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Politics


loretta-lynch-ap

Attorney General Loretta Lynch testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 7, 2015. (AP)

Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced Friday the Department of Justice will launch a federal civil rights investigation into the Baltimore Police Department.

“This investigation will begin immediately and will focus on allegations that Baltimore Police Department officers used excessive force including deadly force, conduct unlawful searches, seizures, and arrests, and engage in discriminatory policing,” Lynch said. “It was profound sadness for the loss of life, for the erosion of trust, for the sadness and despair that the community was feeling, for the frustration that I know the police officers were feeling also.”

Lynch was sworn in last week as the successor to Eric Holder, whose 6-year controversial tenure as attorney general was plagued by race tensions and scandal. But critics say the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice is in no position to investigate any local law enforcement agency, given their track record in recent years.

“Unfortunately, over the last few years, the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department has seen instances of embezzlement, employee abuse, harassment, theft, and perjury. Little to nothing has been done by Division management in response,” former DOJ lawyer J. Christian Adams said in sworn testimony to the House Judiciary Committee. “In some cases, Division management has defended, promoted or given awards to the wrongdoers. The Division has implemented hiring practices which, according to the Justice Department Inspector General, have created the perception of an ideologically lopsided workforce. Division management has rejected the recommendations of the Inspector General and resisted making changes to ensure non-ideological hiring at the Division.”

Adams points to cases of blatant ideologically-driven harassment of conservative and even less uber-liberal employees, as well as an employee litmus test implemented by the Civil Rights Division for hiring those responsible for conducting investigations into local police departments. Under Holder, Mr. Adams contends, the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department developed a culture of corruption that is unlikely to change under an attorney general that Vice President Joe Biden said was “cut from the exact same cloth” as Holder.

Immediately after taking over at the Justice Department, Holder drew harsh criticism for dropping the voter intimidation case against New Black Panther Party leaders who were caught on tape wielding a billy club and hurling racial slurs at elderly white people as they attempted to enter a polling station in Philadelphia. The Bush administration opened the case and began to move forward with the prosecution, but despite threats about killing white babies and hurls of “cracker,” Holder decided the case didn’t warrant prosecution.

The list goes on and on, but it was the “grotesque” misconduct on behalf of the DOJ team, according to a federal judge, which resulted in the overturning of convictions involving five New Orleans Police Department officers that critics say is perhaps most relevant.

That case wasn’t a one-off instance. Lying and pursuing faux civil rights cases, such as the cases in Ferguson and Staten Island, have become known tactics in a DOJ scheme that aims to exert federal control over local police forces. While this practice clearly began under Eric Holder, Attorney General Lynch supports this tactic; one she, Holder, President Obama, State Attorney General Marilyn Mosby and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, all know is not supported by law or reality.

“The law of civil rights requires the government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant, usually driven by racial prejudice, willfully acted — violently in these cases — with the evil purpose to deprive a person of specific federal rights,” Andrew McCarthy recently explained. “Holder and his constitutional-scholar boss are not banging the civil-rights drum because they believe these are prosecutable cases. It is just a pretext for unleashing Justice Department community organizers on state and municipal police departments.”

As McCarthy noted, these investigations conducted by the Civil Rights Division under Holder and Lynch are about big government control of local governments via the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. It states “any government authority” that “engage[s] in a pattern or practice of conduct by law enforcement officers . . . that deprives persons of [federal] rights, privileges, or immunities” is subject to federal takeover-by-oversight. It grants the attorney general the means to “obtain appropriate equitable and declaratory relief to eliminate the [offensive] pattern or practice.”

As far as result, it doesn’t matter and never mattered if these cases were legitimate civil rights cases, or not. In both the cases of Ferguson and Staten Island, the Civil Rights Division involvement in what turned out to be non-civil rights cases, gave the federal government an “in” they never would have been able to engineer in the absence. Sadly, neither community-police relationships nor crime and poverty conditions improved or show signs of improvement after the DOJ invokes the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.

“Whatever has happened in America to cause these feelings of resentment, it’s not the failure of law enforcement,” said Jeff Roorda, business manager of the St. Louis Police Officers Association. “This is decades of racial disparity and economic disparity. It’s not a problem with the police.”

