Poland and U.S. Launch New Chapter

The two presidents that stood in the Rose Garden this week have often been compared to one another. Presidents Trump and Duda both tend to upset some of the political elites in their country. Both have been accused by political opponents of seeking to undermine democracy--and in both cases quite unfairly. 

But, at their June 12 press conference, the two leaders announced to huge steps for U.S.-Polish relations. One, the U.S. will station about 2,000 new troops in Poland. For those who claim Trump is a puppet of Vladimir Putin, the increased U.S. military presence will make Russia furious. On another front, Trump plans to announce in the next 90 days that the United States will include Poland in the Visa Waiver Program, to make travel between the two countries easier. 

In September, Trump will again travel to Poland--site in 2017 of one of the best speeches of his presidency. The other is the recent Normandy speech. In both instances, he followed the script. 

In September, it will be to mark the 80th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland that started World War II. 

This has been a significant year for anniversaries in Poland. It's the 20th anniversary of the joining the NATO alliance and its 30 years since Poland had its first free and fair elections. Both of these were ultimate outcomes of U.S. leadership--chiefly by President Reagan. 

This comes a year after the 100th anniversary of Polish independence. Even this was one of the few bright spots of President Wilson's time in office. 

For Government Bullies, It's All About Coercion

The following is an excerpt from an article in Organization Trends: 

In the debate over state religious freedom laws, gay marriage isn’t really the issue.

For the Left, nothing is ever worthwhile until it’s connected to coercion. That’s why a vast collection of progressive organizations, many bankrolled by billionaire financier George Soros, joined to pile on Indiana and other religious freedom advocates.  None of the political or corporate response would have come without progressive groups stirring up alarm.
 

Oregon Capitol (Credit:Oregon.gov)

The assertion that a state religious freedom law is somehow an “excuse” for a state legislature to pass laws protecting business owners ignores the fact that sincerely held religious beliefs are being crushed under the despotic boot of government. Religious freedom laws are not a solution in search of a problem. They’re a response to a clear and present danger.

In late April, Oregon Administrative Law Judge Alan McCullough ordered Aaron and Melissa Klein, owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa bakery in Portland to pay $135,000 in damages to a gay couple for emotional suffering caused by the bakery’s not catering their wedding.

In New Mexico, the case of Elane Photography v. Willock began when a lesbian couple asked to have their commitment ceremony photographed. When Elane Photography declined, the couple made a complaint to the New Mexico Human Rights Commission. New Mexico has a RFRA law, but the Human Rights Commission refused to apply it to a business in the state, so litigation ensued.

During a Colorado Civil Rights Commission meeting on Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips’s decision to refuse to bake a wedding cake, commissioner Diann Rice said, “Freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the Holocaust … we can list hundreds of situations where freedom of religion has been used to justify discrimination. And to me it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use … their religion to hurt others.”  The commission went so far as to order “reeducation” as a potential remedy.

That was too much for Richard Epstein, a New York University law professor who supports same-sex marriage: “The Colorado Commission made the grotesque and inexcusable comparison of the refusal to do business in a highly competitive market with the mass extermination of helpless individuals in government gas chambers,” wrote Epstein.

“Commissioner Rice’s insistence that Cakemasters has used its religion to ‘hurt others’ means that anyone who turns a person down for business ‘hurts’ that person. Her formulation shows no appreciation whatsoever for the relative harms involved in these low-level commercial interactions. Craig [the plaintiff suing Cakemasters] has dozens of alternative outlets clamoring for his business. Phillips and Elane Photography don’t have that luxury; they are now put to the impossible choice of closing down or violating their religious beliefs.”

Clinton Foundation Link in the Hillary Email Scandal: History of Wrecklessness with National Security

Hillary Clinton's email headache doesn't seem to be going away no matter how much she attempts to wave it off.

Federal investigators have reportedly determined more than 300 emails on the former secretary of state's private server could be classified information. The private server was discovered because of the House Benghazi committee. But don't forget about the infamous Clinton Foundation. 

(Credit:State.gov)

As I wrote about in Foundation Watch in May -- before we found out this server contained classified info -- Hillary Clinton has played fast and loose with national security information for some time.

From Foundation Watch:

As Hillary Clinton was in charge of running America’s foreign policy, Bill was giving high-dollar speeches in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Central America, Turkey, Thailand, Taiwan, India, and the Cayman Islands, according to Judicial Watch. Certainly some of these should have raised eyebrows by reviewers at the State Department, considering tenuous U.S. relations with Russia and China. And the fact that the list of donors includes Muslim nations that are known for mistreating women, ought to set off the hypocrisy alarm bells because Mrs. Clinton has long positioned herself as a champion of women’s rights.

The New York Times also reports when she was at the State Department, Hillary okayed a financial transaction that handed control over 20 percent of America’s strategically important uranium resources to Russia after investors gave money to Bill and large donations to the Clinton Foundation. This matters because uranium is needed to make nuclear weapons and America only has an estimated 20 percent of the uranium it needs.

From 2005 through 2011 investors in Uranium One, a shady Canadian company, reportedly gave money to the Clinton Foundation. In 2010 Bill accepted $500,000 from an investment bank to give a single speech in Russia. Uranium One stock carried a “buy” rating with the bank, which had links to the Russian government. Eventually the Kremlin assumed 100 percent control over Uranium One through a subsidiary of Rosatom, a state corporation owned by the Russian government.

Then there are the massive financial institutions sponsoring the speeches that would certainly have an interest in currying favor with the Department of State. These sponsors included Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and American Express. Other sectors sponsoring international speeches included major players in the energy, automotive, casino, hotel, real estate, technology, media, and health care industries, according to Judicial Watch.

Another sponsor was Renaissance Capital in June 2010, where the former president talked in Moscow about the theme of “Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States: Going Global.” This was in the middle of Hillary’s “reset button” approach to U.S.-Russia relations. The investment bank was focused on Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and sub-Saharan Africa, the Washington Examiner reported.

For Clinton’s speech to a UBS Wealth Management event in April 2012 in Chicago, the State Department characterized it as “approximately 300-400 ultra-high net worth clients, prospective clients, and UBS Financial Advisers.”

Two years earlier, Clinton spoke at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut, which the State Department review characterized as “a private speech of up to 350 friends and patrons of Mohegan Sun.… The event will not be open to the public. The event will not be publicly advertised.”

