Selective Law Enforcement is National Insanity!

Slouching Toward Anarchy

5/28/2019 - Sheriff David Clarke (Ret.) Townhall.com

The concept of the rule of law is the bedrock of the U.S. Constitution.  The founders agreed that for an orderly society to survive, we had to agree to a set of rules by which we would organize around, limit government power and create laws that would be evenly enforced and fairly applied. For the nearly 240 years our Republic has existed, these principles have stood the test of time. However, it is now eroding in ways previously thought unimaginable.

James Madison, who wrote the model that framed the U.S. Constitution, said, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.”

We are witnessing systematic chipping away at the adherence to written laws instead of working through the legislative process, courts of law or elections to challenge grievances. 

Former President Barack Obama issued his infamous statement to form laws more to his liking with his “pen and his phone.” The Department of Justice—namely the FBI—decided that the process and rules for investigating Americans did not apply to them. They operated lawlessly rationalizing that they self-righteously needed to save the country from a duly elected president they did not like. We saw it when Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, the nation’s top law enforcement officer at the time, publicly resisted the authority of the president when she said she would not instruct the Justice Department officials to carry out President Trump’s lawful order on Muslim refugees traveling to the United States.  We saw it when several states, cities, and counties defied the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution and federal law concerning illegal aliens and declared themselves sanctuary cities. Some county sheriffs have done the same saying they will not enforce state laws relative to firearms without doing it through the state legislature or the courts. The Weld County sheriff has even vowed to go to prison rather than administer a duly passed state law.  Remember when after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld gay marriage in Obergefell v Hodges, Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples citing personal religious objections to same-sex marriage? She chose incarceration for refusing the Court’s decision. A Supreme Court decision has the effect of law. Whether one agrees with it or not is irrelevant. These gun control laws, including red flag laws, are a thinly veiled anti-gun scheme and seem to be unconstitutional but refusing to enforce them is not how we should go about it.

We have history to rely on where government officials tasked with enforcement authority decided that they were the law. In 1963 Birmingham Alabama Police Commissioner Bull Connor adamantly refused to carry out civil rights laws while defending segregation. Democrat Governor George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama and defied the Supreme Court order to desegregate public schools in his state. This is the slippery slope of men and women deciding that the duly passed laws of the state or federal government mean nothing to them.

Now we have state prosecutors in Georgia’s five most populous counties saying they will not enforce the state’s legislatively enacted heartbeat law that prohibits abortion after a heartbeat is detected.

This stuff might make for good sound bites, but it is all outside of our agreement to be a nation of laws and not a nation of men and women. When government officials both elected and appointed fail to live up to their sworn oath to administer the law and instead decide they are the law, the laws are thereby not consistently applied and this create an ethics gap. What they swear to in their oath doesn’t reflect the way they behave. It shakes people’s faith and trust in government. Confusion and chaos follows. These people are substituting their judgment for what the duly passed law says. Folks, this puts us on a road to a very dark place—anarchy.

I don’t care about these government officials’ high mindedness or ego-driven crusade. I care about the law and the process used to enact and enforce it. If certain people do not like duly passed laws, then they need to work through the legislative process and the political process to build a critical mass of people to change it through elections or petitioning the Court for relief. I hesitate to encourage appealing to courts; however because it invites a temptation for judges to engage in political high jinx and activism or act like a super-legislature. Think Justice John Roberts and Obamacare. We then become ruled by people in black robes instead of leaving to the elected legislatures that lawmaking authority, which is reserved for them.

This attitude of deciding which laws we will follow or evenly enforce is problematic. Once we get used to it, it will become a habit, once it becomes a habit the government loses its legitimacy. When that happens, we are no longer a constitutional republic. We cease to be a government of laws and return to the type of governance under King George. We become subject to the whims of particular people or groups who are known to intimidate and bully to get their way. This is a shortcut, the lazy way out.

Read your Declaration of Independence. The list of grievances cited by the signers is eerily upon us again.

Sheriff David Clarke Jr. is former Sheriff of Milwaukee Co, Wisconsin, President of AmericasSheriff LLC, Senior Advisor for America First, author of the book Cop Under Fire: Beyond Hashtags of Race Crime and Politics for a Better America. To learn more visit www.americassheriff.com

Border Chaos & Confusion Continues - This is Insanity!

Border Patrol Whistleblower Provides An Inside Look At America's Broken Immigration System

5/25/2019 - Beth Baumann Townhall.com

For years, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol have said their facilities are overwhelmed and the system is severely broken. Politicians in Washington, D.C. have debated the issue, but one thing they can't debate is the cold hard facts. And the fact is we have people from around the world taking advantage of loopholes in our immigration system, a Border Patrol whistleblower told Townhall.

Central American caravan riders have overwhelmed the Border Patrol since last fall when they began coming to the United States en masse. Mexico established a system to help the U.S. deal with the people who were coming to America, allegedly seeking asylum. Those who wanted to seek asylum had to go through a port of entry, file the paperwork and then go back to Mexico to wait until their court date. Mexico even offered to provide humanitarian visas to those who couldn't legally enter into the United States so they could stay in Mexico and work. But that's not what these migrants wanted. They want a life in America.

