As Obama Speaks in Dallas, Police Groups Question His Support

As President Barack Obama visited Dallas on Tuesday to speak at the memorial service for five slain police officers there, some law enforcement advocates faulted his legacy on the issue as negative.

“It’s a consistent pattern that whenever there is violence, he has repeatedly failed to wait until the facts are known before giving his opinion that implies cops are racists and that pollutes the environment around the case,” Ron Hosko, president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, told The Daily Signal in a telephone interview.

“He has put his thumb on the scales of justice and has simultaneously inflamed matters,” Hosko said. “He is no friend to law enforcement.”

During his remarks in Dallas, the president repeatedly praised police but also asserted that the concerns of peaceful protesters are legitimate.

“We know that an overwhelming majority of police officers do an incredibly hard and dangerous job fairly and professionally. They are deserving of our respect and not our scorn,” Obama said, adding:

When anyone, no matter how good their intentions may be, paints all police as bias or bigoted, we undermine those officers we depend on for our safety. As for those who use rhetoric suggesting harm to police, even if they don’t act on it themselves, they not only make the job of police officers more dangerous, they do a disservice to the very cause of justice they claim to promote.

The president added: “America, we know bias remains. We know it. … No institution is entirely immune. That includes police departments.”

He continued:

When mothers and fathers raise their kids right and have ‘the talk’ about how to respond to a police officer—‘Yes, sir, no sir’—but fear that something terrible may happen when their child walks out the door, still fear that kids being stupid and not quite doing things right might end in tragedy—when all this takes place more than 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, we can’t just simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as troublemakers or paranoid. We can’t simply dismiss it as a symptom of political correctness or reverse racism.

‘Symptomatic’

On Wednesday, the president is scheduled to meet with a group of law enforcement officials, civil rights activists, and local political leaders about rebuilding trust between police departments and their communities, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.

Earnest said It’s time for police departments around the country to implement the recommendations of the White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing. That report called for a greater emphasis on police forces having community-based partnerships with schools, businesses, and neighborhood organizations; greater transparency and oversight; and increased officer training.

Jon Adler, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, on Monday publicly asked Obama to use blue lights to illuminate the White House in honor of the fallen officers in Dallas:

While we appreciate the president’s proclamation to have our flag flown at half-mast in honor of our fallen police heroes, I respectfully request that he demonstrate his full respect for their ultimate sacrifice by illuminating the White House in blue. Actions speak louder than scripted words, and the honorable act of displaying law enforcement’s ‘This Blue Line’ at the White House would demonstrate the president’s sincere commitment to our fallen heroes and their families.

The White House did not respond to The Daily Signal’s inquiry as to whether it would honor the request or is considering the blue lights.

Obama’s remarks at the memorial service in Dallas were his most extensive so far.

Speaking Friday from Poland, Obama condemned the police shootings of black men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and in Minneapolis that preceded the deadly attack Thursday on Dallas police officers, saying:

What I can say is that all of us as Americans should be troubled by these shootings because these are not isolated incidents. They’re symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system.

‘Anti-Police Narrative’

Hosko, who was assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division from 2012 through 2014, said he agrees with recommendations from the White House policing task force, including body cameras, more neighborhood-based policing, and better training.

However, he said, too many departments don’t have enough resources.

Hosko and other critics with law enforcement backgrounds say Obama has unfairly criticized police before knowing the facts, beginning with a police officer’s arrest of a Harvard professor that led to a “beer summit” at the White House and continuing with the president’s commentary regarding the deaths of black men after altercations with police in Ferguson, Missouri, and in New York and Baltimore.

However, PolitiFact recently called it “mostly false” to characterize Obama as anti-cop, publishing numerous pro-police statements by the president. Among them was this 2015 remark:

“As president, I am committed to making sure America’s dedicated police officers receive the support and recognition they have earned, and to doing all I can to protect those who protect us.”

Vice President Joe Biden told CNN on Monday that Obama “in fact has, repeatedly, been supportive of the police organizations. He talked about it.”

In 2009, Obama said during a White House news conference that Sgt. James Crowley of the police department in Cambridge, Massachusetts, “acted stupidly” in confronting Henry Louis Gates Jr. as the Harvard professor was entering his house. Crowley arrested Gates for disorderly conduct, a charge that later was dropped.

“There’s a long history in this country of African-Americans being stopped disproportionately by the police,” Obama also said at the time. “It’s a sign of how race remains a factor in this society.”

The Cambridge police union accused Obama of a rush to judgment. The president tried to smooth over the matter by bringing together Crowley and Gates for a beer with himself and Biden.

