Listen to “West Virginia Removes Entire Supreme Court” on Spreaker.

All five members of West Virginia’s supreme court are off the bench following a corruption scandal resulting in three impeachments, two resignations, and one plea bargain to a felony charge.

Chief Justice Margaret Workman and justices Allan Loughry and Beth Walker still face trial in the West Virgina Senate.  Justice Menis Ketchum reached a plea bargain with federal prosecutors before the impeachment votes began.  Justice Robin Davis resigned following the votes in the House of Delegates.

At issue is illegal payment to senior status judges, including the falsifying of 1099 IRS forms.  The judges also spent lavishly to redecorate their offices, which was what initially caught the attention of local WCHS-TV reporter Kennie Bass, who discovered the renovation expenses in Freedom of Information forms.

But the 1099 forms immediately gave the issue import to lawmakers.  Judges falsified the forms to provide additional payment to senior status judges.  Those are retired judges to come in to fill vacancies.  State law only allows senior status judges to earn $126,000 per year, but three of the justices fudged the tax forms to get extra money to those judges.

“Not every justice was charged in this article (of impeachment).  Loughry, Workman, and Davis were charged this way.  That’s because they signed the IRS form to circumvent the law.  It was a scheme to circumvent the state law.  Once the judges hit that threshold of $126,000, they would convert them to 1099 employees and continue to pay them,” said West Virginia Republican Del. Michael Folk, a leading voice in the impeachment effort.

“It’s a criminal statute that if you sign a document as a public official, as an officer, in this case the chief justice of the supreme court with the intent to enable or assist to obtain money to which he was not entitled, you’re guilty of a felony,” said Folk.

Folk says the actions are in clear violation of the West Virginia constitution as well.

“In West Virginia, it could be maladministration under our constitution, high crimes and misdemeanors, neglect of duty, and a few others,” he said.

He says it is especially galling conduct since there were plenty of other senior status judges who had not reached their payment limit.

Folk says the reaction of justices to the initial reports of lavish spending were also very troubling.

“In the case of Loughry, he basically blamed other people and said he didn’t know anything about how much his floor cost and pretty much didn’t have anything to do with the design work.  Once it was dug into, they had found where he had done detailed drawings of the floor exactly how he wanted it done,” said Folk.

“David reacted nonchalantly saying, ‘Yeah, it’s mine but I’m allowed to spend it,'” he added.

It will take two-thirds majorities in the West Virginia Senate to convict Workman, Loughry, or Walker, which may be an uphill climb given the large but not always lopsided impeachment votes in the House.

Since Ketchum and Davis resigned, their seats will be up for election in November.  If any of the impeached justices are convicted, Republican Gov. Jim Justice would appoint replacement, who would then face the voters in 2020.

Folk is not done rooting out corruption and waste of taxpayer dollars.  He is appalled that West Virginia University President E. Gordon Gee travels by plane from the campus in Morgantown to the state capitol in Charleston when they’re only 140 miles apart.

He’s even more upset about how it’s being paid for.

“He’s using student tuition money to fly from Morgantown to Charleston and back and he does that a lot.  He wastes about a million dollars a year,” said Folk.

As for the current scandal, Folk says legislators really had no choice.

“We should expect a lot more from our higher court than what we’ve been receiving in recent years,” he said.

Listen to “Phillips vs. Colorado Again, Horrific Priest Abuse & Cover-up, Economics of Abortion” on Spreaker.
David French of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America take on three heavy topics, starting with Colorado baker Jack Phillips now having a powerful case of discrimination against the Colorado Civil Rights Commission after the commission ruled Phillips had violated the rights of a transgender lawyer for not customizing a cake for their gender transition or one depicting Satan engaged in a sex act.  They also hammer the Catholic church in Pennsylvania over the new grand jury report that reveals more than 3oo priests horrifically abusing more than a thousand children over the decades and the despicable lengths officials in the church went to in order to silence accusers and keep the priests in active ministry.  And they shred Chelsea Clinton’s absurd contention that abortion has been great for the economy because it allows more women to stay in the workforce.

Author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza says the violent “anti-fascist” protesters are the real fascists, that white nationalism is rooted on the left, and that Republican operatives urging conservatives to vote for Democrats this year as a check on President Trump “need to have their heads examined.”

D’Souza’s latest project is “Death of A Nation: Plantation Politics and the Making of the Democratic Party.”  It seeks to draw parallels from the outrage following the election of President Trump to the volcanic opposition to the 1860 victory of Abraham Lincoln.

This past weekend, Antifa protesters took to the streets of Charlottesville and Washington and spent most of their time hurling epithets at police and the media.  D’Souza says Antifa might claim to be opposing fascism but they clearly embody what they say they hate.

