Why Conservatives Might Not Demand a Conservative Speaker

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For the conservatives who helped push out Speaker John Boehner, finding a replacement isn’t about picking someone who is as conservative as them.

The Freedom Caucus, a group of about 40 conservative lawmakers whose votes are key to leadership races, wants the next speaker to commit to numerous process and rules changes to the way the House currently operates.

These lawmakers believe that the changes would allow them to advance conservative policies by empowering rank-and-file members to have more influence in the legislative process.

“The new speaker could be Paul Ryan, Justin Amash, or Charlie Dent—I don’t care who it is,” said Rep. Mick Mulvaney of the Freedom Caucus, which has endorsed little-known Rep. Daniel Webster for speaker because of his vow to reform the way the House does business.

“People think we are supporting Webster because he’s the most conservative,” Mulvaney told The Daily Signal. “But the man has a centrist voting record. We are looking for creative destruction in how the House operates. And we don’t care who takes the lead on doing that.”

This idea of creative destruction was echoed by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who chairs the conservative Senate Steering Committee. He argued in a Federalist op-ed that what matters is “not who the next speaker is but what the next speaker does.” He called for “open source policy innovation” that decentralizes power in Congress and opens the legislative process to new ideas.

According to a document leaked to Politico, and confirmed by The Daily Signal, the proposed reforms include opening up the process of committee selection, allowing committee chairmen more control, and creating more transparency in the way bills are brought to the floor. They also want a return of the “Hastert rule,” which requires a majority of Republicans to support any bill brought to a floor vote.

“We want to change it from being the speaker’s House back to the people’s House,” said Matt Salmon, a Freedom Caucus founder from Arizona. “In the last 20 years, it became the speaker’s House, because the speaker has incredible power, where they and their staff determine the legislation, what’s in it, and what amendments are involved.”

Allowing bills to go through committee first, voting separately on the 12 appropriations bills instead of using stopgap measures, and allowing an open amendment process is known as “regular order.” Freedom Caucus members want must-pass bills to come up for a vote well in advance of deadlines and allow lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, the chance to debate and amend legislation.

Promises like this were made by current Republican leaders, including Boehner and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in the months before the 2010 election in the GOP’s “Pledge to America.” The document, which preceded the Republican takeover of the House, promised to “end the practice of packaging unpopular bills with ‘must-pass’ legislation … advance major legislation one issue at a time” and to “let any lawmaker—Democrat or Republican—offer amendments to reduce spending.”

In recent years, spending bills required to keep the government funded rarely go through committee and are rushed to the floor. Despite promises from Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the House passed only six of 12 appropriations bills for fiscal year 2016, and the Senate passed none. Facing last-minute deadlines and unable to win a majority of Republican votes, leadership has passed funding measures with the aid of Democrats.

“The basic underlying point is if you go back to the way the House has been run under Boehner—similar to the way it was run before—if you are going to get into leadership, or work your way up to committee leadership, you have to be very obedient to the speaker,” Rep. John Fleming of Louisiana, a Freedom Caucus founder, told The Daily Signal. “What that really means is our leadership is marginalizing the people we represent. Their voice is being diminished.”

Rep. Charlie Dent, a Republican from Pennsylvania allied with leadership, says he would be open to the GOP conference creating a task force to discuss rule changes, but he believes it’s unfair to expect commitments from speaker candidates upfront, saying that’s not the “fair or right way to go.”

Dent believes that a “completely open process” can have caveats. “An open process works great as long as members in the majority are prepared to support the bill,” Dent said. “When you have a completely open process, which works reasonably well with appropriations bills, it does empower the minority party in a certain way.”

Salmon told The Daily Signal that he is “totally confident” conservative ideas could succeed under a more open format.

“Sir Edmund Burke once said, ‘There is no idea so dangerous it can’t be debated.’ I am not afraid of robust debate, because I think we will win out,” Salmon said.

Beyond these changes, the Freedom Caucus is asking would-be speakers to make numerous policy commitments, including opposing the Export-Import Bank, fully repealing Obamacare, and impeaching the IRS commissioner.

“The appetite for reform in this conference is pervasive, not just among conservatives,” Mulvaney insisted. “We all want it.” (For more from the author of “Why Conservatives Might Not Demand a Conservative Speaker” please click HERE)

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Why Did Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio Promise an Alternative Plan to Obamacare but Never Deliver? [+video]

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As Congress comes back this week to additional speculation about whether or not Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) will throw his hat into the race for Speaker, there’s another question surrounding the House Ways and Means Committee Chairman:

Where’s the Obamacare alternative that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said he was working with Paul Ryan on…?