In Seattle, for instance, across-the-board violent crimes have increased, a lot. In New York City and Ferguson, it’s the same story.

A recent data set from the NYPD CompStat Unit reveals an across-the-board regression in policing and crime in the Big Apple since leftist Mayor Bill de Blasio and the Justice Department began to collaborate against the New York City Police Department. There was a shocking 35 percent increase in murders in the week following the grand jury decision not to indict Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo, a 29-year-old, eight-year veteran of the NYPD. Arrests are down significantly juxtaposed to 2014. Felony arrests are down 40 percent, drug arrests are down a whopping 83 percent and minor crimes arrests are down 93 percent.

So, now the Civil Rights Division will “immediately” begin their investigation into the Baltimore Police Department. But who will investigate them? What will the community look like when they are long gone after making promises they never intended nor ever believed they could keep?

Unfortunately, we have the data to answer all of these questions.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced Friday the

Economy


jobs report applications

Americans seeking full- and part-time work fill out job applications at a workshop. (Photo: REUTERS)

The Labor Department Friday said the U.S. economy added 223,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate dropped to 5.4 percent, just below expectations for 224,000. However, while some are touting the report as evidence the labor market slowdown last month was temporary setback, others point to the oft-ignored data that just won’t improve.

“Weak wage growth remained the fly in the ointment of the labor market report, albeit with signs that pay pressures are gradually picking up, with average hourly earnings up 2.2% on a year ago,” Chris Williamson, chief economist at research firm Markit said.

Previous job gains were also revised downward, an unwelcome but barely covered development that is beginning to look like a trend. In March, just 85,000 new jobs were created, most which came from the low-paying and part-time sectors.

Incorporating the revisions for February and March, which reduced nonfarm employment by 39,000, on net, monthly job gains have averaged 191,000 over the past 3 months,” said Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Commissioner Erica L. Groshen.

“Well, the idea that America is in the midst of a great recovery is pure fiction. It’s a lie,” Las Vegas resort mogul Steve Wynn said in an interview this week. “It’s a jobless recovery because recoveries are marked by the amount of real employment. And if you count the people who have left the workforce, real unemployment is 15- to 20-percent. If you take real inflation, and you’ve got to count energy and food and all that stuff, inflation is much higher than they say it is.”

In fact, wages rose by just three cents per hour — representing only 0.1 percent — which represents a near-zero change from a month earlier. The labor force participation rate — which has remained at a 37-year-low range from 62.7 percent to 62.9 percent since April 2014 — was also up by just 0.1 percent at 62.8 percent.

Wynn isn’t the only notable labor market power-player outright casting doubt on the validity of the Labor Department’s jobs reports. Gallup Chair and CEO Jim Clifton said recently that the unemployment rate measured and reported by the Labor Department “amounts to a big lie.”

“There’s no other way to say this,” said Clifton. “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.”

Clifton later back-peddled from his statements during an interview with CNBC when he stated that he was worried he might “suddenly disappear” and not make it home that evening after telling the truth about unemployment in America.

Further, among those employed in April, a whopping 6.6 million remained part time for economic reasons. These Americans claim they want full-time work, but simply cannot find it. In April, 2.1 million people were neither working or looking for work because they did not believe a job in the labor market was available to them, and 756,000 were marginally attached to the work force. Neither of these numbers, the latter of which want to work and were searching, have changed at all over the last 12 months.

The headline BLS numbers stand in stark contrast to the ADP National Employment Report released earlier this week.

“April job gains came in under 200,000 for the second straight month,” said Carlos Rodriguez, president and chief executive officer of ADP. “Companies with 500 or more employees had the slowest growth.”

However, the ADP report also found troubling news for wage growth, as the sectors of the economy that provide higher-paying jobs continue to show lackluster performance. Manufacturing shed 10,000 jobs in April after losing 3,000 the month prior, while goods-producing employment declined by 1,000 jobs in April, down from 3,000 jobs gained in March.

The Labor Department Friday said the U.S.

