Archives for March 2015

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review cheer Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for fully describing the threat posed by a nuclear Iran since our leaders won’t do it.  They also slam Hillary Clinton again after revelations she had her own personal email server installed to collect all of her emails while serving as secretary of state.  And they rip the Department of Veterans Affairs after an investigation found $92.5 million illegally diverted from medical care for vets.

As House Republican leaders moved forward with a Tuesday vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security, including the Obama administration’s unilateral action on immigration, conservative legend Phyllis Schlafly says the GOP wasted their best and, perhaps, last chance to stop what she calls illegal executive amnesty.

Schlafly is the founder of Eagle Forum.  She spearheaded the fight against the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s and 80s.  Her most recent books include “Who Killed the American Family?” and the re-release of “A Choice Not an Echo” some 50 years after its original publication.

On Friday, Congress barely avoided a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown by approving a one-week extension of current funding.  Democrats insist they only did so in exchange for a promise from House Speaker John Boehner to offer a “clean” bill to fund the department, including the administration’s immigration action through September.  Boehner insists he made no such deal, but told House Republicans Tuesday morning that a vote on the clean bill would happen later in the day.

Boehner told GOP members the votes did not exist for another short-term extension and he refused to cut off funding for DHS at a time of mounting threats to the U.S.  Tuesday afternoon, the clean bill was approved 257-167.  All 182 Democrats supported it, as did 75 Republicans, while 167 GOP members opposed it.

Schlafly says the GOP abandoned the mission voters tasked them with in November.

“It’s an insult to everyone who voted to elect the Republicans in the last congressional election.  The American people clearly voted against Obama’s illegal, unconstitutional bills of all kinds, amnesty is the main one but there are others too.  The American people are absolutely against amnesty and they don’t want it funded.  I just don’t understand the Republicans,” said Schlafly, who says Republicans control appropriations and ought to use that power to stop a lawless act.

“The Constitution gives the House the power of the purse and they should exercise that power of the purse by cutting off money they think is wrong,” she said.  “I wish Republicans would be Republicans.  That’s what we really need, people to stand up to Obama.  He’s a disaster for our country and he doesn’t have our national security at heart.”

For weeks, Democrats have held their ground in insisting upon full funding of DHS or nothing at all.  In the wake of Friday’s near shutdown, the House GOP leadership began targeting conservatives who refused to vote for legislation containing money for the Obama immigration program.  The American Action Network (AAN) was founded by former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and  is still closely connected to House GOP brass.  It launched television ads against three conservatives and digital campaigns against several others.

“While threats grow, conservatives in Congress want to beef up our security, enhance cybersecurity and put real teeth in immigration enforcement.  It’s the right message to send to our enemies.  But some in Washington are willing to put our security at risk by jeopardizing critical security funding.  That’s the wrong message to send to our enemies.  Tell Congressman Tim Huelskamp to fund Homeland Security.  Our safety must come first,” said an AAN advertisement.

In addition to Huelskamp, R-Kansas, the TV ads targeted Reps. Jim Bridenstine (R-Oklahoma) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

Schlafly says the ad got one thing right.

“It is a matter of national security.  There’s new information out on how many crimes are committed by these illegal aliens, who get in here one way or another and who are let in by Obama,” said Schlafly.

When we let him go ahead with his illegal amnesty, it’s an offense to everybody.  These illegal aliens are committing all sorts of crimes, from murder to drunk driving.  We’re just looking for some Republicans to stand up and fulfill what they believe,” she said.

But there are larger issues at work, according to Schalfly.  She says the illegal immigrants championed by Democrats are very different than immigrants of past generations and that ought to matter in determining whether they’re allowed to stay.

“They don’t want to be assimilated into America.  I think anybody who’s let into this country for permanent residency should want to be an American.  If they don’t want to be an American and abide by our Constitution and laws, we shouldn’t let them in,” said Schlafly.

How does she expect voters to respond to Republicans giving Democrats what they want on DHS funding?

“I think it’s going to be acute disappointment and they may retaliate in the next election.  We’re hoping we’ll have a replacement for Obama in the next election, but giving Obama what he wants right now is not what the American people want,” she said.

The immigration issue is one of multiple reasons why Schlafly is concerned about 2016.  She recently made headlines for chastising the Republican Party for trying to arrange a coronation of former Gov. Jeb Bush, R-Florida, as the GOP nominee.  It’s a charge she readily repeats and says it’s a strategy that has resulted in disaster for the GOP.

“They’ve been trying to have a coronation for their candidate every time and they’ve been successful in getting their candidate nominated, but they’ve been a series of losers and we’re tired of their losers.  They pick globalists and internationalists the American people do not want.  So I’m hoping that the grassroots will rise up,” said Schalfly.

She says Bush appears to be the latest choice of GOP leaders but she considers him unacceptable on critical issues.

“On the two hottest issues or the grassroots, he’s wrong.  They are amnesty and Common Core.  The American people at the grassroots do not want amnesty, period, and they do not want Common Core to take over the teaching of our kids in public school,” said Schlafly.

