THE PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY REPORT
by John and Andy Schlafly
In pardoning Sheriff Joe Arpaio, President Trump illustrated why he is a cut above other politicians. Without waiting for judicial activism to drag on for years in the Ninth Circuit, Trump used his constitutional authority to stop the long-running witch-hunt against a good man who has devoted 50 years to law enforcement.
Trump’s pardon of Sheriff Joe was the kind of Trumpesque move that millions of Americans have been waiting for. Trump acted on his own instincts, and perhaps even against his legal advisers who have been urging him to adapt to business-as-usual in D.C., rather than changing it.
Trump’s audacious pardon confirmed why Phyllis Schlafly saw in Donald Trump something she had not seen in any other presidential candidate since she wrote her classic “A Choice Not An Echo” more than 50 years ago. Sheriff Joe is hated by the kingmakers who want open borders, and Trump’s pardon delivered a stunning setback to their globalist agenda.
In 2012, Phyllis wrote about how the pro-amnesty crowd waged an expensive campaign that year to defeat Sheriff Joe, but he won his reelection at the age of 81. Sheriff Joe stood up against Obama, and liberals have been determined for years to punish Joe.
A decade ago Phyllis and others repeatedly urged President George W. Bush to pardon two courageous border patrol agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, who had been unjustly sentenced to 11 and 12 years in prison for doing their job in shooting a drug smuggler near the Mexican border. The smuggler was merely wounded in his buttocks, while our border patrol agents were sent to prison for more than a decade.
Yet GWB would not pardon the agents, even after one of them suffered a beating in prison at the hands of convicts hostile to law enforcement agents. Instead, GWB waited until his last full day in office, and then merely commuted their sentences, leaving the agents to linger for additional weeks in prison and be hampered in finding good jobs after they were finally released.
Trump’s decisive pardon of Sheriff Joe is in welcome contrast to the effete leadership of the past. Sheriff Joe was elected six times by the fourth largest county in America, Maricopa County in Arizona, a hotbed of illegal immigration and widespread crime caused by the illegals whom Joe worked overtime to arrest.
Trump’s pardon of Sheriff Joe was a necessary step to curb the misuse of the federal courts, which are now stacked with Obama and Clinton appointments who repeatedly rule in favor of liberal groups and against the will of the American people. In what took GWB years to do only incompletely on his last full day in office, it took only a few days for Trump to do completely at the first opportunity.
The ACLU did not like Sheriff Joe’s approach to illegal immigration, and they used the federal courts to take punitive action against him. Without the benefit of a jury trial, a federal judge held that the publicly elected Sheriff Joe was in criminal contempt in how he did his job in protecting the American people against illegal aliens.
The court ruling was contrary to the testimony of every witness in Sheriff Joe’s civil case, which had been brought by the ACLU. Sheriff Joe, now age 85, faced six months in jail and further litigation that would bankrupt him.
Presidents should not wait for the legal system to destroy anyone before issuing a pardon to cut off the abuse. The justice in President Trump’s pardon is not merely that he exonerated Sheriff Joe, but that President Trump did it quickly to prevent further injustice against this hero.
Although the presidential power to pardon is clear, criticism of Trump has ranged from the inane to the absurd. Some even objected that President Trump issued his pardon of Sheriff Joe during Hurricane Harvey, as though a president should allow a natural disaster to block his decision-making on all other important issues.
Trump pointed out to a hostile press corps on Monday that President Clinton issued many pardons of shady characters. Obama, for his part, granted a record number of commutations while he was president, none as distinguished as Sheriff Joe.
Prior Republican presidents would have been too cowardly to pardon Sheriff Joe, and Republican leadership in Congress pathetically criticizes Trump now. But the need to check judicial supremacy requires acting promptly to block the overreach, and Trump’s pardon of Sheriff Joe proved why he was Phyllis Schlafly’s choice, not an echo.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously on September 6.
Tuesday, August 29, 2017
Saturday, August 26, 2017
Men's site praises Phyllis
Return of Kings is a web site for men with a variety of commentary. Some of it is self-emprovement, some of it is political, and some covers other topics. It is distinctly anti-feminist and politically incorrect. Here is a recent essay:
I endorse Roosh’s polemic against educating women beyond high school. Ask yourself a simple question next time you see a university girl: would her time be better spent studying and preparing for a job, or should she spend it as a mother and homemaker, hence allowing a suitable man to take her place at work? In 99% of cases, the answer is the latter; a girl fulfills her comparative advantage at home. ...The article goes on to praise these four women.
It is, nonetheless, instructive to focus on the One Percenter woman: that rare bird who attains masculine heights of greatness, but only at great cost.
