Conservative Chronicle for April 13 2016 by Mid-America Publishing Corporation

At Issue this week... April 13, 2016 2016 Election Krauthammer (3) Lambro (2) Abortion Murchison (1) Apportionment Morris (20) Baseball Will (21) Britain Barone (30) Climate Change Greenberg (29) Clinton, Hillary Napolitano (6) College Campuses Lowry (3) Schlafly (23) Williams (27) Conservatism Chavez (25) Prager (27) Constitutional Fidelity Limbaugh (4) Dear Mark Levy (19) Economy Elder (13) Fed, The Kudlow (12) GOP Race Buchanan (9) Cushman (7) Farah (28) Greenberg (10) Towery (8) Government Oversight McCaughey (22) Leslie’s Trivia Bits Elman (14) Liberals Moore (11) Libya Will (31) Obama, Barack Massie (20) Panama Papers Bay (29) Pardons Saunders (22) Refugees Hollis (5) Ryan, Paul Tyrrell (8) San Francisco Saunders (26) Sarandon, Susan Bozell (25) SCOTUS Nominee Thomas (30) Trump, Donald Buchanan (24) Charen (17) Coulter (7) Lambro (18) Limbaugh (15) Lowry (17) Sowell (16) U.S. Elections Thomas (13) VA Malkin (14) Victimhood Barone (10)

Abortion by William Murchison

Abortion in our whacked-out era

he screwball nature of modern times was on full display last week when 1) Donald Trump couldn’t find a coherent way of asserting the need to protect unborn life and 2) Hillary Clinton got in trouble for insinuating that “life” was an issue at all when a woman wanted an abortion. TRUMP WADED from one end to another of the deep waters he got into by suggesting, in an interview, “punishment” was appropriate for women who undergo abortions. Later that day, he explained that women were in fact the victims, like their unborn children; any punishment should fall on the medical abortionists. It was then Clinton’s turn to muddy the moral waters, declaring on Meet the Press that the “unborn person doesn’t have constitutional rights,” in spite of the obligation society incurred in such cases to “make sure the child will be healthy.” “Person?” “Child?” These terms are not in the lexicon of the pro-choice movement she believes she has in her pantsuit pocket (and she probably does). A Planned Parenthood spokeswoman took umbrage at Clinton’s word choices. “Fetus” is the preferred word for “unborn child,” the latter term implying a humanity the government finds itself obliged to defend, were that humanity to attain the recognition Clinton is evidently expected to deny it. The Washington Times notes Planned Parenthood’s strong preference for “embryo,” “fetus,” and “the pregnancy.” Which you can understand. “Fetus” has a nice abstract quality to it. Most people have never met one. You might as conveniently talk to them about an atrioventricular valve. No show of emotion is to be expected. It has become necessary to talk this way in our screwball age. Our screwball age admits no moral complications in the way it views the essentials of human life. Human life, in the screwball view of our philosophers, is a straightforward proposition. We each have a life. What each does with that life is his or her affair — except where the government indicates otherwise. THERE WAS a time — long, long ago — when an “unborn person,” to borrow Clinton’s useful terminology, was viewed as a not-quite-yet-but-soon-to-be member

of the human community, with all manner of prospects, potentialities and needs. The first of those needs, logically, was to get born: to move from womb to the world outside, for care, attention and training. The community of this new life provided benefits and protections. Life was a right: a human life. One couldn’t unjustly deprive one of that right, irrespective of age. THAT IS, until the Supreme Court, in Roe v. Wade, decided otherwise. It was suddenly OK, in the opinion of seven justices, for an individual

William

to decide that life wasn’t, after all, a human right. For such a pronouncement the nation and the culture were unprepared — remaining so in large measure today, rights and wrongs still unsorted through. Yet with large numbers persuaded that the “fetus” — as Planned Parenthood likes to call it — is really, as Hillary Clinton put it, “a human person,” with or without the

constitutional rights Clinton implies the high court took away from it, transferring them to the mother. The fact that confusion endures even in the minds of candidates for the presidency shows how unfinished a business the abortion matter remains. We need to give Clinton, a grandmother, some credit. Consciously or unconsciously, she portrayed the confusion that lingers, 43 years after Roe v. Wade, over how seven men of the bar could rewrite Western civilization’s obligations to future citizens. THE MUSINGS of Donald Trump and the vocabulary choices of Hillary Clinton dispose of nothing in terms of the essentials. They remind us, nevertheless, that no election in our whacked-out times can take care of all our concerns, all our fears and grievances. Moral content — right vs. wrong, truth vs. falsehood — has to be pumped into every debate, every discussion that seems to be about trade or entitlements or Benghazi. With regard to abortion, we’re getting there accidentally, sideways, half an inch at a time. April 5, 2016

Conservative Chronicle

2016 ELECTION: April 5, 2016

Across the board, lightweight presidential candidates

The email fiasco, a product of her t’s hard to recall a presidential race in the modern era where the obsessive secrecy, began with her tellfront-runners were as unpopular ing Americans she had done nothing or frightening as the ones we have now. wrong and that her use of a private, Donald Trump, who’s drawing a 65 personal computer was safe and proper. percent unfavorable rating from voters, Her phony cover-up ended months later the highest among all the candidates, when she admitted she had made a big says he’d cut NATO’s defense budget “mistake.” That raises the very serious in Europe. And that, if abortions be- issue of her competence to be president came illegal, there would have “to be and leader of the free world. Her resume says she was an activsome form of punishment” for women ist first lady who was assigned by her who had them. to draw up a national Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, whose unfavo- husband health care program; rables have risen a U.S. senator from to nearly 50 perNew York; a candicent, has earned a date for president reputation for bein 2008; and, fiing the most un(c) 2016, United Media Services nally, secretary popular lawmaker of state for four in Congress. His experience? Little more three years in years. But what were her achievements? the Senate, though he’s been running The health care plan she authored and for president during most of that time. that Bill Clinton sent to Congress was The Democrats are even scarier. an incomprehensible, Rube Goldberg HILLARY CLINTON, the front- contraption that was a national emrunner for her party’s presidential nom- barrassment. It was so unpopular that ination, has seen her unfavorable image Democratic leaders, who ruled the climb to 53 percent. She remains un- House, refused to bring up for a vote in der investigation by the FBI and other committee, let alone send it to the floor agencies for using an unsecured home for approval. No one can recall any of computer system through which she her achievements in the Senate, or as sent out classified information in her secretary of state, for that matter. So what has she done to merit a proemails. Polls show many Americans find her motion to become the nation’s chief exuntrustworthy and dishonest. Critics ecutive officer? The campaign agenda question both her judgment in the reck- that she has set forth so far suggests that less email scandal, and her failure to she is running to be President Obama’s protect our U.S. consulate in Benghazi, third term, promising to enact all of the Libya, where four Americans were proposals Obama couldn’t get to first murdered in a preventable terrorist at- base on Capitol Hill throughout his troubled presidency: tack.

Donald

Lambro

— A national increase in the minimum wage, which a study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says will kill between 500,000 and one million jobs as employers cut their payrolls to keep their businesses solvent. — Increased tax rates on upperincome Americans, higher spending for an encyclopedia of social welfare spending, and more regulations on an underperforming economy held back by a mountain of anti-job, anti-growth taxation. This week, the Commerce Department reported that new orders for U.S. factory goods declined 1.7 percent in February and that business spending on capital goods was far weaker than had been forecast. If you need more evidence that the economy is on a downward slide, the government said new factory orders have fallen in 14 out of the past 19 months.

“NATO is costing us a fortune, and, yes, we’re protecting Europe, but we’re spending a lot of money.” Trump puts it in the “billions and billions.” But Washington’s ace fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, says if Trump means “direct spending to fund NATO,” then he’s “essentially wrong. Defense Department budget documents show the annual direct contribution is less than $500 million a year,” Kessler reports. That Trump plays fast and loose with the facts should be obvious by now. His bungled answer on abortion, then his retraction, shows that he hasn’t thought through a lot of issues. Pulling away from NATO in the face of Russia’s threats to the Ukraine and the Baltic states? Urging Japan and South Korea to develop nuclear weapons? Then adding Saudi Arabia to the list, only to reverse himself moments later?

WITH ECONOMIC growth slowing in the fourth quarter to a snail’space 1.4 percent, and consumer confidence in decline in March, an honest, capable candidate would be highly critical of the economy’s direction. But not even a peep of complaint has come from Clinton, who is in lockstep with Obama’s failed policies. If Clinton isn’t scary enough for you, Democrats have a backup in Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a wide-eyed, selfdescribed socialist who is running on a reckless tax-and-spend agenda that would bankrupt our country. But don’t rule him out. He was breathing down Clinton’s neck in the Wisconsin presidential primary as hordes of left-wing Democrats were flocking to his far-out socialist banner. Earlier this week, a Marquette Law School survey, considered the gold standard of Wisconsin polls, had Sanders leading Clinton by 49 percent to 45 percent. Notably, it showed him running 57 percent to 37 percent among self-identified independents. This is the upside-down, crazy political climate that our country is going through right now. On the right, the leading GOP candidate is inaccurately complaining that

THERE ONCE was a time when only major, heavyweight political figures were considered for the top job. Now we’re offering it to four people whom you would not want running the mailroom.

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April 13, 2016 2016 ELECTION: April 1, 2016

Final Four: The four foreign policies

fter dozens of contests featuring cliffhangers, buzzer- beaters and a ton of flagrant fouls, we’re down to the Final Four: Sanders, Clinton, Cruz and Trump. (If Kasich pulls a miracle, he’ll get his own column.) The world wants to know: What are their foreign policies?

HEREWITH, FOUR candidates and four schools: pacifist, internationalist, unilateralist and mercantilist. (1) Bernie Sanders, pacifist. His pacifism is part swords-into-plowshares utopianism, part get-thee-gone isolationism. Emblematic was the Nov. 14 Democratic debate which was supposed to focus on the economy but occurred the day after the Paris massacre. Sanders objected to starting the debate with a question about Paris. He did not prevail, however, and answered the first question with some anti-terror pablum that immediately gave way to an impassioned attack on his usual “handful of billionaires.”

The “Clinton/Obama” foreign poliSanders boasts of voting against the Iraq War. But he also voted against the cy from Ukraine to Iran to the South 1991 Gulf War. His reaction to all such China Sea has been a demonstrable But in trying to figure dilemmas is the same anti-imperialist/ failure. out what President pacifist reflex: Clinton would do in Stay away, but if the future, we need we must get into note that she volved, let others often gave conlead. (c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group trary advice, genThat’s for erally more asmeans. As for ends, Sanders’ foreign policy objec- sertive and aggressive than President tives are invariably global and univer- Obama’s, that was overruled, most sal, beginning above all with climate notably, keeping troops in Iraq beyond change. The rest is foreign-policy-as- 2011 and early arming of the Syrian social-work do-goodism, most espe- rebels. cially undoing the work of U.S. impeTHE LIBYA adventure was her rialism. Don’t be surprised if President grand attempt at humanitarian interSanders hands Guantanamo Bay over ventionism. She’s been chastened by to the Castros, although Alaska looks the disaster that followed. Her worldview is traditional, postrelatively safe for now. Closest historical analog: George Vietnam liberal internationalism — America as the indispensable nation, McGovern. (2) Hillary Clinton, internationalist. but consciously restraining its exercise

Charles

Krauthammer

COLLEGE CAMPUSES: April 4, 2016

The chalkening: Do not fear the chalk

tudents at the University of Michigan called police the other day — because someone had written Donald Trump’s name in chalk. No arrests were made. The episode is part of a nationwide trend of Trump supporters writing pro-Trump messages on sidewalks, stairs and other surfaces at college campuses, where fainting fits are sure to ensue. When they could get no relief from law enforcement, the University of Michigan students took it upon themselves to erase the offending messages — including “Trump 2016,” “Build the Wall” and “Stop Islam” — while fighting through feelings of betrayal. One student complained that there should be a special emergency number to call in such cases — one wonders how often students are really going to need recourse to an unwelcome-chalk-message hotline — and said that the administration’s inadequate response “perpetuates these really racist and hateful stereotypes that turn into violence and turn into students of color feeling unsafe on campus.” RARELY BEFORE have a few scribblings been so traumatizing — and written not even in ink or paint or some other difficult-to-remove substance, but in the same chalk used to mark out hopscotch courts and write temporary promotional messages about sorority mixers and student theatrical productions. That chalk messages can be considered tantamount to a physical threat captures the crisis of free speech on campus perfectly.

What has become known on social media as “the chalkening” demonstrates how some college kids can’t be exposed to the simplest expression of support for a major presidential candidate without wanting to scurry to the nearest safe space. By this standard, a “Make America Great Again” hat is a hate crime waiting to happen. It’s not clear how any of these students can turn on cable TV or look at the polls for the Republican nomination these days without being triggered.

Rich

PRO-TRUMP CHALKING took off after the reaction at Emory University, where some students were reduced to tears by the messages and said they felt “fear.” Protesters gathered at an administration building and let loose the antiphonal chant “You are not listening! Come speak to us, we are in pain!” This might have been an appropriate response if the kids had been tear-gassed, rather than seeing a positive phrase about a candidate that is supported by some significant plurality of the American public. The president of the school, James Wagner, promised to review security footage to try to identify the perpetrators, and in a statement full of campus-diversity jargon pledged, among other things, “immediate refinements to certain policy

of power through multilateralism and near-obsessive legalism. Closest historical analog: the Bill Clinton foreign policy of the 1990s. (3) Ted Cruz, unilateralist. The most aggressive of the three contenders thus far. Wants post-Cold War U.S. leadership restored. Is prepared to take risks and act alone when necessary. Pledges to tear up the Iran deal, cement the U.S.-Israel alliance and carpet bomb the Islamic State. Overdoes it with “carpet” — it implies Dresden — although it was likely just an attempt at rhetorical emphasis. He’s of the school that will not delay action while waiting on feckless allies or farcical entities like the U.N. Closest analog: Ronald Reagan. (4) Donald Trump, mercantilist. He promises to make America strong, for which, he explains, he must first make America rich. Treating countries like companies, he therefore promises to play turnaround artist for a foreign policy that is currently a hopeless money-losing operation in which our allies take us for fools and suck us dry. You could put the Sanders, Clinton and Cruz foreign policies on a recognizable ideological spectrum, left to right. But not Trump’s. It inhabits a different space because it lacks any geopolitical coherence. It’s all about money. He sees no particular purpose for allies or foreign bases. They are simply a financial drain. Imperial Spain roamed and ravaged the world in search of gold. Trump advocates a kinder, gentler form of wealth transfer from abroad, though equally gold-oriented. Thus, if Japan and South Korea don’t pony up more money for our troops stationed there, we go home. The possible effects on the balance of power in the Pacific Rim or on Chinese hegemonic designs don’t enter into the equation. Same for NATO. If those free-riding European leeches don’t give us more money too, why stick around? Concerns about tempting Russian ambitions and/ or aggression are nowhere in sight. The one exception to this singular focus on foreign policy as a form of national enrichment is the Islamic State. Trump’s goal is simple — “bomb the s--- out of them.” Yet even here he can’t quite stifle his mercantilist impulses, insisting that after crushing the Islamic State, he’ll keep their oil. Whatever that means. Closest historical analog: King Philip II of Spain (1556-1598).

and procedural deficiencies” and “regular and structured opportunities for difficult dialogues.” How about striking an even greater blow for diversity and asking the kids to get over seeing an anodyne political message that they disagree with? To his credit, Wagner himself chalked “Emory stands for free expression,” a message that will evidently have trouble penetrating the formidable incuriosity of some of his students. The reaction to the chalkening is a testament to the electric charge surrounding Trump. He is like the Washington Redskins of political candidates — so politically incorrect that some people can’t bear to see or hear his name. (The New York Times columnist Charles Blow actually refuses to use it.) This branding isn’t prudent positioning for a general election, but it makes Trump a perfect vehicle for provoking the other side, and it’s in that thumb-in-the-eye spirit that the Trump chalking is spreading. The students getting the vapors over it don’t understand free expression or what it means to live in a free society, where you inevitably encounter people who have ideas and support candidates that you oppose. They hate Donald Trump. Fine. That is reason to argue and agitate against him, not to seek protection from any contact with supporters of his, no ON JAN. 20, one of these four conmatter how tenuous. tenders will be sworn in as president. And one of these four approaches to the IF THEY ARE having a hard time world will become the foreign policy of handling this election cycle, just imagine the United States. how Reince Priebus feels. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Conservative Chronicle

CONSTITUTIONAL FIDELITY: April 1, 2016

We must not destroy the Constitution to save it

really worry that the Trump have been ineffective in stopping them. movement is a misguided reac- If you excuse Trump on the specious tion to the abuses of power by the grounds that all is fair in business, then ruling class in Washington, D.C. In our you are deluding yourself about the dire predicament, we need to be very importance of adhering to America’s f o u n d i n g principles. thoughtful about our remedy. I t deeply troubles me Some presumably well-intentioned that Trump supportpeople are coners, most of whom vinced that beare Republican cause federal voters, seem unpoliticians have concerned about caused the prob(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate Trump’s seeming lems threatening America, only an “outsider” can fix indifference to many political issues them. I understand the sentiment, but and the scheme of limited government a mere cursory comparison of the two enshrined in the Constitution. “That’s leading candidates vying for the GOP not important to us. What matters is that presidential nomination exposes the fal- he has a lifelong record of getting things done.” lacy. They argue that things have so deteriIT’S SILLY to define outsider so orated that they cannot be fixed through literally. Donald Trump cannot be con- ordinary means. “Don’t give us your sidered an outsider in any true sense, pseudo-sophisticated lawyer talk. You since he has been involved all his adult lawyers are the ones who have messed life in buying influence from, cavorting things up. Only a seasoned businessman with, and enabling a whole host of D.C. can make them right.” While I think that business acumen politicians. Sen. Ted Cruz, by contrast, has fought the establishment more than can be a great attribute for a chief executive, and even a commander in chief, a anyone. Let’s not forget that the primary savvy, no-nonsense alpha businessman movers in destroying America’s lib- can’t run things with the same degree of erty, prosperity and solvency hail from autonomy he might run his businesses. Haven’t we conservatives been horthe political left. The right hasn’t done nearly enough to stop them, but pro- rified at President Obama’s flagrant gressives have actively tried to supplant usurpations of power — his continuous America’s founding ideas for half a cen- end runs around the Constitution? Why in the world would we condone similar tury. Why is that relevant? Because Don- actions on the right? If I am unfairly ald Trump has happily supported these characterizing the Trump supporters’ agents of destruction throughout his position here, then what do they think career, probably even more than he’s Trump could do that other presidents helped the Republican politicians who could not?

David

Limbaugh

I’ve conversed with a number of Trump supporters who have simply said that we need someone to go in there and shake things up — not a little bit, mind you, but at the level of a Richter scale magnitude 8 earthquake. “We’ll root out the establishment toxins, and then we’ll go about rebuilding our system.” Sorry, but it doesn’t work like that. If we ignore the Constitution, ostensibly to save it, we’ll never get it back. And that means we’ll never get America back, no matter how often we repeat the slogan, “make America great again.” IT IS NOT just lawyers who appreciate the Constitution. We make ideal scapegoats, but constitutional patriots span the full range of vocations. It would be a grave mistake to chuck aside the Constitution just because it has been under relentless assault by progressives.

I’m all for reinforcing it’s integrity through an Article V process, but let us never join the left in torching the document William Gladstone referred to as “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.” Do we really want to grant Obama his lifelong wish of exacting revenge on America, as founded, by reacting irrationally and thereby abetting him in the destruction of the our constitutional order? Can you imagine the joy he’s feeling as he witnesses the havoc he’s caused? What a cruel irony if Obama crosses the finish line with the help of people who should be uniting to push him back to the other end zone. Don’t surrender to the seductive lie that our national salvation depends on cashiering the Constitution, or that we must choose between presidential character and effectiveness, especially when we can have both. We are poised in this election cycle to elect a man who is uniquely qualified to restore our constitutional order. It’s as if Ted Cruz has been preparing all of his life for this pivotal moment in our history to roll back the regulatory state, substantially reduce federal taxing and spending, structurally reform entitlements, stem the infernal explosion of federal power and restore power to the states, institute market reforms to health care, rebuild America’s military, seal our borders, end the environmental madness, and unleash market forces and robust economic growth. We must not replace authoritarianism on the left with authoritarianism on the right. We must not dishonor the Constitution and the rule of law to preserve them. But we can turn things around if we’ll finally stand up to progressives with the same vigor that they stand up to America’s founding principles. LET US KEEP our heads, behave like adults, and truly make America unique again.

