2016

While the most arrogant President in modern American history pontificates that if only he had been permitted to run for a third term he would have been easily reelected, President-elect Donald Trump is methodically preparing to assume office as the first true reformer since Ronald Reagan. Media pundits love to speculate on what Trump’s “First 100 Days” will look like. However, the country’s 45th President-in-waiting likely will press an agenda that can accomplish more in his first month than most of his predecessors accomplished in their first year.

After all, what is so magical about the “first 100 days”? It is nothing more than an arbitrary benchmark for critics and supporters of a new president to cheer or denounce the new White House occupant. Moreover, there is much a new president can accomplish immediately on assuming office and in the days following. For President Trump, a few recommended “first steps:”

1. Deliver a bold foreign policy address at a major international forum, within one week of January 20th.

As last week’s terror attacks in Germany and Turkey continue to demonstrate, dealing with acts of terrorism will face Trump as soon as he is sworn in. As I wrote last week, America remains in desperate need of a foreign policy reboot. Obama’s default position has been one of submission; an odd mixture of mealy-mouthed rhetoric, coupled with efforts to shift focus away from the real problem – radical Islamic terrorism — to pet domestic agenda concerns such as gun control.

Trump needs immediately to signal a change in course. To do this, he must demonstrate a clear shift from the “kinder and gentler” mentality of the Obama Administration, to a bold and firm declaration that our enemies once again shall be on notice that any attack on America, her citizens, or her interests, will be met with force. Furthermore, just as he did when he took the historic call from the Taiwanese president, Trump should make it clear that no other country – especially China – will be dictating what we can or should do when pursuing what is best for America.

2. Ignite America’s energy policy.

Trump’s declaration of a new American foreign policy must be coupled with a sweeping reform of America’s energy policy. To help secure our long-term security, America must become more energy self-sufficient — a direction abandoned by Obama in favor of “green energy” subsidies and favors to global warming activists and liberal donors.

As President, Trump will have the power to – and therefore should — take steps immediately to undo many of the anti-energy policies implemented by his predecessor. Thus, within his first days in office, Trump should approve the fourth phase of the Keystone XL Pipeline; which collected cobwebs on Obama’s desk for six years, only to be symbolically rejected when Democrats needed to score P.R. points with their liberal base.

Trump also should instruct the Army Corp of Engineers to reverse its decision to block the proposed North Dakota Access Pipeline — a decision made after intense pressure from Obama and his cadre of environmental extremists.

These two shots across the bow of the Oil Cartel and the environmental lobby will make clear there is a New Sheriff in Town who will indeed put America back to work and in charge.

3. Restore Justice and Federalism.

For eight years, our once vaunted Department of Justice has been politicized and used as a club to beat up on and control local law enforcement agencies. Rehabilitating the Justice Department’s shattered reputation, and restoring a proper balance between federal and state/local law enforcement responsibilities should be among the highest priorities for the new President. So long as the reputation of the United States Department of Justice remains at an all-time low, credibility of all federal agencies and responsibilities will continue to erode.

To set the stage for a rebirth of Justice, as soon as Jeff Sessions is confirmed by the Senate as the nation’s 84th Attorney General, the new President should deliver a major policy address, from the Great Hall at the Department of Justice,declaring in clear and unambiguous terms, that the “war on cops” is over, and that historically and constitutionally-based priorities at the Department will be restored and implemented.

4. Nominate Sen. Mike Lee to fill the vacancy of the Supreme Court.

This is a no-brainer, and should announced as early as January 21st. It will send Liberals into conniption fits, but put a smile on the face of Lady Justice.

These four simple but important steps by the new President Trump will set the stage for a rebirth of the Constitution at home; place the country on a firm, new path to security and energy independence; and lay the groundwork for the legislative challenges facing the Administration in the following months, including repeal of Dodd-Frank, and repeal and replacing Obamacare.

In Roman ruler Julius Caesar’s account of the Gallic Wars, written in the ancient manuscript Commentarii de Bello Gallico, he describes the principle of “murum aries attigit” – which states that a soon-to-be-conquered city would be offered conditions of surrender by the Romans, but only “before the battering-ram should touch the wall.” And, should it touch the wall, no longer would such mercy would be shown, and only total devastation would follow. The doctrine was meant to foster a diplomatic resolution by dissuading further hostilities with the very real threat of no alternative but death.

