Money to Burn: 5 Things You Won’t Believe the Feds Are Doing With Your Tax Dollars

/0 Comments/in , /by

When President Obama took office in 2009, our national debt was $10.63 trillion. Today, it approaches near $20 trillion. The already colossal number has nearly doubled under the Obama administration. As Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla. (C, 71%) points out, even “if Congress were able to balance the budget, keep it balanced, and create a yearly surplus of $50 billion, it would still take 460 years to pay off our national debt.” Think about that.

And where has your money gone? In his office’s “Federal Fumbles” report, a project to identify the most ridiculous examples of federal waste, Sen. Lankford shows that the Obama administration has wasted your tax dollars on some pretty egregious things in the past few years.

Here are but five of the most ridiculous, wasteful projects your tax dollars have funded:

1. Icelandic Grave Diggers:

The National Science Foundation has bankrolled nearly $500,000 in grants to study the connection between religion and political power in Iceland from 870 A.D. to 1300 A.D. by looking at church graveyards. The NSF also funded two other grants of $46,688 and $26,680 to determine where archeologists should dig for the graveyard study.

2. Really old Tanzanian fish bones

Nearly $200,000 of your tax dollars are funding an NSF study on “Fish as a delicacy and a staple: Social status and the daily meal at the 14th- to 16th-century town of Songo Mnara, Tanzania.” The study will be conducted over several years to determine what “constructions of meaning” the eating of fish had on society in the African nation of Tanzania 600 years ago.

3. Embroidered Snuggies

The waste of nearly $2 million by the University of Washington is another profligate example of NSF grants gone wrong. The NSF gave the University of Washington a few million dollars in grant money, and about $1.8 million of that was used to pay extremely high salaries to senior employees. $3,920 was spent on swag, including “custom Snuggies, canvas bags, and mini optical computer mice.” The university also spent an additional $1,179 of NSF grant money on embroidered Snuggies. The National Science Foundation, wasted grant money — are you starting to see a trend here?

4. How does that ruling make you feel?

The NSF is dedicating $120,703 in grant money to a study of 1,000 people, “half of whom will be impacted by a Supreme Court decision, the other half of whom could possibly feel indirectly impacted by a decision.” The study seeks to gauge the “psychological impacts” of Supreme Court rulings. Apart from being a complete waste of money, the potential premise of this sort of study is problematic, as it perfectly jibes with the endless insanity seen on college campuses these days. The law is concerned with justice, not feelings.

5. How do you like your salmonella?

In 2010, salmonella-contaminated eggs sickened 2,000 people because the Department of Agriculture did not alert the FDA about the infected eggs, which entered into the American food supply as a result. Instead of learning from that fiasco, the communication between the two agencies has not improved. In June 2016, the Health and Human Services inspector general determined that the FDA still didn’t have an effective food recall program that would prevent another health outbreak from happening. Sadly, the whole point of the FDA and USDA, and their respectively massive workforce and budgets, is to prevent these exact types of outbreaks from ever occurring. What exactly are the employees doing every day?

So, how does all this waste of your tax dollars make you feel?

The good news is that Sen. Lankford offers two ways to combat wasteful government spending in the “Federal Fumbles” booklet. The Taxpayers Right-to-Know Act, which has passed the House, would allow taxpayers to see what all federal agencies are spending and how the agencies gauge the effectiveness of their programs. The bill awaits consideration in the Senate.

There is also the Grant Reform and New Transparency (GRANT) Act, which would establish a new system for how grants are awarded to stop wasteful grant spending. So far it’s up for consideration in the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee.

Hopefully with Donald Trump as president, both of these bills will get passed by Congress next year and signed into law so that the spigot of wasteful grant spending is stopped. (For more from the author of “Money to Burn: 5 Things You Won’t Believe the Feds Are Doing With Your Tax Dollars” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Lawmakers Missed Their Chance to Protect Religious Liberty

/0 Comments/in , /by

Victory. Those have been few and far between during the Obama era, but this week, conservatives can rightly say they secured a huge victory against the left’s radical agenda: America’s young women will not be forced to sign up for the Selective Service, the precursor to being included in a future military draft.

