Diocese Splits Over Gay Clergy, Battles Episcopal Denomination for Church

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A California church is battling to keep property from the Episcopal Church after leaving the denomination over its acceptance of gay clergy.

The Episcopal Church filed a lawsuit against St. Columba Church, alleging that St. Columba’s administration illegally took ownership of its church building after splitting with the denomination in 2008 and joining the Anglican Church of America.

St. Columba argues, however, that the former bishop of the Diocese of San Joaquin, John-David Schofield, transferred ownership of the church building and grounds to the church’s administration while he was still bishop, making their ownership legal.

Schofield attempted to split the entire diocese from the Episcopal Church in 2006 after the denomination appointed its first gay bishop, Gene Robinson. He succeeded in handing over ownership of St. Columba in 2007, but the Episcopal Church removed him as bishop before who could do anything further. . .

The lawsuit is only the latest in a series of legal battles that have ensued since churches began leaving the Episcopal denomination over the denomination’s acceptance of gay clergy and gay marriage. The sharp disagreement over the church’s stance on homosexuality featured as a major factor in the multi-million dollar legal battle between the Epsicopal denomination and 29 churches of the Diocese of South Carolina in 2017. (Read more from “Diocese Splits Over Gay Clergy, Battles Episcopal Denomination for Church” HERE)

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Cringeworthy: Failed 2016 Candidate Says All Black Men Look Alike, or Something

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She’s the woman who just cannot fade into the night. Hillary Rodham Clinton still says she wants to be president when asked about 2020. Of course, why should she think otherwise, as annoying as she is in the national political discourse? The fact that Democrats keep circling back to her is indicative of their weak bench. Yes, there are a lot of up-and-coming progressives, but no one knows who the hell they are—and their credentials are shoddy, to say the least. If there is any name recognition, it’s deeply curtailed by geography, like no one knows who the hell Sen. Cory Booker is outside of Jersey, Sen. Gillibrand outside of the Catskill Mountains. For all their hollering, the fact remains that Donald Trump is still on the path to re-election.

Clinton made these remarks in New York City, though she also decided to make what some are saying could be construed as a racial remark, namely by saying that all black males look alike. . .

Ms. Swisher did mix up Eric Holder and Cory Booker, which led to Mrs. Clinton saying, “Well, they all look alike.” Swisher was asking about the recent incivility in our discourse (which is still politics at its base level, but whatever), noting Holder’s remarks about kicking Republicans; Swisher incorrectly said it was Booker. Clinton did say she adores Booker prior to this rather odd remark.

Not all agree that this was a racial joke, but rather a bad impromptu comment made in light of Swisher’s error. (Read more from “Cringeworthy: Failed 2016 Candidate Says All Black Men Look Alike, or Something” HERE)

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A Second Caravan Is Now Forming

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The 7,000-strong migrant caravan that’s heading toward the United States from Central America is not the only one the Trump administration may soon have to deal with. A second migrant caravan has formed at the Honduran border, although it is currently much smaller, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Thousands of Honduran migrants gathered in a Guatemalan city near the border with Honduras Tuesday to prepare for a new caravan that would follow in the footsteps of a larger group currently marching to the U.S.-Mexico border, posing a fresh challenge to Guatemalan and Mexican authorities seeking to contain a surge in mass migration.

Church-run charities assisting migrants and activists say as many as 2,500 Hondurans who crossed into Guatemala in recent days have gathered in the city of Chiquimula, near the border with Honduras. But estimates of the size of the new group vary widely, from that number down to a few hundred, according to Francesca Fontanini, spokeswoman for the Americas region for the United Nations office on refugees.

The migrants say they plan to head to Ciudad Tecun Uman, the Guatemalan border town that was overwhelmed by a larger group of migrants who rushed into Mexico over the weekend. (WSJ)

(Read more from “A Second Caravan Is Now Forming” HERE)

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Women’s March Holds ‘Vigil’ to Oppose Anti-Semitism — Led by Linda Sarsour

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The Women’s March, whose leaders have openly embraced anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, tried to lead the “resistance” in opposition to President Donald Trump in the wake of the Pennsylvania synagogue shooting Sunday, holding a “vigil” outside the White House to protest anti-Semitism.

There was just one problem: it was led by noted supporter of anti-Semite Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan (and likely anti-Semite, herself), Linda Sarsour.

“Today we are turning our grief to action with @jewishaction,” the Women’s March tweeted, “to send a clear message that these anti-semitic and xenophobic attacks can never happen again.”

Notice they’re conflating terms — associating “anti-Semitism” with “xenophobia” in an effort to connect violence explicitly against the Jewish people with a broader campaign against opponents of unfettered immigration — because it’ll become important later. . .

Sarsour and fellow Women’s March leaders Tamika Mallory and Carmen Perez are, of course, friends with arguably the nation’s foremost anti-Semite, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who regularly delivers anti-Jewish messages from the pulpit of his mosque in Chicago, and just last week referred to Jews as “termites” who require extermination. (Read more from “Women’s March Holds ‘Vigil’ to Oppose Anti-Semitism — Led by Linda Sarsour” HERE)

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The Originalist Case Against Birthright Citizenship

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The American people are being told by the political class that there is nothing they can do to prevent future waves of illegal immigrants from coming here, unilaterally declaring political and legal jurisdiction, and securing citizenship for their children. We are told that there is no recourse through our elected representatives to prevent illegal immigrants from gaining a legal foothold in this country, all because of a footnote from the most radical anti-originalist justice of this century, William Brennan Jr.

