The U.S. Military’s Stats on Deadly Airstrikes Are Wrong. Thousands Have Gone Unreported

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The American military has failed to publicly disclose potentially thousands of lethal airstrikes conducted over several years in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, a Military Times investigation has revealed. The enormous data gap raises serious doubts about transparency in reported progress against the Islamic State, al-Qaida and the Taliban, and calls into question the accuracy of other Defense Department disclosures documenting everything from costs to casualty counts.

In 2016 alone, U.S. combat aircraft conducted at least 456 airstrikes in Afghanistan that were not recorded as part of an open-source database maintained by the U.S. Air Force, information relied on by Congress, American allies, military analysts, academic researchers, the media and independent watchdog groups to assess each war’s expense, manpower requirements and human toll. Those airstrikes were carried out by attack helicopters and armed drones operated by the U.S. Army, metrics quietly excluded from otherwise comprehensive monthly summaries, published online for years, detailing American military activity in all three theaters.

Most alarming is the prospect this data has been incomplete since the war on terrorism began in October 2001. If that is the case, it would fundamentally undermine confidence in much of what the Pentagon has disclosed about its prosecution of these wars, prompt critics to call into question whether the military sought to mislead the American public, and cast doubt on the competency with which other vital data collection is being performed and publicized. Those other key metrics include American combat casualties, taxpayer expense and the military’s overall progress in degrading enemy capabilities. (Read more from “The U.S. Military’s Stats on Deadly Airstrikes Are Wrong. Thousands Have Gone Unreported” HERE)

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Trump’s New National Security Adviser Has a Doctorate in Art History. Here’s Why That’s a Good Thing

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Lost in the sound and fury of President Trump’s first days in office was the tapping of Victoria Coates to serve as Trump’s senior director for strategic assessments on the National Security Council.

Coates — who has served as the national security advisor for Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas (A, 97%) for nearly four years — before that was an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a foreign affairs advisor for Governor Rick Perry’s 2012 presidential campaign, and director of research for former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, where she edited Rumsfeld’s autobiography.

Pretty decent national security bona fides, right? Overall, Coates has been working in a very high level of the foreign affairs field for a decade.

But Coates has attained other impressive achievements in another field: art. Coates has a doctorate in Art History from the UPenn, served as a consulting curator for the Cleveland Museum of Art for three years, and recently published a book titled “David’s Sling: A History of Democracy in Ten Works of Art.”

Victoria Coates’ art-related background has opened her up to questions and criticism about her qualifications to advise anyone on national security. In a salty piece for Esquire, Army veteran Robert Bateman took aim at Coates’ liberal arts background, criticizing the fact that she hasn’t worked in the Pentagon, the State Department, served in the military, or written books or articles on national security. As for her work as Donald Rumsfeld’s research director, Bateman said: “Editing the English Language does not exactly make you a National Security expert, does it?”

What Bateman didn’t know or acknowledge was that Coates had written about national security — but had written under pseudonyms. Further, it was the quality of her thoughtful writing on foreign policy that first drew Rumsfeld’s attention. In a 2016 interview, Coates said that she “always had a double track” when it came to art history and national security as intellectual pursuits.

“It was something I’ve always been involved in. My family was politically active, it’s long been a part of my life,” Coates told Breitbart.

So not only does Coates have 10 years of solid, professional national security experience, but her liberal arts background is a help — not a hindrance. The point of a liberal arts degree is to learn how to think critically, so that a person can discern truth. The intensive reading, writing, and thinking involved translates into lifelong skills.

In fact, the Association of American Colleges and Universities has found that “the skills employers value most in the new graduates they hire are not technical, job-specific skills, but written and oral communication, problem solving, and critical thinking—exactly the sort of ‘soft skills’ humanities majors tend to excel in,” Fortune reported.

In his attack piece on Coates in Esquire, Army veteran Robert Bateman says, “Death is permanent. For those who deal in the reality of combat, this is not an abstract issue open to offhand suggestions … based on the advice of Don Rumsfeld’s art-historian editor.”

