PrairiePundit

Robert Stacy McCain: Americans are no longer a free people, if debate on major public-policy issues is effectively criminalized, which is what the Democrats and their allies are attempting to do with regard to our immigration policy. We are now being told in effect that it is “hate speech” to express opposition to the open-borders agenda of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and such of their billionaire donors as George Soros. Democrats and their media allies have recently taken to declaring that it is a “dog whistle” of racism and anti-Semitism for any Republican even to mention the name of Soros in connection with the immigration issue. If you don’t think the United States should throw open its borders to welcome the caravan of Honduran migrants now headed north through Mexico, and if you call attention to how Democrats are cheering on this horde of would-be foreign invaders, well, you must be some kind of Nazi who wants to kill Jews. Or at least that’s the general drift of liberal rhet

Times of Israel: Iranian infrastructure and strategic networks have come under attack in the last few days by a computer virus similar to Stuxnet but “more violent, more advanced and more sophisticated,” and Israeli officials are refusing to discuss any role they may have had in the operation, an Israeli TV report said Wednesday. The report came hours after Israel said its Mossad intelligence agency had thwarted an Iranian murder plot in Denmark, and two days after Iran acknowledged that President Hassan Rouhani’s mobile phone had been bugged. It also follows a string of Israeli intelligence coups against Iran, including the extraction from Tehran in January by the Mossad of the contents of a vast archive documenting Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and the detailing by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the UN in September of other alleged Iranian nuclear and missile assets inside Iran, in Syria and in Lebanon. “Remember Stuxnet , the virus that penetrated the computers of the I

Julie Kelly: ... ... the Democrats also may have a more long-term problem with black voters. A small but growing number of young blacks are aligning themselves with the GOP, rejecting their parents’ and grandparents’ hand-me-down political fealty to the Democratic Party. This past weekend, hundreds of black conservatives ages 15 to 35 gathered in Washington, D.C., for the Young Black Leadership Summit. The three-day event—sponsored by the conservative campus outreach group Turning Point USA—hosted sessions in grassroots political organizing and leadership training. Featured speakers included prominent black leaders such as Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Heritage Foundation President Kay James, talk show host Larry Elder, and actress Stacey Dash. On Thursday night, Donald Trump, Jr. spoke to the energized crowd, which greeted the president’s son with chants of “USA! USA!” He took direct aim at how the Democratic Party takes black voters for granted. “You know

CNBC: Employment costs rose more than expected in the third quarter in a sign that more inflation could be brewing in the U.S. economy. The Labor Department's employment cost index rose 0.8 percent for the period, ahead of the estimate of 0.7 percent from economists surveyed by Refinitiv. Wages and salaries rose 0.9 percent, well ahead of expectations for 0.5 percent. Benefit costs were up 0.4 percent. On a yearly basis, wages and salaries jumped 3.1 percent, the biggest increase in 10 years. Wage increases have been the missing link in the economy since the recovery began in mid-2008. Average hourly earnings have been rising steadily but have stayed below the 3 percent level as slack has remained in the labor market. However the unemployment rate is now at 3.7 percent, the lowest since 1969, and wage pressures have begun to build. The Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates in an effort to stave off future inflationary pressures, though the central bank's p

Marc Thiessen: After a deranged Democrat living in his van nearly assassinated Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) firing more than 70 rounds at House Republicans practicing for the Congressional Baseball Game, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) declared it “outrageous” that anyone would blame Democrats’ rhetoric for inspiring the shooter. “How dare they say such a thing!” Pelosi thundered . Never mind that the shooter echoed Democratic vitriol against the president, ranting on Facebook that “Trump is Guilty & Should Go to Prison for Treason” and that “Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.” Now Democrats are doing exactly what they condemned, blaming President Trump’s divisive rhetoric for the recent spate of mail bomb attacks and the massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue. The truth is they ceded the moral high ground years ago. Our descent into vitriol began long before Trump — and Democrats and their allies are as culpable as the president. R

NY Times: ‘Cold War’ Takes New Meaning for U.S. Marines at a NATO Exercise A military conflict between NATO and Russia would mean fighting in the cold. American troops have spent much of the past 17 years warring in warmer climes. Actually, it has been much longer.  The last time US troops were fighting in extreme cold was in the Korean War.  There were 12,000 Marines surrounded by an estimated 120,000 Chinese troops near the Chosin reservoir.  The Marines fought their way backed to the coast and killed about 25,000 Chicom troops and left many of the Chinese survivors "combat ineffective."  A female war correspondent asked one of the Marines what was the worst part of the fighting.  He responded "Trying to get four inches of dick out of six inches of clothing to take a whizz." In Vietnam, it was hot and humid.  Recent wars have been in mostly hot and dry climates. But when I was in training to go to Vietnam, much of the time was spent in cold winters in N