Another event reveals how in tune the Clintons are with the supposed plight of “income inequality” and the poor: Clinton spoke in October 2011 at a San Francisco event for the Wells Fargo Private Bank and the Wells Fargo Family Wealth Group, whose clients, State Department documents explain, “have at least $5 million and $50 million in assets respectively.”

The documents obtained by Judicial Watch show the State Department also approved a consulting gig for Clinton with Teneo Strategy, a company headed by Clinton Foundation adviser Doug Band, with offices in Dubai, London, Dublin, Hong Kong, Brussels, and Beijing. After taking some heat over Teneo’s ties to the failed investment firm MF Global, the Clintons ended the deal after just eight months.

Teneo Strategy brings up another aspect that complicates the whole Clinton Foundation-State Department nexus, which is Huma Abedin, better known to some as Mrs. Anthony Weiner. Abedin served under the Secretary of State as deputy chief of staff from January 2009 to June 2012, at which point she became a senior adviser and a “special government employee” that would be allowed to represent individual clients and have outside employment. She was a “special government employee” until February 2013. During that time, Abedin did not disclose what type of work she did for Teneo Strategy, the New York Times reported.

“So we know that the Obama administration’s judgment as to what constitutes a ‘conflict of interest’ is skewed, to put it nicely,” Judicial Watch said in a press release about its findings.

Apparently, some in the State Department may agree with Judicial Watch. On April 10, the department’s inspector general announced he was launching an investigation into Abedin’s irregular employment arrangements.

As evidence continues to accumulate that Clinton’s cavalier approach to state secrets may have put U.S. national security in jeopardy, the shady background of Abedin, who has known ties to the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, is barely acknowledged on Capitol Hill. And it’s not clear that it will ever come up. After several Republican lawmakers publicly raised concerns about Abedin in 2012, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was enraged.

“These sinister accusations rest solely on a few unspecified and unsubstantiated associations of members of Huma’s family, none of which have been shown to harm or threaten the United States in any way,” the senator said. “These attacks on Huma have no logic, no basis and no merit. And they need to stop now.”

It is a matter of public record that Huma’s mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, is a co-founder of the Muslim Sisterhood, a pro-Sharia organization consisting of the wives of some of the highest-ranking leaders in the Muslim Brotherhood. Egyptian opposition newspaper Al-Liwa Al-Arabi reports that Muslim Sisterhood members: “smuggle secret documents”; “spread the Brotherhood’s ideology by infiltrating universities, schools and homes”; “fulfill the interests of the Brotherhood”; and “organiz[e] projects which will penetrate [the Brotherhood’s] prohibited ideology into the decision-making in the West … under the guise of ‘general needs of women.’” Nagla Ali Mahmoud, wife of Mohammed Morsi, the Islamist who was elected president of Egypt in June 2012 and then deposed, is a member of the Muslim Sisterhood. Mrs. Abedin is editor-in-chief of the notoriously pro-Islamist Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. From 1996 to 2008, Abedin worked as assistant editor of the Journal, FrontPageMag.com reported.

And the Clinton Foundation has some explaining to do after one of its former employees received a sentence of life imprisonment in Egypt after being convicted of sedition. In 2012 Gehad el-Haddad, “divided his time between volunteering for the Muslim Brotherhood and heading the Cairo office of the Clinton Climate Initiative, but later that year began to work full time for the Muslim Brotherhood,” according to the Egypt Independent.

Appropriately, the name Gehad can also be spelled Jihad.

A month after Haddad left the Clinton Foundation job for a position with then-Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood standard-bearer, the Clinton Global Initiative invited Morsi to deliver a major address. Morsi calls Jews “bloodsuckers” and “the descendants of apes and pigs.” After Morsi was overthrown, in 2013 Haddad was arrested in Egypt for inciting violence. Haddad was given a life sentence on April 11 of this year, according to the Muslim Brotherhood’s official English language website.

Faith in Statism

Below is an excerpt from my piece in Organization Trends: 

The Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn pointed out, “Back when gay marriage was first proposed, advocates pitched it this way: What can it possibly matter to you if two men or two women wed?”  He continued: “Since then Americans have learned: It can mean an end to your small business, it can mean your church institutions—from schools to adoption agencies—can no longer run themselves according to their principles, and, if you are a Silicon Valley CEO, it can mean you lose your job.”

McGurn was referring to Mozilla co-founder and CEO Brendan Eich, who was forced from his job in 2014 for having donated to the 2008 campaign in California to recognize marriage as exclusively between one man and one woman.

Hillary Clinton (Credit: State.gov)

Gay journalist Andrew Sullivan wrote of the pizza controversy, “The whole episode disgusts me—as it should disgust anyone interested in a tolerant and diverse society. If this is the gay rights movement today—hounding our opponents with a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone else—then count me out. If we are about intimidating the free speech of others, we are no better than the anti-gay bullies who came before us”

Government hysteria about the Indiana religious freedom law began from the top down, as the White House sounded off in April. “I do think in the mind of the president, the thought that we would have state legislatures in the 21st century in the United States of America passing laws that would use religion to try to justify discriminating against people for who they love is unthinkable,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee in waiting, Hillary Clinton, also weighed in on Twitter: “Sad this new Indiana law can happen in America today. We shouldn’t discriminate against [people because] of who they love #LGBT.”

Pointing out that Hillary opposed gay marriage until 2013, the Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf wrote, “she declares Indiana out of step with the times for making gay weddings legal, because refusing to bake cakes for them may be legal, too.”

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) and Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy (D) both announced they would ban publicly funded travel to the state of Indiana. San Francisco Mayor Edwin M. Lee (D) and Seattle Mayor Ed Murray (D) also banned city employees from traveling to Indiana for work-related trips.

In higher education, San Francisco State University banned work-related travel to Indiana. And even in Indiana, the presidents of the three major universities—Indiana, Depaw, and Butler—issued statements denouncing the law as discriminatory and harmful to the state’s reputation.
Friedersdorf expressed concern about the mob, prefacing his April 1 post with his view that bans on gay marriage in 13 states are “callous.” Nevertheless, he added, “When 13 states prohibit gay-marriage outright, what sense does it make for gay-rights supporters to boycott a different state where gay marriage is legal?”

“Being barred from marriage puts a significant burden on gay couples—a burden many orders of magnitude greater than the relatively small possibility of being refused by an atypically religious photographer or baker in the course of planning a same-sex wedding (the outcome the law’s opponents assert to be its true purpose).”

