Conservative Chronicle for May 11 2016 by Mid-America Publishing Corporation

At Issue this week... May 11, 2016 2016 Election Lambro (21) Will (8) America Prager (27) Bathroom Debate Murchison (26) Business Investment Kudlow (12) Christians Jeffrey (26) Thomas (25) Clinton, Hillary Massie (6) College Costs Saunders (12) Common Sense Williams (4) Dear Mark Levy (19) Economy Lambro (13) Etiquette Hollis (15) Felon Voting Rights Schlafly (4) Fiorina & Clinton Morris (5) Fourth Amendment Napolitano (28) Gender Ideology Farah (2) GOP Race Barone (20) Coulter (7) Limbaugh (18) Saunders (18) Government Waste de Rugy (14) Greenberg (25) Malkin (11) Islamist Terrorists Jeffrey (24) Leslie’s Trivia Bits Elman (14) Media Bias Bozell (22, 23) Elder (22) Shapiro (23) National Interests Bay (24) Obama Presidency Tyrrell (3) Political Party Rules Barone (1) Puerto Rico Moore (29) Will (30) Random Thoughts Sowell (30) Republicans Charen (16) Harsanyi (17) Thomas (17) Russia Buchanan (31) Trump, Donald Buchanan (9) Chavez (10) Cushman (7) Erickson (10) Krauthammer (3) Lowry (8, 20 ) McCaughey (5) Saunders (29)

Political Party Rules by Michael Barone

GOP should have adopted Democrats’ rules

he unexpected successes, forecast by almost no one 12 months ago, of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in winning 40 percent and 42 percent in Republican and Democratic primaries and caucuses is widely taken as evidence of raging discontent among American voters. There’s something to that. But Trump’s better-than-even chance of winning the Republican nomination and Sanders’ success in pushing Hillary Clinton to the left owe something to another factor: Each party’s nominating process has proven better suited this year to the other party. OVER THE 44 years since primaries started dominating the nominating process, both parties have adopted rules that suited their separate and different historical characters. They have often served their intended purposes. But not this year. The Republican Party, since its foundation in 1854, has been dominated by a core of people who are considered typical Americans — white Northern Protestants in the 19th century, white married people today — but who are never by themselves a majority of the nation. Republicans have to build on that minority to win and often have. The Democratic Party, since its first national convention in 1832, has been a coalition of disparate groups — white Southerners and Catholic immigrants in the 19th century, gentry liberals and black churchgoers today — with often conflicting goals. But when the Democratic coalition holds together it produces impressive majorities. The parties’ nominating rules reflect these differences. Republicans have tended to favor winner-take-all delegate allocation, in the belief that candidates who win a plurality will be acceptable to, if not the first choice of, the party’s core. Thus after the Super Tuesday primaries in 2008, John McCain led Mitt Romney in popular votes by only 39 to 32 percent. But winner-take-all rules, especially in California, where McCain carried 48 of 53 congressional districts, gave McCain such a big delegate lead that Romney withdrew two days later. Democrats, needing to unite disparate constituencies, actually required a two-thirds supermajority for the nomination from 1836 to 1932. Since 1972 they have tended to allocate delegates by proportional representation, to give each large constituency something like a veto on the nomination.

This has blocked the nomination of disruptive candidates who had large blocs of support but were unacceptable to the majority, such as George Wallace and Jesse Jackson. Democrats’ granting votes to superdelegates operates similarly. But proportional representation hasn’t served Democrats well in 2016. As Daniel Nichanian at FiveThirtyEight points out, under Republican Party rules Hillary Clinton would now have nearly a 1,000-delegate lead over Bernie Sanders.

Michael

EXIT POLLS indicate that Clinton is widely acceptable to Democratic voters. But Sanders’ persistent challenge has led her to take leftist stands that may be difficult to defend in the fall or to sustain in governing. As for Republicans, Donald Trump is the kind of disruptive candidate more common among Democrats — deeply unacceptable to many party voters and officeholders. But Republican rules have enabled him to amass a big delegate lead by winning pluralities of the vote in multi-candidate fields. Under Democratic proportional representation rules, according to the estimate of FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver, Trump would have won nearly 100 fewer delegates in contests up to March 6.

And that was before the first winner-takeall primaries March 15. By my back-ofthe-envelope estimate, proportional representation rules (allocating delegates only to candidates meeting a 20 percent threshold) would have cost Trump a little more than 100 delegates net in post-March 6 contests. So under Democratic rules, instead of being about 240 delegates short of the 1,237 needed for the nomination as he is now, Trump would be about 440 delegates short. In that scenario he would have to win more than 60 percent of remaining delegates, almost surely impossible for a candidate who has won just 40 percent so far. It’s the same position Bernie Sanders finds himself in. Now the Republican Party faces the possibility of defections from Trump supporters if he isn’t nominated and from Trump opponents and general election voters if he is. EITHER WAY the losing side will claim the rules are unfair. Rational arguments can be made for the fairness of both parties’ rules, or for changing them. The parties’ past tinkering has been aimed at repairing damage in previous contests. The unintended result is that both parties are saddled with rules ill-suited to their contests this year, with the potential to damage their nominees in November. May 3, 2016

Conservative Chronicle

GENDER IDEOLOGY: May 4, 2016

Duh! You think surgery, drugs should be last resort?

n normal times, say, in the midst of the 1960s sexual revolution or the 1990s, when Congress was unanimously proclaiming marriage was an institution between men and women, a story like this wouldn’t be cause of shock. But, this is 2016 — a time of opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms for children, LGBT education for kindergarteners, super-celeb Caitlyn Jenner.

HERE IT is: The American College of Pediatricians urges “educators and legislators to reject all policies that condition children to accept as normal a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex. Facts — not ideology — determine reality.” Wow! That’s radical. And it happened Feb. 2. Are these people in jail yet? I mean, isn’t this “hate speech” under the new rules? Do children’s doctors have special exemptions from the laws of political correctness? I’m astonished! And that’s the problem. What the ACP is saying is just common sense, a commodity in short order, especially among professional colleges. Who are these brave, brilliant doctors?

The statement was written by Dr. “derailed” by the experiences and inMichelle A. Cretella, president of the formation a child receives from infancy American College of Pediatricians; Dr. forward. Further, no matter what sex a Quentin Van Meter, vice president of person imagines themselves to be, they the American College of Pediatricians remain either a biological male or a bioand a pediatric endocrinologist; and Dr. logical female. Paul McHugh, university distinguished Thirdly: “A person’s belief that he or service professor of psychiatry at Johns she is something they are not is, at best, Hopkins Medical School and the former a sign of confused thinking” or the child psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins could suffer from gender dysphoria — Hospital. “an objective psychological problem ... It cites eight reasons why “gender that lies in the mind not the body, ideology” instead of treatment based and it should be treated as on biological facts such.” is harmful to chilFourth: “Puberty dren. is not a disease, and “Human sexualpuberty-blocking ity is an objective hormones can be (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate biological binary dangerous” by intrait: ‘XY’ and ‘XX’ are genetic mark- hibiting growth and fertility, according ers of health — not genetic markers of to the position statement. a disorder,” with the purpose of male According to the Diagnostic and Staand female being “the reproduction tistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the and flourishing of our species.” It notes statement says, “as many as 98 percent “exceedingly rare exceptions of sexual of gender confused boys and 88 percent differentiation,” which are disorders but of gender confused girls eventually acdo not represent a “third sex.” cept their biological sex after naturally Secondly, “No one is born with a passing through puberty.” gender. Everyone is born with a biological sex. Gender (an awareness and AND, OF COURSE, wouldn’t that sense of oneself as male or female) is a be troubling to the LGBT cartel. sociological and psychological concept; “Children who use puberty blocknot an objective biological one.” ers to impersonate the opposite sex It went on to add that “self-aware- will require cross-sex hormones in late ness” develops over time and can be adolescence,” the statement points out.

Joseph

Farah

“Cross-sex hormones are associated with dangerous health risks including but not limited to high blood pressure, blood clots, stroke and cancer.” “Rates of suicide are 20 times greater among adults who use cross-sex hormones and undergo sex reassignment surgery, even in Sweden which is among the most LGBQT-affirming countries,” it continues. Lastly, it’s child abuse: “Endorsing gender discordance as normal via public education and legal policies will confuse children and parents, leading more children to present to ‘gender clinics’ where they will be given puberty-blocking drugs. This, in turn, virtually ensures that they will ‘choose’ a lifetime of carcinogenic and otherwise toxic cross-sex hormones, and likely consider unnecessary surgical mutilation of their healthy body parts as young adults.” The college, a nonprofit organization founded in 2002, states as its mission: “The Mission of the American College of Pediatricians is to enable all children to reach their optimal physical and emotional health and well-being. To this end, we recognize the basic fathermother family unit, within the context of marriage, to be the optimal setting for childhood development, but pledge our support to all children, regardless of their circumstances.” THANK GOODNESS the entire academy hasn’t yet been cowed by the radicals determined to conduct vicious social experimentation on our kids.

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May 11, 2016 DONALD TRUMP: April 29, 2016

The world according to Donald Trump

oreign policy does not determine American elections. Indeed, of all Western countries, we are the least interested in the subject. The reason is simple: We haven’t had to be. Our instinctive isolationism derives from our geographic exceptionalism. As Bismarck once explained (it is said), the United States is the most fortunate of all Great Powers, bordered on two sides by weak neighbors and on the other two by fish. TWO WORLD wars, nuclear missiles and international terrorism have disabused us of the illusion of safety-byisolation. You wouldn’t know it, though, from the Democratic presidential race where foreign policy has been treated as a nuisance, a distraction from such fundamental questions as whether $12 or $15 is the proper minimum wage. On the Republican side, however, foreign policy has been the subject of

furious debate. To which Donald Trump enter the Korean War for the sake of has contributed significantly, much of Koreans, but from the conviction that it off-the-cuff, contradictory and con- intervention was essential for American fused. Hence his foreign policy speech security. On the other hand, America First on Wednesday. It was meant to make him appear consistent, serious and pres- does have a history. In 1940, when Britain was fighting for its life and idential. Churchill was begHe did check ging for U.S. help, it off the required was the name of the box — delivering group most virua “major address” lently opposed to to a serious for(c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group U.S. intervention. eign policy outfit, It disbanded — tothe Center for the National Interest (once known as the tally discredited — four days after Pearl Nixon Center). As such, it fulfilled a po- Harbor. litical need. THE IRONY is that while President As did its major theme, announced right at the top: America First. Classi- Obama would never use the term, it cally populist and invariably popular, it is the underlying theme of his foreign is nonetheless quite fraught. On the one policy — which Trump constantly dehand, it can be meaningless — isn’t ev- nounces as a series of disasters. Obama, ery president trying to advance Ameri- like Trump, is animated by the view that can interests? Surely Truman didn’t we are overextended and overinvested

Charles

Krauthammer

OBAMA PRESIDENCY: April 28, 2016

Once again, Mr. President, you misspoke

resident Barack Obama participated in a press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron last Friday, during which he helped me decide whether or not the British should stay in the European Union. The vote is on June 23. That same day, our president penned a column in the Telegraph, a British publication similar to the Wall Street Journal. On both platforms, Obama argued that Britain should remain in the EU. UNTIL OBAMA marshaled his case, I was uncertain as to what our British allies should do. Now I know. After reading his column and listening to his speech, the answer became clear: Britain should opt out of the EU. Once again, Obama’s reasoning made the obvious choice clear. Once again, he was arrogantly wrong. Britain’s economy is sound. There is no reason for it to be dragged down by the troubled European economies. It is far more stout in its anti-terrorist policies than other countries on the continent. Its immigration policies have proven more civilized, and it actually has a natural barrier to Europe’s migrant crisis. It is called the English Channel. The channel is said to be even more formidable than Donald Trump’s proposed wall along our southern border. Before Europe’s migrant crisis becomes Britain’s migrant crisis, the British should kick the EU coil. The Brits are perfectly justified to ignore Obama’s bullying.

They should also see through his hypocrisy. After all, it is Obama that has led America in retreat. He has withdrawn our global influence. Why now should Britain follow his call? Be consistent, Mr. President. You want us out of the Middle East; you want us to be less dominant in Europe. Let Britain make up its own mind, and if the British people want to be less dominant in Europe, so be it. Welcome their defense of British sovereignty. The EU is hobbling a great nation with its morass of regulations and infringements on British sovereignty. Let Britain be Britain. After all, America will soon be free of you.

R. Emmett

YOU SPOKE on Friday of America’s “special relationship” with Britain. It is one of the few times you have mentioned that historic relationship. I think it is arguable that you are the most anti-British president in modern times. You, without any explanation, summarily removed the bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office shortly after your inauguration. If a Republican is your successor, I think it would be appropriate for him to return Churchill to his honored position. Without his leadership in World War II, we might all be speaking German.

At least Churchill was half-American. The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, made the point last week that your ancestry is “part-Kenyan,” and he speculated that your removal of Churchill might have revealed an “ancestral dislike” for Britain. Kenya was a British colony from 1920 until it gained its independence in 1963. Through this act, you opened yourself up to such speculation, and then you recklessly entered into a hotly debated British controversy. You might have anticipated Johnson’s rude hostility. Yet in your arrogance, you proceeded. Actually, ever since Obama removed Churchill’s bust from the Oval Office, advocates of this special relationship have been noting his apparent distancing of the U.S. from Britain. We have pondered his apparent disrelish for Britain and its imperial past. Years have gone by, and he has done nothing to quiet our suspicions. But then, out of the blue, he went to London last Friday to lecture the British on the need for their country to remain in the EU. He even threatened them with the warning that U.S.-UK trade deal is “not going to happen anytime soon.” IN SAYING this, Obama was again wrong. Look at the calendar. I say to my fellow English-speakers in the United Kingdom: You will not have long to wait long for a trade deal with the United States. It will come soon after Inauguration Day in Jan. 2017.

abroad. “The nation that I’m most interested in building is our own,” declared Obama in his December 2009 West Point address on Afghanistan. This is also the theme of Bernie Sanders. No great surprise. Left and right isolationism have found common cause since the 1930s. Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas often shared the platform with Charles Lindbergh at America First rallies. Both the left and right have a long history of advocating American retreat and retrenchment. The difference is that liberals want to come home because they think we are not good enough for the world. Conservatives want to wash their hands of the world because they think the world is not good enough for us. For Obama, we are morally unworthy to act as world hegemon. Our hands are not clean. He’s gone abroad confessing our various sins — everything from the Iranian coup of 1953 to our unkind treatment of Castro’s Cuba to the ultimate blot, Hiroshima, a penitential visit to which Obama is currently considering. Trump would be rightly appalled by such a self-indicting trip. His foreign policy stems from a proud nationalism that believes that these recalcitrant tribes and nations are unworthy of American expenditures of blood and treasure. This has been the underlying view of conservative isolationism from Lindbergh through Pat Buchanan through Rand Paul. It is not without its attractions. Trump’s version, however, is inconsistent and often contradictory. After all, he pledged to bring stability to the Middle East. How do you do that without presence, risk and expenditures (financial and military)? He attacked Obama for letting Iran become a “great power.” But doesn’t resisting that automatically imply engagement? More incoherent still is Trump’s insistence on being unpredictable. An asset perhaps in real estate deals, but in a Hobbesian world American allies rely on American consistency, often as a matter of life or death. Yet Trump excoriated the Obama-Clinton foreign policy for losing the trust of our allies precisely because of its capriciousness. The tilt toward Iran. The red line in Syria. Canceling the East European missile defense. Abandoning Hosni Mubarak. TRUMP’S SCRIPTED, telepromptered speech was intended to finally clarify his foreign policy. It produced instead a jumble. The basic principle seems to be this: Continue the inexorable Obama-Clinton retreat, though for reasons of national self-interest, rather than of national self-doubt. And except when, with studied inconsistency, he decides otherwise.

Conservative Chronicle

FELON VOTING RIGHTS: May 3, 2016

We do not need voting by murderers

e do not want convicted murderers and rapists sitting on juries in criminal trials, and we do not want convicted felons to be picking the next leaders of our Nation. Elections are for law-abiding citizens to pick law-abiding leaders, not for criminals to elect fellow criminals. But Democrats have realized that convicted felons are more likely to vote for a Democrat than a Republican. In Virginia, the number of convicted felons is about four percent of the number of registered voters, which is more than enough to change the outcome in many local and statewide elections.

OUR LAWS recognize that service on a jury and voting are not activities that should be open to anyone and everyone. People who are in our country illegally, for example, should not be voting in elections or serving on juries. Children who are under age 18 should not be voting in elections or serving on juries. These activities require a level of responsibility possessed by law-abiding adults so their decisions will continue to safeguard our society against our enemies, foreign and domestic. There is no constitutional right for murderers, rapists, and other convicted criminals to vote in our elections and potentially sway the outcome. Most states properly deny voting rights to persons who are convicted of committing serious crimes, while usually allowing a way for convicted felons to regain their voting rights only if certain conditions are met. But the highly political Democratic governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, is a lame duck and a close friend of Hillary Clinton. McAuliffe will automatically be out of work in less than two years because Virginia does not allow a governor to run for re-election. McAuliffe realizes that in order for Hillary to win in November, she must carry Virginia. McAuliffe could then gracefully accept a high-level position in the Clinton Administration after his term ends, or even sooner. The math is obvious. McAuliffe was elected as governor of Virginia by a margin of only 50,000 votes, despite outspending his Republican opponent Ken Cuccinelli by many millions of dollars. There are 200,000 convicted felons in Virginia who have not been allowed to vote. By unleashing this voting bloc in time for November, McAuliffe could swing the outcome in Virginia to Hillary, which could push her over the top in the electoral college nationwide. On April 22nd, Governor McAuliffe issued an unprecedented executive order granting the right to vote to 206,000 convicted felons, including murderers and rapists. He did this without any ap-

proval by the Virginia legislature, and low murderers and rapists to vote, why in apparent violation of Virginia’s state let a little thing like a constitution get in the way? constitution. The governor’s shocking order afThe Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates responded with justifi- fects juries, too, because he allows perable outrage. “I am stunned yet not at sons convicted of serious crimes to serve People tried for murall surprised by the governor’s action,” on them. der in Virginia can observed William J. Howell, now face people R-Stafford. He convicted of murpointed out that der in the jury box. the Democratic Governor McAuGovernor prob(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate liffe even vowed ably aspires to be to issue new expicked by Hillary Clinton for a Cabinet position if she ecutive orders repeatedly to expand as becomes president, and that McAuliffe much as possible the number of conhas always viewed his governorship “as victed felons, including those who have a stepping stone to a job in Hillary Clin- been incarcerated for violent crimes. Why aren’t the feminists expressing ton’s cabinet.” outrage at allowing convicted rapists to PRIOR VIRGINIA governors vote and serve on juries? Governor McAuliffe also extended thought that such a massive change in voting rights could not be done lawfully voting rights to felons convicted of vioby executive order under the Virginia lent crimes who have not fully paid resConstitution. But when the goal is to al- titution to their victims for the injuries

Phyllis

Schlafly

they caused. The victims of these violent crimes may be dead or unable physically to make it to the polling booths, but the perpetrators of heinous crimes will be able to vote however they like. McAuliffe declared, “Once you’ve paid your time, there’s no difference to me.” But his actions demonstrate his political motive, because he did not restore Second Amendment rights to own guns to felons convicted of non-violent crimes who have “paid their time” because Hillary and other Democrats would not have liked that. THE VIRGINIA legislature was in session the same week that McAuliffe made his unauthorized move by executive order, which thereby circumvented the democratically elected legislature. Hillary immediately applauded McAuliffe’s power grab, which illustrates how she would ignore and circumvent Congress if she is given the opportunity to do so in the upcoming presidential election.

COMMON-SENSE: May 4, 2016

Common-sense messages

epublican presidential aspirant John Kasich stirred up angry words from women’s organizations and the Democratic Party by his response to a question from a female college student at a town hall meeting in Watertown, New York, regarding sexual assault. Kasich said all the right things about prosecuting offenders, but what got the Ohio governor in trouble with leftists was the end of his response: “I’d also give you one bit of advice: Don’t go to parties where there’s a lot of alcohol, OK? Don’t do that.” Let’s examine that advice. To do so, let’s ask some general questions about common sense. DOES ONE have a right to put his wallet on the hood of his car, attend a movie show, return and find his wallet and its contents undisturbed? You say, “Williams, you’ve lost it! Why would one do such a crazy thing?” If that’s your response, you miss the point made by Kasich’s critics. People are duty-bound to respect private property rights. So why shouldn’t one feel at ease leaving his wallet on the hood of his car and expect it to be there when he returns? If the person’s wallet were stolen, what would you advise? Would it be to counsel people to respect private property rights? Put into the context of feminists’ responses to Kasich’s suggestion, you might argue that it’s outrageous to suggest that people “restrict their behavior.” Plain, ordinary common sense

so well-behaved and law-abiding. They do drugs, shoplift and play hooky. Your son does none of those things. As a responsible parent, your advice to your son would be that it is better to be alone than in the wrong company and that people judge you based upon the peoHERE’S A does-the-same-principle with whom you associate. Your son ple-apply question. Does a voluptuous, might respond by saying, “I have rights. scantily clad young woman have a right If I’m not doing something wrong, I to attend a rowdy fraternity party, dance shouldn’t be judged based on what my suggestively, get drunk and face no un- friends do!” Your response should be, welcome sexual advances? My answer “You’re right, but unfortunately, the world doesn’t work that way.” is yes. Her body is her private Here’s another common-sense issue property, and she has every particularly relevant to today’s police/ citizen relations. Suppose it’s the middle of the night and a police officer is suspicious of a young male driver. The (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate officer uses the excuse that the young man made an illegal lane change to pull right to expect that her inebriated state him over. If the driver were your son, not be exploited. Suppose you were the what would you advise him to do, exyoung woman’s father. Would you ad- ercise his free speech rights to berate vise the following? “Go ahead and wear the officer for making a stop on such a scanty attire, dance suggestively and get flimsy basis? Or would you advise him drunk. If a guy makes unwelcome ad- to quietly give the officer his license vances, we’ll catch him and bring rape and registration and answer the officer’s charges.” I’m betting that most fathers’ questions, which probably would allow advice would be the opposite, namely: him to drive away without a citation at “Dress and behave like a respectable all? lady, and don’t attend drunken parties TO TEACH young people, particuand get drunk.” It’s similar to the advice about leaving a wallet on the hood of larly young men, Benjamin Franklin’s a car. People are not angels, and one’s admonition that “an ounce of prevention conduct ought to take that into consid- is worth a pound of cure” is a challenging task. But it is the job of adults to get eration. Suppose you have a well-behaved, such common-sense messages across, law-abiding son whose friends are not even at the cost of leftist condemnation. would say yes, a person has the right to lay his wallet on the hood of his car and expect it to be there when he returns. But we don’t live in a world full of angels; therefore, the best bet is for one to keep his wallet in his pocket.

