How Many Millions Of Americans Suffer Today’s DEM CONTROL OF CONGRESS?

Portland families leaving the city to escape homelessness and crime

JOHN SEXTON Aug 17, 2022 at HotAir: 

KGW8 aired a report yesterday about families in North Portland who have had enough of the city’s homeless camps and rising crime. Some of them are seriously thinking about leaving but some have already sold their homes and are moving further out into the suburbs, away from the problems associated with the city.

“It makes you not feel that great about living here,” said Greg Dilkes, who has lived in North Portland for 30 years. “It makes living in the neighborhood harder, not as congenial as it could be.”

Dilkes said the homeless camps along the Peninsula Crossing Trail near his home have changed the area.

“It’s the first time in a long time that we’ve actually seriously thought about moving,” he said…

North Portland neighbors told KGW at least three families along McKenna Avenue are leaving due to nearby homeless camps. Real estate broker Lauren Iaquinta sees it first hand.

“I would say the migration to the suburbs, I’ve seen quite a bit in the last two years,” she said. “Most people don’t want to have to worry about if they can leave their car parked in their driveway overnight without maybe having it broken into. It’s a pretty testy subject.”

The issues these particular neighbors are complaining about involved a bike trail called Peninsula Crossing which has become a haven for the homeless. Over the weekend, KGW did a story about the trail and the people living there which is worth a look. TT Sanchez, the “camp mom” who is supposedly in charge of the camp, says homeowners have nothing to fear from her or other camp residents. She describes the camp as one big family of people who are temporarily down and out. But at least one camp resident KGW spoke to admitted that he chose the homeless lifestyle because he prefers it. He doesn’t explain why exactly but I think you can probably guess.

North Portland isn’t the only part of the city facing these problems. Yesterday, KATU 2 published a story about people in Southeast Portland who feel terrorized by a group of homeless people living in a large treehouse adjacent to their property.

“We actually had to put up a fence from Johnson Creek all the way back to the Springwater Trail, just to keep them out of our backyard,” said [Kerry] Stickler.

He’s talking about people who live in the treehouse, about 100 yards from his home on city property. Stickler shared a video with KATU News, showing us the elaborate structure built in the trees, including a window and a staircase surrounded by fencing. He and his wife, Marysue, say a few dozen people have been living in the treehouse, and they’re not good neighbors.

“They’re right outside our bedroom window at night. We can hear them,” said Marysue Stickler. “They’re fighting. There’s [sic] guys punching women, women screaming up and down the street. It’s horrible.”…

“They threatened to shoot our dog. They’ve actually shot at us from up there when my dog was barking,” said Stickler.

Here’s a photo of the treehouse. As you can see, it’s not a small structure.

A Note of Life To My Readers:

Fascist Dems Broke The Sacred Law Forbidding Invasions Of A PRESIDENT’S HOME

In reply to:I can’t understand the blindness of men today. Hippies would have been better prepared. The blindness may be due to technology, our fast paced lives and everyday people believing and reaching for hyped dollars. Confusion by delusions is a perfect plan for a NWO. But for a thorough and complete wakeup, we must undergo the darkness.

Your observation is quite correct…..In the general the American human male doesn’t really exist any more….at least compared to the males I was trained to respect and copy from 1939 Kindergarten to roughly when I got married in 1956. Males were males. Females were females…..according to the more Biblical arrangement between the two.
I WAS TO PROTECT WIFE AND OUR CHILDREN AND COUNTRY. Wives were to become JudeoChristian MOTHERS WHO CARED FOR THEIR CHILDREN FROM HOUSE TO SCHOOL AND NEIGHBORHOOD.
NEIGHBORS WERE NEIGHBORS AND SHARED MATTER WHEN MATTER WAS NEEDED AMONG NEIGHBORS.
DADS WORKED SIX DAYS A WEEK AWAY FROM HOME….BUT DADS WHEN AT HOME TOOK CARE OF THE HOUSE (WHICH MOTHER KEPT CLEAN), FAMILY, NEIGHBORHOOD AND SCHOOLS IF NEEDED.

NO ONE SWORE IN PUBLIC……FAMILIES EXISTED WITH AUNTS AND UNCLES, AND THEREFORE COUSINS.
CHURCH AND SYNAGOGUE WERE BUSY WHENEVER NEEDED.
DADS IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD WERE RESPECTED, BUT NOT WELL KNOWN. MOTHERS WERE MAGNIFICENT, AS I REMEMBER THEM. THERE WERE SO MANY ALONG OUR ST. PAUL, MN BLOCK…WE ALL HAD UNCLES, AUNTS, COUSINS, GREAT AUNTS, RELATIVES TO LOVE, TO AID WHEN NEEDED…with clothes passing on, picnics, and play with countless cousins. NEARLY EVERYONE WAS GOD FEARING, POLITE, NEIGHBORLY, AND CARING….WE WERE, AFTER, unlike today. REAL AMERICANS!

In school, Kindergarten through Senior class, no one dared or would be rude enough ever to swear in public until “rude” students in looser schools of the late 1960s began to practice their mouths. glenn h. ray!

FBI….Fascists At Work??

Abolish the FBI?

JAZZ SHAW Aug 17, 2022 at HotAir:

AP Photo/Susan Walsh

At Newsweek, Liz Wheeler has jumped into the debate over what to do about the ongoing weaponization of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation under Joe Biden and Merrick Garland in the aftermath of the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s home last week. She covers some of the current accusations against Garland and the Bureau that are rather difficult to simply brush aside as partisan bickering or paranoia. Chief among these is a reminder that it was Hillary Clinton’s lawyer, Marc Elias, who first suggested accusing Trump of hiding a classified document and then prosecuting him under Title 18 of U.S. Code 2071. If a conviction could be obtained, Trump would be barred from ever holding public office again. (Which was the point of the entire exercise to begin with.)

