Right Wing Granny

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Right Wing Granny

Tag Archives: American citizens

Disturbing News

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On Sunday, The Washington Times posted an article about the potential invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

The article reports:

Americans in Ukraine will be on their own if Russia invades so the U.S. government is advising them to take the earliest commercial flight possible out of the country.

On Sunday, State Department officials said they didn’t know if Russian President Vladimir Putin has made the decision to send tanks across the border but insisted such a move could come “at any time.”

“The U.S. government will not be in a position to evacuate American citizens in such a contingency,” a senior State Department official told reporters in a briefing. “Russian military action anywhere in Ukraine will severely impact the U.S. embassy’s ability to provide consular assistance.”

So why aren’t we providing military flights to get Americans out of the country now? The government has issued a “do not travel” advisory because of the coronavirus, but has not ordered American citizens to leave the country.

The article concludes:

Although repeatedly pressed by reporters in Sunday’s briefing, State Department officials wouldn’t say how many U.S. citizens are believed to be in Ukraine.

“It’s a number we are not able to share because we don’t have a solid number (and) it’s not ‘helpful’ to share estimated numbers,” an official said.

U.S. officials wouldn’t comment on British reports that Russia is planning to invade and replace Ukraine’s government in Kyiv with one that could be controlled by Moscow.

“We’re very concerned about attempts to destabilize (Ukraine) internally,” the State Department official said. “We have been concerned and have been warning about those kinds of tactics for weeks. That is very much part of the Russian playbook.”

Remember when America was respected around the world to the point that our citizens were not in danger when they were in other countries?

I heard an interesting commentary on this situation on Saturday. There are well-informed people who believe that Russia is simply posturing in order to get more favorable trade agreements. I have no idea if that is true, but I like that idea much better than the idea of going to war.

 

 

Something To Watch While Everything Else Is Going On

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Yesterday The Washington Times posted an article about contact tracing in the era of the coronavirus. Since the article is behind the subscriber wall, I found it on Outline. The article reminds us how the government can easily abuse its power under the guise of tracking contacts to prevent the spread of a virus.

The article reports:

From The Hill, in a piece titled, “A day in the life of America’s contact tracing army,” comes this quote of Kelsey Green, a contact tracer working for the Carroll County Health Department in Maryland: “It’s not a fun job at times,” she said, in reference to the telephone calls she makes to people to inform them they may have come into contact with someone who’s tested positive for the coronavirus.

She went on to say: “A lot of people don’t want to hear it, but when they do hear it, they’re receptive and thankful. It seems a little intrusive, but it makes me so happy if someone answers [the phone], and I’m able to tell them, ‘Hey, you’ve been in contact with someone who’s tested positive. Can you quarantine?’ “

Quarantine?

How about this as a response: Who the freak are you? Hang up, hang up quick. Hang up quick and call the police; there’s a stalker on the streets.

The article concludes:

If the government says you have been exposed to the coronavirus — then that’s it, you’ve been exposed to the coronavirus. And now you must stay home. Now you must cede your civil liberties.

Now you must do as the government says.

Now you must obey.

This is America, post-COVID-19, and the “new normal.” Where are the Republican lawmakers on this?

Congress, at least the conservatives in Congress, need to step in and put a speedy end to these crazily unconstitutional designs with legislation that makes clear: Neither contract tracers nor their minions in the bureaucratic health fields have power to tell free citizens what to do, positive coronavirus test results be danged.

Free American citizens are only free so long as they are able to keep control of their most basic private and personal decisions. If the government can tell citizens what to do when they’re sick, or maybe sick, or might be sick, or have maybe crossed paths with someone who is sick, or maybe sick — well then, that’s the end of freedom in America as we know it.

The “new normal” is no America at all.

If we are still a country in five years, I wonder how we will look back on this. Please follow the link above to read the rest of the article.

The Lies That Allowed The Investigation To Continue

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As the drip, drip, drip of information about the Russia investigation continues, it is becoming more obvious that the investigation was based on lies. Today The Gateway Pundit posted an article titled, “2018 DOJ Memo to FISA Court Contained at Least 8 Lies which Ensured Mueller Investigation Would Continue.” The article details the lies and the false impressions they were designed to create.

These are the lies:

1. The DOJ letter refers to the Nunes and Schiff memos released in February 2018 and states that with this new information the Deep State attorneys leading the DOJ at that time still believed that the Carter Page FISA applications contained sufficient support that the agent they were spying on was an agent of a foreign power [Russia].

2. In addition, the DOJ claimed that Carter Page was targeted by Russia when in fact they knew that his connections with Russia were were as a result of his time as a CIA agent working for the US in spying on Russians.  This information was altered and then provided to the court omitting that Page was working for the CIA…

3. The document goes on to state that a friendly foreign government, which is not identified, reported that George Papadopoulos was perhaps coordinating with Page and Russia.

4. The government then goes on to mention activities related to Papadopoulos that no doubt were in the press at that time and claims that Papadopoulos’s discussions were “consensually recorded”. But we now know that Papadopoulos was not aware at the time that he was being taped.

5. Then the DOJ claims that none of what Papadopoulos shared would have impacted the Carter Page FISA, but this is not true as well.

6. The DOJ next discussed information about its “Source 1”. One item that jumps out is that the source, believed to be British MI6 Agent Christopher Steele, was handled before September 2016, which is the date when Steele reportedly first interacted with the DOJ…

7. and 8. The DOJ said they still didn’t think Steele was behind the Yahoo News leak and the DOJ claimed the Primary Sub Source (PSS) was found to be believable, but in the DOJ IG’s report from December 2019, not a single person could be found who believed this.

