Memo to Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar

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Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar’s screeching about birth control and rights, Christians and the Taliban has sunk to depths of hysterical dopiness previously uncharted.

Once again, they gathered around their table of gab last week to smear those who don’t want to be forced to pay for someone else’s contraception. They sounded the alarm over the impending calamity about to fall on American women who would be deprived of their God-given right to all manner of contraception at no cost to them. The sky is falling! Women are simply doomed! And it’s all because of mean-spirited, uptight, religious fanatics — such as the Little Sisters of the Poor — who want to impose their beliefs on everyone and force every woman to live by their religious rules.

“How are these people any different than the Taliban?” they asked, for the umpteenth time, with total exasperation.

Well, Whoopi and Joy, let me help you with a few, obvious distinctions.

First, let’s start with your beloved birth control. It’s not medicine, because fertility is not a disease. Fertility isn’t a malfunction of any bodily system, but in fact a healthy and proper function. Medicine treats disease.

I wasn’t aware that diabetics received their insulin free of charge, or that people with heart disease received their medication free of charge, or that cancer patients received their life-saving treatments free of charge. If actual medicine that treats actual diseases and actually keeps people alive is not given out for free, why in the world should the Pill, the patch, or the IUD be thrown at women like confetti? Women do not deserve free contraception just because some want it.

Let’s also remember that the Pill is widely available for about $10 bucks a month, and has been for at least a decade now. Yeah, it’s an outrageous expense! (And if even ten dollars is just too much, I can tell you how to avoid pregnancy for free.)

No one is taking away women’s contraception, or telling any woman she can’t use it if she wants to. The folks doing the imposing here are you. You want to impose the demand of free contraception on every individual and employer, and those who dare to object to your unreasonable demand are branded misogynist, religious fanatics who want to keep women down. (Oh, yawn.)

Now, onto this crazy obsession you have with conflating Christians with the Taliban. I’m Catholic, so I’ll speak for my own Church — especially since I know you have a special contempt for the Catholic Church. Let’s do an easy comparison to start with.

The Catholic Church has been educating girls all over the world for many, many, many centuries now.

When girls and women were condemned to a life of illiteracy and ignorance by the authorities of the time, the Church came in and upheld their dignity and worth and educated them. The Church is still doing that all over the world today.

In contrast, the Taliban forbids girls to be educated. Girls who desire an education risk execution if caught. Perhaps you remember Malala Yousafzai?

The Catholic Church not only does not sanction, but expressly forbids, child marriage, and any manner of forced marriage. No marriage exists unless the man and woman both enter into it with total, free assent.

In contrast, the Taliban has no such concern for age or freedom. Young girls are often forced into marriage.

Women under the Taliban cannot be out in public without a blood relative. They cannot have contact with any males other than their husband or blood relatives. They are covered from head to toe in the burqa.

They cannot speak loudly in public. They must not be visible from the streets, so the windows of their houses must be painted or covered.

There is no Catholic sanction for girls to be mutilated, tortured, shot, burned with acid, sold into slavery, raped under the guise of marriage, held captive in their homes, or regarded as property.

In contrast, a young girl named Bibi Aisha tried to flee a forced marriage, and when she was caught, the Taliban cut off her nose and ears to make an example out of her, lest other young girls get any ideas.

With all of these facts as foundation, you still want to insist that not wanting to be forced to pay for someone else’s birth control is the equivalent of the Taliban? If so, no one should take anything you say seriously.

You preach “tolerance” while practicing intolerance. You chat up rights while wanting to violate the rights of others. You claim, “Just let me do what I need to do and leave me alone” even as you demand that Catholic nuns who spend their lives caring for the poor and outcast fork over the money for your abortion and birth control pills. Worst of all, you loathe any suggestion that one’s sexual activities really are one’s own responsibility.

But here’s the truth: No one owes you or anyone else free contraception. Buy your own Pills and devices if you can’t live without them. (For more from the author of “Memo to Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar” please click HERE)

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This Mystery Virus Is Being Compared to One of the World’s Worst Illnesses

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A year and a half ago “Full Measure” first reported on a baffling new illness responsible for nightmarish scenarios: a child wakes up and his legs don’t move. Soon, he’s paralyzed from the neck down.

Since then, the number of cases has grown. Yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it still has no clue what’s causing it—and won’t say much else. One thing we know … the disease mimics one of the world’s most feared illnesses: polio. Today, we continue our investigation into the mysterious outbreak that’s left hundreds of American children suddenly frozen.

The following is Sharyl Attkisson’s “Full Measure” report on this issue.

