President Trump Should Speak at Berkeley

/0 Comments/in , /by

If you are not chilled to the bone by the riots that college administrators and campus police allowed to erupt at the University of California at Berkeley on February 1, in response to the campus appearance of a single, mildly provocative conservative speaker, Milo Yiannopoulos, it is your civic duty to watch the videos below.

The power-addicted left has reacted to losing a single presidential election like a big, angry junkie thrashing and clawing for a fix. This national tantrum points up for all Americans just what a cyanide-soaked, exploding plutonium-anthrax bullet we dodged in Hillary Clinton. (NOTE: Raw footage and rough language.)

Progressive elites had soaked in the high-handed, lawless arrogance of Barack Obama, who swept in like a messiah and ruled like an absolute monarch — flouting Congress, falsifying the plain meaning of laws, and abusing executive authority with Nixonian abandon. The same elites had assumed that they would get to finish stuffing the U.S. Supreme Court with leftist judicial activists, and crown it once and for all as a permanent, sitting Constitutional convention. No conservative or Christian voters anywhere in America would really have any voice left after that.

The Left Has Abandoned Persuasion

And that’s the whole point: We’re not supposed to. Our views are illegitimate and evil, and don’t deserve the protection of law from violence and intimidation. It is up to the conscience of any given leftist to decide whether or not the views of a fellow citizen deserve to be tolerated. If they deem you too “offensive,” it’s fine to use force in shutting them down:

Government force, like California trying to yank routine federal funding to close or de-Christianize schools that followed the Bible on sexual ethics;

Corporate force, like Marquette University and Providence College acting to remove or harass conservative professors for expressing their views, or DePaul University banning conservative speakers;

Mob violence, which the “Antifa” thugs used at Berkeley to silence Milo;

Individual assault, like a punch in the face or a spray of pepper gas aimed at someone whose views are simply “offensive.”

That’s the left’s mode of operating these days: Not just defeating opponents, but stigmatizing, silencing and finally destroying its “enemies.” From Christian bakers and florists to highly accomplished executives like Brendan Eich of Mozilla and TV hosts like the Gaines family; from the Little Sisters of the Poor to wealthy philanthropist Betsy DeVos; no one is too small to escape being targeted, too innocent or eminent to avoid getting battered and smeared.

I’ll Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It

Now some of the views to which leftists object really might be offensive or wrong. We have no sympathy with a white separatist like Richard Spencer — except insofar as he is an American citizen speaking lawfully and civilly about political issues as our Constitution absolutely guarantees him the right to do — without getting sucker-punched by some passing coward.

If leftists decide that his views, or Milo’s campy provocations, or Christina Hoff Sommers’ thoughtful criticisms of feminism, are so dangerous and contemptible that they may use violence to silence them … let’s pause to ask: On that principle, what should pro-lifers do to abortionists?

We know that these people are directly killing Americans by the millions. To avoid civil war, we agree to proceed against these mass murderers within the law. Would the Left like us to abandon that policy? Have they forgotten which side in America’s culture wars joins the army, staffs the police, and treasures its right to keep and bear arms?

The fact that we have to even raise such an appalling prospect points up how hazardous the Left’s lawless use of force has become. Drunk on the self-righteousness of political views that they have never heard challenged — thanks to the tyrants or cowards who run their universities — young leftists are speaking and acting like Spanish anarchists in the early 1930s, whose mob violence and rejection of a democratic election sparked the Spanish Civil War. They might pause to reflect how that war turned out. (There’s a bumper sticker in that: “Act like a Spanish anarchist — expect an American Franco.”)

Time to Reinforce Fort Sumter

We cannot let things in America keep spiraling downward in that direction. We must insist on the perfect legitimacy of the outcome of our elections, and the absolute enforcement of Constitutional rights. Thugs cannot be allowed to shout down speakers at universities, or burn the streets of our cities. School administrators may not enable violent mobs that silence civic speech. State governors and city mayors may not rebel against federal immigration law and collude in flouting it.

Each of these actions is a direct attack on the sovereignty of our government, and hence on every voter and citizen — just as surely as the “massive resistance” employed by Southern segregationists was in the 50s and 60s. It took the force of the federal government to defend the Constitutional rights of black Americans then. Those same rights demand a similar use of force today.

President Trump is right to threaten the cutoff of federal funds to universities that let hecklers veto or mobs attack American citizens lawfully practicing free speech. But he should go further. He should announce a presidential address, as soon as possible, at the University of California-Berkeley. He should inform the governor of California that the National Guard must cooperate with the Secret Service in guaranteeing order, and the right of the President to speak and citizens to listen.

Whatever use of legitimate force it takes to repress mob violence at Berkeley during that speech, the mob cannot prevail. President Trump should make it clear that anywhere in America where free speech is violently attacked as it was in Berkeley, he will make it his business to visit and insist that our Constitution is still in force.

