An Inconvenient Right: Ninth Circuit Fails to Protect 2nd Amendment

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There are all sorts of rights the federal courts have invented. There is a right to an abortion with no restrictions on the clinics; there is a right to force states to recognize any relationship as a marriage; there is a right for Planned Parenthood to get state funding; there is a right to 20 days of early voting and ballot harvesting.

Yet, when it comes to the unambiguous, natural right of self-defense, enshrined into the Second Amendment, the courts tell the states that they are free to regulate the unalienable right all they want.

The latest example is the notorious Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upholding California’s law requiring a 10-day waiting period to take possession of a gun after a purchase. Writing for a three judge panel, which overturned a district judge’s opinion in favor of the Second Amendment, Judge Mary Schroeder wrote that “[A] 10-day cooling-off period would serve to discourage such conduct and would impose no serious burden on the core Second Amendment right of defense of the home.”
Let’s be clear here: There is only one enumerated right in the Bill of Rights for which the unequivocal language of “shall not be infringed” is used. That language is not used for abortion or forced recognition of alternative lifestyles as marriage against the will of the states. (In fact, it doesn’t talk about those things at all in the Constitution. Yet, the courts are saying states can’t even implement common sense health regulations on abortion clinics.) The one right that is mentioned explicitly in unmistakable language, on the other hand, seems to be open to all sorts of political arguments by the courts.

Putting aside the fact that criminals don’t submit themselves to background checks and have plenty of avenues to purchase a gun immediately, these are not constitutional arguments. Placing a 10-day waiting period is a substantial burden, especially for first-time purchasers who often make the decision out of an imminent sense of fear or need for self-defense.

Such a restriction is manifestly unconstitutional for those who are approved quickly by the federal background check system, especially in the eyes of judges who think everything not in adherence to the DNC platform is unconstitutional.

The same courts that nullify every legitimate state power — from marriage and abortion regulation to election maps and even adhering to natural law — are suddenly deferential to state laws that are incontrovertibly against the plain language of the Constitution.

Whereas they apply strict scrutiny to any regulation of a clear state power against the ACLU’s assertion of a fundamental right, they only applied intermediate scrutiny to this gun regulation against a natural right that pre-dated our Constitution.

There are a couple of other observations in order here:

1. The lower courts are killing the Second Amendment. SCOTUS remains silent.

This gun ruling is part of a growing trend where lower courts are severely limiting the scope of the Heller ruling (not that we need the court to affirm a natural right). In Heller, the Supreme Court made it clear that governmental interest cannot be factored in to mitigate an individual right to own or bear firearms because the Second Amendment “is the very product of an interest-balancing by the people,” and “[t]he very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government … the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon.”

Yet every single circuit that has heard cases on gun restrictions — the Second, Third, Fourth, Ninth, and 10th Circuit Courts — has ruled there is no right to self-defense outside the home in contravention of the plain language of the Heller decision and the undeniable text of the Second Amendment. They have also upheld state “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazine bans in the Second, Fourth, and Seventh, and Ninth Circuits.

Thus far, we can’t even affirm a foundational right to self-defense with a single circuit, and the Supreme Court has therefore declined to grant cert (accept an appeal from the lower courts) to gun rights activists in an effort to overturn these lower court decisions on appeal.

Even when SCOTUS has broached the topic of guns since the Heller ruling, all but the few conservatives have clearly gone along with limiting Heller. The conservatives on the court have called them out for surreptitiously allowing the Second Amendment to be killed in the lower courts.

2. The courts are a one-way dead-end for conservatives

Ever since the federal judiciary has erroneously been given the distinction of the sole and final arbiter of constitutional interpretation, conservatives have been on the losing side of judicial supremacy well over 90 percent of the time. Heller was one of the few cases where we benefited from judicial supremacis

But notice the difference between liberal victories in the courts (even when built upon unconstitutional jurisprudence) and the few conservative victories (even when the jurisprudence is rooted in the plain text of the Constitution).

Immediately after Obergefell where the courts redefined the building block of all civilization, every red state pretty much immediately threw in the towel. Conversely, when conservatives won in Heller, the blue states immediately got to work to chip away at the scope of the victory by continuing to enforce anti-carry laws, assault weapons bans, and sundry restrictions. The dividends of liberals’ “Never surrender” mentality have paid off as the lower courts are upholding their shenanigans.

Thus once again, I must say, the federal judiciary is a dead-end for us to enforce true constitutionalism in blue states and will only serve as an anti-constitutional juggernaut for our policies in red states. Which is why we need judicial reform — badly.