To make my case, I focus on four brilliant women: Ann Coulter, Camille Paglia, Phyllis Schlafly, and Marie Curie. I choose these women on purpose, for they are truly exceptional.
Thursday, August 24, 2017
Some still believe in free speech
Some comments are here. Unfortunately, Apple, Google, and many of our political leaders have turned against free speech.
The ACLU apologized for using a white baby.
‘Where Does It Stop?’
THE PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY REPORT
by John and Andy Schlafly
“Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments,” President Trump tweeted last week. “You can’t change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson – who’s next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish!”
The mob violence did not stop with Confederate generals, but quickly extended to statues of ordinary soldiers, and then to other great historical figures. Christopher Columbus was attacked with a hatchet in Detroit, Abraham Lincoln was burned in Chicago, and the recently canonized Father Junipero Serra was spray-painted with the word “murder” at Mission San Fernando, California.
In Annapolis, Maryland, a sculpture of Chief Justice Roger Taney was hoisted from its massive pedestal and hidden in an undisclosed location as payback for Taney’s opinion in the 160-year-old Dred Scott case. In Baltimore a Columbus monument erected in 1792 was attacked with a sledgehammer and in New York City, the Council Speaker has demanded a review of the massive, 76-foot-high sculpture at the center of Columbus Circle.
After President Trump asked “Where does it stop?,” some amateur historians responded by claiming that Robert E. Lee was a “traitor” who committed “treason” against the United States. Such comments are ignorant and wrong, for the simple reason that the 11 Confederate states that Lee fought for are now part of the United States.
The Fourteenth Amendment, which became part of the Constitution in 1868, sets forth the conditions under which the defeated Southern states were readmitted to the United States on an equal basis with all other states. Nearly all who fought for Southern independence were restored to full citizenship on an equal footing with their counterparts who fought for the Union of North and South.
A previous generation of Americans, including those who actually fought in the Civil War, debated whether to charge General Lee and other rebels as traitors. They wisely decided not to go down that road, and it’s too late to revisit their decision now.
Some Republican weak sisters – the same people who timidly proposed civil unions as an alternative to gay marriage (remember how that turned out?) – have offered a compromise. Instead of destroying the offending statues, move them to museums or Confederate cemeteries.
Gentlemen may cry peace, peace, but there is no peace: even cemeteries are not safe from the mob bent on the destruction of history. In Los Angeles, an online petition forced the Hollywood Forever cemetery to remove a 92-year-old hunk of granite that marks – “lest we forget” – the nearby graves of 37 Confederate soldiers.
In Madison, Wisconsin, the leftwing mayor removed a two-foot plaque marking the graves of 140 Confederate soldiers who died in a Union prison at Camp Randall after surrendering in battle. In Boston, where over 600 Confederates were held at Fort Warren, a granite slab bearing the names of 13 who died in prison was boarded up so their names cannot be seen.
History teaches what happens when a revolution gets out of hand, and it’s not pretty. When law and order are overthrown, the mob rules.
When the French Revolution reached its peak of mob violence in 1793, the revolutionaries were not satisfied with slicing off the heads of their deposed king, Louis XVI, and his wife, Marie Antoinette. They also invaded the church of St. Denis, where French kings and queens for the preceding 1,000 years had been buried under monuments and statues that marked their lives and reigns.
The mob opened more than 100 tombs and scattered the remains so that the royal bones could never again be identified and reassembled. Then they marched to Notre Dame Cathedral, where they destroyed all vestiges of Christianity and turned the sanctuary into a “temple of reason.”
In our hometown of Alton, Illinois, two Civil War-related monuments have stood for more than a century at opposite ends of town. On the east side, a flamboyant 110-foot column, topped by a winged sculpture of an angel and flanked by a pair of enormous eagles, honors Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, the anti-slavery newspaper publisher who died defending his printing press from a mob on Nov. 7, 1837.
On the quieter western edge of town, a simple but elegant granite obelisk, 58 feet tall, marks the final resting place of 1,354 Confederate soldiers who died as prisoners of war in Alton’s federal prison. More than 13,000 Confederate soldiers and civilians were imprisoned there under horrific conditions during the war, resulting in as many as six to 10 deaths a day.
For as long as civilization has existed, the end of life on earth has been a time to remember the dead and to reflect on what their lives meant to us who survive. It’s time for the grave robbers and defilers to stand down, or if they will not, to be put down by the law. Requiescat in pace.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously on September 6.
These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.
by John and Andy Schlafly
“Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments,” President Trump tweeted last week. “You can’t change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson – who’s next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish!”
