Last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., told an audience at Liberty University that the United States was founded “on racist principles.” He added, “That’s a fact. We have come a long way as a nation.”

The principles on which on our country was established are articulated with clarity in the Declaration of Independence. On the matter of race, the Declaration has one simple but profound teaching: “all men are created equal.” That’s it. There are no qualifications or subtractions.

Nowhere does the Declaration or the Constitution, for that matter, classify human beings according to the color of their skin.

Far from the principle of equality being a product of racism, it actually struck at the heart of slavery. By making equality the defining principle of the nation, the Founders hoped to put slavery on the course of its ultimate extinction.

While some of the Founders held slaves, they all knew that blacks were human beings.

In a rough draft of the Declaration, Jefferson charged King George III with waging “cruel war against human nature itself” by keeping “open a market where men should be bought & sold.” By calling slaves men, Jefferson clearly recognized their humanity.

Not only did the Founders think that blacks were human beings, but they also acknowledged the wrongness of slavery in principle.

Benjamin Franklin succinctly stated his opinion on slavery: “Slavery is…an atrocious debasement of human nature.” George Washington argued that “there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it.”

The Founders knew that slavery was wrong in principle, because it violated the rights of slaves to enjoy their natural liberty—the very same liberty the colonists fought for in the American Revolution.

But a problem emerges: Why did the Founders not simply prohibit slavery in the Constitution? And didn’t the Constitution actually condone slavery?

The Founders were well aware that the institution of slavery blatantly violated the principles of the Declaration. But without a strong union that included the Southern states, which would have never ratified a constitution that abolished slavery, the new nation would not have existed.

Of the several compromises made over slavery in the original Constitution, perhaps the most egregious one from our vantage point is the three-fifths clause.

Contrary to common opinion, however, the three-fifths clause did not mean that the Founders thought that blacks were three-fifths of a human being. First of all, the text refers to “other persons”—the term persons meaning human beings. In fact, in 1790 there were approximately sixty-thousand free blacks, who possessed all the same rights as whites.

Secondly, the three-fifths clauses was a compromise between the North and South in which three-fifths of slaves were counted for purposes of taxation and representation. Southerners in fact wanted to count slaves as full persons, thus magnifying their political power. Northerners did not want slaves to be counted at all specifically because they thought it was wrong to further encourage the importation of more slaves.

Though arguments could be made that the Founders made too many compromises, their overall project was to set anti-slavery principles in place so that they could be enforced at some point in the future.

The anti-slavery character of the Declaration and Constitution was grasped by the great civil rights leaders of the past two centuries, Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Douglass, a former slave, called the Constitution “a glorious liberty document.”

In his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Dr. King likened the “magnificent words” of the Declaration and Constitution to a “promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.”

King continued: “This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the ‘unalienable Rights’ of ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’”

Our exceptionalism as a nation is not measured by how far we have separated ourselves from the principles laid out in the Declaration.

It instead derives from how closely we live up to those principles.

By Michael Sabo 

LIBERALS HATE IT.

One common criticism of billionaire businessman and presidential candidate Donald Trump is that he far too often speaks in vague generalities and rarely offers specifics about where he stands on the issues.

That is no longer the case, at least regarding his stance on gun rights and the Second Amendment, as Trump just released his official policy position on his campaign website.

“The Second Amendment to our Constitution is clear. The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed upon. Period,” the position paper began.

Trump went on to explain that the right to keep and bear arms is a right that pre-exists both the government and the Constitution, noting that government didn’t create the right, nor can it take it away.

He also rightly denoted the Second Amendment as “America’s first freedom,” pointing out that it helps protect all of the other rights we hold dear.

In order to protect and defend that right, Trump proposed tougher enforcement of laws that are already on the books, rather than adding new gun control laws.

Citing a successful program in Richmond, Virginia, that sentenced gun criminals to mandatory minimum five-year sentences in federal prison, Trump noted that crime rates will fall dramatically when criminals are taken off the streets for lengthy periods of time.

Trump also proposed strengthening and expanding laws allowing law-abiding gun owners to defend themselves from criminals using their own guns, without fear of repercussion from the government.

Noting that many of the recent high-profile shooters had clear mental problems that should have been addressed, Trump proposed fixing our nation’s broken mental health system by increasing treatment opportunities for the non-violent mentally ill, but removing from the streets those people who pose a danger to themselves and others.

Trump would do away with pointless and ineffective gun and magazine bans and suggested fixing the current background check system already in place, rather than expanding a broken system.

Furthermore, Trump proposed a national right to carry, a national concealed carry reciprocity law that would compel states to recognize the concealed carry permits of any other state, exactly as drivers licenses from anywhere are accepted by all states today.

Finally, Trump would lift the prohibition on military members carrying weapons on military bases and in recruiting centers, allowing trained military members to carry weapons to protect themselves from attacks by terrorists, criminals and the mentally unstable, as we have seen recently.

This is great, and those who cherish our right to keep and bear arms should be pleased by Trump’s stated position on the Second Amendment.

Of course, liberal anti-gunners will hate this, but their opinion on the matter is of little concern to us “people of the gun,” of which Donald Trump is apparently one.

Conservative Tribune

The U.S. Census Bureau has released its annual poverty report. Conventional wisdom holds that the U.S. has a small social welfare system and far more poverty compared with other affluent nations. But noted liberal scholars Irwin Garfinkel, Lee Rainwater, and Timothy Smeeding challenge such simplistic ideas in their book “Wealth and Welfare States: Is America a Laggard or Leader?”

Garfinkel and his colleagues examine social welfare spending and poverty in rich nations. They define social welfare as having five components: health care spending, education spending, cash retirement benefits, other government cash transfers such as unemployment insurance and the earned-income tax credit (EITC), and non-cash aid such as food stamps and public housing.

The authors find that in the U.S., social welfare spending differs from that in other affluent countries because it draws heavily on both public and private resources. By contrast, in Europe, government controls most of the resources and benefits. For example, in the U.S., government health care spending is targeted to elderly and low-income persons; the American middle and working classes rely primarily on employer-provided health insurance. The U.S. government health care system is, therefore, more redistributive than the systems of most other developed nations.

Elderly middle-class Americans are also more likely to have private pensions than are Europeans. Middle-class parents in the U.S. pay for much of the cost of their children’s post-secondary education; in Europe, the government pays. Overall, in Europe, the upper middle class is heavily dependent on government benefits; in the U.S., it relies much more on its own resources.

But even setting aside the private sector, the U.S. still has a very large social welfare system. In fact, among affluent nations, the U.S. has the third highest level of per capita government social welfare spending. This is striking, given that government spending in the U.S.  is more tightly targeted to benefit the poor and elderly.

