Conservatives welcome. Libs & RINOs go away. It's all of you destroying the society and conservatives must no longer appease you!
Wait for the knee jerk reaction from the usual suspects. Via The Smoke Room: The Miami Dolphins have signed free agent quarterback David Fales to the roster. ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported the news Tuesday morning in a series of tweets. Things are about to get lit on the internet. A white, free agent quarterback who […]
via Weasel Zippers
Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: http://ift.tt/2s3tLUa
Per Article II of the Constitution, every federal judge must be nominated by the president and then confirmed by the Senate. Nine months into the president’s term, a Senate controlled by the president’s party has confirmed only seven nominees out of 56, including one Supreme Court nomination.
Justice Neil Gorsuch was a unique case. It had been decades since there was a pending vacancy on the Supreme Court when a new president was sworn in, and there was a media frenzy that shined such a spotlight on the affable and mild-mannered appeals judge that it inescapably resulted in a speedy confirmation process. Senators get no credit for managing to confirm him, though they do deserve credit for keeping the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia open, and for invoking the nuclear option to ensure Justice Gorsuch’s ascension.
However, since Justice Gorsuch’s confirmation, the Senate has confirmed only six judges—less than one per month of the Trump presidency. At this rate, President Trump will see only a fraction of his 150-plus current and forthcoming nominations confirmed by the end of this four-year term. Supporters of a judiciary that is faithful to the Constitution as written lay all the blame squarely on the Senate, and are pushing McConnell to do several things within his power to rapidly accelerate this process.
As a recent memo from the Conservative Action Project pointed out, in recent years the Senate has often been working only 2.5 days per work week. This does not even consider days or weeks when the Senate is in recess. Since May 1—days after Justice Gorsuch joined the High Court—the total number of Monday-Friday standard work days where the Senate has been in recess exceeds 31. In other words, more than a full month in recess during what are working days for most Americans.
The number of vacancies in the federal judiciary is skyrocketing. President Trump inherited 107 open seats when he took office, more than any of the past five presidents except President Clinton. George H.W. Bush had 41, Clinton had 117, George W. Bush had 84, and Barack Obama had 55.
The initial number has increased rapidly; there are currently some 145 judicial nominees. When you add the number of judges who have explicitly signaled their retirement but not yet stepped off the bench, that number jumps to 166.
The roadblocks to judicial appointments have arisen at two levels: the Senate Judiciary Committee (SJC) and the Senate floor. Most of the committee roadblocks have been plowed through, but not so on the floor.
Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) of the SJC has recently taken major action to move nominations forward. Just last week, Grassley held hearings for five judges on Tuesday, then a full dozen on Thursday, for an impressive total of 17.
Groups are urging Grassley to take the one remaining measure within his power, pertaining to blue slips. Home-state senators receive a blue piece of paper when someone in their state is nominated for a federal judgeship, asking if the senators support or oppose the nomination.
While most SJC chairmen do not treat this as a one-senator veto power by refusing to return the blue slip, Grassley has. This has blocked the nomination of Justice David Stras of the Minnesota Supreme Court to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, because Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) refuses to return his blue slip.
Grassley has signaled that he is getting impatient, however, so that final roadblock may move soon. And Grassley’s recent pace at moving nominees through his committee is earning him a lot of goodwill on the issue.
No so yet with the Senate floor. Senate Democrats are slow-walking nominations, including requiring cloture votes on many nominees, then consuming all 30 hours allowed under Senate rules of post-cloture debate. But those rules are subject to reinterpretation by a simple majority of 51 senators. There are 52 Republicans in the Senate, plus Vice President Mike Pence to cast tie-breaking votes.
Senate Republican apologists point out that Bush 43 and Trump have both made 56 nominations to date, and that the Senate has confirmed an equal number for both at this point on the calendar.
That analogy fails, however, because Bush had to deal with a 50-50 tied Senate that shortly thereafter became 51-49 Democrat-controlled. Moreover, President Trump has twice the number of vacancies to fill that Bush had, so it is imperative for conservatives and Republicans to confirm the pending nominees to make room for more.
McConnell is promising to take major action on judges now that the budget has been passed. Voters are watching to see what will happen next.
Ken Klukowski is senior legal editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @kenklukowski.
via Breitbart News
Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: http://ift.tt/uktKj3
I’m trolling with that headline, inspired by today’s double-barreled shots at Trump from retirees Corker and Flake. But I’m only trolling a little.