Washington Times: President Trump paid his respects Tuesday to the victims of a mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, while a coalition of liberal groups sought to gain partisan advantage by blaming the president for the tragedy and urging the public to “vote against anti-Semitism” on Election Day. The president and first lady Melania Trump met privately with some of the wounded, with family members of some victims, and with first responders who confronted the gunman. They lit candles in the vestibule of the Tree of Life Synagogue steps from the sanctuary where the worshippers were gunned down. It is still a crime scene. At a makeshift memorial outside the house of worship, the Trumps placed white flowers and small stones from a White House garden on 11 white Stars of David bearing the names of the dead. They chatted quietly with Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, who witnessed the attack Saturday and described the tragedy for them in step-by-step detail. They were accompanied by Ivank

NBC News: Lured by the charm of little Havana or the glamour of South Beach, some 15 million tourists visit Miami every year. But for a growing number of Russian women, the draw isn't sunny beaches or pulsing nightclubs. It's U.S. citizenship for their newborn children. In Moscow, it's a status symbol to have a Miami-born baby, and social media is full of Russian women boasting of their little americantsy. "It's really common," said Ekaterina Kuznetsova, 29. "When I was taking the plane to come here, it was not only me. It was four or five women flying here." Ekaterina was one of dozens of Russian birth tourists NBC News spoke to over the past four months about a round-trip journey that costs tens of thousands of dollars and takes them away from home for weeks or months. Why do they come? "American passport is a big plus for the baby. Why not?" Olesia Reshetova, 31, told NBC News. ... It's not just the Russians who are c

Navasoto Examiner: ... “In 1842, when Washington became the capital for the second time (of Texas), many people of note lived within its confines. Sam Houston and his family were residents for a short while; and Anson Jones lived a few miles out in the country at ‘Barrington.’ “Religiously, educationally, socially and commercially it forged rapidly to the front. A great volume of business was transacted, and brick buildings, some of them three stories high, were erected. “River traffic assumed business importance about 1842 which year witnessed the appearance of the stern wheeler, ‘Mustang.’ … it was not uncommon sight to see as many as three boats, all being docked at the large wharves at Washington. River traffic improved with a rapidity unparalleled from 1844 to 1854, (during early statehood).” Mrs. Pennington continued, “at the close of the ‘40s and early 50s … Washington reached the zenith of its glory and attained its greatest commercial importance. With a population of

Bell Gertz: The Justice Department announced the indictment of nine people on Tuesday linked to a Chinese cyber intelligence operation targeting aerospace technology. The nine people, including intelligence officers, state-controlled hackers, and recruited agents inside companies were linked to computer intrusions at U.S. and European companies and the theft of turbofan jet engine technology used in commercial airliners. The operation was directed by cyber spies operating out of the Jiangsu Province branch of the Ministry of State Security, the civilian spy service, based in Nanjing, China, and known as the JSSD. Two MSS officers indicted in the case were identified as Zha Rong and Chai Meng, who worked with state-controlled Chinese hackers and insiders working for targeted aerospace companies. The MSS hacker team under the direction of the two MSS officers were identified as Zhang Zhang-Gui, Liu Chunliang, Gao Hong Kun, Zhuang Xiaowei, and Ma Zhiqi. The Justice Department

John Solomon: Silence of 'the lambs': The deafening quietude of the FISA court and John Roberts ... This week, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), the conservative firebrand who, along with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), has driven the once reluctant House leaders to dig for much of the aforementioned evidence, sent his own missive to U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer. She is chief judge of the FISC. His letter asked the obvious question: As a separate and equal pillar of government from Congress and the executive branch, does the judiciary have concerns with the FBI’s and DOJ’s conduct? “Based on our investigation and open source information, the FISC may have not lived up to the Constitution’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures in approving U.S. citizens targeted without probable cause,” Meadows wrote. “We write to encourage you to investigate the possibility that FISA has recently been weaponized for political means.” ... But a troubling whisper has begu

