Among the most likely Democratic (Socialist) Party nominees for the 2020 presidential election, are Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker.

What sort of people they are was revealed under bright lights during the recent, days-long, televised interrogation of Brett Kavanaugh to confirm his appointment by President Trump to the Supreme Court.

So what sort of people are they? Well, they’re both black. That’s a chief qualification in the eyes of the racist Left. And one of them is a woman. Double points.

But what of their ideas, their competence, their characters?

Ken Blackwell writes at Townhall:

Despite the Senate Judiciary Committee’s being the most politically polarized committee in Congress, there’s still usually a sense of seriousness during a Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Not this time.

Over the four days of hearings – two of which Judge Kavanaugh went well into the night answering Senators’ questions – there were well over a hundred interruptions by protesters.

And when Democratic Senators did ask questions, they did their image no good whatsoever.

For his part, Kavanaugh was masterful in fielding every question, befitting a confident 12-year veteran of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals bench, the second most important court in the country. The American people saw a judge’s judge – he will fairly apply the law, he will honor the Constitution, he won’t make up law … or impose any kind of agenda from the bench. It’s clear, as with Neil Gorsuch, President Trump had hit another home run with a man who’ll be another great justice. …

Leading the [Democratic] parade were two committee members who’ve made it no secret they’re running for president in 2020. 

For Senators Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), the hearings were their own little “Kavanaugh Primary” within the primary contest for the Democratic nomination. They were expected to try and outdo each other in appealing to their party’s base, but what happened instead was a literal comedy of errors. 

During his first opportunity to question Kavanaugh, Booker tried to ambush the judge with emails from the time he served in the George W. Bush White House as an associate counsel and later as staff secretary. Kavanaugh calmly kept asking Booker if he could please see a copy of the emails to which the Senator was referring – so he could accurately answer his question. But they were not provided. 

Early the next morning Booker pronounced he was releasing documents, including the emails to which he had referred the day before, in what he believed to be a brazen display of flouting Senate rules for the public good. He said he was releasing confidential documents that were being withheld by the committee so the public could see them, and he would accept the consequences. He even proclaimed: “This is the closest I’ll ever get in my life to an “I am Spartacus” moment.”

A brave leader of an uprising of the oppressed against a tyranny. Easy heroism. Booker was, figuratively speaking, banging his chest as he boasted that he was taking an enormous risk, but would accept any consequences fearlessly.

In harsh reality he was making a fool of himself.

But it turned out Senate Democrats had gotten clearance to release them [the emails] several hours prior.

Spartacus had lied to us.

A presidential candidate?

Let’s look at the other one.

Not to be outdone, Harris tried to ambush Judge Kavanaugh as well.

It was late Wednesday night, she was one of the last Senators to question Kavanaugh during what had been a long, grueling day. She glared at him, knowing the cameras were capturing every moment, and sprang her gotcha question: “Have you discussed [Special Counsel] Mueller or his investigation with anyone at Kasowitz Benson and Torres, the law firm founded by Marc Kasowitz, President Trump’s personal lawyer. … Be sure about your answer, sir.”

Kavanaugh couldn’t recall any such conversation but, as he told Harris, he was happy to have his memory refreshed if she was aware of anything. She played coy. Her staff told reporters throughout the night and into the next day of the hearings that she had it on good information such discussions had taken place.

“Good information”. How good?

Surely she had him, she had damning information about Kavanaugh inappropriately discussing the Mueller investigation with the president’s personal law firm, and he was the president’s pick for the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court could well hear arguments in the Mueller investigation. Game over, right?

Wrong.

When she asked him the same question directly the next night he flatly said, “no.”

And then she … moved on. It was all made up, nothing to see here. Fishing expedition comes up empty.

It’s a sobering thought that there are millions of people who might vote for Booker or Harris to be president.

Tommy Robinson has been released from prison.

He is the leader of the grass-roots resistance movement of the British people against a tyrannical and treacherous government intent on Islamifying the United Kingdom.

They jailed him over and over again. They deliberately put him in prison among Muslims who beat him to a pulp. Though once they offered to stop persecuting him if he would become their tool, their secret agent!  He refused, so the persecution was stepped up.

They imprisoned him yet again in May this year. He was sentenced to thirteen months penal servitude by a kangaroo court. Now, on appeal, he has been freed – at least for a few weeks – by the Lord Chief Justice. Not, we suspect, because Britain is still a country under the rule of law, but because the ill treatment of Tommy has become an international scandal.

From Breitbart:

Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett quashed the contempt of court conviction … which saw [Tommy Robinson]  going from arrest to trial, and to prison in just five hours and under a blanket of enforced media silence.

The court’s written judgement stated the speed with which the original conviction was made “gave rise to unfairness”, and that there was a “lack of clarity” over evidence for the charge of contempt given to Robinson.

Further, the document states the original judge should have resisted “the temptation” to rule on Robinson’s behaviour there and then, as after he had offered to delete the video he created from Facebook the “urgency went out of the matter”. Instead, the judge should have referred the matter to the Attorney General rather than acting immediately.

In all, the judgement found, the original case had the opportunity to “have avoided the risk of sacrificing fairness on the altar of haste”, but failed to take it.

Robinson’s defence team have maintained that the unusual speed with which he was jailed had led to “deficiencies” in the legal process.

The QC defending Mr Robinson in the appeal told the court the original trial had been “unnecessarily and unjustifiably rushed”, had featured “procedural difficulties”, and the sentence was “manifestly excessive”.

Robinson had been live-streaming the arrival of defendants of another trial outside Leeds Crown Court at the time of his arrest, and part of his bail conditions prevents him from returning to that court. Another trial has now been ordered to take place by the Court of Appeal, but the Lord Chief Justice ruled that Robinson had already served sufficient time pending the outcome of the retrial, and was, therefore, to be released.

The order to release came after a short hearing which followed longer proceedings on July 18th, where the judges hearing the case delayed their finding to give themselves time to confer.

Now free, Tommy has described the torment he endured inside the prison.

Matthew Vadum writes at Front Page:

The jailers of newly freed human rights activist Tommy Robinson deliberately subjected him to inhumane treatment behind bars in England, according to independent journalist Ezra Levant of the Canadian news website, TheRebel.media.

The goal of the authorities seems to have been to silence Robinson, perhaps permanently.

“Tommy has endured two months as a genuine political prisoner, and I say that thoughtfully,” Levant said. “I don’t want to throw around the word political prisoner. Britain is still a great liberal democracy, but not in the case of Tommy Robinson, they weren’t.”

We don’t agree that Britain can still be described as “a great liberal democracy”.

Robinson’s lawyers, Carson Kaye of London, released a statement celebrating his release: “The rule of law and the right to a fair hearing are fundamental to every individual and this ruling [is] an example of the procedural safeguards of our system, and its potential for protecting every citizen equally.”

Well, they have to say that. If they said “Tommy Robinson is being released because of an international outcry against the injustice he’s been subjected to”, they would feel the heavy had of tyranny falling on their own shoulders, or its boot in their own faces.

… [On May 25, 2018] Robinson had been trying to bring transparency to an opaque legal system distrusted by the public. The 35-year-old married father of three used his smartphone to live-stream on Facebook the arrival of accused rapists on trial for acts allegedly committed while being part of a so-called Muslim grooming gang.

The filming of the alleged pedophile rapists infuriated trial judge Geoffrey Marson Q.C. because he had imposed a ban on publishing news from their criminal proceeding. Within five hours Robinson had been railroaded and sentenced to 13 months in prison.

But on Wednesday a judicial panel headed by Baron Burnett of Maldon, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, quashed Robinson’s contempt of court conviction and ordered him released on bail. The Court of Appeal ordered that Robinson be released pending a fresh trial on the contempt charges before a different judge. …

Marson failed to provide sufficient particulars of the contempt allegation, which meant Robinson did not know what case he had to meet. Because of the extreme rush, Robinson didn’t have sufficient time to work with counsel to prepare a defense. In fact, the proceeding was so expedited he had to rely on a public defender –as opposed to his own regular lawyer— who had no time to prepare. The appeals court questioned the appropriateness of the 13-month sentence and found it was wrong of Marson to hand it down so quickly without sober reflection, Levant said.