“Now that those who would discriminate against gays are a powerless cultural minority that focuses its objectionable behavior in a tiny niche of the economy, elites have suddenly decided that using state power to punish them is a moral imperative,” Friedersdorf continued.

“The timing suggests that this has as much to do with opportunism, tribalism, humanity’s love of bandwagons, and political positioning as it does with advancing gay rights, which have advanced thanks to persuasion, not coercion.”

'Sore Winners' and More Reminders of Democrats and Jim Crow

Below is an excerpt of my article published in Organization Trends:

Of course, neither the First Amendment nor the Religious Freedom Restoration Act gives a person blanket immunity to do whatever he wants by claiming it’s part of his religion. Let’s recall the 1990 Supreme Court ruling whose backlash helped to bring RFRA into being.

The case of Employment Division v. Smith involved Alfred Smith, a member of the Klamath tribe in Oregon, who was fired for ingesting the hallucinogenic drug peyote, even though he told his employer that his consumption of it was part of a tribal ritual. In what might be a black mark against an otherwise stellar judicial record, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote an overly broad decision in the case, decreeing that “the right of free exercise [of religion] does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a valid and neutral law of general applicability on the ground that the law proscribes (or prescribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes).’”

Justice Antonin Scalia (Credit: acus.gov)

In other words, because the law applied to everyone regardless of religious faith, it was deemed constitutional. RFRA essentially provided the courts with better guidance. The law shifted the burden to the government to prove (1) that it has a “compelling interest” in restricting whatever practice of religion is at issue and (2) that it has used “the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.” In the 1997 case of City of Boerne v. Flores, the Supreme Court determined that the federal RFRA law does not protect citizens from religious freedom infringement by state and local governments.
 
Congressional efforts to patch this loophole failed, and in 1999 states began to take up the issue with legislation of their own. So what happened between Clinton’s signing of the bipartisan bill and now? How did we reach the point where what was a universally held principle a mere two decades ago has now became a rallying cry for demagogues?
 
Why is the current White House calling RFRA laws “unthinkable,” even though as a state senator in 1998, Barack Obama voted for the Illinois version of RFRA, which passed the state senate 56-0? Why are other politicians imposing boycotts? Why are corporations buckling to pressure groups that invoke the ugly history of Jim Crow and the murderous Holocaust when speaking about religious freedom laws? Supposedly the answer is cake and pictures. To be more precise, wedding caterers and wedding photographers who cite their religious beliefs when opting against working at gay weddings. For this reason, they have been targeted and sometimes smeared. In one case, a pizzeria—that will almost certainly never be asked to cater any wedding—was harassed into closing its doors. A bakery in Oregon was ordered to pay a $135,000 fine.
 
The owners of another bakery in Colorado were compared to Nazis in a formal government hearing. The real answer to what is behind the change in views about religious liberty is a network of well-financed progressive groups whipping up controversy.
 
Matt Welch, editor of the libertarian magazine Reason that supports same-sex marriage, identifies the problem: “The bad news, for those of us on the suddenly victorious side of the gay marriage debate, is that too many people are acting like sore winners, not merely content with the revolutionary step of removing state discrimination against same-sex couples in the legal recognition of marriage, but seeking to use state power to punish anyone who refuses to lend their business services to wedding ceremonies they find objectionable.”

“That’s not persuasion, that’s force, and force tends to be the anti-persuasion among those who are on the receiving end of it.”

Most recently, the Indiana and Arkansas versions of RFRA were mischaracterized to stir fear among a public that too often only hears those who are shouting the loudest. National Action Network president and MSNBC host Al Sharpton said, “This is a key moment for the country. Too often in our history, we’ve seen religion used to justify attacks on other people’s rights, from slavery, to Jim Crow, to women’s right to vote … That same fight is with us today. And we can’t let it stand”.
 
Aside from insulting those who suffered under Jim Crow, Sharpton is making an illogical comparison. Jim Crow was the name given to Democrat-imposed state laws that required, among other things, that businesses segregate their public accommodations.
 
In other words: big government regulation. No doubt in that era some restaurants and hotel owners would have chosen to discriminate without the state laws. But they would have had competitors who would have been glad to get the business the discriminators refused.

Thus, Jim Crow laws shielded bigoted business owners from competition. Jim Crow laws were not only racist, but anti-market and anti-capitalist. No wonder Democrats loved Jim Crow politics so much. Southern streetcar businesses opposed forced segregation, because it required them to spend more money on cars and conductors. They routinely ignored the laws until conductors were arrested and the business owners fined by regulatory agencies.
 
The Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn explains, “In 1964, when the Supreme Court upheld the Civil Rights Act’s requirement that hotels serve African-Americans, blacks, especially in the South, effectively had their ability to travel restricted by the possibility they couldn’t secure lodging. In contrast, no one today suggests gay couples can’t find a baker or photographer for their weddings.”

To the contrary, it’s almost certain that if one wedding photographer, caterer, or for that matter, pizza delivery man, didn’t want the business of a gay couple, a nearby competing business would almost certainly be happy to take the couple’s money. Nevertheless, today we see an intense parade of calculated hyperventilating. On the frontlines of hyperventilation is the organization that, at least in name, would seem inclined to defend religious liberty.
 
The American Civil Liberties Union ought to know better. In fact, in 1993 the ACLU actually joined a coalition that included the National Association of Evangelicals, the Southern Baptist Ethics Religious Liberty Commission, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and others to support the federal RFRA.
 
Contrast that with today, when the ACLU attacks Midwesterners who wanted the same kind of law for Indiana. “The Indiana legislature and the governor made a terrible and dangerous mistake, and they were met with widespread condemnation and a backlash that has hurt their state’s reputation and its economy,” the ACLU said in a statement.

The group added, “Religious freedom is important, but it doesn’t give anyone the right to impose their beliefs on others, discriminate, or cause harm.” And yet, any honest evaluation of what has happened in recent months clearly shows only one side has tried to “impose their beliefs on others.”

Under pressure, Indiana made changes to the religious freedom law so as not to allow religious beliefs as a defense in a civil rights lawsuit. Even these amendments did not appease the mob. The ACLU statement continued to say the law “still poses a risk that it can be used to deny rights to others, including in education, access to health care, and other aspects of people’s lives.”

