Christian Leaders React to Trump Video Scandal

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Donald Trump’s newest scandal is causing some top Republicans to withdraw endorsements and call for him to step down as the party’s presidential nominee. The Republican National Committee appears to be stopping some of its election efforts on behalf of Trump, and both Trump’s wife and running mate have criticized comments made a decade ago by Trump about how he tried to have sex with a married woman, and how his fame allowed him to do largely whatever he wanted with and to women.

Others are noting that liberal and Democratic critics of Trump may not have a moral or legal leg to stand on:

So what are Christian leaders – many of whom backed Trump enthusiastically while others more grudgingly – saying? Below are more than a dozen statements, with credit to Sarah Bailey at The Washington Post for collating many of the Tweets, as well as other statements.

From Bailey:

Ralph Reed, a conservative Christian activist and the head of Trump’s religious advisory board, said that as the father of two daughters, he was disappointed by the “inappropriate” comments.

“But people of faith are voting on issues like who will protect unborn life, defend religious freedom, grow the economy, appoint conservative judges and oppose the Iran nuclear deal,” he said in an email.

He contrasted Trump with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, saying that her “corrupt use of her office to raise funds from foreign governments and corporations and her reckless and irresponsible handling of classified material on her home-brewed email server, endangering US national security, that will drive the evangelical vote.”

“I think a 10-year-old tape of a private conversation with a TV talk show host ranks pretty low on their hierarchy of their concerns,” he said.

Franklin Graham:

The crude comments made by Donald J. Trump more than 11 years ago cannot be defended. But the godless progressive agenda of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton likewise cannot be defended. I am not endorsing any candidates in this election. I have said it throughout this presidential campaign, and I will say it again — both candidates are flawed. The only hope for the United States is God. Our nation’s many sins have permeated our society, leading us to where we are today. But as Christians we can’t back down from our responsibility to remain engaged in the politics of our nation. On November 8th we will all have a choice to make. The two candidates have very different visions for the future of America. The most important issue of this election is the Supreme Court. That impacts everything. There’s no question, Trump and Clinton scandals might be news for the moment, but who they appoint to the Supreme Court will remake the fabric of our society for our children and our grandchildren, for generations to come.

Tony Perkins:

“As a husband and father of three daughters, I find this behavior deeply offensive and degrading. As I have made clear, my support for Donald Trump in the general election was never based upon shared values rather it was built upon shared concerns. These concerns include the damage the Supreme Court would continue to do to this country through the appointment of activist justices, concerns over the security of our nation because of our government’s refusal to confront the growing threat of Islamic terrorism, and concerns over the prospects of continued attacks by our own government upon religious freedom.”

“At this point in the political process, because of our lack of engagement and involvement as Christians, not just in this election but in the government and culture as a whole, we are left with a choice of voting for the one who will do the least damage to our freedoms.”

“This is far from an ideal situation, but it is the reality in which we find ourselves and as difficult as it is, I refuse to find sanctuary on the sidelines and allow the country and culture to deteriorate even further by continuing the policies of the last 8 years,” concluded Perkins.

Via Reuters:

“Naturally I’m disappointed,” said Steve Scheffler, head of the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition. “But, you know, the Bible tells me that we are all sinners saved by grace and I don’t think there’s probably a person alive that I know of that hasn’t made some mistakes in the past.” He said Clinton has peccadilloes of her own, most notably marital woes with her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

“So yes, I will vote for Donald Trump. I’m not excusing his behavior at all. It’s disgusting,” he said.

(For more from the author of “Christian Leaders React to Trump Video Scandal” please click HERE)

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Hillary Loves Religious Freedom… Only for Muslim Foreign Nationals

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Hillary Clinton called for fact checkers to help her out tonight. At the risk of staying up the entire night debunking every word she spoke on policy, lets address what is perhaps the most scandalous part of the debate from a policy perspective. Hillary managed to flip two of the most foundational principles — religious liberty and sovereignty — upside down and inside out.

Early on in the debate, a Muslim voter, who was allegedly undecided, asked the following question:

There are 3.3 Muslims in the United States and I’m one of them. You’ve mentioned working with Muslim nations, but with islamophobia on the rise, how will you help people like me deal with the consequences of being a threat to the country after the election is over.

After a brief back-and-forth between the candidates on refugee policy — one of the few moments when Trump was fully on message — Hillary made the following laughable, hypocritical, outrageous, and dangerous comment:

But it is important for us as a policy, you know, not to say as Donald has said, we’re going to ban people based on a religion. How do you do that? We are a country founded on religious freedom and liberty.

How do we do what he has advocated without causing great distress within our own country … are we going to have religious tests?

Remember folks, Hillary is the leader of the party that believes religious Christians and Jews (or Muslims or anyone else) must service homosexual or transgender events with their own private property. They must engage in involuntary servitude or have their livelihoods terminated unless they agree to violate their conscience; the “most sacred of property” rights, as Madison put it. They believe unelected judges can force a grocery store to include every type of contraception in their pharmacy section when 30 other pharmacies within driving distance sell the products. And they believe a county clerk who has served her jurisdiction for 27 years — predating the concept of a gay marriage –—should be thrown in jail for requesting that someone else sign the license, which in itself runs country to state law that was never changed statutorily.

No, Mrs. Clinton, our country wasn’t founded upon the notion that foreign nationals have an affirmative right to immigrate to this country. But it was founded upon the self-evident truth of natural law and nature’s God — the very God you rejected with your defense of judicial tyranny tonight — that Americans and those accepted into our society through mutual consent have the right to secure their property, earn a living, and practice their religious liberty. They most certainly have the right to not have their religion debased with their own business and property.

