Daily Archives: January 25, 2021

The young poet's performance was a spoken-word attack on Trump and his followers.

Near the end of Joe Bidens inauguration, 22-year-old Amanda Gorman offered a poem called The Hill We Climb to punctuate the event. She performed extremely well, and her poem was powerful and quite nicely written. But it was something more than that. Hers were the most honest remarks of the day in terms of what the American left actually believes.

These lines stood out as rather important, especially compared to the other speakers:

Weve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it,

Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.

And this effort very nearly succeeded.

But while democracy can be periodically delayed,

It can never be permanently defeated.

At the top of the poem, Gorman writes, We have braved the belly of the beast. She also wrote that we were not prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour.

One of the nice things about writing a poem as opposed to a speech is that double meanings are encouraged. In this case, we have to ask, was the force that would shatter our nation limited to the attackers of the Capitol? Or does it refer to Trump supporters more generally? The answer to that question may well depend on what side of the aisle you are on. But for many or even most progressives, it is assuredly the latter.

That these more extreme ideas would be expressed more directly in a poem than in Bidens speech makes sense and is telling. Biden is still walking the line he has for two years now between the woke sensibilities of the progressive left and the more traditional views of most Democratic voters outside of progressive bastions. He paid lip service to the idea that some large numbers of Americans are basically racist but did not linger on the point. On the other hand, he is undoing Trumps 1776 Project educational executive order intended to bring more patriotism and love of country back to our childrens educations.

Conservatives failed by and large to convince independents that Biden was a Trojan horse for progressivism, and not for lack of trying. Bidens age, presence in politics for so long, and past association with the moderate wing of the Democratic Party hurt those efforts. So did Bidens refusal to actually campaign and the corporate news medias lack of curiosity as to what he actually planned to do as president. In the last ceremony before entering the White House, Biden still seems on the fence, or if not actually on the fence, like someone who very much wants to appear to be.

It is difficult to know what this all means for vaster Democratic Party goals of court-packing and statehood for Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Those are somewhat outside his control. But at least on cultural matters, Biden seems unlikely to draw any lines in the sand on issues of race, gender, or whether the United States has a history deeply steeped in evil. This is an opportunity for conservatives.

Growing numbers of Americans of all demographic groups are becoming increasingly disturbed by what their kids learn in school, by their daughters competing against boys in athletics, by the idea that they are deplorable and must be deprogrammed. Biden is likely to quietly support all of these things. Sign the orders but bury the news, just like putting the most forceful condemnation of Trump and his supporters in a poem after he spoke, not in a sound bite from his own remarks.

On some level, Donald Trumps presidency took the sting out of accusations of racism or bigotry against those who do not hold progressive moral and social values. Republicans should not be shy about these issues. Rather they should face them directly as Trump did.

Much is undecided and unknown as we embark on the administration of President Joe Biden. One thing is not. Conservatives will not return to a prone, defensive position on issues of race and culture, nor should they. The post-Trump conservative movement will be culture warriors who look a lot more like Andrew Breitbart than Mitt Romney. That is progress, and it must be maintained.

David Marcus is the Federalist's New York Correspondent. Follow him on Twitter, @BlueBoxDave.

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Amanda Gorman's Inauguration Poem Shows What The Left Truly Believes - The Federalist

On his last day as the U.S. secretary of State, Mike Pompeo officially declared that the Chinese Communist Partys actions against Uighur Muslims and other minorities in Xinjiang constitute genocide and crime against humanity. Many countries, including American allies, criticized the CCPs human rights violations in Xinjiang. Pompeos announcement, however, marks the harshest condemnation by any country and makes the United States the first and the only country to designate CCPs abuse in Xinjiang in such powerful terms.

The word genocide was first coined by Polish lawyer Raphel Lemkin in 1944, in response to Nazi Germanys systematic murder of Jewish people. Its a wordthat brings to mind images of mass killing and triggers strong emotional reactions such as terror.

The United Nation defines genocide as any acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, such as killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group. So genocide is never a designation to be used lightly.

In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Pompeo writes his announcement is the result of an exhaustive yearslong investigation, which finds the CCPs abuses of Uighur Muslims and other minorities in Xinjiang meet the majority criteria of UN definition of genocide.

