Have nothing to do with the [evil] things that people do, things that belong to the darkness. Instead, bring them out to the light... [For] when all things are brought out into the light, then their true nature is clearly revealed...

-Ephesians 5:11-13

Category Archives: Constitution

Biden Rants Against Guns Again, but Little Chance Anything Passes in Lame-duck Session

Saturday, 26 November 2022 15:53
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Saturday, November 26, 2022:  

Like a windup doll, White House resident Joe Biden took off after assault weapons following two recent mass shootings. Early on Thanksgiving Day he told reporters, “the idea … we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick. It’s just sick. It has no, no social redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single, solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers.”

He thinks he might be able to get something passed during the upcoming lame-duck session of congress — that lull in the storm between the midterm elections and the installation of a new Congress in January: “I’m going to do it whenever I — I got to make that assessment as I get in and start counting the votes.”

The votes aren’t there, Joe. For a sweeping gun-control bill banning the purchase, possession, or sale of semi-automatic firearms to pass the Senate, it must first pass a nearly insurmountable barrier: the filibuster.

As the liberal Brennan Center for Justice explains:

Once a bill gets to a vote on the Senate floor, it requires a simple majority of 51 votes to pass after debate has ended.

 

But there’s a catch: before it can get to a vote, it actually takes 60 votes to cut off debate, which is why a 60-vote supermajority is now considered the de facto minimum for passing legislation in the Senate.

But there’s the “silent” filibuster rule that may end any chance of Biden getting anything passed:

But since the early 1970s, senators have been able to use a “silent” filibuster. Anytime a group of 41 or more senators simply threatens a filibuster, the Senate majority leader can refuse to call a vote.

Dead. Done. Gone.

So ol’ Joe can count votes until the end of time and there’s little chance anything the Democrats can dream up to infringe further on citizens’ Second Amendment rights will see the light of day between now and January.

But that doesn’t mean ol’ Joe won’t keep trying. Somehow he thinks that with sufficient repetition of the lie that the problem is guns, not the people using them, voters will support a ban on them.

In August, following the Uvalde, Texas, shooting at Robb Elementary School (where, it will be remembered, law enforcement delayed responding to the threat for 74 minutes!), Biden repeated the canard: “A 20-year-old kid can walk in and buy [a firearm]? … What’s the matter with us?” He added: “I’m determined to ban assault weapons in this country. Determined. I did it once, and I’ll do it again.”

Of course, he is referring to the Clinton gun ban of 1994 that ended after ten years of evidence showing that it did nothing to reduce gun violence.

According to Biden, it’s the firearms themselves that somehow are the cause of the shootings. In August he repeated the fable: “We’re living in a country awash with weapons of war. Weapons that weren’t designed to hunt, they’re designed to take on an enemy … what’s the rationale for these weapons outside of a war zone?”

He added:

We have to act for all those kids gunned down on our streets every single day that never make the news…. You have to act so our kids can learn to read in school, instead of learning to duck and cover.

Journalists unpacking the lies spouted by ol’ Joe in just this statement alone could make a nice living doing so.

In his statement following the recent shooting in Colorado Springs, Biden touted his support for a law that further infringes on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens, the real target (sorry) of the legislation:

Earlier this year, I signed the most significant gun safety law in nearly three decades, in addition to taking other historic actions. But we must do more. We need to enact an assault weapons ban to get weapons of war off America’s streets.

Biden is referring to what the mainstream media called the “most important piece of gun legislation since 1994,” which includes the odious and unconstitutional federal funding for red flag laws to states wanting to pass them.

All those red flag laws have managed to do, according to the Associated Press, is “remove the firearms from people 15,049 times since 2020,” but with no evidence of any measurable related decrease in gun violence.

Naturally, rights are in danger any time Congress is in session, but even more so during the lame-duck session, as enough Republicans In Name Only could climb on board a complete firearms ban to end the filibuster, providing a path to the legislation’s passage, while escaping punishment from voters.

Policewoman Sues to Stop Union From Taking Dues From Her Paycheck

Friday, 25 November 2022 20:47
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, November 25, 2022:  

When Melodie DePierro joined the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department in 2006, she agreed to let its union, the Las Vegas Police Protective Association, take her dues automatically from her paycheck.

When she resigned from the union in 2020, she informed them that she was quitting and to stop taking the dues from her paycheck. The union refused, claiming that under a newly crafted and approved contract she only had 20 days — from October 1 to October 20 — to order the union to stop. Since she missed “the window,” the union continued deducting its dues from her paycheck.

She sued to get her money back. Lower courts held for the union. The case was picked up by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which filed a request for the Supreme Court — a “petition for writ of certiorari,” in legalese — to consider her case.

Why is this case important? Because DePierro’s claims are based on a Supreme Court ruling from 2018, Janus v. AFSCME (American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees), in which the high court ruled that the taking of such fees without written consent violates a citizen’s First Amendment right to free speech.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion in Janus that such action violates “the free speech rights of nonmembers [of public unions] by compelling them to subsidize private speech on matters of substantial public concern.”

This is a modern-day restatement of the principle voiced by Thomas Jefferson: “To compel a man [or woman] to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he [or she] disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

In Janus, the high court referred to the right to free speech as a “fixed star”:

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. [Emphasis in original.]

DePierro’s attorneys built on that idea:

That fixed star shines throughout the year — not only for a few days. [Quoting Janus]: “Compelling individuals to mouth support for views they find objectionable violates that cardinal constitutional command.”

They maintained that “this case is exceptionally important,” as a decision would affect all public employees, active or retired, represented by unions who are reacting to Janus by installing such “window periods” in their contracts.

A favorable decision in this case would add an additional bulwark to the complaints bound to follow passage of the odious “Respect for Marriage Act” expected next week. Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee makes the case that the way that law is written, it can and will be used to bludgeon into submission any groups (churches, charities, even states) that refuse to recognize same-sex marriage — upon threat of losing their precious federal funding or tax-exempt status.

Those complaints should remind the courts of the statement from Janus, above, that “no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.” (Emphasis added.)

The petition for policewoman Melodie DePierro was filed with the Supreme Court on November 21. A decision to accept it won’t be made for at least several months.

Newsmax Gets It Wrong on Colorado Springs Shooting

Tuesday, 22 November 2022 13:10
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, November 22, 2022:  

Just hours after the horrific mass shooting at Club Q — a gay and lesbian nightclub in Colorado Springs — Eric Mack, a journalist with Newsmax, did the automatic thing: he reached out to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) for some data. Without analyzing the actual data Mack appeared to be content with simply adding up all their “Mass Shootings in 2022” and wrote this:

After a week of a pair of mass shootings — an LGBTQ club in Colorado and the University of Virginia — the U.S. total has gone over 600 for the year at a record-setting pace, according to Gun Violence Archive data.

Mack added, “A mass shooting is defined as one where four or more people are injured or killed by firearms, which does not include the shooter being stopped.”

It was easy then for him to conclude that “mass shootings” are on the upswing: “Nearly 700 mass shootings occurred in 2021, up from 610 in 2020 and just 417 in 2019.”

Except that in 2019 there were only 30 mass shootings, according to the FBI. And in 2020, instead of 610 such incidents, the FBI reported only 20, a 50-percent decline over 2019!

AWR Hawkins, the Second Amendment writer for Breitbart, explained why: “The GVR standard [when counting mass shootings] is a much lower threshold for qualifying incidents as ‘mass shootings’ than has traditionally been used. In fact, it allows incidents in which there were no fatalities to be counted.… It also allows gang incidents, drive-by shootings, and other common street crimes to be counted as ‘mass shootings.’”

Investigative journalist Lee Williams, writing for Armed American News, was much more explicit:

According to their new report titled: “Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2020,” the FBI defines active shootings as:

 

Shootings in public places

 

Shootings occurring at more than one location

 

Shootings where the shooter’s actions were not the result of another criminal act

 

Shootings resulting in a mass killing

 

Shootings indicating apparent spontaneity by the shooter

 

Shootings where the shooter appeared to methodically search for potential victims

 

Shootings that appeared focused on injury to people, not buildings or objects

 

 

Shootings were excluded from the FBI’s list if they were the result of:

 

Self-defense

 

Gang violence

 

Drug violence

 

Contained residential or domestic disputes

 

Controlled barricade/hostage situations

 

Crossfire as a byproduct of another ongoing criminal act

 

An action that appeared not to have put other people in peril

Williams noted, “By comparison, the Gun Violence Archive excludes nothing, even if the shooting is gang or drug related — the two main causes of most violence in the country today.”

Why do mainstream journalists turn so readily to GVA for data on mass shootings? Wrote Wiliams, “Anytime four or more people are killed or even slightly wounded with a firearm, it’s labeled a mass shooting, and politicians, gun control advocates and the mainstream media treat their reports as if they’re gospel.”

GVA includes everything, and lets those writers seeking to promote their anti-gun, anti-Second Amendment agenda decide for themselves how they will use the data. The GVA website records police shooting injuries and deaths, mass shootings, individual gun related incidents, suicides, injuries, teen, child, and adult related injuries and deaths.

