NOTE: When Phyllis Schlafly founded Eagle Forum, the name of the organization was taken from the Scripture used in this article. It is an inspiring place to focus as we go through these last days prior to Election Day.
You can find some of the remarkable and unique characteristics HERE.
OCTOBER 27, 2020 | KIM POTTER, IFA CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Father, I am weary. Help me trust in You as You tell me I am like the eagle and You sustain me for the battle. Help me to stand on Romans 8:37!
God interrupted my sleep, speaking four words to my heart, “My people are weary.”
A couple hours later I received confirmation of that word in an email from a friend. It said, “People are weary, we have to help them.”
It’s true. You can almost feel the weariness across our nation. We have been in a spiritual battle and it has been a heavy one. The issues in our nation we have passionately opposed in both prayer and action have not been easy. This has gone on for many months. No wonder we feel weary.
Intercessors across the nations have fought a battle this year, unlike anything we could have ever imagined. We all recognize the stakes are high.But although we are weary, we simply can’t quit now.
He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint (Isaiah 40:29-31).
The Passion Translation says it like this; He empowers the feeble and infuses the powerless with increasing strength. Even young people faint and get exhausted; athletic ones may stumble and fall. But those who wait for Yahweh’s grace will experience divine strength. They will rise up on soaring wings and fly like eagles, run their race without growing weary, and walk through life without giving up.
I meditated on those Scriptures as I went to bed Friday night. Hours later, I woke myself up chanting a cheer from my high-school years. It was something I had not thought about for decades.
“We are the eagles, the mighty mighty eagles, everywhere we go, people wanna know, who we are, so we tell them, we are the eagles the mighty mighty eagles.”
As I thought about the significance of the words, I remembered when we used that particular cheer.
It was the one we pulled out toward the end of the football game, when all the players were beyond weary. It was when we were close to victory, yet we needed one more score to win the game. It came at the moment our players felt they had nothing left.
I knew when I awoke, loudly declaring this cheer, it was God providing a strategy to overcome the weariness we all feel—when it seems there is nothing left.
“We are the eagles, the mighty mighty eagles, everywhere we go, people wanna know, who we are, so we tell them, we are the eagles the mighty mighty eagles.”
First, we must remember who we are in Christ!
Here are a few Scriptures to remind us:
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. (Phil 4:13).
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. (1 Pet 2:9).
Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. (Rom 8:37)
We are more than conquerors in Christ, we are partakers with Him.
The Bible says in Hebrews 3:14, “For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end.”
It is vital, especially now, in this late hour, that we hold the beginning of our confidence, steadfast to the very end.
Second, we must declare it and remind the enemy of who we are.
Declare is defined as “to make known formally or officially; To reveal or make manifest.”
I believe Romans 8:18-21 in the Passion Translation describes where we are in this hour:
I am convinced that any suffering we endure is less than nothing compared to the magnitude of glory that is about to be unveiled within us. The entire universe is standing on tiptoe, yearning to see the unveiling of God’s glorious sons and daughters! For against its will the universe itself has had to endure the empty futility resulting from the consequences of human sin. But now, with eager expectation, all creation longs for freedom from its slavery to decay and to experience with us the wonderful freedom coming to God’s children.
This is the freedom for which we fight.
I know we are weary and the battle seems to be growing more fierce. However, it is the end of the game and the reward is in site. We cannot quit now.
I compare this to a woman in labor. She has carried her baby for nine months, and now it’s time for delivery. Perhaps delivery has been difficult, yet she must continue to push. At one point the doctor says, “I see the head, one more big push and we are there.” That is where I feel we are. One more big push and we are there.
Like Peter, we have toiled through the darkness of night, yet God is telling us, “Launch out into the deep one more time and bring in the haul.”
Take a deep breath intercessors, you have it in you for one more big push. It is within you to bring in the haul. YOU are an eagle, a mighty mighty eagle. Let us not forget who we are.
Kim Potter is a writer and the founder of A New Thing Ministries, which sends a daily teaching to thousands of people all around the world. Her articles have appeared on The Elijah List, Charisma, Spirit Fuel and iBelieve.com. Kim’s message is one of hope. She speaks to the heart of those who have grown discouraged or disappointed by the circumstances of life, imparting hope. For additional information, or to receive her daily writings, go to www.anewthingministries.com
Commentary: New Revelations on the Biden Family Scandal; October’s Surprise Part Two and Counting
by Julie Strauss Levin
It is hard to keep up with the Biden Family Scandal (yes, it’s worthy of a title) because more information unfolds daily. Joe Biden is counting the hours, no minutes, until this election is over. For every moment that passes and the Democrat media, in lock step with Democrat Big Tech, censors, Joe is hoping few will learn that the Biden family got millions of dollars from foreign entities and even foreign governments by using Joe’s position as Vice President of the United States.
Put another way: The Biden family used, exploited and abused the Office of the Vice Presidency to enrich the Biden family by millions and millions of dollars. Biden ducks and denies, but all the hair-splitting in the world and all of the carefully crafted wording by his campaign spinners and surrogates doesn’t negate that.
Here is a brief synopsis. Hunter Biden, Joe’s son, reportedly abandoned his laptop with about 40,000 emails on it. These emails show that the Biden family made millions of dollars from deals with foreign entities (think China, Russia and the Ukraine for starters), beginning when Joe was Vice President. (We won’t get into potential activity during his 35 plus Senate years). The FBI has verified that these are Hunter’s emails, as has Congressman Jim Jordan.
Add to that, separate and corroborating emails and texts provided by Tony Bobulinski, ex-CEO of SinoHawk Holdings, an entity run by Biden family members in partnership with a now defunct, bankrupt Chinese energy company. Mr. Bobulinski has come forward to turn over to the FBI and the Senate three cell phones bursting with information concerning the Biden Family business deals, including involvement by Joe Biden himself.
The Senate Homeland Security Committee already issued an 87-page interim report last month, revealing details about the web of business deals and the millions of dollars flowing from foreign countries to Biden coffers. Committee chairman Senator Johnson put it succinctly when he recently said:
When [Joe Biden] said in the tail end of 2019 that he never spoke to his son about his overseas business dealings, that was a lie. We know in testimony now from Amos Hochstein [top adviser to then-VP Biden on international energy affairs], who is the only people of [sic] we know of that actually spoke directly to the vice president about this glaring conflict of interests, the vice president then talked to Hunter, who then set up a meeting with Amos Hochstein to talk about this very subject.
We know that Hunter took a multi-hour plane trip over to China with his father, had a separate agenda, but, during that trip, then arranged for a handshake between one of his business partners, Jonathan Li, and the vice president. What was all that about?
So I have never believed that the vice president never talked to his son Hunter. He’s still lying to the American public. And the mainstream media has to ask far tougher questions.
Recall that son Hunter was awarded a paid position to sit on the board of Ukraine energy company Burisma at a tune of $83,000 a month, despite having zero experience in or knowledge about the energy world. A coincidence that his VP father Joe had been placed in charge of America’s foreign policy decisions in the Ukraine during the Obama-Biden years? We think not. Suspicious that Burisma’s 2014 website featured a photo of VP Biden and Hunter’s business associate Devon Archer (now awaiting sentencing for unrelated securities fraud and conspiracy convictions), yet Biden has unequivocally denied knowing about his son’s business deals? Highly suspicious.
It is also not only a coincidence but also suspicious that in late 2015 Burisma executive Pozharskyi sent an email to Hunter and Devon asking for the assistance of U.S. officials to provide positive PR about Burisma. “The scope of work should also include organization of a visit of a number of widely recognized and influential current and/or former US [sic] policy-makers to Ukraine in November, aiming to conduct meetings with and bring positive signal/message and support.” The purpose of that visit, according to the email, was to “close down for [sic] any cases/pursuits” against the head of Burisma in Ukraine.
It was certainly no coincidence that one month later, Blue Star Strategies, a Washington, DC public relations firm hired by Burisma, participated in a conference call with the White House regarding Joe Biden’s upcoming trip to the Ukraine and later provided notes of that conference call to Hunter. Thereafter, Joe went to the Ukraine and called upon the country’s prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma, to be fired. Voila, Shokin was fired.
Joe Biden later assumed his tough guy stance when he recounted how Shokin came to be fired. Biden explained that he told the Ukraine president that the U.S. would withhold $1 billion in aid to the Ukraine if Shokin wasn’t fired. We know this is true because Joe said it on video and has yet to disavow his own statement. (Yes, we know Joe’s propensity to lie even when caught on videotape; think fracking, but I digress.)
Indeed, Biden bragged, “I’m leaving in six hours. If he’s [Shokin]not fired in six hours, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch, they fired him.” Biden also boasted that if the Ukraine president didn’t believe him, the president could go ahead and call Obama. There’s more about the Ukraine and the Biden family, but you get the drift.
And then there’s Joe’s strong kinship with China that has been present for many years. His 2011 speech in China at Sichuan University provides a glimpse into the Biden China mindset: “In order to cement this[U.S. and China] robust partnership, we have to go beyond close ties between Washington and Beijing, which we’re working on every day, go beyond it to include all levels of government, go beyond it to include classrooms and laboratories, athletic fields and boardrooms.”
In 2017, Biden proclaimed, “I want China to succeed. The idea that they’re going to eat our lunch? They don’t have enough energy. They don’t have enough water.” And then there’s Biden’s 2019 declaration in Iowa. Yes, he actually pulled a classic Joe with his rhetorical, “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man. I mean, you know they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not competition for us.”
Biden’s statements defy all credulity. A basic understanding of geopolitics warrants the conclusion that China poses perhaps the single greatest threat to U.S. security in the world. And yet, Joe has said a “rising China is a positive, positive.” This from the man who seeks to be the President of the United States and the leader of the free world.
Son Hunter clearly shares Joe’s affinity for China. Like father, like son. Recall that Hunter travelled to China with Joe on Air Force Two in 2013. Joe met with Hunter’s Chinese partners while they were in Beijing, and, ten days later, Hunter’s company signed a multi-billion dollar deal with a subsidiary of the Communist-owned Bank of China, creating a private billion dollar equity fund known as Boahi Harvest RST. As a gentle reminder, at the time the Bidens flew to China, it had just extended its sovereignty, air rights, over the South Pacific, namely the South China Sea. Instead of confronting China over its belligerent and aggressive actions in the region, Joe met with Hunter’s partner Jonathan Li, and Hunter ended up with a lucrative business deal. Hmmm.
And then there was the sale of a Michigan-based automobile company, Henniges, in 2015 to the same Boahi Harvest RST and the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC). That sale required the approval of the Obama-Biden administration’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) since AVIC was a Chinese government subsidiary and Henniges produced certain technology with U.S. “military applications.” Surprise (or maybe not at this point), CFIUS approved the sale. Yes, CFIUS approval was Obama-Biden approval. As an industry newsletter noted, the sale was the “biggest Chinese investment into U.S. automotive manufacturing assets to date.” And this passes the national security smell test?
