Cough Syrup With GPS Tracker Helps Police Nab Suspected Pharmacy Burglars

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The suspects had no idea that the bottle of cough syrup perched on a shelf at a Tustin pharmacy contained something more than cough relief.

It wasn’t until the nondescript package was removed from the small Newport Avenue business by burglars that its secret ingredients went to work.

Concealed inside the bottle of cough syrup was a GPS device that began tracking the medicine thieves’ every move, according to police investigators.

After days of tracking, undercover surveillance and evidence gathering, investigators arrested Willie James Clark, 21, of Roland Heights and Brian Vega Salinas, 20, of La Puente on suspicion of committing the Nov. 10 burglary. (Read more from “Cough Syrup With GPS Tracker Helps Police Nab Suspected Pharmacy Burglars” HERE)

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Tolerance Strikes Again: College Students Shout Down Rick Santorum During Speech

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Open-minded, tolerant liberals are at it again — this time, shouting down former Pennsylvania U.S. Senator and two-time presidential candidate Rick Santorum for making a speech at Cornell University on the future of America under President-elect Donald Trump. Famously socially conservative, Santorum made a short speech and opened up the floor to questions from the packed audience.

But liberals couldn’t wait that long to heckle Santorum, both in the marked area outside the auditorium and indoors. Hosted by the Cornell Republicans, the campus’ Young America’s Foundation and the Student Activities Funding Commission, Santorum was introduced by Cornell College Republicans President Olivia Corn. Within a minute of speaking, Corn had to firmly ask hecklers to “please give me the respect I’m giving you.”

It only got worse from there, with hecklers chanting “Shame!” as Santorum spoke. They also said he should leave campus, and were otherwise hostile despite claiming to have liberal values. The event can be seen in full at the video immediately below, starting around 29:00.

In a particularly poignant clip, Santorum seemed to chuckle as he noted that the same liberal students yelling “Shame!” were likely to “walk around this campus and talk about tolerance.” Santorum was interrupted this time by cheers and a partial standing ovation, after which he continued: “And all of them will tell you that you have to celebrate what? Diversity! Celebrate diversity! Preach tolerance! But when it comes to anybody who disagrees with them, there is no tolerance.”

The conservative student publication Cornell Review mocked the protesters, while The Cornell Daily Sun gave prominent voice to students who claim Santorum is “anti-gay” and “racist.” The independent student newspaper The Daily Sun article noted that the evening began with the usual reading of the university’s free speech policy, which had to be read again half-way through, “as protesters were continually hindering the speaker’s ability to address attendees.”

The SJW students at Cornell clearly can’t tolerate a viewpoint or rationale with which they disagree, though it appears the number of outlandishly rude and intolerant students was small compared to the 500-person audience reported by the Review. Cornell’s student leadership and administration deserve credit for hosting Santorum despite the students who showed their liberal values go no further than their safe spaces. (For more from the author of “Tolerance Strikes Again: College Students Shout Down Rick Santorum During Speech” please click HERE)

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SHOCK: Senate to Vote on Letting Democrats Keep Control of the FCC

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Multiple sources confirm that the nightmare scenario identified by ATR is indeed likely to occur: Senate Democrats have picked off enough Republicans to force a vote next week on reconfirming Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel to the FCC, resulting in at best an initial 2-2 deadlock on the committee if Tom Wheeler, the current chairman, follows precedent and resigns, leaving only four commissioners at the FCC until another is confirmed. That would delay action on President Trump’s job creation agenda at the agency, which is bad enough.

But there is an even more disturbing possibility: If Wheeler follows through on his threat not to resign, it would mean Democrats would retain control of the FCC well into Trump’s presidency.

The FCC is a huge deal economically, overseeing a portion of the economy – television, radio, the Internet, mobile – roughly equal in size to the healthcare sector.

Moreover, under Obama the FCC has been a massive weapon of regulatory control, imposing public utility-style regulation of broadband, with a serious negative impact on investment and job creation. In that and many other ways, the FCC has been politicized and corrupted under Obama Democrats.

Imposing a Democratic FCC on a Republican president is completely outrageous and no Republican should vote for it. It is inconsequential whether it is paired with Republican Ajit Pai’s renomination, because he is already slated to stay on the FCC for another year and can be easily reconfirmed next year.

