Category Archives: President Obama

The Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power of the purse. A president unilaterally cancelling up to $1.6 trillion would be a rank violation of that power. Of course, the federal student loan programs are themselves unconstitutional. The federal government only has the specific, enumerated powers given to it by the Constitution, and the authority to fund education, either directly or through loans, is nowhere among them!

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AUGUST 23, 2022 4:35PM

Top Five Reasons Federal Student Debt Cancellation Is a Bad Idea


The Biden administration is nearing its deadline to announce what it will do about federal student debt. In part this is because the latest freeze on student debt repayment ends on August 31. Also, at least in part, this is because progressives are demanding cancellation. But pushy progressives and a freeze that should have ended long‐​agodo not make a policy wise. Indeed, there are at least five major reasons mass cancellation is a terrible idea.

1. Helping the Winners

People who have attended, and especially graduated from, college are typically set for a huge increase in their lifetime earnings. As seen below, the average person with a bachelor’s degree will earn an estimated $1.2 million more over their lifetime than someone topping out at a high school diploma. For someone with a graduate degree – and student debt is disproportionately taken on for graduate study – that earnings premium rises to between $1.6 and $3.1 million.

Lifetime earnings premiums for education behyond high school

In addition to huge earnings increases, people who attended college have much greater job security than those who did not, and this benefit was especially stark during COVID-19 lockdowns. In April 2020, the unemployment rate only hit 8.4 percent for college graduates, versus 17.6 percent for Americans topping out at a high school diploma and 21.1 percent for workers with less than that.

Unemployment rates by education level

There is no reason that people in such a good financial position should not repay taxpayers, roughly two‐​thirds of whom do not have bachelor’s degrees.

2. Regressive

We have seen various cancellation proposals floated by different people, but one of the most recent was reported from the Biden White House: $10,000 cancellation with an income cap of $150,000 individually and $300,000 for joint filers. The table below is an estimate for the cancellation amounts and distribution of that plan by income quintile (and decile for top earners).

Debt cancellation distribution estimate

As highlighted in the graph below, much more of that aid would go to the highest quintile of earners than the lowest — $54.3 billion versus $33.8 billion. That’s because higher‐​income people are more likely to borrow, and borrow more, for college than lower‐​income.

Cancellation difference top and bottom household income quintiles

3. Huge Cost to Taxpayers

The $10,000 plan discussed in reason number two would cost taxpayers – the people who funded all these student loans whether they liked it or not – an estimated $260 billion. $50,000 per borrower with no cap would cost taxpayers around $1 trillion. And forgiving the whole amount would cost taxpayers more than $1.6 trillion.

4. Even Worse Price Inflation

The biggest problem in higher education is its incredibly expanding price. As seen below, inflation‐​adjusted tuition, fees, room and board at four‐​year, nonprofit private colleges ballooned from $27,720 in the 1990–91 school year to $$51,690 in the 2021–22 school year, an 86 percent increase. At public four‐​year institutions it rose from $10,430 to $22,690, a 118 percent ballooning. It was accompanied by a huge increase in aid per student.

College aid and price increases, 30 years

Much research has shown that aid fuels college price inflation, including a Federal Reserve Bank of New York finding that for every 1 dollar increase in “subsidized” student loans, colleges raise their prices 60 cents. Mass cancellation would incentivize much greater inflation as neither colleges nor prospective students would believe future loans would have to be repaid, blowing the lid off of prices.

5. Unconstitutional

The Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power of the purse. A president unilaterally cancelling up to $1.6 trillion would be a rank violation of that power. Of course, the federal student loan programs are themselves unconstitutional. The federal government only has the specific, enumerated powers given to it by the Constitution, and the authority to fund education, either directly or through loans, is nowhere among them. Cancellation would thus be a double violation of the Constitution.

Some cancellation advocates argue that Congress gave the president the power to cancel all loans in the Higher Education Act. But not only is the constitutional ability for Congress to give away its power highly dubious, the Higher Education Act does not authorize blanket cancellation, only forgiveness under specific loan repayment programs.

Conclusion

Mass cancellation would be a blatantly unconstitutional giveaway of taxpayer money to the people who arguably need it the least, and it would exacerbate the biggest problem in higher education.

There’s nothing to like about that.

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https://video.foxnews.com/v/6310973230112

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https://video.foxnews.com/v/6310973230112

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6310973230112

Tucker Carlson: There’s a reason the public’s confidence in the FBI has plummeted

Tucker Carlson breaks down the Whitmer kidnapping plot and its alleged ties to the FBI

By all accounts, Attorney General Merrick Garland was shocked to hear criticism of the raid on Mar-a-Lago last week. It turns out that Garland lives in such a tiny, airless world of left-wing activists and sycophants that it had never occurred to him that anyone might object to siccing the FBI on Joe Biden’s political opponents.

When woke Twitter and The New York Times are your only sources of news, police state politics seems perfectly normal. Trump is bad. Find a reason to arrest him. That’s how they think. So, if you watched Garland carefully at his press conference other day, you may have noticed that he appeared highly annoyed by the idea of having to stoop to explain himself to mere citizens. But he found a solution. Being a liberal, Merrick Garland’s first instinct was to seize the role of victim because when you’re a victim, you’ve already won the argument. You don’t have to explain yourself. You don’t have to change your behavior. You are, by definition, the good guy. The victim always is. Being oppressed means never having to say you’re sorry.

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6310973230112

So, as Garland explained at the press conference, the FBI was in fact the real victim here. Mean old Fox News was asking unfair questions and that’s just wrong. So, the real problem isn’t that America’s most powerful law enforcement agency is dangerously politicized and corrupt. No, the real problem here is the people have dared to complain about it, and they must stop immediately or else they are domestic terrorists.

As Garland put it, with what seemed like genuine outrage, I will not stand silently by as the integrity of the FBI is unfairly attacked. Well, of course, media organizations loved it. There’s nothing they revere more than a victim. Victims are holy. So, they immediately took Garland side. “They’re being mean to the FBI. Stop it, guys. That’s not allowed.” But if you take three steps back and think about it for a second, Garland’s position, which effectively is “You’re not allowed to criticize me. I’m the attorney general of the United States” is pretty weird.

Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks to announce a team to conduct a critical incident review of the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, during a media availability at the Department of Justice , Wednesday, June 8, 2022, in Washington. 

Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks to announce a team to conduct a critical incident review of the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, during a media availability at the Department of Justice , Wednesday, June 8, 2022, in Washington.  (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

In fact, it is an inversion of the traditional relationship between the U.S. government and the population that supposedly serves. According to Merrick Garland, the onus is on American citizens to respect the FBI. “Obey, it’s your duty.” But of course, that’s not true. In a democracy, the onus is on the FBI to earn the respect of Americans. They work for you, remember? And lately they have not been doing a very good job and people know that they haven’t been.

The public’s confidence in the FBI has plummeted by double digits in just the last few years and unfortunately, there’s a reason for that and it’s a huge problem. We need the FBI. You can’t just defund federal law enforcement. There are a lot of federal laws, most of them are silly, some of them are not silly at all. They’re very serious and they must be enforced. So, we have to have an FBI and it has to be an FBI we can trust and we can’t trust it until its behavior merits trust, until it’s honest, and to the extent it can be transparent, consistent in the way it enforces the law.

We have to have a federal law enforcement agency like that. We can’t just make it go away and hope for the best, but we’re nowhere near that point because the people who are supposed to be overseeing the FBI have ignored egregious examples of corruption over many years, but they’re getting very hard to ignore because they’re just so obvious now and it’s not just the raid on Mar-a-Lago. Consider the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping case. You may remember that story. It’s from the fall of 2020. You may even have followed it a little bit and heard how it ended. So, what seemed like a terrorism plot was, in fact, a setup by the government to make a group of ordinary people in Michigan look like terrifying right-wing extremists, those violent White nationalists Joe Biden is always mumbling about.

Well, turns out there aren’t enough of those people in real life. They’re pretty rare, actually. It’s not a very racist country, despite what they tell you. So, the Justice Department had to go create some and they did and that’s not just our opinion. That was the finding of a federal jury in Michigan. So, it’s a shocking story, really, but the details of that story are even worse than that. They are beyond belief and we’ll tell you what they are in just a minute, but first to set the scene, here is Gretchen Whitmer, herself, governor of Michigan, announcing that she was the intended target of a terrorism plot. This is from October 8, 2020.

GOV. GRETCHEN WHITMER: Earlier today, Attorney General Dana Nessel was joined by officials from the Department of Justice and the FBI to announce state and federal charges against 13 members of two militia groups who were preparing to kidnap and possibly kill me. If you break the law or conspire to commit heinous acts of violence against anyone, we will find you. We will hold you accountable and we will bring you to justice.  

“We’ll bring you to justice. I’m so important that militia groups have organized to take me out.” What a self-aggrandizing description, but the last thing she said, “we’ll bring you to justice,” well, they actually tried to do that. They had a trial and then a retrial and thanks to that, we have testimony and cross-examination that reveals what actually happened, how the FBI engineered this plot.

Now, most of the media were paying zero attention to this. Julie Kelly of American Greatness has actually covered it. We’re grateful to her for what she’s found. Here’s the outline. In early 2020, a 35-year-old Army veteran called Dan Chappel (nicknamed Big Dan) was working as a contractor for the U.S. Postal Service. He drove delivery trucks. He was Scrolling Facebook one night and Chappel says he found a pro-Second Amendment group called “Wolverine Watchmen.” He says he just happened upon it. So, Chappel testified that he was concerned by the group’s criticism of law enforcement. So, he went to a police officer, a friend of his, and asked for advice. None of the messages within the group violated any law, but somehow, within a week, Chappel wound up connected to the FBI, to several FBI agents, including a special agent called Jayson Chambers.

TOP TRUMP TARGETS CHENEY, MURKOWSKI, FACE VOTERS IN TUESDAY’S PRIMARIES IN WYOMING, ALASKA

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer addresses the press before signing the final piece of a $76 billion state budget into law, Wednesday, July 20, 2022 in Detroit.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer addresses the press before signing the final piece of a $76 billion state budget into law, Wednesday, July 20, 2022 in Detroit. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Now, we learned through testimony in the trial this week why Chambers was interested in the case. It turns out that Chambers, in violation of FBI policy, was running a side hustle. He just incorporated a security firm called Exe-Intel, and he saw his work on the Whitmer case as a way to promote his own business. We know that because throughout 2020, someone affiliated with his business, their Twitter account, repeatedly tweeted nonpublic information about the kidnapping case that Dan Chappel was building for the FBI.

So, it’s not surprising, given the built-in incentives here, which were against policy once again, that Chambers appeared to do everything he could to make sure the investigation went according to plan. Now, no investigation can go according to plan because there shouldn’t be a plan. An investigation is the process of finding out what happened. An investigation is not the process of orchestrating things to happen, but that’s exactly what this became.

In all, the FBI with chambers is the handler paid Chappel (Big Dan) more than $60,000 in the course of just a few months. Today,Chappel testified that he made more money working for the FBI in seven months that he did working for the United States Postal Service over the course of an entire year.

So, there’s a lot of money moving from the FBI, the Federal Treasury, to this informant. So, the FBI told Chappel that in exchange for all of that money, he needed to start assembling a group of right-wing extremists for the FBI to prosecute. They made the whole thing up, and he did that with the FBI’s help. Within a few weeks, the FBI created a new Facebook group called “Patriot Three Percenters.” This is why you should be careful of Facebook, by the way.” Oh, it’s just a screw-up. It looks interesting.”

TRUMP RAID SHOWS THAT FBI, JUSTICE DEPARTMENT WANT TO DECIDE WHO CAN BE OUR PRESIDENT

Okay. So, Chappel and several members of that group then attended a protest at the Michigan State Capitol. “Look at you, bringing people together,” the FBI handler texted Chappel. Now throughout that protest, which didn’t look a whole lot different from the January 6 protest, Chappel kept in touch, close touch, with federal agents. He informed the feds that a 37-year-old man called Adam Fox was at the state capitol during the protest. Adam Fox has got to be one of the least powerful people in our society. He lived alone with his two dogs in the basement of a vacuum repair shop. Why? Because he had no money whatsoever.

In fact, he had so little money that in order to get running water, to brush his teeth or use the bathroom, he had to go to a nearby Mexican restaurant and use their men’s room. So, Chappel began texting this diabolical mastermind, Fox, hundreds of times. But Fox seemed inherently moderate, actually. He wrote things like this, “Our goal is to restore the constitutional republic.”

Fox also said, “In our hearts and minds, we are not domestic terrorists.” Oh, sounds very dangerous. So, based on those text messages, the FBI gave Chappel more instructions. They provided Chappel with several $5,000 limit credit cards, and they told him to give those credit cards to Fox and tell them to spend it on guns and ammunition. So, Fox, despite the fact he had no money at all, had used the men’s room in a Mexican restaurant to brush his teeth, refused. On five separate occasions, he refused to take the credit cards to buy guns and ammunition. Then (what a terrorist) then in July of 2020, Chappel suggested that Fox and others fire rounds into the governor’s mansion, as well as at her cottage, but the alleged plotters, including Adam Fox, again refused. They didn’t want to hurt the governor.

Ultimately, in August of 2020, the group started to splinter. Chappel and other informants were instructed to keep the group together. “No, keep it together. Keep the threat real.” So, they introduced another undercover agent, [who] pretended to be an explosives expert. He showed the group a video of a bomb that blew up a vehicle to prove he knew what he was doing. Where did that video come from?

Well, it was made by the FBI. Is this shaking your confidence a little bit? These details are real, by the way. They came out at trial. Then the bureau recruited a convicted felon and a long time FBI informant called Stephen Robeson to introduce a new idea to Fox as well as to Barry Croft. This time the idea was to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer. Robeson, with the FBI’s money, organized several events including a national militia conference in Ohio, training in Wisconsin and a meeting in Delaware, FBI orchestrating all of this.

On July 18, 2020, at one such militia meeting, again organized by the FBI when they took a right-wing extremists. In this case, they created them. So, at this militia meeting, an alleged plotter, are called Ty Garbin rejected out of hand the idea of kidnapping Gretchen Whitmer. Didn’t want to do it. “No, I don’t think so. Kidnap the governor? No, we’re not crazy. We just want a constitutional republic.” Okay. Then the topic came up again in August and then another defendant called Daniel Harris was equally adamant. “No snatch and grab,” he said, “I swear to f-ing God.”

So, clearly they said it emphatically out loud explicitly these were people were not interested in kidnapping Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, but the FBI kept pushing.

The FBI informants drove the defendants to Gretchen Whitmer’s home. Then they suggested killing the governor of Virginia, also a Democrat. On September 5, 2020, FBI Special Agent Jayson Chambers texted Chappel, “Mission is to kill the governor specifically.” What country is this? To pressure one of the defendants, a man called Barry Croft , into doing that, one FBI agent admitted this week that a female informant slept in the same hotel room as Croft. It was a honey trap. FBI agents also testified this week that they regularly got high with Adam Fox. They smoked weed with Adam Fox. They said he was so high, in fact, he was high in all of his meetings with them. Again, that’s against FBI policy. You can’t just give drugs to people and hope they do something bad.

Well, after all of this failed to produce a kidnapping plot, it fell on yet another FBI agent called Richard Trask to build the criminal case against the defendants. Now, that same year, Trask, who is now been convicted of beating his wife, called Donald Trump a piece of excrement on social media. Really? Yeah. Just nonpartisan federal bureaucrats, public servants doing their job. Now, incredibly, after all of this, the person in charge of the field office overseeing the Whitmer investigation in 2020, a man called Steven D’antuono , was promoted, not fired, promoted to lead the DC field office in late 2020. Are you connecting the dots here?

In other words, the guy who made sure that FBI informants were active during a rally in the Michigan State House in 2020 as part of this concocted plot. That same guy went on to become the guy who oversaw the investigation into—wait for it—January 6, the election justice protest they’re calling an insurrection. But just remember, don’t ask whether the FBI used informants to entrap anyone on January 6. No, you can’t do that or else you’re an insurrectionist yourself. Nor are you allowed to ask why Steven’s agents were involved in the raid on Mar-a-Lago, even though that’s in Florida, and he’s in Washington. As it turns out, questions like this are hate speech. Watch.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: All the buzz on the Internet and all over the airwaves. It does, it does have an impact.  

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Well, I mean, you saw buzz. Well, there’s an awful lot of hate speech coming from pro-Trump media outlets just attacking the nation’s premier law enforcement agency simply because Donald Trump is being investigated.

Oh, it’s hate speech. Now, if there’s one thing we know about hate speech is that it’s not protected by the First Amendment. You’ve read that part of the Constitution which says you can say whatever you want as long as MSNBC doesn’t designate your words hate speech. So, when they call any criticism of the FBI, that would be Joe Biden’s personal Defense Force, they call that hate speech, what they’re really saying is you’re committing a crime and see where this is going, but the truth is, there are still questions about the FBI’s behavior on and around January 6 and given what happened in Michigan, where we know beyond question that the FBI tried to create an act of terror. It’s fair to ask, “What exactly did happen on January 6?”

And why is the FBI still hiding footage critically of the person who planted a pipe bomb outside the DNC on January 6 while Kamala Harris was apparently inside, something that she lied about for months? What exactly is going on here? We’re, of course, not alleging anything. We don’t know the answer, but we know for a fact, given the FBI’s behavior and we report this with great sadness over the last several years, it is worth getting to the bottom of this. In fact, we have to if we’re going to restore confidence in federal law enforcement. No one is asking these questions really apart from Revolver News and here’s what they’ve come up with. Watch this.

NARRATOR: Camera one shows the pipe bomber walking up to the DNC grounds at roughly 7:42 p.m.. He sits on bench one, then he gets up and walks off screen. According to the FBI, he walks the length of the DNC building and 10 minutes later he comes back to the same bench area and sits on bench two. There at 7:52 p.m., camera two captures the pipe bomber sitting on bench two and we are told, planting the pipe bomb by the side of the bench next to the bush. We are told the pipe bomber plants the pipe bomb there, but we can’t see it. Camera two is occluded by a giant bush that blocks the scene. The pipe bomber even looks at camera two head on for some reason. It’s very frustrating because we can’t see the moment the pipe bomber plants the pipe bomb, but the FBI can. That’s because the whole scene should be captured on camera one as well, and much more clearly than camera two. Camera one has a clear shot of both benches. If the FBI released the full tape from camera one, we could see the pipe bomber planting the bomb. 

Okay. So, what exactly happened outside the DNC on January 6, and why is no one asking that question, and why has the Department of Justice not told us? We’ve heard everything they want us to know about January 6. Why not more about this?

Open letter to President Obama (Part 644)

(Emailed to White House on 6-10-13.)

President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here.

The federal government debt is growing so much that it is endangering us because if things keep going like they are now we will not have any money left for the national defense because we are so far in debt as a nation. We have been spending so much on our welfare state through food stamps and other programs that I am worrying that many of our citizens are becoming more dependent on government and in many cases they are losing their incentive to work hard because of the welfare trap the government has put in place. Other nations in Europe have gone down this road and we see what mess this has gotten them in. People really are losing their faith in big government and they want more liberty back. It seems to me we have to get back to the founding  principles that made our country great.  We also need to realize that a big government will encourage waste and corruption. The recent scandals in our government have proved my point. In fact, the jokes you made at Ohio State about possibly auditing them are not so funny now that reality shows how the IRS was acting more like a monster out of control. Also raising taxes on the job creators is a very bad idea too. The Laffer Curve clearly demonstrates that when the tax rates are raised many individuals will move their investments to places where they will not get taxed as much.

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https://video.foxnews.com/v/6310973230112

We can fix the IRS problem by going to the flat tax and lowering the size of government.

Did President Obama and his team of Chicago cronies deliberately target the Tea Party in hopes of thwarting free speech and political participation?

Was this part of a campaign to win the 2012 election by suppressing Republican votes?

Perhaps, but I’ve warned that it’s never a good idea to assume top-down conspiracies when corruption, incompetence, politics, ideology, greed, and self-interest are better explanations for what happens in Washington.

Writing for the Washington Examiner, Tim Carney has a much more sober and realistic explanation of what happened at the IRS.

If you take a group of Democrats who are also unionized government employees, and put them in charge of policing political speech, it doesn’t matter how professional and well-intentioned they are. The result will be much like the debacle in the Cincinnati office of the IRS. …there’s no reason to even posit evil intent by the IRS officials who formulated, approved or executed the inappropriate guidelines for picking groups to scrutinize most closely. …The public servants figuring out which groups qualified for 501(c)4 “social welfare” non-profit status were mostly Democrats surrounded by mostly Democrats. …In the 2012 election, every donation traceable to this office went to President Obama or liberal Sen. Sherrod Brown. This is an environment where even those trying to be fair could develop a disproportionate distrust of the Tea Party. One IRS worker — a member of NTEU and contributor to its PAC, which gives 96 percent of its money to Democratic candidates — explained it this way: “The reason NTEU mostly supports Democratic candidates for office is because Democratic candidates are mostly more supportive of civil servants/government employees.”

Tim concludes with a wise observation.

As long as we have a civil service workforce that leans Left, and as long as we have an income tax system that requires the IRS to police political speech, conservative groups can always expect special IRS scrutiny.

And my colleague Doug Bandow, in an article for the American Spectator, adds his sage analysis.

The real issue is the expansive, expensive bureaucratic state and its inherent threat to any system of limited government, rule of law, and individual liberty. …the broader the government’s authority, the greater its need for revenue, the wider its enforcement power, the more expansive the bureaucracy’s discretion, the increasingly important the battle for political control, and the more bitter the partisan fight, the more likely government officials will abuse their positions, violate rules, laws, and Constitution, and sacrifice people’s liberties. The blame falls squarely on Congress, not the IRS.

I actually think he is letting the IRS off the hook too easily.

But Doug’s overall point obviously is true.

…the denizens of Capitol Hill also have created a tax code marked by outrageous complexity, special interest electioneering, and systematic social engineering. Legislators have intentionally created avenues for tax avoidance to win votes, and then complained about widespread tax avoidance to win votes.

So what’s the answer?

The most obvious response to the scandal — beyond punishing anyone who violated the law — is tax reform. Implement a flat tax and you’d still have an IRS, but the income tax would be less complex, there would be fewer “preferences” for the agency to police, and rates would be lower, leaving taxpayers with less incentive for aggressive tax avoidance. …Failing to address the broader underlying factors also would merely set the stage for a repeat performance in some form a few years hence. …More fundamentally, government, and especially the national government, should do less. Efficient social engineering may be slightly better than inefficient social engineering, but no social engineering would be far better.

Amen. Let’s rip out the internal revenue code and replace it with a simple and fair flat tax.

But here’s the challenge. We know the solution, but it will be almost impossible to implement good policy unless we figure out some way to restrain the spending side of the fiscal ledger.

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At the risk of over-simplifying, we will never get tax reform unless we figure out how to implement entitlement reform.

Here’s another Foden cartoon, which I like because it has the same theme asthis Jerry Holbert cartoon, showing big government as a destructive and malicious force.

IRS Cartoon 5

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Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com

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‘Forgiving’ Student Loan Debt Would be Illegal, Raise Inflation

A.F. Branco for Oct 21, 2021

President Joe Biden is considering canceling student debt, despite economists’ warnings that this would increase inflation and subsidize the highest earners. Pictured: Biden speaks at the White House before signing the Inflation Reduction Act on Aug. 16. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

The Biden White House is reportedly considering “forgiving” $10,000 worth of student debt for some borrowers, a move that is likely illegal and definitely will increase inflation and force poor people to subsidize rich people.

President Joe Biden is possibly considering subsidizing Americans earning less than $150,000 or $300,000 for married couples filing jointly—households in the 96 percentile of income, e.g. the most wealthy among us. He has to make a decision by Aug. 31.

dailycallerlogoIt’s clearly an election year scam, one perfectly timed to try to gin up votes for a president whose approval ratings make him toxic on the campaign trail. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi previously suggested Biden’s move would be illegal: “The president can’t do it. That’s not even a discussion,” she said last year.

It’s unlikely Pelosi will remember her warning and will probably endorse this violation of the Constitution stipulating power of the purse to Congress.

In January 2021, just before the Trump administration departed, the U.S. Department of Education issued a legal memo (which has since been ripped down by the Biden White House) stating the secretary of education “does not have the statutory authority to cancel, compromise, discharge, or forgive, on a blanket or mass basis, principal balances of student loans, and/or to materially modify the repayment amounts or terms thereof.”

Wasteful COVID-19-related government spending helped create record, devastating inflation this year and “forgiving” student loans will make inflation worse. Biden also ignores that the U.S. government fueled the initial student loan debt balloon.

For decades, college tuition vastly outpaced inflation, but universities kept raising tuition because they know government-backed student loans will follow.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported in 2017 that one dollar of government student loan expansion correlates with a tuition raise of 60 cents per dollar. And what have we gotten for those pricey degrees?

Education scholar Preston Cooper at The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity reviewed degree earnings potential, or the “Return on Investment,” of more than 60,000 post-secondary degrees and certifications. Cooper estimates “28% of bachelor’s degrees have negative ROI, meaning the degree does not increase students’ earnings enough to justify the costs of college and the risk of dropping out.”

Who wins most under Biden’s fake magic wand? Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget reports:

Nearly two-thirds of the benefit of canceling $50,000 in student debt per person would go to the top 40 percent of households and over three-tenths would go to the top quintile, according to a recent paper by Sylvain Catherine and Constantine Yannelis. Less than 5 percent would go to the bottom quintile. They estimate an average net lifetime benefit of $5,775 for someone in the top quintile and only $731 for someone in the bottom.

The only possible voice of reason Biden might be listening to is economist Larry Summers, who rightly says that student loan cancellation “raises demand and increases inflation.” Summers impotently warned his fellow Democrats that their rash spending was spiking inflation.

