‘Deep State’ Pulls Clearance of Trump NSC Official. Rogue Agenda?

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A respected National Security Council analyst has had his security clearance revoked, and his allies are unanimously blaming a “deep state” campaign designed to sabotage the Trump national security agenda.

Last week, Adam Lovinger – a longtime Pentagon expert on loan to the NSC, who held a top secret clearance over the past decade without issue – had his clearance suspended effective immediately.

On Tuesday, Lovinger was informed by the Pentagon that his clearance was suspended. He was then abruptly marched out of the NSC offices. According to sources with direct knowledge of the situation, Lovinger has been transferred to an Alexandria, Va., location to do clerical work for an indefinite amount of time. Without his clearance, he has been effectively frozen out of the ability to do meaningful national security work.

Bill Gertz, who broke the story of Lovinger’s dismissal, reports at the Washington Free Beacon that Lovinger had been a strategic affairs analyst at the Office of Net Assessment (ONA) for over a decade. He is an expert in net assessments, which are “highly classified reports that assess foreign threats and U.S. capabilities.” Lovinger is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and holds a J.D. from Georgetown. He is an expert on the Indian Ocean region, the Persian Gulf, and sub-Saharan Africa.”

When President Trump was elected to the White House, Lovinger expressed an interest in moving his portfolio temporarily to the National Security Council, so that he could help shape the incoming administration’s grand strategy. He moved over to the NSC during the transition, and was then tasked with crafting a more comprehensive national security strategy for the Trump administration.

Sources say that Lovinger’s relationship soured with his Pentagon supervisor, James H. Baker, after the latter became aware that his colleague was being interviewed for a position at the NSC. Following Lovinger’s transfer, Baker immediately led two investigations into his security clearance.

Allies of Lovinger describe Baker as someone who is vehemently opposed to the policies of the Trump administration. Baker was appointed by Obama Defense Secretary Ash Carter in 2015 to lead ONA. He has since been held over by the current administration, for reasons unknown.

Another individual directly aware of the situation tells CR. “Because Lovinger’s clearance was being held by the Department of Defense, Baker got DOD to withhold his clearance off of phony information.”

Another source close to Lovinger said he was so alarmed by actions taken against his security clearance that he went to an attorney and filed a 38-page sworn affidavit to make a record of Baker’s campaign against him.

The Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment was created to assess and develop future strategies for the U.S. military. It was first led by Andrew Marshall, a legendary director who is nicknamed “Yoda” for his strategic brilliance. Lovinger, described as a “brainiac” by one of his colleagues, was a protege of Marshall.

Under Baker, the ONA has been criticized for failing to produce assessments fundamental to the office’s founding mission.

Lovinger is the second National Security Council staffer to have his clearance revoked under questionable circumstances.

In February, NSC African specialist Robin Townley had his clearance pulled by the CIA, according to reports. Angelo Codevilla, a renowned international affairs expert, alleged that the agency axed Townley’s clearance because he did not approve of the CIA’s current trajectory.

The Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comment. Adam Lovinger did not respond to a request for comment. (For more from the author of “‘Deep State’ Pulls Clearance of Trump NSC Official. Rogue Agenda?” please click HERE)

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Don’t Buy the Climate Hype: Trump’s EPA Change Is a Good Thing

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Crank up the hysteria machine, as President Trump is continuing his War on Science™ at the Environmental Protection Agency.

According to a story at the New York Times, the administration has removed five scientists from a review board, opening up the possibility of replacing them with representatives from various industries, which would fit into the President’s promises to reduce the regulatory grip of the department on the market:

A spokesman for the E.P.A. administrator, Scott Pruitt, said he would consider replacing the academic scientists with representatives from industries whose pollution the agency is supposed to regulate, as part of the wide net it plans to cast. “The administrator believes we should have people on this board who understand the impact of regulations on the regulated community,” said the spokesman, J. P. Freire.

The dismissals on Friday came about six weeks after the House passed a bill aimed at changing the composition of another E.P.A. scientific review board to include more representation from the corporate world.

Agency spokesman J.P. Friere told the newspaper that the agency wants to expand the “pool of applicants [for the 18-member board] to as broad a range as possible, to include universities that aren’t typically represented and issues that aren’t typically represented.” This could also include representatives from the energy world.

