Conservatives welcome. Libs & RINOs go away. It's all of you destroying the society and conservatives must no longer appease you!
Being pushed by the chancellor, Richard Carranza. Via NY Post: In controversial “implicit bias” training, New York City’s public-school educators have been told to focus on black children over white ones — and one Jewish superintendent who described her family’s Holocaust tragedies was scolded and humiliated, according to firsthand accounts. A consultant hired by the […]
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Former High Court judge Dr Bryan McMahon made the revelation while giving evidence to the Oireachtas (legislature of Ireland) Committee on Justice and Equality this week, as the United Nations ordered politicians to improve the quality of life for asylum seekers in the country.
Dr McMahon, whose eponymous 2015 report predicted an “upward trend in the number of new applications” for asylum in Ireland, described how efforts to regularise the migration status of 4,000 people were set back by politicians’ fears that “the word ‘amnesty’ … is not a prospect that would go down well with the public”.
He said: “With regard to an amnesty for those who have been in the system for more than five years, we tried very much in our discussions to introduce something that was like an amnesty but we did not dare call it an amnesty.
“To some extent, the word is taboo in the discussion because it will not fly [so] the administrators tried to do it in another way,” Dr McMahon added, stressing that the move “had to be done without using the word ‘amnesty’.”
‘Put an Empty Space to Better Use’: Irish Urged to House Migrants in Spare Beds https://t.co/jdK2OtYA2a
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) May 16, 2018
The head of the Irish branch of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Enda O’Neill, had complained to the committee over the length of time migrants were having to wait to have their applications processed.
Other issues raised included that newcomers, who are now allowed to work while seeking asylum thanks to rule changes supported by big business, were being placed in taxpayer-funded accommodation which was considered too far away from urban areas to be considered convenient for finding employment.
In September, Ireland announced an amnesty to regularise the status of an estimated 3,500 to 5,500 illegal immigrants who arrived in the country as international students between 2005 and 2010 — a move hailed by open borders groups such as Right to Remain.
The Britain-based NGO, which works to dismantle immigration restrictions in Britain, lauded the decision, alleging that “support for amnesty schemes is mainstream in Ireland”.
“Major Irish political parties have advocated regularisation schemes, including in election manifestos, and the main opposition party welcomed the move,” the group said on its website.
Exclusive: Tiny Irish Town Taking Hundreds of Migrants Had No Say, Locals Fear Being Called Racist https://t.co/CzJMCsp8dn
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 7, 2018
But a number of factors suggest there is far less consensus on the topic than the Irish establishment claims, including that politicians and the country’s almost uniformly left-liberal mainstream media enforces a tough line against anyone who would discuss mass migration or its consequences in less than glowingly positive terms.
At recent elections, discourse around immigration has been controlled by the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), an NGO funded by Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros and EU taxpayers, while a centrist politician was smeared as a “dog-whistling” extremist for commenting that “there needs to be sustainable levels of immigration in this country, it needs to be managed”.
The gap in attitudes between Ireland’s elite and the people who they are supposed to represent was exposed in a survey earlier this year, which found that not one of the country’s TDs (the equivalent of British MPs) wanted to reduce immigration.
Despite half the respondents admitting that mass migration was regularly brought up on the doorstep as a topic of concern, 65 per cent said they were happy to see immigration remain at its current level while 35 per cent stated they would like to see it increased further.
Guinness Sorry for ‘Racist’ Ad Linking Ancestry to National Pride https://t.co/5xY4L67uip
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) February 4, 2019
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In total, around 32 per cent of French in 2018 identify as being members of the Roman Catholic church, but the majority, 19 per cent, say that they do not practise, and only seven per cent say that they attend mass once a month — down from an already low nine per cent in 2008, French political magazine Le Point reports.
The research comes from sociologists Claude Dargent and Olivier Galland who compared the numbers to 1981 when 70 per cent of French identified as being Roman Catholics and 17 per cent regularly practised.
