PUTIN THE PUNDIT: Tells Dems Why They Lost, Reaches out to Trump

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Russian President Vladimir Putin followed up a warm letter to Donald Trump with a more terse message for U.S. Democrats Friday: Don’t blame me for your November drubbing.

President-elect Trump on Friday released the Dec. 15 note from Putin, who Democrats blame for tilting the election Trump won against Hillary Clinton, and called it a “very nice letter.”

In it, Putin wished Trump “warmest Christmas” greetings and expressed hope that Trump would “bring our level of collaboration on the international scene to a qualitatively new level” . . .

But Putin, in a year-ending address from Moscow Friday, had a different message for Democrats as he offered his analysis of the American political scene.

“Democrats are losing on every front and looking for people to blame everywhere,” he said. “They need to learn to lose with dignity. (Read more from “PUTIN THE PUNDIT: Tells Dems Why They Lost, Reaches out to Trump” HERE)

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Is Yahoo! Serious With This Absurd Ivanka Trump’s Alleged Pre-Flight Harrassment?

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More airline harassment. More media malfeasance.

Reports emerged Thursday afternoon that Ivanka Trump was accosted by a man while on a JetBlue flight. According to TMZ, an “out-of-control passenger” on the plane allegedly began “verbally berating” Ms. Trump and “jeering” at her children:

Ivanka was on a JetBlue flight leaving JFK Thursday morning with her family when a passenger started screaming, “Your father is ruining the country.” The guy went on, “Why is she on our flight? She should be flying private.” The guy had his kid in his arms as he went on the tirade.

The unruly man was reportedly escorted off the plane by JetBlue personnel. But wait, there’s more.

Twitchy collected a series of since-deleted tweets from one Matthew Lasner, a professor at Hunter College in New York City, who said it was his husband who was the man kicked off the plane.

“Ivanka and Jared at JFK T5, flying commercial. My husband chasing them down to harass them. #banalityofevil,” Lasner tweeted (preserved via screengrabs from Twitchy).

“Ivanka just before @JetBlue kicked us off our flight when a flt attendant overhead my husband expressing displeasure about flying w/ Trumps,” read another one of his tweets.

“Ivanka and Jared on our flight. My husband expressed displeasure in a calm tone, JetBlue staff overheard, and they kicked us off the plane,” read a third.

A statement from JetBlue explains that the decision to remove a passenger “is not taken lightly,” explaining: “[I]f the crew determines that a customer is causing a conflict on the aircraft, the customer will be asked to deplane, especially if the crew feels the situation runs the risk of escalation during flight.”

So, let’s review the facts.

JetBlue policy is to remove a passenger pretty much as only a last resort. The husband of the alleged offender tweeted that his husband was going to “harass” the future first daughter, and her husband Jared Kushner. And TMZ’s report confirms that Ivanka and her children were verbally abused by this passenger before JetBlue personnel were forced to deplane him.

Now, let’s look at how Yahoo! News reported the story.

“Man kicked off JetBlue flight for questioning why Ivanka Trump was on it.” Are you kidding, Yahoo!?

“Questioning”?

Ivanka Trump was, reportedly, verbally assaulted. She was allegedly harassed — her innocent children yelled at. The entire incident and deplaning did not revolve around some questions.

And, of course, Yahoo! is not alone in this egregious distortion of the facts. ThinkProgress editor Judd Legum’s attempt at spinning the story said the passenger was “kicked off Jet Blue flight for talking to Ivanka Trump.”

No, he wasn’t kicked off for “talking”; he was kicked off for harassing a fellow traveler simply due to her familial association. But facts don’t matter to many on the Left. Over and over again, they demonstrate they don’t care much for inconvenient truths.

And that is, ladies and gentlemen…

(For more from the author of “Is Yahoo! Serious With This Absurd Ivanka Trump’s Alleged Pre-Flight Harrassment?” please click HERE)

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The Courts Just Made It Legal for Police to Shoot Your Dog for No Reason!

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In a disturbing ruling, the 6th Circuit Court gave blanket deference to police officers to shoot any dog they reasonably believe to be a threat while executing a search warrant. As the Washington Examiner points out, this effectively means that if your dog so much as barks or moves towards and officer, it’s fair game to be killed.

Now it’s one thing if, for example, police are responding to a domestic dispute and they get charged by a snarling Rottweiler. It’s common for drug gangs, too, to keep guard dogs which are trained to be vicious towards strangers. At some point, the officer has to do what he can to defend himself.

But the case in front of the 6th Circuit, and the reality in thousands of cases nationwide, is that some police departments exercise a casual “shoot the dog, ask questions later” policy. In some jurisdictions, like Detroit, it’s not even uncommon. It’s difficult to tell how often these episodes occur, because few centralized records are kept. Networks of pet owners and alarmed activists and journalists, however, have begun documenting thousands of what are grimly called “puppycides”.

