Category Archives: Liberal

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

An ancient habit of Western elites is a certain selectivity in condemnation.

Sometimes Westerners apply critical standards to the West that they would never apply to other nations.

My colleague at the Hoover Institution, historian Niall Ferguson, has pointed out that Swedish green-teen celebrity Greta Thunberg might be more effective in her advocacy for reducing carbon emissions by redirecting her animus. Instead of hectoring Europeans and Americans, who have recently achieved the planets most dramatic drops in the use of fossil fuels, Greta might instead turn her attention to China and India to offer her how dare you complaints to get their leaders to curb carbon emissions.

Whether the world continues to spew dangerous levels of carbons will depend largely on policies in China and India. After all, these two countries account for over a third of the global population and continue to grow their coal-based industries.

In the late 1950s, many elites in United States bought the Soviet Union line that the march of global communism would bury the West. Then, as Soviet power eroded in the 1980s, Japan Inc. and its ascendant model of state-sponsored industry became the preferred alternative to Western-style democratic capitalism.

Once Japans economy ossified, the new utopia of the 1990s was supposedly the emerging European Union. Americans were supposed to be awed that the euro gained ground on the dollar. Europes borderless democratic socialism and its soft power were declared preferable to the reactionary United States.

By 2015, the EU was a mess, so China was preordained as the inevitable global superpower. American intellectuals pointed to its high-speed rail transportation, solar industries and gleaming airports, in contrast to the hollowed-out and grubby American heartland.

Now the curtain has been pulled back on the interior rot of the Chinese Communist Party, its gulag-like re-education camps, its systematic mercantile cheating, its Orwellian surveillance apparatus, its serial public health crises and its primitive hinterland infrastructure.

After the calcification of the Soviet Union, Japan Inc., the EU and the Chinese superpower, no one quite knows which alternative will next supposedly bury America.

The United States and Europe are often quite critical of violence against women, minorities and gays. The European Union, for example, has often singled out Israel for its supposed mistreatment of Palestinians on the West Bank.

Yet if the purpose of Western human rights activism is to curb global bias and hate, then it would be far more cost-effective to concentrate on the greatest offenders.

China is currently detaining about a million Muslim Uighurs in re-education camps. Yet activist groups arent calling for divestment, boycotts and sanctions against Beijing in the same way they target Israel.

Homosexuality is a capital crime in Iran. Scores of Iranian gays reportedly have been incarcerated and thousands executed under theocratic law since the fall of the shah in 1979. Yet rarely do Western activist groups call for global ostracism of Iran.

Dont look to the U.N. Human Rights Council for any meaningful condemnation of worldwide prejudice and hatred, although it is a frequent critic of both the United States and Israel.

Many of the 47 member nations of the Human Rights Council are habitual violators of human rights. In 2017, nine member nations persecuted citizens who were actively working to implement U.N. standards of human rights.

There are many reasons for Westerners selective outrage and pessimism toward their own culture. Cowardice explains some of the asymmetry. Blasting tiny democratic Israel will not result in any retaliation. Taking on a powerful China or a murderous Iran could earn retribution.

Guilt also explains some of the selectivity. European nations are still blamed for 19th-century colonialism and imperialism. They will always seek absolution, as the citizens of former colonial and Third World nations act like perpetual victims even well into the postmodern 21st century.

Virtual-signaling is increasingly common. Western elites often harangue about misdemeanors when they cannot address felonies a strange sort of psychological penance that excuses their impotence.

It is much easier for the city of Berkeley, California, to ban clean-burning, U.S.-produced natural gas in newly constructed buildings than it is to outlaw far dirtier crude oil from Saudi Arabia. Currently, the sexist, homophobic, autocratic Saudis are the largest source of imported oil in California, sending the state some 100 million barrels per year, without which thousands of Berkeley motorists could not get to work. Apparently, outlawing clean, domestic natural gas allows one to justify importing unclean Saudi oil.

Western elites are perpetually aggrieved. But the next time they direct their lectures at a particular target, consider the source and motivation of their outrage.

Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, is the author of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won (Basic Books, 2017).

Read the original:

Liberal elites shaming of Western culture ignores the true international offenders - Washington Times

Liberal-Academic-Methodist-Midwestern-Public School Proud-Steel Mill Salary Educated-Lesbian Mom-Tell Me Again About My Bubble. This was my sign at the 2017 Womens March in Chicago.

