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Showing posts with label Congress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Congress. Show all posts

Friday, May 30, 2025

The Legitimate Scope Of Judicial Restraints On Presidential Authority; The Need For Politically Neutral Principles

Now more than four months into President Trump’s second term, there have been dozens of District Court injunctions blocking policies that the new administration has sought to implement. Deportations of gang members illegally in the U.S. back to El Salvador? Enjoined! Mass firings at USAID? Enjoined! Other mass firings at 22 other agencies and departments? Enjoined! Cancellation of funding of certain grants for Harvard? Enjoined! Ending of eligibility for Harvard to participate in foreign student visa program? Enjoined! Termination of federal funding for public schools maintaining DEI programs? Enjoined! Termination of security clearances for certain prominent law firms? Enjoined! And these are just examples among many more.

It seems that whatever new policy President Trump tries to implement, it will be enjoined within days by some left wing federal judge. Professor Adrian Vermuele of Harvard in a May 23 tweet called these pervasive injunctions “basically an automatic judicial veto on all new policy.” He commented, “let’s please not call it democracy.” It’s actually the opposite of democracy: President Trump tries to implement the policies he promised to implement and that the voters elected him to implement; and the unelected judges — almost all appointed by presidents of the party that just got voted out — stop him.

But before you get too outraged about the courts (and Democrat-appointed judges) blocking President Trump’s every move, let’s not forget about a few constraints that the courts imposed on prior President Biden. If you disagree with what the courts have just done in the list of injunctions in the first paragraph of this post, you might nevertheless find yourself agreeing with some big constraints that landed on Biden. 

For example, in Biden v. Nebraska, the Supreme Court held that President Biden did not have the authority under the Higher Education Act to engage in mass forgiveness of student loans; and in West Virginia v. EPA the Supreme Court held that the Biden EPA did not have the authority under the Clean Air Act to force the closure of all electric power plants using fossil fuels. The Supreme Court justices who voted to imposed these constraints on Biden were all appointed by Republicans.

So almost everyone, left or right, would agree that the courts have at least some legitimate role in reining in overreach by the executive branch. But the cases are so politically charged that one’s view of the outcome of any given case tends to turn almost entirely on the party of the President who got blocked. Republicans cheer on the courts when they block Democratic presidents, and Democrats are currently cheering on the courts when they block President Trump. At the District Court level, both sides forum shop for a friendly judge appointed by a president of their own party when trying to block an action of a president of the opposite party.

What is badly needed here are politically neutral principles by which one can distinguish the legitimate uses of the courts’ role in restraining executive overreach from the illegitimate. Remarkably, the Supreme Court to date has not really laid down such principles to any significant extent. The reason for that is that before now cases have not come before the Court requiring it to do so. But now things are different. President Trump is challenging the rule of the permanent bureaucracy to a far greater degree than did the two Bushes, or even Reagan or Nixon.

I don’t think there’s any single easy bright-line test that can separate the legitimate from the illegitimate uses of the judicial power to rein in the president. Instead, as cases come before it, I think the Supreme Court needs to lay down a set of guidelines for the lower courts, and then enforce those guidelines via prompt reversals of lower courts that step out of line.

Here are some suggestions that I will make for some proposed politically neutral principles:

  • The Constitution must be the fundamental guide star of the enterprise. Most important are the provisions that “all legislative powers . . . shall be vested” in the Congress (Article I, Section 1), “the executive powers shall be vested” in the President (Article II, Section 1), and that the President “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed” (Article II, Section 3).
  • Injunctions, and particularly preliminary injunctions, to force the executive branch to do anything, should be strongly disfavored. The main function of the preliminary injunction has historically been to preserve the status quo while the case proceeds. Many of the current round of preliminary injunctions have followed the opposite of this principle, for example by forcing the government to spend money that can then never be recovered. Note that neither the Biden v. Nebraska case, nor West Virginia v. EPA, involved any injunction. Rather, the Court just stated what the law is, and expected the executive to follow it.
  • There should be essentially no constraints on the President firing at will anyone in the executive branch. The alternative is that large numbers of people work in the executive branch who disagree with the President’s policies and work to undermine him. This is fundamentally at odds with the vesting of all executive power in the President, and with the President’s duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. It is also fundamentally at odds with the principle of democracy, that is, that the people get to change the government’s policies by voting in a new President promising new policies. Yes, there are many statutes purporting to protect the jobs of government employees. To the extent that the employees in question have any role in deciding or influencing policy, those statutes are unconstitutional.
  • The courts should have a very limited role in forcing the President to spend money appropriated by Congress. Most appropriation statutes do not say that the President must spend the money, but just say that x dollars are made available for the program. The courts should not interfere in a President’s decision to spend less than all the money. Yes, it is different if money has been contractually committed, or if Congress has specifically directed that x dollars must be spent; but even in those cases, a new incoming President should have the ability to hold up funds on grounds that, for example, there may have been corruption that needs to be investigated.
  • The role of the courts should be very limited in situations that involve the core functions of the executive branch, for example decisions on how to enforce laws (e.g., immigration laws), and decisions with respect to foreign policy.
  • By contrast, an area where the courts have a very important role in keeping the executive branch in line is the area of potential usurpations of the legislative power through overreaching regulations or executive orders. This was the situation in both Biden v. Nebraska and West Virginia v. EPA, in both of which the executive branch under Biden sought to assert vast powers never granted to it by legislation.

Analogous to President Biden’s overreaching with student loan forgiveness and greenhouse gas regulations is President Trump’s overreaching with tariffs. Perhaps you are wondering how it is that President Trump asserts the authority to impose a tariff of 100% on some country one day, make it 200% the next day, then back to 50% a week later, and so forth in a series of dizzying moves. The answer is that there is something called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, enacted back in 1977. The IEEPA grants power to the President to take certain actions, including imposing tariffs, in the event of the declaration of a “national emergency.” It turned out that giving Presidents the right to declare national emergencies was an open invitation to abuse. This is from Congress’s website:

As of January 15, 2024, Presidents had declared 69 national emergencies invoking IEEPA, 39 of which are ongoing. History shows that national emergencies invoking IEEPA often last nearly a decade, although some have lasted significantly longer. . . .

Numerous cases have been brought challenging President Trump’s use of the IEEPA and so-called “national emergency” powers for his series of actions on tariffs. The forum for these cases is the US Court of International Trade. Plaintiffs in the cases include many states (both red and blue) and something called the Liberty Justice Center. Here is a report from Professor Ilya Somin of the Scalia Law School on the argument of one such case that took place on May 24. Excerpt:

Judge Restani repeatedly noted that the government's position would allow the president to declare an "emergency" for any "crazy" reason, and then impose whatever tariffs he wanted.

I have not studied the details of these cases and the wording of the statute sufficiently to have a view of how it might come out. However, I do support the idea that the courts have a real role in restraining the President from making up the “law” as he goes along, thus usurping the legislative function that is delegated only to the Congress.

