The Phyllis Schlafly Report
by John and Andy Schlafly
While large corporations dominate the news and the lobbying in D.C., economists have long known that small business is the real engine to drive economic growth. Headlines about big business are more likely to mention “massive layoffs” than any hiring plans.
Small business and innovation by small inventors are essential to our economy, as some of them will become the big employers of tomorrow. Kodak and Xerox were just two of the successful businesses founded on an idea of a small inventor, and a patent that secured for him the fruits of his labor.
Yet today 80% of challenged patents are invalidated in some way by the Patent and Trademark Office, without the patent owner ever getting his day in court. Imagine the outrage if homes or other property were taken away by an administrative agency without a court hearing.
On Monday, in Oil States v. Greene’s Energy, the Supreme Court held lively oral argument in a challenge supported by small inventors to how the federal government is taking away their property in deprivation of their Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. Several Justices expressed dismay at how our patent system, once the envy of the world, has denigrated into a victim of the administrative state.
Due to a federal law enacted in 2011, the America Invents Act, the Patent Office changes its mind and tosses out most of the patents that it previously issued, if someone asks it to. Anyone – a competitor, a disgruntled employee, or even a stranger – can ask the Patent Office to strike down a previously issued patent, without the right of the patent-holder to have a trial in court.
During the one-hour hearing before the Supreme Court, Justice Breyer expressed alarm at how a patent can be in existence for 10 years, with $40 billion invested in developing it, and “then suddenly somebody comes in and says: Oh, oh, we want it reexamined, not in court but by the Patent Office.” Phyllis Schlafly opposed this bad law at the time, but corporate lobbyists pushed it through.
Our economy depends heavily on new inventions to grow, because cheaper labor will always be available in other countries. Our competitors, such as China, recognize how important innovation is, and they force American companies to share the secrets of our inventions with them.
The result has been devastating to the real elements of economic growth: jobs and wages. Neither has improved in years.
Only 63% of potential workers are actually working in the United States. This labor participation rate is near its 38-year record low, set during the Obama Administration.
Likewise, real wages actually decreased in October, and over the past year wages have barely kept up with inflation. This is in sharp contrast with nearly two decades ago, when hourly pay was increasing at a much healthier rate of 4%.
When the Governor of Virginia issues a press release to brag about a company in his State creating merely 15 new jobs, as Democratic Governor McAuliffe did on Monday, it underscores how scarce good jobs are. Pandering to lobbyists of big corporations, as Congress does, will not help.
The American economy grew fastest when the incentives of our unique patent system existed for small inventors. Buoyed by the inventions of Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, our economy boomed in the late 1800s.
Thomas Edison obtained more than a thousand American patents, which enabled him to attract large investments. With such funding Edison was able to light up New York City in September of 1882, using his new electricity-generating power plant.
Raymond P. Niro has explained how important the rights of small inventors are to a prosperous future, in an article available on the helpful website IPWatchdog.com. He listed nearly three-dozen inventions that have changed the world, all by “individual inventors who ultimately formed companies to exploit their ideas, but who initially manufactured nothing.”
Justice Sotomayor asked rhetorically during oral argument on Monday, “If I own something, … how can a government agency take that right away without due process of law at all? Isn’t that the whole idea of Article III, that only a court can adjudicate that issue?”
Indeed, and it is ironic that while Congress talks about boosting our economy with a tax bill, it is actually the Supreme Court that may do more for job and wage growth if it rules in favor of small inventors in the Oil States case. Congress seems uninterested in helping small investors and small business, but the Court might.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously last year. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
No Thanksgiving at the Border
THE PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY REPORT
by John and Andy Schlafly
On the first day of Thanksgiving week, U.S. Border Patrol agent Rogelio Martinez died and an unidentified second agent was seriously injured as they patrolled a lonely stretch of Interstate 10 in west Texas, near the Mexican border. The agents’ injuries were apparently caused by grapefruit-sized rocks thrown by men who had illegally crossed the border in an area where, as the New York Times reports, “drug and human trafficking are common.”
The U.S. Border Patrol has tallied 720 assaults on border officers in the last fiscal year, and 38 agents have been killed in the line of duty since 2003. You’d think the dangerous assaults on federal agents would have given pause to the federal judge in San Francisco who was considering a lawsuit challenging President Trump’s crackdown on sanctuary cities, but no.
