In a recent BBC interview, when asked if she was proud of America, Jane Fonda answered, “no.”  She was proud of the “resistance,” but not of America.  Select NFL players upon hearing the National Anthem “take a knee” by which they mean to protest in the face of the very symbol of America, the American flag.  The legacy of America is one of freedom, a freedom that Fonda and the NFL players very much depend upon and exploit to protest the country of liberty that has given them so much.  It is one thing to express an opinion, it is quite another to condemn the country that protects your right to voice that opinion.  The former may make sense, the latter is illogical and absurd.  Charitably we may say that Fonda and the NFL players who take a knee are confused, woefully inarticulate, and misguided, conditions that are painfully apparent because their expressions of dissent are so obtuse and contrary to the proof extant in the lavish lives they lead in the U.S.  More accurately we may say that they are examples of a spoiled generation that still does not comprehend that the spoils they enjoy are proof that far from harming them this bounteous land of freedom has enabled them to succeed in ways not possible anywhere else in the world.

Without this land of freedom, they are nothing.  But ingratitude of the sort they express is not new, just repulsive, unremarkable and foolhardy.  Theirs is the rant and romp of a juvenile, excusable but for the fact that they are adults if by age only.  In stark contrast to their incomprehensible expression, the First Amendment rises above, far above the pedestrian level, confirming that even those like Fonda and Kaepernick who communicate ignorant or ill-conceived sentiments are free to do so in America, just as those who hear the words that offend have their right to call out their expression as folly.  Were Fonda and Kaepernick the children of North Koreans, they would understand all too well what it means to live in a country where fundamental rights have no protection from the greatest threat to individual liberty, the monopoly of the state.

Unique among all nations on earth, the United States was founded upon the principle that just governments derive their authority to govern from the consent of the governed; that just governments are instituted among men for the very purpose of protecting the rights of the governed; and that if government presumes to violate that sacred compact, the government must be altered or abolished because rights to life, liberty and property are God given, precede the existence of the state, and are superior to the state.  Although rights theory and a Republic arose among men, and were initially deemed the province of white, landowning men, the two concepts were fundamental and transformative.  For the first time in history, people decried the notion that rulers were divinely appointed and possessed of a monopoly of all rights, articulating instead the revolutionary concept that all men are created equal and endowed by God with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and property.  Because rights theory was so fundamental, it could not be limited to landowning white males for long but instead within less than two centuries became recognized as universal, thus largely sweeping away hypocrisy in society and law.

When Fonda and the NFL players think of America, they apparently conjure up notions of discontent, albeit precisely what they despise about America eludes even them.  They do not appreciate well that the kernel of liberty germinated here, first, uniquely among all nations of the world.  It is that liberty which is America.  The flag embodies the fight for that liberty against enemies domestic and foreign that would enslave or destroy us.  The flag is hallowed by the blood of patriots.  It is the banner under which the best and the bravest have sacrificed their lives, giving the full measure of devotion, to secure for their fellow Americans the rights to life, liberty and property.  We should be so very grateful for the brave men and women who police our neighborhoods, respond to all manner of crises, and take up arms to defend America.

It is, therefore, profoundly disgraceful and disrespectful to the very men and women who are willing to die for the life of fellow citizens who are complete strangers, profoundly disgraceful and disrespectful to the very people whose integrity rises above self and sustains the existence of our nation, to do anything but give them homage and give reverence to that flag which symbolizes their bravery.  There are many ways to voice opinion and protest that do not denigrate the flag (and the speaker alike), acting in ways that dishonor the flag are not among them.

I do not say that Americans have no legal right to utter stupidity.  They do so long as it does not violate the rights of others.  They have the right to burn their own flag on their own property, no matter how dishonorable I believe or anyone else believes that to be.  But they do not have the right to occupy someone else’s property to burn a flag or to burn someone else’s flag.  They do not have a right to endanger others as they perform dishonorable acts.

Indeed, so powerful is our First Amendment that it stands in defense of minority views repulsive to every great right and foundational principle declared by the Declaration of Independence and every great right and limitation on government power enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.  To be sure, we are all protected in our freedom to express even hatred for our own country against, and especially against, a majority holding contrary views.  Nevertheless, that right to speech does not deprive others of their equal rights, does not compel the owners of the NFL franchises to allow by contract reprehensible dishonoring of the flag and does not compel a private citizen or corporation to make available privately owned property for speech they oppose.  Moreover, reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions are appropriate in public places to protect intended uses of property, ensure safe passage, and avoid obstruction to ingress and egress.

I find it more than a little ironic that a spoiled generation acts to dishonor the very objects that stand for the freedoms upon which they depend to protest.  They behave as ignorantly as one who rises to speak to condemn freedom of speech and lights his own platform ablaze as a sign of protest.  Like that person, were the entire nation to follow Fonda and Kaepernick’s lead, the American people would soon lose their precious land of liberty and in its place would come a regime far more hostile to dissent.  Fonda and Kaepernick would then discover what it is like not simply to speak ill of freedom while benefiting from it but to live under tyranny.

© 2017 Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Jonathan Emord: jemord@emord.com

North Korea continues to build an arsenal of nuclear weapons capable of reaching the United States and its allies.  It intends to use threats of imminent attack to intimidate Western states into conceding to its demands for resources.  The regime functions in a thuggish, uncivilized manner.  Its actions invite both a conventional and an unconventional response.  President Trump can learn much from Winston Churchill, who faced a comparable threat from the Nazis as Prime Minister and dealt with it brilliantly relying not just on conventional but also on unconventional means.  That adaptation is the best way to overcome the rigid command and control regime that is the dictatorship of Kim Jung Un.

In his Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Giles Milton records how Winston Churchill relied upon a group of unconventional war minded thinkers and warriors to prepare for the Battle of Britain and wreak havoc behind enemy lines throughout the war.  The effects of those efforts were critical to allied victory and to reducing the loss of allied life.  President Trump would do well to adopt the same framework in his dealings with the hermit kingdom.

On the conventional side, the United States must do everything it can to encourage South Korea and Japan to adopt a war footing, to educate their citizenry that the war with North Korea is likely to come and to accept an expansion of U.S. and allied military operations within South Korea and Japan, including an expansion of the presence of American military, installation of new ballistic and anti-ballistic missile systems under American control, and expansion of allied air presence over South Korea and Japan and an expansion of allied naval presence in the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan.  In short, we need to convince South Korea and Japan that the issue is no longer if North Korea will go to war but when.  We need to convince them to presume a state of war now and to take all measures necessary to perfect a war time footing through education of their people and through expansion of their strategic military posture and coordination with the United States.

In turn, we need to expand substantially and rapidly our offensive and defensive capabilities in the region until we are confident that annihilation of North Korea is achievable with minimal loss of allied lives.  In that regard, we need to implement now “ungentlemanly warfare,” by which I mean clandestine and unconventional operations to interfere with the ability of North Korea to exist and to maintain command, control and communication.  We need to rely on innovative and clever means of overwhelming the ability of the dictatorship to dictate.

We are indeed fortunate that our North Korean enemy is one of the most brutal totalitarian regimes on earth.  Its principal weakness lies in the fact that it depends fundamentally on commands from Kim Jung Un himself to implement each of its military objectives.  Its commanders in the field are pre-programmed to act in strict accordance with orders.  If those orders are not present, they are stymied by indecision because any act not in accord with the precise will of the Supreme Leader is punishable, often by death.  The military thus operates in fear and dependence, not inspiration and independence, and thus has virtually no ability to function without constant commands from the top.  Aware of that, we may orchestrate a comprehensive clandestine unconventional war right now, before Kim Jung Un completes construction of his primary arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Among the many “ungentlemanly” methods we can employ against the North are those dependent on cyber warfare.  We can clandestinely employ the brightest minds in the cyber world to develop and deploy all manner of cyber attacks on North Korea’s computer operating systems designed to disable those relied upon by the military, the state financial systems, and the government, effecting a total disruption in the systems upon which they rely for command, control, and communication.  We should aim at achieving intermittent and unpredictable breakdowns in their systems as well as in false initiation of orders, financial transfers, etc.  We should ravage their state economy in this way, cause military leadership to execute orders against their own forces, and interfere in everything from state propaganda broadcasts to imports and exports to military command to tax collection and to public transportation.

Ultimately, our cyber warfare efforts should aim at achieving a means to cause one massive instantaneous complex disruption of their entire command, control and communication systems so complete that it makes their warfighting capability impossible to effectuate.  Commanders would not know whether orders were legitimate, incapable of relying on any means of communication.  We should then undertake a prompt decapitation first strike, whereby we would employ electromagnetic pulse weapons to fry their electronic systems simultaneous with the delivery of massive ordinance, an overwhelming bombardment decimating their war fighting capability, followed by special forces interdictions to take out their leadership in every sector backed by tactical nuclear weapons if necessary at key targets.

The sad reality is that unless we presume a state of war now and prepare to take out this regime, it will fulfill its mission of amassing a nuclear arsenal capable of blackmailing the free world.  We cannot assume that Kim Jung Un’s threats to attack the United States, South Korea, and Japan are idle ones.  Nor can we assume that Kim Jung Un will act rationally.  We must assume the worst.  Based on that mindset, a new war footing, and the present implementation of “ungentlemanly warfare,” we can overwhelm the hermit kingdom and minimize the loss of American and allied life.

© 2017 Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Jonathan Emord: jemord@emord.com

The United States Missile Defense Agency has recently performed exercises to demonstrate the effectiveness of its medium range ballistic missile intercept capabilities.  While not a perfect record, the instances of interception are sufficient to alert Kim Jung Un that reliance on an offensive ballistic missile capability is folly not only because U.S. and allied retaliatory strikes are certain to end all life North of the 38^th parallel but also because Un’s first strike capability may be mooted before a single ballistic missile hits its target.  Using the effectiveness of our intercept capability to strategic advantage the time may soon arrive when we would do well to prove the intercept not solely by shooting down a test missile but by shooting down a missile launched by Un that passes over allied territory.

Under United Nations’ resolutions, Un’s nuclear program, including his launch of test weapons over the territories of South Korea and Japan, are clear violations of international law.  When the President is satisfied that the U.S. Missile Defense Agency has maximized the effectiveness of the intercepts such that he can with a high degree of certainty count on those systems to take out ballistic missiles before they reach their targets, why not deploy the land and sea based systems sufficiently to enable an effective defense against multiple simultaneous launches by North Korea?

Then, we could give Un an ultimatum.  We could explain that his repeated launch of medium range ballistic missiles over the territories of South Korea and Japan are in violation of international law and pose a direct threat to the security of those nations.  We could then explain that if any future launch would place a North Korean missile over an allied nation’s territory, it will be destroyed before impact.

That will then place Un in the position of either having to test our resolve by launching a missile over allied territory or refrain from doing so in favor of launches that do not cross allied territories.  We would then be free to destroy any missile launched that passes over the territory of Japan or South Korea.  The actual deployment against Un’s actual missiles would have a major effect on North Korean confidence in the nation’s offensive ballistic weapon capabilities.

While blunting directly the threat posed by Un is increasingly a necessity for the United States and its allies, doing so will not contain the overall threat posed by North Korea.  North Korea poses a threat through its support of terror and its reliance on unconventional means to deliver nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.  North Korea is also able to launch a major conventional attack on the South, but doing so would likely provoke a tactical nuclear response and an overwhelmingly destructive American and allied military campaign against the North that would be rapid and overwhelming, resulting in the annihilation of the North,

By taking additional, more direct steps now to counter North Korea atop reliance on economic sanctions, the United States and its allies are likely to prove Un’s threat less ominous.  With each instance whereby we prove the threat lessened, it diminishes not only the persuasive force of Un’s extortionate demands but also his lease on life.  At some point, a challenge from within the regime or inspired by China may topple Un, particularly if his jingoism does not cause the United States to blink or make concessions, as was the unfortunate history of our diplomacy prior to President Trump.

Presently China benefits from strategic intelligence it gathers from U.S. and allied response to Un’s saber rattling.  If China perceives a pattern in American response that suggests a lack of resolve to defend its own or allied interests in the region, China’s appetite for overthrowing Taiwan will increase, as will its expansion of military control over the South China Sea and the islands it contests with Japan.  From China’s vantage point, that benefit is outweighed by disadvantage if the United States acts resolutely to defend its own and its allies’ interests by means that prove the Un threat incapable of effectuation, and if the United States greatly expands its offensive military capabilities in the region.

President Trump will do well to avoid negotiation with Un, maintain an ever expanding and tightening American military encirclement, denuding and defanging of North Korea, and rise to thwart more directly the demonstrations of offensive capability offered by Un.  Contained and increasingly proven to lack an effective offensive capability, Un will be less able to maintain his hold on power and less able to curry meaningful support from China.  China will also find it more difficult to expand its influence in the region.

© 2017 Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Jonathan Emord: jemord@emord.com

Across the nation people driven by a mistaken sense of righteousness tear down monuments that remind us of American history, that depict Americans who sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War.  The desire to bring the monuments down arises from an immaturity and political correctness that compels adherence to suppression over a robust exchange of ideas and information.  Those who favor destruction of the monuments generally lack a sophisticated understanding of the underlying history and operate without a clear distinguishing principle. To them, any statue of a slave owner or apologist for slavery that exists should be destroyed, or at least, removed from public view.  Theirs is an irrational hatred that superficially removes reminders of history, as if we ought to suppress the errors of our past rather than be reminded of them so as not to repeat them.

The institution of slavery is a horrendous evil, inconsistent with our founding principles and with humanity.  To own a person, to force a person to perform labor against his or her will, and to subject a person to life dictated in every respect by another is an abomination, a robbery of the very reason for existence, of very nearly a person’s soul. Slavery is so fundamental an offense that it defies credulity to distinguish between bondage and perpetual imprisonment and torture.  Although contrary to the Lockean principles so beautifully expressed in the Declaration of Independence, and although controversial even among the families of those individuals who vehemently defended the institution preceding the Civil War, the peculiar institution of slavery grew in America like a cancer, at first thought benign and likely to disappear without need for abolition, but then by 1840 becoming a malignancy in the South, which Southerners dared not discontinue volitionally.

But while the institution of slavery is abhorrent, as was the Confederate States of America which intended to preserve it, individuals like Robert E. Lee, Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson, and Jubal Anderson Early, who believed their duties to their states first and foremost ought not be condemned with a broad brush stroke that aims to remove any mention of them from history or any image of them from the public square.  Those men helped define military tactics in the age and were possessed of many personal attributes that define greatness.  To be sure, few of those who we revere in the world can be held to a standard of perfection.   Indeed, it was Jesus Christ, who reminded us of the folly associated with self-righteous indignation that would justify condemnation of the whole person for the sake of a single sin: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.” John 8:7.

The same folly preoccupies those whose political correctness drives them to expunge from history and the public square every artifact or reference to the support for or the defense of the institution of slavery.  There is from many of the great generals of the Civil War who fought on the side of the Confederacy much to be learned, not least of which is their deft use of war fighting to enable a force outnumbered and ill-equipped to defeat a Union foe repeatedly.  We may justly abhor slavery but we should not erase history in the process.  We need to understand slavery, and to understand it, we must not only discover what life was like under the institution of slavery but also what caused those who participated in it, defended it, and condoned it to do so.  The search for knowledge and truth depends on the discovery of ignorance and falsehood.  We learn from our mistakes, and we are bound to commit them again if we suppress the evidence of those mistakes.

The statues of confederate soldiers and generals are monuments to individuals who share the complexities of us all.  Those people are multi-faceted with lives defined by a loyalty to their States, torn apart by the conflict between Union and States, driven to defend their families, and distinguished by their conflicting beliefs (passionately committed to individual rights yet apologists for slavery; exceedingly faithful yet willing to defend man’s inhumanity to man).  None of those depicted in the statues is perfect, as indeed none of us is perfect. With hind sight we may see all too clearly the fallacy that is the institution of slavery (the repugnance of the notion that one people of one race should have a legal right to control the lives of another people of another race) but for many who fought for the confederacy (the vast majority of which never owned slaves; less than 2% of the Southern population were slave owners) the cause was just because the war they conceived to be against their states, their families, and their ways of life.

The American Civil War defines the nation precisely because it is a war of brother against brother, a Cain versus Able struggle, a conflict that we should endeavor to understand rather than write out of existence.  It is instructive to reflect upon the mighty rhetoric in Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.  A spirit of charity rises above the base fight of good versus evil and enables us to view the past with maturity without the need to suppress the historical record.  Having lived the equivalent of more than a single lifetime in his struggle to preserve the Union and end the institution of slavery, Abraham Lincoln had what many viewed as just cause to obliterate the South.  The victor had righteousness on his side and the sweep of abolitionism could have reduced to death and slavery the slaveholders, but Lincoln had no such intention because his was a commitment to charity; he offered grace instead of destruction.

Lincoln, like Robert E. Lee, viewed slavery in biblical terms.  The Lord would abolish it from the face of the Earth when the Lord was ready.  If the Union won the war, it was due in no small measure to a Divine Providence that intended for the institution of slavery to be eradicated from the South.  But while Lincoln meant for slavery to end, he did not view those responsible for the institution as worthy of total condemnation.  Rather, he understood that as for their actions to sustain slavery, they would be appropriately judged by God and should not be judged by Lincoln.  It was for the Union to end slavery but to forgive the sinner, to welcome back into the Union those whose sin it was to subject others to bondage.

Lincoln spoke of the illegitimacy of slavery but did not translate that view into a condemnation of those who enslaved others and of those who fought for a Confederacy dedicated to perpetuate slavery. “It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces,” Lincoln said, “but let us judge not, that we be not judged.”  For Lincoln, slavery was an offense that the Union fought to end, but whether the Union would be allowed to bring it to an end was a matter ultimately for God.  “If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?  Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away . . .”

If he could end the scourge of slavery throughout the United States, Lincoln was, in that, contented.  He did not want more destruction but, instead, wanted healing once the sin was removed.  “With malice toward none,” he said, “with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Those who would destroy monument after monument to rid the nation of a subset of ugly parts of history do us all a grave disservice.  They ignore the truths contained in the closing admonition in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.  They lack the maturity and wisdom that enables a person to deplore some aspects of an individual’s life while simultaneously admiring other aspects; or, to recognize an individual’s historic significance without having to agree with that person’s political philosophy.   It is that same lack of maturity and wisdom that leads youth on college campuses to rant and rave during a speaker’s presentation because the speaker does not hold views identical to their own.   In truth, these destructive and speech suppressive actions are the real scourge that burdens our nation today, certainly not the presence of inanimate statues that remind us of that great test of national endurance, the Civil War.

© 2017 Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Jonathan Emord: jemord@emord.com

James Alex Fields drove his silver Dodge Challenger into a crowd of people protesting against white supremacists, white nationalists, and fascists, many, if not most, of whom came to the event from outside of Charlottesville, Virginia.  There were also counter-protestors, variously labeled Anti-Fa or Anti-Fascists, with many, if not most, coming from outside of Charlottesville and with some who also engaged in acts of violence, albeit none resulting in the loss of life.

Fields’ actions caused the death of Heather Hager, a 32 year old woman who was protesting against white power protestors.  She was hit while crossing the street.  Although presently charged with second degree murder, Fields ought to be charged with Capital Murder under the Virginia criminal code.  His actions appear to qualify for that higher charge.  The conviction and execution of Fields would send a clear message to others of like ilk who entertain the notion of transforming venomous rhetoric into violent action.

Under the First Amendment, each of us is entitled to use his or her own property or public areas set apart from time immemorial for the delivery of speeches to convey our views.  We may do so provided that we do not act in ways that violate the equal rights of others or block ingress or egress to buildings and streets.  We may do so even, as is the case here, or most especially when, the views expressed are repulsive to the majority.  Most all of us condemn the views of those who claim that one’s immutable characteristics, race, disability, age, gender, etc. render them deserving of derision, punishment, or denial of equal justice under law.  But that condemnation by the majority does not justify suppression of the minority and such suppression if sustained or condoned by law violates the First Amendment.  Indeed, equal justice under law and blind justice are bedrock principles of Western jurisprudence and of our Constitution and laws.

Although imbued with an unalienable right to hold and communicate one’s own views on one’s own property or on public property set apart for that purpose, none of us has a right to graduate from vile invective to violent action.  The political problem for the White supremacists who gathered in Charlottesville is that their vile views call for the degradation of people based on their non-white status.  That is their essential political problem, but it is not a legal problem per se.  The legal problem for the White supremacists in this instance is that they translated their vile rhetoric into violent action.

When speech merges with violent action, the state may act against the violence not because the speakers hold a particular viewpoint but because they have violated the equal rights of another, in this case, depriving an innocent, 32 year old woman, Heather Hager, of her life.  Although the authorities have thus far charged Fields with second degree murder, they ought to rethink that determination because he plainly appears deserving of a Capital Murder charge.

Under Virginia law, if a person commits a “willful, deliberate, and premeditated” killing that involves one or more aggravating factors, that person is guilty of Capital Murder.  The penalty for Capital Murder is capital punishment by lethal injection or electrocution, at the convicted party’s election.  In this instance, James Alex Fields intentionally used his Dodge Charger as an instrument to cause death and serious bodily injury by driving it at a high rate of speed into a crowd of anti-white power protestors.  It was the logical and predictable consequence of his act that one or more people might die.  Moreover, his action fits at least two of the aggravating factors specified in the Virginia statute, only one of which is required for Capital Murder.  It appears that Fields was not acting alone but in conjunction with accessories.  Individuals associated with the White supremacist movement who have encouraged violence at other rallies or violence in general  may have solicited or encouraged Fields’ actions.  If so, then his act of murder was “pursuant to the direction or order of one who is engaged in a continuing criminal enterprise.”   Even if that factor cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, another appears likely provable beyond a reasonable doubt.  A murder “committed in the commission or attempted commission of an act of terrorism” is Capital Murder.   An act of terrorism is defined as intentional or indiscriminate violence as a means to create terror or fear.  Undoubtedly, Fields’ decision to drive a car at lethal speed into a crowd of anti-White power protestors was an act of intentional violence intended to create terror or fear.

Consequently, rather than being charged with second degree murder, James Alex Fields should be charged with Capital Murder, and his conviction and execution can then serve as a sober deterrent to other like-minded individuals who are intent on committing acts of violence in service of the White power movement.  They must come to understand that while in the United States, our Constitution affords protection to those who utter even views as repulsive as their own, it affords no protection for those who commit acts of violence.  For those who would kill to make a point, the law should afford proportional justice and ensure that they may never kill again.  Capital Murder appears to fit well the violent acts committed by James Alex Fields.

© 2017 Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Jonathan Emord: jemord@emord.com

President Trump has shrewdly made clear to North Korean Dictator Kim Jung Un that the United States will obliterate the Hermit Kingdom if Kim Jung Un arms one or more serviceable ballistic missiles with the threat of firing same at the United States or its allies.  In this way, President Trump has revived a very effective strategy employed during the Cold War called brinksmanship.  Pioneered by President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, the strategy involves positioning maximum deliverable nuclear force against an enemy for rapid deployment along with articulation of an unwavering commitment to use that force if circumstances warrant it.  The unpredictability of a precise moment of action combined with an ever-escalating nuclear capability and readiness forces the opponent to put up or shut up, or, in this case, to avoid an ultimate use of a nuclear weapon or be wiped off the face of the earth.

This strategy, termed “mutually assured destruction” at the height of the Cold War, worked well to contain the nuclear ambitions of the former Soviet Union, as it continues to do so today, keeping Russia and China from launching a first strike.  President Kennedy used this strategy to advantage in the Cuban Missile Crisis against Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev.  By escalating the threat of an American first strike if Russian warheads were not removed from Cuba, President Kennedy compelled Khruschev to face the reality of Russian nuclear inferiority and remove the warheads.

Kim Jung Un depends on the perception that he is unstable to extort economic support and intimidate his neighbors to strategic advantage.  In our interaction with his regime, we must presume him ultimately rational while preparing for him to take ultimately irrational actions.  In short, we must move rapidly to enhance our anti-ballistic missile, cyber warfare, and electromagnetic pulse warring capabilities, directing them specifically at Un with the capability of implementing them in a moment’s notice.  We need to increase deployment of nuclear weapons in the region along with strategic forces sufficient to ensure an immediate and overwhelming response at every level to any real nuclear provocation from North Korea.  This will put us on a hair trigger footing and on maximum readiness.  Taking these measures combined with unwavering insistence that we will use the force if North Korea arms one or more warheads and threatens its or their use against the United States or its allies helps give Kim Jung Un a clear view of where he and his Hermit Kingdom are headed if a weaponized missile is ready for launch against the United States.

The threat we convey, and must implement if challenged, must be for a first strike against North Korea wherein we will deploy rapidly such overwhelming force that it will ensure within minutes the complete annihilation of North Korea.  That commitment must be real, backed by the full deployment of all weapons systems necessary and capable to bring about the objective.  Our troops must be kept at the highest state of readiness, and we must ensure continuous escalation of the threat so that Un is constantly rendered powerless to effect any change in the ultimate outcome.

This environment of instability is to the disadvantage of North Korea, far more than to our own.  There is no question that in a contest we would prevail but would we prevail without losing one or more American cities or bases.  We must ensure that immediately serviceable nuclear weapons and anti-ballistic weapons are in the region and dedicated to North Korea such that a first strike can be effected within seconds.  We must also invest new resources in the rapid development of a fully effective nuclear shield, at last fulfilling Ronald Reagan’s dream for an umbrella capable of shielding the United States from such an attack.

© 2017 Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Jonathan Emord: jemord@emord.com

North Korea, Russia, and China all have ambitions to seize territorial islands and international waters surrounding Japan.  Japan is vulnerable to a first strike within minutes of launch as soon as North Korea perfects its nuclear capability.  Although protected by the American nuclear umbrella via U.S. commitments in the Southeast Asia Treaty for the defense of member states, Japan remains victimized by threats from North Korea, Russia, and China.  The time has come for U.S. placement of ballistic missiles in Japan at American bases there.

Since the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, Japan has steadfastly resolved to maintain only a defensive force and not to become a nuclear nation.  Faced with the imminent threat of nuclear weapons capable of hitting the island from North Korea and belligerent actions by Russia and China, the absence of a Japan based nuclear response capability invites further destabilization of the region to the detriment of Japan.

Although it is no doubt reluctant to break with tradition, the time has come for Japan to accept an American military presence that includes an island based nuclear arsenal.  If the United States moves swiftly to deploy such an arsenal, while it will no doubt be met with condemnation from North Korea, Russia, and China, it will underscore the American commitment to Japan’s defense from nuclear attack and it will provide a major counterbalance to the strategic aggression of these enemies of freedom.

In particular, we are now deadlocked with China on what to do with North Korea.  China gains a strategic benefit by North Korean provocations.  So long as North Korea does not launch its nuclear weapons at the U.S. or an ally, China benefits from observing our response to the testing of American will.  It can ascertain whether there exists an opening for more aggressive actions in the region.  China very much wants to know if the day has yet come when it may without U.S. intervention attack Taiwan, the Republic of China, or may exert sufficient control over the South China Sea to use closure of sea lanes as a form of economic warfare or effective extortion to intimidate pro-Western neighbors into backing down from support for the West.

By taking a bold move now via placement of both nuclear weapons and anti-ballistic weapons systems on the island of Japan, we would send an unmistakable signal to China and Russia that the time has not come for either to presume the U.S. unwilling to defend its allies in the region.  Also, it would remove any doubt Kim Jong Un may have about American willingness to defend Japan against a nuclear attack from North Korea.

Those in opposition to this idea believe it will lead to a regional arms race.  Well, we already have a regional arms race.  North Korea’s rapid development of a nuclear weapon is just that.  The failure of China or Russia to reign in North Korea supports that arms race.  We must act to counter it, and we must be brave and bold enough to expend the resources necessary to leave no doubt that any act of nuclear aggression will be met with a full offensive and defensive response that will not only minimize or negate the threat but will ensure total destruction to those who bring it upon the United States or its allies.  Having American forces equipped with nuclear weapons on the island of Japan provides a necessary response, the absence of which ensures further destabilization in the region.

Monday, July 31, 2017

The inability of Republican leadership in the House and Senate to repeal Obamacare bodes ill for tax reform.  Rather than fulfill their promises to the American people, many key Republicans have sided with Democrats in refusing to repeal the most inept example of social engineering in our lifetimes.

The President will need to do more to compel tax reform than was done to compel the repeal of Obamacare if there is any hope of passing another of his key campaign planks.  This go around the lessons learned from the failure to repeal Obamacare should influence how the President campaigns for reduction in individual and corporate tax rates.

When faced with a hostile Congress, Presidents in the past have reached beyond the beltway to the American people, communicating with oval office addresses in prime time, with speeches in key states, and with a call for Americans to deluge Congress with demands for passage of the legislation.  The President must expand beyond tweeting to give a detailed message that explains why tax reform is essential for all Americans, why the bill he supports achieves the reductions required to trigger an economic boom, and why failure to act now threatens continued economic growth.  He must campaign vigorously for tax reform, more outside the beltway than within it.  He must essentially drive the passage of the bill with a wave of popular support sufficient to overwhelm the opposition.

The Obamacare repeal failure teaches us that leading Republicans are willing to bolt from their prior promises and keep faith with their political opponents rather than the President.  He is indeed an outsider, and they do not like that.  While Democratic leaders pursue obstructionism, resisting all that is Trump; leading Republicans have demonstrated that they would rather abandon their promises to voters and side with Democrats than rally behind the President.

The Congress of the United States is populated by a majority of individuals whose interest in self vastly exceeds interest in country.  The only alternative for the President is to break loose from the internal politics of Washington and rally as much popular support as he can in favor of tax reform.  It is up to him to explain the details of his plan, the necessity of it, and the promise of it.  He cannot rely on surrogates.  He must also be the primary campaigner, the one who calls on the public to inundate members of Congress with demands for passage of the bill.  He must also insist on a bill that achieves true cuts in individual and corporate taxes, opposing all efforts to defeat the central objective.  No bill is better than a bad bill.

Tax reform also enables the President to achieve replacement of Obamacare without repeal.  Obamacare is effectively dead.   To kill it off, he need only ween the remaining insurers from participation in it.  That can be done with tax incentives for companies to discontinue involvement.  As to replacement, I have long advocated a simple remedy that would have profound effects.

In the tax bill, the President should include provision for giving each taxpayer a $1.50 tax deduction for each dollar spent on medical care.  The deduction would apply for individuals who pay for the medical expenses or health insurance costs of family members or anyone else.  The deduction would apply for businesses that pay for the medical expenses or health insurance costs of employees or anyone else.  In this way, those with resources would have a huge incentive to help those without.  Hospitals would benefit from providing subsidized or free services to those destitute.  This simple change would restore a patient centric system in which physicians, medical centers, and hospitals would aim to satisfy the needs of patients rather than insurance companies that serve as proxies for government.  Health care and health insurance would be tailored to satisfy patients rather than serve as a one size fits all government program of mediocre care for all.

As the President moves on to tax reform, he must be mindful of the lessons the Obamacare repeal effort provide.  This is not a Congress he can lead from within.  He must depend on the American people to join him in leading it from without, in demanding passage of the President’s tax reform legislation on pain of election loss.  Rich proof now exists that neither Paul Ryan nor Mitch McConnell can command the allegiance of party members, and neither has remained true to principle.  The President must lead the effort.

© 2017 Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Jonathan Emord: jemord@emord.com

The White House is about to experience the perils of trial by congressional committee.  Although the Russia collusion probe has failed to yield any evidence of criminal wrong-doing, that fact is not going to stop members from grand standing to insinuate obstruction of justice and collusion.  The Democratic leadership of today is virtually indistinguishable from the Republicans of yesteryear who worked in tandem with Senator Joseph McCarthy to destroy the reputations of innocent people through character assassination broadcast from each day’s Army McCarthy hearings.

For those of us who have represented clients before Congressional committees, the fact of character assassination is all too real.  Members whose own shady history is rich presume to sit in judgment of those called to testify.  While purporting to investigate facts germane to one probe or another, all too often they ignore relevant facts that do not fit their narrative and use long winded oratory to substitute for either evidence against their position or no evidence at all.  It is indeed a witch hunt.

In this instance, however, those called for the shellacking have the political clout and resources to fire back, and they should.  Members who presume to condemn the witnesses and grand stand for media advantage should themselves be thoroughly vetted such that their own sordid histories come to light.  It is a sad reality today that most members of Congress are carpet baggers of sorts.  Lacking principle but filled with hedonism and a desire to profit off of public office, many members depend on contributions not tracked by the Federal Election laws to finance everything from employment of their children to junkets around the world.  Peter Schweizer copiously details the corruption in his book Extortion.

In short, the integrity essential to justice is absent in the typical congressional committee hearing.  In this case, Democrats aiming to bring down the Trump presidency by every means possible have no hesitation to do so based on a patently false narrative, that somehow President Trump is a patsy for the Russians or is otherwise complicit in Russian attempts to influence the outcome of the elections.  Despite four congressional investigations and Justice Department and FBI probes into the matter for months there is nothing of any consequence that has come to light.

Wasting tax dollars, as the Democratic leaders are want to do across the board, they now aim to maintain a steady drum beat of false accusations in an effort to block consideration of the President’s domestic agenda and confound his political future.  As with most of these attempts, this one too is likely to redound to their detriment.  While only a minority is likely to find the charges worth exploring despite the absence of evidence, most understand that this is itself obstructionism, designed to render government dysfunctional.  While political folly to spend almost every hour of every day banging the drum of false conspiracy and offering no true alternative to the President’s agenda, the Democratic efforts are yielding fruit in the form of dysfunctional government.  They are obstructing the President’s ability to pursue his legislative agenda in Congress.

Were Republicans to marshal support for the President and attack those bringing the false charges, there would be less obstructionism.  The reality is, however, that many Republicans, including those in leadership positions, dislike the President and therefore ignore or even condone the witch hunt.  In the end, those Republicans disserve not only the President who leads their party but also the electorate that expected them to work cohesively with the President to implement his agenda.

© 2017 Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Jonathan Emord: jemord@emord.com

The Republican leadership in the Senate agonizes over how best to “replace” Obamacare.  They thus start with a flawed premise which is bound to fail.  Based on the paternalistic and freedom depriving notion that it is for the government to compel the individual to obtain insurance and it is for the government to dictate the kind of insurance available to all, Obamacare invariably leads to market distortions that increase cost, to government influenced or mandated allocation of medical resources which rations care, to a government centric rather than patient centric system, and to near universal disappointment and inadequate care.  The business of insurance is one of careful measurements of risk dependent upon a myriad of factors which nonetheless leaves ultimate care decisions to patients willing to pay and doctors willing to perform.  An effort to impose a one size fits all standard on health insurance thus alters not only the make-up and cost of insurance (limiting options and increasing costs) but it also delimits medical practice, which must bend to accommodate insurance demands regardless of medical realities and professional preferences.

So, when the Republican leadership presumes to keep Obamacare in place in part and tweak it, or diminish its scope but infuse it with funding to keep it on life support, the Republican leadership begins with a failed premise, thus dooming itself and the nation to defeat.  The Republican leadership is thereby conceding the anti-market, government paternalistic premise (the corrupt heart and soul) of Obamacare, the very evil that Republican voters demanded their officials end in the 2016 elections.

There is a principled alternative to Obamacare appeasement, one that removes top down, government dictation of health insurance and health markets and replaces that state paternalism with a patient centric system replete with freedom of choice.  As in most all things, the central question is who exercises ultimate freedom to determine whether and to whom dollars enter the health care system:  Is it the government by insurance company proxy or is it the patient in each individual case?  All who value freedom should prefer a patient centric health care system where patients determine whether and who to pay, where doctors are attentive to the needs and demands of patients first and foremost and to insurance companies only secondarily.

There is no way to retain any element of Obamacare and revivify a patient centric system where market forces prevail over government mandates.  Consequently, the first order of business must be complete repeal of Obamacare, leaving none of it.

The sequence of overall legislative events germane to this issue is backward.  Tax reform should have preceded Obamacare repeal and replace.  That is because the ultimate patient centric alternative to Obamacare is best triggered through amendments to the tax code, not government control of health insurance markets.

In my book, Restore the Republic, I advocate a simple, yet profound free market alternative to Obamacare, one that removes government control and replaces it with individual preferences.  That alternative creates a true incentive to finance the care of those in need who cannot afford to pay for insurance or care but leaves the ultimate freedom to follow that incentive with the individual.   It is simple alternative, and yet, its effects would be revolutionary in empowering patients and ensuring no federal government limits on the nature, degree, quality, or quantity of health care offered.

Here is the overall plan.  Congress would repeal Obamacare immediately but not replace it.  Congress would then move forward with President Trump’s tax reform measures, lowering corporate and individual rates to trigger an economic boom.  In addition to the Administration’s slated reductions in taxation would come the tax reform measure I recommend to encourage private action to care for those who cannot afford health insurance or the care they need.  This tax reform would be the free market replacement called for by the electorate.

It works this way.  For every dollar an individual or entity spends to cover the health insurance or health care costs of an individual who cannot afford to pay for same, the donating individual or entity would receive a $1.50 federal tax deduction.  Under this simple measure, companies of all sizes would have a major incentive to provide health insurance for employees who cannot afford it and also to pay directly either for health insurance for, or part or all of the medical expenses of, identified others in need because doing so would result in a significant tax deduction.  Individuals would likewise have a great financial incentive to pay for relatives in need or identified others in their communities who have needs.  Finally, hospitals, medical groups, and individual physicians would also have a huge incentive to pay directly for the costs of caring for the indigent, because doing so would result in a substantial tax deduction.

Most importantly, money would be restored to private hands and individual patients would be empowered by the tax plan.  That would be the free market antithesis of Obamacare.

In short, rather than accept as given the offensive premise at root in Obamacare that government knows better than an individual what how that individual should spend his health care dollars, we should reject that premise, reject Obamacare in totality, and “replace” it not with additional government but with no government at all, using instead the power to relieve tax burdens as a way to encourage the provision of patient-centric care.

© 2017 Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Jonathan Emord: jemord@emord.com

The recent launch of an ICBM by North Korea signals a turning point that demands a multi-faceted economic and military response from the United States.  We cannot count on NATO, China, or any other state to do what must be done to prevent the maniacal regime of Kim Jung Un from launching a nuclear armed missile in the not so distant future.  Although he may not have that capability at present, he surely is endeavoring to obtain it, hoping no doubt to use it as a means for nuclear blackmail.  Once he grasps that capability, he no doubts perceives himself to be in the best position to make demands under threat of nuclear attack to kow South Korea, Japan, and perhaps even the United States.  China and Russia want to see this play out, because if North Korea can achieve those ends, so too can they, and the balance of world power will have shifted.  To prevent this eventuality requires an immediate investment of resources to enable the United States to neutralize the threat.

Additional economic sanctions can be imposed by NATO and SEATO states but those are unlikely to effect any change in Kim Jung Un’s direction.  Instead, we should presume him presently capable of launching a nuclear attack on our allies and the United States, and we should take immediate steps to use unconventional means to neutralize that threat.  The United States should pursue cyber warfare options, developing viruses that can dismantle or countermand computer operations necessary to achieve launch from fixed sites.  In addition, the United States should develop satellite based laser weapons and satellite, land, and sea based electromagnetic pulse based weapons targeted directly at key military operations in North Korea.  We must possess the capability to fry all electronic based systems in North Korea upon confirmation of a nuclear armed warhead approaching a launch vehicle.  We must possess the capability to fire laser weapons at a missile on the launch pad or shortly after dispatch, even if that requires a substantial investment to achieve the capability.  We should expand deployment of anti-ballistic missile systems, even if doing so requires violation of international treaties.

In short, we need to be on a war posture now, using our vast technological capabilities in coordination with teams assigned for secret development and deployment from the private sector to come up with the most intrusive and effective electronic cyber warfare, electromagnetic pulse, and anti-ballistic missile systems for use in the region sufficient to neutralize any threat posed.

Secondarily, we need to enhance our offensive nuclear capabilities and deploy more short range intercontinental ballistic missiles to the region aimed at North Korea.  We must not only be able to eliminate any potential for nuclear launch from the North, if at all possible, but we must also be prepared upon evidence of an imminent launch to obliterate the regime and the North Korean military.  That will require, as Douglas MacArthur well understood in the Korean War, a nuclear strike upon the North relying on tactical nuclear weapons.  We must not only take out Kim Jung Un in that eventuality but also his large army and conventional weapons systems.  There is no way to do that and spare mass casualties in South Korea (and perhaps even in Japan) than by rapidly deploying tactical nuclear weapons in a massive offensive that will eliminate the regime and its military.

It should now be clear that China has no intention to reign in North Korea beyond rhetoric and modest trade restrictions.  Indeed, while China loathes prospects of a nuclear war in North Korea, it relishes the intelligence it can gather from North Korean brinkmanship.  It is learning whether the United States will back its allies with the full commitment that an attack upon one is an attack upon all.  It is also gauging the extent to which the United States and its allies will allow itself to be a victim of nuclear blackmail.

The rapid development of an international nuclear capability by North Korea is forcing our hand.  We cannot afford to limit ourselves to a reactive posture.  We have to move now on the premise that nuclear war is imminent, putting in place all unconventional means to minimize the risk of launch and, if launch is unavoidable, of destroying the warhead before it reaches the United States or its allies.  That requires use of the latest technological means in cyber warfare, electromagnetic pulse weapon systems, laser systems, and anti-ballistic missile systems.  If Kim Jung Un attempts a launch, we cannot rest upon terminating the particular weapons; we must regard that attempt as an act of war and must respond with tactical nuclear weapons to obliterate his regime and his military and weapon systems.

© 2017 Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Jonathan: jemord@emord.com

Our forebears understood that individual liberty was indispensable to progress and happiness, that without it man was but a slave to the state, and that with it there are no limits to the human potential.  Among the subjects of the Crown were a revolutionary few who were willing to fight and die for freedom, so that their families, kinsmen, and future generations would enjoy the blessings of liberty.  Then, as now, the enemies are the same: regulatory entanglement from an unelected administrative state and over taxation.

Faced with the unwillingness of the colonists to accept any form of taxation without representation even to the point of tarring and feathering tax collectors, the administration of George III adopted the so-called Coercive Acts to punish the citizens of Boston.  Through committees of correspondence, patriots in all of the colonies adopted the cause of Boston as their own, viewing the threat against one as a threat against them all.  Although a subset of the universe of all British subjects and constantly exposed by Tories in their midst, the American patriots successfully avoided taxes, overcame restrictions on trade, and in due course defeated tyranny in favor of a Constitution of liberty.

Viewed with disdain, even disgust, by King George and the Tory leadership in Parliament, the American cause for liberty nonetheless inspired several members of Parliament sympathetic to the American cause, who defended the right of the colonists to leave free of entanglements.  The language of liberty recorded in America became universal, inspiring revolutions outside of the colonies, including the overthrow of monarchy in France, albeit with a tyranny of democracy run riot.

The genius encapsulation of the rights of man that is the Declaration of Independence became a powerful rallying cry against which neither the British King nor the Tory Administration ever offered an alternative thesis of comparable suasion.  Indeed, the world has yet to witness a defense of tyranny that can compare with the stirring “self-evident” truths that animate the language of liberty contained in the American Declaration of Independence.

Although comprised of largely undisciplined men, the Continental Army proved itself superior in killing power and tactics to the professionally trained and disciplined soldiers of Britain in the Battle of Saratoga, the turning point of the war for independence.

As we celebrate Independence Day in the presence of governments federal and state that have far more in common with the overbearing power that characterized that of the Hanoverian Kings of England toward the American colonies, we can nevertheless appreciate, as our forebears did then, that there is no force on earth equal to that of individual liberty. The history of the world is proof that even the most oppressive regimes fail in the end to arrest the spirit of liberty that animates man, that, as our Declaration of Independence recognized, is endowed by our Creator in each of us. Repeatedly tyrannical regimes collapse as the spirit of liberty enlivens us to topple those regimes and restore governments that defend the unalienable rights of man to life, liberty, and property. Indeed, as our Declaration explains, just governments are instituted among men to protect the rights of the governed and whenever governments so instituted become an enemy of those rights, it is the duty of the people to alter or abolish them.

We today struggle as our forebears did against the arbitrary will of the administrative state and against overtaxation.  While modern governments depend on redistribution of wealth to curry favor with a government created class of dependents, roughly equal in number to the productive, the Achilles heel of government remains the same as it was in the 18^th century.  In the end overtaxation exhausts the productive who flee from it and regulation so stifles productivity that the overregulated and unemployed come to share a like burden.  When the oppression thus affects all who produce and all who pay taxes alike, they abandon the state and the state finds its ability to redistribute wealth and provide services for the entitled class impossible to sustain.  Then, the entitled class who have depended on state benefits and services likewise turn on the state.  The entitled class, effectively entitled no more, turns in support of the productive class, and all work to alter the tyrannical state into one that defends the unalienable rights of man.  We are caught up in that evolution at present.

The struggle for liberty is eternal.  It is so precisely because just as we come near the zenith of freedom following alteration of a tyrannical regime to one that defends liberty, the political forces that naturally favor vestiture of power in single hands and use of the resources of the productive to further the ends of those in power continually work to undue the gains made for freedom.  Inevitably, as our Founding Fathers well understood, they remove the meaning of those barriers to tyranny that exist in our Constitution, rendering the barriers mere parchment yet again.  And as they do so they ignite the sacred fire of liberty in those of us who love our Constitution and favor liberty over tyranny.  While the articulate among us who defend liberty as a constant remain a minority, over time the message of liberty resonates in the hearts of a majority as the tyranny of the state becomes ever more unbearable for increasing numbers of people.  We then reach a tipping point in politics like the tipping point at Saratoga in the revolutionary war.  At that point, the friends of liberty arise and achieve electoral victory.  At first they remain in a minority but over time as oppression increases they arrive at a majority, and then the work of restoring liberty begins.

© 2017 Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Jonathan: jemord@emord.com

On June 24, the Town of Gifford, Illinois and the Gifford Tornado Relief Fund dedicated a public park to Ernest A. Emord and Jeanette W. Emord, my father and mother.  My parents were remarkable people from the Greatest Generation, who loved and served their country, their community, and their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, friends, and acquaintances.  It is altogether fitting and proper therefore that they have been honored in this way by the small town that they loved and that loved them.  You can learn more about the Emord Memorial Park and my parents by visiting emordmemorialpark.com.  You can also learn more about them through my Christmas Stories columns posted in the archives of newswithviews.com.

