Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review react to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker endorsing Ted Cruz. They slam Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal to caving to liberals and big business to veto religious freedom legislation. And they do a double take as the National Journal’s Ron Fournier suggests prosecutors must meet a higher standard before charging Hillary Clinton because she is running for president.
Republican Oklahoma State Senator Joseph Silk is sponsor of a bill calling for abortion providers to be viewed as murderers under state law but the legislation is now in limbo after his own party’s leaders refused to let it come to the floor.
Silk is sponsor of Senate Bill 1118. It includes very direct language.
“A person commits murder in the first degree when that person performs an abortion,” the bill states. It defines abortion as “the use or prescription of any instrument, medicine, drug or any other substance, or device to intentionally kill an unborn human being.”
Silk says it’s time for pro-life leaders to go after what they really want.
“We need to call it what it is, which is murder, the pre-meditated intentional killing of a human being, and then treat it as such. We’re trying to change the conversation from the typical pro-life rhetoric to actually being pro-life and getting justice for all these murdered children,” said Silk.
He believes pro-life lawmakers have spent way too long fighting at the margins in this debate.
“We’re essentially regulating abortion. Your typical pro-life bill, and I say pro-life in quotes, is ‘Hey, you can’t kill your baby with this instrument, but you can with this.’ If we as pro-lifers believe that abortion is murder, then those pro-life bills aren’t actually pro-life,” said Silk.
Silk says the public reaction in Oklahoma was overwhelmingly supportive.
“The vast majority of Oklahomans who heard about the bill and were active in contacting legislators and the Senate in particular were very, very excited about the bill because people are tired of hearing the pro-life rhetoric. Candidates say, ‘Yeah, I’m pro-life. We’re going to do what we can do.’ They don’t ever do anything,” said Silk.
He says the people loved the direct language.
“We have the most severe wording and the truth in that wording. People were excited to see that coming from the state government. We got huge public support for that bill,” said Silk.
But Senate Bill 1118 was blocked from state senate consideration earlier this month and will not be brought up again until next year at the earliest.
“Two members of leadership decided to block the bill and they did succeed in that despite my best efforts and some of my colleagues and other citizens of Oklahoma,” said Silk. “They blocked it and it did not get a hearing on the senate floor.”
Republicans control the Oklahoma state senate by a 39-9 margin, meaning GOP brass scuttled the bill. Silk says thus far he is not satisfied with the explanations given by party leaders.
“They never could give me an answer why they were blocking it. They just kept saying, ‘It’s a dangerous vote. It’s going to put members in a hard place. It goes too far.’ Things like that,” said Silk.
Silk’s appeal to their pro-life position also fell on deaf ears and muted voices.
“Then I would ask them, ‘You believe that life begins at conception?’ They would obviously say, ‘Absolutely.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s what this bill says,’ and then there’d just be blank stares,” said Silk.
Silk plans to re-introduce the bill in the 2017 session and knows it could face the same fate. He admits the language to Senate Bill 1118 was changed somewhat to accommodate issues raised in a committee hearing. Silk hopes lawmakers will look at it differently once they’ve had time to soak in the language.
Another argument against the bill was that the courts will strike it down and the U.S. Supreme Court is very unlikely to overturn Roe v. Wade under its current leadership.
That doesn’t deter Silk at all. In fact, he relishes a legal fight at the heart of the abortion debate.
“We need to attack the issue directly. Life begins at conception and abortion is murder. Until we start doing that, [the Supreme Court is] never going to be forced to overturn that ruling,” said Silk.
He says activists have changed court precedent many times in the past, most notably with respect to slavery. He also says the Supreme Court defied it’s own logic on the definition of marriage in just two years.
“Just three years ago, they said marriage shall be defined by the states. After continuous pounding, what did they do this last year? They defined it for us,” said Silk. “Sure, some bills may get struck down, but eventually you’re going to push the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade,” said Silk.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review warn GOP voters that most polls show Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders clearly defeating Donald Trump in November. They also rip Pres. Obama for trying to blur the lines between capitalism and communism. And they unload on parents for turning a kids’ Easter egg hunt into a brawl.
Terrorism expert Dr. Walid Phares says Belgian authorities are making some of the same mistakes as other European nations in the wake of a major terrorist attack, and the new foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump is also explaining what Americans could expect on this front if Trump becomes president.
