Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see Donald Trump is not a drag on Kelly Ayotte thus far in New Hampshire. They also slam Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans for wanting to require women to register with Selective Service. And as Trump says he would speak with Kim Jong-Un, we preview what that meeting might look like.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson warns air travelers to prepare for much longer than usual airport security lines, but a Transportation Security Administration watchdog says this mess is simply a matter of the government failing to manage its resources responsibly.
On Monday, Johnson stood at Ronald Reagan National Airport just outside Washington and told passengers to expect longer than expected wait times as the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, expedites hundreds of new personnel into service to speed up the security process. In Chicago, passengers were told to arrive three hours prior to departure,
The TSA claims that congressional action has led to the elimination of some 4,500 personnel over the past few years and the agency simply doesn’t have the manpower to keep up, but that’s just spin according to Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute. He also run Cato’s “Downsizing Government” blog.
Edwards says the TSA is littered with problems, starting with its existing personnel.
“Annual surveys of federal government employees find that the TSA and the broader Homeland Security Department have some of the poorest morale in the federal government. The TSA has a high turnover rate for their screeners, which is not good for morale and is not good for security,” said Edwards.
But perhaps even worse is TSA’s penchant for directing its ever-increasing budget into the wrong areas.
“TSA has spent many billions of dollars on things that don’t work. As a result, they’ve starved their budget from hiring more screeners to reduce congestion,” said Edwards.
He says the most glaring example is one of TSA’s most controversial projects.
“Remember those full-body scanning machines that were in airports for years that essentially showed nude pictures of passengers as they got screened?” asked Edwards.
“Those things were eventually withdrawn because of civil liberties concerns. People didn’t want to see their nude bodies when they went to the airport. But those things have been found to not really work at all. It’s fairly easy to slip guns and plastic explosives through those machines,” said Edwards.
Another major problem, says Edwards, is the inability of such a large bureaucracy to adapt to differing needs at different airports.
“As a government bureaucracy, the TSA has a very inflexible workforce. Unlike a private company, where if they saw one of their facilities or one of their cities get a lot more business and a lot more demand, they’d move workers over there. They’d hire more part-time workers to fill surges in demand. Government bureaucracies don’t do that. They have fixed numbers of people at these airports and they don’t adjust them like any normal private business would,” said Edwards.
He says airports do have the option to boot the TSA and go with private security. He says only 15-20 airports do that and actually perform better when secret tests are conducted to see whether weapons or explosive materials get past security.
“Airports are allowed to opt out of TSA screening and some of them have been looking at that recently because of the huge congestion at the airports,” said Edwards.
He says things work much more smoothly north of the border.
“In Canada, all major airports have private screening. There’s a number of different expert companies that specialize in airport screening. They get three-year contracts to do particular airports. If they don’t do a good job, if they don’t have high security, they get fired. The next time around, a different company gets the contract,” said Edwards.
While U.S. airports do have the ability to ditch the TSA and hire private security, Edwards says the Obama administration is making it much tougher to do that.
“Congress has had to slap down the administration a few times to get them to allow airports to go private. In the original legislation that created TSA, House Republicans slipped in this provision that airports could petition the Department of Transportation to go private, but the Obama administration has made that very difficult,” said Edwards.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review discuss the financial collapse of Burlington College thanks to Bernie Sanders’ wife. They also react to Marco Rubio’s Twitter mockery of Washington Post stories quoting sources supposedly close to Rubio. And they enjoy watching Democrats worry that the chaos in Nevada over the weekend could spill over to the national convention.
The Supreme Court ruled 8-0 on Monday that it is sending the legal cases involving religious organizations and the Obamacare contraception mandate back to lower courts for resolution, a decision that an attorney for the Little Sisters of the Poor calls a “win-win.”
The case, Zubik v. Burwell, is a legal battle over whether the government can force religious organizations to provide contraception coverage in their health plans if that coverage violates sincerely-held beliefs.
The justices ruled they would not be ruling on the merits of the case at this time.
“In particular, the Court does not decide whether petitioners’ religious exercise has been substantially burdened, whether the Government has a compelling interest, or whether the current regulations are the least restrictive means of serving that interest,” the court stated in an opinion that was not ascribed to a specific justice.
While the Obama administration says it is “gratified” by the decision, most court watchers summarized the ruling as the justices punting the issue back to the lower courts. But the Little Sisters don’t see it that way at all.