To avoid the headaches that Indiana endured, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) told the state legislature to re-do the religious freedom bill that it had already passed. The ACLU called for improving the law, but it seems unlikely any changes would please the organization. “While we are grateful that Governor Hutchinson listened to the loud outcry in opposition to HB 1228, this new proposal falls far short of ensuring that this law cannot be used to discriminate against or harm anyone within our state,” said Rita Sklar, executive director of the Arkansas ACLU. “I encourage the legislature and the governor to work together to improve this proposal now.”

The ACLU and other left-wing groups were able to successfully torpedo a religious freedom law in Arizona, where Gov. Jan Brewer (R) vetoed the measure last year, after businesses in the state became fearful. Meanwhile, Georgia’s proposal didn’t make it through the 2015 session. In 2012, North Dakota voters turned down a religious freedom law after heavy spending by Planned Parenthood, the pro-abortion group NARAL, and the state’s ACLU.

Planned Parenthood's War on Babies and Taxpaayers

Just as it seems its becoming possible for Planned Parenthood to defend its existence, let alone its taxpayer funding, yet another video comes out. 

Now the pressure is on those politicians who seek to justify sending limited resources to such an organization, when in fact there are other community health organizations that are more effective and less controversial. Planned Parenthood is a powerful lobby, and expects something back from the politicians who put them in office. 

Before when funding for Planned Parenthood came up, the group and it's political allies simply rallied around the "War on Women" slogan. Shockingly, something so absurd worked. But they can only got to that well so many times. The undercover videos make it nearly impossible that such a strategy can continue. 

I previously wrote about Planned Parenthood's role in the "War on Women" meme for Organization Trends.

In February 2011, the Republican-controlled House was debating the proposed “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.”  That’s when Rep. Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, said, “This legislation, represents an entirely new front in the war on women and their families.”  The Center for American Progress followed Nadler’s comment with a press release, “The Right’s War on Women.”  Planned Parenthood led a protest against the legislation with printed signs that said “War on Women.” …

“The ‘War on Women’ describes the legislative and rhetorical attacks on women and women’s rights taking place across the nation.  It includes a wide-range of policy efforts designed to place restrictions on women’s health care and erode protections for women and their families.  Examples at the state and federal level have included restricting contraception; cutting off funding for Planned Parenthood; state-mandated, medically unnecessary ultrasounds; abortion taxes; abortion waiting periods; forcing women to tell their employers why they want birth control, and prohibiting insurance companies from including abortion coverage in their policies.” …

EMILY’s List teamed with MoveOn to start the website StopTheWarOnWomen.com, asking people to sign a petition to “Tell Congress to stop its attacks on Planned Parenthood.”  The site added, “By signing this petition, you are opting to receive email from EMILY’s List and MoveOn.org Political Action.”  MoveOn.org posted on its own website the “Top 10 Shocking Attacks from the GOP’s War on Women.”  The top 10 charges include accusations against members of Congress and state legislatures for pro-life legislation and cuts to various programs.

If Joe Biden Makes Elizabeth Warren His VP Pick, She Will Have Powerful Friends to Boost Democrats 2016

Vice President Joe Biden, pondering shaking up the 2016 Democratic presidential primary by challenging Hillary Clinton, reportedly meeting with radical Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Credit:warren.senate.gov)

 This is fueling speculation that Biden might tap Warren to be his vice presidential running mate.

If so, Warren would bring in an immense infrastructure in the form of the nonprofit group Demos, as I wrote about last year in Organization Trends:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the freshman Massachusetts senator who pioneered the “you didn’t build that” philosophy, is using her new book, Fighting Chance, to throw red meat to the Left and position herself to the left of Democrats like Hillary Clinton, who are more comfortable with Wall Street donors. Warren’s book tour was well received among fawning liberal supporters across the country, many of whom are looking for an un-Hillary in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary.

“I’d spent nearly twenty years fighting to level the playing field for the middle class, and I’d seen millions of working families go over the economic cliff—and it was getting worse,” Warren writes in her book, explaining why she decided to run for Senate in 2012. “What kind of country would my grandchildren grow up in? What if the conservatives and the big banks and the big-time CEOs got their way and Washington kept helping the rich and powerful to get richer and more powerful? Could I really stand on the sidelines and stay out of this fight?”

The New Republic has called Warren “Hillary Clinton’s Worst Nightmare,” and much reporting since has followed similar themes, even as Warren feigns uninterest in presidential politics (just as she claims public clamor forced her to run for the Senate).

Still, many political observers claim former Secretary of State Clinton is invincible. Of course, similar claims were made in 2008. That year, in addition to her official campaign organization, Hillary had close allies in the nonprofit sector propping her up, such as the Center for American Progress (founded by a former Clinton White House chief of staff, John Podesta) and targeting her enemies, as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) did.

How can Warren compete with that?

Should Warren run, she will likely have her own infrastructure in place with Demos, the research and advocacy group whose slogan is “An Equal Say and Equal Chance for All.” Notice the similarity to the title of Warren’s book.

Of course, the Left’s vision of equal opportunity is usually based on some absurd equality-of-outcome scheme, which is part of the core policy positions of Demos: to spend more, tax more, redistribute more, restrict political speech more, and convince the public that big government is good for them. The organization’s mission statement even calls for “rethinking American capitalism as it exists today as a system of political economy.”

The name Demos is actually an ancient Greek word meaning “people” or “the mob.” The Greek term is the root of the English word democracy—and also of demagogue.

Before she was a senator, Demos honored Warren at its 10th anniversary gala in 2010 with its “Transforming America” award, because Warren was the architect of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation (New York Times, April 10, 2010). Demos aggressively advocated for the Dodd-Frank bill and has long supported Warren. In 2003 Demos helped promote Warren’s previous book, The Two Income Trap. But that’s understandable, given that the senator’s daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, is a co-founder and currently chairman of the governing board for Demos.

Demos has a new president, Heather McGhee, who took the job in March when Miles Rapaport left to become president of Common Cause (see Organization Trends, May 2014). McGhee ascended to the presidency after serving as vice president of policy and outreach. She previously served as the deputy policy director for the ill-fated 2008 presidential campaign of former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards (D). There’s no reason to believe she was among the campaign aides involved in covering up Edwards’ extramarital affair or his questionable use of campaign funds that led to his indictment by a federal grand jury. (He was acquitted.)

But more importantly where Demos is concerned, Edwards sought to position himself far to the left of both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during that primary, running a “two Americas” campaign based on class warfare themes that approximate most of the positions in policy papers and books that the organization publishes.

