Columnist: If the Nation is More Important to Hillary Than Power, She Will Step Down

“It would be the most responsible thing to do.”

11.1.2016 

 

News

 

 Trey Sanchez 

 

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Conservative Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass has a suggestion after the recent bombshell dropped in the 2016 presidential election that the FBI is re-opening the investigation into E-Mailgate: If the nation is truly more important to Hillary Clinton than power, she should step down.

For all the talk about qualifications that Clinton and other Democrats have suggested a U.S. president have, mishandling national secrets is certainly one in which disqualifies a person from obtaining the highest office in the land and is also one in which the FBI has determined Mrs. Clinton guilty.

At the very least of the scandal-plagued life she has led so far, Kass believes Democrats have one noble thing to do in this situation:

If ruling Democrats hold themselves to the high moral standards they impose on the people they govern, they would follow a simple process:

They would demand that Mrs. Clinton step down, immediately, and let her vice presidential nominee, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, stand in her place. 

Democrats should say, honestly, that with a new criminal investigation going on into events around her home-brew email server from the time she was secretary of state, having Clinton anywhere near the White House is just not a good idea…

The best thing would be for Democrats to ask her to step down now. It would be the most responsible thing to do, if the nation were more important to them than power. And the American news media — fairly or not firmly identified in the public mind as Mrs. Clinton's political action committee — should begin demanding it.

In a video accompanying the column, Kass asks, “Are you ready to have a president-elect, should she be elected, the subject of a criminal investigation?” And if Kaine isn’t the right person, he adds, then choose Bernie Sanders this late in the game. But as he wonders in his piece, “Has America become so numb by the decades of lies and cynicism oozing from Clinton Inc." that voters are still willing to give her a shot?

And of the political strife and division sweeping the country, Kass argues that it’s wrong to blame only Trump: “It's obvious the American political system is breaking down. It's been crumbling for some time now, and the establishment elite know it and they're properly frightened. Donald Trump, the vulgarian at their gates, is a symptom, not a cause. Hillary Clinton and husband Bill are both cause and effect.”

Of course, Clinton won’t step down because surrender is never an option for her family. It has always been about power, as Kass also concludes, and about “protecting fortunes already made by selling nothing but political influence:"

The Clintons weren't skilled merchants. They weren't traders or manufacturers. The Clintons never produced anything tangible. They had no science, patents or devices to make them millions upon millions of dollars.

All they had to sell, really, was influence. And they used our federal government to leverage it.

“If you take a step back from tribal politics, you'll see that Mrs. Clinton has clearly disqualified herself from ever coming near classified information again,” Kass continues. “If she were a young person straight out of grad school hoping to land a government job, Hillary Clinton would be laughed out of Washington with her record. She'd never be hired.”

But this isn't just any old government job, this is president of the United States. That position should be earned, not bought.

The Freedom Center is a 501c3 non-profit organization. Therefore we do not endorse political candidates either in primary or general elections. However, as defenders of America’s social contract, we insist that the rules laid down by both parties at the outset of campaigns be respected, and that the results be decided by free elections. We will oppose any attempt to rig the system and deny voters of either party their constitutional right to elect candidates of their choice.

Thornton: How Trump Happened How the #NeverTrumpers sunk themselves.

Thornton: How Trump Happened

How the #NeverTrumpers sunk themselves.

11.1.2016 

 

Commentary

 

 Truth Revolt 

 

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The chorus of NeverTrumpers is wailing ever louder as election day and Hillary’s supposed victory approach. After more than a year of complaining about Trump crashing their political soiree, the Republicans attacking Trump still don’t seem to get how their own behavior contributed to the perception that they are out-of-touch elites disdainful of the Republican masses.

A recent example comes from premier NeverTrumper Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal. In his column Stephens bids farewell to a Republican Party stupid enough to nominate Trump, contrasting it with his imagined Golden Age of Republican policy excellence that Trump and his followers have destroyed. One policy in particular, immigration, reveals the distance between the political and pundit elite and the voting masses that helped make Trump the nominee:

At a 1980 Republican primary debate in Houston, candidates George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan were asked whether the children of illegal immigrants should be allowed to attend public schools for free. Mr. Bush said they should. “We’re creating a whole society of really honorable, decent, family-loving people that are in violation of the law,” he lamented.