Walter

Williams

May 11, 2016 DONALD TRUMP: May 4, 2016

The Trump campaign shows its policy chops

he rap on Donald Trump is in the doldrums along with the U.S., he’s all bluster. The New York partly because of their high corporate Times says he’s offering “in- tax rates. Trump also proposes a one-time 10 coherent mishmash.” GOP rival Ted Cruz claims Trump has “no idea” how percent repatriation tax on profits U.S. to fix the economy. Don’t’ believe it. companies made overseas and kept avoid the 40 percent The Trump campaign is putting for- there to rate. That bargain ward proposals could lure back to fix problems as much as $2.5 facing the nation, trillion in capital from the long urgently needed waits for medical (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate here. care at the VA to To promote investing in plants and the impending collapse of Obamacare. Check out Trump’s economic plan, equipment, Trump would allow comfor starters. Unlike Hillary Clinton’s panies to write off the purchases the radical anti-business agenda, Trump’s year they’re made, rather than over plan would actually help unemployed several years, as current law requires. Economist Larry Kudlow predicts Americans get back to work. that if Trump’s corporate tax plan beTRUMP SLASHES the corporate comes law, you’ll see “a tremendous tax rate to 15 percent, down from the movement of capital and labor back to current 40 percent, the highest rate the United States.” Trump’s 15 percent business rate in the industrialized world. Not all American companies pay that stagger- would also apply to small businesses ing rate, but even after deductions and that usually get taxed at individual inaccounting maneuvers, companies in come tax rates. That would give a break the U.S. end up clobbered with taxes to mom and pop operations, startups nearly twice the global average (24 and other small businesses, which are percent). In Ireland, a magnet for tax- the source of most jobs. weary companies, the rate is only 12.5 COMPARE TRUMP’S blueprint percent and their economy is growing about three times as fast as ours. Con- with Clinton’s nightmare scenario: versely, Japan and Argentina are stuck Higher taxes, more tax complexity and

Betsy

McCaughey

an avalanche of new regulations. Overregulation has depressed growth for the last 15 years. The Obama administration suffocated business with 81,000 pages of new regulations in 2015. Clinton is pushing for even more — with controls on hiring, pay, bonuses and overtime to promote “fairer growth.” Translation: enforcing gender and racial preferences, plus meddling in how much you get paid.

FIORIANA & CLINTON: April 29, 2016

Fiorina: An authentic feminism

he difference between Carly Fiorina’s and Hillary Clinton’s assents to prominence is a lesson that compares that authentic and inauthentic models of feminism. Fiorina earned everything she has gotten. She started as a secretary and worked her way up the corporate ladder — through twists and diversions — until she came out on top as the CEO of a Fortune 20 company, the largest tech company in the world. CLINTON ADVANCED only in the wake left by her husband. Bill Clinton blazed the trail. She followed in his footsteps. Hillary Clinton left law school with high hopes. Hired by the House Judiciary Committee to pursue the Watergate investigation and President Nixon’s impeachment. But her misconduct — purloining documents the Committee needed — allegedly led to her dismissal. After she failed the D.C. bar, top legal jobs were barred to her in Washington. Lacking other options, she followed Bill Clinton to Fayetteville, Arkansas, and began a lifetime of following the furrows her husband plowed. Bill was

teaching at the University of Arkansas Law School and he got his wife a job there. After Bill lost his 1974 race for Congress, he migrated to Little Rock to run for attorney general in 1976. Hillary followed him. She searched for a job but only landed one at the Rose Law Firm — Arkansas’ most prestigious — after Bill was elected the top

Dick

legal official in the state. She labored as an associate until Bill became governor and, presto, she made partner. WOULD HILLARY have been chosen to lead the health care reform effort in 1993 if Bill were not president? Would her path to the New York Senate seat have been smoothed — with no primary in this totally blue state in which she had never lived — if Bill was not pulling the strings in the White House?

And, after Hillary lost her presidential race in 2008, would President Obama have appointed her as Secretary of State? Or was his decision influenced by his need to keep Bill and Hillary Clinton on the reservation. Leaving them outside the administration would have subjected him to eight years of second-guessing and fire from within his party. As LBJ said, it’s probably better to have someone inside the tent pissing out than someone outside pissing in. The self-evident answer to all these questions is obvious: Hillary only moved up because Bill led the way. Fiorina, like most American women, had no such luck. Nor did she make her name in the field of politics, where advancement rarely comes from objective performance assessments. Rather, she made it in the corporate world, historically the last to accord women their due. AT THIS writing, we do not know if Ted Cruz will be sufficiently successful in his pursuit of the nomination to bring Fiorina in with him. But it is obvious that Carly Fiorina would make a great vice president. On her own. Like she’s always done.

Remember Obama’s statement, “You didn’t build that?” Well, Clinton assumes that “you don’t own that.” Government will run your business. Clinton wants companies to stop maximizing quarterly earnings for shareholders — what she derides as “quarterly capitalism.” She wants “farsighted investments.” Companies that can get out of the U.S. will rush for the exits. She’s even promising an end to “the boom and bust cycles on Wall Street.” As plausible as ending rainy days. Trump’s “make America rich” plan targets impoverished cities like Baltimore with incentives for companies to move there. For African-Americans, whose unemployment rate is twice as high as the nation’s overall, Trump’s has a four-letter remedy. JOBS. For young blacks with no job experience, he’s got plans. One is borrowed from the left-leaning Century Foundation. Every summer, the State Department brings about 100,000 young foreigners into the U.S. to work in restaurants, camps and seaside resorts under J-1 visas. Trump says convert the program into a jobs bank for our own inner-city youth. Meanwhile, Clinton is stoking racial hatred, telling black voters they’re victims of “systemic racism” and meeting with Al Sharpton. Clinton says public schools should stop disciplining and suspending black teenagers who misbehave. But self-discipline is precisely what’s needed to succeed at school and on a job. While Clinton panders, Trump offers specifics to get these young people on the job ladder. CLINTON’S ALWAYS been tagged the policy wonk, but she’s just a cynical politician. Trump, who’s rolling out serious policies to get Americans working, is the real deal.

Conservative Chronicle

HILLARY CLINTON: May 2, 2016

Donald Trump’s right: ‘Hillary is crooked’

atching MSNBC’s post site — which has in the past misstated inelection coverage last Tues- formation with respect to my syndicated day, the dishonest Erebusic columns — are this time correct in saying duplicity of the politically correct in-stu- that the former House Judiciary Comdio analysts and pundits was in a word, mittee’s Watergate investigation Chief Counsel Jerome Zeifman didn’t nauseating. fire Clinton in 1974. Donald Trump, What is not in during his post question is that Zeifive-state primary fman did say of victory speech, Clinton: “If I had said of Hill(c) 2016, Mychal Massie the power to fire ary Clinton that: her, I would have “She’s crooked; she’ll be a horrible president. She knows fired her.” There is also no question purnothing about job creation ... except jobs suant to Zeifman having said of Clinton: “She was an unethical, dishonest, lawfor herself.” yer.” That is a damning indictment of UNBIASED INFORMED indi- Clinton even if one chooses to question viduals would have asked the question: if he alleged that Clinton “conspired to “What did Trump say that wasn’t true.” violate the Constitution, the rules of the But never let it be said that describes the House, the rules of the committee and political punditry. The in-studio analysts the rules of confidentiality.” I read Snope’s lengthy “why Clinton were aghast that Trump would dare say such things about Hillary. They even wasn’t fired by Zeifman” and much of it discussed to what extent Trump had was packaged in poli-lawyer speak that hurt his election chances by calling Hill- dances on the edge of the truth pointing ary “crooked.” Personally I think what out what was specifically not true but at Trump said of Hillary were the nicest the same time omitting what was specifithings that could be said of her, but I di- cally true. gress. IT’S A FACT that Hillary Clinton I think Brian Williams and Rachel Maddow do a fine job in presenting post and husband were forced to return some primary election coverage. But I will $200, 000 worth of china, furniture, and make no such admission pursuant to other items taken from the White House when they left office. their on air in-studio analysts/pundits. There is no question that Hillary and Hillary Clinton is “crooked” and for those who were either not born yet or her husband, the former president, took who suffer from short memory spans, White House items that did not belong to them. But the spin is not that she/they following are two examples. Let’s say for the record that Snope’s, didn’t take the items; it’s that she didn’t the biased, left leaning, truth or fiction “knowingly” steal them.

Mychal

Massie

Jon Greenberg writing for Politifact gave a rather lengthy disquisition that, if nothing else, is one of the best pieces of “she did it but she didn’t do it” double talk I’ve read. ((Viral Image Claims Clintons Stole $200K In Furniture, China, And Artwork From White House; 10/1/2015) Albeit to be fair, he did acknowledge there was a “grain of truth to the claim” of their thievery before launching into “she did it but she didn’t do it.” I’m truncating the strenuous details of the claim “she did but she didn’t” due to space requirements. What’s key is that the argument isn’t whether she and her husband took the items, it’s that they didn’t “steal” them and that they weren’t forced to return them under the cloud of impropriety the public understood the situation to be.

Supposedly, the real situation was that persons had given gifts of furniture and china to the White House and “they never intended their gifts to go to [Hillary and her husband]. They thought they were donating to the White House itself as part [of] a remodeling project in 1993.” The argument presented is: “This is where the questions of provenance get muddy. Some gifts are intended for the government, and must stay in the government’s hands, while some are intended for the person[s] [i.e., Hillary and Bill] living in the White House. But it’s not always as simple as ‘this is mine’ and ‘that is Uncle Sam’s.’” I argue it is exactly that easy. My late grandmother always said, “Where there’s smoke there’s fire.” From the beginning of her life in college until the moment I’m typing this article, the smoke surrounding Hillary could, euphemistically speaking, cover the northern hemisphere. There is the Rose Law Firm, Whitewater, Susan McDougal, reputable allegations of Hillary personally organizing the coordinated bullying and threatening of the women her husband raped and assaulted. There are the questions and allegations of criminality pursuant to Hillary’s magical moment of investing $1,000 in cattle futures and making a dramatic gain of $100,000. Something that raised the eyebrows of even the most seasoned futures investors, but something that was explained away by Clinton and her media. Her entire political life, from her days in the Arkansas governor’s mansion to Fast and Furious to Benghazi to her email accounts, is shrouded in controversy, allegations of wrongdoing, sinister activity, ad nauseum but it is always explained away. THE SHOCK expressed by the MSNBC analysts shouldn’t have been that Trump called Hillary “crooked,” the shock should have been that based on her record that was all he called her.

May 11, 2016 GOP RACE: April 27, 2016

A slow talker and a homeless guy walk into a bar ...

pparently, John Kasich and Ted Cruz are at their most appealing when no one is paying attention to them, which, conveniently, is most of the time. After Cruz won cranky Wisconsin last month — only the fourth actual election he’s won — voters decided to give him a second look. But two seconds after people said, “OK, let’s give this guy a try,” he cratered. You might say a little of Ted Cruz goes a long way. Voters can’t stand Cruz any more than his Senate colleagues can. LISTENING TO Cruz always makes me feel like I have Asperger’s. He speaks so slowly, my mind wanders between words. As Trump said, there’s a 10-second intermission between sentences. I

want to order Cruz’s speeches as Ama- a strange way of bouncing his head and zon Audibles, just so I can speed them up looking around that makes you want to cross the street to avoid him. It looks like and see what he’s saying. The guy did go to Harvard Law he cuts his own hair, and his suits are School, so I keep waiting for the flashes Ralph Nader cast-offs. He wolfs down like a street person, has of brilliance, but they never come. Cruz f o o d a hair-trigger temper, is completely inand rants about recapable of extemligion in a way that poraneous wit. only he can underNow that Cruz stand. has been math(c) 2016, Ann Coulter Kasich is conematically eliminated, he’s adding Carly Fiorina to the stantly proclaiming that illegals are ticket. She’s not his “running mate,” but “made in the image of God,” and dehis “limping mate.” It’s an all-around nounces the idea of enforcing federal immigration laws, saying: “I don’t think it’s lemon-eating contest. Voters quickly moved on from Cruz right; I don’t think it’s humane.” and tried Kasich. But he turned out to WHEN ASKED about his decision be the spitting image of a homeless man. He’s got the slouch, the facial tics, and to expand Medicaid under Obamacare

Ann

Coulter

DONALD TRUMP: April 28, 2016

Donald Trump’s triumph

onald Trump’s commanding win this week of all five of the Republican primaries provides him with enormous momentum for the final six weeks of the nomination process. For weeks, Trump detractors have opined that there was a ceiling for Trump support, and that he could not garner a majority (50 percent). Well, they were wrong — once again. CNN reported on Wednesday morning that Trump won 58 percent of the vote in Connecticut, 61 percent in Delaware, 54 percent in Maryland, 57 percent in Pennsylvania, and 64 percent in Rhode Island. These are commanding wins for Trump. A clear Trump Triumph.

WITH 1,237 delegates needed to win the Republican nomination outright, Trump has 988 after this week’s elections. There are 674 delegates remaining to be awarded on the Republican side, Trump needs to capture only 249 of them before the convention, or 37 percent of the remaining delegates. The final primary date is June 7, when voters in Calif., Mont., N.J., N.M. and S.D. will go to the polls to determine who wins 303 Republican delegates. While Trump considers himself the presumptive Republican nominee, he likely will not secure the required delegates until June. But, based on this week’s results, he will likely go into the Republican Convention with enough delegates to secure the nomination. Trump laid out three key themes in his victory speech Tuesday night that hint at his general election strategy. Theme one: politicians can’t accomplish anything, (so elect me, I’m an outsider and can get things done). In refer-

ring to his Republican opponents, Trump noted, “Governor Kasich and Senator Cruz have really hurt themselves with a faulty deal that was defaulted on before it even started. Kasich said, ‘What do you mean, aren’t they going to vote for me in Indiana?’ I thought they just made that deal. Politicians, all talk no action, they can’t get it done, and they certainly can’t straighten out our country. We are going to bring back jobs, take care of our military, so many things.”

NOTE THAT Trump used their elected titles, Senator and Governor, reinforcing that they are part of the current problem. Look for Trump to also use Senator Clinton or Secretary Clinton in the future.

Jackie

Theme two: Hillary cannot be trusted, she is a crook, and has accepted money from Wall Street. “I call her crooked Hillary,” Trump said. “She would be a horrible president, she knows nothing about job creating ... She does nothing about jobs, except jobs for herself ... She doesn’t have the strength, the stamina.” This point will resonate with the Republican base, and with many independents who do not trust Hillary Clinton. The email issues and the Bengazi questions will resurface, as will large donations from Wall Street. Theme three: Trump will continue to be direct — to be himself. “She has the woman’s card,” Trump noted of Hillary. “She has nothing else going.” Trump will continue to be direct when answer-

ing questions and providing his opinion. Why is this important? Because, while Hillary declared Tuesday night that she is willing to “play the woman card,” younger women may not share her views and Trump might be able to use that to his advantage. Reporter Kelly Wallace wrote an article for CNN in February titled, “Why the female generational divide for Hillary Clinton?” in which she noted, “Some 64 percent of women Democratic voters younger than 45 backed Bernie Sanders, while just 35 percent supported Clinton, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC/ Marist College poll in New Hampshire last week. When it comes to women 45 and older, Clinton leads Sanders by nine percentage points, the poll found.” Wallace interviewed young women voters. “’As a young woman who supports Bernie Sanders, I’m frustrated and outraged by being constantly attacked by older feminists for my refusal to vote according to my gender,’ said Ariana Javidi, a sophomore studying human rights, economics and gender studies at the University of Connecticut. “’Like my fellow young feminist women, I recognize that voting for a woman because she’s a woman is sexist, just like voting for a man because he’s a man is also sexist,’” said Javidi. AS THE END to the primary season nears, it’s interesting that on both sides, Republican and Democrat, outsiders (Trump and Bernie Sanders) generated enthusiasm and interest among the voters. This week, Trump’s cards got stronger. If he ends up running in the general election against Clinton, who has been in politics for decades, his appeal might become terrific.

— projected to cost federal taxpayers $50 billion in the first decade — he said: “Now, when you die and get to the, get to the, uh, to the meeting with St. Peter ... he’s going to ask you what you did for the poor. Better have a good answer.” He lectured a crowd of fiscal conservatives on his Obamacare expansion, saying, “Now, I don’t know whether you ever read Matthew 25, but I commend it to you, the end of it, about do you feed the homeless and do you clothe the poor.” He also attributed the law to Chief Justice John Roberts and said, “It’s my money, OK?” Voters thought they were getting a less attractive version of Mitt Romney with Kasich, but it turns out they’re getting a more televangelist version of Ted Cruz. They’re also getting a less warm and personable version of Hillary Clinton. Last week, Kasich lashed out at a reporter who asked a perfectly appropriate question, going from boring campaign boilerplate to irritated browbeating in about one second flat. As much as I enjoy watching reporters being berated, this was deranged. Kasich: Listen, at the end of the day I think the Republican Party wants to pick somebody who actually can win in the fall.” Reporter: But if you’ve only won Ohio? Kasich: “Can I finish?” Reporter: “If you answer the ques—” Kasich: “I’m answering the question the way I want to answer it. You want to answer it?” (Snatches voice recorder from reporter’s hand.) “Here, let me ask you. What do you think? When giving a speech to Ohio EPA workers a few years ago, Kasich suddenly went off topic and began shouting about a police officer who had given him a ticket three years earlier. “Have you ever been stopped by a police officer that’s an idiot?” he began. He proceeded to tell the riveting story of his traffic violation to the EPA administrators, yelling about “this idiot! ... He’s an IDIOT!” Based on the dashcam video immediately released by the police, Kasich had been in the wrong, and the officer — you know, “the IDIOT” — was perfectly polite about it. With Trump it’s exactly the opposite. The more people see of him, the more they like him. The usual pattern is: Trump says something perfectly sensible, the media lie about it, then voters find out the truth and like him more and the media less. IRONICALLY, IT’S Kasich who has been complaining the loudest about the alleged billions of dollars of “free media” Trump has been getting. It turns out not getting “free media” was a godsend for Kasich and Cruz.

Conservative Chronicle

2016 ELECTION: May 1, 2016

In case of Trump nomination, break glass

onald Trump’s damage to the Republican Party, although already extensive, has barely begun. Republican quislings will multiply, slinking into support of the most anti-conservative presidential aspirant in their party’s history. These collaborationists will render themselves ineligible to participate in the party’s reconstruction. Ted Cruz’s announcement of his preferred running mate has enhanced the nomination process by giving voters pertinent information. They already know the only important thing about Trump’s choice: His running mate will be unqualified for high office because he or she will think Trump is qualified.

HILLARY CLINTON’S optimal running mate might be Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a pro-labor populist whose selection would be balm for the bruised feelings of Bernie Sanders’ legions. Running mates rarely matter as electoral factors: In 2000, Al Gore got 43.2 percent of the North Carolina vote. In 2004, John Kerry, trying to improve upon Gore’s total there, ran with North Carolina Sen. John Edwards but received 43.6 percent. If, however, Brown were to help deliver Ohio for Clinton, the Republican path to 270 electoral votes would be narrower than a needle’s eye. Republican voters, particularly in Indiana and California, can, by supporting Cruz, make the Republican convention a deliberative body rather than one that merely ratifies decisions made elsewhere, some of them six months earlier. A convention’s sovereign duty is to choose a plausible nominee who has a reasonable chance to win, not to passively affirm the will of a mere plurality of voters recorded episodically in a protracted process. Trump would be the most unpopular nominee ever, unable to even come close to Mitt Romney’s insufficient support among women, minorities and young people. In losing disastrously, Trump probably would create downballot carnage sufficient to end even Republican control of the House. Ticket splitting is becoming rare in polarized America: In 2012, only 5.7 percent of voters supported a presidential candidate and a congressional candidate of opposite parties. AT LEAST half a dozen Republican senators seeking re-election and Senate aspirants can hope to win if the person at the top of the Republican ticket loses their state by, say, only four points, but not if he loses by 10. A Democratic Senate probably would guarantee a Supreme Court with a liberal cast for a generation. If Clinton is inaugurated next Jan. 20, Merrick Garland probably will already be on the court — con-

firmed in a lame duck Senate session condign punishment for his compre— and justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, hensive disdain for conservative essenAnthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer tials, including the manners and grace that should lubricate the nation’s civic will be 83, 80 and 78, respectively. The minority of people who pay life. Second, conservatives can try from the anti-Trump close attention to politics includes to save undertow as many those who define senators, represenan ideal political tatives, governors outcome and purand state legislators sue it, and those as possible. who focus on the (c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group It was 32 worst possible years after Jimmy outcome and strive to avoid it. The former experience the Carter won 50.1 percent in 1976 that excitements of utopianism, the latter a Democrat won half the popular vote. settle for prudence’s mild pleasure of Barack Obama won only 52.9 percent avoiding disappointed dreams. Both and then 51.1 percent, but only three sensibilities have their uses, but this is Democrats — Andrew Jackson (twice), a time for prudence, which demands Franklin Roosevelt (four times) and the prevention of a Trump presidency. Lyndon Johnson — have won more than 53 percent. Trump probably would WERE HE TO be nominated, con- make Clinton the fourth, and he would servatives would have two tasks. One be a tonic for her party, undoing the would be to help him lose 50 states — extraordinary damage (13 Senate seats,

George

Will

69 House seats, 11 governorships, 913 state legislative seats) Obama has done. IF TRUMP is nominated, Republicans working to purge him and his manner from public life will reap the considerable satisfaction of preserving the identity of their 162-year-old party while working to see that they forgo only four years of the enjoyment of executive power. Six times since 1945 a party has tried, and five times failed, to secure a third consecutive presidential term. The one success — the Republicans’ 1988 election of George H.W. Bush — produced a one-term president. If Clinton gives her party its first 12 consecutive White House years since 1945, Republicans can help Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, or someone else who has honorably recoiled from Trump, confine her to a single term.

DONALD TRUMP: April 28, 2016

Upside down: The end of pieties

hen the Americans defeated the British at Yorktown, the surrendering British forces supposedly played “The World Turned Upside Down.” The song should be on the soundtrack at Donald Trump rallies. The mogul is marching toward the Republican nomination by trampling every single assumption about presidential politics, especially on the GOP side.

