News & Politics

One of the leading human rights voices in the United States says Nigeria is becoming badly destabilized due to the rampage of terrorist groups and a fragmenting of the population there could trigger a refugee crisis in the West that would make the current infusion of refugees pale in comparison.

Former Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., is now a distinguished senior fellow at the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative.  He was part of a delegation from the group that visited Nigeria earlier this year and concluded the country is in grave danger of collapse while the people there feel as though the rest of the world has abandoned them.

Wolf says that is being proved again in recent days as the world barely notices a video showing some of the 276 Christian schoolgirls abducted more than two years ago.  The video depicts one girl pleading with the Nigerian government to release Boko Haram fighters from prison as the only way for her and the other girls to be released.

“The girls were kidnapped two years ago in April and there was such a hue and cry.  If you recall the #BringBackOurGirls.  Mrs. Obama did that.  Former Prime Minister David Cameron did one in England.  Then all of a sudden, people have all forgotten about them,” said Wolf.

Media coverage in the West has been dominated this year by ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks and the U.S. presidential race.  But does that mean Boko Haram is any less brutal to the people of Nigeria?  Wolf says it’s far worse than anyone realizes.

“No, Boko Haram is the most dangerous terrorist group in the world.  Second most dangerous is ISIS,” said Wolf.  “They’re killing Christians.  They’re burning churches.  They’re even burning mosques.”

One of the worst attacks in recent months came during the 21st Century Wilberforce trip to Nigeria.

“The week we were there, in the village of Agatu, they killed about 200 people.  They came in helicopters and motorized boats.  So no, they are the most dangerous and they’ve pledged allegiance to ISIS,” said Wolf.

Wolf says he and many others fear a a major destabilizing of Nigeria and its neighbors could be horrific for western civilization.

“The impact the Syrian refugees have had in Europe, in Germany, in France, has been unbelievable.  It’s been very, very negative,” said Wolf, nothing that Syria’s population was about 25 million.

“Nigeria has 180 million people.  The Irish rock star Bono said a couple of months ago if Nigeria fragments and breaks apart, the impact in Europe will be an existential threat,” said Wolf.

On top of the mess in Nigeria itself, he says chaos there would trigger refugee migrations from neighboring countries.

“Plus you have all the people in Cameroon, you’ve got the people in Chad, you’ve got the people in Benin, you’ve got people in the so-called Lake Chad region.  It’s probably over 200 million people so the impact on the West will actually be greater,” said Wolf.

Could the U.S. have done something about this years ago?  Wolf says yes, and he says Hillary Clinton is a big reason why Boko Haram was given space to grow.

“They needed to move quickly.  It was a failure of the administration, particularly Secretary Clinton, to designate them as a terrorist group.  The FBI wanted to call them a terrorist group.  The CIA wanted to call them a terrorist group.  AFRICOM wanted to call them a terrorist group.  But Hillary Clinton didn’t want to call them a terrorist group.  That lost time has set this issue back,” said Wolf.

Wolf says the U.S. has done virtually nothing beyond the hashtag campaign since the schoolgirls were abducted, and he says that actually made things worse.

“It seemed like a good idea but I actually think it’s been a bad idea because it’s given more attention to the girls and made them more valuable as hostages,” said Wolf.

Wolf chastises the western Christian church for effectively abandoning Nigerian believers in their time of persecution.  He also blasts the Obama administration for not appointing a special envoy to oversee the U.S. response to the crisis and coordinating effective aid and counter-terrorism strategies.

He says the White House has completely ignored the request, even though the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative is recommending former Rep. Tony Hall, D-Ohio, for the job.

“We’ve just gotten thank you notes for the letters but no activity,” said Wolf.  “The real danger is that the closing months of an administration, nothing happens.  Everyone is looking for jobs.  If something isn’t done by the administration sometime in September, it probably will not be done,” said Wolf.

 

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss only bad news, starting with the violent and destructive protests in Milwaukee following the police shooting of a young black man in what seems to be fairly simple case.  They also rip Sen. Claire McCaskill for suggesting Trump is actually responsible in part for the rise of ISIS.  And we discuss the brutal robbery of four U.S. Olympians in Rio as more proof the city was a terrible choice to host the games.

One of the U.S. military’s most accomplished snipers says politics got in the way of a successful conclusion to our mission in Iraq, leaving ISIS to gobble up territory American heroes tied to bring under control from Islamic radicals.

Nicholas Irving served six years in uniform. most of them as a U.S. Army Ranger demolition assaulter and sniper.  Over a four-month stretch in 2009, Irving recorded 33 enemy kills, a record for a single deployment.  He is also the author of “Way of the Reaper: My Greatest Untold Missions and the Art of Being a Sniper.”