So how about those litmus tests? Hillary seems to have figured out how to implement religious tests when it comes to the religions she doesn’t like. Oddly, she has no problem replacing the real religious freedoms of Americans with a phantom and dangerous right for any particular immigrant or groups of immigrants to come here against the will of the people, even though many of them come from cultures that will not disagree with her chosen religion — the sexual revolution — in an agreeable and cordial fashion.

Under Hillary’s dangerous conception of the First Amendment, a view shared by the majority of the modern legal profession, an American Christian has no right to run a business without violating his religion, yet a Pakistani national can sue for discrimination for not being allowed to immigrate to our shores in the first place. This position is not only dangerous, especially during a time of war; it’s ignorant.

Given that Hillary will not read my book, which debunks her premise on both accounts of religious liberty and sovereignty, she would be wise to read one court case: Turner v. Williams, [194 U.S. 279, 290 (1904)]. In Turner, which was unanimous and is the most accepted area of settled law, the Court stated, “[R]ested on the accepted principle of international law, that every sovereign nation has the power, as inherent in sovereignty and essential to self-preservation, to forbid the entrance of foreigners within its dominions, or to admit them only in such cases and upon such conditions as it may see fit to prescribe.”

This is one “precedent” from the courts liberals don’t like to abide by.

That we have a presidential candidate who is this ignorant of our most foundational values of sovereignty and religious liberty should scare us all. Then again, it’s not like we have a Republican Party beating the drums on behalf of true religious liberty either. (For more from the author of “Hillary Loves Religious Freedom… Only for Muslim Foreign Nationals” please click HERE)

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Fraudulent Hillary Blasts the Very Tax Loopholes She Uses

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Today, Hillary Clinton stood before the nation to outline her vision for the American economy. During her speech, she was resolute in her differences with political nemesis, Donald Trump.

Clinton was correct; the policy positions she shares with Trump are few; their policy differences, many. Clinton would like to increase taxes, regulations, and labor union membership. Trump wants the exact opposite.

Yet, Clinton was most emphatic in highlighting the difference between the two candidates’ tax policies. Of course, Clinton took a page from the ole’, outdated Democratic playbook, claiming her Republican opponent is proposing tax cuts for the rich. And this time, Clinton can point to her opponent, a billionaire himself, who will benefit from his own policies.

As I’ve pointed out in the past, the “tax cuts for millionaires” line is an easy talking point for Democrats, since it plays into the emotions of the middle class that the rich aren’t paying their fair share. Yet, the facts paint a different picture: The rich pay more than 70 percent of all federal taxes; the top one percent of Americans pay 25 percent of all taxes. On the other hand, those at the bottom of the income ladder pay only 0.8 percent (yes, that’s zero point eight) of all taxes.

So, any tax cut at all will almost always have a larger impact on those who pay most in taxes.

Clinton would like to increase taxes on millionaires. Her proposal, as studied by the Tax Policy Center, will increase taxes by $1.1 trillion over the next decade. Among her liberal tax policies, Clinton would like to impose an “exit” tax on corporations seeking more favorable tax rates in other nations and a special “American Dream Tax” — meaning those who make millions will be levied a new special tax.

But perhaps NO ONE hates paying taxes more than the Clintons. In fact, the Clintons go to such lengths to avoid the very taxes they propose for others that some believe they are engaged in tax fraud.

First, Clinton highlighted (vigorously I might add) that Trump wants to eliminate the estate tax. The estate tax, otherwise known as the death tax, is a transfer of wealth to the federal government after a family member dies. Currently, the death tax has a relatively high threshold: Taxes apply to assets over $5 million per individual, or $10 million per couple. So, of course, they mostly apply to upper income families — Trump’s and Clinton’s included.

Conservatives have long believed the death tax is unjust since it re-taxes all those assets that had already been taxed. It’s a long-standing tradition for conservatives to propose its elimination, as Trump has done.

Today, however, Clinton trashed Trump for such a proposal. The true irony, of course, is that Clinton has set up legal tax shelters to avoid ever paying the death tax — the very tax that she thinks rich Americans should pay. Bloomberg News reported in 2014:

Bill and Hillary Clinton have long supported an estate tax to prevent the U.S. from being dominated by inherited wealth. That doesn’t mean they want to pay it.

How righteous of them.

Bloomberg also found that in 2010 the Clintons shifted their mansions into residential trusts. By doing so, any appreciation in the house will not be valued in the tax base. Experts believe this could save the Clintons hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes. In addition to their residential trusts, the Clintons also participate in life insurance trusts (also created in 2010). A life insurance trust allows the Clinton’s to avoid paying any death taxes.

How many of the ordinary Americans Clinton is supposedly “championing” on behalf of can place their homes into tax exempt residence trusts? Yah, me neither. Of course, these tax loopholes are legal, but the Clintons could have avoided such tax schemes in order to fulfill their “patriotic” defense of breaking up wealth held by the country’s top performers.

Yet, this is only the beginning of the Clintons’ hypocrisy.

The Clintons have been known to utilize five different shell companies, all registered to an address in Wilmington, Delaware, for the purposes of avoiding taxes. Actually, the Clintons aren’t even that discreet about it. The one address their shell companies use is also shared by 280,000 other companies for the purpose of avoiding taxes.

Bonnie Kristian writes in The Week:

[T]wo of the five [businesses] are tied to Bill and Hillary Clinton specifically. One, WJC, LLC, is used by the former president to collect consulting fees. The other ZFS Holdings, LLC, was used by the former Secretary of State to process her $5.5 million book advance from Simon & Schuster. Three additional shell companies belong to the Clinton Foundation.

And that brings us to the mother of all tax farces: the tax-exempt Clinton Foundation. In fact, a charity watchdog, the Sunlight Foundation, called the Clinton Foundation a “slush fund.” For starters, the charity work by the Clinton Foundation is suspect. In 2013, the Clinton Foundation raised more than $140 million, yet only spent $9 million on charity. Interestingly enough, the Foundation spent $30 million on payroll and employee benefits, $10 millions of luxury office space; another $10 million for “conferences and conventions,” while the rests sits in coffers presumable awaiting a Clinton retirement.

