Why Delaying Obamacare Repeal Is Hurting the American People

/0 Comments/in , /by

When President Donald Trump took office, repeal of Obamacare seemed like a guarantee—and then the timeline started slipping.

All the elements are in place: A Republican-controlled Congress and a Republican president, all elected after promising to repeal Obamacare. But once the celebration and ceremonies died away, Congress started to do what it does best. Nothing.

“Nothing” may be a bit strong given the historic levels of obstruction from Democrats in the Senate, but House Republicans have no such excuse. In fact, they even have a blueprint.

Last year, the House and Senate passed an Obamacare repeal using the budget reconciliation process. That measure was ultimately vetoed by then-President Barack Obama, but that same legislation can be reintroduced and sent to Trump’s desk to be signed into law.

There is no reason to delay. The slipping of the Obamacare repeal timeline is creating cascading problems for the American people.

Delaying Repeal Prolongs the Current Health Care Crisis

No one needs reminding that Obamacare takes away choice, erodes the value of health care, and puts additional burden on the pockets of the American taxpayer. The unsustainable nature of Obamacare is creating massive uncertainty and causing insurers to leave the marketplace, causing individual premiums to increase.

Additionally, once repeal is signed into law and real health care reforms begin moving forward, private insurers will need time to adjust to the new market. Continuing to delay repeal shortens the time insurers will be able to adjust and provide the best solution for the insured.

Most importantly, we don’t want Americans living under the current failing health care system any longer.

Obamacare is bad, and only getting worse. Average premiums are going up by 25 percent this year, deductibles are blowing past $10,000 for a family, and 70 percent of U.S. counties have no insurer choice, or a choice between only two insurers.

What good is a health care plan that you can’t choose and can’t afford to use? Congress must repeal it as soon as possible to put better health care choices back in the hands of the American people.

Delaying Repeal Hurts Public Support for Congress

Nearly every single congressional Republican campaigned on the promise to repeal Obamacare. The unfortunate consequence of the delay is that the American people are losing faith in the people whose job it is to represent them.

Recent Heritage Foundation research shows 72 percent of Americans will take the promises of Congress less seriously if they wait to fulfill their promise to repeal Obamacare. And 70 percent of Americans believe the longer Congress waits to fulfill their promises to repeal Obamacare, the less likely they will be successful.

There is no doubt that lawmakers will be held accountable to their promises.

Delaying Repeal Keeps the Focus Off Other Priorities

The surest way to repeal Obamacare is through the reconciliation process. However, that option has an expiration date. The reconciliation package is part of the budget process for fiscal year 2017 and it has to be completed before the fiscal year 2018 budget process begins.

In addition to creating a time crunch, the fight over when and how to repeal Obamacare is delaying action on other critical fights.

There is no doubt that Obamacare repeal is and should be the first priority, but Trump and congressional Republicans have made major promises to Americans that must also be considered.

Tax reform. Border security. Regulatory reform. Those priorities cannot move forward until Obamacare repeal is finalized.

What’s Next?

Republicans campaigned on repealing Obamacare in 2010, 2014, and 2016. Now it is time to step up to the plate and use the budget reconciliation process to deliver on those promises.

Congress needs to send a full repeal of Obamacare to the president for his signature. Americans cannot afford any further delays. (For more from the author of “Why Delaying Obamacare Repeal Is Hurting the American People” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Trump’s Acting Treasury Secretary, an Obama Holdover, Helped Craft Iran Nuclear Deal

/0 Comments/in , /by

As President Donald Trump’s nominee for treasury secretary continues to wait for Senate confirmation, an architect of the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal is currently running the agency.

Acting Treasury Secretary Adam Szubin—who had been a career department employee—previously served as the acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial crimes in the Obama administration. The Senate never confirmed Szubin.

A White House spokesman told The Daily Signal this week there are no announcements planned as to whether Szubin will remain in the Treasury Department after Trump’s nominee, Steven Mnuchin, is confirmed as treasury secretary. Mnuchin is expected to get a Senate vote Saturday.

