Report Confirms Russia’s Responsibility for Shooting Down Malaysian Airliner

/0 Comments/in , /by

In interim findings, a team of investigators says Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile fired from an area controlled by Russian-backed fighters in eastern Ukraine.

The team, comprised of investigators from Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands, and Ukraine, is conducting a criminal investigation into the downing of MH17 on July 17, 2014, which killed all 298 people on board.

The report says “the investigation also shows that the BUK-TELAR [surface-to-air missile system] was brought in from the territory of the Russian Federation and subsequently, after having shot down flight MH-17, was taken back to the Russian Federation.”

The report confirmed what has been known for some time. The day after the downing of the airliner, President Barack Obama said evidence indicated “the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile that was launched from an area that is controlled by Russian-backed separatists inside of Ukraine.”

Obama also said Russia had supplied weapons, including anti-aircraft weapons, to Russian-backed forces in Ukraine. In October 2015, a report from the Dutch Safety Board concluded the plane was brought down by a Russian-made surface-to-air missile.

The tragic loss of nearly 300 innocent lives over the skies of Ukraine over two years ago is emblematic of the cavalier and naked aggression Russia has undertaken against Ukraine.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2014, annexed Crimea a few weeks later, and continues to fight a war in the Donbas region against Ukrainian government forces. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has cost more than 9,600 lives and resulted in over 22,000 injuries since April 2014.

The shooting down of the civilian airliner in 2014 threatened to turn worldwide public opinion further against Russia. As a result, Russian propaganda conjured up a flurry of alternative absurd conspiracy theories mostly blaming Ukraine for the shoot-down.

Russia’s disinformation campaign and trolls have targeted investigators looking into MH17, and Russia is also believed to be behind a 2015 cyberattack of the Dutch Safety Board.

The interim report findings should serve as a reminder to Americans that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Russia is not a friend that can be bargained with, rather it is a brutal regime that has brought war back to Europe, a war which continues to this day and has cost thousands of innocent lives.

Furthermore, Russia’s reaction to the shooting down of MH17 and subsequent investigations into the tragedy are clear examples of how Russia uses propaganda, cyberattacks, and obfuscation to advance its narrative of events, even when irrefutable evidence exists to prove Russian disinformation incorrect.

Whoever takes over the White House in 2017 will face an aggressive, revanchist Russia that is a threat to the United States and our allies. No amount of wishful thinking can obscure this fact.

The U.S. must approach relations with Russia from a position of strength, reassure our allies, and implement a comprehensive strategy for dealing with Russia as it currently is. The U.S. should also continue to support Ukraine as it defends itself and continues to institute necessary political and economic reforms.

MH17 was a tragic incident brought about by Russia. American leaders must not view Putin and his regime through rose-colored glasses.

Let us hope that these latest findings help clarify any misunderstandings about the nature of the Russian regime and the deadly consequences of its actions. (For more from the author of “Report Confirms Russia’s Responsibility for Shooting Down Malaysian Airliner” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

No, Mainstream Media, Hillary Did Not Win the First Debate

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Immediately after the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton ended Monday night, liberal media pundits began gloating abuot how poorly Trump performed. Many Republicans piled on. I felt like we had watched two different debates.

Were they right? No.

Trump’s Higher Hurdle

Trump had to jump higher hurdles than Clinton to get a favorable report from the mainstream media, who favor Clinton and see the world the way she does. He faced other disadvantages.

The moderator, Lester Holt of NBC Nightly News, is being called “the third debater” by HeatStreet for his biased role. He asked six follow-up questions of Trump but none of Clinton. Holt asked Clinton nothing about her emails, Benghazi or the Clinton Foundation. Instead, he “grilled Trump on stop-and-frisk, the birther story, his comments about women, his many bankruptcies, why he hasn’t released his tax returns — and a host of other issues the media sees as unfriendly to the Republican candidate.”

Holt’s fact-checking follow-ups were directed at Trump, not Clinton. Todd Starnes, a contributor to The Stream, tweeted, “Lester Holt should’ve moderated — instead of auditioning to be Hillary’s press secretary.” (For other examples of the media’s unfair use of fact-checking against Trump, see The Washington Times‘ article “Eight examples where ‘fact-checking’ became opinion journalism.”)