If you are scratching your head wondering how our own Constitution can be used as a suicide pact against us by foreign countries, you are not missing anything. This irrational sentiment expressed by a number of conservative and liberal pundits alike, in fact, undermines the very fabric of the social contract, popular sovereignty, and the republican form of government established by the preamble of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Mandated birthright citizenship even for legal immigrants is a big stretch

Let’s put aside everything we believe as conservatives for a moment and take the activist ruling of Wong Kim Ark (169 U.S. 649 (1898)) as impregnable constitutional law. As such, the Fourteenth Amendment would compel Congress and the executive agencies to grant citizenship to all children of legal immigrants. Although we all agree as a matter of policy that it is a good idea to grant children born to legal permanent residents citizenship, by accepting the 1898 court decision as settled law, thereby enshrining birthright citizenship into our Constitution, we’d have to swallow the following ridiculous notions:

We’d be adopting one-directional stare decisis of an activist court that overturned two previous court decisions: the 1873 Slaughterhouse Cases and Elk v. Wilkins (1884). In those cases, the Supreme Court made it clear that the original intent of the Fourteenth Amendment was primarily to grant equal rights to freed black slaves and that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” required that the petitioner for citizenship be “completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance.” These cases excluded children born to foreign diplomats and American Indians and were quite clear that the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment would not include all children of immigrants – most of whom would have been covered by less political jurisdiction than even those born on Indian reservations, which were partially under U.S. jurisdiction. (See more from Prof. John Eastman at NRO on defining jurisdiction.)

We’d be overturning the most logical meaning of the text of the citizenship clause, rendering the second phrase all but superfluous.

We’d be ignoring the intent of the drafters of this amendment, who clearly had no intention of mandating birthright citizenship for all immigrants (see more in the Eastman article). While originalists like to focus on text, in this case the text fits in exactly with the intent of the drafters, as demonstrated by the Senate floor debate.

We’d be adopting the Revolutionary-era feudal system of English Common Law rooted in the fact that men are subjects of the state by virtue of being born on the soil. This is antithetical to the consent-based notion of citizenship expressed by our Founders. Although many of our laws are built upon the English Common Law, this certainly was not one of them, and this segregation-era court was incorporating it into American law, ironically, at a time when England was abandoning feudalism. As Thomas Jefferson wrote precisely in a discussion on immigration in Notes on the State of Virginia (Query 8, 211), our Constitution is a composition of the “freest principles of the English constitution.”

By adopting jus soli as a constitutional mandate (not just policy) for automatic citizenship based on soil, and not jus sanguinis – right of blood – all children born to American citizens abroad would not automatically be citizens, as noted by then-Chief Justice Fuller in his dissent in Wong Kim Ark.
Fuller further noted in his masterful dissent that by mandating automatic citizenship for all children of immigrants – no matter the circumstances – the Fourteenth Amendment would have the power “to cut off the legislative power from dealing with the subject.” Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress plenary power over naturalizations. Fuller observes that “the right of a nation to expel or deport foreigners who have not been naturalized or taken any steps toward becoming citizens of a country is as absolute and unqualified as the right to prohibit and prevent their entrance into the country.”

Extrapolating birthright to illegals countermands the social contract and all semblance of sovereignty

Freeze frame at this point.

Accepting the notion of automatic birthright citizenship for legal immigrants as a constitutional mandate is hard enough to swallow. Yet the conservative pundits in the political class want to extrapolate this terrible decision to children of illegal immigrants. As if it wasn’t enough to accept the activist 1898 court case from the segregationist justices, proponents of anchor citizenship for illegal immigrants rely on footnote 10 in William Brennan’s Plylor v. Doe (1982) opinion – a decision that absurdly forced taxpayers to fund K-12 education for illegal immigrants.

In that footnote, which is nothing more than dicta (nonbinding comments not relevant to the case), Brennan quotes “one early commentator” noting that “given the historical emphasis on geographic territoriality, bounded only, if at all, by principles of sovereignty and allegiance, no plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment ‘jurisdiction’ can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful.”

There you have it, until the end of time. American citizens – through their elected representatives – have no recourse to prevent future illegal immigrants from obtaining citizenship against the will of the people, because of the nonbinding footnote of the most radical justice of the 20th century, which in itself relied on a decision reversing precedent and relying on the English feudal system.

In reality, there is a huge difference between the legal permanent resident who was the subject of the 1898 court case and the illegal immigrants of today, even if we were to fully accept the concept of birthright citizenship based on nothing more than geographical jurisdiction. The justices in Wong awarded the child citizenship because his Chinese immigrant parents were “domiciled” in America (legally, before the ban on Chinese immigration). As Prof. Eastman notes, “’Domicile’ is a legal term of art; it means ‘a person’s legal home,’ according to Black’s law dictionary, and is often used synonymously with citizenship.” Undoubtedly, those here in contravention to our laws, unlike Wong Kim Ark’s parents, cannot unilaterally declare domicile in our country.

And this all leads to a much more fundamental and vital discussion about sovereignty. There is simply no way our Constitution can prohibit our elected representatives from preventing illegal immigrants from driving their pregnant wives to the border, and, assuming the border patrol fails to catch the speeding vehicle in time, poof! That baby is a citizen.