In recent years the Russian government, under Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, has adopted a similar doctrine in its response to Islamic terrorism. This approach was first displayed in 2002 when Putin used unconventional – some might say “brutal” — methods of subduing 40 Chechan rebels who had stormed a Moscow theater, taking more than 850 hostages. The raid on the theater, which included the use of a “knock-out” gas, unintentionally resulted in the death of more than 100 hostages. Putin brushed aside criticism, noting the rescue saved hundreds of other hostages while killing all the Islamic terrorists. Moreover, as Putin stated, the response “proved it is impossible to bring Russia to its knees.”

Such a heavy-handed response to a terrorism is utterly unthinkable in Obama World. While Putin has adopted the murum aries attigit doctrine against terrorism, Obama has opted instead for a policy that virtually ignores the very existence of Islamic terrorism. How Russia is likely to respond to this week’s assassination of its Ambassador to Turkey, compared to America’s own responses to recent acts of terrorism, including its own assassinated Ambassador to Libya in 2012, presents a stark contrast in leadership in the post-911 world.

Immediately following the assassination Monday of Russian Ambassador Andrey Karlov, in which the attacker stood over the body shouting support of global jihad, Putin promised to escalate its fight against terrorism, and warned those “bandits” responsible for the assassination “will feel this happening.” Compare this to the Obama Administration’s tepid and waveringan response to the 2012 terror attack on an American diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya. Despite knowing almost immediately the attack was a planned terror attack, Obama’s State Department – led by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – denied any connection to Islamic terrorism, and declared the attack was merely a “spontaneous protest” over a YouTube video that got out of hand. Later, when this was proven to be a bald-faced lie, Obama intentionally stonewalled congressional investigations into the many security failures that led to the attack.

There was no declaration of definitive action by Washington, or promise of swift retribution. Such obfuscation of facts, and dodging having to verbally recognize the threat of Islamic terrorism, has been the standard response to acts of terrorism at home and abroad under Obama. For example, Obama and his Democratic cronies in Congress used the 2015 terrorist shooting spree in San Bernardino, California not to announce a commitment to wiping ISIS from the map, but as an excuse to talk about “gun control.” In response to the massacre earlier this year at an Orlando nightclub popular in the gay community, Obama pushed a politically coded message about “tolerance.”

Obama’s inability to accept the reality of global terrorism for fear of offending the globalist community or a cherished interest group, and the lack of definitive action beyond waiting and seeing whether the “international community” will first “come together” to help “degrade” and “manage” such attacks on U.S. citizens and interests, has created a vacuum in which ISIS and its lone-wolf converts are actively plotting future attacks. In fact, Obama’s response to terrorism, if doing so at all, has been so backwards that Al Qaeda even struggles with making sure it gets proper credit for its activities — suggesting attackers target Caucasians so as to avoid such attacks being labeled “hate crimes” rather than terrorism.

Putin is far from a model leader, but his strong, consistent and definitive response to terrorism leaves no doubt where Russia stands on combatting global terrorism, or what its response will be to those who seek to do Russia harm. Fortunately for America, Obama’s time in office is finally coming to a close, and our next president, Donald Trump, does not look to be one to keep the battering ram from the wall for long.

Days before the November 8th election, the biggest question from Democrats was not if their candidate would win (which in their minds was never in doubt), but how Trump would handle losing. Would he concede with grace, or would he go down kicking-and-screaming, like a toddler whose favorite toy was taken away? Talk about a vicious role reversal.

Ironically, now more than a month removed from Election Day, it seems the Democrats are the ones in desperate need of a group pacifier. In whatever scenario they envisioned for how Trump would lose the election, the Left has surely surpassed it with their fits of screaming about “Russian hacking” and “fake news” costing them the election.

Adding to their PESD (post-election stress disorder) has been Trump’s excellent picks for his cabinet; demonstrating a clear commitment to reforming how the Executive Branch operates. This stark change from the previous two administrations, in which government power was vastly extended across the board, has created a reaction similar to that seen in 1980, when the full extent of the political reset from the Jimmy Carter years became apparent with Ronald Reagan’s cabinet selections.