Journalists evaluating the debate kept up the claim that Trump made many mistakes and false claims. Compared to Clinton, he is vulnerable to this criticism. Clinton is a lawyer, with years of experience nitpicking details, which showed when she got bogged down on details several times during the debate. In contrast, Trump is a creative innovator, who has focused on the big picture throughout his entire career.

Now, it is true that Trump made a few mistakes, but his misstatements were generally not material. One “error” some jumped on was his saying Clinton has “been fighting ISIS [her] entire adult life.”

Yes, ISIS began in 1999, when Clinton was 52. She hasn’t been fighting ISIS her entire adult life. But as a public figure, she has always been a strong supporter of aggressive military action against such groups. Trump exaggerated to make a point about her consistent support for military intervention. It’s called “hyperbole” and it’s a legitimate way of making a point. Nevertheless, some “fact-checkers” declared that Trump was wrong again.

Clinton Performed Even Worse

What the media is leaving out is that Clinton performed even worse than Trump. Equally missing is any praise for the clever things Trump said.

Stylistically, Clinton was a disaster. It may not be fair to judge candidates on this, but style does influence voters — remember the Nixon-Kennedy debate. She marched out in a glaringly bright red pantsuit, the type of outfit she is ridiculed for, since the harsh colors are unforgiving to her body shape. She reverted to her nasally, harsh “schoolmarm” voice throughout the length of the debate, perhaps to keep from coughing.

She came across as arrogant and condescending, unlikable, particularly when she gloated while boasting about her accomplishments. Since few voters know anything about her tenure as secretary of state other than the Benghazi terror attack and her email scandal, the bragging felt fake.

Trump cleverly interjected short comments while Clinton was speaking, refuting her. Even if a critic disagrees with him, the critic should credit him with an effective debating strategy. Of course, his critics complain that he only did that because she’s a woman — though if Clinton had done the same to him they would have been silent.

Professional political observers can argue about who did better in the debate. I think Trump did better than Clinton, but liberal journalists usually think Clinton did better than Trump. The real test is what effect the debates have on undecided voters, and that is something we won’t know for a long time. (For more from the author of “No, Mainstream Media, Hillary Did Not Win the First Debate” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Teen Told He’d Never Stand Again, Stands for First Time During National Anthem

/0 Comments/in , /by

While football players all across America — from Pop Warner up through to the NFL — are kneeling in protest of the national anthem, South Carolina teen Wesley Baker stood up for America.

Doctors were sure he would never stand again — possibly relegated to a permanent vegetative state.

In 2013, the high school football player was walking along the highway when he was hit by an 18-wheeler. Though he survived, miraculously, Baker lost a leg and sustained heavy brain trauma, among other injuries.

But after three years of medical attention, therapy, and peerless persistence, 19-year-old Wesley Baker stood for Old Glory and the Star-Spangled Banner during Friday night’s football game at his former Conway High School.

It was the first time he’s been able to stand since his accident.

“It feels like a dream. I’ve asked God for three years… when his accident took place I said, ‘God please let my son walk again and talk again,’ and day by day, he’s shown me miracles,” his mother, Debra Phipps, told WKRC.

“Wesley, he’s worked hard, he’s lost his leg and he had a right to sit down, but now God is giving him the strength to stand up, and we all need to stand up for America,” she said. (For more from the author of “Teen Told He’d Never Stand Again, Stands for First Time During National Anthem” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Gowdy Says Lies Show Sufficient Intent to Prosecute Clinton in Email Scandal

/0 Comments/in , , /by

With the FBI investigation into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server having revealed careless conduct, flouting of the rules for handling sensitive documents, and attempts to cover up the scandal, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., wanted to know on Wednesday what — exactly — the FBI’s standard would have been to have prosecuted Clinton for breaking the law.

“What would she have had to do to warrant your recommendation for prosecution?” Gowdy asked FBI Director James Comey during a House Oversight Committee hearing Wednesday.

Comey, as he has before, said that he would have to be able to prove intent. On Wednesday, he replied to Gowdy that he would have had to be able to prove Clinton knew what she did was wrong when she did it.

“But the way to prove that is whether or not someone took steps to conceal or destroy what they’ve done,” Gowdy said. “That is the best evidence you have that they knew it was wrong, that they lied about it.”

The congressman made it clear he believed intent had been demonstrated.