Reagan agreed. Instead of “putting up a fence,” he asked, “why don’t we . . . make it possible for them to come here legally with a work permit, and then, while they’re working and earning here, they pay taxes here.” For good measure, Reagan suggested we should “open the border both ways.”

Where, in the populist fervor to build a wall with Mexico and deport millions of human beings, is that Republican Party today?

Take Bush senior’s statement first. It repeats basically the same clichés that the bipartisan Gang of Eight recycled in 2013 during their push for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, another euphemism for amnesty. All those hard-working, family-values illegal immigrants are embryonic conservatives, we were told, who just need legal status and social recognition so they can “come out of the shadows,” as John McCain said, and start voting Republican. The political apple doesn’t fall far from the tree: son Jeb ended his presidential ambitions by calling illegal immigration an “act of love.”

This stance on illegal immigration by Republican politicos and pundits is obviously light-years from the experience and position of many ordinary people. Take McCain’s oft-repeated trope of “living in the shadows.” Seriously? Illegal alien young people openly protest on live television, knowing they are not going to be deported. Millions visit emergency rooms for free, and wrangle food stamps, welfare transfers, school lunches, and all sorts of largess, all the while they live protected by “sanctuary cities.” And “living in the shadows” doesn’t deter them from committing felonies, given that even if caught, convicted, and deported, they’ll soon be back. Remember Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, the illegal alien deported five times, who murdered Kate Steinle? Or Angel Gilberto Garcia-Avalos, another five-time deportee who just this month started a $61 million fire in Sequoia National Park? He had just been released from the Kern County Jail, but could not be deported because of California’s lunatic sanctuary city law, which prohibits a sheriff from contacting federal agents.

Simply repeating the “hard-working, family values, religious” mantra doesn’t address the problems of illegal immigration. There are such illegal immigrants, as I know from over sixty years of personal experience living in the San Joaquin Valley, one of the largest concentrations of illegal aliens in the country. I grew up with Mexican-Americans, they’re members of my immediate family, they’re my friends, students, and colleagues. They’re also the victims of the crimes and disorder caused by our porous border.

Some illegals do transition into these sort of immigrants, but many do not. A rigorous vetting process might sort out the wheat from the chaff. But Bush, McCain, and Stephens have not proposed a workable, rigorous mechanism for determining who should stay and who should go. That means with any form of amnesty, citizenship will likely be granted indiscriminately, with only the most egregious felons sifted out, if any are stupid enough to apply for citizenship rather than continuing to “live in the shadows.” But all those guilty of DUIs, hit-and-runs, or defrauding the welfare system with fake IDs will stay––and then bring their extended families under the provisions of the disastrous 1965 Immigration Act, which enshrined “family reunification,” with no limits on relatives of U.S. citizens.

Equally tone-deaf is Stephens’s bringing up Ronald Reagan’s “open the border both ways.” That’s exactly what he did in 1986 when he signed the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, which granted amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, with promises of “border enforcement” that never materialized. Stephens doesn’t mention that as a result, the number of illegal immigrants increased from about 3 million to 11 million, creating today’s crisis. The obvious lesson is secure the border first, then figure out what to do with the 11 million. It would be governmental malfeasance to repeat Reagan’s mistake.

The problem with politicians and pundits like Stephens is they don’t live with the consequences of indiscriminately letting in people from very different cultures and mores. People like Stephens don’t live daily with the disorder and crime that results. They’re not aware of the extensive damage to quality of life, the illegal immigration version of “broken windows,” such as dogs without rabies shots running free, health and safety codes ignored, building codes shrugged off, garbage and refuse dumped everywhere, copper wire stolen from pumps and street lights, and chronic petty theft––and that’s on top of stolen cars, hit-and-runs, driving without insurance, gang-banging, and dealing drugs.

And if Mr. Stephens thinks I’m just a nativist or xenophobe or racist, I dare him to visit the San Joaquin Valley. Better yet, let him bring his wife and children to live there for a month. Come and tour a hospital emergency room, a Social Security disability office, a public school, a county jail, and then wax lyrical about these “honorable, decent, family-loving people.” It would take just a week for Mr. Stephens to develop a “fervor” for a five-foot high wall around his house, and buy four or five pit bulls and a shotgun. Then again, he wouldn’t last that long. Within a day he’d scurry back to his nice, white, secure tony neighborhood where he doesn’t have to pay the cost of his moral preening.