I grew upMethodistin a southern Illinois steel mill town, the kind where my wife and I still dont really feel comfortable holding hands. Nonetheless, I was amazed to discover that following the United Methodist Churchs 2019 vote to affirm a proposed Traditional Plan, one which kept in place and strengthened bans on LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriage, the vast majority of young and middle-aged parishioners abandoned my childhood church in protest. Perhaps less surprisingly, simultaneous to that small-town exodus, the social justicedriven, queer-inclusive Chicago churches Ive called home ones I chose for their rainbow flags and pink triangles railed against the UMC machinein the face of an institutional decision they saw as antithetical to their very beings.

Where are these stories? Buried somewhere beneath headlines about Kanyes performance alongside anti-LGBTQ speakers and Trumps promise for big action in promoting prayer in schools (the same schools where his administration rolled back protections for LGBTQ students), are untold stories of queer and queer-friendly liberal Christians. Sure, the 24-hour news cycle briefly latched onto the January 3 announcement ofthe UMC's proposed split, a separation that would leave the more progressive and queer-friendly faction of the denomination at the center, with the regressive traditionalists as aseparated side-denomination.But this kind of pro-queer action within the Christian community is not new. News outlets that clamor for the most regressive talking heads just make it seem so.

Where are the faces of queer and liberal Christianity? When I came out in the 1990s, Mel Whites Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America gave me peace. But hes not the full story (and had he not been a former ghostwriter for Jerry Falwell, there may have been no story). Sure, the mainstream news found Mayor Pete, but to them hes an unavoidable and attractive unicorn: a queer Christian Midwestern veteran. Where are the queer and queer-friendly talking heads?As a queer media scholar and liberal Christian, Ive been watching headlinesclosely, wondering yet again why an image of Christianity driven by hate and exclusion continuously controls the frame.

We liberal Christians are out there fighting for LGBTQ+ rights,immigrant rights,reproductive rights, and everything painted by the right as blasphemous and hedonistic. Yet progressive Christianstill doesnt exactlytrip off the tongue (let alone queer Christian).

Althoughreligioncommonly makes its way into the political beat, whether through George Conways anti-Trump Lincoln Project releasing ascathing videojuxtaposing evangelicals praise of the president with the commander in chiefs most egregious anti-Christian statements or the president launching his Evangelicals for Trump reelection coalition or trottingBilly Grahams granddaughter Cissieonstage during a Miami campaign rally to rebukeChristianity Todays call for his ouster, seldom dothe protests or progress of liberal Christians make the cut. For this reason, the UMC story has been an extraordinary wrinkle in the dominant conservative Christian narrative.

For decades, the hyperpresence of a vocal Christian right has driven liberals (including LGBTQ parishioners) away from the church. At a time when American churches are seeing declining numbers in general and surveys asking about religion note a rise in nones, queer congregants areneeded. And just as the UMC needed its queer parishioners and their queer-friendly allies to drag church doctrine into the 21stcentury, American politics and the impending election cycle need to hear from progressive Christiansand those who support LBGTQ rights.

According to the most recentPew Research Center surveylinking political ideology and religious affiliation, in the categories of both Mainline Protestant and Historically Black Protestant, the combined classifications of moderate and liberal far outweighed those of conservative. Nevertheless, its the conservative talking heads who cork off during the 24-hour news cycle, and its conservative politicians who wave the banner of Christianity while painting Christians with broad regressive strokes. They dont speak for all of us.

The story of the UMC is much more reflective of the current American religious landscape than are the talking points spewing forth on cable news, talk radio, and the Trinity Broadcasting Network. Evangelical legacy Franklin Graham (who gives Vladimir Putin props for protecting his nations children from the damaging effects of any gay and lesbian agenda) and megachurch preachers like Joel Homosexuality Is a Sin, But Repentance Leads to Heaven Osteen, cramming50,000 worshippers into the old Houston Rockets stadium and reaching another 10 million weekly via TV, may have the cash, flash, Pepsodent smiles, and coiffures to sell the show. But they only speak for a subset of contemporary Christianity, one that unfortunately carries disproportional weight when it comes to headlines.

We are notKim Davisrefusing marriage licenses to Kentucky same-sex couples, religiousColorado bakersrefusing to bake queer wedding cakes, orHobby Lobbys Green familydenying Plan B or IUDs to their employees. As long as we allow them, the Grahams, the Osteens, and President TrumpsProsperity Gospel darlingand faith whisperer, multimillionaire Paula White, to be the face of American Christianity, we not only lose the public relations battle, but allow religion to be used as a weapon by the political right not just against us but all progressive Christians.

Only a visible and vocal presence of the Christian left can help combat this cultural fallacy.