With relationships between local police forces and their communities already tense, stuff like this doesn’t help.

Part of this “puppycide” epidemic could be addressed by training. In many cases, a basic understanding of canine body language and the difference between excitement and aggression could save a lot of furry lives. Many postal workers and other professionals who are frequently in contact with strangers’ dogs (and who aren’t authorized to just shoot them) use such training to their benefit. Many police departments have seen the value in such preventative measures and have begun educating their officers accordingly.

But training doesn’t solve all of these problems, because dogs are naturally inclined to step in between their owners and a perceived threat. Any dog owner also knows that dogs are incredibly responsive to the moods of their masters, and are going to be more inclined to respond with fear or suspicion in a high-stress situation like a police search. Under a ruling like this 6th Circuit case, even a non-aggressive fearful response like barking or growling would serve as probable cause for blowing away the family pet.

A more effective way to reduce such encounters is to reduce the number of occasions where police even have to encroach on people’s property in the first place. The disturbing trend in policing over the past century has shifted from guaranteeing the peace to enforcing the law, as the volumes of laws restricting our behavior grow thicker by dozens of pages per year.

The thousands of criminal penalties imposed by unelected bureaucrats and the futile, destructive drug war have vastly increased the number of encounters where police are sent to incur on people’s homes and property. This unhealthy dynamic has been accompanied by a corresponding increase in the use of SWAT teams and no-knock raids. Both drastically increase the likelihood of both puppycide and officer-related shootings of people because of the sudden, combat-like nature of the raids.

Officers of the law should definitely be held to a higher standard before using deadly force against pets than what the 6th Circuit required. But ultimately, for the safety of both the police and the private citizens they are supposed to protect, the only foolproof way to reduce these encounters is for citizens to demand that lawmakers reduce the number of laws that are enforced at the point of a gun. (For more from the author of “The Courts Just Made It Legal for Police to Shoot Your Dog for No Reason!” please click HERE)

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JetBlue Removes Man for Harassing Ivanka Trump and Her Kids

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A man angry at President-elect Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton was removed from a JetBlue flight after harassing Trump’s daughter Ivanka, son-in-law Jared Kushner and the couple’s three young children.

Originally reported by TMZ, the verbal assault was later verified by multiple media outlets. According to Mediaite, Trump was not targeted because of her work for her father’s campaign, but rather for his victory:

The soon-to-be First Daughter was on board a JetBlue flight from JFK when an “out-of-control passenger” began screaming, going as far as to “jeer” at her three children. “A passenger on the flight tells TMZ Ivanka ignored the guy and tried distracting her kids with crayons,” says the report.

The passenger, identified only as a man, reportedly said, “Your father is ruining the country” and “Why is she on our flight? She should be flying private.” The man even had a child with him at the time of the incident; bizarrely, the daughter of our 45th President was sitting in coach with other family members according to the report.

The belligerent passenger, later identified as attorney Daniel Goldstein, apparently then yelled at JetBlue for removing him, saying, “You’re kicking me off for expressing my opinion?”

JetBlue tweeted that it got the man on the next flight, while a Trump Organization spokesman told CNN, “The story speaks for itself. It’s an incredibly unfortunate situation.”

Abusers Pretend to Be Victims

According to Forward.com, Goldstein’s partner Matt Lasner tweeted that he and Goldstein were the victims in the incident:

“My husband expressed his displeasure in a calm tone, JetBlue staff overheard, and they kicked us off the plane.”

However, this was no random chance encounter. According to Twitchy and CNN, Lasner earlier tweeted proudly that Ivanka was targeted the minute she was spotted.

“Ivanka and Jared at JFK TF, flying commercial. My husband chasing them down to harass them. #banalityofevil”

Lasner quickly deleted his Twitter account. CNN reported that Lasner had identified himself on that account as a book author and Hunter College professor. His faculty page currently brings up an error; a his personal website notes that his teaching focuses on urban planning and living. Forward reports that has Lasner marched against Trump and called him a fascist.

Marc Scheff, who allegedly witnessed the incident and is himself severe critic of the President-elect, disputed Lasner’s account in a Facebook post:

When he got on and saw her, sitting behind me, he said “oh my god. This is a nightmare” and was visibly shaking. He said “they ruin the country now they ruin our flight!” (Context: Boarding and therefore the flight was delayed because they needed to get on first through some other way)

He did not yell. He was also not what I would describe as calm. Agitated maybe. His husband behind him was very calm. His son is adorable and sharply dressed.

When the JetBlue staff went back to speak to the man I overheard Ivanka say to them “I don’t want to make this a thing.” My assessment is that she was happy to let the man take his seat. She handled the situation calmly and with class. Security made the call to remove the man.

And for good reason. The man’s calm husband had tweeted earlier that his husband was “chasing them down to harass them.”

