Leftists Ramping up the Violence: How Long Until They Kill Somebody?

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How long before somebody gets killed by an enraged leftist? Let’s start a pool. I’ll be the bookie (the only sure way to make money).

Odds on a killing in the next six months, 7 to 1 against; from six months to a year, 4 to 1; after a year 2 to 1. Get your bets in early. These odds might tighten.

Some friends of mine, Roy Spencer and John Christy, were shot at. Both men are bona fide atmospheric scientists. They have actually studied and contributed greatly to their field. They also express skepticism that global-warming-of-doom will kill us all unless we put the government in charge of all aspects of our lives.

Spencer wrote:

A total of seven shots were fired into our National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC) building here at [the University of Alabama Huntsville] over the weekend.

All bullets hit the 4th floor, which is where John Christy’s office is (my office is in another part of the building).

Given that this was Earth Day weekend, with a March for Science passing right past our building on Saturday afternoon, I think this is more than coincidence.

The UAH police, with lickety split speed, classified the violence as a “random shooting.”

The bullets must have just showed up out of nowhere.

Storming the Heritage Foundation

So the violent folks at People’s Action — why do communists always say their violence is done in the name of the people? — attacked the Heritage Foundation offices. Stormed right on in.

Media accounts call the violent actors “protesters.” The proper word is, of course, thugs, though violent rabble would do as well. The media does not use proper labels because, as everybody knows, the media is delighted by the attacks.

Why did these violent individuals storm a think tank? In their own fantastical words, “We’re shutting it down at @Heritage because it continues to be @realDonaldTrump’s think tank. #RiseUp2017 #Budget4ThePeople”

Well, what more justification is needed since the think tank expresses (tepid) support for a sitting President? Off with their heads, amirite?

We’ve already seen the well ensconced culture of violence on university and college campuses, now places of strict and unthinking intolerance. Just as a for-example, students, many with those dead-alive eyes familiar from social media posts, attacked author Charles Murray and a professor at Middlebury College. The professor was sent to the hospital.

The media sighed a slight sigh and then hinted the woman with Murray had it coming because, said the Washington Post, the Southern Poverty Law Center “considers Murray a white nationalist who uses ‘racist pseudoscience. …’”

Students at Wellesley penned an article that said, in effect, that if they have to keep hearing talk from people on the right, “hostility may be warranted” to shut them up.

The mercurial Ann Coulter was invited to speak at Berkeley, ground zero for fingers stuck in ears, but was told by the university officials she couldn’t come, because why? Because of concerns over her safety.

Now I ask you, is that not tacit admission that student violence is expected and seen as natural, and perhaps even desirable? I’ll answer for you: yes it is.

Coulter is still coming, and daring Berkeley, an institution that boasts of it free speech heritage, to shut her up. Police forces have begun mustering. Update (26 April, 6:15 PM): Coulter, losing even her supporters, herself canceled her speech.

But will the police be allowed to intervene should violence begin? At the so-called Battle of Berkeley, pro- and anti-Trump supporters clashed, and police infamously sat on their thumbs. (They are even “training for violence.” The antifa forces lost, and so they are now actively “training” for the next battle.)

Why this inaction? It’s a good bet that the politicians anticipating the event thought it would be yet another instance of leftists causing mayhem, violent acts they could “officially” condemn after they occurred, but which they were not unhappy to see. Yet this time, the other side fought back. And won.

Now that the right is fighting, it’s an even better wager that the politicians will have the police move in quickly at the first hint of violence.

Free speech is dead on the American campus. How do we know? Leftists tell us so. Dead, and good riddance, they say. The New York Times and the New Republic say students are right to insist they should not have to hear ideas which might cause them pain.

Author Heather Mac Donald was chased off a campus by a violent mob recently. She noted that some students at Berkeley “opined that physical attacks against supporters of Mr. Yiannopoulos and President Trump were ‘not acts of violence. They were acts of self-defense.’”

There you have it. When the killing comes, it will be called “self defense.” It will be called “necessary.” Those reporting on it will express sadness, yes, but they will, oh so regretfully, say it couldn’t be helped.

How are those odds above looking to you now? (For more from the author of “Leftists Ramping up the Violence: How Long Until They Kill Somebody?” please click HERE)

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The Police vs. The PC Police

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As is almost always the case, signs of trouble preceded the latest shooting in Paris, which left one police officer dead and wounded two bystanders before police killed the gunman, later identified as French national Karim Cheurfi, a known criminal with a long, violent record. ISIS claimed to be behind the attack. According to police, a note praising ISIS fell out of Cheurfi’s pocket when he fell.

Cheurfi was of Algerian descent, born in a Paris suburb. The Washington Post reported he had a criminal record and was known to authorities. His rap sheet included four arrests and convictions since 2003. He had spent nearly 14 years in prison for crimes that included burglary, theft and attempted murder.

When Cheurfi attempted to buy weapons French authorities took notice, especially when he made statements about wishing to kill police officers. After he traveled to Algeria earlier this year, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Cheurfi was interviewed, but a judge refused to revoke his probation. It makes one question not only France’s probation laws, but the types of background checks in place that ought to have prevented Cheurfi from legally acquiring any firearm (if he bought it legally), much less the Kalashnikov rifle he allegedly used.

French and other European politicians immediately expressed concern over what effect the shooting and the terrorist attacks that preceded it might have on France’s choice of a new president. Rightist candidates immediately tried to exploit the issue, but it has been a subject on the minds of French voters, particularly in Paris, where a major enclave of immigrants from Muslim countries continue to be seen by many as a threat to the French way of life.

Cheurfi should have been back in jail for parole violations. Given his record, his statements and the trip to Algeria, enough red flags were raised to warrant action.

A side note. While Algeria has not been a main source of terrorism in the world, the human rights agency Algeria Watch has noted: “Although Algerian nationals were not among the suicide bombers of 11 September 2001, they have featured prominently in subsequent investigations into al-Qaida activities in North America and Europe.