While no one denies that combat experience makes the reach of foreign policy decisions viscerally real, to argue that a person who has never seen a death in the field can’t understand foreign policy or national security issues and give good counsel on them is unfair. Jeane Kirkpatrick never served in the military, yet was an excellent foreign policy adviser on Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign. Reagan then made her the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Most American presidents haven’t had military experience, and most have had liberal arts degrees. President Obama never served in the military, and also was an academic before he ran for Senate — to then almost immediately start running for the presidency. Did Bateman and other Coates critics have a problem with Obama’s lack of visceral foreign policy experience?

Victoria Coates’s strong speaking, writing, and critical-thinking skills will only serve to benefit her on Trump’s National Security Council. And to be sure, if Coates was incompetent or a political lightweight, Sen. Ted Cruz wouldn’t have kept her around. (For more from the author of “Trump’s New National Security Adviser Has a Doctorate in Art History. Here’s Why That’s a Good Thing” please click HERE)

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Pro-Life Leadership From the White House Can Change the Course of History. Reagan Did It, and So Can Trump

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It has been well-reported that the number of abortions in America has dwindled to below the number of abortions in 1973, the year Roe vs. Wade was decided. But one chart shows how extremely important pro-life leadership in the White House can change the course of history.

The Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe vs. Wade encouraged millions of women to have abortions under the assumption that it was a right guaranteed to them by the United States Constitution. That decision was an absolute abomination and as the number of abortions rose exponentially in the first years after the decision, so too did the moral outrage in the hearts and minds of the people. But in 1980 that number reversed course, and the election of Ronald Reagan just might have changed history.

Ronald Reagan made pro-life arguments every single time the issue of abortion came up in his campaign for president. In one debate against John Anderson, who ran as an independent, (then-President Carter declined the debate) a question having to do with whether a president should be guided by organized religion on issues such as abortion was asked. Reagan defended the GOP platform and stated:

The litmus test that John says is in the Republican platform, says no more than the judges to be appointed should have a respect for innocent life. Now, I don’t think that’s a bad idea. I think all of us should have a respect for innocent life. With regard to the freedom of the individual for choice with regard to abortion, there’s one individual who’s not being considered at all. That’s the one who is being aborted. And I’ve noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born. I think that, technically, I know this is a difficult and an emotional problem, and many people sincerely feel on both sides of this, but I do believe that maybe we could find the answer through medical evidence, if we would determine once and for all, is an unborn child a human being? I happen to believe it is.

Reagan stated his pro-life views at a time when abortion was wildly popular, in fact, the most popular in all of American history. His courage in stating his views and connecting with the American people might just have turned the tide on the issue.

What many do not remember about back then was that large numbers of so-called “establishment Republicans” at the time embraced the Supreme Court’s ruling. They accepted it as the “law of the land” and wanted to move on from the issue. Indeed, President George H.W. Bush was a pro-abortion Republican as were Presidents Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon. Ronald Reagan was considered by these pro-abortion Republicans during the 1980 campaign to be “backward” on the issue. Still, he was able to make a clear case for life which helped him harness the issue for the American people.

Reagan biographer Craig Shirley characterized the leadership of Ronald Reagan at this point in history. As he said in an email, “Reagan not only freed millions behind the Iron Curtain but he also saved countless lives by being the first president to put a spotlight on the horrors of abortion.” Ever since, the Republican Party has been pro-life.

That’s why it’s so heartening to see Donald Trump take up the torch of life and run with it.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump’s comments on the subject of abortion were hard to sift through. If he wasn’t going over the top — for example, when he said that the woman has to have some sort of punishment, which made every pro-lifer cringe and denounce him — he was muddling the issue on the importance of defunding Planned Parenthood. Many conservatives had a very difficult time trying to figure out just what he would do as president. But only two weeks into his presidency, Trump has already done some significant things on the pro-life front.

First, Trump knocked down International Planned Parenthood’s recent eight-year-stint of population control experiments worldwide by reinstating Ronald Reagan’s Mexico policy. There has been many accolades for this move, but in fairness, George W. Bush also reinstated the policy when he took office. Trump then nominated a justice for the Supreme Court who has taken a clear pro-life position, even writing, “human life is fundamentally and inherently valuable, and that the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.”

I would challenge Donald Trump to further the pro-life movement by taking a strong stand on defunding Planned Parenthood. The reinstatement of Reagan’s Mexico City policy is good, really good, but it doesn’t go far enough and people may have it confused with actually defunding the private abortion corporation. There should be no quarter given to an organization as heinous as that one exposed by the Center for Medical Progress as profiting off of the death of millions of children who would not receive a decent burial. Instead, they are used as parts ready to be sold to the highest bidder. The American people clearly are turning away from abortion, they should certainly not be funding the nation’s largest provider and butcher shop.

