Republican Senators Just Agreed to Scrap New Work Requirements for Food Stamps

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Here we go again. Congress needs to pass a five-year multi-billion dollar farm bill, and conservative reforms have been scrubbed from the legislation.

The Associated Press reports lawmakers in both parties have rejected a plan to add new work requirements to the nation’s food stamp program, killing a plan supported by President Donald Trump and conservative Republicans.

Democrats and many Senate Republicans opposed the work requirements, which became the biggest stumbling block to an agreement on the farm bill. The legislation sets federal agricultural and food policy for five years and provides more than $400 billion in farm subsidies, conservation programs and food aid for the poor.

In a statement Thursday, House and Senate agriculture committee leaders from both parties said they had reached an agreement in principle but were working to finalize the bill’s language and costs.

“We still have more work to do. We are committed to delivering a new farm bill to America as quickly as possible,” said the statement by Sens. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and Reps. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, and Collin Peterson, D-Minn.

House Republicans passed a bill with these new work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) without Democratic support earlier this year, requiring that food stamp recipients between ages 18-59 work at least 20 hours a week and requiring parents with children older than 6 to work or participate in job training. But those conservative reforms died in the Senate, where Democrats in the minority will block legislation they don’t like and Republicans in the majority will kowtow to their demands to avoid a partial government shutdown.

“You have to have something that will pass the Senate,” was the excuse Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., gave. “We took a more comprehensive approach.”

With the Democrats ready to assume control of the House in January, conservative lawmakers will now be pressured to advance the bill without needed reforms in the lame-duck session.

Welfare reform was yet another promise Republicans made on the campaign trail that they have now abandoned in the majority. How much longer will conservatives tolerate the Senate’s obstruction of a conservative agenda? Why is it that for every conservative priority, the excuse given by Republican leadership is that there aren’t 60 votes, so we can’t pass the reforms? Is that not ridiculous? Does anybody actually believe the Founding Fathers envisioned a super-majority requirement in the Senate to advance even basic policy changes?

If Democrats refuse to cross over to support the majority agenda, the onus is on Senate Republican leaders like Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to force their hand. Tell them it’s the conservative bill, or a government shutdown.

If conservatives don’t have leaders willing to do that, then we will never pass legislation out of Congress. And if we can’t legislate, if we can’t pass conservative policies, what’s the point of the conservative movement? (For more from the author of “Jeff Flake Holds Judicial Nominees Hostage to Mueller Protection Bill, Forces GOP to Drop Confirmation Votes” please click HERE)

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The President Is Not in Any Kind of Legal Jeopardy

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Thursday on the radio, LevinTV host Mark Levin lit into the leftist media for continuing to play up the phony Russia-collusion investigation after Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, plead guilty Thursday of lying before Congress.

Levin explained that Cohen’s personal corruption is not indicative of the president himself.

“People keep saying, ‘What are the legal implications for Trump?’” Levin asked. “There are none. Zero. There’s no legal implication; there’s no legal jeopardy, period. Moreover, in all this so-called reporting and analysis by these phony experts, where did President Trump collude, coordinate, or conspire with the Russians during the election, to fix the result of the election? Where is this evidence? And since there’s not a scintilla of evidence, this should underscore the point that this entire investigation is bogus.”

Listen:

“Shouldn’t [the media] be cheering over the fact that so far, all the leaks show that Trump did nothing? Shouldn’t they be celebrating that, that in our republic, the president that we chose is guilty of nothing? That he didn’t collaborate, he didn’t coordinate, he didn’t conspire with the Russians? But they’re not. They keep bringing in these phony experts, who are utterly predictable. ‘You know, uh, if I were Don Jr., I’d be worried about now’ — the country should be worried about now, about what’s taking place. The country should be worried,” Levin said.

Levin explained that there has there never been a “substantive, underlying crime” to expose and reiterated that the president is not in legal danger, despite the media’s assertions.

“How many more damn times do I have to explain that it is the position of the United States Department of Justice that you cannot indict a sitting president? He’s not in any kind of legal jeopardy.” (For more from the author of “The President Is Not in Any Kind of Legal Jeopardy” please click HERE)

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Democrats: It’s Time to Remove the 181-Year Ban on Religious Headwear on the House Floor

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Democrats have drafted a proposal of rules for Congress once they take over the House of Representatives in January. One of the proposals is doing away with a 181-year ban on religious headwear, like hijabs, on the House floor. One of the first Muslim women who was just elected to the House, Ilhan Omar, is spearheading the policy change, ABC News reported.

Nancy Pelosi, who is expected to retake the Speakership, proposed the rule change last week. She’s working with Ranking Member Jim McGovern and Omar on making the proposal a reality. . .