And let’s recall Mr. Bobulinski, mentioned earlier, as the prior CEO of SinoHawk Holdings, the entity run by Biden family members in partnership with Chinese energy company CEFC Energy. Mr. Bobulinski recently spoke about a 2017 email that reveals the offer by the Chinese company to wire $10 million into an account, $5 million of which was a loan to “BD family … interest-free.” The “BD family” refers to the Biden family. Less than two weeks later, $5 million was wired from China to a Delaware LLC. As an aside, Mr. Bobulinski only learned about that wiring after Senator Johnson reported on the same.
Mr. Bobulinski said he has come forward now because he had heard Joe say he had never spoken to Hunter about his business dealings. Mr. Bobulinski is now correcting the record and Biden’s false statements. “I’ve seen firsthand that that’s not true because it wasn’t just Hunter’s business. They said they were putting the Biden family name and its legacy on the line.”
Mr. Bobulinski also revealed that Biden was referred to as the “Chairman” or the “Big Guy,” and that it was understood that Joe Biden was not to be mentioned in writing. The Bidens, Mr. Bobulinski said, were “paranoid” about keeping Joe’s name secret.
There’s so much more to the Biden Family Scandal and yet Joe emphatically, indignantly and angrily has said, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” He refers to any mention of the Scandal as a “smear,” and he and his surrogates (including the Adam Schiff, John Brennan crowd) shrug off the Biden Family Scandal as Russian disinformation. Mr. Bobulinski has confirmed that he personally met with Joe Biden. Director of National Intelligence John Radcliffe has unequivocally rejected the “blame it on Russia” election interference mantra.
And consider last Thursday night’s debate. The Democrat-supporting moderator reluctantly asked of Biden whether “in retrospect,” any of son Hunter’s business relationships were “inappropriate” or “unethical” (milquetoast to say the least). Biden was vexed with her question. He looked into the camera and proclaimed, “I have not taken a penny from a foreign source in my life.” You “doth protest too much, methinks,” Joe.
If Joe has got nothing to hide and is truly indignant about a smear on the Biden family name, then pull Hunter out of the proverbial witness protection program and let’s have the entire Biden clan come clean. Call for a special counsel to investigate, go before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, knock on the door of the FBI and DOJ and answer questions, make a lengthy public statement and walk the American people through the Biden Family Scandal. Just level with the American people.
They say oftentimes the cover up is worse than the crime. Not sure here though. The American people are smart. This mere sampling of the depths of the Biden Family Scandal is instructive. Imagine if the media did its job. Marvel how much the American people would learn if Big Tech didn’t behave like a fascist regime. Indeed, the American people are well-poised to understand all of this.
Let’s be clear. The Biden Family Scandal isn’t election season rhetoric. This is an extremely serious matter involving potential violations of multiple laws (SEC, IRS, FCPA, FARA to name a few) and abuse of power that reach the highest levels of public office straight into the people’s house, the White House.
There is no way Joe Biden should be anywhere near the Oval Office, ever. Voting for this man is a vote for Kamala Harris because she will be the first to boot him out, ironically using the Biden Family Scandal as the pretext. That she is the most radical member of the U.S. Senate according to the nonpartisan GovTrack (yes, she surpasses Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) says it all.
Biden-Harris, Harris-Biden, whichever way you look at the ticket, both must be rejected. Joe Biden must, in any case, come clean with the American people about his Biden Family Scandal once and for all. If only a fraction of the information to date is accurate, the security of the United States of America has already been threatened, and numerous laws and regulations have been compromised. Yes, the American people are long overdue a complete explanation about all of the sordid details surrounding the Biden Family Scandal. They deserve it immediately if not sooner.
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Julie Strauss Levin is an attorney and concerned American.
Photo “Julie Strauss Levin” by Gage Skidmore CC2.0.
Americans have learned a lot about Amy Coney Barrett in four weeks. They know about the family's chinchilla, which parent does the laundry, and whether the Notre Dame alum hates warm puppies (she doesn't). But they've also come to know more important things: she loves her country, its Constitution, and she'll stand on her faith no matter how many Democrats try to shame her for it. In the end, that's what Americans will remember. And in this next chapter of the Supreme Court, that's what they'll respect.
Today with Chief Justice Roberts, the mother of seven raised her hand, with another on the Bible, and took the judicial oath of office. After years of dreaming about this moment, she couldn't have known that her time would come at such a pivotal moment: her country in one of its darkest years, a hurting people on the verge of a bitter election. But maybe Barrett's confirmation -- a symbol of young, honest, humble hope -- is what our nation needs: a woman at one of the highest pinnacles of government who's still inspired by the good of America.
"I love the Constitution," Barrett said again, at her White House swearing in, "and the democratic republic it establishes. And I will devote myself to preserving it." Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), like a lot of conservatives, watched the president's nominee hold her own through the process with pride. "Marsha Blackburn and I have had the most wonderful conversations about how great it is that President Trump made this nomination -- a strong woman of faith, a mom, [who is] obviously extremely successful and bright in her career. It really does give women something to aspire to." Maybe now, she said, conservative women will start to realize that they "don't have to march in lockstep with what the liberals believe in idea of a woman should be. And I think it's important for us to recognize that we can be conservative, and we can be strong, and we can set that example for others."
But unfortunately, while the American people have warmed up to the newest justice, the same can't be said of Senate Democrats. In a pathetic display, they marched, one by one, to podiums or Twitter accounts and bashed the confirmation. On the floor of the Senate, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) even dared to call it "one of the darkest days in the 231-year history of the United States Senate." Why? Because his chamber confirmed an accomplished woman who wants to uphold the law? What a sad commentary on the state of the Democratic Party.
This is a justice whose first speech after her swearing in was to say that she understood her place. "The confirmation process has made ever clear to me one of the fundamental differences between the federal judiciary and the United States Senate," Barrett insisted. "It is the job of a senator to pursue her policy preferences... It is the job of a judge to resist her policy preferences. Federal judges don't face election. Thus, they have no basis for claiming that their preferences reflect those of the people." Those sentiments aren't just a win for Republicans -- they're a win for every American who cares about the Constitution. But then, maybe that's the problem. Democrats don't. They're terrified of the rule of law because it stands in the way of every radical thing they want to accomplish.
So instead of celebrating the confirmation, they warned of "consequences," like Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), or uttered profanity like Senator Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii). Or you say outrageous things, like Senator Schumer, who apparently didn't sense the irony when he thundered that "generations yet unborn will suffer the consequences of this nomination." He's right about one thing. Generations will be affected, to be sure -- but under a justice who reads no right to abortion in the shadows of the Constitution, they will not suffer.
Piling on the Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) even threatened to upend the lower courts. "Hundreds" of judges, he warned, shouldn't "be allowed to sit peaceably without our re-examining the process, the results, and the consequences." The bottom line, Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) fired back, is "they want to rig American democracy. Overturn the results of the last two elections. That's their agenda. [Joe Biden], of course, [is] going to give into it. He doesn't have the guts to say it." Of course, David Harsanyi points out:
"When you're under the impression that the system exists solely to facilitate your partisan agenda, something will seem 'broken' every time you lose. When Barack Obama was unable to pass his agenda after 2010, the system suffered from 'dysfunction.' ... But now that Democrats are in the Senate minority, employing the very same tools to slow the president, we must 'fix' the Electoral College, the Senate, and, most recently, the Supreme Court.'"
As Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said, regardless of what the Left does or says, Barrett's confirmation should have been a happy night for our country. But it's also a clear reminder of what's at stake in seven days: a republic and a Constitution, if we can keep them.
Tony Perkins's Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC Action senior writers.
This article contains graphic content about abortion that might be distressing for some readers.
I have had an abortion — a horrific saline abortion in which I gave birth to a dead baby boy after hours of labor. It was over 45 years ago, yet it’s an image that will stay with me forever.
Believe it or not, I am grateful I saw that stark truth, exposing abortion for what it really is, instead of living in the darkness and lies. Like those of countless other women, my abortion was coerced, another truth so often denied or ignored by those claiming abortion is a good. The fallacy of “free choice” is easier to sell than the reality of the betrayal of boyfriends, parents, spouses, or other outside pressures.
As I listened to Sen. Dianne Feinstein during Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings speak of women she knew in the 1950s who suffered and even died from illegal abortion, I could not help but wonder whether Feinstein has ever spoken to the countless women who suffer now, or the families of those who have died from the “safe, legal abortion” she has worked so hard to ensure. Probably not. She can speak about how “distressing” it was for her not to get a straight answer from Barrett regarding whether the judge would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, but it appears Feinstein has no idea of the real distress millions of women experience every day due to a past abortion.
As we digress down this slippery slope we were warned about decades ago, “safe, legal, and rare” has become “safe, legal, and free,” as portrayed in the “Thank God for Abortion Anthem” video making its rounds on the internet. At least those proponents are honest. With more than 60 million abortions since Roe, rare it is not.
Joe Biden speaks of this election as a fight for the “soul of our nation,” and so it is. It is difficult, however, to listen to Biden speak as if he is on some high moral ground when, in fact, he advocates for abortion throughout the entirety of a pregnancy. This disregard for innocent human life goes beyond the soul of our nation. It is a fight for personal souls.
This self-proclaimed “devout” Catholic sadly has the support of some bishops, who tell their flocks they can vote for him “in good conscience.” Anyone who takes the time to contemplate the more than 60 million deaths of innocent babies, however, knows this cannot come from a good conscience, but from an absence of one.
I know about the fight for souls. I have faced it in my own life since that abortion all those years ago, when I was tortured with guilt and shame. Those who support abortion blame my Catholic faith for instilling guilt and shame, but I know that’s not it. That agony comes from having seen my son lying on the bed next to me, killed from a saline abortion.
I also know about the fight for souls from the more than 200 new people I hear from each year who are seeking healing from abortion. These women live in pain and regret, often alone in silent suffering in a society that refuses to acknowledge their grief.
I know about it from the men who can’t let go of having coerced a girlfriend into aborting while they were in college, or the ones who had no say as their child was killed. I know about it from the siblings of aborted children who feel guilty for even being alive, or who wonder if their names would have been different if their brother or sister had been permitted to live.
Yes, we are in a fight for the soul of our nation, and for each soul within it, as our country chooses not to see what is going on, turning a blind eye to the horror of what we have done. These are decisive times. As we slip deeper and deeper into the depravity of the killing of innocent human life, with elected officials even entertaining infanticide, we lose a little more of our soul every day and will live with the consequences. We already are.
As Biden proclaims, “We are fighting for the soul of our nation,” I can only hope the scales that blind him will someday fall and he will come to realize his significant role in the loss of which he speaks. I pray we will be able to say, “I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see” before it is too late and we slip into the abyss with no way back.
PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES: PRAYER POINTS AND PROPHETIC WORD
OCTOBER 22, 2020 | KAREN HARDIN, IFA CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Lord, we pray that Your presence would be all over this next debate and that You would cover the candidates against any spiritual attacks. May the truth win out.
