Patriotic Americans Flee the Democratic Party

by

Zeno Potas

      Speak out against party lines, Comrade, and you will soon be consigned to the ash heap of history. That is what being a members of the Democratic party have been shown repeatedly. Have an idea different than the party’s? No, you don’t, or else. Sound familiar? Anyone who has read history knows that these are the utterings of Communist or a NAZI. In the twenty-first century, this is a Democrat.

      Take for example former Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski. He WAS one of the few remaining conservative Democrats in Congress. Since his views were not party lne he went under siege from the left in his own party, battling for his political life against progressives teamed up to replace him with a candidate that was far more in line with liberal orthodoxy. He knew he didn’t stand a chance. Before his defeat he stated, “There are Democrats who are a lot more conservative than I am on issues. (who are silent.) I wish there were more moderate Democrats.”(who had their own mind.) In the 2020 primary Lipinski was defeated in the Democratic primary by progressive challenger Marie Newman.

      Another Democrat Representative, Jeff Van Drew, also could no longer be a clone to the party. Van Drew was the Democratic nominee in New Jersey's 2nd congressional district in the 2018 election. He was elected with 53% of the vote against Republican nominee Seth Grossman, who received 45% of the vote. "I’m proud to be a Democrat because to me it always represented working people, middle class people and issues of compassion."

       However, after a short time on Capitol Hill he became extremely disgruntled with the old guard of the party, who are controlled by the Lefist elite both inside and outside the United States, and the new, ever growing, Progressive pro-Communist ideolgy being pushed down his throat. On December 19, 2019, Van Drew announced that he would be leaving the Socialist Democrats and joining the Republican Party, and he officially did so on January 7, 2020. Here, in his own words, are his reasonig and hopes and fears for America.

      "My decision to leave the Democrat Party was one that was not entered into lightly. The pressure of party bosses, activists, and even my colleagues, was great, but the Democrat Party has changed. It is no longer the party that my grandparents and I grew up admiring. It is not the party that once allowed for and encouraged free thought and robust debate. Now, it is a mob that drives policy decisions with the goal of starting over with a new system of governance."

      "I was always told that Republicans would marginalize me, push me aside and treat me like dirt. This could not be further from the truth. I have been welcomed with open arms, and even when I have disagreed on some issues, my views have been respected. The picture of Republicans that is painted by Democrats and their allies in the media is mostly false; in fact, many of my former colleagues firmly believe the Republican Party is the sole cause of many societal ills. It is this unjustified logic that allows them to treat their colleagues, their constituents and their fellow citizens with disdain and call them deplorable, or worse. We must work in concert to keep America unified and push back against that ignorance. I have never been driven by partisan politics, only a desire to better the lives of my constituents."

      "America is under immense pressure to turn its back on the things that have made it exceptional. Make no mistake, many proposals put forth by the House majority in this Congress, while cloaked in the language of good intentions, are not governed by truth and are communistic in nature. Many continue to run away from America. I cannot – I must run toward America. I will fight for my district, my state, and my nation."

       "Winston Churchill once stated – “…that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried.” America is not perfect, but it is better than every alternative."

      "I will always be focused on supporting proposals that keep America strong and prosperous. We must continue to provide our society with the opportunities on which our past, present and future generations have and will continue to thrive. We cannot stand by and idly watch; we must be actively involved in the fight for this nation. I love America and the opportunity for which it stands. We must continue to improve ourselves without destroying all the values that have made us great."

                                    THIS IS A PATRIOT - THIS IS AN AMERICAN

Edward Snowden - Hero or Traitor?

by

       Phillip Todd

      Hero or traitor? Like politics in the United States,

when you talk to people, they have a black or white opinion on Edward Snowden. He is thought of as a man who outed the largest world-wide government conspiracy of all times or he that gave our enemies an insight on our nation’s secrets. The US government pulled his passport as he was traveling through Russia, which left him stateless and unable to travel internationally, stranded in Russia forever? The public is divided.

      He has just released a new book Permanent Record in which he again speaks to his reasoning with the disclosures. He once again states that he believes in what is right and what is wrong not what is legal and what is not. He speaks of what the government is doing without telling it’s citizens. One example is when Snowden discusses at length how the government in general, and the spy agencies in particular, rely on outside contractors. He makes clear that for all intents and purposes they are barely distinguishable from formal employees, with one major exception: they are generally better paid. Taxpayers foot the bill but few voice concern.

      Now criminally charged (by the US) and living in Moscow, he has few defenders outside the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and free speech purists. Other than security matters, his crime was that Snowden revealed that American citizens were subjected to mass government surveillance. The privacy that they valued was not intact. Uncle Sam was a silent partner in their lives and most never even knew it.

