www.dailycorinthian.com
Opinion
Reece Terry, publisher
Mark Boehler, editor
4 • Saturday, March 4, 2017
Corinth, Miss.
Dems lay basis for coup with Sessions BY DICK MORRIS AND EILEEN MCCANN Columnists
Here’s how it will go down, scripted in the playbook shared by former President Barack Obama and Saul Alinsky. The goal: Remove President Donald Trump from office. 1. Wiretap the Russian ambassador (or Michael Flynn) to get a record of contacts. 2. Raise the issue in public in the hopes that Flynn errs and denies the conversations took place. 3. Force Flynn’s resignation for lying in his denials. 4. Use wiretaps and surveillance of the Russians (and perhaps of Jeff Sessions) to get evidence of his contacts with them. 5. At the confirmation hearing, set up Sessions with a question so he can be accused of “lying.” 6. Demand that he recuse himself so the Dems can force a special prosecutor. 7. Get a prosecutor on the job to collect evidence aimed at impeaching Trump. The evidence doesn’t have to do with election contacts only. It could relate to anything uncovered in the process of the probe. The attempts to push aside Sessions are nothing less than the early stages of a coup d’etat to reverse the results of the election. The outraged calls by both Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign or at least to recuse himself from investigations of Russian contacts with the Trump administration are hypocritical. When Sessions’ predecessor, Loretta Lynch, met with Bill Clinton while Hillary Clinton was under investigation by her own Justice Department, she steadfastly refused to recuse herself from the investigation -- without a peep of protest from the Democrats who are now calling for Sessions’ head. This entire “scandal” is phony. What is wrong with contacts between a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Russian ambassador to the United States? Democrats lynched former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn for speaking with the ambassador while he was still a private citizen five weeks before he was sworn in, but Sessions was a Senator and it was fully appropriate for him to meet with the ambassador. When asked about whether or not he met with any Russians during the campaign, he told the Senate Committee that he had not. But the question was clearly related to the campaign and Sessions’ contacts were not about politics but rather about relations between the two countries. And, for that matter, what is wrong with an incoming national security advisor meeting with the Russian ambassador five weeks before taking office? With Vladimir Putin pondering retaliatory sanctions against the U.S., it was the right thing for Flynn to do to seek to head them off. The Democratic moves were scripted and prepared by Obama before he left office and before the election. They were Plan B in the event Trump won. Bottom line: Trump must NOT name a prosecutor and Sessions must NOT recuse himself (regardless of the next move in the coup attempt). Dick Morris, former advisor to the Clinton administration, is a commentator and writer. He is also a columnist for the New York Post and The Hill. His wife, Eileen McGann is an attorney and consultant.
Prayer for today Almighty God, may I not only approve of justice and kindness, but practice it. Grant that I may be attentive to the call of work and steadfast in completing it. May I be sincere to those who are dear to me, and never falter in my support to those who are dependent upon me. Amen.
A verse to share Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever. — 1 Chronicles 16:34
Letters Policy Please include your full signature, home address and telephone number on the letter for verification. All letters are subject to editing before publication, especially those beyond 600 words in length. Send to: Letters to the editor, Daily Corinthian, P.O. Box 1800, Corinth, Miss. 38835. Letters may also be e-mailed to: letters@daily corinthian.com. Email is the preferred method.
Oscars left activism on cutting room floor Imagine the result, with hundreds of millions of people watching worldwide, if Hollywood turned its creative firepower on real problems. Instead, viewers watched wall-to-wall Trump-bashing. They should have spent less time bashing Trump and more time making the sure presenters got the correct envelopes. If so, the Oscar gaffe of the century — reading the wrong name for Best Picture -- might have been avoided. Also, during the “In Memoriam” portion of the night, they put up picture of a very much alive producer instead of the costume designer who died last October. The broadcast’s ratings were the second-lowest in Academy Award history. Not one word was said about the oppression and subjugation of women in parts of the Muslim and Arab world. Nothing was said about how women, in parts of the Arab and Muslim world, cannot work outside the home, drive a car or get a divorce. There are instances in which a Muslim woman, having been raped, becomes a criminal for having had sex with someone other than her husband. Not one word was said about radical Islam, and nothing about ISIS, Boko Haram, alQaida, Hamas, Hezbollah or other terror groups.
The winner of Best Foreign Film declined to travel from Iran to attend the Oscars Larry because, as Elder he put it in the statement Columnist read on stage: “I’m sorry I’m not with you tonight. My absence is out of respect for the people of my country and those of other six nations who have been disrespected by the inhumane law that bans entry of immigrants to the U.S. Dividing the world into the ‘us’ and ‘our enemies’ categories creates fear — a deceitful justification for aggression and war. These wars prevent democracy and human rights in countries which have themselves been victims of aggression. Filmmakers can turn their cameras to capture shared human qualities and break stereotypes of various nationalities and religions. They create empathy between us and others. An empathy which we need today more than ever.” Not one word about the fact that Iran leads the world as a state sponsor of terrorism. Nothing about how the ayatollahs and Iranian politicians routinely chant, “Death to America” and, of
course, “Death to Israel.” Nothing about the fact that homosexuality is a crime in many Muslim and Arab countries. And in many of these countries — including some in Africa and Asia — the penalty for same-sex sexual acts is death. Hollywood’s silence over the abusive treatment of women, gays and religious minorities in much of the Muslim and Arab world has a parallel in academia. Dr. Fred Gottheil is an economics professor at the University of Illinois. In 2009, Gottheil found a fourpage petition, signed by 900 academics, calling for a U.S. abandonment of the support of Israel. Many petition signatories, he discovered after further research, were faculty in women’s and gender studies departments. What about the anti-human rights, anti-gay, anti-woman practices in the Muslim Middle East? Gottheil wrote a four-page “Statement of Concern” about human rights violations in the Muslim Middle East, such as honor killing, wife-beating, female genital mutilation and violence against gays and lesbians. His statement included evidence of such atrocities and included the names of Muslim clerics and scholars defending these human rights violations.
