Month: November 2018

After failing to guard its southern borders from Central America’s migrant caravan as it busted through and then providing buses and succor as it snaked northward, Mexico has effectively dumped the entire caravan mess onto its northern city of Tijuana, leaving it with the cost of caring for the uninvited migrants whose prospects for entering the U.S. legally are dim.

Such nice people. But it’s about par for Mexico City, given the famous contempt with which Mexico’s elites hold the country’s northernmost industrial metropolis. Americans can easily sympathize with the plight of Tijuana, given Mexico City’s behavior.

According to the mayor of Tijuana, Mexico City has actually abandoned them, sending no extra money to help cover the costs of its winked-and-nodded-at caravan. More migrants are arriving by the day, crime is up, and now disease is spreading. Now he’s calling for international help.

According to the Daily Mail:

The mayor of Tijuana has declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city and is asking the United Nations for aid to deal with 5,000 Central American migrants who arrived there.

The comments by Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum came as city officials and volunteers worked together to assist the 4,976 men, women and children who traveled there and are sleeping outside and inside a sports complex.

What’s more, Tijuana officials and citizens are placing the blame exactly where it belongs:

Manuel Figueroa, who leads the city’s social services department, said Tijuana was bringing in portable toilets and showers, as well as shampoo and soap. 

‘Because of the absence, the apathy and the abandonment of the federal government, we are having to turn to international institutions like the UN’, Figueroa said.

Rene Vazquez, 60, a Tijuana resident who was volunteering at the stadium, said Mexico’s federal government ignored the problem by allowing the caravan to cross the country without stopping. Now the city of 1.6 million is stuck with the fallout.

With that the consensus, it may be a golden opportunity for President Trump to step in and give Tijuana the resources it needs. Sure, diplomacy is done state-to-state, not state-to-municipality. But recent decades have loosened that up a bit, and Trump is nothing if not unconventional. Tijuana has a tradition of acting unconventionally, too. Meanwhile, Trump is one of the players in a position of strength, with Mexico City showing weakness and Tijuana feeling the squeeze. So any arrangement would not come for free, of course, but as part of extending Trump’s leverage through a deal.

Because the political aspect of the picture seems to present opportunities. In TJ, the general sentiment is that Mexico City is withholding aid because Tijuana’s mayor is a conservative and not part of the current ruling party. According to RT News:

[Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel] Gastelum, who is in opposition to the current Mexican government, has been vocal in his disdain for the federal authorities and has sided with US President Donald Trump. Gastelum stirred controversy after he was spotted wearing a red “Make Tujuana great again” cap, and invited an endorsement by the US President himself, who tweeted that like Tijuana, the US is “ill-prepared for this invasion.”

Friendly Tweets from Trump and signs of friendliness from the mayor of Tijuana, who after all, knows his city’s economy is closely linked to a gate with the U.S. and both are conservatives…

I’ll throw out a proposal and though I know not everyone will like it, it just seems like something that could happen to a good result, given President Trump’s experience and success with direct negotiations, and the desirability of keeping the UN’s corrupt pontificators out of the region.

The U.S. helps Tijuana with its humanitarian needs surrounding the migrant caravan as its denizens await their asylum appointments. Any aid, very basic, should also be open to the poor of Tijuana as well.

Tijuana does all it can to discourage future migrant caravans from making their way to the border, from added razor wire of its own on the Mexico side to added city security to prevent a border rush.  (Some of this has apparently already been done but there could be more.)

Tijuana holds the caravan organizers who foisted this humanitarian crisis onto the city, Pueblo Sin Fronteras, accountable – and if the latter can’t pay for the food and upkeep of the migrants they enticed to the border in this humanitarian crisis, well, then they’ll have to go to jail for humanitarian crimes.

Tijuana encourages the migrants to accept jobs at Tijuana’s labor-starved maquiladoras – or else no aid.

And some of the aid can be for bus trips for the migrants back to their homelands where they will be encouraged to apply to the U.S. legally.

It’s just a starting ballpark, but the fun of it is that such a deal would drive Mexico City (and U.S. Democrats) crazy. Trump is famous for unconventional dealings, and in an unconventional political challenge such as the invading caravan, a deal could do a lot of good, not just to restore regular legal migration, but to end the perception that Trump is anti-Latino when in fact he and his supporters are just pro-rule of law. Tijuana could benefit from the whole thing, too, and get its problem gone.

