‘I am sorry for furthering confusion on tribal sovereignty and tribal citizenship and harm that resulted….’
Elizabeth Warren/IMAGE: YouTube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) After long denying that she had benefited from false claims of minority status early in her professional career, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is doing damage control from revelations that she listed “American Indian” on her 1986 Texas State Bar card.
Using an open records request, The Washington Post obtained the previously undisclosed document and broke the story on Tuesday, hours before President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address was guaranteed to dominate the next day’s news cycle.
“I can’t go back,” Warren said in an interview with The Post. “But I am sorry for furthering confusion on tribal sovereignty and tribal citizenship and harm that resulted.”
It was previously known, but sparsely reported, that Warren had identified as a minority in the 1986 Association of American Law Schools Faculty Directory, released a year before she accepted a prestigious position at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
As Mary Katharine Ham noted in The Federalist, “Both Harvard and Penn touted her minority status in literature about their law schools.”
After apologizing to the Cherokee Nation recently for having taken a widely-mocked DNA test that revealed only a trace of Indian DNA—less than the typical American Caucasian—Warren attempted to bury the lede by tacking on in her Post interview that it was also intended to cover her earlier exploitation of minority status while at the Ivy League law schools.
“I told him I was sorry for furthering confusion about tribal citizenship,” Warren told The Post, referencing a conversation between herself and Bill John Baker, principal chief of the Cherokee. “I am also sorry for not being more mindful about this decades ago. We had a good conversation.”
Elizabeth Warren’s 1986 Texas Bar card/ IMAGE: Amy Gardner, The Washington Post
While it seems Warren, one of the first major Democratic candidates to formally announce her 2020 bid for the White House, hoped to get out in front of the controversy, or at least appear to be addressing it proactively, the Post revelation poses further challenges to her judgment, ethics and integrity.
Warren has attempted to play against type by casting herself as a champion of the common folk, chugging a beer on New Year’s Eve, and calling on her fellow Democrats to disavow dark money funding and rely only on grassroots donations.
But she has been unable to live down her own past history of benefiting from the same things she claims now to oppose, including having her early political career bolstered by billionaire George Soros.
Soros indicated that he planned on sitting out the crowded Democratic presidential primary instead of financially or otherwise backing a specific candidate.
Warren also seems to have lost the crucial support of her own home-base newspaper, The Boston Globe. While The Globe had long laid cover for her on the Cherokee-gate scandal—asserting without evidence that she never benefited from minority status and also that her DNA test supported her heritage claims—it discouraged her from running for the White House after her November re-election race showed declining support in the liberal stronghold of Massachusetts.
One of the most vocal supporters of Warren’s floundering campaign, however, has been President Donald Trump. Although Trump had yet to comment on the latest developments as of Wednesday morning, he has routinely mocked “Pocahontas” on Twitter over the false heritage claims and expressed hope that she will be selected to run against him.
Pocahontas is at it again! Goofy Elizabeth Warren, one of the least productive U.S. Senators, has a nasty mouth. Hope she is V.P. choice.
‘We must choose whether we are defined by our differences or whether we dare to transcend them…’
Donald Trump / IMAGE: Screenshot via Yahoo News
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) With nary a mention of the government shutdown looming in 10 more days, President Donald Trump spent much of his roughly 90-minute State of the Union address seeking common ground and focusing on American “greatness” past, present and future.
“Tonight, I ask you to choose greatness,” he said, riffing on his 2016 “Make America Great Again” campaign theme.
The anniversaries of two landmark American events provided anchor points for the president: the 75th anniversary of America’s D-Day assault launching the liberation of Europe, and the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.
Trump, whose invited guest list featured an array of heroes and survivors—including several Holocaust survivors and three World War II veterans who helped to rescue them—called on the divided Congress to reflect on the momentous events that preceded them in the annals of America.
“Together we represent the most extraordinary nation in all of history,” he said. “What will we do with this moment? How will we be remembered? I ask the men and women of this Congress—look at the opportunities before us.”
In his tone and in several of his agenda items, Trump seemed to deliberately be reaching across the aisle, thus giving the partisan opposition in Congress little room to heckle or jeer.
He even gamely indulged them at times, offering a nod to the record number of women present in the new Congress, many clad in white, who pointedly observed the irony that voter disdain for the president had, in some cases, helped elect them.
“You weren’t supposed to do that. Thank you very much,” he deadpanned in one of the evening’s moments of levity as the Congressional Democrats raised the roof.
World War II veterans and Holocaust survivors were among those Trump honored at his 2018 State of the Union address. / IMAGE: Screenshot via Yahoo News
Another of the speech’s lighter moments came with the chamber’s singing “Happy Birthday” to 81-year-old Dachau concentration camp survivor Judah Samet.
“They wouldn’t do that for me,” Trump observed.
The president emphasized the major successes of his first two years in the White House—among them one of the most robust and sustained economic booms ever witnessed in U.S. history and a growing energy independence.