The key difference between Sasse and his two anti-Trump colleagues is time. They’re up for reelection next year, he’s not up until 2020. That’s good news for him twice over. Maybe Trumpism or populism will run out of gas within the party by then, at least enough to allow the incumbent Sasse to prevail in a primary in Nebraska. Flake said today that he believes “the fever” will break eventually, although not in time for his primary against Kelli Ward. Could it break by 2020? Well … not break, perhaps, since Trump himself will be back on the ballot but it could cool to the point where it’s survivable for Sasse. That’s the other good news for him, that Trump is also running in 2020 and will be too busy with his own race to worry much about knocking off Republican senators. McConnell and the donors will put heavy pressure on him too not to divide the party with the stakes so high by trying to take down any incumbents. With Trump ignoring the race, Sasse stands a better chance of hanging on.
But.
Trump’s base will be raring to punish Sasse for his criticism of the president, regardless of how often he ends up voting with Trump over the next two years. (Flake aligned with POTUS 92 percent of the time and that didn’t help him.) Steve Bannon will still be looking for scalps, if only to show off his power. Sasse will be his prime target and of course Sasse knows that. He doesn’t need to make a decision on reelection for another two years but one thing that’s interesting about him is how distinctly he gives off the sense that he’d be just fine leaving Washington behind. He’s the most conspicuously “normal”-seeming guy in the Senate. It wouldn’t surprise me if he decided to take Bannon on and run again, as Flake did not, just to force voters to choose between the Sasse vision of the party and the Trump/Bannon vision: If Republicans prefer nationalism to “the better angels of our nature,” as Flake noted today, okay, but put ’em on the record. It would surprise me less, though, if Sasse concluded “to hell with it” and followed Corker and Flake into retirement by declaring himself a one-termer earlier than expected. It’ll be no fun for him serving another term in the Senate anyway if it’s controlled by Chuck Schumer and the president is either Trump or a Democrat. If he takes reelection off the table early, he’ll be as free to speak out against Trump as Corker and Flake now are and he’ll have much more time to do it.
Speaking of Flake, Ben Shapiro makes the case that his anti-Trump pageant in the Senate today was mainly a fig leaf aimed at disguising the real reason he’s retiring. Namely, he had so alienated Republican voters on policy that he stood no chance of reelection, Trump or no Trump. He’s going out as a fake martyr because that narrative is more flattering to him:
Here is the reality: Jeff Flake was one of the most unpopular senators in the country nearly from the point of his election in 2012. In April 2013, The Atlantic ran a piece titled, “How Jeff Flake Became the Most Unpopular Senator in America.” At that point, Trump wasn’t a gleam in Steve Bannon’s eye, and Bannon wasn’t a gleam in the media’s eye. Flake began his career in the Senate as a popular hard-line Republican; he quickly shifted to the middle, embracing Gang of Eight immigration reform (many immigration reform Senators have fallen askance of the base), siding against the Obamacare defunding effort, voting repeatedly for debt ceiling increases, pushing gun control, working with President Obama to open trade with Cuba.
Eh. Those points are fair enough but (a) I doubt the average Republican voter could name any Flake heresy on policy apart from immigration and (b) I don’t agree at all that Flake’s public criticism of Trump was something he undertook to give him a pretext of leaving. Shapiro concedes that Flake’s attacks on Trump were sincere but believes Flake “purposefully exacerbated” his weakness with the base by taking on POTUS publicly to give himself an excuse to quit. I don’t think there was any political calculation to it. I disagree with Flake on amnesty but have always thought he spoke up about Trump because he felt morally obliged to do so, even to his own political detriment. Shapiro’s right that that was a kamikaze mission but I doubt the point of the mission was to build a feelgood storyline for his eventual retirement. I think he attacked Trump because he felt he had a duty to do so and trusted that the polls would eventually turn around for him. They didn’t and there was no longer any denying what that would have meant for the primary next spring. That’s why the criticism that Flake should have faced primary voters in Arizona and given them a chance to support or reject his vision for the party doesn’t add up. His polling was so bad that running again would have handed the seat to either Kelli Ward or a Democrat, neither one of whom shares his vision. His agenda stands a better chance with someone else running on it. If anyone’s willing to.
Here’s Rush Limbaugh on Corker/Flake Day (before the Flake news, though) marveling that the key difference between pro-Trumpers and anti-Trumpers isn’t about policy, it’s about Trump and his personal peccadilloes. Well, yes: Hence the label “Never Trumpers,” not “Never Republicans” or “Never Conservatives.” Much of Flake’s criticism in his floor speech today had to do with Trump’s personal behavior and seeming indifference to the country’s civic heritage — although he did reserve some harsh words for protectionism and immigration restrictionism. In any case, a thought worth pondering from Tim Carlson: “The people who told you the power of conservative ideas would win over the American public are saying Jeff Flake is the problem, not Trump.” Indeed. Apart from immigration, Flake is much more of a traditional conservative than Trump is. And yet the Rushes of the world, who touted Reagan-style conservatism as a foolproof winning formula for years, now say it’s Flake who needs to go. Flake’s great sin isn’t that he’s a RINO or a “moderate,” it’s that he’s emphatically not a populist. And as we learned starkly last summer, in a battle between a populist and a conservative, “conservatives” will side with the populist every time.