” … you have to prove it by circumstantial evidence such as whether or not the person intended to set up an e-mail system outside the State Department, such as whether or not the person knew or should have known that his or her job involved handling classified information, whether or not the person was truthful about the use of multiple devices, whether or not the person knew that a frequent e-mailer to her had been hacked, and whether she took any remedial steps after being put on notice that your e-mail or someone who’s been e-mailing with you prolifically had been hacked, and whether or not — and I think you would agree with this, Director — false exculpatory statements are gold in a courtroom. I would rather have a false exculpatory statement than a confession. I would rather have someone lie about something and it be provable that that is a lie, such as that I neither sent nor received classified information. Such as that I turned over all of my work related e-mails. All of that to me goes to the issue of intent,” Gowdy said.

He told Comey he was “real careful not to criticize you” but was highly unhappy with the results of the FBI’s work.

“That is not the FBI that I used to work with,” Gowdy said.

Gowdy had also expressed his frustration during Fox and Friends when he noted that rules seemed to have been bent severely in the investigation, as typified by the multiple roles played by Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, who was given immunity by the FBI.

“Cheryl Mills, one day she’s a target, one day she’s a witness, and then the next day, she’s sitting in Secretary Clinton’s interview as a lawyer. And I’ll just tell you, as somebody that did this for a living, that is unprecedented,” Gowdy said.

Gowdy was not alone in being skeptical.

“It seems clear that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton committed multiple felonies involving the passing of classified information through her private email server,” said Committee Chairman Robert W. Goodlatte, R-Va.. “The FBI, however, declined to refer the case for prosecution on some very questionable bases.”

Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, said he was certain the decision not to prosecute Clinton was made before she was interviewed. Comey denied that assertion. (For more from the author of “Gowdy Says Lies Show Sufficient Intent to Prosecute Clinton in Email Scandal” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Senate Hands Obama Huge Loss, Gives 9/11 Victims’ Families Big Victory

/0 Comments/in , /by

Families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks moved one step closer to being able to sue Saudi Arabia after the Senate overrode President Barack Obama’s veto of a bill allowing those lawsuits.

The vote on the override was 97-1.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., was the only one in the chamber to support Obama.

The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA, would provide an exception to the Obama-supported doctrine of “sovereign immunity,” in which countries are not sued in one another’s courts.

Obama has insisted that although the bill does give 9/11 families the chance they have wanted to sue Saudi Arabia, the U.S. might lose the immunity from lawsuits it currently has in other nations.

Senators who opposed Obama said the risk was worth taking.

“This legislation is really about pursuing justice,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas. “The families have already suffered too much. They’ve already suffered untold tragedy, of course, and they deserve to find a path to closure that only justice can provide.”

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., another strong supporter of the legislation, said, “Overriding a presidential veto is something we don’t take lightly. But it was important in this case that the families of the victims of 9/11 be allowed to pursue justice. Even if that pursuit causes some diplomatic discomforts.”

The bill was vetoed by Obama on Friday after the president sought to find supporters who would take his side against the families of 9/11 victims who pushed for the bill.

Overriding a presidential veto requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress.

The Senate was the first to act to override. House action is now pending and may take place this week.

JASTA’s override came as some lawmakers expressed concerns that they still don’t know the full extent of Saudi involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

“We are still learning the facts, but there is mounting evidence that the Saudi government – or at least operations and operatives within the Saudi government – aided and abetted one of the most massive crimes in the United States,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. “In our system, the truth behind those facts deserves to be presented in court – a court of law where fairness and justice will be assured.” (For more from the author of “Senate Hands Obama Huge Loss, Gives 9/11 Victims’ Families Big Victory” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

LGBT Activists Are Coming for Your Children

/0 Comments/in , /by

Do you need to lock your doors and windows at night because a homosexual predator is coming after your kids? That is absolutely not what I mean when I say that LGBT activists are coming for your children.

I’m talking about educators and government leaders; I’m talking about celebrities and judges; I’m talking about people of influence who want to indoctrinate your children even before they get to school. I’m talking about an all-out war for the minds and hearts of your kids.

Are you equipped and ready to do what is best for these little ones?

By all means, as parents, we should teach our kids to be kind to all, especially to those who seem different and are ostracized by their peers. And we should teach by word and example that bullying is always wrong. In other words, we don’t need to teach gay is good in order to teach that bullying is bad. In the same way, we don’t need to push every boy to be a football player and every girl to be a ballerina to combat transgender activism.