Here’s to hoping something like this could be tried.

 

After failing to guard its southern borders from Central America’s migrant caravan as it busted through and then providing buses and succor as it snaked northward, Mexico has effectively dumped the entire caravan mess onto its northern city of Tijuana, leaving it with the cost of caring for the uninvited migrants whose prospects for entering the U.S. legally are dim.

Such nice people. But it’s about par for Mexico City, given the famous contempt with which Mexico’s elites hold the country’s northernmost industrial metropolis. Americans can easily sympathize with the plight of Tijuana, given Mexico City’s behavior.

According to the mayor of Tijuana, Mexico City has actually abandoned them, sending no extra money to help cover the costs of its winked-and-nodded-at caravan. More migrants are arriving by the day, crime is up, and now disease is spreading. Now he’s calling for international help.

According to the Daily Mail:

The mayor of Tijuana has declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city and is asking the United Nations for aid to deal with 5,000 Central American migrants who arrived there.

The comments by Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum came as city officials and volunteers worked together to assist the 4,976 men, women and children who traveled there and are sleeping outside and inside a sports complex.

What’s more, Tijuana officials and citizens are placing the blame exactly where it belongs:

Manuel Figueroa, who leads the city’s social services department, said Tijuana was bringing in portable toilets and showers, as well as shampoo and soap. 

‘Because of the absence, the apathy and the abandonment of the federal government, we are having to turn to international institutions like the UN’, Figueroa said.

Rene Vazquez, 60, a Tijuana resident who was volunteering at the stadium, said Mexico’s federal government ignored the problem by allowing the caravan to cross the country without stopping. Now the city of 1.6 million is stuck with the fallout.

With that the consensus, it may be a golden opportunity for President Trump to step in and give Tijuana the resources it needs. Sure, diplomacy is done state-to-state, not state-to-municipality. But recent decades have loosened that up a bit, and Trump is nothing if not unconventional. Tijuana has a tradition of acting unconventionally, too. Meanwhile, Trump is one of the players in a position of strength, with Mexico City showing weakness and Tijuana feeling the squeeze. So any arrangement would not come for free, of course, but as part of extending Trump’s leverage through a deal.

Because the political aspect of the picture seems to present opportunities. In TJ, the general sentiment is that Mexico City is withholding aid because Tijuana’s mayor is a conservative and not part of the current ruling party. According to RT News:

[Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel] Gastelum, who is in opposition to the current Mexican government, has been vocal in his disdain for the federal authorities and has sided with US President Donald Trump. Gastelum stirred controversy after he was spotted wearing a red “Make Tujuana great again” cap, and invited an endorsement by the US President himself, who tweeted that like Tijuana, the US is “ill-prepared for this invasion.”

Friendly Tweets from Trump and signs of friendliness from the mayor of Tijuana, who after all, knows his city’s economy is closely linked to a gate with the U.S. and both are conservatives…

I’ll throw out a proposal and though I know not everyone will like it, it just seems like something that could happen to a good result, given President Trump’s experience and success with direct negotiations, and the desirability of keeping the UN’s corrupt pontificators out of the region.

The U.S. helps Tijuana with its humanitarian needs surrounding the migrant caravan as its denizens await their asylum appointments. Any aid, very basic, should also be open to the poor of Tijuana as well.

Tijuana does all it can to discourage future migrant caravans from making their way to the border, from added razor wire of its own on the Mexico side to added city security to prevent a border rush.  (Some of this has apparently already been done but there could be more.)

Tijuana holds the caravan organizers who foisted this humanitarian crisis onto the city, Pueblo Sin Fronteras, accountable – and if the latter can’t pay for the food and upkeep of the migrants they enticed to the border in this humanitarian crisis, well, then they’ll have to go to jail for humanitarian crimes.

Tijuana encourages the migrants to accept jobs at Tijuana’s labor-starved maquiladoras – or else no aid.

And some of the aid can be for bus trips for the migrants back to their homelands where they will be encouraged to apply to the U.S. legally.

It’s just a starting ballpark, but the fun of it is that such a deal would drive Mexico City (and U.S. Democrats) crazy. Trump is famous for unconventional dealings, and in an unconventional political challenge such as the invading caravan, a deal could do a lot of good, not just to restore regular legal migration, but to end the perception that Trump is anti-Latino when in fact he and his supporters are just pro-rule of law. Tijuana could benefit from the whole thing, too, and get its problem gone.

