We are the drain the swamp people

Gary Bauer writing at American Values devastates opposition to Trump’s use of emergency powers to strengthen the border and deal with the humanitarian crises there. Law, precedent, necessity, and ready funds available are all on his /our side.  That Congress should authorize the wall full force, and has not, is not dispositive of the President not being able to operate under independent Executive powers granted him.   If they so desire let Congress gather the strength to deny him the use of funds to do so by passing legislation. Short of that he has the constitutional power.

There will be Republican opposition  to Trump using emergency powers (they should hear from us in no uncertain terms). Presumably there would not be enough to circumvent his authority after the use of  his veto power.

Trump Is Right
 
If you want a good example of fake news, the hysteria over President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the border is it. 
 
You are being told by a media mob that the president has made himself a dictator, that he is using powers he does not have.  Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer called Trump’s decision “lawless.” 
 
Here are the facts:

Congress has repeatedly granted the president the power to declare national emergencies since 1976. 

• The left-wing Brennan Center for Justice has identified 123 statutory powers — that means authority already existing in the law approved by Congress — that the president can exercise under an emergency declaration.

• This power has been used nearly 60 times and by every president since Jimmy Carter, who declared two national emergencies.  Reagan declared six.  George H. W. Bush four.  Clinton seventeen.  George W. Bush twelve.  Obama thirteen.

• Donald Trump has already used this power three times during his administration.  No one freaked out then.

• There are 31 active national emergencies still in effect. 

• In 2005, two Democrat governors, Janet Napolitano (D-AZ) and Bill Richardson (D-NM) declared states of emergency at their borders due to surging illegal immigration, crime and violence — the same issues President Trump is citing today.

 
President Trump has every legal right to issue this emergency declaration.
 
But, as he conceded during his press conference this morning, there will be a flurry of lawsuits.  And he will probably lose in lower left-wing courts still dominated by Obama appointees.  I expect the administration to fast-track its appeals to the Supreme Court, where I also expect Trump will prevail, just as he did on the travel ban.
 
Here’s something to keep in mind:  No one questions the president’s authority to send troops to the border.  Every president in recent memory has done it.  Those troops regularly help build additional fencing to secure the border.
 
If the president can do that, why can’t he tell them to dig holes and pour concrete?  Of course, he can, as constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley explains here and here.
 
 
 
The Order
 
There is an emergency at the border.  Current apprehensions have surged 84% and are on pace to reach a 10-year record of more 730,000 illegal border crossings this year.  
 
In the past two years, ICE agents arrested more than 260,000 criminal aliens who were responsible for 30,000 sex crimes and 4,000 murders.  These crimes, and the untold suffering they caused, never should have happened. 
 
The failure of our politicians to secure the border and protect our citizens is what is truly immoral in this debate, not the wall.
 
President Trump is right to issue this emergency declaration.
 
The order Trump signed today authorizes the administration to reallocate approximately $8.1 billion from various sources. 
 

• $600 million from the Treasury Forfeiture Fund.
• $2.5 billion from Department of Defense funds for Counterdrug Activities.
• $3.6 billion from Department of Defense military construction projects.

 
In short, the president is using seized assets from drug cartels and funds already set aside for drug interdiction and military construction projects.  There’s no better use of these funds than securing the border to keep drugs and gangs out.
 
By the way, the left is all in on open borders.  But don’t take my word for it. 
 
Watch Beto O’Rourke vow to tear down the El Paso wall.  And just on the other side of that wall is one of the most dangerous cities in the world.
 
 A False Argument
 
Now that I knocked down the fake news, I want to address the false argument that many conservatives may fall for, and which some Republican member of Congress are already making.  And that is:  What about the precedent this emergency declaration will set?
 
Speaker Nancy Pelosi raised it yesterday because she knows conservatives are susceptible to arguments about process and the rule of law.  Pelosi suggested a future liberal president might declare a national emergency on gun violence. 
 
Others have fretted about a future President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declaring a national emergency to impose her Green New Deal.
 
That argument is absurd, and we shouldn’t fall for the left’s scare tactics. 
 
As I have already noted, there is no precedent being set here.  The authority Trump is using has been used repeatedly by every president since Jimmy Carter.  Trump is following precedent. 
 
Moreover, Pelosi is demonstrating her contempt for the Constitution.  The president does not have the power to nullify a constitutional right.  There is no authority to unilaterally invalidate the Second Amendment. 
 