Judge William Orrick went right ahead on Monday night with his 28-page order declaring a nationwide permanent injunction against the president’s effort to punish sanctuary cities with the loss of federal funds. Judge Orrick was named to the federal bench in 2013 after he bundled at least $200,000 for Obama and donated another $30,800 to groups supporting him.
As U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said last week in his address to the Federalist Society, “an increasing number of district courts are taking the dramatic step of issuing nationwide injunctions that block the entire U.S. government from enforcing a statute nationwide. In effect, single judges are making themselves super-legislators for the entire United States.”
“The Supreme Court has consistently and repeatedly made clear that courts should limit relief to the parties before them,” General Sessions continued. “So if lower courts continue to ignore that precedent, then the Supreme Court should send that message again.”
Last month California became a sanctuary state when Governor Jerry Brown signed a new law that limits what state and local officials can say to federal immigration officers about people detained by police or awaiting trial. It also prohibits law enforcement from inquiring about a person's immigration status.
The law, known as SB 54, was championed by state senate president pro tem Kevin de Leon, who is running to replace Dianne Feinstein in the U.S. Senate. If elected, he would represent a state that is home to more than 2.3 million illegal aliens – a state where 45 percent of the population told the Census Bureau that a language other than English is spoken at home.
The harm of sanctuary policies is illustrated by the case of Nery Israel Estrada-Margos, who was arrested by Santa Rosa, California police on August 18 after allegedly beating his girlfriend, Veronica Cabrera Ramirez, to death. The illegal alien had been arrested two weeks earlier, on August 2, for domestic violence, but released because he had no prior convictions.
The sheriff of Santa Rosa county, which has its own sanctuary policy, defended the prior release by claiming he gave a heads-up to agents of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In fact, local officials gave ICE only 16 minutes to travel over 60 miles, and the man was gone by the time ICE got there.
Similar atrocities have occurred in other sanctuary jurisdictions, which are mostly found in the 20 so-called blue states that voted for Hillary Clinton for president. In Maryland near Washington, D.C., Montgomery County officials ignored a detainer from ICE in order to release Mario Granados-Alvarado, who broke into an unmarked police car and stole an AR-15 and ammunition from the officer’s trunk.
Near the town of Brentwood on New York’s Long Island, three more young bodies were found bearing the marks of ritual killing by the gang called MS-13. They were Angel Soler, 15, from Honduras, who had been hacked to death with a machete; Javier Castillo, 16, from El Salvador; and Kerin Pineda, 19, from Honduras.
In Massachusetts, the popular columnist and talk-show host Howie Carr identified an assortment of violent crimes recently committed by “Third World illegal-alien criminals.” In just the last few weeks a Cambodian, an African, a Salvadoran, a Dominican, a Vietnamese, a Chinese, and a Liberian were charged or convicted of murder, assault, drug trafficking, identity fraud and resisting a federal officer.
The tax reform bill moving through Congress plugs one of the ways in which illegal aliens have been supporting themselves with federal tax credits. The bill requires a valid Social Security number to claim the Additional Child Tax Credit, under which $4.2 billion a year has been paid out to illegal aliens who lack a valid number.
That’s fine as far as it goes, but child tax credits should require a valid ID from both parents, not just one. An even better reform, which is not currently in the bill, would be to prohibit employers from getting a business tax deduction from wages paid to unauthorized alien workers.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, $165 billion a year in deductible wages is currently being paid to illegal workers, thereby saving their employers about $25.4 billion a year in federal taxes. Plugging that gap would yield $254 billion over 10 years which could support additional tax cuts for law-abiding Americans.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously last year. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.
by John and Andy Schlafly
On the first day of Thanksgiving week, U.S. Border Patrol agent Rogelio Martinez died and an unidentified second agent was seriously injured as they patrolled a lonely stretch of Interstate 10 in west Texas, near the Mexican border. The agents’ injuries were apparently caused by grapefruit-sized rocks thrown by men who had illegally crossed the border in an area where, as the New York Times reports, “drug and human trafficking are common.”
The U.S. Border Patrol has tallied 720 assaults on border officers in the last fiscal year, and 38 agents have been killed in the line of duty since 2003. You’d think the dangerous assaults on federal agents would have given pause to the federal judge in San Francisco who was considering a lawsuit challenging President Trump’s crackdown on sanctuary cities, but no.