Yesterday was the 225th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights. Years after the courts have been crowned king over our Constitution, everything under the sun has been retroactively enshrined into those critical amendments, except for the principles that were actually adopted in plain English. (For more from the author of “An Inconvenient Right: Ninth Circuit Fails to Protect 2nd Amendment” please click HERE)

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It’s Not Islamophobia to Recognize That Sharia Is Incompatible with the Constitution

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The Washington Post is trying to pathologize as “Islamophobia” normal, human responses to the worldwide explosion of Islamic supremacism and jihad violence, including recent savage terrorist attacks in America by Muslims our government foolishly welcomed. In a recent column, William McCants tries to cast Donald Trump, Stephen Bannon, Newt Gingrich, Frank Gaffney, and anyone who agrees with them about the danger of Islamist radicalism as tinfoil-hat-wearing hatemongers or fools. That would have to include the scholars of the Claremont Institute, who issued this erudite warning of the grave threat posed to America by Islamist ideology and organizations — such as the many-tentacled Muslim Brotherhood.

No one knows the rules better than the Post: If you want to crush someone in America, link him somehow to racism, if only by some lame analogy. If you want to silence debate about your reasons for crushing him, suggest that he is frothing with hatred, to the point that his condition is a kind of moral disease. If anyone defends him, accuse that defender of that same disease and suggest that if he won’t throw his friend under the bus he could share his fate. Find out where he works, and look into getting him fired.

That’s how opinion is policed in America, where thanks to our Constitution elites don’t have the option of simply throwing dissenters in jail — as the Dutch establishment has jailed patriotic politician Geert Wilders, simply for opposing further Muslim immigration. That’s right, Wilders was sentenced to prison for making a policy argument. Fear not: Opinion polls suggest that he might be elected Prime Minister, at which point even EU minions would probably feel the need to let him out.

Or maybe not. The scorn which European elitists feel for mere citizens is so overpowering, that the Dutch might just leave Wilders to rot and annul the election — as EU satraps in Britain are trying to overturn the Brexit vote, and some Democrats are attempting to nullify the election of Donald Trump with wild charges of Russian “hacking.”

We can scent here the sniffy contempt that Clinton felt for “Deplorables,” which is shared by the Washington press corps. What’s funny is that this sense of superiority is absolutely groundless, built on wishful thinking and ignorance — in this case about what Islam really teaches and what it demands.

Communism was “pseudo-Islam.” The real thing is worse.

The brilliant economist and social philosopher Wilhelm Röpke — the very first professor fired by the Nazis for his ideas — once summed up Communism as a “pseudo-Islam.” A powerful insight: They are both creeds of conquest and domination. For a few generations, people were willing to lay down their lives for the sake of a future “socialist paradise,” but their fervor quickly faded. If you don’t believe in an afterlife, martyrdom is a pretty hard sell.

Islam, by contrast, from the very beginning offered rewards both in this life and the next one. Muhammad recruited warriors by promising them the three things which young men most crave: plunder, power, and pleasure. Those who followed him and his heirs would have Allah’s blessing in stealing loot from the unbeliever, subjugating him, and taking his wife or daughters as sex slaves. Here’s just one of the relevant verses from the Quran:

Quran (33:50) – “O Prophet! We have made lawful to thee thy wives to whom thou hast paid their dowers; and those (slaves) whom thy right hand possesses out of the prisoners of war whom Allah has assigned to thee”

As The Religion of Peace explains: “This is one of several personal-sounding verses ‘from Allah’ narrated by Muhammad — in this case allowing a virtually unlimited supply of sex partners. Other Muslims are restricted to four wives, but they may also have sex with any number of slaves, following the example of their prophet.” And of course if jihad warriors died in battle against the unbeliever, they would go straight to paradise and enjoy a harem in heaven.

Sharia is an ideology, aimed at world domination.

Islamic sharia law is intrinsically political, oriented toward imposing Islam by force if necessary upon every nation on earth, keeping non-Muslims in a servile state, and defending masculine “honor” by savagely policing women’s sexual behavior. In every Muslim-dominated country, sharia does just these things. And every orthodox Muslim must accept sharia — including all its provisions about warring against unbelievers, with the goal of converting, killing, or enslaving every last non-Muslim on earth.

Imagine if rules for burning witches or torturing heretics were mandated in the New Testament, and put into practice in virtually every Christian country on earth, to this very day. Picture evangelicals hounding and killing witches in Alabama, and Pope Francis burning a hundred heretics or so each year in the Vatican. Don’t you think that non-Christian countries would be cautious about admitting Christian immigrants? Not just Christians with actual ties to witch-hunters and inquisitors, but any Christian who wouldn’t clearly renounce such violent practices?

In the center of Sunni Islam, Saudi Arabia, which seeds lands around the world with shiny new mosques and handpicked radical imams, all the most violent practices of primitive Islam are still in effect—from polygamy to blasphemy flogging, from cutting off hands of thieves to executing ex-Muslims for “apostasy.” The Islamic pressure groups funded by Saudi money, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, have close links to sponsors of terrorist groups like Hamas, as a U.S. federal judge concluded in 2009.

Time to Change Our Immigration Laws

Given these facts, it is folly to pretend that sharia is compatible with the American experiment. It is not. We need a change to our immigration laws requiring that every potential immigrant renounce the use of force to compel or restrain religious freedom — with provisions for deporting any newcomer who later expresses support for sharia or anything like it. We can model such a law on the perfectly constitutional, decades-long ban on immigration for members of Communist parties.