Uighur Muslims are Turkic-speaking Sunni Muslims of Central Asia. Today most of them live in northwest Chinas Xinjiang region. They have a distinctively different language, culture, and religion from Chinas Han majority. Even before the U.S. State Departments investigations, there have been numerous news reports about the Chinese government building a mass surveillance system in Xinjiang and putting more than 1 million Uighur Muslims in so-called re-education camps, although most have no criminal background and have never been charged with any crimes.

These camps are surrounded by barbed wire fences and have armed guards stationed at the entrances. Once inside, Uighurs are not allowed to leave or receive visitors. Omnipresent cameras monitor everything. Uighurs are forced to pledge loyalty to the CCP and renounce Islam, sing praises for communism, learn Mandarin, and became forced laborers for Chinese companies. A survivor describes these re-education camps as places Uighurs are systematically dehumanized, humiliated, and brain-washed. An international tribunal also found evidence of forced organ harvesting inside these camps.

Uighur women reportedly suffer the worst: rape, sexual assaults, forced sterilization, and forced abortions inside the camps. After an international outcry, the Chinese Embassy in Washington deleted a tweet that shamelessly declared Uighur women had been emancipated and were no longer baby-making machines.

According to Pompeo, one key factor in determining the atrocities in Xinjiang rise to the level of genocide is the CCPs efforts to stop Uighur women from giving birth via forced abortion and sterilization. Outside the camps, however, Uighur women are no safer, and there are reports of forced marriages to Han Chinese men as well as forced co-sleeping arrangements in which Chinese men are assigned to monitor the wives of Uighur men who were sent to camps.

Besides these unspeakable human sufferings, Uighurs are losing their religious sites and cultural heritage. An investigation By the Guardian finds more than two dozen mosques and Muslim religious sites have been partly or completely demolished in Xinjiang. Researchers believe hundreds of smaller mosques and shrines have been bulldozed but they lack access to records to prove it definitively. With their adults locked away and mosques razed to the ground, Uighur children will grow up without any knowledge of their cultural and religious identity.

In the final analysis, what the CCP has done to Uighurs is a systematic elimination of Uighur culture, faith, identity, and population genocide. Indeed, in Pompeos words, Not every campaign of genocide involves gas chambers or firing squads.

After repeated denials, the Chinese government finally admitted in late 2018 that it has put Uighurs in what it terms vocational training centers, where Uighurs are taken care of by the Chinese government to learn life skills. Beijing even amended state law and then backdated it to legitimize its detention of Uighurs. In November 2019, The New York Timess reported leaked Xinjiang Papers a 400-page collection of classified documents including speeches by Chinese leader Xi Jinping reveal Xi is directly responsible for the genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang.

Beijing likes to point to the collective silence from Muslim-majority countries such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey as proof that it has done nothing wrong to Uighurs. Yet the shameful silence from these countries simply reflects the economic power of Chinas coercion.

Thanks to the relentless reporting of Western journalists and the courageous testimony from Uighurs who survive the camps, the world now understands the scope of what China has done. In July 2019, more than 22 countries including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Japan issued a statement condemning Chinas arbitrary detentions of Uighur and other minorities in Xinjiang, and called on China to end such practices immediately. Talk is cheap, however, and China has defiantly ignored international criticism.

Giving credit where credit is due, the United States is the only country that has taken series of sincere and genuine actions to hold the CCP accountable for its human rights abuses.

In October 2019, the Trump administration imposed visa restrictions on Chinese officials who are believed to be responsible for, or complicit in the detention of Muslims in Xinjiang, and added eight Chinese companies to its export blacklist for these companies role in assisting the Chinese governments effort of building the mass surveillance of Uighurs and other minorities.

In June, Trump signed the Uighur Human Rights Act, which passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support.

In July, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on several senior officials of the CCP for their roles in human rights abuses against Uighur Muslims and other religious minorities in Xinjiang. The sanction includes Chen Quanguo, a member of CCPs elite 25-member Politburo, which is the most powerful political body in China. No previous American sanctions have ever reached a CCP official at this senior level.