The post So, when does Ben Sasse announce that he’s not running for reelection either? appeared first on Hot Air.
via Hot Air
Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://hotair.com
Two brave Arkansas officers risked their lives wrestling with an armed, unstable man looking to commit suicide-by-cop.
In the body-camera video below, one officer is seen trying to wrestle a firearm from the hands of the unwell man, named Marcus, who is begging to be killed.
“Please take me out,” pleads Marcus. “I don’t want to live.”
Another officer, wearing a body-camera and aiming a gun at the man, is heard yelling: “Marcus, put it down! Put it down! Drop it, Marcus! Drop it!”
“Shoot me,” begs the man, still wrestling with the officer and clinging onto his firearm. “Shoot me, please. … I want to die.”
After the man is finally taken to the ground, the officer tases him.
The man, now in tears, still begs, “Take me out, please. .. I don’t want to live.”
The video has just recently surfaced online, but appears to have been initially taken mid-January.
WATCH:
via Daily Wire
Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: http://ift.tt/1TJbF1r
Galileo Galilei may have declared, “Mathematics is the language with which God wrote the universe,” but Professor Rochelle Gutierrez of the University of Illinois sees sinister white privilege in the language of math. Toni Airaksinen of Campus Reform spotted the latest absurdity to make its way down from the ivory tower to the unwashed masses:
A math education professor at the University of Illinois argued in a newly published book that algebraic and geometry skills perpetuate “unearned privilege” among whites.
Rochelle Gutierrez, a professor at the University of Illinois, made the claim in a new anthology for math teachers, arguing that teachers must be aware of the “politics that mathematics brings” in society.
“On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness. Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White,” Gutierrez argued.
Gutierrez also worries that algebra and geometry perpetuate privilege, fretting that “curricula emphasizing terms like Pythagorean theorem and pi perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans.”
Oddly enough, this Euro-bias or white privilege does not seem to have prevented East Asians from excelling at math, as any glance at the classrooms at MIT or CalTech will demonstrate. But according to Professor Gutierrez:
…evaluations of math skills can perpetuate discrimination against minorities, especially if they do worse than their white counterparts.
“If one is not viewed as mathematical, there will always be a sense of inferiority that can be summoned,” she says, adding that there are so many minorities who “have experienced microaggressions from participating in math classrooms… [where people are] judged by whether they can reason abstractly.”
Sorry, Professor, but analytical reasoning is an incredibly important skill in an era where technology is continually revolutionizing life. The beauty of math is its anchoring in pure reason, available to anyone who cares to take the logical steps and is capable of understanding them. The problem for the racialists is that functional math skills are very unevenly distributed among various demographic slices. One hopes that this is a matter of cultural conditioning, not innate ability. But whatever the origins of the demographic contrasts, the hard reality is that math is difficult, it requires concentration, focus, and the ability to reason. It is hard work that not everyone is prepared to make the sacrifices for.
But Professor Gutierrez sees a different reality:
Gutierrez stresses that all knowledge is “relational,” asserting that “Things cannot be known objectively; they must be known subjectively.”
Would Professor Gutierrez like to be the first person to cross a bridge engineered by someone who felt that math was “relational” and that things cannot be known objectively? How about boarding an airplane designed by someone with her own convictions?
Western civilization gained the power to transform the world thanks to hard-won intellectual achievements rooted in math and science. The peoples of the world had available to them the entire cornucopia of benefits of this intellectual achievement. Some of those non-western peoples chose to adapt to the available intellectual bounty and throw themselves into the realm of science, engineering, entrepreneurship, and achievement, with Japan as the prototype. Race had nothing to do with their success. Other nations and groups have followed suit, with great success.
The opposite posture, alas, one of victimization and rejection of the value of the world-changing knowledge, is a trap. And Professor Gutierrez not only fell into the trap, she is baiting it for her students and those who follow her lead.
Galileo Galilei may have declared, “Mathematics is the language with which God wrote the universe,” but Professor Rochelle Gutierrez of the University of Illinois sees sinister white privilege in the language of math. Toni Airaksinen of Campus Reform spotted the latest absurdity to make its way down from the ivory tower to the unwashed masses:
A math education professor at the University of Illinois argued in a newly published book that algebraic and geometry skills perpetuate “unearned privilege” among whites.
