Ex-Gitmo Inmate Among 6 Detained From French Jihadi Network

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A former Guantanamo Bay inmate is among six people from an alleged jihadi recruiting network linked to the Islamic State group who were detained on Tuesday, a French judicial source said.

Among the suspects arrested was Sabir Mahfouz Lahmar, who was freed from the U.S. detention center in Cuba in 2009 after France agreed to accept him, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the case.

Lahmar was one of six Algerians detained in Bosnia in 2001 on suspicion of plotting to bomb the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo. The Justice Department later backed off the allegations, but held the men at Guantanamo for years. Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy agreed to take him in April 2009, and Lahmar moved to Bordeaux later that year. (Read more from “Ex-Gitmo Inmate Among 6 Detained From French Jihadi Network” HERE)

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Airstrikes on Terrorists in Afghanistan Hit Five-Year High Under Trump

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U.S. airstrikes on Taliban insurgents and Islamic State terrorists hit a nearly five-year high in April, Air Force Times reports.

The U.S. dropped 460 bombs in April, more than double the number dropped in the previous month. The military has not dropped that many bombs since August 2012, when there were seven times more U.S. troops present in the country. April also marked the first use of the largest non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal against ISIS in Afghanistan, known as the “Mother Of All Bombs.”

The increase in bombs reportedly stems from a renewed U.S. focus on defeating ISIS in Afghanistan, and the start of the spring fighting season for the Taliban. The terrorist group is largely confined to a single province in Afghanistan, but has proven resilient in the face of a nearly two-year effort by the U.S. and Afghan National Security Forces to oust it.

The renewed vigor of the fight in Afghanistan comes as President Donald Trump is considering a Pentagon proposal to increase the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Both U.S. commanders in Afghanistan say they need a couple thousand more troops to effectively train, advise, and assist the Afghan National Security Forces. (Read more from “Airstrikes on Terrorists in Afghanistan Hit Five-Year High Under Trump” HERE)

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Should Fearless Girls Worship the Golden Calf of Abortion?

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The saga of the Charging Bull and the Fearless Girl is back in the news. It seems New York sculptor Alex Gardega objected to feminists’ appropriating the Wall Street icon. So he added something: a pug, relieving itself on the girl.

I couldn’t put my finger on it. But something about the Fearless Girl statue didn’t sit well with me. Social media fawned over the diminutive addition that bravely stood in front of Charging Bull in New York’s financial district. But the statue seemed like a cheap way to score political points. My cynicism grew the more I considered her underlying message.

The plaque at Fearless Girl’s feet reads: “Know the power of women in leadership. SHE makes a difference.” “SHE” is both a descriptive pronoun and the NASDAQ ticker symbol for the organization that funded her. Fearless Girl’s message is to promote workplace gender diversity. And to encourage companies to recruit women to their boards. Those pleasant enough politically correct platitudes.

The artist of the Charging Bull has himself complained that Fearless Girl distorted the meaning of his bronze. It transformed the bull from a symbol of strength and prosperity into one of a villain. In response, New York City Mayor de Blasio tweeted, “Men who don’t like women taking up space are exactly why we need the Fearless Girl.”

But there is more to the story than just political posturing and man-shaming. Mayor de Blasio has already made it clear that the statues’ meanings are fluid. So let’s consider what happens when we move these two statues somewhere else in the world. How does changing the context change their meaning?

Move Those Statues to Africa

If Charging Bull and Fearless Girl were on the African continent, people might think they are a Public Service Announcement. “Caution: Wild Bulls.” Locals seeing a little girl in the path of a raging bull might not find it so — well, inspiring. In fact, they would see it as quite the contrary. Any child left alone in such circumstances is a tribal (or village) failure. They know the inevitable outcome.

And what if the bronzes were moved to India or Nepal? There Hinduism is practiced, and all things bovine — including their dung and urine — are revered. Honoring cows is so weighty that U.S. diplomats are warned that if while driving they are faced with the choice of hitting a person or a cow, the better thing to do is hit the person. Perhaps again Fearless Girl might not inspire the same sort of “You go, girl!” spirit. Suddenly, Fearless Girl is no longer a heroine, but merely a bystander while the bull holds center stage.

Of course, worshiping bulls is nothing new. It never leads to anything good. Just ask the ancient Greek queen of Crete, Pasiphae, how worshiping the white bull worked for her. Their coupling created the monstrous Minotaur: the bull-headed man who devoured Athenian. Nor did the Israelites profit from worship of their golden calf. It nearly got them wiped out as a nation.