Sadly, they did listen when Summers claimed the so-called Inflation Reduction Act would decrease inflation, even though multiple nonpartisan analyses show it won’t. Regardless, in this instance, we can only pray Biden will give credence to Summers’ diagnosis.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities for this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation, or The Heritage Foundation, the parent organization of The Daily Signal.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

thanks

March 31, 2021

President Biden  c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

Please explain to me if you ever do plan to balance the budget while you are President? I have written these things below about you and I really do think that you don’t want to cut spending in order to balance the budget. It seems you ever are daring the Congress to stop you from spending more.

President Barack Obama speaks about the debt limit in the East Room of the White House in Washington. | AP Photo

“The credit of the United States ‘is not a bargaining chip,’ Obama said on 1-14-13. However, President Obama keeps getting our country’s credit rating downgraded as he raises the debt ceiling higher and higher!!!!

Washington Could Learn a Lot from a Drug Addict

Just spend more, don’t know how to cut!!! Really!!! That is not living in the real world is it?

Making more dependent on government is not the way to go!!

Why is our government in over 16 trillion dollars in debt? There are many reasons for this but the biggest reason is people say “Let’s spend someone else’s money to solve our problems.” Liberals like Max Brantley have talked this way for years. Brantley will say that conservatives are being harsh when they don’t want the government out encouraging people to be dependent on the government. The Obama adminstration has even promoted a plan for young people to follow like Julia the Moocher.  

David Ramsey demonstrates in his Arkansas Times Blog post of 1-14-13 that very point:

Arkansas Politics / Health Care Arkansas’s share of Medicaid expansion and the national debt

Posted by on Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 1:02 PM

Baby carrot Arkansas Medicaid expansion image

Imagine standing a baby carrot up next to the 25-story Stephens building in Little Rock. That gives you a picture of the impact on the national debt that federal spending in Arkansas on Medicaid expansion would have, while here at home expansion would give coverage to more than 200,000 of our neediest citizens, create jobs, and save money for the state.

Here’s the thing: while more than a billion dollars a year in federal spending would represent a big-time stimulus for Arkansas, it’s not even a drop in the bucket when it comes to the national debt.

Currently, the national debt is around $16.4 trillion. In fiscal year 2015, the federal government would spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.2 billion to fund Medicaid expansion in Arkansas if we say yes. That’s about 1/13,700th of the debt.

It’s hard to get a handle on numbers that big, so to put that in perspective, let’s get back to the baby carrot. Imagine that the height of the Stephens building (365 feet) is the $16 trillion national debt. That $1.2 billion would be the length of a ladybug. Of course, we’re not just talking about one year if we expand. Between now and 2021, the federal government projects to contribute around $10 billion. The federal debt is projected to be around $25 trillion by then, so we’re talking about 1/2,500th of the debt. Compared to the Stephens building? That’s a baby carrot.

______________

Here is how it will all end if everyone feels they should be allowed to have their “baby carrot.”

How sad it is that liberals just don’t get this reality.

Here is what the Founding Fathers had to say about welfare. David Weinberger noted:

While living in Europe in the 1760s, Franklin observed: “in different countries … the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”

Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee (15 October 1747 – 5 January 1813) was a Scottish lawyer, writer, and professor. Tytler was also a historian, and he noted, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.”

Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Milligan

April 6, 1816

[Jefferson affirms that the main purpose of society is to enable human beings to keep the fruits of their labor. — TGW]

To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, “the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it.” If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the State, the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all in equal degree; and the better, as this enforces a law of nature, while extra taxation violates it.

[From Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Albert E. Bergh (Washington: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), 14:466.]

_______

Jefferson pointed out that to take from the rich and give to the poor through government is just wrong. Franklin knew the poor would have a better path upward without government welfare coming their way. Milton Friedman’s negative income tax is the best method for doing that and by taking away all welfare programs and letting them go to the churches for charity.

_____________

_________

Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733

Williams with Sowell – Minimum Wage

Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell – Reducing Black Unemployment

By WALTER WILLIAMS

—-

Ronald Reagan with Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 2-5

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Democrats’ $369 Billion Green New Virtue Signal Barely Scratches Global Warming

————-

Democrats’ $369 Billion Green New Virtue Signal Barely Scratches Global Warming

Despite Democratic promises, the Inflation Reduction Act will have a subliminal long-term effect on projected temperature increases.Pictured: Activists hold signs ahead of the vote on the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 outside the US Capitol on Aug. 12 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Oliver Douliery/Getty Images)

“The Inflation Reduction Act invests $369 billion to take the most aggressive action ever—ever, ever, ever—in confronting the climate crisis and strengthening our energy security,” President Joe Biden said Tuesday at the White House, just before signing the IRA into law.

IRA goes far beyond the massive figure that Biden cited. This leviathan raises taxes $739 billion during a recession and boosts spending $433 billion amid 8.5% inflation—a price-hike level better suited to the early 1980s.

The IRA’s “aggressive action” includes, among much more:

•$160 billion for clean-electricity tax credits

•$35 billion for clean fuel and vehicle tax credits

•$27 billion for a new EPA “Green Bank.” What do federal eco-crats know about banking? About as much as bankers do about agricultural nitrous oxide emissions.

So, given this expenditure and activity, IRA surely will slash expected increases in Earth’s temperature. For all these billions, IRA is like a giant air conditioner—cooling the planet before it boils like a whistling kettle.

Right?

Wrong!

IRA will have a subliminal long-term effect on projected temperature increases. Its cooling potential is, frankly, comical.

Danish climate expert Bjorn Lomborg founded the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a sound-science think tank. He has spoken, debated, and broadcast extensively on so-called “global warming.” His books include False Alarm, Cool It, and Skeptical Environmentalist.

Lomborg plugged IRA’s measures into the United Nations’ warming models. His resulting calculations oscillate between astonishing and hilarious.

“The new US climate bill will do almost nothing to reduce global temperature,” Lomborg explained via Twitter.

How close to nothing?

“Impact of new climate legislation,” Lomborg specified. “Unnoticeable: 0.0009°F to 0.028°F in 2100. [0.0005°C to 0.016°C] Why is no media describing just how little your $369 billion will achieve?”

In practical terms, IRA’s minimum effect would be like cranking a thermometer from 72 degrees Fahrenheit (room temperature) down to 71.9991°F. If IRA works all of its magic, analogous temperatures would plummet—all the way to 71.972°.

Billy Joel’s immortal lyrics spring to mind: “Is that all you get for your money?”

Now, imagine that America wanted to get tough and cut Earth’s expected temperature in 2100 by a full 1°. Under IRA’s best-case scenario, $369 billion buys a 0.028° reduction. So, 1° would cost $13.18 trillion. Worst-case scenario: $369 billion yields a 0.0009° cut. Hence, a 1° decrease would require $410 trillion.

Keep those tax checks coming!

Why such pathetic results? Blame IRA’s paltry temperature curbs and the fact that other nations—namely China and India—refuse to do their fair share to cool the planet.

Imagine a mountain cabin in which grandma sits in a rocking chair and swiftly fans herself. Meanwhile, her two raucous teenage grandsons throw logs into a roaring

fireplace, stoke the charcoal-fueled flames in a pizza oven, and heat pots of water to make steaming bowls of ramen. Don’t be surprised if Granny barely feels cooler, no matter how furiously she waves that fan in her face.

Until China and India stop pumping coal smoke into the air, America could pass an Inflation Reduction Act every decade, and temperatures would decrease imperceptibly before 2100.

As Lomborg told the New York Sun: “Even if the entire U.S. went net-zero today and stayed net-zero for the rest of the century, it [IRA] would reduce temperatures by just 0.3°F by the end of the century.”

But IRA is not really about fighting global warming. It’s about Democrats seizing more power and control for themselves, ladling more gravy for their green-power donors, and unleashing 87,000 more IRS agents to squeeze every red corpuscle from every taxpayer.

IRA also is a 15-digit Green New Virtue Signal that helps Leftists pound their chests and show Earth how much they care. The wags at MIT’s satirical Babbling Beaver understand this perfectly: “It’s not the actual impact of climate legislation on global temperatures that matters. It’s how it makes you feel.”

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

The climate-change hustle

John Stossel: Through 50 years of reporting on scares, only COVID proved true

I hear that climate change will destroy much of the world.

“There will be irreversible damage to the planet!” warns a CNN anchor.

Joe Biden says he’ll spend $500 billion a year to fight what his website calls an “existential threat to life.”

Really?

I’m a consumer reporter. Over the years, alarmed scientists have passionately warned me about many things they thought were about to kill Americans.

Asbestos in hair dryers, coffee, computer terminals, electric power lines, microwave ovens, cellphones (brain tumors!), electric blankets, herbicides, plastic residue, etc., are causing “America’s cancer epidemic”!

If those things don’t get us, “West Nile Virus will!” Or SARS, Bird Flu, Ebola, flesh-eating bacteria or “killer bees.”

Experts told me millions would die on Jan. 1, 2000, because computers couldn’t handle the switch from 1999. Machines would fail; planes would crash.

The scientists were well-informed specialists in their fields. They were sincerely alarmed. The more knowledge you have about a threat, the more alarmed you get.

Yet, mass death didn’t happen. COVID-19 has been the only time in my 50 years of reporting that a scare proved true.

Maybe you accepted the phrase I used above: “America’s cancer epidemic.” But there is no cancer epidemic. Cancer rates are down. We simply live long enough to get diseases like cancer. But people think there’s a cancer epidemic.

The opposite is true. As we’ve been exposed to more plastics, pesticides, mysterious chemicals, food additives and new technologies, we live longer than ever!

That’s why I’m skeptical when I’m told: Climate change is a crisis!

Climate change is real. It’s a problem, but I doubt that it’s “an existential threat.”

Saying that makes alarmists mad.

When Marc Morano says it, activists try to prevent him from speaking.

“They do not want dissent,” says Morano, founder of ClimateDepot.com, a website that rebuts much of what climate activists teach in schools.

“It’s an indoctrination that’s so complete that by the time (kids) get to high school, they’re not even aware that there’s any scientific dissent.”

Morano’s new movie, “Climate Hustle 2,” presents that dissent. My new video this week features his movie.

Morano argues that politicians use fear of global warming to gain power.

“Climate Hustle 2” features Sen. Chuck Schumer shouting: “If we would do more on climate change, we’d have fewer of these hurricanes and other types of storms! Everyone knows that!”

But everyone doesn’t know that. Many scientists refute it. Congress’ own hearings include testimony about how our warmer climate has not caused increases in the number of hurricanes or tornadoes. “Climate Hustle 2” includes many examples like that.

“Why should we believe you?” I ask Morano. “You’re getting money from the fossil fuel industry.” After all, Daily Kos calls him “Evil Personified” and says ExxonMobil funds him.

“Not at all,” he replies. “I’m paid by about 90% individual contributions from around the country. Why would ExxonMobil give me money (when) they want to appear green?”

Morano’s movie frustrates climate activists by pointing out how hypocritical some are.

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio says he lives a “green lifestyle … (using) energy-efficient appliances. I drive a hybrid car.”

Then he flies to Europe to attend a party.

I like watching Morano point out celebrities’ hypocrisy, but think one claim in his movie goes too far.

“Stopping climate change is not about saving the planet,” says narrator Kevin Sorbo. “It’s about climate elites trying to convince us to accept a future where they call all the shots.”

I push back at Morano: “I think they are genuinely concerned, and they want to save us.”

“Their vision of saving us is putting them in charge,” he replies.

And if they’re in charge, he says, they will destroy capitalism.

—-
State of the Union 2013

Published on Feb 13, 2013

Cato Institute scholars Michael Tanner, Alex Nowrasteh, Julian Sanchez, Simon Lester, John Samples, Pat Michaels, Jagadeesh Gokhale, Michael F. Cannon, Jim Harper, Malou Innocent, Juan Carlos Hidalgo, Ilya Shapiro, Trevor Burrus and Neal McCluskey respond to President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union Address.

Video produced by Caleb O. Brown, Austin Bragg and Lester Romero.

_______________

In the past I have written the White House on several issues such as abortion, medicare, welfare,  Greece, healthcare, and what the founding fathers had to say about welfare programs,   and have got several responses from the White House concerning issues such as Obamacare, Social Security, welfare,  and excessive government spending.

Today I am taking a look at the response of the scholars of the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute scholars to the 2013 State of the Union Address.

Amy Payne

February 13, 2013 at 8:22 am

State of the…Climate?

Swept into office four years ago based, in part, on promises to slow sea-level rise, President Obama initiated a radical climate agenda. It seems we are seeing a rerun in 2013. It is worth asking what is different four years after his first State of the Union Address?

There have been four more years of no global warming. In 2010, there had been no significant world temperature increase for over a decade. The streak is now 16 years long. We have four years of costly lessons on the waste and inefficiency of green-energy subsidies.

The scientific basis for catastrophic climate change gets weaker and weaker. The economic argument for green subsidies has already collapsed. It is time for the administration to quit using both arguments to justify a regulatory and fiscal power grab.

David W. Kreutzer, PhD, research fellow in energy economics and climate change, Center for Data Analysis

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What Cheney’s Shellacking Says About Future of GOP

———

What Cheney’s Shellacking Says About Future of GOP

Faux-conservative Liz Cheney will be looking for a new job after she lost Tuesday’s primary election in a landslide to Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman. Pictured: Cheney gives a concession speech on Aug. 16 in Jackson, Wyoming. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Last Friday, I landed in beautiful Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to speak at a pro-life summit. The summit organizers had kindly dispatched a van to transport a number of us from the airport, and a U.S. congressman who happened to be on the same arriving flight hopped on to hitch a ride. The congressman, a conservative, was actually not in town for the pro-life summit; as I learned when he sat next to me, he was in town to campaign against his House colleague and Jan. 6-obsessed would-be martyr for “democracy,” Rep. Liz Cheney (RINO-WY).

Turns out the campaigning congressman’s efforts were not in vain: On Tuesday evening, Republican primary voters in Wyoming absolutely walloped Cheney and nominated her leading challenger, the Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman. In this sparsely populated deep-red state, the Republican primary doubles as the de facto general election. Hageman can thus book her ticket to Washington, come January. The housebroken faux-conservative Cheney, on the other hand, will be looking for a new gig. CNN hostess comes to mind.

Cheney’s shellacking in Tuesday’s Republican congressional primary in the Equality State comes a little less than three months after a similar landslide in the Lone Star State. On May 24, the Republican primary runoff between incumbent Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and challenger George P. Bush, the state’s land commissioner, was shockingly one-sided: Paxton routed Bush by a roughly 68%-32% margin. Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, and George P. Bush, son of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and nephew of former President George W. Bush, thus both lost their Republican primaries this year by nearly 40 points.

Texas and Wyoming Republican voters, by eye-opening margins, have dealt thumping death blows to the Bush and Cheney political dynasties. (Perhaps Cheney is solipsistic enough to mount a 2024 presidential bid, a truly masochistic endeavor in which she would have precisely zero chance of victory.)

 

But the even bigger and more important coup de grace is not that for any specific individual—or, indeed, for any particular family dynasty. Rather, the crucial symbolic death blow is that for the effete, country club Republicanism and swashbuckling neoconservatism represented by the Bush-Cheney era. The tremendous defeats this year of Liz Cheney and George P. Bush, scions of neoconservative family royalty, at the hands of two Trump-backed primary opponents, represent a clarion plea from the Republican rank and file: “We will not go back to the old, pre-Trump era.”

Good.

After President Donald Trump’s narrow defeat in the hotly contested 2020 election, many in the housebroken GOP establishment began quietly pushing the party to reject all the substantive departures from sclerotic orthodoxy that Trump’s presidency entailed, to whitewash his myriad accomplishments from the history books and to revert to the “principled loserdom” status quo ante of John McCain and Mitt Romney. But Trump’s generally sustained success in Republican primary contests this year, outside some blips on the radar, evinces the folly of such Beltway conceit.

The demolitions of no less establishment figures than those literally named “Bush” and “Cheney,” especially given the latter’s lofty perch in the petty and vindictive Jan. 6 “select committee” witch hunt, only accentuates the key point: The “New Right,” a sweeping amalgamation of nationalist and conservative-populist sentiment, whose propitious rise has served as a rebuke to the overly “liberal” conservatism of yesteryear, is here to stay.

There will be no going back to the old, feckless, moralistic nation-building crusades of decades past. There will be no going back to the old, neoliberal-inspired free trade absolutism that outsourced entire supply chains to our Chinese geopolitical archfoe, dramatically undercutting America’s industrial resilience. There will be no going back to the old, pro-Fortune 500 immigration agenda of open borders, amnesty for illegal aliens and mass visas for all sorts of foreign nationals.

There will be no going back to the old, corporatist economic agenda of prioritizing corporate and capital gains tax cuts while working-class families struggle to raise their kids on a single income. There will be no more focusing on libertarian economics, the donor class’s policy hobbyhorse, to the exclusion of those “nasty,” “icky” cultural issues that animate the GOP’s actual voter base.

Republican presidential primary voters in two years will likely have an opportunity to decide whether the party’s future is best represented by Trump himself, on the one hand, or some variation of conservative-populist “Trumpism without Trump,” on the other hand. But those remain the only two games in town. There will be no going back to the pre-2016 “dead consensus”—except perhaps in the fever dream monologues of Liz Cheney’s impending CNN show.

———-

 

Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., seen delivering opening remarks on June 13 at the U.S. Capitol during a Jan. 6 hearing, deliberately edited former President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” exhortation to omit the fact that he urged supporters to be peaceful. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

 

 

To listen to House Democrats’—and Reps. Liz Cheney’s and Adam Kinzinger’s, but I repeat myself—shrieks of hysteria from the opening nights of the Jan. 6 House select committee dais is to hearken back to the Soviet-era show trials of yesteryear.

Vladimir Lenin, as the veteran conservative commentator Roger Kimball reminds us, referred to them as “model trials,” wherein the “aim isn’t to discover the truth—which was supposedly already known—but to stage a propagandist exhibition.”

For Democrats, the aim of the Jan. 6 select committee’s “propagandist exhibition” is twofold: First, to attempt (in vain) to distract a besieged citizenry from the myriad problems now tearing asunder the country, under their leadership, in this midterm election year; and second, to lay the foundation for a Justice Department indictment against the 45th president that could hamstring his efforts to seek a second term come 2024.

To anyone paying even a modicum of attention—and I’d recommend no more than that—to the committee’s theatrics, it is obvious that the game is rigged.

 

Consider as but one data point how Cheney, who will be looking for a new job come January, deliberately edited former President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” exhortation from that fateful rally so as to omit the fact that he urged his supporters to make their way to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically.”

Or how about the fact that the committee has thus far made no effort to subpoena the families of the roughly 800 people who have been arrested—and sometimes placed in solitary confinement, per columnist Julie Kelly’s exceptional reporting—for wandering in and traipsing around the Capitol, often shepherded right in by Capitol Police? Curious, that.

A legitimate committee interested in investigation and arriving at the truth would surely want to call some of those families as witnesses. Perhaps that hypothetical legitimate committee would also be interested in hearing from the family of Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran fatally shot on that day by a subsequently exonerated Capitol Police officer. Alas.

Instead, to take Democrats at their word—an always-dubious endeavor—is to believe that Jan. 6, 2021, represented the closest thing to an “insurrection” since the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861.

To be sure, some—a very small minority—of the protesters who made their way into the Capitol on that day did so with malicious intent. And that very small minority should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But as a whole, Jan. 6, 2021, looks something like a limper version of the Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s, which amounts to no more than an asterisk in the high school history textbooks.

But the Democrats have found their “insurrection”—and they want to make the dreaded Orange Man, conductor of this benighted orchestra, pay for what he has wrought. Or so they tell us.

The Democrats’ obsession with the word “insurrection” raises an obvious additional question, though: How might we describe the recent attempt—thankfully aborted at the last moment—by a deranged California man to assassinate Trump-nominated Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, following last month’s seminal leak of the draft majority opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization abortion case?

Black’s Law Dictionary defines an “insurrection” as “a rebellion, or rising of citizens or subjects in resistance to their government.”

Surely, any sober assessment of the trajectory of events pertaining to the court’s possible overturning of Roe v. Wade—from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer nakedly threatening Kavanaugh and Justice Neil Gorsuch from the court’s steps to the unprecedented Dobbs leak to the now month-and-a-half of grueling (and illegal) “protests” outside the conservative justices’ homes to the closest thing to a high-profile politically motivated assassination in America since Robert F. Kennedy in 1968—would lead one to conclude that this intimidation campaign against the court, culminating in a literal assassination plot, amounts to a soft “insurrection.”

And it is definitely more of an “insurrection”—more of a straightforward attempt to rebel and implement a coup against our constitutional edifices—than what happened on Jan. 6, 2021.

Nonetheless, after the Senate last month unanimously passed a bill to increase security for the Supreme Court justices in the aftermath of the Dobbs leak, it languished on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk.

That bill finally passed the House this week—against the repulsive dissenting votes of 27 House Democrats. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez even openly bragged about her efforts to block the bill’s passage. If she had any sense of shame, she’d hide her head in a bag.

On Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a statement that concluded with this admonition: “The same Democrats who want to make a national spectacle out of their supposed opposition to political violence will not even call out violence and intimidation from their own side. Let alone fulfill their oaths and put a stop to it.”

No reasonable observer of our fractious politics can disagree with that bleak assessment. Because for Democrats, what constitutes an actual “insurrection” is merely in the eye of the beholder.

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left undermines America width=

The left praises democracy when elected but claims the right will destroy democracy when it loses. Pictured: Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton discusses the 2016 election during her 2017 book tour. (Photo: Bastiaan Slabbers, NurPhoto/Getty Images)

 

 

Recently, Democrats have been despondent over President Joe Biden’s sinking poll numbers. His policies on the economy, energy, foreign policy, the border, and COVID-19 all have lost majority support.

As a result, the left now variously alleges that either in 2022, when it expects to lose the Congress, or in 2024, when it fears losing the presidency, Republicans will “destroy democracy” or stage a coup.

A cynic might suggest that those on the left praise democracy when they get elected, only to claim it is broken when they lose. Or they hope to avoid their defeat by trying to terrify the electorate. Or they mask their own revolutionary propensities by projecting them onto their opponents.

After all, who is trying to federalize election laws in national elections contrary to the spirit of the Constitution? Who wishes to repeal or circumvent the Electoral College? Who wishes to destroy the more than 180-year-old Senate filibuster, the over 150-year-old nine-justice Supreme Court, and the more than 60-year-old 50-state union?

Who is attacking the founding constitutional idea of two senators per state?

The Constitution also clearly states that “When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.” Who slammed through the impeachment of former President Donald Trump without a presiding chief justice?

Never had a president been either impeached twice or tried in the Senate as a private citizen. Who did both?

The left further broke prior precedent by impeaching Trump without a special counsel’s report, formal hearings, witnesses, and cross-examinations.

Who exactly is violating federal civil rights legislation?

New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in December decided to ration new potentially lifesaving COVID-19 medicines, partially on the basis of race, in the name of “equity.”

The agency also allegedly used racial preferences to determine who would be first tested for COVID-19. Yet such racial discrimination seems in direct violation of various title clauses of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

That law makes it clear that no public agency can use race to deny “equal utilization of any public facility which is owned, operated, or managed by or on behalf of any State or subdivision thereof.” Who is behind the new racial discrimination?

In summer 2020, many local- and state-mandated quarantines and bans on public assemblies were simply ignored with impunity—if demonstrators were associated with Black Lives Matter or protesting the police.

Currently, the Biden administration is also flagrantly embracing the neo-Confederate idea of nullifying federal law.

The Biden administration has allowed nearly 2 million foreign nationals to enter the United States illegally across the southern border—in hopes they will soon be loyal constituents.

The administration has not asked illegal entrants either to be tested for or vaccinated against COVID-19. Yet all U.S. citizens in the military and employed by the federal government are threatened with dismissal if they fail to become vaccinated.

Such selective exemption of lawbreaking non-U.S. citizens, but not millions of U.S. citizens, seems in conflict with the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

After entering the United States illegally, millions of immigrants are protected by some 550 “sanctuary city” jurisdictions. These revolutionary areas all brazenly nullify immigration law by refusing to allow federal immigration authorities to deport illegal immigrant lawbreakers.

At various times in our nation’s history—1832, 1861-65, and 1961-63—America was either racked by internal violence or fought a civil war over similar state nullification of federal laws.

In the last five years, we have indeed seen many internal threats to democracy.

Hillary Clinton hired a foreign national to concoct a dossier of dirt against her presidential opponent. She disguised her own role by projecting her efforts to use Russian sources onto Trump. She used her contacts in government and media to seed the dossier to create a national hysteria about “Russian collusion.” Clinton urged Biden not to accept the 2020 result if he lost, and herself claimed Trump was not a legitimately elected president.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has violated laws governing the chain of command. Some retired officers violated Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice by slandering their commander in chief. Others publicly were on record calling for the military to intervene to remove an elected president.

Some of the nation’s top officials in the FBI and intelligence committee have misled or lied under oath either to federal investigators or the U.S. Congress, again, mostly with impunity.

All these sustained revolutionary activities were justified as necessary to achieve the supposedly noble ends of removing Trump.

The result is Third World-like jurisprudence in America aimed at rewarding friends and punishing enemies, masked by service to social justice.

We are in a dangerous revolutionary cycle. But the threat is not so much from loud, buffoonish, one-day rioters on Jan. 6. Such clownish characters did not for 120 days loot, burn, attack courthouses and police precincts, cause over 30 deaths, injure 2,000 policemen, and destroy at least $2 billion in property—all under the banner of revolutionary justice.

Even more ominously, stone-cold sober elites are systematically waging an insidious revolution in the shadows that seeks to dismantle America’s institutions and the rule of law as we have known them.

 

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The Honorable Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Washington D.C.

