Never Forget -- Freedom Rings Today!

As We Remember Our Heroes This Memorial Day, Let’s Also Remember How Precious And Fragile Liberty Is

5/28/2018 - Scott Morefield Townhall.com

“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.” – Patrick Henry

 “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” – Benjamin Franklin

In May 1942, with the U.S. Pacific fleet down to just three carriers after heavy losses incurred at the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, the USS Wasp, after having distinguished itself in the Atlantic war, embarked to fight the Japanese in the Pacific.

After a hard fight at Guadalcanal, three Japanese torpedoes hit the Wasp head-on. Fires spread quickly thanks to the incredible amount of oil and gas released from the tanks by the direct hits, and it wasn’t long before the ship’s fate was sealed. My grandfather, Harding Morefield, was forced to jump into the ocean after his hair caught on fire. When the ship’s captain, Forrest P. Sherman, ordered the abandon ship, the only delays were caused by the crewmen who didn’t want to leave until every single wounded soldier was brought to safety. 

When the foundering, desperate Germans cut through the Ardennes to surprise American forces in December 1944 with what would be their last major offensive of the war, my wife’s grandfather, a young infantryman named George, was shot in the leg. Because the units in the area were caught by almost complete surprise, George languished in the snow for 12 hours before being rescued. He lost his leg in the battle, but 19,000 other Americans lost their lives. 

There are millions of stories like this, interwoven throughout the histories of millions of American families. Most of us have ancestors who were willing to fight and die for something they saw as bigger than themselves, a nation where they, their families and their descendants could live in freedom. From the patriots who risked their lives and sacred honor to found a new country based on liberty and justice to today’s brave soldiers who willingly sign up to fight an enemy that doesn’t always even wear a uniform or adhere to the laws of war, courage and sacrifice are what founded our nation and made it great. 

Our grandparents were heroes to us, of course, and in many ways today’s pampered generation can barely imagine the sacrifices they endured. My wife’s grandfather who lost his leg was said to have never complained about his situation, at least within earshot of his family. To them, he would have gladly given his other leg for his country. 

But they, along with most everyone who survived the horrors of war, would never tell you they were heroes. No, they’d probably say they were lucky, because to them it didn’t seem like there was any real rhyme or reason to those who got to go home and those who got buried on a European battlefield or dumped into the Pacific ocean, or even those who left a leg in some makeshift military hospital in Belgium. To them, the real heroes were the ones who gave all they had to give in places like Khe San and Hamburger Hill, Normandy and Bastogne, Belleau Wood and Flanders, Manassas and Gettysburg, Bunker Hill and Yorktown. 

Crosses in their honor are planted in fields all across Europe, and in Lee’s old farm in Virginia, their lives cut off in the flower of their youth, their deaths mourned by family members who would never see them again. 

The real heroes - they would say - never came home. 

American industrialist Henning Webb Prentis Jr. once described the historical cycle as, “from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy, from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more.” 

This Memorial Day weekend we should certainly remember our slain heroes, but we should also consider whether our fragile, dependent generation has the same mettle as our ancestors. Because if not, and if Prentis is correct, we’re about to enter a period of bondage unlike any mankind has experienced. 

As we enjoy an extra day off work and fire up the barbecue, may we not only remember the heroes who gave everything so we could live in a country founded upon and defined by liberty, may we also acknowledge just how precious and easily lost that liberty is. May we remember that freedom is something that, once lost, is never freely returned by those in power. 

It is always born of blood.

DEBT! Our Greatest Menace

A Million Dollars a Minute

2/15/2018 - Judge Andrew Napolitano Townhall.com

Imagine you open the faucet of your kitchen sink expecting water and instead out comes cash. Now imagine that it comes out at the rate of $1 million a minute. You call your plumber, who thinks you're crazy. To get you off the phone, he opines that it is your sink and therefore must be your money. So you spend it wildly. Then you realize that the money wasn't yours and you owe it back.

Now imagine that this happens every minute of every day for the next three years. At the end of the three years, you owe back more than $6 trillion. So you borrow $6 trillion to pay back the $6 trillion you owe.

Is this unending spigot of cash reality or fantasy?