SURELY NO campaign has ever before had a divisive internal fight over whether the candidate should be presidential or not. But that has reportedly been one of the points of contention between new Trump hand Paul Manafort and old Trump hand Corey Lewandowski, the contestants in a high-stakes episode of “Consultant Apprentice.” Trump is operating on the rather insulting assumption that he can’t act presidential — i.e., with too much dignity — while also attempting to appeal to his Republican voters, and so far he has been proved right. It’s just one of the ways in which he has seemed to understand the party he is seeking to take over better than its longtime loyalists. It was once thought that a Republican presidential candidate had to pay constant obeisance to Ronald Reagan and hew closely to certain rhetorical tropes and policy truisms. It turns out that the Republican Party — or at least a sizable element of it — isn’t that conservative, and even what were once thought to be the party’s most rigidly ideological guardians in talk radio aren’t really

sticklers for conservative doctrine. It was once thought that any serious presidential candidate had to have political experience and be a committed member of the party he or she sought to lead, or at the very least not openly threaten it. Trump the novice, who reregistered as a Republican only in 2012, has appended the not-so-subtle warning “or else” to his candidacy from the beginning. It was once thought that you had to organize a campaign operation, run TV ads and raise money. Trump has barely done any of them.

Rich

It was once thought that you had to know something and demonstrate it in every setting, or risk seeming amateurish and not up for the job. Trump has blown through this norm. IT WAS ONCE thought that you had to act with some decorum, display respect for others and yourself, and avoid vulgarity and public displays of anger. Trump has made it his business to do the opposite and, even after reining himself in a little, is still the most outlandish presidential candidate in memory. We have destroyed manners and chivalry over recent decades — with popular and celebrity culture leading the way — and the left has tried to re-

place them with political correctness. As a celebrity comfortable in the realms of Howard Stern and the WWE, Trump has little loyalty to the old standards at the same time he (rightly) rejects political correctness. This is a license for unconstrained boorishness. And it has played well in the party of evangelicals, of social conservatism and of disdain for Hollywood and for elite libertinism. Trump has barely made a pretense of religiosity, and been incredibly overt in his vindictiveness and braggadocio. Clearly, what a certain segment of conservatives didn’t like about Mitt Romney wasn’t his pedigree as a Northeastern moderate — which he shares with Trump — so much as his decorousness. Peggy Noonan wrote a book on Reagan called When Character Was King. The follow-up for our era could be called When Character Became a Sign of Weakness. THE OLD pieties don’t have the hold they once did, but Trump’s celebrity and unsurpassed media skills have also allowed him to get away with things that more conventional candidates never could. At least with Republican voters. Everyone else is another question. If Trump wins the nomination, he has to hope that swing voters are as enamored of belittling nicknames and brash putdowns (“if Hillary were a man ...”), and that the traditional rules of how a president acts and represents the country no longer apply. He will need the world to be turned upside down.

May 11, 2016 DONALD TRUMP: April 29, 2016

At last, America first! A revolution taking place

hether the establishment to make less and less sense. Logic was likes it or not, and it evi- replaced with foolishness and arrogance, dently does not, there is a which ended in one foreign policy disaster after another.” revolution going on in America. He lists the results of 15 years of The old order in this capital city is on the way out, America is crossing a great Bush-Obama wars in the Middle East: civil war, religious fanatidivide, and there is no going back. cism, thousands of Donald Trump’s Americans killed, triumphant march trillions of dollars to the nominalost, a vacuum cretion in Cleveland, ated that ISIS has virtually assured (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate filled. by his five-state Is he wrong here? How have all of sweep Tuesday, confirms it, as does his these wars availed us? Where is the “New foreign policy address of Wednesday. Two minutes into his speech before World Order” of which Bush I rhapsothe Center for the National Interest, dized at the U.N.? Can anyone argue that our intervenTrump declared that the “major and overriding theme” of his administration will tions to overthrow regimes and erect be — “America first.” Right down the democratic states in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen have succeeded smokestack! and been worth the price we have paid in GUTSY AND brazen it was to use blood and treasure, and the devastation that phrase, considering the demoniza- we have left in our wake? George W. Bush declared that Amerition of the great anti-war movement of 1940-41, which was backed by the young ca’s goal would become “to end tyranny patriots John F. Kennedy and his brother in our world.” An utterly utopian deluJoe, Gerald Ford and Sargent Shriver, and sion, to which Trump retorts by recalling John Quincy Adams’ views on America: President Hoover and Alice Roosevelt. Whether the issue is trade, immigra- “She goes not abroad in search of montion or foreign policy, says Trump, “we sters to destroy.” To the neocons’ worldwide crusade for are putting the American people first again.” U.S. policy will be dictated by democracy, Trump’s retort is that it was always a “dangerous idea” to think “we U.S. national interests. By what he castigated, and what he could make Western democracies out of promised, Trump is repudiating both the countries that had no experience or interfruits of the Obama-Clinton foreign pol- est in becoming Western democracies.” We are “overextended,” he declared, icy, and the legacy of Bush Republican“We must rebuild our military.” Our ism and neoconservatism. When Ronald Reagan went home, NATO allies have been freeloading for says Trump, “our foreign policy began half a century. NAFTA was a lousy deal.

Pat

Buchanan

In running up $4 trillion in trade surpluses since Bush I, the Chinese have been eating our lunch. This may be rankest heresy to America’s elites, but Trump outlines a foreign policy past generations would have recognized as common sense: Look out for your own country and your own people first. INSTEAD OF calling President Putin names, Trump says he would talk to the Russians to “end the cycle of hostility,” if he can. “Ronald Reagan must be rolling over in his grave,” sputtered Sen. Lindsey Graham, who quit the race to avoid a thrashing by the Donald in his home state of South Carolina. But this writer served in Reagan’s White House, and the Gipper was always

seeking a way to get the Russians to negotiate. He leapt at the chance for a summit with Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva and Reykjavik. “Our goal is peace and prosperity, not war,” says Trump, “unlike other candidates, war and aggression will not be my first instinct.” Is that not an old and good Republican tradition? Dwight Eisenhower ended the war in Korea and kept us out of any other. Richard Nixon ended the war in Vietnam, negotiated arms agreements with Moscow, and made an historic journey to open up Mao’s China. Reagan used force three times in eight years. He put Marines in Lebanon, liberated Grenada and sent FB-111s over Tripoli to pay Col. Gadhafi back for bombing a Berlin discotheque full of U.S. troops. Reagan later believed putting those Marines in Lebanon, where 241 were massacred, to be the worst mistake of his presidency. Military intervention for reasons of ideology or nation building is not an Eisenhower or Nixon or Reagan tradition. It is not a Republican tradition. It is a Bush II-neocon deformity, an aberration that proved disastrous for the United States and the Middle East. The New York Times headline declared that Trump’s speech was full of “Paradoxes,” adding, “Calls to Fortify Military and to Use It Less.” But isn’t that what Reagan did? Conduct the greatest military buildup since Ike, then, from a position of strength, negotiate with Moscow a radical reduction in nuclear arms? “We’re getting out of the nation-building business,” says Trump. “The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony.” No more surrenders of sovereignty on the altars of “globalism.” IS THAT NOT a definition of a patriotism that too many among our arrogant elites believe belongs to yesterday?

Conservative Chronicle

DONALD TRUMP: April 29, 2016

Trump’s ‘America First’ movement

give voice to the people who have no newspaper or newsreel or radio station at their command, to the people who must do the paying and the fighting and the dying if this country enters MOST COMMENTATORS have the war.” Lindbergh promised, “There assumed that Trump’s “America First” is a policy open to this nation that will theme was accidental, that he didn’t lead to success — a policy that leaves follow our own way know its origins. Maybe. He is, after us free to of life and to develall, the least litop our own civilierate presidenzation.” He said he tial aspirant in spoke for “the citirecent memory. zens who ... had But it doesn’t (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate to work too hard really matter if at their daily jobs he knows what the America First Committee was. to organize political meetings.” He arTrump’s speeches, including the pre- gued: “We must turn our eyes and our pared text he read at the National Inter- faith back to our own country before it est this week, sound eerily similar to, if is too late. And when we do this, a difless articulate than, a speech Lindbergh ferent vista opens before us.” The America First movement coldelivered in New York in April 1941. Lindbergh claimed, “The America lapsed when Japan bombed Pearl HarTRUMP REPRESENTS a repudia- First Committee has been formed to bor on Dec. 7, 1941. The United States tion of the Republican Party’s commitment to smaller government, free trade DONALD TRUMP: April 29, 2016 and an internationalist foreign policy. On the latter, Trump gave his first major policy address this week in Washington. Though it was short on specifics, vacuous and self-contradictory, the t should be a no brainer of a state- of people intend to light up and inhale. overall theme of his speech made clear ment. Smoking cigarettes causes But a funny thing is happening. These where his instincts lie. He is first and cancer. In fact, there are many people are demanding the rest of us start foremost a nationalist, one who would fit in comfortably with Marine Le Pen’s things a person can smoke that do less smoking cigarettes as well. They seem National Front in France, the Danish damage. Cigars and marijuana are less to think that if we all start smoking then People’s Party or the Freedom Party of likely to cause cancer than smoking no one will get cancer. That is just not so. Not only does that not neutralize Austria — all populist, anti-immigrant, cigarettes. Back in March, when people started the cancer threat, it also just means far nationalist movements. This should come as no surprise to asking me to smoke cigarettes, I de- more people down wind are affected by anyone who has paid attention to his clined. Not only did I decline, but I said all the smoke. campaign thus far. His strategy, articu- I would never smoke cigarettes. Why? NOVEMBER IS coming, and with lated in every speech from his presiden- Because smoking cigarettes causes canit, more likely than not a diagnosis of tial announcement to his latest rally, has cer. It is a no brainer. cancer. The smokers do not been to appeal to whites who feel left THERE IS ample evidence of the behind economically and overwhelmed culturally and demographically. “Make fact. The data is voluminous showing a America Great Again” means keep- direct link between cigarettes and caning foreigners out, reserving American cer. But smoking cigarettes does not jobs for the American-born, punishing just cause cancer. There are all sorts (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate our more “cunning” trading partners — of other ill effects. Cigarette smokespecially Mexico and China — build- ers tend to prematurely age. Their skin ing walls and withdrawing from for- wrinkles, their voice deepens, they get seem to be inclined to stop smoking yellow teeth and stained skin. They cigarettes. They made the fatal mistake eign alliances and wars. This brand of American national- may get emphysema as well as asthma. of believing the hype and marketing. ism is not new. Trump’s “America Then there is the smell. Cigarette smok- The people on television, radio, and the First” slogan is a throwback to the ers smell. They also lose their sense of internet who personally profit by an inpre-World War II movement against smell. Smokers know they smell like creased demand in smoking have done a U.S. entry into the war. The America cigarettes so they often overdo cologne remarkable job selling a poison. Unfortunately, the temptation a lot First Committee, whose most famous and perfume to compensate, which just of these cigarette smokers are going to member was aviator and Adolf Hitler makes it worse. Down ballot ... errrr ... downwind have in November is to blame others for admirer Charles Lindbergh, argued that the United States should build an im- from the cigarette smoker is also a prob- their decision. They may blame the marpregnable defense but stay out of the lem. The secondhand effects of cigarette keters, but these were just marketers. war in Europe — a position that was, smoking can cause cancer in others, They may even blame those of us who in the late 1930s, highly popular with along with asthma, emphysema, and a told them to never start smoking. They the American people. By the time the host of other pulmonary problems. This may claim we pulled over on them some America First Committee officially has been documented. It is well known. reverse psychology. By telling them that formed in September 1940, Nazi Ger- There is no reason to pretend otherwise. smoking cigarettes would cause cancer, Still, despite all the evidence about somehow we compelled them to smoke many had already swallowed Austria, invaded Czechoslovakia, Poland, Fin- how bad smoking cigarettes can be, a lot cigarettes. ndiana’s upcoming primary may well determine the fate of not only the GOP presidential nomination but the party itself. Donald Trump’s sweeping victories in the five primaries last Tuesday were a sober wake-up call that the party of Ronald Reagan is no more. If Trump wins a majority in Indiana, as well, it will be nearly impossible to stop him from winning the Republican nomination. Already, major “mainstream” Republicans are jumping on his bandwagon, including two House chairmen this week: Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania, who chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and Jeff Miller of Florida, who chairs the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee. But Trump’s winning the Republican nomination will doom the party as we’ve known it for much of the past 40 years.

land, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands and France and launched an air war against Britain.

Linda

Chavez

Cigarettes cause cancer

Erick

Erickson

joined the war against the Axis, sent troops, ships and planes to Europe, as well as to the Pacific, and defeated Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito. The United States emerged from the war as a superpower that would lead the economic and political transformation of much of Western Europe and parts of Asia. NOW DONALD Trump wants to channel Charles Lindbergh to build walls around a fortress America, whose civilization he promises to protect from “criminals, drug dealers (and) rapists” from Mexico and elsewhere. This is not a recipe to make America great again but its opposite. And if he succeeds in capturing the Republican nomination, he will turn the GOP into a fringe nationalist movement that will polarize American politics unlike anything we have seen before.

As the risk of cancer grows, those of us who said to never smoke cigarettes will not suddenly become cancer supporters. No, we will warn everyone of the risks of cancer. We will make sure everyone knows how bad it will be. But that does not mean we are okay with the cigarette smoking. It just means we find one leads to the other and the other is terrible. Naturally, of course, this whole column makes no sense unless you realize that smoking cigarettes is a reference to Donald Trump and cancer is a reference to Hillary Clinton’s tenure in the White House. Voting for Donald Trump will lead inevitably to Hillary Clinton’s presidency. It will also cause devastation down the ballot in House and Senate races. For months and months, many of us have raised the red flag and played the role of Cassandra warning Republicans that voting for Donald Trump would doom the Republican Party. If Indiana picks up the pack of cigarettes that is the Trump campaign and starts smoking, the cancer of a Clinton Presidency will be all but guaranteed. WHEN IT happens, the temptation of Trump supporters will be to blame those of us who said we would never support Trump. But we told them long before his nomination was assured. They knew he would not get the support he needs and still they voted for him. So do not come blaming us when Clinton gets elected. We told you not to smoke cigarettes.

May 11, 2016 GOVERNMENT WASTE: May 4, 2016

Tale of two tribes: ‘Climate refugees’ vs. EPA victims

“Channels cut by loggers and oil he left has concocted a lucrative category of politically companies eroded much of the island,” correct victims: “climate ref- the paper reported, “and decades of flood control efforts have kept once ugees.” It’s the new Green racket. U.S. taxpayers will now be forking free-flowing rivers from replenishing over untold billions to ease the pain al- the wetlands’ sediments.” Never mind that there are legedly inflicted on “carbon’s casualconflicting scities” by industrial entific analyses activity. By conon the extent to trast, those who which man-made have suffered as greenhouses gasa direct result of (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate es have caused government incompetence by federal environmental sea levels to rise; whether the rate is accelerating; and how much, if any, bureaucrats continue to get the shaft. reducing carbon emissions would acCONSIDER THE plight of two tually mitigate purportedly rising sea tribes: the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choc- levels. Never mind that enviro-alarmists taw in Louisiana and the Navajo Nahave conveniently changed their tune tion in New Mexico. The New York Times splashed a viral from blaming global warming for story on its pages this week spotlight- causing sea level rises to blaming ing the U.S. Department of Housing global warming for causing sea level and Urban Development’s $48 million drops. Oh, and never mind that many of grant to Native-Americans who live in the flood-ravaged coastal community the inhabitants of Isle de Jean Charles of Isle de Jean Charles. About 60 resi- — whose forefathers originally moved dents, the majority of whom belong to there to escape forced government the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe, relocation under the 1830 Indian Removal Act — don’t even want to leave will be resettled to drier land. That’s a whopping $800,000 per and have fought resettlement efforts for decades. “climate refugee!” Obama’s social engineers are alNever mind that the Times’ propagandists themselves admit that erosion ready plotting how to replicate the on the island began in 1955 as a re- climate change relocation program. sult of land-use and land-management “We see this as setting a precedent for factors that had nothing to do with cli- the rest of the country, the rest of the world,” declared HUD official Marion mate change.

Michelle

Malkin

McFadden, who is running the pro- still begging for help after Obama’s gram. destructive EPA poisoned their waters. It’s been almost eight months since EVEN WORSE, the United Na- an Environmental Protection Agency tions is looking to pre-emptively “ad- contractor recklessly knocked a hole at dress extreme weather displacement” the long-abandoned Gold King Mine by targeting refugees even before any in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. apocalyptic event has caused them to You should know that Washington has seek refuge. long schemed to declare it a Superfund Can you spell “manufacturing a cri- site, which would increase its power, sis?” budget and access over the region. While these meddling liberals conA federally sponsored wrecking spire to displace one tribe in the name crew poking around in the mine last of saving the planet, another tribe is August triggered a three million-ton flood of bright orange gunk into the Animas River. EPA’s blithering idiots delayed notifying local residents for 24 hours and downplayed the toxic spill’s effects. Downstream, the muck seeped into the San Juan River in New Mexico, where the Navajo Nation lives and farms. The impact on drinking water and livelihoods has been catastrophic. But the Obama administration refused the tribe’s request for disaster relief from FEMA last fall and yanked emergency water tanks the EPA had supplied for Navajo livestock. Navajo Nation chief Russell Begaye blasted the White House at the time for shirking its responsibilities. “U.S. EPA caused this entire disaster, they have harmed the people, the water and the land. ... For years, we have consistently been at the receiving end of toxic spills and contamination with no adequate relief as the United States Government and Private Companies became wealthy off of the natural resources of the Navajo Nation.” OUR ECO-SAVIOR on the Potomac’s response to the victims of his man-caused, government-engineered disaster: Never mind.

Conservative Chronicle

BUSINESS INVESTMENT: April 30, 2016

Growth anemia: Blame collapse in business investment GDP for the first quarter of 2016 came in at a paltry 0.5 percent. That sorry showing follows growth of 1.4 percent and two percent in the previous two quarters. If such a thing is possible, the already-anemic economy is actually getting worse. But even worse than that, the latest GDP numbers reveal a collapse in business investment, the real driver of the economy. When businesses don’t spend and invest, they don’t hire and cannot offer better-paying jobs. Business investment and wages are two sides of the same mirror. If a company purchases five trucks rather than 10, there are five fewer trucking jobs. If employers don’t invest in more computers, there are fewer programming jobs. If businesses don’t purchase more jackhammers and cranes, fewer construction workers are hired.

BUSINESS INVESTMENT hasn’t grown for two years. Over the past two quarters, total business fixed investment has fallen by an annualized average of four percent. Business equipment and software has dropped by more than five percent. Non-residential structures — such as commercial office space, shopping malls, factories, and hotels — have dropped by nearly eight percent. But let’s go further back. For the entire 32-quarter economic recovery, business fixed investment has averaged just 1.1 percent at an annual rate. Since 1960, however, business fixed investment has averaged 4.4 percent at an annual rate. So the present expansion in business investment is roughly onequarter of the 55-year average. Why? One key factor is tax policy, especially business tax policy. At 40 percent for combined federal and state business tax rates, the U.S. has the largest corporate tax burden in the developed world. We double-tax corporate profits earned overseas, as virtually no other country does. Our depreciation rates for investment tax expensing are among the worst in the world. And despite all the talk about corporate tax reform, nothing gets done — even under a Republican Congress. What’s more, the Obama administration has raised tax rates on capital gains, dividends, and income (paid by small-business pass-throughs). So, as the tax cost of capital has gone up, business investment has come down. Arthur Laffer has taught us: “If you tax something, you get less of it.” That’s why firms are moving offshore in droves. It’s not about being unpatriotic. It’s that it doesn’t pay, after-tax, to invest in the United States. A second key reason for the business-investment slump is monetary

policy. While this may not be the right fuel. The president pushes for climatetime for rate hikes, ultra-low interest change regulations instead of a masrates have led to financial engineering sive build-out of energy infrastructure, rather than the deployment of excess including pipelines, liquid-natural-gas corporate cash for productivity-en- terminals and new refineries. Want more manufacturing? The hancing investment. business, and the Rather than invest in job creation e n e r g y potential for North and higher wages, American energy firms are buyindependence, is ing back stocks the key. Hillary to boost priceClinton, with her earnings ratios. In (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate promise to end many cases, they oil and gas frackare even borrowing money they don’t need so they can ing, will pull us further in the wrong direction. buy back stocks. Many people do not understand A THIRD KEY reason for the busi- that business investment is a critical ness-investment collapse is over-regu- prosperity-booster, leading to more lation. Obamacare rules and mandates jobs, higher wages, and stronger famare job-killers. Dodd-Frank red-tape ily income. Put another way, rising tax costs have held back lending to such and regulatory burdens that penalize an extent that business startups have investors and businesses also punish practically come to a halt. And com- middle-income wage earners. And it’s these wage earners who munity banks have drastically pulled back loans to existing small business- would benefit most from business tax reforms, such as a 15 percent corpoes. Then we have the Obama EPA’s new rate rate for large C-corps and small rules, which amount to a war on fossil S-corps. This should be accompanied

Larry

Kudlow

by immediate tax-deduction expensing for new investment and a territorial tax regime that would stop double-taxing profits earned abroad. Study after study shows that corporate tax reform is a middle-class tax cut, not a tax cut for the rich. You see, corporations don’t really pay taxes. They simply collect them and pass the cost along in the form of lower wages and benefits, higher consumer prices and reduced shareholder value. THE OVERARCHING theme of this election is an angry revolt by the middle class over the fact that jobs and wages have barely increased in the past decade. They blame Washington, China, immigration, power elites and almost everything else. So be it. There is a lot of work to be done on all these fronts. But without radical tax, regulatory and currency reform, business investment will never fully recover. And neither will the economy.

COLLEGE COSTS: April 28, 2016

Is college too pricey? Wait till it’s free

s he panders for the youth vote, Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders promises free tuition at public colleges and universities because, he says, “a college degree is the new high school diploma.” Rival Hillary Clinton supports President Barack Obama’s plan to make community college tuition-free — that is, publicly funded. Beware, America: Imagine how expensive college tuition will be if Democrats somehow manage to make more of it “free.” As for value, if Sanders has his way, you can expect the college degree to be the new high school diploma.