In December, the Trump administration banned all cotton and cotton products imports from Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), one of Chinas largest cotton producers, citing evidence of XPCCs reliance on slave labor of detained Uighur Muslims.

Then finally, on Jan. 19, 2021, the United States became the first country to designate the CCPs human rights abuses in Xinjiang as a genocide. The designation carries legal and moral implications.

By being the first country to call out the CCPs genocide, Pompeo delivers one final gift to the Biden administration and another to the rest of the world. Although Tony Blinken, Bidens nominee for secretary of state, said in his Senate confirmation hearing that he agrees China is committing genocide in Xinjiang, he may face difficulty making this designation in his official capacity. Many interest groups the Biden administration is beholden to will prevent Blinken from calling China out because they dont want to upset their economic interests in China.

By making the genocide designation on his last day in the office, Pompeo removed a challenging task for his successor, making it easier for the Biden administration to take tough actions to hold Beijing accountable, and providing the new administration powerful leverage it can use in any future negotiations with Beijing.

The rest of the world is hungry for Americas leadership to counter the CCPs aggression. Since the United States is still the leader of the free world, Pompeos announcement provides clarity and a strong dose of courage. Other nations, especially U.S. allies, will hopefully follow suit. The more countries acknowledge that China is committing genocide in Xinjiang, the harder it is for these governments to fail to take action.

As Pompeo notes:

The genocidal blows struck against the Uighurs arent localized to Xinjiang; they are also an offense against the concept of universal human dignity that Americas founders championed. In the anguished cries from Xinjiang, the U.S. hears the echoes of Nazi Germany, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur.

The United States has taken a stand and provided moral leadership. For the sake of humanity, other nations can no longer remain silent and indifferent.

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Why Calling China's Genocide What It Is Really Matters Federalist #3 - 2 hours ago - The Federalist

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Independent Womens Forum Senior Policy Analyst Inez Feltscher Stepman joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to reflect on Donald Trumps presidency and how the institutional distrust he harnessed can be traced back to the Tea Party.

We have to confront the fact that mistrust in media and in a bunch of our institutions is reasonable, Stepman said. Every major mainstream outlet has put out actively false stories about Donald Trump. Itis a complete mistake to think that you can continually draw on that public trust and credit that was once bipartisan while using it for your own ideological and partisan ends forever.

This distrust, Stepman said, extends beyond faulting the corporate media, Democrats, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other institutions, but it also encompasses a wariness that many have when addressing establishment Republicans who have failed to enact concrete policy changes while in power.

I think that a huge part of Donald Trumps appeal was rooted in that contempt, and again we have an example of a set of gatekeepers right in the Republican Party, refusing to examine their own role in creating the whirlwind that brought Donald Trump to power because I would argue that it was a direct consequence of the contempt with which they treated the Tea Party, Stepman said.

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From The Tea Party To Trump: Reflections On The Eve Of Inauguration - The Federalist

The last-minute impeachment of President Trump raises the question: can a federal officer be convicted by the Senate when he no longer holds office? We will soon find out the answer. While the House impeached Trump during his term, all indications suggest the Senate will not begin to even debate the matter until after he leaves office.

The Constitution grants broad discretion to Congress in this area. Article II, section 4 of the Constitution holds that the President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. Historically, the definition of high crimes and misdemeanors has been very loose essentially anything Congress wants.

In Federalist No. 65, Alexander Hamilton explained the prerequisites for impeachment:

Those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.

James Madison was concerned that too broad a term would lead the president to serve at the pleasure of the Senate, but state ratification debates in 1787 and 1788 included assurances that Congress could impeach someone who excites suspicion, carries out maladministration, or even those who behave amiss, or betray their public trust. James Wilson, the legal scholar, and future Supreme Court justice, even suggested that a president could be impeached for forming a bad treaty.

The original public understanding of Congresss impeachment powers thus show Congress has wide latitude on the subject matter, but what about the timing of an impeachment? There is less evidence of this debate in contemporary sources, but the general impression is that Congresss power is similarly broad.