And that hypocrisy is where Trump came from. In the perception of millions of voters––perceptions NeverTrumpers have fed so incessantly that they look a lot like reality––the conservative politicians and pundits care more about their privileged status and purity of principle than they do about the welfare and interests of their party’s voters. And so they would rather see a venal, perjurious, corrupt mediocrity become Obama 2.0 and continue the progressive destruction of the Constitutional order, than see elected the nominee of their own party. What sort of “principle” is that?

Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

Glick: Netanyahu's Critical Foreign Tour

The unraveling of the US electorate comes against the backdrop of the diminution of US military power.

11.1.2016 

 

Commentary

 

 Caroline Glick 

 

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming trips to Australia, Singapore, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan might be the most significant diplomatic visits he makes in his tenure in office. The trips will take place against the backdrop of two major international shifts that cast Israel into uncharted waters as a small state with a dizzying array of strategic threats arrayed against it. The states that he will visit are all well-positioned to help Israel navigate its next moves.

The first shift is the US’s political crackup.

Next week American voters will choose their next president. The major candidates, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump, are the weakest candidates to have ever stood for the highest office in the land. Their rise is a testament to the weakening, if not the unraveling of the glue that has held America together since the Civil War.

The unraveling of the US electorate comes against the backdrop of the diminution of US military power. The US’s multi-trillion dollar investment in inconclusive if not failed wars in the Middle East over the past 15 years has come at the expense of military modernization. The F-35 program has sucked up the majority of the remaining research and development funds.

And it has yet to produce a reliable airplane.

Worse, the F-35’s long and problematic gestation period has given Russia and China the time and opportunity to develop air defense systems capable of neutralizing the F-35’s stealth systems.

Those systems were supposed to be its chief advantage as the next generation fighter for the US and its allies.

The deterioration of the US’s military capabilities has gone hand in hand with the US’s apparent loss of strategic rationality.

This is apparent worldwide, but is nowhere more obvious than in the Middle East.

President Barack Obama’s decision to effectively abandon the US’s major allies in the Middle East in favor of cultivating ties with Iran has made the region far more dangerous to the US and its spurned allies than it was eight years ago.

True, in theory, Obama’s decision to prefer the Shi’ites to the Sunnis makes sense given the totalitarian and imperial nature of Sunni jihadism. But in light of the genocidal, totalitarian and imperial nature of the current Iranian regime, his move made no sense and its impact has been massively destructive.

Moreover, Obama’s willingness to rack up the US’s national debt in an unprecedented manner and repress economic growth through overregulation has left a large question mark over the possibility of a military buildup.

In other words, even under the best circumstances, it is hard to imagine that the US will be capable of reestablishing its global primacy over the next four years or even over the next decade.

The implications for Israel are far reaching. For decades, Israel’s strategic posture has been predicated on its ability to depend on US power. This strategic posture is no longer tenable.

The second major international shift is Russia’s sudden rise as the primary global power in the Middle East. As Channel 2 reported Sunday night, Russia has deployed sophisticated naval and air systems in the region that can detect all of Israel’s air and naval operations. In a matter of months, Israel has lost the air and naval supremacy it has enjoyed for the past four decades.

The air force reportedly is convinced that the F-35’s stealth systems will be able to neutralize Russia’s detection capabilities.

But given the well-documented current problems with the F-35’s stealth systems, this conviction is unwise. And even under the best circumstances, in which Israel has the opportunity to develop its own electronic warfare systems and apply them to its F-35 without American interference, it will take Israel years to surmount the challenge that rapidly improving Russian systems present to our air force.

According to Channel 2’s report, air force and naval commanders are in a panic over the sudden turn of events.

Rather than panicking though, Israel needs to roll with the punches and figure out how best to cope with this new situation. The obvious answer is that we need to quickly expand our capabilities in areas that Russia’s military primacy does not reach.

Specifically, Israel needs to expand massively its capacity for under-the-radar operations. The first area that needs to be massively strengthened is our intelligence capabilities, particularly human intelligence capabilities. Israel should be investing massively in developing and expanding our cultivation and direction of proxies on the ground throughout the region.

Second, Israel needs to adapt its cyber technology capabilities in a manner that diminishes our enemies’ ability to strike us. Israel needs to be able to disrupt and disable command and control and other systems. Israel’s reach needs to extend as low down the line of its enemies’ military chain of command as possible.

If our offensive capabilities are being checked, so must the capabilities of our enemies.