According to Roll Call, Omar will have a number of “firsts.” She’ll be the first member of Congress to wear a religious headpiece on the floor of the House, the first Somali-American in Congress and the first woman of color to represent Minnesota in Washington, D.C. Omar and Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib are the first two Muslim women in Congress. (Read more from “Democrats: It’s Time to Remove the 181-Year Ban on Religious Headwear on the House Floor” HERE)

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Here We Go: Gun Control Advocates in California Now Want to Tax Semi-Automatic Firearms

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California Assemblyman Marc Levine (D) has proposed a new gun control measure: taxing the sale of semi-automatic firearms and using the money to support gun violence prevention programs, The Sacramento Bee reported. The proposal was a direct result of the shooting at the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks.

“The goal is fewer gun deaths,” Levine said in a statement. “The gun tax will support the kind of interventions that make gun violence less likely in the first place, which is exactly what we need to do.”

Should the bill pass, the money would go to the California Violence Intervention and Prevention Program, which is overseen by the Board of State and Community Corrections. The BSCC then uses the money to send various grants to cities and community-based organizations. . .

Right now, it’s unclear what the tax would look like but Levine’s chief-of-staff said they’re considering a $25 fee per firearm, which is similar to Chicago and Seattle’s tax. Although the tax amount is not set in stone, it’s estimated that it will bring in millions in additional revenue to the California Violence Intervention and Prevention Program.

(Read more from “Here We Go: Gun Control Advocates in California Now Want to Tax Semi-Automatic Firearms” HERE)

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The Latest Russia Collusion ‘Bombshells’ Are Big, Fat Duds

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A recent blitz of “bombshell” headlines initially appear to show there might actually have been some collusion between the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and Russia. First, there was The Guardian claiming that Paul “Manaford” (oops, the source meant Manafort) met with Julian Assange of WikiLeaks in spring 2016, with the obvious implication that it was done to plan or coordinate WikiLeak’s Hillary Clinton email dump.

Mollie Hemingway ably pointed out holes in the story by mentioning, among other issues, that Manafort would have entered the Ecuadorian embassy to meet Assange in the heart of London, which is blanketed by the most robust network of video cameras in the world. There would be video and it would have leaked. It hasn’t.

Margot Cleveland followed up with a nice article showing that The Guardian’s anonymous sourcing doesn’t pass muster against on-the-record denials from both Assange and Manafort, especially in light of the pattern of the media’s several false starts with other competing collusion theories.

We can now add NBC News, which just published a very misleading piece that incorrectly appears to be another “smoking gun” gotcha of Russia collusion. The first sentence reads, “Two months before WikiLeaks released emails stolen from the Clinton campaign, right-wing conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi sent an email to former Trump campaign advisor Roger Stone anticipating the document dump.” . . .

On July 21, 2016, Heavy reported that Assange would release the new emails as part of “a series,” which strongly suggests Assange planned to time the releases for maximum effect in the presidential election. On July 27, 2016, The New York Times noted that Assange was timing his email releases for maximum political damage, releasing one batch for the Democratic National Convention. Following the July, 2016 release of documents, Assange publicly announced that his website might have “a lot more material” relevant to the U.S. electoral campaign. (Read more from “The Latest Russia Collusion ‘Bombshells’ Are Big, Fat Duds” HERE)

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The Democrats Still Can’t Prove Their Trump-Russia Theories

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Democrats have the House majority they need to impeach President Trump in 2019, but they still don’t have something very important to the equation: hard evidence of an impeachable offense.

Friday evening on the radio, LevinTV host Mark Levin, pointed out that there’s a lot of speculation flying around about what Trump supposedly did, but there’s not a whole lot of evidence behind any of it.

Levin played recent television appearances by Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., and Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., in which each speculated about the president’s supposed dealings with Moscow or the status of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Levin then went on to highlight the lack of proof to support the various Russia theories.

“They’re just trying to create this narrative,” Levin concluded. “It’s the big lie, and they’re good at it. They repeat it and repeat it and repeat it, and the media help them.”

(Read more from “The Democrats Still Can’t Prove Their Trump-Russia Theories” HERE)

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Google Employees Debated Burying Conservative Media in Search

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Google employees debated whether to bury conservative media outlets in the company’s search function as a response to President Donald Trump’s election in 2016, internal Google communications obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation reveal. . .

Communications obtained by TheDCNF show that internal Google discussions went beyond expressing remorse over Clinton’s loss to actually discussing ways Google could prevent Trump from winning again.

“This was an election of false equivalencies, and Google, sadly, had a hand in it,” Google engineer Scott Byer wrote in a Nov. 9, 2016, post reviewed by TheDCNF.