None of the recent jihadi attackers, in Florida, California, or Ohio, had any provable connection with terrorist groups. The Boston Marathon bombers grew up here since early childhood. What did each of these terrorists have in common? They were simply orthodox Muslims, steeped in sharia — thus primed by their creed and culture to turn against their non-Muslim neighbors. All it took was some piece of bad news, a personal setback, or the right imam spouting on the right message board, to light the spark. It is not Islamophobic to recognize this fact, and to take measures to protect ourselves and our loved ones from it. It is Islamo-realism. (For more from the author of “It’s Not Islamophobia to Recognize That Sharia Is Incompatible with the Constitution” please click HERE)

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The Most Important Cabinet Member You’re Not Paying Attention To

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President-elect Trump is nearly finished filling out his Cabinet. One of the remaining spots — and in my opinion, the most important — remains undecided. The position in question? The director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

The individuals who serve in Trump’s Cabinet will get the opportunity to oversee the agency or department within their specialized domains, like, for example, the Department of Defense, or the Environmental Protection Agency. But unlike those positions, the director of OMB gets the opportunity to keep tabs on each individual government agency.

That’s because OMB is specifically tasked with allocating the federal budget to the various agencies, as well as monitoring agency performance and providing financial management. OMB is also required to, “coordinate and review all significant Federal regulations by executive agencies,” — no easy task for a government that loves to spend money and promulgate never-ending regulations.

Since OMB is also responsible for drafting and formatting the President’s budget, this also allows this office to be intimately involved in all the policy and spending priorities for the entire federal government.

Although the director of OMB is not treated with the same eminence as those who run the State Department or the Department of Defense, few Cabinet positions are as important as the individual in charge of the budget office for these very reasons.

Some of the individuals chosen to join Trump’s Cabinet are controversial. For example, Trump’s choice for the deputy secretary of state postition, John Bolton, has been met with consternation by many in the liberty movement, such as Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky. (A, 92%) for his stance on issues like bombing Iran and supporting the Iraq war.

Still, conservatives and small-government Republicans should be optimistic about the names currently being floated for director of OMB. The first name floated was former Senator Tom Coburn. Coburn was an astute study of the budget during his days in the Senate, and was referred to by CNN as “a former US Senator from Oklahoma, who turned his Senate career into a crusade against government spending.”

He was also the champion of eliminating government waste, even in programs considered sacrosanct, like the military; he was a long-time advocate of fixing the Pentagon’s broken budget by demanding an audit. But Coburn also made that his mission government-wide, and was well known for publishing detailed reports on government waste.

Another promising name, and small government warrior, that has been mentioned is Congressman Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C. (A, 94%). One of the more conservative members of Congress, he is a member of the Freedom Caucus.

This often means that Mulvaney stands on principle against his own party. For example, when Republican leaders proposed the Bipartisan Budget Act — a bill to hamstring spending restraints by $63 billion — it was Mulvaney that spearheaded opposition to the deal.

In addition, Mulvaney has long advocated for a balanced budget, lower taxes, and eliminating corporate cronyism, like the Export-Import bank.

Among some of the other promising names that have been mentioned is David Malpass, a strong conservative economist by training, and a former high-ranking Reagan and George H.W. Bush official. Malpass also shares the list of names with Eric Ueland, a long-time budget staffer on the Senate Budget Committee.

The current list of conservative individuals under consideration for this position deserves more attention than perhaps any time since President Truman took office. That’s because this OMB director will have a daunting challenge in controlling government spending and debt, more than ever before. Consider the article by the Committee for a Responsible Federal budget, titled, “Trump Will Face Highest Debt-to-GDP Ratio of Any New President Since Truman.”

By our estimates, the national debt will total about 77 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) when Trump takes office, compared to 103 percent when Truman took office at the end of World War II, 58 percent when Eisenhower took office, and 46 percent when Clinton took office.

And yet, it’s not even fair to compare the debt under Truman with that of Obama. The debt that materialized under Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman was almost solely related to the one-time expenses of fighting World War II. As you can see in the graph, once the war was over, the debts were quickly whittled away. That’s not the case today. Instead, our debts are becoming increasingly structural; the result of promised entitlement spending like Social Security and Medicare.

So really, the task that confronts today’s budget head will be far more daunting than anything that faced Truman. Consider this; by 2021, Social Security and Medicare alone will consume half of every dollar the government brings in. Whereas Truman could allocate surplus dollars to paying down the debt instead of buying tanks, post WWII, the budget director under Trump must decide between taking on more debt and tackling the acrimonious challenge of entitlement reform.

Still, conservatives deserved a good list of names to run what may become the most important office in the White House, and Trump has made a wise selection so far. This is what conservatives fought for. This is where we can make the government small again, and scale back Obama’s absurd regulations. (For more from the author of “The Most Important Cabinet Member You’re Not Paying Attention To” please click HERE)

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Busted: Deceitful Media Lied About Trump’s Speech in 3 Racially Charged Headlines

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With all the recent consternation from the mainstream media over the prevalence of “fake news,” and the constant grumblings about the dangers that low-information voters present, you’d think the media would take care extra care in their reporting these days.

