Posts

The Reckless Spending That Taxpayers Let Congress Get Away With

/0 Comments/in , /by

There are new Congressional Budget Office numbers out on the national debt, and America’s fiscal future is looking bleaker than ever. According to a new estimate, we’ll add $12 trillion to the total over the next decade, which CBO director Keith Hall calls “unsustainable.”

My colleague Chris Pandolfo is right: A driving force behind this problem is public apathy about it: “Numbers and statistics are boring. They don’t go viral. Celebrities don’t talk about them, and numbers as big as a trillion are impossible to wrap our minds around.”

But this is only half of the equation. The other side is that Washington really likes spending, and both major parties are guilty of it. As Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., and CR’s Daniel’s Horowitz have pointed out, the problem is more about spending than about revenue supposedly reduced by GOP tax cuts.

Each party, of course, gets its spending fix through different means. Whereas Democrats like burgeoning entitlement programs but don’t like the idea of reforming them and subsidies for green energy products that aren’t yet economically viable, Republicans like market-distorting farm subsidies and are usually averse to anything that might somehow reform or reduce defense spending. (Meanwhile, the Pentagon failed its first-ever audit back in November.)

There’s also widespread hesitation to do anything to meaningfully reform Social Security and Medicare, both of which are hurtling towards insolvency at faster rates than predicted.

Then you have emergency spending, which falls more along geographical lines than ideological ones. States in disaster-prone areas surely can’t be expected to put money aside to address the natural disasters than naturally occur there. The preferred Swamp method to address this is through massive emergency spending bills with even less oversight and more expedience than regular spending bills.

Of course, there’s all the odd, wasteful things like federal funding to study the sex habits of quails on cocaine, or $18 million to prop up Egypt’s tourism industry, or $200,000 to put on plays in Afghanistan. Seriously, if you haven’t read the 2018 Waste Report put out by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., you’re missing out. These are smaller than the bigger-ticket items above, but the sheer number of spending programs is a reminder of just how vast and complex the administrative state has gotten. That’s yet another front of the debt fight.

And all this is assisted by the mistaken cultural assumption that attention to a specific issue is best measured in the amount of taxpayer money dedicated to it. But when you have a hammer, the old saying goes, every problem looks like a nail. There are indeed a lot of misidentified nails in the D.C. Swamp. (For more from the author of “The Reckless Spending That Taxpayers Let Congress Get Away With” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE

The Clock Runs out on ‘Trump’s Worst’ Nominee. Will He Finally Pick a Conservative for the Job?

/0 Comments/in , , /by

With the start of a new Congress on Thursday, nominations President Trump sent to the last Congress have expired, including a highly controversial one that a conservative senator hopes won’t be nominated again in the new year.

The re-nomination of Commissioner Chai Feldblum to another term in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has been opposed by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, for months. Lee has long said that Feldblum’s views on marriage and LGBT issues are dangerous to the First Amendment.

As early as February, Lee warned that the nominee “wants to use the federal agency’s power to undermine our nation’s founding principles,” and effectively blocked Feldblum from being confirmed again during the 115th Congress.

“And don’t think for a second that you, your family, and your neighbors will be left alone if Feldblum gets her way,” reads a press release from the senator’s office highlighting the nominee’s more radical statements. “Feldblum believes her radical agenda ‘cannot be adequately advanced if pockets of resistance… are permitted to flourish.’ She therefore has argued that ‘no individual exceptions based on religious beliefs’ should ever be allowed if they conflict with ‘the goal of liberty for gay people.’”

Feldblum was first nominated by President Barack Obama in 2009. When she didn’t get a floor vote, Obama appointed her during a Senate recess, after which the Senate confirmed her by a vote of 54-41, with only two Republicans voting to confirm: Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.

Lee also highlighted several of these positions in a recent floor speech. Feldblum responded in a Medium post saying that she “did not recognize the person Senator Lee was talking about” because the “quotes were either misconstrued or taken out of context.”