“They’re posing as anti-fascists.  Of course they dress like fascists.  They act like fascists.  They have the same intolerance as fascism.  And let’s notice that their target isn’t fascists.  When you’re targeting cops and Republicans and patriots and Christians, you’re actually not targeting fascists but anti-fascists.

“So we have an amazing situation in which the fascists – Antifa – are pretending to be anti-fascists and targeting anti-fascists, whom they claim are fascists,” said D’Souza

So why does the far left have a compulsion towards violence?

“Their view is that since Trump is like Hitler circa 1933, they are fully justified in using, as they say, any means necessary to eject him, including illegal means, including violence,” said D’Souza, who also asserts that fascism is a far left ideology that academic liberals twisted to blur the coziness between the American Democrats and fascist leaders before World War II.

“Fascism is properly defined as the ideology of the centralized state, when you have the state organizing and running the private economy, when you have the states running the lives of citizens.  That’s fascism.  That’s how Mussolini understood it.  That’s how Hitler understood it,” said D’Souza.

Antifa took to the streets to counter a planned rally by white nationalists who never showed up.  The tension between the two sides is often characterized by the media as right versus left.  D’Souza says that’s wrong because both are on the left.  He says this is made clear as he interviews white nationalist figures Jason Kessler and Richard Spencer in “Death of A Nation.”

“These guys actually have backgrounds in the left.  They’re not right wingers and yet the media doesn’t report this.  Why?  Because they’re trying to pin the fascist and racist tail on the Republican elephant,” said D’Souza.

D’Souza says white nationalism is a “spent force” that usually cannot muster more than a few dozen people to events that are then dwarfed by counterprotesters.  But if white nationalists are of the the left, why did so many openly endorse President Trump in 2016?

D’Souza says it was their ticket to short-term relevance.

“They call (the rally) ‘Unite the Right’ because they want to feed the left wing narrative that they are somehow representative of Trump and this somehow gives them an inflated notoriety.  In exchange, what they’re giving the left is that they’re confirming and corroborating the left’s narrative,” said D’Souza.

Liberal protesters take to the streets en masse in opposition to most Republican presidents but D’Souza says it’s worse this time because Trump fights back.

“Trump realizes that he’s in a big fight.  The Left does not hold back.  The traditional Republican strategy of going under your desk or running for the exit doesn’t really work in this situation,” said D’Souza.

He says the next big fight is in the the midterm elections.  D’Souza says Democrats already have several racial and ethnic groups dependent upon government to supply what they need to exist and handing them the majority means they will only look to expand what he calls “plantation politics.”

“They’d love to have everybody in this position of ethnically-enforced dependence.  It’s actually a horrible system and it would make this a horrible country, which is why we have to work really hard to prevent that nightmare from becoming a reality,” said D’Souza.

Several anti-Trump Republican operatives like Michael Gerson and Steve Schmidt are urging conservatives to vote for Democrats under the logic that the GOP has been corrupted by Trump and must be destroyed so it can be rebuilt again.

D’Souza rejects that entirely.

“These people literally need to have their heads examined,” he said.  “They’re talking absolute nonsense and should be completely ignored.”

Listen to “Corruption Crackdown, 9th Circus on Guns, Vote Dem to Fix GOP?” on Spreaker.
David French of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America applaud the West Virginia legislature for impeaching four of the state’s five state supreme court justices for gross mismanagement of taxpayer dollars.  They also roll their eyes as the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholds a California law requiring any guns subsequently purchased in the state must include features that don’t actually exist.  And they unload on “conservatives” from Michael Gerson to Steve Schmidt, who contend that conservatives need to vote for Democrats because supposedly the only way to save the Republican Party is to burn it to the ground.

Former Trump administration staffer and former reality television star Omarosa Manigault Newman is releasing clips of secret recordings she allegedly made in the most sensitive areas of the White House, and a former White House information official says that could mean big trouble.

Manigault Newman is publicizing the conversations she had with President Trump and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly from around the time she was fired from the administration.  She says the discussion with Kelly took place in the White House Situation Room, which is designated as a “Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility,” or SCIF, pronounced “skiff.”

“If this turns out to be true that a recording device was in the White House Situation Room, of all places, that would be an incredibly serious breach of not only trust but a breach of a classified facility on a level that is very, very serious,” said Theresa Payton, who served as White House Chief Information Officer in the George W. Bush administration.  She is now CEO at Fortalice Solutions, a cybersecurity consulting firm.

Payton says there are severe consequences for flouting protocol in these facilities.

“This is considered a grave security breach so there’s a lot of different actions that could choose to take.  Some of those actions that they could entertain are revoking a security clearance, recommending an individual to not clear again.

“They could take legal action.  That’s typically rare unless secrets were sold to the adversary or a real grave breach happened,” said Payton.