I am not speaking of Amazon or Google or Exxon Mobil or Apple. They deliver products that appeal to consumers and investors. They deal in copious amounts of money because they sell what hundreds of millions of people want to purchase and they do it so efficiently that hundreds of thousands want to invest in them. If they fail to persuade consumers to purchase their products and investors to purchase their financial instruments, they will go out of business.

My analogy about all that cash in your kitchen sink that just keeps coming is not about voluntary commercial transactions, which you are free to accept or reject. It is about the government's spending what it doesn't have, the consequences of which you are not free to reject.

Government produces no products that consumers are willing to pay for voluntarily, and it doesn't sell shares of stock in its assets. It doesn't generate wealth; it seizes it. And when it can no longer politically get away with seizing, it borrows. It borrows a great deal of money -- money that it rolls over, by borrowing trillions to pay back trillions to prior lenders, and thus its debt never goes away.

Last week, after eight years of publicly complaining that then-President Barack Obama was borrowing more than $1 trillion a year to fund the government -- borrowing that the Republicans silently consented to -- congressional Republicans, now in control of Congress and with a friend in the Oval Office, voted to spend and hence borrow between $5 trillion and $6 trillion more than tax revenue will produce in the next three years; that's a few trillion more than they complained about in the Obama years.

That's borrowing $1 million a minute.

Obviously, no business or household or bank can survive very long by borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. Yet the federal government, no matter which party controls Congress or the presidency, engages in staggering borrowing -- borrowing that will cripple future generations by forcing them to pay for goods and services that were consumed before they were born.

The government has often borrowed to meet critical emergency needs, typically during wartime. Indeed, the country was born in debt when Alexander Hamilton, the father of big government, offered the idea that the new federal government created by the Constitution could purchase the fidelity of the states by assuming their Revolutionary War debts.

But those debts were paid back using inflation, gold and tax dollars, and the country enjoyed sporadic periods of nearly debt-free government. Then three unhappy events coincided about 100 years ago: Woodrow Wilson -- the father of modern-day big government -- was elected president, and he brought us into the useless battle over national borders among old European royalty called the Great War, and he financed American participation in that first world war using the new printing presses owned by the new Federal Reserve System.

The $30 billion President Wilson borrowed from the Federal Reserve and others has been rolled over and over and has never been repaid. The federal government still owes the $30 billion principal, and for that it has paid more than $15 billion in interest. Who in his right mind would pay 50 percent interest on a 100-year-old debt? Only the government.

Wilson's $30 billion debt 100 years ago has ballooned to $20.6 trillion today. At the end of President Donald Trump's present term -- because of the Republican budget signed into law last week -- the government's debt will be about $27 trillion.

That amount is a debt bomb waiting to explode. Here's why. Every year, the federal government collects about $2.5 trillion in revenue and spends it all. It borrows another $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion and spends it all. To avoid paying back any of the $27 trillion it will owe, the federal government will need to spend about $1 trillion a year in interest payments.

That $1 trillion is 40 percent of the revenue collected by the federal government; that's 40 cents on every dollar in tax revenue going to interest on old debts -- interest payments that are legally unavoidable by taxpayers and voters.

Will the taxpaying public tolerate this much longer? What would happen if taxpayers stopped paying taxes because 40 percent of what they've been paying has produced nothing for them? Would investors stop lending money to the government because of fear that the government could not pay them back? The Constitution requires the government to pay its debts. Would the government's creditors acquire control of the government's fiscal policy in order to pay themselves back? The government's biggest creditor is one of its biggest menaces -- the government of China.

Borrowing money at $1 million a minute is digging a hole out of which we will never peacefully climb. President Obama's and President Trump's own military and intelligence chiefs have argued that the national debt -- not the Russians or the Islamic State group or the North Koreans -- is the greatest threat to freedom and security that we face today.

Why are Congress and President Trump not listening?

Liberals Never Learn!

Three Ways Liberals Hoist Themselves With Their Own Petards On Immigration

5/14/2018 - Scott Morefield Townhall.com

If any timeworn phrase perfectly describes liberals and their ridiculous policy positions, it’s the fact that they’re constantly “hoisting” themselves with their “own petards.”

What doth that mean, asks ye? 