      After the Snowden revelations, an intermediate US appellate court reinstated a lawsuit brought by the ACLU that challenged the constitutionality and statutory legality of the NSA’s bulk telephone metadata collection. In 2015, a three-judge panel held that “the program exceeds the scope of what Congress has authorized”. But the court did not adjudicate the larger constitutional issue.

      Will it continue? I am speaking of the mass surveillance and data harvesting system that now pervades our lives. Edward Snowden still has hope that “we the people” can and will put an end to this. Here now is his stand alone article entitled:

         The Age of Mass Surveillance Will Not Last Forever

The Power to End it is in Your Hands.

      "When I was working at the CIA, if you had told me that there would soon come a youth rebellion that relied on lasers and traffic cones as sword and shield, and that it would come to paralyze one of the world’s richest and most powerful governments, I would have—at the very least—raised an eyebrow. And yet as I write these words nearly a decade later, this is exactly what's happening in Hong Kong, the city where I met with journalists to reveal the secret that would transform me from an agent of government into one of the world’s most wanted men. As it happened, the very book that you now hold in your hands lay on the desk, the desk of the last hotel room I would ever pay for with a credit card.

What I showed those journalists was proof, in the form of the government’s own classified documents, that the self-described “Five Eyes”—the state security organs of the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada—had together conspired to weaken their laws. They had forced clandestine access to the networks of their largest telecommunications and internet titans (some of whom hadn't needed much in the way of arm-twisting) in pursuit of a single goal: the transformation of the free and fragmented internet into history’s first centralized means of global mass surveillance. This violation of our fundamental privacy occurred without our knowledge or consent, or even the knowledge and consent of our courts and most lawmakers.

      Here’s the thing: Although the global response to this violation was furious, producing the largest intelligence scandal of the modern age, mass surveillance itself continues to work today, virtually unimpeded. Nearly everything you do, and nearly everyone you love, is being monitored and recorded by a system whose reach is unlimited, but whose safeguards are not. But while the system itself was not substantially changed—as a rule, governments are less interested in reforming their own behavior than in restricting the behavior and rights of their citizens—what did change was the public consciousness.

      The idea that the government was collecting the

communications of those who had done nothing wrong had once been treated as a paranoid conspiracy theory (or as the subject of instructive fiction, such as the work you're about to read). Suddenly, this prospect had become all too real—the sort of universally acknowledged truth that can be so quickly waved away as obvious and unremarkable by the crooked timber of our political operators.

      Meanwhile, the corporations of the world digested the realization that their darkest shame—their willful complicity in crimes against the public—had not been punished. Rather, these collaborators had been actively rewarded, with either explicitly retroactive immunity or informal guarantees of perpetual impunity. They became our latest Big Brother, striving to compile perfect records of private lives for profit and power. From this emerged the contemporary corruption of our once-free internet, called surveillance capitalism.

We are coming to see all too clearly that the construction of these systems was less about connection than it was about control: The proliferation of mass surveillance has tracked precisely with the destruction of public power.

      And yet despite this grim reading from my seven years in exile, I find more cause for hope than despair, thanks in no small part to those lasers and traffic cones in Hong Kong. My confidence springs not from how they are applied—to dazzle cameras and, with a little water, to contain and extinguish the gas grenades of a state gone wrong—but in what they express: the irrepressible human desire to be free.

      The problems that we face today, of dispossession by oligarchs and their monopolies, and of disenfranchisement by authoritarians and their comfortably captive political class, are far from new. The novelty is in the technological means by which these problems have been entrenched—to put it simply, the bad guys have better tools.

      You have heard that when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Herein lies the folly of every system of rule whose future relies more heavily on the omnipotence of its methods than the popularity of its mandate. There were times when empires were won by bronze and boats and powder. None survive. What outlasts each forgotten flag is our greatest technology, language: the empire of the mind.

      It is true that we have been thrust, like Marcus Yallow and his friends, into an unequal battle. But no amount of even the most perfect surveillance, no amount of repression or rent-seeking, can or will change who we are. From brave students in Hong Kong to brilliant cypherpunks in San Francisco, there is not a day that passes without individuals searching for the means to restore and improve the systems that govern our lives. 

      We have seen ingenuity and invention give rise to systems that keep our secrets, and perhaps our souls; systems created in a world where possessing the means to live a private life feels like a crime. We have seen lone individuals create new tools—better tools—than even the greatest states can produce. But no technology, and no individual, will ever be enough on their own to curtail for long the abuses of our weary giants, with their politics of exclusion and protocols of violence. This is the part of the story that matters: that what begins with the individual persists in the communal.

The changing of an age takes more than lasers and traffic cones: it takes the hands that hold them.

