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Time for Conservative Intellectuals to Get Comfortable With the Right to Bear Arms

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The right to keep and bear arms is a vital element of the liberal order that our Founding Fathers handed down to us.

As I argue in a new essay for The Heritage Foundation, the founders understood that those who hold political power almost always will strive to reduce the freedom of those they rule and that many of the ruled always will be tempted to trade their liberty for empty promises of security. The causes of these political phenomena are sown in the nature of man.

The Constitution, including the Second Amendment, is a device designed to frustrate the domineering tendencies of the politically ambitious. The Second Amendment also plays an important role in fostering the kind of civic virtue that resists the cowardly urge to trade liberty for an illusion of safety.

Armed citizens take responsibility for their own security, thereby exhibiting and cultivating the self-reliance and vigorous spirit that ultimately are indispensable for genuine self-government.

While much has changed since the 18th century, for better and for worse, human nature has not changed. The fundamental principles of our regime and the understanding of human nature on which those principles are based can still be grasped today.

Once grasped, they can be defended. Such a defense, however, demands an appreciation of the right to arms that goes beyond the legalistic and narrowly political considerations that drive contemporary gun-control debates.

Regrettably, too many American opinion leaders, forgetting or rejecting the reasons that justify this right, have been extremely uncomfortable with the Second Amendment.

The progressive left, for example, largely has been united in promoting restrictions on civilian access to firearms. Lawyers as well, who Tocqueville famously thought could serve America as a kind of democratic aristocracy, have been hostile to gun rights.

Until 2008, federal judges—our most elite corps of attorneys—never once had sustained a Second Amendment challenge to a government regulation. State courts, for their part, generally had upheld gun regulations under legal tests that practically gave legislatures a blank check. And the organized bar has lobbied for decades in favor of more restrictive controls on firearms.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court finally rediscovered the Second Amendment, it so far has protected only a narrow right to keep a handgun in one’s home, and it did that much only by a narrow 5-4 vote. Especially after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, there is little reason to expect that the court will adopt doctrines that offer robust protection for the right to keep and bear arms.

Conservative intellectuals have offered little resistance to conventional elite opinion. Few of these pundits raise their voices against infringements of the right of self-defense, which is the core principle on which our liberal republic was founded. Some, including George Will and Charles Krauthammer, even advocate repeal of the Second Amendment so that the citizenry can be disarmed.

The principal sources of discomfort with the Second Amendment are the authoritarian impulse that comes so naturally to those who wield political power (either directly or through their influence over officeholders) and the cowardice that such people seek to instill in those they rule.

As a crime-control measure, restricting access to weapons by law-abiding citizens has been a proven failure, for reasons with which our Founders were quite familiar. Support for such policies is a sign either of ignorance about their effects or of disregard for the principles on which our republic was founded.

Conservatives constantly and rightly complain about the erosion of individual liberty by bureaucratic government, about the enervating effects of the nanny state, and about the suffocating atmosphere of euphemisms and repressed resentment imposed by the political correctness police. Whatever else has contributed to the decay of America’s republican spirit, forgetfulness or ignorance about the philosophy underlying our free institutions is among the least excusable failings that public intellectuals can display.

That philosophy was articulated by John Locke, William Blackstone, and every one of our Founding Fathers. If more pundits paid more attention to their views, fewer people would think that the right to arms is a product of romanticism about guns or an outmoded 18th-century mentality.

The American right to keep and bear arms, and its continuing value, reflect the reality of human nature and a reasoned response to that reality. The same cannot be said for the views of conservatives who would gut or even repeal the Second Amendment. (For more from the author of “Time for Conservative Intellectuals to Get Comfortable With the Right to Bear Arms” please click HERE)

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4 Times Conservatives Lost a Major Supreme Court Case by a Single Vote

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Sunday night’s second presidential debate underscored the importance of the next Supreme Court justice, as the candidates and questioners alike recognized that the fate of the federal courts rests in the next president’s hands.

The high court has been closely divided on many contentious issues in recent years, and the next justice could change the development and application of the law for decades. As former Attorney General Ed Meese has stated, “No president exercises any power more far-reaching, more likely to influence his legacy, than the selection of federal judges.”