Wrong.

The Chicago Tribune published a piece covering President-elect Donald Trump’s Thursday rally in Hershey, Pa. And, as it turns out, the story’s headline is a complete lie. The Tribune’s headline:

“Trump calls on Pennsylvania crowd to cheer African-Americans who ‘didn’t come out to vote.’”

Again — a complete falsehood. It says to the reader that Trump encouraged the crowd to cheer for black people who stayed home on Election Day — an overtly racially-charged act. But Trump did not say what the Tribune claims.

Watch for yourself (The comment in question is at the 6:48 mark. Trump begins his discussion of the black vote at the 6:20 mark):

“They didn’t come out to vote for Hillary,” Trump said.

Trump was not asking people to applaud the non-participation of black citizens; he was commending those who did not vote for his opponent — a corrupt, lying, nasty woman.

But the media has a narrative to sell to the people who don’t read past headlines. And so the New York Daily News writes:

“SEE IT: Donald Trump on ‘Thank You’ tour thanks ‘smart’ African-Americans for not voting in 2016 election.”

And Raw Story says:

“Trump tells Pennsylvania fans they can thank African-Americans for not voting in November election.”

And “journalists” push that narrative.

In their hatred of Donald Trump, the mainstream media are perfectly willing to fabricate news (or blatantly mislead, at the very least) if it makes the president-elect look like the evil, racist, monster that they insist he is. And the media does this despite the ease with which relevant facts disprove their narratives.

What is most confounding of all, though, is that the gaffe-prone Donald Trump says enough stupid things that they shouldn’t have to make up “news.” For instance, Trump recently said that African-American voters not showing up to the polls was “almost as good” as those who showed up to vote for him.

“The African American community was great to us,” Trump told a crowd in Grand Rapids, Mich., last week. “They came through, big league. Big league. And frankly if they had any doubt, they didn’t vote. And that was almost as good because a lot of people didn’t show up. Because they felt good about me.”

See, there in Grand Rapids was when Trump said something similar to what the media are implying Trump said this week. They didn’t have to lie about Trump’s comments in Pennsylvania to make their point. But they did lie in their headlines. In their efforts to spread misinformation, The Chicago Tribune and company have embarrassed themselves at the height of this fake-news hysteria.

I don’t consider myself a journalist; I’m a commentator. And so I’ll offer this comment: The point of journalism, it seems to me, is to simply report the facts and truth. It is to inform people of “the real story” when others attempt to spread lies or hide the truth.

The reason people are falling for “fake news” is because the self-proclaimed truth-tellers in MSM are willfully spreading lies. If you are a member of the mainstream media and you want people to believe in you again, stop twisting the facts. Stop pushing narratives.

Start telling the truth. (For more from the author of “Busted: Deceitful Media Lied About Trump’s Speech in 3 Racially Charged Headlines” please click HERE)

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Sheriff Joe Arpaio Offers Evidence He Says Proves Obama’s Birth Certificate Is Not Real

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The office of Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio presented what it characterized as proof that the birth certificate the White House offered as evidence of President Obama’s American birth is not real.

Arpaio began the press conference Thursday in Phoenix by assuring reporters the office had “followed the evidence” and would have been just as satisfied if it had determined the certificate was authentic.

In the hour-long presentation, Arpaio’s lead investigator, Mike Zullo, made the case that the certificate was created from a “source” document: the birth certificate of Hawaiian Johanna Ah Nee, who was born within weeks of Obama in August 1961.

The Ah Nee document was originally obtained from investigative journalist Jerome Corsi, the author of several books and a contributor to the website World Net Daily.

According to Zullo, two separate forensic expert sources from two continents — Reed Hayes from Hawaii and the For Lab team in Italy — reviewed the Obama certificate and concluded it was not authentic.

Zullo told reporters Hayes has 45 years in the field and originally did not want to take the case because he is an Obama supporter and voted for him twice.

After reviewing the Obama certificate, the court expert stated, “I can’t clear this. There is something wrong with it.”

Zullo showed a video to reporters that purported to demonstrate how the date stamp in two different boxes on Obama’s certificate had the exact angle and placement, matching one of the date stamps on the Ah Nee original.

(For more from the author of “Sheriff Joe Arpaio Offers Evidence He Says Proves Obama’s Birth Certificate Is Not Real” please click HERE)

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Why 209 Is the Most Significant Number Behind Trump’s Victory

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Since her op-ed in the Washington Post last week lamenting “the way Trump won,” Clinton Communications Director Jen Palmieri has done a turn on a host of cable news shows, demanding “introspection” from the Trump team for supposedly winning by appealing to, and empowering, white supremacists.

Ms. Palmieri, it seems, has taken her sour grapes and disguised them as a self-righteous crusade against the very “deplorables” that cost her boss the election.