Here’s to hoping something like this could be tried.

 

Hungary’s foreign minister Péter Szijjártó has condemned the UN Migration Pact for attempting to “legalise illegal immigration,” announcing his country will vote ‘no’ on the agreement in Marrakesh in December.

Mr Szijjártó told media on Thursday that “The goal of the UN Global Compact for Migration is to legalise illegal immigration, which is totally unacceptable and violates the sovereignty of member states, including that of Hungary.”

“The UN is making the same mistake as the European Union, which wants to base its own migration policy on mandatory resettlement quotas,” he continued.

“The UN Compact is more dangerous, however, because it is a global initiative, meaning it will have a greater effect than [European] policy, and represents a risk to the whole world.”

Confirming that Hungary will be voting “No” to the Global Compact for Safe and Orderly Migration in Marrakesh, Morocco, next month, the minister said the government’s main issue with the Compact is “whether or not it is mandatory, and in view of the fact that the document contains the word ‘obligation’ on eighty occasions, the claim that it only includes recommendations is a false one.”

“A legally not binding document would not prescribe the establishment of national action plans, and accordingly it is ‘clearer than day’ that, just like the originally voluntary mandatory quota, the Global Compact for Migration will become a point of reference, mandatory, and the basis for international judicial decisions,” the minister of foreign affairs and trade explained.

 

Hungary’s statement that the ‘non-binding’ Compact can, in fact, be ‘binding,’ came days after Dutch MEP and Co-President of the Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) group Marcel de Graaff said that “it is still the legal framework on which the participating countries commit themselves to build new legislation.”

Calling it “a legalisation of mass migration,” the Dutch populist said: “It’s declaring migration a human right.”

Belgian law professor Pierre d’Argent has argued the migration agreement, like other UN compacts, could be used by lawyers in interpreting laws, with German law professor Matthias Herdegen noting the UN compact occupied a “legal grey area” which “gives the impression of [state] liability.”

Mr de Graaff also warned this week that the document could be used as a basis for making criticism of mass migration illegal, saying: “One basic element of this new agreement is the extension of the definition of hate speech… Criticism of migration will become a criminal offence. Media outlets that give room to criticism of migration can be shut down,” he claimed.

‘No Compromises’: Merkel Launches Passionate Defence of UN Migration Pact https://t.co/HcfylEemUM

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) November 21, 2018

“In fact, it will become impossible to criticise Merkel’s ‘welcome migrants’ politics without being at risk to be jailed for hate speech,” de Graaff added.

On Wednesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the architect of the European migrant crisis, made an impassioned defence of the UN Migration Compact, saying there should be “no compromise” on global mass migration and condemned opposition as “nationalism in its purest form.”

Apart from Hungary, Australia, Israel and several other countries have said that they will not sign the document or have signalled that they will not, following the lead of U.S. President Donald Trump who rejected the compact in December 2017.

World Follows Trump’s Lead: Nations Abandon Legal ‘Framework’ Building UN Migration Pact https://t.co/QivexL6Jsk

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) November 22, 2018

Follow Breitbart London on Facebook: Breitbart London

The popularity of socialism on America’s campuses and among a substantial fraction of Democrats defies the evidence of a natural experiment taking place in Venezuela, just across the Gulf of Mexico from America. Venezuelans already are starving due to socialism’s perversion of incentives. Food producers can’t make money under the price controls, expropriations and regulation of the socialists of Chavez and his successor Maduro, so they don’t produce food, and people must flee by the millions in order to stay alive.

Venezuelan refugees in Colombia (photo credit: Daniel Cima)

Now, the same process of perverse incentives is shutting down the very resource that made Venezuela the richest country in Latin American before socialism ruined it.  Fabiola Zerpa of Bloomberg reports:

Venezuela’s fuel shortages are worsening as mass resignations at the state oil company’s tanker fleet have delayed gasoline shipments.

Petroleos de Venezuela SA’s refineries are running at less than a quarter of their capacity, forcing the country to rely on imported gasoline.