The mob violence did not stop with Confederate generals, but quickly extended to statues of ordinary soldiers, and then to other great historical figures. Christopher Columbus was attacked with a hatchet in Detroit, Abraham Lincoln was burned in Chicago, and the recently canonized Father Junipero Serra was spray-painted with the word “murder” at Mission San Fernando, California.
In Annapolis, Maryland, a sculpture of Chief Justice Roger Taney was hoisted from its massive pedestal and hidden in an undisclosed location as payback for Taney’s opinion in the 160-year-old Dred Scott case. In Baltimore a Columbus monument erected in 1792 was attacked with a sledgehammer and in New York City, the Council Speaker has demanded a review of the massive, 76-foot-high sculpture at the center of Columbus Circle.
After President Trump asked “Where does it stop?,” some amateur historians responded by claiming that Robert E. Lee was a “traitor” who committed “treason” against the United States. Such comments are ignorant and wrong, for the simple reason that the 11 Confederate states that Lee fought for are now part of the United States.
The Fourteenth Amendment, which became part of the Constitution in 1868, sets forth the conditions under which the defeated Southern states were readmitted to the United States on an equal basis with all other states. Nearly all who fought for Southern independence were restored to full citizenship on an equal footing with their counterparts who fought for the Union of North and South.
A previous generation of Americans, including those who actually fought in the Civil War, debated whether to charge General Lee and other rebels as traitors. They wisely decided not to go down that road, and it’s too late to revisit their decision now.
Some Republican weak sisters – the same people who timidly proposed civil unions as an alternative to gay marriage (remember how that turned out?) – have offered a compromise. Instead of destroying the offending statues, move them to museums or Confederate cemeteries.
Gentlemen may cry peace, peace, but there is no peace: even cemeteries are not safe from the mob bent on the destruction of history. In Los Angeles, an online petition forced the Hollywood Forever cemetery to remove a 92-year-old hunk of granite that marks – “lest we forget” – the nearby graves of 37 Confederate soldiers.
In Madison, Wisconsin, the leftwing mayor removed a two-foot plaque marking the graves of 140 Confederate soldiers who died in a Union prison at Camp Randall after surrendering in battle. In Boston, where over 600 Confederates were held at Fort Warren, a granite slab bearing the names of 13 who died in prison was boarded up so their names cannot be seen.
History teaches what happens when a revolution gets out of hand, and it’s not pretty. When law and order are overthrown, the mob rules.
When the French Revolution reached its peak of mob violence in 1793, the revolutionaries were not satisfied with slicing off the heads of their deposed king, Louis XVI, and his wife, Marie Antoinette. They also invaded the church of St. Denis, where French kings and queens for the preceding 1,000 years had been buried under monuments and statues that marked their lives and reigns.
The mob opened more than 100 tombs and scattered the remains so that the royal bones could never again be identified and reassembled. Then they marched to Notre Dame Cathedral, where they destroyed all vestiges of Christianity and turned the sanctuary into a “temple of reason.”
In our hometown of Alton, Illinois, two Civil War-related monuments have stood for more than a century at opposite ends of town. On the east side, a flamboyant 110-foot column, topped by a winged sculpture of an angel and flanked by a pair of enormous eagles, honors Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, the anti-slavery newspaper publisher who died defending his printing press from a mob on Nov. 7, 1837.
On the quieter western edge of town, a simple but elegant granite obelisk, 58 feet tall, marks the final resting place of 1,354 Confederate soldiers who died as prisoners of war in Alton’s federal prison. More than 13,000 Confederate soldiers and civilians were imprisoned there under horrific conditions during the war, resulting in as many as six to 10 deaths a day.
For as long as civilization has existed, the end of life on earth has been a time to remember the dead and to reflect on what their lives meant to us who survive. It’s time for the grave robbers and defilers to stand down, or if they will not, to be put down by the law. Requiescat in pace.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously on September 6.
These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
The Myths of ‘Diversity’
THE PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY REPORT
by John and Andy Schlafly
The world’s fastest human, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, retired last week from the sport of track and field. He won multiple gold medals in three consecutive Olympic games, setting world records in both the 100-meter and 200-meter events.
Like most Jamaicans – and most sprinters – Usain Bolt is of West African descent. No white or Asian man, and no woman of any race, is good enough to compete at his level.
Is it fair that in more than 30 years, no white man has won an Olympic medal in the 100-meter dash? In every Olympics since 1988, every finalist in the 100-meter dash has been a black male.
Usain Bolt’s amazing career provides a useful corrective to the politically correct assumption that all types of human activity must be “diverse.” Wherever competition determines the outcome, we see differences in human achievement.
We can all work to improve our skills with the talents God gave us, but not everyone can excel at the highest level of competition. Talents are not equally distributed, and some human differences are too great to overcome, even with hard work.