Dear Representative Adam Kinzinger, 

I noticed that you are a pro-life representative that has a long record of standing up for unborn babies! It was in the 1970’s when I was first introduced to the works of Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop and I wanted to commend their writings and films to you.

I recently read about your impressive pro-life record:

Washington, DC – Today, Congressman Adam Kinzinger (IL-16) joined his House Republican colleagues in a press conference urging Democratic leadership to allow a vote on the Born Alive protections. The proposal would protect babies who survive abortion and provide them with the same medical care that any other premature baby would receive. Yesterday, the Democrats blocked the proposed legislation—for the 17th time—from coming before the House for a vote.

Joining the Congressman and House Republican leaders at the press conference this morning was Jill Stanek, an Illinois nurse and pro-life advocate who has witnessed the devastating realities of these pro-abortion laws. The Illinois legislature is currently debating two abortion bills, similar to the extreme pro-abortion agendas in New York and Virginia. 

It seems you have a grudge against President Trump while our freedoms under President Biden are being taken away. I recommend to you the article below:

The January 6 Insurrection Hoax

 • Volume 50, Number 9 • Roger Kimball

Roger Kimball
Editor and Publisher, The New Criterion

Mr. Kimball concludes his article with these words: 

That’s one melancholy lesson of the January 6 insurrection hoax: that America is fast mutating from a republic, in which individual liberty is paramount, into an oligarchy, in which conformity is increasingly demanded and enforced.

Another lesson was perfectly expressed by Donald Trump when he reflected on the unremitting tsunami of hostility that he faced as President. “They’re after you,” he more than once told his supporters. “I’m just in the way.”

 

Bingo.

You can google and get Roger Kimball article “The January 6 Insurrection Hoax”

NOW WHAT DID YOU DO TO TURN YOUR BACK ON OUR LIBERTY AND PERPETUATE THE HOAX THAT JANUARY 6TH WAS AN INSURRECTION? Read below!! 

9 Republicans voted to hold Trump aide Bannon in contempt of Congress

 

There were a few Republicans Thursday who surprised observers when they voted in support of holding former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress and referring him to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.

Prior to the vote, four Republicans were considered a lock to approve the criminal referral, according to Capitol Hill sources: Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Fred Upton of Michigan and Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio.

 

Cheney and Kinzinger are on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and have for months stood alone as the only two House Republicans willing to speak out against former President Donald Trump’s continued lies about the 2020 election. They were the only two House Republicans to vote for the formation of the select committee on June 30.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi formed the select committee after Republicans rejected a bipartisan commission that would have been evenly split between five Democrats and five Republicans. Only 35 Republicans voted for that measure when itpassed the House of Representatives, and it was defeated by a GOP filibuster in the Senate.

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 27:  (L-R) Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) arrive for the House Select Committee hearing investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol on July 27, 2021 at the Canon House Office Building in Washington, DC. Members of law enforcement will testify about the attack by supporters of former President Donald Trump on the U.S. Capitol. According to authorities, about 140 police officers were injured when they were trampled, had objects thrown at them, and sprayed with chemical irritants during the insurrection. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

 

 
More

Upton has served in the House for more than three decades, since 1987, and will face a primary challenge next year because of his willingness to stand up to Trump.

Gonzalez is retiring from Congress next year, after only four years in the House. “While my desire to build a fuller family life is at the heart of my decision, it is also true that the current state of our politics, especially many of the toxic dynamics inside our own party, is a significant factor in my decision,” Gonzalez said in September when heannounced he would not seek another term.

 

The remaining five Republicans included three who voted for impeachment — Peter Meijer of Michigan, John Katko of New York and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington — and two House Republicans who did not vote to impeach Trump: Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.

Do you realize that Americans rights are being taken away from them and would you like an example? I am going to quote Mr. Kimball again.  You can google and get Roger Kimball article “The January 6 Insurrection Hoax”

Trump seems never to have discerned what a viper’s nest our politics has become for anyone who is not a paid-up member of The Club. 

Maybe Trump understands this now. I have no insight into that question. I am pretty confident, though, that the 74 plus million people who voted for him understand it deeply. It’s another reason that The Club should be wary of celebrating its victory too expansively. 

Friedrich Hayek took one of the two epigraphs for his book, The Road to Serfdom, from the philosopher David Hume. “It is seldom,” Hume wrote, “that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” Much as I admire Hume, I wonder whether he got this quite right. Sometimes, I would argue, liberty is erased almost instantaneously.

I’d be willing to wager that Joseph Hackett, confronted with Hume’s observation, would express similar doubts. I would be happy to ask Mr. Hackett myself, but he is inaccessible. If the ironically titled “Department of Justice” has its way, he will be inaccessible for a long, long time—perhaps as long as 20 years. 

Joseph Hackett, you see, is a 51-year-old Trump supporter and member of an organization called the Oath Keepers, a group whose members have pledged to “defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.” The FBI does not like the Oath Keepers—agents arrested its leader in January and have picked up many other members in the months since. Hackett traveled to Washington from his home in Florida to join the January 6 rally. According to court documents, he entered the Capitol at 2:45 that afternoon and left some nine minutes later, at 2:54. The next day, he went home. On May 28, he was apprehended by the FBI and indicted on a long list of charges, including conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, destruction of government property, and illegally entering a restricted building. 

As far as I have been able to determine, no evidence of Hackett destroying property has come to light. According to his wife, it is not even clear that he entered the Capitol. But he certainly was in the environs. He was a member of the Oath Keepers. He was a supporter of Donald Trump. Therefore, he must be neutralized.

Joseph Hackett is only one of hundreds of citizens who have beenbranded as “domestic terrorists” trying to “overthrow the government” and who are now languishing, in appalling conditions, jailed as political prisoners of an angry state apparat.

Let me recommend that you read this letter below from Senator Ron Johnson and his colleagues:

Sen. Johnson and Colleagues Request Answers from DOJ on Unequal Application of Justice to Protestors

 

 

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), along with senators Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), sent a letter on Monday to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting information on the unequal application of justice between the individuals who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, and those involved in the unrest during the spring and summer of 2020. The senators sent 18 questions to the attorney general on what steps the DOJ has taken to prosecute individuals who committed crimes during both events, and requested a response by June 21.

“Americans have the constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances,” the senators wrote. “This constitutional right should be cherished and protected. Violence, property damage, and vandalism of any kind should not be tolerated and individuals that break the law should be prosecuted. However, the potential unequal administration of justice with respect to certain protestors is particularly concerning.”

 

The full text of the letter can be found here and below.

 

 

June 7, 2021 

The Honorable Merrick B. Garland

Attorney General

U.S. Department of Justice

950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20530

 

Dear Attorney General Garland:

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is currently dedicating enormous resources and manpower to investigating and prosecuting the criminals who breached the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. We fully support and appreciate the efforts by the DOJ and its federal, state and local law enforcement partners to hold those responsible fully accountable.

We join all Americans in the expectation that the DOJ’s response to the events of January 6 will result in rightful criminal prosecutions and accountability.  As you are aware, the mission of the DOJ is, among other things, to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.  Today, we write to request information about our concerns regarding potential unequal justice administered in response to other recent instances of mass unrest, destruction, and loss of life throughout the United States. 

During the spring and summer of 2020, individuals used peaceful protests across the country to engage in rioting and other crimes that resulted in loss of life, injuries to law enforcement officers, and significant property damage.[1]  A federal court house in Portland, Oregon, has been effectively under siege for months.[2]  Property destruction stemming from the 2020 social justice protests throughout the country will reportedly result in at least $1 billion to $2 billion in paid insurance claims.[3] 

                In June 2020, the DOJ reportedly compiled the following information regarding last year’s unrest:

  • “One federal officer [was] killed, 147 federal officers [were] injured and 600 local officers [were] injured around the country during the protests, frequently from projectiles.”[4]
  • According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), “since the start of the unrest there has been 81 Federal Firearms License burglaries of an estimated loss of 1,116 firearms; 876 reported arsons; 76 explosive incidents; and 46 ATF arrests[.]”[5]

Despite these numerous examples of violence occurring during these protests, it appears that individuals charged with committing crimes at these events may benefit from infrequent prosecutions and minimal, if any, penalties.  According to a recent article, “prosecutors have approved deals in at least half a dozen federal felony cases arising from clashes between protesters and law enforcement in Oregon last summer. The arrangements — known as deferred resolution agreements — will leave the defendants with a clean criminal record if they stay out of trouble for a period of time and complete a modest amount of community service, according to defense attorneys and court records.”[6]       

                DOJ’s apparent unwillingness to punish these individuals who allegedly committed crimes during the spring and summer 2020 protests stands in stark contrast to the harsher treatment of the individuals charged in connection with the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.  To date, DOJ has charged 510 individuals stemming from Capitol breach.[7]  DOJ maintains and updates a webpage that lists the defendants charged with crimes committed at the Capitol.  This database includes information such as the defendant’s name, charge(s), case number, case documents, location of arrest, case status, and informs readers when the entry was last updated.[8]  No such database exists for alleged perpetrators of crimes associated with the spring and summer 2020 protests.  It is unclear whether any defendants charged with crimes in connection with the Capitol breach have received deferred resolution agreements.

Americans have the constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances.  This constitutional right should be cherished and protected.  Violence, property damage, and vandalism of any kind should not be tolerated and individuals that break the law should be prosecuted.  However, the potential unequal administration of justice with respect to certain protestors is particularly concerning.  In order to assist Congress in conducting its oversight work, we respectfully request answers to the following questions by June 21, 2021:  

Spring and Summer 2020 Unrest:

  1. Did federal law enforcement utilize geolocation data from defendants’ cell phones to track protestors associated with the unrest in the spring and summer of 2020?  If so, how many times and for which locations/riots?  
  1. How many individuals who may have committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020 were arrested by law enforcement using pre-dawn raids and SWAT teams?
  1. How many individuals were incarcerated for allegedly committing crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020? 
  1. How many of these individuals are or were placed in solitary confinement?  What was the average amount of consecutive days such individuals were in solitary confinement?
  1. How many of these individuals have been released on bail?
  1. How many of these individuals were released on their own recognizance or without being required to post bond?
  1. How many of these individuals were offered deferred resolution agreements?[9]
  1. How many DOJ prosecutors were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?
  1. How many FBI personnel were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?

January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol Breach:

  1. Did federal law enforcement utilize geolocation data from defendants’ cell phones to track protestors associated with the January 6, 2021 protests and Capitol breach?  If so, how many times and how many additional arrests resulted from law enforcement utilizing geolocation information?
  2. How many individuals who may have committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach were arrested by law enforcement using pre-dawn raids and SWAT teams?
  1. How many individuals are incarcerated for allegedly committing crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
  1. How many of these individuals are or were placed in solitary confinement?  What was the average amount of consecutive days such individuals were in solitary confinement?
  1. How many of these individuals have been released on bail?
  1. How many of these individuals have been released on their own recognizance or without being required to post bond?
  1. How many of these individuals were offered deferred resolution agreements?
  1. How many DOJ prosecutors have been assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
  1. How many FBI personnel were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach?

Sincerely,

 

Ron Johnson

United States Senator

 

Tommy Tuberville

United States Senator

 

Mike Lee                                                            

United States Senator

 

Rick Scott

United States Senator

 

Ted Cruz

United States Senator

 

###

 


[1] Jennifer Kingson, Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history, Axios, Sept. 16, 2020, https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-damage-276c9bcc-a455-4067-b06a-66f9db4cea9c.html.

[2] Conrad Wilson and Jonathan Levinson, Protesters, federal officers clash outside Portland’s courthouse Thursday, OPB, Mar. 12, 2021, https://www.opb.org/article/2021/03/12/protesters-vandalize-portlands-federal-courthouse-again/.

[3] Jennifer Kingson, Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history, Axios, Sept. 16, 2020, https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-damage-276c9bcc-a455-4067-b06a-66f9db4cea9c.html.

[5] Id.

[6] Josh Gerstein, Leniency for defendants in Portland clashes could affect Capitol riot cases, Politico, Apr. 14, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/14/portland-capitol-riot-cases-481346.

[7] Madison Hall et al., 493 people have been charged in the Capitol insurrection so far. This searchable table shows them all., Insider, accessed June 4, 2021, https://www.insider.com/all-the-us-capitol-pro-trump-riot-arrests-charges-names-2021-1.

[8] Capitol Breach Cases, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, accessed May 21, 2021, https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/capitol-breach-cases?combine=&order=title&sort=asc.

[9] Josh Gerstein, Leniency for defendants in Portland clashes could affect Capitol riot cases, Politico, Apr. 14, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/14/portland-capitol-riot-cases-481346.

—-

I want to recommend to you a video on YOU TUBE that runs 28 minutes and 39 seconds by Francis Schaeffer entitled because it discusses the founding of our nation and what the FOUNDERS believed: 

How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 5 | The Revolutionary Age

 

Thank you for your time, and again I want to thank you for your support of the unborn little babies!

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, 13900 Cottontail Lane, AR 72002, cell 501-920-5733, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org

——————————————————————————————

——

Dr. Francis schaeffer How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 5 | The Revolutionary Age

 

– Whatever happened to human race? PART 1 Co-authored by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop)

C. Everett Koop
C. Everett Koop, 1980s.jpg
 
13th Surgeon General of the United States
In office
January 21, 1982 – October 1, 1989

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 2 | Slaughter of the Innocents

Francis Schaeffer – Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 3 | Death by Someone’s Choice

Mr. Hentoff with the clarinetist Edmond Hall in 1948 at the Savoy, a club in Boston.

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 4 | The Basis for Human Dignity 

Image<img class=”i-amphtml-blurry-placeholder” src=”data:;base64,Edith Schaeffer with her husband, Francis Schaeffer, in 1970 in Switzerland, where they founded L’Abri, a Christian commune.

________________

______________________

March 23, 2021

President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. I know that you don’t agree with my pro-life views but I wanted to challenge you as a fellow Christian to re-examine your pro-choice view. Although we are both Christians and have the Bible as the basis for our moral views, I did want you to take a close look at the views of the pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff too.  Hentoff became convinced of the pro-life view because of secular evidence that shows that the unborn child is human. I would ask you to consider his evidence and then of course reverse your views on abortion.

___________________

The pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff wrote a fine article below I wanted to share with you.

Nat Hentoff is an atheist, but he became a pro-life activist because of the scientific evidence that shows that the unborn child is a distinct and separate human being and even has a separate DNA. His perspective is a very intriguing one that I thought you would be interested in. I have shared before many   cases (Bernard Nathanson, Donald Trump, Paul Greenberg, Kathy Ireland)    when other high profile pro-choice leaders have changed their views and this is just another case like those. I have contacted the White House over and over concerning this issue and have even received responses. I am hopeful that people will stop and look even in a secular way (if they are not believers) at this abortion debate and see that the unborn child is deserving of our protection.That is why the writings of Nat Hentoff of the Cato Institute are so crucial.

In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented  against abortion (Episode 1),  infanticide (Episode 2),   euthanasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close look at the truth claims of the Bible.

Francis Schaeffer

__________________________

I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have.  Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.

Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION

_____________________________________

 

Dr. Francis schaeffer – from Part 5 of Whatever happened to human race?) Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 5 | Truth and History

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – A Christian Manifesto – Dr. Francis Schaeffer Lecture

Francis Schaeffer – A 700 Club Special! ~ Francis Schaeffer 1982

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – 1984 SOUNDWORD LABRI CONFERENCE VIDEO – Q&A With Francis & Edith Schaeffer

________________

Jewish World Review June 12, 2006/ 16 Sivan, 5766

 

Insisting on life

http://www.NewsandOpinion.com | A longtime friend of mine is married to a doctor who also performs abortions. At the dinner table one recent evening, their 9-year-old son — having heard a word whose meaning he didn’t know — asked, “What is an abortion?” His mother, choosing her words carefully, described the procedure in simple terms.

“But,” said her son, “that means killing the baby.” The mother then explained that there are certain months during which an abortion cannot be performed, with very few exceptions. The 9-year-old shook his head. “But,” he said, “it doesn’t matter what month. It still means killing the babies.”

Hearing the story, I wished it could be repeated to the justices of the Supreme Court, in the hope that at least five of them might act on this 9-year-old’s clarity of thought and vision.

The boy’s spontaneous insistence on the primacy of life also reminded me of a powerful pro-life speaker and writer who, many years ago, helped me become a pro-lifer. He was a preacher, a black preacher. He said: “There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of a higher order than the right to life.

“That,” he continued, “was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore out of your right to be concerned.”

This passionate reverend used to warn: “Don’t let the pro-choicers convince you that a fetus isn’t a human being. That’s how the whites dehumanized us … The first step was to distort the image of us as human beings in order to justify what they wanted to do — and not even feel they’d done anything wrong.”

That preacher was Jesse Jackson. Later, he decided to run for the presidency — and it was a credible campaign that many found inspiring in its focus on what still had to be done on civil rights. But Jackson had by now become “pro-choice” — much to the appreciation of most of those in the liberal base.

The last time I saw Jackson was years later, on a train from Washington to New York. I told him of a man nominated, but not yet confirmed, to a seat on a federal circuit court of appeals. This candidate was a strong supporter of capital punishment — which both the Rev. Jackson and I oppose, since it involves the irreversible taking of a human life by the state.

I asked Jackson if he would hold a press conference in Washington, criticizing the nomination, and he said he would. The reverend was true to his word; the press conference took place; but that nominee was confirmed to the federal circuit court. However, I appreciated Jackson’s effort.

On that train, I also told Jackson that I’d been quoting — in articles, and in talks with various groups — from his compelling pro-life statements. I asked him if he’d had any second thoughts on his reversal of those views.

Usually quick to respond to any challenge that he is not consistent in his positions, Jackson paused, and seemed somewhat disquieted at my question. Then he said to me, “I’ll get back to you on that.” I still patiently await what he has to say.

As time goes on, my deepening concern with the consequences of abortion is that its validation by the Supreme Court, as a constitutional practice, helps support the convictions of those who, in other controversies — euthanasia, assisted suicide and the “futility doctrine” by certain hospital ethics committees — believe that there are lives not worth continuing.

Around the time of my conversation with Jackson on the train, I attended a conference on euthanasia at Clark College in Worcester, Mass. There, I met Derek Humphry, the founder of the Hemlock Society, and already known internationally as a key proponent of the “death with dignity” movement.

He told me that for some years in this country, he had considerable difficulty getting his views about assisted suicide and, as he sees it, compassionate euthanasia into the American press.

“But then,” Humphry told me, “a wonderful thing happened. It opened all the doors for me.”

“What was that wonderful thing?” I asked.

“Roe v. Wade,” he answered.

The devaluing of human life — as the 9-year-old at the dinner table put it more vividly — did not end with making abortion legal, and therefore, to some people, moral. The word “baby” does not appear in Roe v. Wade — let alone the word “killing.”

And so, the termination of “lives not worth living” goes on.

 

______________________

Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. Now after presenting the secular approach of Nat Hentoff I wanted to make some comments concerning our shared Christian faith.  I  respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,

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Dan Mitchell: The obvious moral of the story is that we should not have government-subsidized moral hazard.That’s not a proper role of the federal government, and it’s not a proper role of state governments!

______

The Volcanic Version of Government-Subsidized Moral Hazard

I’ve written several times about federally subsidized flood insurance, mostly to complain that it is terrible policy.

People are encouraged to build homes in low-lying areas, which then leads to needless destruction during floods.

The monetary cost is significant, but I get even more upset that responsible people are forced to finance other people’s irresponsible choices.

It’s such a bad policy that even Bernie Sanders favors reform.

And it’s such a bad policy that politicians in Hawaii decided it is worth copying. But they chose to subsidize building homes that are vulnerable to volcanic eruptions.

I’m not joking. Joe Kent of the Grassroot Institute wrote about this foolish system.

…the state originally encouraged the building of homes in this dangerous area by offering lava insurance where no private company would. …In response to the absence of private insurance, the state Legislature created the Hawaii Property Insurance Association (HPIA),whose job is to provide coverage for homes in areas that private insurance won’t touch. The law requires private insurance companies to pool their money to subsidize the expense of offering insurance in high-risk lava zones. …This resulted in a boom in the housing market below the active Kilauea volcano. …The moral hazard of this new insurance program gave a false sense of security to homebuilders in Leilani Estates.

And where, pray tell, can you find Leilani Estates?

In the most dangerous path of the most active volcano in Hawaii.

Given my libertarian sympathies, I think people should have the right to build in dangerous areas.

But I also think that they should bear the risks. Including what happened a few years ago.

…that hazard is very real for families watching their homes be engulfed by magma. What was seen as a “market failure” was really a warning sign to those building in Lava Zones 1 and 2. If the state had stayed out of the situation, probably fewer families would have built in the area, and today there might be less housing destruction.

The obvious moral of the story is that we should not have government-subsidized moral hazard.That’s not a proper role of the federal government, and it’s not a proper role of state governments.

P.S. The same is true for subsidized terrorism insurance.

P.P.S. For more on government-created moral hazard, click here.

April 15 is usually the worst day of the year, giving Americans ample reasons to both laugh and cry.*

Because of a holiday in Washington, D.C., however, tax returns this year are due on April 18.

So let’s celebrate (or commiserate) this awful day by wading into the debate about whether the Internal Revenue Service should have a bigger budget.

Proponents usually claim the IRS is under-funded by comparing today’s budget to how much the bureaucracy received in 2011.

But that was a one-year spike because of all the money in Obama’s failed stimulus package. If you review long-run data, you can see that the IRS’s budget has increased significantly.

And these numbers are adjusted for inflation.

But perhaps proponents are right, even if they use deceptive numbers.

The Washington Post has a new editorial on this topic, arguing that the bureaucracy needs more money.

The IRS is currently limping along without enough staff or funding. Congress, especially Republicans, needs to face up to reality. …It’s not a mystery how the IRS deteriorated. …the core problem is that Republicans slashed the IRS budget about 18 percent in the past decade. That’s not belt-tightening, it’s gutting an agency. …The Biden administration is rightly asking for a big increase for 2023 (a request of $14.1 billion). This isn’t some Democratic wish list item; it’s about restoring the basic functions of America’s tax collection agency.

When this topic was being debated last year, Ryan Ellis explained that the IRS will target small businesses if it gets a bigger budget.

Here are some excerpts from his piece in National Review.

…the idea is that if taxpayers fund the IRS to the tune of $40 billion over the next decade, the IRS will step up audits and collect an additional $100 billion in tax revenue, penalties, and interest. This is lauded as a good because of the supposed “tax gap,”… Apparently, it doesn’t occur to anyone that the IRS, which is seeking this extra $40 billion in taxpayer funding, has every incentive in the world to exaggerate this “tax gap” and to make wild promises about the new money that additional enforcement will yield for the Treasury. …Giving money to IRS bureaucrats to conduct fishing expedition audits on millions of honest self-employed people? The same IRS behind the Lois Lerner scandal a decade ago, when the IRS inappropriately targeted conservative political groups during the 2012 election season, when Obama was running for reelection?

Ryan is right to point out that the IRS is undeserving because of bad behavior.

He mentions the Lois Lerner/Tea Party scandal. I think the recent leak of taxpayer data is equally reprehensible.

Advocates of more funding will argue that the bureaucracy’s malfeasance is a separate issue and that more employees and more audits are needed regardless of whether criminals at the IRS are caught and punished.

But this brings us to another important topic, which is whether it would be best to fix the underlying tax laws instead of throwing more money at the IRS.

In a column for the Louisville Courier-Times, we get this point of view from Richard Williams of George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.

…money won’t fix this problem. …Another approach would be drastically reducing the complexity of federal taxes. …The Tax Foundation estimates that we give up 3.24 billion hours and $37 billion to comply with federal taxes each year. Given the headaches and anxiety that come with this, Americans don’t need more IRS workers. We need a leaner agency…individual filers and small businesses represent a huge proportion of the public who would gain from simplification. …There is no need to hire more people to oversee a reformed system. What’s not to like?

Amen.

When proponents say the IRS needs more money, they implicitly are arguing for the current, convoluted tax system.

They want the IRS to be in the business of collecting revenue. But that’s just one role.

And that’s just a brief list of the things that the IRS now does in addition to generating revenue.

Get rid of these added roles, ideally as part of a total replacement of the tax code with a flat tax, and the discussion would be about how much money could be saved by reducing the IRS’s budget.

But that means less power for politicians, so don’t hold your breath waiting for genuine tax reform.

That being said, supporters of good policy should feel no obligation to help prop up the current system by shoveling more money to the IRS.

An underfunded corrupt IRS administering a bad tax code is better than a well-funded corrupt IRS administering a bad tax code.

*April 15 may be the worst day of the year, but there’s an argument to be made that October 3 is the worst day in history.

P.S. From my archives, here are some examples of the bureaucrats who will benefit from a bigger IRS budget.

P.P.P.S. And since we’re recycling some oldies but goodies, here’s my collection of IRS humor, including a new Obama 1040 form, a death tax cartoon, a list of tax day tips from David Letterman, a cartoon of how GPS would work if operated by the IRS, an IRS-designed pencil sharpener, two Obamacare/IRS cartoons (here and here), a sale on 1040-form toilet paper (a real product), a song about the tax agency, the IRS’s version of the quadratic formula, and (my favorite) a joke about a Rabbi and an IRS agent.

IRS not only hated Tea Party but also the Constitution!!!

SEPTEMBER 23, 2014 11:57AM

Targeting the Constitution

[Cross-posted from The Volokh Conspiracy]

It is now well known that the IRS targeted tea party organizations. What is less well known, but perhaps even more scandalous, is that the IRS also targeted those who would educate their fellow citizens about the United States Constitution.

