Conservative Chronicle for September 21 2016 by Mid-America Publishing Corporation

At Issue this week... September 21, 2016 2016 Election Barone (11) Buchanan (8) Chavez (29) Cushman (13) Fields (14) Lambro (12) Morris (30) Saunders (15) Academia Williams (24) Assange, Julian Lowry (10) Blacks Elder (26) Sowell (24) Book Recommendations Sowell (15) Climate Change Jeffrey (25) Clinton, Hillary Buchanan (3) Farah (21) Lowry (6) Massie (9) Thomas (3, 9) Columbia Bay (30) Dear Mark Levy (19) Democratic Party Murchison (6) Shapiro (29) Digital Privacy de Rugy (22) Economy Moore (13) FBI Napolitano (18) Godless Society Prager (27) IRS Will (20) Leslie’s Trivia Bits Elman (14) Media Bias Bozell (17, 23) Coulter (7) Harsanyi (16) Hollis (17) Mother Teresa Tyrrell (5) Neo-Darwinism Olasky (27) Obamacare Greenberg (22) McCaughey (2) Obama Presidency Barone (1) Krauthammer (31) Political Correctness Malkin (23) Portman, Rob Will (28) Schlafly, Phyllis Schlafly (5) Sexual Assault Laws Saunders (20) Trump, Donald Charen (10) Limbaugh (4)

Obama Presidency by Michael Barone

How’s fundamental transformation going?

hen Air Force One landed in China last week for the G-20 Summit, Chinese authorities didn’t wheel out the usual staircase for the president to disembark. Instead he had to exit through an opening in the back of the enormous aircraft. It was, you might say, a pivot to Asia. That wasn’t the last insult Barack Obama absorbed in Hangzhou. The president of the Philippines, long considered a U.S. ally, called him a name family publications usually don’t print. It’s rare for an American president to be treated with such contempt. It’s what happens when you draw red lines and do nothing when people step over them. WHEN BARACK Obama promised to “fundamentally (transform) the United States of America,” this is probably not what he had in mind. But like the much-talked-about pivot to Asia, his two most transformational policy initiatives, as identified by his foreign policy staffer Ben Rhodes — Obamacare at home and the Iran nuclear deal abroad — have had disappointing results. Consider Obamacare. “Insurers are pulling out of the exchanges and premiums are rising,” as Bloomberg’s Megan McArdle writes. Fewer people are uninsured, but mostly because they’re shoved into bare bones Medicaid-type plans, which some studies indicate don’t improve health outcomes. We may be seeing death spirals, with higher premiums making healthy people drop coverage until only the very sick buy policies. One reason for Obamacare’s problems is that it was jammed through Congress in defiance of public opinion and contrary to legislative regular order. The public, speaking through the unlikely medium of the voters of Massachusetts, made clear their views when Scott Brown won a January 2010 special election after promising to cast a decisive vote against Obamacare. That left Democrats with no ideal options. In December, the Senate, with Democrats’ 60-vote supermajority, had passed a placeholder measure with plenty of wrinkles to be ironed out. With the 60th vote gone, their options were to jam that bill through a reluctant House or to drop back and negotiate with Republicans on a more limited alternative. Politicians have to act without the luxury of knowing the future. Barack Obama, at the urging of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, decided to push ahead, in the hopes that after the bill was passed and (as Pelosi said) people

learned what was in it, it would be popular. Don’t people always want more free stuff? Not necessarily, it turns out. Obamacare has been tested in hundreds of polls since it became law in March 2010. In just about every one, pluralities and usually majorities have expressed negative feelings about the law. That helped Republicans win majorities in the House in 2010, 2012 and 2014, majorities unwilling to change the law in ways Democrats would like.

Michael

OBAMA’S GAMBLE that the law would work as he hoped and promised has failed to date. Health insurance markets and health care delivery have been transformed, but not fundamentally and not sustainably. Mark him incomplete, at best. Incomplete is also the best mark conceivable for Obama’s other attempt at fundamental transformation, the Iran nuclear deal. It’s part of his basic approach of spurning traditional allies and courting traditional enemies. Sometimes this works: Friends stay friendly; enemies change course. But Iran’s mullah regime has certainly not done so to date. In lengthy negotiations it extracted concession after concession Obama and John

Kerry said they’d never make. They even got secret approval of transfers —in cash — of at least $400 million and apparently $1.3 billion more. It’s plain, however, that Iran’s extremists have not given up on their goal of obtaining nuclear weapons, deliverable to Israel, India, Europe and maybe beyond. The best the deal’s defenders can say is that it delays the process. The Iran deal lacked and lacks majority support from the public and in Congress. To prevent a congressional veto, Obama Democrats pushed through an unusual procedure, which reversed the constitutional requirement of two-thirds Senate approval for treaties. Now it just needed one-third. But all signs are that Iran remains an obdurate enemy, supporting terrorists and spreading its influence in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and the Gulf. America’s traditional friends in the region are looking for other sources of support. THAT SEEMS the case in Asia as well. The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, intended to bolster America’s regional lead role, now looks dead, as both major-party presidential nominees oppose it. Which leaves Obama, who never pressed the deal hard with his own party, scampering out of the back of his plane. September 13, 2016

Conservative Chronicle

OBAMACARE: September 7, 2016

Stop penalizing Obamacare victims

n Inauguration Day, the next acare exchanges after losing billions trypresident of the United States ing to sell the unpopular plans. Wherever should suspend the penalty only one insurer remains, all patients on for being uninsured under the Affordable Obamacare will be funneled into that Care Act. President Obama promised his single remaining insurer’s network of law would provide an array of affordable doctors. That will make it nearly imposhealth plans. In 2017, consumers will get sible to get a doctor’s appointment. Worse, many of these remaining inneither choice nor affordability. In nearly primarily in the Medone-third of the nation, only one insurer surers are business. Obamacare will offer coverage — that’s no choice i c a i d will mean paying at all. And premisoaring premiums ums are skyrockfor Medicaid-leveting everywhere. el access to care. Obamacare is What a deal. broken. Slapping (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate In Illinois, most Obamacare refuseniks with hefty penalties (averaging Obamacare premiums are going up 51 almost a thousand dollars) for not sign- percent before subsidies. In Tennessee, ing up is as unjust as enforcing a parking it’s 62 percent. Individuals earning more than $48,000 ticket when the meter was broken. and couples earning more than $64,000 CONSUMERS WILL be clobbered have to pay full freight. It’s highway robstarting Nov. 1, the beginning of open bery. enrollment. They’ll want to know what FROM THE start, Obamacare Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton intend to do about it, especially in in swing has made financial sense only for two states like Pa., Wis. and N.H., where groups: The very sick or those eligible premiums are rising as much as 30 to for a free ride. That’s why more than 11 40 percent. In many parts of Florida, an- million people a year are opting to pay other must-win state, consumers will be penalties instead of buying in. Amazing. forced to sign up for the only insurer in More people are paying NOT to have Obamacare than are signing up for it. town or get hit with the penalty. Now, with premiums soaring and Giant insurers Aetna, UnitedHealth and Humana are exiting most Obam- choices disappearing, even more people

Betsy

McCaughey

will say “no,” predicts industry expert Robert Laszewski. These people shouldn’t get penalized. The same law that imposes the penalty promised them choice and affordability — and is reneging on both. Does a president have the power to suspend the penalty? Yes. I am not suggesting the next president go rogue, like Obama himself did, changing the law 43 times without asking Congress. Only Congress can make or change law. But the Section 5000A hardship exemptions give the next president a legal opening. Stratospheric premiums and deductibles and lack of choice are hardships for sure. Laszewski warns that dropping the penalty “would only make the system implode faster.” True, because the young and healthy will be under no pressure to pay for a raw deal. But why should these individuals be sacrificed to prop up “the system?”

The collapse of the Affordable Care Act plans is good riddance. Twenty million people have gained coverage under the ACA, but the lion’s share is enrolled in Medicaid, not in private plans. Those plans cover at most eight million people who were previously uninsured — a small gain compared with the 11 million who pay the penalty and five or so million who had insurance they liked and were forced to give up for Obamacare. One of Obamacare’s chief architects, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, calls for stiffer penalties on the uninsured. Princeton professor Uwe Reinhardt recommends the U.S. copy how European countries crack down on the uninsured, including garnishing wages. Yikes. Sounds like what Hillary Clinton recommended in 1993, when she proposed her failed health care plan. (And no doubt it’s what she’d try again.) BUT AMERICANS don’t want to be Europeanized, and they won’t march lockstep into an insurance scheme that takes away their choices. Let’s hope the next president is listening.

•USPS: 762-710/•ISSN: 0088-7403 Published by Hampton Publishing Co. (Established 1876)

Division of Mid-America Publishing Corp. The Conservative Chronicle is published weekly for $75.00 (U.S.) per year by Hampton Publishing Co., 9 Second Street N.W., Hampton, IA 50441, and entered at the Post Office at Hampton, Iowa 50441, as periodicals postage under the Acts of Congress. Editorial Offices Conservative Chronicle, P.O. Box 29, Hampton, IA 50441. Ph. 1-800-888-3039. Editorial Coordinators, Kevin and Ruth Katz Circulation & Subscriber Services Conservative Chronicle P.O. Box 29, Hampton, IA 50441-0029. Ph. 1-800-8883039. Circulation Manager, Deb Chaney. Subscription Rates One Year.......................................... $75.00 (Call for outside USA rates for Air Mail) Single Copy........................................ $3.00

Need to make a correction on your mailing label?

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Conservative Chronicle, P.O. Box 29, Hampton, IA 50441-0029. E-mail address: conserve@iowaconnect.com Visit our web site at: www.conservativechronicle.com

September 21, 2016 HILLARY CLINTON: September 9, 2016

Is the tide going out on Hillary Clinton?

ere the election held today, Hillary Clinton would probably win a clear majority of the Electoral College. Her problem: The election is two months off. Sixty days out, one senses she has lost momentum — the “Big Mo” of which George H. W. Bush boasted following his Iowa triumph in 1980 — and her campaign is in a rut, furiously spinning its wheels. The commander in chief forum Wednesday night should have been a showcase for the ex-secretary of state’s superior knowledge and experience.

INSTEAD, CLINTON looked like a witness before a grand jury, forced to explain her past mistakes and mishandling of classified emails at State. “Of the two candidates,” the New York Times reported, “Mrs. Clinton faced by far the tougher and most probing questions from the moderator, Matt Lauer of NBC, and from an audience of military

veterans about her use of private email, fired the finance minister who told him her vote authorizing the Iraq war, her to invite the Donald to Mexico City for a talk. hawkish foreign policy views ...” There are other indices the tide is turnOn defense most of the time, Clinton ing against Clinton. scored few points. Consider the near hysteria of a meAnd with a blistering attack on Lauer, the Times all but threw in the towel and dia that has taken to airing charges, in conceded that the Donald won the night. echo of “Tail Gunner Joe” McCarthy, “Moderator of Clinton-Trump Forum that Donald Trump is somehow the conagent of a Kremlin Fields A Storm of Criticism,” was the s ci o u s conspiracy. headline as analyst Why? Because Michael GrynTrump accepts the baum piled on: compliments of “Mr. Lauer Vladimir Putin found himself be(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate and refuses to call sieged on Wednesday evening by critics of all political the Russian ruler a “thug,” which is now stripes, who accused the anchor of un- apparently the mark of a statesman. Moreover, when it comes to her stronfairness, sloppiness, and even sexism in gest suit, foreign policy, before Clinton his handling of the event.” When your allies are ripping the refs, can elaborate on her vision, she is forced to answer for her blunders. you’ve probably lost the game. Indeed, in this dress rehearsal for the WHY DID SHE vote for the war in debates, Donald Trump played Trump, while Clinton was cast in the role of Iraq? Why did she push for the war in Mexican President Pena Nieto, who just Libya that produced this hellish mess?

Pat

Buchanan

HILLARY CLINTON: September 8, 2016

Hillary Clinton channels Nixon

ne wouldn’t think Hillary Clinton and former President Richard Nixon would have a lot in common, but in responding to FBI investigators that she “could not recall any briefing or training by State related to retention of federal records or handling classified information,” Clinton took a page straight out of Nixon’s playbook.

IN A MARCH 23, 1973 meeting with top aides Bob Haldeman and John Dean to discuss what Dean should say during testimony before a grand jury looking into the Watergate affair, the following exchange took place. Haldeman: “You can say you have forgotten, can’t you?” Dean: “Sure, but you are chancing a very high risk for a perjury situation.” Nixon: “But you can say I don’t remember. You can say I don’t recall ...” Thirty-nine times by CNN’s count, Hillary Clinton invoked Nixon’s advice in her response to questions from FBI investigators. No wonder. The things she might recall could be contradictory to statements she has made in the past. The Weekly Standard has chronicled a few of them in an editorial titled “Absolute, Categorical Lies.” They are too numerous to list here, but worth reading. Clinton also claimed to have used two devices for her emails, one for work, the other personal. According to The Hill, in the just released report on Clinton’s

emails, the FBI identified 13 mobile devices “that were potentially used to send emails via clintonemail.com.” In addition, writes Bloomberg Politics, the FBI “cited five iPads it sought as part of the probe that were ‘potentially’ used to send private emails.” The FBI found three. No one knows what happened to the other two. Maybe someone should dig up Sidney Blumenthal’s backyard?

Cal

You can almost smell the corruption. In the age of reality TV, speculation is now considered almost as good as fact, so suppose Hillary Clinton really can’t recall? What if there is a medical explanation for her impaired memory? HILLARY CLINTON fell and suffered a concussion in December 2012, which husband Bill said took “six months of very serious work to get over.” The State Department claimed the recovery period was much shorter. Who do we believe? Hillary Clinton admitted to having a blood clot and double vision and to taking blood thinners. Her doctors, however, insist she’s fit to be president. Is there anything else? With the Clintons the question answers itself. WebMD.com has some useful information: “A mild or moderate concus-

sion may have longer-lasting consequences than previously realized, a new study suggests. “By comparing brain imaging studies and thinking tests between healthy people and those with relatively minor concussions, the researchers found that the recovery of thinking skills can take a long time ... “Initially, those with concussions had thinking and memory test scores that were 25 percent lower than those in healthy people. One year after injury, however, while the scores for those with and without concussions were similar, those who had had brain injuries still had evidence of brain damage on imaging tests, with clear signs of continued disruption to key brain cells. “The findings are especially important because 90 percent of all traumatic brain injuries are mild to moderate, said Andrew Blamire, senior author of the study and professor of magnetic resonance physics at Newcastle University, in the United Kingdom.” Is Hillary Clinton’s memory loss the result of her concussion, or is she lying? I’m more inclined to believe the latter, as the Clintons’ dissembling precedes her injury. An examination by a neurologist would answer one question. The other will have to be determined by voters. BUT CONSIDERING what happened to Nixon, Hillary Clinton might not want to pattern herself after him.

Does she still defend her handling of the Benghazi massacre? What happened to her “reset” with Russia? Most critically, when facing the press, which she has begun to do after eight months of stonewalling, she is invariably dragged into the morass of the private server, the lost-and-found emails, her inability to understand or abide by State Department rules on classified and secret documents, and FBI accusations of extreme carelessness and duplicity. Then there are the steady stream of revelations about the Clinton Foundation raking in hundreds of millions from dictators and despots who did business with Hillary Clinton’s State Department. Bill Clinton now describes himself as a “Robin Hood” of Sherwood Forest who took from the rich to give to the poor, with Hillary Clinton presumably cast in the role of Maid Marian of Goldman Sachs. It is all too much to absorb. To get her “message” out, Clinton has to punch it though a media filter. But many in this ferociously competitive and diverse media market today know that the way to the front page or top of the website is to find a new angle on the plethora of scandals, minor and major, surrounding Hillary and Bill. And with thousands of emails still out there, the contents of which are known to her adversaries, she will likely have IEDs going off beneath her campaign all the way to November. Consider the coughing fits, a repeated distraction from her message. Should they go away, no problem. But if they recur, people will rightly demand to know from a physician what is the cause. Because of her own blunders, Clinton’s adversaries have achieved a large measure of control over how her campaign is reported. In a sense this is like Watergate, where, no matter that Richard Nixon might be managing well a Yom Kippur War or a strategic summit in Moscow, the press and prosecutors cared only about the tapes. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s message has begun to come through — loud, clear and consistent. He will secure the border. He will renegotiate the trade deals that have been killing U.S. manufacturing and costing American jobs. He will be a law-and-order president who will put America first. He will keep us out of wars like Iraq. He will talk to Vladimir Putin, smash ISIS, back the cops and the vets, and rebuild the military. OTHER THAN being the first woman president, what is the great change that Hillary Clinton offers America? THE CLINTON campaign has a big, big problem.

Conservative Chronicle

DONALD TRUMP: September 9, 2016

Never-Trumpers vs. reluctant Trumpers

re you as sick as I am of seeing the tedious finger-pointing between never-Trumpers and certain Republicans who have decided — many reluctantly — to vote for Donald Trump? I assume that most people on both sides are in good faith and are doing what they believe is in the nation’s best interests. I wish people would quit judging the others as immoral or sellouts. That’s a bit presumptuous and self-congratulatory for my tastes.

I DOUBT that many people outside the commentator universe are agonizing over the decision to the extent the “professionals” are. To most Republicans and conservatives, voting for Trump over Hillary Clinton is a no-brainer, even if they find Trump distasteful, unpredictable and significantly unreliable. I was a vocal supporter of Ted Cruz’s and don’t slightly regret it, mainly because I believe that most politically related problems plaguing the nation stem from our abandonment of the Constitution and that the best remedy for them is to restore constitutional principles and advance policies based on them. I believe that authentic, constitutional conservatism has not been tried for too long and that Cruz would have brought it. But Cruz lost. Trump won. And either he or Clinton will be the next president. There’s nothing I can do to change that, but there is something I can do to help affect, however slightly, the outcome of the election. That something is my vote. Abstaining or voting for a fantasy candidate will help Clinton. We can argue logical fallacies all day long, but I have only one option if I want my vote to contribute to Clinton’s defeat, and that is to vote for Trump. I can’t see myself being a cheerleader for Trump, but having made my decision on the basis of the nation’s best interests, I do want to do my small part to help him put his best foot forward and to nudge him toward doing the right things and implementing the correct policy prescriptions should he prevail. So when I see an improvement in his demeanor and his approach, when I see him making good, substantive speeches on national security and other subjects, my pride does not interfere with my applauding those developments. Maybe I’m rationalizing, but this may signal that he is listening to the right people and that he will follow through on these ideas. Even if you doubt Trump’s genuine commitment to conservative policies, remember that he has many incentives to implement our policies. Apart from a few issues, his supporters want him to govern like a conservative, and he knows he’ll never appease the rabid left. Regardless, I have no doubt that he’d govern infinitely more conservatively

than Clinton. Remember, if Clinton were have the luxury of worrying about the vito win, not only would she govern as an ability of conservatism or the Republican ultra-leftist (Barack Obama on stilts) but Party. If we lost the borders issue alone, also her constituency groups would urge we might never win another election. her to go further left, rewarding her for If Clinton were to appoint one or more doing so and punishing her for deviat- Supreme Court justices, there’s no limit ing. The electorate has changed enough to the damage the court could do to the now that she doesn’t usually even bother Constitution, which is already in trouble. pretending to be moderate. That should If we keep pretending we are not at war with terrorists and continue to degrade scare all of us. As for the never-Trumpers, I believe our military, we will be inviting further home and the triumph there are different types among them. attacks at of evil abroad. And Some are more on and on. conservative and So once Cruz lost, closer to being I concluded we have constitutional purto cut our losses ists — many, but (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate and try to save the not all, of whom nation, however voted for Cruz. They share the frustration that many imperfectly we do it. In the process, we original Trump supporters have with so- can remain constitutional watchdogs and called establishment Republicans. They advocates and lobby and pressure Trump have seen our predicament as perilous, to pursue conservative policies. Other never-Trumpers, the estabwith the nation facing a number of real, existential threats. But they are apparent- lishment types, have never seemed as ly convinced that the nation’s plight isn’t alarmed about Obama’s destruction of so dire as some of the rest of us believe it this nation. They haven’t seen the urgenis, that we could survive a Hillary Clin- cy, and they believe that establishment ton term and that the best chance of sav- Republicans have been unfairly criticized ing the nation in the long run is to avoid for not doing enough to oppose and stop elevating Trump to president and leader Obama. Some of them apparently see a of the party because he could forever de- Clinton presidency as just another day at stroy conservatism and the Republican the office or are convinced Trump would be so bad that Clinton couldn’t be worse, brand. which is hard for me to wrap my head I CAN RELATE to those arguments around. Many of them have contempt and have even made them myself in ear- for the Cruz types because they believe lier discussions. But in the end, I think that Cruz was opportunistically chasing our situation is so precarious that if we after rainbows, for example, in his willelected Clinton, we might never again ingness to fight Obama to the point of a

David

Limbaugh

government shutdown. They don’t share the grass roots’ frustrations with Republicans and therefore don’t grasp that their complacency contributed to the rise of Trump. What an irony! I don’t agree, however, with those avid Trump supporters who blame conservatism or conservatives for Obama and the left’s successes. Conservatism shouldn’t be tainted by the failures of those who falsely call themselves conservatives to win elections or lack courage to stand up to Democrats and the media. Conservatism itself, and true conservatives advancing it, is still the answer. But even true conservatives, going forward, must take a page out of Trump’s playbook in fighting back against political correctness (when he has actually and properly done so) and in counterattacking the ruthless left without fear of being shunned as mean-spirited. But for now, we have two — and only two — choices. To say otherwise is to fool ourselves. I choose to proceed optimistically, with the prayer that Donald Trump will implement mostly conservative ideas and help stop the bleeding with regard to our borders, our courts, our tax and regulatory systems, and our national security. I know for a fact that Hillary Clinton would not do so. I RESPECT the never-Trumpers and will not presume to judge them as abandoning the nation’s best interests, and I hope they will accord people like me the same consideration — realizing that we have the same goals but disagree on how to reach them.

