Muslim Prayer Erupts During Protest at DFW Airport

/0 Comments/in , /by

By Associated Press. Demonstrators have gathered at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport to protest President Donald Trump’s travel ban barring citizens of seven predominantly Muslim nations from entry into the U.S.

An estimated 200 people held signs and chanted “Let them go!” as they awaited word Sunday on what state representatives for the Council on American-Islamic Relations say are nine people detained at the airport.

(Read more from “Muslim Prayer Erupts During Protest at DFW Airport” HERE)

_____________________________________

Chaos as Pro-Muslim Refugee Protests Erupt at LAX

By Brenda Gazzar and Cynthia Washicko. Throngs of passionate protesters marched, waved signs and staged a sit-in Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport, demanding President Donald Trump lift his executive order affecting refugees as well as certain nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Chanting “Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here” and “Let them in,” the protesters gathered first at the Tom Bradley International Terminal but then marched around the lower Central Terminal Area, forcing rolling closures of some lanes of traffic.

Flight operations were unaffected and no arrests were made, airport officials said. However, traffic was gridlocked at times trying to get into and out of the airport.

Among the thousands of protesters at the airport was Matthew Pagoaga, 32, of Highland Park, who held a sign adorned with an image of the “Star Wars” character Yoda that read “Fear leads to Anger, Anger leads to Hate, Hate leads to Suffering.”

“There’s never been anything so atrocious in our political system, discriminating against whole groups of people based on religion,” he said. “We can’t protect ourselves by hating other people.” (Read more from “Chaos as Pro-Muslim Refugee Protests Erupt at LAX” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

It Took Just One Week for the NY Times to Blame Trump for ‘Deaths Around the World’

/0 Comments/in , /by

Polemic New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof reached a new level of outrageous this week with “President Trump’s War on Women Begins,” claiming President Donald Trump will be responsible for “deaths around the globe” after reinstating the “Mexico City policy.” The policy, which prohibits federal tax dollars from going to international organizations that perform or support abortion services, is usually reinstated during Republican administrations.

Kristof believes that Trump upholding his pro-life campaign promises as president is either a deception or “the measure of his delusion.” Because, in Kristof’s mind, it’s logically impossible and inhumane to believe in the pro-life message otherwise. In the leftist columnist’s eyes, the reinstatement of the Mexico City policy is Trump’s “most horrific chicanery.”

Of all the faux pas and unsubstantiated statements from Trump, Nicholas Kristoff thinks that his move to ban taxpayer dollars from paying for the contraception and abortions for women overseas is the worst.

Why? Because we are “increasing the number of abortions and dying women,” and “the victims invariably are among the most voiceless, powerless people in the world.”

There are two problems with Kristoff’s thinking. First, it’s fallacious to think that it’s Americans’ obligation to fund abortion-supporting organization to prevent more, future/hypothetical abortions. Kristoff has written that he “find[s] abortion a difficult issue, because a fetus seems much more than a lump of tissue but considerably less than a human being. Most of us are deeply uncomfortable with abortion, especially in the third trimesters, but we still don’t equate it with murder.”

But many, many Americans do think abortion is morally wrong, because it’s the taking of a life. And even if a fetus doesn’t seem as human as a spry 25-year-old, that doesn’t mean a fetus doesn’t have all the trappings of a human being — it’s just in a particular stage of growth.

So is it just to take the tax dollars of the many Americans who morally object to fund overseas abortions? Especially when even a pro-abortion liberal like Kristof finds the morality of abortion “difficult”? Is it ever morally acceptable to knowingly aid in the killing of a human life in order to prevent an unknown and hypothetical? No.

Second, the voiceless victims Kristof thinks will be hardest hit by the Mexico City policy reinstatement are the women losing access to abortion services. But what about all the unborn children whose lives come to a brutal end in the womb? They are very literally voiceless victims. No mention of them, though, in Kristof’s polemic.

Kristof finishes his piece by calling on all the protesters at the Women’s March last weekend to keep marching, because “it’s about the lives of women and girls.”

Please, Nicholas Kristof, think about all the girls who never got the chance to live because they were murdered in the womb. (For more from the author of “It Took Just One Week for the NY Times to Blame Trump for ‘Deaths Around the World'” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Yes, America, the March for Life Is Still Relevant 44 Years After Roe v. Wade

/0 Comments/in , /by

Of the hundreds of babies callously murdered over the course of years in a flea-bitten torture chamber in west Philadelphia, only seven – identified only by letters of the alphabet – made it to the courtroom.