Christopher Roberts, parent: Carter probably developed the flu-like symptoms on a Saturday morning and within 24 hours of that on Sunday morning we found him on the floor and no mobility on his right side. He was unable to move and he was faintly asking for help.

Carter Roberts was just 3 when he was hit by sudden paralysis that looked just like polio. We first caught up with father, Chris, last year at Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, where Carter was hospitalized for months.

Roberts: Last night he cried for 25 minutes. Just uncontrollably. He’s in, I think, regular and constant pain. Although he is immobile, he can definitely feel everything all over his body. But then this morning we’ve had a really good day.

CDC gave the mysterious paralysis a new name: acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM. Myelitis is inflammation of the spinal cord. Doctors told Hayden Werdal of Bremerton, Washington, that he just had a sinus infection—but in 10 days he was paralyzed from the neck down. Mandy Baker was a musical honor student about to start her sophomore year of high school and went from feeling fine to being paralyzed in a single day. Her illness ran up a $3 million hospital bill and treatments not covered by insurance.

As cases piled up in fall of 2014, doctors theorized they were connected to a rare outbreak of a virus called enterovirus, or EV-D68. Unusually high numbers of kids were showing up at ERs with severe breathing problems from EV-D68. Some ended up paralyzed. Within five months, there were more than a thousand (1,153) severe cases of EV-D68 in 49 states, and at least 14 deaths. And 120 known cases of AFM paralysis in 34 states, mostly young children.

The CDC—normally quick to raise alarms and speak on TV when there’s any threat of infectious disease—wasn’t saying much at all this time. They declined our repeated interview requests and instead pointed me to this video that it provided WebMD.

Brian Rha, medical epidemiologist, CDC: Infants, children, and teenagers are more likely to become infected with enteroviruses and become ill.

The video offered little insight. I requested information under the Freedom of Information Act. It took CDC more than a year and a half to begin turning over documents. Internal emails show CDC investigated what could be triggering the AFM paralysis in some kids, including West Nile Virus, insecticides, international travel, and vaccines—particularly oral polio vaccine.

Officials say they still can’t pinpoint the origin. There was one physician in the email exchanges who treated dozens of the paralyzed children—and seemed to be looking at the bigger picture.

Dr. Benjamin Greenberg wondered if we were seeing the 21st-century version of polio … if it is “in the early stages of evolution,” he urged CDC, “we can get ahead of it.”

I recently tracked down Greenberg at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas.

Sharyl Attkisson: What’s the difference between what we’re seeing with these children and polio?

Benjamin Greenberg: Not much—which is interesting.

Greenberg filled in a lot of blanks on the mysterious afflictions … where the CDC would not.

Attkisson: Is it accurate to say this is less contagious than polio?

Greenberg: We don’t know yet. Part of what we’re lacking is the ability to go through a population, and determine who has been exposed to this virus and who hasn’t. We looked at the papers written 100 years ago describing cases of poliomyelitis in the U.S., and we talked to colleagues from around the world who are actually part of teams who treat polio cases. And to all of our surprises, basically what we were seeing was a polio-like illness but not from the polio virus.

Attkisson: Millions of people had been infected with this EV-D68, but a relatively few actually come down with the paralysis. Do we have any idea why those certain children get paralyzed?

Greenberg: We don’t know that yet, but it’s worth noting that that phenomenon, that the same virus can infect thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of people with only a few individuals having catastrophic events from the virus is true for almost every virus in human biology.

At its worst, polio killed 3,000 (3,145) and paralyzed 21,000 Americans (21,269) in a single year back in 1952. In 2014, there were 120 known cases of AFM paralysis in the U.S. In 2015, there were just 21. But last year, the number surged to 138. There have been five confirmed cases so far this year.

Attkisson: Did polio have a pathology that was anything similar to what you’re seeing now?

Greenberg: So if we look at the history of polio, at least in the United States, it started with small outbreaks, and then would disappear for years, and then re-emerge.

Attkisson: Clearly, it’s not a one-time event.

Greenberg: Clearly, as we saw in this last year, we see—we had a spike in cases again. There were about 120 reported in 2014; relative to—monitoring that started in August. In 2016, what we saw is over 130, maybe over 140, cases. And so we know that this virus has the capability, if it is the cause, to come back, and to cause damage.

With CDC saying so little publicly, families struck by the horrible illness have found each other on Facebook. Erin Olivera runs a parent support group. In 2012, she says she noticed her 2-year-old son Lucian crawling oddly; soon he could barely move. In Albany, Oregon, McKenzie Anderson went from having a cold to being paralyzed from the neck down and on a ventilator in 12 days. There’s Sadie Briggs in Oklahoma City, Laura Carton of Oswego, Illinois, and Adrian Dittmar of Seaman, Ohio.