Ms. Palmieri’s op-ed and subsequent comments read like a calculated exercise in self-delusion; the kind where people construct an alternate reality to live in because reality itself is too difficult to accept. In this instance, Palmieri takes the existence of white supremacy in America as somehow proof that Donald Trump rode to power on its back.

While that might make a more comfortable world for Palmieri to live in — one where she doesn’t have to acknowledge the weaknesses of her own candidate — the electoral facts of this election simply do not bear that out.

Perhaps no detail illustrates this more than the number 209. That’s the number of counties that voted to send Barack Obama to the White House (and not just once, but twice), that flipped to support Trump — and overwhelmingly so.

Again, those are counties that voted for Trump after overwhelmingly supported a black president for two election cycles. If this election was indeed a cover for empowering white supremacists, how does Palmieri explain this statistic?

Aside from how impressive that number is, there are equally unimpressive numbers for Hillary Clinton. In fact, Palmieri might do well to heed the number six. That’s the number of counties that never supported Obama, but voted for Clinton. Yes, just six.

If Palmieri can’t discern the message embedded in those numbers, it’s this: Her candidate failed to reach reliable Democratic voters, but even worse, utterly failed to convince anyone else to join her team.

It wasn’t some bizarre pact with the Ku Klux Klan (an organization that Trump has disavowed) that put Trump in the White House. Nor was there an uprising of white supremacist voters for Donald Trump — or any popular upsurge for Trump at all, in fact. He received about as many votes as Mitt Romney did in 2012. Votes for Trump were just better distributed throughout traditionally blue states in the industrial Midwest — and that was crucial to his victory.

Even more damning for Ms. Palmieri’s claims of empowered sects white supremacists is that Trump actually did better with black and Hispanic voters than Romney did. As one pollster noted in recent analysis,

With Barack Obama off the ticket – and Ms. Clinton on it – higher percentages of both [black and Hispanic voters] voted Republican last month. Black voters helped Mr. Trump even more by staying home. In crucial Michigan and Wisconsin, Ms. Clinton received an estimated 129,000 fewer of their votes than Mr. Obama, more than Mr. Trump’s combined margin of victory in two states. [Emphasis added.]

Ms. Palmieri can bemoan the negative aspects of American society all she wants, but the simple fact is, that’s not why Donald Trump won.

Rather, the post-election analysis shows that Trump simply went to states that Hillary Clinton spent little time in instead taking them for granted. In Michigan and Wisconsin — traditionally blue states that went to Trump — Clinton’s campaign was drastically under resourced.

Per one report, Michigan had one-tenth the canvasser capacity utilized by then-Senator John Kerry during his 2004 presidential race. The same poor ground game cost Clinton Pennsylvania. As tellingly is where the candidates chose to spend the most time in the last 100 days of the election. Trump made 133 visits to Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Michigan and Wisconsin. Clinton made 87.

These electoral statistics don’t even begin to address the quality of candidates and their messaging, and the role that played in the election. Trump may have lacked the 30 years of political experience of Clinton; often much less polished, unfiltered, and politically incorrect.

In fact, it’s perhaps exactly what the voters were hungry for: a candidate that appealed to those voters who felt displaced, disenfranchises, and looking for real change (not the type promised by Senator Barack Obama back in 2008).

As for Hillary Clinton, she could not have been a more status-quo candidate. Moreover, she failed entirely to reach voters in rural areas, a constituency Democrats have long taken for granted. But without a compelling economic strategy, or any strategy really — except to promise another Obama-term — the Clinton campaign did little to sway them.

In fact, Politico reported that Clinton’s campaign team had one staffer dedicated to rural outreach — based in Brooklyn.

Despite Palmieri’s hysterics, perceived support from the fringe of American society is not responsible for electing Trump. Palmieri may not agree with all the Trump team’s rhetorical tactics. Indeed, some disagreement should in fact be expected, but her inability to recognize the strategic failures of the campaign she ran, not to mention the poor quality of her own candidate, should be evidence that Democrats are nothing but sore losers. (For more from the author of “Why 209 Is the Most Significant Number Behind Trump’s Victory” please click HERE)

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Did Harry Reid Take a $2 Million Bribe? The Feds Won’t Let Investigators Find Out

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There are allegations that outgoing U.S. Senator Harry Reid, D-Nev. (F, 2%) may have accepted a massive bribe to push a bill legalizing online poker nationwide in 2010. And the federal government has reportedly “stymied” the investigation into those allegations.

Tom Harvey and Jennifer Dobner report for The Salt Lake Tribune that Davis County Attorney Troy Rawlings is investigating the origins of a $2 million cashier’s check with connections to an online poker company that was laundered through “Mail Media LTD” — an outfit for laundering online-gambling funds — and may have landed in a Marshall Islands bank account in the name of a holding company “to benefit, or even bribe, Harry Reid, the once-powerful majority leader.”

