Phyllis Schlafly, the iconic pro-family activist who rose to fame in the 1970s when she campaigned against the Equal Rights Amendment, has died at age 92, according to the Eagle Forum, the conservative organization she founded.

Schlafly had been an activist since the early Cold War era, but gained national prominence by leading traditional-religious women in the movement against the Equal Rights Amendment. President Reagan praised her campaign against ERA as “brilliant” and called Schalfly “an example to all those who would struggle for an America that is prosperous and free.”

Schlafly rose to national attention in 1964 with her self-published book, “A Choice Not an Echo,” that became a manifesto for the far right. The book, which sold three million copies, chronicled the history of the Republican National Convention and is credited for helping conservative Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona earn the 1964 GOP nomination.

She went on to become one of the most influential pro-family activists in the 1980s and 1990s, and her support was courted by all GOP presidential candidates. She authored 27 books and thousands of articles.

Founded in 1972, Eagle Forum focuses on pro-family and socially conservative issues and now has an estimated 80,000 members.

Republican candidate Donald Trump praised the conservative activist in a statement released Monday evening.

“Phyllis Schlafly is a conservative icon who led millions to action, reshaped the conservative movement, and fearlessly battled globalism and the ‘kingmakers’ on behalf of America’s workers and families,” the statement read. “I was honored to spend time with her during this campaign as she waged one more great battle for national sovereignty.”

Schlafly endorsed Trump at a rally in St. Louis in March, and she co-authored a book called “The Conservative Case for Trump” that is being released Tuesday. Trump says he was “honored to spend time with her.”

In April, Schlafly’s endorsement purportedly sparked uproar among Ted Cruz supporters on the Eagle Forum board of directors.

In a statement posted on its website Monday afternoon, the Eagle Forum said Schlafly died at her home in St. Louis surrounded by family members.

“Her focus from her earliest days until her final ones was protecting the family, which she understood as the building block of life,” read the statement. “She recognized America as the greatest political embodiment of those values. From military superiority and defense to immigration and trade; from unborn life to the nuclear family and parenthood, Phyllis Schlafly was a courageous and articulate voice for common sense and traditional values.”

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement that Schlafly was “an unflinching champion of many ideas Republicans have long held dear.”

“Through her tireless activism that continued even into her 90s, Phyllis Schlafly never wavered in giving a voice to millions of Americans concerned about preserving constitutional rights, strong families, and American greatness. Her influence will continue to be felt for years to come, and as we celebrate an iconic figure in the conservative cause, our thoughts and prayers go out to her family, friends, and many admirers.”

Schlafly was born Aug. 15, 1924, and grew up in Depression-era St. Louis. Her parents were Republican but not politically involved.

With the country involved in World War II during her college years, Schlafly worked the graveyard shift at the St. Louis Ordnance Plant. Her job included testing ammunition by firing machine guns. She would get off work at 8 a.m., attend morning classes, then sleep in the middle of the day before doing it all over again.

The schedule limited her options for a major. “In order to pick classes to fit my schedule I picked political science,” Schlafly recalled in a 2007 AP interview.

She graduated from Washington University in 1944, when she was 19. Her first taste of real politics came at age 22, when she guided the 1946 campaign of Republican congressional candidate Claude Bakewell, helping him to a major upset win.

In 1952, with her young family living in nearby Alton, Illinois, Schlafly’s husband, attorney John Schlafly Jr., was approached about running for Congress. He declined, but she ran and narrowly lost in a predominantly Democratic district. She also ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1970.

Schlafly earned a master’s degree in government from Harvard in 1945. She enrolled in Washington University School of Law in 1976, and at age 51, graduated 27th in a class of 204.

Schlafly received an honorary degree at Washington University’s commencement in 2008. Though some students and faculty silently protested by getting up from their seats and turning their backs to the stage, Schlafly called it “a happy day. I’m just sorry for those who tried to rain on a happy day.”

She is survived by six children, 16 grandchildren and 3 great-grandchildren.

Fox News’ Chris Snyder, Joe Weber and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Moviegoers have attended American theaters over the past five years and watched three movies produced by conservative writer and producer, Dinesh D’Souza: 2016: Obama’s America (2012); America: Imagine The World Without Her (2014); and now, Hillary’s America: The Secret History Of The Democratic Party (2016).

These movies provide the viewer with historical context for modern politics, and meticulously document and chronicle how the American Left has systematically undermined personal liberties preserved in the original Constitution, exploiting Blacks and other minorities to wrest political power and wealth from The People.

Unfortunately, most Blacks and minorities have never seen these movies. Indeed, they would be shocked to see the truth of American history unfold before them on the big screen.

D’Souza’s latest installment, “Hillary’s America: The Secret History Of The Democratic Party,” exposes how the Democratic Party was the party of slavery, and those who wore the masks of the KKK; and when they lost the Civil War, they continued to discriminate against Blacks and minorities through fighting the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, which granted Blacks rights as citizens, and to vote, etc., It also documents subsequent Republican efforts to overrule Democrat laws and doctrines, like the Jim Crow laws.

The modern media has turned history on its ear, rewriting the truth about Republicans being the Party of equality and civil rights, and Democrats fighting them at every turn.

When the Left lost its fight against equality and civil rights, they decided to exploit Blacks and other minorities to undermine the American economy and accumulate political power, with Great Society and similar legislation–greatly expanding governmental powers while ensnaring American Blacks in ghetto life as a permanent underclass. Today, Blacks and minorities are born into fatherless families, and lose around 3,500 babies daily to abortion clinics. They live in poverty, in violent neighborhoods, trapped in drug use and lives of crime, and are given no choice of which schools they can attend–all thanks to the impoverishment policies of the Democratic Party.

Why do American Blacks and other minorities continue to believe the lie about Republicans and Democrats, and their role in enslavement and liberation? Because the media and educational institutions purposefully protract the lie. See articles herein, i.e.: Dems Entrenched in Power Institutionally – We Must Eliminate Institutional Power July 28, 2016; Independence Day 2016: Revolution July 3, 2016; Democrats Destroying Minorities July 13, 2012.

Because Presidential hopeful Donald Trump is seeking to educate Blacks and minorities about Democrat party exploitation, and has begun spreading his message that their policies have been destructive to Blacks and other minorities, it occurs to me that broadcasting D’Souza’s latest cinematic work might have immediate and far reaching benefits in spreading that message.

Indeed, the Trump campaign might be well served by making “Hillary’s America: The Secret History Of The Democratic Party” available for free viewing to as many American Blacks as possible. How? By buying out showings in theaters located in predominantly black neighborhoods, and advertising on black radio stations that the movie is free, along with free drinks and popcorn.

Similarly, Trump could purchase broadcast programming on cable television networks that cater predominantly to American Blacks and other minorities and run “Hillary’s America: The Secret History Of The Democratic Party.”

There are many Blacks and minorities who are beginning to question the validity of the false message the media and others have been broadcasting. D’Souza’s movies, produced by Spielberg veteran Gerald R. Molen, would provide much needed ammunition for traditionalists in the Black community, who would like the opportunity to explain to the rest of the community why Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican.

