News & Politics

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review welcome new, unimpressive poll numbers for Hillary Clinton.  They staggered as to why evangelicals are flocking to Donald Trump despite his life and political positions being a giant middle finger to traditional values.  They marvel at Trump’s ability to plan an event that may well eclipse the debate he’s skipping and the RNC’s inability to stop other networks from airing it.  And they mark 30 years since the horrific Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

The lead attorney for one of the undercover pro-life reporters indicted this week in the aftermath of last year’s exposing of Planned Parenthood says prosecutors are pursuing bogus charges, Planned Parenthood officials are the obvious criminals and we’re reaching a “scary” point where politics determine the outcome of the justice system

On Monday, a Harris County, Texas, grand jury elected not to indict Planned Parenthood for allegedly selling organs and other body parts of aborted babies.  Instead, the members returned a felony indictment of tampering with a government record against Center for Medical Press President David Daleiden and his colleague, Sandra S. Merritt.  If convicted, they could each spend as much as 20 years in prison.

“These two individuals will be exonerated.  There’s no question about that,” said Liberty Counsel Chairman Mathew Staver, who is lead counsel for Merritt.  “They’ll have their day in court.  We look forward to that.”

Daleiden was charged with an addition misdemeanor of trying to purchase organs from aborted babies.

According to the indictment, the felony tampering charge accuses Daleiden and Merritt of fabricating California driver’s licenses to gain entry to the Houston Planned Parenthood facility.

Staver says the statute is being badly misapplied in this case.

“They were using journalistic tactics like lots of journalists do.  It’s not just David and Sandra.  This is something that has been done by journalists for a long time,” said Staver.

In addition, he says there is an explicit exception to the law.

“If you take a driver’s license and you tamper with it and make it look like it’s valid for you because you have had your driver’s license revoked for a DUI or whatever, and you then present that as your driver’s license to the police officer knowing that you really have no driver’s license, that is what’s covered by this situation,” said Staver.

As a result, Staver is supremely confident both defendants will be cleared.

“This indictment really goes beyond what the statute words say, and certainly the intent of the statute.  That’s why I think this will be thrown out at the end of the day,” said Staver.

Staver says the misdemeanor charge against Daleiden may be even more bogus.

“That’s even more outrageous because he’s purchasing what from whom and the seller doesn’t get anything to that effect?  If someone’s going to purchase something, you have to have a seller selling something, and it’s illegal to sell body parts,” said Staver.

He says Daleiden has even stronger ground in that he had no intent to actually buy any body parts from aborted babies.  He says no one would videotape their activities and then disseminate it far and wide if they believed it was criminal.

Staver believes the absence of charges against Planned Parenthood is the greatest travesty of all in this case.

“It’s obvious what they’re doing.  They’re on video.  It’s multiple times, multiple people, high-ranking Planned Parenthood individuals.  They’re talking callously about aborting baby body parts.  They’re talking about preserving certain fetal organs intact because they can get higher prices for them.  Then they’re talking about selling these body parts, so it’s pretty obvious,” said Staver.

“Planned Parenthood is the one that has committed criminal acts here.  They’re the ones that should be indicted and having to reveal to the rest of the public the inner workings of Planned Parenthood, this brutal, barbarous kind of activity that Planned Parenthood is doing and being funded by state and federal tax dollars in the process,” said Staver.

So how did this happen?  Staver sees two potential issues, beginning with the grand jury process itself.

“[A grand jury] is basically giving one side of a story without the other side represented.  Certainly we need to respect the grand jury’s process but I do know there are situations where grand juries don’t get all the information and they are going on information that is being presented to them, which is a very narrow slice of the pie.  That’s why prosecutors need to be so ethically above board,” said Staver.

That last point leads to Staver’s second major concern.  While Harris County District Attorney Davon Anderson is a Republican who calls herself pro-life, one of her assistant prosecutors most certainly is not.