After the Commission on Presidential Debates decided to change the already agreed upon rules and turn debate #2 into a virtual debate, not surprisingly, President Trump refused the changed format. While the Commission claimed it was due to President Trump’s recent bout with COVID, the president would have been quarantined the required ten days from testing by the time the debate was scheduled on October 15. My question is, if the masks work as they claim, and if social distancing works, as they claim, what was the issue with an in-person debate? Or perhaps, if we are honest, was it actually the bigger issue of a need to protect the opposing candidate who struggles in such a setting?
In any event, what took place was dueling Town Halls. ABC aired a town hall featuring Candidate Biden while NBC aired a town hall featuring President Trump. If it wasn’t safe for the two presidential candidates to face off and debate before a live audience, why was it safe for them to hold a town hall with a moderator, live audience, full camera crew, etc? Nothing was different except Biden didn’t have to face President Trump. Team Biden was correct that it wasn’t safe for Biden to have another face-to-face debate, but the reason had NOTHING to do with COVID.
Now the Commission has decided at the last minute to change the rules yet again before the Oct. 22 debate to mute the mics of the two candidates when it is not their turn to speak. Essentially it provides time for a two-minute uninterrupted memorized response. That’s not a debate. That’s simply a question and answer session.
Additionally, where the final debate has always been on foreign policy, all questions regarding this important issue have been removed. So the American people get to hear NOTHING from the candidates regarding their responses to how they would interact with a foreign government. Perhaps this is because of the emails discovered on Hunter Biden’s computer which reveal Joe and his son, have been receiving kickbacks from foreign governments, namely Ukraine and China? How convenient that the debate won’t cover any of that.
What we will hear more about, which was covered in the first debate and the town hall, is COVID-19. Seriously, does anyone want to hear more on that topic?
Debate Commissioner, Frank Fahrenkopf, when asked about these two changes insisted, “”We do our best here and we’re nonpartisan, we are not biased.”
He also stated, “‘We’re looking for that person who is as unbiased as possible’” to host 2020 debates. I guess that explains why they chose Kristen Welker, NBC News White House correspondent whose family has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates, including Biden’s current campaign, according to a report from the New York Post.
Additionally, in 2012, Welker and her family spent part of their Christmas holiday at the White House with the Obama family according to the Washington Examiner.
But according to Fahrenkopf, she would be a person who is “as unbiased as possible.” Right.
Based on the fact that the two substantive changes in the debate favor one candidate, does anyone believe that? And in light of the fact that Hillary Clinton received copies of the questions prior to her debate with Trump in the 2016 debate, does anyone believe that Team Biden hasn’t received copies of the exact questions so he can memorize his responses?
The first debate was unquestionably a painful experience. My nephew has worked for the Republican National Convention for years. During the debate he texted me off and on with comments regarding the train wreck we all watched. In the end he made an astute comment, “Biden didn’t win, but Trump lost.”
In the two against one misnomer of a debate, neither Trump nor Biden carried themselves as statesmen. The American people deserve the chance to see a rematch where hopefully both men can show us a more presidential side.
By definition a debate means: to argue, to contend in words, or to discuss a question by considering opposing arguments. That means the discussion may not always be peaceful, but hopefully it will be more civil.
As intercessors, it is urgent that we contend for tonight’s debate–pray for all involved, and for the effect of their words and actions not only on Americans, but other nations who are watching.
Pray:
That the rules of debate, already agreed upon by both sides in advance, would not be changed (Mt 5:37).
Fairness. This includes the need for a fair moderator. For a fair amount of time to be given to both candidates. That there will be fair questions which are not positioned to the advantage of one side over the other (Prv 11:1).
For civility to replace the name-calling that took place on both sides. We want to see men who will act like leaders and statesman, not children (Col 4:6).
That the fact-checks that take place at the conclusion will be honest. And that the unfair targeting by the media against one side will be brought to an end. Let us pray for the exposure of lies, so they will not be allowed to hang in the air unchecked (Eph 5:11).
Wisdom for viewers, as they watch, to have discernment of what they see and hear (Prv 3:21).
That preconceived ideas and the veil of deception would be bound and removed and replaced with understanding, light, and truth (2 Cor 3:16).
For a true debate/discussion to take place instead of a fight (Prv 18:13)
President Trump is from Queens and a street fighter. When backed into a corner, especially in a two against one fight, he will always come out punching. It is this very strength that makes him the man for the hour in our nation. He has taken more false accusations, media dog piles, and opposition than any other president in history.
Some have said after the last debate they could never vote for him. Instead I would say, let us pray that a new grace and power will come upon him.
“This that shall take place shall be the most unusual thing. A transfiguration. A going into the marketplace, if you wish, into the news media where Time magazine will have no choice, but to say what I want them to say. Newsweek, what I want to say. The View, what I want to say.”
“Trump shall become a trumpet,” says the Lord. “Trump shall become a trumpet. I will raise up the Trump to become a trumpet…”
“It shall come to pass that the man that I place in the highest office shall go in whispering my name.” But God said, “When he enters into the office he will be shouting out by the power of the Spirit. For I shall fill him with my spirit when he goes into office and there will be a praying man in the highest seat in your land.”
“There will be a praying president. Not a religious one. For I will fool the people,” says the Lord. “I will fool the people. Yes I will,” God says. “The one that is chosen will go in and they shall say, ‘he has hot blood.’” For the Spirit of God says, “Yes, he may have hot blood, but he will bring the walls of protection on this country in a greater way and the economy of this country shall change rapidly,” says the Lord of hosts.
Listen to the word of the Lord says, “I will put at your helm for two terms a president that will pray. But he will not be a praying president when he starts. I will put him in office and then I will baptize him with the Holy Spirit and my power says the Lord of hosts.”
We are in the time of the prophetic word. It is up to us to usher in His plans and purpose as we pray.
Commentary: Biden Plus Harris Equals California Everywhere, a Nightmare We Must Reject
by Julie Strauss Levin
Imagine a country where rolling blackouts are a common occurrence, where gasoline-powered cars are outlawed, and all new car sales must be electric by a date certain. Imagine a country where borders are open, sanctuary cities and towns are everywhere, where people here illegally are celebrated with lots of free things like healthcare and housing, and wage-earners pay for it all. Imagine a country where the radical Green New Deal is thrust upon us (out goes natural gas, oil and coal; in comes renewables; goodbye to your warm/cool home) and a nationwide absence of forestry management causes out-of-control fires that threaten homes and air quality.
Imagine a country that dictates cultural norms, imposes a radical sexual education curriculum starting in kindergarten, where abstinence-only and religious doctrine education are prohibited, and parents may opt out on a limited basis only.
Imagine a country where police officers are ostracized and defunding police departments is the norm, where there’s chaos on the streets, and the mob is celebrated. Imagine a country where a family’s home is no longer considered its castle. Imagine a country where the Second Amendment is in the crosshairs and decimating it is the result.
Imagine a country where income taxes will go up regardless of your income. (Biden-Harris’ claim that under $400,000 wage earners won’t see increased taxes is false, as per multiple studies including Penn’s Wharton School. “Taxes would increase at every income level under [Biden’s] presidency, with the bottom quintile’s after-tax income decreasing 0.5 percent, and the second, middle, and fourth quintiles all seeing after-tax income drop 0.4 percent. Likewise, wages are projected to decrease.”)
Imagine a country where the federal government re-imposes an Obama-Biden housing regulation that Trump ripped up, where Washington, DC bureaucrats dictate the zoning of suburbia, make decisions where to put high-density, low-income housing, re-draw school districts, make roads and transportation decisions, and do away with single-family zoning.
Imagine a country where there is one-party rule, and the rule is by Marxists and socialists. Sounds like a nightmare, right? Just look West to see a beautiful state gone disaster under the grip of the Democrats, who have reigned for far too long. The United States will become California on steroids because Biden-Harris are radical. Don’t be fooled by the folksy Uncle Joe scheme. Biden selected the most radical member of the Senate to be his sidekick, and they surround themselves with fellow radicals like Bernie Sanders and AOC. Biden is the one who bragged, “I am the Democratic[sic] party.” Well, if the shoe fits, Joe …
A Biden-Harris administration will make California seem tame. They will turn our exceptional country into California and pile on from there. Medicare for all, packing the Supreme Court, returning to the disastrous Iran deal and resuming payments to the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism, re-joining the Paris Climate Agreement, and abandoning our strong and close ally Israel are all on their to-do list.
It’s too late for California but it’s not too late to preserve and protect our exceptional country. As Thomas Paine eloquently said, “these are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
The time is now upon us to stand tall and serve our country by firmly rejecting Biden-Harris and leaving all the radicals behind. And for that, men and women who revere our republic and cherish liberty will love and thank you for future generations to come.
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Julie Strauss Levin is an attorney and patriot who loves her country.
Recall the NAACP? That would be the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People?
Once upon a time it was the premier civil rights organization of the day. And when the first black Supreme Court Justice — Thurgood Marshall — retired? The NAACP wanted a black judge to replace him.
President George H. W. Bush gave them exactly that — nominating then-Judge Clarence Thomas, a young African-American, to replace Marshall. And the NAACP went ballistic.
The Los Angeles Times headlined the story this way:
NAACP Vows to Fight Thomas’ Confirmation
The Times story said,
WASHINGTON — The NAACP on Wednesday said that it strongly opposes Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, terming the black jurist too “reactionary” to replace retiring Justice Thurgood Marshall and vowing to fight his Senate confirmation.
The board of directors of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People — the nation’s oldest and most influential civil rights organization — took the position in a 49-1 vote, even though it meant opposing one of the two blacks ever nominated to the nation’s high court.
“We have concluded that Judge Thomas’ confirmation would be inimical to the best interests of African-Americans,” NAACP Chairman William F. Gibson said at a news conference. “Judge Thomas’ inconsistent views on civil rights policy make him an unpredictable element on an increasingly radically conservative court.”
Say what? The NAACP was suddenly saying they opposed a black jurist for the Court because they found his stance on civil rights policy “unpredictable”? What was this?
He said his opponents believed that “You’re not really black because you’re not doing what we expect black people to do,” adding,
We know exactly what’s going on here. This is the wrong black guy. He has to be destroyed.
Justice Thomas was exactly right. The hard fact is that the Left — and by 1991, when Thomas was nominated, the NAACP was long gone from advancing civil rights and had become a reflexively far-left interest group — views black Americans as their political property.
Former Vice President Joe Biden blurted out this reality not long ago when he told a black talk-show host that “if you’re for Trump you ain’t black.”
But as Judge Amy Coney Barrett is finding out this week, the idea of blacks as political property on the liberal plantation isn’t limited to blacks — it also includes women. (And, for that matter, Hispanics and gays.)
As with the confirmation battle over Justice Thomas, Barrett’s real sin is that she is a very smart, extremely well-qualified woman — who is a conservative. Which effectively makes her, in the eyes of the Left, a traitor to her gender. Just as Justice Thomas was seen as a traitor to his race.