In numerous instances, the Foundation has been questioned as to whether it’s merely been a scheme to pay off friends. The New York Post reported that Chelsea Clinton’s friend, Eric Braverman, took over the Foundation in 2013 and made a killing — earning $275,000 in just five months.

In addition to paying exorbitant salaries to friends and family, a typical tax avoidance technique by the rich to shelter taxes, the Clintons use the Foundation to subsidize travel expenses, office space, and rental properties that would make a king jealous.

The profits that the Clintons realize through their foundation have been suspicious for some time. Take for example Hillary’s 2012 push for the US—Panama Trade Promotion Agreement. Included in that agreement was the ability to facilitate simplified financial transactions between the United States and Panama. That agreement may have paved the way for Panama to become one of the world’s largest tax shelters, as we now know came to fruition in the great world-wide offshore havens set up by the firm Mossak Fonseca.

As The Nation highlights in one article, “Although Hillary denounced Mossak Fonseca’s dealing on cue after the Panama Papers story broke, a number of individuals and multinationals that have contributed to the foundation used MF to establish offshore accounts.”

Furthermore, in May, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that the Clinton foundation was shelling out millions in untaxed donations that didn’t fit the charity definition, per se, but their friends. In that article, the WSJ revealed that more than $2 million was committed to a for-profit company, Energy Pioneer Solutions, founded by Scott Kleeb, a close friend of the Clintons. But it gets juicier. Brietbart news reports,

Not only did the [Clinton Foundation] potentially violate tax-exempt charitable foundation law by acting for private benefit, but Bill Clinton personally endorsed the company’s request to former Energy Secretary Steven Chu for a federal grant of $812,000.

This anecdote is just the tip of the iceberg. There are countless stories of Hillary selling political favors while she was Secretary of State for donations to her very own Foundation. For example, the less than democratic and perhaps American-terrorist endorsing state of Saudi Arabia, donated between $10 to $25 million to the Clinton Foundation. Fishy? I’d say so.

This is the difference between the two candidates. Whether you like Trump or not, you get the transparent attempt to lower taxes for both the rich — and the poor. Yet, Clinton will sell the American public a policy that makes the tax code fair by increasing taxes on the rich or closing tax loopholes only the wealthy can access. The sad fact is that Clinton is a dishonest human being who herself has been living off tax loopholes and exploiting the tax code perhaps more than anyone. My bet is that Clinton is interested in a tax code that benefits her wealthy buddies far more than you can ever imagine. (For more from the author of “Fraudulent Hillary Blasts the Very Tax Loopholes She Uses” please click HERE)

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New WikiLeaks Document Dump Targets Clinton Foundation, Hillary’s Campaign Chairman

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WikiLeaks published more than 2,000 documents Friday that it said are emails from Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton‘s campaign chairman, John Podesta.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said the emails focus on Podesta’s “communications relating to nuclear energy, and media handling over donations to the Clinton Foundation from mining and nuclear interests.”

One of the major topics of the emails is the State Department’s support for the Russian takeover of the U.S. firm Uranium One in 2010.

The book Clinton Cash alleged that Uranium One shipped millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation. Further, The New York Times reported that $2.35 million was donated to the Clinton Foundation from Uranium One.

“Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors,” The Times reported.

The Times also noted that not long after Russia moved to acquire the majority of Uranium One, former President Bill Clinton received $500,000 for a speech in Moscow.

Jose Fernandez, assistant secretary of state for economic, energy and business affairs, has said Clinton played no role in the deal.

However, an email released by WikiLeaks shows a link between Fernandez and the Clinton campaign.

“John, It was good to talk to you this afternoon, and I appreciate your taking the time to call. As I mentioned, I would like to do all I can to support Secretary Clinton, and would welcome your advice and help in steering me to the right persons in the campaign,” the email reads.

The email dump also includes an email with snippets from remarks Clinton made at various speeches.

In speaking to a Goldman Sachs event, she noted that in terms of middle America, “I’m kind of far removed because the life I’ve lived and the economic, you know, fortunes that my husband and I now enjoy, but I haven’t forgotten [my past].”

A speech to General Electric touched on politics and money.

“I really admire the people who subject themselves to it. Even when I, you know, think they should not be elected president, I still think, well, you know, good for you I guess, you’re out there promoting democracy and those crazy ideas of yours,” Clinton said.

” … in my campaign — I lose track, but I think I raised $250 million or some such enormous amount, and in the last campaign President Obama raised $1.1 billion, and that was before the super PACs and all of this other money just rushing in … So we’re kind of in the wild west, and, you know, it would be very difficult to run for president without raising a huge amount of money and without having other people supporting you because your opponent will have their supporters,” she said. (For more from the author of “New WikiLeaks Document Dump Targets Clinton Foundation, Hillary’s Campaign Chairman” please click HERE)

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EPA Issues 57-State Climate Warning!

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Strike that. It’s a 50-State warning. That 57 came from elsewhere in the Obama administration.

Well, 50 is less than 57, so the warning is not as dire as you might have thought. Yet it’s still serious. Everybody knows that our beneficent government knows best and that all its cautions should be heeded. This is why you should listen to its bureaucratic experts, who are saying “climate change” will have “impacts.”

Impacts!

“Very real impacts,” says the EPA. And what is real is not a fantasy. So get ready to rumble, weather wise. But before thinking about that, we have to understand what “climate change” is.

Here is a scientific fact. In 1936, a typical year, the climate of the earth was perfect. Every afternoon everywhere was sunny and a clement 78 degrees on Mister Fahrenheit’s scale, even in winter. The rain fell in amounts sufficient to water every crop, fill every stream, and extinguish every forest fire — and then it stopped. Floods didn’t happen. There was just enough wind to loft every kite, and no more.