Since Jan. 20, and until Mnuchin is confirmed, Szubin is running the agency. It’s the same type of role that Sally Yates had at the Department of Justice before she was fired Jan. 30 for refusing to defend Trump’s immigration executive order.

The Treasury Department is charged with implementing the Trump administration’s new Iran sanctions. White House press secretary Sean Spicer told The Daily Signal during a press briefing this week those sanctions were applied and “went off without a hitch.”

The Trump administration last week announced new economic sanctions on 13 Iranian individuals and 12 Iranian companies in response to the country’s missile test in support of Houthi rebels in Yemen. The sanctions do not affect the Obama administration’s negotiated multilateral nuclear deal with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

The Treasury Department did not respond to questions from The Daily Signal.

Keeping former Obama administration officials on board could threaten the effectiveness of the new sanctions, said Fred Fleitz, a former chief of staff for arms control and international security at the State Department, working under then-undersecretary John Bolton.

“I would be concerned about implementation and enforcement of Iran sanctions with Obama holdovers in place,” Fleitz, now the senior vice president for policy and programs at the Center for Security Policy, a national security think tank, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “Having a confirmed treasury secretary in fast should be a priority.”

Fleitz said he is more concerned with State Department officials in the arms control bureaus, who are hostile to Trump and strongly support the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, being in charge of the deal.

Szubin’s time is limited at this point, and it could be too early to pre-judge what he will do, said Mark Dubowitz, a CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a national security think tank.

“Adam Szubin is a strong believer in the Iran deal, but he is a consummate professional who is extraordinarily talented at finding innovative ways to squeeze the Iranian regime. But he is leaving soon,” Dubowitz told The Daily Signal in an email.

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Trump chose to keep Szubin at the Treasury Department for now to maintain continuity, but that report regarded his acting undersecretary role. It could also be a sign of the new administration’s policy, said Jim Phillips, senior research fellow for Middle Eastern affairs at The Heritage Foundation.

“I think it is one more sign that the Trump administration is in no hurry to tear up the deal and is still reviewing its options,” Phillips told The Daily Signal in an email.

Szubin’s job as acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence was to disrupt financial support to international terrorist organizations, proliferators of weapons of mass destruction, and narcotics traffickers. President Barack Obama nominated Szubin to this political position in 2015 in an acting role, though the Senate never confirmed him.

Before the Iran deal, Szubin also helped to draft tough sanctions against Iran, which he later said helped force the country to negotiate.

Speaking at the Atlantic Council and the Iran Project Symposium on Dec. 17, 2015, Szubin said:

Our sanctions worked as intended. Iran would not have come to the table as seriously as it did were it not for the powerful array of sanctions robustly enforced by the U.S. and our allies around the world. And once Iran came to the table, we reached a strong, comprehensive deal that closes every pathway to an Iranian nuclear weapon.

While serving as acting undersecretary in the summer of 2015, Szubin traveled to Israel to lobby government officials to support the Iran nuclear deal, Foreign Policy reported.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., blocked the Szubin nomination for undersecretary from coming to the Senate floor last year. He said Szubin is “well respected on both sides of the aisle,” but his key objection was to the Iran policy pushed by Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.

“Until President Obama, and Secretary Kerry, and Secretary Lew publicly and conclusively renounce any intent to allow Iran to dollarize a foreign transaction, I will object to this nomination,” Cotton said, according to The Hill.

Cotton’s office did not respond to inquiries from The Daily Signal for this story.

Szubin began working in the Treasury Department under President George W. Bush as a career employee, serving as director of the department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, a position he held from 2006 to 2015. Before that, Szubin worked in the Justice Department. From 1999 to 2000 he clerked for Judge Ronald Gilman, a President Bill Clinton appointee on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. (For more from the author of “Trump’s Acting Treasury Secretary, an Obama Holdover, Helped Craft Iran Nuclear Deal” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Book Detailing the Story of Infamous Abortionist Left off New York Times Best-Seller List

/0 Comments/in , /by

A popular book chronicling the story of abortionist Kermit Gosnell, who was convicted for murdering several infants, was left off of The New York Times best-seller list.