The same week that Usain Bolt retired, we learned that a woman dropped out of training to become a Navy SEAL. The unnamed female midshipman (can we still use that word?) failed to complete the initial three-week qualifying course, or “pipeline,” which is followed by six grueling months of training.
No woman has ever been good enough to become a Navy SEAL. Among other things, you have to lift yourself from the ocean into a small boat, a feat that requires upper-body strength that women just don’t have.
Women can excel in many fields that don’t require upper-body strength – writing computer code, for example. But as we learned from the 10-page memorandum written by James Damore, the 28-year-old engineer recently fired by Google, not that many women are interested in doing that kind of work.
Google has been under federal investigation to explain why only 21 percent of its technical workforce is female. In his well-researched paper seeking to explain that disparity, Damore mentioned various reasons why more men than women gravitate to tech work.
Researchers have found gender differences in infants, which suggests a biological origin. Baby girls respond more to faces, while baby boys respond to shiny objects. A few years later, girls seek relationships with people, while boys are interested in trucks, battles and adventures.
For a host of reasons, Damore wrote, “women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things. Women on average are more cooperative. Women on average look for more work-life balance, while men have a higher drive for status on average.”
Damore’s memo did not sit well with Google’s vice president for diversity and inclusion, who said it “advanced incorrect assumptions about gender.” The next day Damore was fired for “perpetuating gender stereotypes” and escorted off the premises, known as the Googleplex, with the promise that his personal effects would be mailed to him.
The Google engineer was careful to concede that “I’m not saying diversity is bad, or that we shouldn’t try to correct for existing biases,” but that wasn’t enough to save his job. The feminist dogma is that anything less than 50-50 representation can only be the result of discrimination, oppression and sexism.
Damore pointed out, “When it comes to diversity and inclusion, Google’s left bias has created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence.” He added that at Google, and presumably other major corporations, there is “an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed.”
The CEOs of some of the biggest American corporations are “grandstanders,” as President Trump puts it, by quitting his Manufacturing Council in feigned protest over Trump's supposed lack of sensitivity to diversity issues. But fortunately, Trump does stand up for freedom of speech, and the CEOs of companies like Google that profit from freedom of speech should be the first to defend him.
It is ironic that Google wants freedom on the internet and insists on what is called "net neutrality" to defend Google's own self-interest, but at the same time censors speech among its employees. Google itself would never have become so profitable without the free speech that is allowed on the internet, and yet becomes the censor that it urges government not to be.
The most competitive math contest for college students is the annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, sometimes called the "Olympics" of that field. So rarely do any women place among the top contestants that there is a separate award for women who do well on the grueling exam.
Phyllis Schlafly had granddaughters who excel in math and engineering, including one who became an actuary and another who majored in Mechanical Engineering. But Phyllis Schlafly was always the first to point out that there are important differences between men and women, and boys and girls, and it is harmful to pretend otherwise.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously on September 6.
These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.
by John and Andy Schlafly
The world’s fastest human, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, retired last week from the sport of track and field. He won multiple gold medals in three consecutive Olympic games, setting world records in both the 100-meter and 200-meter events.
Like most Jamaicans – and most sprinters – Usain Bolt is of West African descent. No white or Asian man, and no woman of any race, is good enough to compete at his level.
Is it fair that in more than 30 years, no white man has won an Olympic medal in the 100-meter dash? In every Olympics since 1988, every finalist in the 100-meter dash has been a black male.
Usain Bolt’s amazing career provides a useful corrective to the politically correct assumption that all types of human activity must be “diverse.” Wherever competition determines the outcome, we see differences in human achievement.
We can all work to improve our skills with the talents God gave us, but not everyone can excel at the highest level of competition. Talents are not equally distributed, and some human differences are too great to overcome, even with hard work.
The same week that Usain Bolt retired, we learned that a woman dropped out of training to become a Navy SEAL. The unnamed female midshipman (can we still use that word?) failed to complete the initial three-week qualifying course, or “pipeline,” which is followed by six grueling months of training.
No woman has ever been good enough to become a Navy SEAL. Among other things, you have to lift yourself from the ocean into a small boat, a feat that requires upper-body strength that women just don’t have.
Women can excel in many fields that don’t require upper-body strength – writing computer code, for example. But as we learned from the 10-page memorandum written by James Damore, the 28-year-old engineer recently fired by Google, not that many women are interested in doing that kind of work.
Google has been under federal investigation to explain why only 21 percent of its technical workforce is female. In his well-researched paper seeking to explain that disparity, Damore mentioned various reasons why more men than women gravitate to tech work.
Researchers have found gender differences in infants, which suggests a biological origin. Baby girls respond more to faces, while baby boys respond to shiny objects. A few years later, girls seek relationships with people, while boys are interested in trucks, battles and adventures.
