Ryan=Boehner: Paul Ryan’s House Sets the Stage for Next Highway Bailout Boondoggle

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GOP leaders have spent the past few years rubber stamping Obama’s agenda and refusing to confront him on the most consequential societal issues of our time. This week they plan to preemptively undermine the next Republican president from his ability to make substantial reforms to our inefficient federal transportation system.

The House plans to consider a $325 billion 6-year highway bill that will require an $85 billion bailout through FY 2021. Where will they find the $85 billion in savings? The same place the found the $112 billion in “offsets” to fund the budget betrayal deal last week. In other words, they will use Enron-style accounting and an array of intangible offsets to pay for another bailout of the failed and inefficient federal transportation system. But what is most offensive about this bill is that, by reauthorizing federal highway programs for another 6 years instead of 2 or 3 years, this bill will preemptively sabotage the leverage of the next president to force critical policy changes in the system.

On July 30, the Senate passed its version of the bill, with only 15 Republicans opposing it. The Senate bill only offsets the first three years of the 6-year shortfall (an estimated $85 billion), and as noted, even those offsets are notional. For example, one of the offsets is the dubious notion of selling off the Strategic Petroleum Reserves, ironically, the very same offset they just counted against the budget bill!

The House plans to pass the Senate version of the bill (H.R. 22), albeit with a provision that will prohibit Congress from spending more money on highways after the first three years unless they come up with more revenue. But this is nothing more than a ruse to get conservatives to allow the House to go to conference with the Senate. We all know how this will end. A full 6-year bill with no real offsets and no conservative policy reforms that fix the systemic problem with our surface transportation system.

Once again, 21% of the entire bill is allocated for mass transit expenditures, something that should only be funded by states that are willing to pay for it with their own funds. As the Competitive Enterprise Institute observed earlier this year, we are spending a quarter of the highway funds on a method of transportation that accounts for less than 2% of all trips. Accordingly, 81% of the entire projected shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund is the result of increased spending on mass transit.

The irony of the bailout for mass transit coming on the heels of last week’s bailout of the Disability Insurance program is probably lost on the politicians, but it’s worth reviewing now.

Much like the payroll tax was sold as a pay-as-you go supply for Social Security, the 8.4-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax and the 24.4-cent diesel excise tax were promised to be used exclusively for highways and bridges. And just like with Social Security whereby 17% of the funds were later diverted to the disability program, 20% of the highway funds have been diverted towards mass transit, as a result of the urban pressure groups.

This is why the responsibility for transportation and the revenue of the gas tax must be returned to the states. They must be forced to prioritize their transportation projects. This is a common sense reform conservatives have united behind over the past few years, yet Paul Ryan has failed his first test and is embarking on a process that will not only continue the failed status quo and drive yet another $85 billion bailout, it will preclude the next president from enacting these reforms.

And of course, the Senate bill contains a reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, the only federal agency Republicans have successfully shut down in recent memory. Ryan himself claims to oppose Export-Import Bank, but this process clearly shows that he will not deviate from the Washington Cartel, even to push the few ideas he shares with conservatives.

New party leader, same mentality. (For more from the author of “Paul Ryan’s House Sets the Stage for Next Highway Bailout Boondoggle” please click HERE)

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Why Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy Should Resign

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As a public official performing his legal duties, Justice Anthony Kennedy is bound to enforce the law of the land, which is the Constitution that was ratified in 1789. If he feels that he is facing difficult moral questions in upholding the Constitution as it was written and adopted at the time of its passage and at the time of its relevant amendments, then he has an obligation to resign his office.

That was the gist of what Kennedy said about Kim Davis and those facing similar predicaments, but in reality, it is more aptly applied to himself. During a speech he delivered at Harvard last week, he was asked by a law student if state officials are always bound by the “new insights” of Kennedy and his colleagues and if they are prohibited to “act according to the old understanding of life and the Constitution.”

Kennedy replied by extolling the virtues of those who resign when their faith comes into conflict with what he views as the law. He even gave the bizarre analogy of judges resigning in Nazi Germany, and then noted the following:

Great respect, it seems to me, has to be given to people who resign rather than do something they view as morally wrong, in order to make a point. However, the rule of law is that, as a public official, in performing your legal duties, you are bound to enforce the law.

