Monday, December 31, 2018

Shutdown Blues Will Grip Democrats

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Government shutdowns are supposed to favor Democrats, according to conventional wisdom. All they need do, pundits pompously declare, is wait patiently until the Republican President caves into their demands.

That is the mindset that brought us the current shutdown. Senate Democrats dug in and refused to approve the modest $5.7 billion in funding for the border wall as approved by the House of Representatives.

But President Trump’s approval rating has remained steady during the shutdown, according to the respected Hill-HarrisX survey. This is in contrast with how President Clinton’s approval rating plummeted 10 points during the 1995-96 shutdown.

This leaves Democrats in a quandary they did not expect. President Trump, unlike past Republican presidents, may stand his ground and refuse to buckle.

The shutdown disarms the Democrats of their most powerful weapon against Trump: investigations by the House of Representatives, soon to be controlled by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. With committee majorities starting in 2019, Democrats could serve subpoenas on anyone they choose, from Trump’s children to his biggest supporters.

Pelosi is lawyering-up with attorneys who want to impeach the president. Fourteen of the nation’s most aggressive and partisan lawyers are already working for Robert Mueller, but there is no shortage of liberal hacks anxious to take on the assignment of trying to bring down a conservative president.

The House Democrats plan to launch many investigations and hold numerous committee hearings against conservatives other than Trump. If someone turns on the lights, heats the buildings, pays the congressional staff, and serves the subpoenas, that is.

The shutdown postpones some of these bad things from happening. Liberals are not interested in working for free in a cold building, and investigations go nowhere if subpoenas cannot be enforced.

As Trump enjoys a rock-solid base of support, he is probably asking himself why he would want to fund Pelosi and the House Democrats to harass him, his family, and his supporters. The spectacle of Pelosi not having funds to accomplish her political mischief should be appealing to the president and all conservatives.

There has already been enough wasteful distraction caused by the funding of Robert Mueller and his search for non-existent crimes. The shutdown prevents a multiplication of that in the House.

The shutdown may even cause unexpected problems for the Mueller investigation itself, despite official denials. The Department of Justice insists that the Mueller probe will be unaffected by the shutdown, but reports are that President Trump thinks otherwise and he may well be right.

Federal district courts around the country are warning attorneys that court funding could run out by mid-January, which would place federal litigation on hold. Several federal courts have already suspended their pending cases involving the United States.

Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker will need to prioritize the urgent cases in the Department of Justice as resources dwindle and dry up in courthouses and in his department. It is difficult to see how Mueller’s searching for imaginary crimes would rank as more important than processing drug kingpins.

Mueller depends on support by the Department of Justice for serving subpoenas, bringing people into custody, and making court appearances. Whitaker could politely decline that support of Mueller due to the shutdown, as there is no reason why Mueller should get special treatment over other investigations.

Mueller has already run aground in his effort to hold a foreign corporation in contempt. Chief Justice John Roberts intervened in that potential abuse of power by Mueller, and has set a briefing scheduling before allowing Mueller to move forward on that front.

But heat and light will be needed at the federal courthouses to resolve that and other pending issues in the Mueller investigation. Staff may not show up unless paid, and Chief Justice Roberts will not be assuming the role of the clerk to accept newly filed briefs.

The Constitution may require keeping the lights on at the Supreme Court, although it is unclear who could enforce this if bills are not paid. The Constitution does not require continued funding for all other federal courts, which exist entirely at the discretion of Congress.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has long been a liberal hangout to interfere with job creation, suffered the same fate that its regulations have caused to many businesses. Last week the EPA furloughed 13,705 employees, telling them to stay home without pay.

That means a slowdown in EPA regulations and enforcement actions, which is good for the economy. It is a temporary hardship on the EPA employees, but far more employees of businesses hurt by EPA regulations have permanently lost their jobs because of it.

So what is the hurry for ending the shutdown? Stand strong, Mr. President, and watch the Democrats beat a path to your door to end the shutdown, on your terms.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Monday, December 24, 2018

Trump’s Christmas Echoes the One in 1776

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
by John and Andy Schlafly

For the 22nd time since 1975, an impasse between Congress and the President has resulted in a partial shutdown of non-essential government offices. Like the 21-day shutdown in 1995-96, this one is occurring over the Christmas holidays when little government work is done anyway.

Members of Congress went home after failing to approve a modest down-payment on essential border security. Thankfully, President Trump has stood strong for building a wall along our southern border, where over 100,000 people crossed illegally last year.

Of course the Republican Congress should have addressed this long ago, not days before they lose their majority in the House. It should not have required a successful “GoFundMe” fundraising effort for the wall to prod the House to finally authorize $5.7 billion to fund it.

Some Democrats are refusing to support a border wall merely because Trump supports it. As Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) said last week, “I talked to four Democrats that said: ‘Look, if you just stop calling it the wall, we’re in.’”

Democrats have thought that a shutdown always works to their advantage, but that calculation changed after Republicans benefited from the Schumer shutdown last January. Trump had generously offered to sign legislation protecting the children of illegal aliens, but his offer was rebuffed by Schumer and Pelosi.

Democrats claim they support “border security,” but what they really mean is money to process thousands of bogus claims of asylum by people hoping to land in the great American safety net while they wait for their claims to be heard. Trump has outfoxed the asylum industry by requiring claimants to remain in Mexico while they wait.

To reinforce his commitment to protect Americans first, the president also announced plans to withdraw troops from Syria, where ISIS has been decimated, along with a reduction of our involvement in the 17-year, no-win war in Afghanistan. He accepted the resignation of the defense secretary who disagreed with these decisions.

Among the D.C. swamp dwellers, many of the same people who resist building a wall on our own border insist that American troops be permanently deployed in faraway countries. They support an endless presence by our soldiers elsewhere, but oppose a wall to protect our own people from the influx of illegal aliens and drugs from Central America.

“We fight for the borders of other countries,” Trump tweeted on December 22, “but we won’t fight for the borders of our own!”

It’s time to recall the first government shutdown in American history, and how a future president won that battle with his bold, decisive action. It was in December of 1776, when General George Washington was camped along the Delaware River in northeastern Pennsylvania.

On December 12, 1776, Congress adjourned without extending the enlistments of American soldiers or approving their pay for the coming year. Members of Congress abandoned Philadelphia, where they had been meeting, because they feared the British troops nearby in New Jersey.

Once the soldiers’ enlistments ran out, the Continental Army would disband and soldiers would return to their farms in the 13 colonies. Some soldiers had already gone home, some were barefoot, food was running short, and winter was coming in.

But Washington was not going to give up the American cause without a fight. In an incredibly bold and risky maneuver, he decided to load his entire army ― men, horses and munitions ― into boats to cross the icy Delaware River on Christmas night.

To inspire his men, Washington ordered them to assemble for a public reading of Thomas Paine’s new pamphlet, “The American Crisis,” which had just been published on December 19: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

On December 23 and 24, many boats were collected and secured with the help of experienced seamen. The crossing began at sundown December 25, and lasted all night amid horrendous weather: rain, sleet, snow, ice, and winds that were called a hurricane.

It was daylight on December 26 when troops reassembled on the Jersey shore. They marched 9 miles to Trenton where they surprised and defeated a contingent of British-allied Hessian troops, took them prisoner and captured their food, supplies and horses.

That was the early turning point in the American Revolution, thanks to the leadership of George Washington against all odds. Trump displays the same kind of initiative needed to put our Nation back on the path sought by our Founders.

Amid the current Democrat-caused shutdown, Trump delivers to the People the best Christmas present a president can give: leadership to Make America Great Again.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

Entrapment of Flynn Takes Another Dark Turn

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Life in the Deep State took another dark turn on Tuesday, at the sentencing of Lt. General Michael T. Flynn that did not happen. Instead, he was asked if he had committed treason, which is something not even the partisan Mueller prosecutors ever considered charging him with.

This story would be suitable for Alice in Wonderland if it did not involve an injustice inflicted on an honorable man who risked his life for our Nation. Rather than being able to celebrate Christmas by putting this travesty behind him, Lt. Gen. Flynn is left wondering how his lifelong patriotism was called into question.

In a word, “entrapment” and an unconstitutional independent prosecutor are how the injustice against Lt. Gen. Flynn continues. He was ambushed by an interview that never should have occurred, misled into not having counsel present, and then left helpless against Mueller’s $50 million wrecking machine.

A mere four days after the inauguration of President Trump, then-FBI Director James Comey sent senior agents to ambush Lt. Gen. Flynn with a surprise interview. Comey admits that this was not ordinary procedure, and that proper protocol is to arrange such interviews through attorneys.

It was a setup of Lt. Gen. Flynn, with the since-discredited agents of the Deep State Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok playing their parts. Both have since been fired but as Shakespeare observed, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”

Lt. Gen. Flynn had been an outspoken supporter of President Trump which liberals consider unforgivable. Outside the federal courthouse on Tuesday, a crowd of Leftists chanted against him.

Flynn never would have been prosecuted by a properly functioning Department of Justice, but the unconstitutional Mueller investigation has spent more than a fortune hunting for crimes. The former National Security Advisor to President Trump would be a trophy for Mueller to justify his prosecutorial crusade, so after Flynn he went.