Unfortunately, there will be a missed opportunity as well: It looks like a religious liberty provision won’t be in National Defense Authorization Act.

Let’s backtrack. The women’s draft push started in 2015, when the Obama administration took unilateral action to allow women to serve in all combat units.

According to former Marine Corps servicewoman and current Heritage Action Sentinel Jude Eden:

Drafting women is a bad idea because putting women into combat units is a bad idea on a myriad of fronts from degraded combat readiness to skyrocketing injuries, risk, expense, and danger to the long-term medical bill and increased casualties. We always need men to fight whereas drafting women is totally unnecessary.

Of course, liberal lawmakers took the Obama administration’s move as a signal to force American women, aged 18 through 26, to register for Selective Service, more commonly known as the draft.

They didn’t seem to care that, as Eden puts it, “Combat is not an equal opportunity for women because they don’t have an equal opportunity to survive.”

At first, House Republicans successfully removed a provision of the committee-passed National Defense Authorization Act that would have included America’s young women in any future national military draft.

Despite the House’s efforts, the “Draft our Daughters” was included in the Senate’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act.

Fortunately, 17 conservative senators, led by Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., signed a letter advocating opposition to any defense bill that included the “Draft our Daughters” provision.

And ultimately they won: The women’s draft provision was removed during conference negotiations, marking an important win against the left’s agenda.

Standing up to the progressive social agenda is possible, and conservatives in Congress deserve credit for slowing the advance of their radical agenda. Unfortunately, the Republican-controlled Congress has not been as successful fighting the Obama administration’s assault on religious liberty.

Here’s the backstory: In 2014, President Barack Obama issued an executive order protecting sexual orientation and gender identity with regard to the hiring policies of contractors. This means religious employers would likely be forced to change their employee conduct standards concerning marriage, sexual behavior, and their bathroom, shower, locker, and pronoun policies or lose federal grants and contracts.

Rep. Steve Russell, R-Okla., realized the need to ensure that churches, religious organizations, and other nonprofits weren’t forced to choose between contracting with the federal government or living by their foundational religious beliefs.

He introduced the Russell Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which was adopted in committee and ultimately, included in the House version that passed by a vote of 277 to 147.

Unfortunately, a similar provision was not included in the Senate’s version.

Heritage Foundation expert Roger Severino explains the need, and simplicity, of the amendment:

The Russell Amendment is sound policy that will prevent the administration from stripping contracts and grants from faith-based social service providers whose internal staffing policies reflect their faith. Jewish day schools and Catholic adoption centers, for example, are not liable under Title VII for being authentically Jewish or Catholic, and their staffing policies shouldn’t disqualify them from federal grants and contracts either.

This commonsense solution was opposed by 42 Senate Democrats, who sent a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee asking that the Russell Amendment be stripped from the final National Defense Authorization Act being negotiated.

The Democrats’ demand, combined with a veto threat from Obama, was enough to force the Russell language out of the final bill language.

Conservative victories can be achieved when lawmakers uphold the Constitution, listen to the American people, and don’t cave to political pressure.

While we are celebrating that the National Defense Authorization Act doesn’t include a women’s draft, it’s disappointing that conservative lawmakers appear to be content to pass this bill without the Russell Amendment, meaning they will have missed a chance to protect religious liberty.

In November, Republicans were given a mandate to lead boldly. Now is not the time to cower to pressure, give into empty promises, or “hope” that something will change. There are no more excuses.

Come 2017, it will be time to let our shared conservative principles govern, not the radical demands of America’s elitist left wing. (For more from the author of “Lawmakers Missed Their Chance to Protect Religious Liberty” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Widespread Coverage of Liberal Hate Crimes ‘Study’ Shows Media’s Fake News Problem

/0 Comments/in , /by

So much for taking America’s “fake news” problem seriously.

Ever since Donald Trump was elected president, there’s been an abundance of hand-wringing over the “fake news” that supposedly is rampant on social media.

Yet missing has been any kind of serious searching among the mainstream media about whether it could learn any lessons from this election—and whether reporters and editors are holding themselves accountable to their supposed values of objectivity and rigorous reporting.

And a new “study” presents Exhibit A as to why the mainstream media should reconsider its own practices.