When private-sector contributions to retirement, health care, and education are added to the count, social welfare spending in the U.S. dwarfs that of other nations. In fact, social welfare spending per capita in the U.S. rises to nearly twice the European average. As Garfinkel, et al. conclude:

For those who believe the absolute size of the US welfare state is small, the data presented … [in the book] are shocking and constitute a wake up call. Once health and education benefits are counted, real per capita social welfare in the United States is larger than in almost all other countries!

Only one nation (Norway) spends more per person than the U.S. spends.

How much of this spending reaches the poor? The left often claims that the U.S has a far higher poverty rate than other developed nations have. These claims are based on a “relative poverty” standard, in which being “poor” is defined as having an income below 50 percent of the national median. Since the median income in the United States is substantially higher than the median income in most European countries, these comparisons establish a higher hurdle for escaping from “poverty” in the U.S. than is found elsewhere.

Measuring the poverty-fighting success of the United States versus Europe according to this uneven standard is like having a race in which the European sprinters run 100 meters and the American runner runs 125 meters. The Europeans reach the finish line first and are declared faster. Using such non-uniform standards to compare countries is obviously misleading.

A more meaningful analysis would compare countries against a uniform standard. To their credit, Garfinkel and his co-authors do exactly that. They measure the percentage of people in each country who fall below the poverty-income threshold in the U.S. ($24,008 per year for a family of four in 2014). The authors reasonably broaden the measure of income to include “non-cash” benefits such as food stamps, the earned-income tax credit, and equivalent programs in other nations. They also subtract taxes paid by low-income families, which are heavy in Europe. (Their poverty comparison does not include health care and education.)

By this uniform measure, the U.S. was found to have a poverty rate in 2000 that was lower than the United Kingdom’s but higher than the poverty rates of most other West European nations. But the differences in poverty according to this uniform standard were very small. For example, the poverty rate in the U.S. was 8.7 percent, while the average among other affluent countries was around 7.6 percent. The rate in Germany was 7.3 percent, and in Sweden, it was 7.5 percent. Using a slightly higher uniform standard set at 125 percent of the U.S. poverty-income thresholds, the authors find that the U.S. actually has a slightly lower poverty rate than other affluent countries.

Misperceptions about the extent and severity of U.S. poverty are, in part, driven by the Census Bureau’s consistently flawed poverty report. Census defines a family as poor if its income falls below certain thresholds. But in counting income, Census ignores almost all of the trillion dollars per year that government spends on means-tested welfare aid. Census pretends that programs such as food stamps, the refundable EITC, and housing vouchers do not exist. No surprise, then, that other government reports show that poor people spend $2.30 for every $1.00 of income Census claims they have.

The actual living standards of the poor differ greatly from conventional perceptions. The government’s own data show that the typical poor family in the U.S. has air-conditioning, a car, and cable or satellite TV. Half of the poor have computers, 43 percent have Internet, and 40 percent have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that only 4 percent of poor children were hungry for even a single day in the prior year because of a lack of funds for food.

Only 7 percent of poor households are over-crowded. The average poor American has more living space than the average, non-poor individual living in Sweden, France, Germany, or the United Kingdom. By his own report, the average poor person had sufficient funds to meet all essential needs and was able to obtain medical care for his family throughout the year whenever needed.

It is, of course, a good thing that left-wing claims of widespread deprivation in the U.S. are inaccurate. But government welfare policy should be about more than shoveling out a trillion dollars per year in “free” benefits. When President Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty, he sought to decrease welfare dependence and increase self-sufficiency: the ability of family to support itself above poverty without the need for government handouts. By that score, the War on Poverty has been a $24-trillion flop. While self-sufficiency improved dramatically in the decades before the War on Poverty started, for the last 45 years, it has been at a standstill.

A decent welfare system would return to Johnson’s original goal of reducing poverty by increasing self-sufficiency. It would require able-bodied recipients to work or prepare for work if they are to receive benefits. It would reward, not penalize, marriage. In other words, it would be the exact opposite of the welfare behemoth we currently have.

by Robert Rector 

 

A debate over Islam — first sparked by Donald Trump not correcting a town hall questioner who called President Obama a non-American Muslim, and now Ben Carson saying a Muslim should not be president — has unexpectedly shifted the conversation in the Republican presidential race.

So far, neither candidate at the center of the furor is backing down. Trump has said he had no obligation to correct the man who wrongly called Obama a Muslim. And Carson is doubling down on his remarks from Sunday.

Carson, a Christian and retired neurosurgeon, initially commented on whether a Muslim should be president on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation,” Carson said. “I absolutely would not agree with that.”

He later told The Hill that the next president should be “sworn in on a stack Bibles, not a Koran.” He explained, “I do not believe Sharia is consistent with the Constitution of this country.”

Carson’s comments were attacked by Democrats, while fellow Republicans gave a more careful answer to the same question. In a primary race that so far has been as unpredictable as it is unruly, the Muslim debate marks the latest sharp turn — after previous heated debates over illegal immigration and other issues.

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said Sunday, “It’s hard to understand what’s so difficult about supporting an American citizen’s right to run for president.

“But unsurprisingly, this left Republicans scratching their heads. Of course a Muslim, or any other American citizen, can run for president, end of story.”

In a separate appearance on NBC, fellow 2016 GOP candidate Ohio Gov. John Kasich, was asked whether he would have a problem with a Muslim in the White House.

“The answer is, at the end of the day, you’ve got to go through the rigors, and people will look at everything. But, for me, the most important thing about being president is you have leadership skills, you know what you’re doing and you can help fix this country and raise this country. Those are the qualifications that matter to me.”

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who taped Sunday an episode of Iowa Press, an Iowa Public Television program, was asked if he agreed with Carson’s statements on Muslims being president.

“The Constitution specifies that there shall be no religious test for public office, and I am a constitutionalist,” Cruz said.

Fellow GOP contender and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio suggested the entire matter is a distraction.

He told ABC News: “This has nothing to do with the future of our country. These issues have been discussed ad nauseam over the last few years. It’s a big waste of time. Barack Obama will not be president in a year and a half. It’s time to start talking about the future of America and the people that are at home.”

Carson, a top-tier 2016 candidate and popular among the GOP’s evangelical wing, made the statement Sunday after fellow Republican candidate Trump was addressed by a man during a rally Thursday in New Hampshire who said President Obama is a Muslim.

“We have a problem in this country,” the unidentified man said. “It’s called Muslim. … You know our current president is one.”

Obama is a Christian. But Trump has declined to address the issue, saying he is not “morally obligated” to set straight the record.

Carson also described the Islamic faith as inconsistent with the Constitution. However, he did not specify in what way Islam ran counter to constitutional principles.