Irving left uniformed service in 2010 but was back in Iraq as a private contractor in 2011 as the full withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq was unfolding.  He says the rise of ISIS is proof that politics trumped mission success.

“I think politics got way too involved with this whole global war on terrorism and didn’t allow us to do our jobs effectively.  We lost a lot of lives and things got out of hand.  We look at ISIS today.  They’ve gotten out of hand because we didn’t stop them when we had the opportunity,” said Irving.

He says seeing the unimpeded advance of ISIS in 2013-2014 was tough to watch for service members who gave so much taking that land away from terrorists.

“All of the places that ISIS controls right now in Iraq are the same exact places I was deployed to .  You have to ask sometimes, what was it for?  Was it worth it?  It’s a weird, weird struggle and question I often ask myself.  We all do,” said Irving.

Regardless of who is elected president in November, Irving has one urgent plea for our next commander-in-chief.

“Let the guys do their job.  That’s all we ask.  Just let the guys do their job,” said Irving, referring to increasingly restrictive rules of engagement in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

It’s those guys and the sacrifices so many made during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan that Irving thinks of most.

“They’re my blood brothers is what it feels like and that’s how I relate to them,” said Irving.

The feeling is mutual for the men Irving and his fellow snipers protected in combat.

“A few years later, I got an email from a guy and he just wanted to thank me for being his guardian angel.  I never looked at it like that and I don’t really take compliments too well.  I did a job and did what I had to do.  If I was a guardian angel then so be it,” said Irving.

When the box office smash “American Sniper” hit theaters in early 2015, some liberals recoiled at the idea that snipers were hero.  Activist filmmaker Michael Moore created the most headlines with his slam at the late Chris Kyle and other snipers.

“My uncle killed by sniper in WW2. We were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot u in the back. Snipers aren’t heroes. And invaders r worse,” tweeted Moore.  “But if you’re on the roof of your home defending it from invaders who’ve come 7K miles, you are not a sniper, u are brave, u are a neighbor.”

Moore received immense backlash at the time.  Irving has a much more succinct response to the suggestion he and his brothers in arms were cowards.

“I have a one-way ticket with his name on it to Afghanistan.  I want to see if he changes his opinion on using the word coward.  Cowards are what the terrorists are,” said Irving.

For Irving, his job was a childhood dream come true.

“It’s one of those things I always wanted to do.  I set my mind to it.  It was a goal that I had, and I definitely loved the job,” he said.

He says most people can be taught to shoot with precision and survey a combat zone, but he believes there is in innate quality that all snipers have.

“I think you’re born with some of the traits of being a sniper.  The mental aptitude tests and some of the psychological evaluations we take, you have to be born with a certain thing.  I’m not sure what it is,” said Irving.  “I guess the separation of watching a target and then taking that target out, maybe that’s what they’re looking for.”

Irving says 90 percent of sniper work is watching and communicating and “only ten percent is being a surgeon with bullets.”  He says he and his men didn’t want to shoot unless they had to, which usually meant the enemy was trying to kill them or their friends.

He says he wrote the book to honor those who served alongside him and to let all Americans know what life is like for those who go to fight for us on the other side of the world.

“Supermen.  That’s how I described all my guys.  They were like supermen.  Having the chance to see that sacrifice these guys make day in and day out, the superheroes they are and having the chance to serve with them and how regular we all are,” said Irving.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Ian Tuttle of National Review welcome news that the FBI and a well-respected federal prosecutor in New York are actively investigating the Clinton Foundation.  They also groan as fears grow that Donald Trump will hurt Republicans in Senate, House and state races.  And they sigh as Trump blows another chance to score points against the Obama-Clinton legacy and makes himself look ridiculous in the process.  Finally, they close on a high note by celebrating the achievement of the American athletes at the Olympic Games.

The former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency says the United States has to get serious about defeating radical Islam and is laying out a plan to do it – a plan he says is dependent upon Donald Trump winning the White House in November.

Retired U.S. Army Lt. General Michael T. Flynn is a frequent cable news contributor and spoke on behalf of Trump last month at the Republican National Convention.  He is also the author of “The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War on Radical Islam and Its Allies.”

In his book, Flynn it’s long past time for the U.S. to stop “participating” in the war against radical Islam and start winning it.  He believes we’re just spinning our wheels while ISIS and other enemies pursue an announced, strategic campaign against the West.

“We totally have lacked imagination and we’ve forgotten how to win, actually,” said Flynn.  “And we have to stop being politically correct about this enemy and we have to clearly define it.”

