She promises to investigate Trump officials after she wins.
Editorial Board January 23, 2020
Think the fog of partisan Trump investigations will lift once the President leaves office, either in 2021 or 2025? Not if Elizabeth Warren has anything to say about it. With the Iowa caucuses approaching and her campaign fortunes flagging, Senator Warren now says that as President she’d launch an open-ended criminal investigation into her predecessor and anyone who worked for him.
Ms. Warren’s latest “anti-corruption” plan says she would create “a Justice Department Task Force to investigate corruption during the Trump administration and to hold government officials accountable for illegal activity.” She would order Justice to look for violations of “federal bribery laws, insider trading laws, and other anti-corruption and public integrity laws” as well as immigration-enforcement offenses.
“This will be no ordinary transition between administrations,” the document says ominously. Team Warren won’t be satisfied with taking control of the executive branch in an election. They also want scalps of choice ex-officials. The plan links to news articles about Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, White House Adviser KellyanneCon way and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson.
If there is evidence of a crime by a former Administration official, it should be investigated through the normal channels. Ms. Warren is proposing something different: A law-enforcement task force dedicated to searching for wrongdoing only by political opponents. This would be familiar in Latin American dictatorships where the party that loses an election may be jailed as retribution.
Pundits said Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign threat to investigate Hillary Clinton for her email mismanagement was a chilling breach of democratic norms. We opposed such an investigation but at least the alleged misconduct was limited to specific conduct by one official, whereas Ms. Warren wants investigations of all Republican officials for any political offenses.
Despite all the apocalyptic think-pieces and high-minded books, America has not become an “autocracy” three years into Donald Trump’s Presidency. The opposition party won the House in the midterms, proceeded to impeach the President, and its leading candidates are ahead in the head-to-head 2020 presidential election polls.
Yet in polarized times the temptation to criminalize political differences is stronger than ever. It will be especially strong for Democrats once they are back in control of the Justice Department. Down Senator Warren’s road lies a real threat to liberty.
Eric Eggers, author of the new book called “Fraud: How the Left Plans to Steal the Next Election,” says, “I think there is clear evidence that they (Democrats) are actively working to create an environment that makes cheating as possible and as likely as it can be. Let’s put it this way, what Democrats have actively pursued charges of voting fraud? In closing, Eggers says, “The good news is we do have a president like President Trump that is laser focused on the issue, and he is informing quite a few people. . . . The sanctity and security of our elections is absolutely a national security issue.” Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with Eric Eggers, author of the new book all about election fraud of the left called “Fraud.”
VIDEO LINDA SARSOUR, FEMALE MUSLIM ACTIVIST, ASKS FOR SUPPORT FOR ABDUL EL-SAYED, MUSLIM CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR OF MICHIGAN. IN PARTICULAR, SHE ASKS SIRAJ WAHHAJ, UNINDICTED CO-CONSPIRATOR in the 1993 WORLD TRADE BOMBING FOR HIS SUPPORT FOR ABDUL EL -SAYED
California billionaire Tom Steyer announced Tuesday that he plans to invest $1 million into the effort to flip North Carolina’s 9th and 13th congressional districts by mobilizing young voters. Nick UtAP file
California billionaire Tom Steyer announced Tuesday that he plans to invest $1 million into the effort to flip North Carolina’s 9th and 13th congressional districts by mobilizing young voters.
The money is on top of $30 million he’s spending on NextGen Rising, a campaign to energize millennial voters in more than two dozen key districts in 10 states.
Steyer told the Observer that in North Carolina he’ll put 11 full-time and 25 part-time staffers on 12 college campuses in the two districts. In addition, he wants to target 100,000 young voters through a mail and digital campaign.
The districts are now represented by Republicans Robert Pittenger of Charlotte in the 9th and Ted Budd of Davie County in the 13th. Each has a well-funded Democratic opponent.