April 13, 2016 REFUGEES: March 31, 2016

Obama’s inscrutable immigration policies

Given that ISIS is trying its best to he news these days reads like a poorly written B movie script. kill as many people in its own region as You know the kind — where it can, it’s hard to see how our depriving the audience watches a formulaic plot them of large numbers of their intended development with one-dimensional victims makes them any more favorably characters, and thinks, “No one in their disposed toward us. (Presumably, those who legitimately want to come here right mind would really do this!” ISIS already have a faOn Easter Sunday, Breitbart News’ to escape vorable impression Jerusalem buof the U.S.) reau chief Aaron Worse, Obama’s Klein aired a ralofty language igdio interview with nores more painAbu al-Ayna al(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate ful realities like Ansari, described those in Europe, by Breitbart as “a well-known Gazan Salafist jihad- which is contending with an influx of ist allied with Islamic State ideology.” over a million refugees just in 2015. Klein asked al-Ansari whether ISIS was European countries are also fighting planning attacks on U.S. soil. While al- against a pervasive underground terror Ansari could not confirm the number of network that is aggressively exploiting ISIS operatives in the United States, he the Middle Eastern migration. The tersaid, “I can confirm that our leadership rorist attacks referenced by al-Ansari made it very clear that what happened that took place in Paris last year and in in Paris, what happened in Brussels was Brussels last week killed and injured only a small rehearsal before the big hundreds of people, further exposing Europe’s vulnerability. The head of thing that will happen in America.” Germany’s domestic intelligence agenAS IF ON CUE, President Obama cy confirmed in a New York Times argave a radio address in which he restat- ticle last month that European authoried his commitment to taking 100,000 ties know for certain “that terrorists refugees fleeing ISIS-controlled terri- are being smuggled in, camouflaged as tory in the Middle East. In his speech, refugees.” An Algerian couple arrested he echoed a theme that he has used bein Germany last month for suspicion fore: ISIS will be defeated, and part of of planning a terrorist attack in Berlin Obama’s strategy is demonstrating our entered the country disguised as Syrsuperior kindness: “We have to wield ian refugees. Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the another weapon ... [a]nd that’s the pow- “mastermind” of the Bataclan attacks in er of our example. Our openness to ref- Paris, was able to slip into France pretending to be a Syrian refugee. ugees fleeing ISIL’s violence.”

Laura

Hollis

THIS CAN BE replicated anywhere. The complete lack of documentation, computer databases or any other reliable form of identification for refugees makes the notion of “vetting” them all impossible — a fact which the Assistant Director of the FBI told the Homeland Security Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives in September of last year. Any claim to the contrary, therefore, is either unfathomable blindness or outright deception. We don’t even have to speculate about what might happen. We have already seen it. We were warned by Russian intelligence that Tamerlan Tsarnaev (an immigrant who was applying for citizenship, and one of the brothers responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing) was suspected of having been radicalized. Tamerlan escaped detection because of an error in the spelling of his last name. Tashfeen Malik — wife of Syed Rizwan Farook, who, along with her husband, murdered 14 people in San Bernardino last year — declared her loyalty to ISIS on her Facebook page. Nobody caught it.

If would-be terrorists within our borders can escape detection, why would we bring in tens of thousands more individuals whose backgrounds, behaviors and loyalties can be neither ascertained nor scrutinized? That is a perfect cover for those who intend us harm, and it does not take many to wreak incredible havoc, as Europe has already discovered, to its chagrin. Why, under these circumstances, would the President of the United States double down on a policy that will subject people already living here to an increased risk of terrorist attacks? Consider this analogy: What father, having been warned by law enforcement that criminals were likely on the prowl in his neighborhood, would leave his home unlocked and announce that fact to the world? Is that responsible? Is it any less inscrutable if someone made such an announcement and bolstered it with pious platitudes about his faith in humanity? If thieves took advantage of the unlocked door to steal the man’s family blind — or worse — what would our reaction be? “Why on earth would you leave your door unlocked?” Refusing to take in tens of thousands of Middle Eastern refugees is not heartless — there are many other ways to provide support. And no one can legitimately accuse the United States of not being receptive to immigrants. There are over 42 million immigrants currently living in the U.S. — 13 percent of the total population, which is the largest percentage in over a century. Approximately 80 million people (or about 25 percent of the total population) in the United States are either first or second generation. So, no — this is not about generosity. We have amply proven our generosity. This is about national security. The President of the United States should articulate a policy that makes clear that keeping those already living here safe is his or her top priority. To say otherwise — to watch as terrorists exploit Europe’s open borders; to see murderous attacks, and then to proclaim that we are going to take in refugees anyway, is to say that the lives of Americans are a price you are willing to pay to score political points. THAT ISN’T kindness, and it isn’t compassion. It’s criminal negligence.

Conservative Chronicle

HILLARY CLINTON: March 31, 2016

The Clinton investigation enters a dangerous phase

he FBI investigation of former Department email stream from governSecretary of State Hillary Clin- ment computers to Clinton’s secret servton’s failure to protect state se- er in her home in Chappaqua, New York. crets contained in her emails has entered He has told them that Clinton paid him its penultimate phase, and it is a danger- $5,000 to commit that likely criminal ous one for her and her aides. activity. Federal law enforcement sources He has also told some of the 147 FBI have let it be known that federal prose- agents assigned to this case that Clinton cutors and the FBI have completed their herself was repeatedly told by her own examination of raw data in the case. S t a t e Department inforAfter the FBI acmation technology quires raw data — experts and their for example, the colleagues at the nature and number National Security of the state secrets Agency that her (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate in the emails Clinpersistent use of ton failed to protect or the regular, con- her off-the-shelf BlackBerry was neither sistent, systematic nature of that failure an effective nor an acceptable means of — prosecutors and agents proceed to receiving, transmitting or safeguarding draw rational inferences from that data. state secrets. Little did they know how reckless she was with government seTHEN THEY proceed to corrobo- crets, as none was apparently then aware rate those inferences, looking for other of her use of her non-secure secret server sources to support or even to contradict in Chappaqua for all of her email uses. them. With one exception, all of this We know that the acquisition and corwork has been done with neutral sources roboration phase of the investigation has of evidence — documents, email meta- been completed because the prosecutors data, government records and technical have begun to ask Clinton’s top aides experts. during her time as secretary of state to The exception is Bryan Pagliano, the come in for interviews. This is a delicate one member of Clinton’s inner circle and dangerous phase for the aides, all of who, with either a written promise of whom have engaged counsel to reprenon-prosecution or an order of immu- sent them. nity from a federal judge, began to coHere are the dangers. operate with federal prosecutors last fall. The Department of Justice will not reHere is what he told the feds. veal to the aides or their lawyers what it Pagliano has explained to federal knows about the case or what evidence prosecutors the who, what, when, how of criminal wrongdoing, if any, it has acand why he migrated an open State De- quired on each of them. Hence, if they partment email stream and a secret State submit to an FBI interview, they will go

Andrew

Napolitano

in “blind.” By going in blind, the aides run the risk of getting caught in a “perjury trap.” Though not under oath, they could be trapped into lying by astute prosecutors and aggressive FBI agents, as it is a crime — the equivalent of perjury — to lie to them or materially mislead them. FOR THIS reason, most white-collar criminal defense lawyers will not permit their clients to be interviewed by any prosecutors or FBI agents. Martha Stewart’s lawyers failed to give her that advice, and she went to prison for one lie told in one conversation with one FBI agent. After interviewing any Clinton aides who choose to be interviewed, the DOJ personnel on the case will move their investigation into its final phase, in which they will ask Clinton herself whether she wishes to speak with them. The prosecutors will basically tell her lawyers that they have evidence of the criminal behavior of their client and that before they present it to a grand jury, they want to afford Clinton an opportunity blindly to challenge it.

This will be a moment she must devoutly wish would pass from her, as she will face a damned-if-you-do, damnedif-you-don’t dilemma. Here is her dilemma. If she were to talk to federal prosecutors and FBI agents, they would catch her in many inconsistencies, as she has spoken with great deception in public about this case. She has, for example, stated many times that she used the private server so she could have one mobile device for all of her emails. The FBI knows she had four mobile devices. She has also falsely claimed publicly and under oath that she neither sent nor received anything “marked classified.” The FBI knows that nothing is marked classified, and its agents also know that her unprotected secret server transmitted some of the nation’s gravest secrets. The prosecutors and agents cannot be happy about her public lies and her repeated demeaning attitude about their investigation, and they would have an understandable animus toward her if she were to meet with them. If she were to decline to be interviewed — a prudent legal but treacherous political decision — the feds would leak her rejection of their invitation, and political turmoil would break loose because one of her most imprudent and often repeated public statements in this case has been that she can’t wait to talk to the FBI. That’s a lie, and the FBI knows it. Some Democrats who now understand the gravity of the case against Clinton have taken to arguing lately that the feds should establish a different and higher bar — a novel and unknown requirement for a greater quantum of evidence and proof of a heavier degree of harm — before Clinton can be prosecuted. They have suggested this merely because she is the likely Democratic presidential nominee. THE PUBLIC will never stand for that. America has a bedrock commitment to the rule of law. The rule of law means that no one is beneath the law’s protections or above its requirements. The DOJ is not in the business of rewriting the law, but the Democrats should get in the business of rethinking Clinton’s status as their presumptive presidential nominee, lest a summer catastrophe come their way.

April 13, 2016 DONALD TRUMP: March 30, 2016

It’s only Trump — looking for a winner

he only question for Republi- winnable presidential election in 2012, Presidential elections are won by wincans is: Which candidate can says it’s impossible for Republicans to ning states. (Only someone who got his win states that Mitt Romney get one more white vote — and the me- a-- kicked running an eminently electable dia are trying to convince the GOP that candidate might not know this.) lost? Excluding third parties and breaking Start with the fact that, before any he’s right. Stevens says Romney tapped out ev- it down to a two-man race, Mitt Romney vote is cast on Election Day, the Demo88 percent of the white crats have already won between 90 and ery last white voter and still lost, so he w o n vote in Mississippi, 98 percent of the black vote and 60 to 75 says Republicans but only 40 percent percent of the Hispanic and Asian vote. are looking for of the white vote Unless Republicans run the table on the “the Lost Tribes of in Massachusetts. the Amazon” hopwhite vote, they lose. What sense does it ing to win more (c) 2016, Ann Coulter make to talk about IF THERE’S still hope, it lies with white votes: “In Trump and only Trump. Donald Trump 1980, Ronald Reagan won 56 percent his national percentage of the white vote will do better with black and Hispanic of white voters and won a landslide vic- with disparities like that? voters than any other Republican. But it’s tory of 44 states. In 2012, Mitt Romney ROMNEY LOST the white vote to with white voters that he really opens up won 59 percent of whites and lost with Obama in five crucial swing states: Maine 24 states.” the electoral map. Apparently, no one’s told Stevens (42 percent of the white vote), Minn. (47 A Republican Party that wasn’t intent on committing suicide would know that. about the 50-state Electoral College. percent), N.H. (48 percent), Iowa (48 But Stuart Stevens, the guy who lost a The national white vote is irrelevant. percent) and Wis. (49 percent). He only

Ann

Coulter

GOP RACE: March 31, 2016

GOP contenders: What we believe

fter months of Republican primary candidates vying for attention on debate stages around the country, this week’s CNN town hall from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, proved to be a study in contrast. Three hours, three segments, and three Republican candidates left standing — Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and John Kasich. The format provided an opportunity for longer answers and more pressing follow-ups from Anderson Cooper, the CNN moderator. Decided and undecided voters alike had an opportunity to question each candidate. The result? Trump showed his toughness and self confidence. A rookie interview question stumped Cruz, who elegantly weaved personal stories into his answers in an apparent attempt to humanize his image, and Kasich channeled Jimmy Stewart. TRUMP, WHEN asked about the arrest of his campaign manager, responded, “I stick up for people when people are unjustly accused. And, in my opinion, unjustly accused. She’s grabbing me. He walks in to stop it. She walked through Secret Service. She had a pen in her hand, which could have been a knife, it could have been just a pen, which is very dangerous. She should not have been doing that. “And she didn’t fall to the ground. She wasn’t dragged to the ground and all of the things that she said, Anderson. I stick up for people.” The message to voters: Trump is tough and won’t back down. Trump’s self-surety continued when answering the question, “When was

the last time you actually apologized for something?” “No, I do — I don’t know — I’ll think,” Trump answered. “Can I think? But look, I do believe in apologizing, if you’re wrong. But if you’re not wrong, I don’t believe in apologizing ... Yes, I mean — apologized — I apologized to my mother years ago for using foul language. I apologize to my wife for not being presidential on occasion. She’s always saying ‘Darling, be more presidential.’” The takeaway — no major messups that required an apology from Trump, he’s mostly right — well, about everything.

Jackie

CRUZ WAS challenged by Shannon O’Connell, who asked, “My question is more personal in nature. What would you regard as your greatest personal failure and what did you learn from it?” Cruz answered, “What I will say is I’m a pretty driven guy. That has pros and cons. I have always been a very driven guy. I believe passionately in free-market principles and the Constitution ... And, you know, a lot of that, I think the reason that I’m so driven on this front has to do with my family background.” Ahh, the classic, college-interview response — my biggest fault is really a positive attribute — therefore I must not have any real faults, just pretend ones that make me a better candidate and hopefully a better president.

Kasich channeled Jimmy Stewart during his close when asked by Cooper, “You said that this campaign has caused you to slow down.” Kasich replied, “I think when people want to feel safe and for some reason they come to the town halls I have ... and for some reason people feel safe ... I want to ship a lot of programs back to the states, but here’s what I really want everybody to know I believe. The spirit of our country, Anderson, doesn’t rest in the president. I mean, the president’s important, but the spirit of our country rests in the neighborhoods. The Lord’s given us all a certain purpose in life, and we need to carry it out. We need to live a life bigger than ourselves... And, frankly, state government ought to be shifting more power to the neighborhoods. That’s the spirit of our country. The spirit of our country — don’t you think? Where we live? It’s in you. It’s in you. It’s in me, and him. It’s not in somebody, you know, down in Washington D.C. “You think? I mean, I hope so. I believe that.” While running for president, Kasich has learned to slow down, and become more articulate about what makes America great. The answer is not him, or not any person in Washington, but the people who live in the neighborhoods and help others out. Kasich understands it’s not about him.

narrowly beat Obama’s white vote in other important swing states — Ill. (51 percent), Colo. (52 percent), Mich.(53 percent), Ohio (54 percent) and Pa. (54 percent). Increasing the white vote in these states gives Trump any number of paths to victory. If Trump wins only the same states as Romney, but adds Mich, Pa., Ohio and Ill. — where Romney’s white vote was below his national average — Trump wins with 280 electoral votes. (Romney wasn’t an ideal candidate in the industrial Midwest.) Trump could lose any one of those states and make up for it by winning Minn. and Wis. — where Romney actually lost the white vote. Or he could lose two of those states but add victories in places outside the Rust Belt, where Romney’s white vote was also below average, such as Colo., Iowa, Maine and N.H. (In 1992, Ross Perot came in second in Maine, beating George Bush.) I haven’t even mentioned Florida, where Trump recently trounced Stuart Stevens’ dream candidate, Marco Rubio, a sitting senator — and a Cuban! — in a 20-point rout. Republican primary voters outnumbered Democratic primary voters in that election by more than half a million votes. If Trump wins Florida, he needs to win only two or three of the 10 states where Romney either lost the white vote outright or won a smaller percentage of it than he did nationally. Stevens’ analysis assumes that there will be no new voters — and, again, there isn’t a mammal on the North American landmass who knows less about winning presidential elections than Stuart Stevens. It’s as if we’re only allowed to divvy up the pile of voters from 2012. Unless you voted in 2012, you can’t vote in 2016! Use it or lose it, buddy. That’s not how it works. Trump is saying he’ll bring in lots of new people, as he has throughout the primaries. In the Florida GOP primary, for example, Trump got nearly half a million more votes than Romney did in 2012 — and about half a million new people voted. Trump may be wrong, but it’s insane to say that it’s impossible for him to bring out new voters. What’s impossible is for any Republican candidate, other than Trump, to win a single state Romney lost. Ted Cruz’s corny speaking style is creepy to anyone who doesn’t already agree with everything he says. He’s the less likable, more hard-edged version of Romney. Every other Republican is, one way or another, a less attractive version of Romney.

THE TOWN HALL left me thinking about the differences between the candidates. Trump believes in himself, Cruz MAYBE 50 years of Third World imbelieves his major flaw is being too driven and Kasich believes in the American migration means it’s too late, and even people. It will be interesting to see which Trump can’t win. But it’s an absolute certainty that any other Republican will lose. candidate wins out.

Conservative Chronicle

GOP RACE: March 31, 2016

My final column: ‘Have fun storming the castle’

n six short months I’ve lost my father and, as an only child, have grappled with caring for my mom. All of this while trying to analyze polls, assist a great law firm, continue a long-planned move to Florida and continue “Newsvesting.” Clearly, something has to give. Sadly, the “give” is this 15-year-old syndicated column. Not because I don’t love it. But because it deserves the research and time I will no longer be able to give it. WHILE I never reached the readership levels of famed columnists, I did strive to tell it like it is from outside the D.C. Beltway. I will leave in that same tradition, thankful to readers and publications that loyally followed or published me. In the early 1980s, working for a great Republican, then- U.S. Sen. Mack Mattingly, I attended meetings led by Newt Gingrich in his then-tiny House legislative office. Elected officials, young aides and experts would gather informally to listen and give input to Gingrich as the rising star created policies of what quickly became “The Conservative Opportunity Society.” Those efforts became the foundation for his later years as speaker of the House — a time of welfare reform, tax cuts, and the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. I might note that one John Kasich played a serious role in those efforts as well. Ironically, some of us who were part of, or witness to, that last real conservative movement are now castigated for taking another political phenomenon seriously. One fast food chain exclaims “We didn’t invent the chicken, just the chicken sandwich.” That’s how I feel about my 2014 column stating that, should Donald Trump run for president, he would be scoffed at by the media and GOP establishment but would emerge as a strong contender. It seemed so obvious to me. Fifteen months later, Trump still leads the delegate count. Consider just one simple example of Trump’s appeal to his supporters. His proposed wall to stop illegal entry into the U.S. is lampooned and deemed offensive by the media and establishment. But recently a VA hospital in Atlanta erected a wall-like fence designed to prevent shabbily treated and depressed vets from jumping from its parking decks to commit suicide. Trump supporters ask “Why are we forced to wall in forgotten vets but not compelled to wall out those who illegally enter the country?” Not the logic of policy wonks, but sensible to a lot of frustrated voters. Gingrich wrote in the Washington Times that my early columns on Trump

were “prescient.” Neither of us was PAC ads. And recently hitting him making endorsements. That’s not a col- again with the “anti-female” mantra. This over a lamentable series of Trump umnist’s job. I certainly don’t know how “pre- jabs at Cruz’s wife in response to what perceived as a Cruzscient” the following observations will T r u m p condoned and equalbe, but, for one last ly lamentable attack time, here goes. on Mrs. Trump. SorTrump and Ted did, silly and disCruz are facing a tracting stuff. trap of tradition (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate The totality of from the Repubthese efforts has lican Party. Get along with the political powers in the potentially slowed Trump’s momenGOP and you’re OK. But operate au- tum. At the same time, the old guard tonomously and they will manipulate has accelerated looking at convention and rig things against you. I know first- rule changes and the filling of state delhand, having chaired my state GOP egations with anti-Trump delegates. Clearly, they aren’t sure they can convention decades ago. I saw the horror on the establishment’s face when I slow him down enough at the ballot box. But to try, some leaders who indidn’t do what they expected. tensely disliked Cruz are now embracIN THE CASE of Trump, insiders ing him. He doesn’t go along or get have already thrown everything but the along with his fellow GOP senators, a badge of honor this election cycle. But kitchen sink at him. First by demanding a loyalty pledge. they will support Cruz to help him deThen running endless negative Super prive Trump of a first-round victory at

Matt

Towery

the GOP convention. Then, in subsequent rounds of voting, with delegates increasingly free to vote as they wish, those delegates could look elsewhere for a nominee. If this all comes to pass, the GOP will cease to exist as a major party. Trump’s supporters will abandon the party. Cruz’s supporters, if double-crossed, will sit November out. A Republican Party that currently exists purely for the sake of holding power will come to an end. Perhaps a good thing. This likely won’t be resolved until the July Cleveland convention. Years ago, I quit letting politics rile me up. So, if the Republican Party explodes, I might just hear it from under a palm tree! THANKS FOR reading, and since I won’t be part of the fracas to come, I’ll simply quote Billy Crystal’s character in the classic movie, The Princess Bride. “Have fun storming the castle!”

