No, a Study Did Not Show That Same-Sex “Marriage” Laws Reduce Teen Suicide Rates

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You probably saw the breathless reports suggesting, as CNN did, that “same-sex marriage may decrease teen suicide attempt rates, study says.” A yes, a study. A statistical study. That’s supposed to give it gravitas. In fact many, perhaps even most, statistical studies simply can’t be trusted. Certainly not this one.

The study in question is the peer-reviewed paper “Difference-in-Differences Analysis of the Association Between State Same-Sex Marriage Policies and Adolescent Suicide Attempts” by Julia Raifman, Ellen Moscoe, and S. Bryn Austin, in the once-prestigious journal JAMA Pediatrics.

This widely touted work purports to have discovered, using statistical methods, “that same-sex marriage policies were associated with a 7% reduction in the proportion of all high school students reporting a suicide attempt within the past year.” The authors say there is now “empirical evidence for an association between same-sex marriage policies and mental health outcomes.”

Association.

Think about what the authors are implying: that the mere presence of gmarriage — government-defined marriage, as opposed to marriage defined by reality — stops teens from reporting suicide attempts.

Implications

If what these authors are eager to imply is true, it must have been that some teenagers before gmarriage reported trying to kill themselves because there was no such thing as gmarriage. Or it must be that some teenagers after gmarriage became the “law of the land” thought to themselves, “You know, I was going to report trying to kill myself. But now that Bert and Ernie can be gmarried, I won’t report it.” (Both could be true.)

About the number of teenagers who actually killed themselves because of the absence of gmarriage — or because of the presence of gmarriage — nobody knows. The study only relates how many kids self-reported suicide attempts. Since most of the kids giving answers were 15-16, it can’t have been because of actual forbidden gmarriage or marriage ceremonies that caused reporting suicide attempts (of course, there could have been a handful of child brides or grooms in the data).

This is among all teens, mind you, and not just the minority reporting same-sex attraction or other non-biologically oriented sexual desires. The authors claim the effect was greater in the sexual minority.

Weighted Realities

Forgive the dive into the details, but it’s necessary to see what’s really happening. Via a complicated massaging of numbers, the authors say that before gmarriage

a weighted 8.6% of all high school students and 28.5% of 231 413 students who identified as sexual minorities reported suicide attempts before implementation of same-sex marriage policies. Same-sex marriage policies were associated with a 0.6-percentage point…reduction in suicide attempts, representing a 7% relative reduction in the proportion of high school students attempting suicide owing to same-sex marriage implementation.

A weighted 8.6% to a weighted 8%, they say. This is a 7% reduction, all right, but a minor tweak in the actual weighted number. Thee numbers are weighted averages across several states and the result of a statistical model called a linear regression. The 0.6 drop is not observed, but is the output from a model.

What’s odd is that the authors report the rate for teens reporting non-traditional sexual desires (a modeled 4% drop from 28.5%), and also for all teens (that modeled 0.6% drop), a group which includes the sexual minority. But they don’t report numbers for normal teens (did this number increase?). This omission leads one to suspect the authors are fooling themselves. This is suggested in two ways.

Complication

The first is that these numbers are modeled averages across states. The numbers within states is anything but straightforward (the authors provide graphs). For instance, some states show reported suicide attempts increasing after gmarriage (New York, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, for example). The graphs also indicate a general decline in rates before gmarriage and continuing afterwards (see their Fig. 3). What makes this even more curious is that there are only a couple of years of data after gmarriage (there are many before), making comparisons more prone to error.

But those are all quibbles. Forget them if you like. The second reason is more to the point. The year each state imposed gmarriage was put into the authors’ model: this created a before and after period. The attempted suicide rates in the before period were caused by any number of things, but, the authors imply, some of the attempts were because of the lack of gmarriage.

In the after period, there were still myriad causes of suicide attempts, but one cause was removed (lack of gmarriage). Thus some kids who would have tried to unsuccessfully kill themselves did not try because of gmarriage access (but not for themselves, because they were too young).

Correlation is not Causation!

But — and this is a big but — since no questions about why kids tried to kill themselves were asked, the demarcation of before and after is entirely arbitrary. The year most cited for gmarriage was 2014. Thus not only could access to gmarriage by others (but not for themselves) be used, so could the Ebola epidemic becoming a global health crisis, which also happened in 2014, and which was one of the biggest news stories of the year, according to ABC.

Think: putting Ebola in the model works equally well with gmarriage to explain the data. So do the disasters of those crashing Malaysian airliners, or the fighting in Ukraine and Crimea. So does the 2014 Winter Olympics! And the death of sad-funny-man Robin Williams (all mentioned by ABC).

Or any of an uncountable number of events. The truth is the data do not say, and cannot say, what caused the observed changes. It is sloppy statistics — it is bad science, period — to suggest the one thing the authors thought of had to be the one and only cause of the changes.

It is made worse when this cause has so little bearing on the lives of the people purported to be affected. Fifteen and 16-year-olds do not often marry, and nobody has (yet?) heard of any same-sex “weddings” between teenagers.