And although CDC told me it has “not received any reports of death in an AFM case…”

The family of 14-year-old Isaac Prestridge of Louisiana says the CDC confirmed to the coroner that AFM was the cause of their son’s death. He got sick last October, complaining of a “weird feeling in his knees,” and died two days later.

Attkisson: Some of these kids die?

Greenberg: “They do. It is—it is a very rare event—to have death related to acute flaccid myelitis; unfortunately, it has happened.”

Attkisson: As a medical outsider, I look and I say more kids have been hurt seriously with this than measles, Ebola, and Zika combined. But you don’t hear anything about it. There’s no emergency funding requests, CDC is not making big public pronouncements. How do you explain that?

Greenberg: So there are some scientist reasons to have priorities around Ebola, measles, and Zika that are very valid. Enterovirus D68 is a common virus with a low rate of causing—significant paralysis or conditions that lead to disability. And so the decisions have been made that, while it is a problem, while it is a concern, it may not garner the level of need that some other public health issues do.

Attkisson: Do you agree with that?

Greenberg: I wish we had the resources to do it all.

Greenberg says there’s reason to hope that AFM isn’t the beginning of another polio. So far, he says, the rate of paralysis after infection seems lower.

Greenberg: The No. 1 question we get asked is about rehabilitation and recovery. Will children get better after the event?

Attkisson: And what’s the answer?

Greenberg: They do. It’s very slow, and it takes a lot of work. When we stay aggressive and we push and we stay with a routine, we’re seeing slowly but surely improvements occur.

Today, Carter is out of the hospital and back at home in Richmond, Virginia. There’s been no improvement in his condition, but he’s considered “stable.”

Roberts: I guess long-term prognosis has varied greatly between the different patients to this point. What I’ve seen, what I’ve read and heard, there have only been two children who have recovered from this, but even then not fully because they’re still demonstrating muscular weaknesses.

Believe it or not, AFM paralysis isn’t a “reportable disease” like West Nile Virus or measles … meaning doctors aren’t required to report cases. Greenberg thinks that should change … in fact, he advocates a broadened surveillance system to track all kinds of sudden paralysis to better find answers as to what’s causing them. (For more from the author of “This Mystery Virus Is Being Compared to One of the World’s Worst Illnesses” please click HERE)

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‘The President Made It Sound Like…’ Leaked Documents Blow a Hole in Obama’s Russia Narrative

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Leaked NSA documents revealing that Russia engaged in election-related hacking efforts just days before the election directly contradict what former President Barack Obama told the American public.

Speaking at a year-end news conference in December, Obama told the public that Russian interference in the election ceased after he told Russian President Vladimir Putin to “cut it out” in early September. Russia’s cyberattacks stopped after warnings of “serious consequences” if they continued, Obama said.

“What I was concerned about in particular was making sure [the DNC hack] wasn’t compounded by potential hacking that could hamper vote counting, affect the actual election process itself,” Obama said. “So in early September when I saw President Putin in China, I felt that the most effective way to ensure that that didn’t happen was to talk to him directly and tell him to cut it out and there were going to be serious consequences if he didn’t. And in fact we did not see further tampering of the election process.”

“But the leaks through WikiLeaks had already occurred,” Obama said, indicating that any further election interference was the result of emails released by WikiLeaks in the days and weeks leading up to the election.

“The president made it sound like that worked,” The New York Times reported at the time, noting Obama’s claim that “we did not see further tampering of the election process.” (Read more from “‘The President Made It Sound Like…’ Leaked Documents Blow a Hole in Obama’s Russia Narrative” HERE)

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No, a KS GOP Rep. Did Not Threaten Colleague With Firearms

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This may be the dumbest story you read about today, but it’s gaining traction with the Left, so here we go …

A conservative state lawmaker in Kansas, Rep. John Whitmer, R, is under fire for tweeting a joke that – in context – is completely anodyne.

Kansas lawmakers voted Thursday on a bill that would exempt state mental hospitals, community mental health centers, and the University of Kansas Health System from a concealed carry law passed in 2013, establishing these places as gun-free zones.

Before voting on the bill, for reasons that are unclear, Republican lawmaker Rep. Stephanie Clayton tweeted that she was “so scared” about the upcoming vote.

Clayton, a liberal Republican, voted in favor of creating the gun-free zones. Conservative lawmakers in Kansas had ridiculed the legislation with the slogan “a sticker doesn’t make you safe,” a reference to the inability of a gun-free zone sticker to make a place safe from criminals with firearms.

Rep. Clayton does not care for that argument.

So Rep. Whitmer decided to have some fun with Clayton and tweeted a joke.