We have our own sacred cow. The West thinks that equality between men and women can only be reached by erasing their differences. Such “equality” rests squarely on the notion that women must be free from the burden of childbearing and therefore must have abortion on demand — no restrictions.

Worshiping the Golden Calf of Abortion

Abortion was sold as “safe, legal and rare.” But that golden calf has grown up into something fierce and terrifying. Today, worship of the bull of abortion is a rite of passage for any woman who craves power, prestige or fortune. Nearly every public woman in the corridors of influence from New York to Washington to Hollywood has offered her pinch of incense to the abortion behemoth — Planned Parenthood.

So what if we moved Fearless Girl and Charging Bull back to New York, but consider yet another meaning for each? What if we see Charging Bull as the abortion juggernaut, and Fearless Girl as all those who worship him?

This new, fierce and ferocious bull devours the innocent like the Minotaur. Instead of 15 males and 15 females a year, the numbers are closer to 1500 males a day and 1500 females a day in the United States alone.

Like the golden calf worshipers of old, the new bovine worshipers are not left unscathed. Tragically, all these women who worship abortion have been frozen as little girls — as if in bronze — never to grow up and become true women, but to forever remain stuck in a feminist frenzy: a vicious cycle of victimization, foot stomping tantrums, illogic, perpetual aping of men, and vulgar pink hats.

Sadly, unlike Africa, there are no more grown-ups in the village to come and protect them, for these little girls are the grown-ups; they are the cultural elite; they are culture makers. And yet little girls they remain — fearless and foolish — and try as they might, unless or until they find healing, there they will remain stuck in the path of the charging bull of their own making. (For more from the author of “Should Fearless Girls Worship the Golden Calf of Abortion?” please click HERE)

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Framing Seth Rich

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From the reaction of the establishment media you would think Sean Hannity and others raising questions about the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich had committed the crime themselves. Such collective, concentrated and contrived outrage always makes me suspicious. Throw in their jackbooted online allies at John Podesta’s Media Matters and I get really suspicious.

The Hypothetical

Let’s pose a hypothetical:

It’s July 2016, in the heat of the campaign. A Republican National Committee staffer is murdered under curious circumstances. A couple weeks later a website — let’s call it “TrikiLeaks” — begins publishing a trove of emails from the RNC that indicate some sort of collusion between the RNC, Donald Trump and Russia.

The owner of TrikiLeaks hints that the dead staffer was involved. Even puts up some of his own cash as a reward for the capture of his killer. The RNC doesn’t let the FBI check its computers to determine the leak source. A TrikiLeaks operative denies the emails were from an outside hack, insisting he met up with an inside source in D.C.

A year later, with the crime still unsolved, a famed hacker with known connections to TrikiLeak, steps up and says, “Yeah, I was working with the RNC staffer. He was ticked at the collusion.” Meanwhile, an anonymous federal investigator tells CNN, “I saw the emails the staffer sent to TrikiLeaks.” A regular contributor to MSNBC says his police sources are telling him pressure from Republican politicians has put a damper on the investigation.

Question: What is the top story on CNN/MSNBC tonight and for the next month? What are the headlines from The New York Times and Washington Post?

The Twists and Insults

You know the answer: The late RNC staffer would be hailed as the greatest martyr since Joan of Arc. The RNC would be called the greatest crime syndicate since the Costra Nostra. As for President Trump? Well, he’s already compared to Hitler and they’re screaming for his impeachment. So I guess they’d be left to just scream “Murderer!”

Meanwhile, anyone who suggests the RNC staffer may have simply been the random victim of street thugs will be throttled and battered in a raging Twitter storm.

However, in this case we see something quite different. On Friday, The New York Times published “The Demented Detectives on Seth Rich’s Case.” CNN calls the possibility of Seth Rich’s involvement in the WikiLeaks exposure of DNC emails a “myth.” The Los Angeles Times calls it “nothing but noise.” The Washington Post calls it “absurd.” Vox calls it “bonkers.”

(Funny how the same folks that are calling those raising questions “bonkers” and “demented,” are the same people who insist Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton secretly met on a plane during the Hillary email investigation to discuss grandchildren.)