And it grows worse yet again, when it is implied, as the authors do imply, that the increases after gmarriage in specific states were actually decreases — because the (modeled) mean across states decreased.

If suicide attempts increased in a state after gmarriage, as it did in several states, could it be that the presence of gmarriage is causing more kids to try and kill themselves?

If not, why not? (For more from the author of “No, a Study Did Not Show That Same-Sex “Marriage” Laws Reduce Teen Suicide Rates” please click HERE)

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U.S. Drops to Lowest Point Ever in Index of Economic Freedom. Can Trump Improve It?

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The U.S. has reached its lowest ranking ever in the Index of Economic Freedom, produced annually by the Heritage Foundation. The U.S. spent years in the top 10, but has been declining for years, and is now at number 17.

Hong Kong maintains the top spot, although the city-state is officially part of the Peoples’ Republic of China. Other countries that beat the U.S. include New Zealand, Switzerland, Australia, Canada (no. 7), and Chile. Last place (no. 180) goes, as usual, to North Korea. If you want to know how economic freedom and prosperity are related, just remember: booming, bustling Hong Kong is at the top, and unlit, starving North Korea is at the bottom.

The Index measures such things as the rule of law, size of government, regulatory efficiency, and openness of markets. It should be no surprise that these traits got worse during President Obama’s two terms in office.

Consider regulation. Since 2008, our economy has been burdened with more than 20,000 new regulations. This added some 572,000 pages to the Federal Register. You’ve probably read more about sluggish job growth, than about how regulations have contributed to it. Obama-era rules cost our economy almost a trillion dollars.

According to one study, there was a net increase of 421,000 new businesses from 1992 to 1996, and 405,000 from 2002-2006. In contrast, 2009, 2010, and 2011 “saw a net loss of new companies year-over-year — the first time in a generation.” Apparently if the government makes it harder to start new businesses and to hire new employees, there will fewer new companies and fewer new employees. Who’d have thunk it?

But many of the biggest regulatory burdens under Obama were added before Republicans took control of Congress in November 2010. Why has the U.S. dropped below six other countries since just last year, when it came in 11th? Probably because the Index now includes government debts and deficits:

Large budget deficits and a high level of public debt, both now reflected in the Index methodology, have contributed to the continuing decline in America’s economic freedom. Having registered its lowest economic freedom score ever, the United States is no longer among the world’s 15 freest economies.

The anemic economic recovery since the great recession has been characterized by a lack of labor market dynamism and depressed levels of investment. The substantial expansion of government’s size and scope, increased regulatory and tax burdens, and the loss of confidence that has accompanied a growing perception of cronyism, elite privilege, and corruption have severely undermined America’s global competitiveness.

Much of the blame for this debt can be laid at the feet of President Obama. Total debt nearly doubled during his years in office, from $10.6 trillion in January 2009, to $19.7 trillion when he left. But the same could be said of President Bush, who also doubled the previous debt during his two terms. We seem to have a bipartisan trend on our hands.

At the current pace, we double our total debt every eight years. You don’t have to be a deficit hawk to know that this can’t go on forever. Eventually, the interest on the debt alone would consume all tax revenue. At that point, the government would have to start printing money to service the debt, which would destroy our currency’s value — as happened in Weimar Germany.

Will Trump Make the US Economy More or Less Free?

But will our economic freedom improve or decline under President Trump? The jury is still out on that one.

Trump’s early executive orders reducing environmental regulations, and his call for the abolition of two old regulations for each new one, are good news for economic freedom and growth. His appointment of Scott Pruitt to lead the EPA also shows that he takes seriously the drag that many regulations have on the economy.

Trump’s pledge to repeal and replace Obamacare was the centerpiece of his campaign. If Congress can give him a replacement that introduces real competition and market discipline into the health care market, this would not only improve health care but would free up a full 16 percent of the American economy.

The president decries government debt, and his pledge to freeze government hiring could make a small dent in that. If his other policies grow the economy overall, that would bring in more revenues, which could reduce deficits — as long as it doesn’t simply encourage Congress to spend more money. On the other hand, the president doesn’t seem keen on tackling entitlements — which is where much of the debt will come from in future years.

Trump’s threats to raise trade tariffs and abandon free trade are most worrisome of all. If he pursues policies that “save” a handful of jobs in one state or industry, but cause a net loss of jobs and productivity elsewhere to the economy, we could see the U.S. slip even farther down the Index of Economic Freedom.

Let’s hope President Trump’s protectionist rhetoric is just the opening gambit of a skilled negotiator, and not the hardened convictions of a president who thinks that, when it comes to trade, America can only win if someone else loses. (For more from the author of “U.S. Drops to Lowest Point Ever in Index of Economic Freedom. Can Trump Improve It?” please click HERE)

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Conservatives to Congress: Deliver on Obamacare Repeal and Replace Promise

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Conservatives and business leaders in the health care market have a message to Congress on Obamacare: Deliver on your promise to repeal the health care law and begin the process of returning to a health sector that can be “America’s greatest.”