Since its release on Jan. 24, “Gosnell: The Untold Story of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer” quickly reached Amazon’s best-seller list, but was left off The New York Times’ hardcover nonfiction best-seller list.

It should have been the “fourth best-selling nonfiction title,” according to a press release by Regnery Publishing, the book’s publisher.

Gosnell-COVER-676x1024

“Gosnell” authors Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer covered the detailed story of the prolific abortion doctor and convicted murderer. The book includes an exposé of Gosnell’s practices, including a description of “his collection of severed baby feet and heads in his basement,” according to the Conservative Book Club.

According to Publishers Weekly, McElhinney and McAleer’s book was the ninth best-selling on the hardcover nonfiction best-seller list last week, and currently sits at No. 22 on the list.

When released, the book quickly sold out at both Amazon and Barnes & Noble and reached the top spot on Amazon’s “Hot New Release” list on the first day of its release.

“This book rose to No. 4 on Amazon without any coverage from the mainstream media,” McAleer told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “The irony is that the book is about how the mainstream media refused to cover Gosnell’s murder trial. And even today, they’re still being shamefully dishonest.”

McElhinney and McAleer recently spoke at a Heritage Foundation event about their decision to write the book and produce a movie about Gosnell.

McAleer said that if the book had been published on the best-seller list, it would have been the first time the book was even mentioned by The New York Times.

“New York Times readers would’ve said, ‘What’s this book I’ve never heard of?’” McAleer said.

The book, however, is listed at No. 13 on the Feb. 12 edition of The New York Times’ combined print and e-book nonfiction list, Danielle Rhoades Ha, New York Times vice president of communications, told The Daily Signal in an email last week.

According to Rhoades Ha, the list was manufactured based on “confidential” sales records provided by retailers.

“The Times’s best-seller lists are based on a detailed analysis of book sales from a wide range of retailers who provide us with specific and confidential context of their sales each week,” she said. “These standards are applied consistently, across the board in order to provide Times readers our best assessment of what books are the most broadly popular at that time.”

This is not the first time The New York Times has snubbed a conservative author, according to NewsBusters.

“The Intimidation Game: How the Left Is Silencing Free Speech,” written by a Wall Street Journal editorial board member Kimberley Strassel was left off of the top 20 hardcover best-seller list when it was released in June 2016, despite selling more copies than some of the books on the list.

Similar instances have occurred to other conservative authors, including Dinesh D’Souza, Ted Cruz, and David Limbaugh, according to NewsBusters. (For more from the author of “Book Detailing the Story of Infamous Abortionist Left off New York Times Best-Seller List” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

You’ve Heard People Compare Trump to Hitler. So We Asked a Woman Who Was Born in Nazi Germany…

/0 Comments/in , , /by

A popular talking point on the left is that Donald Trump has things in common with Hitler.

But is this the case? Independent Journal Review decided to speak to a woman born in Nazi Germany about the comparison . . .

[Inga] Andrews said:

“What is going on in this country is giving me chills. Trump is not like Hitler. Just because a leader wants order doesn’t mean they’re like a dictator.

What reminds me more of Hitler than anything else isn’t Trump, it’s the destruction of freedom of speech on the college campuses — the agendas fueled by the professors.”

(Read more from “You’ve Heard People Compare Trump to Hitler. So We Asked a Woman Who Was Born in Nazi Germany…” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Another Putin Critic Mysteriously Poisoned — When Will Trump Speak Out?

/0 Comments/in , /by

Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr., a high-profile Russian critic of President Vladimir Putin, has fallen extremely ill for the second time in two years under mysterious circumstances. He appears to have been poisoned by an unknown substance, his wife said this week, per Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

This is the second time that an advanced toxin has allegedly entered his system. In 2015, Kara-Murza was rushed to the hospital with major organ failure. He recovered enough to be discharged, but with permanent nerve damage. However, this time, he has again suffered sudden organ failure and has been placed in a medically induced coma.

Only 35 years old, Kara-Murzo has been active in reformist politics in Russia as a member of the People’s Freedom Party. In the past few years, he has become an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin’s policies.