Phares is a longtime Middle East and terrorism scholar, a Fox News terrorism analyst, a lecturer at National Defense University and an adviser to the U.S. Congress. In recent days, he was announced as one of Trump’s five top advisers on matters of foreign policy and national security.
In the wake of major terrorist attacks earlier this week, Belgian authorities are actively conducting raids and chasing down leads to find the perpetrators of the airport and subway bombings. Phares says those operations are being run with some competence but don’t get at the bigger issue plaguing Europe and other parts of the world.
“My worry is not about the tactical investigation. It is really about the strategic investigation with regard to who planted that cell initially. What kind of communication does it have with ISIS, meaning the metropolitan ISIS back in Iraq and Syria, and the possibility of other networks, not just in Belgium and France, but also on the rest of the continent?” said Phares.
He says the fight to stop the spread of radical Islamic terrorism needs to be at the ideological level, not just in aggressive law enforcement.
“Yes, [the Belgian authorities] could have done a little better on the technological level, but the real battle will always be how to disconnect the radicalization and indoctrination networks,” said Phares. “We’re doing everything but that.”
For his part, Trump responded to the attacks by targeting immigration policy, a move Phares says is being very responsive to his base.
“He says, ‘We don’t know what’s happening.’ So now the answer to that is his administration, his task forces that he will be forming will have to answer one question, in cooperation with Congress of course. ‘How do we vet?’ The answers to all the questions about the jihadists is, ‘How do we vet them?'” said Phares.
He says the answer on vetting immigrants lies in digging much deeper into applicants’ connections with those driving a radical ideology.
“You have to create the proper institution that is concentrating on the vetting, meaning, number one, determine what the ideology is, who is circulating the ideology, who is actually creating those madrassas, meaning ideological schools online and offline. Start to work a bit deeper than just a tactical investigation. It’s a whole change of policy,” said Phares.
He says that is the polar opposite of what President Obama and Hillary Clinton want to do.
“The problem is that the Obama administration and maybe a Clinton administration won’t be inclined to do so. They have always been remote from dealing with anything related to the jihadi ideology,” said Phares.
As for Trump’s general foreign policy and national security philosophy, Phares says it’s a work in progress.
“Mr. Trump is coming from a different field than the other public policy politicians. he’s a very successful businessman. He is arriving to the scene with that huge experience in terms of economics and finances and deals and what have you,” said Phares.
“He is now in the process of forming his strategic thinking with the help of reading a lot, he observes a lot and with the help of the task forces he establishes,” said Phares.
For those looking for detailed Trump plans soon, Phares says they are coming, but not in time for primary voters to evaluate them.
“I think the major activity is going to come hopefully after the nomination,” said Phares.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Ian Tuttle of National Review react to a new poll suddenly showing Ted Cruz with a narrow lead in Wisconsin. They also rip Obama’s reaction to the Brussels attacks and for continuing to assert that keeping Guantanamo Bay open is somehow more dangerous to Americans than letting detainees go. And they react to the latest salvo over wives in the Republican presidential race.
With the world focused on a major terrorist attack in Belgium and the intensifying presidential race, a renowned expert on the Far East says North Korean missile tests and their detention of an American college student ought to be very concerning to the Obama administration and other world leaders.
In recent days, North Korea test-fired numerous ballistic missiles in a manner designed to menace its neighbors and also sentenced University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier to 15 years of hard labor for tearing down a poster of the late Kim Jong-Il inside a North Korean hotel.
The missile tests followed a statement from dictator Kim Jong-Un that he wanted the military to have nuclear weapons ready for use “at any time.”
Columnist and author Gordon Chang has studied China and North Korea up close for years and is author of “Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World.” He says the communist regime has reasons for doing what it’s doing.
“North Korea will continue to test short and intermediate-range missiles. They want to show their customers that these things work. Also they want to rattle the international community,” said Chang.
But he says the U.S. better be paying attention too.
“What we’re concerned about, however, is their testing of long-range missiles. They do have two launchers that can reach 48 states. Therefore, we’ve got to be concerned because eventually, if not now, they’ll be able to put nuclear warheads on those missiles and therefore threaten America,” said Chang.
Chang says much of what we’re seeing from North Korea in recent weeks is out of fear of the world cracking down on it’s behavior.
“We see a number of sanctions that have been imposed on North Korea, not only by the UN but unilaterally by South Korea, Japan and the United States. North Korea’s got to be concerned that these are actually going to throttle its economy, especially the economy as it relates to the regime members,” said Chang.