Judge William Orrick went right ahead on Monday night with his 28-page order declaring a nationwide permanent injunction against the president’s effort to punish sanctuary cities with the loss of federal funds. Judge Orrick was named to the federal bench in 2013 after he bundled at least $200,000 for Obama and donated another $30,800 to groups supporting him.
As U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said last week in his address to the Federalist Society, “an increasing number of district courts are taking the dramatic step of issuing nationwide injunctions that block the entire U.S. government from enforcing a statute nationwide. In effect, single judges are making themselves super-legislators for the entire United States.”
“The Supreme Court has consistently and repeatedly made clear that courts should limit relief to the parties before them,” General Sessions continued. “So if lower courts continue to ignore that precedent, then the Supreme Court should send that message again.”
Last month California became a sanctuary state when Governor Jerry Brown signed a new law that limits what state and local officials can say to federal immigration officers about people detained by police or awaiting trial. It also prohibits law enforcement from inquiring about a person's immigration status.
The law, known as SB 54, was championed by state senate president pro tem Kevin de Leon, who is running to replace Dianne Feinstein in the U.S. Senate. If elected, he would represent a state that is home to more than 2.3 million illegal aliens – a state where 45 percent of the population told the Census Bureau that a language other than English is spoken at home.
The harm of sanctuary policies is illustrated by the case of Nery Israel Estrada-Margos, who was arrested by Santa Rosa, California police on August 18 after allegedly beating his girlfriend, Veronica Cabrera Ramirez, to death. The illegal alien had been arrested two weeks earlier, on August 2, for domestic violence, but released because he had no prior convictions.
The sheriff of Santa Rosa county, which has its own sanctuary policy, defended the prior release by claiming he gave a heads-up to agents of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In fact, local officials gave ICE only 16 minutes to travel over 60 miles, and the man was gone by the time ICE got there.
Similar atrocities have occurred in other sanctuary jurisdictions, which are mostly found in the 20 so-called blue states that voted for Hillary Clinton for president. In Maryland near Washington, D.C., Montgomery County officials ignored a detainer from ICE in order to release Mario Granados-Alvarado, who broke into an unmarked police car and stole an AR-15 and ammunition from the officer’s trunk.
Near the town of Brentwood on New York’s Long Island, three more young bodies were found bearing the marks of ritual killing by the gang called MS-13. They were Angel Soler, 15, from Honduras, who had been hacked to death with a machete; Javier Castillo, 16, from El Salvador; and Kerin Pineda, 19, from Honduras.
In Massachusetts, the popular columnist and talk-show host Howie Carr identified an assortment of violent crimes recently committed by “Third World illegal-alien criminals.” In just the last few weeks a Cambodian, an African, a Salvadoran, a Dominican, a Vietnamese, a Chinese, and a Liberian were charged or convicted of murder, assault, drug trafficking, identity fraud and resisting a federal officer.
The tax reform bill moving through Congress plugs one of the ways in which illegal aliens have been supporting themselves with federal tax credits. The bill requires a valid Social Security number to claim the Additional Child Tax Credit, under which $4.2 billion a year has been paid out to illegal aliens who lack a valid number.
That’s fine as far as it goes, but child tax credits should require a valid ID from both parents, not just one. An even better reform, which is not currently in the bill, would be to prohibit employers from getting a business tax deduction from wages paid to unauthorized alien workers.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, $165 billion a year in deductible wages is currently being paid to illegal workers, thereby saving their employers about $25.4 billion a year in federal taxes. Plugging that gap would yield $254 billion over 10 years which could support additional tax cuts for law-abiding Americans.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously last year. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.
The Sexual Revolution Turns Ugly
Stephen Baskerville writes in Crisis magazine:
The Sexual Revolution is now out of control. Initially promising freedom, like all revolutions, it has entered something like its Reign of Terror phase and is devouring its own children. As with other revolutions, it is not because the revolutionaries enjoy broad popular support; it is because civic and religious leaders are confused, divided, and cowed into silence. Those whom one expects to impose some order on all this—conservative politicians, religious leaders, civil libertarians, journalists, scholars—are either hiding under the table or signaling their virtue by themselves fanning the flames of a hysteria that they show no interest in trying to understand. ...This appears to have been written before many additional allegations that have underlined his main points.