According to the inspector general’s report (pp. 30 & 38), this particular IRS targeting commenced on Jan. 25, 2012 — the beginning of the election year for President Obama’s second campaign. On that date: “the BOLO [‘be on the lookout’] criteria were again updated.” The revised criteria included “political action type organizations involved in … educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.”

Grass-roots organizations around the country, such as the Linchpins of Liberty (Tennessee), the Spirit of Freedom Institute (Wyoming), and the Constitutional Organization of Liberty (Pennsylvania), allege that they were singled out for special scrutiny at least in part for their work in constitutional education. There may have been many more.

The tea party is viewed with general suspicion in some quarters, and it is not difficult, alas, to imagine the mindset of the officials who decided to target tea party organizations for special scrutiny. But federal officers swear an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” It is chilling to think that these same officials who are suspicious of the tea party are equally suspicious of the Constitution itself.

What is most corrosive about this IRS tripwire is that it is triggered by a particular point of view; it is not, as First Amendment scholars say, viewpoint-neutral. It does not includeobfuscating or denigrating the Constitution; only those “involved in … educating on the Constitution” are captured by this criterion. This viewpoint targeting potentially skews every national debate about politics or government. And the skew in not strictly liberal; indeed, it should trouble liberals as much as conservatives. The ultimate checks on executive power are to be found in the United States Constitution. Insidiously, then, suppressing those “involved in … educating on the Constitution” actually skews national debate in favor of unchecked executive power.

For example, this IRS tripwire would not be triggered by arguing that the NSA should collect the phone records of every American citizen. But it would be triggered by teaching that the Fourth Amendment forbids “unreasonable searches and seizures.” This tripwire would not be triggered by arguing that the president should unilaterally suspend politically inconvenient provisions of federal law, like ObamaCare. But it would be triggered by teaching that, under Article II, section 3, the president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” This tripwire would not be triggered by arguing that the president should appoint NLRB members unilaterally. But it would be triggered by teaching that, under Article II, section 2, such appointments require “the Advice and Consent of the Senate.” This tripwire would not be triggered by arguing that the president should target and kill U.S. citizens abroad. But it would be triggered by teaching that, per the Fifth Amendment, no person shall “be deprived of life … without due process of law.” This tripwire would not be triggered by arguing that the president should declare war unilaterally. But it would be triggered by teaching that, under Article I, section 8, “Congress shall have Power … To declare War.” In short, the IRS was “on the lookout,” not for those who preach unlimited executive power, but for those who would teach about constitutional constraints.

Even more to the point, perhaps, this IRS tripwire would not be triggered by arguing that the IRS should discriminate against the tea party. But it would be triggered by teaching that such discrimination constitutes unfaithful execution of the tax laws. And thus, alas, there is a perverse logic to targeting constitutional educators alongside tea party organizations. Political discrimination in the administration of the tax laws is not merely “outrageous,” as President Obama has said; it is an assault on our constitutional structure itself. For an official who has chosen to go down this road and target the tea party, there is an Orwellian logic to targeting constitutional educators as well. After all, they are the ones who might shed light on this very point.

This is a new low for American government — targeting those who would teach others about its founding document. Forty years ago, President Richard Nixon went to great lengths to try to conceal the facts of his constitutional violations, but it never occurred to him to conceal the meaning of the Constitution itself, by targeting its teachers. Politicians have always been tempted to try to censor their political adversaries; but none has been so bold as to try to suppress constitutional education directly. Presidents have always sought to push against the constitutional limits of their power; but never have they targeted those who merely teach about such limits. In short, never before has the federal government singled out for special scrutiny those who would teach their fellow citizens about our magnificent Constitution. This is the new innovation of Obama’s IRS.

“We the People” do not yet know who first decided to target “political action type organizations involved in … educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.” But there is at least one person who does know. Ironically, though, Lois Lerner, former director of the Exempt Organizations Division of the IRS, is making full use of her own constitutional education: “I have been advised by my counsel to assert my constitutional right not to testify …. One of the basic functions of the Fifth Amendment is to protect innocent individuals, and that is the protection I’m invoking today.”

Five years ago, President Obama, our constitutional law professor-in-chief, presented his first, ringing Constitution Day proclamation: “To succeed, the democracy established in our Constitution requires the active participation of its citizenry. Each of us has a responsibility to learn about our Constitution and teach younger generations about its contents and history.” Quite so. Perhaps this year, Obama could explain why his IRS would target those who answered this call.

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Dan Mitchell: people in government value taxes more than growth, jobs, competitiveness, and all sorts of other factors!

Summarizing the Mentality of Government in One Sentence

Back in 2014, I shared a meme with a motto that was perfect for Washington, DC.

Today, let’s do something similar. But instead of a motto specifically for America’s unsavory capital, how about one sentence that summarizes the mentality of all governments.

I used a fill-in-the-blank format because there are so many possible answers.

After all, people in government value taxes more than growth, jobs, competitiveness, and all sorts of other factors.

And one of those other factors is public health, as we can see in this report by Rachel Pannett and Julia Mio Inuma in the Washington Post.

Japanese officials, worried about shifting demographics and a sharp decline in sin tax revenue, have come up with an unusual fix for their fiscal woes: encouraging young people to drink more. …Liquor tax revenue in the fiscal 2020 yearwas about $8.4 billion, a plunge of more than $813 million from the previous year, according to government data. That was the largest decline in three decades — and a cause for alarm for a government facing broad fiscal challenges. …The unorthodox push by bureaucrats to “revitalize the liquor industry” has faced a backlash…on Twitter. …“As long as they can collect taxes, I guess people’s health doesn’t matter.”

When I first saw this story, I thought it was a good fit for one of my columns highlighting “Great Moments in Foreign Government.”

But the final sentence of the excerpt caught my eye and motivated me to take a different approach.

Though the story gets added to my collection of “Strange Moments in Japanese Governance”:

Yet another reminder that you’ve asked a very strange question if more government is the answer.

In the Case of the IRS, Bigger is Not Better

Sadly, Joe Biden’s plan for a bigger IRS is becoming reality. As you might imagine, I’m not happy.

I’m motivated to share the above video, which was part of last week’s episode of The Square Circle, because it galls me to see some writers defend huge budget increases for the internal revenue service while simultaneously overlooking very serious problems.

Such as.

The latest example of IRS sycophancy comes from Paul Waldman of the Washington Post.

Here’s some of what he wrote.

…with the pending passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, we may finally begin to turn the tide in a war only one side has been fighting…this is something all Americans should celebrate.…The bill contains nearly $80 billion for the Internal Revenue Service… With this bill, it would be able to hire as many as 87,000 new employees…the wealthy and corporations don’t pay their fair share. …Americans don’t mind paying taxes, as long as they believe the system is fair.

It’s not just that Waldman fails to address problems at the IRS. He also is either very misinformed or very dishonest about who pays the lion’s share of income taxes.

For instance, even the IRS freely admits that upper-income taxpayers finance a hugely disproportionate chunkof the income tax burden.

And if he didn’t want to accept data the objects of his affection at the IRS he could peruse numbers from the Tax Foundation. Or rely on data from the Congressional Budget Office.

Sadly, facts don’t matter to some of our friends on the left. Too many of them seem to think government should have first claim on anything taxpayers earn, particularly if they are successful.

The bottom line if that envy and spite should not be guiding principles for taxation.

Let’s close by revisiting Waldman’s column and reviewing his assertion about “three things we should all be able to agree on.”

We need a government. …In order to have a government, we need to collect taxes. …If we’re going to collect taxes, the agency that does it should operate as efficiently and effectively as possible.

To which I respond.

  1. We need a government, but not a bloated, ever-expanding leviathan.
  2. We need to collect taxes, but we did just fine for more than 100 years with no income tax.
  3. An efficient and effective IRS will be far more likely with a simple and honest tax system.

Needless to say, I won’t hold my breath waiting for #3 to happen.

P.S. If today’s topic is too depressing, here’s some IRS-themed humor to hopefully boost your mood.

P.P.S. Mr. Waldman is not the only IRS sycophant.

P.P.P.S. While readers will not be surprised that politicians such as Elizabeth Warren want a bigger and more intrusive IRS. But how many of them realize Trump and his team also were bad on this issue?

Open letter to President Obama (Part 644)

(Emailed to White House on 6-10-13.)

President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here.

The federal government debt is growing so much that it is endangering us because if things keep going like they are now we will not have any money left for the national defense because we are so far in debt as a nation. We have been spending so much on our welfare state through food stamps and other programs that I am worrying that many of our citizens are becoming more dependent on government and in many cases they are losing their incentive to work hard because of the welfare trap the government has put in place. Other nations in Europe have gone down this road and we see what mess this has gotten them in. People really are losing their faith in big government and they want more liberty back. It seems to me we have to get back to the founding  principles that made our country great.  We also need to realize that a big government will encourage waste and corruption. The recent scandals in our government have proved my point. In fact, the jokes you made at Ohio State about possibly auditing them are not so funny now that reality shows how the IRS was acting more like a monster out of control. Also raising taxes on the job creators is a very bad idea too. The Laffer Curve clearly demonstrates that when the tax rates are raised many individuals will move their investments to places where they will not get taxed as much.

______________________

We can fix the IRS problem by going to the flat tax and lowering the size of government.

Did President Obama and his team of Chicago cronies deliberately target the Tea Party in hopes of thwarting free speech and political participation?

Was this part of a campaign to win the 2012 election by suppressing Republican votes?

Perhaps, but I’ve warned that it’s never a good idea to assume top-down conspiracies when corruption, incompetence, politics, ideology, greed, and self-interest are better explanations for what happens in Washington.

Writing for the Washington Examiner, Tim Carney has a much more sober and realistic explanation of what happened at the IRS.

If you take a group of Democrats who are also unionized government employees, and put them in charge of policing political speech, it doesn’t matter how professional and well-intentioned they are. The result will be much like the debacle in the Cincinnati office of the IRS. …there’s no reason to even posit evil intent by the IRS officials who formulated, approved or executed the inappropriate guidelines for picking groups to scrutinize most closely. …The public servants figuring out which groups qualified for 501(c)4 “social welfare” non-profit status were mostly Democrats surrounded by mostly Democrats. …In the 2012 election, every donation traceable to this office went to President Obama or liberal Sen. Sherrod Brown. This is an environment where even those trying to be fair could develop a disproportionate distrust of the Tea Party. One IRS worker — a member of NTEU and contributor to its PAC, which gives 96 percent of its money to Democratic candidates — explained it this way: “The reason NTEU mostly supports Democratic candidates for office is because Democratic candidates are mostly more supportive of civil servants/government employees.”

Tim concludes with a wise observation.

As long as we have a civil service workforce that leans Left, and as long as we have an income tax system that requires the IRS to police political speech, conservative groups can always expect special IRS scrutiny.

And my colleague Doug Bandow, in an article for the American Spectator, adds his sage analysis.

The real issue is the expansive, expensive bureaucratic state and its inherent threat to any system of limited government, rule of law, and individual liberty. …the broader the government’s authority, the greater its need for revenue, the wider its enforcement power, the more expansive the bureaucracy’s discretion, the increasingly important the battle for political control, and the more bitter the partisan fight, the more likely government officials will abuse their positions, violate rules, laws, and Constitution, and sacrifice people’s liberties. The blame falls squarely on Congress, not the IRS.

I actually think he is letting the IRS off the hook too easily.

But Doug’s overall point obviously is true.

…the denizens of Capitol Hill also have created a tax code marked by outrageous complexity, special interest electioneering, and systematic social engineering. Legislators have intentionally created avenues for tax avoidance to win votes, and then complained about widespread tax avoidance to win votes.

So what’s the answer?

The most obvious response to the scandal — beyond punishing anyone who violated the law — is tax reform. Implement a flat tax and you’d still have an IRS, but the income tax would be less complex, there would be fewer “preferences” for the agency to police, and rates would be lower, leaving taxpayers with less incentive for aggressive tax avoidance. …Failing to address the broader underlying factors also would merely set the stage for a repeat performance in some form a few years hence. …More fundamentally, government, and especially the national government, should do less. Efficient social engineering may be slightly better than inefficient social engineering, but no social engineering would be far better.

Amen. Let’s rip out the internal revenue code and replace it with a simple and fair flat tax.

But here’s the challenge. We know the solution, but it will be almost impossible to implement good policy unless we figure out some way to restrain the spending side of the fiscal ledger.

___________________________

At the risk of over-simplifying, we will never get tax reform unless we figure out how to implement entitlement reform.

Here’s another Foden cartoon, which I like because it has the same theme asthis Jerry Holbert cartoon, showing big government as a destructive and malicious force.

IRS Cartoon 5

_____________

Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com

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Mar-a-Lago ‘Raid’: Two-Tiered Justice?

——

There seems to be a separate system of justice for top Democrats than there is for former President Donald Trump, who is seen here speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Aug. 6 in Dallas. (Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Attorney General Merrick Garland justified the unprecedented FBI raid of the residence of a former president by saying: “The department does not take such a decision lightly. Where possible, it is standard practice to seek less intrusive means as an alternative to a search, and to narrowly scope any search that is undertaken.”

With the approval of former President Donald Trump and after a request by the Department of Justice, Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, who approved the warrant, publicly released it, as well as the inventory of items removed.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the FBI “removed 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked as top secret … and … took around 20 boxes of items, binders of photos, a handwritten note and the executive grant of clemency for Mr. Trump’s ally Roger Stone.”

The crimes the DOJ asserts include evidence of probable cause that Trump violated the part of the Espionage Act pertaining to classified information; removal of government records; and the destruction of records.

 

Generally, disputes between a departing president as to what documents and materials can be removed and what should be returned are worked out between the president and the relevant government entities.

The problem is the appearance of a two-tiered system of justice, one pertaining to Trump and the other pertaining to laws or subpoenas allegedly violated by top Democratic officials like then-President Barack Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder, who refused to comply with a congressional subpoena and became the only sitting AG to be found in criminal contempt of Congress; IRS official Lois Lerner, accused of withholding the granting of tax-exempt status to conservative charities and who refused to comply with a congressional subpoena; the treatment of Bill Clinton’s national security adviser Sandy Berger, who removed and destroyed documents from the National Archives in 2003; and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her alleged violation of the Espionage Act.

Take Clinton’s alleged violation of the Espionage Act because of the private server she installed in the basement of her home, a server on which she sent and received classified information.

About Clinton and her staff, then-FBI head James Comey said, “There is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” But he concluded that Clinton was not engaged in “clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information.”

But does the relevant part of the Espionage Act require “intent”?

Political columnist and commentator Charles Krauthammer wrote: “This is baffling. Under the statute (18 U.S.C. section 793(f)), it’s a felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally or ‘through gross negligence.’ The evidence, as outlined by Comey, is overwhelming.”

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy wrote: “The question is whether she knew classified info would end up on the server, and her set-up made that inevitable. … Clinton could’ve been prosecuted either for willfully mishandling classified info or for doing so through gross negligence.”

Peter van Buren, a 24-year veteran of the State Department, wrote: “While Comey maintains there was no intent or gross negligence by Clinton to violate the law, it is difficult to reconcile her actions and his statement. … The standards applied in the Clinton case are at variance with how classified information violations elsewhere in the government are handled.”

Harvard Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz wrote: “Berger was administratively fined, and Mrs. Clinton was rebuked by James Comey, then director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which might have cost her the 2016 election. But neither was subjected to broad search warrants or criminal prosecution.”

There is much we still don’t know about the underlying affidavit for the warrant and whether Trump broke laws in removing material from the White House. But given the treatment of top Democratic officials versus the treatment of Trump, did the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago meet what Garland called the “standard practice to seek less intrusive means as an alternative to a search”?

At the very least, the optics look bad, really bad.

COPYRIGHT 2022 LAURENCE A. ELDER

 

 

———

 

left undermines America width=

The left praises democracy when elected but claims the right will destroy democracy when it loses. Pictured: Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton discusses the 2016 election during her 2017 book tour. (Photo: Bastiaan Slabbers, NurPhoto/Getty Images)

 

 

Recently, Democrats have been despondent over President Joe Biden’s sinking poll numbers. His policies on the economy, energy, foreign policy, the border, and COVID-19 all have lost majority support.

As a result, the left now variously alleges that either in 2022, when it expects to lose the Congress, or in 2024, when it fears losing the presidency, Republicans will “destroy democracy” or stage a coup.

A cynic might suggest that those on the left praise democracy when they get elected, only to claim it is broken when they lose. Or they hope to avoid their defeat by trying to terrify the electorate. Or they mask their own revolutionary propensities by projecting them onto their opponents.

After all, who is trying to federalize election laws in national elections contrary to the spirit of the Constitution? Who wishes to repeal or circumvent the Electoral College? Who wishes to destroy the more than 180-year-old Senate filibuster, the over 150-year-old nine-justice Supreme Court, and the more than 60-year-old 50-state union?

Who is attacking the founding constitutional idea of two senators per state?

The Constitution also clearly states that “When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.” Who slammed through the impeachment of former President Donald Trump without a presiding chief justice?

Never had a president been either impeached twice or tried in the Senate as a private citizen. Who did both?

The left further broke prior precedent by impeaching Trump without a special counsel’s report, formal hearings, witnesses, and cross-examinations.

Who exactly is violating federal civil rights legislation?

New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in December decided to ration new potentially lifesaving COVID-19 medicines, partially on the basis of race, in the name of “equity.”

The agency also allegedly used racial preferences to determine who would be first tested for COVID-19. Yet such racial discrimination seems in direct violation of various title clauses of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

That law makes it clear that no public agency can use race to deny “equal utilization of any public facility which is owned, operated, or managed by or on behalf of any State or subdivision thereof.” Who is behind the new racial discrimination?

In summer 2020, many local- and state-mandated quarantines and bans on public assemblies were simply ignored with impunity—if demonstrators were associated with Black Lives Matter or protesting the police.

Currently, the Biden administration is also flagrantly embracing the neo-Confederate idea of nullifying federal law.

The Biden administration has allowed nearly 2 million foreign nationals to enter the United States illegally across the southern border—in hopes they will soon be loyal constituents.

The administration has not asked illegal entrants either to be tested for or vaccinated against COVID-19. Yet all U.S. citizens in the military and employed by the federal government are threatened with dismissal if they fail to become vaccinated.

Such selective exemption of lawbreaking non-U.S. citizens, but not millions of U.S. citizens, seems in conflict with the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

After entering the United States illegally, millions of immigrants are protected by some 550 “sanctuary city” jurisdictions. These revolutionary areas all brazenly nullify immigration law by refusing to allow federal immigration authorities to deport illegal immigrant lawbreakers.

At various times in our nation’s history—1832, 1861-65, and 1961-63—America was either racked by internal violence or fought a civil war over similar state nullification of federal laws.

In the last five years, we have indeed seen many internal threats to democracy.

Hillary Clinton hired a foreign national to concoct a dossier of dirt against her presidential opponent. She disguised her own role by projecting her efforts to use Russian sources onto Trump. She used her contacts in government and media to seed the dossier to create a national hysteria about “Russian collusion.” Clinton urged Biden not to accept the 2020 result if he lost, and herself claimed Trump was not a legitimately elected president.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has violated laws governing the chain of command. Some retired officers violated Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice by slandering their commander in chief. Others publicly were on record calling for the military to intervene to remove an elected president.

Some of the nation’s top officials in the FBI and intelligence committee have misled or lied under oath either to federal investigators or the U.S. Congress, again, mostly with impunity.

All these sustained revolutionary activities were justified as necessary to achieve the supposedly noble ends of removing Trump.

The result is Third World-like jurisprudence in America aimed at rewarding friends and punishing enemies, masked by service to social justice.

We are in a dangerous revolutionary cycle. But the threat is not so much from loud, buffoonish, one-day rioters on Jan. 6. Such clownish characters did not for 120 days loot, burn, attack courthouses and police precincts, cause over 30 deaths, injure 2,000 policemen, and destroy at least $2 billion in property—all under the banner of revolutionary justice.

Even more ominously, stone-cold sober elites are systematically waging an insidious revolution in the shadows that seeks to dismantle America’s institutions and the rule of law as we have known them.

 

(C)2022 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation. 

 

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

 

The Honorable Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Washington D.C.

Dear Representative Adam Kinzinger, 

I noticed that you are a pro-life representative that has a long record of standing up for unborn babies! It was in the 1970’s when I was first introduced to the works of Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop and I wanted to commend their writings and films to you.

I recently read about your impressive pro-life record:

Washington, DC – Today, Congressman Adam Kinzinger (IL-16) joined his House Republican colleagues in a press conference urging Democratic leadership to allow a vote on the Born Alive protections. The proposal would protect babies who survive abortion and provide them with the same medical care that any other premature baby would receive. Yesterday, the Democrats blocked the proposed legislation—for the 17th time—from coming before the House for a vote.

Joining the Congressman and House Republican leaders at the press conference this morning was Jill Stanek, an Illinois nurse and pro-life advocate who has witnessed the devastating realities of these pro-abortion laws. The Illinois legislature is currently debating two abortion bills, similar to the extreme pro-abortion agendas in New York and Virginia. 

It seems you have a grudge against President Trump while our freedoms under President Biden are being taken away. I recommend to you the article below:

The January 6 Insurrection Hoax

 • Volume 50, Number 9 • Roger Kimball

Roger Kimball
Editor and Publisher, The New Criterion

Mr. Kimball concludes his article with these words: 

That’s one melancholy lesson of the January 6 insurrection hoax: that America is fast mutating from a republic, in which individual liberty is paramount, into an oligarchy, in which conformity is increasingly demanded and enforced.

Another lesson was perfectly expressed by Donald Trump when he reflected on the unremitting tsunami of hostility that he faced as President. “They’re after you,” he more than once told his supporters. “I’m just in the way.”

 

Bingo.

You can google and get Roger Kimball article “The January 6 Insurrection Hoax”

NOW WHAT DID YOU DO TO TURN YOUR BACK ON OUR LIBERTY AND PERPETUATE THE HOAX THAT JANUARY 6TH WAS AN INSURRECTION? Read below!! 

9 Republicans voted to hold Trump aide Bannon in contempt of Congress

 

There were a few Republicans Thursday who surprised observers when they voted in support of holding former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress and referring him to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.

Prior to the vote, four Republicans were considered a lock to approve the criminal referral, according to Capitol Hill sources: Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Fred Upton of Michigan and Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio.

 

Cheney and Kinzinger are on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and have for months stood alone as the only two House Republicans willing to speak out against former President Donald Trump’s continued lies about the 2020 election. They were the only two House Republicans to vote for the formation of the select committee on June 30.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi formed the select committee after Republicans rejected a bipartisan commission that would have been evenly split between five Democrats and five Republicans. Only 35 Republicans voted for that measure when itpassed the House of Representatives, and it was defeated by a GOP filibuster in the Senate.

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 27:  (L-R) Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) arrive for the House Select Committee hearing investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol on July 27, 2021 at the Canon House Office Building in Washington, DC. Members of law enforcement will testify about the attack by supporters of former President Donald Trump on the U.S. Capitol. According to authorities, about 140 police officers were injured when they were trampled, had objects thrown at them, and sprayed with chemical irritants during the insurrection. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

 

 
More

Upton has served in the House for more than three decades, since 1987, and will face a primary challenge next year because of his willingness to stand up to Trump.

Gonzalez is retiring from Congress next year, after only four years in the House. “While my desire to build a fuller family life is at the heart of my decision, it is also true that the current state of our politics, especially many of the toxic dynamics inside our own party, is a significant factor in my decision,” Gonzalez said in September when heannounced he would not seek another term.

 

The remaining five Republicans included three who voted for impeachment — Peter Meijer of Michigan, John Katko of New York and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington — and two House Republicans who did not vote to impeach Trump: Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.

Do you realize that Americans rights are being taken away from them and would you like an example? I am going to quote Mr. Kimball again.  You can google and get Roger Kimball article “The January 6 Insurrection Hoax”

Trump seems never to have discerned what a viper’s nest our politics has become for anyone who is not a paid-up member of The Club. 

Maybe Trump understands this now. I have no insight into that question. I am pretty confident, though, that the 74 plus million people who voted for him understand it deeply. It’s another reason that The Club should be wary of celebrating its victory too expansively. 

Friedrich Hayek took one of the two epigraphs for his book, The Road to Serfdom, from the philosopher David Hume. “It is seldom,” Hume wrote, “that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” Much as I admire Hume, I wonder whether he got this quite right. Sometimes, I would argue, liberty is erased almost instantaneously.

I’d be willing to wager that Joseph Hackett, confronted with Hume’s observation, would express similar doubts. I would be happy to ask Mr. Hackett myself, but he is inaccessible. If the ironically titled “Department of Justice” has its way, he will be inaccessible for a long, long time—perhaps as long as 20 years. 

Joseph Hackett, you see, is a 51-year-old Trump supporter and member of an organization called the Oath Keepers, a group whose members have pledged to “defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.” The FBI does not like the Oath Keepers—agents arrested its leader in January and have picked up many other members in the months since. Hackett traveled to Washington from his home in Florida to join the January 6 rally. According to court documents, he entered the Capitol at 2:45 that afternoon and left some nine minutes later, at 2:54. The next day, he went home. On May 28, he was apprehended by the FBI and indicted on a long list of charges, including conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, destruction of government property, and illegally entering a restricted building. 

As far as I have been able to determine, no evidence of Hackett destroying property has come to light. According to his wife, it is not even clear that he entered the Capitol. But he certainly was in the environs. He was a member of the Oath Keepers. He was a supporter of Donald Trump. Therefore, he must be neutralized.

Joseph Hackett is only one of hundreds of citizens who have beenbranded as “domestic terrorists” trying to “overthrow the government” and who are now languishing, in appalling conditions, jailed as political prisoners of an angry state apparat.

