Saturday, February 4, 2017

Berkeley Riots Provoked by Freedom Center Campaign (VIDEO)

David Horowitz appears on Lou Dobbs' show, at the video.

And here's Matthew Vadum, at FrontPage Magazine, "Berkeley fascists shut down Milo Yiannopoulos’s scheduled anti-sanctuary campus speech":

Leftist UC Berkeley students and outsiders rioted last night to prevent Milo Yiannopoulos from delivering a David Horowitz Freedom Center-sponsored speech demanding the end of “sanctuary campuses” that harbor illegal aliens. Milo's address, which was canceled amid violent mob attacks, fire-setting, and wanton property destruction, had been scheduled to mark the launch of the Freedom Center’s #nosanctuarycampusforcriminals campaign.

“One thing we do know for sure: the Left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down,” Yiannopoulos, tech editor at Breitbart News, said after being safely evacuated from the campus.

“This is what tolerance looks like at UC Berkeley,” Mike Wright, a Berkeley College Republicans member told SFGate as smoke bombs exploded nearby. He said paint was thrown on his person. “It’s sad.”

“The so-called ‘sanctuary movement’ is a concerted effort by left-wing administrations in major cities to thwart the purposes of the Patriot Act, undermine federal immigration law, and cripple the efforts of the Department of Homeland security to protect American citizens from terrorist threats,” David Horowitz, founder and CEO of the Freedom Center, said on Jan. 31.

“Thanks to the efforts of left-wing activists and administrators, this seditious movement has now spread to our colleges and universities.”

Backed by the Freedom Center, Yiannopoulos, an outspoken gay, Jewish, Greek-born British citizen who ardently supports President Trump, was on campus to demand that federal grants to UC Berkeley be withdrawn and that university officials like UC President Janet Napolitano and Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks who endanger their students with their illegal alien-shielding policies be prosecuted.

UC President Napolitano, formerly President Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary, is under the microscope because, as head of the taxpayer-supported University of California system, she is deliberately harboring hundreds of illegal aliens attending UC system schools. She has forbidden campus police from working with immigration law enforcement and provided $5 million to aid the illegals UC is sheltering from ICE.

The University of California system even provides legal aid to illegal alien students who wish to keep breaking U.S. immigration laws.

The executive director of the University of California Undocumented Legal Services Center at the UC Davis School of Law explained to Rolling Stone in December what a sanctuary campus was.

“Basically it’s a concept that says, ‘You’re safe here, and your immigration status, we won’t ask,’” said Maria Blanco. “’We won’t turn you over. We won’t turn your records over.’”

Not all the rioters were from Berkeley.

Many of those dressed black bloc-style so police can’t identify them appear to be associated with the “antifa” movement. Antifa may be short for anti-fascist but these thugs, usually a mix of anarchists and communists, use violent fascistic tactics against their targets. These terrorists do not tolerate opposing views. Before the riots broke out those gathered carried signs that read “hate speech is not free speech.” Signs from the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PLS) also showed up in Berkeley.

Antifa is also involved in the protests and melees at airports nationwide launched in opposition to President Trump’s Executive Order 13769 which as of Jan. 27 temporarily banned visitors from a handful of terrorism-plagued Muslim nations.

The Berkeley police had reportedly been given a “stand down” order which allowed rioters to generate mayhem. Later when the police declared the throng of troublemakers an unlawful assembly and ordered those present to leave, the mob chanted “you go first!”

After leaving the campus Yiannopoulos reflected on the night’s events in a video on his Facebook page...
Keep reading.

In the Mail: Alexander Hill, The Red Army and the Second World War

*BUMPED.*

This just came today a couple of weeks ago, courtesy of Cambridge University Press.

At Amazon, Alexander Hill, The Red Army and the Second World War.

I'm going to read a couple of chapters right now. More blogging later today.


'Antifas' Will Come After You, So-Called 'Liberals' Too

People are going to get killed.

Following-up, "The Old Gray Lady Promotes the Black Bloc: 'Anarchists Vow to Halt Far Right's Rise'."

Seen on Twitter:


The Old Gray Lady Promotes the Black Bloc: 'Anarchists Vow to Halt Far Right's Rise'

Following-up, "Only 'Antifas' Allowed 'Free Speech'."

I gotta say this is pretty fascinating. Anarchists and communists brawling with alleged brown shirts. It's like the 1930s, although let's hope not with the same results.