Carson said he believes Obama is a Christian and has “no reason to doubt what he says.”

He also said he would consider voting for a Muslim running for Congress, depending on “who that Muslim is and what their policies are.”

Carson also made a distinction when it came to electing Muslims to Congress, calling it a “different story” from the presidency that “depends on who that Muslim is and what their policies are, just as it depends on what anybody else says.”

Congress has two Muslim members, Democratic Reps. Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Andre Carson of Indiana.

“If there’s somebody who’s of any faith, but they say things, and their life has been consistent with things that will elevate this nation and make it possible for everybody to succeed, and bring peace and harmony, then I’m with them,” Carson said.

FOXNEW.COM/The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The survey, conducted in the three days after 23 million people tuned in to Wednesday night’s GOP debate on CNN, shows that Trump is still the party’s front-runner with 24% support. That, though, is an 8 percentage point decrease from earlier in the month when a similar poll had him at 32%.

Fiorina ranks second with 15% support — up from 3% in early September. She’s just ahead of Ben Carson’s 14%, though Carson’s support has also declined from 19% in the previous poll.

Driving Trump’s drop and Fiorina’s rise: a debate in which 31% of Republicans who watched said Trump was the loser, and 52% identified Fiorina as the winner.

During the CNN debate, Fiorina clashed with Trump over his personal attacks and their business records and scored points for her condemnation of Planned Parenthood.

The top three contenders underscore a key theme in the 2016 race: In a jampacked GOP presidential field, the leading candidates are the only ones who have never held political office.

But one established politician has seen his standing rise after flashing foreign policy chops on the debate stage. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida — identified as Wednesday’s winner by 14% of Republicans, putting him second behind Fiorina — is now in fourth place with 11% support, up from 3% in a previous poll.

In fifth place is former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, at 9%. He’s followed by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 6% each, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky at 4%, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 3%, Ohio Gov. John Kasich at 2% and former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania at 1%.

Five other candidates received less than one-half of 1 percentage point support: former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former New York Gov. George Pataki and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

Walker’s collapse is especially stark.

Celebrated by conservatives — in the party’s base and its donor class alike — for his union-busting efforts in Wisconsin, Walker at one point led the field in the key early voting state of Iowa.

His support had already dropped to 5% in a CNN/ORC poll in early September, but the bottom appears to have fallen out completely since then — with a second flat debate performance coming after criticism of his disparate answers on issues like birthright citizenship.

Carson was a quiet presence in Wednesday’s debate, but he remains the most popular candidate in the GOP field, with 65% of Republican voters saying they view him favorably, compared with just 10% saying they have an unfavorable opinion of the retired neurosurgeon.

Rubio ranks second in the popularity contest, with 57% viewing him favorably and 16% unfavorably. He’s followed by Fiorina (54% favorable to 17% unfavorable), Huckabee (53% to 28% unfavorable), Cruz (52% to 22%) and Trump (52% to 40%).

The biggest positive movement was in favor of Fiorina, whose favorability rating has climbed by 9 percentage points since August. And the biggest drop hit Trump, who shed 6 percentage points in that same period.

But Trump still stands out on the issues.

About 44% of likely GOP voters say they see Trump as the candidate who could best handle the economy — well ahead of his nearest competitors: Fiorina at 11%, Rubio at 10% and Bush at 8%.

Trump also wins on immigration, with 47% saying he could best address the issue, ahead of second-place Rubio’s 15% and Bush’s 9%.

He even edges Rubio, 22% to 17%, on who could best handle foreign policy.

The poll offered some good overall news for Republicans: 65% of GOP voters said they are either “extremely” or “very” enthusiastic about voting in the 2016 presidential race, compared with 51% of Democrats.

The CNN/ORC poll was conducted September 17-19 and surveyed 1,006 adult Americans, including 924 registered voters — 444 of whom are Republicans and independents who lean toward the GOP. The margin of error with the Republican results is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

By Eric Bradner, CNN

In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

The recently concluded federal trial over North Carolina’s election rules proved one thing beyond a reasonable doubt: The Obama administration and its partisan, big-money, racial-interest-group allies will stop at nothing to win elections. And using the courts to change election rules is a key part of their strategy.

That was clearly evident in the federal courtroom in Winston-Salem. The plaintiffs, including the Justice Department, challenged a number of election reforms implemented in 2013 that were designed to reduce the cost and complexity of running elections and make it harder to commit voter fraud.

The administration pushed a novel legal argument. In its telling, if a change in election rules might statistically affect blacks more than whites, it constitutes illegal discrimination. For example, if 98 percent of whites have a voter ID but only 97.5 percent of blacks have one, then requiring voters to present ID violates federal law. Never mind the fact that getting an ID is free, easy, and open to everyone without regard to race. And never mind if a policy change is in line with the rules of many other states, or if it’s explicitly sanctioned by federal law. The mere act of changing the law in the wrong direction is discriminatory.

In other words, the Obama administration would turn the Voting Rights Act into a one-way ratchet to help Democrats. The court refused to go along.

None of the reforms had an obvious racial angle. For example, North Carolina required voters to vote in the precinct where they actually live. This commonsense reform—returning to the law the state had prior to 2003—prevents chaos on Election Day, from overcrowded polling places to precincts running out of ballots because election officials can’t predict how many voters will show up. Thirty-one states do not allow voting outside of your precinct. The Justice Department claims that North Carolina broke the law when it returned to this policy.

North Carolina was wrong to end same-day registration, too, according to Justice. North Carolina implemented same-day registration in 2007. Shortly thereafter, a local election in Pembroke, N.C., had to be done over because of voter fraud and unverified ballots. The problem with same-day registration is that people can register and cast a ballot simultaneously—leaving election officials unable to verify the accuracy of a voter’s registration information. So the state changed that. In North Carolina, you now have to register at least 25 days before the election, well within the voting standard set by federal law, which makes 30 days the maximum. Only about a dozen states today have same-day registration.

The state also shaved a few days off early voting to cut down costs, but North Carolina’s new ten-day period falls well within the norm. The number of early-voting days allowed by states varies from just four to 45, with the average being 19. At least 16 states don’t allow early voting at all. Additionally, more than 20 early-voting states do not allow either any weekend voting or Sunday voting, both of which are available in North Carolina. And yet, according the Justice Department, this reform was also illegal.

The rule in most states is that you can register to vote if you will be 18 prior to Election Day. In 2009, North Carolina changed the law to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register, apparently causing a logistics nightmare for election officials, who were forced to create two different voter-registration lists and integrate them when the pre-registered teenagers actually became eligible to vote. So the state went back to the prior rule, which the vast majority of states follow. Justice challenged this decision as well.