He says that’s something President Obama and subordinates like Hillary Clinton refuse to do.

“Number one is to clearly define the enemy and that’s something our current government and current president does not allow us to do,” said Flynn.

But what needs to be done to define our radical Islamic enemies that has not already been done?

“We have to discredit this ideology, this radical Islamist ideology, for what it is.  We have to call it what it is and we have to begin to come up with a very imaginative, very creative information campaign to discredit it,” said Flynn.

Flynn says it must be a consistent, sustained effort, just as the U.S. labored for decades to attack the ideology of Soviet communism, its ideological flaws and its destructive results.

The general also says the U.S. cannot abandon the founding principles that make us strong.

“We have to get our own strategic house in order.  We have to decide how we’re going to organize as the United States to begin to protect our way of life and not fear what our country was built upon, which is a set of Judeo-Christian values and principles,” said Flynn.

He says the Obama administration is taking exactly the wrong course.

“Instead, we have this politically correct nonsense.  We spent 40 years calling the communists communists.  When we talk about radical Islamists, you get chastised for being racist.  We have to stop that.  That’s unfair to the American public and it’s definitely not going to help us defeat this enemy,” said Flynn.

Although Flynn says the 2016 presidential race is one America cannot afford to get wrong, he believes it is essential to rein in the role the president plays on national security.

“The decision-making apparatus has been built up around the President of the United States is out of control.  It doesn’t have the strategic flexibility.  It doesn’t have the adaptability.  It doesn’t have the speed and, frankly, it does not have the maturity to make the kind of decisions nor to even think clearly,” said Flynn.

“That’s why we get involved in places like Libya and we have poor decisions like getting out of Iraq in 2011.  That’s why we see the messes that we see around the world right now in our foreign policy.  I’m very concerned about that,” said Flynn.

Flynn is a registered Democrat but is outspoken in his support for Trump.  He adds that his endorsement is almost entirely based on what he sees in Trump and is not simply a reaction to his opposition to Clinton.  Flynn says Trump is running for the right reasons.

“He’s not doing this for Donald Trump.  He’s doing this for the people of this country and for America.  That’s the purpose.  That’s why he dove head-first into the political cesspool that we have in this country to try to fix what we can to make this country great again,” said Flynn.

The criticisms of Trump on national security are legion: from his border security and deportation proposals to a temporary ban on immigration from nations with terrorist infestations.  Others slam the GOP nominee for seeming to lack understanding of key global challenges and having no intellectual curiosity to learn about them.

Flynn says that is not the Trump he sees in private.

“He’s a great listener.  He’s a rapid learner.  He’s somebody who’s able to absorb lots of information quickly.  He’s an exceptional decision-maker and problem solver.  And he has great instincts for the types of people he has around them,” said Flynn.

Flynn asserts that Hillary Clinton’s honesty issues show she cannot be trusted as the next Commander-in-Chief.  He says growing up as a military kid hammered the importance of honesty into his bones, a lesson he says the Democratic nominee has not learned.

“You told the truth – good, bad, ugly or indifferent.  You accepted the responsibility and your punishment.  She does none of that.  I think we’re in a real world of hurt if the people of this country don’t get this election right,” said Flynn.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Ian Tuttle of National Review cringe at a new report confirming that top officials at U.S. Central Command changed intelligence reports from their own analysts to paint a false, more optimistic picture of our fight against ISIS.  They also laugh as Donald Trump, who hates losers and says only he can fix America, says he’ll be just fine if he loses in November.  And they shred Hillary Clinton’s argument to Utah voters that she is and would be a champion of religious liberty for them.

The American Bar Association has adopted a new rule it says will crack down on discriminatory conduct in the legal profession, but conservative critics warn the real goal is to silence views contrary to the group’s liberal orthodoxy on gender identity and sexual orientation and drum attorneys who hold those views out of business.

Rule 8.4 of the American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct was amended this week.  In addition to existing rules like not engaging in criminal actively, blatant dishonesty or attempting to influence government officials, a new section enters into brand new territory.

“It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to:

(g) “Engage in conduct that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know is harassment of discrimination harass or discriminate on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or socioeconomic status in conduct related to the practice of law. This paragraph does not limit the ability of a lawyer to accept, decline, or withdraw from a representation in accordance with Rule 1.16. This paragraph does not preclude legitimate advice or advocacy consistent with these rules.”

Supporters of the change say this is mostly about putting an end to insulting behavior such as calling a female attorney “honey”, but others see a far more sinister agenda.