Please follow the link to the article to read the details. The bottom line here is that the Russia investigation was a political hit job designed to remove a sitting President before he could uncover the unlawful activities of the previous administration in regard to surveillance of American citizens. Unless people go to jail, this will happen again.

The Slow Drip Of Investigations Into FISA Abuse Continues

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Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted an article titled, “FISA court orders DOJ to review flawed surveillance applications and provide names of targets.”

The article reports:

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court demanded answers about whether FISA applications were invalid after a new Justice Department inspector general report found pervasive issues with the FBI not following fact-checking procedures.

Friday’s ruling came days after DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a memo showing FISA flaws were not just limited to the surveillance of Trump campaign associate Carter Page.

The findings of Horowitz’s audit released on Tuesday focused on the FBI’s requirement to maintain an accuracy subfile known as a “Woods file.” Investigators found serious problems in each of the 29 FISA applications they examined.

“We believe that a deficiency in the FBI’s efforts to support the factual statements in FISA applications through its Woods Procedures undermines the FBI’s ability to achieve its ‘scrupulously accurate’ standard for FISA applications,” Horowitz concluded.

The article continues with information that might indicate the FISA court is not happy about being misled:

“It would be an understatement to note that such lack of confidence appears well-founded. None of the 29 cases reviewed had a Woods File that did what it is supposed to do: support each fact proffered to the Court. For four of the 29 applications, the FBI cannot even find the Woods File,” presiding Judge James Boasberg said. “For three of those four, the FBI could not say whether a Woods File ever existed. The OIG, moreover, ‘identified apparent errors or inadequately supported facts’ in all 25 applications for which the Woods Files could be produced. Interviews with FBI personnel ‘generally have confirmed’ those deficiencies, not dispelled them.”

Boasberg said the wide-ranging problems “provide further reason for systemic concern” about the FBI’s FISA process and “reinforces the need for the Court to monitor the ongoing efforts of the FBI and DOJ to ensure that, going forward, FBI applications present accurate and complete facts.” The judge said, “When problems are identified in particular cases, furthermore, the Court must evaluate what remedial measures may be necessary.”

The article concludes:

In a rare public order last year, the FISA court criticized the FBI’s handling of the Page applications as “antithetical to the heightened duty of candor described above” and demanded an evaluation from the bureau. The FISA court also ordered a review of all FISA filings handled by Kevin Clinesmith, the FBI lawyer who altered a key document about Page in the third renewal process. He is now under criminal investigation by U.S. Attorney John Durham, a prosecutor from Connecticut who was tasked by Attorney General William Barr with investigating the origins and conduct of the Russia inquiry.

I will not be impressed with any of this until people actually go to jail for violating the civil rights of American citizens. I am still not convinced that will ever happen.

 

How To Navigate The Media Spin

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The Epoch Times posted an article yesterday about the report of the Justice Department Inspector General. The report found that the FBI failed to document facts correctly in 29 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) applications that were reviewed. A rational person would take that as an indication that all was not well at the FBI and that Americans were being unlawfully surveilled. However, the mainstream media did not necessarily see it that way.

Eli Lake posted the following comments at Bloomberg News:

In the twisted politics of the Trump Era, some of bureau’s defenders might actually view this report as good news: It shows that the investigation of the Trump campaign was not necessarily politically motivated. The bureau made the same kinds of mistakes with suspects who were not connected to the Trump campaign.

That’s hardly reassuring — and the malpractice that the report uncovers is a much larger problem than the FBI and its defenders may wish to admit. So far, the response to Horowitz’s December report has been a series of administrative reforms, such as a requirement that FBI field offices preserve their “Woods files” and a mandate for new FISA training for FBI lawyers and agents. That’s all well and good. But one need not go back to the bad old days of J. Edgar Hoover to see that the bureau has been careless in its monitoring of U.S. citizens.

The Woods procedures were issued in 2001 after Congress obtained a memo from the FBI’s counterterrorism division detailing surveillance abuse in the late 1990s. One target’s cell phone remained tapped after he gave it up and the number was reassigned to a different person. Another FBI field office videotaped a meeting, despite a clear prohibition on that technique in its FISA warrant. In 2003, an interim report from the Senate Judiciary Committee concluded that the 2001 memo showed “the FBI was experiencing more systemic problems related to the implementation of FISA orders” than a problem with the surveillance law itself.

Very little has changed in the intervening 17 years. That’s why it’s foolish to expect new and better procedures will work this time. A better approach would be an aggressive policy to prosecute FBI agents and lawyers who submit falsehoods to the surveillance court. The best way to prevent future violations is to severely punish those who commit them in the present.

Scott Johnson posted an article today at Power Line Blog that included the following quote (follow the link to the article for the audio of the answer to the question):

The New York Times is illustrative of “the twisted politics of the Trump era.” Daniel Chaitin covers the Times angle in his Examiner article “‘Biased and out of control’: Devin Nunes rips New York Times reporting on FISA memo.” Chaitin reports on Rep. Devin Nunes’s interview with Larry O’Connor:

Radio host Larry O’Connor read a passage from the [Times’s] report [on the Horowitz memo] to Nunes during the Examining Politics podcast on Tuesday. It said DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report “helps the FBI politically because it undercuts the narrative among President Trump and his supporters that the bureau cut corners to surveil the adviser, Carter Page, as part of a politically motivated conspiracy.”