Politics


hillary-clinton-immigration-roundtable-vegas

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton takes part in a roundtable of young Nevadans discussing immigration as she campaigns for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination at Rancho High School in Las Vegas, May 5, 2015. (Photo: AP)

Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic candidate for president, said in an interview on the John Grambling radio show in Feb. 2003, that she was adamantly against illegal immigrants. Now, unsurprisingly, she is singing a different tune. In a new ad released by the RNC, Clinton sounded more like a Republican than a Democrat.

“We got to do several things and I am adamantly against illegal immigrants,” Clinton said during the interview. “Certainly, we’ve got to do more at our borders, and people have to stop hiring illegal immigrants.”

[brid video=”8050″ player=”1929″ title=”Hillary Clinton “I’m Adamantly Against Illegal Immigrants””]

“Come up to Westchester, go to Suffolk and Nassau counties,” Clinton continued. “Stand in the street corners in Brooklyn or the Bronx. You’re going to see loads of people waiting to get picked up to get yard work, and construction work, and domestic work.”

Yet, at a campaign event in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Clinton vowed to protect President Obama’s executive action on immigration against “partisan attacks,” and even expand on it.

“When they talk about legal status that is code for second class status,” Clinton told a group of young Hispanics, adding she “would do everything possible under the law to go even further” unilaterally if Congress “continues to refuse to act.”

However, Clinton failed to comment on the fact the executive action has been ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge, thus until the case is heard by the Supreme Court, the policy has been halted because the action she vows to take — as of now — is not “possible under the law.” U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in February granted the preliminary injunction requested by 26 states and temporarily blocked the president’s order. As PPD previously examined, according to the latest polls and oral arguments, the policy is losing in the courts of public and legal opinion.

Not only did President Obama’s lawyer had a rough day during arguments in April before a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, but the American people are “adamantly against” executive action on immigration (view polling here). But the Clinton camp obviously believes the former secretary of state must take a hard turn left if she hopes to hold together the coalition that twice carried Mr. Obama to the White House.

“That is just the beginning,” Clinton promised. “There is much more to do to expand and enhance protections for families and communities to reform immigration enforcement and detention practices so they are more humane, more targeted, and more effective. And to keep building the pressure and support for comprehensive reform.”

Hillary Clinton said on the John Grambling

World


uk-pm-david-cameron

U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron and his conservative Tory Party have won approximately 331 seats in the Parliamentary election, more than enough for an outright majority. Polls had shown the election was too close to call, but the opposition Labour Party lost much of its support to the Scottish independence movement and has been shed to a projected 232 seats.

“This was clearly a very strong night for the Conservative Party” Cameron said in Oxfordshire, who also hoped to appease Sottish nationalistic fervor. “I want my party, and I hope a government that I would like to lead, to reclaim a mantle that we should never have lost — the mantle of one nation, one United Kingdom.”

Cameron will go to Buckingham Palace later Friday to inform Queen Elizabeth II that he had enough support to form a government, while his coalition partner, the Liberal Democrat party, faced a clear electoral disaster. The party is predicted to lose most of its seats as punishment for supporting a Conservative Tory agenda since Cameron first rose in 2010.

“It is now painfully clear that this has been a cruel and punishing night for the Liberal Democrats,” said leader Nick Clegg, who held onto his own seat. Clegg resigned early Friday morning as leader of the party.

The Scottish National Party won a projected 56 seats, 50 more than it garnered at the last election in 2010.

“The Scottish lion has roared this morning across the country,” said former SNP leader Alex Salmond, who was elected in the seat of Gordon.

The pound surged on the heels of the election results, as investors will not see days or weeks of uncertainty over the formation of a new government. The currency held onto most of those gains on Friday, trading at $1.5440. Stocks also surged, with the main FTSE 100 up 1.6 percent.

U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron and his

Economy

The Labor Department Thursday said weekly jobless claims rose for the week ended May 2 by 3,000 to a seasonally adjusted 265,000. While that number represents a near 15-year low, it is important to note that the Labor Department has since changed its methodology for calculating weekly jobs claims, and the report comes on the heels of an abysmal ADP National Employment Report.

However, claims have been below 300,000 for nine weeks, the threshold that is usually associated with a strengthening labor market. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims rising to 280,000 last week.

A Labor Department analyst said there was nothing unusual in the state-level data.