By James Thompson

Let’s concede at the outset that many students find their college years enlightening and enriching. But something is rotten in the state of academia, and it is increasingly hard not to notice.

There once was a time when employers could be reasonably certain that college graduates had a basic sense of the world and, as a minimum, could write a coherent business letter. That is simply no longer the case, as some academic leaders appear ready to admit.

Harvard’s former president, Derek Bok, mildly broke ranks with the academic cheerleaders when he noted that, for all their many benefits, colleges and universities “accomplish far less for their students than they should.” Too many graduates, he admitted, leave school with the coveted and expensive credential “without being able to write well enough to satisfy employers … [or] reason clearly or perform competently in analyzing complex, nontechnical problems.”

Bok noted that few undergraduates can understand or speak a foreign language; most never take courses in quantitative reasoning or acquire “the knowledge needed to be a reasonably informed citizen in a democracy.” Despite the massive spending on the infrastructure of higher education, he conceded, it was not at all clear that students actually learned any more than they did 50 years ago.

This knowledge deficit has been a long time coming.

Indeed, a recent survey of the nation’s top-ranked public universities by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni found that only nine of them required an economics course for graduation; just five required a survey course in American history; and only 10 required that students take a literature course. Despite the lip service given to “multiculturalism” on campus, the study found that: “Fewer than half required even intermediate study of a foreign language.”

This knowledge deficit has been a long time coming.

By 1990, the cost of four years at an elite private college had passed the median price of a house in the United States. But a survey sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1989 found that a majority of college seniors would flunk even a basic test on Western cultural and historical literacy: 25 percent could not distinguish between the thoughts of Karl Marx and the United States Constitution (or between the words of Winston Churchill and those of Joseph Stalin), 58 percent did not know Shakespeare wrote “The Tempest,” and 42 percent could not place the Civil War in the correct half-century.

Most seniors were unable to identify the Magna Carta, Reconstruction, or the Missouri Compromise; they were “clearly unfamiliar” with Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.”

The question is no longer whether students have learned specific bodies of knowledge; it is whether they are learning anything at all.

These concerns now seem almost—quaint. The fact that college students had huge gaps in their knowledge was old news by the early 1990s. But today the question is no longer whether students have learned specific bodies of knowledge; it is whether they are learning anything at all.

This knowledge deficit has been a long time coming.

Indeed, a recent survey of the nation’s top-ranked public universities by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni found that only nine of them required an economics course for graduation; just five required a survey course in American history; and only 10 required that students take a literature course. Despite the lip service given to “multiculturalism” on campus, the study found that: “Fewer than half required even intermediate study of a foreign language.”

This knowledge deficit has been a long time coming.

By 1990, the cost of four years at an elite private college had passed the median price of a house in the United States. But a survey sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1989 found that a majority of college seniors would flunk even a basic test on Western cultural and historical literacy: 25 percent could not distinguish between the thoughts of Karl Marx and the United States Constitution (or between the words of Winston Churchill and those of Joseph Stalin), 58 percent did not know Shakespeare wrote “The Tempest,” and 42 percent could not place the Civil War in the correct half-century.

Most seniors were unable to identify the Magna Carta, Reconstruction, or the Missouri Compromise; they were “clearly unfamiliar” with Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.”

The question is no longer whether students have learned specific bodies of knowledge; it is whether they are learning anything at all.

These concerns now seem almost—quaint. The fact that college students had huge gaps in their knowledge was old news by the early 1990s. But today the question is no longer whether students have learned specific bodies of knowledge; it is whether they are learning anything at all.

In their widely cited book “Academically Adrift,” Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa concluded that 45 percent of students “did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning” during their first two years of college. More than a third (36 percent) “did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning over four years of college.”

Traditionally, the authors wrote, “teaching students to think critically and communicate effectively” have been claimed as the “principal goals” of higher education. But “commitment to these skills appears more a matter of principle than practice,” Arum and Roksa found.

“An astounding proportion of students are progressing through higher education today without measurable gains in general skills,” they wrote. “While they may be acquiring subject-specific knowledge, or greater self-awareness on their journeys through college, many students are not improving their skills in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing.”

But those are precisely the skills that employers increasingly expect from college graduates. A 2013 survey of employers on behalf of the Association of American Colleges and Universities found that 93 percent of employers say that a demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than a candidate’s undergraduate major.

More than three-quarters of the prospective employers of new college graduates said they wanted colleges to put more emphasis on such basic skills as “critical thinking, complex problem solving, written and oral communication, and applied knowledge.”

Trashing the Curriculum

So how could we spend so much for so little? The most obvious answer is that colleges and universities frankly don’t care whether students learn much of anything.

Once again, Harvard’s Bok is willing to admit that administrators have few incentives to worry about something as irrelevant as student achievement because student learning can’t be monetized and doesn’t do anything to advance academic careers. “After all,” he writes, “success in increasing student learning is seldom rewarded, and its benefits are usually hard to demonstrate, far more so than success in lifting the SAT scores of the entering class or in raising the money to build new laboratories or libraries.”

The dumbing down of elementary and secondary education has made its way to the collegiate level.

There are, of course, other factors at work. The dumbing down of elementary and secondary education has made its way to the collegiate level; too many unprepared students are admitted despite their inability to do college-level work. Nearly four out of 10 college faculty now agree with the statement “Most of the students I teach lack the basic skills for college-level work.” This inevitably contributes to the flight from teaching (few professors want to teach remedial courses) and the overall lowering of standards.

This general indifference to what, if anything, students learn is embodied in the modern curriculum that enables students to study just about anything, without necessarily learning much at all.

By Charles Sykes @SykesCharlie. This is an excerpt from “Fail U.: The False Promise of Higher Education” by Charles Sykes. Copyright © 2016 by the author and reprinted with permission of St. Martin’s Press, LLC.

Read our article on overhauling higher education titled It’s Time to Overhaul Higher Education of October 25, 2015.

In back-to-back interviews with Fox News, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange criticized the U.S. media for “incredible politicization” in its coverage of the presidential election, and vowed there are more shoes to drop before the Nov. 8 vote.

Assange appeared Friday morning on “Fox & Friends,” where he said “significant” information would be published on the site regarding Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, but did not specify what it would be.

“I know you guys would love it if we scooped ourselves on ‘Fox & Friends,’ but we’re not going to do that,” Assange said from the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he has lived for nearly five years as he fights extradition to Sweden where he is wanted on charges relating to sexual assault that his supporters say are politically driven.

Assange said information regarding Clinton’s health is fair game, and noted that in an email already disclosed by the organization, Clinton refers to her own “cracked head.” He said he had information about GOP nominee Donald Trump as well, but indicated it may not be as revelatory as critics might hope.

It is difficult “for us to publish more controversial material than what comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth every day,” Assange said. He also suggested Clinton and other officials have enjoyed a form of “elite immunity.”

“Fox & Friends” spoke with Assange hours after Fox News’ “The Kelly File” aired an interview, the second in a two-part series of questions and answers with him.

Assange’s group was behind a trove of Democratic National Committee emails leaked on the eve of the party’s convention revealed a bias against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign and led to the resignation of chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

“I’d like to believe that no media organization would not publish the DNC emails,” Assange told Fox News’ “The Kelly File”. “[But] I think MSNBC wouldn’t publish [nor would] The New York Times … That’s sad.”