Scheff agreed with the decision to remove Goldstein. “You know my politics, but I would have made the same call here,” he wrote. (For more from the author of “JetBlue Removes Man for Harassing Ivanka Trump and Her Kids” please click HERE)

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What Really Happened in North Carolina With LGBT Activists and the HB2 Vote

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Did the North Carolina legislature do the right thing by refusing to repeal HB2 after the Charlotte City Council voted 9-0 to repeal the controversial bill that started the whole firestorm? Or did the Republican-led NC Senate miss a great opportunity to remove the stigma surrounding the state and do a major reset? When all things are considered, these legislators did the only thing they could do if they were to be faithful to their convictions and their conscience.

Before I explain why, allow me to give a brief recap.

Recap: How North Carolina Got HB2

In February, 2016, the Charlotte City Council voted 7-4 to enact radical LGBT legislation that would have in effect prohibited genuinely separate male and female restrooms. And they did this despite “more than 250,000 emails, more than 20,000 petition signatures, the opposition of more than 200 local business, community, and faith leaders, and the strong disapproval voiced by the overwhelming number of the 140 people who testified before the council prior to the vote.”

In response to this far-reaching “LGBT Non-Discrimination” bill, and before it could take effect, the state passed HB2, stopping the bill in its tracks and, for the most part, simply putting things back to the way they were before Charlotte’s rash actions. And Gov. Pat McCrory signed the bill into law. (For simplicity’s sake, I’m focusing here on the most controversial aspects of both bills, first that of the city of the Charlotte, then of the state of North Carolina.)

Recalling the Nationwide Backlash Against HB2

The backlash against HB2 was immediate, intense, and unrelenting, with PayPal deciding not to move into Charlotte, the NBA pulling the 2017 All-Star game and the NCAA pulling its state championship events, and celebrities like Bruce Springsteen and Ringo Starr cancelling appearances in the state, costing North Carolina millions.

Gov. McCrory came under unrelenting assault for supporting HB2, while his Attorney General Roy Cooper, who was himself running for governor, strongly opposed HB2 and became the darling of LGBT activists.

Then, in September, Gov. McCrory stated that if the Charlotte City Council would drop its bill, HB2 could be repealed, offering a state-wide reset, but the City Council, with strong support from pro-LGBT activist Mayor Jennifer Roberts, refused to repeal their bill.

On the political front, the battle between McCrory and Cooper was neck and neck, with Cooper holding a small lead most of the time, even before the passage of HB2, and McCrory dogged by two other issues, one having to do with a proposed toll road and the other having to do with Duke Energy.

In the end, Cooper barely defeated McCrory, despite outspending him roughly two-to-one, with the help of major backing by wealthy gay activists and leftwing organizations like the Human Rights Campaign. And, I was informed, some local pundits suggested that without either the toll road controversy or the Duke Energy controversy, McCrory would have stayed in office, let alone if he had received equal funding for his campaign. So, despite the spin being put on McCrory’s loss, this was not a statewide rejection of HB2, as the Republicans, who passed HB2, retained their super-majority in both state houses.

Instead, this was a targeted strategy by LGBT activists and their allies to remove McCrory and make North Carolina an example. In that sense, the state was ground zero in a larger national campaign.

Now, with Roy Cooper about to assume office, the same Charlotte City Council that refused to vote on a repeal of their bill back in September miraculously changed their tune, voting 9-0 to repeal their bill with the understanding that the state would then repeal HB2.

“Let’s have a reset and go back to the way things were before,” they seemed to be saying.

Why then didn’t the state legislators jump at this opportunity to remove the reproach of being boycotted and shunned?

I can best explain that by reminding you of Aesop’s fable about the scorpion and the frog, which goes like this.

Analogy: The Scorpion and the Frog

A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, “How do I know you won’t sting me?” The scorpion says, “Because if I do, I will die too.”

The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp “Why?”

Replies the scorpion: “I’m a scorpion. It’s in my nature. …”

Now, I am not comparing LGBT activists and their allies to scorpions (or conservatives to frogs), but I am making a point about people and groups acting in accordance with their nature.

The fact is, this had nothing to do with a reset, nor were groups like the HRC saying, “OK. We’ll stop pushing our bills if you stop pushing yours.” If that had been the case, they would have repealed their bill back in September, under Gov. McCrory’s leadership, rather than refusing to act until he had been removed.

No, this was the HRC and the City Council and the incoming governor saying, “We’ll give you an excuse to remove your oppressive HB2 so we can now come at you with a flood of new bills in cities across North Carolina, bills just as radical as the Charlotte bill that started all this. It’s what we do. It’s our nature.”

Of course, LGBT activists and their allies will say in response, “This is not about our ‘nature.’ This is about what’s right. This is about equality. This is about fairness. This is about non-discrimination.”

I certainly understand that perspective, but that only underscores my point.