Alongside their evidence was that of slain Karnamaya Mongar, a 41-year-old refugee from Bhutan, who had died in the same filthy “health clinic” run by mass-murderer and late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell.

While Washington, D.C., just hosted its 44th March for Life on Friday, those still confused or on the fence about the cause for which so many turn up in the annual pilgrimage might want to turn their attention to “Gosnell: The Untold Story of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer” from Regnery Publishing, a new book by documentarians Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney about these atrocities and Gosnell’s criminal trial that followed.

This the latest product of an investigative project that began with a 2014 crowdfunding campaign to raise money for a movie about Gosnell. The film, which will feature Dean Cain as Detective James Woods, is currently seeking a distributor.

The filmmakers recently told The Christian Post that the reason they opted for both a book and film was that some of the material was far too gruesome for the screen.

“After we decided to make the movie we went to Philadelphia and started interviewing people, and we bought the trial transcripts and started going through them,” McElhinney told CP’s Brandon Showalter. “But we thought, people didn’t know them. And the stories should still be told.”

And the stories are brutal.

Page after page, the story delves into excruciating and heart-rending detail about the horrors woman and child alike endured at Gosnell’s macabre hellhole.

One section of the book outlines in a painful, rhythmic list what befell each of the seven babies for whose murders Gosnell was charged. Per The Daily Signal:

Baby boy A was born and murdered on the same day – July 12, 2008. He was so large, even in a clinic where late abortions were not unusual, that two clinic employees snapped pictures of him on their cell phones …

Baby E was the baby that cried – the one that [one employee] said “sounded like a little alien …”

After baby F jerked its leg to its chest, Gosnell cut its neck with scissors.

Baby G breathed. Gosnell snipped its neck.

The stories go on, each more devastating and horrific than the last, outlining decades of ghoulish gore on unsuspecting women and their helpless, innocent children.

But yet, all of this, all of it … ALL OF IT … went ignored by government authorities for years thanks in large part to the pro-abortion politics of officials like former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge and others.

In the process of writing the book, the atrocities McAleer and McElhinney uncovered actually converted the latter to the pro-life cause, she explains at The Daily Signal.

“I never trusted or liked pro-life activists,” McElhinney writes. “Even at college I thought them too earnest and too religious. I thought the shocking images they showed were manipulative.”

“Reading the testimony and sifting through the evidence in the case in the research for this book and for writing the script of the movie has been brutal. I have wept at my computer. I have said the Our Father sitting at my desk,” she adds. “I am no holy roller—I hadn’t prayed in years—but at times when I was confronted with the worst of this story I didn’t know what else to do.”

For those still confused about why so many people would drive or fly across the country to walk in the cold, rain, and/or snow year after year, this is why. You can attribute malice and misogyny; you can rail against some Marxist concept of a “patriarchy” or old-world theocracy. But none of this is correct.

The people who marched Friday, who come to the National Mall every January are out there for babies A through G — for the women harmed and scarred by the yet uncovered Kermit Gosnells out there. And yes, they’re out there for the children who may had their lives snuffed out more sterile environments, but had them snuffed out nonetheless.

They are why we march. (For more from the author of “Yes, America, the March for Life Is Still Relevant 44 Years After Roe v. Wade” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Let’s Be Real: Obama ‘Barred’ Syrian Christian Refugees

/0 Comments/in , /by

President Trump said he’s righting a wrong in ordering his administration to prioritize refugee applications from Christian minorities in Muslim countries Friday, but critics are declaring the move unfair and “un-American.” Let’s look at what the numbers have to say about the way Christian refugees were treated under President Obama.

The country admitted about the same number of Christian refugees as Muslim refugees in Fiscal Year 2016, according to Pew Research Center figures cited by The New York Times in an effort to refute Trump’s statement. About 38,000 Christian refugees were admitted compared to about 39,000 Muslims.

But this figure is a sum total of refugees worldwide, when Trump was clearly referring to specific Christian minority populations in the Middle East. The way it’s deployed in The New York Times report is incredibly misleading and entirely misses the point.

Previous administrations made it “almost impossible” for Syrian Christian refugees to gain admission, Trump told the Christian Broadcasting Network Friday, although they were “horribly treated” in their country.