What we do have—as many long ago warned we would have—is a highly sexualized culture controlled by men and women who have succeeded in changing the terms of sexuality because they have both ideological and pecuniary interests in using sex as a financial tool and a political weapon. ...
Now that Secretary DeVos has made it safe to do so, conservative pundits—who for years remained mute as other journalists and a few scholars risked their careers and reputations to blow the whistle—are now coming out of the woodwork to trumpet their own virtue. Even the National Review, which for years studiously looked the other way in the face of rampant injustice, and even supported the hysterics, has suddenly discovered that the witch hunt, about which they were told for years, is real.
Thursday, November 16, 2017
Why Democrats won in Virginia
Ann Coulter writes on why Democrats won in Virginia:
What happened was: Democrats brought in new voters. In 1970, only one out of every 100 Virginians was foreign-born. By 2012, one in nine Virginians was foreign-born.A comment says European immigrants are also socialists, and vote Democrat.
The foreign-born vote overwhelmingly, by about 80 percent, for Democrats. They always have and they always will—especially now that our immigration policies aggressively discriminate in favor of the poorest, least-educated, most unskilled people on Earth. They arrive in need of a LOT of government services.
According to the Pew Research Center, 75 percent of Hispanic immigrants and 55 percent of Asian immigrants support bigger government, compared to just over 40 percent of the general public. Even third-generation Hispanics support bigger government by 58 percent.
Polls show that immigrants are far more likely to support Obamacare and affirmative action than the general public, and are far less likely to support gun rights and capitalism.
Tuesday, November 14, 2017
Roy Moore and the Double Standard
THE PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY REPORT
by John and Andy Schlafly
Personal scandals by Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, and Barney Frank are just fine with the liberal media, who endorsed them for election and re-election. Ted Kennedy was celebrated as the Lion of the Democratic Party for 40 years despite having driven a young woman off the bridge at Chappaquiddick and abandoning her there to drown.
But woe to any conservative candidate, such as Roy Moore, who might have an imperfection in his distant past. Somehow that renders him unfit for elective office in D.C., according to the same people who supported Bill Clinton throughout the scandal concerning his conduct with Monica Lewinsky in the White House.
The double standard in American politics needs to stop if we are going to make America great again. Voters overcame the double standard by electing Donald Trump as president, despite the Billy Bush tapes and unproven allegations by women, and Roy Moore should do likewise in the upcoming Senate election in Alabama.
The criticism of Roy Moore is not about something that happened 5, 10, 20, or even 30 years ago. The accusations against Moore, which he has denied, relate to misdemeanors he supposedly committed in December 1977 and January 1979, nearly 40 years ago.
Marrying later in life has become the norm today, but for most of American history it was considered normal and even desirable for a young woman to marry, or at least become engaged, in her teenage years. Only in the last two decades has the median age of first marriage risen to 27 for females and 29 for males.
In 1977, the year Roy Moore supposedly flirted with a teenage waitress at the Olde Hickory House in Gadsden, Alabama, half of all young women in America were married by the age of 21. By her own account, as she read her tearful statement under the watchful eye of Gloria Allred, the now 56-year-old woman refused Roy Moore’s advances because she already had a boyfriend, thereby conceding that she wasn’t too young to have one.
In that same year of 1977, a prominent feminist lawyer named Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that the “age of consent” for sexual acts should be lowered to the age of 12. In her book entitled “Sex Bias in the U.S. Code,” the future Supreme Court Justice also called for repealing laws against statutory rape, bigamy, prostitution, and sex trafficking because they perpetuate a stereotype that such laws are needed to “protect weak women from bad men.”
Ginsburg has never disavowed her radical writings, so it is particularly hypocritical for feminists to criticize Roy Moore’s alleged dating of teenage girls as though there was anything improper about it. As usual the feminists want to have it both ways, as they sanctimoniously insist that Roy Moore quit the race for dating teenage girls when he was a 32-year-old bachelor.
Liberals and the Establishment hate Roy Moore for his conservative positions today, not what he allegedly did 40 years ago as an unmarried district attorney looking for a future wife. Judge Moore subsequently married his beautiful wife Kayla, who had been a runner-up for Miss Alabama, when she was22 24 and he was 38.