First, as noted before, Article 1 Section 8 grants Congress plenary power over naturalization. Mandating automatic citizenship to babies born in the aforementioned case would completely strip the ability of Congress to exercise the most basic regulation over naturalization – keeping out those we affirmatively do not want in the country.

But more fundamentally, the notion that illegal immigrants can unilaterally declare citizenship for their kids against the will of people and the laws duly passed by the people’s representatives, and that those representatives would lack a single recourse to stop it even prospectively, violates the very essence of consent-based citizenship. The notion of consent-based citizenship serves as the bedrock of popular sovereignty, territorial sovereignty, and Republicanism – all built on the social contract. The preamble of the Declaration of Independence was built upon the principle that in order to protect natural rights, people are entitled to popular sovereignty – to form a government that derives its powers “from the consent of the governed.”

Professor Edward Erler has been the leading voice observing how birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants, and indeed the entire phenomenon of illegal immigration and their securing of rights and benefits, violates the social contract in the most foundational way. In his book “The Founders on Citizenship and Immigration,” Erler writes the following on citizenship and the social contract:

[T]he social contract requires reciprocal consent. Not only must the individual consent to be governed, but he must also be accepted by the community as a whole. If all persons born within the geographical limits of the United States are to be counted citizens – even those whose parents are in the United States illegally – then this would be tantamount to the conferral of citizenship without the consent of “the whole people.”

Drawing on the writings of our Founders, Erler notes that they clearly envisioned that “new members can be added only with the consent of those who already constitute civil society.” He cites Madison, who wrote that “in the case of naturalization a new member is added to the social compact, not only without a unanimous consent of the members, but by a majority of the governing body, deriving its powers from a majority of the individual parties to the social compact.”

Even Wong Kim Ark court would never mandate citizenship for illegal aliens

Clearly, even the authors of the Wong decision, unlike William Brennan, understood the basic concept of consent-based citizenship, at least as it relates to those who come here illegally. While some intellectuals contend that because there was no real concept of illegal immigration in those days, the decision would apply to all aliens, the writings of that very court prove otherwise.

In fact, by that point, pursuant to the immigration laws passed in 1882 and 1891, Congress had already denied admission to the following categories of aliens: “idiots,” the insane, paupers, and polygamists; persons liable to become a public charge; those convicted of a felony or other crime or misdemeanor involving moral depravity; and sufferers “from a loathsome or dangerous” contagious disease. They also passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, banning all new immigration from China. The Immigration Act of 1891 created a new office, the commissioner of immigration, within the Treasury Department, vested with the power to inspect new immigrants and potentially deny them entry if they were deemed inadmissible under one of the criteria.

In Nishimura Ekiu v. United States (1892), a Japanese woman sued immigration officials for denying her entry becauase she would be a supposed public charge. She claimed that her due process was violated because she was not afforded the opportunity to present her case. And no, she was not even asserting the dubious modern substantive due process violation in pursuit of new fundamental rights; she was merely alleging a procedural due process violation. Yet Justice Gray – the author of the Wong decision – not only rejected her claim, he noted that the courts shouldn’t even have the jurisdiction to second-guess legislative and executive decisions on immigration. Here are the relevant quotes, with my emphasis added:

“It is an accepted maxim of international law that every sovereign nation has the power, as inherent in sovereignty, and essential to self-preservation, to forbid the entrance of foreigners within its dominions, or to admit them only in such cases and upon such conditions as it may see fit to prescribe. Vat. Law Nat. lib. 2, §§ 94, 100; 1 Phillim. Int. Law, (3d Ed.) c. 10, § 220. In the United States this power is vested in the national government, to which the constitution has committed the entire control of international relations, in peace as well as in war. It belongs to the political department of the government, and may be exercised either through treaties made by the president and senate, or through statutes enacted by congress, upon whom the constitution has conferred power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, including the entrance of ships, the importation of goods, and the bringing of persons into the ports of the United States; to establish a uniform rule of naturalization; to declare war, and to provide and maintain armies and navies; and to make all laws which may be necessary and proper for carrying into effect these powers and all other powers vested by the constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof. […]”

“It is not within the province of the judiciary to order that foreigners who have never been naturalized, nor acquired any domicile or residence within the United States, nor even been admitted into the country pursuant to law, shall be permitted to enter, in opposition to the constitutional and lawful measures of the legislative and executive branches of the national government. As to such persons, the decisions of executive or administrative officers, acting within powers expressly conferred by congress, are due process of law.”

Here we have the very activist author of the decision used as the foundation for the birthright argument clearly expressing the basic concept that Congress has the ability to control the nation’s sovereignty. It would require preposterous mental gymnastics to assume that, had this Japanese woman given birth at the port the day she was interviewed by the immigration officer, Justice Gray would have conferred citizenship on that baby – against the will of the people’s representatives.

Where is the voice of the people on immigration?

The reason the birthright discussion is so important is because it sheds so much light on the transmogrification of the judicial system on issues of popular sovereignty and the social contract. Not only do we have judges like Brennan bestowing citizenship and education rights on illegal immigrants from the high perches of the bench, they have invalidated almost every attempt by the states and federal government to keep out illegal immigrants. A California judge recently invalidated detention for all illegal immigrants with children, essentially mandating their irrevocable disappearance into the American population.

In addition to the courts, we have unelected bureaucrats and the U.N. transforming entire communities through refugee resettlements without the consent of the people. And although our current immigration system was formed by the Hart-Cellar Act (“Kennedy bill”) in 1965, the supporters of the bill lied to the American people and publicly ruled out the transformational outcome that indeed took place. For decades, illegal aliens have been counted in the Census and have now permanently distorted the representation the civil society needs to fight on behalf of its sovereignty.