 Additions:

Three Judges Blocking Trump’s Tariffs Have Decades-Long Histories of Democrat Activism -The judges on the U.S. Court of International Trade who ruled that President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs are illegal have a history of Democrat Party activism. Each of the members of the three-judge panel issuing the Wednesday ruling – which was stayed Thursday by an appeals court, allowing the tariffs to continue – fit the profile of other activists judges who continued their political activism after joining the court.

 


Thursday, April 3, 2025

Republicans Move Against Federal Judges Blocking Trump’s Agenda

Through legislative and other means, the president’s allies are preparing to deal with judicial overreach.

By | Apr 2, 2025 @ Liberty Nation News, Tags: Articles, Opinion, Politics

Congressional Republicans, perhaps many of them concerned about their modest majorities in the House and Senate if they don’t deliver on the Trump agenda before the midterm elections, are ready to take on the judges. Restraining orders and other types of injunctions, tying the hands of President Donald Trump’s administration, have been coming in thick and fast from federal judges across the country. Frustrated GOPers are now exploring various options for putting a stop to what increasingly appears to be a politically motivated sabotage operation being conducted through select courts and with the aid of complicit judges.

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Since Trump began his second term, almost every action at the executive branch level has been met with an injunction of one form or another. At least a dozen such legal rulings have stymied the president’s plans. Several of the federal judges issuing these injunctions have been revealed to be Democratic Party donors, many with associations or family connections to various progressive special interests. The idea, then, that their decisions are based purely on law and have nothing to do with politics  – according to some GOP lawmakers – is hard to swallow.

Backlash to Federal Judges Growing

An effort to impeach US District Court Judge James Boasberg is reportedly gaining momentum on Capitol Hill, even as Republican leaders hesitate. Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order to prevent the administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport illegal aliens. The likelihood of Boasberg or any of the other “activist” federal judges being convicted and removed from office in a Senate impeachment trial is more than unlikely. Such a course of action, then, might be seen as almost petty and would amount to little more than a slap on the wrist.

A couple of legislative moves aimed at curtailing the judges’ ability to, essentially, dictate executive branch policy are underway in both chambers of Congress. In the Senate, Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is pushing a bill titled the Judicial Relief Clarification Act of 2025, which would allow injunctions to be immediately appealed.

Grassley expressed one of the main concerns with the deluge of legal obstacles. “For a number of years, but particularly in the last few months, we’ve increasingly seen sweeping orders from individual district judges that dictate national policy,” the senator asserted in a statement. He elaborated:

“Judges are not policymakers, and allowing them to assume this role is very dangerous. The Judicial Relief Clarification Act clarifies the scope of judicial power and resolves illegitimate judicial infringement upon the executive branch. It’s a commonsense bill that’s needed to provide long-term constitutional clarity and curb district courts’ growing tendency to overstep by issuing sweeping, nationwide orders.”

Indeed, as Just the News reported, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan – appointed by President Barack Obama – was herself concerned by this judicial (or perhaps extrajudicial) trend. Speaking at Northwestern University Law School in 2022, Kagan said, “It just can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years it takes to go through the normal process.”

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Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) has a more ambitious idea. It is generally understood that federal judges are appointed to lifetime terms, but Biggs notes that the Constitution does not grant lifetime tenure. Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution states, “The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour,” and so there appears to be no barrier in the founding document to ousting a judge for “failing to maintain the standard of good behavior required of judges.” That quote is from the resolution the congressman has filed to remove Boasberg from office.

The bigger picture is a disregard for the democratic process. It is, to say the least, ironic that the people who constantly claim Trump is a threat to democracy are now using politically friendly judges to override the will of the people. American voters knew very well what Trump had planned for the country. They elected him and, according to the polls, remain supportive of the very actions these federal judges are blocking. It’s almost as if Democrats and progressive activist groups pursuing legal action to obstruct the Trump agenda have decided that election outcomes can and should be negated if their preferred policies are not being enacted


Dig Deeper Into the Themes Discussed in this Article!
Liberty Vault: The Constitution of the United States


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Liberty Nation does not endorse candidates, campaigns, or legislation, and this presentation is no endorsement.

Read More From Graham J Noble Chief Political Correspondent & Satirist

Monday, March 31, 2025

Congressman Pleads With Congress to Stop Him Before He Trades Stocks Again

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

In 2023, Rep. Ro Khanna, the most active stock trader in Congress, demanded that some sort of law be passed to urgently stop members like him from trading stocks.

“All I want for Christmas is to clean up the corruption in Congress,” Rep. Khanna, who is Hindu, declared. “Our political system should not be for sale.”

That year, Rep. Khanna made 4,253 trades making him by far the House’s most active trader.

The completely useless resolution that Khanna knew had no chance of passing urged banning “members of Congress from holding and trading individual stocks”, imposed term limits, a ban on PAC contributions, a “binding code of ethics” and term limits for Supreme Court justices.

In 2024, Rep. Khanna traded $450,000 worth of stocks and was once again named the “most active trader” in Congress. The 200 transactions by Silicon Valley’s congressman included significant investments in tech companies, including major federal cybersecurity contractors like CrowdStrike and AOC, even while Rep. Khanna sits on the House Cybersecurity, Information Technology Oversight Subcommittee.

Rep. Khanna’s trades also “spanned all of the top five military contractors” while serving as a ranking member of the House Armed Services subcommittee on cybersecurity.

The 4th richest Californian in Congress with a net worth at least in the tens of millions, claims that most of these investments are a private trust held for his wife, Ritu Khanna, a 46-year-old woman, courtesy of her father, Monte Ahuja, an Indian immigrant who owns an investment company, Mura Holdings, and that it’s managed by independent money managers who keep going back to defense stocks even after he promised to divest from them back in 2021.

Despite introducing multiple proposals to get members of Congress out of the stock market, Rep. Khanna couldn’t even get his family out of trading stocks from industries he oversees.

But Rep. Khanna’s “political reform resolution” conveniently called for banning “members of Congress” from trading stocks. Not their spouses. Or the money managers of their spouses.

Silicon Valley’s congressman is certainly far from the only politician with sizable financial interests in companies that intersect with his congressional oversight areas, but he’s the sleaziest when it comes to loudly virtue signaling, calling for urgent reforms, condemning his colleagues and promising major reforms while doing all the things that he’s denouncing.

Now he’s at it again.

Rep. Khanna announced a ‘Drain the Swamp Act’ to fight corruption by people like him.

“Anti-corruption has to be core to rebuilding the Democratic brand,” Rep. Khanna announced. “Democrats need to be seen as owning the mantle of reform.”

Rep. Khanna, whose regular announcements about how much he hates the type of behavior he engages in constantly pop up in media headlines and Twitter feeds, knows all about “owning the mantle of reform”, he just doesn’t know anything about actually wearing the mantle of reform.

“This is what enrages the working class in this country, that you have big donors that are influencing these decisions,” Khanna fumed in an article about Gov. Newsom’s aides having dinner with self-driving vehicle lobbyists, stymying his efforts to stop those vehicles.