September 21, 2016 MOTHER TERESA: September 8, 2016

When Malcolm Muggeridge met Mother Teresa

ope Francis canonized Mother Teresa on Sunday. She was a celestial figure to many for sweating away in Calcutta, India, with “the poorest of the poor.” By that oft-used term meant the poor for whom a government poverty line would be a luxury. Mother Teresa took in street urchins, the hopelessly sick and the dying — lost souls who were at death’s door. They were the poor that we Americans can hardly imagine. For the most part, one has to travel to the slums of backward countries to encounter them. I FIRST became aware of Mother Teresa in the early 1970s when I became friendly with Malcolm Muggeridge, the uniquely eloquent British journalist armed with a satirical style and a biting wit. By the time I knew him he had become a major figure on the BBC, a memoirist whose works had gained interna-

tional literary acclaim, and a champion of be brimming with goods and Moscow’s Mother Teresa. In the 1930s he, a minor streets to be crowded with gleaming new figure of the international left, had blown vehicles. In Galbraith’s piece, which was the whistle on communism as practiced in published in the New Yorker, he wrote a the Soviet Union even before George Or- gem of a line, saying, “the Russian syssucceeds because ...” well. His colleagues in the British press t e m Duranty won a Pudid not welcome litzer Prize for his his revelations. His reportage. Galbraith filings from Rusis still honored in sia and Ukraine academe as one of were making life (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate the 20th century’s difficult for them to practice their trade in Moscow, for he premier economists. Muggeridge is pretwas exposing the famine in Ukraine that ty much forgotten now, but he was not in the early 1970s. Joseph Stalin insisted did not exist. Good old Walter Duranty filed stories BY THEN, Muggeridge had produced in the New York Times from Moscow reporting that there was no such fam- a BBC documentary on Mother Teresa, ine, much as in late 1984, just before the along with other documentaries on reliSoviet Union went belly up, when John gion and ancient times. He wrote books Kenneth Galbraith reported that the Rus- about her, and he appeared frequently on sian economy to be humming along bril- the lecture circuit in America and on teleliantly, Moscow’s department stores to vision. Bill Buckley featured him on his

R. Emmett

Tyrrell

PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY: September 10, 2016

Phyllis Schlafly, 1924-2016 Remarks delivered by John Schlafly is considered the classic expression of at the funeral of his mother, Phyllis Phyllis’ opposition to feminism. The 1972 article set forth the proposiSchlafly, at the Cathedral Basilica of St. tion that our public laws and policies, as Louis on September 10, 2016: embedded in the fundamental law of our hen my father, Fred nation, should reinforce the family as the Schlafly, reached the age of basic unit of any society. Confronting 75, and realized he could the burgeoning feminist movement and no longer compete in the sports he had its principal objective, the Equal Rights enjoyed throughout his life, he turned to Amendment (ERA), Phyllis’ simple but my mother one day and said: “Phyllis, powerful argument seemed controveryou probably have about 10 good years sial and even retrograde to liberals. As Father Brian Harrison explained left.” That conversation took place more in his homily today, the idea that a nathan 30 years ago. And those 30 extra tion’s laws should recognize the basic years were good years: Good for us, of social unit as the family, rather than course, her family and friends who re- the individual, is grounded in the soceived her wise counsel; and also good cial teaching of the Catholic church. It’s for our country, as her political activism the central insight of the pope’s famous continued to influence the 2016 elec- 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which launched Catholic social teaching, and tion. it has been reaffirmed many times since THEY WERE good years for Phyl- then. lis, too, despite the increasing burdens PHYLLIS EXPRESSED the idea of her old age. She was able to watch her family grow to 25 descendants, with in a way that attracted tens of thousands more on the way. In her final days, she of people, mostly of other faiths, to had the great joy of seeing the infants what she called the “pro-family” moveand toddlers that my father never knew. ment. Many of those she touched and My parents were partners in their life inspired have honored our family by together, and Phyllis depended on Fred coming here today. We now take Phyllis to rest beside for everyday reinforcement. He supported her career, screened what she her husband, my father, in the place wrote, and coached her on what to say. she selected many years ago. Like every place she ever lived, she decided She called him “the censor.” Fred Schlafly’s influence is appar- the burial plot needed another tree — a ent in Phyllis’ most widely read article, maple tree that that turns bright gold in “What’s Wrong With ‘Equal Rights’ for the fall. She selected a tree, planted it and Women?” First published in February 1972, that article has since been reprint- drove there frequently with buckets of ed in dozens of college textbooks and water, to make sure the tree survived.

Since we buried my father there, 23 years ago, the little tree that Phyllis planted has become a powerful, majestic, stately canopy, and next month its color will be gorgeous. Reflecting on my mother’s long life, the singular quality that explains her effectiveness is that she was always prepared. Whether her task was to give a speech, conduct a meeting or meet a deadline, her careful preparation made the job seem effortless and gave her time to deal with unexpected events. Phyllis was never at a loss for the appropriate words. She faced crisis and conflict with grace, and she infuriated opponents with her unflappable good humor. In the parable of the bridegroom (Matt. 25:1-13), Jesus tells the story of 10 women who were called to light the way for a wedding party. Five of the women brought no extra oil, and their lamps went out before the wedding party arrived. The other five women came prepared with extra oil in case the wedding party was running late. The sensible five were admitted to the wedding feast from which the foolish five were excluded. Phyllis would have been one of the five wise enough to bring an extra flask of oil. Even in her final year, she was planning for the future, including America’s future as well as her own.

PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY was a wise woman, a sensible woman, a faithful woman. Her lamp would not go out, and I believe she was prepared for today.

show, Firing Line. By then Muggeridge had given up on communism. And in the 1960s he had given up on pot, zoo sex and other excesses of the 1960s youth culture (soon to be 1970s adult culture, and then the culture). He was a somewhat unlikely champion of Mother Teresa. He himself was a reformed participant in his generation’s bohemian excesses but remained a rude and raucous contrarian. Still he adored the saint of the Calcutta slums. “Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” was one of her favorite sayings, and he tried to live that way. Following Mother Theresa, he lived simply, abstemiously and prayerfully. Taking Muggeridge to a chic restaurant could present problems. I blame it all on Mother T. He quoted her often, marveling at how she got supplies to what became a series of convents in 138 countries. At the time of her death in 1997 her order, the Missionaries of Charity, included thousands of religious folk, mainly women, intent on serving the poorest of the poor. “The Lord will provide,” she told Muggeridge, though she did keep Ronald Reagan’s telephone number in her Rolodex along with doubtless the numbers of countless other world figures. But in the last days as her fame spread, she acquired critics — medical experts who questioned her facilities’ hygiene, local Calcuttans who suspected her of giving their city a bad name, right-wing Hindus who believed she was intent on converting their coreligionists and feminists who thought abortion is the true Eucharist. Her answer to all of them was as it had been for earlier critics: “We are not social workers, not teachers, not nurses or doctors; we are religious sisters. We serve Jesus in the poor. Our life has no other reason or motivation. This is a point many people do not understand.” FOR DAYS now I have been reading all the commentary about this singular woman of God. Of course, I also have been thinking of my old friend Malcolm who had spent so much time with her. Yet there is one comment I cannot fathom. It came from Pope Francis. He said on Sunday, “She made her voice heard before the powers of this world, so that they might recognize their guilt for the crime of poverty they created.” Their “guilt?” The “crime of poverty they created?” Who is his Holiness talking about? Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Fidel Castro? The corner pickpocket? Members of the local drug cartel? George Soros? Could someone send the Vatican a book on economics with statistics about the reduction of world poverty over the last 30 years? Much of it has been achieved with market economics. As Stephen Moore has written so many times, free market capitalism has done more to alleviate poverty in the world than any other system known to man, including charity.

Conservative Chronicle

HILLARY CLINTON: September 12, 2016

Clinton diagnosis: Chronic secrecy and dishonesty With the Clintons, mistrust always being more transparent. But cover-ups have their advantages. If things had pays. A couple of weeks ago, Hillary was bounced differently, Bill might have yukking it up with Jimmy Kimmel been able to get away with denying his Monica Lewinsky; we over the absurdity of rumors that she affair with never have learned was hiding something about her health. m i g h t of Hillary’s private Look, she can server; and Hillary’s open a pickle jar! pneumonia diagnosis That feels so long might have been ago now that her kept under wraps, campaign has ad(c) 2016, King Features Syndicate too. mitted that she lic skepticism is most justified. PolitiSurely, the public had a right to know. cians lying about or concealing health was indeed hiding something about her health — a pneumonia diagnosis late Millions of people get pneumonia ev- problems is a common feature of every ery year, and often it is easily treatable, political system the world over, demolast week. yet the condition is serious enough that cratic or totalitarian, East or West. HillSOME OF the diagnoses from afar Hillary’s doctor told her to scale back ary would do well to adopt an uncharacof Hillary’s purported illnesses have her campaign schedule. The public in- teristic policy of complete transparency been elaborate fantasies, and she might terest in disclosure took a back seat to about her health records and perform have really been fit as a fiddle when Hillary’s interest in not giving any more the rest of the way without a disruption she opened the famous pickle jar. But fodder to critics questioning her vigor. more serious than a stray sneeze. Clinton has now been caught being through her secretive handling of her Even if she does, the handling of her pneumonia, she has, once again, shown dishonest about an area where pub- pneumonia is a preview of how a second how it never pays to trust a Clinton. Bill and Hillary have a way of treatDEMOCRATIC PARTY: September 13, 2016 ing the credibility of their allies as a disposable commodity, in this case including the credibility of a protective media. The press had worked itself into a lather in recent weeks about the illegitimacy of inquiries into Hillary’s health. ay, do you think she might have LGBT fundraiser): “The racist, sexist, They were repaid by Clinton leaving to drop out of the race if she’s homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophoreporters behind without notice at the as sick as she looked on this bic — you name it,” who she says make Sept. 11 memorial; nearly collapsing Sept. 11 in Manhattan? up “half of Trump’s supporters.” when she was out of their view (the You’re a bad, bad person in Clinton’s I understand the question. However, incident was captured on video by a something more than the obligations of book if you question the agenda of tobystander); giving them a wave and a Christian charity militate against wish- day’s Democratic Party: Which is to misleading “feeling great” outside of ing for such an outcome. make all of America mind its manners. Chelsea Clinton’s apartment, where she The first deterrent to this wish-ful- There will be no criticism of the followhad gone to recover; and leaving them fillment is Hillary Clinton’s iron deter- ing: Affirmative action; preference for behind yet again to go to her home in mination to take the place in history the random victims of officer-involved Chappaqua and see a doctor. she long ago assigned herself — Na- shootings over the police themselves; Her campaign initially said Hillary poleoness extraordinaire, remaking the eradication of ancient understandings of “overheated” (on a gorgeous and mild world’s encrusted outlooks, overhaul- marriage; contempt for such morning in New York City). Can hap- ing its out-of-date prejudices. I think benighted souls pen to anyone, right? Well, yes — and the mortician would have to chain her especially someone walking around down to make her subside. Even then with a case of pneumonia. she might not. Bill and Hillary have attracted more (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate than their share of kooky conspiracy EQUALLY TO the point, Hillary theories, but they also have vindicated Clinton typifies, in spades, the modern some of the darkest suspicions of their Democratic Party. No one more normal as insist that immigration laws be enmost passionate detractors. than she could obtain the party’s nomi- forced; banishment of fears concerning Only a hater would have believed nation today. a religion, some of whose adherents go that Bill Clinton, embroiled in a sexuThe party of Truman and LBJ, and of around massacring the innocent. al-harassment case, would have an af- the original Clinton in this deal, is the fair with a White House intern. Only a party of Harry Reid, Elizabeth Warren, IT TAKES AN industrious party hardened cynic would think that Hillary, Nancy Pelosi, Sonia Sotomayor, Black to assemble such a swarm of enemies serving as secretary of state and assured Lives Matter, the LGBT caucus, the and a dedicated presidential candidate to make a front-running campaign for anti-coal and anti-oil lobby, the teachers (they’ve got that, all right) to give these the Democratic presidential nomina- unions, NARAL Pro-Choice America, antagonisms punch. tion, with every incentive to keep her and the New York Times editorial page Well, it’s Richard Nixon’s fault. We nose clean, would mingle private and — among other fierce, uncompromising all know that. It was Nixon who began public business to aid her family’s al- spirits bent on turning an older, gener- siphoning off to Republicanism the ready incredibly well-funded founda- ally unsatisfactory America into a con- Democratic conservatives and modtion. Only a kook would wonder about geries of do-it-our-way power centers. erates who once kept the party liberher occasional coughing fits. Which, I grant, is a mouthful. It takes als (now called “progressives”) more a mouthful just to enumerate the dis- or less in line. A few moderates — I AND WE KNOW how all of that likes the party holds close to itself. They haven’t heard of any conservatives lateturned out. It is a cliche in the press have a whole “basket of deplorables,” ly — remain in Democratic ranks, but to say that Hillary hurts herself by not as Clinton herself put it (notably, at an not enough to tame the party’s general

Rich

Lowry

Clinton White House would operate. If she’s elected president, inevitably, some outlandish allegation will arise. The Clintons and their defenders will dismiss it as a hateful fantasy, before — when all other options are exhausted — admitting it’s actually true. THIS IS THE Clinton pattern over a couple of decades of stoking, and validating, their critics’ distrust.

Hillary Clinton and the ‘homophobes’

William

Murchison

animus against local rights, capitalism, traditional moral norms and foreign policy that recognizes and seeks to counter real, live enemies of democracy and freedom. Such is the party that nominated Hillary Rodham Clinton for the presidency. Care to bet its leaders doubt her commitment, real or put-on-for-the-occasion, to the Progressive Cause? They would tolerate nothing less in a leader. No more Scoop Jacksons or Mike Mansfields, as in days of yore. “Stick it to the homophobes” is the ticket. Clinton’s disability invites the voting public to look at what she stands for: Not least for a party-wide attitude of disdain for people who think differently than Democrats think. They’re the kind of people you can’t and don’t want to work with. Which means, just let her get elected and see what the party of Clinton (overlapping as it does the party of Obama) has to say about fracking or same-sex bathrooms or immigrant rights or any of the rest of the stuff the party of Trump seems to believe is at the very least worth discussing for the sake of attaining, where possible, a possible consensus. THE PARTY of Trump isn’t in such great shape itself, thanks to the vices and weaknesses of a candidate with a gift for disunity. It’s possible that Clinton will bring off the unity business for Trump at below union rates by alarming the voters Clinton claims to find outrageous and unworthy. It is as I was saying (or if I wasn’t, I should have been): Some campaign! Some mess!

September 21, 2016 MEDIA BIAS: September 7, 2016

Every word, including ‘and’ and ‘the’ ...

he media’s daily slander of like one of the country’s last five living Donald Trump is hard to white supremacists? Not exactly — it was a black reversquare with their increasingly frenzied assurances that he is going to end ... Did he do something awful? lose the election. If anyone in the media Well, it was just a retweet ... seriously believed Hillary had this in Is the retweet anything we could call the bag, this would be a golden opportu“homophobic,” “antinity for the media to be fair and get the “racist,” Semitic” or “Islamapublic to hate them phobic?” a little less. Technically, no. Instead, we’re It’s a political cargetting a nevertoon portraying ending stream of (c) 2016, Ann Coulter Hillary as a racist. lies about Trump FOR THE and his supporters. To paraphrase Mary McCarthy on Lil- MONEY WE PAY YOU, THAT’S ALL lian Hellman, every word the media ut- YOU CAN COME UP WITH?? Nonetheless, all day last Friday, ter about Trump is a lie, including “and” the chyron on MSNBC was: “Trump: and “the.” Blackface Backlash.” The media-manufactured “crisis” WE’VE ALREADY covered the media’s deliberate lie — and frantic was that a Trump-supporting black mincover-up of their lie — about Trump al- ister, the Rev. Mark Burns, had retweetlegedly mocking a disabled man. We’ve ed a cartoon of Hillary in blackface. covered the lie about Trump referring to Blackface is how whites exploit black Megyn Kelly’s period. We’ve covered people, so evidently, the cartoonist was the lie about Trump “attacking a Gold saying that Hillary exploits black peoStar dad!” “In Trump We Trust: E Plu- ple. That’s the labyrinthine process our ribus Awesome!” covers a slew of admedia went through to get the word ditional media slanders of Trump. But it’s impossible keep up with the “Trump” in the same sentence as Mount Vesuvius of lies about Trump. “blackface.” The poor minister apologized for Every day, the media wake up with the same basic mission: OK, what are we retweeting a political cartoon the media going to pretend is a huge crisis for the didn’t like, which I would have advised against. That’s when the media tasted Trump campaign today? One day last week, an intern came blood. For acceding to the media’s hysrunning in and said, “I’VE GOT ONE!” teria, Burns’ online resume was subjected to a painstaking examination, more Was it something Trump did? extensive than the “vetting” of any IsNo, it was a Trump supporter ... Was it an embarrassing supporter, lamic refugee.

Ann

Coulter

As it turned out, Burns had INFLATED HIS RESUME! He had only attended, but not graduated from, a college he listed on his resume and had served not in the Army Reserve, but in the South Carolina National Guard. NAILED! As soon as the media are done scouring the records of all the black people who support Trump, perhaps they will get around to a sitting U.S. senator who lied about his military service allegedly in Vietnam (Hillary supporter Richard Blumenthal). While MSNBC and CNN were bashing a black reverend for supporting Trump, over on Fox News, Chris Wallace was asking a black congressman, Rep. Gregory Meeks, “Do you think that Donald Trump is a racist?” SO AT LEAST the media are giving us both sides. A confusing series of slanders came out of Trump’s fabulous meeting with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto last week. (You know that the meeting went smashingly well because you haven’t seen a single clip of it on TV.) In their joint press conference after a private meeting, Trump called Nieto “a

friend” and effused about the Mexican people, saying “they are amazing people ... just beyond reproach, spectacular, spectacular, hardworking people. I have such great respect for them ...” But he also brought up the serious issues of illegal immigration, a border wall, drug cartels, NAFTA and keeping manufacturing in our hemisphere. Asked by Jonathan Karl of ABC if he had asked President Nieto to pay for the wall, Trump said, with Nieto standing at his side: “We did discuss the wall. We didn’t discuss payment of the wall. That’ll be for a later date. This was a very preliminary meeting.” If he had told the president that Mexico was paying for the wall, the media were prepared to call Trump rude, boorish, offensive and a bully. But having failed to do something wildly inappropriate, instead the media said that Trump had “chickened out.” Even Hillary and her vice presidential nominee couldn’t keep their Trump denunciations straight, with Hillary calling Trump’s highly successful meeting “an embarrassing international incident” and Tim Kaine saying Trump “folded under pressure.” Although Nieto politely disagreed with Trump on some points during their press conference, such as on trade and illegal immigration, he didn’t contradict Trump’s claim — made in front of him and the entire press corps — that they did not discuss who would pay for the wall. But after the meeting, the Mexican president came under blistering attacks — from his political opponents, from his people and, most of all, from the American media — apparently for not spitting in Trump’s face. Fully two hours later, Nieto remembered something he had forgotten to mention at the time, and tweeted out that, in fact, he had told Trump in no uncertain terms that Mexico was NOT paying for any wall. American media: TRUMP IS A LIAR! AS WITH ALL things Trump, absolutely nothing you hear about him from our journalist friends is likely to be true. America is being lied to by well-paid media elites, who want cheap nannies and couldn’t care less about out-of-work and underpaid Americans. Vote against the media. Vote Trump!

Conservative Chronicle

2016 ELECTION: September 13, 2016

The last chance for the ‘deplorables’

peaking to 1,000 of the over- and one-half losers we should pity. And she is running on the slogan privileged at an LGBT fundraiser, where the chairs ponied “Stronger Together.” Her remarks echo those of Barack up $250,000 each and Barbra Streisand sang, Hillary Clinton gave New York’s Obama in 2008 to San Francisco fat cats puzzled about those strange Pennsylvasocial liberals what they came to hear. “You could put half of Trump’s sup- nians. They are “bitter,” said Obama, they porters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?” smirked Clinton “cling to guns or religion or antipathy who aren’t like them or to cheers and laughter. “The racist, sex- to people immigrant sentiment ist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamo- a n t i or anti-trade sentiphobic, you name ment as a way to it.” They are “irexplain their frusredeemable,” tration.” but they are “not In short, PennAmerica.” (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate sylvania is a backThis was no verbal slip. Clinton had invited the press water of alienated Bible-banging gun in to cover the LGBT gala at Cipriani nuts and bigots suspicious of outsiders Wall Street where the cheap seats went and foreigners. But who really are these folks our new for $1,200. And she had tried out her new class detests, sneers at and pities? As Aflines earlier on Israeli TV: “You can take Trump supporters and rican-Americans are 90 percent behind put them in two baskets.” First there are Clinton, it is not black folks. Nor is it “the deplorables, the racists, and the hat- Hispanics, who are solidly in the Clinton ers, and the people who ... think some- camp. Nor would Clinton tolerate such slurs how he’s going to restore an America that no longer exists. So, just eliminate directed at Third World immigrants who are making America better by making us them from your thinking ...” more diverse than that old “America that AND WHO might be in the other bas- no longer exists.” No, the folks Obama and Clinton deket backing Donald Trump? They are people, said Clinton, “who test, disparage, and pity are the white feel that the government has let them working- and middle-class folks Richard down, the economy has let them down, Nixon celebrated as Middle Americans nobody cares about them. ... These are and the Silent Majority. people we have to understand and empaTHEY ARE the folks who brought thize with.” In short, Trump’s support consists of America through the Depression, won one-half xenophobes, bigots and racists, World War II, and carried us through the

Pat

Buchanan

Cold War from Truman in 1945 to victory with Ronald Reagan in 1989. These are the Trump supporters. They reside mostly in red states like W.Va., Ky. and Middle Pennsylvania, and Southern, Plains and Mountain states that have provided a disproportionate share of the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who fought and died to guarantee the freedom of plutocratic LGBT lovers to laugh at and mock them at $2,400-a-plate dinners. Yet, there is truth in what Clinton said about eliminating “from your thinking” people who believe Trump can “restore an America that no longer exists.” For the last chance to restore America, as Trump himself told Christian Broadcasting’s Brody File on Friday, Sept. 9, is slipping away: “I think this will be the last election

if I don’t win ... because you’re going to have people flowing across the border, you’re going to have illegal immigrants coming in and they’re going to be legalized and they’re going to be able to vote, and once that all happens, you can forget it.” Politically and demographically, America is at a tipping point. Minorities are now 40 percent of the population and will be 30 percent of the electorate in November. If past trends hold, 4 of 5 will vote for Clinton. Meanwhile, white folks, who normally vote 60 percent Republican, will fall to 70 percent of the electorate, the lowest ever, and will decline in every subsequent presidential year. The passing of the greatest generation and silent generation, and, soon, the baby-boom generation, is turning former red states like Va., N.C., Colo., Ariz. and Nev. purple, and putting crucial states like Fla. and Ohio in peril. What has happened to America is astonishing. A country 90 percent Christian after World War II has been secularized by a dictatorial Supreme Court with only feeble protest and resistance. A nation, 90 percent of whose population traced their roots to Europe, will have been changed by mass immigration and an invasion across its Southern border into a predominantly Third World country by 2042. What will then be left of the old America to conserve? No wonder Clinton was so giddy at the LGBT bash. They are taking America away from the “haters,” as they look down in moral supremacy on the pitiable Middle Americans who are passing away. But a question arises for 2017. WHY SHOULD Middle America, given what she thinks of us, render a President Hillary Clinton and her regime any more allegiance or loyalty than Colin Kaepernick renders to the America he so abhors?