Under these circumstances, a Senate vote on Jessica Rosenworcel has nothing to do with her qualifications or record on the FCC.

It is a simple referendum on one thing: should an Obama FCC be forced on President Trump and rewarded for its outrageous regulatory assault on the U.S. economy by retaining power? (For more from the author of “SHOCK: Senate to Vote on Letting Democrats Keep Control of the FCC” please click HERE)

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One of These 21 Men and Women Will Be Trump’s First Supreme Court Pick

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President-elect Donald Trump is that rare president who will nominate a Supreme Court justice almost immediately after taking office.

Trump is expected to act quickly to fill the seat of Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February.

Two of the remaining eight Supreme Court justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 83, and Stephen Breyer, 78, are older than average for a justice and may choose to retire. One-third of the potential nominees on Trump’s list of 21 contenders are 50 or younger, and four are women.

This could present a historic opportunity for Trump to reshape the Supreme Court, author and presidential historian Craig Shirley says.

“With a vacancy and aging people on the court, just as there was a Reagan court and just as there was a Roosevelt court, we might see a Trump Supreme Court,” Shirley told The Daily Signal, adding:

It is less likely these justices will retire. It’s more likely they will go out feet first. When you’re in your 80s, you might as well show up at the office. You’re not going to take up water skiing.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest told The Daily Signal that President Barack Obama is well aware of coming changes on the high court, though Earnest said he hasn’t heard the president discuss it.

“I’m not aware that the president has spoken to this, either publicly or privately,” Earnest said. “I think the president’s expectation is that President Trump will fill vacancies on the Supreme Court by appointing people who are quite different than the kind of people that President Obama appointed.”

Top Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway has said the president-elect is committed to choosing justices from the list of 21 candidates he released earlier this year.

Trump’s release of the list during the campaign was an unprecedented move, Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director for the Judicial Crisis Network, noted after the election.

“Given the significance of the court to Trump’s voters, I’m confident that he will stand by his campaign promise to appoint someone from his excellent list of constitutionalist judges,” Severino said in a formal statement, adding:

While that still would leave the Supreme Court in a 4-4-1 balance, with Justice [Anthony] Kennedy as a swing vote, Trump is likely to have the opportunity to appoint additional justices, who can ensure that the Constitution is interpreted according to its text and original meaning and isn’t used as a vehicle for political policy goals.

Most on the list are state Supreme Court justices or U.S. Court of Appeals judges. The list include two individuals who have served in Congress and would have a political record to defend. Two brothers also are on the list.

Trump faced some criticism for lack of diversity, with eight white males among the 11 names on the initial list he released in May; his subsequent list in September included one South Asian and one Hispanic.

A Political Trail

At Senate confirmation hearings, Supreme Court nominees who already are judges typically avoid directly answering questions about how they would rule on a policy that might come before the nation’s highest court.

However, three of those on Trump’s list were elected by voters to offices that require taking public stances during the course of a campaign. Two of the three have gone on to become judges:

U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, is a big favorite of conservatives. Lee, 45, was also a strong critic of Trump during the presidential campaign. As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Lee typically would be in the advise and consent role during confirmation hearings for judicial nominees. Before he was elected to the Senate in 2010, Lee served as an assistant U.S. attorney for Utah. He is a graduate of Brigham Young University Law School and clerked for Justice Samuel Alito.

Florida Chief Justice Charles Canady, 62, was a four-term Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1990s. Canady was one of the impeachment managers that acted as a prosecuting team against President Bill Clinton during his Senate trial in 1999. Canady, on the state’s high court since 2008, was elevated to chief justice in 2010. He previously was a state appeals court judge. He is a graduate of Yale Law School.

Judge William H. Pryor Jr., a Bush appointee, has served since 2004 on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Alabama. Pryor, 54, became Alabama’s attorney general in 1997 after his predecessor, Jeff Sessions, was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Republican. (Trump has announced he intends to nominate Sessions as U.S. attorney general.) Pryor was elected in his own right in 1998 as state attorney general and was re-elected in 2002. In 2013, he was confirmed to a term on the United States Sentencing Commission. Pryor received his law degree from Tulane.

State Supreme Court Justices

In recent years, presidents typically have plucked federal appeals court justices to serve on the Supreme Court.

Not since President Ronald Reagan nominated Arizona state appeals court judge Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court in 1981 has a state judge of any kind been elevated to the high court.

