Category: US Politics

A leftist protester at American University was filmed screaming at a conservative who was hosting conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza on campus. D’Souza commented on the protester during his speech, saying, “And he goes, ‘You don’t know what it means to be a person of color.’ And I thought, well if there is one thing I do know, it’s that.”

‼️ THIS JUST IN ‼️ Deranged leftist has a complete mental breakdown over @DineshDSouza speaking at @AmericanU tonight. Someone get him some help… #onlyatYAF

Tune to see the reaction to what D’Souza has to say LIVE tonight ➡️ https://t.co/xzzVdJYVDb pic.twitter.com/gOvEV4HaWU

— YAF (@yaf) November 7, 2018

A leftist protester was caught on film screaming at a conservative student activist this week. The meltdown came in response to a scheduled lecture from conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza at American University in Washington D.C.

“You should crawl back into your mother’s rancid womb, gestate for a few more hours, slide back out, and then learn something about not being an entitled, white piece of shit,” the protester screamed.

“Because motherfuckers like you come here and you have no idea what it’s like to be gay, to be a person of color, to know what it’s like to live with institutional racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia,” he said, to an inaudible response from the student.

The protester then blamed conservative speech for mass shootings around the country. “I don’t believe people should be promoting hate speech that leads to mass shootings by angry, white, Brock Turner motherfuckers like you,” he shouts.

“If I were your father, I’d kill myself,” the protester said before the video cuts off.

In the lecture, D’Souza addressed the protester, specifically the portion where the protester argued that the student had no idea what it is like to be a person of color. “I just saw, on social media, a video of a protester screaming about my presence here tonight, a white guy. And he goes, ‘You don’t know what it means to be a person of color.’ And I thought, well if there is one thing I do know, it’s that.”

You can watch D’Souza’s lecture below.

President Donald Trump has issued his formal proclamation barring economic migrants who try to sneak across the U.S. border from being allowed to apply for full asylum.

The announcement is intended to help block the impending caravan of Honduran migrants, and it says:

“The entry of any alien into the United States across the international boundary between the United States and Mexico is hereby suspended and limited … this proclamation shall not apply to any alien who enters the United States at a port of entry and properly presents for inspection, or to any lawful permanent resident of the United States.

The proclamation policy is being paired with new rules which say that the growing number migrants caught crossing the border will be only allowed to file for a limited amnesty, dubbed a “withholding of removal.”

This “withholding of removal” process eases deportations, it does not provide a path to green cards, and it raises the bar for migrants to win their cases. For example, illegal migrants will have to show they have a “reasonable fear” of persecution if they are refused entry, not merely an easy-to-pass “credible fear” test. In fiscal 2018, almost 400,000 migrants were caught crossing the border. 

The policy does not fix other border problems, such as the easy-asylum rules set by Congress for people who apply at the formal “ports of entry” along the border. Many of the caravan migrants — especially those bringing children — are expected to apply for full asylum at the ports of entry. 

In the preamble to the proclamation, Trump said: 

The United States has a long and proud history of offering protection to aliens who are fleeing persecution and torture and who qualify under the standards articulated in our immigration laws, including through our asylum system and the Refugee Admissions Program.  But our system is being overwhelmed by migration through our southern border.  Crossing the border to avoid detection and then, if apprehended, claiming a fear of persecution is in too many instances an avenue to near-automatic release into the interior of the United States.  Once released, such aliens are very difficult to remove.

The new proclamation-and-withholding package is part of a larger strategy which uses a series of regulatory changes to gradually shrink the border-wall loopholes which are being held open by pro-migration Democrats and business-first Republicans in Congress.

For example, officials are pushing forward with a plan to close the 2015 Flores loophole which allows economic migrants who bring children to be released into the U.S. job market after just 20 days of detection — or well before officials can complete the 40-day asylum-adjudication process. 

Trump has also said he expects to build “tent cities” on the border. The likely purpose it to prevent the release of migrants into the labor market while officials quickly process and deport economic migrants.

AG Sessions has raised the bar for passing the credible fear tests and getting a judicial approval of an asylum request.  

At the border, officials are also forcing migrants to wait in Mexico as border officials process a reasonable number of claims each day. This process, dubbed “metering,” prevents a rush of migrants from overwhelming the border process and then triggering the catch-and-release process. The metering process also keeps migrants in Mexico, so preventing them from filing lawsuits in U.S. courts to bypass border safeguards. The process also allows border stations to conduct normal procedures, such as checking visitors and trucks for potential crimes, such as drug smuggling. 

All of these policies threaten the labor-trafficking cartels because they may make migration economically unaffordable to poor migrants. In contrast, the current catch-and-release rules allow migrants to walk through the border barriers and into U.S jobs, so providing cheap labor for U.S businesses, cheap services for wealthy Americans and lucrative smuggling payments back to the cartels. 