By no means would I suggest that queer liberal or any liberal Christian voices form a monolithic Christian base. Surely demographic overlap exists between Christians and those who seek to withhold birth control, ban abortion, prevent same-sex couples from adopting, and bar transgender Americans from usingtheir chosen bathroom, but settling in on this view of Christian America is counterproductive. In fact, data pulled from a 2018Cooperative Congressional Election Studyshows that the religious left, although obscured by the media, is the mostpolitically activereligious group in the United States. And queer Christians are driving the fight for social change.

Queer Christians and their allies need to come out of yet another closet and make their voices heard. It shouldnt take tragedy or Jim J. Bullock and Tammy Faye Bakker teaming up for queer and religion to find their way into the same sentence. For decades we have fought to make ourselves and the LGBTQ community visible and valued; heres one more step to take. Make your voices heard not just in your churches but in the media, in local politics, and while canvassing for your candidates. Take away the taboo union of progressive politics, queerness, and Christianity.

We need to publicly prove that we too are part of the force driving positive and inclusive social, cultural, and political movements in this country. Dont let the pundits and politicians defineChristian. WWJD? Drive the story.

Kelly Kessler, a public voices fellow with The OpEd Project, teaches media and cinema studies at DePaul University in Chicago. Her teaching and scholarship often focus on the intersection of mainstream media, queer audiences, and queer images. All the while, shes doing her best to make her twins into good humans.

Read the rest here:

Where Are the Faces of Queer and Liberal Christianity? - Advocate.com

Commission fonctionnaires may be urbane, talented, and hard-working, but they are not a civil service. They can launch dawn police raids. They can impose vast fines on their own authority. They have quasi-judicial powers and the prerogative of legislative initiative.

They are more like the Roman Curia. Nothing like this has existed in British political life since the Reformation. How do voters hold this Caesaropapist structure to account? They cannot do so. That is what Brexit is about.

There are great numbers of us in Britain, France, Holland, the Nordics, or the Czech Republic, who think the precious liberal nation state inspired by the redemptive values of the English Bill of Rights and the Dclaration des droits de l'homme has been a resounding success.

We think it is the only forum of authentic democracy, the agent of the greatest moral progress the world has ever seen. We think the systematic attempt to discredit the nation state by blaming it for two world wars is an historical sleight of hand, a lie fed to two generations of European school children though the co-ordinated Franco-German curriculum in a systematic brain-washing exercise.

We see it as the guarantor of social solidarity and a bulwark against religious agitation, fracture, and the unforgiving clash of communitarian identities. We think it should not be discarded lightly.

Read the rest here:

Leaving the EU is horrible, but it is the only way to preserve our democratic liberal nation state - Telegraph.co.uk

TheGunBlog.ca Peter MacKay, a top candidate to lead the Conservative Party of Canada, promised to undo the governing Liberal Partys gun confiscations against hunters, farmers and sport shooters if he is elected prime minister.

Whatever they do, we will undo, Mackay said on Twitter today, sharing an article from The Post Millennial about Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rushing to order mass seizures from federally licensed firearm owners. The safety of Canadians will be enhanced by putting criminals behind bars, not harassing law-abiding citizens.

Liberal Mass Confiscation

Trudeau promised one of the biggest confiscations against honest citizens of any democracy in history.

Hes preparing to order licensed firearm owners to surrender a quarter-million of their rifles, and potentially all of their handguns.

He said he would offer to pay victims of the rifle confiscations, but not the handgun confiscations.

MacKay, OToole

MacKay is one of the most-popular candidates seeking to lead the Conservatives and beat the Liberals in the next election.

Erin OToole, another contender who respects Canadas 2.2 million men and women with a firearm Possession and Acquisition Licence (PAL), officially entered the race today. The military veteran pledged to scrap the deeply flawed Firearms Act when he ran for the leadership in 2017.

Members Vote, But Will PAL Holders?

Anyone who wants to vote for the next Conservative chief must have a valid party membership.

Although many firearm users vote Conservative in federal elections, almost no PAL holders voted in the 2017 Conservative election that propelled Andrew Scheer past Maxime Bernier.

The Post Millennial article summarized a report in Blacklocks Reporter yesterday on the planned Liberal confiscations.

See original here:

Peter MacKay on Liberal Gun Bans: 'Whatever They Do, We Will Undo' - TheGunBlog.ca

QUEBEC CITY -- Tensions between the two camps squaring off in the leadership race of the Quebec Liberal Party rose a notch Monday, with the party's ethics at the heart of the budding conflict.