Of course, foreign currency is in very short supply in Venezuela precisely because its oil production and refining output are collapsing, as incompetent political appointees screw up, and have no incentive to perform well. Because gasoline is regarded as so essential, Venezuela controls its price, further reducing incentive to produce:

 Gas prices are still the among the cheapest in the world, with the black market rate earlier this month less than one cent per gallon. Maduro has yet to increase prices after vowing to do so at the end of September.

Price controls always produce shortages, as rent control regulations (also beloved by American socialists) demonstrate. Price may be affordable, but there are no goods available.

Now, not just oil production and refining, but also transportation is collapsing under cronyism and perverse incentives:

Resignations and requests for leave by personnel at PDV Marina, the oil company’s shipping affiliate, are reducing the tankers’ crews to a minimum, according to a document seen by Bloomberg. At least 11 tankers are affected, and minimal staffing is hindering PDVSA’s ability to deliver on time, the document shows. Venezuela’s Oil Ministry and PDVSA officials declined to comment.

“Tankers are now delayed all the time,” PDVSA union leader Gregorio Rodriguez said from Puerto La Cruz.“The situation is worse in cities far from distribution centers, where the truck fleet service is also shaky, as is eastern Venezuela.”

God forbid, a tanker disaster is possible with minimal crewing and inexperience.

Adam Smith wrote, “There’s a lot of ruin in a nation.” Venezuela is demonstrating the process by which the ruin of a nation unfolds, as vital systems gradually shut down, poisoned by socialism.

Media favorite Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who speaks Spanish, has never, so far as I can discover, commented on the ongoing tragedy socialism is foisting on Venezuelans.  The Babylon Bee has satirized her silence, but our media progressives are not going to press her on the issue.

It’s time for the American left to explain why the tragedy of Venezuela will not happen here if their policies are enacted.

The popularity of socialism on America’s campuses and among a substantial fraction of Democrats defies the evidence of a natural experiment taking place in Venezuela, just across the Gulf of Mexico from America. Venezuelans already are starving due to socialism’s perversion of incentives. Food producers can’t make money under the price controls, expropriations and regulation of the socialists of Chavez and his successor Maduro, so they don’t produce food, and people must flee by the millions in order to stay alive.

Venezuelan refugees in Colombia (photo credit: Daniel Cima)

Now, the same process of perverse incentives is shutting down the very resource that made Venezuela the richest country in Latin American before socialism ruined it.  Fabiola Zerpa of Bloomberg reports:

Venezuela’s fuel shortages are worsening as mass resignations at the state oil company’s tanker fleet have delayed gasoline shipments.

Petroleos de Venezuela SA’s refineries are running at less than a quarter of their capacity, forcing the country to rely on imported gasoline.

Of course, foreign currency is in very short supply in Venezuela precisely because its oil production and refining output are collapsing, as incompetent political appointees screw up, and have no incentive to perform well. Because gasoline is regarded as so essential, Venezuela controls its price, further reducing incentive to produce:

 Gas prices are still the among the cheapest in the world, with the black market rate earlier this month less than one cent per gallon. Maduro has yet to increase prices after vowing to do so at the end of September.

Price controls always produce shortages, as rent control regulations (also beloved by American socialists) demonstrate. Price may be affordable, but there are no goods available.

Now, not just oil production and refining, but also transportation is collapsing under cronyism and perverse incentives:

Resignations and requests for leave by personnel at PDV Marina, the oil company’s shipping affiliate, are reducing the tankers’ crews to a minimum, according to a document seen by Bloomberg. At least 11 tankers are affected, and minimal staffing is hindering PDVSA’s ability to deliver on time, the document shows. Venezuela’s Oil Ministry and PDVSA officials declined to comment.

“Tankers are now delayed all the time,” PDVSA union leader Gregorio Rodriguez said from Puerto La Cruz.“The situation is worse in cities far from distribution centers, where the truck fleet service is also shaky, as is eastern Venezuela.”

God forbid, a tanker disaster is possible with minimal crewing and inexperience.

Adam Smith wrote, “There’s a lot of ruin in a nation.” Venezuela is demonstrating the process by which the ruin of a nation unfolds, as vital systems gradually shut down, poisoned by socialism.

Media favorite Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who speaks Spanish, has never, so far as I can discover, commented on the ongoing tragedy socialism is foisting on Venezuelans.  The Babylon Bee has satirized her silence, but our media progressives are not going to press her on the issue.

