Michael Brown Funeral: Cop-Lynching Pep Rally

My article from the Aug. 26, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Michael Brown Funeral: Cop-Lynching Pep Rally

By Matthew Vadum

An Al Sharpton-led memorial service yesterday for Michael Brown, the black 18-year-old thug who gave a white Ferguson, Mo. police officer a severe head injury while trying to seize his handgun, became the grotesque political rally some observers feared it would be.

The distinctly anti-police tone of the service was proof that the lie that Brown tried to surrender to white police officer Darren Wilson, rather than trying to beat the life out of him, won’t die. The racial-grievance industry, egged on by President Obama, won’t let it go.

The Left’s narrative that the nearly 300-lbs. Brown, who had just robbed a convenience store on Aug. 9 mere minutes before encountering decorated policeman Wilson, is under withering evidentiary assault every day. As federal officials scour the riot-torn St. Louis suburb in a desperate search for material to justify federal civil rights charges, Sharpton is pressing on with his campaign to foment race-based hatred.

The funeral sets the stage for the mob-led lynching of Officer Wilson, an outcome eagerly sought by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Missouri’s governor, Jay Nixon (D). Nixon has been covering his left flank in recent days, terrified because activists noticed that he seemed to support law and order and oppose mobocracy, rioting, and looting in the early hours of the crisis that followed Brown’s death.

But after criticism from the Left, Nixon, like the Democratic members of the local congressional delegation, wants Wilson indicted, evidence or not.

Holder’s Lynch Mob in Ferguson

My article from the Aug. 22, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Holder’s Lynch Mob in Ferguson

By Matthew Vadum

The cop-hating radical lawyers of Eric Holder’s Justice Department are reportedly continuing to feed the passions of the lynch mob in Ferguson, Mo., that is screaming for the blood of the white cop who shot and killed a young black man earlier this month in what now almost certainly appears to be an act of self-defense.

A white police officer’s racism, an allegation for which there is no evidence whatsoever, supposedly caused the unfortunate incident. But the leftists who run the federal government need this. They want it badly. A police officer has to be sacrificed to appease Democrats’ political base and to help fend off an increasingly likely Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate in November.

Federal civil rights charges may be in the works against Darren Wilson, the white police officer who shot Michael Brown after an intense physical altercation that left Wilson with severe head injuries.

The feds may simply ignore local authorities and go forward with a case against Wilson, says Hans von Spakovsky, who worked in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under President George W. Bush. He is currently a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation and is co-author of the recently published Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department.

“Eric Holder has completely politicized the Justice Department,” von Spakovsky told WND’s Greg Corombos. “As we can see, unfortunately, this is happening in other places like the Travis County (Texas) D.A.’s office” that charged Texas Gov. Rick Perry with a crime for threatening to veto legislation.

The Ferguson Fix Is In

My article from today's FrontPage magazine:

The Ferguson Fix Is In

By Matthew Vadum

As mass hysteria over the fatal shooting of Ferguson, Missouri resident Michael Brown grips the progressive movement, President Obama is sending the most divisive, corrupt race-baiter in his cabinet to the riot-torn St. Louis suburb where the suspect died.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who has single-mindedly focused on converting the Department of Justice into a racial grievance incubator, is scheduled to visit Ferguson, Mo., today in an appearance billed as an attempt to restore calm to a community that has erupted in almost daily violence since Brown, a young black man, was shot Aug. 9 by a police officer. Left-wingers who believe as an article of faith that America is racist insist, despite the growing body of exculpatory evidence, that Brown was murdered by a white policeman. They will not be dissuaded no matter how much proof accumulates that the officer fired on Brown because he believed his life was in danger.

The visit comes as the Left’s narrative that the nearly 300-lbs. Brown, who had just robbed a convenience store minutes before encountering decorated policeman Darren Wilson, was an innocent gentle giant trying to surrender, unravels more and more each day. More witnesses are coming forward to identify Brown as the aggressor in a vicious attack on Wilson in which he tried to grab the gun of the six-year veteran of the Ferguson police force and inflicted head injuries so severe that the officer may lose an eye.

Yet the belief that Brown is the real victim remains strong in many circles.

Inane commentary is being churned out by hopelessly affective left-wingers at an impressive clip. For example, leftist lawyer Michelle D. Bernard told the under-medicated Chris Matthews of MSNBC that in 2014 — when the U.S. has a black president, black attorney general, black billionaires, and black professionals in probably every field of human endeavor — legions of Americans still hate black males.

“I don’t have an answer that is palatable to be able to look my children in the face and say there are people in this country who– not only do not like African-Americans, but they despise black men,” Bernard said.

“There is a war on black boys in this country. In my opinion, there is a war on African-American men … it’s going to turn into a genocide if it doesn’t stop,” she said, echoing recent comments from perpetually offended movie director Spike Lee.

Michael Brown: A Criminal and a Thug

My article from today's FrontPage magazine:

Michael Brown: A Criminal and a Thug

By Matthew Vadum

As the media-sanctioned rioting, bloodshed and looting continue in Ferguson, Missouri, evidence is emerging that police shooting victim Michael Brown wasn’t the upstanding citizen that many on the Left have claimed him to be.

All of this is happening as mobs have been attacking cops with Molotov cocktails and destroying community infrastructure. Some blacks in the region are reportedly randomly assaulting non-blacks as collective payback for what happened to Brown. Looting and property destruction are rampant. Scores of people have been arrested. Aircraft were ordered to fly at least 3,000 feet over Ferguson airspace after police said their helicopters were fired on from the ground.