He also underscored several promises he had kept where others before him had faltered, such as working with Canada and Mexico on a revamped trade deal to replace NAFTA.
“For years politicians promised [American workers] they would renegotiate for a better deal, but no one ever tried until now,” he said.
Trump outlined a number of policy objectives where compromise already had been achieved, such as criminal justice reform. He introduced guests including recently commuted prisoner Alice Johnson and Matthew Charles, the first person released under the new First Step program.
He also discussed several initiatives that Democrats could readily applaud, such as infrastructure improvements and healthcare reforms (while preserving Obamacare’s protections of pre-existing conditions), and he proposed a new goal to eradicate the HIV virus in America and beyond within 10 years, while also taking on childhood cancer. (Seated next to First Lady Melania Trump was a young brain-cancer survivor, Grace Eline, whom he introduced.)
On some of the more contentious points in the president’s speech—such as border security, abortion, socialism and anti-Semitism—Trump effectively framed his argument in moral terms that brought clear discomfort to the Democrats in the audience who have undermined American norms.
“In the past, most of the people in this room voted for a wall, but the proper wall never got built. I will get it built,” he pledged.
Sen. Bernie Sanders reacts to Trump vowing not to let America become a socialist country. / IMAGE: Screenshot via Yahoo News
Trump also promised never to abolish ICE and never to allow America to become a socialist country—both directed at the leftist extremists in the room who had made those objectives centerpieces in their recent campaign promises.
Addressing the scourges of drug- and human-trafficking, sexual assault, gang affiliation and other immigration-related crimes, Trump touted the “moral duty” of border enforcement.
“Tolerance for illegal immigration is not compassionate. It is actually very cruel,” he said.
He gave a nod to the “Angel Moms and Dads”—parents of those killed by illegal immigrants—who figured prominently into his previous State of the Union, and he introduced Debra Bissel, who only three weeks ago lost her parents after they were shot to death by an illegal immigrant at their home in Reno, Nevada.
But Trump also recognized the benefits and the necessity of an immigration system that works, deflating Democrats’ past efforts to frame mass migration at the border as a humanitarian crisis.
“Legal immigrants enrich our nation and strengthen our society in countless ways,” he said. “I want people to come into our country in the largest numbers ever, but they have to come in legally.”
Trump deftly used a call for paid parental leave, which drew Democrat applause, to transition into one of the other major points of division—and likely a major battle in the lead-up to 2020—abortion.
Condemning the New York legislature’s passage of a law supporting partial-birth abortion and Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam‘s recent comments advocating for post-natal infanticide in some cases, Trump said, “There could be no greater contrast to the beautiful image of a mother holding her infant child than the chilling displays our nation saw in recent days.”
He called on Congress to pursue legislation against late-term abortions, saying “Let us work together to build a culture that cherishes innocent life.”
Trump touched on a number of foreign policy issues, including his withdrawal of troops from Syria and ongoing overtures for peace in both North Korea and Afghanistan, where he has recently engaged Taliban leaders in talks.
“We do not know if we will achieve an agreement,” he said, “but we do know after two decades of war, the time has come to at least try to achieve peace.”
However, Trump reserved particularly harsh criticism for Iran, calling to mind for some, perhaps, George W. Bush’s inclusion of it with Iraq and North Korea in the infamous “Axis of Evil.”
The phrase in Bush’s post-9/11 State of the Union speech in 2002 marked the first sign since the Jimmy Carter administration of a strained relationship with the fundamentalist Islamic republic, now believed to be a major sponsor of Middle Eastern terrorism.
After undoing the Obama administration’s efforts to ease Iranian tensions with a tepid anti-nuclearization deal, and instead implementing what he described as the toughest sanctions the U.S. had ever imposed, Trump said Iran was continuing to do “bad things.”
Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib were alluded to in with a criticism of anti-Semitism. / IMAGE: Screenshot via Yahoo News
“We will not avert our eyes from a regime that chants ‘death to America’ and threatens genocide against the Jewish people,” he said.
Trump likewise called for a unified effort in condemning American-based anti-Semitism, as some freshmen Democratic congresswomen have faced criticism for their attacks on Jews in Israel.
He introduced SWAT officer Timothy Matson, an injured hero who helped confront the shooter in the recent massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue.
Calling anti-Semitism a “vile poison,” Trump said, “With one voice we must confront this hatred anywhere and everywhere it occurs.”
In another move that was likely to disarm his domestic political adversaries, Trump also criticized Russia and mentioned his recent withdrawal from the outdated Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
“While we followed the agreement and the rules to the letter, Russia repeatedly violated its terms,” he said.
Trump said the U.S. had no choice but to withdraw. “Perhaps we can negotiate a different agreement, adding China and others, or perhaps we can’t—in which case we will outspend and out-innovate all others by far.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi celebrates as Trump recognizes the women in Congress. / IMAGE: Screenshot via Yahoo News
But early on in his speech, the president emphasized the need for domestic political foes to come together and remain united in order to tackle the threats from abroad.