Assange discussed Wikileaks offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to a conviction in the killing of DNC staffer Seth Rich, who was shot and killed in Washington early on July 10.

“Why are you so interested in Seth Rich’s killer?” Kelly asked Assange.

“We’re very interested in anything that might be a threat to Wikileaks’ sources,” Assange answered, later adding that Wikileaks had “received a variety of information” about the case. Assange would neither confirm nor deny that Rich was “necessarily connected to our publications.”

Assange also accused the Clinton campaign of stoking “a kind of neo-McCarthy hysteria” about Russia’s alleged role in the DNC hacking and Moscow’s purported links to the Trump campaign.

“The Trump campaign has a lot of things wrong with it,” Assange said, “but as far as we can see being Russian agents is not one of them.”

On Wednesday, Assange told “The Kelly File” that “absolutely” new information culled from Clinton’s emails would be released prior to the November election.

Earlier Thursday, a federal judge ordered the State Department to begin releasing almost 15,000 more emails from Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state by Sept. 13. The emails were uncovered by the FBI during their investigation into Clinton’s use of a private server.

Federal authorities are investigating a weekend stabbing in Virginia to see whether the attacker may have been trying to behead a victim and whether the attack was inspired by the Islamic State terror group.

Wasil Farooqui, 20, was charged with two counts of aggravated malicious wounding in the stabbing attack Saturday that left two people wounded.

The FBI confirmed to Fox News it is investigating the dual stabbing alongside the Roanoke County Police Department. A source familiar with the incident also told Fox News the FBI is investigating the incident as a possible terrorism-related incident.

“The FBI is working with the Roanoke County Police Department following the incident that occurred on Saturday evening,” said Adam Lee, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Richmond Division.

“While I cannot discuss details of the investigation at this time, I do want to reassure the community that we are working to determine the nature of the incident,” Lee said.

According to ABC News, Farooqui had traveled to Turkey in the last year and may have tried to sneak into Syria to meet with ISIS militants.

Farooqui allegedly attack a man and woman at an apartment complex in Roanoke, according to WDBJ-7. Both victims were seriously injured in the attack. Witnesses told authorities that Farooqi was yelling “Allah Akbar.”

Authorities believe that Farooqui may have been trying to behead the male victim, according to ABC News. Investigators said that there was no connection between FarooqUi and the victims.

“The FBI is working with the Police Department following the incident that occurred on Saturday evening,” Special Agent In Charge Adam Lee, head of the FBI’s Richmond field office told ABC News in a statement. “While I cannot discuss details of the investigation at this time, I do want to reassure the community that we are working to determine the nature of the incident.”

Farooqi was being held without bond at the Western Virginia Regional Jail.

ABC News. Fox News’ Matt Dean contributed to this report. 

Did you know that 64 people were hacked to death by Islamist Terrorists this week in the Congo?

Okay, no one had mentioned that. So did you know that 392 people were killed and 330 were severely injured by Islamic Terrorists in the second week of this month? No?

So why is the mainstream media burying these stories? And why has the Obama Administration been falsifying its reports on ISIS and other Islamic Terrorists? During Obama’s tenure, after all, there have been over 18,000 Islamic terror attacks around the world, in which more than 130,00 people were killed and 170,000 more were seriously injured.

This certainly seems newsworthy, but the Obama Administration and the press have buried these numbers, and the sad and critical reality they reveal.

How about America–any Islamic Terrorist attacks here? During President Obama’s time in office, over 130 Americans have been killed on American soil by Islamic terrorists, and nearly 400 Americans were injured. The president, however, prefers to call these “workplace violence” or “senseless violence.” This, of course, does not include the 2,996 Americans killed in the 2001 9/11 attacks.

How about recently? What have you heard? For instance, in the month of July there were 197 Islamic Terror attacks in 24 countries, killing 1,699 innocent victims and severely injuring 2,249 others. Hadn’t heard that?

2016- Thus far in 2016 there were 1,497 Islamic Terror attacks in 50 countries, in which 13,323 people were killed and another 16,023 injured. You haven’t heard this mentioned on the evening news either?

2015- In this single year there were 2,862 Islamic Terror attacks in 53 countries, in which 27,594 people were killed and another  26,141 injured.

And hey–whatever happened to those hundreds of kidnapped school girls in Nigeria–taken to be sold off as young wives and sex slaves of Islamic Terrorists (cashing in on their promised virgins a little early)? Remember Michelle Obama’s #BringBackOurGirls campaign? If so, you’re the only one, because Michell and Barack haven’t mentioned a word about them in quite a while.

So what about the peaceful Muslims around the world? Do they condemn Islamic Terror? Do they support it? Why are they so quiet when asked to condemn it?

Multiply the numbers: The numbers above appear to be magnified by polling data that shows tens of millions of Muslims are supportive of violent jihad to expand Islamism throughout the world. For instance, recently, a pro-Muslim polling firm in the Middle East interviewed 3,500 Muslim male young adults (18-24) face-to-face, and asked them questions regarding their level of support for radical Islamic terror groups like ISIS (Daesha in Arabic). (ASDA’A, Burson, Marsteller, 2016) The firm touted that young Muslim support for violent global jihad went down this year to just 13 percent, with 9 percent saying they were undecided, celebrating that 78 percent of young Muslims do not support violent jihad.

Here is the problem with these kinds of poll results. If these number hold true throughout the global Muslim population, 13 percent of the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world leaves us with approximately 208 million Muslims who support violent jihad.

Pro-Muslim groups tell us that despite the accuracy of these kinds of polls, we should believe that the number of Muslims who actively support global violent jihad is close to just 1 percent. Of course, 1 percent still leaves us with 16 million Muslims involved at the grassroots level of violent jihad. These numbers are overwhelming when compared with, for instance, the number of soldiers in the United States Army—less than 500,000.

All of this adds up to hundreds of thousands of mothers, fathers, and children whose lives have been devastated by the murder of a loved one, or an entire family. Most Americans are unaware of the gravity of the problem, and although the press reports individual attacks, sometimes, total numbers are rarely given.

With the rapid global expansion and Westward movement of Islamic Terrorism, many American leaders believe the U.S. should attack Islamic Terrorists at their source, most of whom are assembled near Syria at this time. The administration, however, adheres to the “ignore it and it will go away” philosophy. I don’t think Islamic Terrorists are going anywhere anytime soon–except farther west.

In case you didn’t hear this on the evening news, Muhammad is the most popular baby boy name in the UK’s London, and a few other European Countries.

By James Thompson

James Thompson is a political writer and a ghostwriter of many political books and books by national and global business leaders.

With this November’s election looming just over the horizon, the topic of voter fraud is popping up much more frequently in our news feeds.

Progressives insist that voter fraud is a myth, a charade meant to justify repressive voting laws. The facts, however, tell a different story: Voter fraud is real, and if we ignore it, we leave our ballot boxes open to fraudsters who would rather steal elections than risk losing in a fair and open contest.

The Heritage Foundation’s “Does Your Vote Count” report identifies reasonable measures states can take to protect the integrity of their electoral systems without disenfranchising voters.