People from other countries – especially those labeled "exotics" by Border Patrol – have figured out a way to skirt the new system: cross the border, find an agent and say, "I want to see an immigration judge." Border Patrol processes them and out the door they go, released into America. Of course, they're given a court date but the immigration court is so backlogged that their date isn't for two to three years down the road and the reality is, once they're released, they don't show up for their court hearing. What incentive do they have? 

Things continue to heat up along the Southern border. Democrats have said we don't have a crisis at the border, but statistics and figures say otherwise. U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Acting Commissioner John P. Sanders said last week that Border Patrol is having to transport "hundreds of families by bus and aircraft from the U.S. Border Patrol’s severely overcrowded processing facilities to less-crowded stations along the Southwest border."

Smaller stations, primarily quick processing centers designed to target drug traffickers and cartels, have had to take on this additional responsibility. Illegal aliens were flown from Texas to San Diego and bused to various facilities in the San Diego sector, despite the sector designed for short-term holding (24 hours).

Despite being designed for short-term holding, illegal aliens are being held for long periods of time, documents provided to Townhall reveal. As of May 19th, the Brown Field station had 100 detainees who had been held for seven days and another 91 who had been held for six days. The Murrieta station had 16 detainees who had been held for eight days and Imperial Beach had seven that had been held for 30 days. The Chula Vista station had 223 people in custody in 10 cells, five of which exceeded maximum capacity, documents provided to Townhall show. And all of these facilities are designed to hold people for a maximum time period of 24 hours.

The reason this is a big deal: these short-term facilities lack basic necessities and amenities. The Murrieta station, for example, can hold a maximum of 25 people. There are no beds, no showers, one or two toilets and simple metal benches. They are literal jail cells that people are being shoved into like cattle. And when this happens, it's not only inhumane but it's also unfair to Border Patrol agents. Despite being "pre-screened" for health conditions, guess what's happening? Communicable diseases are popping up. San Diego recently had a flu epidemic that was directly traced back to the aliens who were flown from Texas for processing. Agents are doing what they can to identify health issues but they're not doctors. They're not trained to spot measles, TB, the flu and other diseases, the whistleblower revealed.

And here's where things get even more twisted. If an illegal alien comes up sick, agents are forced to take him or her to a nearby urgent care or hospital for treatment, exposing everyone in the community to the communicable disease. Border Patrol and ICE aren't required to report said diseases to the Center for Disease Control so there's absolutely no way for the CDC to accurately track where an outbreak began, the whistleblower explained. Not only that, but agents are getting sick themselves and they're bringing these diseases home. They're exposing their kids and family members to the diseases they're being exposed to while on the job.

The whistleblower who spoke to me explained the general concern amongst agents tends to be the same: agents really aren't on the border right now because they're spending basically all of their time and resources processing people who ask to see immigration judges. The illegal aliens figured out our "catch and release" system so they're coming in droves. Not having anyone along the border means we essentially have open borders. The drug cartels and terrorists are taking advantage of that fact. Agents are seeing more "exotics" – people from South Africa, Somalia, India and the Middle East – than they otherwise would have. It's not just those from Central America, like Guatemala and Honduras. 

Between May 12 and May 18th, the Chula Vista station alone had people from the following countries, according to documents viewed by Townhall:
• Honduras - 69
• Guatemala – 51
• India - 43
• El Salvador - 23
• Nepal - 3
• Ecuador - 3
• Brazil - 2
• Senegal - 2

These aren't people coming to the port of entry and asking for asylum either. They're illegally crossing, waiting to be apprehended and told they want to see an immigration judge. They get processed and then are being released back into the community. 

In Southern California, the Department of Homeland Security is dumping these illegals at various locations, from bus stops to malls. They essentially throw them in our communities and say "see you later," even though it's really "we'll never see you again."

The only time an illegal is kept in custody is if he or she has been convicted of a crime in America. Theoretically, someone could have committed murder in Honduras, but unless that conviction was reported to the international database, there's no way for agents to know that the person has a criminal background. We're literally letting anyone and everyone into our country, the whistleblower said.

President Trump is correct: there is a crisis at our border. Sadly though, his hands are tied until Congress decides to take action. The first step is to close our border and build the wall. The second step is to remove the requirement that every person sees an immigration judge. These illegal aliens are using our system against us. They don't have a Constitutional right to due process because they're not American citizens. It's time to close the border and the loopholes.

Immigration With Merit -- Sensible and Logical

How to Modernize Immigration Laws

5/21/2019 - Stephen Moore Townhall.com

When I used to talk to candidate Donald Trump about immigration, I would tell him, Make sure your "big, beautiful wall" has plenty of gates for people to come here legally. President Trump's new immigration initiative would achieve both goals -- border security and a new system to admit the immigrants America needs most.

We've only waited some 50 years for this moment to have a national debate about how to modernize our immigration laws. Elvis was at the top of the charts back in 1965 when we passed the last overhaul, and if we don't fix things, we will be governed by an antiquated 20th-century immigration system to deal with our labor needs and economic priorities through the middle of the 21st century.