The hard reality of not only losing the election, but losing an important tool to pushing their agenda by using regulatory rulemaking to bypass Congress, has sent liberals into a full-blown conniption fit. Meanwhile, conservatives and the working class finally catch a breath of fresh air.

Here is a look at just a few of such picks:

As I have written previously, Trump’s nominee for U.S. Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, will shift the focus of the Justice Department away from the current Administration’s witch-hunts among local police departments, and its politicization of priorities within various substantive divisions within the Department. Sessions comes from a more traditional, real-crimes based approach to federal law enforcement policy, and will work to reduce the footprint of the Department in control over local police departments, and refocus its priorities on proper federal law enforcement issues.

At the EPA, Trump’s nominee, Scott Pruitt, looks to reform what has been one of the worst offending agencies in abusing its regulatory power to push a partisan agenda. In so doing, Pruitt would start putting taxpayer dollars into environmental programs that foster genuine conservation and protection of natural resources, rather than continuing to prosecute political wars against coal and in support of “global warming” – hallmarks of the Obama Administration for the past eight years. This could mean an end to onerous environmental regulations, such as the Clean Power Plan and overbearing CAFE standards; it would also mean a big boost to jobs in industries such as agriculture and energy, which would be freed from regulatory burdens that inhibit growth and innovation.

The Labor Department is also due for serious reshaping with the nomination of Andrew Puzder, Chief Executive of CKE Restaurants. Unlike the typical career bureaucrat at Labor, whose closest connection to job creation has been through academic treatises and pro-union regulations, Puzder is responsible for employing tens of thousands of working-class Americans. Because of this experience in the private sector — specifically in the restaurant industry where labor regulations, like raising the federal minimum wage or Obama’s recent overtime rules, determine the fate of millions of jobs — Puzder will be a crucial voice in curtailing oppressive labor regulations.

Trump also nominated Betsy DeVos, a champion of school choice, to head the Department of Education – a perfect fit for her at a department that under both Obama and Bush, attempted to extend its reach from Washington into the classrooms of communities across America. The appointment of DeVos harkens back to the days when the GOP was actually serious about keeping control of school districts in the hands of local communities. It is unlikely we will see anything the likes of “No Child Left Behind” coming from a Department of Education headed by DeVos.

Predictably, of course, these and other Trump cabinet picks have thrown the Left into fits of rage. Nary has a single Democrat stepped forward to ponder that perhaps having a job creator as Secretary of Labor might make some sense. Who on the left has the guts to recognize that EPA need not be an industry killer in order to protect the environment within the bounds of federal jurisdiction? And, with the Left held hostage by the Black Lives Matter movement, there is no room to acknowledge that an Attorney General who actually supports good local policing benefits all citizens.

Watching the Left melt down in agony over Trump’s cabinet choices will be a humorous side show; but the tangible benefits that will result from what the President-elect is doing will be magnificent to behold.

In just over a month since winning the 2016 presidential election — and more than that away from even assuming the duties of President — it would seem Donald Trump has withstood more media scrutiny than Barack Obama did during his entire eight years in office. From who Trump is considering for cabinet positions, to simply having a steak dinner without the media asking him what on the menu looks good, Trump’s every move is dissected by a Mainstream Media machine looking for the tiniest slip-up. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that a call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen would send steam shooting from their ears.

“Honestly, this is just *insane*,” MSNBC flack Chris Hayes feverishly pecked on Twitter after reports of the call; joined by others in the liberal media basically accusing Trump of being “ignorant” to the diplomatic differences between “China” (as in the People’s Republic of China, or PRC) and “Taiwan” (as in the Republic of China, or ROC), and bemoaning how it might provoke the Chinese. However, just as he was constantly underestimated by the media during the entire campaign season, I suspect Trump knew exactly what he was doing by taking the call.