For a host of reasons, Damore wrote, “women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things. Women on average are more cooperative. Women on average look for more work-life balance, while men have a higher drive for status on average.”
Damore’s memo did not sit well with Google’s vice president for diversity and inclusion, who said it “advanced incorrect assumptions about gender.” The next day Damore was fired for “perpetuating gender stereotypes” and escorted off the premises, known as the Googleplex, with the promise that his personal effects would be mailed to him.
The Google engineer was careful to concede that “I’m not saying diversity is bad, or that we shouldn’t try to correct for existing biases,” but that wasn’t enough to save his job. The feminist dogma is that anything less than 50-50 representation can only be the result of discrimination, oppression and sexism.
Damore pointed out, “When it comes to diversity and inclusion, Google’s left bias has created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence.” He added that at Google, and presumably other major corporations, there is “an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed.”
The CEOs of some of the biggest American corporations are “grandstanders,” as President Trump puts it, by quitting his Manufacturing Council in feigned protest over Trump's supposed lack of sensitivity to diversity issues. But fortunately, Trump does stand up for freedom of speech, and the CEOs of companies like Google that profit from freedom of speech should be the first to defend him.
It is ironic that Google wants freedom on the internet and insists on what is called "net neutrality" to defend Google's own self-interest, but at the same time censors speech among its employees. Google itself would never have become so profitable without the free speech that is allowed on the internet, and yet becomes the censor that it urges government not to be.
The most competitive math contest for college students is the annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, sometimes called the "Olympics" of that field. So rarely do any women place among the top contestants that there is a separate award for women who do well on the grueling exam.
Phyllis Schlafly had granddaughters who excel in math and engineering, including one who became an actuary and another who majored in Mechanical Engineering. But Phyllis Schlafly was always the first to point out that there are important differences between men and women, and boys and girls, and it is harmful to pretend otherwise.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously on September 6.
These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.
Tuesday, August 8, 2017
Chicago Leads the Resistance
THE PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY REPORT
by John and Andy Schlafly
With a rising level of violence and urban decay plaguing Chicago, you’d think Mayor Rahm Emanuel would be working overtime to police his city. More than 400 homicides have been recorded there so far this year, more than New York and Los Angeles combined.
Mayor Emanuel should be using all available resources to protect Chicago’s law-abiding residents from the violent crime. Instead of doing his duty, Mayor Emanuel has decided to sue the Trump administration by filing a 46-page lawsuit against Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Mayor Emanuel wants a federal judge to stop Sessions from withholding federal grants from sanctuary cities. But a federal law (8 U.S. Code Section 1373) provides that no State or local government may “prohibit, or in any way restrict” its officials, including the police, from providing the federal government with information regarding the citizenship or immigration status of persons they have in custody or even at a brief traffic stop.
Mayor Emanuel’s lawsuit claims that the federal government has to abide by something called the Welcoming City Ordinance, which was announced by previous Chicago mayors in 1985 and 1989 and then passed by the city council in 2006 and 2012. Someone should remind the mayor that he took an oath to support the U.S. Constitution, which provides for the supremacy of federal law over local ordinances.
Justice Department lawyers will respond to Mayor Emanuel’s lawsuit in due course, but the attorney general is not backing down. “No amount of federal taxpayer dollars will help a city that refuses to help its own residents,” Jeff Sessions said in a statement.
“To a degree perhaps unsurpassed by any other jurisdiction, the political leadership of Chicago has chosen deliberately and intentionally to adopt a policy that obstructs this country’s lawful immigration system,” Sessions added.
Thomas Homan, the no-nonsense head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), spoke out against Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Philadelphia as cities that harbor illegal immigrants. “Sanctuary cities, in my opinion, are un-American,” he said in a recent interview.
“In the last year, I’ve read all these stories of how the crime rate has exploded in Chicago, and the president’s trying to help them. We’re stepping up our game in Chicago. Is Chicago doing everything that it can to decrease the criminal activity up there? I say no,” Homan said.
“I say no because if you’re an illegal alien, and you get arrested in the United States for a crime, and you get booked in Cook County, Chicago, my officers aren’t allowed in the jail. They don’t accept our detainers. They don’t share information with us,” he said.
“Why would Cook County not want my officers, federal law enforcement officers, to go talk to somebody that committed yet another crime against the citizens of this country? It’s ludicrous,” the acting head of ICE continued.
“These jurisdictions, these cities, are choosing to shield people who violated the laws of this country. So, what’s next? Sanctuary cities for people who don’t want to pay their taxes?”