“Ms. Feldblum’s views on using government power to undermine religious liberty are too extreme and contrary to existing law,” Lee said in a statement to BlazeTV. “I hope President Trump chooses a different nominee this year.”

Back in March, Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro called Feldblum “President Trump’s worst federal nomination” and referred to her views as “fully radicalized stuff.”

“We need a conservative, now, to lead the EEOC and push back against the radical courts,” Conservative Review’s Daniel Horowitz wrote in late 2017, “not maintain Obama’s personnel to encourage the courts to be even more radical.”

Since Lee blocked the slate of nominees, which also included two others, the commission does not have a quorum going into this year, a paywalled article at Law360 explains. This means that while the body will be able to continue investigating and bringing suits in harassment cases, it will not be able to make policy.

The EEOC and other government bodies like it are part of what many constitutionalists refer to as the “fourth branch” of the federal government, so a temporary hiccup in the commission’s operations shouldn’t bother too many on the Right anyway. (For more from the author of “The Clock Runs out on ‘Trump’s Worst’ Nominee. Will He Finally Pick a Conservative for the Job?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE

The Top 10 Votes in Congress From 2018

/0 Comments/in , /by

The year 2018 is finally over. It was a tumultuous year for Congress, during which the government shut down twice, President Trump faced several challenges both domestically and in foreign policy, and the Democrats retook the House of Representatives on Election Day.

In all the tumult of the day-to-day news and the hysterical media coverage of Trump’s every action, Congress was at work passing some legislation you may have missed. Have you watched how your elected representatives voted in 2018?

Taken from the Conservative Review Scorecard, here are the top ten votes of 2018:

1. Support unconstitutional abuse of Americans’ privacy

This procedural vote in the Senate was to advance a bill reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Surveillance Act, without substantial reforms. This law permits the warrantless surveillance of American citizens.

Under Section 702, the National Security Agency has sweeping authority to collect incidental data on Americans while spying on foreign targets. The collected information, including emails and text messages, is stored and can be queried by law enforcement without a warrant or even probable cause.

Civil liberties advocates in the Senate like Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., were denied the opportunity to filibuster the legislation when Republicans and Democrats voted 60-38 to end debate and advance the bill.

2. Support effort to ban abortions after 20 Weeks (point of pain)

The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act would have protected unborn children through a federal ban on abortions after the 20th week of gestation, when scientific evidence suggests a child can feel pain. This bill would have penalized abortionists who perform an abortion procedure after 20 weeks with up to five years in prison and/or fines.

The United States is one of just seven countries — including China and North Korea — to permit elective abortions after 20 weeks. Even in leftist Europe, most countries ban abortions after the first trimester.

The House of Representatives passed the bill in 2017, sending it to the Senate, where Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., brought it up for a vote in January 2018. Sixty votes were needed to break a Democratic filibuster, ending debate and considering the legislation for passage. Unfortunately, the Senate fell short at 51-46, with progressive Republican Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, voting against.

3. Massive spending, debt ceiling raise, and Democrat priorities funded

In February, the Republican majority in Congress passed a two-year budget agreement containing the largest spending increase since the 2009 “stimulus” bill passed by Democrats under President Obama. Importantly, the spending bill increased the budget caps set by Republicans in 2010 by $300 billion for two years, which undid the only successful effort to limit spending under the Obama administration and has since led to hundred-billion-dollar deficits under President Trump.

The bill funded several Democratic priorities, including increased spending on entitlement programs, bailouts for hospitals, and $89 billion in “disaster relief” unrelated to the hurricanes that hit the U.S. in 2017. Republicans also squeezed in crony capitalist tax breaks for special interest groups after touting a tax reform bill that was supposed to simplify the tax code.

Throw in a debt ceiling increase on top of all of that, and you have one of the worst pieces of legislation Congress passed in 2018, which the Senate voted to advance 73-26, and the House passed 240-186.