Mayor Roberts and her radical council members are not about to retreat from their larger goals, nor is the HRC, nor is Governor-elect Cooper. In fact, on December 19, the HRC issued this urgent notice: “North Carolina General Assembly Must Immediately Repeal HB2.” And the HRC stated up front that, “City leaders also reaffirmed their commitment to passing comprehensive non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people after HB2’s repeal.”

Roy Cooper himself said,“Full repeal [of HB2] will help to bring jobs, sports and entertainment events back and will provide the opportunity for strong LGBT protections in our state” — and note that these “strong LGBT protections” were the very things which HB2 was preventing, since these alleged “protections” were actually direct attacks on religious freedoms along with unwanted intrusions into private places like bathrooms and locker rooms.

To return to the scorpion and frog analogy, in this case, the scorpion was telling the frog up front that it was going to bite him. Why then, would the frog give the scorpion a ride? Why remove HB2 if, within a matter of months, there would be bills passed in city after city in North Carolina which would only multiply what HB2 was put in place to stop?

“No Thanks,” Says the Frog

It is truly unfortunate that North Carolina has been stigmatized and bullied by the cultural elitists — although, from what I understand, the state economy continues to thrive — and it is a shame that the city of Charlotte has engaged in such a dangerous game of political football. It’s also tragic that many in the LGBT community in North Carolina feel rejected and unsafe although, the truth be told, things were basically fine statewide before Charlotte started on its ill-advised activist course.

But the heart of the matter was expressed by Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, who posted this on his Facebook page:

Charlotte repealed an ordinance that the General Assembly already voided months ago. I support HB2 and do not favor its repeal. No economic, political or ideological pressure can convince me that what is wrong is right. It will always be wrong for men to have access to women’s showers and bathrooms. If HB2 is repealed, there will be nothing on the books to prevent another city or county to take us down this path again. The left has already publicly stated the removal of HB2 is necessary for the rest of their agenda to move forward. With certainty, if HB2 is repealed, we will fight this battle all over again with another city or county. The names will change, but the national groups who are pushing this agenda will not stop until their social engineering is accomplished. The only thing stopping them are those of us who continue to stand strong.

Yes, “The left has already publicly stated the removal of HB2 is necessary for the rest of their agenda to move forward,” and people of conscience throughout the state have said, “Not on our watch.”

Where things will go in the months and years ahead is uncertain, but what happened this week in North Carolina makes perfect sense: A scorpion asks a frog for a ride across the stream but tells him it will bite him along the way, and the frog said, “No thanks.” (For more from the author of “What Really Happened in North Carolina With LGBT Activists and the HB2 Vote” please click HERE)

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EPA Makes an About-Face on Fracking Report: Science or Politics?

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Gordon Tomb pays about $40 per month to heat his home in central Pennsylvania. And he wants to keep it that way.

“I’ve lived in Pennsylvania for more than 60 years and have never paid so little for my home heating,” Tomb, a senior fellow with the free market Commonwealth Foundation, said in an interview.

He credits his low heating bills to the boom in natural gas production brought on by hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), which enables energy companies to tap into the state’s gas-rich Marcellus Shale formation.

“The natural gas industry has been the brightest spot in the Pennsylvania economy for the past decade and it’s likely to be for a long time,” Tomb said “It’s contributed billions to property owners in royalties and leases alone. There are hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues and in wages by the economic activity of hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

In 2009, a handful of Dimock, Pennsylvania, homeowners sued a Houston-based company, alleging their drinking water was tainted by fracking.

The Pennsylvania complaint and others like it from across the country prompted a five-year, $29 million Environmental Protection Agency study, which, according to a draft report released in June 2015, “did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States.”

This was a relief to the oil and gas industry, given that fracking currently accounts for half of the nation’s crude oil production and two-thirds of the natural gas production, yet has also been controversial.

But something happened between last year and last week to make the EPA change its tune.

In its final report released last week, “Hydraulic Fracturing for Oil and Gas: Impacts from the Hydraulic Fracturing Water Cycle on Drinking Water Resources in the United States,” the EPA said fracking can affect drinking water resources “under some circumstances.”

But it cited no cases in which such contamination was confirmed. Instead, the EPA concluded that there is a paucity of data on which to base a conclusion, and in the instances where data is available, there are too many uncertainties to conclude anything with confidence.

“Because of the significant data gaps and uncertainties in the available data, it was not possible to fully characterize the severity of impacts, nor was it possible to calculate or estimate the national frequency of impacts on drinking water resources from activities in the hydraulic fracturing water cycle,” the study says. “We were, however, able to estimate impact frequencies in some, limited cases (i.e., spills of hydraulic fracturing fluids or produced water and mechanical integrity failures).”

On that thin reed, environmentalists are taking a victory lap. But what changed?

It wasn’t the science, according to Jeff Stier, senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, but politics.