PAUL RYAN: March 31, 2016

Speaker Paul Ryan’s road ahead

he House Speaker, the honorable Paul Ryan, recently expressed his hope for a more “confident America.” He went on to say “we don’t shut people down. If someone has a bad idea, we tell them why our idea is better. We don’t insult them into agreeing with us.” He spoke of the superiority of persuasion to execration. CLOSE OBSERVERS of the Ryan metier thought he was addressing Donald Trump. After listening to the campaigns in both parties, I have a different view. In my mind, Ryan was urging caution on everyone campaigning for the presidency this year. Certainly, his remarks were aimed at his fellow Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. John Kasich. Yet they were also aimed at Sen. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, who both disparage Trump, Cruz and Kasich — and forget not the infamous one percent — whenever they take the lectern. Ryan calls for reflection and restraint from both parties. Nonetheless, he is in a tricky position. In a year of riotous politics, he has taken the chance of offending the rabble-rousers by calling for a sense of restraint. He even has a tea partier challenging him back home. Of course, he has no alternative given his lofty goals in the House of Representatives. As speaker of the House, he is responsible for getting budgets through that chamber that are acceptable to a majority and also advance his

free market policies. He has never been known for heated rhetoric, and he is not calling for it now. His role is unique in national politics: He wants to be effective, which seems to be what the majority of Americans call for, but he is an advocate of free markets. RYAN COMES from the Jack Kemp corner of the Republican Party. Thus, he would solve the problem of poverty and unemployment through

R. Emmett

pro-growth policies. He favors tax cuts as the route to economic growth. The war on poverty has not worked. We have almost as many Americans living beneath the poverty line today as when President Lyndon B. Johnson began his war on poverty more than five decades ago. All that has changed is that we have spent, by Ryan’s reckoning, $15 trillion in a futile effort to extinguish poverty. Ryan wants to try to end it with alternative economic growth. He will have to keep his Republicans united in the House to be successful. He also wants to repeal Obamacare. This, too, will require a united Republican Party. There are various approaches to repealing Obamacare, but his Republican colleagues are go-

ing to have to settle on one approach. Ryan has advanced the pieces; he must now bring the pieces together. Finally, he says he wants to start paring back the federal debt that President Obama has doubled in his nearly eight years in office. That is going to be tricky, too. He will need party loyalty once again. No wonder he has been on a crusade to cool rhetoric. Moreover, as chairman of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this summer, he is facing the possibility of the first contested convention in decades. He has to remain neutral. He is right to show no partiality. Whether Trump arrives at the convention with the necessary number of delegates for victory, or whether new candidates enter the race, Ryan has to be an honest broker. His role at the convention may be very large. SO, NOW HE has asked that the race for the presidency proceed with dignity. At the last Republican debate on March 10, there were signs that it would proceed with dignity. But since then there has been a tabloid eruption and a battle of wives on Twitter. My guess is that things are going to settle down now. The Republicans will act like statesmen; Sanders and Clinton will continue to bore; Ryan will play his roles as the leader in the House and the honest broker at the Republican convention. Nevertheless, the elections of 2016 will have some surprises.

April 13, 2016 GOP RACE: April 1, 2016

Lock out the establishment in Cleveland

he Wisconsin primary could cause he threatens the rights of women, be an axle-breaking speed but because he threatens them. The establishment’s problem is that bump on Donald Trump’s Trump refuses to take the saddle. Again road to the nomination. Ted Cruz, now the last hope to derail and again, he has defied the dictates of Trump of a desperate Beltway elite that political correctness that they designed debate and demonize lately loathed him, has taken the lead in to stifle dissent. the Badger State. Trump has gotMillions in atten away with his tack ads are beinsubordination ing dumped on and shown, with the Donald’s head (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate his crowds, votes, by super PACs of GOP candidates, past and present. Gov. and victories, that millions of alienated Scott Walker has endorsed Cruz. Con- Americans detest the Washington estabservative talk radio is piling on Trump. lishment and relish his defiance. Trump has denounced the trade treaAnd the Donald just had the worst ties, from NAFTA to GATT to the WTO two weeks of his campaign. and MFN for China, that have de-indusTHERE WAS that unseemly ex- trialized America, imperil our soverchange with Cruz about their wives. eignty and independence, and cost milThen came the pulling of the woman lions of good jobs. And who is responsible for the trade reporter’s arm by campaign chief Corey Lewandowski, an atrocity being deals that sold out Middle America? likened by the media to the burning of “Free-trade” Republicans who signed on to “fast-track,” surrendered ConJoan of Arc. Then there was Trump’s suggestion, gress’ rights to amend trade treaties, and instantly withdrawn, that if abortion is buckle to every demand of the Business outlawed, then women who undergo Roundtable. The unstated premise of the Trump abortions may face some punishment. This gaffe told us nothing we did not campaign is that some among the Forknow. New to elective politics, Trump tune 500 companies are engaged in ecois less familiar with the ideological and nomic treason against America. No wonder they hate him. issues terrain than those who live there. As for Trump’s call for an “America But the outrage of the elites is all fakFirst” foreign policy, it threatens the ery. Democrats do not care a hoot about rice bowls of those for whom imperial the right to life of unborn babies, even interventions are the reason for their exunto the ninth month of pregnancy. And istence. If the primary goals of U.S. foreign the Republican establishment is grabbing any stick to beat Trump, not be- policy become the avoidance of con-

Pat

Buchanan

frontations with great nuclear powers and staying out of unnecessary wars, who needs neocons? Should Trump lose Wisconsin, he can recoup in New York on April 19, and the following week in Pa., Conn., R.I., Del. and Md. YET, A LOSS in Wisconsin would make Trump’s climb to a first-ballot nomination steeper. Still, if Trump goes to Cleveland, having won the most votes, the most states and the most delegates, stealing the nomination from him would split the party worse than in 1964. The GOP could be looking at a 1912, when ex-President Theodore Roosevelt, who won the most contested primaries,

was rejected in favor of President Taft. Teddy walked out, ran on the “Bull Moose” ticket, beat Taft in the popular vote, and Woodrow Wilson was elected. Cruz says the nomination of Trump would mean an “absolute trainwreck” in November. But, Cruz, 45, with a future in the party, would be foolish to walk out as a sore loser, as Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney did in 1964. A Cruz rejection of a nominee Trump would mean the end of Cruz. The elites would hypocritically applaud Ted’s heroism, publicly bewail his passing, then happily bury and be rid of him. Cruz, no fool, has to know this. If the nomination is taken from Trump, who will be 70 in June, he has nothing to lose. And as “Julius Caesar” reminds us, “such men are dangerous.” Trump and Cruz, though bitter enemies, are both despised by the establishment. Yet both have a mutual interest: insuring that one of them, and only one of them, wins the nomination. No one else. And if they set aside grievances, and act together, they can block any establishment favorite from being imposed on the party, as was one-worlder Wendell Willkie, “the barefoot boy of Wall Street,” in 1940. All Trump and Cruz need do is instruct their delegates to vote to retain Rule 40 from the 2012 convention. Rule 40 declares that no candidate can be placed in nomination who has failed to win a majority of the delegates in eight states. Trump has already hit that mark. Cruz almost surely will. But no establishment favorite has a chance of reaching it. With Cruz and Trump delegates voting to retain Rule 40, they can guarantee no Beltway favorite walks out of Cleveland as the nominee — and that Ted Cruz or Donald Trump does. NO MATTER who wins in Cleveland, the establishment must lose.

Conservative Chronicle

VICTIMHOOD: April 5, 2016

Are Donald Trump voters really victims?

hat you hear when you lisIn writing of such places National Reten to many fervent sup- view’s Kevin Williamson describes “the porters of Donald Trump is welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol that they are victims — victims of glo- addiction, the family anarchy — balization and trade agreements that have w h i c h is to say, the whelping sent their jobs to of human children Mexico or China. with all the respect Victims of compeand wisdom of a tition from illegal stray dog.” immigrants from I wouldn’t be (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate Mexico willing to so harsh. But the work for starvation wages. Victims of a fact is that Disability Insurance rolls have Republican establishment that promised more than doubled in the last two deto get rid of lots of things they don’t like cades, and about half the applicants claim and then failed to deliver. ailments — back pain, depression — that are unverifiable. THEIR COMPLAINTS, in some cases, have some validity, but not always DI RECIPIENTS can live in such and not a lot. Economist Gordon Hanson places on $13,000 annual benefits. But writes that without the ability to move it’s hard for them to gain the satisfaction lower-wage jobs to Mexico after NAFTA that comes from earning success at work, was ratified in 1993, “there might not be raising your family and serving your much left of Detroit at all.” Which is to community. say, the U.S. wouldn’t have the 800,000 What such people need, Williamson relatively high-wage auto-sector jobs it says, is not OxyContin but U-Hauls. But has today. mobility — moving from one place to anAs for the reviled Republican congres- other — in America has been declining sional leaders, anyone familiar with the for a generation. There is little out-migraConstitution should know that the presi- tion from the Ohio River counties, much dent has the power — and in this case the inclination — to veto any conservative GOP RACE: March 31, 2016 legislation Congress passes. Demographic analysis shows that Trump is getting disproportionate support in primaries from white male noncollege graduates with modest incomes — a group that, as the New York Times’ t’s been a wacky election season, Thomas Edsall notes, has been giving but when hasn’t it been? ReRepublicans large margins in general member when Ross Perot, who elections. couldn’t decide whether he was runAnd Trump’s appeal amounts for ning or not running for president, did some quantum — no one can be sure ex- both, alternately jumping in and out of actly how much — of the increased Re- the race as the mood struck him? Welpublican turnout this year. So far 21 mil- come to the quadrennial circus that is lion Americans have voted in Republican an American presidential campaign. primaries and caucuses, as many as in the whole 2008 cycle and nearly two million THIS YEAR the stacked deck now more than in 2012. has two jokers — Donald Trump, the But Trump supporters also seem to self-infatuated real-estate magnate of have something else in common, as I reality TV and the Greater New York argued in a recent column — a lack of Metropolitan Area, and Chris Chrissocial connectedness. They are less likely tie, the governor of New Jersey with a than average to be active in voluntary as- gift for gab. Naturally he promptly ensociations and in churches, in community dorsed The Donald. It’s a wonder how activities and in extended families. anybody can take them seriously — They seem to see Trump, a familiar even if they’re not at all funny. figure from his reality TV show, as a sinConservatives used to be known as gle figure who can, without institutional the humorless party, but then a relasupport or coherent philosophy, right the tively unknown candidate for mayor wrongs they complain of. of New York City surfaced: a young When you look at a map of the coun- intellectual who had started his own ties Trump has carried in primaries, magazine to fill a void on the Ameriprominent among them are places with can right. And everything changed. slumped industrial economies and closed He had a sense of humor (in addition factories, such as Youngstown and the to a lot more) and it showed. He actuOhio counties along the Ohio River. They ally thought politics should be ... fun! are places where family structures are As soon as the election returns showing crumbling, male life expectancy is dehe’d lost had been certified, somebody clining, opioid addiction is common and asked what he’d have done if he’d won. up to one-fifth of adults receive disability His immediate response: “Demand a insurance payments. recount!”

Michael

Barone

less than there was from Youngstown when steel factories closed 35 years ago. Then there was moaning about the fate of people uprooted from their lifelong communities to move to fastgrowing places like Texas. Moving is a pain, but it struck me that people leaving Youngstown were less painfully uprooted than their grandparents were when they moved there from rural Poland. Earlier generations of Americans, after being moved around the country and the world in World War II, moved readily to seek better lives. Several million Midwesterners moved to California. Onethird of American blacks moved from the segregated South to what seemed the promised land of the North.

Inadvertently perhaps, we have made it easier to stay put, through disability insurance, through low-priced goods at Wal-Mart and its competitors, through opioid prescriptions written by dollarhungry doctors — even as family and community ties grow frayed. People in such situations evidently see themselves as victims and Donald Trump as someone who will make them winners again. Their sense of victimhood resembles that of the Emory University students who couldn’t bear seeing “Trump 2016” chalked on the sidewalk. THOSE VICTIMS could easily have solved their problem themselves. Maybe protesting Trump voters can, too.

Wanted: A sense of humor

His name was William F. Buckley Jr., and soon there was no need to introduce him. His book about that campaign, The Unmaking of a Mayor, soon proved a small classic, unlike his other books, like God and Man at Yale, that proved great ones. CAN YOU imagine any of the frontrunners for the Republican presidential nomination this year, or even behindrunners, engaging in wit, irony or anything else besides bluster, braggadocio and endless self-promotion?

Paul

Can you picture them telling selfdeprecating jokes? But this Buckley character not only told them, he made a weekly television show featuring his wit-and-wisdom that competed with the most watched news programs on the air. And it was on educational television yet. The program, Firing Line, was a combination vocabulary test (“mere velleity,” “asymptotically”) and cat-and-mouse game with outmatched guests, whose dumbfounded looks said it all: “What did he just call me?” Then there was Bill Buckley’s plummy accent, which seemed to have de-

rived from his days in English public schools, meaning the elite private ones, but also invented as he went along, dragging out every upper-class vowel with aristocratic savor. A rhetorical strategist of the first rank who’d grown up conjugating Latin verbs and starring on debate teams, Mr. Buckley “would nudge the guest gently but firmly down the slippery slope to forensic demise. It was an intellectual execution by a most genial hangman,” as Firing Line producer Neal Freeman put it in the Wall Street Journal. It’s hard to imagine now, but there was once “a charming and commanding conservative presence at the center of American culture.” Now we get a bumptious Donald Trump, who substitutes repetition for argument, a nice guy like John Kasich who has little but his niceness to recommend him, or the likes of a Ted Cruz who manages to sound principled one day and opportunistic the next — a bunch that alternates between taking themselves too seriously and the issues not seriously enough. WELCOME TO yet another wacky American election campaign — one without humor, without wit or learning or dignity. In short, one without William F. Buckley.

April 13, 2016 LIBERALS: April 5, 2016

Liberalism: Why do liberals hate America?

He might as well have been praising he idea of American exceptionalism has been embedded Mussolini for making the trains run on in our collective DNA for gen- time. Even more unbelievable: The meerations. It is the faith-based belief that, dia applauded. How far the Democratic Party has as Ronald Reagan put it, America is a fallen. Can anyone imagine Obama, “shining city on a hill.” Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders havDo modern liberals believe that? gumption or wisdom I almost never try to get into the other ing the to tell Mikhail Gorside’s head or asbachev to “tear cribe ill motives down this wall?” to those on the It wasn’t so long left. They are, I’ve ago that leading always believed, (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate Democrats — misguided, not JFK, Harry Trumalign. But I’m having second thoughts after man and even the AFL CIO — were listening to Barack Obama’s defense of staunch enemies of communism. Today, communism/socialism when he was in there is no place for such beliefs within Argentina. He advised young people to the progressive Democratic Party. If it get behind “what works” economically involves ceding power to the state, the — as if there is some deep mystery here. left is all for it — as evidenced by the rise of Bernie Sanders. But for every action, there is a reOBAMA DIDN’T misspeak. The modern left in America really has come action, and the left’s lunacy has given to believe that communism, socialism, momentum to the tumultuous uprising Marxism and totalitarianism — or other on the right this year. Millions of votterms for the monopolization of power ers who support Donald Trump want into the hands of a ruling elite — are our government to put America first and focus on our own mounting problems at superior to free-market capitalism. The president of the United States is home, then worry about Europe, Israel, supposed to be the global spokesman the melting ice caps, AIDS in Africa and for free enterprise. But, instead of trav- so on. If your house is burning down, eling to Cuba to point out to the world you put out that fire and save your own the decades of stagnation, deprivation children trapped on the second floor, beand dehumanization at the hands of the fore you go down the street and put the Castros, and instead of using this mo- fire out at your neighbors’ house. Here’s just one observational data ment in history to showcase the triumph of capitalism 90 miles away, Obama point that, admittedly, is anecdotal but praises Cuba’s health care and educa- speaks volumes about the left-right divide in America. At a typical Donald tion systems.

Stephen

Moore

Trump or Ted Cruz rally, you will see American flags waving everywhere. These are patriotic gatherings. At Sanders events, you will see some flags, but not many — because if you are a leftist, it’s not cool to love America. What is much cooler is wearing a Che Guevera T-shirt. AT A REPUBLICAN rally, you typically meet many veterans who served our country with honor and valor. Some who protest at Trump rallies detest those who are wearing military uniforms and call them fascists and give the Nazi salute. I’ve seen it happen. I want to grab these brats and shout at them like Jack Nicholson did in A Few Good Men: “I

would rather you just said ‘thank you’ and went on your way.” Trump voters see America losing both the economic and cultural wars vital to national survival. We have a $19 trillion national debt that has doubled in the past decade. We have wages flat or falling for most Americans. We have a political class that is actively trying to destroy whole industries — coal production, oil and gas, community banks and so many others. We have a president (along with the intellectual class) pushing a radical climate change agenda that will cost the middle class millions of jobs, but won’t change the global temperature by a hundredth of a degree. Trade deals seem to be drafted to benefit foreign workers and businesses over our own. America pays far more than its share for programs like the United Nations and NATO. Our public schools put teachers first, not kids, and they often don’t adequately educate. We have courts overturning the will of the people in state after state on issues such as gay marriage. We have speech police. We have illegal immigrants who work here and live here and then wave the Mexican flag at rallies, as if to be intentionally offensive. (And I’m in favor of immigration.) Then they wonder why Americans want a wall. We have the TSA searching the underwear of infants but letting certain adults pass through without inspection because we wouldn’t want to be accused of profiling. We have a Justice Department thinking about prosecuting people for questioning the climate change “consensus.” THIS IS THE same crowd that seems to prefer the economic systems in Sweden and Greece and Cuba over America’s. They preach human rights, but they don’t seem to understand that economic freedom is a core human right.

Conservative Chronicle

THE FED: April 1, 2016

Slash corporate taxes first, then Yellen can normalize

peaking before a packed audi- long argued that Fed models have conence at the prestigious Econom- sistently overpredicted the economy. As ic Club of New York, Fed chair a result, the Fed has consistently had to Janet Yellen basically announced that lower its forecasts in the face of stagthere would be no rate hikes for quite nant two percent growth. some time — maybe once before year The possibility that Janet Yellen is esend, maybe not. Her key point was that caping the defective Phillips-curve menthe global economy is worse today than t a l i t y gives one a bit of conit was in December, fidence, especially back when the Fed if she is watching took its target rate market prices. She up a quarter point. even noted in her I think she’s right. speech that the (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate I also think she Fed’s favorite inis paying more atflation indicator tention to forward-looking, inflation-sen- actually fell in February, and is up only sitive financial and commodity-market one percent over the last year. prices. This is good. Very good. Now let me make a second point. Most financial-market people think the YELLEN CITED shrinking inflation Fed’s ultra-low target rates indicate spreads in the Treasury bond market, ultra-easy money. They’re wrong. The declining commodities (until recently), principal reason that market interest a flattening of the Treasury yield curve, rates are so low is that the economy is and a stronger dollar. The sum total of stagnant and inflation is virtually nonthese market-price indicators is stagnant existent. Along with a strong greenback growth and virtually no inflation. Hence, and falling commodity prices, you could there’s no need for the Fed to militantly argue that the Fed is tighter than anyraise its policy rates. body thinks. This price-rule approach is a lot betI don’t want more QE, which was ter than the Fed’s flawed models, which a failed experiment. The fact is, rockare based on a false tradeoff between bottom interest rates generally indicate lower unemployment and higher infla- near-zero inflation and relative monetary tion. I’ve said it a million times: More tightness. If market interest rates were people working does not cause inflation. surging, that would be a sign of higher Instead, more people prospering and pro- inflation, undoubtedly because the Fed ducing makes the existing money supply was too easy. less inflationary. Milton Friedman taught us this over Austan Goolsbee, former chairman 50 years ago. Interest rates are lousy of the Council Economic Advisors, has monetary indicators. Better to watch the

Larry

Kudlow

money supply or the velocity turnover rate of money, which can be captured by tracking nominal GDP. Over the past year, money GDP has increased only 3.1 percent. That’s a sign of monetary tightness, not ease. As free-market economist Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute recently noted, government interest rates were rock bottom in the 1930s. That’s because the Fed and most other central banks were way too tight. EVEN WORSE today, having stuffed banks with excess reserves, central banks in Europe and Japan are punishing those banks with negative inter-

est rates. They’re also punishing savers. This is not good policy. What we have now in these uncertain times is not so much a monetary problem as a major fiscal problem. In particular, corporate tax rates must be slashed in the U.S. for large and small businesses. We also need full cash tax expensing for new investment and an end to the double taxation of foreign profits. This would rejuvenate economic growth. In the global race for capital, the U.S. would emerge victorious. Incentives matter. I’m not just talking about four or five percent economic growth, but higher wages and stronger employment-participation rates. And my guess is that, as real economic growth jumpstarts, real interest rates would move higher. And that’s when the Fed can follow market interest rates upward by raising its policy rates. By the way, it’s the same problem overseas. Europe and Japan and so many other countries are ignoring tax policies, which are in sore need of growth repair. Japan needs tax cuts across the board: corporate, personal, sales, you name it. Europe has relatively low business tax rates. But it needs to slash taxes on personal income, estates and retail sales. Negative interest rates won’t do the trick, but new tax incentives to work, save and invest will. So I support Janet Yellen’s moratorium on rate hikes. But I wish she would be more outspoken about the need for corporate tax reform. If the U.S. economy starts moving back toward its potential — four or five percent economic growth over the next bunch of years — the Fed can normalize its interest-rate structure by following higher market interest rates which would respond to faster economic growth. WHAT WE basically have here is a tax problem, not so much a monetary problem.