Ernest A. Emord (a.k.a. Tommy Reardon) was a professional boxer and a member of the Armed Forces who served in the Navy, Army Air Corps, and United States Air Force for 32 years.  He learned how to box along side his friend Goody Petronelli, who later became Marvelous Marvin Hagler’s boxing coach, and his older friend Rocky Marciano, who was a heavy weight when Tommy was a light weight.  Ernie was a great combination puncher who quickly rose in the ranks from Brockton, Massachusetts to New York.

With the advent of World War II and attainment of an age to serve, he left his boxing career for the military, first serving in the Navy, then in the Army Air Corps, and then in the United States Air Force.  He became the boxing coach for the Air Force in Europe.  After three decades of service involving active duty in the Second World War and pilot training in the Korean War and the Cold War, he retired and moved to Gifford.  There he lived for three decades, touching the lives of many, defending the underdog, and helping dozens of people who were down on their luck.

Jeanette W. Emord was a graduate of Westbrook Junior College in Maine where she studied drama and journalism.  Possessed of a beautiful singing voice, natural acting talent, and ease with mastering and mimicking foreign languages and dialects, she sang on radio during World War II, served troops in the USO, and acted in dramas along the East Coast.  She was the daughter of Dr. William Gordon Walker, a renowned Brockton, Massachusetts cardiologist, who treated many people for free during the Depression, treated outcasts at that time who suffered from venereal diseases (doing so by writing them prescriptions using pseudonyms to shield them from shame), and ultimately treated President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the White House.  Throughout her over five decades of marriage to Ernie Emord, Jenny Emord cared for many kids and adults in need.

Most notably, when my father discovered that two teenage girls lived in a house with two chronically drunk and physically abusive alcoholic parents, he extricated them from that horror and my mother essentially raised them, clothed them, and fed them throughout their high school years.  She became the mother they did not have, and she ensured that they always had the emotional and material support they needed.

Having touched the lives of so many with whom they came in contact all over the world, it did not surprise me in the least when after their deaths I received many calls and much correspondence from people who grieved for their loss and who recited to me stories of how greatly my parents had affected and improved their lives.

There are many examples of selflessness, of patriotic heroism, and of loyal devotion to God, family, and country among those who lived in the Greatest Generation.  My parents would tell you that those others were more deserving than they of any public recognition.  Their own humility was substantial and, so, if they were alive today they would have recommended that the town name the Park after others.  But, indeed, when their stories are known, nearly all would conclude that Ernest A. Emord and Jeanette W. Emord were remarkable.  The love that drove their actions in life still reverberates in the hearts and minds of those whom they loved.  The logical reaction to my parents’ outpouring of love and service  is a reciprocal expression, which love has produced the Emord Memorial Park.  My parents would be delighted no doubt that in this park families and especially children will find joy for generations to come.

© 2017 Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Jonathan: jemord@emord.com

Former FBI Director Comey’s congressional testimony presents nothing to support Democratic accusations that President Trump violated federal law or obstructed justice by interfering with the FBI’s investigation into Russian tampering with the election.  In his recitation of meetings with Trump, Comey offers his interpretation of statements given him, statements he said called for “loyalty” or “honest loyalty” from Comey, and which called upon him to treat former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, whom he referred to as a “good guy,” fairly.  There is in his recitation of the facts nothing that proves President Trump engaged in any illegal act.

The critical factor is that Trump gave no orders to Comey to stop the investigation.  Comey recites no action by any agent of Trump to withhold evidence or obstruct the FBI’s investigation.  Indeed, had Comey countenanced any such action through inaction, he himself would be potentially guilty as complicit in acts of obstruction.  But, in the end, there are no acts of obstruction.

For a President to expect “loyalty” or “honest loyalty” from his FBI Director is not a crime.  Indeed, it is hard to discern what those terms mean, even within the context of Comey’s interpretation of the conversations.  For the President, as chief executive officer of the United States charged with ensuring the faithful execution of the laws to demand that his FBI Director be loyal is legal and appropriate so long as that loyalty requires fulfillment of presidential actions in fulfillment of or in concert with the law.  There is nothing in Comey’s testimony which reveals any call by the President to have Comey commit an illegal act or be loyal to the President in service of an illegal enterprise.

The testimony is, thus, further confirmation that there is no basis for challenging the legality of the actions of the President.  Moreover, Comey confirmed again directly that the President was not a target of the FBI’s investigation and that the FBI had no information which would lead the agency to believe the President had committed any illegal act.

This then is yet more confirmation that President Trump is no Richard Nixon.  This is not a situation where the President is engaged in a cover up of illegal activity.  Indeed, Comey’s testimony neither accuses the President of involvement in any illegal act nor says that, aware of an illegal act, the President took steps to cover-up the illegality.  In short, there is nothing in Comey’s testimony which implicates the President in any act in violation of the laws of the United States.

Despite the absence of testimony or proof that President Trump was involved in any illegal activity, we can well expect the leading Democrats in the House and Senate, who condemned Trump of obstruction of justice before any proof was adduced, to continue to claim his actions to be unlawful.  In fact, Comey gives nothing of substance to support such a charge, yet we can expect Democratic leaders to proceed as they have without the benefit of proof to convict the President of wrong doing he has not committed.A wise media would perform a public service of demanding that those who make accusations of illegality to present the proof in support of those accusations before credence is given them.  But we do not live in an Edward R. Murrow age any more.  Rather, driven by ideological adherence to a liberal agenda, most of the media republish political statements that charge the president with illegality without the slightest serious critical examination of those charges.  The effect, of course, is to mislead people into believing the proof established when, in fact, it is non-existent.

© 2017 Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

President Trump and Secretary of Defense Mattis are unveiling a new strategy to defeat ISIS.  In addition to forming the first coalition of Arab states to work in tandem with the U.S. in ferreting out and destroying radical Islamic terrorists, the President and Defense Secretary have moved American war fighting from a campaign to liberate lands held by ISIS to a campaign to eradicate ISIS.

The shift is a momentous change in U.S. foreign policy and military strategy, yet it is going by with hardly any notice from the media.   By integrating military and military intelligence operations across allied Arab states, the United States for the first time is gaining the means to eliminate its enemies before they cross over to ISIS training camps and terrorist operations.  By changing war fighting from a campaign to retake lands occupied by ISIS to one aiming to eradicate ISIS, the prospect for ending terror is now a real one.

In Mosul, for example, Defense Secretary Mattis is encircling the terrorists, not only to cut off their lines of supply and reinforcement, but also to ensure that they are not able to escape and reform elsewhere.  He means to kill them, and he intends to allow no terrorist to escape if at all possible.

That approach also creates a huge new disincentive for ISIS.  A minority of those who fight for the caliphate are in the end willing to die for it.  When defeated, more ISIS fighters flee and go AWOL than stay and fight to the death.  When death is imminent, ideology takes a back seat, and only the most hard core of the hard core will expose themselves to certain death if they can avoid it.

Consequently, Defense Secretary Mattis’s approach of eradicating terrorists rather than liberating lands includes a bonus benefit for the United States.  Consistent use of this approach will strongly dissuade those who join ISIS for any reason other than suicide.  As Mattis hunts down and eliminates every terrorist through a consistent pattern of eradication, he makes manifest that America intends not to defeat ISIS but to eliminate it.  There is then no refuge, no safe haven, no sure way to regroup, no opportunity to recede from the field of battle.  It is all war all the time and a war to win by eliminating the enemy, not just defeating it.

That extraordinary change from the Obama years, when the military was hamstrung and denied the opportunity to obliterate the enemy, offers a genuine prospect of restoring peace and civilization to the world.  President Obama harbored sympathies for our enemies, not just the Iranians but the terrorists themselves.  He was unwilling to allow our military to fight to the nth degree.  He imposed limits on engagement that not only ensured the escape and reformation of terrorist enemies but also increased the risks our military faced on a daily basis in combat. Many of our best and bravest died precisely because Obama chose to limit their ability to fight, allow terrorists to escape lethal force, and release prisoners from GITMO who have predictably returned to support and commit acts of terror.

We should all be grateful for the momentous changes afoot.  With few exceptions, such as Qatar and Iran, the leaders of the Arab world are accepting President Trump’s challenge and Saudi Arabia’s lead in supporting the war against radical Islamic terrorism.  Already we see a change in the rhetoric coming from Iran.  Like North Korea, Russia, and China, Iran cannot predict what President Trump and Defense Secretary Mattis will do if provoked.  It is engendering a hesitancy on their part that did not exist in the Obama years.  There will come a time in the not so distant future when American leaders will be tested by new conflicts that are unavoidable, but this President unlike his predecessor will likely react in powerful and unpredictable ways to our great strategic advantage.

© 2017 Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

President Trump is changing terms used in political and military discourse in ways that are helping to reassert American leadership in the world.  Radical Islamic terrorists are called for who they are now by the military, the state department, and the White House.  The terrorists are not referred to as monsters; they are losers.  No longer is it the Persian Gulf; it is now the Arabian Gulf.  Consider the impact of these changes.

Speaking at a Bethlehem press conference President Trump condemned the suicide attack in Manchester, England, that killed 22, including children.  He did so not by proclaiming shock and horror at the act of a monster but by conveying condolences to those who have suffered at the hands of a “loser.”  Monsters are not human and possess powers beyond human capacity; we are defenseless against monsters.  Losers are human and possess little power beyond acts of cowardice.  We can defeat losers.  We cannot defeat monsters; they are products of our imaginations.  The change in word choice is brilliant.  It reinforces the President’s commitment, unequivocally communicated to our nation’s military and intelligence leaders that radical Islamic terrorists are to be exterminated, obliterated from the face of the earth.  That commitment promises victory because defeat to “losers” is not an option.

Despite media reports to the contrary, the President did not depart from his decision to refer to radical Islamic terrorists by reference to those three words.  In doing so, he is not attacking Islamic people in general, rather he is attacking that subset of radicals who engage in terror in the name of Allah.  It is those, a minority, who aim to kill all who refuse to submit to their theocratic dictatorship, including Islamic people who refuse to follow that minority.  It is this President who truthfully identifies radical Islamic terrorists as our enemy, and not Barack Obama, that the Saudis embraced with a royal reception and commitment to aid in the war against radical Islamists.  It is this President, not Barack Obama, who the Israelis also have embraced, renewing America’s historic alliance.  Suddenly Iran is the target and its neighbors are coalescing in an alliance with the United States against that radical Islamic state, the chief state sponsor of terrorism in the world.

In a recent conversation with a friend who serves in the Gulf, I was advised of another simple yet profound change that is increasing esprit de corps in the military.  During the Obama Administration, when the White House adopted appeasement of Iran as official U.S. policy, the Gulf was known as the “Persian” Gulf.  Persia is synonymous with Iran and, thus, adopting that phraseology reinforces the notion that the Gulf is properly under Iranian control rather than an international waterway for commerce from all nations.  The Iranians assert that the Gulf is rightfully theirs, deeming the Straits of Hormuz as appropriately dominated by the small gun boats of the Iranian navy.  Thus it is that they engage in antics that pose little military threat to American military vessels but do, on occasion, invite a military response.  During the Obama years, such a response was out of the question and the rules of engagement were so tight that they effectively served as a barrier to self-defense.  President Trump and Secretary of Defense Mattis no longer refer to the Gulf as the “Persian” Gulf.  It is now the “Arabian” Gulf.  In word and deed, the United States is reasserting its power in the region.  President Trump is effectively isolating and surrounding Iran.  While occasionally cantankerous, the Iranian leadership does not know what to make of this President.  They view him as unpredictable, and that is decidedly to America’s advantage.  if they harass American ships, take more Americans captive, or expand their nuclear weapons program, will this President and Secretary of Defense defend America’s interests by sinking Iranian vessels, re-imposing sanctions, or perhaps even destroying a large part of the Iranian navy or air force?  They do not know for sure but they suspect that he will act unpredictably and decisively.  They know he is not moved by threatening rhetoric or jingoistic actions.

Since Thomas Jefferson’s creation of the merchant marines to attack radical Islamic terrorists who harassed American ships off the coast of Tripoli and who took Americans hostage, the most effective means to achieve peace has been to vanquish the barbarians rather than pay tribute to them.  President Trump is that proven course and, in so doing, is changing even the language used in military and political discourse, changing that language in ways that support and magnify American power in the world.

© 2017 Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

Democratic catharsis over Trump’s connection to the Russians, predicated on the unproven assertion that the Russians aided Trump in winning the election, is no doubt confirmation in Putin’s mind that Russian efforts to interfere with domestic American politics are bearing fruit.  The aim of that meddling is to create dissension within the nation by causing Americans to lose faith in Democracy and in their elected officials.  With enough dissension and disunity, Americans can then be politically hamstrung, distracted from acts of global aggression by America’s enemies and unable to protect fully American interests around the world.

One of the greatest ironies of our time is that the very individuals who complain loudly of a fictive Trump-Russian connection (supposedly in defense of American interests against the Russians) and build national campaigns to that effect are themselves the primary servants of Putin’s objective of creating a dysfunctional America.  While indeed Russia is the enemy (and Putin is among the greatest enemies of freedom on earth), political protest to disable Trump fueled by the “resist” movement and embraced by the Democratic Party is doing much to confuse the public and fulfill Putin’s objectives.

President Trump has acted swiftly and decisively to alert the world to the fact that his Administration is building a resurgent America that utterly rejects the appeasement of the Obama years and will not stand by as Russia, China, Iran, Syria, and North Korea reduce America’s economic and political influence and challenge America’s defenses.  The success of those efforts depends on political cohesion and support for President Trump and his administration, a cohesion and support that the Trump-Russian connection and “resist” Trump crowd aims to prevent.

There is among those who disapprove of the President a significant number who don’t simply disagree with him, but who hate him.  For them negative facts about Trump are appreciated but are unnecessary, because they resort to conclusory assertions (like Putin aided Trump in winning the election) without any proof to support their position whatsoever.  They have latched on to this equally unsupported concept that somehow Trump fired Comey because Comey was amassing evidence which showed Trump complicit with the Russians.

In so doing, these individuals are furthering Putin’s cause.  They are creating significant dissension, confusion, and dysfunction.  They have made Trump the enemy rather than Putin.  They stand in the way of all things Trump, even when it is Trump taking action to thwart the advance of Russia, China, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and radical Islamic terrorists against the United States.

There actions engender a further irony.  While lambasting Trump for Russian complicity and sewing the seeds of dissent to all things Trump, they are enabling the enemies of the nation to take advantage of the political rifts and expand their hegemony at the expense of the United States.  They are increasing the likelihood that those enemies will test America’s mettle in various ways, to see if the nation has the ability to unite and defend itself.

There will come challenges in the not so distant future, some of them likely major, where the United States will be faced with an imminent threat requiring decisive action and sustained American support for that action.  Those who so hate Donald Trump as to make every innocuous fact into an impeachable offense are not only confounding the President’s domestic agenda, they are diverting attention away from the true enemies of the nation and increasing the risk that the President will lack the political cohesion and support he needs to defend the nation.

© 2017 Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

Monday, May 15, 2017

Liberal Democrats like Trump nemesis Charles Schumer have been quick to analogize the Comey firing to the “Saturday Night Massacre” of Watergate fame.  The analogy is flawed.  The firing of a special prosecutor investigating the Watergate break-in orchestrated by operatives at the White House and the President’s cover-up of that crime have no parallels in the Trump administration’s dismissal of Director Comey.

After President Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Independent Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, who had subpoenaed White House tapes potentially inculpating President Nixon in obstruction of justice, including the cover-up of the Watergate break-in, Attorney General Richardson refused and resigned.  President Nixon then asked Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox but Ruckelshaus refused and tendered his resignation as well.  The Solicitor General, Robert Bork, was the official next in line at the Department of Justice and, so, Nixon turned to him to fire Cox.  The President had a limousine pick up Bork, take him to the White House and then, before having him sworn in as the new Acting Attorney General, asked Bork to fire Cox.  With reluctance, Bork did just that. These events transpired on Saturday, October 20, 1973.  The firing of Cox was eventually held in violation of the statute giving rise to the Independent Special Prosecutor by U.S. District Court Judge Gerhard Gesell.

Four months before the Saturday Night Massacre, as it was termed by the press, on June 13, 1973, White House aide Alexander Butterfield had famously testified before the Senate Watergate Committee, in a somewhat nonchalant manner, to the existence of a White House taping system wherein most conversations with the President were captured on tape.  On June 25, 1973, former White House Counsel John Dean testified to that same Committee that he had advised the President he could be guilty of obstruction of justice and that there was a “cancer growing on the presidency” which could eventually kill the presidency.

In short, “Watergate” involved direct and circumstantial evidence that the President of the United States was actively involved in a cover-up of a burglary conducted by former CIA operatives at the Democratic National Committee’s Watergate headquarters at the behest of White House and Committee to Re-Elect the President officials.  The Saturday Night Massacre was itself an illegal firing by the President after evidence came to light of his potential involvement in that cover-up and the Independent Special Prosecutor had served the White House with a subpoena for White House tapes.

Unlike Watergate, the firing of the Director of the FBI came not following adduction of evidence inculpating the President in any crime and came not against the wishes of the Attorney General of the United States, Jeff Sessions, and the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, Rod J. Rosenstein.  The firing of the Director of the FBI arose from the FBI Director’s own actions and at the urging of the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General.  Unlike Watergate, there is no credible evidence offered by any U.S. intelligence official tying the President of the United States to any criminal activity involving the Russian government or its operatives.

What we should observe is that while former U.S. Senator Sam Ervin and his committee conducted the Watergate investigation with solemnity and decorum and investigated the facts of Watergate meticulously before drawing any conclusions, the same is not true of current Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.  Indeed both Schumer and Pelosi have become famous for suggesting that the President is guilty of unlawful complicity with the Russians without a shred of supporting evidence and for analogizing President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey to President Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre” when the two events have nothing substantive in common.  Moreover, both have contradicted the testimony of key intelligence officials who have said there is no evidence of the President’s complicity with the Russians by holding press conferences and making public statements that there is such evidence.

It is thus not President Trump who is acting improperly but those who have chosen to condemn him of complicity with the Russians without evidence and those who have chosen to compare the firing of FBI Director Comey whose public reveals of FBI investigations caused him to lose the confidence of the sitting Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General.  Like Richardson and Ruckelshaus before them, Sessions and Rosenstein are men of impeccable integrity.  To presume the firing of Comey improper one must first confront the reality that Sessions and Rosenstein are not the kind of people who would recommend the firing of the FBI Director without just cause for so doing.

© 2017 Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

President Trump’s recent visit at Mar-a-Lago with Chinese President Xi Jinping continues to bear fruit in our confrontation with North Korea’s dictator Kim Jung Un. That visit and President Trump’s continuing interaction with China related to the North Korean problem have borne more fruit than eight years of directionless foreign policy by the Obama Administration.  Rather than continue the retreat characteristic of Obama’s disengagement from international affairs, President Trump has placed pressure on China and North Korea in ways that are causing significant rifts to appear in the Chinese-North Korean relationship.

North Korea is largely dependent on China for survival. The restrictions China has begun to place on North Korea and China’s public scolding of that neighboring communist state are having an effect, leading to the first ever direct criticism by North Korea of China and to a not so veiled threat by North Korea of unspecified retaliatory action against China. The rift is greatly to our advantage in destabilizing the Jung Un regime.

Over twenty percent of the male population in North Korea is in military service.  While a large part of the civilian population is largely destitute, indeed frequently suffering from starvation, the military has historically been kept from that fate. If Chinese restrictions on trade with North Korea result in losses of essential goods, the North Korean military will be first to experience an unprecedented sense of neglect, a loss of food and essential support from the regime. The regime uses the feeding of its military and a form of bribery for top officers to beget loyal service. The carrot is also accompanied by a stick, the unpredictable threat of execution or indefinite detention and imprisonment for those in the military high command whose actions, inactions, or behavior displease Jung Un.

At the top, North Korea thus depends on brutal dictatorship to keep its military regime from biting back. If the military experiences serious depravations due to Jung Un’s saber rattling, the issue of loyalty will be squarely placed before North Korea’s commanders. Will they tolerate the ever-unpredictable Jung Un attendant risk of annihilation if they see a loss of China begetting more widespread starvation and hardship, even for the military? Or, will one or more of the military leaders go rogue and attempt to assassinate Jung Un?

Without question, the approach President Trump is taking, to isolate North Korea and place it in a box wherein it faces a hostile world that cuts off trade while pointing munitions at the ready in the face of Jung Un, is best calculated to destabilize his regime. It is also the best alternative to a leader whose conventional forces are many and whose nuclear weapons program poses a threat to the world.

Without the squeeze, Jung Un will rapidly develop a warhead deliverable anywhere in the world.  With it, he may proceed along that path but does so in a state of constant peril and while experiencing the risk of losing China’s support entirely. On the political level, the squeeze helps imperil Jung Un’s regime. On the economic level, it causes the typical North Korean and, eventually, the military, to lose essential goods and services. On the military level, it ensures that any move by North Korea will face an overwhelming response from the United States and its allies that would take out North Korea’s ability to wage offensive war and, likely, take out Jung Un.

Keeping that squeeze in place is the wisest move America can make. President Trump and Secretary of Defense Mattis have proven instrumental in protecting the United States from this rogue regime.  We should all recoil from the thought of what predicament the world would be in had Obama’s feckless foreign policy remained in place during this crisis. There is no question in the minds of foreign leaders that President Trump will use American military power to the fullest to arrest aggression fomented by Jung Un.  That sure knowledge is our best defense.

© 2017 Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

President Reagan, the Great Communicator, succeeded in pushing through what was then a largely hostile Congress one of the largest tax reductions in American history.  He appealed directly to the American people through the medium of television, and the people responded overwhelmingly in favor of the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981.  That tax cut laid the foundation for decades of economic growth and prosperity.  President Trump aims to do the same thing but with even larger tax cuts.  In promoting his corporate and individual tax cuts, which his Secretary of the Treasury labels the most significant in American history, he should take advantage of every media opportunity to call for support, appealing to friend and foe alike.  Congress will endeavor to neuter his bill through all manner of countermeasures, but those countermeasures will only succeed if the public is either unaware of them or persuaded to agree with them.

The President appears to have a solid 40% of support for his agenda.  The remainder is variously persuadable.  Everyone in the middle class and all small to medium sized businesses are in dire need of tax relief.  They are the audience that can alter the course of history if energized by the President to support his tax reform bill, but they must be educated about the bill and persuaded of the immediate need to support it.  He and proxies from all sectors of the economy need to be heard to favor the bill loud and clear, but the President has to lead the charge.

President Trump should appear on nationwide television from the oval office to advise of his delivery of his tax reform bill to Congress, to explain its vital features and effects, and to urge the public to support the measure.  The Administration should likewise solicit from friendly political action committees support for a series of advertisements endorsing the bill.  The public needs to see that individuals from small business people to titans of industry want this bill to pass.

All libertarian and conservative think tanks and public policy groups should be urged to support the measure publicly and encourage their members and supporters to contact Congress in support of the bill.  A massive public relations effort must reach the American people and impress upon them the urgent need for action in support of the tax reform agenda.

Only if that silent majority which voted for Trump is energized as before, and only if those who did not vote for Trump but appreciate economics are likewise energized, can significant reductions become reality.

At a time when a huge segment of employable Americans are outside the work force and small and medium sized businesses, in particular, struggle under the combined weight of overregulation and over-taxation, there is a crying need to cut tax rates significantly, as the President has proposed.  Doing so will spur an economic boom which will swell the ranks of the employed and trigger a great market expansion as goods and services and research and development bring previously unaffordable offerings to consumers.

As Arthur Laffer famously explained, the ironic effect of significant marginal tax rate reduction is an increase in tax revenues as both the economy grows and those who have ferreted money into tax loop holes suddenly pay more in taxes.  The likely result of the tax reductions in the long term will be less debt than if the status quo were maintained.

President Trump’s re-election prospects in no small measure hinge on his ability to deliver regulatory and tax reforms that revitalize the economy, including domestic manufactures.  He aims to achieve a significant rise in the Gross Domestic Product, one not possible without passage of his tax bill and significant reduction in business stifling regulations.

Through Executive Orders and memoranda he has initiated the move to liberate business from costly regulatory entanglement.  A lot more deregulation needs to occur to bring about meaningful and lasting results.  Those efforts alone will not translate into a significant rise in the GDP unless accompanied by large tax reductions.

© 2017 Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

North Korean Dictator Kim Jung Un has only one card to play in the international arena.  The country is essentially bankrupt but for its enormous army and stockpile of conventional weapons.  Its nuclear program inches forward to the day when it can fire an ICBM at South Korea, Japan, or the United States.  Un is perhaps the most reckless of North Korea’s dictators since the end of the Korean War.  Since then, the United States and South Korea and the Chinese and North Korea have maintained a hair trigger divide with North Korea never renouncing the state of war and always promising to one day takeover the remainder of the Korean peninsula.  Although most North Koreans are destitute, the twenty-five percent inducted in the military are fed and are fiercely loyal to Un.  President Trump and Un are now eye to eye, waiting for the other to blink.  North Korea is no match for the United States, but history teaches that Un will continue to be provocative and wisdom dictates unconventional means are the best response to Un’s provocations.  In short, we must aim to isolate and neuter him first and foremost but must be ready, if all else fails and Un launches nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons, to annihilate North Korea.

One of the primary difficulties facing the United States in its stand-off with North Korea is our lack of good intelligence concerning just what makes Kim Jung Un tick.  He is an odd, quirky, and brash fellow, to be sure, but does his immaturity ultimately lend itself to a fear of being deposed and of annihilation or to delusions of grandeur in which he fantasizes that his ambitions will translate into reality, no matter what.  Dictators of comparable ilk, like Adolph Hitler, have frequently underestimated their opponents and have exaggerated their own country’s power.  Does Un, like Hitler, micromanage military strategy?  Does he interfere with the recommendations of his military commanders?  Will he control in detail the use of North Korean forces in battle, such that they will be inflexible in responding to the dynamic array of force that the United States and its allies can marshal?

Having little to go by in comprehending the psyche of Un, we nonetheless do have a good idea of what weapons systems are available to him and of his command, control, and communications.  Secretary of Defense Mattis is well situated to discern the weaknesses in those systems.

Although defense of American interests demands that we maintain a high state of readiness for war, the better part of this battle can now be waged to render North Korea increasingly isolated and to sabotage its means for waging war before its outbreak.  North Korea is linear in its conventional force.  Its unconventional warfare involves activity characteristic of the mob and terrorists (kidnappings, assassination, poisonings, and terrorist acts).  We can anticipate that Un will expand its mob type activities against Americans as his conventional forces are checked.  He will continue to supply terrorist groups that target Americans with weapons, perhaps even fissile materials for making dirty bombs.

The President is ably served by Secretary of Defense Mattis who is a well-informed and well-educated warrior, very much aware of North Korea’s weaknesses and of how best to employ conventional and unconventional means to isolate and neuter Un.  The United States has plenty of means short of overt military engagement to achieve its objectives but must be positioned to employ overwhelming and devastating force if Un deploys nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.

Were this crisis to have arisen during the Obama Presidency (as indeed it did to a somewhat lesser degree), he could be counted upon by Un to recoil from ultimate conflict, enabling Un to succeeds in intimidating his neighbors and in advancing his nuclear program to the point of posing a direct threat of a first strike capability against Japan and the United States.  We are fortunate that the crisis has arisen while Trump is President and General Mattis serves as Secretary of Defense.  Neither one of them will allow Un the advantage. Neither one is shy about resorting to unconventional warfare to achieve our strategic defense with the least risk to American and allied lives.

Cyberwarfare can disable much of the technology upon which Un depends to launch rockets.  Electromagnetic pulse weapons can incapacitate North Korea’s old communist, top down command, control, and communications model, making it impossible for him to wage conventional war.  We can effectively deny North Korea financial assistance and banking support from most of the world.  If we increase our naval presence around the Korean peninsula, we can impose a naval blockade if needed, denying North Korea access to markets for export and import of goods.  President Trump has wisely made Chinese constraint of Un’s jingoism a condition precedent to more normalized relations with the United States.  We can specifically make elimination of Un a top priority in our dealings with China, demanding that the Chinese find a way to remove the dictator and deescalate tensions.

In the last analysis, if Un transforms his rhetoric into action and unleashes nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons on South Korea, Japan, or the United States, we must be sure that he knows and believes that the United States will swiftly move to take him out, to annihilate North Korea, and to obliterate its six million troops, its conventional and unconventional weapons systems, its air and rocket forces, and its nuclear weapons production facilities.  He needs to appreciate that his own life will be eliminated promptly if he takes those steps.  We need to make sure that the message reaches him through proxies and that he receives it repeatedly.  We should redouble our efforts to make sure that all weapon systems needed to achieve that objective are at a high state of readiness so as to minimize the loss of American and allied lives.

President Trump appreciates that quiet action and unflinching resolve are the best antidote to Un’s jingoism.  He has wisely elected to avoid telegraphing to Un and the world the precise steps we are taking to repulse Un.  It is best that Un feel the effect of the action before he hears of it, keeping him off balance and in a state of constant uncertainty.  There is perhaps no better leadership assembled in the United States to confront Un than exists now.  It is an apt time for us to end the era of strategic patience.

© 2017 Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

The shrill cries that Donald Trump is a patsy for Vladimir Putin have been quelled of late as the President projects American military might into Putin’s Syrian back yard.  Putin proxy Assad has come to the startling realization, as Putin has himself, that Donald Trump is no Barack Obama and is not about to be a feckless pawn complicit in a Russian resurgence or in an Assad chemical war that induces more mass migrations westward.

At a time when radical Islamic terrorists have successfully insinuated themselves into migrant populations from Syria, Assad unleashed chemical weapons on his own people, effecting an even greater migration out of the country to the West.  Aiming to stem the flow and the concomitant threat of terrorist attacks it brings to Europe and the United States, President Trump together with Secretary of Defense Mattis executed a bold move to reverse the Assad/Putin course.  By knocking out most of the air base from which Assad launched his chemical attacks, Trump revealed that he has replaced feckless leadership and ephemeral red lines with a reassertion of American military might.  It was a bold and necessary move.

Suddenly the Putin calculus has changed, as has that of communist China and North Korea and the theocratic dictatorship of Iran.  They must now accept the real possibility that President Trump will use American military power to retaliate for acts of aggression that threaten American interests, whether that be from mass migration induced by Assad’s concussive hammering of the Syrian people; through interdiction of American navy vessels or air forces by the Iranian regime in the Strait of Hormuz; through greater Russian military adventurism in the Ukraine and Eastern Europe; or through the launch of ballistic missiles by North Korea.

To hammer home the advantage, President Trump advised Chinese President Xi Jinping as American Tomahawks hit the Syrian base that if China fails to reign in North Korean Dictator Kim Jung-Un, the United States will.  In less than one hundred days of his presidency, Donald Trump has re-established that the United States will no longer pursue an apology tour and withdrawal and retreat from the defense of its vital national interests.  The contrast with the Obama Administration’s constant flogging of the American ideal and appeasement of its enemies could not be more profound.  The Trump doctrine will mean a much safer America, respected by America’s allies and feared by its enemies.

The odd and hypocritical liberal hue and cry against Trump, never spoken about Obama or Clinton despite a wealth of evidence, that Trump is somehow complicit in Russian attempts to undermine American interests at home and abroad has collapsed amidst direct evidence that he has put America first.  It is the constitutional duty of the Commander-in-Chief to defend America against threats at home and abroad.  Obama shirked his responsibilities as Commander-in-Chief; Donald Trump has assumed the mantle.

After years of his successful cowing of Obama, Putin now faces the prospect of a formidable opponent and an unraveling of Russian global domination.  Putin’s stalking of the American military with his own, his veiled and direct threats against the United States, and his collaboration with proxies and allies to reverse American political and economic gains are now confronting the reality of a resurgent America, one far stronger militarily and economically than Russia.  Losing revenues from a declining oil market and without the economic might to compete with a revitalized American military, Putin watches as Trump plans a major expansion of the American military and economy.  He cannot compete with that expansion, and he knows that in its wake Russia will be far less influential and far less able to pursue its adventurism.  Trump is putting Putin in a box.

China seized the initiative during the Obama years to build a mighty global military for the first time and to assert its power by violating international law with the construction of islands in the South China Sea, islands occupied by its forces and capable of constricting the vital flow of goods and services through the region.  Although accurate in its predictions that Obama would not stand in the way, it now faces uncertainty as Trump applies new pressure to undo the Chinese advantage.  China relished the effect of North Korea in shaking up the SEATO alliance’s confidence in American defense of the region, and in Japan’s confidence in American defense.  It filled the void with jingoistic threats to those powers followed by creation of the military islands in the South China Sea.  Now China must confront the real prospect that North Korea may precipitate an American military response, upsetting its leverage over regional powers and forcing China into a protracted struggle with its small Southern neighbor with a big appetite for war.

No longer is America hiding from the very real threats to its interests.  No longer is America allowing its enemies to advance based on a consistent retreat.  The tables have turned because Donald Trump has the interests of the United States at heart.  We should all be grateful.

© 2017 Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

Beginning in earnest in the 1960’s on American college campuses and continuing thereafter down to the grade school level, public schools have rejected education that inculcates the American ethos of the Founding and New Nation periods.  Indeed, American education has become hostile to American exceptionalism, denigrating rather than celebrating the extraordinary achievements that made America a unique place of limited government, freedom, and free enterprise and the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth.  As a consequence we now witness the rise of a generation of lost youth, Americans by birth or naturalization only, who do not know what it means to be an American beyond pop culture’s distortion of the world, who lack even a basic understanding of American history, and who in numbers higher than in any prior generation subscribe to a view of America as undeserving of its place in the world.  This generation of lost youth fail to appreciate that without diligent and intelligent defense of liberty, the American ethos will die and with it the very strictures that limit power and preserve liberty.  The abandonment of the American ethos by our lost youth will not be arrested until American education disavows its American apologia and once again fully embraces and celebrates a deep education in and profound respect for the United States, our extraordinary history of limited government, liberty, and free enterprise.

Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and Madison all subscribed to the view that the survival of liberty and republican government depended on instilling in our youth a deep appreciation for the lessons of the American revolution; for the fight to secure a government instituted for the very purpose of protecting the rights of the governed; for virtue, piety and industry; and for the need to defend republicanism (a devotion to secure the hard fought gains of the revolution against measures that would invariably aim to destroy it in service to the ambitions of those in power).  Educators kept faith with the founding generation and fulfilled that promise well until after the 1930’s with a radical departure occurring in the 1960’s and continuing to this day.

Our forebears knew that if we did not raise youth to appreciate the ideological origins of the American republic, to comprehend the many hard fought battles for independence, and to appreciate the fundamental differences between liberty and tyranny, a republic and a despotic government, and a mixed constitution and a government of centralized powers, the resulting ignorance would be the greatest threat to the survival of a republican form of government.  We would lack the intellectual fortitude and patriotic zeal needed to defend the republic against those ever present threats to liberty at home and abroad that seek to subvert liberty in pursuit of self-interest.  Over the last sixty years, we have experienced that grave turn.  The new generation that now embraces socialism, that has not even a modicum of understanding of or appreciation for American history, and that does not understand the meaning of liberty or of tyranny are ill equipped to exercise the vigilance required to restore, defend, and perpetuate our republican form of government.

It is that fact which poses the greatest threat to the survival and success of our republic.  It is that fact which leads to mind numbing protest without purpose, to disrespect for and destruction of property,  and to an insatiable demand for immediate gratification at public expense.  Liberty depends on sacrifice in a never ending struggle to limit government power, but we now witness the rise of a generation that takes liberty for granted and, so, lacks any willingness to sacrifice for it.

I write now of the majority.  There are still precious youth who defy the odds, who acquire a deep appreciation for our history, a love of their country, and a willingness to die for liberty if that becomes necessary.  They are the last, best hope of the rising generation.  They are the few awake as the alarm bells ring while the majority remains asleep unaware of the crisis that surrounds them.

To change direction requires that states across the nation demand that public schools teach youth from kindergarten through high school the history of the American revolution, the doctrines ensconced in the Declaration of Independence, the reasons for a written constitution and the power limiting characteristics of the United States Constitution,  the intellectual foundations of liberty and the Bill of Rights, the precise doctrines which underpin republican government, the association between maintenance of limited government and preservation of liberty, and associations between protection of liberty, free enterprise, and prosperity.  The aim must be for all those who are educated in American schools to understand the American ethos with the hope that they will come to love it, as a precondition to their fundamental civic duty (to defend the United States from its enemies both domestic and foreign).

© 2017 Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

A congressional hearing is a poor substitute for a court of law.  Although both suffer from imperfections, the rules of evidence, the right to counsel, and the risk of appellate courts overturning lower courts create an environment far more conducive to justice than exists in congressional hearings where virtually no constraints exist on abuse of power.  We once again see stark proof of political destruction of justice in the confirmation hearings of Jeff Sessions and Neil Gorsuch and in the endless quest to condemn Donald Trump for ties to Russia without the slightest evidence in support.

Those of us who have represented parties in congressional hearings must face the sad reality that political grand standing to make a public spectacle for the evening news is often of far greater import to members of Congress than maintaining any semblance of impartiality, of search for truth and justice, of defense of the rule of law, or of a presumption of innocence in the absence of a conviction.

Although some members do not fit the mold, the typical member uses each moment in the spotlight to grand stand, to ask loaded questions, and to inveigh against people and positions to please particular special interests.  Politics in the congressional hearing environment is often vile with members engaging in character assassination, assertion of false charges, distortion of the facts, and abuse of power without a second thought as to the ultimate consequences that stem from such conduct.

The endless search for an illegal connection between the Trump campaign or Administration and the Russian government reveals the worst in political behavior.  Without any hard facts to establish an effort by Donald Trump to involve the Russian government in influencing the outcome of the American elections, members complain loudly that the association is a fact, that Trump is an agent of Putin doing his bidding against the interests of the American people, and that Trump may even be a victim of blackmail with Putin using Trump’s tax returns as leverage to manipulate him.  All of this is hokum, not only grossly speculative but directly contrary to evidence that has been adduced.  For the prescient listener and observer, resort to these tactics to disparage the President reveals the moral bankruptcy of the pols who make the assertions.  Senator Charles Schumer, for example, prefers to jump right to the conclusion that probable cause exists of criminal collusion before a shred of supportive evidence has come to light.  He calls for a special prosecutor to investigate without a scintilla of evidence that a crime has been committed.

Hypocrisy reigns supreme in these efforts as many of the members of Congress have far more close knit connections with operatives of the Russian government than Donald Trump or anyone else in his administration.  While labeling Trump a partisan buoyed by Putin, they completely ignore the far more substantial charges against Hillary Clinton for conflicts of interest.  When Clinton facilitated the transfer of 20% of U.S. Uranium reserves to Uranium One, a corporate entity that serves the Russian government, no Democrat howled and, to this day, not a single Democratic leader has cried foul or called for an investigation.

The efforts to sink Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Judge Neil Gorsuch smack of desperation but they also tell us about just how far the Democratic leadership is willing to go into the mire of falsehood and innuendo to bring down their opponents.  The public should be wary and should respond in 2018 by voting out of office those who support these sordid tactics.  Indeed, it is this rank speculation followed by demands for legal prosecution that led the Massachusetts Bay Colony to execute those it deemed “witches.”  It is rank speculation followed by demands for prosecution that led the United States government to place Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II without probable cause that those interned had conspired with the enemy and with the overwhelming majority harboring a love of the United States to the point of being willing to fight and die for the nation. It is rank speculation followed by demands for legal prosecution that led former Senator Joseph McCarthy to destroy the reputations and livelihoods of many fine Americans whose only true fault was to land on McCarthy’s list of communist sympathizers without any proof, as in the case of Donald Trump, that they were agents of a communist power.

Senator Charles Schumer and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi are now a part of this vile legacy of McCarthyism.  They are modern day witch hunters, fear mongers, and McCarthyites.  The very prejudice they loudly condemn as they bang their drums against racism, sexism, etc., they adopt and further themselves when they attack Trump falsely for ties to Russia, when they condemn Trump supporters falsely as racists, and when they besmirch the well-deserved good reputations of men of the utmost character and integrity like Jeff Sessions and Neil Gorsuch.

© 2017 Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

Psychiatry has a justly deserved bad rap.  Until the second half of the Twentieth Century, psychiatry was generally viewed by physicians as the least credible area of practice, one where near exclusive subjectivity reigns.  It was not until the pharmaceutical industry decided that psychiatry was a great, open field for the development of new classes of drugs that psychiatry became viewed as more mainstream within the profession.  To support the creation of an extensive line of anti-psychotic and anti-depressant medications, the pharmaceutical industry worked in tandem with psychiatrists to label many conditions not previously identified as specific diseases as such.  Once defined as a disease, any mental condition is then capable of having drugs approved for it.

Today, one in five Americans is on psychiatric drugs.  That is greater than at any time in our history and greater drugging of the American populace than in any other country on earth. The abuses are legion, from kids whose normal activity for children is deemed hyperactivity disorder to adults whose loss of parents or spouses brings on an episode of depression, all are invited to take drugs that have awful side effects, from the shrinking of the brain, to the elimination of emotion, to the creation of new psychoses, to the onset of thoughts of violence or suicide.  Many of the psychiatric drugs approved by the FDA have no proof of efficacy beyond placebo.  Despite FDA’s and the industry’s contentions to the contrary, many are addictive.

With the growth of the psychiatric profession and the increasing promulgation of laws and decisions that force parents to accede to psychiatrists’ demands for the drugging of their children as a condition precedent to public schooling, the field of psychiatry and the industry that supports it have become leviathans.  Lost in this rise is a true concern for the welfare of patients and, most importantly, an abandonment of the essential medical creed that demands practitioners to avoid harm.

No clearer example of the toxic industry-psychiatry union exists than in the case of electro-convulsive therapy, ECT, more commonly known as shock treatment.  For decades the psychiatric profession proudly endorsed the “efficacy” of lobotomies, the insertion of metal objects into the prefrontal lobe of the brain to severe nerve pathways.  At the age of 23 Rosemary Kennedy had a lobotomy following recommendations given to her parents that this “new medical procedure” in the late 1930’s would calm their daughter and eliminate her mood swings.  The effect was devastating, leaving her with the IQ of a 2 year old and incontinent. The Kennedys were devastated and deeply regretted the trust they placed in the psychiatrists who performed the procedure.

In the 1970s numerous nations banned lobotomies, as did many U.S. states, but a relic from that same era, shock therapy, continued on; indeed, today as many as an estimated 1 million shock therapy treatments are performed each year in the United States.  The exact number is unknown because neither the federal government nor the state governments require medical reporting of the treatment.

Lobotomies are now widely accepted as barbaric and inefficacious, even by the psychiatric profession.  But not so shock therapy.  Psychiatrists, and even the American Psychiatric Association, tout it as beneficial, particularly in cases of “refractory” psychiatric treatment (i.e., when patients do not respond well to psychiatric medications).

Shock treatment involves the placement of electrodes on either side of the brain, near the temple.  The unit is attached to an electrical source and then upwards of 450 or more volts of electricity are directed into the brain, ordinarily at longer intervals based on age.  Patients frequently undergo thirty or more treatment sessions wherein each time they are shocked.  To endure the procedure without convulsions, patients are given sedatives and muscle relaxants and are strapped to a gurney.  The treatment is barbaric and is favored in many brutal regimes worldwide as a form of torture.

The FDA allows this treatment despite never receiving proof of its safety or efficacy.  Thrice, FDA asked the industry to supply scientific proof of the safety and efficacy of shock treatment, but each time the industry demurred, failing to submit the requested evidence.  Despite that fact, FDA has done nothing to stop the proliferation of the devices and the expansive use of them by the psychiatric profession.  The few groups that have attempted to gather data about ECT have discovered that it has been used in the United States on people of all ages from children to adults.  The adverse effects are many and often profound.  Those subjected to it have suffered from memory loss, atrial fibrillation, brain shrinkage, heart attack, stroke, visual impairment, loss of sense of smell, loss of sense of taste, myopathy (muscle weakness), and death.  Many do not remember being married, do not recognize their spouses, do not recognize their children, do not remember how to play a musical instrument, do not remember how to practice their professions, etc.

There is no scientific evidence of the long-term safety or efficacy of ECT.  By law, FDA is supposed to ensure that no drug or device is marketed without that proof, yet FDA has long classified ECT as a Class III (high risk) medical device.

Adding to the abandonment of protection of the public, FDA has recently proposed to allow ECT to be used more commonly in the United States by physicians.  It has proposed to reclassify these barbaric instruments of torture from Class III (high risk) to Class II (intermediate risk).  On behalf of patients who have suffered lifelong debilitation from shock treatment and with the great assistance of attorney Kendrick Moxon (who has spent a lifetime researching ECT and has amassed an enormous body of evidence confirming its lack of safety and efficacy), my firm has petitioned FDA to stop the reclassification and urge the agency to revoke clearance for these dreadful machines.

© 2017 – Jonathan Emord – All Rights Reserved

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon explained that the Trump Administration intends to achieve a “deconstruction of the administrative state.”  Four deregulation executive orders later, all within the first fifty days of President Trump’s term in office, we can see that President Trump is driven to achieve substantial and lasting deregulation with an unwavering commitment; he is taking unprecedented action to cut back regulation and reduce the size and scope of the federal bureaucracy.  No President since Ronald Reagan has proceeded with such determination, and no President has proceeded so astutely to that end, relying on multiple simultaneous angles of attack against the bureaucracy, thus maximizing the chance of success.

The approach taken by the Administration is exceedingly clever.  In prior administrations, much lip service has been paid to deregulation, but the Presidents have often relegated the initiative to Vice Presidents who have maintained a somewhat half-hearted effort that has failed to stop the massive growth of the administrative state.  The problem with relying exclusively on the agencies themselves to recommend rules for elimination is that the agencies have an inherent conflict of interest.  When agency heads advocate elimination of regulation and reduction in the size and scope of their agencies, they are recommending a diminution in their own power and influence.  It should come as no surprise, then, that the only times when agencies have been deregulated significantly is when both the President and the President’s pick to be agency head were of one mind, to deregulate, and with a clear understanding from the start that the agency head’s actions may well alienate the bureaucracy, the regulated class, Congress, and the very professional community into which the agency head would ordinarily go after government employment.