“So, the good news for the FBI is that they trampled on people’s rights all over the place, not just people who worked with Donald Trump’s campaign,” O’Connor said. “Is that the takeaway we should have here congressman?”

I agree with Eli Lake–severe punishment for those guilty of illegal spying on American citizens is the only way to prevent future abuse by the FBI.

 

This Needs To Be Dealt With

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The Gateway Pundit posted an article today with the following headline:

Three Years Ago a FISA Report Confirmed Obama Admin Was Sending FISA Obtained Information on Americans to Non Government Entities We Still Don’t Know Whose Data Was Sent to What Companies

This is a serious violation of the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans.

The article states:

The FISA Court Ruling showed widespread abuse of the FISA mandate. According to the report, Obama’s FBI, NSA and DOJ performed searches on Americans that were against their 4th Amendment rights. This went on for years. One paragraph in the report states that 85% of the Section 704 and 705(b) FISA searches made during the time of the audit (a few months in 2015) were non-compliant with applicable laws and therefore criminal.

In addition, Obama’s DOJ and FBI were illegally searching Americans against their rights. Unbeknownst to most Americans, Obama’s FBI was providing this information to outside contractors who had no business or legal cause or claim for the information.

A review of the report showed on page 19 that the Court stated that Obama’s NSA had an institutional “lack of candor”.

The article includes the report.

The article concludes:

The level of corruption within Obama’s NSA, FBI and DOJ is shocking.

To date no one has been charged with crimes or is serving time as a result of the many crimes committed by this group of government hoodlums.  We still don’t know what companies were receiving personal information on which Americans during the Obama years.

It’s been more than four years!!!

It is high time that those responsible for violating the constitutional rights of American citizens be brought to justice.

The New Way Forward Act

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The Daily Caller posted an article yesterday about The New Way Forward Act which was referred to the Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship on January 30, 2020.

The article lists some of the highlights of the bill:

The bill, among many things, calls for the decriminalization of illegal immigration, would make it more difficult to deport convicted criminal aliens, empower immigration judges to nullify deportation orders, and also calls for the return of previously deported illegal aliens.

…The decriminalization of illegal immigration was already becoming a more mainstream position with the Democratic Party. In fact, before the introduction of the bill, Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both came out in support of the proposal. Sanders, a clear frontrunner in the nomination contest, has also voiced support for virtually ceasing all deportations.

The New Way Forward, however, takes these positions even farther.

Under the auspices of the bill, minimum prison sentences that require deportation would rise from one year to five years. This could mean that illegal aliens who are convicted of crimes such as car theft, weapons offenses and fraud — all crimes that carry average sentences of less than five years, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics — would not be required to be removed from the country.

The article concludes:

The president, during his address, also touted a GOP bill in the Senate that would allow victims of illegal alien crime to sue states that released the alien in defiance of an ICE detainer.

“Democrats in the House have prioritized open borders over the safety of citizens and legal law abiding immigrants,” Marguerite Telford, a spokeswoman for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based immigration think tank, said in a statement to the DCNF.

Like the president, Telford also compared Democratic immigration priories with that of GOP lawmakers

“Contrast that with most Republicans who are worried about safety and focus on sanctuary jurisdictions, driver’s license laws, knowing who is crossing our border … and the rule of law in general,” she continued. “For example, Rep. Gosar has the Criminal Alien Removal Clarification Act which stands in stark contrast to the New Way bill.”

I guess the question is whether it is more important to protect the rights of American citizens or the ‘rights’ of those who are here illegally.

Why The Census Is An Issue For The Democrat Party

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The Democrats have been pursuing two paths regarding the 2020 Census and its impact on the 2020 election–the first is to eliminate the Electoral College and the second is the refusing to distinguish between American citizens and non-citizens during the census. Eliminating the Electoral College will put Los Angeles and New York City in charge of our country’s government (those two cities have not really mastered good government with fiscal responsibility) and counting non-citizens in the census will give more Electoral College delegates to the Democrat states.

On January 5th, The Blaze reported the following:

Population estimates show reliably Democratic states, like New York, California, and Illinois will each lose at least one congressional district and representation in the Electoral College. Conversely, states that tend to vote for Republicans—such as Texas, Florida, and Montana—are expected to increase their presence.

“This is looking to benefit Republicans only because of how the landscape has changed,” said Jenna Ellis, senior legal analyst for the Trump 2020 campaign, according to radio station KTRH.

Ellis also noted that Democrats’ anticipated losses is why they mobilized so strongly to oppose the Trump administration’s addition of a citizenship question on the Census.

“They’re not interested in laws,” she said. “They’re not interested in sound reasoning or fair and accurate representation of every American. They are only interested in concentrating their own political power by any means necessary.”

Most Americans have the option of voting with their feet. That is why California is rapidly losing citizen residents and Texas is gaining them.

The article lists the states gaining and losing population:

Among GOP strongholds expected to lose an electoral vote are: Alabama, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Among the blue states are California, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, and Rhode Island. That’s an even minus five for both parties from the 2016 election night map, according to an analysis by NBC News.

However, when analysts looked at states expected to gain seats, the GOP comes out on top. Three Republican states that went for Trump in 2016—Montana, Arizona, and North Carolina—are likely to pick-up one seat after the Census. On the Democratic side of the ledger, two states (Oregon and Colorado) will each add a seat, resulting in a net gain of one Electoral College seat for Republicans.