Another writer who fell into the GVA data trap is Mother Jones Editor Mark Follman. In 2015 he used their data to claim that there were 355 “mass shootings” that year, but then discovered the mistake, and corrected it:

At Mother Jones, where I work as an editor, we have compiled an in-depth open-source database covering more than three decades of public mass shootings. By our measure, there have been four “mass shootings” this year, including the one in San Bernardino, and [just] 73 such attacks since 1982.

We are persuaded that Newsmax writer Eric Mack made an honest mistake. We are not persuaded that mainstream media writers are as innocent of misusing GVA data.

Lawsuit Claims FDA Declared Pregnancy an “Illness”

Monday, 21 November 2022 13:35
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 21, 2022:  

The public interest law firm Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed the first lawsuit of its kind on Friday. It sued the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), claiming that for decades the agency has operated outside its legal boundaries, has failed to protect young pregnant women, and has ignored science in favor of politics in the process:

The FDA failed America’s women and girls when it chose politics over science and approved chemical abortion drugs for use in the United States.

 

And it has continued to fail them by repeatedly removing even the most basic precautionary requirements associated with their use….

 

Plaintiffs … ask that the Court hold [the agency’s actions] unlawful, set them aside, and vacate them.

The use of RU-486, aka mifepristone, was successfully blocked by pro-life groups for years after it was developed in France. But during the Clinton administration, then-president Bill Clinton instructed the FDA to promote the testing, licensing (for profit), and manufacture of the drug.

This led to the French pharmaceutical company that held the patent on the life-ending drug to donate it for free to the Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored Population Council. From there it was a short hop to approval by the FDA. By September 2000, the FDA had approved the council’s application, and abortion by ingesting poisonous chemicals became legal in the United States.

There was major pushback against the FDA, including two citizen petitions, both of which were ignored for years by the agency before finally being rejected. Along the way the agency continued to make the drug ever more accessible, finally even making it available by mail.

Ironically, one of the plaintiffs in the case, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, has adopted its own version of the Hippocratic Oath:

The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM) upholds and promotes the fundamental principles of Hippocratic medicine.

 

These principles include protecting the vulnerable at the beginning and end of life, seeking the ultimate good for the patient with compassion and moral integrity, and providing healthcare with the highest standards of excellence based on medical science.

This is a softer, kinder, gentler version of the original Hippocratic Oath:

I will use those dietary regimens which will benefit my patients according to my greatest ability and judgment, and I will do no harm or injustice to them.

 

Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary [prosthetic device] to cause abortion.

The lawsuit reminds the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, where it was filed, that the only way the FDA was able to approve the drug was to lie:

The only way the FDA could have approved chemical abortion drugs was to use its accelerated drug approval authority, necessitating the FDA to call pregnancy an “illness” and argue that these dangerous drugs provide a “meaningful therapeutic benefit” over existing treatments.

 

But pregnancy is not an illness, nor do chemical abortion drugs provide a therapeutic benefit over surgical abortion.

 

In asserting these transparently false conclusions, the FDA exceeded its regulatory authority to approve the drugs.

 

What’s more, the FDA needed to disavow science and the law because the FDA never studied the safety of the drugs under the labeled conditions of use despite being required to do so by the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA).

 

The agency also ignored the potential impacts of the hormone-blocking regimen on the developing bodies of adolescent girls in violation of the Pediatric Research and Equity Act (PREA).

 

And the FDA disregarded the substantial evidence that chemical abortion drugs cause more complications than even surgical abortions.

The FDA knew then, and knows now, that administering RU-486/mifepristone has a complication rate four times higher than surgical abortions. In fact, one in five pregnant women who use the chemical to force the abortion of her living child will suffer complications requiring further medical attention, perhaps facing severe vaginal bleeding, life-threatening infection, and/or becoming sterile, and often requiring a blood transfusion followed by a hysterectomy.

According to ADF senior counsel Erik Baptist, the FDA’s approval has always been based on questionable ethical and legal grounds:

The FDA’s approval of chemical abortion drugs has always stood on shaky legal and moral ground, and after years of evading responsibility, it’s time for the government to do what it’s legally required to do: protect the health and safety of vulnerable girls and women.

 

On behalf of the national health care organizations and physicians we represent, we ask the court to hold the FDA accountable for its reckless, unlawful behavior.

 

We urge the court to reject the marketing and distribution of dangerous chemical abortion drugs so that the health, safety, and welfare of women are protected.

The lawsuit claims that the FDA knew all of these things and approved the drug anyway, cowing to political pressure from the White House and the profit motive of the pharmaceutical companies to which it owes its loyalty and allegiance:

In addition to the legal and scientific infirmities referenced above, all of the FDA’s actions on chemical abortion drugs — the 2000 approval, the 2016 major changes, the 2019 generic drug approval, and the two 2021 actions to eliminate the in-person dispensing requirement — failed to acknowledge and address the federal laws that prohibit the distribution of chemical abortion drugs by postal mail, express company, or common carrier.

 

Instead, the FDA’s actions permitted and sometimes even encouraged these illegal activities.

 

After two decades of engaging the FDA to no avail, Plaintiffs now ask this Court to do what the FDA was and is legally required to do: protect women and girls by holding unlawful, setting aside, and vacating the FDA’s actions to approve chemical abortion drugs and eviscerate crucial safeguards for those who undergo this dangerous drug regimen.

Colorado Free-speech Case Headed for Supreme Court

Friday, 18 November 2022 13:55
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, November 18, 2022:  

Denver-based website creator Lorie Smith, owner of 303Creative.com, will, after six long years, finally get her day in court. On December 5, oral arguments begin on a case that should never have been filed, on an issue that should never have been raised. At issue: Smith’s right to conduct her business as she sees fit, according to her own values and beliefs.

When Colorado’s leftist legislators passed the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, or CADA, Smith immediately saw the potential threat to her business and filed a preemptive lawsuit. If the new law were allowed to stand, her business would be a prime target: She declared that, according to her Christian beliefs, she would not build a website for a marriage that conflicted with those beliefs.

She makes that clear on her website:

As a Christian who believes that God gave me the creative gifts that are expressed through this business, I have always strived to honor Him in how I operate it….

 

Because of my faith … I am selective about the messages that I create or promote — while I will serve anyone I am always careful to avoid communicating ideas or messages, or promoting events, products, services, or organizations, that are inconsistent with my religious beliefs.

To the anti-Christian liberals at Colorado’s civil-rights commission, this is anathema. Courts ruled in their favor, and Smith appealed. Last February, the Supreme Court agreed to take the case, limiting the issue to this: “Whether applying a public-accommodation law to compel an artist to speak or stay silent, contrary to the artist’s sincerely held religious beliefs, violates the Free Speech or Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment.”

According to Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the public-interest law firm that is representing Smith, the lower court “astonishingly concluded that the government may, based upon content and viewpoint, force Lorie to convey messages that violate her religious beliefs and restrict her from explaining her faith [on her website].”

There was one voice of common sense in that lower court’s ruling, expressed by the Tenth Circuit’s Chief Judge Timothy Tymkovich:

The majority takes the remarkable — and novel — stance that the government may force Ms. Smith to produce messages that violate her conscience.… [It] concludes … that Colorado has a compelling interest in forcing Ms. Smith to speak a government-approved message against her religious beliefs.

 

No case has ever gone so far.

The majority’s ruling, wrote Tymkovich, ushers in “a brave new world”:

The Constitution is a shield against CADA’s discriminatory treatment of Ms. Smith’s sincerely held religious beliefs … [but] the majority ushers forth a brave new world when it acknowledges both speech and silence — yet finds this intrusion constitutionally permissible.

 

CADA [according to the panel’s ruling] forces Ms. Smith to violate her faith on pain of sanction both by prohibiting religious-based business practices and by penalizing her if she does speak out on these matters in ways Colorado finds “unwelcome” or “undesirable.”

Not surprisingly, the ACLU has lined up on the side of the commission. ACLU national legal director David Cole is worried that the Supreme Court might not only rule in favor of Lorie Smith, but also broaden its narrow ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission in 2018. In that ruling, the high court avoided the free-speech issue and ruled instead that the civil rights commission “failed to act in a manner neutral to religion” and thus violated baker Jack Phillips’ First Amendment-protected rights.

Wrote Cole, “If 303 Creative prevails here, then any business that can be characterized as expressive, and that’s a lot of businesses, can start putting up signs saying no Jews served, no Christians served, no Blacks served.”

This could be a “landmark” case, said the ADF:

No one should be banished from the marketplace simply for living and speaking consistently with their religious beliefs. This could be a landmark case for the freedom of speech, religious liberty, and artistic freedom.

 

We look forward to representing Lorie before the high court.

Pa. House Committee Approves Articles of Impeachment Against Soros-backed Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner

Wednesday, 16 November 2022 12:45
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, November 16, 2022:  

When the Old Testament prophet Hosea warned that those who “have sown the wind shall reap the whirlwind,” he could have been speaking of Philadelphia voters. In 2017, intoxicated by promises of Larry Krasner, the Soros-funded candidate for the city’s district attorney, to revamp the city’s law-enforcement policies, the heavily Democratic city’s voters bought the lie.

They reelected him by even more overwhelming numbers in 2021.

His policies have resulted in a jaw-dropping increase in every category of violent crime, and caused the Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee to approve two articles of impeachment against him on Tuesday.