He pointed specifically at the ongoing investigations against his 2016 campaign and its alleged foreign ties—although little has yet been presented to implicate him, despite the convictions of several former advisers.
“An economic miracle is taking place in the United States, and the only things that can stop it are foolish wars, politics and ridiculous partisan investigations,” Trump said. “If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation.”
Capping off his speech with a note of optimism, Trump, whose delivery stood out as more eloquent and focused than in other addresses, took a surprisingly poetic turn.
“Our biggest victories are still to come,” he said. “We have not yet begun to dream. We must choose whether we are defined by our differences or whether we dare to transcend them. We must choose whether we will squander our inheritance—or whether we will proudly declare that we are Americans. We do the incredible. We defy the impossible. We conquer the unknown.”
‘The most dangerous place in Washington is between Rep. Mark Meadows and a media camera…’
Mark Meadows/Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC)
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Considered to be among President Donald Trump’s closest allies in Congress, the House Freedom Caucus took fire Tuesday from a former congressman who touted himself as Trump supporter but was unseated by a more conservative challenger.
In an op–ed piece for The Charlotte Observer, defeated congressman Robert Pittenger blamed the Freedom Caucus—and specifically its chairman, fellow N.C. Rep. Mark Meadows—for harming the GOP by impeding the legislative efforts of the former Republican majority.
Pittenger said Meadows’s showboating undermined party unity, throwing party leaders like ex-Speaker Paul Ryan under the bus, and that his strict adherence to principle failed to take into account the political imperatives of deal-making.
“The most dangerous place in Washington is between Rep. Mark Meadows and a media camera,” Pittenger said. “Mark will sound off against the Speaker or anyone to stake out a claim that he is the champion of conservatives, while he understands the reality that passing legislation requires additional funding to get the necessary 60 votes in the Senate.”
Pittenger said the failure of the GOP Congress to achieve consensus may have cost it not only legislative victories, but also the House majority.
Addressing Trump, he said, “Mr. President, Mark Meadows and the Freedom Caucus are not your friends. They laud you on Fox News then undermine your legislation. Had we passed healthcare and immigration reform with border funding we would have likely kept the House.”
The attack came on the heels of a Pew Research scorecard that dubbed the previous Congress the fourth least productive in three decades, despite having majorities in both chambers and also holding the White House.
Pew said that “while the 115th Congress was more legislatively active than its recent predecessors, the proportion of substantive to ceremonial legislation was much the same.”
Such heavily qualified critiques of Republican-led Congresses were also commonplace during the Barack Obama administration, neglecting to consider that the blockage of bad legislation may also be a political objective and victory in its own right.
However, Pittinger said the Freedom Caucus’s hard-line stance against so-called Dreamers had proven self-defeating.
“In addition to a health care bill, we lost immigration reform and $25 billion of border wall funding a year ago because Meadows and his pals would not accept DACA,” he said.
Trump recently offered a three-year extension on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and also temporarily protected visa holders, which would have impacted roughly a million immigrants altogether, in return for $5.7 billion in wall funding. But Democrats rejected the deal, and the funding fight continues.
“Get over it, the kids are grown up and are living here,” Pittenger said. “They are not going anywhere and the Freedom Caucus chose to grandstand and lose the opportunity to stop the hemorrhage at the border.”
Pittenger also defended his support of an omnibus spending bill, largely panned by conservatives, saying it provided necessary defense funding.
“These critical security votes allowed Mark Harris to call me a liberal,” he said.
Last year, Pittenger lost his primary race in North Carolina’s now-notorious 9th District to Mark Harris, a Baptist preacher by trade who was seen as being to the right, and more aligned with Trump and the Freedom Caucus, on key issues.
Harris narrowly defeated Democrat Dan McCready by a margin of just over 900 votes, but allegations of voter fraud in parts of the district have waylaid the certification and kept Harris from being seated. Some discussions of a possible re-vote have centered on whether that should include the GOP primary, though Pittenger said he would not participate regardless.
‘Tellingly, not one other reputable media outlet has seen fit to air this false claim…’
Justin Fairfax / IMAGE: WTVR CBS 6 via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) New sexual-assault accusations against Virginia’s lieutenant governor, paired with the racist scandal against its governor, could result in the Left’s biggest case to date of “intersectionality” run amok.
In one corner is racist Gov. Ralph Northam—who had confessed to being in a picture on his 1984 medical school yearbook page that featured a person in blackface and another in KKK regalia, before later backtracking and claiming he only ever wore blackface in a Michael Jackson tribute.
In the other corner, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who now stands accused of a very “credible” allegation of forced oral sex that was originally suppressed by outlets like The Washington Post.
It took conservative website Big League Politics breaking both of the damaging stories on the Democrats in order for them to see the light of day, even as The Postshelled out big bucks for a Super Bowl ad touting its “Democracy Dies in Darkness” slogan to counter the ever-growing chorus of criticism against the “fake news” media.