April 13, 2016 ECONOMY: March 31, 2016

Why the anger? Obamanomics has failed

resident Barack Obama, when asked to name an accomplishment for which he is most proud, said, “I’m proud of saving the American economy.” Breathtaking. Let’s examine the facts, using only government, left wing — or, at least, non-conservative — statistics, sources or analyses.

IN 2012, the third year of the Obama recovery, the Associated Press wrote: “Since World War II, 10 U.S. recessions have been followed by a recovery that lasted at least three years. An Associated Press analysis shows that by just about any measure, the one that began in June 2009 is the weakest. ... Economic growth has never been weaker in a postwar recovery. Consumer spending has never been so slack. Only once has job growth been slower. More than in any other post-World War II recovery, people who have jobs are hurting: Their paychecks have fallen behind inflation.” PBS’ Tavis Smiley, who possesses industrial-style contempt for the economic policies of former President Ron-

The national “official” rate of unald Reagan, said in January, 2016: “On every leading economic issue, in the employment — as released by the U.S. leading economic issues black Ameri- Department of Labor and touted by the cans have lost ground in every one of media — stands at 4.9 percent, the lowthose leading categories. So in the last est since 2008. As to this official rate, by 2015, it had dropped ten years it hasn’t been good for black w h e n , to 5.6 percent, Galfolk.” lup CEO Jim Clifton Rep. Emanuel wrote: “None of them Cleaver, D-Mo., will tell you this: then the head of If you, a family the Congressio(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate member or anyone nal Black Caucus, is unemployed and said in 2011, when the official black unemployment stood has subsequently given up on finding at 14.1 percent: “As the chair of the a job — if you are so hopelessly out of Black Caucus, I’ve got to tell you, we work that you’ve stopped looking over are always hesitant to criticize the Pres- the past four weeks — the Department of ident. With 14 percent (black) unem- Labor doesn’t count you as unemployed. ployment, if we had a white president That’s right. While you are as unemwe’d be marching around the White ployed as one can possibly be, and tragically may never find work again, you are House.” According to the Federal Reserve, not counted in the figure we see relentwhile white households’ median wealth lessly in the news — currently 5.6 perslightly increased from 2010 to 2013, cent. Right now, as many as 30 million Hispanic households’ net worth dropped Americans are either out of work or se14 percent, while black net worth fell verely underemployed. Trust me, the vast from $16,600 to $11,000 — a three-year majority of them aren’t throwing parties to toast ‘falling’ unemployment. ... drop of 34 percent.

Larry

Elder

U.S. ELECTIONS: April 5, 2016

2016: Can’t we do better?

ccasionally I am asked if I ever considered running for political office. My response: “I did once, but I took two aspirin, lay down for a while and the feeling went away.” Besides not wanting to accept a pay cut, why would I want to put myself through the agony of exposing the smallest misdeed and bad decision to political opponents and a ravenous media who could turn my public image into something no family member would recognize? Not to mention the amount of money I would have to raise that would go up exponentially the higher the office sought. With each donated dollar a little piece of my soul, character and integrity must ultimately be exchanged. Why else do people donate if they don’t expect something in return? Might that something somehow dilute whatever virtues I am perceived to possess?

WHAT I HAVE just described are major reasons why people who might be smart and capable enough to run for office decline the “honor.” Who looks forward to having one’s sins exposed by the media and gloating opponents who seek to destroy a fellow candidate, rather than beat him (or her) on the field of ideas? If I were to run I would issue a press release on every sin I can remember having committed, because for the media and the other party (and sometimes with

candidates in one’s own party) it isn’t about what one has done, as much as what one is hiding. Looking at today’s remaining field of presidential candidates reminds me of a quote from John F. Kennedy when he ran for president in 1960 against the legacy of the Eisenhower-Nixon administration. “We can do better,” said JFK. We certainly can, but the signs offer little reason for optimism.

Cal

ON ONE SIDE in this presidential contest we have a tired old warhorse, Hillary Clinton, whose chief qualifications for office appear to be her gender and a sense of entitlement after sticking with her adulterous husband. She has no real accomplishments to which she can point. The other Democratic candidate is an even older dinosaur who metaphorically wants to change America’s initials from USA to ATM, with free stuff for all, paid for by taxing “millionaires and billionaires.” Millennials, who apparently have no clue about economics, drink the red Kool-Aid like members of a cult. On the Republican side there is Donald Trump. Polls show Trump has uni-

fied much of America like few other politicians. Unfortunately for him, most are unified in opposition. There is Sen. Ted Cruz, who might save the GOP from Trump, but who needs to work on his own likeability. Ohio Governor John Kasich remains in the race for reasons known only to himself. Kasich is proving the cynicism of baseball coach Leo Durocher’s line, “nice guys finish last.” There must be a better way to nominate and elect a president. The Constitution provides little guidance. There is nothing in it about parties, conventions, or length of campaigns. Why must we endure nonstop politicking? As soon as one election ends, people start positioning themselves for the next one. Much of this is due to the voracious media, especially cable news. This fixation on politicians as saviors doesn’t benefit the country. Can academia, or think tanks, put together a plan which points to a better way to get good people in office at lower cost and less time commitment? Would politicians of both parties accept it? It is obscene that it takes $1 billion to run for president today. WE CAN DO better, but will we? We had better, or face the likelihood of even worse political choices in the future.

“There’s no other way to say this. The official unemployment rate, which cruelly overlooks the suffering of the long-term and often permanently unemployed as well as the depressingly underemployed, amounts to a Big Lie.” OK, SOME of the above statements are opinions, even if non-conservative, and some of the statistics applied to the state of the economy two to four years ago. What about now? Gross Domestic Product: The recession ended in June 2009. Obama’s recovery, according to the Joint Economic Committee, averaged an inflation-adjusted GDP growth of 2.2 percent over the next 25 quarters. The average recovery following post-1960 economic slowdowns, which lasted more than 12 months, is 3.9 percent, and under President Ronald Reagan it was 4.8 percent. President Obama will be the first president to reign over a recovery in which not a single year’s economy grew at least three percent. Jobs: During this recovery, privatesector jobs grew 11.6 percent. According to the Congressional Joint Economic Committee., the private-sector job growth under the average recovery is 17.0 percent. Under Ronald Reagan, average job growth was 23.6 percent. The national debt: When Obama entered the White House, the federal debt stood at $10 trillion. Federal debt, according to the summary tables in the last budget Obama submitted — which runs through September 30, 2017 — will be over $20 trillion. The reason the Reagan recovery and the Obama recovery are analogous is that, as Tavis Smiley put it, the “leading” economic “categories” were similar. Under Reagan, unemployment peaked at 10.8 percent, under Obama at 10.0 percent. In the early ‘80s under Reagan, inflation averaged 13.5 percent, under Obama, it’s been relatively tame. Under Reagan, prime interest rates hit 20.5 percent. So blaming the tepid Obama recovery on the “unprecedented” harsh numbers of so-called “Great Recession” he inherited won’t fly, despite the pass — and frequent praise — Obama gets from the media. Just days ago, in Argentina, Obama explained that the debate between communism and capitalism was merely an “interesting intellectual argument.” He suggested that each state simply “choose from what works.” BY THAT standard, Obamanomics — compared to the Reagan-style policy of reducing taxes, slowing down government spending, and decreasing regulation — simply ... hasn’t ... worked.

Conservative Chronicle

VA: April 6, 2016

Requiem for a suffering VA victim

hat does a suffering military veteran have to do to force an unresponsive government to change its ways? How about self-immolating in front of his VA clinic? Hello, paper-pushers and desk jockeys? Are you there? Would the heat, the smoke and the smell of burning flesh rouse you in the least? Nope. Apparently, even this horror is not enough to move the inert bureaucrats at the Department of Veterans Affairs — let alone the indifferent tango dancer-in-chief. While President Obama sashayed in Buenos Aires two weeks ago, proud Navy veteran Charles Richard Ingram III, 51, made his last life’s journey. He walked nine miles from his home in Egg Harbor Township, N.J., to the curb in front of the Northfield, N.J., VA clinic on New Road.

WITH A LARGE blue wooden cross looming on the side of a chapel in the background, Ingram stood on the lawn, poured gas all over his body and lit a match. A firefighter told the Daily Beast that the retired chief petty officer, known as “Rich” to family and friends, was “100 percent burned.” A bystander had rushed to his side with blankets to snuff out the flames and first responders arrived within minutes. But it was too late. CPO Ingram leaves behind a grieving wife, two young children ages 3 and 5, and a charred patch of brown and blackened grass 75 feet from the entrance of the VA’s Atlantic County Community Based Outpatient Clinic. The bloated VA system now employs nearly 400,000 people to carry out its purported “mission of caring.” The CBOCs were established to “to more efficiently and effectively serve eligible veterans and provide care in the most appropriate setting,” according to the feds. But nobody from Ingram’s CBOC — one of 800 such offices run by the VA, which boasts a record $150 billion budget — was there to help on that Saturday when Ingram perished. Why not? Because the facility is closed on weekends. Its daytime, weekday hours (8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.) serve the convenience of the government employees, not of the men and women who put their lives on the line for their country. Area veterans’ advocates and local officials in both political parties have pushed for years to address chronic understaffing and Soviet-era wait times. The Atlantic City Press reports that there is just one lone psychologist to provide therapy to 200 veterans on any given day. “To make matters worse,” local Democratic state senator Jeff Van Drew (who worked in the VA system as a den-

How about a pilot program to free the VA’s hostages and allow vets to receive health care from personal doctors and local hospitals, as Rep. Frank LoBiondo, R-N.J., has long proposed? There must be no escape hatches, antiprivatization special interests have decreed. All must suffer for the Greater Good. Flacks for the Wilmington, DelaWOULD IT have been too much to ask the VA’s employees to open for just ware, VA Medical Services facility, oversees Ingram’s one day of weekend appointments and w h i c h South Jersey clinic, one weekday of downplayed aplate-night appointpointment delays ments? Apparand vets’ comently, that was too plaints after Inmuch of a sacrifice (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate gram’s sacrificial for the 8-to-4:30act. Instead, the ers. Vets’ groups petitioned for extended hours for years. bureaucrats blithely touted their “telehealth” services via computer, “group Nothing happened. tist) pointed out last week, “there are no Veterans Affairs hospitals in the region, so even if a veteran is able to schedule a timely appointment at the nearest VA hospital, he or she would have to travel hours to Philadelphia, Pa., northern New Jersey or Delaware to receive care.”

Michelle

Malkin

therapy” and “additional social workers.” Nothing to see here, move along. When Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc burned himself to death on a Saigon street corner to protest abuses by the Diem government in 1963, the world took notice. The monk left behind his crystallized bones, intact heart and an inflamed movement to end repression against his people. American journalists played a key role in amplifying Duc’s message and ensuring that his death wasn’t in vain. Where are the national media voices and advocates for U.S. Navy CPO Charles Ingram and the countless other martyrs victimized by the VA? IF A LOYAL veteran burns himself to the ground in a forest of government bureaucrats, will anybody hear him?

LESLIE’S TRIVIA BITS: April 4, 2016

Leslie’s Trivia Bits

ectarines are mutant, fuzzfree cousins of peaches that bypassed the peach’s dominant trait for fuzziness. Both fruits originated in China, which grows more than 50 percent of the world’s supply. (Sorry, Georgia.) Paleobotanists (scientists who study prehistoric plant life) cheered when a recent road construction project in China unearthed eight fossilized peach pits dating back about 2.5 million years. It was the first evidence that the peach’s history goes back such a long way.

IN 1988, Germany’s Christa LudingRothenburger medaled in speed skating in Calgary and cycling in Seoul, making her the only athlete, male or female, to medal at the summer and winter Olympic games in the same year. She also won speed skating medals in Sarajevo (1984) and Albertville (1992). Canada’s Clara Hughes medaled in cycling in Atlanta (1996) and in speed skating at Salt Lake City (2002), Turin (2006) and Vancouver (2010) — the last at age 38. American sprinter Lauryn Williams won medals in Athens (2004) and London (2012) then medaled in bobsleigh at Sochi (2014). Dry Tortugas National Park in Florida spans 100 square miles, most of which is underwater. Historically, plenty of trading ships passed through the area traveling between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. And plenty of ships were wrecked on the journey, thanks to the area’s treacherously shallow waters and its susceptibility to violent storms. The wrecks beneath the park’s waters — now considered “submerged cultural resources” — number in the hundreds.

At the center of a traditional Tibetan Buddhist “Wheel of Life” painting are depictions of a pig, a snake and a bird, chasing each other in a circle. They represent spiritual ignorance, anger and attachment — what Buddhists call the “three poisons” that prevent people from reaching spiritual enlightenment. Early QWERTY manual typewriter keyboards rarely had keys for the number 1 or the exclamation point. Typists used a lowercase letter L for

Leslie

the number 1. They typed an apostrophe, backspaced, and then typed a period beneath it to form an exclamation point. The QWERTY system — named for the first five letters on the top left of the keyboard — was patented in 1878 by Christopher Latham Sholes, a newspaperman from Milwaukee. NOT ONLY DID 17th-century astronomer Christiaan Huygens contribute to our knowledge of the planets, he speculated about the extraterrestrial life on them. In the 1690s, he wrote that “it’s not improbable that the rest of the Planets have their Dress and Furniture, nay and their Inhabitants too...” To critics who might have called his ideas blasphemous, he pointed out that if God made the stars why wouldn’t he also have populated the planets of the universe with “planetarians?” TRIVIA 1. Which cocktail traditionally is

made with sparkling wine and peach puree? A) Bellini B) Buck’s Fizz C) Kir Royale D) Mimosa 2. Since the first modern Olympics in 1896, which is the only city to have hosted the games three times? A) Athens B) London C) Los Angeles D) Paris 3. “Father of the American Navy” John Paul Jones commanded (and lost) what ship in the process of capturing the HMS Serapis in September 1779? A) Bon Homme Richard B) Endeavour C) Independence D) Victory 4. Although he is considered the spiritual leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama currently lives in exile in what country? A) Cambodia B) China C) India D) Japan 5. Sir Isaac Pitman and John Robert Gregg are most closely associated with what office time-saver? A) Adding machine B) Carbon paper C) Postage meter D) Shorthand writing system 6. The planet NASA calls Kepler16b, located about 200 light-years from Earth, has what unique feature? A) Blue soil B) Krypton gas atmosphere C) Saltwater core D) Two suns (answers on page 19)

April 13, 2016 DONALD TRUMP: April 5, 2016

Trump’s strengths are his Achilles’ heel

His supporters aren’t only unfazed ix months ago, I warned that Donald Trump’s strengths by his political incorrectness; they also could also be the weaknesses seem to be indifferent to his childish that would destroy his campaign. I think tweets, his personal attacks and his rewe’re beginning to see that play out markable lack of knowledge and preparation — not to mention vacillation — now. Trump has repeatedly said he is a on the issues. But has his shtick begun to wear counterpuncher — that he won’t initipeople finally saying ate attacks against his rivals but if they thin? Are enough is enough? were to hit him first I don’t believe he would hit back that many of his much harder. die-hard supporters He seems to are going to peel take pride in this, (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate away from him. as if it proves his But I do think toughness — an essential part of the image he’s cultivat- his antics have guaranteed that he can’t ed. It’s not just abstract machismo that extend his appeal much beyond his dehe sells but muscularity in promoting voted followers. Indeed, I get the sense that he has the policy issues that form the centerreached his peak and is beginning to piece of his campaign. Take, for example, his position on falter for real this time. Can he wait out Muslims. By refusing to kowtow to the clock and squeak by as the remaincultural and media pressure to be po- ing states choose their delegates? He doesn’t have much choice, belitically correct, he reinforces his image among his supporters as a strong leader cause contrary to the opinion of some, Trump is not very adaptable. Rumors and as an outsider. were circulating a few weeks ago that THE LOUDER the critics’ con- his close advisers were leaning on him demnations the more emboldened he to act more presidential. But Trump is has become and the more entrenched nothing if not Trumpish, so we shouldn’t his supporters have become — as if be surprised he was not amenable to the criticisms are validating rather than reining himself in. He demonstrated his incorrigibildisqualifying. Trump’s opponents have been flummoxed throughout, scratch- ity when the super PAC Make America ing their heads over an inelastic demand Awesome, which is not even connected among his followers that rivals that of to the Ted Cruz campaign, posted on its cigarette buyers indifferent to price Facebook page a photo of a nude Melania Trump from a GQ photo shoot hikes.

David

Limbaugh

she’d done years ago. Liz Mair, the Republican strategist behind the ad, stated that Cruz had nothing to do with it, and she admitted it was aimed directly at voting-age Mormons. Trump, treating the ad as if Cruz had directly ordered it, tweeted that Cruz should be careful or he would “spill the beans” on Cruz’s wife, Heidi. He next shared a photo of an attractive Melania Trump juxtaposed with an unflattering one of Heidi Cruz with this caption: “No need to ‘spill the beans.’ The images are worth a thousand words.” THIS WAS A gratuitously cruel and unwarranted attack, not unlike earlier personal attacks he’d made on other women, including Carly Fiorina. When called on it, Trump’s responses ranged from defending his actions to denying that the photo of Heidi was unattractive. Then when Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker endorsed Cruz — not couched in an anti-Trump statement as some had urged but said as a full-throated endorsement of Cruz and his conservative credentials — Trump just couldn’t leave

it alone. True to form, he attacked the popular governor in his own state for his allegedly poor economic record and even as a guy who doesn’t seem to be an authentic biker. Whether Trump was trying to be cute and continue the behavior that led to his rise or this was merely his inability to control himself, one can only speculate, but it was most likely a bit of both. In September, I wrote that Trump should treat his personal characteristics like a minefield and learn how to navigate it without blowing himself up. He would need to keep being himself to retain his appeal but not go too far. Even the conscious process of attempting to strike that balance would be a gamble because it would involve discipline and restraint — and thus a partial abandonment of the unscripted spontaneity that endeared him to his supporters in the first place. While the GOP presidential field was broad, Trump could act with relative impunity, but as it has narrowed, his margin for error has significantly decreased. The more outrageous his behavior the less likely his appeal will expand beyond his base, which simply doesn’t care about anything other than his positions on immigration and trade, his business acumen, and his outsider status. The more the field has winnowed the more apparent Trump’s ignorance and thoughtlessness on most issues have become, as exemplified by his damaging interview with Chris Matthews on abortion and his subsequent inability to overcome it, such as taking some five separate positions on abortion in the following week. Trump has finally given even some of his loyal supporters pause, but he’s definitely alienated a supermajority of women and others who might have considered voting for him before. Just as being himself led to his meteoric rise, continuing to be himself is leading to his implosion. Those who are praying for a makeover surely realize how difficult it would be for Trump and how risky it would be even if he could pull it off. THE ONLY question is whether he will fall far and fast enough before the convention and Ted Cruz will continue to shine and rise in the polls. I am increasingly optimistic.

April 13, 2016

Dangerous Donald Trump: People are waking up

onald Trump’s victories in receive a majority of the delegates. If the Republican primaries you cannot even get a majority of the may make him seem like a delegates in your own party, how can sure winner. But those victories have you expect to win the November elecbeen achieved by receiving either tion for President? Delegates get their first opportusomewhat less than 40 percent of the votes or somewhat more than 40 per- nity to choose a candidate by voting according to the way their cent, but never a majority. respective primary The fragmentvoters voted. But, ing of the Repubif that process lican vote among fails to produce a many candidates winner, then delin the primaries (c) 2015, Creators Syndicate egates can vote made this posagain, this time on sible. But victory in the general election for President of the basis of their own best judgments, the United States in November is going for as many rounds of voting as it may to require a lot more than 40 percent of take before someone gets a majority. None of this is new. Yet some Trump the votes. And polls consistently show Mr. Trump to be the most negatively supporters are talking as if a failure regarded of any of the candidates in ei- to change the rules for the benefit of “the Donald” — by letting a pluralther party. ity, rather than a majority, choose the IN SOME Republican winner-take- winner — would mean that Trump all states, 40 percent of the votes can had been cheated out of the nominabe enough to get 100 percent of the tion. But what of the voters who voted delegates. This leverage might enable AGAINST Trump during the primaTrump to gain a majority of the del- ries? Despite the fog of political rhetoegates needed to become the party’s ric, we should not lose sight of the fact that those who voted against Trump in nominee. But Trump and his supporters want the primaries were far more numerous more. They are now talking as if win- than those who voted for him. This might all be just an internal ning a plurality of the delegates ought to be enough to gain him the nomina- problem of the Republican Party, and tion, despite his failing to get a major- of no concern for those of us who are ity, as required by long-standing rules. not Republicans, except for one thing. There is a reason why the rules re- This country is at a dangerous crossquire a candidate for the nomination to roads.