Many states have adopted these measures. Nevertheless, these safeguards, including voter ID laws, have come under scrutiny in state and federal courts. In the past few weeks, courts have struck down election integrity laws in Kansas, North Carolina, North Dakota, Texas, and Wisconsin, although some provisions of Texas’ challenged election laws will likely remain in effect this election and a stay has been entered against the order striking down Wisconsin’s law.

Many on the left may celebrate the results in these cases, but it is increasingly difficult for them to deny the basic fact that election fraud exists. In fact, Heritage’s voter fraud database catalogues over 400 examples of individuals convicted of numerous offenses, from impersonation fraud at the polls, to duplicate voting, to schemes to buy votes and steal elections.

Some recent additions to the database include:

Kentucky

Ruth Robinson, the former mayor of Martin, Kentucky, was sentenced to 90 months’ imprisonment on a variety of charges that included vote buying, identity theft, and fraud.

With specific regard to the election charges, Robinson and co-conspirators James “Red” Robinson and James Steven Robinson threatened and intimidated residents of Martin in the run-up to the 2012 election, in which Robinson was seeking re-election.

The cabal targeted residents living in public housing or in properties Robinson owned, threatening them with eviction if they did not sign absentee ballots the Robinsons had already filled out. Robinson also targeted disabled residents, and offered to buy the votes of others. James “Red” Robinson was sentenced to 40 months in prison, and his son James Steven Robinson received a total of 31 months’ imprisonment.

Texas

Guadalupe Rivera and Graciela Sanchez illegally “assisted” absentee voters in Rivera’s 2013 re-election bid for city commissioner. Rivera won the election by 16 votes, but the result was invalidated after a judge determined that 30 absentee ballots had been submitted illegally.

Rivera pleaded guilty to one count of providing illegal assistance to a voter and was sentenced to one year of probation and a $500 fine. Sanchez also pleaded guilty to four misdemeanor counts of violating Texas’ election code and was sentenced to two years’ probation.

Iowa

Erin Venessa Leeper registered and voted in a 2015 school board election. As a convicted felon, however, she was ineligible to do so, and pleaded guilty to perjury last May. She was ordered to pay a $750 fine, plus $240 in court costs, and was sentenced to a suspended five-year prison term and two years of probation.

Wisconsin

Robert Monroe pleaded no contest to 13 counts of voter fraud, making him the worst duplicate voter in state history, according to Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf.

The judge in the case rejected Monroe’s claim that he was insane at the time, concluding that Monroe’s mental state did not prevent him “from appreciating the wrongfulness of his votes or from conforming his actions to election laws.”

Monroe will serve up to a year in jail, in addition to a suspended three-year prison sentence, five years’ probation, 300 hours of community service, and a $5,000 fine.

As the old adage goes, we are entitled to our own opinions, but not to our own facts. These cases—along with the hundreds of other convictions Heritage has documented—are the inconvenient facts many on the left choose simply to ignore. Reasonable Americans should not follow their lead.

Elections—our most direct means of political participation—should be fair and untainted by fraudsters. Every time a vote is cast illegally, it nullifies a legitimate vote and undermines the entire system by eroding public trust in our political institutions. It is imperative that this not be allowed to happen.

By Peter Tapsak / Jason Snead / @jasonwsnead

Guns are a tricky topic. Very rarely do you find voters ambivalent about gun violence, gun safety, etc. Someone is either strongly pro-gun rights or pro-gun control, which makes a civil conversation difficult to start or maintain. But the solution isn’t to avoid the topic.

As I mentioned in my last column, you may be the only conservative who tries to challenge a liberal’s worldview. No pressure.

It may sound like a heavy weight to bear, but not if you’re prepared. So, let’s talk guns.

Here are a few strategies that work well:

1.) Common Ground

Even though the other side often demonizes those who support gun rights, it’s important that you not return the favor.

Instead, work hard to find common ground on such a hostile topic. You will develop instant goodwill and buy some credibility as you support a viewpoint the media often finds “crazy.”

So, what’s the common ground? Whether pro-gun rights or pro-gun control, both sides are motivated by one general desire: safety.

The goal is to keep people safe. One side aims to do so via tougher restrictions and therefore fewer guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens; the other side aims to do so via looser restrictions and therefore more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens. The goal is the same—prevent future gun violence. The means to that end is the sticking point.

Start by acknowledging your shared goal.

2.) Examples

Personal anecdotes and stories can go a long way to diffuse a hostile topic like gun ownership. Humanizing your position will only strengthen your argument and paint a clearer picture of what you believe.

For example, when I discuss the importance of gun rights, I like to highlight that I am a woman who values safety in an often unsafe city like the District of Columbia.  Since the police can’t be everywhere at all times, it’s important for someone like me to be able to protect myself.

Another way to lend credibility to your argument is to highlight real-life, recent, or current events where having a gun could’ve saved lives. The shootings at both the Pulse nightclub in Orlando and the Bataclan theater in Paris are examples of long-lasting hostage situations that could’ve ended much sooner if someone on the scene had a gun.

Don’t just tell your audience that more shootings happen in gun-free zones, cite examples to show when and how.

3.) Words

Sadly, in the age of the Kardashians, “Bachelor in Paradise,” and Snapchat, most Americans don’t know what the Second Amendment is, or even understand the phrase “right to bear arms.” Instead, use words that are easy to comprehend and evoke more emotion like “the right to protect yourself.”

Also, you can’t go wrong stealing the other side’s language like “fair” or “choice” (i.e.: “As a woman, it is important that I have the same rights to choose to defend myself…”).

In summary, find common ground by talking about this issue from a safety perspective, use real-life examples, and steal the left’s language to frame your narrative.

So, bite the bullet (pun intended) and speak up.

By Beverly Hallberg @bevhallberg

Shortly after Hillary Clinton left the Obama administration, the State Department quietly took steps to purchase real estate in Nigeria from a firm whose parent company is owned by a major donor to the Clinton Foundation, records obtained by Fox News show.

On March 20, 2013, William P. Franklin, an “international realty specialist” at the State Department, emailed Mary E. Davis, an American diplomat stationed in Africa, instructing her to “put on Post letterhead” an “expression of interest” by the department in purchasing property at Eko Atlantic, a massive real estate development off the coast of Lagos. Franklin further instructed that the signed letter was to be “delivered to Ronald Chagoury.”

The draft letter, also obtained by Fox News, was undated and addressed to Chagoury care of his firm South Energyx Nigeria Limited, a subsidiary of the larger Chagoury Group that is spearheading the Eko Atlantic real estate venture. The State Department letter sought, among other things, to confirm that the department could proceed with “acquisition of the real property…[at] the asking price of $1,250 per square meter.”

Overtures to real estate developers from State Department officials scouting locations for embassies, consulates and other diplomatic facilities would ordinarily not arouse interest. But in this case, the budding transaction – never completed, the department now says – raised eyebrows because Ronald Chagoury is the brother and business partner, in the Chagoury Group, of Gilbert Chagoury, a Lebanese-born businessman whom federal records show has donated between $1 and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation.