According to a three-page summary of the decision provided by the appeals court: “The order at Leeds Crown Court was also erroneously drawn up to suggest the appellant had been convicted of a criminal offence rather than having been committed for contempt of court.”

Marson’s mistakes were grave. “Errors like this have serious consequences upon the classification of prisoners, resulting in the deprivation of privileges and release on license.”

Ezra Levant is further quoted:

Robinson’s “brutal incarceration, solitary confinement, and the constant threats of violence he faced in prison, all flow from the errors of the judge in Leeds.”

Initially, Robinson was sent to Her Majesty’s Prison Hull, which is “one of the safer prisons in the U.K. for Tommy.” … “By safer I mean it is not dominated by Muslim prison gangs.”

But then a faceless bureaucrat in the prison system ordered Robinson transferred to the much tougher, Her Majesty’s Prison Onley, which is “a much more Islamized prison.” …

On whose orders, or according to whose policy, did the “faceless bureaucrat” incarcerate Tommy where he was likely to suffer the most?

Whose but the government’s?

And why?

Because the Islam-coddling rulers of the land wanted –

… either to get Tommy killed at the hands of a Muslim prison gang, or to force him to do what they knew he would do because he’s done it before – to request to be put into solitary confinement to save his own life. But the thing is you cannot live for 13 months in solitary confinement. You’ll go mad. It would be regarded as torture. But that’s where Tommy was placed. …

Prisoners would regularly be given access to the front of Tommy’s cell and they would open up the flap to his cell and shout threats at him. And this was permitted by the prison. It’s obviously a form of psychological torture. Let me give you more examples. There is also a window in Tommy’s cell for a breeze in the hot summer. The prisoners were permitted to go up to the window and spit into Tommy’s cell which is a form of assault and battery and it’s gross and it’s psychologically abusive so Tommy had to shut his window in this particularly hot British summer. …

On at least three occasions his cell door was accidentally not locked. Accidentally, eh?

Reviled by the Left and milquetoast Conservative Party leaders like Prime Minister Theresa May, Robinson has been trying for years to raise awareness about the Islamization of the U.K.

Milquetoast they may be in submitting to the corrupt rulers of the EU, but at home they’re sadistic bullies.

The deck is stacked against those skeptical of Islam. In the United Kingdom the police now monitor statements on social media and jail those who express frowned-upon sentiments. In the U.K., Big Brother is no longer just something from George Orwell’s prophetic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Political correctness and fears of being smeared as racist or Islamophobic have led authorities in the United Kingdom to downplay or ignore sex crimes committed by unassimilated, misogynistic Muslims who rape Britons. From the 1980s to the 2010s, as many as 1,400 Britons, mostly white girls, were raped largely by Muslim men in Rotherham, England. In recent years Muslim rape gangs have been uncovered in Rochdale, Telford, Aylesbury, Banbury, and in many other British communities.

The fear of “being smeared as racist” makes British officials tolerate appalling crimes committed by foreign gangs! Britons who used to sing that they “never never never shall be slaves”! Britons whose forefathers of the last thousand years fought fearlessly on battlefields at home and abroad for freedom and justice, afraid of being smeared as racist?

Yes. Afraid of being called a name. Let all the young daughters of the kingdom be debauched and sold, what is that compared to being called a name?

To no one’s surprise, Britons do not trust their government to deal with such grooming cases fairly or protect the public from such sexual predators. British politicians worship at the altar of multiculturalism and would rather protect criminals from victims.

And this seems to be why the British authorities felt they needed to silence Robinson.

Seems? That IS why they are trying to silence Tommy Robinson.

And the press is on the side of the tyrants. The BBC, the posh papers and the tabloids, all choose to denigrate Tommy. He is frequently called a “far right activist”, even a “neo-Nazi”. And of course a “racist”, “xenophobe”, “Islamophobe”, “bigot”.  None of which he is.  

Only the social media give him his due as hero and political martyr.

Here is what a Murdoch-owned rag called The Sun says about this genuine hero:

Tommy Robinson is a nasty thug and a grandstanding idiot.

He is not a freedom fighter. Nor is he the hero he is made out to be in the sewer which social media has become.

Nor is he a “reporter” fearlessly exposing an establishment cover-up of rapes by gangs of Asian men. That scandal has been exposed by actual journalists.

In fact Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, almost wrecked the trial of some accused of serious crime …

The crime of debauching and selling underage girls …

… thus potentially denying both them and their alleged victims justice.

Yesterday he was freed on appeal over his contempt of court. Supporters say he was locked up too hastily and for too long. But he was already serving a suspended sentence for the same offence.

His many convictions stretch from violence to fraud. We have no sympathy.

He tells his own story, not omitting the why and how of the violence and the fraud, in his book Enemy of the State. 

We think it more than likely that John of Gaunt, Henry V, Nelson, Wellington, Churchill would be proud of Tommy Robinson.

We seldom argue with atheists of the Left. We seldom argue with the Left. We find the attempt to be, almost always, a nugatory exercise. Leftism is a religion, and religions are not to be argued with. Faith and Reason exclude each other.

A religion need not have a god in it. Atheists on the Left can and do reason against the existence of a deity, but not against the doctrines of collectivist ideology such as: the community must be organized; the economy must be planned; the purpose of government is to control and direct the lives of the people to serve the general interest.

This time we make an exception. We raise arguments with certain statements that seem reasonable, but are not, because – we want to demonstrate – they are premised on dogma.

We quote an article from Patheos Friendly Atheist, a Humanist website. As far as we can discover, all self-named humanists and all Humanist organizations are on the Left (although there is nothing about Humanism as such that makes Leftism logically necessary to it). Patheos is no exception.

Patheos Friendly Atheist’s most frequent columnist, Hemant Mehta, writes:

Here’s a really important development in the world of organized atheist activism.

On Thursday [July 19, 2018], the American Humanist Association launched what they’re calling the Humanist Legal Society.

I’d call it the atheist equivalent of the conservative Federalist Society: A way to identify, bring together, and support those in the legal professional who are dedicated to maintaining church/state separation, science-based evidence, civil rights (especially for marginalized people), and ethics in government.

You know… all the things conservatives no longer give a damn about.

The statements we have stressed in bold provide us with an opportunity to make clear how the issues we are concerned about, the values we hold, and the judgments we make according to the information we acquire, are opposed to the issues, values, and judgment of Hermant Mehta, the Humanist Legal Society, and the Left in general.

1.”The atheist equivalent of the conservative Federalist Society”

To start with, he does not, or they do not, really mean “the atheist equivalent”. The Federalist Society is not a god-concerned institution. What is meant is a “leftist-humanist equivalent”.

So what is the Federalist Society?

This is what the members of the Federalist Society say about themselves under the heading,

Our Purpose

Law schools and the legal profession are currently strongly dominated by a form of orthodox liberal ideology which advocates a centralized and uniform society. While some members of the academic community have dissented from these views, by and large they are taught simultaneously with (and indeed as if they were) the law.

The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies is a group of conservatives and libertarians interested in the current state of the legal order. It is founded on the principles that the state exists to preserve freedom, that the separation of governmental powers is central to our Constitution, and that it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be.  The Society seeks both to promote an awareness of these principles and to further their application through its activities.

This entails reordering priorities within the legal system to place a premium on individual liberty, traditional values, and the rule of law.  It also requires restoring the recognition of the importance of these norms among lawyers, judges, law students and professors.  In working to achieve these goals, the Society has created a conservative and libertarian intellectual network that extends to all levels of the legal community.