University’s Center for College Affordability and Productivity co-wrote a pamphlet for the Heartland Institute on higher education reform in 2011, which explored how federal grants and student loans have driven up the cost of college. His report showed the cost of a four-year degree had more than doubled in inflation-adjusted dollars from 1975. College gradu-

ON THE OTHER side of the aisle, GOP presidential hopefuls rarely talk about “college affordability.” The issue is not on front-runner Donald Trump’s main issues pages. Ditto for Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Ohio Gov. John Kasich suggests that one way to make college more affordable is by encouraging “more students to earn college credit while completing their high school courses” to give them a “jump on their college careers” and a break financially. Republicans wisely are pushing personal fiscal responsibility as the main answer to rising tuition and fees. Who’s going to pay for all this? Everyone. Richard Vedder of Ohio

ates aren’t more literate; they have a lower level of reading comprehension than those who graduated a decade earlier. Also, many grads are underemployed. According to federal statistics, 13 percent of American parking lot attendants and 14 percent of hotel clerks have a bachelor’s degree or better.

Debra J.

VEDDER DESCRIBED Clinton’s plan as better than Sanders’ because Clinton does not propose subsidies for affluent families. Both Democratic candidates have good intentions. Nonetheless, Vedder told me Wednesday, their proposals “would have very profound negative unintended consequences.” A spike in tuition subsidies would most

likely increase the number of college dropouts and underemployed graduates. “If we went to free tuition,” Vedder asked, would the real beneficiaries be “the students or the universities?” (Last I checked, college administrators are not living hand to mouth.) Then there’s the big question: “Where are the taxpayers getting the money?” Vedder asked. It’s not unfair if college graduates are saddled with student loan debt, because their incomes should be higher than those of adults who didn’t go to college. OVER THE PHONE, I asked three of Vedder’s students what they think of free tuition. Sure, they stand to benefit personally, but senior Sam Kissinger fears free tuition would “decrease the quality of schools.” Junior Will Vosler anticipates a “high school effect” — with too many students taking college for granted. Senior David Holman has a novel idea to cut costs: “Encourage people not to go directly after high school.” Let them work after high school, salt away a few dollars and go to college with a better sense of what they want to do. All three understand that students value an education more when they earn it.

May 11, 2016 ECONOMY: April 28, 2016

Economic lethargy needs kick from new fiscal policy

t comes as no surprise that in clue how to turn the economy around, or Barack Obama’s last year as presi- has been too busy raking in millions on dent, the U.S. economy has all but the speaking circuit to utter a discouragstopped growing. ing word. Obama has had relatively little, if anyIt’s not as if the Democrats were thing, to say about the economy lately, b l i n d sided by the U.S. and with good economy’s decline. reason. What can It was in a near free he say? Except, fall in the last three maybe, “I’m sorry. months of 2015, I don’t know why when it slowed to (c) 2016, United Media Services this is happening.” a bare 1.4 percent The president is briefed by top aides each growth rate. That elicited yawns from morning on major developments at home Obama’s party leadership on Capitol Hill, and abroad, so he couldn’t have missed despite a growing number of business the Commerce Department’s bad news. layoffs, a sharp decline in U.S. exports, and what Reuters said was a buildup in HERE’S HOW Reuters’ worldwide unsold merchandise “clogging up warenews service put it in its lead Thursday houses.” morning: “U.S. economic growth braked Another worrying sign behind the sharply in the first quarter to its slowest economy’s decline is consumer spendpace in two years as consumer spending ing, which accounts for more than twosoftened ...” The gross domestic prod- thirds of all economic activity. It slowed uct, or GDP, the government’s broadest to a tepid 1.9 percent, “the slowest since measurement of the economy’s annual the first quarter of 2015 and marked a degrowth rate, “increased at a 0.5 percent celeration from the fourth quarter’s 2.4 annual rate, the weakest since the first percent rate,” Reuters said. quarter of 2014.” The Federal Reserve, notorious for The Democrats have been ignoring issuing exaggerated forecasts of an ecothe economy’s troubles for years, with- nomic comeback, was virtually mum as out a peep of criticism from its leaders in well about the economy’s collapse. DeCongress, or maybe even an apology to spite its past promises that the central the voters about why Obama’s economic bank will keep to its plan to raise interest scores have rarely broken out of the two rates in the months to come, the Fed left percent growth range. The Democrats its benchmark rate unchanged Wednespaid a price for their silence, suffering day but said relatively little else — except big losses in the 2012 and 2014 congres- a terse statement that it would continue to sional elections. “closely monitor inflation indicators and Hillary Clinton, on a fast track to be- global economic and financial developcome the Democrats’ 2016 presidential ment.” nominee, has side-stepped the subject While the Fed grudgingly acknowlaltogether. Maybe because she hasn’t a edged the economy’s slowdown, its wa-

Donald

Lambro

tered-down response was disappointing. The economy’s sharp nose-dive spoke volumes about the Fed’s capitulation in the face of the Obama economy’s dismal performance and its refusal to face reality. THE ECONOMY’S lethargy can’t and won’t be solved by monetary policy alone, as former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke often reminded us in the Bush years. It will need a sharp turnaround in fiscal policy, including pro-investment, pro-growth, pro-job tax cuts, ironclad spending reductions and deregulatory reform to unlock the economy’s animal spirits. But we’re not going to get those reforms from Obama, or a Democratic Congress, nor will they come from Hillary Clinton, whose economic agenda has “big government” and “higher taxes” written all over it.

What we need now is an experienced leader who understands the power of capitalism to get our economy moving again by restoring America’s entrepreneurial, risk-taking spirit. Obama came into office telling us that capitalism didn’t work, and he wanted no part of it. “‘The market will take care of everything,’ they tell us ... But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ‘50s and ‘60. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory,” Obama said in a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, on Dec. 6, 2011. But Obama is wrong. Everywhere it has been tried, it has not only worked, it has been a spectacular success. “In 1800, the total population in America was 5.3 million, life expectancy was 39, and the real gross domestic product per capita was $1,343 (in 2010 dollars),” wrote Professor James Otteson, then of New York’s Yeshiva University, in a paper for the Manhattan Institute think tank. But by “2011, our population was 308 million, our life expectancy was 78, and our GDP per capita was $48,800. Thus, even while the population increased 58fold, our life expectancy doubled, and our GDP per capita increased almost 36fold,” Otteson continued. “Such growth is unprecedented in the history of humankind.” And it was “due principally to the complex of institutions usually included under the term ‘capitalism.’” Near the end of Ronald Reagan’s successful presidency that ended a severe recession in just two years, a liberal critic said he had made capitalism “fashionable again.” And once in office, Obama admitted to colleagues that he aspired to be “a transformational leader” like Reagan. THAT WAS NOT going to happen, especially to someone who still believes that capitalism is a disproven theory.

Conservative Chronicle

GOVERNMENT WASTE: April 28, 2016

Crony capitalism and the spigot of government subsidies

Solyndra, the bankrupt crony solar panel company run by large donors to President Barack Obama’s campaigns and subsidized by the infamous Department of Energy’s 1705 loan program. The Los Angeles Times shed some light on the state and federal cronyism involved in SpaceX: “On a smaller scale, SpaceX, Musk’s rocket company, cut a deal for about $20 million in economic development subsidies from Texas to construct a launch facility there. (Separate goal of enabling people to live on other from incentives, SpaceX has won more planets.” U.S. taxpayers shouldn’t be on than $5.5 billion in government contracts the hook for space travel and other ideas from NASA and the U.S. Air Force.)” of private purpose that won’t benefit And why are the taxpayers subsidizing a many, if any, taxpayers. Musk is a billionaire many times over. company that specializes in commercial space travel when the United States has If he thinks colonizing other planets is a profitable idea, then he should put up his PERHAPS THE most prominent case a hard enough time balancing a budget? own money. The taxpayers shouldn’t be of cronyism in modern history is Elon THE SPACEX website says: “SpaceX forced along as passengers on his expenMusk. A brilliant entrepreneur, Musk founded the online payment company designs, manufactures and launches ad- sive and risky experiments. X.com with profits he made off the sale vanced rockets and spacecraft. The comELON MUSK made his fortune by of Zip2 — another profitable company pany was founded in 2002 to revolutionand the first online version of the Yellow ize space technology, with the ultimate inventing products commonly used by Pages. X.com eventually merged with Confinity and became the wildly successLESLIE’S TRIVIA BITS: May 2, 2016 ful PayPal. And there were many other successful ventures that made Musk into one of the most successful businessmen in the world. According to Forbes, Musk is worth $14.3 billion. Much of his wealth renades take their name make a total of nine presidents who is the result of producing brilliant ideas, from the French word for breathed their last in the Empire State. creating value for others and revolutionVangelis gave us the Chariots of Fire pomegranate, the fist-sized izing the way we do business. fruit that bursts forth with seeds when theme in 1981. (Think athletes running More recently, however, Musk has you open it. Explosive weapons aside, on the beach.) Since then, the theme used his wealth to invest in space trav- pomegranates are a traditional sym- has been used in Mr. Mom, Good Burgel, solar panels and electric cars. There bol of fertility and vitality (what with er, the live-action version of How the wasn’t anything wrong with that until the bursting seeds and all). That’s why Grinch Stole Christmas, Old School, Musk dragged the government into it. you’ll see pomegranates on the coats of Bruce Almighty, Kicking and ScreamTesla Motors, SolarCity and SpaceX — a arms of medical associations, such as ing, Madagascar, and both National few of his highest-profile projects — have the Royal College of Physicians in the Lampoon’s Vacation and its 2015 rerelied heavily on government subsidies. United Kingdom. boot. Talk about going the distance ... According to a 2015 article in the Los Angeles Times, these three companies “toTHE WORLD’S longest train tungether have benefited from an estimated nel, the 35-mile Gotthard Base Tunnel, $4.9 billion in government support.” And is scheduled to open later this year in though none of these projects is profitable Switzerland. It will run directly through on its own, Musk is making a mint. the Gotthard Massif in the Alps with a (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate Tesla secured nearly $1.3 billion in flat track to accommodate high-speed benefits from a variety of sources, includ- trains. Drilling and blasting for the ing money from Nevada to set up a car two-track tunnel started in 1999 and ACCORDING TO the American battery factory, federal subsidies through continued until the excavation crews at Kennel Club, the first Akita dog registhe U.S. Department of Energy’s Ad- each end reached a “breakthrough” in tered in the U.S. belonged to a military vanced Technology Vehicle Manufactur- October 2010. officer from Montana. But it was Helen ing program, and a number of federal and St. Florian is the patron saint of Keller, deaf-blind political and social state tax breaks for the purchase of Tesla firefighters. You’ll sometimes see his activist, who brought Akitas to the atvehicles (such as the $7,500 federal tax likeness at fire stations, depicted with tention of the American dog-loving credit and a $2,500 California rebate). the single bucket of water that legend public. She received one as a gift durWhy would so much in government sub- says he used to save an entire city from ing a visit to Japan in 1937 and named sidies go to produce a car that only a few burning. Today, the four-sided symbol her Kamikaze-Bo. When “Kami” died, Americans can afford? The new Tesla used to designate firefighting services Keller acquired another Akita who she Model S ranges from $80,000 to nearly is known as the Florian Cross. named Kenzan-Go, or “Go-Go.” $115,000 before tax credits and rebates. TRIVIA New York has the dubious distincSolarCity got over $300 million in tion of being the state where the most 1. What unfortunate Greek goddess federal grants and tax incentives, in ad- presidents have died. James Monroe, was doomed to be queen of the underdition to state and local subsidies meant Martin Van Buren, Millard Fillmore, world because she ate some pomegranto create an artificial demand for solar Ulysses S. Grant, Chester Arthur, Wil- ate seeds? energy. In a funny twist, the company liam McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, A) Arachne even moved in to old office space from Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon B) Penelope reating something that people want is how one gets wealthy in a market economy. Sadly, there’s another way to get rich. It’s called cronyism, and it can make billions for the lucky businesses that get government support — whether their products are profitable or not. In the process, the taxpayers foot the bill. Taxpayer insurance against unprofitability takes many forms, from loan guarantees to grants, which provide a no-lose scenario for beneficiaries. If the business is profitable, then the corporation makes massive profits. If the business goes bust, then the taxpayers take a hit. Either way, the crony capitalist wins.

Leslie’s Trivia Bits

Leslie

Elman

consumers every day. Now he has resorted to taking billions in government cash and subsidies to work on ideas that probably won’t return a profit to the taxpayer. He’s using his friendships in government, as well as some high-priced lobbyists, to keep the spigot of government money going his way. Though it has been profitable for him, Musk is a case study in cronyism and a shining example of a rich individual abusing his influence to make taxpayers pay for risky investments. Veronique de Rugy is a senior research fellow at George Mason University.

C) Persephone D) Rhea 2. Emmentaler, Gruyere and Kirsch are principal ingredients in what traditional Swiss dish? A) Fondue B) Leckerli C) Papet vaudois D) Rosti 3. Who’s the firefighter character in the G.I. Joe Real American Hero series? A) Ash B) Barbecue C) Ember D) Flamekiller 4. The largest mausoleum in North America houses the remains of which U.S. president and his wife? A) Ulysses S. Grant B) John F. Kennedy C) Abraham Lincoln D) Zachary Taylor 5. Chariots of Fire is about athletes competing in the 1924 Olympics held in which city? A) Amsterdam B) Athens C) London D) Paris 6. The Alabama quarter in the U.S. Mint 50 State Quarters series incorporates what element into its design? A) Braille writing B) Confederate flag C) Hologram D) QR code (answers on page 19)

May 11, 2016 ETIQUETTE: April 29, 2016

Bring back etiquette

Nowhere is this clearer than with the hen I was a child, my mother (traditional South- “sexual revolution,” which has been an ern woman that she was) unmitigated disaster. Rampant divorce? enrolled me in an etiquette class for chil- Check. Fatherless children and impovdren called “White Gloves and Party erished families? Check. Spread of sexuManners.” Bratty little Yankee know-it- ally transmitted diseases among young all that I was (this being 1970 or so), I people? Check. Hyper-sexualization of thought it was the most absurd waste of children? Check. “Rape culture” on college campuses? Check. (Seriously time I’d ever been forced to endure. — you cannot have Etiquette got a a culture that treats bad rap then, and sex like a spectator to a certain extent sport and then feign it still does. It is shock when young seen in many quar(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate people treat it like ters as patrician, a spectator sport.) elitist, a vestige of Even some of the most contentious isa society based upon class distinctions and a mechanism for institutionalized sues of our day could have a significant amount of friction lessened with a little snobbery. bit of etiquette and propriety: a young AS I HAVE grown older, I have come woman has too much to drink on a date? to appreciate just how wrongheaded that A young man raised to be a gentleman perception is. We have lost much by would not dream of taking advantage of chucking etiquette out the window, and her. A man is walking down the street what has taken its place is not an im- wearing women’s clothing? Propriety would suggest a smile and a “Good provement. It’s the absurd notion that the past has morning” and not remarking any further nothing to teach us that has gotten us upon it. Your gay nephew and his signifiwhere we are today. It’s popular to de- cant other announce their marriage, civil ride the millennial generation as coddled union or commitment ceremony? Good “special snowflakes.” But it’s the baby manners dictate a thoughtful gift and a boomers who absolutely cannot admit handwritten card if you cannot — or prefer not to — attend. that they were wrong. A number of societal trends have And oh, were they wrong. Theirs was the generation that gave us “Don’t trust rushed into the vacuum left by etiquette’s anyone over 30,” and their obsession with unceremonious expulsion, and none of youth has produced 50 years of deliberate them are good. The first of these is the disregard of the wisdom that comes with adolescent insistence upon constant affirage. Etiquette was one of the first casual- mation and public expressions of approval. This attitude has created nothing short ties.

Laura

Hollis

of an ongoing national temper tantrum. For heaven’s sake, grow up. Everyone isn’t going to “approve” of you, and it is puerile to insist upon it. AND WHEN approval becomes a civil right, how better to insist upon it than by using the law? In place of politesse (as the French so daintily put it), we have prosecution. Instead of a blotter, we now have a bludgeon. Thus, we move from “approve of me” to “approve of me or I will sue you.” Do you really think that you will bring people around to your view of homosexuality, contraception or abortion by using the law to force people to participate? It’s a prudish throwback to teach our sons to be chivalrous or our daughters to exercise good judgment — but it’s somehow “progress” for them to sleep around in a drunken stupor and then have their lives ruined by actual sexual assault, or false accusations of sexual assault, or academic “disciplinary” proceedings that utterly lack due process, or criminal prosecutions. The third trend contributing to our collective misery is the apparently irresistible impulse to tell everyone what

one thinks of them. This has only been exacerbated by social media and the anonymity of the Internet. We have become a nation of insufferable busybodies. Who made it your business? As counterintuitive as it may sound, polite behavior based upon widely acknowledged social mores is vitally important to the smooth operation of a liberal society. In its absence, we do not have more freedom, but exhibitionism and offense and conflict and oppression. I’m not suggesting that we obsess over Downton Abbey-esque intricacies of etiquette (“Which fork with fish?”). But we could improve things immeasurably by following just a few simple rules: 1. Don’t be vulgar in public. 2. Keep your private life private. 3. Keep your opinions to yourself. And while we’re on the subject, “privacy” is not synonymous with “shame.” There are plenty of human activities — most of which involve some kind of bodily function — that we do in private, not because they are shameful, but because they are nobody’s business. Those who equate rudeness and exhibitionism with societal advancement have done little except make our culture insufferably crude I’ve made these observations before, and there are inevitably those who go into fits of apoplexy: “You’d take us back to the 1950s, when women and minorities were second-class citizens.” What a load of rubbish. Time marches on. There are any number of ways in which society is far better than it was, we all know it, and no one (well, except perhaps ISIS) is going backward. But not everything contemporary is “better,” nor does progress preclude us from appreciating things in the past that actually have something to offer. Chaucer is still wickedly funny; Shakespeare’s plays and poetry are still genius; John Milton is still poignant and inspirational, and we still teach — and play — the works of Mozart and Beethoven. That’s not saying we want to live in the 14th, 16th or 18th centuries. IF WE CAN appreciate Botticelli and Bach without a desire to live in their eras, so, too, can we look back and decide that the decorum associated with an earlier age still has a place today, notwithstanding — or perhaps because of — our modernity. And we should.

May 11, 2016

Reaganism is dead — no party coherence

less to the vertigo-inducing reality that people who call themselves conservative, even “very” conservative, can vote for someone like Trump — a liberalleaning, Planned Parenthood-defending, Code Pink-echoing, flamboyantly ignorant swindler. Anger about immigration isn’t it. I’ve always been a mushy moderate on immigration. At least with regard to Mexico, it’s a problem on the way to solving itself. The “wall” would be the greatest waste of money since the THE LESSON of the Ted Cruz feds created the Department of Educacampaign is that the party faithful are tion — and threatening to dun Mexico the cost is sheer flimflamnot nearly as conservative as some for mery. Still, I was had thought. Even willing to entertain among “very conthe idea that voters servative” votwere really exerers in New York, cised about it as an Cruz carried only (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate explanation for 27 percent. Were the Trump rise — Empire State voters still smarting from Cruz’s “New until I looked at exit polls. Since Iowa, voters have been asked York values” snipe? Maybe, but Cruz won only 29 percent of “very conserva- to rank issues by importance. In New tives” in Alabama, 31 percent in Virgin- Hampshire, only 15 percent of voters ia and 41 percent in Pennsylvania. Cruz put immigration at the top of their list has worked assiduously to showcase of concerns. Fifty-six percent favored his conservative bona fides, and while a path to legalization for illegals living purists might raise an eyebrow at some and working here. In South Carolina, of his foreign policy stands and his flip- even fewer (10 percent) ranked immiflopping on trade, he passes every other gration first among issues of concern, conservative litmus test with deep dye. and 53 percent favored that path to leYet even among very conservative vot- galization. These results were replicated in nearly every state that has held a ers, he failed to close the deal. A lot of ink has been spilled analyz- primary so far. Among Republicans in ing why Trump was able to run away Pennsylvania, for example, fewer than with Cruz’s “evangelical” voters, but 40 percent favored deportation of illelongtime Republican conservative emailed me after Donald Trump’s Tuesday night romp through the “Acela corridor.” “Is the GOP now the anti-trade, anti-immigrant party?” I don’t think so, but take no comfort in the reason: Republicans haven’t signed on to protectionism and nativism (or at least, only a minority has), but they seem to have lost all philosophical coherence.

Mona

Charen

gal immigrants, yet Trump won nearly 57 percent of the vote. The exception to this rule is the large number of voters who approve of Trump’s proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from the U.S. — a very new wrinkle on the old immigration issue. TRADE HAS loomed large in a few states, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, but has been more mixed elsewhere, with voters divided on whether it helps or hurts the economy. So the answer to my friend is that Republicans are not voting on issues; they are voting on personality and attitude, and thus revealing themselves to have

fallen for one of the worst errors of the left: the progressive belief that all will be well provided the “right” people, the “best” people, if you will, are running the government. “This is the end of Reaganism,” former Sen. Tom Coburn, a conservative hero, told me. The three-legged stool of strong defense, small government and conservatism on social issues has been smashed. Republicans, or at least a plurality of Republican primary voters, no longer distrust government per se; they simply distrust this government. They dislike Obama and the Republican leadership. But they’re ready to believe that an outsider will be able to bring his annealing touch to the economy, to the culture and to national greatness. If a Republican politician today were to tell the joke about “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you” — a reliable punch line in the Reagan repertoire — he or she would be greeted by incomprehension. This is a signal victory for the left: the triumph of faith in the state. Trumpites are reprising Barack Obama’s “Yes We Can” with a new lead. Republican politicians cannot rely on the healthy skepticism about government that was once woven into the fabric of the party. People used to know that bigger government enables more corruption; that the mediating institutions of society, such as family, church and community organizations, are better at nearly every task than bureaucracies; and that government undermines these institutions when it expands too much. “ALL KINGS is mostly rapscallions, as fur as I can make out,” explained Huck Finn, a good American constitutionalist. It’s a lesson the Republican Party will have to relearn when this season passes. April 29, 2016

This Week’s Conservative Focus

Republicans

The GOP has been bad, but not as bad as you think

epublicans, I’m told, were elected to Congress by the people, and yet they’ve done absolutely nothing. This indictment has now mutated into “Republicans gave President Obama everything he wanted,” i.e., the GOP and Obama were basically colluding against the American voter this whole time. Republicans have been dreadful on plenty of fronts — the quality of their advocacy, the spine they show making arguments and the lack of innovation and malleability in the focus of their policies, to name a very few — but resistance to Obama’s legislative agenda was definitely not one of them. If Republicans had capitulated in the way the average angry populist claims, Obama would not have needed to enact some of the most consequential abuses of executive power since World War II. SOME OF this anger is propelled by false expectations and wishful thinking about how government works — which is to say, when voters don’t get what they want they assume the system has

failed. On one hand, voters are under They stopped it when Obama was in the impression that presidents should the White House and Democrats conbe able to craft law and policy and trolled both legislative branches. Remake everything great again; and on publicans then filibustered the DREAM the other, they are angered about the in- Act of 2010 and voted to end the Deeffectiveness of the legislative branch. ferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and then many joined It all depends on which of these corre- p r o g r a m , against DACA. Yet sponds with their own political affilia- the suit on numerous occation. sions I’ve engaged As far as exwith radio talk pectations go, Reshow callers and publicans deserve hosts who are blame for mak(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate mad at Republiing promises they couldn’t possibly fulfill — including cans for not doing enough. Should the the notion that they could repeal Obam- RNC send two battalions to shut down acare. Then again, overpromising is not the White House? exactly a new political trend. And it’s THE GOP WAS too late to stop not as if voters flock to candidates who tell them unvarnished facts about this Obamacare, and they are partially at fault for failing to deal with health care cruel world of ours. But did Republicans do nothing but at all. Yet only one Republican ever voted for Obamacare. The GOP sued surrender the last eight years? If you’re a conservative who op- Obama for rewriting the law without a poses immigration reform, conserva- vote of Congress and, at this point, I’ve tives put an end to it in 2008, when Re- lost count of how many times they’ve publicans controlled the White House voted to repeal ACA. They sent a repeal and Democrats controlled Congress. bill to the president’s desk.