The cartels are expected to change their labor-trafficking strategies in response t Trump’s proclamation. 

The quickest response is expected from pro-migration legal groups in the United States, such as the ACLU. For example, the caravan migrants are heading to the California border, ensuring their legal claims will be reviewed by the very pro-migration judges in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. In contrast, migrants who cross the Texas border have their claims heard by 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. 

FACT: US law specifically allows individuals to apply for asylum whether or not they are at a port of entry.

It is illegal to circumvent that — by agency or presidential decree. https://t.co/vVRdFEQ1qX

— ACLU (@ACLU) November 8, 2018

Congress is also expected to react by minimizing Trump’s funding for border enforcement. For example, the GOP-controlled House and Senate have already rejected administration requests to fund 50,000 detention spaces for migrants. The House and Senate have also rejected requests for extra funding to hire more border guards and enforcement agents.

Business-first and pro-migration legislators may unite this December to pressure Trump into accepting a swap that gives him a no-reform border-wall in exchange for a no-strings DACA-plus amnesty. 

Also, Congress may use the lame-duck session in December to use the funding bill to sneak more loopholes into the border laws. For example, in July, Kansas Rep. Kevin Yoder added a measure to the 2019 spending plan that would indirectly enforce catch-and-release rules by barring border officials from sheltering children is different locations from detained parents. The plan is unlikely to be included in any final law, in part, because Yoder lost his election campaign. 

The proclamation includes a long preamble where Trump makes his political and legal case in support of the new rules: 

The United States expects the arrival at the border between the United States and Mexico (southern border) of a substantial number of aliens primarily from Central America who appear to have no lawful basis for admission into our country.  They are traveling in large, organized groups through Mexico and reportedly intend to enter the United States unlawfully or without proper documentation and to seek asylum, despite the fact that, based on past experience, a significant majority will not be eligible for or be granted that benefit.  Many entered Mexico unlawfully — some with violence — and have rejected opportunities to apply for asylum and benefits in Mexico.  The arrival of large numbers of aliens will contribute to the overloading of our immigration and asylum system and to the release of thousands of aliens into the interior of the United States.  The continuing and threatened mass migration of aliens with no basis for admission into the United States through our southern border has precipitated a crisis and undermines the integrity of our borders.  I therefore must take immediate action to protect the national interest, and to maintain the effectiveness of the asylum system for legitimate asylum seekers who demonstrate that they have fled persecution and warrant the many special benefits associated with asylum.

In recent weeks, an average of approximately 2,000 inadmissible aliens have entered each day at our southern border.  In Fiscal Year 2018 overall, 124,511 aliens were found inadmissible at ports of entry on the southern border, while 396,579 aliens were apprehended entering the United States unlawfully between such ports of entry.  The great number of aliens who cross unlawfully into the United States through the southern border consumes tremendous resources as the Government seeks to surveil, apprehend, screen, process, and detain them.

Aliens who enter the United States unlawfully or without proper documentation and are subject to expedited removal may avoid being promptly removed by demonstrating, during an initial screening process, a credible fear of persecution or torture.  Approximately 2 decades ago, most aliens deemed inadmissible at a port of entry or apprehended after unlawfully entering the United States through the southern border were single adults who were promptly returned to Mexico, and very few asserted a fear of return.  Since then, however, there has been a massive increase in fear-of-persecution or torture claims by aliens who enter the United States through the southern border.  The vast majority of such aliens are found to satisfy the credible-fear threshold, although only a fraction of the claimants whose claims are adjudicated ultimately qualify for asylum or other protection.  Aliens found to have a credible fear are often released into the interior of the United States, as a result of a lack of detention space and a variety of other legal and practical difficulties, pending adjudication of their claims in a full removal proceeding in immigration court.  The immigration adjudication process often takes years to complete because of the growing volume of claims and because of the need to expedite proceedings for detained aliens.  During that time, many released aliens fail to appear for hearings, do not comply with subsequent orders of removal, or are difficult to locate and remove.

Members of family units pose particular challenges.  The Federal Government lacks sufficient facilities to house families together.  Virtually all members of family units who enter the United States through the southern border, unlawfully or without proper documentation, and that are found to have a credible fear of persecution, are thus released into the United States.  Against this backdrop of near-assurance of release, the number of such aliens traveling as family units who enter through the southern border and claim a credible fear of persecution has greatly increased.  And large numbers of family units decide to make the dangerous and unlawful border crossing with their children.

The United States has a long and proud history of offering protection to aliens who are fleeing persecution and torture and who qualify under the standards articulated in our immigration laws, including through our asylum system and the Refugee Admissions Program.  But our system is being overwhelmed by migration through our southern border.  Crossing the border to avoid detection and then, if apprehended, claiming a fear of persecution is in too many instances an avenue to near-automatic release into the interior of the United States.  Once released, such aliens are very difficult to remove.  An additional influx of large groups of aliens arriving at once through the southern border would add tremendous strain to an already taxed system, especially if they avoid orderly processing by unlawfully crossing the southern border.