LifeNews revealed that Lauren Reeder, a prosecutor in Anderson’s office, is listed as an unpaid director for the Houston Planned Parenthood clinic in question on the facility’s most recent 990 tax form from 2014.

“The district attorney or the assistant district attorney has a lot of power in either giving evidence to give one side or withholding evidence to not give the other side,” said Staver.

In the big picture, Staver fears we are entering a “very scary” phase in which politics and ideology seem to matter more than the law in resolving hot-button cases.

“When you get into two different particular areas, abortion and the issue of homosexuality and same-sex marriage, it seems all the common sense, all the logic, all the rules of procedure, frankly the rule of law just gets tossed to the side and you have these outrageous, shocking situations,” said Staver.

“What’s driving it?  It’s not the rule of law.  It’s ideology and it’s politics and it should have nothing to do with judicial proceedings.  When you ultimately mix ideology and politics with the judiciary, you’re really messing up the system that the founders envisioned.  All of us should be concerned about that because all of lose our liberty,” said Staver, noting that those who cheer today’s decisions could find the winds blowing against them soon.

The Iran nuclear deal is signed, it survived a congressional hurdle and now even the sanctions are being removed, but Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, is now looking to the courts to stop the deal in its tracks.

Gohmert says this is the last chance to derail what he insists is a treaty while Barack Obama is in the White House.

Despite the fact the deal is already being implemented in multiple ways, Gohmert insists the law is on his side.

“It alters the Non-Proliferation Treaty in a number of respects.  You can’t alter a treaty with something that isn’t a treaty.  It gets into weapons.  It gets into a number of things that can only be done with a treaty,” said Gohmert, a former judge who now sits on the House Judiciary Committee.

He says President Obama’s ongoing actions also add to the case.

“There is a decent shot in court because the president has continued to act under this deal as if it were affirmed.  It is a treaty and he’s acting like it was ratified and it simply has not been.  Never mind that Iran continues to violate the terms and continues to say ‘Death to America,'” said Gohmert.

But there is also a major problem.  Congress never declared the agreement a treaty.  Instead, Republicans adopted the Corker-Cardin bill.  Concerned in early 2015 that Congress would have no say on any deal, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., authored legislation that would require a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate to reject the deal.  It failed in the Senate.

Had the Senate declared it a treaty, a two-thirds majority could have been needed to ratify it.

“The Senate should have had the guts to treat it as a treaty, not bring it up under the Corker bill because the Corker bill did not apply to a treaty.  Bring it up for a ratification vote that requires two-thirds.  It wouldn’t have gotten anything close.  Then it would have been a lot easier to go to court and establish that the administration could not act in accordance with a treaty  that had not been ratified,” said Gohmert.

“Since the Senate didn’t have the courage to stand by the Constitution and do what was needed – at least their leaders didn’t – then that is going to make the court challenge a little more difficult,” said Gohmert.

While the Senate tactics are a major setback, Gohmert says a court case can still proceed.

“[Congress] can still go to court.  They can still get a court to rule and a judge in his right mind should say, ‘Yeah, this is a treaty and it didn’t get ratified.  So no, you can’t act under this treaty and give  the largest supporters of terrorism in the world $100-150 billion so they can kill more Americans,'” said Gohmert.

He says the case does not need any congressional vote, although a subsequent Senate vote on ratification would be a big help.  Nonetheless, he says the House never voted on Corker-Cardin and that should bolster the case.

“It was clear from our vote, which the appellate court can take judicial note of, that we didn’t recognize it as being in compliance with Corker-Cardin so it would have been perfectly understandable for the Senate to then take it up as a treaty and vote it down.  Unfortunately they did not,” said Gohmert.

Gohmert says it is vital to keep up this fight because Obama is already stiff-arming Congress on new issues, including the lifting of U.S. sanctions.