Archbishop of Vienna: ‘Many Muslims’ Want European Conquest https://t.co/RVWxaV9pKW pic.twitter.com/Jed6QMJMXB
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) September 13, 2016
One of the largest trends in the data is the huge difference between those of different generations in terms of active religious practice. Among the 18 to 29-year-olds, a mere three per cent of Catholics say they practise, compared to 16 per cent of those over the age of 70.
As Catholicism has declined, other religions have grown in France, with Islam being the fastest. Around 14 per cent of French identify as being Muslim, and among the 18 to 29-year-old age bracket there are just as many practising Muslims in France as practising Roman Catholics.
The rise of Islam in France was addressed by Archbishop of Strasbourg Luc Ravel, who tied the trend to the shifting population demographics, claiming, “Muslim believers know very well that their birthrate is such that today, they call it … the Great Replacement, they tell you in a very calm, very positive way that, ‘one day all this, it will be ours’.”
A Quarter of French Believe ‘Elites’ Using Mass Migration to ‘Replace’ Native Europeans https://t.co/dr2IQVqPQf
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) February 7, 2019
The idea of population replacement, conceived as the “Great Replacement” by French writer Renaud Camus, is considered a conspiracy theory by many in the mainstream media.
According to a survey by Jean-Jaurès Foundation and Conspiracy Watch, at least a quarter of French believe “elites” are using mass migration policies to replace them.
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“Pregnancy Kills. Abortion Saves Lives.”
That was the headline on an absurd opinion article in The New York Times, deploying Orwellian language to turn the abortion debate on pro-lifers and comfort those who support abortion on demand.
While the conversation over Alabama’s new abortion law has drawn out some wild arguments from the left, it’s easy to miss the less obvious ways the media reinforce the pro-abortion side.
The media, cleverly and often subtly, use rhetorical adjustments to reinforce left-wing ideas under the guise of objectivity.
It’s not just on the abortion issue that the media kowtow to the left in the terminology they use in charged public debates.
For instance, The Guardian, a British outlet, recently updated its style guide to reinforce the idea that challenging prevailing left-wing ideas about man-made climate change is fundamentally illegitimate.
Few topics, however, draw out media bias like abortion, where the concerns of pro-life Americans are left on the back page or uncovered, and a magnifying glass is put on anyone who challenges pro-abortion orthodoxy.
Ultimately, media bias regarding abortion is nothing new.
Ross Douthat, a conservative New York Times columnist, wrote in 2012:
Conservative complaints about media bias are sometimes overdrawn. But on the abortion issue, the press’s prejudices are often absolute, its biases blatant, and its blinders impenetrable. In many newsrooms and television studios across the country, Planned Parenthood is regarded as the equivalent of, well, the Komen foundation: an apolitical, high-minded and humanitarian institution whose work no rational person—and certainly no self-respecting woman—could possibly question or oppose.
This is certainly the case today.
Not only is coverage of abortion highly skewed, but it’s clear that the language used to describe it is made to soften the reality of what the practice is, while diminishing the concerns of those who believe fundamental rights are being violated.
NPR, which is of course publicly funded, recently updated its language guidelines for reporters.
Here are some of the terms now off-limits for NPR journalists: pro-life, late-term abortion, fetal heartbeat, partial birth.
Instead they are to use terms such as “intact dilation and extraction” (to describe a partial-birth abortion) and “medical or health clinics that perform abortions” (instead of simply “abortion clinics”).
The phrase “abortion doctor” also would drop off the list of acceptable phrases. Instead, NPR reporters are instructed to list the doctor’s name and write that he “operated a clinic where abortions are performed.”
If anything, the attempt to use more scientific language to describe abortions, such as “intact dilation and extraction” in the place of “partial birth abortion,” at best merely confuses readers as to what actually is being performed.
This point was well made by National Review’s Alexandra DeSanctis, who wrote in a thread on Twitter:
Of course, NPR has also set strict guidelines about how to treat the words “unborn” and “baby,” making sure that reporters never describe, well, unborn babies in anything other than technical language to remove thorny debates about personhood or humanity. NPR instructs its reporters:
The term ‘unborn’ implies that there is a baby inside a pregnant woman, not a fetus. Babies are not babies until they are born. They’re fetuses. Incorrectly calling a fetus a ‘baby’ or ‘the unborn’ is part of the strategy used by antiabortion groups to shift language/legality/public opinion.