The entry of large numbers of aliens into the United States unlawfully between ports of entry on the southern border is contrary to the national interest, and our law has long recognized that aliens who seek to lawfully enter the United States must do so at ports of entry.  Unlawful entry puts lives of both law enforcement and aliens at risk.  By contrast, entry at ports of entry at the southern border allows for orderly processing, which enables the efficient deployment of law enforcement resources across our vast southern border.

Failing to take immediate action to stem the mass migration the United States is currently experiencing and anticipating would only encourage additional mass unlawful migration and further overwhelming of the system.

Other presidents have taken strong action to prevent mass migration.  In Proclamation 4865 of September 29, 1981 (High Seas Interdiction of Illegal Aliens), in response to an influx of Haitian nationals traveling to the United States by sea, President Reagan suspended the entry of undocumented aliens from the high seas and ordered the Coast Guard to intercept such aliens before they reached United States shores and to return them to their point of origin.  In Executive Order 12807 of May 24, 1992 (Interdiction of Illegal Aliens), in response to a dramatic increase in the unlawful mass migration of Haitian nationals to the United States, President Bush ordered additional measures to interdict such Haitian nationals and return them to their home country.  The Supreme Court upheld the legality of those measures in Sale v. Haitian Centers Council, Inc., 509 U.S. 155 (1993).

I am similarly acting to suspend, for a limited period, the entry of certain aliens in order to address the problem of large numbers of aliens traveling through Mexico to enter our country unlawfully or without proper documentation.  I am tailoring the suspension to channel these aliens to ports of entry, so that, if they enter the United States, they do so in an orderly and controlled manner instead of unlawfully.  Under this suspension, aliens entering through the southern border, even those without proper documentation, may, consistent with this proclamation, avail themselves of our asylum system, provided that they properly present themselves for inspection at a port of entry.  In anticipation of a large group of aliens arriving in the coming weeks, I am directing the Secretary of Homeland Security to commit additional resources to support our ports of entry at the southern border to assist in processing those aliens — and all others arriving at our ports of entry — as efficiently as possible.

But aliens who enter the United States unlawfully through the southern border in contravention of this proclamation will be ineligible to be granted asylum under the regulation promulgated by the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security that became effective earlier today.  Those aliens may, however, still seek other forms of protection from persecution or torture.  In addition, this limited suspension will facilitate ongoing negotiations with Mexico and other countries regarding appropriate cooperative arrangements to prevent unlawful mass migration to the United States through the southern border.  Thus, this proclamation is also necessary to manage and conduct the foreign affairs of the United States effectively.

The formal presidential announcement says: 

NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including sections 212(f) and 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) (8 U.S.C. 1182(f) and 1185(a), respectively) hereby find that, absent the measures set forth in this proclamation, the entry into the United States of persons described in section 1 of this proclamation would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, and that their entry should be subject to certain restrictions, limitations, and exceptions.

Sec. 2.  Scope and Implementation of Suspension and Limitation on Entry.  (a)  The suspension and limitation on entry pursuant to section 1 of this proclamation shall apply only to aliens who enter the United States after the date of this proclamation.

(b)  The suspension and limitation on entry pursuant to section 1 of this proclamation shall not apply to any alien who enters the United States at a port of entry and properly presents for inspection, or to any lawful permanent resident of the United States.

…

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this
ninth day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand eighteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-third.

DONALD J. TRUMP

Business groups and Democrats tout skewed polls which prod Americans to declare support for migrants and for the claim that the United States is government-expanding “Nation of [employed] Immigrants,” not a nation of self-ruling American citizens.

The alternative “priority or fairness” polls — plus the 2016 election — show that voters in the polling booth put a much higher priority on helping their families, neighbors, and fellow nationals get decent jobs in a high-tech, high-immigration, low-wage economy.

Overall, Washington’s economic policy of using migration to boost economic growth shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the market with cheap white-collar and blue-collar foreign labor. That flood of outside labor spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees.

Veteran comedian Dennis Miller told Jimmy Kimmel that liberalism is like a “nude beach,” because it only sounds good in theory.

“I went to vote yesterday and I won’t even–I live in a surf town, up the coast here from L.A., and they don’t even give you the sticker. You have to actually get ‘I voted’ tattooed above your pubic mound,” Dennis Miller told Kimmel.

“They’re tattooing people?” Kimmel responded, laughing.

“It’s a hell of a thing,” Miller said.

Kimmel also questioned Miller on his conservative beliefs.

