A Victory for Election Integrity

My article in today's FrontPage Magazine:

A Victory for Election Integrity

By Matthew Vadum

In a landmark ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down part of the Voting Rights Act that gave the race-baiting ballot box stuffers of the Left a distinct advantage in federal elections.

The court opinion in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, is essentially an official finding from the highest court in the land that America is not the racist swamp of leftist myth.

The court finally recognized that the anti-discrimination provisions of the Voting Rights Act, which gave the federal government a veto over changes in state election laws, may have been needed when the law was enacted in 1965, but no longer.

Catherine Engelbrecht, president of Houston-based True the Vote, a good government group, praised the decision:

For decades, voters in various states, counties and boroughs have been punished for the sins others committed in a bygone era. Washington has treated whole segments of this nation as guilty until proven innocent. Ideological bureaucrats have used this law to exact a form of racial justice on their presumed enemies while ignoring the country’s demands for basic election integrity measures. Thankfully, the Court stripped Washington of a power that was only being used as a weapon today.

J. Christian Adams described the court opinion, which clears the way for enforcement of much-needed state-level voter ID laws, as “one of the most important decisions in decades.”

In terms of how the game of politics is played in this country, he’s right.

The Voting Rights Act is what unscrupulous Attorney General Eric Holder used to block states from implementing voter ID laws aimed at combating election fraud. The Left relies on fraud to win closely contested elections.

Matthew Vadum's work is cited in 52 books (so far)

I've been keeping a running tab of the books that reference my work and/or quote me.

Authors on the right, such as John Fund, Phyllis Schafly, Michael Reagan, David Horowitz, and Michelle Malkin rely on my research and commentary.

Authors on the left, such as Arianna Huffington, Thomas Frank, and Center for American Progress visiting fellow Shirley Sagawa, have also given my work a vote of confidence by relying on it.

Here is the list as of June 24, 2013:

* asterisk indicates New York Times bestseller

In reverse chronological order (sorted by year):

52) Breakthrough: Our Guerrilla War to Expose Fraud and Save Democracy, by James O'Keefe, Threshold Editions, 2013, page 39, 71, 322n39, 323n71

51) Handbook of Research on Sport and Business, edited by S. Söderman, H. Dolles, Edward Elgar Publishing Inc., 2013, page 458

50) Change Agents: Alinskyian Organizing Among Religious Bodies, Volume 1, by Stephanie Block, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013, page citations unknown.

49) The Maclean's Book of Lists, Rogers Publishing, 2012, page citation unknown.

48) Judge Me By The People Who Surround Me: The Obama Challenge, by Barbara Bluefield, Outskirts Press, 2012, page citations unknown 

47) Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right, by Thomas Frank, Macmillan, 2012, page citations unknown 

46) Who's Counting?: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk, by John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky, Encounter Books, 2012, page citations unknown

*45) Shadowbosses: Government Unions Control America and Rob Taxpayers Blind, by Mallory Factor and Elizabeth Factor, Center Street, 2012, page citations unknown

*44) No Higher Power: Obama's War on Religious Freedom, by Phyllis Schafly and George Neumayr, Regnery Publishing, 2012, page citations unknown

43) The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown, by Richard L. Hasen, Yale University Press, 2012, page citations unknown

*42) Cowards: What Politicians, Radicals, and the Media Refuse to Say, by Glenn Beck, Threshold Editions/Mercury Radio Arts, 2012, at least 3 citations

41) The New Leviathan: How the Left-Wing Money-Machine Shapes American Politics and Threatens America's Future, by David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin, Crown Forum, 2012, 278n4

The Rosenberg Traitors: 60 Years Later

My article from today's FrontPage Magazine:

The Rosenberg Traitors: 60 Years Later

By Matthew Vadum

All those who treasure America’s liberties should solemnly observe the 60th anniversary this week of the execution of Communist spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Given that the Soviet Union they spied for is no more, why are the Rosenbergs still important?