It’s time for the American left to explain why the tragedy of Venezuela will not happen here if their policies are enacted.

The package of criminal justice reform proposals endorsed by President Donald Trump is not “soft” on crime. It’s tough on injustice. And it’s about time.

Known as the “First Step Act,” the legislation confronts the Titanic failure of the federal government’s trillion-dollar war on drugs by reforming mandatory minimum sentences, rectifying unscientifically grounded disparities in criminal penalties for crack vs. powder cocaine users, and tackling recidivism among federal inmates through risk assessment, earned-time credit incentive structures, re-entry programs and transitional housing.

There’s nothing radical about giving law-breakers who served their time an opportunity to turn their lives around and avoid ending up back behind bars. More than 30 red and blue states have enacted measures to reduce incarceration, control costs and improve public safety. Texas — no bleeding-heart liberal mecca — spearheaded alternatives to the endless prison-building boom a decade ago by redirecting tax dollars to rehab, treatment and mental health services. The Lone Star state saved an estimated $3 billion in new public construction costs while stemming the prison population tide.

Similar efforts adopted last year in Louisiana — long known as the prison capital of the world — have yielded promising reductions in the recidivism rate. Pelican Institute for Public Policy analyst Margaret Mire reports that “Louisiana’s re-arrest rate in the first nine months is 19 percent, or 7 percentage points, behind the national, annual re-arrest average of 26 percent.” State data show that the re-incarceration rate is down to 6 percent in the same time period — “on pace to be 9 percentage points lower than its full-year average prior to the reforms, or 15 percent.”

Mississippi GOP Gov. Phil Bryant overhauled sentencing mandates, embraced faith-based ministries and funded counseling programs for inmates preparing for their transition to life on the outside. “Crime is down 6 percent,” he reported at a White House prison reform summit earlier this year. “We have 3,000 less inmates. We saved $40 million since 2014. And you can do the same thing.”

Despite staunch support from conservative Republican governors, prosecutors and law enforcement closest to the ground on this issue, the same hyperbolic talking points used by some immovable “law and order” opponents at the state level are now being used against First Step: Cops will be endangered, critics balk. Violent monsters will go free. Child predators and drug kingpins will flood our neighborhoods.

Scary, but deceptive. The plain language of the bill makes clear that its “early release” provisions must be earned. Moreover, as Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee points out: “At all times the Bureau of Prisons retains all authority over who does and does not qualify for early release.” Former U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman, a veteran of the criminal justice system for 20 years, notes that inmates convicted of crimes of violence (including assaults on police), drug trafficking (including hardcore fentanyl and heroin dealing) and child pornography would not qualify for credits. Period. The list of ineligible prisoners is a mile long.

As a staunch opponent of illegal alien amnesty for the past 25 years, the most potent attack by First Step critics concerns whether criminal aliens in federal prisons will be let loose en masse. They won’t. The law states that no prisoner can earn time credits “if that prisoner is an inadmissible or deportable alien under the immigration laws (as such term is defined in section 101 of the Immigration and Nationality Act.” And legislative analysts assert that under current Bureau of Prisons’ regulations, a prisoner subject to an ICE detainer wouldn’t be eligible for placement in home confinement, anyway.

Critic Dan Cadman of the Center for Immigration Studies is not satisfied and argues that “the simplest way to make it a clean bill where immigration enforcement is concerned is to say at the beginning of the bill that ‘none of the sections that follow in this bill apply to incarcerated aliens.'” That should be a simple fix and is no reason to prevent First Step from moving to the Senate floor for vigorous debate.

My own awakening to the systemic flaws and failures of our criminal justice system came from viewing it through the eyes of the wrongfully accused and wrongfully convicted. Prosecutorial misconduct, police malfeasance, investigative bias and a guilty-until-proven-innocent agenda have ruined lives and squandered limited resources. From there, I’ve come to appreciate activists and practitioners on both sides of the aisle educating people about sweeping “hang ’em high” mandates that ensnare millions of their fellow citizens, clogging up jail space and wasting away productive years.

Our system is at its best when all involved can admit policy failures and work to change them. Why wait?

Michelle Malkin is host of “Michelle Malkin Investigates” on CRTV.com. Her email address is [email protected] To find out more about Michelle Malkin and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Social justice affects military readiness.