He must act quickly and firmly, as Ronald Reagan did against campus terrorists back in the 1960s. Expect Americans of good will to unify behind him — and the enemies of freedom to learn their limits. It is the job of the president at times like these to say, as President Lincoln once had to say to a previous generation of thuggish Democrats afraid of losing power: “Thus far, and no further.” (For more from the author of “President Trump Should Speak at Berkeley” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

The Four Chaplains Who Went Down With the Ship

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Had the men obeyed the captain’s order, more would have survived that night.

On February 2, 1943, 902 servicemen, merchant seamen and civilian workers sailed on the United States Army Transport (USAT) Dorchester from New York on their way to Greenland. Most were 18 and 19-years-old. A Coast Guard cutter picked up sonar evidence of a German U-boat below. The captain ordered that the men sleep in their clothes and life jackets.

Many of the men chose to sleep without the life jackets or day clothes as ordered, perhaps because they were uncomfortable. At 12:55 a.m. on February 3, 1943, a U-boat torpedoed the Dorchester, knocking out its electrical system. In the chaos, men ran for their lives, some of them still in their underwear, leaving behind warm clothing in the near-freezing temperatures.

One man, while trying to retrieve his gloves, was stopped by one of the ship’s four chaplains, Rabbi Alexander Goode. “Never mind,” Rabbi Goode said, “I have two pairs.” Later, he realized that Rabbi Goode did not have another pair of gloves and that he’d decided to stay with the Dorchester as she sank.

The Chaplains On the Sinking Ship

The chaplains — Rabbi Goode, Methodist minister George Fox, Catholic priest John Washington, and Dutch Reformed pastor Clark Poling — were new to their jobs and were being taken to their assignment. They walked around the evening before the disaster, reminding men to sleep in their clothes and life jackets. They handed out crackers and comforted those who were seasick.

The four decided to hold a variety show to ease the tension. The men put on a musical review featuring the chaplains, all of whom could sing very well and loved to perform. Later, when most of the sailers were asleep, the torpedo hit.

The chaplains ran to the deck. One opened a storage locker on the ship’s deck and the four began distributing life jackets. They comforted the men on the ship, offered encouragement for the living and prayed for the dying. Survivors later reported hearing prayers in Hebrew, Latin and English.

When the life jackets ran out, the four gave their own jackets to the men. “It was the finest thing I have seen or hope to see this side of heaven,” said John Ladd, a survivor. After helping men into lifeboats, the chaplains linked arms, braced themselves against the listing deck and, as they sang hymns, went down with the ship.

One survivor, Grady Clark, said, “As I swam away from the ship, I looked back. The flares had lighted everything. The bow came up high and she slid under. The last thing I saw, the four chaplains were up there praying for the safety of the men. They had done everything they could. I did not see them again. They themselves did not have a chance without their life jackets.”

That cold, winter night 672 men perished by the torpedo and in the freezing water. The 230 survivors had been plucked out of the sea by two of the three Coast Guard cutters.

A Light in the World’s Darkness

Almost two years later, the four chaplains were posthumously awarded the Purple Heart and the Distinguished Service Cross for their selfless service and ultimate sacrifice that night.

President Harry S. Truman honored the chaplains on February 3, 1951, when he dedicated The Chapel of the Four Chaplains, now located in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Navy yard. Congress couldn’t give them the Medal of Honor because it could only be given for acts of heroism under fire. Their acts of heroism took place after the torpedo. Congress decided to bestow a special medal on the chaplains.

On January 18, 1961, President Eisenhower awarded them “The Four Chaplains Medal.” In 1988, Congress established February 3 as an annual “Four Chaplains Day.”

On that dark and cold night, in the middle of a horrifyingly tragic event, four chaplains of different faiths and denominations stood in unity as a model of John 15:13: Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

They showed love to the men on the Dorchester, and gave their lives so that others could live. May we be as bold if the moment comes when we are called to lay our lives down for others and show the love of Christ that will resonate for generations. (For more from the author of “The Four Chaplains Who Went Down With the Ship” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Truly Christian and Truly American Can Both Be True

/0 Comments/in , /by

I see a lot of journalists shocked that roughly a third of Americans believe that Christianity is a key to being “truly American,” according to a recent Pew poll. Compared to, say, Sweden, that’s a huge number.

Liberals don’t like to think that what makes someone “American” looks very much like what makes someone Christian.

Were you to look at the whole of a people and their history of giving, fighting for freedom and liberty around the world, accepting all comers who share those values (and many who don’t), governed under a principle of natural law derived from our Creator, you would see a Biblical template beneath it.

You would also see the people of the United States of America fitting that template. People who look through a purely political lens see Christianity as something to hide behind, masking motives like racism and xenophobia. Liberals have so rewritten history to fit their own narrative and philosophy that they can’t see a connection that expresses itself so naturally from many Americans who aren’t hung up on race identity politics.

I don’t think the people who answered the Pew survey were thinking, “Americans must be church-attending, white, Protestants.” I think they were thinking “what values make us American?”