But you better believe that we need to take a stand for our kids — in the schools; in the world of entertainment and social media; in the courts; in the churches — if we want to keep them safe from this destructive and deceptive indoctrination.

Consider that there are YouTube channels dedicated to teaching pre-school children that you can be a boy or a girl or neither or both, also trying to teach them the meaning of words like “queer.”

Kids this age can barely tell the difference between fantasy and reality (they play with dolls and toys as if they were real creatures), and they have virtually no understanding of sexuality or romantic attraction. Some even think they are dogs and like to walk on all fours and bark. Yet activists want to indoctrinate them with the latest LGBT talking points. This is so wrong.

I documented years ago how groups like GLSEN were going after elementary school children with “Terminology Game Cards” that quizzed students and teachers on terms like Biological Sex, Gender Identity, Gender Role, Transgender, Gender Expression, Sexual Orientation, Heterosexism, Transphobia, Asexual, Bisexual, Lesbian, Gay, Transsexual, Intersexual, Androgyny, Cross Dresser, Genderqueer, Gender Non-Conforming, Queer, LGBTQ, Sexual Reassignment Surgery, D/L (Down Low), MSM (Men Who Have Sex with Men).

And the average mom and dad probably have no clue that their little 7-year-old daughter just learned to distinguish between Genderqueer and Gender Non-Conforming in school today.

This is absolute madness.

Of course, I understand what motivates the activists and educators. They want to teach “tolerance” and they want a child who does not appear to be “gender conforming” to realize that their insides might not be in harmony with their outsides.

But that doesn’t make what they’re doing right, nor does it make it helpful. And the best motivation in the world cannot change falsehood into truth.

That being said, it is clear that LGBT activists and their allies have had ample motivation to change the thinking of Americans, beginning with our children, and already in 1995, lesbian author Patricia Nell Warren stated, “Whoever captures the kids owns the future.” (Published in The Advocate, October 3, 1995, p. 80, in the article “Future Shock.”)

How sad that these activists have been far more visionary than many of us who identify as conservative Christians and who claim to care about future generations.

Frankly, I don’t doubt that we care; I do doubt that we have been on the alert.

It is becoming increasingly common for women who partially transitioned to men to give birth to their children and even nurse them — this was graphically illustrated in one of the most disturbing images I have ever seen — while a recent headline stated, “Is this the world’s most modern family? Man who used to be a woman gives birth to a baby by woman who used to be a man.” (Stream note: You can read more about this twisted story in Jennifer Hartline’s new column “Back to Reality, Please: A Man and a Woman Make Babies“)

What effect will this have on the children? How will the child feel as it grows up and marries and has children yet knows that its “father” is actually its mother?

In keeping with this confusion, the hit ABC show Modern Family has now added a transgender child actor to its cast. How fitting (and ironic) that Modern Family will now feature an 8-year-old boy who is actually a girl. And your kids are taking all this in.

Over in Norway, “A proposed bill in the Norwegian Parliament would allow people to change their legal gender online within a matter of minutes.” And the word “people” includes children as young as 6-years-old. Yes, a child that young would have the ability to make a decision officially changing their legal gender. How can this be?

Incredibly, “The bill is expected to pass with few objections when it goes to a vote this summer. Norwegians would just have to go online and simply ‘tick a box’ to change their legal gender.”

Back here in the States, the Obama administration is ready to punish schools that will not force a 15-year-old girl to share a locker room and shower with a 15-year-old boy who identifies as a girl. This is why I say that LGBT activists (and their allies) are coming after your children.

Perhaps we can learn from the people of Mexico who recently rallied in more than 130 cities and drew crowds of over 200,000 in Mexico City alone, as they stood against redefining marriage and family in their country.

And we can do this without hating anyone. In fact, love requires us to act. Our children’s future is at stake. (For more from the author of “LGBT Activists Are Coming for Your Children” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

First Baby Born With Controversial ‘Three-Parent’ Technique

/0 Comments/in , /by

A technique to make “three-parent babies” was voted into law by the British Parliament in February 2015, but it wasn’t a “three-parent” baby born in the UK that made an ethical splash heard around the world — it was a baby boy born to a Jordanian couple treated in Mexico by a team of U.S. doctors. This procedure, called mitochondrial replacement therapy, is not legal in the U.S., so Dr. John Zhang and his team at the New Hope Fertility Center in New York City traveled to Mexico to treat the Jordanian woman.