Last year, Rep. Khanna took over hosting duties from Rep. Pelosi for the Innovation Leadership Circle Retreat in Napa Valley that featured members of Congress and tech executives, including the chief legal officer of Coinbase, a crypto company, and investors. And some, like Ron Klain, Biden’s former chief of staff, who now works for Airbnb, spanned both worlds.

Other attendees included Indian billionaire Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist with holdings in DoorDash, Instacart, and a critic of self-driving vehicles who backs rival Glydways. Khosla is also a donor and endorser of Khanna. And Khanna supports public transit ‘pod cars’ like those of Glydways while trying to restrict competition from self-driving cars..

So much for the rage of the working class, which can’t afford to set foot in Rep. Khanna’s neighborhood unless they’re there to drop off a delivery, about big donors buying influence.

Other Khanna donors include Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Google’s CEOs and millions from high-dollar personnel at tech firms. And the only reason Khanna made it to Congress was backing from top executives at Facebook and Google.

How did Rep. Khanna do it?

In 2009, Obama picked Khanna to serve as the deputy assistant secretary of the Department of Commerce and then the White House Business Council which brought him into contact with top executives. Gov. Jerry Brown planted him on the state’s Workforce Investment Board. He wrote a book, ‘Entrepreneurial Nation’, “profiling” some of the “business leaders” he met under Obama accompanied by pull quotes from Elon Musk and other CEOs. Then it was on to Wilson Sonsini, a law firm that represents tech companies and venture capitalists, with extensive connections to the Obama administration. Before he even decided to run for congress, Khanna had a $1.2 million war chest despite being a complete unknown outside big government and big tech.

Rep. Ro Khanna’s entire political career is a tribute to the influence of money in politics.

But Rep. Ro Khanna also wanted to have it both ways. He wanted to rub shoulders and take money from tech company CEOs and then pound the pulpit about the evils of big money.

And so he co-chaired Sen. Bernie Sanders’s socialist presidential campaign while playing a “progressive capitalist”. He endorsed Rep. Barbara Lee for Senate while knowing she had no chance to build cred with leftist radicals. This contradiction in terms seeps through Khanna’s entire brand as a leftist who built his entire career on his business contacts, who fulminates about big money in politics while bringing money into politics, who castigates Congress for being in thrall to the people he hosts luxurious retreats in Napa to wine and dine.

“Congress must pass my 5-point anti-corruption plan. It’s time to unrig Washington,” Rep. Khanna demanded. Several months earlier, he had been forced to return thousands of dollars to members of the Duong family caught up in one of the state’s largest corruption investigations.

A photo of Khanna however still appears arm in arm with Andy Duong who has been accused of laundering political donations through a karaoke club that also sold cocaine and trafficked prostitutes. Anti-corruption agendas don’t come any more corrupt than this.

“Getting money and lobbyists out of politics, that should be our mantle,” Rep. Khanna claimed less than a year after his Napa event and having to return money from an alleged crime family.

But how will Rep. Ro Khanna get himself out of politics?

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donationThank you for reading.

 



Tuesday, March 25, 2025

Midterm Momentum: House Republicans Aim to Defy History

History says the GOP will lose lower chamber seats next year. Current events indicate otherwise.

By | Mar 24, 2025 @ Liberty Nation News, Tags: Articles, Opinion, Politics

In 20 of the last 22 midterm elections, the party of the president has lost an average of 28 House seats. This time, however, Republicans hope to break the trend. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has identified 26 House Democrats it considers “vulnerable” in 2026. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) released a similar list of at-risk Democratic seats. Can the GOP defy history to widen its currently slim margin of majority in the House?

Midterm Challenges

Thirteen of the lawmakers on the NRCC’s list represent districts President Donald Trump won in the November election. Of the 26 endangered seats, five are in California, three of which unseated Republican incumbents in 2024. New York also has vulnerable Democrats – as does Nevada, a state Trump won in 2024 with just over 50% of the vote.

Thanks to the GOP’s increase in Latino voters, some Democrats in areas with higher Hispanic populations could be at risk as well. “Democratic Reps. Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico, Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas as well as Nellie Pou of New Jersey are all a part of the GOP’s expanding offensive map for 2026,” explains the Daily Caller. Notably, those representatives won their seats in red districts.

But the House is only half of the equation. The Senate, though historically less likely to flip, has the opposite trajectory from  2024. Republicans will have to protect more seats than Democrats this time around: 20 out of the 33. But the left has some weak spots here, too, with “three vulnerable seats to defend,” as The Hill put it, “those of Sens. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and now[Gary] Peters’ open seat in Michigan.” In 2024, Trump won Georgia and Michigan and missed New Hampshire by nearly three points. Republicans, on the other hand, appear to have only two seats that could be in peril: Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and, assuming he goes ahead with his announced retirement, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

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“[V[ulnerable House Democrats have been hard at work demonstrating they are painfully out of touch with hardworking Americans,” said Richard Hudson, chairman of the NRCC, in a press release. “Republicans are taking the fight straight to these House Democrats in their districts, and we will unseat them next fall.” Still, House Republicans are playing both defense and offense

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Meanwhile, Democrats can’t seem to establish a clear party leader. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both from New York, have clashed over their responses to the GOP-backed spending bill, sparking further conflict within their party.

Despite internal turmoil and one of the lowest favorability ratings since the early ’90s, some Democrats remain optimistic. “I fundamentally believe that our party is grounded in the values, principles, and aspirations of the working class,” said Ken Martin, the DNC’s new chair, in a memo last month. “[T]hat belief will guide my decisions and approach in the years ahead.” Beliefs are great and all, but what one believes is often highly imaginative and far from reality. All that matters in elections is what the public believes.

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Liberty Nation does not endorse candidates, campaigns, or legislation, and this presentation is no endorsement.

Read More From Corey Smith National Correspondent

Tuesday, December 31, 2024

118th Congress Report Card: The Least Productive in Modern History?

A Congress perhaps best forgotten.

By | Dec 31, 2024 @ Liberty Nation News, Tags: Articles, Opinion, Politics

As the 118th Congress ends, most lawmakers would probably like to erase 2023-2024 from their memories. Over the last two years, they managed to break records and pioneer historic firsts – but not the positive kind folks might later brag about. A look back at the big stories shows not a trend of legislative success, but rather of divisiveness, in-party fighting, and upheaval – especially in the House of Representatives. And compared to previous congresses, the 118th saw an embarrassingly small number of bills signed into law.

Chaos and Strife

From the very beginning, the 118th Congress was plagued by strife as Republican lawmakers fought over who would lead the new GOP majority in the House. It took an impressive 15 roll call votes to elect Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as speaker of the House, holding up the start of congressional work for several days. That’s the longest it has taken since before the Civil War. The longest ever, of course, comes from the 34th Congress, which took 133 rounds of voting over about two months.

And then he didn’t even hold the gavel a full year.

McCarthy was ousted after some in his own party called a vote to vacate his speakership. Democrats were only too happy to oblige, and so out with McCarthy and – eventually – in with Mike Johnson (R-LA). But it wasn’t quick. Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina served in the position temporarily so the House could continue its business while working on electing a permanent speaker, a process which took 22 days.