No American has a right to have a border without a wall.  But every American has a right to own a firearm.  No American will lose anything because of the president’s emergency declaration.  But his order will keep people who should not be here out of the country.
 
Finally, when the left is in power, it doesn’t care about precedent.  Liberals do whatever they have to do to advance their agenda. 
 
When state after state passed laws protecting traditional marriage, the Obama Administration and other left-wing politicians refused to defend those laws.  What was the precedent for that? 
 
There was a time in our nation’s history when filibusters against judges and executive appointments were extraordinarily rare.  But after George W. Bush was elected, the left broke precedent and abused the filibuster to repeatedly block his judges in order to preserve its grip on the courts. 
 
Later, when it was convenient for them, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid broke the rules to make it easier to confirm Obama’s judges in order to preserve the left’s grip on the courts.
 
I am glad Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said yesterday that he supports the president’s emergency declaration because a few weeks ago he indicated that he would not. 
 
Now I hope McConnell will change his mind again and end the legislative filibuster.  Had he done so when President Trump urged him to at any point in the past two years, we would not be in this position today. 
 
Sen. McConnell doesn’t want to change the rules on the legislative filibuster now because, ever the gentleman, he assumes Chuck Schumer will afford him the same courtesy to block legislation the next time liberals control the White House and the Senate. 
 
Seriously? 
 
Progressives won’t hesitate to fundamentally change the rules the next time they have power and the chance to complete their socialist transformation of America.
 
We shouldn’t be trying to govern the country with one hand tied behind our back!

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THE DEMOCRATS DON’T NEED A “PRECEDENT”.  JUST ASK HARRY REID!
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PELOSI WARNS THAT A FUTURE DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT COULD DECLARE NATIONAL EMERGENCY TO PUSH GUN CONTROL

WASHINGTON, D.C. — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned President Donald Trump on Thursday that a future Democratic president could declare a national emergency to achieve an agenda, such as gun control policy.
Responding to the president’s announcement that he will declare a national emergency related to the U.S. southern border, Pelosi maintained that “Democratic presidents can declare emergencies as well. So the precedent that the president is setting here is something that should be met with great unease and dismay by the Republicans.” 

AS DLH AS OFTEN INTONED ~~ WHO ON GOD’S GREEN EARTH (apologies to AOC) thinks today’s Democrats would be inhibited one iota by precedent on anything they want?!!

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• Being for ridiculous and childish “free everything” is good politics for Democrats
• Rationality is not useful

They are not after the mushy middle or true believers – they are after the most detached and unreasoning to vote, the most subject to their pie-in-the-sky advocacy.  The mushy middle is too compromised and too much work to harvest as easily.  There are really four segments of voters anyway and by no means the same size. There are true believers left and right,  the so-called mushy middle and the fourth being the indolent and ineligible.

The latter is who Dems are focused on according to this article at The Resurgent. Indeed as the author Stacey Lennox points out the Dems have telegraphed their strategy to their organizers for several years now. Lennox refers to a seminal article for Democrat strategists that is behind Democrat vote harvesting efforts and how their radicalism is part and parcel with that.

Believe Everything A Socialist Tells You About What They Want (excerpt)

. . . according to Data for Progress capturing the largest group of non-voters possible is the best way to build a progressive coalition. The study was commissioned by the Justice Democrats, a group founded by staff from Sanders’ 2016 campaign. Sanders identifies himself as a Democratic Socialist.

According to the report, non-voters and occasional voters support a far left agenda. One of the section introductions:

The section talks about the need to increase voters who are poorer and more diverse. There is also much said about 2012 being the only election some of the occasional voters have participated in. Here is the hypothesis of the authors:

The path to victory is energizing and delivering to the base. Yet far too often, Democratic campaigns are designed to win over mushy milquetoast (and mythical) moderates, rather than excite the base.
“THE FUTURE OF THE PARTY“, Lead Author Sean McElwee, April 2018

The clear message to Democrat candidates is “DO NOT MODERATE”. For the constituency that sees themselves as ascendant, there is no place for actual liberals, left-leaning libertarians or independents who may lean center left. The new Democrat party is done with you if their strategy is executed.

Our view is that people genuinely concerned with civic virtue don’t advocate for ignorant oblivious voting, haranguing manipulating falsifying those who decline, those not interested, that have so little volition, or for good reason are ineligible. But that is what Democrats do.