“How he responded to that right off the bat showed his view of law enforcement was decidedly skeptical,” Scott Erickson, president of Americans in Support of Law Enforcement, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.

“He has been one of many pieces that has helped create an anti-police narrative,” said Erickson, who served as a police officer for 18 years in California, adding:

How he responds is disproportionate because he is the president and it impacts what we see as acceptable. What he should do and should have done is show a shared sense of empathy. Shared empathy will make a person less prone to jump to conclusions.

‘A National Problem’

During a December 2012 interview with BET, the month after he won a second term, Obama said:

The vast majority of law enforcement officers are doing a really tough job, and most of them are doing it well and are trying to do the right thing. But a combination of bad training, in some cases; a combination in some cases of departments that really are not trying to root out biases, or tolerate sloppy police work; a combination in some cases of folks just not knowing any better, and in a lot of cases, subconscious fear of folks who look different—all of this contributes to a national problem that’s going to require a national solution.

Five days following the Ferguson incident in 2014, when officer Darren Wilson shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown after he grabbed at the officer’s firearm, Obama said from Martha’s Vineyard: “There is never an excuse for violence against police or for those who would use this tragedy as a cover for vandalism or looting. There’s also no excuse for police to use excessive force against peaceful protests or to throw protesters in jail for lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights.”

The Obama administration’s Justice Department launched an investigation of the Ferguson Police Department and settled a federal lawsuit with the agency in March.

After drug dealer Freddie Gray, who was black, died last year while in the custody of Baltimore police, Obama criticized both police and voters. He went on to say: “I can’t federalize every police force in the country and force them to retrain, but what I can do is to start working with them collaboratively so that they can begin this process of change themselves.”

In the incidents last week before the Dallas attack, an officer fatally shot Philando Castile during a traffic stop in Minneapolis and officers fatally shot Alton Sterling after forcing him to the floor of a parking garage.

The latest police shootings of black men prompted protests around the country, many organized by Black Lives Matter, including the one Dallas. Near the end of that protest, authorities say, Micah Xavier Johnson shot 12 police officers, killing five.

“Insisting we do more to root out racial bias is not an attack on cops, but an effort to live up to our highest ideas,” Obama said Tuesday in Dallas, adding:

Even those who dislike the phrase Black Lives Matter surely we should be able to hear the pain of Alton Sterling’s family … so that yes, insist that his life matters, just as we should understand the students and coworkers who showed their affection for Philando Castile.

‘We Need to Fight’

Another liberal group, MoveOn.org, criticized conservatives who questioned the president or Black Lives Matter in their treatment of the issue of police shootings.

“The last thing we need is more violent and hate-baiting rhetoric like what we’re seeing from former Congressman Joe Walsh and right-wing pundits,” Anna Galland, the group’s executive director of civic action, said in a statement.

In a tweet he later deleted, former Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Ill., wrote: “3 Dallas Cops killed, 7 wounded. This is now war. Watch out Obama. Watch out black lives matter punks. Real America is coming after you.”

Galland’s statement for MoveOn.org continued:

We don’t need fear-mongering calls for more guns or more militarized policing. We don’t need a further crackdown on peaceful, lawful protesters or to cast blame at peaceful movements that are confronting police violence. We need to protect civil liberties and fight for the civil rights of black people and all Americans, while keeping our neighbors and communities safe.

Fox News quoted William Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, as faulting Obama and his administration for their “refusal to condemn movements like Black Lives Matter.” The police group endorsed Obama in 2008.

Johnson said such movements were “actively calling for the death of police officers, that type of thing, all the while blaming police for the problems in this country,” and such rhetoric “has led directly to the climate that has made Dallas possible.”

“It’s a war on cops,” he said. “And the Obama administration is the Neville Chamberlain of this war.” (For more from the author of “As Obama Speaks in Dallas, Police Groups Question His Support” please click HERE)

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Debunking 6 Myths About the First Amendment Defense Act

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing Tuesday on the most important piece of religious liberty legislation before Congress in years: the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), introduced by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rep. Raúl Labrador, R-Idaho.

Several Democratic House members and their invited witnesses made some stunning claims about the bill both orally and in written remarks that merit serious fact-checking. Here are six of them.

Claim 1: The bill is cover for discrimination against LGBT people.

Reality: This claim is rebutted by simply stating what the bill actually does—it prevents the federal government from discriminating against individuals and institutions that follow their beliefs about marriage and what it entails. It protects supporters of both sides of the same-sex marriage debate from being stripped of nonprofit tax-exempt status, licenses, grants, contracts, or accreditation. Just as Congress protected people from being punished for declining to participate in abortions after Roe v. Wade, the First Amendment Defense Act protects people from being punished for their beliefs about marriage after the Obergefell decision, without taking anything away from anyone.