To no one’s surprise, given the current Justice Department’s partisan history on voting-related issues, North Carolina’s new voter-ID requirement was also challenged, although that law will not be in effect until 2016.

Incredibly, the Justice Department, the NAACP, and the other plaintiffs claimed that all of these changes were “discriminatory” and violated the Voting Rights Act—a law designed to break down racial barriers to the ballot box. Apparently, in 2015 North Carolina, not being able to register when you are 16, having to register 25 days ahead of time, having only ten days before the actual date of an election to vote, and being required to vote on Election Day in the precinct where you actually live are not only racist, but barriers to voting itself.  Contrast these “conditions” with the ugly discrimination of the early ’60s.

Times have certainly changed. When the racial interest groups sued North Carolina over its reforms, a swarm of lawyers from gigantic law firms donated their services. The Justice Department devoted hundreds of thousands of dollars and man-hours to attack the law. But no witnesses could be found to say they couldn’t vote because of the changes.

The Justice Department also pumped untold thousands of dollars into a database run by a company called Catalist. This database has been populated with data provided by the Democratic National Committee, unions, and other liberal organizations and is used to help them win elections. Catalist’s infrastructure and database are expensive to maintain, but fear not: the Justice Department, in the North Carolina trial and elsewhere, has provided federal tax dollars to its expert witnesses so that they could purchase Catalist’s proprietary data. Yes, federal dollars were used to fund a database that will be used next year to try to win the 2016 election for Democratic candidates.

For all the resources expended, the Justice Department’s entire case was built on speculative claims. Not able to produce a single eligible voter who was or would be unable to vote, the plaintiffs relied on hypothetical statistical arguments to claim that the turnout of black voters would be “suppressed” because they might use early voting and same-day registration slightly more than white voters, and because black voters are “less sophisticated voters.” DOJ experts actually made the borderline racist argument that “it’s less likely to imagine” that black voters could “figure out or would avail themselves of other forms of registering and voting.” That’s a shameful way to enforce a law that was used to protect real victims of real discrimination in the Deep South.

In the end, real statistics destroyed the Justice Department’s case. The reforms the plaintiffs claimed would disenfranchise “less sophisticated” black voters didn’t depress turnout at all. Indeed, in comparison with the 2010 primary, the turnout of black voters actually increased a whopping 29.5 percent in the May 2014 primary election, while the turnout of whites increased only 13.7 percent. The same thing happened in the general election. This knocked the stuffing out of the plaintiff’s discrimination claims.

The Justice Department still holds a thoroughly demeaning view of civil-rights law. It is a view that insists that blacks are incapable of performing basic societal functions, and therefore the law must step in any time they are asked to comply with a simple procedural step to participate in the electoral process. This is not only an abuse of the department’s authority; it’s a misuse of the Voting Rights Act. It should not be tolerated.

J. Christian Adams / Hans von Spakovsky / @HvonSpakovsky

In Denver, city council members are weighing whether Chick-fil-A will be allowed to open in the Denver International Airport.

Denver council member Paul Lopez “called opposition to the chain at DIA ‘really, truly a moral issue,’” according to the Denver Post, while council member Robin Kniech is alarmed about Chick-fil-A’s “corporate profits used to fund and fuel discrimination.”

“Ten of the 13 [Denver city council] members attended Tuesday’s meeting, and none rose to defend Chick-fil-A, although some didn’t weigh in,” reported the Post.

Chick-fil-A’s crime? Well, back in 2012—when 48 percent of Americans opposed gay marriage, according to Gallup—Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy spoke out about his opposition to gay marriage, setting off a firestorm. The fact that the CEO of a company so committed to Christian values that it’s not even open on Sundays opposed gay marriage was somehow shocking.

But Cathy, while not changing his views (at least publicly), has changed his tone in the ensuing years. “I’m going to leave it to politicians and others to discuss social issues,” Cathy told USA Today in 2014. Campus Pride executive director Shane Windmeyer told USA Today that he had a “friendship” with Cathy and was “appreciative for the common ground we have established in treating all people with dignity and respect — including LGBT people.”

What a hater.

If the Denver City Council is concerned about the morality of the businesses at the airport, they should take a closer look at two current occupants: Ben and Jerry’s and Starbucks.

According to 2nd Vote, Starbucks Foundation has donated to Planned Parenthood, while Starbucks has been “listed as a company that matches employees’ gifts to Planned Parenthood.” Ben and Jerry’s parent company, Unilever, has donated to Planned Parenthood. Neither Starbucks nor Ben and Jerry’s responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment in July when asked about their support for Planned Parenthood.

Maybe that’s because even the best PR whizzes are hard-pressed to explain why a corporation would donate to a company whose executives have been caught on camera cavalierly discussing the sale of fetal body parts. (Planned Parenthood has denied the organization profits from selling fetal body parts or tissue, and has said the organization follows all laws.)

Some of the videos’ highlights suggest that Planned Parenthood, which performs around a third of abortions in the United States, hardly represents American values:

–In  the first video, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, senior director of medical services at Planned Parenthood, makes statements suggesting Planned Parenthood may perform partial-birth abortions, despite such procedures being illegal.

— Former StemExpress employee Holly O’Donnell told the Center for Medical Progress that it did not appear all women whose children’s fetal tissue was used gave consent: “If there was a higher gestation, and the technicians needed it, there were times when they would just take what they wanted. And these mothers don’t know. And there’s no way they would know.”

— In the second undercover video released by the Center for Medical Progress, Dr. Mary Gatter, president of the Medical Directors’ Council for Planned Parenthood, joked that “I want a Lamborghini” when discussing prices for fetal tissue.

Liberals, for all their talk about tolerance, have long shown they have no interest in coexistence with Chick-fil-A. In 2012, mayors of major cities across the country denounced Chick-fil-A. “Chick-fil-A’s values are not Chicago values,” said Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel. San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee tweeted, “Closest #ChickFilA to San Francisco is 40 miles away & I strongly recommend that they not try to come any closer.” Then-Washington, D.C., Mayor Vincent Gray wrote, “Given my long standing strong support for LGBT rights and marriage equality, I would not support #hatechicken.”

Just try to imagine what the reaction would be if say, a Texas town tried to ban Starbucks or Ben and Jerry’s.

Liberals are free to boycott Chick-fil-A, just as conservatives can boycott companies who support organizations who donate to groups advocating stances they find immoral or wrong.

But it’s another matter entirely to bring in the government to ban Chick-fil-A entirely. It should be consumers, not government officials, who decide which businesses thrive and which don’t.