September 21, 2016 HILLARY CLINTON: September 11, 2016

She has no right demanding no one question her health

ven though I’ve read the Constitution many times, I had to check it again just to be sure I hadn’t missed what Hillary is demanding. Not only does Clinton have no Constitutional authority to demand that the media stop discussing her obvious health condition, neither is there any precedent for same. Thomas Eagleton was afforded no such concessions. In 1972 he was forced to resign as Democrat vice-presidential nominee to George McGovern, the Democrat presidential nominee. Eagleton wasn’t having coughing attacks, he wasn’t staggering and falling, he wasn’t delaying the start of the vice-presidential debates by spending a suspiciously long period of time in the bathroom; he wasn’t having seizures in public, and he didn’t have hearing devices secreted in his ear during extended interviews and debates. He wasn’t secreted away for days at a time only to appear before near empty room campaign rallies and then disap-

right to demand her health not be an issue. There is no precedent for her aides EAGLETON SUFFERED from de- to viciously attack David Martosko, pression most of his life. His crime was U.S. Political Editor for the Daily Mail, that he had been hospitalized for same for “commenting about Clinton’s tired, and attempted to conceal his hospital listless appearance at a press conferFriday [September 9]. stays from the public. His attempt at se- ence on Clinton Aides Attack, crecy supposedly embarrassed McGov- ( S e e : Threaten Reporter ern and Eagleton for Saying Hillary was forced to drop Looked ‘Low Enout of the race. ergy’ at Friday Compared to Press Conference; Eagleton, isn’t (c) 2016, Mychal Massie Kristinn Taylor; what Clinton is trying to pull off demonstrably more 9/10/2016) Was Martosko supposed to lie to the egregious? Is she not attempting to deceive the voters, her Party and in fact the public by writing something that was untrue that ignored important details United State as a whole? Clinton is running for office in The pursuant to her ability to function as United States of America, not some president, if she were to win in Novemdespotic third world tribalistic country. ber? Apparently that’s exactly what the The American people have the right to demand the facts pursuant to her health Clinton campaign is demanding. As crisis. She however, does not have the Taylor wrote: “When reporters are pubpear from public sight for an extended period of days time after time after time.

eign challenges the candidates propose. Perhaps the upcoming debates will help focus their and our minds. Bad language in politics is nothing new. The 1800 presidential race between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who are now held in high regard as statesmen, was the beginning of what we now call negative campaigning. In addition to the often scurrilous things they said about each other, Adams and Jefferson had surrogates who attempted to outdo them. As Rick Ungar wrote in 2012 for Forbes magazine, the president of Yale University, a John Adams supporter, suggested that if Thomas Jefferson were to become president, “We would see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution.” A Connecticut newspaper, notes Ungar, warned that the election of Jefferson would create a nation where “murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will openly be taught and practiced.” Not to be outdone, James Callender, “an influential journalist of the time ... wrote that Adams was a rageful, lying, warmongering fellow; a ‘repulsive pedant’ and ‘gross hypocrite’ who ‘behaved neither like a man nor like a woman but instead possessed a hideous hermaphroditical character.’”

CERTAINLY ANYONE can appreciate that it’s not easy for a husband to watch his wife exposed to the harsh light of public scrutiny, but Bill Clinton has no right to lash out at those of us who are determined in the best interest of the country, to reveal the truth concerning Hillary’s health. He doesn’t mind embarrassing her with his serial philandering. But I digress. Hillary is the presidential candidate for his party and the public has the right to know the truth. Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon was in perfect health, apart from a flu, which gave him the appearance of looking grey and in poor health compared to the Democrat nominee John Kennedy, who was tanned and fit looking. History has long argued that Nixon’s appearance caused by the flu that cost him the election. Whether that is factual or not, it is still discussed 50 years later. Clinton isn’t suffering from the flu. Her health is in crisis and the American people have the right to know that the person claiming to be fit and up to the rigors of the office she seeks will truthfully be able to carry out the duties of said office. It is unconscionable for Clinton’s minion in Congress and in the media to insult the American public by branding them as “quite sexist” for daring to seek the truth about Clinton the candidate so as to make an informed decision about whether or not to vote for her. And her health certainly isn’t a non-issue. Americans suffered attacks by the Obama minions, being called racists for attempting to learn more about his qualifications and background. That was unfair then and this is more so now, considering that knowing more about Obama may have spared America and the world eight years of his failures. Clinton has the keys to end all questions and concerns about her health. She can release all information pursuant to her obviously failing health. Opening a jar of pickles (that most believe had the top loosened ahead of time) on a late night talk show doesn’t prove good health. Nor does just saying you are fine. The more public images the American people see of Clinton that vividly show her health in frightening decline, the more important it is for Clinton to reveal the truth of her failing health.

DEPLORABLE, BUT redeemed in the minds and hearts of their countrymen; I’m doubtful the same will be said of the current presidential candidates 200 years from now.

AND WE’RE NOT prepared to believe it is singularly pneumonia that is causing her failing health, unless it is in conjunction with something far more serious.

Mychal

Massie

HILLARY CLINTON: September 13, 2016

The ‘deplorables:’ Everyday Americans

very now and again secular progressives rip off their mask and tell conservatives what they really think of them. At an LGBT fundraiser last Friday in New York, Hillary Clinton one-upped President Obama, who said of conservatives during the 2008 presidential campaign: “And it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” That came to be known as the “bitter clingers” speech.

HILLARY CLINTON said: “You can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.” She then said that some of these people were “irredeemable.” After strong pushback, presumably from some of the “deplorables,” Hillary Clinton partially walked back her remarks. She said she had been “... grossly generalistic and that’s never a good idea. I regret saying half — that was wrong.” How many, then? One-quarter? One-third? Ten percent? And how does she arrive at such a figure? This is the contempt in which it seems the left holds traditional Americans. Anything they say “no” to is to be labeled racist, sexist, misogynist, xenophobic and nativist. To the left, anyone who does not share “modern” ideas is to be condemned, even called unAmerican and deplorable.

Clinton’s remarks remind me of what Washington Post writer Michael Weisskopf wrote about evangelical Christians in the early ‘90s. Weisskopf said they were “mostly poor, uneducated and easy to command.” That produced a torrent of critical letters and phone calls to the newspaper, prompting Ombudsman Joanne Byrd to explain the reasoning behind Weisskopf’s statement was that most journalists don’t know any of “these people.” The two comments prompted scores of evangelicals to send their resumes to the newspaper, showing degrees, even doctorates in various fields.

Cal

In a statement released by the Republican National Committee in response to Clinton’s remarks, Chairman Reince Priebus said, “Insulting everyday Americans to a group of wealthy donors shows whose priorities Clinton really has in mind and exposes the hypocrisy of a candidate whose stated desire to unite the country is clearly all for show.” Priebus went on to accuse Clinton of “condescension and “disrespect” to her fellow citizens. HALF OF them anyway. Name-calling on both sides prevents us from hearing what solutions to America’s manifold domestic and for-

licly attacked by high ranking political operatives it is not just meant to intimidate that reporter, it is meant to ‘other’ him by separating him from the herd and intimidate other reporters from following his lead.”

Conservative Chronicle

DONALD TRUMP: September 9, 2016

It’s not Flight 93, and Trump cannot save America

repeated his favorite barstool bluster toughness. A truly great nation needn’t that the United States of America should lord it over minor Mexicans. He later have “taken the oil” before departing purred about his cordiality with VladiIraq. Leaving aside for a moment the mir Putin, and imagined how delightful morality of using the U.S. military to the world would be if we could have a pillage another nation, the “how” of this better relationship with Russia, which formulation is a bit murky, since Trump “wants to defeat ISIS as badly as we is adamantly opposed to “boots on the do.” Well, not badly enough actually on them, it seems. ground.” We could have left a small to fire Russian jets hit force, he airily Bashar Assad’s opexplained to Matt ponents square on Lauer. And the but left ISIS pretty Iraqi population much unscathed. would have been (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate Trump claims fine with that? No danger of an insurrection, to say nothing to have taken an interest in international affairs for “many years,” but he of sabotage? apparently missed the part when Barack TRUMP AGAIN repeated the de- Obama/Hillary Clinton had the same bunked claim that Mexico is “taking naive hope about Russia. They called it all of our jobs or a big percentage of a “reset.” Trump would decry it as a “diTO JUSTIFY support for an emo- our jobs” and preened about causing saster” even as he slides into the exact tionally stunted, aspiring authoritarian, the resignation of a mid-level Mexi- same rut. Despite his slogan, Trump is Prager et al argue that the country “can- can government official as proof of his quick to slander America. Asked about not survive” four years of a Hillary Clinton presidency. Limbaugh warns that JULIAN ASSANGE: September 8, 2016 this is a “Flight 93” election — meaning we either storm the cockpit and risk death, or surely die. Bad analogy. The passengers on Flight 93 were pretty sure they were going to die. The only question was If Julian Assange plays this right, he years ago, Hannity tore into the Obama whether to go down fighting and pos- just might score an invitation to CPAC administration for not doing more to capsibly disrupt the terrorists’ plans, or to next year. ture the WikiLeaks founder, and sympadie passively. Those passengers ought to The notorious WikiLeaks founder thized with the contention that Assange remind us that a lot remains right with would have to attend the Conservative was the equivalent of a terrorist. Now, America, because the voices crying Political Action Conference remotely the host says he was “conflicted” about doom are particularly piercing just now. because he is still holed up in the Ecua- Assange, and he had qualms about his There is much decay in America. dorian Embassy in London, avoiding a work only because “I believe in privacy.” Government, best represented by an IRS rape investigation in Sweden and fearing This makes it sound as though that targets Americans for their political extradition to the United States for his WikiLeaks published a Hulk Hogan sex activism and an FBI that declines to hold malicious exposure of state secrets. But, tape. Instead, Assange dumped, high officials to the same standards as surely, the details could be worked out. among other things, what the ordinary ones, is corrupt. Government is also sclerotic and headed for insolvenASSANGE IS now treated as a recy — with the approval of both major- spectable figure by some elements of the party candidates. The courts are making right because he detests Hillary Clinton social policy without even a pretense of and promises to torpedo her campaign (c) 2016, King Features Syndicate constitutionality. Race relations are get- with new email exposures. Never mind ting worse. The press is dominated by that he has done everything within his Defense Department called “the largest mindless infotainment. Men are drop- power to damage the interests of the leak of classified documents in its hisping out of the labor force. The internet United States, in league with his quasi- tory.” has unleashed the most feral appetites ally, Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Rarely has of the human soul — from child porn “strange new respect” been stranger. HANNITY WAS once outraged that to anti-Semitism. Manners are fraying. It’s like conservatives embracing Kim the leaks potentially endangered U.S. alSo, yes, it may be that we cannot pull Philby, the infamous British double agent lies in Afghanistan, but today hails Asout of this dive. Many of these ills are who defected to the Soviet Union in the sange for exposing “how corrupt, disnot susceptible to repair by a president. 1960s, if he promised to produce damag- honest and phony our government is.” In any case, how can people who until ing information about Lyndon Johnson The fugitive himself puts his agenda in the day before yesterday emphasized before the 1964 election. Or welcoming more starkly anti-American terms. He the crucial importance of ethics, moral- Philip Agee, the anti-CIA activist from has a poisonous, Chomskyite view of the ity, tradition and honor now argue that the 1970s who was allied with Russian United States as a dastardly “empire,” Trump is not the antithesis of those vir- and Cuban intelligence, if he demon- bending the world to its will and persetues? strated enough hostility to Jimmy Carter. cuting brave dissidents like none other If you’re going to have a cult of perThe enemy of my enemy (or more than Julian Assange. sonality, at least choose someone wor- properly, my domestic political oppoWhen he started out, Assange was thy. Trump has spent a career in the nent) can still be a reprehensible creep, committed to exposing the world’s genutabloid zone, and it shows. The amaz- and that’s what Assange is. inely pernicious states. He said he was ing thing is that a lifelong teetotaler can But Sean Hannity of Fox News has a going to criticize “highly oppressive resound so drunk. At NBC’s “Commander newfound soft spot for the accused rap- gimes in China, Russia and Central Eurin Chief Forum,” for example, Trump ist and scourge of America. A couple of asia,” and warned a newspaper in Mos-

y old friends Dennis Prager, Bill Bennett and Rush Limbaugh, among many others, seem to have made a transition. It’s not enough to vote for Trump. No, even reluctant supporters must now talk themselves into believing that conservative “principles” require a vote for Trump. Like John C. Calhoun, who discovered that slavery was not only not wrong, it was a “positive good,” some Republicans are urging that a vote for Trump is a moral imperative. To oppose him is, in Bennett’s words, to put vanity and a sense of “moral superiority” above the interests of the country. Rush Limbaugh, who travels in a private plane, condemns anti-Trump intellectuals at tiny, poorly funded think tanks for “(wanting) their paychecks.”

Mona

Charen

the attempted coup in Turkey, he sneered that the U.S. lacks the moral authority to criticize other nations. When presented with Putin’s record of killing opponents, he was phlegmatic. “Our country does plenty of killing also.” He’s long admired dictators he describes as “strong leaders.” TRUMP’S COMMENTS on foreign policy come at a time when he’s been attempting to impersonate a normal candidate, and some observers have developed blinding amnesia. This Trump is bad enough, but the other one — the violence-inciting, promiscuously dishonest, bankruptcy-declaring, NATO-dissing, tax return-withholding, alt-right empowering, threat-issuing, America-disparaging Trump — cannot remain chained for long. That Trump cannot save America. He might do even more damage than she. So spare us the overwrought Flight 93 analogies.

Julian Assange is still a creep

Rich

Lowry

cow of the damaging information he had acquired about Russia. Assange is no longer in that line of work. He has fallen into the arms of Vladimir Putin as the activist pursues his vendetta against the United States and its former secretary of state, whom, it so happens, Putin despises for condemning the conduct of Russia’s 2011 parliamentary elections. An avowed champion of transparency and free speech, Assange told the Times he doesn’t go out of his way to castigate a Russian government that kills journalists because to do so is “boring.” Interfering in a U.S. election is much more interesting. U.S. officials believe that Russia was behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee that WikiLeaks used to such effect around the time of the Democratic convention. The promised additional WikiLeaks exposures may well be the handiwork of the Russians, as well. It is Hillary’s own fault that she is vulnerable to the likes of Assange. Her secrecy, corrupt practices and dishonesty make her an ideal target. Yet there is a world of difference between Tom Fitton, the head of Judicial Watch, who has done so much through litigation in the U.S. courts to expose Clinton, and Assange, a certified America-hater whose work is likely enabled by Russian intelligence. THERE WAS a time when everyone could see the distinction, but that was before 2016, a year of strange, not to say loathsome, bedfellows.

September 21, 2016 2016 ELECTION: September 9, 2016

Why the latest polls are tightening up

There are plenty of signs Clinton is aybe Hillary Clinton isn’t going to be elected president poorly positioned to do that. Black turnafter all. That’s a thought out and Democratic percentage is likely that’s evoking glee in some, nausea in to be down, at least slightly, from when others, terror in some and relief at the re- the first black president was seeking moval of an increasingly tedious figure re-election. Polls have shown Hispanics less interested and motivated by this from public view in still more. The thought is prompted by the campaign than just about any other degraphic group. CNN/ORC poll showing Clinton trail- m o Young voters, ing Donald Trump while repelled by in four-candidate Trump, are not atpairings by a 45 to tracted by Clinton. 43 percent margin. She ran way beClinton’s lead in (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate hind Bernie Sandthe RealClearPoliers among young tics.com average of recent polls is down from 7.6 per- women as well as young men in primacent on Aug. 9 to 2.8 percent today. The ries and caucuses. Four-candidate polls FiveThirtyEight website has Trump’s typically show Clinton running far behind the 60 percent Obama won among chances of winning up to 30 percent. under-30s in 2012, with as many as 20 THE CNN/ORC poll has been criti- percent preferring Libertarian Gary cized for having more self-identified Johnson or Green candidate Jill Stein. So turnout could tilt more RepubRepublicans than Democrats. Since random sample polling was invented in lican this time. And these polls mostly 1935, there hasn’t been a presidential don’t measure the impact of the recently election in which self-identified Repub- released notes from Clinton’s FBI interlicans outnumbered self-identified Dem- views that took place over the weekend ocrats. The closest was in 2004, when before July 4. They were released late the exit poll showed both parties with 37 Friday afternoon before the Labor Day weekend, and only two current national percent. But there may be something to learn polls included some interviews conductfrom CNN/ORC’s decision to whittle ed afterwards. So most respondents had no time to their sample down to likely voters. The Clinton campaign’s goal has been to rep- digest the juicy bits, such as the Bleachlicate Barack Obama’s 51 percent coali- Bit destruction of thousands of emails tion in 2012. Assembling that coalition after they were subpoenaed by the relied on spurring turnout among black, House committee on Benghazi. Also revealed was the fact that Clinton used Hispanic and young voters.

Michael

Barone

not one email device, as she claimed in March 2015, but at least 13, and that several were lost and two smashed with a hammer. When asked about the “C” notations on documents, Clinton said that perhaps they had something to do about alphabetical order, even though there were no documents labeled “A,” “B” or “D.” The candidate touted as the most qualified ever professed deep ignorance about government classification practices.

terview notes provide further convincing evidence that she is a liar and a cheat. The kid gloves treatment she got from the FBI — no recordings, allowing aide and co-conspirator Cheryl Mills in the interview — confirm the impression, created by the intended-to-be-secret meeting of Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch days before, that the fix was in. So does the fact that Clinton and her aides in court-ordered interviews claimed loss of memory 378 times. ACCORDING TO polls, more than None of this is helpful to Hillary Clin60 percent of Americans believe Clinton ton’s candidacy. It helps explain why she is not honest or trustworthy. The FBI in- has not subjected herself to a standard press conference in 278 days, and why the polls are suddenly tightening. Another reason is that Trump finally found his bearings. When Clinton was fundraising in Hollywood, the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard, Trump visited flood-stricken Louisiana and met with President Enrique Pena Nieto in Mexico City, where he was treated as and acted like a serious national leader. That night in Phoenix he dialed back on unrealistic immigration promises (of deporting all 11 million illegals) and advanced a surprisingly plausible reform package. In a world where FedEx and UPS can track packages and Visa and MasterCard can process purchases, why should it be impossible for the government to track visa holders and verify job applicants’ legal status? And why shouldn’t we revise immigration law to encourage highskill and discourage low-skill immigration? The United States always needs more Einsteins but hasn’t needed more low-skill job seekers any time lately. OF COURSE, Trump has proved himself capable of self-harm, and many voters will likely continue to find him unacceptable. But suddenly it’s looking like a real contest.

Conservative Chronicle

2016 ELECTION: September 8, 2016

Economic cloud hovers over last months of election

he often bizarre 2016 presi- accused her of “extreme carelessness” in dential campaign is speeding her use of an unsecured home computer toward its widely unsatisfying system as secretary of state. conclusion. One of the candidates will “I communicated about classified mawin. terial on a wholly separate system,” she Donald Trump was praising his pal, said. “I took it very seriously.” Russian President Vladimir Putin, reWho is she kidding? That’s not what minding voters that the former KGB the FBI found after months of digging thug — who plots to annex Ukraine d e e p l y into her emails, disin pursuit of his covering that she sent dream of reclaimout untold messages ing parts of the that contained conold Soviet Union fidential or highly — has called him sensitive material. (c) 2016, United Media Services “brilliant.” But she has At a national sesince invented a curity forum this week, Trump defended bogus defense for the campaign trail, his adoring admiration for Putin, saying based on the belief that she can fool he can get along with the Kremlin leader most of the voters most of the time. who is helping bloodthirsty Syrian dic“Classified material has a header that tator Bashar Assad bomb civilians in the says ‘top secret,’ ‘secret,’ ‘confidential,’” besieged city of Aleppo. Clinton said. “None of the emails sent or received by me had such a header.” NOT KNOWN for being humble, the While in certain cases this was true, real estate business mogul said, “Well, I the fact remains that the FBI determined think when he calls me brilliant, I think that many of these unmarked emails did, I’ll take that compliment, OK?” in fact, contain information that was “I think I would have a very, very compromised by her cavalier approach good relationship with Putin,” Trump to government documents. Equally irsaid, “and I think I would have a very, responsible, her many email replies invery good relationship with Russia.” cluded details of such classified inforIt was another alarming example of mation. what his foreign policy would be toward Clinton’s loose handling of classified Moscow. Unlike President Reagan, who information, and what the FBI called flatly called Russia “an evil empire,” similar mismanagement throughout Trump will take a “see no evil, hear no the department, has raised widespread evil” approach to Putin’s plans to seize doubts about her ability to be the nasovereign territory and his support for tion’s chief executive. evil despots. One of the questions raised at the foMeantime, Hillary Clinton, who also rum came from a veteran who said that participated in the forum, was defending if he had mishandled classified informaher handling of classified materials, de- tion the way Clinton did, he would likely spite a lengthy, detailed FBI report that have been prosecuted and jailed.