Among the best examples of an agency head who remained true to his deregulatory mission even at the expense of extreme contrary pressure from a hostile Congress, hostile regulatory community, and hostile press was former FCC Commissioner Mark Fowler.  He did more to deregulate the broadcast media and bring about true competition than any other person to hold that position.  He did so at considerable personal expense, bravely ignoring repeated threats made to him that by pursuing a policy of sweeping deregulation he would become persona non grata with industry leaders and their lawyers and consultants who depended on the regulations to maintain those leaders’ market dominance.  He, and his successor, Dennis Patrick, deregulated with zeal, based on constitutional principles that revivified First Amendment protection for independent editorial control of the broadcast media, and rebuked with wit, wisdom, and grace often vehement and caustic attacks from enemies of the First Amendment, such as then Congressman, now Senator, Ed Markey.

President Trump has astutely created engines of persistent deregulation within his executive branch agencies.  Not only has he ordered that no new agency regulation be adopted unless two existing agency regulations are eliminated, he has also ordered the agencies to identify and eliminate all costly impediments to free market operation.  Although he has ordered the agencies to deregulate, he is not depending on the agency heads alone to achieve his deregulatory objectives.  Rather, he has created within each agency a deregulation task force that will also identify regulations to be placed on the chopping block.  But that is not all, stacking the deck further against the forces for regulation, he is actively soliciting input from outside government critics of regulation and from industry stakeholders adversely affected by regulations, aiming to leave no stone unturned.

His freeze order not only prevents new regulations from being implemented but also applies to guidance documents.  During the Obama years, the administrative agencies flouted the legal strictures of the Administrative Procedure Act by adopting what were legislative rules as “guidance documents” without going through the legally required notice and comment rulemakings.  On the one hand, the Obama agencies disingenuously declared the rules presented as mere ‘guidance” for industry, not to be considered legislative rules, but on the other they enforced those guidances as rules against the regulated industries.  The effect was to create authoritarian rules, i.e., rules adopted by the unelected agency heads and imposed without any sure way for industry to challenge them in the courts.

When parties would challenge the “guidances” in the courts, the courts would often reject the challenges as not stating a true case or controversy in light of agency statements to the courts that the positions were but “guidance” and not rules.  Bannon and Trump are very much on to the deceptive and costly game of legerdemain performed by the agencies and are routing out those instances where agencies have created rules through guidance documents.

The steps taken by the President and his senior advisors to ensure substantial and meaningful deregulation are extraordinary.  They hold out great promise for an increase in freedom and free enterprise.  There can be no significant economic recovery unless American enterprise is unleashed from the costly and freedom killing shackles imposed upon them by zealous federal regulators over the last sixty years.  President Trump knows this, and he is doing everything in his power to deconstruct the administrative state.

The replace part of the President’s health care bill is under criticism for including tax credits.  The argument is that tax credits (or direct payments from the U.S. treasury) establish a new entitlement when they go to folks who either pay no taxes at all or who pay an amount in taxes less than the amount paid in the credit.  The credits are aimed at enabling those without the financial wherewithal to pay for private insurance to help manage the cost of insurance.  There is an alternative to tax credits that I discuss at some length in my book Restore the Republic.  That alternative would create an incentive for family members, businesses, health care providers and hospitals to pay for the care of the indigent without taxpayers footing the bill through tax credits.

In Restore the Republic, I recommend that legislation be passed to codify a tax deduction equal to a $1.50 for every $1.00 paid by an individual or corporation to pay for the health care of a person in need or an employee.  By codifying a deduction of this kind, people could substantially reduce their tax liability by doing what they likely would do were they not taxed so heavily (take care of their own).

Each taxpaying family member should be able to reduce his or her taxes significantly by covering the cost of health care (or health insurance) given another family member.  Each taxpaying employer should be able to reduce its taxes significantly by covering the cost of health care (or health insurance) given an employee.  Each physician, health care provider, or hospital should be able to reduce his or its taxes significantly by covering the cost of health care for the indigent.

This approach encourages philanthropy and family ties while at the same time granting significant tax relief.  It decreases funding of public sector health care programs while increasing private care and philanthropy.

Private philanthropy of this kind is far more efficient, accurate, and effective than government programs which are ordinarily rife with waste, fraud and abuse.

Therefore, as the Republican majority mulls over the President’s Obamacare replacement, it would do well to replace the tax credit approach with the tax deduction approach I have explained above.  By permitting the family member, business, health care provider and hospital to be given a meaningful tax deduction for taking care of their own, the President will likely build a greater base of support for his replacement plan than currently exist in the House and Senate.

Conservatives and libertarians rightly contend that tax deductions are likewise manipulative and distort private markets, but we live in a world of second bests.  Obamacare exists and so does the massive welfare state.  To wean the nation from both requires measures that afford a politically achievable transition.  The proposal I offer, of tax deductions for taxpayers to foot the medical and medical insurance bills of family members, employees, and the indigent is a realistic means to transform the health care market, making it far less public, far more responsive to the market, and far more capable of helping those in need than the current system.

The Trump Administration is evaluating how best to transfer back to the states powers that have been usurped by the federal government since the New Deal, including an ever greater role planned for the states in public education, health care, public safety, land management, and pollution control.  There is in the President’s intended devolution of power to the states an opportunity for reduction in federal spending and in state burdens.  There is also an opportunity for the Trump Administration to evaluate every unfunded federal mandate imposed on the states and eliminate all which are redundant of state functions or interfere with state-tailored means to address the underlying issues, which means are likely to be less costly and more effective.  This devolution of power signals a return to dual federalism, including less federal paternalism and more state-centric solutions to the peculiar problems of each state’s citizens.

During the Reagan Administration, President Reagan issued Executive Order 12291 and Congress passed the State and Local Cost Estimate Act of 1981.  Those measures were designed to quantify the cost to the states of unfunded federal mandates.  Hundreds of pieces of federal legislation contain unfunded mandates, including prominently the No Child Left Behind Act, Medicaid, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Act, the Wilderness Act, and the Endangered Species Act.  No one knows for sure the total cost to the states of the mandates now imposed nationwide but they are likely in the tens of billions of dollars.

The order of federal business since the New Deal has been to remove discretion from the states by imposing federal fiats of one kind or another, frequently without funding support.  Those legislative commands either compel the states to undertake initiatives at state expense to receive other federal benefits or compel the states to act without any financial help.  Over the last thirty years traditional state functions in education, health and welfare, and criminal justice have been usurped by the federal government, leaving much of the cost of compliance on the states.

As was apparent at the recent National Governors’ Conference, a majority of Governors view the mandates as overwhelming, rendering the states increasingly mere functionaries of the federal government, and denying the states discretionary funds sufficient to implement their own tailored plans at less cost.

The great deregulation initiative commenced on February 24 with President Trump’s Executive Order on Enforcing the Regulatory Reform Agenda should be followed by an additional Executive Order to require a review with the aid of the states’ Attorneys General of all unfunded federal mandates.  That order should anticipate a move by the Administration to alleviate the states of the mandates.

First, all unfunded mandates which are redundant of state functions should be identified as appropriate for repeal.  Second, all anachronistic unfunded mandates and those which impose costs that exceed benefits should also be up for termination.  Third, all mandates in areas that could more appropriately be addressed by state and local officials should likewise be slated for elimination.

Then, with the mandates identified that are in need of elimination and the support of a majority of the nation’s Governors, the Trump Administration’s allies in Congress should introduce legislation to eliminate the unfunded mandates.  The reduction in cost burdens pm the states combined with the greater freedom the states will acquire to address issues of education, health care, public safety, land management, and pollution will lead to less costly and more efficient government overall, as well as to a revitalization of the dual federalist constitutional system intended by the Founding Fathers.

On Friday, February 24, President Trump issued an Executive Order to establish task forces in every regulatory agency dedicated to achieving his directives to cut the federal bureaucracy by 75%. The President is doing more than any prior occupant of his office to end the era of government by bureaucratic oligarchy. His action promises to do more to restore rule by the elected in place of rule by the unelected heads of the agencies than any President in the modern era, since before Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The President’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, heralded the move as the first step toward “deconstruction of the administrative state,” words spoken with the force of the President’s conviction and the promise of returning America to the people. Since the 1930s, Congress has delegated progressively more legislative, executive and judicial powers to the unelected heads of what are now in excess of 250 regulatory agencies.

Today those agencies preside over a vast body of regulatory law that has never been approved by Congress. Indeed, federal regulation, adopted independent of Congress, represents over two thirds of all federal law. The heads of agencies have ruled like oligarchs, largely unaccountable to the courts, Congress and the American people. Congress has conveniently delegated away its and the Executive and Judicial Branches powers year after year, removing every thorny issue of law and policy from Congress (where accountability carries consequences at the ballot box) to the hands of the unelected who rule with little public awareness of their often sweeping actions.

Year after year industry sectors have been burdened with new regulations, some to the point of driving out most market players and leaving behind a regulated monopoly. The result has been progressively less freedom, less market entry and activity, and more government power to determine winners and losers. The system has grown incredibly corrupt with regulatees essentially buying regulation by providing sure sources of post-government employment to the decision makers in the agencies.

New start ups and small firms along with consumers have suffered from the system. Repeatedly regulations that were designed to provide market protection or advantages for incumbent firms with political influence have been sold to the media and the public as designed to protect or further the public interest. The contrary reality has caused most Americans to distrust Congress and the agencies.

The President’s new initiative differs from deregulatory regimes of the past, oftentimes lead by Vice Presidents in Republican administrations. This one is placing the power to arrive at significant deregulation in the hands of task forces at the agency level, task forces comprised of critics of government regulation. Those task forces will identify precise regulations to be put on the chopping block, so-called guidances that are in fact illegally adopted rules to be placed on the chopping block, and enforcement policies to be placed on the chopping block. For the first time, the promise of true deregulation is before us.

But deregulation is not enough, as is evidenced by Steve Bannon’s statement that the significant deregulation contemplated is the first step toward “deconstruction of the administrative state.” It is important for us to recall that the Constitution vests the powers to make laws in Congress, to execute laws in the President, and to judge laws in the Judiciary. In no instance does the Constitution authorize delegation of those essential powers to individuals outside of the constitutional framework of government. Indeed, although condoned by the Supreme Court since the 1930’s to usher in the alphabet soup agencies of the New Deal, those powers were intentionally placed in the constitutional branches so that the public would maintain a electoral check on the law making and enforcement powers wielded by our elected representatives.

The Administrative State has thus betrayed and circumvented the careful system of checks and balances created by the Constitution and has established virtually omnipotent fiefdoms that rule business in America, the agencies. Those agencies frequently violate law, interpret statutes to mean the opposite of what Congress intended, and expand the scope and control of government to such an extent that nothing done by business can be done independent of them.

With an ever watchful eye toward what a regulator may deem unacceptable, businesses operate in a constant state of fear, wondering whether contemplated expansion or innovation will bring down the wrath of regulators and whether competitors can achieve strategic advantages by currying favor with the oligarchs. Of all moves by the President to drain the swamp, this sweeping executive order may provide the most lasting and significant drainage, an effect that will help restore a Constitution that has been drowning in red tape for over eighty years.

© 2017 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

When journalists, politicians, and activists profess independence yet challenge individuals with whom they disagree based on political viewpoint, that reveals bias. When, however, those partisans go beyond challenging views they dislike to calling into question the character, motivation, or legality of those with whom they disagree, they aim to disrupt lives and careers. In the days of Edward R. Murrow, professional journalists, politicians, and activists largely avoided stooping to the level of character assassination unless the facts were largely beyond dispute and the issues clearly affected the public welfare. Not so any more.

With the Michael Flynn and Monica Crowley debacles and with the incessant efforts to accuse the President of complicity with the Russians, we see journalists, politicians, and activists condemn their opponents without the benefit of facts, aiming to destroy their careers. That may help account for why journalists, politicians, and activists are among the least trusted and most disliked groups in the country. The liberal media condemns first and then scurries to find supporting facts; when support is not found, the facts are twisted to suggest negative inferences, and the false stories are published anew.

It used to be that professional journalists aspired to avoid opinionated discourse in favor of a careful recitation of the facts. Opinion was left to the editorial pages and opinion talk shows. It used to be that politicians refrained from attacking the character of their opponents, preferring instead to address the issues. It used to be that political activists endeavored to make clear their ideological positions and concerns and draw public attention to the plight of those victimized by forces beyond their control.

Now, however, many who call themselves journalists, politicians, and activists share the unseemly goal of destroying the character of their opponents with little or no effort spent on explaining the difference in political opinion that are often their true motivation. In some instances that is because of a mindless opposition, prejudice, or anarchistic sentiment which runs strong in opposition quarters. In other instances, however, that is because casting aspersion on character is thought to leave a more indelible and disabling mark on a person than challenging their views.

So it is that a man of great integrity and intellectual prowess, Tenth Circuit Judge Neil Gorsuch, is now the subject of much brainstorming by Democrats and liberal activists intent on finding some way to impugn his character and integrity. Again the focus is not so much on the facts of his record but on how those facts may be twisted to suggest that he suffers from character flaws so profound as to warrant his disqualification. In the case of Judge Gorsuch, that effort is so shrill, so far-fetched, that it should be apparent to every reasonable person.

Although the politics of character assassination have old roots, the use of them to destroy reputation were honed by activists and politicians during the confirmation fights over the nomination of Judge Robert Bork and, later, Judge Clarence Thomas. Many charges were levied against those honorable men that grew from selectively culled facts and innuendo, innocuous in and of themselves, yet sewn together to suggest that the two were character deficient. Any who objectively followed the careers of those two men came to the conclusion that they were far from the evil people they were portrayed to be.

In the end the epidemic of disruptive journalism, politics, and activism, which aims to render people and government dysfunctional, to tear down character and institutions without any clear aim other than destruction, reflects most profoundly on those engaged in the tactics.

They should themselves be the subject of great scrutiny, called before the public to answer for their reliance on false information and their condemnation of others without the benefit of facts. Once these select journalists, politicians, and activists who disserve us all have been discovered for their false publications, the public should act to hold them accountable, no longer supporting, patronizing, or voting for them.

© 2017 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

SALLY YATES’ MISTAKE
There is an honorable way to dissent from the President’s directives and a dishonorable way. The former Acting Attorney General, Sally Yates, chose the dishonorable way. In addition, she professed an erroneous legal opinion as the basis for her action.

On January 30, President Donald Trump fired Acting Attorney General Yates after she publicly and loudly condemned his Executive Order on immigration, explained that she would not defend the order in Court, and invited other Justice Department attorneys to follow her example.

There is another way to handle dissent from the President when you are in the employ of the Executive Branch. That way involves honor. It is the route pursued by former Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus on October 20, 1973, when then President Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Richardson and then Deputy Attorney General Ruckelshaus to fire the Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Nixon acted to keep from disclosure evidence that he had engaged in a cover-up of the Watergate break-in. Faced with a directive from the President that Richardson and Ruckelshaus could not in good conscience and law follow, they resigned one after the other.

Were Yates possessed of comparable honor, she would have voiced her dissent in private to the President and then offered her resignation. Instead, she chose to become a political opponent of the President and attempt a revolt within the Justice Department to the President’s immigration Executive Order. That is reprehensible for an officer of the law. Her proper resort was to resign, not hold her position and subvert the will of the President.

The comparison with Watergate falls apart when the focus turns to the merits of the two situations. Watergate was at root a petty burglary for political ends. It was outrageous, to be sure, because it involved illegal conduct authorized by the President’s men and operatives hired by them with campaign funds and because it involved a cover-up of illegality by the President himself, which could well — in its manifestations of obstruction of justice and subornation of perjury — fall within the impeachable “high crimes and misdemeanors” of Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution. But Nixon resigned before he could be tried, and President Ford famously pardoned him.

President Trump’s Executive Order on immigration is, however, far from an unprecedented or illegal act. Since at least the Alien Act of 1798, the President of the United States has imposed country specific bans on immigration and has compelled the deportation of foreign citizens. Indeed, use of country specific immigration bans to protect national security is far more common than the howls of protests from the Left would lead you to believe.

The plenary powers of the President in field of foreign affairs under Article II are well recognized. As part of his authority as Commander-in-Chief, the President may identify countries of the world containing individuals who pose a threat to the lives, liberties, and properties of Americans. He can then use a ban on immigration and on imports from those countries as a means to protect American interests.

In the present case, President Trump determined (based on civil and military intelligence obtained by the prior Administration) that citizens of seven countries could not be adequately vetted to determine whether they were, or were aligned with, those who are intent on killing Americans. He found that information hopelessly deficient in the case of Syria and, so, instituted a permanent ban on emigration from that country. He found six others to warrant a 90 day ban on emigration to the United States, including Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.

Given the amount of radical Islamic terrorist activity arising in and exported from those countries, the decision was prudent. The duration of the ban provides a short window within which the Administration can improve the vetting of citizens from those countries. In short, the action was reasonable given the circumstances.

Undoubtedly exceptions arise (as in the case of those citizens of the restricted countries who are dedicated servants of the American military and intelligence services) and, so, there will need to be case by case exceptions. It is as to these exceptions, which are on the periphery of the Executive Order, that the order, like all orders of this kind, requires case by case evaluation.

But the need for tinkering at the edges through careful vetting to see if individual exceptions are warranted does not diminish the overall national security importance of the measure or in any way diminish the necessity of taking broad protective measures to guard against radical Islamic terrorists reaching the United States.

Former Attorney General Yates’ response, like that of Senator Charles Schumer and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, is one of over-reaction, entailing both misrepresentation of the order and exaggeration of its nature and effects. That overreaction is grossly irresponsible because it invites elimination of an Executive Order that provides protection for the American people. To his great credit, President Trump shows not the slightest interest in altering the order to accommodate the loud complaints from his Democratic opponents or from disconcerted Republicans.

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© 2017 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

President Donald Trump has accomplished more in the first few weeks of his presidency than any other president in the modern era. He is making good on each of his campaign promises, transforming America into a nation that has secure borders, that reduces regulatory impediments that block market entry and retard free enterprise, that permits free markets to arise in health care, and that wages a relentless campaign of destruction against radical Islamic terrorists worldwide. His actions are so swift and so consequential that his opposition has difficulty capturing the news cycle. By the time they coalesce opposition against a measure, President Trump is on to the next initiative.

He is unintimidated by his opposition and dedicated with laser like precision to achieve the objectives of his Administration. To this point in history, each modern President has been preoccupied with media perception of each action. That preoccupation has rendered actions anemic and results unimpressive in case after case. By contrast, President Tump leads and lets the consequences follow. He means to make a huge difference for the benefit of his country and has no tolerance for mindless drivel and opposition based on sympathies for America’s enemies.

The politics of Washington have been the politics of indecision, inaction, and inertia. President Trump has filled Washington’s vacuum of power with bold and directed leadership. Republicans thought to be likely antagonists of the President have largely fallen into rank behind him, recognizing that President Trump proceeds like a steamroller at full throttle without regard to whether his opposition comes in the form of a Red or a Blue state representative.

For those who have long yearned for change to revitalize the American economy, defend America’s borders, and dismantle the regulatory state, President Trump comes as an answer. There is no one in Washington more dedicated to the welfare of the United States than President Trump.

He is increasingly winning over the hearts and minds of the American people. They are coming to realize that bureaucratic mountains thought to be impenetrable and permanent are the very ones he intends to bring down. The dams those mountains formed, blocking the flow of free market activity are rapidly giving way, ushering in new streams of commerce for the benefit of all Americans.

Just one month ago, the market heaved forward carrying the weight of regulation with no apparent end in sight. Many doubted that President Trump, even were they to credit his promise to deregulate, could alter decades old regulatory regimes that exercised an authoritarian strangle hold on the throat of business.

Business leaders have learned that regardless of how illogical or extreme the regulations imposed upon them, they would have to adjust because the regulators were not going to disappear and possess numerous tools to fine or destroy those who resist compulsion. Trump’s executive order on deregulation changes the direction. Now the regulatory state faces a President who means to reduce the size and scope of the regulatory state by a promised 75%. They face a President with the fortitude necessary to stand firm in the face of bureaucratic wailing and gnashing of teeth.

President Donald Trump is proving by action, not rhetoric, that he means to resurrect the American empire. The contrast with his predecessor could not be greater. The world is fast coming to realize that Donald Trump will fight tenaciously and unrelentingly to rebuild American military and economic dominance. The apology tour is over. America is back. Thank you, Mr. President.

© 2017 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

President Donald Trump has accomplished more in the first few weeks of his presidency than any other president in the modern era. He is making good on each of his campaign promises, transforming America into a nation that has secure borders, that reduces regulatory impediments that block market entry and retard free enterprise, that permits free markets to arise in health care, and that wages a relentless campaign of destruction against radical Islamic terrorists worldwide. His actions are so swift and so consequential that his opposition has difficulty capturing the news cycle. By the time they coalesce opposition against a measure, President Trump is on to the next initiative.

He is unintimidated by his opposition and dedicated with laser like precision to achieve the objectives of his Administration. To this point in history, each modern President has been preoccupied with media perception of each action. That preoccupation has rendered actions anemic and results unimpressive in case after case. By contrast, President Tump leads and lets the consequences follow. He means to make a huge difference for the benefit of his country and has no tolerance for mindless drivel and opposition based on sympathies for America’s enemies.

The politics of Washington have been the politics of indecision, inaction, and inertia. President Trump has filled Washington’s vacuum of power with bold and directed leadership. Republicans thought to be likely antagonists of the President have largely fallen into rank behind him, recognizing that President Trump proceeds like a steamroller at full throttle without regard to whether his opposition comes in the form of a Red or a Blue state representative.

For those who have long yearned for change to revitalize the American economy, defend America’s borders, and dismantle the regulatory state, President Trump comes as an answer. There is no one in Washington more dedicated to the welfare of the United States than President Trump.

He is increasingly winning over the hearts and minds of the American people. They are coming to realize that bureaucratic mountains thought to be impenetrable and permanent are the very ones he intends to bring down. The dams those mountains formed, blocking the flow of free market activity are rapidly giving way, ushering in new streams of commerce for the benefit of all Americans.

Just one month ago, the market heaved forward carrying the weight of regulation with no apparent end in sight. Many doubted that President Trump, even were they to credit his promise to deregulate, could alter decades old regulatory regimes that exercised an authoritarian strangle hold on the throat of business.

Business leaders have learned that regardless of how illogical or extreme the regulations imposed upon them, they would have to adjust because the regulators were not going to disappear and possess numerous tools to fine or destroy those who resist compulsion. Trump’s executive order on deregulation changes the direction. Now the regulatory state faces a President who means to reduce the size and scope of the regulatory state by a promised 75%. They face a President with the fortitude necessary to stand firm in the face of bureaucratic wailing and gnashing of teeth.

President Donald Trump is proving by action, not rhetoric, that he means to resurrect the American empire. The contrast with his predecessor could not be greater. The world is fast coming to realize that Donald Trump will fight tenaciously and unrelentingly to rebuild American military and economic dominance. The apology tour is over. America is back. Thank you, Mr. President.

© 2017 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

A peculiar assortment of radicals descended on Washington, D.C. to disrupt the inauguration of President-Elect Donald Trump. His platform of “America First” reforms appeals to a large segment of Americans forgotten over the last eight years: those who believe in free markets, meritocracy, the rule of law, American exceptionalism, a strong national defense, a foreign policy that advances American interests, and border security. In short, those who love their country and wish to restore its constitutional limits on power and protections for individual freedom of choice are increasingly a minority, a minority embraced by Donald Trump.

Those anathema to America’s patriots form a diverse array of protestors who aim to tear down business and government or seek government ownership of and control over all things private, silence all with whom they disagree favoring censorship over freedom of speech, and obtain special privileges and government handouts at the expense of those who earn a living. Those protestors were well represented at the inauguration but well contained to minimize their propensity for violence and destruction.

In the end, the protests staged by the radicals have a greater effect on their opponents than on those who sympathize with their cause. For the forgotten Americans remembered by Trump, the radical protestors are proof of the necessity of the President’s reforms, of the unwise deviation of the Obama years which gave license to these radicals and increased their number and influence. For others, they are a stern reminder of how low American can devolve into an abyss of mediocrity when it departs from its constitutional moorings and embraces European style governments, administrative rule, and managed economies. Very few thinking Americans find inarticulate rants and random acts of violence laudable or persuasive.

Among the groups protesting President Trump were anarchists who aim to destroy private property, bring down government, and create mayhem for no apparent reason beyond mindless discontent. Then there are Nihilists who eschew all morality and religion, apparently believing that loud complaints and tantrums from a spoiled generation can beget the same response from government that came from their doting parents: acquisition of property without the need to pay for it, misbehavior without the need to take responsibility for it. Then there are the new racists, the Black Lives Matter protestors and those of like ilk, who believe racism exists in everyone, even in Blacks who pledge allegiance to the United States, and who think everyone and every institution in our society a product of racism and irredeemable.

Unlike Martin Luther King who had a dream of interracial harmony, they have a dream of racial separatism, much like the early Malcom X, wherein they endorse attacks on public and private institutions, from the police to retail establishments. Communists and socialists also partake in the protests.

Unlike the anarchists, nihilists, and racists, they seek to use government to gain ever greater control over markets and to redistribute the wealth of the successful to those who are not, thus establishing universal mediocrity.
They, like Obama, are apologists for America, who believe the nation an oppressor, who believe America’s enemies and those who wish to do the nation harm need to be embraced, trusted, and invited to live among us, and who shed far more tears for those they mistakenly think America has “oppressed” than they do for the brave men and women who serve our country and defend it against evil every day: law enforcement, the military, and the intelligence services.

The anarchists, nihilists, racists, communists, and fellow travelers harbor a perennial pessimism that has failed throughout history to win out against the positivism and uplifting power of freedom and free enterprise. They are here to condemn but offer no workable alternatives. They are here to protest what they do not like about America, not to celebrate American achievements.

They repulse even those with whom they more closely associate because negativity and contempt are the elements of defeatism, not the building blocks of success and persuasion. They drive away; they do not attract. And yet it is these losers in society who cannot lead that the present Democratic Party has embraced and reflects. Consequently, during the confirmation hearings liberal Democrats who reflect this discontent and lack the ability to articulate a competing vision of success relied on all manner of scurrilous attacks, innuendo, and insinuations to call into question people of great talent, achievement, and intelligence—but to no avail.

In a narrow escape from the corruption and decline into the trash heap of history that Hillary Clinton would have brought with her to the White House, less than a majority of voters nationwide but a majority of the electoral college rose to save the nation for one more day, rejecting continuation of the failed Obama presidency.

President Trump is fast making good on his pledges to bring back American greatness by restoring a vibrant free enterprise economy, reducing individual and corporate taxes, revitalizing America’s military, re-establishing strong ties with Israel and our allies, abrogating Obama’s unilateral ties to, fawning over, and cowing to Iran and our enemies, attacking Radical Islamic terrorism around the world, building new defenses against invasion of America by Radical Islamists, and restoring respect for law enforcement. We are indeed fortunate. Those of us who love our country should be very grateful but on our guard with an eye toward achieving even greater gains in the 2018 mid-term elections.

© 2017 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Corporations, individuals, and markets anticipate rapid passage of President-Elect Trump’s tax reduction plan, which reduces almost all taxpayers’ burdens and brings down the top rate from 40% to 33%. The plan also reduces corporate taxes from 35% to 15%. It eliminates the estate and gift taxes, and it causes millions of Americans on the lowest end of the tax scale to pay no income tax at all.

The only way to achieve economic revival with the reasonable likelihood of between a 3 and 5% GDP growth annually is by implementing President-elect Trump’s major rehaul of the tax code at the earliest possible moment. The mid-term 2018 elections, particularly the ten senate seats now held by Democrats in states that voted for Trump, will in no small measure hinge on whether President Trump has succeeded in bringing about the tax reforms he promised during the campaign. If the reforms are delayed beyond the first 100 days, it will be more difficult to pass them later and results stemming from the reforms if not passed at the outset will arrive potentially too late to be felt by the 2018 elections.

Consequently, delivery of the President’s tax reduction package to Congress with rapid passage by the House and Senate must be job one. Some have advocated a bifurcated approach, where corporate tax deductions would be pushed through first and individual income tax reductions follow sometime thereafter. That is unwise because popular support for corporate tax reductions can be expected to be far less than for a combined individual and corporate tax reduction plan. Moreover, if only a corporate plan is offered, the opposition will rally on the proposition that the President did not really intend to deliver promised benefits for individuals and is but a tool of Wall Street. While that would be a false charge, it nevertheless will gain currency if the corporate plan is introduced without a simultaneous introduction of the individual plan.

With the planned corporate and individual tax reductions implemented, the American people and industry will enjoy profound increases in income that will fuel a dramatic revitalization of the economy. For the first time in years, most Americans will retain more income and experience a higher standard of living with more resources to spend and save. Businesses, particularly small and medium sized businesses, will undergo a cathartic release of pent up demand for introduction of new goods and services and will increase market activity together with hiring. More people will be employed, more choices will be supplied to consumers, and more innovation will arise, fueling a major expansion. There will be a palpable increase in the GDP with greater revenues entering the treasury. As Art Laffer has long explained, tax cuts of this magnitude are likely to increase tax revenues beyond current levels in years following the implementation of the cuts.

The tax reduction package, while enabling a major economic revival akin to the boom experienced following passage of Reagan’s Economic Recovery Tax Act, must be accompanied by substantial and sustained deregulation. In particular, the Trump Administration needs to back passage of legislation that will prevent implementation of any proposed regulation by the regulatory agencies unless first adopted as law by Congress and signed into law by the President. Moreover, the agencies have in recent years used unilateral promulgation of guidance policies to circumvent the rulemaking process. The Administration needs to impose a moratorium on promulgation of guidance documents. In that way, a halt to expansion of regulation will occur in large measure, affording the President’s team the chance to deregulate in earnest, removing all regulations that impose costs that exceed benefits and that encumber market entry and development.

Close attention needs to be paid to rulings made by the regulatory agencies in the rulemaking and adjudicatory contexts. Obama administrative agencies have spent the last eight years championing an anti-market agenda that has ruined many small and mid-sized companies without proof of actual harm stemming from alleged rule violations. President Trump should order his new agency heads to revisit Obama Administration regulatory decisions and reverse them wherever they have imposed sanctions on individuals and corporations that have not been proven to have caused actual injury to others or where the benefit said to be achieved is outweighed by the burden imposed.

In the end, neither the Constitution nor the market will experience restoration without replacing the administrative state with a return to direct congressional action, thereby causing the unelected heads of the agencies who are largely unaccountable to the courts, the Congress, and the American people to give up the law making powers (rulemaking powers) Congress has delegated them since the 1930’s in favor of a return of law making to Congress, as the Constitution prescribes.

Historically most new Presidents who have failed to push through the great bulk of planned legislation within the first year of their presidencies have been hard pressed to do so in subsequent years. President Trump will advocate passage of many pro-market and pro-defense reforms in the first hundred days. It will be critical for him to move first on rapid passage of tax reform together with repeal and replacement of Obamacare. Republicans in the House and Senate must avoid petty bickering and grand standing to support these reforms in unison. The margin for victory is thin in the Senate, and every Republican vote will be needed to ensure passage of the reforms.

© 2017 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Legally compelled health insurance, Obamacare, is an enemy to freedom of choice and free enterprise. Free choice and free enterprise are essential to achieve the best and highest uses in all markets, including medical care. Only when patients are empowered with knowledge and choice can they pursue their own best interests. Only when patients are able to pursue their own best interests will competition come to medical care, causing prices for services to come down.

Congress violated the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution and fundamentally reoriented the relationship between the federal government and the individual when it presumed to compel every American into the health insurance market and to compel every American to subscribe to a certain set of health insurance offerings. The Trump Administration and a majority in both houses of Congress are intent on repealing Obamacare, but what, if anything, should replace it?

At the outset, everyone should recognize the abject failure that is Obamacare. Advocates of the system promised that it would cause 50 million uninsured individuals to become insured, that it would prevent rates from skyrocketing, and that it would have no adverse effect on choice of doctor. Among its many failings, Obamacare has fallen far short of the number of enrollees required to make it sustainable (only about 11 million are enrolled), has been rejected by most physicians and hospitals, has caused health insurance rates to skyrocket, and has caused many individuals to lose their preferred choice of doctor.

In my book, Restore the Republic, I offer a market based alternative to the existing system, a system that empowers patients. The following reforms need to be made to ensure that the 11 million enrolled can have options to choose from other than a system that is not working and cannot survive.

Congress should require all hospitals and physicians to reveal prominently their fees and drug and device charges, enabling competition in price. Congress should create tax free medical savings accounts and medical IRAs with no contribution caps, available to each taxpayer. Congress should exempt from any federal income tax all individuals who are diagnosed with a terminal illness or who are in hospice care. Congress should provide a $1.50 federal individual income tax reduction for each $1.00 spent by a taxpayer on the cost of medical care of a family member or relative. Congress should provide a $1.50 business tax reduction for each $1.00 spent by an employer on the cost of an employee’s health insurance or medical care. Hospitals and physicians should be given a dollar for dollar tax deduction for all services provided to the indigent.

There should be no legal limits or mandates on the mix of coverages available for health insurance. A person should be able to decline from buying health insurance, buy health insurance with only a limited menu of coverages, or choose only to buy health insurance for catastrophic care without suffering any adverse consequence. The death tax should be eliminated; there should be no tax on the transfer of an estate from parents to children or relatives due to death.

By creating transparency in medical care pricing, removing the federal government from dictating health insurance and the nature of health care, and creating tax incentives protective of free choice, Congress will not only replace Obamacare but will inspire the growth of a true free market in medical care, where price competition exists and where patients are empowered. The one size fits all approach of mandated care will be replaced with a cornucopia of health care options. The relative level of risk assumed by an individual will remain his or her choice. Young people who wish to invest their resources in growing a business will not be compelled to sacrifice their dreams to buy costly health insurance. They will be free to assume the risk, to gamble, and to accept the consequences if the gamble fails. That is freedom. Freedom entails risk, but the truth is not even the government can shield the individual from risk without depriving the most productive of their freedom and their resources.

Further reforms would involve reducing licensing law restrictions in the states that prevent experienced health care practitioners from expanding the availability of health care options at lower cost to patients. For example, a surgical nurse of a certain number of years experience ought to be able to counsel patients as to treatment options within the area of her experience, if certified by a hospital or medical group or accredited university or institution, without need for state licensing. A person with a graduate level degree in nutrition science, clinical nutrition, or another related specialty ought to be able to recommend parenteral and enteral nutrition and nutrition management of disease, if certified by a hospital or medical group or accredited university or institution, without being licensed as a dietitian or physician.

A physicians assistants with years of experience, if certified by a hospital or medical group or accredited university or institution, ought to be able to act independently within his or her area of expertise to diagnose, treat, and prescribe. Those changes will ease the growing shortage of physicians, will expand patient choice, and will reduce the cost of medical services.

There are many more market based alternatives that can and should be available to patients. A free market in health care, replete with transparent pricing, patient choice, and the right to keep one’s own earnings and choose whether and how those earnings will be invested and spent on health leads to better health, prosperity, innovation, and competitive pricing in health care. Only if America abandons the failed notion of government planned markets and mandates and reembraces a free market in health care will the nation experience a renaissance in affordable and abundant health care options.

© 2017 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Since his election in 2008, President Obama has consistently pursued policies that have aided the state sponsors of radical Islamic terrorism around the world and have isolated the staunch U.S. ally and only democracy in the region, Israel. He has released hundreds of billions of dollars and given direct financial aid to the foremost state sponsor of radical Islamic terrorism in the world, Iran. He did so via a direct deal, without Senate approval, in derogation of the Treaty Clause, Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution. His deal with Iran has enabled that radical Islamic state to acquire nuclear weapons and through the release of over $100 billion has facilitated that nation’s quest to expand hegemony over the entire Middle East. He has toppled the brutal Libyan regime of Qaddafi only to usher in the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization. He failed to authorize use of military force to defend the American embassy compound in Benghazi from a radical Islamic terrorist attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

He failed to take any action sufficient to prevent Russia, Iran, and Assad’s Syria from obliterating all opposition to the brutal regime in power and failed to do anything to stem a refugee crisis that has carried in its ranks radical Islamists intent on mayhem throughout Europe. He supported the overthrow of Mubarak regime in Egypt, only to give rise to Muslim Brotherhood control of that country and disavowal of support for the United States. And now, in the crowning achievement of his movement to destabilize the Middle East and advance the interests of those dedicated to the destruction of the United States and Israel, he withdrew American objection to UN Resolution 2334 that defines Israeli occupied territories in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem as illegally held.

Through his actions, Obama has advanced the cause of international terrorism, diminished the power of America’s foremost ally in the Middle East, Israel, has precipitated war, and has laid the seeds for new armed conflict in the region. Most importantly, he has fostered instability while enormously contributing to the financing, arming, and deployment of radical Islamic terrorists around the world. He has placed the lives of Americans at home and abroad at risk.

Preceding the Six Day War in 1967, Israel found itself under siege as its Arab neighbors conspired to amass military forces on its Western borders, promising destruction of the Israeli state. In response, Israel drove the Arabs back and occupied territories that had been used as staging areas for the attack on the Jewish state. Those areas, the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem have been occupied by Israel ever since. Historically, any movement to return those territories has been linked to an initial assurance of peace from the Palestinians and a recognition of the state of Israel. But, since 1967, radical Islamists in Palestine have engaged in a relentless campaign of terror against Israel and have consistently demanded elimination of Israel, refusing to embrace the “two state” solution that the United States has advocated. I thank my colleague attorney Eric Awerbuch for his contributions to this report.

Until the leaders of the Palestinian governments, Hamas (in control of the Gaza Strip) and Fatah (in control of the West Bank) repudiate terrorism and recognize Israel’s right to exist, any movement by Israel to return occupied territories to Palestinian control is simply a gratuitous concession that endangers Israeli security. It is that gratuitous concession that the Obama Administration endorsed when it abstained, rather than veto, UN Resolution 2334. UN Resolution 2334 expressly provides that “ . . . the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law. . .” The adoption of UN Resolution 2334 shifted the balance of power in the Middle East to the radical Islamic terrorists who seek Israel’s destruction. It gave legal credence to, and greatly emboldened, the anti-Israeli cause by laying a foundation in International law for the determination that the Israeli occupied lands are illegally held. In particular, it pulled the rug out from under Israel and all Christendom when it deemed East Jerusalem unlawfully held except by the Palestinians. It is in East Jerusalem that the most venerated and sacred holy places of Judaism and Christianity are found: the Temple Mount, the Western Wall, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Thus, Obama acted against Israel, but also against all of Christendom, when he allowed a ruling that the only lawful claim to the Holy Land of East Jerusalem lay with governing authorities that condemn Judaism and Christianity.

The Obama Administration could have demanded that East Jerusalem not be a part of the resolution, but they did not object to its inclusion, thus aligning the United States with what is a patently anti-semitic and anti-Christian stance, that the Holy Lands of East Jerusalem should be controlled by those who pledge death to Israel, death to the United States, and view any form of worship other than Islam condemnable and prosecutable under the Sharia law. In short, the Obama Administration embraced absolute intolerance for religions other than Islam in the most holy places of Jewish and Christian worship. That, unquestionably, is an act of racism and religious intolerance, because it endorses control by a theocratic dictatorship antithetical to Judaism and Christianity.

The Gaza Strip is controlled by Hamas, which is a terrorist organization. Un Resolution 2334 would, if effectuated, turn the Gaza Strip over to Hamas. Since 2007, Hamas’s military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades have rained down on Israel in excess of 3,000 rockets, have murdered Israeli defense force members and civilians, have murdered Americans in Israel, and have sponsored suicide bombings within Israel. Hamas daily condemns Israel, calling for its complete annihiliation, condemns Jews (welcoming the murder of Jewish civilians in speeches and song), condemns the United States (welcoming the murder of Americans), and rejects the two-state solution in favor of obliteration of Israel and expansion of the Palestinian state. Hamas pays for citizens to engage in acts of terror against Israelis and Americans. As an example of how casually and routinely Hamas leaders embrace genocide, in 2012, Ahmad Bahr, Deputy Speake of the Hamas Parliament, said in a prayer broadcast to the Palestinian people: “O Allah, destroy the Jews and their supporters. O Allah, destroy the Americans and their supporters. O Allah, count them one by one, and kill them all, without leaving a single one.” Those sentiments are commonly voiced by Hamas leaders and define a relentless enemy that resides within minutes of Israel’s heart of commerce and governance.

The West Bank is controlled by Fatah, which is likewise opposed to the existence of Israel and is against the two-state solution. There is, thus, no faction with governing control of Palestine that is not dedicated to the twin goals of destroying Israel and rejecting peace through a resolution that would allow the existence of two states, Israel and Palestine.

Obama’s endorsement of this anti-Semitic and anti-Christian UN resolution is also calculated to disable his successor’s ability to improve U.S. relations with Israel and combat terrorism. An affront to President-elect Trump and to Jews and Christians across the United States, the move to deem illegal even Israeli control of East Jerusalem, must now be undone but that process will require considerable effort by the Trump Administration.

Once in power, the Trump Administration must formally repudiate UN Resolution 2334, explaining that it is the official position of the United States government that the resolution does not affect any change in international law or American policy toward the state of Israel because essential preconditions to peace identified in all other international accords between Palestine and Israel have not been met, namely Palestine has not agreed to cease all acts of violence against Israel and Palestine has not admitted that Israel has a right to exist. Only when both of those concessions have been made and when the actions of Palestine match its promises to that effect will UN Resolution 2334 be capable of effectuation (and, even then, it would only invite a negotiated resolution between the two affected parties).

The Trump Administration should define UN Resolution 2334 as a dead letter and, to the extent resorted to by others to obtain control of lands occupied by Israel, will be opposed by Israel and the United States using all force necessary to protect Israeli occupants of the lands in question from any effort to expel them.

The Trump Administration should promptly cut off all American aid to Palestine, explaining that unless and until UN Resolution 2334 is revoked, Palestinians cease resort to acts of terrorism, and Palestinians accept Israel’s right to exist, the United States will not provide any financial help which, invariably, is either directly diverted or aids in the direct diversion of funds used to support acts of terror and solicitations of violence against the Jewish state and Americans.

The Trump Administration should promptly cut off funding for administration of the United Nations, explaining that unless and until UN Resolution 2334 is revoked, the United States will not finance UN administration.

Those measures may not cause UN members to revoke the resolution but will reduce the tendency of states to seek enforcement of it and will squarely align the United States with the position that Israel has a right to exist in peace and that the United States intends to act against any radical Islamic terrorist organization anywhere in the world, including against Hamas and its supporters.

© 2017 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

The Wikileaks’ releases of Hillary Clinton-related emails helped establish the existence of an extensive breach of national security and of malfeasance at the DNC to further Clinton’s presidential ambitions. For her own convenience and to avoid Freedom of Information requests, Clinton violated State Department regulations and illegally moved all of her State Department correspondence, including all of her classified correspondence, to her private servers and devices. For that, she should have been prosecuted, as many others have been, and she should have served jail time. Instead, thanks to the erroneous legal position of FBI Director James Comey, she is free. To secure her party’s nomination and to exercise undue influence over the media, she worked with the DNC to derail the presidential ambitions of Bernie Sanders and to plant questions for the presidential debates.

Given that dishonorable history, Hillary Clinton now proceeds with considerable hubris when she contends without the slightest evidence that Donald Trump collaborated with the Russian government or was otherwise benefited by the Russian government in securing his electoral college victory over her. Nothing could be further from the truth, but the hypocrisy is palpable. On the one hand, Hillary Clinton directly placed the national security at risk by intentional acts in gross dereliction of her duty, of the law, and of the interests of our country and its intelligence operatives. On the other hand, without the slightest shame, she points the finger at Donald Trump and accuses him of complicity in Russian influence in the election.

The first problem with Clinton and Podesta’s argument is that it is factually bereft. While Russia, and indeed many of our nation’s enemies, endeavor through direct action and indirect influence to interfere with the American electoral process, there is no proof that they did so specifically to favor Trump’s election. Even were some foreign or domestic hackers aiming to do that very thing, there is no proof that they influenced the casting of a single vote. Indeed, with the two candidates blasting one another and liberal and conservative talking heads filling the airwaves and the net with their views, it is impossible to prove that anyone voted for Donald Trump because of what any enemy of the United States said.

Indeed, even were there proof of such efforts, how can we know whether individuals in reaction to it, if they suspected it favored Trump, would not vote against Trump for that reason? Indeed, before the election, the Clinton camp along with supportive media, crowed loudly that the Russians were working with Trump to influence the outcome of the election. That was not provably true then, as it is not provably true now, but they made that irresponsible claim which was broadcast across the media and on the web. So, to be sure, we would probably be more apt to find folks who say they voted against Trump because of that accusation than we would to find folks who could even identify what is a story planted by Russian agents, let alone say it was that story (rather than a host of other factors) that caused them to vote for Trump.

Clinton, Podesta, Democratic leaders, and even some misguided Republicans want to spend millions of tax dollars chasing this fantasy. While I do not begrudge any of sincere efforts to improve protection of the polls and to call out any instance of actual foreign government efforts to influence the conduct of elections, the former is a state function and the latter is best left to the media (if the mainstream media could ever restore its investigative reporting function to one without political bias). A federal government effort through the CIA, such as Obama has authorized, is a fiasco, costing millions and likely to produce no clear evidence of votes being cast in reliance on efforts to influence the election by Russia.

Finally, of the two candidates, without question Hillary Clinton would be the best choice for Russia if its objective were destruction of the United States. The American military has been weakened substantially during the Obama years; Hillary Clinton’s reset with Russia and efforts to alter the dynamic in the Middle East to favor the U.S. failed miserably to the great benefit of Russia and its ally Iran.

On the personal front, the Clinton Foundation took money from Russian proxies and worked deals through the State Department that benefited those proxies. Consequently, Putin could well perceive that as an opportunity to “buy” influence from a Clinton presidency. Continuation of the dire Obama policies would redound to the benefit of Russia.