Denver, it’s time to try a little tolerance.

bu Katrina Trinko / @KatrinaTrinko

A University of North Carolina English course on the 9/11 attacks comes with a lengthy reading list of works that critics say portray Americans as the bad guys and radical Islamists as sympathetic, but some of the professor’s former students warn those taking the class not to disagree with the professor.

According to a posting by a UNC student on higher education blog The College Fix, “Literature of 9/11” offers a syllabus of reading assignments that include poems, memoirs and graphic novels widely perceived as presenting terrorists in a sympathetic light and the U.S. as an imperialist nation. The course is taught by associate professor Neel Ahuja, and according to a review of his course syllabus, most of the reading focuses on justification. Required reading includes “Poems from Guantanamo: Detainees Speak,” a collection of poems written by terror detainees; “Reluctant Fundamentalist,” a work of fiction in which the protagonist is a successful Pakistani in the U.S. who eventually comes to believe America to be evil; and “Sirens of Baghdad,” the final installment in a trilogy of novels focusing on Islamic fundamentalism.

“Carolina offers academic courses to challenge students – not to advocate one viewpoint over another.” – Statement from University of North Carolina

“[The book] brings the reader inside the mind of an unnamed terrorist-to-be, an Iraqi Bedouin, radicalized by witnessing the death of innocents and the humiliation of the civilian population by the American forces in the Second Gulf War,” reads a review from Publisher’s Weekly. “Without apologizing for the carnage caused by either side in the conflict, the author [Yasmina Khadra] , a former officer in the Algerian army, manages to make the thoughts of a suicide bomber accessible to a Western readership, even as the scope of the terrorist’s intended target, meant to dwarf 9/11 in its impact, and the method’s plausibility will send a shiver down the spine of most readers.”

Ahuja did not respond to requests for comment but university officials defended the course.

“For any student, part of the college experience is the opportunity to grow by learning about yourself and how you engage with and learn from those who have different points of view,” the Chapel Hill school said in a statement. “Carolina’s first-year seminar program is part of that growth. The University isn’t forcing a set of beliefs on students; we’re asking them to prepare for and engage in every lesson, debate and conversation, and share what they think. Carolina offers academic courses to challenge students – not to advocate one viewpoint over another.”

However, online criticism of Ahuja’s teaching style says otherwise.

“He favors kids who share his own views, so learn to do that,” wrote one poster who took the class in 2010. “A very interesting guy, just don’t disagree with him.”

Another commenter agreed, writing last November, “AGREE WITH HIS STANCE IN YOUR PAPERS!!!!!”

“Portray yourself as a socialist who views USA as a horrible imperialist country squashing other countries- support illegal immigration and radical Islam,” wrote another commenter. “Then you will get an easy A.”

However, some former students took issue with The College Fix report.

“As someone who took this class at UNC, I strongly disagree with this article,” read a comment from one former student. “The class would be more aptly named, ‘The Cultural Impact of 9/11,’ and considering the class as I took it in 2011, much of this article is untrue. Course reading also included “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” a Jonahtan Safran Foer novel from the perspective of a young jewish boy whose father was lost in the event.”

Charles Stozier, founding director of the Center on Terrorism at John Jay College in New York and author of the 2011 book, “Until The Fires Stopped Burning: 9/11 and New York City in the Words and Experiences of Survivors and Witnesses,” said he understands what Ahuja is trying to do, but doesn’t necessarily agree with his methods.

“He’s obviously trying to convey that there’s literature from outside of the perspective of the survivor and witnesses,” Strozier said. “You could say that the course takes no account of the victims of 9/11, which is okay, but the course seems to privilege a different perspective.

Stozier, who is teaching three courses on terrorism this fall at John Jay, said that he would have devised a different syllabus.

“I would prefer a broader political approach by starting with a look at the effects through victim and survivor statements and then look at some of the other perspectives,” he said.

Officials from UNC say that the class is voluntary and that like many other seminar programs, students should use it as an opportunity for debate.

“More than 80 seminar courses on a wide variety of topics were available to incoming freshman this semester,” read the statement provided to FoxNews.com. “The ability to bring differing points of view goes beyond the classroom; each year, student organizations invite speakers representing their own platforms that, collectively, offer an array of diverse ideologies from the left and right that lead to intellectual debate and discovery.”

Perry Chiaramonte is a reporter for FoxNews.com. Follow him on Twitter at @perrych

An FBI “A-team” is leading the “extremely serious” investigation into Hillary Clinton’s server and the focus includes a provision of the law pertaining to “gathering, transmitting or losing defense information,” an intelligence source told Fox News.

The section of the Espionage Act is known as 18 US Code 793.

A separate source, who also was not authorized to speak on the record, said the FBI will further determine whether Clinton should have known, based on the quality and detail of the material, that emails passing through her server contained classified information regardless of the markings. The campaign’s standard defense and that of Clinton is that she “never sent nor received any email that was marked classified” at the time.

It is not clear how the FBI team’s findings will impact the probe itself. But the details offer a window into what investigators are looking for — as the Clinton campaign itself downplays the controversy.

The FBI offered no comment.

A leading national security attorney, who recently defended former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling in a leak investigation, told Fox News that violating the Espionage Act provision in question is a felony and pointed to a particular sub-section.

“Under [sub-section] F, the documents relate to the national defense, meaning very closely held information,” attorney Edward MacMahon Jr. explained. “Somebody in the government, with a clearance and need to know, then delivered the information to someone not entitled to receive it, or otherwise moved it from where it was supposed to be lawfully held.”

Additional federal regulations, reviewed by Fox News, also bring fresh scrutiny to Clinton’s defense.

The Code of Federal Regulations, or “CFR,” states: “Any person who has knowledge that classified information has been or may have been lost, possibly compromised or disclosed to an unauthorized person(s) shall immediately report the circumstances to an official designated for this purpose.”

A government legal source confirmed the regulations apply to all government employees holding a clearance, and the rules do not make the “send” or “receive” distinction.

Rather, all clearances holders have an affirmative obligation to report the possible compromise of classified information or use of unsecured data systems.

Current and former intelligence officers say the application of these federal regulations is very straightforward.

“Regardless of whether Mrs. Clinton sent or received this information, the obligations under the law are that she had to report any questions concerning this material being classified,” said Chris Farrell, a former Army counterintelligence officer who is now an investigator with Judicial Watch. “There is no wiggle room. There is no ability to go around it and say I passively received something — that’s not an excuse.”

The regulations also state there is an obligation to meet “safeguarding requirements prescribed by the agency.” Based on the regulations, the decision to use a personal email network and server for government business — and provide copies to Clinton attorney David Kendall — appear to be violations. According to a letter from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Kendall and his associate did not have sufficient security clearances to hold TS/SCI (Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information) contained in two emails. Earlier this month, the FBI took physical custody of the server and thumb drives.

