June 26, 2024
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Biden’s Public Health Assault on 2A rights
By Rick Manning
President Joe Biden’s Surgeon General has declared gun violence a health care emergency in a new report issued just in time for the presidential debate.
How dare he?
I’m sorry, but a president and political party that has opened the border to gangs, rapists, drug cartels and human traffickers doesn’t have the moral authority to say anything about law abiding citizens right to keep and bear arms to defend themselves and their families from those violent thugs.
A president and political party that elects prosecutors who fail to prosecute both property crimes and violent criminals simply doesn’t get to sanctimoniously issue a report based upon diagnosing bullet holes and not the hands that pulled the trigger to create them.
A president and political party that defunds and demoralizes the police in many of our major cities making them little more than clean-up crews rather than active interdictors against violent crime have forfeited any credibility in commenting on the crime and squalor that result.
Finally, a president and political party which oversees and benefits from a failed, teacher union dominated public education system where kids are deliberately left behind to suffer under both the tyranny of low expectations and dilapidated schools run by gangs where drugs and violence are the norm, have no business telling those who survive that system that they are what’s wrong and their rights should be shattered.
Yet, it is the pattern of the left in America to break things and then propose solutions that give more power to the government while deconstructing individual rights – all for a good cause of course.
Not surprisingly, Joe Biden’s chief health politician failed to even consider any of these actual causes of violent crime. Instead, the ‘reports’ Table of Contents read like a gun ban seminar.
You have the debunked international comparisons, disproportionate impacts, racial inequities as all included along with some crime data and a section of the effects of gun violence. The 32 page pamphlet seeks solemn legitimacy through its Ivy Tower approved language without even attempting to engage in anything resembling serious, rigorous, unbiased academic review.
Not one section is devoted to the impact of the open border and the failure to deport illegal alien criminals, the ending of broken windows policing on increased violent crime, the disparate impact of failure to prosecute criminals on community violence, the emasculation of many big city police forces or the correlation between failed schools and increased crime.
Imagine that, a bunch of politically motivated public health foofs have created a report on gun violence without bothering to look at actual root causes.
What a shock! Not. The very people who couldn’t figure out that a coronavirus originating in Wuhan, China, the home of the Wuhan Institute for Coronavirus Research, likely came from that lab and not some once in a hundred years bat/pangolin virus mutation, are now seeking to drive health care edicts on gun violence without looking at any of the actual causes of criminal behavior.
But the potential impact of this unserious report cannot be taken lightly. The Biden administration continues to try to subject the American health care system to the whims of the Chinese government World Health Organization. The WHO has already declared private gun ownership to be the enemy of world health.
The other reason to take it serious is that Covid proved that due to the regulations, insurance repayment mechanisms and health reporting systems put in place by Obamacare, the federal government health care bureaucrats have extraordinary power to mandate medical procedures and standard questions all the way to the local doctor’s office.
Every time a person gets asked about ‘guns in the home’ by their doctor or nurse it is likely to be recorded into the cloud, creating an accessible, sortable database of gun owners in America, in direct contravention of law.
Because of this, Biden Surgeon General Vivek Murphy’s laughably political report is actually nothing to laugh about. What the left have failed to do legislatively or through the Courts, they are trying to accomplish through the administrative state under the guise of public health. After the past four years, liberty loving Americans should shudder at this very notion.
Barack Obama once said, ‘elections have consequences’ when dismissing concerns that his policies went too far. This report is just one more bit of evidence that the left will use every bit of power they are allowed to hold in the pursuit of growing government power and diminishing the power of the people.
Elections do have consequences and November is coming. Consider your choices carefully and vote for freedom. Remember a failure to vote for a candidate who can win is effectively an abdication of this right to others.
Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/06/bidens-public-health-assault-on-2a-rights/
Democrats Have Lost a Key Demographic on Migrant Crisis at the Border – Hispanics
By Manzanita Miller
The pervasive identity politics ideology of the left is being upended with a series of polls showing Hispanic Americans reject President Joe Biden’s Open Borders agenda, trust former President Donald Trump more on immigration, and support a national deportation program of illegal immigrants.
Multiple recent surveys show Latinos who show up in polls – and are arguably more likely to be U.S. citizens – favor strict border security measures and empowering law enforcement to handle illegal aliens. Of course, existing in a voter database is no guarantee of citizenship, but it is fair to conclude a higher share of those responding to polls are citizens.
The sentiment among the Hispanic community is largely frustration with President Joe Biden’s border chaos, and support for what would have been considered drastic measures a few years ago to curb the increasing flood of illegal immigrants that have entered under Biden’s watch.
Latinos now favor not only minimizing asylum-seeking at the border, but deportation for illegals already inside the United States, and empowering local police to identify illegal aliens. These measures, intended to correct for the vast number of illegals that have entered since Biden took office, are also favored by a wide plurality of the public.
A new battleground state poll from Equis Research finds Latino voters now trust Trump or the GOP over Biden and Democrats on immigration by a margin of 41% to 38%. According to the Equis report, “Dems no longer hold advantage on handling immigration”, which the research group labeled a “problem”.
There is heavier-hitting evidence of a nationwide shift among the Hispanic population from a new YouGov survey. The survey reveals Latinos are fully aware that if Biden wins reelection the influx of illegals on the southern border will increase, and a majority of Hispanics support deportation efforts.
There is little ambiguity among Latinos about the ramifications of Biden’s border incompetency, with Latinos saying by a twenty-point margin – 48 percent to 28 percent – if Biden wins reelection the migrant crisis will increase. On the flip side, Latinos say by a sixty-one-point margin – 65 percent to 4 percent – that they believe the influx of illegals will decrease under Trump.