According to their reporting, “state and federal investigations, court filings and public records requests — including audio recordings of interviews and thousands of pages of transcripts, summaries by investigators, emails, requests for evidence and other materials — show that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI failed to pursue a vigorous investigation of this money and any potential tie to Reid.”

The matter was brought to Rawlings’ attention when “disgraced” businessman Jeremy Johnson confessed that the money came out from a now-defunct business where Johnson and his cohorts illegally processed payments for poker companies. Johnson told FBI agents and Rawlings that Sen. Reid was going to get “a little something extra” in exchange for political help.

Rawlings’ investigation into the route of the $2 million check picked up the trail from two former Utah attorneys general of interest, with the officials’ suspicious actions motivating Rawlings to further pursue the case. Harvey and Dobner of the Tribune report:

The available evidence contains no direct connection between the money and the Nevada Democrat, only that Rawlings wants to dig into that possibility.

Federal authorities have stymied his effort, leaving Rawlings to wonder why. Were agents ordered to steer clear of that money trail? And, if so, by whom? In short, was there a cover-up? […]

Even at the state level, though, Rawlings’ push for funding for a grand jury also has stalled. Attorney General Sean Reyes’ office has not turned over any funds for such an inquiry despite months of negotiations.

Johnson had claimed to authorities at the time of Reid’s contentious 2010 reelection bid against Republican Sharon Angle, his company SunFirst was asked to distribute poker funds to Reid through various donors at a July 6, 2010 fundraiser.

The Salt Lake Tribune documents the following events thereafter:

Reid, according to Johnson, told the crowd — including Bitar, Ifrah and Poker Players Alliance Executive Director John Pappas — that he was switching positions and would now support legislation to ensure that online poker was legal at the federal level. Pappas said in an interview that he didn’t remember what Reid said at the meeting.

In his multiple accounts of the meeting, and specifically in a February 2014 interview with two FBI agents, Johnson has said, “Harry Reid is going around meeting people and saying ‘Hi’ and I was standing next to one of Ray’s entourage and I’m like, ‘How did you guys get Harry Reid to go against his own constituents and do this?’ and he’s like, ‘Well, let’s just say he’s getting a little something extra in his retirement fund.'”

Attorney Troy Rawlings has asked federal agencies for evidence linking Reid to this bank account. But while they have been happy to investigate other figures of interest, they have blocked efforts to gain information about the Democratic Senate minority leader: “Rawlings said he has been told by federal authorities to ‘forget Harry Reid.’”

A month after Sen. Reid’s reelection in 2010, he began campaigning in Congress to legalize online poker.

According to Tom Harvey and Jennifer Dobner, “Reid’s spokeswoman did not return emails and a phone message seeking comment for this story. Previously, his office called any bribery allegations “unsubstantiated” and accused Rawlings of grandstanding to advance his political career.” (For more from the author of “Did Harry Reid Take a $2 Million Bribe? The Feds Won’t Let Investigators Find Out” please click HERE)

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Forty Electoral College Members Now Calling for Intelligence Briefing Before They Vote

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Thirty additional members of the Electoral College signed their names to a letter Tuesday demanding an intelligence briefing prior to casting their votes for president Dec. 19.

Forty electors have now signed the letter, all of them Democrats with the exception of one Republican, according to The Hill.

As reported by Western Journalism, a group of 10 electors requested more information Monday about the ongoing investigation regarding what influence the Russians may have had in the presidential election.

In an open letter addressed to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, the electors stated they would need additional details before meeting Dec. 19 to formally vote for the country’s next president.

Christine Pelosi, the daughter of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, is one of the electors leading the effort.

The letter reads, in part: “The Electors require to know from the intelligence community whether there are ongoing investigations into ties between Donald Trump, his campaign or associates, and Russian government interference in the election, the scope of those investigations, how far those investigations may have reached, and who was involved in those investigations.”

“We further require a briefing on all investigative findings, as these matters directly impact the core factors in our deliberations of whether Mr. Trump is fit to serve as President of the United States,” the letter continues.

It concludes, “Additionally, the Electors will separately require from Donald Trump conclusive evidence that he and his staff and advisors did not accept Russian interference, or otherwise collaborate during the campaign, and conclusive disavowal and repudiation of such collaboration and interference going forward.”

The campaign of Democrat Hillary Clinton is backing the effort by the electors.

On Fox News Sunday, President-elect Trump was asked about a Washington Post story Friday headlined, “Secret CIA Assessment Says Russia Was Trying To Help Trump Win White House.”

“I think it’s ridiculous. I think it’s just another excuse. I don’t believe it. I don’t know why, and I think it’s just — you know, they talked about all sorts of things. Every week, it’s another excuse,” he replied.

“So, why would the CIA put out this story that the Russians wanted you to win?” host Chris Wallace followed up.

“I’m not sure they put it out. I think the Democrats are putting it out because they suffered one of the greatest defeats in the history of politics in this country. And, frankly, I think they’re putting it out. It’s ridiculous,” the president-elect responded.