Well, according to Wikipedia, “‘Hoist with his own petard’ is a Shakespearean idiom from Hamlet meaning ‘to cause the bomb maker to be blown up with his own bomb.’” Of course, a Hamlet idiom is entirely too dignified for these idiots, who’d be far more accurately portrayed as Wile E. Coyote letting a bomb intended for the Road Runner explode in his own face. Over and over again, because liberals never learn (and the ones that do become conservatives!).

So let’s examine a few key ways liberals wreak havoc on their own professed causes and long term goals, not to mention society itself, by championing positions that are not only untenable and unworkable, but quite definably insane. These three will deal with the immigration issue, but there are doubtless plenty more where these came from on plenty of other issues.

Sanctuary Cities

The idea behind a so-called “sanctuary city” is for local authorities to not cooperate with immigration authorities when it comes to turning over illegal immigrants who happen to be caught committing crimes and imprisoned in local jails. Yes, I realize we’re supposed to believe illegal immigrants don’t actually commit crime - a lie which, were it true, would negate the need for “sanctuary cities” entirely. But sadly, illegal immigrants not only commit crime, they commit it far out of proportion to their numbers. And liberals, for whatever reason, feel the need to protect these criminals from deportation so they are free to commit their next crime here in the good ole’ U S of A. 

At any rate, what actually happens is illegal immigrant criminals are released and, instead of being picked up by ICE at the jail and dealt with according to the law, make their way back to their community, which is bound to consist of more than a few other illegal immigrants. Consequently, as confirmed by none other than retiring ICE acting director Tom Homan, when the feds inevitably come after them, they come across a whole other host of potential arrestees. Whoops!

Unlimited Third-World Immigration

If any universal rule would ever apply specifically to liberals, it’s that they’ve never seen a Third World immigrant they didn’t absolutely love. And it’s an unconditional love, like the kind that’s typically reserved for offspring, cute puppies, and NBC’s “This Is Us.” Every time a liberal sees a picture or video of Third World migrants ‘courageously’ marching or sailing to the West to demand their free goodies, every liberal sitting comfortably in their fancy home in their lilly-white suburban neighborhood literally gets a Chris Matthews-style thrill right up their leg.

It’s a hard and fast rule too, like gravity, thermodynamics, and their love for Che Guevara. It doesn’t matter if the migrants crossing the border are ISIS terrorist sleeper cells or a rogue MS-13 unit the rest of the gang sent to America for being too violent for their tastes - the more the merrier, so long as they’re likely to vote Democrat.

Except, terrorism and crime aside, aren’t Democrats and liberals supposed to be for ordinary working people? If so, wouldn’t that entail at least pretending to want them to make more money? Which leads to the question - when hordes of low-skilled illegal and even legal immigrants pour across the border, who do liberals think they’re going to compete with for jobs? Rocket scientists? Physics professors? Nuclear engineers? 

Nope, they’re competing with the very people liberals count on to keep blindly putting them into power. Except, Democratic ignorance of this issue is a major reason Trump overturned the electoral map by winning states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. It’s called ‘supply and demand,’ and the fact that liberals cannot seem to comprehend it doesn’t make it any less an economic fact. 

Unlimited Islamic Immigration

Again, liberals love immigration from the Third World, and it really doesn’t matter to them where it’s coming from, as long as it’s coming TO Western nations and FROM the Third World. As far as they’re concerned, the deeper the hellhole the more qualified the candidate. So when Syrians and other Muslims make their way to Europe from the Middle East and northern Africa by the boatload or the trainload, libs across the pond want to open that door as wide as possible, all the while cracking the whip on any upstart natives who dare dissent.

But here’s the problem, especially in Europe where the vast majority of Third World migrants adhere to a religion that doesn’t exactly align with your typical progressive agenda, much less anyone who thinks gays have the right to live or that women should be allowed to drive or show their ankles in public. Now I’m not saying every Muslim believes everything about the most extreme elements of their religion, because they obviously don’t, but to state that Islam tends to be more socially restrictive than Western social norms is a more than reasonable assertion.

So, where’s the logic? Well, there’s not a lot, except votes (for now). Check out this article from last year about how European liberals twist themselves into a pretzel trying to “pursue Muslim voters without undermining their liberal values.” So, how is this supposed to end, libs? What do Islamic countries look like and, if Muslims become the majority in any Western nation, what would we expect that nation to eventually become? Or have you even thought it through that far?