“If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible,” he said. “I thought it was very, very unfair. So we are going to help them.” (Read more from “Let’s Be Real: Obama ‘Barred’ Syrian Christian Refugees” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

White House Defends Omission of Jews from Holocaust Statement

/0 Comments/in , /by

By Michael Wilner and Tamara Zieve. The Trump Administration defended its decision to omit any mention of Jews or antisemitism from its statement marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, noting that Jews were not the only victims of Nazi slaughter.

“Despite what the media reports, we are an incredibly inclusive group and we took into account all of those who suffered,” Hope Hicks, a communications aide for the president, said in a comment to CNN. In his statement, Donald Trump vowed to stand up against the forces of evil as president.

“It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust,” the US president said in the statement.

“It is impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror.”

The omission drew ire from the Anti-Defamation League, whose CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted that it was “Puzzling and troubling @WhiteHouse #Holocaust- MemorialDaystmt has no mention of Jews. GOP and Dem. presidents have done so in the past.” (Read more from “White House Defends Omission of Jews from Holocaust Statement” HERE)

_________________________________________

German Muslim Students Protest Holocaust Remembrance, Attack Israel

By Benjamin Weinthal. Muslim students of Arab and Turkish origin protested participation in an International Holocaust Remembrance Day event in Germany, while their high school’s administration showed understanding for their criticism of Israel.

“Some Muslims students said they would not participate in the event,” said Florian Beer, a teacher at the school in the city of Gelsenkirchen in North Rhine-Westphalia state, Der Westen newspaper reported on Thursday.

The Holocaust remembrance event was part of a global commemoration in which participants take selfie photographs along with a sign saying “I Remember“ or “We Remember.“ A blackboard at the school was defaced with the sentence: “F*** Israel, free Palestine.” The school was not able to identify the perpetrator.

Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the head of the Jerusalem office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Jerusalem Post on Friday, “Muslims students are greatest in need of Holocaust education, so it would be unfortunate if they were excused from those activities.”

Zuroff, who is Wiesenthal’s chief Nazi-hunter, added, “Given that Holocaust consciousness is a central idea of civic identity in the Federal Republic, it is doubly important for families that come from countries with deep antisemitic traditions and no knowledge of the Holocaust and the destruction of European Jewry.” (Read more from “German Muslim Students Protest Holocaust Remembrance, Attack Israel” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Are Trump Voters Heretics?

/0 Comments/in , /by

Stephen Mattson, writing last week in Sojourners Magazine, raised a passionate warning for white evangelicals, saying that while we sing worship songs about keeping “eyes above the waves,” we’ve elected a president who rejects refugees who have passed through those same waves. We’re “refusing shelter and opportunity to some of the world’s most helpless and oppressed people,” he adds.

Our hypocrisy is thick and rancid, says Mattson. Whereas Christ has called us to aid “the poor, oppressed, maligned, mistreated, sick, and those most in need of help,” conservative policies instead encourage “xenophobia, misogyny, racism, hatred, corruption and fear.”

And who did we just vote for? Blogger Zack Hunt notes that during the campaign, Trump declared his “personal motto is ‘eye for an eye.’” He admitted that he never asked for forgiveness, he “pathologically lied,” he spoke of his own daughter in a creepy way and he bragged about sexually assaulting women — among other un-Christ-like behavior.

Late in the primaries I wrote a little e-book entitled The Trump Bible: Why No Christian Should Vote for Donald Trump. (And echoed some of my arguments here.) After Clinton became the only alternative, I lacked the heart to promote that booklet. But I sympathize with my liberal brothers and sisters. Witnessing so many fellow Christians’ glee at Trump’s election must be, for them, like getting on a bus and finding your fellow passengers wearing prison uniforms and sporting tattoos of Las Vegas show girls. “What? Did I catch the right bus?”

But before our liberal brothers and sisters in Christ jump off the bus, let us try to understand one another better.

Not Most Christians’ First Choice

First, liberals should know that Donald Trump was not the first choice for most conservative Christians.

In the month before the election, I drove around the United States speaking about a book I had more heart to promote (Jesus is No Myth). Over and over again I heard, “I am deeply concerned about Trump’s character. But Hillary is just as dishonest and even more crooked. And I cannot support someone who willingly allows the deaths of unborn children.”