The big problem for the Left is that forecasts show Florida and Texas—both of which voted for Trump in 2016—picking up a combined five seats (two for Florida, three for Texas). Thus, if the estimates hold, Republicans will pick-up six Electoral College votes. Of course, this assumes that both the GOP maintains control of the Lone Star and Sunshine States, but that’s a topic for a different day.

The only hope for the Democrats is that the people moving to Republican states bring their big government ideas with them and overwhelm the population. As someone who lives in one of those states, I am hoping that doesn’t happen.

The Overlooked Impact Of Illegal Immigration

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Breitbart posted an article yesterday about an aspect of illegal immigration that is often overlooked.

The article reports:

Research by the Center for Immigration Studies’ Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler finds that annual illegal and legal immigration to the U.S. will redistribute political power in the form of 26 House seats away from a number of red states and towards massively populated blue states like California and New York.

“To put this number in perspective, changing the party of 21 members of the current Congress would flip the majority in the U.S. House,” Camarota and Zeigler note.

Ohio, a swing state that voted for President Trump in 2016, will get three fewer congressional seats in 2020 due to mass immigration in other states. Michigan and Pennsylvania, also states that voted for Trump in 2016, will each have two fewer congressional seats. Wisconsin, a Trump-supporting swing state, will have its congressional seats cut by at least one.

Red states such as Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia, Camarota and Zeigler predict, will all get one less congressional seat in 2020. Smaller blue states such as Minnesota and Rhode Island will each receive one less congressional seat.

Those seats cut from mostly red states will be redistributed to California, the most immigration-inundated state in the country. California, by 2020, is set to gain 11 congressional seats solely due to the fact that noncitizens, rather than just American citizens, are counted in congressional apportionment.

Likewise, New York — where nearly 40 percent of residents are foreign-born — is set to gain four more congressional seats and New Jersey, with a more than 22 percent foreign-born population, will also take an additional two congressional seats.

Texas, which has become increasingly blue due to immigration and out-of-state young people, will gain another four congressional seats, as will the swing state of Florida with its foreign-born population of 4.1 million.

The deeply blue states of Illinois and Massachusetts, both of which went 55 to 60 percent for Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, will each gain one congressional seat.

What this is saying is that the influx of non-citizens into blue states will lessen the impact of voters in red states. This is a glaring example of the reason only citizens should be counted when allotting seats in the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives is supposed to represent American citizens. Americans are leaving California and New York in droves. These two states should be losing representatives–not gaining them.

Protecting Americans From Unlawful Surveillance

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Yesterday Judicial Watch posted the following Press Release:

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced it today filed a lawsuit against Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and the House Intelligence Committee for the controversial subpoenas issued for phone records, including those of Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s lawyer. The phone records led to the publication of the private phone records of Giuliani, Congressman Devon Nunes, journalist John Solomon, Trump attorney Jay Sekulow, attorney Victoria Toensing, and other American citizens.

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit under the public’s common-law right of public access to examine government records after it received no response to a December 6, 2019, records request (Judicial Watch v Adam Schiff and U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (No. 1:19-cv-03790)):

    1. All subpoenas issued by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on or about September 30, 2019 to any telecommunications provider including, but not limited to AT&T, Inc., for records of telephone calls of any individuals;
    2. All responses received to the above-referenced subpoenas.

Schiff is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, currently serving as Chairman of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Schiff is being sued in his capacity as Chairman of that committee. The new lawsuit states:

The records are of critical public importance as the subpoenas were issued without any lawful basis and violated the rights of numerous private citizens.

Disclosure of the requested records would serve the public interest by providing information about the unlawful issuance of the subpoenas.

The requested records fall within the scope of the public’s right of access to governmental records as a matter of federal common law.

“Adam Schiff abused his power to secretly subpoena and then publish the private phone records, in potential violation of law, of innocent Americans. What else is Mr. Schiff hiding?” asked Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Schiff and his Committee ran roughshod over the rule of law in pursuit of the abusive impeachment of President Trump. This lawsuit serves as a reminder that Congressman Schiff and Congress are not above the law.”

What Adam Schiff did is inexcusable. Private phone records are private unless subpoenaed. What was the basis for the subpoena? This is simply another instance where someone aligned with the deep state chose to ignore the rights of American citizens for his own purposes. If this is not stopped and people held accountable, Americans will continue to be subject to unwarranted violations of their constitutional rights.

Common Sense From NBC?

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Yesterday Breitbart reported some recent statements on NBC News by justice correspondent Pete Williams.

The article reports:

On Monday, during NBC News breaking new following the release of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report, justice correspondent Pete Williams said Horowitz found that the FBI “screwed up at every level.”

Williams said the inspector general found, “The FBI failed to document to the court assertions in the FISA application that undercut Steele’s credibility.”

…He added, “The IG report says the FISA application was inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported. It says, for example, that the FBI failed to look at some of the problems in Steele’s past work, but that was never sufficiently addressed.”

This is the most important part of what Pete Williams said:

He concluded, “The inspector general is so concerned about these problems that if the FBI so mishandled this application for an investigation into a candidate for president, then how is it doing it for garden variety people who are subject to these warrants? And for that reason, we learned today the inspector general is now opening a new investigation on how the FBI gets these warrants on American citizens.”

It’s time to wake up and realize that privacy is a thing of the past. How does an average American protect himself from this sort of invasion of privacy and unwarranted legal charges? That should be the lesson learned from all of this–if President Trump with all of his money and all of his power is vulnerable to political surveillance and witch hunts, how secure from government attacks are the rest of us?

What Are We Doing To Our Children?