In a debate during the First Congress in 1789, Madison said a president is impeachable for any crime or misdemeanor before the Senate, at all times. The comment is some evidence, perhaps, that Madison may have thought the impeachment power not to have been limited by time.

The first attempt at impeachment adds to the case against a time limit as the person in question, William Blount, left office the day the House impeached him. But mixed up in this precedent was the fact that Blount was not what we would today think of as one of the civil officers of the United States. He was a senator.

In 1797, Blount had conspired to help Great Britain take control of Spanish lands to the west of the United States, believing that British ownership would better protect his investments in the region. Before the conspiracy could accomplish anything, Blounts letters about the plot reached the Senate, which voted 25-1 to expel him.

Expulsion from Congress is not impeachment but a separate power found in Article I, section 5, which holds that Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behavior, and, with the Concurrence of two-thirds, expel a Member.

The Senates action was, therefore, undoubtedly legal and constitutional, but the House, after limited debate, impeached Blount anyway. Rep. James Bayard of Delaware defended the post-expulsion impeachment:

If the impeachment were regular and maintainable when preferred, I apprehend no subsequent event can vitiate or obstruct the proceeding. Otherwise, the party, by resignation or the commission of some offense which merited and occasioned his expulsion, might secure his impunity.

Blount protested that he was not a civil officer, and a majority of the Senate agreed to dismiss the charges on those grounds. They established an important precedent, but the issue of timing remained unsettled.

The issue did not arise again until 1876, when the House impeached Secretary of War William W. Belknap. Belknap was one of several officials in Ulysses Grants administration who was accused of corruption and the House controlled by Democrats for the first time since before the Civil War was determined to root him out. Two hours before they were set to impeach, Belknap resigned, but the House proceeded against him anyway, voting to impeach after an hours debate.

This became the only time the issue of post-resignation impeachment was directly debated in the Senate. Montgomery Blair, Belknaps lawyer, summed up the argument against impeachment:

All the reasons upon which the proceeding was supposed to be necessary applied only to a man who wielded at the moment the power of the Government, when only it was necessary to put in motion the great power of the people, as organized in the House of Representatives, to bring him to justice. It is a shocking abuse of power to direct so overwhelmingly a force against a private man.

For the other side of the argument, Rep. Scott Lord of New York said:

What is the real intent and meaning of the word officer in the Constitution? It is but a general description. An officer in one sense never loses his office. He gets his title and he wears it forever, and an officer is under this liability for life; if he once takes office under the United States, if while in office and as an officer he commits acts which demand impeachment, be may be impeached even down to the time that he takes his departure from this life.

With Belknap claiming that his resignation wiped out all grounds for impeachment and House Democrats claiming they could impeach him until he died, the Senate had a tough decision to make. What they came up with muddled: by a 37-29 vote, the Senate agreed that Belknap could still be impeached.

A majority supported the interpretation advanced by Lord and the other House managers, but with two-thirds needed to convict, they fell short. Belknap said the result exonerates me as fully as if I had a thousand votes, but the fact remains that most of the Senate thought the charges against him were still valid after he left office.

Blair was correct that the main reason to impeach someone is to remove him from office. But it is not the only one. The Constitutions Article I, section 3 says: Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States (emphasis added). Removal was no longer a factor for Blount or Belknap, just as it will not be for Trump on Jan. 20, but disqualification from office remains a punishment that the Senate may wish to impose.

In the Washington Post, Judge J. Michael Luttig suggests Congresss desire to disqualify Trump does not override the implicit requirement that an impeached person holds office during his impeachment. In a reply to Luttig in the Post, Harvard Laws Laurence H. Tribe disagreed, noting the Constitutions silence on the question and Congresss precedents in the Blount and Belknap impeachments. Historically, Congresss opinion has been the only one that matters in impeachments.

Both answers have the potential to produce bad results. Belknap escaped punishment after his resignation, both when the Senate refused to convict him and when the government dropped bribery charges against him the following year. Indeed, Tribe points out the dangers of following Luttigs interpretation:

To render this uniquely appropriate remedy unavailable simply because the gravest abuses of power were committed near the very end of a presidents term would be bizarre at best, self-sabotaging at worst. Nothing in the Constitution suggests that a president who has shown himself to be a deadly threat to our survival as a constitutional republic should be able to run out the clock on our ability to condemn his conduct and to ensure that it can never recur.