Trump's plan follows many of the recommendations made by my colleagues at The Heritage Foundation on how our immigration system should work. It starts with a principle that almost all economists would agree on: When selecting immigrants for visas out of a huge pool of people who want to come, why not admit immigrants based on the benefits they will bring to the United States rather than based on who they are related to.

The plan would exploit America's unique and awesome opportunity. The United States is like an NFL team that every year can have every first-round draft pick. Most immigrants with exceptional skills and talents want to come to America. They don't want to go to France or Brazil or Australia or Russia. Foolishly, we have turned them away.

It's almost unfathomable that we have allowed our broken immigration system to prevail for so long without a rebuild. The table below shows that we select a much smaller percentage of our immigrants based on skills and talent than do other nations. In most nations, the share of immigrants admitted based on skills and merit is well over half the total. In America, only about 1 in 8 gain a visa based on their skills and talents.

This isn't to say that those who are selected based on family connections or who come as refugees are not net contributors. Most are. Andrew Grove came to America as a refugee from behind the Iron Curtain in Hungary in the late 1950s with almost literally only the shirt on his back. He was a co-founder of Intel, one of America's iconic technology companies. But we do know from decades of research that those who come with skills and education do better than those who don't.

Under the Trump plan, the percentage of immigrants with college and advanced degrees would nearly double, according to the White House's calculations. And many of these degrees will be in engineering, the sciences and technology. We need them.

The absolute number of immigrants coming would be roughly the same as today. But the quality would improve. America would still be a beacon for freedom and opportunity across the globe. The refugee program -- providing a safe harbor to those who are escaping persecution -- would be preserved. First in line to gain visas would still be immediate family members of American citizens.

"We want immigrants to come here," Trump declared in his Rose Garden unveiling on the plan. "We cherish the open door." The bill is a great way for the Republican Party to pivot on immigration: We want immigrants, but unlike Democrats, we think they should come legally, and we should prioritize what they can do for us and our some 300 million citizens already here.

This new immigration system could add at least $2 trillion to our economy over the next decade while reducing the national debt by $500 billion, according to White House estimates.

By shifting to younger immigrants, who come at the start of their working lives, the impact on Medicare and Social Security finances will be positive and will push off into the future the doomsday insolvency of these programs. Since many of these newcomers will start businesses -- skilled immigrants have high levels of entrepreneurship -- the number of job openings should rise, not fall. These immigrants won't take jobs from Americans; they will create them.

In short, under the Trump immigration plan, America does good and does well.

Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and an economic consultant with FreedomWorks. He is the co-author of "Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive the American Economy." To find out more about Stephen Moore and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Establishment Institutions -- Downfall of GOP

The GOP Base Is Done Tolerating RINO Collaboration With The Democrats

5/16/2019 - Kurt Schlichter Townhall.com

The stupid Beltway GOP Establishment, but I repeat myself, is finally standing firm on something – unfortunately, what it is standing firm on is its failure to listen to its own base. The base is woke and the Establishment’s a joke. I speak to a lot of conservative groups of various types and flavors: hardcore tea partiers, patriotic vets, loyal radio listeners, besieged students, brass New Yorkers, even rich country club types who you would think were into Jeb! – you know, diversity. And lately, I’ve tended to start off my talks by posing this question:

“Okay, who here agrees with me that the left wants us enslaved or dead?”

Every hand goes up.

Every single one of them.

That’s our base. 

Folks, our base is hella woke.

And they love Trump, because Trump has delivered the oven-fresh, piping hot conservatism they ordered. 

Now, these were not all Trump fans from the get-go. The vast majority were initially like me – extremely suspicious and leery of the outrageous Manhattan tycoon. But, as I described in the first chapter of book Militant Normals, I came around because Trump delivered – something the GOP Establishment never did. Trump came through with the most conservative agenda of anyone since Reagan – maybe more conservative than even St. Ronnie – and he won me over. And he won the base over. They love him.

Love him.

He fights. 

He wins.

The Establishment never does either.

So, we’re now two years into what we hope will be eight years of awesomeness. The GDP is exploding. We’re rebuilding our military yet avoiding more idiotic wars that the geniuses in DC thought were a great idea for us and our kids to get killed fighting with our hands tied behind our backs. We have scores of new judges and have rolled-back bushels of regulations. Unemployment – for every kind of American – is setting record lows not seen since Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit tried to rock a miniskirt. And the constitutional abomination that was the soft coup disguised as a scandal was finally blown out of the water by a gravely disappointed Robert Mueller.

It appears the situation might be resolved, but it never should have arisen. With the party unified and rising in the polls, and the fake RUSSIA! scandal finally behind us so we can move forward with the conservative agenda we were promised, what do the Fredocon jerks of the GOP Establishment do?

What they always do. 

Screw everything up.

You probably don’t know Senator Richard Burr (R-Chamber of Commerce), because he’s utterly undistinguished in everything except his total commitment to doing the bidding of his corporate donor masters in service of reinforcing the Establishment’s grip on power. He allegedly represents North Carolina, but he is actually the Distinguished Gentlemen from Open Borders. 