David

Harsanyi

Whom to blame for the rise of Trump?

r. Frankenstein created the monster that bore his name and if Dr. Jekyll had not conducted those experiments in his laboratory, Mr. Hyde would never have emerged to terrorize London. In literature, we know whom to blame for the monsters, but who is to blame for the rise of Donald Trump? Is he the “monster” the elites say he is?

I AM NO FAN of Trump and wish there were better candidates for president from both parties, but the major fault for his rise as the “presumptive nominee” of the Republican Party in 2016 can be laid at the feet of the very elites who are so vociferous in their condemnation of him. It is they who have presided over the horrific national debt, spending as if there were no tomorrow. They are not good stewards of the money we make and they take. It is the elites who have started wars we should not have fought and then not fought them to win with too many “rules of engagement” that only guarantee stalemate, or victory for the other side. They are the ones who over-regulate even small businesses, stifling their growth and preventing the creation of new ones. They so penalize initiative that if today’s OSHA regulations had been applied to Wilbur and Orville Wright the two visionaries would never have emerged from their Ohio bicycle shop,

much less flown for the first time at Kitty Hawk, N.C. The career politicians, the lobbyists, the lawyers, the self-serving institution that government has become (instead of the constitutionally limited, peopleserving institution it was originally created to be) have fueled the rise of Donald Trump. It doesn’t help their position now that these elites appear at least as arrogant as Trump in their denunciations of him while refusing to accept responsibility for what they have failed to dismantle. As Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan has noted, Trump projects love for America and

Cal

increasing numbers of voters, who also love America, are captivated by his love song, even if he sings it off key. MANY OF those voices that have warned of dire consequences should Trump become president have enabled big government. Republican politicians, afraid of their own shadow, the media and the Democrats, have done little to reverse any of this. When former House Speaker John Boehner refers to Sen. Ted Cruz as “Lucifer,” it is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. What

did Boehner do as speaker, other than cut deals with Sens. Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy and kiss former Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the cheek as she handed him the gavel? She must have instinctively known that Boehner wasn’t going to rock the boat and would do little damage to the Democratic agenda until the day that party would return to the majority and members resume their former ways. Voters gave Republicans a majority in both houses of Congress and they did almost nothing with it. It is why Boehner was ousted by conservative members of his own party. Don’t you have a right to be angry if you love America, if you served in the military or have relatives who did, as I have and did? The anger is bipartisan, as the popularity of the socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) attests. THIS LYRIC from the British punk rock group Dead Swans might help explain the country’s mood: “You’re lying to yourself, just like you always have, the words you said never meant a thing, I could see it from the start, you just want attention, absent friends and enemies are all that’s left in your life, every day is like a knife cutting through your chest, constant frustration, you choked on the best years of your life, no love, no hate, no hope, all lies.” May 3, 2016

Republicans also stopped cap-andtrade, which would have created a fabricated “market” for energy in the same way Obamacare fabricates “markets” for health insurance. Stopping it helped undermine Democrats’ efforts to make fossil fuels prohibitively expensive — which was, initially, the stated goal of this administration. When Obama circumvented Congress again, Republicans across the country sued the Environmental Protection Agency. Conservatives in Congress also put an end to bipartisan gun-control legislation. They stopped the so-called Paycheck Fairness Act — twice — and the Paying a Fair Share Act of 2012, which would have raised taxes. They stopped the American Jobs Act bailout and the authoritarian card-check stuff. They stopped the DISCLOSE Act; and the sequestration replacement; and the Keep Student Loans Affordable Act of 2013; and the across-the-board federal minimum wage efforts. Republicans sued and won when Obama abused his power by naming recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. This is not nothing. Even more importantly, there is a counter-history to consider. There is no way to quantify how many Obama-led liberal initiatives would have been instituted without a Republican Congress — much less a tea party wing within that Republican Congress. The Obama presidency would probably have been as far-reaching as any in modern history. The very gridlock these populists grouse about is a reflection of a divided electorate. Though I imagine that’s not the sort of argument that wins voters. In the end, one of the persistent complaints about the GOP is that it was too cowardly facing the prospect of a government shutdown. Unlike prevailing wisdom, I doubt shutting down government is always a loser for the GOP. Republicans have done just as well after shutdowns, historically. But the idea of utilizing shutdowns regularly as means of shaping policy is unrealistic. You can shut down Washington all you like: Obama is not going to allow Obamacare to be dismantled, and Democrats are not going to offer major concessions in spending. Change takes a long-term commitment with smart policy and good arguments; Republicans don’t have them. Shutdowns just tend to prove it. THE FACT is: Democrats got some of the things they wanted. But not all, or we’d be dealing with single-payer health care, carbon-trading energy markets, more union bailouts and about a dozen reforms that you didn’t even know existed. April 29, 2016

Conservative Chronicle

GOP RACE: April 29, 2016

Critical choices — cruising to Indiana

hough I won’t go so far as to say the Indiana primary is door-die for the Ted Cruz campaign, it couldn’t be much more important. As events have unfolded, Indiana has a critical choice to make next Tuesday. It shouldn’t surprise political observers that Donald Trump won decisively in New York and the other Northeastern states. I don’t mean to disparage Republicans in that region, but they are more liberal than Republicans elsewhere in the United States, and Trump is far more acceptable to liberal Republicans than Cruz is, especially on social issues.

BUT THE RACE isn’t over. Trump will still have great difficulty acquiring 1,237 delegates before the Republican National Convention. No, Cruz can’t reach 1,237 before the convention, but he very well could reach that number if Trump doesn’t, either, and the race goes to a second ballot. This is not to say that Trump doesn’t have a strong advantage now or that the candidates’ respective delegate counts are irrelevant going in to the Cleveland convention. The more Cruz can narrow the gap between now and Cleveland the greater his case for succeeding on subsequent ballots. In that sense, all the remaining states are pivotal, but Indiana perhaps more so because it is in the Midwest and is considered more conservative — and right now is up for grabs, according to polls. Though all primary and caucus voters have a grave responsibility, scorching heat is on Indiana Republicans. We mustn’t forget that the Trump phenomenon was born from the gross excesses of the leftist Obama administration and the ineffectiveness of the GOP establishment to stop them. Regardless of the latter’s insistence that it did everything it could to resist President Obama, the majority of Republicans, at least, don’t buy it. But that’s all moot now. The Trump movement is here; it’s real; and it wants to reach the finish line. Cruz is also an anti-establishment candidate. His success has been partly based on that, but it’s been based more so on his unique qualifications and his reliable conservatism. There has been unmitigated rancor between Trump supporters and Cruz supporters in recent months as the race has narrowed to these two. Granted, I’m a Cruz supporter, but from my perspective, many Trump supporters feel that they alone own the title deed to “we the people” and that all Republicans opposing them are “cuckservatives,” on the wrong side of history and, in some cases, traitors to the people — if my Twitter feed is any indication. Some anti-Trump people have been

harsh, as well, so I’m not suggesting it past 50-plus years. The federal governall goes one way, but instead of focus- ment has expanded to an unconscioing on the nastiness from both sides, nable level, wholly against the constilet’s look briefly at their respective tutional order and at the expense of our claims to legitimacy and the realism of liberties and prosperity. Onerous taxing and spending, a metastatic regulatory their positions. It goes without saying that in a free state, a liberally activist Supreme Court, country, we have a right to support and sustained, relentless assaults on the whomever we want. No voter is more Second Amendment, our health care, viability, our military, legitimate than another. But what ran- our fiscal our national security kles me is the arguand our very culment from many ture have radically Trump supporters transformed Amerthat Trump is the ica. only outsider. (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate These probTruth be told, lems stem from Cruz has been fighting the insiders — from within — abandoning our Constitution and foundmuch longer than Trump, who actually ing principles, so the solution is to rehas never fought them in reality. Trump store those principles and roll back the has only done so rhetorically, and then federal leviathan. Many believed 2016 only recently, during this campaign. presented a perfect opportunity for the Most of his adult life, Trump has sup- election of a true constitutional conserported liberal causes and liberal politi- vative who intimately understands this. cians. Cruz never has, and that should Cruz couldn’t fit that bill more perfectly. Though Trump supporters believe make a major difference to voters in terms of which of the two they can trust. that Trump alone is qualified to undo the damage to this country, Cruz supMY CALCULUS is rather simple. porters rightly believe that Trump, with The problems we face are overwhelm- his emotionally driven, nationalistic ingly the result of liberal policies of the populism, has hijacked the conserva-

David

Limbaugh

tive movement just at a time when it is poised to save this nation from the ravages of liberalism. Trump sings the right notes when he talks about making America great again. But Cruz is the one who has the right answers to actually restoring America’s greatness. On issue after issue, he is consistent and his solutions are tried and tested. Trump is all over the board — right on some issues, very wrong on others — and no one knows whether he’ll change his mind from one day to the next. My humble appeal to Indiana voters is that you thoroughly consider the nature of America’s ailments and which of the two political doctors has the best cure — not the best ability to stir up a crowd and get attention but the best bona fides to actually do what needs to be done to restore America and preserve its uniqueness for generations to come. PLEASE DON’T surrender to your emotions and fall for the seductive claim that we must burn this house down in order to rebuild it. We conservatives have always said we could fix things if finally given the chance. We must not blow this.

GOP RACE: May 3, 2016

Loyal Republicans are worried, angry

able news pundits often warn that Republicans have to respect the righteous anger of Donald Trump supporters. They forget the other angry Republican voters — the many folks I saw at California’s Republican convention in Burlingame over the weekend who have been loyal GOP votes. They’ve gone to the lunches and supported candidates for down-ticket races. They care about conservative values; they know how it is important to win general elections. And they’re furious that their party is being hijacked by a rump of unreliable voters who think that just because they showed up at a rally, they are entitled to special treatment.

IT KILLS ME. This could have been the year when Republicans took back the White House. Instead, it may be the year GOP primary voters handed the election to Hillary Clinton, a dishonest, self-serving political animal and the second-least liked person in the race. Trump fans think that because Trump trounced the competition in most GOP primaries, he can win in November. They don’t care if Gallup reports that 70 percent of women don’t like Trump. His net favorable/unfavorable rating among women is minus 47 percent. They know women who like Trump. They point to

Clinton’s minus three percent net negative rating among women. That’s the statistic they trust. On June 7, California will offer the last stand to stop Trump from winning the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nod. Because California’s system awards all but 13 of its 172 delegates to each winner in the state’s 53 congressional districts, the stop-Trump movement is telling state

Debra J.

Republicans to vote for Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas or Ohio Gov. John Kasich — whichever candidate looks likelier to win one’s particular district. (How can you tell? Watch for which GOP rival generates the most campaign mail.) ON FRIDAY night, Kasich gave the standout speech at the convention. It’s too bad he wasn’t addressing a full house, as I saw a candidate who understands economic insecurity and the fear that haunts working-class families with no political connections or clout. I saw the Republican who fares best against the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Former California Gov. Pete Wilson endorsed Cruz on Saturday. Wilson doesn’t trust Trump with Supreme Court nominations, but he believes that Cruz would pick solid conservative justices and be a strong commander in chief. Wilson told me, “If he can actually win the nomination, I think Cruz can win it.” GOP pros have been watching Trump stomping all over the slim chances of a party on life support. In the first three months of 2016, California registered 850,000 new voters — twice as many voters as it registered in the same period in 2012. Yes, GOP registration is up. But political data guru Paul Mitchell wrote in Capitol Weekly that the state has seen a “doubling of registration growth among Latinos, and a more than 150 percent increase for some young voters, and a near-tripling for Democrats.” That’s why many GOP political pros will not vote for Trump in June — or November. OTHERS ARGUE that Trump is inevitable. And if he could confound naysayers by garnering the most GOP votes, perhaps he also could beat the odds in November. OK, there is a possibility that Trump could win and perhaps even could be a good president. But is it likely?

May 11, 2016 DEAR MARK: April 29, 2016

Woman cards, Ferrell, Justice Cruz, Hill’s experience DEAR MARK: I had to laugh when I saw that Team Hillary is actually selling a pink “woman card” as in Hillary is playing the woman card in her bid for the presidency. It’s gimmicks like this that always seem to work with Dum-o-crats but I think these stunts diminish the importance of the presidential election. Do you think it will have an effect? — No Thrill for Hill Dear No Thrill: More than likely this little stunt in response to Donald Trump’s remarks about Hillary’s weak resume will work with her current supporters but probably no one else. Besides ,the only card Hillary can play is a joker in a pantsuit. DEAR MARK: I just read that Will Ferrell will be playing Ronald Reagan during the last years of Reagan’s life when he had Alzheimer’s. On top of that the movie is supposed to be a comedy. I don’t care where your politics fall, that is one of the most disrespectful things I have ever heard of. Alzheimer’s is an absolutely horrible disease that not only hurts the afflicted but also the family, friends, and caregivers. How could such a seemingly nice actor like Ferrell even consider a script like this? — Buddy Dear Buddy: Thankfully Will Ferrell, who is one of my favorite actors, has turned down producing and starring in the “comedy.” The PR spin is that this script was just one of numerous scripts that Ferrell sees regularly and that reading a script is much different than endorsing and moving forward with a screenplay.

Personally the idea that a script poking fun at one of our nation’s greatest president’s developing Alzheimer’s is a sad testament to the moral bankruptcy of Hollywood. Yet I’m not surprised, either, with the intolerance most of Hollywood has for conservatives. If Barack Obama were to have pancreatic cancer, would Hollywood make a comedy about that? To the contrary, an awareness campaign and stage production with ribbons on every lapel would begin immediately. DEAR MARK:

Mark

If Donald Trump is so smart he should offer Ted Cruz a Supreme Court nomination and the veep position to Marco Rubio or John Kasich. I’m a Cruz supporter and Cruz on the Supreme Court is a lifetime position and he is the only one who is qualified to fill Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat. Would this work? — Antoinette B. Dear Antoinette: Sounds like a great idea on paper. Unfortunately we’re talking about the wacky world of politics where even on the GOP side of the political ledger egos run as big as Donald Trump’s monthly hairspray bill and as fragile as rice paper. I love the idea of a strict constitutionalist like Ted Cruz serving on the Supreme Court; however, the notion of Trump offering any position to Cruz short of Whitehouse butler has long left port. Sadly this year’s GOP primaries have become extremely personal in na-

ture and I believe any chance of a new bridge between Trump and Cruz is slim to none. A Trump/Rubio ticket with Kasich serving as Commerce or Treasury Secretary seems to have tremendous appeal, certainly compared to a Democrat ticket with Hillary, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren involved. DEAR MARK: Hillary Clinton made some interesting comments after being asked about Donald Trump when being interviewed on CNN. She talked about “having a lot of experience dealing with men who get off the reservation.” I had to laugh because the thought of her husband’s infidelities jumped right out at me. I’m glad she did but why would Hillary even go down that road? — Roll Tide Dear Roll: Every now and then a politician gives a completely honest answer. Here’s Mrs. Bill Clinton’s answer to CNN’s Jake Tapper. “I have a lot of experience dealing with men who sometimes get off the reservation in the way they behave and how they speak.” With Bill Clinton appearing to be undamaged, it makes one wonder what in the world Vince Foster could have possibly done. Besides isn’t the phrase “someone is off the reservation” an extremely racist and derogatory comment towards Indians ... uh, I mean, Native Americans? Can you imagine the media blowback if Trump had used that phrase? Oh the good old double standard in politics. E-mail your questions to marklevy92@ aol.com. Follow Mark on Twitter @MarkPLevy

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

TRIVIA ANSWERS T rivia B I T S

ANSWERS 1) Eating pomegranate seeds locked Persephone into marriage with Hades, Greek god of the underworld. 2) Emmentaler and Gruyere cheeses with a splash of Kirsch cherry brandy are main ingredients of Swiss fondue. 3) Gabriel Kelly, nicknamed Barbecue, is the firefighter character in the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero toy and video franchise. 4) General Grant National Memorial, better known as Grant’s Tomb, in New York City is the largest mausoleum in North America. 5) The 1924 Summer Olympics were held in Paris. 6) The Alabama state quarter in the U.S. Mint 50 State Quarters series features a portrait of Helen Keller with her name in Braille.

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Conservative Chronicle

GOP RACE: April 29, 2016

Trump isn’t the ‘presumptive nominee’ — not yet

onald Trump has declared himself, after following up his New York win April 19 with victories in five other Northeastern states Tuesday, the “presumptive nominee” of the Republican Party. Is it a done deal? Not quite. Trump’s 40 percent of total primary votes so far have yielded him 48 percent of pledged delegates — not exactly the unfair system he’s been decrying. He must win about 56 percent of those yet to be chosen to get to the 1,237 majority necessary for the nomination.

THERE ARE signs in the Northeastern primary results that he may get there. For the first time, he significantly outperformed his poll showings. For the first time, he got more than 50 percent of the vote (he came closest earlier in Massachusetts, with 49 percent). But turnout in these primaries hovered around just 10 percent of eligible voters, lower than in any other state but Louisiana. That’s partly because registered Republicans are scarce on the ground in the Northeast: 37 percent of registered voters in Pennsylvania, between 21 and 29 percent in the other closed primary states. Not coincidentally, none except Pennsylvania has come close to voting for a Republican presidential nominee in recent years. The Northeastern results are the latest example of a phenomenon seen throughout this Republican race: Voters in one state are not much moved by the choices of voters in an earlier contest. Donald Trump won in New Hampshire after losing in Iowa. Marco Rubio came in second in South Carolina after stumbling to fifth in New Hampshire. Trump won four of five big states on March 15 but got beat by Ted Cruz in Wisconsin April 5 — after which, Cruz finished third in five of six states in the Northeast. This reminds me of the 1980 Democratic race between Edward Kennedy and Jimmy Carter. Just when Carter seemed to have things wrapped up, Kennedy would get a big win. Then Carter would come back. It was as if many Democratic voters wanted neither one to clinch the nomination. Perhaps this year many Republican voters don’t relish a Trump victory or a contested convention where Cruz or someone else could win. The next test comes in Indiana. Polling is sparse there because of a state anti-telemarketing law, with the three April polls showing Trump leading Cruz by 39 to 33 percent, with 19 percent for John Kasich. That’s not quite as unfavorable for Trump as polling immediately before

Wisconsin, but it leaves Cruz within striking distance, especially if, as in Wisconsin, Kasich underperforms his poll numbers.

one county, Manhattan, in those six states. Indeed, outside Manhattan and his home state of Ohio he has carried just six counties, four in Vermont and two in Michigan. Cruz has carried, by THERE’S A GOOD chance that my count, 759. happens, given the apparent deal by Whoever carries Indiana will win which Kasich would defer to Cruz in the bulk of its 57 delegates, enough to Indiana in return for Cruz doing so counterbalance Trump’s expected winin Oregon in May and New Mexico ner-take-all 51 in New Jersey. The yetin June. Polls suggest that Kasich’s to-vote smaller states (except strength in InWest Virginia) look diana, as elselike tough territory where, is in afflufor Trump, but no ent suburbs. Cruz one is sure how could pull ahead California’s vote (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate if anti-Trump will shake out. voters switch to There 159 of him in the suburban counties around 172 delegates are chosen winner-takeIndianapolis, which cast one-fifth of all by congressional district, and 24 of Republican primary votes. those 53 districts voted 65 percent or Kasich’s weak showing in the more for Barack Obama in 2012. So Northeast may accelerate that trend. a lot depends on the votes of the relaHe was supposed to be strong in afflu- tively few registered Republicans in ent suburbs there, but he carried just such districts, a matter on which there

Michael

Barone

is no polling evidence or applicable precedent and on which smart analysts refuse to hazard a guess. Members of the “Never Trump” group may imagine a candidate who combines Cruz’s appeal to hard shell conservatives and Kasich’s to upscale suburbanites: Call him Marco Rubio. But Rubio couldn’t carry his home state of Florida, so Republicans are stuck with candidates who carried and embody the images of their home states, which are New York and Texas — images repellent to many other voters. DEMOCRATS HAVE already settled for a presumptive nominee who is universally known with high negatives. Do Republicans — especially in Indiana and California — want to do that, too?

DONALD TRUMP: May 2, 2016

Anti-Trump protesters do his bidding Donald Trump is lucky in his enemies. Every time leftist protesters disrupt one of his events or stage a riot outside, he benefits. They aren’t on the Trump payroll, but they might as well be. The protests are catnip to cable TV — as if Trump needed any more free media attention — and provide the perfect framing for Trump’s message that only he has the strength to defy the forces of chaos and political correctness.

AT CALIFORNIA campaign stops last week, anti-Trump protesters blocked a freeway entrance, stomped on and tried to overturn a police car, threw rocks at passing vehicles and bloodied a Trump supporter. They tried to shut down the California GOP convention where Trump spoke (he had to enter the hotel through a back entrance). And some of them were waving Mexican flags. In other words, they could have been cast in a Trump reality show about his own campaign. These kind of protests are quickly becoming accepted as part of the scenery, but they are a noxious breach of our political norms. There is never an excuse for violence, and attempting to shut down an event because you disagree with things that are being said there is speech suppression worthy of Brown University or Oberlin College. The anti-Trump protests get media coverage, but not wall-to-wall outrage, since the left tends to get a free

pass for its lawlessness (it is always presumed to be in the cause of truth and justice). Imagine if inflamed conservatives were constantly interrupting Bernie Sanders rallies and trying to obstruct his events. A thousand cable debates and op-eds would be devoted to dissecting the dangerous thuggery of the right.