Meanwhile, the four-week average — which is considered a better measure of labor market trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility — decreased by 4,250 last week to 279,500, or the lowest since May 2000.

Worth noting, the data has no bearing on Friday’s employment report for April as it falls outside the survey period.

According to a Reuters survey of economists, nonfarm payrolls are expected to have increased by 224,000 in April after adding just 126,000 in March. Still, April’s employment report could have no real information on the strength of the economy’s recovery, as first-quarter growth initially estimated at 0.2 percent is likely to be revised down to show contraction.

The claims report showed the number of people still receiving benefits after an initial week of aid declined 28,000 to 2.23 million in the week ended April 25. That was the lowest reading since November 2000 and suggested more long-term unemployed are getting jobs.

The Labor Department Thursday said weekly jobless

Politics, Video

Pamela Geller, the head of the organization that put on the Muhammed Art exhibit, faced off against radical London imam Anjem Choudary on Hannity Wednesday night. Geller, the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), was named as a target in a “message to the crusaders” posted on a social media site this week by alleged ISIS terrorist Abu Ibrahim Al Ameriki. The message entitled “A New Era,” claimed ISIS has 71 “trained soldiers” in 15 states awaiting orders to attack targets, and called for the “slaughter” of Ms. Geller.

“Our aim was the khanzeer (pig) Pamela Geller and to show her that we don’t care what land she hides in or what sky shields her,” the threatening message read. “We will send all our Lions to achieve her slaughter.”

Choudary, who was one of nine men arrested by Scotland Yard as part of a major investigation into Islamist terrorism last September, said that khanzeer (pig) was too good of a word to use to describe Geller.

“First of all, the word khanzeer is too good for you,” Choudary said.

ISIS officially claimed responsibility for the attack on a Muhammed art exhibit in Texas on Sunday through their Al Bayan radio station Tuesday, calling the failed terrorists “two soldiers of the caliphate.” Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, two Phoenix roommates, drove 1,100 miles from their apartment to carry out the failed attack. Simpson, 31, was an American Muslim convert who appears to have become radicalized over the last decade and Soofi, 34, a Pakistani-American, grew up in a Muslim family in Texas but studied Islamic theology in Islamabad.

The event offered a $10,000 prize for the best caricature of the Prophet Muhammad, which imam Anjem Choudary said warrants “capital punishment.”

Pamela Geller, the head of the organization

Politics


Glenn-Beck-CAIR

Glenn Beck speaks on his television program on May 6, 2015. (Photo: TheBlaze TV)

Glenn Beck ripped CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), CNN and Comedy Central host Larry Wilmore Wednesday over their gross misinterpretation of free speech regarding the failed terrorist attack in Garland, Texas. Alia Salem, a spokesman for CAIR, said Americans need to have a discussion about when free speech becomes hate speech, and when hate speech becomes “an incitement to violence.” The organization released a statement claiming their was a difference between “free speech and irresponsible speech.”

“If Christian activists were blowing ‘piss Christ‘ art shows up and chopping off the heads of anyone who mocked Jesus … how would you feel if the Christian community responded saying, ‘Wait a minute — how about all those mean things they’re saying about Jesus?’ It’s insulting!” Beck said heatedly. “You should be the first in line to condemn the crazy animals running around slaughtering people in your name! You should be the loudest voice saying, ‘That’s not who we are!’”

Watch Here

“Hey CAIR, what cartoon did the Christians you beheaded on the beach draw? What hateful words did the gays that were tossed off buildings and stoned to death say?” Beck asked. Are they responsible for their own demise because they were irresponsible with their speech, too?”

It wasn’t immediately clear whether Beck was referring to the Egyptian coptic Christians that were beheaded on a beach in the now-ISIS-riddled nation of Libya, where President Obama and then-Sec. of State Hillary Clinton helped to topple Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, or the more recent execution of Ethiopian Christians on a beach. Regardless, neither of the two executions were definitely denounced by the so-called moderate Islamic organization founded by radical Islamists, which has known ties to terror groups.

“It is insane that we’re having this conversation,” Beck said. “Terrorist attacks on cartoon contests means we have a terrorist problem, not a cartoonist problem.”