“To the extent that this is a punt, this is a punt that gives the Little Sisters great field position,” said Daniel Blomberg, an attorney with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents the Little Sisters. “It puts them in a place that we can get to a solution that frankly isn’t a win-loss, it’s a win- win.”
“Today was a big win. It was the unanimous decision that we’ve been hoping for and it protects the Little Sisters of the Poor from having to violate their religious beliefs or pay massive fines,” said Blomberg.
While the court did not rule on the merits, Blomberg says its actions demonstrate the justices are not okay with with groups like the Little Sisters being in the government’s cross hairs.
“Several lower court decisions had gone the wrong way and they were forcing the Little Sisters to choose between their faith and fines and they were massive, crushing fines. The Supreme Court today said, ‘No, we’re not going to do that. We’re going to send this back down to get reconsidered because the government has admitted it has other ways of accomplishing its mission without forcing the sisters to violate their beliefs,” said Blomberg.
Blomberg says the court also played a pivotal role in the early stages on this case.
“[The Little Sisters] had to run to the Supreme Court because the government was so aggressively pursuing them and requiring them to violate their faith or pay massive fines. Justice (Sonia) Sotomayor issued an opinion saying, ‘No, let’s put the brakes on this. Let’s give more time to think about it.’ Then the full court said you can’t fine them while this case is proceeding,” said Blomberg.
Despite its recent reputation, Bloomberg says the Supreme Court has ruled on the side of liberty on this issue several times in recent years.
“We’ve had several other decisions since that time and they’ve all gone the same way. They’ve all rejected the government’s arguments and they’ve all provided protection for the Little Sisters and other religious ministries,” said Blomberg.
So why is the White House welcoming this decision?
“Of course the government’s spinning,” said Blomberg. “You can read the clear text of the Supreme Court’s order yourself. It says you don’t get to fine the sisters to make them do what you want. It does say that you have to find a solution that actually accommodates their religious beliefs,” said Blomberg.
He also says the Obama administration is constantly changing it’s position in this case.
“The administration hasn’t changed its views in this matter just once, not just twice, not just three times and not just four times. They have changed their position ten times in the course of this litigation. Every time they’ve changed their position, they’ve still managed to say, ‘Whatever else we do, we want to force the sisters to pay millions of dollars in fines if they don’t do what we want,'” said Blomberg.
But given the lower courts siding with the government most of the time, why is Blomberg so confident the decisions would be different this time around?
“Every one of those decisions have been erased. They’re gone. The court sent a very clear signal that those decisions were going down the wrong path,” said Blomberg, who points out the government also confessed to the justices that it could apply the mandate without impacting the Little Sisters.
While the legal battle continues, Blomberg says he remains deeply impressed by the Little Sisters themselves.
“They are amazing human beings. It’s been a pleasure and an honor to work with them. We’ve gotten to know them on a personal level and . They couldn’t be more sincere,” said Blomberg.
The Obama administration launched another offensive in the battle over public accommodation Friday, telling all public schools to allow students to use facilities based on their gender identity instead of their biological sex, a directive that Liberty Counsel President Mathew Staver says is blatantly unconstitutional and part of a larger Obama goal of rubbing God out of the public square.
Officials at the Justice and Education departments released a letter providing “guidance” as to how school districts should comply with the policy. The letter also made it clear that states or schools that did not fall in line could face federal lawsuits or a denial of federal education funds.
“Under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, schools receiving federal money may not discriminate based on a student’s sex, including a student’s transgender status. The guidance makes clear that both federal agencies treat a student’s gender identity as the student’s sex for purposes of enforcing Title IX,” stated the latter.
Staver says the idea that lawmakers considered gender identity in the context of sex discrimination 44 years ago is absurd.
“Common sense says that in 1972, no one was thinking that ‘sex’ included somebody’s fictitious mind games of thinking they are the opposite gender,” said Staver.
Not only does he believe Congress did not intend the expanded definition of sex, but Staver points out that lawmakers have repeatedly defeated attempts to make such a change to Title IX.
“(The Obama administration demand) eviscerates the statute and has nothing to do with its intent. In fact, Congress, multiple times over the past 10-15 years, has rejected attempts to include sexual orientation or gender identity in any of the federal laws. They’ve specifically rejected those attempts,” said Staver.
He also urges parents and all citizens to carefully watch how local officials react to the government’s demands.
“If any school buckles to this nonsense, we encourage families and communities to hold those school officials and those school boards accountable for the sexual assaults that no doubt will come in light of these policies and agendas,” said Staver.