Donald

Lambro

While a number of issues continue to bedevil the two candidates, there’s new evidence that illegal immigration — which Trump has made the centerpiece of his campaign — isn’t considered that seriously by voters. A massive, 50-state Washington Post poll of more than 74,000 registered voters on the election race reported this week that “immigration is a second- or third-tier issue for voters across the country.” WHEN VOTERS were asked to name the issue that was most important to them, the economy and jobs topped the list, at 32 percent, followed by health care and terrorism at 16 percent each, education at 10 percent and the environment at eight percent. Immigration was fifth on the list at seven percent, and foreign policy last at four percent.

Those responses generally mirrored the same findings of other polls over the years, particularly the Gallup Poll’s voter surveys. If Trump thought illegal immigrants alone were going to catapult him into the presidency, he’s in for a surprise. But recent polls may explain why he is emphasizing the economy and jobs lately in his early ads in Virginia and elsewhere. Despite the Obama administration’s fiction, swallowed whole by the national news media, that the economy is doing fine and jobs are plentiful, quite the opposite is true. The economy is growing at a minuscule one percent, and is showing further signs that it is slowing down for the rest of this year. “Last month, employers added a disappointing 151,000 jobs to their payrolls,” Fortune said last week. “The number is another sign that the economy could be slowing down.” U.S. factory production and orders declined in August, according to the Institute for Supply Management’s index, which fell 3.2 percent. Manufacturing lost 14,000 jobs, and the Labor Department said applications for unemployment claims rose by over 2,000 in the past week alone. The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the jobless rate at 4.9 percent, but no one believes that figure. Gallup’s daily tracking survey puts the real unemployment rate at 10 percent. This and other economic data “raises the prospect that the economy will remain tepid,” the Associated Press said this week. This is the dark economic cloud that will hover over the candidates for the last two months of this election. VOTERS WANT stronger economic growth, good-paying jobs and a better future. But Trump is more focused on deporting hardworking immigrants, while Clinton offers us only four more years of the failed Obama agenda.

September 21, 2016 ECONOMY: September 13, 2016

Want prosperity? Follow the red state model

hat makes America an economically ingenious place is the competitive federalism model set forth by our Founding Fathers. They established our nation as the world’s largest ever free trade zone, in which 50 states use varying economic and fiscal policies to compete for jobs and people. And boy, have liberals come to hate that model. Why? Because it puts their policies of tax, spend, regulate and restrict on trial every day. We can see with our own eyes the stampede flowing out of liberal blue states and into conservative red states. THESE TRENDS are more important to point out today than ever before, because Hillary Clinton wants to adopt a classic “blue state” model of econom-

ic revival — more government spend- less regulation and with right-to-work ing, higher tax rates on the rich and laws have substantially and statistically increased regulations — while Trump significant higher rates of job and inwould follow the “red state” course. come growth. Red states, on average, be a magnet for people That would mean: Lower tax rates; con- tend to incomes, whereas trol of federal spending and regulations; a n d many blue states — and drilling for including, most noour bountiful and tably, New York and valuable energy California — are resources. (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate losing out bigIf Clinton’s vitime in the intersion for America makes sense, why has it failed in the nal migration game. states? BY THE WAY, I mean red states not Two years ago, I co-authored a New York Times best-selling book with Ar- as “Republican states,” but as shorthand thur Laffer, Rex Sinquefield and Travis for states that adopt free market poliBrown, entitled An Inquiry Into the Na- cies. I mean “blue states” as places with ture and Causes of the Wealth of States. costly and highly regulated state govWe documented the overpowering ernments. Virginia once had one of the evidence that states with low tax rates, most pro-growth governors in America,

Stephen

Moore

2016 ELECTION: September 8, 2016

Winning versus leading

abor Day has passed, school is back in session, businesses are planning for the new year, presidential nominees are set, and it’s time for the presidential candidates to sprint to the end. With two months to go, every move becomes more important and every error more painful for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. While their immediate goal may be to win the election, their real goal should be to lead the American people after the election. This requires that, in addition to winning 270 electoral votes, the next president must also receive a majority of the popular vote. AT THIS POINT, it might be too late for either candidate to muster that kind of support, but failure to do so would not be a first. Of the 24 presidential elections since 1916, a quarter has been won by candidates who garnered less than 50 percent of the popular vote. All these elections were held in the past 68 years, with three in the last 24 years. Harry Truman won with 49.6 percent of the popular vote in 1948; John Kennedy won with 49.7 percent in 1960; and Richard Nixon won with 43.3 percent in 1968 (then 60.7 percent in 1972). Bill Clinton won both terms with less than 50 percent (43.0 percent in 1992 and 49.2 percent in 1996). George W. Bush won with 47.9 percent in 2000, (then 50.7 percent in 2004). While the elections were won, and the presidents were sworn in, none of them carried the overwhelming support of the American people. So far this election season, the Democratic and Republican nominees have

hovered in the low- to mid-40s in national polls. A dismal showing indeed. It’s not been a question of who is pulling in a majority of support from potential voters, but who is narrowly beating out the other candidate. The current Real Clear Politics average has Hillary Clinton at 46 percent with Donald Trump at 43 percent. Neither candidate has polled above the 50 percent mark consistently. This year it’s about more than presidential politics, no matter what you might be led to believe by watching the news. In the races for the Senate, (currently controlled by Republicans, 54 to 44 seats), Real Clear Politics has 40 safe (or not up) Republican seats, and four likely or leaning Republican. On the Democratic side, they record 44 as safe, with three likely or leaning Democratic.

Jackie

THE REMAINING nine are in the toss-up category. These include current Republican incumbents: Arizona, (McCain), Florida (Rubio), Missouri, (Blunt), New Hampshire (Ayotte), North Carolina (Burr), Ohio (Portman), Pennsylvania (Toomey) and one open seat in Indiana. With a total of 435 seats in the House of Representatives, 218 are needed for control. Republicans currently have 246 seats, with Democrats holding 186 seats. Based on the 270towin website, the Republicans are projected to maintain control with 226 seats. So in summary, the presidential elec-

tion will be decided based on which candidate the voters can support, even if that means they have to close their eyes and hold their noses to do so. The Republicans will more than likely retain the House, and the Senate is in play — but leaning Republican. Is there anything that can be done at the presidential level for one candidate or the other to gather more than 50 percent of the popular vote in the remaining two months before Election Day? To win the mandate to lead rather than just win? On September 27, 1994, five weeks before the off-season election, the House Republican congressional candidates rolled out the Contract with America. It contained three principles and 10 specific reforms to be voted on in the first 100 days. The contract changed the tone, tenor and focus of the election, but more importantly laid out a path for the year ahead. The 1994 election resulted in the Republicans taking control of the House and the Senate, with 52 percent of the popular vote. The contract was clear and specific and communicated a core set of values as well as a playbook for the next session. That was a generation ago. Imagine a new promise to the American people, one that included specific reforms that could be passed through both houses of Congress and signed by the president, and specific changes that voters would see as leading to real change and a brighter future.

Doug Wilder — a Democrat. Then it had one of the biggest tax and spend governors ever, Bob McDonnell — a Republican. Party labels don’t matter. Policies do. Almost 1,000 people on net have been leaving high-tax states for lowtax states. This is more than three million people a year voting with their feet against liberalism. It isn’t quite the same as the exodus after World War II from East Germany to West Germany, but the same phenomenon is in place. As Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas, loves to point out (and Census data confirm), the Lone Star state (with no income tax) created more jobs from 2007-14 than the other 49 states combined. If you think big government and high taxes are a path to prosperity, how in the world do you explain that one? Even with the oil recession, Texas is still doing fine. No wonder Clinton is having a hard time convincing voters that her model for rebuilding the economy will work. It hasn’t worked anywhere in the country. Even California lost one million residents due to internal migration from 2005-14. The New York Times recently disputed all this, arguing: “Despite what you may have heard, blue states are generally doing better.” They looked at life expectancy at birth, percentage of college graduates, median income, and number of patents per 1,000 people. Not so fast. To find which states are going in the right and wrong directions, you have to look at how things are changing. Even the New York Times editorial admitted: “The gap between today’s red and blue states was enormous for much of the 20th century. It then narrowed substantially.” But these states made this progress by cutting taxes and regulation.

BLUE STATES were once prosperous, and taxes and spending were less onerous than they are now. Connecticut once was very rich. One key to its success was that until 1991 Connecticut had no income tax. Its other key attribute was its proximity to high-tax, anti-business New York. But over the last 25 years, Connecticut has been in a free fall. It has raised its income tax four times, and there is no state, perhaps outside of Illinois, that has more towering deficits. The joke now in Connecticut is: “Will the last person in the state please turn out the lights?” This is prosperity? Texas — not Connecticut or Illinois or New Jersey — is the model for the country. Clinton wants to make all of America look more like blue state America and Donald Trump wants the country to follow the policies of Florida THAT WOULD be leading rather and Texas. It really is as simple a choice as that. than just winning.

Conservative Chronicle

2016 ELECTION: September 9, 2016

The campaign: Hurry up, please. It’s time T.S. Eliot thought April is the cruelest month. But he didn’t live long enough to sample the 2016 presidential campaign. Besides, he skipped the country to take up citizenship in England. September and October are the cruelest months this year, leading out of a long, hot summer to the autumn road that will take us to the momentous decision. Who will preside over the Oval Office for the next four years? In Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land,” there’s the reprise of familiar words he heard at the end of the evening at the pub: “HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME.” They’re words that come to mind now.

THE CONVENTIONAL wisdom (which is not always wrong) says that most voters have made up their minds, that it’s all over but the counting of votes. But the polls are rocking with different numbers, suggesting that a lot of people still aren’t sure. Donald Trump’s negatives haven’t changed much, but Hillary Clinton’s now outpace his. His missteps and mistakes congealed after he won the nomination and set a tone through insults and personal attacks, drawing a caricature of a bully leaving deep footprints in the landscape. Clinton’s missteps, by contrast, have a softer, insidious consistency. She continues to tiptoe around the truth as if it were something that might stick to her shoe. She has told so many lies that it’s hard to keep up with the minutiae of her manipulation. Eyes glaze over. Two decades ago, William Safire, the New York Times columnist, said that Americans would eventually see Clinton, who was then first lady, as a “congenital liar,” someone born to lie. He catalogued chapter and verse of her mendacity, and though the specifics have changed, the pattern she set has remained with an eerie persistence. Clinton’s lies, he wrote, were not irrational, because they enabled her to buy, delay and distract. In one particular example, when the FBI found copies of her “lost” records she “found” them, too, and lucky for her they miraculously appeared two days beyond the statute of limitations expired, which enabled her to evade a civil lawsuit. Friends and aides could be counted on to help her cover her tracks, and she would advance their careers. Safire thought Clinton would inevitably trap herself in the web of her mendacity, but until now she has run out the clock. Timing in love, war and politics, as we all know, is everything. The clock continues to move in her favor, but the tick and the tock have taken on a baleful note. A new CNN poll shows Trump not only closing the gap, but inching ahead of Clinton by two points in a four-way race with Clinton, Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party and Jill Stein of the

Green Party. The third and fourth candidates might do for Trump what candidate Ross Perot did for Bill Clinton against George H.W. Bush in 1992, draining just enough attention and votes to enable Bush to squeak through and win. NO DOUBT Hillary Clinton thought that her emails and reckless abuse of national security would be long gone from the public mind by now, and that the Clinton Foundation, so adept at scooping up millions from rich foreigners who are anticipating business with a new president, would be seen as a clutch of do-gooders on missions of mercy. Instead, she’s suffering the wounds of a thousand cuts. She has counted on Trump’s low numbers on honesty being worse than hers, and she can’t count on that any longer.

In that same poll the Republican nominee trumps Clinton for honesty and trustworthiness by 15 percent among likely voters. His brash, realityshow style may be better suited to the times than her calculated lying. He recently explained his donations to varied causes, saying: “I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. That’s a broken system.” The Clinton style is to take advantage of the broken system in another way. When she was secretary of state she invited Douglas Becker, founder of the for-profit college network Laureate International Universities, a man “who Bill likes a lot,” to an intimate dinner at the State Department on global diplo-

macy in higher-education policy. Nine months later Bill became a consultant and “honorary chancellor” of Laureate, earning $17.6 million over five years. Becker has since given millions to the Clinton Foundation. IMAGES AND impressions are beginning to stick now, and character will out. The conventional wisdom, which is carefully nurtured by the media, has been saying that Clinton would win in a landslide. Now the odds are changing. In the race to the bottom it’s hard to discern a winner. Hurry up, please. It’s time. Write to Suzanne Fields at suzannefields2000@gmail.com. Suzanne Fields is currently working on a book that will revisit John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

LESLIE’S TRIVIA BITS: September 12, 2016

Leslie’s Trivia Bits

lthough she knew she was a carrier of typhoid, Mary Mallon worked as a cook in and around New York City. That’s how she spread the disease to more than 20 people, before she was caught and institutionalized in 1907. When she was released, she went right back to cooking — and infecting people. After another typhoid outbreak was traced to her, “Typhoid Mary” was quarantined on an island in the East River for the rest of her life. OOMPA-LOOMPAS or WhippleScrumpets? Roald Dahl almost went with the latter as a name for Willy Wonka’s helpers in his classic kids’ novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Eventually, he settled on Oompa-Loompas, whom he described in the book as “tiny people” with “funny long hair.” The idea for giving Oompa-Loompas orange skin came from the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Now it’s hard to picture them any other way. Cats — including lions and tigers — appear to be the only mammals that can’t taste sweetness. That means they don’t get any particular satisfaction from eating sugary things, which is just as well since their bodies don’t digest sugars efficiently. They’re not the only creatures without a taste for sugar — chickens can’t taste sweetness either. It’s possible that the inspiration for Indiana Jones was Roy Chapman Andrews, an explorer-scientist who led an expedition to the Gobi desert of Mongolia from 1922 to 1930, where he found the first known complete nest of dino-

saur eggs. A graduate of Beloit College in Wisconsin, he cajoled his way into a job at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where he started out by sweeping floors and eventually became the museum’s director. Blackjack is the most widely played casino game in the world. It’s also one of the oldest casino games. It was wellestablished by the 1600s when Miguel de Cervantes (who’s best known for writing Don Quixote) mentioned it in a story called “Rinconete

Leslie

y Cortadillo.” That tale of two young gamblers who specialize in a game called veintiuna — Spanish for twentyone — is thought to contain the first written mention of the game. THE DELAHANTYS were the biggest band of brothers ever to play Major League Baseball. Five of them — Ed, Tom, Joe, Jim and Frank — had big league contracts and a sixth brother, Will, suffered a career-ending injury in the minors. “Big Ed,” the eldest, was the standout. He batted above .400 two times - and .399 once — with a career batting average of .346 over his 16-year career. Midseason in 1903, at age 35, he mysteriously fell to his death from a bridge spanning Niagara Falls. TRIVIA 1. Coronaviruses that cause severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)

and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) probably come from what type of creature? A) Bat B) Dog C) Horse D) Snake 2. Dick Wilson portrayed Mr. Whipple in a long-running ad campaign for what well-known brand? A) Charmin B) Jell-O C) Listerine D) Pine-Sol 3. Mattamuskeet, Walla Walla and Vidalia are sweet varieties of what food crop? A) Apple B) Lettuce C) Onion D) Potato 4. Permian High School is the setting for which of these books? A) Carrie B) Friday Night Lights C) Looking for Alaska D) The Perks of Being a Wallflower 5. Whose face was pictured on the 1863 2-cent postage stamp known as the Black Jack? A) John Quincy Adams B) Andrew Jackson C) King John of England D) Jack London 6. The source of the Ganges river is a glacial ice cave in which mountain range? A) Atlas B) Caucasus C) Himalaya D) Ural (answers on page 19)

September 21, 2016 BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS: September 13, 2016

Election year books: Some old, some new, all good

lection year politics generates it is in a country where the welfare recipmuch rhetoric and confusion. ients are overwhelmingly whites, so that And the media often adds its their behavior cannot be explained away spin. But, fortunately, there are some by “a legacy of slavery” or “institutional books around that deal with reality and racism,” or other such evasions of facts can cut through the nonsense. Most of in the United States. As Dr. Dalrymple says: “It will come these books were not written during this election year, but what they presented as a surprise to American readers, percan be very eye-opening on the issues haps, to learn that the majority of the British underclass is white, raised by politicians this year. and that it demonIf you are constrates all the same cerned about issocial pathology as sues involved the black underwhen some people class in America want to expand the (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate — for very similar welfare state and others want to contract it, then one of the reasons, of course.” That reason is the most relevant and insightful books is Life welfare state, and the attitudes and beat the Bottom by Theodore Dalrymple. It havior it promotes and subsidizes. Another and very different example of was not written this year and is not even about the United States, much less our the welfare state’s actual consequences is current presidential or other candidates. The New Trail of Tears by Naomi Schaefer Riley. It is a painful but eye-opening WHAT MAKES Life at the Bottom account of life on American Indian resespecially relevant and valuable is that it ervations. People on those reservations have is about the actual consequences of the welfare state in England — which are re- been taken care of by the federal govmarkably similar to the consequences in ernment for more than a hundred years. They have lived in a welfare state lonthe United States. Many Americans may find it easier to ger than any other minority in America. think straight about what happens, when What have been the consequences?

Thomas

Sowell

ONE CONSEQUENCE is that they have lower incomes than any other minority — including other American Indians, who do not live on reservations, and who are doing far better on their own. The economic plight of people on the reservations is by no means the worst of it. The social problems are heart-breaking. As just one example, the leading cause of death, among American Indian boys from 10 to 14 years of age, is suicide.

2016 ELECTION: September 13, 2016

2016’s unhealthy political climate

s a presidential candidate with Hillary Clinton’s health problems — pneumonia now, but also for some time deep vein thrombosis and a history of blood clots — healthy enough to be president? Most probably, yes, but her weekend health issues make you wonder if Clinton is covering up bigger health problems than her team has revealed to date. After all, her campaign initially told the press Clinton left a 9/11 ceremony early because she “felt overheated.” Only after a video revealed Clinton’s legs buckling as secret service agents spirited her into a van, did Camp Clinton release a statement that revealed she had been diagnosed with pneumonia Friday. YOU CAN’T WATCH the video of the back of Clinton’s head as others tried to prop her up and not feel for the former secretary of state and first lady. She’s always been an all-out campaigner, and even the healthiest politicians get sick. But as you think about the campaign’s attempt to gloss over this incident, you start to wonder what her team is not telling you. You recall Clinton’s many misrepresentations — that she was told her used of a homebrew server was “allowed,” that she had handed “all my work-related email” to

authorities, that she was cooperating fully with officials when she refused to talk to the Office of Inspector General — made before the Democratic primary was settled. Clinton, 68, doesn’t just mislead others about herself. During an interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer last week, Clinton said, “we are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again, and we’re not putting ground troops into Syria. We’re going to defeat

Debra J.

ISIS (Islamic State) without committing American ground troops.” Surely Clinton is aware of the more than 4,000 U.S. troops risking their lives in a bid to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria as I write this. Yet she talks as if there are no boots on the ground. CRITICS POUNCED on Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson — a fitness buff, who says he runs two to three hours every day he does not campaign — for fumbling when asked what he would do about Aleppo. Johnson didn’t think immediately think “Syria”

when he heard the name Aleppo, as one steeped in foreign affairs would. He said he thought Aleppo was an acronym. What’s Clinton’s excuse for her off-the-mark answer on ISIS? This would be an ideal time for Donald Trump, 70, to release comprehensive medical records. (The rushed letter in which his doctor wrote that Trump could be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency” was more a stunt than the result of close examination.) Trump now says he will release detailed records Thursday on The Dr. Oz Show. And yet, I remain skeptical — because one always should be skeptical when Trump says he will do something. Donald Trump, after all, repeatedly told the press he would release his personal tax returns. I APPRECIATE how Clinton’s drive led her to push herself to attend the 9/11 memorial event on Sunday. But after she collapsed, I think she should have gone to a hospital, where given the state of her health that day, she could be given diagnostic tests. Instead, she went to her daughter’s home for enough recovery time to stage a comeback photo op with a little girl. Not for the first time, Hillary Clinton’s first instinct was to cover up the basic facts of her situation.

As regards black Americans, there is much talk about the role of police. If you want a book that cuts through the rhetoric and confusion, and deals with hard facts, then The War on Cops by Heather Mac Donald does precisely that. On racial issues in general, the best economic survey is Race and Economics by Professor Walter Williams of George Mason University. Just the table on page 35, showing unemployment rates among black and white teenagers, going all the way back to 1948, should demolish all the rhetoric and spin that tries to conceal the deadly effects of minimum wage laws on unemployment among black teenagers. No community is better off for having large numbers of idle young males, hanging around with nothing to do except getting into trouble. Many other issues are covered in Professor Williams’ book, including racial discrimination in general and the effects of various government interventions in the economy which disproportionately create problems for lowincome minorities. Among my own books, Basic Economics is probably best for people who want to look up a variety of economic issues, ranging from rent control to tax policies and international trade policies. It is written in plain English and has been translated into seven foreign languages, so apparently many people find it useful and understandable. For those who are especially interested in issues revolving around income distribution or the concentration of wealth, my Wealth, Poverty and Politics covers those issues and cuts through much political rhetoric on that subject. SO DOES another book on that subject: Who’s the Fairest of Them All? by Stephen Moore. It was written four years ago, but it has a special relevance this year because Stephen Moore is now one of Donald Trump’s economic advisors. That is one of the very few hopeful signs this election year.

