🚨NCIS finally gives a VERY long awaited confirmation

 

Source: https://www.tvinsider.com/1187628/ncis-season-22-episode-18-recap-sam-returns-ll-cool-j/

LL Cool J reprises his NCIS: LA role as Sam Hanna in the Monday, April 21, episode of NCIS. And with his return — he appeared on the mothership in the LA backdoor pilot and the three-show crossover with Hawai’i — comes a couple of key updates.

First of all, Sam is no longer with NCIS. After his Elite team was killed in Hawai’i, he requested a leave of absence because he wanted a change of pace. Now, he’s working in D.C., on the Hill, wearing a suit, dealing with bureaucrats, and doing his best to protect democracy. (One senator comes in handy during the case.) It’s a “course correction,” he tells Knight (Katrina Law) when she checks on him, knowing the grief of losing a team (for her, it was her REACT team). He asked to be a voice since politicians don’t see the sacrifices soldiers make. He also has a standing weekend karaoke date with Palmer (Brian Dietzen) and his daughter Victoria; Sam sings “a little,” while Palmer raps, old-school. (Love the nod to LL Cool J’s music career.)

When Knight remarks that Sam’s new position, a lone wolf job, sounds more like something Callen (Chris O’Donnell) would do, he reveals that his partner’s no longer a lone wolf: He and Anna (Bar Paly) are expecting a “new pup”! Sam also provides some news about Jane Tennant (NCIS: Hawai’i‘s Vanessa Lachey) when he brings in pastries for the team at the end: She bakes.

Sonja Flemming / CBS

By the end of the episode, Sam has quit his new job. “Seeing your team, working shoulder to shoulder with them, reminded me how much I missed it,” he explains to Vance (Rocky Carroll). The director remarks, “Well, you always were a team player, like any good SEAL,” and assures him, “There’s always a place for you back at NCIS.” Sam just has some things to take care of first — leading to news about Hetty! “Wouldn’t have anything to do with Hetty, would it? I’ve heard rumors she’s been spotted on the wrong side of the DMZ,” Vance comments, but Sam tells him it’s better he doesn’t know. The “see you around” when McGee (Sean Murray) and Sam say goodbye in passing makes us think this won’t be the last time we see LL Cool J on NCIS.

As for the case, it’s Sam’s badge number that gets him involved: The team’s suspect in the murders of three vets keeps repeating it. He gives his name, Mark Davis, once in interrogation, and Sam can’t believe his friend could be responsible. He trusted him with his life. But, it turns out, the man in interrogation isn’t Mark, but rather, his brother, Roger. Mark’s in trouble, and Sam’s the only person he trusts, so he gives Roger his badge number. While Roger was covered in the victims’ blood, he insists he didn’t kill them — he went to the motel to meet Mark but found them and tried to do CPR — nor did his brother. He wants Sam to find Mark before he ends up dead, too.

Though it does look like Mark could be guilty of murder and Sam worries he’s not the man he remembers, he’s been captured because of his attempt to blow the whistle on a private military company, Iron Horizon, hiring vets and having them protect warlords and other bad guys, which none of them signed up for. (The woman running the employment services charity that led them to Iron Horizon sold Mark out.) Rescuing him leads to Sam, McGee, Knight, and Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) facing off against Russian mercenaries in some brutal hand-to-hand that leaves them all bloody. (To find someone who’s tough for Sam to take down? Impressive.

Elsewhere, McGee continues to investigate Laroche, but Torres worries that he’s becoming obsessed. McGee hopes to have the proof he needs via a friend at the Department of Justice who is sending an unpublished report with Laroche’s name all over it. Parker (Gary Cole) warns McGee that word of what he’s doing is making its way around the building.

In fact, Vance calls McGee into his office at the end of the episode to talk to him about the file that his friend at the DOJ sent. McGee stumbles over defending himself, but Vance just warns him that he has to be “absolutely certain” that Laroche is guilty of something or they could all get burned. He leaves McGee in his office with the file while he takes a call in MTAC. McGee quickly begins reading.