Wheeler asserts that Merrick Garland “underestimated the fury of the American people” as they are watching all of this play out. The raid has turned out to be a “spectacular backfire” and the Bureau appears to be in damage control mode for now. But even if this one unseemly episode is put behind us, what, if anything, can be done to stop the same thing or something similar from happening again in the future? That’s where Liz Wheeler moves into some bold, new territory. She declares that it’s time to take a page from the left’s playbook and “abolish the FBI.”

The FBI is now backpedaling, claiming its agents were looking for nuke documents, a convenient (and implausible) excuse that the FBI will never have to prove because it can’t reveal classified information to the public.

If it smells fishy, it’s because the FBI is rotten to the core.

It’s time to abolish the FBI. The raid on Mar-a-Lago revealed the agency to be a political hatchet man for the Left disguised as law enforcement. People have rightly lost their trust that it will operate as a neutral enforcer of the law. Now, half the country is looking over its shoulder wondering whether a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag will bring federal agents to their door in pre-dawn hours.

The chances of eliminating the FBI seem slim at best, despite the current abuses taking place. The Bureau has been around in one form or another for more than a century. (Since 1908 to be precise.) And it’s grown into a behemoth. And the FBI continues to have a lot of complex responsibilities that would have to be addressed by someone in its absence.

Wheeler’s suggestion covers that issue as well, at least at the surface level. She proposes that we “farm out the vital functions of the FBI and raze the rest.” But we would first need to identify each of those “vital functions” and determine what other existing law enforcement agencies would have the abilities and resources to absorb those duties.

The FBI is primarily involved in investigating crimes that cross state lines or take place on federal lands where state law enforcement agencies would not have jurisdiction. It’s pretty much the definition of the FBI’s purpose in life. Those duties can’t be handed off to the local or state police because of the aforementioned jurisdictional issues. The military can’t take on that role because of Posse Comitatus unless we want to try to ram through an amendment to the Constitution or attempt a massive and unique piece of federal legislation that might not survive a court challenge.

I suppose, at least in theory, the CIA could be tasked with situations like these. But do they have the bandwidth to take on that workload? The CIA currently has a little more than 20,000 agents. The FBI has about 18,000 employees, roughly 8,000 of whom are special agents. We would need to nearly double the size of the CIA. And would replacing the FBI with an even more deeply buried bunch of federal spooks really be much of an improvement?

It sounds as if the only solution would be to create a new federal law enforcement agency out of whole cloth to take over the investigation and resolution of crimes involving activity taking place across state lines. And being a law enforcement vehicle, there really isn’t anyplace else where it would logically fit in the federal government besides the Department of Justice. But if we do that, aren’t we really just creating a new FBI, perhaps with a different name?

Donald Trump has already suggested one possible course of action, though he was approaching it more broadly and applying it to the entire federal bureaucracy. First, retake control of Congress in November and impeach Merrick Garland. (Yes, that can legally be done.) Or just wait until 2024 if the Democrats lose the White House and he’ll be gone on his own. Then go through and fire pretty much every senior official in the FBI from the top down to regional levels and vet the hell out of any experienced law enforcement officers who apply to replace them. Establish a new office under the Inspector General at the DoJ specifically tasked with doing nothing but monitoring the FBI for any signs of partisan hackery and chicanery in the future. It might not solve everything on the first try, but at least it would be a start.

That Fascist Attack On President Trump….

August 17, 2022

These Two Amendments Are Trump’s Friend Right Now

By Ned Barnett at American Thinker:

The recent Mar-a-Lago raid will go down in history as one of the more egregious violations of any individual’s constitutional protections.  Objective future historians will view this as an outrageous abuse of the tradition that former presidents be treated with the decorum due their office.  This document seizure, conducted under false pretenses, is unprecedented.

Only two other presidents have ever faced impeachment: Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.  Both were believed by the then-majority party in the House to have committed “high crimes and misdemeanors.”  Yet neither of these men was convicted, nor afterward subject to inappropriate searches and seizures.

This is why this absurd violation of Trump is unprecedented — a word meaning “it’s never happened before.”  The U.S. attorney general (A.G.), the FBI, and the federal Judiciary have all done themselves and our country irreversible harm.  Absent a Supreme Court ruling, legal precedents like this, once established, have a nasty way of remaining precedents.

In the future, any A.G., with the complicity of the FBI and just one federal judge, will be permitted to do the same thing to anyone, all in the name of whatever faux reason they can “trump up.”

However, Trump has a constitutional option to overturn this outrageous search.  Any fair court must recognize that this search was “permitted” by a bogus warrant, issued by a radical Obama judicial appointee, U.S. Magistrate Bruce Reinhart, based on counter-factual information from a single unreliable “insider.”

This judge previously represented men involved with the Jeffrey Epstein pedophilia sex ring.  Before becoming a judge, Reinhart financially supported far-left Democrats.  Even left-leaning USA Today reported, “In response to Reinhart’s newfound notoriety, his biography and contact information have been removed from the website of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.”

If this smells to you like a cover-up, you aren’t wrong.

If Trump is going to get justice, he’ll need to do so through higher courts, ultimately leading him to the Supreme Court.