During the race, the Clinton campaign and fellow Democrats blamed the Russians for being behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee that resulted in embarrassing emails being released by WikiLeaks.

Since the election, the Clinton team has supported Green Party Candidate Jill Stein’s recount efforts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, despite the former secretary of state’s having described any attempts to undermine or not accept the election results as “horrifying” during a presidential debate in October.

“That is not the way our Democracy works,” Clinton said. “We have been around for 240 years. We’ve had free and fair elections. We’ve accepted the outcome when we may not have liked them and that is what must be expected. … [Trump] is talking down our democracy, and I, for one, am appalled that someone who is the nominee of one of our two major parties would take that kind of position.”

Additionally, the Democrat nominee has pointed to “fake news” and FBI Director James Comey as reasons Trump won the election. (For more from the author of “Forty Electoral College Members Now Calling for Intelligence Briefing Before They Vote” please click HERE)

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Key Questions About Russia’s Alleged Hacking of the US Election

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A Central Intelligence Agency report that Russian operatives intervened in the U.S. election to help President-elect Donald Trump win has roiled Capitol Hill, producing a bipartisan call for congressional investigations.

But there is skepticism within the U.S. government, particularly at the Federal Bureau of Intelligence, that the evidence definitively proves that the Russians had the specific goal of influencing Americans to vote for Trump.

This split, amplified by Trump’s expressed disbelief in the CIA’s conclusion, sets up an early test for the next president, who will likely come into office as lawmakers—including Republicans—are investigating what happened.

At the same time, Trump, who has vowed a closer relationship with Russia, will have to deal with a range of policy challenges dealing with the Kremlin’s military interventions in wars in Syria and Ukraine.

The Daily Signal below explains the many questions of the Russian hacking controversy, and what consequences may come from it.

What Happened and When?

In early October, the Obama administration confirmed what the intelligence community had long expected, formally accusing Russia of trying to interfere in the 2016 elections, including by hacking the computers of the Democratic National Committee and other political organizations, and releasing the information to WikiLeaks.

In its announcement, the Obama administration noted Russia had previously attempted to interfere in other countries’ political processes, using other techniques to influence public opinion in Europe.

The White House, at this point, was considering potential responses, including economic sanctions, but it did not mount an offensive reply.

In the weeks before the presidential election, The New York Times reported that American spy and law enforcement agencies were united in the belief that the Russian government had deployed computer hackers to sow chaos into the campaign.

But last week, as The Washington Post first reported, the CIA produced a formal assessment to lawmakers concluding that Russia did not just intend to disrupt the election, but intervened with the primary goal of electing Trump as president.

“It doesn’t appear that there is any real uncertainty here about the origins of the attacks,” said Michael O’Hanlon, director of research for the foreign policy program at Brookings Institution, in a response to emailed questions from The Daily Signal. “I see the differences as ones of interpretation—who can really be sure of Russian motives based on observation of their actions?”

The FBI has not affirmatively concluded the Russians’ intent.

It is unclear why the CIA waited until after the election to reveal its judgment.

Intelligence officials also believe that Russia hacked the databases keeping Republican National Committee data, but chose to release only documents from the Democrats. The committee has denied that it was hacked.

How Have Politicians Reacted?

Trump dismissed the CIA’s report, referencing the agency’s faulty 2002 conclusion that the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, had weapons of mass destruction.

“I think it’s ridiculous. I think it’s just another excuse. I don’t believe it,” Trump said on Sunday in an interview on Fox News.

Republicans in Congress have also been careful about supporting the CIA’s assertion that Russia tried to throw the election to Trump—and that the Kremlin’s influence impacted the result. But many lawmakers in Trump’s party have been forceful in calling for investigations into what happened.

“I don’t believe any member of Congress should summarily dismiss an assessment from the intelligence community with respect to Russian interference in an American election,” Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., told The Daily Signal in an interview, adding:

We must take this seriously and investigate it. I have not seen any evidence thus far that the outcome of the presidential election was impacted by Russia’s actions. But with that said, it disturbs me greatly that Russia is attempting to interfere with our democratic process, not only in the U.S., but throughout Europe as well.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on Monday that he supported congressional investigations of possible Russian cyberattacks, which will be led by the Intelligence Committee and Armed Services Committee.

McConnell said the investigations would occur through the normal committee process, and he did not endorse the creation of a special select committee probe.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., seemed to suggest Monday he backs a similar investigation of Russian “state-sponsored cyberattacks.”

“Throughout this Congress, the Intelligence Committee [has] been working diligently on the cyber threats posed by foreign governments and terrorist organizations to the security and institutions of the United States,” Ryan said in a statement. “This important work will continue and has my support.”

Democrats also want a congressional probe, and Hillary Clinton’s campaign even said it supports a request by members of the Electoral College for an intelligence briefing on foreign intervention in the presidential election, Politico reported.

President Barack Obama, meanwhile, has ordered a full review into Russia’s hacking to capture “lessons learned” to be concluded before Trump’s inauguration.