Claim 2: FADA prevents enforcement of every single federal law that imposes a “penalty”—be it antidiscrimination, health, retirement, housing for noncompliance—if the person being penalized can claim they are acting out of a belief about marriage.

Reality: The word penalty appears only once in FADA and in a paragraph dealing exclusively with taxation because FADA only prevents discriminatory imposition of tax penalties, not every penalty in federal law. Most of the criticisms of FADA, including the most fantastical ones, vanish once this is understood.

Claim 3: FADA allows businesses to deny employee benefits for same-sex partners in violation of the Family and Medical Leave Act, Employee Retirement Income Security Act, and employment discrimination laws.

Reality: The previous response applies with equal force here as FADA provides no immunity or exemptions from the Family and Medical Leave Act or any employment civil rights laws. As illustrated by the Hobby Lobby decision at the Supreme Court, business owners should not be forced by government to give up their religious beliefs and convictions in order to earn a living. FADA furthers this important right by protecting businesses in limited contexts—such as grants, contracts, tax exemption, and licenses—while leaving our landmark civil rights laws untouched.

Claim 4: FADA protects state clerks who want to opt out of issuing same-sex marriage licenses to gay people.

Reality: FADA does not cover state government employees, so state clerks are not protected. Kelvin Cochran testified at the hearing about being unjustly fired from his position as Atlanta fire chief because of his views on marriage, and how FADA would have protected him had it been the federal government stripping him of his position as United States fire administrator. His story prompted former Rep. (and FADA opponent) Barney Frank to say that he wished there were a law that would have protected the chief. Frank is right: There should be such a law and FADA is it at the federal level.

Claim 5: Under FADA, federal contractors would be able to deny certain government-funded benefits under Title X, such as contraception, to a person because they enter into a same-sex marriage.

Reality: FADA opponents have been forced to imagine outlandish hypothetical scenarios like these because they cannot come up with real world examples where FADA would prevent gays and lesbians from getting government services everyone is entitled to. FADA specifies that for-profit contractors cannot deny services to anyone required to be served under the terms of a federal contract. Additionally, where protection is provided, as with religious nonprofits, FADA does not relieve the federal government of any obligation to deliver government benefit or services “either directly or through a person not seeking protection under this act.” In short, everyone entitled to a government benefit or service will get it before and after FADA.

Claim 6: Under FADA, a hospital could deny visitation rights to people in same sex-marriages.

Reality: FADA states that it does not apply to any “hospital, clinic, hospice, nursing home, or other medical or residential custodial facility with respect to visitation, cognition of a designated representative for health care decision-making, or refusal to provide medical treatment necessary to cure an illness or injury.” It doesn’t get any clearer.

The Supreme Court itself said that the belief in marriage as the union of one man and one woman is grounded in “decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises,” not on discrimination. FADA respects this truth and gives life to the best of our traditions of tolerance and religious freedom.

Tuesday’s hearing proved that FADA protects people and institutions from having their beliefs about marriage targeted for discrimination by their own government. It would do nothing more, nothing less. (For more from the author of “Debunking 6 Myths About the First Amendment Defense Act” please click HERE)

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You Won’t Believe the Latest Gitmo Detainee Mr. Obama Decided to Spring

For those who doubt the cold-hearted nature of the man currently leading this nation, Barack Obama’s sham commission is releasing a high risk GITMO prisoner with extensive training in poisons, an al-Qaida member of bin Laden’s 55th Brigade. Never a good prisoner, he didn’t try to give the appearance of being reformed.

He was sent to Italy.

Our military likely died at his hands because he was on the front lines and military risked their lives to capture him. He is a high risk candidate to go back to the fight and continue his goal of attacking US targets.

Obama wants to close GITMO and Americans be damned.

For the 83% of Democrats who support and admire Barack Obama, I ask why?

(For more from the author of “You Won’t Believe the Latest Gitmo Detainee Mr. Obama Decided to Spring” please click HERE)

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GOP-Led Senate Passing Bills at Rate Not Seen in Decades

The Senate is off to its best year since 1990 by at least one measure, with more than 30 of its bills having been signed into law by President Obama.

Eighteen months into Republican control of the Senate, the upper chamber has settled into a new normal. The partisan fights remain, and senators aren’t spending much time on the floor debating bills — but they are passing them, and at a surprising cli

All told, including the 31 Senate bills and 42 House-written bills, Congress approved 73 measures that Mr. Obama signed into law from January through the end of June. That’s nearly three times the number of bills approved in the first six months of 2015 and 20 more than in 2014, which was the last year Democrats had control of the Senate.