Trump’s list includes as many state supreme court justices as federal appeals judges. The inclusion of two district judges, however, means federal judges outnumber state judges:

Georgia Supreme Court Justice Keith Blackwell, named by Gov. Nathan Deal to the court 2012, previously was a state appeals court judge and state prosecutor. Blackwell, 41, was an assistant district attorney for Cobb County before becoming a deputy state attorney general. A graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law, Blackwell also has worked in private practice.

Colorado Supreme Court Justice Allison Eid, named to the state’s high court by then-Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican, in 2006, won 75 percent of the vote to retain the position. Eid, 51, previously was the state’s solicitor general. A graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, Eid clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Michigan Supreme Court Justice Joan Larsen was named to the state’s high court by Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican. Larsen, 48, in 2002 became an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Larsen, who also taught law at the University of Michigan. received her law degree from Northwestern and clerked for Scalia.

Utah Supreme Court Justice Thomas Lee is the brother of Mike Lee, so the list is no small achievement for the Lee family. Both men are the sons of former U.S. Solicitor General Rex Lee. Thomas Lee, 52, began serving on Utah’s high court in 2010, nominated by Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican. (His brother was elected to the U.S. Senate that same year.) Lee previously was on the faculty of Brigham Young University Law School, where he continues to teach in an adjunct capacity. During the Bush administration, he was deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Civil Division from 2004 to 2005. A graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, he clerked for Thomas.

Iowa Supreme Court Justice Edward Mansfield was appointed in 2011 by Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, and voters decided to retain him in 2012. Mansfield, 58, previously served on the Iowa Court of Appeals. He is a graduate of Yale Law School.

Minnesota Supreme Court Justice David Stras, 42, was appointed by Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, in 2010. He was elected to a six-year term in 2012. Before serving on the bench, Stras taught at University of Minnesota Law School. He received his law degree from the University of Kansas and clerked for Thomas.

Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett has served on the state’s high court since 2005, appointed by then-Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, and re-elected twice by voters. Willett, 50, previously was a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. An adviser to George W. Bush’s gubernatorial administrations, Willett later served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy when Bush became president. He also was a deputy attorney general under then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, now the state’s Republican governor. Willett received his law degree from Duke University.

Michigan Chief Justice Robert Young, 65, was appointed to the state’s high court in 1999 by then-Gov. John Engler, a Republican. He previously served as a judge on the Michigan Court of Appeals. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School.

Federal Appeals Judges

Trump could follow the model of most recent Supreme Court nominations by choosing a federal appeals court judge.

Two of President Barack Obama’s nominees were appellate judges—Sonia Sotomayor, confirmed by the Senate, and Merrick Garland, his pick to replace Scalia, who has not been confirmed.

President George W. Bush nominated John Roberts and Samuel Alito, both former appeals court judges who were successfully confirmed.

Obama also successfully nominated Elena Kagan, a former solicitor general who never before served as a judge. Bush nominated and later withdrew White House counsel Harriet Miers, also never a judge.

President Bill Clinton’s two Supreme Court appointees, Ginsburg and Breyer, were both federal appeals court judges.

President George H.W. Bush named David Souter, a former appeals court judge. Reagan’s other two nominees, Scalia and Kennedy, were both federal appeals court judges.

Appeals court judges on Trump’s list are:

Judge Steven Colloton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit in Iowa, was appointed in 2003 by George W. Bush. Colloton previously served as a U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa. The 53-year-old graduate of Yale Law School clerked for the late Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

Judge Neil Gorsuch, 49, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Colorado, was appointed in 2006 by Bush. Before that, Gorsuch was a deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department. The Harvard Law School graduate clerked for both Kennedy and Byron White.

Judge Raymond Gruender, 53, was named by Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit in Missouri in 2004. He previously was a prosecutor and served as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. He received his law degree from Washington University in St. Louis.

Judge Thomas Hardiman was appointed by Bush in 2007 to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit in Pennsylvania. Hardiman, 51, previously was a federal district judge for the Western District of Pennsylvania, a position he took in 2003. A Notre Dame graduate, Hardiman practiced law in Washington and Pittsburgh.