In the UK, where an Algerian community has grown as a largely unknown minority in recent years, several dozen Algerians have been arrested since mid-2001 in localities as widely spread as Leicester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, London and Manchester. Arrests in London in January 2003 uncovered a cell producing ricin, while in Manchester, one of the Algerian detainees, 27-year-old Kamel Bourgass, was responsible for killing a police officer — the first victim in the UK’s post-11 September anti-terrorist campaign.”

In the United States and other countries in the West, most often someone has to actually break the law before they can be arrested. Given the tactics of terrorists, it might be worth discussing whether to invoke a doctrine of pre-emption, which is sometimes employed when an enemy nation appears to be an imminent threat. If that is an option to prevent death and destruction from countries, why can’t we impose something similar for people who have violent criminal records and who openly state, as Cheurfi did, that he intends to kill police?

Western reluctance to adapt such a practice shows there is one force more powerful than the uniformed police. It is the “PC police.” These are people who care more about how they feel than for the innocent people gunned down in our streets.

Don’t innocents have the right to be protected from fanatics who so often claim to be doing God’s work? With ongoing investigations by the Department of Homeland Security into radical terrorists in every state, it’s long past time to get them before they get any more of us. (For more from the author of “The Police vs. The PC Police” please click HERE)

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The Real Threats to Science: Sloppiness, Bias and Fraud

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I had dinner with a friend of mine in New York’s Cornelia St. Café. She told me about her Brooklyn neighborhood’s March for Science: “A neighbor child organized a parade around our block. It was adorable: kids made up their own signs and their own chants.”

It sounds adorable. Also vaguely creepy. Like this San Francisco restaurant owner announcing that “food is inherently political.” Her Middle Eastern eatery, she claims is the place where people will have open and honest conversations. Well, maybe some people.

The Brooklyn Children’s March for Science? It reminds me of when Soviet kids used to playact show trials of their peers. All to defend St. Vladimir Lenin’s glorious Revolution. Read The Whisperers if you want to see how creepy the politicization of everything can become. The essence of the totalitarian impulse is: Everything is political. Fortunately for us, that impulse isn’t backed by guns yet. Just tweets, marches and shoving matches in the street.

The Left craves a substitute for religion or morality. They want certain truths to be self-evident and unquestionable. So they yoke science to their ideology. The better to bash political opponents over the head.

What Would You Do to Get Your Paper Published?

Meanwhile there is a real, actual crisis in science taking place today: a massive failure to replicate major medical scientific findings.

Springer publishing last week retracted 107 papers from the journal Tumor Biology. Retraction Watch called it the most retractions from a single journal in history. The studies were pulled because the authors had compromised the peer review process. How? By getting editors to submit their paper to fake peer reviewers. In some cases, the authors submitted real scientists’ names but gave editors fake email addresses. That allowed them to review their own papers.

Think about it: So-called scientists risking the health of cancer patients to ensure that their precious papers get published. Like abusive clergy, they are a tiny minority. But they are bad apples who need to be tossed out fast.

This is the tip of the iceberg. A major review of landmark studies in cancer research found that “scientific findings were confirmed in only 6 (or 11 percent of) cases. Even knowing the limitations of preclinical research, this was a shocking result.”

Last week, Retraction Watch also published a letter from a biostatistician pointing out that many recent studies in ten major biology journals contained a basic and crucial omission: the sample size of the study was either unclear or unknown. In Cell, a major biology journal, 8 out of 10 recent articles published did not provide a clear sample size. Failing to report the sample size means it’s virtually impossible to replicate the finding. This is statistics 101. What better way to avoid scrutiny?

Scientific Progress Requires a Commitment to Truth

A similar problem plagues the psychological sciences. Here the pressures are mostly to produce the results pleasing to the social justice tribe (minus any justice for unborn babies).

Protecting science is enormously important. Marching in the streets just makes things worse.

Scientific progress requires scientists whose first and fearless commitment is to the truth, not to partisan visions of social justice. Scientists are of course also human beings. So they are tempted by the same things other people are tempted by: applause, money, status, fear of social exclusion.

Cleaning up science is a job for scientists with integrity. There is little you and I can do about it.

Well, there is one thing: taxpayers could insist that data from any government funded studies be posted online upon publication. President Trump, are you listening? (For more from the author of “The Real Threats to Science: Sloppiness, Bias and Fraud” please click HERE)

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Was the Hill Hoaxed Over Its Attack on Steve Bannon?

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On Thursday, I reported on how The Huffington Post was hoaxed into running a column. It called for white males, worldwide, to be stripped of the right to vote. Then it came out that the piece was actually penned by a white guy as a satire. So of course somebody got fired.

Not the editor who greenlit and defended the piece. The author, whom Huffington editors outed to his employer. The satirist lost his job with a think tank, and The Huffington Post yanked the column, which now it decided was hate speech. Because it didn’t want to yank people’s voting rights based on race. I’ll pause for a moment, to let the reader assimilate all that.

Did Steve Bannon Hoax The Hill?

And now, it appears to me that the online journal The Hill was the victim of a similar hoax. I believe, based on an analysis of internal evidence such as tone, logic, and content, that the April 20 column “America’s biggest enemy isn’t North Korea or Iran — it’s Steve Bannon” with the byline “Mark Feinberg” was written by Bannon himself.

Don’t put it past him. TIME magazine dubbed Bannon “The Master Manipulator.” That’s a cover story which the New York Times’ Frank Bruni believes helped to alienate Donald Trump. Assuming that Trump is the insecure, short-fingered doofus painted by liberal media, Bruni thought the article made Trump so defensive at the perception that Bannon was pulling his strings, that it led Trump to sideline Bannon.