Of course, it’s true that an anomalous heatwave killed over 12,000 Americans in 1936. But still, since there was quite a lot less carbon dioxide in the air then than now, the climate was necessarily better.

The climate was also better in 1886, long before people were burning gasoline on their commutes to work. It was better because there was less atmospheric carbon dioxide, even less than in 1936. And it was better even though the USA was hit by seven hurricanes, the most since records began to be kept (which wasn’t that long ago).

The climate continued to be better than it is now, right up through the 1960s and 1970s when the consensus was that global cooling was going to kill many people. Good thing it never happened (the government had not yet reached its current state of perfection).

Then the climate changed sometime in the mid 1980s into what it is now, with death, doom, destruction on every side. Consult the media for the latest horror. Why did this happen? As hinted at above, a miniscule increase in the atmospheric trace gas carbon dioxide caused the climate to change.

Scientifically speaking, all climate change is bad. Nothing good can ever come of the climate changing. The climate in the past was always better than it is now. The government and environmentalists are in agreement that any change whatsoever to the climate must necessarily be towards greater evil. This is why we must “fight” climate change.

So it’s 2016 and the climate has changed, and will continue to change unless the government can control all aspects of the economy. Sure, you might not think it’s so bad where you live, and that the weather hasn’t been anything unusual. But if you concentrate only on the good news, you’ll miss the important scientific fact that things could be worse. And they will be if the climate continues to change.

And that’s where the EPA comes in, to tell of the “implications of climate change.” The outlook is bleak.

For instance, the climate has changed since 1980, and all climate change is bad. Corn production in 1980 was about 7.5 billion bushels, changing to around 14 billion bushels in 2015 amidst the changing climate. Statisticians call this kind of signal a “correlation.” The EPA warns that climate change in corn-growing Michigan could exacerbate the risk of increased production. Farmers might run out of bushels if the correlation persists, a disaster caused by climate change.

The EPA warns of climate change in Iowa. They say “Hot days can be unhealthy — even dangerous.” Cold days can be unhealthy and dangerous, too. Climate change puts Iowans in danger of both, whereas before climate change such calamities were not possible; or at least they were not caused by climate change. A significant problem, as in Michigan, are “bumper crops” of corn, soybeans, and other foodstuffs. This is causing prices for food to drop. Climate change is thus bad news for those wanting higher prices.

It isn’t only agriculture. Take Texas, where the state GDP was $815 billion in 1997, a time of rapid climate change, according to the EPA. By 2015, amidst a still-changing climate, the GDP had changed to $1,475 billion. The EPA warns “Texas’s climate is changing.” If the observed correlation between GDP and climate change holds, we could see even more changes like these to the GDP.

We could do each state, but you have the picture now. Ravage after ravage. This is why it is a good thing the EPA warned of the dire consequences of climate change a month before the election. Voters will have the chance to choose between Hillary, who has vowed to cease climate change, and Trump, who has said climate change is not especially worrisome. (For more from the author of “EPA Issues 57-State Climate Warning!” please click HERE)

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Church Historian: ‘Trump Is a Political Exorcist’

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The Vatican recently reported a worldwide shortage of exorcists, the priests especially trained to emulate Jesus and the apostles in banishing spirits of evil. Recently, I had the chance to interview an historian who thinks that American political culture needs an exorcist — and might have found one. H. W. Crocker III is a popular historian best known for his book Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church, A 2,000-Year History. He is also the vice president and executive editor of Regnery Publishing.

Unlike most historians, Crocker has real world experience in politics. He was a foreign policy advisor on the George H. W. Bush campaign for president in 1988 and a speechwriter for California Governor Pete Wilson during his first term (1991-94) and on his come-from-behind reelection victory over Kathleen Brown (Jerry Brown’s sister) that also saw Republicans winning a majority in the California Assembly and several statewide offices. His latest book is The Yanks Are Coming! A Military History of the United States in World War I. Here are some snippets from our conversation.

Has there ever been another presidential election like this?

Well, the obvious comparison is with 1912, except that in this case the Bull Moose candidate, Trump, got the Republican nomination. The establishment Republicans (or the Bush/Kasich wing) are on the outside looking in.

How important is this year’s presidential election?

If Trump loses, I might move to Iceland.

You’re supporting Trump?

Yes.

With no qualms?

None. Trump did what any smart Republican needed to do, which was build a new coalition with blue collar conservatives. Republicans can’t win nationally unless they redraw the electoral map — he does that. He’s the only one who could do that. After Romney’s defeat in 2012, I commissioned Rick Santorum to write a book called Blue Collar Conservatives, which showed what needed to be done. Trump apparently read that book and put it into play.

What about people who say Trump is too flawed to be president?

I say they are fundamentally unserious about politics — more concerned with manners than political reality. You’re not just electing a man, you’re electing an administration. And the reality is that every day of a Hillary administration will further the grinding under heel of the Constitution, with leftist bureaucrats fundamentally transforming America. Every day, by every conservative — or Christian — measure, things will get worse.

Can a Christian be a liberal in today’s sense of the word?

No. Liberalism is the Devil’s politics, and you can quote me on that. It makes the bad good and the good bad. The first Whig was the Devil, as Dr. Johnson said, and he was right.

And where does Trump fit in that picture?

Trump is a political exorcist, casting out demons from our body politic — and by demons I mean things like political correctness.

Isn’t that putting things a little strongly — to call political correctness demonic?

Political correctness is all about lies — lies like there’s no difference between men and women, or that killing an unborn child is morally neutral. The Devil is the “father of lies,” according to the Bible, and today there’s no shortage of lies that we’re supposed to believe.

And what does Trump do about that?