Rich

Whatever you think of their tactics, the anti-Trump protesters are dancing to his tune. Trump is not a candidate of freedom, but of order. Every time he is seen as standing up to a mob, it enhances and cements his brand with his supporters. Especially when that mob is waving the flag of a foreign country. It allows him to pose as the protector of the community, as a champion of free speech, as a man too courageous to back down from telling truths that the other side doesn’t want to hear. POLITICS AS it is conventionally practiced involves smoothing over rough edges and emphasizing unity. Trump does it differently. He has gotten to the cusp of the Republican nomination with a genius for raw, emotive spectacle (made more spectacular by the telegenic disruptions of protest-

ers). He is unapologetically divisive. He has realized from the beginning that by angering and outraging all the people who will never support him (at least not now), he could earn the undying loyalty of a critical mass of people who will always support him. The cliche is that politics is a game of addition. For Trump, the computation is a little more complicated — the addition would be impossible without subtraction. If he weren’t so hated, he wouldn’t be so loved. He has gone out of his way to create a charged atmosphere around his candidacy. He has — appallingly — egged on his supporters to punch protesters, and threatened violence at the Republican convention if he doesn’t get his way. His occasional pledges to become more presidential presumably involve toning down the belligerency, but it’s not clear if he is really inclined to dial it back, and even if he is, all that has transpired over the past year won’t be forgotten. He will continue to be a radioactive figure and draw protesters seeking to shut him down or, failing that, create an aura of discrediting chaos around his candidacy. IN 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama was dubbed “no-drama Obama.” Trump, so far, has been drama all the time. If he is the nominee, it will be a long, hot summer — and fall.

May 11, 2016 2016 ELECTION: May 3, 2016

Electoral map in Dems’ favor at this point in campaign

Compare this to the Republican elecould the 2016 presidential election be decided by a sin- toral map, which he says “is decidedly gle state, as it was in 2008 less friendly” to the GOP. There are 13 when George Bush edged out Al Gore states that Republicans have carried in the past six presidential elections, but in Florida’s disputed vote tally? That’s one of several electoral vote they total only 102 electoral votes — scenarios that are popping up in the meaning the GOP’s nominee must go news media, with some solid numbers hunting for at least 168 more votes to r e a c h 270. to back it up. But it’s still Politico, the allearly in the politics website, presidential conreports that a Flortest, and there ida poll for a busiare many facness group showed (c) 2016, United Media Services tors that could Hillary Clinton change the poeasily beating Donald Trump by 13 points in the pivotal litical dynamics of the race in favor or Sunshine State in the general election. against the two front-runners. Both draw high unfavorable pollIt also shows her beating Ted Cruz by ing numbers. A Gallup poll last month nine points. “Why is that important?” asks Chris found that 43 percent of the voters had Cillizza, who covers politics for the a favorable opinion of Trump, while 47 Washington Post. “Because if Clinton percent were very unfavorable. Clinton’s unfavorable numbers are wins Florida and carries the 19 states that have voted for the Democratic also high, especially in Florida, where presidential nominee in each of the last a statewide poll found that “a whopsix elections, she will be the 45th presi- ping 42 percent of Florida voters have a ‘very unfavorable’ view” of her, the dent,” he writes. “It’s that simple.” Tampa Bay Times reported Monday. Nevertheless, the Times said, the poll THESE 19 states, including the District of Columbia, have been won by by the GOP-leaning Associated Indusevery Democratic nominee from 1992 tries of Florida (AIF) showed Clinton to 2012, and total 242 electoral votes: “easily beats either Donald Trump or Calif., Conn., De.e, D.C., Hawaii, Ill., Ted Cruz” in the general election. For example, just among Florida’s Maine, Md., Mass., Mich., Minn., N.J., N.Y., Ore., Pa., R.I., V.t, Wash. and Wis. Hispanic voters, who make up 14 perThrow in Florida’s 29 electoral cent of its electorate, “Trump is viewed votes, and Clinton would get 271. negatively by 87 percent” of them, the newspaper said. “Game over,” Cillizza says.

Donald

Lambro

“Voters in Florida appear poised to reject Donald Trump and Ted Cruz as viable options for the presidency,” said a memo put out by AIF’s Florida polling group. “In this critical swing state, it is clear to us that Republicans continue to suffer substantial brand damage amongst all segments of the ascending electorate (younger voters, Hispanics and nonmajor party voters), and this presidential campaign has clearly exacerbated these attitudes,” the polling report said. “The bottom line is this electorate is volatile, and in some segments, downright hostile. Voters don’t like the direction this country is headed in, nor do they like their current options for who should fix it,” the memo concluded. NOT ONLY IS the nation’s electorate volatile, the battle for the Republican nomination is, too. Heading into Indiana’s primary Tuesday, Trump had 996 delegates, still short of the 1,237 needed to lock up the nomination. And 41 of his delegates remained “unbound,” mean-

ing they were not pledged to vote for Trump and could vote for Cruz, Ohio Gov. John Kasich or even Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who “suspended” his campaign but is still holding on to his delegates. In all, these candidates have a total of 905 delegates between them in their collective efforts to stop Trump from becoming the GOP’s nominee. Another 200 or more delegates “are either unbound or allocated to a candidate who has dropped out. Some of these delegates will be free to vote for any candidate on the first ballot at the convention,” writes the Post’s Kevin Schaul. “With fewer than 600 delegates left unallocated, and some wiggle room in those already allocated, this is the race to watch: Will Trump reach 1,237 delegates, or will everyone else?” he adds. Meantime, questions are being raised about whether Trump meant what he said about lowering the bombastic and explosive tone of his campaign as he draws closer to clinching the nomination. Up to this point, his candidacy has been marked by an unending stream of insults, name-calling, playing fast and loose with facts, and egging on his supporters at raucous rallies with pleas to “rough up” protesters. Then, as his unfavorable ratings climbed into dangerous territory, Trump said he was going to become much “more presidential” and tone down his rhetoric. Well, not quite. That isn’t going to happen, says his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. “What has been a certainty in this race is that Mr. Trump is going to be Mr. Trump. That is to say, his appeal has been as a person who tells it like it is. Mr. Trump is a candidate who has the ability to change the narrative at any moment.” Does this mean the Trump we’ve seen so far was an act? That’s what his convention manager, Paul Manafort, admitted recently when he said Trump has been playing “a part” in his march to the nomination, and would be a very different person in the fall campaign. IT HAS ALL been a calculating, uncompromising, tough-guy act, they say, but he’ll be a very different person when he’s in the White House. Sure.

Conservative Chronicle

MEDIA BIAS: April 28, 2016

ESPN fired Schilling: What about liberal offenders? ESPN fired baseball analyst and former All-Star Curt Schilling for mocking the debate about the North Carolina public facilities law. On his Facebook page, Schilling posted a meme (a graphic) with the picture of an aged and overweight man dressed in just enough women’s clothing to prevent flagrant violation of public exposure laws. The photo caption read: “Let him in to the restroom with your daughter or else you’re a narrow-minded, judgmental, unloving, racist bigot who needs to die!” Under the meme, Schilling wrote: “A man is a man no matter what they call themselves. I don’t care what they are, who they sleep with, men’s room was designed for the penis, women’s not so much. Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic.” ABOUT SCHILLING’S firing, the Disney-owned sports cable network said: “ESPN is an inclusive company. Curt Schilling has been advised that his conduct was unacceptable and his employment with ESPN has been terminated.” Last summer ESPN suspended Schilling for retweeting a meme likening Muslim extremists to Nazis. Last month, he no doubt angered management for saying that Hillary Clinton should be “buried under a jail somewhere” for her email scandal. So Schilling, to ESPN, is a serial offender. And as a private company, it can terminate an employee for perceived offenses. OK, so Schilling has to go. But what are the rules? ESPN hired former NFL star Ray Lewis in 2013. Originally charged with murder in a double-homicide case 13 years earlier, Lewis agreed to cooperate with the police in exchange for a guilty plea to misdemeanor obstruction of justice. (He told witnesses to “keep their mouths shut”). Obstruction of justice in a double-homicide case?! As to employees who weigh in on political controversy, ESPN took no action against commentator Tony Kornheiser, who compared the tea party to ISIS. Filmmaker Spike Lee makes documentaries for ESPN. Lee once said he dislikes interracial couples: “I give interracial couples a look. Daggers. They get uncomfortable when they see me on the street.” Lee said about then-NRA president Charlton Heston: “Shoot him with a .44-caliber Bulldog.” Lee called thenRepublican Senate leader Trent Lott “a card-carrying member of the Klan. I know he has that hood in the closet.” What are the rules? James Earl Jones, Morgan Freeman and Samuel Jackson enjoy lucrative side careers pitching products on national TV. They’ve offered Schilling-esque opinions about the tea party and Republicans.

At NBC — the same network that ABOUT THE tea party, Jones said: “I think I have figured out the tea par- employs the race-card hustling, antity — I think I do understand racism Semitic, tax-deadbeat bigot Al Sharpton because I was taught to be one by my — sportscaster Bob Costas has enjoyed a decades-long career. About thengrandmother.” ident George W. Bush, Asked if the tea party was racist, P r e s Costas said: “This is Jackson said, “It’s a failed administrapretty obvious tion. ... This adminwhat they are.” istration can be He also said the rightly criticized only reason he (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate by a fair-mindvoted for Obama ed person who’s was “because he was black. ‘Cause that’s why other folks smack in the middle of the political vote for other people — because they spectrum on a hundred different counts, and by now they’re all self-evident. ... look like them.” About the tea party and GOP Sen- It is sad to say, this is a tragically failed ate leader Mitch McConnell, Freeman administration.” At CNN, host Carol Costello ridisaid: “The tea partiers who are controlling the Republican Party ... and Mitch culed Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol, McConnell, their stated policy, publicly who told Anchorage police that she’d stated, is to do whatever it takes to see been assaulted. In introducing audioto it that Obama only serves one term. ... tape of Bristol describing the attack to ‘Screw the country, we’re going to do ... the police, Costello said, “This is quite whatever we can to get this black man possibly the best minute and a half of audio we’ve ever come across — well, out of here.’ ... It is a racist thing.”

Larry

Elder

come across in a long time, anyway. A massive brawl in Anchorage, Alaska, reportedly involving Sarah Palin’s kids and her husband. It was sparked after someone pushed one of her daughters at a party. That’s what Bristol Palin told police in an interview after the incident. ... So sit back and enjoy.” A near hysterical Palin says: “A guy comes out of nowhere and pushes me on the ground, takes me by my feet, in my dress — in my thong, dress, in front of everybody — ‘Come on, you (expletive), come on, you (expletive), get the (expletive) out of here.’ ...” At the conclusion of the segment, a smirking Costello said, “You can thank me later.” Costello did, two days later, apologize, but only in writing. Imagine mocking claims of assault by Sasha or Malia Obama? SO, WHAT are the rules? Curt Schilling will have plenty of time to try and figure that out.

MEDIA BIAS: April 29, 2016

Transgender ‘fact’ and fantasy

he liberal opinion site that calls itself PolitiFact insists it’s just a fact-checking website. When choosing to assess whether a politician’s claim is true or false, their “About Us” page says they ask: “Is the statement rooted in a fact that is verifiable? We don’t check opinions, and we recognize that in the world of speechmaking and political rhetoric, there is license for hyperbole.” WHEN IT comes to humans, there is probably not a fact more verifiable than one’s gender. But guess what? On April 26, the website Mediaite carried the eye-grabbing headline: “PolitiFact Rules It’s Now Objectively False to Call Transgender Women Men.” The alleged fact mangler was Sen. Ted Cruz, whose recent ad wondered, “Should a grown man pretending to be a woman be allowed to use the women’s restroom? ... Donald Trump thinks so.” PolitiFact rated that statement “Mostly False.” Trump told Fox News that the North Carolina gender-blurring bathroom law should be left alone, but Cruz somehow failed the accuracy test. “Further, it’s not entirely accurate to say that transgender women are men, as PolitiFact Texas has reported,” PolitiFact writer Linda Qiu harrumphed. “Medical experts typically agree that a transgender woman is a woman who identifies differently from her assigned sex at birth, though

there isn’t universal agreement on this point.” In short, a transgender woman is a woman and not “a grown man pretending to be a woman.” There isn’t “universal agreement,” but it’s “objectively false” not to call a transgendered man a woman. It’s like global warming. Silence, you knuckle draggers!

Brent

To use PolitiFact’s own terminology, this paragraph is a “Pants on Fire” lie. THIS UNDERLINES the upsidedown absurdity of this debate. Gender isn’t simply wished away. Surgeons can amputate body parts, but even then, gender assigned at birth remains a biological fact that can’t be overruled by psychological-wishful thinking or political intimidation. Alex Griswold at Mediaite smelled a rat: If “there isn’t universal agreement” among “medical experts,” then there’s trouble. “I’m pretty sure that when there’s debate about whether something is true, you don’t state as a matter of fact that it is.” Remember: PolitiFact claims, “we don’t check opinions.”

Then, the editors of PolitiFact grew nervous, and actually scrubbed the paragraph with the categorical lie, saying, “a transgender woman is a woman.” They noted that Mediaite and other readers thought PolitiFact “made it sound as if there is no public debate over transgender issues or how gender is defined. We did not mean to suggest that, and we have edited our report to more fully reflect that ongoing debate.” They moved to these weasel words: “It’s not entirely accurate for Cruz to define a transgender woman as ‘a grown man pretending to be a woman.’” But the “Mostly False” ruling against Cruz remained. Not only are they immune to facts; they couldn’t even politically play it down the middle and allow any “license for hyperbole.” On so many issues, liberals insist there is no debate and should be no debate, that there is only sense and nonsense; truth and falsehood; and fact and fantasy. When it comes to “nonconforming” to the immutable facts on gender, they are the moral deconstructionists embracing nonsense, falsehood and fantasy, insisting all the sane and sensitive “medical experts” agree with their negation of fact. NO ONE should settle a political debate with PolitiFact. On this issue, they’re simply so liberal they’re PolitiFalse.

May 11, 2016 MEDIA BIAS: May 4, 2016

Trump’s press clips better than Clinton’s?

olitico Magazine published vative media (the National Review, the its third annual “Media Is- Daily Caller and the Washington Exsue,” complete with polls of aminer) and some tilted hard to the left reporters who are perhaps the most (The Huffington Post and Al Jazeera). A separate Politico survey of 72 resistant to being polled, fearing how they might reveal which viewpoint is members of the White House press corps gave the same results: ideologically dominant in the press. said they were votSo, who will these reporters vote only 12 ing for Clinton, for in Novemthree for Sanders, ber? Reporters two for Cruz and surveyed were one for Trump. very, very coy. Most (41) gave Politico surveyed (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate the chicken-out 82 members of the campaign press corps, and only 12 answers. When asked if they regisof them (less than 15 percent) admitted tered with a party, 27 percent answered they would vote for Hillary Clinton. Democrat, 13 percent independent and Sanders, Trump, Cruz and Kasich drew zero Republican ... zero. Sixty percent one reporter apiece. Most of them (48) claimed “not registered.” checked the boxes “don’t plan to vote” BUT THE MEDIA’S true tilt might or “don’t know.” Color us skeptical. When asked if they were registered be implied from the question, “Knowwith a political party, 21 percent of the ing what you know now, who do think campaign reporters said Democrat, 22 will be the next president?” It wasn’t percent said independent, eight per- close. Among campaign reporters, 86 cent said Republican and 49 percent percent said Clinton and 10 percent said Trump. Among the White House said they are not registered. reporters, 88 percent picked Clinton WE SHOULD note this sample and 11 percent picked Trump. The reporters who deny they tilt libwas not entirely composed of objective outlets, but included some conser- eral or vote Democrat overwhelmingly

Brent

Bozell

believe the second President Clinton era is approaching. Despite Clinton lurching left to keep primary voters away from Sanders, journalists apparently see liberalism as wildly popular, despite the results of the last two midterm elections.

MEDIA BIAS: May 3, 2016

The left’s thought-fascism hits ESPN

or baseball fans, the performance of Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling in the 2004 American League Championships ranks among the most memorable gutsy plotlines of all time. The Red Sox, fighting a World Series winless streak dating back to 1918, were down three games to none to their archrival, the New York Yankees. The Sox then won two straight games. In the crucial Game Six, Schilling was slated to start, despite a torn tendon sheath in his right ankle that required medical staff to literally suture his tendon to deeper tissue. He proceeded to throw seven innings, giving up just one run, and giving us the immortal image of blood seeping through his sock as he dragged his team to victory.

room. He shared a meme with a rather hideous gentleman in a skirt, and a leather top with cutouts for his man boobs and stomach, wearing a blonde wig. The caption: “LET HIM IN! To the restroom with your daughter or else you’re a narrow minded, judgmental, unloving, racist bigot who needs to die!” Schilling added: “A man is a man no matter what they call themselves. I don’t care what they are, who they sleep with, men’s room was designed for the penis, women’s not so much. Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic.”

ESPN CREATED a 30 for 30 documentary on the series titled “Four Days In October.” The original documentary ran one hour and five minutes, and included a 17-minute segment focusing on Schilling’s heroics. When ESPN re-aired the documentary this week, however, the 17-minute Schilling segment was simply cut. Why? Two weeks ago, Schilling posted on Facebook that men who believe they’re women shouldn’t use the women’s bath-

THIS LOGIC IS, of course, inarguable. But it led ESPN to fire him nonetheless, stating: “ESPN is an inclusive company. Curt Schilling has been advised that his conduct was unacceptable and his employment with ESPN has been terminated.” By inclusive, ESPN does not mean ideologically inclusive. They simply mean that if you do not kowtow to politically correct idiocies about men magically becoming women, you will not be tolerated. ESPN is the same channel that

Ben

rewarded Caitlyn Jenner, nee Bruce, the Arthur Ashe Courage Award for getting a misguided boob job, facial reconstruction surgeries and hormone treatments that will not solve his underlying mental illness. Pointing out that Caitlyn is still a man, however, will get you fired from that same network. Not only that, but you will be memory-holed. Any person can be wiped from history with a Hillary Clinton-esque cloth at any time if he or she violates the prevailing leftist orthodoxy. Mike Tyson can still star in multiple 30 for 30 episodes after being convicted of rape. But Schilling must be excised from one of the most crucial sporting series in baseball history because he thinks men with penises are still men. Every area of American life has now been transformed into an enforcement mechanism for leftist groupthink. Entertainment. Education. Even sports. CONSERVATIVES SPEND all their time and energy focusing on elections. But the real battles are fought in the cultural space, on supposedly minor issues like the employment of All-Star and borderline-hall-of-famer Curt Schilling. If conservatives fail to realize that, elections are only the beginning of their losing streak.

What’s funny is how reporters think Trump has the press eating out of his hand, and not Clinton. When asked if Trump “successfully manipulates the media to his advantage,” 94 percent of campaign reporters said “yes,” and just six percent disagreed. But when asked if Clinton “successfully manipulates the media to her advantage,” just 31 percent said “yes,” and 69 percent said “no.” That wasn’t the only hilarious polling answer. When campaign correspondents were asked which candidate has been treated the most kindly by the press, only six percent chose Clinton. Instead, it was split among Trump (34 percent), Sanders (21 percent), Marco Rubio (20 percent) and John Kasich (18 percent). When Politico asked it the other way — which candidate has been treated the most harshly? — 49 percent said Clinton. That’s far ahead of Trump (15 percent), Sanders (nine percent), Rubio (eight percent), Cruz (seven percent), Jeb Bush (seven percent) and Ben Carson (three percent). These answers suggest reporters aren’t actually reading or viewing the actual press coverage. Which frontrunner had the adoring press acolytes running joyously after her Scooby van in Ohio last year, cheering her burrito run to Chipotle (to be “fun” and “new”)? And which one has been compared in the papers to Hitler and Pol Pot? BOTH TRUMP and Clinton have very high unfavorable ratings. His can be blamed in part on the national media. It’s much tougher to prove that Clinton has had her character sullied, or her message mangled, by the very media that overwhelmingly think she is the next president.

Conservative Chronicle

NATIONAL INTERESTS: May 4, 2016

Defining U.S. national interests: The debate continues

n late April, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said that if he were elected president, “national interest” would guide American national security policy and foreign policy.

DEFINING A “national interest” is always a challenge. Strategists and political scientists endlessly ponder the term. All interests are not equal. Theorist Hans Morgenthau argued that a nation has two types of interests, vital and secondary. If a vital interest is at stake a nation should be prepared to fight for it. “Schools” of American foreign policy have emerged, such as the “Realist” and “Idealist” schools. Other schools have names suggesting stricter guidance for formulating implementing policy, such as the Isolationist, NeoIsolationist, Cooperative Security and American Primacy schools. American isolationists, paleo and neo, tend to favor defensive or “continental” policies. Cooperative Security draws on the Idealist legacy of President Woodrow Wilson (think U.S. efforts partnered with or channeled through multi-nation organizations like the UN). Primacy advocates argue that liberal democracies are always vulnerable to threats from dictatorships. Dictatorships can focus their power and take advantage of the anarchy that is an inherent feature of international affairs. Securing the survival of the U.S. and its allies means America must dominate the international security environment. No sure fire formula that precisely defines a national interest has emerged from the debate. “National values” drawing on powerful psychological, political and moral concepts always play a role in determining interests. When values are part of the calculus, there is always room for more debate. Moreover, interests can change and mutate. However, dismissing one man’s national interest as another man’s national folly avoids the heart of the matter, which is providing sound guidance for a real world presidential decision that has a national security dimension. The security issue could be economic. It could be environmental. The most challenging decisions involve war or the threat of a war where the nation’s survival is at risk. I THINK it is fair to assume that Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton would agree that the survival of the U.S. as a nation state is a vital national interest. However, 99.9999 percent (or more) of presidents do not involve an immediate crisis (such as an all-out nuclear

The Keystone XL would have connected Canadian oil sands in Alberta province to U.S. Gulf Coast refinIN LESS STARK conditions, pres- eries and been able to transport up idential judgment is a major determi- to 800,000 barrels of oil a day. For Obama, combating clinant of national interest. In November mate change is an 2015, President American national Barack Obama interest that super(who calls himsedes reliably tapself a foreign polping an on shore, icy realist) em(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate North American ployed the phrase hydro-carbon en“the national interest” to justify his rejection of the ergy source. TransCanada and American supTransCanada corporation’s proposed porters of the pipeline accused Obama Keystone XL pipeline network. “... the State Department has decid- of “symbolism,” not realism. Other nations have national intered the Keystone XL pipeline wouldn’t serve the national interest ...” the Pres- ests, and their chief executives make ident said. “I agree with that decision.” judgments about those interests. In war) where the U.S. is engaged in a life or death struggle.