The first paragraph makes it perfectly clear that the Federalist Society opposes “a centralized and uniform society”.

The second and third paragraphs provide a summary of certain core conservative principles: “that the state exists to preserve freedom, that the separation of governmental powers is central to our Constitution, and that it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be”; that individual liberty is a prime value, along with “traditional values, and the rule of law”. The Federalist Society works to restore “the recognition of the importance of these norms among lawyers, judges, law students and professors.” To this end it has “created a conservative and libertarian intellectual network” in the world of the legal profession.

Plainly, this new association is intent on reinforcing the very “orthodox liberal ideology” that the Federal Society exists to overcome.

The Humanist Legal Society’s purpose is to defend “a centralized and uniform society” that does not believe in the state’s prime duty to preserve individual freedom, traditional values and the rule of law. It would hold that the duty of the judiciary is to say what the law should be, not what it is. It would exist to preserve all that the Federalist Society finds wrong with “the current state of the legal order”. There is no equivalence between the cause of individual freedom protected by the rule of law and the cause of collectivist state-dictatorship. The Humanist Legal Society might be called the “counterpart” of the Federalist Society, but not its “equivalent”.

2. “All the things conservatives no longer give a damn about”

2.1″Church-state separation”

Conservatives want the Constitution to be preserved intact. They want no variation of the First Amendment, the separation of church and state clause. So to say that “conservatives no longer  give a damn about church-state separation” is a lie.

2.2 “Science-based evidence”

Mehta may be referring here to the belief among Christians, many of whom are also conservatives, in Bible literalism, and their rejection of evolution. But Bible literalism, or any variety of Creationism, is not a core principle of conservatism.

What is also probably being referred to here is the widespread skepticism among conservatives that climate change is caused – dangerously – in our time by human activity. We are unwilling to go over the arguments as to why we conservatives are skeptical about it, but they can be found easily. One of our own posts revealing the vicious motivation behind the Anthropological Global Warming (AGW) movement, The real enemy is humanity itself, may be found here.

The Left maintains that the science of AGW is “settled”. That in itself is an unscientific statement. It is a dogmatic statement.

All real science is ardently encouraged by most conservatives. American conservatives are delighted that NASA is returning to the exploration of space under President Trump’s leadership, after Obama had told the space agency to concentrate on outreach to Muslims!

Furthermore, as gathered by the Heritage Foundation …

Conventional wisdom holds that it’s conservatives who are anti-scientific morons, and liberals who are devotees of reason, science, and evidence. But as the The Chapman University Survey on American Fears reveals, that accusation is based on nothing but prejudice.

As The Washington Post summarizes it, “Democrats were slightly, and in some cases significantly more likely than Republicans to believe in paranormal phenomena.” From fortune telling to astrology, liberals live in a world of spirits. At least belief in Bigfoot is bipartisan. 

The Chapman study shouldn’t surprise anyone. A 2011 Pew Research Center study similarly found that liberals were more likely than conservatives to believe in the evil eye, spiritual energy, reincarnation, communication with the dead, and of course fortune tellers and ghosts.

2.3 “Civil rights”

Since President Trump was elected, the civil rights of his supporters have been violently interfered with by  militant organizations of the Left. Instance are numerous, but one of the most egregious was the violent action of masked ANTIFA thugs at Berkeley on February 1, 2017. There are no such violent militant organizations on the conservative Right interfering with anyone’s civil rights.

Towards the end of the article “letting the government dictate what a woman can do with her body”  – meaning her “right” to abort a child she has conceived – is raised, probably  to be understood as a civil rights issue. The Left consistently refuses to allow that when there is another body inside a woman, the law has to extend its protection to that other, helpless, human being.

2.4″Marginalized people”

The Left is obsessed with race and sex. What matters about you, according to Leftist ideology – propounded continually by ever-more-lefty Democrats – is your race, your descent, your ethnicity, your sex and sexual proclivity. Not your individual worth, your talents, your achievements. And they like to pretend that women, non-whites, and those classed as  “LGBT”, are “marginalized” in the United States.

American women are the most privileged class of person that has ever existed in the history of humankind.

And in fact, far from it being “LGBT” persons, it is white men and the sexually normal who are marginalized wherever the Politically Correct and the Social Justice Warriors have power – notably in the academies.

As for blacks – it is ironic and outrageous that Democrats should virtue-signal themselves as the champions of blacks. Democrats whose party defended slavery and segregation; Democrats who  launched and exclusively manned the KKK; who passed the Jim Crow laws; who consistently opposed every effort the Republicans made to give equal rights to blacks! A black woman professor, Carol Swain, explains in this video how that was really the case. And now it is the Democratic Party that insists on the humiliating policy of affirmative action, based on the notion that blacks cannot compete unless whites (and Asians) are handicapped!

2.5 “Ethics in government”

The Left makes wild unsubstantiated accusations against President Trump of every kind of moral offense from his being given two scoops of ice-cream when everyone else was only given one, to his being a “racist” and a “sexist”, and even a “traitor” for meeting with Vladimir Putin and not throwing the Russian leader’s crimes in his face. Meanwhile, in a manifestation of deliberate amnesia, the Left ignores the indisputable fact that the Obama administration was deeply morally disgraceful, guilty over and over again of scandalous turpitude. Its inaction over the appalling events in Benghazi on 9/11/12, to recall just one of the scandals, marks Obama’s terms in office as a period of ethical baseness hard to outmatch in the history of the United States. And how ethical was it to give permission to the hostile regime of Iran to build a nuclear arsenal in a few years’ time?

Mehta quotes:

“Many lawyers approach the world and the law from a humanist standpoint, but there is a need for them to have a way of organizing professionally as a group,” said the Society’s president, David Codell, a nationally recognized constitutional litigator who has served as counsel in many major cases involving LGBT rights. “The Humanist Legal Society will give humanist lawyers solidarity and resources that will make a difference.”

No. It is against the iniquitous Left, with its religious intolerance, its betrayal of science, its denial of civil rights to everyone it disagrees with, its marginalization of whites, and its lack of moral responsibility, that lawyers, judges, law students and professors need to band together. And fortunately they have done so, in the Federalist Society.

Further to yesterday’s post, The Left’s abuse of children, and our argument that the best way to deal with the flood of illegal aliens crossing into the US over the southern border is to send them straight back to where they came from, here’s an authoritative opinion that the President has the power to do this.

Daniel Horowitz* examined Article II of the Constitution which gives the President control foreign affairs – reiterated as delegated congressional authority under 8 U.S.C. §1182(f) (Sec. 212(f) of the INA) – and writes at Conservative Review:

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

There are three important observations to be made here:

1. The criteria for exclusion is not based on “national security concerns” or “terrorism.” It’s anything that, in the determination of the president, would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.” That includes public welfare, health concerns, values, attitudes, etc. Thus, in this case, where the surge has already created the worst drug and gang crisis in the history of the country, the president would be justified in invoking this power.
2. Just like the president has the authority to completely shut off immigration, he may impose any restrictions on entry even if he chooses to continue various forms of immigration. Thus, in order to abide by the Geneva Conventions on asylum, the president can condition any asylum claims on applying at a U.S. consulate in Mexico, not at the border – or turn them back immediately.
3. This is not the type of provision in which a court can demand evidence that the condition of “detrimental to the interests of the United States” was met. The delegation of authority was designed as plenary power. The courts have absolutely no authority to second-guess the president’s determination. That is up to Congress and the electorate. As a recent Congressional Research Service report observes, from the House report on the 1952 immigration bill that granted this authority: “The bill vests in the President the authority to suspend the entry of all aliens if he finds that their entry would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, for such period as he shall deem necessary” (H.R.RPT.1365, 82d Cong.,2d Sess., at 53 (Feb. 14, 1952)).