“The EPA already said in its draft report that there was no systemic effect on the water supplies from fracking. Nothing in the underlying science of the report was changed, it’s simply a change in their framing of it,” Stier said. “There’s been a concerted political campaign to apply pressure to the EPA. Certainly the report as it was written in draft form would have taken away any leg that activists had to stand on.”

Specifically, Stier says, certain members of Congress, environmental activists, and the EPA’s independent researchers pushed for the scholarly flip-flop.

The draft report, and its fracking-favorable findings, remained status quo for more than a year.

Then in August of this year, the agency’s Science Advisory Board sent a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. The board complained in the 180-page letter that the statement about “widespread, systemic impacts” was not supported and needed revision. The board also advised the EPA add specific research on places with a track record of reported problems—including Dimock, Pennsylvania.

On Oct. 20, McCarthy got a scathing follow-up letter signed by 51 members of Congress. The note blasted not only the 2015 draft report, but the EPA’s public handling of the report, and urged the EPA to either revise the “widespread, systemic impacts” statement, or delete it.

The EPA opted for the delete button, offering this explanation on its website:

After receiving comments from the [Science Advisory Board], EPA scientists concluded that the sentence could not be quantitatively supported. Contrary to what the sentence implied, uncertainties prevent EPA from estimating the national frequency of impacts on drinking water resources from activities in the hydraulic fracturing water cycle. Additionally, EPA scientists and the [Science Advisory Board], came to the conclusions that the sentence did not clearly communicate the findings of the report.

‘Hanging on by a thread’

U.S. Rep. Matthew Cartwright, D-Pa., was among those who pressed the EPA to change its conclusion. He said that he has been at the forefront of federal efforts to crack down on fracking to protect communities and environment in which fracking occurs, including his home state.

“I am pleased that the EPA took seriously the issues raised by the Scientific Advisory Board, and revised its report accordingly,” he said. “My priority has always been to see that the fracking industry operates safely and responsibly, and I have repeatedly introduced legislation aimed at encouraging that.”

Tomb, however, is wary of any regulations coming from Washington to a state that’s well-schooled in natural resources and well-equipped with fracking regulations.

“I see nothing good about additional federal regulations in this area,” he said. “The first oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania in the mid-1800s. So this state has been dealing with this industry going on 200 years. And in my lifetime, it’s done very well.”

Stier says the push by the congressmen and the review board is part of a much broader “keep it in the ground” movement.

“The big picture opposition to fracking has nothing to do with drinking water. It’s opposition to humans taking energy out of the earth,” Stier explained. “These opponents realize they would not be able to win a political argument in the court of public opinion considering they don’t want us taking energy out of the ground. So they had to argue that this threatened our drinking water because that’s a way to get everyone to agree because we all want clean drinking water.”

Swapping out the previous conclusion is, according to Stier, a last leg for the anti-frackers on the eve of the Trump administration. “They’re hanging on by a thread to sow doubt about the safety of fracking. But I don’t think it’s a very strong leg to stand on because it’s simply a political document now.”

Indeed, a hostile letter-writing campaign will likely not have the same effect on Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt—President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to replace McCarthy at the EPA. Pruitt has been a frequent and effective critic of EPA overreach, and took a leading role in efforts to put the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan on hold.

“From what I’ve seen so far from the Trump administration, they don’t care about idiotic claims by people looking to advance their own skewed view of how the world should be, who want to meddle in everybody’s lives and everybody’s business,” Tomb added. “Most people want to live their lives, raise their families—all that can be done and has been done, while protecting the environment.” (For more from the author of “EPA Makes an About-Face on Fracking Report: Science or Politics?” please click HERE)

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Weiner Delivered Clinton’s October Surprise, Not the FBI

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Bill Clinton says that FBI Director James Comey cost his wife the 2016 election.

Has he met Anthony Weiner?

Weiner, after all, is the reason why FBI Director Comey went to Congress in October, notifying lawmakers that investigators had discovered emails on Weiner’s computer that could be related to its investigation of Clinton’s off-the-books email arrangement while she served as secretary of state.

Had Weiner, married to top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, not sent sexually explicit text messages to a minor, the FBI would have never had a reason to seize his laptop in the first place. There would have never been any “October surprise.”

It’s not as if this is the first time Weiner has gotten, literally, caught with his pants down, either. He resigned from Congress in 2011 after he was caught posting a lewd image on Twitter. Then in 2013, during his failed New York City mayoral bid, the Hollywood gossip site TMZ posted explicit messages he sent to women in 2012 under the alias “Carlos Danger.” Then, he exchanged more messages with a minor in 2016, which elevated his scandalous behavior to a felony level.

So, how is Comey to blame exactly? Clinton wasn’t “schlonged” by the FBI, as Trump may say. She was “Weinered.”