Trump, by contrast, is unpredictable except in one factor most important to an assessment of him: He loves America and he is committed to nailing Iran, restoring American economic primacy, and, most importantly, rapidly restoring American military prowess and pursuing the war against radical Islamic terrorism. If anything, Trump is the far greater threat to Putin’s geopolitical ambitions, not Hillary Clinton. Indeed, General James Mattis (DOD), General Mike Flynn (NDI), and General John Kelly (DHS) are not the picks of a man predisposed to lessen defense of America’s vital interests, and none of those distinguished and proven American patriots would ever sacrifice those interests to appease the Russians, the Iranians, or any other foreign power. President Trump and those Generals are invested in reversing that disgraceful legacy of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

For the past six years during the Christmas season, I have written a column in remembrance of the many great and wonderful lessons I learned from my father, Ernest A. Emord (aka “Tommy Reardon”). I have done so in the hope that these stories, but a small sampling of the remarkable legacy he left, might inspire you to hearken the call of an earlier age, of, to paraphrase Lincoln, the better angels of our nature. A professional boxer from Brockton, Massachusetts, a career military man who served the United States armed forces for 32 years, a humble man of great humor, wit, and devotion to his family and country, Ernest Emord lived a life set apart from the ordinary that touched the lives of many in remarkable ways. Here are a few more remarkable stories from the life of Ernie Emord.

The Part About Grocery Shopping I Overlooked. I had just turned 4 years old. Since my first year I had accompanied my mother on jaunts to the grocery store. When I was 4 my family lived at Alconbury Royal Air Force Base in Alconbury, England. My father served in the United States Air Force at that base. Repeatedly, my mother took me along with her to the Air Force Exchange commissary at Alconbury. I observed how my mother pulled items she wanted from the store shelves and placed them in a shopping cart. I watched her push the cart through the store and finally outside for the trip home. I stood below the height of the check-out counter, so the one part of the trip I did not notice was my mother’s payment of cash for the items she acquired. Intrigued by the grocery store experience, I decided one morning at the customary time when I met my 3 and 4 year old friends to tell them about this remarkable place. They all were amazed by my description, so I decided to take them there. Somehow I managed to lead four or five boys all the way to the commissary from base housing.

When we arrived, I had the boys help me retrieve a grocery cart, and I instructed them to pull from the shelves whatever they wanted. The boys went throughout the store but settled only on candy (lots of candy), chocolate (lots of chocolate), and some cakes and pastries. With a full cart, we all worked to push it through the check-out and out the door to the street. There, we continued to push the cart all the way back to base housing. We pushed the full cart onto the grass and into an open field next to where we lived. We turned over the cart and then shared the contents, eating quite a lot of it before the Air Police arrived. The Air Police surveyed the situation and, after a few questions, discovered that none of us was beyond the age of 4, none of us was accompanied by a parent, and that none of us had a clue about grocery shopping beyond going, getting, and eating. The all-important payment part was unknown to us.

While the police stood puzzling over what might be done to take care of the problem, my father arrived in uniform. He looked at the cart, the food all over the ground, and the chocolate covered faces of all the kids, and he smiled. He had an amiable, quiet conversation with the Air Police and then handed them cash from his bill fold. The Air Police then left and my father stood there in front of us. He asked us if the candy, chocolate, cakes, and pastries were good. We all said yes, very pleased with our achievement. I proudly explained to my father how we all managed to find the commissary and how we did what mom always did, get the cart, fill it with what we wanted, and then take the cart out. He complimented us on getting everything right about grocery shopping . . . but one thing.

He then kneeled down to our level and told us a story with a smile on his face. He said that everything we had taken from the shelves at the commissary was made by someone who had to get paid to be able to make those things. He explained how the people who worked at the commissary also needed to be paid in order to survive and that the money for all of that had to come from somewhere. He then asked us if we knew where the money came from. I said the base commander. Others of the boys agreed with me or said maybe their moms or dads paid some of it. Others said they did not know. He then told us that it actually came from each person who took something from the store shelves. He said whenever you take something from the shelf that you intend to keep, you, the one taking it, agree to pay for it right then and there. So, he said, you could take your allowance to the store and get something you could afford and give that money to the people who work at the store in exchange for that something.

In that way, the people who made the things would keep making them. The people selling the things would keep selling them, and each of them would have money to pay for the things they removed from the shelves. So long as each person pays for what he or she takes form the shelves, he said, then we all could count on the grocery store to continue having what we wanted on the shelves, and no one who made the things would stop making them or who sold the things would stop selling them. We all appreciated the message. A few of us stopped eating the food we brought back while we listened. Others found eating the ill-gotten gains a pleasant experience while they were told the story.

Rather than be traumatized by a stern reprimand, my father had the wisdom to appreciate that a compassionate explanation would go a lot farther with 3 and 4 year olds than chastisement. I do not remember feeling the slightest bit guilty or fearful for what we had done. I was glad my dad paid the police, and I was glad someone told me about the important part of grocery shopping I had overlooked: the payment part.

The Intelligent Dog. My father was never one to tell a yarn to an unsuspecting person. He enjoyed that humor, never at the expense of the other person beyond a good ruse. One such person was Pete Valez, an Air Force enlisted man stationed at Chanute Air Force Base. When I was 6 years old, I joined my father on a short car ride to Pete’s base quarters. Our dog, Yella, a golden Labrador Retriever, joined us in the car. Yella was young and spry, found of moving about in the car from one open window to another. I sat in the front seat passenger’s side. The dog was in the back seat. Pete met my father in front of his quarters.

My father and Pete began a conversation. My father’s back was to the car. From his vantage point, Pete could see my father and the car clearly. He could make out that I was in the front seat and the dog in the back. Suddenly, midway through my father’s conversation, Yella bounded from the back to the front seat, with his paws landing on the horn, producing a loud horn blast that also caused the dog to bark. Without missing a beat, my father turned toward the car and said with annoyance, “Yella, be patient. I’ll be through in just a minute.” He then turned back and continued talking to Pete. An amazed expression came over Pete, who kept staring away from my father and intently at the car. It was clear that Pete actually thought the dog honked the horn the horn and barked with impatience. Walking with my father to the car to see this amazing dog, Pete remarked, “Chief, you have quite an intelligent dog.” My father replied, “yes, but he is still learning about patience.”

Yella Ate the Couch. In the 1960’s drive-in movie theaters were all the rage. Although my parents rarely went to a move, they decided to see the movie “Patton” with the lead played by George C. Scott. They lamented the fact that our family dog, a golden Labrador Retriever named Yella, would be home alone, but they thought the few hours he would be without companionship would not be a problem. After the movie, they came back home. My father opened the door for my mother and she walked in. A few moments later she said, “Ernie, Yella ate the couch.” Sure enough, the only couch they had in the living room was now a wooden box with springs sticking out and white fill everywhere. As she moved in, astonished. My father followed her.

As they both looked in amazement, they heard a tail wagging under the dining room table against the wall, creating a familiar patter indicative of the dog’s pleasure at their return. My father then turned to my mother and said, “I guess Yella really wanted to see that movie,” and the two of them laughed. The couch could be replaced, the dog was irreplaceable. To avoid the purchase of a new couch, my mother discovered the wonders of duck tape. For a very long time, I recall sitting on a silvery taped thing we called the living room couch.

Ending Trespass. Chanute Air Force Base had a problem. It was the 1960’s and students opposed to the Vietnam War decided to trespass on base property to protest the war. They chose a novel way to do so. They hid in the cargo bay of moving vans going on the base and would thereafter exit the moving vans, chain themselves together, and sit over the areas they thought were missile silos. The Air Police would then arrest them, jail them for a brief time, and release them off the base. The frequency of these acts of trespass increased over time and the base commander asked my father, the Senior Enlisted Advisor at Chanute, to find a way to stop them. At first my father spoke to the Air Police, directing them to make sure that no moving van entered the base without the cargo bay being inspected.

That, however, proved unsuccessful as several of the vans would come to a near stop, flash their papers, but would keep rolling and enter the base while others contained furniture and boxes that blocked the view of humans hidden in the hold. Frustrated by the continuation of the problem, my father decided to become an Air Policeman.

My father manned one of the main entrances to the base on a daily basis. Eventually, a moving van arrived. He ordered the driver to stop. The driver flashed his papers but did not come to a stop, rolling past the entrance. My father then jumped onto the running board of the moving van, held onto the outside mirror, pulled his side arm from its holster with the other hand, shoved the barrel of the pistol through the open truck window into the mouth of the driver, and ordered the driver to stop or be shot. The driver stopped. The other Air Police then broke open the cargo bay. There inside were student protestors. All were arrested. From that moment forward, the practice of student protestors trespassing on the base came to an end.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Failure is not a word in the vocabulary of General James N. Mattis, President-elect Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense. “I don’t lose any sleep at night over the potential for failure. I cannot even spell the word.”

At a time when we desperately need to reverse the half-hearted efforts of the Obama Administration to combat radical Islamists (who the President dares not mention by name), rebuild the military, and expunge those enemies of the United States from the planet earth, there is no better person for leading the effort than the heavily decorated, battle-hardened, scholar, tactician, and strategist James Mattis.

Mattis is loved by Marine Corps officers and non-commissioned officers alike. He has been said by many to be a “Marine’s Marine.” He has dedicated his life to serving the United States as a Marine, climbing the ranks from a military career that has spanned over four decades and has embraced direct and material involvement in the Persian Gulf War, the Afghanistan War, and the Iraq War. He went from serving as Rifle and Weapons Platoon Commander in the Third Marine Division up the ranks to becoming Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, Commander of the United States Joint Forces Command, and, before his retirement, Commander of the United States Central Command.

He holds himself and those who serve under him to a very high standard of performance. He is selfless, a true patriot, a brilliant tactician and warrior, and, most importantly, like Ulysses S. Grant committed to victory and accepting of nothing but victory. He understands deeply the problems confronting American servicemen and Special Forces as they endeavor to destroy the terrorists and their infrastructures. He is well versed in the peculiar tribal customs, doctrines of Islamic radicalism, sources of support, and means of recruitment used by the Western world’s most ardent terrorist enemies, and he is committed to his very core to destroying those enemies. He is a creative, unpredictable, and terrifying foe. He will be America’s best weapon.

President-elect Trump was right to compare him to General George S. Patton, because he has many of the same characteristics that made Patton an extraordinary war fighter. Mattis’s successes in battle have earned him legendary status among Marines.

His bookish nature, constant study of tactics, strategy and military history led his troops to dub him affectionately the “warrier monk.” You can hear the echo of General Patton in many of the famous lines delivered by Mattis to his troops on the eve of battle. “Find the enemy that wants to end [the American] experiment [in Democracy],” said Mattis, “and kill every one of them until they’re so sick of the killing that they leave us and our freedoms intact.” Like Patton, Mattis is a happy warrior. “Fight with a happy heart,” he is fond of saying.

Mattis will reinvigorate the American military, break down the political barriers preventing achievement of military objectives, and give radical Islamic terrorists no respite, no quarter, no opportunity to regroup, and no future. After the disgrace of Obama’s eight years in office, whereby the United States has lost respect all around the world, General Mattis will restore it not through bravado but through deeds as the troops who love him will finally be given the support they need to defend America’s national interests and as the Trump Administration brings to pass the promise of American exceptionalism.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

President-elect Trump’s selection of Tom Price for Senate confirmation to the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services overwhelmingly confirms his decision to repeal and replace Obamacare. Repeal of Obamacare is essential if we are to restore sanity, affordability, and utility to the health insurance marketplace so sorely rent by Obamacare mandates; if we are to end the perversion of the Constitution that attends Chief Justice Robert’s dreadful King v. Burwell decision; and if we are to pave the way for a patient-centric, market driven economy in health care.

There is no more profound critic of Obamacare in the United States Congress than Tom Price, Congressman from Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District. A former orthopedic surgeon, Price introduced his Empowering Patients First Act (EPEA) in 2009. That bill would create tax credits to enable Americans to purchase (or not) at their election health insurance. That bill would also create interstate markets in health insurance, encouraging competition to reduce premium prices. In 2014, he introduced another plan that would replace Obamacare with tax credits up to $3,000 per year for those 50 and older (helping people buy their own health insurance) and provide a $1,000 tax cut for tax free investment in Health Savings Accounts.

Price is not a friend of a very energetic government, opposing regulation unless needed to guard against provable harm. He first ran for Congress in 2004, stating that he wanted to get into government to get government off of his back.

As Secretary of Health and Human Services upon confirmation by the Senate, Price will spearhead Trump’s legislative effort to repeal and replace Obamacare. Like Trump, Price is action oriented and driven. He will reform HHS, ensuring that the repeal Obamacare agenda is fully implemented.

Without question, the long elusive goal of repealing Obamacare has been given a huge boost by President-elect Trump’s decision to make Tom Price HHS Secretary. While Democrats in the Senate will likely put up a fight against his nomination, at the end of the day Price will become HHS Secretary. There has not been a person of his conservative principals and dedication to the goals of limited government in that position since the Reagan years. He is a conservative stalwart, well-schooled in the Founding Fathers’ conception of a limited, federal republic and dedicated fundamentally to restoration of as much of that government as he can achieve.

To ensure the success of Secretary Price at HHS, President-elect Trump will need to appoint complementarily conservative, anti-Obamacare, and pro-free market people to the posts of FDA Commissioner; Assistant Secretary for Health (overseeing the Public Health Service); Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and FTC Chairman.

There will need to be a major house cleaning at FDA to eliminate corruption and industry cronyism with the heads of all major departments replaced. Comparable reforms need to be made at each of the other agencies. During the past eight years, FTC has become the captive of leftist ideologues who have contempt for the free market. President-elect Trump will not only need to replace them with pro-free market individuals, but will also need to undo the extensive damage done by FTC through its various regulatory initiatives including, this very month, its latest guidance, which aims at destroying a good part of the homeopathic medical market in the United States.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

There is no more dedicated enemy of the United States than the theocratic dictatorship and state sponsor of radical Islamic terror known as the Islamic Republic of Iran. Since the radical Islamist followers of Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held captive, humiliated, and tortured 52 Americans for 444 days, successive Iranian regimes have dedicated themselves to a relentless campaign of condemnation of the United States, the taking of American hostages, and the funding and direct support of terrorist acts against the United States around the world. Among the many atrocities Iran has committed against the United States, Iranian Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani provided copper tipped IEDs to Iraq and helped train terrorists to kill American soldiers, resulting in the death of approximately 500 U.S. servicemen on active duty in Iraq. Iran has consistently provided funding support, weapons, weapon systems, and ground support to those who aim to kill Americans.

Despite Iran’s fervent desire and active campaign to kill Americans and destroy the United States, the Obama Administration embarrassed every American citizen when it acted directly contrary to American interests by entering into the decidedly pro-Iranian nuclear deal (a treaty for which Obama never sought Senate confirmation in violation of the Constitution).

That Neville Chamberlainesque deal has provided Iran in excess of $7 billion, including $4.2 billion of unfrozen assets, and has resulted in the elimination of sanctions against Iran. That massive infusion of funds, including actual cash delivered by plane directly to Iran, and the wholesale end to sanctions against Iran have enabled the Islamic Republic to rehabilitate its economy and vastly expand its global reach and state sponsorship of terror. Iran’s nuclear ambitions go unchecked and its power and influence in favor of radicalization and terror continue unabated around the world as a direct result of Obama’s unilateral surrender to Iranian demands.

President Trump has pledged that he will revoke Obama’s deal with Iran, which is an essential first step in righting the wrongs Iran has committed against Americans since 1979, but it is only the first step. We need to work closely with Israel to retaliate against Iran, greatly diminish its power and influence, and eliminate its nuclear capability. In particular, Bibi Netanyahu is sorely in need of a green light from President Trump to do whatever is necessary, including leveling Tehran, to destroy the Iranian nuclear capability and end the Islamic Republic’s support of international terrorism. The United States should make clear that it stands with Israel in its opposition to the Islamic Republic of Iran and should provide full military support for an Israeli war against that bitter enemy of both the United States and Israel.

Chastened by Iranian backed efforts to topple their regimes, Middle Eastern states that might otherwise come to the aid of a fellow Arab country are unlikely to come to the aid of Iran. Iran’s jingoism and advocacy of terror is aimed not only against the United States and Israel but also against its more moderate neighbors. Israel can therefore rest assured that its war against Iran will not likely provoke a united Arab counterattack.

The failure to take prompt action now to eliminate the Iranian regime and its burgeoning nuclear capability will redound to the detriment of the world in years to come. No country is more likely to engage in nuclear blackmail and deployment of nuclear weapons against Israel than Iran. Our paramount interest in ending the foremost state sponsor of radical Islamic terrorism, ending the taking of American hostages, and ending the loss of American lives around the world dovetails precisely with those of Israel.

That natural ally has been severely hamstrung by President Obama, who has absurdly attempted to befriend Iran and has made it clear to Israel that the United States will not reliably come to Israel’s aid if Israel attacks Iran. The Trump Administration has a lot of work to do in rebuilding Israeli trust and confidence in the United States. Beyond restoration of good relations with Israel, the United States must assure Israel that Israeli pre-emptive actions to save itself from the threat of Iranian nuclear blackmail and war are actions fully consistent with the interests of the United States.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserve

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the mayors of several other cities across the United States are the first to challenge President-Elect Donald Trump on his willingness to uphold the rule of law. On November 14, Emanuel threw down the gauntlet, declaring defiantly that “Chicago will always be a sanctuary city.” On Friday, January 20, 2017, after President-elect Trump is sworn into office, his first move should be to demand compliance with federal law and warn that any state or local official who stands in the way of federal law enforcement will be arrested and prosecuted. The example he should follow is that of President Ronald Reagan who on August 3, 1981, put a rapid end to the PATCO strike.

Confronted with a comparable flagrant violation of federal law, President Ronald Reagan told the striking members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), the now defunct union decertified as a result of its violation of 5 USC Section 118p (since recodified at 5 USC Section 7311), that they would be fired if they did not return to work. Indeed, Reagan defended the rule of law against PATCO despite the fact that PATCO was the only union that formally endorsed his candidacy for the presidency. Each federal employee, including each PATCO member, swore then and swears today an oath not to go on strike. PATCO members went on strike August 3, 1981 at 7AM. By 10:55AM that same day, Reagan appeared before reporters stating that all PATCO members who did not return to work within 48 hours would be fired. On August 5, 11,345 PATCO members did not return to work. Reagan fired them all, and he banned them from employment in the federal government for the remainder of their lives.

The showdown Rahm Emanuel and other like-minded mayors seek from Donald Trump should come in a rapid and immediate fashion without fanfare in the pattern of Ronald Reagan. Upon assuming office, President Trump should announce that Sanctuary Cities violate federal law and that any state official who impedes federal law enforcement officers endeavoring to enforce the nation’s immigration laws will be arrested and prosecuted. He should then direct the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) to arrest and deport all persons who are in the United States illegally, beginning with those who pose a threat to the lives and property of others, particularly those who have criminal records.

By so doing, President Trump will ensure that the states and cities no longer impede ICE enforcement of the immigration laws. State and local employees have a right, as do we all, to their opinions but when they translate those opinions into open defiance of federal law, they cross the line. While it is beyond federal law to permit the arrest of state and local officials who enact sanctuary city laws and policies, it is not beyond federal law (indeed, it is entirely consistent with federal law and the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution) to arrest and prosecute any such official who actually physically obstructs ICE agents from investigating, arresting, and prosecuting illegal aliens. And, indeed, if local government agents do stand in the way, they should be arrested and prosecuted by the feds.

By upholding federal law and ensuring that those committing acts of violence and that those engaged in illicit other activities (like prostitution, drug smuggling, money laundering, and burglary and theft) are apprehended even if in sanctuary cities, President Trump will literally be saving the lives and property not only of American citizens but also of illegal aliens.

The great irony of sanctuary cities is that they are, in fact, often not a sanctuary because they permit illegal aliens engaged in criminal activities to go undetected and unpunished. It is precisely this kind of unlawful harboring of fugitives from the law that enabled an illegal alien to take the life of Kate Steinle in San Francisco and Jamiel Shaw Jr. in Los Angeles. Steinle and Shaw are but two examples of many who have suffered loss of life or property at the hands of illegal aliens and yet have evaded law enforcement by secreting themselves in sanctuary cities.

Consider the consequences that would follow if President Trump were cowed by Emanuel and did not defend the rule of law but, through inaction, condoned the sanctuary cities.

If President Trump were to take office and not promptly countermand the defiant mayors by ensuring that federal law is enforced and that local officials who interfere with enforcement are arrested, he would thereby embolden them. Sanctuary cities would thereafter expand and become even more numerous, and the ability to enforce federal immigration laws would be rendered even more difficult. Consequently, I fully expect that President Trump will demand compliance with federal law and authorize the enforcement measures necessary to achieve that end.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Donald Trump’s stunning defeat vanquished the politics of self over country, of public corruption over the rule of law, and of American decline over American exceptionalism. His program for American economic, military, and political restoration promises to expand opportunity, protect the nation, and reignite economic growth. Through bills to achieve business and personal tax reductions, deregulation, elimination of Obamacare, restoration of the American military, vigorous prosecution and destruction of radical Islamic terrorism, and the establishment of meaningful border security, Donald Trump aims in his first hundred days to unlock the extraordinary potential of free enterprise, rebuild the national defense, and end widespread corruption.

President-elect Trump’s plans for the transition to this bold new era are now being perfected. The changes planned and promised are momentous. They will save America from the movement of the Obama Administration to reduce American stature in the world, compel purchase of health insurance mandated by the federal government, tax and regulate all productive elements of our society, and diminish and neglect the nation’s military and border defenses.

There could be no greater proof of American disgust with the corrupt, self-interested politics of Washington than the rejection of Hillary Clinton and the policies of Barack Obama by a majority of the electorate on November 8. There could be no greater proof of the love still harbored by those same Americans for their country than the popular rejection of the Clinton candidacy in favor of Donald Trump. We are witnessing the start of a new era of American majesty and grandeur, an American apotheosis.

Through a Trump presidency with a government no longer divided (Republicans holding the House and Senate), there is the precious opportunity to restore the foundations of American greatness: limited government, free enterprise, and a strong national defense. There is the hope that yet again the United States will prove itself a city upon a hill, as John Winthrop first put it in his 1630 admonition to members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

This time, unlike past elections, a revolution is afoot. A startling Brexit-like break with a bureaucratic past has taken place. The new President is beholden neither to the old guard nor to specific financial interests. He can lead without those old tethers, and he can overcome obstacles with an appeal directly to the American people.

He will be told that compromise is the order of the day. He will be told that a gracious victor must build bridges with the opposition that entail concessions that water down and sacrifice key elements in his agenda. He must resist those efforts and he must put forth a bold legislative initiative that favors passage of those measures that will bring to fruition the promises made in his campaign. There must be a border wall. There must be tax deductions for business and individuals. There must be an end to Obamacare. There must be an end to the horrible deal with Iran. There must be an option for veterans to obtain medical care from private hospitals.

There must be an investment in revitalizing the American military, ensuring that it has the best available means to accomplish the goal of destroying radical Islamic terrorism. There must be a declaration of war against radical Islamic terror. There must be an elimination of the administrative state in favor of a return to direct legislation.

There must be an elimination of the Department of Education and a return of education initiatives to the states. There must be a justice appointed to the Supreme Court who is dedicated to upholding the ideological foundations that define the limited government meaning and rights protective meaning of our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

It is a tall order. It requires an unwavering commitment. Now President-elect Donald Trump has his moment in history to make an unprecedented difference that will secure America’s place in the world as a bastion of freedom and free enterprise.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Consider all sources of information germane to who Hillary Clinton really is: the creation of an illegal private email server for all of her State Department emails, including those containing classified information; the neglect of that most fundamental duty to protect American lives in Benghazi, resulting in the death of four Americans, including the Ambassador; the delivery of State Department favors to major Clinton Foundation donors, netting the Clinton Foundation over $2 billion while she served as Secretary of State; the near constant litany of lies she has told to the American people about Benghazi, about her receipt of classified information on her private server, about her private server, and about her involvement with corrupt practices at the Democratic National Committee; and the spate of Wikileaks’ emails confirming the existence of profound and repeated conflicts of interest, contempt for the electorate, and a willingness to break the law, lie, and destroy others’ reputations in the vainglorious quest for money, power, and the White House. From all sources the glaring realities reflect a dark, hedonistic, and depraved character. We can now say with supreme confidence that Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt politician in American history. If history is our guide, she will, if elected, be the most corrupt president in American history.

If we examine the character of many of those who Hillary Clinton has selected to serve her, we find a similar degree of corruption. Clinton has surrounded herself with aides willing to advance her illegal agenda; condone and repeat her falsehoods and collude with the media to propound them; violate federal law to serve her political and personal financial ambitions; deceive the American people; destroy the reputations of honest people; and expose Americans in service to their country to grave risks. In short, Hillary Clinton is rotten to the core. Many, if not most, of those surrounding her are likewise rotten.

Clinton is so devoid of moral scruples, so enmeshed in corrupt activities that use public office to advance her private financial interests, and so willing to do whatever it takes to win, regardless of the legal boundaries, that her election to the presidency threatens to transform the entire executive branch of government into a cesspool of corruption, abuse of power, and tyranny.
One would fully expect that those same aides proven through the Wikileaks’ releases to be complicit in her corruption will fill the Clinton Executive branch (the cabinet posts and the agency leadership positions). The government of the United States would then be virtually indistinguishable from any one of a dozen corrupt third world countries. The law would assuredly apply only to those unable to buy political favors or lacking ties to the administration.

Given Clinton’s undeniable legacy of corruption, one must very well ask whether liberals keen on electing the first woman to the White House really want this woman to be the first. Will it advance or detract from the women’s movement if the first woman elected president is also the most corrupt in American history? Would it not be better to avoid that happenstance so that a future woman, of stellar reputation for integrity and a sincere commitment to the nation over herself, would be the first and a profound example of good, not just for all women and girls but for all people?

And for those who simply want another liberal to be president, why vote if your vote is an endorsement of corruption and insincerity? Hillary Clinton’s politics are as fickle as her penchant for the truth. She has changed her positions on issues vital to liberal voters more times during this campaign than any other politician who has run for elected office.

Hers is an ever changing kaleidoscope of policy positions. She has few, if any, deeply held views, and nothing she says she believes in today can assuredly define who she will be tomorrow. Given that reality and the fact of her corruption, why tarnish your own reputation by aligning yourself with Hillary Clinton through a vote in her favor? A vote is assuredly a powerful endorsement, particularly in this election. Better to keep your own integrity intact and stay home on election day than turn out for Hillary whose bankrupt character is so unlike the character of most Americans. A vote for Hillary is a vote for corruption.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

The critical factor that will determine the outcome of the presidential election in 2016 is voter turnout. Always important, it becomes determinative in a race where significant segments of the electorate harbor hatred for both of the major party candidates. Hillary Clinton continues to suffer from an enthusiasm gap propelled by a lengthy and continuing series of revelations about her abuse of public office for private gain, and Donald Trump continues to suffer from allegations of sexual harassment, albeit many of those allegations have not risen beyond mere conjecture.

Hillary Clinton has the benefit of a well-organized get-out-the-vote machine but she has been a lackluster candidate plagued by substantial evidence of Espionage Act violations and public corruption and a duplicitous public versus private position on issues. She remains distrusted by the vast majority of the electorate and with good reason. Her hidden agenda (including her refusal to reveal her Wall Street speeches) and her profound character flaws illustrated by the great number of false public statements that she has made and continues to make repulse many who would otherwise vote Democratic. She is among the most disliked people in politics. In the end, if she wins it will be because she has inspired enough people to vote on the basis of a hatred for Trump, rather than a fondness for her. In short, most people do not trust or like Hillary Clinton; if motivated to vote for her, a substantial number will do so in large measure because they dislike Trump even more than they do Clinton.

While Donald Trump lacks a get-out-the-vote operation comparable to Clinton’s, he has something she lacks in spades: charisma. His supporters are enthusiastic and can be counted upon to vote. The issue for Trump is whether his enthusiastic supporters are enough to overcome those who favor Clinton. The answer will depend on whether Trump’s message, come election day, has a strong enough draw to cause his supporters to go to the polls in very high numbers and to cause those independents who might be tempted to vote for Clinton to refrain from doing so to avoid condoning Clinton’s history of law violation for which she has not been made to account. Trump must depend on a very high voter turnout among those predisposed to vote for him and a very low voter turnout for those predisposed in favor of Hillary.

Logically, the charges of boorish behavior against Trump pale in comparison to the facts of public corruption against Clinton. Trump’s rude comments about women do not have the same gravity as Hillary’s chronic abuse of public office to achieve private gain, conflicts of interest that expose her desire for financial aggrandizement to exceed her willingness to defend the national interest. Indeed, when Clinton Foundation donors are enemies of the United States and received favors from Secretary Clinton, her actions imperil our national security.

Hillary depends on a campaign of hate and an electorate willing to condone her abuse of public office. She vilifies Trump and engages in fear mongering in an effort to stem his popularity. She does offer a plan, but it is one that expands upon the very same failed policies of the Obama Administration. Hillary has positioned herself to the left of Obama on domestic policy (a rather hard thing to do) and to the right of him on foreign policy (apparently favoring greater interventionism than President Obama).

Trump depends on a campaign of fundamental change, one that promises to take on the establishment and institute tax reduction and deregulation along with a more profound military effort to eliminate ISIS and create border security for America. He remains quite popular among those who identify the economy as their primary election issue. He also remains the overwhelming favorite among active duty personnel and veterans.

While most polls reveal an advantage for Hillary Clinton, polls cannot tell us who will actually vote. Particularly in this election, the outcome will largely depend on relative levels of enthusiasm among those who favor Clinton and Trump. Which candidate’s negatives will cause more voters to stay at home? Which candidate has succeeded in reducing those negatives enough to win the popular vote? And then, what will the electoral college decide? Will they vote consistent with the popular outcome, or will they deviate from the popular vote?

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

The recent spate of Wikilinks emails reveal Hillary Clinton and her top aides to harbor contempt for the electorate, who they view as rubes, and harbor a sense of entitlement for themselves, presuming that they are above the law, beyond reproach, and privileged. They are a peculiar brand of elitist criminals: The ordinary rules that govern all other Americans they deem inapplicable to them; they remain unrepentant for violations of the Espionage Act, for conflicts of interest, for derelictions of duty that resulted in the loss of four Americans’ lives in Benghazi, and for foreign policy decisions that have sacrificed the lives of Americans and have hastened the arrival of a nuclear Iran, the spread of radical Islam, and the rise of ISIS.

Combine the Wikilinks emails with the evidence supporting the conclusion that the Clintons have abused public office for private gain through influence peddling schemes dating back to their Arkansas days, and we have a recipe for widespread corruption if Hillary becomes the 45th President of the United States.

Bill Clinton famously “sold” the Lincoln bedroom and infamously engaged in illicit affairs with woman after woman from the time he was Attorney General of Arkansas through the time he served as President until the present, even engaging in sexual acts with intern Monica Lewinsky in the White House. Bill Clinton notoriously lied about the Lewinsky affair to the American people and under oath, lost his license for perjuring himself, and suffered a vote of impeachment by the House of Representatives (but was acquitted by the Senate). Hillary Clinton effectively sold access and favors while serving as Secretary of State, helping obtain in excess of $2 billion in contributions to the Clinton Foundation which, itself, is really a Clinton slush fund and not a “charity” (giving but a very small amount of funds received to the needy).

The election of Hillary Clinton brings not only Hillary but also Bill Clinton back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and with them a long and uninterrupted legacy of debauchery and influence peddling more extensive and corrupt than ever before in American history. The Clintons have built riches out of public service, shamelessly selling favors to some of the wealthiest people on earth, including those who are dedicated enemies of the United States. They prove through these actions a love for self to the exclusion of a love for country. To them the instrumentalities of government are but opportunities for private exploitation, to be dangled in front of would be financial supporters to entice them to finance the Clintons themselves. Having aligned the rich and powerful behind them through manipulation of policy and grants of political favors and overt conflicts of interest, they have in a very short time amassed great wealth.

Despite the corruption, many Americans appear now predisposed to put the Clintons back in the White House. This go around, having escaped sanction for Benghazi, the email scandals, the Espionage Act violations, the abuse of public office for private gain, and false testimony before Congress, Hillary Clinton stands poised to attain a position of power so extensive that she may command not just the State Department but the entire executive branch of government to serve the Clintons’ private financial interests.

In a new Clinton administration, there will be a constant double standard. The Clintons and those they favor will continue to escape punishment for illegal acts, while the rest of America will not. A Clinton empire is in the works. Unlike prior imperial presidencies where violations of the rule of law were the exception, in this one the rule of law will be so thoroughly traduced that the Founding Fathers’ bedrock principle, that America is a nation of laws and not of men, will be replaced by the arbitrary will of the Clintons.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

In the first debate, Hillary Clinton condemned Trump’s economic plan of tax cuts and regulatory relief as “trickle down” economics, the contention that by reducing the top marginal tax rates the middle-class and the poor receive little or no benefit. That argument stems from ignorance of economics and history, yet it has become a popular foil for justifying the kinds of tax increases, government redistribution, and regulatory advance that Hillary Clinton demands.

Cutting taxes leaves in private hands, directed by free will, money that would otherwise go to the government and be spent according to the dictates of politicians and bureaucrats. When large sums of money are left in private hands, particularly in the hands of those who have succeeded in finding ways to satisfy public demand for goods and services, i.e., in the hands of successful business people, it is variously saved, invested or spent. Whether saved, invested, or spent, whether allocated prudently or foolishly, the resulting effect is one of expanding the economic pie, the gross domestic product. When the captain of industry invests in his business, he employs more people, he brings to market more goods and services, he becomes more competitive locally and globally. When he saves, his money expands the lending capacity of those with whom he saves. When the captain of industry spends in the market, he employs more people, he provides more capital for vendors of goods and services, and he helps make the market more competitive locally and globally.

When, on the other hand, the government taxes accumulations of wealth, it creates a disincentive for the productive to remain as productive. It withdraws from the market capital that would otherwise be available to employ more people, bring to market more goods and services, and enable Americans to be more competitive locally and globally. One of the brilliant aspects of a free market is its efficiency in satisfying demand and exploiting opportunities. Government planning, by contrast, has ever been notoriously inefficient, driven not by the verities of the market but by the political choices of those in power. Politicians and bureaucrats have a near perfect track record of miscalculating demand and of wasteful spending (i.e., spending that fails to reach its best and highest use in the market).

Government programs are created to provide benefits to those politically favored, irrespective of those program’s ability to satisfy actual consumer demand. Government programs are terribly inefficient, with most funds allocated to the maintenance and expansion of the agencies that receive the funds rather than to the public. Government programs rarely, if ever, result in an expansion of the overall size of the market, i.e., the gross domestic product.

Instead, programs like the Obama Administration’s notorious loans to environmental concerns have a remarkably high failure rate because the political ambitions of the administration are at odds with actual market demand. There has yet to be an enormous consumer demand for solar power, and so increased production of solar goods and services made possible by government spending results in market losses, rather than market gains.

The waste generated by government spending of confiscated income produces market dislocation. The tax on productive elements reduces productivity. The regulation of those same elements produces a like effect, or worse (frequently causing a complete shut-down of markets and loss of goods and services). When the most productive become less so, that hurts everyone. It means there are fewer jobs. It means there are less goods and services available. It results in less competition, and it causes the United States to be less prominent in global markets. In other words, we all lose.

Hillary Clinton’s pronouncement that “trickle down” economics injures the middle-class and the poor arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of, or antipathy toward, capitalism. Money does not “trickle down” in the sense that only a small portion of it benefits those in need of employment, in need of money for their businesses, or in need of market opportunities. Rather, the entire amount left in the economy invariably benefits those same people and entities. Consistent with the genius of the market, all funds left in the economy find their best and highest use, resulting in an expansion of the economy.

It is precisely because tax cuts increase the economic pie that Arthur Laffer is correct when he predicts that reduction in marginal tax rates results in an increase in GDP and, therefore, the ironic effect of actually increasing tax revenues. Conversely, the kinds of tax increases and new regulations Hillary Clinton advocates have the effect of preventing GDP growth or, more likely, lessening it, and result in far more losses of jobs, funds available for business, and opportunities than would otherwise be the case were the money left in the economy.

The ultimate irony is that it is government redistribution, not leaving money in the economy free of tax, that produces “trickle down” economics. Because government is so inefficient, far less than 100% of monies obtained from taxes actually reach those intended to benefit from any government program. The vast majority of the funds are consumed by the agencies that administer the programs and, to the extent money reaches the public, it is but a small subset, a literal “trickle down,” from the monies taxed.

Furthermore, Hillary Clinton’s political twist on taxation is that she will only tax the rich, but the fact remains the cost of the programs she advocates, not least of which is free education for everyone, demand tax receipts vastly in excess of those attainable from a tax on the rich alone. The middle class is targeted for tax increases under the Clinton plan and will surely be required to pay the lion’s share of the cost for the vast expansion in the welfare and regulatory state Hillary Clinton wishes to impose on the United States.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

The Constitution of the United States of America defines a limited federal republic. It was designed for the protection of the rights of the governed. It bound those in power by the rule of law. It provided that rights exist against government and that rights precede government, they having been endowed in man by God. It created a system of checks and balances intended to separate and limit power such that no single person or entity could possess combined legislative, executive and judicial powers, which the founding fathers defined as tyranny. It made office holders the servants of the people.

No other nation on earth before or since has adopted a written Constitution so perfectly suited to provide for the common defense and the general welfare while simultaneously forbidding the exercise of power in derogation of the rights of life, liberty and property. No other nation before or since has so closely mirrored in practice the natural rights philosophy of John Locke, the separation of powers doctrine of Montesquieu, and the rule of law doctrine of Samuel Rutherford. We are a nation of laws, not of men, the founding fathers were fond of saying. Governments are instituted among men to protect the rights of the governed, our Declaration of Independence enshrines.

Americans in each generation have fought and died to keep America free, to defend the Constitution, and to defend the rights of free people to live in peace. And while time has tested each of these concepts and our modern federal government has violated our Constitution, the Constitution and the symbols of liberty, the American flag and the national anthem, remain fundamental reminders of our ideological origins and the fact that the fight for liberty against tyranny is never ending.

It is disgraceful when a person who benefits from the blessings of liberty rejects the very source of his own prosperity and seizes the limelight to communicate that betrayal, like San Francisco 49ers Quarter Back Colin Kaepernick, who has chosen to cast aspersion on our nation and reject the symbols of liberty, a liberty without which he would be nothing. And although Kaepernick and the other civilians who follow him have an undoubted right, in the face of the government and on their own property, to express hatred for the symbols of liberty no matter how vile that expression may be, they are bound by the wishes of those private property owners who give them a license to use their property for a limited purpose, in Kaepernick’s case, to play football on NFL fields owned by different leagues.

California is the only state in the Union which has erroneously construed the right of free speech to apply against private property owners in certain instances, but under the federal Constitution the matter is clear. Private parties who own property possess the right of free speech and editorial control over that property. Consequently, if the owners of a football team wish to insist that players avoid disparaging the flag, the national anthem, and the Constitution, they may do so, just as they may prohibit private activities by their players which cast aspersion on the team, as a matter of contract. Because the right to free speech on private property inures in the first instance to the benefit of the property owner, who has absolute editorial control over that property, the York family owners of the San Francisco 49ers are complicit in Kaepernick’s repudiation of allegiance to the United States when they allow his dissent on their property and condone that dissent through inaction.

Those who love the liberty given them by this country more than life itself would never tolerate the disgraceful dissent of Kaepernick on the property they own. Take, for example, Dallas Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones, whose reaction to Kaepernick and followers is direct and profound.

This past week Jones warned his coaches, players and field staff: “You are all simply paid performers on a stage and that field is my stage! You will stand, with your hand over your heart and with respect, when our Country’s National Anthem is being played or you will no longer be a Dallas Cowboy, a Coach for the Dallas Cowboys or have any association with the Dallas Cowboy Organization! I will immediately fire you, no matter who you are!”

I salute Jerry Jones. He is a descendant of the true friends of liberty, the American patriots in every age who risked their reputations, property, and even their lives to defend this country against enemies of liberty foreign and domestic. He has staked his reputation, all he owns in defense of this country. He will not let those he employs disgrace his country, their team, and the fans. He owns the stage, and he expects those who perform on it to honor this country with their allegiance to the symbols of liberty, the flag and the anthem, or get off the field and lose their pay. He has set the proper example for the NFL owners and has sent the right signal to the players. His action begs the ultimate question: Where do all of the other NFL owners stand?

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

The Obama Administration has made America a wide open target for would-be terrorists. This Administration’s essentially open border policy combined with its flaccid military response to terror, its embrace of the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, Iran, and its unwillingness to identify and declare war against the true enemy, radical Islamic terrorism, has created an environment hospitable to the growth of radical Islam and to radical Islamists murder of Americans. Hillary Clinton offers no stark break with that shameful past. Indeed, she condoned the very policies responsible for America’s decline while serving as Secretary of State. Throughout the campaign, she has wooed the far left wing of her party and select minorities on promises to maintain the very Obama Administration policies responsible for making America vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

Donald Trump remains the only candidate committed to a dramatic break with Obama appeasement with radical Islam and its principal state sponsor, Iran. Trump would reinvigorate the military, using all necessary force to eradicate radical Islamic terrorists around the world, would secure the borders and would severely limit immigration into the United States from those countries from which radical Islamic terrorists hail. He means to ramp up the intelligence and military campaigns against radical Islamic terror by ferreting out and destroying radical Islamists wherever they may be.

The recent terrorist incidents in New York and New Jersey make apparent just how vulnerable we are under the current Administration. Those incidents underscore the need for a break with that failed past and the need for new leadership that puts the interests of the United States first and does not apologize for the nation but demands respect for it around the world (and enforces those demands with decisive military action).

The election of Hillary Clinton sends a clear signal to our enemies that America will continue along the self-destructive path of reductionism championed by Obama. They know Hillary to be the very person responsible for misleading the nation as to the true source of the Benghazi terrorist attacks; the very person who failed to defend American lives in Benghazi when the U.S. diplomatic compound was under attack; the very person who, to keep her corrupt private dealings secret, placed all email correspondence to her office on a highly vulnerable private server, including top secret correspondence; and the very person who has joined Obama in favoring the deal with Iran that funds Iran’s sponsorship of terror and hastens the day when Iran obtains nuclear weapons. Hillary Clinton is thus viewed as weak and reliably inconsistent in defending America’s interests, the ideal choice for radical Islamic terrorists.

The election of Donald Trump sends an equally clear signal to our enemies that America will no longer continue along the self-destructive path of reductionism championed by Obama. They know he will invest heavily in expanding the power and extent of the American military. They know that he will view as a personal assault any attack on Americans lives or interests and will respond swiftly and decisively with overwhelming force to irradicate not just those who instigated the attack but all those who provided aid, comfort, and support for the attackers. They know he will do whatever it takes to annihilate radical Islam, including seeking a declaration of war against radical Islamic terrorists, thus making radical Islam the official enemy of the United States and the official target of the United States military. They know he will secure the nation’s borders and repudiate the deal with Iran, condemning that state sponsor of terror in no uncertain terms. They also fear Trump because they cannot predict what methods he will use in ferreting out terror and destroying it.

They also know that Trump has neither the corrupt history of Clinton in public office nor her willingness to permit the sacrifice of American blood for personal convenience. Trump’s commitment to protecting the interests of the United States is unwavering, and he will defend those interests consistently and zealously, and they know that well.

This election is thus pivotal not only because it will determine who will sit on the Supreme Court and the direction of the court for decades, will determine whether American enterprise will be unleashed from job killing and innovation stifling regulations and taxation, but also because it will send a message to the world concerning whether the American empire will continue to abandon defense of its own interests and whether the people of the United States have voted in favor of a move from a defensive, limited engagement against radical Islamic terrorist assaults to an offensive battle to annihilate radical Islamic terrorists wherever they may be.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

The footage of Hillary Clinton leaving early from the 9/11 memorial commemoration, leaning against a post and then wobbling and collapsing whereupon she was manually lifted by aides into an awaiting SUV, is among the latest in a series of disturbing videos that call into question whether she is mentally and physically healthy enough to endure the stresses that come with being president. Several other video clips show her in various stages of mental and physical breakdown, including violent and uncontrollable head bobbing, odd facial contortions, eyes wide open and mouth agape at inappropriate times, long coughing episodes, and various instances where she loses muscle control, stumbles or must be held up to walk. She is obviously ill. Her campaign is hiding from the American people the full extent of her health challenges. The latest statement that she is suffering from a bout of pneumonia, admitted late to the press, may well be true but it is not the whole story. A case of pneumonia does not explain her neurological symptoms or total loss of muscle control.

It should not surprise us that the Clinton campaign, which obfuscates and falsifies virtually everything of material significance that reflects adversely on Hillary’s candidacy, would keep from us the facts concerning her deteriorating health.

The violent head bobbing, the odd contortions of the face, and the sudden and profound loss of muscle control are indicative of neurological problems. We know that she suffered a brain injury requiring hospitalization, and among the consequences of serious brain injury are neurological problems. The apparent severity of her brain related problems suggest a condition that is deteriorating over time, perhaps aggravated by the stresses of campaign and public awareness of scandal.

We have not been told whether the peculiar manifestations of illness we see in Hillary, which reveal out of control muscle contractions and various states of collapse, are part of a deteriorating brain condition. She appears to be suffering from a neurological disorder but does that disorder affect her cognitive function? Huma Abedin admitted that her boss appeared out of it at times. It would be reasonable to assume that if the condition when pronounced denies her control over muscle function and causes disorientation, it would also result in a loss of mental focus, ability to concentrate, analyze, and evaluate. If when disoriented she loses spatial awareness, becomes confused and incoherent, and cannot engage in meaningful thought or communication, we must be concerned that this will affect her ability to serve as president.

One thing we do not want is a president who loses mental control now and again, particularly when under pressure, such as when stressed by a domestic or international crisis. As commander-in-chief, the President must often respond in a very short period of time to circumstances that can escalate out of control and result in catastrophic loss of life and property. In such instances, the President may need to order military action in a second.

When forced to respond in an instant, he or she may act rashly and irresponsibly with catastrophic consequences if not in full control of his or her faculties or may not react at all if so disoriented that decision-making becomes impossible.

If the Clinton campaign does not permit an independent and thorough evaluation of Hillary Clinton’s physical health and full revelation of it to the American public, the onus will be against her on the issue of physical and mental fitness to serve as President. If we are not told the truth, we must assume the worst. The evidence supports the conclusion that Hillary Clinton is physically and mentally ill. The odd contortions, violent head bobbing, and loss of muscle control are so profound and unusual indications of neurological problems that we must assume her health compromised and we must likewise protect the nation with our votes against the risk of a President who may falter catastrophically in a crisis.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

From taking 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, working with terror groups to kill over five hundred American soldiers; providing munitions and financial support to terror groups and Taliban insurgents in their fight against American forces; taking American tourists, missionaries, and public aid workers hostage; and harassing American vessels in the Persian Gulf to condemning the United States weekly, the theocratic dictatorship which calls itself the Islamic Republic of Iran has behaved as if it were at war with the United States since November 1979. By contrast, the United States has denied the existence of that war and, in recent years, has aided in the funding of that war and the great expanse of that regime’s hegemony over the region.