Section 212(f) has been invoked 43 times since 1981, 19 of which were by President Obama. The one major Supreme Court case covering 212(f) was Sale v. Haitian Centers Council, Inc. (1993), which dealt with a policy established by Bush 41 and Clinton to apprehend Haitians traveling by sea to our shores. The policy was designed to return these Haitians to their home country before they could land in the United States and apply for asylum. In a clear 8-1 decision authored by Justice John Paul Stevens, the court fully upheld the act and made it clear that there are no limitations on 212(f) authority.

Similarly, the few lower court decisions on this matter clearly affirmed long-standing settled law. Any alien who enters the country without lawful status or against the president’s 212(f) proclamation is considered to be outside our borders and has no right to apply the due process of deportation procedures to his predicament.

In one of the few cases on 212(f) (Encuentro del Canto Popular v. Christopher, 1996), a district judge in California made it clear that not only does the president have the delegated authority from the legislature to cut off visas, but he also has his own powers to conduct foreign affairs:

The exclusion of aliens is a fundamental act of sovereignty. The right to do so stems not alone from legislative power but is inherent in the executive power to control the foreign affairs of the nation. When Congress prescribes a procedure concerning the admissibility of aliens, it is not dealing alone with a legislative power. It is implementing an inherent executive power” [930 F. Supp. 1360, 1365 (N.D. Cal. 1996)]. …

In addition to INA 212(f), there is another section — INA 215(a)(1) — that grants the president an almost equal level of authority to regulate entry of all aliens, which includes both immigrant and non-immigrant visas:

Unless otherwise ordered by the President, it shall be unlawful–

(1) for any alien to depart from or enter or attempt to depart from or enter the United States except under such reasonable rules, regulations, and orders, and subject to such limitations and exceptions as the President may prescribe;

If demanding that all immigrants enter legally or apply for asylum in a safe and controlled environment at a consulate rather than at a border controlled by some of the most dangerous people in the world is not a “reasonable rule”, I’m not sure what is. According to the Congressional Research Service, President Carter used 215(a)(1) authority to suspend immigrant and non-immigrant visas from Iran following the Iran hostage crisis. Bill Clinton also used it to prevent Haitians from landing on our shores. These regulations clearly cover even legal permanent residents; they therefore certainly cover people who have no ties to our country and are seeking entry at our border for the first time.

The point is that nobody ever has a claim to land on our shores without the consent of the president, and the president can block such entry using both his inherent Article II powers and these two sections of the INA. As the Supreme Court said in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company v. Sawyer, “When the president acts pursuant to an express or implied authorization of Congress, his authority is at its maximum, for it includes all that he possesses in his own right plus all that Congress can delegate.”

Also, let us not forget that even if individuals find a way onto our soil, that does not give them any affirmative rights. Constitutional rights on our soil only apply to a person who comes here with consent. That is deeply rooted in social compact theory and settled law. As the court said long ago in United States v. Ju Toy, a person who comes to the country illegally is “to be regarded as if he had stopped at the limit of its jurisdiction, although physically he may be within its boundaries”. 

Trump is reportedly looking for a way to go big on immigration using executive authority. He already has the ultimate authority to shut off the migration completely. And that is all the leverage he needs over Congress.

*Find Daniel Horowitz’s book Stolen Sovereignty: How to Stop Unelected Judges from Transforming America here.

Tommy Robinson has been imprisoned (yet again) for opposing the Islamification of Britain.

The actual technical charges against him are irrelevant. His “crime” is his opposition to the  slow conquest of his country and Europe by the dark-age force of Islam, launched, facilitated, and protected by the governments, main political parties, churches, academies, and mass media of all the West European states. 

He writes:

So here we go again! Its Sunday night 10/6/18, the news of the amazing scenes yesterday in London are just filtering their way to me.But before I start on the positives of yesterdays demonstration let me 1st start with some negatives. Let me share with you part of my wife’s letter I received yesterday:

School rang me today though, before I went to work and said Spencer was really upset at school, to be honest he isn’t managing mate. Sam said to him ‘I’m doing a 5k run with my dad’, and Spencer said well I can’t do it with my dad and ran off crying. He cries himself to sleep. Sleeps with your pillow and ask me 50 times a day what day is dad coming home? I can’t even give him a rough date yet because you haven’t been give any! Just hope to keep telling him its not for long, nothing will change and he needs to be brave to make you proud. He said to me last night ‘I’m going to go and do something bad so I can be put in jail with dad at least then I will be with him’.

I’m not going to lie, reading this broke my heart. The prison removed my wife’s phone number over a week ago so I have not even been able to speak with my children, it also upsets me that in my son’s head he must think his dad has done something bad to end up in prison.

Before I sit and feel too sorry for myself I should put it into perspective. I’m away from my family for a short duration. Members of our armed forces’ children must go through this all the time which is why I admire the sacrifices they make, past and present.

I’m not going to go too much into my case as my appeal is just being lodged. What I will talk about is the difference you have all made to me. When I landed in this prison I was totally gutted. Gutted about what my family were about to go through. Gutted for those who I was in discussions with who rely on me to tell their stories. I was also adamant I would be killed on this prison sentence.

When I was leading the English Defence League I was sentenced to 10 months in prison in 2012, I was separated from everyone for my own protection and kept on solitary confinement for 22 weeks. I believe this was because the government feared what may happen on the streets if I was murdered in prison. Lee Rigby was beheaded in 2013 and our government witnessed that a soldier can be beheaded and no one will really react.

I was then sent to prison in 2014 for 18 months. I was literally fed to the wolves. I was lucky to escape alive, fighting my way through violent beatings at the hands of Muslim inmates.

The government knew I could be killed and no one would really do anything. It was a sad moment for myself, realising that if I’m murdered my death wouldn’t make much difference or change. I also realised my family would not be looked after and would go on to struggle for safety and stability.

OH WHAT A CHANGE 4 YEARS MAKES!

In the first few days here I began to hear that thousands are protesting outside 10 Downing Street. This was within 24 horus of my abduction by the state. I was told ‘your petition has 100,000’, then ‘hey its now at 300,000’ and then half a million. I heard people were climbing the gates of Downing Street.

I thought the people telling me must be getting it wrong. They must be confused with our Day for Freedom demo. I was completely unaware what was unfolding outside of the prison was a world wide FREE TOMMY movement.

I was in danger in my first days in this prison, housed with Muslim prisoners, then something changed. I was whisked from my cell and wing and taken and separated to safety. I believe now this was the moment Lord Pearson spoke up about my safety. His actions could have literally saved my life.

I then heard protests were spreading across the globe. I heard politicians, police and barristers were speaking out. I’ve heard so many people who have sat on the fence for years were now speaking out. To hear that 20-30 thousand people travelled to London this weekend to stand in solidarity with me is an amazing feeling. I truly am gobsmacked at the reaction from the public. I feel so loved!! Loved and appreciated.

I receive a bag of letters and emails every day. I read every one. I’m so grateful, I want to say a thank you to every single person who has supported me.

I understand how difficult it is to speak out. I understand that many people would have faced a backlash from friends, or even from work for speaking out on my behalf and I am truly grateful to people for standing with me.

Free speech is not free when it has social consequences. I sit here happy, happy that this sentence has backfired on the establishment. Happy that the public reaction has sent a message of the consequences if they have me murdered on this sentence.

I have said for so long that there will be a moment in our country, none of us know what that moment will be but it will change the direction of our nation.

I think deeply about this and for a while now I’ve been sure that I will be murdered for opposing Islam. A scary thought. But not as scary as thinking it will make no difference. Although now I sit here smiling with the belief that my murder would start a revolution, I’m standing laughing out loud – that may seem mad – but knowing this is so satisfying.

I’ve always said I’d sacrifice my life tomorrow if it would end the Islamic takeover of our beautiful land. Our battle is not as simple as against flesh and blood, but we battle a system! A corrupt system. Sitting here gives you so much time to think. We can no longer be looking from the outside in. We must involve our voice and our movement into politics. I have so many plans on what I want to do when I get out.