The obvious things that tie people to a nationality — common language, customs and traditions — are shared by many countries (except, it seems, Sweden). Faith is where most countries differ on national identity. Greeks maintain the strongest ties to religion, and given the Greek Orthodox Church, that makes sense. Third on the list is the U.S., by far the largest, most pluralistic nation to tie faith closely to national identity.

But why? This is where the great philosophical divide, along with differing views of American history, is exposed.

Julie Zauzmer at the Washington Post suggested it might be related to political ideology and the particular brand of Christianity with which Americans associate.

One’s own religion also strongly affected the answers: Pew found that 57 percent of white evangelical Protestants thought it was very important to be Christian in order to be American, while 29 percent of white mainline Protestants, 27 percent of Catholics and just 9 percent of people unaffiliated with a faith felt the same way.

Kathryn Casteel at FiveThirtyEight posited that the attitudes regarding what makes one feel “American” strongly correlates with one’s support for, or opposition to, President Donald Trump.

There was also a partisan divide: Around 43 percent of Republicans surveyed by Pew felt that Christianity was an important part of being an American, versus 29 percent of Democrats and 26 percent of independents. Exit polls show Trump won 80 percent of white born-again and evangelical Christian voters and smaller majorities among all other denominations of Christianity.

Is a Christian-based view of America a racist view? Is it related to being a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant (WASP)?

Certainly a poll could be interpreted that way based on who answered which way. But Democrats, African Americans and Hispanic Americans believed that “sharing American customs and traditions were very important, and 70 percent of all Americans believed that speaking English was very important to national identity.

I submit that it’s not racist, nor is it ignorant to believe that Christianity is inimitably tied to Americanism.

American government is founded on the principle of natural law, which is derived from God as the creator and father of all moral law. Our rights in pluralistic America do not derive from the heredity of monarchs, or the consent of the State, or the majority opinion of its citizens. Our rights are inherent and granted by God.

Engraved on the Statue of Liberty, poet Emma Lazarus wrote “Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles.” Some have cited these words as proof that those who seek to protect America are either not Christian, or those who claim Christianity cannot also claim America.

They have it wrong. Truly, they have it backwards.

It’s not that to be truly American, one must first be a Christian. It’s that if one is truly American, and understands true Christianity, looking in the mirror of “American” you find “Christian.” It’s not because of who we call ourselves, it’s because of what we do, what we believe and how we act toward others.

America truly is a Christian nation, because those who understand both correctly realize that one could not exist without the other. (For more from the author of “Truly Christian and Truly American Can Both Be True” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

One Way Neil Gorsuch Will Carry Scalia’s Legacy on the Supreme Court

/0 Comments/in , /by

President Donald Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court—Neil M. Gorsuch—is a terrific choice to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

Heritage Foundation legal scholars and others have noted a number of similarities between the two great judges, and one of them is their sensitivity to issues of overcriminalization.

If confirmed to the bench, Gorsuch would carry on Scalia’s legacy of respect for the rule of law and his keen awareness of how federal criminal law has been misused to punish Americans for minor mistakes that don’t warrant federal prosecution.

Here is some direct evidence.

Undersized Fish, Oversized Federal Criminal Code

Most fishermen can spin a yarn, but in 2007, Florida fisherman John Yates probably never imagined that tossing undersized fish overboard to avoid a citation would bring him before the United States Supreme Court.

Much less, he never expected he would be fighting a maximum 20-year federal prison sentence for allegedly violating the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Congress enacted that statute after the Enron fiasco to prevent auditors from destroying corporate records that may contain evidence of crime, thereby obstructing federal investigations.

At oral argument, Scalia balked at the absurdity of Yates’ predicament. He made clear that twisting fairly trivial misconduct already banned by state law into a major federal felony offense is unwise, to say the least.

“This captain is throwing a fish overboard,” said Scalia. “He could have gotten 20 years … What kind of a mad prosecutor would try to send this guy up for 20 years?”

Scalia said that he would be cautious about “how much coverage I give to severe statutes” if prosecutors could stretch them beyond their breaking point.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissenting opinion that Yates’ case spotlights “overcriminalization and excessive punishment in the U. S. Code,” resulting from an excess of “bad law—too broad and undifferentiated, with too-high maximum penalties, which give prosecutors too much leverage and sentencers too much discretion.”

Kagan called the situation “not an outlier, but an emblem of a deeper pathology in the federal criminal code.”

Gorsuch and Scalia in Lockstep

In one of Scalia’s many pithy dissents—this one in Sykes v. United States (2011), ruling that Indiana’s felony vehicle flight offense counts toward the Armed Career Criminal Act’s sentencing scheme—he directly addressed the legislature’s role in overcriminalization:

We face a Congress that puts forth an ever-increasing volume of laws in general, and of criminal laws in particular. It should be no surprise that as the volume increases, so do the number of imprecise laws. And no surprise that our indulgence of imprecisions that violate the Constitution encourages imprecisions that violate the Constitution. Fuzzy, leave-the-details-to-be-sorted-out-by-the-courts legislation is attractive to the Congressman who wants credit for addressing a national problem but does not have the time (or perhaps the votes) to grapple with the nitty-gritty. In the field of criminal law, at least, it is time to call a halt.