4. Advance a massive $1.3 trillion omnibus that funds Democrat priorities

Having passed the budget in February, Congress moved on to funding the government in March with an enormous $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill. The titanic 2,232-page bill failed to keep Republican promises of securing the border, defunding sanctuary cities, and defunding Planned Parenthood, among others.

Instead, the Republican Congress increased the deficit by $1 trillion without funding President Trump’s priorities. President Trump was so incensed at Congress that he vowed he would “never sign another bill like this again.”

There were two opportunities in Congress to stop this bill. The first was on procedural votes necessary to advance the legislation before final passage. The House of Representatives advanced the bill 211 – 207, and the Senate advanced it 67-30.

5. Pass a massive $1.3 trillion omnibus that funds Democrat priorities

The second opportunity to stop the spending was on final passage of the omnibus bill. Instead, the House of Representatives passed the bill 256-167, and the Senate followed in a vote of 65-32.

6. “Penny Plan” to balance budget without tax increases

Having passed the “must-pass” omnibus spending bills in March, Republicans in the Senate who campaigned as fiscal conservatives had an opportunity to show that in the future they will be responsible with government funding. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., offered up a resolution to balance the budget without raising taxes by restoring the budget caps and implementing a “Penny Plan” to cut government spending.

The Penny Plan is simple: It would require the government to spend one penny less for every on-budget dollar the federal government spent in fiscal year 2018 for the next five years. Thereafter, spending would grow by one percent annually. Paul’s plan would reduce spending by $13.35 trillion over the next ten years and would balance the budget without making changes to Social Security.

Paul characterized it as a “litmus test for conservatives.” In a procedural vote of 21-76 to advance the budget, most Senate Republicans failed the litmus test.

7. Pass amnesty with citizenship for 1.8 million illegal immigrants

More than any other issue, illegal immigration was central to President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign. He made key promises to build a wall on the southern border, increase border security, end Obama’s unconstitutional DACA amnesty policies, and reform our immigration system into a merit-based system.

Democrats in Congress refused to accept this agenda, and Republicans, unwilling to fight for most of the year, attempted to reach a compromise that would have traded making Obama’s illegal amnesty the law of the land in return for $25 billion for border security. But Republicans went above and beyond what Obama had done, expanding amnesty with citizenship to 1.8 million illegal immigrants in their proposed deal. The legislation also failed to limit judicial involvement in immigration, permitting rogue leftist judges to continue to undermine American sovereignty without limits imposed by Congress.

It was a bad compromise, and thankfully it was defeated in the House of Representatives, 121 – 301.

8. Pass a promise-breaking cromnibus before the election

Just before the election, Congress added a continuing resolution (CR) to another omnibus spending bill, creating an $855 billion “Cromnibus” bill combining Department of Defense funding with Labor/Health and Human Services/Education funding.

The dirty swamp trick of this vote was to make it look like conservatives opposed to increased funding for government programs in the Health and Human Services, Labor, and Education Departments were also opposed to increased military spending. The military was held hostage by congressional leadership to force conservative lawmakers to vote for these progressive policies.

It was a despicable thing to do. The Senate passed the Cromnibus in a vote of 93-7, and the House passed it 361 – 61.

9. Pass a $900 billion farm bill with socialist policies

The spending never ends in Washington D.C. This vote was to pass a $900 billion farm bill to fund crony capitalist farm subsidies and food stamps for the next five years.

Every five years the farm bill contains the same government handouts, bailouts, subsidies, and regulations that favor big agribusiness in America at the expense of the taxpayer. And every five years Congress passes the bill without needed reforms. At one point conservatives attempted to attach watered-down work requirements to the bill, but Senate Democrats and some Republicans balked and rejected that effort. While they were at it, lawmakers actually increased spending in this farm bill compared to the last one.