(Cue Wile E. Coyote staring resignedly at a bomb in his hand that’s about to explode…)

There are obviously plenty more where these came from, because more often than not policy positions originated by liberals tend to come back and bite themselves in the rear. Maybe we’ll cover some more in a future column, but in the meantime feel free to comment on some other crazy ways you’ve observed liberals hoisting themselves with their own petards. 

Don’t worry, warning them won’t make them stop doing it because liberals never learn, just like Wile E. Coyote.

Obama Swamp Remains

Obama Record of Lawlessness Continues with New Enablers

5/6/2018 - Bruce Bialosky Townhall.com

One would have thought that once President Obama left office his charade of never doing anything illegal or having a smidgen of corruption would be exposed.  Yet nearly 18 months later, he has found new enablers to continue his destructive policies that have no basis in law.  This past week reiterated that situation.

As I have defined before, once Obama lost the majorities in the House and Senate in January 2011, he did not abandon his desire to fundamentally remake our country.  He just adopted a new strategy.  With the help of political appointees who were true believers and career employees that harbored similar attitudes, he enacted his new plan of attack.  Obama crafted executive actions that were clearly not within the law, but did it anyway. He then thumbed his nose at his opponents saying – come get me; I will use your money via the federal government to defend my lawless actions until a court overrules me.  

The two central policies that he enacted were DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals)  and the Iran Deal.  As you know, DACA was done by executive order after multiple statements of the fact by Obama that he could not take such action because he had no authority.  The Iran Deal was never approved by the U.S. Senate as all treaties with foreign entities must be.  Obama did take it to the United Nations for them to ratify with some believing somehow this is a lawful agreement for our country.  

The newest enabler of Obama is U.S. District Judge John Bates who stated the decision to phase out the program was “arbitrary and capricious because the Department of Homeland Security failed adequately to explain its conclusion that the program was unlawful.”  I know this guy was appointed by George W. Bush, but he either is unfit to make decisions of this kind or has lost his mind.  His response is almost akin to asking someone “When did you stop beating your wife?”  

Maybe Judge Bates can explain to us laypeople how the law is different for DACA participants than it was for DAPA participants.  If the DAPA action was ruled illegal, why would the DACA action be deemed legal?  What is the difference between the parents and their children?  Why does a president now get to make laws instead of the Congress?  These are simple questions that the Judge should be able to answer instead of using the old standby “arbitrary and capricious.”  Quite frankly that is lame.  

Then we had the double onslaught of the French and German leaders coming to lecture us on why we should not abandon the Iran Deal.  I certainly do not expect Macron and Merkel to insist we follow our own constitution.  But they are not stupid people and they know we have a process and Obama circumvented it.  

Macron and Merkel know -- just as the supporters of the Iran Deal in the U.S. do -- that since the implementation of the deal the Iranians have been on an international rampage.  They have attempted to create a hegemony across the Middle East.  Their support of the war criminal Assad in Syria is just the tip of the iceberg.  They have funded Hezbollah and Hamas who are waging war in Syria and against our allies.  They have denied they provided rockets to the Houthis in Yemen against another ally of ours, Saudi Arabia, but that is doubtful.  

As for the nuclear aspect, they have done everything except launch a bomb.  The deal itself restricts such little nuclear activity.  It only restricts the aspect of nuclear centrifuges.  Iran launched ballistic missile tests and asserted it was not covered by the treaty. They may actually be correct about that fact and that is the problem.  One would have to ask why are you testing ballistic missiles unless you intend to deliver nuclear warheads with them?  And as defined by the information released by the Israeli government this past week, the Iranians have lied about their actual intentions for over a decade.  Only fools believed their assertions anyway.  

But let us assume that the deal is going swimmingly as some assert.  David E. Wade, chief of staff at the State Department while John Kerry was negotiating this deal, recently stated in a column: “The Tehran regime eliminated 97 percent of its uranium stockpile, removed and destroyed the core from its Arak reactor, blocked production of weapons-grade plutonium, ripped out more than 13,000 centrifuges, halted all uranium enrichment at the underground Fordow site, and implemented the gold-standard of verification. Tehran is complying, and Iran is crawling with inspectors.”  