Christians on the left and the right agree it is a Christian’s duty to care for “the least of these.” Many feel this must begin with the unborn.

Christianity Isn’t Such a Failure After All

Second, there is reason to believe American Christianity has not utterly failed when it comes to following the example of Jesus.

In his book Who Really Cares, sociologist Arthur Brooks points out that devout American believers, left and right, tend to give about the same amount to charity, more than three times more than those who seldom attend religious services. Committed believers even give far more blood than nonbelievers. And Americans are vastly more personally forthcoming with funds than Europeans. So has American Christianity failed? Not at making Americans Christians among the most generous people in the world. (Tom Gilson gives examples from his own church, here — and I see evidence of the same in every church where I speak.)

Who Is Our Neighbor?

But what about refugees drowning beneath waves while we sing songs?

Right and Left do face one another across a deep philosophical divide. Our assumptions about economics, just warfare, and even human nature often seem starkly at odds. Yet our common agreed starting point should be “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

How does that apply, say, to Trump’s partial ban on immigrants from some Muslim countries?

Liberals may understandably reply:

“When asked ‘Who is my neighbor?’ Jesus told of a ‘Good Samaritan.’ He could have been talking about Syrian refugees! How dense can ‘Christians’ be not to see that nationalistic conservatives are the Pharisees who ‘pass by on the other side,’ voting for a man who denies entrance to needy and abused refugees!”

But a Trump supporter could respond with equal heat:

“Did the Good Samaritan take the mugging victim into his own home? What if he had a daughter, and this traveler had a bad reputation with women? Safe zones — which Senator McCain called for — would be a closer parallel to the inn. After all, not even the early Church allowed people who failed to share its values to join.

“And shouldn’t we also show compassion for blue collar workers whose jobs are put at risk, for women in England and Germany who have been abused by immigrants, or for the victims at the Boston Marathon? Peace and prosperity have been insured for the past 70 years by a strong America holding largely to Judeo-Christian values. That may change, if America accepts all Muslims who wish to come.”

Wisdom Regarding Islam

Loving Middle Eastern Muslims is certainly part of Jesus’ calling. But his first command also includes loving God with our minds. This means acting with wisdom as well as compassion. If we are to love Muslims, we must honestly recognize the nature of the ideology to which they subscribe.

Islam is an inherently aggressive belief system whose pretensions are as universal as those of communism. Islamic law prescribes death for those who convert out. As historian Bernard Lewis notes, Islam has never birthed movements for the liberation of women, slaves or unbelievers.

Building Fences Can Be an Act of Love

Love sometimes means building fences. A cell is a community of chemicals protected by a cell wall. An organ is a co-op of cells protected by a membrane. A body is a community of organs inside skin. Families and schools are protected by walls, locks and fences.

Nations also define themselves in part by rivers, mountains and Great Walls. Yes, love may emerge in rich ways at higher levels of organization, but the integrity of the community must also be guarded, by means of membrane, skin, skulls, brick, Homeland Security, the FBI.

I have welcomed foreigners to America, but in one case endangered loved ones in the process, through failing to understand how much culture and religion matter, especially in treatment of women. Nothing bad came of that error (involving a young Muslim man), thankfully, because our trust remained guarded.

Jesus said “Love God, love your neighbors as yourself.” He did not promise that understanding how best to do so would be easy, or that everyone would agree on the same solutions.

So let followers of Christ dialogue in humility, wisdom and genuine compassion. Let’s recognize the complexities of life. And let’s not indulge ourselves in any form of easy self-righteousness towards those with whom we disagree. (For more from the author of “Are Trump Voters Heretics?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

The Media Play the Numbers Game, and Somehow Conservatives Always Lose

/0 Comments/in , /by

“This was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe,” Trump’s press spokesman said on Friday, a claim he repeated it on Saturday. “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period,” Sean Spicer told a very skeptical press.

He based the estimate in part upon the number of people recorded riding D.C. public transit on Friday. He erroneously compared the total number of riders that day with half-day numbers from Obama’s inauguration.

Spicer retracted his statement later, but the mainstream media pounced on him for what was likely an honest mistake, and gleefully ran with their own misleading analysis of the numbers. Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway defended Spicer on Meet the Press, “You’re saying it’s a falsehood and Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that.” This just further incensed the media, with some outlets calling for Spicer to resign.

Why Does This Matter?