Gorsuch matches not only Scalia’s respect for the principle that judges are not empowered to rewrite or repeal law as they see fit, but also Scalia’s aversion to ramping relatively minor state offenses into major federal prosecutions, or otherwise turning innocent conduct into a crime.

And Gorsuch matches Scalia’s wit, too, especially when it comes to issues of overcriminalization.

In a 2013 lecture titled “Law’s Irony,” published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Gorsuch wrote that today’s criminal justice system “bears its share of ironies.”

He noted that “today we have about 5,000 federal criminal statutes on the books, most of them added in the last few decades, and the spigot keeps pouring, with literally hundreds of new statutory crimes inked every single year.”

And that does not “begin to count the thousands of additional regulatory crimes buried in the federal register,” said Gorsuch. “There are so many crimes cowled in the numbing fine print of those pages that scholars have given up counting and are now debating their number.”

He cited a few examples:

While then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., “worried that we have assumed a tendency to federalize ‘everything that walks, talks, and moves,’” Gorsuch noted that “we should say ‘hoots’ too, because it’s now a federal crime to misuse the likeness of Woodsy the Owl … ”

“Businessmen who import lobster tails in plastic bags rather than cardboard boxes can be brought up on charges.”

“Mattress sellers who remove that little tag? Yes, they’re probably federal criminals too.”
Gorsuch summed up the problem: “Whether because of public choice problems or otherwise there appears to be a ratchet, relentlessly clicking away, always in the direction of more, never fewer, federal criminal laws.”

He asks, “What happens to individual freedom and equality when the criminal law comes to cover so many facets of daily life that prosecutors can almost choose their targets with impunity?”

Warnings From History

Digging into America’s common law history, Gorsuch explained that the “excesses of executive authority invited by too few written laws led to the rebellion against King John and the sealing of the Magna Carta, one of the great advances in the rule of law.”

Looking further into the history of criminal law, Gorsuch noted how “history bears warning that too much—and too much inaccessible—law can lead to executive excess as well. [The Roman emperor] Caligula sought to protect his authority by publishing the law in a hand so small and posted so high that no one could really be sure what was and wasn’t forbidden.”

The American framers were well aware of this history.

“[James] Madison warned that when laws become just a paper blizzard citizens are left unable to know ‘what the law is’ and to conform their conduct to it”—and Gorsuch warns today that either “too much or too little can impair liberty.”

Scalia’s forceful dissent in Sykes v. United States provides some insight into how today’s bloated federal criminal code imperils liberty. Heritage legal scholars and many others have written extensively on the pitfalls, perils, and paths away from overcriminalization.

But as Gorsuch continues in his lecture, “The fact is, the law can be a messy, human business.”

Like Scalia, however, Gorsuch would look to “careful application of the law’s existing premises,” rather than his view on what the law should be, to resolve contemporary social problems.

For that and many other reasons, Gorsuch and Scalia are of like minds.

Both demonstrated respect for the constitutional right to life and the death penalty as punishment for a capital offense, for example. Both are devoted textualists whose opinions reject legislating from the bench.

And Gorsuch would continue Scalia’s legacy on many issues of criminal law—including a sharp, conservative skepticism of the federal government’s ever-increasing expansion of criminal liability. (For more from the author of “One Way Neil Gorsuch Will Carry Scalia’s Legacy on the Supreme Court” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Leftover Obama Refugee Deal With Australia Draws Questions

/0 Comments/in , /by

In mid-November, just after Donald Trump was elected president, the outgoing Obama administration reached an agreement with Australia to resettle hundreds of refugees to America.

Australia’s hard-line policy to deter illegal immigration had banished thousands of asylum-seekers, most from the Middle East, to offshore detention centers on the Pacific island nation of Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island.

After human rights groups had reported poor conditions and abuse at camps on the islands, the United Nations intervened and worked with Australia to secure a pledge from President Barack Obama to accept about 1,250 refugees, provided they passed U.S. security screening.

Obama’s deal, which attracted little attention when the U.S. and Australia announced its terms, collided this week with the policies of the Trump administration, which just temporarily barred people from seven countries the Obama administration had designated as posing terrorism risks from entering the U.S.

In a phone call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Saturday, Trump reportedly criticized the refugee deal, although the two leaders have disputed media accounts about the content of the discussion.

“You can see why Trump, given his views, would be upset about this deal,” said Kevin Appleby, senior director of international migration policy at the Center for Migration Studies in New York, in an interview with The Daily Signal. “It’s like a fly in his ointment. He sees the deal puts him in a bad position politically. He’s probably wondering what Australia is doing for us when the U.S. is taking in all these refugees from countries that are now banned.”