Thomas

Sowell

We got here by electing a president on the basis of glib words and boastful promises. We cannot afford to repeat that mistake. IN ADDITION to internal polarizations, we are threatened by countries that openly declare their hatred of America, and are developing intercontinental missiles that can carry nuclear bombs. In addition, there are international terrorist organizations killing people in Europe and in the United States. In order to deal with these threats, and especially secretive international

terrorist organizations, we are going to need the cooperation of many other nations around the world. These nations, knowing that cooperating with the United States will make them targets for terrorists, must first have confidence in the words and deeds of whoever is President of the United States. They cannot have that confidence in someone who is constantly spouting off with irresponsible rhetoric — some of which has to be walked back by his apologists — or someone whose snap judgments about complex and weighty issues betray a superficial knowledge, if not sheer ignorance. If ever there was a time when we needed a serious, mature President of the United States, with a depth of knowledge and a foundation of personal character — a grownup in the White House — this is that time. But seldom a week goes by without Donald Trump demonstrating, yet again, that he is painfully lacking in all these prerequisites. Instead of offering coherent plans for dealing with the nation’s problems, Trump skips that and boasts of the great things he will achieve. Those who dare to question are answered with cheap putdowns, often at a gutter level. A man in his 60s, who is still acting like a spoiled adolescent, is not going to grow up in the next four years. And, as President, he would have the lives of us all, and our loved ones, in his hands, as well as the fate of this great nation at a fateful time. THERE ARE signs that some people are belatedly waking up to the dangers that Donald Trump represents. We can only hope that the voters in Wisconsin are among them — and that voters in New York, California and elsewhere wake up before it is too late. April 5, 2016

This Week’s Conservative Focus

Donald Trump

Why Donald Trump loves Lewandowski

n a year of floors falling away under one’s feet (such as the assumption that nearly all Americans demand a minimal level of civility in public life), the Corey Lewandowski story represents one more gob smack. That Donald Trump stands by the belligerent Lewandowski tells us more of what we already knew about Trump, and also hints at the coward beneath the blowhard. FIRST, THE battery. The campaign manager — not a volunteer, not even a hired security guard, but the honest-togoodness campaign manager — nearly shoved reporter Michelle Fields to the ground and inflicted bruises on her arm. When she protested, there was no apology. Instead, the campaign at first suggested that there was a mistake: Lewandowski mistook Fields (who worked at the time for the proTrump Breitbart.com) for a member

Never mind. In the morality-free of the mainstream media. Oh, so that makes shoving OK? But the campaign Trump zone, facts are optional. “You quickly reverted to outright lies. Hope are totally delusional,” Lewandowski Hicks, a Trump campaign spokesman, said of Fields. “I never touched you. said that Fields’ account was “entirely As a matter of fact, I have never even Trumpkins disdain false. ... I did not witness any encounter met you.” eyewitnesses, au... not a single camera or reporter of dio recordings and more than 100 in videotape. You attendance caphave your truth, as tured the alleged our friends on the incident.” Trump (c) 2015, Creators Syndicate left would say, himself offered and I have mine. that “maybe she Not even Bill Clinton was so brazen. made it up.” Except there was an eyewitness, Ben SO THE BATTERY is an estabTerris, of the Washington Post, who confirmed Fields’ account that very lished fact shamelessly denied. And day. And the following day there was then there is the character assassinaan audio recording of the Terris/Field tion. Trump has suggested that Fields conversation immediately after the in- was an attention seeker, and sneered cident, which further confirmed her ac- that she’s “not a baby, OK?” This is count. And then there were videos, one classic Trump — attacking those he of which was enough to convince the has already wronged. Asked in an early debate about the people left holding police to bring battery charges.

Mona

Charen

Present at the destruction

onald Trump never ceases to amaze, but his answer at a CNN town hall about the pledge he had taken to support the Republican Party’s nominee was still jawdropping. Not only did Trump say that the pledge is null and void as far as he’s concerned, he also went further and told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that he doesn’t want the support of Ted Cruz.

HERE IS A front-runner for a major party’s nomination doing all he can to repel his nearest competitor, who has won 5,732,220 votes so far, or 29 percent of the total (Trump has won 39 percent), and speaks for a significant, and highly engaged, faction of the party. Is there any precedent for such a willfully and pointlessly destructive act in modern American politics? Every rational calculation says that Trump should seek to preserve the pledge. At this point, he is more likely than anyone else to be the nominee and benefit from the support of his competitors. He should want to use every possible lever of unity at his disposal. And yet, he’s done the opposite. Who can guess why? Stupid pride? A manliness contest, where he wants Cruz eventually to have to offer his support even after he says he doesn’t want it? A disdain for every political convention, even one that might help him? Whatever the reason, it is yet another sign that Trump is all about himself. In this sense, he is already what the

Republican National Committee feared when it got him to sign the pledge — a third-party candidate. He’s running against the Republican Party from within the Republican Party. He cares nothing about its values or its interests. He favors it exactly to the extent it can be subordinated to him and no further. Political parties have been riven by clashes of personalities and ideologies before, but it is hard to think of another example of a party so damaged by such a heedless interloper. IT’S BEEN A month since we were told Donald Trump was pivoting to being more presidential and unifying after his victories on Super Tuesday. Since then, he has: declared that he’d consider paying the legal bills of a goon who sucker-punched a black protester; talked of riots at the

Rich

Republican convention if it doesn’t go his way; threatened and mocked Heidi Cruz; and justified his campaign manager’s manhandling of a female journalist in the most asinine and dishonest ways. It has become a truism in the coverage of Trump that nothing can hurt him, and with his base that is certainly true. But everyone else has been paying attention, and Trump has made himself toxic with the general public.

the bag after his four bankruptcies, he dismissed them, saying they were “big boys and girls.” Actually, many were electricians, carpenters and other working people who couldn’t afford his fancy lawyers. Any number of Trump-enabling commentators have advised Michelle Fields to get over it, put on her “bigboy pants,” and otherwise to suck it up. Really? What about the big boy who’s running for president? Why is he so scared? Perhaps Trump’s fondness for Lewandowski is not in spite of his henchman’s willingness to get physical but because of it. Trump seems more than usually frightened of protesters. To be sure, every candidate gets serious threats, and doubtless Trump has received some. But his threshold for feeling vulnerable seems unusually low. Before a rally in Iowa, he was told that some protesters might throw tomatoes at him. He was sufficiently alarmed to tell the crowd: “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them.” For tomatoes. Nor has he been shy about calling down violence even on those who merely attempted to disrupt his speeches —which, I hasten to add, they have no right to do — which in no way justifies mob violence. On another occasion, Lewandowski waded into the crowd and grabbed a protester by the collar. Trump approved of this maneuver, too, explaining (if that’s the right word) to CNN’s Anderson Cooper that the man’s sign contained very bad words. Non sequitur. The Trump campaign has changed its story several times about Michelle Fields. The latest, on CNN Tuesday night, featured Trump justifying Lewandowki’s manhandling of Fields because she approached the TV star armed with a pen “which is very dangerous.” Tomatoes, Bics, is there no end to the threats against Trump? Donald Trump avoided the draft by claiming bone spurs in his heels — which somehow didn’t keep him off the ski slopes. Yet he had the gall to disparage the heroism of John McCain. His only real exposure to danger, his “personal Vietnam” he says, was sleeping around and risking STDs in the 1970s.

Events can always intervene, and Hillary Clinton certainly has her own weaknesses, but every objective indicator is that nominating Trump will mean a divided Republican Party loses in the fall, perhaps badly, maybe even epically. Probably the most favorable nonTrump scenario is that Ted Cruz beats him on a second ballot at a convention and has enough anti-establishment credibility to take the edge off the inevitable revolt of the Trump forces. But surely Trump would do all he could to destroy Cruz and the GOP in retribution for denying him the nomination. Trump’s implicit threat is almost certainly lose with me in a simulacrum of a normal process (and lose your integrity and principles along the way), or almost certainly lose without me in an intraparty cataclysm I will make as spectacular as possible. Either way, the GOP is in all likelihood now managing dismal outcomes. The Trump phenomenon holds important lessons for the party, but there is no escaping the insuperable weakTRUMP IS a physically large man ness and failings of Trump himself, with the courage of a mouse. Like namely his egotism, immaturity, irre- many cowards, he loves tough talk, sponsibility and habitual dishonesty. but he prefers to issue threats from the comfort of his private jet and to let THE RNC thought it had scored a bullyboys like Lewandowski actually victory so many months ago when Don- get their hands dirty. Purely as a matald Trump signed its pledge. Instead, it ter of national hygiene, Lewandowski was enacting the political equivalent of should be fired. But more importantly, the fable of the scorpion and the frog. so should his boss. March 31, 2016

March 30, 2016

Conservative Chronicle

DONALD TRUMP: March 31, 2016

Trump’s sinking fortunes reflected in dropping polls

t isn’t every day I get a note pening in the U.S. auto industry. He from one of Donald Trump’s is making up a situation that does not former supporters, saying Trump exist. Worse, Trump uses decades-old trade doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But earlier this week, Stephanie rhetoric that may have been legitimate in Cegielski, who was a consultant to a the ‘60s, ‘70s or ‘80s, but not in today’s former “Make America Great Again” global economy. In one of the first Represidential debates super PAC (that has since shut down), publican this year, Trump said read my column that Japanese ships about how the were lined up on former TV reality the West Coast, show host is makloaded with cars ing stuff up about (c) 2016, United Media Services to sell to AmeriAmerica’s trade cans. That is no record. The day before, she had posted an open letter longer true. While he’s telling voters that he will online, denouncing the candidate she once supported, and emailed me some bring “jobs back to America,” the fact is that Japan is the one creating millions of of those same sentiments. “The man does not know policy, jobs in our country. Toyota, Honda and nor does he have the humility to ad- other automakers have manufacturing mit what he does not know,” Cegielski plants across our country, where Ameriwrote, saying she no longer supports cans are turning out cars, automotive parts and engines by the millions. Trump. Most of these plants are set up in NOT ONLY does he not know much right-to-work states in the South where about trade policies, but he’s given to they don’t have to deal with unions, inventing his own “facts” about them. “and that in turn has led to supplier My column was about remarks parks being established nearby,” says Trump made last month, in which he ace Washington Post fact checker Glenn said, “They (Japan) have cars coming Kessler. “Trump’s promise that he was going in (to the U.S.) by the millions, and we to bring car companies back to Michisell practically nothing. “We will keep the car industry in gan ignores the fact that Michigan has Michigan, and we’re going to bring car been losing the auto industry to other companies back to Michigan,” he told states, not countries, because of its voters on a campaign swing through union traditions,” Kessler writes. “Michigan would have to pull up its the Rust Belt. But this is a deep distortion, if not socks in a big way,” says Gary Hufbaudownright false, about what is hap- er, senior fellow at the Peterson Insti-

Donald

Lambro

tute for International Economics. “You might be able to bring some auto production back to the United States, but not Michigan.” That’s another thing Trump doesn’t mention, because he either doesn’t know it, or leaves it out of his speeches to con the voters into believing his phony political pitch. Yes, manufacturing jobs have declined in the U.S., but we’re producing more because of increased productivity. “In real terms, U.S. factories produced more output (looking at straight output or value added) last year than ever before in history,” says Dan Ikenson, director of trade policy studies at the free-market Cato Institute. “Year after year (with the exception of recessions), the sector breaks new records with respect to output, revenues, exports, imports, return on investment.” AT THE SAME time, “Trump’s complaints about currency manipulation are woefully out of date,” Kessler says, quoting economist Fred Bergsten, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute, who says Trump is “way out of whack.”

China hasn’t been manipulating its currency for about two years. Indeed, it’s been selling its dollars and reducing its reserves in the face of its economic slowdown. Kessler, who gives out Pinocchios to public figures who make false and dubious claims, gave Trump four, his worst score for dishonesty. Yet all of Trump’s false or outdated statements about trade and imports have remained a staple in his campaign rhetoric, duping voters into believing that he knows what he’s talking about. But people are beginning to catch on to Trump’s flimflam candidacy, and an increasing number of voters are turning away from him in droves. In fact, recent polling shows that both Trump and his remaining chief rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, fell to new lows in their favorable ratings in March. “The primary and caucus season is taking its toll on the images of three of the major presidential candidates,” writes Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the well-respected Gallup Poll. “Republicans Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, in particular, have suffered significant drops in their images over the past two months,” Newport said Wednesday. “Trump has always had the worst image” of any of the five active presidential candidates, “and his image has slipped further among Americans since January.” Trump’s current minus-35 net favorable rating — 30 percent favorable and 65 percent unfavorable — “is the worst for him in any month since tracking began,” Newport says. “Cruz, like Trump, has seen his image deteriorate in recent months,” too. “His net favorable score of minus-16 (based on 32 percent favorable and 48 percent unfavorable) is now the second lowest of the five candidates.” Hillary Clinton’s numbers are better, but still weak, 42 percent favorable versus 53 percent unfavorable. The bottom line: Americans now view Trump and Cruz in “a worse light than in any month since Gallup began last July.” AND JUDGING from Trump’s incendiary remarks this week that “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who got an abortion if it was made illegal, the GOP’s polls are only going to get worse.

April 13, 2016 DEAR MARK: April 1, 2016

GOP establishment, anti-women, crybaby Hillary DEAR MARK: The GOP establishment does not seem to care about anything but themselves. The entire Trump fiasco came about because those that GOP voters chose were people who made promises year after year and did not keep any of them. This has been going on for decades. GOP voters are looking for someone who will tell it like it is and promise to make attempts to change some of Washington’s more egregious sins and actually keep their word no matter the political fallout. A strict constitutionalist who does not “bow his knee” to what the establishment wants is what we’re looking for. This is not an endorsement of Ted Cruz, per se. Rather than the “anyone but Trump,” we are more the “anyone but a GOP establishment candidate.” We are rejecting the GOP establishment because they have been rejecting us. To say that the GOP is about to deconstruct is obvious and few of us will care. We Republican voters are pretty much fed up, not just with the party but with a GOP establishment that only pays lip service to what they profess to live by. The reality is that they are only trying to please themselves and others of their ilk. Many media personalities say they will leave the United States if Trump is elected; from where we sit, they can go. Then we can return our country and its government back to the founder’s original intent. Thank you for this forum. — Kathleen the Conservative Machine Dear Kathleen: It seems so simple doesn’t it? If the Republicans we sent to Washington simply kept their campaign promises

and also followed the Constitution, they could probably stay in office as long as they liked. Call me cynical but Washington is pretty much a good old boys and girls club between Republicans, Democrats and lobbyists. It works like this: Nancy, Harry, Mitch and Paul all regularly meet over scotch to discuss not hurting each other too bad politically so that they can please their respective lobbyists. The end result is both parties leave Washington with a lot more money than when they got to town. Border security is a perfect example. Republicans had

Mark

enough votes in the House and Senate to pass a clean bill securing the border either with a wall, fence, drones or other high tech means. But establishment Republicans are beholden to many businesses that love the cheap illegal labor while Democrats are beholden to their Hispanic constituency. As a result members of both parties will receive some big coin just as Mrs. Bill Clinton did for her Wall Street speeches and the American people still have to be worried about terrorists walking across from Mexico. Hopefully the GOP can survive its own convention and Cruz or Trump can win in November to kick some tail in Washington and bring some sanity back to DC. DEAR MARK: Polls are showing Donald Trump is

losing ground in the female demographic. His recent remarks to Chris Mathews that women who have abortions should be punished sure didn’t help him. Is Trump anti-woman? — Not Helen Reddy Dear Not Helen: I don’t believe Mr. Trump is antiwoman but the left led by Mrs. Bill Clinton will take any remarks by any GOP candidate and turn them into the rightwing war on women. Although Trump has made crude remarks about women such as Megyn Kelly, Carly Fiorina and Rosie O’Donnell, he has proven to be an equal opportunity offender with outrageous remarks about his fellow GOP contenders as well. I have to give it to the Donald with his comments on abortion; he has managed to offend both sides of the abortion debate with a single comment. Now that is a savvy politician. DEAR MARK: It’s hilarious that Hillary’s campaign is telling the Bernie campaign to change its negative tone toward Hillary or there will be no Democratic debate in New York. Doesn’t she sound like a big crybaby? — No Crying in Politics Dear No Crying: Team Hillary’s comments seem disingenuous considering the destruction the Clinton machine is capable of. Also the whining about softening the tone is probably the same thing Bill was begging Hillary each time he was caught with another woman. E-mail your questions to marklevy92@aol.com. Follow Mark on Twitter @MarkPLevy

CONTACT INFORMATION Individual Contact Information Greenberg - pgreenberg@arkansasonline.com Krauthammer - letters@charleskrauthammer.com Levy - marklevy92@aol.com Lowry - comments.lowry@nationalreview.com Malkin - malkinblog@gmail.com Massie - mychalmassie@gmail.com Napolitano - freedomwatch@foxbusiness.com Saunders - dsaunders@sfchronicle.com Schlafly - phyllis@eagleforum.org Thomas - tmseditors@tribune.com Will - georgewill@washpost.com Contact through Creators Syndicate Michael Barone, Austin Bay, Brent Bozell, Pat Buchanan, Mona Charen, Linda Chavez, Jackie Gingrich Cushman, Larry Elder, Leslie Elman, Erick Erickson, Joseph Farah, David Harsanyi, Laura Hollis, Terry Jeffrey, Larry Kudlow, David Limbaugh, Dick Morris, William Murchison, Dennis Prager, Ben Shapiro, Thomas Sowell, Matt Towery Contact - info@creators.com Contact through Universal Press Ann Coulter or Donald Lambro Contact by mail : c/o Universal Press Syndicate 1130 Walnut Street Kansas City, MO 64106 Answers from page 14

TRIVIA ANSWERS T rivia B I T S

ANSWERS 1) The Bellini combines sparkling wine (usually prosecco) and peach puree. 2) London is the only city to have hosted the modern Olympics three times: 1908, 1948 and 2012. 3) John Paul Jones’s ship Bon Homme Richard was destroyed in battle and had to be abandoned. 4) Since the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959, the Dalai Lama has lived in exile in India. 5) Pitman and Gregg developed shorthand writing systems. 6) Discovered in 2011, planet Kepler-16b orbits two suns.

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Conservative Chronicle

BARACK OBAMA: April 1, 2016

What is Obama? He revealed himself in Argentina

e, to a greater or lesser ex- juxtaposed to examining the genesis from tent, know who Obama is, which his ideology springs. What is Obama? He is a product of but do we know what he is? Permit me to take a somewhat circuitous his inculcation. He is a product of Friedrich Nietzsche, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich route to address same. Let’s start with what he and his spouse Hegel, et al. He is the spawn of the “God movement, not from a are. They are the worst kind of racialists, is Dead” theological position, they are elitist Lerather from a stridenninists with concy and willingness to tempt for traditionlive with the ramial America. They fications of that display disrespect (c) 2016, Mychal Massie theory. for the sanctity of Obama’s rethe office he holds, and for those who are willing to admit sponse in essence said there is no right same, Michelle Obama’s raw contempt or wrong choice. There is only the choice that you make based upon what you perfor white America is transpicuous. ceive to be best for you. Albeit, all choice BUT THAT IS who they are, not what must have as its core “a social and moral he is. We must dig deeper to uncover and ethical and community basis.” what he is, not because it is particularly HE, LIKE HIS primogenitor, subwell hidden, but rather because to identify what he is people must be willing to scribes to secularism that when extended accept truth that is uncomfortable to their to its logical and systemic conclusion denies the existence of God. God is reinculcated ethos. On his recent trip to Argentina, placed with empirical reasoning. The Obama’s response to a young person’s problem with empirical reasoning is that question during a quasi town hall type ap- said can only give you the facts, you must pearance unambiguously exposed what decide whether they are right or wrong Obama is. He was asked a question about for you based upon the metaphysical. nonprofit community organizations and Meta meaning “beyond” and physical the necessity of attracting funding from meaning “nature,” ergo despite what one both the public and private sector. The sees, they must ultimately make their dequestion was a mélange at best, although cisions based upon what they cannot see. an American who holds to the traditions our Founders set forth would have adAPPORTIONMENT: April 6, 2016 dressed the youth in the context of free market capitalism. However Obama responded: “So often in the past there has been a division between the left and the right, between capitalists and communists or socialists, he Supreme Court decision and especially in the Americas, that been in Evenwel v. Abbott harkens a big debate. ... Those are interesting inback to how our original Contellectual arguments, but I think for your stitution enshrined slavery in power ungeneration, you should be practical and til the Civil War. just choose from what works. You don’t The Evenwel decision holds that have to worry about whether it really fits states may apportion districts — and into socialist theory or capitalist theory. presumably Congress can apportion You should just decide what works [for Congressional representation — based you].” on total population rather than based on He continued by praising Cuba’s so- those eligible to vote. So immigrants cialist system and dictator Raul Castro, here illegally, who cannot vote, are expounding on Cuba’s free access to edu- counted equally with voters in allocatcation and health care. He did not blame ing legislative representation. communism for the condition Cuba is in today, rather he blamed it on the economy THERE IS a terrible analogy benot working. He concluded his comments tween the Evenwel decision and the arguing that a free market-based system infamous three-fifths rule that was ad“has to have a social and moral and ethi- opted to determine slave representation cal and community basis.” Which is sim- in the House of Representatives. ply another way of saying take from those At the original Constitutional Conwho earn and give to those who do not. vention, the Northern and Southern We can easily dissect Obama’s ver- states wrangled over how to count biage and conclude the absurdity of his slaves — who could not vote — in alresponse. The answer is not an “intel- locating congressional districts to the lectual argument” nor is “America” a states. The South wanted its voting part of the “Americas.” America is a power enhanced so slave states could sovereign nation distinct unto itself not come closer to a majority in the House a conglomerate of third world countries. of Representatives and have more But that would be a topical addressment electoral votes in choosing a president

Mychal

Massie

When the layers are removed and all the pontificating is done, Obama is someone who subscribes to theory but rejects the absolute. Dr. Ravi Zacharias, a man I have long looked upon as a mentor, one of the most renowned biblical apologists of the modern era, if not all time, states that “[those like Obama] repudiate the faith upon which the nation, [i.e., America] was founded. They talk about rights and human rights but they seldom talk about the right to be human. How can we talk about human rights when we don’t talk about the right to be human?” Obama is a conflicted contradiction who adheres to a theory that has failed in

every society in which it has been introduced. He is a person whose entire orthodoxy is based upon the premise that he knows more than God and with his rejection of proof to the contrary he is driven to advance a heterodoxy of failure. HE IS ONE who has rejected truth and replaced it with a vain attempt to change the ramifications of his flawed theory. He is confused, lost, and “hellward” bound. He is a person unable to make sound decisions for his own life and yet he has convinced people he is able to make decisions for them. Which explains in large part why his administration has been the model of failure.

