the court. He now attends St. John’s Episcopal Church in Boulder City, Colorado, where his daughters served as acolytes. The church describes itself as “an inclusive, Christ-centered community reaching out to all who are seeking a deeper spirituality and relationship with God and one another.” It has a woman pastor.

3) He opposes the legalization of euthanasia, as he wrote in his book The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia. Princeton University Press published the book in 2009. Two of the nation’s leading Catholic bioethicists, Princeton’s Robert P. George and Georgetown’s John Keown, praised it.

However, as the Southern Baptist’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission noted, “during his confirmation hearing [for the Tenth Circuit] he said he would follow the law rather than personal convictions, and that in his writings he has largely defended existing precedent in these areas.” As one constitutional scholar described Gorsuch’s views:

[He] believes that “any State’s decision to legalize assisted suicide would likely bring with it both benefits and some attendant costs, and, accordingly, the legalization question presents a difficult moral and legal choice.” … In his book, Gorsuch elaborates on these ideas, proposing as a guiding principle the intrinsic value of human life and arguing that “to act intentionally against life is to suggest that its value rests only on its transient instrumental usefulness for other ends.” He suggests a standard that would leave room for patient autonomy while not allowing intentional killing.

4) Gorsuch is taken to be an opponent of abortion, though he’s never written a court decision on the matter. He wrote in his book that “All human beings are intrinsically valuable and the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.” Also, “To act intentionally against life is to suggest that its value rests only on its transient instrumental usefulness for other ends.” And also:

It is simply not acceptable when we are deciding who is and is not treated as fully human…. It is incompatible with the promise of equal justice under law that any of us should feel at liberty to sit in judgement to decide who is and who is not entitled to the benefits of that promise.

In a footnote to the book, he argued that “Abortion would be ruled out by the inviolability-of-life principle I intend to set forth.” He noted that this depended on another belief. It would be true “if, and only if, a fetus is considered a human life. The Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade, however, unequivocally held that a fetus is not a ‘person’ for purposes of constitutional law.” Observers believe he would find that the fetus is a person.

His one judicial encounter with the issue came in Planned Parenthood of Utah v. Herbert. “Last October,” writes constitutional expert Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Gorsuch “dissented strenuously” when the court left standing a order keeping funds going to Planned Parenthood and over-rode the governor’s directive. “Gorsuch faulted the panel for failing to accord the appropriate degree of deference to the district court’s factual findings and for making its own bizarre inferences about the governor’s reasons for acting.”

A negative testimony to his position is NARAL’s reaction. The formerly named National Abortion Rights Action League tweeted, “We will fight hard, we will fight back, and we will #RESIST Neil Gorsuch & Trump’s extreme #antichoice agenda! #StopGorsuch”.

5) He’s an advocate of religious freedom and tolerance. He wrote in his book that “The law … doesn’t just apply to protect popular religious beliefs: it does perhaps its most important work in protecting unpopular religious beliefs, vindicating this nation’s long-held aspiration to serve as a refuge of religious tolerance.”

Gorsuch has “an especially strong record” on this subject, writes Whelan. In 2013, Gorsuch supported Hobby Lobby against the Obamacare mandate to provide conception, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court. Two years later, he supported the Little Sisters of the Poor, an organization of Catholic nuns, against similar requirements.

He “has also written or joined opinions — again, largely vindicated by the Supreme Court — that have criticized doctrines that limit religious expression in public spaces,” writes another legal scholar, Eric Citron, on the SCOTUSblog.

The common thread in these cases is one that matters very deeply to conservatives: a sense that the government can permit public displays of religion – and can accommodate deeply held religious views – without either violating the religion clauses of the Constitution or destroying the effectiveness of government programs that occasionally run into religious objections. In his 2009 concurrence in Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum, Scalia articulated very similar views.