To add insult to injury, Barrett is a devout Catholic and the mother of seven, with two of her children adopted — and black. Joe Biden, reply Barrett’s critics, is a Catholic too. Yes, but he is a Catholic who long ago changed his position and supported abortion. Barrett is on the record as having criticized Roe v. Wade — and that is, for the Left, the ultimate political sin.
What is it that makes the Left and its Democratic Party insist that to be black or a woman has to mean liberal as well? The answer is simple. This is how progressives get political power. Racism and genderism — both identity politics — are the political fuel of the Left. And if you are either black and a woman and, God forbid, have departed the liberal plantation, the Left is coming for you if you are nominated or elected to any serious position of power in American government.
Time after time some version of this has played out, well beyond the treatment of Justice Thomas or what Judge Barrett is currently experiencing. The party that celebrated the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for her leadership on women’s issues simply could not abide the late conservative leader Phyllis Schlafly. They celebrate former President Barack Obama — but cannot stand conservative Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, with Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin assailing Sen. Scott as a “token.”
Back during the Bush administration, the nomination of the superbly qualified Miguel Estrada for the D.C. Court of appeals was filibustered by Democrats. In 2013, the Washington Examiner’s Timothy P. Carney recalled why:
I prefer to start the story with the time Democrats filibustered a qualified nominee for the crime of being Hispanic.
Go back to February 2003, the first weeks of a new Republican majority in the Senate, when Democrats were blocking a vote on D.C. court nominee Miguel Estrada. Liberal writer Dahlia Lithwick at Slate covered the upheaval around the filibuster and chastised Republicans for “the grotesque claim that Estrada is being blocked because he is Hispanic.”
But of course, that was why Democrats were filibustering Estrada. In November 2001, as Democrats debated whether to undertake an unprecedented filibuster of President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees, liberal groups met with Senate Democrats.
We know about this meeting because Republican Judiciary Committee staffers improperly gained access to the Democrats’ server and downloaded Dems’ emails and documents. In one purloined email, an aide to Dick Durbin told his boss that liberal activists in the meeting “identified Miguel Estrada (D.C. Circuit) as especially dangerous, because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment.”
Estrada, you see, as with Justice Thomas and Judge Barrett, was a traitor to his group — Hispanics in that case. And a Latino judge who is conservative is “dangerous” — dangerous to the idea that to be in this group you have to be liberal.
In today’s world this practice has been extended to the gay community. This is why Democrats have been so fiercely opposed to Trump’s Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell when he was appointed as the acting Director of National Intelligence. Stories abound of gay Trump supporters being turned on because of their beliefs. As here with one Chris Mulvihill from Chicago. Mulvihill says,
After I voted for Trump in 2016 and came out as one of his supporters I lost 90% of my friends, they found it unforgivable. My support for Trump eroded friendships, a lot of people have an unhinged hatred for him and they can’t accept my views.
Not to be forgotten either is the boogeyman status assigned to another group — white males nominated to the Supreme Court by Republican presidents. If you are one of those, the presumption is that you are the typical racist/sexist/homophobic crazy and must be destroyed. See, Kavanaugh, Justice Brett.
This idea of insisting entire groups of Americans must be on the left took root in the American political system from the moment the Democratic Party was birthed in the early 1800s as the party of white slave owners. In that case it took the form of being a white Southerner. If you were a white guy — and later white woman when they got the right to vote — then you had to be a Democrat. Your race demanded it. Now that principle has been expanded to blacks, women, Hispanics, and gays.
So as the nation watches the confirmation hearings of Judge Barrett, there is, thanks to the abominable treatment of Justice Thomas, a serious understanding of just why Barrett will be so vociferously opposed.
She is (Sin No. 1) a woman. A woman who is both (Sin No. 2) a conservative and (Horrors! Sin No. 3) a conservative Catholic. And for those three “sins” Democrats will do everything in their power to “Thomas-ize” her. Which is to say, just as Justice Thomas quite correctly said of himself, the goal will be to try and destroy her.
In a period of less than 10 minutes on Monday, I read an article about candidate Joe Biden’s extreme pro-abortion views and then was sent a link to the home page for “Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden.”
The article cited Biden’s response to a question about abortion rights, where he addressed the potential of Amy Coney Barrett becoming a Supreme Court justice. Should that be the case, he said, and should the court overturn Roe v. Wade, “the only thing, the only responsible response to that would be to pass legislation making Roe the law of the land. That’s what I would do.”
This is in harmony with the Democratic platform, which plainly states, “We will repeal the Hyde Amendment, and protect and codify Roe v. Wade.”
Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden Overlook Abortion to Focus on Other “Pro-Life Issues”
In that light, how can you identify as a “pro-life” evangelical who supports Biden? Wouldn’t that be like declaring yourself a pro-abolition supporter of George B. McClellan, the Democratic candidate who ran against Abraham Lincoln in 1864? Or like declaring yourself an anti-segregation supporter of George Wallace? How can you identify as “pro-life” and yet actively campaign for the party of abortion?
The pro-Biden website states this, in all caps: “AS PRO-LIFE EVANGELICALS, WE DISAGREE WITH VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN AND THE DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM ON THE ISSUE OF ABORTION. BUT WE BELIEVE A BIBLICALLY SHAPED COMMITMENT TO THE SANCTITY OF HUMAN LIFE COMPELS US TO A CONSISTENT ETHIC OF LIFE THAT AFFIRMS THE SANCTITY OF HUMAN LIFE FROM BEGINNING TO END.”
How can you identify as “pro-life” and yet actively campaign for the party of abortion?
In other words, while we think the slaughter of tens of millions of innocent babies is a bad thing, we’re willing to sacrifice their lives before they enter the world by voting Democrat, since we prefer the Democratic Party’s other policies. Seriously?
How much different is this than saying, “While we have a problem with Pol Pot’s genocidal policies, we do think his other reforms serve in the best interest of the country, and so he gets our vote.”
To be clear, I am not comparing Joe Biden to Pol Pot (please repeat that 10 times slowly, since I am not making that comparison). But I am comparing the slaughter of the unborn to other mass moral atrocities, and for good reason. Thus, I find any evangelical justification of a vote for an aggressively pro-abortion candidate and party to be unethical. (Yes, this is my personal opinion. Each of us will give account to God, and He is the ultimate judge.)
Arguments for Standing with Biden Because of Other “Pro-Life Issues” are Weak
How, then, do these evangelical leaders justify their position? They state, “Many things that good political decisions could change destroy persons created in the image of God and violate the sanctity of human life. Poverty kills millions every year. So does lack of healthcare and smoking. Racism kills. Unless we quickly make major changes, devastating climate change will kill tens of millions. Poverty, lack of accessible health care services, smoking, racism and climate change are all pro-life issues.”
And this is the justification for voting for a pro-abortion candidate? A candidate who wants to be sure that Roe v. Wade is the law of the land? A candidate who, during the campaign, reversed his longstanding support of the Hyde Amendment?
I agree that poverty kills, but Trump’s economic policies have helped alleviate poverty, not accelerate poverty.
As for lack of healthcare, both parties want good healthcare for all Americans but simply differ on the best way to achieve that.
As for smoking — yes, smoking — what on earth does that have to do with a vote for Biden? Does Trump, himself a non-smoker, encourage Americans to smoke? Would a vote for Biden be a vote against smoking?
As for racism killing people, perhaps what kills people is the stoking of racism, especially by the left? As for Americans literally killed because of racism every year, as tragic as even one such death would be, that number pails in comparison to the 700,000 (!) babies killed in their mother’s wombs every year. (In years past, that number has been twice as high.)
As for climate change and what should be done about that, there is intense scientific debate about the subject.
Yet, for these very reasons, we are being told not to vote for the strongest pro-life president we have ever had and rather to vote for the most radical, pro-abortion ticket in our nation’s history.
Do You Really Think a Vote for Democrats Will Help Save Babies’ Lives?
These pro-Biden evangelicals claim that “the most common reason women give for abortion is the financial difficulty of another child,” and so “we appreciate a number of Democratic proposals that would significantly alleviate that financial burden: accessible health services for all citizens, affordable childcare, a minimum wage that lifts workers out of poverty.”
Oh yes, if we vote Democrat, they will help these poor women out of their poverty, and thus abortions will be reduced.
In all honesty, I ask: Can you really say those words with a straight face in the presence of a holy God? Are you not perhaps driven more by deep opposition to Trump (as expressed quite forthrightly in other writings by some of this movement’s leaders) than by the hope that a vote for Democrats will help save babies’ lives?
The statement concludes with, “For these reasons, we believe that on balance, Joe Biden’s policies are more consistent with the biblically shaped ethic of life than those of Donald Trump. Therefore, even as we continue to urge different policies on abortion, we urge evangelicals to elect Joe Biden as president.”
Tell that to the more than 60 million babies slaughtered since 1973. Tell that to the babies viciously terminated in the third-trimester, some of them with their brains sucked out while still alive.
The Democratic Party Supports Barbaric Procedures and Opposes Regulations on the Barbarity
And tell that to Brenda Pratt Shafer, a registered nurse from Dayton, Ohio, who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on November 17, 1995, about what she witnessed when assisting a doctor abort a baby boy in his 26th week.
She stated that the baby was alive and moving as the abortionist “delivered the baby’s body and arms — everything but the head. The doctor kept the baby’s head just inside the uterus. The baby’s little fingers were clasping and unclasping, his feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors through the back of his head, and the baby’s arms jerked out in a flinch, a startle reaction, like a baby does when he thinks he might fall. The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening and sucked the baby’s brains out. Now the baby was completely limp.”
Any mention of “biblical balance” that doesn’t start with concern for the shedding of innocent blood is so far out of balance it is no longer biblical.
These “pro-life” evangelicals are voting for the party that has supported these barbaric procedures for years. Indeed, they are calling on other Christians to vote for the party that opposes the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would guarantee medical care for a baby that survives abortion.
In fact, as senator, Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris voted against this very Act, and “earlier this year she voted against the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Act, which would have protected unborn babies from abortion procedures after the point at which they can feel pain (20 weeks).”
True “Biblical Balance” Doesn’t Make the Shedding of Innocent Blood Secondary
Yet these enlightened evangelicals state they “oppose ‘one issue’ political thinking because it lacks biblical balance.”
With all respect, I say this: Do not talk to me about “biblical balance” while urging evangelical followers of Jesus to vote for the party that justifies the slaughter of more than 60 million babies in their mother’s womb and will fight tooth and nail to codify Roe v. Wade.
Any mention of “biblical balance” that doesn’t start with concern for the shedding of innocent blood is so far out of balance it is no longer biblical.
President Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he would nominate a woman to fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. According to news reports, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a judge on the Chicago-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, is on the shortlist of candidates whom the president is considering.