During a panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, on Thursday, Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, told attendees to think of Obamacare’s repeal as a “down payment” that will allow Republicans to implement their own health care reforms in the future.

But first, Turner said Republicans need to take action to repeal the law using a fast-track budget tool called reconciliation.

“We have to do this,” she said. “We have to be get this out of here to be able to deliver on the repeal-and-replace pledge to the American people, and then to begin the process of truly returning to a health sector that can be America’s greatest health sector again.”

Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, Scott Flanders of eHealth, and Dale Bellis of Liberty HealthShare joined Turner on the health care panel at the annual event.

While Republicans campaigned since 2010 on repealing Obamacare, efforts to advance the legislation dismantling the law have slowed over the last few weeks.

The GOP-led Congress passed a bill using reconciliation to undo major provisions of the health care law in 2015. But President Barack Obama ultimately vetoed that legislation.

Now, conservatives in Congress are calling on their leaders to bring that same bill before members for another vote.

“It’s going to happen,” Burgess said of Obamacare’s repeal. “What [the 2015 bill] demonstrated to me was that if you got the right president in the White House, you could send that bill back down to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, and you could repeal large pieces of the Affordable Care Act.”

The 2015 reconciliation bill repealed Obamacare’s individual and employer mandates, Medicaid expansion, and subsidies. It also stripped the federal government of the authority to run the exchanges, and eliminated federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

Though that legislation passed both chambers of Congress, tensions have emerged among GOP lawmakers over which parts of the health care law to unwind.

Republicans are split over whether to leave the Medicaid expansion in place, while GOP leaders want to include parts of a replacement plan in the same legislation that will repeal the law—a strategy that some conservatives have derided.

But Burgess, who serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the 2015 reconciliation bill will serve as a “starting point” for Congress this year, with Republicans understanding that the repeal bill will be at least the same as that passed in 2015.

In addition to disagreement over whether to include parts of Obamacare’s replacement in the repeal bill, Republicans also split on whether to provide tax credits or tax deductions to consumers.

But Turner stressed that the process for replacing the law—what she said will become a “once-in-a-generation reform”—will be a lengthy one that requires thought, particularly since Republicans are starting not from a blank slate, but with an already changed health insurance market.

“It’s really what would we want if we were starting from the right kind of policy for the health sector? We are not starting there. We’re starting with Obamacare,” she said. “We’re starting with some number of millions of people … relying on Obamacare. You have to create a lifeboat for them, and structures that provide the kind of resources people need who don’t have means to purchase health insurance on their own so they can continue coverage.”

Like Republicans in Congress, President Donald Trump campaigned on repealing Obamacare.

During his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order addressing Obamacare and giving his federal agencies the discretion to no longer enforce the individual mandate.

And he’s repeatedly said that his new Health and Human Services secretary, Tom Price, will present a replacement plan before Congress.

But so far, no proposal has been presented.

Trump will address a joint session of Congress next week, and Burgess had his own wishes for what he hopes the president will tell Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

“I would like for him to say very directly to us, to my leadership in the House, Republicans and Democrats, that ‘this is your job,’” Burgess said. “‘I want you to get it done.’ Simple as that.”

CPAC, the largest annual national gathering of conservative activists, runs from Wednesday to Saturday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington. (For more from the author of “Conservatives to Congress: Deliver on Obamacare Repeal and Replace Promise” please click HERE)

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Pence Vows to End ‘Obamacare Nightmare’

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Vice President Mike Pence attempted to assure conservative activists on Thursday that Obamacare is on its way out.

“Let me assure you,” Pence said at the annual Conservative Action Political Conference, or CPAC. “America’s Obamacare nightmare is about to end.”

As plans to repeal and replace Obamacare remain in limbo, Pence made the issue centerfold in his keynote address at CPAC, the largest annual gathering of conservatives. Pence promised to repeal Obamacare, “eliminating its mandates, its taxes, and its intrusion into your business and into your lives,” saying Obamacare would be “replaced with something that actually works.”

“Despite the best efforts of liberal activists in town halls around the country,” Pence added, “The American people know better. Obamacare has failed and Obamacare must go.”

“This failed law is crippling the American economy and crushing the American people.”

Adding fuel to the fire, Pence referred to the “promises liberals made about Obamacare” as “fake news.”

“Remember they told us the cost of insurance would go down. They told us if you liked your doctor, you could keep [him]. They told us if you liked your health plan, you could keep it.”

“Now we all know the truth. Today Americans are paying $3,000 more a year on average for their health insurance. Last year, premiums skyrocketed by a stunning 25 percent. Millions have lost their plans and lost their doctors. Higher costs. Fewer choices. Worse care. That’s Obamacare.”

He also said the Affordable Care Act was a “job killer.”

Discussing replacing Obamacare, Pence was dismissive of “all the fearmongering from the left,” and said there would be “an orderly transition to a better health care system that finally puts the American people first.”

He detailed what he and President Donald Trump would do to ensure all Americans had “access to quality and affordable health care insurance, which is why we’re designing a better law that lowers the cost of health insurance without growing the size of government.”