“The new Republican Congress, under the leadership of Sen. McConnell, operates under a dramatically different approach than the Democrats in the previous Congress,” Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, said in a statement. “Sen. McConnell opened the Senate, and despite efforts by the Democrat leadership to block bipartisan legislation, we have returned to a more functioning Senate, and allowed senators to participate in the legislative process. While this isn’t the easy way, it allowed members to have more than dysfunction to show for their time in the Senate.”

Democrats say Congress doesn’t deserve the platitudes. (Read more from “GOP-Led Senate Passing Bills at Rate Not Seen in Decades” HERE)

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NFL Star Posts Graphic Image of Slitting Cop’s Throat

An NFL player is apologizing after he posted an image on Instagram of a man in black slitting a police officer’s throat.

The following image was posted and later deleted by Cleveland Browns running back Isaiah Crowell, 23.

Under the Instagram image showing blood spilling from the officer’s neck, Crowell wrote, “Mood: They give polices [sic] all types of weapons and they continuously choose to kill us … #Weak.”

Crowell_Instagram

WCBS-TV noted that the man in black resembles ISIS terrorist Jihadi John who is known for appearing in online videos in which he is shown beheading American and British victims. The man in the Instagram photo is cloaked completely in black and wears an ANKH pendant around his neck.

According to Cleveland.com, Crowell posted the image after Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, and Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, were shot and killed by police officers. (Read more from “NFL Star Posts Graphic Image of Slitting Cop’s Throat” HERE)

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Sanders Wins Liberal Influence Over Democratic Platform

Bernie Sanders may have lost out on the Democratic nomination, but he won significant influence over the party’s official policy positions, getting a draft document that largely reflected his liberal views.

A marathon meeting in Orlando on Friday and Saturday marked the final deliberation of the Democratic Party’s platform before the convention later this month. A group of 187 delegates, including supporters of both Democratic candidates, crammed into a steamy hotel ballroom to pore over a draft document and offer amendments.

After a frequently combative negotiating session, all sides agreed the final product was the most liberal set of policies on record. Some of the positions in the non-binding document go beyond Clinton’s past policy statements. The platform, which serves as a guidepost for the party, will be voted on at the convention. (Read more from “Sanders Wins Liberal Influence Over Democratic Platform” HERE)

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Americans Scoff at Obama’s Plan to Visit Dallas in Wake of Tragedy

President Barack Obama’s decision to cut short his European trip to visit Dallas, where five police officers were killed Thursday night, failed to provide the positive reaction for which the president might have hoped.

“He’ll just continue to divide on racial grounds,” John S. Roberts wrote on Young Conservatives.

Many voices on Twitter agreed that Obama’s visit was too little too late.

Although Obama condemned the deadly Dallas ambush, more than one commentator said Obama is part of the problem, not the solution.

“I don’t believe there’s any sincerity behind the president’s words,” Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke said Friday. “Just yesterday he was popping off at the mouth again — exploiting the situations in Louisiana and Minnesota — exploiting it on the basis of race. He has no foundation for that. There’s no data or research that suggests or proves anything he thinks in terms of disparity.”

“The spread of misinformation and constant instigation by prominent leaders, including our president, have contributed to the modern day hostility we are witnessing between the police and those they serve. As a result, today we are seeing one of the noblest professions condemned by those who could benefit the most,” said Rep. Roger Williams, R-Texas. (For more from the author of “Americans Scoff at Obama’s Plan to Visit Dallas in Wake of Tragedy” please click HERE)

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Shocking Detail Revealed About Dallas Shooter’s History With Black Militant Group

In the wake of the deadliest attack on law enforcement since 9/11, new details are starting to emerge about Micah Xavier Johnson’s past.

Since last Thursday’s sniper attack in Dallas that left five officers dead and seven wounded, it’s been discovered that Johnson was a sympathizer of some black militant groups and was friends with a man who preached radical “afrocentrism.” But The Daily Beast is reporting other surprising details.

When Johnson was sent home from Afghanistan, it was because he stole women’s panties and was eventually caught. He was discharged in the summer of 2014. Back at home, he sought to join radical black movement groups that believed in armed resistance against white people.

The organization he originally tried to join remains unknown, but in order to be accepted he had to submit an application. That process was handled through known affiliates. One of these militant groups was the Collective Black People’s Movement. Ken Moore, who is a member, was asked to run a background check on Johnson. When he found out about the Army and the reason Johnson was sent home, Moore labeled him as “unfit for recruitment.”

Because this type of blacklisting is reported to other black nationalist groups, Johnson was effectively banned from joining any of them. “Once you’re blacklisted by the alert that we put out, that’s a wrap,” Moore said.