Yet, the Clintonistas are far more outraged at the man who investigated disgusting sexually deviant behavior toward a young woman than the man who actually conducted the disgusting sexually deviant behavior toward a young women.

Hm. Sounds … familiar.

Some things never do change. Definitely not the Clintons. (For more from the author of “Weiner Delivered Clinton’s October Surprise, Not the FBI” please click HERE)

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How Sen. Lee Forced McConnell’s Hand on Repealing Obamacare

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House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc. (F, 51%) and Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. (F, 40%) have garnered plaudits recently for their strong stance on repealing Obamacare.

As voters await the repeal vote they’ve long been promised, it’s worth reflecting on how Republicans have finally gotten to this point.

It was Senator Lee who, in July of 2015, forced the repeal issue in the Senate — despite severe and unwarranted opposition from his own party’s leadership. And it is because he did so that Republicans are now poised to repeal this unwanted, unaffordable and unworkable law.

During a little-noticed floor fight over a transportation bill in the summer of 2015, Sen. Lee found a procedural loophole that would have allowed Senate Republicans to take a meaningful vote on Obamacare repeal. (By “meaningful,” I mean a vote requiring only a 51-vote majority to pass, not the 60-vote threshold more frequently employed in the Senate.) Lee entered the repeal vote, via an amendment to the transportation bill. And in doing so, he turned the Senate Republican conference on its head.

Despite campaigning on the pledge to repeal Obamacare “root and branch,” McConnell actually had no intention of allowing Lee to go ahead with a repeal vote.

Rather, he took a leaked email from a Lee staffer (full disclosure, that staffer was me) discussing the repeal vote, and used it as a tool to bludgeon Lee in front of his colleagues — not once, but twice — claiming that Lee was using this opportunity only to “divide the party.”

Dividing the party over repeal of Obamacare? The one campaign pledge that they all had in common?

As Ben Domenech later wrote in The Federalist, McConnell’s “bizarre and childish tantrum” over an Obamacare repeal vote raised the question — did McConnell have the yips?.

But rather than respond in kind, Sen. Lee chose to be the statesman. He withstood the unwarranted scorn of his colleagues and the scathing rebuke from McConnell, and offered to withdraw the amendment — but for something in return. Rather than repeal Obamacare then, he agreed to withdraw the amendment for a promise to repeal Obamacare via the reconciliation process later in the year — a more potent and powerful opportunity to issue a first strike at the law.

That promise, extracted by Lee from McConnell, formed the basis of the repeal effort, and is the reason McConnell and Ryan can so confidently line up the process in January.

How?

As a result of Lee’s efforts, Republicans passed a reconciliation bill last year that repealed Obamacare. Though it was subsequently vetoed by President Obama, that effort was the single step which proved that Senate Republicans can pass repeal, over all procedural and policy objections. That effort forms the baseline for what Republicans are about to tackle in January. Without Sen. Lee’s courageous stand, they’d be starting from scratch. As a direct result of his efforts, they are instead starting with the wind at their backs.

Some might say that end counts more than the means — so, since Republicans are going to repeal Obamacare in January, it doesn’t matter how they got there. To them I would reply: Until Lee forced repeal to be included in last year’s reconciliation, it was clear that Senate leadership would make no effort to offer a meaningful vote. Rather, up until that point, they continued to hide behind show votes at a 60-vote threshold — the kind where members can vote for something, confidently knowing it will never get the 60 votes to pass.

Lee’s actions forced the Senate majority to put its money where its mouth was. No more could they talk a big game while hiding behind show votes; they would actually have to cast a meaningful vote in the direction of full repeal. Without Lee, Senate Republicans would never have fulfilled the promises they made to the voters who elected them.

After spending nearly a decade as a staffer in Congress, I can confidently say there are very few politicians courageous enough to stare down Senate leadership and the ire of their colleagues without blinking. Sen. Lee did just that.

In Washington, holding yourself and others accountable to campaign promises can be a thankless task. Amid all the celebration and self-congratulation that will accompany the first repeal vote in January, Sen. Mike Lee deserves considerable gratitude as the unsung hero of the repeal effort. (For more from the author of “How Sen. Lee Forced McConnell’s Hand on Repealing Obamacare” please click HERE)

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Fearing Late Action by Obama, Republicans Consider Curbing Presidential Power to Declare National Monuments

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President Barack Obama is using his executive power to issue a broad swath of environmental protections during his last weeks in office, guarding himself against a successor who has vowed to roll back parts of that agenda.

As part of this effort, Obama has made historic use of a 110-year-old law signed by Theodore Roosevelt that gives a president unilateral authority to designate national monuments on land already owned by the federal government.

Some Republicans in Congress have long accused Obama of abusing the law—the 1906 Antiquities Act.

“What was created 110 years ago for the purpose of giving the president power to protect some of our natural resources and archeological treasures from imminent destruction has lost its meaning over time,” said Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, in an interview with The Daily Signal. “The envelope has been pushed to the point where there’s nothing left of it.”