These statements are disputable because the inspectors are restricted from many sites, including Iran’s military sites.  If you accept all of these assertions and this agreement is working, then I have a simple solution: legalize it. Get it approved by the U.S. Senate.  You might say that is just silly because it will not pass the Senate. That is true. It would not pass the Senate in 2015 either despite all the efforts of Obama; thus, the end run around the U.S. Constitution.

These are dangerous precedents being set.  The Democrats in Congress should really analyze what they are doing.  They are ceding power to the presidency that they may regret at a future time.  For example, something Trump does they don’t like.   These are not only bad decisions; they are bad for our republic.  

Mid-terms - Extremely Important Essential Voting Required!

What Would a Progressive America Look Like?

5/3/2018 - Laura Hollis Townhall.com

While the November elections may seem like a long way off (at least for those of us not running for office), we need to be thinking about the consequences of those elections.

As I have noted before, Democrats running for office this year have been styling themselves as “centrists,” taking policy positions that seem taken from Republican platforms. But there is no indication that any Democrats will govern from the center these days, and every reason to think that they will succumb to the pressure brought to bear by the “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party and move left. The more Democrats there are in Congress, the further left that body will go. 

So before you vote for a Democrat for Congress, it’s worth asking -- what would a Congress controlled by Democrats do?

First and foremost, of course, is the impeachment of President Donald Trump. Many of the left’s mouthpieces make no bones about the fact that this is their end game. Others (including best-selling author and talk show host Mark Levin) warn that the investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia has morphed into a thinly disguised (and arguably unconstitutional) effort to drum up anything to justify impeachment.

The risks to the country if Democrats play fast and loose with the law to unseat a duly elected president are grave. But the enormity of that effort obscures the other threats to American liberty if so-called “progressives” get control of the government.

What would a progressive America look like? Recent headlines provide plenty of sobering evidence.

Progressives tout their commitment to “universal health care,” often using the National Health Service of Great Britain as an exemplar. But the distressing cases of Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans present an abject lesson in what can go wrong when personal health care choices intersect with the progressive viewpoint that government knows best. British hospital staff told the parents of both gravely ill children that it was in their children’s best interests to die, and the parents were prohibited from taking those children elsewhere for alternative treatments.

American colleges and universities -- enclaves of progressive thought -- should also give us insight -- and pause. 

Recent surveys show that nearly 20 percent of college students think violence is justified against speech one finds offensive. More than twice that number think that the U.S. Constitution prohibits “hate speech.” (It does not.) The protests -- and even riots -- we have seen on university campuses bear this out with frightening clarity. Less violent but more insidious are the widespread campus policies restricting speech and conduct (think “trigger warnings,” “safe spaces” and “microaggressions”) that could potentially cause offense.

The Obama administration’s notorious “Dear Colleague” letter purported to advise colleges how to investigate and deter sexual assault on campus. In practice, those recommendations gutted due process for anyone accused of sexual misconduct, depriving them of the presumption of innocence, the right to counsel, the right to confront their accuser and even the right to appeal. Over 150 lawsuits alleging violations of due process have been filed since 2011.

Other abuses of legal process should get our attention, like the “John Doe” raids conducted in Wisconsin against conservative political activists -- later declared unconstitutional. In many essential respects, these are of a piece with the conflicting standards we increasingly see applied by the FBI and the Department of Justice, the Federal Election Commission and even the IRS -- to Democrats or progressives versus Republicans or conservatives.

Disregard of existing laws is also behind much of our current immigration crisis. The progressive embrace of unlimited immigration (aided and abetted by distinctly non-progressive businesses that want cheap labor) has given us de facto open borders, rampant crime in border states, gang activity, “sanctuary cities” and staggering expenditures.

Cities and states run by progressive politicians also provide cautionary tales of mismanagement. Chicago has strict gun control laws and one of the country’s highest rates of gun violence (although the numbers are down this year, thankfully). Reports of widespread trash, used needles and human feces all over downtown San Francisco shocked the country. Fully one-third of the residents of Portland, Oregon, have considered leaving, because of the city’s massive homeless problem. The state of Illinois -- run by Democrats for decades -- is facing an unfunded pension liability of $250 billion. 