Austin

Bay

February 2007, then-Australian Prime Minister John Howard decried thencandidate Barack Obama’s plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by March 2008. Howard said the withdrawal threatened Australia’s national interest. Why? Implementing Obama’s plan would “encourage and give succor” to Middle Eastern and Asian terrorists. “I hold the strongest possible view that it is contrary to the security interests of this country (Australia) for America to be defeated in Iraq,” Howard said. “...if I hear a policy being advocated that is contrary to Australia’s security interests, I will criticize it.” GIVEN THE rise of ISIS, should we classify Howard as a realist?

ISLAMIST TERRORISTS: May 4, 2016

Zawahiri’s strategy 11 years later

he White House this week marked the fifth anniversary of the death of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by posting a piece by National Counterterrorism Center Director Nick Rasmussen on the White House website. It was Rasmussen’s recollection of being in the White House Situation Room when U.S. forces took bin Laden down. “Five years ago, I watched in the Situation Room along with President Obama, Vice President Biden, and members of the president’s national security team to see if U.S. Special Operations Forces could deliver the justice that every American had been waiting for for a decade,” Rasmussen wrote. They did.

blessed you and your brothers while many of the Muslim mujahideen have longed for that blessing, and that is Jihad in the heart of the Islamic world,” said Zawahiri.

BUT KILLING bin Laden did not kill the radical Islamist ideology he embraced. Nor did killing Abu Musab Zarqawi before him. Indeed, the strategic plan that bin Laden’s top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, outlined for Zarqawi in 2005 is at this moment being advanced by the late Zarqawi’s terrorist group, which is now divorced from al Qaeda and calls itself the Islamic State. In October 2005, the office of the director of national intelligence released a letter Zawahiri sent to Zarqawi in July of that year. An English translation of this letter is currently available on the website of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. Zawahiri told Zarqawi that he was “blessed” to be at the struggle’s main front. “What I mean is that God has

you can to spread its power in Iraq, i.e., in Sunni areas, is in order to fill the void stemming from the departure of the Americans, immediately upon their exit and before un-Islamic forces attempt to fill this void, whether those whom the Americans will leave behind them, or those among the un-Islamic forces who will try to jump at taking power.” “The third stage: Extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq,” said Zawahiri. “The fourth stage: It may coincide with what came before: the clash with Israel, because Israel was established only to challenge any new Islamic entity,” he said. What has happened since Zawahiri sent Zarqawi this letter? Almost 10 years ago, in June 2006, U.S. forces killed Zarqawi in Iraq. Five

HE POINTED TO four “stages” he envisioned in that struggle. “The first stage: Expel the Americans from Iraq,” Zawahiri wrote. “The second stage: Establish an Islamic authority or amirate,” he said, “then develop it and support it until it achieves the level of a caliphate — over as much territory as

Terry

years after that, in May 2011, U.S. forces killed bin Laden in Pakistan. For more than six years after Zawahiri sent his July 2005 letter to Zarqawi, the U.S. maintained troops in Iraq. According to the Congressional Research Service, those troops peaked at 170,300 in November 2007, more than a year after Zarqawi’s death. In December 2011, President Obama removed all remaining U.S. forces from Iraq. “But we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people,” Obama said then. In 2014, the Islamic State (now led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) and Zawahiri’s al Qaeda parted ways. And the Islamic State now controls territory in both Syria and Iraq, where it has declared a “caliphate” and where it is committing genocide against Christians and other religious minorities. President Obama has sent more than 4,000 U.S. troops back into Iraq and last week the administration announced he was adding 250 U.S. troops to the 50 already in Syria. But, as recent history has demonstrated, a U.S. ground war in the Middle East will not eradicate the threat posed by radical Islamist terrorist groups, such as the Islamic State. INSTEAD, AMERICA needs to do everything necessary to keep Islamist terrorists from entering this country while supporting the Arab governments that understand the same threat.

May 11, 2016 GOVERNMENT WASTE: May 2, 2016

Race to the bottom: Examples of federal waste It’s an ugly sight It’s not easy to choose from so many contenders in a crowded field, but choosing the worst example of federal waste, extravagance, and just plain awful policy is starting to become clear in our crystal ball. As the clouds slowly part, the winner is, no, not the Internal Revenue Service this time but, the envelope, please ... the National Park Service.

WHAT? THE nice people who run the national parks and do all other manner of good works across the country? Can it be? Not only can it be, it is. The NPS’ chief administrator and troublemaker is Jonathan B. Jarvis, whom you might remember from the national crisis, government shutdown and general foofaraw of 2013, only three years and a millennia or two ago as these national crises are reckoned.

Back then, Mr. Jarvis not only shut who can hardly be bothered even to get down nearly every national park, me- their paperwork in order. The cost of morial site and general national treasure fixing the once beautiful Arlington Mein sight but dispatched guards to keep morial Bridge, a model of American arthe American public at bay. From the chitecture and city planning once upon gotten time, has been World War II memorial in the nation’s a now forput at $150 milcapital to scenic lion, a pittance in Mount Rushmore, a federal budget lest innocent mothat now goes into torists be able to the billions and bilsee the national (c) 2016, Tribune Media Services lions. monument as The federal they happened to be passing by. Talk about mean, that Transportation Department’s ironically was just plain vicious. But there is no named FASTLANE has some $800 milquarter given in these budgetary wars. lion to spend. National Park Service These people would take tin cups away officials and the city of Washington, from the blind if they could. And make D.C., submitted an application just beInspector Javert look generous and for- fore the April 14 deadline seeking funds to repair the corroded bridge. Not just giving. Only we’re not talking about fictional Republican but Democratic lawmakers villains here but real-life incompetents were apoplectic over this near-derelic-

Paul

Greenberg

CHRISTIANS: April 27, 2016

God and politics (continued)

eligion and politics are again at the forefront of this year’s presidential race. Yet, in this campaign, self-described evangelicals don’t seem as concerned as they once were about a candidate’s personal faith. Otherwise, more of them might support the openly Christian candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz, rather than Donald Trump, whose familiarity with the Bible, not to mention the lifestyle it recommends, places him among biblical illiterates.

AT THE Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, I participated in a forum called “God and Politics,” along with SBTS president R. Albert H. Mohler Jr. The forum was packed. It was also civil, respectful and non-confrontational and many in attendance wished it could be the norm. Dr. Mohler noted that “God and Politics” wasn’t meant to be “either/or,” and he was right. Christians have the freedom, he said, even the obligation, to speak to leadership and culture from a biblical viewpoint. Right again, but my main point was that in an increasingly secular society, conservative Christians must find a better way to make their message heard, if they hope to prevail, especially on social issues. To quote a biblical passage they should be “wise as serpents, but harmless as doves.” The difficulty facing conservative Christians today is revealed in research conducted by the Barna Group, a leading research organization focused on the intersection of faith and culture. In a survey published in August 2015, Barna found that: “While the United States remains shaped by Christianity, the faith’s

influence — particularly as a force in American politics and culture — is slowly waning. An increasing number of religiously unaffiliated, a steady drop in church attendance, the recent Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage, and the growing tension over religious freedoms all point to a larger secularizing trend sweeping across the nation.” To underscore its findings, Barna reported that between 2013 and 2015, “the percentage of Americans

Cal

who qualify as ‘post-Christian’ rose by seven percentage points,” from 37 percent to 44 percent. THIS TRACKS with what the Pew Research Center reported in May 2015. It found that “the percentage of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated — describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” — has jumped more than six points, from 16.1 percent to 22.8 percent.” And, according to Pew, the “unaffiliated are comparatively young — and getting younger.” Before secularists start rejoicing they should consider what happens to nations that abandon faith, or transfer faith to political leaders whose unwillingness to solve problems is behind much of the anger and frustration in both parties. Religious language infused the nation’s founders and even the late liberal

icon, Justice William O. Douglas said, “We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.” The problem has always been how one applies such a presupposition to government and culture. It is a tension that has been with us from the beginning of the nation and most notably influenced the debate over slavery, the civil rights movement and in our day, abortion and human relations. That Christians seem to be losing ground in what has erroneously been called the “culture war” may not be a bad thing. It might force them to rethink their primary calling, which is to a kingdom “not of this world.” By following the instructions and example of Jesus of Nazareth to love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit those in prison, care for widows and orphans and love your neighbor as yourself, the result might be what they are seeking in politics, but can never find: a bubble-up “morality” that results from transformed hearts, which cannot come through politics. During the SBTS conversation I quoted C.S. Lewis: “A sick society must think much about politics, as a sick man must think about his digestion.”

THAT WE focus too much on politics — a faith in its own right — when it consistently has demonstrated it cannot address our deepest needs is an indication of how sick we have become. Rather than despair, Christians should recall where real power comes from and apply it as the early church did when it was the target of persecution.

tion of duty and common sense. But what, our bureaucrats worry? They’re too busy cashing their generous paychecks at your expense, duped taxpayer. ARE THERE words to describe such incompetence compounded by just plain laziness? If so, they fail us. Even local lawmakers in the nation’s capital — all of them Democrats, of course, this being the District of Columbia and a Democratic stronghold. One disgrace followed another as this episode unfolded, and it’s far from over even now. As embarrassment follows embarrassment, partisan scandal after partisan scandal. Lest we forget, some 68,000 drivers cross this bridge every day, or at least used to before it was found to be falling apart. Its beautiful statues, its splendid art work, its classic and classical monuments at each end, forget ‘em all. Your federal government has forgotten them, or maybe never noticed them in the first place. The result is the usual squalor that marks every government project from housing to highways. It’s the all too well-known tragedy of the commons. For if everybody owns something, nobody does. Nor is anybody willing to take responsibility for its sad condition. Whether we’re talking about a communal farm on a kibbutz or a communal dining hall in the U.S. Army, where KP is despised. Whether we’re talking about Arlington National Cemetery, formerly the home of Robert E. Lee, or any other piece of federal land that has been taken, the same story goes on and on. At last the Feds are taking their revenge not only on the old general but on history itself. But who cares these days any more than they did during the Civil War/ War Between the States/War of Northern Aggression, whichever appellation you prefer? Who cares these days even though there was a time when Americans cared very much, indeed bitterly? Perhaps it’s just as well, for memory is a useful servant but a tyrannical master. And the living must soldier on. And should. Or as a ragged private told old Stonewall Jackson, aka Thomas Jonathan Jackson, general, CSA, “I’ll be damned if I ever love another country.” One can understand his bitterness without, all these years later, sharing it. Let the dead bury their dead. The living must go on, well, living. It is our fate and liberation, our destiny and damnation. THAT WAS A terrible conflict, our war between brothers, but let it lie there now in peace or what passes for it these ever confusing days. To quote W.H. Auden, we must love one another or die.

Conservative Chronicle

CHRISTIANS: April 27, 2016

Open the door to Christian refugees from Syria “Today, Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world.” Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas said that on the Senate floor March 17 after he explained what had happened six months before to a Syrian man and his 12-year-old son. “This boy was a Christian and standing above him were Islamic State terrorists holding knives,” said Cotton. “In the crowd was the boy’s father, a Christian minister,” he said. “Methodically, the terrorists began cutting off the young boy’s fingers. Amidst his screams, they turned to the minister, his father. If he renounced his faith and in their terms ‘returned to Islam,’ the boy’s suffering would stop.”

THE INCIDENT ended when the Islamic State murdered both father and son. “They did so by crucifixion,” Cotton told the Senate. “In the time of Christ,” Cotton said, “the cross was not just a means of execution but a brutal public warning to all. Because of Christ’s suffering, the cross was transformed into a revered symbol of His sacrifice and promise of salvation, but today it is clear ISIS seeks to turn the cross once again into a message of dread.” Three weeks before Cotton spoke these words, Secretary of State John Kerry had testified in a House subcommittee that he needed to see an “additional evaluation” before he could decide if the Islamic State was committing genocide. Then, on the same day Cotton gave his speech, Kerry met a congressionally imposed deadline by declaring that the Islamic State, which he called “Daesh,” was committing genocide against Syrian Christians and other minorities. Yet, even as they face genocide at the hands of the Islamic State, very few Syrian Christians are being admitted as refugees to the United States. As Patrick Goodenough has reported in a series of stories for CNSNews.com, their number has not been in proportion to their representation in the Syrian population. The State Department maintains a database that reports the national origin and demographics of refugees admitted to this country. Between March 17, when Kerry declared that “Daesh” was committing genocide, and April 27, the United States admitted 489 refugees from Syria, according this database. 464 were Sunni Muslims, 14 were Shiite Muslims, 10 were Yazidis and only 1 was a Christian. Since Oct. 1, 2014 (the beginning of fiscal 2015), the United States has admitted 3,312 refugees from Syria. Just 38 were Christians. But 3,147 were

“Let me stress,” Cotton said on the Sunnis. That equals about 1.1 percent Senate floor, “that this underrepresentaChristian and 95 percent Sunni. The Syrian population, according to tion is not the result of intentional disthe CIA World Factbook, is 10 percent crimination.” In 2013, the U.S. Commission on Christian and 74 percent Sunni. In his March 17 speech, Cotton ad- International Religious Freedom puba factsheet on the dressed the scarcity of Christians among l i s h e d already unfolding the Syrian refuSyrian refugee crigees being admitsis. ted to the United The U.N. High States. Commissioner “There are a (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate for Refugees number of fac“told USCIRF that tors,” Cotton said. “Perhaps chief among them is that the Christians and Alawites reportedly are United States, for all intents and pur- not registering with their organization poses, relies exclusively on the U.N. because they fear negative repercusrefugee agency to identify candidates sions from Sunni refugees identifying them with the regime,” said the factfor resettlement.” sheet. “They reportedly also fear that if “ACCORDING TO the State De- Bashar Al-Assad remains in power and partment, less than one percent of the they return to Syria, the Syrian govthousands of Syrian refugees referred ernment will view them as disloyal for by the U.N. to the United States are reli- having sought safe haven in a neighboring country.” gious minorities,” he said.

Terry

Jeffrey

Cotton has offered the “Religious Persecution Relief Act” to help fix this problem. It would permit up to 10,000 Christians and members of other religious minorities in Syria to be admitted to the United States as refugees each year for the next five years. These refugees could apply through U.S.backed resettlement centers and would not need to go through the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. But they would go through the same security vetting as other refugees from Syria. The House of Representatives voted unanimously last month to declare that the Islamic State is committing genocide against Christians and other religious minorities in Syria and Iraq. Secretary of State John Kerry had no choice but to concur. WILL THEY now find no way to allow Middle Eastern Christians fleeing that genocide to find refuge in our land?

BATHROOM DEBATE: May 3, 2016

The bathroom debate: It’s all about me!

he 1940 presidential election centered on potential U.S. entry into World War II. In 1860, Lincoln and Douglas, along with two other candidates, squared off over chattel slavery and state liberties. John Adams’ use — or abuse — of presidential power animated the 1800 contest with Thomas Jefferson. And 2016 found Ted Cruz going after “Caitlyn” (or Bruce — take your pick) Jenner over transgender bathroom rights. Jenner had posted a video lambasting Cruz for support of a North Carolina law intended, in practice, to bar Jenner and fellow transgender women (who were born men) from use of the ladies’ room. THE ROAD to the future leads downward as well as upward. It’s a fact you can’t miss as you look around the country today. But back to bathroom “rights” — an issue less interesting for its tangible implications than for what it shows about the American soul in the year of grace 2016. The fact that the debate’s being framed as a rights issue shows the distemper of the times. The great rights, as civilization used to understand them, flowed from the nature of man. And woman. We had received our rights from God, who trusted us to do something constructive with them under a regime that emphasized freedom consistent with social and civic purpose. England’s bill of rights, and our own, a century after England’s, inscribed on the public record the attitudes necessary for upward movement:

free speech, the right to worship, the right to assemble, the right to trial by a jury of peers ... and the right to your bathroom of choice? The founders must have missed that one. Wonder how. We can’t see, apparently, the transcendent need not just to alter human architecture but, further, to force public acceptance of that rather unusual requirement. The Great Transgender Bathroom Debate isn’t about bathrooms at all. It’s about the monarchical privilege — running counter to all concepts of human rights — of making the world agree you’re who you say you are, whether or not what you say makes sense.

William

“OH, EXCUSE US, we somehow had the idea you were a man.” Such is the idea the Great Transgender Bathroom Movement wants to dethrone. The GTBM wants to say forcefully and loudly to the world: “Shut up! This isn’t about you; it’s about me! Me — got that? Whatever nature got wrong (on my personal reading) concerning my sex and me is a dead issue. The live issue is — well, me, of course. What else? Who I say I am is who I am. Thus I demand my choice of bathroom! Note I didn’t say ‘request.’ That’s too gentle, too forbearing. You’re going to give me what I want because it’s my right.

“My right.” Sigh. The rights, the verities of the larger society yield in every case these days to the demands, the claims of the self-empowered. Agree with ‘em, or lose any reputation you ever had for sensitivity, tolerance, fairness and receptivity to the formerly unknown and now just barely sensed. Acceptance of a compromise — the public’s provision of a genially sexneutral bathroom, for those who want such a thing — would fail to serve the purpose. Sometimes choice goes too far. In the present instance, it could leave you wondering (if I’m Bruce/Caitlyn) whether or not you have beaten your head on the floor in humble submission to my demand for acknowledgment — of the new, improved, undoubtedly wonderful Me. That’s the Great Transgender Bathroom Debate in the proverbial nutshell: a contest for power over imputed critics and foes. As Edward G. Robinson enjoined in the old TV commercial, “You do it my way, see?” That’s until we see, coming toward us, the next imposition on historical, civic, philosophical and theological understandings that the left (all this stuff comes from the left, naturally) wishes to impose on contemporary thought. DONALD TRUMP, Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders? Sorry, kids, they’re just bystanders, onlookers. The battle to reshape civilization goes on not at the polls but in the high school restroom.

May 11, 2016 AMERICA: May 3, 2016

A dark time in America — valid pessimism

s of tonight, we may know food, shelter and health care “are a right if Donald Trump will be that government should provide to those the Republican presidential unable to afford them.” That means that candidate. And, barring unforeseeable nearly half our young believe they have events, it is certain that Hillary Clinton a legitimate claim on the labor and earnothers for life’s bawill be the Democratic nominee. Those ings of sic necessities. are two reasons More than half — of many, unforof 18- to 29-yeartunately — why, old Americans do other than the first not support capiyears of the Civil (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate talism, the source War, when the survival of the United States as one country of the prosperity they enjoy, and the only was in jeopardy, there has never been a economic system that has ever lifted mass numbers of people out of poverty. darker time in American history. When young Americans see pictures THE VARIOUS major wars — the of the Founding Fathers, they do not see Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World the great men that most Americans have War I and II, and the Korean and Viet- seen throughout American history; they nam wars — were worse in terms of see white males who were affluent (now derisively labeled “privileged”) and American lives lost. The Great Depression was worse in owned slaves. The belief that certain fundamental economic terms. There were more riots during the rights are God-based — a view held by every American founder and nearly all Vietnam War era. But at no other time has there been Americans throughout its history — is as much pessimism — valid pessimism, reviled outside of conservative religious moreover — about America’s future as circles, and held by fewer and fewer Americans today. there is today. The view that male and female are Among the reasons are: Every distinctive value on which distinctive identities — one of the few unquestioned foundational views of evAmerica was founded is in jeopardy. According to a Pew Research Center ery society in history — is being oblitstudy, more and more young Americans erated. Simply saying that one believes do not believe in freedom of speech for (all things being equal) a child does best what they deem hate speech. Forty per- starting out life with a married father cent of respondents ages 18 to 34 agreed and mother will ensure they’ll be conthat offensive statements should be out- sidered a “hater.” The ideas that America should be a lawed. According to a series of Harvard melting pot, or that all Americans should University polls, about 47 percent of identify as American, are now unutterAmericans ages 18 to 29 believe that able in educated company. In fact, many

Dennis

Prager

college campuses do not have an American flag on their campus because some students regard it as offensive and representational of imperialism and capitalism. IN ADDITION, virtually every major institution is in decay or disarray. Religious institutions, which, for most of American history, have been the most important institutions in everyday American life, are being rendered irrelevant. And a larger number of Americans, many more than ever before, do not identify with any religion. The traditional family has become nothing more than one of many options open to Americans. For the first time in American history there are more unmarried women than married women. The

number of adults age 34 and under who have never been married is nearing 50 percent. In recent years, data showed just 20 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 are wedded, compared to nearly 60 percent in 1960. Additionally, more than 40 percent of American births are to unmarried women. Among Hispanic women the percent is over 53, and among black women the rate is over 71 percent. Universities (outside the natural sciences and mathematics), are intellectual frauds. In terms of ability to think clearly, they actually make most students dumber than before they entered college. As Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens wrote recently, “American academia is, by and large, idiotic.” National, state and city governments have no doubt largely engaged in Ponzischeme-like practices, racking up levels of debt that will crush the economy of the country sooner or later. The size of the federal government, and its far-reaching meddling in and control over Americans’ lives, is the very thing America was founded to avoid. The arts are as fraudulent as academia. Artistic standards have been destroyed. In music, art and architecture, nonsense and ugliness have replaced the pursuit of meaning, edification and beauty. The scatological have replaced the noble. And now there’s Clinton and Trump. Nothing more clearly exemplifies the dark time in which we are living than this political version of Sophie’s choice. I will not end on a happy note because there isn’t one; but neither will I despair. ONE DOESN’T fight only when one is optimistic. One fights because it is the right thing to do, and because America remains, as Lincoln said, “the last best hope of earth.”