To hear that Geert Wilders travelled and spoke in London is so exciting for me.

When I started my activism I looked to Geert and the life changing decisions he made to speak out against Islam. He has been an inspiration to me. I can’t list all the people I need to thank as there are so many but I know Alex Jones at InfoWars would be leading the shout for my freedom. I love him, he cracks me up.

Gerard Batten of UKIP, Lord Pearson, Raheem, Ezra, Katie Hopkins, my cousin Kevin Carroll jumping straight in with the demo. Danny for organising it. DONALD TRUMP JUNIOR for tweeting. I’d have done 6 months just for that recognition.

The list could go on and on. I’ll do my proper thank yous upon my release. One person I have to thank, my wife!

When I finally got through to her on the phone from prison I asked her, “Have you had enough yet?” Ha ha. I’ve not been a great husband but she has been a perfect wife and an amazing mother.

I simply couldn’t get through any of this without my family.

So Jenna, if you are reading this letter online then know I LOVE YOU and I MISS YOU.

My mates will ruin me for this soppy shit ha ha.

Lots of people say I give them hope, but I want you all to know that your reaction, whether it be supporting my family, paying for legal costs, or even just sharing videos or tweets, you have all given me hope and an absolutely priceless feeling.

Please excuse my handwriting but my hand is failing me. I’m using my time to put pen to paper and detail out my next book. I was already working on it before this sentence. Working title: “The Battle for Britain”. Basically bringing “Enemy of the State” up to date and also looking into the future.

So I’d like to thank Her Majesty for giving me the time alone on my own to work on it. Knowing that there are more plans for demonstrations until my release is great. It’s great to know that I’ve not been forgotten and their attempts to silence me won’t work. It’s now Monday evening and I’ve just watched LOVE ISLAND ha ha.

My wife’s number was put back on the system so I have spoken with my children today so I’m less stressed and more relaxed. My children will come to visit me in the near future.

Thank you all for the support. It’s your outcry and reaction that will keep me safe. Please know how inspired and grateful I am. I’m hoping Lord Pearson and Gerard Batten will also be visiting me here and lads if you are reading this ask Geert to pop into HMP Hull with you. My appeals have gone in, appeal sentence, appeal conviction and bail app.

Oh yeah thank you Pauline Hanson, thank you AFD for the offer of asylum.

The establishment thought this would close the book. Instead the public have just turned the page to continue the next chapter.

I love and thank you all.

Mum and dad sorry about the stress I give you ha ha.

Thank you to the free world.

It’s Tuesday, I’m being moved prison so my kids won’t see me this weekend.

Yesterday we wrote about the corruption of the leadership of the CIA.

Now here’s a summary of just some of the instances when the FBI failed the nation in recent years – under corrupt leadership. (James Comey’s leadership is not discussed, but a good brief overview of his failures and deceptions can be found here.)

Many murders were committed because the Left in power favored Islam.

Lloyd Billingsley writes at Front Page:

After Nikolas Cruz gunned down 17 people at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, FBI special agent Robert Lasky, head of the bureau’s Miami division, said he “truly regrets” the pain caused by the FBI’s failure to act on a tip about the shooter.

The FBI said it had no way to trace the tip …

An obvious lie …

… then FBI boss Christopher Wray said the message was never passed on to the FBI’s Miami field office, as official protocol required. Relatives of the victims might have noted the passive verb construction. In typical style, Wray failed to name the person who never passed on the tip, and offered no explanation why that person might have done so.

Wray did say “we deeply regret the additional pain this causes all those affected by this horrific tragedy”. In response to that admission Florida governor Rick Scott called for Wray to resign. Across the country Americans could make a case that Wray and many others in the FBI deserved much sterner measures.

In 2013 Omar Mateen lost his job as security guard at Florida’s St. Lucie County courthouse. Mateen had made “inflammatory comments about women, Jews and the mass shooting at Ft. Hood.” The FBI twice questioned Mateen after he touted ties to terrorists, but FBI special agent Ronald Hopper told reporters “we were unable to verify the substance of his comments and the investigation was closed.” On June 12, 2016, Mateen gunned down 49 people and wounded 58 others at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

Mateen was born in the United States of Afghan parents but the Tsarnaev brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, [Sufi] Muslims from the Caucuses region, entered the United States on tourist visas then claimed asylum. Russian intelligence warned the FBI the Tsarnaev brothers were dangerous but the FBI’s investigation found no links to terrorism.  On April 15, 2013, the brothers planted bombs at the Boston Marathon that killed three people and wounded at least 264.

In 2008, the FBI had picked up emails between U.S. Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan and Islamist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a terrorist with ties to the 9/11 hijackers. In these emails, Hasan was asking for religious sanction to kill American soldiers. The FBI failed to interview Hasan or even make a phone call to his superiors, and no government agency took any steps to stop him. On November 5, 2009, at Fort Hood Texas, Hasan gunned down 13 unarmed American soldiers, including private Francheska Velez, 21, who was pregnant, and wounded more than 30 others.

Senator Joseph Lieberman sought to make the Hasan-Awlaki emails public but the FBI blocked their release, and military prosecutors forbade their presentation in the trial.

During those proceedings, reporters asked Robert Mueller, FBI boss from 2001-2013, if the bureau had dropped the ball by failing to act. “No,” Mueller responded, “I think, given the context of the discussions and the situation that the agents and the analysts were looking at, they took appropriate steps.” No word about any “regrets,” deep or otherwise, about Hasan’s victims.

For POTUS 44 [Obama], the Fort Hood attack was not terrorism or even “gun violence”. The mass murder was “workplace violence” and Mueller had no problem with that. POTUS 44, who as Barry Soetoro attended a Muslim school in Indonesia, proclaimed that the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. He also ordered that the FBI must not consider any links between Islam and terrorist attacks against the United States.

Mueller duly purged hundreds of counter-terrorism training materials of any hint that Islamic terrorists might pose a security problem. CAIR boss Nihad Awad thanked Mueller for his “pledge” to review FBI counterterrorism training.  So Mueller slavishly put political correctness above the safety of the American people, and that doubtless explains why the FBI looked the other way as the Tsarnaevs, Omar Mateen and others plotted their deadly actions.

Mueller’s politically correct compliance also explains why deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who has problems of his own, tapped the former FBI boss to head up the Russia investigation. Mueller duly bulked up his team with big-time Clinton supporters but his probe has turned up no collusion with the Trump campaign, as the 2016 presidential loser and her media fan club charged.

If Mueller wants to show some integrity, he should shut down the probe immediately.

But where would he suddenly get integrity from?

The former FBI boss’s preference for politics over safety, abetted by incompetence, has trickled down into similar inaction against walking red flags such as Nikolas Cruz. After his mass shooting Christopher Wray admitted the FBI failed and expressed deep regrets. President Trump and Congress need to lean on this guy more than a little bit.

Peter Strzok worked three shifts exonerating Hillary Clinton and framing Donald Trump. That doesn’t sound much like the job description of the FBI’s chief of counterintelligence. So why is this partisan bigot still employed by the FBI in any capacity?

Who are the FBI agents, and their bosses, who looked the other way in the Fort Hood, Boston Marathon and Orlando terrorist attacks? What, exactly, are they doing now?

Answer: Continuing to work hard at undermining the Donald Trump presidency. Is there any reasonable doubt about it?

A few days ago, a nineteen year old psychopath shot and killed seventeen people at the school in Florida that he had been expelled from. He entered the school, set off a fire alarm, and shot randomly into crowd streaming out of the classrooms.

How to prevent such a crime?

The Left’s solutions are not solutions at all:

Pass a law making it harder to obtain guns? Criminals by definition do not obey laws.

Confiscate all privately owned automatic and semiautomatic guns and shotguns? A gift to criminals.

Defy or change the second amendment to the constitution so no citizen who is not in the armed forces or the police is allowed to carry a gun? A help to would-be tyrants, most notably and threateningly those of the “community organizing” kind.