“Keep in mind the existing law says the president cannot release the sanctions to Congress for a vote,” said Gohmert.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review enjoy watching Hillary Clinton claim people keep calling her untrustworthy because they are liars who want to stop her from bringing positive change to America.  They sigh as Italy covers up nude art and refuses to serve wine at a state dinner so as not to offend the Iranian president.  And they get a get a kick out of Hillary Clinton continuing to insist she did nothing wrong with her private server.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review plow through the snow to enjoy the possibility of Michael Bloomberg launching an independent White House bid.  They also shudder as the FBI probes Hillary Clinton and her State Department subordinates for taking highly classified information and pasting it into emails on Clinton’s non-secure server.  And they react to Donald Trump saying he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and he wouldn’t lose any supporters.

It’s well known that man Republicans in Washington do not like Sen. Ted Cruz, but the full extent of that antipathy is coming to light this week as several current and former lawmakers say they prefer Donald Trump as the GOP nominee, although they have little regard for either man.

Some GOP consultants and strategists started the rumblings in recent days.  Then Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad told Republicans in his state to oppose Cruz because of the senator’s opposition to ethanol subsidies.

But the story broke wide open on Wednesday when former Senate Majority Leader and 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole said he would choose Trump over Cruz, going so far as to say a Cruz nomination would be “cataclysmic” for the Republican Party.  Another former GOP Senate leader, Trent Lott, has said the same.

But Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tex., a Cruz supporter, is not swayed.  While honoring Dole for his heroism in World War II, Gohmert says many mainstream Republicans are worried about what a President Cruz would mean for them.

“You don’t get any more establishment than Bob Dole and Trent Lott,” said Gohmert.  “So they’re going to be an indication of where the establishment will go.  They have more belief that Trump will make deals with them and that Ted Cruz will continue to stand on principle as he has been.”

Current officeholders are joining the chorus, including Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Dan Coats, R-Ind.

“An awful lot of us really didn’t like to be targeted as corrupt, establishment bought by the lobby establishment,” Coats added. “It sure looks like someone was using it as a way to gain notoriety as the only true conservative in Washington,” Coats told CNN.

Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., went a step further, reportedly telling donors that he would vote for Bernie Sanders before he’d back Cruz.  Burr later asked for a retraction, but the Associated Press is standing by the story.

Gohmert believes the venom in the GOP is a result of Ted Cruz doing something most other politicians don’t.

“If you’re a person that’s interested in lying or you’re interested in twisting the truth or you’re interested in breaking your promises that you made to get elected, then you’re not going to care for Ted Cruz,” said Gohmert.

But the congressman also says the notion that Capitol Hill is a wasteland of Cruz supporters is dead wrong.

“Ted Cruz has got a bunch of members of Congress, solid conservatives, a whole bunch of them that have come out and endorsed Ted.  I’m not aware of anybody in the House that has endorsed Trump,” said Gohmert.

Gohmert says moderate Republicans and the mainstream media are aligning with Trump based on a major assumption.

“They think he’ll be more of a deal maker.  They’re probably figuring, ‘You know, Trump is a winner.  He says what he has to to win.  He’ll say what he has to to win the Republican primary.’  And so they’re probably thinking, ‘So then he’ll go back and agree with Democrats to say what he needs to to win the general election,'” said Gohmert.

Gohmert says the Republicans are doomed in that scenario.

“If that were to happen, as has happened before, then so many in the base of the Republicans would have nowhere else to go but third party.  That assures the Democrat wins,” said Gohmert.

But can Cruz work with people in Congress?  Gohmert says yes.

“He can compromise.  He has compromised on issues but when it comes to matters of principle, you shouldn’t be compromising on matters of principle and he doesn’t,” said Gohmert.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Ian Tuttle of National Review discuss National Review devoting an entire issue and calling on 20 different conservatives in an effort to convince voters to reject Donald Trump.  They also salute the hundreds of thousands of pro-life activists descending on snowy Washington for the annual March for Life.  And they slam Secretary of State John Kerry for casually conceding that Iran will spend some of his billions in unfrozen assets on terrorism.

When the story of the 2016 Republican presidential race is written, January 19 might emerge as a critical turning point, as two major moments triggered seismic shifts in the campaign and the state of conservatism and the GOP itsel.