September 21, 2016

The media is giving Hillary Clinton a free pass

residential nominee Hillary she attempted to obstruct the investiClinton was finally asked a gation into those emails. We can’t talk tough question during NBC’s about Donald Trump tweets 24/7, after commander-in-chief forum, so natu- all. For critics, there was an even uglier rally the establishment media immediately coagulated around the notion moment. How could Lauer let Trump that NBC’s Matt Lauer was the worst get away with lying about his position on Iraq? This was the big takeaway moderator ever. An Air Force and Navy veteran, last night, and the dominant apprehenwho said he held “the top secret sen- sion of the media, the sanctity of the sitive compartmentalized information candidate roundtable and political declearance,” said to Clinton regarding bates. As if politicians blatantly lying positions were a unique her acts as secretary of state, “Had I about their communicated this information not event. Basically, evfollowing preeryone lied about scribed protocols, everything at the I would have been forum. Yet rarely prosecuted and was any of the imprisoned.” He (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate post-forum handthen asked, “Secretary Clinton, how can you expect wringing concerned about Clinton’s those such as myself who were and are performance. It is true that Clinton’s trusted with America’s most sensitive distortions are better-couched, but information to have any confidence in why was there no pushback when she your leadership as president when you claimed that no Americans died takclearly corrupted our national secu- ing in Libya “action” in 2011? Why was there no fact-check on Clinton’s rity?” false intimation that no one hacked her HOW COULD Lauer allow a veter- emails? The consensus is that a foreign an to spend precious time on Clinton’s nation probably did hack her classified email “scandal,” they wondered from emails. No one seemed exceptionally the bubble? Since Clinton claims that concerned about her prevaricating on her experience is what makes her ready that one. “on day one,” it’s not unreasonable to NOW, MEDIA types are wondering wonder why she still supposedly didn’t understand how classified documents if perhaps moderators should engage in worked; or why she engaged in actions spontaneous fact-checks, which, theothat probably allowed foreign actors to retically, sounds like a wonderful idea. access top secret information; or why In practice, though, as the very stories

David

Harsanyi

calling for fact-checks illustrate, the media is highly selective in ascertaining which inaccuracies they find problematic, and which would skew coverage even more than it’s already skewed — if that’s possible. Imagine Candy Crowley, who moderated the second presidential debate in 2012, using incorrect information to defend President Barack Obama from Gov. Mitt Romney but having no moderator challenging the president’s litany of untruths regarding Obamacare. Republicans “lie,” but Democrats offer imprecise or nuanced assertions that can be transformed into a truth with a couple of Vox explainers.

What must have been most off-putting was Clinton’s performance. For the first time, a small part of me was forced to concede that Clinton might be one of the few politicians in the country awful enough to lose a general election to Trump. She must have felt something went wrong as well because for the first time in 278 days she held a formal press conference, on a tarmac in New York. Not that it mattered. The press didn’t exactly roll her an orange and ask her what her favorite color is, but it wasn’t far off. Most of her time was spent ripping Trump’s ugly assertion that he prefers Russian President Vladimir Putin to President Obama. It was unpatriotic and outside the norms of political discourse, said Clinton, who probably forgot that a couple of months ago she was cheering on Democrats who were accusing Republicans of arming ISIS. With the freedom to ask the probable next president of the United States anything in the world they wanted, the first query from the media was about polls. Why aren’t you winning by a larger margin, Hillary? By the end, Clinton had answered a total of four questions, not one of them challenging or enlightening in any genuine way. Two softballs allowed her to pontificate about foreign policy. One question was about the horserace, and one about the unfair treatment she receives from the media. CLINTON SAID during the press conference: “I have been somewhat heartened by the number of articles recently pointing out the quite disparate treatment of Trump and his campaign compared to ours. I don’t understand the reasons for it.” That’s probably because it’s a complete fantasy propagated by partisans and now internalized by the media as a reality. September 9, 2016

This Week’s Conservative Focus

Media Bias

Is ‘President Hillary’ wishful thinking?

ith just two months left until Election Day, the “conventional wisdom” says that Hillary Clinton will win. The New York Times this week gave Clinton an 83 percent chance of winning. And it’s bipartisan: The writers for conservative magazine National Review wallow in the same glum predictions; there’s scarcely an NR column critical of Hillary Clinton that doesn’t simultaneously contain a statement about the “inevitable” Hillary Clinton presidency, offered with Eeyoresque resignation. I find this baffling and counterintuitive. I also wonder whether there is an element of wishful thinking, media manipulation or even deceit. It wouldn’t be the first time. CONSIDER THE 1994 congressional elections. That fall, I was living and working in London. The British papers — even those with distinctly liberal editorial postures — were predicting that Republicans would likely take control of the House of Representatives for the first time since 1952. The New York Times on the other hand, danced around the subject, wrote puff pieces on Democratic candidates, and pooh-poohed predictions of a “Republican Revolu-

tion.” It was quite clear to me that the and Talking Points Memo warned that New York Times was endeavoring not to the GOP had been “deeply damaged” report the news, but to shape it into an by the government shutdown in 2013, and that voters would punish them at the outcome more to their liking. The New York Times was, of course, polls. In race after race, the mainstream proven wrong. Republicans took the media predicted that the 2014 election House and the Senate. Democrat incum- results would be “too close to call,” or bents were slaughtered. Not a single decided by “a razor-thin margin.” It was a blowRepublican incumout. Not only did bent was defeated. Republicans reFast forward to gain control of 2010. Predictions both houses of made by some (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate Congress but also of the same meGOP candidates dia outlets touting Clinton’s inevitable ascendancy now, won record-setting percentages of state were wrong then. Although a number of legislature elections and gubernatorial pollsters and pundits predicted Repub- races. lican gains in the House, few expected THE 2014 RESULTS were so emthe pickup of 63 seats — the highest number gained by a party since 1938. barrassing that “how-could-we-haveAnd the rejection of President Barack been-so-wrong” was a media meme for Obama’s party spilled over into the state months. Time magazine and the New legislative elections as well, as GOP York Times conveyed the oft-repeated candidates picked up 680 seats across explanations that polls were skewed the country — even more than Demo- toward Democrats, didn’t anticipate crats had in the election immediately Republican voter turnout and disproportionately relied upon landlines, thus following Watergate. 2014 was even more inaccurate. Re- leaving cellphone users out of the pollmember when “everyone knew” that the ing data. Ok. So explain how they got it wrong tea party was dead? The Economist magazine, citing polls by ABC News, CNN again during the Republican primaries

Laura

Hollis

Hillary’s untrustworthy temperament NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd began his pundit-panel segment on Sept. 4 by remarking: “Nobody cares about the damn emails. That’s what Bernie Sanders famously said. I couldn’t believe when I looked at the time stamp, October of 2015. ...We are now at September of 2016. Somebody cares about them.” Apparently the political director at NBC News isn’t in that “somebody” camp. When it comes to Clinton scandals, he has what Donald Trump calls “low energy.”

during these months of the promise of a second Clinton presidency? They released their tax returns. It’s all there, in black and white. They enriched themselves for access. They peddled their influence to the highest bidder. One education magnate even paid former President Bill Clinton more than $17.6 million as “honorary chancellor.” They’ve raked in enough tens of millions of dollars to make a Third World potentate green with envy.

THE LATEST CNN poll showed an honesty number that would really ruin a journalist’s day. When asked whether Clinton or Trump is more trustworthy, 50 percent of voters picked Trump, and only 35 percent chose Clinton. Do the math. Over a quarter of her own voters find her deceitful! You’d never know it watching NBC. After Todd grilled vice president candidate Mike Pence that same day about Trump releasing his tax returns, Todd asked the panel, “Don’t you want to know if your president is going to use his presidency to enrich himself or not?” Trump, yes. Clinton, not so much. What were the Clintons doing during her tenure as secretary of state, and

Bozell

Brent

AND YET, a week before that, when he was interviewing former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, Todd didn’t talk about the Clintons enriching themselves. He asked Plouffe, “Why wasn’t there thought of former president Bill Clinton stepping down from the (Clinton) Foundation eight years ago?” That’s easy — because no one in the media would ever make such a demand of who NBC has presented as America’s “royal family.” NBC News was also a player in the enrich-the-Clintons sweep-

stakes, hiring their daughter, Chelsea Clinton, for $600,000 per year to be what we could call an “honorary journalist” on prime-time TV. (Quick. Tell us what she did to deserve that salary.) In the same vein, Hillary Clinton’s media defenders are cheering that she’s holding little gaggles on her press plane, as if that puts all her problems to rest. Clinton has made it her top talking point that Trump doesn’t have the temperament to be president. But her very long and definitive record of lying and obfuscating and hammering cellphones to delete her scandals demands that the media question her temperament. But they won’t. She expects to be honored and obeyed like a tyrant, not questioned like the leader of a democracy. And they will comply. BUT THEN, the media’s general lack of interest in Clinton scandals also shows that most journalists have a “temperament” problem. They present themselves to the public as ornery, nonpartisan watchdogs, but in reality they’re the aggressively obsequious partisans that swoon over Clinton when she buys a burrito. Is it any wonder that trust in the media is so low? September 7, 2016

this past year? Remember when Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight said that Donald Trump didn’t have a chance? (To his credit, Silver published a mea culpa in which he admitted that he “was subject to a lot of the same biases as the pundits” he usually criticized.) What about when the Huffington Post refused to publish anything about Trump as news? “Instead,” they wrote condescendingly, “we will cover his campaign as part of our Entertainment section. Our reason is simple: Trump’s campaign is a sideshow. We won’t take the bait.” They must have a heck of an entertainment section at this point. Trump broke records for Republican voter turnout in the primaries, and for total primary wins. Clinton received nearly a million fewer primary votes in 2016 than she did when she ran in 2008. A good deal of Trump’s support is due to Republican voter dissatisfaction with GOP leadership, the Republicans in Congress who have done virtually nothing despite the mandate they were given two years ago, and — most importantly in a presidential election — widespread dissatisfaction with President Obama’s policies. (A Rasmussen poll this week shows 78 percent of those polled believe the country is going in the “wrong direction.”) This smacks of 2010 and 2014. Clinton’s scandals and the questions about her health are too numerous to list here. Voters don’t trust her. Liberals and progressive voters who backed Bernie Sanders either have tepid support for her or have switched their support to Jill Stein. Yes, I get it. Some people will vote for Clinton because they don’t like Trump. (Apparently, this includes a lot of Catholics and disaffected GOP #NeverTrumps. Good luck with that, guys.) But which voters are more motivated? Do Trump’s supporters love him more than Clinton voters hate him — or love her? Trump visited Mexico and distributed relief supplies in Louisiana, while Obama golfed and Clinton was — resting? If the rallies are any indication, Clinton is in much more trouble than her devotees in the press want us to believe. In August alone, Donald Trump held over 30 rallies where nearly 200,000 attended. Clinton held far fewer, and did not get 10,000 attendees. He’s filling stadiums; she can’t fill a bookstore. How does any of this translate to a Clinton landslide? I’M NOT issuing predictions — yet. But you’ll have to forgive me if I’m not persuaded that Hillary Clinton has it all wrapped up. September 7, 2016

Conservative Chronicle

FBI: September 8, 2016

Hillary Rodham Clinton and the FBI

By examining the contents of the n Sept. 2, the FBI released a lengthy explanation of its in- email to see whether it contained state vestigation of Hillary Clinton secrets, which it clearly did not, Clinand a summary of the evidence amassed ton demonstrated an awareness of the against her. It also released a summary of law — namely, that it is the contents of a document or email that cause it to be Clinton’s July FBI interrogation. The interrogation was in some re- protected by federal secrecy statutes, not nomination put on it by spects standard and in others very trou- the dethe sender. bling. It was standard in that she was This added to the confronted with case against her beemails she had sent cause she later told or received and the FBI that she was asked whether (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate had never paid atshe recalled them, tention to whether and her judgment about them was challenged. The FBI was a document contained state secrets or looking for gross negligence in her be- not. In the strange world of espionage prosecution, this denial of intent is an adhavior about securing state secrets. mission of guilt, as it is profoundly the THE FAILURE to secure state se- job of the secretary of state to recognize crets that have been entrusted to one for state secrets and to keep them in their sesafekeeping is known as espionage, and cure government-protected venues, and espionage is the rare federal crime that the grossly negligent failure to do so is does not require prosecutors to prove the criminal. The FBI notes of the interrogation defendant’s intent. They need only prove recount that Clinton professed serious the defendant’s gross negligence. At one point during the interrogation, memory lapses 39 times. She also proFBI agents attempted to trick her, as the fessed ignorance over what “C” means law permits them to do. Before the inter- in the margin of a government document. rogation began, agents took the hard copy “C” in the margin means “confidential,” of an innocuous email Clinton had sent which is one of the three levels of federal to an aide and marked it “secret.” Then, state secrets. The other two levels are at her interrogation, they asked Clinton “secret” and “top secret.” Under federal whether she recognized the email and its law, Clinton was required to keep in secontents. She said she did not recognize cure government venues all documents it, but she questioned the “secret” denom- in those three categories. The FBI found ination and pointed out to the agents that that she had failed to do so hundreds of nothing remotely secret was in the email. times.

Andrew

Napolitano

By denying that she had paid attention to notes in margins designating the presence of secrets, by denying that she recognized a secret when she saw one and by denying that the location of planned drone strikes is secret (an obvious secret with which FBI agents confronted her), she succeeded in avoiding incriminating herself. But by saving herself from indictment, she may have doomed her campaign for president. In this dangerous world, how can a person seeking the presidency be so dumb or ignorant or indifferent or reckless or deceptive about what is a secret and what is not? THE RECORDS released last week also reveal that the FBI must have been restrained from the outset from conducting an aggressive investigation. It did not present any evidence to a grand jury. It did not ask a grand jury for any subpoenas, and hence it didn’t serve any. It did not ask a judge for any search warrants, and hence it didn’t serve any. The data and hardware it gathered in the case

were given to it in response to simple requests it made. I counted five times in the report where the FBI lamented that it did not have what it needed. This is the FBI’s own fault. This tepid FBI behavior is novel in modern federal law enforcement. It is inimical to public safety and the rule of law. It is close to misconduct in office by high-ranking FBI officials. Someone restrained the FBI. The FBI did not ask Clinton aggressive follow-up questions. Her interrogators just blithely accepted her answers. They failed to present her with documents she had signed that would have contradicted what she was telling them — particularly, an oath she signed on her first day in office promising to recognize state secrets when she came upon them and to keep them in secure venues. And agents violated Department of Justice policy by not recording her interrogation when her lawyers told them she would not answer questions if her answers were recorded. Now the FBI has interjected itself into the presidential campaign by releasing these documents. Notwithstanding the mountain of evidence pointing to Clinton’s guilt, it is highly improper and grossly unfair to release evidence gathered against a person who will not be prosecuted. Moreover, it is tendentious to release only part of the evidence — only what agents want the public to see — rather than the complete file. Yet all this evidence is secret under DOJ regulations. Had any of it been intended for or presented to a grand jury, the release of it would have been criminal. What happened here? The FBI seriously dropped the ball, and Clinton was more concerned about being indicted than she was about losing the race for the presidency. IT IS APPARENT that some in FBI management blindly followed what they were told to do — exonerate Hillary Clinton. There is no other explanation for the FBI’s failure from the outset to use ordinary law enforcement tools available to it. Yet some in the FBI are not professionally satisfied by this outcome. They know that a strong case for prosecution and for guilt is being ignored for political reasons. What else do they know?

September 21, 2016 DEAR MARK: September 9, 2016

Hillary’s health, taking a knee, politics and ice cream DEAR MARK: Lately Hillary’s cough and other maladies have been in the news and some are wondering if health wise she’s fit for the office of president. I have to admit that I don’t think she looks healthy and lately she hasn’t been campaigning aggressively. Should her health be an issue? — Trapper John Dear Trapper: Are we talking about her physical health or mental health? Quite honestly Hillary’s physical health should be a concern but not a political target. If Donald Trump or his surrogates push too hard on this issue the left will make it appear as another wild conspiracy theory that paints Trump and his supporters as nut cases. In addition Team Hillary will falsely say this proves that Trump is using Hillary’s poor health rumors to distract from his own shortcomings and that he doesn’t have anything else to campaign on. I am more concerned about Hillary’s mental state and her ability to lie with impunity without the slightest regard for getting caught. Of course this brings into question the mental state of the Hillary sycophants in the media who refuse to press her on this issue. By the way I do believe Hillary is in poor health but she’s going to do everything she possibly can to drag herself across the presidential finish line including lying like a cheap rug at every instance. DEAR MARK: Colin Kaepernick not standing for the National Anthem is really getting on my nerves. Some people are comparing him to Rosa Parks and Muhammad Ali for

taking a knee during the Star Spangled Banner. I was born in the fifties and Kaepernick is nothing but a pampered millionaire athlete who is ignorant to the persecution Parks and Ali endured in their lifetimes. I know he has a right but should he use it? — Georgia Peach Dear Georgia: Of course Kaepernick should use his right to take a knee so then I can use my right to call him an idiot.,Kaepernick’s stand is ridiculous in that it’s based on the false narrative of rampant

Mark

racist police brutality spewed by the Black Lives Matter mob. I support people fearlessly taking heroic stands against legitimate injustices while facing potential harmful consequences. However the worst things Kaepernick has faced are negative tweets and opinion columns. Not exactly a lynching or jail time. DEAR MARK: My girlfriend and I are having a somewhat heated discussion involving Hillary and the Clinton Foundation “pay for play” accusations. She says Hillary is no different than other politicians because they all accept money and that the donors expect something in return. She sites all of the high dollar political fundraisers as examples of the quid pro quo in politics. I really like her so how can I combat her position without being too offensive? — Looking for Happily Ever

After Dear Happily: Your girlfriend’s argument sounds good superficially which is why liberal pundits are using the same talking points of “everybody does it.” Here’s how I would approach your situation. For openers make sure the venue for your discussion is an ice cream parlor. Then acknowledge that you agree that money has polluted politics and it appears that all politicians do “it.” (And not the same “it” that Anthony Weiner does just to add a little levity to the conversation.) Next ask her if she prefers a system that is transparent and regulates how a candidate raises campaign contributions or one that does not. Of course she will answer she prefers a system that is transparent. This is your opportunity to discuss how the American political system is regulated by the Federal Election Commission while contributions to the Clinton Foundation are regulated by no one. Well except for maybe the IRS and we know in whose pocket the agency resides. Bring up the fact that at these rubber chicken fundraisers $2,500 will get you a photo of you and your favorite candidate for your mantle and not much else. Whereas the $156 million that 85 donors contributed to the Clinton Foundation got them appointments with then Secretary of State Mrs. Bill Clinton. If this logic fails just act like your girlfriend won the argument and get her another scoop of Rocky Road.

E-mail your questions to marklevy92@ aol.com. Follow Mark on Twitter @MarkPLevy

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

TRIVIA ANSWERS T rivia B I T S

ANSWERS 1) The coronaviruses that cause SARS and MERS probably come from bats. 2) Mr. Whipple famously requested “please don’t squeeze the Charmin.” 3) Mattamuskeet, Walla Walla and Vidalia are types of sweet onion. 4) Friday Night Lights is about the football program at Permian High School in Odessa, Texas. 5) Andrew Jackson was pictured on the 2-cent postage stamp known as the Black Jack. 6) The source of the Ganges River is in the Himalayas.