Although the Framers of the Constitution envisioned the judiciary as the “least dangerous branch,” the judges who populate its ranks wield tremendous power to decide cases that affect the daily lives of millions of Americans.

While each branch of government has an independent duty to uphold the Constitution, the Supreme Court has grabbed power by declaring that its decisions are the supreme law of the land, and the other branches have largely acceded to these claims. This is why every vote matters in cases before the Supreme Court.

Often, significant cases are decided by just one vote. While the justices agree in many cases, the next president must consider that one person could make a big difference in nearly a quarter of cases that the court decides by a 5-4 margin each term.

Consider some of the important cases that struck a blow to the Constitution over the past 10 years where one justice was the deciding vote:

In Kelo v. City of New London, the Supreme Court interpreted the takings clause of the Constitution to allow the government to seize citizens’ homes—not to build a road or fulfill some other public use as is required by the Fifth Amendment, but to transfer the property to a private corporation because it could pay more taxes.

In Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court extended the right of habeas corpus to the Guantanamo Bay detainees, usurping national security authority.

In National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, the Supreme Court instituted one of the largest tax increases in history when it strained the Affordable Care Act’s text to uphold the individual health care mandate as a valid exercise of Congress’ taxing power.

In Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court recognized a constitutional right to marriage that includes same-sex couples in a decision so unmoored from the text of the Constitution that even supporters of the ruling have described it as unintelligible and poorly reasoned.

Now consider some of the significant wins for the Constitution where one justice cast the deciding vote:

In McDonald v. City of Chicago and District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court overturned Chicago and Washington, D.C.’s, virtual bans on handguns, upholding the Second Amendment rights of Americans.

In Town of Greece v. Galloway and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court respected religious freedom, upholding a town council’s right to begin a meeting with a prayer, and stopping the government from requiring business owners to pay for certain abortion-inducing drugs and devices in their health care plans against their religious beliefs.

In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court tossed out unconstitutional restrictions on political speech and campaign contributions.

In Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court held that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which set forth an outdated coverage formula that was used to determine which states needed to get preapproval from the federal government before making any changes in their voting laws, was unconstitutional.

On the occasion of nominating Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Antonin Scalia, President Ronald Reagan reminded us that Supreme Court justices “must not only be jurists of the highest competence; they must also be attentive to the rights specifically guaranteed in our Constitution and to the proper role of the courts in our democratic system.” The Supreme Court is only one vote away from upholding or rejecting these principles.

To learn more about the proper role of judges in our government, the road to confirmation for those nominated to be judges, and close cases in which a single Supreme Court justice made the difference in cases of incredible significance, check out The Heritage Foundation’s new booklet “Supreme Consequences: How a President’s Bad Judicial Appointments Threaten Your Liberty.“ (For more from the author of “4 Times Conservatives Lost a Major Supreme Court Case by a Single Vote” please click HERE)

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The 5 Bills House Conservatives Plan to Push Before Election

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Protecting religious liberties, keeping Americans secure from foreign and domestic threats, and holding government accountable are the goals of the House Freedom Caucus for 2016.

The members of the Freedom Caucus held a press conference Wednesday to unveil their policy priorities. Five bills were at the forefront of the proposal.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, said the five bills are specific priorities that can be passed before the presidential election and reflect what the American people want.

“So to the American people, we say we hear you,” Jordan said. “We want to spend more time on legislation that will restore and protect your freedoms, and we do have time to take action this fall. And the House Freedom Caucus is committed to doing so.”

Here is a recap of each bill:

First Amendment Defense Act

Introduced almost a year ago, the First Amendment Defense Act aims to protect individuals and organizations who hold traditional views about marriage. A hearing was held Tuesday on the bill in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Rep. Raúl Labrador, R-Idaho, sponsored the legislation that would prevent those with traditional views of marriage from being denied federal grants and loans, tax-exempt status, or from being fired from the federal government.

“This bill does not alter anything or modify any civil rights protections or negate any federal anti-discrimination laws,” Labrador said at the press conference. “It’s really important to read the bill. A lot of the testimony yesterday in committee was refuted just by a simple reading of the bill.”

Welfare Reform and Upward Mobility Act

Introduced in May, the Welfare Reform and Upward Mobility Act has three main goals: “to help individuals receiving assistance under means-tested welfare programs obtain self-sufficiency, to provide information on total spending on means-tested welfare programs, [and] to provide an overall spending limit on means-tested welfare programs.”