This is not the first time that Barrett’s name has been mentioned in connection with a possible Supreme Court seat: Barrett was reportedly also on the shortlist to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy in 2018. Although that seat was eventually filled by now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Trump reportedly told advisers that he was “saving” Barrett in case Ginsburg stepped down during his presidency. Barrett became a hero to many religious conservatives after her 2017 confirmation hearing for her seat on the court of appeals, when Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee – most notably, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California – grilled her on the role of her Catholic faith in judging.
Early life and career
The 48-year-old Barrett grew up in Metairie, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans, and attended St. Mary’s Dominican High School, a Catholic girls’ school in New Orleans. Barrett graduated magna cum laude from Rhodes College, a liberal arts college in Tennessee affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, in 1994. (Other high-profile alumni of the school include Abe Fortas, who served as a justice on the Supreme Court from 1965 to 1969, and Claudia Kennedy, the first woman to become a three-star general in the U.S. Army.) At Rhodes, she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and was also recognized as the most outstanding English major and for having the best senior thesis.
After graduating from Rhodes, Barrett went to law school at Notre Dame on a full-tuition scholarship. She excelled there as well: She graduated summa cum laude in 1997, received awards for having the best exams in 10 of her courses, served as executive editor of the school’s law review, and received the Hoynes Prize, the school’s highest honor, as the top student in her class.
Barrett then held two high-profile conservative clerkships, first with Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, from 1997 to 1998, and then with the late Justice Antonin Scalia, from 1998 to 1999. After leaving her Supreme Court clerkship, she spent a year practicing law at Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin, a prestigious Washington, D.C., litigation boutique that also claims as alumni former U.S. solicitor general Seth Waxman, former deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick, and John Elwood, the head of Arnold & Porter’s appellate practice and a regular contributor to SCOTUSblog. In 2001, Miller Cassidy merged with Baker Botts, a larger, Texas-based firm, and Barrett spent another year there before leaving for academia. To the chagrin of Democratic senators during her confirmation process for the 7th Circuit, Barrett was able to recall only a few of the cases on which she worked, and she indicated that she never argued any appeals while in private practice.
A prolific stint in academia
Barrett spent a year as a law and economics fellow at George Washington University before heading to her alma mater, Notre Dame, in 2002 to teach federal courts, constitutional law and statutory interpretation. Barrett was named a professor of law at the school in 2010; four years later, she became the Diane and M.O. Miller II Research Chair of Law. Barrett was named “distinguished professor of the year” three times.
While at Notre Dame, Barrett signed a 2012 “statement of protest” condemning the accommodation that the Obama administration created for religious employers who were subject to the Affordable Care Act’s birth control mandate. The statement lamented that the accommodation “changes nothing of moral substance and fails to remove the assault on individual liberty and the rights of conscience which gave rise to the controversy.” Barrett was also a member of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group, from 2005 to 2006 and then again from 2014 to 2017. In response to written questions from Democratic senators during her 7th Circuit confirmation process, Barrett indicated that she had rejoined the group because it gave her “the opportunity to speak to groups of interested, engaged students on topics of mutual interest,” but she added that she had never attended the group’s national convention.
During her 15 years as a full-time law professor, Barrett’s academic scholarship was prolific. Several of her articles, however, drew fire at Barrett’s confirmation hearing, with Democratic senators suggesting that they indicate that Barrett would be influenced by her Catholic faith, particularly on the question of abortion.
Barrett co-wrote her first law review article, “Catholic Judges in Capital Cases,” with Notre Dame law professor John Garvey (now the president of the Catholic University of America); the article was published in the Marquette Law Review in 1998, shortly after her graduation from Notre Dame. It explored the effect of the Catholic Church’s teachings on the death penalty on federal judges, and it used the church’s teachings on abortion and euthanasia as a comparison point, describing the prohibitions on abortion and euthanasia as “absolute” because they “take away innocent life.” The article also noted that, when the late Justice William Brennan was asked about potential conflict between his Catholic faith and his duties as a justice, he responded that he would be governed by “the oath I took to support the Constitution and laws of the United States.” Barrett and Garvey observed that they did not “defend this position as the proper response for a Catholic judge to take with respect to abortion or the death penalty.”
When questioned about the article at her 7th Circuit confirmation hearing, Barrett stressed that she did not believe it was “lawful for a judge to impose personal opinions, from whatever source they derive, upon the law,” and she pledged that her views on abortion “or any other question will have no bearing on the discharge of my duties as a judge.” She acknowledged that, if she were instead being nominated to serve as a federal trial judge, she “would not enter an order of execution,” but she assured senators that she did not intend “as a blanket matter to recuse myself in capital cases if I am confirmed” and added that she had “fully participated in advising Justice Scalia in capital cases as a law clerk.”
Barrett’s responses did not mollify Feinstein, who suggested that Barrett had a “long history of believing that religious beliefs should prevail.” In a widely reported exchange, Feinstein told Barrett that, based on Barrett’s speeches, “the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you. And that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for years in this country.”
In another article, “Stare Decisis and Due Process,” published in the University of Colorado Law Review, Barrett discussed the legal doctrine that generally requires courts to follow existing precedent, even if they might believe that it is wrong. Barrett wrote that courts and commentators “have thought about the kinds of reliance interests that justify keeping an erroneous decision on the books”; in a footnote, she cited (among other things) Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 decision reaffirming Roe v. Wade. Barrett’s detractors characterized the statement as criticism of Roe itself, while supporters such as conservative legal activist Ed Whelan countered that the statement did not reflect Barrett’s views on Roe itself, but instead was just an example of competing opinions on the reliance interests in Roe.
Path to the federal bench
Trump nominated Barrett to the 7th Circuit on May 8, 2017. Despite some criticism from Democrats, she garnered bipartisan support at her confirmation hearing. A group of 450 former students signed a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, telling senators that their support was “driven not by politics, but by the belief that Professor Barrett is supremely qualified.” And she had the unanimous support of her 49 Notre Dame colleagues, who wrote that they had a “wide range of political views” but were “united however in our judgment about Amy.”
After Barrett’s confirmation hearing but before the Senate voted on her nomination, The New York Times reported that Barrett was a member of a group called People of Praise. Group members, the Times indicated, “swear a lifelong oath of loyalty to one another, and are assigned and accountable to a personal adviser.” Moreover, the Times added, the group “teaches that husbands are the heads of their wives and should take authority for their family.” The newspaper quoted legal experts who worried that such oaths “could raise legitimate questions about a judicial nominee’s independence and impartiality.”
Barrett declined the Times’ request for an interview about People of Praise, whose website describes the group as an “ecumenical, charismatic, covenant community” modeled on the “first Christian community.” “Freedom of conscience,” the website says, “is a key to our diversity.” In 2018, Slate interviewed the group’s leader, a physics and engineering professor at Notre Dame, who explained that members of the group “often make an effort to live near one another” and agree to donate 5% of their income to the group.
On Oct. 31, 2017, Barrett was confirmed to the 7th Circuit by a vote of 55 to 43. Three Democratic senators – her home state senator, Joe Donnelly; Tim Kaine of Virginia; and Joe Manchin of West Virginia – crossed party lines to vote for her, while two Democratic senators (Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Robert Menendez of New Jersey) did not vote.
Barrett as a judge: Gun rights and abortion
In a story in the National Review in August 2020, conservative legal activist Carrie Severino described Barrett as a “champion of originalism” during her short tenure so far on the 7th Circuit. In the 2019 case Kanter v. Barr, the court of appeals upheld the mail fraud conviction of the owner of an orthopedic footwear company. He argued that federal and state laws that prohibit people convicted of felonies from having guns violate his Second Amendment right to bear arms. The majority rejected that argument. It explained that the government had shown that the laws are related to the government’s important goal of keeping guns away from people convicted of serious crimes.
Barrett dissented. At the time of the country’s founding, she said, legislatures took away the gun rights of people who were believed to be dangerous. But the laws at the heart of Kanter’s case are too broad, she argued, because they ban people like Kanter from having a gun without any evidence that they pose a risk. Barrett stressed that the Second Amendment “confers an individual right, intimately connected with the natural right of self-defense and not limited to civic participation.”
During her time on the court of appeals, Barrett has grappled with the issue of abortion twice – both times in dealing with requests for the full court of appeals to rehear a case, rather than as part of a three-judge panel. In 2018, the full court ordered rehearing en banc in a challenge to an Indiana law requiring fetal remains to be either buried or cremated after an abortion but then vacated that order and reinstated the original opinion blocking the state from enforcing the law.
Barrett joined a dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc written by Judge Frank Easterbrook. Easterbrook began by addressing a separate provision of the law that had also been struck down but was not at issue in the rehearing proceedings: It would bar abortions based on the race, sex or disability (such as Down syndrome) of the fetus. Characterizing the provision as a means of preventing prospective parents from “[u]sing abortion as a way to promote eugenic goals,” Easterbrook expressed doubt that the Constitution bars states from enacting such laws.
Indiana later went to the Supreme Court, which reversed the 7th Circuit’s opinion on the provision governing fetal remains. States have an interest in the proper disposal of fetal remains, the justices reasoned, and this law “is rationally related to” that interest. But the justices did not weigh in on the part of the 7th Circuit’s decision that struck down the ban on abortions based on race, sex or disability, leaving the state unable to enforce that provision.
In 2019, Barrett indicated that she wanted the full 7th Circuit to hear a challenge to an Indiana law requiring young women to notify their parents before obtaining an abortion after a three-judge panel ruled that the law was unconstitutional. She joined a dissent from the denial of rehearing by Judge Michael Kanne, who wrote that “[p]reventing a state statute from taking effect is a judicial act of extraordinary gravity in our federal structure.” The state asked the Supreme Court to weigh in, and the justices sent the case back to the lower courts this summer for another look in light of their ruling in June Medical Services v. Russo, which struck down a Louisiana law that requires doctors who perform abortions to have the right to admit patients at nearby hospitals.
Also in 2019, Barrett joined an opinion that upheld a Chicago ordinance that bars anti-abortion “sidewalk counselors” from approaching women entering an abortion clinic. The Chicago ordinance was modeled after a Colorado law that the Supreme Court upheld in 2000 in Hill v. Colorado, but challengers argued that later decisions by the Supreme Court “have so thoroughly undermined Hill’s reasoning that we need not follow it.” Judge Diane Sykes – who is also on Trump’s list of potential nominees, although now an unlikely candidate at age 62 – wrote that “[t]hat’s a losing argument in the court of appeals. The Court’s intervening decisions have eroded Hill’s foundation, but the case still binds us; only the Supreme Court can say otherwise.” The Supreme Court denied the challengers’ petition for review in July 2020.
Barrett as a judge: Sex discrimination on campus and immigration policy
In Doe v. Purdue University, Barrett wrote for a three-judge panel that reinstated a lawsuit filed against the university and its officials by a student who had been found guilty, through the university’s student discipline program, of sexual violence. One expert who advises colleges and universities on compliance with Title IX, a federal law that bars gender discrimination in education, told The Washington Post that the opinion was a “trendsetter” that would make it easier for students to bring lawsuits against universities to trial.