In 2014, he highlighted the Kremlin’s return, under Putin, to the “Soviet practice” of taking away citizenship from political dissidents. That same year, in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, he exposed Putin’s post-Olympics crackdown on political opposition groups.

Kara-Murzo is known for his close ties to members of the U.S. Congress, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The Russian opposition leader has lobbied for sanctions against Russian state-media and senior officials under Putin. He was also a strong proponent of the Magnitsky Act sanctions, a 2012 bipartisan bill that sought to punish Russian leaders who were deemed responsible for the killing of Russian lawyer and whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky.

Vladimir Kara-Murza is far from the first Kremlin critic to fall ill under mysterious circumstances. Numerous opponents of Vladimir Putin have suddenly become extremely ill and/or were killed by rare forms of poison. Many suspect that Putin has tasked the FSB, the successor spy agency to the Soviet-era KGB, with carrying out the assassinations.

Kara-Murza was also a long-time adviser and friend to Boris Nemtsov, another prominent Putin critic who was assassinated in February 2015.

The news of another prominent Putin critic falling extremely ill under mysterious circumstances comes on the heels of President Donald Trump refusing to condemn the authoritarian Russian president. In a recent interview with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, which aired on Super Bowl Sunday, Trump refused to label Putin as a “killer.”

“There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What do you think — our country’s so innocent?” Trump said.

Throughout his presidential campaign and subsequent move to the nation’s highest office, Pres. Trump has time and time again refused to condemn Putin’s barbarity. Will Vladimir Kara-Murza’s case force Trump to finally speak out and condemn the human rights abuses perpetrated by Putin? Or, will the president again remain silent on the Russian leader’s tyrannical behavior? (For more from the author of “Another Putin Critic Mysteriously Poisoned — When Will Trump Speak Out?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Democrats’ Warped View of Islam Is the Reason Our National Security Debate Is So Screwed Up

/0 Comments/in , /by

The Left’s persistent denialism over the relationship between Islam, jihadism, and our national security is, to somewhat-paraphrase Thomas Hobbes, brutish and nasty without the decency of being solitary or short. Some recent polling shows the cold hard data on just how unhinged from reality this persistent denialism is.

One recent CBS News poll found that 66 percent of Democrats believe that other world religions are just as violent as Islam, while Rasmussen found that Democrats are more likely to believe that Muslims are mistreated in the U.S. than to think Christians are in Muslim-majority countries.

These, of course, raise the eternal question: What color is the sky in the Democrat Party’s world?

The first assumption – that all religions are somehow equally violent – runs parallel to the equally ludicrous assertion of many on the Left that “right-wing extremism” poses a larger threat to the American people than jihadist terror.

Is there a concerted conspiracy of militant Christians all over the world to topple sovereign governments and institute a global theocracy? When was the last time it struck? How many Baptists have been radicalized into shooting up a gay nightclub or their office building for the glory of Jesus Christ lately? And please, if Catholic or Mormon extremists ever tried to lay waste to the Milwaukee Art Museum for that grotesque depiction of Pope Benedict XVI, please let me know; I can’t find it.

Of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims, the vast majority are peaceful. But whether or not there is a liberty-loving American patriot within each remains a rightfully debated point, given the prevalence of Sharia-supremacist attitudes throughout the Muslim world (as well as in Muslim-heavy Western populations).

Such an assumption, however, would seem to be common creed and shibboleth among Democratic policymakers who would have their fellow citizens look the other way, pretending that not all worldviews are created equal. They’re clearly not. The distinction that needs to be made here is that Islam has a problem, rather than necessarily being the problem itself. But it’s a bigger, more violent problem than any other major religion.

Then, as illustrated by the Rasmussen survey, we have Democrats’ belief that Muslims in the United States are treated worse than Christians in Muslim-majority countries. That makes you wonder whether people are still confusing that part of the world with Agrabah, the fictional city from Disney’s “Aladdin.”