What then?

Let’s start with the proposition that central planning is always a bad idea.

What non-governmental action might work?

Jeff Deist writes (in part) at the website of the (libertarian) von Mises Institute:

There are no top-down political solutions available from Washington. Gun control doesn’t actually prevent crime, but it does provide the political class and media with another diversionary bitter cultural debate. Americans are deeply divided on guns, just as they are deeply divided on abortion and climate change and scores of other issues. …

Contrary to popular belief, the Second Amendment neither “federalized” gun laws nor created a right to private ownership of firearms. It simply enshrined the notion that “the people” need to be armed to defend themselves potentially against the state itself. …

The libertarian response to mass shootings, in particular school shootings, is to allow teachers and other personnel to carry weapons on campus. In fact, the broader libertarian program is to have most people armed, or at least potentially armed, to create a safer (not to mention more polite) society. If we cannot snap our fingers and produce crime-free cities and neighborhoods where nobody needs to carry a gun, then at least we allow everyone the ability to dissuade or defend against criminal shooters.

This is all well and good, but ignores the market impulse to outsource services to specialists. This is why neighborhoods hire private security patrols, and why celebrities hire professional bodyguards. Not everyone wants to carry a gun or train themselves in gun proficiency. And there is the issue of scale, where individuals might find themselves arrayed against organized criminal gangs.

Rather than endlessly debate the fraught political process of crafting illiberal gun control laws, we ought to think about private-market solutions that focus on controlling crime.We should think in terms of market economics, where private property and correct incentives give us what government and laws cannot: a mechanism to determine possible harms and the cost of protecting against or preventing those harms. People want safe neighborhoods and schools, which is just another way to say there is a market for them.

Generally speaking, the US legal system imposes premises liability on property owners whose negligence (or willful conduct) results in someone getting injured on that property. This arose conceptually through common law courts and juries applying general negligence concepts.

We accord different degrees of legal responsibility (“duty”) to landowners based on the identity of the injured party: a trespasser, for example, has less recourse to sue for injury than a business invitee (i.e., a customer). The law considers whether the injured party had a legitimate purpose being there, and in some cases whether they contributed to their injury through their own negligence.

The duty to make one’s property safe from a particular harm relates to, and in a sense hinges on, the foreseeability of that harm. Leaving spilled milk in a grocery aisle too long could well subject the owner to paying damages for a shopper who suffers a fall — a fall that was quite predictable and clearly caused by the wet floor. But intentional criminal acts by a third party … generally absolve the property owner of liability. After all, no shooter ever entered the grocery before, so why must the owner guard against this most unlikely event?

But should a public school district have a higher duty to keep students safe than the grocer has for shoppers? Arguably yes, in that society values children’s lives, well-being, and innocence perhaps more than adults’. And we force children into school attendance via truancy laws and meddling protective services agencies.

Furthermore, are school shootings now foreseeable even though they remain exceedingly rare? Does the media attention and notoriety given to such shootings change the calculus? At some point, perhaps today, school shootings could become foreseeable in the eyes of a jury.

We can’t necessarily draw conclusions here, but the question is whether the owners of public schools — generally municipal or county school districts — should be immune from lawsuits for school shootings simply because they are political subdivisions of states? Should sovereign immunity apply to them, or should they be forced to consider security measures just as private owners must? After all, it seems clear that a mass shooting at a prestigious private school would result in litigation.

It seems clear that imposing tort liability on school owners and operators, even government owners, would both improve security and provide a ready source of compensation for the families of victims. Private security agencies, which have a market reputation to develop or protect, almost certainly would provide more efficient service than government police — for the simple reason that more crime punishes their bottom line, while it often creates calls for increased police budgets.

To put it another way: Private security businesses must maintain a good record of keeping their clients safe, or they lose business and lose money; whereas government agencies such as the police can blame their failures on insufficient funding, so the more they fail the more money they get.

And private security models like Disneyland benefit from wanting to create a peaceful and happy environment, where security forces have every incentive not to escalate situations or incur liability.

Furthermore, private insurance models could help schools rationally allocate funds relative to the risks involved. Since school shootings are rare, premiums to cover such an event should be constrained. But other lesser types of crime in schools could be insured against as well, helping administrators better understand what they’re up against. And insurance companies would bend over backward to offer advice on avoiding shootings, since they would bear the cost of liability payments.

Admittedly, public schools using taxpayer funds to hire private security and pay insurance premiums muddies the waters. But at least it moves all of the parties involved — school districts, administrators, teachers, security providers, and parents — toward a market-based approach to safer schools. Tort liability, however imperfectly administered by government courts, offers one way to align the interests of parents and school owners in preventing further horrific events.

To sum up the message: Let school administrations choose to buy protection, the best the market can provide, at a price a competitive market puts on it.

(Hat-tip to Don L for the link to the Jeff Deist article)

Which would you rather be able truthfully to claim:

“I have a right to …”

or

“I am free to …” ?

There has been some discussion in the comments section of our post The Colossus … and the enriching of America (29 January, 2018) about whether government is necessary for the protection of a citizen’s rights or the protection of his liberty. I say, for the protection of his liberty. That is what defines “a free country”. In the United States of America, there are certain “rights” granted in law that are themselves protective of the individual’s freedom. The ultimate aim of the Founders in granting those rights was the protection of liberty.

*

“Freedom is not a state of nature but an artifact of civilization”

– Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, Chapter Four.

To be for freedom to do what one wants to do is not to be for unbounded liberty. (I use the words “liberty” and “freedom” interchangeably, as they are synonyms.)

What then are the bounds of liberty?

Ideally, my liberty is limited by nothing except everyone else’s liberty.

Sane, sober, sensible self-interest tells me that if I don’t want to be bonked on the nose by my neighbor, I would do well not to bonk him on his nose. But I cannot trust everyone else – or even myself – to be always sane, sober, and sensible.

If I live in a time and place when and where I have to fear continually that I will very likely be assaulted, injured, killed, and that the things I have acquired to sustain my existence, comfort, safety, and pleasure may be forcefully taken from me, I am not free. I am constrained to be perpetually on my guard against attack. I must never venture abroad unarmed. I must carry my possessions with me or stay with them. I am burdened with anxiety. I am severely hampered.

But if my freedom is protected by law and the apparatus of law-enforcement – police, judicial courts, prisons, gallows – I can take the safety of my person and my things for granted, and go lightly about my business among my fellow citizens. (Which is not to argue that it’s unnecessary to insure my house and its contents, or register my intellectual property. These are, it is true, private protections taken on by personal choice, but available to me only in a society governed by the rule of law.)

The city-states of ancient Greece embodied the idea of a society made up of people from many different countries, nations and tribes, all governed by the same rule of law. Your willingness to obey the law made you a worthy citizen, regardless of what region of the earth you derived from. The idea that people of many different nations could melt together into one nation ruled by law (“e pluribus unum”) was lost and forgotten for centuries and was not applied again until the eighteenth century with the founding of the United States of America.

However, the idea of a nation governed by the rule of law rather than by a monarch, re-emerged earlier than that, in England, with the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215. By signing it, King John conceded the principle: “Be you ever so high, the law is above you.” It was intended to be a “charter of liberties”, not a bestowal of “rights” on his subjects or on any one class of his subjects such as the barons. Clause 60 declared: “all the customs and liberties which we have granted to our own men shall be observed by all of our men, both lay and clerk [cleric], to their own men”. In other words, just as the king pledged liberty to the barons, so the barons, by the same token (the Charter) pledged liberty to their tenants.

Magna Carta affirmed the vital principle of freedom under the law. Clause 39 of the Charter said: ‘no free man shall be imprisoned or deprived of his lands except by judgement of his peers or by the law of the land’.  Clause 40 said: ‘To no one shall we sell, delay or deny right or justice’ (“right” in the sense of what is right, not “a right”).  Before Magna Carta, the king had been able to do pretty well whatever he liked – and did.  After the making of the charter of liberties, the king was as firmly subject to the law as everyone else.