Judge Raymond Kethledge was named by Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Ohio in 2008. Kethledge, 50, previously served as judiciary counsel to then-U.S. Sen. Spencer Abraham, R-Mich. He also was in-house legal counsel for Ford Motor Co. The University of Michigan graduate clerked for Kennedy.

Judge Margaret A. Ryan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces was appointed by Bush in 2006. As a military judge and a veteran, she stands out among other contenders. Ryan, 52, served in the Marine Corps in the Philippines and during the Persian Gulf War. She graduated from Notre Dame Law School on a military scholarship and served as a JAG officer for four years. She clerked for Thomas.

Chief Judge Timothy Tymkovich of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Colorado, a Bush appointee, has served since 2003. Tymkovich, 60, previously was Colorado’s solicitor general. He is a graduate of the University of Colorado College of Law.

Judge Diane Sykes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Wisconsin was named by Bush in 2004. Sykes, 58, had been a justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court since 1999. Before that, she was a trial court judge in both civil and criminal matters. She received her law degree from Marquette.

Federal District Judges

Federal district judges are also rare Supreme Court nominees, but Trump’s list includes two:

Judge Federico Moreno of the Southern District of Florida is a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States, the national policymaking body for the federal courts. Moreno, 64 and Hispanic, appointed in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush, previously was a state and county judge in Florida. He is a graduate of the University of Miami School of Law.

Judge Amul Thapar of the Eastern District of Kentucky was appointed by the younger Bush in 2007. He has taught law students at the University of Cincinnati and Georgetown. Thapar, 47, previously served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., and the Southern District of Ohio. He is of South Asian descent. Just before being named to his judgeship, Thapar was U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky. He got his law degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

(For more from the author of “One of These 21 Men and Women Will Be Trump’s First Supreme Court Pick” please click HERE)

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The Diversity Police Went Too Far in Attacking HGTV’s Fixer Uppers

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For years I have said that gay activists and their allies would overplay their hand and that their bullying would backfire. It is happening today in front of our eyes as a Christian couple, Chip and Joanna Gaines, who recently graced the cover of People magazine, is now being attacked simply for attending a Christian church. Oh, the thought of it!

Yes, if you are a public figure and you attend a church that preaches that marriage is the union of one man and one woman and you actually believe that homosexuals can be changed by the power of the gospel, you should be shamed, ridiculed and perhaps even fired.

That is the obvious offshoot of BuzzFeed’s recent article which carried the headline, “Chip And Joanna Gaines’ Church Is Firmly Against Same-Sex Marriage.” How terrible!

Chip and Joanna attend a church that actually believes what the Bible says? They’re part of a congregation that preaches what the church has taught for 2,000 years? Worse still, “Their pastor considers homosexuality to be a ‘sin’ caused by abuse,” although, “whether the Fixer Upper couple agrees is unclear.” Horror of all horrors. What kind of monsters are these two?

And note that the Gaines’ crime was not making a public statement against homosexuality, as Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson did, after which he was promptly (albeit briefly) suspended by A & E.

Their crime was not making ministry-related statements against abortion and homosexual practice, as the Benham Brothers did, because of which they were promptly fired by HGTV (after that network was bullied by radical left activists).

Their crime was not preaching in their own church that homosexuality was a sin, as Dr. Eric Walsh did, because of which he was fired by the state of Georgia as Public Health Director.

Their crime was not writing a book that made passing, negative reference to homosexual practice as did Kelvin Cochran, because of which he was fired by the city of Atlanta as fire chief.

Their crime was not penning an op-ed piece in a local newspaper, taking respectful issue with the notion that gay is the new black, as Crystal Dixon did, because of which she was fired as Associate Vice President of Human Resources at the University of Toledo.

Their crime was not even signing a petition after a church service which called for a popular vote on same-sex “marriage” in the state of Maryland (rather than letting legislators decide this), as Dr. Angela McCaskill did, because of which she was placed on leave by Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. where she served as Associate Provost of Diversity and Inclusion (a position, by the way, which made no reference to sexual issues in its description).

No, the crime of Chip and Joanna Gaines was simply that they attend a gospel-preaching church. How much farther will these witch hunts go?

The Gaines and their representatives have not even issued a statement as to their own beliefs (if they do, I sure hope they affirm what their church teaches), nor has there ever been the slightest hint that anything they said on or off the show has been offensive, mean-spirited or hateful. Still, the very fact that they are popular, conservative Christians has put a target on their backs.