Pence continued:

We’re going to let Americans purchase health insurance across state lines, the way you buy your life insurance, the way you buy your car insurance.

We’re going to make sure that Americans with preexisting conditions have access to health insurance and the security they need, and we’re going to give states the freedom and flexibility to take care of the least fortunate in the best way that will work in their state and in their community.

It was Pence’s ninth time addressing CPAC, but his first time doing so as vice president. CPAC, the largest annual national gathering of conservative activists, runs from Wednesday to Saturday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington.

Pence spoke about Trump’s “historic” victory, noting he won 30 of 50 states, and saying that “the media, the elites, the insiders, everybody else who profits off preserving the status quo,” had “dismissed our president every step of the way.”

“In dismissing him, they also dismissed millions of the hard-working forgotten men and women who make this country great,” Pence said. “And worse yet, they’re still trying to dismiss him. They’re still trying to dismiss all of us.”

“What they should have learned on Election Day is this is not a government of the elites, by the media, or for the establishment. What Nov. 8th showed, even if they didn’t listen, is that this is still government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

But he also cautioned the “fight didn’t end” on Election Day, saying “the harder work, the most important work, now lies ahead.”

In addition to repealing and replacing Obamacare, Pence highlighted several additional top agenda items under the Trump administration. These included rescinding “unconstitutional executive orders signed by Barack Obama,” rolling back “job-killing regulations,” strengthening the military, and reducing taxes. He said under Trump, “no state will ever be forced to adopt the Common Core [standards],” and highlighted the administration’s approach to Israel, “our most cherished ally.”

“Israel’s fight is our fight. Her cause is our cause. Her values are our values.”

The vice president also highlighted the top figures in the Trump administration. Mentioning Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Housing secretary pick Ben Carson, Pence said “This is the A team.”

“President Trump has assembled the strongest conservative cabinet in my lifetime, bar none,” Pence said.

Pence told conservatives they have a “once in a lifetime opportunity” to accomplish this agenda. “My friends, this is our time. This is the chance we worked so long to see.”

In order to accomplish all this, Pence said, “We got to mobilize. We got to march forward as if it’s the most important time in the history of our movement, because it is.”

He called on young conservatives “use social media to fight back.”

And pray.

“More than anything,” Pence concluded, “Trump and I need your prayers.” (For more from the author of “Pence Vows to End ‘Obamacare Nightmare'” please click HERE)

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Why Trump’s Call to Investigate Vote Fraud Is Valid

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President Donald Trump recently called for an investigation into vote fraud. His press secretary Sean Spicer added: “This isn’t just about the 2016 election. This is about the integrity of our voting system.”

And there is a problem: Liberal activists have all too often rejected and fought against bipartisan efforts to fix these critical problems.

Trump detailed some of the problems in our voting system: “You have people that are registered who are dead, who are illegals, who are in two states. You have people registered in two states. … They vote twice.”

In 2014, President Barack Obama’s bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration called for voter list maintenance to improve the voter registration rolls. Yet liberals have regularly fought against efforts to clean up voter rolls.

The irony was that at the same time Obama’s lawyer, Bob Bauer, was leading the bipartisan commission, his own firm was suing the state of Virginia, calling the efforts to clean up voter rolls racist and purging.

It goes further. Obama nominated Myrna Perez to be on the Election Assistance Commission. Perez was an adamant opponent of voter list maintenance, declaring such efforts “purging.”

This is why it’s tough to even talk about vote fraud. Any efforts, even those with bipartisan support, are bitterly opposed by liberal activists.

Aside from the incendiary rhetoric, there are real challenges to maintaining clean voter registration rolls that liberals and conservatives need to work together to overcome.

Underfunded and understaffed state election offices do not have the resources to review voter registration records and remove dead people and other ineligible voters. States do not share information to identify double registrations and potential double voting.

Lists of noncitizens excused from jury duty are not shared with secretaries of state to be removed from voter registration rolls. Significant advances are being made in this area through the use of technology, but much remains to be done. Bipartisan cooperation, not political bickering, is needed.

There may be no better example than the requirement for a photo ID. Voter ID is overwhelmingly supported by the public. A 2016 Gallup poll last August found that 80 percent of Americans, including 63 percent of Democrats, support the requirement that a person show a photo ID at the polls before voting.

A primary recommendation of the 2005 bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform (the “Carter-Baker Commission”) was to require voter ID. This commission was led by Jimmy Carter, former president and noted liberal, and James Baker, secretary of state under President George H.W. Bush.

Yet, liberals oppose any efforts to enact commonsense voter ID laws, opposing them in legislatures and in the courts. Voter ID laws, which protect the integrity of the vote and thus our democracy for all citizens, are called racist and mechanisms of voter suppression.

Liberals often make ludicrous, unsubstantiated claims about voter ID, such as claiming hundreds of thousands of voters would be disenfranchised by voter ID—claims that even sympathetic liberals and courts question as based on faulty statistics and methods.