What ever happened to the voice of the people?

Immigration transformation pursued outside the democratic process is even worse than having courts decide societal issues, such as abortion and gay marriage, in what Justice Scalia calls “societal transformation without representation.” The courts have now empowered themselves to unilaterally and immutably change civil society itself – without any recourse for those the Constitution vested with making such decisions. How far we have deviated from the Founders’ vision that even so-called conservatives support the idea of changing the civil society without the consent of its citizens.

Indeed, the issue of birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants is not just a tangential topic within immigration. It cuts to the very core of how illegal immigrants are able to force their will on the American citizenry and the broader issue of sovereignty. This runs much deeper than the Fourteenth Amendment. The question for policymakers has moved beyond whether we will survive as a nation as our Founders envisioned. We have already deviated extremely far from that vision. It’s a question of whether we are a nation at all. (For more from the author of “The Originalist Case Against Birthright Citizenship” please click HERE)

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Here’s How Much of Planned Parenthood’s Campaign Activity You Helped Pay for This Election Cycle

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One of the most prominent of the Republican Party’s unkept promises from the 2016 election will hurt them in more ways than one in 2018.

A new report from the pro-life nonprofit Live Action contains the latest numbers outlining what it calls “Planned Parenthood’s political money laundering scheme.” The report clearly shows that taxpayers ultimately contribute hugely to the abortion giant’s pro-abortion political activities on the campaign trail and beyond.

Planned Parenthood plans to spend a total of $20 million by itself in support of pro-abortion candidates in the 2018 midterm elections. The group is also taking part in another $30 million investment with three other groups for a political action committee called Win Justice PAC to mobilize voters in key battleground states.

This is all possible, the report explains, because — despite scandals involving its “health care services,” undercover videos released by the Center for Medical Progress, new allegations that clinics failed to report rape and abuse, and GOP control of the federal government since January 2017 — Planned Parenthood’s medical operations are subsidized by the American taxpayer to the tune of around half a billion dollars per year.

And while the group’s clinical and political arms are technically separate, that’s just not how things pan out in the real world, the report shows.

“While Planned Parenthood and its political arms are separate on paper, because taxpayers are forced to give the abortion chain over $500 million a year, donors are freed up to direct their money to Planned Parenthood’s political agenda rather than to fund what nominal health services Planned Parenthood itself provides,” explains Live Action CEO and founder Lila Rose in a press release.

“The corrupt bargain between Planned Parenthood and pro-abortion politicians must end,” continues Rose. “It’s paid for by taxpayers and with the lives of over 320,000 preborn children every year. Congress and the president must fulfill their promise to defund Planned Parenthood of all taxpayer dollars.” (For more from the author of “Here’s How Much of Planned Parenthood’s Campaign Activity You Helped Pay for This Election Cycle” please click HERE)

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OUTRAGE: Fox News Now Considers Any Criticism of George Soros to Be Anti-Semitic

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By CNN. . .On Sunday, the network’s senior vice president for programming, Gary Schreier, released a statement denouncing what many people called an anti-Semitic trope used by a guest on Dobbs’ show earlier in the week. . .

“We condemn the rhetoric by the guest on Lou Dobbs Tonight,” Schreier said in a short statement. “This episode was a repeat which has now been pulled from all future airings.”

The comment in question was made by Chris Farrell, a board member of the right-wing organization Judicial Watch, during Thursday night’s episode of Dobbs’ show. During a segment about the caravan of migrants moving toward the US’ southern border, Farrell called the State Department “Soros-occupied” territory, referring to billionaire and liberal philanthropist George Soros, one of the targets of mail bombs discovered earlier this week. (Read more from “Outrage: Fox News Now Considers Any Criticism of George Soros to Be Anti-Semetic” HERE)

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House Republican Campaign Chief Defends Anti-Soros Ads

By NBC News. Ohio Rep. Steve Stivers, chairman of the House GOP campaign arm, defended the group’s repeated criticism of billionaire liberal donor George Soros in campaign ads on Sunday.

The National Republican Congressional Committee has been running ads in Minnesota’s First Congressional District tying the Democratic candidate, Dan Feehan, to Soros. Feehan worked at the Center for New American Security, a think-tank that received funding from Soros.

The first ad, which began running the middle of this month, shows Soros sitting behind a pile of money as the words “connoisseur of chaos” show on the screen. . .

When asked about the ads, Stivers noted that the group’s independent expenditure staff, which creates the ads, is walled off from the rest of the committee leadership to comply with campaign finance laws. But he defended the ad as “factual.”

“Our independent expenditure arm is independent. But that ad is factual. And it also has nothing to do with calling for violence. That ad is a factual ad,” he said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” (Read more from “House Republican Campaign Chief Defends Anti-Soros Ads” HERE)

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RED ALERT: Meet the Laughably Fraudulent Patsy Just Arrested for Democrat-Staged Fake Bombs

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We were wondering what the October Surprise would be. This is it.

Authorities have made an arrest in Florida regarding the string of mail bombs targeting Democrats that have been discovered over the last few days. The suspect has been identified as Cesar Sayoc, (aka Cesar Alieri or Cesar Altieri Randazzo), a man with an extensive record, including a 2002 bomb threat and other charges up to 2015, as well as a bankruptcy filing in 2012, who registered Republican in 2016. Early reports showed a van plastered with pro-Trump political stickers and slogans being towed away by authorities. I guarantee you however, that this was a setup hatched by Democrats to shore up their flagging support as we head to the elections now less than two weeks away.