San Francisco became America’s best-known sanctuary city when Kate Steinle was shot and killed there on July 1, 2015 by an illegal immigrant who was released from custody by the sheriff despite 7 felony convictions and 5 orders of deportation. In accordance with a city ordinance, the sheriff refused to honor a detainer from ICE so federal officials could intercept Juan Francisco López-Sánchez while he was in custody.
A few months after Kate Steinle’s preventable death, another illegal immigrant, Pedro Figueroa-Zarceno was in police custody for an outstanding warrant. Perhaps because outrage over Kate Steinle’s unnecessary death was bringing unwanted attention to San Francisco, this time the police turned the alien over to federal authorities for deportation to El Salvador.
Like many people who were ordered deported, Pedro didn’t actually go home when ordered to do so. He remained in San Francisco while continuing to resist deportation, and in 2016 his next hearing was scheduled for 2019.
Last week, the San Francisco city attorney announced an agreement to settle a lawsuit by paying Pedro $190,000. So the illegal immigrant not only gets to stay, but if the city council approves the settlement, he’ll also get a lump sum from the taxpayers to enjoy life while waiting for his deportation hearing.
Seattle is another sanctuary city where local officials have joined the resistance against federal immigration laws, but that may change following a horrible crime committed in a Seattle suburb by a so-called Dreamer. Salvador Diaz-Garcia is accused of brutally attacking and raping a 19-year-old woman while she was on the treadmill of the gym in her apartment complex.
The crime occurred in the small suburb of Burien, which had its own sanctuary policy, but residents there are up in arms. Following a petition signed by 3,600 of Burien’s 33,000 residents, the city council has just voted 6-1 to allow the voters in November to decide whether to repeal the sanctuary ordinance.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously on September 6.
These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.
by John and Andy Schlafly
With a rising level of violence and urban decay plaguing Chicago, you’d think Mayor Rahm Emanuel would be working overtime to police his city. More than 400 homicides have been recorded there so far this year, more than New York and Los Angeles combined.
Mayor Emanuel should be using all available resources to protect Chicago’s law-abiding residents from the violent crime. Instead of doing his duty, Mayor Emanuel has decided to sue the Trump administration by filing a 46-page lawsuit against Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Mayor Emanuel wants a federal judge to stop Sessions from withholding federal grants from sanctuary cities. But a federal law (8 U.S. Code Section 1373) provides that no State or local government may “prohibit, or in any way restrict” its officials, including the police, from providing the federal government with information regarding the citizenship or immigration status of persons they have in custody or even at a brief traffic stop.
Mayor Emanuel’s lawsuit claims that the federal government has to abide by something called the Welcoming City Ordinance, which was announced by previous Chicago mayors in 1985 and 1989 and then passed by the city council in 2006 and 2012. Someone should remind the mayor that he took an oath to support the U.S. Constitution, which provides for the supremacy of federal law over local ordinances.
Justice Department lawyers will respond to Mayor Emanuel’s lawsuit in due course, but the attorney general is not backing down. “No amount of federal taxpayer dollars will help a city that refuses to help its own residents,” Jeff Sessions said in a statement.
“To a degree perhaps unsurpassed by any other jurisdiction, the political leadership of Chicago has chosen deliberately and intentionally to adopt a policy that obstructs this country’s lawful immigration system,” Sessions added.
Thomas Homan, the no-nonsense head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), spoke out against Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Philadelphia as cities that harbor illegal immigrants. “Sanctuary cities, in my opinion, are un-American,” he said in a recent interview.
“In the last year, I’ve read all these stories of how the crime rate has exploded in Chicago, and the president’s trying to help them. We’re stepping up our game in Chicago. Is Chicago doing everything that it can to decrease the criminal activity up there? I say no,” Homan said.
“I say no because if you’re an illegal alien, and you get arrested in the United States for a crime, and you get booked in Cook County, Chicago, my officers aren’t allowed in the jail. They don’t accept our detainers. They don’t share information with us,” he said.
“Why would Cook County not want my officers, federal law enforcement officers, to go talk to somebody that committed yet another crime against the citizens of this country? It’s ludicrous,” the acting head of ICE continued.
“These jurisdictions, these cities, are choosing to shield people who violated the laws of this country. So, what’s next? Sanctuary cities for people who don’t want to pay their taxes?”
San Francisco became America’s best-known sanctuary city when Kate Steinle was shot and killed there on July 1, 2015 by an illegal immigrant who was released from custody by the sheriff despite 7 felony convictions and 5 orders of deportation. In accordance with a city ordinance, the sheriff refused to honor a detainer from ICE so federal officials could intercept Juan Francisco López-Sánchez while he was in custody.