Seth Rich may or may not have been the source for the DNC WikiLeaks. His efforts may or may not have led to his death. Do your own searching.

However …

However, the murder is unsolved. Six-figure rewards have dangled unclaimed over the mean streets of Washington. The botched robbery theory is just that … a theory. And it is a simple fact, as revealed by the emails obtained by WikiLeaks, that the DNC conspired against Bernie Sanders on behalf of Hillary Clinton. Plainly put, Sanders got robbed.

My point: It is hardly “bonkers” to propose that a young, gifted and gung-ho Bernie Sanders supporter became disillusioned over how Sanders was robbed by the DNC and wanted to do something about it. (This is even before getting to the statements of Julian Assange and Kim DotCom.)

I see the photos of Rich dressed in clothes decorated with American flags, and I can’t help but picture Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. An earnest Midwesterner who believed the stories about government, only to discover the system and even his own hero were corrupt and eager to crush him. For any Sanders supporter — or even those who believe in a level playing field — what was going on within the DNC must have been devastating.

The Right-Wing Conservative Conspiracy Theory Conspiracy

Which gets to another of last week’s media deceptions, what I call “snake news.” How often did you hear the phrase “right-wing conspiracy theory” or “conservative conspiracy theory” in regards to the Seth Rich story? The full title of the LA Times article is “Sorry, Trump Supporters, Unlike Trump’s Russian Adventures, the Seth Rich Story is Nothing But Noise.”

While Sean Hannity may be the loudest high-profile voice raising questions, lots of digging in the case is being done by Sanders supporters, as The Stream‘s Rachel Alexander points out. This includes popular internet sleuth George Webb, who on Tuesday laid out who he thinks murdered Rich.

Rachel also introduced us to the Pandas4Bernie. Here’s what they posted on their Reddit account after the nickname “Panda” was linked to Rich:

We may not be Seth Rich, but we can do justice to his life by extending the effects of his work, by honoring the courage of whistleblowers who put their lives on the line to expose the truths that animate our demands for justice, and ultimately to break the power of corrupt, undemocratic elites once and for all over our lives and institutions.

Panda is the name Kim DotCom says Rich used when contacting him. The notorious hacker claims he worked with Rich to get the DNC material to WikiLeaks. Nobody’s expecting to see Kim DotCom at CPAC.

Onward

So while any right-minded conservative would want the murder of Rich solved, it is disingenuous and downright deceitful for the media to make the search for the truth simply a rabid right-wing mission. And when news outlets are being deliberately deceitful you have to wonder why. Especially when they also start throwing around words like “absurd,” “bonkers” and “demented.”

When you lie to me and call me names you are telling me you have something to hide or something to fear.

That alone is reason for citizen journalists and interested reporters to carry forward. The truth is still out there to be had, wherever the chips fall. Murderers are still out there. If sincere inquiry can be silenced with boycotts and abuse, then the First Amendment itself is shot in the back and left for dead.

Let facts be uncovered, for truth’s sake; not for scoring partisan points. Arrogance and anger have no place. Mockery does not align with justice.

The political community of the Nation’s Capital lost one of their own. A bright light was snuffed out in D.C.’s Bloomingdale neighborhood. And here we must follow the words of Paul: Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. (For more from the author of “Framing Seth Rich” please click HERE)

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Iowa’s GOP Senators Say Health Care Law Repeal Unlikely

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Lowering expectations, Iowa’s two Republican senators say the long-promised repeal of “Obamacare” is unlikely, and any final agreement with the Republican-controlled House is uncertain.

The comments Tuesday by Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst come as the Republican-controlled Senate moves forward on its work to dismantle the 2010 health care bill while facing conflicting demands within their own party and lockstep Democratic opposition. Both senators are active players in the health care debate.

“You can’t repeal it in its entirety,” Ernst told reporters after a joint appearance with Grassley in suburban Des Moines. (Read more from “Iowa’s GOP Senators Say Health Care Law Repeal Unlikely” HERE)

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Report Finds Thousands of Noncitizens on Voter Rolls in Virginia

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A conservative legal organization has uncovered that Virginia election officials removed thousands of voters between 2011 and May 2017.

In a report released Tuesday, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative legal group, found 5,556 voters were removed because they were noncitizens and that one-third of those removed voted illegally.

Hans von Spakovsky, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a board member of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, told The Daily Signal in an email that the findings of the report are alarming.