On the other hand, Scott Lords position that an officer may be impeached and convicted even down to the time that he takes his departure from this life seems excessive and cruel. Combine that with Wilsons contention that a bad treaty is grounds for impeachment, and you could have Jimmy Carter impeached in 2021 for signing the Panama Canal Treaty in 1977. That is an absurd result, but mere absurdity has never stopped Congress before.

The right answer involves self-restraint. Someone who left office mere days ago may be a reasonable target for impeachment, especially if barring his return to office is Congresss goal. The more time has elapsed, though, the more tenuous the claim to justice whatever you think of the Canal Treaty, Carter should be allowed to enjoy his retirement.

Even in more recent cases, when a nation needs healing prosecution is often the wrong way to go about it. In 2016, Trump campaigned on the vow to lock-up Hillary Clinton; after his victory, the matter was quietly dropped.Self-restraint is increasingly unknown in our politics, but here even excessive zeal by the Democrats will not stretch the already loose constitutional boundaries of impeachment very far.

Like Belknap, Trump was impeached while in office and will be tried when out of it. Each Senator may consider that fact when deciding how to vote, just as they did in 1876 when Belknap was acquitted despite overwhelming evidence of his guilt. If they decide, this time, to convict, it will not undermine the Constitution any more than anything else that has happened this month. Whether it is prudent is for the Senate to decide.

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Senate Can Convict Trump After He's Out. Would That Be Prudent? - The Federalist

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris released a statement on Friday in honor of the 48th anniversary ofRoe v. Wade, celebrating the murder of millions of babies through abortion.

In the announcement, the Democrat politicians promised to remain deeply committed to ensuring access to abortions, which they labeled as reproductive healthcare. They also lauded Roe v. Wadeas a foundational precedent.

The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to codifyingRoe v. Wadeand appointing judges that respect foundational precedents like Roe, the statement reads.

Multiple pro-life groups and their leaders condemned the statement, pointing out its flaws and deceptive language.

Abortion isnt healthcare. It is heartbreaking but not surprising that on the day we commemorate the loss of 60+ million Americans to abortion the new administration is already aggressively leaning into abortion extremism, March For Life President Jeanne F. Mancini wrote on Twitter. Doing so brings more divisiveness at a time when our country needs unity and healing.

CatholicVote.org also weighed in on the statement, noting that Bidens true colors of remaining deeply committed to the intentional destruction of innocent life through the heinous practice of abortion are showing.

This represents a major rupture with the Church, only days after his press secretary described Joe Biden as devout, the organization wrote. Joe Bidens full-throated endorsement of abortion today totally vindicates Archbishop Jose Gomez, head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who warned Catholics that our new President has pledged to pursue certain policies that would advance moral evils and threaten human life and dignity.

Pro-life networking organization Susan B. Anthony List also denounced the Biden-Harris statement, pointing out that the administrations commitment to Roe v. Wade would allow for late-term abortions.

President Biden & VP Harris just released a statement on the 48th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, absurdly calling it foundational. Wrong. What is truly foundational is the right to LIFE of every American, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, the tweet read.In their statement, Biden-Harris commit to codifying the dated & unscientific 1973 Roe ruling, which would make it permanent. This would result in federal law permitting abortion on demand for ANY reason, through ALL NINE MONTHS.

Biden and Harris are already rushing to undo the Trump administrationspro-life policies, promising to reverse the Mexico City policy, which bans U.S. foreign aid from being directed to organizations that perform abortions. The administration is also looking to reinstate federal funding to the United Nations Population Fund, which offers information to women and young girls around the world about how to obtain abortions, and to review the Hyde Amendments provision preventing taxpayer dollars from funding abortions except if the mothers life is in danger, she was raped, or there was incest.

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

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Biden, Harris Release Statement Celebrating Killing Babies In The Womb - The Federalist

Republican Sen. Rand Paul said he will not take advice about the future of the Republican Party from former FBI Director and Russian collusion hoaxer James Comey because the senator thinks he should be imprisoned.