Johnson himself then faced a vote to vacate but was saved when Democrats stepped in to keep him in the role. Now, Johnson goes into a vote on January 3 to determine whether or not he’ll retain the gavel – and it’s unlikely he’ll have many allies across the aisle this time.

The Least Successful Congress in How Long?

Before being ousted from the roll and eventually dropping out of Congress entirely, then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy initiated an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden, but even in a GOP-led House, it floundered and failed. Over the remainder of the two sessions, House Republicans went on to launch eight other impeachment attempts, including against Attorney General Merrick Garland, Vice President Kamala Harris, Defense Secretary Llyod Austin, and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. All failed but the second try against Mayorkas, which passed by a single vote, 214-213.

The Senate quickly dismissed the charges.

Amid all this turmoil, very little actual legislating got done. The 118th Congress passed just 209 bills that went on to be signed into public law – and remember, a good number of those are just agreeing to rename some public building! So how does that compare? Not well. The previous 117th, which enjoyed a Democrat majority in the House and an effective majority in the Senate (technically it was a tie, but the tie-breaking VP was also a Democrat). Under this effective trifecta, there were 362 public laws enacted.

But going back a little further, we have the 116th, a government so divided that the Democrat-controlled House successfully impeached President Donald Trump not once, but twice. Still, then House Speaker Nanci Pelosi (D-CA), Trump, and the Republican-led Senate managed to enact 344 public laws.

The 118th, based purely on public laws enacted, has been the least productive Congress this century and beyond – perhaps for the last 100 years or more. One can track the number of public laws enacted by any Congress going back to 1951 on Congress.gov – and all the way back to the beginning in the Congressional Record and the old Annals of Congress. The only two in recent history that came close to having this low a number were the 112th and 113th, which still managed 283 and 296, respectively. The rest in the last thirty years or so passed bills numbering in the 300s and 400s. Before that, Congress seemed to enjoy a decades-long period of prolific bipartisan legislating, with numbers averaging in the 600s to the 800s, going back to the 80th Congress in the late 1940s, even occasionally dipping into the 900s and once breaking 1,000.

The Unknown Unknowns

Of course, to determine whether this abysmal record is actually good or bad for the Americans who pay these lawmakers’ salaries, one must look at the laws that are passed. Every law that makes it through Congress adds to the ever-growing leviathan that is our federal government. Who even knows how many federal laws there are, specifically? The government doesn’t even know. The Library of Congress merely explains that it’s impossible to know. An attempt was made in 1982, but the man in charge of it, Ronald Gainer of the Justice Department, eventually gave up and famously said “you will have died and been resurrected three times” and still not have answered the question.

Do Americans enjoy greater personal liberties under this legislative burden? From that point of view, perhaps the 118th didn’t do so poorly after all – terrible fiscal record aside, of course. Still, history will not remember this Congress well. And it’s likely to haunt the dreams – and re-election efforts – of the lawmakers themselves, especially Republicans. Can the GOP turn it around, though, in 2025 and 2026 with Republican control of both chambers of Congress and the White House – or will the intraparty squabbling in the lower chamber continue to hold them back?

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Liberty Nation does not endorse candidates, campaigns, or legislation, and this presentation is no endorsement.

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Friday, July 26, 2024

Netanyahu Defends America Before Congress

Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog 



Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had come to D.C. to defend Israel’s war against Islamic terrorists, instead he ended up defending America in a city and Congress overrun with them.

Marxist and Jihadist mobs prowled the streets of D.C., tearing down and burning American flags, and putting up the terrorist flags of the PLO in their place. Hamas supporters openly waved the green flag of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization and even the black ‘battle flag’ used by ISIS and other Jihadists made an appearance in the capital of the United States.

The Columbus fountain outside Union Station was vandalized with the red triangles supporting Islamic terrorist attacks and “Hamas is Coming”. “Long live the intifada” was scrawled on the Freedom Bell. A courageous lone individual rushed to save an American flag being burned by a mob shouting “Allahu Akbar” which quickly gave chase. The Capitol Police, formerly so beloved by Democrats and media, battled more of the red-shirted radical thugs with no support.

“Allahu Akbar! Hamas!” a Muslim protester shouted. “We’re gonna kill all the Jews.”

Then in a few hours the insurrectionist mob that assaulted Capitol Police officers was set loose.

The message from the Biden administration and Democrats was once again that terrorist mobs could freely vandalize landmarks, threaten members of Congress and assault Capitol Police.

The White House offered no specific condemnation of the anti-American violence. Rep. Pelosi and many top Democrats instead blasted Netanyahu for refusing to surrender to Hamas. None of them spoke out against the hatred not only for Israel, but for the United States of America, for the calls to murder Jews and the chants for the destruction of America.

Inside the situation was no better. Kamala Harris, Rep. Nancy Pelosi and many top Democrats had decided to boycott Netanyahu’s speech. Those who attended offered little applause and sat scowling through much of the bipartisan address. A few behaved disruptively including Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a longtime terrorist supporter, who held up a protest sign during the speech.

It fell to Netanyahu to condemn the mobs who “burned American flags even on the fourth of July. And I wish to salute the fraternity brothers of the University of North Carolina who protected the American flag against these anti-Israel protesters.” Followed by chants of “USA, USA.”

It would not be the first or last time that chants of “USA” were heard during the address.

Netanyahu’s speech often sounded like a State of the Union address that no one was around to give anymore, praising America as “the guardian of Western civilization”, and urging that “for the forces of civilization to triumph, America and Israel must stand together.” He invoked Pearl Harbor and 9/11 and condemned the failures of colleges to teach basic values.

Netanyahu described clarity as “knowing the difference between good and evil.” He denounced those protesters who “stand with evil, they stand with rapists and murderers” who found babies hidden in an attic and murdered them. While Speaker Mike Johnson stood up to applaud, the ranking Democrat, Sen. Ben Cardin applauded lightly but remained seated .

“Some of these protesters hold up signs saying: ‘Gays for Gaza’ they might as well hold signs saying ‘Chickens for KFC’”, Netanyahu said. Cardin did not applaud that one. Few Dems did.

With rescued hostages and hostage families in attendance, he described the Hamas atrocities of Oct 7 when “these monsters raped women, beheaded men, burned babies alive, they killed parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents, they dragged 255 people, both living and dead, into to the dark dungeons of Gaza.”

Meanwhile Rep. Jerry Nadler boasted that he was “trolling” Netanyahu by reading a book.

“We also have families with American hostages here,” Netanyahu said, while Kamala was off attending a sorority event, and some 70 Democrats were officially boycotting the speech.

He introduced Avichai Reuven, an Ethiopian Israeli soldier who ran 8 miles during the Oct 7 attacks, killed terrorists and saved lives, and three other heroes of the fight against Hamas, two of whom had lost limbs. “These are the soldiers of Israel, unbowed, undaunted and unafraid.”