Beyond merely the raging antipathy liberals in the media have for Trump, they claim Trump has no right to violate a four-decades-long “One China” policy that ignores our long-time ally of Taiwan, in favor of the Beijing regime. This is utter nonsense. The ROC is a sovereign nation; albeit one that the U.S. and most other nations have decided is less important diplomatically than the PRC. However, there is no impediment under international or U.S. law for someone in the U.S. communicating with an official from Taiwan. Given the many recent (and unprovoked) belligerent actions of the Chinese against the Taiwanese, the U.S., and other nations in the Pacific rim (the fly-bys of Taiwan by Chinese war planes, the creation of man-made, military “islands” in international waters, to name just a few examples), it is perhaps more important than ever such communications exist.

Presidents, beginning with Jimmy Carter and continuing to the current occupant of the White House, may be okay with treating Taiwan like a cross-eyed step child, but considering the increasingly cozy Sino-Russian relationship, which clearly is aligned against the long-term strategic interests of the United States, it may be far better to have a President who is willing to buck the status quo. While the U.S. and other nations may have decided in previous decades — for whatever reason(s) — to recognize diplomatically “One China,” it certainly does not mean we should never reevaluate that position, or refuse to deal with a long-term and consistent strategic ally like Taiwan. In fact, a more open dialogue with Taiwan may perhaps even improve our military posture vis-à-vis the PRC, and our negotiations (direct and indirect) regarding Beijing.

The only way to truly know is to make the first step, which Trump already has done.

More importantly, perhaps, is the message Trump is sending to the world with “The Call.” For the last eight years, American foreign policy was crafted by feckless bureaucrats in the Obama Administration, whose default position in engaging with other nations, especially other superpowers, was one of submission. Obama has been shown repeatedly to be vastly outmatched by Putin on the global scale, looking much like a wimp crying at a bully during Russia’s hostilities against Ukraine in a crisis that continues to this day. Also, let us not forget that Obama unthinkably paid a ransom to Iran, just to gain its cooperation in a nuclear deal in which Tehran had the upper hand from the very get-go. As it has been said many times, Obama has stood flatfooted and paralyzed in fear as the world continues to crumble in the absence of real leadership coming from the United States.

If the call with Taiwan is any indication, the routine posture of submission looks to change dramatically under President Trump. “The president of the United States should talk to whomever he wants if he thinks it’s in the interest of the United States,” said former UN Ambassador John Bolton of Trump’s now-historic call. “And nobody in Beijing gets to dictate who we talk to.” Such a bold attitude towards American exceptionalism is a welcomed change in international relations. And all it took was a single phone call.

Though it may be distasteful to some to “speak ill of the dead,” the passing of a tyrant or a murderer should not serve as an excuse to erase the evil they did while they were among the living. However, in the make-believe world in which President Barack Obama operates, the death of a murderous despot like Fidel Castro, is indeed occasion to sing his praises; especially since the recently departed despised the United States.

It is not only Obama who took the occasion of Fidel’s long-anticipated death to wax eloquent about the Cuban’s wondrous accomplishments. Lefties from across the country and Canada verbally prostrated themselves in praising the communist Jefe Maximo.

Jill Stein, the middle-aged radical hippie who recently carried the Green Party’s banner in the presidential election, praised Castro as “a symbol of the struggle for justice in the shadow of empire.” Stein’s statement would be simply hilarious, but for the fact it came not from the mouth of a child with no knowledge of concepts such as “justice” or “empire,” but from the mouth of a grown woman.

Then we have Rep. Barbara Lee, a Democrat from Oakland, and one the Left’s standard bearers in the Congress, who decreed that Americans need to “stop and pause and mourn [Castro’s] loss.” The California Representative then piled on the plaudits; declaring that Fidel’s “revolution” led to “social improvements for his people” – when gushing over the death of a fellow Leftist, why let facts cloud your vision.

However, none of these bleary-eyed tributes came close to the nonsense heard north of the border — from Canada’s playboy Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The Canadian heartthrob expressed “deep sorrow” at Castro’s death; mourning him as a kindly grandfather figure. To the young Mr. Trudeau, Castro had nary a mean bone in his body, and was simply a good-hearted “larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century.” As they said back in the eighties, “Gag me with a spoon.”

