November 2016

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.