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Watch the video below that appeared on American television while considering the fact that the family is the building block of American society:

If children can be taught to be part of their community at the expense of being part of their family, the community can shape their views in ways that might not be in agreement with their family values. If children can be taught to value the ‘common good’ over property rights, part of the foundation of America’s prosperity can be dismantled.

The United Nations was established for the purpose of promoting freedom, democracy, and world peace. At least that’s what we were told. It has since drifted from those ideals. The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights outlines rights given by government. There is no mention of the concept in the U.S. Declaration of Independence that rights come from God and that governments are put in place to protect those rights. The education group of the United Nations focuses on teaching children a perspective based on the UN’s ideals of sustainable development which do not include the concept of nation states or individual freedom.

It should be noted that a document posted on the UN education agency’s website about “Education for Sustainable Development” states, “Generally, more highly educated people, who have higher incomes, consume more resources than poorly educated people, who tend to have lower incomes.” The UN ‘toolkit’ for global sustainable education explains, “In this case, more education increases the threat to sustainability.” So the UN sees education as a threat to their agenda.

The concept of ‘The New World Order’ has been the goal of some in our government for a number of years. This concept is tied up with the United Nations and the move in American education to create ‘global citizens.’ There is nothing wrong with the concept of teaching children to consider themselves citizens of the world as well as Americans, but we are not teaching them to be American citizens. We are not teaching them about the values in America that are worth defending.

So where am I going with this? America is the biggest obstacle to those who believe in the “New World Order” (which means a one-world government ruled by an elite group of people). The New World Order is simply tyranny on a global scale. The public school education our children are getting is preparing them to be open to this form of government. Our AP History courses are distorting our history, the Christian values upon which our nation was founded are being undermined and mocked, and the foundations of America are being attacked in our public schools (and also in some of our private and parochial schools).

Right now, the answer to this problem is homeschooling. Until enough parents wake up and hold local and federal officials accountable, I don’t see the curriculum in our public schools changing.

Don’t Hold Your Breath Waiting For Consequences

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On October 9, One America News reported the following:

The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has ruled that the FBI previously violated Americans’ privacy rights by conducting unreasonable searches. The FISA Court opinion disclosed Tuesday revealed that the FBI violated constitutional rights and federal law through their warrant-less internet surveillance program.

A 2018 review revealed the bureau used their raw intelligence database in 2017 and 2018 to administer tens of thousands of searches on private U.S. citizens. The searches were conducted on some occasions to screen FBI personnel and sources, involving emails and phone numbers. In one instance, the court stated that an FBI contractor searched his family, staff members and himself on the database.

Federal law requires the database only be used to gather evidence of a crime or foreign intelligence information. According to the ruling, the FBI violated the law authorizing the program as well as the Fourth Amendment, which bars the government from conducting unreasonable searches.

Following the court’s decision, the FBI said it would apply new procedures as to how the database is used in order to better protect personal privacy.

The Foreign Intelligence Service Act has been under scrutiny for some time. Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page has argued the Obama-era FBI may have used its FISA authority unlawfully against him.

Years ago I took a critical thinking course taught by a former NSA employee. At the beginning of the course, he assured us that guidelines that protected Americans from illegal surveillance were being followed. He stated that in his experience anyone who violated those guidelines was escorted out immediately. About a year later, I talked to him and he apologized for misleading the class. He commented that upon further research he found violations tolerated and sometimes encouraged. Unfortunately there were a lot of things that went on during the Obama administration regarding the politicization of government agencies that we are just now beginning to uncover. It is my hope that the people who chose to violate the civil rights of American citizens will be held accountable. If they are not, the abuses of power will continue.

The Truth May Be Slightly Different Than What You Have Heard

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The Gateway Pundit today posted an article about some recent comments by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Some of Secretary Pompeo’s recent comments have been totally misrepresented in the press.

The article reports:

Pompeo told reporters how Democrats in the House violated fundamental principles, contacted State Department officials directly and told them NOT to contact legal counsel.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: Back to first principles. The predicate of your final question about objecting to what the folks on Capitol Hill have asked. It’s fundamentally not true. What we objected to was the demands that were put that deeply violate the fundamental principle of separation of powers. They contacted State Department employees directly. They told them NOT to contact legal counsel at the State Department. That’s been reported to us. They said the the State Department wouldn’t be able to be present. There are important constitutional prerogatives that the executive branch has to be present so that we can protect the important information so our partners, countries like Italy, can have confidence that the information they provide can have with the State Department will continue to be protected. So the response that I provided them was one that could acknowledge that we will of course do our constitutional duty to cooperate with this co-equal branch but we are going to do so in a way that is consistent with the fundamental values of the American system. And we won’t tolerate folks on Capital Hill bullying, intimidating State Department employees.

What kind of kangaroo court were the Democrats planning? The ‘don’t contact legal counsel’ approach was used on General Flynn, and that didn’t work out too well for him. What we have here is Democrats in the House violating constitutional rights of American citizens. I guess the Democrats have failed to get enough spies into the inner circle of Mike Pompeo and now feel the need to find another way to spy on him. This is ridiculous.

So Remind Me Why I Voted

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We live in a representative republic. We elect people to represent us. Occasionally we actually vote on issues via referendums, ballot initiatives, etc. Those votes directly reflect the will of the voters.

In 2018, the General Assembly passed a law putting an item on the ballot that required voters to show identification in order to vote. Governor Cooper vetoed the legislation; the Senate overrode the veto. The measure was also challenged in court, but that challenge seems to have gone nowhere.