That seems to me unlikely. But Bannon is certainly crafty. He catapulted Breitbart to the top of conservative media. Then he went on to take Trump’s stalled presidential campaign and make it a winner. Would you really put it past Steve Bannon to counter the constant media hammering he’s getting by trolling himself in print?

If you believe unsourced media speculation (and who among us doesn’t?), you’re convinced that Bannon and the rest of Trump’s campaign team have deep ties to the Kremlin. And an old standby tactic of Soviet propaganda was “disinformation.” The KGB raised it to a high art in its heyday. A favorite trick: releasing truthful but embarassing information in a crass, discredited source. Then if a real newspaper ever uncovered it, no one would believe it.

Is it really so surprising that Bannon would craft an attack on himself so over the top and absurd that it discredits mainstream criticism? Even better, that he’d get it in a staid, non-partisan venue such as The Hill? (It’s not a left-wing rag. I’ve written there myself.)

So Many Random, Unsupported Charges, the Author’s Clearly Kidding

Okay, so we’ve established plausibility. Bannon might be behind this. But where’s the evidence? The piece is riddled with it.

First of all, the title. “America’s biggest enemy isn’t North Korea or Iran — it’s Steve Bannon.” Could we go a little further over the top? So a mere presidential advisor is more of a threat than a nuclear-armed totalitarian state, and a leading sponsor of international terrorism.

Not just a threat, but an “enemy.” It’s not customary in America to call one’s political opponent an “enemy” of the nation. I don’t think Pat Buchanan ever said that of Bill Clinton, or Trump of Hillary. Even “screaming Howard” Dean didn’t say it about Mitt Romney. (Though Dean claims that Ann Coulter’s “hate speech” is not protected by the First Amendment. Maybe Coulter is secretly controlling Howard Dean — but that’s a topic for a future investigation.)

The Hill piece goes on to call Bannon “a dangerous figure.” The evidence offered? “Bannon reportedly works 18-hour days behind the scenes to promote a far-right, extremist, white nationalist agenda.”

No one has ever offered a speck of credible evidence that Bannon is a white nationalist, of course. His Jacksonian nationalism is race-neutral. Trump made as much clear in his first speech to Congress.

The Stream has explored Bannon’s views via his 2014 speech at the Vatican. Bannon does resent globalist influence-peddlers and crony capitalists. But those folks come in all colors. The charge that Bannon is an anti-Semite collapsed from a total lack of evidence. Then it was drowned out by Jewish conservatives rallying to his defense. Just another strand of spaghetti, peeling quickly from the wall.

Neo-Nazis Under the Bed

The op-ed takes the white nationalist charge as proved and quickly moves on. Next it asserts that Bannon is an “enemy of the Constitution.” So by having him as an advisor Trump is violating his Presidential Oath of Office. Read for yourself:

Like every president, Trump vowed to protect and defend the Constitution, and the legitimacy of Trump’s presidency depends on fulfilling that oath. This is why his hiring of Steve Bannon has tainted his presidency from the beginning: Trump vowed to fight enemies of the Constitution, not to hire them.

Even worse, Bannon was able to “transform Trump’s finely honed ability to insult and humiliate opponents into the leading edge of a multi-pronged, strategic propaganda machine.” Dear me. Did the article just say that … Bannon helped Trump campaign more effectively, and win? We can’t have people like that running around the White House, so close to the nuclear button.

So what is the hidden agenda of this “dangerous figure” that makes him an “enemy of the Constitution”? In fact it’s such a threat that he must be fired to save the “legitimacy of Trump’s presidency”? The article exposes the ugly “facts”:

[Bannon] shaped Breitbart into a unifying platform for a spectrum of hate, ranging from Tea Party racists to far-right extremist groups like neo-Nazis, Klansmen and white nationalists. The core shared goal among this spectrum of far-right extremist groups is to build a new muscular America as a white ethnostate.

You might think that those links lead to statements by Bannon that prove the author’s point. Or at least pieces he ran at Breitbart that express such sympathies. That’s the kind of evidence, if it existed, that a sincere critic of Bannon would compile and use to damn him.

But the author of this piece does not seem to be trying to hurt Bannon. So he sends readers off on a wild goose chase. The first link goes to a random piece from Mother Jones that lists crank neo-Nazis who offered Trump unwanted endorsements which Trump ignored. (Just so, Hillary Clinton ignored the endorsement of the head of the Communist Party, USA.)

The next link goes to an article about white race fetishist Richard Spencer, who has never been published at Breitbart. He had not the slightest link either to Trump or Bannon. He’s just a small time hustler trying to hitch his racist wagon to the nearest rising star. Clearly, the piece’s author is trying to frustrate readers and exhaust them.

Bannon Has a Potty-Mouth

For the next piece of “evidence,” the piece cites some emails from Bannon. In them, Bannon spoke with profane contempt about an anti-Trump congressman, Jason Chaffetz. These establish that Bannon has a temper and a potty-mouth. But they have nothing to do with the charges in the previous paragraph. Nor are they linked to anything asserted in the next paragraph. They’re just random information, with no connection to charges of racial or ethnic bias. None. Surely the author knew this. No one is this incompetent.

I could go on and on. Instead let’s finish with this paragraph:

It’s thus predictable that, in the White House, Bannon would be determined to move the hate-right agenda forward regardless of constitutional protections, legal restrictions or democratic norms. Bannon is said to have been the architect of the unconstitutional and doubly cursed Muslim ban; he over-ruled specific legal advice within the administration in doing so; and he has shown a proclivity to use aggressive threats to silence the press and bend members of Congress to his will.

“Doubly-cursed”? Come on. That’s the kind of language used in fatwas coming from Islamist sheiks in Egypt, not academics at colleges in Pennsylvania. Again, nothing the author asserts even tries to establish that Bannon is an “enemy of the Constitution.” He’s just a political figure promoting policies liberals don’t like. Even left-wing professors consumed with hatred for Bannon, Trump, and Trump’s voters aren’t this sloppy and incoherent.