As a career veteran of the Armed Forces, Flynn lacked the resources to spend millions on attorneys to defend himself. A billionaire could have run multiple appeals of this case up to the Supreme Court, but Flynn’s career does not produce the war chest that businessmen have to dismiss these cases.

This Kafkaesque nightmare was supposed to end Tuesday morning at sentencing before the federal district court in D.C., where Flynn was expected to receive leniency. But instead the hearing unraveled when Judge Emmet G. Sullivan asked if Lt. Gen. Flynn’s conduct “rises to the level of treasonous activity.”

The unexpected question stung for the family of the man who has repeatedly risked his life defending our Nation. Even one of Mueller’s prosecutors then defended Lt. Gen. Flynn by stating that the investigation never considered charging Lt. Flynn with treason.

After a break, Judge Sullivan took back his question about treason, and urged everyone not to read too much into his comments. Judge Sullivan has been tough on prosecutors too, and a common mistake of bystanders is to place too much emphasis on speculative remarks in court.

But the emotional dismay at the injustice became too much at that point. Flynn’s attorneys felt compelled to request postponement of the sentencing, and the court requested a status report by March 13, 2019.

In the meantime, numerous secret filings in this case are not helping anyone except Mueller’s perpetual taxpayer-funded investigations of anyone he wants. Unsealing the records and removing his redactions would serve justice.

Judge Sullivan ordered Mueller to file a “302” report of the fateful interview of Lt. Gen. Flynn, which Mueller had long withheld from Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley. Mueller ultimately filed a heavily redacted “302” report with the district court on Monday, but he continues to conceal from the public how Flynn was entrapped by the Deep State.

On Tuesday Mueller submitted to the court yet another document under seal, which further withholds from the public what is really going on. All this is contrary to the Constitution, which requires that criminal trials be conducted in open court, and not be based on secret information.

The FBI already knew the answers to the questions it asked of Lt. Gen. Flynn during his fateful interview in January 2017, due to its secret wiretaps of his conversations. But entrapment may have been the goal of the Deep State, the term for the entrenched intelligentsia in D.C. that continued to oppose President Trump after his election by the American People.

We are more than two years past the presidential campaigns of 2016, and there is no plausible justification for Mueller to conceal so much information in his filings from the public that is footing Mueller’s bill. With no end in sight for Mueller’s probe, there should at least be some transparency.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Trump Derails the Marrakech Express

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

A new attempt to impose globalism unfolds in Marrakech, Morocco, under the guise of helping migrants. Most of the 193 countries in the United Nations convened there in order to create new international law to require every participating country to accept vast hordes of foreign migrants, and be subjected to this new form of globalism.

Any other president, Republican or Democrat, would probably welcome and join this undermining of national sovereignty. But in another reminder of how great Trump is, he leads the way in denouncing this virulent strain of globalism.

Called the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration, the Marrakech meeting would prevent the American people from deciding immigration policy for ourselves. Trump has posted multiple reasons why the United States and every country should reject this bad idea.

“We believe the Compact and the process that led to its adoption, including the New York Declaration, represent an effort by the United Nations to advance global governance at the expense of the sovereign right of States to manage their immigration systems in accordance with their national laws, policies, and interests.”

That sounds like something Phyllis Schlafly might have written during her lifelong opposition to treaties that undermine American interests. But the above statement was issued by none other than President Trump, and is available on the official usun.state.gov website.

“Decisions about how to secure its borders, and whom to admit for legal residency or to grant citizenship, are among the most important sovereign decisions a State can make, and are not subject to negotiation, or review” by international courts and documents, he explains.

In August, an international tribunal called the European Court of Human Rights commanded that Hungary provide food to migrants and refugees held in detention camps. It is no surprise that Hungary has joined the growing number of countries which are following President Trump’s bold leadership in rejecting the Compact.

Other countries imitating Trump by pulling out of this globalist Compact include Austria, Australia, Chile, the Czech Republic, Italy, Poland, Latvia, Slovakia and the Dominican Republic. Notice the immense diversity among nations rejecting this globalism.

Additional countries, including Bulgaria and Israel, are also considering getting out of this deal. The political coalition that rules Belgium has collapsed due to conservative opposition to how her prime minister has pushed that country into joining the Compact.

President Trump, in his official statement on behalf of the United States, properly criticizes the use of the legalistic name “Compact,” rather than the traditional labels of convention or a treaty. “Compact” implies binding legal obligations.

Proponents of global governance look for ways to bypass the Treaty Clause of the Constitution, which requires a supermajority of two-thirds approval by the Senate in order to ratify foreign treaties. Many treaties have been signed by American presidents but thankfully never ratified by the Senate, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris Agreement on so-called climate change.

President Obama approved both of those treaties, which were also deceptively named to avoid the use of the word “treaty.” Trump campaigned against them in 2016 and they have never become law.

“The Paris Agreement isn’t working out so well for Paris. Protests and riots all over France,” President Trump tweeted on Saturday morning about the violent protests there which have been the worst in decades.

The Compact on migration includes a “right to privacy” provision that is not recognized by international law, and should be rejected so that it is not misused to become some kind of international right to abortion. Most countries have strong pro-life laws and are subjecting themselves to judicial activism by an international tribunal if they remain in the Compact.

“Migration should not be governed by an international body unaccountable to our own citizens,” President Trump declared in a statement issued by the White House. He cited the Monroe Doctrine for the principle that we do not accept interference of foreign nations in our hemisphere.

It was nearly 200 years ago, in 1823, when President James Monroe promulgated that famous doctrine against European nations intermeddling in the affairs of the Americas. The Monroe Doctrine was based on the simple observation that the Old and New Worlds have different political systems and it is “dangerous to our peace and safety” to allow the systems to mix.

Likewise, it is dangerous to try to mix our American liberty and prosperity with migrants who may hate us, or at least not respect our culture and values. President Trump proves once again his tremendous leadership in being the first to reject the Compact, thereby setting a model which many other countries are following now.

As other countries are rejecting globalism thanks to President Trump, they are making their own countries great again.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, December 4, 2018

Trump Train Pauses for One Who Missed It

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Amid well-deserved praise for former President George H.W. Bush, unfortunately he did miss the Trump Train. Yet President Trump is showing his class by paying his respects anyway.

It is difficult to imagine two Republicans who are more different from each other than George H.W. Bush and Donald Trump. Bush based his career on the Establishment, while Trump rose by defying it.

Bush pushed for a “New World Order” and entangled us in foreign wars. Trump promotes national sovereignty and seeks to Make American Great Again.

Bush generally pandered to the liberal media, which mostly got its way with him. Trump is not afraid to take on liberals in the media and call them out.

Bush pledged “read my lips: no new taxes,” but then raised taxes anyway. Trump has not caved in on any of his campaign promises despite enormous pressure to do so.

Everything about Bush was a mixed bag, a compromise, and a combination of the bitter with the sweet. Everything about Trump is unambiguous, clear, and sharply defined.

Despite their contrasts and how the Bush family broke with precedent by refusing to support Trump, he has graciously put the federal government at the service of those honoring the 41st president. Now is a good time to observe how much the Republican Party has changed since it was Bush’s party.

The Bush political dynasty began when Bush’s father, Prescott Bush, was elected U.S. Senator from Connecticut in 1952. As a typical liberal Republican of that era, Prescott Bush voted to censure the anti-communist Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954, and backed his fellow eastern liberal Senator Henry Cabot Lodge’s last-ditch effort to stop the nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964.

Prescott Bush, who made his money on Wall Street as a partner of the leading Democratic power broker, W. Averell Harriman, was the epitome of the “eastern establishment.” Like his mentor, Nelson Rockefeller, Bush was an internationalist and a fanatical supporter of birth control, both domestically and around the world.

Senator Prescott Bush’s son George H.W. moved to Texas as young man, first Midland and then Houston, but the apple didn’t fall very far from the family tree. During his brief service in Congress, George H.W. Bush sponsored the landmark legislation that made family planning a federal priority, the program known as Title X, which distributes $56 million a year in taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood.

Bush was a supportive acolyte to Ronald Reagan during his eight years as vice president, but as President Bush he seemed to forget the lessons that made Reagan so successful. Reagan was not a globalist, but Bush was.

It was in a high-profile address to Congress on September 11, 1990, that Bush shocked Americans with his proclamation that it was time for a “New World Order.” Ronald Reagan would never have used that kind of language, which Bush kept repeating although he never defined it.

By launching the first Persian Gulf War in 1991, Bush changed American foreign policy from focusing on defense of the homeland to engaging in foreign interventionism. Bush’s war was the first of several futile attempts to impose Western values on Middle Easterners who lack the cultural conditions for democratic self-government.

President Trump, by contrast, has reclaimed and rehabilitated nationalism and America First. As he said in his address to the United Nations in September, “America is governed by Americans. We reject the ideology of globalism, and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism.”

Even when it comes to Planned Parenthood, Trump has turned the corner on Bush. New regulations published by the Trump administration would curtail taxpayer funding of groups like Planned Parenthood which violate federal law by using abortion as a method of family planning.