And he’s a sap.

He’s chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee – go ahead and insert your own oxymoron joke – and it was with him that Donald Trump, Jr., agreed to give 20+ hours of testimony about the whole bogus RUSSIA TREASON EMOLUMENTS TRAITOR COLLUSION lie on the condition that his testimony was once and done. In the end Mueller, who would have gleefully charged Don Jr. with anything he could have found or invented charged Don Jr. with nada. So, after Mueller reluctantly put a stake in the heart of this garbage scandal – because you know Mueller and his pack of Democrats was slobbering at the thought of a Trump scalp – what did Burr decide to do?

1. Celebrate the total exoneration of the President of the false charges made against him by Democrats and their lying mainstream media transcriptionists?

Or

2. Decide to play along with the Democrats’ craven and malicious effort to keep the lie alive by subpoenaing Don Jr. to testify again about claims made by Federal Convict #86626, aka Michael Cohen, currently a resident of the old stoney lonesome for lying to Congress, as part of an attempt to frame the President’s son for perjury?

“Well, gosh,” you might think, “Only a Democrat-collaborating hack, or slack-jawed idiot, or both, would choose Option Two,” but then you remember we’re talking about an Establishment bot like Richard Burr.

Of course, the usual cruise ship conservative crewmembers gathered on the Lido Deck to opine that this was all perfectly legit and just fine and gee, how could anyone imagine that what is manifestly a perjury trap designed to revitalize a failed bogus narrative could be a perjury trap designed to revitalize a failed bogus narrative? Why, we should defer to our wonderful institutions because the people who run our insitutions only want what’s best for us.

Except our institutions are garbage. 

There’s our lesson from the last two years. The ruling class that runs them ran the institutions not for our benefit but for its own, to preserve its own power and position. The institutions and those running them are entirely responsible for our legitimate contempt – they deserve no respect, no deference and no obedience.

That’s the feeling of the GOP base, DC insiders. You might consider interacting with some DC outsiders sometime because you don’t seem to get it. The base is furious. And now this North Carolina nitwit decides to side with the Democrats against the base just as we were all finally coming together? Does anyone think the base will just shrug it off?

This kind of nonsense is just part and parcel of what Never Trump is. See, though Burr is apparently not running again in four years, he’s laboring under the delusion that by then America will come to its senses and welcome him and his gooey ilk back into unchallenged power. He’s counting on some sort of Establishment payback down the road – a nice job on K Street, an appointment as the token GOP Secretary of Mediocrity for President Creepy Joe, or maybe some CNN hits along with Ana Navarro. He’s burnishing his credentials as one of the Republicans the ruling class can always count on to submit and obey.

He’s Mitt Romney without the dog tormenting. BTW, Mitt was last seen voting against a federal judge nominee because of True Conservatism™ or something.

Never Trump is just another flavor of narcissism, and Burr’s selfishness will shaft the rest of his Senate colleagues most of all in 2020. He doesn’t care – and he expects the Senate collegiality he is ignoring as he hurts his team will protect him from the blistering criticism he deserves from other Republicans. Pity poor Thom Tillis, North Carolina’s other senator. Most of us already suspect he’s squishy. Tillis has to run in 2020 and now Burr’s brought this Schiff-storm down on him. Burr’s behavior was bad enough that Tillis offered tweets in protest, which is a big deal among senators. When Tillis loses, he can thank his good buddy Burr the Blue Falcon.

Other senators better tighten-up and turn on the pressure. Martha McSally faces a tough run next year – where is she on this? John Cornyn? Better surf the zeitgeist, and the zeitgeist is all about fighting back. I give Mitch McConnell (who Hugh Hewitt accurately assesses as the best GOP Senate majority leader in a century) a pass, since he has to wrangle a Senate caucus composed of both sissy weak-hearts and sturdy heroes, and he needs to fight this fight his way even if we don’t fully appreciate his moves right now. But you know Cocaine Mitch must be livid at Burr; down the road, that tool will be saying “Hello” to Mitch’s little friend.

We’re woke to the Burrs too, and sooner or later we are going to purge them all.

Want to experience exactly what the left would do if given a monopoly on power? Check out my action-packed yet super-snarky novels about the United States’ split into red and blue, People's Republic, Indian Country and Wildfire. The squishes will tell you my vision could not possibly be true. The hacks who sank the garbage scow flagship of Conservative, Inc, TheWeekly Standard, call my books “appalling.” Could there be any better recommendation?

Provisions of Secure & Protect Act of 2019

Lindsey Graham Just Introduced New Legislation to Fix the Border Crisis

5/15/2019 - Katie Pavlich Townhall.com

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham held a press conference Wednesday morning to announce new legislation, the Secure and Protect Act of 2019, aimed at fixing the current border crisis and strengthening security. 

"Today I'm going to introduce legislation designed to deal with the crisis at our border," Graham said. “We have a perfect storm brewing at the border because of a series of broken and outdated laws related to asylum and children.”