The woman, identified as Ibtisam Shaban, has Leigh syndrome, which is a fatal disease affecting the developing nervous system, reported the New Scientist. The genes for Leigh syndrome are in the mitochondrial DNA of the mother. While Shaban did not exhibit symptoms of Leigh syndrome, she lost her first two children to the disease at ages six and eight months.

The procedure used to produce the baby, Abrahim Hassan, is surrounded by a flurry of ethical questions. In his case, Dr. Zhang removed the nucleus (which houses the majority of a person’s DNA) and placed it in the “shell” of a donor’s egg containing healthy mitochondria DNA. Another technique is to fertilize both the mother’s egg and the donor egg with the father’s sperm, then replace the donor’s nucleus with the mother’s. This technique destroys one embryo. While the mitochondrial transfer procedure is being hailed as a great accomplishment for those who have or are treating mitochondrial diseases, it also raises several serious ethical questions.

Altering the Germ Line

A child with mitochondrial DNA therapy will have DNA from three people, hence the term “three-parent babies.” Since mitochondrial DNA is passed from mother to child, females with three parents will permanently alter the “germ line” by passing the altered DNA to their children and so on. Dr Trevor Stammers, Program Director in Bioethics and Medical Law at St. Mary’s University, said, “Even if these babies are born they will have to be monitored all their lives, and their children will have to be as well. We do not yet know the interaction between the mitochondria and nuclear DNA. To say that it is the same as changing a battery is facile. It’s an extremely complex thing.”

Playing God

Some have charged that experimenting with DNA is “playing God,” and producing “genetically-modified” humans. “These regulations would authorize the crossing of a rubicon for the first time,” said British MP Fiona Bruce who chairs the All Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group. “It would authorize germ line therapy… to alter the genes of an individual. This is something defined by the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights as effectively constituting eugenics.”

Only Boys Allowed

At this time, the procedure is only recommended to produce male embryos, since mitochondrial diseases are passed down through females. According to Science News, the Institute of Medicine in the United States determined “it would be ethical to produce male embryos using the technique,” but as of this year federal laws still prohibit the method. This means that female embryos would be destroyed in search of a male who would not pass on mitochondrial diseases to future generations.

Risk of Crossing Ethical Boundaries

British MP Jacob Rees Mogg said once the lines have been crossed, there’s no going back. “I think the difficulty is that it starts a process which is very hard to see where it stops,” he said. “Once the germ line is changed at one point you decide that isn’t allowable in other cases … there is a very clear boundary that babies cannot be genetically altered. And once you have decided that they can you have done something very profound.” Bruce concurs, “We … have approved a technique and what that technique could be used for in the future who knows,” she said. “We’re opening a Pandora’s box.”

The concerns around what amounts to having two mothers could present a problem in the future as child custody battles grow increasingly complicated, even as same-sex couples fight for custody of a child who biologically belongs to only one of them. Others worry that the legalizing of this technique will lead to creating “designer babies” on demand. While scientists may not be able to select a preferred eye color or hair color now, selecting embryos based on sex is already being done. Selecting other desired characteristics is only a matter of time. Once the laws are in place to perform mitochondrial DNA transfers in the U.S., the question of designer babies will be a nonissue.

Genetic Abnormalities

Perhaps one of the most alarming findings has to do with the very real possibility of genetic abnormalities for the three-parent babies. “There are numerous serious risks associated with this technology,” said Dr. Paul Knoepfler, Associate Professor at the University of California, Davis. “These include most notably the possibility that developmentally disabled or deceased babies will be produced. Aberrations could lead to developmental defects in babies or also manifest in later life as increased rates of aging [or] cancer.”

Dr. Knoepfler’s concerns are hardly unreasonable. In the early 1990s, embryologists in the U.S. performed a similar technique involving DNA from three people and the results were unsuccessful. The babies who were born later developed genetic disorders, including two infants born with a missing X chromosome and two who later had serious developmental disorders. The practice was banned after the problems were discovered.

Even with the mitochondrial DNA therapy there are no guarantees that the baby will be born without the mitochondrial disease the parents were hoping to avoid. Scientists are aware of mitochondrial carryover during nuclear transfer, also known as Genetic Drift — that is, the mitochondrial DNA of the mother carrying the disease could still carryover to the created embryo and eventually take over anyway, as reported in the journal Cell Stem Cell. Professor Mary Herbert of Newcastle University commented that “we don’t know what it means for development, but it’s alerted us to the fact that we really need to work hard to get as close to zero carry-over as we can.”