Krasner’s “progressive” policies, aided and abetted by a supportive far-Left mayor, included ending criminal charges against those caught possessing marijuana, ending cash bail for criminals charged with “minor” crimes, and demanding lenient sentences for certain crimes.

In addition, the progressive reordering of justice in Philadelphia included reviewing past cases and sentences in order to seek re-sentencing to lesser punishment, or even release from prison.

Rep. Martina White, a Philadelphia Republican and prime sponsor of the two articles of impeachment, told a press conference following the committee’s vote on Tuesday:

I suspect that we will have bipartisan support for this effort as we have thus far. The investigation and holding Larry Krasner in contempt was bipartisan.

 

Tomorrow, I believe this will also be bipartisan because the people of Philadelphia deserve better than what they receive out of the district attorney’s office.

 

He has not been doing his job well enough for us, endangering the lives of citizens that he’s supposed to serve and protect by prosecuting criminals and making sure that they’re convicted guilty, should the evidence be there.

 

But that’s not what’s happening right now. The district attorney is basically withdrawing cases at an unprecedented level.

The investigation to which she referred — the Second Interim Report by the Select Committee on Restoring Law and Order — opened with this:

The Select Committee begins this Second Interim Report by summarizing the statistics with respect to the increase in the number of homicide victims—between January 1, 2021, and October 16, 2022, 992 people have died as a result of a homicide in Philadelphia.

 

This is a stark increase to the 557 deaths resulting from homicides in 2015 to 2016 combined. [Emphasis in original.]

The report attributed the increase — Hosea’s “whirlwind” — directly to the policies of the district attorney and his office:

It is no secret that the DAO [district attorney’s office] and DA Krasner’s progressive policies are the focus of criticism with respect to the increasing crime rate, the handling of criminal cases, and the abject failure to respond, in any meaningful way, to the current crisis….

 

Between 2017 and September of 2022, 81% of non-fatal shootings and 61.5% of fatal shootings did not result in arrests of the shooters.

 

However, most troubling to the Select Committee, is what happens after arrests are made—the DAO’s prosecution, or lack thereof. The DAO categorizes violent offenses as homicides, nonfatal shootings, rape, robberies, aggravated assault, and other forms of assault.

 

To date in 2022, 65% of all violent offenses have been withdrawn by the DAO or dismissed by the courts, resulting in no prosecution for those crimes. [Emphasis in original.]

Criminals are emboldened by the new policies, says the report:

The Select Committee has learned that while a prosecutor’s discretion to enforce criminal laws is broad, the most powerful impact of that discretion is a prosecutor’s decision not to prosecute a case.

 

The Select Committee shares Philadelphia Police [Commissioner] Danielle Outlaw’s outrage that arrests in Philadelphia are not leading to criminals being removed from the streets.

 

No doubt, Philadelphia criminals are emboldened by the knowledge that (a) the likelihood that they will be arrested is slim, and (b) once caught, the likelihood that they will be prosecuted and incarcerated is minimal. [Emphasis in original.]

Pennsylvania’s state constitution says that Krasner can be impeached and removed from office if convicted “for any misbehavior in office.” Assuming the full House approves the committee’s vote, Krasner’s future as DA moves to the Republican-controlled Senate for trial.

Trump Sues Jan. 6 Committee Over Subpoena

Tuesday, 15 November 2022 11:38
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, November 15, 2022:  

No doubt tempted to take on the January 6 “select” committee in a public forum, former President Donald Trump decided to take a more formal, and decisive, route: by suing the committee last Friday, he effectively ended its existence.

The lawsuit won’t likely be decided until after the new Congress is installed in January. And the new Congress is highly unlikely to continue the charade as it focuses on other vastly more important matters.

Voters, as The New American pointed out, have already effectively dismissed the committee in any event, with just five of the committee’s nine members surviving the November 8 midterm elections.

Trump has held all the cards. After the subpoena was issued, he ignored it. After a deadline passed, the committee extended it. Following failed “negotiations” with the committee, Trump’s lawyers filed suit.

The lawsuit is a beauty:

The Committee’s Subpoena is invalid because, as explained below, the Committee did not issue the Subpoena to further a valid legislative purpose; the Subpoena is unwarranted because other sources can provide the information the Subpoena seeks; the Subpoena is broader than reasonably necessary; the Subpoena infringes on executive privilege; the Subpoena infringes President Trump’s First Amendment rights; the Committee is not duly authorized; and the Committee lacks the authority to issue subpoenas.

The former president is immune from such demands:

[It is] the Department of Justice’s longstanding view that Presidents and former Presidents are absolutely immune from compelled testimony before Congress. To wit, “[s]ince the 1970s, [the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice] has consistently advised that ‘the President . . . [is] absolutely immune from testimonial compulsion by a Congressional committee’ on matters related to their official duties.”

 

Other presidents have rightly refused similar demands. When President Harry Truman absolutely refused an investigative committee’s subpoena, he said:

 

I am carrying out the provisions of the Constitution of the United States; and am following a long line of precedents commencing with George Washington himself in 1796.

 

Since his day, Presidents Jefferson, Monroe, Jackson, Tyler, Polk, Fillmore, Buchanan, Lincoln, Grant, Hayes, Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, Coolidge, Hoover, and Franklin D. Roosevelt have declined to respond to subpoenas or demands for information of various kinds by Congress.

The committee itself is a sham and a fraud:

The composition of the Committee is governed by Section 2 of H. Res. 503. Section 2(a) states “Appointment of Members. —The Speaker shall appoint 13 Members to the Select Committee, 5 of whom shall be appointed after consultation with the minority leader.”

 

Speaker Pelosi has appointed only nine members to the Committee: seven Democrats and two Republicans. None of these members was appointed from the selection of five GOP congressmen put forth by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

 

While the Court has determined authorized congressional committees have certain subpoena authority implied by Article I of the Constitution, the Committee is not an authorized congressional committee.

Trump, through his attorneys, is demanding:

A declaratory judgment that the Subpoena and any subpoena similar in form and content to the Subpoena is invalid, unlawful, and unenforceable because President Trump … has absolute immunity … it does not further a valid legislative purpose … [it] is an unwarranted intrusion into the Executive Branch … [it] is broader than necessary … it seeks documents and testimony protected from disclosure by Executive Privilege … it violates President Trump’s First Amendment rights … [and] because Congress failed to comply with resolutions regarding the creation of the committee and the issuance of subpoenas.

The response from the chair and vice-chair of the committee, Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, respectively, claimed Trump was merely hiding from the committee:

Even though the former President initially suggested that he would testify before the committee, he has since filed a lawsuit asking the courts to protect him from giving testimony. The truth is that Donald Trump … is hiding from the Select Committee’s investigation….

No, he’s not. He’s just letting the clock run out on the committee’s existence already foretold by voters last week.

Vermont High School Backs Down Over “Transgender” Incident After ADF Files a First Amendment Lawsuit

Friday, 11 November 2022 14:38
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, November 11, 2022:  

Lawyers representing Randolph Union High School (RUHS) in Randolph, Vermont, persuaded school officials to drop their threats of punishment upon receiving a 124-page lawsuit filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).

At issue: the school’s determination to force its transgender policies upon a 14-year-old girl and her father. For daring to question those policies — i.e., complaining when a male who declared himself to be a female entered the girls’ locker room to observe them undressing — RUHS officials demanded that the student, Blake Allen, “take part in a restorative circle … to help her understand the rights of [transgender] students to access public accommodation … in a manner consistent with their [self-proclaimed] gender identity.”

School officials also demanded that her father, Travis Allen, apologize for a Facebook post challenging the mother of the transgender male/female over the veracity of a Facebook post she made defending her transgender male/female son/daughter.

ADF reviewed the incident:

Travis Allen and his fourteen-year-old daughter, Blake, were punished for expressing their views on a matter of profound public concern: whether a teenage male who identifies as female should be permitted to change in a girls’ locker room regardless of the discomfort experienced by girls in that room.

 

In objecting to a male being in the room while the girls are changing, Travis and Blake each made comments underscoring that the trans-identifying student is in fact a male, including by using male pronouns.

 

Indeed, their view of the student’s maleness was foundational to their opinions on appropriate use of the locker room.

 

Yet, their remarks were too much for Defendants’ transgender orthodoxy — Travis was deemed to have “misgendered” the student, while Blake was found guilty of “harassment” and “bullying” — so Defendants disciplined both of them.

ADF claimed that by doing so the school officials violated the Allens’ First and Fourteenth Amendment rights:

Defendants are state actors and violate the First Amendment when they attempt to dictate what may be said on matters of public concern.

 

And they cannot discriminate against speech on the basis of its viewpoint.

 

Yet, that is exactly what happened here. Defendants punished Travis and Blake for saying that a male is a male, as a matter of sex and biology, regardless of the gender identity that the male has assumed.

On September 21 a male who identifies as a female entered the girls’ locker room while the girls were changing. Many of them got upset and demanded that he leave. Their parents called the principals to complain.

The next day Blake expressed her thoughts on the incident to some of her classmates, exclaiming, “[he] literally is a dude,” who “does not belong in the girls’ locker room.”