Presidential leadership is often the key to attitudinal changes. If Donald Trump didn’t convince many that his intentions were true on the issue of life, he may be well on his way. But now that the number of abortions has dropped so significantly, it would be a mistake to believe the issue has taken care of itself.

President Trump must take a cue from Ronald Reagan, remember the American people who, during his campaign, so strongly demanded the defunding of Planned Parenthood, and encourage the Republican Congress to listen to the people who gave them the majority. (For more from the author of “Pro-Life Leadership From the White House Can Change the Course of History. Reagan Did It, and So Can Trump” please click HERE)

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Former Muslim Refugee: Think ‘Rationally’ About Dangers of Radical Islam

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A former Muslim refugee is asking her fellow American citizens to think “rationally” about the dangers of radical Islam.

“I know what it’s like to fear rejection, deportation and the dangers that await you back home,” Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim of Somali origin, writes in the Huffington Post.

Ali writes that she became an American citizen after escaping an arranged marriage and working in the Netherlands at a factory and as an interpreter for abused Muslim women. Overtime, she says she made the decision to leave the religion of Islam because it was “too intolerant of free thought.”

She was “excited” when she heard Trump’s August 2016 speech about combatting the underlying ideology of radical Islam which oppresses women, the LGBT community and other religions. She was also encouraged by his promise to help moderate Muslims who strove to combat radicalism.

Four Types of Muslim Immigrants

“In the course of working with Muslim communities over the past two decades, I have come to distinguish between four types of Muslim immigrants: adapters, menaces, coasters and fanatics,” Ali says.

The adapters are those who adapt to the customs and embrace the freedoms of Western civilization; menaces are often young men who are subject to and then commit crimes of domestic violence; coasters are those who want to take advantage of welfare without working; and fanatics “use the freedoms of the countries that gave them sanctuary to spread an uncompromising practice of Islam.”

Ali writes that some people move from one category to the other over time, which makes it more difficult to distinguish between adapters and troublemakers.

“[T]he problem of Islamist terrorism will not be solved by immigration controls and extreme vetting alone,” she writes. “That’s because the problem is already inside our borders.”

Ali cites surveys which reveal majorities of Sharia-supporting Muslims in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Iraq — whence most Muslim immigrants are expected to come to the U.S. in the coming decades — agree with the death penalty for those who leave Islam.

Ali writes:

Such attitudes imply a readiness to turn a blind eye to the use of violence and intimidation tactics against, say, apostates and dissidents — and a clear aversion to the hard-won achievements of Western feminists and campaigners for minority rights. Admitting individuals with such views is not in the American national interest.

While Ali says she was disappointed in the clumsy implementation of Trump’s temporary travel ban, she still supports the president’s longterm plan of rejecting any would-be immigrants who support terrorist groups or believe in Sharia law over the Constitution.

“American citizens — including immigrants — must be protected from that ideology and the violence that it promotes,” she writes. “But the threat is too multifaceted to be dealt with by executive orders. That is why Trump was right to argue in August for a commission of some kind — I would favor congressional hearings — to establish the full magnitude and nature of the threat.”

“Until we recognize that this ideology is already in our midst, we shall expend all our energies in feverish debates about executive orders, when what is needed is cool, comprehensive legislation,” Ali writes. (For more from the author of “Former Muslim Refugee: Think ‘Rationally’ About Dangers of Radical Islam” please click HERE)

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A New Great Awakening Is Unlikely? More Unlikely Than Donald Trump Being Elected President?

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We are often too rational for our own good, not willing to believe in the seemingly impossible because, well, after all, it seems to be impossible. But are some of the things we’re afraid to dream about any more unlikely than the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States?

In the morning prayer service the day of the inauguration, evangelical leader James Robison said after addressing Trump, “We believe, dear God, that the stage is set for the next great spiritual awakening, and I believe with all my heart it is absolutely essential.”

Yes, of course, an awakening “is absolutely essential” to our nation, but are we really supposed to believe that “the stage is set for the next great spiritual awakening”? Are we really supposed to believe that the moral and spiritual climate of our nation can be changed? Absolutely.