“Mark Feinberg, Ph.D.” Indeed

No, this is a nasty caricature. A right-wing parody of progressive hysteria penned by the very man it pretends to attack. This column has Bannon’s nefarious ink-stained fingerprints all over it.

If “Mark Feinberg, Ph.D.,” really exists, and really is a “research professor of Health and Human Development at Pennsylvania State University,” as The Hill’s byline asserts, then I am really the Queen of Spain.

Good one, Steve. You had some people fooled! (For more from the author of “Was the Hill Hoaxed Over Its Attack on Steve Bannon?” please click HERE)

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Protest All You Want, but Science Can’t Tell Trump How to Govern

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[Yesterday], a group of concerned citizens participated in the March for Science, a gathering on the National Mall in Washington, DC, protesting the Trump Administration’s attitudes towards science, accompanied by the assertion that science should be a motivating factor in determining public policy.

The appeal to science is one of the progressive movement’s go-to tactics in the attempt to appear reasonable and unbiased. After all, science doesn’t have a political agenda, right? As Joe Friday said, it’s “just the facts, ma’am.” And since science is synonymous with learning, inquiry, and critical thought, the only people who would reject science must be ignorant, unintelligent, and superstitious.

The trouble with this line of reasoning is that it anthropomorphizes science into something that has opinions, conclusions, and recommendations. This not only fundamentally misunderstands the concept of science, but can lead down some pretty dangerous roads if we’re not careful.

First of all, let’s get straight what science is and is not. The word “science” is only a noun for grammatical convenience. In reality, science is not a “thing,” but a set of methods that, when applied appropriately, can answer certain questions about the world in which we live. Science is a process. It is not something you can “believe in,” and it cannot “say” anything. When you hear people claiming to believe in science or that science says the Earth is warming, they are misusing the term and projecting their own beliefs onto a set of abstract principles.

And while science is excellent at answering questions when applied properly, it can also be applied improperly, or used sloppily to give answers that don’t reflect reality. This is why it’s so ridiculous to assign conclusions to science. The conclusions are really those of certain fallible humans who have used certain techniques in an effort to answer questions. You can argue that their techniques were good or bad, but you can’t just declare an entire discipline in agreement on any questions of great import.

It’s all well and good to say that science should guide public policy, but what does that really mean? In one sense, this is basically the same as saying language should guide public policy. It’s so obvious as to be meaningless. Every road and bridge, every piece of military equipment, all telecommunications were designed and constructed using scientific principles. Without science, it would be impossible to have any public policy at all.

What these protestors really mean, of course, is that they want their particular conclusions on controversial topics to be the standard by which government operates, particularly when it relates to climate science. But even if we could all agree that climate change is caused by man and is something that will cause problems, science cannot tell us what to do about it. Decisions about tradeoffs between human welfare now and in the future, prioritizing some people over others, and central planning versus individual freedom are well outside the scope of the scientific method.

I cannot help but be reminded of our most scientifically minded president, Woodrow Wilson. The only president to hold a Ph.D., Wilson was eager to use science to guide the country forward, and this eagerness caused him to embrace some things that, in hindsight, were really, really bad ideas. The American eugenics movement, supported by Wilson, held that the nation could be improved by forcibly sterilizing the unfit, the criminals and the mentally disabled and allowing only the strongest to breed. Darwin’s theory of natural selection gave scientific credence to the idea that this was possible, and so-called enlightened men went along with it. Tens of thousands of Americans were forcibly sterilized before the horrors of World War II soured us on the idea.

The point of this story is not to say that global warming alarmism is akin to eugenics, but to point out that science cannot answer the moral questions, such as “Is it okay to rob people of their liberty for the good of the species?” That is the domain of philosophy. Personally, I would rather more energy be spent on ensuring that our president has a good philosophy of government than on flogging for science that can be misused and manipulated — and that ultimately can’t answer life’s most important questions. (For more from the author of “Protest All You Want, but Science Can’t Tell Trump How to Govern” please click HERE)

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Are Our Universities Producing Spoiled Brats?

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There are plenty of fine universities in America today where the students are challenged and stretched. But all too many schools are coddling their students rather than challenging them, thereby producing graduating classes filled with lots of spoiled brats.

How bad are things on some campuses?

Not only are schools offering coloring books and crayons during finals week to help students deal with stress.

Not only are schools providing safe-spaces where students can go to escape from the conflicts of the real world.

Not only are schools issuing guidelines for campus speech, replete with the latest trigger warnings to guard against microaggressions.

All that is absurd enough.

But schools are now responding to student tantrums: If you threaten to throw a fit, we will back down, post haste. We do not want to get you upset!

In the home, parents know how to deal children who throw tantrums. They don’t give in to the screaming and crying and foot stomping. They hold their ground and they remind their child that this is the way things are going to be, like it or not. And rather than rewarding their child’s tantrum, they discipline their child for such unhealthy behavior.

In contrast, many of our campus administrators haven’t learned how to respond to student tantrums — or even to the threat of a tantrum. We can’t upset our students! And if the threatened tantrum is coming from outside the school, rather than standing up to the few bullies, the university caves in — always, it seems, in the direction of political correctness.

Anarchy Now, Failure Later

What kind of example are these schools setting for their students? And how will their grads deal with the conflicts and problems and stresses of the real world.

Take, for example, the recent uproar at Berkeley over a planned speech by Ann Coulter. Just the threat of protests was enough to shut the event down, in light of which Stanley Kurtz observed that “America’s colleges continue their descent into low-grade anarchy.”

A legal letter from the Berkeley College Republicans and the Young America’s Foundation responding to Berkeley leadership hit the nail on the head (with some fitting sarcasm, to boot). “Thank you for conceding in your letter today that UC Berkeley chooses to limit speech as a direct result of the successful misconduct of ‘some of the same groups that previously engaged in local violent action,’” Harmeet K. Dhillon wrote. “In other words, all one has to do to silence conservative speakers at UC Berkeley, is to don a mask and become violent, or place anonymous phone calls to the administration threatening such violence.”