And the Old Gray Lady is playing it up. See, "Anarchists Respond to Trump’s Inauguration, by Any Means Necessary":

The videotaped sucker punch that staggered the white nationalist Richard Spencer on Inauguration Day quickly inspired mockery on social media. But it echoed loudly in an escalating confrontation between extreme ends of the political spectrum.

With far-right groups edging into the mainstream with the rise of President Trump, self-described anti-fascists and anarchists are vowing to confront them at every turn, and by any means necessary — including violence.

In Berkeley, Calif., on Wednesday night, masked protesters set fires, smashed windows and stormed buildings on the campus of the University of California to shut down a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, an inflammatory Breitbart News editor and a right-wing provocateur already barred from Twitter. Five people were injured, administrators canceled the event, and the university police locked down the campus for hours.

That followed a bloody melee in Seattle on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, when black-clad demonstrators — their faces concealed to minimize the risk of arrest — tried to prevent a speech by Mr. Yiannopoulos at the University of Washington, and a 34-year-old anti-fascist was shot and seriously wounded by a supporter of Mr. Yiannopoulos.

The outbreaks of destruction and violence since Mr. Trump’s inauguration have earned contempt from Republicans — including Trump supporters who say it is exactly why they voted for his promises of law and order — and condemnation from Democrats like Berkeley’s mayor, Jesse Arreguín. He called Wednesday’s display “contrary to progressive values” and said it “provided the ultranationalist far right exactly the images they want” to try to discredit peaceful protesters of Mr. Trump’s policies.

But anarchists and anti-fascists, who often make up a small but disproportionately attention-getting portion of protesters, defend the mayhem they create as a necessary response to an emergency.

“Yes, what the black bloc did last night was destructive to property,” Eric Laursen, a writer in Massachusetts who has helped publicize anarchist protests, said, using another name for the black-clad demonstrators. “But do you just let someone like Milo go wherever he wants and spread his hate? That kind of argument can devolve into ‘just sit on your hands and wait for it to pass.’ And it doesn’t.”

Anarchists also say their recent efforts have been wildly successful, both by focusing attention on their most urgent argument — that Mr. Trump poses a fascist threat — and by enticing others to join their movement.

“The number of people who have been showing up to meetings, the number of meetings, and the number of already-evolving plans for future actions is through the roof,” Legba Carrefour, who helped organize the so-called Disrupt J20 protests on Inauguration Day in Washington, said in an interview.

“Gained 1,000 followers in the last week,” trumpeted @NYCAntifa, an anti-fascist Twitter account in New York, on Jan. 24. “Pretty crazy for us as we’ve been active for many years with minimal attention. SMASH FASCISM!”

The movement even claims to be finding adherents far afield of major population centers. A participant in CrimethInc, a decades-old anarchist network, pointed to rising attendance at its meetings and activity cropping up in new places like Omaha.

“The Left ignores us. The Right demonizes us,” the anarchist website It’s Going Down boasted on Twitter. “Everyday we grow stronger.”

Little known to practitioners of mainstream American politics, militant anti-fascists make up a secretive culture closely associated with anarchists. Both reject social hierarchies as undemocratic and eschew the political parties as hopelessly corrupt, according to interviews with a dozen anarchists around the country. While some anarchists espouse nonviolence, others view property damage and even physical attacks on the far right as important tactics...
I hate these people. Anarchists were among the leftist goons that attacked me in Anaheim, in 2014. See, "Cowardly #ANSWER Communists Violently Harass 'American Power' at Anaheim Police Brutality Protest!"

They will resort to violence to shut you down. I've confronted them numerous times, but if you're going to do it, you need to do it in numbers. I'm not going out to cover another one of these events unless I've got a posse with me.

Only 'Antifas' Allowed 'Free Speech'

I've been checking out the "Refuse Fascism" Twitter feed for a couple of weeks now. These people are the real fascists, and they're not shy about it.

According to the collective's editorialists, Milo Yiannopoulos has no free speech rights because "he spews forth hateful, crude, unthinking bigotry and low-level insults against marginalized and oppressed people, and he has a documented record of knowingly unleashing campaigns of harassment, stalking, and threats of violence." (Via Memeorandum.)


All of this is false, of course. Even if his comments are "hateful," they're still protected by the First Amendment. Anyone with half a brain knows this (or anyone who wants to be taken seriously).