If elected, Roy Moore would join a U.S. Senate in which one Democratic member, Bob Menendez, is on trial for allegedly accepting bribes, including the use of a private jet to Paris followed by three nights in a $1,500-a-night hotel room for Menendez and his girlfriend. The same people who are calling on Roy Moore to step aside have failed to call on Menendez to resign for the many felonies of which he was charged.
The Establishment has insulted Alabama voters who have a right to decide the election for their Senate seat, not Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the rest of the D.C. swamp. McConnell staked his future on trying to defeat Roy Moore in the September primary, but Moore won by a landslide precisely because voters reject the same-old, accomplish-nothing politics of both parties in Washington.
The allegations against Roy Moore pale by comparison to what is the norm in Hollywood, which has long been one of the biggest financial backers of the Democrat Party. First they ridiculed Roy Moore for supposedly being too much of a goody two-shoes, and now they criticize him for supposedly being too much like themselves.
We cannot make America great again if unproven allegations are allowed on the eve of elections to ambush only conservative candidates. Those who had any beef about something Roy Moore did nearly 40 years ago should have spoken up long before now, or forever held their peace as voters pick the best candidate for the future: Roy Moore.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously last year. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.
by John and Andy Schlafly
Personal scandals by Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, and Barney Frank are just fine with the liberal media, who endorsed them for election and re-election. Ted Kennedy was celebrated as the Lion of the Democratic Party for 40 years despite having driven a young woman off the bridge at Chappaquiddick and abandoning her there to drown.
But woe to any conservative candidate, such as Roy Moore, who might have an imperfection in his distant past. Somehow that renders him unfit for elective office in D.C., according to the same people who supported Bill Clinton throughout the scandal concerning his conduct with Monica Lewinsky in the White House.
The double standard in American politics needs to stop if we are going to make America great again. Voters overcame the double standard by electing Donald Trump as president, despite the Billy Bush tapes and unproven allegations by women, and Roy Moore should do likewise in the upcoming Senate election in Alabama.
The criticism of Roy Moore is not about something that happened 5, 10, 20, or even 30 years ago. The accusations against Moore, which he has denied, relate to misdemeanors he supposedly committed in December 1977 and January 1979, nearly 40 years ago.
Marrying later in life has become the norm today, but for most of American history it was considered normal and even desirable for a young woman to marry, or at least become engaged, in her teenage years. Only in the last two decades has the median age of first marriage risen to 27 for females and 29 for males.
In 1977, the year Roy Moore supposedly flirted with a teenage waitress at the Olde Hickory House in Gadsden, Alabama, half of all young women in America were married by the age of 21. By her own account, as she read her tearful statement under the watchful eye of Gloria Allred, the now 56-year-old woman refused Roy Moore’s advances because she already had a boyfriend, thereby conceding that she wasn’t too young to have one.
In that same year of 1977, a prominent feminist lawyer named Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that the “age of consent” for sexual acts should be lowered to the age of 12. In her book entitled “Sex Bias in the U.S. Code,” the future Supreme Court Justice also called for repealing laws against statutory rape, bigamy, prostitution, and sex trafficking because they perpetuate a stereotype that such laws are needed to “protect weak women from bad men.”
Ginsburg has never disavowed her radical writings, so it is particularly hypocritical for feminists to criticize Roy Moore’s alleged dating of teenage girls as though there was anything improper about it. As usual the feminists want to have it both ways, as they sanctimoniously insist that Roy Moore quit the race for dating teenage girls when he was a 32-year-old bachelor.
Liberals and the Establishment hate Roy Moore for his conservative positions today, not what he allegedly did 40 years ago as an unmarried district attorney looking for a future wife. Judge Moore subsequently married his beautiful wife Kayla, who had been a runner-up for Miss Alabama, when she was
If elected, Roy Moore would join a U.S. Senate in which one Democratic member, Bob Menendez, is on trial for allegedly accepting bribes, including the use of a private jet to Paris followed by three nights in a $1,500-a-night hotel room for Menendez and his girlfriend. The same people who are calling on Roy Moore to step aside have failed to call on Menendez to resign for the many felonies of which he was charged.