What are the grounds for the court to overturn the warrant, disallowing all “information” seized?  Trump has three claims under the Bill of Rights, under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.

The Fourth Amendment offers two protections for President Trump.  Here’s what the Fourth Amendment says: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated[.]”

Whenever an action, such as a search and a seizure, is considered “unprecedented” — another way of saying it’s never happened before — it’s reasonable to argue that “unprecedented” is another word for “unreasonable.”  Can anyone — absent hyper-partisan anti-Trumpers — honestly contend that the action against Trump’s home and records was reasonable?

Of course not, for several reasons.  First, Trump’s been in negotiations with the National Archives over records in the president’s possession.  These are destined for the Trump Presidential Library, regardless of who controls them.  As quoted on the Trump Library’s website, “The Trump Presidential Library is part of the Presidential Libraries system administered by the National Archives and Records Administration, a federal agency.”  The two parties have been trying to negotiate who will actually secure key documents until they can be placed, securely, within the presidential library.

Could anything be more “Washington”?

Or it would be “Washington” if they’d continued to use such tools as subpoenas to force compliance.  But Biden’s A.G. chose to weaponize a highly partisan federal judge to sign off on the FBI’s request for a warrant.  The FBI has been politicized since 2016, swearing oaths before a FISA judge to obtain court orders for bugging Trump Tower, based on the now-debunked Steele Dossier.  Similar hijinks in 2020 may have influenced Trump’s electoral margins in key states.

The Fourth Amendment also decrees that “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” 

To date, no mention of what was seized — beyond “a dozen boxes” of…something.  Further, the warrant was not presented to Trump’s attorney on site.  She was allowed to review it briefly, but not to keep a copy.  Nor was that attorney permitted to observe the FBI during the search.  Those are two serious violations of procedure.  Instead of describing the place to be searched, an FBI agent said the search warrant gave them “full access to everything.”  

This is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, allowing them — they said — to “scour Melania Trump’s wardrobe” in the Trumps’ master bedroom.

Anti-Trumpers are gloating.  Even if no evidence of a Trump documentary cover-up proves true, the FBI can use anything they find as evidence in unrelated actions against Trump.  However, if the warrant is ruled unjustified by the Supreme Court, anything the FBI seized would be considered “fruit of a poisoned tree.”  It could then not be used as evidence in any criminal case.

To date, nobody other than the FBI and the A.G. know what’s been seized.  FBI agents ransacked Trump’s home office for almost ten hours, during which FBI agents spent significant time ransacking Melania Trump’s wardrobe.  Just prurient interest?  Does the FBI believe that Trump hid classified documents in her lingerie, or perhaps sewed them into designer gowns?  Did this all-encompassing warrant really give them the right to plunder her clothing? 

What triggered all this?  In press coverage on January 20, Trump was seen taking one box of…something…out of the White House, making way for Biden.  To date, Trump’s already voluntarily turned over 15 document boxes to the National Archives.  Then the FBI seized another dozen.  This rivals the “miracle of the loaves and fishes,” or maybe it’s just “New Math,” Washington style.

The president is also protected by the Fifth Amendment.   The Fifth Amendment says:  “No person … shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself[.]”  There’s another Fifth Amendment clause directly applicable to this FBI search: “nor shall any person be subject for the same offence be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb[.]”

This latter clause protects us from double jeopardy.  Constitutionally, you can’t be tried twice for the same crime.  Once found not guilty, the government cannot come back and nail you a second time.

Why is this clause in the Fifth Amendment applicable to President Trump?  Simple.  As the left-wing news media are reporting, this search is not really about National Archives rules.  That’s a fig-leaf excuse permitting the FBI to claim a bogus national security excuse for the search and seizure of we know not what. 

These obscure regulations have never been treated as criminal violations.  Instead, as the mainstream media claim, this seizure will find proof of Trump’s complicity in the January 6, 2021 “insurrection.”

Recall that President Trump was impeached for his supposed role in the that odd event at the Capitol Building.  That impeachment farce was held between January 6 and 20, even though, at noon on the 20th, Trump officially and constitutionally stepped aside as president. 

Despite the fact that an impeachment is a trial taking place in Congress instead of the courts, nothing in the Constitution says a failed impeachment does not provide double jeopardy protection.  If this is the real reason for the warrant and search, if what’s been seized will be used to prosecute President Trump once again, the courts will have to throw it out. 

There is no vagueness in the Fifth Amendment.  In fact, neither the Fourth nor the Fifth Amendment is vague about the rights of any American to be protected from unjustified searches and seizures, leading to criminal prosecution. 

While the nation reels from this outrage, and while Melania Trump arranges for her clothes to be fumigated for “bugs,” Trump’s legal team is determining how those sacred rights enshrined in our Constitution will be used to protect President Trump.

The ultimate outcome, should a Republican gain the presidency in 2024, needs to be a major shake-up in both the Department of Justice and the FBI.  For too long have these two vital arms of our government been taking orders from the Dark State.  It’s time for some sunlight disinfectant.

Ned Barnett has been active in Washington for decades. 

“Trump has a constitutional option to overturn this outrageous search”.

August 17, 2022

These Two Amendments Are Trump’s Friend Right Now

By Ned Barnett at American Thinker:

The recent Mar-a-Lago raid will go down in history as one of the more egregious violations of any individual’s constitutional protections.  Objective future historians will view this as an outrageous abuse of the tradition that former presidents be treated with the decorum due their office.  This document seizure, conducted under false pretenses, is unprecedented.