6) Gorsuch is intellectually independent. He’s willing “to rethink constitutional principles from the ground up,” says Jeffrey Rosen of the National Constitution Center, quoted by Politico. “Like Justice Scalia, he sometimes reaches results that favor liberals when he thinks the history or text of the Constitution or the law require it, especially in areas like criminal law or the rights of religious minorities, but unlike Scalia he’s less willing to defer to regulations and might be more willing to second-guess Trump’s regulatory decision.”

7) He loves his wife Louise and two daughters, Emma and Belinda. He dedicated his book to them with the words “Finally, and borrowing in part from P.G. Wodehouse, I thank my wife, Louise, and my daughters, Emma and Belinda, without whose constant love and attention this book would’ve been finished in half the time — but without whom life wouldn’t been half as fully lived.” (For more from the author of “A Few Facts About SCOTUS Pick Neil Gorsuch’s Religion” please click HERE)

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Le Monde Labels Breitbart Fake News as Google Bans 200 Sites from Ad Network

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No one likes fake news. But that can be bad news, when liberal newspapers and websites use it as an excuse to censor conservative news sources.

Facebook, for example, announced a plan to combat fake news last month, which entails using left-leaning media and fact-checking organizations to analyze stories. Stories that are considered false will be less likely to show up in Facebook’s news feed, will contain a warning flag and will be prohibited from being promoted through an ad.

Who isn’t concerned that left-leaning Facebook users will report conservative articles as fake, left-leaning fact-checkers will rule the articles fake, and journalists who lean to the left will affirm the reports?

Snopes acknowledged that a site called USA Politics Today had only one fake news article on its entire site, which was removed, but Google still banned the site from its advertising network.

Le Monde, Google, Media Matters and Buzzfeed

Last week, the prominent French newspaper Le Monde identified 600 news sites it considers to be fake news, including the popular conservative site Breitbart, until recently led by top Trump aid Steve Bannon. Le Monde‘s fact-checking division Les Décodeurs compiled the list.

Samuel Laurent, head of Les Décodeurs, said some sites may seem normal but are dispelling misinformation on areas like abortion. “You then find out they’re run by Catholic militants,” so are heavily partisan, he said. Sites that contain negative information about Muslims were also included.

The newspaper built a downloadable browser extension that will alert readers to the “truthfulness” of stories on these 600 websites. It is also building a bot for Facebook to identify the stories. The full list has not been made public yet.

Other important sites are doing the same thing. Google decided in the fourth quarter of last year to ban fake news sites from its Google Adsense network. Adsense allows publishers to receive royalties from ads and the company said putting out misleading information violates the program’s terms of usage. The ban targeted sites which impersonate real news organizations through shortened top-level domains, such as by using .co instead of .com. Google did not issue a list of the 200 sites it banned, but at least one of them is a conservative news site.

The left-wing site Media Matters, which aggressively targets conservatives, regularly reports conservative news sites to Google as fake news sites. Media Matters identified 24 of these websites in December. They are mostly familiar conservative websites, including some fairly prominent sites like Right Wing News, Gateway Pundit and Western Journalism (disclaimer: I am a regular contributor to Right Wing News).

Last October, the left-leaning site Buzzfeed identified 30 articles on Right Wing News as fake news. John Hawkins, the owner of Right Wing News, analyzed all of the articles and concluded that 23 of the articles were accurate — but Buzzfeed would only retract three of the false labels.

Media Matters triumphantly announced on January 26 that this list had been whittled down to just over a dozen sites, but most of the sites removed from the list still appear to be a part of the Adsense network. The only site I could determine that was successfully kicked out of the network is USA Politics Today, a fairly popular conservative site. The owner of the site said Google told them the site was banned because two titles of articles on the site were misleading. One of the articles, “BREAKING: Jill Stein Just ENDORSED Donald Trump! Watch Her Obliterate Hillary!” was removed from the site, but Google would not renege. According to the left-leaning, myth-debunking site Snopes, that article was the only fake news on the entire website.