On Thursday, Johnson took matters into his own hands and launched his attack on white officers during a “Black Lives Matter” protest.

During the final moments in the standoff in Dallas, Johnson wrote “R.B.” on the wall with his own blood. Investigators suspect this might have been a nod to the Black Riders Liberation Party, an extremist group that has openly called for the death of “oppressors.” The full acronym is “RBG” — which represents the colors of the Pan-African flag, red, black and green — but it seemed Johnson was never able to finish the last initial.

Lakesia Washington, the leader of the Black Riders, has repeatedly shouted for a “call to arms” among all black people. On Thursday afternoon, she posted on Facebook: “We intend to see that our racist oppressors also get a taste of death!”

When news broke that Johnson had killed five officers in Dallas later that night, celebration occurred within the group.

Washington posted a message in tribute. It read: ““R.I.P. Micah…X…Johnson !!!… RBG 4 LIFE!” (For more from the author of “Shocking Detail Revealed About Dallas Shooter’s History With Black Militant Group” please click HERE)

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Social Conservatives Declare Victory on Bathrooms, Marriage in GOP Platform

After fending off attempts to change the Republican Party’s official position on LGBT issues and traditional marriage, a coalition of social conservatives cautiously celebrated an early victory Monday afternoon.

Before the Grand Old Party picks its presidential nominee formally, a select set of delegates on the platform committee will spend the week staking out Republican positions on everything from domestic to international issues definitively.

On the social issue front of the Republican platform, conservatives maintained a strict definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman. They limited the use of single-sex bathrooms in public buildings to those of the same biological sex. And they defeated efforts to steer the party in a direction more in line with LGBT advocacy groups.

“There are those who are committed to undermining the conservative ideals that this party has long stood for,” said Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Center and a Louisiana delegate to the convention.

“They’re an extreme minority, they’re committed to their view, and I think they will persist,” he told The Daily Signal Monday. “But I don’t believe they will prevail.”

To become a part of the party’s platform, those initial advances still need to be ratified by a majority of the 2,472 Republican delegates that will crowd onto the floor of Quicken Loans Arena next week.

But social conservatives seemed confident Monday afternoon that they had defeated an effort financed by billionaire Republican Paul E. Singer, according to The New York Times. His group, American Unity Fund, along with Log Cabin Republicans, aimed to hammer new gay rights planks into the platform.

The effort ultimately failed in the subcommittee on the family.

“I’m really happy with the way it turned out. I had heard that somebody was spending $6 million to get LGBT stuff into the platform,” Kansas delegate Mary Culp told The Daily Signal. “I would say that the effort fizzled.”

President Barack Obama’s bathroom directive took center stage. In a sweeping May proclamation, the administration instructed local schools to extend Title IX protections, which prohibit sex-based discrimination, to transgender students. The directive suggested that schools that refuse to allow transgender students to use the single-sex bathrooms and locker rooms of the gender they identify with would potentially lose federal funds.

Addressing that policy in the platform is a political miscalculation, according to Anne Dickerson, a New York delegate who argued that the “discussion of bathrooms takes us down a rabbit hole quite a great distance.”

“I think this is a state issue,” she told her colleagues during a subcommittee hearing. “A lot of states, local municipalities, and schools who have transgender students have dealt with this issue rightfully at the local level.”

Though Dickerson declined to comment for this article, the New York delegate argued in committee that Republicans were blindly taking Democrats’ bait by elevating the issue in their platform.

Gregory Angelo, president of Log Cabin Republicans, echoed that sentiment, telling The Daily Signal he’s frustrated by Monday’s development.

“This is a foolish issue to nationalize and talk about within the Republican Party platform,” he said. “It literally drags the platform into the gutter when so many people who are on this committee seem hell-bent with some obsession with bathroom use.”

Social conservatives on the family subcommittee justified their positions by insisting that the White House forced their hand. It was necessary to insert bathroom language in the platform, they argue, to offer a rebuttal and give local school districts guidance on the issue.

“Cowards would say this is not politically expedient, let’s not talk about it, let’s just let the president’s radical agenda go unchallenged,” Perkins told The Daily Signal. “This is not the party of cowards.”

In an interview last week with The Daily Signal, former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said delegates on the platform committee should take up the issue to keep boys and girls in their respective bathrooms based on biology, not gender identity.

“The president had made a federal issue—and it’s amazing to be saying this—of bathrooms,” Cuccinelli said. “The president has done this, we didn’t. But if he’s going to pick the fight, we’re not going to back down.”

The fight over social issues comes as evangelical voters question where Donald Trump, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, stands on social issues.