“This report should concern everyone,” von Spakovsky said, adding:

It highlights the problem of illegal voting by noncitizens and illustrates the shocking fact that not only do election officials not have any measures in place to prevent this from happening, but that law enforcement apparently has no interest in prosecuting this fraud when it is discovered. And the circumstances of these cases show that what PILF has discovered despite resistance by state officials may only be the tip of the iceberg.

“This report is timed in a way to … keep the discussion fresh in the voting public’s mind because the reality is, we’re told over and over again that this sort of thing does not happen,” Logan Churchwell, communication’s director at the Public Interest Legal Foundation, told The Daily Signal in an interview.

The report also found that 7,474 illegal ballots were cast from the group of removed noncitizens and that some records of illegal voting went back to the 1980s.

According to the report, which was based on voter history documents, record requests, and lawsuits, noncitizens “were caught by happenstance, usually by telling the motor vehicle agency they were not a citizen after previously telling the agency they were a citizen.”

“At the instruction of Gov. [Terry] McAuliffe’s political appointees, local election officials spent countless resources to prevent this information from spilling into the open,” J. Christian Adams, president and general counsel at the Public Interest Legal Foundation, said in a statement, adding:

Virginia hid critical information that would have improved election integrity while a political operative-turned-governor vetoed numerous proposals that would’ve prevented alien registration and voting. From [Northern Virginia] to Norfolk and all urban and rural points in between, alien voters are casting ballots with practically no legal consequences in response.

McAuliffe and his appointees also obstructed legislative initiatives to combat voter fraud, according to the report.

The Daily Signal contacted McAuliffe’s office but did not receive a response.

It was a challenge, Churchwell said, to obtain data on the noncitizens.

Some counties and municipalities, like Prince William County in Northern Virginia, cooperated, but others did not comply, according to Churchwell.

“What we started hearing was ‘I’m sorry, I can’t give you that information,’ ‘Sorry, I can’t do that, that information is protected,’” Churchwell said. “So even after one county says, ‘Here’s the records you asked for,’ you go across the county line, they immediately start telling you no. And then all of those no’s become uniform answers,” Churchwell said.

County officials, Churchwell said, used the Drivers Privacy Protection Act, which prohibits disclosure of personal information of a person’s motor vehicle record as a shield to protect voting records.

The process to verify citizenship must change for the problem to be solved, and Churchwell said he is hopeful that President Donald Trump’s panel to investigate voter fraud, launched in early May, will help.

“The next big discussion that this presidential commission will likely launch into and Congress might even go into thereafter is how do we essentially modernize our voter registration system,” Churchwell said.

The question, Churchwell said, is how to balance state control over voter integrity, but also provide guidance to states so they can better verify the citizenship status of incoming applicants.

“This idea of ‘check the box yes or no’ is not going to work,” Churchwell said. (For more from the author of “Report Finds Thousands of Noncitizens on Voter Rolls in Virginia” please click HERE)

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A Sanctuary City … for Abortion?!

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Sanctuary city jurisdictions are local governments that seek to trample upon and undermine the federal government’s constitutional role in enforcing immigration law by offering cover to illegal aliens. However, another sort of “sanctuary” legislation in the U.S. seeks to continually and legally trample the human conscience to protect abortion.

Religious groups in Missouri are now suing to overturn a St. Louis “abortion sanctuary” city ordinance that would have disastrous effects on the freedoms of religion, speech, and association. The AP reports:

A group of St. Louis Catholics filed a lawsuit against the city Monday over a local ordinance that prohibits discrimination based on “reproductive health decisions,” saying the law could force employers or landlords to go against their religious beliefs. The law, enacted in February, bars employers from hiring or firing people based on whether they have had an abortion, get pregnant outside of marriage, or use contraceptives or artificial insemination. Landlords also can’t refuse to rent to someone based on those criteria. Opponents say they law makes St. Louis a sanctuary city for abortion. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Roman Catholic grade schools operating under the Archdiocese of St. Louis; Our Lady’s Inn, a home for pregnant homeless women; and a private company whose owner is Catholic. It seeks to stop the city from enforcing the ordinance.

“The passage of this bill is not a milestone of our city’s success,” said St. Louis Archbishop Robert J. Carlson at a public press conference after filing the lawsuit on Monday. “It is rather a marker of our city’s embrace of the culture of death.”

Alderwoman Megan Green, 15th ward, who originally sponsored the legislation, called the lawsuit “frivolous.”