The voters of North Carolina approved voter id by more than 50 percent. The Governor has called the law racist and unnecessary. If everyone is required to show identification, how is that racist? The law is necessary because we have a number of voters on our voter rolls that are over 110 years of age. I doubt that all of those people are still alive. There are also situations where fifty or more people are listed as having the same address–an address that does not have an inhabitable building. There have also been situations where people who voted were asked to serve on a jury and told the court they couldn’t because they were not American citizens. Wow.

Yes, voter id is necessary. Yes, the voters of North Carolina voted for it. Yes, Governor Cooper, you should be representing the will of the voters.

Does The Will Of The People Mean Anything?

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Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted an article about the question of asking people if they are citizens on the 2020 census.

The article reported:

Americans by a wide margin agree with President Trump that the upcoming 2020 census should ask a citizenship question.

The latest Economist/YouGov poll found that 53% feel it should ask the question versus 32% who don’t.

The survey asked: “Do you think the federal government should or should not ask people whether they are American citizens as part of the 2020 census?”

  • Should ask 53%
  • Should not ask 32%
  • Not sure 14%

The Supreme Court has rejected including the question in a form the administration proposed but left the door open to another version. And Trump is considering changing the version.

…And it can be done, according to legal expert and George Washington University Law professor John Banzhaf.

“There are several rationales — including one based upon the Constitution itself — which could well still persuade the courts to permit a citizenship question on the census, especially if the explanation were included in the executive order now being considered, rather than in some new declaration by the Secretary of Commerce,” he said in a review of the court’s decision.

Why does this matter? The census is used to determine the number of Representatives a state has in the House of Representatives. Theoretically these Representatives represent American citizens living in their districts. The number of Representatives a state sends to Congress also helps determine the number of votes a state has in the Electoral College.

So if people who are not citizens and may be here illegally are counted in the census, what happens? California, whose population is losing American citizens to other states and gaining illegal immigrants will either retain its current number of Representatives or gain some. States with lower non-citizen populations may be underrepresented in Congress and in the Electoral College. In a sense, when you count non-citizens in the census, you risk taking representation away from Americans. Counting non-citizens will also skew the Electoral College.

We Are Being Played

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We have a humanitarian crisis on our southern border. We also have a legal crisis of our southern border. No country can randomly allow non-citizens to cross their borders illegally and then take advantage of the largess of their citizens. All of these immigrants crossing  into the country illegally are receiving  medical care, dental care, etc. at the border. Many of them manage to collect government benefits after being here. Many receive free college tuition that American citizens do not get. Yes, there is a problem. It would be nice if Congress solved the problem. Hopefully they are moving in that direction.

Meanwhile, as Rahm Emmanuel once said, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

The first thing you do is create a really good photo op. Below is an example:

This is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez crying over the plight of immigrant children at our southern border. There is only one problem with the picture.

This is the shot from another angle:

I guess it is touching that AOC has compassion for border patrol agents standing in an empty parking lot, but somehow that is not how the media described the picture. The media suggested that AOC was sobbing presumably at the sight of migrant children being inhumanely detained. From the looks of the second picture, that was not exactly the case.

Photos posted at The Gateway Pundit.

 

 

 

Putting The Rights Of Non-Citizens Before The Rights Of Citizens

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America is a representative republic. We elect people to represent us. The number of Americans in a given state determines the number of representatives from that state and also impacts the electoral college. Therefore if the population of a state is overstated, it will have more representatives than it is entitled to. If California’s population of American citizens decreases, but its population of non-citizens increases, according to the Constitution, it should lose representatives. If the non-citizens are counted, it might gain representatives, thus acquiring representation that should rightly go to states that increased their number of citizens. That is the reason the citizen question on the census matters. Unfortunately, some of the justices of the Supreme Court do not understand that concept.

The Supreme Court ruled today that the citizenship question should not be included in the census.

The Gateway Pundit reported today:

“Seems totally ridiculous that our government, and indeed Country, cannot ask a basic question of Citizenship in a very expensive, detailed and important Census, in this case for 2020,” Trump said.

“I have asked the lawyers if they can delay the Census, no matter how long, until the United States Supreme Court is given additional information from which it can make a final and decisive decision on this very critical matter. Can anyone really believe that as a great Country, we are not able the ask whether or not someone is a Citizen. Only in America!” he said.

…Of course the Democrats and open borders zealots don’t want the citizenship question on the census because it gives illegal aliens representation in Congress — illegal aliens don’t even have to be given voting rights, as long as they are counted as citizens, they are given a US Representative who fights for their interests over the interests of taxpaying Americans — this is precisely why the Democrats are fighting like hell to stop the Trump admin from adding this question to the census.

The census is taken every 10 years and is used to allot seats to the US House of Representatives in addition to distributing almost $1 trillion in federal funds.

The Supreme Court’s decision is a sad one for our country. American citizens will no longer be correctly represented in Congress.

Checking On Big Brother

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Yesterday Breitbart reported that Attorney General William Barr is checking on intelligence records prior to July 2016 to make sure that American citizens were not illegally spied upon. This is guaranteed to get very interesting.

In September 2017, Fox News reported:

Samantha Power, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was ‘unmasking’ at such a rapid pace in the final months of the Obama administration that she averaged more than one request for every working day in 2016 – and even sought information in the days leading up to President Trump’s inauguration, multiple sources close to the matter told Fox News.

Two sources, who were not authorized to speak on the record, said the requests to identify Americans whose names surfaced in foreign intelligence reporting, known as unmasking, exceeded 260 last year. One source indicated this occurred in the final days of the Obama White House.