The Unlikely Surprise of Donald Trump

History tells us it is possible and the unlikely events we’re witnessing before our eyes remind us that anything is possible.

From the perspective of history, if you’ll study past awakenings, you’ll see that they all came after a season of steep spiritual decline, often leading to hopelessness, with many feeling as if “things will only go downhill from here.”

But if God awakened us before, He can do it again and, from the perspective of current events, is it really any harder to believe that God can send another great awakening than it is to believe that a man like Donald Trump could become our president?

Just think about it.

Let’s say I asked you this two years ago: Which is more likely to occur? There will be a spiritual awakening in America or Donald Trump will win the Republican nomination, defeating senators and governors along the way, and then will defeat Hillary Clinton in the general election, getting 81 percent of the white evangelical vote. What would your answer have been? Which would have seemed more likely?

Let’s take it one step further. What if I asked you two years ago, which is more likely to occur? There will be a spiritual awakening in America or Donald Trump will become the darling of the pro-life movement, nominating a solid pro-life conservative to replace Antonin Scalia within two weeks in office?

Certainly a spiritual awakening would have seemed far more believable than what has happened already with President Trump. What stops us, then, from believing for the former if the latter is happening before our eyes?

In an interview in the Star-Telegram, Robison said, “I do believe if [Trump] remains wise — as preposterous as this might sound to some — … he can prove to be as great a president as this nation has ever had.”

For some, this does sound preposterous, but is it any more preposterous that these words came from the mouth of Robison?

After all, during the primaries, Robison had very strong reservations about Trump, urging Dr. Ben Carson not to endorse him. In fact, Robison shared on my radio show that to the very last moment, even as Carson was on stage, about to endorse Trump, the two were talking by phone, with Robison urging him not to give his endorsement.

Ironically, Carson gave his endorsement on the condition that Trump would meet privately with Robison, which he did, for 90 minutes. Afterwards, Robison joked to Trump that it was “the longest you’ve been quiet in your entire life.”

Who would have thought that this staunch opponent of Trump would have become of one of his most trusted spiritual advisors?

The Lesson of Reagan, Thatcher and Pope John Paul II

John Zmirak, a conservative Catholic columnist who holds a Ph.D. in English from Louisiana State University and is a senior editor of The Stream, told me that when he was a student at Yale, his professors uniformly praised communism, making clear that it was communism, not capitalism, that was the key to the world’s future success. They were quite confident that this socialist system was here to stay, with its sphere of influence growing by the decade.

Who would have imagined how dramatically and quickly it would collapse around the globe? And, Zmirak asked, who would have believed that the principal players who would help topple communism would be a former Hollywood actor (Reagan!), a female Prime Minister in England, the daughter of a lay preacher and grocer (Thatcher!), a shipyard worker who became the head of a Polish trade union (Walesa!) and a Polish pope (John Paul II!).

Today, it is a wealthy, former playboy, real estate tycoon and reality TV star who is shaking up the political scene and exposing the biases of the mainstream media.

If this, then, is actually happening, why is it so hard to imagine that God will send a massive spiritual awakening to our nation?

Why not? (For more from the author of “A New Great Awakening Is Unlikely? More Unlikely Than Donald Trump Being Elected President?” please click HERE)

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The Super Super Bowl: Patriots Pull off Biggest Super Bowl Comeback Ever!

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Tom Brady has a record fifth Super Bowl win for a quarterback after the biggest comeback in the game’s history, and one of the greatest catches.

James White ran 2 yards for a touchdown on the first possession of overtime, and the Patriots came back from 25 points down for a 34-28 win over the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl 51.

The Patriots drove to the tying score with help from a unbelievable catch by Julian Edelman, who somehow kept the ball off the turf on a diving grab of a tipped pass that bounced off a defender’s shoe. (Read more from “The Super Super Bowl: Patriots Pull off Biggest Super Bowl Comeback Ever!” HERE)

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Survival of the Evilest: We Must Reimpose Sanctions on the Islamist Sudanese Government

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Former President Obama lifted sanctions on the Islamist Sudanese government on January 13, 2017. The Islamist Sudanese government had long survived even with the sanctions in place. Don’t dismiss the genius behind its longevity by believing — as many have — that things have changed; that the influence of the hardliners, radical Islamists, has diminished during the past 20 years. The hardliners remain deep inside the government, still trying to build a global Caliphate and incite jihad.