Need to make a correction on your mailing label? Contact us at 800-888-3039 or conserve@iowaconnect.com

Conservative Chronicle

IRS: September 11, 2016

The IRS commissioner merits impeachment

outrage, yet fails to enforce its constitu- myth.” This is particularly true now that Congress, inept at producing 12 approtional authority.” The Koskinen controversy, Turley priations bills, forfeits its leverage by said, “falls at the very crossroads of ex- funding the government indiscriminatepanding executive power, diminishing ly with omnibus bills and continuing congressional authority, and the rise of resolutions. So, Congress is left with the Fourth Branch,” which consists of impeachment as the only “functional “federal agencies that exercise increas- deterrence for executive overreach.” T h e Constitution authorizes ingly unilateral and independent powpeachment for “high ers.” As Turley noted (and as Hillary i m crimes and misdeClinton can ruemeanors.” Madifully attest), “prison favored this vate litigants like language and inJudicial Watch” terpreted it to inare nowadays (c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group clude “maladminmore successful than Congress in prying information istration,” which surely encompasses from the executive branch. And (as the perjury and obstruction of Congress. Lerner case illustrates) “the administra- The idea that an IRS commissioner is tion has effectively foreclosed avenues not a high enough official for impeachlike the referral of criminal contempt ment ignores, Turley says, “the realities and other sanctions that should be im- of the modern regulatory state.” Composed for providing misleading state- missioners have authority over 90,000 employees collecting $2.5 trillion in ments to Congress.” revenues annually. Andrew C. McCarthy, former federal AS A MEANS of controlling the executive, the power of the purse “has prosecutor and Justice Department ofHERE ARE A few pertinent facts. become something of a constitutional ficial, reminded the Judiciary CommitAt the IRS, Exempt Organizations Director Lois Lerner participated in delaySEXUAL ASSAULT LAWS: September 8, 2016 ing for up to five years — effectively denying — tax-exempt status for, and hence suppressing political advocacy by, conservative groups. She retired after refusing to testify to congressional hen horrific and ugly offender, which he did Tuesday after he committees, invoking the Fifth Amendcrimes make headlines, returned to Ohio. While critics say Perment’s protection against self-incrimipoliticians like to seize sky went easy on Turner because he was nation. Koskinen, who became commission- the opportunity — to make their own a white Stanford student, Turner in fact er after Lerner left, failed to disclose the headlines. So when Superior Court will be serving a life sentence as a regdisappearance of emails germane to a Judge Aaron Persky sentenced former istered sex offender. He not only won’t congressional investigation of IRS mis- Stanford student Brock Turner, now 21, be able to work in a public school, but behavior. Under his leadership, the IRS to six months in jail — he served only also will not be able to get a commerfailed to comply with a preservation three months — for sexually assault- cial driver’s license or even order pertaining to an investigation. He ing a woman who was too inebriated to sell insurdid not testify accurately or keep prom- consent to sex in 2015, California lawises made to Congress. Subpoenaed makers did not hesitate. The same Calidocuments, including 422 tapes poten- fornia legislature that just passed the tially containing 24,000 Lerner emails, Restorative Justice Act, which touted (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate were destroyed. He falsely testified that alternatives to incarceration, shamethe Government Accountability Of- lessly passed two tough-on-crime laws. ance. When convicted killers get out fice’s report on IRS practices found “no Both are now on the governor’s desk. of prison, they face fewer restrictions examples of anyone who was impropAS GOV. Jerry Brown considers than many convicted sex offenders like erly selected for an audit.” In June testimony to the House Ju- whether to sign the bills, he should look Turner. diciary Committee, Jonathan Turley of to Minnesota. In 1989, a masked strang“FEW NEW public policies have the George Washington University Law er with a gun accosted three young School noted that the Obama adminis- boys riding their bikes on a fall night. become so widespread so quickly or attration stands accused of “effectively The man ordered two of the boys to run tracted such unanimous support from weaponizing the IRS.” And the Koski- away, then handcuffed Jacob Wetter- across the political spectrum,” Eli Lehnen controversy comes as Congress ling, 11,who was never seen again. This rer of the libertarian-leaning R Street “is facing an unprecedented erosion week, Danny Heinrich, 53, admitted Institute wrote in National Affairs. of its authority vis-a-vis the executive that he sexually assaulted, then killed Lehrer believes states should cull their branch.” The “increasing obstruction Wetterling, as he pleaded guilty to a fed- registries by, for example, eliminating and contempt displayed by federal agen- eral child pornography charge for which most juvenile offenders. Better to focus on predators most likely to re-offend. cies in congressional investigations re- he will serve at least 20 years. Wetterling’s disappearance spawned Lehrer also argued “blanket residency flects the loss of any credible threat of congressional action. Congress has be- the 1994 national sex offender registry, restrictions” — such as California’s recome a paper tiger within our tripartite advocated by Jacob’s mother, Patty, and strictions on living near schools or day system — a branch that often expresses signed by President Bill Clinton. The care centers — “simply do not serve any law compels Turner to register as a sex valid public-safety purpose.” epublican congressional leaders ardently want conservative members of the House to not force a vote on impeaching the IRS commissioner. The public does not care about John Koskinen’s many misdeeds. And impeachment will distract attention from issues that interest the public. And because Democrats are not ingrates, the required two-thirds of the Senate will never vote to convict Koskinen, whose behavior continues the pattern of doing what Democrats desire with the most intrusive and potentially punitive government agency. These Republican leaders’ reasons are cumulatively unpersuasive. Resuscitating the impeachment power would contribute to revitalizing Congress’ Article I powers. Impeachments are rare — no appointed official of the executive branch has been impeached in 140 years. But what James Madison called the “indispensable” power to impeach should not be allowed to atrophy, as has Congress’ power to declare war.

George

Will

tee that “the point of the Constitution’s vesting of all executive power in a single official, the president, is precisely to make the president accountable for all executive branch conduct.” And impeachment of a subordinate official, far from being a radical remedy, is much less drastic than impeaching the president or defunding the official’s agency. ONE OF THE articles of impeachment filed by the House against Richard Nixon was that he, “acting personally and through his subordinates “ (emphasis added), had “endeavored” to use the IRS to violate Americans’ rights, causing IRS actions “to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.” If presidents are, as McCarthy says, “derivatively responsible” for misconduct by executive branch subordinates, surely those officials are responsible for their own misconduct and that of underlings. Refusing to impeach Koskinen would continue the passivity by which members of Congress have become, in Turley’s words, “agents of their own obsolescence.”

Big headlines make for really bad laws

Debra J.

Saunders

Patty Wetterling herself has come to question the registries’ scope. In 2013, she told City Pages, “We’ve cast such a broad net that we’re catching a lot of juveniles who did something stupid or different types of offenders who just screwed up. Should they never be given a chance to turn their lives around?” “Hard cases make bad law,” the saying goes. As if to prove that point, the legislature overwhelmingly approved AB2888, which would set a minimum three years in prison for convicted rapists. Yes, a three-year minimum seems reasonable, but I have doubts given how readily campus rape cases turn into political footballs. (Turner tried that game himself when he blamed Stanford’s party culture for his criminal behavior.) AB701 stipulates that all forms of nonconsensual sex be considered rape. Prosecutors had charged Turner with sexual assault because he digitally penetrated the victim before two passersby intervened. I appreciate the rage behind the bill, but I also want men to know that there are harsher penalties if they rape a woman (or a man) with their penises. IT’S GOOD when victims’ advocates try to tweak the law to disincentivize brutal crimes. As it is, Patty Wetterling already took care of Turner. These Sacramento bills can achieve only one goal — headline-grabbing.

September 21, 2016 HILLARY CLINTON: September 14, 2016

Why Obama could never allow Hillary to be indicted

s the facts about Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state become clearer every day, the question every American should ask themselves is whether she got away with a very significant and heinous crime for the following reasons: — She was a Democrat and was widely seen by the Democratic Party as the likely successor to Barack Obama. — She was part of the Democratic Party and Washington establishment, and they seldom turn on their own. — Those who would be responsible for prosecuting her in the U.S. Justice Department were loyal to Bill and Hillary Clinton because Loretta Lynch, the attorney general, got her previous job as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York in 1999 when she was nominated by then-President Clinton. — Lynch moved from that position as U.S. attorney in New York to a partnership with Hogan & Hartson, a giant international law firm whose clients included the Clintons and the Saudi royal family, which donated millions to the Clinton Foundation. — In 2004, Hogan & Hartson in Virginia filed a patent trademark request for Denver-based MX Logic Inc., the computer software firm that developed the email encryption system used to manage Hillary Clinton’s private email server beginning in July 2013. A tech expert has observed that employees of MX Logic could have had access to all

the emails that went through her ac- mark SPAMTRAQ in a letter written on Hogan & Hartson stationary and signed count. — While there is no evidence Lynch by the firm’s Virginia-based attorney played a direct role either in the tax Audrey H. Reed on May 19, 2004. — On July 30, 2009, Internet security work done by the firm for the Clintons or in linking Hillary’s private email software giant McAfee Inc. announced server to MX Logic, the ethics of the it had entered into a definitive agreelegal profession hold all partners jointly ment to acquire MX Logic for $140 liable for the actions of other partners in million in cash. In November 2012, without explanation, Clinton’s a business. private email account — In an April 26, was reconfigured to 2010, statement, use Google’s servHogan & Hartson ers as a backup in announced that case her own perLynch had decided (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate sonal email server to return to her prefailed. Then, in vious Justice Department job after being nominated by July 2013, five months after Clinton rePresident Obama in February 2010 to signed as secretary of state, her private become once again the U.S. attorney for email server was reconfigured again to use a Denver-based commercial email the Eastern District of New York. — A report published April 8, 2008, provider, MX Logic, which was then by the American Lawyer noted Hogan owned by McAfee. — In June 2013, Clinton hired Platte & Hartson were among Hillary Clinton’s biggest financial supporters in the River networks in Denver to upgrade, legal industry during her first presiden- secure and manage the private email tial campaign. In addition, Hogan & server for both Clintons and their staffs. Hartson was a major donor to the Clin- Marc Perkel, a tech entrepreneur and ton Foundation. Further, Christine Var- former systems administrator at the ney, another partner at the firm, served Electronic Frontier Foundation, went on as chief counsel to the Clinton-Gore the record on March 16, 2015, explaining that employees at MX Logic, now Campaign in 1992. — As first reported by Patrick How- owned by McAfee, “had full access” to ley on Breitbart.com last August, Hogan all of Hillary Clinton’s classified emails & Hartson filed with the Commissioner in an unencrypted form. — Then, of course, there’s that infor Trademarks in Virginia to abandon MX Logic’s application for the trade- nocent little, chance meeting between

Joseph

Farah

Bill Clinton and Lynch at the Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix when both their planes happened to be there at the same time. A few days later, when the heat was at its hottest, FBI Director James Comey announce his agency was closing the investigation of Hillary’s breaches of national security because there was “no intent” on her part to commit a high crime. WITH ALL OF this background, most of it virtually unreported by the inthe-tank-for-Hillary Big Media, I defy any American who cares about equal justice under the law to read the following federal law — 18 U.S. Code 2071: (a) Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both. (b) Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. As used in this subsection, the term “office” does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States. Do you know any prominent person clearly and self-evidently guilty of this provision? Of course you do. Are you going to vote for that person for president when she should be in prison — along with many members of the current administration who helped cover up her crime? THAT’S THE question you need to ask yourself, along with these: — Do you believe in equal justice under the law? — Should the gilded elite get away with crimes for which other ordinary citizens, including some members of the military, are currently serving prison terms — even though they had “no intent” either? — Do you really believe Hillary Clinton has changed her ways as a result of this experience — even while she continues to lie that she did nothing wrong? — How do you think she’ll handle classified and top-secret information as president?

Conservative Chronicle

OBAMACARE: September 6, 2016

Kill the monster ... and replace Obamacare

Is it any wonder that both insurers on’t just go on fixing up a health-insurance scheme and their customers are waking up? that is beyond fixing. End United Health Group, Humana, Aetit. For the Affordable Care act, aka na ... they’ve backed away from this Obamacare, is proving neither afford- rigged market, and others are getting Still others are just able nor very caring. It begins to dawn ready to. out of the busion both insurers and their policyhold- g e t t i n g ness altogether. ers that they were To quote Julie sold a bill of Mix McPeak, the goods. And yet insurance comthe Hon. Barack (c) 2016, Tribune Media Services missioner of our Obama seems deneighboring state termined to save his signature program. No matter how of Tennessee, “It’s terribly concernembarrassing it’s proving. It’s so much ing.” It should be. Because in most of Tennessee, there’s likely to be just easier to pretend it’s working. one insurer on the federally mandatBUT THAT’S not what the latest ed health exchanges come next year. reports show. And the reports to come Similar crises are cropping up — or may be even worse. Cynthia Cox of the soon should be — in states like Ala., Kaiser Family Foundation, who stud- Alaska, Ariz., Fla., Mo., N.C., Miss. ies such things, told the Washington and Okla. Consider the case of Joseph Devoy, Post that in one out of every four counties in the country next year, insurers a 31-year-old Arizona construction United Health is leaving his state, he’s may offer their policyholders only worker. As the Wall Street Journal not sure what he’ll have to do next one government-backed health plan. reported, he had to switch to United year, confronted with what amounts to Insurers keep dropping out because Health this year after his previous pro- a mandatory government monopoly. “I it just doesn’t pay to handle this kind vider stopped selling plans. Now that don’t know what to do now,” he said. of losing proposition. When the sick and desperate sign up for Obamacare, DIGITAL PRIVACY: September 8, 2016 which is understandable enough, that doesn’t leave enough healthy folks in the risk pool to take up the slack. What, this president worry? He’s still banging the drum for his signature ne of the most powerful ar- rebuked the Justice Department after a failure. Just patch it up here and there, guments for limiting the size three-year legal battle with Microsoft, he advises in an article for the Journal and scope of government is which hosted data for an Irish citizen of the American Medical Association. “Congress should revisit a public plan the inability of politicians and regula- being pursued by U.S. authorities. The to compete alongside private insurers tors to keep up with the pace of techno- data was being kept in a server located in areas of the country where competi- logical change. Case in point: Congress in Ireland, yet the U.S. government tion is limited,” he concludes. “Add- has not updated the rules regulating insisted it had jurisdiction to demand ing a public plan in such areas would when and how law enforcement may access just because the company that strengthen the marketplace approach, access stored online data since the time held it is a subsidiary of Microsoft, an giving consumers more affordable op- period depicted in Netflix’s 1980s nos- American corporation. tions while also creating savings for talgia-heavy hit, “Stranger Things.” The Electronic Communications the federal government.” Privacy Act was passed in 1986, when But theory is one thing, practice quite another. And in practice Obam- data storage was considerably more acare has never measured up to its expensive and primitive. At the time, (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate inflated promise. In essence, the presi- it was not common for data to be kept dent who routinely badmouths his op- online for very long. As such, the The government sought to use a warposition now seems to be counting on ECPA considers emails held online by a third party for more than 180 days to rant that was issued pursuant to a statit to bail him out. be abandoned and thus open to access ute under the ECPA, which provides no AND HE’S BEING supported by by law enforcement without a normal authority for access to data held overall the usual cast of characters in this warrant. Sure puts that cluttered inbox seas. The government officials most likely made this overreach rather than tragicomedy. “There’s no bottleneck,” in a new light, doesn’t it? go through the mutual legal assistance Jonathan Gruber, the accidental whistreaty, or MLAT, process — which NOW THAT free online email hosts tleblower who keeps letting the cat would have enabled them to work are commonplace and terabytes of out of one bag after another, told the with the appropriate overseas authorcloud storage are available at little cost, Post. “This is just the natural growth ity — because of the fact that MLAT the ECPA is a troubling anachronism. pains of a new market. What happened procedures are also cumbersome and Today’s internet users expect their data is they set up this new market where insurers didn’t have experience; insur- to be protected from prying govern- outdated. ers made an estimate as to what people ment eyes for as long as they choose to THERE IS a bill making its way would cost, and their estimate turned store it. There are additional reasons driving through Congress that attempts to adout to be too low.” And if you believe all that, we’ve got a health-insurance the need for data access reform. One dress these issues. It’s the International plan for you to buy — at government was clearly demonstrated in July, when Communications Privacy Act. The bithe 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals partisan bill — introduced by Sens. order.

Paul

Greenberg

WHAT THE American public in general needs to do is scrap this whole misconceived dream called Obamacare and start all over again.

Outdated digital privacy laws

Veronique

de Rugy

Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Chris Coons, D-Del., and Dean Heller, R-Nev. — presents significant changes meant to reduce the temptation for law enforcement to overstep its bounds as it did against Microsoft by making MLATs viable options through greater transparency and accountability. More importantly, if implemented, it would codify into law a simple and clear standard: A warrant should always be required to access private information from a third party. The reforms in the ICPA would move us away from the current ‘80s drama. It also seems that the package could even move through Congress during a contentious election season because it safeguards consumer data while also acknowledging that there must be legitimate and accessible law enforcement tools to pursue digital evidence across borders. Businesses that operate or store data in multiple jurisdictions would also benefit from clearer rules regarding their users’ expectations of privacy and avoid unnecessary and costly legal battles. NO ONE really disputes that it’s time to update the ECPA, and the ICPA has support from key leadership figures from both parties. That said, if legislators were known for their swift action, the law would never have been allowed to become so outdated in the first place.

September 21, 2016 POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: September 14, 2016

PC: Mulan vs. the diversity-mongers

et’s get down to business. The casting kerfuffle over Disney’s live-action remake of the 1998 animated hit “Mulan” brings honor to none. It’s a politically correct tempest in a Chinese teapot. More than 90,000 angry activists have now signed a petition “to tell Disney that we demand to see them cast an Asian Mulan.” The lead instigator, Michigan children’s librarian Natalie Molnar, vented against the practice of “whitewashing” — that is, employing “white Caucasian actors and actresses in roles originally meant to be characters of color.” EXTREME RACIAL and ethnic bean-counting is necessary, even in the remake of a cartoon, the petitioners argue, because “children benefit from finding themselves represented in fiction.” Skin color-based casting entitlements and quotas: “For the children.” Of course. Once again, privileged progressives demonstrate how arbitrary, capricious

Movie-making is a never-ending exand ridiculous militant identity politics can be. Last year, Asian-American left- ercise in radical multiculturalism and ists attacked director Cameron Crowe identity apartheid. for casting Emma Stone as a mixedTHE DIVERSITY cops maintain race character in the romantic comedy Aloha. It didn’t matter whether Stone that only the right kind of mixed-race pulled off the role. The protesters were stars should play mixed-race characters. too busy administering racial and ethnic Only the right kind of black actresses win black roles. And litmus tests for employment in the en- s h o u l d only Asians should tertainment indusbe cast in Mulan to try. maintain ethnic reThis year, alism. grievance-monBut there’s no gers moaned (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate rhyme, reason or about the casting logic in their deof mixed-race actress Zoe Saldana as black jazz legend mands for authenticity. Take Mulan. The Nina Simone and white actress Scarlett original movie was riddled with historiJohansson as a Japanese Manga cartoon cal inaccuracies. Based on the legend of teenage warrior Hua Mulan popularized figure. In social justice land, movie-making in an ancient Chinese ballad, the heroisn’t about casting the most talented ine disguises herself as a man to take the actors, regardless of race or ethnicity. place of her elderly father in battle — “to Movie-making isn’t about entertaining defeat the Huns,” as the song from the movie goes. customers or making money. Nope.

Michelle

Malkin

MEDIA BIAS: September 14, 2016

CNN’s deplorable smear of Pence

he CNN screen graphic at 6 p.m. on Sept. 12 was blunt: “PENCE REFUSED TO CALL DAVID DUKE ‘DEPLORABLE.’” Donald Trump running mate Mike Pence had granted Wolf Blitzer a 30-minute interview, and what he received in return was a reckless leftist smear. Let’s be clear about this interview. Blitzer offered 39 hostile questions or interjections about Trump’s tax returns, medical records and charities, and made offensive remarks before asking a single question about policy. In the middle of this contentious exchange, Blitzer arrived at Hillary Clinton’s recent gaffe of calling Trump backers a “basket of deplorables.” Blitzer obnoxiously underlined that some Trump backers were truly deplorable: “David Duke, for example, (and) some other white nationalists, (would) fit into that category of deplorables. Right?” PENCE PROTESTED: “I’m not really sure why the media keeps dropping David Duke’s name. Donald Trump has denounced David Duke repeatedly. We don’t want his support, and we don’t want the support of people who think like him.” Blitzer pushed back: “So you call him a deplorable. You would call him deplorable.” Pence replied, “I’m not in the name-calling business, Wolf.” CNN ignored that denouncement of Duke and his backers. It was spiked in favor of a cheap National Enquirer-style “Pence Won’t Deplore Duke” headline. It’s the kind of “gotcha” journalism

Do you imagine, in your wildest imagination, Blitzer posing any of these questions to Clinton running mate Tim Kaine? — “The Communist Party USA endorsed you. Is it deplorable?” — “You’ve been endorsed by Planned Parenthood, an organization that harvests baby parts for sale. Is it deplorable?” — “You are supported by Seddique Mateen, the anti-American father of Omar Mateen, who murdered 49 gay people in an Orlando, Florida, nightclub. Isn’t he deplorable?”

saying, “The fact that...a contemptable individual like that supports my running mate is no more relevant than the fact that the father of a man who killed 49 people in Orlando, Florida, was cheering Hillary Clinton at one of her rallies.” CNN could grill Kaine about a sympathetic September 2 story in the New York Times about the Democratic vice presidential nominee seeking out communist priests as his mentors in El Salvador and Nicaragua. He “walked miles” to meet Rev. James Carney, who even the Times reported took “an extreme view of liberation theology that supported the taking up of arms against military oppressors.” Kaine’s mentor, Rev. Jack Warner, believed “the gospel is an extremely communist document.” Were these priests “deplorables?” Did Kaine’s hunger for their Marxist mumbo-jumbo make him deplorable? Here’s another question CNN will never ask: “Hillary Clinton’s husband has been exposed as a serial philanderer. He was impeached. He committed perjury, and was disbarred. There is also the accusation by Juanita Broaddrick that he raped her. Is Bill Clinton deplorable?”

IN AN INTERVIEW on Aug. 28, Blitzer’s colleague, Jake Tapper, asked Pence about Duke’s support for the umpteenth time. Tapper at least offered a “that must really bother you” expression. For his part, Pence blasted it over the fence, explicitly making a comparison between Duke and Seddique Mateen,

INSTEAD, BLITZER & Co. unloads smears designed to help Hillary Clinton because they know she is in trouble. And CNN is all too willing to do Clinton’s dirty work. Media credibility continues to erode in the polls because there is nothing the press won’t undertake to slander conservatives.

that has the public disgusted with the press. Whatever Pence answered would have been deemed wrong and exploited by the media. Had he uncorked the easy answer and called Duke deplorable, Blitzer and everyone else would have had their headlines read, “Pence Admits Hillary Was Right.” Pence chose not to give them that luxury, so he gets “Pence Won’t Deplore Duke.”

Brent

But the Huns were thousands of miles away sacking Rome and Western Europe. The “Huns” who attacked the legendary Mulan in 6th-century China were mostly likely related to the central Asian Xiongnu tribe in what became Mongolia, which warred with the Han dynasty in the 3rd century. Movie historian Alex von Tunzelmann notes “that was at least a couple [of] hundred of years before Mulan’s time, and in any case the link between the Xiongnu and the Huns is in dispute.” Unfortunately for social justice warriors, “Let’s get down to business/to defeat the nomadic tribe that was possibly the Xiongnu in the region of Mongolia before it was known as Mongolia” just doesn’t have the same ring as the Disney tune that’s still stuck in my head after 18 years. Weirdly, the Asian-American liberal entertainment lobby didn’t have a problem with Filipina musical theater star/ actress Lea Salonga singing Chinese Mulan’s parts in the original movie. Which raises my still-unanswered question in these well-worn casting wars: Why is it that the self-appointed Definers of racial and ethnic Authenticity get to pick and choose which historical inaccuracies and inconsistencies to protest or ignore? Strangely, some of the minority actors and actresses in the “People of Color” tribe that the Demand-y Demanders want to cast in Mulan are as authentically Asian as Mulan’s Eddie Murphyvoiced annoying dragon sidekick, Mu Shu. Oliver S. Wang, an L.A.-based culture writer, tweeted that “The Rock” (Canadian-American actor Dwayne Johnson of Samoan and Black Nova Scotian heritage) should play the “Mongol villain.” How do you say “Huh???” in Chinese? Heidi Yeung, editor for a South China Morning Post-owned website, is pushing for Korean-American Daniel Dae Kim to play the villainous role of Shan Yu — in part because he has “almost identical cheekbones to the animated character.” Diversity! Additionally, she wants JapaneseAmerican George Takei to play the Chinese Emperor and another Korean American, Margaret Cho, to play the Chinese matchmaker. So because the diversity-mongers’ choices look more vaguely Asian-ish, never mind the vast differences between their nationalities and heritages, they trump other non-Asian actors and actresses who must all step aside and bow down to the gods of ethnic fauxthenticity. IF “WHITEWASH” is the problem, why is fake yellow wash the solution?