Eighteen Months—And Counting

In an interview with a Denver radio station just before the midterm elections, Sen. Rubio, when asked what would happen with Obamacare in the new Congress, said “I’ve actually been working on one [Obamacare alternative] with Paul Ryan that we hope to introduce soon.” He then went on to outline some general principles for an alternative, including more personalized health insurance options, and equalizing the tax treatment of health insurance.

That was nearly one year ago—and eighteen months since the first rumors appeared that Rubio and Ryan were working on a plan. Since then, the rumor mill among health wonks on and off Capitol Hill has speculated about what was, or was not, in this supposed alternative.

Since then, Sen. Rubio has written two health care op-eds—the first around the time of the Supreme Court heard arguments in King v. Burwell, and the second days before Gov. Scott Walker released his own health care proposal. Chairman Ryan co-signed neither. Both pieces included three carefully-parsed paragraphs outlining an alternative—and I know they were carefully parsed because those three paragraphs are nearly identical in each article.

But two op-eds—which dedicated more time bashing Obamacare than explaining what should replace it—do not a “plan” make. For instance, the op-eds propose a new refundable credit for health coverage, and says, “we should set the tax preference for employer-sponsored insurance on a glide path to ensure that it will equal the level of the credits at the end of the decade.” But that language doesn’t begin to explain how this quite novel approach to the tax treatment of health care would work in practice. And it also doesn’t explain why the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which happens to have jurisdiction over tax policy, decided not to endorse it.

The questions ask themselves: Where’s the Rubio-Ryan plan? Did Rubio decide to go off on his own? If so, why exactly did Paul Ryan decide not to endorse the Rubio plan?

The next Republican debate is a week from Wednesday. Perhaps we’ll find out then. (For more from the author of “Why Did Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio Promise an Alternative Plan to Obamacare but Never Deliver?” please click HERE)

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Nazi Gun Control: Three Words that Go Together [+video]

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Ben Carson is in the crosshairs for his candid, principled comments on gun control — which included a statement that the Nazis could have been resisted more effectively had Europe’s Jews not been disarmed by their own governments before the Nazis took over their respective countries. Some have leveled the absurd charge of anti-Semitism against Dr. Carson, distorting his words to suggest that he accused Europe’s Jews of cowardice. Quite the contrary is true.

No one, including Dr. Carson, thinks that an unarmed man is a coward for obeying the orders of thugs carrying weapons. The fact that Jews and millions of other victims were forced into passivity is a matter of grim historical record — confirmed by survivor accounts, and recent accounts of Nazi genocide such as Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands, and Mark Mazower’s Hitler’s Empire. The latter documents precisely how much resistance the Nazis encountered as they tried to implement Hitler’s delusional racial anti-utopia — which aimed at turning all of Eastern Europe into a depopulated frontier, where surviving Slavs were illiterate helots of German colonists, and Jews were a vanished race. The answer is: surprisingly little, in almost any country that they occupied, with a few glaring exceptions.

What did those countries where the Nazis saw armed resistance have in common? The resistance forces had access to private weapons. Polish resistance forces such as the Home Army had stored caches of military-grade weapons before the country’s final surrender. Jewish militias that would later rise up in the Warsaw ghetto had also obtained weapons, sometimes from other sympathetic Poles. In Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Belarus, and the parts of Western Russia that saw serious partisan activity, the resisters were also armed with leftover military weapons or smuggled arms from Stalin. French resistance forces — which only became a serious threat when Hitler broke his alliance with Stalin in 1941 and French Communists stopped collaborating — had stockpiled caches of arms, and received more via airdrops from Britain.

Of course, the Holocaust could never have been implemented had the Nazis not come to power, and managed with little resistance to overturn the key protections of Germany’s constitution. It is here that the issue of private gun ownership was even more critical. World War II scholar Stephen Halbrook performed a detailed analysis of the impact of gun control laws on the Nazi seizure of absolute power in his book Gun Control in the Third Reich. In it, he shows how crucial Nazi officials such as Josef Goebbels considered the effort to disarm private citizens — especially those in groups that the Nazis considered their worst political enemies. Halbrook cites statement after statement from Nazi leaders about the urgency of confiscating private weapons from the Iron Front (a Social Democrat militia), from Communist groups, from Catholic conservatives, and from individual, law-abiding Jews.

The build-up to the first national Nazi pogrom, the brutal Kristallnacht, included a frenzied effort on the part of leading Nazis to track down all the registered firearms owners of Jewish descent, and seize their weapons so that there could be no real resistance when Nazi stormtroopers attacked Jewish businesses and burned historic synagogues.