---------------------------------

NOTES:

THIS is the update I have waited 2 years for!!! The Queen is still alive. Even after 2 years with 0 updates, she's still alive!! This means she can most definitely come back next Season in 1 of these shows!!

Patience really does pay off in the end, even after 2 years. (and FINALLY 1 step closer to a physical come back 4 years in the making!)

The Sad Trombone Blows For Leticia James – Whomp! Whomp!

posted by Kurt Schlichter at Townhall 

It’s hard to express how much cruel delight I take in the current dilemma of porcine New York Attorney General Letitia James. You see, the malignant Democrat, who ran specifically on the electoral promise that she was going to find something to sue or convict Donald Trump over, just got herself caught up in a little jam. Actually, it’s a big jam. And it’s hilarious.

Now, I was against the new rule about conducting fishing expeditions on your political enemies with an eye towards finding some criminal act they may have committed or some quasi-criminal act that could be twisted into wrongdoing in front of a solicitous court with a politically unfriendly jury pool. That’s exactly what she did to Donald Trump in New York. Actually, she couldn’t get anything on Trump himself, so she went after his companies under some ridiculous loan fraud theory where no one was ripped off, and everybody was happy with the transactions. She found a judge who would play along and eagerly wreak vengeance on Donald Trump, the law and justice be damned. It resulted in a judgment of hundreds of millions of dollars that’s almost certain to be flushed down the toilet on appeal like exactly what it is. It cost Trump plenty of time, money, and embarrassment – and under the old rules those were improper purposes. But the old rules were changed.

James accomplished her mission, and she was very proud of herself. She thought this was great. She took the power of her office and shamelessly abused it to punish a political opponent. She went looking for something, anything, that she could twist into a judicial proceeding to hurt him, and she managed to do it. Congratulations, Leticia James.

You just played yourself.

It is kind of hilarious. She went after Donald Trump for loan fraud, and, in hindsight, that makes sense because she’s an expert on loan fraud. Apparently, she has had plenty of practice. It turns out that she has been criminally referred to the Trump Justice Department for several loan fraud crimes, including allegedly lying about the number of bedrooms to get a better mortgage rate and claiming out-of-state property as her place of residence to get a better deal. It’s all there on paper. If true, she does not have to be framed or some new offense invented to drag her into court, unlike Donald Trump. If proven in court, this will be a run-of-the-mill, perfectly normal and routine mortgage fraud.

Bizarrely, she’s allegedly been doing this for a couple of decades. Although the statute of limitations has run, in the past, she allegedly attempted to take out mortgages by claiming to be married to her father. That’s totally normal and not at all yucky. I’m not sure what it is with these weird Democrat politicians claiming to be married to close relatives, but the Ilhan Omarization of America has got to stop. It’s just tacky.

So, now the Trump’s Justice Department has Leticia James in its sights, and I couldn’t be happier. Again, I thought that going and looking for bad acts by political opponents in order to use the judicial system against them was a bad idea. I strongly opposed that, including in these very electronic pages. I did not want the old rule, where you don’t do that, to be changed in favor of the new rule, where you do that. But you know what? Leticia James and her friends had other ideas. They thought doing this to their political opponents was a great idea and that this new rule was wonderful. Except they forgot something. It’s a very important thing, and they never considered it.

They forgot that when they made it the rule, it became the rule. And that if the GOP took power, it could use that new rule.

I wouldn’t put it past Dems just being really stupid for never considering that someday they would be out of power and would face Republicans who didn’t hesitate to use their power. After all, it was used against them. No one should be surprised that the Republicans are now using all the tools in their toolbox to fight their enemies. The day of the gentlemanly GOP loser has passed into history. Now, our enemies are going to pay.