In an earlier statement on Monday, Fairfax had denied the “unsubstantiated” allegation and used The Post‘s decision not to publish in order to bolster the claim.
“Tellingly, not one other reputable media outlet has seen fit to air this false claim,” said the statement.
But the Jeff Bezos-owned paper pushed back against the suggestion that there were no red flags.
In its story on Monday, The Post said it chose not to publish because it could find no one to corroborate the accounts.
However, it offered a detailed account of the lurid, heretofore undisclosed allegations.
“The woman described a sexual encounter that began with consensual kissing and ended with a forced act that left her crying and shaken,” The Post said. “She said Fairfax guided her to the bed, where they continued kissing, and then at one point she realized she could not move her neck. She said Fairfax used his strength to force her to perform oral sex.”
That article added momentum to the uncorroborated and anonymous letter alluded to by Sen. Dianne Feinstein while seeking to delay confirmation, resulting in a divisive and highly watched Senate hearing. Ultimately, despite an FBI investigation that turned up nothing to substantiate, Kavanaugh was confirmed by a 50-48 vote, divided largely by party line.
As with Blasey Ford, the woman making the accusations against Fairfax is reportedly a California college professor, according to Big League Politics.
The echoes of Kavanaugh in both the Northam and Fairfax scandals put Democrats in a difficult spot.
Ralph Northam’s 1984 Eastern Medical yearbook / IMAGE: CNN screenshot via Youtube
Unable to overlook the ‘youthful indiscretions’ and the shifting cultural context of the 35-year-old Northam photo after having drawn a red-line on Kavanaugh’s yearbook, those who might otherwise have remained silent were pressured to condemn the governor.
They did so, however, with the knowledge and assurances that Fairfax would take the governor’s office farther to the left with the added boon of diversity.
The latest allegations against the lieutenant governor, however, will certainly put to the test the “Believe women” mantra that the Left has pushed throughout the #MeToo movement to justify an assumption of guilt while denying due process to the accused.
If both Northam and Fairfax were forced out, one more Democrat, state Attorney General Mark Herring, would be in line for the office before it fell to Kirk Cox, the Republican speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates. Herring was first elected into his office in 2013 under highly suspicious and contested circumstances by a margin of only 165 votes.
Thus far, Northam has defied the calls to resign, and some speculate that he may even be behind the Fairfax smear. It is unclear what recourse the state legislature might have in terms of censuring or impeaching the governor for the photo, though it would certainly be an uphill battle for him to lead.
Cox confirmed Monday that it was unlikely the state legislature would make any moves to force out Northam. “I think there’s a rightful hesitation about a removal from office,” he said. “Impeachment—that’s a very high standard.”
Northam, a pediatric doctor by trade, already was embroiled in a scandal from earlier in the week after seeming to endorse a defeated bill that would have permitted late-term abortion, with the governor suggesting that a baby might be “aborted” even after birth.
President Donald Trump publicly addressed the scandal by observing that the campaign of Republican candidate Ed Gillespie should have uncovered the racist yearbook photo when doing opposition research for the 2017 gubernatorial election.
Ed Gillespie, who ran for Governor of the Great State of Virginia against Ralph Northam, must now be thinking Malpractice and Dereliction of Duty with regard to his Opposition Research Staff. If they find that terrible picture before the election, he wins by 20 points!
‘We put that in the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, because people died at 38 or 40 back then…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Filmmaker Michael Moore has never let immutable facts get in the way of a good story while producing his radical leftist pseudo-documentaries.
So it’s no surprise that Moore would trash the U.S. Constitution for thwarting his latest crusade, to install 29-year-old socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, D-N.Y., into the White House, according to The Daily Mail.
Moore told MSNBC’s “The Last Word” last week that Democrats in 2020 should forgo running on “issues” and instead focus on the question “Who can crush Donald Trump?”
He then lamented that Article II, section 1 of the U.S. Constitution requires a president to be at least 35 years of age.
“We put that in the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, because people died at 38 or 40 back then,” Moore said. “Y’know, we need to lower that.”
Moore’s argument that the age clause established in the Constitution is too high because people back then died earlier would seem to contradict itself on its face. However, it also flies against several other realities.
With the exception of George Washington, who died at 67, and William Henry Harrison, who contracted pneumonia during his inaugural address and died a month later at 68, all of the first 10 presidents lived into their 70s. John Adams, the second president, lived into his 90s.
Only nine of the 45 presidents have been in their 40s when they ascended into the Oval Office, and none have ever been in their 30s.
While the Constitution does not elaborate on the reasons for the age limit, it is commonly understood that it was included to ensure that presidents had attained a reasonable degree of worldly knowledge and experience. At the time, 35 was considered middle-aged.
“Considering the nature of the duties, the extent of the information, and the solid wisdom and experience required in the executive department, no one can reasonably doubt the propriety of some qualification of age,” wrote early Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story in an 1833 commentary.