A curfew was imposed, and the state’s feckless Democratic governor, Jay Nixon, stripped local police of some of their responsibilities, replacing them with state highway patrolmen. This, predictably, led to more looting of stores and all the things that usually happen when an angry, violent mob is rewarded for its bad behavior.

Through it all, the Left is out in force in Ferguson, trying to make a bad situation worse. The criminal elements of the city have been emboldened by martyrized accounts of Brown, and have carried out a campaign of destruction against the civil order under the banner of “no justice, no peace.”

As happened in the Trayvon Martin case two years ago, the hulking, nearly 300-lbs. Brown has been portrayed as an innocent doe-eyed angel unfairly cut down by evil police as a promising future awaited him. In Brown’s case, he was said to be just days away from heading off to college.

But as one blogger observed, in this age of ubiquitous social media, the 18-year-old African-American man left behind,

“a cache of rap songs … that contain pretty much what you’d expect out of modern rap – lots of boasting about murdering, taking drugs, drinking, and sex with hos.”

In one of them labeled “Free$tyle Big’Mike,” one performer raps, “My favorite part’s when they bodies hit the ground. I soak ‘em up like I’m wringin’ out a sponge.”

Race Riot Romance

My article from the Aug. 14, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Race Riot Romance

By Matthew Vadum

The fatal police shooting of a young black suspect in a Midwestern town last weekend has given the Left yet another opportunity to advance its destructive, racially polarizing agenda.

After 18-year-old Michael Brown, a black man was killed by police in Ferguson, a mostly black community in St. Louis County, Mo., the city and region surrounding it have been under siege. Not content to wait for the wheels of the justice system to spin, some view this tragedy as a license to riot.

Cries of “no justice, no peace” pierce the air as demonstrators hurl Molotov cocktails at law enforcement officials. Some say the police have been responding to the protesters and rioters with excessive force and have been mean by discouraging protests. Some blacks are reportedly randomly assaulting non-blacks as collective payback for what happened to Brown.

Looting and property destruction are rampant. Dozens of people have been arrested. The Federal Aviation Administration ordered aircraft to fly at least 3,000 feet over Ferguson airspace after police said their helicopters were fired on from the ground.

Witnesses give conflicting accounts of what happened to Brown. The young man was apparently walking in the street and then stopped by police. There was a scuffle over a policeman’s gun and Brown was shot. Local police are investigating as are federal officials and civil rights bureaucrats. Brown could ultimately be found to be a would-be murderer or a murder victim himself. Time will tell.

The name of the police officer who shot Brown has been withheld for the time being by police who quite justifiably fear for his safety.

All this unrest over the death of Brown seems selective, for lack of a better term.

By contrast, when James Boyd, a mentally disturbed, homeless, white man was fatally shot in the back by Albuquerque, N.M. police recently, there were some protests but no riots. In some circles, white victims are apparently less valuable than black victims.

Regardless of what he may say publicly, all this racially motivated anger and violence is fine by President Obama, an extreme-left community organizer by profession.

I wrote something nice about James Brady – you won’t believe what happened next

Here's my debut piece on Rare.us. It ran on August 6.

President Obama's 16 Watergates (So Far)

It's always a thrill to get attacked by George Soros's character assassins at the slander shop called Media Matters for America.

At least I think today's post, President Obama's 16 Watergates (So Far), was intended as an attack.

Here's the relevant part of the post:

The Gibson Guitar Raid, The GM Bailout, And The NLRB/Boeing Dispute

In a 2013 column titled, "Obama Scandals vs. Watergate," FrontPageMag columnist Matthew Vadum posited, "Obama's serial acts of malfeasance have cost hundreds of lives while Nixon's caused no loss of life. Both attacked their political enemies using taxpayer resources and tried to rig the system to favor their side." Among the alleged offenses listed by Vadum:

Quite apart from the IRS, Benghazi, and AP scandals, Obama has a long record of abusing government power to harass those he perceives as political enemies and reward his allies. He lives and breathes corruption.

In 2011, he sent armed federal agents to raid Gibson Guitars in Memphis, Tenn., over specious environmental infractions. Obama's National Labor Relations Board targeted Boeing for daring to open a facility in right-to-work state South Carolina. Obama rigged the GM and Chrysler bankruptcy proceedings to unfairly enrich his friends in the United Auto Workers at the expense of higher-priority creditors such as bondholders and suppliers.

Border Horror

My article from today's FrontPage magazine:

Border Horror

By Matthew Vadum

The brutal slaying of a U.S. Border Patrol agent by illegal aliens highlights the perils of the Obama administration’s de facto open borders policy that has transformed the nation’s southern boundary into a taxpayer-funded welcome center for desperately poor unskilled and low-skill workers, sick children, welfare mooches, and violent criminal gang members.

This horrific crime happened not too far from the same border that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) sedately insisted was “secure.”

“We hear a lot on TV that the border is secure, that the border is safer and that couldn’t be any farther from being true,” Chris Cabrera, vice president of Local 3307 of the National Border Patrol Council told Neil Cavuto of Fox News.

“It seems to be getting more and more dangerous as the days go by. It seems with all of this talk about amnesty or comprehensive immigration reform, getting [legislation] through, people seem to be more and more desperate to get into this country.”

While off duty this past Sunday, Border Patrol Agent Javier Vega Jr., just 36 years old, died in south Texas, gunned down by two illegal immigrants trying to rob him while he was on a fishing outing. He was murdered in front of his family, including his two children and parents.