That triggered school officials into conducting an “investigation,” after which it was concluded that Blake was guilty of “harassment on the basis of gender identity” and needed to be punished:

Defendants also seek to coerce her to agree with their transgender dogma. In addition to giving Blake two days’ out-of-school suspension, Defendants are requiring her to “[t]ake part in a restorative circle with … our Equity Coordinator and at least two students who can help her understand the rights of students to access public accommodations … in a manner consistent with their gender identity,” and “submit a reflective essay.”

 

Defendants intend to render their own judgment on this reflective essay; and if they deem it “lacking good faith,” Blake will be required to serve an additional three days’ out-of-school suspension.

Blake’s father, Travis, got involved when he responded to the following Facebook post by the mother of the son/daughter:

I am the mother of the trans student in question and my [son] daughter did not make any comments at all. The entire team can back this up, other than the girl that made up the story for attention.

 

This is slander, defamation of character, and we have secured a lawyer….

Travis responded:

I am the father of the girl you claim “made up a story for attention.” The truth is your son watched my daughter and multiple other girls change in the locker room. While he got a free show they got violated.

 

You think this is fine and dandy. I wonder how you would feel if I watched you undress?

For that transgression school officials demanded that Travis apologize, and ended a contract it had with him as coach of the school’s girls’ soccer team.

Claimed the ADF in its lawsuit:

The First Amendment does not countenance this kind of government censorship, where a public school mandates that students and coaches refrain from expressing any view that offends its prescribed views, particularly on an issue as important as whether the school should permit males identifying as girls to undress, shower and change in the girls’ locker room.

 

Travis and Blake Allen were entitled to express their views on that issue and, in expressing those views, to support them with what is a biological fact — that a biological teenage male is, indeed, a male.

 

This case presents a textbook example of unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination, and Plaintiffs are entitled to all appropriate relief.

ADF summed up their argument:

By requiring Blake Allen to take part in a “restorative circle” to help her “understand the rights of students to access public accommodations … in a manner consistent with their gender identity” and “submit a reflective essay” that meets Defendants’ own standards in order to avoid additional out-of-school suspension, Defendants are seeking to compel her to speak in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

 

By requiring Travis Allen to issue a public apology for his September 29 Facebook post as a condition to be reinstated as a coach, Defendants are seeking to compel him to speak in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

The state of Vermont has created this problem by its willingness to buy into the current fad of “transgenderism.” It states that

  1. All students have a gender identity which is self-determined;
  2. All persons, including students attending school, have privacy rights.

Vermont defines “transgender” as “an individual whose gender identity or gender expression is different from the individual’s assigned sex at birth.”

Conflict is therefore inevitable, yet it never existed when the Genesis account was considered the basis of all law. Genesis 1:27, if Vermont state officials would follow it, eliminates the conflict: “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them.”

After reviewing the lawsuit, school officials backed down. Said ADF: “Shortly after filing the lawsuit, counsel for the school officials notified ADF attorneys that the superintendent was rescinding the disciplinary actions.”

Church Sues New York State Over Law Prohibiting Worshipers From Carrying Firearms

Wednesday, 09 November 2022 12:03
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, November 9, 2022:  

Eight days after the Supreme Court ruled in June against New York in its Bruen decision that the state’s restrictions on concealed carry permits were unconstitutional, and declared further that all citizens, including New Yorkers, had the constitutional right to carry firearms outside their homes for self-protection, the Democrat-controlled state Legislature enacted a “work-around” law to circumvent Bruen.

The law — S51001 — declares a total ban on the carrying of firearms in “any place of worship or religious observation.”

In a lawsuit brought by First Liberty Institute (FLI) on behalf of Pastor Micheal Spencer and his church, His Tabernacle Family Church, with locations in Horseheads and Ithaca, New York, the complaint states that

It is thus now a felony in New York to carry a firearm in a place of worship, regardless of whether one has a license to carry a firearm and regardless of whether the place of worship expressly authorizes — or even encourages — the carrying of firearms on its property.

Pastor Spencer and a number of his parishioners have shown skill at arms and, until passage of the law defying Bruen, regularly carried firearms during church services to protect the flock.

What makes the new law especially pernicious is its flagrant disregard of the Bruen decision. It specifically targets churches, as the law allows other property owners to give permission to their visitors or customers to carry on site.

The complaint refers not only to Bruen as precedent, but also to another Supreme Court decision — Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo — that was decided in 2020 that struck down then-Governor Andrew Cuomo’s “Covid occupancy” requirements which unfairly applied to churches.

Wrote the lawyers from FLI:

Those decisions should have taught New York to proceed with extreme caution where First or Second Amendment rights are at stake going forward.

 

Instead, the state recently doubled down on its rights-denying tendencies — by infringing two fundamental liberties at the same time.

 

New York now puts houses of worship and religious adherents to an impossible choice: forfeit your First Amendment right to religious worship or forfeit your Second Amendment right to bear arms for self-defense.

The complaint focuses on Democrats’ deliberate intention to single out churches in its attempt to circumvent Bruen:

New York’s attempt to force houses of worship and their parishioners to choose between their First Amendment rights and their Second — an outlier policy shared by no other state in the Nation — stands as an act of defiance to the Supreme Court’s recent and emphatic holdings protecting both.

 

First, by prohibiting the exercise of a fundamental constitutional right in places of worship while permitting its exercise on a wide variety of other private property, and denying to religious leaders the authority it gives other private property owners to decide whether to permit the carrying of firearms, the state discriminates on the basis of religious status, singles out houses of worship for especially harsh treatment, and treats comparable secular activity more favorably than religious exercise.

 

Additionally, S51001 runs into the Establishment Clause by entrenching on core matters of internal church governance.

 

The state may have power to dictate many things, but how worshippers should conduct themselves at worship services on church property is not one of them.

Attorneys from FLI pointed out that the legislation passed within days of the Bruen decision had been carefully crafted months earlier, in anticipation of the ruling:

While Bruen and Roman Catholic Diocese should make New York [Democrats] particularly sensitive to protecting … citizens’ First and Second Amendment rights, they seem to have prompted exactly the opposite reaction.

 

Barely before the ink on Bruen could dry, New York embarked on a campaign “to offset the impact of the court’s decision” — a campaign that also tramples First Amendment rights….

 

Of course, New York was able to move so quickly because it began preparing legislation to undercut any eventual Supreme Court decision before it was even handed down and regardless of what it might say about the Constitution’s demands….

 

New York officials have made abundantly clear both their contempt for Bruen and their intention to vigorously enforce all aspects of S51001 notwithstanding the constitutional rights upon which it tramples.

The “workaround” law puts Pastor Spencer and his church — and all other churches in New York — at greater risk than before:

Pastor Spencer believes that someone planning to harm or kill his flock will not be deterred by S51001, and may in fact by emboldened by it since it leaves [all] houses of worship defenseless against those bent on doing violence to people of faith.

The complaint filed on behalf of Pastor Spencer and his church concludes that what New York Democrats have done is deliberately attack not only their church (and all other churches in the state), but also the constitutional basis upon which all religious institutions in the state and the nation operate:

It is therefore a constitutional vice, not a virtue, that New York has disarmed all religious people all at once, whether they kneel in prayer or stand in worship.

 

In short, S51001 is a compendium of constitutional infirmities, infringing in one fell swoop on Pastor Spencer’s and the Church’s rights to freely engage in religious exercise, to exercise autonomy over the Church’s internal affairs, and to carry firearms to ensure the safety of all persons on the Church’s premises.

The complaint exposes the agenda of New York Democrats: not only their complete and total disregard for and antipathy toward the Supreme Court’s decisions relating to this case, but their vicious animosity toward religion in general. The complaint exposes the real culture war: the church versus the state.

Pastor Spencer and his church are demanding a trial by jury to hear their complaint.

Biden Eclipses Obama’s Record as the Country’s Greatest Gun Salesman

Monday, 07 November 2022 19:21
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 7, 2022:  

During the Obama administration monthly gun sales soared, jumping from about 850,000 in October 2009 to more than 1.3 million in October 2016, a gain of more than 50 percent.

With gun sales now averaging more than 1.25 million a month, what it took the Obama administration to accomplish in eight years the present administration has accomplished in two.

Of course, the present resident of the Oval Office has had some help. Crime in Democrat-controlled cities, thanks to progressive George Soros-backed district attorneys, has also soared. Of the 30 cities experiencing the highest crime rates, Democrats run 27 of them.

The momentum in gun sales was aided and abetted by the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision in June. In that decision not only did the highest court in the land rule that New York’s “may issue” restrictions on concealed carry licenses violated the Second Amendment, the high court went further: it ruled that the Second and the Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution protect an individual citizen’s right to carry a handgun for self-protection outside the home.

Writing for the 6-3 majority in the case — New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen — Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas held:

When the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct [here the right to bear arms], the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct.

 

[Any state or local] government [contesting that right] must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

 

Only then may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s “unqualified command.”

This was huge, and is resulting in dozens of lawsuits being filed successfully against states with laws that are in violation of those same amendments. That would include Illinois, with its infamous Firearm Owner’s Identification (FOID) card, as well as North Carolina, Minnesota, Nebraska, Hawaii, Michigan, Maryland, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, which have similar “permit to possess” requirements.

With an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 present gun control laws now subject to repeal or serious modification, gun owners are seizing the opportunity to exercise their Second Amendment right by purchasing firearms in record numbers.