Via Stars and Stripes:

The Trump administion on Friday once again asked the Supreme Court to bypass the usual legal process to take on another controversial issue — President Donald Trump’s decision to ban transgender people from military service.

Solicitor General Noel Francisco asked the justices to consolidate the challenges to the ban — which so far have been successful in lower courts — and rule on the issue in its current term.

The challenges are to the administration’s order that would prohibit transgender men and women from enlisting, possibly subject current service members to discharge and deny certain medical care. The order reverses an Obama administration policy allowing transgender men and women to serve openly and to receive funding for sex-reassignment surgery.

Federal judges so far have prohibited the Trump order from being implemented.

“The decisions imposing those injunctions are wrong, and they warrant this Court’s immediate review,” Francisco wrote.

Trump in July 2017 suprised military leaders and members of Congress when he abruptly announced the proposed ban in several tweets. In announcing the change, Trump said he was “doing the military a great favor” by “coming out and just saying it.”

Challengers have used such statements to argue that the directive is the result of discrimination rather than a study of how allowing transgender personnel affects the military, and lower court judges largely have agreed.

“There is absolutely no support for the claim that the ongoing service of transgender people would have any negative effect on the military at all. In fact, there is considerable evidence that it is the discharge and banning of such individuals that would have such effects,” U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote in a case filed in the District of Columbia.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is scheduled to hear an appeal of the ruling next month.

The Trump administration has taken an aggressive posture when lower courts have ruled against it on important issues. It has asked the Supreme Court — with varying degrees of success — to accept the cases before they have run through the normal appeals process. The administration argues that such cases can only be settled by the high court.

Keep reading…

Much of today’s incivility and contempt for personal liberty has its roots on college campuses, and most of the uncivil and contemptuous are people with college backgrounds. Let’s look at a few highly publicized recent examples of incivility and attacks on free speech.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, were accosted and harassed by a deranged left-wing mob as they were leaving a dinner at Georgetown University. Sen. McConnell was harassed by protesters at Reagan National Airport, as well as at several venues in Kentucky. Sen. Ted Cruz and his wife were harassed at a Washington, D.C., restaurant. Afterward, a group called Smash Racism DC wrote: “No — you can’t eat in peace — your politics are an attack on all of us. You’re (sic) votes are a death wish. Your votes are hate crimes.” Other members of Congress — such as Andy Harris, Susan Collins and Rand Paul — have been physically attacked or harassed by leftists. Most recent is the case of Fox News political commentator Tucker Carlson. A leftist group showed up at his house at night, damaging his front door and chanting, “Tucker Carlson, we will fight! We know where you sleep at night!” “Racist scumbag, leave town!”

Mayhem against people with different points of view is excused as just deserts for what is seen as hate speech. Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray discovered this when he was shouted down at Middlebury College and the professor escorting him was sent to the hospital with injuries. Students at the University of California, Berkeley shut down a controversial speaker and caused riot damage estimated at $100,000. Protesters at both UCLA and Claremont McKenna College disrupted scheduled lectures by Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has discovered so-called bias response teams on hundreds of American college campuses. Bias response teams report to campus officials — and sometimes to law enforcement officers — speech that may cause “alarm, anger, or fear” or that might otherwise offend. Drawing pictures or cartoons that belittle people because of their beliefs or political affiliation can be reported as hate speech. Universities expressly set their sights on prohibiting constitutionally protected speech. As FIRE reported in 2017, hundreds of universities nationwide now maintain Orwellian systems that ask students to report — often anonymously — their neighbors, friends and professors for any instances of supposed biased speech and expression.

A recent Brookings Institution poll found that nearly half of college students believe that hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment. That’s nonsense; it is. Fifty-one percent of college students think they have a right to shout down a speaker with whom they disagree. Nineteen percent of students think that it’s acceptable to use violence to prevent a speaker from speaking. Over 50 percent agree that colleges should prohibit speech and viewpoints that might offend certain people. One shouldn’t be surprised at all if these visions are taught and held by many of their professors. Colleges once taught and promoted an understanding of Western culture. Today many professors and the college bureaucracy teach students that they’re victims of Western culture and values.

Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech.” Much later, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said, “Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.” From the Nazis to Stalinists to Maoists, tyrants have always started out supporting free speech, just as American leftists did during the 1960s. Their support for free speech is easy to understand. Speech is vital for the realization of their goals of command, control and confiscation. The right to say what they please is their tool for indoctrination, propagandizing and proselytization. Once the leftists gain control, as they have at many universities, free speech becomes a liability and must be suppressed. This is increasingly the case on university campuses. Much of the off-campus incivility we see today is the fruit of what a college education has done to our youth.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Obstruction of justice.

Via Fox News:

Monica Lewinsky has opened up for the first time about how Bill Clinton convinced her “to break the law” and lie under oath.

In the final part of the A&E docuseries “The Clinton Affair,” Lewinsky revealed that Clinton convinced her to deny the affair if she was called to testify in the Paula Jones case. The 45-year-old recalled the former president telling her that she could avoid being deposed if she denied the affair in an affidavit.

Lewinsky said that Clinton had called her at 2:30 in the morning to let her know that she was on the witness list for the Paula Jones case.

“I was petrified. I was frantic about my family and this becoming public,” Lewinsky tearfully recalled. “Thankfully, Bill helped me lock myself back from that and he said I could probably sign an affidavit to get out of it, and he didn’t even know if a 100 percent I would be subpoenaed.”

She was subpoenaed a few days later.

And though she clarified that Clinton never said the words “you’re going to have to lie here,” Lewinsky pointed out that he also never said “we’re going to have to tell the truth.”

After being subpoenaed, the former White House staffer decided to talk to attorney Vernon Jordan, a close friend of Clinton. In the documentary, Lewinsky claims that she managed to secure a meeting with Jordan on her own and from that meeting, she was introduced to lawyer Frank Carter.

“Frank Carter explained to me if I’d signed an affidavit denying having had an intimate relationship with the president it might mean I wouldn’t have to be deposed in the Paula Jones case,” she recounted. “I did feel uncomfortable about it but I felt it was the right thing to do, ironically, right? So, the right thing to do, to break the law.”

Keep reading…

Parkland student Kyle Kashuv is asking others to sign a petition he started to encourage President Donald Trump to give a student who died in the Parkland Shooting while helping others the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Peter Wang, 15, was a Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) cadet who was killed while holding the door to let others out of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February last year during an active shooter situation where a total of 17 students and staffers were killed.

Wang and two other JROTC members who were killed, Alaina Petty, 14, and Martin Duque, 14, were honored by the Florida National Guard.

Wang was posthumously accepted to the U.S Military Academy at West Point— where he dreamed of going to school— “for his heroic actions,” the academy said in a statement.

“It was an appropriate way for USMA to honor this brave young man,” the statement said. “West Point has given posthumous offers of admission in very rare instances for those candidates or potential candidate’s whose actions exemplified the tenets of Duty, Honor, and Country.”

The petition claims Wang was buried in his JROTC uniform.

In an interview with The Daily Wire, Kashuv said that his initiative is “a great way to unify all Americans around something we can all agree on.”

“Peter is the very definition of a hero,” Kashuv said. “If you go through the past honorees, they’re all American heroes. Whether it’s sporting heroes, military heroes, musical heroes, etc. there’s no doubt in my mind that Peter belongs among those names and exulted even higher, to be honest.”

“It’s also incredibly important that the president, on behalf of a very grateful nation, is given the opportunity to thank Mr. and Mrs. Wang for raising a hero,” Kashuv added.

The petition has been shared or retweeted by the Founder and CEO of the Young Turks, Ceny Uygur; former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell, and The Daily Wire’s Editor in Chief, Ben Shapiro, among others.

“This is an easy nonpartisan issue all Americans can agree with,” Uygur tweeted, “Let’s honor Peter Wang!”

Yale economics professor Howard Forman shared the petition and thanked Kashuv for “reminding us one of the many things we have to be thankful for. And the many people who have sacrificed to keep us all safer.”

So far, the petition has garnered more than 3,200 signatures of its 100,000 signature goal.

Kashuv said that in the wake of the shooting, he and other student activists entered the national spotlight causing Wang and others to be “overshadowed.”

“It’s an utter shame that people like myself and other activists took the spotlight,” Kashuv said. “We messed up. We should’ve kept saying in every media situation that we must honor and remember those we lost, especially Peter and Coach Feis who are heroes.”

“The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian honor possible,” Kashuv added. “There’s literally nobody who deserves this more than Peter.”