Despite his misgivings, Trump later agreed to honor the initial agreement, according to Turnbull and the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer. It’s unclear how many refugees will ultimately be resettled in the U.S. and when they might come.

Spicer said Trump was “extremely upset” to have inherited the deal, but would fulfill the U.S.’ commitment to it.

Many of the refugees stranded in the Australian-run detention centers—and designated for resettlement in the U.S.—came from Iran, Iraq, Sudan, and Somalia, countries included in Trump’s order.

A special provision in the Trump order allows for exceptions to honor “a pre­-existing international agreement,” a line that seems to reference the Australia deal.

In November, the parties to the deal said the U.S. would prioritize families and children, and that the transfer of refugees would take six months to a year as the refugees underwent vetting, including two rounds of interviews with America’s Department of Homeland Security.

According to the Australian government, around 80 percent of people in the offshore detention camps have been determined to be legitimate refugees.

As the Trump administration decides how to implement the deal, some are expressing concern about how the Obama administration negotiated the agreement in the first place.

On Thursday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, wrote a letter to Rex Tillerson, Trump’s new secretary of state, asking him to declassify the details of the agreement.

Grassley first raised concerns about the agreement in November, when he wrote to the Obama administration and accused it of “failing to allow for public scrutiny of the plan” and not consulting Congress about it.

“As I said before, the American people have a right to be fully aware of the actions of their government regarding foreign nationals who may be admitted to the United States,” Grassley wrote in the letter to Tillerson. “American taxpayers not only foot the bill for the majority of the refugee resettlement in the United States, but they bear any consequences regarding the security implications of those admitted to our country.”

Appleby doesn’t consider the refugees coming to the U.S. in the deal as much of a security risk.

“It’s beyond reason that some ISIS terrorist would go through all of this when it’s much easier for them to radicalize someone already living in the U.S. or Australia than sending someone through this multi-year, brutal process,” Appleby said.

But he and other experts say the agreement could be viewed as rewarding Australia for an immigration policy that has been widely criticized.

“These are human beings who have been living in very difficult conditions on these islands for years,” Nayla Rush, a senior researcher at the Center for Immigration Studies, said in an interview with The Daily Signal. “It doesn’t make sense for the U.S. to take them. Why should the U.S. be the moral compass of Australia? These people want to go to Australia. They have been stranded by the Australian government, and they are responsible.”

While the Obama administration and Australian government have not said the U.S received something in return as part of the deal, the parties signed their agreement two months after Turnbull agreed to help the U.S. resettle refugees fleeing violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

“There will not be a people swap,” Scott Ryan, a special minister of state in Australia, said at the time.

Under a long-standing policy, Australia mandates offshore detention centers for asylum-seekers who arrive by boat.

According to CNN, Australia launched Operation Sovereign Borders (OSB) in 2013 after a previous liberalization of immigration policies resulted in a surge of the number of people arriving by boat from 161 in 2008 to 2,726 in 2009.

But the new deterrence strategy did not slow the immigration flow.

The Guardian in 2016 reported cases of physical and sexual abuse of refugees at the detention centers. Protesters rallied across Australia demanding the closure of the centers.

In April 2016, Papua New Guinea’s Supreme Court ordered the Australian government to close the processing center there, calling the facility a violation of the migrants’ rights.

“The Australia deal with the U.S. is reflective of a failed policy, and that’s the larger point here,” Appleby said. “It’s a broader strategy the developed nations are pursuing to deter large movements of people. That doesn’t work, and the U.S. and Australia are now bailing each other out.” (For more from the author of “Leftover Obama Refugee Deal With Australia Draws Questions” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Trump’s Executive Orders on Financial Regulation Are a Great First Step

/0 Comments/in , /by

President Donald Trump has vowed to dismantle the Dodd-Frank Act, and on Friday he signed two executive orders to get that process moving. All Americans should be encouraged by this start, especially since the President is only two weeks into his administration.

One of Friday’s executive orders deals with a single Obama administration rule, but the other one sets the table for much broader reforms.

The former order lays out a path to rescind or revise what’s known as the fiduciary rule, a regulation designed to provide a single standard for anyone providing retirement investment advice.

The Dodd-Frank Act required the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to study the need for a new, uniform federal fiduciary standard for brokers and investment advisers. Despite this provision and a lack of evidence that there was any problem to fix, former President Barack Obama’s Department of Labor (DOL) issued its own fiduciary rule.

In general, a fiduciary standard requires financial advisers to put their individual client’s interests above their own. As simple as that sounds, imposing a one-size-fits-all approach on investors is likely to lead to many unintended consequences, such as less investment advice for average Americans.

Trump’s executive order puts the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule on a clear path to its demise, and makes it known that the administration wants to “empower Americans to make their own financial decisions.” This statement marks a sharp break from the Obama administration’s paternalistic view that Americans cannot sufficiently educate themselves on even basic investment issues.

The second order has much broader implications for a White House that expects “to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank.”