It’s that simple. Just throw the college version of a tantrum and the college version of your parents (the school’s faculty and administration) will quickly back down.

This reminds me of an old Andy Griffith episode about a spoiled kid who always got his way – that is, until Sheriff Griffith got involved. There’s a lesson here for the entitlement generation, which also suffers from of a lack of good parenting.

As I’ve shared before, a friend of mine in the business world told me that it’s more and more common for college and university grads to have trouble on their jobs. But it’s not because they lack intelligence or the necessary academic training. Instead, it’s because they can’t take correction, having been shielded from it during much of their upbringing and education. “You may be my boss, but you’re making me feel bad, which makes you a bad person, since I’m a good person and therefore a good employee.”

Put On Your Big Boy Pants

I may be exaggerating the sentiments, but not by much. After all, kids are being raised today in a “never-lose” environment, where everyone gets rewarded and scores are not kept in sports games. By the time they get to college, the mentality that the “world revolves around my feelings” is deeply entrenched within them. This is the fault of their upbringing as much as it is their own fault, and as things begin to implode on our campuses, it’s high time for change.

What’s really unfortunate is that there are so many fine young people on our campuses and there are plenty of schools producing fine grads. But this generation is getting tarred by the bad reputation of some of its loudest representatives, and it is for them — the bad apples — that I have a simple word of advice: Grow up.

In fact this word of advice applies to some educators as well. If we will act like adults, young people will follow our lead. (For more from the author of “Are Our Universities Producing Spoiled Brats?” please click HERE)

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More Bombs, Please: Truth Bombs and Real Ones

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If President Trump is ultimately known for demonstrating something akin to a Samuel Gerard foreign policy in the Middle East, then count this Trump skeptic in.

Gerard is the fictional U.S. marshal made famous by Tommy Lee Jones in the movie “The Fugitive.” In one of the climactic scenes of the film, Gerard loses his sidearm and gets it pointed at him by the man he is chasing: a character named Dr. Richard Kimble, played by Harrison Ford.

Kimble, who is truly innocent, begins pleading his case with Gerard to that effect. To which Gerard, despite the precarious situation he is in, replies simply but emphatically: “I don’t care.”

Not because he is a man without conscience, but because his jurisdiction over Kimble is not that of a judge or a jury. His job is to bring him in and let his guilt or innocence be determined by others. In other words, Gerard was a man who didn’t believe in needlessly complicating the job before him.

Keep it simple. Perhaps especially when things are the most dangerous.

This is where Trump comes in, after dropping the “mother of all bombs” on a bunch of Islamic State jihadis in Afghanistan last week. The dropping of one such bomb does not a trend line make. However, taken within the context of recent White House visits by Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and King Abdullah of Jordan, the possibilities are encouraging.

Trump, like Gerard, may be telling us that his terms for doing his job as commander-in-chief and/or foreign diplomat are simple. They don’t involve needless parsing about whether America should trend toward isolationism or interventionism. They don’t concern themselves with whether Islam is an existential threat to humanity or a great religion hijacked by crazy people. And they most certainly don’t try to go Marie Harf-style zero-dimensional chess, with faux utopian suggestions like jobs programs that can save the world from itself.

There may be a lot of things I wish Trump cared more about, but in this case I’d be positively giddy if he didn’t give a rip about any of that. The post-9/11 world cannot be negotiated with Rube Goldberg political contrivances that make a lot of silly people feel smart but serve only to bloody the waters further.

No, we don’t need more nuance concerning the Middle East. Nuance is killing Americans, as well as innocent Muslims caught in the cross-hairs of our wishcasting. We need more Gerard.

So the message Trump sent the world last week on that front – knowingly or not – was that if you desire to be our friend in the Middle East, like al-Sisi or Abdullah, let’s be friends.

Sometimes we will agree and sometimes we won’t. But our alliance will be able to survive such ups and downs, because our larger sense of purpose for coming together will be unambiguous. We hate murderous thugs who regularly prey on the innocent like barbarians, regardless of what their motivations are.

Other than that, we need have very few conditions on what might bring us together.

But in the case of the terrorists who call the Middle East home, let it be known far and wide that talk is for chumps. We are done with Middle Eastern urban renewal. We are done with the Arab Spring, which is really the Muslim Brotherhood. We are done with excuse-making. We’re not here either to apologize for Islam or to insult it. Neither are we here to bring you faux democracy or self-actualization.

All of that is your business. Take care of your own, and we’ll do the same. Want to be our friend? We will be yours, regardless of what church you do or don’t go to or what language you speak. Settling your religious or regional differences isn’t the jurisdiction of the U.S. government, but protecting the American people and their interests is.

Therefore, if you choose the path of barbarism and threatening the American people, our terms are that we came to drop bombs. Big ones, even. Ah, the heck with that: the biggest ones. The mother of all bombs, to be precise. MOAB will bomb you back to the Moabites from whence you came if you disturb the peace.

And then this will be us over here, not giving a rip what the “global community” thinks — those who play the fiddle while barbarism flourishes. It’s been a refreshing change to see our U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, laying down ordnance on these cretins.

So: more bombs, please. Truth bombs from our diplomats and actual bombs from our commanders upon those whose “truth” is a pernicious lie. Less psychobabble, religious parsing, and utopian schemes and dreams.

Maybe, just maybe, we complicated things post-9/11? Maybe what was needed was much simpler? We will be your friend, regardless of your personal views, if you choose to be ours. But should you choose poorly, your personal view will become a dying wish that the redcoats had won in 1776.