Only two other presidents have ever faced impeachment: Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.  Both were believed by the then-majority party in the House to have committed “high crimes and misdemeanors.”  Yet neither of these men was convicted, nor afterward subject to inappropriate searches and seizures.

This is why this absurd violation of Trump is unprecedented — a word meaning “it’s never happened before.”  The U.S. attorney general (A.G.), the FBI, and the federal Judiciary have all done themselves and our country irreversible harm.  Absent a Supreme Court ruling, legal precedents like this, once established, have a nasty way of remaining precedents.

In the future, any A.G., with the complicity of the FBI and just one federal judge, will be permitted to do the same thing to anyone, all in the name of whatever faux reason they can “trump up.”

However, Trump has a constitutional option to overturn this outrageous search.  Any fair court must recognize that this search was “permitted” by a bogus warrant, issued by a radical Obama judicial appointee, U.S. Magistrate Bruce Reinhart, based on counter-factual information from a single unreliable “insider.”

This judge previously represented men involved with the Jeffrey Epstein pedophilia sex ring.  Before becoming a judge, Reinhart financially supported far-left Democrats.  Even left-leaning USA Today reported, “In response to Reinhart’s newfound notoriety, his biography and contact information have been removed from the website of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.”

If this smells to you like a cover-up, you aren’t wrong.

If Trump is going to get justice, he’ll need to do so through higher courts, ultimately leading him to the Supreme Court.

What are the grounds for the court to overturn the warrant, disallowing all “information” seized?  Trump has three claims under the Bill of Rights, under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.

The Fourth Amendment offers two protections for President Trump.  Here’s what the Fourth Amendment says: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated[.]”

Whenever an action, such as a search and a seizure, is considered “unprecedented” — another way of saying it’s never happened before — it’s reasonable to argue that “unprecedented” is another word for “unreasonable.”  Can anyone — absent hyper-partisan anti-Trumpers — honestly contend that the action against Trump’s home and records was reasonable?

Of course not, for several reasons.  First, Trump’s been in negotiations with the National Archives over records in the president’s possession.  These are destined for the Trump Presidential Library, regardless of who controls them.  As quoted on the Trump Library’s website, “The Trump Presidential Library is part of the Presidential Libraries system administered by the National Archives and Records Administration, a federal agency.”  The two parties have been trying to negotiate who will actually secure key documents until they can be placed, securely, within the presidential library.

Could anything be more “Washington”?

Or it would be “Washington” if they’d continued to use such tools as subpoenas to force compliance.  But Biden’s A.G. chose to weaponize a highly partisan federal judge to sign off on the FBI’s request for a warrant.  The FBI has been politicized since 2016, swearing oaths before a FISA judge to obtain court orders for bugging Trump Tower, based on the now-debunked Steele Dossier.  Similar hijinks in 2020 may have influenced Trump’s electoral margins in key states.

The Fourth Amendment also decrees that “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” 

To date, no mention of what was seized — beyond “a dozen boxes” of…something.  Further, the warrant was not presented to Trump’s attorney on site.  She was allowed to review it briefly, but not to keep a copy.  Nor was that attorney permitted to observe the FBI during the search.  Those are two serious violations of procedure.  Instead of describing the place to be searched, an FBI agent said the search warrant gave them “full access to everything.”  

This is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, allowing them — they said — to “scour Melania Trump’s wardrobe” in the Trumps’ master bedroom.

Anti-Trumpers are gloating.  Even if no evidence of a Trump documentary cover-up proves true, the FBI can use anything they find as evidence in unrelated actions against Trump.  However, if the warrant is ruled unjustified by the Supreme Court, anything the FBI seized would be considered “fruit of a poisoned tree.”  It could then not be used as evidence in any criminal case.

To date, nobody other than the FBI and the A.G. know what’s been seized.  FBI agents ransacked Trump’s home office for almost ten hours, during which FBI agents spent significant time ransacking Melania Trump’s wardrobe.  Just prurient interest?  Does the FBI believe that Trump hid classified documents in her lingerie, or perhaps sewed them into designer gowns?  Did this all-encompassing warrant really give them the right to plunder her clothing? 

What triggered all this?  In press coverage on January 20, Trump was seen taking one box of…something…out of the White House, making way for Biden.  To date, Trump’s already voluntarily turned over 15 document boxes to the National Archives.  Then the FBI seized another dozen.  This rivals the “miracle of the loaves and fishes,” or maybe it’s just “New Math,” Washington style.

The president is also protected by the Fifth Amendment.   The Fifth Amendment says:  “No person … shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself[.]”  There’s another Fifth Amendment clause directly applicable to this FBI search: “nor shall any person be subject for the same offence be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb[.]”

This latter clause protects us from double jeopardy.  Constitutionally, you can’t be tried twice for the same crime.  Once found not guilty, the government cannot come back and nail you a second time.

Why is this clause in the Fifth Amendment applicable to President Trump?  Simple.  As the left-wing news media are reporting, this search is not really about National Archives rules.  That’s a fig-leaf excuse permitting the FBI to claim a bogus national security excuse for the search and seizure of we know not what. 

These obscure regulations have never been treated as criminal violations.  Instead, as the mainstream media claim, this seizure will find proof of Trump’s complicity in the January 6, 2021 “insurrection.”

Recall that President Trump was impeached for his supposed role in the that odd event at the Capitol Building.  That impeachment farce was held between January 6 and 20, even though, at noon on the 20th, Trump officially and constitutionally stepped aside as president. 