I repeat: This kind of shaming and bullying will backfire, and it will backfire sooner rather than later.

That’s why the left-leaning Washington Post already published an article by Brandon Abrosino, himself open and proudly gay, taking issue with the BuzzFeed article and noting that almost 40 percent of Americans are “not on board” with same-sex “marriage.” In response to this Abrosino asks, “Is the suggestion here [meaning, on BuzzFeed] that 40 percent of Americans are unemployable because of their religious convictions on marriage? That the companies that employ them deserve to be boycotted until they yield to the other side of the debate — a side, we should note, that is only slightly larger than the one being shouted down?”

Under no circumstances can gay activists and their allies wave the flag of Equality, Diversity and Tolerance when it comes to the BuzzFeed article. No, this is an overt and explicit attack on equality, diversity and tolerance and is, itself, an example of bigotry and intolerance of the highest order.

So, here’s a word of wisdom for BuzzFeed and those applauding their attack on Chip and Joanna Gaines: The Bible will be here long after you are gone, and the words of Moses, Jesus and Paul will be quoted for generations to come, while articles like the current hit piece on Chip and Joanna will be here today and gone tomorrow.

Put another way, as Bible-believing followers of Jesus, we’re not backing down or cowering in a corner or going underground. We’re here to stay, we are not ashamed, and the more you attack us, the stronger we become.

(For more from the author of “The Diversity Police Went Too Far in Attacking HGTV’s Fixer Uppers” please click HERE)

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Trump’s Cabinet Picks Sounding Alarms

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It’s often said “personnel is policy” when it comes to an incoming president’s Cabinet selections, and that’s what has some of Donald Trump’s most fervent supporters asking, “Why THESE people?”

In fact, Americans on both the left and right of the political aisle are expressing concern over the president-elect’s recent choices for key positions in his administration.

On Wednesday came word that Vice-President-elect Mike Pence was meeting with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, an outspoken Trump critic. In October, Rice called for Trump to end his bid. “Donald Trump should not be president. He should withdraw,” she wrote in a Facebook post following release of a decade-old video of Trump having a lewd conversation about women. Rice even insisted Trump replace himself with “someone who has the dignity and stature to run for the highest office in the greatest democracy on earth.” In July, Rice declined to attend the Republican National Convention. The Trump team has not indicated whether it is considering Rice for a Cabinet post.

Also Wednesday, the New York Times reported Trump may be considering professional wrestling magnate Linda McMahon for the Small Business Administration. McMahon developed World Wresting Entertainment, or WWE, with her husband, Vince McMahon. Upon leaving Trump Tower Wednesday, McMahon told reporters, “The meeting went great. It was really nice to be up, and I was honored to be asked to come in. Anytime I think the president-elect of the United States asks you to come in for a conversation, you’re happy to do that. We talked about business and entrepreneurs and creating jobs, and we talked about S.B.A.”

Trump may also be considering former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for secretary of Veterans Affairs, Reuters reported Wednesday. Trump has long said a top priority of his administration will be to improve veterans’ care. (Read more from “Trump’s Cabinet Picks Sounding Alarms” HERE)

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Why This Potential Pick for DHS Would Be a Huge Reversal on Trump’s Biggest Campaign Promise

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The possible appointment of Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Tex. (F, 56%) to the position of Homeland Security chief may finally signal to Donald Trump’s most loyal supporters that the president-elect is not going to follow through on his chief campaign proposals of border security and immigration.

McCaul, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, met with the president-elect Tuesday in Trump Tower. He is said to be among a handful of individuals in the running to become the next secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

During his presidential campaign, especially in the GOP primary, Trump promised to build a security wall along the southern border to strengthen domestic national security. He has also pledged to enforce immigration law and restore order to the immigration system as a whole.

Conservative critics of Rep. McCaul say he’d be a “very disappointing” pick to lead DHS, a gargantuan government department created in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

McCaul, of course, has also earned the scorn of many a conservative for floating the idea of challenging Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas (A, 96%) in a primary.

“We certainly hope that Donald Trump would not reward a deceptive pro-amnesty lawmaker like Michael McCaul with a Cabinet position,” William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, told the Washington Times on Tuesday. “That would be very disappointing to all of us that believed his campaign promises to secure our borders and deport millions of illegal immigrants under current U.S. laws.”