While many conservatives fear another long court fight will result in another disappointing decision from the Supreme Court, Staver is confident the administration will lose this battle.
“It absolutely is contrary to the law. They’re making it up as they go. They’re going to lose this in a legal challenge,” said Staver.
Nonetheless, Staver is alarmed by the impact of the government pushing this agenda on the nation.
“It shows how radical this agenda is, to accommodate a sexual, evolutionary, anarchist kind of agenda that you can think, therefore you are something that you’re really not, over the well being and interest of students, over the well being, interest and protection of religious freedom. They really couldn’t care less,” said Staver.
In some states, the threat of withholding federal aid is primarily a hit to programs providing meals to underprivileged students. Staver says holding that funding as a bargaining chip is especially galling.
“It is the top priority agenda for this administration. They don’t care whether little boys are girls have their school lunches. ‘Fine, they’re not going to eat but we’re going to allow boys to go into the girls’ restroom, shower rooms and locker rooms.’ That’s their agenda. It’s actually very perverted and, frankly, dangerous,” said Staver.
As troubled as he is by this policy effort, Staver says the larger goal of Obama and his allies is even more frightening.
“They want to abolish the concept of gender, so there is no male and there is no female. It’s all a product of your mind,” said Staver. “Whatever you want to be then you ought to be treated that way. That’s Never Never Land. That’s George Orwell’s ‘1984.’ This is turning reality into some kind of fiction-based living situation,” said Staver.
Ultimately, he says the left is trying to scrub God and morality from American life.
“The reason they want to abolish gender is because they also want to remove any kind of moral construct regarding human sexuality. Ultimately they want to abolish gender so they can abolish the very notion of the creator God himself, who created you and I in His image. Male and female, God created you and I, distinctly different yet complementary,” said Staver.
The Justice Department order says any student can identify as the opposite gender of their biological sex with consent from his or her parents and the school must comply. In addition, the school is not allowed to seek any sort of verification.
“A school may not require transgender students to have a medical diagnosis, undergo any medical treatment, or produce a birth certificate or other identification document before treating them consistent with their gender identity,” the letter reads.
Staver says the government is effectively cheering people on in their mental illness.
“Let’s just be frank. This is not normal. This is a mental disorder, just as much as anorexia or bulimia, or even much worse, apotemnophilia, someone who thinks that they are a disabled person inhabiting an able body. Yes there are people who think that way. Those are not normal,” said Staver.
He says catering to people struggling with their gender is the same as enabling those other disorders.
“It certainly doesn’t help to suggest that it’s normal. It’s not, any more than it would be suggestive that, ‘Even though you want to regurgitate your food even though you’re not overweight, that’s okay. We’re going to do something that protects that.’ That just doesn’t help the individual,” said Staver.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review cheer a federal court ruling that the Obama administration acted unconstitutionally in funding additional assistance for people enrolling in Obamacare. They also rip the Obama administration for its unconstitutional decree that all public schools must let students use bathrooms and locker rooms according to gender identity rather than biology. And they shake their heads as Chelsea Clinton’s husband has to close a hedge fund in which he convinced investors to bet on a big Greek economic recovery.
Donald Trump’s meeting with House Speaker Paul Ryan was the talk of Washington Thursday, but a former top Republican official says party unity will only come when Trump reaches out to skeptical Republicans, those same Republicans give him a fair evaluation and party leaders are comfortable with his tone.
The build-up to Thursday’s meeting began days ago, when Ryan told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “I’m not there yet,” when it comes to endorsing Trump.
Following Thursday’s encounter, both Trump and Ryan called the encounter a positive step. Ryan suggested they agreed on core principles and didn’t talk much about specific issues. He also said 45 minutes was not enough time to make him ready to formally back Trump but looked forward to future conversations.
Former Republican National Committee Chairman Frank Donatelli, who also served as political director in the Reagan White House, said party unity is a must if the GOP hopes to win in November.
“It’s very, very important. The parties are very polarized these days and, typically, each party gets 90 percent of the party members that vote in that election. Anything that falls off even slightly from that is a real problem as far as the nominee is concerned,” said Donatelli.
“It’s not enough for the Republican nominee to have overwhelming support. They have to have almost unanimous support in order to have enough votes to compete for independents and win the presidential election,” said Donatelli.
Recent polls suggest Trump is improving in his efforts to consolidate GOP support, although he won Tuesday’s Nebraska primary with about 61 percent of the vote despite having no real opposition. Donatelli says winning over Ryan, who sees himself as an heir to the sunny, free market Reagan legacy would help Trump because a lot of Republicans agree with Ryan on most issues.