…During congressional testimony since the unmasking controversy began, National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers has explained that unmasking is handled by the intelligence community in an independent review.

“We [the NSA] apply two criteria in response to their request: number one, you must make the request in writing. Number two, the request must be made on the basis of your official duties, not the fact that you just find this report really interesting and you’re just curious,” he said in June. “It has to tie to your job and finally, I said two but there’s a third criteria, and is the basis of the request must be that you need this identity to understand the intelligence you’re reading.”

Previous U.N. ambassadors have made unmasking requests, but Fox News was told they number in the low double digits.

This is old news, but the unmasking was probably illegal. Look for relentless attacks by the political left on Attorney General Barr as he begins to reveal the misuse of government agencies that went on during the Obama administration.

Using Our Laws Against Us

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In February, Judicial Watch reported that a group of illegal aliens working in a slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant in East Tennessee were arrested by ICE agents. These illegal aliens, aided by the Southern Policy Law Center (SPLC), are suing the federal agents that arrested them.

The article reports:

Represented by an extremist nonprofit that lists conservative organizations on a catalogue of “hate groups,” seven illegal immigrants detained in a workplace raid are suing the federal agents that arrested them, claiming that they were racially profiled for being Latino. In a federal court complaint filed this week by their pro bono attorneys at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the illegal aliens assert that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents violated their Constitutional rights against illegal seizures and to equal protection under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

The raid occurred last spring at a slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant in a small rural town called Bean Station in east Tennessee. Agents from ICE and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) raided the facility as part of a lengthy investigation into the owner’s multi-million-dollar tax evasion and fraud scheme. About 100 illegal aliens were arrested, most of them from Guatemala and Mexico and some had been previously deported from the U.S. more than once. At least 54 people were deported immediately, some were released and others faced federal or state charges, according to a local news report following the seize.

The owner of the business, James Brantley, eventually pled guilty to multiple federal crimes, including tax fraud, wire fraud, and employment of unauthorized illegal aliens. The feds say he avoided paying nearly $1.3 million in taxes by hiring at least 150 illegal aliens and paying them off the books in cash. The scheme began in 1988 and continued through 2018 when he got busted. Brantley had reported to the IRS that he had only 44 wage-earning employees, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). To avoid Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) tax obligations, unemployment insurance premiums, unemployment tax and workers’ compensation insurance premiums he paid illegal immigrants in cash at a rate of $8-$10 per hour.

Since when do illegal aliens have constitutional rights–they are not American citizens, and they are breaking the law by being here.

The article also states:

Leftist groups went ballistic, asserting that illegal immigrants were victims whose “rights” were violated by the federal government. Outraged, the SPLC called it the largest workplace immigration raid since the George W. Bush administration. “What happened on April 5, 2018 was law enforcement overreach, plain and simple,” said the group’s senior supervising attorney Meredith Stewart. “We, as a nation, have a shared set of ideals, rooted in the Bill of Rights: We have a right to be free of racial profiling and unlawful arrests. If we are not willing to uphold those ideals for everyone in this country, then we are all at risk of losing our rights.” In the complaint, SPLC attorneys write that the federal officers conspired to plan and execute the forceful and prolonged seizure of the meatpacking plant’s Latino workforce solely on the basis of their actual or apparent race or ethnicity.

If the workers were here illegally, why would anyone characterize the arrests as unlawful? Isn’t it lawful to arrest people who break the law?

I hope a judge throws this case out of court. The person running the business was breaking the law by hiring the illegals, but the illegals were also illegal. They are not protected by the U.S. Constitution. Does anyone believe that if they entered Mexico illegally that they would be under the protection of the Mexican constitution?

Who Gets To Be Represented In Congress?

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One America News Network reported yesterday that the Supreme Court will take up the matter of the citizenship question on the 2020 Census.

The article reports:

The Trump Administration is looking to appeal a ruling by the Southern District of New York, which struck down their request. The ruling then headed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals; however, this latest move means Justices will resolve the case before the lower court has the chance to review it.

The Department of Justice said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who announced he would pursue updating the questionnaire in 2018, has the legal authority to include the citizenship question on next year’s census.

However, the district judge cast doubt on the reasoning behind Ross’ decision to include the question in the survey. The judge argued its inclusion would be unlawful and would violate the Administrative Procedure Act, but Ross cited the need to enforce the Voting Rights Act by asking census-takers if they are citizens of the United States.

The agency argued the question was included in previous years, with it last being seen in 1950.

Why is this important? It’s important for the House of Representatives and for the Electoral College.

The National Immigration Forum explained the impact of the question in an article posted in August 2018:

Because Congress is reapportioned in accordance with overall population, states with large undocumented populations that would go uncounted stand to lose representation. Due to the growth of the immigrant population in the southeast in recent years, in both rural towns and large southern cities like Atlanta and Charlotte, the impact of a census undercount will be felt in blue and red areas alike. As one expert has noted, the states “most disadvantaged, however, are not those with simply the most undocumented people,” like New York or Illinois. Rather, the states with the highest proportion of undocumented people compared to overall population would be the most impacted. These states include solid blue states like California, Maryland and New Jersey, but also a number of red states and swing states – Arizona, Florida, Nevada, and Texas. To the extent the citizenship question drives down the response rate, these states are most likely to lose congressional representation.

The number of votes a state receives in the Electoral College is also partially determined by the number of Representatives the state has in Congress, so an accurate count of the population is also important in determining the number of electors.