Following the UK’s legalization of the procedure, MEPs wrote to Prime Minister David Cameron, calling the practice “unethical.” In an open letter, the group warned Cameron that EU law prohibited genetic alterations that will carry on to the next generation. “Your proposals violate the fundamental standards of human dignity and integrity of the person,” they wrote. “Modification of the genome is unethical and cannot be permitted.” The Center for Genetics and Society (CGS) said it was “a historic mistake” and warned the technique “will turn children into biological experiments.”

CGS added, “… [T]hey will result in children with DNA from three different people in every cell of their bodies, which will impact a large range of traits in unknowable ways, and introduce genetic changes that will be passed down to future generations through the female line.” (For more from the author of “First Baby Born With Controversial ‘Three-Parent’ Technique” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

The Left’s Decivilization Agenda Comes to Ohio

/0 Comments/in , /by

If a person can become transgender, why can’t a state or another branch of government become trans-judicial?

Our Founders never envisioned that states would remain obsequious to judicial power grabs. But they could never have anticipated, in their wildest nightmares, a day when federal judges would require states to treat boys like girls. Yet, that is exactly what happened in Ohio when Judge Algenon Marbley of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio ordered Highland Local School District to treat a boy who thinks he’s a girl “as the girl she is”!

Just like North Carolina, Ohio can’t seem to catch a break from the tentacles of the radical courts. Last week, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals prevented Ohio’s Secretary of State from cleaning its voter registration lists of dead voters. Now a district judge is ordering a school district outside of Akron to treat a boy in Highland Elementary School like a girl for all official school business.

After the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, prompted by a complaint from the boy’s family, ordered the school district to allow him in female bathrooms and locker rooms, the school officials sued the DOE in federal court for grossly misinterpreting the 1972 Title IX statute as absurdly applying to those suffering from transgender illness. Threatened with the loss of $1 million in Title IX funding, the school district argued that they already went out of their way to accommodate that individual student by allowing him to use a bathroom in the school office. But the parents argued that the boy, who they say had previously attempted suicide, would suffer mental health breakdowns from such an accommodation.

In Monday’s order, Judge Marbley, a Clinton appointee, required the Highland Local School District to allow the child (absurdly referred to as “Jane Doe”) into the girl’s bathrooms and locker rooms. “The Court orders School District officials to treat Jane Doe as the girl she is, including referring to her by female pronouns and her female name and allowing her to use the girls’ restroom at Highland Elementary School,” wrote an irate Judge Marbley.

The judge went on a mind-blowing polemic about how … you guessed it … the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment likely protects this individual and creates a right to use the opposite gender’s bathroom. “[A]s a tiny minority of the population, whose members are stigmatized for their gender non-conformity in a variety of settings, transgender people are a politically powerless minority group.”

Sadly, this is no April Fool’s joke. The unelected judges and bureaucrats at the DOE are using a 1972 statute and an 1868 amendment that was designed to stop real discrimination against fundamental rights to codify the most absurd distortion of natural law — the very source of fundamental rights.

There is no end to the absurdity of this de-civilization agenda. There are all sorts of unfortunate mental disorders in the world that deserve treatment and compassion from the society. But nobody would ever suggest that we codify the hallucinatory behavior of those stricken with the disorders into practice, law, the Constitution, and inalienable rights. What if a schizophrenic student who legitimately exhibited suicidal behavior demanded to be treated as a killer whale and asked for the school district to allow him to sit in a water tank during class? Or what if the student demanded to be referred to as “it” in all documentation? Would this stigmatized super-minority not be entitled to the same degree of “privacy” and “equal protection?”

The Ohio case is a quintessential example when states must simply say no and refuse to comply with the most ludicrous debasements of fundamental rights and the worst usurpations of power by the two unelected branches of the federal government. Even the elected branch of the federal government could never order a state to engage in such absurdity. How can the DOE and the courts be taken seriously for a minute?

Folks, we are like frogs in boiling water who become desensitized to the sharp increase in the temperature of cultural licentiousness. Even those on our side are beginning to adopt much of the Left’s premise and use the absurd and illogical parlance about sexual identity mental disorders. What is it going to take to arouse the states and the people from their slumber as the federal judiciary initiates the most outrageous societal transformation imaginable? Why are the federally elected representative of states like Ohio and North Carolina not fighting to defund the DOE transgender mandate in the budget bill? Why are they not countering the stolen sovereignty from the courts with congressional powers?