The rest of the piece is made up of quotes from Trump critics repeating variations on the theme that the president is anti-climate or anti-science because of the move. The New York Daily News goes so far to label this shuffle as the latest maneuver in Trump’s supposed “war on science.”

The horror: People with insight on how regulations affect the price of energy might have a say in how our natural resources are regulated. This may require a trigger warning for the climate crowd, but here goes: One cannot write sensible regulations with science alone.

As Conservative Review’s Logan Albright wrote in anticipation of the highly publicized and nakedly partisan “March for Science” weeks before, science can tell us a lot of things, but empirical findings cannot tell public officials what to do with those findings.

The appeal to science is one of the progressive movement’s go-to tactics in the attempt to appear reasonable and unbiased. After all, science doesn’t have a political agenda, right? As Joe Friday said, it’s “just the facts, ma’am.” And since science is synonymous with learning, inquiry, and critical thought, the only people who would reject science must be ignorant, unintelligent, and superstitious.

The trouble with this line of reasoning is that it anthropomorphizes science into something that has opinions, conclusions, and recommendations. This not only fundamentally misunderstands the concept of science, but can lead down some pretty dangerous roads if we’re not careful.

First of all, let’s get straight what science is and is not. The word “science” is only a noun for grammatical convenience.

“What these protestors really mean,” he concludes, “is that they want their particular conclusions on controversial topics to be the standard by which government operates, particularly when it relates to climate science.”

Likewise, too often these conclusions and recommendations ignore the real-world effects of the regulations created by the white-frocked technocrats on these unaccountable boards.

After all, the methods and questions of scientific reasoning do not account for how much more a single mother of two will pay to heat her house the subsequent winter because her energy companies increased compliance costs, or how long a career trucker will have to wait for a cost-of-living increase, or what green fiats will do to the price of diesel.

You don’t need a Ph.D. to care about the land. Ask any farmer, rancher, hunter, fisherman, or hiking enthusiast. You’ll find more than enough concern about the ill effects of pollution on our nation’s precious natural resources. Furthermore, you’ll often find the same drive to preserve these resources in the long term, as these sorts of enterprises – whether economic or recreational – are not typically something anyone would deny to their children and grandchildren.

Likewise, by market forces, energy producers have the incentive to provide the most inexpensive and efficient products they can because of the demands of the kinds of people mentioned above. How government regulations passed by those with little to no skin in the game affect everyone else is indeed some needed insight in this process. People inside the EPA who have real-world experience can provide that insight.

And while these concerned people often do not have the degrees or lab coats necessary to assuage the standard-issue concerns of the technocratic mind, they do understand what happens when detached central planners are given too much control over the land.

Ideally, regulations would be written as locally as possibly by legislatures alone and only when absolutely necessary. But tailoring the regulatory power of an agency that shouldn’t exist to include a broader range of concerns is a step in the right direction.

Just because someone makes a living from the land does not make him or her incapable of contributing to how it is governed; rather, those very people are often far more qualified than those writing regulations from an ivory tower. The view to the contrary says that citizens are incapable of governing themselves, and this is contrary to our very founding principles. (For more from the author of “Don’t Buy the Climate Hype: Trump’s EPA Change Is a Good Thing” please click HERE)

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Trump Administration Announces First Batch of Federal Court Nominees

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The Trump administration on Monday named 10 judges it plans to nominate for key posts.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said that among the candidates are individuals previously named on Trump’s list of 21 possible picks for Supreme Court justice. All nominees would require Senate confirmation.

The announcement came less than a month after Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, was confirmed, restoring the court’s conservative tilt. (Read more from “Trump Administration Announces First Batch of Federal Court Nominees” HERE)

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Authorities Abandon Huge Refugee Camp After ISIS Cells Emerged

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A gigantic refugee camp in Jordan has become an “imminent threat” after Islamic State cells started to emerge.

Some 80,000 people are trapped inside the Al Rukban refugee camp by the Syrian border after Jordanian military cut off humanitarian assistance last summer. ISIS militants at the camp “have whole weapons systems … small arms, RPGs, anti-aircraft,” Brig. Gen. Sami Kafawin of the Jordanian army told NBC News in an article published Monday.