On Wednesday, Fox Newss Bill Hemmer asked Paul to reflect on a quote in the Guardian from Comey saying that the Republican Party needs to be burned down or changed and that the supporters of Donald Trump need to be separated from those people who want to build a responsible conservative party.

The senator from Kentucky was quick to reply, saying he doesnt trust Comey because of his previous political and deceptive actions targeting the outgoing president.

When we start taking advice from Comey, a notorious liar, a guy who ruined the FBI, a guy who used the enormous power of government to go after his political opponent, Donald Trump, I think when we started taking his advice, were taking the wrong advice, Paul said.

Paul continued, saying Comey should have to pay for his crimes.

And so I dont plan on listening to anything from Comey, Paul said. In fact, I think Comey should be imprisoned for the things that he did.

Comey was one of the many bureaucrats who oversaw and botched the failed Russian collusion investigation. Despite his key role in the FBI during the illegally obtained warrants and surveillance of the 2016 Trump campaign, Comey claimed before the Senate that he should not be held responsible for the factual errors in FISA applications. Comey continually feigned his innocence during questioning before the Senate Judiciary Committee in October.

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

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Rand Paul: I'm Not Going To Listen To Comey, He Should Be In Prison. - The Federalist

The corporate press has been churning out puff pieces about the Biden administration since Election Day, and with Bidens inauguration on Wednesday, were getting a fresh round.

One such article in the Washington Post stands out for what it omits. The story, a hard-hitting account of how Biden has decorated the Oval Office, mentions that Biden is nodding to segments of the Democratic Partys base via historic references, and mentions a bust of Cesar Chavez behind the Resolute Desk.

Who was Cesar Chavez? If you ask a Democrat or a member of the press, theyll tell you he was a courageous labor leader and civil rights activist who helped organize Latino farm workers in California in the 1960s, culminating in the formation of the United Farm Workers union. Today, hes a folk hero to the left.

What they wont tell you is that he was also a fierce opponent of illegal immigration, which he opposed because it drove down wages for American farm workers and diminished the organizing power of their unions.

He also opposed guest-workers from Mexico, and campaigned fiercely against the Bracero program, a guest-worker scheme put in place during World War II that allowed Mexican farm workers to enter the country legally for employment on American farms and ranches. Because there was a legal way to enter the country, work, and return to ones family in Mexico on a seasonal basis, the Bracero program helped keep illegal immigration down.

But thanks in large part to pressure from Chavez and others on the union left, the Bracero program was shuttered in 1964. We havent had a guest worker program since.

But shutting down the braceros wasnt enough. In the 1970s, illegal immigration was on the rise and Chavez decided to do something about it. He helped organize wet lines of union workers along the Arizona-Mexico border. Wet linesa reference to wetbacks, a term Chavez freely usedwere armed bands of union thugs that attacked Mexicans with barbed-wire-studded whips and bats when they tried to cross the border, beating and robbing them as a warning to other Mexican workers who dared defy the union.

As Chavez biographer Miriam Pawel wrote in her 2014 book, The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography, wet lines were part of a larger Illegals Campaign to find and report illegal immigrant farm workers and get them deported. But because federal authorities were often not equipped or inclined to enforce immigration laws back then, Chavez took matters into his own hands.

He put his cousin, an ex-convict named Manuel Chavez, in charge of organizing wet lines. This was border vigilantism at its worst, and amounted to a kind of reign of terror on the border. The wet lines carried out hundreds of beatings and robberies. There were allegations of torture, including burnings and castration. Chavez knew about all this and condoned it. As Pawel noted, Manuel was willing to do the dirty work, Cesar acknowledged.

Its hard to imagine someone more virulently anti-immigrant than Cesar Chavez. So the question is, why does President Biden have a bust of this guy behind his desk? One thing is for sure: the corporate press will never, ever ask him about it.