“We know that discrimination does exist. (The ordinance) was done to make sure we are protecting women in making their own medical choices,” Green said Monday, per the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

This is pure pro-abortion politician-ese.

Brushing past Alderwoman Green’s too-commonly-held assumption that abortion is simply just another “medical choice” — rather than a willful taking of human life (dressed up in a lab coat) — the ordinance does nothing to affect any St. Louisan’s ability to procure an abortion or means of contraception (aside from forcing employers to pay for the latter).

Rather, it seeks to elevate actions that just happen to be in concert with their worldview to a protected class (over the First Amendment rights of all else in the city who disagree with them), draping it all in the language of “anti-discrimination.”

And the measure goes far beyond just freedom of religion, but also freedom of speech as well. The law prohibits any housing or job listing “which expresses directly or indirectly any preference, limitation, specification, or discrimination because of reproductive health decisions.”

At the same press conference on Monday in St. Louis, Thomas More Society special counsel Sarah Pitlyk said: “It’s like a page right out of George Orwell’s ‘1984,’ in which people could be prosecuted for ‘thought crimes.’

One has to wonder: Was there really an epidemic of landlords asking women for their medical history in the city? Are these sorts of questions commonplace, across the board, in St. Louis job interviews? If not, what other ends would this serve (aside from creating a means to punish those who disagree with the abortion lobby’s established orthodoxy)?

This is several steps past the contraception mandate that brought the owners of Hobby Lobby and the Little Sisters of the Poor to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Instead of making nonprofits violate their deeply held beliefs in order to merely remain operational, such abortion-sanctuary measures would actively undermine conservative groups’ own goals by forcing them to hire people whose worldviews fundamentally contradict the mission of pro-life organizations.

What this law implicitly teaches is that the killing of preborn children – and one’s support of the procedure – are in effect more important to the St. Louis government than the fundamental rights of conscience of anyone who dares disagree. It is not enough to be able to do so legally, but nobody may dissent to that action in any meaningful way, even with their own property.

The fundamental right of conscience are a sanctuary for the human soul. Now the federal courts will consider whether that ancient, inalienable refuge should even still exist in the city of St. Louis. (For more from the author of “A Sanctuary City … for Abortion?!” please click HERE)

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Cut or ‘Clean’: Trump, Congress Negotiate on How to Raise the Debt Ceiling

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Since winning a House majority in 2010, congressional Republicans have asked for any increase in the nation’s borrowing limit to be offset, at least in part, by spending cuts.

President Barack Obama denied that ambition, but it’s different now that Republicans control the presidency and both houses of Congress.

Or, so it might seem. Last week, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin indicated a “preference” for passage of a clean bill that raises the debt ceiling from $19.81 trillion without necessitating cuts—and before Congress leaves for its August recess.

“I urge you to raise the debt limit before you leave for the summer,” he said.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other Democratic leaders also support such a “clean” increase in the debt ceiling, without attaching it to other matters. But Republicans likely aren’t unified on how to raise the debt limit.

“The responsible thing to do is address the debt ceiling early and avoid a last-minute crisis,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a member and former chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, told The Daily Signal in an email.

“Any debt limit increase should be paired with spending cuts to address our debt,” Jordan said. “The federal government has a spending problem and it’s time that Congress took meaningful steps toward getting it under control.”

The debt ceiling marks the federal government’s ability to continue borrowing money to pay for its spending. Raising the limit technically isn’t new spending, but it rarely takes the government long to reach the new limit.

The House Freedom Caucus, a group of about three dozen conservatives, issued a statement last week in support of raising the debt limit by August. But the caucus opposed doing so without conditions, and demanded any increase be paired with “cutting [the budget] where necessary, capping where able, and working to balance in the near future.”

Raising the debt ceiling should include budget savings, but shouldn’t mean threatening to default on paying the nation’s bills, said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group.

“There should not be talk of allowing the country to default. That’s not a credible threat nor a legitimate strategy,” MacGuineas told The Daily Signal. “But, it does make sense to include savings and debt reduction as part of any package to increase the debt ceiling.”

The August recess is earlier than Congress had planned for raising the nation’s borrowing limit, but it is a reasonable amount of time in which Congress can move, MacGuineas said. Such savings should be consistent with a budget policy Congress decides on, which she said she hopes will be reached by that point.