Since Justice Kennedy chose to bring up Nazi Germany, he is actually making a self-indictment. When the “laws” of the land are implemented improperly and in a lawless fashion, those laws are null and void, except for the ability of its purveyors to enforce them with brute force, as Kennedy did with Kim Davis via the GOP-appointed district judge. But shouldn’t those who made the immoral laws, as Kennedy alluded to with his own analogy, resign first?

We are a nation of laws, not of men. Hence, our law is the Constitution, not Anthony Kennedy’s societal musings.

While great men can disagree over esoteric constitutional questions pertaining to separation of powers or obscure provisions, nobody can disagree about the plain meaning of the Constitution as it relates to societal questions not addressed in the document. They are left to the states. And that is why not a single state recognized gay marriage for the first 135 years after the ratification of the 14th Amendment, and nobody disputed their power to do so. Kennedy plainly recognized this and therefore ruled that the law is whatever it is “as we discover its meaning.”

Kennedy openly declared that he can personally discover new meanings that overturn our entire history and state laws that were around during the ratification of the 14th Amendment, and that is the law of the land. No, sir. If you have issues with the law passed by 75 percent of Kentucky voters – the law Kim Davis was following and the law implicitly supported by the 10th Amendment – you are the one who should resign. Kim Davis was following the law. You, not Davis, are the one with moral problems regarding the law, given your new “discoveries” and “insights.”

When Kennedy suddenly discovers a federal constitutional right for men to relieve themselves in female bathrooms, will federal administrators who worked in their offices for 30 years prior be forced to resign for not implementing his new insight? This is beyond any degree of despotism our Founders ever envisioned.

In 1824, two generations removed from the Founding, Madison reminded people that the law of the land had not changed: “I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution.” [my emphasis added]

If Anthony Kennedy doesn’t like our Constitution the way it was accepted and ratified 226 years ago, he is welcome to resign and pursue a convention of the states to codify his social preferences into law via constitutional amendment. Alternatively, he is welcome to run for office and enact statutes through the political process. Until then, he is obligated to uphold the original Constitution. There are more than enough able-bodied lawyers who can serve in his place. (For more from the author of “Why Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy Should Resign” please click HERE)

Watch yesterday’s interview with the author below:

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Why Did the Environmental Protection Agency Spend $1.4 Million on Guns?

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Even those of us who have worked in Washington for many years and become accustomed to the inner workings of government can still be amazed by what lurks behind the curtain sometimes. Case in point: the Environmental Protection Agency.

Most Americans have at least heard of the EPA, even if they have only a dim notion of what the agency actually does. It tends to skate along under the radar, unless something unusual happens, such as the toxic spill that turned the Colorado’s Animas River orange last August. Of course, what really made the spill unusual is that the EPA itself caused it.

Otherwise, Americans don’t hear much about the agency. So many of them would probably be as unpleasantly surprised as I was by a new report by Open the Books, a nonprofit group that promotes government transparency. Its look into the EPA’s spending habits is alarming, to put it mildly.

The first thing that strikes you is the EPA’s spendthrift ways. Even if times were flush and government coffers were overflowing (which is far from the case), the agency spends money like it’s expecting the Second Coming next week. The Open the Books audit covered tens of thousands of checks the EPA wrote from 2000 to 2014, with hundreds of millions going toward such things as luxury furnishings, sports equipment, and “environmental justice” grants to raise awareness of global warming.

The second thing that hits you is where the rest of the money goes. The headline of an op-ed by economist Stephen Moore in Investor’s Business Daily sums it up well: “Why Does the EPA Need Guns, Ammo, and Armor to Protect the Environment?”

And not just a few weapons. Open the Books found that the agency has spent millions of dollars over the last decade on guns, ammo, body armor, camouflage equipment, unmanned aircraft, amphibious assault ships, radar and night-vision gear, and other military-style weaponry and surveillance activities.

“We were shocked ourselves to find these kinds of pervasive expenditures at an agency that is supposed to be involved in clean air and clean water,” said Open the Books founder Adam Andrzejewski. “Some of these weapons are for full-scale military operations.”

Among the EPA’s purchases:

$1.4 million for “guns up to 300mm.”

$380,000 for “ammunition.”

$210,000 for “camouflage and other deceptive equipment.”

$208,000 for “radar and night-vision equipment.”

$31,000 for “armament training devices.”

The list goes on. It’s filled with the kind of equipment you’d expect to be purchased by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, not an agency ostensibly designed to protect the environment.