Let me put it this way: Republicans usually let Democrats, the enforcers of political correctness, set the agenda; they even grant them the moral high ground — and then they play defense or try to moderate Democrat proposals. Trump sets his own agenda — and does it the reverse of the normal Republican way. He plants his flag on the right and then walks it back as necessary, moving the center to the right. That’s an enormous advantage to have — and we haven’t had a president who could do that since Ronald Reagan.

Okay, if Americans do elect Trump. What comes after that?

Something less flamboyant: Eisenhower; Mike Pence — if he holds the Trump coalition together and restores the Nervous Nellie Republicans.

What about Christians — Catholics in particular, who have been leaning to Hillary, as some polls suggest?

Catholic voters need to prove they’re as pro-life as Trump. If they vote for Hillary, they’re not.

I’ve asked whether a Trump defeat could lead to increased persecution of Christians in this country. What do you think?

If Trump loses, that’s inevitable. The rule of law is already in jeopardy. The First Amendment is already in tatters. Hillary Clinton’s judges and bureaucrats would put the Constitution through a paper shredder. Hillary, in my opinion, will be a disaster on foreign policy. She already has been. She will be a disaster on the economy. But the people she really wants to crush are social conservatives; they’re the “deplorables.”

Then I take it that, given what’s at stake in November, you think it’s a time for prayer and fasting.

You better believe it — at least the prayer part. On the fasting, we’ll have plenty of that in our future if the people elect Hillary. (For more from the author of “Church Historian: ‘Trump Is a Political Exorcist'” please click HERE)

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The Unstoppable PR Machine Fed by Your Taxes

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A new report commissioned by Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo. (F, 58%), who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, found that government agencies spend about $1.5 billion every year on advertising and public relations. It may take a minute for the absurdity of that to sink in. Still not there? Maybe an analogy will help.

Suppose the mafia were to stop by your place of business and shake you down for a few hundred bucks. Then the next day, you see an ad on the side of a bus featuring a smiling mobster urging you to support your local protection agency. That’s essentially what is happening here.

It’s important to remember that the government has no money of its own. Everything it spends, it must first take from the people who earned it. We euphemistically call this legal pillaging “taxation,” but don’t let the terminology fool you. A shakedown is a shakedown, whether done by a tax collector or a guy with a baseball bat in a back alley.

Being robbed of the hard-fought fruits of our labors is bad enough, but the PR spending adds insult to injury. The government is taking our money for the express purpose of trying to convince us that it’s okay to take our money. George Orwell’s Big Brother would be so proud. The least it could do would be to take a page from the Soviet Union’s book and name this PR machine “the Ministry of Propaganda.” But I suppose that would be a bit too honest.

Of the money spent, we are told, about a $1 billion goes directly to advertising campaigns, trying to sell us on the benefits of programs we hate, like Obamacare and the Environmental Protection Agency. The other half a billion goes to pay the salaries of public relations professionals, who each make on average about $90,000 a year. Presumably these people are charged with smoothing over the government’s numerous errors, many of which cost American lives, like when a gun-running operation in Mexico backfires or when an American ambassador is killed overseas because of the secretary of State’s unwillingness to send the requested help. I suppose someone got paid a lot of money to come up with the “It was because of an Internet video” story. Pretty sweet gig if you can get it.

Indeed, the State Department was listed as among the biggest spenders on PR, pretty convenient for the former secretary who now happens to be running for president. If only all candidates for public office could have the use of taxpayer dollars to cover up their mistakes.

Among the other biggest spenders are the EPA, the Federal Election Commission, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. These agencies are supposed to be non-partisan and represent all Americans, but of course, they are biased in their own favor as well as the policies of the incumbent administration. Part of representative democracy means that our tax dollars will be spent on things we disagree with, but spending them on ads telling us that we should agree is manipulative and undemocratic.

All this should only reinforce what we already know: Government is a self-perpetuating entity. It exists to continue its existence. It feeds on taxpayers so that it can continue to feed on them. And when it grows fat like a swollen tick, its appetite only increases. Your tax dollars at work, America! (For more from the author of “The Unstoppable PR Machine Fed by Your Taxes” please click HERE)

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7 Big Judicial Setbacks to Obama’s Executive Overreach

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Much of President Barack Obama’s executive action legacy will be decided by the courts after he leaves office, but he had a rough judicial record while serving.

Though Obama has frequently touted his pen and phone policymaking, these actions on immigration, environmental policy, and presidential appointees have often been swatted away by the Supreme Court.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, issued a July 2014 report that found 20 instances in which a unanimous high court ruled against the administration. Not all of these cases were executive actions, but legal interpretations by an agency.

The Obama administration has fared worse before the Supreme Court than any other modern president’s administration, with a 45 percent win rate, according to an analysis by Ilya Shapiro, a fellow in constitutional studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, and editor of the Cato Supreme Court Review. Obama’s last five predecessors had a win rate of between 60-75 percent before the high court, according to Shapiro.

“Every president ratchets up executive power, it’s what Congress and the courts have allowed to happen over the years,” Shapiro told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “President Obama has pushed beyond that in pushing administratively what he failed to do legislatively.”

The overreach has less to do with Obama—or for that matter any other individual president—but the expansion of government, said Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University.

“I would not be hugely surprised if he had the most actions overturned because as government gets larger, there are more targets for the courts to shoot at,” Somin told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “In a sense, each president builds on the precedent of the last president. Presidents are incentivized to take actions like this.”

District and appellate level courts halted many of Obama’s executive actions. Some of Obama’s actions still await a ruling in court, such as his gun control initiative.

“The U.S. Supreme Court and lower federal courts have overturned Obama administration actions that went beyond constitutional and statutory limits at an unprecedented rate, as documented by statistical studies,” Alden Abbott, deputy director of legal and judicial studies at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal in an email.