Instead of Kim acting more responsibly to ease sanctions, he expects the dictator to antagonize the world even more.
“Kim Jong-Un, the ruler, is going to continue to do these things, including making threats about incinerating Manhattan, which he did about four or five days ago, as he tries to change the status quo,” said Chang.
All of this leads back to the question the United States and the world have been trying to answer for decades: What is the most effective response?
Chang says it should start with being serious about the new sanctions.
“What we need to do is not only impose sanctions but, more important, to enforce them. There’s a pretty heavy set of sanctions already in place before this year, when there was the nuke and missile test,” said Chang. “If we actually started to enforce these sanctions, we might get the attention of China, especially if we impose sanctions on Chinese banks doing business with North Korea.”
He says getting China on the right side of the North Korea problem is pivotal.
“We haven’t been willing to do that for various reasons, neither this administration nor the prior one. We’ve got to look at North Korea in a very new light and understand we have very little time to solve this problem,” said Chang.
In addition to the ominous aspects of the North Korean threat, Chang says the United States should also be taking advantage of the dysfunction in Pyongyang.
“This administration really has yet to come to grips with one fact and that is that inside the regime in North Korea, there seems to be a lot of intense infighting, especially Kim Jong-Un struggling with his four-star officers. He’s killed at least two of them in the last 13 months and a third one has recently disappeared,” said Chang.
Chang implores leaders to see the challenges posed by North Korea with clarity.
“We can talk all we want about what North Korea should do, but the issue is what North Korea is going to do. I don’t think the policy community in Washington and in other capitals has really understood the dynamic, the very dangerous dynamic, in the Kim regime,” said Chang.
The Warmbier case presents a very different headache for U.S. officials, but it’s one they’ve faced several times before. Chang says North Korea relishes having American citizens in custody to use as “bargaining chips.” He believes Warmbier made a mistake even travelling to North Korea and should have known better than to pull down the poster, but the punishment grossly exceeds the offense.
“I don’t think he should have gone to North Korea. Americans should not do that. It is extraordinarily dangerous. Now that he has done it, we need to continue to put pressure on North Korea to release him because obviously this sentence is way out of bounds for what anyone would expect for something like this. This was a prank. It doesn’t deserve 15 years hard labor,” said Chang.
Chang says the U.S. cannot reward North Korea by making concessions in exchange for Warmbier.
“We should not reward the regime for taking Americans because all that does is give them incentive to take more. We sent President Carter, President Clinton, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence. These are big propaganda coups for North Korea, so they get something when we take Americans back who have been released from captivity,” said Chang.
He says a smarter analysis reveals the U.S. has more leverage in these situations than it realizes.
“The regime has an incentive to let these people go anyway. They do not want to hold them. So we should play a little tougher with them on this because we need to stop this dynamic. It’s great to get Warmbier out, but we’ve got to worry about the next Warmbier and the one after that,” said Chang.
The father of Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz escaped the horrors of Cuba during the communist revolution there and says the U.S. is making a huge error by re-engaging the Castro regime without any concessions and that President Obama’s actions there amount to treason.
“It is a drastic, drastic, drastic mistake,” said Rafael Cruz, who fled Cuba in 1957.
Cruz is now an ordained minister and the author of “A Time for Action: Empowering the Faithful to Reclaim America.” As a teenager, he intensely resisted the brutal rule of dictator Fulgencio Batista, and initially aligned himself with Fidel Castro, who led the revolution under false pretenses.
“I was involved in the revolution with Castro, thinking that he was a freedom fighter. I was imprisoned and tortured (by the Batista regime) as a result. I came to the States in ’57,” said Cruz.
He says he still didn’t realize Castro’s true agenda until returning shortly after the revolution.
“In ’59, when I went back, something didn’t look right. They were starting to talk about how the rich were evil, how they oppressed the poor, about the need to redistribute the wealth. Soon thereafter, he called himself a Marxist-Leninist and began confiscating private property, freedom of religion (and) freedom of the press,” said Cruz.
“I felt like I was duped, like many of us kids. We were high school kids when we were involved and we didn’t know any better,” added Cruz. “Thinking about what Obama is doing nowadays, trying to extend the lifeline to Cuba is really a horrible situation.”