Indeed, even the far-left Los Angeles Times got it right the other day, when it defended Milo's right to speak at Berkeley. See, "The No Free Speech Movement at Berkeley":
A leaflet circulated at the Berkeley protest said Yiannopoulos has “no right to speak at Cal or anywhere else” because he’s a “tool of Trump’s possessive fascist government."

This is just the latest variation on the age-old argument of the censor that “error has no rights,” or, put another way, that one only has a right to free speech if one is speaking the “truth.” It’s an insidious notion that needs to be opposed in every generation.
Well, leftists don't want free speech. They don't want open debate and discussion, because they don't want their ideas exposed to critical examination (and repudiation). So, instead of engaging their opponents, they seek to destroy them. That's the textbook characteristic of fascism, hence the irony of "refuse fascism." For more on that, see Guy Benson, "Berkeley's 'Anti-Fascism' Protesters Embrace Fascism to Shut Down Free Speech."


We're in the midst of a political war. The Berkeley riot was just an advanced column of the left's forces of annihilation. The way to respond is with equal force, pushing back through vigorous law and order policies. (Governor Reagan sent in the National Guard at Berkeley in the 1960s. I expect we might be seeing a repeat of that kind of action in the current era, especially if the Trump administration decides to crack down.)

More at Right Wing News, "Who’s Funding the Liberal “Protests”?"

Hailey Clauson's Sizzling Return (VIDEO)

At Sports Illustrated:



Friday, February 3, 2017

Der Spiegel Cover Depict President Trump Beheading Lady Liberty

It really is going to be a long four years.

Man, I don't know if I can take leftist hysteria 24/7 for 48 months, sheesh.

Via Mashable "Powerful magazine covers depict America after Trump's immigration ban" (at Memeorandum).


Thursday, February 2, 2017

Milo Yiannopoulos, Dangerous

Milo was on Tucker Carlson's earlier. Watch, "Milo: Media legitimizes violence on conservatives":
Exclusive: Breitbart editor reflects on the riots that led to the cancellation of his speech at U.C. Berkeley, mainstream media creating environment for violence against conservatives, his new book, hate speech and more...
He's irresistible, actually.

Heh.

And his new book's sailing up the charts at Amazon, Dangerous, out March 14th.

Leftist Violence at Berkeley

Following-up from last night, "Masked Rioters Shut Down Milo Yiannopoulos at U.C. Berkeley (VIDEO)."

Also from last night, at the Other McCain, "VIOLENT BERKELEY MOB RIOT SHUTS DOWN YIANNOPOULOS SPEECH."

And earlier today, from Joseph Paul Watson:


Kate Moss for W Magazine

At London's Daily Mail, "Kate Moss, 43, goes completely naked for W magazine as she joins Jennifer Lopez, Jessica Chastain, Taraji P Henson and Donatella Versace."

And at W, "Kate Moss is Proudly Naked at 43 and Going Strong as Fashion's Reigning Muse."

Gorsuch Nomination Battle May Go Nuclear

Actually, I hope does.

Harry Reid opened the door to chucking the filibuster. Trump's likely to have another nomination this year or next, due to retirements on the Court. Throwing out the filibuster could move the Senate to a straight majoritarian chamber, better reflecting the will of the electorate. Now's the time to do it. The GOP could lock in a conservative majority on the Court for years, if not decades.

At the Los Angeles Times, from day before yesterday, "Democrats are ready to fight Trump's Supreme Court pick as the GOP-led Senate weighs 'nuclear option' on filibuster":

After Republicans blocked a string of President Obama’s judicial and executive nominees, frustrated Senate Democrats in 2013 used their majority to change long-standing filibuster rules and allow confirmations with a simple majority.

Now Republicans are considering the same “nuclear option” to confirm President Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court if Democrats mount a filibuster, as they appear poised to do.

So while Democrats sound alarms over Trump’s high court nomination and threaten to block it, their ability to actually stop him will be limited, thanks in part to their past willingness to change the filibuster rule when they held power.

Trump plans to announce Tuesday evening his choice for the seat made vacant last year by the death of conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia.

Senate filibusters of Supreme Court nominees are rare, largely because the decision had been seen as too important to be bogged down in partisanship.

When President Johnson tried to elevate Justice Abe Fortas to the position of chief justice, senators filibustered in part over an ethics scandal that eventually forced Fortas to resign. In 2006, Democrats, including then-Sen. Barack Obama, tried to filibuster Samuel A. Alito Jr., but the effort fizzled and Alito was confirmed.