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This helps to understand the positions of all the candidates in the French presidential race. This French election has important implications for the future of France, the EU and the Muslim migrant issue. Nancy
“What poses a problem is not Islam, but certain behaviors that are said to be religious and then imposed on persons who practice that religion.” — Emmanuel Macron
“Those who come to France are to accept France, not to transform it to the image of their country of origin. If they want to live at home, they should have stayed at home.” — Marine Le Pen
“It [France] is one nation that has a right to choose who can join it and a right that foreigners accept its rules and customs. — François Fillon
Jean-Luc Mélenchon has called for a massive increase in public spending, a 90% tax on anyone earning more than €400,000 ($425,000) a year, and an across-the-board increase in the minimum wage by 16% to €1,326 ($1,400) net a month, based on a 35-hour work week.
Benoît Hamon has promised to establish a universal basic income: he wants to pay every French citizen over 18, regardless of whether or not they are employed, a government-guaranteed monthly income of €750 ($800). The annual cost to taxpayers would be €400 billion ($430 billion). By comparison, France’s 2017 defense budget is €32.7 billion ($40 billion).
Voters in France will go to the polls on April 23 to choose the country’s next president in a two-step process. The top two winners in the first round will compete in a run-off on May 7.
The election is being closely followed in France and elsewhere as an indicator of popular discontent with mainstream parties and the European Union, as well as with multiculturalism and continued mass migration from the Muslim world.
A group of leading senators is calling on newly installed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to immediately launch an investigation into efforts by the Obama administration to sway foreign elections by sending taxpayer funds to “extreme and sometimes violent political activists” that promote leftist causes, according to a copy of the letter.
The lawmakers disclosed multiple conversations with foreign diplomats who outlined active political meddling by the Obama administration’s State Department, including the use of taxpayer funds to support leftist causes in Macedonia, Albania, Latin America, and Africa.
A portion of this State Department funding appears to have gone to organizations supported by the controversial liberal billionaire George Soros, according to the letter, which was authored by Republican Sens. Mike Lee (Utah), Jim Inhofe (Okla.), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Ted Cruz (Texas), David Perdue (Ga.), and Bill Cassidy (La.).
The senators are asking Tillerson tolaunch a full-scale investigationinto these funding efforts in order to determine how exactly the Obama administration sought to promote left-leaning causes and political parties across the globe.
Memo to critics of North Carolina’s election-law reforms: Black midterm turnout has increased.
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Robert D. Popper Mr. Popper is a senior attorney for Judicial Watch and served as the deputy chief of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department from 2008-13.
Federal lawsuits against North Carolina claim that recent changes to the state’s election laws will “suppress” minority votes. For example, in N.C. State Conf. of NAACP v. McCrory, plaintiffs assert that the new laws “impose a disproportionate burden on the ability of African Americans to vote” and will “raise costs for voters and deter participation.” They highlight testimony by a former director of the State Board of Elections who asserted that the laws will “ultimately reduc[e] turnout in comparison to comparable elections.”
Turnout data for the 2014 election, posted Dec. 10 on the state’s Board of Elections website, tell a different story. Black turnout and registration for the November 2014 election increased by every relevant measure compared with November 2010, the last non-presidential general election.
Last July, North Carolina adopted electoral reforms that eliminated same-day registration, reduced the number of days of early voting to 10 from 17, and required ballots to be cast in a voter’s home precinct. It also instituted a voter-ID requirement that will take full effect in 2016.
Two sets of plaintiffs, led by the NAACP and the League of Women Voters, sued in federal court on Aug. 12, 2013. They were followed a few weeks later by the Justice Department. Attorney General Eric Holder asserted that the state’s new laws would restrict “access and ease of voter participation” and “would shrink, rather than expand, access to the franchise.”
All three suits alleged that the reforms will inflict “burdens” on North Carolina voters—and in particular, on minority voters. These allegations were backed by reams of expert reports submitted by social scientists predicting that these burdens would depress voter registration and turnout.