The Southern Poverty Law Center—an organization that calls the Family Research Council an “extremist group” because of its socially conservative views on LGBT matters—reported Nov. 29 that “in the 10 days following the election, there were almost 900 reports of harassment and intimidation from across the nation.”

“Many harassers invoked Trump’s name during assaults,” the report continued, “making it clear that the outbreak of hate stemmed in large part from his electoral success.”

Cue the widespread coverage:

“Nationwide, there have been more than 867 incidents of ‘hateful harassment’ in the first days following the election, the Southern Poverty Law Center says,” reported CNN.

“In the 10 days following the November election, SPLC said it collected 867 hate-related incidents on its website and through the media from almost every state,” wrote the Associated Press.
NBC News headlined its piece on the study “Southern Poverty Law Center Reports ‘Outbreak of Hate’ After Election.”

The Washington Post’s headline blared, “Civil rights group documents nearly 900 hate incidents after presidential election.”

There’s just one issue: The Southern Poverty Law Center didn’t confirm these “nearly 900” incidents actually happened.

“The 867 hate incidents described here come from two sources—submissions to the #ReportHate page on the SPLC website and media accounts,” the SPLC report states. “We have excluded incidents that authorities have determined to be hoaxes; however, it was not possible to confirm the veracity of all reports.”

In other words, who has any idea if these incidents actually happened or not?

Yet, the fact that there was no verification of these incidents didn’t stop the media from covering this “study.”

And let’s not pretend there’s no to very little chance that a Trump opponent would make up a hate crime story.

Just consider this reported hate incident in November: “The men used a racial slur, made a reference to lynching, and warned him this is Donald ‘Trump country now,’ according to the report he gave police,” reported the Boston Herald.

Yet the man wasn’t telling the truth. The Herald reported that Kevin Molis, police chief of Malden, Massachusetts, said “it has been determined that the story was completely fabricated.”

“’The alleged victim admitted that he had made up the entire story,’ saying he wanted to ‘raise awareness about things that are going on around the country,’” the newspaper added, continuing to quote Molis.

So maybe 867 hate crimes happened in the first 10 days after the election. Or maybe 5,000 did. Or maybe five did.

Maybe 10,000 did—and most of them were directed at Trump supporters, not opponents. (Let’s not forget the man beaten in Chicago while someone said, “You voted Trump.”) Who knows?

The SPLC should realize that playing around with facts is no laughing matter.

In 2012, a gunman entered the headquarters of the Family Research Council “with the intent to kill as many employees as possible, he told officers after the incident,” reported Politico. The 29-year-old man, identified as Floyd Lee Corkins II, did shoot and wound a security guard. His motivation?

“Family Research Council (FRC) officials released video of federal investigators questioning convicted domestic terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins II, who explained that he attacked the group’s headquarters because the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) identified them as a ‘hate group’ due to their traditional marriage views,” the Washington Examiner reported.

Ultimately, regardless of what the Southern Poverty Law Center does, the media shouldn’t be giving a platform to faux studies like this.

But maybe it’s not surprising, given attitudes like President Barack Obama’s. In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine published Tuesday, the president griped about the reach of Fox News Channel—and then complimented Rolling Stone: “Good journalism continues to this day. There’s great work done in Rolling Stone.”

Yes, that Rolling Stone—the news outlet that published the completely discredited University of Virginia gang rape story. In early November, “jurors awarded a University of Virginia administrator $3 million … for her portrayal in a now-discredited Rolling Stone magazine article about the school’s handling of a brutal gang rape [at] a fraternity house,” the Associated Press reported.

It’s tough to hold the media accountable when even the president seems willing to brush aside true instances of fake news. (For more from the author of “Widespread Coverage of Liberal Hate Crimes ‘Study’ Shows Media’s Fake News Problem” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Trump’s Cabinet Picks Sounding Alarms

/0 Comments/in , , /by

It’s often said “personnel is policy” when it comes to an incoming president’s Cabinet selections, and that’s what has some of Donald Trump’s most fervent supporters asking, “Why THESE people?”

In fact, Americans on both the left and right of the political aisle are expressing concern over the president-elect’s recent choices for key positions in his administration.

