Tea Party Patriots Ordinary citizens reclaiming America's founding principles.

Monday, January 30, 2017

Temporary ban on immigration: Is It Legal?

image credit: wisegeek
  
The media is going wild. President Trump fired Sally Yates, the Obama-appointed acting Attorney General, because she would not enforce Trump’s temporary suspension of immigration from seven Muslim majority counties known to aid, abet, and finance terrorists. The legality of President Trump’s EO is at issue, and if you are listening to any of the TV news analyses, his temporary ban is not legal, it’s not American, etc., even though it was reviewed and approved by the Dept. of Justice Office of Legal Counsel. 

Take a minute or two to read through Andrew McCarthy’s legal analysis at National Review. McCarthy was a federal prosecutor for the case against the Blind Sheik and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The concluding take-away:

One can debate the policy wisdom of the executive order, which is plainly a temporary measure while a more comprehensive and thoughtfully tailored policy is developed. The seven countries the president has singled out are surely hotbeds of radical Islam; but he has omitted other countries – e.g., Saudi Arabia, home to 15 of the 19 suicide-hijackers who attacked our country on 9/11 – that are also cauldrons of jihadism.

Furthermore, as I have argued, the real threat to be targeted is sharia-supremacist ideology, which is inherently hostile to the Constitution. Were we to focus our vetting, unapologetically, on that ideology (also known as “radical” or “political” Islam), it would be unnecessary to implement a categorical ban on Muslims or immigrants from majority-Muslim countries. That is critical because non-Islamist Muslims who can demonstrate loyalty to our constitutional principles should not be barred from admission; while Islamists, on the other hand, are not found only in Muslim-majority countries – other things being equal, a sharia supremacist from the banlieues of Paris poses as much of a threat as a sharia supremacist from Raqqa.

Yet, all that can be debated as we go forward. For now, there is no doubt that the executive order temporarily banning entry from specified Muslim-majority countries is both well within President Trump’s constitutional authority and consistent with statutory law.
But read the whole thing here.

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Sunday, January 29, 2017

A local union is cutting pension benefits

image credit: aarp

Yesterday, Jazz Shaw at the blog Hot Air reported (via the WaPo) on a development in Ohio:

In Cleveland, the Iron Workers Local 17 union has approved cuts to their pension plan to avoid having it become insolvent. The cuts will affect different workers by varying amounts depending on their individual circumstances, but everyone will be feeling the pinch.
. . .
The first thing to remember is that we’re talking about a private sector labor union, not one for government workers. The effects on retirees are going to be serious to be sure, but what are the other options? The union made promises to the workers which it wasn’t able to keep. This is a system which is much like any sort of general entitlement program in that it always requires growth, or at least stability. You have to have more people paying into the system than drawing out of it and if the numbers contract, the math immediately ceases working. (It’s the old question of how many people can ride in the cart as opposed to the number who are pulling it.)

[Shaw] pointed out the private sector aspect of this because the premise of the government guaranteeing these pension funds was always dubious at best. How is it that the taxpayers are on the hook for these shortfalls when the system becomes insolvent? I realize that’s not a solution, but the problem wasn’t created by the government in the first place and the taxpayers had no seat at the table when the deals were originally negotiated. But that’s not stopping Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, who is still pushing for a federal bailout of the plan.

The problem gets even more complex when we look at state pension plans which are hung around the necks of taxpayers.

Read the rest of the report here
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Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Liberals, conservatives, and the American right VS the American left


image credit:  historynet

Dennis Praeger makes the distinction between liberals and the American left:
Liberalism — which was anti-left, pro-American and deeply committed to the Judeo-Christian foundations of America; and which regarded the melting pot as the American ideal, fought for free speech for its opponents, regarded Western civilization as the greatest moral and artistic human achievement and viewed the celebration of racial identity as racism — is now affirmed almost exclusively on the right and among a handful of people who don’t call themselves conservative.
. . .
How are those of us who oppose left-wing nihilism — there is no other word for an ideology that holds Western civilization and America’s core values in contempt — supposed to unite with “educators” who instruct elementary school teachers to cease calling their students “boys” and “girls” because that implies gender identity? With English departments that don’t require reading Shakespeare in order to receive a degree in English? With those who regard virtually every war America has fought as imperialist and immoral? With those who regard the free market as a form of oppression? With those who want the state to control as much of American life as possible? With those who repeatedly tell America and its black minority that the greatest problems afflicting black Americans are caused by white racism, “white privilege” and “systemic racism”? With those who think that the nuclear family ideal is inherently misogynistic and homophobic? With those who hold that Israel is the villain in the Middle East? With those who claim that the term “Islamic terrorist” is an expression of religious bigotry?

He concludes his column by sounding the alarm:

With the defeat of the left in the last presidential election, the defeat of the left in two-thirds of the gubernatorial elections and the defeat of the left in a majority of House and Senate elections, this is likely the last chance liberals, conservatives and the right have to defeat the American left. But it will not happen until these groups understand that we are fighting for the survival of America no less than the Union troops were in the First Civil War.

We all have family or friends who would identify as classical “liberals.” In my own family, after years of conversations, several liberal relatives have moved into the “conservative” column. We also have family or friends who think of themselves as liberals but who actually fit Praeger’s definition of being on the American left. So far, conversations with them haven’t made any difference.

Read the rest of Praeger's column here
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CNN’s inauguration gigapixel

photo of the Inauguration posted at CNN, 
taken about an hour earlier than the image at the links below

Stop the presses! CNN posted something useful! Here is the link to CNN’s  gigapixel of Trump’s Inauguration. You’ve probably been watching the endless blathering about how many people watched the inauguration, what time the photos were taken of the crowds on the Mall, etc. Well, this photo “gigapixel” is a composite of photographs of the event that allows you to zoom in, zoom out, drag your cursor to move around, and see for yourself what the crowds looked like.
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Friday, January 20, 2017

Our new President

The Daily Mail UK is often first off the mark with photos. Here's the lead photo of President Trump taking the oath of office, with First Lady Melania holding the Bibles. And click here for more photos and the report.


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Inauguration of Donald J. Trump



RSBN LIVE Stream: The Inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States 1/20/17 (h/t CTH Sundance)
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Thursday, January 19, 2017

Democrats boycott the inauguration tomorrow



photo credit: mediatrackers

Adelle Nazarian at Breitbart reports:

At last count, over 50 Democrats have announced they will be skipping President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Friday, January 20.

The majority of them are from the deep blue state of California.

The full list is here. Ohio Representative Marcia Fudge is on that list. Cleveland.com article is here.
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