Rochelle Gutierrez, a professor at the University of Illinois, made the claim in a new anthology for math teachers, arguing that teachers must be aware of the “politics that mathematics brings” in society.
“On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness. Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White,” Gutierrez argued.
Gutierrez also worries that algebra and geometry perpetuate privilege, fretting that “curricula emphasizing terms like Pythagorean theorem and pi perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans.”
Oddly enough, this Euro-bias or white privilege does not seem to have prevented East Asians from excelling at math, as any glance at the classrooms at MIT or CalTech will demonstrate. But according to Professor Gutierrez:
…evaluations of math skills can perpetuate discrimination against minorities, especially if they do worse than their white counterparts.
“If one is not viewed as mathematical, there will always be a sense of inferiority that can be summoned,” she says, adding that there are so many minorities who “have experienced microaggressions from participating in math classrooms… [where people are] judged by whether they can reason abstractly.”
Sorry, Professor, but analytical reasoning is an incredibly important skill in an era where technology is continually revolutionizing life. The beauty of math is its anchoring in pure reason, available to anyone who cares to take the logical steps and is capable of understanding them. The problem for the racialists is that functional math skills are very unevenly distributed among various demographic slices. One hopes that this is a matter of cultural conditioning, not innate ability. But whatever the origins of the demographic contrasts, the hard reality is that math is difficult, it requires concentration, focus, and the ability to reason. It is hard work that not everyone is prepared to make the sacrifices for.
But Professor Gutierrez sees a different reality:
Gutierrez stresses that all knowledge is “relational,” asserting that “Things cannot be known objectively; they must be known subjectively.”
Would Professor Gutierrez like to be the first person to cross a bridge engineered by someone who felt that math was “relational” and that things cannot be known objectively? How about boarding an airplane designed by someone with her own convictions?
Western civilization gained the power to transform the world thanks to hard-won intellectual achievements rooted in math and science. The peoples of the world had available to them the entire cornucopia of benefits of this intellectual achievement. Some of those non-western peoples chose to adapt to the available intellectual bounty and throw themselves into the realm of science, engineering, entrepreneurship, and achievement, with Japan as the prototype. Race had nothing to do with their success. Other nations and groups have followed suit, with great success.
The opposite posture, alas, one of victimization and rejection of the value of the world-changing knowledge, is a trap. And Professor Gutierrez not only fell into the trap, she is baiting it for her students and those who follow her lead.
via American Thinker Blog
Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: http://ift.tt/1c2jbfc
For the first seven days after The Hill published startling new information about the Clinton/Russia/Uranium scandal, the 24-hour cable news giant CNN had produced less than five minutes (3 minutes, 54 seconds) of actual news coverage about the case.
From the morning of October 17 through the morning of October 24, CNN’s reporters and anchors only mentioned the scandal twice: first, on October 19, after President Trump scolded reporters for failing to cover the story, anchor Wolf Blitzer offered a 19-second explanation of what Trump was talking about.
Then, on October 20, Blitzer’s 5pm Situation Room included an interview with an ex-Obama administration official, Jake Sullivan, who told Blitzer that Trump’s charge of corruption against the Bill and Hillary Clinton “had no basis in fact.” Blitzer, to his credit, at least pushed back, asking Sullivan about how “some of these Russians who were involved were giving the Clinton Foundation thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Bill Clinton was going to Russia to deliver speeches for huge speaking fees?”
That interview lasted a total of 3 minutes, 35 seconds. CNN also aired live coverage of a Wednesday morning hearing in which Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley discussed the case for 4 minutes, 53 seconds, without any additional comment by CNN. Additionally, the network carried live coverage of President Trump on Thursday talking about the need for more attention — his remarks on this subject totaled 61 seconds, followed by Blitzer’s short comment (noted above).
This afternoon, CNN also went live for a press conference by House GOP members announcing an investigation into the story CNN hadn’t bothered to cover in the past week.
After the press conference, CNN Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash dismissed the story as little more than a conservative conspiracy theory. “What we do know is that the President tweeted about it a couple of days ago, on the 19th of October. Sean Hannity, Fox News, the conservative media, from Breitbart to talk radio, they have been aggressively pushing this story, saying that the mainstream media is ignoring it.”
If conservative media was aggressively pushing this over the past week, CNN certainly wasn’t listening.