They continue to matter because they remain part of the Left’s anti-American mythology. The Left denied the treachery of its pseudo-martyrs for decades, arguing that they were condemned to death in a wave of anti-Communist hysteria. This lie permeates American culture even today — in movies, plays, and literature — decades after Ron Radosh’s painstaking research conclusively established the Rosenbergs’ guilt.

Electrocuted at Sing Sing on June 19, 1953, the penalty they paid was more severe than the sentences handed down to other American traitors such as Alger Hiss, Robert Hanssen, and Aldrich Ames, who similarly jeopardized the nation by passing sensitive data to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But the punishment meted out to the Rosenbergs was just because their actions led to the deaths of who knows how many Americans.

The Rosenberg spy ring gave the USSR sensitive information about U.S. air capabilities in the Korean War and the secrets of the A-bomb, allowing our totalitarian enemies to develop nuclear weapons years earlier than they otherwise would have. These spies helped to change the balance of power in the world and emboldened the irredentist Soviet Union as it became a superpower and went on the march enslaving tens of millions in Eastern Europe.

Amnesty and the Attack on American Workers

My article from the June 19, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Amnesty and the Attack on American Workers

By Matthew Vadum

The “dangerous” immigration bill working its way through the U.S. Senate will devastate America’s labor marketplace and “guarantee” the country will have to grant “another amnesty” in the future, says Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama).

“This legislation is not going to work,” Sessions told Breitbart News. He described the measure sponsored by the bipartisan so-called Gang of Eight in the Senate as a “surrender to illegality that will guarantee we’ll be back in this position again.”

“We have no indication whatsoever that this administration will have renewed [its] commitment to follow whatever law is passed,” Sessions said. “This Senate bill is very, very dangerous. It won’t work, and I hope the American people will dig into it and follow the details of it.”

In a time of high unemployment, record food-stamp dependency, and economic stagnation, a minimum of 11 million immigrants will immediately be given Social Security cards that will allow them to compete for government and blue collar jobs. The legislation puts “tremendous pressure” on the job market and makes it harder for workers to find jobs and leave welfare programs.

Although amnesty remains deeply unpopular among the American public at large, the activist Left wants the estimated 11 million illegal aliens present in the U.S. to be processed because they see them as future Democratic voters. In addition, many labor unions, such as SEIU (which has executives focused solely on immigration issues) see today’s illegals as future union members. Business lobbies favor amnesty because they crave the cheap, largely unskilled labor.

The Left’s goal with the current immigration bill, which a Heritage Foundation study found would add $6.3 trillion to the nation’s budget deficits over the coming 50 years, is the same as with most of its major policy initiatives over the past half century: To destroy the American system.

Syria: The Next Libya?

My article from the June 14, 2013 edition of FrontPage Magazine:

Syria: The Next Libya?

By Matthew Vadum

The Obama administration has finally officially acknowledged that the Syrian government has used illegal chemical weapons in its bloody civil war half a year after reports first surfaced, which opens the door to U.S. involvement in the conflict.

After months of heel-dragging, the administration admits Syria crossed the much-vaunted “red line” President Obama laid down for U.S. action in that regime’s two year war against opposition forces. Obama said last summer that if Syria used chemical weapons such an action would be a “game-changer” for the United States. Despite reports that the Assad regime has done precisely that, Obama has been taking his sweet time making an official finding.

But yesterday Ben Rhodes, a young White House speechwriter who works as the White House’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, said “the president has made his decision.”

Rhodes, for what it’s worth, may be responsible for concocting the official lies about last September’s deadly terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

Rhodes said U.S. intelligence reports indicate Hezbollah-backed Syria has used sarin and various chemical weapons “on a small scale” against multiple rebel targets on at least four occasions over the past year. The death toll from such attacks could be 150 or higher, he said. The United Nations says 92,000 have died in the civil war so far.