Everything else is in the category of “that’s a you problem.” (For more from the author of “More Bombs, Please: Truth Bombs and Real Ones” please click HERE)

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The ‘Trans’ That God Really Cares About

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Hardly a day goes by where we don’t hear about “trans” — as in transgender. Whether it’s a trans child or a trans celebrity or a trans lawsuit, trans is ever before us.

But it’s not just transgender that’s in the news. We also hear about transracial and transabled and transhuman and trans-species — all of which leads me to focus on the trans that matters most to God: transgression.

I don’t mean that God doesn’t care about people who identify as transgender or who wrestle with other variations of trans. I simply mean that the “trans” that matters most to Him is the trans in transgression — as in disobedience, sin, wickedness, evil.

What Does Transgression Mean in the Biblical Sense?

What is the actual definition of transgression?

In our English Bibles, “transgression” has a very specific meaning: intentionally breaking God’s laws.
The English verb “transgress” comes from two Latin words, trans meaning “across” and gradi meaning “to go,” coming into English by way of Old French. So, to transgress is to “go across, step across,” while a transgression is the act of going across or stepping across.

In short, to transgress is “to act in violation of some law,” and you can transgress boundaries, customs, codes or guidelines.

In our English Bibles, “transgression” has a very specific meaning: intentionally breaking God’s laws. This means there is a willful nature to our actions. We know something is wrong, yet we do it anyway. We know God forbids it, but we disobey. We don’t just fall short of the mark while making our best efforts. We determine to do what is wrong. This is self-will. This is pride. This is rebellion.

Accordingly, the Hebrew word translated as “transgression” in most of our English Bibles means “an act of rebellion,” and it is related to a verb meaning “to rebel.” It’s not surprising that both the verb and the noun occur many times in the Old Testament.

In the New Testament, there is a more specialized word for “transgression,” and it carries the meaning of “stepping over” or “violating,” with specific reference to God’s law.

To explain this further, let’s say you’re driving 100 mph on a narrow, winding road that has no speed limits since it’s on private property. You are driving dangerously and foolishly and you might crash and even die, but you are not breaking any law because there is no law. But if you’re driving 100 mph on a public road with a 40 mph speed limit, not only are you driving dangerously and foolishly. You’re also breaking the law. You’re guilty of transgression.

That is the state of the human race.

The Penalty for Such Transgression is Death

We’re not just like a curious toddler, innocently touching something we shouldn’t touch. We’re like a rebellious toddler, looking Mommy in the eyes defiantly, and touching the very thing she forbade us to touch. Only we’re not toddlers. We’re adults, and we’re fully responsible for our actions — for our transgressions.

Whether or not we like it or acknowledge it, God has given us His laws, His holy standards. They tell us what is right and wrong.

The most important ones are not just written in the Bible. They are written on our hearts. And when we sin against these laws, we sin against God and we transgress. Our sin is an act of rebellion against the Lord.

Of course, it is possible to harden our hearts to the point of insensitivity — where we no longer have any sense of guilt. But that’s not how it starts. A normal man who steals from an elderly woman and then, in fear that she’ll report him to the police, beats her to death, knows that he has done wrong. A normal woman who lies to her husband and deceives her children to carry on an illicit affair knows that she has done wrong.

Even atheists have consciences (some have very sensitive consciences). It is because the God they deny gave them a conscience. And when any of us sin against those internal, divine standards, we transgress God’s laws. The penalty for such transgression is death.

That’s the bad news.

Living in the Light of the Gospel

The good news is that Jesus paid the death penalty for us. As the prophet Isaiah wrote, “he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned — every one — to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:5-6).

Our sins and transgressions are incredibly ugly — just look at the ugliness of the cross. But they have been paid in full by the Lord Himself, and if we turn to Him in true repentance and faith, He will completely forgive us.

That is what we have just celebrated during this Passover-Easter season, and that’s the trans issue that God really cares about — dealing with our transgressions.

And when our sins are forgiven through the cross, something else happens — the best “trans” of all. We experience radical transformation, going from death to life, from condemned to forgiven, from lost to saved, from unclean to holy. Our God is a God who transforms!

For my own story, “From LSD to Ph.D.,” which describes my transformation from a heroin-shooting, LSD-using, 16-year-old, Jewish, rebellious hippie rock drummer to a husband and father and grandfather and minister and professor, click here.

By God’s grace, you can have your own story too! (For more from the author of “The ‘Trans’ That God Really Cares About” please click HERE)

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6 Reasons to Be Skeptical of RINO Tax ‘Reform’

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“We must do ‘something’ on health care so we can get to tax reform. Now!”

This is the latest rage and clamor among the big donors, lobbyists, and consultants within the less intelligent arm of the Democrat Party, otherwise known as the GOP.

The entire argument is built upon a false premise and will not result in sound policy unless conservatives grab the mantle on tax policy away from the party establishment.

There are many emergency public policy issues vexing our economy, society, sovereignty, security, and the core of our ability to operate as a democratic republic: the judicial oligarchy crisis, Afghanistan, debt, the entitlement and dependency state, uncontrolled immigration, Islamic terrorism, the collapse of the civil society, and challenges to religious liberty and core family values, just to name a few. These are all either new problems or issues where the trends have dramatically worsened, have become unsustainable, and will destroy our country. The same cannot be said of the tax code, at least not in terms of trends, unsustainability, and a sense of urgency.

As much as we all hate the tax code, “tax reform” is not one of those emergency “triage” issues needed to solve an unsustainable trajectory within the next few months. If anything, relative to almost any other policy issue, the trend on taxes has gotten relatively better after the Reagan and Bush tax cuts. The political realities of what we are dealing with today will make any play for tax reform an interception rather than a touchdown. Which is why it would be better to stay away from it, at least from a “comprehensive approach,” and tackle more pressing issues, such as immigration, terrorism, and homeland security – or de-regulation of major industries, government reforms, and stripping down the judiciary from its autocratic nature.