Brandon Morse: Amidst the news of the swelling migrant caravan heading toward the United States border come disturbing reports of the migrants getting state-funded help from Mexico. According to Fox News, the migrants are being loaded onto professional charter buses being provided by the Mexican government in order to expedite some of the migrants to the border. “Something new that’s developing here,” said Fox News reporter Griff Jenkins. “We’ve seen the 5,000 strong caravan walking to the border but now they’re waiting for a ride to the border. This is the first time I have seen an organized bus operation from the state of Oaxaca actually getting volunteer buses to put people … on them and take them to their next location.” Jenkins is seen showing multiple buses as migrants board. ... It looks like they are trying to get them to the border before election day in the US.  This suggests a blatant attempt to influence the US election.  It is certainly a change from the previous Mexic

Becket Adams: Beto O’Rourke’s 1998 drunken driving accident isn’t the only thing his media profilers have ignored. The New York Times did a fine job this week detailing the Democratic Senate candidate’s shady history in political backscratching, including a real-estate deal he championed even though it would’ve directly benefited his billionaire father-in-law. William D. Sanders’ plan to turn a historically Mexican-American neighborhood into a shopping epicenter ultimately failed, sparing the Latino residents the pain of being displaced and/or losing their homes to eminent domain. But not for Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s lack of trying. One of the chief takeaways from the Times report is that it is becoming increasingly clear O’Rourke has more in common with gentrifying Brooklyn hipsters than he does with truly grassroots populists, as my Washington Examiner colleague Siraj Hashmi noted earlier this week. But two more takeaways occurred to me. First, I’ve read nearly a dozen medi

Ann Althouse: ... The "calls for him to cool his overheated rhetoric" are what I've been calling "civility bullshit" for years. It's always only aimed at the other side. They want you to stop fighting them with vigor, and they have no intention of stopping fighting you. Trump obviously know this and can't be played. You might think just this once — because 11 people were massacred — he'd go presidential, bow his head, and sing "Amazing Grace," but his opponents didn't refrain from closing right in on him and kicking him, and he kicks back. Because Trump fights back many in the media have escalated their rhetorical attacks against him.  What this has done has harmed what credibility the media has left.  It is why so many have tuned them out.  What Trump supporters like is the fact that he refuses to be a stoic punching bag for the media and keeps fighting back. The media started this fight by deciding early on that they did not hav

Roger Kimball: ... ... In his speech in Milwaukee on Friday, Barack Obama demonstrated once again his effortless, masterly deployment of deceit. Again, I do not say that we groundlings have been vouchsafed all the inner workings of the mechanism. But one thing is clear from Obama’s performance: brazenness is key. If you are going to lie, don’t be shy. Capitalise on the public’s inherent goodwill — and its poor memory. Another useful gambit: accuse others, preferably in violent terms, of precisely that of which you are yourself guilty. Watch this: ‘What we have not seen before in our public life is politicians just blatantly, repeatedly, baldly, shamelessly, lying. Just making stuff up.’ Nice! As in, ‘if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor’? ‘Nobody In My Administration Got Indicted,’ said the Big O, but consider Eric ‘kick ’em when they’re down’ Holder, the only Attorney General in history to have been held in contempt of Congress. Consider also Lois Lerner, the

Houston Chronicle: Some political groups on the left are borrowing a tactic from disinformation campaigns, placing ads on Facebook that pretend to be impartial information or unbiased news sources, when in fact the ads spread misleading facts about candidates. One ad , taken out by a group called "The Voter Awareness Project," reopens old wounds between President Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, implying that Trump is at odds with Cruz even as the president stumped for the senator last week near the end of Cruz's surprisingly close re-election bid against Democrat Beto O'Rourke. "Trump's trying to drain the swamp of do-nothing politicians. Trump says Lyin' Ted Cruz has accomplished nothing for Texas, and he's right," the ad reads, referring to a 2016 tweet from when Trump was a candidate. But Trump and Cruz have since buried the hatchet. Trump has been endorsing Cruz for re-election since February. He recently said, "He's not Ly

Washington Times: Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey isn’t likely to tout his endorsement by the state’s largest newspaper any time soon. Voters in the Garden State will head to the polls next week and the Newark-based New Jersey Star-Ledger is telling them to “choke down” a Menendez salad instead of opting for Republican challenger Bob Hugin. “It’s a miracle that Menendez escaped criminal conviction,” the editorial board wrote of his November 2017 mistrial on bribery and fraud charges. “[It’s] an act of profound narcissism that he stayed in the race despite this baggage, putting a Democratic seat at risk while Donald Trump sits in the White House.” The newspaper’s editors admonished him for breaking Senate rules by surreptitiously accepting expensive gifts and promoting “the personal and business interests of the man who paid the bills,” but they ultimately rejected Mr. Hugin. “The bigger concern is Hugin’s admiration for Trump,” the newspaper wrote. “Many Republicans felt duty

Jeff Dunetz: Trump Creates 1st National Monument Celebrating African-American Civil War Soldiers The President engages in more outreach to the black community.  It is not surprising that his polling in that community has increased significantly.