Donatelli thinks Ryan approached the meeting well, both in what was discussed and in how he sees the relationship going forward.
“I think Ryan is right to talk about general principles rather than specific proposals. At least let’s get agreement on general principles as a way of moving forward,” said Donatelli.
” It would not be credible for these men to have one meeting and say, ‘Oh look, we’ve agreed on everything.’ That is not going to satisfy anybody. It’s the idea of baby steps here. You have one meeting and narrow the differences. Then there’s another meeting and maybe there’s a meeting of the minds here where eventually they can all get on board. It’s not going to happen right away,” added Donatelli.
The greatest galvanizing force for the right is the desire to stop Hillary Clinton from winning the White House. But Donatelli says that alone won’t bring Republicans together.
“That goes a part of the way but obviously it doesn’t go far enough with Ryan or (Arizona Sen.) Jeff Flake or Mitt Romney or a lot of other Republicans that still have doubts,” said Donatelli.
Donatelli says both sides of the GOP divide need to make overtures to the other, starting with Trump.
“I think it’s up to the nominee and the campaign to unify the party. Hopefully, that means the candidate and his team is on the phone, calling Republicans, talking to them, encouraging them to be part of the team, not threatening them but trying to build a common set of principles that all Republicans can run on,” said Donatelli.
But he also says the Republicans currently stiff-arming Trump, also need to take action.
“Conversely, it’s up to all Republicans to take a look at the candidate, what his principles are and the tone of his campaign and make an honest judgment as to whether or not they want to be part of that effort,” said Donatelli.
But ultimately Donatelli says Republicans need to follow their conscience, and he says some Republicans are reluctant to formally back a wild card like Trump.
“I think it disturbs him and it disturbs a lot of Republicans if we have a nominee that’s constantly combative and belittling and just not speaking or acting the way a president should act, with grace and with measure and always thinking before they are saying something,” said Donatelli.
He says that issue more than any policy positions are holding back more endorsements, especially from down ballot candidates who aren’t sure how close they should get to Trump.
“On the one hand, they want to be true to the Republican Party and the nominee. On the other hand, they have their own coalition they have to put together to win, especially in swing states and so-called purple states. You’re going to see candidates come up with different formulations as to how they try to balance those two objectives,” said Donatelli.
The good news for all sides, according to Donatelli, is that there’s ample time to coalesce.
“We have plenty of time down the road. The convention’s not for a couple of months. Let’s keep talking and let’s see if we can get on the same page,” said Donatelli.
While the outcome of the convention in Cleveland is no longer in doubt, Donatelli says that week could still spawn some fierce debates.
“The fact that this is not going to be a contested convention, in the sense that we know who the nominee is going to be, that doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be a lot of controversies at the convention. There are a lot of platform issues that need to be worked out, probably some credentials fights, some rules fights,” said Donatelli.
Another major issue is who will speak at the convention and trying to nail down what other speakers will say, particularly figures like Sen. Ted Cruz, who spent months locked in a bitter fight with Trump.
“All these issues are still to be negotiated and determined, so I think that the RNC chair and his staff’s work has just begun in this regard,” said Donatelli.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are happy to see a corrupt leftist president get the boot – even if it is only in Brazil. They also practice their shocked faces as the Washington Post says it will dig into every detail of Donald Trump’s life. And they get a kick out of the frothing media coverage of the Trump-Ryan meeting.
North Carolina Lt. Gov. Dan Forest is firing back at the Obama administration for what he says is the federal government trying to make states conform to its cultural agenda, threatening “extortion” to compel his state to abandon its new public accommodation law and comparing the debate over transgender access to the civil rights movement.
The debate expanded in two major ways this week after Gov. Pat McCrory rejected the Obama administration’s assertion that North Carolina was in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. McCrory also announced he was asking the federal courts to define what is meant by the discrimination based on sex in the law. The same day, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced the Justice Department was bringing action against the state for denying civil rights to transgenders by requiring them to use facilities based on their sex at birth.
But Lynch didn’t stop there. She also said the state could be losing considerable amounts of federal assistance if it did not back down.
“We retain the option of curtailing federal funding to the North Carolina Department of Public Safety and the University of North Carolina as this case proceeds,” said Lynch.
Forest is appalled.