On Wednesday came word that Vice-President-elect Mike Pence was meeting with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, an outspoken Trump critic. In October, Rice called for Trump to end his bid. “Donald Trump should not be president. He should withdraw,” she wrote in a Facebook post following release of a decade-old video of Trump having a lewd conversation about women. Rice even insisted Trump replace himself with “someone who has the dignity and stature to run for the highest office in the greatest democracy on earth.” In July, Rice declined to attend the Republican National Convention. The Trump team has not indicated whether it is considering Rice for a Cabinet post.

Also Wednesday, the New York Times reported Trump may be considering professional wrestling magnate Linda McMahon for the Small Business Administration. McMahon developed World Wresting Entertainment, or WWE, with her husband, Vince McMahon. Upon leaving Trump Tower Wednesday, McMahon told reporters, “The meeting went great. It was really nice to be up, and I was honored to be asked to come in. Anytime I think the president-elect of the United States asks you to come in for a conversation, you’re happy to do that. We talked about business and entrepreneurs and creating jobs, and we talked about S.B.A.”

Trump may also be considering former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for secretary of Veterans Affairs, Reuters reported Wednesday. Trump has long said a top priority of his administration will be to improve veterans’ care. (Read more from “Trump’s Cabinet Picks Sounding Alarms” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Meet Wilbur Ross, Trump’s Pick for Commerce Secretary

/0 Comments/in , /by

President-elect Donald Trump tapped Wilbur Ross, an investor and longtime Trump associate, to serve as secretary of the Department of Commerce, the transition team announced Wednesday.

“Wilbur Ross is a champion of American manufacturing and knows how to help companies succeed. Most importantly, he is one of the greatest negotiators I have ever met, and that comes from me, the author of The Art of the Deal,” Trump said in a statement. “Together, we will take on the special interests and stand up for American jobs.”

Ross, 79, is a billionaire investor most known for rescuing failed companies — a reputation that earned him the nickname “the king of bankruptcies,” according to Politico.

He’ll take over the Commerce Department as the new administration gears up for implementation of Trump’s “America First” economic plan, which involves creating more than 25 million jobs in the next 10 years.

A native of New Jersey and a former Democrat, Ross spent 25 years at the head of Rothschild Inc.’s bankruptcy practice, according to Forbes. He then launched WL Ross & Co., an investment firm, in 2000 and currently serves as its chairman.

Ross is worth an estimated $2.5 billion, according to Forbes.

“I am delighted to have been selected to join President-elect Trump’s Cabinet and look forward to working especially closely with [newly appointed Treasury Secretary] Steve Mnuchin to implement the economic programs which we have developed jointly to implement the president-elect’s strategy for accelerating our economic growth,” Ross said in a statement.

The 78-year-old billionaire has resurrected companies in the steel, coal and textiles industries. Ross also helped Trump salvage his Trump Taj Mahal casino in 1990, when the casino was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Ross and investor Carl Icahn decided to restructure the bankruptcy filing in 1991, according to The New York Times, which allowed Trump to save his brand.

Ross is most known for his decision to buy struggling steelmakers including LTV and Bethlehem Steel, which he turned into a new company called International Steel Group. In 2004, Mittal Steel purchased International Steel Group for $4.5 billion.

Despite Ross’ success in that deal, the billionaire’s foray into the steel industry took a drastic turn in 2006 when an explosion at the Sago Mine in West Virginia killed 12 miners. A company Ross owned, International Steel Group, took over the mine just months earlier.

Ross served as an economic adviser to Trump during the campaign and shares Trump’s views on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, calling it the “worst trade deal yet for American manufacturing” in an August op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

If confirmed by the Senate to lead the Commerce Department, Ross will succeed Penny Pritzker. President Barack Obama selected Pritzker for the post in 2013.

As secretary, Ross would serve as a liaison between the White House and the business community. The Commerce Department oversees the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the International Trade Administration, the National Weather Service and the Census Bureau.