Daily Mail: The second migrant caravan, believed to be armed with bombs and guns, crossed into Mexico on Monday despite a huge police presence. Hundreds of migrants following in the footsteps of the first caravan heading to the U.S. border crossed a river from Guatemala. A low-flying police helicopter hovered overhead as the migrants waded in large groups through the Suchiate River's murky waters, apparently trying to use the downdraft from its rotors to discourage them. Guatemala's Noti7 channel reported that one man drowned and aired video of a man dragging a seemingly lifeless body from the river. Once on the Mexican side the migrants were surrounded and escorted by black-uniformed officers as sirens wailed. The second group back at the Guatemalan frontier has been more unruly than the first that crossed. Guatemala's Interior Ministry said Guatemalan police officers were injured when the migrant group broke through border barriers on Guatemala's side of t

Nolan Rappaport: Many people mistakenly believe that asylum seekers have a right to apply for asylum in the United States. The first paragraph in the Immigration and Nationality Act’s (INA) asylum provisions provides that aliens physically present in the United States “may” apply for asylum. But the second paragraph provides the following three exceptions, and asylum may be denied on the basis of disqualifying conduct, such as having been convicted of a particularly serious crime. Safe third country. – Asylum is not available to an alien who can be sent pursuant to a bilateral or multilateral agreement to a country where he will not be persecuted, other than the country of the alien's nationality; and where he will have access to a full and fair procedure for determining an asylum claim or equivalent protection. An exception is permitted when it is in the public interest for the alien to receive asylum in the United States. Time limit. – An alien has to file his asylum appl

Breitbart: Poll: Trump Hits Record High Approval Rating with Black Voters Amid BLEXIT Launch If these poll results are reflected in the voting booth it would be a dramatic shift that would mean long-term problems for Democrats.  The poll gives President Trump an overall approval rate of 50 percent.

Dov Fischer: Here we go again: “It’s all Trump’s fault.” Do you remember the Democrats and the CNN crowd rushing to blame Saudi Arabia for the 9-11 attack on the Twin Towers? Or to blame Islam? I don’t. There were 19 murderers on 9-11, and 15 of them came from Saudi Arabia. The others also were Muslims. And all we hear — from Obama and George W. Bush on down — is that Islam is a “religion of peace,” so don’t blame Islam. Obama tells us that ISIS “is not Islamic.” Instead, we were told after 9-11, the “Saudis are our friends.” They, their Wahhabi Islam, the hundreds of anti-Christian madrassas they have built throughout the United States, the $10 billion they have poured into Western colleges and universities, the hundreds of millions they have thrown at American universities to buy off entire Middle East Studies departments and to teach anti-Americanism, anti-Christianity, and anti-Judaism to young people on our soil. And yet we repeatedly get fed the mantra about “our friends the

Victor Davis Hanson: ... Central Americans claim they are “refugees,” forced out of their homes by violence and endemic lawlessness to save their very lives by migrating to the United States. They insist on that rationale because of quirks in American law that make it more difficult to deport resident “refugees” (especially those with small children) than ordinary illegal aliens seeking improved economic conditions inside the United States. Yet the migrants are now for the most part well inside Mexico. The Mexican government has generously offered succor. No one is threatening their lives. Mexico has even offered temporary residence for those who seem to have good grounds to be admitted as true political refugees. In response, the caravan migrants have ignored those offers, because the vast majority are not true refugees. They are mostly no different from the millions of illegal aliens who have entered the United States for higher wages, for the chance to send remittances to the