Cruz says the most alarming aspect of Obama’s olive branch to the Castros is that the regime is not changing it’s behavior one iota. He says the legacy is clear of Cuba pouring 25,000 troops into Angola in 1979 to assist in a communist revolution and to this day training the terrorists of FARC to destabilize Columbia.
Even in the lead-up to Obama’s initial announcement that he would pursue normal relations with Cuba, Cruz says Cuba was still fostering terrorism.
“A year before Obama approached Cuba about normalizing relations, there was a merchant ship from North Korea leaving Cuba. It was stopped in Panama, sacks of sugar on top, thousands of tons of weapons in the bottom manufactured in Cuba and going to North Korea. Cuba is still exporting terrorism and insurrection throughout the world,” said Cruz.
Cruz also slammed Obama for severely damaging national security, both in restoring ties with the regime in Havana and for releasing as many detainees from Guantanamo Bay as possible.
He didn’t hold back in his characterization of the president’s actions.
“Today, Obama is bent on releasing all of those terrorists from Guantanamo Bay. Every time he releases some of those, they go join ISIS or join Al Qaeda to kill more Americans. That’s treason,” said Cruz.
“Beyond that, he wants to empty Guantanamo Bay and I’m sure that after that, he will want to give that base back to Cuba,” said Cruz.
He explained his greatest fears if the U.S. relinquishes control of our naval base at Guantanamo Bay.
“Think about this for a moment. Suppose Cuba decides to put that base up for bids, maybe to Russia, maybe to China, maybe to North Korea, maybe to Iran. This could be disastrous. This is a matter of national security,” said Cruz.
Cruz says he does not know exactly what his son’s policy would be towards Cuba if elected president but assures voters a President Cruz would chart a very different course.
President Obama believes lifting the trade embargo would be a win-win for the American and Cuban peoples given the greater demand for goods and the new jobs needed to meet it. But Cruz says there is no good news here for the Cuban people.
“Raul Castro made a statement, saying that if an American company hired a Cuban worker, that salary had to be paid to the Cuban government. The Cuban government would retain 92 percent of that money and pay the worker the other eight percent. So all it would do is fatten the fat cats while they continue to exploit the Cuban people,” said Cruz.
Finally, Cruz is unimpressed by Obama’s appeal for Cuba to embrace religious freedom. He says Obama’s own actions and policies show the president believes in a freedom to worship, rather than the freedom of religion. He says there’s a huge difference.
“What he wants to promote is, ‘You keep your religion inside the four walls (of the church), but the moment you step outside that church this is a secular society.’ He wants to promote that the religion of America is secular humanism. That means there are no more values, no more absolutes,” said Cruz.
He says the consequences of that in society are devastating and we are already seeing them.
“What we see as a result of that is a total decay on our moral values. We see chaos. We see immorality. We see a society that is crumbling, even a direct attack on the traditional family,” said Cruz. “The natural consequence of that is the destruction of society as we know it.”
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Ian Tuttle of National Review discuss Jonah Goldberg’s column suggesting conservatives need to prepare for the end of the GOP as we know it whether Trump wins the nomination or not. They also slam the Super PAC who put out a racy photo of Melania Trump as reason to vote against her husband – and they slam Trump for blaming the ad on Cruz and threatening to “spill the beans” on Heidi Cruz. And they sigh as Sarah Palin prepares to follow in the footsteps of Judge Judy.
ISIS is claiming responsibility for multiple bombings in Brussels, Belgium, that left dozens dead and hundreds injured and terrorism expert Richard Miniter says the attacks were a direct message to the United States and we need to be much more effective at fighting back.
Miniter also panned President Obama’s brief reaction to the bombings and critiqued the responses of the top Republican presidential candidates as well.
Tuesday morning, bombings ripped through the terminal in Brussels, near the American Airlines ticket counter. Another device blew up in a crowded subway station during morning rush hour. Estimates of deaths and injuries vary, but all accounts have at least 28 dead and over 200 injured.
In a column written shortly after the attack, Miniter says the specific location of the airport bombing was deliberate.
“I don’t think it was any accident that the bombers chose to blow up the American Airlines check-in desk. Not only that, of the three American Airlines check-in desks, they close the one closest to the Starbucks. They were trying to kill Americans, not just Europeans,” said Miniter, who believes the attack was also a message to the U.S. government.
“I think this attack in Brussels was also a message to the White House. ‘If you step up air attacks and ground attacks against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, we will retaliate with terrorist attacks like this one and bring down your presidency, Mr. Obama,'” said Miniter.