“They consider the camp a safe haven. We consider it an imminent threat,” Kafawin told NBC News.

Authorities estimate as many as 4,000 residents, about 5 percent of the camp’s population, may be militants. The area has been struck by several attacks and almost daily gun battles after the government lost control, according to Kafawin.

The military abandoned the camp after seven border guards were killed and another 13 were wounded in an ISIS-claimed car bombing last June. (Read more from “Authorities Abandon Huge Refugee Camp After ISIS Cells Emerged” HERE)

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A Secular Rapper Calls American Pastors to Account

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You know we’re in trouble when a secular rapper urges pastors to get back to preaching that the Lord is a jealous God of “discipline and obedience.” As a recent article declared, “Chart-Topping Rapper Kendrick Lamar Is Preaching More Spiritual Truth Than Most of the Dead Churches In America.” So sad, but so true.

Lamar is a 29-year-old, Grammy Award-winning rapper, and his lyrics are typical, hardcore rap: filled with content, packed with protest, laced with profanity. Suffice it to say that he is not a pristine pure, born-again, Christian rapper. Yet he sees a gaping hole in many churches today, and it mirrors his experience as a boy.

A Perceived Imbalance

In an email to Hip Hop website DJ Booth he wrote,

I went to a local church some time ago, and it appalled me that the same program was in practice. A program that I seen as a kid the few times I was in service. Praise, dance. Worship. (Which is beautiful.) Pastor spewing the idea of someone’s season is approaching. The idea of hope.

He continued,

After being heavily in my studies these past few years, I’ve finally figured out why I left those services feeling spiritually unsatisfied as a child. I discovered more truth. But simple truth. Our God is a loving God. Yes. He’s a merciful God. Yes. But he’s even more so a God of DISCIPLE. OBEDIENCE. A JEALOUS God. …

And in words that mirror the words of Paul in Romans 11:22, which urge us to consider both the goodness and severity of God, he wrote, “So in conclusion, I feel it’s my calling to share the joy of God, but with exclamation, more so, the FEAR OF GOD. The balance. Knowing the power in what he can build, and also what he can destroy. At any given moment.”

Telling the Whole Truth

How ironic that a worldly rapper is more concerned to balance out his message than many a preacher in America. How ironic that someone whom the churches would damn in a moment (in fact, “Damn” is the name of his latest project) sees the imbalance in so many of our contemporary churches.

Today, in many of our churches, it’s all about making people feel good about themselves, all about the coming breakthrough (probably financial!), all about fulfilling our personal dreams.

But what about the biblical gospel? What about the fact that one day we’ll have to give account to God for our lives? What about the judgment that will come on the whole world? What about the reality that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23)? What about the fact that Jesus saves us from our sins so that we will live the rest of our lives for Him?

I’m all for preaching hope and encouragement and love, but that is not the whole message. What happened to the rest of God’s holy Word?

A Quick-Fix Gospel

In my forthcoming book Saving a Sick America: A Prescription for Moral and Cultural Reformation, I devoted one chapter to the subject of “Restoring Thunder to Our Pulpits.”

In that chapter, I wrote,

Let the truth be told. There is very little thunder from our pulpits, very little preaching that creates an atmosphere of holy reverence (what the Bible calls ‘the fear of the Lord’), very little that challenges us and confronts us and stirs us and awakens us, very little that equips us to endure hardship or to be courageous or to confront the culture or to live a sacrificial life out of love for our neighbor.

Many of our leaders preach a toothless, pep-talk gospel that fits in perfectly with our convenience store, quick-fix Christianity, promising all kinds of benefits without any requirements. What a deal! Who could refuse it? No wonder we are producing consumers rather than disciples. What else can we expect when we so studiously bypass the cross in so much of our preaching? What else can we expect when we preach God the Genie rather than God the Judge?

Do you affirm these words?