But as it turns out, armed, commando-style raids by the EPA are not unheard of. One such raid occurred in 2013, in a small Alaskan town where armed agents in full body armor reportedly confronted local miners accused of polluting local waters. Perhaps the agency is gearing up for more operations like that one?

If so, the EPA wouldn’t be all that unique. According to the Justice Department, there are now 40 federal agencies with more than 100,000 officers authorized to carry guns and make arrests. They include the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The EPA audit underscores the need for serious budget cuts at the agency. In July, before the Colorado spill and the Open the Books report, environmental policy expert Nicolas Loris called on Congress to shrink the EPA’s budget, outlining several specific cuts that could be done immediately and with no detrimental effect on the environment.

“The proposed cuts outlined here merely scratch the surface of a rogue agency that has wildly spent and regulated outside its purview,” Loris concluded. After reviewing the Open the Books report, who can disagree? (For more from the author of “Why Did the Environmental Protection Agency Spend $1.4 Million on Guns?” please click HERE)

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Ryan Is a Boehner ‘Mini-Me’ to Some Conservatives

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Just weeks after Republicans won control of the House in 2010, John A. Boehner celebrated his 61st birthday with a cake with green frosting.

It was actually a double celebration. That same day, Nov. 17, 2010, he was elected speaker-designate by the Republican conference with unanimous support — a present he never enjoyed again.

That unified Republican vote included at least seven current members of the House Freedom Caucus.

Off Capitol Hill, where tea party activists had been rallying conservative voters to the polls weeks earlier, support for Boehner’s speakership was tepid.

“We were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt at first,” Joe Miller, Alaska’s 2010 GOP Senate nominee, told CQ Roll Call last week. After losing the general election to Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who waged a write-in campaign to win re-election, Miller continued his tea party activism, and he now hosts a daily talk radio show.

“On the fundamentals, [Boehner] appeared to be right,” Miller added.

In fact, some tea party supporters found the Ohio Republican to be the best of the available options.

“When John Boehner was elected speaker following the historic tea party wave of 2010, it was another major victory for the grass roots. We fought incredibly hard for Mr. Boehner to be the speaker, instead of the establishment Republicans’ big-spender, Rep. Pete Sessions,” California tea party activist Christina Botteri told Breitbart News in September.

Other tea party sympathizers just didn’t know much about Boehner, House leadership or how the process worked in Washington.

“I would have to say that because a lot of us had never been really active in GOP politics, we didn’t have an opinion back in 2010,” Randy Bishop, a Michigan-based host on Patriot Voice Radio, told CQ Roll Call.

Fast-forward to this fall. Conservative blogs have claimed victory over Boehner’s resignation. “Conservatives Inside and Outside the House Caused Boehner’s Downfall,” blared a Breitbart headline the day Boehner announced his resignation.

“As [tea party activists] became more engaged in the political process, and knowing more of what’s going on in Washington, obviously we started becoming very upset with Boehner,” Bishop explained.

Miller said Boehner’s rhetoric was fine at the beginning, “but his rhetoric did not match his actions.”

“Although as a person and as a political figure he has not changed, his political philosophy — attitudes about him have changed, ” Miller said, “and that’s largely the perception that he’s a compromiser.”

Wisconsin Rep. Paul D. Ryan, who officially joined the speaker’s race on Oct. 22, is being dogged by the same perception.

Before his name came up for speaker, Ryan, even more so than Boehner in 2010, had his admirers on the tea party right.

Former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin was an early supporter of Ryan’s budget plan, even suggesting that he’d make a good presidential candidate.

Leading up to the GOP presidential convention, the tea party had been expecting to be left out in the cold — until Mitt Romney added Ryan to his ticket.

“The Ryan pick gives the tea party a seat at the table, and that’s why I’m so encouraged,” tea party supporter Allan Olson the Christian Science Monitor in 2012.

Based on surveys of its supporters, the Tea Party Express called the Wisconsin Republican a “strong tea party choice” after Romney picked him for his No. 2.

“We have been polling our members for the last couple of months, and Paul Ryan, along with Senator Marco Rubio, have had the strongest support from Tea Party Express supporters across the country,” then-Tea Party Express Chairwoman Amy Kremer wrote in a statement at the time.

“Ryan is a strong fiscal conservative, and he has used his Chairmanship of the House Budget Committee to address the serious financial woes facing the country,” Kremer continued.