“That, which has been selected, is the middle age of life, by which period the character and talents of individuals are generally known, and fully developed; and opportunities have usually been afforded for public service, and for experience in the public councils.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez / IMAGE: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert via Youtube
Regardless, Moore said Ocasio–Cortez should be eligible to run against President Donald Trump in 2020 because of the impact the freshman congresswoman has already had within the Democratic Party by setting a more radical, Marxist-driven agenda.
“She is the leader. Everybody knows it. Everybody feels it. She is the leader of this mass movement,” he said.
But despite the strawmen Moore consulted with before making his claim, “AOC” as liberals have dubbed her, has not been embraced by all on the Left.
In fact, some Democrats are already calling for a primary challenge against her in the 2020 congressional election.
While many on the Right have ridiculed her perceived lack of intelligence, even sympathetic news outlets have found it necessary to fact-check her statements and to question the feasibility of her policy proposals.
Others have worried that the shift to the extreme Left would have a negative impact on the party by alienating moderates, comparing it with the Tea Party on the Right and even likening Ocasio–Cortez’s populist appeal to that of Trump himself.
Already, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, himself a radical progressive in many regards, has begun staking out a third-party position as a “centrist,” which Democrats fear will spoil their election chances.
After attacking Schultz last week and disputing the billionaire’s assertion that he was ‘self-made,’ Moore dismissed the the notion that Democrats should concern themselves with the political center.
“If you’re being moderate, stop being moderate. Take a position,” Moore told MSNBC. “There’s no middle ground anymore.”
But whether AOC’s political views disqualify her or not, the Founding Fathers certainly would have said that the former bartender should wait it out at least one more election cycle in order to reach her fullest intellectual peak—whatever that may be.
“The faculties of the mind [at age 35], if they have not then attained to their highest maturity, are in full vigour, and hastening towards their ripest state,” Story wrote. “The judgment, acting upon large materials, has, by that time, attained a solid cast; and the principles, which form the character, and the integrity, which gives lustre to the virtues of life, must then, if ever, have acquired public confidence and approbation.”
‘Defense may provide support for the counterdrug activities [including] Construction of roads and fences … to block drug smuggling corridors across international boundaries…’
Mo Brooks/IMAGE: YouTube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) At a House Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday, Defense Under Secretary John Rood dropped a bombshell in response to questions from Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ga., confirming that U.S. Code permits military support for some civilian activities without requiring a “state of emergency.”
That includes military support for fences and other barriers to combat drug smuggling and organized crime.
In 10 U.S. Code Ch. 15, under “Military Support for Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies” it says, in §284, “The Secretary of Defense may provide support for the counterdrug activities or activities to counter transnational organized crime [including] Construction of roads and fences and installation of lighting to block drug smuggling corridors across international boundaries of the United States (subsection b-7).”
Of course, some may argue that a fence and a wall are two different things—Trump has indicated he would be OK with either so long as it does the job—but Brooks said at the hearing that the semantics didn’t apply.
“If you look it up in the dictionary the word fence includes the word barrier, and the word barrier includes ‘walls made of a wide variety of different materials,'” Brooks said.
Rood said that while the section of code had never before been used to deploy military, Brooks was correct that it would include use for counter-drug barriers.
Brooks then asked if a “national emergency” were needed, to which Rood replied no, and whether the U.S. military would obey such an order if President Donald Trump were to instruct them to build the wall.
“If we judge it to be a lawful order, yes sir,” Rood said. “And I assume it would be.”
Despite past support, increasingly polarized Democrats have waged a resistance campaign against the wall for largely symbolic reasons to block Trump from fulfilling a major campaign promise.
However, some critics, including Trump, have speculated that illegal immigration also benefits the Left, which hopes a shifting demographic and cultural landscape will, in coming years, entrench its electoral dominance.
Supporters of the wall have countered that whatever the reasons for wanting open borders, they create a considerable public-safety hazard by promoting drug- and human trafficking, and other criminal activity.
….however, for strictly political reasons and because they have been pulled so far left, do NOT want Border Security. They want Open Borders for anyone to come in. This brings large scale crime and disease. Our Southern Border is now Secure and will remain that way…….
As the clock ticks toward the mid-February expiration of a stop-gap funding measure that last week reopened several government offices following a monthlong partial shutdown, Trump had previously signaled his intention to use the military by declaring a national emergency.
In response, Democrats, including Armed Services chair Adam Smith, D-Wash., had threatened court challenges and legislation that zeroed in on the questions of whether the current border crisis qualified as an emergency.
However, the Defense Department’s interpretation of the code may deflate plans for a costly and time-consuming legal battle that would hinder Trump’s executive order through injunction, instead forcing House Democrats to reach some form of compromise.
As of Friday, numbers from House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., indicated that about a quarter of Democrats signaled some support for a border barrier.