Jordan sponsored the bill, but Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., discussed it at the press conference Wednesday.

“Consistently, I have found from even the most liberal to the most conservatives, there is a real desire to make sure that we provide the needs for those who are truly needy,” Meadows said. “But also, there is a real desire to hold those accountable who take advantage of the situation.”

Agency Accountability Act

Sponsored by Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Ala., the Agency Accountability Act would require all federal agencies—except for the the U.S. Postal Service and Patent and Trademark Office—that collect money directly through fines, fees, penalties, or settlements to deposit that money in the general fund of the U.S. Treasury.

Palmer called it a “step toward restoring constitutional government,” as Article 1, Section 9, of the Constitution says money can only be drawn from the Treasury by an appropriation of Congress.

Resettlement Accountability National Security Act

The Resettlement Accountability National Security Act would suspend the admission of refugees into the United States until Congress passes a joint resolution that gives the secretary of Homeland Security the authority to continue to admit refugees.

Sponsored by Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, the act would also require the comptroller general to submit a report examining the costs of providing benefits to refugees. The report would have to be submitted within 90 days after the bill passes into law and would look at data over the last 10 years.

The bill was introduced last year and has been referred to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security.

Conscience Protection Act

Originally introduced as the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act in 2011, the Conscience Protection Act is intended to prevent discrimination against providers of health services who decline involvement in abortion.

As an example, the bill, which the House passed Wednesday, mentions how California’s Department of Managed Health Care requires coverage for all elective abortions in all health plans. Despite members of Congress having questioned the Department of Health and Human Services surrounding California’s decision, the issue has not been resolved. The bill would address this and similar issues.

“Remember, the majority of Americans today are pro-life,” Rep. John Fleming, R-La., said at the press conference. “But even a greater majority believe that even if it is a woman’s choice, that they shouldn’t be forced to participate or to fund what is someone else’s choice in taking the life of a preborn human being.” (For more from the author of “The 5 Bills House Conservatives Plan to Push Before Election” please click HERE)

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Conservatives’ List of Grievances Against the 2016 GOP Establishment

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It’s time once again to celebrate our nation’s birth with a reminder to read the Declaration of Independence.

If you spend any amount of time searching for great deals on summer items at the much-hyped Fourth of July sales, you have the time to put yourself back in time when, after decades of abuse, the American colonies proclaimed that they would govern themselves, drawing from the consent of the governed.

The document itself is not that long, but it can be tedious document for some to read, what with all the arcane language. It should be noted, however, that if you tried to read any of the bills Congress has foisted upon us in modern times, the Declaration is at least self-explanatory and instructive.

Some of the great things about reading the Declaration is that every word has such definable meaning, each sentence is carefully constructed, and the manner in which the Founders communicate independence is backed up by a long list of “Facts” to be “submitted to a candid world.”

I’m told the legal term for this list is a “bill of particulars,” in which perhaps a prosecutor would lay out a case against someone charged with a crime or crimes, but that’s neither here nor there as long as you know when you read the list, it backs up the case for independence.

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people …”

You don’t have to read long into the Declaration for your mind to worry about what we’ve become. Are we “one people?” Shall we dissolve “political bands?” Do we believe in “unalienable Rights?” Has government become so far off and detached from the people that it can’t possibly “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed?”

Isn’t what the Left is doing when they act on anything a direct repudiation of everything in that document? Yes, I believe so, and it has Americans hopping mad.

Yet, when you read the list of grievances, you come to realize just how bad it was for the colonies in 1776. The Brits allied with murderous natives who wiped out entire families. At the time of the signing, the colonists and the British had been in open war for over a year, Bunker Hill had been fought, and some great men had died. British soldiers were on the streets and demanded property from the colonists, women were raped, and the King was taking away any rights of the colonists to have representation in Parliament. The colonists were far, far beyond any reason anymore. They had to either fight for independence, or be slaves to a distant government who abused them and had no respect for human life.

The enemy of the American Patriot is the American Left. They fight for the murder of the innocent, they offer tolerance to the enemy, they destroy every possible pursuit of happiness, they conjure crisis after crisis to reconcile takings of liberty, they relax law and order so street thugs can destroy whole cities, and they take the future away from our children by spending and use their positions in education to destroy their ability to reason.