It takes you.”

Attorney General William Barr Speaks on the Leftist Drift in America

by

      The Staff of the American Constitutionalist

      Attorney General William Barr is slamming

Democrats who refuse to condemn the violent riots rocking America this summer, saying far left extremists are on a mission to "tear down" U.S. institutions key to democracy. In a series of interviews this week the Attorney General spoke of the on going attack, from within the country, on the American way of life. We have made his comments available on a question and answer format.

AC: What do you think of the radical Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA groups? Antifa’s stated long-term objective, both in America and abroad — and it got its birth in Europe — England, then Germany, then the United States — is to establish a Communist world order and this is a fact, by the way, this information has been put out, it’s not like we’re conspiracy theorists and so forth. In the United States, Antifa’s immediate aim is to bring about the demise of the Trump administration. Black Lives Matters co-founders have said they are trained Marxists. Who are these “peaceful protesters” as the media describes them?

AG Barr: "They are revolutionary groups that are interested in some form of Socialism or Communism. They're essentially Bolsheviks. Their tactics are fascistic," he said. “They high-jack these demonstrations and they provoke violence and they have various tiers of people from the sort of top provocateurs, down through people who are their minions and sort of run the violent missions. Mao – Mao Tse Tung used to speak about the guerrilla being like fish swimming in the ocean the way the guerrilla moves through the people.”

AC: How so?

AG Barr: "The way the guerrilla...hides out among the people as a fish in the ocean...what they do is they are essentially shielding themselves or shrouding themselves in First Amendment activity," he explained. "They go into the demonstrations, which are exercising First Amendment activity, and they insinuate themselves in there to shield themselves. That's where they swim. And what they do is they hijack these demonstrations and they and they provoke violence. It’s a difficult phenomenon to deal with. They’re highly organized at these demonstrations. And these tactics that they use are designed – and the way the media responds to them, of course — the media doesn’t take footage of what’s happening. They don’t take the footage of the rocks being thrown.”

AC: The media, are they lying to the American people?

AG Barr: "They are projecting a “narrative" and selling a "lie" to the American people in their watered-down coverage of the civil unrest.” Barr noted that, “ Antifa’s acts of extremist violence are “highly organized at these demonstrations” and that “the media doesn’t take footage of what’s happening.” "You don't see it on the networks. You don't see it on the other cable stations. And yet you hear about these peaceful demonstrators. So it's you know, it's just it's a lie. The American people are being told a lie by the media," Barr said. “The media has become "extremely monolithic," he concluded, "and it's wedded in many ways to the Democratic Party."

AC: The Democratic party doesn't speak out against the violence that is going on in their cities are they supporting these anti-American values riots or is there something else?

AG Barr: "The left has "pulled away from the umbrella of classical liberal values that have undergirded" America and made a "secular religion" out of seeking "complete political victory," he argued. “It began the day Trump won in 2016, and from that point forward, there's been the resistance, Barr stated. “Power has become a "secular religion of the left," Barr asserted. "They want to run people's lives so they can design utopia for all of us...and it's the lust for power. They view their political opponents as evil because we stand in the way of their progressive utopia that they're trying to reach," he said. "and that's what gives the intensity to the partisan feelings that people feel today, because for them, this pilgrimage we're all on is a political pilgrimage. I think it’s because of the desire for power, is essentially their state of grace and their secular religion,” Barr continued. “They want to run people’s lives. That’s what turns them on. They weren’t expecting Trump’s victory, and it outrages them.They were trying to impeach Donald Trump from Day One. They have done everything they can..and I think it's because of the desire for power that the left wants."

AC: The attorney general also commented on the hostile treatment he received last month before the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee. You testified in front of this very hostile Leftist Democrat led panel. When you asked why their party was silent on this attack on America, what was their response?

AG Barr: "I said during my hearing: “Can any of you just come out and say it's not OK to burn down federal courthouses?' I mean, they talk about the rule of law. They talk about the importance of the federal legal system to protection of civil rights. Well, the heart of that is our court system. And they're not willing, not one of them piped up to say, 'No, it's not OK to be burning down federal courts,” he said “Many of them are just cowards and are afraid from, you know, about a challenge from the left," Barr said referring to Democrats who haven't condemned the riots. "So for them, it's careerism."

 

AC: The election, what are your thoughts on massive mail-in voting?

AG Barr: "The idea of conducting elections by wholesale mail-in ballots is reckless and wrong," Barr said, everyone knows what has happened in these cases. The "reckless" push by Democrats to expand mail-in voting could raise "serious questions about the integrity of the election," Attorney General William Barr "I think it is grossly irresponsible to be doing what the Democratic Party is doing now," Barr said. "We've had very close races in recent history, the country is divided. If anything, we should be assuring the integrity of our elections so that government going forward would be legitimate and be accepted as legitimate." 