Sudan’s Leaders

The leaders of Sudan are all hardliners who were committed to building a global Caliphate long before ISIS. They play a game of “Change the Face.” It’s a Darwinian dance to alter the regime’s appearance and fool the outside world while pursuing their agenda to bring Sharia and Arabization to all of Sudan and then to the entire African continent.

The late former Sudan Prime Minister, Hassan al Turabi, was a Change the Face expert. Turabi looked like a jolly old uncle, but the tiny Sorbonne-educated Muslim Brotherhood leader not only oversaw the forced Islamization and Arabization of the south, he managed the murahaleen, Arab militias that raided villages in South Sudan and the Nuba Mountains, burning crops and livestock, killing men and taking women and children into slavery. They were forerunners of the Janjaweed (devils on horseback), responsible for the Darfur genocide.

Turabi accepted Bibles from naïve American pastors and nodded winsomely when they gushed that they were both “people of the Book”! He charmed the brains out of many Western visitors, but his Islamic ideology never changed. How could it? He was the founder of the Popular Arab and Islamic Congress, working for the globalization of radical Islam, and of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Sudanese branch.

Another Change the Face expert was Sudan’s previous foreign minister (architect of the jihad in Darfur and the Nuba Mountains) Ali Karti. Karti washed the blood of black Africans off his hands, put on a tailored suit and attended the National Prayer Breakfast. He charmed members of Congress with his sincerity and some invited him to their districts to spread his message of desiring peace and unity for Sudan, not having a clue what it actually means. (In these cases “peace” means Islam, which literally means submission. “Unity” means Arabization — all of Sudan’s hundreds of indigenous black African people groups to deny their own cultural heritage, language and customs, and embrace Arabization.)

Part of the Strategy

Change the Face and the related “Charm Offensive” are part of the overall strategy that has kept the Islamist Republic going in spite of unspeakable atrocities, persecuting Christians and other religious minorities, and perpetrating five genocidal jihads.

The genocide waged on southern Sudan (now Republic of South Sudan) and the Nuba Mountains/Blue Nile region resulted in the death of over 2.5 million people, with some 5 million displaced. The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement brought the South’s misery to a standstill and the Nuba Mountains/Blue Nile region achieved a ceasefire arranged by the first U.S. Sudan Special Envoy, former Senator Reverend John Danforth.

But in 2011, the Sudan government began another genocidal attack on Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile State that is still going on. Nuba Christians have been particularly targeted, the Bishop of the region revealed in his 2011 testimony to the House of Representatives. And Khartoum has supported insurrectionists in the South, trying to destroy the new nation.

The Case for Sanctions

Most people have lost track of “saving Darfur.” They may be surprised to know that Darfur still needs saving. Sudan scholar Eric Reeves says 600,000 have died and some 2.8 million displaced in that genocide.

Untold numbers of women have been raped, including those violated in the Sudan Army’s mass rape of hundreds of girls and women. In addition, a recent report from Amnesty International documents the Sudan government’s use of chemical weapons more than 30 times in the past year against one town.

Shouldn’t this be enough for the Sudan Islamist regime to merit sanctioning? But there’s more. Sudan is the global jihad incubator. It plays host to numerous jihadi groups throughout the country. And it’s more than just a “host.”

Darfur is occupied by terrorist groups spreading from Sudan to Mali. The Darfur Sudan United Movement’s General Abakar Abdallah and activist Jerry Gordon write in FrontPage Magazine:

New terrorist groups continually arrive in Darfur from Libya through Dongola, in North Sudan … These terrorist groups … are believed to include Boko Haram and ISIS jihadis. Villagers who have encountered them reported they are a mixture of Arabs and Africans. The latter look like Nigerians … They possess ISIS flags and wear the Kodomul (black turban). They are moving on Toyota pickup trucks similar to those used by ‘Peace Forces’. The Sudan regime pretends that these ‘Peace Forces’ are combating illegal immigrants. In reality they are helping bring in terrorists and Chadian rebels from Libya to Darfur.

But additionally, the Khartoum regime continues training jihadists in its own terror camps that the United States has been warned about since the 1990s. And Khartoum is sending trained jihadists all over the world, disguised as refugees or as wealthy Sudanese citizens.