Roger Ailes attacks political correctness, multi-culti nonsense

Money quote from a speech tonight at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., by Fox News CEO Roger Ailes as he accepted a 2013 Bradley (Foundation) Prize:

"We have allowed ourselves to be manipulated by others many of whom want to impose their culture and laws under the manufactured utopian idea that all cultures are equal and most are better than America's. Now of course all people should be proud of their heritage. They should teach their children to be proud of their history and their traditions and they should be welcomed in America but America is a culture, it has a culture, and it must be recognized."

Obama’s Disasters in the Middle East

My article from today's FrontPage Magazine:

Obama’s Disasters in the Middle East

By Matthew Vadum

As the Obama administration quietly transferred $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid to the Islamist government of Egypt, Syria is burning and totalitarian Islam continues its march in the Middle East and North Africa.

President Obama’s manmade disasters continue to mount.

It turns out Secretary of State John Kerry surreptitiously gave Egypt U.S. military aid last month, rewarding that country’s Islamofascist dictatorship for its increasingly vicious assaults on foreign workers, religious minorities, and civil society.

Kerry authorized aid to the violent, totalitarian, anti-American regime despite finding in a May 9 memo that “we are not satisfied with the extent of Egypt’s progress and are pressing for a more inclusive democratic process and the strengthening of key democratic institutions.”

In order for the aid to flow U.S. law requires the secretary of state to certify that the Egyptian government “is supporting the transition to civilian government, including holding free and fair elections, implementing policies to protect freedom of expression, association and religion, and due process of law.”

Despite Egypt’s failure to meet any of these criteria, Kerry waived legal requirements in order to curry favor with Egypt’s “military leadership, who are key opinion makers in the country” and to maintain “[a] strong U.S. security partnership with Egypt” as the U.S. encourages “Egypt to continue its transition to democracy,” according to the memo.

Of course Egypt isn’t moving forward to democratic reforms; it’s moving backwards toward the seventh century. Egypt is now in the hands of President Mohammed Morsi and the terrorist-friendly Muslim Brotherhood thanks to Obama’s meddling. The Arab Republic is threatening Israel, a nation with which it has had a peace treaty since 1979.

Spy Games & Double Standards

My article from today's FrontPage Magazine:

Spy Games & Double Standards

By Matthew Vadum

As details of President Obama’s massive domestic spying operation continue to dribble out into the public domain, the Left for the most part is quiet and content.

Left-wingers are unable even to entertain the idea that Obama, who billed himself on the campaign trail as a champion of civil liberties, is a power-mad authoritarian who views the Constitution as worthless parchment.

Obama promised:

“no more illegal wire-tapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient.”

But that was then when Obama was still just a senator.

The Obama administration’s spying is ostensibly aimed at combating al-Qaeda and protecting America from attack.

But today the relentless cries of “fascism!” we heard all throughout George W. Bush’s presidency are absent. There are no riots in the streets. No rowdy Occupy Wall Street-sponsored demonstrations. No candlelight vigils.

Obama’s Secret Invisible Government

My article from today's FrontPage Magazine:

Obama’s Secret Invisible Government

By Matthew Vadum

A media outlet has uncovered what may be a massive conspiracy by the Obama administration to evade public accountability laws — and in at least one case to intimidate the media from asking questions.

“There is widespread use throughout the administration of private email accounts to do public business for the obvious reason that it avoids transparency,” Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow and attorney Christopher C. Horner told this writer in an interview yesterday. Horner is also author of The Liberal War on Transparency.

Horner spoke in light of the Associated Press discovery that some of President Obama’s political appointees — including Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and other HHS officials — are using secret email accounts to communicate. This appears to be illegal because federal law requires that certain government records be preserved. Federal agencies are required to keep emails in the event they are needed for congressional or other investigations or for lawsuits.

The lame explanation offered by the scandal-plagued Obama administration is that officials like Sebelius need the secret email accounts so they’re not swamped with unwanted emails.

In other words, the Obama administration knows what the law is but chooses to ignore it.