 

      Barr clarified that because of the process required to obtain an absentee ballot, such voting is safer than general mail-in balloting, in which ballots are automatically sent "to everyone on the voting list," resulting in "thousands and thousands of ballots floating around, not just the state but the country. "I have friends who haven't lived in California in 21 years who received ballots," Barr said. "There are ballots left in boxes in apartment buildings, ballots for people who used to live at addresses are delivered to those addresses. They can be filled out by anybody. This is reckless and it could create serious questions about the integrity of the election, and to do this when we are closely divided country as we are is playing with fire in my view."

AC: Any thoughts on the President?

AG Barr: “I went back and I watched his victory speech after election night. People should go back and look at it. It was very measured, it was a very statesman-like speech. He offered the olive branch, he praised Hillary Clinton, thanked her for all her service to the country, talked about working together to make things better for the American people.

That was the day he won, and from that point forward, there’s been the resistance. They were trying to impeach him from day one. They have done everything they can. They’ve shredded the norms of our system to do what they can to drive him from office or to debilitate his administration.”

AC: Thank you, Mr. Attorney General

Socialist Media Continue to Oust Left Leaning Moderates For Not Being Left Enough

by

       George Sontag

      A one-sided Progressive Communist media continues to strengthen as centrist and moderate writers continue to be pushed out. Such are the facts as two long time journalists lost their positions this week. Their crime was they did not and would not write agenda driven propaganda.     

       Our first journalist is Andrew Sullivan who penned his last op-ed in New York Magazine on Friday after being forcedout. Sullivan’s take on it was this, "What has happened, I think, is relatively simple: A critical mass of the staff and management at New York Magazine and Vox Media no longer want to associate with me. They seem to believe, and this is increasingly the orthodoxy in mainstream media, that any writer not actively committed to (Lefist)critical theory in questions of race, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity is actively, physically harming co-workers merely by existing in the same space. That, to the best of my understanding, is why I’m out of here."

      The columnist spoke of how "we all live on campus now," noting the increasingly limited exchange of ideas, other than Leftist, on college campuses, has spilled into everyday media. Making his point he stated that according to a survey, only 1.46 percent of the faculty at Harvard University identify as "conservative, but that’s probably higher than the proportion of journalists who call themselves conservative at the New York Times or CNN or New York Magazine."

        “I’m not a conservative,” Sullivan stated, in my case means that I have passionately opposed Donald J. Trump and pioneered marriage equality, that I support legalized drugs, criminal-justice reform, more redistribution of wealth, aggressive action against climate change, police reform, a realist foreign policy, and laws to protect transgender people from discrimination. I was one of the first journalists in established media to come out. I was a major and early supporter of Barack Obama. I intend to vote for Biden in November." our opinion on his statement is that his politics are moderate-left, but apparently, not left enough.

      Then there is New York Times opinion columnist and editor Bari Weiss who announced Tuesday she is leaving saying she was bullied by colleagues weeks after reporting there was a “civil war” inside the paper. She said she doesn’t understand how toxic behavior is allowed inside the newsroom and "showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery."

      Weiss published a scathing resignation letter that she sent to Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger on her personal website. She stated, “a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.” She continues, “stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history,” she wrote, Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.” (opinionated propaganda)

      She also spoke out against the censorship at the paper, “Op-eds that would have easily been published just two years ago would now get an editor or a writer in serious trouble, if not fired. “Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher. Rules at the paper are applied with extreme selectivity and work goes unscrutinized if it aligns with the new orthodoxy. The fact is “we can assure ourselves of job security by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world? Self-censorship has become the norm.”

      In her resignation letter, Weiss noted that her own “forays into Wrong-think” have made her the subject of “constant bullying by colleagues” who disagree with her views. "They have called me a Nazi and a racist,” she wrote, for questioning the agenda.”

      “The paper of record, the New York Times, is, more and more, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people,” Weiss wrote. “This is a galaxy in which, to choose just a few recent examples, the Soviet Union space program is lauded for its “diversity”;(Communist propaganda) the unethical doxxing of teenagers in the name of justice is condoned;(unlawful acts) and the worst caste systems in human history includes the United States alongside Nazi Germany.”(re-writing history) She also noted that much of the information and “facts” published at the New York Times comes from social media not news reports. “Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times,” but social media acts as the ultimate editor.”This is what our media has become. It is nothing more than a propaganda machine for change. That change is towards Corporate Socialist Communism and they wrap it up in red, white, and blue so it can be palatable.