The Establishment has insulted Alabama voters who have a right to decide the election for their Senate seat, not Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the rest of the D.C. swamp. McConnell staked his future on trying to defeat Roy Moore in the September primary, but Moore won by a landslide precisely because voters reject the same-old, accomplish-nothing politics of both parties in Washington.
The allegations against Roy Moore pale by comparison to what is the norm in Hollywood, which has long been one of the biggest financial backers of the Democrat Party. First they ridiculed Roy Moore for supposedly being too much of a goody two-shoes, and now they criticize him for supposedly being too much like themselves.
We cannot make America great again if unproven allegations are allowed on the eve of elections to ambush only conservative candidates. Those who had any beef about something Roy Moore did nearly 40 years ago should have spoken up long before now, or forever held their peace as voters pick the best candidate for the future: Roy Moore.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously last year. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
Never-Trumpers’ Violence Goes Unpunished
The Phyllis Schlafly Report
by John and Andy Schlafly
Today is the 365th day after President Trump was elected president. Yet like a few Japanese soldiers after World War II, there are still pockets of holdouts who refuse to accept Trump’s leadership.
Some holdouts can be found among professors on college campuses, where the feminist culture remains scornful of President Trump. Other holdouts are holed up within the federal bureaucracy, where workers continue to block the agenda that Trump was elected to implement.
Pop psychologists say there are five stages of grief. First there is denial, and then anger or resistance, and beyond that there is acceptance, reconstruction and hope.
Democrats and Republican Never-Trumpers have long been in the stage of denial, as displayed by the books of Hillary Clinton, Donna Brazile, Jeff Flake, and the Bushes. Sen. Jeff Flake, facing a certain landslide defeat in his own primary due to his continuing denial of Trump, seemed finally to accept reality when he decided not to seek reelection, despite being one of the youngest senators.
The peaceful deniers do not pose a threat to our Republic, but the violent objectors do. This began on Inauguration Day, when hundreds of anarchists rioted in downtown Washington, D.C., smashing windows at McDonalds, Starbucks, and Bank of America.
The media have failed to sharply criticize the anti-Trump violence, and the Department of Justice has been slow in prosecuting it. It seems that crimes against almost anyone other than Trump supporters qualify as hate crimes, while authorities turn the other way to allow Leftists to commit violence against those on the side of our President.
When a burly man rushed toward President Trump from behind during a rally at an airport hangar in Ohio last year, as captured on national television, he was merely charged with a misdemeanor and ultimately fined only $250. His slap-on-the-wrist punishment of one-year probation was lifted before he served even half of it.
Hate-filled acts of violence by the Left have dominated the headlines for much of this year. In June a supporter of Bernie Sanders shot up a baseball practice by Republican Congressmen, and in September a refugee gunned down church attendees in Tennessee.
When a Leftist goes on a shooting rampage and then kills himself, or is killed by a bystander, then there may not be much to prosecute. But last Friday a frightening assault against a leading conservative in the U.S. Senate, Rand Paul, has left much to prosecute in order to deter future attacks like it.
The brutal attack by an outspoken liberal against Sen. Paul was cowardly, to put it mildly. Senator Paul had been peacefully mowing his own lawn while wearing sound protectors, when his assailant sneaked up behind him to hit him so hard that it broke five of Senator Paul’s ribs and caused lung contusions.
It bloodied Senator Paul’s face, too, which suggests that the assailant did not merely “tackle” Senator Paul as initial media reports described. Instead, the substantial injuries suggest that this was a calculated attempt to inflict pain on the conservative senator.
The assailant was a wealthy middle-aged man who, like the murderer Stephen Paddock in Las Vegas, apparently had lots of time on his hands. Rene Boucher, aged 59, is listed by a Kentucky government website as being a retired physician who no longer practices medicine.
Like most of the other perpetrators of recent violence, Boucher is a registered Democrat who has posted rants against President Donald Trump. Boucher has advocated for gun control but apparently was just fine with an ambush of a U.S. Senator that injured him with physical violence.
The Department of Justice spends many millions searching for non-existent crimes by supporters of Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate will be without one of its finest members for some time due to this attack on him by a Democrat.
Boucher’s attorney quickly insisted that the attack has nothing to do with politics. Yet Boucher has not yet publicly provided a real apology or plausible explanation for his violent ambush.
