Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review discuss Rick Santorum’s 2016 White House bid and George Pataki’s entry into the race. They also slam Rand Paul for suggesting that hawkish Republicans are responsible for the rise and growth of ISIS. And they have fun with Hillary Clinton’s contrived southern accent.
‘This Lawsuit Could Not Be More Crucial’
A leading congressional critic of President Obama’s unilateral immigration actions is hailing a federal appeals court decision to uphold the challenge of 26 states to a policy that would grant at least five million illegal immigrants legal residence in the U.S.
On Tuesday, a three-judge panel from the Fifth Circuit ruled 2-1 that the challenging states would be overly harmed by Obama’s actions. It also rejected an administration request to move forward with the program in the states that did join the lawsuit.
Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, is a former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and is still a senior member of that panel. He filed a petition in support of Texas and the other 25 states challenging Obama’s actions. Despite two long days of evaluating the response to devastating floods in his district, Smith is very upbeat about the courts delivering another blow to what he sees as an Obama overreach.
“This lawsuit could not be more crucial, quite frankly. It’s our first good win in court in a long, long time. We were overdue in trying to hold this president accountable for his unlawful actions,” said Smith. “He took action to give amnesty to as many as five million people in the country illegally. Clearly that was in violation of current law.”
The congressman not only believes the 26 states have a good chance of winning the case all the way to the Supreme Court, but he believes the court-imposed hold will run out the clock on Obama’s amnesty agenda.
“It was clearly unconstitutional and I’m just gratified that the three judge panel called it for what it was, unlawful and unconstitutional. I think this has really set the administration back and I think the president will be out of office before it’s resolved,” said Smith.
The White House, of course, vehemently disagreed with the decision.
“Today, two judges of the Fifth Circuit chose to misrepresent the facts and the law,” said White House spokeswoman Brandi Hoffine, who says the president’s actions were designed to improve our immigration system and the economy and were “squarely within the bounds of his authority.”
The crux of the legal debate is how far the president’s discretion over deportations extends. Smith admits the chief executive does have the power to halt some deportations.
“On an individual basis, he does have an amount of discretion whether to send someone back to their home country or not,” he said.
Obama contends he can defer deportation to the five million people in the nation illegally, because they all fall within a certain category. Namely, they all allegedly have children who are legal residents of the United States.
Smith says that’s not what the law allows.
“He cannot give amnesty to categories of individuals. He can, on a hardship basis, make individual exceptions to the general rule, This is anything but individual,” said Smith.
The Obama administration has not only lost at the district and appellate court levels but has also been admonished by District Judge Andrew Hanen for continuing to implement the policy after Hanen placed an injunction on it. As a result, more than 108,000 people in the U.S. illegally were granted three-year deportation deferrals.
“The judge was understandably upset by this. The administration says they don’t know how it happened. They were wrong. The apologized, but we have seen time and time again this administration will do whatever they think they can get away with,” said Smith, who says the administration has displayed that attitude since Obama took office.
“Throughout his tenure, President Obama has intentionally undermined immigration laws, not enforced immigration laws and tried to unilaterally change immigration laws,” he said.
The administration claims it is trying to find out who was improperly granted deportation deferrals but Smith says it’s hard to undo it.
“I don’t know whether to believe the administration or not. I’m glad they apologized but the damage is done,” said Smith.
Smith’s comments come after two days of meeting with residents and local and state leaders after historic flooding in his district. Over Memorial Day weekend, the Blanco River sent a 44-foot high wall of water into Wimberly, Texas, destroying property in its path and taking several lives. Others are still missing. The previous record surge on the river was a 32-foot crest back in 1926.
Smith says he is working to help the Texans in his district get on their feet and rebuild.
“It is tragic. The devastation is hard to imagine. At the same time, it was reassuring to see these individuals who had been damaged by this flood already rebuilding. They’re resourceful. They’re resilient and I really watched firsthand the American spirit at work,” said Smith, who says many businesses hope to be open again by the end of the week.
