Archives for January 2016

Several Republican presidential candidates were bloodied over their shifting positions on immigration reform in Thursday’s debate, but a key voice in the debate says all of the candidates seem to be edging to a more conservative position on border security and what to do about people in the U.S. Illegally.

In the debate, candidates Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio were confronted with montages of their own statements that seemed to contradict what they’re saying now.  Rubio was quoted from 2010 saying that an earned pathway to citizenship was code for amnesty yet he backed such a pathway in the 2013 Senate immigration bill.

Cruz was asked to explain statements from 2013, when he tried to amend the immigration bill by banning citizenship for people in the U.S. illegally but allowing them to become legalized.  Cruz insists that was a poison pill designed to show how unreasonable Rubio and the other sponsors were and that he has never really backed a path to legalization.

Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian says everyone has blemishes on this issue.

“Nobody is pure on this issue.  not Trump, not Cruz, not Rubio, not Jeb.  They’ve all shifted their positions,” said Krikorian.

But he says they are are all flip-flopping in an encouraging way to him.

“They’ve all shifted their positions in the right direction.  They’ve all become more hawkish on immigration as the public concern over the issue has become clearer and harder and harder to deny,” said Krikorian.

But not all flip-flopping is created equal.  Krikorian says Jeb Bush is the least credible on the issue but doesn’t see Bush as still having a shot at the nomination.  Among the top tier of candidates, he says Rubio has the most to answer for because of his involvement in the Gang of Eight legislation.

“I’m not sure that people are going to forgive and forget that and I’m not sure that they should.  In a sense, no matter what he says, it’s important that somebody who does the kind of thing Rubio did be punished politically no matter what he thinks now.  In other words, that there be a price exacted so that other people in the future will think twice about doing what Rubio did to help Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama,” said Krikorian.

Krikorian is also thrilled the issue is getting so much attention in this campaign.  He says Donald Trump deserves credit for pushing the issue to the forefront but not as much credit as Trump gives himself.

“Even if he weren’t in the race, not just Republicans but independents and even lots of Reagan Democrats, are really concerned about this immigration issue.  It would be coming up.  There’s no question about it but Trump is right.  He has gotten so much traction talking about this that the other candidates have been scrambling more than they would have been scrambling otherwise,” said Krikorian.

While voters must determine the sincerity of the candidates, Krikorian says Americans have made it clear what they want on immigration.

“The only way the public would ever accept amnesty would be if we fixed the problem first,” said Krikorian.  “Plug the hole in your boat first before you talk about how you’re going to bail it out.”

But Krikorian says candidates and the media have missed the most critical immigration issue – defining the extent of legal immigration.

“The more important issue is how much legal immigration do you think the United States wants to have.  We have tens of millions of Americans who want to work and can’t find work,” said Krikorian.

Just three days before the first votes are cast in the 2016 presidential campaign, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is on defense again after the State Department refused to release 22 emails kept on her unsecured server because they contain highly sensitive information.

State Department sources says the 37 pages of emails contain Special Access Program information, some of the most closely guarded secrets in our government.

“This is very telling,” said former U.S. Attorney Andrew C. McCarthy, who is now with National Review and is the author most recently of “Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment.”

McCarthy says this doesn’t radically change the scope of the FBI investigation into Clinton’s server since we already know more than 1,300 emails contained classified information and have been released with the sensitive parts redacted.  Still he believes this highlights the seriousness of Clinton’s actions.

“With respect to these 22 (emails), there is actually a blanket prohibition on disclosure and the reason is that they fear there are other copies of these emails out there,” said McCarthy.

“If they release any part of them, whoever may have those emails will have it confirmed to them that you’re dealing with a Special Access Program national security intelligence matter,” said McCarthy.

He says tipping anyone off to such information could have horrific consequences.

“When that kind of stuff gets revealed and people work backwards or go to school on the information that’s out there, that can result not only in the compromise of important sources of intelligence but also potentially in the killing of people who are spies or covert informants,” said McCarthy.

The Clinton campaign calls the State Department decision “overclassification run amok” and insists bureaucratic infighting over what qualifies as classified is all that’s happening in this story.

McCarthy dismisses that assessment and says this is the latest evidence that ought to give voters great pause this year.

“As a candidate, I think it makes even less appropriate for her to be given an even higher position of public trust,” said McCarthy.

The Obama White House also waded into the Clinton investigation on Friday, with Press Secretary Josh Earnest downplaying the likelihood that Clinton will face any legal trouble for her actions over the server.

“That’s not something I’m worried about,” said Earnest.  “Some officials have said she is not the target of the investigation and it does not seem to be the direction in which it is trending.”

McCarthy finds that statement puzzling.

“The political parts of the government, including the White House and the White House staff, shouldn’t know what’s going on in the Justice Department’s investigation,” said McCarthy.

McCarthy also says Earnest is using slippery language by saying Clinton is not the “target” of the investigation.  He says in the legal community the term “target” or “subject” is reserved only for situations when a grand jury has begun to investigate a specific person.  Since there is no grand jury, McCarthy says Earnest’s statement is meaningless.

He says the FBI should not be rushed by the political calendar but he also says this probe really shouldn’t take that long.

“A classified information case is easier to investigate than other kinds of cases in the sense that the arguments either where they belong or they’re not.  They were either transmitted to people who shouldn’t have had them transmitted to them or they weren’t,” said McCarthy.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review applaud Ted Cruz for refusing to embrace ethanol subsidies and mandates in Iowa.  They slam Cruz for his terrible joke about leaving the stage and they discuss the GOP bloodbath over immigration flip-flopping.  And they wonder why Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum allowed themselves to be used by the Trump campaign.

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.