Democrats like Pelosi and Nadler, along with Kamala, Schumer and many others demand that they be daunted and surrender to Hamas. They are doing the dirty work for Hamas and Iran.

Recently, as Front Page Magazine reported, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines admitted that Iran was financing some of the pro-terrorist protesters. Netanyahu suggested that could include the Hamas riots outside and called them “useful idiots” for Iran. He described Ayatollah Khomeini’s promise to “export the revolution to the entire world.”

America stands in the way of Iran’s plan to impose Islam on the world, he argued.

“That’s why Iran sees America as its greatest enemy.” He quoted a Hezbollah terrorist official who said that, “the real war is with America.” Iran had sent “death squads” to kill Americans, including Trump administration officials and even “brazenly threatened to assassinate former President Trump.”

“Iran realizes that to challenge America, it must first conquer the Middle East… but Israel stands in its way. That’s why the mobs in Tehran chant ‘Death to Israel’ before ‘Death to America.’”

Netanyahu laid out a compelling case for Israel as the barrier to Islamic expansionism. And for America to support Israel so that it doesn’t have to put boots on the ground in the Middle East.

But he was also speaking to a very different Washington D.C. than when he first spoke in 1996.

The idea of America as “the guardian of Western civilization” would now be outright offensive to the average Democrat. As is the idea of fighting Islamic terrorism instead of surrendering to it.

But in a Washington D.C. where Islamic terrorist flags are freely waved and Jihadist graffiti is scrawled across national monuments, that may no longer be so. The nation’s capital, under Biden and Kamala, is no longer the “guardian” of anything except pork and privilege.

Rather than defending Israel in D.C., Netanyahu was tasked with defending America, making the case for it as a great nation and a force for good even while members of Congress, congressional staffers, wealthy brats and Islamic terrorists made their stand for evil.

Israel lacks support in D.C. not just because the left is antisemitic, but because it hates America. And a movement that hates America cannot be expected to love Israel or support civilization.

Netanyahu was the product of a better America. When he left in the sixties to fight for Israel, he had imbibed the best of this nation in his time here. Yet each time he returned America had grown worse. Had he jeered America, denounced it as a racist, capitalist and imperialist enterprise, many of the Democrats who boycotted the speech would have come and cheered.

This was a speech meant to remind Americans of what Israel and we are fighting for. But despite his eloquence, the red and green mobs outside waving terrorist flags, chanting “Allahu Akbar” and burning American flags did that better than even the greatest speech ever could.

No matter how many lies the media put out there, the choices are painfully clear.

One of the protesters, the sorts of people whom Kamala described as “showing exactly what the human emotion should be”, stood holding a sign reading “Allah is gathering all the Zionists for the ‘Final Solution’ with a nuclear mushroom cloud overhead.” In his other hand, he waved the black battle flag of the Caliphate with its call for imposing Allah and Islam on America.

The choice between good and evil is all too clear. All that remains is to make it.

 
 
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

Thursday, April 11, 2024

Royko’s People to Congress: You Have Forgotten Your Place

What happens when radical becomes mainstream

By Rich Kozlovich

If you're paying any attention to the news you can't help but notice just how radical and....quite frankly.... how stunningly stupid so many are in the media.  One of the nitwits on The View, Sunny Hostin, claimed global warming caused the "solar eclipse, a recent earthquake, and the impending cicada breeding season".  Even Whoopie knew better, and since she's about the dullest pebble in the brook, and she got it right, you have to wonder who picks these nitwits for this show?   Well, actually, for that matter, you could say that about MSNBC, and the rest of the mainstream media. 

That wasn't always true.  

I've written about Mike Royko in the past, and truth be told, the more I see going on, the more I miss him.  For those who aren’t old enough to remember Mike Royko let me tell you about him. Mike Royko, who died in 1997, was a syndicated columnist out of Chicago where he grew up. Royko was an ethnic kid of Polish/Ukrainian origin, and was the voice of “everyman Chicago”. He was sarcastic, caustic, and totally skeptical of elitists and their thinking. Royko took the view, as Studs Terkel pointed out"

“Somebody’s up against it”! Royko wanted to make sure there was someone who would do something about it. Him! A healthy attitude in my opinion!

It was clear that Royko had very little respect for politicians and hated political correctness. He hated hypocrisy, special privileges for special people, and had little tolerance for them.  Royko was all about basic fair play. 

Everything had become about superficial imagery and money and he hated it. But, Mike’s gone now and the problems he was so concerned about have only become exacerbated by time, and if Mike had lived he's be 88 now, and I have no doubt if he was still capable he'd be taking a stand against the insanity.   Sadly, he's no longer here, and for a number of reason, there just hasn't anyone who could take his place in the minds of Americans.   

So where does that leave "Royko's people"? 

Royko was sensitive to people who were suffering, and he had a way of cutting right past the smoke screen of nonsense spewed out by those who are prominent and powerful and right into the fire. Have we lost sight of the need for that? Are we capable of seeing past the activity that has become a substitute for accomplishment? Are we capable of standing up on our hind legs and saying:

“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore?” As someone once said: “It’s a falsehood; history doesn’t repeat itself; people just fail to grasp the lessons of history”.

We have the world’s governments spending billions and billions of dollars on projects that they claim are to save the world’s environment. Money they don’t have! They pass laws to make the world change from perfectly operating power generation systems to systems that are completely incapable of meeting current energy needs, let alone future needs.

Eleven years ago people in Eastern Europe froze to death due to a lack of sufficient energy production. All due to their governments desire to reduce CO2 emissions, based on the false premise that CO2 is causing global warming. Yet all these ‘alternative’ power generating schemes are failures. They have always been failures. And they will always be failures unless there is some kind of massive technological breakthrough that currently isn’t even on the horizon. Result; people die, people suffer and people pay through the nose for the energy they are supplied. All based on lies from the green movement.

We have placed unaccountable bureaucrats in charge of determining what pesticides are to be used even when we know, and have known from the very beginning, they are basing their rules on ideology and not science. We shouldn’t have to be even discussing this reality. We now know the EPA has sweetheart deals with the green movement called “Sue and Settle”.

The greenies sue the EPA and the EPA gives a half hearted attempt to defend itself and then settles with the activists to get power they want that Congress never intended for them to have. The result? We have people suffering all over the world from the lack of inexpensive, effective chemistry that saves lives from diseases and starvation. In the U.S. we suffer from an ever growing bed bug plague, yet the EPA and the green movement continue going down their insane path with speculative claims that pesticides represent grave dangers; speculations that have no relationship to reality.

We have bureaucrats impose serious limitations on people’s use of their own property in total violation of their Constitutional rights based on the whim of some self important government employee. And then they claim they have no legal recourse because the courts have no jurisdiction over their actions.  That's called the administrative state, and finally, the courts are taking this up and saying there's nothing in the constitution that permits Congress to transfer their power and responsibilities to bureaucrats.