Indeed, our enemies need to be subverted.

Part of the intelligence and cyber capabilities that Israel must develop and deploy must be geared toward destabilizing with the goal of overthrowing the regime in Iran. At the same time, Israel should be empowering anti-regime sectors in Iran in a manner that expands the prospect of developing close ties with a successor regime along the lines of the strategic alliance Israel built with the regime of the shah in the decades which preceded the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Third, Israel needs to expand and diversify the capabilities of our ground forces. Israel needs to be capable of using new means to deploy its fighters at home and on distant shores. It needs to align its both its special and regular forces with the new threat environment. And it needs to be able to utilize its ground forces in manners that can extend the reach and diminish the compromised positions of its air and naval assets in the era of Russian regional primacy.

Fourth, Israel needs to expand its economic growth and diversify its economic ties in a manner that positions it as a regional economic power. It needs to use it natural gas resources specifically as a means to expand and deepen its ties with Asia. Such economic growth and power will positively influence Russia’s willingness to allow Israel to carry out air and naval operations against its enemies – and Russia’s allies in Lebanon, Syria and beyond. In other words, the more economically powerful Israel is, the more Russia will be willing to side with Israel against Hezbollah and others that are currently operating under the Russian umbrella.

This then brings us to Netanyahu’s upcoming trips. Each state that he will visit has something to offer Israel in expanding its intelligence, cyberwarfare and economic capabilities. Australia, a major Western economy, is moving toward China as America has become less engaged in the Pacific. Israel has an acute interest in using Australia as a platform for expanding its ties to China and other Asian countries, both because of the economic advantages such ties convey and due to China’s strategic importance to Russia.

As for Singapore, Israel effectively built the Singaporean military in the 1960s and 1970s. The country remains extremely supportive of Israel. Like Australia, Singapore has close ties to China.

It has technological and other capabilities that can be extremely advantageous for Israel today.

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are critically important to Israel today. Their strategic proximity to Iran, and their ties to Russia, along with their ethnic composition and their natural resources make securing good relations with both critical to Israel’s ability to advance and security its strategic interests in every sphere.

Israel has tremendous assets to offer each of the four countries that Netanyahu will visit. These assets must be deployed wisely to ensure that Israel gains as much as possible from his trip and from its future ties with all of them.

Given the dramatic changes in the global power balance, and their implications for Israel, Netanyahu’s decision to fly to visit these four countries just after the US elections tells us that he gets it. At a time of regional and global turbulence and uncertainty, in the context of swiftly multiplying threats, this is no small matter.

Prager: Still Think Hillary Clinton Is a Role Model for Your Daughter?

The notion that Hillary Clinton is a role model for young American women is yet another testimony to the moral decline of America.

11.1.2016 

 

Commentary

 

 Dennis Prager 

 

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Three months ago, I wrote a column refuting the claim repeatedly made by supporters of Hillary Clinton that having a woman president -- specifically, Hillary Clinton -- would be a terrific thing for girls and young women.

In light of how much more we now know about Clinton's activities while secretary of state and the renewal by the FBI of its investigation of her private email server as well as the revelation, denied months ago by Clinton, that it is investigating her family-run charities, it is a topic worth revisiting. Good and decent men and women who are Democrats ought to stop thinking this way -- for America's sake and for their daughters' sake.

Only those in willful denial can continue to reject the overwhelming evidence that Clinton is essentially a crook, prone to chronic lying, and, worst of all, she has betrayed America's best interests for those of herself and her husband.

There is nothing I can say to those people.

But to those Democrats who will vote for Clinton but who are nevertheless able to acknowledge Hillary Clinton's extraordinary ethical defects, I make the following appeal: Do not believe, let alone claim, that having her as president, if she is elected, will be a good thing for your daughters.

Quite the contrary.

The notion that Hillary Clinton is a role model for young American women is yet another testimony to the moral decline of America -- not to mention to the moral state of the American Left and the Democratic Party.

While many of us who are voting for Donald Trump readily acknowledge our ambivalence over doing so, one never hears any moral ambivalence from Democrats, liberals or anyone else voting for Hillary Clinton.

Indeed, Clinton supporters -- especially women -- speak of the Democrats' nominee with pride. They actually say that they yearn for her to be president so as to serve as a model for young American women.