"What I'm trying to do is stop the flow coming from Central America to regain control of our border and stop a humanitarian crisis that I think is just going to get worse over time. One of the most important things I can stress to you is that people are trying to get caught. They're not avoiding getting caught," Graham continued. "So when we talk about building a wall as Republicans, that makes sense to stop illegal entry into the country, try to direct people into areas where we have a better chance of apprehending them. That doesn't work when the goal of the person is to find a Border Patrol agent and turn yourself in."

Graham addressed calls from lawmakers to give additional funding to Central American countries, arguing it won't stop the problem. The real problem with the current crisis are the loopholes in U.S. immigration law. 

"To those who want to give more money to Central America, it won't stop the problem. They're going to keep coming to the United States...no amount of money is going to stop people from coming," Graham said, noting he's in charge of foreign assistance on the Appropriations Committee. "No matter how high the wall will be built, no matter how many drones you have, no matter how many agents you put at the border, they'll keep coming because they want to get caught."

The legislation, which is 11-pages long, allows federal immigration authorities to keep families together in detention centers for 100 days, allows for unaccompanied alien children to be swiftly returned home to their families, reforms the asylum system and clarifies asylum standards for "credible fear" in order to cut down on rampant abuse. Those seeking asylum will be required to do so in a U.S. consulate or embassy in Central America or Mexico. 

"No more asylum claims at the U.S. border if you're from Central America," Graham said.

Currently, families and unaccompanied minors can only be held for 20 days. Because of the lengthy processing backlog for asylum seekers, they are released into American communities. 

"If you're an unaccompanied minor from Central America, under our law we can only hold you 20 days at DHS, then we turn you over to labor HHS. Ninety-eight percent of the unaccompanied minors who make it to America from Central America never leave the United States. Families know this, word is out on the street in the Northern Triangle countries that if your child can get here by themselves then the chance of them staying in America is almost 100 percent. We are incentivizing a horrible journey," Graham said. "Under our law if you come as a unit, family unit, and you have a minor child, we can only hold the family for 20 days because we don't want to separate the family. We don't have enough detention bed space. We release the entire family after 20 days. So word is out on the street in Central America that if you bring a minor child with you, your chance of getting deported goes to almost zero. Your hearing date is years away and we release you inside the country and that's the goal of coming. This legislation is going to deal with the problem."

Graham's legislation also calls for the hiring of 500 additional immigration judges to get through the 900,000 case asylum backlog.

More on asylum abuse numbers from the White House: 

-On average, out of every 100 aliens subject to expedited removal who claim a fear of persecution, only about 12 will ultimately be granted asylum.
-Around half of all aliens who make a credible fear claim and are subsequently placed in removal proceedings do not actually apply for asylum.
-The number of aliens who do not show up to court and are ordered removed in absentia has soared, with 17,200 removal orders issued in absentia in the first quarter of fiscal year (FY) 2019.

You can watch Graham's remarks below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVQtBiUFfcU

Valuable Lesson on Tariffs - Thanks Pat!

Tariffs: The Taxes That Made America Great

5/14/2019 - Pat Buchanan Townhall.com

As his limo carried him to work at the White House Monday, Larry Kudlow could not have been pleased with the headline in The Washington Post: "Kudlow Contradicts Trump on Tariffs."

The story began: "National Economic Council Director Lawrence Kudlow acknowledged Sunday that American consumers end up paying for the administration's tariffs on Chinese imports, contradicting President Trump's repeated inaccurate claim that the Chinese foot the bill."

A free trade evangelical, Kudlow had conceded on Fox News that consumers pay the tariffs on products made abroad that they purchase here in the U.S. Yet that is by no means the whole story.

A tariff may be described as a sales or consumption tax the consumer pays, but tariffs are also a discretionary and an optional tax.

If you choose not to purchase Chinese goods and instead buy comparable goods made in other nations or the USA, then you do not pay the tariff.

China loses the sale. This is why Beijing, which runs $350 billion to $400 billion in annual trade surpluses at our expense is howling loudest. Should Donald Trump impose that 25% tariff on all $500 billion in Chinese exports to the USA, it would cripple China's economy. Factories seeking assured access to the U.S. market would flee in panic from the Middle Kingdom.

Tariffs were the taxes that made America great. They were the taxes relied upon by the first and greatest of our early statesmen, before the coming of the globalists Woodrow Wilson and FDR.

Tariffs, to protect manufacturers and jobs, were the Republican Party's path to power and prosperity in the 19th and 20th centuries, before the rise of the Rockefeller Eastern liberal establishment and its embrace of the British-bred heresy of unfettered free trade.

The Tariff Act of 1789 was enacted with the declared purpose, "the encouragement and protection of manufactures." It was the second act passed by the first Congress led by Speaker James Madison. It was crafted by Alexander Hamilton and signed by President Washington.

After the War of 1812, President Madison, backed by Henry Clay and John Calhoun and ex-Presidents Jefferson and Adams, enacted the Tariff of 1816 to price British textiles out of competition, so Americans would build the new factories and capture the booming U.S. market. It worked.