See, it’s funny because real conservatives understand that Americans’ constitutional right to bear arms makes us safer. So, if Clayton feels unsafe, there’s no need to worry since 25 state lawmakers are packing on the floor of the House, making the area safe from harm.

And the liberal media is running with the “Republican lawmaker threatens colleague with guns before vote” story, and Whitmer was pressured into deleting his tweet.

Per The Daily Kos, emphasis mine:

The tweet, aimed at a fellow legislator was in response to an ongoing debate regarding notifications on the doors abut gun free zones. The message was also a lot more profound: a man physically larger than a female legislator reminding her he and others are carrying a gun, and she’s on what they view as the wrong side of a piece of legislation. Talk about intimidation.

Raw Story picked up the Daily Kos’ version of events.

A Republican state representative in Kansas raised some eyebrows on Thursday when he reminded one of his Republican colleagues that he was carrying a gun on him just before she was set to vote on a bill that would have allowed state psychiatric hospitals to bar people from carrying guns inside hospital grounds.

And now fellow lawmakers are calling for Whitmer to be sanctioned for a joke. Not a threat. A joke.

The Daily Kos and Raw Story won’t be the last liberal outlets to run with the “gun-toting conservative threatens fellow lawmaker before vote” lie. But now you know the context of this story and can expose this fake news. (For more from the author of “No, a KS GOP Rep. Did Not Threaten Colleague With Firearms” please click HERE)

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Obama Goes Full Jackass in Desperate Attempt to Stay Relevant

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Barack Obama just couldn’t help himself. As President Donald Trump took steps to withdraw from the Paris climate accords, undoing one of Obama’s most egregious executive overreaches, the former president released a statement criticizing Trump.

“The nations that remain in the Paris Agreement will be the nations that reap the benefits in jobs and industries created,” Obama said. “But even in the absence of American leadership; even as this Administration joins a small handful of nations that reject the future; I’m confident that our states, cities, and businesses will step up and do even more to lead the way …”

“The absence of American leadership”? Really, Mr. Obama?

Let’s talk about the absence of American leadership the voters just freed themselves from after eight years of Obama’s pathetic presidency.

Under President Obama’s absent economic leadership, the U.S. economy stalled at an anemic 1.9 percent growth rate from which the economy finally seems to be emerging under President Trump.

Under President Obama’s absent health care leadership, premiums skyrocketed because Obamacare’s market-distorting policies saw favorable health insurance plans disappear from countless American workers and families.

Under President Obama’s absent leadership abroad, America’s enemies were emboldened. The Middle East became more dangerous with the rise of ISIS. Iran is in open violation of the nuclear deal Obama negotiated. Between apology tours, crossed red lines, and the hollowing out of the American military, Obama’s foreign policy was an unmitigated disaster.

What successes can Obama claim? In his statement Thursday, the former president cites his past negotiations on the Paris accord as “principled American leadership.” His negotiations would have bound America to a jobs-killing, economy-constraining, wealth-redistributing deal — all without the consent of Congress.

President Trump provided real American leadership Thursday by putting the good of American citizens above the demands of Big Business and foreign bureaucrats. The American people don’t need Obama inserting himself into Trump’s successes to undermine the current, relevant president with the former, irrelevant president’s foolish left-wing talking points. (For more from the author of “Obama Goes Full Jackass in Desperate Attempt to Stay Relevant” please click HERE)

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Obscene Immigration Policy Gets Cop Fired for Enforcing the Law

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A police officer in Minnesota has been fired after simply asking a question about a suspect’s legal status. But were the policies that led to his termination really in the best interests of the people he was trying to protect and serve?

Here’s how it went down, according to Fox, earlier this month. An officer with the Minnesota Transit Police confronted a man suspected of fare dodging on a Minneapolis commuter train:

After the exchange with the transit officer, the passenger, Ariel Vences-Lopez, 23, was arrested for fare evasion and was taken to the Hennepin County jail in Minneapolis. He was eventually placed on a detainer for immigration violations, the Star Tribune reported.

The incident occurred May 14 and was captured on cellphone video. The officer is seen asking Vences-Lopez for a government-issued ID after an apparent ticket dispute. When Vences-Lopez shook his head, the officer asks: “Are you here illegally?”

A now-viral video captured by a bystander shows a portion of the incident, after which Vences-Lopez was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and is now scheduled for deportation to Mexico.

Now, that officer is out of a job, according to a statement from the Metro Transit Police Department, as the city has barred law enforcement officers from asking about immigration status since 2003.

A lengthy Facebook explains that, since the incident, the department’s policy was subsequently updated to “ensure equal enforcement of the law and equal service to all persons regardless of their immigration status” and states that the agency is “working to reestablish the trust that was broken by this isolated incident.”