The Senate passed the bill 87-13, and the House passed it 369-47.

10. Release dangerous criminals from federal prisons

This bill, the First Step Act, was a divisive piece of legislation that had the support of many good-willed conservatives but ultimately contained too many unaddressed problems. Focusing on prison reform, the bill reduced prison sentences for drug traffickers, increased the discretion judges have to avoid mandatory sentencing, and mandated that administrative agencies create ill-defined programs to accelerate release for federal prisoners.

Sentencing leniencies were given to many classes of hardened criminals, including criminal illegal aliens. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., confirmed that several violent crimes ranging from assaulting a law enforcement officer to first-time assault with intent to commit rape were not excluded by the First Step Act. Cotton offered amendments to the legislation that sought to exclude more classes of sex offenders and violent criminals, to require the government to notify victims of a crime before prisoners are released, and to require the Bureau of Prisons to track the re-arrest rates of those who are released early. Those amendments and other important amendments that would have strengthened the bill and corrected several of these problems were rejected by the Senate before the bill was passed.

The other problems with the law are numerous and too extensive to cover here. You can read more of Conservative Review’s opinion and analysis on the First Step Act here.

The Senate passed the First Step Act 87-12, and the House of Representatives passed it 358-36.

Visit the Conservative Review Scorecard to see how your elected representatives in Congress voted not just on these 2018 votes, but on all the top votes Congress took in recent years.

What bills will Congress pass in 2019? Stick with Conservative Review to keep up to date. (For more from the author of “The Top 10 Votes in Congress From 2018” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE

Democrats: It’s Time to Remove the 181-Year Ban on Religious Headwear on the House Floor

/0 Comments/in , /by

Democrats have drafted a proposal of rules for Congress once they take over the House of Representatives in January. One of the proposals is doing away with a 181-year ban on religious headwear, like hijabs, on the House floor. One of the first Muslim women who was just elected to the House, Ilhan Omar, is spearheading the policy change, ABC News reported.

Nancy Pelosi, who is expected to retake the Speakership, proposed the rule change last week. She’s working with Ranking Member Jim McGovern and Omar on making the proposal a reality. . .

According to Roll Call, Omar will have a number of “firsts.” She’ll be the first member of Congress to wear a religious headpiece on the floor of the House, the first Somali-American in Congress and the first woman of color to represent Minnesota in Washington, D.C. Omar and Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib are the first two Muslim women in Congress. (Read more from “Democrats: It’s Time to Remove the 181-Year Ban on Religious Headwear on the House Floor” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

The VA Needs a Lot of Help. These Members of Congress Are Going to Work on… the Motto

/0 Comments/in , /by

File this under “proposals to paint the barn while the house is on fire.” Two members of Congress want to change the VA’s motto to be more gender-inclusive, according to a report from Stars and Stripes.

Currently, the department’s motto is a quote from President Abraham Lincoln’s 1865 inaugural address that reads: “To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan.”

Instead, Reps. Kathleen Rice, D-N.Y., and Brian Mast, R-Fla., want the new motto to read: “To fulfill President Lincoln’s promise to care for those ‘who shall have borne the battle’ and for their families, caregivers, and survivors,” according to the report.

“The brave women who have worn our nation’s uniform and their families deserve to be equally embraced by the motto of the very agency meant to support them,” reads a statement from Rice’s office last week.

However, days after the proposed motto change was announced, six veterans’ groups called for improvements to the quality of care in the department, citing instances that are “nothing short of horrifying,” while thousands of veterans face the prospect of homelessness because the department has been late in sending out their GI Bill payments.

Let’s face facts: With all the help the VA needs to properly do its job of caring for our nation’s heroes, whether or not the motto is inclusive enough for 21st-century sensibilities ought to be at the bottom of the list, if not at the very bottom.

Supposedly people can walk and chew gum at the same time, but we’re talking about the federal government, where even necessary reforms and changes to programs like the VA are infamously slow and where any minor distraction from those necessary reforms has the potential to completely derailed the task at hand.