Placed in the indefensible position of opposing national defense, some Democrats have sought to appear open to compromise by supporting a “technological wall,” but while that may be an important component of border security, it would certainly be more costly and less effective in the long run than a physical barrier.
Trump will have yet another opportunity to make his case publicly next Tuesday, when he delivers his State of the Union address before Congress, after the shutdown prompted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to withdraw an earlier invitation.
‘He’s a badass and he’s really listening about these dangerous orgs…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The emerging socialist wing of the Democratic Party has received all the attention as its wave of foul-mouthed, poorly behaved freshman representatives dominate headlines with their radical—and infeasible—progressive vision for America.
However, newly elected Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a former chief of staff for Sen. Ted Cruz, is out to show that the incoming Republicans are a force to be reckoned with as well.
Roy excoriated the “People’s House” Democrats for putting on a big show while doing nothing thus far to actually serve the needs of their constituents.
The “People’s House” literally came in Monday night… left Wednesday early pm… and had a handful of votes, none of which will secure the border. #DoOurJobhttps://t.co/3wOGYn8x3e
On Thursday, Roy posted a series of dispatches from the border on his Twitter page.
The mission—intended to underscore, in real time, the very serious crisis and “to get the truth about what’s happening” in the Rio Grande Valley—deployed the hashtags #PelosiDoesntCare and#DemocratsDontCare.
.@speakerpelosi continually refuses to do her job and face the facts about the humanitarian crisis at our border. I’m on my way to get an update from the border patrol on the front lines. All the political theater makes one thing clear: #PelosiDoesntCarepic.twitter.com/S708dU1CXx
Along the way, he shared a story from The Hill about border officers having made the largest fentanyl seizure ever last Saturday at an Arizona port of entry.
He also met up with Brandon Darby, the director of Breitbart’s Border and Cartel Chronicles projects, who spends his days interviewing migrants forced into indentured servitude by drug cartels while attempting to cross through cartel territory.
On the border in RGV with @ChipRoyTX guiding him on his unannounced border inspection of Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas territories. He’s a badass and he’s really listening about these dangerous orgs. pic.twitter.com/PgOnOTqLRt
While media, such as CNN’s Jim Acosta, have attempted to portray illegal immigration as a non-issue by passively going during daylight hours to secured areas, Roy took the other approach, going directly into the cartel paths, unannounced, to get an accurate snapshot of the issue.
On Thursday evening, he visited McAllen, an unsecured part of the Texas border, where he witnessed hundreds of crossings and captured a short video of the steady stream of migrants with nothing stopping them from entering.
Just another night on the Texas “secured” Border… in McAllen. McAllen area lacks necessary fencing, technology, and infrastructure.. while cartels exploit asylum for profit… So far over 700 and counting – of whom I’ve seen well over 100… cc: @RepDanCrenshawpic.twitter.com/lSjO1j1zAX
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) As his team readies for yet another NFL Super Bowl appearance on Sunday, New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski is dealing with an unwelcome #MeToo distraction over a lewd remark he made to a female reporter.
In a freewheeling interview for the opening-night media event on Monday, “Gronk,” who is known for his puerile behavior and an affinity for the number 69, singled out a female reporter who, he claimed, knew his favorite number. The phrase is common slang for a sexual position.
Without mentioning it, New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski talks about his favorite number pic.twitter.com/9hDYievadt
To ensure the punchline wasn’t lost to subtlety, Gronkowski later doubled down on the attempt at humor later by offering a math problem:
“What’s six times nine plus six plus nine?” he asked.
Although the immature joke originally came in response to a question asking about the percentage likelihood of his retiring at the end of the season, the remark seemed to catch some reporters off guard.
Sports commentators on WFAN’s “Carlin, Maggie and Bart” show tore into Gronkowski on Tuesday, saying he crossed the line.
“I think there has been a pass that’s been given to Rob Gronkowski for a really long time,” said cohost Maggie Gray. “I think part of the pass that he gets comes with the fact he is doing this and really doesn’t have anything in his past or in his private life that would indicate he actually has an issue. It just seems like an act.”
Not surprisingly, the outrage was amplified in the Twittersphere, where at least one user invoked the #MeToo movement and demanded a suspension, reported Fox News.
@MGolicJR57 if you REALY want the #MeToo movement to have a second wave that will have a lasting impact? Suspend @RobGronkowski for what he said to the female reporter about what his favorite number is. Great football player, complete idiot, not cool. Apologize or don’t play
Others however, seemed unfazed, pointing to a tradition of juvenile pranks and general lighthearted tone of the opening night, during which a student reporter also invited Gronkowski to attend a fraternity party.
Gronkowski himself retweeted a story that made reference to the “69” comments among the “Gronk-iest Moments” of the event.
The #MeToo movement has succeeded in bringing about the downfall of many men in positions of power, many of whom, like alleged serial rapist Harvey Weinstein and alleged pedophile Kevin Spacey, were considered open secrets in their industry circles.