The student, known as John Doe, was suspended from school, which in turn led to his expulsion from the Navy ROTC program, the loss of his scholarship and the end of his plans to join the Navy after graduation. The court of appeals agreed with the student that he should be allowed to pursue his claim alleging that the process used to determine his guilt or innocence violated the Constitution. “Purdue’s process,” Barrett wrote, “fell short of what even a high school must provide to a student facing a days-long suspension.”
The court also revived the student’s statutory claim under Title IX. Barrett observed that although a 2011 letter from the Department of Education to colleges and universities warning schools to vigorously investigate and punish sexual misconduct or risk losing federal funds would give Doe “a story about why Purdue might have been motivated to discriminate against males accused of sexual assault,” it might not, she observed, standing alone, be enough for his case to go forward. However, she continued, the combination of the letter and facts suggesting that university officials had chosen to believe his alleged victim “because she is a woman and to disbelieve John Doe because he is a man” would suffice for his case to continue.
In June 2020, Barrett dissented from a decision that upheld a district court order blocking the Trump administration from enforcing the “public charge” rule, which bars noncitizens from receiving a green card if the government believes they are likely to rely on public assistance. The district court had put the administration’s 2019 interpretation of the rule on hold, ruling that it likely exceeded the scope of the underlying “public charge” statute, which according to the district court requires a longer and more substantial dependence on government assistance before someone may be considered a “public charge.” In February, a divided Supreme Court issued an emergency order allowing the federal government to begin enforcing the rule while its appeals were pending.
In her dissent, Barrett rejected the challengers’ efforts to portray the public charge statute as narrow. The current law, she explained, “was amended in 1996 to increase the bite of the public charge determination.” As a result, she continued, it is “not unreasonable to describe someone who relies on the government to satisfy a basic necessity for a year, or multiple basic necessities for a period of months, as falling within the definition of a term that denotes a lack of self-sufficiency.” What the challengers are really objecting to, she suggested, is “this policy choice” or even the very idea of excluding legal immigrants who are deemed likely to depend on government assistance. But, she concluded, litigation “is not the vehicle for resolving policy disputes.”
In Yafai v. Pompeo, Barrett wrote for a three-judge panel that agreed that the wife of a U.S. citizen could not challenge the denial of her visa application. A consular officer rejected the application by Zahoor Ahmed, a Yemeni citizen, on the ground that she had attempted to smuggle two children into the United States. Ahmed and her husband told the embassy that the children she was accused of smuggling had died in a drowning accident and provided documentation, at the embassy’s request.
Relying on a doctrine known as consular nonreviewability, which prohibits courts from reviewing visa decisions made by consular officials overseas, Barrett concluded that it was enough that the consular officer cited the provision of federal immigration law on which he relied and the basic facts at the heart of her case. Because Ahmed and her husband did not show that the consular officer had acted in bad faith in denying her visa application, courts could not look behind that decision. If anything, Barrett suggested, the fact that consular officers had asked for additional documents “suggests a desire to get it right,” and she said that an email from an embassy officer to Ahmed’s lawyer “reveals good-faith reasons for rejecting the plaintiffs’ response to the smuggling charge.”
Barrett as a judge: Other cases
One case that would almost certainly draw attention if she were nominated came shortly after she took the bench: EEOC v. AutoZone, in which the federal government asked the full court of appeals to reconsider a ruling against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in its lawsuit against AutoZone, an auto parts store. The EEOC had argued that the store violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which bars employees from segregating or classifying employees based on race, when it used race as a determining factor in assigning employees to different stores – for example, sending African American employees to stores in heavily African American neighborhoods. A three-judge panel (that did not include Barrett) ruled for AutoZone; Barrett joined four of her colleagues in voting to deny rehearing by the full court of appeals.
Three judges – Chief Judge Diane Wood and Judges Ilana Diamond Rovner and David Hamilton – would have granted rehearing en banc. Those three also had strong words in the dissenting opinion they filed. They alleged that, under “the panel’s reasoning, this separate-but-equal arrangement is permissible under Title VII as long as the ‘separate’ facilities really are ‘equal’” – a conclusion, they continued, that is “contrary to the position that the Supreme Court has taken in analogous equal protection cases as far back as Brown v. Board of Education.”
In Schmidt v. Foster, Barrett dissented from the panel’s ruling in favor of a Wisconsin man who admitted that he had shot his wife seven times, killing her in their driveway. Scott Schmidt argued that he had been provoked, which would make his crime second-degree, rather than first-degree, homicide. The trial judge in a state court reviewed that claim at a pretrial hearing that prosecutors did not attend, and at which Schmidt’s attorney was not allowed to speak. The judge rejected Schmidt’s claim of provocation, and Schmidt was convicted of first-degree homicide and sentenced to life in prison. When Schmidt sought to overturn his conviction in federal court, the panel agreed that Schmidt had been denied his Sixth Amendment right to counsel, and the court of appeals sent the case back to the lower court.
Barrett disagreed with her colleagues. Her dissent began by emphasizing that the standard for federal post-conviction relief is “intentionally difficult because federal habeas review of state convictions” interferes with the states’ efforts to enforce their own laws. In this case, she contended, the state court’s decision rejecting Schmidt’s Sixth Amendment claim could not have been “contrary to” or “an unreasonable application of” clearly established federal law (the requirement for relief in federal court) because the Supreme Court has never addressed a claim that a defendant has a right to counsel in a pretrial hearing like the one at issue in this case. While acknowledging that “[p]erhaps the right to counsel should extend to a hearing like the one the judge conducted in Schmidt’s case,” she warned that federal law “precludes us from disturbing a state court’s judgment on the ground that a state court decided an open question differently than we would — or, for that matter, differently than we think the [Supreme] Court would.”
In Akin v. Berryhill, Barrett joined an unsigned decision in favor of a woman whose application for Social Security disability benefits had been denied by an administrative law judge. The panel agreed with the woman, Rebecca Akin, that the judge had incorrectly “played doctor” by interpreting her MRI results on his own, and it instructed the judge to take another look at his determination that Akin was not credible. The panel indicated that it was “troubled by the ALJ’s purported use of objective medical evidence to discredit Akin’s complaints of disabling pain,” noting that fibromyalgia (one of Akin’s ailments) “cannot be evaluated or ruled out by using objective tests.” It added that, among other things, the administrative law judge should not have discredited Akin’s choice to go with a more conservative course of treatment when she explained that “she was afraid of needles and that she wanted to wait until her children finished school before trying more invasive treatment.”
Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Monday outlined the Senate schedule to usher Barrett through the confirmation process and advance her to the Supreme Court, likely before the Nov. 3 election.
Graham, a South Carolina Republican, described Barrett as “in a category of excellence” that should make the nation proud but warned that the confirmation will take place in an election year.
“My Democratic colleagues will say, 'This has never been done,'” he said, countering, “The Senate is doing its duty, constitutionally,” even though no justice has been confirmed so close to an election.
Graham said there have been 19 justices confirmed in an election year, 17 of them when the White House and Senate parties were aligned.
Monday’s hearing will be composed of opening statements by senators and Barrett, who is now a court of appeals judge for the 7th Circuit, having been confirmed to that bench by the Senate in 2017. Senators will question Barrett on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Graham said the hearing is not about “persuading each other, unless something really dramatic happens,” but said it would give Democrats a chance to “dig deep into her philosophy” and serve the same purpose for the GOP.
“Most importantly, it gives you, the American people, the chance to find out about Judge Barrett,” Graham said. “Find out for yourself.”
Graham warned Democrats that Barrett “doesn’t deserve” the treatment of Kavanaugh, who was scrutinized in an additional hearing to air accusations by a former high school acquaintance who said he sexually assaulted her.
“Let’s remember — the world is watching,” Graham said.
Is this the last time we can celebrate Columbus Day?
A wave of cities have decided to remove the holiday from the calendar and replace it with “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”
Christopher Columbus, the Italian explorer credited with discovering America, and his legacy are under attack figuratively and, increasingly, literally.
Several Columbus monuments have been attacked and vandalized around the country. The towering Columbus statue at Columbus Circle in New York City now needs 24-hour guards after Mayor Bill de Blasio put it on the list of a commission to review “offensive” memorials.
And according to Far Left Watch, a watchdog organization, Antifa and other left-wing groups plan to deface and attack Columbus statues across the country on Columbus Day.
It is unfortunate to see what was once a uniting figure—who represented American courage, optimism, and even immigrants—is suddenly in the crosshairs for destruction. We owe it to Columbus and ourselves to be more respectful of the man who made the existence of our country possible.
Once Revered, Now Maligned
A few historians and activists began to attack Columbus’ legacy in the late 20th century. They concocted a new narrative of Columbus as a rapacious pillager and a genocidal maniac.
Far-left historian Howard Zinn, in particular, had a huge impact on changing the minds of a generation of Americans about the Columbus legacy. Zinn not only maligned Columbus, but attacked the larger migration from the Old World to the new that he ushered in.
It wasn’t just Columbus who was a monster, according to Zinn, it was the driving ethos of the civilization that ultimately developed in the wake of his discovery: the United States.
“Behind the English invasion of North America,” Zinn wrote, “behind their massacre of Indians, their deception, their brutality, was that special powerful drive born in civilizations based on private profit.”
The truth is that Columbus set out for the New World thinking he would spread Christianity to regions where it didn’t exist. While Columbus, and certainly his Spanish benefactors, had an interest in the goods and gold he could return from what they thought would be Asia, the explorer’s primary motivation was religious.
“This conviction that God destined him to be an instrument for spreading the faith was far more potent than the desire to win glory, wealth, and worldly honors,” wrote historian Samuel Eliot Morison over a half-century ago.
In fact, as contemporary historian Carol Delaney noted, even the money Columbus sought was primarily dedicated to religious purposes. Delaney said in an interview with the Catholic fraternal organization the Knights of Columbus:
Everybody knows that Columbus was trying to find gold, but they don’t know what the gold was for: to fund a crusade to take Jerusalem back from the Muslims before the end of the world. A lot of people at the time thought that the apocalypse was coming because of all the signs: the plague, famine, earthquakes, and so forth. And it was believed that before the end, Jerusalem had to be back in Christian hands so that Christ could return in judgment.
Columbus critics don’t just stop at accusing him of greed. One of the biggest allegations against him is that he waged a genocidal war and engaged in acts of cruelty against indigenous people in the Americas.
But historians like Delaney have debunked these claims.
Rather than cruel, Columbus was mostly benign in his interaction with native populations. While deprivations did occur, Columbus was quick to punish those under his command who committed unjust acts against local populations.
“Columbus strictly told the crew not to do things like maraud, or rape, and instead to treat the native people with respect,” Delaney said. “There are many examples in his writings where he gave instructions to this effect. Most of the time when injustices occurred, Columbus wasn’t even there. There were terrible diseases that got communicated to the natives, but he can’t be blamed for that.”
Columbus certainly wasn’t a man without flaws or attitudes that would be unacceptable today.