If one has lived in an area more than a matter of a few months and is not informed enough to know how and where to vote and do so on their own volition that is a strong indicator they should not be voting. Go with ones indolence. Voting is not a civic duty unless one is informed. Get out the vote efforts removed from reason are like passing out communion wafers hither and yon — there is no virtue  — indeed it denigrates the very concept.

But Democrats know this, they just figure those people are easily appealed to with their radical thoughtless agenda and they are probably right. This includes “heads full of mush” young people.  Of course Republicans over the years have handed them the tools to do this by going along with voting “reforms” rather than hold the line against motor voter, or automatic registration, vote by mail and long voting periods.  The  “easy but secure” slogan is a joke when secure is so easily overcome by “easy”.

R Mall

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From a forward by RD.  This first one has relevance to all of  “liberal arts” academia and even much of the sciences. ESPECIALLY and most impactful —  law, political “science” and journalism.

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Regular readers will note that we have called for changes to the judicial selection process in Iowa for some time.  Certainly we we were not the only ones seeing the liberal bias (law culture and otherwise) that is practically built-in to the current process.

Legislation  has now been introduced to reduce the influence of the state bar association which is saturated with products of liberal bias in the state’s law schools ,which produces by far most of the state’s attorneys and therefore judges.

What exists of the political process, the political science of the constitution, should not be owned by lawyers. The political science of the constitution is not so obscure that is unavailable to every citizen. But if the system builds in a certain ilk as to who can be effectively nominated then that system broadly controls the legal results.

Under the present system the judicial selection bias too often provides little real alternative even though the legal community does produce lawyers who as judges would respect the core documents they are obliged to uphold.

The people are governed by the constitution and laws consistent with it and therefore the people should have a better system to govern the selection of those that seek to redefine the law. Too often having to settle for Tweedledee 1, 2 or 3 or being saddled with little alternative after the fact (retention votes) s not a good system if the judicial philosophy is oriented toward judge-made-law rather than application of the law. If the system builds in a certain ilk as to who can be effectively nominated then that system controls

Even the existing process, modeled after the so-called Missouri Plan, recognizes the importance of citizen involvement as it provides for retention votes regarding judges. But the plan is loaded toward the bar association in the key nomination and selection process and that is loaded with products of law educators liberal politcal bias and an association bias that creeps in as well. The bias is so bad that conservative professors are practically blocked from teaching at the University of Iowa Law School* and what we have heard about the only other school Drake University Law School, is hardly comforting.

This article appearing at Caffeinated Thoughts provides a report and analysis of recently introduced legislation to reform the system. It requires some concentration as to the process, perhaps a chart will be produced to help visualize the changes for a quick scan,  but clearly the proposal shifts more emphasis to the people and their representatives. Improvements in the hearing process are indicated and key as well.

  A Needed Change to Iowa’s Judicial Selection Process 

*more on the veracity of that figure in a subsequent article

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Language corrupts

So Lizzy Fauxahontas Warren wants to lead us Pilgrims . . . over the cliff

And apparently by the QC Times choice of words to describe Fauxahontas’s mission as “populist”, the tens of millions of people who voted for Trump are all billionaires or something

And being a socialist –  she a HUGE bureaucracy advocate – for government control of everything substantial in life — markets – what is earned  – health care – resuscitate or not – what is taught –  –  and (inevitably) written and broadcast . . .

Sen. Elizabeth Warren brings populist message to Davenport

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Whats more fun in an interlude than given it to Democrats??

Via Intellectual Froglegs , forwarded to us by TN,  Dem women in white at the SOTU

They have their latest video posted which we intend to excerpt  for your pleasure as soon as we figure out how to embed a non-YouTube item –  The IF site has decided to shun You-Tube ,FaceBook and Twitter in favor of other avenues of communication.  Good for them.

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Can Trump Handle a Foreign Crisis?

• A resounding “YES!” ? “Miss Peggy” Weighs in
• Uh, well, no, not a “resounding ‘YES”…from Peggy Noonan? Are you kidding?
• Always a Trump critic, and, almost always a Republican president critic, Peggy Noonan’s shoulder chip is never more visible than when she is going after President Trump.
  ————————————————————————————————–

Peggy’s column is special even for the one time Reagan staffer.

She warns us all that the Trump administration is certain to face a foreign crisis and, with Trump’s “famously impulsive, uninterested in deep study, not systematic in his thinking…(one who has) given no sign of..spending..time forging deeper relationships with advisors, and agency heads…” there’s “good reason to worry the administration will be unprepared.”