Trump has been friendly toward former Olympian and current transgender advocate Caitlyn Jenner—who announced she will speak as a “transgender ambassador” at an event in Cleveland during the convention.

But recently the New York businessman announced his support of a North Carolina law that requires individuals to use public restrooms that correspond with their biological gender.

Social conservatives see the platform as a way to tether Trump to their brand of a pro-family platform. And so far, the Trump campaign has demonstrated little interest in challenging the party platform.

That’s good news for conservative groups such as the Susan B. Anthony List that were happy with the 2012 platform position on abortion, which looks unlikely to have significant changes.

“We’re going to remain vigilant, we want it [to] remain rock solid, and then we want to see Mr. Trump embrace this platform once it’s passed,” said Billy Valentine, the pro-life group’s director of government affairs, in an interview last week.

Though the party’s presumptive nominee disagrees with some GOP orthodoxies, coalition members say they’re confident that Republican doctrine on social issues will be conserved in the party platform. (For more from the author of “Social Conservatives Declare Victory on Bathrooms, Marriage in GOP Platform” please click HERE)

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#CIVILWAR: When the Commander-In-Chief Acts as the De Facto Head of a Terror Group Called #BlackLivesMatter

The ambush-style mass shooting of cops in Dallas, Texas, last week makes it clear that it is time for the dangerous, anti-American insurgency called Black Lives Matter to be designated a terrorist organization for fomenting a war against the nation’s law enforcement officers.

Five officers were killed during a demonstration in downtown Dallas against police brutality that leftists say is directed at black Americans as a matter of government policy. Similar marches and rallies took place in other cities, including New York, Oakland, Calif., and Denver, Colo.

Of course, murdering police officers has long been encouraged by activists with the Black Lives Matter cult, with the support of the activist Left.

A year ago Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who openly advocates the mass murder of whites, called for “10,000 fearless men” to “rise up and kill those who kill us.” Like many radicals, Farrakhan mischaracterizes Black Lives Matter as a rising civil rights movement.

President Barack Obama, who a decade ago promoted inter-racial warfare in Kenya, has long tried to provoke civil unrest here in the U.S. with his hateful anti-cop rhetoric and his relentless demonization of opponents. His goal is fundamental transformation of the United States. A Red diaper baby who identifies violence-espousing communist Frantz Fanon as an intellectual influence, he has also steadfastly refused to condemn the explicitly racist, violent Black Lives Matter movement. In fact Obama has lavished attention on the movement’s leaders and invited them to the White House over and over again.

Members of the Democratic National Committee expressly endorsed Black Lives Matter, throwing their lot in with black racists and radical Black Power militants. The DNC officially embraced a statement that slams the U.S. for allegedly systemic police violence against black people. A resolution passed by hundreds of delegates at the DNC meeting in Minneapolis last year accuses the nation’s police of “extrajudicial killings of unarmed African American men, women and children.”

The Left persists in these lies because, well, that’s what these people do.

According to one analysis, of all the people shot and killed in the U.S. by police so far in 2016, only 24 percent, or 122, were black. Black people are only about 13 percent of the population but they commit around half of all violent crimes. So far this year 47 percent of people shot and killed by police, or 235 individuals, were white.

Only 3 percent, or 13 people shot and killed by police year to date were black and unarmed. The percentage for whites is exactly the same. In other words, police are shooting and killing unarmed blacks and whites at the same rate, Paul Joseph Watson observes.

“There’s no racial disparity,” he says. “Do we have a problem with police brutality in America? Yes, undoubtedly. Is it almost exclusively targeted towards black people as Black Lives Matter claims? No, but the polarizing way in which Black Lives Matter made it all about race has divided the nation and made half of the country completely disinterested.”

Watson addresses “black people,” telling them that “Black Lives Matter is hurting you. It’s doing incredible harm. Martin Luther King achieved justice and civil rights by championing equality and building bridges with white America.”

Black Lives Matter, on the other hand, demands racial segregation, keeps whites out of its meetings, and urges the killing of police, he adds. . .

In its intensifying assaults on American law enforcement the Left seized upon a police-involved death earlier in the week of a notoriously violent criminal in Louisiana who had reportedly menaced an innocent by-stander with a gun.

Recidivist felon Alton Sterling, a black offender well known to local law enforcement, was shot to death by police early last Tuesday morning in Baton Rouge following a physical struggle with police in which Sterling may have reached for a weapon. Both officers “believe they were completely justified in using deadly force,” according to the local district attorney.

Although even with graphic video footage of the shooting it’s not entirely clear what happened as the two cops and Sterling struggled, the Left has moved full speed ahead portraying the deceased career criminal as a martyr slaughtered by the evil system that rules a hopelessly racist America.