When radical thinking becomes mainstream this is what happens to “Royko’s people”. Because it’s average people just trying to live their lives who suffer from the actions of the elite, the arrogant and the insane. Becky Gerritson told Congress:

“I’m not here as a serf or a vassal. I’m not begging my lords for mercy. I’m a born free American woman. Wife, mother, and citizen. And I’m telling my government that you’ve forgotten your place. It’s not your responsibility to look out for my wellbeing and to monitor my speech. It’s not your right to assert an agenda. Your post, the post that you occupy, exists to preserve American liberty. You’ve sworn to perform that duty, and you have faltered…”You have forgotten your place”....... 

That sent electric waves through anyone who heard it. Aren’t you glad someone said it?  Royko thrived on confrontation more than willing to stand up for what's right, and I'm just sorry that Royko wasn't here to see that.  He would have loved it!

When rulers forget their oaths April 11, 2024 by Richard C. Lyons - Such people have the perfect moral chemistry to engage in tyranny.  In self-governing societies, choosing a leader of the nation is the most important responsibility a citizen has.  In our United States, where the presidency has grown to be so powerful an office, it is even more so.  Through time immemorial, whether in Greece or Rome, in England, or among native Americans, a few vital questions have always been foremost when questioning those who sought powerful office: will they obey their oath to follow the constitution?  Will they faithfully execute the law and obey the law themselves?  Do they believe in a higher moral calling, a higher power, as in God?

The reason for these questions is perhaps not obvious.  But if a person in power does not perceive himself as being bound by his oath or by a constitution of law, the powerful tend to change from humans into wolves.  And if one does not believe in a higher moral authority there is no moral code or power he will respect between here and hell. .............And it is why this alliance of the Democrat party, its Administrative State, and its subsidiary media is so dangerous.  In pursuit of absolute power, the Democrat party is prepared to wrench the Constitution out of existence and break any law or faith they have to, if it stands in their way.  The Democrat party literally holds to no oath, no law, no altar...

 

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Robert Hur Testimony Did Not Exonerate Joe Biden

Despite Democrat efforts, the special counsel did not let Biden off the hook. 

By | Mar 13, 2024 @Liberty Nation News, Tags: Articles, Good Reads, Opinion, Politics

Three questions dominated Special Counsel Robert Hur’s March 12 testimony on Capitol Hill regarding his investigation of Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents: Were crimes committed – more specifically, was there an intent to commit an act that violates federal law? Why did the special counsel not recommend future criminal charges? Why has former President Donald Trump been indicted for retaining classified documents when neither Biden nor any past presidents – many of whom did the same thing – face a similar fate? The Hur testimony answered the first two questions unequivocally – as does his report. The answer to the third question is still something of a head-scratcher.

Hur was careful to stick to what appeared in his report. At times, that strategy – which was entirely proper – stymied both the Republicans and the Democrats present at the hearing. One notable way in which Democrats attempted to elicit from Hur an opinion not included in his report concerned the matter of whether Joe Biden had committed a crime or crimes. More than one member of the House minority tried to get the special counsel to concede that he did not recommend criminal charges because he had found no evidence of unlawful activity. That was not the case, though, and Hur did not take the bait.

Charging Decision Explained in Hur Testimony

It was a point Hur was compelled to make several times: His decision not to recommend charges was not wholly based upon a lack of evidence but rather on the probability of the government getting a conviction in a jury trial. Hur deemed that possibility to be very low – in large part because he believed Biden, in some future trial when he is no longer in office, would come across as an elderly man with a failing memory, a sympathetic character unlikely to be condemned by a jury.


The special counsel did agree that there was an element of intent – of willfulness – to Biden’s retention of government documents spanning his almost five decades of public service. The current commander-in-chief did disclose sensitive information – material that may have been classified – to his ghostwriter. Hur conceded, during questioning by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), that Biden was motivated to retain documents to cement his legacy as a statesman – principally, in the form of a book for which, according to Jordan, Biden received an $8 million advance. Thus, willful intent was present.

This point exposed one of the few discrepancies between the Hur testimony and the final special counsel report, which did indeed cite a lack of evidence of willful intent beyond reasonable doubt. One might suggest that it seems Biden was afforded quite a bit of leeway: Intent existed, but not enough – or not obvious enough – to warrant a criminal charge. How many people serving prison sentences today would be free if they had been afforded such a defense?

Trump vs Biden Cases: The Same but Different?

During the hearing – and indeed within the pages of Hur’s report, curiously – certain comparisons were made between Biden’s handling of classified information and Donald Trump’s. As Liberty Nation predicted, there were attempts from both sides of the aisle to get Hur to discuss the differences or similarities between the two investigations and the special counsel declined to discuss details of the Trump case.

In the matter of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump, Democrats leaned hard into the alleged efforts by the 45th president to defy requests to turn over documents and to otherwise obstruct the government’s efforts to recover those materials. The argument – which does appear to be borne out by the known facts – is that Biden took no such actions and instead cooperated with federal authorities. That doesn’t alter the fact that Trump is the only former president to even be questioned or challenged on his removal of materials when he left office. He is the only former president to be indicted for retaining documents.

Whether he is guilty of obstruction or not, it seems that Trump was singled out to be held accountable for keeping government documents – something the National Archives and the Department of Justice have acknowledged every president at least as far back as Ronald Reagan has done. Had the issue of documents not been raised – as it had not been raised to any previous president – then none of the other alleged actions would have taken place. In fact, if Trump had been left alone, then Hur’s testimony and his investigation of Biden would not have happened.

The bottom line is that neither Trump nor Biden should have been the subject of investigations for doing what so many former presidents – and probably many other government officials – have done for decades.

Editor's Note:  This last sentence is incorrect. The President of the United States is the ultimate classifying authority, and his mere possession of classified material declassifies them as a matter of law.  Joe Biden wasn't President of the United States when he stole all those classified documents. He had no classifying authority as Vice President, in effect, he held all those documents illegally, not so for Donald Trump.  

Trump being investigated was blatantly political, with no legitimate legal standing.  In Biden's case it isn't political, because he did commit crimes by stealing classified documents.   Legally he should be investigated, and if there's a political downfall for that, so be it. But make no mistake, Biden most assuredly should be investigated, as he's actually committed crimes.  RK 

Still, it was clear that Democrats were on the defensive during the hearing, even going so far as to suggest the special counsel deliberately trashed Biden in his report so that he might be rewarded with a federal judgeship, should Donald Trump again become president. Though he did not let his professional demeanor slip, one could imagine that the irony of Democrats accusing others of conducting politically motivated investigations was not lost on Hur.

The Hur testimony did not exonerate Biden – and the special counsel, in answer to one question, made it clear that the word did not appear anywhere in his report (an attorney’s way of saying, no, he is not exonerated). The report of the investigation points to several possible “innocent explanations” for why Biden might have found himself with classified documents. In short, Biden has been granted the benefit of the doubt – something Trump has not enjoyed for a second from the moment he first decided to run for president.

 
Read More From Graham J Noble

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Will 2024 Be a Big Year for the House GOP – Or Another Big Bust?

There’s just one year left for the least productive Congress in modern history to do something.
 