The bandidos ordered the family to get on the ground and were surprised to discover that Vega and his father were armed, unlike the typically helpless victims in Mexico and other Latin American countries where life is cheap and privately owned firearms are forbidden or severely regulated.

Vega suffered a mortal wound in the chest during the bungled attack, but as life drained out of his mangled body he pleaded with his dad to “keep shooting.” Vega’s father took a non-fatal shot in the hip and his mother picked up an AR-15 rifle and fired upon the killers’ vehicle, hitting it several times as the two assailants fled the scene. The vehicle apparently broke down and was found abandoned a few miles from the site of the shooting.

Help make Trevor Loudon's "The Enemies Within" into a movie!

The great Trevor Loudon is trying to make his opus, The Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the U.S. Congress, into a motion picture.

He needs your help.

Click on the below to donate.

The Arrogance of Eric Holder

My article from today's FrontPage magazine:

The Arrogance of Eric Holder

By Matthew Vadum

Attorney General Eric Holder argues in a new interview that activism is the proper role of the nation’s chief law enforcement officer — and it is precisely this radical conceit that by itself ought to disqualify him from holding the office.

“If you want to call me an activist attorney general, I will proudly accept that label,” he told left-wing journalist Juan Williams.

“Any attorney general who is not an activist is not doing his or her job,” Holder pontificated, skating over the long-recognized fact that an attorney general is supposed to enforce the law, not fundamentally transform the nation. (For a full profile of Holder, see DiscoverTheNetworks.)

“The responsibility of the attorney general is to change things [and] bring us closer to the ideals expressed in our founding documents,” he said, again deliberately misrepresenting the purpose of his high office.

It is especially galling that Holder invokes the nation’s founding documents, which to him are mere pieces of parchment to be ignored or overcome depending on the political exigencies of the moment.

When critics decry his Department of Justice for containing an “activist civil rights division and this is an activist attorney general — I’d say I agree with you 1,000 percent and [I am] proud of it,” Holder said.

This is not mere hubris.

Holder is the legal ringleader for today’s Democrats and their culture of corruption. After being held in criminal contempt of Congress in June 2012 –the first such citation against a sitting attorney general in American history– he is just a few steps away from being impeached in the House of Representatives and tried in the Senate for the high crimes and misdemeanors his detractors say he has committed against the American people.

Conservatives Triumph in Border Bill Victory

My article from today's FrontPage magazine:

Conservatives Triumph in Border Bill Victory

By Matthew Vadum

Conservatives in Congress scored a major triumph last week as the House approved emergency legislation that strengthens border security and attempts to rein in a lawless president.

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), a conservative champion, took a well-deserved victory lap in an interview with the WND news website.

The “legislative miracle” approved by the House represents a “stunning turnaround” and “a huge victory for the conservatives in Congress.” Its approval is also a big win for the American people who, Bachmann said, “saved Congress from itself” by jamming the congressional switchboard to state their opposition to President Obama’s planned immigration amnesty.

Bachmann noted the legislation pays states to place National Guard troops on the border, doubling funding for that program. It also responds to the president’s threat that “he would act alone, lawlessly, to grant work permits to 5- to 6 million illegal foreign nationals.”

“We have taken the strongest possible action, legislatively, to stop him,” Bachmann said. “We’ve put the president on notice by saying, ‘You better not issue these work permits because we’ve said no. You better not try it, Mr. President.’”

The bill also provides funding to immigration agencies to house illegal alien children and also amends a 2008 law that was created to block the sex trafficking of young people but which has been used to provide asylum to illegals coming from Central American countries.

Bachmann also marveled at the fact that the bill was even tougher in her view than what anti-amnesty stalwarts Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) had thought was politically possible to achieve.

She also rejected President Obama‘s mischievous comment Friday afternoon in which he attacked conservatives for supposedly preventing the House from approving a border-fix measure.

That comment was “infantile,” Bachmann said, noting that the Democrat-controlled Senate is the chamber that has yet to approve a border bill. Republicans hope Senate Democrats take a public relations drubbing in coming weeks for failing to act.

Victory came a day after a conservative-led uprising among House Republicans scuttled Speaker John Boehner’s worse-than-useless border crisis and immigration legislation. “The bill as it was had more loopholes than a knitted afghan,” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) told FrontPage on Thursday.

Conservatives Kill Amnesty Bill —- For Now

My article from the Aug. 1, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Conservatives Kill Amnesty Bill —- For Now

By Matthew Vadum

A conservative-led uprising among House Republicans scuttled Speaker John Boehner’s worse-than-useless border crisis and immigration legislation yesterday but party leaders vowed to try again today to pass the emergency funding bill.

“The bill as it was had more loopholes than a knitted afghan,” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said in a statement released exclusively to FrontPage late yesterday.

Tonight, many members were able to come together and hammer out many of those problems so that we could live with the result. Whether the final product gets the needed 218 votes will depend on how the final product looks once it is typed and printed.