In remembering Bush 41, we should note his affection for our national pastime, ever since he was captain of his college baseball team. As president, Bush honored the holders of two of the most remarkable records in baseball history, both set in 1941: Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak and Ted Williams’ .406 season batting average.

Those records had stood for 50 years when President Bush welcomed the elderly DiMaggio and Williams to the White House in 1991. Another 27 years have gone by since then, but no other baseball player has ever come close to those feats.

Bush set important records of his own, which richly deserve the praise that he is receiving. He was the only president to have received the Distinguished Flying Cross, which he earned for having been shot down during a World War II bombing mission.

Bush also loyally stood by his Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas despite the all-out smear campaign by the Left to stop him. As Bush’s continuing legacy, Thomas has sided with Trump more than Bush did.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Trump Was Right To Rebuke Chief Justice Roberts

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

President Trump rightly rebuked Chief Justice Roberts for criticizing his factual statements about “Obama judges” consistently ruling against the Trump Administration. Liberals are gaming the court system by running to activist judges in San Francisco, Hawaii and Maryland to obstruct the will of the People who elected Trump.

John Roberts is not the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, or even the Chief Justice of all the federal courts. His office is the Chief Justice of the United States, which means he should be acting on behalf of all three branches of government, and not provincially defending lower court judges against justified criticism by the President.

As pointed out by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee who has been wonderful in confirming Trump’s nominees, Chief Justice Roberts was completely silent after the unjustified tongue-lashing given by then-President Obama against Supreme Court Justices during the 2010 State of the Union address. The double-standard in denouncing Trump now is striking.

President Trump was correct in saying that Obama-appointed judges have been unfair in issuing numerous sweeping rulings against the Trump agenda, which has necessitated quickly running those bad decisions up on appeal. Senseless delays and increased taxpayer expense have resulted from Roberts’ own failure to rein in the rampant judicial activism among certain lower courts, which he could curb.

"Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have 'Obama judges,' and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country," Trump tweeted after Roberts chided him. Indeed, nearly all of the high-profile injunctions against Trump have been by “Obama judges.”

San Francisco is nowhere near the southern border and there is no valid reason why liberal lawsuits against Trump’s immigration policies are repeatedly filed there. The apparent motivation is this: 11 out of the 14 active judges in that federal district were appointed by Obama, and Trump properly criticized how that one-sided venue has resulted in national injunctions against the President.

Chief Justice Roberts should check with his fellow Supreme Court Justices about how abusive these nationwide injunctions have been. Justice Clarence Thomas persuasively opposed these nationwide injunctions in an opinion that Roberts should have written or at least joined.

San Francisco is a favorite venue of the Resistance to Trump because appeals go from there to the Ninth Circuit, which Obama packed with seven lifetime appointments. The liberal California senators have failed to allow Trump to fill six vacancies on that circuit, which has long been notorious for being reversed, often unanimously, by the Supreme Court.

The Ninth Circuit even issued decisions by activist judge Stephen Reinhardt after he died on March 29th of this year, including a July 24th decision in which the other judges on the panel stated that Reinhardt had agreed with the court opinion even though he had died nearly four months earlier. Perhaps because a party complained, the Ninth Circuit later withdrew that decision.

Trump’s Solicitor General Noel Francisco is doing what he can to combat the judicial supremacy. He has taken the extraordinary step of asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear certain appeals without first awaiting decisions by the U.S. Circuit Courts that are packed with Obama nominees.

Unlike the President, the Supreme Court decides for itself how much work to do, which controversies to take up, and when to adjourn for its three-month summer vacation. The Court takes far fewer cases than it did a generation ago, and it is shocking how it increasingly fills its docket with easy, non-controversial cases.

A cursory glance at the cases the Court has decided to hear this Term reveals much that is insignificant, while Trump works overtime addressing crisis after crisis. Much of the Court’s time seems to be spent dodging abortion and other hot-button issues; the Court has deferred again and again cases concerning the simple authority of states to defund Planned Parenthood.

Chief Justice Roberts failed to join the dissent by two Justices, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, to the spectacle of putting the Trump Administration on trial in New York for including a question about citizenship in the census. One would think that the first and most important question in a census by any country, dating back to ancient Rome, would concern citizenship.

But Chief Justice Roberts and a majority of the Court have allowed an Obama-appointed judge – the brother of Obama’s chief economist – to put Trump officials on trial. No court would have put members of the Obama Administration on trial with respect to their policy decisions.

Perhaps Chief Justice Roberts is still smarting from criticisms of him by candidate Trump in 2016. But as the Chief Justice of the United States, Roberts should be defending the President rather than taking cheap shots at him.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Make Tijuana Great Again, and the White House Too

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The two-thousand-mile trek of migrants from Honduras arrived to an angry reception in Tijuana, just south of the California border. It was not President Donald Trump who shouted down the illegal aliens camped there, but Tijuana’s own mayor, along with many of his Mexican constituents.

“Make Tijuana Great Again” sported the Tijuana mayor, Juan Manuel Gastélum, on his bright red hat nearly identical to the one worn by President Trump. Hundreds of Tijuana residents turned out in agreement, chanting “Tijuana First” and similar slogans.

Well, how about that! The false narrative perpetrated by liberals that only extremists who voted for Donald Trump are against illegal immigration is disproven by Mexicans in Tijuana demanding that the migrants return home.

“I would dare say that not all of them are migrants,” Mayor Gastélum observed in Spanish during an interview on the Mexican Milenio television channel. He suggested that some of the migrants are criminals.

Many tough, angry-looking young men can be seen in images of the caravan. In one photo, a construction worker is seen defying the Mexican police with a vulgar gesture at them.

The migrants seem to have been coached, because one of them claimed that he was the victim of racism by the Mexican police. The culprit is not racism but globalism: the assault on national borders, which are essential to maintaining liberty and prosperity.

These migrants should be trying to make Honduras great again rather than crashing through borders to overrun places where they are not wanted. Anyone who can walk (or hitchhike) two thousand miles, like these migrants, can use their pent-up energy to improve their own country, instead of demanding handouts from Mexico or the United States.

Many migrants undoubtedly left behind women and children who depend on the support of the able-bodied young men who comprise the vast majority of the migrant caravan. The United States should not allow these migrants to abandon their responsibilities, but should send them back home to support their families.

But a federal judge in San Francisco just interfered with President Trump’s efforts to do exactly that. Despite how border control is an issue of national security under nearly exclusive presidential authority, Obama-appointed Judge Tigar took it upon himself to issue an injunction against the presidential proclamation that limited asylum applications by Central American migrants.

That leaves Trump with no good option: either appeal to the liberal Ninth Circuit, where the deck is stacked against him, or file an emergency petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, which rarely interferes in cases pending in lower courts.

Often the immigrants who cross the border illegally from Mexico are not even from Central or South America. Near Laredo, Texas, U.S. Border Patrol agents recently caught six young men trying to enter the United States illegally from far-away Bangladesh.

Official statistics show that 668 Bangladeshis were caught near our southern border during the twelve months ending on September 30, plus another 75 in October. There is big money in this, with the illegals or their sponsors paying up to $27,000 per person to be smuggled into the United States, as reported by Breitbart.com.

By now President Trump has appointed many judges to the federal bench, but the vetting of those nominees was cast in doubt by the ruling last week against the White House concerning CNN’s Jim Acosta. Despite how a man’s home is his castle under centuries of precedents, a Trump-appointed judge ruled that President Trump cannot promptly exclude a misbehaving reporter from the White House.

Only the most conservative judges should be appointed to federal courts for the District of Columbia, which has no U.S. Senators who might object. President Trump, acting on apparently bad advice, nominated former Senate Judiciary Committee counsel Timothy Kelly to that bench.

Kelly was confirmed almost unanimously, and into his courtroom landed the lawsuit by CNN against Trump to reinstate access to the White House by the abrasive Jim Acosta. CNN sued for Acosta to retain his access to the White House grounds even after he disrupted Trump’s post-election news conference with an argumentative non-question.

If a hostile reporter had combatively resisted relinquishing the microphone during a presser held by President Obama, the reporter would have been banned. But in a stark illustration of judicial activism, Judge Kelly ordered President Trump to return Acosta’s highly desirable “hard pass” for full access to the West Wing.

Judges require journalists to treat courthouses and court proceedings with extreme deference, but President Trump has been made powerless to regulate who can roam freely inside his own home. Let’s hope the President makes the White House Great Again by posting a burly security guard next to Jim Acosta with orders to remove him the next time he misbehaves.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Sunday, November 18, 2018

ACLU no longer focused on civil liberties

David E. Bernstein writes:
This problem was exacerbated by the growth within the ACLU of autonomous, liberal, special interest cliques known as "projects." These projects have included an AIDS Project, a Capital Punishment Project, a Children's Rights Project, an Immigrants' Rights Project, a Lesbian and Gay Project, a National Prison Project, a Women's Rights Project, a Civil Liberties in the Workplace Project, a Privacy and Technology Project, and an Arts Censorship Project. This loss of focus led Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz to waggishly suggest that "perhaps the Civil Liberties Union needs a civil liberties project." ...