Conservative Chronicle

BLACKS: September 13, 2016

Racial issues and what really helps blacks

rdinarily, it is not a good idea to base how you vote on just one issue. But if black lives really matter, as they should matter like all other lives, then it is hard to see any racial issue that matters as much as education. The government could double the amount of money it spends on food stamps or triple the amount it spends on housing subsidies, and it will mean very little if the next generation of young blacks goes out into the world as adults without a decent education.

MANY THINGS that are supposed to help blacks actually have a track record of making things worse. Minimum wage laws have had a devastating effect in making black teenage unemployment several times higher than it once was. In my own life, I was very fortunate when I left home in 1948, at age 17 — a high school dropout with no skills or experience. At that time, the unemployment rate of black 16- and 17-year-old males was 9.4 percent. For white males the same ages, it was 10.2 percent. Why were these unemployment rates so much lower than we have become used to seeing in later times — and with very little difference between blacks and whites? What was different about those times was that the minimum wage, established in 1938, had been rendered meaningless by a decade of high inflation. It was the same as if there were no minimum wage. In later years, as the minimum wage was repeatedly raised to keep up with inflation, black teenage unemployment from 1971 through 1994 was never less than three times what it was in 1948, and ranged as high as more than five times the 1948 level. It also became far higher than the unemployment rate of whites the same age. The relations between the police and the black community are another issue that has gotten a lot of attention, and produced counterproductive results. After all the rhetoric and all the efforts towards more tightly restraining the police, the net result has been that murder rates have soared in cities where that policy has been followed — and most of the people killed have been black. None of the most popular political panaceas for helping black communities has a track record of making things better, and some have made things much worse. The one bright spot in black ghettos around the country are the schools that parents are free to choose for their own children. Some are Catholic schools, some are secular private schools and some are charter schools financed by

Despite all the dire social problems in many black ghettos across the country — problems which are used to excuse widespread academic failures NOT ALL OF these kinds of in ghetto schools — somehow ghetto run by KIPP and Sucschools are successes. But where there s c h o o l s Academy turn out are academic successes in black ghet- c e s s students whose tos, they come academic perfordisproportionatemances match or ly from schools exceed the peroutside the iron formances in grip of the edu(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate suburban schools cation establishwhose kids come from high-income ment and the teachers’ unions. Some of these academic successes families. What is even more astonishing is have been spectacular — especially among students in ghetto schools op- that charter schools are being opposed, erated by the KIPP (Knowledge IS not only by teachers’ unions who think Power Program) chain of schools and that schools exist to provide guaranteed jobs for their members, but also by the Success Academy schools. public school systems but operating without the suffocating rules that apply to other public schools.

Thomas

Sowell

politicians, including black politicians who loudly proclaim that “black lives matter.” Apparently these black children’s futures do not matter enough for black politicians — including the President of the United States — to stand up to the teachers’ unions. The teachers’ unions produce big bucks in campaign contributions and big voter turnout on election day. ANY POLITICIAN, of any race or party, who fights against charter schools that give many black youngsters their one shot at a decent life does not deserve the vote of anybody who really believes that black lives matter.

ACADEMIA: September 14, 2016

Academic giants and dwarfs

he University of Chicago’s president, Dr. Robert J. Zimmer, wrote a Wall Street Journal article, titled “Free Speech Is the Basis of a True Education.” In it, he wrote: “Free speech is at risk at the very institution where it should be assured: the university. Invited speakers are disinvited because a segment of a university community deems them offensive, while other orators are shouted down for similar reasons. Demands are made to eliminate readings that might make some students uncomfortable. Individuals are forced to apologize for expressing views that conflict with prevailing perceptions. In many cases, these efforts have been supported by university administrators.”

SHARING THE president’s vision, the University of Chicago’s dean of students, John Ellison, sent a letter to freshmen students that read, in part: “Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.” Those are hardly the sentiments of dishonest and spineless administrators at other colleges. At DePaul University, a visit by conservative journalist Milo Yiannopoulos was disrupted by student activists. School security refused to restore order and later banned Yiannopoulos from returning. Conservative Ben Shapiro was invited by Young America’s Foundation to California State University, Los Angeles to deliver a speech

titled “When Diversity Becomes a Problem.” University President William Covino wrote an email that read, “After careful consideration, I have decided that it will be best for our campus community if we reschedule Ben Shapiro’s appearance for a later date, so that we can arrange for him to appear as part of a group of speakers with differing viewpoints on diversity. Such an event will better represent our university’s dedication to the free exchange of ideas.” But note that the university invited leftists such as Cornel West, Angela Davis and Tim Wise without feeling a need for differing viewpoints.

Walter

SOCIOLOGIST Barry Glassner is the president of Lewis & Clark College. Morton Schapiro is the president of and a professor of economics at Northwestern University. Schapiro wrote in the Washington Post: “I’m an economist, not a sociologist or psychologist, but those experts tell me that students don’t fully embrace uncomfortable learning unless they are themselves comfortable. Safe spaces provide that comfort.” Both presidents, in a Los Angeles Times oped, said campus protests are a “sign of progress” toward diversity and inclusion and are “noble” methods of change, as opposed to the opining of “pundits and politicians ... from gated communities and segregated offices.” They added, “Students are coming of age in a time of political, social and economic turbulence unseen in a generation.”

Many college administrators have generalized contempt for American values. Here’s just a bit of the evidence. A reporter from Project Veritas covertly recorded an administrator at Vassar College following through on her request to shred the Constitution. Carol Lasser, professor of history and director of gender, sexuality and feminist studies at Oberlin College, said that “the Constitution is an oppressive document” because it intentionally makes change a slow process. Wendy Kozol, chair of comparative American studies at Oberlin, agreed, saying “the Constitution in everyday life causes people pain” and adding that she rarely discusses the Constitution in class and that when she does, she tends to focus on specific amendments. The University of Michigan and Case Western Reserve University have announced safe spaces to protect students from unwelcome opinions. University of California, Santa Barbara students want trigger warnings for all classes and the right to be excused from any lessons that might “trigger” them. THE COURAGE shown by University of Chicago administrators is relatively rare. The academic tyranny seen on many college campuses reflects a dereliction of duty by those who are charged with the ultimate control — the boards of trustees. Trustees have the power to fire a president and his key administrators for yielding to campus tyrants. College administrators buy into today’s nonsense because they lack backbone and are cowards. Worse yet, they may see merit in safe spaces, trigger warnings and student disruption of speakers with uncomfortable ideas.

September 21, 2016 CLIMATE CHANGE: September 7, 2016

Obama and Communist China agree

ommunist Party General Sec- carbon emissions to reach a plateau or retary Xi Jinping, United Na- decline ‘around 2030,’ but without any tions Secretary General Ban specific target for reductions like those Ki-moon and President Barack Obama Mr. Obama pledged for the United rendezvoused Saturday, Sept. 3, in the States (between 26 and 28 percent of 2005 levels by 2025). That means China People’s Republic of China. of room to continue Thus unfolded a moment of unusual has plenty fossil fuels to power clarity in the struggle between those burning its economy.” who believe in Obama, nonetheindividual liberty less, described his and those who beunilateral approval lieve government of the Paris Agreeshould plan and (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate ment as a personal control our lives. The purpose of the meeting? The triumph — that could save the Earth. “One of the reasons I ran for this ofCommunist leader and the president handed over to the secretary general fice was to make sure that America does documents declaring their nations were its part to protect this planet for future officially joining the Paris Agreement on generations,” Obama said, according to the White House transcript of his reclimate change. marks. “Over the past seven and a half years, THE AGREEMENT itself describes such documents as “instruments of rati- we’ve transformed the United States fication, acceptance, approval or acces- into a global leader in the fight against climate change,” he said. sion.” “And someday we may see this as the Obama did not ask the Senate to ratify this agreement by the two-thirds vote moment that we finally decided to save our planet,” he said. our Constitution requires of treaties. So, what does the People’s Republic So to what did Obama — alone — do with people? commit this nation? “The government restricted the rights The agreement says one of its primary aims is: “Holding the increase in the of parents to choose the number of chilglobal average temperature to well be- dren they have,” the State Department low 2 C above pre-industrial levels and said in its latest human rights report on pursuing efforts to limit the temperature China. “Intense pressure to meet birth-limincrease to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would sig- itation targets set by government regunificantly reduce the risks and impacts lations resulted in instances of local family-planning officials using physical of climate change.” The Sunday New York Times de- coercion to meet government goals,” scribed the varying U.S. and Chinese said State. “Such practices included the commitments to this project as follows: mandatory use of birth control and the “They include a promise for China’s forced abortion of unauthorized preg-

Terry

Jeffrey

nancies. In the case of families that already had two children, one parent was often required to undergo sterilization.” Chinese families that have a child without government approval can be subject to what amounts to a 1,000-percent income tax. “The law requires each parent of an unapproved child to pay a ‘social compensation fee’ that could reach 10 times a person’s annual disposable income,” said the State Department. ONE OF OBAMA’S top advisers on climate change is John P. Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. In 1973, as this column has noted before, Holdren joined Paul and Anne Ehrlich — authors of The Population Bomb — in writing Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions. The co-authors saw three

sources for environmental degradation: People, affluence and technology. “The relation,” they wrote, “can be written as a mathematical equation: Total environment damage equals population, times the level of material affluence per person, times the environmental damage done by the technology we use to supply each bit of affluence.” “Halting population growth must be done, but that alone would not be enough,” Holdren and his co-authors wrote. “Stabilizing or reducing the per capita consumption of resources in the United States is necessary, but not sufficient. Attempts to reduce technology’s impact on the environment are essential, but ultimately will be futile if population and affluence grow unchecked. Clearly, if there is to be any chance of success, simultaneous attacks must be mounted on all the components of the problem.” In their conclusion, Holdren and the Ehrlichs said: “Political pressure must be applied immediately to induce the United States government to assume its responsibility to halt the growth of the American population.” “A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to dedevelop the United States,” they said. “Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided for every human being,” Holdren and his co-authors wrote. Forty-three years later, with Holdren serving as White House science adviser, Obama took the Little Sisters of the Poor all the way to the Supreme Court in an effort to ensure that their employee health care plan would cover abortioninducing drugs and devices. AND ON Saturday, in China, President Obama said of his climate change agreement: “Someday we may see this as the moment that we finally decided to save our planet.”

Conservative Chronicle

BLACKS: September 8, 2016

Trump at a black church: What he should have said Here’s what Donald Trump, at the Gov. George Wallace, who stood in black church in Detroit, should have said: front of the school door and said, ‘Seg“In the words of Malcolm X, blacks regation now, segregation tomorrow, have been ‘political chumps.’ At the time, segregation forever,’ died a Democrat. he said that 80 percent of blacks voted West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, who Democratic in hopes of a civil rights was not only a member of the Ku Klux bill, but President John Kennedy, in the Klan but a recruiter for the KKK, died a opinion of a lot of black leaders, dragged Democrat. “According to 2008 his feet so as not to lose the South come exit polls, 65 percent of those who voted re-election time. In the last presiden- for Obama gave the economy as No. 1 concern. The tial election, 95 percent of blacks voted t h e i r next-highest, at about Democratic. 10 percent, was the “I indict the Iraq War. What did Democratic Parblack voter get for ty for creating their 95 percent family-destroy(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate Democratic vote? ing dependency; deepening unemployment with mini- By most measures, things are worse! “Black poverty is up; black net worth mum-wage laws; burdening job creators with excessive taxes and regulations; is down; black home ownership — increasing crime by falsely maligning down; black home equity — down; the the police — the overwhelming majority ‘wealth gap’ between white households of whom are hardworking, honest pub- and black households hasn’t been this lic servants of all colors; and for stoking wide in 26 years; and by 2014 the labor anger by playing the race card for votes. force participation rate — the percentage of black males working or seeking “I WANT TO remind you that the work — hit the lowest rate since the Democratic Party is the party of slavery government’s been keeping that statisand Jim Crow, and that, as a percentage tic. of the party, more Republicans voted for “IT’S A FACT that under Ronald the passage of the hallmark Civil Rights Reagan, black adult unemployment fell Act of 1964 than did Democrats. “I refute the liberal lie that there was faster than did white adult unemploya ‘big switch’ in which racist Southern ment. Black teen unemployment fell Democrats allegedly flocked en masse to faster than did white teen unemploythe Republican Party — due to their op- ment. The revenue of black businesses increased faster than did the revenue of position to integration. “No, nearly all of the racist Demo- white businesses. Look it up. “Reagan lowered taxes. Obama crats, who voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Bill, died Democrats. Alabama raised them. Reagan lessened regu-

Larry

Elder

lations. Obama piled them on. Reagan slowed down the rate of domestic spending — leaving more money in the pockets of individuals to save, invest or donate as they please, not as some government bureaucrat dictated. Obama dramatically increased government spending. “Why is lowering taxes a good policy when a lot of working people and poor people don’t even pay any federal taxes? Because the more money left in the pockets of job creators, the more jobs they can and will create. “Here’s my immediate plan: Lower taxes on job creators; lessen regulations that require people to get costly, time-consuming and unnecessary occupational licenses for so many jobs and

careers; allow school vouchers so urban parents, if they choose, can take their kids out of an underperforming government school that Democrats force them to attend; and stop illegal immigration that takes jobs away from — and puts downward pressure on the wages of — inner-city workers. “Long term, we need to rethink the government-provided, no-questionsasked welfare that has produced so many fatherless homes. We need to ask whether government — as opposed to nonprofits, community charities and churches like yours — should primarily be responsible for handling the needs of the needy. “I finish by saying this about racism. In 1997, nearly 20 years ago, Times/ CNN conducted a poll in which both white and black teens were asked about racism. Both called racism a major problem in America. But when black teens were asked whether racism is a ‘big problem,’ ‘small problem,’ or ‘not a problem at all’ — in their own lives — 89 percent said ‘small’ or a ‘not a problem.’ In fact, more black teens than white teens said, ‘Failure to take advantage of available opportunities’ was a bigger problem than racism. I repeat, more black teens than white teens said, ‘Failure to take advantage of available opportunities’ was a bigger problem than racism. “Again, that was 20 years ago. I believe most people here would have to say, after the election and re-election America’s first black president, racism is certainly less potent now than it was 20 years ago. America certainly isn’t perfect. Racism has by no means been eliminated, but the issue today is empowerment. “THANK YOU for allowing me to come to your beautiful church to speak. May God bless you, and may God continue to bless America.”

September 21, 2016 NEO-DARWINISM: September 9, 2016

Chaos driven? How neo-Darwinians lost their marbles

hen university studies of mythology began in the 19th century, scholars often saw myth as primitive science. ‘Why do seas surge and winds blow?’ Edward Burnett Tylor, Oxford University’s first professor of anthropology, argued that cultures evolve from seeing events as random to a higher belief in causation. ‘The tidal wave was not accidental. It came because Poseidon was angry. Next time we’ll make a sacrifice and avert his anger.’

NOAH, OF COURSE, knew that the greatest physical disaster was not accidental. He communicated that understanding on to his descendants, but in a few generations some became fuzzy on the details and tried to stop minor floods by propitiating gods of their own

creation. Refugees from the Tower of or payments would decrease the number Babel created Hindu and Greek mythol- of years we or loved ones would spend ogy. They did not want chance to rule in purgatory. With indulgence science, their lives. They thought they could man could control what had seemed to bring order by offering sacrifices, and be uncontrollable — and there seemed some even killed their children in an at- no way to disprove it. But there was: In the 16th century, tempt to gain control — but they learned reformers like Martin Luther and John that mythology science didn’t work. Christianity broke with the idea of Calvin taught that the Bible was the instructor in the way exchange, the faith that ‘if I do some- only true God and the world thing for God, worked. They unHe’ll do somedermined belief in thing for me.’ The purgatory, and in New Testament so doing attacked taught that we (c) 2016, God’s World Publications the sense that man could not ascend could control God. to God: He had come down to us. But that did not satis- They did not undermine belief in order, fy those who wanted more control. The since Luther and Calvin both emphamedieval church hierarchy worked out a sized God’s sovereignty, but Enlightensystem of indulgences: Specific actions ment intellectuals like Voltaire argued

Marvin

Olasky

GODLESS SOCIETY: September 13, 2016

How is the godless West working out? There are many recent developments in the godless West. To name a few: — The Supreme Court of Italy last week ruled that public masturbation is legal (except in front of minors). — The New York City Council voted in May that public urination is not a criminal act. — The San Francisco City Council decided, by one vote, to continue the city’s ban on public nudity — not, of course, on the grounds of “decency” but on the grounds of public health. Since that can easily be resolved by use of a towel on public benches and chairs, it is only a matter of time, probably a couple of years, before people will be permitted to walk around naked in San Francisco. — A few weeks ago, teachers in Charlotte, North Carolina, were instructed not to refer to their elementary school students as “boys and girls” but as “students” and “scholars.” The reasoning is presumably for inclusivity — there may be a student who has no gender identity — and that adults should not impose a gender identity on young people. — In a New York Times op-ed column, a professor of philosophy noted his shock at learning that most young Americans do not believe that moral truths exist. They are incapable of asserting that anything, including killing for fun, is wrong beyond personal opinion. THESE ARE all inevitable consequences of the death of belief in God and Judeo-Christian values, and of the Bible as society’s primary moral reference work.

The West has been in moral decline since World War I, the calamity that led to World War II and the death of national identity and Christianity in most of Europe. There has always been one exception:The United States. But now that is ending. The seeds of America’s decline have been sown since the beginning of the 20th century, and they came to fruition with the post-World War II generation, the baby boomers. Radical and aggressive

Dennis

secularism and atheism have replaced religion in virtually every school and throughout American public life. WE HAVE gone from President Abraham Lincoln reading the Bible every day to Alaska Airlines feeling forced to stop passing out prayer cards with meals. In a hundred years, we’ve gone from near-total biblical literacy to near-total biblical illiteracy. One wonders whether half of America’s college seniors could correctly identify Cain and Abel, or whether more than 1 in 10 Americans could cite the Ten Commandments. We have gone from President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaiming the need to save “Christian civilization” in World War II speeches to a virtual ban on American presidents mentioning the word “Christianity.” And, as is widely noted, Americans are no longer supposed to wish strangers “merry

Christmas,” and they must refer to a Christmas party as a “holiday party.” Similarly, the European Union constitution never mentions Christianity, despite the fact that it was Christianity that formed Europe. The prices that we Americans and Europeans are paying for creating the first godless societies in recorded history amount to civilizational suicide. Boys and girls are not to be referred to as boys and girls; Western elites dismiss national identity as protofascism; the belief that moral truth exists has been destroyed and replaced by feelings and opinions; fewer people are marrying; and more people live alone than at any time in American history. Western European countries have become empty, soulless places. They are pretty and appear materially secure (for now), but they stand for almost nothing (except “multiculturalism” and “tolerance”). They have replaced a Jewish population that overwhelmingly wanted to assimilate with a Muslim population that does not want to. And nearly all European countries are headed to Greece-like insolvency as fewer and fewer workers pay enough in taxes to support those who collect welfare, and as tensions with their Muslim inhabitants increase. But the good news is that now, beginning with Italy and New York, citizens can watch each other masturbate or urinate in public. THERE IS no way to prove that God exists. But what is provable is what happens when societies stop believing in God: They commit suicide.

that disasters like the earthquake that destroyed Lisbon in 1755 showed a lack of order: Randomness ruled. Then the French Revolution razed order-giving institutions, and other revolutions followed in 1848. Chaos was back in the saddle again. LET’S JUMP to recent times: If you don’t believe in Christ but don’t want chaos to rule, what’s the gift that keeps on giving? Islam, for some, but for much of Europe and America, Charles Darwin. “On the Origin of Species in 1859 posted “survival of the fittest,” with life a tale of sound and fury where those with the biggest roar and the biggest teeth win. True, Darwinian evolution left neither God nor man in charge of the process, but everything did not occur just by chance. Although individual lives lost their purpose, Life did not: Higher, stronger, faster, fitter. But the problem that bugged Darwin proved unsolvable: How did one kind of creature turn into another kind? In the 20th century, neo-Darwinians integrated Mendelian genetics with Darwin’s overview, claiming that change came not only through natural selection but via genetic drift, random changes in the frequency of genes. Neo-Darwinians often explained it by picturing 50 orange and 50 green marbles in a jar. Choose 10, and you might end up with seven oranges and three greens. Then fill up a second jar proportionally, with 70 orange and 30 green marbles. Choose 10 more, and you might end up with nine oranges and one green. Repeat the process, and by the fourth generation you might have all orange marbles. What a melancholy notion! The orange ones are no more fit than the green ones. If you did the experiment the next time, you might end up with all greens. The neo-Darwinian synthesis was unrealistic: Would random changes in DNA or chance recombination of strands over time turn the descendants of marbles into Legos? But the greater sadness is that neo-Darwinism elevated chance to a spot it hasn’t had in Western thought since ancient Greek beliefs became known as mythology. As the late paleontologist Stephen Gould admitted, “I believe that ... any replay of the tape would lead evolution down a pathway radically different from the road actually taken.” NO WONDER The Purpose Driven Life has sold a gazillion copies. The alternative is purposelessness not only for one life but all life. Reprinted with permission of WORLD. To read more news and views from a Christian perspective, call 800951-6397 or visit WNG.org.