Yes, let’s hold up the United States — where the First Amendment and supporting legislation have defended Muslim citizens’ rights to abstain from transporting alcohol at work, pray in public schools, and maintain beards as first responders, and even as prisoners — to some helpful case studies in the Muslim-majority world.

The abuses visited on Christians and rarely-persecuted mob violence in the Middle East are so well documented, it barely merits response. One need only look at the horrors Christians face under ISIS, the state of the underground church in Iran, the ongoing trial of Asia Bibi and others in Pakistan, and attacks on Christians by Muslims even in refugee camps to know that even a one-to-one comparison with Muslims’ wellbeing in America would be sheer lunacy.

In addition to the cases mentioned above, it’s also important to remember that Muslims in America are free to convert to other religions, profess atheistic views, or to openly question the teachings of their own faith without government coercion to the contrary.

A quick survey of Muslim-majority countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and others with apostasy and blasphemy laws show that this is not the case for millions of their foreign counterparts, many of whom can face death for such activities.

Some will say that the real persecution doesn’t necessarily come from the state, but rather intolerance in the population. This is equally overblown.

Regardless of what you think of hate crime legislation, Muslims in the United States are protected by a justice system — bound by our laws and Constitution — that tracks, prosecutes, aggregates, and publicly reports incidents of religiously motivated hate crimes. An examination of that report shows that incidents against Muslims significantly trail behind those of Jews (with nary a word from the media, academia, and Hollywood).

While vigilante persecution of any religion is an anathema to who we are as Americans, it’s also important to keep proportion and frequency in mind. This message doubly applies to the post-election hijab hoaxers and their deceptive ilk.

Following President Trump’s travel suspension and the error-laden legal battle surrounding it, the breathless dungeon of public discussion involving Islam, terrorism, national security, and religious freedom has only gotten more hostile and dysfunctional.

It’s not because one side of the debate is pushing an agenda that oversteps the limits of power prescribed by the Constitution, thereby ushering in some sort of fascist dystopia — it’s because the other side, as the polls show, is completely detached from reality. (For more from the author of “Democrats’ Warped View of Islam Is the Reason Our National Security Debate Is So Screwed Up” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Steven Crowder Nails the Perfect 4-Letter Word for Bernie Sanders

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. (F, 17%) said a lot of crazy things during Tuesday night’s CNN debate on Obamacare.

But the worst was when he essentially told a small business owner he doesn’t care about her business; he’s going to force her to pay for her employee’s health insurance even if she can’t afford it.

Here’s the highlight from Steven Crowder’s live stream (caution – profanity):

At least Sanders is honest about how he would screw small business to advance his ideology. Most progressives have to lie about that to get elected. (For more from the author of “Steven Crowder Nails the Perfect 4-Letter Word for Bernie Sanders” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Human Trafficking and Slavery: How Flight Attendants Are Saving Lives Miles in the Air

/0 Comments/in , , /by

A young teenager with greasy blond hair sat on an Alaska Airlines flight. She was disheveled and kept her head down when addressed, refusing to answer. A well-dressed older man sat beside her. He made it clear by controlling conversation with others that he was in charge. The whole situation raised a red flag for a flight attendant named Shelia Fedrick.

Fedrick gave the girl a message instructing her to go to the restroom, where she had left a note on the mirror. The disheveled teen wrote on the note that she needed help. Fedrick’s suspicions confirmed, she quickly informed the pilot, who then called the police. The suspect was arrested when the plane landed on charges of human trafficking.

4 Million Trafficked

The United Nations estimates that 4 million women and children are trafficked each year for prostitution or labor. The human trafficking business brings in about $32 billion per year. The widespread problem involves countries all over the world, including the United States — and flight attendants are on the front line in this battle.

When Sheila Fredrick saved the young woman, she did so on her own. Flight attendants got no official training for how to spot sex traffickers and victims. Now they are instructed on how to spot human traffickers and ways to intervene.

Former airline flight attendant Nancy Rivard founded Airline Ambassadors International (AAI) in 1996 to provide for orphans and vulnerable children. In 2009, AAI began providing human trafficking awareness training at 40 U.S. airports and other airports around the world.