Three Martini Lunch 5/27/15
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review cheer a federal appeals court for ruling against President Obama’s unilateral amnesty. We also slam Hillary Clinton after new reports that the State Department approved billions of dollars worth of arms sales to nations that donated to the Clinton Foundation. And we have fun with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders saying it’s terrible that there are 23 different types of underarm spray deodorants while kids are hungry.
Time to End Compulsory Education?
An award-winning documentary filmmaker says science shows that compulsory education is a failed concept and the answer is to dismantle the system and allow “self-directed” learning designed largely by the children themselves.
Cevin Soling is the director of “The War on Kids” and is author of “The Student Resistance Handbook.” His film won honors as the best educational documentary at the New York Independent Film and Video Festival. He is speaking up again on the issue after legendary astronaut and former Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, said, as a Christian, that he believes evolution should be taught in schools but intelligent design should not.
Soling says he is no fan of intelligent design, but believes the scientific community lacks any consistency when it comes to education.
“My complaint is that the science community is saying that a component of curriculum of an institution that is wholly unscientific should be changed. That itself belies any kind of scientific mission and is grossly hypocritical,” said Soling.
In fact, Soling believes an honest appraisal of science confirms that compulsory education, whether public or private or whether religious or secular.
“There’s absolutely nothing science-based to the structure of compulsory schooling. Compulsory schooling is an experiment. It’s an intervention that is designed to have some kind of purpose that’s never been adequately defined. There’s never been any test. There’s never been any experimentation to show that compulsory schooling is effective at whatever it allegedly is designed to produce,” said Soling.
He says even the generally assumed goals of all organized education are a proven failure.
“If one posits several different things that compulsory schooling could potentially produce – literacy, work skills, democratic values, social skills – one sees that compulsory schooling actually fails in every single one of these categories,” said Soling.
And how exactly does Soling conclude that every type of formal education flops in those categories?
“In 2003, the Department of Education did a study and showed that only 13 percent of american adults were deemed proficient in literacy skills,” said Soling. “One would imagine when you have a population that’s forced to go to this institution for twelve years, nine months out of the year for five days a week that one would produce better results than that. And it hasn’t been tested against other approaches to education.”
Apart from academics, Soling says the atmosphere in every school intrinsically teaches lessons antithetical to American principles.
“Schools are run in a fundamentally fascist environment where you have an autocracy, where the population that’s in the school is deprived of almost all of their civil rights,” he said.
According to Soling, every school in America and parents of every student in the nation are trampling students’ civil rights by making them go to school and follow rules while there.
“First you have a population that’s forced to be in a place against their will. That in itself is a fundamental and gross violation of the most basic civil rights. Their speech is limited (as is) their capacity to go where they want, be where they want, socialize with who they want. Their due process is severely limited. (Their protections against) search and seizure is severely limited,” said Soling.
While the law does require schooling to a certain age, the vast majority of parents would likely enroll their children anyway. So while Soling does believe parents have a key role to play in educating their children, his answer on who ought to ultimately make educational decisions might come as a surprise.
“It need to be a mediated decision between the parents and the child. The parents need to listen to and respect the interests of their child, which is something the institutions train them not to do,” said Soling, who shed light on what he sees as the ideal education system.
“The solution is developing self-directed learning. There are many different approaches to that. You have to understand and appreciate that all people are different and have different needs. Some people require more structure than others. There’s democratic schooling, where intrinsic motivation comes from following the things that you’re interested in,” said Soling.
He says parents do have a key role in that setting.
“They’re in the role of mentors, so the structure can be rather rigid if that’s something that the individual child requires or quite free in the example of unschooling, where the child can have tremendous amounts of liberty,” said Soling.
Without any sort of standard for measuring achievement or gauging preparation for college or the working world, how would anyone know when a student is ready to move on?
“That’s not for other people to judge. That’s for the individual to judge. They decide whether their needs are getting met,” said Soling.
Three Martini Lunch 5/26/15
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are glad to see federal prosecutors holding General Motors accountable for the deaths caused by faulty ignition switches. They also slam President Obama for saying Iran’s intense anti-semitism is no reason for him to reconsider a nuclear deal. And they scold Obama for saying the Afghan war is over.