This order makes it the official policy of the Trump administration “to regulate the United States financial system in a manner consistent with” seven core principles. These principles are as follows:

empower Americans to make independent financial decisions and informed choices in the marketplace, save for retirement, and build individual wealth;

prevent taxpayer-funded bailouts;

foster economic growth and vibrant financial markets through more rigorous regulatory impact analysis that addresses systemic risk and market failures, such as moral hazard and information asymmetry;

enable American companies to be competitive with foreign firms in domestic and foreign markets;

advance American interests in international financial regulatory negotiations and meetings;

make regulation efficient, effective, and appropriately tailored; and
restore public accountability within Federal financial regulatory agencies and rationalize the Federal financial regulatory framework.

Many of these principles closely track the ideas in the Financial CHOICE Act, a bill that Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, proposed to replace large parts of Dodd-Frank.

The mere fact that the president stated these principles 15 days into his administration is a great sign for anyone who wants to get rid of bureaucratic red tape, government mandates, and taxpayer backing of losses.

Combining these principles with strong actions in new executive orders would be even better, but there’s no reason to suspect the Trump administration will remain idle. (For more from the author of “Trump’s Executive Orders on Financial Regulation Are a Great First Step” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

When Sending People to Jail, Criminal Intent Matters

/0 Comments/in , /by

Can a person go to jail for a crime that he had no intent to commit, and that the government admits he did not know would occur?

Jack and Peter DeCoster, father and son executives of the Quality Egg business, have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider their jail sentences for a crime committed by someone else without their knowledge: Selling eggs contaminated with salmonella.

The Outbreak

The DeCoster family was one of the largest egg producers in the United States, with 100 barns housing 5 million egg-laying hens. In 2010, a Salmonella outbreak that caused nearly 2,000 reported consumer illnesses was traced to their Iowa-based farms at Quality Egg, LLC.

The family business had a poor environmental and public health record with several past regulatory violations. But their business was booming until the 2010 outbreak, when about 550 million eggs were recalled.

The Sentence

In 2014, the DeCosters pleaded guilty to introducing adulterated (i.e. contaminated) eggs into interstate commerce, in violation of federal law.

Under the food adulteration provision (21 U.S.C. § 331) of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, “[t]he introduction or delivery for introduction into interstate commerce of any food, drug, device, tobacco product, or cosmetic that is adulterated or misbranded” is prohibited.

The statutory penalty allows for fines and up to one year’s imprisonment.

The family and business paid $7 million in total fines under their plea agreement. Consumers also hit the business with a myriad of lawsuits seeking money damages. In 2011, the DeCosters reached settlements with at least 40 victims, some of whom reportedly received around $250,000.

The family’s loss of their business would seem to be a fair price to pay for sloppy operations that ended up making customers sick. The financial remedies they were forced to pay effectively bankrupted Quality Egg.

But in addition, both Jack and Peter DeCoster were sentenced to serve three months in prison.

This sentence, which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit recently upheld, represents a dangerous misstep in the law of criminal liability for corporate supervisors.

As Judge Arlen Beam writes in his dissenting opinion, the government conceded that the DeCosters “did not know that any eggs distributed by Quality Egg at any relevant times ‘were, in fact, contaminated with Salmonella,’” and that “no person associated with Quality Egg had knowledge of salmonella contamination at any relevant time.”

The Appeal

In challenging only their prison sentences, not their convictions, the DeCosters explained that they had no knowledge of the harmful conduct.

They argue that, absent any level of criminal intent, their prison sentence for the offense of food adulteration authorized by statute (21 U.S.C. § 333) violates the due process guarantee of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

In their defense, the DeCosters note that they periodically conducted salmonella tests of their eggs even before they were under any obligation from the government to do so. They relied on expert advice from food-safety consultants at the University of Georgia and in private practice to develop their Salmonella testing program, which was conducted by a third-party.

Thousands of environmental tests conducted on Quality Eggs products yielded satisfactory results in the years leading up to the 2010 Salmonella outbreak.

Still, the relevant statute that criminalizes supplying adulterated eggs is silent on criminal intent. It does not require that management ever knew of the possible danger. The DeCosters violated the statute and were subjected to criminal liability under the Responsible Corporate Officer Doctrine.

The Responsible Corporate Officer Doctrine

Depending on the outcome of the DeCosters’ appeal, the Responsible Corporate Officer doctrine could become a more significant cause for concern among employers. The doctrine holds employers criminally liable for the bad acts of their employees, even if the former has no knowledge whatsoever of the alleged unlawful acts.

Traditionally, Anglo-American law required proof of some mens rea (Latin for “guilty mind”) standard, also known as a criminal intent standard, which specifies, as the influential English legal scholar William Blackstone wrote, that “an unwarrantable act without a vicious will is no crime at all.”

The United States Supreme Court has recently breathed new life into the old presumption that criminal statutes should be construed to require proof of criminal intent even when a statute is silent on the issue.