Glenn Beck ripped CAIR (Council on American-Islamic

Policy


death-tax-protest

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is a lead co-sponsor of the legislation by Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., the Death Tax Repeal Act of 2015.

I’ve openly stated that there are tax-hiking budget deals that theoretically would be attractive. But notice that “theoretically” is part of that sentence.

That’s because in the real world, tax hikes have a poisonous effect on fiscal policy. Instead of being the lubricant that produces concessions from the big-government crowd, the prospect of additional revenue is like putting blood in the water when hungry sharks are circling.

The bottom line is that trying to cure deficits with taxes is like trying to cure alcoholics by giving them keys to a liquor store.

Indeed, the New York Times accidentally proved my point by putting together a chart showing that the only successful budget deal was the one that cut taxes instead of raising them.

ny-times-deficit-deals

Source: The New York Times

So, this is why I’m a huge fan of Americans for Tax Reform’s no-tax-hike pledge. Simply stated, I want to restrain – and hopefully reduce – the burden of government spending. And that definitely won’t happen if politicians think more revenue is an option.

So I get excited any time voters express the same sentiment. As such, you can imagine my feeling of happiness that Michigan voters overwhelmingly rejected a big tax increase that was supported almost by the entire political establishment.

Here are some of the joyous details from a Detroit Free Press report.

With all counties reporting, 1.4 million Michiganders voted no on Proposal 1 while less than 351,000 voted yes, according to the Michigan Secretary of State’s office. The 80-20 rejection may be the most one-sided loss for a proposed constitutional amendment in state history. …Proposal 1 would have hiked the state sales tax to 7% from 6%, taken the sales tax off fuel sales, and hiked fuel taxes — raising close to $1.3 billion extra for roads. When fully implemented, the plan would have also generated about $200 million a year more for schools; $116 million for transit and rail; sent $111 million more to local governments; and given a $260-million tax break to low- and moderate-income families through restoration of the Earned Income Tax Credit.

If the Michigan earned-income credit works the same way as the one in Washington, it’s not a tax break. It’s simply a wage subsidy, a form of redistribution that gets laundered through the tax code.

But that’s not terribly relevant for purposes of today’s discussion. What really matters is that politicians were pushing a big increase in the overall burden of spending financed by a big increase in the overall burden of taxation.

And they had special interests on their side, which enabled them to out-spend the pr0-taxpayer side by a margin of about 20-1.

the Safe Roads Yes committee, which pushed for a yes vote on Proposal 1, reported raising $9.6 million to spend on its campaign. Of that, $5.8 million came from the Michigan Infrastructure & Transportation Association, a lobbying group for road builders and their suppliers. …The main no committee, the Coalition Against Higher Taxes and Special Interest Deals, reported raising just under $500,000 as of Monday.

But special-interest money doesn’t necessarily translate into votes. At least it didn’t in Michigan on Tuesday.

By the way, I’m not claiming voters always make the right choices. As we saw from referenda in Oregon and California, they can sometimes be lured into voting yes on tax hikes if they’re told “the rich” are the only ones who will pay.

John Miller of Hillsdale College (site of my flat tax v. fair tax debate) explains that the politicians in Lansing were simply too greedy. Writing for the Wall Street Journal before the vote, Miller suggests voters were unhappy that they were being asked for a big tax hike, when 40 percent of the money was going to be diverted to non-transportation purposes.

…the measure would generate more than $2 billion in revenue a year. Yet the amount that would go to transportation—mostly roads and bridges, but also bike paths, light rail and “streetscape” projects that aim to improve the look of downtown areas—is only about $1.2 billion. …In other words, taxpayers will get less than $1.2 billion in roadwork for the price of more than $2 billion.

How typical. Politician proposed a tax hike for one reason, but then hijacked their own plan and made it a Christmas tree of special-interest spending.

P.S. Here are my five policy and five political reasons against higher taxes in Washington.

P.P.S. The international evidence also shows that higher taxes are a recipe for bigger government and more debt.