‘The Pulpit is Responsible’

At the beginning of the chapter, I quoted from an 1873 sermon from Charles Finney. He said,

Brethren, our preaching will bear its legitimate fruits. If immorality prevails in the land, the fault is ours in a great degree. If there is a decay of conscience, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the public press lacks moral discrimination, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the church is degenerate and worldly, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the world loses its interest in religion, the pulpit is responsible for it. If Satan rules in our halls of legislation, the pulpit is responsible for it. If our politics become so corrupt that the very foundations of our government are ready to fall away, the pulpit is responsible for it. Let us not ignore this fact, my dear brethren; but let us lay it to heart, and be thoroughly awake to our responsibility in respect to the morals of this nation.

Although the pulpit was more influential in his day than in ours, I believe that what he said remains largely true. If America is in serious moral and spiritual decline, many of our preachers are partly to blame.

I say it’s time that we restore thunder to our pulpits. A chart-topping, secular rapper says, “Please do!” (For more from the author of “A Secular Rapper Calls American Pastors to Account” please click HERE)

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National Front to Rebrand After Crushing Defeat in French Election

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Marine Le Pen’s National Front party will engage in a rebranding effort after suffering a crushing loss Sunday to centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron.

Le Pen told supporters that the party must reevaluate itself, and that she will continue to fight for its policies in the upcoming parliamentary elections in June. The populist leader lost the run-off election after receiving approximately 35 percent of the vote.

“The National Front must also renew itself,” said Le Pen in an address to supporters after the results came in. “I will therefore start the process of a deep transformation of our movement … I call upon all patriots to join us.”

Le Pen promised to create a “number one opposition force” to counter globalization in France.

The party will change its name, among other things, according to National Front Vice President Florian Philippot. (Read more from “National Front to Rebrand After Crushing Defeat in French Election” HERE)

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Google Asked to Label Anti-Fracking Websites as ‘Fake News’

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An oil and gas drilling advocacy group published an open letter to Google asking the search engine giant to consider “purging or demoting” websites spreading misinformation about hydraulic fracturing.

Google rewrote its search engine algorithm to bury “fake news” websites in the wake of the 2016 presidential election. Now the industry-funded Texans for Natural Gas wants Google to include anti-fracking websites.

“We believe many of the most prominent anti-fracking websites have content that is misleading, false, or offensive – if not all three,” the group wrote in an open letter to Google published Monday.

“As a result, we urge you to consider purging or demoting these websites from your algorithm, which in turn will encourage a more honest public discussion about hydraulic fracturing, and oil and natural gas development in general,” the group wrote.

Google raters “assess search results — to flag web pages that host hoaxes, conspiracy theories, and what the company calls ‘low-quality’ content,” Bloomberg reported in April. (Read more from “Google Asked to Label Anti-Fracking Websites as ‘Fake News'” HERE)

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Texas Takes Strong and Needed Action on Sanctuary Cities

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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott acted to protect the citizens of Texas on Sunday when he signed into law SB 4, a bill to punish (and deter) local cities and counties like Austin from implementing sanctuary policies.

Abbott and the legislators who sponsored this bill are trying to stop the Lone Star State from being a sanctuary for criminal aliens. They want to make sure that criminals are removed from the state and deported from the country, rather than remaining in Texas so they can victimize even more citizens of the state.

SB 4 requires local governments in the state to comply with federal immigration law. That includes 8 U.S.C. § 1373, which forbids state and local governments from preventing their officials from exchanging information with the federal government on the citizenship status of any individual.

Under the new Texas law, local governments can’t prevent their law enforcement officials from sending information to the feds on criminals they have arrested or detained.

City and county officials also can’t prevent federal immigration officers from enforcing immigration laws in local jails, and are charged with “assisting or cooperating with a federal immigration officer as reasonable or necessary” to provide “enforcement assistance.”

Further, Texas law enforcement agencies are directed to “comply with, honor, and fulfill any request made in the detainer request provided by the federal government.”

This means that local jurisdictions that fail to honor federal detainer warrants—which are requests issued by federal immigration authorities to hold illegal aliens for pickup—will also be in violation of state law.

SB 4 imposes a civil penalty on sanctuary cities of up to $25,500 for each day of intentionally violating this law. In a fitting sense of justice, the civil penalties collected will be deposited in a special victim’s crime fund set up by the state.