Members of the Liberal caucus are starting to worry that tangible animosity between the camps of candidates Dominque Anglade and Alexandre Cusson will leave a mark, to the point that it could undermine the party's unity the day after it chooses its next leader on May 31.

Anglade's team has asked MNA Marwah Rizqy, the right-hand woman of Cusson, to put an end to personal attacks against Anglade, a fellow MNA from Montreal.

On Sunday, during the launch of Cusson's campaign, Rizqy hinted that Anglade was practicing 'denial' by avoiding tackling head-on the issue of ethics at the Quebec Liberal Party.

On Monday, in the wings of the Liberal caucus being held in preparation for the next parliamentary session, the two co-chairs of the Anglade campaign, MNAs Carlos Leitao and Marie Montpetit, as well as Anglade herself, publicly called Rizqy to order.

This is a developing story that will be updated.

Originally posted here:

Quebec Liberal Party leadership: Growing tensions between the two opposing camps - CTV News

Liberals admit this much: executives at a powerful corporation may have done some bad thingsso bad, they led to criminal charges. Still, the powerful corporation is powerful, senior Liberals warn. If the justice system does not cut a deal, the corporation will make life difficult for Canada. With financial and political ties to Liberal higher-ups, the corporation could make life difficult for the party, too.

Some senior Liberals draw the inevitable conclusion: prosecutors must have made a mistake. The attorney general should intervene in the prosecution and give the corporation what it wants. That way, these Liberals say, Canada can get what it wants. And Liberalsthey do not saycan get what they want, as well.

Liberal partisans may be relieved to hear that this is not yet another summation of the SNC-Lavalin scandal. They wish to cease all mention of it. Its odd, then, that some party stalwarts seem bent on reenacting it.

Meng Wanzhou, a citizen of a powerful state and an executive of a powerful corporation, Chinas Huawei Technologies, with close ties to the Chinese state, allegedly defrauded an American bank; prosecutors in the United States Department of Justicecharged her with fraud; Canada, honouring an extradition treaty with its neighbour and ally, arrested her the December before last. Having kidnapped two Canadians and banned various Canadian agricultural products, China has demonstrated that if Canadian courts do not let her go, it will make life difficult for Canada; having ties to senior Liberals, China could make life difficult for the party, too.

READ MORE:Chrtiens China and Trudeaus

These Liberals have concluded that the prosecution of Meng must be a mistake. The attorney general, they say, should intervene to forestall her prosecution and give China what it wants so that Canada can get what it wants. And certain Liberalsthey do not saycan get what they want, as well.

There are differences between the two cases. This time it is senior party members, not senior government officials, who are petitioning the attorney general to spare an alleged criminal from going to trialindeed, the Prime Minister, who led the attempted interference in the SNC-Lavalin affair, has reportedly decided the government will not intervene in Mengs extradition.

But there are similarities, as well. What does it say about the culture of the Liberal Party that such important party higher-ups as former prime minister Jean Chretien, his former chief of staff Eddie Goldenberg, his former finance andforeign affairs minister John Manleyall of whom now work for firms and businesses with close relationships with Chinese companies, including Huaweias well as his former defence minister John McCallumwho Trudeau dispatched to China as ambassadorare so confident they will get a hearing when they argue the government should capitulate to Chinas demands? What does it say about the Liberal Partys commitment to the rule of law that their arguments bear so many striking parallels to those made in defence of Justin Trudeaus capitulation to SNCs demands?

How many parallels? Consider:

Advising politicization

Once again, senior Liberals are demanding the attorney general take the virtually unprecedented step of interfering in a criminal case for political reasons, compromising the independence of the judicial system and undermining the rule of law.

With SNC, the Liberal government, in response to the companys persistent lobbying, pressured the attorney general to override the prosecutors decision and allow the corporation to avoid a criminal trial. With China, senior Liberals are urging the current attorney general to do much the same with respect to an extradition proceeding, exercising his ministerial prerogative to refuse to surrender Meng to U.S. authorities.

In both cases, the same precedent would be set: that those with political connections and financial leverage can keep their friends out of trouble.

Relativizing rule of law

Once again, senior Liberals are implying that the rule of law is a mere preference rather than a democratic necessity. Liberals painted the SNC scandal as a policy disputesome members of cabinet preferred the independence of criminal prosecutors, while others valued jobs.

With China, senior Liberals present Chinas hostage-taking as a cultural disputesome cultures prefer impartial justice, while others do not.

McCallum, for one, thinks Canada has more in common with China than the United States now; others advise Canadians to be more understanding of China. But when Goldenberg says it is essential to understand where the Chinese are coming from in seeing the extradition request as part of an American persecution campaign against the regime and Huawei, he more than understands the Chinesehe appears to agree with them. He writes, Obtaining [our hostages] freedom should have nothing to do with how we feel about China.