“You know, I was always a big fans of yours. And people, though, today are like ‘What?’ I think people get upset because you’re conservative,” the ABC talk show host said. “Because you’re a comedian. I think it’s weird for a comedian to be conservative. Unusual, I should say. What–they say, what happened to you? What did happen to you, Dennis?”

Miller responded that he was “socially liberal,” and said, “When I look at–I was watching backstage. This is how interesting things are. When I watch Trump, he doesn’t rankle me like he rankles people on your side. There are days he’s a buffoon. There are days I can’t believe the stuff he says. But, today, when I watch that thing, I kind of laugh. I watch Pelosi and she drives me batty.”

“Interesting,” Kimmel said.

“And I know on your side, I think Pelosi’s kind of acceptable and she says stuff like that, that drives me more crazy,” Miller said.

The actor continued, “All I know is this. I’ve met so many nice people, most of my dearest friends in the world are liberals. I refuse to go through life defining who I’m going to be friends with, who I’m going to love, who I’m going to hang with, from this ‘D’ or ‘R’ after people’s names.”

“All I know, is when I look at, like I said, socially liberal–that’s when I don’t dig what the conservatives do. They always come off like the town elders from Footloose and that’s a drag to me. But you know, I look at liberals sometimes, and I think liberalism’s like a nude beach–it sounds good till you get there.”

“Then…there’s lots of cankles and misspelled tattoos,” he joked.

Miller’s most recent standup comedy special, Dennis Miller: Fake News, Real Jokes was released this week on Amazon, Apple, and Google Play.

The Democratic playbook of dirty tricks is getting so, so, so old.

First the Blasey/Kavanaugh show, which was a redux of the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas show. Now the Florida recount, which ecrudescences, well, the 2000 Florida recount. Are Democrats so out of ideas they can’t come up with new dirty tricks?

It’s just getting amazingly predictable what they are capable of pulling.

Having lost two or three close elections in Arizona and Florida, all of a sudden, they are “finding” new ballots and attempting to change the outcome. Just like they did in Florida’s 2000 election.

In Arizona, boxes and boxes of uncounted ballots are somehow turning up, quite unlike in the rest of the country where the vote tallies get done and the state moves on, all because the losing candidate, far-left congresswoman and Code Pink activist, Kyrsten Sinema, seems to have narrowly lost to Republican congresswoman and fighter pilot Martha McSally for the vacant Senate seat. Never mind that Arizona is a generally red state and the late Sen. John McCain who vacated the seat was a moderate Republican. Never mind that McSally comes fairly close to fitting into that military/moderate template, which would presage the outcome we see. And on the other side, never mind that the candidate was bad: crazy suddenly trying to act respectable tends not to win. Sinema was a tremendously flawed candidate with a far-left past, with mistakes quite comparable to those that sank past GOP Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell, and yet somehow, she’s supposed to be the winner? Only if new ballot boxes are “discovered.”

Which suddenly, they are.

Over in Florida, it’s the same thing, only worse. In Broward County, suddenly there’s a problem counting votes. Never mind that every other county could count its votes according to specifications, Broward not only flunked, it only flunks whenever there’s a close election and a Democrat is losing. And strangely, the found ballots only go in the direction of the Democratic candidates. The person in charge of this fiasco is the same Democrat who was responsible for these other irregularities, according to ABC Local 10:

In the November 2016 general election, a small number of ballots were mailed to voters without the state’s medical marijuana referendum. Then, during the primary election months earlier, early results were posted about 30 minutes before polls closed, violating state law.

Earlier this year a circuit court judge ruled that Snipes broke federal and state law by too quickly destroying ballots from the August 2016 primaries, even though there was a pending lawsuit seeking access to the ballots.

Threw away ballots to give the election to a Democrat? Posted early results to sway the other voters? I think we already know what Snipes’s ethics are like. This is obviously a crook who doesn’t belong near a ballot counting station.

Almost as disturbing is that the lawyer leading the Senate-race recount effort (which is different from the first-count effort going on in Broward) for Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, which is actually legal under Florida law in close elections, is none other than Marc Elias, the Democrat lawyer tied to the famous “pee dossier.” According to Breitbart News:

Marc Elias, the attorney who infamously retained Fusion GPS to produce the largely discredited anti-Trump dossier on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, has been retained to represent Sen. Bill Nelson’s recount efforts in Florida.

The Florida Senate race is likely headed to a recount after late reporting from Broward County lowered Gov. Rick Scott’s lead to about 17,000 votes, meaning the election is within the .25% margin necessary to require a hand recount.  The race has already reached the 0.5 percent threshold to require a machine recount.

I think we know what his ethics are like, too.

Florida. Recount. Democrats.

The whole thing reeks of 2000, that era of Bill Clinton who summed his philosophy up as: “Well, we’ll just have to win, then” led off by the Florida recount back when Al Gore was trying to get recounts of recounts until he could get the total he wanted for president.