“I am honored that Demos’ board and staff have entrusted me with the leadership of this extraordinary organization at this moment,” McGhee said in a statement after her promotion. “It’s true that a future progressive majority is emerging, but deep change is needed to ensure that the next generation has a meaningful say in our democracy and a chance in our economy. At a time when more Americans are demanding solutions to the inequality crisis, there’s simply no place I’d rather be.”

Other top staff members have a history in left-wing activism.

Brenda Wright, the Demos vice president of legal strategies, is a former managing attorney for the National Voting Rights Institute in Boston, as well as a board member for Common Cause of Massachusetts—Warren’s state, coincidentally. She was also the director of the voting rights project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, where she remains a board member.

Why Did the Left Turn Against Religious Liberty?

Below is an excerpt from my recent piece for Organization Trends:

On June 26, the Supreme Court by 5 to 4 struck down all state-level bans on same-sex marriage. Since then, a poll found that 19 percent of Americans believe “religious institutions or clergy should be required to perform same-sex marriages.” The survey was conducted by the Barna Group, which studies attitudes toward religion in America. That percentage may seem small, but it means one in five Americans have no problem with the government violating the first freedom of the First Amendment. That number increases to more than a quarter—26 percent—among Americans under the age of 40, who believe churches and pastors should be forced to perform gay marriage ceremonies.

Sen. Ted Kennedy (bioguide.congress.gov)

Reasonable people can disagree on the issue of gay marriage as a public policy, but what should not be questioned are the basic First Amendment principles of the country, rights that were reinforced by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed in 1993 by a Democratic administration and Congress.

The majority and dissenting opinions in the same-sex marriage case, Obergefell v. Hodges, addressed the matter of religious freedom. Even President Barack Obama made passing reference to this fundamental liberty when he praised the ruling in the Rose Garden: “All of us who welcome today’s news should be mindful of that fact; recognize different viewpoints; revere our deep commitment to religious freedom.”

For the court’s majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote:

It must be emphasized that religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned. The First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths, and to their own deep aspirations to continue the family structure they have long revered. The same is true of those who oppose same-sex marriage for other reasons.

It’s good to know Kennedy still thinks Americans have the right to hold private religious views. Yet Chief Justice John Roberts responded that many difficult issues remain:

“Respect for sincere religious conviction has led voters and legislators in every state that has adopted same-sex marriage democratically to include accommodations for religious practice. The majority’s decision imposing same-sex marriage cannot, of course, create any such accommodations. … Hard questions arise when people of faith exercise religion in ways that may be seen to conflict with the new right to same-sex marriage—when, for example, a religious college provides married student housing only to opposite-sex married couples, or a religious adoption agency declines to place children with same-sex married couples.”

Now congressional Republicans are considering taking action to protect the First Amendment right to practice religion, not only for clergy and their congregations, but for private businesses as well.  

Another Supreme Court decision, this one in 1990, prompted lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to fear it would be too sweeping. Fierce left-winger Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) sponsored a Senate version to complement the House bill of another hard-left Democrat, then-Rep. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), whom no one ever accused of being a right-wing theocrat.  The bill passed almost unanimously through the House and Senate, and it was happily signed by another Democrat, President Bill Clinton.

Again, Schumer and Kennedy weren’t any kind of right-wingers. But neither are the 21 state laws that were modeled after the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) that Kennedy, Schumer, and Clinton made into law. The legislation was so non-controversial in its time that President Bill Clinton remarked on the bipartisanship consensus on the issue when signing the bill into law, “The power of God is such that even in the legislative process miracles can happen.”
But just this past year, after a journalist hounded a mom-and-pop pizza shop in Walkerton, Indiana, that state’s version of RFRA sparked a national controversy that even the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) felt obliged to join. Charles Schumer, now a U.S. senator and apparently hoping everyone would forget his 1993 actions, tweeted:  “@NCAA if you’re looking for a new place to hold 2021 #FinalFour – NY has plenty of great venues that don’t discriminate.”

Clinton Foundation: No Model for Fiscal Responsibility

If Hillary Clinton wants to tout herself as a candidate for fiscal responsibility, that will be difficult to demonstrate, based on the financial mess of the Clinton Foundation, which has been little more than a cauldron or corruption and cronyism.

Bill Clinton never tires of reminding the public that he was the last president to sign a balanced federal budget. But the financial management of the foundation is less than exemplary, as the New York Times reported in August 2013.

The foundation ran deficits in 2007 and 2008 because it faced competition—Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. That may very well repeat itself over the next two years. The foundation had multi-million-dollar shortfalls several other years as well. The Times reported that in 2012, the Clinton Foundation raked in $214 million but still ran a shortfall of $8 million.

The Times reported that the organization staff was concerned it was too reliant on Bill Clinton for buck raking, and so pulled in Hillary and Chelsea with a goal of raising the endowment to $250 million.

As the latest Clinton campaign competes with the foundation for funds, it’s worth realizing how much duplication exists between the two. The headline of a recent column by the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel summed it up: “The Clinton Foundation Super PAC. It’s past time to drop the fiction that the Clinton Foundation is a charity.”

“Most family charities exist to allow self-made Americans to disperse their good fortune to philanthropic causes,” Strassel wrote. “The Clinton Foundation exists to allow the nation’s most powerful couple to use their not-so-subtle persuasion to exact global tribute for a fund that promotes the Clintons.”

The Washington Post reported that Clinton fundraiser Susie Tompkins Buell, a member of George Soros’s shadowy billionaires’ club known as the Democracy Alliance, donated $10 million to the Clinton Foundation (for more on the Democracy Alliance, see Foundation Watch, October 2014). In February, the foundation’s chief development officer, Dennis Cheng, resigned to be a fundraiser for Hillary’s 2016 campaign. And in March of this year the Wall Street Journal reported that Donna Shalala, one of the more controversial members of Bill Clinton’s cabinet, will take over as CEO of the foundation later this year when her tenure as president of Miami University ends. When she served as Health and Human Services Secretary, Shalala, a longtime Clinton loyalist, “thought it was a mistake to run the effort to overhaul the U.S. health-care system from the White House, and she opposed Mr. Clinton’s decision to sign a sweeping welfare law.” After defending President Clinton when “allegations of an affair with intern Monica Lewinsky surfaced,” she later “dressed him down in front of the cabinet” after Clinton “admitted that he had had an improper relationship” with Lewinsky.

Not Just Foregin Donations: Other Shady Ties to the Clinton Foundation

 As bad as foreign donations are, it's not the only problem facing the Clinton Foundation, as explained in in Foundation Watch.
 