Bash then accused the committee of only bringing this case up to appease the GOP base – not because of its own merits: “obviously the fact that all the Republicans, not the Democrats, but just the Republicans on the House intel committee gathered to announce that they’re investigating this, you know, means that there is – that they’re listening to their base.”
via NewsBusters – Exposing Liberal Media Bias
Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: http://ift.tt/2v7eUfC
Sen. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.) / Getty
Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake (R.) announced Tuesday he will not seek reelection to his seat in 2018, saying he does not believe he can in good conscience earn the Republican nomination in the current political climate.
Flake, who President Donald Trump has called “weak” and “ineffective,” also said he will not run as an independent and has no plans to run for president.
“Here’s the bottom line: The path that I would have to travel to get the Republican nomination is a path I’m not willing to take, and that I can’t in good conscience take,” Flake told the Arizona Republic in a telephone interview. “It would require me to believe in positions I don’t hold on such issues as trade and immigration and it would require me to condone behavior that I cannot condone.”
Flake’s campaign had $3.4 million in cash on hand as of Sept. 30, according to the Republic. The Arizona lawmaker said in a Senate floor speech shortly after 3 p.m. that the “coarseness” of the national dialogue under Trump should not be allowed to become the new normal.
“We must never regard as ‘normal’ the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals,” Flake said. “We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country—the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms, and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth or decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have all been elected to serve.”
Flake’s surprise announcement is a blow to Republican hopes to hold onto the Senate majority next year given the advantages of his incumbency. He joins Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker (R.) as another incumbent who has announced he will not seek another term next year.
Flake, who was first elected to his seat in 2012, has been one of the sharpest critics of Trump from the Republican side of the aisle, saying the president’s brand of protectionism and isolationism stands at odds with conservative values.
In August, Flake expressed concerns about the direction of the GOP, as well as the “anti-immigration fervor” Trump had brought.
via Washington Free Beacon
Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: http://freebeacon.com
Former president Barack Obama has been busy since leaving office trying to secure his legacy.
But here’s one big way Americans will always remember the 44th president: People forced to live on food stamp soared 32% under his watch. In 2009, when he took office, there were 33.5 million people on food stamp benefits; in October 2016, just a few months before he left office, that number had skyrocketed to 44.2 million — a jump of 10.7 million people.
The cost of the program to taxpayers rose from $50.3 billion to $66.6 billion — all while Obama’s administration pushed the idea that the economy was booming (it wasn’t). As the unemployment rate dropped (mainly due to Obama officials reducing the number of people considered in the “work force,” millions were forced onto food stamps.
But that “hope and change” has been replaced by four simple words: “Make America Great Again.”
New statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show nearly1.5 million Americans have gotten off the food stamp rolls since President Trump took office in January 2017. That’s a 3.5% drop in less than a year.
They’ve been streaming off the rolls every month.
See the full stats here.
via Daily Wire
Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: http://ift.tt/1TJbF1r
Anyone else seeing a pattern here? Via Fox News: A male feminist writer has been fired by the prestigious GQ Magazine after a woman accused him of sexually assaulting her outside a bar. The writer, Rubert Myers, apologized to his accuser after she outed him on Twitter. “Having been made aware of some allegations against […]
via Weasel Zippers
Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: http://ift.tt/2s3tLUa
As millionaires in the NFL continue to protest the national anthem and the American flag, one California high school football team decided they wanted to display their patriotism and love for the American flag during their homecoming game on Friday night.
Every football player at Sherman E. Burroughs High School football team in Ridgecrest, California, walked onto the field carrying an American flag as God Bless the USA played on the stadiums’ PA system on Friday in the team’s 20-17 win over Oak Hills.
The team gathered together on the field in a line as the national anthem played and a pair of F-18s flew over the field.
The video — originally posted on Facebook — gained over 3 million views and over 100,000 shares in under 72 hours.
Hundreds commented on the video and how proud they were of the young men for showing respect to the American flag and national anthem.
“I just shared this post from last nights homecoming game in Ridgecrest,” John Faber wrote. “I want all my friends and family to see how respectful this little town is, and how proud I am to be considered part of this school.”
Members of the U.S. military stationed in Iraq viewed the video and were appreciative of the young men as they noted the effect that the video had on their spirits.
“Just watched this video from Iraq a few minutes ago and I couldn’t be more proud of Y’all,” Justin Smith wrote. “Great job boys, way to stand up for your country and show your appreciation for being an American. It makes it a lot easier for us overseas knowing we have support from guys like you. Shoutout to your head coach and coaching staff as well. I tip my cap to the parents, family, and friends of these players. Makes me proud to call Ridgecrest home. Way to go guys.”
WATCH:
via Daily Wire
Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: http://ift.tt/1TJbF1r