Abbott noted the unanimous rebukes by the high court came at a much higher rate than for previous presidents.

“This reflects an Obama administration pattern of ignoring the rule of law and usurping the role of Congress—as illustrated, for example, in its unauthorized efforts to rewrite the immigration laws and the Obamacare statute without congressional authorization,” Abbott said.

Here are some of Obama’s executive actions knocked down by the judiciary.

1. Executive Amnesty

In June, the Supreme Court had a tie vote on Obama’s executive actions on immigration. The 4-4 ruling resulted in upholding an appellate court ruling to strike down Obama’s executive amnesty.

Obama’s actions would have shielded 5 million illegal immigrants from deportation. The president took the action in December 2014, shortly after Republicans won control of the Senate.

The move expanded on a previous executive action in 2012 to shield childhood arrivals from deportation. The new edict would extend to the parents of those children.

Texas and 25 other states filed the lawsuit to halt it.

2. School Gender Identity Restrooms Mandate

In August, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas ruled that schools may keep restrooms, locker rooms, and showers separated based on biological gender.

The judge blocked the mandate one day before the first day of school in Texas. The preliminary injunction is in place while the lawsuit proceeds.

The judge determined the Obama administration overreached on its authority by mandating in May that public schools allow people to use restrooms based on their gender identity instead of biological gender. If the schools did not adhere to the rules, they would risk losing their federal education funding.

Texas filed the suit and was joined by 12 other states. This is only the first court hearing and the case will ultimately be decided after Obama leaves office.

3. Appointing Without Confirmation

In a stinging legal defeat for Obama, the Supreme Court ruled that the president cannot make recess appointments when the Senate is still in session. The liberal wing, including Obama nominees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, joined the majority for a 9-0 rebuke in June 2014.

Obama made recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board at a time when the Senate was in pro forma session every three days for the express purpose of preventing recess appointments. The appointments were challenged in a labor dispute, in the case of NLRB v. Noel Canning.

4. Delayed Carbon Regulations

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in February to halt the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan from taking effect until the legal challenge is complete. But it’s a setback rather than a death blow to the regulation.

The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia heard oral arguments in the case, and will likely have the final say when it does rule, at least until the ninth slot on the court is filled.

Numerous industry groups, 25 states, and four state agencies sued the EPA over the rules.

The EPA finalized the plan in October 2015, requiring states to meet individual carbon dioxide emissions reduction goals for power plants by 2022, and again in 2030.

Under the rules, the EPA would offer incentives to states. The incentives include extra credits to meet carbon reduction if a state used more renewable energy sources. It would also offer states the option of imposing a carbon tax or a regional cap-and-trade.

5. Searching Cellphones

The Supreme Court ruled in another unanimous decision that the Obama administration could not search cellphone data without cause in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

In the case of Riley v. California in June 2014, the high court held that government must get a warrant before searching the contents. The Obama Justice Department contended that an arrest gives authorities the right to search the phone.

The majority opinion said:

Modern cellphones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans ‘the privacies of life.’ The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought.

6. Obamacare Judicial Setback

The Supreme Court has twice upheld Obamacare, either in whole or in part.

However, in a lawsuit brought by the House of Representatives, the law hit a snag in May when U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer in the District of Columbia ruled the administration has been improperly funding the Obamacare subsidy program.

Though Congress authorized the program, it didn’t appropriate funding for it, Collyer said in her opinion. Former House Speaker John Boehner launched the lawsuit. The House v. Burwell case was filed at a time of growing concerns about the Obama administration’s executive overreach on various matters.

The funding program was set up to reimburse insurance companies and provide cost-sharing for low-income patients.

In October 2015, an appeals court similarly ruled on a stay for the EPA’s water rules. The case is on appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which again, could have the final say if the Supreme Court remains divided 4-4.

7. Regulating Water

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, based in Cincinnati, ruled that the Obama administration’s Waters of the United States rule wasn’t legal, asserting that it clashed with Supreme Court precedent. The EPA unsuccessfully argued that bodies of water could be under federal control because of their connection to larger bodies of water.

The court determined:

A stay allows for a more deliberate determination whether this exercise of executive power, enabled by Congress and explicated by the Supreme Court, is proper under the dictates of federal law …

A stay temporarily silences the whirlwind of confusion that springs from uncertainty about the requirements of the new rule and whether they will survive legal testing. A stay honors the policy of cooperative federalism that informs the Clean Water Act and must attend the shared responsibility for safeguarding the nation’s waters.

Again, this could also be the final say in the matter in lieu of a ninth justice. (For more from the author of “7 Big Judicial Setbacks to Obama’s Executive Overreach” please click HERE)

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Utah Republican Urges Paul Ryan to File Lawsuit Over Obama Administration’s Use of Obscure Fund to Settle With Insurers

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Republican Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah has mounted a campaign urging House Speaker Paul Ryan to initiate a lawsuit against the Obama administration over the potential use of a fund the Treasury Department oversees to pay federal legal claims to settle with insurance companies suing the government.

Stewart is circulating a letter to his Republican colleagues that would push Ryan to intervene to prevent the Obama administration from using the Judgment Fund, an indefinite appropriation created by Congress, to pay billions to insurers who are suing over Obamacare’s risk corridor program.

So far, at least 10 members have signed on to his letter to Ryan.

“Such an egregious misuse of taxpayer funds is not only a violation of the law but also represents an institutional challenge to the legislative branch, and should be met with the fullest opposition from the House of Representatives,” the letter states. “If such a payment is not met with a challenge from Congress, there is no limit to any administration’s ability to decide which of its priorities it funds.”

AshLee Strong, spokeswoman for Ryan, said they are looking at options.

“By passing the [Sen. Marco] Rubio amendment, Congress has been clear that no taxpayer dollars are to go to failing insurance companies under Obamacare,” she said in an email to The Daily Signal.