Tariffs financed Mr. Lincoln's War. The Tariff of 1890 bears the name of Ohio Congressman and future President William McKinley, who said that a foreign manufacturer "has no right or claim to equality with our own. ... He pays no taxes. He performs no civil duties."

That is economic patriotism, putting America and Americans first.

The Fordney-McCumber Tariff gave Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge the revenue to offset the slashing of Wilson's income taxes, igniting that most dynamic of decades -- the Roaring '20s.

That the Smoot-Hawley Tariff caused the Depression of the 1930s is a New Deal myth in which America's schoolchildren have been indoctrinated for decades.

The Depression began with the crash of the stock market in 1929, nine months before Smoot-Hawley became law. The real villain: The Federal Reserve, which failed to replenish that third of the money supply that had been wiped out by thousands of bank failures.

Milton Friedman taught us that.

A tariff is a tax, but its purpose is not just to raise revenue but to make a nation economically independent of others, and to bring its citizens to rely upon each other rather than foreign entities.

The principle involved in a tariff is the same as that used by U.S. colleges and universities that charge foreign students higher tuition than their American counterparts.

What patriot would consign the economic independence of his country to the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith in a system crafted by intellectuals whose allegiance is to an ideology, not a people?

What great nation did free traders ever build?

Free trade is the policy of fading and failing powers, past their prime. In the half-century following passage of the Corn Laws, the British showed the folly of free trade.

They began the second half of the 19th century with an economy twice that of the USA and ended it with an economy half of ours, and equaled by a Germany, which had, under Bismarck, adopted what was known as the American System.

Of the nations that have risen to economic preeminence in recent centuries -- the British before 1850, the United States between 1789 and 1914, post-war Japan, China in recent decades -- how many did so through free trade? None. All practiced economic nationalism.

The problem for President Trump?

Once a nation is hooked on the cheap goods that are the narcotic free trade provides, it is rarely able to break free. The loss of its economic independence is followed by the loss of its political independence, the loss of its greatness and, ultimately, the loss of its national identity.

Brexit was the strangled cry of a British people that had lost its independence and desperately wanted it back.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever."

Immigration Lawlessness is Total Insanity!

Keeping Fake Illegal Alien Families Together

5/8/2019 - Michelle Malkin Townhall.com

Who remembers the hysterical sound and fury of open borders leftists last summer over President Donald Trump's detention and enforcement policies at our besieged southern border?

Remember the #FamiliesBelongTogether, #WhereAreTheChildren, #AbolishICE and #MeltICE hashtags?

Remember the "Trump Child Abuse," "Free the Children," "Save the Children" and "AMERICANS DON'T USE CHILDREN AS PAWNS," posters wielded at protests across the country?

Remember the 24-hour hunger strikes and Instagram-friendly border photo-ops by actresses and supermodels of the anti-Trump resistance who care, care, care, so much more than you about the suffering of migrant children?

Remember Time magazine's fake news "Crying Girl," promoted in June 2018 as a global symbol of Trump's heartless "zero tolerance" stance? Two-year-old Yanela Sanchez was never separated from her mother. In fact, she had been dragged across the border unbeknownst to and against the wishes of her father back in Honduras. He obliterated the "all migrants are simply escaping persecution and violence" narrative by revealing that he had a "good job" and the family's life was "fine." He "never got the chance to say goodbye" to his daughter before his wife paid a coyote $6,000 to bring them to the U.S.

Yanela's mother, who now bides her time awaiting an immigration court hearing in migrant housing in Washington, D.C. (most likely subsidized by you and me), abandoned her husband and three other children for a chance to win in the asylum fraud lottery. She made the decision to tear her own family apart, not Trump.

Here's my question: Where are all the caring resisters and champions of children now that deplorable human renting/recycling scams involving exploited illegal immigrant kids are coming to full light? These horror stories are the unconscionably perverse and utterly predictable consequence of incentivizing families -- real and fake -- to abuse our suicidal generosity.

The Arizona Daily Star reported this week that a Guatemalan man, Maynor Velasquez Molina, allegedly paid a family the equivalent of $130 to 'rent' their 8-year-old son to help him get into the U.S. as a "family." He and the boy were caught in February. Across Central America, the kiddie catch-and-release regime endorsed by open borders ideologues is advertised as the hottest ticket to gain entry. Aliens caught illegally crossing the Rio Grande Valley have told Border Patrol agents they surrendered with children because they expected permisos (free passes) to be granted.

"Borderwide," the Daily Star revealed, "federal officials said they had seen about 3,100 fraudulent family claims since April 2018, alongside about 260,000 migrant family members."

In another outrageous case disclosed this month, Border Patrol agents discovered a "recycled" illegal alien child who had been used by at least three "families" of unrelated adults attempting to get into the U.S. from Mexico. The practice is orchestrated by transnational criminal organizations to increase smuggling profits. One Guatemalan woman in South Carolina recycled children 13 times for payments of $1,500 each.