Rivard hopes to teach people to think like Shelia. She had the sense that something just wasn’t right. The contrast between the younger disheveled teen and the well-dressed older man made her stop and think. Other signs to look for, according to Rivard, include someone who:

Is being controlled

Is bruised, battered or underfed

Won’t answer questions or make eye contact

Has few or no personal items

Is unusually submissive to the person accompanying him or her

Can’t get away from the person with them, even to go to the restroom

Doesn’t appear to know where he or she is going

The AAI provides seminars with trainers, some of whom are survivors of human trafficking. The in-depth training seminars are geared toward the travel industry, law enforcement, transportation and universities and institutions that offer tour and travel management classes. AAI’s curriculum has been adopted by the International Tourism Management Institute.

If You See Something …

American Airlines, headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, told The Stream that their flight crews receive training offered by The U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The DHS offers training on spotting human trafficking through the DHS Blue Campaign.

“The training is … part of their flight manual, which is regularly reviewed,” AA Media Relations said. “On our employee portal, we link to DHS training on how employees can spot possible instances of human trafficking.” American Airlines also supports AAI through donations, communications support and pass privileges (donated by employees).

Because of Fedrick’s and Rivard’s experiences, the AAI provides training and also works closely with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Blue Campaign to combat human trafficking and prevent more stories like theirs.

The young girl Fedrick rescued? Fedrick keeps in touch with her. She’s now in college and worries about her exams rather than her exploitation. Fedrick’s motto is now: “If you see something, say something.” (For more from the author of “Human Trafficking and Slavery: How Flight Attendants Are Saving Lives Miles in the Air” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Please, Please Br’er Democrat, Don’t Throw Me Into That Filibuster Patch!

/0 Comments/in , /by

It might seem perverse to say so, but pro-lifers should welcome a Democratic filibuster of Trump Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. Here’s why:

The Democrats are wounded.

What’s left of the squishy GOP establishment is still in shock at Trump’s historic win.

The media are chasing a dozen different imaginary scandals as Steve Bannon’s apparent strategy of “flooding the zone” with bold initiatives seems to be working.

Every time President Trump lights a candle in the White House, the Left is throwing a tantrum and shouting “Reichstag fire!”

We have a nominee who is manifestly qualified, to fill the seat of a deceased, highly respected conservative.

A filibuster now would be so obviously partisan and absurd that it would be easy to justify trashing the filibuster forever.

And that is what we need to do, if we are serious about overturning Roe v. Wade, and removing the Supreme Court as a weapon of leftist rule by decree on every crucial social and Constitutional issue.

The Real Fight is the Next Supreme Court Opening

We conservatives are in a strong position now. In a year or two, when Ruth Bader Ginsburg or another justice finally retires, the balance of power will be different. And the stakes will be infinitely higher. The next SCOTUS nominee won’t just serve to restore the Court’s balance to what it was when it issued the outrageous pile of sophistries that was Obergefell v. Hodges. The next vote could tip it.

So next time, the Left will fight a justice like Gorsuch with the fury of a thousand suns, as the war chests of Planned Parenthood are flooded with money from George Soros and other pro-abortion philanthropists, from Warren Buffet to Bill Gates and beyond. Expect the United Nations and the European Union to issue statements. Because if abortion extremism — in all 50 states, for nine months of pregnancy, for any reason — falls in the United States, it’s in deep trouble all across the world. Expect every demon in Hell to weigh in with his opinion.

If the filibuster still exists when we have to fight that battle, count on a few squishy GOP senators (who don’t really want to overturn Roe v. Wade anyway, in their heart of hearts) to “reluctantly” side with the Democrats. And we’ll end up with some Republican version of Merrick Garland, or worse.

The Supreme Court is the Death Star of the Left

Unless President Trump betrays us, the next judge he chooses, if confirmed, will shift the balance on the Court, giving constitutionalists the votes to strike down a long series of badly decided, lawless precedents that have stymied us for decades, and left liberals free to keep “pushing the envelope” on one outrageous innovation after another. Essentially, up till now, when the left couldn’t win at the ballot box (as it couldn’t win in most states on same-sex “marriage”), it would call in the courts like a napalm strike on a Vietnamese village. Then we would be left helpless, and the left could get busy in its next assault on normalcy, private property, Western culture, or the family. Rinse and repeat.