Fox News was first to report, Aug. 19, that two emails — from aides Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan — with classified information kick-started the FBI probe, a point not disputed by the Clinton campaign.

The CFR also require a damage assessment once a possible compromise has been identified “to conduct an inquiry/investigation of a loss, possible compromise or unauthorized disclosure of classified information.”

Farrell said, “There is no evidence there has been any assessment of Mrs. Clinton and her outlaw server.”

Citing the ongoing investigation, a State Department spokesman had no comment, but did confirm that Clinton’s immediate staff received regular training on classification issues.

Clinton told reporters Friday that she remains confident no violations were committed.

“I have said repeatedly that I did not send nor receive classified material and I’m very confident that when this entire process plays out that will be understood by everyone,” she said. “It will prove what I have been saying and it’s not possible for people to look back now some years in the past and draw different conclusions than the ones that were at work at the time. You can make different decisions because things have changed, circumstances have changed, but it doesn’t change the fact that I did not send or receive material marked classified.”

The Clinton campaign did not provide an on-the-record comment on the matter when given questions by Fox News.

By Catherine Herridge, Pamela Browne

 

IF YOU LIKE YOUR 401(k), YOU CAN KEEP YOUR 401(k)

In 2013, in a little-heralded case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit rejected the Obama Labor Department’s attempt to punish voluntary retirement plan service providers. The DOL, under the direction of the controversial, radical leftist Tom Perez, had tried to force providers of 401(k), 403(b), IRA, and related services to adopt a massive new set of regulations known as “fidiculary” responsibilities.

The Seventh Circuit slammed the door shut on Labor and the Supreme Court thereafter declined to hear the appeal, which meant that the Obama administration had lost in the highest court in the land.

Of course for the “most transparent administration ever”, that step simply meant that the court’s opinion was to be rejected and that Obama would use his infamous pen to rule by executive fiat. After all, the ends justify the means, correct?

On August 24th, Perez and the Labor Department confirmed they are moving forward with new regulations that would repudiate the court’s opinion. Even Obama’s SEC Commissioner issued an ominous warning that the Labor Department’s new regulations would unleash havoc and create “a mess.”

Furthermore, financial services experts have cautioned that the new rule is “too complicated to [actually] put into practice.”

Earlier this month, the Labor Department held public hearings to discuss the input and concerns they have received from industry groups and other stakeholders that will be impacted by the department’s proposal to expand the definition of “fiduciary” under ERISA … In the debate over the DOL’s proposal — which, as written, [will] create a vast and costly new regulatory regime for independent firms and advisers across the country…

Barack Obama and Tom Perez don’t care about all of that. They’re on a mission to seize your retirement funds:

Labor Department officials are determined to produce a new standard of fiduciary duty for anyone giving retirement investment advice, once they process concerns raised in thousands of comment letters and four days of hearings on their proposal.

A SIMPLE PLAN

Like Obamacare, the idea is to drive small- and mid-size service providers out of the retirement business by ensuring that the costs of complying with regulations are unaffordable. And, to ensure a Republican president can’t easily unwind the Rube Goldberg machinery, the Labor Department has also promised an impossible eight month implementation timeline. Most providers believe it will take three years to follow all of the byzantine rules and regulations.

Their intent, in my view, is to force a consolidation of the retirement service industry, just as Obamacare drove mergers and acquisitions in the health care business, leaving only gigantic corporations in its wake. These companies have become intertwined and dependent upon legislators and lobbyists in Washington. They can’t make a move without the permission of the federal leviathan.

Many Democrats are open about the true goal of Obamacare: to end up with a single-payer health care system, modeled after the National Health Service in the U.K. You know, the system that was reported to have killed 120,000 seniors in 2012 alone.

SETTING THEIR SIGHTS ON TRILLIONS OF YOUR RETIREMENT DOLLARS

The Obama administration has its sights set on an incredible amount of your money. By some estimates, Americans are holding well over $10 trillion in private retirement accounts.

For a country with debt that is clearly “unsustainable” (source: the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office), that amount of money is akin to showing a kilo of heroin to a desperate junkie.

THE GOAL: FINANCIAL REPRESSION

One of the first steps the Obama administration took to signal its direction was to unveil its wildly unsuccessful “MyRA” program. This takes participants’ funds and invests them in “ultra-safe”, government-issued debt.

You can be sure that the future of the retirement services business will be to extend “fiduciary” responsibilities to require advisors to leverage federal debt instruments in their clients’ portfolios.

This is called “financial repression“, and it is the hallmark of a government on its way to bankruptcy. Essentially, a failing government forces investors to purchase its debt because it knows damn well that the instruments will ultimately never be repaid.

Argentina and other failed countries have embarked upon this strategy prior to a full-blown currency collapse.

You can be sure that the real goal of the Obama administration is to nationalize your retirement account and to invest it in debt that will become increasingly unsellable in the open market.

If you want to maintain control of your retirement funds, I’d recommend contacting your member of Congress today. Urge them to defund the Department of Labor until this rule is nuked from orbit.

by David Mills

Political commentator Ann Coulter believes that immigration is the most important issue facing America today. If we don’t get it right, she says, debates over economics, foreign policy, and other issues just won’t matter.

Coulter makes the case in her new book, “Adios, America,” that it has been the goal of liberals for decades to fundamentally transform America by bringing in millions of immigrants from third-world countries to build their voting base.

As those familiar with Coulter know, she speaks her mind. Watch the interview to find out what she told us.

Genevieve Wood / @genevievewood

Over the last week, the debate over birthright citizenship has divided the 2016 Republican presidential field and put the spotlight back on immigration.

Birthright citizenship allows children born in the United States to be granted automatic citizenship, including those born to illegal immigrants. So what are some of the issues surrounding birthright citizenship, and how are those opposed looking to end it? The Daily Signal explains.

UPDATE: Several commenters have raised questions about the 1898 Supreme Court case, U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark. Professor Edward Erler addresses the case in “The Heritage Guide to the Constitution” and Heritage senior legal fellow Hans von Spakovsky said this about it in a Fox News op-ed:

Even in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, the 1898 case most often cited by “birthright” supporters due to its overbroad language, the Court only held that a child born of lawful, permanent residents was a U.S. citizen. That is a far cry from saying that a child born of individuals who are here illegally must be considered a U.S. citizen.

Melissa Quinn / @MelissaQuinn97

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Sunday that Hillary Clinton is indeed the focus of a Justice Department probe, calling the argument that the probe is about her private email network when she was secretary of state “ridiculous.”

“The FBI doesn’t investigate machines,” Mukasey, a Bush administration attorney general, told “Fox News Sunday.” “It investigates people.”