*Note - Media reporter Yashar Ali tweeted  that in recent weeks, he had "repeatedly heard rumors from sources that Bari Weiss and Andrew Sullivan were going to work on a project together."

The Unconstitutional Law Allowing Federal Troops in Coastal Cities

by

       M. Richard Maxson

       In United States criminal law, the border search exception is a doctrine that allows searches and seizures at international borders and their functional equivalent without a warrant or probable cause. The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects Americans from random and arbitrary stops and searches. According to the government, however, these basic constitutional principles do not apply fully at our borders. Federal law allows certain federal agents and military, including Homeland Security, to conduct search and seizures within 100 miles of the border into the interior of the United States. 

 

      The doctrine is not regarded as an exception to the Fourth Amendment, but rather to its requirement for a warrant or probable cause. The government’s view is that the expectation of privacy less at the border or it’s cities. The country's interests at the border are balanced against the Fourth Amendment rights of entrants. This balance at international borders means that routine searches are "reasonable" there, and therefore do not violate the Fourth Amendment's proscription against "unreasonable searches and seizures". Pursuant to this authority, officers may generally stop and search the person and property of anyone at random, or even based largely on ethnic profiles without probable cause or a warrant. This, to originalists, is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, but the Supreme Court has clearly and repeatedly confirmed that the border search exception applies within 100 miles of the border of the United States. 

      Roughly two-thirds of the United States' population lives within the 100-mile zone—that is, within 100 miles of a U.S. land or coastal border. That's about 200 million people. Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont lie entirely or almost entirely within this area. Nine of the ten largest U.S. metropolitan areas, as determined by the 2010 Census, also fall within this zone: New York City, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego and San Jose. This is why you are seeing Federal agents in major cities. IT IS LEGAL.

      Many people think that border-related policies only impact people living in border towns like El Paso or San Diego. The reality is that Border Patrol's interior enforcement operations encroach deep into and across the United States, affecting the majority of Americans. Even in places far removed from the border and/or coastline, deep into the interior of the country, immigration officials enjoy broad—though not limitless—powers. Specifically, federal regulations give multiple U.S. agencies the authority to operate within 100 miles of any U.S. "external boundary." There are limits in this 100-mile zone. However, agents routinely ignore or misunderstand the limits of their legal authority in the course of individual stops, resulting in violations of the constitutional rights of innocent people. These problems are compounded by inadequate training for Border Patrol agents, a lack of oversight by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security

      Under this “law” many violations of constitutional rights have occurred. Federal agents are stopping, interrogating, and searching Americans on an everyday basis and often in ways that our Constitution does not permit. Also, the Border Patrol rejects any geographic limitation on agents' authority. Unfortunately, at least two federal circuit courts condone Border Patrol operations outside the 100-mile zone, federal regulations and Supreme Court precedent notwithstanding.

      No matter what the agents think, our Constitution applies throughout the United States, including within this “100-mile border zone.” The expansion of government power both at and near the border is part of a trend toward expanding police and national security powers without regard to our most fundamental Constitutional rights. If Americans do not continue to challenge the expansion of federal power over the individual, we risk forfeiting the fundamental rights and freedoms that we inherited—including the right to simply go about our business free from government interference, harassment and abuse.

Attorney General Barr Lays out the Law to the Judiciary Committee

by

       M. Richard Maxson

       Yesterday, Attorney General William P. Barr, testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee. The Democrats on the committee were reading to rake him over the coals and discredit him. It did not work. The truth made fools of these members and common sense and lawful testimony by Barr cemented their attempts as political hogwash. Here is the attorney Generals opening statement laying out the true situation.

Written Statement of 

William P. Barr Attorney General 

Committee on the Judiciary 

U.S. House of Representatives 

July 28, 2020

      Chairman Nadler, Ranking Member Jordan, Members of the Committee, I am pleased to be here this morning. I accepted an invitation to testify before this Committee in late March, but it was postponed as a result of the pandemic that continues to pose challenges to us all. I know some other hearings this week have been postponed to honor your late colleague, Congressman John Lewis of Georgia. On behalf of the Department of Justice, I want to pay my respects to Congressman Lewis, an indomitable champion of civil rights and the rule of law. I think it is especially important to remember today that he pursued his cause passionately and successfully with an unwavering commitment to nonviolence.

      We are in a time when the political discourse in Washington often reflects the politically divided nation in which we live, and too often drives that divide even deeper. Political rhetoric is inherent in our democratic system, and politics is to be expected by politicians, especially in an election year. While that may be appropriate here on Capitol Hill or on cable news, it is not acceptable at the Department of Justice. At the Department, decisions must be made with no regard to political pressure—pressure from either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, or from the media or mobs.