That momentum favoring the Second Amendment should flow over into the midterm elections on Tuesday. Voters in Oregon will have a chance to toss the state’s present “permit to purchase” requirement, while voters in San Jose, California, will have the opportunity to rein in the City Council’s demand that all gun owners pay a fee to exercise the right to purchase a firearm as well as buy liability insurance for the privilege.

In addition, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF, which just released the October numbers), a “sizeable number” — estimated at between five million and eight million — of those twenty or so million people purchasing firearms so far this year are brand-new gun owners. They are likely to be very possessive of their right to keep and bear arms, and are equally likely to vote against politicians running on a platform to infringe on that right.

Newport News Pastor “Under Investigation” for Talking Politics From the Pulpit

Thursday, 03 November 2022 16:22
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, November 3, 2022:  

After promoting his own campaign from the pulpit for a seat on the City Council of Newport News, Virginia, Pastor Willard Maxwell of New Beech Grove Baptist Church found himself under investigation by local authorities.

A woman familiar with Maxwell’s alleged breach of federal law reported him to local authorities. She included a video of his remarks with her complaint. In that two-minute video, Maxwell said, “We have signs out there. If you want to take a sign to your house that would be great. Anytime you want to donate $5, $25 — it doesn’t matter. Or get other people to donate. I would really appreciate it.”

He then addressed the constraint put upon such activities by the Internal Revenue Service: “Now I know a lot of people say you can’t use certain things or say stuff at church…. Republicans and Democrats alike have been trying to tell me I can’t say nothing. Man, if I can’t say nothing, you can’t say nothing.”

On October 17, the Commonwealth’s Attorney Howard Gwynn responded to the complaint: “The video that you sent is very disturbing. Please be assured that this matter is under investigation and is being taken very seriously.”

It’s far from clear exactly what local, municipal, or state violations might be involved here. If the violations relate to the Johnson Amendment — the part of the IRS code that infringes on the freedom of pastors to speak on political issues from their pulpits under pain of losing 501(c)(3) status — it’s unclear just how Gwynn would be involved in enforcing that federal law.

That federal law passed in 1954 with nary a peep from any of the American pastors whose right to speak freely from their pulpits was being restricted. The Johnson Amendment is named for then-Texas Senator Lyndon Johnson, one of the most notoriously corrupt politicians of the day. Johnson’s litany of illegal activities had been exposed by local pastors, and in retaliation Johnson proposed the amendment.

The offending language from the IRS code reads:

Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.

 

Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity.

 

Violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.

When he was informed of the investigation by local authorities, Pastor Maxwell responded that he has for years let various political candidates come to speak at his church: “I let Democrats come. I let Republicans come. The individual who is running against me [for City Council] even came and spoke from my pulpit. The rule is: whatever you do for one, you gotta let him do for all.”

He went further:

Anytime anyone wants to come to the church and speak about their campaign, whether I agree with them or not, I let them say whatever they need to say, and garner whatever support they need.

 

They pass out their literature, they pass out their signs, they say whatever they need to say. And I’ve done that forever.

Whether this molehill turns into a mountain remains to be seen. What popular Christian writer and speaker Eric Metaxas can’t abide is why American pastors let this Johnson Amendment slide into a bill to become federal law in the first place. Writing in his latest book, Letter to the American Church, Metaxas said:

It was in 1954 that then-Senator Lyndon Johnson introduced an amendment to the U.S. tax code prohibiting churches — and any other nonprofit organizations — from taking a public stand on political candidates. If anyone from a pulpit dared to endorse a candidate, that church’s [tax] exemption would be repealed.

 

It is astonishing that pastors in American allowed this wild idea to go uncontested. In this they behaved rather like many of the submissive pastors in Germany two decades earlier.

 

Of course, for American pastors meekly to submit to anything like this is far more shocking, given our own history of religious liberty and freedom of speech.

Metaxas then added ominously, “If the churches in America are not free to speak on any topic and in any way that they choose — and if they voluntarily go along with this view — then no one in America is truly free, and America itself has effectively ceased to exist.”

After Eight Years of Litigation, Coach Joe Kennedy Will Get His Job Back

Friday, 28 October 2022 12:35
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, October 28, 2022:  

In a “stipulation agreement” supported by attorneys on both sides, Bremerton (Washington) High School assistant football coach Joe Kennedy will have his old job back at the end of the current season:

[Joseph Kennedy] is to be reinstated to his previous position as assistant coach of the Bremerton High School football team on or before March 15, 2023.

Kennedy was fired for one reason and one reason only: Bremerton was following the notion that the Founders somehow had built a “wall of separation” between religion and the state, and that the state was thus free to quash any seeping over from the spiritual world into the secular.

Writing for the majority (6-3) decision in June exonerating Kennedy, Justice Neal Gorsuch touched briefly on that falsehood:

Kennedy’s private religious exercise did not come close to crossing any line one might imagine separating protected private expression from impermissible government coercion. [Emphasis added.]

Tyrants, seizing the quote from Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists more than a decade after the Constitution was put in place as sufficient proof that government must protect itself from spiritual influence, have sold the canard across the land.

At issue was Kennedy’s kneeling and praying in public view after each game. This was, in the district’s view, a violation of separation of church and state. This view as been pushed for decades, using Jefferson’s remarks in his private letter to the Danbury Baptists as a hammer to remove all religious expression from the public square.

Gorsuch expanded slightly on the myth in his opinion in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District:

Here, a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a personal religious observance, based on a mistaken view that it has a duty to suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech. [Emphasis added.]

 

The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination. Mr. Kennedy is entitled to summary judgment on his religious exercise and free speech claims.

The attack on Kennedy’s religious freedom was intentional and deliberate, wrote Gorsuch:

The contested exercise here does not involve leading prayers with the team; the District disciplined Mr. Kennedy only for his decision to persist in praying quietly without his students after three games in October 2015….

 

Prohibiting a religious practice was thus the District’s unquestioned “object”….

 

A government entity’s concerns about phantom constitutional violations do not justify actual violations of an individuals’ Frist Amendment rights. [Emphasis added.]

Tim Greenwood of Tim Greenwood Ministries provided one of the clearest definitions of the Founders’ original intent on the matter more than 10 years ago:

The “wall” was understood as one-directional; its purpose was to protect the church from the state.

 

The world was not to corrupt the church; yet the church was free to teach the people Biblical values [without interference].

The Pilgrims left England over exactly that type of interference. Wrote Greenwood:

The American people knew what would happen if the State established the Church like in England. Even though it was not recent history to them, they knew that England went so far as forbidding worship in private homes and sponsoring all church activities and keeping people under strict dictates.

 

They were forced to go to the state established church and do things that were contrary to their conscience. No other churches were allowed, and mandatory attendance of the established church was compelled under the Conventicle Act of 1665.

 

Failure to comply would result in imprisonment and torture.

 

The people did not want freedom FROM religion, but freedom OF religion.

Coach Kennedy’s restoration to his position at Bremerton is a small victory in the larger war against religion being waged secular and anti-Christian forces in America, using the myth of separation as justification.

Student Sues Marxist University Profs Over Violation of Her Free-speech Rights

Thursday, 27 October 2022 13:42
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmeerican.com on Thursday, October 27, 2022:  

Maggie DeJong isn’t unique among Christians being persecuted on college campuses across the land. But her case — DeJong v. Pembrook — is unique in the college’s method to quash her First Amendment-protected right to speak her mind about her faith: a no contact order.

The professors in the Art Therapy Program at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) issued a “no contact” order — virtually a restraining order — against DeJong last February, demanding that she no longer have any interaction, direct or indirect, with three of the students in her tiny class.

“That’s what this case is about: the unconstitutional censorious actions of officials at … SIUE,” wrote her attorney from Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) in its opening remarks in DeJong’s lawsuit against the university.

The order from the school neatly ignored DeJong’s First Amendment-protected rights by simply ordering her to stay away from those three students: no prior hearings, no charges that DeJong had somehow violated school policies or rules in her interactions with them. Instead, it was a demand from on high:

This Order is not an indication of responsibility for a violation of University policy; rather it is intended to prevent interactions [between DeJong and those three offended students] that could be perceived by either party as unwelcome, retaliatory, intimidating, or harassing.

When DeJong learned of the restraining order that had been issued against her, she protested to one of her professors. The conversation revealed the pro-communist, Marxist indoctrination camp that SIEU has become:

DeJong: I feel this push [from the program] to not hold to my worldview. But it feels like you are coming from a very distinct worldview as well.

 

So, if [you’re] really accepting this postmodern approach — like everybody has “their truth” — then why am I not allowed to align with my truth?

 

Professor George: It’s actually a James Baldwin quote that’s coming to mind to explain it: “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.”

 

DeJong: But then, who determines? Because that’s a very dangerous thing, too. It’s very concerning [over] who determines who silences whom.

The above-quoted James Baldwin was so close to the communists who had infiltrated the American Civil Rights movement in the 1960s that the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) was still celebrating him years after his death.

The ADF attorneys made much of the fact that DeJong’s disagreements were in love, not enmity. At the end of more than 40 text messages exchanged between DeJong and one of the students who complained to the school, DeJong wrote this:

DeJong: I wanted to reiterate to you today how much I value you.