Conservatives are apparently doing the people’s will. A new poll suggests Republican voters side with conservative lawmakers over House GOP leadership. Breitbart News reports:

Polling data compiled by Tea Party Patriots and provided exclusively to Breitbart News shows that a majority of Republican voters think Republicans standing strong on immigration is more important than repealing Obamacare, getting to the bottom of the Benghazi or IRS scandals—or anything else for that matter.
When asked by TPP’s pollster which issue they think is the [most] important for Republicans in Congress to deal with, 34.6 percent of GOP voters said stopping the flow of illegal immigrants across our southern border. Stopping Obama’s ‘illegal overreach’ with executive power came in a distant second with 24 percent of GOP voters saying that’s the most important, while 23 percent saying repealing Obamacare is the most important and just 7.2 percent say the IRS scandal is the most important issue and 2.8 percent say the Benghazi scandal is most important. A total of 8.4 percent of GOP voters said they don’t know or refused to answer.
The poll was conduc[t]ed with 1,000 likely GOP voters on Thursday, July 24 via a combination of cell phones and landlines nationwide, with a margin of error of 3.2 percent.

The showdown between rank-and-file Republicans and their leaders in the House comes as Americans grow increasingly angry over the border crisis that has been staged and carefully choreographed by the far-left levelers of the Obama administration.

President Obama threatens to plunge the nation into a grave constitutional crisis after Labor Day by using executive orders to grant a huge amnesty to millions of illegal aliens now in the United States. Of course, in the American system of government, Congress, not the president, is supposed to make laws. Congress has repeatedly refused to grant the amnesties that Obama seeks, but the president refuses to take no for an answer, pressing on regardless of how much damage he does to the country.

Lawmakers in the nation’s capital had been racing to wrap up legislative business and leave Washington for a five-week summer recess yesterday but Boehner put their vacation plans on hold after a revolt forced him to temporarily shelve his border bill that conservatives say is really amnesty legislation.

Some House members were already at the airport preparing to fly back to their congressional districts but “a sudden and fierce backlash forced Boehner to rescind the decision” to put the bill on the back burner, Breitbart News reports.

Down to the Wire

My article from the July 31, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Down to the Wire

By Matthew Vadum

Republican lawmakers in the nation’s capital are racing against the legislative clock to approve measures aimed at cleaning up the border mess that President Obama created and preventing him from issuing unilateral decrees making it much, much worse.

The Obama administration is threatening to plunge the nation into a dire constitutional crisis after Labor Day by using executive orders to grant a huge amnesty to millions of illegal aliens now in the United States. Of course, in the American system of government, Congress, not the president, is supposed to make laws. Congress has repeatedly refused to grant the amnesties that Obama seeks, but the president refuses to take no for an answer, pressing on regardless of the casualties he inflicts on the country.

There is no indication Obama is backing off.

After meeting with Obama at the White House, leftist congressman Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) again predicted the president would go forward with a massive immigration amnesty.

“I believe the president of the United States is going to act broadly and generously,” Gutiérrez said Tuesday on MSNBC when describing the White House visit that took place Friday. “That’s my belief. He didn’t say that to me but that’s what I believe he’s going to do.”

A giddy Gutiérrez said last week that the Obama administration could unilaterally provide legal status to as many as 5 million illegals.

But an amnesty fiat by the president would violate the U.S. Constitution and the separation of powers doctrine and is clearly “an impeachable offense,” according to commentator Charles Krauthammer.

Although Krauthammer doesn’t support efforts to impeach Obama which he refers to as “political suicide,” he said that unilaterally granting work permits and legal status to millions of illegal aliens would be “clearly lawless and it would be biggest domestic overreach of a president in memory.”

Time is running out for Congress to act to protect its constitutionally guaranteed legislative prerogatives from Obama’s tyrannical encroachments. On Friday the House of Representatives is set to adjourn for five weeks for summer vacation.

Bracing for Amnesty

My article from the July 28, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Bracing for Amnesty

By Matthew Vadum

Amnesty is coming — big time.

Americans need to brace themselves for a huge new wave of Obama-led lawlessness because the president is planning what a top schemer in the White House calls a “very significant” executive action on immigration after the summer.

Undoubtedly this means some kind of amnesty for illegal aliens is in the works over and above what Obama has already done, the Constitution and public fury notwithstanding.

Obama’s “planned executive orders” would give legal status “to another 5–6 million illegal immigrants,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions, (R-Alabama). “This would effectively end immigration enforcement in America.”

Leftist congressman Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) boasted Friday that the Obama administration could unilaterally provide legal status to as many as 5 million illegals. The lawmaker said he planned to meet with White House officials “to negotiate additional terms and avenues the president can use” through executive action.

“I think we can get 3 or 4, maybe even 5 million people,” Gutiérrez said.

The news comes as Americans grow increasingly angry over the border crisis that has been staged and carefully choreographed by the far-left levelers of the Obama administration. Flames of discontent are flickering even in places like Lynn, Massachusetts, long a Democratic Party bastion, as local residents grow weary of the seemingly unending influx of illegal aliens that they are hard-pressed to feed, house, and clothe. As many as an estimated 10,000 people protested illegal immigration outside the Massachusetts legislature in Boston over the weekend.

Because a U.S. Senate-approved immigration package has very little chance of passing the House, Obama has decided yet again to usurp the power of the Congress and make law, a clear violation of the Constitution and an impeachable offense.

But instead of getting serious about border security, the Obama administration views the ongoing invasion by gang members, criminals, and other illegal immigrants from Central America as an opportunity to dynamite what remains of the nation’s southern border. He doesn’t care that plenty of illegal aliens, many of them children, are dying in the act of crossing the border. They are mere collateral damage in the pursuit of so-called social justice.

Americans Say Obamacare Is Hurting Families

My article from the July 25, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Americans Say Obamacare Is Hurting Families

By Matthew Vadum

The American people hate Obamacare and recognize the lasting damage it is inflicting, according to a new national poll.