Back to three-fifths slavery formula

(electoral votes are allocated by adding the number of senators and congressmen from each state). The Northern states relented and agreed to count each slave as threefifths of a person in apportioning legislative seats. The South and the slave interest benefited enormously from the compromise.

Dick

SO, AS A RESULT of the Supreme Court’s decision in Evenwel, immigrants in this country illegally are to be the modern equivalent of slaves in proportioning representation in Congress. Like slaves, these people cannot vote. But they are counted in determining how many seats in Congress each state gets. These phantom voters have no more right to influence the composition of our Congress than the slaves did — unless and until they can vote. As Gary Wills explains in his 2003 book Negro President: Jefferson and the

Slave Power, the distortions caused by the three-fifths rule permitted the slave power to remain in ascendency. The Southern slave states had 47 House members in 1793 — under the threefifths rule — while they should have had only 33. By 1812, they had 76 but should have been entitled to only 59. By 1833, they had 98 as opposed to the 73 they should have had. Wills calls Jefferson the “Negro President” because it was the extra electoral votes that came from the three-fifths rule that let Jefferson eek past President John Adams in the electoral college in the election of 1800. In that contest, Jefferson won with 73 electoral votes to Adams’ 65. But had the Electoral College votes only reflected vote eligible citizens, and excluded the three-fifths rule, Adams would have won. THIS ODIOUS comparison illustrates the injustice of using illegal immigrants to apportion power but not giving them a voice in how it is used. Either make them citizens and count their votes or leave them out of apportionment.

April 13, 2016 BASEBALL: April 3, 2016

How well do you know your baseball?

(14) The three players to get two exitcher Jim Bouton said: “Baseball players are smarter than tra-base hits in an All-Star Game before football players. How often do age 23. (15) The player with seven straight you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field?” To show how seasons with a .300 average, 20 homers, 100 RBIs and 100 walks. smart you are, identify: (16) The Hall of Famer who played (1) The team that won a record 26 his games as DH. consecutive games (but finished fourth). most of (17) The sec(2) Among those ond player, after with 3,000 hits, Ty Cobb, to have the player with the at least 221 hits, 46 fewest home runs. doubles and 54 (3) The play(c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group steals in a season. er who led both (18) The team leagues in homers that had five consecutive Rookie of the and triples (not in the same season). (4) Who hit the only game seven Year winners. (19) The player who slugged .826 in a World Series walk-off home run. (5) The four players who hit World six-game World Series, with a record 10 Series homers in three different decades. RBIs, but whose team lost. (20) The player who had the most (6) The first manager to lead three consecutive World Series hits (7). teams to pennants. (21) The record number of games in a (7) The manager who, after Connie Mack and John McGraw, had the most season in which a team homered. (22) The player who had the most caconsecutive years managing one team. (8) The first player to hit 30 home reer RBIs (1,903) without ever leading runs, score 125 runs and steal 45 bases the league. (23) The player who reached a base in in a season. (9) The four hitters who, since World a record 84 consecutive games. (24) The most recent former Rookie War II, had five or more seasons batting of the Year elected to the Hall of Fame. .350 or better. (25) The two pitchers who pitched 27 (10) The five hitters ranked in the top 25 in career singles, doubles and triples. World Series innings without yielding an (11) The player whose 44 hits in his earned run. (26) The only player in the last 100 first month is second to Joe DiMaggio’s years who twice in a season scored four 48. (12) The four Hall of Fame pitchers runs in a game without a hit. (27) The pitcher who won 107 games DiMaggio faced during his 56-game hitbefore age 23. ting streak. (28) The first pitcher to have two (13) The youngest player to lead the 300-strikeout seasons. National League in hits.

George

Will

(29) The four pitchers to win at least two Cy Young awards, to win at least two World Series rings, and pitch a no-hitter. (30) The three pitchers who started five All-Star Games. (31) The team that had the highest American League season winning percentage. (32) The team with the most wins in an AL season. (33) The NL team with the best singleseason winning percentage since 1900. (34) Which team that existed in 1900 took the longest to win a World Series. (35) The youngest unanimous MVP. (36) The three pitchers to strike out at least 150 in each of their first nine seasons. (37) First infielder (other than first basemen) to hit 500 home runs. (38) The manager of the AL team with a season-record 116 wins. (39) Who won a home run title with a batting average lower than that year’s Cy Young winner, Steve Carlton (.218). (40) The pitcher who retired 46 consecutive batters. Bonus question: Who said, “All of the Mets’ road wins against the Dodgers this year occurred at Dodger Stadium.”

ANSWERS: (1) 1916 New York Giants (2) Eddie Collins (3) Sam Crawford (4) Bill Mazeroski (5) Yogi Berra, Joe DiMaggio, Eddie Murray, Matt Williams (6) Bill McKechnie (1928 St. Louis Cardinals; 1925 Pittsburgh Pirates; 1939, 1940 Cincinnati Reds) (7) Walter Alston (8) Mike Trout (2012) (9) Wade Boggs, Rod Carew, Tony Gwynn, Ted Williams (10) Ty Cobb, Stan Musial, Tris Speaker, Paul Waner, Honus Wagner (11) Yasiel Puig (12) Bob Feller, Lefty Grove, Ted Lyons, Hal Newhouser (13) Starlin Castro (2011) (14) Ken Griffey Jr., Mike Trout, Ted Williams (15) Frank Thomas (16) Frank Thomas (17) Jose Altuve (18) 1992-1996 Los Angeles Dodgers (19) Ted Kluszewski, 1959 Chicago White Sox (20) Billy Hatcher, 1990 Cincinnati Reds (21) 131, New York Yankees (2012) (22) Willie Mays (23) Ted Williams, 1949 (24) Mike Piazza (25) Christy Mathewson (1905), Waite Hoyt (1921) (26) Bryce Harper (27) Bob Feller (28) Rube Waddell (29) Bob Gibson, Sandy Koufax, Tim Lincecum, Jim Palmer (30) Don Drysdale, Lefty Gomez, Robin Roberts (31) 1954 Cleveland Indians, 111-43 (.721) (32) 2001 Seattle Mariners, 116-46 (.716) (33) 1906 Chicago Cubs, 116-36 (.763) (34) Philadelphia Phillies (1980) (35) Bryce Harper (36) Hideo Nomo, Tom Seaver, Don Sutton (37) Eddie Matthews (38) Lou Piniella (39) Dave Kingman (40) Yusmeiro Petit BONUS ANSWER: Ralph Kiner, of course.

Conservative Chronicle

PARDONS: April 5, 2016

Obama’s underused get-out-of-jail-free card “Did ‘Hope and Change’ really Attorney Ronald Rodgers, a holdover mean: ‘Arguably, better than the very from the George W. Bush administraworst?’” political science professor tion, had withheld information from P.S. Ruckman Jr. asked in his Pardon Bush that might have led to the release Power blog last week. With 61 new of Clarence Aaron, a first-time nonlent drug offender presidential commutations making the v i o sentenced to life total to date 248, without parole President Barack and the subject of Obama had many of my colreached a numumns. Horowitz ber of commuta(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate concluded Rodtions greater than those of the “past six presidents,” the gers fell “substantially short” of the White House blog had boasted. Con- expected standard. Obama did not residering the poor record on clemency move Rodgers until 2014. of Obama’s recent predecessors, RuckUNDER THE Constitution, a presiman is not impressed. After attending a closed White House briefing last week, dent can issue commutations and parhe told me he is “really, really afraid dons unilaterally, and there is nothing Congress can do about it. Obama could that they’re spiking the ball.” have used the pardon power to make federal inmates condemned to die in THERE WAS a time when the things right for the mostly minority prison for low-level drug trade offensWhite House looked as if it might be serious about using the president’s parGOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT: April 6, 2016 don power to commute the sentences of federal offenders. In August 2013, then-Attorney General Eric Holder addressed the American Bar Association in San Francisco. He called the criminal justice system “broken,” and very year, more than half a to work for us — the public — but he informed lawyers that the presimillion patients in the U.S. clearly they’re siding with the hospital dent would begin issuing more comare unknowingly put at risk of industry instead. The FDA refuses to mutations. In December, Holder told contracting a superbug infection during reveal where the two most recent deaths the Washington Post he envisioned as a common medical procedure. A doc- occurred. many as 10,000 commutations. It’s been a four-year saga of incomtor threads a tube-like scope down your Policy wonks on the right and left throat and into your digestive system to petence, cover-ups and dying patients. applauded Holder. Federal drug laws treat cancer and other problems. You as- And it’s still going on, even after a U.S. had swollen the federal prison popu- sume the tube is clean. Think again. Senate report in January 2016 lation to about 200,000. The federal The scope’s defective design allows mandatory minimum sentencing sys- bacteria to lurk within, even after rigtem set obscenely long sentences for orous cleaning between patients. The nonviolent drug offenses, often meted federal Food and Drug Administration out to smaller fish in the drug trade. Of has known about this problem since (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate last week’s 61 commutees, a third had 2012, yet dawdled. Three months ago, been sentenced to life in prison. the manufacturer of most of the scopes, After the announcement came the Olympus, began recalling them. exposed the agencies’ blunders and letdown. In 2014, the administration called for reforms. The agencies “have had named a new pardon attorney, BUT NUMEROUS hospitals are known about this for so long and people Deborah Leff, to signal that the De- still using them, and patients are still are still dying,” laments Glenn Smith, partment of Justice had gotten seri- getting infected and dying — eight whose teenage son nearly died from a ous about its Clemency Initiative. In more infections and two more deaths superbug infection after being treated January, Leff resigned. Last month, according to last month’s FDA data. with the device. USA Today obtained a copy of Leff’s Patients have contracted infections resignation letter, in which she wrote linked to the contaminated scopes (duIN THE WINTER of 2012-2013, that she had been denied “all access to odenoscopes) at prestigious institutions 38 patients at a suburban Chicago hosthe Office of the White House Coun- such as UCLA Medical Center, NewY- pital contracted the deadliest superbug, sel,” including in cases where higher- ork-Presbyterian, Hartford Hospital in carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaups reversed her recommendations. “I Connecticut, Massachusetts General in ceae, after being scoped. The CDC isbelieve that prior to making the seri- Boston and Thomas Jefferson Univer- sued a perfunctory report in January ous and complex decisions underlying sity Hospital in Philadelphia. 2013, but omitted the model number clemency, it is important for the presiHospitals don’t warn their patients and manufacturer of the faulty scope, dent to have a full set of views,” Leff about the risk, which makes a mockery referred to “hospital A” instead of namwrote. of the idea that patients are giving “in- ing Advocate Lutheran General Hospiformed consent” before the procedure, tal. Forget alerting the public, or docAT A POLITICO breakfast Friday, says medical safety expert Lawrence tors who want to protect their patients White House counsel Neil Eggleston Muscarella. from a similar fate. claimed that he had taken care of Leff’s At the same time, at least 39 patients Worse, the FDA and another federal complaints before she left. agency, the Centers for Disease Control contracted the same type of lethal suI am skeptical. In 2012, Inspector and Prevention, go along with the hush- perbug at Virginia Mason Medical CenGeneral Michael E. Horowitz informed up about which hospitals are having a ter in Seattle, and 18 died, all after bethe Obama White House that Pardon problem. These agencies are supposed ing treated with the dirty scope. After

Debra J.

Saunders

es. But he didn’t care enough to get it right.

Government dysfunction costs lives

Betsy

McCaughey

initially losing the paperwork regarding these early incidents, the FDA began investigating in September 2013, but took no steps to alert hospitals, doctors or the public about the risk for another 17 months. That’s why two patients died needlessly at the UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center after being treated with bacteria-laden scopes. UCLA didn’t even begin using these scopes until June 2014. Had doctors there been alerted, it’s likely these patients would have been spared. That’s how deadly government dysfunction and secrecy can be. But, as the Senate report makes clear, the hospital industry is to blame as well. Not a single hospital where the devicerelated infections occurred reported the problem quickly to the manufacturer or the FDA, as required. The Senate investigation found that NewYorkPresbyterian waited seven months. The Senate’s report rightly calls for hospitals that hide or delay reporting deaths caused by defective medical devices to be barred from Medicare. THE BIGGEST problem is the unholy alliance between the hospital industry and complacent federal bureaucrats. They all want to keep problems quiet. Publicizing infections is bad for hospital revenues and erodes the public’s misplaced confidence that the federal government is performing its oversight function. Doctors were kept out of the loop about the dangers of these scopes. But the real victims in this conspiracy of silence are trusting patients.

April 13, 2016 COLLEGE CAMPUSES: April 5, 2016

Chinese crowding our college campuses

igh school seniors are ea- its public colleges nevertheless admit gerly watching their mail this huge numbers of students from mainmonth, hoping for the “fat land China, including 1,200 at UC envelope” indicating acceptance by the Berkeley (up from 47 a decade ago) and college of their choice. Unfortunately, 2,200 at UC San Diego (up from 70). Of more American students are receiving the nearly one million people living in States on F-1 student the “thin envelope” because college ac- the United about 360,000 are ceptance rates are continuing their de- v i s a s , from China. cade-long decline. Why did U.S. The most selecuniversities decide tive public collegto open their doors es, such as UCLA to foreign stuand Michigan, (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate dents? Follow the now take one out of six applicants, compared to one out money. Foreign students usually pay of three a decade ago. Top private col- full tuition rates, which could be two leges, such as Stanford and Harvard, ad- or three times more than American stumit one out of 20 applicants, compared dents pay. Like any business seeking to exploit to one out of 10 a decade ago. a new profit opportunity, the higher WHAT EXPLAINS the steady de- education “industry” has hired more cline in college admission rates for Chinese-speaking staff in order to reAmerica’s best high-school students? Is cruit more students and cater to them it really true that the percentage of high- after they arrive on campus. Some U.S. school graduates who are prepared for universities even hold pre-departure orientations in China. college keeps getting smaller? The lure of higher tuition has temptOne reason for this trend is the huge increase of students from foreign coun- ed state colleges to lower their admistries, especially China, who are admit- sion standards for foreign and other outted to study on American campuses. of-state students. The California State The numbers of Chinese and other for- Auditor recently found that the average eign students who go to college in the SAT scores and grades of out-of-state students were lower than those of inU.S. is truly mind-boggling. The University of Illinois has 5,000 state students, and that state universities Chinese students on its Champaign-Ur- had rejected 4,500 Californians whose bana campus, compared with less than test scores and grades were good enough 100 a decade ago. Students from the for out-of-state and foreign students. Chinese students do seem to have People’s Republic of China made up a plenty of money to spend, and not just tenth of last year’s freshman class. California has more U.S.-born Chi- for tuition, room and board. Many drive nese students than any other state, but expensive cars and wear fashionable

Phyllis

Schlafly

clothing, which makes them stand out dealership near the University of Oreamong typical American college stu- gon at Eugene, and five percent of sales dents. by a luxury dealer near the University of Iowa in Iowa City. WHILE AN American kid might In case you’re thinking that Chinese drive a beat-up Toyota handed down students must be some of “the best and from an older member of the family, the brightest” who provide the brainChinese students seem to have no prob- power needed by America’s engineering lem affording a new Audi, BMW or schools, nothing could be further from Lexus. In the Boston area, which has the truth. Most Chinese students have no 44,000 foreign students attending doz- better than average ability, and many do ens of colleges, the 12,000 Chinese stu- not speak, write, or understand English dents are often seen driving Maseratis, well enough to contribute significantly Lamborghinis, and Range Rovers. to the academic community. At Michigan State in East Lansing, A professor of Chinese history at where 4,400 Chinese students are en- New York University told the Wall rolled, Chinese students accounted for Street Journal that students from China 10 to 20 percent of a luxury car dealer’s often pose a “burden” on her lectures, entire sales. Chinese students provided which she has to modify for their beneight percent of the sales of a luxury car efit. Many Chinese students “are woefully underprepared,” she said. WholeRen Education, a U.S. company that caters to students from China, reported that some 8,000 Chinese students were expelled from American universities last year, mostly for poor academic performance or cheating. “Chinese students used to be considered top-notch,” a WholeRen executive said, “but over the past five years their image has changed completely -- wealthy kids who cheat.” The Reuters news service has just published an in-depth examination of Chinese cheating on college entrance exams such as the SAT, which is administered in China under license from the College Board. In many cases, actual test questions and even entire test booklets were found on Chinese web sites or used by Chinese cram schools. SOME CHINESE families aren’t waiting to send their kids off to college in the U.S., but are starting much earlier. About 35,000 K-12 students from China, some as young as 10 years old, now live in the U.S., many paying nonresident tuition to attend U.S. public schools.

Conservative Chronicle

DONALD TRUMP: April 5, 2016

What Trump has wrought during his campaign

s Wisconsinites head for the the EU in amassing a huge bribe to the polls, our Beltway elites are Turks to please take them back, and almost giddy. For they fore- keep them away from the Greek islands see a Badger State bashing for Donald that are now Islam’s Ellis Island into Trump, breaking his momentum toward Europe. Africa’s population will double to 2.5 the Republican nomination. Should the Donald fall short of the billion by 2050. With 60 percent of Afnow under 25 years delegates needed to win on the first bal- r i c a n s of age, millions will lot, 1,237, there find their way to is growing certithe Med to cross to tude that he will the Old Continent be stopped. First where Europeans by Ted Cruz; then, (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate are aging, shrinkperhaps, by someone acceptable to the establishment, ing and dying. Look for gunboats in the which always likes to have two of its Med. If immigration is the first issue where own in the race. Trump connected with the people, the BUT THIS city of self-delusion second is trade. Republicans are at last learning that should realize there is no going back for America. For, whatever his stumbles of trade deficits do matter, that free trade is the last two weeks, Trump has helped to not free. The cost comes in dead factounleash the mightiest force of the 21st ries, lost jobs, dying towns and the rising rage of an abandoned Middle America century: nationalism. Transnationalism and globalism are whose country this is and whose wages have stagnated for decades. moribund. Economists who swoon over figures First among the issues on which Trump has triumphed — “We will build on consumption forget what America’s the wall — and Mexico will pay for it!” 19th-century meteoric rise to self-sufficiency teaches, and what all four presi— is border security. Republican candidates who failed dents on Mount Rushmore understood. Production comes before consumpto parrot Trump on illegal immigration tion. Who owns the orchard is more were among the first casualties. For that is where America is, and that essential than who eats the apples. We have exported the economic indepenis where the West is. Consider Europe. Four months ago, dence that Hamilton taught was indisAngela Merkel was Time’s Person of pensable to our political independence. the Year for throwing open the gates to We have forgotten what made us great. China, Japan, Germany — the secthe “huddled masses” of the Middle and ond, third and fourth largest economies Near East. Merkel’s Germany is now leading on earth — all owe their prosperity to

Pat

Buchanan

trade surpluses run for decades at the expense of the Americans. A third casualty of Trumpism is the post-Cold War foreign policy consensus among liberal interventionists and neoconservatives. Trump subjects U.S. commitments to a cost-benefit analysis, as seen from the standpoint of cold national interest. WHAT DO we get from continuing to carry the largest load of the defense of a rich Europe, against a Russia with one-fourth of Europe’s population? How does Vladimir Putin, leader of a nation that in the last century lost its European and world empires and a third of its landmass, threaten us? Why must we take the lead in confronting and containing Putin in

Ukraine, Crimea and Georgia? No vital U.S. interest is imperiled there, and Russia’s ties there are older and deeper than ours to Puerto Rico. Why is it the responsibility of the U.S. Pacific Fleet to defend the claims of Hanoi, Manila, Kuala Lumpur and Brunei, to rocks, reefs and islets in the South China Sea — against the claims of China? American hawks talk of facing down Beijing in the South and East China Seas while U.S. companies import so much in Chinese-made goods they are fully subsidizing Beijing’s military budget. Does this make sense? Patriotism, preserving and protecting the unique character of our nation and people, economic nationalism, America First, staying out of other nation’s wars — these are as much the propellants of Trumpism as is the decline of the American working and middle class. Trump’s presence in the race has produced the largest turnout ever in the primaries of either party. He has won the most votes, most delegates, most states. Wisconsin aside, he will likely come to Cleveland in that position. If, through rules changes, subterfuge and faithless delegates, party elites swindle him out of the nomination, do they think that the millions who came out to vote for Trump will go home and say: We lost it fair and square? Do they think they can then go back to open borders, amnesty, a path to citizenship, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and nation building? WHATEVER HAPPENS to Trump, the country has spoken. And if the establishment refuses to heed its voice, and returns to the policies the people have repudiated, it should take heed of John F. Kennedy’s warning: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.”