Gold Star Children to be Honored on Memorial Day
This Memorial Day weekend, the nation will pause to remember and honor Americans of all generations who lost their lives in service to the United States, and this year’s National Memorial Day Concert will spend time highlighting the children of those recently lost a parent in combat and how their lives are forever changed.
The concert airs live on Sunday, May 24, from 8:00-9:30 Eastern Time on PBS. One of the focal points will on the work done by American Gold Star Children to reach out to kids devastated by the loss of a parent and connect them with other children going through the same heartache.
“That’s an ultimate sacrifice when a parent has had to give up their life, knowing that they had a child and yet they put themselves in harm’s way so the rest of us in this country could live the good life and live with the freedoms and protections and advantages we have in this country,” said actor Joe Mantegna, co-host of the National Memorial Day Concert.
“Being able to focus on those children will be a very important part and I’m sure a very moving aspect of the program,” said Mantegna, who is co-hosting the event for the thirteenth straight year. For the past decade, he has partnered with fellow actor Gary Sinise.
The Dostie family was chosen to represent American Gold Star Children at the concert. U.S. Army Sgt. First Class Shawn Dostie was killed in Baghdad on Dec. 30. 2005. The 32-year-old Dostie was a 14-year veteran and left behind his wife, Stephanie, an eight-year-old son and a five-year-old daughter.
“Befor Shawn was killed, I didn’t know myself, even as a military wife, what a Gold Star was. All of a sudden, I became a Gold Star wife and my children became Gold Star children,” said Stephanie Dostie. “Of course it was devastating. Your whole family dynamic changes. The first three years were pretty rough. It took a lot of adjusting.”
She says part of the reason those early years were so difficult is because often times it didn’t feel as though Shawn had been killed.
“As a military family, we were used to him being deployed or in training somewhere, so we were used to him being gone quite a bit. For a long time, it felt like he was still on a deployment or he was away at training. It took a few years to really comprehend that he wasn’t coming home at all,” said Dostie.
Even after that realization, Dostie says adjusting to a new life was very difficult.
“We have spent the last years trying to put everything back together and beginning to be a family of three instead of a family of four. We take it one day at a time, still to this day we take it one day at a time and I think that’s the best way to get through something like this. Surround yourself with wonderful people, have a good support system and take it one day at a time,” she said.
Dostie’s children were chosen as the faces of Gold Star children for the National Memorial Day Concert after many were considered. She says this attention is so meaningful to Gold Star families.
“The only thing harder than losing your hero is feeling like they have been forgotten. To us, this is a wonderful way to honor Shawn. We’re very blessed that they were picked and we’re really looking forward to sharing our story with the nation,” said Dostie, who says her family’s experience with American Gold Star Children has been critical for her kids.
“When they meet another Gold Star child, they have a camaraderie with them. They’re able to open up to that child because that child knows that they’ve been through,” she said.
While life has resumed some sense of normalcy in since receiving the news of Shawn’s death nearly a decade ago, nothing will ever be the same.
“I think my son had a harder time than my daughter for quite a few years. He really needed his dad in his life. There were pivotal points where he just needed his dad there. He can talk to mom but there are some things he doesn’t want to talk to mom about. He wanted his dad there,” said Dostie.
That son will soon graduate from high school.
“It’s bittersweet because I want his father there to see him walk across that stage. It’s going to be a beautiful day for my son. It’s also going to be a hard day for the family because his dad isn’t there,” said Dostie.
“Once you’re a Gold Star child, this follows you for the rest of your life. I think down the road when my daughter’s going to get married, she’s not going to have her father there to walk her down the aisle. I’m not going to be able to sit on a porch with my husband and tell stories to my grandchildren,” she said.
“This isn’t something that ends once the funeral is finished. This is something that follows these children for the rest of their lives,” added Dostie.
She hopes the family’s participation in the concert will help the American people understand families of those grieving loved ones from wars past and present.
“I just hope the nation realizes the sacrifice these children have made by sacrificing their parent for freedom for this country. I hope it brings awareness to teach others to educate what a Gold Star child is,” said Dostie.
The National Memorial Day Concert will have a number of other special features, including a salute to World War II heroes 70 years after the war ended.
Mantegna says with the World War II generation slipping away, this is a critical tribute.