       Ever since I made it clear that I was going to do everything I could to get to the bottom of the grave abuses involved in the bogus “Russiagate” scandal, many of the Democrats on this Committee have attempted to discredit me by conjuring up a narrative that I am simply the President’s factotum who disposes of criminal cases according to his instructions. Judging from the letter inviting me to this hearing, that appears to be your agenda today. So let me turn to that first.

      As I said in my confirmation hearing, the Attorney General has a unique obligation. He holds in trust the fair and impartial administration of justice. He must ensure that there is one standard of justice that applies to everyone equally and that criminal cases are handled evenhandedly, based on the law and the facts, and without regard to political or personal considerations. I can tell you that I have handled criminal matters that have come to me for decision in this way. 2 The President has not attempted to interfere in these decisions. On the contrary, he has told me from the start that he expects me to exercise my independent judgment to make whatever call I think is right. That is precisely what I have done.

       From my experience, the President has played a role properly and traditionally played by Presidents. Like his predecessors, President Trump and his National Security Council have appropriately weighed in on law-

enforcement decisions that directly implicate national security or foreign policy, because those decisions necessarily involve considerations that transcend typical prosecutorial factors. Moreover, when some noteworthy event occurs that potentially has legal ramifications – such as leaks of classified information, potential civil rights abuses by police, or illegal price fixing or gouging – the President has occasionally, and appropriately, confirmed that the Department is aware of the matter. But the handling of the matter and my decisions on criminal matters have been left to my independent judgment, based on the law and fact, without any direction or interference from the White House or anyone outside the Department.

      Indeed, it is precisely because I feel complete freedom to do what I think is right that induced me serve once again as Attorney General. As you know, I served as Attorney General under President George H. W. Bush. After that, I spent many years in the corporate world. I was almost 70 years old, slipping happily into retirement as I enjoyed my grandchildren. I had nothing to prove and had no desire to return to government. I had no prior relationship with President Trump.

      But as an outsider I became deeply troubled by what I perceived as the increasing use of the criminal justice process as a political weapon and the emergence of two separate standards of justice. The Department had been drawn into the political maelstrom and was being buffeted on all sides. When asked to consider returning, I did so because I revere the Department and believed my independence would allow me to help steer her back to her core mission of applying one standard of justice for everyone and enforcing the law even-handedly, without partisan considerations. Since returning to the Department, I have done precisely that. My decisions on criminal matters before the Department have been my own, and they have been made because I believed they were right under the law and principles of justice.

      Let me turn briefly to several pressing issues of the day. The horrible killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis understandably jarred the whole country and forced us to reflect on longstanding issues in our nation. Those issues obviously relate to the relationship between law enforcement and the African-American community.

       Given our history it is understandable that, among black Americans, there is at least some ambivalence, and often distrust, toward the police. Until just the last 50 years or so, our laws and institutions were explicitly discriminatory. It was not until the 60’s that the Civil Rights movement finally succeeded in tearing down the Jim Crow edifice. Our laws finally came to formally embody the guarantee of equal protection. Since then, the work of securing civil rights has rightly focused on reforming our institutions to ensure they better conform to our laws and aspirations.

      That work, it is important to acknowledge, has been increasingly successful. Police forces today are far more diverse than ever before; there are both more black police chiefs and more black officers in the ranks. Although the death of George Floyd – an unarmed black man – at the hands of the police was a shocking event, the fact is that such events are fortunately quite rare. According to statistics compiled by the Washington Post, the number of unarmed black men killed by police so far this year is 8. The number of unarmed white men killed by police over the same time period is 11. Some unarmed suspects, moreover, were physically attacking officers or threatening others at the time they were shot. And the overall number of police shootings has been decreasing. Nevertheless, every instance of excessive force is unacceptable and must be addressed, as is happening now in Minneapolis.

      Apart from their numbers, I think these events strike a deep chord in the black community because they are perceived as manifestation of the deeper, lingering concern that, in encounters with police, blacks will not be treated even-handedly; they will not be given the benefit of the doubt; they will be treated with greater suspicion than a white person would be in the same circumstances. Senator Tim Scott has recounted the numerous times he has been unjustifiably pulled over on Capitol Hill. As one prominent black professional in Washington said to me, African Americans often feel “treated as suspects first and citizens second.” I think these concerns are legitimate.

      At the same time, I think it would be an oversimplification to treat the problem as rooted in some deep-seated racism generally infecting our police departments. It seems far more likely that the problem stems from a complex mix of factors, which can be addressed with focused attention over time. We in law enforcement must be conscious of the concerns and ensure that we do not have two different systems of justice. In a pluralistic society like ours, composed of many races and ethnicities, we all must strive not to reduce each other to stereotypes or to allow those stereotypes to govern our treatment of our fellow citizens. Rather, we have a basic and overriding obligation to treat each other as individuals, created equal and entitled to the benefit of the doubt rather than assumptions based on skin color.