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Why Does Biden Have A Bust Of A Union Radical In The Oval Office? - The Federalist

Pertinent to our recent situation, this is an excerpt from Federalist No. 28, on the question of whether to restrict the legislative authority (that is, Congress) in regard to common defense:

Should such emergencies at any time happen under the national government, there could be no remedy but force. The means to be employed must be proportioned to the extent of the mischief. If it should be a slight commotion in a small part of a State, the militia of the residue would be adequate to its suppression; and the national presumption is that they would be ready to do their duty. An insurrection, whatever may be its immediate cause, eventually endangers all government. Regard to the public peace, if not to the rights of the Union, would engage the citizens on whom the contagion had not communicated itself to oppose the insurgents; and if the general government should be found in practice conducive to the prosperity and felicity of the people, it were irrational to believe that they would be disinclined to its support.

(Emphasis added.) This number of the Federalist Papers was written by Alexander Hamilton, and published in the Independent Journal in the State of New York on Wednesday, December 26, 1787.

As with the misguided insurrectionists of January 6, the rioters in Portland and Seattle need to be forcefully convinced to stop their violent behavior, and prosecuted according to the law, not just for the safety and security of the immediate area suffering the rampages, but also for the good of the general community local, state, and national.

Once peace and quiet are re-established, those in charge should take great pains to transparently investigate grievances, and to sponsor remedies where good cause exists and an effective remedy identified and agreed upon.

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Book excerpt: seditions and insurrections are inseparable from politics - Orange County Breeze

In an eerie preview of our post-pandemic future, lawmakers on Capitol Hill are still donning face masks even after vaccination, illustrating how pandemic rules might be here to stay for quite some time, with no clear threshold provided for what justifies repeal.

House Democrats began to put in motion last week a new rule change fining members $500 then $2,500 on the second offense for those who dont wear face masks. The proposal comes after Democrats baselessly blamed maskless Republicans sheltering in the Capitol bunker during this months siege for infecting three Democratic lawmakers.

The vaccination drive for members of Congress, however, began in December. By now, most members of Congress and even a sizeable number of staff have been afforded the opportunity to be vaccinated, receiving both shots clearing them of possible infection. And yet, face masks remain compulsory on Capitol Hill, and now on all federal property pursuant to a new executive edict passed down by the new president Wednesday.

Every person pictured in the photo below at President Joe Bidens signing ceremony should have been vaccinated, and yet remains properly distanced wearing face masks.

So why are members still wearing them despite themselves being vaccinated? Some might charge it as political theatre, others cite it as example setting.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the jury still technically remains out on whether vaccinated individuals can still spread the virus, recommending that until more data is available whenever that will be masks remain essential regardless of ones own immunity.

While not downplaying the purported effectiveness in masks to slow the spread, many have highlighted, however, that previous vaccine experience shows theres little to no chance vaccinated individuals can still serve as conduits of the virus.

If there is an example of a vaccine in widespread clinical use that has this selective effect prevents disease but not infection I cant think of one! writes Harvard Dr. Paul E. Sax.

Dr. Monica Gandhi of the University of California, San Francisco echoes Saxs sentiments on Twitter, writing, Please be assured that YOU ARE SAFE after vaccine from what matters disease and spreading.

Still, Gandhi has continued to urge those who are vaccinated to continue wearing masks.

When it comes to masks on Capitol Hill, some members have refused to take the vaccine, whether out of skepticism of the vaccine itself such as Colorado Republican Rep. Ken Buck, or out of an insistence that front-line medical workers get vaccinated first such as Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul (who also already had the virus last year).

The Office of the Attending Physician did not respond to The Federalists inquiries on how many members of Congress or how many staffers had been vaccinated.

Paul, also a physician, has also recommended Americans already enjoying immunity either through previous infection or vaccination throw away their face masks, arguing theres no need, though CDC guidelines have stipulated otherwise.

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Why Are Vaccinated Members Of Congress Still Wearing Masks? - The Federalist

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. With those words, James Madison explained why, in the Constitution he was asking people to support in 1788, it was vital that the national government have a system of what our civics books like to call checks and balances. Each branch of government needed the means to call the others to account if they ran astray.

He wrote those words in what we now call Federalist No. 51. That makes it the 51st essay in the series of over 100 that he and Alexander Hamilton, with a little help from John Jay, wrote to encourage New Yorkers to scrap the Articles of Confederation and adopt the Constitution they and their fellow Federalists were advocating.