Liberal activists unfortunately show by their actions they do not want to fix our electoral system despite strong public, bipartisan support for things like voter list maintenance and photo ID requirements.

Instead of accepting and supporting reforms that have public support, liberals open the door to more fraud by championing changes to the process like mandatory voter registration, all mail-in voting, same-day registration, no-excuse absentee voting, and not requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration.

These changes have not been shown to improve voter participation, engagement, or turnout, but instead strain local election resources and present more opportunities for ineligible people to register and cast fraudulent ballots.

Take the example of New Hampshire.

Democrat New Hampshire Secretary of State William Gardner supports a 30-day residency requirement to stop fraudulent, as he calls it, “drive-by voting,” in which people from out of state come to New Hampshire for a short period to vote on Election Day.

New Hampshire has same-day registration and no period of residency required before a person may register and vote. Yet a commonsense residency requirement has been passed for the past two years by the New Hampshire Legislature, which liberals in the Legislature opposed and then-Gov. Maggie Hassan vetoed each time.

Even Hillary Clinton recognized the problem, alleging that out-of-state voters led to her losing the 2016 New Hampshire presidential primary to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Gardner pledged to investigate.

One can only wonder how out-of-state voters affected the close 2016 presidential and senatorial election in New Hampshire, where Hassan defeated Sen. Kelly Ayotte by approximately 700 votes.

Significantly, data from the state election results published regarding the 2012 and 2014 general elections by the New Hampshire secretary of state demonstrate the margin of victory for the winning candidate in the races for governor, Senate, and president was less than the number of votes cast on Election Day by same-day registrants.

A few votes from out-of-state voters can literally change the winner of a race.

This begs the question: What are liberals trying to hide? Why not support Trump’s call for an investigation into vote fraud? Is it because they are concerned what would happen if they helped pass laws to protect the integrity of our elections?

It’s time to stop playing politics with election administration and start working together to fix our electoral system, which in turn protects our democracy and our republic. (For more from the author of ” Why Trump’s Call to Investigate Vote Fraud Is Valid” please click HERE)

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Climate Change ‘Lunacy’ Called a Gift to Conservatives

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For conservatives, the “lunacy,” “wrongness,” and “criminality” of climate change theories is the gift that keeps on giving, the executive editor of the London branch of Breitbart News Service said Thursday during a panel discussion at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Three major strands characterize the climate change movement, James Delingpole said during the CPAC panel, sponsored by E&E Legal Institute and titled “Fake Climate News Camouflaging an Anti-Capitalist Agenda.”

Delingpole identified these three strands as a sort of religious view that sees man “as a cancer and blight to the planet,” a “follow the money” component in which well-placed individuals “make money off scams” at public expense, and a political component that exists, he said, because “the left has always wanted to find scientific justification to tax and regulate us and control our lives.”

Joining Delingpole were Steve Milloy, a lawyer and author who founded the website JunkScience.com, and Tony Heller, who has written under the pseudonym Steven Goddard at the blog Real Science, which he founded. John Fund, a columnist for National Review, acted as moderator.

When he was on a panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival in 2008, Fund recalled, he noticed that activists there were substituting the words “climate change” for “global warming.”

He asked audience members to explain the change, and it turned out to be “a very uncomfortable question,” Fund said. “If you ask a question innocently enough, the truth comes out.”

Since the planet isn’t always warming, environmental activists found that they had more flexibility to advance their agenda under the more generic label of “climate change,” he said.

Looking to the future of energy policy, Thursday’s CPAC panelists said they found cause for encouragement with the Trump administration.

Milloy credited President Donald Trump for a professed willingness to “abolish the EPA” and for recognizing the Environmental Protection Agency has committed “regulatory overreach.” He said he anticipates the Trump administration will “turn loose the American energy industry.”

Environmental activists have made a concerted effort to circulate “fake climate news” in recent years, but the technique is not exactly new, Heller said.

The 1692 witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, may have been brought on in part by a spell of cold weather, he suggested.

Citizens blamed alleged witches for lower-than-average temperatures, according to some news reports.

Panelists also discussed the “climategate scandal” involving emails leaked to the internet from the University of East Anglia in Great Britain in 2009. The emails showed that some university researchers appeared willing to manipulate scientific data to exaggerate global warming.

Such manipulation of scientific data is often at the root of “fake news,” panelists agreed.

CPAC, the largest annual national gathering of conservative activists, runs from Wednesday to Saturday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington. (For more from the author of “Climate Change ‘Lunacy’ Called a Gift to Conservatives” please click HERE)

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No Room for You, Moderate Dems. DNC on the Verge of Appointing Extremist Ellison as Chair

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Will the Democratic Party complete its descent into madness this weekend?

As the Democratic National Committee meets in Atlanta to select its next chairman, the frontrunner for the position — extremist Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn. (F, 26%) — represents the leftist radical fringe’s complete takeover of the party. In a survey of DNC members, Ellison leads his nearest rival with nearly twice the support.