The entire operation is just too obvious.

Twelve bombs were sent to some of the most prominent Democrats in the news today, timed to arrive within days of one another, at the height of election season where the story would dominate the news cycle. The sender made little effort to hide the suspicious nature of the packages. In fact, they screamed “examine me, I’m suspicious.” They were also made to appear crude and stupid. Many words were misspelled, but how does such a person then manage to coordinate the timing so well that multiple packages would show up within days of each other in New York, Florida and California?

Many bomb experts have concluded that, while the bombs have the components needed to meet the “bomb” definition, that they couldn’t detonate and perhaps were deliberately made that way. The New York Times quoted other experts who said they looked “fake”:

Some bomb technicians who studied photos of the device that circulated on social media suggested that the bomb sent to CNN had hallmarks of fake explosives — the kind more typically depicted on television and in movies, rather than devices capable of detonating.

A digital clock was taped to the middle of the pipe, a feature that experts say is typically shown on fictional bombs in an attempt to ratchet up dramatic tension, but unnecessary in real life.

In fact, bombmakers generally avoid attaching visible clocks to their devices to keep from tipping off their targets about when the bombs are set to explode.

It was a foregone conclusion early on that whoever did this would be caught. He left just too much evidence. And his van literally screams “I am a rightwing nutjob.” It is brand spanking new. How could a poor, bankrupt guy allegedly living in his mother’s basement or in the van itself afford such a vehicle? The pro-Trump stickers are not stickers at all, but professionally-created, poster-sized collages designed to perfectly fit in each one of the van’s windows. And all the van’s windows are covered in them except the front driver’s side window and the windshield.

The reaction from Democrats was another tell. They were ready the minute the story hit – some even before it hit. John Brennan predicted that more bombs were coming because he hadn’t gotten one. The next day he did. When CNN received its bomb, instead of running for cover and calling authorities, they took photos of it. Alexander Soros was even able to get an OpEd printed in the New York Times the same day the Clinton/Obama bombs were found. How did he manage that without prior knowledge?
President Trump was immediately blamed for creating an atmosphere of “incivility” that motivated some right-wing nut to go after Democrats with bombs. Logically, that doesn’t square, because his rallies have uplifted and motivated people to vote, not enraged them with feelings of powerlessness that might inspire some nutjob with the same psychological profile as the Democrats’ baseball game shooter, James Hodgkinson. But logic has never been Democrats’ strong point. Subversion and duplicity however, is.

Unlike Republicans, who have to scramble for campaign dollars, the Left base is comprised of numerous billionaires, like George Soros and Tom Steyer, willing to shower money on leftwing candidates and causes, and who have shown themselves to be completely free of any ethical constraints. Some of these same individuals and groups were behind the Caravan financing and the Kavanaugh protests.

Here is what happened. The highly-organized, paid, Democrat opposition to the appointment of Justice Kavanaugh backfired, mobilizing the GOP base. The next effort was the Honduran Caravan, organized by Central and South American leftists (who collude with the American Left regularly), and financed by Soros and other big-dollar leftists. That has backfired too, and now many in the caravan are heading home, according to a Fox News report this morning.

This latest effort is the Democrats’ “October Surprise.” It has likely been long-planned but held in reserve as a last-minute Hail Mary pass if other efforts failed. They have found a patsy and offered him huge dollars to do this, knowing he would be caught because that was the point. He only registered Republican in 2016. He is likely a Democrat plant who developed a two-years long “conservative” track record to establish credibility. This is how undercover operatives work, and they exist on both sides of the aisle, although the Left has a lot more of them because the Left can afford to. Either way, this person knew going in that he would be arrested and possibly face a long-term jail sentence. He also knew he would receive ample compensation.

Veteran reporter and talk show host Shad Olson has written a brilliant analysis of Sayoc based on social media posts that show a far left activist who over the past two years tried to reinvent himself as a hardcore Trump supporter. That post, as far as I’m concerned, nails it.

People call such nonsense “conspiracy theories,”and “tin hat” stuff. Well, Democrats live in a fever swamp of conspiracy theories regarding their enemies and are famous for accusing Republicans and conservatives of it every day, most famously Hillary Clinton’s “vast right-wing conspiracy” comment. Like the guilty spouse, they accuse their partner of cheating. They are simply projecting what they do. But when someone else accuses them of some kind of conspiracy, we are all crazy.

Average, everyday people are unfamiliar with the deeply subversive nature of today’s Democrat Party. At its heart, it is nothing short of a domestic enemy fifth column led by hardcore Communists dedicated to overthrowing and destroying the nation we know and love. Consider what we endured during the eight years of President Obama’s reign of terror:

Trump/Russia Investigation Launched by the Obama administration in coordination with the Hillary Clinton campaign, with complicity right up to President Obama himself. This is a more fantastic, true story than the most imaginative spy fiction. The Trump/Russia investigation scheme was initiated in March 2016 by Democrat operative Alexandra Chalupa, who began investigating Trump as far back as 2015.

Fast ‘n Furious A gun-running scheme whereby the Eric Holder Justice Department underwrote firearms sales to Mexican cartels. They claimed that they hoped to trace those guns to cartel members. But internal documents show it was as much an effort to discredit American gun ownership. Meanwhile those very guns were used to border Patrol agent Brian Terry, and execute hundreds of Mexicans.