Border-trespassers and smugglers in turn pay drug cartels a tax -- derecho de piso -- to gain passage through sections of the border controlled by the criminal rackets. The RAND Corporation estimated revenue from derecho de piso at anywhere between $30 million to $180 million in 2017.

Federal Judge Andrew Hanen of the Southern District of Texas blew the lid off the Obama administration's deplorable role as child smuggling facilitators in a scathing 2013 ruling on the case of U.S. vs. Mirtha Veronica Nava-Martinez. Nava-Martinez, a resident alien, was an admitted human trafficker caught at the border trying to smuggle an El Salvadoran minor into the U.S. using the birth certificate that belonged to one of her daughters. The transaction had been arranged by the minor's illegal immigrant mother living in Virginia. She paid $6,000 up front on an $8,000 fee. After Nava-Martinez and the child were caught, the Department of Homeland Security did not arrest the mother. Instead, DHS "delivered the child to her" in Virginia.

Hanen noted that the Nava-Martinez case was the fourth that had come before his court in which illegal immigrant parents had paid smugglers to bring minor children across the border and the U.S. government had abetted the operations. He called the feds' actions "dangerous" and "unconscionable" for inducing parents to jeopardize their own children's safety by turning the over to strangers engaged in criminal activity with drug cartels and risking their lives in the desert. Indeed, Judge Hanen warned that "the government is not only allowing them to fund the illegal and evil activities of these cartels, but is also inspiring them to do so."

Trump's efforts to close the myriad loopholes that aid and abet this transnational illegal immigrant kiddie smuggling racket have been condemned as heartless. But what's truly inhumane are the virtue signalers who use and abuse children as pawns in their ruthless, lucrative, sovereignty-sabotaging pursuit of open borders.

Michelle Malkin's email address is writemalkin@gmail.com.

Truth & Media at Odds With Eachother

Deaths Of Children At The Border: The Rest Of The Story

5/6/2019 - Sheriff David Clarke (Ret.) Townhall.cm

Recently there have been three news reports of children dying in the U.S. while in custody of the U.S. Border Patrol. That phrase, “while in custody of” is used to imply that the child would be alive today if only the Border Patrol had let them illegally trespass without interruption. If a child dies in a hospital, the media rarely claims that the child died “while in the custody of” a hospital. It doesn’t have the same impact. Every media outlet in America knows that a news story about the death of a child is emotionally heartbreaking. Children are a vulnerable subset of the population like the elderly and the disabled. Nearly every adult holds in their heart the feeling that children need our protection.  

Nevertheless the liberal media exploits the sensitivity we have when hearing about the death of a child. In today’s political environment, nothing is sacred. Politicizing the treatment of children of parents illegally crossing into the country gets attention mainly—and only if—the left can weaponize and hammer people who want secure borders, or support President Trump and law enforcement like the Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In the first news report a 7-year-old Guatemalan girl died, “after being taken into U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Protection,” the story said.  Her father dragged her on a 2000-mile journey from northern Guatemala. Her father stated she was in good health during the screening process. Her health deteriorated on a 90-minute bus ride to the Border Patrol station. She was immediately transported to a hospital. An autopsy report indicated that she died from sepsis, a bacteria found in her lungs, adrenal glands, liver, and spleen. I am not a doctor, but I can safely presume that she had that bacteria in her long before she hit the U.S. border. This is very sad, but it isn’t the fault of U.S. border policy. It can be said that her father was negligent in dragging her on that dangerous journey. Why is that fact not being raised by the liberal media?

In the second death, an 8-year-old boy, again from Guatemala died after being dragged by his father on a 2000-mile journey and illegal entry into the U.S. The media made a point of indicating that Felipe Alonzo-Gomez was the second child to die, “in Border Patrol custody.” The boy became ill and was treated by medical personnel in the U.S. including being hospitalized several times. The autopsy showed that his cause of death was from the flu. Doctors who did not treat the boy were interviewed and said that he should have been checked for the flu and wasn’t. They said it was preventable. Yeah, right. Eighty thousand people died from influenza in the US in 2018 and another 56,000 in 2017 according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Were those preventable? Were the doctors negligible? Besides, that is a question of the medical diagnosis of the doctors who treated him, not the Border Patrol. They sought immediate medical attention for him. However, blaming doctors won’t help politically here. Pinning this on the Border Patrol and President Trump is the goal.

In the third case, a 16-year-old unaccompanied migrant died after several days in intensive care at a children’s hospital in the United States. Clinicians observed no health concerns when he arrived at a shelter. He became ill the next day the story said and was taken to a hospital, treated and released. He did not improve and was hospitalized again and later died. The cause of death from the autopsy was that the 16-year-old died from a brain tumor. Obviously that set in long before entering the US. The symptoms did too. Why is the media not asking the father why treatment was not sought in his home country? Yet, is anybody surprised the liberal media reflexively began their predictable blame and smear tactics? 

The liberal media labels these stories high profile. They are only high profile because the media has weaponized these deaths to club the Border Patrol and President Trump. There are no reports of neglect by Border Patrol officials. It appears that all protocol was followed. These are unfortunate and tragic incidents. These kids got better treatment “while in the custody of” the Border Patrol than they did in their home country and along the way on this dangerous journey to the U.S. The real question is why a parent—if they were the actual parents—would subject their child to this dangerous trek to our southern border.