Let me recommend that you read this letter below from Senator Ron Johnson and his colleagues:

Sen. Johnson and Colleagues Request Answers from DOJ on Unequal Application of Justice to Protestors

 

 

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), along with senators Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), sent a letter on Monday to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting information on the unequal application of justice between the individuals who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, and those involved in the unrest during the spring and summer of 2020. The senators sent 18 questions to the attorney general on what steps the DOJ has taken to prosecute individuals who committed crimes during both events, and requested a response by June 21.

“Americans have the constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances,” the senators wrote. “This constitutional right should be cherished and protected. Violence, property damage, and vandalism of any kind should not be tolerated and individuals that break the law should be prosecuted. However, the potential unequal administration of justice with respect to certain protestors is particularly concerning.”

 

The full text of the letter can be found here and below.

 

 

June 7, 2021 

The Honorable Merrick B. Garland

Attorney General

U.S. Department of Justice

950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20530

 

Dear Attorney General Garland:

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is currently dedicating enormous resources and manpower to investigating and prosecuting the criminals who breached the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. We fully support and appreciate the efforts by the DOJ and its federal, state and local law enforcement partners to hold those responsible fully accountable.

We join all Americans in the expectation that the DOJ’s response to the events of January 6 will result in rightful criminal prosecutions and accountability.  As you are aware, the mission of the DOJ is, among other things, to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.  Today, we write to request information about our concerns regarding potential unequal justice administered in response to other recent instances of mass unrest, destruction, and loss of life throughout the United States. 

During the spring and summer of 2020, individuals used peaceful protests across the country to engage in rioting and other crimes that resulted in loss of life, injuries to law enforcement officers, and significant property damage.[1]  A federal court house in Portland, Oregon, has been effectively under siege for months.[2]  Property destruction stemming from the 2020 social justice protests throughout the country will reportedly result in at least $1 billion to $2 billion in paid insurance claims.[3] 

                In June 2020, the DOJ reportedly compiled the following information regarding last year’s unrest:

  • “One federal officer [was] killed, 147 federal officers [were] injured and 600 local officers [were] injured around the country during the protests, frequently from projectiles.”[4]
  • According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), “since the start of the unrest there has been 81 Federal Firearms License burglaries of an estimated loss of 1,116 firearms; 876 reported arsons; 76 explosive incidents; and 46 ATF arrests[.]”[5]

Despite these numerous examples of violence occurring during these protests, it appears that individuals charged with committing crimes at these events may benefit from infrequent prosecutions and minimal, if any, penalties.  According to a recent article, “prosecutors have approved deals in at least half a dozen federal felony cases arising from clashes between protesters and law enforcement in Oregon last summer. The arrangements — known as deferred resolution agreements — will leave the defendants with a clean criminal record if they stay out of trouble for a period of time and complete a modest amount of community service, according to defense attorneys and court records.”[6]       

                DOJ’s apparent unwillingness to punish these individuals who allegedly committed crimes during the spring and summer 2020 protests stands in stark contrast to the harsher treatment of the individuals charged in connection with the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.  To date, DOJ has charged 510 individuals stemming from Capitol breach.[7]  DOJ maintains and updates a webpage that lists the defendants charged with crimes committed at the Capitol.  This database includes information such as the defendant’s name, charge(s), case number, case documents, location of arrest, case status, and informs readers when the entry was last updated.[8]  No such database exists for alleged perpetrators of crimes associated with the spring and summer 2020 protests.  It is unclear whether any defendants charged with crimes in connection with the Capitol breach have received deferred resolution agreements.

Americans have the constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances.  This constitutional right should be cherished and protected.  Violence, property damage, and vandalism of any kind should not be tolerated and individuals that break the law should be prosecuted.  However, the potential unequal administration of justice with respect to certain protestors is particularly concerning.  In order to assist Congress in conducting its oversight work, we respectfully request answers to the following questions by June 21, 2021:  

Spring and Summer 2020 Unrest:

  1. Did federal law enforcement utilize geolocation data from defendants’ cell phones to track protestors associated with the unrest in the spring and summer of 2020?  If so, how many times and for which locations/riots?  
  1. How many individuals who may have committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020 were arrested by law enforcement using pre-dawn raids and SWAT teams?
  1. How many individuals were incarcerated for allegedly committing crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020? 
  1. How many of these individuals are or were placed in solitary confinement?  What was the average amount of consecutive days such individuals were in solitary confinement?
  1. How many of these individuals have been released on bail?
  1. How many of these individuals were released on their own recognizance or without being required to post bond?
  1. How many of these individuals were offered deferred resolution agreements?[9]
  1. How many DOJ prosecutors were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?
  1. How many FBI personnel were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?

January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol Breach:

  1. Did federal law enforcement utilize geolocation data from defendants’ cell phones to track protestors associated with the January 6, 2021 protests and Capitol breach?  If so, how many times and how many additional arrests resulted from law enforcement utilizing geolocation information?
  2. How many individuals who may have committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach were arrested by law enforcement using pre-dawn raids and SWAT teams?
  1. How many individuals are incarcerated for allegedly committing crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
  1. How many of these individuals are or were placed in solitary confinement?  What was the average amount of consecutive days such individuals were in solitary confinement?
  1. How many of these individuals have been released on bail?
  1. How many of these individuals have been released on their own recognizance or without being required to post bond?
  1. How many of these individuals were offered deferred resolution agreements?
  1. How many DOJ prosecutors have been assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
  1. How many FBI personnel were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach?

Sincerely,

 

Ron Johnson

United States Senator

 

Tommy Tuberville

United States Senator

 

Mike Lee                                                            

United States Senator

 

Rick Scott

United States Senator

 

Ted Cruz

United States Senator

 

###

 


[1] Jennifer Kingson, Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history, Axios, Sept. 16, 2020, https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-damage-276c9bcc-a455-4067-b06a-66f9db4cea9c.html.

[2] Conrad Wilson and Jonathan Levinson, Protesters, federal officers clash outside Portland’s courthouse Thursday, OPB, Mar. 12, 2021, https://www.opb.org/article/2021/03/12/protesters-vandalize-portlands-federal-courthouse-again/.

[3] Jennifer Kingson, Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history, Axios, Sept. 16, 2020, https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-damage-276c9bcc-a455-4067-b06a-66f9db4cea9c.html.

[5] Id.

[6] Josh Gerstein, Leniency for defendants in Portland clashes could affect Capitol riot cases, Politico, Apr. 14, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/14/portland-capitol-riot-cases-481346.

[7] Madison Hall et al., 493 people have been charged in the Capitol insurrection so far. This searchable table shows them all., Insider, accessed June 4, 2021, https://www.insider.com/all-the-us-capitol-pro-trump-riot-arrests-charges-names-2021-1.

[8] Capitol Breach Cases, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, accessed May 21, 2021, https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/capitol-breach-cases?combine=&order=title&sort=asc.

[9] Josh Gerstein, Leniency for defendants in Portland clashes could affect Capitol riot cases, Politico, Apr. 14, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/14/portland-capitol-riot-cases-481346.

—-

I want to recommend to you a video on YOU TUBE that runs 28 minutes and 39 seconds by Francis Schaeffer entitled because it discusses the founding of our nation and what the FOUNDERS believed: 

How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 5 | The Revolutionary Age

 

Thank you for your time, and again I want to thank you for your support of the unborn little babies!

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, 13900 Cottontail Lane, AR 72002, cell 501-920-5733, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org

——————————————————————————————

——

Dr. Francis schaeffer How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 5 | The Revolutionary Age

 

– Whatever happened to human race? PART 1 Co-authored by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop)

C. Everett Koop
C. Everett Koop, 1980s.jpg
 
13th Surgeon General of the United States
In office
January 21, 1982 – October 1, 1989

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 2 | Slaughter of the Innocents

Francis Schaeffer – Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 3 | Death by Someone’s Choice

Mr. Hentoff with the clarinetist Edmond Hall in 1948 at the Savoy, a club in Boston.

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 4 | The Basis for Human Dignity 

Image<img class=”i-amphtml-blurry-placeholder” src=”data:;base64,Edith Schaeffer with her husband, Francis Schaeffer, in 1970 in Switzerland, where they founded L’Abri, a Christian commune.

________________

______________________

March 23, 2021

President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. I know that you don’t agree with my pro-life views but I wanted to challenge you as a fellow Christian to re-examine your pro-choice view. Although we are both Christians and have the Bible as the basis for our moral views, I did want you to take a close look at the views of the pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff too.  Hentoff became convinced of the pro-life view because of secular evidence that shows that the unborn child is human. I would ask you to consider his evidence and then of course reverse your views on abortion.

___________________

The pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff wrote a fine article below I wanted to share with you.

Nat Hentoff is an atheist, but he became a pro-life activist because of the scientific evidence that shows that the unborn child is a distinct and separate human being and even has a separate DNA. His perspective is a very intriguing one that I thought you would be interested in. I have shared before many   cases (Bernard Nathanson, Donald Trump, Paul Greenberg, Kathy Ireland)    when other high profile pro-choice leaders have changed their views and this is just another case like those. I have contacted the White House over and over concerning this issue and have even received responses. I am hopeful that people will stop and look even in a secular way (if they are not believers) at this abortion debate and see that the unborn child is deserving of our protection.That is why the writings of Nat Hentoff of the Cato Institute are so crucial.

In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented  against abortion (Episode 1),  infanticide (Episode 2),   euthanasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close look at the truth claims of the Bible.

Francis Schaeffer

__________________________

I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have.  Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.

Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION

_____________________________________

 

Dr. Francis schaeffer – from Part 5 of Whatever happened to human race?) Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 5 | Truth and History

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – A Christian Manifesto – Dr. Francis Schaeffer Lecture

Francis Schaeffer – A 700 Club Special! ~ Francis Schaeffer 1982

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – 1984 SOUNDWORD LABRI CONFERENCE VIDEO – Q&A With Francis & Edith Schaeffer

________________

Jewish World Review June 12, 2006/ 16 Sivan, 5766

 

Insisting on life

http://www.NewsandOpinion.com | A longtime friend of mine is married to a doctor who also performs abortions. At the dinner table one recent evening, their 9-year-old son — having heard a word whose meaning he didn’t know — asked, “What is an abortion?” His mother, choosing her words carefully, described the procedure in simple terms.

“But,” said her son, “that means killing the baby.” The mother then explained that there are certain months during which an abortion cannot be performed, with very few exceptions. The 9-year-old shook his head. “But,” he said, “it doesn’t matter what month. It still means killing the babies.”

Hearing the story, I wished it could be repeated to the justices of the Supreme Court, in the hope that at least five of them might act on this 9-year-old’s clarity of thought and vision.

The boy’s spontaneous insistence on the primacy of life also reminded me of a powerful pro-life speaker and writer who, many years ago, helped me become a pro-lifer. He was a preacher, a black preacher. He said: “There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of a higher order than the right to life.

“That,” he continued, “was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore out of your right to be concerned.”

This passionate reverend used to warn: “Don’t let the pro-choicers convince you that a fetus isn’t a human being. That’s how the whites dehumanized us … The first step was to distort the image of us as human beings in order to justify what they wanted to do — and not even feel they’d done anything wrong.”

That preacher was Jesse Jackson. Later, he decided to run for the presidency — and it was a credible campaign that many found inspiring in its focus on what still had to be done on civil rights. But Jackson had by now become “pro-choice” — much to the appreciation of most of those in the liberal base.

The last time I saw Jackson was years later, on a train from Washington to New York. I told him of a man nominated, but not yet confirmed, to a seat on a federal circuit court of appeals. This candidate was a strong supporter of capital punishment — which both the Rev. Jackson and I oppose, since it involves the irreversible taking of a human life by the state.

I asked Jackson if he would hold a press conference in Washington, criticizing the nomination, and he said he would. The reverend was true to his word; the press conference took place; but that nominee was confirmed to the federal circuit court. However, I appreciated Jackson’s effort.

On that train, I also told Jackson that I’d been quoting — in articles, and in talks with various groups — from his compelling pro-life statements. I asked him if he’d had any second thoughts on his reversal of those views.

Usually quick to respond to any challenge that he is not consistent in his positions, Jackson paused, and seemed somewhat disquieted at my question. Then he said to me, “I’ll get back to you on that.” I still patiently await what he has to say.

As time goes on, my deepening concern with the consequences of abortion is that its validation by the Supreme Court, as a constitutional practice, helps support the convictions of those who, in other controversies — euthanasia, assisted suicide and the “futility doctrine” by certain hospital ethics committees — believe that there are lives not worth continuing.

Around the time of my conversation with Jackson on the train, I attended a conference on euthanasia at Clark College in Worcester, Mass. There, I met Derek Humphry, the founder of the Hemlock Society, and already known internationally as a key proponent of the “death with dignity” movement.

He told me that for some years in this country, he had considerable difficulty getting his views about assisted suicide and, as he sees it, compassionate euthanasia into the American press.

“But then,” Humphry told me, “a wonderful thing happened. It opened all the doors for me.”

“What was that wonderful thing?” I asked.

“Roe v. Wade,” he answered.

The devaluing of human life — as the 9-year-old at the dinner table put it more vividly — did not end with making abortion legal, and therefore, to some people, moral. The word “baby” does not appear in Roe v. Wade — let alone the word “killing.”

And so, the termination of “lives not worth living” goes on.

 

______________________

Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. Now after presenting the secular approach of Nat Hentoff I wanted to make some comments concerning our shared Christian faith.  I  respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,

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Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 9 “The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence” (Schaeffer Sundays)

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Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 8 “The Age of Fragmentation” (Schaeffer Sundays)

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Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 7 “The Age of Non-Reason” (Schaeffer Sundays)

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Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 6 “The Scientific Age” (Schaeffer Sundays)

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By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

Trump Raid Isn’t First Dust-Up Over Presidential Records. Here Are 3 More.

——

The Presidential Records Act of 1978 specifies that the U.S. “shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of presidential records.”  Pictured: Former President Barack Obama speaks Sept. 28, 2021, during a ceremonial groundbreaking for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago’s Jackson Park. (Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Although an FBI raid on the home of a former president had been unprecedented until this month, clashes over compliance with a law called the Presidential Records Act are nothing new. 

The 1978 law, signed by President Jimmy Carter, was in response to fallout from the Watergatescandal, when former President Richard Nixon tried to claim that all his White House records belonged to him. 

The law specifies that “the United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of presidential records.” 

Long before enactment of the Presidential Records Act, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s records were the first to go to the National Archives and Records Administration for safekeeping. Before that, presidents took their records with them when leaving the White House. 

 

It’s not likely President Donald Trump could be prosecuted for a violation of the Presidential Records Act, presidential historian Craig Shirley told The Daily Signal in an interview.

“Before FDR, every president just took their records home; some kept them around the house, others used [them] for the fireplace,” Shirley said. “Let’s face it, keeping papers that are supposed to be in presidential archives is akin to not returning an overdue library book.” 

Here are three past controversies involving presidents’ records. 

1. Obama Foundation Supplants Archives

When President Barack Obama left office in January 2017, some 30 million pages of documents from his administration were moved to a warehouse near Chicago that previously was the site of a furniture store. 

The Obama Foundation announced a plan to digitize all of the records ahead of building a $500 million Obama Presidential Center. 

The major difference between the Obama center and previous presidential libraries is that it would be run by the Obama Foundation, a nonprofit established by the former president and former first lady Michelle Obama.

Going back to Herbert Hoover, the National Archives and Records Administration has maintained presidential libraries and records. 

Obama’s plan caused some angst among historians, The New York Times reported. 

“The absence of a true Obama presidential library will have the effect of discouraging serious and potentially critical research into the Obama presidency,” David Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Obama biographer, told the Times.

Timothy Naftali, a former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, said the Obama move “opens the door to a truly terrible Trump library.”

The day after the FBI’s raid on his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, Trump publicly brought up the documents held by Obama. 

“President Barack Hussein Obama kept 33 million pages of documents, much of them classified. How many of them pertained to nuclear? Word is, lots!” Trump said in an Aug. 9 post on Truth Social, the social media platform launched early this year created by Trump Media & Technology Group.

This message prompted the National Archives to issue a statement Aug. 12 in response to Trump that says:

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) assumed exclusive legal and physical custody of Obama presidential records when President Barack Obama left office in 2017, in accordance with the Presidential Records Act (PRA).

NARA moved approximately 30 million pages of unclassified records to a NARA facility in the Chicago area where they are maintained exclusively by NARA. Additionally, NARA maintains the classified Obama presidential records in a NARA facility in the Washington, D.C., area. As required by the [Presidential Records Act], former President Obama has no control over where and how NARA stores the presidential records of his administration.

2. Clinton’s Presidential Library

Former President Bill Clinton’s presidential library in Little Rock, Arkansas, delayed the release of tens of thousands of pages of records in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential race in which Hillary Clinton was the expected Democrat front-runner. 

The delay by the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum came with the help of Obama White House lawyers, Politico reported in February 2014.

The episode led to Congress’ passing a law that year to curb White House prerogatives on secrecy, which Obama signed. 

The legislation specifically updated the Presidential Records Act to direct that no one use personal email to conduct White House business.

3. Bush and Post-9/11 Action

In November 2001, in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush issued an executive order to limit access to presidential records going back to the Reagan administration. The order included the records of his father, Ronald Reagan’s successor as president.

The 12-year shield under the Presidential Records Act protecting records from going public after a president leaves office had expired for the Reagan administration. 

But Bush’s order resealed the presidential records maintained by the National Archives and required a “demonstrated, specific need” for documents to overcome a past president’s assertion of executive privilege to prevent their release. 

On a war footing, the Bush administration argued that the records remain under seal for national security reasons. 

After the American Historical Association sued, part of the younger Bush’s executive order was struck down by a federal court. 

Obama, after promising transparency on the campaign trail, revoked Bush’s executive order shielding records after he took office in January 2009, making most of the records open again and no longer requiring a “demonstrated, specific need.”

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.  

 

 

 

 

Tucker Carlson: Biden Is Using Law Enforcement to Cling to Power

 

 

Fox News host Tucker Carlson eviscerated the Biden administration Monday night for using law enforcement to target its political adversaries, most recently with the raid on former President Donald Trump’s Florida home.

“This could get very bad, very fast and the Biden people know that perfectly well,” Carlson told viewers. “They know what could happen if they continue down this path of using law enforcement to cling to power. But they don’t care because they’re facing a repudiation from voters and they’re desperate and they’ll do anything but at what cost? Pray they pull back before it’s too late.”

Watch the full monologue for read a portion of the transcript below. The full transcript is available from Fox News.

We’ve had a few days to reflect on it and have concluded that no honest person could believe that the raid on Donald Trump’s home last week was a legitimate act of law enforcement. It was not. Even the Biden administration didn’t really bother to pretend otherwise. The official explanations that we have heard for the raid make no sense at all. It doesn’t matter how forcefully they are repeated by the media, they’re nonsensical. In case you’ve forgotten what they are, here’s the very first explanation they gave us. 

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS, HISTORIAN: Why did this guy have these ultra-classified documents in the basement of Mar-a-Lago unsecured, where they could be presumably broken in on or stolen or photographed and given to hostile foreign powers or conceivably even terrorists?  

Are you listening to this? So, it’s not just classified documents in the basement of Mar-a-Lago, but according to Michael Beschloss, the pet historian of the halfwits who run our country, these are ultra-classified documents, the most classified kind, just sitting there helpless in boxes like maidens in bikinis, waiting to be photographed by terrorists. You just imagine al-Qaeda taking selfies with these documents, one after the other relentlessly, repulsive and terrifying. 

Is it true?  At this point, no one has provided proof that it is true, not that august historians like Michael Beschloss wait around for actual evidence before pronouncing final judgment on cable news shows. They just go ahead, but for the sake of argument on our show, we’re going to say that it is in fact true and that Donald Trump did, in fact, have boxes of classified documents sitting in his cellar. 

Let’s say that’s true. What would it mean? Well, what it means depends in part on what the documents were. Did those documents contain meaningful information? Should they have been classified in the first place? Is there a good reason the rest of us should not have been allowed to see those documents? 

Now, you never hear those questions asked in public, but anyone who lives in Washington knows perfectly well they should be asked in public a lot, because in Washington, virtually anything can qualify as an official state secret and often does.  

In 2011, to name one of many examples, the CIA finally declassified a trove of documents from the First World War. These documents dated back to 1917, almost 100 years before. One of these documents, the most ultra-secret of them, contained a recipe for disappearing ink. Now, why would federal bureaucrats spend an entire century hiding an outdated recipe for ink that you can buy legally in any magic store for your fifth grader? Good question. No one asked it. 

Instead, then CIA Director Leon Panetta issued a press release bragging about how he was giving the secret ink recipe to a grateful public. “These documents remain classified for nearly a century until recent advancements in technology made it possible to release them,” Panetta wrote. “When historical information is no longer sensitive, we take seriously our responsibility to share it with the American people.” 

There was no hint whatsoever that Panetta was joking when he wrote that. You’re welcome, America. Here’s your century-old ink recipe. Again, this was in 2011. So, think it through. You had to wonder what recent technological advancements was Leon Panetta talking about in the press release and just how recent were they? Was Panetta actually saying that CIA spies were still communicating in World War One era disappearing ink as of, say, 2010 or even as of 1950? Please. It was bizarre. Of course, it was another lie from the people in charge.  

Here’s the truth. The documents have been classified for 100 years, not because disappearing ink was any sort of national security secret. They’d been classified because the government’s default position in every case is that you have no right to see anything ever. It is their information. It is not yours. You’re not a citizen. You’re just the taxpayer. Shut up and pay for it all. To this day, there are large amounts of classified information remaining from World War II. These are documents written 80 years ago by people whose grandchildren are now old, but you still can’t see it. You don’t have the clearances. Sorry. 

So, when they tell you that Donald Trump had classified documents in his basement, those materials could be literally anything, but once again, for the sake of argument, we’re going to stipulate that Trump did have possession of documents that were classified for some good reason. Documents that, for example, we legitimately would not want the Chinese government to see. If that is true, would it justify what happened? Would it justify sending a large team of federal agents to shut down the entire southern tip of Palm Beach to raid Mar-a-Lago on a weekday? No, it wouldn’t. So, one of the laws they’re telling you that Trump broke doesn’t even have criminal penalties attached to it because it’s not serious enough.  

Federal paramilitaries don’t show up at your house when you violate the Presidential Records Act and in fact, as we later learned, the actual warrant for the raid, which was signed by an openly partisan judge because you couldn’t make any of this up if you tried, once represented Jeffrey Epstein’s side in the famous underage sex case, that judge. That judge allowed the FBI to seize virtually every piece of paper in Donald Trump’s house, whether or not it had ever been classified.  

They took Roger Stone’s clemency order, for example. That had been on the front page of the Washington Post, so was therefore probably not a secret. Apparently, the feds even walked off with Donald Trump’s passports preventing him from leaving the country. So, whatever else this raid was, this raid was not about the Presidential Records Act. That explanation is absurd. It’s almost as ridiculous as the claim that the White House knew nothing about the raid before it happened. Right. Please. If they’re going to lie to us, they ought to try a little harder. So, what was this raid about? Well, we’re keeping track. So, here’s the second explanation they gave us. 

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Now with Donald Trump, suddenly, when we’re talking about the possibility of nuclear weapons, classified documents of the highest classified status being stolen from the White House and taken to Mar-a-Lago. 

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Just a reminder of why the Justice Department might be a little bit concerned about nuclear secrets knocking around Mar-a-Lago.  

SCARBOROUGH: Two words for you, my friend. Two words. “Nuclear secrets.” 

What! Nuclear secrets? Nuclear secrets are the highest classified status. Ultra-secret nuclear secrets. Donald Trump stole those. Ladies and gentlemen, America is in danger tonight. That was their new explanation for the raid. Now, that revised storyline was leaked anonymously to an obedient press corps, which, as you just saw, repeated every word like it was verifiable fact. 

Once again, no one even bothered to explain what these nuclear secrets might be. What’s a nuclear secret exactly and what did Trump plan to do with them? Did he plan to defect to Moscow, give the launch codes to Vladimir Putin, start his own rogue state in the Bahamas? Nobody said, but that didn’t stop former CIA director Michael Hayden from suggesting that Donald Trump should be executed, fried to death in the electric chair, for committing these crimes, whatever these crimes were. We still don’t know. 

There weren’t a lot of facts floating around. There still aren’t, but there was a reason for that. They couldn’t tell you the whole story. They couldn’t release all the documents because that would jeopardize American national security. So instead, you’re just going to have to trust them and of course, you’re going to have to listen to their outrage. There was a lot of that. There was endless huffing on television about something called the rule of law and how absolutely no one is above that. No one. Not even a former president. 

We’re informed of this by the same people who paid rioters to burn down our cities, the ones who eliminated bail, the ones who encouraged tens of millions of foreign nationals to ignore our federal immigration statutes and move to our country permanently at public expense as a reward for breaking our laws, but keep in mind, no one is above the law. That was definitely the word from Joe Scarborough, a man who was accused of committing murder while serving as a member of Congress, yet somehow move seamlessly to the MSNBC lineup without being charged or even investigated. No one is above the law. Remember that. 

So, it was an awful lot of posturing in the days after the raid. But none of it was very effective because again, it didn’t make sense. Even propaganda has to add up. Two plus two equals nine doesn’t convince anybody.  

Nuclear secrets? If the Biden administration really believed that, if they really thought Donald Trump possessed documents that posed an imminent danger to American national security, then you have to wonder, why did they wait a year and a half to do anything about it? Why did they wait till 90 days before a midterm election, an election that polls suggest they will lose? It doesn’t make, oh, wait, actually, it does make sense. 

In fact, the question answers itself. Despite superficial appearances, the raid of Mar-a-Lago was not an act of law enforcement. It was the opposite of that. It was an attack on the rule of law. It was a power grab. As Matt Boose put it recently, in American Greatness, the raid on Trump’s home “was exactly what it looks like, a show of force against the opposition leader by the head of state and his personal bodyguards. If this happened in, any other country would immediately be denounced as the act of a dictator.” 