One expert in the Justice Department lawsuit claimed that more than 200,000 black voters, along with 700,000 white voters, would be “burdened” in an off-year election. Another expert concluded that particular provisions “will lower turnout overall” and “will have a disparate impact on African-American voters.”
Those predictions were not borne out. The 2014 elections were the first test of the impact of North Carolina’s new laws, including a “soft rollout” of its voter-ID requirement—under which poll workers asked voters if they had ID and if not, to acknowledge the new requirement in writing. Board of Elections data showed that the percentage of age-eligible, non-Hispanic black residents who turned out to vote in North Carolina rose to 41.1% in November 2014 from 38.5% in November 2010. (more…)
It wasn’t all that long ago that the Democrats were predicting the end of the Republican Party.
With the rise of Obama, James Carville began peddling a new book “40 More Years” promising that the Dems would rule for generations.
Just this year Carville predicted that the Republican Party would become extinct if it lost to Hillary Clinton. But it was the Democratic Party that was going extinct in Carville’s own backyard.
Republicans began winning Senate seats in Louisiana for the first time in a century in just the last ten years. If Landrieu loses, then both of the Louisiana’s Senate seats will be unprecedentedly held by Republicans.
And Louisiana isn’t an outlier. Bill Clinton couldn’t stop Arkansas from going full Republican with two Republican senators and a full suite of Republican representatives for the first time in history. That’s all the more amazing in a state that only had two Republican senators before that for over a century.
The Democratic Party is going extinct in places like Louisiana, Arkansas and West Virginia. It’s vanishing because the working class White Democrat is becoming extinct.
Even Carville hedged his bets while predicting the end of the Republican Party by joining FOX News.
A generation ago, white Democrats outnumbered white Republicans. Today it’s the other way around. Under Obama, barely a quarter of white people still identify as Democrats.
Republicans didn’t just win a few elections. They swept across entire legislatures in western and southern states. They took state senates and governorships in places like New York and Illinois. It’s not that Republicans had a particularly compelling message, some did and some didn’t, but that Democrats had assumed that enough white voters would continue showing up to prop up their rainbow coalition.
Fouad Ajami Mr. Ajami, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, is the author, most recently, of “The Syrian Rebellion” (Hoover Press, 2012).
Nov. 15, 2013
The current troubles of the Obama presidency can be read back into its beginnings. Rule by personal charisma has met its proper fate. The spell has been broken, and the magician stands exposed. We need no pollsters to tell us of the loss of faith in Mr. Obama’s policies—and, more significantly, in the man himself. Charisma is like that. Crowds come together and they project their needs onto an imagined redeemer. The redeemer leaves the crowd to its imagination: For as long as the charismatic moment lasts—a year, an era—the redeemer is above and beyond judgment. He glides through crises, he knits together groups of varied, often clashing, interests. Always there is that magical moment, and its beauty, as a reference point.
Mr. Obama gave voice to this sentiment in a speech on Nov. 6 in Dallas: “Sometimes I worry because everybody had such a fun experience in ’08, at least that’s how it seemed in retrospect. And, ‘yes we can,’ and the slogans and the posters, et cetera, sometimes I worry that people forget change in this country has always been hard.” It’s a pity we can’t stay in that moment, says the redeemer: The fault lies in the country itself—everywhere, that is, except in the magician’s performance.
Forgive the personal reference, but from the very beginning of Mr. Obama’s astonishing rise, I felt that I was witnessing something old and familiar. My advantage owed nothing to any mastery of American political history. I was guided by my immersion in the political history of the Arab world and of a life studying Third World societies.
In 2008, seeing the Obama crowds in Portland, Denver and St. Louis spurred memories of the spectacles that had attended the rise and fall of Arab political pretenders. I had lived through the era of the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser. He had emerged from a military cabal to become a demigod, immune to judgment. His followers clung to him even as he led the Arabs to a catastrophic military defeat in the Six Day War of 1967. He issued a kind of apology for his performance. But his reign was never about policies and performance. It was about political magic. (more…)