Byron York: Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for porn star Stormy Daniels, jumped into the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation battle on the afternoon of Sept. 23. On that day, the New Yorker published the allegations of a woman named Deborah Ramirez, who claimed that a drunken Kavanaugh exposed himself to her during a party at Yale sometime in 1983 or 1984. Almost immediately, Avenatti took to Twitter with an allegation of his own. Avenatti said he had a client, "a woman with credible information regarding Judge Kavanaugh and Mark Judge." He did not reveal her name. Within minutes, Mike Davis, chief counsel for nominations at the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent an email to Avenatti. "You claim to have information you consider credible regarding Judge Kavanaugh and Mark Judge," Davis wrote. "Please advise of this information immediately so that Senate investigators may promptly begin an inquiry." Avenatti responded quickly. "We are aware o

Fuel Fix: The Port of Corpus Christi and investment firm The Carlyle Group will team up to develop an inland crude oil export terminal for some of the world's largest oil tankers. The project on Harbor Island, just two miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico, would allow Texas' booming oil production to be exported around the world on some of the largest crude oil tankers. The terminal will include two loading docks and allow very large crude carriers, or VLCCs, to dock. The tankers are preferred by exporters because of their ability to export 2 million barrels of oil per ship. A separate storage area would be located somewhere across Redfish Bay, which lies to the west of Harbor Island. The cost of the Harbor Island project could be upwards of $1 billion, according to the port's CEO Sean Strawbridge. It is expected to be operational in late 2020. ... The time of the build appears to correspond with the timing of new pipeline capacity from the Permian Basin.  Texas i

James Robbins: Accused Pittsburgh synagogue killer Robert Bowers is a raving anti-Semitic white nationalist who also despises President Trump. This might sound confusing to people who bought into the tiresome “Trump is Hitler” media narrative, but it makes perfect sense. Bowers faces 29 criminal charges , including 11 for homicide, after a shooting rampage at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh on Saturday. There is no mystery as to his motive; he left a long record of neo-Nazi-inspired anti-Semitic ranting on social media, and shouted “all Jews must die” when he opened fire. Naturally some critics rushed to blame President Trump for "inspiring" the attack . The left has long charged that Trump is a Nazi sympathizer spouting hateful rhetoric and his supporters are fascist enablers . And critics say that those Trump voters who support his economic or foreign policies are simply too stupid to know they are bigots. But actual Nazis disagree. Bowers was explicit

Rowan Scarborough: Special counsel Robert Mueller is churning in uncharted legal waters as he tries to nail a Russian firm for bankrolling Moscow’s deceptive social media invasion into the 2016 election. It is not only Concord Management and Consulting LLC’s attorney saying this. Defense attorney Eric Dubelier said in court that Mr. Mueller created a “make-believe crime” and that the “real Justice Department” would never have brought such an indictment. U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich also is expressing doubts about Mr. Mueller’s unique prosecutorial adventure, though she is not saying she will dismiss the charges, as Mr. Dubelier has requested. A review of the transcript of an Oct. 15 hearing shows the judge’s reservations. She said of Mr. Mueller’s team, “They’ve got a heavy burden at trial to prove that knowledge.” She was referring to awareness that Concord knowingly defrauded the Federal Election Commission, the Justice Department and the State Department. “I wil

NY Times: Beto O’Rourke Once Supported an El Paso Real Estate Deal. Barrio Residents Remember. As a young city councilman, Mr. O’Rourke, now running for Senate in Texas, angered residents who viewed him as siding with the moneyed elite in supporting a redevelopment plan. Well he is still siding with the moneyed elites who are mainly from outside of Texas in running the most expensive Senate race in history.  The polls suggests that all that money is not buying him enough love to win.

Cynthia Farahat: On October 25, a spokesman for the Taliban announced that Pakistan had released Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar from prison. Baradar, the Taliban co-founder and former deputy to Mullah Mohammed Omar, was arrested by Pakistani authorities in the southern port city of Karachi in 2010. According to Al Jazeera , Pakistani authorities released Baradar at the request of the State of Qatar. Al Jazeera reported that the "Taliban confirmed that they had held talks with US Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad in Doha, the capital of Qatar." In 2013, the Taliban political office in was set up in Doha at the request of the U.S. to facilitate "peace talks." Two years after the Taliban office was established in Qatar, the head of al-Qaeda, Ayman el-Zawahiri , gave the bay'a (Islamic oath of allegiance) to Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour. Mansour was killed in 2016 by a U.S. drone strike in southw

Washington Free Beacon: North Korean Defector Describes ‘Prison Camp’ Conditions for Slaves Sent Overseas Kim Jong Un finances nuclear program with cash made from overseas labor The Norks boosted theri slave labor footprint in response to the sanctions that have made it more difficult to engage in regular commerce.