To Liberal Pollyannas such as these, death squads, torture, government kidnappings, censorship, and imprisoning political opponents, can (must?) be overlooked if undertaken in pursuit of “social justice” (whatever that term means to them). We conservatives know that viewing the world through such rose-colored glasses, accounts in large measure for the revisionist double standard that guides contemporary Liberals. And, some of the results of this warped worldview are truly bizarre.

Take, for instance, a recent call by more than 450 professors and students at the University of Virginia to stop the university president from “quoting” Thomas Jefferson in school-wide emails. Despite Jefferson’s central role in establishing both the University of Virginia and the United States of America, these campus buffoons have decided that his wisdom is not only irrelevant today, but actually harmful to the sensibilities of 20th Century academia; because the author of the Declaration of Independence and our third President, owned slaves back in the 18th Century.

This is not the first-time Jefferson has been targeted in recent years either; Democrats in Connecticut voted in 2015 to remove Jefferson’s name from an important annual fundraising dinner, presumably to avoid offending those incensed by a rational review of history. “You can’t change history, but you don’t have to honor it,” was their excuse.

Sadly, this is a malady that has infected not only political leaders and academics; after all, we live in a society in which people – including multi-millionaire sports figure Colin Kaepernick — wear t-shirts depicting Fidel Castro and his brother-in-arms, Che Guevara. The majority of those who display Guevara’s face on their clothing likely have no idea who he was; but to those who do, his visage adorns their shirt not because he was a cold-blooded killer, but rather because he has morphed into an heroic symbol of anti-capitalism.

By making figures like Castro, Guevara, and Hugo Chavez (who Obama was once photographed warmly greeting at a 2009 Summit of the Americas conference) heroes, and demonizing others like Thomas Jefferson, the Left has created a disturbingly partisan standard that distorts history in favor of its warped worldview. This may be easy to overlook in individuals like Kaepernick and Stein, but from world leaders like Trudeau and Obama, the impact of such revisionism cannot be discounted or ignored.

The Left may claim that it does not wish to “rewrite history,” but that is exactly what it is trying to do; through the media, academia, entertainment, and politics. We allow them to succeed at our and our progeny’s peril.

President-elect Trump’s decision last week to nominate Sen. Jeff Sessions to serve as America’s 84th Attorney General signals a return to a Justice Department that reflects a more traditional, real-crimes based approach to federal law enforcement policy, as opposed to the control-oriented, social policy-heavy approach under which that Department has operated for the past eight years.

The fact is, the Department of Justice, when formally established in 1789, was not meant to serve as the heavy-hand of law enforcement; but rather as a relatively small federal agency to focus limited federal resources on the handful of crimes that truly were “federal” in nature – forgery, immigration, interstate fraud, customs matters, robbery of federal facilities, and the like.

Understandably, over the decades as the size and scope of the federal government has grown, so has the Justice Department in size and responsibilities. Unfortunately, during the past four decades or so, one Administration after another, and one Congress following another, have been unable to resist the urge to keep adding to that list of “federal crimes,” so it now numbers in the thousands; over 4,500 according to some estimates. The current Administration has taken that ball and run with it.

While many of the thousands of attorneys working for the Department are top-notch, and continue to investigate and prosecute crimes that the average citizen would understand as constituting crimes that properly should consume the time and resources of Uncle Sam – complex white collar fraud cases, and multi-state and international drug cases, for example – more and more, those attorneys are being directed by the Attorney General to involve themselves in matters of quite a different nature. An increasing number of these cases are regulatory in nature; often of the sort that a civil (that is, non-criminal) approach not only would suffice to rectify the problem, but better serve the ends of justice.

An illustration of the manner in which federal criminal laws can be easily abused to reach conduct not clearly federal in nature, or at best, actions that are not reflective of clear federal priorities, was the “Bridgegate” case involving former associates of New Jersey Gov. Christie. To be sure, Christie’s former associates clearly abused their power as political officials when they caused massive back-ups at a key bridge going into New York City for a couple of days. However, treating the case as a major federal criminal case, including alleging violations of civil-rights era laws with which to punish Christie’s idiotic underlings, represents the type of mis-prioritization of resources that needs to be addressed at the Department.