But even as a man of an earlier age in which violence and cruelty were often the norm between different cultures and people, Columbus did not engage in the savage acts that have been pinned on him.
How Americans Once Viewed Columbus
For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, most Americans were taught about Columbus’ discovery of the New World in school.
“In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue … ” went a popular poem about the Italian explorer who flew under the Spanish flag. At one time, Americans marveled at what seemed like an unbelievably courageous voyage across unknown waters with the limited tools and maps of the 15th century.
It is difficult in the 21st century to imagine what Columbus faced as he crossed the Atlantic in search of what he thought was a route to Asia. The hardship and danger was immense. If things went awry, there would be nothing to save his little flotilla besides hope, prayer, and a little courage.
Most people, even in the 1490s, knew that the Earth was round. However, Columbus made a nevertheless history-altering discovery.
The world was a much bigger place than most had imagined, and though Columbus never personally realized the scope of his discovery, he opened up a new world that would one day become a forefront of human civilization.
This is the man and the history that earlier generations of Americans came to respect and admire.
Unfortunately, Zinn and others’ caricature of Columbus and American civilization has stuck and in an era in which radicals and activists search the country for problematic statues to destroy, Columbus is a prime target.
Ku Klux Klan Pushed Anti-Columbus Rhetoric
Much of the modern rhetoric about Columbus mirrors attacks lobbed at him in the 19th century by anti-Catholic and anti-Italian groups like the Ku Klux Klan.
In fact, Columbus Day became a nationally celebrated holiday following a mass lynching of Italians in New Orleans—the largest incident of lynching in American history.
In 1892—the 400th anniversary of the Columbus voyage—President Benjamin Harrison called for a national celebration of Columbus and his achievements. Americans patriotically celebrated Columbus and erected numerous statues in his honor as the country embraced him.
Though American appreciation of Columbus deepened, some groups weren’t pleased.
As the pro-Columbus website The Truth About Columbus points out, the Ku Klux Klan worked to stop Columbus Day celebrations, smash statues, and reverse his growing influence on American culture.
According to The Truth About Columbus, in the 1920s, the Klan “attempted to remove Columbus Day as a state holiday in Oregon,” burned a cross “to disturb a Columbus Day celebration in Pennsylvania,” and successfully “opposed the erection of a statue of Columbus in Richmond, Virginia, only to see the decision to reject the statue reversed.”
Attempts to quash Columbus failed, but they have re-emerged in our own time through the actions of far-left groups who want to see his legacy buried and diminished forever.
This would be a tragic loss for our generation and those of the future.
The bravery and boldness that Columbus displayed in his trek to America have been inherent in the American cultural DNA from the beginning.
We may never have the class, the taste, the sophistication of the Old World upper crust. But what we do have is a reverence for simple virtues of strength, boldness, and a willingness to push the envelope to secure for ourselves a better future than those who’ve come before.
We are a civilization that admires those who push the limits of the frontier, who don’t merely accept what is and want something more. The spirit that drove us west and in modernity, to the moon, is what we celebrate in men like Columbus.
President Ronald Reagan said it best in a Columbus Day tribute:
Columbus is justly admired as a brilliant navigator, a fearless man of action, a visionary who opened the eyes of an older world to an entirely new one. Above all, he personifies a view of the world that many see as quintessentially American: not merely optimistic, but scornful of the very notion of despair.
When we have lost these things, when we no longer have the capacity to celebrate men like Columbus, as imperfect as they sometimes were, we will have lost what has made us great, and distinct.
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Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Tuesday declassified documents revealing that former CIA Director John Brennan had briefed former President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s plan to tie then-candidate Donald Trump to Russia — as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.”
Ratcliffe declassified two items — two pages of Brennan’s handwritten notes — taken after he briefed Obama on intelligence the CIA received, according to Fox News; and a CIA memo that showed that the CIA referred the matter to the FBI for potential further investigation.
Most of Brennan’s handwritten notes are redacted. However, the unredacted portions say: “We’re [gaining] additional insight into Russian activities from [REDACTED].”
“Cite alleged approval by Hillary Clinton [on 26 July] of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to villify [sic] Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services,” he wrote.
An intelligence official said on background about the revelation:
The American people deserve to see how the Obama-Biden White House and their appointees at DOJ and CIA politicized our work, because many of them are trying to regain power now. We just want to keep the American people safe. It’s what we spend every waking hour focusing on. We don’t want to go back to our important work being abused as a political weapon of the Democrats.
The rest of Brennan’s notes appear to be linked to different Obama administration officials — possibly of what they said or wanted follow-up action on.
In the left margin, he wrote “POTUS,” and to the right, he then made three bulleted notes. Two are redacted, but one said: “Any evidence of collaboration between Trump campaign + Russia.”
He then wrote “JC” in the left margin — a likely reference to then-FBI Director James Comey, and took four additional bulleted notes on the right, all of which are redacted.
He drew another line, with no additional name, for one bulleted note that is redacted.
Another line was drawn, and below that in the left margin he wrote “Denis” — likely in reference to then-White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, and added one redacted note.
He drew another line, and below it in the left margin wrote “Susan” — likely then-National Security Adviser Susan Rice. To the right, he added five bulleted notes, and put an asterisk by one of the notes. All of the notes are redacted.
RealClearInvestigations journalist Paul Sperry tweeted on Monday evening that the Clinton foreign policy adviser who allegedly proposed vilifying Trump is Jake Sullivan, who is now a top Biden campaign aide
Sperry said Clinton gave her approval to Sullivan’s plan on July 26, 2016 — just four days before the FBI opened its probe of the Trump campaign.
The CIA memo Ratcliffe declassified is dated September 27, 2016, for then-FBI Director James Comey, but addressed to the attention of Peter Strzok, then-FBI Deputy Assistant Director for Operations Branch I, Counterintelligence Division, for potential further investigation.
It said:
2. [Redacted] Per FBI verbal request, CIA provides the below examples of information the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE fusion cell has gleaned to date [Source revealing information redacted]:
a. [Redacted] An exchange [redacted] discussing US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server. [Redacted] According to open sources, Guccifer 2.0 is an individual or group of hackers whm US officials believe is tied to Russian intelligence services. Also per open sources, Guccifer 2.0 claimed credit for hacking the Democratic National Committee (DNC) this year.
The CIA likely referred the matter to the FBI since it was related to its ongoing Crossfire Hurricane investigation and only the FBI can conduct domestic investigations. Last week, Comey testified to the Senate that he did not remember any such information, despite him overseeing the investigation.
There is no evidence that the FBI ever investigated Clinton for any such proposal, nor were any members of Congress informed of the intelligence obtained by the CIA.
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jim Jordan (R-OH) tweeted Tuesday: “We now know that John Brennan and Hillary Clinton conjured up the phony Russian hoax with the Obama/Biden Administration to distract Americans from the Clinton email scandal. The witch hunt was worse than we ever thought!”
Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA) tweeted: “BREAKING: Brennan’s handwritten notes prove he briefed Obama on Hillary Clinton’s “approved” plan to “vilify Donald Trump by stirring up” the Russian collusion hoax. Yes, there was coup to take down @realDonaldTrump. And it was even worse than we thought!”
Former Acting DNI Richard Grenell tweeted that the declassified documents were proof that Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden directed their administration to use the powers of government to attack Trump’s campaign and then transition.
“The Susan Rice email to herself after the Oval Office meeting was part of a coverup,” he tweeted, in reference to a January 24, 2017, email Rice emailed herself about a January 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting where participants, including Obama and Biden, were briefed by Comey on its investigations into Trump campaign members. Rice had heavily stressed in her email to herself that the investigations were “by the book.”
Ryan Fournier, founder and co-chair of Students for Trump, tweeted: “BREAKING: Newly declassified notes show Obama knew of Hillary’s plan to tie Trump to Russia… “As a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” Obama was briefed on this by Former CIA Director John Brennan in 2016. THIS IS HUGE.”
Don Trump Jr., the president’s son, tweeted: “The people who turned the intelligence community & our justice system into a weapon against @realDonaldTrump in 2016 are the same people trying to regain power now. They want Power for themselves. Trump wants Prosperity for all Americans. VOTE!!!”
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany tweeted: “CROOKED Hillary denied our country a peaceful transition of power. SHE concocted the Russia hoax! Brennan briefed Obama on Clinton’s ‘plan’ to tie @realDonaldTrump to Russia as ‘a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.'”
Last week, while on a business trip in Wisconsin, I learned about an insane ballot harvesting scheme that appears to be tied to a deep-pocketed left-wing advocacy group subsidized by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Google, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and eBay former chairman Pierre Omidyar's Democracy Fund.
Conservative talk radio host and grassroots activist Vicki McKenna blew the whistle after hearing ads played during her daily show on 1310 WIBA.
"Last week on my radio program, we played Biden campaign ads," she told me. "They were all about something called 'Democracy in the Park.' It was an advertisement about how Madison, Wisconsin, would have 200 parks hosting ballot harvesting events." The ads were punctuated by a disclosure that they were "paid for by Joe Biden for President."
On Saturday, Sept. 26, as advertised by the Biden campaign, Madison poll workers turned out across the city to register voters and collect absentee ballots, even though in-person absentee ballot collection is not supposed to start until two weeks before Election Day, according to Wisconsin state election law. Several of McKenna's listeners showed up to photograph the city government workers' activities promoted by the Biden for President campaign.
The poll workers stuffed ballots into "red zipper bags with no security whatsoever. The poll workers witnessed people's [blank] ballots, just like you would if you did an in-person absentee ballot, threw them in the red zipper bags, and we don't know what's become of these ballots since," McKenna told me.
Imagine sheaves of ballots carelessly stuffed into cheap, canvas, pizza delivery-style totes. Then imagine them being carted away by unknown drivers to unknown locations for unknown reasons. Observers captured photos of several stuffed red bags being loaded into an unmarked white van parked outside Madison's municipal government building.
"It's clear from legal analysis: this is not legal and does not comport with Wisconsin election law," McKenna argues. "There's some serious questions about [Democratic] campaign coordination with the city of Madison."
Now, enter a shady entity called the "Center for Tech and Civic Life" (CTCL). It just so happens that this nonprofit "election reform advocacy group," based in Chicago and founded in 2012, has showered more than $6 million on the five largest cities in the crucial swing state of Wisconsin. In July, using COVID-19 as a pretext to boost mail-in and absentee voting, the center released the following amounts to governmental grantees:
—City of Milwaukee: $2,154,500.
—City of Madison: $1,271,788.
—City of Green Bay: $1,093,400.
—City of Kenosha: $862,779.
—City of Racine: $942,100.
According to the CTCL's website, they fielded over 1,100 applications from across the country for their purported "COVID-19 Response Grant Program" to "provide funding to U.S. local election offices to help ensure they have the critical resources they need to safely serve every voter in 2020." Grants are to be used to encourage alternatives to in-person voting, "voter education and outreach efforts," "early in-person voting," and vote by mail — all tactics being deployed by anti-Trump, "color revolutionary" forces to drag out the election long past Election Day.