Trump has encouraged Republican senators to scrap the filibuster and quickly confirm his choice. “We have obstructionists,” Trump told Fox’s Sean Hannity last week. Asked whether he wants GOP leaders to change the rules for the high court, he said, “I do.”

Without a filibuster, Republicans have enough votes to confirm Trump’s pick, assuming the party is unified. Republicans hold a 52-48 majority.

But if a filibuster is allowed, they’d need Democrats to help reach the 60-vote threshold needed to defeat the tactic.

And Democrats are in no mood to cooperate with Trump. Many remain incensed that Republicans refused to consider President Obama’s choice of Judge Merrick Garland after Scalia’s death, leaving the court with only eight justices for nearly a year.

“This was a stolen seat; it’s not Trump’s to fill,” said one Senate Democratic aide granted anonymity to discuss the situation...
Heh.

It's not "stolen." Democrats are just poor losers. See, "The 'Stolen' Supreme Court Seat."

Plus, still more at the link.

The 'Stolen' Supreme Court Seat

Nobody "stole" anything.

Joe Biden advocated the same alleged changing of the "rules" back when he was chair of the Senate Judiciary committee in the 1990s. Both sides do it. It's just that Republicans gambled on a power-play last year and won a massive and decisive victory with Donald Trump's election. All leftists can do now is scream about "stolen" seats" and about how "Hillary won the popular vote."

God it's pathetic.

But we're in a new era. Democrats just can't stand that they now face a powerful Republican administration, and majority in Congress, that is willing and able to fight by the very rules leftists invented: Alinsky Rule #4, make the enemy live up to its own standards.

In any case, see the childish whiner David Leonhart, at the New York Times (where else?), "Why Democrats Should Oppose Neil Gorsuch":
It’s important to remember just how radical — and, yes, unprecedented — the Senate’s approach to the previous Supreme Court nominee was.

Republican leaders announced last March that they would not consider any nominee. They did so even though Barack Obama still had 10 months left in his term and even though other justices (including Anthony Kennedy) had been confirmed in a president’s final year.

The refusal was a raw power grab. Coupled with Republican hints that no Hillary Clinton nominee would be confirmed either, it was a fundamental changing of the rules: Only a party that controlled both the White House and the Senate would now be able to assume it could fill a Supreme Court vacancy.

The change is terribly damaging for the country’s political system. It impedes the smooth functioning of the court and makes it a much more partisan institution.

Of course, the strategy also worked, and the flip from an Obama justice to a Trump justice will likely be the deciding factor in many of the most important cases in coming years.

So what can Democrats do?

First, they need to make sure that the stolen Supreme Court seat remains at the top of the public’s consciousness. When people hear the name “Neil Gorsuch,” as qualified as he may be, they should associate him with a constitutionally damaging power grab.

Second, Democrats should not weigh this nomination the same way that they’ve weighed previous ones. This one is different. The presumption should be that Gorsuch does not deserve confirmation, because the process that led to his nomination was illegitimate....

*****

Finally, the Democratic Party should begin planning its long-term strategy for the court, and that strategy needs to revolve around last year’s events. One option, for example, would be a plan first to deprive a Republican president of one nominee in coming years and second to offer a truce with Republicans.

I understand that all of these options sound aggressive and partisan, and it makes me deeply uncomfortable to make such an argument. But Democrats simply cannot play by the old set of rules now that the Republicans are playing by a new one. The only thing worse than the system that the Republicans have created is a system in which one political party volunteers to be bullied.
It doesn't make him "deeply uncomfortable." Frankly, by a look at his Twitter feed, the dude's reveling in his partisan hatred and demonization of the administration.

Fuck him.

America's New Opposition: The Left Has Been Reborn

Well, I suppose there's something to the argument of a renewed left --- it makes sense with the Democrats out of power, and especially so in the aftermath of Donald Trump's crushing (extinction-level) defeat of Hillary Clinton. The collective left has gone insane. Our political system is in a constant state of partisan siege. It only makes sense that the most angry seeds of the leftist revolt will be found in the bilge of the progressive fever swamps.