This Darwinian survivor-regime stores up treasure for itself, making one deal after another while its people suffer. In addition to contracts with France for 16 million tons of gold in eastern Sudan, the regime recently announced a deal for 97 million tons of gold and silver in the Red Sea Minerals Project, to begin in the year 2020.

Global jihad will be well financed!

Khartoum also has agreements with Arab nations to provide farm land in Nubia, Beja land (Eastern Sudan), Darfur and elsewhere, displacing the indigenous people and stealing their land. The regime intends to change the demography of the country to erase its African identity.

Survival of the Evilest

What can defeat the survival of the evilest? The unified opposition of Sudan’s marginalized people from Nubia, Darfur, Beja Land, Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile State — the anti-jihad, anti-Caliphate, pro-secular democracy, pro-freedom and equality Sudanese — could put together a New Sudan. But they can only do this if the United States and others do not stand in their way under the illusion that the Khartoum regime are Islamists they can “work with.”

Then Sudan could change its face one last time. But this time, to the face of a secular democracy that would ensure religious freedom and equality for all Sudanese. Sudan would then face the United States as a real intelligence partner and a genuine ally in the war against global jihad. (For more from the author of “Survival of the Evilest: We Must Reimpose Sanctions on the Islamist Sudanese Government” please click HERE)

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It’s Time to Reel in the Obama-Appointed Ambassador Who Meddled in Macedonian Politics

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Macedonia has a population smaller than Queens and is roughly the size of Vermont. It is stuck in the southern Balkans, wedged between a hostile Greece and sometimes revanchist Albania and Bulgaria. It is not the center of the universe.

So why are some members of Congress having to ask our Macedonian ambassador, Jess Baily, to explain reports that he’s been acting as the bullying sovereign of the country, shoehorning political parties into forming a “red-green” coalition between leftist and Islamic-based parties?

And is it true, they also want to know, that the ambassador is siphoning off government money to groups founded by the left-wing billionaire activist George Soros?

Members of both the House and the Senate sent their letters to our ambassador in Skopje, that nation’s capital, on Jan. 17 and gave him two weeks to reply. President Barack Obama’s appointee hasn’t responded yet, though after I called the State Department and the embassy to inquire, the State Department did reach out to at least one congressman to tell him a response was being drafted.

But things have gotten so bad that congressional hearings and congressional delegations to the small Balkan country are being contemplated. Members of Congress have also reached out to the new Trump administration to inquire into the matter.

Tony Perkins, the president of the pro-traditional values Family Research Council, has also taken a keen interest in the matter. He wrote this week:

While the U.S. goals for Macedonia include benign statements on investing in democracy, the State Department began favoring partnerships with Soros’ long litany of organizations in 2012. These organizations are anything but democratic. Instead, they are pushing progressive, violent, and radical ideals throughout Europe.”

Under pressure, State Department spokesman Mark Toner on Thursday issued a statement backing the ambassador.

“Ambassador Baily and his team have been working in partnership with Macedonian authorities as well as with civil society to advance U.S. policy and U.S. goals. The Department of State has full confidence in our embassy and ambassador in Macedonia,” said Toner.

The questions from Reps. Chris Smith, R-N.J, Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., Robert Pittenger, R-N.C., Randy Hultgren, R-Ill., Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, and Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, from the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, were very similar.

They were also tough, so it’s not easy to see why the State Department and the embassy are dragging things outs.

“Unfortunately, we have heard credible reports that, over the past two years, the U.S. Mission to Macedonia has actively intervened in the party politics of Macedonia, as well as in the shaping of its media environment and civil society, in a manner that consistently favors the parties, media, and civil society groups of the center-left over those of the center-right,” begins the House letter.

They also seek to know whether the embassy under Baily has given preference to leftist media outlets over conservative ones in the disbursement of U.S. aid.

Both letters also ask if it was true that our embassy “selected the Open Society Foundation as the major implementer of USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) projects in Macedonia?”

The Open Society Foundation is a Soros creation that promotes the billionaire’s progressive ideology worldwide. Macedonian critics charge that since 2012, or two years before Baily’s appointment, USAID has been allocating most of its assistance to the Open Society Institute and nongovernmental organizations run or controlled by Soros. They put the figure at $5 million.