Ross graduated from Yale University and Harvard University, and lives with his third wife in Palm Beach, Florida, not far from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

His second wife is Betsy McCaughey, who served as New York’s lieutenant governor from 1995 to 1998. McCaughey also served on Trump’s economic team during the campaign. (For more from the author of “Meet Wilbur Ross, Trump’s Pick for Commerce Secretary” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

The Left’s Utterly Ridiculous Claim That Police Are Trained to ‘Shoot to Interview’

/0 Comments/in , /by

As a former uniformed law enforcement officer, federal agent, and law enforcement instructor, I’m growing increasingly frustrated with the dangerous naiveté within the far-left activist and “talking-head” community when it involves discussing police use-of-force incidents.

After nearly every police-involved use-of-force incident, some far-left activist or news commentator feels the need to rush in front of the cameras and, without even knowing the facts, spout off about the incident. Much of this heated and uninformed anti-police rhetoric inspires the same kind of rhetoric in return in defense of the police. (I have engaged in some of these heated debates on camera when I felt that the police are unjustly being attacked.) As a result, no substantive discussion occurs — only a yelling match.

But, what I saw last night set a new low for liberal commentary on law enforcement. What happened on Fox News’ “The Kelly File” was inexcusable and dangerous.

As I sat in front of the television, relaxing after completing my Facebook Live session, I watched liberal commentator Nomiki Konst say something about police officers so outrageous that I nearly choked on the Seltzer I was drinking. Host Megyn Kelly asked Konst to comment on the Ohio State University knife attacks and the since-deleted tweet by former vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine that inaccurately implied the attacker had a gun.

The conversation quickly went off the rails as Konst, unbelievably, implied that the life-saving actions of heroic OSU police officer Alan Horujko may have been an exercise in poor judgement. If you’re saying “What!?” then join the chorus. Now I have met Nomiki before and found her to be both affable and relatable and do not intend this to be, in any way, a personal attack.

Konst went on to state that non-deadly force could have been used against the knife-wielding, murderous savage because, in her words: “The FBI trains in situations like this and they want to make sure the attacker is alive so they can question him, especially if there’s some sort of terrorist affiliation.” She added, “There’s a lot of training behind this. You find a way to injure them, harm them, knock them down, still keep them alive so you can question them.”

Fascinating. This is breaking news if true.

I, along with the legions of local, state, and federal law enforcement agents would be astonished to discover that decades of use-of-force training — designed to STOP a subject from causing serious physical injury or death to himself or others — had changed and that the new policy was “shoot to interview.”

To be sure I hadn’t heard Konst wrong, I rewound the segment and listened again and, to my chagrin, my ears were working just fine. To their credit, host Megyn Kelly and co-panelist Dana Loesch immediately threw the BS flag on this nonsensical and dangerous assertion and forced Konst back on her heels. But the damage had already been done.

Friends, what happened in this cable news segment is the reason why we can’t have a civil discussion in this country about understandably heated intersections such as race and police use-of-force. Not only was Konst grossly misinformed about how police are trained to use force in a situation requiring it, but she was also spouting the exact opposite position many of her fellow, liberal activists and commentators have taken in the past when they stoked the flames of racial division after a use-of-force incident involved a minority.

For example, here’s a headline from an editorial piece written just a few days ago discussing police use-of-force incidents, “Black Lives Matter 2016: Why Do Police Shoot To Kill? How Officers Are Trained In The Use of Force.”

So, liberal activists and commentators, which one is it? Are police trained to “shoot to kill” or to “shoot to interview”? How can we have a serious conversation in this country when liberal activists ask us to reevaluate and change a policy they don’t even understand? Or do they understand it, and they’re just changing their talking points to fit a new narrative designed to sway public opinion in their direction?

Either answer is troubling. Do you see how a productive conversation is impossible given that we aren’t all talking about the same things? People who are trained law enforcement professionals are talking about apples, while the liberal commentators and activists are talking about oranges from Jupiter (or Jupiter being orange, depending on the direction of the political winds of the moment).

As I said previously, I have met Nomiki in the past, and I don’t want to impugn her motives, but this was irresponsible at best. Misinforming the public on such an important issue such as the training of our nation’s police officers in an effort to increase cynicism against the police — in a time where police-community relations are already struggling in many areas of the country — is incredibly irresponsible.