Immigration hawks are particularly startled by McCaul’s 2015 Secure Our Borders First Act. Critics say the Texas representative’s co-authored bill ignored policy solutions to deal with the millions of people living in America illegally, like the administration’s “catch and release” policy.

Another factor working against McCaul’s credibility to head the Cabinet department simply in charge of “keeping America safe” is his support for Obama’s Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) agenda, which seeks to prevent jihadist radicalization through a mix of community and counter-propaganda approaches.

The overarching goal of the CVE approach is to stop would-be jihadists before they act, by countering the destructive narratives that may radicalize them within their local communities and online. The problem, critics claim, is that the structure of the program does not actually lend itself to countering violent extremism.

Obama’s pilot program has been criticized as a “catastrophic failure,” primarily because it fails to address the roots of this brand of violence and extremism (jihadism), and engages Muslim organizations with extremist ties, instead of reformist outfits.

As Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a Muslim reformist and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy puts it, entrusting groups like these with counter-terrorism responsibilities is akin to “treating arsonists like firefighters.”

What was Rep. Mike McCaul’s role in this? After criticizing President Obama’s approach during the White House CVE conference in Feb. 2015, the House Homeland Security Committee chairman sponsored a bill to create an entire CVE office inside the Department of Homeland Security.

Other potential nominees for DHS secretary (and related national security posts) include: Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, California Rep. Duncan Hunter, former Pennsylvania Rep. Robert Smith Walker, Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, and former CIA officer Clare Lopez. (For more from the author of “Why This Potential Pick for DHS Would Be a Huge Reversal on Trump’s Biggest Campaign Promise” please click HERE)

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Dollywood Employee Finds Burned Bible Page After Wildfires

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The day after wildfires tore through Gatlinburg, destroying more than 150 structures, killing at least three people and displacing thousands, Isaac McCord was doing his part to help out, picking up debris from the Dollywood park grounds.

Gripping his rake, he revisited a spot in Craftsman Valley he had skimmed over after his co-worker, Misty Carver, quipped, “Is that how you clean your room?” Provoked, he said he had started “really getting in the nooks and crannies” under a park bench when he caught a glimpse of a piece of paper lying in a puddle of water — soggy, seared and torn in two . . .

“As soon as I got down on the ground, I noticed it was a Bible verse, and I was like holy crap,” McCord said in a phone interview on Tuesday night. “It was in a puddle of water. I said, ‘I want to take care of this the best way I can,’ so I gently scooped it up and carried it out the best I could” . . .

In silence, the pair pored over the page, the edges of which were burned black, rendering many words illegible. But parts of the right side of the page were preserved enough to get the message across: it perfectly reflected, McCord said, the tragic natural disaster that had thrust Gatlinburg and Sevier County into the national spotlight the night before.

“O Lord, to thee will I cry: For the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame hath burned all the trees of the field,” the page reads, according to a picture of the page posted on McCord’s Facebook. (Read more from “Dollywood Employee Finds Burned Bible Page After Wildfires” HERE)

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Threatening Electors Violates Federal Law. So Why Isn’t Loretta Lynch Doing Anything About It?

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Before Donald Trump’s stunning victory on November 8, liberals called for acceptance of election results. But since the election didn’t go as they’d planned, some have taken to harassing and intimidating electors in an attempt to change the election results. Some of these threats may violate federal law, yet the Justice Department acts strangely uninterested in investigating.

Following the election, a coalition of liberal activist groups launched #NotMyPresident Alliance, an organization dedicated to fighting the inauguration of President-elect Trump. As part of that effort, #NotMyPresident distributed personal contact information — including telephone numbers and addresses — of electors in states that voted Republican.
According to Buzzfeed, Maddie Deming, a strategist for the group, said they wanted to put electors in the spotlight and “to hold them accountable for their decision.” Whatever the intent, the initiative has produced a deluge of threats.

Electors across the country report receiving not only a flood of emails and phone calls to change their vote to Hillary Clinton but death threats as well. Alex Kim, a Texas Republican elector, reported that he and other electors had “receiv[ed] thousands of emails a day” urging them to vote for Clinton, including threats of harm and death. Arizona’s electors have reported harassment as well.