Despite the fact that an impeachment is a trial taking place in Congress instead of the courts, nothing in the Constitution says a failed impeachment does not provide double jeopardy protection.  If this is the real reason for the warrant and search, if what’s been seized will be used to prosecute President Trump once again, the courts will have to throw it out. 

There is no vagueness in the Fifth Amendment.  In fact, neither the Fourth nor the Fifth Amendment is vague about the rights of any American to be protected from unjustified searches and seizures, leading to criminal prosecution. 

While the nation reels from this outrage, and while Melania Trump arranges for her clothes to be fumigated for “bugs,” Trump’s legal team is determining how those sacred rights enshrined in our Constitution will be used to protect President Trump.

The ultimate outcome, should a Republican gain the presidency in 2024, needs to be a major shake-up in both the Department of Justice and the FBI.  For too long have these two vital arms of our government been taking orders from the Dark State.  It’s time for some sunlight disinfectant.

Dems Also Know DONALD J. TRUMP IS AN OUTSTANDING PRESIDENT!

Mick Mulvaney, Laura Ingraham reach the same conclusion – Trump policies are good but drama is bad

KAREN TOWNSEND Aug 16, 2022 at HotAir: 

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

This is becoming a popular line of reasoning for Republican voters looking to the 2024 presidential election. Republicans are getting comfortable with saying the hard part out loud – it’s time for a younger, nondramatic version of Trump to run for president. It’s one thing for regular voters to deliver such an opinion (and completely understandable), it’s more noticeable when it comes from a loyal Trump supporter or a former member of Trump’s administration.

Granted, the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago reminded everyone of the never-ending drama that surrounds Trump and the continuous overreach his opponents provide in their quest to prevent him from running for president again. Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s former acting chief of staff and director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), said he hopes Trump doesn’t run and if he does, he hopes Trump loses the GOP nomination. Mulvaney said there can be a continuation of Trump’s policies with someone who is younger and without Trump’s baggage. He went on to suggest Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, and Mike Pompeo. He spoke on a NewsNation show on Monday.

‘We’ve got younger people, it’s time for Donald Trump to sort of go to the sideline, continue to push the policies that made him so popular,’ Mulvaney said on NewsNation’s ‘Banfield’ Monday.

‘We defined my party, but we can have all the policies without the baggage, so I hope he doesn’t run,’ the former GOP congressman continued. ‘And if he runs, I hope he doesn’t win the nomination for Republicans.’

‘He may well be the only Republican who can lose to Joe Biden or any other Democrat in 2024,’ Mulvaney said of Trump.

Mulvaney also served as Trump’s Special Envoy to northern Ireland, which is the position he had on January 6. He resigned after the Capitol riot. When asked if he would vote for Trump in 2024 if he is the nominee, Mulvaney said, ‘It would be really hard, knowing what I know about January 6th.’

Mulvaney may hold a grudge against Trump after January 6th but he sounds like people from both sides of the aisle when he talks about the FBI raid on Mar-a -Lago.

‘If the FBI doesn’t find a cold body or a smoking gun, then I think this will go down as one of the greatest overreaches in law enforcement history,’ he said. ‘You don’t get to go into a former president’s house because of just technical document violations. There has to be something really serious there. I can’t imagine what that might be.’

Laura Ingraham made some similar comments during a podcast on Monday. She said it just may be time to turn the page on Trump. She thinks the country is ready to move on with someone who can carry out Trump-like policies but governs drama-free.

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She’s right. It is hard to argue that most of Trump’s policies were anything but successful during his time in office. He governed as the most conservative president since Reagan. His personality, though, often steps on recognition of that success. Trump brought in people with real business experience and business and economic knowledge. There is a glaring difference between the Trump administration’s leadership and that of the Biden administration. Biden chose to check off identity boxes instead of checking for actual experience on the resumes of his cabinet and senior staff. It shows. The country is in a mess and it’s important that the 2024 GOP nominee, whomever it turns out to be, win the election to start turning the nation around.

Do I think Laura Ingraham will vote for Trump if he is the nominee? Yes, of course she will. She has been one of Trump’s most loyal supporters. That is why it is so interesting to hear Laura admit that people are simply over the drama. Republican voters want the Trump policies back but not the drama.

In the meantime, Trump and some of his supporters want to take advantage of the FBI raid and gin up enthusiasm for Trump’s potential candidacy. Supporters say he should announce his candidacy before the midterms.

Former President Donald Trump claimed that a backlash to the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home will fire up Republican voters and deliver extra seats in November’s midterm elections.

Some of his supporters want Trump to capitalize on anger to the raid to announce his own run for the White House in 2024.

In the meantime, Trump himself said on Monday that it would help Republicans in November’s elections.

‘Republicans could win many additional seats, both in the House & Senate, because of the strong backlash over the raid at Mat-a-Lago,’ he posted on his Truth Social media platform.

‘Polls are showing that some lost Republican territory over the last number of weeks has been more than made up with the unannounced Break In by the FBI, which should never have happened!’

I’m not so sure about his claim about the polls. It plays into the exhaustion felt by supporters over the drama. Trump should concentrate on talking about policy and not on emotions. Elections are about the future, not dwelling in the past. It is time to move on to the younger candidates on the GOP bench. Unlike the Democrats, Republicans have several who could fit the bill, beginning with Ron DeSantis.

 

BUT WILL AMERICAN WOMEN WANT TO BE MOTHERS OR BUSINESS BIGSHOTS?