Americans seem to recognize that the Obamacare law will boot people out of their health care plans, encourage idleness, drive wages down, increase the government’s tax take, and fail to put a dent in the number of Americans without health insurance coverage.

“Obamacare is helping some people; mostly Americans with preexisting conditions and those who are eligible for very generous subsidies,” Townhall’s Guy Benson observes. “But it’s hurting far more people. And a substantial majority oppose the law.”

Indeed, after but a wee taste of the deadly horrors of government-run health care, Americans now say by a 2-to-1 margin that it has hurt their families, according to a new CNN/ORC International poll.

When asked what impact the Obamacare law has had, 18 percent of respondents said their families were better off as a result of the law, compared to 35 percent who said Obamacare has made them worse off.

Americans continue to hate Obamacare overall, disapproving of the program by a dramatic margin of 59 percent to 40 percent.

Many Americans are finding that guaranteed access to health care insurance doesn’t actually translate to getting health care in the real world. This “access shock” is spreading, according to a surprisingly honest assessment in Politico:

Anger over limited choice of doctors and hospitals in Obamacare plans is prompting some states to require broader networks — and boiling up as yet another election year headache for the health law … It’s not just a political problem. It’s a policy conundrum. Narrow networks help contain health care costs. If state or federal regulators — or politicians — force insurers to expand the range of providers, premiums could spike. And that could create a whole new wave of political and affordability problems that can shape perceptions of Obamacare.

And to the continuing amazement of our enlightened progressive betters, Americans are stubbornly immune to the relentless onslaughts of socialist propaganda from Obama mandarins and the media that sing the praises of government-run health care.

“Obamacare was pitched as a win/win for everyone, with no trade-offs and no losers,” said Benson. “That has not been the case.”

The Obama Administration’s Homeland Security Hypocrisy

My article from the July 15, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

The Obama Administration’s Homeland Security Hypocrisy

By Matthew Vadum

After years of working hard to comfort America’s terrorist enemies and erase U.S. borders, the nation’s perpetually embattled attorney general is suddenly concerned that Middle Eastern jihadists are working together to create undetectable explosives that could be used to blow up U.S. airliners.

Intelligence reports suggest Islamic terrorists in Yemen and Syria have joined forces to make the stealthy bombs and this development is “more frightening than anything I think I’ve seen as attorney general,” Eric Holder said on ABC’s “This Week.”

The collaboration between Islamist militants in the two Muslim countries is a “deadly combination” of those who have technical skills and “people who have this kind of fervor to give their lives in support of a cause that is directed at the United States and directed at its allies.”

“It’s something that gives us really extreme, extreme concern,” Holder said.

Holder’s comments come as the U.S.Department of Homeland Security announced it was ratcheting up security measures at international airports. Individuals will now be made to demonstrate that their electronic devices such as cellphones and laptop computers are not bombs by turning them on at security checkpoints.

Such measures are “prudent steps that are necessary to protect the flying public,” Holder said.

Yet while Holder pretends to be a responsible adult, at the same time evidence has surfaced that security measures have been all but suspended at U.S. airports for newly arrived illegal immigrants in the southern states.

Breitbart Texas reports that illegals are being allowed to board commercial airliners without valid ID. “The aliens who are getting released on their own recognizance are being allowed to board and travel commercial airliners by simply showing their Notice to Appear forms,” said Hector Garza, a spokesman for Local 2455 of the National Border Patrol Council. (NBPC is the labor union representing about 17,000 Border Patrol agents and support personnel assigned to that law enforcement organization.)

Soros Network Ready to Boost Radical Groups

My article from the July 11, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Soros Network Ready to Boost Radical Groups

By Matthew Vadum

Amidst internal dissent, George Soros’s shadowy political funding powerhouse is planning to execute a $200 million fundraising campaign this election cycle in order to benefit key groups pushing for a permanent radical left-wing Democrat majority.

The billionaire members of the elite fundraising empire known as the Democracy Alliance have reportedly funneled $500 million or more into leftist and pro-Democrat organizations. The goal of the Alliance is to foster a permanent political infrastructure of left-wing nonprofits, think tanks, media outlets, leadership schools, and activist groups.

Among the groups benefiting from the Alliance’s largesse are the John Podesta-founded Center for American Progress, Media Matters for America, America Votes, and Organizing for Action (an outfit that grew out of the Obama campaign and used to be known as Organizing for America).

Much of the money being spent by groups that enjoy support from the Democracy Alliance is being devoted to class warfare and the vilification of right-leaning billionaires Charles and David Koch in order to distract from President Obama’s failed policies. Members of the Alliance are “obsessed with” the Kochs’ funding network, according to Politico‘s Ken Vogel.

“Conservatives, particularly the Koch Brothers, are playing for keeps with an even more pronounced financial advantages [sic] than in recent election cycles,” according to a 62-page briefing book Democracy Alliance donors received before the annual spring of the group at Chicago’s luxurious Ritz-Carlton hotel.

“The briefing book reveals a sort of DA-funded extra-party political machine,” Vogel writes, “that includes sophisticated voter databases and plans to mobilize pivotal Democratic voting blocs, air ads boosting Democratic candidates, while also — perhaps ironically — working to reduce the influence of money in politics.”

As Vogel reports, the Democracy Alliance is embracing a series of projects its leadership believes help to advance the leftist cause.

According to internal documents, at the Chicago meeting the Alliance recommended increasing annual funding of the alleged “conservative misinformation” watchdog Media Matters for America from last year’s level of $2.4 million to $3 million in order to back the group’s “Metis” software for “tracking conservative smears.”