 

Even though we don’t agree. I see a beautiful heart and compassion for children in you. A strong warrior. And honestly a hilarious personality that I think is so necessary when we find ourselves taking ourselves to[o] seriously in our program.

 

I just can’t express enough the goodness you bring and I didn’t want that to get washed out with our disagreement last night.

 

What is more important that you know this, than anything else: sorry if this follow up is annoying. But I am okay risking being annoying if it means I can express this to you. Have a beautiful Saturday.

 

[flower emoji]

 

Student 3: I know. Last night is not how I wanted that conversation to go. I value you too.

Five days after DeJong’s attorneys sent a letter to SIUE warning the school that it was violating free-speech rights, the school rescinded the noxious no contact order.

Following graduation, and further consultation with ADF, DeJong filed suit over the matter, asking for punitive damages and a formal judgment that the school violated her First Amendment-guaranteed rights, along with attorneys’ fees.

When asked why, ADF attorney Gregg Walters noted:

Maggie has always respectfully shared her religious or political views, which every student is entitled to do under the First Amendment. It is a sad day for civil dialogue and freedom of speech when universities can issue gag orders like those issued against Maggie for nothing more than expressing her beliefs — beliefs held by millions of Americans….

 

[DeJong] asked the university to change their unconstitutional policies, and the university hasn’t done that. So, she’s not the last student that will be impacted by these policies that censor student speech….

 

[One of the goals of the lawsuit is] to challenge these policies and ensure that students are able to speak freely on campus about their beliefs.

That case — DeJong v. Pembrook — is pending. The New American will watch for developments and keep readers informed of any outcome.

Marjorie Taylor Greene and Other House Members Demand FBI and DOJ Remove Records of Americans Coerced Into Waiving Their Second Amendment Rights

Wednesday, 26 October 2022 15:24
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, October 26, 2022:  

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and 14 other House members sent a letter to the FBI and DOJ on Monday demanding that they remove any and all traces of a spurious form the agencies used to intimidate and coerce law-abiding Americans to give up forever their right to own a firearm.

The “unnumbered” form (all legal, official government documents must be “numbered” so that they can be accessed easily) with the chilling title “NICS Indices Self-Submission Form” was signed by an unknown number of American citizens, usually during home visits by FBI agents.

The egregious infringement of Second Amendment rights came to light back in 2019, thanks to efforts by Gun Owners of America (GOA). When pressed by the GOA to answer its demands that it cease use of the illegal form and confirm that it was no longer being used to intimidate Americans, the FBI and DOJ ignored the group.

Then the GOA filed a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) demand to force the agencies to respond.

Oh, said the agencies, this test of Americans’ gullibility happened back in 2017, and ended in 2019 — nothing to worry about. Just move along.

First, the form. The unnumbered form demands:

Please clearly print your full legal name on the line immediately below:

 

I, [print your name here], voluntarily request permanent entry into the NICS Indices of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

 

I UNDERSTAND THAT COMPLETION & SUBMISSION OF THIS FORM WILL RESULT IN DENIAL OF MY RIGHT TO PURCHASE, TO POSSESS, AND TO USE ANY FIREARM.

 

In addition, I understand that once I am in the NICS Indices, I may not be permitted to withdraw my name or information from the NICS Indices….

 

I have a mental-health condition that may cause me to: (check all that apply):

 

_____ Be a danger to myself or others

 

_____ Lack mental capacity adequately to contract or manage the details of my life

And then, in an Orwellian twist, the form demands that a physician or mental-health professional attest to the citizen’s mental capacity to sign the form!

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) called such a demand “ironic”:

There is a certain irony to saying to someone: you have to be mentally competent to sign this statement that says you’re not mentally competent to have a gun!

In its follow-up letter last month, the GOA stated in no uncertain terms that what the FBI/DOJ was pulling was illegal:

The FBI has no statutory authority to create or to use such a form….

 

Yet the FBI has been using the signing of its form as the sole basis to deprive Americans of their constitutional rights….

 

The FBI has yet to inform Gun Owners of America of this form’s discontinuance, or of any corrective actions taken to rectify the situation or to restore the rights of those affected.

When there was still no response from either the FBI or the DOJ, firebrand conservative Marjorie Taylor Greene rounded up 14 of her supporters to launch another demand that the rogue agencies come to heel.

She wrote:

Congress has been made aware of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) illegal use of a form entitled the “NICS Indices Self-Submission Form.”

 

This form was created by FBI personnel and used by FBI agents to coerce and intimidate Americans who were not convicted of any crime into signing away their right to obtain a firearm, a right protected by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution….

 

We demand immediate confirmation that:

 

(i) The Department of Justice has identified and taken action to “remove” offending records from any “database” relating to those who have signed the rogue FBI form;

 

(ii) The FBI (under the authority of the Attorney General) took action to “remove” the offending records from the NICS system; and

 

(iii) The FBI has halted its use of the illegal and unconstitutional NICS Indices Self-Submission Form.

The “rogue” form smells to high Heaven. It is unnumbered. It was used to intimidate, pressure, and coerce naïve Americans to sign it. There is no way that a citizen, even under pressure, can “sign away” his intrinsic, God-given rights. They may be stolen from him, but he cannot arbitrarily, unilaterally give them up.

That’s the rub: If Americans are unfamiliar with their rights, then they go away, especially under pressure from agents with guns and badges standing over them in their homes.

That may be the “test” the form was developed to conduct.

New York Judge Strikes Down Rule Allowing “No Excuse” Absentee Balloting

Tuesday, 25 October 2022 17:16
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, October 25, 2022:  

Democrats’ ever-growing lust for power in New York State was considerably dampened last Friday by a ruling by a state supreme court judge declaring its rule allowing absentee voting for any reason unconstitutional.

In other words, in one of the most liberal (i.e., power hungry) states in the union, the state’s constitution still reigns supreme.

The New York State Constitution guarantees every citizen the right to vote. It has been amended so that voters unable “because of illness or physical disability” to vote in person may request and receive a mail-in ballot.

But the heavily Democrat-laden state legislature (Democrats control 106 of the 150 Assembly seats and 43 of the 63 Senate seats) decided to “clarify” the meaning of “illness” so that it would include anyone suffering from, or who might possibly think they might be suffering from, Covid-19.

As Supreme Court Justice Dianne Freestone wrote:

“Because of illness” shall be expanded to include, but not be limited to, “instances where a voter is unable to appear personally at the polling place of the election district in which they are a qualified voter because there is a risk of contracting or spreading a disease that may cause illness to the voter or to other members of the public.”

This proviso, which became effective in August 2020, was set to expire on January 1, 2022. But the power-grabbing ruse worked so well that the Democrat-controlled legislature decided to extend the period for the full year 2022.

Judge Freestone also noted that when voters had an opportunity actually to amend the constitution directly to reflect what the Democratic legislature wanted, it was soundly defeated. Wrote Freestone, “New York voters overwhelmingly rejected this broad-sweeping ballot proposal that would have amended the [state’s] Constitution to authorize all voters to vote absentee in any election for any reason.”

But that didn’t deter the Democrats. This little ruse all but guaranteed that Democrats would rule in perpetuity in The Empire State.

Judge Freestone saw through the ruse and declared the legislature’s efforts to expand mail-in balloting unconstitutional because they “conflict with and violate various provisions of the Election Law and the New York State Constitution [and] interfere with various constitutionally-protected rights of citizens.”

She wasn’t done. She called out the defendants’ attempts to justify the extension using “alarmist” statistics:

Indeed, the Respondents’ [the defendants’] respective papers are replete with alarmist statistics of rising incidences of COVID-19 infections and the collective phantom menaces of Monkey Pox and Polio looming.

 

The Respondents suggest throughout their respective papers and arguments that this consternation about constitutionality is the Shakespearean “much ado about nothing”.… This Court is skeptical of such a pollyannish notion.

She added that if the overreach was not nipped in the bud now, then the expiration date will continue to be renewed on into infinity:

There is nothing before this Court to suggest that the continued overreach of the Legislature into the purview of the New York State Constitution shall sunset or that this authority once taken shall be so returned.

 

Despite the express will of the People against universal absentee voting … the Legislature appears poised to continue the expanded absentee voting provisions … into an Orwellian perpetual state of health emergency … cloaked in the veneer of “voter enfranchisement.”

Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Suspended Indefinitely for Outrageous Behavior

Monday, 24 October 2022 13:06
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, October 24, 2022:  

After reviewing Cleveland, Ohio’s three-member panel of the Board of Professional Conduct’s report on municipal judge Pinkey Suzanne Carr’s outrageous conduct in her courtroom over the last two years — including bribery, demanding kickbacks, and issuing illegal arrest warrants — Ohio’s Supreme Court suspended her immediately and indefinitely.

The state’s highest court even declared that the 57 letters she submitted in her defense from people attesting to her good character were, in fact, obtained under false pretenses.

Wrote the court:

And while we acknowledge that Carr submitted letters from 57 people attesting to her good character and reputation, those letters were procured with a false narrative in which Carr characterized her blatant and intentional misconduct as a series of inadvertent mistakes.