That’s true, but it’s hard to hear those words anyway. As an American, you don’t want to believe it and yet here are the essential facts. The same week the Biden White House announced that Joe Biden will definitely seek a second term as president, the same week, the Biden Justice Department launched an armed raid against Biden’s main rival in that same presidential election. That’s what happened. Pause for a minute. If The New York Times told you that something like that was going on in Chad or the Gambia, what would your reaction be? 

You’d probably say to yourself, “Thank God I don’t live in a place like that, a country where politicians used armed men to cling to power.” Oh, but you do live in a country like that. You do. The evidence is all around us. We just don’t want to see it.

 

———-

 

left undermines America width=

The left praises democracy when elected but claims the right will destroy democracy when it loses. Pictured: Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton discusses the 2016 election during her 2017 book tour. (Photo: Bastiaan Slabbers, NurPhoto/Getty Images)

 

 

Recently, Democrats have been despondent over President Joe Biden’s sinking poll numbers. His policies on the economy, energy, foreign policy, the border, and COVID-19 all have lost majority support.

As a result, the left now variously alleges that either in 2022, when it expects to lose the Congress, or in 2024, when it fears losing the presidency, Republicans will “destroy democracy” or stage a coup.

A cynic might suggest that those on the left praise democracy when they get elected, only to claim it is broken when they lose. Or they hope to avoid their defeat by trying to terrify the electorate. Or they mask their own revolutionary propensities by projecting them onto their opponents.

After all, who is trying to federalize election laws in national elections contrary to the spirit of the Constitution? Who wishes to repeal or circumvent the Electoral College? Who wishes to destroy the more than 180-year-old Senate filibuster, the over 150-year-old nine-justice Supreme Court, and the more than 60-year-old 50-state union?

Who is attacking the founding constitutional idea of two senators per state?

The Constitution also clearly states that “When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.” Who slammed through the impeachment of former President Donald Trump without a presiding chief justice?

Never had a president been either impeached twice or tried in the Senate as a private citizen. Who did both?

The left further broke prior precedent by impeaching Trump without a special counsel’s report, formal hearings, witnesses, and cross-examinations.

Who exactly is violating federal civil rights legislation?

New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in December decided to ration new potentially lifesaving COVID-19 medicines, partially on the basis of race, in the name of “equity.”

The agency also allegedly used racial preferences to determine who would be first tested for COVID-19. Yet such racial discrimination seems in direct violation of various title clauses of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

That law makes it clear that no public agency can use race to deny “equal utilization of any public facility which is owned, operated, or managed by or on behalf of any State or subdivision thereof.” Who is behind the new racial discrimination?

In summer 2020, many local- and state-mandated quarantines and bans on public assemblies were simply ignored with impunity—if demonstrators were associated with Black Lives Matter or protesting the police.

Currently, the Biden administration is also flagrantly embracing the neo-Confederate idea of nullifying federal law.

The Biden administration has allowed nearly 2 million foreign nationals to enter the United States illegally across the southern border—in hopes they will soon be loyal constituents.

The administration has not asked illegal entrants either to be tested for or vaccinated against COVID-19. Yet all U.S. citizens in the military and employed by the federal government are threatened with dismissal if they fail to become vaccinated.

Such selective exemption of lawbreaking non-U.S. citizens, but not millions of U.S. citizens, seems in conflict with the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

After entering the United States illegally, millions of immigrants are protected by some 550 “sanctuary city” jurisdictions. These revolutionary areas all brazenly nullify immigration law by refusing to allow federal immigration authorities to deport illegal immigrant lawbreakers.

At various times in our nation’s history—1832, 1861-65, and 1961-63—America was either racked by internal violence or fought a civil war over similar state nullification of federal laws.

In the last five years, we have indeed seen many internal threats to democracy.

Hillary Clinton hired a foreign national to concoct a dossier of dirt against her presidential opponent. She disguised her own role by projecting her efforts to use Russian sources onto Trump. She used her contacts in government and media to seed the dossier to create a national hysteria about “Russian collusion.” Clinton urged Biden not to accept the 2020 result if he lost, and herself claimed Trump was not a legitimately elected president.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has violated laws governing the chain of command. Some retired officers violated Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice by slandering their commander in chief. Others publicly were on record calling for the military to intervene to remove an elected president.

Some of the nation’s top officials in the FBI and intelligence committee have misled or lied under oath either to federal investigators or the U.S. Congress, again, mostly with impunity.

All these sustained revolutionary activities were justified as necessary to achieve the supposedly noble ends of removing Trump.

The result is Third World-like jurisprudence in America aimed at rewarding friends and punishing enemies, masked by service to social justice.

We are in a dangerous revolutionary cycle. But the threat is not so much from loud, buffoonish, one-day rioters on Jan. 6. Such clownish characters did not for 120 days loot, burn, attack courthouses and police precincts, cause over 30 deaths, injure 2,000 policemen, and destroy at least $2 billion in property—all under the banner of revolutionary justice.

Even more ominously, stone-cold sober elites are systematically waging an insidious revolution in the shadows that seeks to dismantle America’s institutions and the rule of law as we have known them.

 

(C)2022 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation. 

 

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

 

The Honorable Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Washington D.C.

Dear Representative Adam Kinzinger, 

I noticed that you are a pro-life representative that has a long record of standing up for unborn babies! It was in the 1970’s when I was first introduced to the works of Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop and I wanted to commend their writings and films to you.

I recently read about your impressive pro-life record:

Washington, DC – Today, Congressman Adam Kinzinger (IL-16) joined his House Republican colleagues in a press conference urging Democratic leadership to allow a vote on the Born Alive protections. The proposal would protect babies who survive abortion and provide them with the same medical care that any other premature baby would receive. Yesterday, the Democrats blocked the proposed legislation—for the 17th time—from coming before the House for a vote.

Joining the Congressman and House Republican leaders at the press conference this morning was Jill Stanek, an Illinois nurse and pro-life advocate who has witnessed the devastating realities of these pro-abortion laws. The Illinois legislature is currently debating two abortion bills, similar to the extreme pro-abortion agendas in New York and Virginia. 

It seems you have a grudge against President Trump while our freedoms under President Biden are being taken away. I recommend to you the article below:

The January 6 Insurrection Hoax

 • Volume 50, Number 9 • Roger Kimball

Roger Kimball
Editor and Publisher, The New Criterion

Mr. Kimball concludes his article with these words: 

That’s one melancholy lesson of the January 6 insurrection hoax: that America is fast mutating from a republic, in which individual liberty is paramount, into an oligarchy, in which conformity is increasingly demanded and enforced.

Another lesson was perfectly expressed by Donald Trump when he reflected on the unremitting tsunami of hostility that he faced as President. “They’re after you,” he more than once told his supporters. “I’m just in the way.”

 

Bingo.

You can google and get Roger Kimball article “The January 6 Insurrection Hoax”

NOW WHAT DID YOU DO TO TURN YOUR BACK ON OUR LIBERTY AND PERPETUATE THE HOAX THAT JANUARY 6TH WAS AN INSURRECTION? Read below!! 

9 Republicans voted to hold Trump aide Bannon in contempt of Congress

 

There were a few Republicans Thursday who surprised observers when they voted in support of holding former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress and referring him to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.

Prior to the vote, four Republicans were considered a lock to approve the criminal referral, according to Capitol Hill sources: Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Fred Upton of Michigan and Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio.

 

Cheney and Kinzinger are on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and have for months stood alone as the only two House Republicans willing to speak out against former President Donald Trump’s continued lies about the 2020 election. They were the only two House Republicans to vote for the formation of the select committee on June 30.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi formed the select committee after Republicans rejected a bipartisan commission that would have been evenly split between five Democrats and five Republicans. Only 35 Republicans voted for that measure when itpassed the House of Representatives, and it was defeated by a GOP filibuster in the Senate.

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 27:  (L-R) Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) arrive for the House Select Committee hearing investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol on July 27, 2021 at the Canon House Office Building in Washington, DC. Members of law enforcement will testify about the attack by supporters of former President Donald Trump on the U.S. Capitol. According to authorities, about 140 police officers were injured when they were trampled, had objects thrown at them, and sprayed with chemical irritants during the insurrection. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

 

 
More

Upton has served in the House for more than three decades, since 1987, and will face a primary challenge next year because of his willingness to stand up to Trump.

Gonzalez is retiring from Congress next year, after only four years in the House. “While my desire to build a fuller family life is at the heart of my decision, it is also true that the current state of our politics, especially many of the toxic dynamics inside our own party, is a significant factor in my decision,” Gonzalez said in September when heannounced he would not seek another term.

 

The remaining five Republicans included three who voted for impeachment — Peter Meijer of Michigan, John Katko of New York and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington — and two House Republicans who did not vote to impeach Trump: Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.

Do you realize that Americans rights are being taken away from them and would you like an example? I am going to quote Mr. Kimball again.  You can google and get Roger Kimball article “The January 6 Insurrection Hoax”

Trump seems never to have discerned what a viper’s nest our politics has become for anyone who is not a paid-up member of The Club. 

Maybe Trump understands this now. I have no insight into that question. I am pretty confident, though, that the 74 plus million people who voted for him understand it deeply. It’s another reason that The Club should be wary of celebrating its victory too expansively. 

Friedrich Hayek took one of the two epigraphs for his book, The Road to Serfdom, from the philosopher David Hume. “It is seldom,” Hume wrote, “that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” Much as I admire Hume, I wonder whether he got this quite right. Sometimes, I would argue, liberty is erased almost instantaneously.

I’d be willing to wager that Joseph Hackett, confronted with Hume’s observation, would express similar doubts. I would be happy to ask Mr. Hackett myself, but he is inaccessible. If the ironically titled “Department of Justice” has its way, he will be inaccessible for a long, long time—perhaps as long as 20 years. 

Joseph Hackett, you see, is a 51-year-old Trump supporter and member of an organization called the Oath Keepers, a group whose members have pledged to “defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.” The FBI does not like the Oath Keepers—agents arrested its leader in January and have picked up many other members in the months since. Hackett traveled to Washington from his home in Florida to join the January 6 rally. According to court documents, he entered the Capitol at 2:45 that afternoon and left some nine minutes later, at 2:54. The next day, he went home. On May 28, he was apprehended by the FBI and indicted on a long list of charges, including conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, destruction of government property, and illegally entering a restricted building. 

As far as I have been able to determine, no evidence of Hackett destroying property has come to light. According to his wife, it is not even clear that he entered the Capitol. But he certainly was in the environs. He was a member of the Oath Keepers. He was a supporter of Donald Trump. Therefore, he must be neutralized.

Joseph Hackett is only one of hundreds of citizens who have beenbranded as “domestic terrorists” trying to “overthrow the government” and who are now languishing, in appalling conditions, jailed as political prisoners of an angry state apparat.

Let me recommend that you read this letter below from Senator Ron Johnson and his colleagues:

Sen. Johnson and Colleagues Request Answers from DOJ on Unequal Application of Justice to Protestors

 

 

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), along with senators Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), sent a letter on Monday to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting information on the unequal application of justice between the individuals who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, and those involved in the unrest during the spring and summer of 2020. The senators sent 18 questions to the attorney general on what steps the DOJ has taken to prosecute individuals who committed crimes during both events, and requested a response by June 21.

“Americans have the constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances,” the senators wrote. “This constitutional right should be cherished and protected. Violence, property damage, and vandalism of any kind should not be tolerated and individuals that break the law should be prosecuted. However, the potential unequal administration of justice with respect to certain protestors is particularly concerning.”

 

The full text of the letter can be found here and below.

 

 

June 7, 2021 

The Honorable Merrick B. Garland

Attorney General

U.S. Department of Justice

950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20530

 

Dear Attorney General Garland:

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is currently dedicating enormous resources and manpower to investigating and prosecuting the criminals who breached the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. We fully support and appreciate the efforts by the DOJ and its federal, state and local law enforcement partners to hold those responsible fully accountable.

We join all Americans in the expectation that the DOJ’s response to the events of January 6 will result in rightful criminal prosecutions and accountability.  As you are aware, the mission of the DOJ is, among other things, to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.  Today, we write to request information about our concerns regarding potential unequal justice administered in response to other recent instances of mass unrest, destruction, and loss of life throughout the United States. 

During the spring and summer of 2020, individuals used peaceful protests across the country to engage in rioting and other crimes that resulted in loss of life, injuries to law enforcement officers, and significant property damage.[1]  A federal court house in Portland, Oregon, has been effectively under siege for months.[2]  Property destruction stemming from the 2020 social justice protests throughout the country will reportedly result in at least $1 billion to $2 billion in paid insurance claims.[3] 

                In June 2020, the DOJ reportedly compiled the following information regarding last year’s unrest:

  • “One federal officer [was] killed, 147 federal officers [were] injured and 600 local officers [were] injured around the country during the protests, frequently from projectiles.”[4]
  • According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), “since the start of the unrest there has been 81 Federal Firearms License burglaries of an estimated loss of 1,116 firearms; 876 reported arsons; 76 explosive incidents; and 46 ATF arrests[.]”[5]

Despite these numerous examples of violence occurring during these protests, it appears that individuals charged with committing crimes at these events may benefit from infrequent prosecutions and minimal, if any, penalties.  According to a recent article, “prosecutors have approved deals in at least half a dozen federal felony cases arising from clashes between protesters and law enforcement in Oregon last summer. The arrangements — known as deferred resolution agreements — will leave the defendants with a clean criminal record if they stay out of trouble for a period of time and complete a modest amount of community service, according to defense attorneys and court records.”[6]       

                DOJ’s apparent unwillingness to punish these individuals who allegedly committed crimes during the spring and summer 2020 protests stands in stark contrast to the harsher treatment of the individuals charged in connection with the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.  To date, DOJ has charged 510 individuals stemming from Capitol breach.[7]  DOJ maintains and updates a webpage that lists the defendants charged with crimes committed at the Capitol.  This database includes information such as the defendant’s name, charge(s), case number, case documents, location of arrest, case status, and informs readers when the entry was last updated.[8]  No such database exists for alleged perpetrators of crimes associated with the spring and summer 2020 protests.  It is unclear whether any defendants charged with crimes in connection with the Capitol breach have received deferred resolution agreements.

Americans have the constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances.  This constitutional right should be cherished and protected.  Violence, property damage, and vandalism of any kind should not be tolerated and individuals that break the law should be prosecuted.  However, the potential unequal administration of justice with respect to certain protestors is particularly concerning.  In order to assist Congress in conducting its oversight work, we respectfully request answers to the following questions by June 21, 2021:  

Spring and Summer 2020 Unrest:

  1. Did federal law enforcement utilize geolocation data from defendants’ cell phones to track protestors associated with the unrest in the spring and summer of 2020?  If so, how many times and for which locations/riots?  
  1. How many individuals who may have committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020 were arrested by law enforcement using pre-dawn raids and SWAT teams?
  1. How many individuals were incarcerated for allegedly committing crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020? 
  1. How many of these individuals are or were placed in solitary confinement?  What was the average amount of consecutive days such individuals were in solitary confinement?
  1. How many of these individuals have been released on bail?
  1. How many of these individuals were released on their own recognizance or without being required to post bond?
  1. How many of these individuals were offered deferred resolution agreements?[9]
  1. How many DOJ prosecutors were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?
  1. How many FBI personnel were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?

January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol Breach:

  1. Did federal law enforcement utilize geolocation data from defendants’ cell phones to track protestors associated with the January 6, 2021 protests and Capitol breach?  If so, how many times and how many additional arrests resulted from law enforcement utilizing geolocation information?
  2. How many individuals who may have committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach were arrested by law enforcement using pre-dawn raids and SWAT teams?
  1. How many individuals are incarcerated for allegedly committing crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
  1. How many of these individuals are or were placed in solitary confinement?  What was the average amount of consecutive days such individuals were in solitary confinement?
  1. How many of these individuals have been released on bail?
  1. How many of these individuals have been released on their own recognizance or without being required to post bond?
  1. How many of these individuals were offered deferred resolution agreements?
  1. How many DOJ prosecutors have been assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
  1. How many FBI personnel were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach?

Sincerely,

 

Ron Johnson

United States Senator

 

Tommy Tuberville

United States Senator

 

Mike Lee                                                            

United States Senator

 

Rick Scott

United States Senator

 

Ted Cruz

United States Senator

 

###

 


[1] Jennifer Kingson, Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history, Axios, Sept. 16, 2020, https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-damage-276c9bcc-a455-4067-b06a-66f9db4cea9c.html.

[2] Conrad Wilson and Jonathan Levinson, Protesters, federal officers clash outside Portland’s courthouse Thursday, OPB, Mar. 12, 2021, https://www.opb.org/article/2021/03/12/protesters-vandalize-portlands-federal-courthouse-again/.

[3] Jennifer Kingson, Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history, Axios, Sept. 16, 2020, https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-damage-276c9bcc-a455-4067-b06a-66f9db4cea9c.html.

[5] Id.

[6] Josh Gerstein, Leniency for defendants in Portland clashes could affect Capitol riot cases, Politico, Apr. 14, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/14/portland-capitol-riot-cases-481346.

[7] Madison Hall et al., 493 people have been charged in the Capitol insurrection so far. This searchable table shows them all., Insider, accessed June 4, 2021, https://www.insider.com/all-the-us-capitol-pro-trump-riot-arrests-charges-names-2021-1.

[8] Capitol Breach Cases, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, accessed May 21, 2021, https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/capitol-breach-cases?combine=&order=title&sort=asc.

[9] Josh Gerstein, Leniency for defendants in Portland clashes could affect Capitol riot cases, Politico, Apr. 14, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/14/portland-capitol-riot-cases-481346.

—-

I want to recommend to you a video on YOU TUBE that runs 28 minutes and 39 seconds by Francis Schaeffer entitled because it discusses the founding of our nation and what the FOUNDERS believed: 

How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 5 | The Revolutionary Age

 

Thank you for your time, and again I want to thank you for your support of the unborn little babies!

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, 13900 Cottontail Lane, AR 72002, cell 501-920-5733, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org

——————————————————————————————

——

Dr. Francis schaeffer How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 5 | The Revolutionary Age

 

– Whatever happened to human race? PART 1 Co-authored by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop)

C. Everett Koop
C. Everett Koop, 1980s.jpg
 
13th Surgeon General of the United States
In office
January 21, 1982 – October 1, 1989

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 2 | Slaughter of the Innocents

Francis Schaeffer – Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 3 | Death by Someone’s Choice

Mr. Hentoff with the clarinetist Edmond Hall in 1948 at the Savoy, a club in Boston.

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 4 | The Basis for Human Dignity 

Image<img class=”i-amphtml-blurry-placeholder” src=”data:;base64,Edith Schaeffer with her husband, Francis Schaeffer, in 1970 in Switzerland, where they founded L’Abri, a Christian commune.

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March 23, 2021

President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. I know that you don’t agree with my pro-life views but I wanted to challenge you as a fellow Christian to re-examine your pro-choice view. Although we are both Christians and have the Bible as the basis for our moral views, I did want you to take a close look at the views of the pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff too.  Hentoff became convinced of the pro-life view because of secular evidence that shows that the unborn child is human. I would ask you to consider his evidence and then of course reverse your views on abortion.

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The pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff wrote a fine article below I wanted to share with you.

Nat Hentoff is an atheist, but he became a pro-life activist because of the scientific evidence that shows that the unborn child is a distinct and separate human being and even has a separate DNA. His perspective is a very intriguing one that I thought you would be interested in. I have shared before many   cases (Bernard Nathanson, Donald Trump, Paul Greenberg, Kathy Ireland)    when other high profile pro-choice leaders have changed their views and this is just another case like those. I have contacted the White House over and over concerning this issue and have even received responses. I am hopeful that people will stop and look even in a secular way (if they are not believers) at this abortion debate and see that the unborn child is deserving of our protection.That is why the writings of Nat Hentoff of the Cato Institute are so crucial.

In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented  against abortion (Episode 1),  infanticide (Episode 2),   euthanasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close look at the truth claims of the Bible.

Francis Schaeffer

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I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have.  Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.

Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION

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Dr. Francis schaeffer – from Part 5 of Whatever happened to human race?) Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 5 | Truth and History

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – A Christian Manifesto – Dr. Francis Schaeffer Lecture

Francis Schaeffer – A 700 Club Special! ~ Francis Schaeffer 1982

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – 1984 SOUNDWORD LABRI CONFERENCE VIDEO – Q&A With Francis & Edith Schaeffer

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Jewish World Review June 12, 2006/ 16 Sivan, 5766

 

Insisting on life

http://www.NewsandOpinion.com | A longtime friend of mine is married to a doctor who also performs abortions. At the dinner table one recent evening, their 9-year-old son — having heard a word whose meaning he didn’t know — asked, “What is an abortion?” His mother, choosing her words carefully, described the procedure in simple terms.

“But,” said her son, “that means killing the baby.” The mother then explained that there are certain months during which an abortion cannot be performed, with very few exceptions. The 9-year-old shook his head. “But,” he said, “it doesn’t matter what month. It still means killing the babies.”

Hearing the story, I wished it could be repeated to the justices of the Supreme Court, in the hope that at least five of them might act on this 9-year-old’s clarity of thought and vision.

The boy’s spontaneous insistence on the primacy of life also reminded me of a powerful pro-life speaker and writer who, many years ago, helped me become a pro-lifer. He was a preacher, a black preacher. He said: “There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of a higher order than the right to life.

“That,” he continued, “was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore out of your right to be concerned.”

This passionate reverend used to warn: “Don’t let the pro-choicers convince you that a fetus isn’t a human being. That’s how the whites dehumanized us … The first step was to distort the image of us as human beings in order to justify what they wanted to do — and not even feel they’d done anything wrong.”

That preacher was Jesse Jackson. Later, he decided to run for the presidency — and it was a credible campaign that many found inspiring in its focus on what still had to be done on civil rights. But Jackson had by now become “pro-choice” — much to the appreciation of most of those in the liberal base.

The last time I saw Jackson was years later, on a train from Washington to New York. I told him of a man nominated, but not yet confirmed, to a seat on a federal circuit court of appeals. This candidate was a strong supporter of capital punishment — which both the Rev. Jackson and I oppose, since it involves the irreversible taking of a human life by the state.

I asked Jackson if he would hold a press conference in Washington, criticizing the nomination, and he said he would. The reverend was true to his word; the press conference took place; but that nominee was confirmed to the federal circuit court. However, I appreciated Jackson’s effort.

On that train, I also told Jackson that I’d been quoting — in articles, and in talks with various groups — from his compelling pro-life statements. I asked him if he’d had any second thoughts on his reversal of those views.

Usually quick to respond to any challenge that he is not consistent in his positions, Jackson paused, and seemed somewhat disquieted at my question. Then he said to me, “I’ll get back to you on that.” I still patiently await what he has to say.

As time goes on, my deepening concern with the consequences of abortion is that its validation by the Supreme Court, as a constitutional practice, helps support the convictions of those who, in other controversies — euthanasia, assisted suicide and the “futility doctrine” by certain hospital ethics committees — believe that there are lives not worth continuing.

Around the time of my conversation with Jackson on the train, I attended a conference on euthanasia at Clark College in Worcester, Mass. There, I met Derek Humphry, the founder of the Hemlock Society, and already known internationally as a key proponent of the “death with dignity” movement.

He told me that for some years in this country, he had considerable difficulty getting his views about assisted suicide and, as he sees it, compassionate euthanasia into the American press.

“But then,” Humphry told me, “a wonderful thing happened. It opened all the doors for me.”

“What was that wonderful thing?” I asked.

“Roe v. Wade,” he answered.

The devaluing of human life — as the 9-year-old at the dinner table put it more vividly — did not end with making abortion legal, and therefore, to some people, moral. The word “baby” does not appear in Roe v. Wade — let alone the word “killing.”

And so, the termination of “lives not worth living” goes on.

 

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Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. Now after presenting the secular approach of Nat Hentoff I wanted to make some comments concerning our shared Christian faith.  I  respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,

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By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

Tucker Carlson breaks down the Whitmer kidnapping plot and its alleged ties to the FBI

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https://video.foxnews.com/v/6310973230112

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https://video.foxnews.com/v/6310973230112

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6310973230112

Tucker Carlson: There’s a reason the public’s confidence in the FBI has plummeted

Tucker Carlson breaks down the Whitmer kidnapping plot and its alleged ties to the FBI

By all accounts, Attorney General Merrick Garland was shocked to hear criticism of the raid on Mar-a-Lago last week. It turns out that Garland lives in such a tiny, airless world of left-wing activists and sycophants that it had never occurred to him that anyone might object to siccing the FBI on Joe Biden’s political opponents.

When woke Twitter and The New York Times are your only sources of news, police state politics seems perfectly normal. Trump is bad. Find a reason to arrest him. That’s how they think. So, if you watched Garland carefully at his press conference other day, you may have noticed that he appeared highly annoyed by the idea of having to stoop to explain himself to mere citizens. But he found a solution. Being a liberal, Merrick Garland’s first instinct was to seize the role of victim because when you’re a victim, you’ve already won the argument. You don’t have to explain yourself. You don’t have to change your behavior. You are, by definition, the good guy. The victim always is. Being oppressed means never having to say you’re sorry.

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6310973230112

So, as Garland explained at the press conference, the FBI was in fact the real victim here. Mean old Fox News was asking unfair questions and that’s just wrong. So, the real problem isn’t that America’s most powerful law enforcement agency is dangerously politicized and corrupt. No, the real problem here is the people have dared to complain about it, and they must stop immediately or else they are domestic terrorists.