“It is not a political witch hunt,” he said.

For months, questions about the private email network Clinton used while secretary of state have nagged her 2016 Democratic presidential campaign.

In recent weeks, the inspectors general for the State Department and the intelligence community have asked the Justice Department to open an investigation into whether Clinton’s network received or sent classified emails.

Clinton and her campaign have repeatedly said that she neither sent nor received classified email. And they have argued the investigation is not a “criminal” probe and that government nomenclature is at the center of the issue.

“What’s going on here is something that happens all the time,” Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon recently argued. “You have a bureaucratic tangle over what counts as classified and what doesn’t.”

Mukasey, an adviser for Republican Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign, said arguments about what information was either classified or unclassified is “at the margins” of the debate.

“It’s inconceivable that a great deal of the information was unclassified,” he told Fox.

However, Mukasey acknowledged that the issue of Clinton perhaps or eventually facing criminal charges like now-retired Gen. David Petraeus would depend on what she knew about the content of the exchanges.

Petraeus gave classified information to a female writer with whom he was having an extramarital affair.

Former California Democratic Rep. Ellen Tauscher, who is now a Clinton campaign surrogate, on Sunday largely dismissed the email controversy as a political attack.

“We can quibble about what [emails] should be re-classified when they go out to the public, but that’s dancing on the head of a pin,” she told Fox. “That’s partisan politics.”

Off-duty members of the U.S. military subdued a gunman “known to intelligence services” after he opened fire, injuring three aboard on a high-speed train en route to Paris from Amsterdam Friday.

Three U.S. servicemen were on board the train and overpowered the man when the train stopped in the northern French city of Arras, 115 miles north of Paris, French media reported. Some reports said the men were U.S. Marines but that could not be confirmed. 

Passengers on the train subdued the gunman and prevented further carnage, said Christophe Piednoel, spokesman for national railway operator SNCF. The train was then diverted to Arras, where police arrested the suspect, Piednoel said on French television i-Tele.

The suspect was arrested after the train stopped in Arras, 115 miles north of Paris, Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henri Brandet said on French television BFM. Passengers were evacuated and police have secured the area.

The man was armed with an automatic rifle and a knife, Piednoel said.

The suspect is a 26-year-old Moroccan, Alliance police union official Sliman Hamzi said on French television i-Tele.

The victims were identified as an American, a Briton and a Frenchman. Earlier reports said two American service members were among the injured. Two of the victims were in critical condition, according to a statement from the office of President Francois Hollande.

“The situation is under control, the travelers are safe. The train stopped and the emergency services are on site,” Thalys, the train operator, tweeted.

The attack took place while the train was passing through Belgium, according to a statement from Hollande’s office. The statement said he spoke with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, and the two leaders pledged to cooperate closely on the investigation.

Two of the victims were considered to be seriously injured, the French state rail company SNCF said, according to French wire service AFP. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve is on his way to the scene. Passengers were evacuated and police have secured the area.

The motivation for the attack is unknown, officials said. AFP cited French officials saying the suspect is “known to intelligence services.”

Investigators from France’s special anti-terror police are leading the investigation, a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor’s office said.

FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.

In the wake of the recent and ongoing Planned Parenthood scandal regarding the harvesting and sale of baby hearts, livers, lungs, and other organs, late last week a group of black pastors requested that a bust of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, be removed from a temporary Smithsonian exhibit named, ironically, “Struggle for Justice.”

The pastors are deeply offended at Sanger’s inclusion in the program because of her direct ties to eugenics and overall disdain for African-Americans.

Until now, many Americans have trustingly assumed that Planned Parenthood is a benevolent health care provider, but after watching the horrific videos, complete with senior employees’ casual disrespect for human life and dignity, the public is beginning to ask more probing questions about Planned Parenthood’s founding, mission, and ongoing work.

In doing so, they will likely learn very disturbing information about Sanger’s view of black Americans and how that influenced the founding of Planned Parenthood of America, the nation’s largest abortion provider.

In 1921, Margaret Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which in 1942 underwent a name change to become Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Many of the group’s founding directors were actively involved in the “eugenics” movement, which held that certain classes or colors of people were “lesser” and “unfit” for humanity and shockingly should be eliminated. Included in these targeted “unfit” groups were black Americans (another group included was people with disabilities).

In addition to eugenics involvement, one founding director, Dr. Lothrup Stoddard, wrote a book, “Rising Tide of Color against White Supremacy.”

Perhaps the hardest fact to take in is that under Margaret Sanger’s leadership, the organization created a program called the “Negro Project,” which involved strategically seeking to decrease the black population by convincing black community leaders to introduce birth control to their networks.

About the project, Margaret Sanger was once quoted as saying, “We do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten that idea out if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

She also spoke at Ku Klux Klan meetings.

Fast-forwarding to 2015, sadly, today, black Americans are aborted at a highly disproportionate rate.

Making up only 13 percent of the population, this group makes up a staggering 36 percent of the nation’s abortions.

In certain areas such as New York City, a black baby is more likely to be aborted than carried to term.

In the words of the pastors:

Perhaps the gallery is unaware that Ms. Sanger supported black eugenics, a racist attitude toward black and other minority babies; an elitist attitude toward those she regarded as ‘the feeble minded;’ speaking at rallies of Ku Klux Klan women….Also the notorious ‘Negro Project’ which sought to limit, if not eliminate, black births, was her brainchild. Despite these well documented facts of history, her bust sits proudly in your gallery as a hero of justice.

As the undercover videos continue to be made public one after the other, it is likely that Americans will continue to discover many unseemly truths about Planned Parenthood’s origins.

By Jeanne Mancini

The latest revelations about top secret information traversing Hillary Clinton’s private email server have triggered accusations that someone in her “inner circle” likely stripped the classification markings, illegally.

The claims come after the Clinton campaign stuck to the argument that the Democratic presidential candidate, while secretary of state, never dealt with emails that were “marked” classified at the time.

“Hillary only used her personal account for unclassified email. No information in her emails was marked classified at the time she sent or received them,” campaign Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri said in a statement to supporters Wednesday.

But a State Department official told Fox News that the intelligence community inspector general, who raised the most recent concerns about Clinton’s emails, made clear that at least one of those messages contained information that only could have come from the intelligence community.

“If so, they would have had to come in with all the appropriate classification markings,” the official said.

The official questioned whether someone, then, tampered with that message. “[S]omewhere between the point they came into the building and the time they reached HRC’s server, someone would have had to strip the classification markings from that information before it was transmitted to HRC’s personal email.”

The official said doing so would “constitute a felony, in and of itself. I can’t imagine that a rank-and-file career DOS employee would have done this, so it was most likely done by someone in her inner circle.”