But, sure, let’s spend time and resources making sure that a quote from President Lincoln doesn’t leave anyone feeling left out. (For more from the author of “The VA Needs a Lot of Help. These Members of Congress Are Going to Work on… the Motto” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Congress Set to Push Early Release for Gun Felons and Heroin Traffickers

/0 Comments/in , /by

What happens when the evil party and the stupid party get together to pass legislation? We get something evil and stupid.

The most important electoral project for President Trump over the next two years is to win back suburban voters who don’t support the Soros agenda but have been turned off by some of Trump’s demeanor. There is no issue that is more important to suburban women voters than the safety and security of their neighborhoods. Specifically, in recent years, many suburban neighborhoods have experienced an increase in crime as a result of weak criminal justice policies, in addition to a polydrug crisis ravaging our youth.

Being tough on drug traffickers, gun felons, sanctuary cities, illegal immigration, and crime in general is not only the right thing to do, but also the perfect wedge issue to expose the radicalism of Soros Democrats in these critical districts Republicans will need to win back in 2020. Such an agenda will expose these “moderate” Democrats for the phonies they really are on the issues that their constituents care about. Instead, the stupid party is making it top priority in the lame-duck session to use its last remaining month of full control to pass the Soros agenda on crime, thereby not only giving Democrats a pass, but becoming the party of weak on crime.

This legislation will retroactively release drug traffickers and gun felons from federal prison. Moreover, many of these people are foreign nationals who shouldn’t be in the country in the first place. In all my time in politics, I’ve never seen a more self-destroying policy move at the worst time, directed at the most important demographic.

As of now, the plan is to combine the House-passed “First Step Act,” which provides numerous back-end early release credits for federal prisoners, together with most of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s front-end sentencing reductions in one “compromise” piece of legislation.

Here are just a few of the concerns:

When the back-end early release programs from the House bill and the front-end sentencing reductions of the Senate bill are combined, hard-core drug traffickers, responsible for the lion’s share of the 72,000 drug deaths in 2017, who are sentenced to 20 years would be released after 7 years and 10 months. They call this prison reform, but it’s a prison release bill. Remember when they promised us they wouldn’t add on the sentencing bill? Well, they lied.

Prisoners need not do anything more than they are already doing to be eligible for the early release credits. The bill is written like a talking point and refers to programs that already exist. The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation has a very thorough overview of how the standards for these programs are completely vacuous.

A number of the worst gun felons and drug traffickers will be eligible for early release into home confinement. This includes illegal aliens who compose a large share of the federal prison population, particularly among those serving time for drug trafficking. As we’ve noted before, the drug problem is almost all an external immigration problem at the primary trafficking level. If you want fewer people in federal prison for drug charges, and most importantly fewer drugs on the streets, we need to first solve the immigration and sanctuary problem.

4,000 hardened federal prisoners would be immediately released upon passage of this bill.
For all the talk of bipartisan concerns of over-criminalization of “small” white-collar crimes, this bill does nothing to clean up the federal code, which is true criminal justice reform. Instead, it is just an early release bill as part of a broader trend with more odious provisions in the future.

The bill expands the “safety valve,” which circumvents the mandatory sentencing and is already in widespread use, to those with significant criminal histories. Even under current policy, only 12 percent of drug traffickers wind up serving their full mandatory sentences. So much for “low-level, nonviolent” offenders.

Section 401 of the bill mandates that the Bureau of Prisons place prisoners within 500 miles of their homes. This provision is unworkable and would effectively force prisons to house local gang members together, keeping their criminal ties to each other active.

Remember, only 10 percent of the national prison population is in federal prison. These are the worst of the worst and are often people whom the federal prosecutors pursue on gun and drug charges but who have committed even worse crimes yet escaped justice in the state systems. This is why, according to the United States Sentencing Commission, 72.8 percent of federal offenders sentenced in 2016 had already been convicted of a prior offenses, with an average of six convictions each.