Worried that Obama will aggressively act on his way out the door, opponents like Lee are now gearing up for a protracted fight to amend or repeal the law, and are even vowing to work with the incoming Donald Trump administration to overturn monuments already named by Obama.

They are paying special attention to Obama’s next rumored target for a national monument designation, a site known as Bears Ears in southeastern Utah, a 1.9 million-acre retreat of mesas and canyons revered by Native Americans who live by it.

“It will kick off a huge flurry of legislative activity should the president take this unfortunate step,” said Lee, who notes he and nearly every elected state and federal official in Utah opposes Obama acting alone to make Bears Ears a national monument. “He [Obama] doesn’t want to be the guy who tarnishes his legacy of reaching out to populations who have been marginalized in the past [Native Americans]—in many instances by the government itself—by further marginalizing them. If he does act, he is asking for a strong response, and this is what that will bring.”

Battle for Bears Ears

Lee and other opponents have been bracing for Obama to name Bears Ears a national monument, and this week he and other Utah political leaders and several state and local elected officials rallied at the Capitol in Salt Lake City, demanding that the president not act.

Five tribal nations have joined to ask Obama to designate Bears Ears a national monument, arguing that this is the way to best protect the site from looting, mining, and drilling.

The site is not reservation land — it is owned by the federal government and managed by the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, and National Park Service. But local Native Americans depend on it for sustenance, religious activity, and cultural tradition.

The tribal coalition of Navajos, Zunis, Hopis, Utes, and Ute Mountain Utes is proposing to jointly manage the land with the government.

Elected officials who serve the state say the Obama administration’s consideration of Bears Ears as a national monument shares characteristics with the president’s recent use of the Antiquities Act in that there is significant local opposition to unilateral action.

They argue that the coalition of tribes supporting the monument do not reflect the local sentiment of Native Americans, because the group is supported by major conservation groups and nature advocates.

Powerful Republicans in Congress representing the area—including Reps. Rob Bishop, who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, and Jason Chaffetz, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee—have introduced legislation that would protect a portion of Bears Ears while opening other parts of the state to development.

The massive public lands bill—called the Utah Public Lands Initiative—includes a provision that would conserve less of Bears Ears—1.4 million acres instead of 1.9 million acres—and also would allow energy development in certain areas.

The measure, which has not received a floor vote in the House, is opposed by environmental groups and the tribal coalition, who say it does not significantly protect natural resources.

“At the end of the day, we stayed at the table as long as anybody working with Congress and county commissioners trying to come up with a protection mechanism for this landscape,” said Barb Pahl, the senior vice president of field services at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, in an interview with The Daily Signal. “There’s an agreement that we need to protect it, but Congress hasn’t acted. We don’t think their bill provides the protection this amazing region deserves, so it’s time for the president to act.”

‘Right the Wrongs’

Naming a national monument through the Antiquities Act has historically received bipartisan support.

Eight Democratic presidents and eight Republicans have used the law in some form, according to the Wilderness Society, designating a combined 152 national monuments.

Yet Bishop and Lee argue some of Obama’s designations have been overly ambitious, and influenced by persistent advocacy from outside groups.

Only Franklin D. Roosevelt has used the Antiquities Act authority more often.

USA Today reported that over the last five years, Obama has designated national monuments for reasons that go beyond conservation. He’s recognized sites important to Latinos, labor unions, African-Americans, Japanese-Americans, and women.

“There are some special-interest groups that think they are empowered because of this act,” Bishop told The Daily Signal in an interview. “That is why the Antiquities Act needs to be reformed.”

If Obama makes Bears Ears a national monument, Bishop says he can use several tools to retaliate. He says he will “immediately” draft legislation to rescind the monument designation, reintroduce the Utah Public Lands Initiative, and aim to block funding through the appropriations process.

All of those moves would likely struggle to advance in a divided Congress, Bishop acknowledges.

To guard against that possibility, Bishop told The Daily Signal that he’s personally lobbied the Trump administration for the president-elect to act alone to overturn Obama’s potential monument designation of Bears Ears.

“If Obama and [Bill] Clinton can abuse this act so badly, I would tell Trump to give himself the ability to change that and right the wrongs that have been done,” Bishop said.

A president has never before rescinded a previous monument designation, although in a few instances, presidents have shrunk the boundaries of a previous president’s proclamations.

The Antiquities Act does not explicitly say whether a president can overturn or change a monument designation, and the concept has not been tested in court.

Bishop and Lee are confident such an action would pass legal muster.

“We are very confident that a subsequent president could at the minimum redraw the boundaries of a previously designated monument,” Lee said. “There is also a thought that what one president can create, another president can extinguish under the Antiquities Act.”