“This is an attempt to silence Christians in the legal profession.  The main drivers of it are LGBT activists trying to eliminate religious liberty defenses on matters pertaining to same-sex marriage and also transgenderism, to purge observant Christians from the legal profession,” said Ken Klukowski, senior counsel and director of strategic affairs at the First Liberty Institute.

Former Attorney General Edwin Meese III and First Liberty Institute President and CEO Kelly Shackleford wrote a blistering letter to the ABA, calling the proposal fascist and imploring members not to approve it.

Klukowski believes the ABA’s goal is to scrub the the legal voice of Christians and people of other faiths from the courtroom.

“[The rule] would apply to all lawyers of conservative faiths in that it would also, for everyone still left in the legal profession, render people and institutions of faith radioactive as clients,” said Klukowski.

ABA members overwhelmingly adopted the new rule and say critics like Klukowski are reading things in the new rule that simply are not there.  Klukowski says you need to understand the language of the ABA to see where the threat lies.

“When it speaks about ‘related to the practice of law,’ that includes not just your conduct but your verbal conduct and your business or social activity,” said Klukowski.  “It applies to lawyers 24 hours a day, seven days a week in every aspect of their life.”

And he says the ABA was well aware of the scope of this language when it debated and approved the amended rule on misconduct.  He says anyone can read the deliberations for themselves at the First Liberty Institute’s website.

“They’ll be shocked to find statements from the ABA president and from committee members when they were debating all this showing they knew exactly what all this was going to lead to.  Some of them deliberately intended it, spoke about the need to root out discrimination that they say people might not know that their thoughts on these matters have anything wrong with them,” said Klukowski.

He says this is nothing more than a blatant assault on the first amendment freedoms of speech and free exercise of religion.

“It is a completely unprecedented censorship regime in that it is limiting the ability of lawyers to be able to engage in all sorts of political conversation,” said Klukowski.

He says lawyers could face severe punishment while off the clock for activities most people wouldn’t think twice about, including sharing the view over dinner at a restaurant that marriage ought to be the union of one man and one woman.

“Anyone sitting at that dinner table or even sitting at the next table could file an ethics complaint with the state bar, seeking to have that lawyer’s law license revoked because he engaged in verbal conduct at a social activity,” said Klukowski.

The scenarios only snowball from there, according to Klukowski.  He says attorneys could face trouble for denouncing Black Lives Matter or publicly opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants.  In addition, a lawyer teaching a Sunday School class could be targeted for expressing the biblical view on sexuality or marriage.  In fact, simply being a member of a church with views opposed by the ABA could put a lawyer’s career in jeopardy.

“The fact that you’re an observant Roman Catholic could be cited as a social activity, as an affiliation, that is evidence of a discriminatory bias on behalf of that Catholic lawyer,” said Klukowski.

However, Klukowski is quick to point out that it’s not just lawyers of faith who could lose their careers.  He says unbelieving attorneys could be in trouble if they take on clients who assert conscience rights, such as the bakers, florists and photographers who refuse to work at same-sex weddings.

“Even if you’re a liberal atheist lawyer, you’re going to be scared to take their case, because anything you say about your client’s case outside of the courtroom is not an essential aspect of representing them in court.  Anything you say to the media, anything you say to a gathering could be used against you as verbal conduct reflecting a bias against LGBT people and you could lose your career,” said Klukowski.

A casual reader of the new rule might ask why the language stating the policy “does not limit the ability of a lawyer to accept, decline, or withdraw from a representation” doesn’t protect the ethical conduct of lawyers.  Klukowski says that only protects attorneys in consultations with prospective clients, in filing briefs and arguing the case in court.  All other conduct is left unprotected.

But do the ABA’s rules have any bearing on state laws?  Klukowski says they most certainly do.

“Most state supreme courts adopt, word for word, any ABA model ethics rules.  Those that don’t, use ABA rules as a starting point for developing their own ethics rules,” said Klukowski.

He says any complaint would likely trigger a state bar investigation involving a formal hearing before a court, and that will be a stain on the record of those lawyers regardless of the outcome.

“When someone’s looking around for a lawyer and you have ten choices, you’re less likely to go with the guy who was officially investigated by the state supreme court for potential unethical conduct, even if ultimately the vote comes down at the end of the day that you’re okay,” said Klukowski.

Finally, he says the new rule will be used to shape future generations of law students because most states will not let anyone take the bar unless they have graduated from an ABA-accredited law school.  And those law schools will be teaching this new policy.

“You’re going to have tens of thousands of law students every year being indoctrinated by their professor.  ‘Okay, now let’s turn to Rule 8.4,’ and it’s going to be taught right alongside all the other ethical requirements,” said Klukowski.