This bill and its broader movement seek more expensive programs while simultaneously touting a talking point of cutting costs – the worst of all worlds. For example, the bill dramatically shifts convicts from prisons to halfway houses, home confinement, and vaguely defined “community supervision.” According to the Bureau of Prisons, these arrangements cost two to three times as much per diem as fixed institutions.
By not appropriating the money in order to brag about cutting costs, this bill will endanger public safety. Moreover, the prison wardens union is concerned that because this bill promises endless new entitlements in prison but doesn’t deliver the funding, it will endanger the security of the wardens by exposing them to more vulnerable logistical situations.

Facts and details about the trends in prison population and crime rates, the nature of federal prisoners, the role of illegal immigration in the drug crisis, the current weak policies on safety valves, and the details of what the bill actually does and doesn’t do matter. The direction of the broader movement pushing this and where it is coming from and where it is headed matters. Chanting mindless slogans about ill-defined “criminal justice reform” like the sheep in “Animal Farm” doesn’t alter these facts.

The opposite of what Trump promised

President Trump promised just the opposite. He promised tougher sentencing and less jailbreak and even floated the idea of the death penalty for top traffickers. Why don’t we fulfill that promise first before pushing other leniencies? Also, with Democrats stealing elections with non-citizens voting, how about addressing that in the lame-duck session before addressing the greatest priority of George Soros? Why is this the sacred agenda?

In a telephone briefing on October 23, Kellyanne Conway told reporters that “nobody here is talking about exempting high-level drug traffickers.” In fact, she said the president is asking the DOJ to come up with tougher policies on high-level drug traffickers because there are “high-level drug traffickers getting little to no punishment because they know just how to stay under the minimum weeks.”

Yet, this bill does the opposite and makes no meaningful exceptions to the leniencies.

The only thing dumber than House Republicans responding to the electoral loss by picking Kevin McCarthy as their minority leader is to pass this piece of jailbreak after losing suburban voters. Unlike the laughably biased polling of the Left, the Foundation for Safeguarding Justice asked respondents in a comprehensive survey whether they would support or oppose a proposal to reduce federal government penalties for traffickers in heroin, fentanyl, and similar drugs – a straightforward description of the bill. Even 70 percent of Democrats opposed it, and opposition was highest among middle-class families with children. It is especially dumb given that there are over 100 better pieces of legislation that passed the House that could be taken up in the lame duck of the Senate.

If the president was actually committed to his plan to get tough on crime, he would demand the following compromise:

Any leniency would only apply to future convicts. No retroactivity.

Stiffen fines for drug traffickers above a certain threshold.

Pass the Hatch-Cotton bill to fix the SCOTUS decision that allows a number of violent criminals to escape mandatory sentencing, including criminal aliens.

Focus first on busting up sanctuary cities and deterring illegal immigration, which is the primary source of drug trafficking killing our cities and also incarcerating people.

Deport as many criminal aliens sitting in federal prison as possible. Let’s start saving money by not incarcerating other countries’ criminals.

Focus on the true impetus for criminal justice reform that luminaries such as Ed Meese signed on to a decade ago; namely, over-criminalization of nonsense crimes. Pass Hatch’s mens rea reform bill on criminal intent and clean up Title 18 of the criminal code for duplicative and random provisions. Don’t let out the worst federal street thugs. As Meese warned when the Senate bill was introduced, “No one should be fooled into believing that at the federal level, prosecutors have charged and judges have sentenced thousands of defendants to years in prison for committing ‘minor’ drug offenses.” Scandalously, phony conservative proponents of jailbreak wrongly tout Meese’s support for cleaning up regulatory crimes as justification for jailbreak.