President Obama has been complicit with Iran, aiding and abetting its acts against American interests, its financing of radical Islamic terror, and its expansion of hegemony over the Middle East. By releasing $1.7 billion to that state sponsor of terror, by removing every real obstacle to Iran developing nuclear weapons, and by refusing to strike back against Iranian acts of provocation against the American military, the Obama Administration has gone far beyond feckless weakness to making itself in fact (and so viewed by countries in the region) as Iran’s greatest financial supporter and facilitator. Iran is now the most powerful enemy of our country in the region, and that is in no small measure due to the Obama Administration’s complicity in that rise. The record could not be more shameful or more powerfully contrary to the interests of the United States. It is as if the prospective victim of violent crime not only gave the person intent on committing the crime a gun but also paid for bullets to be used in the gun and even aided the criminal in loading the weapon.

If we are honest with ourselves and if we intend to rebuild American power and prestige in the world, restoring America to the role of a bastion in defense of American liberty and free enterprise, we must settle this score with Iran. Doing so requires the use of overwhelming force against the regime in power and its burgeoning regional military in response to Iranian actions that threaten the United States, its military, and its citizens. Failing to do so will lead to ever greater actions against us, to an increasingly emboldened enemy that despises us as “infidels.”

Rather than tolerate threats by Iranian vessels against American ships of war in the Gulf, we ought to sink those vessels, every time. Rather than endeavor, painfully, to explain away the humiliation of American soldiers taken captive by Iran, we should retaliate by obliterating the Iranian naval installations where the men were held hostage. Rather than ignore Iran’s financing of terror against American forces, we should be broadcasting the fact of it and hunting down and killing their commanders who are training and aiding terrorists (even in Iran itself). Rather than tolerate Iran’s use of the internet to promote propaganda against the United States, we should be using cyber warfare to block their communication and fry their servers. Rather than alienate Israel and restrain its efforts to eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapon capabilities, short range ballistic missiles, and missile defense systems, we should be giving full and direct support to Israeli efforts to destroy those capabilities, missiles, and defenses.

And if Iran again, as it undoubtedly will, takes Americans lives and property, we ought to follow Thomas Jefferson’s response to hostage holding and ransom demands by the Barbary Pirates. We should respond swiftly, with overwhelming force, and obliterate that enemy.

Increasingly, due to the fecklessness of Barack Obama, America is perceived by its most ardent enemies (Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China) as weak, vacillating, and incapable of protecting its own vital interests. That reputation leads to acts of provocation, acts which escalate over time because they have not been repulsed with ferocity.

A true commander-in-chief explains frankly who our enemies are, works to diminish their ability to cause America harm, and strikes powerfully against those who act against American life, liberty, and property. Obama, by contrast, embraces America’s enemies as friends, ignores actions by those enemies to harm American interests, and routinely fails to strike back completely against those who take American life, liberty, and property. Iran is a classic example of Obama’s disaffection from America, whereby he favors America’s enemies over America’s friends and America itself. In a time of war, such actions are treasonous. In a time of peace, such despicable actions are a betrayal of the public trust imposed in the President, of his oath of office, and of the nation itself.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

It appears to be dawning (even on that minority of individuals who are enthusiastic supporters of Hillary Clinton), that the scandals surrounding her may never end: that the near weekly revelations of wrong doing which have dogged her since the start of her campaign for presidency are never ending, growing more complex, and involving more and more evidence of abuse of public office, of callous disregard for laws designed to protect intelligence operatives and information, and of chronic use of public office for private gain (e.g., the pay for play relationship with the Clinton Foundation). Indeed, given the never ending nature of the scandals, one would be hard pressed to think that she could manage the job of the presidency without constant distractions, let alone avoid the risk of impeachment. Atop it all, Hillary lies, condescendingly and often.

She assumes that the public will believe outright falsehoods if they come from her lips and are repeated prolifically rather than believe direct evidence to the contrary, which keeps rearing its ugly head in email after email. Because neither the FBI Director nor the Attorney General appear willing to make Hillary account for unlawful conduct, there is but one source of justice left: the electorate. Hillary’s gamble is that just as she was able to hoodwink the Obama Administration into allowing her to be above the law, so too will she be able to hoodwink the electorate into allowing her to escape responsibility for her actions in the presidential election. With each passing day of scandal, that hope appears to diminish in favor of justice, of a reckoning at the ballot box where voters of integrity will not allow their vote to elect the most corrupt politician in American history.

One of Hillary’s Democratic peers, Jimmy Carter, used to campaign pledging that he would “never lie to you.” Far from Hillary being able to make that pledge, most voters suspect that she may never tell America the truth. The parents of those slain in Benghazi have an exceptional reason to believe Hillary may never tell the truth.

Decades of corruption prove a pattern and the near weekly revelations of more wrong doing belie Hillary’s attempts to resurrect her character from the mire. No person can now vote for her without accepting that they are placing into the presidency the most corrupt politician in American history. It is that reality which most threatens her presidential ambitions. It is that reality which may well cause scores of Democrats of sound moral character to stay at home on election day, realizing the wisdom of that old adage, “If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.”

Those who vote for Hillary must accept responsibility for their vote, responsibility for the corruption that comes to the presidency if she is elected due to their action. Those who vote for Hillary must explain, at least to themselves, how it is that they can square their insistence on honesty, integrity, and lawful conduct in their daily lives with their vote for president.

When someone lies as often as Hillary Clinton has publicly (and when a person has been implicated in so many scandals as has she), no one can expect that person to become a model of honesty and incorruptibility in future. Because she has lied to the public so often, how is it that anyone can reasonably rely on her promises of government hand-outs or her promises that pander to one interest group or another? With Hillary, little, if anything, appears to be sacrosanct, not even the national security of the United States.

The ultimate problem for Hillary is that her false statements and her wrongful conduct all involve abuse of public office rather than private transgressions. Had her false statements not involved public office, they would assume less gravitas. The falsehoods, however, have been designed to cover up abuses of public office and public trust.

That renders them of paramount importance when voters contemplate putting her back in public office. She has yet to be punished in any way for her wrong doing, and she is betting on the old Clinton standard of political manipulation to keep her unaccountable under the law. Ironically, by enjoying the favor of those in office who have been willing to excuse her law violations without even so much as requiring her to face charges (charges that have resulted in the incarceration of people lacking her political clout), the Obama Administration has made the voting public the last best hope for justice. In November, the vote will likely be the only means by which those of integrity may compel Hillary Clinton to experience a moment of true justice. They may do so either by voting for her opponent or, if not, by staying home, but no possessed of integrity and a sense of justice should vote for Hillary Clinton.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Hillary Clinton and her surrogates depend on public ignorance and misperception to win the election. A substantial amount of evidence spanning her entire public career from 1975 until the present reveal repeated instances of abuse of power, unlawful conduct, and false statements that she and her surrogates variously deny or contend are of no consequence. The divide between the Clinton depiction of the facts and reality is wide and stark.

The evidence reveals that Hillary Clinton channeled all of her emails illegally through private servers, putting classified information and human intelligence at risk in violation of the Espionage Act and State Department regulations and violating the Freedom of Information Act requirements concerning public access to unclassified communication.

The evidence reveals that Hillary Clinton and her top aides worked in tandem to provide access to the Secretary of State and assistance to individuals who, and entities that, made financial contributions to the Clinton Foundation.

The evidence reveals that Hillary Clinton was grossly negligent when she failed to act in response to pleas from Ambassador Christopher Stevens and others to the State Department, resulting in the deaths of the Ambassador; U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith; and CIA contractors Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty, as well as the injury of 12 others. The evidence further reveals that Hillary Clinton lied to the families of the fallen when she told them at the very time that they received the bodies that the lives were lost due to a spontaneous uprising in response to an anti-Islamic video when in fact she knew the losses to be due to an act of terrorism. Through surrogates and in direct statements she perpetuated that lie to the American people.

The evidence reveals that Hillary Clinton propounded false accusations against long time White House Travel Office employees, including then travel office Director Billy Dale, alleging that they had embezzled funds from the travel office. As more information came to light, it became apparent that Hollywood Producer and Inauguration Chair Harry Thomason and his business partner Damell Martin wanted their travel business, TMR, to do all of the bookings and related work that had been done by the travel office. Eventually certain of the travel office employees, including Director Billy Dale, were charged with crimes only to be completely exonerated due to a lack of evidence. Their reputations tarnished and their personal resources depleted, those innocent individuals became victims of Hillary Clinton’s false statements, which coincided with the Clintons’ effort to give the White House travel business to friends Thomason and Martin.

The evidence reveals that far from advancing a feminist cause where it mattered most, in instances where she was directly privy to proof of abuse of women by men, Hillary Clinton instead advanced the causes of the abusive men. In the first instance, as the Director of the University of Arkansas Legal Aide Clinic, Hillary Clinton defended a 41 year old rapist of a 12 year old girl. She not only undertook the defense of a brutal rapist who left the child sterile but she gratuitously endeavored to destroy the little girl’s reputation by suggesting that she fantasized about having sexual relations with an older man. In the second instance, from the time he served as Attorney General of Arkansas through his service as President of the United States, Hillary Clinton not only defended her husband against charges of sexual misconduct with other women but went further to besmirch the reputations of those who brought the charges. Her actions have helped enable Bill Clinton’s philandering, including his illicit relations with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky.

These are but a few of the many actions taken by Hillary Clinton over the course of her public career that reveal a lack of integrity, overt lies to the American people, and deliberate efforts to engage in misrepresentation and lack of candor. Indeed, Bill and Hillary Clinton have become so versed in character assassination as a means to diminish the standing and apparent credibility of their critics that they inculcate that approach into their public campaigns. Whenever accusations come to light that call into question their personal ethics or their adherence to the law, they respond with an unequivocal denial (e.g., “I did not have sexual relations with that woman . . .”). They then follow it by having surrogates attack the character of those bringing the charges, and they then come up with a “narrative” that explains what happened in ways that indicate innocence, lack of knowledge, or fault lying in someone else.

All of these calculated political ploys aim either to persuade the public that the Clintons are not culpable for their own wrongdoing or to befuddle the public, at a minimum, leaving people at a loss as to what the real story actually is. Through denial and obfuscation, the Clintons escape responsibility again and again. In other words, they depend on public ignorance and misperception to get their way, and to win elections.

Hillary Clinton is counting on this approach to carry her to the White House. The traditional part of her Democratic campaign depends on promising specific voting constituencies political favors that tempt them to vote for her (e.g., state paid education for college age kids; government paid health coverage for the elderly; taxing the rich and redistributing the revenues raised to finance a slew of new government programs to placate Sanders’ supporters, environmentalists, and certain segments of the Middle Class and the poor).

The nontraditional part of her campaign depends on redundant pronouncement of falsehoods in a planned, well-orchestrated effort by the candidate and her surrogates to flood sympathetic media with denials of wrong-doing and the false narratives to deflect attention away from the damaging truths that impugn her character, reveal her involvement in unethical or illegal activities, and invite further federal investigation.

All the while, those who bring evidence of the charges are themselves made the true victims. They are castigated and publicly condemned by her surrogates who fan sympathetic social media to maintain a constant flow of disparagement and character assassination.

Her overall approach is highly cynical. It condescendingly assumes the electorate to be comprised of people who can be bought with promises that are almost never fulfilled and who are either too ignorant or too fickle to discern evidence of wrong doing. If Americans elect Hillary Clinton president it will send Hillary and her surrogates a resounding message of confirmation, that the politics of dishonesty and character assassination is the winning way. It will also give her assurance that her long history of abuse of power and misrepresentation to the public can continue unabated throughout the term of her presidency.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Emails released by the State Department to Judicial Watch form yet another window into Hillary Clinton’s conduct in public office, a window that reveals conflicts of interest that suggest the Clinton State Department granted special treatment and favors to Clinton Foundation donors and other Friends of Bill. Truth be told, ethical violations and influence peddling have been a part of the Clinton modus operandi for a very long time, since at least the mid-1970’s when Bill Clinton served as Attorney General of Arkansas. Influence peddling and unethical conduct are, however, but one wellspring from the very dark pool we may collectively call the Clinton soul. It was from that dark pool which Hillary drew, early in her career, when she laughingly recounted her success at liberating from a long prison sentence a 41 year old man who brutally raped a 12 year old girl.

There is perhaps no more profound reflection of Hillary Clinton’s moral ambivalence and disregard for victims than what arises from responses she gave to questions posed her in an interview with Arkansas reporter Roy Reed in 1975. The audio recording of that 1975 interview first published in 2014 by the Washington Free Beacon is chilling in that it exposes a callous disregard for the welfare of a 12 year old girl and proof of legal ethics violations.

In 1974, Hillary Clinton left Washington, D.C. (where she served as a lawyer on the House Judiciary Committee’s Impeachment Inquiry Staff) to live with her fiancée, Bill Clinton (who she first met at Yale Law School in 1970), and serve as the Director of the University of Arkansas Law School’s newly formed legal aid clinic. Clinton was contacted by an Arkansas prosecutor who asked if she would defend Thomas Alfred Taylor, a 41 year old man accused of brutally raping and beating into a coma a 12 year old girl, Kathy Shelton. Clinton agreed to defend Taylor. Her defense proved successful, resulting in a plea deal that reduced what was a potential 30 year prison sentence to just 10 months in the county jail (with 2 months excused as already served).

The 41 year old Taylor lured the 12 year old Shelton into a car. He violently raped her, tearing genital tissue, and he beat her repeatedly into a coma. Following her recovery in a local hospital, Shelton was informed by physicians that her wounds made it unlikely that she would ever conceive, a diagnosis confirmed years later by another physician. Now 54, Shelton remains traumatized by the horrible ordeal. She explained the relevant facts to the Daily Mail.com. As one would expect, Shelton does not have a high regard for Hillary Clinton, viewing her as anything but a sincere defender of the rights of women and children. Indeed, although in most interviews she asked not to be identified, Shelton recently went public, fearing that Hillary will be trusted by women when she claims herself a defender of women and children’s rights, claims Shelton regards as insincere.

An attorney myself, I find Hillary Clinton’s actions and subsequent description of them to reporter Roy Reed evidence of a deep moral depravity, not to mention of legal ethics violations. I would never defend a person who I believed guilty of a criminal offense, let alone the heinous act of raping a 12 year old girl (indeed, I have always refused to undertake any criminal case). The Reed interview makes it clear that Hillary Clinton represented a person she believed to be guilty of a brutal rape of a child. In the Reed interview, Hillary disclosed the confidential content of a lie detector test done on her client along with her own apparent view that he was guilty of the offense for which she personally mounted a defense, even executing an attorney affidavit in his favor that cast aspersion upon the rape victim, a 12 year old girl. Clinton’s affidavit suggested that the girl fantasized about having relations with an older man and invited the assault. Quite clearly, based on the Reed interview, Clinton spent time engineering a defense beyond the evidence, even to the point of executing an affidavit under penalty of perjury that besmirched the character of a little girl. Her apparent delight at succeeding in reducing the sentence of a man she believed guilty of a brutal rape and her callous disregard for the welfare of the child victim of that rape are revolting, wholly inexcusable and profound character flaws.

Although committed when she was a young attorney, and arguably capable of being rectified thereafter, the character flaws evident in the Reed interview have become a staple of Hillary Clinton, presaging many more acts of corruption and abuse that followed from that time to the present.

In her interview with Reed, Clinton revealed that she knew her client to be guilty of the brutal rape charge, stating with a laugh: “I had him take a polygraph, which he passed—which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs.” Clinton built her case against the 12 year old in part upon speculative content that besmirched the girl’s character in an affidavit she executed, wherein she called into question the role of the child’s psyche, representing that the girl probably fantasized about an encounter with an older man. She also worked to gain the testimony of a New York blood expert, who questioned the forensic evidence. Clinton was most proud of her “accomplishment” in achieving a reduced sentence for the rapist, boasting that she succeeded in getting a First Degree rape charge (carrying a 30 year sentence) reduced to a plea of unlawful fondling of a minor (carrying a 1 year sentence). “Oh,” she said in the Reed interview, “he plea bargained. Got him off with time served in the county jail, he’d been in the country jail for about two months.” So Taylor received freedom from a life sentence he richly deserved, while thanks to Hillary Clinton, Shelton, rendered infertile and emotionally scarred for the rest of her life, received no justice at all (and not a single word of sympathy from Hillary Clinton).

Indeed, in her subsequent books and interviews, Hillary Clinton rewrote this despicable real life chapter from her own legal career, professing that she had always been a defender of the interests of women and children, conveniently ignoring this politically inconvenient truth. One would hope the just among us would never forget Kathy Shelton and the injustice Hillary caused Shelton to suffer. Shelton has endured much physical and mental hardship, compounded by the callousness of Hillary Clinton and Clinton’s successful defense of the rapist. So much for the self-proclaimed champion of women and children. This November, will those who view themselves advocates of the rights of women and children reward Hillary Clinton with the presidency or will they remember Kathy Shelton and finally give Kathy a semblance of justice by denying Clinton the presidency?

The Reed interview exposes what many suspect about Hillary Clinton based on numerous occurrences since: that she cares little for those her actions adversely affect so long as she stands to gain. Hillary Clinton pursues her ambitions blindly, leaving casualties in her wake. If the rules are inconvenient for Clinton, she ignores or violates them (witness the patent violation of the Freedom of Information Act and the Espionage Act from her transfer of all of her State Department emails to private and unsecure servers). She did not care that her use of a private server put the nation’s intelligence operatives and secrets at risk. She wanted to keep her correspondence from public release through the Freedom of Information Act, even if it meant placing lives and classified information at risk. When called to produce the emails, she selectively deleted 33,000 of them, keeping from us evidence that may have made her direct involvement with the Clinton Foundation abundantly clear.

It is important for us to remember that Hillary and Bill Clinton are lawyers (albeit Bill had his license suspended from 2001 to 2006 for giving false statements under oath, denying that he had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky). Hillary and Bill graduated from Yale Law School in 1973. In law school, we study legal ethics. We learn about conflicts of interest and rules designed to prevent not only overt conflicts but even the appearance of conflicts. Consequently, lawyers proceed with a high degree of awareness, trained to steer clear of conflicts of interest and be ever mindful of the conflicts of interest laws. In other words, Hillary and Bill are even more culpable than the non-lawyer, because they understand well the rules and the reasons why the rules are in place along with the consequences that follow from transgressing the rules.

During her tenure as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, through her top staff, worked in tandem with the Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton to develop a lucrative financial empire, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, the Clinton Foundation. Ordinarily, consistent with conflicts of interest regulations and disclosures, government officials who assume public office identify potential conflicts and divest themselves of all conflicting involvement and interest before assuming office. Rather than do that, Hillary Clinton professed non-involvement with the Clinton Foundation but then proceeded to allow her office to involve itself intimately with the Foundation and act on her behalf. On occasion, Hillary herself took actions that benefited the Foundation by giving access to and performing special favors for individuals who, or companies that, paid large contributions to the Foundation or paid Bill Clinton speaking fees.

Ordinarily the FBI investigates conflicts of interest by public officials and, upon finding proof, files charges. Indeed, that was the fate of former FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford (whose wife held undisclosed interests in the stocks of pharmaceutical and food companies regulated by the FDA). Crawford was investigated by the FBI, charged with violating the conflicts of interest and false statement laws, forced to resign, and then entered into a plea whereby he paid $50,000 to the United States Treasury.

The 44 emails obtained by Judicial Watch document what appear to be conflicts of interest or, if not, give rise to the appearance of conflicts, which Clinton condoned by nothing to eliminate them while she served as Secretary of State. Indeed, Clinton senior staff assisted the Clinton Foundation, corresponded with the Foundation, and promised favors for those who made contributions to the Foundation. On occasion, Clinton took actions as Secretary of State that stood to benefit contributors to the Foundation.

Indeed, it appears that on repeat occasions Bill and the Foundation milked Hillary’s position as Secretary of State for speaking fees or Foundation contributions, leading major donors to realize that they might obtain special access to the Secretary or favors from her by paying handsomely. Although still subject to discovery through legal process (assuming that a United States Attorney will do his or her job and investigate), there is more than enough publicly available to justify a complete investigation of the conflicts of interest.

Take the case of Frank Giustra, a Canadian billionaire, in the mining business. He contributed a whopping $100 million to the Clinton Foundation in 2005. After Bill Clinton and Giustra held a meeting with President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan in 2005, Giustra’s mining company received authority to do business with three state-run uranium mining companies in Kazakhstan. The Russian Atomic Energy Agency acquired the three companies, which arrangement was approved by the Clinton State Department. Following a dinner with Giustra, Bill and Hillary Clinton met in 2010 with the President of Columbia. Thereafter, a company in which Giustra has a financial interest obtained rights from the Colombian government to perform logging operations in ecological habitats along the Colombian coastline. So much for Hillary’s oft touted concern for the environment. This is but one of several highly suspicious trails of evidence that warrant detailed investigation.

At a minimum, the evidence shows indifference by Hillary Clinton to the presence of conflicts of interest and a purposeful failure on her part to take any action to avoid those conflicts. At a maximum, they reveal a pay for play racketeering operation whereby Hillary operated the Clinton State Department as a lure for obtaining funding to the Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton personally in exchange for grants of special access or favors. That would most definitely be a crime. We have a right to know how far this goes, and the Department of Justice or the United States Attorneys in upstate New York ought to investigate.

In a recent article by Robert Zapesochny, published in the August issue of The American Spectator, he reports that at least 181 individuals, companies and foreign governments made contributions to the Clinton Foundation while lobbying the State Department during Clinton’s term in office. The total amount of donations received by the Clinton Foundation from 2001 to 2015 is staggering: $2 billion.

The amount raked in by Bill Clinton in speaking fees, not to mention those obtained by Hillary since resigning as Secretary of State, surpasses that of any prior president in both amount per speech and number of speeches, including in excess of 650 speeches, earning over $130 million in fees.

The Clintons have proved themselves willing to break the rules of legal ethics and to go to the very edge of law violation and even transgress it, in service to themselves or in furtherance of their own blind ambitions. Their entire public lives they have used the instrumentalities of government, the offices they have held, and the trust the public has given them to feather their own nests at the expense of the nation and the public. We have once endured the disgrace of a White House where a President committed acts of infidelity with an intern and then lied about them under oath and where even the Lincoln bedroom was made available to financial donors. What is to prevent even greater abuses from occurring when Hillary and Bill return to the White House? Are we to expect an abrupt halt to Bill and Hillary’s legacy of corruption and abuse that has taken place over the last forty years?

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Dear Mr. Trump:

As the only true challenger to a failed government in the race, you are expected to run an unconventional campaign, but you suffer from polling that reveals a public trust deficit. That deficit is fed by certain members of the public who buy into the Clinton/Obama argument that you are not fit to lead (the pot calling the kettle black) and by other members of the public who doubt you will fulfill your promises.

To eliminate that trust deficit requires immediate action. I recommend demonstration projects along with the identification of cabinet heads who will lead the effort in your administration. Below I offer five areas where you could prove to the public that you have your program to resurrect American greatness in place and ready to go, if only they will vote you into office.

Making the American Military Great Again. You should form a group that would be comprised of retired officers and heads of defense and intelligence agencies of excellent reputation who support a major revitalization of the American military, ensuring that we have the best, state-of-the art equipment, force type and size, and command necessary to wage war against Islamic terrorists and against conventional enemies all over the world. They would pinpoint precise needs, expenditures, and R & D commitments needed to create a global military power second to none. You would emerge from this meeting naming who would be your Secretary of Defense and precisely what you plan to expend and do to make the American military the most formidable. You would devote one week of the campaign to this theme, appearing with your Secretary of Defense at locations in America where manufacture and production of the new military would most likely be engaged and at locations where acts of terror have been committed on American soil, reminding Americans that the acts of terror could have been prevented had Clinton and Obama engaged ISIS vigorously, destroying it at the outset.

Making the American Economy Great Again. You should form a group that would be comprised of leading conservative economists and deregulation experts, Republican governors past and present who have succeeded in revitalizing state economies, along with the heads of manufacturing concerns from small to large who support your plan for tax and regulatory relief. They would identify the precise problems that stymie the development of a vibrant and free economy and the reforms needed to revitalize the American economy, making it a free market leader of the world. You would emerge from this meeting naming who would be your Secretary of Treasury and your new Deregulation Czar. You would devote one week of the campaign to this theme, appearing with your Secretary of the Treasury at select economically depressed locations across America, faulting Clinton and Obama for advocating costly regulations and taxes that keep Black youth, unemployed people over 45, and women (indeed explaining that Clinton’s “free” tuition for all, single payer socialized medicine, and massive new welfare programs will catapult the $21 trillion deficit into the stratosphere) at historically high levels of unemployment and underemployment and that stifle innovation and deny America its place as free market leader of the world.

Making America Safe Again. You should form a group that would be comprised of security experts, state law enforcement leaders, former intelligence officers, former border patrol officers and builders who support your commitment to cause local, state, national and international law enforcement to have better coordination and to ensure full support for local law enforcement efforts to combat domestic terror and who support your commitment to build a wall and greater security along America’s Southern border to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into the nation. You would emerge from this meeting naming who would be your Secretary of Homeland Security and who would be the head of Border Patrol. You would devote one week of the campaign to this theme, appearing with your Secretary of Homeland Security and head of the Border Patrol along the Southern border at key locations where illegals have crossed in large numbers.

Making America a Nation of Law and Order. You should form a group that would be comprised of leading conservative law professors and attorneys who advocate restoration of constitutional limits on government power and defense of the Constitution who support your list of nominees to the Supreme Court and oppose Clinton/Obama executive actions that violate the separation of powers, make and enforce law without the consent of Congress, and defeat representational democracy by enabling the unelected heads of federal bureaucratic agencies to exceed constitutional limits by enacting through regulation almost all federal law. You would emerge from this meeting naming who would be your Attorney General and who would be your Solicitor General. You would devote one week of the campaign to this theme, appearing with your Attorney General and Solicitor General in Philadelphia to remind Americans that our greatness depends on the rule of law and that the Constitution must be honored in word and deed by Justices of the Court who are subservient to it rather than who presume extraconstitutional powers in support of unlimited government.

Making American Government Honest Again. You should form a group that would be comprised of leading critics of corrupt government practices, waste, fraud and abuse, along with former inspectors general and private attorneys who have sued the government successfully and that would focus on corruption and unlawful activity within the federal departments and agencies. They should catalog the corporate cronyism in the agencies, the revolving door phenomenon in Washington, and the abuse of position and privilege for personal gain (such as Hillary Clinton’s abuses via her private email server and corrupt connections while serving as Secretary of State to donors supportive of the Clinton Foundation).

You should emerge from this meeting naming a new top criminal lawyer and investigator who would serve in a new office within the Department of Justice dedicated to ferreting out and prosecuting those engaged in corrupt and unlawful activity within the federal government and to drafting new laws designed to permit private parties victimized by corrupt acts and practices to sue those government agents individually and recoup damages.

Mr. Trump, if you were to focus your campaign on these themes and provide a clear roadmap to implementation of your agenda via this approach, you would set the national debate on your terms; dispel the public trust deficit; and instill confidence in voters that you have the plans to restore American greatness and the people necessary to do it already in place. You will thereby outflank Clinton and reveal by contrast the vacuous nature of her charges against you. In short, the moves I recommend here will add tremendous gravitas to your campaign beyond rhetoric, enabling Americans to appreciate as never before precisely what a Trump presidency would mean for America.

Sincerely,

Jonathan W. Emord

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Undecided and independent voters are called upon to assess whether statements made by Donald Trump that may have irritated or offended them are of equal or greater gravitas than actions taken by Hillary Clinton in public office. While Trump’s “counterpunches” land hard on those he “hits” and offend many sensitive to their implications, they have never placed in peril American intelligence operatives or methods; have never resulted in the death of Americans overseas; have never misled the American public concerning the actions of terrorist enemies of the United States; and have not placed the most vital secrets of this nation at risk. That horrible history is the unique legacy of Hillary Clinton in public service. Viewed fairly and impartially, nothing Donald Trump has said or done comes close to equaling the dire consequences to our nation that stem from what Hillary Clinton has said and done.

In short, while one of the chief pro-Clinton partisans, President Obama, calls Donald Trump “unfit” to serve as President, the fact is that Donald Trump has done nothing that would constitute a basis for legal disqualification, but the same cannot be said of Hillary Clinton. Indeed, Hillary Clinton is directly responsible for a failure to take action in response to pleas from Ambassador Christopher and his fellow Americans serving in Benghazi, a gross dereliction of duty that resulted in the deaths of those Americans.

She is also responsible, while serving as Secretary of State, for lying to the families of those lost to this act of terror, stating to them that the event was the result of a spontaneous uprising to an anti-Islamic video while telling her daughter shortly before that the Benghazi attack was in fact the result of an act of terror. She is responsible for violating State Department regulations and the Espionage Act by having all email correspondence that she received while serving as Secretary of State delivered to her unsecure private email servers and blackberries, acts that violated regulations defining secure communication channels for Espionage Act compliance purposes, and placing at risk, for the sake of her own convenience, the lives of American intelligence operatives and exposing their methods to risk of hacks.

Add to the foregoing Hillary Clinton’s repeated false statements to the American people (from her lies about the source of the Benghazi attack to her lies denying receipt of classified information to her private server to her lies to the families of the Americans slain by terrorists in Benghazi) and we have a consistent pattern of deceit and obfuscation in public office. While we do not yet have a final determination on probes into the connection between donations to the Clinton Foundation, payments to her husband for speaking engagements overseas, and her actions taken while serving as Secretary of State, the evidence revealed to date, including the employment of State Department employees by the Foundation, reveal at a minimum the appearance of impropriety and at a maximum State Department favors for those who paid hefty sums.

Are we to believe that a person who has been engaged throughout her public career in this kind of reprehensible conduct will spontaneously change and be converted to honesty? Are we to place no stock in the direct email evidence of dishonest tactics in her campaign against Sanders, in her underhanded dealings with the DNC related to Sanders, and in her most recent statements in response to Fox News’s Chris Wallace? A pattern created over thirty years up to the present is not likely to change over the course of four or eight years.

By contrast, some think Trump’s statements are, on occasion, offensive, but none of his statements rises to the level of acts that imperil national security, sacrifice human lives, or violate federal law. Consequently, while we may objectively say, with ample evidence, that Hillary Clinton is indeed unfit to serve as President of the United States; we may not say that, objectively, of Trump. Those, like the President, who contend that Trump is unfit are casting aspersion without requisite fact. Between Clinton and Trump, Clinton alone holds the record for acts of public corruption. That fact ought to weigh heavily on the minds of undecideds and independents who plan to vote in November.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Ted Cruz asked to speak at the Republican National Convention. Donald Trump graciously consented, allowing him to deliver the speech Cruz wanted to give. Cruz was thus given a precious opportunity. In anticipation of Cruz’s remarks, the media drew parallels to the masterful address by Ronald Reagan at the 1976 Republican National Convention, where Reagan effectively snatched political victory from campaign defeat. Would Cruz rise to the occasion, would he replicate the example of Reagan, would he prove himself to be the great hope of conservative America, the promise of 2020?

Campaigns for President are often filled with harsh words which can sting. The sting is particularly hurtful to the thin skinned. The petty reaction is to harbor a grudge. The noble, to rise above and to forgive those who spitefully hate you. The party’s national convention is ordinarily a time for healing after the battle, when the hatchets are buried, at least in public, for the good of the party and of the country. Only the petty refuse to bury the hatchet, refuse to let go of the bitterness that ordinarily fills a struggle for the highest office in the land. Only the petty remain personally affronted and place their selfish pride above the goal of maximizing the chance that the shared goals of the party bear fruit in the election of the party’s nominee.

Ted Cruz proved himself the exception to the rule, not in the way Ronald Reagan proved himself exceptional but in the pedestrian way of one who reacts out of spite and conceit. He could not bring himself to endorse the party’s nominee, yet he arrogantly assumed it appropriate nonetheless to speak at the party’s nominating convention.

Cruz had the opportunity for a Reagan moment, but he proved himself to be no Ronald Reagan. As convention speeches go, Cruz’s was mediocre. He unexceptionally played upon emotion, using the example of a slain Dallas police officer’s bereaved daughter, but while he spoke broadly of freedom, he did not develop that theme beyond platitudes, and he never defined how America could overcome its obstacles and reestablish its empire of unparalleled strength, flourishing free enterprise, and individual liberty. He appeared uncomfortable. Although he caused listeners to feel sympathy for the plight of a family victimized by violent racial bigotry, he failed to inspire them to appreciate the American capacity to overcome all obstacles and transform defeat into victory. Rather, his speech contained an enormous, obvious logical whole. He neither told us precisely how to overcome the violence that plagues our country from radical Islamists, racial bigots and anarchists nor did he inspire us to appreciate our inherent capacity to achieve victory. In the end, his call to action was a lame and generic one, to vote your conscience.

Having delivered a mediocre speech, and having failed to be gracious and endorse the party’s nominee, Cruz appeared selfish and bitter, not altruistic and grand. He missed his opportunity for a Reagan moment. He instantly became forgettable. Few listening to his words would think him the inevitable choice in 2020. His words made him a distant also ran.

When Reagan finished addressing the convention in 1976, everyone (Gerald Ford included), knew that we had not seen the last of this great man. The words Reagan spoke were inspirational and brought the delegates to their feet in thunderous applause, even tears of regret that the great man had not been named the nominee.

The speech caused delegates to yearn for 1980 and the chance to vote for Reagan. Reagan rose above defeat to define the way to victory. He graciously called for party unity, embraced Gerald Ford despite a bitter contest, and he turned his campaign defeat into political victory.

By contrast, when Cruz finished addressing the convention of 2016, everyone knew that he had failed to capitalize on the Reagan moment given him. That spoke volumes about his lack of leadership. He allowed his campaign defeat to define him, leaving him broken and embittered. The words Cruz spoke fell flat. The delegates booed him. He proved himself a fallen man, not an inspirational leader. He did not define the way to victory. He ungraciously refused to endorse Trump, refusing to let go of his selfish bitterness.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Ted Cruz asked to speak at the Republican National Convention. Donald Trump graciously consented, allowing him to deliver the speech Cruz wanted to give. Cruz was thus given a precious opportunity. In anticipation of Cruz’s remarks, the media drew parallels to the masterful address by Ronald Reagan at the 1976 Republican National Convention, where Reagan effectively snatched political victory from campaign defeat. Would Cruz rise to the occasion, would he replicate the example of Reagan, would he prove himself to be the great hope of conservative America, the promise of 2020?

Campaigns for President are often filled with harsh words which can sting. The sting is particularly hurtful to the thin skinned. The petty reaction is to harbor a grudge. The noble, to rise above and to forgive those who spitefully hate you. The party’s national convention is ordinarily a time for healing after the battle, when the hatchets are buried, at least in public, for the good of the party and of the country. Only the petty refuse to bury the hatchet, refuse to let go of the bitterness that ordinarily fills a struggle for the highest office in the land. Only the petty remain personally affronted and place their selfish pride above the goal of maximizing the chance that the shared goals of the party bear fruit in the election of the party’s nominee.

Ted Cruz proved himself the exception to the rule, not in the way Ronald Reagan proved himself exceptional but in the pedestrian way of one who reacts out of spite and conceit. He could not bring himself to endorse the party’s nominee, yet he arrogantly assumed it appropriate nonetheless to speak at the party’s nominating convention.

Cruz had the opportunity for a Reagan moment, but he proved himself to be no Ronald Reagan. As convention speeches go, Cruz’s was mediocre. He unexceptionally played upon emotion, using the example of a slain Dallas police officer’s bereaved daughter, but while he spoke broadly of freedom, he did not develop that theme beyond platitudes, and he never defined how America could overcome its obstacles and reestablish its empire of unparalleled strength, flourishing free enterprise, and individual liberty. He appeared uncomfortable. Although he caused listeners to feel sympathy for the plight of a family victimized by violent racial bigotry, he failed to inspire them to appreciate the American capacity to overcome all obstacles and transform defeat into victory. Rather, his speech contained an enormous, obvious logical whole. He neither told us precisely how to overcome the violence that plagues our country from radical Islamists, racial bigots and anarchists nor did he inspire us to appreciate our inherent capacity to achieve victory. In the end, his call to action was a lame and generic one, to vote your conscience.

Having delivered a mediocre speech, and having failed to be gracious and endorse the party’s nominee, Cruz appeared selfish and bitter, not altruistic and grand. He missed his opportunity for a Reagan moment. He instantly became forgettable. Few listening to his words would think him the inevitable choice in 2020. His words made him a distant also ran.

When Reagan finished addressing the convention in 1976, everyone (Gerald Ford included), knew that we had not seen the last of this great man. The words Reagan spoke were inspirational and brought the delegates to their feet in thunderous applause, even tears of regret that the great man had not been named the nominee.

The speech caused delegates to yearn for 1980 and the chance to vote for Reagan. Reagan rose above defeat to define the way to victory. He graciously called for party unity, embraced Gerald Ford despite a bitter contest, and he turned his campaign defeat into political victory.

By contrast, when Cruz finished addressing the convention of 2016, everyone knew that he had failed to capitalize on the Reagan moment given him. That spoke volumes about his lack of leadership. He allowed his campaign defeat to define him, leaving him broken and embittered. The words Cruz spoke fell flat. The delegates booed him. He proved himself a fallen man, not an inspirational leader. He did not define the way to victory. He ungraciously refused to endorse Trump, refusing to let go of his selfish bitterness.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

From the colonial era until at least the end of World War I and the rise of progressivism, America was populated almost universally by rugged individualists who believed fundamentally in being industrious, achieving success by benefiting others through one’s industry, and saving one’s earnings in the hopes of not only bettering one’s own life but also the lives of future generations of Americans. In stark contrast to those who gave birth to and defended with their lives American liberty and free enterprise are the youthful masses of protestors and supporters of Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, and the new Black Panthers. Many youthful and impatient Americans among the loudest in their complaints against the rest of humanity think they are entitled to have their earthly wants, needs, and interests paid for by others and express disdain, indeed revulsion, at all whose labors have resulted in wealth or power.

We can find these souls who view themselves as entitled without the need for work in all sorts of positions (from students at Ivy League schools who decry free speech unless it is in support of their ideological preferences to Black Lives Matter protestors who condemn those in government and industry as “white supremacists” and demand redistribution of their income to Black America).

Whether the entitled come in the form of millennials upset about speech they do not like who demand censorship, faculty resignations, and more “safe spaces” on campus or protestors who demand redistribution of income and an exception from the criminal laws, all share one thing in common. They all want something for nothing. They want the most productive and highest earning elements of society to be forced to finance the least productive and lowest earning elements of society and, more particularly, to satisfy their wants and needs now.

They offer nothing in return. Indeed, they are indignant at the notion that they might be required to work and save in exchange for wealth or that they might be asked to listen patiently with maturity or humility to a view they do not share. They want ownership, operation, and control without experience, industry, and self-improvement. Theirs is a world of temper tantrums and consternation at what they do not have as opposed to intelligent reflection and diligent pursuit of dreams. They have learned early in life that loud complaints if maintained in apparent earnest cause all manner of folks to show concern and give them that something for nothing they seek.

So they condemn the president of a university and, rather than be expelled, they are rewarded with the president’s resignation. They demand that all wealth be redistributed from those who earned it to those who have not, and they are then invited to meet the President at the White House (a President who proclaimed to leaders of industry that they “did not build that,” meaning they are not entitled to the benefits of their own labor). They loudly complain that they want free health care, free education, and a middle class income not derived from earnings and savings but from government redistribution of wealth; folks like Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton pander to them, promising those very costly benefits at the expense not of them but of a dwindling sector of productive Americans. Theirs is the extended hand accompanied by the never ending whine of victimhood.

Short-sighted, as all socialists are, they do not comprehend or, if they do, do not care, that dismantling the rich to redistribute to politically preferred others always reduces what is above and never raises what is below. For the sake of a freebie, they would destroy the engine of free enterprise which has given them far more promise than any government program ever could. For the sake of hearing their own views crowed back to them, they would destroy the bill of rights. The transformative power of industry and improvement has not only given them the gift of being born into a nation with a higher standard of living (even higher for the poorest among us compared to the poor of yesteryears) and with greater opportunities for success than any generation before, it has given them essential freedom, that most precious gift of all. Yet, given thes great benefits, they take them for granted and condemn the sources from which those benefits come; worse, for the sake of serving their selfish demands, they would confiscate others’ wealth and forfeit everyone’s freedom.

In a nihilistic fashion, courting anarchy, they tear down religion, industry, and government but offer no sustainable alternatives. They do not care that their demands if satisfied would sacrifice others’ careers, wealth, or freedom. Indeed, they appear not to care that their demands if enforced upon the rest of us would require a form of government in which their own protests would be silenced, their freedom forfeited, and their fate would be predetermined, to toil in mediocrity. They are wanton and reckless.

Like spoiled children, they seek a revolution against the very institutions that have given them security (the police), income (employers), and freedom (defense of the Bill of Rights). Few of them share the same ideology; most largely communicate in unintelligible rants.

Each bellows demands that would, if compared one to another, be in contradiction. Each wishes in essence to be a dictator, and so none wishes to take orders or even abide by the strictures each prescribes for all others. They lay the foundations for anarchy, wittingly or not, and beget ruination, and they threaten the very survival of the nation and of liberty itself. They are a generation lost to liberty and opportunity.

One can only hope that the trials of life will chasten these individuals, that an epiphany will descend upon them after an age of foolishness and cause them to realize with more maturity that the America they have inherited is grand and extraordinarily precious, that the loss of that America is a loss that leads ineluctably to tyranny and slavery, and that the most wretched slave among us is he who unwittingly through ignorance forges his own bonds of slavery.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

FBI Director James Comey’s announcement that he will not recommend prosecution of Hillary Clinton for violation of the Espionage Act (despite finding in excess of 110 emails sent or received by her via private email outside of legally required, authorized channels) constitutes an historic betrayal of a bedrock principle of American jurisprudence since the founding of the Republic: Equal Justice Under Law. If anyone had a doubt as to whether the principle that no one is above the law remains a central tenet of the FBI and the Department of Justice, James Comey removed that doubt infamously. He established the existence of two sets of law in America, one for the common man and one for the politically well connected.

The phrase, “Equal Justice Under Law,” engraved atop the main portico of the Supreme Court of the United States, used to be a mainstay of all honorable public servants at the FBI and the Department of Justice, but FBI Director Comey, whose job it is to investigate law violations by U.S. citizens regardless of their station in life and refer violations found to Justice for prosecution, publicly rendered it a mere shibboleth when he refused to recommend Clinton for prosecution despite FBI referrals of lesser government servants and military personnel who committed far less extensive and significant violations of the Espionage Act.

In the American revolution, Thomas Paine echoed the fundamental principle of equal justice in his famous retort: “[I]n absolute governments the King is law” but “in America the law is King.” In his seventh Novangulus letter, John Adams wrote, in lauding what he believed to be the true and just constitutional foundation of Great Britain, that justice depends on “a government of laws, and not of men,” by which he meant law applied to all equally rather than to some selectively. Indeed, in the very decision that established federal judicial review, Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice John Marshall famously wrote: “The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, not of men.”

The malevolent will of government officials to exceed the limits of the law and escape justice was to be ruled out in our Republic. The very notion of justice depends on equal justice or else the Republic devolves into chaos and tyranny. The law is to be applied equally to the rich as well as the poor, the politically powerful as well as the apolitical, the President as well as the citizen; although an ideal never truly realized, it was an ideal no federal law enforcement officer or official would overtly reject or cast aside. Although Comey’s prior history revealed a deep respect for the rule of law, in this single most important moment in his career when he was called upon to champion that principle, he demurred. He will not be remembered for his earlier acts because they are far overshadowed by this latest turn wherein he abandoned the rule of law and replaced equal justice under law with political favoritism.

Indeed, worse than demur on whether Clinton should be prosecuted (a decision for the Attorney General), Comey exceeded the limits of his office by concluding contrary to the evidence and law that no crime had been committed. It was for Comey to investigate whether the evidence revealed a violation of the Espionage Act. He did that, and he admitted the finding of facts that establish a violation of the Act.

Whether the law violations found justified prosecution was not his decision to make, and yet he made it anyway, letting Attorney General Loretta Lynch off the hook. It was Comey’s duty to investigate and, if the facts revealed law violation, to refer the matter to the Attorney Justice for the ultimate decision on whether to prosecute. He did not do that. Of course, in light of the Attorney General’s announcement only a day before that she would follow whatever recommendation she received from the FBI Director, it appears that the fix was in, that once again, as in so many other instances in this Administration, political expedience in service to the President’s agenda superseded justice and the rule of law.

The consequence of Comey’s rejection of equal justice under law is profound. Coming from the FBI Director and endorsed by the Attorney General of the United States, the new precedent that the political class can violate the law and not be made to account rends American justice, replacing it with political preferred outcomes, rendering impartiality or blind justice a thing of the past. Justice Felix Frankfurter presciently observed in United States v. United Mine Workers (1947) what would become of America were we to abandon the principle of equal justice: “If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny.” In this case one man, James Comey, created new law in place of the dictates of statutory law, the Espionage Act.

In this instance, Comey took it upon himself to determine what the law should be, rather than what it actually is. On its face, Clinton plainly violated the Espionage Act. Indeed, for 110 individual violations (the most committed by any American with the possible exception of Edward Snowden), the statute in question would require Clinton to be fined or imprisoned or both. The gravity of the offense is enormous: Hillary Clinton put at risk Americans under cover serving the nation in the most sensitive and vulnerable roles overseas, as well as secret methods used by the government to pursue the nation’s interests against its enemies. For far less consequential acts of gross negligence under this same statutory section, servicemen have been charged, convicted, and incarcerated.