Miller admired Ryan’s economic views and his willingness to take on Social Security.

“I certainly considered him an ally before — and he has done some good things,” Miller said.

Even Bishop, the talk radio show host from Michigan, was comfortable with Ryan back in 2012.

“When Romney picked Ryan in 2012 as his vice president, we were willing to vote for anybody but Obama,” Bishop said, admitting that he has a Romney-Ryan T-shirt in his closet.

Not that he’d be caught dead in it now. “Paul Ryan is a ‘Mini-Me’ of John Boehner,” Bishop said.

Other right-wing activists and political commentators shared that sentiment this week.

Ryan is “Boehner 2.0,” Laura Ingraham tweeted on Oct. 20.

Writing in Breitbart on Oct. 21, Neil Munro highlighted the areas where conservatives fear that Ryan would fall more in line with the Republican establishment and Democrats.

“But if he gets the job, he’ll likely push for goals that are very unpopular in the GOP’s base — passage of a trans-Pacific free trade treaty, a rollback of stiff jail sentences and a bill to increase the inflow of wage-cutting foreign labor. All three goals are top priorities for the Democratic Party and the GOP’s big donors,” Munro wrote.

Palin soured on Ryan as early as 2014, calling his budget a “joke” on her Facebook page. Meanwhile, her fellow Alaskan Miller pointed to recent votes Ryan has taken in Congress to explain the tea party’s disaffection with him these days.

“He was always championed as being an up-and-coming bright star — articulate, smart and willing to address the hard issues,” Miller said. His votes — most recently for a continuing resolution that funded Planned Parenthood — “badly tarnished him,” Miller added, calling Ryan “a tool of the establishment.”

So what does the tea party grass roots want to see in leadership?

Confrontation, Miller said. And not just to push their priorities on Capitol Hill. “We need that level of confrontation to embolden the base, too,” Miller said.

For his part, Miller has not yet ruled out running for office in Alaska again. (“Ryan Is a Boehner ‘Mini-Me’ to Some Conservatives” originally appeared HERE. Reposted with permission. Simone Pathé is a reporter for Roll Call.)

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Hell Is No Laughing Matter

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There was a time when one of the criticisms of the church, and of preachers in general, was that there was too much hellfire-and-brimstone preaching. If this was referring to some guy getting worked up as he talked about judgment all the time with a twinkle in his eye, then I’m with the critics.

Here is my concern, however. Where are the hellfire-and-brimstone preachers today? When I turn on Christian radio or Christian television, I rarely hear a mention of hell, much less a sermon on the topic of hell. What I do hear is a lot of preaching on how to be successful, see your dreams fulfilled and be prosperous. But I don’t hear any sermons anymore about the subject of hell.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to start preaching or writing about hell every week. On the other hand, I’m not going to skip it because it is awkward or difficult or makes people uncomfortable. Jesus spent more time talking about hell than anyone else in all of the Bible.

It isn’t unloving to address this subject. Rather, it’s the most loving thing I could do. If you were asleep in a house that was on fire, and I walked by and did absolutely nothing to get you out of that potential disaster, what kind of neighbor or friend would I be? I would want you to wake up. I would want you to get out. And if Jesus, the very author of grace, spoke about hell more often than anyone else, then it must be a crucial truth. If Jesus took the time to elaborate on it, then certainly we need to know more about it.

One thing we can all agree on is that death will come to every person. The book of Ecclesiastes says, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die” (3:1–2 NIV). (Read more from “Hell Is No Laughing Matter” HERE)

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How Did We Get to Paul Ryan as the Likely New Speaker of the House?

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All the headline grabbing difficulties to choosing a new Speaker of the House are due mostly to one thing — the emergence of the powerful House Freedom Caucus. But the caucus may also now be the solution to those difficulties. Now that a supermajority in the caucus is supporting Paul Ryan to replace John Boehner as speaker, Ryan is all but certain to get the position. Two other factions in the House are expected to endorse him Friday, the centrist Tuesday Group and the mainstream Republican Study Committee, and he is expected to be confirmed by the full House the next day. Ryan has a respectable rating of 90 from The American Conservative Union, and is well-liked by both conservatives and moderates, so he is a natural choice for speaker.