She says it is understood by anyone with security clearance that electronic devices have no place in a SCIF.

“Classified conversations, classified phone calls, classified documents are handled within that facility.  Often times, that facility has no windows.  There’s a series of doors that you have to punch in codes and slide cards into.  There’s a whole sense of protocol.  You can’t accidentally trip into a conference room that’s a SCIF,” said Payton.

Outside the SCIF are usually a series of lockers or storage boxes for people entering the SCIF to leave all electronic devices.

“You never know if those devices are compromised and could be turned into listening and recording devices that could be used by the adversary and/or if they would potentially be connecting to other devices that could be in the room that have been cleared to be in the room for phone calls or video conferences,” said Payton.

The list of banned items includes smartphones, laptops, and tablets but also items like fitness trackers.

There are signs posted prominently outside the SCIF for people to unload their devices but for staff there is frisking or wanding involved.  They are given multiple classes on the proper handling of classified informationand are expected to honor their promises to follow protocols.

“You’re somewhat on the honor system because you are a trained individual and you signed a document saying, “I understand the training.  I understand the law and I will follow it.’  Nobody’s frisking you because they expect you to because they expect you to implement the training you were given and to honor the agreement that you signed,” said Payton.

Payton adds that guests to the White House and other sensitive facilities are put through a number of detectors and instructed to hand over their electronic devices before entering a SCIF but she says there are rarely pat downs for those people either.

She says the fight against cybercrime is far more complicated than when she served in the White House and says it is a constant challenge to stay ahead of people who wish to do far more harm than Omarosa.

“As we improve the defenses at the White House, the adversary realized, ‘This is getting hard.’  And they don’t suddenly say, ‘This is so hard, I should just go be a good person and bake pies for my neighbor.’  They up their game.

“It’s almost like an arms race if you will on the cybersecurity side to stay one step ahead of the adversary,” said Payton.

Listen to “White Nationalists Wither, Antifa Violence Largely Ignored, Omarosa vs. Trump” on Spreaker.
David French of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are encouraged to see a pathetic turnout at the white nationalist rally in Washington D.C. on Sunday, and they hope the media will stop giving airtime to this fringe group.  They also call on the media to cover the violence of the leftist protest group Antifa the same way they cover the alt-right.  And they believe President Donald Trump hired Omarosa Manigault for the wrong reason– because she said “GREAT” things about him– which led to the fallout where she now calls him a racist.

Firefighters spent much of the past week battling the largest wildfire in California history, but an environmental policy expert says things are not getting worse because of climate change but because California is dry and liberal forest policies are making fires bigger, making the air quality worse, and putting lives and homes in danger.

Earlier this week, California officials declared the Mendocino Complex fire the largest in state history, responsible for charring tens of thousands of acres.  Other fires threaten lives and property elsewhere in the state.

Environmental activists claim that human activity is leading to a more volatile climate that makes hurricanes more intense, heatwaves and droughts more intense and snowfalls deeper.

But what do the facts show?

“Climate does play a role in all of this, but not in a way that environmentalists would have you believe,” said Dr. Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

Cohen says the California climate is always conducive for wildfires.

“The climate in California is arid.  It always has been and always will be.  At times it is subject to drought and sometimes even extreme droughts.  California has recently recovered from an extreme drought,” said Cohen, noting the drought was rates the eighth worst in the past century.

But Cohen says the arid nature of the state is only one major factor in the huge fires.

“This dry climate is exacerbated by strong winds.  There are strong winds in southern California – the infamous Santa Anna winds – and strong winds in northern California.  It is not uncommon for these winds to gust up to 60 or 70 miles per hour,” said Cohen.

He also points out the fires find plenty of additional fuel thanks to counterproductive environmental policies.

“California has a lot of public land, federal land and state land, and there are strict restrictions on a lot of that regarding logging and even removal of dead and diseased trees.

“You have tinderboxes brought to you courtesy of either the federal government, or the state government, or – tragically in some cases – both,” said Cohen.

Cohen adds that by bending over backwards on behalf of the environment, liberals are actually harming it.

“Fires are actually a normal and perfectly healthy way of dealing with overgrown forests, but when those forests are mismanaged as U.S. Forest Service land has been mismanaged, not for years but for decades with overgrown forests, these forests are an open invitation to the tragic wildfires that we’re seeing here now,” said Cohen.

The impact is not limited to the forests.  California’s already fragile air quality also suffers.

“You can tighten up the Clean Air act as much as you wish, but once you have these forest fires taking off the way they are out West, the quality of air suffers.  It is absolutely filthy.  You would think environmentalists would be deeply disturbed by this.  As a matter of fact, they show no signs of doing so whatsoever,” said Cohen.