But wouldn’t equal application of the law include enforcing the law on people whose immigration status is outside that law? David Ray, communications director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, says so.

“It’s in the best interest of the American people if state and local cops and federal immigration officials can work in tandem to help control illegal immigration,” he tells CR. And at the end of the day, what’s standing in the way of the American people’s best interests are policies like that in Minneapolis, which, Ray says, is “wrong-headed and undermines public safety.”

While his organization does not comment on specific cases, “as it’s likely all of the facts have yet to come out,” the officer clearly did the people of Minneapolis a big favor by taking steps to identify an illegal alien who, for reasons unknown to us, was immediately flagged for removal by ICE. (For more from the author of “Obscene Immigration Policy Gets Cop Fired for Enforcing the Law” please click HERE)

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City: You Can’t Sell Blueberries Unless You Affirm Gay Marriage

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. . .This year city officials told the devout Catholic family [Tennes family] that their blueberries and sweet corn were not welcome at the farmer’s market — and neither were they.

Last year, someone posted a message on Country Mill’s Facebook page inquiring about whether they hosted same-sex weddings at the farm. Tennes told the individual they did not permit same-sex marriages on the farm because of the family’s Catholic belief that marriage is a sacramental union between one man and one woman.

City officials later discovered the Facebook posting and began immediate action to remove Country Mill from the Farmer’s Market — alleging the family had violated the city’s discrimination ordinance.

“It was brought to our attention that The Country Mill’s general business practices do not comply with East Lansing’s Civil Rights ordinances and public policy against discrimination as set forth in Chapter 22 of the City Code and outlined in the 2017 Market Vendor Guidelines, as such, The Country Mill’s presence as a vendor his prohibited by the City’s Farmer’s Market Vendor Guidelines,” read a letter the city sent to the family.

It also did not seem to matter to city leaders that the farm is located 22 miles outside the city limits — and had absolutely nothing to do with the business of selling blueberries at the farmer’s market. (Read more from “City: You Can’t Sell Blueberries Unless You Affirm Gay Marriage” HERE)

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4 Reasons Trump Was Right to Pull out of the Paris Agreement

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President Donald Trump has fulfilled a key campaign pledge, announcing that the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.

The Paris Agreement, which committed the U.S. to drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions, was a truly bad deal—bad for American taxpayers, American energy companies, and every single American who depends on affordable, reliable energy.

It was also bad for the countries that remain in the agreement. Here are four reasons Trump was right to withdraw.

1. The Paris Agreement was costly and ineffective.

The Paris Agreement is highly costly and would do close to nil to address climate change.

If carried out, the energy regulations agreed to in Paris by the Obama administration would destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs, harm American manufacturing, and destroy $2.5 trillion in gross domestic product by the year 2035.

In withdrawing from the agreement, Trump removed a massive barrier to achieving the 3 percent economic growth rates America is accustomed to.

Simply rolling back the Paris regulations isn’t enough. The Paris Agreement would have extended long beyond the Trump administration, so remaining in the agreement would have kept the U.S. subject to its terms.

Those terms require countries to update their commitments every five years to make them more ambitious, starting in 2020. Staying in the agreement would have prevented the U.S. from backsliding or even maintain the Obama administration’s initial commitment of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent.

The Obama administration made clear in its commitment that these cuts were only incremental, leading up to an eventual 80 percent cut in the future.

In terms of climate benefits produced by Paris, there are practically none.

Even if every country met its commitments—a big “if” considering China has already underreported its carbon dioxide emissions, and there are no repercussions for failing to meet the pledges—the changes in the earth’s temperature would be almost undetectable.

2. The agreement wasted taxpayer money.

In climate negotiations leading up to the Paris conference, participants called for a Green Climate Fund that would collect $100 billion per year by 2020.

The goal of this fund would be to subsidize green energy and pay for other climate adaptation and mitigation programs in poorer nations—and to get buy-in (literally) from those poorer nations for the final Paris Agreement.

The Obama administration ended up shipping $1 billion in taxpayer dollars to this fund without authorization from Congress.

Some of the top recipients of these government-funded climate programs have in the past been some of the most corrupt, which means corrupt governments collect the funds, not those who actually need it.

No amount of transparency negotiated in the Paris Agreement is going to change this.

Free enterprise, the rule of law, and private property are the key ingredients for prosperity. These are the principles that actually will help people in developing countries prepare for and cope with a changing climate and natural disasters, whether or not they are caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

3. Withdrawal is a demonstration of leadership.

The media is making a big to-do about the fact that the only countries not participating in the Paris Agreement are Syria and Nicaragua.