For those who thought the establishment status quo could never be defeated, it was a real shock to see Boehner announce his resignation. But when the Republicans took over the House in 2010, a powerful new conservative GOP formed, the Freedom Caucus, currently composed of 38 conservative, anti-establishment and Tea Party House Republicans. Together, they presented enough of a voting bloc that Boehner realized his effectiveness would be short lived, as the caucus began plotting to force him out.

After Boehner announced his resignation, there was another shock when Boehner’s designated establishment successor, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, announced he was withdrawing from the race. As a former majority whip, he had experience rounding up votes, and said at one point he had collected enough votes to win. But the Freedom Caucus decided to put their support behind little-known Daniel Webster from Florida instead, and McCarthy realized that even if he could get enough votes for the first vote among Republicans, he wouldn’t make it past the second vote on the House floor if the Freedom Caucus members refused to support him. He didn’t help himself by making a comment on TV at this time that seemed to imply the House Benghazi Committee had been set up for the purpose of taking Hillary Clinton out of the presidential race.

Even conservative Jason Chaffetz couldn’t capture the Freedom Caucus’s support after Boehner announced his resignation. Chaffetz has a respectable 92 rating from The American Conservative Union, but he would not agree with the Freedom Caucus on all of the procedural changes they are demanding. Procedural issues are such a serious concern for those House conservatives that they were willing to put their support behind the more moderate Daniel Webster instead, whose lifetime conservative rating is only a paltry 78. This is because without key reforms, the House faces more of the same gridlock that has stopped the Republicans from getting much done even while in control. The changes the conservatives are demanding will decentralize power away from the establishment and old guard in Congress and turn more of it over to committees and other members of Congress.

But with Webster as such a weak candidate, the clamoring increased to entice a uniter like Ryan to enter the race. After much persuasion, he finally did, and the rest should become history.

Why didn’t Ryan jump into the race earlier? Because the speaker’s job is a taxing and thankless position. The speaker is expected to spend much of his time flying around the country fundraising for the party. He (or she) gets the blame when things go wrong — even if they’ve done a great job getting things accomplished. Think of Newt Gingrich’s successful Contract With America, followed by his sudden resignation. Ryan understands this about the position.

He also understands that he may want to run for president some day and that the speaker position could take a toll on his reputation as principled conservative — all that wheeling and dealing and compromising to get bills through can make for powerful fodder for attack ads coming from opponents. Can Ryan serve as speaker then move on to president? Can he do the speaker’s job and still find time for his young family? Can he compromise on prudential matters to achieve worthy ends while never compromising on core principles? It’s a gamble he’s decided to take. (For more from the author of “How Did We Get to Paul Ryan as the Likely New Speaker of the House?” please click HERE)

Watch a recent interview with the author below:

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When Will GOP Stop Letting Liberals Pick Our Nominee?

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Ask yourself this question: imagine what we’d know about our candidates if conservatives moderated these debates and focused on policy and the future of the Republican Party?

At present, the polling numbers of each candidate are distorted based on how much time they are given to speak, how often they are allowed to cut in (notice Carly Fiorina always has more time), how many attack questions they are able to turn into jujitsu broadsides on the moderators, and how they answer the tailor-made personal attacks questions about their opponents. All the while, we know very little about where the candidates stand on the most critical issues and the important philosophical debates that are taking place within the party today.

Perhaps the most substantive, respectful, and informative part of last night’s debate was when Christie and Huckabee disagreed over austerity vs. populism on Social Security and Cruz interjected by noting how the conservative approach is to marry the two by allowing younger workers to invest in private accounts while keeping the promises to older voters. But that represented just three minutes of the debate. Aside from a few isolated moments, especially when Rick Santelli brought some sanity to the debate and engaged in a serious discussion with Cruz about the Federal Reserve, this debate was a complete freak show.

The consensus from the talking heads is that Rubio did really well, but unlike Cruz, his “doing well” hinged on his defense against the personal attacks from the moderators. That is great, but is that how we are going to pick our candidate? Does that make a conservative? To be fair to Rubio, he didn’t have much of an opportunity to address the questions about policy and the divide within the party. And therein lies the problem.

Take a look at this list of questions I prepared several months ago and check off how many of them were addressed. As a result of this faux debate, we have no sense as to what the candidates will do about the massive social transformation, the disenfranchising of the people, the Islamic refugee issue, the war on religious liberty, judicial reform, their views on how our system of governance is broken and how to restore it to the original constitutional mandate. No fundamentals whatsoever. Even the few serious policy questions were the typical insipid issues designed to launch the candidates into their boilerplate stump speeches. In many ways, these primary debates are worse than the questions asked during the general election debates, which we automatically expect to be moderated by the liberal media.