Media bias on this issue will become only more pronounced as the “positive good” school of thought about abortion becomes more pronounced on the left than the “safe, legal, and rare” camp.
Regardless of where one stands on the issue of abortion, attempts to dance around prickly questions about life and humanity are unlikely to solve the division.
The media, as is so common today, distinctly reveals its biases and lets slip the mask of objectivity that’s becoming increasingly difficult for Americans to believe.
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Who is a United States citizen by birth? This question has
increasingly received national attention, in large part because of President
Donald Trump’s promise to “end birthright citizenship.”
As I explain, however, in my recent Heritage Foundation legal memo titled “The Citizenship Clause’s Original Meaning and What It Means Today,” Congress definitively settled that question in 1866 when it passed the 14th Amendment. The problem is that Congress’ answer was far different from what Americans today often assume.
Even though the U.S. government has long abided by a policy of universal birthright citizenship—that is, of treating all persons born in the United States as citizens, regardless of the immigration status of their parents—the reality is that the Constitution doesn’t mandate this policy.
In fact, while the Citizenship Clause eliminated race-based
barriers to birthright citizenship, Congress expressly intended to limit
birthright citizenship based on the strength of a person’s relationship to the
United States.
More importantly, the government today needn’t amend the
Constitution in order to restrict citizenship for the U.S.-born children of
illegal or non-immigrant aliens. It could simply stop abiding by a broad policy
never required by the Constitution in the first place.
Context and
Legislative History:
In the 1857 case of Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Supreme Court held that the U.S.-born descendants of African slaves were not and could never become citizens. In short, black people were simply Africans, not African-Americans, and relegated to the status of perpetual aliens in the nation where they were forced to live and die.
This holding created a previously nonexistent permanent barrier to citizenship based on a person’s race or national origin. It also left the freed slaves essentially stateless—they logically owed allegiance to no sovereign except the United States government, but were nonetheless permanent aliens.
After the Civil War, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 as a direct attempt to override the Dred Scott decision and statutorily expand citizenship to the freed slaves.
That act defined the parameters of birthright citizenship for the first time in U.S. history—“[A]ll persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States.”
Congress drafted and passed the 14th Amendment primarily to strengthen the protections of the Civil Rights Act by writing them into the Constitution itself. Under the 14th Amendment, citizenship belongs to “all persons born … in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
Some advocates of universal birthright citizenship argue that because the 14th Amendment’s definition of citizenship differs from that of the Civil Rights Act, Congress meant to override the Civil Rights Act and adopt the English common law’s jus soli—that is, the principle of citizenship by virtue of birth within a country’s geographical boundaries alone.
The legislative history strongly undercuts this argument. The 14th Amendment did not override or counteract the Civil Rights Act. On the contrary, the two definitions existed side by side for the next 70 years, and both courts and legal scholars roundly understood them as complementary.
The change in language was exclusively the result of
disagreements over how best to exclude tribally-affiliated Native Americans
from birthright citizenship, and in no way reflected a desire by Congress to
fundamentally change the principles of citizenship initially laid out in the
Civil Rights Act.
This is important because it means that the two definitions
of birthright citizenship logically work together and inform each other. In
other words, a person who is “subject to a foreign power” is also not “subject
to the jurisdiction of the United States,” and vice versa.
The legislative history of both the Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment shows quite clearly that, while Congress sought to expand birthright citizenship to include the freed slaves, it also sought to exclude broad categories of individuals who maintained only a qualified or limited allegiance to the nation.
As several congressmen put it, birthright citizenship was reserved for those who, like the freed slaves, were subject to “the complete jurisdiction of the United States.”
To be “subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States” simultaneously meant that a person was not meaningfully subject to a foreign power such that his or her allegiance to the United States was divided or qualified.
Notably, even modern advocates of universal birthright
citizenship agree that at least some individuals were excluded from citizenship
because they owed only a qualified allegiance, despite having been born “in the
United States.”