First, the ACLU ran an anti-Brett Kavanaugh video ad that relied entirely on something that no committed civil libertarian would countenance, guilt by association. And not just guilt by association, but guilt by association with individuals that Kavanaugh wasn't actually associated with in any way, except that they were all men who like Kavanaugh had been accused of serious sexual misconduct. The literal point of the ad is that Bill Clinton, Harvey Weinstein, and Bill Cosby were accused of sexual misconduct, they denied it but were actually guilty; therefore, Brett Kavanaugh, also having been accused of sexual misconduct, and also having denied it, is likely guilty too.

Can you imagine back in the 1950s the ACLU running an ad with the theme, "Earl Warren has been accused of being a Communist. He denies it. But Alger Hiss and and Julius Rosenberg were also accused of being Communists, they denied it, but they were lying. So Earl Warren is likely lying, too?"

Meanwhile, yesterday, the Department of Education released a proposed new Title IX regulation that provides for due process rights for accused students that had been prohibited by Obama-era guidance. Shockingly, even to those of us who have followed the ACLU's long, slow decline, the ACLU tweeted in reponse that the proposed regulation "promotes an unfair process, inappropriately favoring the accused." Even longtime ACLU critics are choking on the ACLU, of all organizations, claiming that due proess protections "inappropriately favor the accused."

The ACLU had a clear choice between the identitarian politics of the feminist hard left, and retaining some semblance of its traditional commitment to fair process. It chose the former. And that along with the Kavanaugh ad signals the final end of the ACLU as we knew it. RIP.

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Trump Realigns the Political Map

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

After the Republican Party had been declining in strength in the executive and judicial branches, and in the U.S. Senate, Trump’s realignment has brought new life to all three. The Election Day results dismayed those who predicted a massive blue wave, and instead ushered in more evidence that Trump is the real future of the GOP.

Trump’s rallies in Missouri, Indiana, and North Dakota delivered resounding victories to Republican Senate candidates, in defiance of most polls. Trump also carried congressional candidates to victory in battleground regions of Southern Illinois and Minnesota.

Trump achieved what was thought to be impossible in ousting the entrenched liberal Claire McCaskill from her Senate seat in Missouri, by holding massive rallies that attracted tens of thousands to Trump. No one could have sent the Leftist-funded McCaskill to an early retirement other than Trump.

The Republicans who lost were mostly anti-Trumpers, as the president observed in reviewing the election results. “Mia Love gave me no love,” Trump quipped about the Republican who lost in the deep red state of Utah, and he listed other GOP candidates who drove their own defeat by opposing him.

By securing and even expanding on GOP control of the upper chamber, Trump paves the way for more conservative judges to join the federal bench. Democrats now admit that they lack a realistic chance of retaking the Senate until at least 2022, which means that Trump could have four more years of conservative judicial appointments.

Republican candidates won the governorships in Ohio and Iowa, in a further indication of how well Trump plays in the heartland. And it appears that the Republican senate and governor candidates in Florida also defied the polls and scored impressive wins.

A realignment of politics is taking place in America, greater than any since the 1960s when the South swung to the Republican Party and African Americans switched more heavily to Democrats. Prior to that southerners voted primarily for Democrats and a substantial fraction of blacks voted for the GOP.

Blue-collar America is turning more Republican, while big cities and the Left Coast continue to drift more to the Democrats. Working class men and their wives are shifting to the Republican Party for the first time, while single and divorced women tilt more heavily to the Democrats.

Voters like Republicans in charge in the White House, most governor’s mansions, and most senates, while Democrats made gains in the lower houses of legislatures. This bodes well for re-electing Trump in 2020 and restoring respect for the Constitution to the federal judiciary with senate confirmations of Trump nominees.

Iowa, in some ways a political cross-section of the entire country, displayed the cross-currents in this realignment. Democrats won seven new suburban seats in the House, but lost two blue-collar seats to Republicans.

In the Iowa Senate, the GOP actually had a net gain of two seats from the Democrats, again by racking up surprise victories in blue-collar districts. Trump’s persona and his America First policies resonate so well with working class Americans that Democrats suffered upset losses in those districts.

Conservative Congressman Steve King triumphed once again over vicious late hits and ambushes, which illustrates the tremendous resilience of those who are most principled. The Republican governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, also won reelection.

The Rust Belt state of Ohio elected a Republican governor, re-elected all its Republican congressmen, and re-elected a supermajority of Republican control over its state legislature. This is a state that President Trump has successfully turned from purple to deep red, after Obama had won it in 2008 and 2012.

With only about 15 months left for the Democrats to coalesce around a presidential contender to run against President Trump, they have no one who can compete with him in middle America. Polls said that Democratic Senator Joe Donnelly would win reelection easily in Indiana, but instead he lost to political newcomer Mike Braun by a wide margin of 6 points, which could have even been a 10-point loss in the absence of the Libertarian Party candidate.

Runaway early voting procedures ensured Republican losses in Arizona, California and Nevada, and there is nothing Trump could have done to avert that. But Trump brought victories where none were expected, such as all-important U.S. Senate seats representing middle America.

The campaign for the presidency starts after the midterm elections, and Democratic contenders are already jockeying for position. But Trump appears invincible in the South, most of the Midwest, much of the Rust Belt, and nearly all of flyover country, which doesn’t leave enough Electoral College Votes for the Democrats to regain the White House.

Trump worked harder in campaigning for his supporters than any president in history, Republican or Democrat. Republicans would have done better in the House if more candidates had stood with him, as the Senate candidates did.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Friday, November 9, 2018

Anti-Kavanaugh Democrats lost the Senate

Marc A. Thiessen writes in the Wash Post:
Brett M. Kavanaugh must have been smiling as the returns came in on Election Day, because it is now clear that the Democrats’ campaign to destroy him will go down as a massive blunder. It failed to keep Kavanaugh off the court. It cost Democrats their chance to regain control of the Senate. And it gave Republicans an expanded Senate majority that will allow them to confirm an even more conservative justice next time around.

Today, Kavanaugh sits on the Supreme Court hearing cases. Meanwhile, Democratic Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.) and Claire McCaskill (Mo.) are packing up their Senate offices — thrown out by voters furious over their party’s brutal campaign of character assassination against Kavanaugh. Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) was the only Democrat who voted for Kavanaugh, and he survived — but just barely. Two weeks before Election Day, Manchin was leading by double digits, but on Tuesday night he won by just over three points. Had he voted against Kavanaugh’s confirmation, he would likely have been toast as well.

The Democrats’ smear campaign also cost them the chance to pick up GOP seats. In Tennessee, Rep. Marsha Blackburn was trailing former Democratic governor Phil Bredesen by five points in a CNN poll before the Kavanaugh hearings. She ended up winning by just under 11 points, as the Democrats’ mistreatment of Kavanaugh united Tennessee Republicans behind her. The Kavanaugh smear no doubt also played a role in energizing GOP voters in Arizona, where Republican Rep. Martha McSally appears to have squeezed out a narrow victory, and in Texas, where Sen. Ted Cruz defeated Rep. Beto O’Rourke by just 2.6 points in one of the reddest states in the union.

None of that might have been possible had it not been for the Democrats’ horrific treatment of Kavanaugh.
Everyone should remember what the Democrats to try to destroy a white Christian man.

Wednesday, November 7, 2018

The Mistake of Early Voting

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

More than 38 million ballots were cast before Election Day arrived this year, shattering the midterm election record for early voting. That was nearly double the level of early voting in the last midterm election, in 2014, when 21 million voted early.

Yet few genuinely benefit from this early voting fad, except political machines and the better-funded candidates. That means early voting boosts the Democrats, who held an enormous fundraising advantage this year along with their political machine that has long dominated Chicago and other big cities.

In the traditionally red states of Texas and Florida, early voting causes many races there to be decided prior to Election Day. Both states now have extensive early voting, and as a result both were targeted by massive cash for Democrats this election cycle.

The influx of tens of millions of dollars by liberals to fund Beto O’Rourke in his campaign for U.S. Senate in Texas baffled some, but not those familiar with the circus of extended early voting that is allowed in the Lone Star State. By herding traditionally Democratic constituents to the polls during the two-week period of early voting, well-funded Democrats in Texas have the hope of winning elections they would otherwise lose in that conservative state.

In Texas, early voting increased everywhere, but particularly skyrocketed in heavily Democratic areas such as Austin and Dallas. Casualties could include down-ballot Republicans, including state legislators and local officials.

Similarly, in the other large red state of Florida, more than 5 million votes were cast early this fall. That was 38.4% of the entire Florida electorate, and more than the number that voted on Election Day.

Smart liberal money flowed in a big way against Republican candidates in both States, attracted by the opportunity to herd people to vote early and tip the outcome. The candidate who raises the most money is more likely to win in elections decided by expensive early voting efforts.

The voting this past Sunday morning in Miami-Dade, Florida’s largest county, tells the story. A record 40,000 ballots were cast, many bused from churches as part of the Democrats’ “souls to the polls” campaign.

That Sunday burst in voting gave the Democrats in Florida the lead in overall ballots cast early. Meanwhile independent voters, on whom Republicans often rely to get elected, are shut out of the early voting gamesmanship and thereby become less significant, particularly in non-presidential elections.

Last year Hans von Spakovsky released a report for the Heritage Foundation in which he concluded that early voting can increase the cost of campaigns, and actually decrease overall turnout. For example, early voting removes the social pressure to vote on Election Day.