Foreign donors aren’t the only shady sources of funds for the organization. Denise Rich—ex-wife of billionaire fugitive Marc Rich charged with wire fraud, tax fraud, tax evasion, and other felonies—gave the foundation $450,000. Bill Clinton gave a presidential pardon to Marc Rich on his last day in office.

George Soros’s Soros Foundation, the European arm of the radical left-wing billionaire’s Open Society Institute, has also donated.

In December 2008, the Clinton Foundation reported it received between $1 million and $5 million from Issam Fares, the former deputy prime minister of Lebanon and now chairman of the Wedge Group, an investment firm in Houston. Fares was also a supporter of Hezbollah and of President Bashar Assad in Syria.

The foundation received between $1 million and $5 million from Friends of Saudi Arabia, a pro-Saudi advocacy group in the United States. The foundation also received between $1 million and $5 million from Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who served as president of the United Arab Emirates from 1971-2004. In 1999, his family set up the Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow-Up, which became a haven for anti-Israel sentiment, terrorist sympathizers, and Holocaust deniers (DiscoverTheNetworks.org).

The Soros-funded Tides Foundation, which mostly acts as a pass-through organization that draws a curtain over ties between donors and various left-wing causes that receive their money, doled out $48,500 to the Clinton Foundation in 2013, another $12,000 to the Clinton Health Access Initiative, and another $3,000 to the foundation in 2012; as well as $19,000 to the Clinton Global Initiative in 2011 and $5,000 to the foundation in 2009 (WND, March 9, 2015; for more on the Tides Foundation, see Foundation Watch, October 2010).

Alarmingly, the Clinton Foundation worked with the now-defunct Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, better known as ACORN. The foundation in 2006 used ACORN to try to persuade residents of the Gulf Coast to sign up for the earned income tax credit (EITC) after Hurricane Katrina.

“For victims of Katrina, EITC is a powerful tool to help rebuild lives in the short-term and realize big dreams in the long-term,” Bill Clinton said in a statement announcing the partnership. “We can put more money in people’s pockets today, simply by spreading the word about this credit and helping families with tax preparation. We’re focusing on those who lost so much after Hurricane Katrina, because this credit can be the difference between financial hardship and rebuilding a better life.”

ACORN president Maude Hurd said in the same announcement: “EITC gives low income people in our communities what they need most—the resources to take care of their families and better their lives. This year, Katrina survivors are in special need of both good information about the EITC and the funds to help rebuild their lives. We are extremely pleased that we can work with the Clinton Foundation to help displaced families across the country.”

Could the Drip, Drip, Drip on Foundation Ultimately Topple Hillary Before the First Primary?

Martin O'Malley's formal entry into the 2016 presidential campaign, joining Bernie Sanders, could be a sign that at least some Democrats view Hillary Clinton as less of a forgone conclusion than much of the political class.

With the drip, drip, drip, it's worth pondering: What happens if it all becomes too much? O'Malley might be in a good position with his organization already in place. But expect Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and other bigger names to enter the Democratic field if Hillary does implode.

Here's an excerpt from my Capital Research Center piece on the Clinton Foundation, which is bound to cause more problems for Hillary.
 

While Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State, the governments of Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Australia, Norway, Algeria, and the Dominican Republic all lavished millions of dollars on the Clinton Foundation. While acting coy when questioned about most of these, the Clinton Foundation has admitted it should have sought approval from the State Department before accepting $500,000 from the government of Algeria. Whoops.

For the entirety of the Clinton Foundation’s existence, foreign donors made up one-third of all donors giving more than $1 million and made up more than half of donors who gave $5 million or more

In fact, Bill Clinton even saw the foreign donations from shady countries as a positive. “I think it is a good thing—for example, the U.A.E. gave us money,” the former president said of the United Arab Emirates. “Do we agree with everything they do? No. But they are helping us fight ISIS, and they built a great university with NYU, open to people around the world. And they have helped us support the work that this foundation does. … Do I agree with all the foreign policy of Saudi Arabia? No.”

In late March, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus sent a letter to Jarrett, now a White House Senior Adviser. Among the questions in the letter were (1) “At what point did the Administration become aware that the MOU and the process of vetting Clinton Foundation donors were flawed?” (2) “What did the White House do, if anything, to mitigate issues with the Clinton Foundation’s donors?” (3) “Was the White House aware that the MOU was insufficient while Clinton was serving as Secretary of State? If so, were any addendums added to supplement the MOU?” (4) “Was there any independent audit or verification that the Clinton Foundation was abiding by the MOU’s Donor Disclosure provisions?” (5) “Were foreign governments that contributed to the Clinton Foundation given special treatment or consideration by the White House?” (6) “If the White House had been aware of the violations, would the Clinton Foundation or Secretary Clinton have been reprimanded in some fashion for their actions?”

“The public deserves detailed answers to these questions. I request a response to each in writing,” the RNC chairman continued. “The MOU was billed to the public and Congress as a pledge toward transparency and the avoidance of conflicts of interest. The American people deserve to know whether it was nothing more than a memorandum between parties that had no real interest in either of these goals.”

For its part, the White House had little to say when asked whether the foundation was getting money from foreign governments. “I’m certainly not going to have a response to them from here, but I think that was a letter that they sent to the State Department?” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told the press. “You mentioned both the contents of the letter describing the Clinton Foundation and the actions of the Secretary of State at the State Department. So, I wouldn’t anticipate a response from here.”

When a journalist responded, “But it was the White House that was supposed to have the agreement overseeing it,” Earnest said, “Well again, for questions about actions by the Clinton Foundation I’d direct you to the foundation that does very important work around the world, but I don’t have a reaction to the letter.”

It’s no surprise that a Democratic administration would not be eager to criticize the party’s presumptive presidential nominee. But what’s clear is that typical Clinton corruption became an Obama administration problem thanks to a family that prefers to explain things after the fact rather than ask permission before acting.

And much more potentially damning evidence is on its way.

As the New York Times reported last month, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why

Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, by acclaimed best-selling author Peter Schweizer is scheduled to be published May 5. The book, “a 186-page investigation of donations made to the Clinton Foundation by foreign entities — is proving the most anticipated and feared book of a presidential cycle still in its infancy,” according to the newspaper.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), now a declared presidential candidate, said the book contains “big news” that will “shock people” and make voters “question” Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy. The volume “asserts that foreign entities who made payments to the Clinton Foundation and to Mr. Clinton through high speaking fees received favors from Mrs. Clinton’s State Department in return,” the Times reports.