While the movement has had a wide-ranging impact on the Hollywood film industry, politics and journalism, it has yet to reach professional sports like football where a culture of “toxic masculinity” has historically pervaded.
However, as it confronts many other social changes and political challenges, most notably its anthem-kneeling controversy, the NFL has been under pressure to hold players accountable for abusive behavior.
The Kansas City Chiefs, one of the top contenders for this year’s Super Bowl, were forced to release star running back Kareem Hunt in November after video surfaced of him beating a woman in a hotel hallway.
‘Before we get to that, are we drinking tonight or not?’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) At the conclusion of his segment Tuesday on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie quipped offhandedly that the appearance could signal the launch of a potential 2020 challenge against President Donald Trump.
“Guess what. Tonight, the beginning of the comeback, baby,” he said. “Here it is, on the ‘Stephen Colbert Show.’ You’ve done it.”
But poor decisions hinted more that it could be the beginning of the end for Christie, a one-time presidential advisor who somehow still claims Trump is a personal friend, despite promoting a new book that torches the White House.
Christie, who underwent bariatric weight-loss surgery in February 2013, has regained some of his girth and appears to have rejected the lifestyle changes that come with the invasive procedure.
As Colbert opened the interview asking about his new book, Christie replied, “Before we get to that, are we drinking tonight or not?”
Enabler Colbert then acquiesced, “Your folks told me that you wanted a cocktail, and so we asked, and you wanted tequila. … This is that liberal George Clooney tequila—I hope you don’t mind.”
Christie replied: “If it gets me loaded, I don’t care. Liberal, conservative, who cares?”
As it did for Democratic 2020 candidate Elizabeth Warren, who sought to contrast herself with the teetotaling Trump by chugging a beer on New Year’s Eve, Christie’s mixing of booze and politics could easily backfire.
But unlike Warren’s stunt, Christie’s consumption could also be life-threatening.
While it is unclear whether Christie still has a lap-band around his upper stomach or if he underwent another surgery to remove it, the blog BariatricEating.com says the procedure dramatically changes one’s ability to process alcohol.
“Your prior experiences with alcohol are no longer valid as things change with your bariatric surgery,” it says. “Without a handbag sized stomach for digestion, the cocktail dribbles directly into the small intestine and is sucked into the bloodstream at almost full proof. You can get deliriously sloppy and dangerously drunk in seconds.”
Christie did two full shots before the commercial break, with Colbert joining him for one.
Afterward, they returned from break with glasses full.
BariatricEating.com goes on to say that drinking alcohol, specifically shots, can be potentially fatal for those who have undergone the surgery.
“Never drink alcohol unless you are with someone with whom you can trust with your life. Period. Your Match.com date does not qualify. Things can go very wrong with alcohol and if you are alone or with someone who does not understand your surgery, it may place you in grave danger. Never do a shot or feel pressured to keep drinking as alcohol poisoning can kill you.”
Colbert, whose radical left-wing politics figure prominently into interviews, made clear that he was not the guy Christie should trust with his life, interspersing caustic bombs of thinly veiled contempt and even asking the governor, “Who likes you?”
“You do. You do, Stephen. You do. Come on,” Christie said, while raising his glass for the third shot.
“More of this and I might,” Colbert replied.
Colbert, after downing his second tequila shot, pressed the question by reminding Christie that he left office with only 15 percent approval.
“Who’s your constituency?” he asked. “The people who don’t like Trump don’t like you because you support him and helped him get elected. The people around Trump probably don’t like you too much cause of your damn book. And the people in your home state are like, ‘Uh, there’s the door.’”
Christie eventually stumbled into a cogent response, saying he wasn’t concerned by approval ratings.
“After eight years, if they don’t want to kick you out then you didn’t do anything significant,” he said. “Then all you did was kiss rear end for eight years and try to get everybody to love you. I didn’t care if everybody loved me. I cared about being respected and doing the job.”
But Christie’s efforts at maverick posturing seemed to run counter to his obsequiousness toward Trump, as Colbert observed in an earlier question, pressing him on his supposed ongoing friendship with the president despite being passed over for a post in the administration.
“How do you be friends with someone who shows no personal loyalty to you?” Colbert asked.
“I don’t engage in friendships to get things out of it,” Christie said. “… I understand that there are times when things happen in politics where you’ve gotta be a big boy, pull your pants up and walk away.”
“Because you just got spanked?” Colbert replied.
Christie reportedly was vetoed for consideration in early Cabinet posts and Trump’s recent chief-of-staff opening by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser.
While a U.S. attorney, Christie had prosecuted Kushner’s father, Charles, in 2005 for 18 counts of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering.
“It’s one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes that I prosecuted,” he told Margaret Hoover on PBS’s Firing Line Tuesday.