Putting the citizenship question on the 2020 Census will allow a more realistic count of American citizens. American citizens are the people Congress is supposed to represent. You gain the right to vote and to be represented when you become a citizen. Otherwise, you are simply a guest. Would you let a guest (invited or uninvited) determine the rules and budget of your household?

The Constitution Upheld By U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California

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The legislative action part of the National Rifle Association is reporting today that ruling on the legal case Duncan v. Becerra, Judge Roger T. Benitez of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California determined on Friday that California’s ban on commonly possessed firearm magazines violates the Second Amendment.

The article reports:

Judge Benitez rendered his opinion late Friday afternoon and handed Second Amendment supporters a sweeping victory by completely invalidating California’s 10-round limit on magazine capacity. “Individual liberty and freedom are not outmoded concepts,” he declared. 

In a scholarly and comprehensive opinion, Judge Benitez subjected the ban both to the constitutional analysis he argued was required by the U.S. Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller and a more complicated and flexible test the Ninth Circuit has applied in prior Second Amendment cases.

Either way, Judge Benitez ruled, the law would fail. Indeed, he characterized the California law as “turning the Constitution upside down.” He also systematically dismantled each of the state’s purported justifications for the law, demonstrating the factual and legal inconsistencies of their claims.

The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The Second Amendment protects American citizens from a tyrannical government–the Founding Fathers understood that the fact that they possessed weapons allowed them to free themselves from the rule of Britain. They wanted to protect future Americans from a tyrannical government. Beware of people who want to take guns away from America–that is the beginning of tyranny.

What Is This Actually About?

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On Friday, Breitbart posted an article about the debate over one of the questions that is supposed to appear on the 2020 Census.

The article reports:

Republican lawmakers are working with Democrats to ban the 2020 Census from asking United States residents whether or not they are American citizens.

In March, President Donald Trump’s administration announced they would put the citizenship question back on the census. It has not been included since 1950. For seven decades, all residents living in the United States have been counted on the census but have not been asked whether or not they are American citizens, making it impossible for the federal government to know the size of the citizen population versus the immigrant population.

The article explains why this question is significant:

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has noted the citizenship question on the census is necessary to further implement congressional apportionment based on the citizen population rather than the current rules that base state representation on the total population — including ocitizens, illegal alien residents, legal immigrants, and nonimmigrants on visas.

Should congressional apportionment be based on the number of American citizens in each state — which is only possible through asking the citizenship question on the census — Democrat-strong coastal areas with large foreign populations like California and Florida could lose representation, while states with small foreigon populations like Wyoming and Ohio would likely gain representation in Congress. Such a rule change would shift power from coastal states to the heartland of the country, Breitbart News reported.

Keep in mind that there are some serious philosophical differences in the politics of the elites in Washington (combined with the elites in coastal America) and the average American living in the mid-west.

Congress has been discussing illegal immigration since the 1980’s. Why hasn’t the issue been resolved? It’s a matter of viewpoint–the Democrats see illegal immigrants as future citizen voters–the corporate Republicans (the non-conservative, country-club Republicans) see cheap labor.  Until we elect Congressmen who are willing to see the problem of having millions of people in the country who are not contributing to Social Security or taxes yet are receiving government benefits, we will continue to have the problem of a large population of illegal immigrants. They do not have the right to represented in Congress–they are not citizens,

The question belongs in the 2020 Census, but I sincerely doubt it will be there.

 

The Insanity Will Be Over Shortly

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The Daily Caller reported yesterday that the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) has fined the Denver County’s sheriff office because it refused to hire non-citizens as deputies.

The article reports:

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, employers are required to give equal treatment to non-citizens with valid work permits, unless state, local, or federal law explicitly requires certain jobs be open only to citizens. More than 40 U.S. states currently have laws that in some capacity restrict non-citizens from being police, but Colorado is not one of them. The department says it was simply unaware that limiting employment to citizens was a violation of federal law.

In a report released last October, the Department of Justice blasted citizenship requirements for officers as a “barrier” to creating more racially diverse police forces.

“While Federal law allows law enforcement agencies to impose a citizenship requirement where it is authorized by state or local law, this requirement may prevent a considerable number of racial and ethnic minorities – many of whom have valuable foreign language skills – from being hired by law enforcement agencies,” the report said.

First of all, doesn’t Denver have the right to decide who they hire as deputies? Second of all, do non-citizens have the same respect for Constitutional rights as citizens? This is another example of federal government overreach.

Common Sense Rears Its Head

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Breitbart.com posted an article today about a Los Angeles Times reporter who was surprised to find Latinos who are supporting Donald Trump for President. Robin Abcarian attended a Donald Trump rally in Fresno, California, and was surprised to find Latino supporters of Trump there.

The article reports:

It turns out that many of them are American citizens or legal immigrants who care about the country’s borders, and share the same views as fellow conservatives Republicans on a variety of issues.

His rhetoric about Mexicans doesn’t bother you, I asked?

“It’s about illegal aliens!” Jennings said. “Mom and I can’t go to Canada and just squat and get benefits. We couldn’t go to Mexico either without the proper paperwork. They’d put us in jail!”

…

“I’m Mexican,” Aderhold said, “and I understand that Mexicans do the farm labor, but there are a lot of legal ones. That’s how they should do it, the way my parents did.”

Note that these people were here legally. The people who have come to America legally do not want to see our borders erased–they want other people to stand in line and do things legally as they did. It is not a surprise to hear that many of them are supporting Donald Trump.