You need to have been alive in 1980 to fully realize what a sick, miserable game of bait-and-switch we pro-lifers have been subjected to. That’s the year our triumphant, pro-life president — the first president to take such a stand, in the teeth of a pro-choice-led GOP — threw away his first SCOTUS nomination on the unknown quantity that was Sandra Day O’Connor, to keep a pointless campaign promise that some (doubtless pro-choice) consultant convinced him to make, to appoint a woman. Having swept the Senate that year, Reagan could have picked a really worthwhile woman of course — such as Phyllis Schlafly, a brilliant attorney who had just saved the Constitution from the indignity of the Equal Rights Amendment.

But no, we got a squish-center “moderate” Republican instead, and by the time the next opening came, we had lost the Senate — giving the Democrats the chance to rip off the veil of civility and smear Robert Bork. When pro-abortion Republicans-in-name-only such as Arlen Specter sided with the Democrats, Reagan lost that battle and was talked into appointing … Anthony Kennedy!

Yes, the man who would go on to write the infamous “Humpty-Dumpty” opinion on Casey v. Planned Parenthood, which said that it’s essential to American Constitutional freedom that we be able to pull our definitions of morality, meaning, life and the universe out of any bodily orifice. To appreciate how outrageous a betrayal that appointment turned out to be, imagine how Democrats would have reacted if one of Bill Clinton’s or Obama’s appointees issued a majority opinion against abortion, citing Thomas Aquinas on Natural Law.

Stop Nominating Useless Bench Warmers

The threat of the Democrats’ “Borking” a genuinely pro-life, Constitutional conservative nominee via filibuster — a non-Constitutional, purely procedural trick whereby a judge required 60 votes for confirmation instead of 51 — was enough, on those occasions and in the case of David Souter, to drive Republican presidents to waste the crucial choice of a Supreme Court nominee on someone entirely useless.

Oh, they may have issued a few opinions on antitrust law or … something that weren’t as bad as a Democrat’s pick would have been. But on the crucial issues on which our culture and law really turn, they let themselves be guided by the left-wing superstition of a “living Constitution.” What that actually boils down to is simply this: The Supreme Court will serve not to interpret what the words of the Constitution really mean, but instead will act as a perpetual, unelected and unaccountable Constitutional Convention — rewriting the core principles of our jurisprudence as five lawyers see fit, and imposing them on the voters by decree. Any SCOTUS appointee who won’t unmask that power grab, which vitiates democracy, is useless. We might as well nominate a mannequin.

Play to Win or Stop Pretending You’re Pro-Life

Meanwhile, right up till 2016, the Republicans in the Senate have been a supine, timid, sniveling pack of sycophants who would have confirmed a ham sandwich if President Obama had nominated it. Hence they exerted exactly zero moderating influence on the Democrats’ choices of justices. So the fight over the direction of the Supreme Court, and hence of the effective meaning of the U.S. Constitution, has been as rigged up till now as a Harlem Globetrotters game — where our team turned out and went through the motions, obeying a strict set of rules that the other side boldly ignored, since they were playing to win.

It’s time we did the same. And with Trump we have the chance, at last. Any “pro-life” senator who claims that the judicial filibuster is some hallowed legislative tradition essential to preserving the rights of the minority and defending our democratic system against extremism — fill in more high-school civics class boilerplate blather here — is in fact telling you something quite different. He is revealing that he’s not serious, that he doesn’t really want to stop five unelected liberals appointed for life from making all our important laws. He isn’t a pro-lifer or a conservative. He just plays one on TV — in campaign commercials every six years or so. (For more from the author of “Please, Please Br’er Democrat, Don’t Throw Me Into That Filibuster Patch!” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Women Protesting President Trump’s Request to Dress ‘Like a Woman’: Are They Serious?

/0 Comments/in , /by

A curious little skirmish happened last week that illustrated how reactionary and unreasonable things are out there right now.