Indeed, Gilbert Chagoury’s friendship with the Clintons can be traced back to the Clinton presidency. In the mid-1990s, Chagoury donated nearly $500,000 to a voter-registration drive designed to help Democratic candidates, attended a White House dinner for premium donors, and met with high-ranking officials  in the Clinton White House – including Susan Rice, now President Obama’s national security adviser – who were shaping U.S. policy toward Nigeria.

More recently, the Chagourys’ close ties to the Clintons generated headlines when a separate series of emails from 2009 – between Doug Band, an aide to former President Clinton and Huma Abedin, an aide to Secretary Clinton – revealed the eagerness of the State Department to oblige a request for Chagoury to be granted access to senior officials working on Lebanon.

The State Department’s outreach to the Chagoury family, looking to buy property from the brothers, came less than a month after former President Clinton himself toured the Eko Atlantic project – for the second time. The first occasion was the ground breaking, in 2009, in which the former president participated. By all accounts, Eko Atlantic represents a staggeringly ambitious undertaking: the dredging of millions of tons of sand from the sea floor off Victoria Island and the creation of an estimated 3.5 square miles of new land, on which the Chagourys aim to establish what they call a “21st century city … for residential, commercial, financial and tourist development.”

Mr. Clinton toured the Eko Atlantic site for the second time on February 21, 2013 – twenty days after his wife left the State Department – to celebrate the Chagourys’ reclamation of 5 million square meters of land, a critical juncture in the project.

Smiling and animated, Mr. Clinton was photographed conferring with Gilbert Chagoury and Jeffrey  J. Hawkins, the consul general for the State Department in Nigeria. Twenty-seven days later, when William P. Franklin would order aides to begin exploring the acquisition of land from South Energyx, the Chagoury-owned company, Hawkins would be one of four State Department officials copied on Franklin’s email.

“A month after Bill Clinton visits a Gilbert and Ronald Chagoury-run land project in Nigeria, the U.S. State Department wants to buy the same land,” said David N. Bossie, president of Citizens United, the conservative advocacy group whose litigation against the State Department pried loose the Franklin email and accompanying letter. “Who could be so lucky? A major donor to the Clinton Foundation, that’s who.”

Queried by Fox News about the matter, the State Department said its officials had “prioritized” the search for a new consulate location in Lagos back in 2011 – when Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state – and that an “independent international real estate firm” had identified Eko Atlantic as a potential site the following year.

“Our site search process … is managed by career real estate professionals in the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations, with input from independent real estate firms and other department stakeholders,” said Elizabeth Trudeau, a State Department spokeswoman, at a briefing for reporters on Monday. “The department has had conversations with multiple property owners and their representatives about the possibility of acquiring property for a new consulate in Lagos.”

Trudeau could not explain why a “prioritized” mission had dragged on for five years without success, noting only that “acquiring property that’s appropriate” for a diplomatic facility can be “a long process.” Asked if Secretary Clinton had been aware of her department’s identification of the Chagoury-owned land as a potential site for a consulate, Trudeau replied: “I’m not aware she was.”

The Clinton campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Mark Corallo, a Washington-based spokesman for Gilbert Chagoury, said in a statement that given the project’s “state-of-the-art urban design,” including advanced telecommunications and security features, “it should come as no surprise that the United States government and other governments from around the world are considering Eko Atlantic as a new opportunity for locating their offices that operate in Lagos.”

John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and Fox News contributor, said the entire series of events involving the Clintons and the Chagourys appeared, at a minimum, poorly handled to insulate Secretary Clinton from conflict of interest charges.

“The impression left is that there’s favoritism involved,” Bolton said. “And it’s just very unusual in State Department real estate and housing transactions overseas to have this kind of focus on someone with such clear financial connections to even the departed secretary of state. Normally, there’s much more competitive activity involved, [of] which we haven’t seen any evidence from the State Department.”

Experts agreed the March 2013 email from William P. Franklin to Mary E. Davis, triggering the State Department’s letter to Ronald Chagoury for a possible real estate transaction, would likely have formed only one set of documents in a longer trail that would have dated back to 2012 – the year the State Department said Eko Atlantic had been identified as a potential site for a new consulate.

Such a trail would presumably include internal correspondence addressing the suitability of the Eko Atlantic site and, perhaps, flagging the potential conflict of interest that could be cited, given the longstanding ties between the Clintons and the Chagourys.

But Citizens United said no other documents on the consulate-scouting effort were turned over by the State Department. The group filed its initial Freedom of Information Act request with the State Department for records relating to Gilbert Chagoury back in 2014, and, receiving no reply, filed suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in April 2015.

_____

James Rosen joined Fox News Channel (FNC) in 1999. He currently serves as the chief Washington correspondent and hosts the online show “The Foxhole.” His latest book is “Cheney One on One: A Candid Conversation with America’s Most Controversial Statesman” (Regnery, November 2, 2015).

Two complaints of vote buying, four complaints of felons voting or registering to vote, and a voter registration under the name of a dead person are among the matters Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s office is reviewing.

Many of the 18 complaints filed in 2016 came through the office’s “Stop Voter Fraud” website and hotline in a year when the state of Georgia finds itself in a role it hasn’t been in for two decades—a presidential battleground.

On the flip side, this has prompted groups from the left such as Common Cause, Project Vote, and the NAACP to hit Georgia with litigation against the state and individual counties.

The stakes are higher now in the Peach State than in past election cycles. Last year, 15 Georgia counties reported suspected voter registration fraud.

Cleaning Up Voter Rolls

Last month, Project Vote, which has opposed voter ID laws in Georgia and other states, sued the state of Georgia to gain information on criteria for disqualifying registration. In February, Common Cause Georgia and the Georgia NAACP sued the state to prevent cleaning up the voter registration rolls.

It’s no coincidence that the litigation is hitting Georgia in what could be a decisive state, said Kim Hermann, senior counsel for Southeastern Legal Foundation, an Atlanta-based legal group that has filed briefs on behalf of the state of Georgia.

“Voter rolls should be cleaned up to make sure they are accurate.”– @HvonSpakovsky

“The claims are frivolous and without merit,” Hermann told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “What we are going to see is a repeat of the voter ID challenges we saw four years ago. Those lawsuits were thrown out because the challengers could not produce anyone who was actually denied access to the ballot, and these ones will be thrown out for similar reasons.”

Project Vote, a Washington-based group, is seeking the release of documents from the Georgia secretary of state’s office describing why some voter registration forms were rejected.

“Secretary Kemp is illegally preventing us from figuring out just what exactly Georgia has been doing with its voter rolls,” Michelle Kanter Cohen, election counsel for Project Vote, said in a statement. “With a presidential election just months away, we’re not willing to wait any longer, and the voters of Georgia can’t afford to wait.”

Kemp spokesman Candice Broce contends the office has been “cooperative and transparent” with Project Vote.

“We have dedicated a substantial amount of time and resources to gather information for this organization, and they have received the information free of charge,” Broce told The Daily Signal in an email. “It is disappointing that Project Vote has resorted to this unnecessary measure when our office has acted in good faith throughout the entire process. It is a shame that taxpayer resources will have to be used to defend this unnecessary lawsuit.”