So, who really stands with the American Patriot? It certainly isn’t the Democratic Party. And while conservatives get thrashed over trashing Republicans, the truth is right now, the Republican Party is held in contempt by the American Patriot because they were put in charge to oppose the Democrats and they instead, went along with them. Republicans have spent numerous recent elections saying, “Hey, at least we aren’t as bad as the Democrats!” And because of that, we have a presumptive nominee who is actually a Democrat.

But with zero intention of making light of the powerful rebuke that the Declaration of Independence was of government tyranny back in 1776, there may be a festering bill of particulars against the leadership of the Republican Party, and how their actions have quite possibly ensured decades of Leftist rule in America.

They have fused their power with their friends across the aisle for their own personal ambition.

They have squandered gains in the House brought to them by the people, and openly mocked their base.

They have pretended at opposition to the fundamental transformation of America, implementing each and every insult to the detriment of the people.

They have given lip service to the United States Constitution, refusing to restore the balance of power among the branches.

They have made solidarity with the Chamber of Commerce whose mission is to create a permanent underclass of cheap labor.

They have silenced conservatives within the party, going so far as to defeat them in general elections by standing by Democrats.

They have increased the debt exponentially upon the president’s orders.

They deal with swarms of lobbyists to fuse government and business, destroying the American entrepreneur.

They have surrendered the treaty power.

They have surrendered the power of the purse.

They have openly described their tactics as show-votes for the praise of their constituents.

They have refused to fight the nationalization of healthcare, and have embraced it.

They refuse to fight for the Right to Life and by doing so, insured the Democratic upper hand on the issue, insuring more death of innocent lives.

They have acquiesced to the president’s illegitimate amnesty decree, thwarting the rule of law.

They have repeatedly tried, void of the consent of the governed, to impose amnesty and give up security on our borders.

They have guilted the base into giving them more power, yet continued to work against the powers of the constitution.

They have made a charade of the election process, promising to stay in line with conservative America to get elected, then abandoning all pretense of servitude once elected.

They have lost all principle to the overwhelming attraction of raw power, and have a delusional belief in their own lies.

They will not hold the president and his overreaching administration accountable and rebuke those who will.

They have redefined the meaning of the word, “compromise” to mean “surrender.”

They have high praise for Democrat lawmakers and scorn for conservative challengers.

They accept the language of the Left and embrace the demolition of the Second Amendment.

They have made a mockery of Congress by refusing to gather sufficient political capital for impeachment.

They have dragged their feet on the Benghazi investigation, and when finally called on a special committee, have allowed the administration to circle the wagons.

They have given decreased our military at a time when warring nations see us as weak.

They rail against conservatives who reach an audience unafraid to take part in their own civics, because information has become their greatest enemy.

They have saved their most vitriolic and vengeful political rhetoric for conservative challengers, and would never dream of treating the Democrats that way.

They have offered up our daughters to fight the enemy in case of draft.

I’m sure many could add to this list, and expand on the fact that GOP leadership will pay zero attention to the reasons why the party is in its death throes. What will become of the organization is anyone’s guess, but the way it is set up right now is playing into the hands of the enemies of America, and it has to stop.

We, therefore, the base of the crumbling Republican Party, the true defenders of the great United States of America, its lifeblood and its soul, solemnly publish and declare that a complete destruction of the Republican Party by the foolishness of their own actions culminating in the nomination of a Democrat, is fully the fault of the leadership, and is what they have strived for ever since the American public woke up to the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama. (For more from the author of “Conservatives’ List of Grievances Against the 2016 GOP Establishment” please click HERE)

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Hey Phony Cons, Blue State Conservatives Know All About #NewYorkValues

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You are besieged and feel out of place. You thought you were pursuing the ideal American life. A life of God, family, property, business, and country – the life you grew up with. Yet, you feel like an alien surrounded by antithetical values promoted by all the levers of power in your city.

You are surrounded by endless crime with violent felons carrying guns but you are barred from carrying a weapon to protect yourself from the violence. Concurrently, the police are demonized for doing their job, and to the extent they succeed in apprehending the criminals, they are released by the leaky criminal justice system.