As Garland put it, with what seemed like genuine outrage, I will not stand silently by as the integrity of the FBI is unfairly attacked. Well, of course, media organizations loved it. There’s nothing they revere more than a victim. Victims are holy. So, they immediately took Garland side. “They’re being mean to the FBI. Stop it, guys. That’s not allowed.” But if you take three steps back and think about it for a second, Garland’s position, which effectively is “You’re not allowed to criticize me. I’m the attorney general of the United States” is pretty weird.

Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks to announce a team to conduct a critical incident review of the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, during a media availability at the Department of Justice , Wednesday, June 8, 2022, in Washington. 

Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks to announce a team to conduct a critical incident review of the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, during a media availability at the Department of Justice , Wednesday, June 8, 2022, in Washington.  (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

In fact, it is an inversion of the traditional relationship between the U.S. government and the population that supposedly serves. According to Merrick Garland, the onus is on American citizens to respect the FBI. “Obey, it’s your duty.” But of course, that’s not true. In a democracy, the onus is on the FBI to earn the respect of Americans. They work for you, remember? And lately they have not been doing a very good job and people know that they haven’t been.

The public’s confidence in the FBI has plummeted by double digits in just the last few years and unfortunately, there’s a reason for that and it’s a huge problem. We need the FBI. You can’t just defund federal law enforcement. There are a lot of federal laws, most of them are silly, some of them are not silly at all. They’re very serious and they must be enforced. So, we have to have an FBI and it has to be an FBI we can trust and we can’t trust it until its behavior merits trust, until it’s honest, and to the extent it can be transparent, consistent in the way it enforces the law.

We have to have a federal law enforcement agency like that. We can’t just make it go away and hope for the best, but we’re nowhere near that point because the people who are supposed to be overseeing the FBI have ignored egregious examples of corruption over many years, but they’re getting very hard to ignore because they’re just so obvious now and it’s not just the raid on Mar-a-Lago. Consider the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping case. You may remember that story. It’s from the fall of 2020. You may even have followed it a little bit and heard how it ended. So, what seemed like a terrorism plot was, in fact, a setup by the government to make a group of ordinary people in Michigan look like terrifying right-wing extremists, those violent White nationalists Joe Biden is always mumbling about.

Well, turns out there aren’t enough of those people in real life. They’re pretty rare, actually. It’s not a very racist country, despite what they tell you. So, the Justice Department had to go create some and they did and that’s not just our opinion. That was the finding of a federal jury in Michigan. So, it’s a shocking story, really, but the details of that story are even worse than that. They are beyond belief and we’ll tell you what they are in just a minute, but first to set the scene, here is Gretchen Whitmer, herself, governor of Michigan, announcing that she was the intended target of a terrorism plot. This is from October 8, 2020.

GOV. GRETCHEN WHITMER: Earlier today, Attorney General Dana Nessel was joined by officials from the Department of Justice and the FBI to announce state and federal charges against 13 members of two militia groups who were preparing to kidnap and possibly kill me. If you break the law or conspire to commit heinous acts of violence against anyone, we will find you. We will hold you accountable and we will bring you to justice.  

“We’ll bring you to justice. I’m so important that militia groups have organized to take me out.” What a self-aggrandizing description, but the last thing she said, “we’ll bring you to justice,” well, they actually tried to do that. They had a trial and then a retrial and thanks to that, we have testimony and cross-examination that reveals what actually happened, how the FBI engineered this plot.

Now, most of the media were paying zero attention to this. Julie Kelly of American Greatness has actually covered it. We’re grateful to her for what she’s found. Here’s the outline. In early 2020, a 35-year-old Army veteran called Dan Chappel (nicknamed Big Dan) was working as a contractor for the U.S. Postal Service. He drove delivery trucks. He was Scrolling Facebook one night and Chappel says he found a pro-Second Amendment group called “Wolverine Watchmen.” He says he just happened upon it. So, Chappel testified that he was concerned by the group’s criticism of law enforcement. So, he went to a police officer, a friend of his, and asked for advice. None of the messages within the group violated any law, but somehow, within a week, Chappel wound up connected to the FBI, to several FBI agents, including a special agent called Jayson Chambers.

TOP TRUMP TARGETS CHENEY, MURKOWSKI, FACE VOTERS IN TUESDAY’S PRIMARIES IN WYOMING, ALASKA

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer addresses the press before signing the final piece of a $76 billion state budget into law, Wednesday, July 20, 2022 in Detroit.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer addresses the press before signing the final piece of a $76 billion state budget into law, Wednesday, July 20, 2022 in Detroit. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Now, we learned through testimony in the trial this week why Chambers was interested in the case. It turns out that Chambers, in violation of FBI policy, was running a side hustle. He just incorporated a security firm called Exe-Intel, and he saw his work on the Whitmer case as a way to promote his own business. We know that because throughout 2020, someone affiliated with his business, their Twitter account, repeatedly tweeted nonpublic information about the kidnapping case that Dan Chappel was building for the FBI.

So, it’s not surprising, given the built-in incentives here, which were against policy once again, that Chambers appeared to do everything he could to make sure the investigation went according to plan. Now, no investigation can go according to plan because there shouldn’t be a plan. An investigation is the process of finding out what happened. An investigation is not the process of orchestrating things to happen, but that’s exactly what this became.

In all, the FBI with chambers is the handler paid Chappel (Big Dan) more than $60,000 in the course of just a few months. Today,Chappel testified that he made more money working for the FBI in seven months that he did working for the United States Postal Service over the course of an entire year.

So, there’s a lot of money moving from the FBI, the Federal Treasury, to this informant. So, the FBI told Chappel that in exchange for all of that money, he needed to start assembling a group of right-wing extremists for the FBI to prosecute. They made the whole thing up, and he did that with the FBI’s help. Within a few weeks, the FBI created a new Facebook group called “Patriot Three Percenters.” This is why you should be careful of Facebook, by the way.” Oh, it’s just a screw-up. It looks interesting.”

TRUMP RAID SHOWS THAT FBI, JUSTICE DEPARTMENT WANT TO DECIDE WHO CAN BE OUR PRESIDENT

Okay. So, Chappel and several members of that group then attended a protest at the Michigan State Capitol. “Look at you, bringing people together,” the FBI handler texted Chappel. Now throughout that protest, which didn’t look a whole lot different from the January 6 protest, Chappel kept in touch, close touch, with federal agents. He informed the feds that a 37-year-old man called Adam Fox was at the state capitol during the protest. Adam Fox has got to be one of the least powerful people in our society. He lived alone with his two dogs in the basement of a vacuum repair shop. Why? Because he had no money whatsoever.

In fact, he had so little money that in order to get running water, to brush his teeth or use the bathroom, he had to go to a nearby Mexican restaurant and use their men’s room. So, Chappel began texting this diabolical mastermind, Fox, hundreds of times. But Fox seemed inherently moderate, actually. He wrote things like this, “Our goal is to restore the constitutional republic.”

Fox also said, “In our hearts and minds, we are not domestic terrorists.” Oh, sounds very dangerous. So, based on those text messages, the FBI gave Chappel more instructions. They provided Chappel with several $5,000 limit credit cards, and they told him to give those credit cards to Fox and tell them to spend it on guns and ammunition. So, Fox, despite the fact he had no money at all, had used the men’s room in a Mexican restaurant to brush his teeth, refused. On five separate occasions, he refused to take the credit cards to buy guns and ammunition. Then (what a terrorist) then in July of 2020, Chappel suggested that Fox and others fire rounds into the governor’s mansion, as well as at her cottage, but the alleged plotters, including Adam Fox, again refused. They didn’t want to hurt the governor.

Ultimately, in August of 2020, the group started to splinter. Chappel and other informants were instructed to keep the group together. “No, keep it together. Keep the threat real.” So, they introduced another undercover agent, [who] pretended to be an explosives expert. He showed the group a video of a bomb that blew up a vehicle to prove he knew what he was doing. Where did that video come from?

Well, it was made by the FBI. Is this shaking your confidence a little bit? These details are real, by the way. They came out at trial. Then the bureau recruited a convicted felon and a long time FBI informant called Stephen Robeson to introduce a new idea to Fox as well as to Barry Croft. This time the idea was to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer. Robeson, with the FBI’s money, organized several events including a national militia conference in Ohio, training in Wisconsin and a meeting in Delaware, FBI orchestrating all of this.

On July 18, 2020, at one such militia meeting, again organized by the FBI when they took a right-wing extremists. In this case, they created them. So, at this militia meeting, an alleged plotter, are called Ty Garbin rejected out of hand the idea of kidnapping Gretchen Whitmer. Didn’t want to do it. “No, I don’t think so. Kidnap the governor? No, we’re not crazy. We just want a constitutional republic.” Okay. Then the topic came up again in August and then another defendant called Daniel Harris was equally adamant. “No snatch and grab,” he said, “I swear to f-ing God.”

So, clearly they said it emphatically out loud explicitly these were people were not interested in kidnapping Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, but the FBI kept pushing.

The FBI informants drove the defendants to Gretchen Whitmer’s home. Then they suggested killing the governor of Virginia, also a Democrat. On September 5, 2020, FBI Special Agent Jayson Chambers texted Chappel, “Mission is to kill the governor specifically.” What country is this? To pressure one of the defendants, a man called Barry Croft , into doing that, one FBI agent admitted this week that a female informant slept in the same hotel room as Croft. It was a honey trap. FBI agents also testified this week that they regularly got high with Adam Fox. They smoked weed with Adam Fox. They said he was so high, in fact, he was high in all of his meetings with them. Again, that’s against FBI policy. You can’t just give drugs to people and hope they do something bad.

Well, after all of this failed to produce a kidnapping plot, it fell on yet another FBI agent called Richard Trask to build the criminal case against the defendants. Now, that same year, Trask, who is now been convicted of beating his wife, called Donald Trump a piece of excrement on social media. Really? Yeah. Just nonpartisan federal bureaucrats, public servants doing their job. Now, incredibly, after all of this, the person in charge of the field office overseeing the Whitmer investigation in 2020, a man called Steven D’antuono , was promoted, not fired, promoted to lead the DC field office in late 2020. Are you connecting the dots here?

In other words, the guy who made sure that FBI informants were active during a rally in the Michigan State House in 2020 as part of this concocted plot. That same guy went on to become the guy who oversaw the investigation into—wait for it—January 6, the election justice protest they’re calling an insurrection. But just remember, don’t ask whether the FBI used informants to entrap anyone on January 6. No, you can’t do that or else you’re an insurrectionist yourself. Nor are you allowed to ask why Steven’s agents were involved in the raid on Mar-a-Lago, even though that’s in Florida, and he’s in Washington. As it turns out, questions like this are hate speech. Watch.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: All the buzz on the Internet and all over the airwaves. It does, it does have an impact.  

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Well, I mean, you saw buzz. Well, there’s an awful lot of hate speech coming from pro-Trump media outlets just attacking the nation’s premier law enforcement agency simply because Donald Trump is being investigated.

Oh, it’s hate speech. Now, if there’s one thing we know about hate speech is that it’s not protected by the First Amendment. You’ve read that part of the Constitution which says you can say whatever you want as long as MSNBC doesn’t designate your words hate speech. So, when they call any criticism of the FBI, that would be Joe Biden’s personal Defense Force, they call that hate speech, what they’re really saying is you’re committing a crime and see where this is going, but the truth is, there are still questions about the FBI’s behavior on and around January 6 and given what happened in Michigan, where we know beyond question that the FBI tried to create an act of terror. It’s fair to ask, “What exactly did happen on January 6?”

And why is the FBI still hiding footage critically of the person who planted a pipe bomb outside the DNC on January 6 while Kamala Harris was apparently inside, something that she lied about for months? What exactly is going on here? We’re, of course, not alleging anything. We don’t know the answer, but we know for a fact, given the FBI’s behavior and we report this with great sadness over the last several years, it is worth getting to the bottom of this. In fact, we have to if we’re going to restore confidence in federal law enforcement. No one is asking these questions really apart from Revolver News and here’s what they’ve come up with. Watch this.

NARRATOR: Camera one shows the pipe bomber walking up to the DNC grounds at roughly 7:42 p.m.. He sits on bench one, then he gets up and walks off screen. According to the FBI, he walks the length of the DNC building and 10 minutes later he comes back to the same bench area and sits on bench two. There at 7:52 p.m., camera two captures the pipe bomber sitting on bench two and we are told, planting the pipe bomb by the side of the bench next to the bush. We are told the pipe bomber plants the pipe bomb there, but we can’t see it. Camera two is occluded by a giant bush that blocks the scene. The pipe bomber even looks at camera two head on for some reason. It’s very frustrating because we can’t see the moment the pipe bomber plants the pipe bomb, but the FBI can. That’s because the whole scene should be captured on camera one as well, and much more clearly than camera two. Camera one has a clear shot of both benches. If the FBI released the full tape from camera one, we could see the pipe bomber planting the bomb. 

Okay. So, what exactly happened outside the DNC on January 6, and why is no one asking that question, and why has the Department of Justice not told us? We’ve heard everything they want us to know about January 6. Why not more about this?

Open letter to President Obama (Part 644)

(Emailed to White House on 6-10-13.)

President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here.

The federal government debt is growing so much that it is endangering us because if things keep going like they are now we will not have any money left for the national defense because we are so far in debt as a nation. We have been spending so much on our welfare state through food stamps and other programs that I am worrying that many of our citizens are becoming more dependent on government and in many cases they are losing their incentive to work hard because of the welfare trap the government has put in place. Other nations in Europe have gone down this road and we see what mess this has gotten them in. People really are losing their faith in big government and they want more liberty back. It seems to me we have to get back to the founding  principles that made our country great.  We also need to realize that a big government will encourage waste and corruption. The recent scandals in our government have proved my point. In fact, the jokes you made at Ohio State about possibly auditing them are not so funny now that reality shows how the IRS was acting more like a monster out of control. Also raising taxes on the job creators is a very bad idea too. The Laffer Curve clearly demonstrates that when the tax rates are raised many individuals will move their investments to places where they will not get taxed as much.

______________________

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6310973230112

We can fix the IRS problem by going to the flat tax and lowering the size of government.

Did President Obama and his team of Chicago cronies deliberately target the Tea Party in hopes of thwarting free speech and political participation?

Was this part of a campaign to win the 2012 election by suppressing Republican votes?

Perhaps, but I’ve warned that it’s never a good idea to assume top-down conspiracies when corruption, incompetence, politics, ideology, greed, and self-interest are better explanations for what happens in Washington.

Writing for the Washington Examiner, Tim Carney has a much more sober and realistic explanation of what happened at the IRS.

If you take a group of Democrats who are also unionized government employees, and put them in charge of policing political speech, it doesn’t matter how professional and well-intentioned they are. The result will be much like the debacle in the Cincinnati office of the IRS. …there’s no reason to even posit evil intent by the IRS officials who formulated, approved or executed the inappropriate guidelines for picking groups to scrutinize most closely. …The public servants figuring out which groups qualified for 501(c)4 “social welfare” non-profit status were mostly Democrats surrounded by mostly Democrats. …In the 2012 election, every donation traceable to this office went to President Obama or liberal Sen. Sherrod Brown. This is an environment where even those trying to be fair could develop a disproportionate distrust of the Tea Party. One IRS worker — a member of NTEU and contributor to its PAC, which gives 96 percent of its money to Democratic candidates — explained it this way: “The reason NTEU mostly supports Democratic candidates for office is because Democratic candidates are mostly more supportive of civil servants/government employees.”

Tim concludes with a wise observation.

As long as we have a civil service workforce that leans Left, and as long as we have an income tax system that requires the IRS to police political speech, conservative groups can always expect special IRS scrutiny.

And my colleague Doug Bandow, in an article for the American Spectator, adds his sage analysis.

The real issue is the expansive, expensive bureaucratic state and its inherent threat to any system of limited government, rule of law, and individual liberty. …the broader the government’s authority, the greater its need for revenue, the wider its enforcement power, the more expansive the bureaucracy’s discretion, the increasingly important the battle for political control, and the more bitter the partisan fight, the more likely government officials will abuse their positions, violate rules, laws, and Constitution, and sacrifice people’s liberties. The blame falls squarely on Congress, not the IRS.

I actually think he is letting the IRS off the hook too easily.

But Doug’s overall point obviously is true.

…the denizens of Capitol Hill also have created a tax code marked by outrageous complexity, special interest electioneering, and systematic social engineering. Legislators have intentionally created avenues for tax avoidance to win votes, and then complained about widespread tax avoidance to win votes.

So what’s the answer?

The most obvious response to the scandal — beyond punishing anyone who violated the law — is tax reform. Implement a flat tax and you’d still have an IRS, but the income tax would be less complex, there would be fewer “preferences” for the agency to police, and rates would be lower, leaving taxpayers with less incentive for aggressive tax avoidance. …Failing to address the broader underlying factors also would merely set the stage for a repeat performance in some form a few years hence. …More fundamentally, government, and especially the national government, should do less. Efficient social engineering may be slightly better than inefficient social engineering, but no social engineering would be far better.

Amen. Let’s rip out the internal revenue code and replace it with a simple and fair flat tax.

But here’s the challenge. We know the solution, but it will be almost impossible to implement good policy unless we figure out some way to restrain the spending side of the fiscal ledger.

___________________________

At the risk of over-simplifying, we will never get tax reform unless we figure out how to implement entitlement reform.

Here’s another Foden cartoon, which I like because it has the same theme asthis Jerry Holbert cartoon, showing big government as a destructive and malicious force.

IRS Cartoon 5

_____________

Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com

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Tucker Carlson: Biden Is Using Law Enforcement to Cling to Power

——

Tucker Carlson: Biden Is Using Law Enforcement to Cling to Power

 

 

Fox News host Tucker Carlson eviscerated the Biden administration Monday night for using law enforcement to target its political adversaries, most recently with the raid on former President Donald Trump’s Florida home.

“This could get very bad, very fast and the Biden people know that perfectly well,” Carlson told viewers. “They know what could happen if they continue down this path of using law enforcement to cling to power. But they don’t care because they’re facing a repudiation from voters and they’re desperate and they’ll do anything but at what cost? Pray they pull back before it’s too late.”

Watch the full monologue for read a portion of the transcript below. The full transcript is available from Fox News.

We’ve had a few days to reflect on it and have concluded that no honest person could believe that the raid on Donald Trump’s home last week was a legitimate act of law enforcement. It was not. Even the Biden administration didn’t really bother to pretend otherwise. The official explanations that we have heard for the raid make no sense at all. It doesn’t matter how forcefully they are repeated by the media, they’re nonsensical. In case you’ve forgotten what they are, here’s the very first explanation they gave us. 

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS, HISTORIAN: Why did this guy have these ultra-classified documents in the basement of Mar-a-Lago unsecured, where they could be presumably broken in on or stolen or photographed and given to hostile foreign powers or conceivably even terrorists?  

Are you listening to this? So, it’s not just classified documents in the basement of Mar-a-Lago, but according to Michael Beschloss, the pet historian of the halfwits who run our country, these are ultra-classified documents, the most classified kind, just sitting there helpless in boxes like maidens in bikinis, waiting to be photographed by terrorists. You just imagine al-Qaeda taking selfies with these documents, one after the other relentlessly, repulsive and terrifying. 

Is it true?  At this point, no one has provided proof that it is true, not that august historians like Michael Beschloss wait around for actual evidence before pronouncing final judgment on cable news shows. They just go ahead, but for the sake of argument on our show, we’re going to say that it is in fact true and that Donald Trump did, in fact, have boxes of classified documents sitting in his cellar. 

Let’s say that’s true. What would it mean? Well, what it means depends in part on what the documents were. Did those documents contain meaningful information? Should they have been classified in the first place? Is there a good reason the rest of us should not have been allowed to see those documents? 

Now, you never hear those questions asked in public, but anyone who lives in Washington knows perfectly well they should be asked in public a lot, because in Washington, virtually anything can qualify as an official state secret and often does.  

In 2011, to name one of many examples, the CIA finally declassified a trove of documents from the First World War. These documents dated back to 1917, almost 100 years before. One of these documents, the most ultra-secret of them, contained a recipe for disappearing ink. Now, why would federal bureaucrats spend an entire century hiding an outdated recipe for ink that you can buy legally in any magic store for your fifth grader? Good question. No one asked it. 

Instead, then CIA Director Leon Panetta issued a press release bragging about how he was giving the secret ink recipe to a grateful public. “These documents remain classified for nearly a century until recent advancements in technology made it possible to release them,” Panetta wrote. “When historical information is no longer sensitive, we take seriously our responsibility to share it with the American people.” 

There was no hint whatsoever that Panetta was joking when he wrote that. You’re welcome, America. Here’s your century-old ink recipe. Again, this was in 2011. So, think it through. You had to wonder what recent technological advancements was Leon Panetta talking about in the press release and just how recent were they? Was Panetta actually saying that CIA spies were still communicating in World War One era disappearing ink as of, say, 2010 or even as of 1950? Please. It was bizarre. Of course, it was another lie from the people in charge.  

Here’s the truth. The documents have been classified for 100 years, not because disappearing ink was any sort of national security secret. They’d been classified because the government’s default position in every case is that you have no right to see anything ever. It is their information. It is not yours. You’re not a citizen. You’re just the taxpayer. Shut up and pay for it all. To this day, there are large amounts of classified information remaining from World War II. These are documents written 80 years ago by people whose grandchildren are now old, but you still can’t see it. You don’t have the clearances. Sorry. 

So, when they tell you that Donald Trump had classified documents in his basement, those materials could be literally anything, but once again, for the sake of argument, we’re going to stipulate that Trump did have possession of documents that were classified for some good reason. Documents that, for example, we legitimately would not want the Chinese government to see. If that is true, would it justify what happened? Would it justify sending a large team of federal agents to shut down the entire southern tip of Palm Beach to raid Mar-a-Lago on a weekday? No, it wouldn’t. So, one of the laws they’re telling you that Trump broke doesn’t even have criminal penalties attached to it because it’s not serious enough.  

Federal paramilitaries don’t show up at your house when you violate the Presidential Records Act and in fact, as we later learned, the actual warrant for the raid, which was signed by an openly partisan judge because you couldn’t make any of this up if you tried, once represented Jeffrey Epstein’s side in the famous underage sex case, that judge. That judge allowed the FBI to seize virtually every piece of paper in Donald Trump’s house, whether or not it had ever been classified.  

They took Roger Stone’s clemency order, for example. That had been on the front page of the Washington Post, so was therefore probably not a secret. Apparently, the feds even walked off with Donald Trump’s passports preventing him from leaving the country. So, whatever else this raid was, this raid was not about the Presidential Records Act. That explanation is absurd. It’s almost as ridiculous as the claim that the White House knew nothing about the raid before it happened. Right. Please. If they’re going to lie to us, they ought to try a little harder. So, what was this raid about? Well, we’re keeping track. So, here’s the second explanation they gave us. 

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Now with Donald Trump, suddenly, when we’re talking about the possibility of nuclear weapons, classified documents of the highest classified status being stolen from the White House and taken to Mar-a-Lago. 

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Just a reminder of why the Justice Department might be a little bit concerned about nuclear secrets knocking around Mar-a-Lago.  

SCARBOROUGH: Two words for you, my friend. Two words. “Nuclear secrets.” 

What! Nuclear secrets? Nuclear secrets are the highest classified status. Ultra-secret nuclear secrets. Donald Trump stole those. Ladies and gentlemen, America is in danger tonight. That was their new explanation for the raid. Now, that revised storyline was leaked anonymously to an obedient press corps, which, as you just saw, repeated every word like it was verifiable fact. 

Once again, no one even bothered to explain what these nuclear secrets might be. What’s a nuclear secret exactly and what did Trump plan to do with them? Did he plan to defect to Moscow, give the launch codes to Vladimir Putin, start his own rogue state in the Bahamas? Nobody said, but that didn’t stop former CIA director Michael Hayden from suggesting that Donald Trump should be executed, fried to death in the electric chair, for committing these crimes, whatever these crimes were. We still don’t know. 

There weren’t a lot of facts floating around. There still aren’t, but there was a reason for that. They couldn’t tell you the whole story. They couldn’t release all the documents because that would jeopardize American national security. So instead, you’re just going to have to trust them and of course, you’re going to have to listen to their outrage. There was a lot of that. There was endless huffing on television about something called the rule of law and how absolutely no one is above that. No one. Not even a former president. 

We’re informed of this by the same people who paid rioters to burn down our cities, the ones who eliminated bail, the ones who encouraged tens of millions of foreign nationals to ignore our federal immigration statutes and move to our country permanently at public expense as a reward for breaking our laws, but keep in mind, no one is above the law. That was definitely the word from Joe Scarborough, a man who was accused of committing murder while serving as a member of Congress, yet somehow move seamlessly to the MSNBC lineup without being charged or even investigated. No one is above the law. Remember that. 

So, it was an awful lot of posturing in the days after the raid. But none of it was very effective because again, it didn’t make sense. Even propaganda has to add up. Two plus two equals nine doesn’t convince anybody.  

Nuclear secrets? If the Biden administration really believed that, if they really thought Donald Trump possessed documents that posed an imminent danger to American national security, then you have to wonder, why did they wait a year and a half to do anything about it? Why did they wait till 90 days before a midterm election, an election that polls suggest they will lose? It doesn’t make, oh, wait, actually, it does make sense. 

In fact, the question answers itself. Despite superficial appearances, the raid of Mar-a-Lago was not an act of law enforcement. It was the opposite of that. It was an attack on the rule of law. It was a power grab. As Matt Boose put it recently, in American Greatness, the raid on Trump’s home “was exactly what it looks like, a show of force against the opposition leader by the head of state and his personal bodyguards. If this happened in, any other country would immediately be denounced as the act of a dictator.” 

That’s true, but it’s hard to hear those words anyway. As an American, you don’t want to believe it and yet here are the essential facts. The same week the Biden White House announced that Joe Biden will definitely seek a second term as president, the same week, the Biden Justice Department launched an armed raid against Biden’s main rival in that same presidential election. That’s what happened. Pause for a minute. If The New York Times told you that something like that was going on in Chad or the Gambia, what would your reaction be? 