The Left reveres thugs. It jumped on the bandwagon promoting the lie that Michael Brown of Ferguson, Mo., and Trayvon Martin of Sanford, Fla., were innocent angels unjustly cut down by white executioners. The truth, as we now know, is that both young black men were killed in self-defense by the white men they intended to harm.

It is telling that the Left is paying far less attention to a much more sympathetic figure killed by police this week in Falcon Heights, a suburb of St. Paul, Minn., because the story of his death doesn’t fit its predetermined anti-American narrative quite as well. It’s not merely about racial conflict potentially: it is also about the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

Philando Castile, 32, a black man with no felony convictions who worked in a school cafeteria, was shot by police during a traffic stop. According to Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond “Lavish” Reynolds, who live-streamed video on Facebook of the stricken man in his final moments, Castile was trying to retrieve his wallet after informing an apparently light-skinned attending officer that he was in possession of a concealed weapon and a permit allowing him to carry it. Perhaps Castile made a move the officer considered threatening. Or maybe the cop was nervous and trigger-happy.

“He let the officer know that he had a firearm, and he was reaching for his wallet and the officer just shot him in his arm,” Reynolds said. In the video as the bloodied driver lay dying the policeman could be heard using expletives and screaming, “I told him not to reach for it.”

Reynolds replied, “You told him to get his ID, sir – his driver’s license.”

Because the Castile case appears to involve gun rights and perhaps other issues possibly unrelated to race, it is harder for left-wing activist groups to fundraise off of. This would explain why the Left is giving the case far less play than the marquee Sterling shooting. And to the extent that progressives have taken up Castile’s cause they are treating it solely as a racial incident. Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton (D) said he was “appalled” by the shooting and that it would not have happened if Castile had been white.

But with Alton Sterling, it is as if his supporters hired teams of publicists to get the desired message out to the masses.

Ignoring Sterling’s two decades of criminal activity, Black Lives Matter quickly went to work inflaming racial antagonism while the man’s body was still warm. The movement characterized the incident as an extrajudicial execution by racist cops. It was aided in this public relations offensive by biased saturation coverage of the Sterling saga by the media.

The movement’s most important cheerleader, President Obama, gleefully stuck a shiv in police, crowing that recent fatal shootings of black suspects by police “are not isolated incidents.”

“They are symptomatic of the broader challenges within our criminal justice system, the racial disparities that appear across the system year after year, and the resulting lack of trust that exists between law enforcement and too many of the communities they serve.”

Predictably MoveOn and Color of Change –which was founded by self-described “rowdy black nationalist” Van Jones and MoveOn alumnus James Rucker— didn’t bother waiting for the facts to be known before using the incident to raise money. On Wednesday MoveOn sent out a mass email to members demanding that U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch hold the police officers involved accountable.

In the email Color of Change executive director Rashad Robinson paints Sterling as an upstanding citizen, describing him as “a 37-year-old Black father of five,” capitalizing the B in black as racists do. The police officers involved “have no respect for Black lives and must be held accountable,” he added.

Celebrities weighed in with vapid and condescending observations.

Singer Beyoncé posted what a groveling USA Today called a “powerful letter” about police brutality. “We’re going to stand up as a community and fight against anyone who believes that murder or any violent action by those who are sworn to protect us should consistently go unpunished,” she wrote, presuming that Americans don’t care about murders committed by police.

Chris Long, who makes his living being hit in the head, chose to insert himself into the story. The defensive end for the New England Patriots was happy to convene a lynch mob on Twitter. He tweeted “If you think we need to ‘wait for the facts’ on the Alton Sterling execution after seeing the video, you are an accessory to evil.”

What is clear is that if the Left is serious about moving its race war forward, it is hanging its future on a pretty slim reed by hyping the Sterling killing.

This is not to suggest that Sterling, who had been living in a homeless shelter, deserved to die. Maybe in the end we’ll find out the cops who dealt with him were overzealous, reckless, malicious, or racist, or all of these things. Perhaps this was a suicide by cop. Time will tell.

Let’s go over what we know.

The Advocate in Baton Rouge reports that on July 5,

“Around 12:35 a.m., Baton Rouge police responded to the Triple S Food Mart at 2112 N. Foster Drive after an anonymous caller indicated that a man in a red shirt who was selling CDs outside the store pointed a gun at someone, telling them to leave the property, Baton Rouge Police Department spokesman Cpl. L’Jean McKneely said.”