“They’re losing thousands and thousands every day. There’s going to come a time when there’s actually no living person alive from that conflict. Yet it had such a major impact on world history, so it’s important that we spotlight it,” said Mantegna.
He says the importance of the victory in World War II cannot be overstated.
“Evil could have triumphed but it didn’t. It was only due to the sacrifices that millions have made throughout the world, not just in this country but throughout the world,” said Mantegna.
Three Martini Lunch 5/22/15
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Ian Tuttle of National Review are encouraged by a National Journal piece saying Democrats have big trouble coming because they have very few promising candidates now and in the years to come. And they discuss the Boy Scouts’ capitulation to progressive culture by banning water pistols and allowing gay scout leaders.
‘They’re Getting More and More Desperate’
Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman James Inhofe is blasting President Obama for telling U.S. Coast Guard Academy graduates Wednesday that climate change is one of the most serious threats to security here in the U.S. and around the world.
In the midst of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program and just days after the Islamic State capture of Ramadi, Obama focused his remarks on the temperature of the earth.
“Climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security. Make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country. So we need to act and we need to act now,” said Obama, who called avoidance of the issue a “dereliction of duty.”
“Denying it or refusing to deal with it endangers our national security. It undermines the readiness of our forces,” he said.
Sen. Inhofe, who is also a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is the author of “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.”
“It shows that they’re getting more and more desperate,” he said. “He’s trying to resurrect the issue of global warming. This has got to be the most desperate statement that he’s made because it’s one that no one’s going to believe.”
“It is kind of humorous, the desperation that this president goes to trying to trying to bring this issue back,” added Inhofe.
He says Secretary of State John Kerry is floundering on climate change as well.
“He’s getting equally desperate. He’s been in on the very beginning of this with Al Gore and others. It has not panned out. The public knows it. The polling is now against them. He will say anything in order to fortify or resurrect the issue,” said Inhofe.
The senator says desperation is growing on the left because the public is less accepting of the dire climate predictions and feels less urgency to address the issue.
“We all know that climate changes all the time but it’s not a result of man-made gases. They’ve lost the argument. I can remember ten years ago it was polling as the number one or number two environmental issue. It’s now number thirteen out of fourteen,” said Inhofe.
Even if climate change were one of the most imminent threats to national security, man wonder what Obama actually expects the U.S. military to do about it. Inhofe says it’s less about logistics and more about building a consensus.
“I think what’s he’s trying to do is to get military members, and now and then he’ll find a retired general to cater to the president, to get them to agree with his assessment. So far, that hasn’t happened on anyone who didn’t have another reason for wanting to agree with the commander-in-chief,” said Inhofe.
“He’s trying to find some allies in the military, but they’re not there,” he added.
Inhofe says Obama’s commencement remarks are especially jarring given the major international challenges erupting in just the past few days.
“North Korea has just announced they have a miniaturized nuclear weapon. ISIS has already taken control of Ramadi. ISIS has sixty percent of Syria right now. They’re beheading Americans. We’re not responding,” said Inhofe.
“His timing could not have been worse to make a statement like that to a group like that, right after the declaration by everyone including James Clapper, the director of national intelligence (and others) that this is the most threatening time in the history of this country,” he said.
The senator is also blunt in blaming Obama for creating the conditions that give us so many national security challenges that he believes are infinitely more urgent than climate change.
“At a time when our enemies don’t fear us, our allies don’t respect us, they know this president has drawn the line in the sand many times as he’s done in Syria and other places and then backed away from it,” said Inhofe.
Inhofe was at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy on Friday, speaking with the underclassmen. He says the cadets there know very well what the real threats to national security are.
“These people at the academy know. They’re really tuned into the threat that is out there because they are trained to meet that threat,” he said.
The good news, says Inhofe, is that the young men and women at the academy show America’s military has a bright future.
“I quoted a lot of the past heroes and let them know that when they take their oath that they’re going to have to defend this country at the risk of their own lives. There wasn’t one hand that didn’t go up saying each one was willing to do that,” said Inhofe.
‘Pig Book’ Reveals Scope of Pork Barrel Spending
The congressional moratorium on earmarks has drastically reduced the amount of pork barrel spending in Washington, but billions of taxpayer dollars are still lost on redundant or worthless programs and the perpetrators are now harder to identify.