IRS Targeting An unprecedented targeting of American citizens that collectively comprised the most effective political opposition to the Left — handing Democrats the most devastating defeats in elections at all levels in 2010.

Benghazi Attacks Obama administration accused a film maker of triggering the Benghazi attacks, which it had advance warning were about to occur. Talk about an implausible conspiracy theory.

Arab Spring Assisted by the State Department and designed to turn the Middle East into a cauldron of instability. Worked beautifully.

There are many more, but you get the drift. The modern Democrat Party is the heart of deep state opposition to President Trump, conservatives, and our constitutional republic. They are capable of doing anything to win. This is their October Surprise. Make sure you vote. (For more from the author of “Red Alert: Meet the Laughably Fraudulent Patsy Just Arrested for Democrat-Staged Fake Bombs” please click HERE)

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America on the Brink: ‘Adolf Hitler Is Alive and Well in the United States, and Is Fast Rising to Power’

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Yet another shooting.

Yet another smear of ugliness, hatred and violence.

Yet another ratcheting up of the calls for the government to clamp down on the citizenry by imposing more costly security measures without any real benefit, more militarized police, more surveillance, more widespread mental health screening of the general population, more threat assessments and behavioral sensing warnings, more gun control measures, more surveillance cameras with facial recognition capabilities, more “See Something, Say Something” programs aimed at turning Americans into snitches and spies, more metal detectors and whole-body imaging devices at so-called soft targets, more roaming squads of militarized police empowered to do more stop-and-frisk searches, more fusion centers to centralize and disseminate information to law enforcement agencies, and more government monitoring of what Americans say and do, where they go, what they buy and how they spend their time.

All of these measures play into the government’s hands.

All of these measures add up to more government power, less real security and far less freedom.

As we have learned the hard way, the phantom promise of safety in exchange for restricted or regulated liberty is a false, misguided doctrine that has no basis in the truth.

Things are falling apart.

When things start to fall apart or implode, ask yourself: who stands to benefit?

In most cases, it’s the government that stands to benefit by amassing greater powers at the citizenry’s expense.

Unfortunately, the government’s answer to civil unrest and societal violence, as always, will lead us further down the road we’ve travelled since 9/11 towards totalitarianism and away from freedom.

With alarming regularity, the nation is being subjected to a spate of violence that not only terrorizes the public but also destabilizes the country’s fragile ecosystem, and gives the government greater justifications to crack down, lock down, and institute even more authoritarian policies for the so-called sake of national security without many objections from the citizenry.

Clearly, America is being pushed to the brink of a national nervous breakdown.

This breakdown—triggered by polarizing circus politics, media-fed mass hysteria, racism, classism, xenophobia, militarization and militainment (the selling of war and violence as entertainment), a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness in the face of growing government corruption and brutality, and a growing economic divide that has much of the population struggling to get by—is manifesting itself in madness, mayhem and an utter disregard for the very principles and liberties that have kept us out of the clutches of totalitarianism for so long.

Yet there is a method to this madness.

Remember, authoritarian regimes begin with incremental steps. Overcriminalization, surveillance of innocent citizens, imprisonment for nonviolent—victimless—crimes, etc. Bit by bit, the citizenry finds its freedoms being curtailed and undermined for the sake of national security. And slowly the populace begins to submit.

No one speaks up for those being targeted.

No one resists these minor acts of oppression.

No one recognizes the indoctrination into tyranny for what it is.

Historically this failure to speak truth to power has resulted in whole populations being conditioned to tolerate unspoken cruelty toward their fellow human beings, a bystander syndrome in which people remain silent and disengaged—mere onlookers—in the face of abject horrors and injustice.

Time has insulated us from the violence perpetrated by past regimes in their pursuit of power: the crucifixion and slaughter of innocents by the Romans, the torture of the Inquisition, the atrocities of the Nazis, the butchery of the Fascists, the bloodshed by the Communists, and the cold-blooded war machines run by the military industrial complex.

We can disassociate from such violence.

We can convince ourselves that we are somehow different from the victims of government abuse.

We can continue to spout empty campaign rhetoric about how great America is, despite the evidence to the contrary.

We can avoid responsibility for holding the government accountable.

We can zip our lips and bind our hands and shut our eyes.

In other words, we can continue to exist in a state of denial.

Whatever we do or don’t do, it won’t change the facts: the nation is imploding, and our republic is being pushed ever closer to martial law.

As Vann R. Newkirk II writes for the Atlantic:

Trumpism demands that violence be solved by local militarization: increased security at schools, the arming of teachers, and now, the adoption of guns in places intended quite literally to be sanctuaries from the scourges of the world. Taken altogether, what Trumpism seems to intend is the creation—or perhaps the expansion—of the machinery of a police state…

In facing what appears to be a rising tide of violence—a tide that Trump himself elevates and encourages—the prescription of arms merely capitulates to the demands of that bloodshed. The purpose of political violence and terrorism is not necessarily to eliminate or even always to create body counts, but to disempower people, to spread the contagion of fear, to splinter communities into self-preserving bunkers, and to invalidate the very idea that a common destiny is even possible. Mandates to arm people accelerate this process. They inherently promote the idea that society cannot reduce the global level of harm, and promote the authoritarian impulses of people seeking order.

Where Newkirk misses the point is by placing the blame squarely on the Trump Administration.