The messages apparently contained satellite imagery and signals intelligence, information that diplomats cannot unilaterally obtain.

Yet, like the Clinton campaign, the State Department public affairs team also maintains that the emails were “not marked classified” when Clinton received them.

“None of them were classified at the time,” department spokesman Mark Toner said.

With Clinton’s server and thumb drive now in the possession of the FBI, questions about whether classification markings were tampered with are just part of the puzzle — and only one factor that is complicating Clinton’s frontrunning bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The Washington Post reports that the server itself was picked up by the FBI on Wednesday in New Jersey, at a third-party data center. But someone from that cyber-management company also told the Post that the server they forked over is blank, because everything on it was transferred during a 2013 upgrade.

Clinton announced that she would turn the server over to the FBI Tuesday. That same day, Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III told members of Congress that at least two emails that traversed the device while she was secretary of state contained information that warranted one of the government’s highest levels of classification.

The latest email revelations have thrown a major wrench into Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, though Palmieri shrugged off the ongoing investigation in her email to supporters Wednesday.

“Look, this kind of nonsense comes with the territory of running for president,” Palmieri said. “We know it, Hillary knows it, and we expect it to continue from now until Election Day.”

Meanwhile, Fox News has learned that top U.S. intelligence officials are running out of patience with the State Department’s reluctance to turn over emails from the server.

The intelligence community’s inspector general has requested approximately 30,000 emails from Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state in order to conduct its own review.

Those emails are in possession of the State Department, which has been gradually releasing them to the public.

An intelligence source told Fox News the State Department has pushed back on the government intelligence watchdog’s request, and that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is considering intervening. The source said the inspector general wants to check the controls on the redaction process and ensure that the office can get a handle on all of the potentially sensitive information that was contained in the Clinton emails.

Fox News’ James Rosen, Peter Doocy and Matthew Dean and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

If no one has looked at the plight of those in poverty lately, it is well worth noting that minority children are being born into households headed by a single mother, and are more likely to go to prison than to college. Every cure for poverty attempted by conservatives is blocked by liberals, so the picture is even more bleak with every passing year.

For instance, conservatives keep trying to push for school choice for all students, offering a voucher system that will enable children of any class or neighborhood to attend the school of their choice–only to be blocked by liberals, who like poor, minority children right where they are. Liberal spending of $18 trillion on impoverished minorities in this county has only served to entrap them in the poverty industry, administered by liberals.

Most of the unemployment in this nation is focused among young minorty men, as is most of the violence. While liberals howl about a few questionable minority deaths during police arrests, they entirely ignore thousands of murders and attempted murders committed against minority men by their own people.

The minority culture has completely abandoned its strong family roots, and adopted a lifestyle of casual sex, resulting in over 1,800 abortions of black babies every day in this country, followed by a like number of Hispanic abortions each day. Those minority babies who aren’t aborted are likely to end up in impoverished, fatherless homes, in the middle of rap and gang cultures where hustling, drugs and crime are a common and accepted way of life.

Because liberals need an impoverished underclass to justify their existence, they block every conservative attempt to liberate the impoverished minorities of this once great nation. If conservatives cannot free them through elevating them into the middle class and above, the only path left open to alleviate the pain of our minorities is the handout path–one that liberals will not fight under any circumstances.

If the federal government would simply offer free contraception in the form of tubal ligations and vasectomies, and add a cash bonus to those who receive them–$5,000 for any man receiving a vasectomy and $15,000 for any woman receiving a tubal ligation–I believe that those who find themselves deepest in the midst of poverty and hopelessness will avail themselves.

What will be the result of this contraception program? Those who have no desire to have or care for children will receive the procedure, and get the money. Those who desire to have children and live the American dream will have no incentive to receive the procedures.

This will cost many millions of dollars, of course. However, the return on investment will be incalculable. Welfare costs, police costs, medical costs, abortion costs, prison costs, repair costs, pain and suffering–they will all begin a rapid descent from the current hundreds of billions of dollars we are currently spending on this sector of society. Societal costs–like disruption in the classroom, violence in our streets, and culture that breaks down every class–will likewise diminish rapidly.

We see no down side to the plan, and invite comments below.

PUBLIUS

IN THE DEBATE: Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Chris Christie and John Kasich.

Fox News has announced the line-up for the prime-time Republican presidential debate this Thursday, and here’s who qualified:

Real estate magnate Donald Trump; former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker; retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson; former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee; Texas Sen. Ted Cruz; Florida Sen. Marco Rubio; Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul; New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

The roster of 10 candidates was determined based on an average of the five most recent national polls. Trump as expected made the cut, as did Bush and Walker, who have each posted strong numbers in recent surveys.

The drama, rather, was at the edge of the top 10. Christie and Kasich, who were hovering by that edge in recent polling, were able to qualify.

But former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, among others, will not be on the prime-time, 9 p.m. ET stage. The seven who did not make the top 10 will be invited to a separate 5 p.m. ET debate.

The debates, hosted by Fox News and Facebook in conjunction with the Ohio Republican Party, will be held at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio.

With the campaign lately being rocked by Trump’s rise in the polls above the jam-packed field, though, the big question is how the other nine candidates will hold their own on the prime-time stage — and whether Trump will remain the front-runner after his debate debut.

For political outsiders like Trump and Carson, Democratic strategist Doug Schoen said, “The question is are they ready, literally and metaphorically, for prime-time?”

The debate will test whether they can articulate a “cogent narrative of what they’ll do to promote and provoke change in our country,” Schoen said.

Analysts have warned that Trump, whose bomb-throwing persona has seemingly fueled his climb, stands to lose traction if he can’t command the stage.

Steve Deace, who hosts a conservative radio talk show in the Hawkeye State, said: “His entire campaign is based on him being a blunt instrument” and if he holds back, “that would be the death knell for him.”

Plenty of candidates are eager to seize the spotlight from him, no matter which debate stage they’re on. Ahead of the debates, Bush on Monday outlined his plan for improving border security and immigration enforcement.

Tough-talking Gov. Christie last week vowed to enforce marijuana laws if elected president, and tangled over the weekend with the teachers unions after saying on CNN they deserve a “punch in the face.”

Paul on Tuesday introduced an amendment to crack down on “sanctuary cities” by requiring local officials to notify the feds about the arrest of an illegal immigrant.

Trump, meanwhile, has continued to climb in the polls despite attracting the ire of fellow Republicans for recently questioning Sen. John McCain’s war record.

In the latest Fox News poll, Trump got the support of 26 percent of primary voters — the highest level of support for any candidate so far and up from 18 percent in mid-July.

FoxNews.com