P.P.P.S. I don’t fixate too much on the bias of the establishment media. It’s annoying, to be sure, but it doesn’t help to get all agitated about things outside of my control. That being said, I thought it was very revealing that the home pages of both the New York Times and Washington Post didn’t have any stories on the Michigan referendum. If the vote had gone the other way, I feel 99 percent confident in stating that the story would have been prominently displayed with lots of “analysis” about why the vote was hugely important.

P.P.P.P.S. Needless to say, Republicans who refuse to take the no-tax-hike pledge should be viewed with considerable suspicion.

[mybooktable book=”global-tax-revolution-the-rise-of-tax-competition-and-the-battle-to-defend-it” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”true”]

Michigan voters overwhelmingly rejected a big tax

Opinion


rand paul

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul gives speech on privacy rights (Photo: REUTERS)

If you plan to visit a college campus this month, don’t be surprised if you see signs and placards encouraging you to “Restore the Fourth.” Restore the Fourth is not about an athletic event or a holiday; it is about human freedom. The reference to “the Fourth” is to the Fourth Amendment, and it is badly in need of restoration.

In the dark days following 9/11, Congress enacted the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act has many flaws, including its prohibition of certain truthful public speech, but its most pernicious assault is on the constitutional right to privacy.

One of its sections permits federal agents to write their own search warrants and serve them on persons and entities who by law are the custodians of records about others, such as physicians, lawyers, bankers, telecoms, public utilities and computers servers. The same section of the act has been used perversely by the NSA and the secret FISA court to authorize the bulk collection of data.

Bulk collection of data — the indiscriminate governmental acquisition of the contents of emails, text messages, telephone calls, bank statements and credit card bills — is what the NSA seeks when it acquires all data in a specific area code or zip code or from a named provider, like Verizon, AT&T and Google.

What’s wrong with bulk collection? The warrant issued by the FISA court that authorizes bulk collection is known as a general warrant. A general warrant does not name a person or place, but authorizes the bearer to search wherever he wishes and seize whatever he finds. General warrants were a tool of colonial repression used by the king prior to the American Revolution. They were issued by secret courts in London. They were so loathed by the Framers that they are expressly forbidden by the Fourth Amendment.

The Fourth Amendment requires evidence — called probable cause — about a particular person, place or event to be presented to a judge and requires the judge to decide whether it is more likely than not that the government will find what it is looking for. The wording of the amendment could not be more precise, and in a Constitution known for vague language, this precision is instructive:

All warrants must “particularly descr(ibe) the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” The Fourth Amendment protects all persons’ bodies, houses, papers and effects.

Yet the Patriot Act purports to avoid these requirements by permitting secret FISA court judges to authorize NSA agents to execute general warrants; thus, without probable cause and without describing the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized.

The purpose of the Fourth Amendment is to prohibit government fishing expeditions, common to totalitarian countries. The theory of the Fourth Amendment is that a restrained government — restrained by an instrument the government cannot change, like the Constitution — is essential if people are to be free. The natural right protected by the Fourth Amendment is the right to be left alone.

Enter Restore the Fourth.

Restore the Fourth is a movement gaining steam now because the section of the Patriot Act that is so constitutionally offensive expires on May 31. President Obama wants it extended so his spies can continue their bulk collection of data. The Republican leadership in the Senate agrees with the president and accepts the myth that less freedom equals more security. The Republican leadership in the House has proposed a Band-Aid that would require the telecoms and computer service providers to sit on bulk data until the feds come calling, but to surrender it without the judicial finding of probable cause or specificity.

The Patriot Act should be repealed because it violates the Constitution and it doesn’t keep us safe. It renders us less safe and less free. The indiscriminate unconstitutional bulk collection of data is far too much raw material even for the 60,000 NSA agents and contractors to navigate. We saw that as recently as last weekend, when two jihadists known to the FBI and who had used email and cellphones attacked a free speech symposium outside of Dallas and were stopped at the last minute by courageous local police who saw their guns — not by federal spies’ warnings.

When longtime NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander was asked under oath how many plots the NSA has stopped in 10 years, he stated 53. The next day, he modified his testimony to three, but declined to elaborate. Edward Snowden, whose revelations about NSA spying have never been refuted, says that no plots have been stopped because the NSA looks at everyone, rather than targeting the bad guys, as the probable cause requirement — if complied with — would induce it to do.