Ellison, the first Muslim American elected to Congress, has built a coalition of support across the DNC spectrum. He is the favorite of the Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. (F, 17%) wing of the party while simultaneously garnering the endorsements of progressive icons such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. (F, 18%) and leadership figures like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. (F, 2%).

All this to say, it is clear most of the Democratic Party has abandoned any pretense of operating in the mainstream. Just how radical is Rep. Keith Ellison?

This is a man who:

once compared the 9/11 terror attacks to the Reichstag fire (though later he retracted those remarks) to attack President George W. Bush as a dictator;

previously and repeatedly advocated on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated CAIR;

compared school choice to Jim Crow laws; and, among of things,

holds every radical liberal position on abortion, on amnesty for illegal aliens, on gun control, on environmental statism.

As if his radical positions weren’t enough to disqualify from leadership in a rational party, Ellison’s disturbing ties to radical Islam ought to give his Democratic colleagues pause. But they don’t. Nor does Ellison’s past relationship with the radical Louis Farrakhan, who perpetually makes the most disturbing anti-Semitic comments possible.

“I want to disabuse the Jews today of the false claim that you are the chosen of God — that Israel or Palestine belongs to you,” Farrakhan recently said at a Nation of Islam conference in Detroit, to the applause of the crowd. He continued, saying:

I want to disabuse you of that. I want to make it so clear and I’m going to tell you about your future. You that think you have power to frighten and dominate the peoples of the world. I’m here to announce the end of your time.

Ellison also shares Farrakhan’s anti-Israel sentiments.

“The United States foreign policy in the Middle East is governed by what is good or bad through a country of 7 million people. A region of 350 million all turns on a country of 7 million. Does that make sense?” Ellison said of the state of Israel at private fundraiser in 2010.

Even the liberal Anti-Defamation League has referred to those comments as “disqualifying.” And we’re supposed to believe President Donald Trump is the anti-Semite? As CR’s Jordan Schachtel noted:

And all that is just the beginning of Ellison’s radicalism, as Conservative Review Editor-in-Chief Mark Levin has explained previously:

That the Democratic Party is even permitting Keith Ellison run for leadership is a disgrace. That he is so close to winning that leadership position shows how far gone the Democrats are in kowtowing to the most radical elements of the Left. (For more from the author of “No Room for You, Moderate Dems. DNC on the Verge of Appointing Extremist Ellison as Chair” please click HERE)

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What the Mainstream Media Won’t Tell You About Donald Trump and Crime in Sweden

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President Donald Trump’s tortured relationship with the spoken word can lead to problems. Case in point, his remarks about Sweden at a rally in Melbourne, Florida on Saturday night. While Trump seemingly made a remark about a recent terrorist attack in Sweden, what he meant was the reported uptick in crime in migrant centers in the country. His remarks have ignited a firestorm online. I try to wade through it all to present to you what is exactly “going on in Sweden.”

If President Trump is right and there is a growing Islamic migrant caused crime wave in Sweden, the first step is to define when the surge in refugees from predominately Muslim countries started to spike in the country. Migrationsverket, the Swedish Migration Agency, has published country of origin data from 1980 to 2014 (pdf). This data does not include 2015, which saw the highest level of asylum seekers in the recent history of the nation.

Resident Permits Geneva Convention

Migrationsverket breaks out nine Muslim majority countries in their data set. Those countries are Kosovo, Somalia, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and Syria. It is clear that the Syrian civil war and ISIS has created a significant uptick in refugees from Syria, beginning in 2012. Prior to that year, immigration from that country was negligible. The second largest number of migrants come from the Horn of Africa with Eritrea and Somalia combining for close to 6,900 persons. The agency has not yet compiled country of origin for the roughly 160,000 asylum seekers that entered in 2015, but there are reports that have placed the Syrian number at over 50,000.

The recent surge in refugees caused Sweden, in the middle of 2016, to toughen its rules. The New York Times reported that Sweden took steps to curb the open door policy it had in place. The country was on pace to admit 200,000 refugees in 2016, or two percent of its population, the majority of whom were from Muslim majority countries.

Does this dramatic uptick in migrants starting in 2012 have anything to do with crime in Sweden? That’s where it gets complicated. As Politfact noted, Swedish authorities do not break out crime data by immigration or refugee status. So it is impossible to determine if any crime increase can be definitively linked to migrants.

What is apparent however, despite the media cherry-picking two years 2014 and 2015, is the significant increase in the number of reported sexual assault and homicides that have coincided with the increased numbers of migrants. According to the Brå, which reports Swedish crime statistics, reported sexual assaults have increased from 17,077 cases in 2011 to 18,057 in 2015. They peaked in 2014 at 20,326, which was 19 percent higher than in 2011. Preliminary data from 2016 show a reported 20 percent increase in sexual “molestation” from 2015, according to Brå numbers. Rapes increased by 13 percent from 2015 to 2016 according to the same preliminary report.