Pahl of the National Trust for Historic Preservation counters that politicians would be making a mistake by upending more than a hundred years of tradition.

“Some of our most beloved national park units and places began life as national monuments designated under the Antiquities Act,” said Pahl, who referenced the Grand Canyon as an example. “Maybe at the moment some of these decisions have seemed like mistakes, but if you look over the course of time, the American people are grateful for these protections, and to all of a sudden pull the plug from them would be wildly unpopular.”

Bishop says his resistance is about process, not substance, and that there are more holistic ways to protect vulnerable federal land.

“We will do everything that has to be done to make sure a monument at Bears Ears is not done through the Antiquities Act, but through legislation, so the people have a say on what they want to do,” he said. (For more from the author of “Fearing Late Action by Obama, Republicans Consider Curbing Presidential Power to Declare National Monuments” please click HERE)

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DNC Hopeful Keith Ellison to Rub Elbows with Radicals at Islamic Confab

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Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn. (F, 26%), the frontrunner to become the next chair of the Democratic National Committee, is set to speak at an event next week that is being described as a “rogue’s gallery of the Islamist world.” He will be joined by a plethora of speakers who have espoused dangerous views and engaged directly with jihadist organizations.

The Muslim American Society (MAS) and Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) are co-hosting the “American Muslims Islamic Duties and Civic Obligations” convention in Chicago next week. And Ellison is scheduled to be a featured guest speaker Tuesday night.

Federal prosecutors have described MAS — which paid for Ellison’s hajj to Mecca — as an “overt arm” of the Muslim Brotherhood. ICNA, for its part, advocates for a global Islamic caliphate ruled by sharia law.

On his own, the Minnesota congressman has a history of menacing commentary and associations, most evident by his attendance at gatherings of fringe Islamic groups. Moreover, Rep. Ellison has likened the 9/11 attacks to a false-flag event, and once compared George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler.

But enough about Ellison for now. Take a look at the company he keeps. Many of the speakers who will share the MAS-ICNA podium with him consist of a who’s who of radicals.

Kyle Shideler, director of the Threat Information Office at the Center for Security Policy, told Conservative Review that Ellison will be accompanied by a “treasure trove of bad guys.”

There’s Siraj Wahhaj, who was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Wahhaj has advocated for the establishment of an Islamic state inside the United States.

Also at the event will be Nihad Awad, founder and director of the Muslim Brotherhood-founded Council on American Islamic Relations. Awad has declared that he is “in support of the Hamas movement,” a U.S.-designated terrorist organization that rules the Gaza Strip.

Additionally on the speakers list is Mohammad Qatanani, an imam from New Jersey with suspected Hamas ties and who federal officials have continually sought to deport.

There is Mohammed Ratib Al-Nabulsi, a Syrian sheikh who once declared that “all the Jewish people are combatants,” and, as such, justifiable targets for suicide bombings. He’s also called for the death penalty for homosexuals.

Jamal Badawi, a founding member of MAS and a former Muslim Brotherhood official, is listed as a speaker. At a 2006 conference, he declared that Islamic suicide bombers were “freedom fighters” against oppression.

Linda Sarsour, a supporter of the terror-tied BDS movement against the Jewish state of Israel, will also deliver remarks.

Imam Suhaib Webb of the Islamic Society of Boston will also be in attendance. Webb, once a close friend of deceased al Qaeda mastermind Anwar al-Awlaki, presides over a congregation that has drawn over a dozen suspected or convicted terrorists

Then there’s Mazen Mokhtar, who was identified in a July 2004 affidavit as someone who solicited financing for the Taliban and Chechen mujahideen. The indictment against him, however, was later dismissed and he is now the director of the MAS New Jersey chapter.

Khalil Meek, once a spokesman for the Holy Land Foundation — a now-defunct group that was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terror financing case in American history — will also speak at the conference.

“The fact is, Rep. Keith Ellison will be attending an event with a veritable rogue’s gallery of the Islamist world,” the Center for Security Policy’s Kyle Shideler told CR. “MAS-ICNA is proudly advertising speakers who have endorsed suicide bombings, called homosexuality a ‘repugnant disease,’ multiple unindicted co-conspirators for terrorism cases, and an imam the DHS is actively attempting to deport for Hamas ties.”

Steven Emerson, founder of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, told Conservative Review:

“Both MAS and ICNA are radical Islamist groups which were derived from the Muslim Brotherhood. For years, both groups have openly issued incendiary statements defending terrorist groups, have had officials from their groups openly linked to terrorist groups, and year after year featured openly radical Islamic fundamentalists as the primary speakers at their conferences.”

By appearing at the Islamic supremacist MAS-ICNA conference, Rep. Keith Ellison does no favors for his campaign to mainstream his candidacy to the Democratic Party at large. (For more from the author of “DNC Hopeful Keith Ellison to Rub Elbows with Radicals at Islamic Confab” please click HERE)

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