More broadly, the manner in which the Justice Department for eight years under President Obama has handled civil right cases, illustrates a troubling shift in focus and priority.

Under prior Administrations, going back to the Reagan Administration, federal prosecutors never hesitated to press cases against local, state or federal law enforcement or other officials, who violated individuals’ civil rights. This was an important component of federal law going back decades. If a local police officer employed excessive or deadly force against an individual without justification and, for example, based on racial discrimination, the FBI would be called on to investigate and if the elements of a case were present, the U.S. Attorney would prosecute; occasionally attorneys from the Civil Rights Division at the Department might become involved. But the point to such prosecutions was to protect the victim’s rights and punish the guilty official.

In contrast, as often as not in today’s Obama Justice Department, every such case becomes an opportunity not simply to punish wrongdoing, but to “teach police departments a lesson.” The overriding goal appears to be to place control of those agencies and individual officers under the federal agency.

This trend toward federalizing crime and the administration of criminal justice is troubling and contrary to fundamental standards of our system of federalism in America; and it is demoralizing to local and state police agencies and officers who increasingly are forced to carry out their demanding and dangerous work with Uncle Sam looking over their shoulder ready to yell, “gotcha!”

Speaking of priorities, no less important a person than the current Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, has been spending her time fretting over whether the Constitution of the United States ought be invoked as a basis to involve the Justice Department in the “transgendered bathroom” debate that began flourishing this year.

I suspect her successor, if confirmed by the Senate, will spend far less time beating up on police departments and worrying about transgendered bathrooms; and far more time focusing on protecting the American people against serious criminal activity.

No sooner had the election results rolled in late last Tuesday night, heralding a Donald Trump victory and continued Republican control of both houses of the Congress, than many Republicans began calling on Speaker Ryan to get the House ready to start passing Trump’s agenda. The better call would have been to remind both Ryan and Trump that it is not when the House of Representatives serves as a rubber stamp for the President, that good and fiscally conservative actions result. Rather, it is when there is a degree of positive tension between the House majority and the President of the same or a different party that the system constructed many decades ago by our Founders, actually works best.

It is a team effort, to be sure, and President Trump has every right to press for enactment of his legislative and fiscal agendas. But Paul Ryan, as Speaker and Leader of the House of Representatives, has an equally important responsibility to ensure that the President’s agenda fits within the budgetary and legislative agendas of the House and of the majority of members elected thereto. Truly, the last thing President Trump should want, is a Speaker who salutes and says “Yessir” whenever the President calls.

While many students of history focus on the differences between the House and the Senate in terms of their procedural powers; the perhaps more relevant focus should be on the relationship between the House of Representatives and the President.

Recent history is full of examples of the bad things that happen when the House forgets or willfully ignores its separate responsibility to carefully consider and amend a president’s legislative proposals; or blindly pushes a president’s budgetary proposals simply because that president happens to be of the same political party as the majority. President George W. Bush’s vaunted “No Child Left Behind Act,” sent to the House in January 2001 and rushed though both houses with little real consideration, turned out to be a law widely panned by educators and many Republicans as costly and unworkable.

Just a couple of years later, Bush demanded the GOP-controlled House pass the prescription drug benefit bill, despite cries by conservatives that its projected costs were drastically and artificially under-estimated. It passed, and has in fact turned out to be hugely more expensive than the Bush Administration’s projections.

The good news is that in Trump and Ryan, there appears to be the ingredients for success in this regard. For one thing, and unlike the current President who almost never dismounted from his high horse to climb the steps of Capitol Hill to meet with members of Congress (even of his own Party), Trump shows no such arrogance. In fact – and as he notes in his books – Trump enjoys the art of negotiating; a critical component of good legislation. Moreover, he respects a tough and informed adversary and is disposed to run roughshod over weak opponents – a characteristic some of his early GOP Primary opponents recognized too late.

Ryan, too, seems to have a good head for negotiating; although his job in a Trump-Ryan tete-a-tete will be more difficult since Trump only has one point of view (his) to worry about, while Ryan has many to keep in mind and in line.