From Jedediah Purdy, at the New Republic, "America’s New Opposition":

In late October 2011, I was volunteering at the Occupy Wall Street library in lower Manhattan. Tucked into a corner of Zuccotti Park, the library was staffed mainly by anarchists of an exceedingly orderly bent. If society were suddenly freed from coercive institutions like libraries, these people would gladly spend the morning sorting donated books by Dewey decimal number—as they were doing in the mild fall weather. I was there for only a few days, but one conversation with a book borrower has stayed with me. He was having trouble understanding why he kept returning to the encampment. He wondered: Had anything like this happened before? Were there books that could tell him who had done it, and why? I felt I was meeting a victim of a political shipwreck. In my mind, he became emblematic of a left that felt itself so unmoored from any shared past that it was puzzled by its own existence.

Now that Donald Trump occupies the White House, it’s easy to feel that we are all castaways in historical time. There is talk in some quarters of leaving the country, of turning blue cities and states into sanctuaries, not just for the undocumented, but for disillusioned liberals—a response that amounts to giving up on creating a just and inclusive democracy in this divided land. But such feelings of despair miss the deeper and perhaps more lasting political transformation that has taken place in the five years since Zuccotti Park.

Indeed, the irruption of radicalism at Occupy turned out to be prophetic. For the first time in decades, the left regained its focus and put down new roots. Fight for $15, the campaign for a higher minimum wage led by fast-food workers, made gains in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco. Rolling Jubilee, founded in 2012, bought and canceled almost $32 million in medical and student debt. Black Lives Matter has forced America to reckon with police violence against black men and highlighted the economic isolation of many black communities. Last year, Bernie Sanders won more than 13 million votes. And recent polls show that a majority of Americans under the age of 30 now prefer socialism to capitalism. While it is unclear just what they mean by that, a renewed openness to radical ideas is unmistakable among young people. The mass protests in response to Trump’s policies, both at the women’s march and at airports around the country, in the last weeks show a sense of urgency and willingness to fight for robust legal equality and inclusiveness. At the very moment when establishment politics have been severely undermined—the GOP hijacked by Trump, the Democrats confounded by Hillary Clinton’s loss—the American left has been reborn.

For most of the 2016 election cycle, however, the left was told, implicitly or explicitly, that while they might be charming or admirable, they should leave real politics to the adults of the Democratic National Committee and the liberal commentariat. There was one candidate, we were assured, and one web of institutions and experts who understood how to get things done: They were battle-tested and ready to win, then to hit the ground governing. The rest of us had pretty sentiments; it was sweet that we thought the word democracy could refer to something larger in ambition and imagination than the current version of the Democratic Party; but politics means putting away childish things.

In the wake of Trump’s victory in November, the present leadership of the Democratic Party has failed to grasp the lessons of its own defeat. “I don’t think people want a new direction,” Nancy Pelosi insisted on Meet the Press just after the election. The DNC doubled down on that position in early January, announcing the creation of an anti-Trump “war room” staffed with Clinton operatives who will continue attacking Trump’s ethics, character, and speculative ties to Russia. This is the same strategy that failed to win the presidential election against a palpably flawed and eminently beatable candidate.

Though fragmented and incipient, this nascent left is now best placed to mount a convincing opposition to Trump, and to engage with the forces that brought him to power. With its focus on economic inequality and collective action, the left knows things that liberals have been reluctant to acknowledge, or in any event to say—knowledge that is necessary to embrace the populist moment, push back on its reactionary inclinations, and seize its progressive potential. The left is able to diagnose the malfunctioning of our democracy because, unlike the Democratic establishment, it starts from the premise that American democracy as it is currently constituted is profoundly insufficient...
An interesting, although profoundly mistaken analysis. Hillary Clinton ran far to the left, much farther than her 2008 campaign, and farther left than both of Barack Obama's campaigns.

The Democrats lost not just because Crooked Hillary was a disaster waiting to happen, it's simply that the electorate repudiated leftism. What we're seeing now, all across the board, especially with the increasing violence, is going to help the Republicans. For all of Donald Trump's flaws, and he's got many, he keeps winning. And it's so early. I do think we're in for perpetual outrage and the concomitant never-ending street protests. In the end what will matter is good governance. Democrats are making massive gambles at this very minute with literally unhinged obstructionism. The voters will see more of the same and punish the "establishment," which is best represented now by the progressive-collectivist elite.

But continue reading.

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Masked Rioters Shut Down Milo Yiannopoulos at U.C. Berkeley (VIDEO)

Here's Milo's statement on Facebook, "I was just evacuated from UC Berkeley (VIDEO)."