“We will see a pattern of financial transactions involving the Clintons that occurred contemporaneous with favorable U.S. policy decisions benefiting those providing the funds,” Schweizer writes.
Paid by radical billionaire George Soros, the leftists at the Center for American Progress and Media Matters for America are doing their best to smear Schweizer, who serves as president of the Government Accountability Institute. That nonprofit declares on its website that its mission is “to investigate and expose crony capitalism, misuse of taxpayer monies, and other governmental corruption or malfeasance.” Schweizer was previously a consultant to NBC News and the William J. Casey Research Fellow at the prestigious Hoover Institution.

After admitting he hadn’t read the book, Media Matters founder David Brock, a former Clinton detractor turned Clinton booster, slammed Clinton Cash on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show. “I think this is a political put-up job, and I can smell it from a mile away,” Brock said. That was too much for the show’s co-hosts, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who then cross-examined Brock on whether it’s fair to consider if the book might contain information about the alleged reciprocal relationship between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department. Brock said it’s a non-issue because Mrs. Clinton handed over 55,000 pages of her emails from her time in the Obama administration.

Brzezinski interjected, “That’s not the question,” indicating she was referring to the 30,000 emails Clinton admitted were deleted. “There’s no answer, is there?” Brzezinski asked. Brock was dismissive of the female journalist, replying that the pages of emails that the State Department will eventually release will throw light on Clinton’s official duties.

“No, David,” Brzezinski said. “That’s the way the law works, Mika,” Brock replied, saying that individual government agencies are allowed to decide how their records should be archived.
Brzezinski bristled at that answer and said angrily, “No, actually, David, you don’t have to give me a lesson on the regulations of the State Department.”

The Center for American Progress, founded by Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign manager John Podesta (who was also White House Chief of Staff for President Bill Clinton), attacked the book in a ThinkProgress blog post by Aviva Shen. Shen doesn’t write much worth reading but she does point out that the evidence in the book wouldn’t be enough to convict the Clintons in court, a fact conceded by the book’s author.

Does Obama Want Credit for Keystone?

So many questions as to why on earth President Barack Obama would veto a no-brainer, job creator like the Keystone pipeline bill.

The presumption is that Obama is simply an ideologue. Or he's simply beholden to Tom Steyer and the environmental lobby. Or he is so hopelessly partisan, he just wants to veto everything the Republican Congress sends him.

President Barack Obamma (WhiteHouse.gov)

Or, he wants to take credit for all the productivity that comes from the Keystone XL pipeline.

From the Washington Examiner:

President Obama Monday predicted that the State Department would conclude its review of the Keystone XL pipeline within "weeks or months," meaning the White House likely would make the final call on the project this year.

"I think it will happen before the end of my administration," Obama told Reuters on Monday, referring to the Keystone XL project, which the State Department has been reviewing for more than six years.

When pressed further, Obama suggested the evaluation would be completed within "weeks or months."

The president recently vetoed legislation authorizing construction of the 1,700-mile pipeline, just the third time he has exercised such powers.

So sure. Veto and totally get Congress out of it. Then in weeks or months, when he needs a boost and Republicans are distracted on other issues, boom, the State Department completes it's ongoing process. After the process is done, it's the Obama administration -- having done its due diligence -- that approved the Keystone pipeline. If it creates as many jobs as advertised, it's part of the president's legacy. If not, well, it was his State Department that did it.

La Raza's Reach Into the White House

After the Obama immigration actions, I looked at the National Council of La Raza's extensive reach inside the White House, as I point out in my feature on the organization in Organizations Trends.

Cecilia Muñoz (WhiteHouse.gov)

No matter who the next president is, it’s unlikely the organization will enjoy the same clout with the White House as it has under the Obama administration. The reason is what the government watchdog group Judicial Watch calls the “Muñoz factor.”

Muñoz refers to Cecilia Muñoz, a former vice president of La Raza who is now Obama’s White House domestic policy director. (Her official title is “Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council.”) The New York Times referred to her as a “fiery immigration rights lobbyist” who in 1997 was furious when Clinton White House staff twice asked her if she was an American citizen. ...

As an activist, she said there should be another amnesty just four years after the 1987 amnesty in a report she wrote for La Raza. Her report also called for ending all workplace enforcement aimed at illegal immigrants.
While serving in the Obama White House, she minimized the seriousness of illegal immigration. “If you were running the police department of any urban area in this country, you would spend more resources going after serious criminals than after jaywalkers. DHS (the Department of Homeland Security) is doing the immigration equivalent of the same thing,” Muñoz told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute conference in September 2011.

When the Obama White House asked her to come on board, she turned them down, feeling she was an activist not a policymaker. But then Obama made a personal call.
“He said that he wasn’t taking no for an answer, that he intended to make this as family-friendly a place as it could be, and that he wanted me to help change the country,” Muñoz said. After the 2012 election, Muñoz said she is glad she joined the White House staff because “the Latino community has gone from being invisible in this town to being not only visible but clear agents of change driving the country forward.” Muñoz added, “People feel empowered”.

Click here to read the full article.

Politicizing the Super Bowl: Why a Lefty Mag Believes the Seattle Seahawks are the Progressive Cause

Ahead of the Super Bowl, the far, far left magazine, The Nation, tells America why it must root for the Seattle Seahawks over the New England Patriots. This intriguing piece I flagged courtesy of the Daily Caller.

“If only” star athletes used their hyper-exalted-brought-to-you-by Nike platform to actually say something about the world instead of just trying to sell us more crap. If only they stood up to tired sports media that for decades had treated outspoken athletes with a sneering and, in the case of black players, transparently racist contempt… This is reason enough, if you aren’t from the Maine-to-Connecticut-corridor, to pull for the Seattle Seahawks. This is a team that has had players speak out for the Black Lives Matter movement and a team that has felt no compunction against calling out a commissioner in Roger Goodell who cares more about public relations than the players and the families of players that the league employs.

I wrote about the shameless legacy of The Nation magazine that is about this publication that will mark its 150th anniversary this year in my piece in Organization Trends.