As of last week, the Treasury Department measured the national debt at $19.8 trillion, right at the limit.

The debt limit came back into effect March 15, after it was suspended temporarily by a 2015 agreement between Congress and Obama.

President Donald Trump’s budget proposal estimated that the national debt will increase to $21 trillion by the end of 2018, and to $24.6 trillion by 2027.

Under Obama, the debt increased from $10.6 trillion upon his inauguration in January 2009 to $19.94 trillion when he left office in January 2017.

Policies in the Trump budget proposal, such as imposing work requirements for recipients of Medicaid and food stamps, could be included in a package raising the debt ceiling, said Romina Boccia, a federal budget expert who is deputy director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

Boccia noted the public doesn’t support simply increasing the borrowing limit without fiscally responsible measures.

“A clean debt ceiling increase is bad optics, bad politics, and bad policy,” Boccia told The Daily Signal. “The debt ceiling can be a key legislative tool for spending cuts in the future and to rein in spending and deficits.”

Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, opposed raising the debt ceiling without achieving savings when he was a House member from South Carolina. Mulvaney also was part of the House Freedom Caucus.

White House officials last week had a “listening session” with conservative groups and members of Congress about raising the debt ceiling, Boccia said.

Testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee last week, Mnuchin replied, “That is my preference” when asked about raising the debt ceiling without conditions. Referring to the Trump administration, the treasury secretary also told the committee:

We are very concerned that the debt has gone from $10 trillion to $20 trillion over the last eight years. We believe that the most important issue is economic growth. … I urge you to raise the debt limit before you leave for the summer. We can all discuss how we cut spending in the future and how we deal with budgets going forward, but it is absolutely critical that where we spent money, that we keep the credit of the United States as the most critical issue. It is the reserve currency of the world and we need to make sure we raise our debt ceiling to pay our debts.

(For more from the author of “Cut or ‘Clean’: Trump, Congress Negotiate on How to Raise the Debt Ceiling” please click HERE)

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‘Overpopulation’ Fears Are a Hoax. Here’s Why Higher Populations Are Actually a Good Thing.

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In 1798, Thomas Malthus wrote “An Essay on the Principle of Population.” He predicted that mankind’s birthrate would outstrip our ability to grow food and would lead to mass starvation.

Malthus’ wrong predictions did not deter Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich from making a similar prediction.

In his 1968 best-seller, “The Population Bomb,” which has sold more than 2 million copies, Ehrlich warned: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”

This hoax resulted in billions of dollars being spent to fight overpopulation.

According to the standard understanding of the term, human overpopulation occurs when the ecological footprint of a human population in a specific geographical location exceeds the carrying capacity of the place occupied by that group.

Let’s look at one aspect of that description—namely, population density.

Let’s put you, the reader, to a test. See whether you can tell which country is richer and which is poorer just by knowing two countries’ population density.

North Korea’s population density is 518 people per square mile, whereas South Korea’s is more than double that, at 1,261 people per square mile.

Hong Kong’s population density is 16,444, whereas Somalia’s is 36.

Congo has 75 people per square mile, whereas Singapore has 18,513.

Looking at the gross domestic products of these countries, one would have to be a lunatic to believe that smaller population density leads to greater riches.

Here are some gross domestic product data expressed in millions of U.S. dollars: North Korea ($17,396), South Korea ($1,411,246), Hong Kong ($320,668), Somalia ($5,707), Congo ($41,615), and Singapore ($296,967).

The overpopulation hoax has led to horrible population control programs. The United Nations Population Fund has helped governments deny women the right to choose the number and spacing of their children.

Overpopulation concerns led China to enact a brutal one-child policy. Forced sterilization is a method of population control in some countries. Nearly a quarter-million Peruvian women were sterilized.

Our government, through the U.N. Population Fund, is involved in “population moderation” programs around the world, including in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, the Philippines, Thailand, Egypt, Turkey, Ethiopia, and Colombia.

The entire premise behind population control is based on the faulty logic that humans are not valuable resources.

The fact of business is that humans are what the late Julian L. Simon called the ultimate resource.

That fact becomes apparent by pondering this question: Why is it that Gen. George Washington did not have cellphones to communicate with his troops and rocket launchers to sink British ships anchored in New York Harbor?

Surely, all of the physical resources—such as aluminum alloys, copper, iron ore, and chemical propellants—necessary to build cellphones and rocket launchers were around during Washington’s time. In fact, they were around at the time of the caveman.