While violent felons reign supreme on the streets, you live in fear of the infinite myriad of state regulations on your small business, private property, and personal liberties.

Your state and city tackily promote transgender bathrooms and the broader officious homosexual agenda at every awkward turn, yet that same faux sense of “live and let live” never extends to your ability to purchase the soft drink you want, the gun of your choice, the goods and services you need – unless they are “green,” aka don’t work. Any “liberty” not associated with libertine cultural rotgut is infringed upon.

You pay endless taxes and fees on income, sales, property (and in Maryland, on rain) so that it can purvey the interminable cycle of poverty, anti-growth, and expelling of local businesses…which in turn creates more poverty and higher taxes.

While your city is no longer a sanctuary for your children to walk the streets safely and your business to prosper, it has become a sanctuary for illegal aliens and Islamic refugees.

Your children are trapped in schools where they are forced to worship multiculturalism and blame America first.

Yes, indeed, you are one of the millions of conservative blue-state-Americans (heck there is a hyphenated identity for everything!). In fact, you are likely one of those angry voters who have despaired over the corrupt and dyslexic priorities of our politicians and are attracted to the macro-messaging of Donald Trump.

Any real conservative living in a blue state understands this, yet phony conservatives like John Kasich and Donald Trump clearly don’t. It’s because they share many of those values.

Once again, Donald Trump rewarmed his feigned outrage routine over Ted Cruz’s comments about him subscribing to ‘New York values,’ something Trump himself readily admitted in that infamous “Meet the Press” interview. Now, even the lapdog for the strong man on the block, John Kasich’s Soros-funded Super PAC is getting in on the action. They are airing a TV ad in New York attacking Cruz over those comments and using Trump’s non-sequitur emotional distraction about 9/11 to obfuscate the broader point about New York’s (and other blue state’s) liberal politics.

Remember, when Kasich’s Super PAC ran the ad referring to Cruz as “Lyin’ Ted?” Can they at least be original or do they have to plagiarize every corny line from Trump?

What’s next? A Kasich ad in San Francisco praising “San Francisco values” and distracting with pictures of the workers building the Golden Gate Bridge?

In reality, both Trump and Kasich are quite similar in that they share New York values. Of course, Kasich’s donors, who are hooked into the Soros network, would be offended by Cruz’s remarks about the politics of New York. John Kasich himself shares many of those values as it relates to taxes, spending, guns, and illegal immigration. And he is from Ohio!

As a lifelong Marylander who has always lived in the Baltimore area, I fully appreciate what it’s like to be a conservative living in a social democratic utopia. Recently, I wrote an article explaining what it’s like to live in the “Baltimore basket case.” Were a presidential candidate to come to Maryland in the coming days and bemoan the Baltimore basket case and pledge to lead the federal government in the exact opposite direction, my conservative friends and neighbors in the area would identify and appreciate that message even more than red state conservatives. They would be far from offended.

In politics you know a man best by the nature of what offends them. (For more from the author of “Hey Phony Cons, Blue State Conservatives Know All About #NewYorkValues” please click HERE)

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Conservatives Make Their Case for Criminal Justice Reform

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Conservative criminal justice reform advocates are making the case that reducing the prison population, treating drug addiction, and giving a second chance to lawbreakers are policy prescriptions that mesh with conservative ideals.

While advocates cite polls that show that most conservatives support ideas like providing alternatives to prison for low-level drug offenders, GOP leaders on the criminal justice reform cause know they have more work to do to overcome a tough-on-crime mentality that came to define the 1980s and ’90s.

“No one is beyond redemption, and hope springs eternal,” said Ken Cuccinelli, the former Republican attorney general of Virginia who spends his time these days speaking out against the harsher sentences from the War on Drugs that helped lead to massive overcrowding in America’s prisons.

Cuccinelli used his appearance this past week at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, outside Washington, D.C., as an opportunity to speak before thousands of conservative activists and leaders about why they should care about mass incarceration in America.

“We [conservatives] need to own this issue if it’s done right,” Cuccinelli said. “The left cannot own it. We have to own it. Somewhere out there is a balance. We should be trying to do it [deal with crime] not just tough, but right.”

In making that case that conservatives should rethink their traditional approach to criminal justice, Cuccinelli and others who spoke during panel discussions at CPAC point to Republican-led states that have already implemented successful reforms.