Conservative Chronicle

ROB PORTMAN: September 8, 2016

In a ‘change’ year, Sen. Portman deserves re-election

Given today’s apotheosis of the outen. Rob Portman probably will win a second term, despite the sider, Portman is fortunate to be running fact that he deserves to. The against a former congressman and goverswarm of young people who gathered nor, Ted Strickland, a political lifer who on a Saturday morning in this Cincinna- first ran for Congress (unsuccessfully) 40 ti suburb to feast on doughnuts and his years ago. He is an ordained Methodist from the gun-toting gratitude are among the 5,000 volunteer minister coal country of interns, including southeastern Ohio. students from 35 Fortunately for campuses, who Portman, Strickland, have made 3.5 after losing the million voter con(c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group governorship to tacts. Portman’s supporters are a forgiving sort, unde- John Kasich in 2010, became head of the terred by his many accomplishments Washington-based, impeccably liberal and qualifications that could be disqual- Center for American Progress Action ifying in this season of populist antago- Fund. What was he thinking? Probably nism toward people who have actually not about running again in Ohio. Strickland has revised the Clintonian governed. mantra about making abortions “safe, leA GRADUATE of Dartmouth and gal and rare.” He seems to prefer “safe, the University of Michigan Law School, legal and as frequent as subsidies can Portman was one of President George make them:” He favors repeal of the H.W. Bush’s counselors. After six terms Hyde Amendment which for 40 years in Congress, Portman became President has banned taxpayer funding of aborGeorge W. Bush’s trade representative tions. The center supports many gun conand, a year later, director of the Office trol measures unacceptable to the NRA, which supported Strickland in 2010 but of Management and Budget. It gets worse: This year’s Republi- has endorsed Portman. The Center for can presidential nominating electorate American Progress shares the Obama decided that the lungs are the locus of administration’s animus against coal, so wisdom, but Portman is as quiet as his the United Mine Workers (like the Team19th-century Quaker abolitionist ances- sters and the Fraternal Order of Police) tors probably were when assisting the have abandoned Strickland. Underground Railroad. (In Uncle Tom’s TIP O’NEILL’S incessantly quoted Cabin, Eliza escapes over the Ohio River ice floes about 50 miles east of here axiom — “All politics is local” — is increasingly false in polarized America, [Terrace Park, OH].)

George

Will

where many elections are nationalized. This year, however, it is in Portman’s interest to stress local issues unrelated to anything being bellowed about by the person at the top of the Republican ticket. Sixty-thousand eligible voters say that the biggest issue for them is algae threatening Lake Erie. And the biggest issue might be the epidemic of deaths from heroin and other opioids. Nationally, such deaths — about 27,000 a year — are almost half the drug overdose deaths that now take more American lives than do car crashes. Opioids are especially devastating in post-industrial commu-

nities, of which Ohio has its share. In 2012, Ohio was one of 12 states where the number of opioid prescriptions written was larger than the number of people. Ohioans who are pleased that Portman authored the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act must forgive him for having done so in Washington. In Portman’s 15-minute parking-lot pitter-patter to his supporters here, he did not mention the choleric man at the top of the ticket. Portman’s strategic reticence does not extend to the matter of trade: He has made the obligatory vow to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Strickland’s one-track-mind campaign focuses on international trade as the root of most of Ohio’s evils. Never mind that Honda is Ohio’s biggest auto employer and that Portman says one-third of the state’s farm acres are growing crops for export. Six presidents were elected from this state (William Henry Harrison, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, William McKinley, William Taft, Warren Harding), a seventh (U.S. Grant) was born here, and there could have been an eighth — Robert Taft (1889-1953). A president’s son, he was “Mr. Republican” during his 14 years representing Ohio in the Senate seat that Portman now occupies. Then as now, Ohio had many blue-collar industrial workers, and Taft’s critics said he could not represent them. So, in 1947 a reporter asked Taft’s wife, “Do you think of your husband as a common man?” Aghast, she replied: “Oh, no, no! The senator is very uncommon. He was first in his class at Yale and first in his class at the Harvard Law School. We wouldn’t permit Ohio to be represented in the Senate by just a common man.” IN 1950, Taft was easily re-elected. Portman probably will be, too, even though he should be.

September 21, 2016 DEMOCRATIC PARTY: September 14, 2016

Hillary Clinton sees her own voters as the 47 percent

ow many times must the left the Midwest are benighted hicks. “It’s tell Americans what it thinks not surprising then they get bitter, they of them before Americans re- cling to guns or religion or antipathy alize a simple fact: Leftist leaders sim- toward people who aren’t like them or ply don’t like half the country? In 2012, anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade the media lost its mind over former Gov. sentiment as a way to explain their Mitt Romney’s statement that 47 per- frustrations,” he said. This cent of Americans received attention “who are depenfrom the conservadent upon governtive press, but was ment, who believe downplayed by that they are victhe mainstream (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate tims, who believe media, or brushed the government has a responsibility to off as accurate. care for them” would vote for President This weekend, Hillary Clinton Obama. This apparently demonstrated echoed Obama. She said: “To just be that Romney hates everyday Americans. grossly generalistic, you could put half Disdains them. Sees them as moochers. of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The IN 2008, then-Sen. Barack Obama racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, claimed that small-town Americans in Islamophobic — you name it. And un-

Ben

Shapiro

fortunately there are people like that.” The other half of Trump supporters, Clinton said, are little better: “But that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. ... Those are people

2016 ELECTION: September 9, 2016

Blame voters, not the candidates

n a democracy, we generally get the leaders we deserve. So what does that say about this year’s election? Nothing good. It’s easy to focus on the faults of the candidates — and Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump may be the two most flawed presidential candidates in history — but at the end of the day, the voters chose them. Or some of the voters did, and that is part of the problem. In the modern world’s oldest democracy, we’ve become complacent. A tiny fraction of eligible voters bother to participate in primaries, and those who do are hardly representative of the broader population. Less than 14.8 percent of eligible voters participated in the GOP primaries, while 14.1 percent voted in the Democratic contests. But even if everyone eligible to vote actually cast a ballot, we’d still have a major problem in the United States. THERE IS little question that Trump rose to the top of the field among 17 candidates largely because of his celebrity status as a reality TV star. The very qualities he exhibits that turn off many educated voters and principled conservatives made him attractive to the masses who get their news in sound bites from talking heads who shout insults at one another on cable networks. He’s opinionated, even when his opinions aren’t based on substantive knowledge, and he’s willing to say anything to guarantee a lead spot on the day’s news coverage. Our schools have done a poor job of educating students about the U.S. Constitution, American history and our civic institutions. And the poorly educated

kids grow into adults who haven’t the faintest idea about separation of powers or the protections enshrined in the Bill of Rights, much less basic economics. And we are paying the price this year. On the one hand, we have Hillary Clinton, who is promising free community college, paid family leave, universal health care and a host of other costly programs, which she thinks she can pay for by upping taxes on only the rich. On the other hand, Donald Trump wants to deploy a deportation force to round up the nearly six percent of those in our workforce who are in the country illegally, wants to administer an ideological test to immigrants and visitors to the U.S., which he hopes would weed out Muslims, and says he’d fire much of the top military brass because, as he’s asserted before, he knows “more about ISIS than the generals do.”

Linda

CLINTON’S APPEAL is the traditional Democratic sop: Government will take care of you. Trump’s appeal is darker: Your problems are the result of foreigners who are invading our country. Depending on where voters fall on this scary spectrum, we will have either a president who expands the role and cost of government at the cost of freedom and a vibrant economy or one who blames ethnic and religious scapegoats for problems at home and abroad and uses demagoguery to whip up mobs, endangering minority protections in favor of absolute majority rule.

Neither prospect is a happy one. Worse is the probability that when voters go into the voting booth, they will most likely be voting their gut, not their head. When our Founding Fathers devised this new form of government — a representative democracy — they could not have imagined how it would devolve. There is a real danger that if Americans do not take their responsibilities more seriously, we will lose our freedoms. The trend in recent years has been to expand the franchise more and more broadly, which in theory is a good thing, but only if the people casting their vote understand the system in which they are participating. Call me an elitist — I’ve been called worse — but I want voters to do more than show up and vote for the person they like the most or against the one they detest. I want them to understand the duties and limits the Constitution imposes on the commander in chief. I want them to have some understanding of the separation of powers, of why majority rule cannot abrogate unpopular but constitutionally protected minority opinions and rights. I want them to be informed enough about the policy differences between the candidates to get some glimpse into how each would govern. IF AMERICAN citizens don’t do a better job living up to their responsibilities in choosing our leaders, we can’t expect we will ever get better candidates than the ones we have to choose from this year. We need to quit blaming Clinton and Trump for being bad candidates and look in the mirror to see how they got here.

we have to understand and empathize with as well.” CLINTON’S LANGUAGE is far more telling than Obama’s. Democrats routinely see voters they don’t understand as morally deficient. That provides them the comforting illusion that disagreement reflects lack of virtue. And that means that their policies need not succeed — success or failure is irrelevant to the ethical question of how to vote. Good people will vote for them regardless of track record, while bad people will oppose them. But Clinton’s language goes further. Where Obama simply labels his opponents as bad guys, Clinton suggests that Romney was right: Those who are her potential supporters are pathetic losers waiting for government to save them. They are disappointed with the economy. They think the government must do more. They just need some tender, loving care from Clinton, and then they’ll realize that Trump isn’t the man for them. This means that the sneering tone so many people detected in Romney exists among Democrats for their own constituents. Clinton doesn’t label her potential voters self-sufficient Americans seeking an equal opportunity. No. They’re grievance-mongers, ne’er-dowells and people who believe they are victims, who believe government has an obligation to take care of them. And she thinks she can draw them to the Democratic Party. So, where are all the good Americans? To Democrats they don’t exist. There are just the deplorables and the needies — and the elites who control them. That’s the scariest thing about the Clinton vision for America. Nobody deserves freedom because nobody wants freedom. Everyone is either a racist or in need of saving; everyone needs a cure, either of their soul or their material well-being. And Clinton thinks she can provide that cure, by crushing half of Trump’s supporters and co-opting the other half. SHE’S ONLY missing one thing: Most Trump supporters, and most Americans, aren’t bitter clingers or victims. They’re independent human beings, waiting for a candidate who wants to grant them that independence — if any elite is willing to stand up for it.

Conservative Chronicle

2016 ELECTION: September 8, 2016

Trump aces the forum: Clinton looks pathetic

t the very start of the NBC fident was she that the name-calling forum on national security will stick. affairs, Matt Lauer asked HILLARY CLINTON is like Hillary Clinton what were the qualities she thinks are most important in a someone trying to run up a down escaEach step — taken commander in chief. She cited steadi- l a t o r . at great effort (and ness, willingness much coughing) to listen to others — is countered by and to evaluate the inevitable, irwhat they say, reversible downtemperament (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate ward movement and judgment as of the machine, powered in this case key. Then, she proceeded to flunk her by her own blunders rather than by electricity. own test. Judgment? After subjecting the country and her own political career to a scandal of her own making by using a separate, private server? Judgment? By endorsing the war in COLUMBIA: September 14, 2016 Iraq at every turn? Steadiness? When each new day brings a new fanciful explanation of why she had the server?

Dick

Morris

INSTEAD, IT was Donald Trump who passed the test with flying colors. After all, this forum — on foreign affairs and national security — was in Clinton’s ballpark. It was a home game for the former secretary of state and a road game for Trump. But it was Trump who appeared more at ease with the subject matter, scoring his points effectively but without bombast, buffoonery or sarcasm. For her party, Clinton came across like a jukebox. When a topic came up, she would press A-5 or B-17 and the appropriate script would come to mind. There was no warmth or even interrelationship with Lauer. Clinton has set a low bar for Trump. She has called him dangerous, demagogic, sexist, extremist, wacky, loony and worse. All Trump has to do when he walks out on stage is to defy those stereotypes and he comes out ahead. There are three precedents for presidential campaigns that were built around scaring people: Lyndon Johnson’s warnings about Barry Goldwater and the bomb, Richard Nixon’s attack on George McGovern’s extreme defense cuts, and Jimmy Carter’s characterization of Ronald Reagan as a shoot-from-the-hip cowboy. Neither Barry Goldwater nor George McGovern had televised debates in which to defend themselves and debunk their opponents scare tactics. But Ronald Reagan did, and, after America met him, it was hard to find the danger that Jimmy Carter spoke of so often. ONCE WE GET past the namecalling, Clinton has nothing left to throw at Trump. She squandered her convention by not setting up issue contrasts with Donald Trump, so con-

Columbia’s peace deal challenges

n August 24, leaders of the “nominally Marxist” Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia agreed to what they called a “definitive ceasefire” with the proU.S. Colombian government they once vowed to topple. Weary Colombian citizens immediately applauded the announcement. They hope the deal will end the 52 years of war FARC ignited in 1964. 260,000 people have died in the conflict. 45,000 are missing.

PAST CEASEFIRE agreements failed to end the war. Non-aligned militia forces, some with right-wing political agendas, some with no definable agenda, have complicated previous deals and could trouble this one. However, after three weeks and some public second-guessing by hardcore FARC militants, it appears the August agreement could eventually cause this round of La Volencia to fade. Yes, this round. Another La Violencia pitting political left against political right gripped Colombia from 1948 to 1958. Somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 people died in one decade of relentless slaughter by militias, guerrilla groups, paramilitary forces and bandit gangs. The formation of a power-sharing National Front government helped end that chaotic conflict. When FARC declared war on the National Front government, Communists were preaching global revolution. The end of the Cold War unmasked their Workers Paradise scam. In 1991, the impoverished Soviet Union (a key FARC ally) collapsed. With Moscow and Fidel Castro’s Cuba no longer providing support, many Colombians believed FARC’s war would fade. It didn’t. FARC adapted. Still “nom-

inally Marxist,” it maintained connections with other guerrilla and terrorist groups. However, FARC transformed itself into a disciplined criminal organization allied with drug cartels. That was ironic, for at one time Colombia’s cocaine cartels united to combat FARC. FARC guerrillas became mercenary gangsters providing security services. In the process, their guerrilla war became what some observers called The New Violence. 2000 and 2001 were the nadir of The New Violence. By 2000, FARC rebels controlled almost 40 percent of the country, carving Colombia into “drug duchies” where the government exerted no control.

Austin

Bay

That same year, the U.S.-supported “Plan Colombia” (a $7.5 billion dollar program with the U.S. kicking in $1.3 billion) provided the hard-pressed government with 60 new helicopters. Suddenly the government had the ability to quickly move troops into the mountains and jungles. ITS POLITICAL camouflage lost, Colombians identified FARC as just another gang. In August 2002, they elected Alvaro Uribe president. Uribe promised to crush FARC and restore law and order. He fired bureaucrats, collected taxes, and increased security spending. Within three years, FARC and other violent groups were in retreat. Yet it took 11 more years to convince the die-hards to quit. Now-

deceased Venezuelan socialist leader Hugo Chavez helped keep FARC alive. Venezuela’s collapse into impoverished socialist anarchy has ended that lifeline. The August agreement confronts major challenges. Colombia’s current president, Juan Manuel Santos, says the agreement is all or nothing. So, on October 2, Colombia will hold a referendum. Citizens will decide to accept or reject the agreement. Polls indicate Colombians will do so. However, many citizens oppose specific parts of the agreement. Former President Uribe (who remains popular) argues FARC leaders responsible for heinous crimes are treated too leniently. They will not go to prison but face “restrictions on their freedom of movement,” whatever that is. In coming months, FARC’s rank and file guerrilla-gangsters must assemble in “Transitional Village Zones for Normalization” and turn in their weapons. In exchange they will receive a limited amnesty. These “safe camps” in the hinterland, however, must be created then secured. This is a huge logistical challenge. EVEN A RATIFIED August agreement will not produce immediate peace. Several observers argue some FARC militants will quickly give up on civilian life and join militias that are not subject to the peace deal or go to work for drug cartels. The agreement does signal FARC as a combatant force has fractured. That means overall violence should diminish, dramatically, and that will give political reconciliation a chance.

September 21, 2016 OBAMA PRESIDENCY: September 9, 2016

Incident in Hangzhou ... and elsewhere

he president of the United world’s general disdain for President States lands with all the maj- Obama. His high-minded lectures about esty of Air Force One, waiting global norms and demands that others to exit the front door and stride down live up to their “international obligathe rolling staircase to the red-carpeted tions” are no longer amusing. They’re tarmac. Except that there is no rolling irritating. Foreign leaders have reciprocated staircase. He is forced to exit — as one China expert put it rather undiplomati- by taking this administration down a cally — through “the ass” of the plane. notch knowing they pay no price. In This happened Saturday at Hang- May 2013, Vladimir Putin reportedly zhou airport. Yes, in China. If the Chi- kept the U.S. secretary of state cooling for three hours outside nese didn’t invent diplomatic protocol, his heels fice before deigning to they surely are its most venerable and his ofreceive him. Even as experienced pracObama was hailing titioners. They’ve the nuclear deal with been at it for 4,000 Iran as a great years. They are the breakthrough, the (c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group masters of every ayatollah vowed tributary gesture, every nuance of hierarchical ritual. In a “no change” in his policy, which reland so exquisitely sensitive to protocol, mained diametrically opposed to “U.S. rolling staircases don’t just disappear at arrogant system.” The mullahs followed arrival ceremonies. Indeed, not one of by openly conducting illegal ballistic the other G-20 world leaders was left missile tests — calculating, correctly, that Obama would do nothing. And stranded on his plane upon arrival. when Iran took prisoner 10 American DID PRESIDENT Xi Jinping di- sailors in the Persian Gulf, made them rectly order airport personnel and dip- kneel and broadcast the video, what was lomatic functionaries to deny Barack the U.S. response? Upon their release, Obama a proper welcome? Who knows? John Kerry publicly thanked Iran for its But the message, whether intentional or good conduct. not, wasn’t very subtle. The authorities WHY SHOULD Xi treat Obama expressed no regret, no remorse and certainly no apology. On the contrary, with any greater deference? Beijing ilthey scolded the press for even report- legally expands into the South China Sea, meeting only the most perfuncing the snub. No surprise. China’s ostentatious tory pushback from the U.S. Obama rudeness was perfectly reflective of the told CNN that he warned Xi to desist or

Charles

Krauthammer

“there will be consequences.” Is there a threat less credible? Putin annexes Crimea and Obama crows about the isolation he has imposed on Russia. Look around. Moscow has become Grand Central Station for Middle East leaders seeking outside help in their various conflicts. As for Ukraine, both the French president and the German chancellor have hastened to Moscow to plead with Putin to make peace. Some isolation. Iran regularly harasses our vessels in the Persian Gulf. Russian fighters

buzzed a U.S. destroyer in the Baltic Sea. And just Wednesday, a Russian fighter flew within 10 feet of an American military jet. The price they paid? Being admonished that such provocations are unsafe and unprofessional. An OSHA citation is more ominous. Add to that American acquiescence not just to ransoming hostages held by Iran, but to delivering the loot by unmarked plane filled with stacks of cold (untraceable) cash, like a desert drug deal. Why the stealth? Obviously to conceal the manner of the transaction from Congress and the American public. Some humiliations are so grotesque that even the Obama team can’t miss it. Now the latest. At the G-20, Obama said he spoke to Putin about cyberwarfare, amid revelations that Russian hackers have been interfering in our political campaigns. We are more technologically advanced, both offensively and defensively, in this arena than any of our adversaries, said Obama, but we really don’t want another Cold Warstyle arms race. Instead, we must all adhere to norms of international behavior. It makes you want to weep. This KGB thug adhering to norms? He invades Ukraine, annexes Crimea, bombs hospitals in Aleppo — and we expect him to observe cyber-code etiquette? Rather than exploit our technological lead — with countermeasures and deterrent threats — to ensure our own cyber safety? We’re back to 1929 when Secretary of State Henry Stimson shut down a U.S. code-breaking operation after it gave him decoded Japanese telegrams. He famously explained that “gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.” WELL, COMRADE, Putin is no gentleman. And he’s reading our mail.

Name _________________________________________________ Address ________________________________________________ City _____________________ State _____________ Zip _________ Credit Card Number # ___________________________________

Billing Information.

Name _________________________________________________ Address ________________________________________________ City _____________________ State _____________ Zip _________

Send a Free Sample.

(U.S. Currency Only) Call for current foreign rate information.

Name _________________________________________________ Address ________________________________________________ City _____________________ State _____________ Zip _________

______/_______

Expiration Date

Credit Card

❏ American Express

❏ Discover Card

❏ MC / VISA

❏ Check Enclosed

Order Total $___________

❏ 52 issues - $75.00

❏ 26 issues - $41.00

❏ 13 issues - $23.00

Select the number of issues you would like.

❏ 52 issues - $75.00

❏ 26 issues - $41.00

❏ 13 issues - $23.00

Select the number of issues you would like.

Michael Barone, Austin Bay, Brent Bozell, Pat Buchanan, Mona Charen, Linda Chavez, Ann Coulter, Jackie Gingrich Cushman, Larry Elder, Leslie Elman, Joseph Farah, Suzanne Fields, 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.

Featured and Contributing Columnists

The weekly publication that features newspaper columns from America's leading conservative commentators.

Conservative Chronicle

Place your order on line at www.conservativechronicle.com

Call toll free in the US 1-800-888-3039

Send this form with payment to: Conservative Chronicle, Box 29 Hampton, IA 50441-0029 or

Your Own Subscription.

(2 or 3 would be great!)

Name _________________________________________________ Address ________________________________________________ City _____________________ State _____________ Zip _________ Sign Gift Card as: ________________________________________ Attach extra sheets for additional gifts.

Give a New Gift Subscription.

You can share this publication and help us expose the truth in 3 ways.

Help Us Spread The Conservative Message.

•NEWSPAPER• •DATED MATERIAL•

RUSH!

Postmaster: Timely Material Please deliver on or before 9/21/16 Periodicals Postage Paid Mailed 9/15/16

Read David Harsanyi, Laura Hollis & Brent Bozell on Pages 16-17

Media Bias

This week our CONSERVATIVE FOCUS is on:

Read Michael Barone’s Column on Page 1

How’s That Working Out?

Transformation

Wednesday, September 21, 2016 • Volume 31, Number 38 • Hampton, Iowa