He sent the statement to 675 signers of the anti-Israel petition, and asked for their support. “The results were surprising,” Gottheil said, “even though I thought the responses would be few. They were almost nonexistent. ...What conclusions do I draw from this? The academic leftists are caught in an ideologically discriminatory trap of their own making. It turns out that with all their professing profession of principle, they are sanctimonious bigots at heart. And some are so obsessed about Israel that they would undermine their own selfinterest. Witness the faculty in gender studies who signed the anti-Israel petition but didn’t sign my ‘Statement of Concern’ which is about discrimination of women, gays, and lesbians in the Muslim Middle East. Sort of pathetic, actually.” On Oscar night, when the Hollywood community could have shed light on these atrocities, they were busy bashing Trump -- in la-la land. Larry Elder is a bestselling author and nationally syndicated radio talkshow host. To find out more about Elder, or become an “Elderado,” visit www.LarryElder.com. Follow Larry on Twitter @larryelder.
Immigration facts support Trump The afternoon before President Donald Trump’s Tuesday night speech to Congress, Twitter watchers were treated to a flurry of tweets, inspired by comments at the traditional lunch with network anchors, that the president was going to endorse something very much like the “comprehensive” immigration bills that foundered in Congress in 2006, 2007 and 2013. That was wishful thinking by people discounting Trump’s constant promises and stuck in the decade-ago mindset that spawned the “comprehensive” legislation, which in Trump’s view would have legalized the presence of undocumented immigrants immediately in return for promises, never to be fulfilled, of tough border and workplace enforcement later. In the House chamber, Trump made that clear as he spoke briefly but tellingly on immigration. He began not by calling for new legislation — the usual subject matter of such presidential addresses — but by describing what he is doing and what is happening now. His unstated subtext: Facts on the ground have made the “comprehensive” model irrelevant. Those facts are being affected by the orders he has issued since taking office, orders requiring stricter en-
Reece Terry
Mark Boehler
publisher rterry@dailycorinthian.com
editor editor@dailycorinthian.com
Willie Walker
Roger Delgado
circulation manager circdirector@dailycorinthian.com
press foreman
forcement of current laws that previous administrations didn’t choose to enforce. Michael The Trump Barone Department of HomeColumnist land Security widened considerably the number of criminal offenses for which undocumented immigrants can be deported. It abolished the Obama administration catch-andrelease procedure. It ended the procedure of sending unaccompanied asylumclaiming teens (or purported teens) to distant towns with summonses -- seldom obeyed — to appear for hearings later. The Trump order specifically excluded “dreamers” — people brought here illegally as children — from threat of deportation, effectively continuing former President Barack Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals exception. That’s widely popular; Americans don’t like punishing children for the sins of their parents. Trump has long said he’s not eager to deport dreamers, and perhaps he’ll offer them legal status or even, as the lunch leaks suggested, citizenship in any immigration legislation. If
so, it’ll be a bargaining chip for “comprehensive”-supporting Democrats who’ve sought legal status for almost all immigrants. In return, Trump would seek what he called for when he got around to talking about possible legislation in his speech: “switching away from this current system of lower-skilled immigration and instead adopting a merit-based system.” This was the 10th point in Trump’s 10-point plan in his Aug. 31 speech in Phoenix, delivered just after he met with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in Mexico City. It’s the major feature of legislation recently introduced by Republican Sens. Tom Cotton and David Perdue. It’s based, as Trump noted Tuesday, on the point systems of the immigration laws of Canada and Australia. In those countries, immigrants have incomes and education levels that are above average, not below average as they are here. It’s politically popular there and might be here. In Britain, Brexit strategist Dominic Cummings, noting that focus group participants without prompting praised “the Australian points system,” made that a major part of the successful Vote Leave message. In seeking a shift to highskilled immigration, Trump is moving with the grain.
World Wide Web: www.dailycorinthian.com To Sound Off: E-mail: email: news@dailycorinthian.com Circulation 287-6111 Classified Adv. 287-6147
Net migration to the U.S. from Mexico, which the Pew Research Center says has produced the lowestskilled immigrants on average, fell to zero between 2007 and 2014 and has not bounced back to anywhere close to previous levels. Meanwhile, immigration from Asia has been increasing. China and India together have accounted for more immigrants than Mexico since at least 2012. Asian immigrants are not all highskilled. So America is already moving toward an inflow of high-skilled immigrants, and Trump enforcement policies may be discouraging low-skilled people to immigrate or stay here illegally. Requiring E-Verify for job applicants and establishing a visa-tracking system -- which might require legislation but might be partly accomplished by regulation -- would move us further toward a higher-skilled and legally sanctioned immigrant population. That’d be a positive result, whatever you think of Trump’s “great, great wall.” Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.
How to reach us -- extensions:
Newsroom.....................317 Circulation....................301 news@dailycorinthian.com advertising@dailycorinthian. Advertising...................339 Classifieds....................302 com Classad@dailycorinthian.com Bookkeeping.................333
Editorials represent the voice of the Daily Corinthian. Editorial columns, letters to the editor and other articles that appear on this page represent the opinions of the writers and the Daily Corinthian may or may not agree.