This Responsible Corporate Officer doctrine lingers on, in tension with that fundamental mens rea requirement, allowing convictions of supervisors on the basis that alleged misconduct took place “on their watch.”

In United States v. Park (1975), the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of John Park, the president of a national food chain who failed to prevent food safety violations.

Park entrusted compliance with the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to a district vice president and his employees who failed miserably in their duties by allowing food to be contaminated by rodents.

Although the results of noncompliance were dangerous to the public, Park had no personal involvement in, or intention behind, any violations of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act requirements.

Still, the Supreme Court credited him with responsibility for “the entire operation of the company” that was under his oversight, and upheld the criminal fine levied against him.

While the Responsible Corporate Officer doctrine served as the basis for a criminal conviction without a showing of intent in United States v. Park, it is an open question whether a person may be incarcerated for an unwitting offense under the doctrine.

What’s at Stake

In challenging their prison sentence, the DeCosters rely on the Supreme Court’s decision in Staples v. United States (1994), which instructs that a court should look at the potential penalty before deciding whether it is constitutionally permissible for a statute to lack a mens rea standard.

There, the Supreme Court reiterated that imposing “a small pecuniary penalty [on] a person who has unwittingly done something detrimental to the public interest” is reasonable, but incarceration for an unwitting defendant is entirely different.

The DeCosters’ three month prison sentence represents one small stint for man, one giant leap backward for the law. Other federal courts have reasoned that “the imposition of severe penalties… for the commission of a morally innocent act may violate the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.”

Heritage scholars have argued elsewhere that incarceration for such an offense could violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

Judge Arlen Beam wrote in his dissenting opinion in the DeCosters’ case that “there is no precedent that supports imprisonment without establishing some measure of a guilty mind on the part of [the DeCosters], and none is established in this case.”

The DeCosters are now asking the Supreme Court to hear their case and rule that the Constitution forbids the imposition of a jail sentence for an unintentional violation of a law that lacks a mens rea standard.

A failure to remedy the lower courts’ reasoning in the DeCoster case could cast the specter of a jail sentence for employers over everyday business activities that they have no involvement in whatsoever. (For more from the author of “When Sending People to Jail, Criminal Intent Matters” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Trump Vows to Repeal Political Limits on Churches

/0 Comments/in , /by

Warning that religious freedom is “under threat,” President Donald Trump vowed Thursday to repeal the Johnson Amendment, an IRS rule barring pastors from endorsing candidates from the pulpit.”

“I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution,” Trump said during remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast, a high-profile event bringing together faith leaders, politicians and dignitaries.

Trump made a similar pledge as a candidate but has not detailed how he plans to scrap the rule or how quickly he will proceed in doing do.

Religious conservatives whose overwhelming support propelled Trump to the White House have been watching closely for him to deliver on promised protections for religious objectors to gay marriage and abortion. Kelly Shackelford, head of First Liberty Institute, a non-profit legal group that specializes in religious freedom cases, said no other presidential candidate was “more outspoken on their commitment to religious freedom” than Trump.

The president made no mention at the prayer breakfast of other steps he may take on those issues, saying only that religious freedom is a “sacred right.” He used his remarks to thank the American people for their prayers in his opening days in office. (Read more from “Trump Vows to Repeal Political Limits on Churches” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Leftist, Big Spending Lisa Murkowski Hypocritically Attacks Trump’s Border Wall Because of Deficit

/2 Comments/in , , /by

In an incredibly brazen attack on President Trump today, Alaska’s Senator Lisa Murkowski pledges his border wall will never get through Congress. Why? Because it will add to the deficit:

“If you’re going to spend that kind of money, you’re going to have to show me where you’re going to get that money,” Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski told CNN. “I don’t see how you can get a bill like that through [Congress] without offsets. I don’t see how that’s possible.”

Of course, Murkowski has never seen a debt ceiling increase she hasn’t embraced. For her, any problems with the budget have to do with why more money is not being spent, not less. Although she is the biggest Senate liberal on the RINO side, save Susan Collins, Murkowski is probably the biggest advocate for spending among Republicans. Her crony-capitalist handlers depend on the billions she directs their way and – in exchange – they manipulate Alaska’s elections for her.

Moreover, Murkowski may be way over her head on this one. To think she can actually run the numbers on the deficit – after failing the Alaska Bar exam five times – is a big question. Basic logical skills seem to elude her.

Unsurprisingly, big-spender Murkowski has never received a majority of Alaskan votes. Joe Miller’s two challenges, including one in which Murkowski was defeated in the primary, reflect that most Alaskans reject her style of politics. But, as long as her good friend and former campaign co-chair controls the corrupt voting system in Alaska, she will remain a fixture in the U.S. Senate.

If President Trump wants to do something about Lisa Murkowski, he should follow through on his commitment to review vote integrity issues in America, starting with Alaska’s dirty system. Otherwise, we can count on another six years of hypocrisy, corruption, and down-right stupidity from our senior senator.