Apparently authentic cellphone videos from the scene soon went viral. They showed two police officers scrapping with Sterling beside a car in a parking lot. “Get on the ground! Get on the ground!” an officer is heard yelling in the early seconds of one clip. The sound of what may be a stun gun can be heard.

“He’s got a gun! Gun,” one cop says. “If you f***ing move, I swear to God,” says an officer. It is unclear what Sterling, who reportedly had a gun on his person at the time, is doing with his arms at this point because the officers are on top of him. In audio that is garbled, one of the officers can be heard saying what seems to be “he’s going for the Taser!” Shots ring out at various points in the confrontation and Sterling is mortally wounded.

Some local sources were quoted in the media saying Sterling was a kind, peace-loving, respected member of the community. If that’s true, that doesn’t speak well of his community.

Sterling was a bad actor with a temper who had gotten physical with police before. The incorrigible reprobate’s rap sheet is long. (Heavy obtained 46 pages of court documents from his criminal file.)

Sterling was convicted of aggravated battery, criminal damage to property, unauthorized entry, and domestic abuse battery, among other offenses.

An affidavit of probable cause states Sterling was involved in 2009 in a wrestling match with a police officer. A cop tried to pat down the man and he resisted arrest. The two men ended up on rolling around on the ground and a “black semi auto gun fell from his waistband.” Another affidavit states a cop pulled Sterling over for speeding. He didn’t have proof of insurance and police allowed him to retrieve his belongings from his vehicle. He crossed the street, laid himself on the pavement in a prone position, yelled at the cops and told them to “go ahead and beat him down regardless of the outcome.” Other such affidavits accuse Sterling of home invasion, burglary, threatening with a gun, stealing pet goldfish, and possession of ecstasy and marijuana.

Sterling was also a registered sex offender, Heavy reports. At the age of 20 he impregnated a 14-year-old girl. In September 2000 he was convicted of “carnal knowledge of a juvenile” in Louisiana and released from prison in October 2004. In August 2015 a warrant was issued for Sterling’s arrest after he failed to update his sex offender registration.

In 2011 he was convicted of “knowingly and intentionally possessing a firearm while in possession of a controlled dangerous substance” and sentenced to five years imprisonment. A drug trafficking-related charge was thrown out apparently as part of a plea bargain.

Meanwhile, the Democrat machine in the Pelican State is doing everything it can to turn Baton Rouge into the new Ferguson, complete with race riots and wanton lawlessness.

Kip Holden (D), mayor-president of East Baton Rouge Parish, said Wednesday he was touched to receive a supportive phone call from the buffoonish Baltimore mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D), who helped to exacerbate race riots in her city after the death of black career criminal Freddie Gray in police custody, because “they’ve been through the same thing.”

How reassuring.

The Left’s goal is to polarize and enrage and foment even more racial tension and violence to distract from presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s endless political problems, as well as to energize the party’s base so they vote in droves in November. They may even blame unrest in Baton Rouge on congressional Republicans who refuse to fight back. Blaming Islamic terrorist Omar Mateen’s murderous rampage at a gay club in Orlando on Republicans and law-abiding gun owners worked, so why not.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) invited his friends in the Obama administration to turn this local investigation into a three-ring media circus. The U.S. Department of Justice announced it would open a civil rights investigation after Edwards demanded it. “I have very serious concerns,” he said. “The video is disturbing, to say the least.”

Getting the feds involved means the Obama administration is sure to deploy government-paid community organizers from DoJ’s Community Relations Service to rub raw the sores of discontent.

After Trayvon Martin’s death in early 2012, local police declined to press charges against the eventually acquitted George Zimmerman for a month and a half because they believed the criminal case against him was ridiculously weak. CRS burned through taxpayer cash organizing marches at which participants inflamed racial tensions and –voila!— Zimmerman was prosecuted in what would become a historic abuse of process.

Almost immediately after Michael Brown died in August 2014, CRS operatives arrived on the ground in Ferguson to interview and indoctrinate local members of the community. As Ryan Lovelace reported at NRO paraphrasing Mayor James Knowles III, “DOJ officials talked about underlying racism that people may not perceive, and the issue of white privilege.”

East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Hillar Moore (D) seems not to understand that having the Obama-controlled Justice Department take over the Sterling investigation is a monumentally bad idea. Explaining why the local government refuses to investigate its own police, Moore said feebly at a press conference, “absolutely, we did not want another Ferguson. Baton Rouge is not Ferguson; we have a completely different history,” Moore said.

Good luck with that, counselor.

And just wait until the authority-hating terrorists of Black Lives Matter turn on you. (For more from the author of “#CIVILWAR: When the Commander-In-Chief Acts as the De Facto Head of a Terror Group Called #BlackLivesMatter” please click HERE)

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