Texas, especially, is considered the leader on the issue.

Beginning in 2005, Texas, under the leadership of then Republican Gov. Rick Perry, undertook a number of reforms that are credited with a 12-percent reduction in its incarceration rate since 2009 and its lowest crime rate since 1968.

Texas, taking a more holistic approach to criminal justice, created specialized drug courts, which allow defendants to get treatment as an alternative to prison. It revamped its probation and parole system to swiftly punish violations without automatically sending the offender to prison—to get a violator’s attention without locking him up.

And in 2007, faced with the prospect of spending $2 billion to build and run new prisons to meet demand, a bipartisan group of state legislators instead invested $241 million to expand in-prison and community-based treatment and diversion programs.

“My appropriators loved that we spent less money,” said Jerry Madden, a former Republican member of the Texas legislature who helped design the reforms. “Since that time, we’ve reduced the crime rate to the lowest level since the 1960s, we have fewer prisons, and we’re safer. That’s what Republicans are about. We’re about public safety.”

Madden, who spoke on a CPAC panel Saturday, continues his advocacy for a conservative approach to criminal justice reform with Right on Crime, a project of the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

“In the Department of Corrections, you are supposed to be correcting behavior,” Madden continued. “Now [after Texas’ reforms], when a drug addict or someone with a mental health problem comes out of prison, gee, they are less likely to commit another crime. That’s what you want. Everyone said, ‘How can Texas do that kind of stuff?,’ and lo and behold, many, many states have followed.”

Indeed, many of Texas’ reforms have since been mimicked by other states, including Georgia, South Carolina, and the Dakotas, while Congress is currently considering several different approaches to criminal justice reform that have been tried at the state level.

Several other states this year, including Alaska, Maryland, Rhode Island, and Tennessee, are considering sweeping criminal justice changes geared toward drug offenders.

Tennessee State Sen. Brian Kelsey, a Republican, appeared at CPAC to discuss his state’s effort, which he expects to take two years.

Since 1981, Tennessee’s incarceration rate has increased by 256 percent.

In response to the problem, Kelsey was appointed by Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, also a Republican, to serve on the state’s Task Force on Sentencing and Recidivism. That panel recommends instituting longer prison sentences for serious violent crimes and promoting alternatives to incarceration for low-level drug offenders.

“We have decided we’ve got to do a better job on focusing our limited resources on the most violent offenders,” said Kelsey, who added that 40 percent of Tennessee’s prison population is made up of those committing technical violations of probation and parole.

Despite this effort, and others like it, the conservative case for criminal justice reform still has doubters.

At the federal level, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., is leading an effort to oppose a proposal by the Senate Judiciary Committee, to which he belongs, to reduce certain mandatory minimum prison sentences created to punish drug offenders during the 1980s and ’90s.

Cotton, highlighting a significant point of disagreement in the debate, believes that the concept of a nonviolent drug offender is misleading.

While reform advocates believe there should be less punishment for those who have lesser roles in a trafficking ring, such as mules, couriers, or street dealers, Cotton and others say drug dealing is a violent act in itself.

Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. agrees with Cotton.

“I am at the street level, at the belly of beast every day, and I totally dismiss this idea of a nonviolent drug offender,” Clarke said during a Thursday appearance at CPAC. “If you are a mother struggling to keep your kid away from that dope dealer, getting that guy off the street is a big deal to her. I agree conservatives own this issue of law and order, and I find it unfathomable we would cede this back to the left by cuddling up to criminals.”

Pat Nolan, a former law-and-order conservative and Republican leader in the California State Assembly, believes that Clarke is missing the point.

“Prisons are for people we are afraid of, but more and more we are filling it with people we are mad at,” Nolan said during the Thursday CPAC panel. “Figures don’t lie. Of those in federal prison, half are drug crimes, and only 14 percent were major traffickers. Why on Earth are we going after street dealers? The federal government should be going after dealers who traffic over international borders and state lines.”

Nolan has experienced the federal prison system firsthand.

In the mid-1990s, after being prosecuted as part of an FBI sting targeting elected officials who received illegal campaign contributions, Nolan served more than two years in federal prison.