How we feel. There are no facts, only a rich mosaic of perceptions and emotions. Who are we to say that protecting an impartial judiciary is better than surrendering to a dictatorship that illegally kidnaps and tortures another countrys citizens as revenge for that country having honoured its treaty responsibilities?

Blaming the prosecution

Once again, senior Liberals have scapegoated prosecutors for fulfilling their professional dutytaking a criminal case to trial when in their judgment it should go to trial. With SNC, Liberals accused the director of public prosecutions of not having made the correct judgement, while expressing rather less concern about the corporations judgment in bribing members of a brutal regime.

With China, senior Liberals are implying American prosecutors are either supine or crooked. Ostensibly, they blame Trump for the criminal charges that led to the extradition request, which is partly why McCallum advised Chinese-language state-owned media that Meng has quite a strong case.

But the charges were brought by the United States Department of Justice. To claim, as they do, that the prosecution is politically motivated is to suggest that Department of Justice attorneys allowed their independence to be utterly compromised by Trumps administrationor if Trump is left out of it, that prosecutors took it upon themselves to compromise their impartiality by using Canada for political purposes.

Either way, when Manley says The U.S. created the mess we are in, or when Chretien calls the issue, a trap that was set to us, their logic dictates it is prosecutors who must in fact be substantially to blamenot the alleged fraudster, nor the controversial multinational that employs her, and not the dictatorship that seeks to protect them both by kidnapping Canadian citizens.

Blaming the attorney general

Once again, senior Liberals have extended the blame to the attorney general for not interfering in a prosecution. With SNC, the difficult and selfish former attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould, was said to have erred in respecting the foundational principle of prosecutorial independence and refusing to intervene. With China, Manley says the former attorney general is on the hook for failing to exercise a bit of creative incompetence and somehow just miss [Meng]; Goldenberg claims it is now the current attorney generals duty to address whether there is a way to stop the extradition.

In both cases, Liberals have called on the attorney general to betray the principles of the justice system she or he is charged with protecting in submission to the threats of a bully.

Prioritizing legal loopholes

Once again, senior Liberals argue that such a radical departure from legal norms is justified by the mere existence of legal loopholes. With SNC, they noted the attorney general had the formal authority, in exceptional circumstances, to override a prosecutors decision to go to trial, and concluded that this authority trumped her obligations to impartial justice. With China, they note that the attorney general has the formal authority to end the extradition process, and conclude that this authority trumps the same obligation even when it means setting a precedent of putting Canadas justice system at the mercy of a rogue state.

Conflating partisan interests with Canadas

Once again, senior Liberals justify violating the norms of justice in a criminal case in the name of a supposedly larger public interest, though other, distinctly private interests arein fact at stake. With SNC, the companys threat of job losses was used as public justification for interference; Wilson-Raybould testified before a Commons committee that behind closed doors Trudeau cited his own political considerations as a rationale. With China, the regimes threats to Canadian citizens and farmers are invoked as justification for interference. No one has to mention party members political considerationsthe relationship of senior Liberals to Chinese interests is well-documented. In both cases, Liberals gloss over a potential conflict of interest that could jeopardize Canadas rule of law.

Advising the attorney general to politicize a criminal prosecution; suggesting the rule of law is a relative thing; attacking prosecutors for upholding the rule of law; attacking the attorney general for upholding prosecutorial independence; claiming legal loopholes trump democratic fundamentals; advocating for an outcome that could benefit their own interests but undermine the countrys. I admit, the Liberals have a point: it would be nice if everyone could finally stop talking about SNC-Lavalin.

View original post here:

The Liberal Party and the rule of law - Maclean's

In a political era defined by abnormalities, few developments are as bizarre as the newfound liberal admiration for federal law enforcement.

Given its rich history of activism and countercultural tendencies, the left has traditionally regarded federal law enforcement with hostility. Looking back, this attitude has been largely earned.

Throughout the 20th century, radical leftists were relentlessly targeted under the guise of protecting America from seditious ideologies. For instance, from 1919 to 1920 thousands of suspected communists were arrested in sweeping raids that spanned 23 states. Subsequent attempts to combat subversives would prove no less appalling: in 1964, the FBI hatched at blackmail plot aimed at coercing Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. to commit suicide.