Why does this matter? Politicians and the press always fight about these things. It matters as an example of the larger problem: the vast attention the media places on favored events while ignoring others, in order to make the former appear more prominent than they really are.

So what about the inauguration crowd? Crowd size estimates were all over the board, in part because the U.S. Park Service no longer provides official numbers. The consensus seems to be there were about 900,000 people at Trump’s inauguration. An estimated 1.7 million attended Obama’s first inauguration, which the press was quick to point out.

But the press left out some important differences. Most important, millions watched the inauguration on TV and streaming media — probably millions in Russia alone.

Content delivery network Akamai reported that the inauguration was the largest, single live news event the company had ever hosted. It peaked at 8.7 Tbps (terabytes per second) during Trump’s speech. Obama’s first inauguration peaked at only 1.1 Tbps. In other words, about eight times more people watched Trump’s inauguration over streaming media than had watched Obama’s.

Media Tries to Make In-Person Attendance the Story

Instead of acknowledging the huge numbers that watched the inauguration over streaming media, the press honed in on the numbers of people who physically attended the event. Reporters jumped on Spicer’s mistake and tried to make that the story.

Media outlets also ran photos from earlier in the day, before the crowd was fullest. In these pictures, large stretches of white tarp stood out, exaggerating the effect of the empty spaces.

The media chose the worst comparison possible. Barack Obama’s first inauguration was the inauguration of the first black president. That was always going to draw a huge crowd. And Washington, D.C., is a heavily Democratic area. Trump drew just 4.1 percent of the vote in Washington D.C. and lost the surrounding states of Maryland and Virginia. How many Trump voters from Michigan or Missouri can get to the capital as easily as a Washington, D.C., Democrat can take the Metro?

Further, the media left out the fact that many people chose not to attend the inauguration for reasons that weren’t a factor at Obama’s first inauguration. Some stayed away to avoid the violent protesters, who increased the crowding and caused long security lines. May people reported not being able to get into the secure area at all thanks to protesters. Some chose not to attend because the weather, which was intermittent rain (the weather was clear for Obama’s first inauguration).

The Inauguration and the Women’s March

The first Obama inauguration wasn’t the only comparison the mainstream media made to try to make Trump look bad. Reporters claimed that the numbers for the Women’s March on Saturday, which reportedly attracted 500,000, surpassed the numbers at the inauguration.

That was clearly untrue. There were 250,000 official tickets issued for Trump’s inauguration, but another 650,000 people showed up to watch from the Mall. That’s 900,000, which is almost twice as many as 500,000.

Several factors inflated the attendence at the Women’s March. It benefited from all the liberals who had already made non-refundable flights and hotel reservations for the inauguration, expecting Hillary Clinton to win. It benefited from being in such a liberal area. And unlike the inauguration, which took place on a weekday, the Women’s March was on Saturday when most people were not working.

Furthermore, how many people watched the Women’s March from beginning to end? Did it grip people all over the country the way the inauguration gripped them?

Here’s one more revealing comparison. Newsbusters found that the Women’s March received 129 times more coverage than the annual March for Life, which also takes place on the Mall.

The pro-life rally has crowds of up to 650,000 (in 2013) and hundreds of thousands march every yer. Yet ABC, CBS and NBC devoted just 35 seconds to covering the 2016 March for Life, while spending an hour and 15 minutes this year on the Women’s March. (This year the mainstream media is finally covering the March. Maybe Trump pushed them?)

It Doesn’t Matter Anyway

It really doesn’t matter how many people watched or attended the inauguration. Conway summed it up best on Meet the Press, “I don’t think, ultimately, presidents are judged by crowd sizes at their inauguration. I think they’re judged by their accomplishments.”

More people may have attended Obama’s first inauguration, but he left office with one of the lowest average approval ratings of any post-World War II president, with his signature achievement, Obamacare, set to be dismantled. (For more from the author of “The Media Play the Numbers Game, and Somehow Conservatives Always Lose” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Trump Refugee Order Balances Security and Compassion

/0 Comments/in , /by

Read any commentary on the just signed executive order on visa and refugee vetting from several countries in the Middle East and odds are the assessment will tell you more about the writer’s politics than be an analysis of the order.

I confess: I have a perspective as well. Mine comes from working on the presidential team on both foreign policy and homeland security from after the Republican convention up to the inauguration. I can’t share the detailed workings of the team. But what I can share, having worked on the issues, is what I believe guided the work.