For example, few people seriously argue that the Citizenship
Clause applied to Native Americans who were born subject to their tribal
governments. Even though they were born “in the United States,” their
allegiance was divided between the United States and their tribal governments, which
were considered “quasi-foreign nations.”
The same legislative history that so clearly excludes tribal
Indians from birthright citizenship also makes clear that the Citizenship
Clause does not cover the U.S.-born children of other individuals who owe only
a minimal, qualified, or temporary allegiance to the United States.
This explicitly meant the exclusion of “temporary
sojourners,” who owe the United States a “sort of allegiance,” but who remain
meaningfully subject to a foreign power.
While the concept of “illegal immigration” did not exist at the time of the 14th Amendment’s passage, the same principles would disqualify individuals who are illegally present in the United States.
What About Wong Kim
Ark?
Despite claims by advocates of universal birthright
citizenship that the Supreme Court has already held universal birthright
citizenship to be “the law of the land,” the reality is far different.
It is true that, in 1898, the Supreme Court held in United States v. Wong Kim Ark that the U.S.-born child of lawfully present and permanently domiciled Chinese immigrants was a U.S. citizen under the 14th Amendment.
At its core, Wong Kim Ark was about the government’s attempt to circumvent the 14th Amendment and keep Chinese immigrants and their children from ever becoming citizens, by any means, just because they were Chinese.
At the time, federal law barred Chinese immigrants from becoming
naturalized citizens, and they were, according to treaty obligations with
China, perpetual Chinese subjects.
Much like the freed slaves, Chinese immigrants were
prohibited from subjecting themselves to the complete jurisdiction of the
United States because of their race, and were relegated to permanent alienage
in a country where they would live and die.
This type of race-based discrimination in citizenship was precisely what the 14th Amendment was intended to prohibit, and the Supreme Court rightly recognized the system for the unconstitutional travesty it truly was.
While the opinion can also be read as affirmatively adopting
jus soli as the “law of the land,” it can just as easily be read as adopting
only a flexible, “Americanized” jus soli limited to the factors of lawful
presence and permanent domicile.
This second interpretation renders the holding consistent with the original meaning of the 14th Amendment. It is also precisely what many legal commentators at the time thought the Supreme Court meant, too.
In short, Wong Kim Ark only deviates from the original meaning of the 14th Amendment if one chooses to read it acting under the assumption that the Supreme Court intended to upend decades of precedent and judicially supersede the clear intent of Congress. That assumption is unnecessary, illogical, and dangerous.
What This Means Today
What this means in practice is that the original meaning of the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause has not necessarily been rendered moot by the Supreme Court. The United States government may today treat all U.S.-born children as citizens, but not because the Constitution requires it—or even because the Supreme Court judicially mandated it.
Ultimately, the government may cease to treat the U.S.-born children of illegal and non-immigrant aliens as citizens without first amending the Constitution.
They are not subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States because they do not meet the requirements of lawful permanent residency envisioned by Congress or laid out by the Supreme Court in Wong Kim Ark. Moreover, their failure to meet these requirements is not the result of race-based prohibitions.
The U.S.-born children of immigrant aliens (also known as lawful permanent residents) are, however, citizens by birth, and rightfully so—their parents are subject to many of the same rights and duties as American citizens, and have taken meaningful preliminary steps toward U.S. citizenship.
These are precisely the “lawfully present and permanently domiciled” individuals whose citizenship has never been questioned under the 14th Amendment.
Embracing the original meaning of the Citizenship Clause is
not about racial prejudice or disdain for immigrants in general.
On the contrary, such a move recognizes that American citizenship is reserved for all those who, regardless of race or former allegiances, have taken meaningful steps toward solidifying permanent bonds with the American people, and have taken up the duties and responsibilities inherent to those bonds.
This is something both citizens and would-be citizens alike should celebrate.
The post Does the Constitution Mandate Universal Birthright Citizenship? Here’s the Answer appeared first on The Daily Signal.
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement ripped Washington for becoming the latest state to enact policies that protect illegal immigrants from local law enforcement and federal authorities.