This shift towards totalitarianism and martial law started long before Trump, set in motion by powers-that-be that see the government as a means to an end: power and profit.

As Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, recognized years ago, “Adolf Hitler is alive and well in the United States, and he is fast rising to power.”

Roberts was not comparing Trump to Hitler, as so many today are wont to do.

Rather, he was comparing the American Police State to the Nazi Third Reich, which is a far more apt comparison.

After all, U.S. government agencies—the FBI, CIA and the military—have fully embraced many of the Nazi’s well-honed policing tactics and have used them repeatedly against American citizens for years now.

Indeed, with every passing day, the United States government borrows yet another leaf from Nazi Germany’s playbook: Secret police. Secret courts. Secret government agencies. Surveillance. Censorship. Intimidation. Harassment. Torture. Brutality. Widespread corruption. Entrapment. Indoctrination. Indefinite detention.

These are not tactics used by constitutional republics, where the rule of law and the rights of the citizenry reign supreme. Rather, they are the hallmarks of authoritarian regimes, where the only law that counts comes in the form of heavy-handed, unilateral dictates from a supreme ruler who uses a secret police to control the populace.

The empowerment of the Gestapo, Germany’s secret police, tracked with the rise of the Nazi regime in much the same way that the rise of the American police state corresponds to the decline of freedom in America.

How did the Gestapo become the terror of the Third Reich?

It did so by creating a sophisticated surveillance and law enforcement system that relied for its success on the cooperation of the military, the police, the intelligence community, neighborhood watchdogs, government workers for the post office and railroads, ordinary civil servants, and a nation of snitches inclined to report “rumors, deviant behavior, or even just loose talk.”

In other words, ordinary citizens working with government agents helped create the monster that became Nazi Germany. Writing for the New York Times, Barry Ewen paints a particularly chilling portrait of how an entire nation becomes complicit in its own downfall by looking the other way:

In what may be his most provocative statement, [author Eric A.] Johnson says that ‘‘most Germans may not even have realized until very late in the war, if ever, that they were living in a vile dictatorship.’’ This is not to say that they were unaware of the Holocaust; Johnson demonstrates that millions of Germans must have known at least some of the truth. But, he concludes, ‘‘a tacit Faustian bargain was struck between the regime and the citizenry.’’ The government looked the other way when petty crimes were being committed. Ordinary Germans looked the other way when Jews were being rounded up and murdered; they abetted one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century not through active collaboration but through passivity, denial and indifference.

Much like the German people, “we the people” have become passive, polarized, gullible, easily manipulated, and lacking in critical thinking skills. Distracted by entertainment spectacles, politics and screen devices, we too are complicit, silent partners in creating a police state similar to the terror practiced by former regimes.

Can the Fourth Reich happen here?

It’s already happening right under our noses. Much like the German people, “we the people” are all too inclined to “look the other way.”

In our state of passivity, denial and indifference, here are some of the looming problems we’re ignoring:

Our government is massively in debt. Currently, the national debt is somewhere in the vicinity of $21 trillion. Approximately half of our debt is owned by foreign countries, namely China, Japan and Saudi Arabia.

Our education system is abysmal. Despite the fact that we spend more than most of the world on education, we rank 36th in the world when it comes to math, reading and science, far below most of our Asian counterparts. Even so, we continue to insist on standardized programs such as Common Core, which teach students to be test-takers rather than thinkers.

Our homes provide little protection against government intrusions. Police agencies, already empowered to crash through your door if they suspect you’re up to no good, now have radar devices that allow them to “see” through the walls of our homes.

Our prisons, housing the largest number of inmates in the world and still growing, have become money-making enterprises for private corporations that rely on the inmates for cheap labor.

We are no longer a representative republic. The U.S. has become a corporate oligarchy. As a recent academic survey indicates, our elected officials, especially those in the nation’s capital, represent the interests of the rich and powerful rather than the average citizen.

We’ve got the most expensive, least effective health care system in the world compared to other western, industrialized nations.

The air pollution levels are dangerously high for almost half of the U.S. population, putting Americans at greater risk of premature death, aggravated asthma, difficulty breathing and future cardiovascular problems.

Despite outlandish amounts of money being spent on the nation’s “infrastructure,” there are more than 63,000 bridges—one out of every 10 bridges in the country—in urgent need of repair. Some of these bridges are used 250 million times a day by trucks, school buses, passenger cars and other vehicles.

Americans know little to nothing about their rights or how the government is supposed to operate. This includes educators and politicians. For example, 27 percent of elected officials cannot name even one right or freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment, while 54 percent do not know the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war.

Nearly one out of every three American children live in poverty, ranking us among the worst in the developed world.

Patrolled by police, our schools have become little more than quasi-prisons in which kids as young as age 4 are being handcuffed for “acting up,” subjected to body searches and lockdowns, and suspended for childish behavior.

We’re no longer innocent until proven guilty. In our present surveillance state, that burden of proof has now been shifted so that we are all suspects to be spied on, searched, scanned, frisked, monitored, tracked and treated as if we’re potentially guilty of some wrongdoing.

Parents, no longer viewed as having an inherent right to raise their children as they see fit, are increasingly being arrested for letting their kids walk to the playground alone, or play outside alone. Similarly, parents who challenge a doctor’s finding or request a second opinion regarding their children’s health care needs are being charged with medical child abuse and, in a growing number of cases, losing custody of their children to the government.