This is perhaps the most violent protest against the man yet. Clearly leftists are even more enraged now that the "alt-right" has a sympathetic ear in the White House.

And at Fox News, and on Twitter below.

There's a major black bloc element out there. These folks are not going to tolerate a difference of opinion. No wonder Yiannopoulos was evacuated. We're on the precipice of civil war. And the initial violent skirmishes are already breaking out on America's campuses.




Trump Administration's Religious Freedom Executive Order

The hits keep coming for leftists, and the freak-out index keeps dialing up.

It turns out the administration's forthcoming executive order on religious freedom's been leaked, and far-left outlets are in meltdown mode.

At Newsweek, "LGBT Groups Brace for Trump Religious Freedom Executive Order."

At at the Nation, "Leaked Draft of Trump’s Religious Freedom Order Reveals Sweeping Plans to Legalize Discrimination":

If signed, the order would create wholesale exemptions for people and organizations who claim religious objections to same-sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion, and trans identity.

leaked copy of a draft executive order titled “Establishing a Government-Wide Initiative to Respect Religious Freedom,” obtained by The Investigative Fund and The Nation, reveals sweeping plans by the Trump administration to legalize discrimination.

The four-page draft order, a copy of which is currently circulating among federal staff and advocacy organizations, construes religious organizations so broadly that it covers “any organization, including closely held for-profit corporations,” and protects “religious freedom” in every walk of life: “when providing social services, education, or healthcare; earning a living, seeking a job, or employing others; receiving government grants or contracts; or otherwise participating in the marketplace, the public square, or interfacing with Federal, State or local governments.”

The draft order seeks to create wholesale exemptions for people and organizations who claim religious or moral objections to same-sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion, and trans identity, and it seeks to curtail women’s access to contraception and abortion through the Affordable Care Act. The White House did not respond to requests for comment, but when asked Monday about whether a religious freedom executive order was in the works, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters, “I’m not getting ahead of the executive orders that we may or may not issue. There is a lot of executive orders, a lot of things that the president has talked about and will continue to fulfill, but we have nothing on that front now.”

Language in the draft document specifically protects the tax-exempt status of any organization that “believes, speaks, or acts (or declines to act) in accordance with the belief that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, sexual relations are properly reserved for such a marriage, male and female and their equivalents refer to an individual’s immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy, physiology, or genetics at or before birth, and that human life begins at conception and merits protection at all stages of life.”

 The breadth of the draft order, which legal experts described as “sweeping” and “staggering,” may exceed the authority of the executive branch if enacted. It also, by extending some of its protections to one particular set of religious beliefs, would risk violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

“This executive order would appear to require agencies to provide extensive exemptions from a staggering number of federal laws—without regard to whether such laws substantially burden religious exercise,” said Marty Lederman, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and an expert on church-state separation and religious freedom.

The exemptions, Lederman said, could themselves violate federal law or license individuals and private parties to violate federal law. “Moreover,” he added, “the exemptions would raise serious First Amendment questions, as well, because they would go far beyond what the Supreme Court has identified as the limits of permissive religious accommodations.” It would be “astonishing,” he said, “if the Office of Legal Counsel certifies the legality of this blunderbuss order.”

The leaked draft maintains that, as a matter of policy, “Americans and their religious organizations will not be coerced by the Federal Government into participating in activities that violate their conscience.”

It sets forth an exceptionally expansive definition of “religious exercise” that extends to “any act or refusal to act that is motivated by a sincerely held religious belief, whether or not the act is required or compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief.” “It’s very sweeping,” said Ira Lupu, a professor emeritus at the George Washington University Law School and an expert on the Constitution’s religion clauses and on the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). “It raises a big question about whether the Constitution or the RFRA authorizes the president to grant religious freedom in such a broad way.”

In particular, said Lupu, the draft order “privileges” a certain set of beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity—beliefs identified most closely with conservative Catholics and evangelical Christians—over others. That, he said, goes beyond “what RFRA might authorize” and may violate the Establishment Clause.

Lupu added that the language of the draft “might invite federal employees,” for example, at the Social Security Administration or Veterans Administration, “to refuse on religious grounds to process applications or respond to questions from those whose benefits depend on same sex marriages.” If other employees do not “fill the gap,” he said, it could “lead to a situation where marriage equality was being de facto undermined by federal employees, especially in religiously conservative communities,” contrary to Supreme Court rulings...
Still more.