Don’t get me wrong: A fair tax or a truly low flat tax that doesn’t punish productivity, redistribute wealth, and socially engineer the economy with asset bubbles induced by tax pork would go a long way towards reviving our economy. There would be no better cause to pursue. Except that is not on the menu. Because of the following factors, it is clear that “tax reform,” which is already ill-defined, will never result in the sort of fair, pro-growth, limited-government outcomes we are looking for and will likely make things worse.

1. Debt is the challenge of our time, not taxes: Taxes used to be the most important domestic policy issue, not only because the tax structure determined how much money stayed in the private sector, but because it was the source of nourishment for the federal leviathan. As such, by cutting taxes, we’d accomplish both the goals of economic growth and limiting the size of government. That era is over. Debt, serviced by monetary manipulation, is the new nourishment of a much greater entitlement state than Reagan ever feared. That is the challenge of our time, much like taxes were the challenge of Reagan’s time. The lesson of the Bush years was that we succeeded on the tax issue but needed to begin work on spending, entitlements, and dependency. Instead, we have gone backwards.

2. Budget scoring severely limits tax reform: Closely related to the first point – because crushing debt and entitlements are the challenge of our time, it makes balanced budgets that much harder. Mandatory spending is projected to cost $34 trillion over the next 10 years, and deficits are estimated to grow by $7.8 trillion. And that is using the CBO’s everlasting optimistic baseline for both revenues and spending. The health care crisis alone will sink this country into insolvency before we reach the end of the 10-year budget window. In addition, there is a consensus to increase military spending. And that doesn’t begin to factor in Ivankacare and the $1 trillion infrastructure porkulous plan. This is a very different era from the Bush years, when there was a projected surplus. To be clear, I’m not one of those who believes we should pass up any opportunity to cut taxes. We have already crossed the Rubicon of Greece-like debt by funding endless dependency without paying for it, so I’m not about to start applying rules of balance to giving people back their own money and growing the economy. But that is the view of conservatives. Republicans in Washington will feel constrained by the need for deficit-neutral “tax reform.” They are already looking for all sorts of corresponding tax increases and new revenue streams to offset any cuts. That will not end well.

3. Not a lot of juice to squeeze out of tax cuts for non-wealthy: The dirty little secret is that half of tax filers don’t pay, on net, federal income taxes. Thanks in large part to the success of the Reagan and Bush tax cuts (plus the Obama tax increases on the wealthy), lower income and lower-middle income earners don’t incur a net positive tax liability. The bottom two brackets have already been eliminated. By definition, any tax cut is going to be enjoyed primarily by the wealthy because they are the ones who pay the taxes.

According to the Tax Foundation, in 2014, the top 1 percent paid 39.5 percent of all federal income taxes, even though they earned just 20 percent of the income pie. The top 5 percent paid 60 percent of the income taxes, even though they earned just 36 percent of the income. The bottom 50 percent, on the other hand, paid just 2.75 percent of the income taxes, even though they earned 11 percent of the income pie. The point is that the income tax is already more progressive than it’s ever been. Yet Republicans have no ability or desire to properly articulate this. Inevitably, they are accused of “cutting taxes for the wealthy.” As such, every time they pick up the “tax reform” ball, they wind up throwing even more refundable tax credits at the bottom and raising taxes, on net, for those at the top.

There is simply not a lot that can be done in terms of a tax cut plan that won’t be perceived as tax cuts for the rich. Not that there is anything wrong with that. This is why it would be wise for Republicans to focus on the hidden tax of regulations, such as the ethanol mandate and many other pernicious interventions, which collectively cost all families $15,000 a year. Until we abolish the 16th Amendment through an Article V convention, I just don’t see any political appetite from this party to truly flatten out the tax code. A true flat tax (even with an exception of the first $30,000) will result in a tax increase on many people. Personally, I’m fine with a low flat tax raising just enough revenue to fund the constitutional aspects of the federal government and with making sure that such a tax would be paid by everyone. But politically speaking, Republicans will never let that happen.

4. Liberals are writing the tax plan: The main players behind the administration’s tax plan are Gary Cohen, Steven Mnuchin, and Wilbur Ross – not a single Republican among them. This will not end well.

5. Buying off Democrats with porkulous: The administration has already hinted that it intends to work to garner Democrat votes rather than push reforms to the existing practice of the filibuster in the Senate. Some prominent supply-siders are already advocating for a trade of tax cuts for more infrastructure spending. As we’ve noted before, transportation spending should be devolved to the states instead of purveying the wasteful federal transportation sinkhole. It’s not worth the trade.

6. Health care must be fixed first: One of the most important reforms that can be made to the tax code is equalizing the treatment of health insurance plans purchased by the individual with employer-provided plans. This will help tackle “the original sin” of health care and get more people to cost-continuously purchase their own plans rather than rely on the over-utilized employer system. The problem is that until and unless Obamacare is repealed, there is no individual market left to which people can take their tax deduction and purchase a cheap plan. Given that Republicans don’t plan to repeal Obamacare – just simply “pass a health care bill” – there is no point in fixing the tax distortion on health insurance.

The path forward

The best way to preempt a bad tax plan is for conservative members of Congress to introduce Trump’s campaign tax plan as a bill and approach the president with it in the hopes of making this plan the default position. His plan is actually really good and politically defensible because it is not flat (which is nearly impossible to achieve), cuts everyone’s taxes, but lowers marginal rates significantly. Recently, the Trump administration has disavowed this plan, but conservatives should not let the president violate another campaign pledge.

However, even such a plan that we agree with will take months to iron out the details and build the proper case for it publicly. If the president doesn’t understand that and wants a quick “victory,” the best course of action is to push for an immediate reduction of the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent without getting rid of any deductions (which would disrupt business models and take longer to work out). This will inject an immediate pro-growth shot into the economy at a time when it badly needs a recovery.