This ‘deep analysis’ of President Trump by the erudite (who, incidentally, as chief speechwriter for GHW Bush’s ’88 presidential campaign coined the historically famous “read my lips; no new taxes”…for which the late president was surely grateful to Peggy, to have this memorable line as a part of his eulogy), recounts in this column the many occasions on which past presidents faced those crucial moments.

Interesting that no mention of former president, Barack Obama’s experiences in preparing for and/or facing ‘foreign crises’ is included. (Is it possibly because he effectively wielded the strategy of “pre-emptive capitulation” (Iran, Yemen, ‘tell Putin to give me some slack’, endless “confessions and apologies” for America’s past “offenses” etc?).

She also is alarmed that “there is a lack of trust between the intelligence community and the White House”, without mentioning how often the “intelligence community” has failed to identify serious threats in the past. Nor how the current “intelligence community” below the Cabinet level is still peopled with former Obama devotees and “Deep Staters”.

She deplores how the National Security Council is “not fully staffed”. Again, she doesn’t note that the former National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster, fired any conservative staffers as a first step upon becoming NSC head.
Nor does the one-time writer of ‘daily commentary’ for Dan Rather at CBS News, acknowledge that many other positions in all areas of the Trump administration are unoccupied due to the massive obstruction efforts of the Democrats which has prevented President Trump from actually fully forming his presidency, even after two years.

She might also have pointed out that a host of Trump Cabinet appointees have been driven from office by relentless attacks on their character and actions which, some believe, were overlooked in other administrations by Democrats, media, and critics like Noonan herself. (Tell me, as an accomplished, highly successful, widely respected individual in private life, would you accept a high profile position in the Trump administration, to be subjected to the vicious innuendo, accusations, and overall shabby treatment by the Democrats, the media, the “never-Trumpers’, (such as Nikki Haley, Ryan Zinke, Mike Pompeo, Tom Price, Ben Carson, Betsey DeVos, and on and on , have experienced)?

Much could be written by more talented and thoughtful analysts (like Victor Davis Hanson) to shred Miss Peggy’s inch deep analysis.
But that’s our two cents’ worth.    DLH

(graphic not in original)

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Peggy Noonan Writes in the WSJ:

Can Trump Handle a Foreign Crisis?   

Someday this White House will face a sudden, immediate and severe foreign-policy crisis. It’s almost a miracle it hasn’t happened already. George W. Bush had 9/11 less than eight months into his tenure; John F. Kennedy had the Bay of Pigs three months into his presidency and the Cuban missile crisis the following year. In two years Donald Trump has faced some turbulence, but not a full-fledged crisis.

Such good fortune won’t continue forever. I sometimes ask past and present officials of this administration their thoughts on a crisis, and how the White House would handle one. They are concerned.

What might such a crisis look like? History resides in both the unexpected and the long-predicted. Russia moves against a U.S. ally, testing Washington’s commitment to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty; a coordinated cyber action by our adversaries takes down the American grid; China, experiencing political unrest within a background of a slowing economy, decides this is a good time to move on Taiwan; someone bombs Iran’s missile sites; Venezuela explodes in violence during a military crackdown; there’s an accidental launch somewhere.

Maybe it will be a wild and deliberate act that brings trouble, maybe not. The historian Margaret MacMillan said a few years ago in a radio interview: “I think we should never underestimate the sheer role of accident.”
What does it take to handle a grave crisis successfully, beyond luck?

Everything depends on personnel, process and planning. The president and his top advisers have to work closely, with trust and confidence, quickly apprehending the shape of the challenge and its implications. There must be people around him with wisdom, judgment, experience. They must know their jobs and be able to execute them under pressure. Clear lines of communication are key between both individuals and agencies. The president and his advisers have to maintain high focus yet pace themselves—you never know how long a crisis will last. They would have to keep their eyes on the million moving pieces, military and diplomatic, that comprise a strategy. As Navy veteran JFK said during the missile crisis, “There’s always some poor son of a bitch who doesn’t get the word.”