Michael Banerian, a Michigan GOP elector, received some of the most extreme threats according to The Detroit News. One email, Banerian said, talked about “shoving a gun in my mouth and blowing my brains out.” Another told him to “do society a favor and throw yourself in front of a bus.”

In Georgia and Idaho, the threats have been so extreme that the secretaries of state both released statements calling for the harassment to end. But the federal law enforcement agency that should be acting to stop these threats — the U.S. Department of Justice — has not done a thing.

Section 11b of the Voting Rights Act (52 U.S.C. §10307) makes it a crime for anyone to “intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for voting or attempting to vote.” While this has been applied in the past to ordinary, everyday voters in federal elections, the language does not limit it only to such voters. Electors who are casting their votes for president and vice president are also protected by Section 11b since the Electoral College is an essential part of the federal voting process. This is supported by Section 14(c) of the VRA, which says that “voting” includes “all action necessary to make a vote effective in any primary, special, or general election.” Obviously, the votes cast by Americans on Nov. 8 will not be effective if the electors they chose are intimidated from casting their votes in the Electoral College.

Federal law (3 U.S.C. §7) requires electors to cast their votes on the first Monday after the second Wednesday of December, which this year is Dec. 19. These are recorded as “certificates of vote,” signed, sealed, and delivered by December 28 to the president of the Senate and the archivist of the United States (3 U.S.C. §11). Congress is required to meet on Jan. 6, 2017 in joint session to count the Electoral College votes (3 U.S.C. §15).

The Dec. 19 deadline for the electors to cast their votes is less than three weeks away, which makes it essential that the Justice Department act immediately — and very publicly — to deter and stop these threats and this intimidation. Yet the website of the Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs contains no announcement of an investigation into these threats. Moreover, we can be pretty certain that if investigators had actually contacted any of the threatened electors, it would have been reported in the press by now. The obvious conclusion is that the Justice Department has done nothing to enforce Section 11b against those who have tried to intimidate and who have threatened electors with bodily harm if they vote for Donald Trump.

Unfortunately, that’s not surprising. After nearly eight years of operation, the Obama administration has yet to file a single Section 11b case. Indeed, shortly after Mr. Obama entered the Oval Office, his Justice Department essentially dismissed almost all of a pending, high-profile Section 11b case concerning voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia. Under Attorney General Eric Holder, the Civil Rights Division had the open-and-shut case dismissed because its “progressive” new leaders did not believe the Voting Rights Act should be used against black defendants to protect white voters. This radical position ignores the fact that the law is race-neutral and protects all voters.

Seriously, if Hillary Clinton had won and Donald Trump supporters were threatening Clinton electors with bodily injury, does anyone doubt that the Justice Department would have acted immediately to enforce Section 11b?

Making threats and attempting to intimidate electors is as anti-democratic as it gets. The U.S. Justice Department, which is charged with protecting all voters, should act to quash this outrage immediately. Failure to do so will just be further evidence that this Justice Department does not believe in equal protection under the law. (For more from the author of “Threatening Electors Violates Federal Law. So Why Isn’t Loretta Lynch Doing Anything About It?” please click HERE)

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Why Intellectuals Adore Tyrants Like Castro

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My best friend in high school was Will, a Cuban exile, who later went on to become a Catholic priest. When I complained that one of our teachers was a “tyrant,” Will laughed at me ruefully. “You have no idea what that word means.” He’d lived in a tyranny, and knew what it was like.

His father and grandfather had both supported Castro against the corrupt usurper Batista — then turned against the regime when it betrayed all its liberal promises, and turned a once-prosperous island into a rusting, starving outpost of the dismal Soviet bloc. Both those men were sent to prison camps, where they were tortured periodically during their multi-year sentences. “My father never wanted to take off his shirt in front of me, so I wouldn’t see all the scars,” Will told me.

Will recounted the heavy pressure his grade school teachers put on him not to go to church. “You should come to our parade, instead!” The Cuban Communist Party sponsored a festive march with bright red flags every Sunday morning, to draw the children from God and toward the Party. Will remembered the heavy emphasis that Cuban schools put on literacy: “They wanted everyone to be able to read their propaganda, and the orders sent by the Party. So there was no excuse for disobedience.”