Add to that how early voting has become the new form of machine-style politics that distorts the election process and changes results. The integrity and excitement of Election Day are undermined by the enormous spending to push people to vote early.

The average American in Florida, Texas, and other early voting states would be fine in getting their lives back, without the tiresome robocalls and other efforts to urge them to vote early. The vast majority of early voters would otherwise vote on Election Day, and having both sides spend millions to move those ballots a week or so early is wasteful.

There was no line to vote at many election polling precincts on Tuesday, which detracts from the experience and could result in fewer people voting next time. Early voting undermines the patriotic value of a unified Election Day.

The early voters had less information, including major economic data not released until last Friday. In some states, such as Montana, the libertarian candidate for Senate pulled out of the race and endorsed the Republican candidate after many votes had already been cast early.

In California, its mail-in balloting means that election outcomes can remain uncertain until long after Election Day, when ballots are finally received by election officials. It becomes impossible to check against voter fraud, and there is no place for precinct monitors.

Nevada is a state where elections are decided by early voting, and it has a tight Senate race for a seat held by a Republican. Yet ballots had already been cast by 40% of active voters there prior to Election Day, and Democrats defeated Republicans by a 41-38% margin in early ballots.

Republicans have controlled the Florida and Texas statehouse and governorship for years, so it is baffling why they allow pervasive early voting there, including Sunday voting in Florida which Democrats exploited. Other Republican states, such as Ohio and North Carolina, have sensibly tried to rein in rampant early voting.

There is a constitutional right to vote. But there is no constitutional right to vote early, and it is time to restore integrity and significance to Election Day by reining in early voting.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Ending Birthright Citizenship

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

President Trump, who frequently campaigned against the horrible practice of giving automatic U.S. citizenship to children of illegal aliens, has again startled the media by proving that he really meant what he said. In an interview released this week, Trump said he would issue an executive order stopping birthright citizenship.

“We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in, has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years with all of those benefits,” Trump said in an interview for Axios. “It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. And it has to end.”

Trump’s blunt talk on the issue of illegal immigration was one of the main reasons Americans elected him in 2016. Yet his opponents pretend to be shocked and horrified that he plans to deliver what the voters expected when we elected him president.

“It was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don’t,” he said, adding that he has run it by legal counsel. “You can definitely do it with an act of Congress. But now they’re saying I can do it just with an executive order,” Trump said.

The media insist that Trump is just “riling up his base” for the midterm election, quoting a tweet from the failed mayor of Chicago. Rahm Emanuel recently announced that he will not seek re-election in the city he has led from crisis to disaster.

Another failed politician, outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan, pontificated to reporters, “Well, you obviously cannot do that.” Ryan went on to say, “I think in this case the 14th Amendment is pretty clear, and that would involve a very, very lengthy constitutional process.”

Actually, Ryan is half right: the 14th Amendment is “pretty clear” that birth alone is not enough to guarantee U.S. citizenship. To get automatic birthright citizenship, children must be born to parents who are “subject to the jurisdiction” of our country.

The key phrase, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” means more than the duty to obey our laws, which applies to everyone, citizen and alien alike. It means that to become a citizen a person must owe allegiance to the United States, and not to any other nation or state.

You are a citizen of the country or nation to which you owe your allegiance, and vice versa. Diplomats, visitors, foreign students, temporary workers, and illegal residents -- all these people are citizens of their home countries, the countries they came from, even while they are temporarily inside our borders.

American history familiar to many high school students demonstrates how wrong birthright citizenship is. Indians living on reservations were not American citizens for most of our history, despite being born in our country.

Native Americans were considered members only of their sovereign Indian tribes, until Congress extended blanket citizenship in 1924. Similarly, children born to foreign ambassadors while in the United States are not American citizens, but are citizens of their country of origin.

In their crusade against President Trump, globalists trot out alleged experts claiming that Trump’s proposal is impossible, unconstitutional, or morally wrong. But the hysterical overreaction by his critics proves how right Trump is.

“The president cannot erase the Constitution with an executive order, and the 14th Amendment’s citizenship guarantee is clear,” said Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “This is a blatantly unconstitutional attempt to fan the flames of anti-immigrant hatred in the days ahead of the midterms.”

In fact, the last time the Supreme Court addressed the issue of birthright citizenship was 120 years ago, in the case of a child born to a lawful permanent resident who had what is now called a green card. The Supreme Court has never decided the citizenship of those born to persons unlawfully present in the United States, or lawfully present on temporary visas for tourism, education, or temporary employment.

The ACLU was also bitterly opposed to Trump’s policy of vetting travelers from countries that are hotbeds of terrorism. Globalists falsely characterized the policy as a Muslim ban, but it was upheld by the Supreme Court last June; Trump’s new executive order should fare just as well when it gets there.

Trump’s announced intention to fulfill his campaign promise caps another week of setbacks for globalism. In Brazil, which is called the second-largest democracy in the Western Hemisphere, the conservative nationalist Jair Bolsonaro won its presidency by a landslide of 55-45%.

That adds Brazil to the United States, Hungary, and the Philippines where conservative nationalists have triumphed on Election Day. Meanwhile, the adversary of President Trump who has led Germany down the wrong path of globalism, Angela Merkel, mercifully announced her plans not to seek reelection in a few years.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

The Real Reason They Hate Trump

Yale professor David Gelernter writes in the WSJ:
For now, though, the left’s only issue is “We hate Trump.” This is an instructive hatred, because what the left hates about Donald Trump is precisely what it hates about America. The implications are important, and painful.

Not that every leftist hates America. But the leftists I know do hate Mr. Trump’s vulgarity, his unwillingness to walk away from a fight, his bluntness, his certainty that America is exceptional, his mistrust of intellectuals, his love of simple ideas that work, and his refusal to believe that men and women are interchangeable. Worst of all, he has no ideology except getting the job done. His goals are to do the task before him, not be pushed around, and otherwise to enjoy life. In short, he is a typical American—except exaggerated, because he has no constraints to cramp his style except the ones he himself invents.

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Dems Tongue-Tied on Caravan Issue

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Democrats have not been shy to criticize President Trump on every imaginable issue ranging from the NFL to the First Lady’s choice of footwear. But suddenly nary a word from the Dems about Trump’s criticism of the caravan of illegal aliens headed toward our southern border.

“Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws! Remember the Midterms!” Trump tweeted on Monday.

But where is the pervasive pushback by Dems to Trump’s tweets on this issue? Their silence is deafening.

The Senate race in Arizona casts light on why Democrats are suddenly speechless, two weeks before the midterm elections. That seat, vacated by the unelectable anti-Trump Senator Jeff Flake, has long been considered a sure takeaway from the Republican Party in the battle for control of the U.S. Senate.

This summer the Democratic candidate Kyrsten Sinema was ahead in the polls by more than ten points, apparently cruising to a landslide. But Arizona bears the brunt of illegal immigration, and as that issue heats up this race has become too close to call.

Congresswoman and veteran Martha McSally, aided by an overflow rally held by President Trump last week in Phoenix, has surged in the polls for that seat. Ms. Sinema was hurt by the surfacing of a 2003 recording of her saying that “I don’t care” if an American joined the Taliban army, which fights against U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

In Missouri, entrenched liberal incumbent Claire McCaskill was so rattled by Republican challenger Josh Hawley’s criticism of her during their recent debate that she left quickly afterward, not even staying for post-debate interviews. Pro-abortion donors have bankrolled McCaskill to a 4-1 fundraising advantage, and yet she trails Hawley.

Meanwhile, voters see photos of thousands of menacing youths approaching our southern border as part of a caravan that stretches for miles. Among them are potential new recruits for the vicious gangs, like MS-13, that plague our cities.

If Sen. McCaskill and her Democratic cohorts had supported building a wall as Trump seeks, then the massive caravan would not be a national crisis. But without a wall, young American soldiers must be put in harm’s way to try to stop these illegals from entering our country.

The presence of children among the migrants makes it even worse. Soldiers are trained to fight and kill, not change diapers for infants carted thousands of miles to cross our border illegally.

“We want to get to the United States,” said a 17-year-old migrant from Honduras, Maria Irias Rodriguez, who brings along her 8-month-old daughter and 2-year-old son, plus her husband. “If they stop us now, we’ll just come back a second time.”

That sounds like a family that could help make Honduras great again. If the migrants have American values, and not all do, then they could spread those values in their own country and help it thrive as the United States has.

There is a process for foreigners to apply to enter our country legally. That includes proper vetting of the applicants, and separating those who love America from those who might not.

Amid the caravan of many thousands could be terrorists, as President Trump pointed out while on his way to lead a massive rally in Houston for Senate candidate Ted Cruz. The 19,000-seat Houston Rockets basketball arena was virtually filled with enthusiastic supporters of Trump’s stance against the caravan and illegal immigration.

But Monday was also the first day of an extended two-week early voting period in Texas, which enables the Democratic political machine to stuff the ballot box without any real safeguards against fraud. An enormous spike in the number of early ballots compared to the last midterm election in 2014 is flooding Texas election offices.