That was nearly 20 years ago, and Democrats are still playing the same playbook, as if Americans wouldn’t remember.

It comes just as we’ve just gotten past the Democrat sheet-show over the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, where phony allegations of sexual harassment were cooked up for a last-minute bid to sink the nomination, following Democrats’ failure to sink it on “advice and consent” alone.

That was a recrudescence of the playbook the Democrats cooked up on Anita Hill in the late 1990s over the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination.

Like we wouldn’t remember that, either.

‘It’s not over until the illegal wins,’ which is another Democrat-supported production.

Bush Derangement Syndrome is now Trump Derangement Syndrome.

She Persisted.

All of these things are suggestive of a party unable to take ‘no’ for an answer, and thus, unable to adapt to democracy itself. Democrats are reacting to everything they don’t win with childish tantrums, and in each case, trying to move back the clock for a do-over.

Yet they’re using a really old playbook, not new stuff.

As a party, they are run by gerontocrats, and their beloved socialism has failed in practice, so maybe they’ve run out of ideas.

But it’s significant that they are using the same sleights of hand they used 20 years ago, and thinking we’re fools who’ll fall for it. They aren’t even coming up with new kinds of dirty tricks, they are just replaying the old ones, hoping for a different result.

This has just got to fail in the era of Trump because one can only go to the well once in politics. Democrats’ latest trick shows they think it’s an open bar.  

 

Image credit: Eddie Dangerous, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0

The Democratic playbook of dirty tricks is getting so, so, so old.

First the Blasey/Kavanaugh show, which was a redux of the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas show. Now the Florida recount, which ecrudescences, well, the 2000 Florida recount. Are Democrats so out of ideas they can’t come up with new dirty tricks?

It’s just getting amazingly predictable what they are capable of pulling.

Having lost two or three close elections in Arizona and Florida, all of a sudden, they are “finding” new ballots and attempting to change the outcome. Just like they did in Florida’s 2000 election.

In Arizona, boxes and boxes of uncounted ballots are somehow turning up, quite unlike in the rest of the country where the vote tallies get done and the state moves on, all because the losing candidate, far-left congresswoman and Code Pink activist, Kyrsten Sinema, seems to have narrowly lost to Republican congresswoman and fighter pilot Martha McSally for the vacant Senate seat. Never mind that Arizona is a generally red state and the late Sen. John McCain who vacated the seat was a moderate Republican. Never mind that McSally comes fairly close to fitting into that military/moderate template, which would presage the outcome we see. And on the other side, never mind that the candidate was bad: crazy suddenly trying to act respectable tends not to win. Sinema was a tremendously flawed candidate with a far-left past, with mistakes quite comparable to those that sank past GOP Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell, and yet somehow, she’s supposed to be the winner? Only if new ballot boxes are “discovered.”

Which suddenly, they are.

Over in Florida, it’s the same thing, only worse. In Broward County, suddenly there’s a problem counting votes. Never mind that every other county could count its votes according to specifications, Broward not only flunked, it only flunks whenever there’s a close election and a Democrat is losing. And strangely, the found ballots only go in the direction of the Democratic candidates. The person in charge of this fiasco is the same Democrat who was responsible for these other irregularities, according to ABC Local 10:

In the November 2016 general election, a small number of ballots were mailed to voters without the state’s medical marijuana referendum. Then, during the primary election months earlier, early results were posted about 30 minutes before polls closed, violating state law.

Earlier this year a circuit court judge ruled that Snipes broke federal and state law by too quickly destroying ballots from the August 2016 primaries, even though there was a pending lawsuit seeking access to the ballots.

Threw away ballots to give the election to a Democrat? Posted early results to sway the other voters? I think we already know what Snipes’s ethics are like. This is obviously a crook who doesn’t belong near a ballot counting station.

Almost as disturbing is that the lawyer leading the Senate-race recount effort (which is different from the first-count effort going on in Broward) for Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, which is actually legal under Florida law in close elections, is none other than Marc Elias, the Democrat lawyer tied to the famous “pee dossier.” According to Breitbart News:

Marc Elias, the attorney who infamously retained Fusion GPS to produce the largely discredited anti-Trump dossier on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, has been retained to represent Sen. Bill Nelson’s recount efforts in Florida.

The Florida Senate race is likely headed to a recount after late reporting from Broward County lowered Gov. Rick Scott’s lead to about 17,000 votes, meaning the election is within the .25% margin necessary to require a hand recount.  The race has already reached the 0.5 percent threshold to require a machine recount.

I think we know what his ethics are like, too.

Florida. Recount. Democrats.

The whole thing reeks of 2000, that era of Bill Clinton who summed his philosophy up as: “Well, we’ll just have to win, then” led off by the Florida recount back when Al Gore was trying to get recounts of recounts until he could get the total he wanted for president.