Swedish sexual assault statistics

Similarly, according to Brå, lethal violence has shown an increase. Lethal violence is described as murder, manslaughter, or assault that results in death. In 2011 there were 81 instances of lethal violence reported; in 2015 there were 112 cases. This is an increase of 38 percent. From 2014 the increase was almost 29 percent. Lethal crimes data for 2016 will not be available until the end of March according to Brå.

swedish lethal violence

The data does show an uptick in violent crime, particularly sexual assault and lethal crimes that coincides with the increased migrant wave. That fact is undeniable and buttressed by the data from Swedish authorities. The media, who have cherry-picked the drop in reported sexual assaults from 2014 to 2015, are misleading with their reporting. But there are also two critical pieces of data missing: 2016 assault numbers, and a breakdown of crime by immigration status. Without those data points, both sides of the argument have cases to be made.

There is certainly a significant amount of anecdotal evidence to buttress the claims of increased violence by migrants in Sweden. Most significantly is the documentary by Ami Horowitz which kicked off the current news cycle. Horowitz was interviewed by Tucker Carlson the day before President Trump made his statement.

Horowitz, with on-the-ground reporting, shows a very different picture than what the MSM or Swedish authorities want you to believe.

In Norway, a bordering Scandinavian country, the authorities recently produced a guide on how migrants should treat women. This was a direct result of a rise in rapes that accompanied a similar increase in migrants.

A spring 2016 Pew poll showed that a whopping 88 percent of Swedes disapprove of the way the European Union, of which Sweden is a member, is handling the refugee crisis. That is the second highest number after Greece, which has been a first port of entry for many migrants as they make their way through Europe. The next highest is 77 percent in Italy.

No matter where the debate here in America stands on the issue, it is clear the Swedish people are concerned about migration to their country. That is why, as previously mentioned, the government took extraordinary means to limit refugee settlement after a long history of virtually open borders. This action happened shortly after the Pew poll was conducted.

The data clearly show an uptick in sexual assaults, and lethal crimes since the massive increase in refugees to Sweden from majority Muslim countries. It is careful to remember that correlation does not always equal causation. Until Sweden publishes data which includes the immigration status and country of origin in their crime statistics, on-the-ground experience will continue to drive the narrative. Politifact and other “MSM fact checkers” owe it to their readers to paint a complete picture. (For more from the author of “What the Mainstream Media Won’t Tell You About Donald Trump and Crime in Sweden” please click HERE)

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Bastards on the Bench: Fourth Circuit Limits Second Amendment Right to Possess Common Firearms

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What happens when courts create faux rights, such as the “right” for foreign nationals to immigrate, the “right” for states to demand more immigrants from the federal government, the “right” for illegal aliens to obtain driver’s licenses, or the “right” to 15 days of early voting?

Inevitably, the courts overlook the most foundational of rights that are written in plain English — the ones that serve as the foundation of our republic. Last week, it was a state court in Washington violating the property and conscience rights of those who don’t service homosexual ceremonies. Today, it is the courts infringing upon the one right that pre-dated the Bill of Rights and is written in the most unambiguous and absolute terms: “shall not be infringed.”

As is always the case, after conservatives secured a 2-1 victory at the Fourth Circuit last year against Maryland’s “assault weapons” ban, the full en banc panel upheld the law. In a 10-4 ruling – one which was full of vengeful rhetoric over Sandy Hook and ignorance of the distinction between a machine gun and a ‘scary looking’ semi-auto — the court ruled that Maryland could ban 45 commonly held weapons as well as magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. “We have no power to extend Second Amendment protection to the weapons of war that the Heller decision explicitly excluded from such coverage,” wrote a brazen Judge Robert B. King. Every Democrat appointee except for Judge William Traxler (who wrote the dissent) and one GOP appointee joined the majority opinion.

Following the Sandy Hook shooting, states like Maryland, New York and Connecticut banned a multitude of semi-automatic rifles containing cosmetic features that make them look scary. Some states also required forced registration of those firearms already owned by private citizens. Additionally, they banned magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. Yet, despite almost a decade since the Heller decision, the lower courts have been allowed to chip away at this foundational right. Thus far, the Second, Fourth, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits have all ruled that almost any common gun or magazine in use can be banned by a state if the pistol grips and picatinny rails on the rifles look scary. Additionally, the Second, Third, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuit Courts have each ruled there is no right to self-defense outside the home — in contravention of the plain language of the Heller decision.

As I’ve written before, the notion that any common weapon can be banned violates the inalienable right to self-defense, which predated the Second Amendment. It is a natural right. Yet, given that we live in a world where rights come from the Supreme Court, we should at least ensure that lower courts properly read the text of the Heller decision. Here is what Scalia wrote in the majority opinion:

We know of no other enumerated constitutional right whose core protection has been subjected to a freestanding “interest-balancing” approach. The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government—even the Third Branch of Government—the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon. A constitutional guarantee subject to future judges’ assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional guarantee at all. Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes) even future judges think that scope too broad.

Thus, contrary to the Fourth Circuit’s opinion, this case has already been addressed by Heller. There is no government “interest balancing” for perceived benefits of public safety that can justify the infringement upon the right to self-defense for any commonly held weapon used for lawful purposes.