For the first time in 20 years, Georgia’s 16 electoral votes are at play. The last Democratic presidential candidate to win the state of Georgia was Bill Clinton in 1992. He lost the state in 1996 to Republican Bob Dole. President George W. Bush twice won the state by double digits, while John McCain and Mitt Romney carried the state by a comfortable margin. This year, Democrat Hillary Clinton leads Republican Donald Trump in the most recent polling of the state, after trailing him for months.

In announcing the lawsuit in February, Georgia NAACP President Francys Johnson said removing voters is based on partisanship.

“This isn’t the first, second, third, or even the fourth time that Kemp has put partisan politics over Georgians’ right to vote,” Johnson said in a statement. “Now Kemp is illegally kicking certain citizens off of voter rolls.”

Kemp spokesman Broce was dismissive of the lawsuit by Common Cause and the NAACP.

“As we have stated all along, the lawsuit is completely without merit and frivolous,” she told The Daily Signal in an email. “The Georgia Department of Law has clearly explained to plaintiff’s counsel multiple times that Georgia law is consistent with the NVRA [National Voting Registration Act].”

Investigating Voter Fraud Complaints

The two state cases on the voter registration rolls come amid a lawsuit in Hancock County, Georgia, that has gained significant national attention relating to cleaning up the voter rolls locally.

This week, a coalition of legal groups also filed a lawsuit against Gwinnett County, Georgia, that charged racial bias in the makeup of districts for local elections.

The secretary of state’s office has a thorough process for investigating allegations of voter fraud, Broce said. The biggest category of fraud usually comes in the form of misuse of absentee ballots, she said.

Several complaints were either dismissed or are still pending. If a violation is found, depending on its seriousness, the secretary of state’s office will either send a letter of instruction to the voter or the local elections officials, or make a referral to the state attorney general’s office for investigation.

According to information provided by the secretary of state’s office, the most recent case to be referred to the attorney general was an unqualified voter allegedly attempting to register in 2014 and a convicted felon attempting to vote that same year. A probate judge in 2012 also found that a third party was bringing in numerous registration forms that included the names of residents outside the county as well as convicted felons.

Increasing Voter Participation

“There could be an indirect tie to the elections this year in filing lawsuits and mobilizing members of a minority community,” Charles Bullock, a University of Georgia political science professor, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “If there is a perception that someone is trying to keep you from voting, then it’s a human tendency to say ‘If someone tells me I can’t do it, then by God, I’m going to do it.’”

Georgia’s voter ID law has been in place since 2007. Voter participation among African-Americans actually increased in Georgia in presidential elections and in the midterm elections, Bullock said.

The African-American turnout for the 2008 and 2012 presidential races after the ID law was put into effect was higher than the African-American turnout for the 2004 presidential election, before the ID law was in effect, he said. That fact can’t be dismissed, Bullock added, because President Barack Obama was on the ballot since African-American turnout was higher in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections than in the 2006 midterm elections.

A 2012 Heritage Foundation analysis had similar findings regarding Georgia’s voter ID law, showing from 2004 to 2008, the African-American turnout increased by 42 percent and the Hispanic turnout increased by 140 percent. In a comparison between the 2006 and 2010 midterms, African-American turnout jumped 44.2 percent and Hispanic turnout was up 66.5 percent. Further, fewer than 1 percent of the state’s population had to obtain an ID to vote, as most residents already had some form.

The report’s author, Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, said the allegations in the Georgia voting litigation are unproven.

“Fortunately, they have the ability to prove their claims in court—and if proven, then any attempted voting discrimination will be stopped,” he said in an email response. He added, “Voter rolls should be cleaned up to make sure they are accurate and not full of duplicate registrations or ineligible voters such as noncitizens.”

Von Spakovsky said that the 2013 Supreme Court ruling that determined states no longer had to gain federal approval before changing election laws did not affect the National Voter Registration Act that governs cleaning up voter rolls.

Federal law requires that states clean their voter rolls. Georgia has a process that removes people from the list if they had no contact with Georgia election officials for the past four election cycles, or seven years, and failed to return a prepaid, pre-addressed card confirming their address.

“Georgia does far more to find its registered voters than what is required by federal law,” Hermann, Southeastern Legal Foundation senior counsel, said of Georgia.

By Fred Lucas

Assange implies murdered DNC staffer was WikiLeaks’ source

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange implied in an interview that a murdered Democratic National Committee staffer was the source of a trove of damaging emails the rogue website posted just days before the party’s convention.

Speaking to Dutch television program Nieuswsuur Tuesday after earlier announcing a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Seth Rich’s killer, Assange said the July 10 murder of Rich in Northwest Washington was an example of the risk leakers undertake.

“Whistle-blowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often very significant risks,” Assange said. “As a 27-year-old, works for the DNC, was shot in the back, murdered just a few weeks ago for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington.”

When the interviewer interjected that the murder may have been a robbery, Assange pushed back.

“No,” he said. “There’s no finding. So… I’m suggesting that our sources take risks.”

When pressed as to whether Rich was, in fact, the leaker, Assange stated that the organization does not reveal its sources.

Speaking exclusively to Breitbart News, political polling pioneer Pat Caddell said the Reuters news service was guilty of an unprecedented act of professional malpractice after it announced Friday it has dropped the “Neither” option from their presidential campaign tracking polls and then went back and reconfigured previously released polls to present different results with a reinterpretation of the “Neither” responses in those polls.

“This comes as close as I have ever seen to cooking the results,” said the legendary pollster and political consultant. “I suppose you can get away with it in polling because there are no laws. But, if this was accounting, they would put them in jail.”

The decision comes on the heels of a Breitbart News report that shows a 17-point swing towards Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump and away from Democratic nominee Hillary R.Clinton.

“The looks to me, are far as I can indicate, they have merely decided to go back and revise their numbers in a formula that removes voters or allocates them–I am not sure how they are doing this–proportionately,” he said.

Reuters has rejiggered its methods in order to get the results they want, said the man, whose out-of-the-box interpretations of the American electorate were the brain-work behind the  insurgent presidential campaigns of Sen. George McGovern (D.-S.D.)  in 1972, Georgia Gov. James E. “Jimmy” Carter in 1976, President Carter 1980 and Sen. Gary Hart (D.-Colo.) in 1984. In 1992, Caddell worked for former California governor Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown, who challenged Arkansas Gov. William J. “Bill” Clinton. In the 1990s, Caddell became a popular cable news guest and consulted on various television and movie projects. The 1984 campaign was a reunion of sorts, because Hart was McGovern’s campaign manager.

“What they have done is unprecedented, he said. “They have now gone back and changed their results.”

There are methods for projecting and allocating undecided voters based on complex attitude structures, based on many questions that tell the pollster that this person is in movement to support someone, he said. “Sometimes, they are hiding. That happens. Particularly in the past, or in racially-sensitive cases.”

Caddell cited two examples to Breitbart News.

“On July 25, they originally reported: Trump 40.3 percent and Clinton 37.2 percent, which was a Trump margin of 2.8,” he said. “They have recalculated that now–which I have never heard of–they changed that data, to be: Clinton 40.9 and Trump 38.4, which is a 2.5 margin for Clinton.”