President Trump reportedly wants his staff to look professional and “pulled together” at all times. And he had the nerve to ask the ladies to dress … “like women.” Gasp!

Womankind everywhere arose and took to the Twitterverse to show their outrage over such an insult! Women sent photos of themselves in every manner of professional dress under the hashtag #DressLikeaWoman in order to put the President in his place.

For my money, this is a perfect example of women overreacting, getting offended by something benign, and becoming defensive for no reason.

No one expects the female police officer to wear anything other than the uniform, just like a male police officer. No one expects the female surgeon not to wear surgical scrubs. No one expects a woman on a construction site to wear a skirt and stilettos rather than jeans and steel-toed boots. No one thinks the female soldier wears a different uniform than the men wear. Common sense, people, please.

When a job requires a specific uniform then no one expects the ladies to be dressed differently. Surely, we can all be adult enough to acknowledge that President Trump understands this, and it has nothing at all to do with his specific request. In the White House setting, a certain decorum can and should be expected, and professional dress is part of the package. It’s reasonable to ask the ladies to dress in a professional manner befitting a lady.

Men and Women Are … Different

But what’s all the fuss about anyway? If there is nothing specific about dressing “like a woman” then why does Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner bother to wear a dress these days? Why does he not continue to wear a shirt and tie and loafers? Why did he change his fashion, if it has no bearing on his supposed new gender?

Our society is trying frantically to have everything every which way all at once. And it doesn’t work. Either there is no way of dressing that is unique to the ladies, or there is. If there is, then a man wouldn’t, or shouldn’t, dress like a lady, and a lady wouldn’t, or shouldn’t, dress like a man. And if that’s the case, then there must be something unique about being either a man or a woman. There must be a distinction. Everyone celebrating “Caitlyn” is unwittingly conceding that men and women are recognizably different.

Try as we might to erase the line, we still see the difference, and we still act on it. We think and act and live according to that difference. Because that’s sane. It’s healthy and normal and good. Men and women ARE different! That’s a primary feature of the human design, not a bug. It’s not a problem to be solved, or an unfortunate obstacle to be overcome. It’s a beautiful thing to be celebrated and honored.

This #DressLikeAWoman brouhaha is women fighting the wrong fight. This is what annoys me about so many modern women. Rather than get huffy over what it might mean to “dress like a woman,” let’s defend the fact that there is such a thing as a woman, and that a man is not one! After all, if anyone can be either/or or neither/none on any given day, then what does it matter what anyone’s wearing?

I still live on planet Sanity, where men and women do indeed exist, and where they are indeed distinct and separate, and where that’s a wonderful thing. On planet Sanity, the ladies do indeed glory in lovely, feminine fashions while at the same time donning the same uniforms, scrubs and job-specific clothing that the gentlemen wear, when that’s what is required for the job. The gentlemen still get to be gentlemen, and the ladies still get to be ladies, and everyone still gets to do their jobs. Common sense reigns. It’s beautiful.

Protest This

But I digress. How many of the women who got their Tweeters in a twist over this “dress like women” business have paid money to be “entertained” by Fifty Shades of Grey? How many of those women oohed and aahed because Christian Grey was so sexy and rich and complicated that they just forgot they were watching him assault a woman under the guise of romance? How many of those women consume the garbage coming out of Hollywood that constantly treats women like objects for gratification? Rap stars are allowed to call women “bit**es” and “hoes” and shout about every crude sex act, and it’s just art and entertainment and people gobble it up. If you want to protest something, protest this.

Or this: millions of girls in this world are still genitally mutilated by a truly oppressive and violent societal code that does not consider them people with human rights.

Or this: the growing sex trafficking that steals little girls and enslaves them in the most horrifying way imaginable.

Asking the women who work in the White House to dress professionally, like women? That doesn’t even deserve a blip on the radar. American women need to stop overreacting to trivialities and save their indignation for subjects that deserve it. (For more from the author of “Women Protesting President Trump’s Request to Dress ‘Like a Woman’: Are They Serious?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.