But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a bad deal. Misery loves company, including North Korea and Iran, who are signatories of the deal.

Some have argued that it is an embarrassment for the U.S. to cede leadership on global warming to countries like China. But to draw a moral equivalency between the U.S. and China on this issue is absurd.

China has serious air quality issues (not from carbon dioxide), and Beijing has repeatedly falsified its coal consumption and air monitoring data, even as it participated in the Paris Agreement. There is no environmental comparison between the U.S. and China.

Other countries have a multitude of security, economic, and diplomatic reasons to work with America to address issues of mutual concern. Withdrawal from the agreement will not change that.

Certainly, withdrawing from the Paris Agreement will be met with consternation from foreign leaders, as was the case when the U.S. withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol.

However, it could very well help future negotiations if other governments know that the U.S. is willing and able to resist diplomatic pressure in order to protect American interests.

4. Withdrawal is good for American energy competitiveness.

Some proponents of the Paris Agreement are saying that withdrawing presents a missed opportunity for energy companies. Others are saying that it doesn’t matter what Trump does because the momentum of green energy is too strong.

Neither argument is a compelling case for remaining in the agreement.

Whether it is conventional fuel companies or renewable ones, the best way for American energy companies to be competitive is to be innovative and competitive in the marketplace, not build their business models around international agreements.

There is nothing about leaving the agreement that prevents Americans from continuing to invest in new energy technologies.

The market for energy is $6 trillion and projected to grow by a third by 2040. Roughly 1.3 billion people do not yet have access to electricity, let alone reliable, affordable energy.

That’s a big market incentive for the private sector to pursue the next energy technology without the aid of taxpayer money.

The U.S. federal government and the international community should stop using other peoples’ money to subsidize energy technologies and while regulating affordable, reliable energy sources out of existence.

The Paris Agreement was the open door for future U.S. administrations to regulate and spend hundreds of millions of dollars on international climate programs, just as the Obama administration did without any input from Congress.

Now, that door has thankfully been shut. (For more from the author of “4 Reasons Trump Was Right to Pull out of the Paris Agreement” please click HERE)

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Where Is the Special Prosecutor for Hillary and Barack?

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Every time I think we have plumbed the depths of stupidity among congressional Republicans, someone comes along to prove that we are so far from the bottom that we can’t even see it.

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), supposedly an up-and-coming conservative “star” in the U.S. Senate, proudly announced that the Senate Intelligence Committee had voted to give itself “blanket authority to issue subpoenas” regarding the investigation into Russian election meddling. This means the Democrats have been granted unrestricted license to go after President Trump despite what is obviously a partisan witch hunt.

How could Republicans be so stupid? We have just barely survived eight years of unrestrained criminality by Obama, two successive attorneys general –Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch– who turned the Justice Department into an extremist partisan attack machine that stood the rule of law on its head. We also endured the shenanigans of serial criminal co-conspirator, Hillary Clinton, who gave Russia a 20 percent stake in U.S. weapons-grade uranium production and auctioned off her influence as secretary of state to the highest bidder.

Unlike the Trump/Russia fantasy, these are not mere allegations. There is proof of their criminality, real proof. Not just hearsay, not just anonymous sources “leaking” documents that no one has seen, and stories whose sources they won’t publicly disclose.

Judicial Watch’s Director of Investigations, Chris Farrell, recently posted a YouTube video that describes the unprecedented depth of this documented criminality by the Obama administration as reported on by the website Circa.

A recently declassified top secret court document from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court proves it. This is the court that decides what federal agencies can and cannot do in carrying out surveillance activities against foreigners when U.S. citizens are involved. The court lays out the issue:

On October 24, 2016, the government orally apprised the Court of significant non-compliance with the NSA’s minimization procedures involving queries of data acquired under Section 702 [of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ] using U.S. person identifiers.

In plain English, this refers to the Obama administration’s illegal preoccupation with surveillance of U.S. citizens. The court goes on:

Since 2011, NSA’s minimization procedures have prohibited use of U.S.-person identifiers to query the results of upstream Internet collections under Section 702. The Oct. 26, 2016 notice informed the court that NSA analysts had been conducting such queries in violation of that prohibition, with much greater frequency than had been previously disclosed to the Court.

In other words, the Obama administration had been illegally identifying Americans and hiding the extent of its surveillance against them. At the Oct. 26 hearing, the court found that “the problem was widespread during all periods under review,” adding these activities present “a very serious Fourth Amendment issue.”

The Circa article asserts, “the admitted violations undercut one of the primary defenses that the intelligence community and Obama officials have used in recent weeks to justify their snooping into incidental NSA intercepts about Americans.”