The July 25 Reuters poll now shows a result that reflects a 5.3 percentage point flip from the previously published results, he said.

“Now look at July 26,” he said. “On July 26 they had Trump at 41.5 percent and Hillary at 36.3. That was a 5.2 Trump margin. Then, in the new calculation, they claim that Clinton was 41.1 percent, Trump was 37.5, and the margin was 3.6 for Clinton. Same poll. Two different results. Recalculated, after you’ve announced the other results.”

“What you get is an 8.8 percentage point margin change, almost nine points swinging from one candidate, based on some phony, some bizarre allocation theory that you claim you know where these people are or you are just leaving them out,” he said. “I actually believe they are allocating them because they are claiming they are really Clinton voters and they are using something to move them to Clinton.”

Caddell said he is confused by Reuters’ motivation.

Writing to explain the change in Reuters poll calculations, Maurice Tamman, the leader of the news service’s New York City-based data mining and investigatory reporting team said respondents in the “Year of Neither” were using the Neither option to avoid revealing a decision they had actually made. When events, such as a party’s national convention, compel the Neither respondents to step forward with their actual choice it creates swings in the poll results that Tamman said suggest shifts in opinion that were actually a result of respondents hiding in Neither.

Caddell said at this stage of the presidential campaign, in an election that is so volatile, the undecided are the most fascinating demographic.

“I want to measure the volatility. I can usually tell–I don’t use the forced leans as much, I mean the really forced leans in calculating results, like in 2014–what I am interested in is how those people, who are now undecided get their attitudes and where their attitudes come from,” he said. 

The pollster said when you force someone to make a decision they do not want to make or are not ready to make you are contaminating the data.

“What you are doing is altering their opinion,” he said. “This notion that they are supposed to predict the election today in these polls now is ridiculous.”

Experienced pollsters ask attitude questions to flesh out the undecided voters, to see where they may end up when they do make a decision, but also to understand how they are processing information and what factors led them to a place where they cannot make a decision, he said.

Reuters themselves admit that there are social pressures working against voters confessing their preference for Trump, so they had to be aware that when they force someone to make a gun-to-the-head decision that decision more often than not will default to the socially acceptable decision of Clinton, he said. “Reuters says sometimes they default to Clinton–I just don’t know what they are talking about.”

Caddell said he has always treating polling as the equivalent of military intelligence. When he does a poll for a candidate, he needs to tell the candidate his strengths, weaknesses, and the same for his opponents. There is no incentive for rigging a poll’s sample weights, questions, or forcing decisions to produce the result the candidate wants to see.

As polls in the public space move from news to entertainment, it is more common for polls to be set up to produce high-impact news or entertainment value, which is different from gathering actionable intelligence about the electorate, he said. Even further away from the true purpose of political polling is the poll that manufactures with propaganda impact.

The propaganda polls are actually the opposite of poll-polls, he said. Instead of figuring out what public opinion reality is, the propaganda polls are created to change existing public opinion reality.

“This idea of ‘We need a poll to give the result we want’ to fit either our ideological or political needs is beyond dangerous,” he said.

“It is dangerous because it drives the news coverage and it is all by design now, which is why everyone is in such shock at what Reuters did.”

By Neil W. McCabe

Hillary Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday was “good if you didn’t live in the real world” — and after analyzing it, “all that’s left is she’s a woman and not Donald Trump,” political strategist Dick Morris said Friday.

“When you compare with what she said with reality, you see first of all how flawed it is and secondly what a poor basis it offers for a victorious campaign,” Morris said on Facebook Live. “Not a basis for winning a campaign.”

Clinton’s speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination capped the four-day event at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. Trump accepted the Republican nomination the previous week in Cleveland.

Morris slammed Clinton’s remarks on numerous points:

•  “She began by urging compromise and working together,” he said. “Is there anybody in the world less likely to compromise than Hillary? Like in the email scandal? Like in Benghazi? Her reputation is standing firm and aggressive and telling everybody to go to hell.”
• “She said that we’re not afraid. The hell we’re not afraid. We’re scared to death. When you look at what’s going on in Nice, Paris, San Bernardino, Boston, and Brussels and all over the world — of course we’re scared. Of course we’re frightened of a terrorist attack. … We’re probably more afraid now than we’ve ever been at any point in our recent history except for right after 9/11.”
• “She criticized Trump saying ‘I alone am going to do this.’ … Everybody knows it’s a rhetorical device … — but the idea of a person standing up there and taking responsibility and taking charge is a very good idea and taps into America’s feeling that gridlock and everybody blaming everybody else is really not working in America.”
• “She said she will fight the influence of money in politics: ‘I will follow the money.’ Hillary follows the money, breathlessly trying to grab off some of it. … Hillary is the epicenter of wealth and privilege in American politics.”
• “She said she was going to stand up to China. … You met with China maybe a dozen times and you’ve never stood up to them. You’ve never raised the human-rights issues. You’ve never named them currency manipulators and backed them away from their unfair trade practices. It’s totally disingenuous for us to believe that Hillary will now stand up to China.”
• “She asked, ‘Does Donald Trump have the temperament to be president?’ … Does anybody believe Trump is going to launch a nuclear war? Who’s the one who gets us into wars? Hillary.”

“The entire basis of her anti-Trump campaign was not based on disagreements with his plans,” Morris concluded. “It was based on style — on fluff, on simply saying, ‘Oh God we can’t put up with that man.’

PHILADELPHIA—Young Democrats appear to be part of the coalition championing that dictum from William Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

I expected the youth caucus meeting at the Democratic National Convention, which I attended Wednesday, to focus almost entirely on current liberal concerns such as student loans, jobs, LGBT issues, and climate change. (Given the near absolute lack of mentions of terrorism on the convention’s main stage, I wasn’t so naïve that I expected any talk about the Islamic State terrorists or national security.)

But this was no MSNBC event, and far from leaning forward, two of the three participants on a panel went on extended diatribes about the United States’ history to a room with enough empty chairs to satisfy an army of Clint Eastwoods.

Sitting about half a mile from Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were signed, I got a whirlwind course in Liberal History 101.

“We understand that we have never had a fully participatory democracy,” said Catalina Velasquez. “We understand that democracy, the way it’s defined in the United States, has been about contracting, disenfranchising. The more we disenfranchise, the better. And we are tired of it.”

Velasquez is the director of Young People For, a group that declares on its website that it is “taking a stand for progressive values.” Earlier in the event, Velasquez got enthusiastic applause after boasts of being “undocumented and unafraid” and “transgender and unashamed.”

Nor was the earlier statement the sum of Velasquez’s criticisms about the United States.

“We are really looking introspectively about how this country came about,” Velasquez said. “This country’s built off the backs of native, indigenous people, the genocide of such. This country’s built off the backs of black people … this country is built on the backs of immigrant labor.”

Velasquez added:

And we are tired, and we are tired because history continues to repeat itself over and over again. We are not seeing the change and we are being told to wait. And we don’t want to wait. We’re ready and we’re coming.

Velasquez then proceeded to tick off how long it had taken different groups to be able to vote in the United States.

“And some of us who are undocumented, let’s not forget, are still fighting for suffrage rights.”