How would this White House handle a grave crisis? It is right to feel particular concern. We know from every first-person account, from the histories, memoirs and journalism, that it’s a White House frequently at war. They don’t get along, they leak, they don’t trust each other. There is unusually high turnover, a constantly changing cast of characters, a lack of deep experience. During the Berlin airlift, thought at the time to be the height of the Cold War, Secretary of State George C. Marshall, who’d been Army chief of staff during World War II, was asked how worried he was. “I’ve seen worse,” he replied. He had. No one around this president has seen worse. When Jim Mattis, John Kelly and H.R. McMaster left the administration, a cumulative 123 years of military and diplomatic experience left with them.

The president is famously impulsive, uninterested in deep study, not systematic in his thinking. His recently leaked schedules give no sign he spends a lot of time forging deeper relationships with advisers and agency heads on whom one day a great deal may depend. There is a marked lack of trust between the intelligence community and the White House—and intelligence is front and center during a crisis. The National Security Council is not fully staffed.

What would happen if they suddenly faced heavy history? “No administration is ready for its first crisis,” says Richard Haass, who was a member of George H.W. Bush’s NSC and is author of “A World in Disarray.” “What you learn is that the machinery isn’t adequate, or people aren’t ready.” First crises trigger reforms of procedures so that second ones are better handled. “This administration is not populated by people who’ve been through a crisis of the first order.” Mr. Haass notes that the national security adviser must see himself not only as counselor to the president but a coordinator of the interagency process. He’s got to make sure it works.

There is no way, really, to simulate a crisis, because you don’t know what’s coming, and key people are busy doing their regular jobs. And all administrations, up until the point they’re tested, tend to be overconfident.
What can they do to be readier? Think, study, talk and plan.

For a modern example of good process, personnel and management, there is the Cuban missile crisis. Because of its nature—two nuclear powers poised eye to eye—the stakes couldn’t have been higher. The threat of miscalculation was ever present in JFK’s mind. He feared a so-called spasm response—a knee-jerk reaction from Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev if he felt cornered or provoked. Presidential historian Michael Beschloss says “a big part of Kennedy’s job was to keep an eye on every aspect, big and small—where planes are flying, where troops are moving”—so that Krushchev “could get no false impression.” Kennedy had learned during the Bay of Pigs disaster that a president can’t do it alone. He created an executive committee of a dozen trusted advisers to help him achieve consensus and devise strategy. “He needed expert help to ride herd on the bureaucracy, including the military bureaucracy.” He often absented himself so members weren’t tempted to tailor their advice to his perceived preferences. In time he brought in Congress. House Majority Whip Hale Boggs was famously summoned by a note in a bottle dropped from an military helicopter as he fished on the Gulf of Mexico. Personal emissaries were sent to Paris, Bonn and London. When former Secretary of State Dean Acheson met with Charles de Gaulle, the latter famously waved away photographic proof of the Soviet missile sites. A great nation like America would not act without proof, he said.

Fundamentally MS Noonan the best rhetoric requires truth. If it sweeps truth away it isn’t much of a speech. You have over varnished your points with examples that are debatable, rebuttable. It was after-all Kennedy who brought us Robert Strange McNamara “a triumph of management” indeed. RM

He notes that President Trump doesn’t seem to think homing in on details is a big part of his job: “For one who touts himself as a spectacular manager, he hasn’t gotten beyond the idea ‘I alone can fix it.’ ”

It would be good to know people in the administration are regularly thinking about all this.

They need to repair the breach with the intelligence community. They need to see to it that a serious NSC process is produced, and all positions filled, preferably with experienced professionals for whom the next crisis is not their first one.

It might be good to have regular situation-room meetings on what-ifs, and how to handle what-ifs, and to have deep contingency planning with intelligence, military and civilian leaders discussing scenarios. “Put yourself in a position,” says Mr. Haass, “where you’re less unread when a crisis does occur.”

All the senior people in an administration always know whether and how they’ll get to the bunker. But by the time we’re talking bunkers, the story is almost over. It’s not a plan. Think about the plan.

Margaret MacMillan again: People not only get used to peace and think it’s “the normal state of affairs,” they get used to the idea that any crisis can be weathered, because they have been in the past. But that’s no guarantee of anything, is it?

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Traded in his Fiat 500 for a Kia

(Pope Francis “arrived at the presidential palace for a welcome ceremony in a Kia hatchback…” (WSJ).

What do you think the Fiat 500 folks thought of that (that’s what he doodled around in when he visited Washington). There goes the Fiat dealership he was going to have when he retired…”Bergoglio Motors “)*

His Holiness Certainly Has A Way With Words

“Pope Francis urged religious leaders to work together to reject the ‘miserable crudeness’ of war…opening the first-ever papal visit to the Arabian Peninsula, the birthplace of Islam…”

The Pope went on to warn that “…the future of humanity is at stake unless religions come together to resist the “logic of armed power… the arming of borders, the raising of walls.”