That was nearly 20 years ago, and Democrats are still playing the same playbook, as if Americans wouldn’t remember.

It comes just as we’ve just gotten past the Democrat sheet-show over the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, where phony allegations of sexual harassment were cooked up for a last-minute bid to sink the nomination, following Democrats’ failure to sink it on “advice and consent” alone.

That was a recrudescence of the playbook the Democrats cooked up on Anita Hill in the late 1990s over the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination.

Like we wouldn’t remember that, either.

‘It’s not over until the illegal wins,’ which is another Democrat-supported production.

Bush Derangement Syndrome is now Trump Derangement Syndrome.

She Persisted.

All of these things are suggestive of a party unable to take ‘no’ for an answer, and thus, unable to adapt to democracy itself. Democrats are reacting to everything they don’t win with childish tantrums, and in each case, trying to move back the clock for a do-over.

Yet they’re using a really old playbook, not new stuff.

As a party, they are run by gerontocrats, and their beloved socialism has failed in practice, so maybe they’ve run out of ideas.

But it’s significant that they are using the same sleights of hand they used 20 years ago, and thinking we’re fools who’ll fall for it. They aren’t even coming up with new kinds of dirty tricks, they are just replaying the old ones, hoping for a different result.

This has just got to fail in the era of Trump because one can only go to the well once in politics. Democrats’ latest trick shows they think it’s an open bar.  

 

Image credit: Eddie Dangerous, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0

“I am considering every single legal option available,” Rick Scott announced last night, and he’s not kidding around. The Florida governor whose Senate election bid is being held up in Broward and Palm Beach counties ordered an investigation by state police into the actions of two county election officers, whom Scott accused of flagrantly violating state election laws in the conduct of their ballot counting. Scott also announced a lawsuit to force both counties into compliance while accusing officials of “rampant fraud”:

Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott on Thursday evening filed suit and asked for an investigation into ongoing ballot counts that he accused of being a partisan attempt by “unethical liberals” to steal the state’s Senate election.

Scott, who ran against incumbent Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson, alleged that the Broward County and Palm Beach County supervisors of elections were engaging in “rampant fraud.” …

The National Republicans Senatorial Committee joined Scott on Thursday to file suit against both Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes and Palm Beach Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher. Scott alleges that the supervisors have violated federal and state laws by failing to provide information to officials.

A judge ruled in May of this year that Snipes had illegally destroyed votes during a 2016 election and Scott said at the time he would send experts to Broward for the upcoming elections, according to the Sun Sentinel.

The biggest issue is the lack of transparency on the number of ballots cast in both counties. The election officers were required to provide an overall total by Wednesday morning in order for observers to know what the final number would be. As of this morning, that still has not been accomplished, but meanwhile tens of thousands of ballots have been added to the votes since Election Night. Scott flat-out accuses Snipes and Boucher of fabricating votes, and he wants the process yanked away from them to find out exactly what’s going on.

As of this morning, the Florida Division of Elections still shows Scott with a 15,000+ lead in the Senate race. Ron DeSantis has a larger lead in the gubernatorial race of 36,000+. Both races are already in the automatic machine-recount range, and the Senate race may be in the hand-recount range. As Scott notes above, though, the gaps in both cases far exceed the kind of changes that could come in a recount. Unless Broward and Palm Beach unpack a whole boatload of new ballots, of course.

In the meantime, we can dust off a familiar nickname for Florida, and it ain’t “the Sunshine State”:

Among the lawyers popping up at the Broward Supervisor of Elections Office Thursday were William Scherer and Ben Kuehne — a pair of legal throwbacks to Florida’s fiercely disputed 2000 presidential election recount.

“The embarrassing nickname for Florida is Flori-duh because of Broward,” Scherer said, with recounts looming in major races after Tuesday’s general election. “And this is Flori-duh again.” …

Scherer said he’s filed several lawsuits against Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes’ office over the years, including one involving absentee ballots and write-in candidates and another involving a candidate’s name change.

Asked why he was hanging around her office, Scherer said: “There could be opportunities for voter fraud,” Scherer said. Why? “Because it’s in Broward.”

Nine individuals were arrested Thursday for their alleged roles in a 2017 voter fraud scheme involving the municipal election in a Texas border town.

These arrests were part of an ongoing investigation into a coordinated effort by political workers to recruit people who would fraudulently claim residential addresses so they could vote in specific races and influence the results of the Edinburg city election held last year, according to information provided by the Office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

“Illegal voting, particularly an organized illegal voting scheme orchestrated by political operatives, is an affront to democracy and results in corruption at the highest level,” said Paxton in a prepared statement.