Given this sordid past, its unsurprising that many Democrats viewed the FBIstreatmentof Hillary Clinton in 2016 as more of the same. In the New York Times, Andrew Rosenthalaccused erstwhile FBI director James Comey of interferingon behalf of the Republican party. The Guardian went further, offering a portrait of the FBI that suggested it was Trumpland.

But the world spins in a different direction only a few years later: allegations of a partisan conspiracy come from the right, while federal investigators arehros de la rsistance. Indeed, firing the man onceblamedfor Clintons electoral demise has become an impeachable offense, and his testimony fit foryoga watch parties.

Of course, tribal loyalties easily explain these transformations investigating enemies is righteous, while investigating allies is nefarious. Once federal agents began probing Trumpworld, many of his supporters discovered the virtues of due process overnight, while Democrats began sounding like rural sheriffs, spewing platitudes about innocent people having nothing to hide.

So whose side are the feds really on? This is likely the wrong question. As Jack Goldsmith and Bob Bauer note, the problems at the FBI revealed by multiple inspector-general investigations do not cut politically in one direction. Individual political biases exist, but the overarching bias is institutional. Federal investigators fashion themselves as guardians of order and seek to defeat those they think threaten it, whether environmental activists, right-wing populists, or drug dealers. While the vast majority are patriots committed to the public good, their righteousness can manifest itself in dangerous ways, fostering an ends justify the means mentality.

One such case study is presented by DoJ Inspector General Michael Horowitzs report examining the FBIs use of FISA while investigating the Trump campaign. The IG report exposes a pattern of misconduct that, in every significant instance, disadvantaged the suspect. This is all the more disturbing given that FISA applications are approved 99 percent of the time. While FISAs defenders have long claimed that this statistic is misleading, Horowitzs report compels us to ask whether the hurdles we expect the government to clear before jettisoning our liberties are, in reality, mere rubber stamps. If rules are bent in such a high-profile case, how often do run-of-the-mill suspects fall prey to such oversights?

While we romanticize ideals like innocent until proven guilty, the truth is that the scales are tipped heavily in the governments favor. In fact, they almost never lose: the DoJs conviction rate regularly exceeds 95 percent. This unsettling statistic is largely explained by a draconian federal code and the aggressiveness of prosecutors. For example, if someone accused of bribing her daughters way into USC dares mount a defense, prosecutors will likely hit Aunt Becky with charges better reserved for someone washing money for the Sinaloa cartel.

The goal? Capitulation. While we like to imagine the adjudication of truth or fair justice to be the principal motivation driving our system, the desire to swiftly dispose of cases and protect prosecutors near-perfect records more often prevails.The latest US Sentencing Commissionsreport reveals that a staggering 97.4 percent of offenders pleaded guilty, rather than being convicted in trial. The prospect of years in a hellacious federal prison reliably inspires people to leap for any deal on offer.

Some readers will surely be unmoved, confident that they are law-abiding citizens. But have they ever gotten lost in the woods? Faked a sick day? As Mike Chase hilariously demonstrates inHow to Become a Federal Criminal, federal law criminalizes a virtually infinite range of behavior, from moving a park bench to making an unreasonable gesture to a passing horse. Indeed, no oneactually knows the total number of federal crimes (allattemptsat a tally have ended in failure.) Sure, prosecutorial discretiontypically prevents the most obscure of these offenses from being charged. But the potential for abuse remains: just ask the Michigan Fish Dealer doing time for trout trafficking.

Federal investigators can devise a plausible justification to target almost anyone. And if their initial suspicions prove unfounded, they are adept, as former prosecutor Ken White notes, at turning investigations of crimesinto schemes toproduce new crimes. It is routine, he emphasizes, to convict people not for the subject of the investigation but for how they react to it.

There is no shortage of hypocrisy on either side. But our views of law enforcement cannot be governed by tribalism: overlooking injustices perpetrated against our adversaries only reinforces behavior that harms all Americans.

Our system grants federal law enforcement extraordinary power to ruin lives. The time has come for Americans of all stripes to ask how freely they should be allowed to wield it.

View post:

The strange new liberal attraction to the feds - The Spectator USA

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks to members of caucus on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, on Jan. 23, 2020.

Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is tapping Senator Marc Gold, a constitutional law expert and former chair of the Jewish Federations of Canada, to serve as the Liberal governments representative in the Red Chamber.

The Quebec senator replaces Senator Peter Harder, who announced he was stepping down from the role in November after three years in the position to allow for some new blood. Mr. Harder remains a senator.

Mr. Gold was appointed to the Senate on the advice of Mr. Trudeau in November 2016 and has been a member of the Independent Senators Group.