“We sued first because they came through the Justice Department and said, ‘Unless you do what we say and repeal this law, we’re going to take away four billion dollars of tax dollars from North Carolina. We’re going to take away your education Title IX funding. We’re going to take away your [Housing and Urban Development] funding. We’re going to take away your transportation funding because we don’t agree with your law,’ even though it’s the same law the federal government has, along with 28 states,” said Forest.
He says he is used to strong arm tactics from the Obama administration, but this reaches a new level.
“For the federal government to tell us now that they think that should be the law of the land, this is really going too far. Using extortion to do that is a pretty extreme measure, even from this administration,” said Forest.
Forest says schoolkids will suffer the most if Obama and Lynch make good on that promise.
“The Obama administration right now is holding North Carolina children hostage by trying to take away their education funding from the federal level to push a radical, extreme agenda of this administration,” said Forest, who wants Congress to probe assert control over the spending of the agencies the government is using to pressure North Carolina.
While the federal government, many liberal interest groups and the media are hostile toward the North Carolina law, Forest says the vast majority of the people in North Carolina agree with Gov. McCrory and the legislature. He is also quick to point out that liberals on the Charlotte City Council started this fight, not Republicans in Raleigh.
“Nobody, prior to Charlotte’s ordinance, was worried about a transgender person going in the bathroom. It was probably happening, people were okay with it and they probably didn’t even notce it. Charlotte brought up the law. (The Charlotte ordinance) is unconstitutional and very extreme, so we had to address that,” said Forest.
Most reports contend the Charlotte city ordinance allowed transgenders to use the men’s or women’s facilities based on their gender identity. Forest says it went much further than that.
“What this Charlotte ordinance actually said is that you would have to take the male and female bathroom signs off the bathroom. You couldn’t have male and female signs anymore. Those would have to come down. They’d all have to be (gender) neutral signs, not just for the government, but for all of the business community as well,” said Forest.
In addition to announcing the lawsuit against North Carolina and threatening to withhold federal funds, Lynch compared the new public accommodation law with the segregation era.
“This is not the first time we have seen discriminatory responses to historic moments of progress for our nation. We saw it in the Jim Crow laws that followed the Emancipation Proclamation. We saw it in the fierce and widespread resistance to Brown v. Board of Education,” said Lynch.
“It was not so very long ago that states, including North Carolina, has other signs above restrooms, water fountains and on public accommodations, keeping people out based on a distinction without a difference,” added Lynch.
Forest is disgusted by the assertion.
“Absolutely shameful is what it is,” said Forest. “These are completely different things. For her to bring this up as if it’s some great civil rights case in America today is really shameful. To be painting that picture on the South or on North Carolina or anybody else just shows she doesn’t understand this issue.”
Forest contends a person’s race should never have been used to determine who could use drinking fountains, rest rooms or lunch counters or where people could sit on a bus. He’s says that’s the opposite of what is happening in North Carolina now.
“That is absolute discrimination and never should have taken place in America,” said Forest of the civil rights era. “But what bathroom a biological male or female uses in going into a bathroom that has a sign that has male or female on it has everything to do with biological sex.”
While the federal government contends the 1964 law meant to include sexual orientation in it’s references to sex discrimination, Forest says the courts have said North Carolina’s position in correct.
“That’s just not the case. There are plenty of lawsuits out there in the federal courts that say that is not the case. The Supreme Court has decided not to rule on that because they don’t believe that’s the case either. That’s why it’s going to the federal courts now for a decision,” said Forest.
Forest says blurring the lines between the sexes not only infringes on the expectation of privacy, but gives a green light to sexual predators who will use looser standards to their advantage.
“There’s a bunch of nefarious characters out there. We have 24,000 registered sex offenders in North Carolina. Don’t give them a loophole. Don’t give them an opening to walk into a bathroom or a shower or anything like that. You don’t want to do that. It defies logic. It defies common sense,” said Forest.
If North Carolina were to capitulate to the Obama administration or the courts ultimately rule against his state, Forest says there will be far more discrimination then than there is now when it comes to public accommodation in the Tar Heel State.
“What we don’t talk about is who is really being discriminated against. That’s women and children, who haven’t had a voice in this, the 99 percent of the population of women and children who don’t want a biological male walking into a place where they should have the most security and privacy of all, and that’s in a bathroom, a shower or a changing facility,” said Forest.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review enjoy watching Hillary Clinton continue to lose states to Bernie Sanders. They also groan as Ted Cruz tells Glen Beck he’d jump back in the race if a path to victory re-emerged. And they shake their heads as Donald Trump decides that he doesn’t need a data operation to turn out his voters in November and will rely on rallies instead.