Conservative Macedonian political commentator Cvetin Chilimanov told me by telephone from Skopje Friday that Baily’s aim was to form a coalition government between the former communist Social Democratic Union and two ethnic Albanian parties, one of which, the Besa Movement, has a strong Islamic component and receives backing from Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

In other words, the ambassador is trying to shut out the strongly pro-American, pro-capitalist VMRO-DPMNE coalition, which actually won the most votes in the Dec. 11 elections.

This is an approach many in Skopje hope will change now that another team is in charge in Washington. (For more from the author of “It’s Time to Reel in the Obama-Appointed Ambassador Who Meddled in Macedonian Politics” please click HERE)

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Rogue Federal Bureaucrats Threaten Trump’s Agenda

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Recent scandals in the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Internal Revenue Service demonstrated that it’s almost impossible to fire federal employees, many of whom reportedly intend to go rogue by not implementing President Donald Trump’s agenda.

Conservatives are hopeful the time has come for civil service reform that would rein in this permanent class of government workers who have voiced outright hostility to the new administration. Some have even called it the “fourth branch of government” or “alt-government.”

“This is a situation where people voted and elected a president who is lawfully trying to complete those tasks [he promised in the campaign], while unelected bureaucrats are willing to overturn the will of the people,” Ben Wilterdink, director of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) Task Force on Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development, told The Daily Signal.

Among federal employees, about 95 percent of political contributions went to Democrat Hillary Clinton during the presidential race, according to an analysis by The Hill.

Some of those federal workers are now in consultation with departed Obama administration officials to determine how they can push back against the Trump administration’s agenda, The Washington Post reported last week.

At the State Department, for example, nearly 1,000 government workers signed a letter protesting Trump’s executive order on refugees. A few days later, Trump had to fire acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she announced she wouldn’t defend the administration’s refugee policy.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said State Department employees who oppose the policy “should either get with the program, or they can go.”

“If a federal employee doesn’t like the ideological foundation or likely outcomes of a presidential directive, it doesn’t mean that the directive is not legal. It means that the views of the federal employee are in conflict with the views of the president who runs the federal government,” said Neil Siefring, vice president of Hilltop Advocacy and a former Republican House staffer, in a column for The Daily Caller.

“In that instance,” Siefring added, “the solution should not be to resist the actions of the president in their professional capacity as a career civil servant in the workplace. The solution is for that federal employee to honorably resign, not actively or passively hamper the White House.”

What if an employee won’t resign? Addressing the problem with the federal workforce won’t be easy, according to experts interviewed by The Daily Signal.

“You can fire federal employees, it’s just that nobody wants to put up with the process,” Don Devine, former director of the Office of Personnel Management during the Reagan administration, told The Daily Signal.

Multiple appeals can be made through the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and the National Labor Relations Board.

“It’s almost impossible to discipline employees because it can be appealed to through the merit system, the labor relations systems, or through the EEOC,” Devine said. “We don’t have a civil service system; we have a dual civil service-labor relations system.”

During the Obama administration, two of its biggest scandals involved the IRS and Department of Veterans Affairs. In 2013, a Treasury Department inspector general report determined the IRS had been targeting conservative groups. In 2014, a VA inspector general’s report revealed falsified appointments in which some veterans died while waiting for care.

Years later, conservatives remain frustrated that federal workers weren’t held accountable.

“I will take your IRS employees and raise you the EPA, where story after story, a worker was viewing porn on work time and couldn’t be fired because the process is fraught with appeals,” Wilterdink said. “It’s hard to argue we have an accountable government when someone can’t be fired for years at a time.”

Earlier this year, the U.S. House revived the Holman Rule, named after a Democrat congressman who introduced it in 1876. It would allow lawmakers to cut the pay of individual federal workers or a government program.

There are other proposals for holding federal workers accountable. House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, introduced a bill in January to hold seriously tax delinquent people ineligible for federal civilian employment, federal contracts, or government grants. This bill was proposed in response to IRS data that found more than 100,000 federal civilian employees owed more than $1 billion in unpaid taxes at the end of fiscal year 2015.

Adding to the challenge is the process commonly known as burrowing. Frequently, political appointees from one administration convert to a career position that comes with civil service protections, allowing them to continue implementing policy—or resisting the new administration’s approach.