The House and its leadership must never forget that its fiscal responsibility is owed not to the incoming or any president, but to the people and the future of our country. Thus, and here again unlike during the first Administration of George W. Bush, if President Trump asks the House to pass a budget that, for whatever great reasons he cites, busts the budget and increases the federal deficit, Ryan must say “No.” As we recall, it took less than two budget cycles for new President Bush and the GOP-controlled Congress to bust the balanced budget so laboriously crafted in 1997 between then-Speaker Gingrich and then-Democratic President Bill Clinton; and Washington has never looked back since.

The runaway budget deficits that became a hallmark of the George W. Bush Administration were a primary factor in the GOP losing control of the House in 2006 for two cycles; and it was in those few years that Obamacare became law, Dodd-Frank was enacted, and all manner of other legislative and executive actions decisions made, which now are ripe to be addressed and undone.

America is on the cusp of an historic opportunity to once again enact constitutionally- and fiscally-sound legislative and budget measures. While it may appear counter-intuitive, to aid in accomplishing this, President Trump should resist demanding a House of Representatives that rubber stamps his every decision. Instead, he should welcome one that will sometimes challenge him and occasionally say “No” – because that’s a recipe for real change, good change, and long-lasting change.

It’s a time-honored tactic – when attacked, change the subject. For generations, politicians of all stripes and parties have tried to change the topic of public discussion whenever their foibles and failings become the target of media attention. And, so it goes with Hillary Clinton.

The beleaguered Democratic presidential nominee has clumsily attempted one verbal sleight of hand after another, in an effort to avoid being held accountable for the highly questionable – if not unlawful — shenanigans between the Department of State during her tenure as Secretary and her family’s cash cow, the Clinton Foundation. Hillary’s efforts should not be permitted to shield her from answering to a Special Prosecutor.

The most recent – but probably not the final – factor that has caused Mrs. Clinton to sweat, is the revelation that the 15,000 e-mails discovered by the FBI not to have been previously turned over to the State Department as Clinton claimed, raise questions anew about whether donations to the Clinton Foundation were tied to contacts those donors had with the State Department.

At the juncture where Mrs. Clinton now finds herself, there are two very distinct choices open to her. Most public officials and candidates, when facing damaging but false allegations of wrongdoing, understand that taking the high road and demanding, or at least “welcoming,” an open and objective investigation, puts them in the strongest political posture to survive the attacks.

The other path – more often taken by those being hounded by damaging charges that probably are not false, hunker down, bluster, and change the subject. Here is where we find Hillary Clinton — hurling mud at the GOP standard bearer, Donald Trump.

In a feat of impressive imagination, Clinton responded to the latest evidence of wrongdoing that has surfaced against her, by charging her opponent with every false invective she could conjure, including racism, bigotry and misogyny. At the end of the day, however, when the dust of her ridiculous claims settled, questions about her integrity and truthfulness were what remained.

The evidence of an improper relationship between then-Secretary of State Clinton and the cash inflow into the Clinton Foundation, is today stronger than ever. The latest revelation, courtesy of the Associated Press, shows that at least 85 of the 154 people from private interests who met or had phone calls scheduled with then-Secretary Hillary Clinton, had donated or pledged money to the Clinton Foundation. And the sums are hardly de minimus. Those donors alone dropped as much as $156 million combined into the Foundation; potentially taking pay-to-play to a whole new level.

Despite assertions by some pundits that the best place to resolve those questions is the political arena, the appointment of a Special Prosecutor affords the only effective vehicle with which to drill down and get to the bottom of the mess candidate Clinton has left in her wake.

There is an urgency to initiating such an impartial investigation. Americans are slightly more than two months away from going to the polls to select a new president. They are entitled to have far more facts about Mrs. Clinton before making their choice than either the candidate or the current Administration has been willing to provide. And, despite the fact that a Special Prosecutor appointed now would very likely not conclude his or her investigation into this matter by November 8th, simply appointing such a person would give the voters the assurance that an impartial investigation will take place and ultimately result in the truth coming out.

In a sense, directing the Attorney General to appoint a Special Prosecutor would be a win for President Obama as well. Such a move would afford him a legacy he does not now appear destined to enjoy – that he is a President who cares more about impartial justice than protecting a political ally. The added benefit to Obama would be that he would then have washed his hands of the mess, and could no longer be pressed to discuss it since it would be in the hands of an independent, Special Prosecutor.