Private property means little at a time when SWAT teams and other government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, wound or kill you, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family. Likewise, if government officials can fine and arrest you for growing vegetables in your front yard, praying with friends in your living room, installing solar panels on your roof, and raising chickens in your backyard, you’re no longer the owner of your property.

Court rulings undermining the Fourth Amendment and justifying invasive strip searches have left us powerless against police empowered to forcefully draw our blood, forcibly take our DNA, strip search us, and probe us intimately. Accounts are on the rise of individuals—men and women alike—being subjected to what is essentially government-sanctioned rape by police in the course of “routine” traffic stops.

Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice. The courts were established to intervene and protect the people against the government and its agents when they overstep their bounds. Yet the courts increasingly march in lockstep with the police state, while concerning themselves primarily with advancing the government’s agenda, no matter how unjust or unconstitutional.

Americans have no protection against police abuse. It is no longer unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later. What is increasingly common, however, is the news that the officers involved in these incidents get off with little more than a slap on the hands.

If there is any absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off. This is true, whether you’re talking about taxpayers being forced to fund high-priced weaponry that will be used against us, endless wars that do little for our safety or our freedoms, or bloated government agencies such as the National Security Agency with its secret budgets, covert agendas and clandestine activities. Rubbing salt in the wound, even monetary awards in lawsuits against government officials who are found guilty of wrongdoing are paid with taxpayer funds.

Americans are powerless in the face of militarized police. In early America, government agents were not permitted to enter one’s home without permission or in a deceitful manner. And citizens could resist arrest when a police officer tried to restrain them without proper justification or a warrant. Daring to dispute a warrant with a police official today who is armed with high-tech military weapons would be nothing short of suicidal. Moreover, as police forces across the country continue to be transformed into extensions of the military, Americans are finding their once-peaceful communities transformed into military outposts, complete with tanks, weaponry, and other equipment designed for the battlefield.

Now these are not problems that you can just throw money at, as most politicians are inclined to do.

These are problems that will continue to plague our nation—and be conveniently ignored by politicians—unless and until Americans wake up to the fact that we’re the only ones who can change things.

We’re caught in a vicious cycle right now between terror and fear and distraction and hate and partisan politics and an inescapable longing for a time when life was simpler and people were kinder and the government was less of a monster.

Our prolonged exposure to the American police state is not helping.

As always, the solution to most problems must start locally, in our homes, in our neighborhoods, and in our communities.

We’ve got to refrain from the toxic us vs. them rhetoric that is consuming the nation.

We’ve got to work harder to build bridges, instead of burning them to the ground.

We’ve got to learn to stop bottling up dissent and disagreeable ideas and learn how to work through our disagreements without violence.

We’ve got to de-militarize our police and lower the levels of violence here and abroad, whether it’s violence we export to other countries, violence we glorify in entertainment, or violence we revel in when it’s leveled at our so-called enemies, politically or otherwise.

For starters, we’ll need to actually pay attention to what’s going on around us, and I don’t mean by turning on the TV news. That will get you nowhere. It’s a mere distraction from what is really going on. In other words, if you’re watching, that means you’re not doing. It’s time to get active.

Pay attention to what your local city councils are enacting.

Pay attention to what your school officials are teaching and not teaching.

Pay attention to whom your elected officials are giving access and currying favor.

Most of all, stop acting like it really matters whether you vote for a Republican or Democrat, because in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn’t.

While you’re at it, start acting like citizens who expect the government to work for them, rather than the other way around. While that bloated beast called the federal government may not listen to you without a great deal of activism and effort brought to bear, you can have a great—and more immediate—impact on your local governing bodies.

This will mean gathering together with your friends and neighbors and, for example, forcing your local city council to start opposing state and federal programs that are ripping you off. And if need be, your local city council can refuse to abide by the dictates that continue to flow from Washington, DC. In other words, nullify everything the government does that is illegitimate, egregious or blatantly unconstitutional.

Finally, remember that when you strip away all of the things that serve to divide us, we’re no different underneath: we all bleed red, and we all suffer when violence becomes the government’s calling card.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the oppression and injustice—be it in the form of shootings, surveillance, fines, asset forfeiture, prison terms, roadside searches, and so on—will come to all of us eventually unless we do something to stop it now.

Unless we can learn to live together as brothers and sisters and fellow citizens, we will perish as tools and prisoners of the American police state. (For more from the author of “America on the Brink: ‘Adolf Hitler Is Alive and Well in the United States, and Is Fast Rising to Power'” please click HERE)

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Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State are available online at www.amazon.com. He can be contacted at [email protected].

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Trump Reveals What’ll Happen to People Trying to Apply for Asylum

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President Donald Trump announced his intention to set up tent cities along the border for people who apply for asylum at the southern border during an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Monday night.

“What has been happening, and we’re not, as of pretty recently, we are not letting them out. What happens is they would catch and release. We are catching, we are not releasing, so they want to come over – but we’re not even doing that. We’re not letting them into this country. We’re not going to let gang members, –” the president said. . .

“If they apply for asylum, we are going to hold them until such time their trial takes place,” Trump responded. . .

“We’re going to put up, we’re going to build tent cities. We’re going to put tents up all over the place. We aren’t going to build structures and spent all of these hundreds of millions of dollars,” the president added. “We are going to have tents, they are going to be very nice and they are going to wait and if they don’t get asylum they get out.” (Read more from “Trump Reveals What’ll Happen to People Trying to Apply for Asylum” HERE)

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