Latinos disapprove of Biden’s border policy by an eighteen-point-margin, 54 percent to 36 percent, and show broad interest in efforts to curb asylum-seeking and remove illegal immigrants.
A plurality of Latinos now support the deportation of all illegal immigrants by a margin of 53 percent to 47 percent. The share of Latinos who favor deportation is just fourteen points shy of the share of whites who do.
This is nearly identical to the share of Latinos in a March 2024 Marist poll (52 percent) who said they favored the deportation of illegal immigrants.
Latinos also widely favor a recent executive order that will diminish the number of illegals allowed into the country by partially shutting down asylum processing. A full 69 percent of Latinos favor partially shutting down asylum processing along the U.S.-Mexico border to reduce migrant entries.
Lastly, Latinos support empowering local police to identify undocumented immigrants by a fourteen-point margin, 57 percent to 43 percent.
YouGov polling from January of this year also drives home the point that Latinos have had enough of Biden’s unsustainable border response. The January survey showed Latinos say by a thirty-seven-point margin – 58 percent to 21 percent – that Biden should be tougher on illegals trying to cross the border.
A plurality of Hispanics (40 percent) in January also said the U.S.-Mexico border is in crisis, and among those who said the border was in crisis, a full 77 percent cited the strain on U.S. resources as a primary concern.
In the YouGov survey, Hispanics also had a bleak outlook for the impact recent migrants will have on the United States. Hispanics said by a ten-point margin – 38 percent to 28 percent – they believe recent migrants will make U.S. society worse in the long run.
While the self-serving Open Borders advocates have pushed a porous border policy as a form of so-called humanitarianism, that message is no longer resonating, including with Hispanic Americans. By wide margins, Hispanics are sharing their concerns about the long-term implications of Open Borders and demanding stronger border security measures.
The idea that “the Hispanic vote” is a monolith in favor of relentless illegal immigration from South America simply because a share of Hispanics are immigrants themselves is far from accurate. According to the data, a plurality of Hispanics support the enforcement of immigration laws, curbing asylum-seeking, and believe the recent migrant crisis will negatively impact society in the long term.
Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/06/democrats-have-lost-a-key-demographic-on-migrant-crisis-at-the-border-hispanics/
Supreme Court fails to rein in deep state coercion and censorship
First Amendment in Peril
June 26, 2024, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement blasting the Supreme Court's ruling in Murthy v. Missouri:
"It is appalling that the Supreme Court failed to rein in the intelligence and law enforcement agencies' abuse of individual First Amendment rights in the Murthy v. Missouri case. The contorted logic that those in the federal government who abused their power with the worst censorship operation in U.S. history should be protected under the guise that they did not voluntarily release enough details of their abuse for the plaintiffs to achieve standing, gives jet fuel to these agencies' unchecked power to continue abusing the Constitution. Under former President Donald Trump, resisters in these same departments and agencies refused to release materials that the President ordered released via declassification with dire consequences.
"As it relates to the facts of this case, Trump should he win the election should order the release of all pertinent materials that enable will plaintiffs to incontrovertibly prove their censorship occurred, and if the agencies refuse, fire everyone involved. Additionally, the House of Representatives should subpoena all involved government parties and compel them to provide further documentation and testimony under oath. We agree with Justice Samuel Alito's dissent which noted that the record had sufficient evidence to uphold the injunction, and that 'The Court... shirks that duty and thus permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think.' The Supreme Court's cowardice in the face of a direct assault by the federal government on First Amendment rights using Silicon Valley cutouts is a black mark on an institution that the left is seeking to destroy. We can only hope that when the case continues in the lower courts, the record can be further established as to be uncontestable."
To view online: https://getliberty.org/2024/06/supreme-court-fails-to-rein-in-deep-state-coercion-and-censorship/
MRC-Led Free Speech Alliance Urges Appropriations Committee to Defund Biden Censorship Scheme
Dear Chairman Cole,
The First Amendment ensures that the free speech rights of Americans are protected, especially when criticizing government officials and other powerful interests. The Biden Administration is attempting to invert this principle and instead use the power and resources of the federal government to silence its critics.
The Biden administration has been brazen in its efforts to censor political opposition under the guise of mis-, mal-, and disinformation. We applaud you for making the protection of free speech rights a top priority by defunding the Biden censorship regime.
You and Speaker Johnson have demonstrated an unprecedented commitment to preserving the First Amendment. Under your leadership, the Appropriations Committee has included language to defund unlawful censorship programs across the government.
As the subcommittees and the full committee continue to do their work, we encourage you to zero out funding for these initiatives in the following offices:
- The White House
- Department of Commerce
○ U.S. Census Bureau
- Department of Defense ○ National Security Innovation Network (regarding NewsGuard and other rating systems)
○ Army Cyber Institute
- Department of Health & Human Services ○ Center for Disease Control (CDC)
○ National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
○ Office of the Surgeon General
- Department of Homeland Security ○ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)
○ Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3)
■ Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grant Program (TVTP) ○ Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) ○ Disinformation Governance Board
- Department of Justice
○ Federal Bureau of Investigation
○ Office of Justice Programs
- Department of State
○ Global Engagement Center
■ Global Disinformation Index
○ US Embassies (Eg. Germany, Hungary, and others)
- Department of the Treasury
○ Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN)
- National Science Foundation
○ Track F: Trust & Authenticity in Communication Systems
We have documentation of censorship across all these agencies and offices we can share with you upon request. Because this censorship is ubiquitous, we are pleased that you have incorporated blanket language to prohibit any form of censorship of US citizens. We would encourage your committee to adopt this blanket language across all bills and to continue fighting against the left’s effort to silence free speech rights.
To view online: https://cdn.mrc.org/static/pdfuploads/Free%20Speech%20Alliance%20Appropriations%20Letter.pdf-1719354313142.pdf