This means that those who have been victimized by criminal illegal aliens will be able to seek compensation from this fund. Local law enforcement officials, such as sheriffs and chiefs of police, can also be charged with a Class A misdemeanor for failing to comply with federal detainer warrants.

Finally, local officials who refuse to comply with SB 4 and who implement sanctuary policies or ordinances can be removed from office. Petitions for their removal are filed by the attorney general of Texas, and such petitions will get the same precedence as election contests under Texas law.

This ensures that such petitions will not languish in court behind other cases. And Texas courts are directed to remove that official if he or she is found guilty—judges have no discretion to keep the official in office.

Abbott said he signed this bill because public safety is his top priority: “This bill furthers that objective by keeping dangerous criminals off our streets.”

Abbott added that it is “inexcusable to release individuals from jail that have been charged with heinous crimes like sexual assault against minors, domestic violence, and robbery.”

He said that such behavior by local officials would no longer be “tolerated,” and that SB 4 was “doing away with those that seek to promote lawlessness in Texas.”

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who also supports the new law, pointed out that “in the past six years, criminal aliens have been charged with more than 566,000 crimes in Texas including kidnapping, homicide, burglary and much more.”

As he said, “there is no excuse for endangering our communities by allowing criminal aliens who have committed a crime to go free.”

Given the large number of crimes committed by recidivist criminal aliens, the claim by some in Texas that this bill will make “our communities more dangerous” defies common sense.

This is particularly true because the new law exempts an illegal alien who “is a victim of or witness to a criminal offense,” or “is reporting a criminal offense.” Thus, it will not deter the reporting of crimes.

As I have pointed out before, sanctuary policies endanger the residents of the very cities they are claimed to “help.” Criminal aliens who would otherwise be detained and removed from sanctuary cities are instead released back into the community, where they can commit more crimes.

One Government Accountability Office study of the criminal histories of 55,322 illegal aliens showed that they had been arrested 459,614 times and committed almost 700,000 offenses.

The vast majority of these crimes would never have been committed if we had a secure border that prevented these criminal aliens from entering the country in the first place, or if we had an effective policy of removing them once they did make it here, or after being detained or arrested for committing a crime.

The Texas governor and legislators are trying to protect their state’s residents from the reckless and irresponsible decisions being made by local jurisdictions to release criminal aliens and to obstruct enforcement of federal immigration law.

This is a good start and the right thing for them to do. (For more from the author of “Texas Takes Strong and Needed Action on Sanctuary Cities” please click HERE)

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Younger Judicial Nominees Give Trump Chance for Legacy in Courts

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President Donald Trump will begin to leave his mark on the lower courts of the federal judiciary with 10 nominees named Monday, many of them judges still in their 40s.

Shortly after 7:30 p.m. Monday, the White House formally announced Trump’s nomination of five judges to federal appellate courts and another five judges to lower federal courts.

“They all appear to be bright, young, capable conservatives who promise to be outstanding judges; some are already judges,” John Malcolm, a legal scholar who oversees the Institute for Constitutional Government at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal earlier in the day.

Two of the appeals court nominees—Michigan Supreme Court Justice Joan Larsen, 48, nominated to the 6th Circuit, and Minnesota Supreme Court Justice David Stras, 44, nominated to the 8th Circuit—were on the list of 21 contenders for the U.S. Supreme Court that the Trump campaign released months ago.

The Heritage Foundation and The Federalist Society developed the list at Trump’s request.

Trump also nominated Amy Coney Barrett, 45, a law professor at Notre Dame and former law clerk for the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, for the 7th Circuit, and Louisville lawyer John K. Bush, 53, for the 6th Circuit.

Rounding out the appeals court nominees is Alabama’s former solicitor general, Kevin Newsom, 44, who clerked for Justice David Souter, nominated for a seat on the 11th Circuit.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters during the Monday afternoon briefing:

These 10 individuals the president has chosen were chosen for their deep knowledge of the law and their commitment to upholding constitutional principles. Two of the nominees today came from the list of potential Supreme Court nominees that the president released during the campaign. … The president followed the principles that were used to guide that list to select the additional eight individuals.