And then there are Democrats’ dreams of taxpayer-funded abortion on demand, a completely disarmed citizenry, higher taxes and a Supreme Court populated by liberal justices who believe the Constitution is a “living document.”

At the local, state, and federal level, there is ample evidence to demonstrate that progressive policies crush civil liberties rather than protecting them, leave the most vulnerable among us victimized, and break the bank (and the backs) of ordinary citizens.

Americans cannot fall prey to the thinking that midterm elections are less important than presidential elections. There is far too much at stake.

Political Pandering by Governor Cuomo

Nationwide, Dems Attack ICE Instead Of Crime

5/2/2018 - Betsy McCaughey Townhall.com

New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo is threatening to sue the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency for its ongoing raids to detain illegal immigrants wanted for serious crimes like assault and rape. A staggering 80 percent of those apprehended in recent ICE raids in New York were either convicted criminals or charged with crimes. But Cuomo's siding with criminals over crime victims. He's playing politics. Faced with a challenge on his left flank from "Sex and the City" star and gubernatorial hopeful Cynthia Nixon, he's desperate to prove his liberal bona fides. Public safety be damned.

The ambitious New York Governor is parroting Democrats across the nation who claim ICE should be abolished because it's breaking apart families and peaceful communities. The facts prove otherwise. Eighty-eight percent of the illegal immigrants arrested in recent Los Angeles ICE raids and 81 percent arrested throughout California, according to the latest ICE data, had criminal convictions. These are bad guys. So when House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., claims that "unjust and cruel" ICE raids "terrorize innocent immigrant families," don't buy it.

Cuomo's making the same bogus claim. Last Thursday, Cuomo denounced an ICE raid on an upstate farm looking for Marcial DeLeon-Aguilar, a three-time prior deportee convicted for felony aggravated assault. The governor complained that Aguilar's children had to watch their father being pinned by officers to block his escape.

Nice try, governor. What about families victimized by violent illegal immigrants?

Since January 2016, at least 25 Long Island youths have been executed by the MS-13 gang of Central American illegal immigrants. Some of the victims are left so mutilated they can hardly be identified. MS-13 beats the youngsters with baseball bats, puts plastic bags over their heads to suffocate them, and then slices off their noses, ears and lips with machetes. No one read these victims their constitutional rights.

ICE's Operation Matador targets MS-13 gang members. Yet Cuomo seems angrier at the ICE agents than at the MS-13 butchers.

Laughably, Cuomo issued a "cease and desist" letter to ICE last week, ordering federal agents to touch base with local police before taking enforcement action. Cuomo doesn't have a constitutional leg to stand on. Check the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Uncle Sam doesn't need Andrew Cuomo's permission to enforce federal laws.

Why the surge in visible, violent sweeps? ICE is forced to conduct sweeps out in the community because New York's sanctuary laws are preventing the agency from taking custody of criminal aliens before they're released from jail, like the agency used to do. As ICE's Deputy Director Thomas Homan points out, these sanctuary policies are needlessly exposing New Yorkers to violence.

Cuomo's mimicking California Democrats, who are in open rebellion against federal law enforcement. In February, Oakland California Mayor Libby Schaaf issued a public alert about a planned ICE raid in her city before it took place, tipping off hundreds of wanted criminals to scatter. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said to Shaaf, "How dare you needlessly endanger the lives of law enforcement just to promote your radical open borders agenda?"

Political pandering is driving this agenda. An amazing 27 percent of California's population are immigrants. Immigrants disproportionately favor big government. California hasn't elected a statewide Republican since 2006. New York is moving in the same direction, with 23 percent of its population foreign-born and Democrats gaining increasing control of state government.

Cuomo and other Democrats resist the federal crackdown on immigrant-related crime, and call for increased spending on after-school music and sports programs to provide an "alternative" to gang activity in immigrant communities. That's nonsense. Brutes willing to torture and mutilate a human being with a machete will not be dissuaded by learning to play the flute.

Donald Trump calls them "animals" who have turned peaceful neighborhoods "into bloodstained killing fields." He's got the right plan: "We will find you. We will arrest you. We will jail you. And we will deport you."