She owes OSU police officer Horujko and the entire law enforcement community an apology. (For more from the author of “The Left’s Utterly Ridiculous Claim That Police Are Trained to ‘Shoot to Interview'” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

A New Confederacy?! Levin EXPOSES the Left’s Sanctuary City Crap-Scheme

/0 Comments/in , /by

Do we have a new Confederacy akin to that of the Civil War-era?

Leftist cities around the country, with the support of the Democratic Party and their president, are nullifying federal immigration law. And they are vowing to continue even after a President Trump is sworn in. They are behaving like Civil War-era pro-slavery states, argued Mark Levin on his radio program Wednesday night.

“Their taking a page out of the Confederacy’s handbook,” said Levin. “Why is okay that [the Democrats] violate federal law?”

Listen to the full clip here:

Levin has a solution for Trump and his new Attorney General Jeff Sessions, however. Make sure to listen and find out what can be done! (For more from the author of “A New Confederacy?! Levin EXPOSES the Left’s Sanctuary City Crap-Scheme” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Sen. Mike Lee Calls for 12-Year Term Limits for Lawmakers

/0 Comments/in , /by

The 2016 election cycle has sent a signal “loud and clear” that the federal government needs fixing, a U.S. senator said Tuesday.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, voiced his support for 12-year term limits on members in either body of Congress while speaking at The Heritage Foundation this week.

“I’m distressed any time I see the right to vote being diluted by an argument that rests on the following line of reasoning,” Lee said Tuesday at The Heritage Foundation event to announce Heritage’s new research Institute for Constitutional Government. He said:

Whenever you see a member of Congress come back and tell his or her constituents, ‘Look I know we’re all citizens in a free republic and that means you can vote for whomever you want, but given the amount of seniority and authority that I’ve accrued during my time in this or that body of Congress, you should know that if you don’t vote for me you will lose money and power and influence.’

“It’s attaching a very high price tag to our most fundamental of rights, our right to vote,” Lee said. “The best way I can see to eliminate that argument, to take it out, is to limit members of Congress to 12 years of service in either house.”

Lee said he believes there should be a constitutional amendment for term limits.

A 12-year term limit in either chamber of Congress would allow U.S. senators to serve for two terms and representatives to serve for six terms.

“Congress is the people’s branch,” Lee said.

Congress needs to be responsible and accountable, he said.

“The American people are frustrated with the government that knows no boundaries,” Lee said. He added:

The American people … know that in many respects they are no longer in charge of their own government. That the government that was created to serve them has tried to untether itself from them, moving away from them and becoming a task-master rather than a servant.

Power has been taken away from the people’s elected representatives and “given to unelected, unaccountable government bureaucrats,” Lee said.

“This is a problem because it results in all kinds of lawmaking made by all kinds of government officials who are never subject to elections and therefore have no reason to fear when the people get concerned about new laws,” Lee said.

“Members of Congress have contributed to this problem,” Lee said of giving too much power to bureaucrats.

Along with advocating term limits, Lee spoke at the event about preserving the Constitution.

“In order to avoid criticism and thereby maximize their chances of achieving perpetual re-election, [members of Congress] depart from and are willing to sacrifice constitutional principles that were designed to connect the people with their own government,” Lee said.

“Power has been taken away from the people and moved to Washington,” he added. “Power that was always supposed to be exercised at the state and local level has been federalized.”

The new constitutional institute at Heritage will help “educate members of Congress, their staff, the new administration, and the American people on the importance of our founding institutions to preserving freedom,” a description of the event says.

“The founders tried to forestall creation of a new tyranny by devising an ingenious system, codified in the Constitution, to limit the power of government and preserve individual liberties,” James Wallner, Heritage’s group vice president for research who will head the new institute, said in a statement.

The B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics, the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, and the Center on Public Opinion research centers are part of Heritage’s new Institute for Constitutional Government.

There is “a real need for more high-level civic education on college campuses to the general public, to members of Congress, to their staff,” David Azerrad, director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics, said on Tuesday.