Mya Dalbesio Will Blow You Away (VIDEO)

Following-up from the other day, "'It took a while for Sports Illustrated to fully convert from exclusive Muhammed Ali cover stories to foreign lingerie models barely covered in Costa Rican hooker thongs...'"

It's true. I do believe SI's fully embraced its full-on porn identity.

At Theo's, "Mya Dalbesio Will Blow You Away With Her Debut - Intimates - Sports Illustrated Swimsuit."

New Claudia Romani Bikini Pics in Miami

She's amazing.

At London's Daily Mail, "Bottoms up! Model Claudia Romani showcases her perky posterior in barely there bikini bottoms as she soaks up the sun in Miami."

'Never Trumpers' Boarding the #TrumpTrain?

I tweeted last night:

And today at the Conservative Treehouse, "Sorry #NeverTrumpers but You Don’t Get to Dismount Your High Horse Today…":

Sorry #NeverTrumpers, but you don”t get to dismount your high horse and celebrate the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch today.  This is NOT your victory, this is ours!

There is a gobsmacking level of pontificating self-righteousness visible from the collective proletariat within your crony-conservative movement who made the decision to formulate their political argument from a position of opposition.

Perhaps it would be different if you framed your antagonism from a position of advocacy, but that wasn’t the direction you chose.  No, you chose a specific position of opposition as clearly evident within your chosen mantra “Never Trump”.

Perhaps it would be different if you ever had a come-to-Jesus moment and apologized immediately following the November election.  Then again, when your opinion of your own self-importance is this high, those humble words are just as foreign as your understanding of the movement that won.

You don’t get to frame the entire construct of your argument around opposition to a team, and then claim benefit to the outcome of victory.  Stay on your high-horse, move along and ride off into that proverbial land of irrelevance; you’re dead here.

Save your dismount for another defining “conservative” assembly where you can gather at CPAC again and give a standing ovation to House Speaker Paul Ryan a month after he eliminates the debt ceiling and passes a $2 trillion OmniBus spending bill, funding all of the progressive priorities you hypocritically claim to oppose; you’re good at that.

That particular circle of crazy just doesn’t sell here any longer.

Save up your fiscal hypocrisy, you’ll need it.  Because in less than two months our victorious bastard will deliver a budget that cuts a trillion “per year” out of the federal coffers…. and there is no doubt the beneficiary of your prior applause will be counting on your fiscally conservative sensibilities to protest for more spending on his behalf.

Oh, and keep your newest VAT tax construct.  We’ll bring the sledgehammer, save your gilded and monogrammed tweezers for a swamp audience stupid enough to believe it – Thank you.

Oh, and don’t go getting all pearl-clutchy.  This isn’t anger directed toward you, this is far, far worse.  This is a very targeted and deliberate Cold Anger surrounding you and the swamp creatures of your affiliation. This sensibility never forgets.

You had a choice. You chose a direction, you lost; and you damn near lost the entire friggin’ country.  Just because the team you ridiculed and attacked has overcome all opposition and gained victory, that doesn’t mean you get to backtrack now and expect the bruised and bloodied recipients to forget those who launched the stones and arrows.

Save your wine-spritzers and crust-less triangle sandwiches. We didn’t have well financed high-horses, we launched boots, well-worn boots, scratched, clawed and advanced despite your hoighty-toighty principles, intransigence and unwillingness to cuss or get your hands dirty.

Good grief, your insufferable sensibilities were frightened of frog memes, FROG MEMES!

It was our deplorable and calloused hands that volunteered, opened our piggy banks, and held firm to support each other and our vulgarian candidate against all opposition.  You were part of that opposition...
Actually, Mary Katharine Ham did apologize, but not anyone else that I know of.

Filibuster of Gorsuch Could Doom Senate Democrats in 2018 Midterm Elections

Well, Senate Democrats aren't doing anyone any favors right now. It's all chickens with their heads cut off. And it ain't pretty.

At the Other McCain, "Trump Nominates ‘Worthy’ Judge; Democrats Go Into Full-On Panic Mode":

Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review calls Neil Gorsuch a “worthy” appointee to the Supreme Court, “a well-respected conservative whose legal philosophy is remarkably similar to that of Antonin Scalia, the justice he will replace if the Senate confirms him.”