And it all started with making America safe.

Not campaign promises, anger at any religion, or prejudice of any kind impacted our thinking on the transition team. What we were worried about were future threats.

As the space for the Islamic State, or ISIS, gets squeezed in the Middle East, the remains of the tens of thousands of foreign fighters will have to flow somewhere. Every nation, not just the U.S., believes they are most likely to flow to the countries cited in the order. That fact, and only that fact, is why those countries are included on the list. Indeed, when it comes to visa vetting, that’s why the European Union has restrictions that are comparable to the United States.

The reason why we all worry is because, from those countries, foreign fighters could well try to flow to the West, principally by using visas or posing as refugees. When they get to the West, they could carry out terrorist acts. We know that because they already have—specifically in Western Europe.

They haven’t come to the U.S.—yet. Right now, our primary threat is Islamist-related terror plots that are organized by terrorists who are already here.

What this administration is doing is making sure we are ready for the next wave of terrorism as well—the outflow of terrorists from the countries of conflict where the foreign fighters are likely to go first.

There are already cries that the precautions are unfair—creating hardships. Fair enough, but terrorists attacks (like those at the Bataclan in France by the followers of ISIS) create unbearable hardships as well—and the government has the responsibility to find the right balance between security and compassion for its citizens as well as consider how U.S. actions impact others around the world.

One area where the order tries to get that balance right is to ensure future refugee processing prioritizes addressing the plight of religious minorities. That is particularly crucial in the Middle East where the remnants of the region’s Christian communities are under severe threat.

Worldwide persecutions against Christian minorities have been rising for four straight years. It’s particularly problematic in the Middle East. The administration is making an extra effort to address that crisis.

While critics will continue to demonize the administration’s policies because they don’t fit their politics, Americans who crave a foreign policy that prioritizes American interests, puts a compassionate face on statecraft that reflects our values, and acts responsibly will find much to respect in the order. (For more from the author of “Trump Refugee Order Balances Security and Compassion” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Republicans Express Doubts over Obamacare ‘Repeal and Replace’ Plan

/0 Comments/in , /by

Some Republican lawmakers are beginning to have doubts about the GOP’s plans to repeal and replace Obamacare, they revealed in a closed-door gathering Thursday in Philadelphia.

But those lawmakers find themselves at odds with conservatives who have for years pushed for repeal of the Affordable Care Act—as well as the top Republican in the House.

“We have to repeal it,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said of Obamacare in an interview with The Daily Signal. “That’s what we told voters we’re going to do, and we have to repeal all of it. Every mandate. Every regulation.”

The Washington Post reported Friday that some Republicans appeared to be wavering over how to follow through on their long-held promise to repeal and replace Obamacare.

The Post obtained a recording of a session on health care held Thursday at House and Senate Republicans’ joint retreat at the Loews Philadelphia Hotel.

Some lawmakers in the meeting expressed concerns over tackling major issues accompanying repeal of the health care law, including how to craft a replacement plan in a timely manner and whether to include a measure to defund Planned Parenthood in the repeal legislation.

Reps. Tom McClintock of California, John Faso of New York, and Tom MacArthur of New Jersey were among those The Post identified on the recording.

Despite their hesitations, however, House Speaker Paul Ryan reaffirmed the GOP’s commitment to rolling back the health care law this year.

“We have to move quickly because we’re in the midst of collapse [of the health care law],” Ryan said during an event Friday organized by Politico.

“We have a moral obligation to fix this problem. Period,” he said.

In a meeting with fellow Republicans in Philadelphia, Ryan mapped out a timeline for repealing and replacing the health care law. He told lawmakers that Congress would pass the bill repealing Obamacare by March or April.

Republicans initially planned to pass a repeal bill shortly after President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

That legislation—passed through a budget tool called reconciliation—also would include parts of a replacement.

For years, conservatives such as Jordan, who previously chaired the roughly 40-member House Freedom Caucus, have made a target of Obamacare—which Congress passed in 2010 without a single Republican vote.

Now that Republicans have the numbers to successfully repeal the health care law, Jordan is calling for Congress to move quickly.

“I want to do it as soon as we possibly can, because I start from the very fundamental premise that health care will be better and cost less when Obamacare is gone,” the Ohio Republican said. “So let’s get rid of it as quickly as we can.”