Story continues below advertisement

As Mr. Trudeaus representative in the Red Chamber, Mr. Gold will be responsible for advancing the Liberal governments legislative agenda in the Senate, where the majority of Canadas 105 senators are unaffiliated with any of the major parties.

Mr. Harders dual role as a nominally Independent senator who handled the Liberal governments business had come under criticism from the remaining Conservative senators.

Senator Golds long record of personal and professional achievement, together with his commitment to promoting human rights and Canadas regional diversity, will help us find common ground in the Senate as we invest in and protect our communities, create good middle-class jobs and fight climate change, Mr. Trudeau said in a statement.

I look forward to working with him to build a better Canada for all Canadians.

Mr. Trudeau still has the task of filling empty seats in the Red Chamber to reach a full complement of senators. Two Conservative senators retired in early November: New Brunswicks Paul McIntyre and British Columbias Richard Neufeld. There will be seven more retirements slated for this year.

A memo provided to Mr. Trudeau shortly after his re-election noted that overall, 24 vacancies are expected to pop up by the end of 2023. That does not include other senators who may step down prior to reaching the mandatory retirement age of 75.

The Liberals reworked part of the Senate appointments process shortly after taking office in late 2015 by allowing people to apply for open seats.

Story continues below advertisement

Ultimately, the prime minister has final say on whose name he puts forward for the Senate, which is an appointment made officially by the Governor-General. That has not changed from the previous process that existed under the Conservatives and other governments before them.

Mr. Trudeau has chosen 50 senators under the understanding they would be called upon to play their role independent of partisan influence, officials wrote in the briefing material, obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.

That cohort coalesced into an affiliation known as the Independent Senators Group, or ISG.

If there are no early retirements, changes in affiliation, or expulsions, the Independent Senators Group will continue to hold the majority of seats in the Senate for the duration of the next mandate, the memo reads.

The memo also notes that the Liberal platform promised to amend the Parliament of Canada Act to reflect the Senates new, non-partisan role. However, the remainder of what officials wrote has been redacted from the document because it is deemed sensitive government advice.

Our Morning Update and Evening Update newsletters are written by Globe editors, giving you a concise summary of the days most important headlines. Sign up today.

Continued here:

Trudeau taps Quebec senator as Liberal governments new representative in upper chamber - The Globe and Mail

The nations red-blue divide means the media have gone from acting blue to feeling it.

House Democrats ended their presentation in President Trumps Senate impeachment trial Friday, and the presidents defense attorneys began laying out their case in a brief Senate session Saturday. The defense will resume its presentation Monday.

The baseless Democratic arguments for impeachment, stretching over three long days and nights, were greeted by a resounding thud of public disinterest. Ratings were down on TV and both senators and bystanders were in poor attendance.

LARA LOGAN: MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS NOT ACKNOWLEDGING SCHIFF'S CREDIBILITY ISSUES

The collapse of the whole impeachment effort looks more disastrous than the eighth season of Game of Thrones.

The anti-Trump media cant understand why America wont celebrate the epic oratory of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif. Mediaite said Schiffs call on the Senate to convict Trump and remove him from office was a powerful speech. The Daily Beast declared Schiff Speaks the Truth and far-left Mother Jones referred to the monologue as stirring.

Only Schiff made an embarrassing gaffe as he was closing, further depressing the anti-Trump press. He cited a CBS News report that claimed President Donald Trump had told senators, vote against the president and your head will be on a pike.

GOP senators were unified in their anger at what Chicago Sun-Times Washington Bureau Chief Lynn Sweet called Schiffs unforced error. The New York Times reported Schiffs comment resulted in Enraging the Right.

CNN Senior Congressional Correspondent Manu Raju tweeted that Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said Schiff offended every Republican senator and that no Republican had been told that.

It was a fitting end to Part I of the bogus impeachment trial. Journalists have celebrated the Democratic Party line so far like they were ready to stand up and cheer their star.

The media threw love bombs at Schiff, envisioning him as everyone from famed orator Sen. Daniel Webster to rock superstar Bruce Springsteen. By comparison, former Time editor Rick Stengel said Trump was like the late Soviet tyrannical dictator Josef Stalin.

Self-described conservative Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin was hanging on Schiffs every word. Thank God I was alive to hear Adam Schiff speak these past few days, she tweeted.

Much of the media didnt just celebrate Trumps attackers. They had to silence his supporters, as well.

Long-time Democrat and ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos gave us the memorable image of the week doing just that. He was captured on camera running his hand back and forth across his throat, telling staff to cut away from Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow answering questions.