April 13, 2016 CONSERVATISM: April 1, 2016

Look in the mirror: Lessons for Republicans

ill Republicans learn the right lessons from the debacle that is the Trump candidacy? I am doubtful, because for many, it requires a good, hard look in the mirror. Donald Trump didn’t create the masses supporting him, he simply played into their fears and prejudices, which have been nursed for the last decade by conservative talk show hosts, cable news programs, websites, grass-roots groups and not a few GOP elected officials.

LIKE TRUMP’S presidential campaign announcement, it began with immigration. It seems like an eon ago that Trump declared, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best ... They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us [sic]. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” This sweeping denunciation — not of illegal immigration, mind you, but

of Mexicans and the government of The right has made opposition to Mexico — would have been enough in immigration — increasingly legal imnormal times to sink most candidates. migration as well as illegal — the sine But the media, including the so-called qua non of conservatism for some time mainstream media, gave him a pass, now. Conservatives who argue, as I do, and many on the right embraced his that our immigration system supposed candor. needs a dramatic National Reoverhaul are rouview’s editor Rich tinely denounced Lowry wrote a as open-borders column “Sorry, traitors because (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate Donald Trump we favor making Has a Point,” arit easier for workguing, “For all its crassness, Trump’s ers with needed skills to immigrate lerant on immigration is closer to reality gally and giving legal status to those than the gauzy cliches of the immigra- illegal immigrants whose labor we detion romantics unwilling to acknowl- pend on — and who have paid taxes edge that there might be an issue wel- and broken no other laws. coming large numbers of high-school dropouts into a 21st-century econoTHERE IS certainly room for legitmy.” I responded immediately with imate debate about immigration policy my own NRO piece, “Stop Defending among conservatives. One can argue Donald Trump.” But it took the maga- for lower immigration levels, more zine months to decide that Trump was diversity among the immigrant pool, unhinged and a danger to the conserva- and certainly for better border secutive movement. rity in good conscience. But suggest-

Linda

Chavez

SUSAN SARANDON: April 1, 2016

Susan Sarandon is burning for Bernie

ctress Susan Sarandon embodies the definitive caricature of the raving socialist who brims with “compassion” and with an estimated net worth of $50 million. She infuriated many liberals by telling MSNBC host Chris Hayes on March 28 that she can only envision Sen. Bernie Sanders for president: “I really want to be on the right side of history, and this is a shot that we’re not going to have again in my lifetime, to have a candidate that is so morally consistent,” while Hillary Clinton is “inauthentic” and a stalking horse for Wall Street, fracking or Monsanto.

SHE WOULDN’T relent, saying she’ll “see what happens” if it comes down to Clinton and Trump: “Some people feel Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately. If he gets in, then things will really, you know, explode.” She didn’t mean Trump would be the revolutionary, only that he would cause America to become unglued and make things ripe for a revolution. Trump could be another Somoza or Batista. On March 27, the New York Times featured one of its Table for Three discussions at Il Cantinori, which the Huffington Post calls “the hot restaurant for the Greenwich Village celebrity crowd.” There, Times reporter Philip Galanes interviewed Sarandon and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. Sarandon dragged out her old story of redistributionist compassion as

a child: “Even as a kid, I rotated my dolls’ dresses so every one got a chance to wear the good one. I think it’s innate. Or maybe it’s about being the oldest kid in the family, the caretaker?” She also proclaimed that she fell into acting as she was a seeker for social change: “I wasn’t interested in acting. But it was the 60s. I was a seeker. And what acting depends on is imagination, which creates empathy and also leads to activism.”

Brent

Nowhere in this sprawling interview did Galanes refer to Sarandon as liberal, leftist, socialist or even progressive. His lingo describes her as an activist who “has spoken out on a wide range of social, environmental and political causes.” Booker is similarly described. The original print headline was “On Purposeful Paths,” but it was modified on the inside pages to “Choosing a Purposeful Path.” TO SARANDON, being in a business where she’s placed in another’s shoes almost “(forces) compassion. I get to show you that you can identify with someone you never thought you’d be able to feel for. That’s what

Dead Man Walking is about. We all make mistakes. But by connecting with the divine in each other, we can be redeemed.” And so, being a socialist naturally follows. Despite Sarandon’s compassion for Death Row prisoners, she couldn’t muster the same feeling for unborn babies. She told the Times that her parents had nine kids “thanks to Catholic indoctrination on birth control.” We wonder which one they wish weren’t alive. Maybe Susan? Galanes asked them to take a stab at the hot topic of political correctness. Sarandon was horrified when he said he found it almost refreshing to be called the F-bomb for a gay man: “’Politically correct’ is almost as good an expression as ‘right to life.’ There’s nothing political about hatred, and there’s nothing correct about it, either. We need to have a dialogue about where the hatred comes from.” Galanes then shifted the interview to the “scary problem” of the mass incarceration of black men and boys. Sarandon shot back: “What are you afraid of? You’re a privileged white guy. You’ll get off.” She lamented the privatization of prisons so companies and lobbyists can “make money by rounding up a population without a voice.” NO ONE ASKED about that $50 million and why Ms. Compassion won’t part with it.

ing that immigrants are “taking jobs from Americans” and that they have “high rates of criminality” — neither of which is true — feeds into a narrative that was ripe for the extremism that Trump has spouted. Organizations like the Center for Immigration Studies, the Federation for American Immigration Reform and NumbersUSA pump out mendacious studies purporting to show that all the jobs that have been created in the last decade have gone to immigrants, and that immigrants disproportionally fill our prisons. These, in turn, make headlines on Drudge, fill hours of rant on talk radio, get serious treatment from conservative news outlets and then turn into direct mail fundraisers from grass-roots conservative organizations. Is it any wonder then, that when Trump comes along and spews his venom, it comes back to bite conservatives who would never think of talking about the issue in Trump’s vulgar, hate-filled rhetoric? But the problem isn’t only immigration. Government itself has become the enemy for many conservatives. Instead of arguments for limited government and smaller bureaucracies, many on the right have begun to sound more like anarchists than Burkean conservatives. Republican elected officials — even staunchly conservative ones — get labeled as Republican In Name Only, so that all who serve in public life become immediately suspect. If you can’t trust anyone who holds office now, an outsider like Donald Trump has a natural opening. It is difficult to see an easy way out of the morass that has become the conservative movement. Conservatism has managed to hold together despite the inherent strains among its various elements, in large part because winning elections was considered important enough to minimize differences. Libertarians and economic conservatives might not have embraced social conservatives’ agenda, (and vice versa) but they were willing to make peace in order to elect representatives who were at least marginally better than the alternative Democrat. Deficit hawks might have worried that defense conservatives would pile up more debt, but they knew prospects were worse if Democrats were elected. Paleo-cons could sit side-by-side with neo-cons with some uneasiness, but not outright enmity. NO MORE. These arrangements now look like quaint relics of a genteel past, not the realpolitik of election victory. We conservatives are likely to lose the 2016 election as a result, and, frankly, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Conservative Chronicle

SAN FRANCISCO: April 3, 2016

The streets of San Francisco, a libertarian take “Sometimes I think we’re so liberal that we’re OK stepping over dead people on our sidewalks,” Daniel Bergerac of the Castro Merchants Association and Castro Cares told me as we discussed the state of the streets of San Francisco. As he knows, people stepping over dead people does happen in San Francisco.

BAGHDAD BY the Bay is living with two intractable problems — a large homeless population and bands of street people who turn parts of this shining city into a menacing and grimy environment. Throwing millions of dollars a year at the homeless problem and developing wellmeaning programs haven’t made the city more livable for the taxpaying public. To the contrary, walk down Market Street and you see men openly flashing cash and dealing drugs. You see street people defecating in public. You smell urine. You see used syringes tossed in plain sight and users passed out in public. City Hall is hobbled by good intentions: Elected officials have been shy to advocate for community standards lest advocates accuse them of waging a war on the poor. The result is a city that fails both the homeless and its middle class. If you lean libertarian, and you believe in smaller government and more individual initiative as I do, you don’t think new laws or well-intended programs can bring about the fundamental change Ess Eff needs. I don’t think the city benefits when social workers enroll homeless adults in welfare and housing programs, and then hope for the best. So I phoned a libertarian-leaning think tank, the Independent Institute in Oakland. Vice President Mary L.G. Theroux suggested that the first step is a change in attitude, a move away from

San Francisco’s approach to the home- partment of Public Health to clear a ratless, which she described as: “We’ll pat infested encampment on Division Street you on the head and say, ‘You poor vic- in February. How can a board of supervisors that tim.’ That’s not helping them.” City Hall means well and does help passed an ordinance that won’t allow a lot of people, but this approach often merchants to give away plastic bags fails the chronically homeless. As Ther- nonetheless give clean needles to junkies oux noted, the progressive view is to let who litter with used needles? Used syare a public health self-destructive people do whatever they r i n g e s hazard — yet City want, and that apHall subsidizes proach helps no needle access proone. grams that do not Here are the require users to steps to a new “at(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate bring in used neetitude:” dles in exchange for clean syringes. Support private charities Quoth Theroux: “You’re always going According to San Francisco’s homeless czar Sam Dodge, the city already to have some people who can’t be helped contracts with more than 30 private char- and who are going to wallow in this, but ities who run homeless shelters. That’s a you don’t have to subsidize it and you plus, as private and faith-based charities don’t have to encourage it.” can do things government institutions LET RESIDENTS own their neighcannot. Theroux has served on Salvation borhoods There’s something to be said for peoArmy boards for about 20 years because its “approach is to help people help them- ple taking charge of their neighborhood’s selves.” The Salvation Army’s Oakland safety instead of expecting government Garden Street Shelter for families re- to do it for them. San Francisco has a quires that parents stay clean and sober. number of Community Benefit Districts, There are random drug tests, Daniel Wil- funded by local merchants, who hire liams of the Salvation Army told me, and cleanup crews and law enforcement. “we search bags every day.” The shelter There’s a more direct link between those encourages parents to attend Friday night who pay for the benefit districts and recovery meetings at the church — which those who serve them. Some districts provides stability for the children. With- hire regular police officers to patrol their out this system, Williams told me, “We communities. The Castro/Upper Market become more of just a place to stay, not a Community Benefit District uses Patrol Specials — a privately paid police force place to get your life together.” that operates under the City Charter. PaHold the same standards for all If working people can’t pitch tents trol Specials — which Bergerac said costs and camp out on public streets, no one about half what San Francisco police ofshould be able to do so. Mayor Ed Lee ficers cost — can make citizens’ arrests, understood this when he ordered the De- contact SFPD about illegal behavior and

Debra J.

Saunders

ask sidewalk squatters to behave or move on. Theroux also sees a role for the Guardian Angels, a volunteer safety patrol group, and Neighborhood Watch groups. The advantage of more law enforcement, Chamber of Commerce Veep Jim Lazarus noted, is that their presence changes a block’s atmosphere: “They don’t even have to arrest anybody.” Remove barriers to cheap housing Theroux advocates for “cheap housing” — not the same thing as affordable housing, which tends to be bigger and permanent. She sees the “tiny house” movement as a means of providing small homes for those in need. Homeless czar Dodge responded that the city has small homes — residential hotel rooms. He called proposed “tiny house” villages “shantytowns.” He fears the same serious health hazards that plague large tent encampments. OK, but there are other tiny homes. When I noted that San Francisco doesn’t have an RV park, Dodge offered that he would be interested in working with a neighborhood to set up a place where RVs now parked on streets can hook up to electricity and water. “An RV park would be another kind of step,” Dodge noted, especially because everyone knows there already are “people living in RVs on city streets.” Know when not to be too libertarian Sometimes safety trumps ideology. Even if you think the federal War on Drugs is misguided, as I do, there is a role for local law enforcement when dealers brazenly sell drugs and users shoot up on Market Street. Proposition 47, the 2014 ballot measure that reduced criminal penalties for drug offenses, has made drug possession an misdemeanor. Use drugs, get a ticket. Nonetheless, San Francisco Police Lt. Mike Nevin told me, drug dealing remains a felony. Good. There’s a handy way to make street dealers afraid of getting caught and going to jail. Arrest them. HARD-CORE libertarians believe that private charities can help those in need better than governments can, in part because coercive government programs often subsidize the wrong behavior. In a speech about what some call the “voluntary city,” economist Robert P. Murphy stressed that it is wrong to equate freemarket conservatism with sink-or-swim social Darwinism. “You can admit that ‘yes, there is a need in a humane society for institutions that take care of people who are poor, who maybe made poor life decisions, or who just got struck with some rare disease or things beyond their control.’ We don’t want as a society to sit back and let those people die in the street.” He sees the answer in voluntary philanthropic organizations. I’ll take whatever works.

April 13, 2016 CONSERVATISM: April 5, 2016

A note to conservatives who are secular

he most profound thinkers in America are conservative. There are, of course, bright liberal and leftist thinkers, but I can’t think of one who approaches the depth and wisdom of the best conservative writers and thinkers. What liberal historian, for example, approaches the understanding of life and history that author Paul Johnson has exhibited in his many works of history? Who on the left matches psychiatrist/writer Theodore Dalrymple’s insight into the underclass? What left-wing columnists understand human nature, the state of mankind, or contemporary America as do George Will, Charles Krauthammer and Thomas Sowell, or many of the leading columnists at publications such as National Review, City Jour-

Most leading Republicans and most of the wealthy donors to the Republican Party — in addition to virtually all I WRITE THIS to make it clear that libertarian politicians and think tank my admiration for the leading conser- scholars — are either uninterested in vative writers, columnists and thinkers the death of Judeo-Christian religions and values in America and the is deep and abiding. West, or they’re OK with There is, however, a “but.” it. They think that The vast maAmerica can surjority of leadvive the death of ing conservative God and religion, writers, just like that fiscal and their liberal col(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate other forms of leagues, have a secular outlook on life. With few ex- conservatism without social conservaceptions, the conservative political and tism can preserve America. intellectual worlds are oblivious to the IT SHOWS how effective the secuconsequences of secularism. They are unaware of the disaster that godless- lar indoctrination in our schools and media has been, that even the majority ness in the West has led to. nal, Commentary Magazine or the Wall Street Journal?

Dennis

Prager

COLLEGE CAMPUSES: April 6, 2016

Campus lunacy, Part II

rofessor Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He recently wrote an article titled “The hypocrisy behind the student renaming craze.” Students, often with the blessing of faculty, have discovered that names for campus buildings and holidays do not always fit politically correct standards for race, class and sex.

STANFORD STUDENTS have demanded the renaming of buildings, malls and streets bearing the name of the recently canonized Junipero Serra, an 18th-century Franciscan priest who was often unkind to American Indians. Harvard Law School is getting rid of its seal because it bears the coat of arms of the Royalls, a slave-owning family. This renaming craze is widespread and includes dozens of colleges and universities, including Amherst, Georgetown, Princeton, Yale and the University of California, Berkeley. The students have decided that some politically incorrect people from centuries ago are bad. Other politically incorrect people are not quite so bad if they were at least sometimes liberal; their names can stay. San Diego State University students are not demanding that the school eliminate its nickname, “Aztecs,” even though the Aztecs enslaved and slaughtered tens of thousands of people from tribes they conquered — often ripping out the hearts of living victims. Should UC Berkeley students and faculty demand the renaming of Warren Hall, named after California Attorney General Earl Warren, who instigated the wartime internment of tens of thou-

sands of innocent Japanese-American citizens? UC Berkeley students and faculty might consider renaming their Cesar E. Chavez Student Center. Chavez sent his thug lieutenants down to California’s southern border to use violence to prevent job-seeking Mexican immigrants from entering the United States. President Woodrow Wilson was a racist who, among other racist acts, segregated civil service jobs. Should Princeton University rename its Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs plus rename its Woodrow Wilson fellowship program?

Walter

Most universities have a women’s studies program. Part of their agenda is to make sure men learn that “no” means “no” and condemn any form of sexual assault. Should campus feminists make clear that former President Bill Clinton, a womanizer and exploiter of women, is unwelcome on any campus? Should they also protest any appearance by his enabler, Hillary Clinton, who helped demonize her husband’s female accusers by cracking down on “bimbo eruptions?” RECENTLY, BROWN University changed its Columbus Day celebration to Indigenous People’s Day. By the way, many cities are following suit. There may be a problem. According to publications such as Lawrence H. Keeley’s War Before Civilization:

The Myth of the Peaceful Savage and Steven A. LeBlanc and Katherine E. Register’s Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage, we may have to rethink just how noble and peaceful American Indians were prior to Christopher Columbus. American Indians waged brutal tribal wars long before Europeans showed up. The evidence is especially strong in the American Southwest, where archaeologists have found numerous skeletons with projectile points embedded in them and other marks of violence. Comanche Indians were responsible for some of the most brutal slaughters in the history of Western America. Our military has a number of deadly aircraft named with what the nation’s leftist might consider racial slights, such as the Comanche, Apache, Iroquois, Kiowa, Lakota and the more peaceful Mescalero. Should they be renamed? Our military might also be seen as disrespecting the rights and dignity of animals. Should military death-dealing aircraft named after peace-loving animals — such as the Eagle, Falcon, Raptor, Cobra and Dolphin — be renamed? Renaming deadly aircraft might receive a sympathetic ear from our politically correct secretary of defense, Ashton Carter. VICTOR DAVIS Hanson says that changing history through renaming is nothing new. Back in the Roman days, the practice was called damnatio memoriae, a Latin phrase meaning “condemnation of memory.” It was practiced when the Romans wanted to erase the memory of people they deemed dishonorable; it was as if they had never existed.

of conservative thinkers are not only secular themselves, but seem to have no idea how much of the American civilization rests on religious foundations. They don’t seem to understand that the only solution to many — perhaps most — of the social problems ailing America and the West is some expression of Judeo-Christian faith. Do the inner-city kids who study the Bible and go to church each week lead wasted lives, join gangs, bear children out of wedlock or commit murder? Other than a religious revival, what do conservatives, with all their superb critiques of disastrous left-wing policies, think will uplift inner-city youths? And why do secular conservatives think so many affluent and well-educated Americans have adopted left-wing dogmas, such as feminism, socialism, environmentalism and egalitarianism as their religions? Because people want to — have to — believe in something. And if it’s not God and Christianity or Judaism, it’s going to be some form of Leftism. Why are evangelical Protestants, theologically conservative Catholics, Orthodox Jews and practicing Mormons almost all conservative? Because they already have a religion and therefore don’t need the alternate gods of leftist faiths, and also because Judeo-Christian religions have different values than leftist religions. When these conservatives — people who revere the Founding Fathers and the Declaration of Independence — read the founders’ assertion that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” do they believe what the founders wrote? Or were they just echoing the irrational religious beliefs of their time, as people on the left believe? When these conservatives see the components of what I call the American Trinity — the words “liberty,” “In God We Trust” and “e pluribus unum” inscribed on every American coin — do they regard “In God We Trust” as no longer necessary? President John Adams warned: “Because we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion ... our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Do secular conservatives think he was right or wrong? THE PROBLEM is not that most leading conservative thinkers are secular; it is that they don’t seem to understand that a godless and Judeo-Christian-free America means the end of America, just as a godless and JudeoChristian-free Europe has meant the end of Europe.