Did Obama Just Hack President Trump’s Statement on Israel?

/0 Comments/in , , /by

The final major policy fight of Obama’s presidency was his public dispute with Israel over their right to build homes in their biblical homeland. The country was rightly appalled that Obama and then-Secretary of State John Kerry chose to focus on a few thousand Jewish homes in the foothills of ancient Samaria at a time when Islamic mayhem is breaking out all over Western Civilization. In many respects, this parting shot from Obama epitomized the moral dyslexia of his entire presidency.

At the time, conservatives and even some intellectually honest liberals breathed a sigh of relief that a new a president would soon be welcomed — one who stopped condemning our ally as a way of apologizing to the Islamic world. We thought we could finally break away from the global elite’s maniacal obsession with the illogical and incoherent distraction of the two-state solution and focus on the root problem: Islamic supremacism.

Thus, naturally, this statement from the Trump White House was shocking:

The American desire for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians has remained unchanged for 50 years. While we don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal. As the President has expressed many times, he hopes to achieve peace throughout the Middle East region. The Trump administration has not taken an official position on settlement activity and looks forward to continuing discussions, including with Prime Minister Netanyahu when he visits with President Trump later this month.

At first I thought this was a hoax, or that it was drafted by an Obama holdover.

Some might suggest that at least Trump’s White House put some distance between this administration and his predecessor by recognizing some right for Jews to live in part of Judea and Samaria.

Really folks? Is this the soft bigotry of low expectations? Are we aiming for pale pastels, haggling over a few inches in an area virtually invisible on a map compared to the mass of land controlled by Islam? At a time when the entire premise of this two-state solution has been countermanded by reality, are we going to continue the same failed recognition of the PLO terrorists the way Clinton, Bush, and Obama did?

What exactly does it mean to “achieve peace” and why is the creation of a 23rd Arab state in our best interest? Why should we continue to invest our diplomatic capital into the foreign policy version of Obamacare? I spent the entire week robustly defending Trump’s immigration policy from a legal, political, historical, and philosophical perspective precisely because we don’t want to endanger our land with Islamic supremacism. Why is the Trump White House asking Israel to do something he wouldn’t want to do himself?

Moreover, this is the very stupidity that embodies the anger people felt against the political establishment and why they voted for Trump. While on the campaign trail, President Trump boldly decried the “stupid” politicians who are “pathetic losers” and perpetuate failed policies that are devoid of common sense. There is nothing that better fits this description than the globalist elite obsession with creating a PLO terror state west of the Jordan River; one which will become saturated with ISIS and Al Qaeda elements within days.

The two-state solution is the Obamacare of foreign policy. Much like Obamacare has locked up our economy and job market on the domestic front, the PLO nonsense has paralyzed our leverage in the Middle East and has consumed our foreign policy for 23 years. It is rooted in an apologetic concession to Islam instead of confronting the reality of Sharia-based Islam. Now, Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood know that any time they want to leverage Trump into making a concession, they will call upon Hamas and the PLO to ratchet up attacks on Israel and criticize the presence of Jews in Jewish territory. We have lost our leverage now that they know we “fear the Arab street” as it relates to moving the embassy and our ally building homes wherever they damn please.

What happened to the tough negotiator? Is this coming from his meeting with King Abdullah of Jordan today? A tough negotiator would tell Abdullah, “listen buddy, you create an Arab terror state on your western border and your country will fall to the Islamists within weeks. We won’t be there to save you.” Jordan would be just as adversely affected by such a dumb move as Israel.

Finally, there is a background here that is probably missed in the media. The reason Israel announced more construction in Samaria today is because, thanks to Israel’s crazy Supreme Court [Robert Bork wrote a lot about it during his lifetime], the Israeli government just dismantled an entire community of Jews in a town called Amona and sent their own army in to kick out their own families who have been living there for 20 years. This is something, to my knowledge, no other nation has done in history. So the building of more homes was somewhat of a domestic compromise for kicking those people out. For the Trump administration to then issue a statement on the same day and rip that wound wide open is appalling to the many religious Christians and Jews who so enthusiastically supported him on the premise that he wouldn’t follow such policies.

The bottom line is there was absolutely no reason to even focus on this issue at a time like this or issue any such statement. Silence in the face of Israel building homes would have been the refreshing change we all expected.

It’s disappointing that Trump is willing to get us sucked into the foreign policy cause célèbre of the very political establishment he claims to detest. On the one hand, he (rightfully) proclaims that our political leaders have been stupid to try to create democracy in the Middle East among existing Arab nations. Yet at the same time, he is willing to expend American capital creating a new Arab state that hates America, exports terrorism, destabilize the region, strengthen the Muslim Brotherhood, and will become a client-state of Iran?

We know you are better than this, Mr. President. Return to the inner voice of common sense and ignore the foreign policy elites. (For more from the author of “Did Obama Just Hack President Trump’s Statement on Israel?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.