Farrell states that the Obama administration “has abused and misused the National Security Agency in a way no one ever even pondered before. This is the sort of stuff that would make Richard Nixon blush. It is beyond the pale. It’s like nothing else we’ve ever seen.”

Rand Paul was quoted in the Circa article, saying, “If we determine this to be true, this is an enormous abuse of power. This will dwarf all other stories… There are hundreds and hundreds of people.”

The ACLU weighed in, but blamed it all on the intelligence agencies without mentioning the Obama administration’s abuses. As noted by Circa, “newly disclosed violations are some of the most serious to ever be documented and strongly call into question the U.S. intelligence community’s ability to police itself and safeguard American’s privacy.” Typical of the Left, the ACLU uses these egregious abuses as an opportunity to discredit the NSA and others. But the ACLU should know it is never the bureaucrats who do this alone. They invariably are taking orders from their political bosses, in this case then President Obama.

We should have seen this coming. (Of course some of us did but the political class had its blinders on). Obama was overstepping his authority before he was even elected. In 2008, then presidential candidate Obama interfered with President Bush’s foreign policy by trying to talk Iraqis out of an agreement with Bush to keep U.S. forces in Iraq. As we now know, it was Obama’s reckless premature pullout from Iraq that returned the nation to anarchy – forcing us now to expend even more blood and treasure to help the Iraqis recapture it from ISIS. And what about Obama’s whispered promise to then-Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that “after my election I have more flexibility.” Flexibility for what? To surrender even more of our missile defense capability?

What about that uranium deal?

Trump has repeatedly accused Hillary of giving “20 percent of America’s uranium supply to Russia.” Snopes and PolitiFact rate the assertion as false and mostly false. We know both of those organizations skew heavily left, especially Snopes, and go out of their way to protect the Clintons. So is it true or false?

It has been widely reported that the Clinton Foundation received $145 million after Hillary Clinton allowed Russia’s nuclear energy agency to purchase a controlling interest in Uranium One, a Canada-based company that mines uranium in states containing 20 percent of U.S. capacity. Snopes and company claim Hillary was not involved in the deal, that it was delegated to then-Assistant Secretary of State Jose Fernandez, and that the State Department is only one of nine agencies on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) that decides such matters.

Regardless of who actually sat at the CFIUS table, Clinton is ultimately responsible for such decisions, and do you really think Fernandez would have made such a momentous decision without her blessing? Moreover, would the other agencies dare to vote against Hillary’s agency? Highly doubtful.

Hillary apologists also try to disassociate the Clinton Foundation’s string of receipts from Russia as though the two were entirely unrelated. Did they give the Clintons $145 million just for yucks? The New York Times, not exactly a bastion of conservatism, lays it out.

So I ask: where is the special prosecutor for Obama, Holder, Lynch and Clinton?

And what about all the leaks? Have any of those weak-kneed members of Congress used their substantial authority to compel the FBI and/or intelligence agencies to investigate and uncover the leakers? Unlike the unsubstantiated allegations about Trump, these are federal crimes.

If unproven allegations of Trump/Russian collusion in the 2016 elections are worthy of a special prosecutor, are the litany of Hillary’s activities not? These are events that actually occurred, not undocumented accusations by partisan Democrats. Ditto with Obama. If the flimsy allegations against Trump are worthy of a special prosecutor, Obama and Hillary’s crimes merit a treason prosecution. But will we even see a special prosecutor for them?

So in tribute to the many GOP imbeciles in Congress, I am starting a hashtag, #STUPIDPARTY. I hope you will use it in tweets to our illustrious Members of Congress and give them holy hell for joining Democrats in their overt effort to destroy this president and bring down his administration.

If the GOP keeps this up, we may well see the Democrats’ hoped-for midterm wave election that sweeps Republicans from power. (For more from the author of “Where Is the Special Prosecutor for Hillary and Barack?” please click HERE)

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Alaska’s Drew Phoenix Serves as a Warning: Conflict Is Inevitable

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To understand why the legislature refused to empower Human Rights Commissioner Drew Phoenix last week, and why that move is worth reflecting on, we should remember a court case that was decided years before Drew was even born. Trop v. Dulles was the first time the U.S. Supreme Court declared that a portion of the U.S. Constitution “must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.”

That assertion, that society is in fact continually maturing, and that the Constitution should be continually reinterpreted so as to keep up with society’s maturity, lies at the heart of the recent confirmation hearings involving Drew Phoenix. Let us set aside for a moment the question of whether or not society is in fact maturing, our communities are becoming more perfect, more safe, and crime is slowly but surely being eradicated, year by year. Let us assume for a moment that all of that is true.