This was the second time that Senator Paul was subjected to an ambush, the first being the shooting on the ballfield near D.C. where the unarmed conservative Representative Steve Scalise was gunned down in that politically motivated ambush. Yet the Department of Justice has apparently done little to protect Trump supporters since.
Imagine the outrage if any of the above acts had been by a registered Republican against a liberal politician. There would be deafening calls for prosecution of such conduct as a hate crime, and a flurry of immediate activity at the Justice Department to deter repetition of such a crime.
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
Today is the 365th day after President Trump was elected president. Yet like a few Japanese soldiers after World War II, there are still pockets of holdouts who refuse to accept Trump’s leadership.
Some holdouts can be found among professors on college campuses, where the feminist culture remains scornful of President Trump. Other holdouts are holed up within the federal bureaucracy, where workers continue to block the agenda that Trump was elected to implement.
Pop psychologists say there are five stages of grief. First there is denial, and then anger or resistance, and beyond that there is acceptance, reconstruction and hope.
Democrats and Republican Never-Trumpers have long been in the stage of denial, as displayed by the books of Hillary Clinton, Donna Brazile, Jeff Flake, and the Bushes. Sen. Jeff Flake, facing a certain landslide defeat in his own primary due to his continuing denial of Trump, seemed finally to accept reality when he decided not to seek reelection, despite being one of the youngest senators.
The peaceful deniers do not pose a threat to our Republic, but the violent objectors do. This began on Inauguration Day, when hundreds of anarchists rioted in downtown Washington, D.C., smashing windows at McDonalds, Starbucks, and Bank of America.
The media have failed to sharply criticize the anti-Trump violence, and the Department of Justice has been slow in prosecuting it. It seems that crimes against almost anyone other than Trump supporters qualify as hate crimes, while authorities turn the other way to allow Leftists to commit violence against those on the side of our President.
When a burly man rushed toward President Trump from behind during a rally at an airport hangar in Ohio last year, as captured on national television, he was merely charged with a misdemeanor and ultimately fined only $250. His slap-on-the-wrist punishment of one-year probation was lifted before he served even half of it.
Hate-filled acts of violence by the Left have dominated the headlines for much of this year. In June a supporter of Bernie Sanders shot up a baseball practice by Republican Congressmen, and in September a refugee gunned down church attendees in Tennessee.
When a Leftist goes on a shooting rampage and then kills himself, or is killed by a bystander, then there may not be much to prosecute. But last Friday a frightening assault against a leading conservative in the U.S. Senate, Rand Paul, has left much to prosecute in order to deter future attacks like it.
The brutal attack by an outspoken liberal against Sen. Paul was cowardly, to put it mildly. Senator Paul had been peacefully mowing his own lawn while wearing sound protectors, when his assailant sneaked up behind him to hit him so hard that it broke five of Senator Paul’s ribs and caused lung contusions.
It bloodied Senator Paul’s face, too, which suggests that the assailant did not merely “tackle” Senator Paul as initial media reports described. Instead, the substantial injuries suggest that this was a calculated attempt to inflict pain on the conservative senator.
The assailant was a wealthy middle-aged man who, like the murderer Stephen Paddock in Las Vegas, apparently had lots of time on his hands. Rene Boucher, aged 59, is listed by a Kentucky government website as being a retired physician who no longer practices medicine.
Like most of the other perpetrators of recent violence, Boucher is a registered Democrat who has posted rants against President Donald Trump. Boucher has advocated for gun control but apparently was just fine with an ambush of a U.S. Senator that injured him with physical violence.
The Department of Justice spends many millions searching for non-existent crimes by supporters of Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate will be without one of its finest members for some time due to this attack on him by a Democrat.
Boucher’s attorney quickly insisted that the attack has nothing to do with politics. Yet Boucher has not yet publicly provided a real apology or plausible explanation for his violent ambush.
This was the second time that Senator Paul was subjected to an ambush, the first being the shooting on the ballfield near D.C. where the unarmed conservative Representative Steve Scalise was gunned down in that politically motivated ambush. Yet the Department of Justice has apparently done little to protect Trump supporters since.
Imagine the outrage if any of the above acts had been by a registered Republican against a liberal politician. There would be deafening calls for prosecution of such conduct as a hate crime, and a flurry of immediate activity at the Justice Department to deter repetition of such a crime.
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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