Francis did resist his impulses to tell us that “the world will end in 12 years” unless humanity takes immediate action and, especially America, adopts a “New Green Deal”.

He also did not reiterate his “Laudato Si” encyclical’s plea for the world to block ‘climate change’ by ridding itself of air conditioners from which manufacturers make unconscionable profits.

He did, however, abandon his “pastoral role” in order to advocate, rather bluntly, for ‘open borders’ and took the opportunity to, in the most sanctimonious terms, “take sides” in the illegal immigration dispute raging in the US. (The always discreet “Peoples’ Pope” just last week advised his flock that he was unable to “take sides” in the escalating confrontation in Venezuela between the Maduro regime and its opponents: “It would be a “pastoral imprudence” and could “do damage”. Thankfully, he did call for a ‘just and peaceful solution.))

Il Papa and the self-proclaimed most “devout Catholic” in Congress, Nancy Pelosi, seem to be on the same page in seeing border barriers, not just as offensive, but downright “immoral”. DLH

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This Conrad Black commentary at American Greatness is a profound analysis as regards the Democrat Party and we hope definitive as regards them*  Picture not in original.

Donald Trump’s Annihilation of the Democratic Party

The nadir of the amoral egotism of what might broadly be called “Me-ism” has been reached by the avant garde of the Democratic Party in their race to the bottom of the electoral depths. The renunciation of any notions of sacrifice, patriotic pride, the spirituality of life, or the recognition of anything except the smash-and-grab politics of endless atomized grievances and instant gratification of convenience, has reached what must, in its way, be the end of history.

The governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, a pediatric neurologist, led the way downwards with an unctuous statement on the virtues of delivering children, assuring their survival as live babies, and then determining in discussion with the mother (of course) whether they deserved to be allowed to survive.

This was an attitude that appalled a large section of opinion in 5th century B.C. Athens. In espousing it, far more than the utter moral vacuity of the cutting edge of the Democratic Party has been exposed. When running for governor, Northam called his opponent a racist and President Trump a “narcissistic maniac.”

The Bigger Fight
The informal, spontaneous, emergent strategy of the Democrats is finally erupting and foaming from the mouths and nostrils of their legislators and candidates in a mighty outburst of opportunistic consciousness. This is a delayed reaction to the destruction of their monopoly on political power by the Trump phenomenon, compounded by the recognition that Trump can’t be impeached and will do everything he promised if he can get a firm enough grip on the apparatus of political power.

The supreme struggle for the commanding heights of American politics, the battle of Verdun or of Stalingrad, has come over immigration. The decades-old understanding between machine Democrats vacuuming up easy Latino votes and largely Republican employers exploiting the cheap labor of illegal Latino immigrants enabled Donald Trump to forge a new coalition of the threatened working class, the middle class exhausted by more than a decade of flat-lined purchasing power, the silent majority of disinterested patriotic Americans, and the legitimate immigrants who do not want their ability to climb the socio-economic ladder as American immigrants have done for 240 years to be undercut by swarms of illegal migrants with no sense of choosing a new country and determining to accept that country’s values and work within them.

Democrats rejoice in proclaiming that Trump didn’t drain much of the swamp when the Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. They know perfectly well that the Republicans in the Congress were NeverTrumpers. The only senator Trump had at the outset was the subsequently hopeless attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who could not have done more to assist the cover-up of Democratic skullduggery if he had co-authored the Steele dossier.

Now Trump has banished the worst of the NeverTrumpers from the congressional Republican delegation, and won the rest over by friendly persuasion—except for Mitt Romney, who virtually terminated his useful career as a senator two days before he was sworn in with an article on the president’s character. The piece confirmed about Romney what his predecessor from Utah, Orrin Hatch, had called him: “a well-oiled weather vane.” It showed, too, that he was a treacherous one. Despite Romney and the chronically bumptious Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Trump’s allies are now in control of the Senate and its committees and the unearthing of the misconduct of the Obama Justice Department, intelligence services, and the Clinton campaign—as the attorney general-designate has pledged—are about to begin.