Their hapless lot is that they were not Secretary of State, according to Comey. He justified not recommending prosecution for Clinton on two weak reeds: (1) that referral would be unprecedented (meaning that no other Secretary of State had been so referred), but that is misleading because the applicable precedent focuses on access to and the handling of classified information regardless of one’s position within the government and (2) that Hillary did not “intentionally” violate the Act, but that is irrelevant under Section 793-f of the Espionage Act and, nevertheless, the evidence contradicts that legal conclusion because, indeed, Hillary was fully briefed and aware of State Department restrictions on and legal limits affecting use of classified information, she just chose to ignore those restrictions and limits (that is an “intentional” violation).

The law concerning the “extreme carelessness” Comey attributed to Clinton’s handling of classified information (18 USC Section 793-f) states: “Whoever, being entrusted with . . . any document relating to the national defense . . . through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper custody . . . shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.” The law is plain. Comey’s findings reveal at least 110 instances wherein Clinton violated the law.

Based on those findings, he should have referred the matter to the Attorney General to decide whether the law violations warranted prosecution. If the principle of equal justice were honored, the Attorney General would have referred the matter for prosecution. Indeed, her complicity in Comey’s action and her failure to reject the recommendation and recommend the matter for prosecution establishes that she, too, as the chief law enforcement officer of the United States, rejects equal justice under law and prefers political favoritism over the rule of law. The decision to close the case will remain the most consequential defining moment of her career as well. She too will live in infamy.

What, then, is an American citizen to do if his government’s law enforcers apply the law selectively to favor the interests of the politically powerful? What is that citizen to do when the courts cannot provide a remedy for the pass given Hillary Clinton? Are we to acquiesce in the political manipulation of the law by doing nothing, or are we to use whatever legal recourse we as individuals have to right the wrong?

In this instance, the ballot is the only remaining remedy. The former Secretary of State, who violated the Espionage Act, and, were she an officer in the military, would have been sent to jail, should not be allowed the privilege of becoming the nation’s chief executive. She should be held accountable by the electorate because she has not been held accountable under the law. If we wish to reassert the rule of law, insist upon resurrection of the bedrock principle of equal justice under law, we must ensure that the office of President of the United States is not filled by a person who brazenly violated the very laws enacted to protect the nation’s most sensitive secrets. No President of the United States should be above the law. If prosecutors will not charge Clinton, if a grand jury will not be allowed to indict her, if a court of law will not be allowed to hear the case against her, then voters must deny her the presidency.

Indeed, can any person who values justice vote in favor of a person to be President, to, under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed….” who, herself, violated the law and never accounted for the violations? Among the solemn duties of the President is to ensure that those who commit acts of espionage are brought to justice and, in the military context, are even executed in accordance with military justice; can a President who committed Espionage Act violations herself yet was excused from accountability be rightfully empowered to prosecute those who commit the same violations?

And under Article I, Section 3, it remains a basis for impeachment and removal from office if the President is convicted of “high crimes and misdemeanors” of which Espionage Act violations are quintessential examples. How is it, then, that if a future President commits the same violations of law, placing in peril the national security of the United States, could we ever justify impeachment when a President Hillary Clinton will have engaged in the same offenses yet has not been made to account.

In short, all Americans must demand equal justice because without it our nation devolves into petty tyranny. Because the FBI Director and Attorney General have failed us, we must restore justice through the ballot box; it is our duty; there is no other way. Hillary Clinton must never become President of the United States if the principle of Equal Justice Under Law is to triumph over political favoritism and tyranny.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Just as the American Revolution became the momentous break with the divine right of kings and the true birth of government instituted to protect the rights of the governed and led to an affirmation of individual sovereignty and the rights of man, the recent British exit from the European Union promises to re-establish the rights of the English, re-establishing their sovereignty over all matters social, political, and economic within the realm while condemning the vices of EU autocratic bureaucracy.

While our revolution may have taught the British a lesson in the incongruity between absolute monarchy and liberty, the Brexit is teaching Americans a lesson in the incongruity between the modern equivalent of absolute monarchy, i.e., autocratic bureaucracy, and liberty.

Most Americans are unaware of the authoritarian nature of European Union governance. Once touted as a means to ensure free trade within all of Europe and to protect the economic interests of a united Europe against the outside world, the European Union has evolved into an enormous, costly autocratic bureaucracy, based in Belgium. The twenty-eight member states of the EU (soon to be twenty-seven) cede their sovereign constitutional and legislative powers to the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament to enact laws pursuant to treaty, most notably the Maastricht Treaty of 1992. The EU Council and Parliament have seen fit to enact a large number of broad laws and to enforce those laws through various “authorities” that are un-elected bureaucratic institutions having jurisdiction over all manner of commerce, including foods, food supplements, drugs, industry, labor, and contract. In effect, just as in the United States almost all federal law is the product of unelected officials who rule the bureaucratic agencies rather than elected officials, so too in Europe, almost all law affecting every EU member state is the product of unelected officials who run the various departments and authorities.

Derived from the power vested in it by treaty, the EU operates under a supremacy principle whereby its laws are deemed sovereign and superior to all conflicting laws of the member states, meaning that any member state law in conflict with EU law is deemed void, even if that law is the constitutional law of a member state.

The effect of this usurpation of power by the EU has been hard on the citizenry of individual countries who deeply resent it. The power grab has imposed one continuous and increasing loss in individual rights within the member states. For example, private contractual disputes, local economies long protected by domestic laws, and environmental law has become the province of the EU, running roughshod over political and economic liberties long enjoyed by the citizens of the member states. A few instances will suffice to prove the point. The EU governs food safety regulation in Europe. So, for centuries in England medicinal herbs have been popular and in the last half century herbal food supplements have been popular. Despite that fact, the European Food Safety Authority has seen fit to ban medicinal herbs and virtually all herbal food supplements, causing the people of England to watch as their consumer choices disappear in deference to laws imposed from outside the country. In addition, environmental directives have imposed huge costs on the British public, passed on by affected industries, even when popular desire for retention of jobs in those industries has been greater than the desire to hasten environmental compliance. Perhaps the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back in Britain was the threat of imminent EU climate change regulation that would have banned the electric tea kettle. For a very long time indeed the English have relied on electric tea kettles to obtain their fix of Earl Gray tea in the morning.

Imagine how an American would feel if he sued for breach of contract in a local court only to discover that the law to govern the matter was not the precedent of the local jurisdiction, but law imposed by a foreign bureaucracy. Americans would be incredulous to see their courts taken over by foreign powers, causing their rights to be dependent on the interpretations of bureaucrats who are entirely unaccountable to them. Indeed, we fought the American Revolution in no small part because we opposed laws imposed on us by the Crown without colonial representation in Parliament.

The Brexit is thus a momentous victory for individual liberty. It has sent a wave of freedom out from the British Isles to all nations of the earth. It sets the proper course for all of Europe, reasserting the notion that local government representative of the interests of indigenous peoples against unrepresentative bureaucracy, is indispensable to the protection of individual rights and to individual sovereignty.

The lesson we can learn from Brexit is that bureaucracy is not indispensable, that the rule of law depends on representative democracy, and that inextricably intertwined with the administrative state is authoritarian rule. We would do well to reject the administrative state and reassert law making by those we elect, who are thus accountable to us for their abuses, unlike the unelected heads of the bureaucratic agencies. If we were to eliminate federal bureaucratic agencies in favor of direct legislation, we would not only ensure restoration of individual sovereignty where the state is our servant rather than our master, we would also re-establish the separation of powers, a constitutional barrier to abuse of power long since lost as the federal courts have condoned the rise of the administrative state since the New Deal.

Related Articles:

1 – Brexit, England’s Independence Day

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Hillary Clinton’s campaign follows a predictable playbook that Donald Trump can derail and outmaneuver. She intends to target states where she is must vulnerable with a heavy dose of negative ads against Donald Trump, portraying him variously as a misogynist, bigot, political neophyte, and explosive and unpredictable personality. Hillary will depend on surrogates to make the nastiest direct accusations. Aware of Hillary’s own profound negative poll numbers, her campaign aims essentially to convey the impression that even if you do not like Hillary, she is the lesser evil.

Trump has a unique opportunity to counter this campaign, which depends on superficial and exaggerated caricatures. Rather than depend entirely on thirty second sound bite retorts from Trump to counter what will be an ever greater volume of diverse negative voices inspired by the Clinton campaign, the Trump campaign needs to implement a strategy for victory that depends on the following elements:

1. He needs to announce the composition of his cabinet in a staged series of announcements, commencing at present and continuing to the Republican National Convention, where, every week, he identifies a different cabinet head and that person then explains in detail the Trump strategy for his or her area of jurisdiction: (a) rebuilding the American military, educating the public about the true nature of the radical Islamist enemy, and ferreting out and destroying that enemy worldwide (Secretary of Defense); (b) establishing an America first foreign policy that defends American interests worldwide (Secretary of State); (c) (c) rebuilding the American economy through substantial deregulation and tax reduction (Secretary of the Treasury); (e) repealing and replacing Obamacare (Secretary of Health and Human Services); (e) restricting the Veterans Administration to streamline its functions and expand private sector options for veterans to receive prompt medical care (Secretary of Veterans Affairs) and (d) building border defenses, building a new system for vetting immigrants, and imposing limits on immigration (Secretary of Homeland Security).

2. Trump needs to emphasize that he will follow a CEO method of governance, following the example of Ronald Reagan. Reagan put in place people who possessed the same conservative ideology as their boss, then asked them to become expert in their respective areas of jurisdiction and to propose means that would achieve his key objectives of tax reduction, rebuilding America’s defenses, and deregulation. Trump should be doing the same thing.

3. Relying on the new secretaries to expound upon the details of Trump policies, candidate Trump needs to emphasize the governing themes: (a) rebuilding the American military and making it second to none; (b) taking care of our Vets by rehauling the Veterans Administration and allowing Vets the option of obtaining care in private facilities; (c) relentlessly pursuing, with all means necessary, terrorists worldwide, killing them and destroying their safe havens, training camps, military hardware, and weapons manufacturing facilities; (d) revitalizing the American economy through substantial deregulation and tax reduction; (e) repealing and replacing Obamacare; and (e) protecting our borders through construction of a wall along the Southern border, more extensive border patrols in reliance on a federal state partnership to apprehend, sanction, and return those who enter America illegally.

4. He needs to adopt theme based campaign visits with his respective chosen secretaries and expound on the destructive policies of the Obama/Clinton era and how he will do better. (a) He needs to visit locations where Obama policies have caused unemployment through excess regulation by the EPA, FTC, and BLM and explain how his Administration will roll back the regulations and restore the local economies. (b) He needs to visit the locations where millions in subsidies were given to failing green energy ventures operated by Obama cronies and explain how he will end that corruption and instead liberate the market to develop domestic oil and gas, reducing remaining dependency on foreign sources. (c) He needs to visit the borders with the border patrol and reveal how illegal immigrants are coming into the nation and the steps he will take to stop illegal entry and build a new and better system for vetting legal immigrants.

5. He needs to identify his choice for Vice President early and have that person along with surrogates reveal and condemn in detail Hillary Clinton’s corrupt practices, inept service as Secretary of State, Espionage Act violations, contradictions, and liberal, anti-market, pro-regulation, and pro-tax policies, leaving it to Trump to call for an end to Obama/Clinton cronyism and corruption, an end to Obama/Clinton over-regulation and over-taxation, an end to Democratic establishment control.
If Trump can implement these measures, and stay on message, he can well shore up support within the Republican Party and reach out to form voting coalitions among disillusioned Democrats and Independents. Therein lies the key to a Trump victory in November.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

The murder of forty-nine Americans in Orlando at the hands of a home grown, radical Islamic terrorist is the logical consequence of a President who refuses to use all means necessary to eradicate radical Islamic terrorists overseas. This President not only refuses to rally the nation, seek a declaration of war, and do what is militarily required to destroy those intent on taking American lives, he shows empathy for the plight of terrorists detained at Guantanamo Bay, seeing fit to effectively bolster their ranks and cause by releasing even the most hardened and dedicated al Qaeda enemy combatants from that facility. He has entered into a deal with our most ardent foe, Iran, a state sponsor of terrorism, whereby he has filled that nation’s treasury with hundreds of billions of dollars, has enabled the country to exercise hegemony over Iraq and Syria, and has virtually ensured it will obtain a nuclear arsenal.

Obama is a pacifist at a time when the nation requires a commander-in-chief at war and total war against those who will otherwise continue to kill ever more Americans. Like Neville Chamberlain, Obama lives in a dream world of peace despite the presence of war. He refuses to put the nation on a war footing by seeking a declaration of war from Congress against radical Islamic terrorists, preferring instead to regard the cowardly attacks of those terrorists on civilians as the equivalent of domestic organized crime, warranting a local police response.

The failure of President Obama to assume the full mantle of commander-in-chief in the face of acts of radical Islamic terrorism against the United States and its allies bodes ill for the lives of Americans at home and abroad. Indeed, Obama’s essentially defensive posture maximizes the likelihood that there will be far more terrorist attacks within the United States.

Obama refuses to secure our borders. He refuses to devote full military power to a relentless campaign of extermination of terrorists around the globe. He refuses to destroy all means of communication used by terrorists. He refuses to cut off all supplies and finances directed to radical Islamists. He refuses to destroy all ISIS training camps and weapons factories. His incoherent foreign policy is suicidal for our nation.

Defensive warfare is not easily won against a persistent enemy comprised of religious zealots willing to die along with their victims. The Japanese in World War II responded to the calls of their Emperor and fought with comparable suicidal zeal against the Allied powers. Were the United States to have assumed a largely defensive posture then, the war in the Pacific would not have been won as promptly or decisively. Instead, Harry Truman did what Obama would never do to save countless American lives. He ended the conflict decisively with the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Truman was right, and Obama is hopelessly wrong. It is likely that we can eliminate radical Islamic terrorism with overpowering conventional force but Obama has no stomach, no courage, and no respect for America sufficient to engage the enemy and win.

In the first instance, this President will not even mention the word radical Islam, let alone declare war on radical Islamic terrorists. A declaration of war is essential to rally the nation, explain the perverse ideology of our foe, and commit America’s military to a relentless battle to ferret out and exterminate every last vestige of radical Islamic terror along with all of those who provide terrorists aid and comfort.

Indeed, rather than define who the enemy is and urge Americans to notify authorities of people who have become radicalized and have taken steps to effectuate acts of terror, this President insists upon political correctness, turning a blind eye to mosques and mullahs who solicit terror, demanding that we ignore the very foundation of Islamic radicalism. Instead, Americans should be educated about the perverse doctrined of radical Islam, should come to understand why it is a dangerous fraud, and should be on the alert for those radicalized in our midst, encouraged to report evidence of terror rather than shy away from reporting for fear of being condemned as Islamophobic.

In the second instance, Obama wages a limited, defensive war, comprised principally of air strikes and limited interventions, which are failing to stop the growth of radical Islamic terror in countries outside of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. By failing to engage in a relentless, all-out war against terrorists around the globe, whereby we annihilate our foe, President Obama ensures their survival and thereby increases the likelihood that those not eradicated outside of the United States will, in ever increasing numbers, slip through our porous borders and commit acts of terror here or induce domestic recruits to become active.

In the third instance, Obama fails to take out the command, control and communication of radical Islamists, allowing them to use media of mass communication, especially the internet, to solicit recruits from within the United States and Europe. We can and should destroy their means of communication through interdiction over the web and via destruction of cell towers, jamming of signals, and electromagnetic pulse warfare. In a war that depends on media of mass communication for conversion, we must destroy their means to reach and influence potential converts.

In the fourth instance, Obama is dedicated to reducing the size and scope of America’s military at the precise time when we need to be increasing it, especially by increasing the number, training, and equipping of America’s special operations forces. This administration learned nothing at all from Benghazi. We lost brave Americans due in no small measure to the unwillingness of this Administration to devote the resources necessary to ensure that no American in the service of his country is abandoned in the face of an enemy attack.

Rather, the Administration through Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lied to the American people, telling us the false narrative of the anti-Islamic film and spontaneous uprising, rather than the truth of a terror attack. She then disgraced the families of the fallen by lying to them in person and refusing to apologize even when the evidence confirmed her falsehoods.

For those who appreciate the dire consequences that will befall America unless the Obama/Clinton legacy of appeasement; limited, defensive warfare; and the enabling of our enemies is rapidly ended, the choice of a next president is a simple one. Donald Trump has advocated a declaration of war against radical Islamic terrorists, has demanded that our military command be given the resources and freedom to wage war relentlessly against radical Islamists, and has called for a major rebuilding of the American military. That prescription for success is not one of several workable options, it is the only option available this election cycle for those serious about ending radical Islamic terrorism.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Barack Obama very much wants to choose who his successor will be and, if Obama’s history with the Clintons is our guide, that person is not Hillary Clinton. Why then has Obama endorsed Hillary Clinton and initiated a direct campaign against Donald Trump? Is it not to maximize the chance of Hillary’s victory in November. I think it is not. I think it is to ensure that Obama remains the central figure in Democratic politics, takes center stage at the Democratic National Convention, and ultimately helps engineer a Biden victory in the Fall, resulting from a Biden entry into the race after Hillary is indicted.

The animosity between the Obamas and the Clintons is well known. So is Obama’s penchant for avoiding controversy and relying on behind the scenes manipulation to bring about the political results he desires. Just ask Elizabeth Warren. The foremost socialist advocating debilitating restraints on lending institutions, she was herself certain until the very day of the Rose Garden announcement by Barack Obama, she Obama intended to pick her to be the Director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but he did not. On the day she expected him to announce that she would be the Director, the very day she came to the White House expecting that result, he stood by her in the Rose Garden and announced that another individual, somewhat more tolerable to industry, Richard Cordray, would be the Director. He neglected to tell Warren of that choice until the very day he announced it publicly.

That is Obama’s way. He cannot be trusted, and he has no problem throwing loyal supporters under the bus if it serves his political interests. Just ask Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who Obama met privately and told him that there is no loyalty in politics and that he would have to sever his ties with that notorious anti-semite and racist despite Obamas years of involvement with Wright, attendance at his church, marriage at his church, and affirmation that Wright was like a father to him.

I think once again Obama is engaged in another bit of political intrigue, reminiscent of the acts of princess dowagers in ancient China, whereby he seeks to alter the expected direction of the general election through acts of manipulation made possible by Clinton’s necessary willingness to have Obama take center stage. Publicly, Obama maintains the façade that he is Clinton’s ally. He is trying to bring Sanders campaign to an end in support of Hillary (and, indeed, he is but not for Clinton, just to get Sanders out of the way). He campaigns for Clinton, but he does so not so much to support her as he does to attack Donald Trump. By all appearances Clinton is meant to think Obama an ally (but, in fact, she is quite suspicious of his motives, as indeed she should be).

However, where Hillary would like Obama to act on her behalf most, by unlawfully interfering with the FBI investigation or by pressuring Attorney General Loretta Lynch to obstruct justice and block an indictment, Obama is keeping his distance. He is avoiding any direct pressure on Attorney General Lynch, which in this administration is in effect a green light for Lynch to follow the law and proceed with an indictment when FBI Director James Comey comes calling. In short, Obama knows that Clinton will likely be indicted. He also knows that he must placate Clinton in order to have a central place in prime time at the Democratic National Convention. He also knows that he must have her trust in order to be directly involved in the effort to destroy Donald Trump. And, indeed, he knows that only if he destroys Trump will he be the ultimate king-maker when Hillary falls after the indictment issues. Then, he may bring in Biden and cement Democratic unity in time to snatch the general election, or so I suspect he thinks.

Obama knows that the Democratic National Convention will be a Clinton spectacle. He does not want to be given a secondary role in that convention because of a failure to endorse Clinton and prove his support for her. Indeed, he wants a starring role, and he also wants a leading role in the general election campaign, but he fully expects that Clinton will be indicted, despite his limited public rhetoric to the contrary.

He and Biden no doubt have calculated the likely fall of Hillary when she is indicted. Given the close proximity to the Democratic National Convention and the likelihood that an indictment will now proceed after Hillary is nominated during the general election, Obama no doubt expects that when the indictment issues Hillary Clinton’s popularity will plummet and Democrats will begin to splinter, some choosing to remain with Hillary, others pushing for Sanders to run as an independent, others vowing to stay home, and others urging Biden to step in. Biden, not Hillary, is Obama’s choice. I suspect that when the indictment issues, Obama will then stand down from supporting Hillary, Biden will step in, and then Obama will reappear as a major advocate of Biden’s presidency. Already fully ensconced in the campaign, Obama will be an election voice Democrats support, and he will rally them to Biden. Biden may indeed bolster his prospects by choosing Bernie Sanders as his running mate, thereby uniting the old Clinton faction with the new Sanders faction of the Democratic Party.

In this way, the sly fox Obama will have led the chickens back into the chicken house where he will effectively devour them, feasting on the election and bringing about his desired outcome in the form of a loyal successor, Joe Biden.

The largely unprecedented direct involvement by Obama in trashing Trump, which will become increasingly apparent in the weeks and months to come, is a prelude to the foregoing scenario. Obama’s involvement is not so much an endorsement of Hillary as it is an excuse for ramping up every effort to portray Donald Trump as Satan incarnate. By doing so, he hopes to bring down Trump’s numbers as much as possible so that when Biden does pop into the race after the Hillary indictment, Biden will be better able to beat Trump, even if there is a splintering of the vote.

Biden in turn will rally the Clinton voters, reach out to the disaffected Sanders voters, and join Obama in hammering Trump, hoping to secure enough votes to defeat Trump in the general election. That, at any rate, I think a plausible explanation for Obama’s present behavior. In my next column I will explain the best Trump counter-strategy because, despite this dire scenario, I do think Donald Trump best positioned to win the general election.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

This past week Hillary Clinton announced that Bill Clinton will be in charge of economic policy if she is elected President. That announcement represents the latest in a mounting series of political blunders that will hurt her chances in the Fall.

Hillary Clinton must somehow gain the support of Bernie Sanders supporters if she is to unify the Democratic Party and shore up her chances of victory. Bernie Sanders has been a vocal critic of U.S. trade policy and of the Clintons’ support for NAFTA. Thus far, those supporters have been highly skeptical of Hillary’s overtures toward them. She is for them, as the unsuccessful Republican Governor candidates were for Trump Republicans, representative of an establishment they despise.

There is no more important issue for voters in this election than the economy. Indeed, the central glue that binds Sanders’ supporters to him is his attack on Wall Street and crony capitalism in Washington. He has consistently faulted Hillary Clinton for her Wall Street ties, for her dependency on large moneyed interests to support her campaign, and for her history of favoring trade deals that he and his supporters view as anathema to working Americans. Sanders, the socialist, has succeeded in drawing far more youthful and energetic supporters to his cause than Hillary, and she cannot win if those Sanders’ supporters become disaffected and either stay home or vote for Sanders as a third party candidate.

Pressured by Donald Trump’s superior ratings on knowledge of the economy, Hillary Clinton decided that her best counter would be to profess that in her White House Bill Clinton would be in charge of economic policy. Bill Clinton will be “in charge of revitalizing the economy,” Hillary said a short time ago.

The move is a critical mistake for an already weak candidate. At the outset, it sends all the wrong signals. Only the President can be in charge of the single most important issue in presidential politics, yet Hillary has abdicated that role to her husband. Clinton likes to project the image that she is “in charge” and that she, a woman, will be the first chief executive in the White House. That narrative is contradicted when on the single most important issue it will be Bill Clinton, a man, who will be in charge.

To make matters worse, Bill Clinton’s long history of infidelity to Hillary and of philandering force those issues back into the limelight as Bill, already slated to be the “First Gentleman” in a Hillary Clinton White House will resume at least some of his former role as President by being “in charge of revitalizing the economy.” That move thus gives greater credence to Donald Trump’s attack on Bill Clinton’s abuse of women and Hillary Clinton’s enabling activity.

Finally, back to the Sanders’ supporters, this move adds greatly to the already negative baggage they associate with Hillary Clinton. She is indeed the quintessential establishment candidate, but she is reinforcing that role by reinserting the centrist Bill Clinton back into White House governance. In their eyes, the move signals palpable Clinton support for expanding the very trade deals they hate and for expanding, rather than contracting, establishment politics in Washington.

In short, the overt declaration that Bill Clinton will run economic policy in Hillary Clinton’s White House is a political disaster. She has added to the factors that discredit her with Sanders’ supporters precisely at the time she mouths platitudes in their direction in an effort to accept her as a Bernie substitute.

She undermines her first woman President argument, the only consistent position she has and her main “credential” in liberal circles for becoming President. She adds to the email, Clinton Foundation, and Benghazi scandals surrounding her the old abuse of women baggage of her husband. She justifies Donald Trump’s attack upon her as an enabler of Bill Clinton; indeed, she plans to enable him to resume a central role in the White House resurrecting all the ugly sex abuse history that entails. Perhaps worst of all, at a time when the electorate yearns for a Washington outsider to shake things up, she confirms that she is a Washington insider who will revitalize the old Democratic guard. Properly exploited by Donald Trump, this latest political blunder definitely represents yet another nail in Hillary Clinton’s political coffin.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

With polls showing Trump and Clinton in a dead heat for the nomination, new worries fill the Clinton campaign that negative news may cause her to plummet suddenly, as she has in primary after primary to Bernie Sanders. For over a year, Clinton and her operatives have promoted a false narrative about the email scandal hanging over her head like the sword of Damocles. She has assured supporters and the media that the FBI investigation is only a “security review,” terminology alien to FBI Director Comey who explains the obvious fact that indeed the FBI is engaged in a criminal investigation. Clinton has assured supporters and the media that at the end of the day FBI will find that she did nothing wrong. Clinton promises that there will be no indictment because she has done nothing wrong. Bill Clinton has belittled the criminal investigation, referring to it as a “game.” The dismissive approach taken by the Clinton campaign courts disaster. There is in that approach an inevitable boomerang effect that in the general election may well depress Democratic voter turnout or even cause Democrats who trusted Clinton’s word to vote for Trump when they learn they have been betrayed.

Hillary Clinton and her campaign team early on assessed how best to cope with public awareness of the FBI investigation into her violations of the Espionage Act (and, later, into word that FBI had expanded its investigation to include a public corruption probe). They had to decide whether to address the topic forthrightly and substantively and have Hillary explain her actions in a detailed narrative and apologize or respond with disdain and refuse to “dignify” the inquiry with a substantive response. They unwisely chose the latter approach, making the FBI investigation a ticking time bomb on two levels: She may well be indicted before November, eliminating her as a contender because she could be convicted and incarcerated; or enough of the details may become public that she will incur the wrath of Democrats who initially trusted her representations but suddenly feel betrayed.

The Clinton campaign did not learn from either Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton’s examples on the wrong way to deal with criminal wrongdoing. Accused of complicity in the Watergate burglary, Nixon steadfastly denied any knowledge or involvement until testimony from John Dean and others revealed answers to the question: “What did the President know and when did he know it?” Accused of sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton steadfastly denied any involvement, asserting infamously, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Monica Lewinsky.” Had Nixon and Clinton confessed and accepted responsibility for their actions early on, they may have avoided impeachment. Nixon was impeached and resigned. Clinton too was impeached but was acquitted by the Senate and remained in office.

Rather than learn from those examples and come clean, Hillary Clinton is following the same course as Nixon and her husband: denial and dismissal rather than truthful explanation and expressions of remorse for wrong doing. That course invites a very damaging boomerang effect, particularly strong for those stalwarts who believe every word spoken by their candidate.

When official word proceeds to the press of the extent of Hillary Clinton’s law violations, her representations that this was nothing more than a “security review” and that she has done nothing wrong will be proven false. She will be viewed as having betrayed those who trusted her, and they will harbor resentment that will either cause them to avoid voting for her in the general election or cause them to vote for her opponent. In this respect, Donald Trump is in the catbird’s seat.

No doubt part of Bernie Sanders’ interest in competing all the way to the convention lies in his team’s understanding that Hillary Clinton’s dismissive approach carries with it its own self-destructive boomerang mechanism. By not engaging the email scandal, Sanders may have astutely allowed Hillary to hang herself. As official word proceeds of Hillary’s law violations, Sanders will be there to pick up the slack. Leading Democrats fear Sanders and will no doubt urge Vice President Joe Biden to be the Democrat’s savior when Hillary falls from grace.

Although it is difficult to predict how these variables will be sorted out, it is likely that the sense of betrayal will keep Democrats from the polls or cause them to vote for Trump in numbers that may be decisive. All of this will likely come from the fact that Hillary Clinton at the start of her official campaign chose to deny the truth of her law violations rather than admit them and accept responsibility for them.

By taking this dismissive approach, Hillary Clinton is unwittingly courting disaster. Between now and the general election, there will be major news events that follow from FBI Director James Comey’s recommendation on a criminal indictment and Attorney General Lynch’s action on that recommendation. As those stories reach the public and as Donald Trump capitalizes on them, Hillary Clinton’s false narrative will become apparent even to her most ardent supporters.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Republicans like Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush have refused to endorse Donald Trump. Their decisions have little, if any, persuasive effect upon the electorate but they do speak volumes about themselves.

Ryan, Romney, and the Bushes do themselves a disservice when they announce their unwillingness to back the presumptive Republican nominee. A public announcement that one is not going to back or vote for a person is essentially the same as a statement that one intends to oppose that person. When it comes from individuals who are or used to be party leaders it has the effect of setting a bad example. In effect, they are endeavoring to hurt Donald Trump’s chances, which means they are necessarily endeavoring to improve Hillary Clinton’s chances of becoming president. On any principled basis, Donald Trump favors positions more consistent with those of Ryan, Romney, and the Bushes than Hillary Clinton, so their unwillingness to endorse Trump is irrational.

For the Speaker of the House, whose job entails maintaining party unity, the failure to endorse the putative nominee is unacceptable. Indeed, that failure warrants Paul Ryan’s removal, not just as convention chair but as Speaker of the House. As Speaker he must either back the party’s nominee or resign and let another Republican willing to endorse the nominee take his place. Otherwise, he sets an untenable example for the Republican Party, one that is self-destructive: that Republican members need not back the Republican nominee for president. Could a Speaker of the House who refuses to endorse the Republican nominee deny any other Republican the equal opportunity to refuse? Of course not. His decision is indeed an example for the remaining members of the party, in this case an unacceptable example.

To be fair to Ryan, he did say that he was “not yet” ready to endorse Donald Trump and that he had a common perception with Trump on some issues. But indecision from the Republican Speaker of the House on whether he will support the presumptive Republican nominee is not an option. He must either endorse that nominee or step aside and give the job to another Republican who will.

Mitt Romney’s attempt to lead Republicans away from Trump was even more disastrous than his unsuccessful bid for the presidency. While he could have explained what the party’s nominee should stand for and then endorse a single candidate to oppose Trump in the primaries, Romney chose to go on a tirade against Trump, filled with negative hyperbole, and then identify no single Trump opponent worthy of his endorsement. In typical Romney fashion, he was too indecisive and fickle to be anything but ineffectual. It is not enough to be against a candidate, you must be bold in what and who you stand for, and in that department Romney failed miserably.

Reeling from his near total lack of suasion among the Republican base, Romney is beside himself with desire to derail Trump, even if that means handing over the White House to Hillary Clinton. Truth be told, Romney probably would rather elect Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump, because as Governor of Massachusetts he endorsed many liberal policy positions and is probably content to see more big government and less individual liberty in America. Romney is now gratuitously demanding that Trump divulge his tax returns despite the presence of a tax audit.

That petty move on his part is transparently based on his hope that something in Trump’s taxes might be his undoing. His demands are, like most of his efforts, unlikely to persuade anyone. Upon what basis does Romney crusade for Trump’s taxes to be revealed? He is not an IRS agent, a FEC agent, or an SEC agent. He is a failed presidential candidate with a hurt ego. He is simply desperate to do something to derail the Trump train. There is in this no class; it is pettiness, embarrassing for those of possessed of common sense.

The Bushes have made clear that they will not be voting for Trump. The drubbing that Jeb Bush took during the primaries from Trump they mistakenly ascribe to Jeb’s defeat. That, however, is not the reason why Jeb Bush lost. Jeb lost because he ran as an establishment candidate against the tidal wave of anti-establishment sentiment sweeping the party and was neither articulate enough nor persuasive enough to lead a movement in his favor. A governor linked directly to the very leaders a plurality of voters in the Republican Party consider to blame for government’s favor could not win the nomination in 2016. Bush lost not because of Trump but because of Bush himself.

A mature regard for what actually happened in the primaries and an appreciation that a Clinton presidency would be more harmful to even the Bush agenda than a Trump presidency would lead rational people to endorse Trump, but rationality is not what is at play.

Ryan, Romney, and the Bushes have a visceral dislike for Donald Trump but that is not their only objection to him. They are horrified by the fact that he cannot be controlled. His independence threatens a largely unspoken pattern of obedience followed by most Republican nominees in the past. They also fear him because he threatens to raise the level of popular involvement in political decision-making and overrule them, regardless of their party stripe to achieve his desired ends. Populism has always been an unwelcome element among those who have wished to keep the Republican Party an intellectually conservative reserve.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

An indictment for violations of the Espionage Act and for public corruption looms. On the evidence made public so far, a failure to indict would be an obstruction of justice. We rightfully should expect Hillary Clinton to be indicted and tried for her Espionage Act violations and for any instance of public corruption in which she gave political favors to individuals in exchange for contributions to the Clinton Foundation. As was said of Richard Nixon so too we may say of Hillary Clinton: No one who serves in the government of the United States is above the law; each must be made to account under the same laws that govern the rest of us. For far lesser violations of the Espionage Act, General David Petraeus was required to answer for his offense. Hillary Clinton cannot escape justice for her more numerous and consequential offenses.

Given the pace of the FBI/DOJ investigation, Hillary may not be indicted until after she becomes the nominee of her party, but every effort should now be made to keep the pressure on DOJ to ensure that Hillary is made to account for her law violations. Among the many knock-out blows capable of being landed against the Democratic frontrunner, none would be so devastating as an indictment from a Grand Jury.

Donald Trump and those who have endorsed him should encourage the public to demand justice and make clear that the eye of the public is keenly upon all those now evaluating whether to seek an indictment. Many others of lesser rank and position whose crime it was to have mishandled classified information were compelled to answer and to serve in prison. Hillary is not above the law, and she too should account for her violations of the Espionage Act.

The argument that no American, regardless of their political station, should escape justice when he or she has committed a crime is a theme that will resonate well with the electorate, Republicans and many Democrats alike. Indeed, it is astounding that Hillary and Bill Clinton have so cavalierly dismissed the idea that Hillary ought to account for her legal transgressions, particularly in light of the fact that Hillary referred lower level employees for FBI investigation who engaged in the mishandling of classified information.

The creation of a private server to receive all of her State Department correspondence together with a brazen refusal to abide by the security strictures required by federal law for the handling of classified documents reveals that Hillary Clinton did indeed regard the law as applicable to others but not to her. She knowingly and arrogantly refused to be bound by laws designed to guard American secrets, including highly classified intelligence on intelligence operations and operatives.

The view that Hillary is above the law, which she and Bill appear to favor, is precisely the view rejected by our Founding Fathers. As Richard Nixon discovered, no public official bound to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States can violate those laws without being made to account for the transgressions; otherwise, the President assumes the mantle of an emperor who dispenses law but is not obliged to abide by it. That notion was rejected at the founding and the principle that no American may violate the law with impunity, regardless of his or her station, was reaffirmed conclusively during the Watergate crisis.

Hillary Clinton remains unfit to serve as President of the United States because she violated the basic laws designed to protect the nation’s secrets. While her derelictions of duty are many and her achievements non-existent, her decision to send and receive outside of secure channels hundreds of emails that contained secret information was a crime. While negligent officials populate all branches of the federal government, negligent officials who go beyond dereliction of duty to violation of the law are a small subset who cannot be allowed to escape justice. To ensure the primacy of the rule of law over the rule of people in power, at a minimum those individuals who violate the law must be made to account in the courts. Hillary is just such a person, as was Richard Nixon.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Although far behind Trump in the delegate count, Cruz transparently tried to draw media attention his way and appeal to women voters by naming Carly Fiorina as a Vice Presidential running mate. The tactic by one whose acquisition of the 1,237 votes needed to be nominated is mathematically impossible smacks of desperation. Cruz is having a hard time drawing media away from Trump following Trump’s decisive victories in New York and five additional Northeastern states, which make him the putative nominee for the Republican Party. Cruz now clings to the unlikely role of a convention spoiler who will thwart the will of the electorate by overthrowing the candidate with the most votes.

That plan to contrive victory against the will of Republican voters offends the vast majority who expect their votes to be respected by the party. Although Cruz’s choice for vice-president is premature, it does beg the question who the putative nominee of the party will ultimately choose.

Donald Trump’s choice for Vice President may well be critical in this year’s general election. His best suited running mate is one who can help neutralize the female and minority bias that Hillary depends upon to win the election. While Hillary should be indicted for violations of the Espionage Act and public corruption before the Fall election, it will remain important for Donald Trump to eliminate false perceptions that the Democratic Party has a lock on women and minorities.

Consequently, it would help if Trump could choose as a running mate a person who can counter the perceived female and minority advantage. He must do so without aligning himself with a person opposed to his commitment to border security, a strong national defense, and tax cuts. No one fits that description better than Susana Martinez, the thirty-first Governor of the state of New Mexico.

Martinez is a tough and extremely popular governor with an approval rate of over 60%. An attorney, Martinez has been a strong advocate for removing the influence of the political class from her state. She barred state agencies from hiring lobbyists. She signed an executive order eliminating sanctuary status for illegals in her state. She sold the state’s luxury jet previously used by the governor, obtaining $2.51 million to add to the state’s coffers. She created a system to grade public schools on their performance and to ensure publication of those grades to the public. She vigorously opposed environmental measures that sacrifice jobs without any meaningful improvement in the environment. She opposed efforts to increase the minimum wage, explaining that the proposed increase would cause job losses in the state. She supported tax cuts to encourage business development in the state.

Of Mexican descent, she is the daughter of a father who was an American war hero and a Golden Gloves boxer. She is fiercely patriotic and a strong advocate of secure borders with Mexico. She utterly rejects race based and gender based politics. She opposes enactment of laws that advance the interests of people solely based on their gender or their race, advocating instead meritocracy without regard to race or gender and a free market.

Although rightly opposed to sexist and racist politics (she does not tout her Latina heritage or gender as qualifications for her office but, instead, asks voters to consider her record and policy positions), Martinez would effectively neutralize a number of superficial gender and race based positions advanced by Democrats. It would indeed be the case that she would be the first woman and the first Latina to serve as Vice President. That factor would draw the attention of those whose vote for Hillary is predicated solely on her gender or who favored her solely because of her avowed ties to minorities but who have held their noses because of Hillary’s legal troubles. In addition, Martinez’s presence on the Trump ticket would help nullify the substantively vacuous charge that Trump will disserve American women as president.

Perhaps most importantly, her presence on the ticket would help dispel arguments that an open border policy is advantageous. Governor Martinez knows first-hand why a secure border is essential, offering the best hope of stemming the risks of crime and terror from illegals crossing the border.

As the presumptive nominee in reach of the 1,237 votes needed to prevail on a first ballot, Trump should focus his attention increasingly on condemning Hillary Clinton’s failures as Secretary of State, including her failure to defend Americans during the Benghazi attack, her support for the ill-fated Gaddafi overthrow, her support for the disastrous Iran deal, and her anemic response to ISIS; her lies to the families of those lost in the Benghazi attack and to the American people (describing the attack as a spontaneous uprising in response to an anti-Islamic video which she then knew was in fact radical Islamic terror); her gross neglect of top secret information, including human intelligence, which, barring obstruction of justice, will cause her to be indicted under the Espionage Act; her abuse of the office of Secretary of State to favor the positions of certain individuals and states who gave large contributions to the Clinton Foundation; and her disrespect of the American military, including her own secret service detail while she was First Lady. There are enormous pitfalls in the Clinton record and no real achievements. She is the ideal opponent, ideally suited to lose if her failings are repeatedly exposed and she is compelled to answer for them.

In that movement to expose, confront and rebut Hillary, Governor Martinez will be a welcomed addition. She will provide an independent voice that will cut through the sexist and racist rhetoric upon which Hillary so heavily depends in her planned attacks against Donald Trump.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Given the outcome of primaries in New York and the rest of the Northeast, a vote for either Cruz or Kasich is a vote for defeat in November. With neither one able to capture the popular vote, and with a clear majority supporting Trump going into the convention, any effort to keep Trump from the nomination will cause a mass exodus from the party of its new heart and soul, the millions of previously disaffected voters who are drawn by Trump’s anti-establishment message. It is now time for sober realism: If Trump is not the Republican nominee, it is highly unlikely that a Republican will be elected President. The effort to stop Trump is worse than futile, it is self-destructive.

Unable to win a majority of their own party, Cruz and Kasich cannot hope to create that party unity necessary to assure victory in the Fall. Instead of investing in an effort to derail the popular favorite through some sort of authoritarian ouster at the convention, party leaders should mend fences with Trump and provide assurance that they will support him as the popular favorite. Doing so will pay dividends, as they will have a greater chance of achieving party unity needed to win in the general election and a more receptive audience in a Trump white house.

Gone are the days preceding the early Twentieth Century when backroom deals could upset popular will at the nominating conventions and those responsible not be made to account. Instantaneous news brings with it immediate information on the machinations underway and will provide convincing evidence that the Republican Party has betrayed its electorate if Trump is not chosen. That would be a major mistake with lasting consequences for the GOP.

The differences party leaders have with Trump are in truth not based on policy. These same leaders have embraced liberal positions by past Republican standard bearers without uttering a peep of dissent. Richard Nixon advocated wage and price controls, a draconian measure offensive to everyone who favors a free market. George Bush advocated Medicare Part D, one of the largest expansions of Medicare in the nation’s history. Mitt Romney authored the precursor to Obamacare in Massachusetts. Despite all of those gross deviations from conservative ideology, none suffered rebuke from party leaders. Indeed, all were embraced. The key difference with Trump is that he cannot be controlled and is averse to the exercise of influence at the expense of free enterprise and the American people.

That means Trump will not be persuaded to pressure the bureaucracy and Congress to maintain or adopt new anti-competitive measures beneficial from one industry over another. The inside line many depend upon, that justifies the employment of so many K Street lobbyists, is not available with Trump. Indeed, he has condemned that inside line and has no interest in being anyone’s patsy. He cannot be bought. It is that, rather than a supposed lack of ideological purity, that is ultimately behind all efforts to thwart democracy and engineer a convention coup to take from Trump the mantle he has earned in popular votes.

If instead of working feverishly and devoting millions of dollars to accomplish the undoing of Trump and thereby make Republican defeat in November a sure thing (a quest that is worse than futile, a quest that is self-destructive), party leaders should swallow their pride, make amends with Trump, and offer all the help they can to support his candidacy and defeat his opponent.

Sadly, certain Republican leaders aligned against Trump may actually prefer Clinton over him, precisely because Clinton has a long history of fraternization with industry and a strong desire to line her political pockets with money from special interests, facts exploited to his advantage by Bernie Sanders. Despite her far left rhetoric, Clinton does indeed have an affinity for politically concocted financial deals, deals that benefit her, her family, and those who lobby her. But betting on Hillary is a very risky option even for those who embrace greed at the expense of principle and the nation. Hillary will likely be indicted before the November elections, leaving open the prospect for another, perhaps Sanders, perhaps Biden, perhaps someone else.

Lest they forget, while Trump will not sell out the country for the sake of one pol or another, he will forge open new markets and protect America’s financial interests around the world. Although those who have depended on easy wealth from barriers to competition may dislike the new, pro-competitive approach, it promises to help stem the movement toward national insolvency, unfetter free enterprise, and rebuild an opportunity economy. That will lift all boats.

While regulatory barriers to competition, heavy taxation, and redistribution of wealth bring down what is above; breaking down barriers to competition, lowering taxation, and allowing greater wealth accumulation raise up what is below, as history teaches.

On balance, therefore, rather than commit political suicide, or form a pact with the devil in the form of Hillary Clinton, Republican leaders should accept the will of the majority, embrace Trump as the standard bearer, and get to work uniting the party behind him and electing him president.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Donald Trump will arrive at the Republican National Convention with the most delegates of any candidate. He will have won the overwhelming majority of the state contests. Were democracy the rule, Trump would be the Republican nominee, but Ted Cruz, John Kasich, and several leading figures in the Republican Party approve of democracy only if they win. Having no chance to win a majority, they instead want to overthrow the democratic will of the people. If successful, that strategy will demoralize and alienate a very large number of Republican voters, and it will decrease the prospects for success of the Republican nominee in November. As Pat Buchanan has observed, if Trump is not the nominee many will stay at home rather than vote in November, but also many will vote for Trump as an Independent candidate rather than acquiesce in the loss of their vote, thereby splitting what would otherwise be votes for the Republican standard bearer and reducing the size, scope, and influence of the Republican Party in the years to come.

Ted Cruz’s operatives are working feverishly to obtain delegates through non-democratic means. That pursuit bespeaks a contempt for representative democracy, very unbecoming for a candidate who proclaims himself the only true guardian of the Constitution. For example, in Louisiana, although Trump won the election, Cruz’s behind the scenes machinations have enabled him to come away with a majority of Louisiana’s delegates. And in Colorado, the Republican Party bosses decided not to allow Coloradans to vote, giving all of the state’s delegates to Cruz, who granted favors to pull resistant delegates to his side. Wherever Cruz has lost democratically, he has worked behind the scenes to overturn the will of the voters, obtaining delegates through influence peddling (jockeying to put in place delegates whose real loyalty is to him rather than to the voters’ choice). Do those who support Ted Cruz endorse this approach? Do they really want authoritarians to cause losing candidates to win through cloak room maneuvers? Do they think those tactics consistent with constitutional conservatism? So much for Ted Cruz’s insistence that he is the true constitutional conservative.

John Kasich clings to a romantic notion that the democratic will of the people can be thwarted at the convention by party bosses apoplectic over Trump who have nowhere else to turn, enabling him to be the party’s nominee. He dreams of the unlikely scenario where no single candidate will reach the magic number of 1,237 on a first, second, or third ballot and where most will turn to him as the party savior. He too favors authoritarianism over democracy if it means he can be declared the winner.

Trump should benefit greatly from focusing on these anti-democratic positions of his opponents, which essentially ask that the majority’s votes be rendered meaningless. Trump’s opponents may campaign. They may call for votes, but in the end they don’t respect any vote except one for them, because they hope and plan to thwart the will of the majority on the convention floor, to achieve victory based on an overthrow of the democratic process.