What we are seeing on display in Washington is a Republican Party that no longer exists, yet we are no closer to understanding how these candidates would deal with any of the issues that have destroyed the party – other than Ted Cruz who is currently fighting these battles. There might be other candidates who have plans to address the broken party establishment, but that will never be properly vetted until we have a debate by conservatives, for conservatives.

If the candidates were smart, they’d form a non-aggression pact and all agree to a demand that the next debate be controlled by a panel of conservatives. And no, Fox News doesn’t cut it. Or at least, if we are going to have liberals moderate the debate can we tap Nancy Pelosi and make this entertaining? (For more from the author of “When Will GOP Stop Letting Liberals Pick Our Nominee?” please click HERE)

Watch a recent interview with the author below:

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An Open Letter to Donald Trump Supporters

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I get why you’re excited about Donald Trump. Like you, I find the prevailing political culture in Washington almost hopelessly corrupt, and I’m outraged at how the Republican establishment keeps trying to push through immigration amnesty without real border security. Like many of you, I consider immigration the most decisive issue that faces us today: Demography is destiny. Flooding our country with poor, less-educated people who will likely skew pro-choice, pro-welfare state and pro-Democrat at the voting booth for decades to come is not just political but national suicide. We are turning our country, state by state (see California) into the kind of poorly governed, statist quagmire that immigrants are understandably fleeing.

Like Trump, I think that the unique greatness of America is not a brute fact of nature, like the Grand Canyon, but something delicate and magnificent, like an heirloom grandfather clock. We have been reckless and careless, and the system just might break down, in our own time or in our children’s. And because of America’s specialness, that would be a tragedy of unthinkable proportions, like the fall of Rome.

I have stood in your shoes. I have supported “insurgent” conservative candidates in the past: I turned out for Pat Buchanan in 1992. In 1995, I joined insurgent Mike Foster in Louisiana — who was still a pro-gun, pro-life Democrat. I pitched his campaign manager the bumper sticker: “Arm the Unborn!” and was promptly hired as Foster’s press secretary. I helped arrange Foster’s cross-endorsement with Pat Buchanan, who carried Louisiana. I was elected an alternate delegate for Buchanan at the GOP convention. I backed Ron Paul in 2008, and Rick Santorum in 2012. I’m the furthest thing from an establishment Republican.

Because I care deeply about the same issues as most Trump voters, I want to ask you to consider whether he is really the GOP candidate most likely to faithfully execute the policies he is promising.

The challenges facing our next conservative president are daunting. On immigration, for instance, securing the border, preventing employers from exploiting illegal workers, and tracking all visitors to the U.S. who (like many of the 9/11 hijackers) overstay their visas — these are all crucial policy reforms. And they make fine campaign talking points. But getting them through Congress will be hard, between all the Democrats dependent on ethnic activists, and those Republicans in tight with the big business/cheap labor lobby. The battle to secure our immigration future will be a long and painful slog through hostile territory, with immense pressure put on the president and individual lawmakers, whom he will have to reach out to and bravely lead.

Is Trump really the man for this job? Even very recently he supported immigration amnesty, criticizing Mitt Romney (!) for taking too tough a line on illegal immigrants.

And this is just one of many issues on which we need our next president to take an unwavering, principled stance. We need to restrict the powers of the U.S. Supreme Court and return the legislative power to those the Constitution gave it to: the people’s duly elected legislators. We must overturn Roe v. Wade and restore legal protection to the most vulnerable Americans. But Trump was publicly “very pro-choice” for most of his career. And even after his politically necessary pro-life “conversion,” Trump let slip his anything-but-conservative preference for Supreme Court justice — his left-wing, judicial activist sister who supports even partial birth abortion.

We also need a president who will roll back the disaster that is Obamacare, but Trump until very recently supported a government takeover of our health system — and even in the first debate couldn’t help himself from praising socialized medicine in other countries. If he can’t even make it through an evening debate without wavering on the issue, how is he going to stand firm for the many months it will take to salvage healthcare from the clutches of Leviathan? Don’t mistake bluntness and brashness for principled commitment.