The Alliance also supports training for “acts of civil disobedience” by groups such as the New Organizing Institute, and funding for the Progressive Leaders Network, which has been described as the left-wing counterpart to the American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC, which writes model legislation that it promotes in state legislatures, suffered mightily in past years as a result of false accusations of racism that the Van Jones-founded group Color of Change level at it based on ALEC’s previous support for voter ID laws.

Supreme Court: Obama is Out of Order

My article from the July 3, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Supreme Court: Obama is Out of Order

By Matthew Vadum

The Supreme Court has wrapped up its 2013-2014 term by handing stinging defeats to the increasingly unpopular President Obama.

Doing its job for a change, the high court reined in the power of the Executive Branch of the federal government, striking down a forced unionization scheme, an abortifacient mandate, and improper recess appointments. The Court also rejected the Obama administration’s contention that police be allowed to search Americans’ cellphones without warrants.

In the nearly five and a half years Obama has been president, the Supreme Court has now ruled against the government 9-0 an astonishing 20 times, as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) points out. George W. Bush and Bill Clinton lost on unanimous votes 15 times and 23 times, during their respective eight years in the Oval Office.

This means that as measured by judicial losses, the Obama administration is on track to surpass its two immediate predecessors.

“The importance of the unanimous cases is that you can’t say, ‘Well, there are five Republican appointees on the court and four Democrats,’” said Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute.

“These cases where they haven’t gotten the votes of either of the two Obama nominees means the arguments being presented by the Justice Department to the court are just out of left field,” he said.

Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor were appointed by Obama. Kagan served as Obama’s solicitor general, arguing cases before the Supreme Court.

In a ruling that has sent shock waves through Big Labor, the Supreme Court struck down a scam that was being run by the grifters at the president’s favorite labor union, Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

The Court ruled 5-4 in Harris v. Quinn (full text of decision) that SEIU cannot compel people who care for their loved ones to become union members. Nor can SEIU deduct member dues from the government checks of the people for whom they care.

Supreme Court Rebukes Obama Lawlessness

My article from the June 27, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Supreme Court Rebukes Obama Lawlessness

By Matthew Vadum

In a humiliating rebuke to President Obama, the Supreme Court affirmed in a labor relations case yesterday that there continue to be constitutionally prescribed limits to the powers of the nation’s Chief Executive.

The Court invalidated three recess appointments the president made in an attempt to unconstitutionally manipulate federal labor relations policy.

Justices held unanimously in National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning Thursday that Obama overreached on Jan. 4, 2012 when he recess-appointed three members to the NLRB without bothering to wait for the U.S. Senate to recess. Obama’s goal was to pack the under-staffed NLRB with likeminded leftists and give the board the quorum it previously lacked to conduct official business.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) lauded the Court’s clampdown on “President Obama’s unlawful abuse of the president’s recess appointments power.”

“This marks the 12th time since January 2012 that the Supreme Court has unanimously rejected the Obama administration’s calls for greater federal executive power,” Cruz said.

A delighted Michael Savage said on his radio show: “America just won a 9-to-0 victory over an emerging dictatorship.” (The full opinion is available at the Supreme Court’s website.)

In this post-constitutional era in which the Supreme Court gave its imprimatur to the nonsensical ruling in NFIB v. Sebelius, the vile pro-Obamacare decision that has been aptly compared to an infamous slavery-reinforcing ruling that helped to precipitate civil war, it remains to be seen what, if any, other limits to governmental power the Court will see fit to recognize. Ben Shapiro correctly characterized the tortuously reasoned Obamacare decision as “the greatest single judicial limitation on American liberty since Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), in which the Supreme Court ruled that under the Constitution, blacks were not human beings.”

The lawsuit disposed of yesterday was brought by Noel Canning of Washington state, the owner of a soft drink bottling and distribution company who was displeased by a ruling the board made against him after its quorum was restored by the purported recess appointments. The NLRB found that Canning’s firm engaged in unfair labor practices by declining to sign a collective bargaining agreement. Canning argued the board had no legal authority to render the decision because the president’s recess appointments, made when the U.S. Senate did not consider itself to be in recess, were improper.

The Mounting Proof of an IRS Cover-Up

My article from the June 25, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

The Mounting Proof of an IRS Cover-Up

By Matthew Vadum

More proof the Obama administration is covering up the political persecution it inflicted on its conservative political enemies through the Internal Revenue Service emerged yesterday as a federal official accused the White House of breaking the law by hiding emails.

Whenever the records, including emails, of federal agencies are destroyed — whether intentional or inadvertent — the law requires that the National Archives be notified. But that did not happen when the computer hard drives of a former IRS official and six of her IRS subordinates allegedly crashed in 2011, destroying records of emails now at the heart of a congressional corruption probe.

“They did not follow the law,” Archivist of the United States David Ferriero said of the IRS during testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

It has also been revealed that the IRS suspiciously backed out of a circa 2005 contract with an email storage contractor named Sonasoft mere weeks after Lerner reported losing personal files and before other IRS officials allegedly experienced hard drive crashes as the Tea Party-targeting investigations got underway.

As Investor’s Business Daily explains,

Timing is everything, the saying goes, and sometimes the timing of events is also very curious, as in the case of the lost emails of Lerner and at least six other officials at the very same time the IRS canceled its contract to back up and preserve those emails as required by federal law.
Lerner’s computer supposedly crashed in June 2011, an alleged event the IRS concealed from the American public and congressional investigators for two years.
This event, which cannot be verified because her hard drive has since been destroyed and recycled, occurred just 10 days after House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Dave Camp first wrote a letter asking if the IRS was engaging in targeting of nonprofit groups.