The best way for voters to reveal their contempt for the anti-democratic subversion of their votes is to vote overwhelmingly against the candidates calling for it in every remaining primary. Any who truly believe in democratic elections must vote against those who seek to derail democracy.

Both the Cruz approach (delegate vote obtained through behind the scenes manipulation) and the Kasich approach (delegate vote obtained through miraculous convention conversion) are based on a contempt for the election process, on a zealous willingness to overturn the democratically elected. In short, they see nothing wrong with making a mockery of the democratic process if doing so gets them the nomination. By hook or by crook, they want the nomination, and they do not care that most voters oppose them. If they cannot win an election honestly, by the votes, they will win it dishonestly, by subversion, and they expect Americans to do nothing in response and thereby be complicit in the destruction of their votes.

The Cruz and Kasich quest for an undemocratic takeover of the election process should offend all Americans. It threatens to make apathy the rule, by undermining fundamentally representative democracy.

Cruz and Kasich are, however, painfully short-sighted. Do either of them really want a Republican nomination against the will of the voters? Are they naïve enough to believe that if party bosses proclaim either one of them the nominee the millions of Trump supporters will accept the overthrow of democracy as permissible gamesmanship and back them in the general election?

I suppose they count upon Republicans voting for them because they would be the primary party opposition to Hillary Clinton. This is not that election year, however. Unlike Cruz and Kasich supporters, Trump’s following is devout and steadfast. Undoubtedly Trump supporters will demand that Trump run as an Independent rather than have their will thwarted by party bosses. Consequently, even if Cruz or Kasich obtain the nomination by contrivance, neither will have the popular backing needed to win the general election. Rather, the Trump majority, which now forms the activist heart and soul of the Republican Party, will reject the party, stay at home, or vote Independent rather than vote for Cruz or Kasich.

That exodus from Republican ranks, involving many who did not vote or did not align themselves with the Republican Party before Trump, will ensure into the foreseeable future that the Republican Party will be an anemic one. Many will not soon forget that the party they entrusted with their vote overturned the will of the majority; that party bosses turned the primaries in the states into farces where voters were led to believe their vote counted, when in fact it did not.

In the end, we should expose and denounce the authoritarian hedonism that drives Cruz and Kasich to favor upsetting the will of the majority. Despite loss after loss in the primaries, they each have a self-love that is greater than their respect for democracy. Each arrogantly presumes that overturning democratic process is fair play because neither has the humility and grace to withdraw when defeated.

It must be obvious to Cruz and Kasich that bullying their way to the nomination offends the very principles they say they believe in (achievement by merit, representative democracy, and accountability to the electorate), yet neither is willing to abide by those principles if it means suffering a personal loss. That willingness to part with principle for personal gain is precisely the primary characteristic of the establishment enemy that voters detest in this election cycle.

It is that kind of anti-democratic politics that Obama used to justify executive actions to amend the law without following the Article I command that Congress approve of the change first; that brought us Obamacare; that brought us thousands of industry stifling regulations from unelected bureaucrats; that brought us corruption to advance the will of industry leaders at the expense of everyone; and that brought us a deal with Iran in circumvention of the Constitution’s Treaty Clause and the requirement of Senate consent.

One would hope that at the convention the delegates would come to appreciate the solemn duty they have to uphold the democratic will of the electorate, that the candidate wanted by the majority must be nominated by the party. If they do not, their undemocratically chosen candidate, having acquired the nomination without merit, will run in the general election without the support needed to win, and will be a figure whose nomination will long alienate those who voted Republican for the first time from ever voting Republican again.

In all likelihood if the majority vote is thwarted that will mean the Republican nominee will not be elected president. Rather, those whose votes were rendered nullities by machinations at the Republican convention will either not vote at all or will vote for Trump as an Independent.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Donald Trump’s recent foibles in discussing abortion create a media opportunity for him that he ought not miss: the opportunity to burst the liberal myth that political issues may be divided based on race, gender, and wealth. In the case of gender, liberals presume that women have issues unique to them and uniquely understandable by them when in point of fact women’s concerns are men’s as well. There is no issue which would beget public policy or a political viewpoint that is not fair for both genders. The need to emphasize that point is accentuated by virtue of the fact that Hillary Clinton plans to run a sexist campaign where she presumes her gender gives her a uniquely valid perspective, superior to any man. So much for equality between the sexes, Hillary, at least when it comes to her own point of view, wherein she asserts a gender based superiority that is no less repulsive than Adolf Hitler’s race based superiority. That sexism is indeed identical to racism, and Donald Trump should call it out. He can deflate Hillary’s sexist balloon in short order by calling it for what it is, sexism, and revealing it to be the product of simple mindedness because in fact issues that beget public policy are not the unique province of any one gender.

Men and women are concerned about protecting the lives of the innocent, including the unborn; protecting the nation against foreign aggressors, including ISIS; and ensuring that the economic opportunity is restored to America for men and women. There is no room in America for gender based or racial based preferences in education, government, the military, or the private sector. Ours should be a meritocracy and that, indeed, appears to be Trump’s view. Hillary, on the other hand, believes in dividing the nation along racial and gender lines and saddling those who are not racial minorities or women with economic and regulatory burdens designed to advance the wealth or status of a preferred race or gender ahead of those not of that preferred race or gender.

That race based and gender based system of government preferences is akin to the racism of Nazi Germany. It is repulsive precisely because it offends fundamentally the notion well-articulated by Martin Luther King, Jr. that all Americans are to be judged by the content of our characters not by the color of our skin or, for that matter, our gender.

The opportunity society Trump wishes to resurrect in America is predicated not on government selection of winners and losers but on the action of free markets where excellence is celebrated and complimented with riches, regardless of race, creed, color, or gender, whether the titan of industry is Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey, Robert Johnson or Doris Fisher. We should prize and protect an opportunity society driven by free markets not by government mandates.

Hillary Clinton, by contrast, wants to continue the heavy overlay of government that characterizes the failed Obama Administration, where government issues grants to, coerces, and cajoles companies into advancing the kinds of product offerings it thinks best, and urges the kind of racial and gender characteristics it prefers. That has proven a total disaster because merit as determined by market demand which is the ultimate source of free market success has been supplanted by political preference as determined by who has the governmental authority to decide. Planned markets have always failed. It is impossible for government bureaucrats to predict the preferences of individuals in the market, and it is equally impossible for them to decide for each of us what we should buy or sell, when each of us has a different idea.

While in America there can be no legal protection for racism or sexism, there must also be no legal protection for select corporations or industries; rather there must be equal legal protection for all private property against the incursions of government. No matter how great a design some bureaucrat in Washington may envision (e.g., the disastrous Obamacare), it is not government, President Obama, who “built that;” rather, it is private initiative, unbounded by the constraints of those in power, that built all things great in America.

If we are ever to reclaim upward mobility as a people and a nation, we must reject the failed notion that central government planners know better than private citizens how best to satisfy private interests.

Trump grasps that fundamentally. He must now articulate the message against all-comers. When asked what he will do for women, he must turn that around and say he will do for women as he will do for all people, regardless of race, gender, or ethnicity; he will get government out of our way, eliminate barriers to competition, and free the market to allow women, men, and all Americans to invent, compete, and succeed, as is the great American tradition.

He must assure us that the wayward course (that of government protectionism and socialism) always brings down what is above, replaces exceptionalism with mediocrity, and deprives individual Americans of that freedom which is essential to economic achievement and progress.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Donald Trump is at a critical juncture in his campaign. His words and deeds from this point forward will determine as never before whether he will amass enough delegates to win on a first or second vote at the Republican National Convention. To win, Trump must become more specific and bold in addressing the key policy topics of:

(1) restoring economic growth, upward mobility and productivity to America;
(2) reducing the power of the bureaucracy to liberate industry from the control of lobbyists who help establish anti-competitive regulation;
(3) destroying ISIS and related terror groups;
(4) establishing strong border protection;
(5) defending and advancing American interests around the world; and
(6) eliminating Obamacare in favor of a free market in health care and health care insurance.
Donald Trump’s viability as a candidate and appeal to a broader base is dependent on his strength of conviction and his anti-establishment credentials. Voters have formed a movement around him convinced that his blunt talk, strong persona, and status as a Washington outsider will shake things up in Washington and allow for a return to limited government, the rule of law, a strong national defense, and a flourishing free market. He stands to lose support if people come to doubt he can deliver on the details. Consequently, he needs to articulate the details boldly and confirm his commitment to bring about true reform.

In particular, he needs to reemphasize the gist of his tax plan that would lower tax rates and create a more hospitable environment for corporate America to remain in America. He needs to explain how tax relief, combined with regulatory relief, can revitalize the economy such that upward mobility, now stagnant, can be restored, re-establishing the lost American dream.

He needs to call for downsizing the federal bureaucracy by eliminating every regulation that has caused or will cause the loss of American jobs, private property without just compensation, or impose a cost greater than any provable benefit. If a regulation costs American jobs, sacrifices private property, or is more costly than beneficial, it should be eliminated.

He needs to call for a quadrupling of American special forces and a commitment to use whatever force is necessary to ensure the prompt and complete obliteration of ISIS and related terrorist groups and all who support ISIS and related terrorist groups. He should make clear that as President he will engage the American military in a relentless day and night campaign of assault to kill all ISIS operatives and all who support them, assuring a substantial increase in the use of American force to bring about the most expeditious and thorough demise of radical Islamic terrorism.

He has made his position on border security clear, and needs to keep that message among those he communicates in all of the remaining states. It is the centerpiece of his campaign. He needs to tie that message more to the threat of terrorists entering the United States and explain that border security is essential to avoid the planned onslaught of terrorists into the United States via our Southern and Northern borders.

He needs to make clear not only that he will end American support for the disgraceful deal entered into by the United States with Iran but that he will back Israel unwaveringly by supporting economic sanctions and, if necessary, military intervention to prevent Iran from developing and deploying nuclear weapons. He should state clearly that by its words and deeds Iran is an enemy of the United States, condemn Obama for allying the nation with its enemy, and assure that under his administration the United States will oppose every effort by Iran to expand radical Islamic terror around the world. He should state clearly that the hostile acts of North Korea will not be tolerated in his administration and that the United States will impose the most stringent economic sanctions on that country, will expand alliances with South Korea and Japan against North Korean acts of aggression, and will intervene to interdict any launch of a ballistic missile by North Korea if accompanied by a threat from North Korea that it will strike the United States. He should state clearly that neither China nor Russia will be permitted to use acts of intimidation or occupation of foreign states or territories if those actions threaten the security or economic vitality of the United States and its allies but that the United States will respond boldly, will increase the presence of its military forces in Eastern Europe, and will make clear it will oppose any effort to topple a country allied to the United States.

He needs to explain the failings of Obamacare and attack its fundamental premise, that the United States has a rightful power to compel everyone to buy health insurance and to force those who pay to subsidize those who do not. He needs to condemn the Obamacare mandate, pledge to eliminate it as a first act of his administration, and commit to taking steps to establish a market economy in health care and health insurance.

He needs to make these positions known at every opportunity and communicate the message with conviction and rebut all who challenge his position. He has that natural ability. It is a major part of his attraction to voters. Now he is being challenged by those who are alleging that his call to make America great again is vacuous. Proof of the contrary proposition requires that he supply the details mentioned above and defend them vigorously. Doing so will define his candidacy.

A burgeoning majority of Americans find the strength of Donald Trump appealing; they now ask if he can deliver. The Teflon he has enjoyed is wearing thin, as vigorous efforts are undertaken by establishment Republicans and liberal Democrats to make Trump out to be a phony conservative, a man devoid of substance, and a bigot.

In the end, nothing matters more to the American people than that they are assured of safety by replacing a weak President, Obama, with a strong one. Nothing matters more to the American people than that they are assured of restoration of a dynamic free market by replacing the vast regulatory state created by President Obama with a government winnowed down such that a free market may flourish and economic opportunity can be restored. Nothing matters more to the American people than that the United States, now the source of ridicule and comedic relief for our nation’s enemies, may be restored to the position of a super power where its enemies fear it, where its friends embrace it, and where it unyieldingly stands as a bastion of freedom.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Media attention focuses on the internecine battle to gain control of the Republican Party’s nominating convention, to the neglect of a far greater story affecting the Democratic Party’s nomination of a presidential candidate. That media coverage is a form of tunnel vision, because it is virtually certain that the Democratic Party will experience an implosion this election cycle, while it is but a possibility that a floor fight will occur at the Republican National Convention.

The FBI is trying to schedule interviews with Hillary Clinton and her top aides, as the probe into Hillary et al.’s violations of the Espionage Act and the public corruption laws reaches its zenith. Based solely on the information publicly revealed to date, the evidence of unlawful conduct is overwhelming. It is hard to imagine either FBI Director James Comey or Attorney General Loretta Lynch not proceeding with a bill for indictment before a federal grand jury within the next several months. The Democratic National Convention will take place July 25 to 28. The issue is increasingly not whether Hillary and her top aides will be indicted but when. Will it occur before she gets her party’s nomination or after?

With over 150 FBI agents completing their evaluation of Clinton’s emails and of the association between her actions as Secretary of State and the receipt of foreign funds by the Clinton Foundation, it is likely that recommendations for the indictment of Clinton and her aides will soon be given by the FBI to the Attorney General. Interviews with those who are the targets of the investigation, including Clinton and her aides, is a necessary prelude to completion of that investigation. In those interviews, Hillary Clinton will be obliged to tell the truth and avoid withholding material information or face additional charges of false statements. She must either take the Fifth or answer, so too must her aides. If she answers in a way consistent with her public pronouncements, she will violate the False Statements Act and that crime will be added to the list of crimes for which she can be indicted.

It appears increasingly unlikely that Attorney General Lynch will stand in the way of a bill for indictment of Hillary Clinton. Lynch’s reputation for faithful adherence to the rule of law is considerable; moreover, her assurances to Congress that politics would not sway her actions make any move in the other direction one that would likely destroy her reputation on the Hill, in the Department, and with the FBI. To refuse to allow a bill of indictment to proceed to the Grand Jury, Lynch would have to be willing to sacrifice her future for the sake of a Clinton presidency. Moreover, if she were to refuse to indict Hillary, she would also likely have to refuse to indict all of Hillary’s aides who likewise violated the Espionage Act. The original error would thereby be compounded, and immediate calls for congressional investigation and an obstruction of justice probe would reach a fever pitch. Suddenly Lynch would be just as much a focus of congressional and public acrimony and attention as Clinton. A refusal to permit a bill of indictment to proceed to the Grand Jury would also likely cause several top level, career FBI agents and Justice Department lawyers with high integrity not only to protest loudly but to resign rather than be associated with the obstruction of justice. Word of the failure of Lynch to indict and resulting conflicts with the FBI and among Justice Department attorneys would reach the media, and even if the indictment failed to proceed, Hillary Clinton would soon become an enormous liability, a candidate not electable.

If the charges go to Justice before Hillary is nominated, word of those charges may well cause the nomination to go to Sanders (with Clinton supporters and super delegates jumping ship). While the mainstream media avoids that hypothetical, it is really the only way Sanders can win, and it is a very real prospect, one no doubt Sanders privately counts on as a path to secure the nomination. It certainly makes it inadvisable in the extreme for Sanders to drop out of the race. Rather, he should go through the entire convention, even if the charges are not brought before it concludes, and he should not concede thereafter but could well run as an independent (remember, Sanders was elected to the U.S. Senate as an Independent from Vermont). If the charges are not brought before Hillary wins the nomination, they most certainly will be brought during the general election (and therein lies the hope for Sanders).

If Hillary becomes the Democratic Party nominee and is indicted during the general election, the temptation for the Democratic Party to schedule a second nominating convention and discharge Hillary and endorse Sanders or Biden will be great. Moreover, even if that does not happen, Hillary financial supporters will likely bolt from her and promise support for a third party run by either Sanders or Biden. If Biden is pulled out of the wings and agrees to jump in, Sanders and Biden will split the vote, making neither electable.

If Sanders runs as an Independent against Hillary and the Republican nominee, there will still be die hards who will vote for Clinton but most will shift to Sanders, yet the split in Democratic vote will likely prevent either Sanders or Clinton from winning the election.

In short, the notion that Hillary Clinton will be our next President is premature in the extreme. Beyond beating the ultimate Republican nominee, she has an insurmountable problem confronting her: per se violations of the Espionage Act and possible violations of the public corruption laws that are about to come to a head. Whether indicted before or after the Democratic National Convention, Hillary Clinton will likely never become President of the United States, regardless of which Republican challenger she faces. Only a minority of Democrats will vote for Hillary Clinton rather than Sanders or Biden, if Hillary has the prospect of becoming a felon convicted under the Espionage Act or the public corruption laws during her first term in office, both unquestionably High Crimes for which impeachment would likely follow.

So, the most likely outcome is for a Republican to be elected President, because the prospect of indictment now hanging over Hillary Clinton like the sword of Damocles will likely fall before November 2016 and will fracture the Democratic Party in ways that prevent its chosen candidate from ever winning the White House.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

An anti-Trump super PAC, Make America Awesome, recently ran a Facebook ad aimed at Mormons in Utah to help defeat Donald Trump in that state. The ad endorsed Ted Cruz but its focus was not on either Ted Cruz or Donald Trump but on Donald Trump’s wife, Melania. The ad presented a picture of a half-nude Melania from a photo shoot sixteen years ago in 2000 by British GQ. Melania was a model. The ad included the following text on the screen: “MELANIA TRUMP. YOUR NEXT FIRST LADY. OR, YOU COULD SUPPORT TED CRUZ ON TUESDAY.” Although Ted Cruz said that his campaign did not have anything to do with the ad, the ad reflects adversely on Cruz rather than on Donald Trump, or Melania for that matter. Therein lies a fundamental problem for Cruz, a problem that makes him unelectable.

Among Christians there is a well-accepted doctrinal recognition that no person is free of sin, that each must seek redemption by turning to Christ, and that none other than the Lord may pass ultimate judgment on others. Cruz has made it a centerpiece of his campaign that he is an evangelical Christian. Despite that, those who identify themselves as evangelical Christians have voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump rather than Ted Cruz. Why is that?

The answer may rest in the fact that the blunt and honest Trump does not profess himself to be morally perfect, but as for Ted Cruz, he describes himself as the only evangelical Christian candidate, a preacher’s son, and the only “consistent conservative.” In other words, Cruz implies that he is, well, perfect. He faults Trump for changing his positions on issues, suggesting that he himself has never done so and he condemns Trump for use of foul language, for name calling, and for superficiality. While an evangelical Christian by self-pronouncement, Cruz does not walk in the path of Christ who did not condemn the sinner, only the sin, and who redeems sinners. The problem with Cruz’s approach is that it rests on a false premise, and there are few things more offensive to evangelicals than the hypocrisy that attends a candidate who proclaims himself the only true evangelical yet engages in dishonest politics.

It is a fact that Ted Cruz changed his position on immigration, having initially favored a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants and then later opposing the pathway. That shifting position is not “consistent” as he argues but it would not be dishonest either, except for his insistence that he never wavered in opposing illegal immigration. It boggles the mind to understand why Cruz simply would not confess that he had a different position earlier but changed it in light of the hordes of illegals that have poured over the border since that time. His insistence that he never wavered on opposing citizenship for illegal immigrants is false, and it conflicts with his dogmatic insistence that he is the only “consistent conservative” in the race. He is not consistent, at least not on one of the most important issues in the campaign, stemming the tide of illegal immigration.

It is also a fact that senior members of the Cruz campaign maintained a false narrative that Ben Carson had left the campaign in the first caucus, Iowa. That false representation to delegates in the caucus caused some to vote for Cruz on the false assumption that their favorite candidate, Carson, was out of the race. While Cruz later agreed that those actions of his agents were improper, he nevertheless did not take any step to rectify the problem (like ask for a second caucus vote or disclaim those votes he received under false pretenses).

And now we have the Melania Trump matter. It is a fact that Melania Trump was a model. It is also a fact that in her twenties she posed nude. It is also a fact that she is beautiful and intelligent. Born in Slovania in 1970, she studied at the University of Ljubjana. She speaks five languages. She is the owner of a jewelry line. She is a devoted mother. Cruz’s failure to condemn the Make America Awesome PAC ad when it first aired is far more revealing and damaging to Cruz than to Trump. Indeed, were Cruz truly an evangelical, he would regard any prior transgression of another as forgivable, not his place to judge ultimately, and not appropriately reflective of either who Melania Trump was then or who she is today. Moreover, he would regard the use of this low tactic in an effort to besmirch Donald Trump itself sinful, because Donald Trump certainly cannot be deemed unfit for office solely because his wife posed nude in 2000 for British GQ. Yet beyond a tweet disclaiming involvement in the ad, Cruz did not upon the ad’s release condemn it, explain that he did not think it appropriate to question Trump based on Melania’s photo shoot, and did not think the image itself a reflection of the honesty or integrity of Melania, but again, as with the Carson incident, Cruz remained largely mum. One can surmise that he did so because he hoped both tactics would redound to his political benefit, but that legerdemain is more characteristic of the Pharisees than of Christ.

Indeed, we do not have qualifications for the position of First Lady; it is not an elected office. But, nevertheless, I for one think Melania Trump would be a great First Lady. I find her refreshingly honest and, like Trump, a Washington outsider, not a career politician’s wife. She comes with none of the dishonest baggage and corrupt political history that accompanied Hillary Clinton to the White House when she was First Lady. Melania’s reputation is one of honesty. She is dignified and elegant. She is fluent in five foreign languages. She is from Eastern Europe, the very part of the world now besought by acts of aggression and political intrigue from Vladimir Putin. She will be a solid link to our Eastern European allies and will give them comfort knowing that a person who has lived among them and is a byproduct of their culture has the ear of the President of the United States.

In the end, I think Cruz’s inconsistencies telling, but I also think his dogmatic insistence on his own perfection politically unappealing. In the primaries thus far, Cruz has held a subset of the conservative vote, but he has not shown any broader appeal.

By contrast, Trump has shown broader appeal, causing conservative Democrats, Republicans who have not voted for years, independents, and disaffected individuals who have never voted along with a segment of the Latino vote to go his way. Because Cruz has shown no facility to reach beyond a subset of the conservative vote, he cannot win in a general election unless, that is, he becomes an inconsistent conservative. In light of Cruz’s insistence that he and he alone is “consistent,” the inconsistencies present give substance to Trump’s charge that Cruz is “lyin’ Ted.”

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

The First Amendment protects a person’s right to communicate ideas, information, and opinions free of government restraint, but it does not protect a person who wishes to incite riot, commit assault, or destroy the property of others nor does it authorize trespass or deprivation of the rights of others. Individuals affiliated with Moveon.org and Black Lives Matter are engaged in criminal incitement and are countenancing physical assaults and deprivation of and destruction of private property at Donald Trump rallies. Those are criminal actions, not protected speech.

When a politician pays for a forum and invites supporters to attend a rally, that public event is not an invitation to riot, obstruct the planned speakers and events, or destroy property. Indeed, those attending are admitted on conditions. They are admitted if they will occupy a seat and avoid obstructive actions. They are guests of the speaker and the sponsor of the event. If they incite riot, commit assaults, or destroy property, they are appropriately arrested, charged, and prosecuted. The First Amendment is not a shield for illegal action.

If the event is held on private property that is made open to the public for the purpose of allowing a political speech to a candidate’s supporters, the property owner retains the right to control the forum, determine who is allowed to speak and what may be said. That right is one of editorial control and is vested in the person who owns the forum to the exclusion of all others. That right has been a freedom of the press since the founding of the republic. Consistent with the First Amendment, there is no super-editorial power in government to deny the forum owner the power to determine the content communicated via his own property. Consequently, the New York Times may editorialize in liberal ways deemed offensive to some conservatives, just as the Washington Times may editorialize in conservative ways deemed offensive to some liberals. That is the essence of the freedom of the press. As a result, the private forum owner may expel any attendee who trespasses, any attendee who obstructs the planned event, or any attendee who commits an assault. He may do so confident in his First Amendment right, which in this case inures to protect him in his right to editorialize, to sponsor and promote the political views, with which he agrees.

If the event is held on public property that is within the confines of a stadium or a building, the government is barred by the First Amendment from engaging in viewpoint or content discrimination but not from imposing reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions. Consequently, if the government owner of the public property wishes to allow Donald Trump to use the facility to speak to his supporters, the government may prohibit actions that obstruct Trump’s right to speak and the audience’s right to hear, so long as the government makes reasonable accommodation for those who wish to speak in opposition to Trump.

Ordinarily, this involves adoption of a content neutral system for allowing the public forum to be made available to alternative speakers and their supporters on different days, and allowing the public streets and parks outside of the government facility to be available for presentation of competing speeches and protest, again subject only to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions (such as preventing assemblies that block traffic, block ingress and egress from buildings, or prevent the normal operations of government or private businesses).

The crowds of college youth, often supported by university faculty, who condemn any viewpoint with which they disagree and act on that condemnation by shouting down speakers, destroying private property, and committing assaults are criminals and thugs who ought to be arrested. They have an undoubted First Amendment right to their own viewpoints and a right to communicate those views in places held from time immemorial for public protest (the streets and parks), but they have no First Amendment right to obstruct political addresses in forums reserved for that purpose, to attack those who support the speaker, or to destroy the property of those who support the speaker. That activity is indeed criminal, and the appropriate response is to arrest the perpetrators, prosecute them, and incarcerate them as the law allows.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Mitt Romney’s uncharacteristically harsh attack on Donald Trump revealed the extent of desperation felt by Republican leaders over the prospect of a party take-over by Trump and his supporters. Republican leaders are apoplectic. So enraged are they that they are willing to risk a loss in November to ensure that Donald Trump is not the nominee. In other words, they would prefer Hillary Clinton or another Democrat to Donald Trump. Indeed, despite his conservative ideological purity, Ted Cruz is loathed by the Republican leaders almost as much as Trump. They find Marco Rubio their only comfortable choice, but Rubio is so far behind that he cannot win. How then can Americans thwart the anti-Democratic efforts of Romney and Republican leaders to prevent a Trump nomination? The answer lies in an intelligent recognition that Cruz, while popular among Republicans, has no appeal outside of Republican circles and, so, is unlikely to win in a general election. Because of that, Republicans can overthrow the establishment and keep Romney and Republican leaders from thwarting the will of the people only by voting overwhelmingly for Trump in the remaining primaries. If they do so, Trump will win on a first ballot, and the machinations Republican leaders are planning will be foiled.

Why is it that Republican leaders are so willing to sacrifice Republican prospects in November to ensure the nomination of a candidate not supported by rank and file Republicans? It is not because they adhere to some sort of conservative litmus test. Despite his ideological purity, Cruz is persona non grata with them. Indeed, they have embraced the likes of Mitt Romney and George Bush in the past who were often proponents of big government. Remember, Romney brought us Obamacare writ small when he was Governor of Massachusetts, and George Bush championed the passage of Medicare Part D (the prescription drug benefit for seniors), the largest welfare program adopted in the United States before Obamacare.

Republican leaders, the old party guard, are not ideological purists like Ronald Reagan was, they are protectionists, more interested in feathering their own nests than in limiting government power. They have long allied themselves with Democrats to favor political appointees who, and government programs that, are favored by industry special interests who hold out the promise of lucrative paybacks for them.

In short, they support the corrupt government quid pro quo with industry that is crony capitalism. Crony capitalism is a form of corruption wherein politicians align themselves with specific industry special interests against others, to pass legislation or enact regulations that are anti-competitive, favoring the economic interests of select industry players at the expense of those others. That game has become the primary business of Congress and the federal agencies, and the leaders of the Republican party cling to it and are responsible for perpetuating it.

Donald Trump, in particular, and Ted Cruz threaten crony capitalism. Because Trump has not sold his soul to Republican leaders and threatens to take dramatic steps that will increase competition, restore upward mobility, and oust the old guard from power, he is intolerable to the leaders. Likewise, Cruz who refuses to curry favor with Republican leaders and has openly condemned them is not an acceptable pick for the old guard.

Driven to the extremes by the very real prospect of a Trump nomination, Romney and his establishment cronies would thwart the democratic selection process by using old fashioned strong arm tactics at the convention to undo the will of the people in favor of the choices of party elites. If that anti-democratic revolution takes place, and Trump is prevented from obtaining the nomination, the Republican party will experience a profound loss in popularity, rendering it incapable of achieving that unity necessary to win the White House in November.

Republican leaders know that, and they do not care! They do not care, because they would rather have a Democrat in the White House who will keep crony capitalism in place than achieve conservative goals of limiting the federal government, revitalizing the nation’s defenses, and restoring competition to the market. Indeed, truth be told, they are not conservative at heart, they are self-interested politicians willing to sell the nation’s founding ideals down the river if it means improving their own financial futures and enhancing their own political power. As they condemn Trump for being a con man, they themselves have presided over the greatest con in American history: selling Americans the idea that government programs are essential when, in fact, they are ordinarily just a cover for political deals that give federal protection to industry leaders at the expense of competition.

What then can Americans do to stop this? A rout at the convention depends on public acquiescence to a greater or lesser degree. Republican leaders’ present plan is to ensure that the remaining primaries deny Trump sufficient support to secure a nomination on the first ballot at the convention. Therefore, if Republicans vote for Trump overwhelmingly, the plan will be thwarted.

But how can conservative purists reconcile that with the risk that Trump will bolt from the conservative reservation on occasion and favor bills of a liberal bend? It is either vote for Trump or watch as a Democrat dedicated to a far left agenda becomes President of the United States. The fact remains that most Americans outside of the Republican Party will not support Cruz for President, but a significant number of Independents and blue collar Democrats will vote for Trump. And a Trump who supports blocking illegal immigration, restoring America’s defenses, aggressively annihilating terrorists, and unleashing free enterprise is a Trump worth voting for, even if he thinks Planned Parenthood outside of abortion services has helped women and even if he thinks he can find a way to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians. If we are going to alter the dynamic in Washington, we need a meat cleaver, not a tooth pick. Only Trump wields a meat cleaver.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Former Mexican Presidents Vincente Fox and Felipe Calderon have recently made public statements stating that Mexico will not pay for the wall Donald Trump intends for the U.S. to build along the southern border to stem the flow of illegal immigrants. “I’m not going to pay for that f—ing wall,” Fox said on Fusion TV. Unintimidated, Trump responded without hesitation that the U.S. will build the wall, that now it will be ten feet higher, and that, indeed, Mexico will pay for it. How refreshing it is to hear from a Washington outsider the politically incorrect, but perfectly logical and direct statement that Mexico owes us (not the other way around).

Without question, Mexico should pay for the wall. For decades Mexico has failed to police our mutual border, taking no meaningful action to stem the tide of illegal immigrants into the United States. Indeed, by failing to crack down on illegal immigration and drug operations, Mexico has contributed to the constant flow of illegals and the rise of drug trafficking and drug related crime in the United States. It has also failed to stop an epidemic of murders, kidnappings, and robberies of Americans who vacation or tour south of the border.

The present administration does nothing to alter the abuses that stem from Mexico’s failure to stop illegal emigration from its country to the United States and to make any serious inroads against crimes against Americans perpetrated by Mexicans. Indeed, through its words and deeds this administration placates the Mexican government, consistent with its global apology tour whereby it agrees with foreign governments that the United States has been a global oppressor. The reality is, of course, quite the contrary. There has never been a nation more generous in its largesse to the world and more courageous in its defense of liberty around the world than the United States.

To end the abuses, it will be up to a Trump Administration to alter the American relationship with Mexico and with other nations in the world, to reassert American power and directness in defense of American interests. That will mean a change in the relationship with Mexico in fundamental ways, forcing that country to respect its northern neighbor and guard against the violation of United States’ interests.

As part of a new move to ensure protection of American interests, Donald Trump has rightfully demanded that Mexico pay for the wall needed to keep non-U.S. citizens within Mexican borders. The border will cost at least $12 billion, a price we must pay if we are to reduce illegal immigration from Mexico.

How, then, can the United States force Mexico to pay for the wall? In his policy paper on the wall, Donald Trump says that if Mexico will not pay directly, he will raise the money by increasing fees on temporary visas from Mexican diplomats, executives, and North American Free Trade workers, as well as cutting foreign aid and raising tariffs. The former Mexican presidents say that if tariffs are raised on Mexico, Mexico will respond by raising tariffs on goods sold to the United States. Doing so would, on balance, harm the Mexican economy more than the American.

Even without a tariff war, the imposition of fees combined with the elimination of foreign aid to Mexico would be a very good idea and would save significant sums. Depending on the year, the United States now lavishes on Mexico some $50 to $210 million dollars in aid annually. By permanently ending aid to Mexico, the United States could help reduce the cost of the wall, but will not likely cover the cost, at least not for decades. Nevertheless, because the wall has become a necessity due to the failure of Mexico to guard against illegal immigration, we should insist upon elimination of Mexican aid regardless.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Obama’s deal with Iran, his relaxation of trade sanctions against Cuba, his forthcoming trip to commiserate with Castro and the communists who rule Cuba, and his plan to shut down the terrorist prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, are part of a long pattern of action that confirms him to be one of the world’s greatest enemies of civil liberty. No true leader of the free world would ignore the plight of those jailed for religious and political dissent in Iran and Cuba (and transfer suspected terrorists to freedom without facing justice) unless he harbored more sympathy for those who mean to destroy liberty than for those deprived of it.

Among the most infamous acts taken against liberty are those not of any foreign power but of this President. The deal with Iran, a power dedicated to the destruction of democracy in favor of totalitarian theocracy and a power that sacrifices the lives of those who deviate from the religious dogma and demands of its theocratic dictatorship, together with the deal with Cuba, an avowed enemy of the United States that imprisons thousands for voicing opposition to its communist regime, have the effect of condoning and advancing the acts of oppression of those regimes and of dashing the hopes of those incarcerated and persecuted for their views. No one who truly believed in individual liberty would ever abandon the cause of liberating those held captive for freedom’s sake, and yet that is Barack Obama’s legacy: Befriend the enemy of freedom and avoid offense to those who ruthlessly persecute religious and political dissenters.

Rather than stand up for freedom, Barack Obama sits down to dine with the slave masters, breaking bread with those who incarcerate and torture ideological opponents. Obama’s lasting legacy will be his abandonment of the cause of freedom at home and abroad, poignantly demonstrated by his befriending of totalitarians and by his unilateral alteration of American law without congressional assent whereby he enables totalitarians to receive enormous sums of money, advancing their oppressive regimes in the process. Obama is tone deaf to civil liberty and the greatest financial backer of totalitarianism in the world. He has effectively celebrated, writ large, and made official U.S. policy actions that magnify the disgrace that was Jane Fonda’s embrace of the communist North Viet Cong during the Vietnam War.

Because the condonation of civil rights violations poses an immediate threat to the lives of those incarcerated and, together with paying ransom for hostages, emboldens our enemies, we have much to fear from Obama’s remaining ten months. Having effectively invited our enemies to engage in further acts of aggression against us, to kidnap our people in exchange for ransom, and to advance their causes of intolerance and persecution unimpeded by the United States, Obama has unleashed the dogs of bigotry and murder. In Obama’s world, America’s avowed enemies are treated with greater respect and are the recipients of more largesse than America’s avowed friends. That is because the America befriended by our allies is the America Obama wishes never was.

The new America Obama is creating does not pay any price, endure any hardship, defend any friend, and oppose any foe to ensure the survival and success of liberty. Rather, it pays any price, endures any hardship, defends any enemy, and opposes any friend to ensure that those who oppose us know that a new humbled America will no longer stand in their way.

The irony is that America’s first Black President, who could have walked in the footsteps of Martin Luther King and demonstrated an unparalleled commitment to civil liberty for all, has abandoned that cause entirely and has embraced the slave masters of the world. Rather than fulfill Dr. King’s dream, he has denigrated it by his actions. Dr. King would not advance the cause of those who enslave, he would (and did) denounce the institution of slavery. Dr. King would not lavish wealth upon those who jailed the innocent, he risked his life in protest against the jailers. Obama’s every move on the international stage betrays King’s legacy and replaces it with one all freedom lovers rightfully denounce.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Most pundits misapprehend the anti-establishment vote that has propelled Donald Trump to GOP frontrunner status. They still seem to think Trump will sooner or later lose his luster and fall from grace. They think the anti-establishment voter more fickle than he or she actually is. They believe Trump will suffer a loss of support once voters realize the credibility of attacks from Trump’s Republican competitors that call into question Trump’s conservative credentials and his fitness to lead. They think that once voters come to realize Trump’s history of past liberal positions and lack of political leadership experience, they will reject him. The pundits misunderstand Trump, and they misunderstand Trump’s supporters.

Trump supporters variously favor him because he is not of the Washington establishment, because he is politically incorrect, because he is unafraid to call it as he sees it, and because he is beholden to no one, to no Republican, to no Democrat, to no media icon, and to no conservative intellectual. Trump supporters reject groomed politicians who, together with their advisors, weigh the meaning of every word spoken and fear offense.

Trump supporters do believe in limited government, a strong national defense, and free enterprise. They reject government solutions to economic problems and favor a restoration of a vibrant, free enterprise economy unfettered by excessive government regulation. They reject a foreign policy stymied by advocates of social justice who will not allow this nation to annihilate its terrorist enemies, to revoke the appeasement deal with Iran, and to rebuild American military might and alliances. They reject international trade bargains built on concepts of “managed trade” where select industry insiders with political clout are favored in lieu of a true free trade arrangement. They want to secure America’s borders and ensure that the United States does not become a haven for terrorists.

Rhetoric from Republican candidates other than Trump consistently falls flat when it reaches the ears of Trump supporters because Trump’s supporters are a new breed. They are comprised of all of the disaffected Republicans, conservative Democrats, and conservative-leaning Independents. Trump is the voice for many who abandoned voting altogether out of disgust over all things Washington. He has caused them to come back into politics in droves. That factor is one that raises the most fear among Democrats. Trump is unpredictable in all respects but one, i.e., his ability to inspire those outside of the electorate to become a part of his political movement and vote for the first time in years, if not for the first time ever.

Fundamentally Trump’s supporters are fed up with all things characteristics of the Washington establishment. They do not want a candidate who can eloquently articulate viewpoints pleasing to their ears because they have watched politician after politician do that, then assume elected office only to betray the promises made. They want someone who has neither financial nor political ties to those in power, who will restore American greatness by courageously and unrelentingly breaking down all barriers to that greatness erected by those now in power and their cronies in the market. In short, they mean to take down the protectionist government that is, unleash the power of the private sector to restore American greatness, erect immigration limits and border security capable of stemming the flow of illegal aliens and terrorists, and rebuild American military might and power in the world. For that revolution, they seek a private sector titan not beholden to the Washington establishment. Trump perfectly fits that bill.

In Trump, they find a person who speaks his mind fearlessly; who stands toe to toe with those tied to the Washington establishment and has no problem directly exposing their duplicity and weakness; who promises to shake things up in Washington such that barriers to economic growth, border protection, and a strong national defense are eliminated; who promises lower tax rates for corporations and individuals; and who plans to free the market rather than regulate it in politically preferred directions.

At root, Trump supporters are not ignorant, as their opponents like to believe they are. Rather, they have a very cogent reason for supporting Donald Trump, one that entirely eludes the media. They know that Trump appreciates well that America is in dire straits and will continue to lose its stature and its economic and military power unless major changes are implemented immediately. They know that Trump will bring about that major change by using the same meat cleaver approach in Washington that he has used successfully in business and in his presidential campaign. If you are in Trump’s way, he will bulldoze you down. If you attack America under Trump, you are attacking him personally, and he will make you pay for it. He appreciates the significance of the nation’s massive debt, of its prolific regulation that stifles competition, of its abandonment of America’s defenses and vital interests in the world, and of its refusal to annihilate its terrorist foes. He promises to make America great again, and he means to do it whether the Washington establishment agrees with his approach or not. He intends to overcome opposition not by violating the Constitution (not by issuing executive orders that trench on the law making power of Congress) but by using the bully pulpit of the Presidency to brow beat into submission anyone in Congress or in the administrative agencies who stands in his way. He will work with Congress by working to defeat those in Congress who will stand in the way of restoring American greatness. He is dead serious, not a carnival barker or superficial actor as his opponents are fond of describing him.

Trump’s supporters realize that the only way to save the nation from the corruption, the abuse of power, and the self-aggrandizement that characterizes the Washington that is, the Washington now maintained by Democrats and Republicans alike, is to bring into the presidency an outsider not beholden to anyone in power who can lead a movement to create a new power structure. To do that requires a very strong leader, one not beholden to those who have either promoted or condoned the existence of corrupt government and one who does not care what the media or anyone else thinks of him.

The more politicians claim Trump to be a closet liberal, a brat with a temper, or a person woefully lacking in political experience, the more they reveal how strong Trump’s Teflon is. Each attack gives way to a lambasting from Trump against the attacker, a lambasting which, by contrast with the original attack, is blunt and direct, an unvarnished reflection of what Trump really thinks. It is the tough and direct persona of Trump that engenders support, not the extent to which he is accurate, representative of conservative thinking, or versed in every nuance of law and policy. The amazing fact is that Trump supporters often do not agree with everything he says but credit him for speaking his mind rather than engaging in tortured and illogical rhetoric that appeases critics. His supporters understand him to be a tough, no-nonsense executive who will force change in Washington, bringing about a reduction in regulation essential for the restoration of a free market and the resuscitation of the rule of law.

Trump is viewed as unapologetic, strong, and sincere, a man who gets things done rather than prattles on about what he will do without a sincere interest in doing what he says and without the stamina required to withstand stiff opposition. Trump is the antithesis of political correctness. Trump supporters are fed up with groomed politicians who profess to be possessed of an elite knowledge and skill but who do nothing consequential in office. They want to remove government from the control of the political class and vest it in those who are from outside the realm of politics, who are citizen politicians. They do not accept the legitimacy of the campaigners who hail from the political class and, so, they place little credence in the attacks they level against Trump.

It is likely that Trump will be the Republican nominee unless he falters on his own. He will win most, if not all, of the remaining primaries, including those on the all critical super Tuesday. Some postulate that if Trump’s competitors were to drop out and endorse, say, Marco Rubio, Trump’s vote would remain at 35% with the contender absorbing the remaining 70%, thus defeating Trump. The problem with that calculus is that it assumes that those supporting candidates other than Rubio and Trump would bolt to Rubio if Cruz, Bush, and Carson drop out. It is reasonably likely that a certain percentage of those for Cruz, Bush, and Carson would go to Trump, making it difficult for Rubio to overcome the Trump advantage. They also assume that this altruistic desire is a part of Cruz, Bush, and Carson. Rather, it is more likely that Bush and Carson will fall out and Cruz and Rubio will remain in, at least past Super Tuesday, and by then the overwhelming momentum is likely to favor Trump. Moreover, who knows what Trump’s meat cleaver will do to Cruz and Rubio by the end of March.

The only way to defeat Trump is likely by word or deed of Trump himself, not by word or deed of anyone else. This is indeed the year of the anti-establishment voter, and Trump is deftly riding that wave to the consternation and misapprehension of his opponents. The media and politicians are in large measure bewildered by the Trump phenomenon because they have yet to grasp that Trump support is indeed deep, not superficial.

Voters are infuriated by the chronic abuse heaped upon the free market, the military, and the people by a government that serves the governors, not the governed. They want an end to government for the welfare of those who are elected and for the welfare of those in cahoots with the elected. They want a return to a free enterprise economy in which government is securely out of the way. They want a restoration of American power in the world. They want American resolve to be unquestioned in defense of the nation’s interests. They want American force to be overwhelming when applied to eliminate all who threaten the lives and property of Americans. They want a nation secured by impervious borders and a robust Second Amendment. Trump champions those causes proudly without qualification, apology, or politically correct language. That is why he may well be the Republican nominee and why he may well become the next President of the United States.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Over the Hil

Increasingly Democrats are “getting over” Hillary Clinton. Indeed, if polling data is accurate, the majority of Democrats distrust Hillary, are to the left of her, and think her an establishment politician who will not deliver. Those impressions make Bernie Sanders increasingly a winner among Democrats; his ideological purity makes him more, not less, attractive compared to Hillary because it evinces an honesty and integrity she lacks. Hillary Clinton believes she will be protected from defeat by a “firewall” in the South, but it is more likely that her “firewall” is tissue paper thin and that Sanders can shred it.

Hillary Clinton has contended that conservative Southern Democrats together with Blacks and Hispanics in the South will overwhelmingly favor her over Sanders. She takes that position in part because of the broad appeal in those communities that her husband enjoys. Unfortunately for Hillary, however, she is no Bill Clinton and more and more Democrats are disappointed by that realization. She lacks his affability, apparent compassion, and glib nature. She cannot “roll with the punches” but has a brittle and angry aspect that makes her unlikeable. If Bill Clinton was “the first Black president,” as some in the minority community have called him, Hillary Clinton is hopelessly white by comparison. Bill could “feel the pain” of those who were suffering, including or most especially minorities, or so goes his image. Hillary appears to feel no pain but her own and to react to that not with affability but with irritability. She lacks her husband’s vibrance and love for others.

She is wooden, staged, and indistinguishable from other establishment politicians that the public presently hates. She lacks personal appeal and charisma. Her speeches fall flat because they are rehearsed and delivered robotically; they lack depth, are expressed without emotion or apparent sincerity, and, most importantly, reveal obvious pandering to constituencies from which she needs votes. Yet, Hillary’s record in public office reveals the delivery of nothing of consequence for those constituencies.

A perfect political storm now surrounds Hillary, all of her own making, and it threatens to envelop and overwhelm her campaign. The fact that at any moment FBI Director James Comey could send Attorney General Lynch a recommendation for issuance of a bill of indictment for numerous violations of the laws governing classified information and for public corruption is a very dark cloud over her head that follows her everywhere. The fact that her connections with Wall Street, receipt of huge speaking fees, and pandering to firms who would later support her campaign all feed into Bernie Sanders’ narrative about her are undeniable elements of her history that the public despises. Making matters worse, rather than admit to any fact of adverse political consequence to her, she responds by falsely denying the existence of the facts and by broadcasting staged lines that attempt to equal or outflank Sanders on the left. Increasingly Democrats are coming to the realization that Hillary cannot be trusted to deliver what she promises, precisely because she lies with such consistency that her integrity is always in doubt; her history is one of self-aggrandizement even if that means tying the knot with leading financial interests; she has used many people to achieve personal aims only to abandon them and be disloyal to them if the association is inconvenient; and she lacks a record of any significant achievement.