Spicer said more judicial and other nominations are on the way.

“I think you will continue to see a very robust amount of announcements on not just the judicial front, but on several fronts,” he said.

Most Supreme Court justices previously served as appeals court judges. Also, the high court can take only a limited number of cases. So, circuit court nominees are highly important.

Trump previously nominated U.S. District Judge Amul Thapar to serve on the 6th Circuit. He is awaiting Senate confirmation.

With more than 120 vacancies, the nominations can’t come too soon, said J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department attorney who now is president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative legal group.

“I’m in federal courts all the time. There are too many vacancies,” Adams told The Daily Signal. “So, we can’t have too many nominees.”

A Democratic majority in the Senate eliminated that chamber’s filibuster for nominees to the district and circuit courts in 2013.

“With a Republican Senate, now is the best time to nominate solid judges,” Adams said. “There is no reason to wait.”

Trump seems to have his eyes on the future with these nominees, said Curt Levey, president of the Committee for Justice and a constitutional lawyer with FreedomWorks, a conservative advocacy group.

“It’s clear that the administration is looking at young nominees,” Levey told The Daily Signal. “Being an appeals court judge, if not on the short list, it puts you on the long list for the Supreme Court. … This administration seems to be making a bigger factor of age than previous administrations.”

Trump also nominated Damien Schiff, a lawyer with the Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative legal group, to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

The White House said the president made two district court nominations and intends to make two more:

Scott Palk, with the University of Oklahoma College of Law, to the Western District of Oklahoma.

Idaho state Judge David Nye to the U.S. District Court for Idaho.

Dabney Friedrich, a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission and a former associate White House counsel under President George W. Bush, to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (pending).

U.S. Magistrate Judge Terry Moorer to the Middle District of Alabama (pending).

The nominees build on Trump’s success in getting another appeals court judge, Neil Gorsuch, confirmed to the Supreme Court just weeks ago, said Carrie Severino, chief counsel for the Judicial Crisis Network, who posted brief biographies of each of Monday’s nominees on National Review’s website.

“The nominees have stellar qualifications and a record of courageous commitment to the rule of law that will make them excellent additions to the federal bench,” Severino said. “When it comes to fulfilling his campaign promise to appoint strong, principled judges, Trump is knocking it out of the park.” (For more from the author of “Younger Judicial Nominees Give Trump Chance for Legacy in Courts” please click HERE)

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Oregon Man Fined $500 for Challenging Timing on Red-Light Cameras

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Mats Jarlstrom’s trouble all began with a red-light camera.

In April 2013, Jarlstrom’s wife, Laurie, received a ticket after driving her Volkswagen through an intersection in Beaverton, Oregon, that was equipped with a traffic camera.

His wife paid the fine, but the timing of the traffic lights at the intersection piqued Jarlstrom’s interest, so he decided to look into a formula created in 1959 to calculate the length of yellow lights.

Jarlstrom says he realized the original formula failed to take into account the extra time it takes for a car to slow before making a right-hand turn safely.

“Currently, people are getting tickets for running red lights because they’re slowing down when they’re making turns,” he tells The Daily Signal “It’s a safety issue because any time we run a red light, we’re in the intersection for the wrong reason, and there is cross traffic, and especially pedestrians are in danger.”

Jarlstrom, an electronics engineer from Sweden, revised the formula to take the deceleration into account, and decided to take his findings public.

But doing so, he quickly learned, came with a risk, and a costly one at that.

Jarlstrom shared his findings with local media, policymakers, the sheriff, and Alexei Maradudin, who helped craft the original mathematical formula in 1959. He also emailed his theory to the Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying, in hopes it would take a look at his research.

The Oregon panel said it didn’t have any jurisdiction over traffic lights. But it did have jurisdiction over the state’s engineering laws. And it decided to open an investigation into Jarlstrom because of “his use of the title ‘electronics engineer’ and the statement ‘I’m an engineer,’” according to an order from the board.

After investigating Jarlstrom for two years, the board fined him $500.

The reason?

Jarlstrom, according to the board, practiced engineering without a license each time he “critiqued” the traffic-light system and identified himself as an engineer in correspondence with the panel.