Finally, after a harrowing escape from that prison island, Will and his parents made their way to New York City, to pursue the ordinary middle class lives that the poor worldwide still dream of — and that too many self-styled intellectuals hold in bemused contempt. That was one thing that Will always found puzzling. “Do these people have any idea what people in Cuba would give to live an American middle-class life? Or even a working-class life?” he would ask me, flabbergasted. In fact, many thousands gave their lives, sailing rickety boats through shark-infested waters, sometimes with the Cuban military shooting at them, as Castro had ordered.

Will would wonder aloud why so many intellectuals — and wannabes, like Hollywood actors — trooped off to Cuba over the decades? Why did they rally to the support of a vicious dictator who

drove one of the wealthiest nations in Latin America into poverty and stagnation;

oppressed and destroyed its middle class, nationalizing virtually all private property;

filled his jails with priests, nuns, businessmen, and ordinary citizens;

and tortured dissident authors and ordinary people whose only “crime” was that they’d been denounced as homosexual?

Why did anti-poverty icon Dorothy Day proclaim, “God bless Castro” in 1961, and poo-poo the obvious signs that he was imposing a totalitarian government that crushed Cuba’s churches? Why did the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, just offer an anodyne eulogy for Castro’s death that has set off a worldwide parody epidemic of comparably blind, bland praise for Pol Pot, Hitler, and Idi Amin?

Socialism: A Disease of the Spirit

There is something deeper going on than simple partisan blindness. What we are seeing grows from a disease of the spirit. We need to diagnose it.

The attraction that lures intellectuals to socialist tyrants like a dog to its master’s leg has its roots in three temptations, that build on one another.

Snobbery

To this day, “bourgeois” is an epithet that college students and teachers toss off with a satisfied smirk, in the same way that too many white Americans used to sling the “n-word.” But it’s still perfectly respectable, even clubbable, to scorn the middle class. In fact, it’s a method of social-climbing, a way to convey to listeners that you — of course — have always enjoyed the perks of good education, nutrition, economic opportunities, and personal freedom. No need for you to scramble after them. In fact, you are actually jaded by them, like an archduke bored with his family’s art collection.

You now have seen beyond the materialistic allure of abundance and social mobility — without, of course, sacrificing either one by embracing actual poverty or relocating to live in some socialist tyranny. (Not one leftist American threatened that if Donald Trump were elected, he would move to Cuba.) Piercing the bourgeois veil has freed you up for the next stage in socialist enlightenment.

Secret Knowledge

Unlike the sweaty, materialistic masses, you have enjoyed an education that would have put most aristocrats over the centuries to shame. You have read enough Marx or Zizek or Zinn in college to see through the empty rhetoric of a free society, to perceive the secret core of pulsating truth: that the status quo, which has cossetted you, is in fact profoundly evil. It is a mechanism by which the wealthy “one percent” hijack control of society’s money and power, while duping ordinary workers with the fleeting dream of a comfortable, peaceable life. That dream numbs these exploited masses to the damage being done to them, and dulls their appetite for struggle.

So it is your business to enlighten them — whether they want your enlightenment or not. In fact that is your duty, as one who has risen above their sad obsessions with cars and houses and tacky white picket fences, to the cold and austere vision offered by the socialist conspiracy theory. It is also deeply satisfying to know that you have a kind of political and economic X-ray vision, which sets you apart from the vast majority of dupes and victims. That superpower which you have gained introduces you to an elite, a class of supermen who make it their business to seize and redirect the course of human history.

God-Like Power

The great Catholic freedom advocate Frederic Bastiat observed that the socialists of his day (the mid-nineteenth century) imagined themselves to be philosopher-kings in exile. They awaited only the moment when they could impose their private designs for a perfect society by the force of the state on millions of hapless citizens — those who had been too blinkered and deluded by bourgeois slogans to know what they actually wanted.

As Bastiat put it, these socialist thinkers imagined their fellow men to be shrubs and trees, while they themselves were the gardeners. The men of Bastiat’s day had at least the excuse that they had not witnessed the Gulag, the famine in Ukraine, the tens of millions of needless deaths imposed by Mao in China, or Pol Pot in Cambodia. They didn’t dream that the shears they’d need to use to carve up human nature into the new shape of Socialist man would be drenched in innocent blood.

What possible excuse is there for favoring socialism today? (For more from the author of “Why Intellectuals Adore Tyrants Like Castro” please click HERE)

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