“All of them now will be taught Model Rule 8.4 as just certain speech and conduct that you cannot be associated with if you want a career in law,” said Klukowski.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Ian Tuttle of National Review welcome House Speaker Paul Ryan’s crushing primary win over Trump clone Paul Nehlen.  They also enjoy seeing more emails emerge confirming Hillary Clinton’s pay-to-play scheme between the State Department and the Clinton Foundation.  And while they don’t believe Donald Trump was inciting violence against Hillary Clinton, they do note several other disturbing things the episode confirms about him.

The largest grassroots taxpayer organization in the United States is lauding the tax reform proposals of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump but sees little commitment to rein in runaway federal spending or even get specific about big ticket policy goals.

Trump addressed the Detroit Economic Club on Monday, calling for across the board tax cuts for individuals, huge cuts in the corporate tax rate and bringing simplicity to the tax code by eliminating loopholes and reducing the number of tax brackets from seven to three.

“The heart of his plan is tax simplification, which is very important .  The IRS has estimated that its entire paperwork burden for all of its forms and requirements will amount to about nine billion hours.  That represents a huge economic dead weight loss of people spending time on their tax forms, instead of doing more productive things with their money,” said National Taxpayers Union Research Director Demian Brady.

The centerpiece of Trump’s tax plan is lowering the corporate tax rate from nearly 40 percent down to 15 percent.  Brady notes that reduction is even bigger than congressional Republicans are advocating and he says the impact of that would be felt in every American family.

“This would be just a great boon to the economy.  It’s not the businesses that pay these taxes.  It’s the consumer that pays them through higher prices, so across the board this will help people,” said Brady, who is also excited that Trump wants to eliminate the estate tax, known derisively on the right as the death tax.

“He’s proposed to eliminate the death tax, which is just a huge waste of time.  The people who have money that fall under this spend so much time and money on tax avoidance that this death tax is not worth the money that it raises.  Let people do what they want to do with their money and they’ve already been taxed on it when it was originally earned,” said Brady.

Trump says his tax plan is aimed at boosting the middle class, but Brady warns middle class investors might not be too happy with the nominee’s approach to capital gains taxes.

“It’s basically a tax on investment through carried interest and capital gains.  What this does is raise the cost of investment, which will be bad for mutual funds and for pension plans around the country.  They’re trying to tax the income of the people who are going out and making these investment decisions, but they’re going to pass along their costs to their customers,” said Brady.

While is largely bullish on Trump’s approach to tax policy, he is far from impressed about Trump’s refusal to articulate a plan to get federal spending under control.

“One problem that you typically run into with Donald Trump is just a lack of specifics,” said Brady.  “He needs to provide more details on some of the things he’d like to do, particularly when it comes to long-term budget reforms.”

Trump frequently mentions getting rid of waste, fraud and abuse throughout the government, but Brady warns that alone won’t make much of dent in the effort to balance the federal books.  However, he says both major party nominees have no answers for bringing spending under control.

“We really want to hear spending reform ideas from these candidates.  Unfortunately, we’re getting a lot more information from the candidates on how they would increase spending , rather than putting in some sort of budgetary restraint,” said Brady.

As of now, Brady says Trump’s spending plans would add billions to the deficit, but he says those plans are shifting all the time.

“Last week we had Trump as a net cutter.  His net plans that we’re able to score with specificity, would have reduced spending by about $56 billion a year,” said Brady.  “Then last week, he said he would double Hillary Clinton’s infrastructure spending.  So that jumps his spending up to $22 billion in new spending per year,” said Brady.

But Brady says even that number fails to account for other areas where Trump won’t offer details.

“He has called for the largest increases of the military in history, but he hasn’t said what that would be.  He has other areas where he hasn’t been too specific .  In the speech, he called, perhaps, for new spending on law enforcement, but we’re not exactly sure what that might be,” said Brady.

But as concerned as Brady is about what the final price tag for the Trump agenda might be, he says Hillary Clinton’s agenda carries much more red ink.

“Her spending proposals would increase spending by about $175 billion annually, so it’s a much more aggressive big government agenda than we see from Donald Trump,” said Brady.

 

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Ian Tuttle of National Review give credit to Donald Trump for articulating some economic principles that are far more conservative than what Hillary Clinton is offering.  They’re also disturbed and bewildered that the father of the Orlando terrorist got a prime seat to cheer on Hillary Clinton Monday in Florida.  And they verbally smack John Kasich for suggesting that John McCain is so great he shouldn’t have to run for re-election.