       A re-commitment to that principle, particularly by those entrusted with the weighty responsibilities of law enforcement, would be a worthy response to George Floyd’s death. It would ensure that good comes out of bad. The Justice Department will honor that commitment. Among other steps, we are implementing the President’s Executive Order, which outlines a number of measures to propel continued professionalization of the police, including setting clear standards for appropriate use of force.

      Unfortunately, some have chosen to respond to George Floyd’s death in a far less productive way – by demonizing the police, promoting slogans like ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards), and making grossly irresponsible proposals to defund the police. The demonization of police is not only unfair and inconsistent with the principle that all people should be treated as individuals, but gravely injurious to our inner city communities. There is no harder job in America today than being a police officer. When officers respond to an emergency, whether a catastrophe like 9/11 or an everyday crime, they do not set out to protect white people or black people. They risk and sometimes give their lives to protect and serve all people, and all people owe them thanks.

      When a community turns on and pillories its own police, officers naturally become more risk averse and crime rates soar. Unfortunately, we are seeing that now in many of our major cities. This is a critical problem that exists apart from disagreements on other issues. The threat to black lives posed by crime on the streets is massively greater than any threat posed by police misconduct. The leading cause of death for young black males is homicide. Every year approximately 7,500 black Americans are victims of homicide, and the vast majority of them – around 90 percent – are killed by other blacks, mainly by gunfire. Each of those lives matter.

      And it is not just that crime snuffs out lives. Crime snuffs out opportunity. Children cannot thrive in playgrounds and schools dominated by gangs and drug pushers. Businesses do not locate in unsafe neighborhoods. When the police are attacked, when they are defunded, when they are driven out of urban communities, it is black lives that will suffer most from their absence.

       It is for that reason that, in select cities where there has been an upsurge in violent crime, we are stepping up and bolstering the activities of our joint anti-crime task forces, which have been successful in the past. In those cities, we are adding experienced investigators, firearms and ballistics analysts, and experts at apprehending violent fugitives. We are also offering funding to support more police who can be assigned to these anti-crime task forces. To be clear, this initiative has nothing to do with the problem of violent mob rioting that I will discuss in a moment; it is instead designed to help state and local law enforcement to meet their basic responsibility to solve crimes and keep their communities safe.

       Finally, I want to address a different breakdown in the rule of law that we have witnessed over the past two months. In the wake of George Floyd’s death, violent rioters and anarchists have hijacked legitimate protests to wreak senseless havoc and destruction on innocent victims. The current situation in Portland is a telling example. Every night for the past two months, a mob of hundreds of rioters has laid siege to the federal courthouse and other nearby federal property. The rioters arrive equipped for a fight, armed with powerful slingshots, tasers, sledgehammers, saws, knives, rifles, and explosive devices. Inside the courthouse are a relatively small number of federal law enforcement personnel charged with a defensive mission: to protect the courthouse, home to Article III federal judges, from being overrun and destroyed.

      What unfolds nightly around the courthouse cannot reasonably be called a protest; it is, by any objective measure, an assault on the Government of the United States. In recent nights, rioters have barricaded the front door of the courthouse, pried plywood off the windows with crowbars, and thrown commercial-grade fireworks into the building in an apparent attempt to burn it down with federal personnel inside. The rioters have started fires outside the building, and then systematically attacked federal law enforcement officers who attempt to put them out—for example, by pelting the officers with rocks, frozen water bottles, cans of food, and balloons filled with fecal matter. A recent video showed a mob enthusiastically beating a Deputy U.S. Marshal who was trying to protect the courthouse – a property of the United States government funded by this Congress – from further destruction. A number of federal officers have been injured, including one severely burned by a mortar-style firework and three who have suffered serious eye injuries and may be permanently blind.

      Largely absent from these scenes of destruction are even superficial attempts by the rioters to connect their actions to George Floyd’s death or any legitimate call for reform. Nor could such brazen acts of lawlessness plausibly be justified by a concern that police officers in Minnesota or elsewhere defied the law.

      Remarkably, the response from many in the media and local elected offices to this organized assault has been to blame the federal government. To state what should be obvious, peaceful protesters do not throw explosives into federal courthouses, tear down plywood with crowbars, or launch fecal matter at federal officers. Such acts are in fact federal crimes under statutes enacted by this Congress.