Americans are largely free because of the rule of law. The rule of law means a supreme law of the land to which even the government is subject, just as are all persons. Without the rule of law, we are subject to the rule of whoever runs the government, and our rights become licenses to be granted or denied by whoever runs the government. In that world, who or what would restrain the government? An unrestrained government is what we fought the American Revolution against.

That’s why we must Restore the Fourth.

Judge Napolitano: If you plan to visit

Politics


pamela-geller

Pamela Geller, the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, in Manhattan. (Photo Credit: Mariela Lombard/ZUMA Press)

Pamela Geller has been taking quite a few hits in recent days for hosting the “Draw Muhammad” event in Garland, Texas, which led to an attack by two gunmen who’ve now been embraced by ISIS as one of their own.

But she’s not the problem. Radical Islamism is — and to a certain extent, so are some of those who condemn her for daring to host this event.

Donald Trump went on Fox & Friends to slam Geller, the American Freedom Defense Initiative president, as little more than crazy.

[brid video=”7787″ player=”1929″ title=”Donald Trump On Pamela Geller What In The Hell Is She Doing”]

“It looks like she’s just taunting everybody,” Trump said. “What is she doing? Drawing Muhammad and it looks like she’s taunting people. … Isn’t there something else they can draw? They can’t do something else? They have to be in the middle of Texas and on Muhammad?”

Fox News giant Bill O’Reilly expressed similarly.

“Insulting a religion with more than a billion followers does not advance the cause of defeating the fanatical jihadists,” he said, during a recent “O’Reilly Factor” segment. “It does not advance the cause of liberty or get us any closer to defeating the savage jihad.”

Laura Ingraham, a guest on O’Reilly’s show and a conservative giant in her own right, agreed the “Draw Muhammad” event wasn’t helpful to the battle against radical Islamism, and that “we shouldn’t unnecessarily insult people.”

A few hours later, Brad Blakeman, a former staffer to George W. Bush and the past president of Freedom Watch, furthered the anti-Geller mantra on national television.

“The First Amendment gives Americans the right to be wrong. And there’s nothing more wrong than to besmirch a religion,” he said, on Fox News. “I can hate radical Islamism. But I respect Muslims.”

And of the Texas event, he said simply: “We’re better than this as Americans.”

Even Rev. Franklin Graham, one of Christianity’s staunchest defenders and an outspoken critic of radical Islamism, called the cartoon contest “wrong” and said those participating ought not to have insulted another’s faith.

The commonality of all these critics is they believe in the First Amendment — with Trump even claiming he believes in free speech “probably more than [Geller] does.”

Well, there’s no doubt they do believe in the First Amendment.

But so does Geller. And call her bold statement of free speech right or wrong, the fact is she makes a good point: If the media stopped self-censoring images of the prophet, and actually showed the pertinent pictures that have sparked terrorist attacks in the past, like the one on France’s Charlie Hebdo, then events like the one she sponsored wouldn’t be necessary. As she said to Martha MacCullum, while defending her First Amendment cause on Fox News: What are the terrorists going to do, blow up everybody in the media?

Maybe Gellar’s event was taunting. Maybe it was mocking, insulting, stupid and even provocative. But as she says, in Time Magazine: “To kowtow to violent intimidation will only encourage more of it.”

So go ahead — fault Geller for insensitivity.

But her point of a cowardly, overly politically correct media is a valid one. The fact that she is willing to take on radicalized Islam with an in-your-face message shouldn’t become the focus of more media attention than what’s afforded the radicalized Islamists who seek to uproot this nation’s First Amendment. On top of that, if the “Draw Muhammad” event is truly counterproductive to the goal of combating the “savage jihad,” as O’Reilly termed it, what exactly is being accomplished by the very public criticisms of a U.S. citizen staging an anti-Shariah, pro-First Amendment event? The world is watching — including the one belonging to the “savage jihad” and his supporters. We should be careful not to condemn Geller so loudly, as our nation’s enemies chalk up another win on the public relations front.

[mybooktable book=”police-state-usa-how-orwells-nightmare-is-becoming-our-reality” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”true”]

Pamela Geller has been taking quite a

People's Pundit Daily
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