Despite a commitment to repealing Obamacare in coming weeks, some Republicans are skeptical that ending taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, should be included in that action.

That provision was part of the bill Republicans sent to President Barack Obama’s desk early last year to roll back major provisions of Obamacare.

Obama vetoed that bill. But with Republican control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, conservatives are pushing for the new repeal bill to at a minimum mirror the legislation passed last year.

Ryan said earlier this month that the House will include Planned Parenthood’s defunding in the budget reconciliation bill the chamber takes up this year.

And conservative lawmakers are urging the House speaker to follow through on that pledge.

“The repeal should include the Planned Parenthood defund language as well because, for goodness sake, that was in the bill we put on President Obama’s desk,” Jordan told The Daily Signal. “Are we going to put something less on President Trump’s desk than what we put on President Obama’s desk?”

“Of course the Planned Parenthood funding should be dealt with in that bill,” he said. (For more from the author of “Republicans Express Doubts over Obamacare ‘Repeal and Replace’ Plan” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Trump Takes the First Step in Restoring the US Military

/0 Comments/in , /by

On Friday, President Donald Trump signed an exceptionally important executive order initiating both the beginning of the rebuilding of the U.S. armed forces and the fulfillment of a campaign promise.

Because he signed this order on the same day he signed the order on immigration it hasn’t yet gotten the attention it deserves. That’s a shame.

The order, titled “Rebuilding the U.S. Armed Forces,” has not yet been officially posted to the White House website. But a draft of the order, accompanied by news reports, gives us enough details to be able to assess it.

The order directs Secretary of Defense James Mattis to conduct a 30-day review of the readiness of the armed forces to assess their ability to conduct the fight against the Islamic State, or ISIS, and other forms of radical Islamic terrorism, as well as near peer competitors and regional adversaries.

This review is critically needed. The Heritage Foundation has been vocal in calling for such a review based on our independent assessment of the U.S. military.

The Heritage 2017 Index of U.S. Military Strength assessed our overall military capability as “marginal, trending towards weak” because of many years of budget cuts and overuse. Our assessment found that the U.S. Army today is the smallest it has been since the start of World War II; the Navy is the smallest it has been since World War I; and the Air Force suffers from crippling shortages of pilots and maintenance personnel. For example, the average age of the Air Force’s planes is 27 years old.

For too long the nation, and the president, has neglected the state of military readiness in favor of other priorities.

This 30-day review will allow the defense secretary and the president to establish the facts and determine the necessary priorities for the rebuilding of the military.

The order also calls for a review to “reduce commitments not directly related to the highest priority operations to make resources available for training and maintenance.” This is also overdue.

As described in the Heritage’s “Blueprint for Balance,” the Department of Defense spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year on programs not directly related to military readiness such as non-military-related medical research, sustainable energy programs, and junior ROTC programs. Although there won’t be enough resources identified just through cuts and efficiencies to fix the Pentagon’s readiness problems, every little bit helps.

Perhaps most significantly, the order directs Mattis and the director of the Office of Budget and Management to develop both a new request for emergency funding for fiscal year 2017 and to revise the still-to-be-released budget request for 2018 to provide the increased funding needed to begin the rebuilding of the military.

That direction aligns with recommendations from both Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas. McCain and Thornberry, the chairmen of the Senate and House Armed Services committees, respectively, both have a clear-eyed view of the critical state of the U.S. military and have written persuasively on the need for additional defense funding.

Obtaining additional funding for defense will require some difficult negotiations within Congress and with the White House, but the need is so critical that failure to succeed is not a viable option.

Congress and the administration will need to establish concrete and measurable objectives for the rebuilding of our military so that the American taxpayer can be assured that every dollar applied to defense results in an improvement.

Finally, the executive order calls for a new nuclear posture and missile defense reviews, two critical defense areas that have both suffered considerably under the Obama administration. Heritage has been consistent and vocal in pointing out the need for new reviews and increased investment of our nation’s nuclear and missile defense domains.

Could all of these actions been undertaken without a presidential executive order? Certainly. But by signing this order, Trump has sent an unambiguous signal across his administration that the rebuilding of our military is one of his top priorities. Given the threats our nation faces today to its national interests, this sends exactly the right signal to both our allies and potential adversaries. (For more from the author of “Trump Takes the First Step in Restoring the US Military” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.