“Each illegal vote silences the voice of a law-abiding registered voter,” added Paxton. “My office will continue to do everything in its power to uncover illegal voting schemes and bring to justice those who try to manipulate the outcome of elections in Texas.”

The nine Hidalgo County residents arrested were Guadalupe Sanchez Garza, Jerry Gonzalez, Jr., Araceli Gutierrez, Belinda Rodriguez, Brenda Rodriguez, Felisha Yolanda Rodriguez, Rosendo Rodriguez, Cynthia Tamez, and Ruby Tamez. Online jail records show bond was set at $20,000 for both Garza and Ruby Tamez. A $10,000 bond was set for Gonzalez, Gutierrez, Belinda Rodriguez, Brenda Rodriguez, Rosendo Rodriguez, and Cynthia Tamez. Felisha Yolanda Rodriguez’s bail was set at $1,000.

The Office of Hidalgo County District Attorney Ricardo Rodriguez will prosecute the cases.

In May, four other county residents were charged with voter fraud related to the 2017 Edinburg election. One of the accused was also a convicted human smuggler. Another was only charged with making a false statement on a voter registration form, a Class B misdemeanor. In June, they charged a fifth person with two counts of illegal voting.

To date, a total of 14 people stand accused of violating election laws in the 2017 Edinburg city election.

In Texas, it is a state jail felony to vote in an election using fraudulent ballot application information. The crime is punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

More arrests are expected in Hidalgo County over last year’s purported illegal voting scheme in Edinburg. The Texas Rangers are assisting the AG’s Election Fraud Unit in this investigation.

Hidalgo County is one of several hotbeds of alleged voter fraud activity where the AG’s office has lent support and assistance to investigations conducted by local district attorneys. In 2015, newly sworn-in Hidalgo County DA Rodriguez vowed to curb public corruption.

This summer, a Hidalgo County grand jury indicted a non-U.S. citizen on a charge of illegal voting for marking a ballot without a voter’s consent in a June 2016 Hidalgo city runoff election. Two of her fellow campaign workers were implicated in the alleged voter assistance scheme. All stand accused of taking advantage of elderly and/or disabled voters.

Earlier this year, Paxton announced a significant voter fraud initiative in the adjacent Starr County where DA Omar Escobar pledged to crack down on voter fraud after questionable registrant records and mail-in ballot applications surfaced. Officials made seven arrests.

Recently, four North Texas women, who allegedly belonged to a paid voter fraud ring in Tarrant County, were indicted on 30 counts of voter fraud following an investigation by the AG’s office. Purportedly, they sought to influence the outcome of certain down-ballot candidate races in the 2016 March Democratic Party primary election. Court documents filed by Paxton’s office accused the county’s former Democratic Party executive director of funding the voter fraud ring’s criminal activities.

The Rio Grande Valley area also made national news before the 2018 election when the Public Interest Legal Foundation released a complaint to county and state officers regarding “altered” voter registration forms circulated by the Texas Democratic Party that were directed to noncitizen residents. The applications featured pre-printed claims of U.S. citizenship. The Texas Secretary of State referred the matter to Attorney General Paxton for further investigation. ProPublica reported that Paxton’s office “does not comment on potential investigations.”

Follow Merrill Hope, a member of the original Breitbart Texas team, on Facebook and Twitter.

Matthew Whitaker’s tenure as acting attorney general may only be able to be measured in hours, but he’s already made a huge impact in how asylum-seekers are processed at the southern border.

According to a new interim final rule from the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, those who enter the country illegally and are captured will no longer be able to claim asylum and will instead be returned to their country of origin on an expedited basis.

“Consistent with our immigration laws, the President has the broad authority to suspend or restrict the entry of aliens into the United States if he determines it to be in the national interest to do so,” Whitaker said in a joint statement with DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

“Today’s rule applies this important principle to aliens who violate such a suspension or restriction regarding the southern border imposed by the President by invoking an express authority provided by Congress to restrict eligibility for asylum.

“Our asylum system is overwhelmed with too many meritless asylum claims from aliens who place a tremendous burden on our resources, preventing us from being able to expeditiously grant asylum to those who truly deserve it. Today, we are using the authority granted to us by Congress to bar aliens who violate a Presidential suspension of entry or other restriction from asylum eligibility.”

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Translating that out of federalese, this is basically saying that those who cross into America illegally and then are captured cannot claim asylum as pursuant to the Immigration and Nationality Act — the same act that the president used to craft the travel ban, which was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court.

That law holds that “(w)henever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”

The only way to gain political asylum, therefore, is to present oneself at a port of entry to the United States.

The New York Times crystalized the arguments for and against the move in their article on the new rule.

“Lawyers for immigration advocacy organizations said they violated a founding principle of federal asylum: to judge each person’s asylum claim on its own merits. And the lawyers said federal and international law made it clear that the United States must provide immigrants the opportunity to claim asylum regardless of whether they entered the country legally or illegally,” the Thursday article read.