“ICE maintains that cooperation by local law enforcement is an indispensable component of promoting public safety. It’s unfortunate that current local and state laws and policies tie the hands of local law enforcement agencies that want and need to work with ICE to promote public safety by holding criminals accountable and providing justice and closure for their victims,” the agency said Thursday in a statement to The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Washington became the latest state to offer safe haven to illegal immigrants after Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee signed a “sanctuary” bill into law on Tuesday.
“Sanctuary policies not only provide a refuge for illegal aliens, but they also shield criminal aliens who prey on people in their own and other communities,” ICE stated. “When ICE officers and agents have to go out into the community to proactively locate these aliens, it puts personnel and potentially innocent bystanders at risk.”
The newly-enacted legislation largely prohibits local law enforcement from asking about an individual’s immigration status or place of birth, with an exception if it pertains to a criminal investigation. State prisons and jails are also barred from honoring voluntary “immigration holds” requested by federal authorities such as ICE, or from alerting them when a migrant is soon to be released from jail.
The rules, signed into law Tuesday, are considered some of the most restrictive in the country.
“Our state agencies are not immigration enforcement agencies,” said Inslee, who is also a Democratic presidential candidate. “We will not be complicit in the Trump administration’s depraved efforts to break up hard-working immigrant and refugee families.”
The legislation is a mandate for all local law enforcement, expanding on a 2017 executive order by Inslee that imposed similar measures that only pertained to state agencies.
Inslee’s signature puts Washington on par with a growing number of deep blue states that have enacted sanctuary policies. A list compiled by the Center for Immigration Studies names at least eight states that enacted laws protecting illegal immigrants from local law enforcement and ICE.
The sanctuary policies brought on by state governments put them in direct conflict with the White House. President Donald Trump has continued to prioritize immigration reform, and the administration is considering a slate of measures that would ratchet up deportation of legal and illegal immigrants.
The sanctuary bill wasn’t the only legislation Inslee, known nationally for his environmental agenda, signed into law in recent days.
The Democratic governor legalized human composting Tuesday, which creates an environmentally friendly alternative to being buried or cremated. Licensed facilities in the state can offer “natural organic reduction,” a process that mixes a dead body’s remains with substances such as straw and wood chips, making it healthier for the soil.
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America has undergone a lot of maturing between the Vietnam War and the conflicts of the 21st century. I know, I wore a uniform during both periods.
On Memorial Day, let’s not regress in that maturity.
When I was still a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy at West
Point, I watched our instructors (all multitour Vietnam veterans) deal with the
end of the war.
In that cathartic period, these brave warriors related the stories of coming home, not to the cheering parades held for their predecessors, but to horrible vilification. This included name-calling and spitting on service members in airports.
All of it was infantile blaming of the young men and women who
fought because of the policy decisions of the elected government that sent
them.
It was a shameful response, one that showed an unfortunate dark
side.
After 9/11, nearly everyone wanted action, but there was a great deal of debate as to what it should be. The Bush administration was set in its intent, but others disagreed. When the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq ground on, the disagreement grew stronger.
As a member of the Army, I wondered how American citizens in the
street would respond to our troops as they rotated back and forth to the combat
zones.
There were numerous wonderful displays of support: White-haired
ladies meeting troops in Bangor, Maine’s airport at 2:30 a.m. with hugs, candy,
and cheers. Teams of “welcome home” groups in Texas airports 24/7.
This all blessed our young people. More importantly, I watched time after time in other airports as Americans stopped and thanked small groups or individuals walking in uniforms still dusty from the desert or the mountains.
Some clearly disagreed strongly with the decisions Washington had
made. But they were able to separate that disagreement to say a quiet thank you
to the ones who were tasked with executing those decisions.
This was an enormous step forward, and showed a great deal of
national maturity.
We are going to celebrate Memorial Day on May 27 this year. To many, it is a joyous time to end winter and begin the fun of late spring and summer. Few will remember the real reason for what is meant to be a very solemn day.
In the fall, on Veterans Day, we stop to thank those who have fought for, and are fighting for, America. That day thanks those still living, and acknowledges their sacrifice.