 

The remaining mitigating factors are simply insufficient to overcome the sheer volume of Carr’s misconduct, including her disregard for the rule of law, and the harm that her misconduct caused to the litigants in her courtroom and the honor and dignity of the judiciary.

 

Carr’s unprecedented misconduct involved more than 100 stipulated incidents that occurred over a period of approximately two years and encompassed repeated acts of dishonesty; the blatant and systematic disregard of due process, the law, court orders, and local rules; the disrespectful treatment of court staff and litigants; and the abuse of capias warrants and the court’s contempt power.

 

That misconduct warrants an indefinite suspension from the practice of law.

The “stipulated incidents” alluded to fell into five general categories:

  1. Issuing false arrest warrants and making false statements;
  2. Engaging in improper plea bargaining and rendering arbitrary rulings;
  3. Turning her courtroom into a “debtors’ prison” by issuing arrest warrants in order to compel the payment of fines;
  4. Exhibiting outrageous behavior in her court room; and
  5. Failing to recuse herself from cases in which she had an interest.

Although the panel’s report ran 126 pages reviewing more than 583 “stipulations of fact and misconduct” by Carr, the high court was able to reduce its decision to just 37 pages. Two especially egregious examples will suffice here:

In March 2020, Judge Michelle Earley, the administrative and presiding judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court, issued an administrative order suspending most courthouse activity in an effort to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

 

Judge Earley ordered that all civil and criminal cases set for hearing between March 16 and April 3, 2020, be rescheduled for three weeks after the originally scheduled date. The order directed the clerk of courts to issue summonses to all of the affected criminal defendants, compelling them to appear on the newly scheduled date, and similarly directed that all parties to the affected civil cases be notified of the postponement.

 

Despite Judge Earley’s order, Carr did not reschedule cases set on her docket.

 

On Monday, March 16, she presided over her regular docket—including eight criminal cases in which the defendants had not been jailed. In each of those cases, Carr issued capias [arrest] warrants for the defendants who did not appear  in court.

 

Her verbal statements on the record and her journal entries noted the defendants’ failure to appear [and] she issued capias warrants for their arrest and set bonds ranging from $2,500 to $10,000.

 

In contrast, Carr waived fines and court costs for defendants who were “brave enough” to appear in court despite the potential for exposure to COVID-19.

The other incident reveals the tone and tenor of the personal language Judge Carr used in her court. When her outrageous behavior was questioned and then reined in by the disciplinary board, she responded (from her court’s record):

You notice I’m no longer the bill collector for the Clerk’s Office. I’m not your b-i-t-c-h. See, you get it? Collect your own money. There you go, player, mm-hmm. Collect your own money, player, mm-hmm. I’m not your b-i-t-c-h. Run tell that, mm-hmm. Mm- hmm. How you like them apples? Suckas.

One has to ask several questions:

1. Where was that so-called “Board of Professional Conduct” all the years that Carr occupied her “debtors’ prison”? Her term began in January 2012, a decade ago.

2. How many other judges in Ohio, or elsewhere for that matter, are allowed to conduct their courtrooms in similar manners without being sanctioned?

3. If courtrooms are allowed to be infested with similar scandalous and corrupt justices and judges across the land, how long will citizens continue to treat them and their rulings and decisions as legitimate?

Latest America’s Values Survey: Good News and Bad News

Friday, 21 October 2022 14:35
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, October 21, 2022:  

The good news from the latest America’s Values Study undertaken by the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University is that nearly all of the nearly 4,000 citizens polled not only think that inflation is going to influence greatly how they vote on November 8, but that their vote will likely reflect their belief that the Democrats are primarily responsible for it.

The bad news is that more and more of those 4,000 are looking to government and not to God for help.

Six in ten of those polled say that inflation, the rising cost of living, food prices and shortages, and oil and gasoline prices will influence how they vote in the midterm elections by “a lot.”

George Barna, the lead pollster, wrote:

Many of the most influential issues in this election are those that highlight publicly perceived failures by the Democrats. The highest-impact issues — specifically, inflation, the cost of food and related shortages, and policies and prices related to gas and oil — all highlight turns for the worse over the past two years, when Democrats have held the White House and both chambers of Congress.

 

If historical patterns hold true, voters will hold Democrats responsible for those failures. Some four out of five incumbents in the U.S. House and Senate are typically re-elected.

 

However, there may yet be substantial change in the two federal legislative bodies given the confluence of anger with the condition of America, the historical tendency to replace the prevailing party in mid-term elections, the unusually large number of incumbents not seeking re-election, and the fact that the issues of greatest importance to voters underscore public dissatisfaction with Democrat rule.

But when it comes to issues like morality, the right to life, and the threats to religious liberty by the government, those polled scarcely mentioned them at all. As Barna noted,

Even among the most deeply religious Americans, regardless of their faith of choice, a greater emphasis was placed upon the personal impact of governance choices and public policies. That focus on self, to the exclusion of the community, is a reflection of their syncretistic worldview and the decline of spiritual commitment in America.

Barna holds that that “syncretistic” view held by most Americans — including those who call themselves Christians — is made up from a vast buffet-like array of religious positions rather than the singular Christian faith that informed the Founders of the nation.

Len Munsil, president of Arizona Christian University, noted the resultant decline in morality exposed by the survey:

Religious segments such as born-again Christians and people who regularly attend evangelical churches did not include issues such as abortion, national morals and values, [or] religious freedom in their top-five lists [of influences].

Lindsey Jensen, a brand ambassador for Turning Point USA, noted the trend away from traditional Christianity two years ago:

Without the belief in God or the natural rights given to us by God, the Constitution wouldn’t exist nor could it be upheld….

 

As Christianity declines, we see that more people in our nation look favorably on the idea of more government involvement. Instead of turning to God or the church, they want the government to solve their problems.

She notes the primary problem — people who call themselves Christians don’t act like it:

Our nation is feeling the repercussions of Christians who “check the box” and attend church but don’t actually want the Word of God to inform their daily life and change the way they live.

 

Our nation needs the kind of people that reflect Christ in all they do.

This is precisely the point made by America’s 30th president, Calvin Coolidge:

The foundations of our society and our government rest so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them if faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country.

The good news is that there is likely to be substantial change in Washington following the midterm elections. The bad news is that the necessary cultural shift away from secularism and the “weak Gospel” toward rebuilding a culture based upon historical Biblical Christianity, self-reliance, and individual responsibility remains elusive.

Another Court Fails to Abolish the Odious and Unconstitutional Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Friday, 21 October 2022 14:33
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, October 21, 2022:  

When Freddy Eynsford-Hill attempted to court Eliza Doolittle (played by Julie Andrews) in the play My Fair Lady, she expressed her exasperation:

Words! Words! I’m so sick of words!

 

I get words all day through;

 

First from him, now from you! Is that all you blighters can do?

One reading through the latest court decision on whether Elizabeth Warren’s illegitimate brainchild, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), is unconstitutional or not, and one gets sick of the words: It’s unconstitutional, all right, but we’re just going to clip its wings and not abolish the monstrosity altogether.

Three Federalist Society-approved, Trump-appointed, so-called conservative judges (Cory T. Wilson, Don R. Willett, and Kurt Engelhardt) ruled that the CFPB is unconstitutional, but kept it in place anyway.

They used smooth-sounding words, quoting from The Federalist, No. 48:

An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced . . . that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.

But that is exactly what the CFPB is: deliberately and intentionally designed by an enemy of the Constitution (Sen. Elizabeth Warren, with The New American’s Freedom Index rating of just 15 out of 100, lower even than that of another enemy, Nancy Pelosi, with 23) to protect the runaway and rogue agency from any constraints whatsoever and thus allow it to expand its power over the financial sector of the nation without limit.

Two financial service groups, the Community Financial Services Association of America and the Consumer Service Alliance of Texas, brought four charges against the rogue agency:

(1) the [2017 Payday Lending Rule’s] promulgation violated the APA [i.e., exceeded its authority];

 

(2) the rule was promulgated by a Director [who is] unconstitutionally insulated from presidential removal;

 

(3) the Bureau’s rulemaking authority violates the nondelegation [of powers] doctrine; and

 

(4) the Bureau’s funding mechanism violates the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution.

Wrote Judge Wilson, for the three’s unanimous decision:

We agree that, for the most part, the Plaintiffs’ claims miss their mark.

 

But one arrow has found its target: Congress’s decision to abdicate its appropriations power under the Constitution, i.e., to cede its power of the purse to the Bureau, violates the Constitution’s structural separation of powers.

 

We thus reverse the judgment of the district court, render judgment in favor of the Plaintiffs, and vacate the Bureau’s 2017 Payday Lending Rule.

This leaves in place the rogue agency, created by Congress in 2010, and its license to pursue hapless financial institutions that happen to stumble over the agency’s ever-changing and ever-expanding power to make the rules, interpret the rules, and then enforce the rules — precisely what the Founders intended to prohibit.

The three blind and weak-kneed mice admit the agency is unconstitutional. On page 32, deep into its 39-page screed, Wilson admits that their decision will allow the agency to act “as a mini legislature, prosecutor, and court, responsible for creating substantive rules for a wide swath of industries, prosecuting violations, and levying knee-buckling penalties against private citizens.”