There is nothing "nonpartisan" about this enterprise. The Center's top staff (many of them Barack Obama campaign tech gurus) come from a now-defunct left-wing nonprofit called the New Organizing Institute, whose far-left donors include George Soros's Open Society Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and Atlantic Philanthropies. CTCL director Tiana Epps-Johnson is a former Obama Foundation fellow. The center received $250 million from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. Trump-bashing Google is a top corporate partner. Other donors include the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Democracy Fund (founded by "Never Trumper" billionaire and eBay former chairman Pierre Omidyar).
Chicago political activist Jay Stone has filed a legal complaint against CTCL, alleging that its grant scheme "artificially inflates Democrat Joe Biden's statewide Wisconsin vote total and enhances Joe Biden's chances of winning Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes" by targeting private funds to Democratic-run cities under the guise of enhancing pandemic safety and election integrity. In addition to Wisconsin, Democratic-run jurisdictions in battleground state Pennsylvania that have received CTCL infusions include Delaware County ($2.2 million) and Philadelphia (a whopping $10 million).
McKenna warns that the alarm-raising "Democracy in the Park" scheme in CTCL-subsidized Madison, Wisc. will be back in action on Oct. 3. I reached out Monday to CTCL to confirm whether its grants are being used for the tote bag ballot-harvesting program touted by the Biden campaign. No reply. Maybe I'll get a reply to these questions:
If, as it plainly appears, private Big Tech and left-wing philanthropic funding are being used to rig the election process in the most important battlegrounds of our country, where the heck are the Justice Department and Attorney General Bill Barr?
Why haven't these dubiously collected ballots already been tracked down, segregated, and secured?
And finally: Is this what the "peaceful transfer of power" is supposed to look like in America?
Michelle Malkin is a conservative blogger at michellemalkin.com, syndicated columnist, author, and founder of hotair.com. Michelle Malkin's email address is MichelleMalkinInvestigates@protonmail.com.
I do not think the Republican leaders are framing the election properly.
Nor are they doing a good job describing what’s at stake in this election.
This election is a contest between a man, Donald Trump, who believes America is good, and a man, Joe Biden, who is controlled by a movement that believes America is bad. Or to put this another way, between a man who wants to preserve the American way of life and a man who will end up destroying it.
Republican leaders are too focused on policy. This is not a policy election. This is a regime decision; a way of life election. One way of life, the traditional American way of life, is based on individual rights, rule of law, and a shared understanding of the common good. Government’s role is to create the conditions for freedom to flourish.
The other way of life I call “multiculturalism” or “identity politics.” This way of life assumes that society is made up of identity groups, all of which are oppressed by white males. Government’s role in this regime is to create equal income and power for each group.
As should be immediately apparent, achieving this kind of “outcome equality” requires a never-ending redistribution of wealth and power. This can only be achieved by a tyrannical form of government. This is to say, multiculturalism, which has taken over the Democratic Party, constitutes a revolutionary movement. I do not mean a metaphorical revolution. It is not like a revolution; it is a revolution, an attempt to overthrow the American Founding as President Trump said in his excellent Mt. Rushmore speech. Republicans should say the same thing. Republicans everywhere, at every level and at every opportunity.
In order to defend the American way of life, Republicans must disabuse the public of the notion that Black Lives Matter cares about black lives. To BLM Republicans might say something like: “absolutely, black lives matter. They just don’t matter to you. You don’t care about Mr. Floyd, the black businesses you have destroyed, or the blacks who are getting killed because you have forced the police to back off. These blacks are just abstractions to you. Their tragedies are just a prop for your agenda. You’re here for destruction. Not black lives, not any lives.”
And then Republicans must explain how the revolution works. Specifically, they must explain that the revolution is being led, not by Black Lives Matter, but by the left-wing of the Democratic Party which has used the BLM riots to move farther and faster than it otherwise could have moved. The left-wing, let’s call it the “BLM wing,” has taken over the entire party. Most Democrats, though not themselves revolutionaries, go along. Joe Biden is one of the “go-along BLM-Democrats.”
Their policy agenda is clear: reparations, socialism, endless affirmative action, open borders, confiscation of guns, and so forth.
But the revolution goes deeper. BLM-Democrats understand that if they are to achieve their policy agenda then they must get us to change our values and principles and the way we understand ourselves. They must get us to believe that national borders and colorblindness are racist; that we are not one culture but many; and that the most important thing in our history—the thing around which all else pivots—is slavery. More extensively, they must get us to believe that we are unworthy—not just that we have sinned (which of course we have)—but that we are irredeemably sinful, or, in the language of today, “systemically racist.” And sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic etc. to boot. The BLM-Democrats (quite reasonably) assume that once Americans accept their guilt they will accept the BLM-Democratic policy agenda.
Republicans cannot let that happen. They must assert—loudly and often—“no, America is not racist.” Period. The American people need to hear what they know in their hearts: They are not racists. Americans also need to hear that America is “incredible,” to use President Trump’s adjective of choice. Republicans must remind the American people that, as a friend of mine is fond of saying, America has brought more freedom and more prosperity to more people than any country in the history of mankind.
In order to change American values and principles, the BLM-Democrats must destroy, or radically restructure, the institutions that teach these values: family, religion, education, and community life. We are engaged not in a policy war but in a culture war. This is where the real action is. Republicans are missing in action.
Republicans should use BLM, the riots, and the government’s response to the Coronavirus to show that the BLM-Democrats wish to destroy traditional marriage and religion, rewrite America’s past, further encroach into community life, and insist on even more affirmative action and the teaching of the America-is-evil narrative.
It should not be difficult to tie this radical agenda to the Democrats. After all, the riots were never a popular uprising; rather, they were always the work of elite Democrats: That is, state and local Democratic officials who permitted, even egged on, the rioting; the Democratic media which looked the other way; Democrats’ largest contributors, major corporations and their leaders, who have given billions upon billions of dollars to BLM, and more recently, leading national Democrats who are, in effect, giving BLM permission to riot because President Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill Justice Ginsburg’s seat.
Republicans must make it clear that these are the “Biden riots.” For Biden too has embraced the agenda of the BLM wing of his party. Just listen to him. “Let’s be clear, transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time,” he said. A year ago, he may not have even heard of transgenderism.
Biden now regularly talks about “systemic” racism. On one occasion Biden said, though without evidence, there is “absolutely systemic racism in law enforcement [but] “it’s not just in law enforcement,” he continued, “it’s across the board. It’s in housing, it’s in education…It’s in everything we do.”
He is wrong on every count, but if indeed he believes that racism is in “everything we do,” that it is systemic, then, whether he realizes it or not, he is calling for the overthrow of the American way of life. I presume that is not his intent, but when the words that he is reading off his BLM teleprompter get translated into policy, that will be the consequence—the destruction of the American way of life.
There is nothing to fear from Biden says Biden: “Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters?” No, he does not, but what he does look like is a sap, a puppet being played by his handlers, 13 of which, by the way, gave money to post bail for BLM rioters, some of them alleged murderers.
Also, Republicans should give more support than they do to President Trump’s efforts to beat back multiculturalism. Trump thinks our culture is “incredible” and that’s the way he wants to keep it, as evidenced by, among many other things, his recently issued executive orders banning the teaching of the America-is-evil narrative in administrative agencies and establishing a national commission to promote patriotic education.
I know Trump has many faults. I myself sometimes cringe listening to him. He is a braggart, often misinformed, petty, and more.
And yet, we are very lucky to have him. At any other time, he might well have been a bad president. But in these times—these revolutionary times—he is the best president we could have had. No other national Republican leader can hold a candle to President Trump. I am almost prepared to say that having him is Providential. How else to explain that we find ourselves with this most unusual, most unpresidential man who has just the attributes most needed for this moment?
He has the indispensable attribute of a leader: courage. As a leader must, he goes where others are afraid to go. He has common sense, which means he generally wants to go to the right place. And he is a fighter.
Above all else, and above anyone else, Trump is committed to America. He is unreservedly, unquestionably pro-America. He feels no guilt for America’s past. He makes no apologies. He concedes nothing. And Trump has unlimited confidence in Americans. In this time of woke guilt and doubt, this is just what the doctor ordered.
If we want to save our way of life, then we should support him—unequivocally. I am. I am giving many times more than I would in a normal election cycle. This election is that important and President Trump is that good.
Remember, Trump versus Biden is the choice between a man who believes America is good and a man who is controlled by a movement that believes America is bad.
– – –
Thomas D. Klingenstein is a principal in the investment firm of Cohen, Klingenstein, LLC and the chairman of the Board of Directors of the Claremont Institute.
We know that the Dems are laser-focused on destroying the legal rock-star Amy Coney Barrett, a Catholic whom Trump nominated for the RBG Supreme Court vacancy. The Dems seem terrified by Amy's genuine Catholicism.
Meanwhile, Franklin Graham was able to organize a massive prayer march on Saturday, 26 September in Washington, D.C., drawing tens of thousands of participants. (Some estimates say it exceeded 50,000.) It began at the Lincoln Memorial and ended outside the U.S. Capitol Building. Vice President Mike Pence and his wife made a surprise appearance.
Despite the size and scope of this event, the Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper, with offices slightly over 100 miles south of D.C., failed to mention it. It was similarly missed by the local Richmond TV news. For those depending solely on information from the local media, this major event never happened.
I first learned of it from an Army chaplain friend stationed at Ft. Bragg, N.C. He stayed at my home Friday night before driving to D.C. the next morning to participate. After the march was over, he confirmed that the crowd was massive and added that everyone remained orderly and peaceful. There were no bricks or Molotov cocktails thrown, no profanity-laced graffiti or any sign of violence. In addition, the crowd left behind no piles of trash for others to clean up unlike marches sponsored by the left.
A detailed report with several photos and videos of this otherwise invisible event was found at Heavy.com. According to the Religion News Service (RNS), Franklin Graham described the purpose of the prayer march this way:
It's important that men and women of God come to Washington, and let's call on his name and ask for his help[.] ... We are so divided, politically, morally, spiritually. We're just divided. We pray that God can help unite this nation to be truly the United States of America.
The RNS also reported political overtones despite Graham's insistence that the march is not an effort to encourage voting or to rally evangelicals to the polls. His stated agenda was to get people to repent and pray. However, the RNS reported that Graham echoed several GOP talking points. But then again, the election this November 3 could determine whether the left's war on our religious freedom will succeed or fail, so injecting some partisan politics makes sense.
Nearly a century ago, Antonio Gramsci, the father of cultural Marxism, proposed a long-term goal that explains the purpose of the left's current war on Christianity. He said, "Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society." Gramsci's plan has achieved remarkable success this century, making this election a potential game-changer. Trump and now Amy Coney Barrett are in the way. Choose your candidates wisely.
NOTE: When Phyllis Schlafly founded Eagle Forum, the name of the organization was taken from the Scripture used in this article. It is an inspiring place to focus as we go through these last days prior to Election Day. 