Putting Parents Back in Charge

An interview with Arizona governor Doug Ducey on the state’s first-of-its-kind universal school-choice legislation

Christopher F. Rufo at realclearpolitics:

August 16, 2022 

Education

Arizona governor Doug Ducey is brimming with optimism. The businessman-turned-politician has spent the past eight years campaigning for universal school choice—and he has finally achieved it. Today, the governor is hosting the signing ceremony for H.B. 2853, which will provide every family in Arizona with an “empowerment scholarship account” (ESA) and an annual $7,000 per child to take to any educational institution of their choice, including private schools, religious schools, and homeschool programs.

I first met the governor last year at a retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where, in between firing rifle and pistol rounds at the shooting range, he spoke with me at length about the Founding Fathers, his own Jesuit education, the threat of critical race theory, and his vision for school reform. The governor had tried to pass universal school choice last summer but came up short by one vote in the legislature. This year, after rallying parents and negotiating with legislators, he has his redemption. Universal school choice has long been the Holy Grail for conservative education reformers. Governor Ducey has achieved it.

I spoke with the governor as he prepared to lead the signing ceremony for this historic victory. The interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

Christopher Rufo: Last year, we met in Jackson Hole and spoke about the deeper purpose of education. What are your first principles when it comes to education policy?

Governor Doug Ducey: The vision that the Founders had around education was the development of a good citizen. And so much of that is in the values and the principles that students learn in school. We’ve seen much of that driven out of traditional K-12 education. The first law that I passed was the American Civics Act. That was to bring civics back to the classroom because we found that if you’re not testing something in K-12, it’s simply not being taught. We were the first state to pass it and we’ve now seen 30 other states follow suit. Then seeing the informed patriotism that is happening in so many of our schools of choice in Arizona—places like the Great Hearts Academy and the BASIS schools network—told me that we need an innovation in our traditional model. We have to break up the cartel that is not teaching our kids things of value around math, reading, and science, or the actual skills of being a good future citizen. That was the real genesis in terms of what can be different in education. And that’s why I’m a huge fan of the educational savings accounts. It puts parents in charge of their child’s education, and it brings some of the market principles to bear that provide higher quality at lower cost, with greater return on investment. This will make for happier children.

Rufo: You’ve been working on this issue for eight years, and your state has now become the first in the nation to pass universal school choice. How did it all come together?

Ducey: This is the issue that animated my running for governor. I believed in this idea. I think this can transform K-12 education. It took all of eight years to get here. Part of it is that we’re in the persuasion business: you have to win over public sentiment; you have to win over legislators to these ideas. There’s an axiom that “friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.” After eight years, there are some threadbare relationships, but this was so important and, as a sitting governor, you do have a certain amount of power— and I intended to use it all. This year, I simply told my team that I was not going to sign the budget until we were able to get this. It took a lot of one-on-one meetings, a lot of phone calls, a lot of lunches and conversations. But we finally got to a majority in both the House and the Senate, and it’s something we’re incredibly excited to sign, something we’re proud that Arizona is leading on.

Rufo: How much did Covid lockdowns, critical race theory, and gender ideology change public perception around education and help pave the way for universal school choice?

Ducey: Covid changed everything in K-12 education. Parents were able to see what their children were being taught via Zoom videos. They were also able to see the lack of rigor and expectation in these classrooms. They saw this pervasive CRT that’s been discovered in so many different districts. And parents were rejecting that, along with the heavy-handed mandates around vaccines and masking, while they saw little to no focus on math, reading, science, character formation, or American civics. We had a lot of parents who were not politically engaged, or had been sitting on the sidelines, saying, “I want to have a say in what happens in my children’s education.” We had an African-American lady, Janelle Wood, who started micro-schools. She sat next to my wife, Angela, at the State of the State address, when I told the body: “Fifty years ago, politicians stood in the schoolhouse door and wouldn’t let minorities in. Today, union-backed politicians stand in the schoolhouse door and won’t let minorities out.” These kids are trapped in failing public schools. It’s time to set these families free. That’s not a Republican idea. That’s an American idea, that we all have equal opportunity and we should have that opportunity for an excellent education.

Rufo: What’s your advice for governors and legislators in other states who are interested in passing universal school choice?

Ducey: First, I’d say to get out of the state capital and get away from the government unions and start talking to parents and building coalitions. Janelle Wood, who leads the Black Mothers Forum, and the black pastors of Arizona—almost all of them registered Democrats—were part of the coalition that helped us get this over the finish line. This is a game-changing issue at the state level, and the audience is large. This is every parent in the state, this is every new couple who wants to have stewardship over their taxpayer dollars, so that they can be in charge of their children’s education. You have to build those coalitions and get out in front of the public and make the case, room by room.

I’d like to think that this could be a bit like Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile. Nobody thought that it was possible. Once one person was able to do it, then many others followed. We know now that universal ESAs are possible, that you can get this through two legislative chambers and have a governor sign it—so let’s see it spread across the country.

Rufo: In my view, universal school choice has the potential not only to serve parents but also to provide communities with meaningful pluralism. Families, neighborhoods, and churches can create their own schools that are centered on their values, not the government’s.

Ducey: I think the educational savings account is the only way to renew and reform K-12 education. I also think it’s the opportunity for us to renew our country. There is no better way to bring communities together than around the best interest of their children. Having parental involvement and making sure that we have the best possible teachers getting additional pay is something that local communities will make certain of and prioritize—but we have to make sure that it’s possible. Too many people have felt trapped in a school system that, for whatever reason, wasn’t right for their child, or they felt like a number in a big education bureaucracy. This is a way to give power back to the people and also to let 1,000 flowers bloom in terms of new ideas—even beyond charter schools, or micro-pods, or who knows what’s next. Traditional K-12 in the United States has been flat-lining since the late seventies. It’s time for a new direction. This puts parents back in charge, and I’m excited about what’s next.

Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Sign up for his newsletter here.

TRUE, TRUE, OH SO TRUE!

August 16, 2022

Too many Republicans are as useless as Democrats

By Patricia McCarthy at American Thinker:

Throughout the long Clinton-fabricated Russia hoax devised to take Trump down, most Republicans had little or nothing to say; too many of them believed it or hoped it was true.  Trump scared them as much as he frightened the left.  

Most of them are participating members of the swamp that Trump promised to drain.  They were nearly as quiet during the two ridiculous impeachments, both absurd and based on lies.  Adam Schiff may well go down in history as the biggest cheat and habitual liar ever to sit in the House.  He has been caught lying numerous times but can’t help himself; he can hardly utter a word that is true. Like the Democrats and the left media who spread every wacky tall tale they get wind of, most Republicans kept their cowardly mouths shut.  Minority leader Kevin McCarthy might as well be a Democrat.  He has had far too little to say about the egregious crimes of the left, especially since Biden took office.

The crimes perpetrated against the nine hundred mostly innocent people who were present in DC to hear Trump’s speech on January 6^th are legion and inexcusable in what once was a democratic representative republic.  While a few brave Republican souls – MTG, Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar —  have worked tirelessly to bring attention to those crimes and the plight of those still imprisoned-without-due-process, most Republicans have shamefully remained quiet.  God forbid they anger the NYT or WaPo, or CNN and MSNBC, both leftist propaganda outlets of the worst kind.  But then truth is not a leftwing value, as Dennis Prager often notes.  

The list of hoaxes and lies the left media and Democrats have embraced since Trump announced his candidacy is long and storied, nearly all of them false.  The anti-Trumpers will believe any absurdity if they think it will damage the man who was the best president since Reagan.   Believability is not a concern; they’ve lost the ability to think critically and too many republicans have fallen prey to the same mental defect.

The left successfully engineered a stolen election because Trump was an outsider who they realized may not toe their DC corrupt line.  They had to prevent the man from running, winning, and winning again. Now they’ve jumped the shark and raided his home at Mar-a-Lago for “classified” documents that have been there since he left office.  They were packed up and shipped there by the GSA (General Services Administration) under the auspices of the NARA (National Archives and Records Administration).  

In June they visited those still unopened boxes of documents they had packed and sent to Palm Beach and then requested an additional lock be  put on the door of the room where those boxes were stored.  Not a newsflash:  The feds had full access to whatever was there.  Trump had been cooperating fully and made his willingness to cooperate in any further requests.  

So, what was this raid all about?  It was meant to dirty-up the man before the mid-term elections and prevent him from running in 2024.  Nearly all of his endorsed candidates have won their primaries.  The Democrats are panicked.  The raid was a foolhardy, injudicious fishing expedition.  Their “warrant” included anything from day one to the last day of Trump’s presidency.  How revealing is that?  

It proves how colossally stupid Merrick Garland, Christopher Wray and those who are Biden’s brain are.  They are short-sighted and incompetent.  Apparently not one of them considered the potential backlash of their Keystone Kops caper at Mar-a-Lago.  These people are not only incompetent, they are deluded. They ignore obvious pitfalls.   According to Paul Sperry, many of the agents who invaded Mar-a-Lago were already under investigation by Durham.  The same agents who breached Mar-A-Lago participated in the Russia hoax.

The never-Trump left has embarrassed themselves over this past week.  Former CIA director Michael Hayden, he of the signers of that pathetic public statement claiming the Hunter Biden laptop was “Russian disinformation,” suggested Trump be executed without doing  a shred of research.  Former alleged historian Michael Beschloss too assumed that whatever the “raid” produced was akin to the Rosenbergs’ crimes!  They were actual spies who passed vital atomic secrets to the Soviets. 

Trump is the most pro-America president since Reagan. No one, not even a single Democrat, should believe that Donald Trump is guilty of any form of espionage.  Clinton, Bush, Obama?  Yeah…they each sold out their own country one way or another but not Trump. Everyone knows that.  

This entire raid fiasco is just more proof that those who rise to power in this country are corrupt and drunk on power.  They are insulated, blinkered by their membership in the swamp, and totally clueless about how most Americans think, work, and strive to provide for their families.  The passage of the tragically misnamed “inflation reduction act” is proof of their malice.  Eighty-seven thousand armed IRS agents can only mean one thing:  police state.  

Contrary to their agenda, most Americans still revere their freedom and their families, that provincial, politically incorrect institution that has been the foundation of western civilization for thousands of years.  Our progressive left seeks to destroy that very institution.  They advocate abortion up to and after birth. They aggressively promote gender transition even for very young children.  They are triggered by any mention of God or any religious belief except Islam.  Apparently the Rosary is now a dangerous symbol of “Christian nationalism”.  Muslims are revered, and Christians and Jews are despised by our left today.  And because Trump is a nominal Christian, that is another reason they loathe him.  Judeo-Christian values have been cancelled by the left.

No matter how hard they try, they will not destroy him because they cannot. Their antics are only making him more revered.  The American people do recognize police state tactics when they see them.  For all his eccentricities, Trump is the real deal, the guy who is not afraid of the left’s grip on the media and education, the man who truly has the nation’s best interests at heart.    That is why they are willing to do anything, no matter how laughable, to destroy his candidacy in 2024.  