Is It Normal for Intelligence Agencies to Disagree?

David Shedd, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency who has worked for the CIA, said it’s normal for the FBI to take a more cautious view of intelligence assessments because of its law enforcement obligation.

“The bureau [FBI] will be more conservative,” said Shedd, who is now a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation. “They are evidence driven. They are about making a court case, determining what will stand up in court. The intelligence community is not about making evidentiary conclusions rising to the level of a court action, but making a judgment that falls considerably short to what the FBI would need to make a similar call.”

Despite the CIA’s lower burden of proof, Patrick Eddington, a Cato Institute policy analyst in homeland security and civil liberties and former CIA analyst, said it’s wrong to assume the agency’s conclusions are flimsy.

“The reality is the CIA does not always get it wrong, and I think because of the track record of the agency, people naturally have a level of skepticism on whether this is real,” Eddington told The Daily Signal in an interview. “That makes it all the more important for everything surrounding this judgment—all the raw intelligence it is based on—to be made public so everyone can make their own conclusions.”

How Can the US Respond?

If Obama elects not to take action, the Trump administration will have a range of options on how to respond to Russia.

These include imposing economic sanctions for “malicious cyber-enabled activities,” a new executive branch tool that Obama created last year, but hasn’t used yet.

The Justice Department could indict Russian actors for hacking. The National Security Agency may also retaliate with its own cyber tools against the Kremlin.

Shedd suggested the U.S. take broader actions to discourage Russia aggression not only in cyberspace, but in other foreign policy endeavors.

“If I were sitting again in the Situation Room, I would be making a very strong case that our response needs to be asymmetrical to the cyberattack,” Shedd said. “Why in the world would we do cyber on cyber as our only response? My advice is to look at what [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s other objectives are. That could be getting him out of Syria and Ukraine—something that fits into our larger relationship with that country.”

Eddington suggested more caution, noting Putin’s unpredictability.

“You have to start with appropriate defensive measures, making sure our systems from a political and social engineering standpoint can’t be hacked,” Eddington said. “When we start talking about offensive measures, we have to be careful and calculated about what we do. At the end of the day, you need to make sure the response is such that Putin cannot afford a repeat, pays some sort short-term to medium-term cost, but at the same time, do not put Russia and the U.S. at the brink of confrontation. We are in uncharted territory in so many ways.” (For more from the author of “Key Questions About Russia’s Alleged Hacking of the US Election” please click HERE)

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Religious Liberty Win: Mass. Backs off Gender Identity Law That Could Have Jailed Pastors

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The state of Massachusetts has backed off a regulation that could have landed pastors in jail for operating church functions according to their faith.

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the non-profit legal organization representing four churches who sued the state over the controversial regulations announced the victory Monday, after the churches agreed to drop the lawsuit.

“No church should fear government punishment simply for serving its community consistently with its faith,” ADF Legal Counsel Christiana Holcomb said in a press release.

As The Stream previously reported, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination released in September an updated Gender Identity Guidance that declared, “places of public accommodation may not discriminate against, or restrict a person from services because of that person’s gender identity.”

That meant during certain church events and activities, church leaders would have been forced to allow a biological man to use women’s restrooms or other facilities if he claimed to identify as a woman, regardless of the church’s religious beliefs regarding gender.

Specifically, the Gender Identity Guidance originally stated that “Even a church could be seen as a place of public accommodation if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the public.”

As UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh wrote in the Washington Post at the time,

[E]ven church “secular events,” which I take it means events that don’t involve overt worship, are generally viewed by the church as part of its ministry, and certainly as a means of the church modeling what it believes to be religiously sound behavior.

Punishment for violating these regulations included the possibility of a year in jail and/or a $2,500 fine. Pastors could have even been jailed for refusing to use a transgender person’s preferred pronouns.

But the state backtracked after ADF initiated the legal case Horizon Christian Fellowship v. Williamson by filing a lawsuit on behalf of four churches in early October.

Almost exactly one month later, the Massachusetts Civil Rights Division responded with a letter to ADF, saying that “your lawsuit caused us to focus on these issues and to make this revision.”

The Gender Identity Guidance has now been updated to say that the “law does not apply to a religious organization if subjecting the organization to the law would violate the organization’s First Amendment rights.” “Houses of worship” was also removed from the list of places of public accommodation from the Massachusetts Attorney General’s website.

ADF attorneys filed a notice of voluntary dismissal Monday.

“The government can’t encroach on the internal, religious practices of a church. The language revisions that our lawsuit prompted should ensure that doesn’t happen,” ADF Senior Counsel Steve O’Ban said in Monday’s press release. “The comments of commonwealth officials gave these churches reason for great concern, and so we are pleased wording changes have been made to respect the constitutionally protected freedoms these congregations and pastors have.”

ADF will be holding a press conference to discuss the state of the lawsuit on Wednesday, December 14 in Boston. (For more from the author of “Religious Liberty Win: Mass. Backs off Gender Identity Law That Could Have Jailed Pastors” please click HERE)

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