 
Editor's Note:  While this piece seems to decry the lack of legislation passed by this Congress, I think that's a mark of success, and less would have been a bigger success.  Do we really think Congress needs to pass more legislation, or less?  In years gone by I've stated the only time the nation was safe was when Congress was gridlocked and Ruth Bader Ginsberg was fast asleep on the bench.  I've yet to see anything that makes me think differently.   And truthfully, I'm betting most of America agrees.  RK

When Republicans took the US House of Representatives in 2023, they had big plans – as majorities often do. But session one showed the 118th to be, so far, the least productive Congress in 87 years, if not longer. Will 2024 be the big year the House GOP hopes for – or just another big bust?

A House of Ill Repute

The 118th Congress got off to a rocky start. The 15 votes across four days required to finally elect Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as Speaker of the House was the most drawn-out and dramatic fight for the gavel since 1857. And after all that, McCarthy couldn’t hold on to the Speakership a whole year. He was vacated by a vote from his peers in October, starting the whole ordeal over again, and it took nearly a month for Mike Johnson (R-LA) to take his place.

Aside from the nigh-constant infighting between Republican groups and investigations into Joe Biden’s family that have yet to result in anything actionable, what does the 118th have to show now that the first session is over? Shockingly little. The House passed 330 bills, resolutions, and amendments – but only 34 bills have gone on to clear the Senate and then be signed into law by the president. Yes, House Republicans have had a Democrat-controlled Senate and White House to contend with, but a mere 34 bills signed into law is an epically low number even for a split Congress.

If one were to comb through the US Statutes at Large, courtesy of the Library of Congress, it would be possible to rank every Congress – indeed, every session – by the number of bills it passed that became law. For those unwilling to devote far too much of their lives to manually counting every piece of legislation passed since 1789, the 75th Congress began numbering them at the front of each year’s report in 1937.

Since then, the least productive Congress, the 112th, managed to see 284 bills become law. The most impressive across that span was the 1,921 laws of the 84th Congress, with the average being 795.

To avoid the “most dysfunctional Congress in modern American history” legacy, this crew will have to work together to pass more than eight times as many laws in the second session as the first – and seeing some tangible results to the numerous investigations into Joe and Hunter Biden wouldn’t hurt. Even the Democrat-controlled House of the 116th Congress – which spent a historic amount of time in the throes of severe Trump Derangement Syndrome – managed to see 344 bills become law across two years despite the Republican majority in the Senate and their archnemesis in the White House. That’s ten times the progress of this Congress, and they managed to pull off two presidential impeachments.

2024 – Big Plans for a Big Year

But it’s 2024 now, and it’s time to turn away from past embarrassments and look to the future. It’s undeniably a big year for America – arguably more so because this time the presidential election winner is almost guaranteed to be either Biden or the man who held the office before him, Trump. It’s a political heavyweight championship bout, and that’s historical enough in itself. But it’s also the year that the Supreme Court will decide whether a presidential candidate can be removed by a state from the primary or even general election ballot based on the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause.

And if House Republicans have their way, it will also be the year an attorney general finds himself asked to prosecute the son of the man who appointed him for skipping out on a congressional subpoena. The resolution to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress has been filed, will be considered by the House Oversight Committee during a markup meeting today, Jan. 10, and may see a floor vote soon after.

The first thing the House will have to do this year is reach an agreement with the Democrat-controlled Senate and President Biden before the current government funding bills expire on Jan. 19 and Feb. 2. Congressional leaders boasted on Jan. 7 of a “top-line spending” agreement, but that doesn’t take care of the specifics. Four bills must be passed by the first deadline, and the House Speaker wants to take them one at a time – with none so far scheduled for consideration this week.

As one might assume, with 2024 being an election year, much of the news coming out of the House focuses not on legislation but on campaigning. Still, the GOP does hope to achieve some success in securing the border with Mexico. It’s unclear if House Republicans will get any policy changes in return for their votes on government spending bills though, and if the “one item at a time” approach sees the government funded – even if only by a continuing resolution – without any meaningful changes to the Biden administration’s border policies, it doesn’t seem likely they’ll get any at all.

Republicans control the House for another year – but if 2024 turns out anything like 2023, merely holding the House may be all they have to brag about. For those who feel better about life and liberty when Congress doesn’t accomplish anything, it certainly seems to be a win for the American people – but it’s an embarrassment for Congress in general and doubly so for House Republicans.

 
Read More From James Fite
 

Friday, December 15, 2023

Hunter Biden, DOJ Stonewalling, and Joe’s Stunning Mistake

Life comes at you fast, they say. Hunter and Joe Biden are finding that out.

Former Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf has some explaining to do after being accused of interfering with a federal investigation of Hunter Biden. Wolf was the target of several accusations made by an IRS whistleblower, Gary Shapley. The Justice Department (DOJ) ex-official was subpoenaed in November by the House Judiciary Committee to address Shapley’s allegations that she “limited” investigators’ questioning of witnesses, blocked a search warrant for Hunter Biden’s place of residence in 2020, and tipped off Joe Biden’s son’s legal team that a search of his storage unit had been planned.

No longer employed at the DOJ, Wolf sat for a closed-door interview on December 14 and, according to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), declined to answer most questions. “She refused to answer based on instructions she was given from the Justice Department,” Jordan said.

US Attorney Puts a Thumb on the Scale?......To Read More....

  •  Hunter Biden: Mendacious, preposterous December 15, 2023 What a pathetic press conference!  The press conference Hunter Biden held on Wednesday could have been an SNL skit for all the lies and hyperbole his whiny talk contained.  It was pure political burlesque.The man is pathetic.  He stood there moaning about how mean the Republicans are to him.  He displayed not a hint of the paradoxical irony, considering what the Democrats have done to President Trump over the past seven years.  The difference is that the Democrats manufactured all the charges against Trump out of whole cloth, whereas the crimes Hunter has finally been charged with are a fraction of the felonies and fraud of which he is actually guilty.   His abandoned laptop is a veritable roadmap of his degeneracy, his depravity, as well as mountains of financial fraud.......The abject criminality and malfeasance of the Biden family will live in infamy forever in the history books if the truth prevails.........

Friday, November 10, 2023

Herding Cats in Congress

By Rich Kozlovich 

The term herding cats is used to describe something that's not only difficult to do, but carries an unpleasant connotation, kinda like herding lawyers.  Well, that's what Speaker Mike Johnson is facing.  I've often said the Republican party is called the stupid party because they earned it not having a shared vision.  

The Mitt Romney's and John McCain's were the darlings of the party 20 years ago, and now they're anathema.   Why?  Real conservatives are being elected to the Congress, and the cage rattling they're causing give the impression the Republicans are in a mess, and they are, temporarily, but they're getting results that were long over due. 

A friend sent me an e-mail quoting Will Rogers  who in the late 1920's or early 30's once said, “I’m not a member of any organized political party…. I’m a Democrat.”  He said he felt that now applied to Republicans, and so too did Dick Yarbrough who posted this article, What would Will Rogers think of today’s Republicans? saying:

There is no question that if ol’ Will was around today, he would probably be a Republican. The Grand Old Party gives new meaning to the term disorganized.