Those moments occured with hours of one another as tea party favorite Sarah Palin endorsed the White House bid of Donald Trump and Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad told Republicans not to support Ted Cruz because of his opposition to ethanol subsidies.

They are also moments that longtime conservative activist Richard Viguerie believes help to crystallize the differences between Trump and Cruz.

Viguerie gained fame in the 1960’s as the first man to use direct mail in political campaigning.  He is now chairman of conservativehq.com and the author of “Takedown: The 100-Year War for the Soul of the GOP and How Conservatives Can Finally Win It.”  He recently endorsed Cruz for the Republican nomination.

The first critical moment Tuesday came when Gov. Branstad told reporters in Iowa that Republicans in his state should reject Cruz over his stand on renewable fuels.

“He is the biggest opponent of renewable fuels and he actually introduced a bill in 2013 to immediately eliminate the Renewable Fuel Standard.  He is heavily financed by big oil,” said Branstad.

“We think once Iowans realize that fact, they might find other things about him attractive but I think it would be very damaging to our state,” added Branstad.  “He hasn’t supported renewable fuels and I believe that would be a big mistake for Iowa to support him.”

Viguerie says Branstad, in addition to touting big government, was deliberately disingenuous.  He says this issue is anything but a reason for voters to punish Cruz.

“I think the person who should be punished is Gov. Terry Branstad.  He’s the one who just lied. He said that Ted Cruz opposes renewable fuel.  No.  He does not oppose renewable fuels.  He opposes subsidized, taxpayer-subsidized renewable fuel.  Big, big difference and he knows that.  He just flat out lied,” said Viguerie.

In fact, Viguerie applauds Cruz for not groveling to Iowa voters over ethanol.

“This is just an example of how Ted Cruz is the limited government, constitutional, principled conservative in the race, the only one at a top tier level,” said Viguerie.

So Viguerie was less than enthused to see tea party favorite and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin endorse Trump on Tuesday.

“I’m sorry to see it.  I think it’s a big mistake.  I think it will have limited value,” said Viguerie.

Why is it a mistake?

After taking a hands-off approach to Trump for months, Viguerie says he now sees Trump acting more like a typical politician, even vowing to increase ethanol subsidies if elected.  But there’s something even more fundamental at work.

“He is in no way a conservative.  He’s got a lifetime record, 40 years plus of being a political liberal person,” said Viguerie.

He says Trump’s record of supporting eminent domain against private property owners, backing abortion at all stages of development, endorsing same-sex marriage and donating to many prominent liberal politicians proves he’s no tried and tested conservative.

Viguerie also says voters should not be swayed just because the GOP figures who frustrate them are also critical of Trump.

“Your enemy’s enemy is not necessarily your friend.  Because the establishment in this country is so opposed to Donald Trump does not mean that he’s our friend.  He has a 40-year record of espousing big government solutions to the problems,” said Viguerie.

He also says the most important ingredient in a Republican win come November is party unity.  Viguerie says Trump’s record of being socially liberal means he cannot bring the GOP together and he will face the same results as Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney.

Curiously, Viguerie believes Cruz is the only Republican candidate capable of uniting the party.  That assessment is likely to cause many Republicans to spit out their coffee.  After all, Cruz is detested by GOP leaders for repeatedly and publicly defying them.  Nearly all of his Senate colleagues have endorsed someone else.

And lately, even names synonymous with the Republican establishment, such as Bob Dole, are starting to prefer Trump to Cruz.

So how does Cruz ever emerge as a unifying figure?  Viguerie says Cruz fits five of the six requirements to unite the party, such as being conservative on economics, social issues and national security.  He also believes Cruz would be appealing to tea party members and libertarians.  That leaves the moderates.

“Since Cruz checks all five of those first boxes, with his vice presidential choice he can bring the establishment moderate Republicans and have a united ticket.  With his vice presidential choice and other appointments, he has an opportunity to unite the party in a way that no other candidate does,” said Viguerie.