Byer falsely labeled The Daily Caller and Breitbart as “opinion blogs” and urged his coworkers to reduce their visibility in search results.

“How many times did you see the Election now card with items from opinion blogs (Breitbart, Daily Caller) elevated next to legitimate news organizations? That’s something that can and should be fixed,” Byer wrote. (Read more from “Google Employees Debated Burying Conservative Media in Search” HERE)

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President George H.W. Bush Has Passed Away

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George H.W. Bush, who in one term as president reasserted the U.S. as the world’s lone superpower, rallying an international coalition against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War and presiding over the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, died on Friday. He was 94. . .

“Jeb, Neil, Marvin, Doro and I are saddened to announced that after 94 remarkable years, our dear Dad has died,” his son said in a statement released Friday night.

“George H.W. Bush was a man of the highest character and the best dad a son or daughter could ask for. The entire Bush family is deeply grateful for 41’s life and love, for the compassion of those who have cared and prayed for Dad, and for the condolences of our friends and fellow citizens,” the statement read.

Grandson George P. Bush said on Twitter Friday night, “He was more than a great man; he was a good man. His courage was matched by his compassion; and his dedication to country was equaled only by his devotion to his family.”

One of the most experienced public servants in U.S. history, Bush served two terms as vice president under Ronald Reagan before becoming president in 1989, capping off a career that included stints as director of the CIA and U.S. ambassador to China and the U.N. in the 1970s. (Read more from “President George H.W. Bush Has Passed Away” HERE)

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The Second Amendment Has Always Been an Individual Right

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In a recent interview with The New York Times regarding his upcoming memoir, former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens shares what he contends are the three worst court decisions to come down during his long tenure. His first choice, unsurprisingly, is District of Columbia v. Heller, the 2008 ruling that finally codified the Second Amendment as an individual right. . .

Stevens doesn’t even attempt to hide the political motivation behind his argument. Earlier this year, in fact, Stevens implored Americans to do what he couldn’t while on the court, and repeal the Second Amendment. Stevens quotes former Chief Justice Burger, who in 1991 claimed that activists had perpetrated “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

Both these justices rely on an expedient revisionist history to make their claims. This effort was spearheaded by left-wing historians who attempted to retroactively dismiss the ubiquitous presence of guns in American life and the role firearms played in the rise of a nation. It was taken up by anti-firearm activists and journalists who have used that revisionist history to dismiss the overwhelming evidence that the founding generation believed individual Americans had an inherent right to bear those arms. . .

The singular purpose of the Second Amendment, they argued, was to arm militias, not individuals. For some reason, they contend, the Second Amendment, unlike most of the Bill of Rights, actually empowered the government rather than the individual. Any other interpretation was an antiquated and destructive reading of the past.

But history has never backed up this contention — not then, and not now. The notion of individual ownership of firearms was so unmistakable and so omnipresent in colonial days—and beyond—that Americans saw no more need to debate its existence than they did the right to drink water or breathe the air. Not a single Minuteman was asked to hand his musket over to the Continental Congress after chasing the British back to Boston. If they had been, the Revolution would have been short-lived, indeed. (Read more from “The Second Amendment Has Always Been an Individual Right” HERE)

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Surprise: Obama Official Helped Prepare Dire National Climate Assessment

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A former Obama administration official with ties to a liberal advocacy group funded by Democratic megadonors George Soros and Tom Steyer helped prepare the Fourth National Climate Assessment, whose dire predictions have since been attacked as overblown.

Andrew Light, who worked on the 2015 Paris accord negotiations as a senior adviser to the U.S. Special Envoy on Climate Change under Secretary of State John F. Kerry, served as a review editor for the assessment, overseeing the pivotal final chapter that concluded under a worst-case scenario that global warming could wipe out as much as 10 percent of the U.S. economy by 2100.

Now a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute, Mr. Light also spent five years as senior fellow and director of international climate policy at the Center for American Progress, which was founded and now led by longtime Democratic insider John Podesta. The center is also financed by liberal billionaires such as Mr. Soros and Mr. Steyer.

The involvement of Mr. Light and other figures known for their climate change advocacy has raised questions about the credibility of the report, which has been widely depicted as a politically neutral, scientific document prepared by disinterested specialists from 13 federal agencies.

Roger A. Pielke Jr., University of Colorado Boulder environmental studies professor, criticized the decision to bring in Mr. Light, as well as the report’s reliance for the 10 percent figure on a 2017 study funded in part by Mr. Steyer’s Next Generation and Bloomberg Philanthropies. (Read more from “Surprise: Obama Official Helped Prepare Dire National Climate Assessment” HERE)

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