Memorial Day is different. This day remembers those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for our country.
We do thank the vets who attend the ceremonies across the land, who march in parades and lay wreaths at thousands of small town memorials. We do it because they are there, standing with us.
In truth, though, we are not honoring them. We are honoring those who are not there, who did not come home. Veterans know this, and you will notice even more humility in their quiet “thank you” answers to the kind words of their fellow citizens.
Many people today could not tell you what we are celebrating. That is sad, and shows not the maturity discussed above, but an intellectual and emotional atrophy. A nation that does not honor its dead is a nation in trouble.
This is not an indictment of all Americans; many will know exactly what they are doing on Monday, May 27. They will pause, perhaps pray, and remember those who gave all for America.
When we see others who are not doing that, I hope that we can
gently remind them.
When children ask, “Why is today a holiday?”, parents can explain. They can point to the names on those small town monuments, and say: “We are remembering them. They died for our freedom.”
Have a blessed Memorial Day. But take a few moments to remember that this is not about sales, or barbecues, or days off.
This is a day to remember sacrifice and authentic heroism.
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Charlies Daniels in Iraq in 2016. (Charlie Daniels Band Photo)
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Politicians can solve all our problems. At least, that’s what they tell us when they are trolling for our votes.
To be sure, they could solve a lot of them.
Take poverty, for example.
Back in the 1960s, when the New Deal was about to morph into the Great Society and the left needed a lot of poor people to hand out cash to, it set the poverty level.
A bureaucrat named Mollie Orshansky decided what a typical family needed to eat, then decided what that amount of food cost and set a percentage of that amount as what the poor could afford.
After all, poverty is not a state; it is just a term to be defined.
If the government wanted fewer poor people, all it would have to do is lower the amount that defines “poverty.”
To most truly poor people in the world, America’s poor are filthy rich.
As the Heritage Foundation has reported, more than 80 percent of the poor have air conditioning, three quarters have a car, nearly two thirds have cable or satellite TV, half have a computer, and 40 percent have a wide-screen HDTV. The biggest health problem they face is obesity.
Ask a beggar on the streets of Calcutta if he thinks any Americans are “poor.”
Another example, from Florida. The state keeps data on school safety problems, including fights.
Turns out, a few years ago, there were thousands of fights in public schools. It sounded unsafe. Public school officials grumbled.
So the state changed the definition of “fighting.” As the Miami Herald found, the number of fights in Dade County schools dropped by about 90 percent. There were not fewer fights; it is just that many of them no longer met the definition.
These examples show why language is important and why it is dangerous to let the Left tell us what language we may use or what it means.
Cutting babies to pieces is just “late-term abortions” (“health care”) that “remove tissue from the patient.”
Tax relief that allows people to keep more of what they earn is termed “tax expenditures” by the budget wizards in Washington who have driven the nation $22 trillion into debt. Soon, no doubt, they will have a new term for “debt,” which sounds so…costly.
Therefore, whenever a politician is using deceptive language — such as calling illegal aliens “undocumented immigrants” — there usually is a reason.
Although he is no longer deemed suitable in academia, the incomparable William Shakespeare had Juliet say, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
The same is true of a skunk. It won’t smell any better if you call it a rose.
Politicians can solve all our problems. At least, that’s what they tell us when they are trolling for our votes.
To be sure, they could solve a lot of them.
Take poverty, for example.
Back in the 1960s, when the New Deal was about to morph into the Great Society and the left needed a lot of poor people to hand out cash to, it set the poverty level.
A bureaucrat named Mollie Orshansky decided what a typical family needed to eat, then decided what that amount of food cost and set a percentage of that amount as what the poor could afford.
After all, poverty is not a state; it is just a term to be defined.
If the government wanted fewer poor people, all it would have to do is lower the amount that defines “poverty.”
To most truly poor people in the world, America’s poor are filthy rich.
As the Heritage Foundation has reported, more than 80 percent of the poor have air conditioning, three quarters have a car, nearly two thirds have cable or satellite TV, half have a computer, and 40 percent have a wide-screen HDTV. The biggest health problem they face is obesity.