“One of the things I think that all conservative and libertarians, and progressives who are still committed to the Constitution, need to recognize is that the task of rebuilding limited constitutional government is going to take a long, long time,” Azerrad said. (For more from the author of “Sen. Mike Lee Calls for 12-Year Term Limits for Lawmakers” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Attack at Ohio State Brings US Terror Plots, Attacks to 93 Since 9/11

/0 Comments/in , /by

This week, terror struck American soil once again—this time on a university campus.

On the morning of Nov. 28, Abdul Razak Ali Artan drove a car into a crowd of pedestrians on the campus of Ohio State University. He then got out of the car and began attacking those around him with a knife.

A nearby police officer, Alan Horujko, was able to respond within a minute, shooting and killing Artan when he refused to drop the knife. Eleven individuals were injured, all of whom are expected to survive.

Authorities believe that Artan may have been inspired by the Islamic State as well as the Yemeni-American propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki. Artan posted a rant against the U.S. on Facebook just before the attack.

Using a vehicle as a method of attack has been recommended by al-Qaeda and ISIS in their magazines and was also used in the terrorist attack in Nice, France, and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

According to authorities, Artan was an 18-year-old student at the university. Of Somali descent, Artan was living in the U.S. as a legal permanent resident. Law enforcement officials and refugee resettlement agencies report that Artan and his family came to the U.S. in 2014 from Pakistan as refugees, where they had reportedly lived for seven years after fleeing Somalia.

While some of these details have yet to be officially confirmed, the evidence is clear enough to add this attack to the list of Islamist terror plots. This attack is the 93rd Islamist terrorist attack or plot against the U.S. homeland since 9/11 and the 12th plot or attack this year.

Including this attack, 14 successful Islamist terrorist attacks have occurred on U.S. soil since 9/11, five of which have been in 2016 alone. With Artan also appearing to have been radicalized here in the U.S., the total number of homegrown plots rises to 82 of the 93.

While the threat of complex, overseas-planned or supported terrorist attacks is still real (as evidenced by attacks in Paris and Brussels), the trend in the U.S. has been toward more basic and improvised attacks by homegrown lone wolves.

Such attacks can be difficult to detect—a reality reflected by the growing number of successful attacks in the U.S. As these individuals are already in the U.S. when they become radicalized, immigration vetting can do little, if anything, to detect these individuals.

If the U.S. is to stop homegrown terrorists, it must do more to empower local officials. Federal capabilities are incredibly important, but the threat of lone wolves requires all hands on deck.

To find and stop these lone wolves before they attack, U.S. leaders should work to advance the following policies:

1. Building more effective communication lines between local law enforcement and the FBI.

2. Ensuring that local law enforcement agents receive proper training on how to respond to terrorist attacks and active shooters.

3. Helping local law enforcement build relationships with its community.

(For more from the author of “Attack at Ohio State Brings US Terror Plots, Attacks to 93 Since 9/11” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

FBI and NSA Poised to Gain New Surveillance Powers Under Trump

/0 Comments/in , /by

The FBI, National Security Agency and CIA are likely to gain expanded surveillance powers under President-elect Donald Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress, a prospect that has privacy advocates and some lawmakers trying to mobilize opposition.

Trump’s first two choices to head law enforcement and intelligence agencies — Republican Senator Jeff Sessions for attorney general and Republican Representative Mike Pompeo for director of the Central Intelligence Agency — are leading advocates for domestic government spying at levels not seen since the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The fights expected to play out in the coming months — in Senate confirmation hearings and through executive action, legislation and litigation — also will set up an early test of Trump’s relationship with Silicon Valley giants including Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. Trump signaled as much during his presidential campaign, when he urged a consumer boycott of Apple for refusing to help the FBI hack into a terrorist’s encrypted iPhone.

An “already over-powerful surveillance state” is about to “be let loose on the American people,” said Daniel Schuman, policy director for Demand Progress, an internet and privacy advocacy organization . . .

In a reversal of curbs imposed after Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 about mass data-gathering by the NSA, Trump and Congress may move to reinstate the collection of bulk telephone records, renew powers to collect the content of e-mails and other internet activity, ease restrictions on hacking into computers and let the FBI keep preliminary investigations open longer. (Read more from “FBI and NSA Poised to Gain New Surveillance Powers Under Trump” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.