The “if” in that sentence expresses a contingency that is difficult to estimate at this point. Democrats are still butt-hurt because when Scalia died in an election year, the Republican majority in the Senate refused to take action on Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland for the vacant seat. Whatever one may think of that controversy, that was last year’s fight and Republicans won it — not only was Donald Trump elected president, but the Garland nomination didn’t hurt the GOP in Senate elections last fall, either. We might therefore conclude that the people ratified the Republican opposition to Obama’s SCOTUS nominee. Yet the Democrats in the Senate evidently don’t recognize the legitimacy of either the Trump presidency or the GOP Senate majority. Many vowed to invoke the filibuster against Trump’s court nominee, even before it was known who the president would nominate...
Yeah, well, like I said, it ain't pretty.

But it's the Democrats we're talking about here. They definitely have not recovered from the November 8th beating. It's going to be a long four years. Long and pretty much hilarious.

Still more.

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

A Jarring New Level of Confrontation and Conflict?

I don't think so, actually.

We've had hyper-partisan conflict virtually 24/7 since 2009, when Barack Hussein took office, and only slightly less so under G.W. Bush. Going back further, Bill Clinton was impeached in December 1988, by a GOP House that took power after the earthquake midterm elections of 1994. Politics has long become partisan warfare. It certainly seems even more intense now, because President Trump has upended all expectations since he announced his campaign in June 2015, and it's been a relentless roller coaster of political terror for the left ever since.

It's been, what, 11 days since the new regime took over? And with the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, the populist-nationalist-conservative right is firing on all cylinders. It's unbelievable. The elation you're seeing even among raving critics of Trump during the campaign --- the "Never Trumpers" --- gives you a powerful idea of just how significant the victories for the right are at this moment. Leftists are being devastated. Hence, the Democrat-Media-Complex has a vested interest in portraying the intensity of partisan sniping as unprecedented. The pace is faster, sure, but that's about all. Trump never seems to sleep, and all the up and downs, the volleys and shots he throws across the bow of the collective left, are looking much more carefully choreographed than people thought possible during the campaign. He's just hammering the radical left!

All of this is absolutely breathtaking and I'm just floating right now. If Mitch McConnell announces the nuclear option to get Gorsuch confirmed, in the face of threats of a Democrat filibuster (and amid the boycott today on Trump's cabinet nominations) --- it's going to feel like the freakin' first time, man!

In any case, see perhaps the hardest hit, the New York Times, "A Jarring New Level of Confrontation and Conflict Hits Washington" (at Memeorandum):

WASHINGTON — President Trump made clear in his fiery inaugural speech that he was going to challenge the Washington establishment. Now the establishment is quickly pushing back, creating a palpable air of uncertainty and chaos in the opening days of his administration.

The new president fired an acting attorney general who refused to defend the administration’s executive order on immigration. Democrats on Tuesday boycotted Senate confirmation hearings to prevent votes on cabinet nominees. State Department employees opposed to the administration were urged to quit if they didn’t like Mr. Trump’s direction.

Even after years of unbreakable gridlock and unyielding partisanship, it was a jarring new level of confrontation and conflict, and it was contributing to a building sense of crisis just as the new president was to disclose the identity of a new Supreme Court nominee — a selection certain to further inflame tensions.

Republicans, adjusting to the new era, seemed blindsided by the rapid pace of events and the worrying failure of the new administration to engage in the information-sharing and consultation that would typically accompany the issuance of a potentially explosive proposal like the freeze on visas for refugees and immigrants from select countries.

“It’s regrettable that there was some confusion with the rollout,” Speaker Paul D. Ryan told reporters Tuesday, noting that top Republicans learned of the contents of the order only as it was being issued.

That secretive, closely held approach may be the preferred choice of the president and self-proclaimed disrupters like his senior adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, who is quickly emerging as the power in the West Wing, but not by more conventional politicians who definitely don’t like to be caught off guard.

Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, said similar failings had emerged in the early days of previous administrations but would not be tolerated for long.

“You get a brief period you’re allowed for a learning curve, but after that, you have to get your act together,” Mr. King said.

One veteran of past Republican administrations, acknowledging the Trump White House was still in its “shakedown” phase, encouraged the president’s staff to focus more on consultation to avert confusion. “Process matters,” said Kenneth M. Duberstein, who served as chief of staff to Ronald Reagan. “You are dealing with not just senior management, but with a variety of constituencies and a board of directors of 535 people.”

Still, the main Republican objection seemed to be with the handling of the executive order by the inexperienced and understaffed White House rather than the actual content of the order...
Keep reading.