Sonasoft runs ads stating the company provides “Email Archiving Done Right” and “Point-Click Recovery.” In a 2009 tweet it bragged: “The IRS uses Sonasoft to back up their servers, why wouldn’t you choose them to protect your servers?”

Why not — indeed.

Under hyper-partisan, left-wing Democrat Lois Lerner, the tax-exempt organizations branch singled out for harassment the heroic Catherine Engelbrecht, leader of the Houston-based good government group True the Vote. Earlier this year the IRS revoked the charitable status of Manassas, Va.-based Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty, because it disseminated criticism of Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry a decade ago. In recent years the federal agency also subjected conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status to heightened scrutiny, harassment, and extended processing delays that may have hindered their activities during the previous election cycle.

It is the latest outrage from the Obama administration which has been on a vindictive rampage in recent years, using the feared tax collection agency to vex and annoy its political enemies, especially those associated with the Tea Party movement.

Republicans say the White House has been less than helpful in efforts to investigate the IRS scandal. “They haven’t done a damn thing to get to the truth of what happened,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said yesterday.

The hearing yesterday followed a previous hearing the night before at which lawmakers unloaded on the increasingly arrogant IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, questioning him aggressively. The normally mild-mannered Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) excoriated Koskinen for his bad attitude in testifying before the congressional panel. On Friday Koskinen set the stage for conflict. He angered lawmakers when he told them at that hearing that the IRS had nothing to apologize for in the missing Lerner emails scandal.

Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) told Koskinen a Monday hearing: “We have a problem with you and you have a problem with credibility.”

At a hearing yesterday, Koskinen told Issa that he had honored his vow to the panel to give it all of Lerner’s emails, adding it is impossible to recover the emails lost in 2011.

“If you have a magical way for me to do that, I’d be happy to hear about it,” a sarcastic Koskinen told Issa.

“I’ve lost my patience with you,” Issa shot back.

The IRS’s ‘Lost’ Email Deception

My article from the June 20, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

The IRS’s ‘Lost’ Email Deception

By Matthew Vadum

Emails from disgraced former IRS tax-exempt division chief Lois Lerner that could throw light on the Obama administration’s thuggish crackdown on conservative nonprofit groups have been sucked into an electronic black hole, IRS officials now claim.

It is the latest outrage from the Obama administration which has been on a vindictive rampage in recent years, using the feared tax collection agency to vex and persecute its political enemies, especially those associated with the Tea Party movement.

Under hyper-partisan, left-wing Democrat Lois Lerner, the tax-exempt organizations branch singled out for harassment the heroic Catherine Engelbrecht, leader of the Houston-based good government group True the Vote. Earlier this year the IRS revoked the charitable status of Manassas, Va.-based Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty, a conservative nonprofit group, because it disseminated old statements critical of Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry a decade ago.

Although President Obama claimed earlier this year that there has not been even “a smidgen of corruption” at the IRS under his watch, it is clear that “the dog ate my homework,” is becoming the excuse of choice for his lawless administration.

But in March the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee published an in-depth report detailing IRS targeting of right-of-center 501c4 nonprofit advocacy groups during the 2010 and 2012 election cycles. (The full report is available in PDF form at the committee’s website.) Congressional investigators determined that Lerner orchestrated an unprecedented crackdown on Tea Party and conservative groups and then attempted to scapegoat those nonprofits, blaming them for the harsh treatment they received at her instigation.

As political pressure builds on Capitol Hill, it can finally be revealed that a mysterious, politically progressive electromagnetic pulse may have hit the hard drives of Lerner and six of her IRS underlings. Obama officials now claim the emails of all seven government employees to outside organizations and agencies including the White House have been consigned to oblivion.

Benghazi ‘Suspect’ Captured

My article from the June 18, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Benghazi ‘Suspect’ Captured

By Matthew Vadum

A man the Obama administration claims orchestrated the deadly attack on the American diplomatic complex in Benghazi, Libya, on the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 atrocities is now in U.S. custody.

This means that — abracadabra! — a suspect is in U.S. custody even before anyone knew there was a suspect. After all, it was supposed to be a video that no one saw that mocked the Islamic prophet Mohammed that sparked spontaneous riots complete with attackers armed with military-grade weapons.

After the administration orchestrated a massive campaign of deception, spoon-feeding lies to its lapdog allies in the media, suddenly Ahmed Abu Khatallah, a senior leader of the Ansar al-Shari’a terrorist militia in Benghazi, is in American hands. Khatallah, who was not in hiding in Libya and who made himself available to visiting journalists, was  charged by U.S. authorities last year with murder in connection with the assault, according to newly unsealed court documents.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, said he “anticipated” that the raid seizing Khatallah would happen but suggested that the importance of the capture is overblown.

“The administration would like to say, all right, we apprehended someone, isn’t that great, to deflect the attention away from the real Benghazi problem—that is, the president and, through [Ambassador Susan] Rice and the rest of them, knew full well that it was all a terrorist attack, and they tried to cover it up and got caught in a lie.”

“The big deal here,” said Inhofe, “is we have a president who lied to the American people.”

Whether Khatallah had anything to do with the attack on the diplomatic facility has yet to be shown. Khattalah told the New York Times in October 2012 that he was not part of the violence at the U.S. facility.