A few months after Kate Steinle’s preventable death, another illegal immigrant, Pedro Figueroa-Zarceno was in police custody for an outstanding warrant. Perhaps because outrage over Kate Steinle’s unnecessary death was bringing unwanted attention to San Francisco, this time the police turned the alien over to federal authorities for deportation to El Salvador.
Like many people who were ordered deported, Pedro didn’t actually go home when ordered to do so. He remained in San Francisco while continuing to resist deportation, and in 2016 his next hearing was scheduled for 2019.
Last week, the San Francisco city attorney announced an agreement to settle a lawsuit by paying Pedro $190,000. So the illegal immigrant not only gets to stay, but if the city council approves the settlement, he’ll also get a lump sum from the taxpayers to enjoy life while waiting for his deportation hearing.
Seattle is another sanctuary city where local officials have joined the resistance against federal immigration laws, but that may change following a horrible crime committed in a Seattle suburb by a so-called Dreamer. Salvador Diaz-Garcia is accused of brutally attacking and raping a 19-year-old woman while she was on the treadmill of the gym in her apartment complex.
The crime occurred in the small suburb of Burien, which had its own sanctuary policy, but residents there are up in arms. Following a petition signed by 3,600 of Burien’s 33,000 residents, the city council has just voted 6-1 to allow the voters in November to decide whether to repeal the sanctuary ordinance.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously on September 6.
These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.
Tuesday, August 1, 2017
Amid Staff Changes, the Trump Train Rolls On
THE PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY REPORT
by John and Andy Schlafly
During a week in which the media were obsessed with reporting on a handful of personnel changes among the White House staff, the Trump administration moved forward on several fronts to implement policies the president campaigned on. Here are some welcome actions that you may have missed.
Fulfilling Trump’s promise to crack down on sanctuary cities, last Tuesday Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced exactly how that will be done. The Justice Department awards $380 million annually in grants to local police departments, and at least 10 percent of that money has been going to agencies with sanctuary policies.
That same evening, the president went to Youngstown, Ohio, one of the areas where Trump attracted the support of thousands of people who had previously voted for Obama. Some 15,000 supporters crammed into an auditorium that was designed for 6,000.
“American cities should be sanctuaries for law-abiding Americans,” Trump said to the cheering crowd. “The predators and criminal aliens who poison our communities with drugs and prey on innocent young people will find no safe haven anywhere in our country.”
The next day, Trump’s policy was reinforced by Thomas Homan, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Homan is now the nation’s top immigration enforcement officer, after working his way up through the ranks of the Border Patrol.
Homan is the point man to enforce the deportation policies previously issued by the outgoing secretary of homeland security, General John F. Kelly, who is now the White House chief of staff. We say “point man” advisedly because arresting criminal aliens is a man’s job, and the burly Tom Homan is clearly fit for the task.
Homan created a stir back in June when he told a House appropriations subcommittee that “If you’re in this country illegally, you need to be worried. No population is off the table.” The next day he said he had “no regrets” for that statement, based on the experience of finding the bodies of 19 illegal immigrants, including a 5-year-old boy, who suffocated inside a locked tractor trailer in Victoria, Texas in 2003.
“Sanctuary cities are a criminal’s biggest friend,” Homan declared, hinting that local officials risk being prosecuted for violating the federal law that punishes anyone who tries to “conceal, harbor or shield” someone who is in this country illegally.
On Friday, President Trump went to a section of Long Island, NY, where the Salvadoran youth gang called MS-13 has been running wild. “Since January 2016,” Trump said to a crowd of 500 uniformed local police officers, “MS-13 gang members have brutally murdered 17 beautiful young lives in this area on Long Island alone.”
Murder is normally a local issue, but not in this case. MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, is a transnational organization almost entirely composed of young citizens of other countries, primarily El Salvador.
MS-13 had been a declining problem until the summer of 2014 when 150,000 unaccompanied alien minors from Central America illegally crossed our southern border. Instead of turning them back to their own countries, Barack Obama treated them as refugees and released them into unsuspecting communities all over the country, including 4,000 to that area of Long Island.
No good deed goes unpunished, and Trump’s speech was predictably protested by groups that advocate amnesty for illegal immigration. “We are outraged to see President Trump use local tragedies to fuel his hateful agenda,” said community agitators who claimed that “what’s really causing this” is “the severe underfunding of our public schools and the lack of access to programs.”
As if on cue, the enforcement agenda of Donald Trump and Tom Homan was justified by the news that a criminal illegal alien named Sergio Jose Martinez broke into a 65-year-old woman’s home in Portland, Oregon, tied her up and sexually assaulted her, and then stole her car, after local authorities refused to honor an ICE detainer. Next he allegedly assaulted a second woman at knifepoint that same day.