But the Nazis’ job was an easy one, because virtually all of Germany’s Jews who owned any guns had dutifully registered them, years before, in compliance with the laws of the Weimar Republic — which was trying to disarm extremist groups. As Halbrook writes:

The decree also provided that in times of unrest, the guns could be confiscated. The government gullibly neglected to consider that only law-abiding citizens would register, while political extremists and criminals would not. However, it did warn that the gun-registration records must be carefully stored so they would not fall into the hands of extremists.

The ultimate extremist group, led by Adolf Hitler, seized power just a year later, in 1933. The Nazis immediately used the firearms-registration records to identify, disarm and attack “enemies of the state”.

Read Halbrook’s heart-breaking account of patriotic German Jew Alfred Flatow, who had won his fatherland a gold medal at the 1896 Olympics, and later obeyed the Weimar law by registering his guns:

By fall of 1938, the Nazis were ratcheting up measures to expropriate the assets of Jews. To ensure that they had no means of resistance, the Jews were ordered to surrender their firearms.

Flatow walked into a Berlin police station to comply with the command and was arrested on the spot, as were other Jews standing in line. The arrest report confirmed that his pistols were duly registered, which was obviously how the police knew he had them. While no law prohibited a Jew from owning guns, the report recited the Nazi mantra: “Jews in possession of weapons are a danger to the German people.” Despite his compliance, Flatow was turned over to the Gestapo.

Anti-gun activists claim that it is absurd to suggest that firearms in private hands could be used to resist a totalitarian government. In fact, the opposite is the case. There is no single example of a country where firearm ownership was widespread among the general population which developed into a totalitarian state — except after a wide-scale civil war (as in Russia) or foreign conquest (such as Poland). Nations that move in an authoritarian direction typically seize private firearms long before they dare to suppress other civil liberties. Conquerors disarm the conquered. (The Nazis, upon their occupation of France, gave citizens 24 hours to turn in their weapons, on penalty of death.)

But we have countless examples of countries where moves toward more authoritarian government were thwarted by private citizens’ rebellions: From the Swiss resistance to the Habsburgs in the Middle Ages, and Holland’s revolt against Philip II in the 17th century, to our own War of Independence. Even within our history, we see that Jim Crow laws included restrictions on black citizens’ owning guns, which they could have used for self-defense against lynch mobs, unjust police and the Ku Klux Klan.

The issue of gun rights turns, finally, on a question about human nature — about common citizens like you and me. Are we responsible adults made in the image of God, with the primary right and responsibility of caring for ourselves and our dependents? Or are we dim-witted, passive sheep, who must look to our protectors in the government for food, protection, and guidance in our everyday decisions? May we defend ourselves and our loved ones when confronted with threats of violence, or is it our duty to surrender passively, then wait for the police to come tag their bodies? Are we free citizens, who may arm ourselves in self-defense and when absolutely necessary resist acts of tyranny? Or are we helpless peasants? (For more from the author of “Nazi Gun Control: Three Words That Go Together” please click HERE)

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The Freedom Caucus’ Unprecedented Insurgency

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Congress has never seen anything quite like the House Freedom Caucus. There’s always someone unhappy on Capitol Hill and it’s not unusual for malcontents to band together. A rebellion made up of members who refuse to work with either party, however, is something that hasn’t happened in living memory.

“This is an unusual and indeed unprecedented development in the history of the party,” says Geoffrey Kabaservice, a research consultant to the Main Street Partnership, a centrist GOP group.

Parties—particularly those with large majorities—almost inevitably split into factions. And congressional history is replete with examples of groups that balked at party leadership. But the insurgents we remember—the ones who weren’t quickly and completely marginalized—managed by and large to find common cause with members of the other party. Southern Democrats, for instance, forged a “conservative coalition” with Republicans that dominated Congress for much of the 20th century.

There hasn’t been a bloc like the Freedom Caucus for at least a century, one that refuses to work with its own party leadership while being steadfastly unwilling to reach across the aisle. “There have been groups that often broke from the party, but in doing so, they didn’t stand as a third force,” says former GOP Rep. Mickey Edwards. “This group is very different.”