It’s time for a new Tea Party, a new movement within the states to fight back against judicial and executive reach. After all, if a boy with male plumbing can be deemed a girl, why can’t a state self-identify as a Supreme Court and control its own destiny? (For more from the author of “The Left’s Decivilization Agenda Comes to Ohio” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

James Comey Promises FBI Database to Track Race-Based Police Activity

/0 Comments/in , /by

Never let a serious crisis go to waste, goes the old axiom. And in the context of America’s ongoing tension regarding race and policing, it would appear that the crisis has provided a ripe opportunity to further centralize policing in the United States by mining data from state and local law enforcement agencies.

At a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on Tuesday, FBI Director James Comey promised a panel of senators that he would spend the remaining seven years of his 10-year term to build a national database to monitor the role of race in use of force by police across the country.

“We simply must collect data that is reliable nationwide about police use of deadly force in altercations, encounters, with civilians,” Comey said, in an exchange with Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., (F, 11%). “If there is anything more inherently governmental than that, I can’t imagine what it is.”

During the hearing, Comey said that the need for the database is due to the fact that the only available information that the public has about policing incidents and the use of force comes from newspapers, whose “data isn’t comprehensive”:

“We will build a nationwide database that the FBI will collect that shows us what happened, when, who was involved, what were they like, what were the circumstances so we can have informed conversations.”

Furthermore, this is a project that Comey said could span through the next two presidential administrations.

“We are going to do this,” the FBI director continued, “One of the beauties of a 10-year term is I am not going to shut up about this. I have seven years to go.”

Ultimately, the goal of James Comey’s proposed policing data project would be to definitively answer questions about whether or not deadly force is applied disproportionately against minorities by police, he says:

“No one in this country knows whether the use of deadly force against any particular group — African-Americans most particularly — is up, down, or sideways over the last 10 years,” Comey told the committee. “Do we have an epidemic of violence? No one knows that. We could, we might not — we simply must gather the information so we can care deeply and solve these problems.”

James Comey’s testimony does sound good at first blush. And had the director’s reputation as an impartial arbiter of the law not been botched over the summer by the bureau’s handling of the Clinton email scandal investigation, there might even be a greater danger of congressmen joining hands to slap the all-powerful “bipartisan” label on this effort and push it forward in the name of “transparency.”

While the narrative of police disproportionately and indiscriminately gunning down unarmed black men is a popular one — and individual incidents generate easy, eye-grabbing headlines for media outlets — the statistics currently available would say otherwise.

A 2015 Washington Post study of police shootings — one of the newspaper pieces that Comey disparaged in the hearing — revealed that incidents of white law enforcement officers shooting unarmed black men accounted for less than 4 percent of fatal police shootings. Furthermore, multiple criminology studies have found that police were actually more hesitant to shoot black suspects who posed a credible threat (versus white suspects).

Giving the FBI and Department of Justice a federally-mandated periscope to look over the shoulder of every beat cop in the country will likely only exacerbate the phenomenon and put more police lives in danger by forcing them to second-guess themselves every time a suspect poses a credible threat.

While this might be an adequate diagnosis of the problem that popular racial policing narrative is, at best, poorly-informed, Comey’s solution is just another means of contributing to the Obama administration’s years-long efforts to centralize everyday policing in the United States.

Past proposals include the president’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, and the host of grants that serve as dangling carrots for local law enforcement to hand over more authority to the feds in exchange for funds.

Contrary to the “Hope and Change” narrative that the president sold voters, the Obama years have seen an unquestionable resurgence in racial tension in the United States. And this tension has been used as excuse at nearly every single instance as a vehicle to increase federal oversight and control over law enforcement — which, by nature, should be a local undertaking.

While James Comey’s FBI database may seem like a benign solution to questions about racial impetus in police shootings, it has to be viewed as part of a greater pattern to increase the DOJ’s presence over local law enforcement. (For more from the author of “James Comey Promises FBI Database to Track Race-Based Police Activity” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

GOP Lawmakers Pressure Administration Over Obamacare ‘Bailout’ for Insurers

/0 Comments/in , /by

GOP lawmakers in the House and Senate are pressuring the Obama administration for additional information on whether it plans to settle with insurance companies suing the government over a program written into Obamacare, which they warn would serve as a “multibillion dollar bailout” of those insurers.