In small Midland County, Texas, five times as many people voted on the first day of early voting compared with the same day in 2014. In the immense Harris County, where Houston is located, more than three times as many people voted early on Monday compared with four years ago.

Liberals are counting on rampant early voting in Texas, California, Nevada, Colorado, and elsewhere to give them an undeserved boost in returns. Trump has joked that the caravan of migrants is coming to the United States to vote for Democrats, and that is not far from the truth.

In traditionally low-turnout midterm elections, stuffing the ballot box can change the outcome in many races. Trump’s spectacular rallies demonstrate the popularity of his positions with the American people, and an honest election would confirm it.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Judicial Supremacy Runs Amok Against Census

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

A stirring rebuke of judicial supremacy is, remarkably, posted on the Department of Justice website. Attorney General Jeff Sessions explains how fed up he is with the continued overreach by federal judges as they repeatedly encroach on Trump and Congress.

The latest outrage cited by General Sessions is a district court order, affirmed on appeal, that compels Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to submit to a deposition about why he wants the census to ask people if they are American citizens. Liberals absurdly claim that it is racist for the census to ask that basic question, and demand that Secretary Ross answer impertinent questions in which he will be falsely accused of secretly harboring a racist motive.

Cabinet officials should not be subjected to rude deposition questioning without any factual basis. Citizenship is not a race and immigrants come in all races, so it cannot be racist to ask people who live here, and who demand entitlements like Medicaid and public schooling, whether they are American citizens.

Before Justice Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed, the Supreme Court seemed fine with allowing the deposition of Secretary Ross, a member of Trump’s Cabinet. But days after Kavanaugh joined the High Court, it put this deposition on hold pending the submission of further briefing on the matter.

President Donald Trump has successfully appointed two Supreme Court justices, 29 circuit judges, and 52 district court judges. But they are mostly in states that voted for him, while fierce pockets of resistance remain in deep blue states like California, New York and Hawaii.

An example is in New York City, where a Barack Obama-appointed federal judge named Jesse Furman is hearing a major case against the Trump Administration. Furman received that prestigious lifetime appointment when he was only 39 years old, and he will probably be elevated to a higher court by a future Democratic president.

In classic judicial activism, Judge Furman is trying to micromanage the government’s planning for the 2020 census, which is already underway. Plaintiffs and apparently Judge Furman are unhappy with how census officials plan to include a question about citizenship in the census.

It should be a no-brainer for the census to ask whether each person residing in our country is a U.S. citizen or not. That basic question was included on the main census questionnaire from 1830 to 1950, but starting in 1960 it was unfortunately demoted to a separate survey that goes to only a sample of Americans.

After the Trump Administration decided to reinstate this question on the questionnaire being sent to every household, a group of leftist organizations and Democratic officials sued Wilbur Ross as the Secretary of the Department of Commerce, which supervises the census bureau.

Only U.S. citizens are supposed to vote here, although there are numerous examples of non-citizens who were improperly placed on the voting rolls when they applied for a driver’s license. The problem is that even when non-citizens don’t vote, they are counted in the census in a way that enhances the voting power of people who do vote.

If non-citizens were evenly distributed across the United States, their presence wouldn’t dilute the voting power of U.S. citizens. But when they are concentrated in a handful of states such as California, whose population includes more than 5 million non-citizens, American citizens who live in other states are disenfranchised.

Non-citizens entitle California to at least 5 extra seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and 5 extra votes in the Electoral College, all taken from states with few non-citizens. Even within California, non-citizens are concentrated in a handful of that state’s 53 congressional districts, such as Maxine Waters’ district where only half the residents are American citizens.
In the 2010 census, which Obama supervised, 6 electoral votes were taken from the states of Missouri, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, all of which voted for Trump in 2016. That was on top of 4 electoral votes lost by those states in the 2000 census, plus another 4 lost by four other Trump states: Indiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Wisconsin.

Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are each projected to lose another seat in Congress and the Electoral College after 2020, as are Alabama and West Virginia. States where aliens live will gain seats, and retain the seats they already won in the last two census counts.

General Sessions emphasized in his posted speech that “the Judicial branch must show significant respect for the Executive branch and Congress. I fear, in a variety of ways, that respect has been eroding.”

Calling out the “eroding” deference by the judiciary is an understatement. So is the term “judicial activism,” when the better term is “judicial supremacy” as coined by Phyllis Schlafly to describe judicial interference with good policies like Trump’s census.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, October 9, 2018

Trump Fulfills Phyllis Schlafly’s Vision

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The thrilling confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court fulfills the vision of Phyllis Schlafly in her early endorsement of Trump. By trouncing the radical feminists in this high-stakes battle for the Supreme Court, President Trump has transformed the Republican Party just as Phyllis wanted.

Kavanaugh’s 50-48 confirmation by the Senate was also a victory for the rule of law over rule by a mob. “You don't hand matches to an arsonist,” Trump declared afterwards, and “you don’t give power to an angry leftwing mob.”

It was a close call, when you consider that one woman on George Soros’ payroll almost succeeded in bringing Kavanaugh down – by screaming at Jeff Flake while he was trapped in an elevator as cameras rolled. Ana Maria Archila, the woman who confronted Senator Flake, reportedly draws a six-figure salary from a Soros-funded outfit called the Center for Popular Democracy, which grew out of the wreckage of the now-defunct ACORN.

But Christine Blasey Ford’s uncorroborated accusations were simply not credible to the fair-minded Senators. Their reigning moderate, Susan Collins, delivered a compelling hour-long speech detailing the many deficiencies.

Ford’s accusations against Kavanaugh were worse than being implausible. They were also unworthy of the heightened attention given to them by the liberal media and the 48 Democratic Senators who voted against him.

Even if Ford's accusations had some basis in fact, they were not serious enough to be considered at this late date. The Senate demeaned itself by forcing Kavanaugh to explain what he meant in his writings as a 17-year-old in his personal diary and his high school yearbook.

By her own account, Ford said she attended and drank beer at an unsupervised house party along with older teenage drunken boys. She alleges that at some point she was groped by two of the boys, whose identities remain unknown, but she admitted that everyone was fully clothed at all times.

If such a complaint had been made then, the police would not have even bothered to pursue it. It would have been such a minor, unprovable infraction that criminal charges would never have been brought.

The complete silence by Ford for 29 years afterwards suggests that even if it did happen, it was not particularly significant to her. Most likely it did not happen at all.

Yet while talking to a therapist nearly three decades later, Ford supposedly “recovered” a memory that could easily exaggerate key details and make mistakes of identity. On the basis of her recovered memory, she tried to bring down Brett Kavanaugh’s career, while keeping her own identity secret in order to avoid the risk of cross-examination.

There is a moment when a movement loses its initial credibility with the general public, and this Kavanaugh confirmation may be that moment for the #MeToo movement. The collapse of support for the reelection of Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp, who ultimately voted against Kavanaugh, illustrates the backlash against doubtful accusations publicized by radical feminists.

Forty years ago, in the 1970s, an earlier wave of feminism called “women’s liberation” was cresting. Led by then-ACLU attorney Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the feminists came close to putting their harmful “equal rights” amendment (ERA) into the U.S. Constitution.

But then the feminists also overplayed their hand, much as they just did with Kavanaugh. With a special appropriation of federal tax money in 1977, they held 50 state conventions for women, culminating in a national convention in Houston to promote International Women’s Year.

The nation watched in dismay as a parade of angry liberal women screamed and screeched their demands, primarily about lesbian rights and taxpayer-funded abortions. The public turned away, the ERA never garnered another state, and five states that had hastily ratified it then rescinded their previous ratifications.

A similar fate awaits the overly hyped #MeToo movement, which started a year ago in response to the lurid accusations against Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and others. Ostensibly a protest against the proverbial casting couch, which has always existed in Hollywood, the #MeToo movement is a double standard as it does not complain about many women who willingly use sex to advance their show-biz careers.

Meanwhile, our nation benefits from the new respect for ancient legal safeguards against false accusations. These include innocent until proven guilty, the right to confront your accuser, and the need for a short statute of limitations on accusations of sexual assault.

When Phyllis Schlafly met Donald Trump on March 11, 2016, before introducing him to a cheering crowd of thousands of supporters in St. Louis, she asked the candidate to appoint judges who would defend the Constitution. With the seating of Justice Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, President Trump has honored his pledge in a spectacular way.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, October 2, 2018

No #MeToo for California’s Gender Quotas

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Americans have never supported quotas, as other countries do. We take pride in being the land of opportunity based on merit, regardless of race, creed, gender or religion.

But California just took another left turn in its newly enacted SB 826, which requires gender quotas on corporate boards. Publicly owned California companies must have at least one woman on their Boards of Directors and, for larger companies, three women by 2021.

Most companies already avoid incorporating in California, so the practical effect may be minimal. One study suggests that, despite all the hoopla, the new law will increase the number of women on Boards by a grand total of only 1 by 2021, at Apple.

But this new law is an alarming sea change. Amid the frenzied, hysterical attack against the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, the California law reveals where the Left is really headed.

This law would not be constitutional if the Equal Rights Amendment had been ratified as feminists wanted, and even persuaded Illinois earlier this year to pass 36 years after its deadline expired. ERA prohibits any law making distinctions based on gender.