The Freedom Caucus, rather than breaking from Republican ranks, has forced Republican leaders to break from them. It’s a perverse sort of political jujitsu. One of outgoing Speaker John Boehner’s supposed crimes was that he went begging Democrats for help passing legislation when he couldn’t find the votes within his own caucus. Some rank-and-file Republicans, meanwhile, have made a separate peace with Democrats on reviving the Export-Import Bank. Normally the opposite would happen and it would be the insurgents reaching across the aisle. But that presupposes an interest in governing. (Read more from “The Freedom Caucus’ Unprecedented Insurgency” HERE)

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America Is a Bomb Waiting to Explode

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[Editor’s note: This story is from “RT News,” an agency of the Russian government. Please keep that in mind as you read this excerpt] The United States is in decline. While not all major shocks to the system will be devastating, when the right one comes along, the outcome may be dramatic.

Not all explosives are the same. We all know you have to be careful with dynamite. Best to handle it gently and not smoke while you’re around it.

Semtex is different. You can drop it. You can throw it. You can put it in the fire. Nothing will happen. Nothing until you put the right detonator in it, that is.

To me, the US – and most of the supposedly free West – increasingly looks like a truck being systematically filled with Semtex.

But it’s easy to counter cries of alarm with the fact that the truck is stable – because it’s true: you can hurl more boxes into the back without any real danger. Absent the right detonator, it is no more dangerous than a truckload of mayonnaise. (Read more from “America Is a Bomb Waiting to Explode” HERE)

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What Bill O’Reilly’s New Book on Ronald Reagan Gets Wrong About Ronald Reagan

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“Killing Reagan,” by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, is supposed to be a book of new scholarship on the Reagan presidency. Instead, it restates old claims and rumors, virtually all of which have been discredited by the historical record.

In this best-selling book, there are no endnotes, no bibliography, no long list of interviewees and only a smattering of footnotes. There is a section titled “Sources,” but it is only two-and-a-half pages long. It includes about two dozen sources, but that is not adequate for a subject, Ronald Reagan, who has been the focus of thousands of books and articles and who was one of the most consequential political figures of the 20th century. The works of three of us are not noted at all, and between the four of us, we have written 19 books on Reagan, not to mention countless articles. The sources section does, however, reference long-questionable works, including the sensational 1991 attack by Kitty Kelley — which is clearly incorporated throughout the book — and the 1999 biography by Edmund Morris, roundly criticized for its intermingling of fact and fiction.

To the authors’ credit, the sources section notes the use of excellent archives such as the Reagan Library, the Reagan Ranch Center and the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. And yet, the acknowledgment of those archives is somewhat puzzling, given that the archives make clear that Reagan was a far more hands-on, engaged and all-around deeply involved president than many of the partisan accounts alleged in their unfair caricatures of him in the 1980s. Frankly, we had thought that demeaning, flawed caricature — Reagan as the doodling old fool who spent too much time sleeping at Cabinet meetings and watching old movies — had been permanently put to rest by recent scholarship. Unfortunately, “Killing Reagan” shows that the old misinformation (if not disinformation) still remains with us, like a demon that cannot be exorcised. It regurgitates and resurrects much material that we had thought (and hoped) was dead and done.

There are small and large mistakes throughout “Killing Reagan.” Repeatedly, Ronald Prescott Reagan is referred to as “Ron Jr,” a minor matter but a revealing one. The book states that Reagan’s radio broadcasts of the late 1970s were once a week, but they were delivered five times a week. There are dozens of Kelley-type references to horoscope readers, astrologers, an imperious Nancy running the country and generally a persistent, clueless and oblivious Ronald Reagan — addle-brained, out of touch, dangerously uninformed. The most common word used to describe Reagan is probably “confused.” (Read more from “What Bill O’Reilly’s New Book on Ronald Reagan Gets Wrong About Ronald Reagan” HERE)

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More Government Than America Needs or Wants

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This summer, while the attention of Americans has been focused on enjoying their family and friends, two dangerous, increasingly lawless, federal government agencies — the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission — have been preparing to substantially restrict the public’s access to homeopathic remedies. We all need to take this threat seriously.

The Arrogance of Power

It is predictable that people in each profession believe that they have special insight. Lawyers believe they are the experts on the Constitution — a document written by and for the People. Physicians believe that they are the experts on the human body, but each of us knows ourselves better than anyone else can. Physicians want deference because they are “scientists.” But most are no more scientists than I am — just clinicians who fall into repetitive patterns, refusing to believe that something that a patient came up with could ever work better than whatever they prescribed. And when the medical establishment cannot persuade others that their opinion of today is a moral certainty, they turn to Government to use all of its coercive power to give them a victory they never earned in the marketplace.