They add that

An expansive executive agency insulated (no, double-insulated) from Congress’s purse strings, expressly exempt from budgetary review, and headed by a single Director removable at the President’s pleasure is the epitome of the unification of the purse and the sword in the executive — an abomination the Framers warned “would destroy that division of powers on which political liberty is founded.” [A quote from The Works of Alexander Hamilton]

And so, through temerity or threats or unknown pressure from unknown places, the three “constitutional” “conservative” judges abdicated their responsibility to protect the citizenry from such combinations and threats to their liberties.

Polls, History, Big-name Democrats, and the Media All Predict a Red Wave in November

Thursday, 20 October 2022 16:09
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, October 20, 2022: 

When Tim Swarens, the deputy opinion editor for USA Today, gives it up and says “Democrats are failing across the board. All signs point to a red wave on Election Day,” it’s time to examine the evidence.

He cites seven reasons behind the wave expected less than three weeks from now:

  • History: the party in power loses ground in the midterms
  • The current resident of the White House is notoriously unpopular
  • Inflation is high and likely to remain so
  • Rising interest rates are killing the housing market and will likely cause a recession
  • Crime is increasing, especially in Democrat-controlled cities
  • Economic issues are more important to voters than abortion
  • Pollsters show Republicans leading in most key races, and they may in fact be undercounting Republican voters

There are numerous other indicators, all of which signal the coming red wave. For instance, big-name Democrats are coming to the rescue of Democratic contenders. Former President Obama is conducting a whirlwind tour of Nevada, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin in an attempt to shore up Democrats who are fighting the wave.

Socialist Bernie Sanders, who just turned 81, has been called on to perform resuscitation in Oregon, California, Nevada, Texas, Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. His plan is to make 19 stops in the next two weeks, promoting the socialism that is bringing America to its knees.

Understandably, some of those Democratic candidates aren’t appreciative. Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way, a progressive leftist group, noted that “the Mandela Barnes [who is running against Republican Senate incumbent Ron Johnson in Wisconsin] campaign is planning to bring in Sen. Bernie Sanders. I desperately want Barnes to win, so I ask again of his campaign: Why would you do this? Why????”

Online betting site PredictIt shows that bettors (real people with real money making real financial bets) are moving away from Democrats and toward Republicans running for the U.S. Senate. PredictIt uses a “continuous double auction” to sell shares for each race. For every person who makes a bet on one side, there must be a taker of that bet on the other side.

In the race “Which party will control the Senate after 2022 election?,” Republicans are buying shares at $.62 while Democrats are buying the other side of the bet at just $.41.

For the House, the race isn’t even close: Republicans are buying the meme that their party will control the House after the midterms, paying $.86 compared to Democrats taking the other side, who are paying just $.17 per share.

Traditional pollster Trafalgar Group found that, in a generic race for Congress, Republicans lead Democrats by more than five percentage points, while Rasmussen shows a seven-point advantage for Republicans.

Poll aggregator RealClearPolitics predicts that Republicans are set to gain at least two seats in the U.S. Senate, two governorships will flip Republican, and, at present, Republicans will gain at least 16 seats in the House, with 38 seats still undecided.

The real question remains, though: What will those Republicans do after their coming takeover? Will they hew to their oaths of office? Or will they, as Salon writer Heather Digby “Digs” Parton put it, squander their advantage by doing “almost nothing” except “investigate” and “impeach”?

Will they follow the lead of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert (who enjoy The New American’s Freedom Index ratings of 97 and 93, respectively), or will they continue to follow the lead of the likes of Kevin McCarthy, who sports a paltry FI rating of just 60 out of 100 in his voting following the Constitution?

DOJ Wants Bannon Jailed for 6 Months for Refusing Jan. 6 Committee

Wednesday, 19 October 2022 14:20
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, October 19, 2022:

The kept mainstream media rejoiced at the news that the Department of Justice, treating the January 6 “star chamber” investigations as legitimate, issued a memo on Monday demanding that former Trump advisor Steve Bannon be given the maximum sentence for refusing to submit to that committee’s demands.

“Star chamber” is a term used for any court proceeding that is grossly unfair or that is used to persecute an individual.

From the very beginning, the House’s “Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol” violated House rules and everything the committee says, seeks, or demands, from that moment on, is illegitimate.

The major news outlets, including The Washington Post, ABC, NBC, and even the left-wing U.K. Independent, jumped all over the memorandum, quoting various pieces from it as they continued their efforts to sully the reputation and credibility of the man who ran Donald Trump’s successful presidential campaign in 2016, and then served as his chief strategist and senior counselor in the early months of his administration.

Efforts to obtain a copy of the 24-page memorandum from the Justice Department failed, but the mainstream media was happy to quote at length all the reasons they could conjure to support the DOJ’s demand that Bannon suffer the maximum penalty for his two convictions for misdemeanors: failing to show up at the committee’s command, and failure provide it with documentation that it demanded.

Each misdemeanor would be punishable by between 30 days and one year in jail, plus fines. The DOJ wants Bannon behind bars for six months, and for him to pay a $200,000 fine.

From the elusive partisan memo, as reported by The Washington Post:

“The rioters who overran the Capitol on January 6 did not just attack a building — they assaulted the rule of law upon which this country was built and through which it endures. By flouting the Select Committee’s subpoena and its authority, the Defendant exacerbated that assault,” U.S. prosecutors J.P. Cooney and Amanda R. Vaughn wrote in a 24-page sentencing request. “Such behavior cannot be tolerated, lest it become commonplace and accepted, and the important work of congressional committees like the Select Committee rendered impossible.”

“Cannot be tolerated” is the theme reiterated by other members of the press. Here is ABC News:

“From the moment that the Defendant, Stephen K. Bannon, accepted service of a subpoena from the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, he has pursued a bad-faith strategy of defiance and contempt,” prosecutors said Monday. “The Committee sought documents and testimony from the Defendant relevant to a matter of national importance: the circumstances that led to a violent attack on the Capitol and disruption of the peaceful transfer of power. In response, the Defendant flouted the Committee’s authority and ignored the subpoena’s demands.”

The statement continued, “For his sustained, bad-faith contempt of Congress, the Defendant should be sentenced to six months’ imprisonment — the top end of the Sentencing Guidelines’ range — and fined $200,000 — based on his insistence on paying the maximum fine rather than cooperate with the Probation Office’s routine pre-sentencing financial investigation.”

ABC News added:

“From the time he was initially subpoenaed, the Defendant has shown that his true reasons for total noncompliance have nothing to do with his purported respect for the Constitution, the rule of law, or executive privilege, and everything to do with his personal disdain for the members of Congress sitting on the Committee and their effort to investigate the attack on our country’s peaceful transfer of power,” they say. “[Bannon’s] abject refusal to heed the Committee’s subpoena, under the circumstances with which this country is confronted, could not be more serious.”

From the U.K. Independent one learns that the elusive memo included this:

“Through his public platforms, the Defendant has used hyperbolic and sometimes violent rhetoric to disparage the Committee’s investigation, personally attack the Committee’s members, and ridicule the criminal justice system,” prosecutors wrote, adding that Mr. Bannon’s numerous public utterances show his actions were “aimed at undermining the Committee’s efforts to investigate an historic attack on government.”

 

“Rather than respect the criminal justice process and participate meaningfully and seriously in the courtroom defense of his case, for the Defendant, ‘going on offense’ meant resorting to name calling, mimicry, and menacing rhetoric aimed at the Committee’s investigation and its membership,” they said.

Added The Independent:

“The Defendant’s abject refusal to heed the Committee’s subpoena, under the circumstances with which this country is confronted, could not be more serious,” they said….

 

“The Defendant is entitled to his views and to express them vociferously; there is nothing criminal about the Defendant’s opinions or his expression of those opinions. But this Court may — and should — consider the Defendant’s out-of-court statements to ascertain his motive, evaluate his intent, and measure the degree of his contempt, including appraising his overall disdain and disrespect for the rule of law and the investigative and criminal justice processes that are crucial to maintaining a peaceful, lawful, and orderly society,” they said.

Bannon has, from the very beginning, had nothing but contempt for the January 6 “star chamber” investigation. It has had nothing to do with any crime that Bannon committed. It had everything to do with his defiance, and his close relationship to the hated 45th president of the United States — one who was legitimately elected, by the way — who has exposed the Deep State’s control over the media, among other heinous political crimes.

Bannon is not going away quietly. As he was leaving the courtroom in July after being found guilty, Bannon said:

I only have one disappointment, and that is the gutless members of that show-trial committee, that [Jan. 6] committee, didn’t have the guts to come down here and testify.

 

We may have lost a battle here today, but we’re not going to lose this war. [The jury] came to their conclusion about what was put on in the in that courtroom. But listen, in the closing argument, the prosecutor missed one very important phrase, right? I stand with Trump and the Constitution, and I will never back off that, ever.

Bannon’s attorney David Schoen said then that Bannon’s defense team will appeal the case, saying, “This is just Round One.”

When history is accurately written, the January 6 committee will be relegated to a mere footnote in history while Bannon will be celebrated as a hero standing up to unconstitutional weaponization of an illegal committee acting in concert with a corrupt and sold-out Department of Justice.

Many of the articles on Light from the Right first appeared on either The New American or the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor.
Copyright © 2021 Bob Adelmann