The question that immediately arises is which of the three branches of government is empowered to change our state law to reflect these changes in society? In the case of Drew Phoenix we have three possible answers that reflect each of Alaska’s three branches of government: 1) The Alaska Human Rights Commission, made up of appointees that fall under the executive branch, 2) The Alaska Supreme Court, made up of appointees that fall under the judicial branch, or 3) Alaska’s elected lawmakers, who comprise the legislative branch (Hint: We refer to them as “lawmakers” because under our current form of government all lawmaking power is reserved exclusively to public officials who have been directly elected by the people).

That last distinction is a very important one. Law puts limits on personal freedom and can bankrupt you and send you to prison if you transgress those limits. Because of this, no just law can be made without the consent of those who will be bound by it, either directly or through their elected representatives. If you look back far enough in American history, you will see that we once fought a bloody 7-year war over this very issue. The power to create laws and taxes is too dangerous to be wielded by unelected officials.

Heck, it’s bad enough when it’s wielded by the elected officials we’ve already got. If they wield that power against Alaskans for the benefit of special interests, at least we have the ability to elect a new governor and a new legislature next year. Without that right, we end up with masters whom we have no power to challenge, and no right to question—Like, say, the members of the Alaska State Human Rights Commission.

As unelected heads of a quasi-judicial agency, commissioners on the Alaska State Human Rights Commission are entirely out of reach of the public, and serve longer terms than the governor. These are simply the facts. The question the legislature was asked to decide last week was whether or not members of the commission should also have the power to remake our state laws. When you are voting on whether or not to confirm an appointee who has been openly seeking to join the commission for that very purpose, it is quite difficult to separate the individual from the plan they are pursuing.

Drew Phoenix has been a tireless advocate for increasing legal rights for the LGBT and transgender community. As a dedicated social justice warrior, Drew worked for 4 years for the ACLU, and a further 3 years for Identity, Inc., whose mission is “to advance Alaska’s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and

transgender) community through advocacy, education and connectivity”. Drew was appointed as a human rights commissioner shortly after leaving Identity in September.

As a political activist, Drew has long promoted changing state law to make Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender a protected class. And there is a bill in the legislature today (Senate Bill 72) which would do exactly that. But efforts to pass such laws in Alaska, and in Pennsylvania and many other states, have consistently failed year after year. Having failed to achieve such changes through the political process, LGBT activists are now attempting to circumvent the lawmaking process by seeking appointment to human rights commissions and, once there, simply “reinterpreting” the law as though they had been successful in changing the law through the legislature.

During the legislative confirmation process, Drew explained that while state law has “not been interpreted yet to include certain things”, i.e. gender identity, “the commission would be within its authority to” add them, and it should. It could do so by redefining the meaning of the word “sex” to not only include sex, but also to include any form of gender identity or “expression”, just as the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission did last month.

If your legislators permit it, this will soon be enshrined as the new frontier of lawmaking, and it will be done by unelected officials whose names most Alaskans will never know. If those unelected officials happen to be members of your political party, or are committed to causes that you personally care about, you may be tempted to see this as a good thing. Certainly in the short term, it can appear that way. Perhaps you applauded when the EPA redefined puddles of water as “waters of the United States” and granted itself the power to regulate them. But there is a terrible cost to be paid anytime we empower unelected bureaucrats to rewrite law and then enforce the laws that they have rewritten.

That cost is consent. Where is the opportunity for Alaskans to refuse consent to the new laws being rewritten and continually reinterpreted by judges and bureaucrats, whom Alaskans did not elect, and the public is often unable to remove from office? Referendums permit the public to reject bad laws, but they only apply to new state laws that the legislature actually passes. As messy and dysfunctional as modern politics often is, it still preserves within it the right for each of us to forcefully object on Election Day when elected officials become too closely tied to special interests, and lose sight of what is best for Alaska.

Americans lost that right once, long ago, and the result was a violent, 7-year war to regain it. On this Memorial Day Weekend, the prospect that Americans might ever have to relive such a chapter makes even the most unpleasant aspects of politics seem a blessing in comparison.

Thank your legislators for voting in a small, but tangible, way to preserve your right to question and to put limits on the power of a bureaucracy that already runs too much of our lives. And while you’re at it, ask them if they wouldn’t mind returning more of that freedom to you next time they are in Juneau. 668,000 Americans died so that you could enjoy it. May we be grateful this Memorial Day Weekend for those who fought, and those who died, and the price they paid so that succeeding generations might continue the American experiment in self-government.

(For more from the author of “Alaska’s Drew Phoenix Serves as a Warning: Conflict Is Inevitable” please click HERE)

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