Allowing this scandal to fester will only further damage the credibility of our legal and political system. Just last week, a new word entered American’s vernacular: “Bleachbit,” meaning a service that prevents recovery of computer files. With trust in our Political Class at an all-time low, can we really afford further dissolution of the bond of trust between citizens and public officials that is essential to the proper functioning of our representative democracy?

Hillary may or may not stand to gain from a Special Prosecutor investigation, but America most definitely will.

In today’s public policy arena, winning ideas rarely are decided by sound logic, accurate facts, or even by the most votes. Instead, content filters and algorithms, meticulously engineered by social media companies like Facebook and Twitter, intentionally steer public debate in the direction of their owners’ personal politics; and, not coincidentally, toward the politics of their liberal friends in Washington and Sacramento.

For starters, consider Facebook – the Big Daddy of social media. There have been numerous reports of Facebook’s algorithm taking down popular pages of pro-gun organizations. But even this example of the “new censorship” pales when viewed in the context of the company’s “aggregators of trending topics” – faceless individuals who decide what news content to list in a high visibility section of the site, and who intentionally suppress conservative news and sites.

Facebook’s co-conspirator Twitter is no better; having permanently banned popular Breitbart technology editor Milo Yiannopoulos, under dubious circumstances. Twitter then was accused in July of removing the #DNCLeaks hashtag from its trending topics; effectively stifling discussion of the evidence of corruption uncovered in the Democratic National Committee’s hacked emails.

Such sneaky practices are growing as social media sites assume a more aggressive approach to posts and content they determine to be “problematic” — a liberal catchall term used to describe any free expression contrary to their personal perspective. This helps to explain why these social media platforms almost exclusively censor conservative news, topics, and users.

Rather than foster open debate, free expression, and deeper intellectual inquiry – actions at one time considered among the goals of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube — these companies have instead taken to creating “safe spaces” for users by banning objectionable content and offensive users. Thus, rather than a place where individuals of varied political backgrounds can openly and intelligently discuss issues important to the future of our nation and our society, social media users consciously or unwittingly become participants in a dumbed-down and tightly constrained public policy arena. This is the price paid for being able to instantly and regularly communicate with fellow users about what they had for dinner or the latest concert they attended.

On college campuses, the consequences are even more profound and negative; as fringe Marxist movements push school administrations to take punitive actions against students who use social media for “hate speech” – that is, intellectually challenging ideas. Others, like the See The Stripes group at Clemson University, have gone so far as to call for “criminalizing” offensive speech by students and faculty – a ludicrous and legally ignorant position, but one illustrative of the growing anti-free speech environment driving censorship both online and offline.

As private entities, the censorship policies of social media companies do not equate to violations of the First Amendment per se; but this does not mean such policies do not contribute to the overall chilling of free speech. Regardless of its legality, the practice of censorship in both public and private environments reinforces the notion that disagreeable or offensive speech is best addressed by eliminating it altogether, rather than through debate, rebuttable, or simply more speech. And, with each occurrence, the notion grows that articulating any idea not part of the liberal agenda is objectionable and subject to removal.

Our Founding Fathers recognized the importance that free speech and expression plays in securing individual liberty. Benjamin Franklin called freedom of speech “a principal pillar of a free government,” and noted that “without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom.”

It is curious indeed to consider how America’s Founding Fathers would have been treated were they to argue in support of American independence in today’s society and using contemporary means of communication. Would Thomas Jefferson have been “no platformed” as he toured American universities with his metaphors about refreshing the Tree of Liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants? Would Patrick Henry be permanently banned from Twitter for extremist comments like, “Give me liberty, or give me death”? Would George Washington’s posts about organizing militias be stripped from Facebook because they contained imagery of guns?

The late 18th-Century world in which our Founders articulated, debated, and implemented the flourishing, freedom-based country that defeated the greatest military power in the world at the time, was anything but a “safe space;” but if the liberal puppeteers fashioning 21st-Century social media had been running things back then, history would have turned out quite different. And not for the better.