You’d probably say to yourself, “Thank God I don’t live in a place like that, a country where politicians used armed men to cling to power.” Oh, but you do live in a country like that. You do. The evidence is all around us. We just don’t want to see it.

 

 

———-

 

left undermines America width=

The left praises democracy when elected but claims the right will destroy democracy when it loses. Pictured: Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton discusses the 2016 election during her 2017 book tour. (Photo: Bastiaan Slabbers, NurPhoto/Getty Images)

 

 

Recently, Democrats have been despondent over President Joe Biden’s sinking poll numbers. His policies on the economy, energy, foreign policy, the border, and COVID-19 all have lost majority support.

As a result, the left now variously alleges that either in 2022, when it expects to lose the Congress, or in 2024, when it fears losing the presidency, Republicans will “destroy democracy” or stage a coup.

A cynic might suggest that those on the left praise democracy when they get elected, only to claim it is broken when they lose. Or they hope to avoid their defeat by trying to terrify the electorate. Or they mask their own revolutionary propensities by projecting them onto their opponents.

After all, who is trying to federalize election laws in national elections contrary to the spirit of the Constitution? Who wishes to repeal or circumvent the Electoral College? Who wishes to destroy the more than 180-year-old Senate filibuster, the over 150-year-old nine-justice Supreme Court, and the more than 60-year-old 50-state union?

Who is attacking the founding constitutional idea of two senators per state?

The Constitution also clearly states that “When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.” Who slammed through the impeachment of former President Donald Trump without a presiding chief justice?

Never had a president been either impeached twice or tried in the Senate as a private citizen. Who did both?

The left further broke prior precedent by impeaching Trump without a special counsel’s report, formal hearings, witnesses, and cross-examinations.

Who exactly is violating federal civil rights legislation?

New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in December decided to ration new potentially lifesaving COVID-19 medicines, partially on the basis of race, in the name of “equity.”

The agency also allegedly used racial preferences to determine who would be first tested for COVID-19. Yet such racial discrimination seems in direct violation of various title clauses of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

That law makes it clear that no public agency can use race to deny “equal utilization of any public facility which is owned, operated, or managed by or on behalf of any State or subdivision thereof.” Who is behind the new racial discrimination?

In summer 2020, many local- and state-mandated quarantines and bans on public assemblies were simply ignored with impunity—if demonstrators were associated with Black Lives Matter or protesting the police.

Currently, the Biden administration is also flagrantly embracing the neo-Confederate idea of nullifying federal law.

The Biden administration has allowed nearly 2 million foreign nationals to enter the United States illegally across the southern border—in hopes they will soon be loyal constituents.

The administration has not asked illegal entrants either to be tested for or vaccinated against COVID-19. Yet all U.S. citizens in the military and employed by the federal government are threatened with dismissal if they fail to become vaccinated.

Such selective exemption of lawbreaking non-U.S. citizens, but not millions of U.S. citizens, seems in conflict with the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

After entering the United States illegally, millions of immigrants are protected by some 550 “sanctuary city” jurisdictions. These revolutionary areas all brazenly nullify immigration law by refusing to allow federal immigration authorities to deport illegal immigrant lawbreakers.

At various times in our nation’s history—1832, 1861-65, and 1961-63—America was either racked by internal violence or fought a civil war over similar state nullification of federal laws.

In the last five years, we have indeed seen many internal threats to democracy.

Hillary Clinton hired a foreign national to concoct a dossier of dirt against her presidential opponent. She disguised her own role by projecting her efforts to use Russian sources onto Trump. She used her contacts in government and media to seed the dossier to create a national hysteria about “Russian collusion.” Clinton urged Biden not to accept the 2020 result if he lost, and herself claimed Trump was not a legitimately elected president.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has violated laws governing the chain of command. Some retired officers violated Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice by slandering their commander in chief. Others publicly were on record calling for the military to intervene to remove an elected president.

Some of the nation’s top officials in the FBI and intelligence committee have misled or lied under oath either to federal investigators or the U.S. Congress, again, mostly with impunity.

All these sustained revolutionary activities were justified as necessary to achieve the supposedly noble ends of removing Trump.

The result is Third World-like jurisprudence in America aimed at rewarding friends and punishing enemies, masked by service to social justice.

We are in a dangerous revolutionary cycle. But the threat is not so much from loud, buffoonish, one-day rioters on Jan. 6. Such clownish characters did not for 120 days loot, burn, attack courthouses and police precincts, cause over 30 deaths, injure 2,000 policemen, and destroy at least $2 billion in property—all under the banner of revolutionary justice.

Even more ominously, stone-cold sober elites are systematically waging an insidious revolution in the shadows that seeks to dismantle America’s institutions and the rule of law as we have known them.

 

(C)2022 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation. 

 

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

 

The Honorable Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Washington D.C.

Dear Representative Adam Kinzinger, 

I noticed that you are a pro-life representative that has a long record of standing up for unborn babies! It was in the 1970’s when I was first introduced to the works of Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop and I wanted to commend their writings and films to you.

I recently read about your impressive pro-life record:

Washington, DC – Today, Congressman Adam Kinzinger (IL-16) joined his House Republican colleagues in a press conference urging Democratic leadership to allow a vote on the Born Alive protections. The proposal would protect babies who survive abortion and provide them with the same medical care that any other premature baby would receive. Yesterday, the Democrats blocked the proposed legislation—for the 17th time—from coming before the House for a vote.

Joining the Congressman and House Republican leaders at the press conference this morning was Jill Stanek, an Illinois nurse and pro-life advocate who has witnessed the devastating realities of these pro-abortion laws. The Illinois legislature is currently debating two abortion bills, similar to the extreme pro-abortion agendas in New York and Virginia. 

It seems you have a grudge against President Trump while our freedoms under President Biden are being taken away. I recommend to you the article below:

The January 6 Insurrection Hoax

 • Volume 50, Number 9 • Roger Kimball

Roger Kimball
Editor and Publisher, The New Criterion

Mr. Kimball concludes his article with these words: 

That’s one melancholy lesson of the January 6 insurrection hoax: that America is fast mutating from a republic, in which individual liberty is paramount, into an oligarchy, in which conformity is increasingly demanded and enforced.

Another lesson was perfectly expressed by Donald Trump when he reflected on the unremitting tsunami of hostility that he faced as President. “They’re after you,” he more than once told his supporters. “I’m just in the way.”

 

Bingo.

You can google and get Roger Kimball article “The January 6 Insurrection Hoax”

NOW WHAT DID YOU DO TO TURN YOUR BACK ON OUR LIBERTY AND PERPETUATE THE HOAX THAT JANUARY 6TH WAS AN INSURRECTION? Read below!! 

9 Republicans voted to hold Trump aide Bannon in contempt of Congress

 

There were a few Republicans Thursday who surprised observers when they voted in support of holding former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress and referring him to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.

Prior to the vote, four Republicans were considered a lock to approve the criminal referral, according to Capitol Hill sources: Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Fred Upton of Michigan and Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio.

 

Cheney and Kinzinger are on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and have for months stood alone as the only two House Republicans willing to speak out against former President Donald Trump’s continued lies about the 2020 election. They were the only two House Republicans to vote for the formation of the select committee on June 30.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi formed the select committee after Republicans rejected a bipartisan commission that would have been evenly split between five Democrats and five Republicans. Only 35 Republicans voted for that measure when itpassed the House of Representatives, and it was defeated by a GOP filibuster in the Senate.

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 27:  (L-R) Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) arrive for the House Select Committee hearing investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol on July 27, 2021 at the Canon House Office Building in Washington, DC. Members of law enforcement will testify about the attack by supporters of former President Donald Trump on the U.S. Capitol. According to authorities, about 140 police officers were injured when they were trampled, had objects thrown at them, and sprayed with chemical irritants during the insurrection. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

 

 
More

Upton has served in the House for more than three decades, since 1987, and will face a primary challenge next year because of his willingness to stand up to Trump.

Gonzalez is retiring from Congress next year, after only four years in the House. “While my desire to build a fuller family life is at the heart of my decision, it is also true that the current state of our politics, especially many of the toxic dynamics inside our own party, is a significant factor in my decision,” Gonzalez said in September when heannounced he would not seek another term.

 

The remaining five Republicans included three who voted for impeachment — Peter Meijer of Michigan, John Katko of New York and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington — and two House Republicans who did not vote to impeach Trump: Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.

Do you realize that Americans rights are being taken away from them and would you like an example? I am going to quote Mr. Kimball again.  You can google and get Roger Kimball article “The January 6 Insurrection Hoax”

Trump seems never to have discerned what a viper’s nest our politics has become for anyone who is not a paid-up member of The Club. 

Maybe Trump understands this now. I have no insight into that question. I am pretty confident, though, that the 74 plus million people who voted for him understand it deeply. It’s another reason that The Club should be wary of celebrating its victory too expansively. 

Friedrich Hayek took one of the two epigraphs for his book, The Road to Serfdom, from the philosopher David Hume. “It is seldom,” Hume wrote, “that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” Much as I admire Hume, I wonder whether he got this quite right. Sometimes, I would argue, liberty is erased almost instantaneously.

I’d be willing to wager that Joseph Hackett, confronted with Hume’s observation, would express similar doubts. I would be happy to ask Mr. Hackett myself, but he is inaccessible. If the ironically titled “Department of Justice” has its way, he will be inaccessible for a long, long time—perhaps as long as 20 years. 

Joseph Hackett, you see, is a 51-year-old Trump supporter and member of an organization called the Oath Keepers, a group whose members have pledged to “defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.” The FBI does not like the Oath Keepers—agents arrested its leader in January and have picked up many other members in the months since. Hackett traveled to Washington from his home in Florida to join the January 6 rally. According to court documents, he entered the Capitol at 2:45 that afternoon and left some nine minutes later, at 2:54. The next day, he went home. On May 28, he was apprehended by the FBI and indicted on a long list of charges, including conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, destruction of government property, and illegally entering a restricted building. 

As far as I have been able to determine, no evidence of Hackett destroying property has come to light. According to his wife, it is not even clear that he entered the Capitol. But he certainly was in the environs. He was a member of the Oath Keepers. He was a supporter of Donald Trump. Therefore, he must be neutralized.

Joseph Hackett is only one of hundreds of citizens who have beenbranded as “domestic terrorists” trying to “overthrow the government” and who are now languishing, in appalling conditions, jailed as political prisoners of an angry state apparat.

Let me recommend that you read this letter below from Senator Ron Johnson and his colleagues:

Sen. Johnson and Colleagues Request Answers from DOJ on Unequal Application of Justice to Protestors

 

 

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), along with senators Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), sent a letter on Monday to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting information on the unequal application of justice between the individuals who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, and those involved in the unrest during the spring and summer of 2020. The senators sent 18 questions to the attorney general on what steps the DOJ has taken to prosecute individuals who committed crimes during both events, and requested a response by June 21.

“Americans have the constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances,” the senators wrote. “This constitutional right should be cherished and protected. Violence, property damage, and vandalism of any kind should not be tolerated and individuals that break the law should be prosecuted. However, the potential unequal administration of justice with respect to certain protestors is particularly concerning.”

 

The full text of the letter can be found here and below.

 

 

June 7, 2021 

The Honorable Merrick B. Garland

Attorney General

U.S. Department of Justice

950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20530

 

Dear Attorney General Garland:

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is currently dedicating enormous resources and manpower to investigating and prosecuting the criminals who breached the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. We fully support and appreciate the efforts by the DOJ and its federal, state and local law enforcement partners to hold those responsible fully accountable.

We join all Americans in the expectation that the DOJ’s response to the events of January 6 will result in rightful criminal prosecutions and accountability.  As you are aware, the mission of the DOJ is, among other things, to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.  Today, we write to request information about our concerns regarding potential unequal justice administered in response to other recent instances of mass unrest, destruction, and loss of life throughout the United States. 

During the spring and summer of 2020, individuals used peaceful protests across the country to engage in rioting and other crimes that resulted in loss of life, injuries to law enforcement officers, and significant property damage.[1]  A federal court house in Portland, Oregon, has been effectively under siege for months.[2]  Property destruction stemming from the 2020 social justice protests throughout the country will reportedly result in at least $1 billion to $2 billion in paid insurance claims.[3] 

                In June 2020, the DOJ reportedly compiled the following information regarding last year’s unrest:

  • “One federal officer [was] killed, 147 federal officers [were] injured and 600 local officers [were] injured around the country during the protests, frequently from projectiles.”[4]
  • According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), “since the start of the unrest there has been 81 Federal Firearms License burglaries of an estimated loss of 1,116 firearms; 876 reported arsons; 76 explosive incidents; and 46 ATF arrests[.]”[5]

Despite these numerous examples of violence occurring during these protests, it appears that individuals charged with committing crimes at these events may benefit from infrequent prosecutions and minimal, if any, penalties.  According to a recent article, “prosecutors have approved deals in at least half a dozen federal felony cases arising from clashes between protesters and law enforcement in Oregon last summer. The arrangements — known as deferred resolution agreements — will leave the defendants with a clean criminal record if they stay out of trouble for a period of time and complete a modest amount of community service, according to defense attorneys and court records.”[6]       

                DOJ’s apparent unwillingness to punish these individuals who allegedly committed crimes during the spring and summer 2020 protests stands in stark contrast to the harsher treatment of the individuals charged in connection with the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.  To date, DOJ has charged 510 individuals stemming from Capitol breach.[7]  DOJ maintains and updates a webpage that lists the defendants charged with crimes committed at the Capitol.  This database includes information such as the defendant’s name, charge(s), case number, case documents, location of arrest, case status, and informs readers when the entry was last updated.[8]  No such database exists for alleged perpetrators of crimes associated with the spring and summer 2020 protests.  It is unclear whether any defendants charged with crimes in connection with the Capitol breach have received deferred resolution agreements.

Americans have the constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances.  This constitutional right should be cherished and protected.  Violence, property damage, and vandalism of any kind should not be tolerated and individuals that break the law should be prosecuted.  However, the potential unequal administration of justice with respect to certain protestors is particularly concerning.  In order to assist Congress in conducting its oversight work, we respectfully request answers to the following questions by June 21, 2021:  

Spring and Summer 2020 Unrest:

  1. Did federal law enforcement utilize geolocation data from defendants’ cell phones to track protestors associated with the unrest in the spring and summer of 2020?  If so, how many times and for which locations/riots?  
  1. How many individuals who may have committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020 were arrested by law enforcement using pre-dawn raids and SWAT teams?
  1. How many individuals were incarcerated for allegedly committing crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020? 
  1. How many of these individuals are or were placed in solitary confinement?  What was the average amount of consecutive days such individuals were in solitary confinement?
  1. How many of these individuals have been released on bail?
  1. How many of these individuals were released on their own recognizance or without being required to post bond?
  1. How many of these individuals were offered deferred resolution agreements?[9]
  1. How many DOJ prosecutors were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?
  1. How many FBI personnel were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?

January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol Breach:

  1. Did federal law enforcement utilize geolocation data from defendants’ cell phones to track protestors associated with the January 6, 2021 protests and Capitol breach?  If so, how many times and how many additional arrests resulted from law enforcement utilizing geolocation information?
  2. How many individuals who may have committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach were arrested by law enforcement using pre-dawn raids and SWAT teams?
  1. How many individuals are incarcerated for allegedly committing crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
  1. How many of these individuals are or were placed in solitary confinement?  What was the average amount of consecutive days such individuals were in solitary confinement?
  1. How many of these individuals have been released on bail?
  1. How many of these individuals have been released on their own recognizance or without being required to post bond?
  1. How many of these individuals were offered deferred resolution agreements?
  1. How many DOJ prosecutors have been assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
  1. How many FBI personnel were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach?

Sincerely,

 

Ron Johnson

United States Senator

 

Tommy Tuberville

United States Senator

 

Mike Lee                                                            

United States Senator

 

Rick Scott

United States Senator

 

Ted Cruz

United States Senator

 

###

 


[1] Jennifer Kingson, Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history, Axios, Sept. 16, 2020, https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-damage-276c9bcc-a455-4067-b06a-66f9db4cea9c.html.

[2] Conrad Wilson and Jonathan Levinson, Protesters, federal officers clash outside Portland’s courthouse Thursday, OPB, Mar. 12, 2021, https://www.opb.org/article/2021/03/12/protesters-vandalize-portlands-federal-courthouse-again/.

[3] Jennifer Kingson, Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history, Axios, Sept. 16, 2020, https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-damage-276c9bcc-a455-4067-b06a-66f9db4cea9c.html.

[5] Id.

[6] Josh Gerstein, Leniency for defendants in Portland clashes could affect Capitol riot cases, Politico, Apr. 14, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/14/portland-capitol-riot-cases-481346.

[7] Madison Hall et al., 493 people have been charged in the Capitol insurrection so far. This searchable table shows them all., Insider, accessed June 4, 2021, https://www.insider.com/all-the-us-capitol-pro-trump-riot-arrests-charges-names-2021-1.

[8] Capitol Breach Cases, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, accessed May 21, 2021, https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/capitol-breach-cases?combine=&order=title&sort=asc.

[9] Josh Gerstein, Leniency for defendants in Portland clashes could affect Capitol riot cases, Politico, Apr. 14, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/14/portland-capitol-riot-cases-481346.

—-

I want to recommend to you a video on YOU TUBE that runs 28 minutes and 39 seconds by Francis Schaeffer entitled because it discusses the founding of our nation and what the FOUNDERS believed: 

How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 5 | The Revolutionary Age

 

Thank you for your time, and again I want to thank you for your support of the unborn little babies!

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, 13900 Cottontail Lane, AR 72002, cell 501-920-5733, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org

——————————————————————————————

——

Dr. Francis schaeffer How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 5 | The Revolutionary Age

 

– Whatever happened to human race? PART 1 Co-authored by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop)

C. Everett Koop
C. Everett Koop, 1980s.jpg
 
13th Surgeon General of the United States
In office
January 21, 1982 – October 1, 1989

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 2 | Slaughter of the Innocents

Francis Schaeffer – Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 3 | Death by Someone’s Choice

Mr. Hentoff with the clarinetist Edmond Hall in 1948 at the Savoy, a club in Boston.

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 4 | The Basis for Human Dignity 

Image<img class=”i-amphtml-blurry-placeholder” src=”data:;base64,Edith Schaeffer with her husband, Francis Schaeffer, in 1970 in Switzerland, where they founded L’Abri, a Christian commune.

________________

______________________

March 23, 2021

President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. I know that you don’t agree with my pro-life views but I wanted to challenge you as a fellow Christian to re-examine your pro-choice view. Although we are both Christians and have the Bible as the basis for our moral views, I did want you to take a close look at the views of the pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff too.  Hentoff became convinced of the pro-life view because of secular evidence that shows that the unborn child is human. I would ask you to consider his evidence and then of course reverse your views on abortion.

___________________

The pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff wrote a fine article below I wanted to share with you.

Nat Hentoff is an atheist, but he became a pro-life activist because of the scientific evidence that shows that the unborn child is a distinct and separate human being and even has a separate DNA. His perspective is a very intriguing one that I thought you would be interested in. I have shared before many   cases (Bernard Nathanson, Donald Trump, Paul Greenberg, Kathy Ireland)    when other high profile pro-choice leaders have changed their views and this is just another case like those. I have contacted the White House over and over concerning this issue and have even received responses. I am hopeful that people will stop and look even in a secular way (if they are not believers) at this abortion debate and see that the unborn child is deserving of our protection.That is why the writings of Nat Hentoff of the Cato Institute are so crucial.

In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented  against abortion (Episode 1),  infanticide (Episode 2),   euthanasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close look at the truth claims of the Bible.

Francis Schaeffer

__________________________

I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have.  Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.

Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION

_____________________________________

 

Dr. Francis schaeffer – from Part 5 of Whatever happened to human race?) Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 5 | Truth and History

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – A Christian Manifesto – Dr. Francis Schaeffer Lecture

Francis Schaeffer – A 700 Club Special! ~ Francis Schaeffer 1982

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – 1984 SOUNDWORD LABRI CONFERENCE VIDEO – Q&A With Francis & Edith Schaeffer

________________

Jewish World Review June 12, 2006/ 16 Sivan, 5766

 

Insisting on life

http://www.NewsandOpinion.com | A longtime friend of mine is married to a doctor who also performs abortions. At the dinner table one recent evening, their 9-year-old son — having heard a word whose meaning he didn’t know — asked, “What is an abortion?” His mother, choosing her words carefully, described the procedure in simple terms.

“But,” said her son, “that means killing the baby.” The mother then explained that there are certain months during which an abortion cannot be performed, with very few exceptions. The 9-year-old shook his head. “But,” he said, “it doesn’t matter what month. It still means killing the babies.”

Hearing the story, I wished it could be repeated to the justices of the Supreme Court, in the hope that at least five of them might act on this 9-year-old’s clarity of thought and vision.

The boy’s spontaneous insistence on the primacy of life also reminded me of a powerful pro-life speaker and writer who, many years ago, helped me become a pro-lifer. He was a preacher, a black preacher. He said: “There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of a higher order than the right to life.

“That,” he continued, “was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore out of your right to be concerned.”

This passionate reverend used to warn: “Don’t let the pro-choicers convince you that a fetus isn’t a human being. That’s how the whites dehumanized us … The first step was to distort the image of us as human beings in order to justify what they wanted to do — and not even feel they’d done anything wrong.”

That preacher was Jesse Jackson. Later, he decided to run for the presidency — and it was a credible campaign that many found inspiring in its focus on what still had to be done on civil rights. But Jackson had by now become “pro-choice” — much to the appreciation of most of those in the liberal base.

The last time I saw Jackson was years later, on a train from Washington to New York. I told him of a man nominated, but not yet confirmed, to a seat on a federal circuit court of appeals. This candidate was a strong supporter of capital punishment — which both the Rev. Jackson and I oppose, since it involves the irreversible taking of a human life by the state.

I asked Jackson if he would hold a press conference in Washington, criticizing the nomination, and he said he would. The reverend was true to his word; the press conference took place; but that nominee was confirmed to the federal circuit court. However, I appreciated Jackson’s effort.

On that train, I also told Jackson that I’d been quoting — in articles, and in talks with various groups — from his compelling pro-life statements. I asked him if he’d had any second thoughts on his reversal of those views.

Usually quick to respond to any challenge that he is not consistent in his positions, Jackson paused, and seemed somewhat disquieted at my question. Then he said to me, “I’ll get back to you on that.” I still patiently await what he has to say.

As time goes on, my deepening concern with the consequences of abortion is that its validation by the Supreme Court, as a constitutional practice, helps support the convictions of those who, in other controversies — euthanasia, assisted suicide and the “futility doctrine” by certain hospital ethics committees — believe that there are lives not worth continuing.

Around the time of my conversation with Jackson on the train, I attended a conference on euthanasia at Clark College in Worcester, Mass. There, I met Derek Humphry, the founder of the Hemlock Society, and already known internationally as a key proponent of the “death with dignity” movement.

He told me that for some years in this country, he had considerable difficulty getting his views about assisted suicide and, as he sees it, compassionate euthanasia into the American press.

“But then,” Humphry told me, “a wonderful thing happened. It opened all the doors for me.”

“What was that wonderful thing?” I asked.

“Roe v. Wade,” he answered.

The devaluing of human life — as the 9-year-old at the dinner table put it more vividly — did not end with making abortion legal, and therefore, to some people, moral. The word “baby” does not appear in Roe v. Wade — let alone the word “killing.”

And so, the termination of “lives not worth living” goes on.

 

______________________

Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. Now after presenting the secular approach of Nat Hentoff I wanted to make some comments concerning our shared Christian faith.  I  respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,

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Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 9 “The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence” (Schaeffer Sundays)

E P I S O D E 9 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IX – The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence 27 min T h e Age of Personal Peace and Afflunce I. By the Early 1960s People Were Bombarded From Every Side by Modern Man’s Humanistic Thought II. Modern Form of Humanistic Thought Leads […]

Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 8 “The Age of Fragmentation” (Schaeffer Sundays)

E P I S O D E 8 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VIII – The Age of Fragmentation 27 min I saw this film series in 1979 and it had a major impact on me. T h e Age of FRAGMENTATION I. Art As a Vehicle Of Modern Thought A. Impressionism (Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, […]

Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 7 “The Age of Non-Reason” (Schaeffer Sundays)

E P I S O D E 7 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason I am thrilled to get this film series with you. I saw it first in 1979 and it had such a big impact on me. Today’s episode is where we see modern humanist man act […]

Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 6 “The Scientific Age” (Schaeffer Sundays)

E P I S O D E 6 How Should We Then Live 6#1 Uploaded by NoMirrorHDDHrorriMoN on Oct 3, 2011 How Should We Then Live? Episode 6 of 12 ________ I am sharing with you a film series that I saw in 1979. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in […]

Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 5 “The Revolutionary Age” (Schaeffer Sundays)

E P I S O D E 5 How Should We Then Live? Episode 5: The Revolutionary Age I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Francis Schaeffer noted, “Reformation Did Not Bring Perfection. But gradually on basis of biblical teaching there […]

Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 4 “The Reformation” (Schaeffer Sundays)

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IV – The Reformation 27 min I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer makes three key points concerning the Reformation: “1. Erasmian Christian humanism rejected by Farel. 2. Bible gives needed answers not only as to […]

“Schaeffer Sundays” Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance”

Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer really shows why we have so […]

Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 2 “The Middle Ages” (Schaeffer Sundays)

  Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 2) THE MIDDLE AGES I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer points out that during this time period unfortunately we have the “Church’s deviation from early church’s teaching in regard […]

Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 1 “The Roman Age” (Schaeffer Sundays)

Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE   Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)