There is another issue that the media conveniently leaves out. Asylum laws dictate that a person fleeing danger in their country of origin are to claim asylum in the first country they reach outside their own. For Guatemalans and Hondurans that would be Nicaragua, El Salvador, Belize or even Mexico, not the United States. President Trump has correctly labeled this a humanitarian crisis that is not of our making. We can’t allow somebody else’s problem to become our problem. These migrants illegally cross into the U.S. It’s a violation of U.S. sovereignty. It is a domestic and national security issue and a public health issue. It puts a strain on limited U.S. resources such as public health facilities, schools, and our welfare system.

If the agenda-driven media correctly diagnosed this, they would blame these deaths of children on the parents or at least on the U.S. Congress, both parties, who refuse to fix this as each side is looking for political leverage instead.

Sheriff David Clarke Jr. is former Sheriff of Milwaukee Co, Wisconsin, President of AmericasSheriff LLC, Senior Advisor for America First, author of the book Cop Under Fire: Beyond Hashtags of Race Crime and Politics for a Better America. To learn more visit www.americassheriff.com

USA Becoming a Victim of its Own Wrong-doing

Mass Immigration Poses An Existential Crisis For The West

4/29/2019 - Peter Morici Townhall.com

America needs well-enforced borders but President Donald Trump’s national “emergency” is part of a much larger crisis facing Western nations.

State entropy, widespread violence and economic desperation, prevalent in many parts of Central and South America, the Middle East and Africa, are driving millions north—mostly to America and the European Union. The sheer potential numbers could pose overwhelming challenges of assimilation and undermine the cultural underpinnings of our market economies and democratic institutions.

The recent sharp increase in Border Patrol apprehensions of illegal migrants and asylum seekers has exhausted U.S. recourses to detain those awaiting adjudication. Within several weeks of apprehension, they join 11 million immigrants without permanent legal status—driving down wages for lower-paid Americans and overwhelming local cultures in some of the nation’s poorest communities.

Sophisticated technologies—cameras, drones and the like—are more cost efficient than a wall, but only a wall could keep migrants from setting foot on American soil and being released into the general population.

Most asylum claims are questionable. Mexico offers migrants humanitarian visas and the opportunity to work, but politically motivated judges have squashed administration attempts to limit asylum claims.

Sadly, federal courts led by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts have become quite comfortable arrogating power in response to public sentiment—for example, striking down state statutes prohibiting gay marriage—and acceding to political pressure from Democrats—the peculiar reasoning Roberts applied to declare Affordable Care Act fines are taxes.

Presidential claims about “Obama Judges” and “Trump Judges” have some merit but in any case, Trump’s immigration point man, Stephen Miller, has not done the homework to effectively argue that a national emergency exists.

Trump charges the illegal flood is full of criminals, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, always a comforting presence, counters that Americans commit rape, robbery and homicide too. What matters is whether poor immigrants commit crimes at an alarming higher rate that our indigenous population.

Since 2015, Germany has admitted over 1.4 million asylum seekers—about 2% of its population, and they commit about 14% of the crimes. Surely, the FBI could help Miller to come up with comparable U.S. statistics. Then we could get at the truth—or he has but the administration is not willing to back off on its crime claims.

Polls show most Americans don’t support the wall and believe legal immigration is good for the economy and our culture, and no one has a finger on the pulse of voters like Pelosi, except perhaps Roberts.

The 1976 National Emergency Act empowers a majority in the Congress to nullify presidential declarations. However, with the GOP holding the Senate, lawsuits will decide whether the president can supplement the $1.4 billion authorized by Congress to build 55 miles of border fence by transferring Department of Defense funds to instead build 234 miles of fence.

The NEA does not define a national emergency. Instead that is spread over at least 470 statutory provisions. One states “the Secretary of Defense can ‘undertake military construction projects … necessary to support such use of the armed forces.’”

As Justice Robert Jackson reminded in Youngstown v. Sawyer (1952), which overturned President Harry Truman’s nationalization of the steel industry to support the Korean War effort, presidential discretion is at its peak when it acts with the support of Congress and “at its lowest ebb” when it is “incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress.”

When the Republicans controlled Congress, Trump could not get his wall built, and he campaigned on the issue in 2018 and got shellacked. Now congressional House Democrats have decided there is no pressing need for a wall.

The president recognizes he will get pilloried in the lower courts but expects a fair hearing in the Supreme Court. He should ponder Roberts’s ire regarding his charges about the politicization of the courts—sometimes being right is not enough.

For Americans living in large prosperous cities, the influx of well-educated legal immigrants, especially in STEM disciplines, are welcome, but many illegal immigrants become burdens in the labor markets and on public services in Trump country.

If Trump fails to get his wall, the crisis at the border could easily become a mass migration that imposes incalculable burdens on those Americans least able to bear them.

This article originally appeared on MarketWatch.