Californian Christine Blasey Ford implausibly alleges that a 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh made unwelcome advances on her at a teenage party in 1982. Ironically, that alleged party was in the same summer that ERA died.

Flouting ERA, California Democratic Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson authored this gender quota bill, supposedly to help women. SB 826 then sailed through the California Senate by a veto-proof supermajority of 23-9, and by 41-26 in its Assembly.

This leaves California companies scrambling to find token women to put on their Boards of Directors, to replace men who may be better for the companies. People will view any woman who is on the Board of a California company with skepticism as to whether she is the token, or is there based on merit.

This also opens the floodgates to me-too legislation to create quotas for every minority or other trait, just as California already has ballots in more than a dozen foreign languages. If a quota can be created for gender, then it can be created for any group that has political heft in the increasingly liberal California legislature.

Interest groups that are particularly powerful in lobbying the California legislature include homosexual activists and transgender advocates. Not many California legislators would vote against a bill to accommodate those interest groups with their own quotas, like the one just passed for women.

Perhaps some feel there are not enough women in high-paying jobs in construction or professional sports. The California legislature could take the same “shatter the glass ceiling” approach and mandate that construction crews on public highways, or professional sports teams that play in publicly financed stadiums, must include at least one woman.

Before long we could have a woman placekicker on California football teams, not because she is the best but because no one dares vote against this concept.

Executives of companies typically reap far greater compensation than directors do, so it may not be long before the social planners demand that at least one woman be among the highest- paid officers. If SB 826 is constitutional in requiring one woman on each Board, then it would be constitutional to mandate highly compensated women, too.

Quotas are something that other, less- successful economies use, in places as far afield as Norway and India. In 2008, Norway required public companies to reserve 40% of their Boards for women, upon threat of dissolution.

Yet a decade later, there is no evidence that Norway’s law has yielded any benefits. It failed to increase the number of women working in the companies, and it has not boosted the number of female CEOs there either.

The “invisible hand” that has guided our country to the greatest prosperity in world history requires that there not be any impediments imposed to limit opportunity. Quotas have been rejected by virtually every elected national politician in the United States, including Democrats.

But the California legislature has become shockingly aggressive in defying national standards upon which our country thrives. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Department of Justice is suing to overturn another bill recently signed into law by California Governor Brown, which would prohibit cable companies from charging internet hogs like Google and Facebook for the immense traffic they use.

Not all feminists are pleased by California’s new gender quota for corporate Boards. No one can argue both for this California law and ERA, for example.

In California any man can consider himself to be a woman, and require acceptance as such. Olympic champion Bruce Jenner, a Californian who has declared himself to be a woman named Caitlin, will be in hot demand by companies seeking to comply with this new law.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Friday, September 28, 2018

Call the Vote on Kavanaugh

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Delaying the Senate vote has not helped anyone except those smearing the good man nominated to the Supreme Court. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell seems to have lost his way in supporting delay after delay on an up-or-down vote for Brett Kavanaugh.

McConnell promised that Kavanaugh will be confirmed, but his strategy has kicked away Democrats who might have supported the nominee. By giving a platform to Kavanaugh’s accusers, McConnell has merely provided political cover for every Democrat in the chamber, such as Claire McCaskill who is in a tight race in Missouri.

McConnell should call the vote on Kavanaugh, and let the chips fall where they may. Delay simply facilitates more false accusations, embellished to an obscene degree.

It was a mistake to pander to Kavanaugh’s accusers by extending the deadline and begging them to show up to tell their coached narratives in the most damaging way that liberals can imagine. No court of law allows a witness to completely take over the scheduling as Kavanaugh’s opponents have.

Kavanaugh would have been confirmed by now if the Senate had simply called the vote. Never-Trump Republicans and even a few Democrats would have fallen in line and voted the right way, or gone down in history as a mob who hangs an innocent man.

But like the failure of a superior army to advance to win a battle, the dilly-dallying by the Republican leadership has led to disarray and lost opportunity. The delay allowed the politically motivated opponents of Kavanaugh to practice and embellish, divide and conquer.

Some hope that vigorous cross-examination of Kavanaugh’s accusers will prove to the world that Kavanaugh has the stellar character that all who know him describe. There are, of course, good questions about political motivation and the orchestration of this smear that should be asked.

But relatively few Americans will watch the hearing, contrary to what the Senators may think, and Abraham Lincoln-style moments on cross-examination are rare. The more that a witness is coached, the less likely a breakthrough at the hearing.

Instead, the vast majority of Americans will see only the headlines and selective sound bites, as spun by a media determined to sink Kavanaugh. The testimony itself is immune from defamation lawsuits, and news outlets will repeat the false accusations without including the cross-examination.

This is fake news in its worst form. Sexually explicit allegations are politically deadly, no matter how false and implausible they are, and the GOP-controlled Senate errs in giving the other side a platform.

“I think it’s horrible what the Democrats have done,” President Trump said on Tuesday. “It is a con game; they really are con artists … playing a con game and they are playing it very well, much better than Republicans.”

President Trump’s instincts have been right on target, as usual, in speaking out against the smear of Kavanaugh. McConnell reportedly telephoned Trump to tell him that his tweets critical of a Kavanaugh accuser were not helpful, but it is McConnell’s delay in the vote that has been unhelpful.

Trump is right that Senate Republicans have given far too many concessions to Kavanaugh’s opponents than they should have. No one was preventing accusers from telling their stories, and the Senate is mistaken to think that its committee hearing procedures will add anything to the equation.

The Senate committee lacks fundamental rules of evidence that any civilized judicial proceeding would have. Unreliable testimony that is more likely to create prejudice than aid in a genuine search for truth is not allowed in most courts of law, but is allowed by the Senate.

Sexually obscene testimony that is uncorroborated should not be allowed and given credibility by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Moreover, false descriptions like “attempted rape” should be ruled out of order and prohibited.

Refreshed recollections about something more than 30 years ago by someone who was drunk at the time, as Kavanaugh’s Yale classmate was, is not evidence that satisfies any reasonable standard of reliability. Most courts of law would prohibit repetition of sexually graphic allegations of such an unreliable nature to a jury.

Instead, advisers have mistakenly relied on administration of an oath as though that will protect Kavanaugh against false accusations. Republicans have underestimated the depth of deceit on the other side, even harboring hope that the accusers will not show up.

Senator Susan Collins and other fence-sitters can sit down to have chit-chats with accusers all they want. No one is interfering with any fact-finding, or falsehood-finding, that any senator wants to engage in.

The U.S. Senate prides itself on open debate, but in every assembly there comes a time when further debate is unproductive. A motion to “call the question,” first used in the British Parliament more than four centuries ago, is overdue to confirm Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Too Little, Too Late in Ambushing Kavanaugh

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
by John and Andy Schlafly

Statutes of limitations are necessary, because memories fade and it is pointless to consider a “he said, she said” dispute decades later.  No one should give credence to a new accusation about something minor that supposedly occurred more than three decades ago, and the Senate embarrasses itself by holding a hearing to do just that.

Brett Kavanaugh fully denies the allegation of misconduct by him at a party 36 years ago, when he was merely 17 years old, and this issue is not something that Senators should be taking seriously today.  On the verge of his confirmation to the Supreme Court, this politically motivated, last-minute smear against him should be laughed off the stage.

Only in the fantasyland of the U.S. Senate, where Clarence Thomas had to endure a similar ordeal in 1991, does fiction replace fact so easily.  Accusations about teenage conduct in 1982, even if Kavanaugh was at the party, should not change anyone’s vote concerning his confirmation to the Supreme Court. 

The confirmation process for Supreme Court Justices should have sensible limits on irrelevant testimony when considering nominees.  It is time to repudiate untestable #MeToo allegations that were never reported within the statute of limitations, and it is time to draw the line before politics descends further into the theater of the absurd.

If Senators fail to establish reasonable rules of evidence, then it becomes a matter of how clever an accuser is at lying.  Courts of law do not allow spectacles of irrelevant, unprovable accusations, and the Senate should not have a standard that is lower than that of traffic court.

Supposedly a 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh, or someone having a similar name, was drunk and had party-like contact with a fully clothed girl who had also been drinking.  At the time, no crime was reported, no adult was told, nothing was prosecuted, and no discipline of any kind was ever sought or obtained.

Most schools would not even punish a student for such behavior at a party, even if true, let alone expel someone for it.  It is beneath the dignity of the Senate to give credibility to an accusation about silly teenage behavior at a drinking party, as though that has any bearing on the abilities and character of an adult more than three decades later.

President Trump was elected to blow the whistle on this kind of circus that too often dominates D.C.  Trump brought some grown-up relief to this crisis on Monday by rejecting a reporter’s question as ridiculous in asking whether Kavanaugh might be replaced as the nominee because of this farcical accusation.

Allowing this ambush of Kavanaugh feeds the chicanery of the Left, and encourages similar antics against future good nominees.  Three Republican nominees to the Supreme Court have been confirmed in a row since liberals unsuccessfully attempted their last-minute smear of Clarence Thomas, and the GOP majority should not allow regression to that low point in the history of the Senate.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) probably dislikes allowing a hearing on this smear against Kavanaugh, but the Republican majority in the Senate is hostage to a handful who pander to the media.  Never-Trumper Jeff Flake, who is an example of someone who does not belong on the Judiciary Committee, was elected by pretending to be pro-life but spends much of his time trying to defy Trump instead.