Insurance companies filed lawsuits against the Department of Health and Human Services earlier this year over the risk corridor program, which was written into the Affordable Care Act and designed to provide insurers with stability during the first few years of the law’s implementation.

Under the risk corridor program, insurers that had excess profits paid into a fund operated by the federal government. Those that incurred excess losses received money from the fund.

Because many insurers experienced significant losses during the 2014 benefit year, insurance companies received just 12.6 percent of the payments they expected to receive from the risk corridor program and are now arguing they’re entitled to the remaining money.

The Obama administration has signaled it is open to discussing settlements with those companies, and if it decided to do so, it would tap into the Judgment Fund to pay out billions of dollars to insurers.

“They hoped this thing would slide under the radar and no one would notice,” Stewart told The Daily Signal. “The Judgment Fund has been abused in the past, but never anything like this, for heaven’s sake. It was a few $10 million a year that the Judgment Fund was paying out, not something more than $1 billion, which is what this administration is inviting the insurers to do: Sue us, and we’ll settle. We’ll settle before we leave office.”

“It’s crony capitalism at its worst,” he continued.

In his letter, Stewart urges Ryan to “initiate a civil action” on behalf of the lower chamber in federal court. Authority to do so, the letter states, would be granted under a House resolution passed in 2014.

That resolution authorized the cost-sharing reductions lawsuit filed against the Obama administration.

Because the House resolution approved the initiation of or intervention in any civil action “with respect to implementation of any provision” of Obamacare, legal experts told The Daily Signal in March that it gives Congress the authority to intervene in the risk corridor case.

Stewart said he prefers lawmakers find a “legislative fix” to prevent the Obama administration from using the Judgment Fund to settle with insurers in the risk corridor lawsuits when they return from an extended recess in November.

However, he views legal action as a “backstop” and said the White House has already found ways to ignore legislation passed by Congress regarding the risk corridor program.

“We thought we dealt with this legislatively already, and the language is very, very clear on this,” he said. “The administration continues to find creative ways to circumvent obvious legislative language.”

Late last month, the Justice Department filed motions to dismiss lawsuits filed by two insurers—Moda Health Plan and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina—on the grounds that there is no deadline by which risk corridor payments must be paid.

This contradicts statements from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and its top officials, which have said the government would explore the option to settle.

In addition to Stewart’s letter, which was first sent to GOP lawmakers Thursday, Republicans in both chambers have expressed concern about use of the Judgment Fund in additional letters to Sylvia Mathews Burwell, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services; Andy Slavitt, acting administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; and Loretta Lynch, U.S. attorney general.

More than 40 House members, Stewart included, sent Burwell a letter late last month warning that any attempt to settle with insurance companies through the Judgment Fund “will be met with the strictest scrutiny” from Congress.

Republican Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming, Mike Lee of Utah, Marco Rubio of Florida, and Ben Sasse of Nebraska sent a separate letter to Burwell, Slavitt and Lynch asking for additional information on whether the Obama administration plans to settle with insurers.

Before working at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Slavitt worked for OptumInsight/QSSI, the sister company of UnitedHealthcare and a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group.

UnitedHealthcare is the nation’s largest insurance company, and Slavitt received an ethics waiver from the White House in 2014 that allowed him to begin working on matters involving his former employer immediately.

Slavitt’s history with UnitedHealth Group is raising questions for Stewart.

“He shouldn’t be sitting in a position to make this decision,” Stewart said of Slavitt. “That’s an example of why my Republican colleagues and I hope others are going to be interested in this.”

“Once [Republicans are] aware of what CMS is recommending, that the administration is trying to sue and settle and do it very quickly with an enormous amount of money, when the obvious conflict between the person who’s advocating this and his own personal interest in the industry that he worked with, we’re going to have a lot of interest,” he continued.

Slavitt’s predecessor at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Marilyn Tavenner, left the Obama administration to lead America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group that represents insurance companies.

Stewart called the revolving door of administration officials to and from the insurance industry an example of crony capitalism.

“We’re seeing it here,” he said of the risk corridor lawsuit, “but it’s not the first time that we’ve seen it. The Affordable Care Act is rife with examples of this, and they do it at the expense of the American taxpayer.”

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

The shortfall in risk corridor payments was the result of an amendment added to 2015 and 2016 government spending bills prohibiting the administration from using taxpayer dollars to fund the payments requested by insurers through the program.

Because of those restrictions, insurance companies participating in Obamacare’s exchanges received a collective $2.5 billion less than originally anticipated. Many smaller insurers, including several of 23 consumer operated and oriented plans, or co-ops, closed their doors because of the lower-than-expected risk corridor payments.

After three separate insurers filed lawsuits, congressional Republicans began to issue warnings about the Obama administration using the Judgment Fund to settle with insurance companies.

Settling with insurers would provide the White House with a way to give insurers their full risk corridor payments, effectively circumventing Congress. (For more from the author of “Utah Republican Urges Paul Ryan to File Lawsuit Over Obama Administration’s Use of Obscure Fund to Settle With Insurers” please click HERE)

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Strangers in Our Own Land: The Non-Citizen Voter Fraud Disaster

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Several weeks after a court ordered Ohio to stop cleaning its voter rolls from dead voters, likely raising the specter of voter fraud in the key battleground state, a new report reveals how Virginia and Pennsylvania — two other critical states — have seen hundreds of cases of non-citizens voting. That raises the question: Is the foundation of our democratic republic and national sovereignty no longer secure?

Earlier this week, the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), headed by former Justice Department Attorney J. Christian Adams, released a pair of damning reports showing how the voting rolls in parts of Virginia and Pennsylvania are compromised with ineligible voters and that some of those voters have actually cast ballots in recent elections. What is more disquieting about this analysis is that it covered only a handful of counties via public record requests made through the National Voter Registration Act. Thanks to stonewalling from local election officials, a story Conservative Review first broke, PILF could not obtain comprehensive data on these two battleground states, which makes it all the more likely the number of registered voters who are non-citizens or otherwise ineligible to vote is much higher.