President Obama, who apparently went to sleep after being informed of the ongoing attack on Sept. 11, 2012, said yesterday he authorized a military operation to seize Khatallah.

Lionizing the Enemy

My article from the June 17, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine

Lionizing the Enemy

By Matthew Vadum

A project is underway to rehabilitate the self-exiled Sixties radical, anti-Semite and “black power” advocate Stokely Carmichael.

The opening salvo in this revisionist project of the Afro-centrist Marxist Left in academia is Stokely: A Life, by Peniel E. Joseph, which was recently published by BasicCivitas Books.

It is more infomercial than biography, calculated to transform its negligible subject into a towering figure of historic importance, and to whitewash the damage he did. Joseph’s central argument is that Carmichael was a “rock star” activist who inspired generations and who singlehandedly changed the course of American history.

Perversely, Joseph calls Carmichael a civil rights leader. If that fairly summarizes Carmichael’s work, he was a civil rights leader only in the bizarre modern sense that racial arsonist like Al Sharpton is a civil rights leader.

It is difficult to imagine an American civil rights leader making common cause with ruthless African dictators but that is what Carmichael did. He changed his name to Kwame Toure to honor two of them. 

In his self-imposed exile he was a courtier to brutal racist tyrants. He was a friend of Ugandan butcher Idi Amin, and rationalized away the relationship by reminding himself that Amin was anti-American and anti-Zionist. Carmichael even accepted Ugandan citizenship.

He was also a friend of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi. Libya came closest to accomplishing Carmichael’s vision of a socialist state, according to Joseph.

It is difficult to image an American civil rights leader going abroad to help hostile powers, but this is what Carmichael did.

Carmichael visited Communist Cuba, giving aid and comfort to America’s enemies abroad. While there he called Abraham Lincoln a racist and helped Cuba’s propaganda effort against the United States. 

After spending three days with Fidel Castro he told reporters that the conversations he had with him were the “most educational, most interesting, and most enlightening of my public life.”

Carmichael praised the world’s most prolific mass murderer, Mao Zedong, as “a great Chinese leader, the greatest Chinese leader there is.” He palled around with Communist Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh and called for the U.S. to be defeated in Vietnam.

Shinseki’s Last Stand?

My article from the May 30, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Shinseki’s Last Stand?

By Matthew Vadum

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki is one step closer to falling on his sword as the deadly, politically explosive VA health care scandal forces even Democratic lawmakers to demand his removal.

The added political pressure came after a new interim report by the VA’s inspector general determined that the agency’s officials were involved in a massive conspiracy to cover up the long, life-threatening delays that America’s veterans have been subjected to in the assembly-line abattoir that is the Veterans Health Administration (VHA).

In the words of the report, which followed audits of 216 health-care centers, there was a “systemic” push by VA officials to conceal the long wait times veterans faced. Veterans in Phoenix, Ariz., waited 115 days on average for a primary care appointment, which far exceeds what official VA statistics indicated. At least 40 veterans have died waiting for appointments at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care system. Many of the dead had been put on secret waiting lists.

It’s the latest chapter in this sad but entirely predictable unfolding of events. The needless deaths, doctored documents, and all-around incompetence, are what necessarily happen when the government runs a single-payer health care system. The VA health care scandal provides real-life examples to the American public of the unspeakable horrors that await them if the Obamacare train is not soon derailed.

After the report came out Wednesday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who had resisted demanding Shinseki step down, joined the growing, bipartisan chorus seeking the secretary’s removal.

Billionaire Leftists Attack Your Gun Rights

My article from the May 28, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Billionaire Leftists Attack Your Gun Rights

By Matthew Vadum

Gun control advocates hoping to capitalize on the tragic incident this weekend in Santa Barbara, California have a powerful asset in their corner this year: Second Amendment-hating billionaires led by George Soros are gearing up for a fresh assault on your constitutional right to defend yourself, your family, and your property.

The Democracy Alliance, a donors collaborative of well over 100 far-left venture capitalists, heirs and heiresses, Hollywood moguls, and unethical bankers, is throwing millions of dollars at left-wing gun-control groups in hopes of preventing the increasingly likely Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate this November.

Soros and other progressive plutocrats plan to send upwards of $175 million to leftist organizations this year to push gun control and the rest of the Left’s agenda, according to documents left behind at a recent Democracy Alliance meeting in Chicago.

Some of the left-wing groups slated to receive hefty donations from Democracy Alliance members include: America Votes ($4 million); American Constitution Society ($1.5 million); Brennan Center for Justice ($2.7 million); Catalist ($750,000); Center for American Progress ($5.5 million); Center for Community Change ($3 million); Center for Budget and Policy Priorities ($2.5 million); Media Matters for America ($3 million); New Organizing Institute ($1 million); Organizing for Action ($1 million); Progress Now ($1.9 million); and State Voices ($2 million).

The mentally unstable head of fake watchdog group Media Matters, former journalist David Brock, himself reportedly has paranoid fantasies that conservatives are trying to kill him. Brock, whose group beats the drum loudly for gun control, also flouts the District of Columbia’s tough gun restrictions. Brock armed his assistant with weapons to protect him from would-be right-wing assassins, a felony in D.C. 

Other groups, many of which focus on the Second Amendment, were listed in a found document called “Democracy Alliance Progressive Infrastructure Map.” The document contains a roster of groups that have previously been approved for funding by the Alliance or that appear to have been deemed eligible for such funding.