If Clinton supporters said, "I will support just about any Democrat for president, no matter how personally immoral, because I consider defeating Republicans the most important thing we Americans can do on Election Day," I could live with that.

The converse, after all, is my position. I will support just about any Republican for president, given the perhaps irreparable damage the Left and the Democrats have wreaked on America -- on its universities, its economy, its race relations, its standing in the world, its allies, on free speech and on the moral fabric of American life.

But Clinton supporters don't say that. Rather, they extol the virtues of a profoundly unethical woman who, mounting evidence indicates, sold her country's interests for her and her husband's personal and political gain. And they endlessly repeat the claim about how wonderful it would be for girls and young women to see this woman in the White House.

In my earlier column, I characterized the argument that it is important for women to vote for a woman president as morally primitive. I feel the same way about blacks voting for blacks, Jews for Jews, Hispanics for Hispanics, and Mormons for Mormons because the candidate is a member of their "tribe." Such group-think is the opposite of what America was set up to be -- a place where, for once, the individual, not the individual's group, is what most matters.

It is also worth noting that the majority of conservative women would not think this way. Women with conservative values are far less committed to female solidarity than liberal women.

Why is that?

Because conservatives do not think as tribally as liberals. People on the left think of themselves as worldly, but this is true only regarding national identity -- they value national identity far less than people on the right. But what the left has done is trade in national identity for race, gender and class identity.

Most conservative women are not impressed with the idea of "female solidarity." And almost all conservatives regard racial solidarity as just another term for racism.

Moreover, far more conservative women think that if a woman is going to serve as a model for their daughters, then her primary responsibility and achievement is making a healthy and character-building home. They are therefore less likely than liberal women to think in terms of astronaut or president when they think about a female role model for their daughter.

Certainly, in terms of America's well-being, they are right. America needs far more great mothers and wives than it needs female astronauts and presidents.

Any support for Hillary Clinton because she is a female is troubling. It is statement that gender identity is more important than moral character. That is the message every parent who asks his or her daughter to look to Hillary Clinton as a model is communicating.

Glazov Gang: How Facebook Enables Militant Islamic Jihad The social media giant's double standard says it all.

Glazov Gang: How Facebook Enables Militant Islamic Jihad

The social media giant's double standard says it all.

11.1.2016 

 

News

 

 Truth Revolt 

 

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This new special edition of The Glazov Gang, hosted by FrontPage Mag editor Jamie Glazov, features Joe Newby, a Marine veteran, IT expert, and conservative columnist. He is the the co-author (with Adina Kutnicki) of the new book, Banned: How Facebook Enables Militant Islamic Jihad.

Mr. Newby came on the show to discuss the book and unveil the dark world of a titanic social media site. Check out the fascinating video above.

Subscribe to The Glazov Gang‘s YouTube Channel.

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Helloween in Chicago: 18 Dead, 58 Wounded The weekend marks deadliest in the last three years.

Helloween in Chicago: 18 Dead, 58 Wounded

The weekend marks deadliest in the last three years.

11.1.2016 

 

News

 

 Trey Sanchez 

 

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The weekend of Halloween 2016 became the deadliest in the last three years for Chicago with 18 people killed, including six teenagers, and nearly 60 wounded.

On the day of Halloween, two people were killed and at least 17 wounded across the city. A 24-year-old man was killed in a drive-by shooting Monday evening, and during the day, a 28-year-old man was shot to death inside an apartment. Thirteen of the 17 wounded were shot in less than six hours. The victims were overwhelmingly teenagers suffering gunshot wounds to various parts of the body.

Between Friday and Monday morning was the worst in three years, with 16 dead and 41 wounded. Slain victims include twin 17-year-old brothers killed in a drive-by, two 19-year-olds shot in separate incidents inside parked cars, and a 24-year-old woman who was dropped off at a hospital to die.

NBC 5 time-marked the individual shootings revealing a pattern of gang-related violence and random violence: teenagers shot in cars, walking on sidewalks, and adults lying dead in the streets making for a horrific scene over the Halloween weekend.

Not only is this weekend the deadliest of the year, beating out Father’s Day and Labor Day weekends, but it’s the deadliest weekend in three years.

Chicago has in place some of the strictest gun laws in the country and yet is consistently among the most violent places to be. Lawmakers advocating for more gun-control laws are only hurting law-abiding citizens. As is the case in Chicago and every other city in America, criminals aren’t following the gun laws already in place.