Curiously—or perhaps not curiously, given that Eleanor Roosevelt is still enough in the good graces of the left to be given an enthusiastic shoutout by Meryl Streep on the convention’s main stage—there was no mention of the Japanese being thrown into internment camps by Franklin Roosevelt.

At any rate, I’m under no illusion that the history of the United States is free from injustice, immorality, and bad decisions.

But what was striking about the account Velasquez gave was, by my memory, the complete absence of any mention of the strikingly great parts of our country’s history. (And of course, the view that somebody who came to the United States illegally should not only be entitled to live here, but also to vote.)

It was unmentioned how the U.S. championed freedom, how our Founding Fathers created a government system that sought both to avoid mob rule and to push citizens to truly govern themselves, to have a government of, by, and for the people, and to have a founding document that recognized the equality of men.

There was no discussion of how the United States had promoted freedom abroad, and had helped other nations with both financial resources and our soldiers’ lives.  There was no consideration of how many immigrants had fled lands where opportunity was limited and found the United States to be a place where they and their children and their children’s children could truly live the American dream.

While Velasquez focused on the more distant past, another panelist offered a narrative (equally depressing) about the past few decades.

Nelini Stamp, who describes herself as an “organizer,” “agitator,” and “believer in community centered liberation” in her Twitter bio, detailed her views on past presidents:

Our parents saw [Ronald] Reagan, saw what happened, and then when … [Bill] Clinton gets elected, and everybody’s like ‘Oh, we’re here, this is amazing.’ And then we had  [George W.] Bush. Eight years of Bush. And we went to war. We started to prioritize Washington [over] … Main Street. In 2008, we bailed out the banks instead of breaking them apart and they stole 60 percent of the wealth of African-American communities.

But don’t think Stamp’s dislike of the banks bailout means she has any empathy for or interest in exploring the views of the tea party:

A lot of folks thought … Obama gets elected, we kind of packed up. We were like ‘Oh, black president, yes, like I’m so happy.’ And then the tea party came along. And a lot of people thought we were this post-racial society and the tea party came along, and … white supremacy starts to become on the rise.

“If we don’t have a black liberation, black movement in this country … we won’t get anything accomplished,” Stamp added.

Nor was it just young Democrats who championed a narrative obsessed with America’s imperfections.

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who is 47, appeared at the event. Booker quoted “the late, great Langston Hughes,” a poet who flirted with communism at one point, to discuss America. Booker focused on these lines from Hughes’ 1935 poem “Let America Be America Again”:

O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—

And yet must be—the land where every man is free.

The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our might dream again. …

 

O, yes,

I say it plain

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath—

America will be!

“Let us swear that oath,” Booker concluded. “Let us stay strong in faith.”

Stamp also grounded her call to young adults in her historical perspective.

“We are the warriors and … the visionaries of the Great Society that people talked about in the past, of that New Deal that went unpromised for communities of color,” she said.

“So I think that the reason we’re going through this is because it’s just history leading up to this moment where we need to take it.”

By Katrina Trinko @KatrinaTrinko

Democrats have changed America in a truly dramatic way. They failed to maintain the evil practice of slavery, losing the Civil War to the Republicans, then instituted Jim Crow laws to keep American blacks as an underclass, and fighting civil rights and voting rights laws, right up until they could no longer resist Republican pressures in the 1960s.

With the aid of Margaret Sanger they introduced Eugenics to America, resulting in the current 1,800 daily abortions of black Americans–whom they term “human weeds.”

Democrats have pursued several ploys to break down the American way of life, diluting the personal protections afforded by the U.S. Constitution by championing the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments, and constantly attacking the First and Second Amendments.

The advent of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments allowed the government to take the wealth of individual Americans through the taxation of their income–something specifically disallowed by the founders in the Constitution. Why were the founders against this? Because it takes the power of the purse away and individual decisions from families and citizens, and puts it in the hands of the government. We can see how annual trillion dollar spending to enforce government authority has greatly changed the nature, size and scope of the federal government.

Once the jewel of American cities, Detroit was taken over by Democrats and imploded on its own boat and corruption.

With the limitations on the federal government thus lifted, it has increased its power and scope continually, flooding the countryside, businesses and families with federal intrusions.

Democrats have also infiltrated teachers unions and universities, along with media and the press, all constantly bombarding our American youth with messages that the federal government is the answer to every question and every problem, and that it continually needs more power and money to perform its needed tasks. These institutions simultaneously broadcast that America is evil, and that personal liberty and free enterprise are destructive and unfair to minority groups.

How to De-fund and De-fang Democrat Institutions

Because the power of the Democrats is institutionalized, lurking in government bureaucracies, federal agencies, school administrations and university faculty, and news producers, record companies and motion picture studios, at this point we must utilize the opportunities afforded us by the current anti-establishment wave, and do everything in our power to de-fund and de-fang these entrenched institutions.

We must:

1. Eliminate the student loan program and replace it with a federally backed online university system–which halts the leftist indoctrination of our college-age youth and de-funds leftist propaganda universities (see our article “It’s Time to Overhaul Higher Education,” Oct. 25, 2015;
2. Eliminate teachers’ unions, and support school choice and charter schools for all children;
3. Eliminate 80% of all federal agencies, and lay off 80% of federal employees, returning them to the workforce to find productive work in the private economy;
4. Return the federally withheld lands in Western states to those states;
5. Pass a balanced-budget Amendment, and cut the federal budget by a significant amount;
6. Make American History courses mandatory in our educational institutions (ensuring that real history is taught).

By eliminating these institutional strongholds of Democrats and other leftists, we can begin to rid ourselves of the permanent stranglehold they have on our nation, and move the population back toward an informed, invested citizenry. As people become less dependent on government handouts and institutions, and are better informed, they will naturally abandon propaganda-based political philosophies.

PUBLIUS

Donald Trump has opened up a 7-point lead over Hillary Clinton nationally, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll released Thursday.

Trump has 44 percent support to Clinton’s 37 percent among likely voters polled by the conservative-leaning Rasmussen. Another 13 percent favor another candidate, and 6 percent are undecided.

Thursday’s survey marks the third week in a row that the presumptive Republican nominee has led Rasmussen’s poll. It shows Trump at his highest level of support in a Rasmussen poll since October.

According to a RealClearPolitics average of polls, Clinton holds a 3.1-point lead over Trump, 44 percent to 40.9 percent. Most recent polls show Clinton ahead by a small margin, but a CBS News/New York Times poll also released Thursday showed Clinton and Trump tied.

The poll found that voters view Trump and Clinton equally regarding their preparedness for the White House.

Trump has the support of 80 percent of Republicans and 13 percent of Democrats. Clinton has the support of 72 percent of Democrats and just 5 percent of Republicans.

Trump also leads among voters not affiliated with either major party. Among those voters, though, 27 percent prefer another candidate or are undecided.

Trump also leads Clinton by 17 points among white voters and 21 points among men. He also has an advantage over Clinton among voters age 40 and over. Clinton leads by 8 points among women.

The candidates are tied among younger voters.

The survey was conducted among 1,000 likely voters July 12–13. The margin of error is 3 points.

By Rebecca Savransky