The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883 was passed to stop raw political party appointments from securing federal government jobs, or a spoils system. The law introduced the merit system into hiring practices and made numerous civil service positions untouchable after they were filled.

However, burrowing has caused a de facto spoils system, Wilterdink said, because, “the pendulum has swung so far to protecting federal employees” that it allows administrations to keep their people in office long term.

Significant reform doesn’t mean recreating a spoils system, according to Robert Moffit, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation who was an assistant Office of Personnel Management director during the Reagan administration. Moffit said a balanced approach would be more desirable.

“You need to have strong managers in each agency to make sure the president’s agenda is properly executed,” Moffit told The Daily Signal. “You must also have a bright line between career and non-career staff so there is no politicization of the merit system.”

Moffit also supports legislation to allow the president to order the firing of career officials who either “broke the law or severely undermined the public’s trust.”

“Even President [Barack] Obama referred to what IRS officials did as outrageous and nothing happened,” Moffit said. “The VA matter is still unresolved. The people responsible for those waiting lists aren’t accountable and people died.” (For more from the author of “Rogue Federal Bureaucrats Threaten Trump’s Agenda” please click HERE)

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Conservatives Pressure 12 Democrats on Supreme Court Pick

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Two conservative advocacy organizations hope to stop Senate Democrats from blocking President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.

“The focus is to put pressure on Democratic senators to decide between following the will of American people and the voters in their state or to follow Sen. Chuck Schumer and the radical left down a path of obstructionism,” Judicial Crisis Network senior adviser Gary Marx told The Daily Signal.

The Judicial Crisis Network and Heritage Action for America have both launched campaigns to bolster the confirmation of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court. Gorsuch, currently a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, was nominated by Trump to fill the seat of the late Antonin Scalia.

Judicial Crisis Network has formed a coalition enterprise to engage in a $10 million campaign of television and digital advertising, research, and grassroots activism. The group claims this is the “most robust operation in the history of confirmation battles.”

Judicial Crisis Network and Heritage Action are targeting Democrat senators from states that Trump won in the 2016 presidential election. Judicial Confirmation Network is also focusing on Colorado, which is Gorsuch’s home state, while Heritage Action has Minnesota, a state Trump narrowly lost, on its list.

1. Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin
2. Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado
3. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio
4. Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania
5. Sen. Joe Donnelly of Indiana
6. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota
7. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota
8. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia
9. Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri
10. Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida
11. Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan
12. Sen. Jon Tester of Montana

“Any vulnerable senator who signs up for Schumer’s obstructionist strategy will pay a heavy price,” said Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director of the Judicial Crisis Network. “Exit polls showed that over one-fifth of voters said the Supreme Court was a primary reason for their vote, and of that large percentage of Americans, Trump won those voters by a resounding 57-40 margin.”

In a phone interview with The Daily Signal, Severino noted that the group’s pro-Gorsuch campaign is about holding senators accountable to their constituents.

Before Gorsuch was nominated, Schumer, the Senate Democrat leader from New York, said in an MSNBC interview, “We are not going to settle on a Supreme Court nominee. If they don’t appoint someone who is really good, we are going to oppose them tooth and nail.”

Tea Party Patriots’ co-founder and national coordinator, Jenny Beth Martin, who is assisting Judicial Crisis Network’s grassroots effort, told The Daily Signal that “our big initiative includes making phone calls to senators, doing sign-waiving events, letters to the editor, social media posts, and also reaching out to constituents in the key swing states with Democratic senators.”

Judicial Crisis Network also launched a new pro-Gorsuch ad, which began airing on Friday in Montana, Indiana, North Dakota, Colorado, and the District of Columbia, according to a press release. This ad is part of the over $2 million initial advertising buy that started on Tuesday night after Gorsuch was nominated. The campaign is part of the organization’s $10 million overall effort.

Heritage Action’s campaign also targets senators in 10 states where Trump won, although it also targets Klobuchar of Minnesota rather than Stabenow. The group, a sister organization of The Heritage Foundation, asks its support to call these senators and ask for a swift confirmation. It also encourages senators to promptly carry out their constitutional role of “advise and consent.” (For more the author of “Conservatives Pressure 12 Democrats on Supreme Court Pick” please click HERE)

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