When Sanders’ history of civil rights activism comes to the forefront and as he increasingly embraces the causes of Black and Hispanic activists, he will undoubtedly cut into Hillary’s support, perhaps decisively. That quest is made easier by virtue of the fact that Hillary is distrusted based on her constant reinvention and near pathological recitation of false statements. When in the polling booth and Democratic voters are contemplating who they can trust to pursue their agenda, many will find the impulse to vote against Hillary and for Sanders irresistible.

In the end, Bernie Sanders rises because his reputation for honesty and integrity is high and his political message resonates with the far left who dominate the Democratic party. Hillary falls because she cannot be trusted and, as a result, no one knows whether she believes in what she says let alone whether she will fight to achieve what she promises. Sanders, by contrast, is a true believer, a genuine socialist who admits he is such. In an environment where Democrats have no problem calling themselves socialists, that far left position does not alienate Sanders but only elevates him. Hillary, by contrast, has no apparent ideology, no conscience that makes truth her lodestone, and no shame associated with the endless shifts in her political positions that litter her past, even her recent past.

Consequently, while it may be that Joe Biden will step in and secure the nomination if Hillary is indicted or drops like a rock due to a recommendation from Director Comey that she be indicted, until then it is likely that more and more Democrats will refuse to hold their noses and vote for Hillary. They will instead choose Bernie, because at least they know where he stands and can trust him; moreover they need not fear that he will be indicted or prosecuted during the general election. In short, a burgeoning majority of Democrats nationwide are “over the Hil” and are “feeling the Bern.”

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

The Republican field of contenders will likely be a lot smaller after the Nevada primary on February 23. At that point all of those who have not been able to be true contenders, with the exception of Jeb Bush, will lack the financial wherewithal to continue. Thus far we have learned a great deal about the strengths and weaknesses of the apparent major contenders.

Donald Trump remains a brash and direct populist with an ego that reaches into the stratosphere. He is decisive but has yet to present a position, beyond his tax plan, that enables Americans to determine whether, indeed, he will govern as an advocate of limited government and a return to constitutional restraints on power. He has repeatedly said that he will repeal and replace Obamacare (but with what?). He is committed to restoring American military power and wielding that power against terrorists. He has called for establishing a physical border, a wall, with Mexico paying for it, and for deporting illegal aliens. His rash personal attacks and unpredictable nature must engender fear in our enemies ISIS, al-Qaeda, and other terrorist groups; Russia; China; North Korea; and Iran. He is clearly an antidote to a weak and feckless Obama, who is manipulated with such ease by those who seek our destruction.

Ted Cruz is an intellectual with a deep appreciation for the Constitution and with an expressed desire to reduce the size and scope of the federal bureaucracy. He is also committed to a zealous military campaign against Muslim extremists, seeking to build an international coalition to effect that end, and to restoring American relations with Israel. He is also committed to repealing Obamacare. His tax plan troubles many because it depends on a Value Added Tax (VAT) system. The issue concerning whether he “stole” the Iowa primary because his campaign falsely represented to delegates that Ben Carson had dropped out of the race remains a character problem for him. That character issue will dog Cruz because he has represented himself to be an evangelical Christian and, thus, has raised the bar for himself beyond what goes as standard political fare these days. In other words, as a Christian, he is expected to follow the commandments and be honest in all his dealings with others. Using falsehood to achieve political victory makes him appear hypocritical, as does his failure to admit that he once supported amnesty for illegal aliens.

Marco Rubio is the most articulate candidate, whose soaring rhetoric conveys an optimistic message of American renewal. Despite strident attacks made by Cruz, challenging Rubio’s conservative bona fides, Rubio professes a commitment to limited government and to revoking Obama’s unconstitutional executive actions, repealing Obamacare, terminating the deal with Iran, and restoring the separation of powers.

Doubt remains as to what extent Rubio will devote himself to eliminating the federal bureaucracy, but no doubt attends his commitment to destroying radical Islamic terrorists, to rebuilding the American military, or to repealing Obamacare.

The good news is that any one of these three candidates would be vastly superior to either remaining Democratic candidate, one of whom, Hillary Clinton, is likely on the verge of being recommended for indictment by FBI Director James Comey (which may force an end to her campaign). The bad news is that millions in the Democratic Party have no problem supporting an avowed socialist for President, albeit the socialist agenda of the Democratic Party has been a mainstay since at least the start of the Obama Administration, just not labeled as such. That growing new left movement will be a force affecting the outcome of the general election. We shall see whether enough Americans still believe in this country and are willing to fight for the Constitution to save it from destruction at the hands of socialists.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Fox’s Megyn Kelly has raised the visibility of a dispute between the families of those slain at Benghazi and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton concerning what Clinton told those families on September 14, 2012. According to four different relatives of those slain, including those who attended the Joint Base Andrews’ Transfer of Remains Ceremony for the return of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other slain Benghazi embassy employees, Secretary Clinton assured the families that she would have the “filmmaker responsible for the deaths arrested,” feeding into a narrative Hillary Clinton knew then to be false: that the Benghazi attacks were the result of a spontaneous uprising in response to an anti-Muslim video rather than a terrorist attack on the embassy compound. The father of Ty Woods, slain at Benghazi, kept a contemporaneous journal in which he quoted Clinton’s statement: “We are going to have the filmmaker arrested who was responsible for the death of your son.”

Assembling all of the facts, it now appears clear that Secretary Clinton endeavored to misdirect the public to avoid accountability for her own dereliction of duty and engaged in an extensive cover-up which persists to this day. She failed to call on Secretary Panetta to dispatch the military in an immediate defense of the besieged embassy compound, and she failed to heed the repeated calls weeks before from Ambassador Stevens to reinforce the compound in light of a clear and present threat to the compound posed by Ansar al-Sharia terrorists. Instead of admitting the derelictions and taking responsibility for them, she propounded a false narrative, callously, indeed heartlessly, communicating that falsehood even to the families of the brave men who died on September 11, 2012, in Benghazi.

The film 13 Hours adds more to this picture, as Megyn Kelly adduced directly from the heroic American soldiers whose story is told in that film. Those soldiers were stationed at The Annex, a CIA facility a mile and a half away from the embassy compound. In The Kelly File interview with three of the five surviving soldiers who were stationed at The Annex, Mark “Oz” Geist (former Marine), John “Tig” Tiegen (former Marine), and Kris “Tanto” Paronto (ex-Army Ranger), each stated that they had received a “stand down” order from their superior, the CIA Chief in the region, that delayed their intervention for thirty minutes despite desperate calls from the compound for help. In the end, the three soldiers say they violated the stand down order and proceeded with a counteroffensive, but it was too late for Ambassador Stevens and the other Americans slain in the embassy compound. The CIA Chief, whose identity has not been released, is adamant that he never gave the “stand down” order.

It is beyond doubt, however, that the claim that the attack was a spontaneous uprising to an anti-Muslim video is a complete fabrication, one that deflected attention away from the real source of the attack, Ansar al-Sharia terrorists fulfilling threats repeatedly made that they would kill Americans in Libya (a fact well known to Ambassador Stevens who called for greater security for weeks prior to the attack). There can be but one motive for the fabrication, to avoid scrutiny of the handling of the affair by government officials and, in particular, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

It is beyond doubt that Hillary Clinton emailed her daughter Chelsea the very night of the attack on the Benghazi compound, Tuesday, September 11, 2012, stating that the attacks were undertaken by an “Al Queda-type group.” That same night the State Department issued a public statement, under Secretary Clinton’s own name, wherein it identified as the source not the Al-Qaeda group Clinton mentioned to Chelsea, but a spontaneous uprising to an anti-Muslim video. The State Department’s schedule reveals that three days later, on the morning of September 14, 2012 (the very same day Hillary Clinton met with the families of the slain at Andrews), Clinton met with U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice preceding Rice’s media tour on Clinton’s behalf that coming Sunday. Two days thereafter, Rice appeared on the Sunday talk shows, restating Clinton’s official statement that the attack was the result of a spontaneous uprising to an anti-Muslim video, leading the media away from the view that the event was a terrorist attack.

It is beyond doubt that within an hour of the start of the attack, U.S. military, the U.S. intelligence community, and the Libyan government knew the attack to be from a hostile, well-armed force, involving heavy munitions. Retired Air Force Brigadier General Robert Lovell, who was at the time in command in the region, confirmed in testimony before Trey Gowdy’s House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that “we did know early on . . . that this was a hostile action” against the embassy compound and that “this was no demonstration gone terribly awry.” The demonstration idea was thus a fabrication, a story concocted to direct attention away from the true source of the attack.

It is beyond doubt that the military had a drone overhead in the immediate vicinity of Benghazi, receiving active intelligence. In his testimony General Lovell confirmed that the military did not respond immediately because they had not received a request for assistance from the State Department, a request that was never timely given. Perhaps because of the absence of that request or a failure of Secretary Clinton to coordinate with then Defense Secretary Panetta, tactical response teams were not dispatched expeditiously. The military could have scrambled F-16s from Aviano Air Base in Northern Italy to Benghazi, but the order for that dispatch did not timely come. F-16s can fly from Aviano to Benghazi (a distance of 3,609 km) within 1.5 hours. Had they been scrambled from Aviano at the start of the attack, they could have fired upon the attackers and driven them off, perhaps sparing the lives of some embassy personnel and certainly former Navy Seals Ty Woods and Glen Doherty who were dispatched from Tripoli to Benghazi. Bogged down at the Benghazi airport, Woods and Doherty were unable to make it to the compound until hours after Ambassador Stevens had been killed and his body removed to a hospital. Shortly after Woods and Doherty arrived at the compound they were killed by mortar fire from the terrorists.

The sum of this evidence is a damning indictment of Secretary Clinton, the Clinton State Department, and the Obama White House. The evidence points to Hillary Clinton as the primary promoter of the anti-Muslim video explanation, despite the fact that she knew at the time she promoted that narrative that it was false and misleading. We know that on the very day of the attack, she met with Ambassador Rice after which Rice recommunicated the false narrative to the media on the Sunday talk shows. On the very day that Clinton met with Rice, she met with the four families and, at that time, it was the State Department narrative, under her own name, that the attack was a response to an anti-Muslim video. It thus comes as no surprise, then, that the families would be told that narrative by Secretary Clinton. Indeed, had she not told them the narrative, it was nevertheless her position vis-à-vis the State Department official statement that the source of the attack was an anti-Muslim video. Thus, it would have been extraordinary for her to deviate from that narrative when speaking to the families, and, in any event, she lied to them, as she did to the public, through the official statement.

Why would Clinton lie to the public and even to the families of the slain Americans on the very day they and the nation received the coffins of those families’ deceased loved ones? Why would she condone the statement by Ambassador Rice on the Sunday talk shows reiterating the false narrative? The answer appears unmistakable at this point. She must have feared that revelation of the fact that this was a terrorist attack would invariably lead to greater inquiry into why the State Department did not authorize the reinforcement of the Benghazi compound and why she had not acted promptly to request military assistance at the start of the attack. No doubt fearing blame for the derelictions of duty that left Ambassador Stevens and the embassy staff virtually defenseless against an attack, Secretary of State Clinton agreed to the false narrative.

Although there are many reasons why Hillary Clinton is unfit to be President of the United States, not least of which involves her unlawful mishandling of classified information and her comingling of Clinton Foundation and State Department functions, the failure to secure the lives of Americans under her watch despite repeated calls for help and despite urgent demands for intervention the night of September 11, constitute proof positive that she cannot be trusted with the awesome responsibility of protecting Americans lives as Commander-in-Chief.

We have a right to expect public officials not to lie to us. We have a right to expect that those given power that affects the lives of Americans will use that power judiciously to protect those lives. We have a right to expect leaders of this country to be held responsible for gross negligence and derelictions of duty that result in the loss of life. Hillary Clinton has escaped all of this so far, but I doubt she will escape the ultimate wrath of the American people. If she achieves the extraordinary by escaping a federal indictment for mishandling classified information and for public corruption, the misdeeds of her past will come home to roost in the general election if not sooner.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

FBI Director James B. Comey is the one to whom over 100 FBI agents will ultimately answer concerning the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s dispatch of over 1,300 emails containing classified information to and through her personal servers. He will decide whether to recommend that a bill of indictment be presented to a federal grand jury for the prosecution of Mrs. Clinton.

Director Comey is a man of integrity, vouched for by those attorneys who have worked closest with him. He is highly intelligent, beyond reproach, and believes fundamentally in the rule of law. He is neither intimidated by power nor beholden to anyone else in the exercise of his legal judgment. His entire public life has been dedicated to ensuring that those who violate the law answer for their crimes. Hillary Clinton will soon learn, if she has not already learned, that Director Comey is not one who can be brow beaten or bribed into bending the rule of law to favor a political outcome. He will see to it that justice is done.

A Republican who voted for Presidents Bush and candidate Romney, FBI Director Comey is a peculiar pick for Barack Obama. Indeed, he stands out among Obama’s appointed officials based on his unwavering commitment to the rule of law and his decidedly non-partisan pursuit of justice.

Combined with his integrity, Comey’s considerable experience in the prosecution of high profile cases and in the management of the entire Department of Justice makes him the ideal candidate for dispassionately determining the extent to which Hillary Clinton has violated the nation’s laws. During the Bush Administration (George W.), he served as Deputy Attorney General. In that capacity, he supervised the functioning of the entire department. As Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, he was on the team of government attorneys who prosecuted the Gambinos. As Managing Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Richmond Division of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, he led the prosecution of those responsible for the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. He also led the prosecution of Martha Stewart on charges of securities fraud, obstruction of justice, and false statements.

Most telling of all, Comey is famous for his refusal to certify the legality of the NSA’s domestic surveillance program during the Bush Administration. Pressed to do so by the White House, he refused. Then, when the White House dispatched Chief of Staff Andrew Card and then White House Counsel (later Attorney General) Alberto Gonzalez to Attorney General John Ashcroft’s bedside in order to pressure Ashcroft into certifying the program, Comey allegedly met shortly thereafter with Ashcroft to argue against certification. Ashcroft ultimately sided with Comey, who was joined in his position by then FBI Director Robert S. Mueller. Standing on principle against political pressure, Comey and Mueller were willing to resign rather than be cowed into taking an action they believed contrary to the law. Ultimately President Bush agreed to change the nature of the surveillance program to accommodate much of the internal opposition to it.

Based on this history, and given what we already know of Hillary Clinton’s negligent dispatch and receipt of classified information outside of secure official channels, it will come as no surprise if Comey, true to form, recommends that Attorney General Loretta Lynch permit the prosecution of Hillary Clinton. What we do not know is whether the Attorney General will follow Comey’s lead or will bend to the pressure of Clinton’s backers. In addition to the issue of personal integrity, because bending to the pressure would damage the Attorney General’s reputation in the legal community and would affect her legacy in the history books, it would appear more likely than not that she will let the matter go before a Grand Jury. And then Hillary will no doubt be indicted.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Hillary Clinton is teetering on a legal tight rope. She is counting on Attorney General Loretta Lynch to block the anticipated request for a Grand Jury to indict her for violation of federal laws governing the handling of classified information. Lynch, however, will become a pariah with lead investigators at the FBI and many career prosecutors at Justice if she intervenes to prevent prosecution of Hillary Clinton. The overwhelming quantity of emails containing classified information that Clinton caused to be transmitted to and from her personal email account and possible additional federal corruption charges are too great to excuse, ignore, or sweep under the rug. The evidence is indeed overwhelming and, unlike in the case of General David Patraeus (whose dereliction constituted one instance of mishandling of classified information), Hillary Clinton’s dereliction involves over 1,340 separate communications. Increasingly, it looks like the central issue about to arise is not whether Hillary will be recommended for indictment by the FBI, but whether Lynch will sacrifice her own career to prevent the matter from reaching a grand jury, and whether the Democratic Party will stand by Hillary Clinton and back her presidential bid even if she is the subject of an FBI recommendation to indict or an actual indictment.

Fox News’ Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne reported this past week that the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton embraces not only the mishandling of classified information but also public corruption charges based on influence peddling. Peter Schweizer’s Clinton Cash first drew significant attention to the overlap between foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s actions while serving as Secretary of State. At root, FBI seeks to determine if decisions made by Hillary Clinton in her dealings with foreign businesses and leaders were in any way in response, or pay back, for contributions lavished upon the Clinton Foundation by those same businesses and leaders or at the direction of those businesses and leaders.

It may well be that if Lynch lets a bill for indictment proceed before a federal Grand Jury, Hillary Clinton will not only be forced to answer for the mishandling of state secrets but also for unlawful influence peddling to bolster the coffers of the Clinton family foundation. The law violations are linked to a significant prison term for the former Secretary of State.

The pressure on Lynch to let the charges proceed will be intense from the FBI, and even from within Justice. Given the waning months of the Obama presidency, and the likelihood that a refusal to allow the charges to proceed would permanently damage Lynch’s reputation in the legal community, there are fair odds that Lynch will let the matter proceed (and that Obama will not act to stop the prosecution). Indeed, by relying on the highly secretive and expert litigation team within the National Security Division of the Department of Justice rather than the general criminal division, Lynch may already have sealed Clinton’s fate. As soon as the FBI completes its investigation and refers the matter to justice with a recommendation to prosecute, the pressure will be acute on Lynch to do the right thing and honor the rule of law over politics. Given the animosity between the Obamas and the Clintons, it is also possible that Obama will not take any extraordinary step to interfere by either pressuring Lynch to block prosecution or taking any other step that might make prosecution more difficult.

Hillary Clinton is thus teetering on a legal tight rope. If indicted before the Democratic National Convention, she may well loose the nomination to Sanders. Undoubtedly it will increase the likelihood that Sanders will be the nominee if her indictment, or even a recommendation for indictment, comes down before the convention. What if she is indicted after she becomes the Democratic nominee? The Democratic Party would likely face considerable pressure to seek a second convention to fend off a serious independent party challenge, perhaps with Bernie Sanders running in that capacity.

Overall, any indictment of Clinton will create a new dynamic that will add impetus for greater independent support for the Republican nominee. Indeed, if the Republican is otherwise neck and neck with the Democratic nominee, a Clinton indictment could well flip the election for a Republican, particularly if the groundswell of disaffected voters now brought back into the electorate by Donald Trump remains involved to the point of voting in the general election.

But what if either through pressure from Obama or on her own initiative, Lynch blocks the prosecution of Clinton? An action of that kind might well result in a series of resignations from high level investigators and lawyers within the FBI and Justice and publicity sufficient to trigger public ire as well. Public condemnations of the failure to make Hillary account for law violations, far fewer of which have resulted in prison time or plea deals with hefty fines for dozens of others, including General Patraeus, may also be enough to give victory to the Republican nominee. It will certainly be a choice point of publicity in favor of the Republican nominee over Hillary throughout the remainder of the general election season.

The mainstream media, so willing to maintain apologias for Hillary Clinton, have yet to appreciate the adverse political avalanche that is about to befall the putative Democratic standard bearer. Burdened by shallow political support and the highest negative ratings of any candidate running (predicated on public perception that Hillary is a “liar”), Hillary Clinton is indeed teetering. An indictment or word of FBI recommendation of an indictment may be enough to cause her fall, denying her the Democratic nomination; or, if she is nominated before being indicted or recommended for indictment, that may be enough to ensure her loss in the general election.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

For the last seven years, President Obama has pursued a dedicated policy of American retreat, withdrawal, and appeasement. He has reduced American prestige, power, and presence in the world, causing our age-old enemies Iran, Russia, and China to expand their respective spheres of influence, their troop presence outside of their borders, and their tests of American defenses and resolve. Obama has embraced America’s foremost enemy, Iran, and has made clear to Israel and America’s European and Asian allies that the United States will not lead in defense of freedom and, indeed, may not take any action to defend even its own vital interests. He has embraced America’s enemies and betrayed America’s allies. To the world, Obama is either a farce or a disgrace, and it is that image of foolishness, weakness, and irresolution that emboldens those who despise us to act against us.

Whether Obama’s unilateral dismantlement of the American empire will continue, be abated, or be reversed is among the most important questions facing the next president. If Hillary Clinton is elected, she will maintain the largely incoherent foreign policy that she implemented as Secretary of State. She will not sacrifice welfare dollars to finance a rebuild of the American military or an expansion of American power in the world. She will not likely alter the anemic military operations Obama maintains against our terrorist foes. She will keep in place the “deal” with, the sell-out to, Iran. She will continue the path toward decline with apologies that Obama made central to his international mission.

If a Republican becomes president, efforts will be undertaken to halt the dismantlement of the American empire, but we cannot know whether abating the decline or rebuilding the empire will be the new president’s mission. Given eight years of rapid and substantial decline and dismantlement, America will be incapable of resurrecting its status as an empire unless it dedicates a significant amount of wealth, resources, and effort to that cause. To achieve that end a revitalization of the American economy and a substantial reduction in the welfare state are essential.

A president serious about restoring the American empire must first restore the American economy and constitutional republic. He must dismantle the regulatory state, cut back the welfare state, eliminate Obamacare, cut corporate and individual tax rates, and work with the states to create the most hospitable environment for capital accumulation, investment, and entrepreneurship. A substantial reduction in the size and scope of the welfare state combined with massive tax relief can liberate the private sector to grow and can provide the revenues necessary to rebuild the American empire. The first order of business would then be to expand and modernize the American military so that we may take the lead in the war against radical Islam and may have at the ready the power to oppose Russian and Chinese expansionism.

Reassertion of American power is essential if we are to avoid greater challenges from Iran, Russia, and China. Now emboldened by American weakness, those countries need to learn anew from a determined and fearless president that the United States intends to act with overwhelming force to repel aggression against our nation, its people, and its property and to take new and decisive military and economic action against our enemies. We need to rebuild American bases in Europe, reinstall short range ballistic missiles in Poland and throughout NATO in Eastern Europe, and maintain substantially increased 24/7 military operations via coordinated special operations and air power against all those who engage in, support, finance, and provide aid and comfort to terrorists around the world.

Much is at stake in the elections this November. Indeed, the fundamental course of the nation will be determined by who is elected. If the new president is Hillary Clinton, she will preside over a continuing decline in the American empire, a lackluster American economy, a “new normal” in which terrorist acts on American soil occur again and again, a Supreme Court that turns increasingly away from the plain and intended meaning of the Constitution in favor of further grants of new legal protection for unlimited government, and an increasingly dangerous world where to be an American is to be a target. If, on the other hand, the new president is a Republican, much will depend on whether that person has the commitment, stamina, and resolve to turn rhetoric into action and to rebuild rapidly the American republic, a free enterprise economy, and America’s global empire. The world, particularly our hapless friends and our emboldened enemies, are keenly interested in the outcome of this coming election. The fate not only of the United States but of the free world largely hangs in the balance.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

The President, and those few who support his slow mo, hands tied behind our back, approach to combatting terrorism, often present a profoundly illogical and ultimately self-destructive justification for their halting approach to the war. They start from the premise that it is the United States’ fault that radical Islamists target Americans. They proceed from that false premise to the conclusion that if we do more than attempt to contain the menace we will stir up an even greater hornet’s nest in the Middle East, inciting even more terrorist enthusiasts to take us down.

They therefore prefer a defensive posture where we treat acts of terror as crimes justifying a policing action. That defeatist illogic is at the core of Obama’s belief structure and inaction. It is ultimately a creed that assures that terrorist acts become the “new normal” on American soil. For the majority of Americans who are not willing to accept that “new normal,” we have a very difficult task to undertake. We have got to find ways to overcome Presidential opposition to total war within the remaining year of Obama’s presidency or the seeds of terror now sewn in American soil will produce a thousand horrific blooms.

The notion that the United States is at fault for the rise of radical Islam is in error. Radical Islam is the by-product of clerics and supposed clerics in the Muslim community who are offended at the existence of Western civilization, who view all forms of Western culture as satanic, and who think it their divine duty to bring about an apocalypse in which jihad is waged culminating in a final battle between the true believers in their radical creed and all of the Western world. They despise us not simply because we went to war in the Middle East but because we are comprised of people who do not subscribe to their radical brand of Islam, refuse to replace Western law with the Sharia law, and refuse to replace our governments with a Caliphate of their making. Because we refuse to be blind followers of an Islamic theocratic dictatorship, we, like more moderate Muslims, like Europeans, and even Russians, are to be destroyed.

The notion that the United States must not be too aggressive in combatting Radical Islam because if we are that will merely stir up more terrorist opposition is profoundly illogical. There is but one direction for our dedicated enemy, to destroy us. When your enemy admits of no compromise and is intent on destroying you regardless of the cost, there is only one way to stop the menace and that is to locate and kill all involved in, conspiring to commit, financing, and aiding and abetting the terrorist cause. Nothing short of a total war dedicated to the complete destruction of terrorism will succeed in ending this menace. Anything short of that total war will allow lingering elements to remain, which will ensure more persistent acts of terror.

By imposing very limiting rules of engagement on American forces, by refusing to seek a declaration of war against identified terrorist organizations and those who provide those organizations’ agents aid and comfort; by refusing to commit troops on the ground in the form of special forces in a relentless, 24 hour a day campaign of destruction against terrorist cells, operatives, financiers and supporters outside of the United States; by appeasing the primary state sponsor of terrorism against the United States and its allies, the Islamic Republic of Iran; and by refusing to identify the true enemy, radical Islam, this President has ensured that the requisite effort needed to secure the United States and destroy the enemy will not be employed.

It is precisely because of his insistence on that halting approach to battle that this President endeavors to assuage American fears of terror through utterance of political pablum, by suggesting that the “new normal” is public acceptance of a degree of terror within our country, by suggesting that his actions are sufficient without need for change, that his actions are containing terrorism, and that other issues of importance to him, climate change, are far more important to the survival of America. The American people, however, are not impressed by a president who refuses to be a commander-in-chief and maintains political theater when military leadership is required. They refuse to become willing lambs to the slaughter, so this President can preserve a legacy based on a liberal domestic agenda.

The irreducible obligation of the President of the United States when the nation is under attack is to serve as a commander-in-chief and employ all means necessary to destroy the enemy, end the threat, and restore protection for life, liberty, and property. Obama has utterly failed to perform those roles. He refuses to serve as commander-in-chief, and he thereby ensures the proliferation of terrorism abroad and within the United States.

What then can Americans do over the coming year to defend themselves? It is up to each American citizen to avail themselves of their Second Amendment rights and become armed. Hundreds of thousands are doing just that. Gun sales are skyrocketing. If terrorists show up at your child’s school, the concert you are attending, the subway you are boarding, the sporting event you are attending, or the public gathering where your family has assembled, you must know in advance that steps have been taken to cut down the terrorist before he or she takes a life. Each of us has to be ready to act decisively to eliminate a person who is in the act of committing terror.

Each state should commence a program to train its citizens in self-defense but also in identifying and reporting to authorities the telltale signs of terrorist plotting, arming, and equipping. We need to be ever mindful of those who by their actions reveal probable cause of terrorism, and the police must investigate each such instance and act swiftly when probable cause is present to obtain warrants and perform searches and seizures.

Moreover, it is also the obligation of each state governor to employ the national guard to provide added security at all locations where people publicly assemble, to call upon off duty and retired military and police to bear arms and serve as an added layer of protection standing at the ready in all locations where people publicly assemble.

Each school should have armed and trained personnel capable of providing a rapid and devastating response if an act of terror is underway. Each state should pass legislation barring entry to any person who seeks to take up domicile in the state and hails originally from a country where terrorist training and recruitment is known to take place. Those individuals should be barred from entry unless and until they are thoroughly vetted by state authorities and can be proven to have maintained cordial relations with Americans within their former homeland; to have had no connections with anyone who sponsors, supports, aids or abets terror; and to have a present intention to become fully integrated into American society and culture and become an American citizen. Eternal vigilance remains the price of liberty, more so now than ever before.

© 2016 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

• Christmas Stories, 12-28-15
• Why Trump’s Temporary Ban on Muslim Entry Fails, 12-21-15
• Deconstructing the Suicide Bomber, 12-14-15
• A Ten Point Plan to Defeat Terror, 12-12-15
• How Political Correctness Aided the San Bernardino Terrorists, 12-7-15
• Obama is no Davutoglu, and the world knows it, 11-30-15
• Terrorism Antidote: A Well Regulated Militia and Unconventional War, 11-23-15
• Telltale Signs of Media Bias, 11-16-15
• Putin’s Quagmire, 11-9-15
• Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler, the Best and the Bravest, 11-2-15
• The Tyranny of the Administrative State, 10-27-15
• FTC Censors “Biodegradable” Claims, 10-19-15
• Winning the War Against ISIS, 10-12-15
• Ben Carson’s Common Sense and Defense of the Second Amendment, 10-10-15
• Putin, Keqiang, and Khamenei Upstage Obama, 10-5-15
• An American Margaret Thatcher, 9-28-15
• Iran’s Path to Destruction, 9-21-15
• Biden’s Best Case Scenario, 9-7-15
• American Heroes’ Message to Obama: Do Something!, 8-31-15
• Why Scandal Plagues Clinton But Not Obama, 8-24-15
• Black Separatism and the New Age of Racism, 8-17-15
• Planned Parenthood’s Evil Empire, 8-10-15
• Why Bibi Should Level Iran, 8-7-15
• Making Deception the Law of the Land, 8-3-15
• The Donald Trump Phenomenon, 7-31-15
• DARK Act Passage: Deception Codified, 7-27-15
• Anti-Semitism and Nuclear War, 7-20-15
• The Real Reason for Hillary’s Media Avoidance, 7-13-15
• The Right Raisin, 7-6-15
• Lawless Jurisprudence, 6-29-15
• Where the BLM and the Antelope Play, 6-22-15
• America Adrift, 6-15-15
• Loss of Empire: The Legacy of Barack Obama, 6-8-15
• President Obama, ISIS is Our Problem, 6-1-15
• Wisdom Beyond His Years, 5-25-15
• Bold and New Beats Boring and Old, 5-18-15
• Garland’s Traffic Cop Deserves Top Honors, 5-11-15
• Division Within, 5-4-15
• Hillary’s Credibility Gap, 4-27-15
• Will the Real Hillary Clinton Please Stand Up?, 4-20-15
• Boston Corbett’s Tales of the Weird, 4-13-15
• Nuclear Folly, 4-6-15
• Obama’s Blind Spot, 3-31-15
• The National Socialist Roots of Compulsory Vaccination, 3-23-15
• The Best Antidote to Bullying, 3-16-15
• The New Authoritarians, the Compulsory Vaccinators, 3-9-15
• FCC Takes Over the Internet, 3-2-15
• Giving Terrorists Jobs, 2-23-15
• Obama Is America’s Neville Chamberlain, 2-16-15
• A Plea for Tolerance and Liberty, 2-9-15
• Obama’s Hyperventilation Over Keystone, 2-2-15
• Obama’s Rose Colored Glasses, 1-26-15
• Obama Is to Blame for Paris Attack, 1-19-15
• Harry Reid Should Be Committed, 1-12-15
• The Discourteous Obama White House, 1-5-15
• The Future of Laser Weapons, 12-29-14
• Christmas Stories IV, 12-23-14
• Freedom to Offend, but Not to Assault, 12-15-14
• Why Reading and Writing Cursive Is Essential, 12-8-14
• From Whence Rights Come, 12-1-14
• Contempt and Jonathan Gruber, 11-24-14
• Deception, 11-17-14
• Will Republicans Seize the Day?, 11-10-14
• Midterm Mandate, 11-3-14
• Obama’s Ambivalence toward American Life, 10-28-14
• Obama Administration’s Late and Inadequate Response to the Ebola Outbreak, 10-13-14
• The Economy’s True Condition, 10-6-14
• The Threat to American Lives and Interests from Obama’s Indecisiveness, 9-29-14
• What Would George Washington Say to Today’s Americans?, 9-15-14
• Justice Served, 7-21-14
• Borderless America, 7-14-14
• Remembering What it Means to Be an American, 7-7-14
• The President Goes AWOL, 6-30-14
• The Petty Tyranny of Claire McCaskill, 6-23-14
• Hidden from View, 6-16-14
• Chinese Communist Oppression, 6-9-14
• Michelle Obama: Good Enough for Your Children but Not for Mine, 6-2-14
• The Benghazi Terror Cover-up, 5-26-14
• J. Russell George’s Lone Voice in the Wilderness, 5-19-14
• The Rise of the American Police State, 5-12-14
• Common Sense, Humility, and Courage, 5-6-14
• Harry Reid, Robert Reich, and the Politics of Character Assassination, 4-28-15
• Harry Reid, BLM, and Cliven Bundy, 4-21-14
• What if the House Sergeant at Arms Paul D. Irving Arrested Lois Lerner?, 4-14-14
• Obama Administration Fails to Free Oil for Export, 4-7-14
• In Defense of Freedom, 3-31-14
• Obama’s Anemic Response to Putin’s Invasion of the Ukraine, 3-24-14
• Itching to Use His Pen and Phone, 3-17-14
• A Lot More Than a Smidgeon, 3-10-14
• Ninth Circuit Upholds Biased School Censorship, 3-3-14
• Brutish Ignorance at ATF and DEA, 2-24-14
• Regulation by “Raised Eyebrow” Returns to FCC, 2-18-14
• Tyler Doohan: Beyond Brave, 2-10-14
• The Real State of the Union, 2-3-14
• EU to Denmark: Danish Rolls Are Contraband, 1-27-14
• My Tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., 1-20-14
• The Imperial Obama Administration, 1-13-14
• The Obamacare Assault on Religious Liberty, 1-6-14
• Three Cheers for John F. Sopko, 12-30-13
• Christmas Stories III, 12-23-13
• Youth to ObamaCare: Not Interested, 12-19-13
• Obamacare’s Unending Funeral Dirge, 12-3-12
• Rigging the 2012 Election, 11-25-13
• Obama Still Not Telling the Truth, 11-18-13
• Saying Sorry When You Do Not Mean It, 11-11-13
• The Obamacare Boondoggle, 11-4-13
• What We Can Learn from Ernie Lee Brown, Jr. (the Turtle Man), 10-29-13
• No Principled Leadership, 10-21-13
• The Democrats’ unCivil War, 10-14-13
• The Inhumanity of Harry Reid, 10-7-13
• Democracy and Liberty Die in Europe, 9-30-13
• Why Not Shut Down the Government?, 9-23-13
• How the Feds Have Turned Forests into Tinderboxes, 9-16-13
• Obama Administration Misleads America on Safety of Gulf Clean-up, 9-9-13
• The Sagebrush Rebellion Continues, 9-2-13
• Does the Federal Government Own Your Property?, 8-26-13
• Billions Wasted, 8-19-13
• A law for You but not for Me, 8-12-13
• The Jack Lew Shuffle, 8-5-13
• Two Mighty Timbers Fall, 7-29-13
• The IRS Scandal Beats a Path to the White House, 7-22-13
• DOJ’s Disintegration Position on Investigating Journalists, 7-15-13
• Bizarre Goings on at Gitmo, 7-8-13
• NSA (and Administration) Illogic, 7-1-13
• What Did Obama Know and When Did He Know It?, 6-24-13
• NSA’s Prying (and Lying) Eyes, 6-17-13
• J. Russell George: An American Super Hero, 6-10-13
• Political Distortion of Science, 6-3-13
• Obama’s DOJ Shreds the First Amendment, 5-27-13
• The Political Sport of Taxation, 5-20-13
• Cicadas Are More Intelligent Than Congress Critters, 5-13-13
• FDA Presumes Itself Omniscient and Consumers Ignorant, 5-6-13
• Effective Counterterrorism, 4-29-13
• Thieves and Accomplices, 4-22-13
• The Overlooked Factor: Psychiatric Drugs, 4-15-13
• Thank You, President Reagan, 4-8-13
• The Mayor Who Would Be King, 4-1-13
• Obama’s Insatiable Appetite for More Government, 3-25-13
• CMS Proposes Anticompetitive Medical Nutrition Therapy Niche for RD’s, 3-18-13
• Obamacare’s Impact on Medicare, Medicaid, and Debt, 3-11-13
• Sequester: Much Ado About Nothing, 3-4-13
• FDA and the Drug Industry out to Destroy the Supplement Industry, You Lose, 2-25-13
• Obama’s “No Clothes” Moment, 2-18-13
• The Fragile Economy, 2-11-13
• Medical Device Companies Suffer Deadly Obamacare Tax, 2-4-13
• From Welfare to Freedom, 1-28-13
• The America We Knew, 1-24-13
• Crises of the President’s Own Making, 1-14-13
• The Second Amendment, 1-11-13
• The Entitlement Society, 1-9-13
• Political Nonsense Surrounding Fiscal Cliff, 12-31-12
• Christmas Stories II. 12-24-12
• Professional Security for Public Schools, 12-19-12
• A Crisis Without Leadership, 12-17-12
• Second Circuit Slaps Down FDA with First Amendment, 12-10-12
• Mediocre Medicine, 12-3-12
• California Commits Suicide, 11-26-12
• The Bureaucratization of Everything, 11-19-12
• A Victory for Failure, 11-12-12
• Will We Sacrifice the Nation? 11-5-12
• The Ground War, 10-29-12
• Obama Void of Vision, 10-22-12
• Benghazi Terror Cover-up, 10-15-12
• Obama Hysteria, 10-8-12
• The Flu Vaccine: More Hype than Substance? 10-1-12
• Plan B for Obama Redux, 9-24-12
• Obama Gets Supreme Court Picks in Second Term, 9-17-12
• Obama’s Forward Equals Two Steps Back, 9-10-12
• What Can I Do?, 9-3-12
• Ron Paul’s Winning Stratagem, 8-27-12
• The Election 2012 Tipping Point, 8-20-12
• FDA Stands Between Terminally Ill and Experimental Drugs, 8-13-12
• Obamacare’s Sacrifice of Religious Freedom, 8-6-12
• Ron Paul Triumphant, 7-30-12
• Rule of Law Perversion and the Rise of Moral Depravity, 7-23-12
• The Awakening, 7-16-12
• The Bigger They Are, Less Prison Time They Serve, 7-9-12
• Roberts Rules: Obamacare Is and Is Not a Tax, 7-2-12
• Holder’s Hubris, 6-25-12
• Obama Unmasked, 6-18-12
• Wisconsin Reveals a New American Majority, 6-11-12
• Diabolical Durbin, 6-4-12
• The Krugman-Obama Connection, 5-28-12
• The Amazing Mr. Clement, 5-21-12
• Remember Billy, 5-14-12
• EPA Official “Crucified” by His Own Words, 5-7-12
• Open Letter to Mitt Romney, 4-30-12
• FDA Condemnation of the Terminally Ill, 4-23-12
• Obama’s Open Mic Comment, 4-16-12
• Why Women Should Not Be Placed in Combat, 4-9-12
• Obama Imposes Martial Law, 4-2-12
• Supreme Court Knocks Down Agency Barriers to Judicial Review, 3-26-12
• Exit Afghanistan and Enter Not Iran, 3-19-12
• Victory for the Second Amendment, 3-12-12
• Taking One for the Team, 3-5-12
• A Government that Knows No Bounds, 2-27-12
• Obama’s Kiss of Death to the Poor, 2-20-12
• Prop. 8 and Marriage Licensing, 2-13-12
• Another Victory for Principle, 1-30-12
• A Victory for Principle, 1-30-12
• Obama’s State of Disunion, 1-27-12
• Bain Bites Back, 1-23-12
• Obama Flunks His Own Test, 1-16-12
• The Inevitable 1-9-12
• High Speed Rail Boondoggle 1-2-12
• Christmas Stories 12-26-11
• The Fed’s Old Boy Network 12-19-11
• Battlefield America 12-12-11
• TSA: Fat, Dumb, and Slow 12-7-11
• One Drug to Make You Happy 11-28-11
• FDA’s Order Compelling Speech Goes Up in Smoke 11-21-11
• FDA Rains on Mobile Medical App Parade 11-14-11
• Libya Unchanged 11-7-11
• Unemployment and Crime 10-31-11
• Ron Paul’s Realism 10-24-11
• Politics and Religion 10-17-11
• The President’s Integrity Crisis 10-10-11
• FCC’s Net Neutrality Rules: A First Amendment Offense 10-3-11
• The Solyndra Lesson 9-26-11
• Efficient and Effective Deregulation 9-19-11
• The $450 Billion Jobs Bill: Obama’s Maginot Line 9-12-11
• Obama’s Political Free Fall 9-5-11
• It Takes an Earthquake to Shake Up Washington 8-29-11
• FDA to Supplements: Drop Dead 8-22-11
• How to Bring America Back from Economic Ruin 8-15-11
• Debt Deal Sleight of Hand 8-8-11
• Obama’s Miscalculation 8-1-11
• Momentous Victory for Commercial Speech 7-25-11
• The Food Police 7-18-11
• Dick Durbin, Enemy of the Founding Fathers’ Republic 7-11-11
• The Meaning of Independence Day 7-4-11
• Poison Politics 6-27-11
• Drowning in Debt 6-21-11
• Principled Downsizing 6-13-11
• After Medicare 6-6-11
• After Social Security 5-30-11
• Obama’s Corporatist State 5-23-11
• FDA Tyrannizes Amish Farmer 5-16-11
• SEALs Eliminate Bin Laden, Justification for Afghan War and Pakistan Support 5-9-11
• The Cybersecurity and Internet Freedom Act 5-2-11
• Lawless Rule 4-25-11
• Abolish the Federal Income Tax 4-18-11
• The Weak Link in Obama’s Armor 4-11-11
• Obama Fiddles While America Burns 4-9-11
• FDA Destruction of the Dietary Supplement Industry 4-4-11
• The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant and Our Future 3-28-11
• Emperor Obama 3-24-11
• Middle East Civil Unrest Reduces Al-Qaeda Recruiting 3-21-11
• Government on Steroids 3-14-11
• Why Governor Scott Walker Is Right 3-7-11
• Blinded and Poisoned by the Light 2-28-11
• The Wisdom of Shutting Down the Government 2-23-11
• Contempt for the Rule of Law 2-21-11
• A Disney Dream Vacation Exit for Mubarak 2-14-11
• California: A Venus Fly Trap for Business 2-7-11
• Federal Mandates: Bankrupting States and Destroying Federalism 1-31-11
• 2012: The Republic’s Bellwether Year 1-24-11
• An Innovation Agenda to Challenge Obama 1-17-11
• Recent Proof FDA Is Controlled by Big Pharma 1-10-11
• Is Putin Losing His Grip? 1-3-11
• FDA Approved Drugs with Serious Side Effects 12-27-10
• Thomas Jefferson First Fought Muslim Terrorists 12-20-10
• Drones in the Hunt for Al-Qaeda 12-16-10
• Fred Upton: Horrible Choice for Energy and Commerce Chair 12-13-10
• FDA Hypocrisy 12-6-10
• Judicial Temperament 11-29-10
• The Restored Reality: Individual Sovereignty and Responsibility 11-22-10
• Remember Who Elected You and Why 11-15-10
• Agenda for the New Congress 11-8-10
• The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow 11-1-10
• Reclaiming the American Dream 10-25-10
• The Disabling Power of Fear 10-18-10
• Liberty’s Triumphant Symbolism 10-11-10
• Global Freedom Fighters 10-4-10
• The President’s Power to Negotiate Treaties 9-27-10
• Obama’s Failed “New Deal” 9-20-10
• Bedbugs in Congress 9-13-10
• The Character Assassins 9-6-10
• More Government Without Accountability 8-30-10
• The Islamic Cultural Center Near Ground Zero 8-25-10
• Under Siege in America 8-23-10
• Government Should Not “Recognize” Marriage 8-16-10
• Larger than Life: The Legacy of DeWitt Shy Spain 8-9-10
• Are you as free today as you were four years ago? 8-2-10
• Judge Bolton invalidates part of Arizona’s Immigration Law 7-29-10
• Cancer’s Worst Enemy 7-26-10
• Drug Industry Politics at the DEA 7-19-10
• Time to Replace, Not Reform FDA 7-15-10
• Medicare Manacles 7-12-10
• Faith in the American People 7-5-10
• Integrity 6-28-10
• The Mystic Chords of Memory 6-21-10
• Market Incentives for Gulf Oil Clean-Up 6-14-10
• The Political Sport of Protectionism 6-7-10
• U.S. District Court Gives FDA a Sorely Needed Drubbing 6-3-10
• A Blueprint for Resurrecting Our Republic 6-1-10
• Rand Paul’s Victory: A Bulwark for Liberty 5-24-10
• Suit Filed Against Obama’s Compulsory Health Care Bill 5-17-10
• The New Totalitarians 5-10-10
• Not the “Audacity of Hope,” but the Arrogance of Power 5-3-10
• The Tipping Point for Liberty’s Return 4-26-10
• Health Reform Law Will Worsen Doctor Shortage 4-19-10
• Health Care Reform Bill Violates the First and Fifth Amendments 4-12-10
• A “Right” to Health Freedom, not to Health Care 4-5-10
• Poison Politics 3-30-10
• Why Liberal Democrats Should Favor a Free Market 3-22-10
• The Best and Worst Job in Town 3-15-10
• Washington’s Response to a Snow Storm 3-10-10
• Why Joe the Plumber Should Not Accept a Compromise McCain Bill 3-8-10
• The Legislation Game 3-1-10
• Abraham Lincoln: Poet and Lover of Poetry 2-22-10
• McCain to FDA: Regulate Joe the Plumber 2-15-16
• The State of Disunion 2-8-10
• Why Are There No Great Statesmen Left in America? 2-1-10
• The Earthquake that Shook Massachusetts 1-25-10
• When Law Becomes the Problem, Not the Solution 1-18-10
• Combatting Terror 1-11-10
• Restoring American Greatness 1-4-10
• Economic Bailout Overwhelmingly Defeated by Economic Regulation 12-28-09
• FDA’s Stormtroopers 12-21-09
• Europe Enters a Nutrition Science Dark Age 12-14-09
• Hamburg to Christmas: Bah! Humbug! 12-7-09
• Thank You, Dr. Leale 11-30-09
• Our Precious Youth 11-16-09
• As the Administrative State Grows, So Grows Injustice 11-9-09
• As Government Grows so Grows Corruption 11-2-09
• Free Market Healthcare Alternative to Obamacare 10-26-09
• An Overnight Solution to the Nation’s Economic Woes 10-19-09
• Mandatory Vaccination is an Assault on Individual Liberty 10-12-09
• Liberty Has Given Way to Tyranny, 10-6-09