Republicans in the House and Senate sent separate letters to top officials with the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Justice, and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services raising concerns over the possibility of the Justice Department tapping into the Judgment Fund to settle lawsuits filed by insurance companies over Obamacare’s risk corridor program.

The risk corridor program was written into the Affordable Care Act and designed to provide insurers with stability during the first few years of the law’s implementation.

“This program was originally intended to be implemented in a budget neutral manner,” Republican Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming, Mike Lee of Utah, Marco Rubio of Florida, and Ben Sasse of Nebraska wrote in a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell, and Acting Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Andy Slavitt.

“This intention was confirmed when Congress passed, with presidential approval, two separate provisions of appropriations law confirming its budget neutrality,” the letter continued. “It now appears the administration is preparing to circumvent these actions.”

The Republican senators said they have “grave concerns” about the potential for settlements with insurers.

Insurance companies filed lawsuits earlier this year after learning they would receive a small fraction of the money requested from the risk corridor program.

But Rubio and Senate Republicans included an amendment in 2015 and 2016 government spending bills prohibiting the government from using any taxpayer dollars to fund payments requested by insurers through the program. Under Rubio’s provision, the federal government could only use money collected from insurers to make those payments.

Because of those restrictions, insurance companies participating in Obamacare’s exchanges received just 12.6 percent of the money they intended to get from the risk corridor program—a collective $2.5 billion less than originally anticipated.

Many smaller insurers, including at least four of 23 consumer operated and oriented plans, ended up closing their doors because of lower-than-expected risk corridor payments.

Congressional Republicans began to sound the alarm over use of the Judgment Fund after insurers filed the lawsuit. Settling with insurers, they warned, would give the White House a way to provide the companies with their full risk corridor payments, effectively circumventing Congress.

“Any attempt to settle these cases out of court as a backdoor way to direct taxpayer dollars to insurance companies through the Judgment Fund will be met with the strictest scrutiny from Congress,” more than 40 GOP lawmakers wrote in one of the letters, sent to Burwell last week.

The Republicans go on to signal they would be willing to file their own lawsuit against the administration.

“Should the administration seek to make settlements in any pending lawsuit regarding risk corridor payments, we remain committed to exhausting all legislative and judicial options to ensure the power of the purse vested in Congress under the Constitution is respected and maintained,” the letter continues.

Republicans further stepped up their pressure on the Obama administration regarding potential use of the Judgment Fund following the release of a Sept. 9 memo from the Department of Health and Human Services on risk corridor payments for the 2015 benefit year.

In its memo, the agency addressed the lawsuit filed by insurers over the risk corridor payments for 2014 and said it would be “open to discussing resolution of those claims.”

Then, in a hearing before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee earlier this month, Slavitt indicated officials from his agency had discussed with the Justice Department a potential settlement with insurers over the risk corridor program.

Nicole Navas, spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said the agency declines to comment because of pending litigation.

Health Republic Insurance of Oregon, a co-op, filed the first lawsuit against the Obama administration over the risk corridor program in February. The nonprofit is seeking class-action status.

Highmark Inc. and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina followed, filing their own individual lawsuits in May and June, respectively.

The insurers allege that the federal government violated the Affordable Care Act and the risk corridor payment obligations outlined in the health care law.

Though the Obama administration has signaled it would be willing to use the Judgment Fund to settle insurers lawsuits against the government, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service issued two separate memorandums to Rubio and Barrasso on the legality of the use of the Judgment Fund.

In a memo sent to Rubio in January, the Congressional Research Service said the administration wouldn’t be able to use the Judgment Fund to award payments to insurers who filed suit.

Congress, the memo concluded, would have to appropriate additional funds for “any payment to satisfy a judgment secured by plaintiffs seeking recovery of amounts owed under the risk corridors program.”

In a separate memo to Barrasso, the Congressional Research Service said that even if the insurance companies won their case, either insurers would need to pay additional money into the risk corridor program or Congress would need to appropriate additional money for companies involved in the litigation to recover additional funds.

“Consequently, it would be inappropriate for the Judgment Fund to be used to settle any litigation stemming from the risk corridor program,” the letter from Barrasso, Lee, Rubio, and Sasse continues. (For more from the author of “GOP Lawmakers Pressure Administration Over Obamacare ‘Bailout’ for Insurers” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.