The Republican party is going through a transitional restructuring, and while Republican ability to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory is legendary, giving the impression, and rightly so, they're in complete disarray, the Democrats have walked in lockstep for years.  That was an illusion.  I'll tell you what, we'll come back to that. 

Other than the obvious party structures of Congress, it's actually made up of two distinct groups.  Those who think America needs saving, and those who don't.  Among the latter is a strong force who wish for America's destruction.  

As the Speaker battle raged in Congress, and the Israel/Hamas War erupted with all the horrors of ancient barbarian brutality, the uniparty, which many recognized for years, has been exposed to the point that even the most casual observer can see who and what they are.  

It should also be clear to the most casual observer America is facing a seriously catastrophic economic crisis with massive spending, borrowing, inflation, devaluation of the dollar, and a movement to abandon the dollar internationally.   

We're seeing unbelievable and disastrous cultural changes that leftists in every one of America's institutions are promoting in order to replace the value system that created America and Western Civilization, the "proven traditional Judeo-Christian values with Godless secular-socialistic utopian ideals that have failed throughout history."

Political insanity that promotes the abandonment of defense measures that has worked forever in favor of  DEI and gender initiatives.   We can't keep our planes in the air, but hey, at least the Defense Department has it's pronouns right.  After all, what's more important, fixing submarines and air planes or providing for abortions and sex change operations for military personnel?  At least that's the priorities of Biden and his misfit cabal of incompetents.  The same misfits who claim the only real national defense worry is climate change.

Since according to them climate change (the second greatest scientific fraud ever perpetrated on humanity since evolution, and the covid scare mongering running a close third) is our only real national fear, they've decided to destroy America's ability to fuel itself and generate sufficient electricity to run our businesses or ever our homes.  Which will destroy America's economy!  

And so, what do we see?  Biden demands the nation stop using fossil fueled vehicles in favor of , which are an unending disaster.  Therefore, if we can't supply sufficient electricity for our homes and businesses with all these alternative energy schemes, all of which are failing, then I think it wise to ask:  How can they supply sufficient energy to charge all these electric vehicles?  The answer?  They can't!

The nation has allowed these misfits to totally ignore and violate American laws on immigration, and no one is being charged with a crime, or even dismissed from government for doing it.  Why?  Because the crime stoppers are the criminals, and this is a classic example of corrupt world of the double standards in which these Washington elitists and insiders reside, and make no mistake, that's a very small tip of the iceberg.

What has been exposed by all this is so many of the so-called conservatives are in reality, CINO's, Conservatives in Name Only, like Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, and my favorite CINO is John Kasich, who claimed while as governor of Ohio he had the right to define conservationism as he saw fit.  In his case if his brand of conservationism was a river, it would run right through the middle of Western Europe.

In reality, of all the 535 members of the Congress in both houses, there are less than 125 who could really qualify as conservatives, all of whom truly believe the nation is in crisis.  But they have little power in stopping this cascading insanity of economic, political, and cultural disaster being pushed on the nation.

This battle for Speaker of the House has threatened the status quo, and we're seeing leadership of both parties, and lobbyists, all of whom have wallowed at the feeding trough of government largess to the nation's detriment, all of whom are supported by a corrupt media insisting to end the status quo, a corrupt status quo,  would be a disaster for the nation, and will destroy "our democracy".  Which is really interesting since both "Corrupt Hillary" and Nance Pelosi are two of the biggest mouths spouting that corrupt nonsense.  

Powerful forces will be in play to prevent any efforts to nix all this corruption.   Matt Gaetz was vilified for his efforts to oust Speaker McCarthy, many saying the time wasn't right, which of course is a logical fallacy because for these nitwits, the time is never right.  But now, he's the hero!  

Will it matter?  When the nation's voting public still ends up supporting insane leftists, and their insane positions, as was done yesterday in Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio, one has to think, it might not matter. 

Who knows, perhaps Joe Biden will follow Volodymyr Zelenskyy and decide he should suspend the 2024 election, since "this might not be the right time for an election".   And since it's been shown the law enforcers of the federal government are the  law breakers, who can prevent that?  Answer?  The outrage of the American people, and something that's coming to the fore, and the Democrat party isn't prepared to deal with it, intellectually, morally, or philosophically.   The Israel/HAMAS War is exposing them for who they really are.  

Going back to Will Rogers statement about the Democrat party not being organized, one has to realize the Democrat party has always been made up of divergent, and often conflicting groups.   Big labor versus those supporting illegal immigration.  Environmentalists versus industrialists.  Race hustlers who create disadvantages for other ethnic groups. All their DEI programs are totally destructive to many of their constituents, and yet they've managed to win elections because of the massive amounts of money being poured into campaigns by ultra rich destructive leftists, and blatant election fraud.  But not all is well. 

Going back to Will Rogers statement about the Democrat party not being organized, one has to realize the Democrat party has always been made up of divergent, and often conflicting groups.   Big labor versus those supporting illegal immigration.  Environmentalists versus industrialists.  Race hustlers who create disadvantages for other ethnic groups. All their DEI programs are totally destructive to many of their constituents, and yet they've managed to win elections because of the massive amounts of money being poured into campaigns by ultra rich destructive leftists, and blatant election fraud.  But not all is well.

Kurt Schlichter posted this piece yesterday, Think the GOP Has Problems? Meet the Democrats!, saying:

Leave it to the Germans to come up with a word for every bizarre confluence of feelings and emotions, like schadenfreude, the shameful joy at others’ pain....... We’re enjoying it...... there are no bedfellows stranger than the freakshow types that make up the Democrat coalition......Half of their party wants to murder the other half..........He’s got to balance these two different groups,  [those]who never met a terrorist they didn’t like or Jew they didn’t want to see murdered, and the regular Democrats, who have gotten pretty leftist themselves, but aren’t willing to take the leap into embracing a new Holocaust. And make no mistake, a new Holocaust is exactly what the wokesters are talking about when they chant “From the river to the sea.”

The Republicans keep putting on a clown show they're calling the GOP Presidential debates, and look like a bunch of incompetent clowns, when in fact, none of them have a tinker's dam's chance to be chosen as the Republican candidate.  

“RNC ‘debate’ audience chanting TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP tells you everything you need to know folks. It’s over folks but the swamp grifters and consultants are going to milk their billionaire funded Super PACs to the last cent. Because the swamp cares about money and power not America.”

It will be Trump, and instead of getting behind him and created a tidal wave of national support, they denigrate him and the entire conservative base of the party.  But that will end after 2024 for the Republicans, and the two top contenders among those original seven dwarfs, DeSantis and Haley, will see the end of their political lives.  

The Democrat leadership and it's base are in fact leftist lunatics filled with with hate, envy, greed, and violence, who will continue to destroy any semblance of sanity in their party, or the nation.   What they have to offer is being demonstrated in America's major cities.  Total collapse of civilized society.   

That's history, and that history is incontestable!