A modest reduction in corporate taxes is a proposition even many Democrats are on record as supporting. This has been a consensus issue, it will not disrupt the market, and it will not lose much revenue. Corporate taxes don’t bring in that much revenue to begin with. This can all be done in the short run while making the case for Trump’s original plan on individual taxes over the next few months.

When approaching the tax issue, Republicans cannot make the same mistake they did with the health care bill. We can’t assume “tax reform” is a policy punchline we all agree with, the same way “repealing Obamacare” clearly didn’t mean what it denoted. Both the broad principles and philosophy behind the effort as well as the details of the specific proposal matter. In the case of health care, Republicans adopted the Democrat philosophy, and the details of their original bill codified Obamacare instead of repealing it. The same will hold true for taxes unless conservatives take a proactive approach to stave off bad policy. (For more from the author of “6 Reasons to Be Skeptical of RINO Tax ‘Reform'” please click HERE)

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Never Forget: Hero Cop Who Blew Whistle on OKC Bombing Did NOT Commit Suicide

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Instead of being treated as the hero he truly was, Sgt. Terrance Yeakey was silenced by his own government in an effort to keep him from exposing their complicity in one of the largest mass murders in American history – which senselessly ended the lives of 168 people, including 19 children.

According to his widow, instead of being showered with accolades by the US government for his heroism, Yeakey was killed, with his death being framed to look like a suicide (although a very poorly staged one) only days before receiving the police department’s Medal of Valor for his heroic rescue efforts on day of the Oklahoma City bombing.

On May 11, 1996, only days after Yeakey’s death, the New York Times ran a story with the headline – ‘A Policeman Who Rescued 4 in Bombing Kills Himself’ – but the bold assertion — that hero cop Sgt. Terrance Yeakey killed himself — couldn’t be further from the truth.

While the NY Times article claimed that Yeakey committed suicide because he was living in such emotional pain from not being able to do more to help the people injured in the bombing, and that he was suffering from intense survivor guilt which he was unable to manage, this information has been repeatedly refuted by Yeakey’s family.

In an effort to further muddy the waters surrounding his death, the Times story went on to claim:

The police are investigating a report that Sergeant Yeakey had violated an order barring him from going near his former wife, said Capt. Bill Citty, a spokesman. Sergeant Yeakey also had a similar order against her, Captain Citty said. Efforts to locate her today were unsuccessful.

Let’s set the record straight.

Sgt. Yeakey’s body was found in a field in El Reno, OK, over a mile away from his abandoned vehicle. There was an extremely large amount of blood found in his vehicle, he had been bound, had rope burn on his neck, ligature marks on his wrists, numerous deep cuts, likely tortured and killed execution-style with a single bullet that entered his right temple at a 45-degree angle. To top it off, no gun was found at the scene of his death — until an FBI agent showed up and suspiciously found a gun in an already thoroughly searched area within 5 minutes of being there.

Sgt. Terrance Yeakey was a 7-year veteran of the Oklahoma City PD, one of the first on the scene of the OKC bombing at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Yeakey became known as a hero after saving the lives of eight people on the morning of April 19, 1995. However, he was uncomfortable being looked at as a hero and didn’t consider himself one, only as a man doing his job.

Far from being suicidal, Yeakey was in the process of achieving some major life goals. He was scheduled for a final interview for a job with the FBI in Irving, TX, and with hopes of being hired to work for the FBI in Dallas. In direct contradiction to the Times‘ nebulous reporting about the Yeakey’s potential relationship trouble, the couple had recently reconciled and had discussed getting remarried.

The real story behind Yeakey’s death, as attested to by his ex-wife, Tonia Yeakey, is that he witnessed things during his response to the bombing which did not agree with the ‘official version’ of events being forwarded by law enforcement and national media at that time and began collecting evidence to support his contentions.

In an interview on AM1300 KAKC, in 1998, Tonia Yeakey clearly exposes the reality underpinning the death of Terrance Yeakey. The extremely important interview with Tonia Yeakey can be heard in the video below — and begins at the 8-minute mark (please watch):

Although no one is sure exactly what Yeakey witnessed, or what exact information he had collected, according to friends and family, he was being intimidated by federal authorities due to his pursuit of the truth and the information in his possession. Additionally, forces within the OCPD were trying to pressure him into signing off on a version of events from the morning of the bombing to which Terry was resistant to do, as he wanted his report to reflect the truth as he witnessed it, according to his ex-wife Tonia.

Essentially, Yeakey was under constant pressure for his refusal to go along with official versions of events during and after the OKC bombing; and because of his refusal to change his story about what he saw that fateful day, he was the target of horrific persecution from his brothers in law enforcement.

Yeakey had compiled his findings in a storage facility outside of El Reno, Oklahoma. Adding weight to the theory that he was “suicided” to keep him quiet, his last known words were,

As soon as I shake these Feds that are following me, I’ll be back and we’ll go to dinner.

Terrance Yeakey was never heard from again.

Immediately upon being notified of Terrance Yeakey’s death, his family insisted that Yeakey had not killed himself — and to this day they maintain that he was murdered and DID NOT commit suicide.

The reality is that there was a high-level federal operation called PATCON, which infiltrated the “patriot movement” across the US, during the Clinton administration, with informants and provocateurs that are likely connected in some way to the OKC bombing. It’s more than probable that Yeakey’s killing was carried out in an effort to cover up the extent to which federal assets, working under PATCON (i.e. informants/provocateurs/infiltrators), were involved in the OKC bombing plot, thus shielding the federal government from potential blowback.

Please watch the extremely informative and startling video below about Sgt. Terrance Yeakey and learn in more detail about the events that surrounded Terry’s death.

Please share this story to help expose this vast coverup — and the murder of a real American hero! (For more from the author of “Never Forget: Hero Cop Who Blew Whistle on OKC Bombing Did NOT Commit Suicide” please click HERE)

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