Miniter is also quite certain ISIS plans to do a lot more than kill Americans abroad. He says the San Bernardino terrorist attack in December taught the Islamic radicals a lot.
“There are a lot of soft targets in America, not just public schools but also shopping malls and other unguarded, unpatrolled areas. They see a target-rich environment in the United States,” said Miniter.
President Obama offered a brief statement on the attacks prior to a high-profile address in Cuba. Obama denounced the attacks, pledged to stand with our Belgian friends, urged global unity against the terrorists and expressed his determination to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Miniter found two glaring problems with Obama’s remarks, starting with the call for unity.
“Human nature divides people and that’s an aspect of human nature that can’t be changed. So the idea that the solution to terror is unity is a bizarre, theoretical, abstract way of dealing with a very real-world problem,” said Miniter.
He also didn’t care for Obama’s end game for dealing with those responsible for Tuesday’s atrocities.
“Obama says he wants to bring the perpetrators to justice, which suggests to me that he means a civilian trial either in the United States or in a European country. The terrorists would have defense attorneys and rights to cross-examine, rights to exclude evidence and all of the other usual criminal protections,” said Miniter.
Miniter says Obama’s response needs to be much tougher.
“It would be far stronger if the president had said that they would go to the ends of the earth and would kill or capture those responsible. Those are the words of George Bush. Those are not the words of Barack Obama. We’ve seen a different philosophical change from the Bush years to the Obama years and that it had a different result in the world,” said Miniter.
He says Obama has learned nothing from his predecessor.
“As a result of the Obama foreign policy, we see Syria has collapsed. more than three million people have fled. Human rights abuses have occurred. ISIS has risen from a small faction of Al Qaeda in Iraq to a deadly global force. The world has become much more dangerous for Americans under the Obama approach,” said Miniter.
Miniter says Bush was successful in stopping terrorist attacks from 2002-2008 because of a a robust intelligence-sharing network of 107 nations that kept track of terrorists no matter where they fled. He says there needs to be a greater effort to target and kill ISIS leaders through missile strikes. And he says the Bush team aggressively targeted bank accounts and even whole banks to dry up terrorist resources.
“What the Obama people have to do is go back to the Bush playbook. I know they got elected saying how wrong Bush was, but Bush was so successful that the issue of terrorism was a bore. Now it’s a live issue and that’s because they threw away the playbook and let the tiger out of the cage,” said Miniter.
As for the current presidential candidates, Donald Trump is calling for a pause to immigration until the terrorism threat is under control. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, argues that altering immigration policy is not who we are as a people.
Miniter says the U.S. has paused immigration in the past, but he’s quick to add that shutting things down won’t be a cure-all.
“The whole system needs to be tightened up and reformed. The idea that you can just turn a switch tomorrow and make it stop? It’s a much bigger problem than that, unfortunately,” said Miniter.
He also says there are many loopholes in other programs such as student visas, where the federal government often doesn’t even check if an applicant graduated from high school. Miniter says students and tourists alike often overstay their visas as well.
Trump is also locked in a debate with GOP rival Ted Cruz over the proper U.S. role in NATO. Trump believes the U.S. should step back and stop footing the bill for the security of the western world. Cruz says U.S. leadership is more vital than ever in NATO.
Miniter says Trump is right in that we are paying two-thirds of security operations for all of NATO. As a result, he says the militaries of European nations are a “joke” with German coast guard vessels having to share radios because there aren’t enough and the UK sporting only one aircraft carrier, unless you count the one that can only carry helicopters.
In the end, he sees the Cruz approach as better.
“Trump is certainly right that we pay far too much for an alliance that doesn’t give us a whole lot. On the other hand, I think Cruz has the smarter of the two approaches,” said Miniter. “Pulling out suddenly would not accomplish anything except terrorize the Europeans and drive them into the arms of Russia. That would be very unwise to turn western Europe over to Russia.”
Miniter does think the U.S. could leverage it’s standing as the muscle for NATO to demand stricter immigration policies and other measure to mitigate the radical Islamic threat to the west.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Ian Tuttle of National Review enjoy hearing Bill Clinton call the last eight years “awful.” They react to the horrific terrorist attacks in Brussels and President Obama’s listless response. And they unload on Obama for his moral equivalence between the problems in Cuba and the perceived flaws in the U.S.