Clarice Feldman: This Saturday eleven people were killed by a shooter in a Pittsburgh synagogue during morning services. The shooter appears to someone who not only hates Jews, but hates President Trump as well . Julia Ioffe, a GQ correspondent, finds a way to blame Trump for this mayhem: Julia Ioffe‏Verified account @juliaioffe FollowFollow @juliaioffe More And a word to my fellow American Jews: This president makes this possible. Here. Where you live. I hope the embassy move over there, where you don’t live was worth it. 9:22 AM - 27 Oct 2018 It will be interesting to see how the rest of the mainstream media handles the background of the man responsible and contrasts it with this week’s perfervid reportage of the man who mailed dud nonfunctioning “bombs” to prominent Democrats and some media. Without a serious look at the background of the dud bomber, much of the press leaped to blame the president. TheOtherMcCain dug deeper into it . While described as a “Seminole I

Jazz Shaw: While it doesn’t get much play in the heat of the final days leading up to the midterms, U.S. energy policy is still in the news. Unfortunately, not all of the coverage is quite as honestly depicted as you might hope. We’re still riding a nearly unprecedented energy boom in the United States, but the New York Times found a way to cast a dark cloud over it this weekend. Eric Lipton et al. published a look at oil and gas drilling on federal lands in Wyoming designed to send chills down your spine just in time for Halloween. To read this coverage, you would think that Big Oil was gorging on the corpse of the Cowboy State, leaving some sort of Mad Max wasteland in its wake. The parade of trailer trucks rolling through Jay Butler’s dusty ranch is a precursor to a new fracking boom on the vast federal lands of Wyoming and across the West. Reversing a trend in the final years of the Obama presidency, the Trump administration is auctioning off millions of acres of drilling r

Algemeiner: Why Were the 7,000 Antisemitic Incidents Under Obama Largely Ignored? The trend contined after Trump was elected.  I suspect that the federal government was more focused on other "hate crimes" and left the prosecution of thse cases to local officials.  I think the problem is big enough that it should get more focused attention on the federal level.  The mass murder of the Jews in Pittsburg should focus the country on the problem and get more tangible results against the perpetraitors.

Washington Times: The European Court of Human Rights just ruled that a woman who was convicted in a Vienna court and fined for disparaging a religion — Islam — after she called out Mohammed as a pedophile did not, as she argued, have her free speech rights infringed. She lost her last appeal and now must pay a fine of 480 euros, which is about $547. Americans, take note. Lessons can be learned here. Warnings should be heeded. There are many in the United States who want to mold this country into the shape of Europe — who want America to shed its sovereign system of capitalistic and constitutional principles and step full-steam-ahead into a more globalist type of governance. But America is special — exceptional, really. Here, unlike in Europe, freedom is a God-given, not government granted. Moving toward the latter, shifting toward an EU-like system that squishes the individual for the good of the collective, means giving up cherished freedoms — freedoms like the right to speak

ABC News: The Republican Jewish Coalition is calling for the resignation of seven Democratic members of Congress whom it claims are "connected" to controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. The group describes him as a "known anti-Semite." The Republican Jewish Coalition is calling for the resignation of seven Democratic members of Congress whom it claims are "connected" to controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. The group describes him as a "known anti-Semite." The lobbying group on Tuesday called for the following lawmakers to step down: Reps. Keith Ellison, D-Minn.; Barbara Lee, D-Calif.; Maxine Waters, D-Calif.; Danny Davis, D-Ill.; Andre Carson, D-Ind.; Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y.; and Al Green, D-Texas. ... Some of the seven have since denounced Farrakhan's alti-semantic statements.  Whether they will continue to associate with him is another question.  Barack Obama has tried to hide his own associations with

Fox News: President Trump derided rival billionaire Tom Steyer as a "wacky" and "crazed & stumbling lunatic" on Sunday, after Steyer -- who was one of the prominent liberals to receive a threatening suspicious package last week -- said he "absolutely was blaming" Trump for creating an atmosphere in which "anything can bubble up, and anything is bubbling up." Steyer fired back quickly, writing that Trump's comment was "unthinkable ... in the midst of the horrible political violence." The Twitter conflagration erupted after Steyer's wide-ranging interview with CNN's "State of the Union," in which the hedge fund manager called Trump "corrupt," and accused him of "the most abject dereliction of duty in the history of the country" by "willingly putting Americans in harm's way" because he has dismissed a major United Nations report on global climate change. Steyer not onl