Its worth remembering that Stephanopoulos is more openly partisan than many of his fellow journalists. He is a former White House communications director for President Bill Clinton and for Bill Clintons 1992 presidential campaign, and he gave $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

But all that adoration was no match for the gang at CNN. Schiff was their shining star and CNN was sure to tell viewers. The networks journalists and pundits nearly wore out the alphabet piling on the praise, terming his speech coherent, cohesive, dazzling, forceful, inspiring, powerful, and remarkable.

The folks at CNN made it clear they were very concerned by impeachment, using the word very 11 times in one segment. Situation Room anchor Wolf Blitzer excelled, celebrating the very, very powerful and forceful speech and noting Schiff made a very, very strong case.

New Day anchor John Berman was so very incensed that senators werent sitting with rapt attention, he whined that they could be could be thrown behind bars for leaving the floor of the Senate. Berman fantasized that 30 of them would be in the slammer right now if [Chief Justice] John Roberts actually enforced the rule.

CNN saw impeachment everywhere even when Trump was the first president to ever speak at the annual March for Life in Washington. Correspondent Kristen Holmes called the speech part of Trumps damage control efforts. It was all happening in the middle of this impeachment trial and that, of course, is very obvious why President Trump would want to speak here today, she said.

The network even stretched the truth to make Schiff more palatable. Chief Political Analyst Gloria Borger pretended that Schiff had begun his career as a moderate Democrat. His lifetime score by the American Conservative Union is a 5 on a scale of 1 to 100.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR OPINION NEWSLETTER

President Clintons press secretary-turned-CNN analyst Joe Lockhart tried to win a creative writing award for fiction. Lockhart made up a conversation between Republican senators but didnt admit at first that the only place the conversation took place was in his vivid imagination.

In Lockharts fictional account (also known as a lie) one senator supposedly said of the Democratic accusations against Trump: I haven't heard any of this before. I thought it was all about a server. If half the stuff Schiff is saying is true, we're up s----- creek. (He wasnt referring to the Canadian sitcom.)

Lockhart was mocked for his fake tweet, but his bosses at CNN didnt seem to mind.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Now that the impeachment trial has shifted over to the Trump defense, CNN is already on the case. Fridays Reliable Sources email warned America is about to be hit with a storm of disinformation.

While intended as an attack on Trump, this reads like a description of pretty much every major anti-Trump media report on impeachment especially at CNN.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE FROM DAN GAINOR

More here:

Dan Gainor: In impeachment trial coverage, liberal media heap praise on Schiff and Democrats prosecuting Trump - Fox News

What kind of deep-down qualities and values tend to separate liberals and conservatives?

New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall (who, as usual, relies more heavily on scholars to delve into such issues than the usual pundits and politicians) takes a deep dive into that question in his weekly New York Times column, and the insights blew me away, including this one, from one of the many scholars included in the piece:

It is likely that rather less liberal democracy will ultimately make liberal democracy more secure.

The rise of Donald Trump, on a platform that included plenty of racism and nativism, led Edsall to pursue, with academics far removed from the more oft-quoted pundits on whom political reporters usually rely, this question:

What if the belief systems used to justify anti-immigrant policies and to justify race prejudice, for that matter hostility to outsiders, insularity, high sensitivity to external threat are as deeply ingrained in the American body politic as belief systems sympathetic to immigration and to racial equality openness, receptivity to new experiences, trust?

The answers he obtained were more nuanced than we hear from the usual talking heads on TV. Ill just give you one taste and then urge you to read the whole thing. Wrote Edsall:

Karen Stenner, a political psychologist and behavioral economist best known for predicting the riseof Trump-like figures under the kinds of conditions we now confront, responded to my emailed inquiries by noting the conflicting pressures at play:

I dont think I would agree that Trumpian conservative stands on immigration, race and homelessness are a more natural or default position. Communities with a good balance of people who seek out diversity, complexity, novelty, new and exciting experiences etc., and those who are disgusted by and averse to such things, avoid them, and tell others to do likewise, tend to thrive and prosper in human evolution.

Finding the right balance, Stenner said, is vital to both societal cohesion and human flourishing. But, she warned, we may have tipped the balance too far in favor of unconstrained diversity and complexity, pushing the boundary beyond many peoples capacity to tolerate it.

At this juncture, she argued, we need to tinker with that balance and get it right for everyone. So theres the paradox of our times: it is likely that rather less liberal democracy will ultimately make liberal democracy more secure.

Read the whole Edsall piece here.

Read this article:

Thomas Edsall elicits nuanced insights into the core belief systems of liberals and conservatives - MinnPost