Conservative Chronicle

FOURTH AMENDMENT: April 28, 2016

Super-secret court: Fruit of the poisonous tree

ould all of our lives be safer text messages. So today, if the governif the government could ment wants information contained in break down all the doors it those communications, it needs to obwishes, listen to all the conversations it tain a search warrant, which the Fourth could find and read whatever emails and Amendment states can only be given by text messages it could acquire? Perhaps. a judge — and only upon a showing of But who would want to live in such a so- probable cause of evidence of a crime contained in the communications it ciety? To prevent that from happening here, seeks. If the government the Framers ratidoes not obtain a fied the Fourth search warrant and Amendment, listens to phone which is the linchconversations or pin of privacy (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate reads emails or and was famously called by Justice Louis Brandeis “the text messages nevertheless and attempts right to be let alone — the most com- to use what it heard or read to acquire prehensive of rights and the right most other evidence or directly in the prosecuvalued by civilized men.” He wrote those tion of a defendant, that is unlawful. That words in his dissent in the first wiretap- type of information is known as the fruit ping case to reach the Supreme Court, of the poisonous tree. Evidence procured that is the fruit of Olmstead v. United States, in 1928. the poisonous tree has been inadmissible ROY OLMSTEAD had been con- in federal criminal prosecutions in the victed for bootlegging on the basis of United States for the past 100 years and words he used in overheard telephone in state criminal prosecutions for the past conversations. Because he had used a 50 years. Until now. phone at his place of work that the govNow comes the super-secret court ernment had tapped without breaking and entering his workplace, the high established by the Foreign Intelligence court ruled — despite the fact that the Surveillance Act, reaffirmed by Congovernment had not obtained a war- gress last year under the so-called USA rant — that he had no right to privacy. Freedom Act. Beware the names of federal statutes, as they often produce reBrandeis dissented. Over time, the Brandeis dissent be- sults that are the opposite of what their came the law. The Fourth Amendment, names imply; and this is one of them. Congress has unconstitutionally auwhich protects the privacy of all in our “persons, houses, papers, and effects,” thorized the FISA court to issue search was interpreted to cover telephone con- warrants on the basis of governmental versations and eventually emails and need — a standard that is no standard at

Andrew

Napolitano

all because the government can always claim that it needs what it wants. The FISA court does not require a showing of probable cause for its warrants, because it accepts the myth that the government is listening to or reading words by foreign people for foreign intelligence purposes only, not for prosecutorial purposes. NEVER MIND that Congress cannot change the plain meaning of the Constitution. Never mind that the Fourth Amendment protects all people in the United States, American or foreign, from all parts of the government for all purposes, not just criminal prosecutions. Yet the FISA court still grants general warrants — look where you wish and seize what you find — exposing our innermost thoughts to the prying eyes of the intelligence community in direct contravention of the Fourth Amendment. Enter the USA Freedom Act. One of its selling points to Congress was that it would permit the FISA court to appoint a lawyer to challenge hypothetically some of its behavior. The court recently made such an appointment, and the lawyer appointed challenged the policy of the

National Security Agency, the federal government’s domestic spying agency, of sharing data it acquires via the unconstitutional FISA warrants with the FBI. She argued that the data sharing goes far beyond the stated purpose of the FISA warrants, which is to gather foreign intelligence data from foreign people, not evidence of domestic crimes of anyone whose emails might be swept up by those warrants. The challenge revealed publicly what many of us have condemned for years: The NSA actually makes its repository of raw data from emails and text messages available for the FBI to scour at will, without the FBI’s obtaining a warrant issued by a judge pursuant to the Fourth Amendment. In an opinion issued in November but kept secret until last week, the FISA court rejected the hypothetical challenge of its own appointee and ruled that the NSA could continue to share what it wants with the FBI. There are several problems with this ruling. The first is the hypothetical nature of the challenge. Federal courts do not exist in a vacuum. They do not render advisory opinions. They can only hear real cases and real controversies involving real plaintiffs and real defendants, not hypothetical ones as was the case here. The whole apparatus of hypothetical challenge and hypothetical ruling is constitutionally meaningless. It was the moral and legal equivalent of a law school moot court oral argument. Yet federal and soon state law enforcement will interpret it as giving cover to the NSA/FBI practice of data sharing, which is clearly unconstitutional because it is the use of fruit from a poisonous tree. FISA and the USA Freedom Act were enacted under the premise — the pretense — that the data collected under them would be used for foreign intelligence purposes only so that attacks could be thwarted and methods could be discovered. Yet the use by the FBI of extraconstitutionally obtained intelligence data for ordinary criminal prosecutions defies the stated purposes of the statutes and contradicts the Fourth Amendment. IF THIS IS keeping us safe, who or what will safeguard our freedoms? Who will keep us safe from those who have sworn to uphold the Constitution yet defy it?

May 11, 2016 PUERTO RICO: May 3, 2016

How to turn Puerto Rico into Hong Kong

n May 1, the government of Puerto Rico defaulted on some $400 million of bond repayments. This default has added urgency to a bill in Congress to rescue the island from its financial crisis, which is getting worse by the day. Puerto Rico faces more than $70 billion of debt, and the government is already in technical default on many of its bonds. Billions more come due in the weeks ahead, and the government is reportedly out of funds to repay. THESE DEBTS don’t even include an additional $43 billion of unfunded pension liabilities. Add it all together and the debt reaches 150 percent of GDP. All the government has done is raise taxes, with the sales tax recently hiked from seven to 11.5 percent. Tragically, Puerto Rico has become the Detroit of the Caribbean.

By law, Puerto Rico can’t declare But as a territory Puerto Rico needs to bankruptcy, but the territory is in de agree to help itself. Here is what shouldn’t happen: a fifacto Chapter 9 already. The House Republican rescue plan nancial cash bailout from U.S. taxpaywould allow the island to restructure its ers. Puerto Rico is 100 percent responfor all of its taxes and debt and delay payments as it attempts s i b l e spending except to rebuild its shatits social security tered economy. tax and spending. The statistics are And as such, U.S. heartbreakingly taxpayers had no bleak: Almost (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate say whatsoever half the residents in the amount of are in poverty (and more than half of all children); debt Puerto Rico took on and should only about 40 percent of adults are not have to pay for Puerto Rico’s bad even in the workforce; half of families decisions. A U.S. bailout would only recollect welfare benefits; and more than ward bad behavior and finance another 10 percent of the island’s residents spend-and-borrow binge. have left for Fla., Tex., N.Y. or other THE MEDIA have invented a story safe havens. Puerto Ricans are American citi- here that the villains are the investors zens whose lives have been turned up- and hedge funds who bought the Puerto side down. The U.S. government has a Rico bonds. The bondholders are cermoral, if not legal, obligation to help. tainly not guiltless for lending money

to a government that is recklessly out of control. And bondholders will surely pay a heavy price for their financial mistake: They are likely to get, at most, 70 cents for each dollar they are owed. So the bondholders will be punished by the marketplace. The real source of the crisis is the Puerto Rican government itself. Puerto Rico’s own elected government has failed its citizens. Even on the eve of the crisis, Puerto Rico continued to spend and borrow as if it were running a Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. The Republican plan that has the support of House Speaker Paul Ryan would create a strong financial oversight board to take control of the government’s finances, taxes and budgeting decisions. We know this model works. In the 1990s it helped save Washington, D.C., during its darkest hours of financial troubles. Now the city is booming. Democrats, such as Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, are unfortunately playing politics and are accusing Republicans of acting like “colonists.” In reality, the GOP plan offers a financial life raft for the island, and if the Puerto Rican legislature or voters prefer to go it alone, they should have a simple up or down press availabilities. That’s the sort of vote on whether to agree to a control hubris one sees before the fall. board. Stutzman has partnered with GOP The thorny and controversial issue is consultants Ray McNally and Rich- how to restructure the outstanding debt. ard Temple in an effort to deny Trump There are at least a dozen classifications the 1,237 delegates it takes to win the of bonds, and the bondholders do have a nomination. As Temple told me, the legal right to repayment or to be able to California primary involves 172 del- sue in court. egates. Ten delegates go to the stateAbout one-quarter of the debt carries wide winner. Three are superdelegates a constitutional “full faith and credit” to the Republican National Committee. guarantee of repayment granted by the The vast majority of them are awarded government of Puerto Rico. winner-take-all to the top vote-getter Those constitutionally guaranteed in each of the state’s 53 congressio- bondholders must be put first in line for nal districts. As Temple noted, it’s like repayment as is consistent with their lehaving 53 little state primaries. gal rights. The Republican plan as curThe RealClearPolitics polling aver- rently written would take away their age gives Trump 46 percent of the vote right to sue in court. in California, with 28 percent for Cruz Puerto Rico’s government would and 18 percent for Kasich. But as Tem- like nothing more than a “cram down” ple noted, a candidate can win the most repayment structure without the bondvotes statewide without winning a cor- holders’ consent. This would not only responding number of delegates. A be unfair to the bondholders; it would moderate candidate, for example, can also hurt Puerto Rico in the long term, win as many delegates in a Bay Area because only a nitwit would ever again district, where about 4,800 households agree to buy PR bonds when the island are likely to vote Republican, as an- has shown it will blatantly violate conother candidate gets for winning a dis- tractual obligations. trict with four times as many GOP voters. Temple wants to strike a blow for NONE OF THIS will work unless party stalwarts who have turned out in there is improvement in the island’s hard times and really don’t want to see economy. Why not turn Puerto Rico into Trump on the ticket in November. a Hong Kong in the western hemisphere through new rounds of tax, regulatory, QUOTH TEMPLE: “California is property rights and welfare reforms? the firewall to stop” Trump — or hand The first step is to restructure the debt him the nomination. and then jump-start the dormant private economy so that the standard of living starts rising again and Puerto Rico has the economic muscle to pay its bills.

Stephen

Moore

DONALD TRUMP: May 1, 2016

Donald Trump crosses a border

onald Trump had to squeeze through a hole in a fence to speak at the California Republican Convention on Friday. He said it felt like “crossing the border.” Meanwhile, his supporters swaggered into the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport banquet hall as if they owned the place. Maybe they know something I don’t, I shuddered. BEFORE TRUMP’S talk, I spoke with many party workhorses — the folks who have sustained the GOP in challenging times. They tended to be skeptical of Trump’s credentials as a Republican and of his chance of winning in November. Trump fans, for their part, were in their glory. Their faces glowed with the flush of expected triumph. “He’s honest,” Bill Gilbert of Woodside, California, told me. “He talks straight.” It was his first GOP convention. Kathy Mosta of Pleasant Hill, also at her first convention, said, “I love him because he mean what he say.” Her syntax is not perfect because she is Persian. She’s also Muslim, she told me, and she supports Trump’s call to ban Muslims from entering the country. Another Trump supporter, Luisa Aranda, was wearing a T-shirt that said, “Latinos for the Wall.” Methinks the supporters who defy stereotypes charged up others who could tell themselves: If Latinos and Muslims and women can stand behind Trump, the juggernaut is unstoppable. They love Trump because he wins; he promises to lead the Republican

Party back into the promised land of victory. “We’re going to start winning again,” Trump told the crowd. It’s “a tougher road for a Republican than it is for a Democrat.” Usually, he can tell whether a candidate will win a state just by looking at the map, he said, but he’ll break the map. “We bring New York into play,” Trump proclaimed. “Republicans will never beat Hillary in Florida. I will. I’ll win in Pennsylvania.” Given the way that

Debra J.

Trump trounced Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Gov. John Kasich in those states, Trump’s claims did not seem outrageous. EXCEPT, AS GOP wise man Rob Stutzman noted afterward, Hillary Clinton won more votes than Trump in all three states. She won more than a million votes in New York — almost double Trump’s 524,932 take. She won 20,000 more votes than Trump in both Florida and Pennsylvania. Though the latest Rasmussen Reports poll found Clinton and Trump even — with 38 percent of the vote each — all other major polls show Clinton beating Trump. The Republican who beats Clinton is Kasich. Trump got lots of laughs when he joked about Kasich’s eating during

Conservative Chronicle

PUERTO RICO: April 28, 2016

What happens in Puerto Rico won’t stay there

Immigrant goes to America, Many hellos in America; Nobody knows in America Puerto Rico’s in America! — West Side Story Puerto Rico, an awkward legacy of America’s 1898 testosterone spill, the Spanish-American War, is about to teach two things that few Americans know: If conditions get bad enough there, its residents, who are American citizens, can come here. And if Congress does not deal carefully with the mess made by the government in San Juan, Congress will find itself rescuing governments in Springfield, Illinois, and other state capitals.

PUERTO RICO’S approximately 18 debt-issuing entities have debts — approximately $72 billion — they cannot repay. The Government Development Bank might miss a $422 million payment due in May, and the central government might miss a $2 billion payment in July. Congress will not enact a “bailout,” meaning an infusion of U.S. taxpayers’ money. But some Democrats — perhaps anticipating a day of reckoning for their one-party state of Illinois, and nurturing their indissoluble marriage to government employees unions, some of which have helped reduce Puerto Rico to prostration — want to reward the San Juan government’s self-indulgence. They favor pouring more Medicare, Medicaid and other benefits into the island. They also favor giving protection of unionized government employees’ pensions priority over payments even to holders of general obligation bonds guaranteed by the territory’s constitution. Although Puerto Rico’s per capita income ($11,331) is about half of that of the poorest state (Mississippi, $20,956), Democrats oppose allowing Puerto Rico to lower the hourly minimum wage. The U.S. minimum, $7.25, which applies to the island, is two-thirds of the average islander’s wage, which increases unemployment and hence emigration to the mainland. Some Democrats even want the earned income tax credit and child tax credits paid to Puerto Ricans even though they do not file personal federal income tax returns. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, may also have his eye on Illinois and other states subjugated by the axis of the Democratic Party and government employees unions. He wants legislation for Puerto Rico to require U.S. state and local governments, almost 60 percent of which last year failed to make full pension contributions, to honestly state their pension liabilities. Puerto Rico has a $44 billion unfunded pension liability. The most complex Puerto Rico issue is what treatments should be authorized for various categories of bondholders. Shed few tears for those who, by buying

Puerto Rico’s (or Illinois’) debt, enable federal oversight, which Gov. Alejandro the sort of high-spending, vote-buying Garcia Padilla calls a “shameful and degovernance that bankrupted Detroit and grading” measure to deprive the island soon will have Illinois begging for what “of its own government.” But curtaildoes not and should not exist — a bank- ing this class’ discretion might not be ruptcy option for states. Puerto Rico’s seen as a deprivation by the 71 percent debts should not be restructured in a way of Puerto Ricans who in a recent poll faoversight board for a that sets a precedent allowing Illinois to vored an government that is dodge both debts warning about beand reforms, paring unable to fuel ticularly reforms police cars and fund pertaining to govschool services. ernment employee (c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group The president unions that have contributed to the territory’s dysfunc- of the territory’s senate likens federal tion. The more Puerto Rico is allowed oversight to “the worst colonial subjugato evade existing legal processes and the tions” and the Washington Post worries need to negotiate with creditors, the more about “the legitimate prerogatives of the island’s legislature.” But what are the leeway it will have to resist reforms. proper prerogatives of a mendicant legPUERTO RICO’S political class islature avidly seeking maximum leeway recoils from a control board exercising to repudiate debts?

George

Will

Because the island is a U.S. territory, what happens there will not stay there: America needs to prevent, or minimize, a humanitarian crisis, some of which would be exported to America. But ameliorative measures must be made conditional on fiscal, labor and other reforms on the island. AMERICA ACTUALLY needs to have a salutary crisis in Illinois. It will be salutary because it will be a cautionary example for other states if Illinois suffers, without offloading pain on taxpayers elsewhere, the severe consequences of decades of ruinous choices. And Puerto Rico’s troubles will benefit America if the bond market, sobered by a demonstration that government bonds can be risky, becomes a restraint on state legislatures by raising the cost of borrowing where the legislatures are most irresponsible.

RANDOM THOUGHTS: May 3, 2016

Random thoughts by Sowell Random thoughts on the passing scene: One of the problems with being a pessimist is that you can never celebrate when you are proven right. If what you want from politicians are quick and easy answers, someone is sure to supply them, regardless of which party you follow. History can tell you where quick and easy answers lead. But, if you don’t want to bother reading history, you can just wait and relive its catastrophes.

WHAT IS “economic power?” What can Bill Gates stop you from doing? I don’t understand how people who cannot predict the weather five days in advance can predict the climate decades from now. One of history’s painful ironies is how often people on the brink of disaster have been preoccupied with trivialities. With a nuclear Iran with intercontinental missiles looming on the horizon, our intelligentsia are preoccupied with calling achievements “privilege” and playing other word games. Of life’s many surprises, encountering an old flame, years later, is in a class by itself. Some people seem to think that Donald Trump has great abilities because he is a billionaire. But being born rich and getter richer is not exactly a Horatio Alger miracle. Of all the disheartening signs of the utter ignorance of so many American college students, nothing so completely disheartened me as seeing on television a black college student who did not know what the Civil War was about. Fifty years ago, it would have been virtually impos-

sible to find a black adult, with even an elementary school education, who did not know what the Civil War was about. Global warming, due to greenhouse gasses, is the latest in a long series of one-factor theories about a multi-factor world. Such theories have often enjoyed great popularity, despite how often they have turned out to be wrong. One of the most richly rewarded skills in politics is the ability to make selfinterest sound like idealism. Nowhere is this tactic more successful than in socalled “campaign finance reform” laws — spending restrictions that

Thomas

prevent challenger candidates from buying enough publicity to offset the free publicity that incumbents get from the media. AT ONE TIME, it seemed as if the free world had defeated the world of totalitarian dictatorships twice — first the Nazis and then the Communists. But, with the slow but steady expansion of government control over our lives and the spread of the idea that people who deny “climate change” should be punished as criminals, it seems as if totalitarianism may be winning, after all. People who want to redistribute wealth often misunderstand the nature and causes of wealth. Tangible wealth can be confiscated, but you cannot confiscate the knowledge which produced that wealth. Countries that confiscated

the wealth of some groups and expelled them, destitute, have often seen the economy collapse, while the expelled people became prosperous again elsewhere. Some people think that Ted Cruz would not have as good a chance against Hillary Clinton as would Donald Trump. They say that Cruz does not have a sparkling style of speaking. But, after months of hearing childish insults from Trump, the public may be ready for some serious adult talk by someone with substance, who can cut right through Hillary’s shallow evasions. To me, beautiful music is whatever music makes you glad to be a human being, whether it is “Musetta’s Waltz” from La Boheme or “Muskrat Ramble” from New Orleans. Much of what passes for music today makes me wish that, if there is such a thing as reincarnation, I can come back as a dolphin. Republican leaders seem to be worried that Donald Trump will get the nomination and lose the election. Those of us who are not Republicans should worry that Trump will get the nomination and win the election. After all, the fate of the country is a lot more important than the fate of a political party — and in far greater danger. AS THIS country continues to degenerate, we hope that it never reaches the desperate stage where only a military coup can rescue it from catastrophes created by feckless politicians. But, if that day ever arrives, we can only hope that the military will do their duty and step in. It is one of the few institutions dedicated to something besides individual self-interest.

May 11, 2016 RUSSIA: May 2, 2016

Why Russia resents us: Reaping their rage

Last year, a Pew poll found majorities in Italy and France also oppose military action against Russia if she moves into Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia or Poland. If it comes to war in the Baltic, our European allies prefer that we Americans fight it. Asked on his retirement as Army chief of staff what was the greatest straVLADIMIR PUTIN’S message: tegic threat to the United States, Gen. Keep your spy planes and ships a re- Ray Odierno echoed Marine Corps Gen. spectable distance away from us. Ap- Joseph Dunford, “I believe that Russia is.” parently, we have not received it. He mentioned Friday, Depthreats to Estonia, uty Secretary of Latvia, Lithuania Defense Robert and Ukraine. Work announced Yet, when Gen. that 4,000 NATO (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate Odierno entered troops, including two U.S. battalions, will be moved into the service, all four were part of the SoPoland and the Baltic States, right on viet Union, and no Cold War president ever thought any was worth a war. Russia’s border. The independence of the Baltic States “The Russians have been doing a lot of snap exercises right up against the was one of the great peace dividends afborder with a lot of troops,” says Work, ter the Cold War. But when did that bewho calls this “extraordinarily provoca- come so vital a U.S. interest we would go to war with Russia to guarantee it? tive behavior.” Putin may top the enemies list of the But how are Russian troops deploying inside Russia “provocative,” while Beltway establishment, but we should U.S. troops on Russia’s front porch are try to see the world from his point of not? And before we ride this escalator view. When Ronald Reagan met Mikhail up to a clash, we had best check our Gorbachev in Reykjavik in 1986, Puhole card. Germany is to provide one of four tin was in his mid-30s, and the Soviet Empire stretched from the Elbe to the battalions to be sent to the Baltic. But a Bertelsmann Foundation poll Bering Strait and from the Arctic to Aflast week found that only 31 percent ghanistan. Russians were all over Africa and of Germans favor sending their troops to resist a Russian move in the Baltic had penetrated the Caribbean and CenStates or Poland, while 57 percent op- tral America. The Soviet Union was a pose it, though the NATO treaty re- global superpower that had attained strategic parity with the United States. quires it. riday, a Russian SU-27 did a barrel roll over a U.S. RC-135 over the Baltic, the second time in two weeks. Also in April, the U.S. destroyer Donald Cook, off Russia’s Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, was twice buzzed by Russian planes.

Pat

Buchanan

Now consider how the world has changed for Putin, and Russia. By the time he turned 40, the Red Army had begun its Napoleonic retreat from Europe and his country had splintered into 15 nations. By the time he came to power, the USSR had lost one-third of its territory and half its population. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan were gone. THE BLACK SEA, once a Soviet lake, now had on its north shore a proWestern Ukraine, on its eastern shore a hostile Georgia, and on its western shore two former Warsaw Pact allies, Bulgaria and Romania, being taken into NATO. For Russian warships in Leningrad, the trip out to the Atlantic now meant

cruising past the coastline of eight NATO nations: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Denmark, Norway and Great Britain. Putin has seen NATO, despite solemn U.S. assurances given to Gorbachev, incorporate all of Eastern Europe that Russia had vacated, and three former republics of the USSR itself. He now hears a clamor from American hawks to bring three more former Soviet republics — Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine — into a NATO alliance directed against Russia. After persuading Kiev to join a Moscow-led economic union, Putin saw Ukraine’s pro-Russian government overthrown in a U.S.-backed coup. He has seen U.S.-funded “color-coded” revolutions try to dump over friendly regimes all across his “near abroad.” “Russia has not accepted the hand of partnership,” says NATO commander, Gen. Philip Breedlove, “but has chosen a path of belligerence.” But why should Putin see NATO’s inexorable eastward march as an extended “hand of partnership?” Had we lost the Cold War and Russian spy planes began to patrol off Pensacola, Norfolk and San Diego, how would U.S. F-16 pilots have reacted? If we awoke to find Mexico, Canada, Cuba, and most of South America in a military alliance against us, welcoming Russian bases and troops, would we regard that as “the hand of partnership?” We are reaping the understandable rage and resentment of the Russian people over how we exploited Moscow’s retreat from empire. Did we not ourselves slap aside the hand of Russian friendship, when proffered, when we chose to embrace our “unipolar moment,” to play the “great game” of empire and seek “benevolent global hegemony?” IF THERE is a second Cold War, did Russia really start it?

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

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Wednesday, May 11, 2016 • Volume 31, Number 19 • Hampton, Iowa