Judge William Traxler, in a rare display of intellectual honesty for a Democrat appointee, laid out the consequences of this case in plain English:

Today the majority holds that the Government can take semi automatic rifles away from law-abiding American citizens. In South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland, the Government can now tell you that you cannot hunt with these rifles. The Government can tell you that you cannot shoot at targets with them. And, most importantly, the Government can tell you that you cannot use them to defend yourself and your family in your home. In concluding that the Second Amendment does not even apply, the majority has gone to greater lengths than any other court to eviscerate the constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms.

Indeed, in the case of lower courts upholding sweeping gun bans, the silence of more than three justices willing to grant cert to petitioners (it takes four) is deafening. As Justice Thomas has noted in his dissent on the denial of cert on the two previous assault weapons bans, the other justices (presumably Roberts and Kennedy included) are clearly allowing the Second Amendment to become a second-class right. And Roberts was allowing this to happen even when Scalia was on the court. Thus, don’t expect this to change after Gorsuch takes his seat on the high court.

What this decision demonstrates, once again, is that not only does stare decisis (precedent) only hold true for liberal Supreme Court rulings, but it fails to bind even the lower courts to opinions it doesn’t like. This is the same rationale the Ninth Circuit used to trash 200 years of settled case law when they created a right to immigrate.

Protecting gun rights from heavy-handed laws in blue states is practically the only benefit left for conservatives to keep the practice of judicial review. Yet, the past five years of gun cases has demonstrated that the courts will never serve as a legitimate venue for us to protect real rights. As such, why empower them to create phony rights for protected classes and dangerous rights for foreign nationals? (For more from the author of “Bastards on the Bench: Fourth Circuit Limits Second Amendment Right to Possess Common Firearms” please click HERE)

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The Media Ignores Anti-Semitism Unless It’s a Tool to Target President Trump

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For years, establishment media outlets have ignored the uptick in violence against Jews nationwide. Now that Donald Trump is president, they use anti-Jewish hate in America as a tool to attack the White House’s legitimacy.

Jewish Community Centers throughout the country have been on the receiving end of bomb threats, forcing school closures and a tense environment in these local areas. In one recent high-profile incident, a Jewish graveyard was vandalized. Though the perpetrators of these crimes have yet to be identified, many media and left-wing institutions have decided that Trump is to blame for these incidents.

The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, an obscure far-left institution based in New York City, has utilized the namesake of the Holocaust victim to bash the entire White House as an anti-Semitic administration. Their statement, which includes sentences like: “The anti-Semitism coming out of this Administration is the worst we have ever seen from any Administration,” has been picked up by countless media outlets, few of which point out the organization’s extreme left-wing platform.

President Trump is many things, but an anti-Semite he is not. For decades, he has been a very public figure, and the media is yet to find a single file that proves Trump has ever fanned the flames of anti-Semitism.

Trump’s children, Ivanka, Eric, and Donald Jr., are all married to Jews. His top advisors are Jews. His closest friends are Jews. His Mar-a-Lago club (in the city of Palm Beach, where Jewish entry to many of institutions is still blocked to this day) and his many other properties encourage Jewish membership. He has been incredibly supportive of the Jewish state of Israel. Simply put, there is *zero* evidence that Donald Trump has ever said or done anything explicitly anti-Semitic. He is, by all accounts, a close friend of the Jewish community.

In November 2016, the FBI released its annual hate crime data for the year 2015. Of the 1,402 victims of anti-religious hate crimes in 2015, over 52 percent were Jewish. From 2014 to 2015, hate crimes against Jews shot up nine percent. Year after year, the vast majority of anti-religious hate crimes have targeted Jews, although American Jews account for only two percent of the U.S. population.

But in reporting on anti-Jewish hate crimes that occurred under the auspices of President Obama, the mainstream media either completely ignored the facts or buried the most important information. Never did anyone in the media ever ask if Barack Obama was to blame for a supposed anti-Jewish climate growing in America.

When the FBI report came out while Obama was still in office, showcasing that more than half of all anti-religious hate crimes targeted Jews, the New York Times headline on the data read: “U.S. Hate Crimes Surge 6%, Fueled by Attacks on Muslims.” The Washington Post echoed the Times report, using the title: “Hate crimes against Muslims hit highest mark since 2011.” The Post story made no mention that Jews accounted for the vast majority of victims. Politico headlined its story: “FBI: Hate crimes against Muslims in U.S. jump 67 percent in 2015”. CBS News utilized an almost identical title. The Boston Globe, NBC News and several others followed suit with comparable titles.

Mainstream media outlets appeared very concerned with the rise of anti-Muslim violence (as they should be), but breezed completely over the most common victims of anti-religious hate crimes.

Until Donald Trump became president, much of the media didn’t seem to care that Jews were overwhelmingly the majority of victims of anti-religious hate crimes. Now, the media utilizes consistent widespread anti-Semitism as a tool to target Trump. (For more from the author of “The Media Ignores Anti-Semitism Unless It’s a Tool to Target President Trump” please click HERE)

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