Cohen says liberal policies are also why we see families and homes devastated in these fires.  Cohen says liberal policies consistently drive the cost of living higher and higher in big cities from San Francisco to Los Angeles to San Diego.  That forces middle class families into areas of the state far more prone to the fires.

According to Cohen, the Healthy Forest Initiative in the George W. Bush administration helped to move things in the right direction by allowing some thinning of forests on federal lands, but he says reforms need to go further.

“[They need to] make it easier for Forest Service personnel to thin trees that they know should be removed so that when the next wildfire comes along it will not enter a tinderbox and devastate thousands upon thousands of acres of land,” said Cohen.

As for the environmentalists, Cohen says they won’t allow any common sense intervention in the forests, despite the impact fires are having on the air and land.

“Their reaction is very simple.  Leave it alone.  Don’t harm nature.  Don’t interfere.  Let nature take its course.  That’s as far as they are willing to go.

“It’s an interesting way of looking at the world, in which you place a higher value on a nature that really doesn’t exist in a way in which they mean it at the expense of human beings who are caught up in the grotesque mismanagement of nature,” said Cohen.

Listen to “Dems Slip in Generic Ballot, Ingraham Immigration Furor, Richard Gere for Congress?” on Spreaker.
Jim  Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America look at generic congressional ballot polls showing the Democratic blue wave might not threaten Republicans as much as was previously thought. They also think Laura Ingraham took the wrong tone during an immigration rant on Wednesday night, and they suggest the immigration discussion focus on policies and beliefs rather than demographics. And they continue to knock Republicans and Democrats for prioritizing celebrities in politics above genuine discussion of ideas, with actor Richard Gere’s name being tossed into the ring for New York’s 18th Congressional District and lawyer Michael Avenatti heading to Iowa to explore a presidential bid.

Middle East tensions are heating up again as Israel mounts a military response to nearly 200 Hamas rockets fired into Israel, but a Reagan-era Pentagon official says the real headline here is that the benefactors of Hamas are rattled.

“I think it’s because its patron, Iran, is in trouble.  The Iranians are making a concerted effort, I think, to attack Israel while they can,” said Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney, who served as an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration.

“The regime, the mullah-ocracy if you will, is increasingly facing pressure from its own people, among others things, to stop supporting Hamas and for that matter Bashar Assad in Syria and Hezbollah,” added Gaffney.

Instability has arisen in Iran before, most notably in the 2009 Green Revolution against the mullahs and then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after clearly rigged elections.

But Gaffney says the current protests are unlike anything we’ve seen before.

“What seems to be different about what’s happening now is that it’s not just certain strata of society that are opposing the government in a visible, public way, as was true in the Green Revolution.

“You have masses of people from across the demographic, political, economic spectrum, many of whom are facing the fact that there’s no longer any water for them to drink.  There’s no employment opportunities.  They’re fleeing their cities and towns and going elsewhere in search of basic necessities,” said Gaffney.

The Israeli military has already carried out airstrikes against Hamas targets in Gaza after 180 rockets were fired into Israel.  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is ordering “strong action” in retaliation as well.

Gaffney says it’s a complicated issue for Israel.  On the one hand, Netanyahu cannot allow his country to be attacked without a fierce response.  At the same time, Hamas consistently embeds its military elements in civilian locations like hospitals and daycare centers.  When Israel attacks the military assets, Hamas and much of the world inevitably accuse it of carry out human rights atrocities.

But Gaffney says both sides need to walk a diplomatic tightrope.

“I think both sides are trying to walk that fine line.  The folks in Hamas understand that Israel can do very considerable harm to their infrastructure and operations.  On the other hand Israelis understand almost anything they do is going to be met with intense criticism by countries elsewhere,” said Gaffney.

The U.S. will be one of the few nations to defend Israel at the United Nations and elsewhere.  But Gaffney says President Trump can achieve greater stability in the Middle East by choking the economic life out of Iran and all of its proxies in the region.

Specifically, he implores Trump to keep up pressure through economic sanctions.  Earlier this week, the U.S. reimposed sanctions on items ranging from carpets to gold and from pistachios to automobiles and aircraft.  Another round of sanctions are scheduled for early November, which will target Iran banks and the oil industry.

“This is a moment when economic warfare against the regime and making very clear our desire to help the Iranian people and stand with them will have a very salutary effect,” said Gaffney.

Listen to “Media Buries Terrorist Compound Story, No Death in Single Payer? Nelson Cries Russia” on Spreaker.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are baffled by the lack of media coverage about a New Mexico compound where starving children were reportedly being trained to carry out school shootings, and they find, once again, that the FBI responded slowly to compelling tips.  They also continue to find entertainment in socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is now claiming that medicare-for-all would eliminate funeral expenses.  And they wonder why Florida Sen. Bill Nelson had made claims about Russian interference in the election when no state official has heard anything about it.