Virginia

The Virginia report, which was the first to be released this week, found 1,046 non-citizens registered to vote in eight counties, who “cast a total of 186 votes between 2005 and 2015.” But here’s the kicker: This was a mere sample from 133 election jurisdictions in the state. And as PILF’s Adams noted in an article at PJ Media, this report does not cover “the behemoths of Arlington and Fairfax Counties.”

Moreover, Adams made it clear that this sample only covered self-reported aliens. “These are just the aliens who were accidentally caught because when they renewed their driver’s license, they told the truth that they were a non-citizen,” wrote Adams in the PJ Media article [emphasis in original quote]. Thanks to the Motor-Voter laws there is no way to require that states and localities use the federal SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) database to check for non-citizens voting. Thus, most of the illegal votes actually reported are by those who legitimately didn’t realize they were ineligible to vote and checked off the box indicating they were not citizens when renewing their driver’s licenses. That is how easy it is for non-citizens to vote and debase the entire value of citizenship and the sovereignty of our people.

Now imagine the total number of non-citizens registered in theses eight counties. Then, add another 125 localities, including the largest population centers in Northern Virginia with huge numbers of non-citizens. Consider the following reality: Virginia is home to a large and fast-growing immigrant population. According to Pew, there were over 1 million immigrants in Virginia as of 2014. In 2013, according to the Census, the number of non-citizens in the state was 427,535, but given the fast pace of new immigration to the region, that number has likely grown. If a random sampling from just eight counties showed over 1,000 non-citizens registered to vote, one can easily speculate that thousands more are registered statewide.

This random sampling on non-citizens voting dovetails well with a 2014 study from three prominent political scientists who found that up to 6.4% of all non-citizens participated in the 2008 elections and up to 14.7% voted. Given the population of non-citizens in the state, that is potentially a very impactful number for any close election.

Worse, unlike fraudulent voters, non-citizen voters cannot be stopped with voter ID requirements. As Adams notes, once states fail to screen out citizenship verification on the application, “the aliens are getting registered to vote when they are getting their photo ID cards!” Making matters worse, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals prevented a number of states from verifying citizenship on the federal voter registration forms used through the Motor-Voter process. This is on top of court rulings barring states from requesting a photo ID to vote.

Pennsylvania

Another must-win state for Republicans this fall is Pennsylvania. In a separate report released Tuesday, PILF discovered 86 registrants in Philadelphia who had their voter registration terminated between 2013 and 2015 due to non-citizen status. Among those illegally registered to vote, 40 ballots were cast. Again, these were only registrants who voluntarily asked to be stricken from the voter rolls. “That means the aliens who don’t want to admit they committed a federal felony when they registered to vote remain on the rolls because Philadelphia election officials do nothing to detect them,” said Adams in an email correspondence. I can only speculate that this is an infinitesimal percentage of the total number of non-citizens registered to vote.

What is so sad here is that preserving the franchise for citizens and eligible voters should not be a partisan issue. In a sane world, a discovery of this magnitude from such a tiny sample of registration lists should spark an immediate bipartisan push to verify every name in every country to ensure non-citizens are not voting. The absence of such an urgent response can lead to no other conclusion than a willingness on the part of Democrats to steal the sovereignty of the citizenry.

As Adams observed, most of the counties in Virginia took active steps to prevent PILF from examining the voter rolls. In a world without ubiquitous malfeasance in government, public officials would welcome every opportunity to ensure that not a single non-citizen is registered to vote, especially after so many discoveries were made.

To be clear, if Donald Trump continues down the current path, the margin of victory for the Democrats will be large enough to overshadow voter fraud. But so many down-the-ballot races in recent years have been decided by tiny margins. Moreover, any path to 270 electoral votes for Republicans this year, or in future elections, will likely encounter slim margins of victory in states like Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.

As Professors Richman, Chattha, and Earnest concluded in the 2014 study, “non-citizen votes have also led to Democratic victories in congressional races including a critical 2008 Senate race that delivered for Democrats a 60-vote filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.”

The consequences of inaction are unconscionable. Here is an observation I made in “Stolen Sovereignty”:

Consider the following agonizing thought for conservatives. Obamacare is the seminal issue and the most consequential legislative victory of the Left this past decade. The bill passed the House 220-210 and garnered sixty votes in the Senate, the bare minimum needed to overcome a filibuster. During the 2008 elections, Democrats won two Senate seats by less than 2 percent. In 2006, they won three Senate seats by 2 percent or less. Some of these elections were decided by a few thousand votes. It is hard to imagine that there were not more than enough noncitizens to account for the entirety of the margin of victory in at least one of these races, thereby rendering Obamacare null and void.

Now, couple non-citizens voting with general voter fraud and the number of House seats Democrats gain thanks to illegal aliens being counted in the Census (states like California gain an extra five seats), and we are strangers in our own land! The average American citizen who wants to continue following our own system of governance, history, and traditions is left helpless while federal and state executives refuse to follow the statutes passed by legislatures to preserve the franchise. Meanwhile, the courts are preventing the people from reclaiming their sovereignty. We are suffering from a collective social transformation without representation.

Those like Judge Roy Moore in Alabama who adhere to existing state law are punished for upholding state powers regarding marriage, the most foundational tradition of all civilization. At the same time, public officials who do nothing about voter fraud and disenfranchise the citizens are free to do what they want while the courts stop the few patriots actually engaging in public service and protecting the integrity of our elections.

Fundamental transformation, indeed! (For more from the author of “Strangers in Our Own Land: The Non-Citizen Voter Fraud Disaster” please click HERE)

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