Rather than pressuring conservatives to “get to yes” on jailbreak, the Swamp should get to yes on being tougher on crime. Trump never campaigned on jailbreak; he campaigned on law and order. To use the waning days of Republican control of the trifecta of government to do the opposite would be one of the most Orwellian moments in political history. (For more from the author of “Congress Set to Push Early Release for Gun Felons and Heroin Traffickers” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Lame Ducks and Congressional Accountability

/0 Comments/in , /by

The ranks of those writing about the state of American governance have swelled recently as more people are alarmed by its dysfunction. Their growing corpus on the subject has facilitated a much-needed debate about how our politics is broken and what reforms are needed to fix it.

Still, Congress’s decision last week to delay action on some controversial issues, including a decision over whether to fund President Trump’s border wall, until after the November elections, has received little attention from the good-governance crowd. Republicans claimed that punting the issue to a lame duck session helps them fully fund the wall. They feared a divisive debate over issues like funding the border wall would have led to a government shutdown just weeks before voters go to the polls. According to Tom Cole, R-Okla., “It doesn’t make a lot of sense to shut down the government, and we’ll fight that fight when it comes, but this isn’t the time to have it.” Republicans believe that waiting until a lame-duck session to fund the wall increases their odds of maintaining their majorities in the House and Senate. And a lame-duck session preserves the opportunity to act in December should the Democrats instead prevail in November.

But intentionally waiting until a lame duck session to pass legislation, especially dealing with controversial issues, violates the spirit of the 20th Amendment and undermines representative government by making it harder, if not impossible, for the American people to hold their elected officials accountable for their votes.

The Constitution initially required that Congress must meet at least once a year on the first Monday in December unless a different date was set by law. And from 1789 to 1933, Congress’s official start date was March 4 of every odd-numbered year. However, in practice, its members didn’t begin regular business until the following December, 13 months after they were first elected. Members would then work through to the following summer at which point they would adjourn until after the elections. Consequently, Congress’s second session did not usually begin until after the members for the next Congress were chosen. In short, it was a lame duck. (Read more from “Lame Ducks and Congressional Accountability” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Congress Must Shed Reputation as Our Most Dysfunctional Institution

/0 Comments/in , /by

To say that Congress is a “dysfunctional institution” is not exactly profound. As our federal legislature winds down yet another fractious and unproductive term, explanations for its decline are everywhere. Indeed, diagnosing the problems of Congress has become a veritable American cottage industry. Whether it is gridlock, partisanship, the decline of civility, the Republicans, the Democrats, lawmakers who keep their families out of Washington, the filibuster, committee system, earmarks, the lack of term limits, lobbyists, and big money, there is an explanation to suit every turn of mind and a supposed panacea to match it.

The reality, however, is that we have been trying to “reform” Congress for more than a century, yet we are as far from a properly functioning legislature as at any time in our history. Why is this? Contemporary reform efforts cannot adequately address the failures of this branch of government because they do not adequately tackle the core problem, which is the demise of Congress as a legislative institution.

The Constitution tells us that “all legislative power herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” The Framers understood that there exists a legislative, or lawmaking power, fundamentally distinct from executive power and judicial power. Laws govern society by informing citizens what they can do, what they must do, and what they are permitted, but not required to do. It is precisely this power that Congress has abdicated over the past century. Sometimes, it simply does not pass legislation. This is especially true during periods of divided government and over contentious issues like immigration reform. But even when Congress is able to pass legislation, it consistently fails to make key decisions regarding the rules of action.

As an example, the Communications Act of 1934 instructed the newly created Federal Communications Commission to issue broadcast licenses as the “public interest, convenience, or necessity” required. But because Congress failed to define that, the agency made those judgments. Similarly, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 required employers and educational institutions to avoid imposing an “undue hardship” on disabled individuals by providing “reasonable accommodations.” But what constitutes a “reasonable accommodation” or an “undue hardship”? Often, employers and educational institutions do not know until they are sued and a judge tells them what they must do to comply with the law. (Read more from “Congress Must Shed Reputation as Our Most Dysfunctional Institution” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Capitol Police Just Arrested a Democratic Congressional Staffer in the Doxxing of GOP Senators

/0 Comments/in , /by

By Townhall. Capitol Police on Wednesday evening arrested a Democratic congressional staffer who allegedly doxxed a handful of Republican senators and then posted their personal information online.