Before describing the current threat to homeopathy, and what can be done about it, however, it is important to return to First Things: From whence does the federal government derive the power to override the judgment of individual Americans as to their own personal healthcare decisions?

When America was the Land of the Free

There once was a time that the People who ratified the United States Constitution in 1789 were treated with a degree of respect by those chosen to serve in national leadership positions. For over a century and a quarter after the founding of this nation, the People were largely free to make intensely personal decisions about their own healthcare, with only a few boundaries, primarily emanating out of the common law — such as the prevention of outright fraud. After all, the federal government was given no enumerated power in Article I, Section 8 over healthcare — and to the extent that any government has any authority over private healthcare decisions, it was to be exercised by the individual states under their limited “police power.”

Even those national political leaders who were fully persuaded that they knew best how to run other people’s lives felt constrained to resist the temptation. Before they “did good,” they asked a threshold question — “Do we have in government the constitutional authority to impose our will on the People?” Of course, it would be wrong to think that politicians, as a class, were ever mostly noble and courageous, for after all, in a wonderfully curious verse, Daniel warns about rulers having one common denominator: they are “the basest of men.” Daniel 4:17. However, during this early period in the nation’s history, even the worst elected officials seemed to understand that the U.S. Constitution ruled over them: that the Constitution is the People’s law that governs the government.

Prior to the Progressive Era, the federal government largely treated Americans as grown-ups, able to make their own decisions, and either benefit from those decisions, or accept the consequences of those decisions. University of Chicago Law Professor David Currie’s wonderful three volume series on The Constitution in Congress demonstrates that the debates in Congress over the constitutionality of proposed laws were often sophisticated clashes, vastly more thoughtful as to what often passes for argument before the current U.S. Supreme Court. Those in Congress repeatedly expressed concern as to whether proposed laws were constitutional. Famously, Congressman Davy Crockett once opposed a popular bill to appropriate money to aid a widow of a naval officer for one simple reason: “We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as a charity.” While there are still a few, such men of conviction generally no longer serve in Congress.

The Rise of the Administrative State

These days, limits on government power do not receive much consideration anywhere. In Congress, the highest priority of any member is to be re-elected. Therefore, with an eye to the next election, members of Congress need and want deniability whenever they want something done which will offend the People. Frequently, complicit members of Congress wanting to serve a large, powerful and wealthy constituency (e.g. Wall Street, Big Pharma) rely on administrative agencies to do their dirty work. They stand back and pretend to be powerless, as if they had no authority to intervene.

In the modern era, Congress delegates broad rule making power to administrative agencies ignoring the Constitutional command that “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” Article I, Section 1. Congress then adds the executive power to enforce those rules. It then completes the package by entrusting these agencies with adjudicatory (judicial) power. The Courts complete the circle by generally refusing to give serious review to administrative actions, citing the need for judges to give deference to bureaucrats, as articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Chevron U.S.A. v. National Resources Defense Council, 467 U.S. 837 (1984). Deference to the bureaucrats helps create a short work day for the judges.

The Administrative State has grown so powerful that another brilliant University of Chicago Law Professor, Philip Hamburger, published last year a book addressing the question Is Administrative Law Unlawful? His conclusion: the modern administrative law is best understood as a reversion to the English King’s thoroughly lawless prerogative courts, typified by the Court of Star Chamber which was abolished in 1640.

The Framers never envisioned the modern administrative state. In Federalist No. 47, James Madison echoed Montesquieu when he explained that the Constitution could never permit it: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judicia [l] in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” Indeed, Madison virtually invited us to resist monstrosities such as the FDA and the FTC: “Were the federal Constitution, therefore, really chargeable with the accumulation of power, or with a mixture of powers, having a dangerous tendency to such an accumulation, no further arguments would be necessary to inspire a universal reprobation of the system.” Indeed, it is past time to inspire a universal reprobation of the FDA and the FTC.

When Homeopathy was Respected, and Honored

There once was a time that those who swam against the prevailing currents by resisting a corrupt establishment received accolades. On January 31, 1900, the U.S. Congress passed an Act of Congress (31 Stat. 709) providing for the creation of a monument in Washington, D.C., dedicated to a foreign physician who was one of the great reformers of his era: Christian Friederich Samuel Hahnemann. On June 21, 1900, the monument was dedicated by President William McKinnley, a believer in homeopathy.