Ask a beggar on the streets of Calcutta if he thinks any Americans are “poor.”
Another example, from Florida. The state keeps data on school safety problems, including fights.
Turns out, a few years ago, there were thousands of fights in public schools. It sounded unsafe. Public school officials grumbled.
So the state changed the definition of “fighting.” As the Miami Herald found, the number of fights in Dade County schools dropped by about 90 percent. There were not fewer fights; it is just that many of them no longer met the definition.
These examples show why language is important and why it is dangerous to let the Left tell us what language we may use or what it means.
Cutting babies to pieces is just “late-term abortions” (“health care”) that “remove tissue from the patient.”
Tax relief that allows people to keep more of what they earn is termed “tax expenditures” by the budget wizards in Washington who have driven the nation $22 trillion into debt. Soon, no doubt, they will have a new term for “debt,” which sounds so…costly.
Therefore, whenever a politician is using deceptive language — such as calling illegal aliens “undocumented immigrants” — there usually is a reason.
Although he is no longer deemed suitable in academia, the incomparable William Shakespeare had Juliet say, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
The same is true of a skunk. It won’t smell any better if you call it a rose.
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But one thing remains the same — their yearly trek to Arlington National Cemetery to pay respects to their fallen Green Beret brothers.
The Special Forces Brotherhood Motorcycle Club and its various chapters from all over the country gather every year at the Arlington National Cemetery to honor and remember friends who have made the ultimate sacrifice.
During a visit to the cemetery on Saturday, they began at the grave of President John F. Kennedy, and headed over to Section 60 — where veterans of the wars against terror are buried.
They visited Army Warrant Officer 1 Shawn Thomas, 35, of 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group, who died February 2, 2017, from injuries suffered in a vehicle accident in Niger. He was on his eighth deployment.
A Green Beret pauses to remember Thomas. (Kristina Wong/Breitbart News)
They visited Army Staff Sgt. Logan Melgar, 34, of 2nd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group, who died June 4, 2017, after he was killed in Bamako, Mali, by a Navy SEAL during an alleged “hazing” incident. It was his third deployment.
A Green Beret pours a drink for Melgar. (Kristina Wong/Breitbart News)
They also remembered Army Sgt. 1st Class Jamie Otts, 41, of 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group, who died February 11, 2018 while on a motorcycle ride with his wife Crystal. Standing around his grave, several Green Berets and family members fondly remembered him as someone a Green Beret would want on their team.
“You don’t want everyone to be like Jamie — but you definitely want a Jamie,” one said fondly.
A Green Beret pours a drink for Otts. (Kristina Wong/Breitbart News)
And just as last year, they spent awhile with Army Sgt. 1st Class Alfonso Molinar, or “Mo,” as he was known to his best friends and family. He served in 3rd Special Forces Group and passed away on Sunday, March 30, 2014. He joined the Army in 2003 at 17-years-old.
Every year, his friends and fiancée Lee Blackwell gather at his grave and remember the person he was.
“He died before his time. The good die young. He was kind-hearted and gentle. He was loved by so many people,” said Blackwell. “He loved flaming hot Cheetos with Cholula, and animals. The only reason I have animals is because they were our first babies together.”
The two met in Raleigh, North Carolina. He tried to be secretive about what he did for a living, at first telling her that he worked at the French consulate in Ghana. Blackwell, excited, began speaking to him in fluent French and his cover was blown.
“Anyone else — I might have been, ‘You’re a frickin’ liar,’” she laughed. “But it was just endearing because he just had this face that was so innocent and childlike.”
Blackwell is surrounded by friends who knew and loved Mo. (Kristina Wong/Breitbart News)
Retired Green Beret Jaraan Little, vice president of the club’s Fort Bragg chapter, credits Mo with saving his life in Afghanistan.
He was pinned down until Mo, his weapons sergeant, came along and took out the enemy forces.
Just like last year, Little will make sure that Mo is never forgotten.
Little (center) poses with two friends of Mo. (Kristina Wong/Breitbart News)
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