(It is true that the monarchs of England nevertheless went on for centuries having too much arbitrary power. But it would be a mistake to believe that the continuing existence of an English monarch now means that the people are not as free as the American people. [The British have recently become less free, but not for that reason.] Since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when William of Orange and his wife Mary became the constitutional monarchs of the United Kingdom, the reigning king or queen is the nominal and ceremonial head of state, not the power of the state. The present Queen has no choice but to sign the acts of law that Parliament passes. The people are “subjects” in name only.)

A free country is one in which the people are free to do anything that is not specifically prohibited by law. Most of its laws proscribe rather than prescribe. They say you must not do this and that, such as murder, steal, perjure yourself. While there  are some that say you must do – for instance, the laws of the fisc: you must pay your taxes – the fewer “must” laws there are, the freer the people.

Now let us suppose that legislators decide that the law should specify everything you may do. Those would be your rights. It would be an infinitely long list, never exhaustive. So the enterprise would be impossible.

Does that mean that there can be no such thing as a “right” granted by law? No, it does not mean that. The law, and only the law, can grant a right. Even if one believes in a god, and makes the claim that the god bestowed certain rights on every human being ever born – the right to life, say – it would be meaningless if it were not recognized as a right, and protected, by the law.

Only the law can grant a right. The rights the laws of a free country can grant are very few. And there is a danger in granting any: that some governments, having granted a few, may claim that what those few permit you is all that you are permitted.

Why can governments only grant a few rights? Because no one can have a right that puts an obligation on someone else.

That is why it is nonsense to speak of a “right” to health care; a “right” to an education, a “right” to a house, a “right” to a minimum income, a “right” to equality of pay; a “right” to social security; a “right” to an abortion; a “right” to contraception; a “right” to a sex-change operation; or, the crowning stupidity, a “right not to be offended”. That takes away the essential freedom on which all the rest depend – the freedom to speak. And it is in itself a deeply offensive notion.

If your “right” compels the labor of someone else, it is not a “right” but a privilege – and what is worse, the indefensible privilege of the parasite.

What of your “unalienable”[1] rights named in the Declaration of Independence as “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”? They do not put an obligation on someone else, so aren’t they good rights? You are declared to be endowed with them by your “Creator”, “Nature’s God” – which is a way of saying that they are yours simply because you exist. And many there are who believe that because they exist, they have a right to exist.

If you believe that God or Nature granted you the right to live, to be free, and to pursue happiness, you may also believe that God or Nature will protect those rights of yours. But in fact Nature guarantees you nothing. You have no natural rights. You can call them natural, you can call them God-given, but unless they are recognized and supported by the law, you may find that they are not dependable.

So what rights can the law grant – and sufficiently protect to make the granting of them more than just the wistful thought of a somnolent parliament?

These: The right to speak freely. The right to a trial if you are accused of breaking the law. The right to safeguard yourself, your property, your reputation. They are among the rights granted by the US Constitution in the first ten amendments (the Bill of Rights), and all of them can be, and are, protected by the law. By protecting them, the law – or say the government – is protecting your freedom.

That is what the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are all about: realizing the idea on which the USA was founded – the idea of liberty.

Jillian Becker   January 31, 2018

[1] “Unalienable” means the same as “inalienable”: that which cannot be taken away.

What are the Big Issues of the day?

1. Donald Trump has been elected president of the USA, which is (a) impossible and (b) intolerable. 
2. President Trump has or has not called shithole countries “shithole countries”; and can it really be true that he weighs only 239 lbs. and is in good health?
3. It has come to light that over the last thirty years or so, for the first time in history, women have been pursued by men for sexual gratification, which is wrong except when Bill Clinton does it.
4. Studies show that white men run everything and must be replaced in all leadership positions by non-whites and women.
5. The academic discipline of mathematics is racist and sexist, and must be made more comprehensible to feminists and other non-intellectuals by infusions of emotion.
6. In a hundred years or so the planet could be a degree or two warmer than it is now.

There are other issues, good and bad, but they are comparatively trivial. Fox TV, conservative papers, some users of social media, and right-wing radio bring them up, but the mainstream media have the good sense not to excite or trouble the public over them.

1. The United States is in the grip of economic recovery.
2. The Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton corrupted the Intelligence agencies and the Department of Justice, by bringing them into a conspiracy to falsely accuse Donald Trump of collusion with the Russians in order to scuttle his candidacy, and later to try to nullify his election as president.
3. Nation states are coming to an end as borders are opened and vast numbers of refugees from shithole countries are moving into the West, which will soon experience radical transformations of their laws, culture and values to turn them into shithole countries.
4. Chief among the transformers are Muslims, whose law, culture and values will bring women – even feminist women – into subjection.
5. Muslims are further advancing their conquest of the West by means of terrorist attacks which can and do kill anybody anywhere at any time.
6. The aggressive states of North Korea and Iran are threatening nuclear war.

Admittedly the nuclear war threats are noticed sometimes by the mainstream media – but only because they are entirely the fault of President Trump.

It is time to sing the praises of a great president who has accomplished wonders in just one year of his presidency – while being opposed, impeded, maligned, frustrated, denigrated and threatened  by his political opponents, most of the media, and a large contingent of snobby Republicans.

Karin McQuillan does the singing beautifully. She understands that great accomplishment is possible only to those who possess the character and talent for it.

She writes at American Thinker:

As more and more people who hate Trump are forced to admit his achievements as president, they are doubling down on character assassination. Even Trump voters often preface their satisfaction with Trump’s actions by criticizing his tweets or his personality.

Here’s an alternate take on things: Trump’s character is responsible for his outstanding performance in his first year as president. If you want to know who someone is, you look at what he does. What we have: a booming economy, growing jobs, more lawful governance, fewer regulations, more global security. What character traits this took: hard work, focus, commitment, courage, honesty, independence, incorruptibility, self-confidence, love of excellence. The list of Trump’s positive character traits goes on and on. You don’t get achievements independent of character. …

I think Trump’s character is excellent.

Trump’s integrity in office is outstanding – the first politician in my memory who is sticking to his promises to voters. We are hugely benefiting from his promise-keeping.

His primary promise was to focus on jobs. Wow, has he delivered. Jobless claims have dropped to the lowest level in 44 years – last seen in 1973, under Nixon. Record-breaking low unemployment in 13 states. Investment reinvigorating the Rust Belt. More high-paying jobs in mining, oil, and industry – another promise kept, as President Trump has unleashed the energy sector and boosted capital investment.

Lazy, leftist, passive President Obama lectured us to accept the new normal of a stagnant economy, which was what his policies delivered. GDP growth was 1.6 percent in 2016.

Passivity and defeatism are not in Trump’s nature. He is a fighter who thinks big. He believes in free enterprise in his gut, because he is himself a go-getter. He thought big for the American economy, because he believes in Americans. Trump likes to say he completed his projects on time and under budget. It was a matter of pride for him. Pride can be a good thing.

Trump was scoffed at as a braggart and buffoon for promising 3-percent growth. He has already over-delivered.

The unemployment gap between blacks and whites has fallen to a record low. Trump promised the black community a better life in a better economy, and he has come through.

Unemployment for Hispanic Americans is the lowest in history. Another promise kept, as our Hispanic citizens have benefited from Trump enforcing our border laws and driving farm wages up. …

Trump boosted the economy through vigorous action: cutting regs, boosting the energy sector, restoring business confidence, dramatic corporate tax cuts, bringing back investments from overseas, and cutting job competition from illegal aliens. We now have a tight labor market, and wages are rising.