There is only one answer for why cellphones, rocket launchers, and millions of other things are around today but were not around yesteryear.

The growth in human knowledge, human ingenuity, job specialization, and trade led to industrialization, which, coupled with personal liberty and private property rights, made it possible.

Human beings are valuable resources, and the more we have of them the better.

The greatest threat to mankind’s prosperity is government, not population growth. For example, Zimbabwe was agriculturally rich but, with government interference, was reduced to the brink of mass starvation.

Any country faced with massive government interference can be brought to starvation. Blaming poverty on overpopulation not only lets governments off the hook but also encourages the enactment of harmful, inhumane policies.

Today’s poverty has little to do with overpopulation. The most commonly held characteristics of non-poor countries are greater personal liberty, private property rights, the rule of law, and an economic system closer to capitalism than to communism.

That’s the recipe for prosperity. (For more from the author of “‘Overpopulation’ Fears Are a Hoax. Here’s Why Higher Populations Are Actually a Good Thing.” please click HERE)

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These Numbers From New Planned Parenthood Report Show Need to Defund Abortion Giant

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Each year, Planned Parenthood Federation of America issues an annual report outlining the abortion giant’s medical service data, revenue and expenses, and advocacy and educational activity.

This week, the 2015-2016 report went public. These reports are typically published in December or January, but this year’s highly anticipated report was inexplicably released several months later than expected.

As previously explained at The Daily Signal, these annual reports provide Americans on both sides of the abortion debate with important information about abortion incidence and other services provided by Planned Parenthood, which receives over half a billion dollars from taxpayers each year.

The report opens with the revelation that Planned Parenthood served 100,000 fewer women in 2015-2016 compared to 2014-2015, and that in the same period the number of Planned Parenthood health centers and affiliates declined.

Planned Parenthood performed more abortions last year (328,348) compared to the previous year (323,999). In the same period, contraception and cancer screening and prevention services declined.

Specifically, Planned Parenthood served fewer female reversible contraception clients, performed fewer vasectomies and female sterilization procedures, and provided fewer emergency contraception kits in 2015-2016 compared to the previous year.

Planned Parenthood also performed fewer breast examinations, fewer HPV vaccinations, and fewer colposcopy and cryotherapy procedures in 2015-2016. Despite often repeated claims to the contrary, Planned Parenthood provides zero mammograms.

The report reveals a dramatic decline in prenatal services. Planned Parenthood provided 9,419 in 2015-2016 compared to 17,419 in the previous year—meaning 8,000 fewer women and their unborn children received prenatal care in just one year.

This sharp decline reinforces the findings of a pro-life organization’s investigative report. Earlier this year, Live Action—a nonprofit dedicated to ending abortion and protecting the right to life—contacted 97 Planned Parenthood clinics searching for prenatal care and was turned away by 92 of the centers.

Despite the declining number of Planned Parenthood clinics, clients, and many services, the abortion giant continues to receive half a billion dollars from taxpayers each year.

For the year ended June 30, 2015, Planned Parenthood reported $553,700,000 in “government health services grants & reimbursements.” For the year ended June 30, 2016, Planned Parenthood reported a slight increase to $554,600,000.

Planned Parenthood also reports increased excess revenue and net assets.

In fiscal year 2015, its excess revenue was nearly $59 million and net assets totaled more than $1.4 billion. For fiscal year 2016, Planned Parenthood’s excess revenue increased to $77.5 million and net assets now total over $1.5 billion.

The information in the latest report is particularly relevant as Congress considers a budget reconciliation bill to repeal Obamacare. The bill includes a provision that would disqualify Planned Parenthood affiliates from receiving Medicaid reimbursements for one year after enactment of the bill.

Planned Parenthood’s latest annual report underscores why taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize the abortion giant. As the number of abortions increases, fewer women are turning to the group for care like cancer treatment and prevention services, contraception, and prenatal services.

Government funds currently flowing to Planned Parenthood could instead be directed to the thousands of centers that provide health care for women without entanglement in on-demand abortion.

It’s time for Congress to end taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood, its affiliates, and other abortion providers once and for all by sending the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act to President Donald Trump’s desk for signature. (For more from the author of “These Numbers From New Planned Parenthood Report Show Need to Defund Abortion Giant” please click HERE)

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