These essays have come to be considered an owners manual for the Constitution they explain in great (sometimes laborious) detail the reasoning behind its every feature and facet.

Madisons words hold the key to understanding our system of government. I tell my students at Sandhills that if they can master Madisons arguments in his two most important essays Federalist No. 10 and No. 51 they can easily understand the America of 1788 or, for that matter, the America of 2021.

In Madisons time, the ambitions that had to be counteracted were similar to the ones that we encounter today. Madison had to tussle with Hamilton, Washington, Jefferson and Adams. Their equals today, in ambition if not in intellect, are Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell.

James Madison would neither be surprised nor especially disappointed by the shenanigans of this trio: His best-known phrase If men were angels, no government would be necessary gives us insight into his dark view of human nature. To put it simply, Madison expected that, because of human nature, our country would always have to deal with people like President Trump and his equally ambitious detractors.

So what of the latest effort of one branch to counteract the other? Mr. Trump has clearly run afoul of Congress. People are really, really mad about what happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6 so mad in fact that they impeached a president who had less than a week left in office.

Is this political overkill? Couldnt the Congress simply have censured him and spared us another act in this tragic political theater?

In my opinion the answer to that is yes and no.

The actions of the Capitol mob on Jan. 6 were reprehensible. But I believe that if Mr. Trumps words on that day are heard in their entirety, they do not rise to the level of inciting sedition.

Sorry, folks, but they just dont. Yes, the former president has a mouth that moves faster than his brain I suffer from that myself and yes his words could have been chosen much more wisely.

One of the responsibilities of leadership is to use words wisely. Donald Trump may have never learned that lesson, but his words on Jan. 6 did not, in my mind, rise to the level of encouraging insurrection against the United States.

That, however, does not get Mr. Trump off the hook. It is his words and actions between the election and Jan. 6 that showed us why his ambition did indeed need to be counteracted by the ambitions of Speaker Pelosi and Sen. McConnell.

In the two months between election day and Jan. 6, Mr. Trump used every opportunity he had to claim that he had won in a landslide over Joe Biden. In so doing, he was creating his own fake news and stoking the resentment of his followers who had just seen their candidate beaten. Poor losers are no fun whatsoever.

Refusing to concede his defeat, Mr.Trump instead sent out his clownish personal attorney to argue that the election had been stolen, promising to deliver mountains of evidence that somehow never appeared. Not one recount ever uncovered the votes that the president wanted election officials to find.

Not one court state, federal or Supreme saw enough evidence to take these claims seriously. Another case of the liberal judges? Actually, many judges and Justices that turned away Mr. Trumps claims were Republicans, and a good number had been appointed by Mr. Trump himself.

In truth, the president was simply attempting to stay in office by undermining the bedrock of our democracy: the peoples belief in the fairness of our elections and the integrity of our political institutions.

It is now estimated that nearly a third of Americans have lost that belief. This is an American tragedy, and only one man could have stopped it. Because Mr. Trump chose not to stop it, he committed an enormous disservice to his legacy, to his office and to the United States.

I have spent the better part of my life either serving or studying the government of the United States. I am aware of its flaws, but have a strong belief in its fundamental goodness. Like any citizen I have had disagreements with my government, but they have been about its policies rather than about its institutions themselves. I have pledged my allegiance to those institutions probably a thousand times. To have their integrity questioned by an American president in a way that causes a third of Americans to lose faith in them is sad beyond words.

As for impeachment, I dont have much taste for it right now. While I hold Mr. Trumps ambition in disdain, I have nearly equal disdain for that of Pelosi and McConnell. Lets let Mr. Trump go away, and lets focus instead on a brighter day. Lets leave this sordid business behind us, and remember that Mr. Madisons view of our nature doesnt have to be the last word.

What if we were to rise as Americans in a way that might surprise Mr. Madison? What if we were to look for guidance in the words of another great American, and move forward from this date With Malice Toward None, With Charity For All?

John Dempsey is the president of Sandhills Community College.

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Column: Political Ambitions Leave Nation Struggling to Move Forward - Southern Pines Pilot