“You don’t need to be an engineer to understand this,” Jarlstrom says in an interview with The Daily Signal, adding:

I read something that was already public and understood it, and I wanted to share that information with the public talking about it. I felt completely shocked when I contacted them that they weren’t interested in listening to the problems that I presented to the board. They accused me of being illegal by saying I was a Swedish electronics engineer.

Jarlstrom paid the $500 fine, and the board closed its investigation. But now, the public-interest law firm Institute for Justice is fighting alongside the Oregon man in federal court to challenge the state’s engineering laws.

“The issues are classic First Amendment issues,” Sam Gedge, an Institute for Justice lawyer who is representing Jarlstrom, tells The Daily Signal. “The government can’t punish people for expressing their concerns. The government can’t take words and redefine them and then punish people for using them in a way the government doesn’t like.”

‘Unusual’

Jarlstrom does have education and experience in engineering.

He has a degree in electronics engineering from Sweden, which is the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree in engineering in the United States.

Jarlstrom, 56, also worked for Luxor Electronics before immigrating to the United States in 1992.

But in Oregon, anyone who engages in “creative work requiring engineering education, training, and experience” under the state Professional Engineer Registration Act is required to be licensed as a professional engineer.

Nearly every state requires professional engineers to have a license. However, those licenses typically are reserved for engineers who build skyscrapers or design electrical plans for buildings.

The Institute for Justice is challenging the vague definition of what constitutes a professional engineer in Oregon, which in effect allows the board to regulate the exchange of ideas and of the word “engineer,” Gedge says:

What makes Oregon so unusual is they’ve taken the licensing regime for professional engineers and are applying it to people like Mats, who are talking about issues that concern them. That’s unusual.

There are two issues for Jarlstrom, Gedge says: He used the word “engineer” to describe himself, and he talked about technical topics.

“There have been a number of instances about the board going after people simply because they used the word engineer to describe themselves,” the lawyer says. “There are also examples of the board going after people who have never used the word engineer to describe themselves, but are nonetheless going out in public and speaking about technical topics.”

“That word isn’t off-limits to people,” he says. “The laws can’t be used to stop people from sending an email to his sheriff for safety.”

Other Incidents

Indeed, Jarlstrom’s experiences with Oregon’s Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying aren’t exclusive to him.

Last year, the board opened an investigation into Allen Alley, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, who stated in campaign ads: “I’m an engineer and a problem solver.”

Alley received a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from Purdue University and worked as an engineer for Ford and Boeing. But he isn’t a licensed professional engineer in Oregon.

The board’s investigation into Alley is ongoing.

In another instance, the panel investigated a woman profiled in Portland Monthly’s “Oregon Woman 2015” edition.

Included in the magazine was an article about Marcela Alcantar and a headline about “the incredible story of the engineer behind Portland’s newest bridge.”

The board opened a “law enforcement case” against Alcantar based on the line, since she wasn’t a registered professional engineer.

Ultimately, the case was closed after the board’s staff spoke with the journalist who wrote the article. The board determined “engineer” was a designation given not by Alcantar, but by the article’s editors.

“The definition of the practice of engineering is so broad according to the board, and the board has shown itself to be so aggressive,” Gedge says. “Expressing your concerns on technical topics certainly leaves you at the risk of being investigated.”

‘Whistleblower’

Although Jarlstrom ultimately paid the fine, he says he believes the board’s decision violated his freedom of expression.

And while he does have engineering experience, Jarlstrom contends the skills he used to craft his revised formula relied on 6th- and 7th-grade math:

It’s interesting that just because students here in Beaverton or elsewhere are using math and looking at some traffic-flow issues in school, they would be considered practicing engineering according to the board. We can’t have laws having that kind of power or overreach.

Jarlstrom says he considers himself a whistleblower and is surprised something like this could happen in the United States. But he vows to continue working to “improve our civil rights and freedom of speech so individuals like myself can share ideas, whether they’re good or bad.”

“We still need to be able to express them,” he says. “If we can’t, there won’t be any ideas to choose from.” (For more from the author of “Oregon Man Fined $500 for Challenging Timing on Red-Light Cameras” please click HERE)

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