In court, scandalous testimony that is irrelevant is excluded without futile attempts to determine its truthfulness.  The Senate should likewise exclude testimony by Christine Blasey Ford about isolated teenage partying which has no relevance to the fitness of the nominee Kavanaugh.

The oath does not have a magical effect in converting lies to the truth, and cannot establish relevancy.  Long-ago high school partying is irrelevant to the important work the Senate and the Supreme Court should be doing.

Even worse is speculation about what a teenage Kavanaugh, or someone who looked like him, might have wanted to do.  Teenagers are wrong about many things, even when trying to tell the truth, and the Senate should not allow such speculative testimony.

The high-tech lynching of Clarence Thomas, as he described it, failed when an accusation was discovered to bear an uncanny resemblance to a line in the book The Exorcist.  This time the allegations may be inspired by a book by Mark Judge concerning his own drinking binges at the same high school Kavanaugh attended.

But Mark Judge himself described the accusations against his classmate Kavanaugh as “absolutely nuts. I never saw Brett act that way.”

It was a mistake to schedule a special hearing, and delay it by a week, which gives the story-tellers more time to practice and embellish.  Allegations about the distant past which lack details are not credible, and the Senate should proceed to vote on Judge Kavanaugh.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Obama’s Tired Rhetoric Is a Flashback to Globalism

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Barack Obama’s return to the campaign trail is a violation of tradition and common sense.  His tired rhetoric on globalism is a powerful reminder of how fortunate we are without him and the Clintons in power.

“Global governance” was the pejorative title of a video produced by Phyllis Schlafly in the ’90s that successfully converted the concept into an object of scorn.  Yet here is Obama recycling Bill Clinton’s discredited push for world government at a time which most nations are rejecting it.

Even in the liberal bastion of Sweden, the electorate delivered a mortal blow to globalism there on Sunday by voting in record numbers for an anti-immigration party.  In Italy, the globalists were voted out of office earlier this year.

Perhaps it is too much work for Obama to update Bill Clinton’s speeches to keep up with the times.  Obama spoke within the safe space of a liberal university campus, where few of the attendees were likely aware of the widespread repudiation of globalism.

The liberal college audience rewarded Obama with applause for every vacuous, anachronistic statement that he made.  He flattered his academic sounding board by complaining that “demagogues promise simple fixes to complex problems.”
Obama had eight long years to fix the problems of a broken economy, a North Korean dictator with nuclear weapons, ISIS terrorists, and the perpetual war in Afghanistan.  He fixed none of those problems, but he did enact an incredibly complex scheme for health care.

Due to Obama’s refusal to support simple solutions, like tax cuts, he was the only president in American history to fail to achieve at least 3% annual growth in GDP.  The economy took off like a rocket the day after Trump was elected and hasn’t stopped since.

Obama’s sleep-inducing platitudes tried to rehabilitate the discredited idea of globalism that is in retreat across the world.  He praised a “bipartisan leadership” (otherwise known as the Deep State) which developed “norms” and a “consensus” that “extended beyond our borders.”

“From the wreckage of World War II,” Obama continued, despite being born in 1961, “we built a postwar web, architecture, system of alliances and institutions.”  He left out how European countries are trying to unwind and disentangle that failed system, and how Europe lags the U.S. economically.

Obama’s backward-looking speech was a rehash of his Democratic predecessor in the White House, Bill Clinton, who spoke of a “web of institutions and arrangements” that set “the international ground rules for the 21st century.”  Clinton urged Americans to support what he called “the emerging international system,” such as the International Criminal Court.

Mercifully, the Obama-Clinton claptrap received a rip-roaring response Monday from President Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton.  In a powerful speech to the Federalist Society, Bolton took aim at “the global governance dogma,” picking up where Phyllis Schlafly left off.

Two decades ago, when few stood up against Bill Clinton on this issue, Phyllis was delivering speeches to packed hotel ballrooms lambasting Clinton’s globalist agenda.  With her witty play on Hillary Clinton’s book that it supposedly takes a village to raise a child, Phyllis asked a crowded Louisiana audience in 1998, “Is it the global village that’s supposed to raise your child?”

No, it’s not, and she urged the United States to repudiate the International Criminal Court after Bill Clinton signed us up.  In 2002, Bolton persuaded President George W. Bush to unsign what Clinton had signed, to keep us out of that anti-American institution.

In his landmark speech on Monday, Bolton called the repudiation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) his “happiest day in government.”  Now he will take steps to prevent American servicemen from being prosecuted by the rogue tribunal masquerading as a court.

Bolton issued a stern warning that judges and prosecutors of the ICC would themselves be prosecuted, sanctioned, and have their travel restricted by the United States if they dare investigate American citizens, particularly our soldiers.  For once Americans have an administration protecting them, as Obama and Clinton should have done while they were president.

Bolton spoke to preempt threatened action by the ICC against Americans.  With all the good that the United States brings to the rest of the world, it is disgraceful that the ICC would even think about bringing politically motivated charges against American citizens.

Bolton indicated that he may not stop there, but is also considering freedom for the United States from other institutions of global governance, such as the World Trade Organization.  President Trump has stated his interest in withdrawing us from that international group, and the sooner the better.

We applaud Bolton's statement that his and the Trump Administration’s “view is that Americans govern Americans.  How’s that for a radical thought?” he humorously added as Phyllis Schlafly might have.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, September 4, 2018

California versus Trump on Phony Net Neutrality

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
by John and Andy Schlafly

As part of its never-ending resistance to the Trump agenda, the California legislature has just passed a bill to reinstate the discredited concept of “net neutrality” for access to the internet. A bill described as the nation’s strongest form of net neutrality awaits the signature of lame duck Governor Jerry Brown.

Net neutrality is as phony as “free trade,” in that both are wonderful only for those getting the better end of the deal.  Google, Facebook, and other California companies have been getting a free ride on net neutrality because it enables them to avoid paying their enormous share of internet traffic.

Net neutrality is a fiction invented by Silicon Valley monopolies to stop cable companies from charging them for their huge amounts of traffic.  Yet these same monopolies do not believe in neutrality in how they conduct business, by censoring political content they dislike.

The many billions in profits flowing to the Silicon Valley companies is partly due to how they hog traffic on the internet for free, without paying their full costs.  They avoid paying, for example, the many billions of dollars needed to bring internet service to people’s homes.

Imagine a toll road where big trucking companies did not have to pay a dime.  This would result in overuse of the toll road by trucks, and underfunding of road improvements.

The free market would be far superior to the phony net neutrality that enriches only Silicon Valley, because the free market enables the owner to charge fees based on use of its property.  Free enterprise is also better in protecting free speech and preventing censorship.

Once the favoritism is ended, whether on the internet or roads, then better facilities would be built and more efficient usage would occur.  The internet could be light years ahead of where it is now, if net neutrality stopped giving billionaire companies a free ride.

Without net neutrality, the public would have far better and faster internet service than we have today, because cable companies could raise money from the traffic hogs to improve the service.  Instead, billions of dollars line the wallets of Silicon Valley executives who invest very little of it in improving internet service.

Under the superior, free-market-based approach adopted by President Trump, companies that carry internet traffic would be able to negotiate with the traffic hogs to compel them to pay their fair share of costs rather than freeload off others.  Google and Facebook would then no longer be able to discriminate against conservatives and shift their costs to us too.

The public who pays the cable costs could then insist on access to the content that they want, which they cannot do now as Silicon Valley censors it.

The Silicon Valley companies do not want any rules of neutrality to apply to them, of course, as they exclude conservatives to appease their liberal base.  They demand net neutrality only when it favors them, and oppose any requirement that they be fair to content with which liberals disagree.

The California legislators know who butters their bread, and their Democrat majority just passed a bill that interferes with President Trump’s better approach of allowing competition to rule the internet.  SB 822 is being sent to Governor Jerry Brown’s desk, and he has not yet said whether he will sign it by his deadline of September 30.

This new California law would prohibit cable companies and other internet service providers from charging high-traffic users more.  This ban is an encroachment on the rights of private property, because the owner of the internet service should be able to require traffic hogs to pay rather than freeload on the private property.

Under the California law, cable companies and their millions of customers could not tell Google and Facebook to stop discriminating against content that people want.  The California law inverts the internet by allowing Silicon Valley to dictate content on the internet, when internet users and internet providers should be able to tell Google to stop discriminating against Dennis Prager and other conservatives.

It is Google and Facebook that block access, and they want leverage to continue doing so.  That is backwards as Trump and his Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recognize, and hopefully they will sue in federal court if California Governor Brown signs this ill-advised bill into law.

Meanwhile, Congress is holding a hearing this week to review San Francisco-based Twitter’s bias against conservatives.  The FTC could be investigating Google’s unfair business practices, Sen. Orrin Hatch points out.

Internet service providers may sue to overturn the California law, which would establish one system in that State which is different from most other States.  California is essentially trying to force its self-interest on the rest of us with respect to the internet, to which California has no special claim of right.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.