Schlafly says she is not endorsing any candidate for the Republican nomination.  She says Govs. Scott Walker, R-Wisconsin, and Bobby Jindal, R-Louisiana, are the potential candidates who impressed her most at the recent Conservative Political Action Confrence.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review react to news that Hillary Clinton only used personal email accounts while she was secretary of state, a violation of law and a major security risk.  They also slam Obama for trying to find a way to change tax policy on his own.  And a PAC connected with House GOP leaders is running attack ads against conservatives taking a stand against executive amnesty.

President Obama is now blatantly breaking the law in an effort to ban one of the most popular types of ammunition for the AR-15 semi-automatic weapon and the timing comes just before a massive amount of supply of the bullets is due to arrive in the U.S., according to Gun Owners of America Chief Counsel Michael Hammond.

Last month, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Exploves (BAFTE) announced it was planning to fast-track a ban on 5.56mm M855 ammunition through executive action.

Hammond says the timing is not a coincidence.

“There is a massive backlog of M855 ammunition from NATO, which was about to come onto the American market as a result of the fact NATO is being encouraged to go from lead to copper ammunition,” said Hammond.

“This action, if it were successful, would [make illegal] the sale and possession of that to individuals in America of this massive backlog, which is coming on line from a government surplus,” she said.

Obama stayed away from the issue of guns during the 2012 campaign, but a month after his re-election in 2012, a gunman murdered 20 elementary school students and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.  The president then called for Congress to take decisive action on the issue of “gun violence.”  However, even Democrats rejected the effort.

“In the Spring of 2013, trying to wave the bloody flag of Newtown, in order to exploit those victims for political purposes and ban this gun.  In the end, he was not only not successful, he didn’t get a majority vote.  He didn’t even get 40 votes in a Democratic-controlled Senate for banning the AR-15,” said Hammond, who says the new executive action comes as no surprise.

“So what does he do?  He turns around and says, ‘If I can’t ban the gun legally through the constitutional process, what I’m going to is ban it illegally by banning the most common ammunition used in it and making that completely unavailable.  Furthermore, I’m going to do it in such a way that explicitly contradicts the statute which I’m purportedly using in order to do this,” said Hammond.

Which statute is that, exactly?  Hammond says he worked to defeat 18 U.S. Code § 921 in the 1980s, but he says Section A17 is crystal clear in forbidding the Obama administration’s actions.

“It says you can ban these bullets only if they’re made ‘entirely’ of tungsten, steel, iron, brass bronze, beryllium, copper, uranium,  Guess what?  M855 ammunition is, by and large, made mostly of lead.  So it doesn’t even arguably fall within the definition of the statute they’re trying to use to ban it,” he said.

Hammond says the revolt to this executive action is already underway.

“The Second Amendment community is really all fired up on this.  We already have a Senate office that’s called us and said, ‘We want to offer language to ban this Obama action and to defund it on whatever the first appropriate vehicle is.  They would have liked to use the DHS appropriations bill, but we will use whatever the first appropriate vehicle is to reverse this unlawful action,” said Hammond.

After watching Republicans fail to find 60 Senate votes to defund the president’s unilateral immigration actions, pro-gun activists may be skeptical that Republicans can block the president through regular order.  However, Hammond says there are Democrats who know failing to defend the Second Amendment could cost them their careers.

“If I were a Democrat from a red state, I would be looking over my shoulder at what happened in 2014 and saying, ‘I don’t want to be going into my next election with the Second Amendment community accusing me of authorizing the illegal banning of AR-15s,'” said Hammond.

Hammond specifically cited Democrats Harry Reid (Nev.), Michael Bennet (Colo.), Joe Manchin (W. Virg.), Heidi Heitkamp (N. Dakota) and Jon Tester (Mon.) as being inclined to buck the president on this issue.

In addition to the legislative fight over guns and background checks in 2013 and the fight brewing over the executive action on M855 ammunition, Hammond says there have been plenty of other battles waged during Obama’s second term.  He says the biggest fights have been won by pro-gun forces.

“They tried to take this requirement that you register multiple sales of firearms with the government, which is currently applicable to four border states.  They tried to extend that to all 50 states.  We were successful in beating that back,” said Hammond.

Another major fight centered on federal efforts to dry up the money supply for the gun industry.

“They tried to use a program called Operation Chokepoint to convince banks not to do business with gun dealers and gun manufacturers, thereby financially strangling the Second Amendment.  We were successful in beating that back,” said Hammond.

“As a matter of fact, we got a Democratic Senate to tack language onto it’s appropriations bill, which says, ‘We’re defunding the whole program, not just vis á vis guns but vis á vis everyone,” he said.

There are other challenges unfolding in addition to the effort to ban certain ammunition.  Hammond says the next big fight will center on Obamacare and efforts to gather information on gun owners.

“The Obama administration is working to use Obamacare in order to encourage doctors to enter into their computerized records who owns a gun and who doesn’t own a gun.  There is a real feat that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms will begin trolling this data bank to determine who should additionally be added to its gun ban black list,” said Hammond.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review review the high points of the Conservative Political Action Conference.  They cheer the impending retirement of Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski, while discussing whether the GOP can pick up the seat.  They also discuss the latest “mysterious” death of another Vladimir Putin critic.  And they shake their heads as Secretary of State John Kerry says our relationship with Israel has never been stronger.