Citizens Against Government Waste is out with its “2015 Congressional Pig Book.” The group uses several criteria to determine if a project counts as pork barrel spending. Items requested by only one member or appropriated without competitive bidding are telltale signs, as are expenditures not requested by the president or that greatly exceed his budget request. Spending that only benefits a specific local area is another red flag.
In the 2015 report, 105 projects are identified as pork, costing taxpayers $4.2 billion.
“We continue to find earmarks after the moratorium, but it’s way down from the record $29 billion in 2006,” said Citizens Against Government Waste President Tom Schatz.
“It’s up from 2014, but $4.2 billion is fairly small compared to years of tens of billions (in spending) and fifteen or sixteen thousand (earmarks). Now there are 105,” said Schatz.
However, Schatz is quick to assert that “fairly small” is still not good enough.
“Everything still counts. We still have a large deficit even though it’s lower than it used to be, lots of liabilities for future entitlements. Every penny, every million counts here in Washington,” said Schatz.
In 2014, the “Congressional Pig Book” counted 109 pork projects, so that number is slightly lower. However, spending is up significantly from $2.7 billion a year ago. The jump to $4.2 billion constitutes more than a 55 percent increase.
“What they’ve done essentially is put into single earmarks what used to be multiple earmarks. So a $25 million earmark that used to be divided among 58 members of Congress is now just a $25 million earmark and we’re not quite sure who’s going to get the money,” said Schatz.
So is pork barrel spending really on the decline or are lawmakers just doing a better job of disguising it?
“Little bit of both,” said Schatz, who says some members make it pretty clear they are behind these earmarks.
“There are a few we can track to members of Congress. There’s $5.9 billion fore the East-West Center in Hawaii, which Sen. Brian Schatz, no relation I might add, has requested over the past few years. There’s $15 million for the Pacific Salmon Recovery Trust Fund out in Washington State and California, which Sen. Patty Murray specifically said she requested,” said Schatz.
Schatz says defense spending is responsible for multiple earmark violations.
“For example, $25 million for a science, technology, engineering and math program through the Department of Defense, when there are more than 200 of those STEM programs identified by the Government Accountability Office in 2012. Not only is it duplicative but the Department of Defense shouldn’t be teaching kids science and math education. That’s up to other agencies,” said Schatz.
The Pentagon ventures into seemingly unrelated fields doesn’t stop with education.
“Why is the Defense Department spending $20 million dollars for alternative energy research when there are billions of dollars for that purpose in the Energy and Water Bill where, if the government should be spending money at all, they should be spending money on alternative energy research,” said Schatz.
Even projects that no longer have a sponsor and no one wants to keep find a way to survive.
“Here’s a great example, not a lot of money but an absolute waste: $2.6 million for the Denali Commission, created in 1998 to build rural infrastructure in Alaska. Even President Obama said to get rid of this in 2012. The inspector general of the Denali Commission himself said, ‘I’ve concluded my agency is a congressional experiment that has not worked out. Congress should put the taxpayers’ money somewhere else,'” said Schatz.
The “Pig Book” has many other eye-opening revelations. Money for the Fund for the Improvement of Education soared from $21.1 billion in 2014 to more than $298 billion this year even though Obama did not request funding for it. The feds are also spending more than three million dollars per year on the Valles Caldera National Preserve even though government spending was supposed to end this year.
For Schatz, the problem of congressional pork isn’t going anywhere, but things are moving in a more responsible direction.
“There are still some outrageous examples of waste but they are far fewer,” he said.
Copies of the “2015 Congressional Pig Book” can be obtained for a small donation at cagw.org or by calling (800) 232-6479, which translates to (800) BE ANGRY.
Three Martini Lunch 5/21/15
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review cheer much of Rand Paul’s call for greater fourth amendment protections and faster issuing of warrants to balance security and liberty. They’re also critical of CNN and Fox News for making plans to limit the number of GOP candidates on stage in early debates. And they roll their eyes at the Florida congressman complaining that lawmakers cannot make it on $174,000 per year.