“Trump administration officials defended the new approach, saying the president is responding to statistics that show that most migrants who seek asylum are eventually denied — but not before many of them skip their court hearings and choose to illegally stay in the United States.”

That last part is generally true. Few asylum seekers are able to establish a credible fear based on political persecution in their home country, which is why their application is typically denied. If they do have a realistic claim, presenting themselves at a port of entry is the proper way of doing things.

As for the legality of that, Bill Hing, general counsel at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, told Newsweek that, “U.S. and international law does not specify that you have to go to a certain port.”

Whether or not this stands is going to be a matter of considerable debate. Whether it specifies you have to go to a certain port or not, under American law, seems again like it would be subject to the Immigration and Nationality Act — although that will certainly be a matter for the courts.

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As for international law, that and $35 will usually get you an oil change. While there are obviously certain international legal norms everyone is expected to follow, the unsecured southern border represents an especial challenge to the United States. The abuse of the asylum process by individuals who have chosen to broke the law to get into the country in the first place, thus placing a strain on a system that already struggles to deal with legitimate asylum claims, should be an overriding concern in this case.

The Trump administration has also said those illegally in the country could apply for two other smaller programs as opposed to asylum, which would technically satisfy our treaty obligations. Whether treaty signatories buy this, and whether it ends up meaning anything, again remains to be seen.

No matter how this shakes out, it’s a sign that Whitaker is putting his stamp on the office posthaste — even if one gets the idea that President Trump had more than a little to do with the formulation of this policy. Say what you will about that, but Sessions certainly wasn’t willing to take this step.

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As Tuesday night turned into Wednesday morning and the results began shaking out, it looked like Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, would hold on to a slim upset over incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat.

Then, in one of America’s most corrupt areas, 15,000 ballots suddenly appeared, as if by magic. And lo and behold, county officials won’t let party officials into the room while they’re being counted, a violation of the law.

“Scott says that 15,000 new votes were found in Palm Beach County, that had not been accounted for. In Broward County, Scott says that 78,840 additional election votes have been counted since polls closed,” WFTS-TV reported.

Now, Scott is suing over the ballot-counting practices. He’s also using his authority as governor to call on the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate.

In a speech, Scott noted that his lead has been shrinking since election night. What makes that suspicious, he says, is the appearance of new votes.

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“On election night, Broward County said there were 634,000 votes cast. At 1 a.m. today, there were 695,700 ballots cast on Election Day,” Scott said in a speech announcing the lawsuit. “At 2:30 pm today, the number was up to 707,223 ballots cast on election day.”

“And we just learned, that the number has increased to 712,840 ballots cast on Election Day.

“In Palm Beach County, there are 15,000 new votes found since election night,” he continued. “So, It has been over 48 hours since the polls closed and Broward and Palm Beach Counties are still finding and counting ballots — and the supervisors — Brenda Snipes and Susan Bucher — cannot seem to say how many ballots still exist or where these ballots came from, or where they have been.”

If you remember the name Brenda Snipes, there might be a good reason. She was named in a lawsuit involving a primary challenge to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz in which she admitted to illegally destroyed ballots.

“Every Floridian should be concerned there may be rampant fraud happening in Palm Beach and Broward Counties. And the Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes has a history of acting in bad faith,” Scott said.

In addition to that 2016 lawsuit, Scott also noted that there were other problems with Snipes’ record.

“In 2016, Brenda Snipes’ office posted election results half an hour before polls closed – a violation of election law. That same year, her office was sued for leaving amendments off of ballots,” he said.

“In 2014, Brenda Snipes’ fellow Democrats accused her of individual and systemic breakdowns that made it difficult for voters to cast regular ballots. All Floridians should be concerned about that.”

Gov. Rick Scott & the NRSC are filing a public records lawsuit against Broward election supervisor Brenda Snipes for failing to provide them with information about outstanding ballots that have yet to be tabulated

The lawsuit comes as Scott’s margins are shrinking v. Sen Nelson pic.twitter.com/ZZunsV1bPP

— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) November 9, 2018

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And that’s just Broward County. Things aren’t much better in Palm Beach County.

“Palm Beach County is also refusing to provide information to the public,” Scott said. “And they are illegally refusing to allow official party representatives into the ballot counting area and forcing people to stand behind a glass wall with limited visibility and no ability to hear what is going on.

“This is a clear violation of Florida law — and we have just filed a lawsuit.”

Whether or not this will do anything about what’s going on in south Florida is anyone’s guess at this point. However, it’s rare to hear a sitting governor and someone who’s involved in a Senate race actually call voter irregularities fraud.

Given the history of fraud in south Florida, however — and the upcoming recount — it’s something every Floridian ought to be deeply concerned about.

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