Today, Nolan, as the director of the American Conservative Union Foundation’s Center for Criminal Justice Reform, makes it his mission to challenge traditional conservative views on criminal justice.

Along with his concerns about how drug offenders are treated, Nolan is also worried about overcriminalization.

At CPAC, he noted people who’ve been incarcerated for low-level crimes like breaking lobster storage regulations and gardening rules.

“I know about violent crime; I grew up in Crenshaw [Calif.],” Nolan said. “We are so watered down in criminal law, and so many things are criminal, that we’ve lost focus on things inherently evil, like robbery, rape, and murder. Let’s get back to the basics.” (For more from the author of “Conservatives Make Their Case for Criminal Justice Reform” please click HERE)

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Conservatives Claim Momentum to Oust House GOP Incumbents

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Badly outspent and targeted by a withering Chamber of Commerce television ad, Woody White lost the Republican primary for an open House seat from North Carolina last year. Yet with anti-establishment Republicans riding high in the presidential race and Congress these days, the tea party-backed lawyer senses a better environment should he force a 2016 rematch with his GOP rival . . .

White and hard-core conservatives around the country say voter anger could help them oust Republican House members considered too unwilling to challenge President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats. They cite a movement energized by the resignation of House Speaker John Boehner, who quit partly to prevent GOP lawmakers from having to vote to keep him in his post – a vote that itself could have prompted primary challenges from irate conservatives.

They also cite the decision by Boehner’s chosen successor, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, against seeking that post and the early appeal of outsider GOP presidential hopefuls Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina. (Read more from “Conservatives Claim Momentum to Oust House GOP Incumbents” HERE)

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House Conservatives Emboldened, Despite Crackdown

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The tension between GOP leadership and House conservatives might have eased somewhat, now that Rep. Mark Meadows has his subcommittee gavel back. But the distrust, even anger, within the conference after last month’s crackdown on House Freedom Caucus members hasn’t quite been relieved.

Instead, leadership’s effort to subdue the 34 Republicans who defied the speaker on a June 11 trade vote seems to have left conservatives emboldened, not cowed.

Evidence of that came just before the Fourth of July recess, when HFC members made it clear that Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz needed to reinstate North Carolina’s Meadows as chairman of an Oversight subcommittee.

In a roughly two-hour meeting of the panel’s Republicans — a meeting that HFC Chairman Jim Jordan described to CQ Roll Call as “a good family discussion” — HFC members presented Chaffetz with a reality. He needed their votes to pick a new chairman — and Chaffetz was in the minority.

Oversight — not generally considered a plum committee assignment — is stacked with HFC members. Roughly half of the 25 Republicans on the committee are, like Meadows, in the Freedom Caucus; and many more were sympathetic to Meadows, who is well-liked in the conference. (Read more from “House Conservatives Emboldened, Despite Crackdown” HERE)

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Bruce Jenner Comes out, and Social Conservatives Logically Take an Apocalyptic View

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Photo Credit: Instagram In the four days since Bruce Jenner came out as a woman named Caitlyn, many Americans have celebrated her transformation as a courageous and even heroic act.

But among the social conservatives who are a powerful force within the Republican Party, there is a far darker view. To them, the widespread acceptance of Jenner’s evolution from an Olympic gold medalist whose masculinity was enshrined on a Wheaties box to a shapely woman posing suggestively on the cover of Vanity Fair was a reminder that they are losing the culture wars.

Across social media, blogs and talk radio this week, conservatives painted an apocalyptic view of America. They said they felt frustrated and increasingly isolated by the country’s sudden recognition and even embrace of transgender people. They see it as immoral and foreign. They drew comparisons to two grimly futuristic novels, George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.”

“People feel like they’re under siege and that the terms of the debate are now you either applaud it or you’re a bigot,” said William J. Bennett, education secretary in the Reagan administration. “It’s like American culture is being dragged kicking and screaming not only toward acceptance but approval.”

Jenner’s watershed moment — which coincides with the Supreme Court preparing to rule on whether to allow same-sex marriage nationwide — leaves the GOP and its stable of presidential candidates grappling with how to represent conservatives who don’t wish to accept Jenner and more moderate voters who have already done so. (Read more from “Caitlyn Jenner Comes out, and Social Conservatives Take an Apocalyptic View” HERE)

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Can True Conservatives Win in Primaries? One Group Has the Answer [+videos]

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In many presidential elections, conservatives have been frustrated that they get stuck with establishment Republicans such as John McCain or Mitt Romney, their votes often lost among a plethora of candidates. A group of New Hampshire conservatives has a plan to consolidate behind a constitutional conservative in advance of the pivotal first-in-the-nation New Hampshire Primary, coming up in February.