Conservative Chronicle

GOP RACE: April 6, 2016

It’s a recipe for 2016 electoral disaster

here are three candidates left worsened since then. The tragedy is contending for the GOP presi- compounded by the reality that a unitdential nomination — one ed Republican Party could be unstopNovember because front-runner, one with a shot at the nom- pable in the American public ination and another really does seek a vanity candidate dramatic change of who remains in the course — one that race for his own would be better reasons. (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate and certain if eiNone of them is ther Trump or Cruz willing to say unequivocally he will support the eventual wins. I know it isn’t easy. But it’s a matter nominee of the party. of putting the country first. Look, I’m a Ted Cruz supporter. But, THAT IS A recipe for a 2016 Republican electoral disaster. Worse than that, if Cruz doesn’t win, I will enthusiastiit represents a potential disaster for the cally cast a ballot for Donald Trump. future of America, which is already on It’s a matter of simple survival. America the brink and at the point of no return cannot take four more years of the kind of “leadership” it has experienced since after eight years of Barack Obama. Forgetting about John Kasich, whose 2009. Here’s the way I look at it. There are support is not pivotal for the two candidates who can win the needed votes important distinctions between either of at the convention, there is an absolute the two leading Republican candidates need for Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton: — Both Trump and Cruz will seal to make peace, to put their differences aside, to make amends, to get behind the border. About that there can be no closed doors together and heal the doubt. They both want to enforce our wounds caused by personal attacks if immigration laws — something that either emerges as the nominee. There hasn’t been done for far too long, even just are not enough Republican votes to before Obama swept into office. This is win a presidential election, defeat Hill- one of the most important issues facing ary Clinton and save this nation from America in 2016. Their prescriptions the misery another Democrat victory by are not dissimilar. Without that course correction, an effectively borderless nadefault will cause. Last week, I wrote about the need tion becomes no nation at all, especially for this rapprochement between the two given the poor track record of the ReRepublican candidates. The open hostil- publican Congress over the last several ity between Trump and Cruz has only years.

Joseph

Farah

— Both Trump and Cruz offer a progrowth economic strategy, with only some minor differences between them. — Both have sworn to end Obamacare if Congress approves legislation to repeal it in 2017. — Both have offered effective strategies to take on the existential threat of radical Islamic terrorism. FOR ME, you can stop right there. That is enough for me to determine there’s a real difference between the eventual Republican nominee in 2016 and the Democratic Party nominee. The choice is much starker and well-defined than it has been in 2008 and 2012.

But hard feelings between the candidates and their supporters carried into the general election campaign could literally hand the presidency to Hillary Clinton. In fact, I would say it represents the only scenario by which she can prevail. If I can see that, I wonder why Ted Cruz and Donald Trump cannot. I also wonder why so many supporters of Trump have such harsh words and carry negative feelings about Cruz. It’s time to get over it. We cannot hand Hillary the election by default. We cannot accept defeat because of sometimes childish pride by either of the two front-runners or their supporters. Vote your preference in the final primaries before a nominee is selected. But don’t shut the door on supporting the eventual winner. It’s stupid. It’s like kissing the American Dream goodbye because your favored candidate didn’t win. Either of these two candidates represents a chance for taking America back. I have my preference; others have their preferences. The kind of disunity and division we’re seeing between the candidates and their supporters needs to come to an end now. On the other side, it is still a hotly contentious race, too. But I have no doubts Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are going to unite one way or another at the convention. That’s what the left always does. It understands the power of the Marxist united front to further its socialist agenda. IT’S TIME for conservatives and Republicans to understand the effectiveness of a strategy that involves putting on a good face even when there remains some very bad blood and very hard feelings. Am I wasting my breath?

April 13, 2016 PANAMA PAPERS: April 6, 2016

Awkward revelation stigmatizes corrupt politicians

belonging to a Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca. The ICIJ says the firm’s financial and legal records expose “a system that enables crime, corruption and wrongdoing, hidden by secretive offshore companies.” Clients include companies and individuTHE SO-CALLED Panama Papers, als sanctioned and blacklisted by the US ernment for doing busiobtained via leak by the International g o v ness with drug cartels, Consortium of Interrorist organizations vestigative Jourand rogue nations. nalists, provide an Some files address astonishingly de“the offshore holdtailed look at this (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate ings of drug dealmucky system. ers, Mafia memThe ICIJ is a Washington-based non-profit organization that bers, corrupt politicians and tax evaders links some 200 investigative journalists ...” worldwide. The scandal’s instant name SUCH AWKWARD revelations. Yes, deliberately echoes the Vietnam-era’s Pentagon Papers. That leaked trove pro- crooked politicians worldwide — many vided shocking revelations, to include of them staunch socialists, government war-related lies peddled by the Johnson interventionists and populists! — filch millions of dollars, billions in some casAdministration. The Panama Papers are actually 2.6 es, via graft, extortion, bribery or outright terabytes of digitized information con- theft. Then they stash their dirty money in taining over 11.5 million client records hidden bank accounts and trusts. sophisticated global sewer system of law firms and banks located in accommodating locales serves the dirty financial demands of corrupt political leaders and their cronies.

Austin

Bay

CLIMATE CHANGE: April 4, 2016

The Inquisition is back

who’s assumed the mantle of Grand Inquisitor, and who’s recruited the Department of Justice to provide the legal muscle behind his crusade. Its instrument of choice is not the rack but RICO, the Racketeer and Corrupt Organization Act, which is to be used to intimidate nonbelievers. A couple of congressmen BUT WHO dares challenge today’s? from California, For all the apparaTed Lieu and tus of church and Mark DeSaulnier, state and its mulpromptly signed titudinous laws up behind Senator and ordinances, (c) 2016, Tribune Media Services Whitehouse — clauses and suband our exquisitely clauses, have been summoned to defend today’s established named attorney general, the Hon. Loretta Church of Climate Change against all Lynch, has already sicced the FBI’s gumshoes on the suspects, which now include dissenters. But even before the state there was Exxon Mobil since it has financed unbiMichael Mann, now revealed as a fraud ased research on the subject. and bully, who concocted his now infaA NEW McCarthyism is fast taking mous Hockey Stick graph to “prove” that the planet’s climate was changing, and in wing as spurious science is backed by a way that could be conveniently traced spurious law. But not if legal analysts on his computer. It was much too neat like David Rivkin and Andrew Grossto be credible, but he proceeded to bring man have their independent-minded way. suit against anybody who dared doubt They’ve just established a Free Speech in him. From the Competitive Enterprise Science Project to further the principles Institute to National Review magazine, of open debate and free speech in what heretics all. The First Amendment be is supposed to be a free country. Let the damned, such views had to be suppressed debate over climate change continue unas thoroughly as those of the Cathars abated. As if it were not revealed doctrine and Waldensians who were burned at the but subject to doubt, that great ally in what should be a struggle for truth unqualified stake in the Middle Ages. Nowadays it is a U.S. senator from and undisguised, not just another fraud. Rhode Island, Sheldon Whitehouse,

How dare anyone doubt climate change! “And yet it moves,” Galileo Galilei whispered when brought before the Inquisition of his day and being forced to recant his claims that the earth moves around the sun.

Paul

Greenberg

The offshore holdings of 12 current and former leaders receive premier billing in ICIJ’s analysis. These cads earned it, since they either rule or ruled their respective nations. Though it appears Russian President Vladimir Putin was not a client, the ICIJ believes the law firm helped Putin’s cronies “shuffle” $2 billion “through banks and shadow companies.” Putin’s childhood friend, the cellist and conductor Sergey Roldugin, is a key shuffler in what could be a classical case of money laundering. In that dark business, Panama is regarded an accommodating locale. Files suggest Roldugin helped snag “a big slice of Russia’s TV advertising industry.” Exposing the corruption is worth it. Corruption undermines genuine economic progress. Cronyism destroys free markets. While it’s doubtful that Putin and Roldulgin will ever face indictment, they and other bad actors do confront the stigmatization of awkward revelation. In the 21st Century, thanks to the Internet, awkward facts can penetrate closed borders. Authoritarians will still attempt to limit access. China has tried to curb Internet dissemination of the revelations. The ICIJ reports family members of several “current or former members” Communist China’s Politburo Standing Committee

used Mossack Fonseca to create offshore companies. “They include (current) President Xi’s brother-in-law ...” Ouch. It is likely that many people who utilized the talents of Mossack Fonseca didn’t use its tentacles — meaning they committed no crime. There are legitimate reasons to have offshore accounts, but in a mass data dump the crimes of the crooked mar the reputations of the legitimate. The hard lesson here is to work with firms that don’t have sewer clients. Iceland’s Prime Minister, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, surely wishes he had been fully transparent. As I write this column, it isn’t quite clear if Gunnlaugsson has resigned or taken a leave of absence. He has suffered severe political damage. Evidence suggests what he did was technically legal. On the last day of 2009, while a member of Iceland’s parliament, he sold his interest in a company he co-owned with his wife to her for a dollar. A new law coming into effect in January 2010 required him to declare his ownership as a conflict of interest. That company now claims over $4 million from three failed Icelandic banks. In 2013 Gunnlaugsson helped craft deal to aid the banks’ claimants. SELF-SERVING? OH, yes. And Icelanders are outraged.

Conservative Chronicle

BRITAIN: April 1, 2016

Will Britain leave or remain in the European Union?

n June 23, when Donald Trump will or will not have won the 1,237 delegates he needs to be nominated, voters in Britain will decide an issue as divisive as Trump’s candidacy: whether the United Kingdom will remain in or leave the European Union.

IT’S NOT A decision that has attracted much attention in the United States. The Obama administration has weighed in, urging Britons to vote to remain. That’s the same approach taken by every American administration for 60 years. The default assumption is that we have done pretty well over the last 240 years with a Union of disparate states, so we should encourage Europeans to form one of their own. Accordingly, post-World War II administrations cheered the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 and the six-member European Economic Community in 1957, which has now become the 28-member European Union. The original idea was to link the French and German economies, to prevent those nations from going to war again as they did with horrendous consequences in 1914 and 1939. In line with the wishes of Jean Monnet, the Frenchman who more than anyone else created the EU, its founding document promised “an ever closer union.” In practice this has meant that the EU regulations, specifying for example the shape of bananas that can be sold, apply in EU members whether voters like them or not. It means that a European court can overrule member governments on whether terrorists can be expelled from their countries. That’s one reason that about half of British voters, to judge from the fluctuating polls, are ready to vote to leave. Britain was not an original member of the EEC but sought to join in 1963. Its application was vetoed by France (most EEC and EU decisions must be unanimous). French President Charles de Gaulle, in one of his famous press conferences where he would set out answers regardless of the questions asked, enunciated the reasons for his veto. “England in effect is insular, she is maritime, she is linked through her exchanges, her markets, her supply lines to the most diverse and often the most distant countries; she pursues essentially industrial and commercial activities and only slightly agricultural ones. She has in all her doings very marked and very original habits and traditions.” Among those traditions is English common law, based on centuries of court decisions and precedents, rather than on a written code like the Napoleonic Code, forms of which govern most of Continental Europe. Supporters of the

so-called “Brexit” agree with de Gaulle nomic and job growth since the 2008 financial crisis; the Continent has zerothat Britain and Europe are a bad fit. After de Gaulle’s resignation in growth economies. In pursuit of “ever 1969, Britain was allowed to join the closer union,” most European countries EU in 1974, and 67 percent of Brit- embraced the Euro common currency. ish voters approved that decision in a G o r d o n Brown, as chancellor of chequer, wisely kept 1975 referendum. Britain’s economy the exBritain’s pound. then was seen as Earlier this year, old-fashioned and Prime Minister Daailing, dominated vid Cameron neby money-losing gotiated changes nationalized steel (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate in Britain’s relaand auto industries. Europe, after 30 years of fast re- tionships with the EU. But many Concovery from war damage (the French servatives feel that the changes are not still refer to les trente glorieuses), enough. Michael Gove and Iain Duncan Smith, who as cabinet members pressed seemed modern and dynamic. successfully for major education and NOW THE picture is different. Mar- welfare reforms, have announced they garet Thatcher’s reforms freed up the support “Leave.” So does the most teleBritish economy, while Europe’s wel- genic and effervescent British politifare burdens weighed their economies cian, Conservative London Mayor Bodown. Britain has enjoyed sharp eco- ris Johnson.

Michael

Barone

Some observers associate Leave supporters with the anti-immigrant feelings of some Donald Trump voters. But Gove, Duncan Smith and Johnson are not nativists, and recent terrorist attacks in Europe undermine the idea that the EU provides security. “Remain” supporters predict dire consequences if Leave prevails, and Leave supporters admit that new trade treaties would have to be negotiated. But that’s a matter for Britons to sort out. U.S.-U.K. intelligence and military cooperation would continue, and Britain would remain just one of five NATO members (with the U.S., Estonia, Greece and Poland) spending the required two percent of gross domestic product on defense. American elites’ sentimental attachment to a United Europe is understandable. But we can live happily with Britain whether it Leaves or Remains.

SCOTUS NOMINEE: March 31, 2016

No copyright on hypocrisy

either political party can lay claim to purity when it comes to hypocrisy, but Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, as well as others in her party, has taken hypocrisy to new depths. While campaigning in Wisconsin before next week’s presidential primary, Clinton said that as president she would have a litmus test for any Supreme Court nominee. “I would not appoint someone who didn’t think Roe v. Wade is settled law,” she declared. Her nominee(s) would also have to show that they support overturning the Citizens United decision that established free speech rights for interest groups.

SHE ADDED that while she believes the Senate should hold hearings and a vote on Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, she would have selected someone more like Justice Sonya Sotomayor because Clinton thinks her Hispanic heritage and underprivileged upbringing has brought a needed perspective to the high court. What about the Constitution? It seems that for the left, the Constitution is only a temporary impediment until they can appoint judges who believe the founding document is more elastic than a waistband and can be stretched to fit their agenda. About Hillary Clinton’s claim that Roe is settled law, was Plessy vs. Ferguson “settled law?” That 7-1 decision in 1896 established “the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the

doctrine of ‘separate but equal.’” It remained in force for nearly 60 years until the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education ruling overturned it. Roe is 43 years old. By the Plessy standard, should Roe really be considered settled law? As for Hillary Clinton’s attacks on Republican senators who refuse to schedule hearings and a vote on Merrick Garland’s nomination, as a senator from New York, she took a contrary position.

IN 2005, Sen. Clinton said the Senate had a right to reject a president’s nominee: “I believe this is one of the most important roles the Senate plays. This, after all, is in the Constitution. We are asked to give advice and consent, or to deny advice and consent.”

Cal

Denial is implied, but not written in the Constitution. What the Constitution does not require is for the Senate to hold hearings, or vote, on a court nominee. At a Democrat town hall last month, Chuck Todd of MSNBC asked Hillary Clinton about President Obama’s statement that he regrets as a senator filibustering Justice Samuel Alito’s nomination when George W. Bush was president. Todd noted that Clinton joined 24 other Senate Democrats in a filibuster against Alito’s nomination and ultimately voted against Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.

Her response? “You get to use the rules.” Well, yes, and while not holding hearings on Judge Garland is not a rule, it might be considered on a par with a filibuster designed to delay and, on some occasions, prevent a vote. Add to this the policy of the Democratic Party leadership which has, according to then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joe Biden, a lengthy and established “tradition against acting on Supreme Court nominations in a presidential year.” Let’s also recall the words of the likely next Senate Majority Leader, Charles Schumer (D-NY), who said in a July 2007 speech that the “presumption of confirmation” for any more nominees to the Supreme Court during the remainder of President Bush’s term should be reversed, because the court, according to Schumer, “is dangerously out of balance.” In short, not liberal enough. The fabled goose and gander analogy seems to apply here, but many voters have proven to have short attention spans and an ignorance of history, which might explain why a recent Pew Research Center poll found that 46 percent of Americans surveyed want Judge Garland confirmed, while 30 percent oppose him. IF PEW surveyed those same people today and read them what Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer said then and now, how many would call them hypocrites? How many would possibly change their minds about Judge Garland? I guess we’ll never know.

April 13, 2016 LIBYA: March 31, 2016

Libya undermines Clinton’s foreign policy credential

tion televised assurance that “the task that I assigned our forces [is] to protect the Libyan people from immediate danger and to establish a no-fly zone.” He said that U.S. forces would play only a “supporting role” in what he called a “NATObased” operation, although only eight of NATO’s 28 members participated and the assault could not have begun without HILLARY CLINTON’S suppos- U.S. assets. Obama added: “Broadening edly supreme presidential qualification our military mission to include regime would be a mistake.” is not her public prominence, which is c h a n g e The next day, derivative from her a Clinton deputy marriage, or her repeated this to a unremarkable tenSenate committee. ure in a similarly And then-Defense derivative Senate (c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group Secretary Robseat. Rather, her ert Gates said at supposed credenthe time that no vital U.S. interest was tial is her foreign policy mastery. Well. She cannot be blamed for Vladimir at stake. Recently, he told the New York Putin’s criminality or, therefore, for the Times (Feb. 27, 2016) that “the fiction failure of her “reset” with Russia, which was maintained” that the goal was to was perhaps worth trying. She cannot be cripple Moammar Gadhafi’s ability to atblamed for the many defects of the Iran tack other Libyans. This was supposedly nuclear agreement, which was a presi- humanitarian imperialism implementing dential obsession. And she cannot be pri- “R2P,” the “responsibility to protect.” marily blamed for the calamities of Iraq, Perhaps as many as — many numbers Syria and the Islamic State, which were were bandied — 10,000 Libyans. R2P incubated before her State Department did not extend to protecting the estimattenure. Libya, however, was what is ed 200,000 Syrians that have been killed known in tennis as an “unforced error,” since 2011 by Bashar Assad’s tanks, arand Clinton was, with President Obama, tillery, bombers, barrel bombs and poison gas. its co-author. Writing for Foreign Policy online, MiOn March 28, 2011, nine days after the seven-month attack on Libya began cah Zenko, senior fellow at the Council and 10 days after saying it would last on Foreign Relations, notes that “just “days, not weeks,” Obama gave the na- hours into the intervention, Tomahawk epublican peculiarities in this political season are so numerous and lurid that insufficient attention is being paid to this: The probable Democratic nominee’s principal credential, her service as secretary of state, is undermined by a debacle of remarkable dishonesty.

George

Will

cruise missiles launched from a British submarine stationed in the Mediterranean Sea struck an administrative building in [Gadhafi’s] Bab al-Azizia compound, less than 50 yards away from the dictator’s residence.” A senior military official carefully insisted “[Gadhafi’s] not on a targeting list.” This was sophistry in the service of cynicism: For months, places he might be were on targeting lists. THE PRETENSE was that this notreally-NATO operation, with the United States “supporting” it, was merely to enforce U.N. resolutions about protecting

Libyans from Gadhafi. Zenko, however, argues that the coalition “actively chose not to enforce” the resolution prohibiting arms transfers to either side in the civil war. While a senior NATO military official carefully said “I have no information about” arms coming into Libya, and another carefully said that no violation of the arms embargo “has been reported,” Zenko writes that “Egypt and Qatar were shipping advanced weapons to rebel groups the whole time, with the blessing of the Obama administration.” On May 24, 2011, NATO released a public relations video showing sailors from a Canadian frigate, supposedly enforcing the arms embargo, boarding a rebel tugboat laden with arms. The video’s narrator says: “NATO decides not to impede the rebels and to let the tugboat proceed.” Zenko writes, “A NATO surface vessel stationed in the Mediterranean to enforce an arms embargo did exactly the opposite, and NATO was comfortable posting a video demonstrating its hypocrisy.” On Oct. 20, 2011, Clinton, while visiting Afghanistan, was told that insurgents, assisted by a U.S. Predator drone, had caught and slaughtered Gadhafi. She quipped: “We came, we saw, he died.” She later said that her words expressed “relief” that the mission “had achieved its end.” Oh, so this military adventure was, after all, history’s most protracted and least surreptitious assassination. Regime change was deliberately accomplished by the determined decapitation of the old regime, and Libyans are now living in the result — a failed state. STOPPING IN Libya en route to Afghanistan two days before Gadhafi’s death, Clinton said, “I am proud to stand here on the soil of a free Libya.” If you seek her presidential credential, look there.

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Michael Barone, Austin Bay, Brent Bozell, Pat Buchanan, Mona Charen, Linda Chavez, Ann Coulter, Jackie Gingrich Cushman, Larry Elder, Leslie Elman, Erick Erickson, Joseph Farah, Paul Greenberg, David Harsanyi, Laura Hollis, Terence Jeffrey, Charles Krauthammer, Larry Kudlow, Donald Lambro, David Limbaugh, Rich Lowry, Michelle Malkin, Mychal Massie, Stephen Moore, Dick Morris, William Murchison, Andrew Napolitano, Marvin Olasky, Dennis Prager, Debra J. Saunders, Phyllis Schlafly, Ben Shapiro, Thomas Sowell, Cal Thomas, Matt Towery, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., George Will, and Walter Williams.

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Wednesday, April 13, 2016 • Volume 31, Number 15 • Hampton, Iowa