“It’s one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes that I prosecuted…and I was the U.S. attorney in New Jersey.”@ChrisChristie talks about prosecuting Charles Kushner for tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions and witness tampering. #FiringLineShowPBSpic.twitter.com/rBNn0j0bCY
— Firing Line with Margaret Hoover (@FiringLineShow) January 29, 2019
A subsequent plea deal resulted in Charles Kushner spending 14 months at a federal prison facility in Alabama, as well as being disbarred in New Jersey.
Christie’s latest antics, which included telling Colbert that he would have been a better president than Trump, are likely to make him even more toxic to the chief executive and his supporters.
However, he may have made at least one friend in the process.
After flipping each other the New Jersey “state bird,” Colbert told Christie, “This is more fun than I thought it would be, by the way.”
Welsh coal minors in the early 20th century enjoy a pint in this image that some have accused of being racially insensitive. / IMAGE: public domain/fair use
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Since the 2008 election of President Barack Obama was said to have ushered in America’s post-racial era, perceptions of racial division and conflict, far from vanishing, have undergone complex, often Orwellian transformations.
Even the most progressive of network news anchors is unsafe for having the audacity to suggest that immigrants might win more popular support by trying to assimilate.
And, with the advent of “intersectionality,” a liberal, Hollywood Latina can be destroyed by accusations of racism simply for ignoring black disparities while calling on more opportunities for Latinx actors.
It is within this context that Rashaad Thomas, a restaurant patron in Phoenix, Arizona, recently was triggered upon seeing an old photograph of coal miners, covered in soot, enjoying a pint after work.
Although Thomas’s opinion piece, published on The Arizona Republic‘s website, does not explicitly state the author’s race, it implied that he identifies as black.
“Who determines what’s offensive?” Thomas wrote. “For me, the coal miners disappeared and … [one of] the most racist propaganda films ever, D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915) surfaces, in which white actors appeared in blackface.”
Thomas acknowledged that there was a correct answer—that fact points to the context of the photograph not being racist originally. Indeed, online research suggests that the miners pictured were not even American but were Welsh workers, possibly during a union strike.
But Thomas maintained that perception was key. More specifically, his perception.
“At the downtown Phoenix restaurant, my concern that the photograph of men in blackface [i.e. the photograph of the coal miners —ed.] was a threat to me and my face and voice were ignored,” Thomas said. “A business’ photograph of men with blackened faces culturally says to me, ‘Whites Only.’ It says people like me are not welcome.”
Revealing himself as an art patron and frequenter of local galleries, Thomas waxed philosophical about the nature of art, something many contemporary artists have said is designed to provoke and challenge people’s perceptions.
Viewed through Thomas’s cultural lense, however, art can reveal only one thing: more racism. Regardless of its intended purpose, a broader social message must needs be superimposed on even the chintziest of wall décor.
“Viewers cannot determine the intention of an artist’s work,” Thomas said. “Art also exposes society’s blind spots. Blackface is only a glimpse of a larger issue. The larger issue is the lack of representation of marginalized people and their voices in Phoenix.”
That issue is one the entire nation has grappled with recently while considering not just art, but also its historical legacy. Many of the Confederate monuments erected by groups such as the Daughters of the Confederacy in a time of active reconciliation, 50 years after the Civil War, are now being reassessed.
Prior to the Obama era, the consensus was that historical impact of such monuments and symbols outweighed the calls to raze and eradicate them. Since then, however, a nationwide initiative to recast and recontextualize its history has opened up entirely different debates, such as the one Thomas alluded to. While doing little to heal and unify, they have succeeded in pushing racial awareness to the forefront.
In Charlottesville, Virginia, efforts to remove monuments and rename two parks honoring Confederate generals spawned two days of violent conflict, directly resulting in the death of one local activist and indirectly leading to two others. The monuments remained standing after court injunctions said the city lacked the necessary authority.
In North Carolina, on the other hand, mobs gathered in 2017 and 2018 to forcibly tear down Confederate statues in the cities of Durham and Chapel Hill, respectively.
IMAGE: Time via Youtube/DerrickQLewis via Twitter
A Durham task force recently proposed that the mangled remains of its monument be displayed as-is in a nearby municipal building with a placard commemorating not their history but their destruction.
Opponents said it was a celebration of lawlessness and lynch-mob mentality. “The crumpled metal, like some kind of perverse trophy for illegal behavior, will be ‘contextualized’ with historical inaccuracies and lies about its meaning and origin.”
While the fate of Chapel Hill’s “Silent Sam” monument remains undetermined, students at the University of North Carolina protested plans to house it on campus. The controversy led the school’s chancellor to unexpectedly announce her resignation earlier in January.
Back in Phoenix, however, far removed from the blight of Civil War history, Thomas said even if the restaurant were to attempt to contextualize the image of the coal miners or otherwise offer justification for their inclusion of it on the wall, the effort would not be enough to placate him.
“The operators of that downtown restaurant can choose to take the photograph down, leave it up or create a title card with an intention statement,” he said. “No matter their decision, I think the photograph should be taken down—sacrificing one image for the greater good.”