Martinez was known as a meth-using street person with a long record of arrests, and had previously been deported at least 20 times, yet he was released by the local sheriff in defiance of ICE’s request. Earlier this year the Multnomah County Sheriff sent a letter to reassure illegal immigrants that “The sheriff’s office does not hold people in county jails on ICE detainers or conduct any immigration enforcement actions.”
To round out the week of good news, on Sunday Chuck Todd of Meet the Press went to Kenosha, Wisconsin to sample the opinion of “everyday voters” on the question, “Has Donald Trump been a successful president?” One of Kenosha’s everyday voters, Rosemary Brunner, spoke for many when she replied: “I think with him, God has given this country a second chance to redeem itself.”
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously on September 6.
These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.
by John and Andy Schlafly
During a week in which the media were obsessed with reporting on a handful of personnel changes among the White House staff, the Trump administration moved forward on several fronts to implement policies the president campaigned on. Here are some welcome actions that you may have missed.
Fulfilling Trump’s promise to crack down on sanctuary cities, last Tuesday Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced exactly how that will be done. The Justice Department awards $380 million annually in grants to local police departments, and at least 10 percent of that money has been going to agencies with sanctuary policies.
That same evening, the president went to Youngstown, Ohio, one of the areas where Trump attracted the support of thousands of people who had previously voted for Obama. Some 15,000 supporters crammed into an auditorium that was designed for 6,000.
“American cities should be sanctuaries for law-abiding Americans,” Trump said to the cheering crowd. “The predators and criminal aliens who poison our communities with drugs and prey on innocent young people will find no safe haven anywhere in our country.”
The next day, Trump’s policy was reinforced by Thomas Homan, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Homan is now the nation’s top immigration enforcement officer, after working his way up through the ranks of the Border Patrol.
Homan is the point man to enforce the deportation policies previously issued by the outgoing secretary of homeland security, General John F. Kelly, who is now the White House chief of staff. We say “point man” advisedly because arresting criminal aliens is a man’s job, and the burly Tom Homan is clearly fit for the task.
Homan created a stir back in June when he told a House appropriations subcommittee that “If you’re in this country illegally, you need to be worried. No population is off the table.” The next day he said he had “no regrets” for that statement, based on the experience of finding the bodies of 19 illegal immigrants, including a 5-year-old boy, who suffocated inside a locked tractor trailer in Victoria, Texas in 2003.
“Sanctuary cities are a criminal’s biggest friend,” Homan declared, hinting that local officials risk being prosecuted for violating the federal law that punishes anyone who tries to “conceal, harbor or shield” someone who is in this country illegally.
On Friday, President Trump went to a section of Long Island, NY, where the Salvadoran youth gang called MS-13 has been running wild. “Since January 2016,” Trump said to a crowd of 500 uniformed local police officers, “MS-13 gang members have brutally murdered 17 beautiful young lives in this area on Long Island alone.”
Murder is normally a local issue, but not in this case. MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, is a transnational organization almost entirely composed of young citizens of other countries, primarily El Salvador.
MS-13 had been a declining problem until the summer of 2014 when 150,000 unaccompanied alien minors from Central America illegally crossed our southern border. Instead of turning them back to their own countries, Barack Obama treated them as refugees and released them into unsuspecting communities all over the country, including 4,000 to that area of Long Island.
No good deed goes unpunished, and Trump’s speech was predictably protested by groups that advocate amnesty for illegal immigration. “We are outraged to see President Trump use local tragedies to fuel his hateful agenda,” said community agitators who claimed that “what’s really causing this” is “the severe underfunding of our public schools and the lack of access to programs.”
As if on cue, the enforcement agenda of Donald Trump and Tom Homan was justified by the news that a criminal illegal alien named Sergio Jose Martinez broke into a 65-year-old woman’s home in Portland, Oregon, tied her up and sexually assaulted her, and then stole her car, after local authorities refused to honor an ICE detainer. Next he allegedly assaulted a second woman at knifepoint that same day.
Martinez was known as a meth-using street person with a long record of arrests, and had previously been deported at least 20 times, yet he was released by the local sheriff in defiance of ICE’s request. Earlier this year the Multnomah County Sheriff sent a letter to reassure illegal immigrants that “The sheriff’s office does not hold people in county jails on ICE detainers or conduct any immigration enforcement actions.”
To round out the week of good news, on Sunday Chuck Todd of Meet the Press went to Kenosha, Wisconsin to sample the opinion of “everyday voters” on the question, “Has Donald Trump been a successful president?” One of Kenosha’s everyday voters, Rosemary Brunner, spoke for many when she replied: “I think with him, God has given this country a second chance to redeem itself.”
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously on September 6.
These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.
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