These people are in alliance with far too many despicable RINO Republicans: Asa Hutchinson , Mitch McConnell, Dan Crenshaw, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, etc.  There are too many to list, disappointments all.  They have all essentially revealed themselves to be enemies of America, invested only in their own grip on power and access to wealth.  They are reprobate RINOs so they stay silent as they see what the FBI and DOJ are doing to the former President. 

The raid on Trump’s Florida home was egregious in every way; illegal, unconstitutional, foolish, and stupidly obvious in its intent.  Americans who have not already awakened to the devious anti-American, anti-human agenda of the WEF should be very aware and very afraid of what the left has in store for us all.  It’s not at all in the best interests of our constitutional republic.  Their fervor to take Trump out is the clearest warning of all.  

Do not fall for their scheme to make us all irrelevant.  We need to make them, the left and the useless Republicans, irrelevant.  Those of us who love America need to vote in every election, on Election Day, and pray our votes count despite the Democrats’ profound, carefully constructed plan to cheat.

That Afghanistan Disaster Was Dem’s Moron Biden COMMAND!

America’s Disastrous Afghanistan Withdrawal Last Year Was Entirely Biden’s Fault

BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON at the Federalist:

AUGUST 16, 2022

President Biden turned a challenge into a crisis and a crisis into a catastrophe. And then he lied about it.

JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON

Ayear after America’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, no one in the Biden administration has been held accountable, including the person who bears the most responsibility for it: President Joe Biden.

Monday marked the one-year anniversary of the fall of Kabul to the Taliban and the beginning of what was arguably the worst U.S. foreign policy disaster since the fall of Saigon in 1975. In Kabul, the Taliban celebrated by marching in a “Victory Day” parade, holding weapons aloft, waving flags, and shouting “God is great.”

And no wonder — the Taliban won, America lost. If Americans had been in denial about our defeat in Afghanistan, the calamitous U.S. withdrawal last August left no doubt. Images of the chaos that ensued as the Taliban closed in on Kabul shocked the world, perhaps none more so than the throngs of Afghans at the airport, running alongside and clinging to U.S. military aircraft as they took off. Some desperate Afghans held on too long, plunging to their deaths as the Americans flew away.

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The falling men of Kabul would come to symbolize America’s abject failure in Afghanistan. Two decades after 9/11, we departed in chaos and confusion, abandoned at least 800 American citizens and tens of thousands of Afghan allies, and left hundreds of billions of dollars worth of military hardware in the hands of the Taliban, our erstwhile enemies who now rule Afghanistan with an iron fist.

When Kabul fell, Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken were on vacation, just as U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ross Wilson had been earlier that summer, when the country was falling apart.

According to a new report on the Afghanistan withdrawal by Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Wilson’s two-week absence that July made it impossible for the U.S. Embassy in Kabul to make critical decisions and prepare for a Sept. 11 deadline Biden had arbitrarily imposed for the withdrawal of all U.S. forces and personnel. 

The congressional report, according to a recent article by Susan Crabtree of RealClearPolitics, claims Biden and top administration officials lied when they claimed the fall of Kabul came as a surprise, and that they had no choice but to rely on the Taliban for security in the Afghan capital during the U.S. evacuation. 

Relying on the Taliban, it turns out, would prove disastrous when a suicide bomber managed to slip past Taliban security checkpoints and kill 13 U.S. soldiers and some 170 Afghans at a Kabul airport gate. The report reveals that those senseless deaths might have been avoided if the Biden administration had accepted an Aug. 15 offer from the Taliban to allow the U.S. military to control security in the capital during the evacuation.  

As for the fall of Kabul coming as a surprise to Biden’s White House, the report says Biden and his advisers were warned more than a month in advance that the Afghan government was on the brink of collapse. A mid-July cable from nearly two dozen U.S. personnel stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul said the Afghan government and military might quickly collapse amid a U.S. withdrawal, as did a CIA intelligence assessment that summer.

Biden and Blinken ignored it, just as they ignored offers from Guam and Pakistan to provide interim transit centers to help process Afghan interpreters and other evacuees after U.S. air bases in Qatar and Germany had been overwhelmed, according to the report.

Perhaps most notoriously, Biden lied about al-Qaeda being “gone” from Afghanistan (or, as Blinken put it, being reduced to “remnants”). How do we know? Because when U.S. forces recently took out al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, he was living in downtown Kabul. He wasn’t hiding in a cave in the mountains, he was living and working in the heart of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan’s capital city, where he had reportedly relocated with his family only months after the U.S. withdrawal.

This week we’ll hear arguments, pegged to the anniversary of the withdrawal, that it wasn’t really Biden’s fault, that he inherited a war none of his predecessors had the guts to end, that former President Donald Trump left him with an unworkable agreement for withdrawal, that really it was all the fault of the corrupt Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, and the feckless Afghan military.

Certainly, there is blame to go around in America’s decades-long misadventure in Afghanistan. But in the months and even years leading up to last year’s withdrawal, almost no one (except top U.S. generals like Mark Milley) argued we should stay in Afghanistan indefinitely. The question was not, do we get out? But, how do we get out in an orderly way?

By ignoring intelligence on the ground in Afghanistan, failing to make careful preparations months in advance, and ceding control of security in Kabul to the Taliban, among other blunders, Biden turned a challenge into a crisis and a crisis into a catastrophe. And then he lied about it. He is still lying about it. And no one has been held accountable. 

And by the way, that doesn’t just describe the Afghanistan withdrawal, it describes almost every major event of the Biden presidency.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.