      As elected officials of the federal government, every Member of this Committee – regardless of your political views or your feelings about the Trump Administration – should condemn violence against federal officers and destruction of federal property. So should state and local leaders who have a responsibility to keep their communities safe. To tacitly condone destruction and anarchy is to abandon the basic rule-of-law principles that should unite us even in a politically divisive time. At the very least, we should all be able to agree that there is no place in this country for armed mobs that seek to establish autonomous zones beyond government control, or tear down statues and monuments that law-abiding communities chose to erect, or to destroy the property and livelihoods of innocent business owners. The most basic responsibility of government is to ensure the rule of law, so that people can live their lives safely and without fear. The Justice Department will continue working to meet that solemn responsibility.

Communists Plan for Final Takeover of the Democratic Party

by

       Zeno Potas

      In the United States, there’s widespread disillusionment with both the Democratic and Republican parties. In the latest Pew Research poll: 38 percent of voters describe themselves as independent, 32 percent as Democrats, and 25 percent as Republicans. Both major parties have deep divisions within them. Today’s Democrat party, according to their own polls is that 47% are Communist/Socialist/Progressives. Within these 47% there are also divisions. There are about 2% that are centrists in the party, about 5% that are moderates, and the remainder still think their party is the one of JFK and MLK which couldn’t be further from the truth.

      A major reason for disillusionment within the Democratic Party Leftists majority is its leadership’s deep connections to Wall Street. It is a party often dominated by corporate interests and especially those forces driving neo-liberal policies. These are the current party leaders, Chuck Schummer, Nancy Pelosi, and the like who have been in power for decades. The old leadership, while outnumbered, they still retain control of the party but for how long?

      In 2007, four U.S. Communist groups formed an alliance, in order to first take control of the Democrat Party in California, then in a number of other states, with the ultimate goal of taking control of the Democrat National Committee. “We are working with and through the Democratic party to expound the teachings of Lenin and Marx,” stated the Communist USA website just last year. “This necessarily means working with the Democratic Party,” the Communist leader explained. "Our objective is not to build the Democratic Party. At this stage we are about building the broad people movement that utilizes the vehicle of the Democratic Party to advance its agenda.”

      The long term plans included the indoctrination of the populace at all levels of public-school education and media to convince millions of students that the government of the United States has been a massive failure, while at the same time, portraying a positive image of Socialism. Their detailed plan is outlined in a document called “The Inside/Outside Project.” This Leftist Inside/Outside Project began shortly after the 2016 elections in response to some on the left who sat out the elections. The groups agree that defeating the right is a strategic imperative and building electoral coalitions with every force possible including with the Democratic Party is key.

      "Inside/Outside means organizing both inside and outside of electoral politics, and building power inside and outside the Democratic Party. We believe this strategy offers the best opportunity to build a force that directly fights (American) nationalism while also working steadily to challenge the neoliberals in the Democratic Party. This social justice left encompasses, Socialists, radical anti-racists, nationalists, and feminists, liberation theologists, strong social democrats, labor militants, pacifists, anti-imperialists, Communists, and everyone else," stated social justice organizer, Bob Wing,

      "First, we are part of building the broadest anti-ultra right alliance possible, uniting the widest array of class (including a section of monopoly), social and democratic forces. This necessarily means working with the Democratic Party. This differentiates us from those moderate groups who underestimate the danger of the right and overestimate the readiness of key class and social forces to bolt the Democratic Party.”

       "Second, our objective is not to build the Democratic Party. At this stage we are about building the broad people’s movement led by labor that utilizes the vehicle of the Democratic Party to advance its agenda. We are about building the movements around the issues roiling wide sections of people that can help shape election contours and debates.”

      "Third, we participate in coalition campaigns that challenge the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party and galvanize forces around a progressive agenda, mainly in Democratic primary elections. These include labor activists, Progressives, Socialists and Communists who emerge from movements and run as candidates, backed by broad coalitions. 

 

      "Finally, another necessary part of the process toward political independence is growing the left current within a very broad coalition that unites left and left/center forces. This means growing the left, including the Communist Party, especially at the grassroots. The Communist Party (CPUSA) is collaborating with several left groups and progressive activists to promote unity and coalition building in the electoral arena to do just that. The campaign by Socialist Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in the Democratic Party presidential primaries has helped do just this.”

       Today, the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) is strongest in the cities of New York, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis and in the states of Connecticut, Texas, Arizona, and California. Communist Party USA boss John Bachtell boasted in a recent column that his Marxist-Leninist organization is, "a tentacle of the Soviet regime in America for decades, “utilizes” the increasingly radical Democratic Party to advance its totalitarian objectives in the United States." 

      Can it be just a matter of time before Patriots wake up to a new reality in America? Can you see it happening now? In the days of the old Soviet Union they predicted that the United States, within a few decades, would divide into possibly five or six separate areas or countries. Is this our future?