A few of the websites belonging to two notorious creators of fake news—leftists posting false stories designed to fool conservatives—were probably included in this list. Jestin Coler ran Conservative Frontline, National Report and The Denver Guardian last year. All three sites are no longer operating and are devoid of content. Paul Horner was the lead writer for National Report, and went on to start his own fake news sites, including newsexaminer.net and abcnews.com.co. Those two sites are still operating, but do not have any ads from Google Adsense.

A Dangerous Trend

The increase in organizations targeting fake news will harm conservative news sites, since they are being included. The definition of fake news has been expanded from meaning sites that purposely churn out false stories to encompass conservative news the left dislikes. The left is trying to hijack the definition of fake news. The organizations choosing to identify fake news are questionable. Since Le Monde is a news organization itself, should it really be the authority on what news is accurate? It is akin to policing itself and making the rules for the industry.

Melissa Zimdars, a media professor at Merrimack College in Massachusetts, compiled a list of fake news websites last year. A couple of the sites included are fairly popular right-leaning sites, such as Infowars and Conservative Tribune. Even more troubling, she singled out Fox News, one of the most prominent and reputable sites for conservatives, as potentially making the list. “Some sources not yet included in this list (although their practices at times may qualify them for addition), such as The Daily Kos, The Huffington Post, and Fox News, vacillate between providing important, legitimate, problematic, and/or hyperbolic news coverage, requiring readers and viewers to verify and contextualize information with other sources,” she wrote.

It is long overdue for a source on the right to compile a list of fake news sites that doesn’t include conservative news. (For more from the author of “Le Monde Labels Breitbart Fake News as Google Bans 200 Sites from Ad Network” please click HERE)

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Former House Freedom Caucus Chairman on Obamacare: ‘Let’s Repeal It as Quickly as We Can’

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Several Republican congressmen from the House Freedom Caucus say they want a full repeal and replacement of Obamacare, despite private talk from some GOP lawmakers about a partial repeal.

Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla.; Mark Meadows, R-N.C.; Raul Labrador, R-Idaho; Scott Perry, R-Pa.; Mark Sanford, R-S.C.; and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio; were all present at the January meeting of Conversations with Conservatives, a monthly press Q&A hosted by conservative lawmakers and The Heritage Foundation.

When Jordan was asked how he felt about the progress Republican lawmakers had made on Obamacare, he said, “I’d like to see an acceleration of the front-end repeal side … let’s get rid of [Obamacare], that’s what we told the voters that we were going to do. Let’s repeal it as quickly as we can and let’s have the effective day be not three and four years down the road.”

The congressman from Ohio added, “health care will be better and cost less when Obamacare is gone.”

“Let’s get after it as soon as we can and repeal everything: every tax, every mandate, and most importantly, every single regulation because I believe that’s [what will be] driving down premiums and deductible costs,” concluded Jordan on the issue of an Obamacare repeal.

Perry went on to stress the importance of having an alternative health care plan at or soon after the time of repeal, saying, “I do think that the repeal and the alternative needs to happen at the same [time], or …. with[in] a week or two or something like that.”

Labrador, Perry, Sanford, and Jordan all agreed that Obamacare must be repealed, with Sanford saying, “Just in terms of the political realm, I think as a vote for conservatives, it would be very difficult for any of us, at the end of the day, to not vote yes on repeal, whether it’s concurrent or not with regard to replace.”

Talking about a replacement for Obamacare, Labrador said, “I want to make sure that we’re gonna move to a free-market plan. And I’m encouraging our leadership to take a bold position on this and move as far away from Obamacare and government-centered health care as possible.”

Jordan agreed, saying, “Ideally, we’d like a plan that’s free market-oriented, patient-oriented, doctor-oriented, community-oriented; not [as] Washington-focused as Obamacare.” (For more from the author of “Former House Freedom Caucus Chairman on Obamacare: ‘Let’s Repeal It as Quickly as We Can'” please click HERE)

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