The group, the 603 Alliance, sees itself as a potential model for conservatives in other states that are sick of having establishment RINOs foisted upon them election after election. At a recent meeting in Littleton, New Hampshire, organizers of the 603 Alliance presented their plans to interested conservatives who share their frustration.
Before getting down to business, they psyched themselves up for the task at hand by watching clips of Ronald Reagan’s inaugural addresses. Especially inspiring were two famous lines—”government is not the solution, it is the problem,” and it is not the job of the government to make good people, but the job of the people to make a good government.

Another video clip, from the group’s foundational meeting about a month earlier, particularly resonated. It was by Trever Loudon, a New Zealander who is part of the organization. He said that if conservatives do nothing in the next 22 months, their children will live in slavery.

To prevent this, organizers presented their plan.

Another member of the steering committee, Andrew Hemingway, who was the 2014 Republican gubernatorial candidate, grilled some of the conservatives at the meeting about many of the potential candidates and which ones were acceptable to them ideologically. There were many good candidates, he said. Too many, and because of that, the conservative vote would be split up and more than likely Jeb Bush would be the candidate. Governor Chris Christie would not win, and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina would stay in the race just long enough so that South Carolina would be out of play for a conservative candidate.

If Jeb Bush becomes the nominee, there is no way he could beat presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Hemingway said.

The primary process can be deceptive, and make it appear as if the leading candidate has more support than he really does. 603 Alliance organizers said that with so many conservative candidates, votes are spread out among them. If Bush wins with 35 percent, and several other candidates such as Cruz, Paul, Carson and Fiorina get 15, 10, 7 and 5 percent, it would appear like Bush won by a great margin when in reality the votes of the conservatives, spread among several other candidates, would outnumber his.

The 603 Alliance hopes to prevent this by getting grassroots conservatives behind a constitutional conservative several months before the election so they can campaign for the candidate and really put a serious effort behind him.

There are lots of candidates, and any one of them would be better than Bush, Hemingway and others said. The important thing will be to coalesce behind one of them. They will do this by holding a caucus on Oct. 17. It will be similar in format to the Iowa caucus. At first, activists will gather in groups supporting their candidates. The one with the fewest votes will be dropped and that candidate will have 20 minutes to join another group. In this fashion, candidates will be eliminated until one is left.

All the activists who attend the caucus will have to agree in advance to stand behind the winner, and to campaign for him in the almost two months between the end of the caucus and the New Hampshire Primary in early February.

“The cause is greater than any single candidate,” Hemingway said.

Hemingway said organizers hope at least 500 conservative activists will attend the caucus and commit to support the winning candidate. Those 500 will have a large impact on the primary, he said. Around 250,000 will vote in the Republican primary and the 500 people from the caucus will influence around 25,000, about 10 percent of those voting.

Those 25,000 could have a decisive impact on the primary, lessening Bush’s lead, or even propelling an actual conservative to victory.

The 603 Alliance will be operating in conjunction with its sister group, the Conservative Business League of New Hampshire. The CBL will be raising funds for the group and will be sponsoring candidate visits around the state. Candidates will have to meet certain basic conservative criteria. Among them will be a strong position opposing illegal immigration and amnesty, control of the borders, opposition to Common Core, support of the Second Amendment, supporting states’ rights, repealing Obamacare, repealing the PATRIOT Act, and supporting judges who believe in a strict interpretation of the Constitution.

The idea behind the 603 Alliance has attracted the attention of conservatives in other states, who see it as a model for their primaries. Organizations in Iowa and South Carolina have contacted the 603 Alliance and a member of the steering committee is traveling to Wyoming to help conservatives there.

While it is too early to tell what impact this movement will have in New Hampshire and beyond, it is heartening that conservatives are not giving up to the establishment without a fight. (See “Can True Conservatives Win in Primaries? One Group Has the Answer”, originally posted HERE)

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