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s National Register of Historic Places describes Hahnemann as “the first foreigner not associated with America’s independence to be represented in sculptural form in Washington, D.C.” and only “the second doctor to gain sculptural recognition.” Described by the U.S. Department of the Interior as “precocious and brilliant,” Hahnemann’s abilities as “a consummate linguist, the master of German, Latin, Greek, French, Italian, English, Arabic, Syriac, Hebrew, and Chaldaic” alone should have deserved some honor. But it was his institution of “mild and humane treatment methods” while serving as “the Superintendent of the Insane Asylum at Goergenthal” and as a member of the “Faculty of Medicine at the University of Leipzig,” and as “Hofrath, or Councilor of State” that he grew to fame. Id.

And it is utterly fascinating that the official Department of the Interior records explain clearly that Hahnemann “attempted to legitimize the medical profession and free it from its barbaric practices.” Hahnemann stood against “medical orthodoxy” of the day that “relied on over drugging and bleeding.” Id. Today, at least the medical establishment has abandoned one of those two treatment modalities.

What the FDA is Planning

The FDA has announced that it is conducting an evaluation of:

its current enforcement policies for drug products labeled as homeopathic from scientific, risk, and process perspectives [and] whether and how to adjust the current enforcement policies to reflect changes in the homeopathic product marketplace. [80 Fed. Reg. 16327 (emphasis added).]

The FDA states that it has permitted what it terms “homeopathic drugs” to be marketed without prior FDA approval under FDA Compliance Policy Guide 400.400 (June 9, 1988) (“CPG”). The CPG also sets forth the labeling requirements for “homeopathic drugs.” The FDA notice asserts authority to control homeopathic remedies when it asserts that the “FDA has not reviewed this class of products for safety and efficacy.” 80 Fed. Reg. 16328. The FDA’s assertion that homeopathic remedies constitute “drugs” is essential for it to assert control over homeopathic remedies, but, as discussed below, that claim is specious.

If you don’t believe the FDA is now seeking to exercise new, broader control over homeopathic remedies, consider the following questions on which the FDA has asked for comment:

What are consumer and health care provider attitudes towards human drug and biological products labeled as homeopathic?

What data sources can be identified or shared with FDA so that the Agency can better assess the risks and benefits of drug and biological products labeled as homeopathic?

Are the current enforcement policies under the CPG appropriate to protect and promote public health in light of the tremendous growth in the homeopathic drug market? Are there alternatives to the current enforcement policies of the CPG that would inform FDA’s regulatory oversight of drugs labeled as homeopathic? If so, please explain.

Are there areas of the current CPG that could benefit from additional clarity? If so, please explain.

Is there information regarding the regulation of homeopathic products in other countries that could inform FDA’s thinking in this area?

A large majority of human drug products labeled as homeopathic are marketed as OTC drugs. These products are available for a wide variety of indications, and many of these indications have never been considered for OTC use under a formal regulatory process. What would be an appropriate regulatory process for evaluating such indications for OTC use?

Given the wide range of indications on drug products labeled as homeopathic and available OTC, what processes do companies currently use to evaluate whether such products, including their indications for use, are appropriate for marketing as an OTC drug?

Do consumers and health care providers have adequate information to make informed decisions about drug products labeled as homeopathic? If not, what information, including, for example, information in labeling, would allow consumers and health care providers to be better informed about products labeled as homeopathic? [Emphasis added.]

Filing Comments with the FDA

The FDA held public hearings on April 20 and 21, 2015 on this topic and then opened up for comments, using the federal governments www.regulations.gov website.

On behalf of the United States Justice Foundation, we filed comments opposing the FDA’s power grab. The initial comment period closed August 21, 2015, with the FDA receiving over 8,600 comments. But there were so many demands to extend the comment period, that the FDA relented, and Comments now may be filed until November 9, 2015.

Although there is no guarantee that the FDA will listen to anyone, we each need to suspend disbelief, and take advantage of this opportunity to let them know exactly what we think of their plan. Comments can be filed by email or on line.

Homeopathic Remedies Are Not Drugs

However, in seeking comments, the FDA ignores the threshold question: does the FDA have any statutory, or, indeed, constitutional authority to sit in judgment over the choice of Americans to use homeopathic remedies? It is our contention that the FDA has no such authority.

The FDA purports to exercise authority over homeopathy under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (“FDCA”), 21 U.S.C. §§ 301, et seq. The FDCA defines a “drug” as, inter alia:

articles recognized in the … official Homoeopathic Pharmacopoeia of the United States … and … articles intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease in man or other animals…. [21 U.S.C. § 321(g)(1)(A)-(B) (emphasis added).]

The basic statutory definition of a drug as including “articles intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease in man or other animals” employs language so broad that the definition could encompass virtually every substance that is consumed or comes in contact with the body.