Jackson Cosko, 27, was charged with making public restricted personal information, witness tampering, threats in interstate communication, unauthorized access of a government computer, identity theft, second-degree burglary and unlawful entry, although additional charges could be added. . .

Last week, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Mike Lee (R-UT) had their home addresses, home phone numbers, cell phone numbers and email addresses added to their public Wikipedia pages. The postings came as the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Kavanaugh over Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault allegations. All three Republican appear to believe Kavanaugh to be innocent. (Read more from “Capitol Police Just Arrested a Democratic Congressional Staffer in the Doxxing of GOP Senators” HERE)

_____________________________________________________

Suspect in Congressional Doxxing Cases Arrested

By Roll Calls. Capitol Police have arrested a suspect in the doxxing of senators and releasing personal information onto the internet. . .

Cosko is in police custody pending his first appearance, which is scheduled for Thursday at 1:30 p.m. in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, according to U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesperson Bill Miller.

The Capitol Police investigation is ongoing, and Cosko could face additional charges, according to USCP spokesperson Eva Malecki. The case is being prosecuted by the Cyber Crime National Security Sections of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

Cosko was recently an unpaid intern for Texas Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee. He no longer works there and the office is “cooperating with law enforcement.”

He previously worked for Democratic Sens. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and California’s Barbara Boxer, who has since retired. (Read more from “Suspect in Congressional Doxxing Cases Arrested” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Somebody at DOJ Isn’t Telling the Truth About Rosenstein’s Subpoena Threats Against Congressional Staff

/0 Comments/in , /by

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein denied under oath he had threatened to subpoena congressional aides’ communications, but a DOJ spokesman had already admitted that was true in statements to multiple news outlets, claiming it was justified.

“Rosenstein threatened to ‘subpoena’ GOP-led committee in ‘chilling’ clash over records, emails show,” reported Catherine Herridge at Fox News. She quoted from multiple e-mails congressional staff sent to the House of Representatives’ Office of General Counsel after a January 2018 meeting with Rosenstein:

‘The DAG [Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein] criticized the Committee for sending our requests in writing and was further critical of the Committee’s request to have DOJ/FBI do the same when responding,’ the committee’s then-senior counsel for counterterrorism Kash Patel wrote to the House Office of General Counsel. ‘Going so far as to say that if the Committee likes being litigators, then ‘we [DOJ] too [are] litigators, and we will subpoena your records and your emails,’ referring to HPSCI [House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence] and Congress overall.’

A second House committee staffer at the meeting backed up Patel’s account, writing: ‘Let me just add that watching the Deputy Attorney General launch a sustained personal attack against a congressional staffer in retaliation for vigorous oversight was astonishing and disheartening. … Also, having the nation’s #1 (for these matters) law enforcement officer threaten to ‘subpoena your calls and emails’ was downright chilling.’

The Department of Justice confirmed that Rosenstein “put them on notice to retain relevant emails and text messages, and he hopes they did so.” The Justice spokesperson said Rosenstein “never threatened anyone in the room with a criminal investigation,” which hadn’t been claimed, but that the “Deputy Attorney General was making the point—after being threatened with contempt—that as an American citizen charged with the offense of contempt of Congress, he would have the right to defend himself, including requesting production of relevant emails and text messages and calling them as witnesses to demonstrate that their allegations are false.” (Read more from “Somebody at DOJ Isn’t Telling the Truth About Rosenstein’s Subpoena Threats Against Congressional Staff” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.