Democrats Backed Into a Corner
The Democratic House of Representatives has taken its stand on immigration. Led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), they claim to favor border security but are reluctant to do anything to reduce the flow of illegal immigrants. The entire Democratic media echo chamber has gone to maximum decibel levels denouncing the time-honored solution of an “immoral” wall, and claiming the problem is wildly exaggerated and chiefly occurs at airports. They are backing themselves into the corner of “sanctuary cities” where police are instructed to ignore federal immigration laws and census-takers are enjoined from asking the citizenship of the country’s residents, as the Constitution requires.

This is insurrection and the pervasion of the immigration question, around 20 million people who entered the United States illegally, has corrupted the Democratic Party as its leaders balk at rational solutions. These include the establishment of a border, the deportation of serious law-breakers illegally present in the United States, a generous treatment for the people who entered blamelessly as children, and an expedited path to citizenship for the great majority of illegal entrants who have been constructive and law-abiding residents.

With battle joined on immigration, the Democrats have lashed out at the rich, including the close pals of the Clintons and Obamas in Wall Street and Hollywood, and are calling for a return to pre-LBJ, almost World War II-level tax rates, (of the confiscatory levels that drove Ronald Reagan into the Republican Party). La Pasionaria of the movement, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and the modern Herbert Marcuse, Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), are both calling for top tax rates in the neighborhood of 70 percent. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, junior U.S. senator from California, surged to the fore by calling for the nationalization of the entire health insurance industry, and, effectively of the entire gigantic field of health care. Never mind single-payer healthcare, this is no-payer health care. Doctors of America would become de facto federal employees.

Exalting Atrocities
The Democratic train is now roaring off the tracks and down the third rail which politicians used not to touch, out of a lingering sense of self-preservation. The logical coruscation of this dispersal—this flight from the political center to the left, to stage a goal-line stand of the die-hards against the Trump ogre, grinding relentlessly forward, heedless of the semi-daily announcements by most of the national media of his imminent collapse in legal shambles, is to repurpose abortion as the end of the policy rainbow.

Abortion is too intrusive, too inconvenient; let the children be born and then the mother can decide whether she wants to be a mother after all, or kill the child, or give it up for adoption.

This was the logical end of the nonsensical Roe v. Wade decision that childbirth is exclusively a matter of a woman’s control over her body: it decided correctly that the state does not have the power and should not seek the power to inflict childbirth on a woman who does not want to have a child. But it ignored the real question of when the unborn attain to the rights of a person. That is why the decision is vulnerable and the Democrats, in cold terror that it could be overturned, are in panic and are moving the battle-lines forward to the position of Ralph Northam, far from a natural oracle of moral opinion this past week.

To hell with control over their own bodies! Women will decide in post-natal calm whether to kill the child. It is to this unspeakable assault on every principle and value that has guided, inspired, and undergirded American civilization, where the Democrats are arriving at their last post.

#MeToo was justice by denunciation. Senator and presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said Dr. Christine Blasey Ford had to be believed over Judge Brett Kavanaugh because she was a woman. Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) saved the balance of evidence and of probabilities, and rebutted justice by mere unsubstantiated denunciation. The Democrats are moving on: women will not only cause the rejection of male candidates for high positions, but have them prosecuted, which in the corrupt American justice system in 95 percent of cases means imprisoned. For good measure, the warrior-queen sisterhood will also decide, after birth, whether their children will be allowed to survive. Life is not remotely sacred, it is to be encouraged if convenient and snuffed out if not.

A Frenzy of Extremism
Donald Trump’s greatest achievement may be the total annihilation of the Democratic Party in its present mutated and degraded form. The Democrats have been allowed to slither to their present state of moral degradation with the witless and spineless collaboration of look-alike Republicans who are easy to defeat, like McCain and Romney, or can be survived, like Reagan and the Bushes, or destroyed, like Nixon.

Faced with a Trump they could not defeat and cannot destroy, Democrats appear to be entering a frenzy of primal extremism. If the Democrats go to the voters next year as the party of infanticide, open borders, a 70 percent top personal income tax rate, and the practical abolition of private health care, they will vanish more quickly, and with less distinction, than the Whigs, who at least had serious leaders like Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Abraham Lincoln before their party imploded. This thronging riff-raff of Democratic presidential aspirants couldn’t lead the country across Washington’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, and won’t get an invitation to try.

*Our only demurral to Black is that he does not quite capture the right to life pre-birth while profoundly exposing the relentless insatiable logic of death as a solution to social problems that is abortion.    R Mall

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