For example, a bottle of water now sold at the corner 7-Eleven could be said to be “intended for use in the … cure of” thirst — which presumably has not yet been classified as a “disease” by modern medicine. However, if that same bottle of water was “intended for use in the … cure of” the medical conditions of Dehydration or Polydipsia — it would be a drug, by this definition.

Clearly, the “intent” of the person selling the substance cannot determine whether a substance is a drug. The statutory definition is overinclusive, as in the case of water, but it is also underinclusive, as it would exclude a pharmaceutical if it was not advertised to address a medical condition. This cannot be the way Congress intended to define a “drug.”

One of the defining characteristics of a pharmaceutical drug is that it has serious toxicity — a key characteristic shared by all pharmaceutical drugs. Because of that toxicity, the federal government limits public access, to protect the public. That rationale does not apply to homeopathy. Where the reason for the rule does not apply, so also should not the rule.

Indeed, when one school of medicine attempts to use the government to quash another school of medicine, that can be a good indication that those demanding the protection of the public have been losing market share. What cannot be accomplished in the marketplace can be imposed by government. Pharmacy Professor Richard Henry Parrish II explains the historic pattern of certain health care providers turning to government to accomplish by compulsion what they could not do by persuasion:

Government became the arbiter of pharmaceutical fact because the professions of pharmacy and medicine, as well as the pharmaceutical industry, could enforce their standards only through police powers reserved to government … at the expense of others’ rights of association, speech, and property. [Richard Henry Parrish II, Defining Drugs: How Government Became the Arbiter of Pharmaceutical Fact, Transaction Publishers, (2003), p. 132.]

FTC Joins the Attack on Homeopathy

Simultaneously, the FTC has opened up another front in the fight against homeopathy. This was to be expected, as the FTC and FDA have long worked in tandem in seeking to shut down access to alternative healthcare. The FTC issued an announcement that it would accept comments, and deadline for comments is now November 20, 2015.

The FTC also scheduled a “workshop” to be held on September 21, 2015, described as “homing in on homeopathy.” Such language triggers the mental image of a drone locked in on an “enemy of the state.” The agenda for the workshop makes it clear that the FTC is thinking about how deceptive advertising laws might be used “as possible remedies to address” homeopathic product claims. (Evidencing inter-agency cooperation, the FTC agenda also lists two FDA employees as panelists.)

Interestingly, the FTC also submitted comments to the FDA in the FDA’s rulemaking, together with an August 21, 2015 press release. The FTC urged the FDA to amend or repeal its current regulatory framework, so that the FTC would be able to freely regulate homeopathy. The FDA’s framework — the 1988 Compliance Policy Guide — requires homeopathic products to contain an indication for use. Yet the FTC complains that the FDA does not “require sellers to have competent and reliable scientific evidence to support the indication for use.” The FTC’s desire is to force homeopathic remedy manufacturers to comply with its scientific substantiation policy, something entirely unsuited for homeopathy.

Conclusion

Although American pharmaceutical manufacturers might prefer to suppress homeopathy so that they may be better able to market their drugs domestically and internationally, such would be a profoundly corrupt motive for the FDA to sanction. For many decades, the FDA has thus far understood that homeopathic remedies are virtually devoid of side effects, inexpensive, and found by millions to be effective for them. Thus, such remedies are completely different from toxic pharmaceuticals, and for these reasons, the FDA has recognized personal choice diversity in health care choices.

Applying the system for government-mandated pharmaceutical drug regulation to homeopathy would have a major ramification on the rights of citizens in a free society: It would stop citizens from acting in their own best interest, and would shift consequent responsibility to professionals and to government. The federal government has neither jurisdiction nor warrant to change direction now and interfere with the right of citizens to have unfettered access to homeopathic remedies. (For more from the author of “More Government Than America Needs or Wants” please click HERE)

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Politicians Exploit School Shooting, Silent About Obama’s Bombing Victims

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Following the recent Oregon school shooting, many politicians rushed to the microphones to call for new gun control laws. President Obama even called on gun control supporters to “politicize” the shooting, while some members of Congress worked to establish a special commission on gun violence.

The reaction to the shooting stands in stark contrast to the reaction to the U.S. military’s bombing of an Afghanistan hospital run by the international humanitarian (and Nobel Peace Prize winning) group Doctors Without Borders.

Our Nobel Peace Prize winning president did apologize to his fellow Nobel laureate for the bombing. However, President Obama has not “politicized” this tragedy by using it to justify ending military involvement in Afghanistan. No one in Congress is pushing for a special commission to examine the human costs of U.S. militarism, and the mainstream media has largely ignored Doctors Without Borders’ accusation that the bombing constitutes a war crime.