We also need a president who will stop the federal government’s abusive use of “eminent domain,” the seizure of private property in pursuit of crony capitalist deals between big business and big government. Here, again, Trump’s history is far from reassuring. In his own business endeavors, as Robert Verbruggen put it, “The man has a track record of using the government as a hired thug to take other people’s property.” Verbruggen continued:

A decade and a half ago, it was fresh on everyone’s mind that Donald Trump is one of the leading users of this form of state-sanctioned thievery. It was all over the news. In perhaps the most-remembered example, John Stossel got the toupéed one to sputter about how, if he wasn’t allowed to steal an elderly widow’s house to expand an Atlantic City casino, the government would get less tax money, and seniors like her would get less “this and that.”

Add to this Trump’s well-documented and longstanding chumminess with Democrats such as Al Sharpton and Bill Clinton. (It seems likely that Clinton urged Trump into the race against his wife. Ever wonder why?)

In the light of all these cold, hard facts, it is our duty as faithful citizens to ask whether Trump is really the principled leader who will stand against massive pressure, defend America’s founding ideals and preserve our sovereignty. Or will he turn to the voters shortly after his inauguration and tell them that “some really fabulous people, best in the business” have convinced him of the wisdom of open-arms amnesty, socialized medicine or any of the other leftist policies that he quite recently supported? I ask you, with all respect for your patriotic instincts and your willingness to buck the establishment, to take such questions seriously. (For more from the author of “An Open Letter to Donald Trump Supporters” please click HERE)

Watch a recent interview with the author below:

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Why It Matters That Carter Says Iraq Raid Isn’t Combat, Then Says It Is

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An American soldier has died in Iraq as a result of the U.S. intervention to support Iraqi forces fighting the Islamic State. It’s the first loss of an American service member since the fight against ISIS began, and the first combat death in Iraq since 2011. U.S. special operations forces operating in Iraq in what Pentagon officials say was a supporting role took part in an Iraqi operation to free Iraqi hostages, including members of the Iraqi Security Forces. After more than 70 hostages were freed, 39-year-old Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler, a veteran of 14 official combat deployments and doubtless several other less-official trips into danger, died of his gunshot wound.

His death has raised the question of how an American could have died in combat when America, at least according to President Barack Obama and his national security leaders, is not at war.

“We have this capability. It is a great American strength,” Carter said Friday at the Pentagon of special operations raids like the one this week. But he insisted those raids are not the same as the U.S. military “assuming a combat role.”

“Americans are flying combat missions, thousands of combat missions, over Syria and Iraqi territory. There are Americans involved in training and advising Iraqi security forces around the country. We do not have combat formations there the way we had once upon a time in Iraq, or the way we have had in years past in Afghanistan,” Carter said.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook had been blunter on Thursday: “Our mission in Iraq is the train, advise and assist mission. This was a unique circumstance…This was a support mission in which they were providing support to the Kurdistan Regional Government. U.S. forces are not in an active combat mission in Iraq.” (Read more from “Why It Matters That Carter Says Iraq Raid Isn’t Combat, Then Says It Is” HERE)

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Obama: Christians Threaten Nation

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If you have ever wondered whether President Obama has an abiding hostility to people of Christian faith, wonder no more. He believes we are a threat to national security. If you are a sincerely devoted follower of Jesus Christ, your president believes you are a potential domestic terrorist.

I do not exaggerate. In a gathering at George Washington University this week, Obama’s assistant attorney general for national security, John Carlin, revealed that the Department of Justice is creating a brand new position just to monitor us. The position, domestic terrorism counsel, will be created to combat the “real and present threat” of domestic terrorism.

And where, pray tell, does this threat come from? From the Muslim Brotherhood, which has a stated goal of exterminating Western civilization and sabotaging our miserable house from within? Nope. From ISIS, which is actively recruiting jihadists in all 50 states? Nope. Jihadists who are sneaking into the United States disguised as Syrian refugees? Nope.

No, the real threat to our national security, according to our president and his minions, is coming from the Family Research Council and the American Family Association.

Carlin lauded the work of the thoroughly discredited Southern Poverty Law Center, which is so blatantly and maliciously biased against Christians that other parts of Obama’s administration – the FBI, the Pentagon, and the U.S. Army – are getting as far away from the SPLC as they can. (Read more from “Obama: Christians Threaten Nation” HERE)

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