Oscar Garrison Villard took over the magazine, producing it again as a stand-alone publication and moving it to the far left. It hasn’t returned to sanity since. Under its new leaders, The Nation enthusiastically backed the Russian Revolution in 1917 and was the first American magazine to print the Soviet Constitution. Vladimir Lenin wasn’t the only tyrant to make its editors’ hearts skip a beat. Over the decades, The Nation would apologize and make excuses for Josef Stalin, Pol Pot, and Ho Chi Minh. All this time, it issued various hysterical warnings that portrayed the United States as one step away from fascism, theocracy, or corporate oligarchy. 

Stalin supporter Freda Kirchwey replaced Villard as editor in 1932, a time when the United States was believed to be at the doorstep of its progressive utopia as Franklin Delano Roosevelt was running for president. Kirchwey was an early secular progressive culture warrior who used the magazine to advocate for such fashionable causes as sexual freedom and birth control (Freda Kirchwey: A Woman of ‘The Nation,’ Harvard University Press). The Nation managed to end up on the side of the United States in World War II—at least once Stalin had broken with his treaty partner Adolph Hitler and needed America’s help. The Nation and Kirchwey did tick off progressives in 1948 by refusing to break rank with Democrats and support Progressive Party presidential candidate Henry Wallace. 

Carey McWilliams, a lawyer, left-wing journalist, and labor organizer, took the helm of the magazine in 1955, as the magazine persistently sympathized with the Soviets on Cold War policies. Among the writers to start at the magazine during McWilliams’ time were radical activist/presidential candidate Ralph Nader, Marxist historian Howard Zinn, and gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson ... 

Ironically, in 1989 the magazine founded by an abolitionist published a slapstick, twinkle-in-your-eye piece about child sex slaves from Haiti by Herbert Gold, who wrote, “For a writer going through personal distractions, an escape into the indulgence of melodrama can provide what the maker of an analgesic calls temporary fast relief. Slave Trade was intended to offer a lively passing of time” (Dec. 18, 1989) ... 

In 2004, the Anti-Defamation League asked why The Nation would allow advertising from a group of Holocaust deniers called the Institute for Historical Review. The ad was titled, “Unmasking Israel’s Most Dangerous Myths” and called the Holocaust a “historical myth cited to justify Zionist aggression and repression.” 

“Doesn’t The Nation have advertising acceptability standards that identify and reject offensive content?” asked ADL national director Abraham H. Foxman in an April 21, 2004 letter to the editor. “If it does, it somehow missed the obvious here. Unfortunately, giving space to a group that sponsors Holocaust denial only lends them credibility and perpetuates a lie.”

The New Republic's Sorry Fall

The mass revolt from The New Republic has reportedly sent a number of writers to new outlets. Still the magazine is having a difficult time recovering. More recently (in what may or may not be an attempt to deliver an audacious cover story in the midst of its free fall) the magazine is doing a self examination on its legacy on race. 

Never a moneymaker, the magazine has a storied history, but has been taken down the tubes by its new management, as I write in Organization Trends.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, known for his snarkiness, wrote mournfully in his Dec. 8, 2014 column about his former employer: “The New Republic is dead; Chris Hughes killed it.” In 2012 Hughes, the wealthy tech liberal, bought the magazine founded by Walter Lippmann, Herbert Crowley, and Willard Straight. “But Hughes is no Lippmann; he’s a callow man who accidentally became rich—to the tune of some $700 million—because he had the luck of being Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s roommate at Harvard,” Milbank wrote. 

Just last year it celebrated its 100th anniversary. Hughes decided it was going to be a technology company and fired Franklin Foer as editor, replacing him with an editor who had been fired from the low-rent gossip website Gawker. This move prompted staffers to flee and most contributing editors to demand that their names be removed from the masthead. The bloodbath caused at least 58 of 87 names on the masthead to disappear. 

The magazine’s apparent death comes after years of being to the right of most other lefty publications. The magazine supported the Global War on Terror and tried to invoke the party of FDR and JFK over the party of MoveOn.org and Daily Kos. It supported Joe Lieberman’s hopeless bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. 

It had some dark years, including a period of editorship under Henry Wallace, FDR’s former vice president and an apologist for Stalin (years later, Wallace recanted). After Wallace left as editor to run for president on the Progressive ticket, the editor in the late 1940s into the 1950s was Michael Whitney Straight, later revealed to be a Soviet spy in Anthony Blunt’s ring at Cambridge University (the two were briefly lovers).

Click here to read the full story.

Will Eric Holder's Push for Drug Amnesty Continue Under Next Attorney General?

In a parting shot at outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, published in Organization Trends, I focus on an aspect of Holder's tenure that gotten less attention, the drug amnesty movement. The issue is something for senators to consider in the confirmation hearing for Loretta Lynch. Please read full article here.

Here's an excerpt:

In a video message earlier this year, Holder talked about the Clemency Project, which is the Obama administration’s initiative aimed at freeing as many as 20,000 drug offenders. “In 2010, President Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act reducing unfair disparities in sentences imposed on people for offenses involving different forms of cocaine,” Holder said. “But there’s still too many people in federal prison who were sentenced under the old regime and who, as a result, will have to spend far more time in prison than they would if sentenced today for exactly the same crime,” he said. “This is simply not right."

The Fair Sentencing Act changed the quantity of crack cocaine and powder cocaine needed to trigger mandatory minimum sentencing laws. The statute eliminated five-year sentences for crack cocaine and reversed many of the provisions of the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act.

The Obama administration was going to use executive action to make a 2010 law passed by Congress retroactively cover sentences handed down by courts prior to the change in the law. For an administration that’s had jolly fun circumventing the legislative branch, this new initiative gave Obama and Holder a means of doing an extra-constitutional end-run around the federal judiciary.
The administration is receiving help from private groups, both large and small, that are united in a push for the relaxation of narcotics laws. Leading the way in recruiting prisoners to seek early clemency through the president’s mass pardon program are the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU Foundation Inc., 2013 assets $341.1 million; ACLU Inc., 2013 assets $34.7 million), National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (2012 assets $6.8 million), American Bar Association (2013 assets $298.1 million), and Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM Foundation, 2012 assets $1.2 million).

No one who follows the activist Left should be surprised to learn that radical philanthropist George Soros funds some of these advocacy organizations. Soros’s Foundation to Promote Open Society has provided grants to ACLU Foundation ($3,192,000 since 2009) and FAMM Foundation ($1.2 million since 2009). His Open Society Institute (recently renamed Open Society Foundations) has given grants to ACLU Foundation ($24,912,175 since 1999) and FAMM Foundation ($1,771,000 since 1999). The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has received $20,800 from the Soros-funded Tides Foundation.