The reason for the different reactions to these two events is that politicians prefer to focus on events they can “politicize” to increase government power. In contrast, politicians ignore incidents that raise uncomfortable questions about U.S. foreign policy.

If the political and media elites were really interested in preventing future mass shootings, they would repeal the federal “gun-free” schools law, for example. By letting shooters know that their intended victims are defenseless, the gun-free schools law turns schoolchildren into easy targets. (Read more from “Politicians Exploit School Shooting, Silent About Obama’s Bombing Victims” HERE)

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McCarthy’s Withdrawal: Too Early for Conservatives to Rejoice

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Many conservatives across the land have rejoiced over the withdrawal of Kevin McCarthy from the Speaker election. They shouldn’t. House Republicans are largely a collection of phonies.

In my view, there are only two who have earned the Speakership: Louie Gohmert and Steve King. I am confident that few conservatives would disagree that these two Representatives have demonstrated honesty, courage and outspoken defense of true conservative principles. Each towers far above the rest of the field. The election of anyone else as Speaker would be a travesty, indicating Republican business as usual.

I will not rehash what I wrote in detail in August: The Deceptive Misuse of Legislator Voting Records. But, faced with this golden opportunity, it is critically important for genuine conservatives to understand that few House Republicans have anything but contempt for them.

I pointed out that, during the Boehner reign, there were but a few roll call votes that vastly exceeded the importance of all the rest. Let’s not forget that, last December, after a major Republican victory, Speaker Boehner rammed through a bill called Cromnibus. This bill effectively nullified the 2014 Republican electoral victory, saved the ObamaCare monstrosity (for a second time under Boehner!), and enabled President Obama to continue to dictatorially further law breaking by aliens. As Sen. Ted Cruz put it in a magnificently courageous speech: “anyone watching Congress right now would have little reason to think that an historic election occurred only a few weeks ago.”

Either of the two current Speaker candidates, Jason Chaffetz or Daniel Webster, could have stopped Cromnibus dead in its tracks by blocking its even being considered by the House. But both voted to allow consideration. Chaffetz even voted for final passage. In fact, 67 Republicans voted against final passage of Cromnibus, but only 16 voted to stop it from being considered at all. In other words, 51 Republicans boasted of voting against passage of a bill they could have defeated by preventing it from even being voted upon.

Among the heroic 16 were Gohmert and King. (Since January 2011, King heroically has fought a courageous battle to prevent implementation of Obama Care.) Given their long history of principled courage placing them so far above everyone else in the House, if either of them is not elected Speaker, conservatives will see more of the same and they will have no cause to rejoice.

And it would be a time for tears if House Republicans elected a faux conservative, such as Trey Gowdy, again inexplicably being touted. As this is written, many reports echo this: Republicans are putting all of their money on Paul Ryan. This is what David Horowitz had to say about Ryan: “Paul Ryan is a nice man and is a very bright man but he hasn’t got a political brain cell.”

In sum, conservative joy is premature and tears may be warranted in the end. If conservatives really are serious, they should press either Louie Gohmert or Rep. Steve King to run for Speaker and then make clear that, if one of them is not chosen, the Republican Party has no claim on conservative support.

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Anti-Establishment Mood Doesn’t Stop ‘Invisible Primary’

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With 83 percent of Americans saying they disapprove of the way Congress is doing its job, one might expect presidential candidates and their savvy political teams to keep themselves at a distance.

But even in this year of the outsider — where, from the revolt in the House to the polls in the presidential race, it might appear the strength of the establishment is on the downturn — candidates seeking the highest office in the land are competing for their endorsements in what has been described as the “Invisible Primary.”

On Friday, Sen. Bernard Sanders, the Vermont independent giving establishment favorite Hillary Clinton her biggest challenge for the Democratic nomination, is expected to receive an endorsement from Rep. Raul M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) during a campaign rally in Tucson, Arizona.

Grijalva would be the only congressional lawmaker to endorse Sanders for president so far — a figure dwarfed by the more than 140 members of Congress who have said they are ready for Hillary . . .

Endorsements from members of Congress are an inherent reflection of establishment support, Lynn Vavreck, a professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote for The New York Times’ Upshot blog. But, she added, research suggests that support from political elites is also “the single best predictor” of a candidate’s success. (Read more from “Anti-Establishment Mood Doesn’t Stop ‘Invisible Primary'” HERE)

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