For much of the year, Trump was doing a lot of jaw-boning and executive actions, with no legislative back-up. These economic achievements came from President Trump’s character strengths. He is a high-focus, driven bulldozer of a man who gets things done. He’s a practical man. He’s a hard worker. These are not sophisticated or cultured or warm, fuzzy traits; they are traits of a strong man.

We have forgotten to honor masculinity in our culture.

President Trump did more than any president in history in his first year to relieve the regulatory burden on Americans. Complying with useless government regulations costs the economy $2 trillion a year, or 21% of the average payroll per American company. Estimates are that the Obama regs slowed the economy by 0.8%. Trump’s regulatory cuts, in which his administration removed 22 outdated regulations for each new one, is a big part of his doubling our economic growth in one year.

What did it take to cut the size of government and unleash the power of capitalism in this way? It was motivated not by conservative principles of small government. It was based in Trump’s character. He is one hundred percent practical. He has a strong sense of fairness. He is fearless. He thrives on opposition. He has incredible guts and stubbornness, necessary to take on the federal bureaucracy. He doesn’t give in when opponents fight dirty, and boy, does the Deep State fight dirty. He is not scared of the media’s attacks on him as a monster destroying the planet and abandoning the poor.

He is a creative and master fighter, as we see in the his effective use of tweets and branding to encourage his supporters and sow confusion among the enemy. …

He does not flout the law … like the underhanded Barack Obama. Obama’s DOJ and EPA created secret and illegal slush funds. The Democrat DOJ blackmailed the industries it was regulating in order to provide half a billion dollars to left-wing groups. The EPA used phony sue-and-settle tactics to hand undemocratic power to privileged leftist groups.

In sharp contrast, Trump … respects the rule of law. He honors the presidency. He is open and forthright. His administration has turned the DOJ and EPA back to following the laws as written.

Obama was an unhealthy narcissist who had never accomplished anything in the real world, yet he boasted that he knew more about every topic than his top advisers. … The mediocre surround themselves with lesser mediocrities. Obama undoubtedly did know more about foreign affairs than his right-hand national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, a speechwriter with a degree in creative writing.

Trump … is not afraid of being surrounded by top experts. He expects them to know far more in their fields than he does. Trump’s pride makes him seek excellence in others. He has created an impressive Cabinet and White House staff of brilliant achievers. You don’t get effective results on the economy and foreign affairs without a high-quality leader.

The importance of character to effectiveness cannot be overstated. … He is not discouraged by failures and mistakes; he learns from them. He doesn’t just set goals; he follows up on results. He faces reality.

Trump does not see Americans in different categories.  He cares about all Americans, black, white and brown; rich, middle-class, and poor; city-dwellers and country-dwellers; New York sophisticates and Evangelicals. He values freedom and prosperity for himself and for the rest of us. He wants to do what is best for the country, not what is best for only some identity groups or some regions at the expense of others, as in Obama and Hillary’s zero-sum game of identity politics.

We barely survived eight years of a bigot in the White House: the resentful, racially obsessed President Obama, who disliked Evangelicals, rural Americans, working-class whites, white small businessmen, and Jews. At home, Obama purposefully stirred up racial hatred and violence for political gain. Abroad, Obama tried to hand over the Middle East to the Muslim Brotherhood and facilitate nuclear weapons for the mullahs as payback to America. Obama’s race-baiting led to Americans dying – assassinations of our men in blue and innocent black victims of the resulting crime spree. He chose to destabilize Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Libya, setting off an unprecedented war on Christians and a Muslim migrant invasion of Europe. Maybe I missed it, but I don’t remember NeverTrumps criticizing Obama on character flaws. …

Unlike our last president, President Trump is who he is. What you see is what you get. His candor is blunt and refreshing.  e is not an ideologue, not a secret schemer, not a race-baiter, not a bitter person seeking payback. …  [He] is a happy warrior.

Trump is honest in another sense, also: he is not corrupt.  Indeed, he seems incorruptible. Trump does not sell himself to certain industries or lobbying groups (think the Clinton Foundation; think Obama’s wasting the trillion-dollar economic stimulus on Solyndra green schemes and payoffs to Democrat voting blocs).

President Trump is a unique politician – a free man.

There’s another set of admirable traits responsible for Trump’s economic achievements. … Trump actually notices and cares about other people.  His voters are real people to him, as he is real to them. …  His priority on growing the economy and job promotion comes from his love of ordinary people, working-class people of all colors and all regions, whom he sees as real human beings and treats with respect. What a relief after the cold and contemptuous President Obama, who cared about power, not people. Trump’s compassion and insight into working people’s lives are wonderful character traits, shared by few in his class.

The president is also our commander in chief. How has Trump’s character served him in this role?

Trump’s love of country and patriotism are dominant character traits. … [His] personal qualities have resulted in the defeat of ISIS, our improved relations with the Saudis (now on board fighting terrorism and cooperating with Israel), restoration of our warm alliance with Israel, decertifying the odious Iran deal, and supporting the Iranian demonstrators against the mullahs. European countries are finally paying their NATO dues, illegal aliens invading our country are being stopped at the border, the H-1B visa system is being applied lawfully to protect American jobs, and terrorists are no longer welcome into the country. Trump is in the process of bullying the Chinese and the U.N. and South Korea into more effective action against North Korea … The ability to bully opponents is something you want in a president.

Thanks to his fearless and clear-sighted character, we finally have a president who will not allow North Korea or Iran to have nuclear weapons.  Those of us who see that this is vital for national security are deeply grateful … 

Trump has an abundance of character strengths as a tough guy – he is brave, he is assertive, he is an experienced fighter, and he always goes on offense. He uses punishments and threats and intimidation, as well as cooperation and rewards, to get things done, because that is what it takes to win, and he wants to win. He is unpredictable and keeps his opponents off balance. He is impervious to their outrage. He is a fierce fighter against all who attack him or his family or his country.

NeverTrumps are allergic to Trump’s aggressive masculinity. … His commonsense thinking, bold methods, and blunt personality are toxic to them – never smart, never constructive, never heroic, never associated with his achievements. They are so blinded by their own hatred that they see Trump as a dangerous monster. They accept outright lies and miss the real man entirely.

In a mere 800-word column, Bret Stephens, conservative columnist for the New York Times, managed to call Trump, in Stephens’s own words, a lying, bullying, bigoted, ignorant, crass, petty, paranoid incompetent; a disgrace; an intemperate, dishonest demagogue who requires debased toadyism from his White House and Cabinet; a man who humiliates, denigrates, and insults his own officers and agencies, who is comparable to Juan Perón and Hugo Chávez and a deviant. Stephens talks of the irremediable “stain of [Trump’s] person,” Trump’s violence, his cult of strength (as in dictatorship), his disdain for truth, his hostility toward high culture, his conspiratorial thinking, and his white identity politics. In the midst of the hysterical name-calling, Stephens doesn’t point to a single bigoted word or action by Trump. He can’t. There is none. The accusations are partisan nonsense. In Stephens’s alternate universe, Trump’s evident competence, his love, respect, and commitment to help his fellow Americans, goes invisible, and we are left with a racist, fascist caricature born of leftist agitprop. …

It is a sorry reflection on our polite society that they are having conniption fits over Trump’s character. They want to divide the man from his achievements, just as they successfully divided Obama from his failures. Can they succeed in besmirching Trump’s character as they succeeded in sanitizing Obama’s? Their megaphone is large, and their self-interest in supporting the status quo ante is strong. They have a ready-built audience. They have enlisted enemies within our own Republican camp.

We have Trump.  We are winning.

President Trump wants everything he works on to be as good, as well made, as fit for its purpose, as it can possibly be. He achieves it because he works for it. He is not satisfied by anything less than the best. How lucky is America that it has such a person willing and able to come to its rescue, not only to save it but to make it even better than it has ever been, after the eight-year battering it took under the former administration led by the Communist, Islam-loving, America-hating nonentity, Barack Obama!

(Hat-tip to Cogito for the link to Karin McQuillan’s fine article)