Just ask Harvard, which was likely thrilled in 1983 (and up until last week) to have SCOTUS strip a Christian university of its tax-exempt status because of its refusal to abide by federal civil rights laws. Harvard is considerably less thrilled now that it finds itself about to be stripped of its tax-exempt status because of its refusal to abide by federal civil rights laws. Maybe it’s just arrogance on their part, the idea that they were above the law. They thought the law was their own special weapon against their enemies, and now that they’re finding their enemy is using it as a suppository. 

Pretty soon, we’re going to see an indictment of Leticia James, and I am going to laugh and laugh and laugh. A couple of points about the indictment: Back when I did law all the time, I didn’t do criminal law, so I reached out to some of my federal criminal law buddies for their insights. The first thing is that it’s not just going to be mortgage fraud that she gets hit with. It’s going to be wire fraud, maybe mail fraud, and some other similar federal law violations. These are serious crimes, and they can lead to jail time. 

The New York attorney general is also not going to get home court advantage. The interesting thing about federal law is you can prosecute in any state where the crime was committed, and here it looks like New York and Virginia are both in the running. If I were the DOJ, I would go with the Eastern District of Virginia. That’s where an offending house is located, and while the jury pool will be a bunch of liberals, it won’t be New York liberals. As we learned with the J6 defendants, the government should always seek the most advantageous venue whenever prosecuting political opponents.

Oh, and when she gets arrested, it’s important that her lawyer not be contacted so she can surrender with dignity and be processed expeditiously. Nah. She gets the Roger Stone treatment. We need to send a SWAT team in at about 2:30 AM to knock down her door. It’s probably not tactically necessary, but it’s important to honor the new rules about how to treat political opponents. Bonus points for alerting Fox News to be on the scene to film it happening.

Say, these new rules are fun!

It will also be fun to watch the reaction of her supporters. Democrats always complain that white-collar criminals skate while their constituents who commit violent crimes get slammed. It’s sure going to be hilarious when they have to defend this particular white-collar crime, but we already know how they’re going to do it. They will use the “Maryland Man” paradigm they have perfected with that scumbag who’s sitting in an El Salvador prison. They will pretend she’s an innocent victim and literally ignore every single bit of evidence against her. They just won’t mention any of it, just like they don’t mention Maryland Man’s wife-beating allegations (made under perjury by his wife), the facts about how he was arrested as part of a gang (his street name is “Chele”), and the due process he received during at least two proceedings where he was adjudicated a gang member.

But people are not buying it about “Chele,” and it’s not going to work for Leticia James either. The refusal to provide full and honest facts is a 20th-century flex that doesn’t work in a 21st-century media environment. There are no longer just three networks and two big newspapers that can conspire to keep the truth from the people. We’re going get the facts, even though they could once hide them. They have not internalized that reality yet. The leftist establishment is, of necessity, going to choose Leticia James as the hill to die on, which is just fine – it doesn’t matter where the leftist establishment dies as long as it dies.

And we Know, On the Fringe, and more- April 21

 

The Trump administration’s five dumbest economic ideas

 Stock markets can erase national debt? Trump invented a decades-old economic theory last year? On both counts, not so much.

Early in the morning on March 2, Donald Trump tweeted that “trade wars are good, and easy to win.” When other countries “get cute”—meaning they enjoy trade surpluses with the U.S.—the president’s cure is simple: “don’t trade anymore.” Voilà, problem solved, he wrote: “We win big. It’s easy!” The reviews were instantly poor. “This is fundamentally incompetent, corrupt or misguided,” wrote Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institution for International Economics. In his popular daily newsletter on March 5, Gluskin Sheff + Associates chief economist David Rosenberg predicted an “outright global trade war.”

The U.S. Department of Commerce counts 46,608 employees among its ranks. The president’s own Council of Economic Advisers exists to advise the president on policies that “foster and promote free competitive enterprise” and “avoid economic fluctuations or to diminish the effects thereof.” The U.S. International Trade Commission stands ready to “provide independent analysis and information on tariffs, trade and competitiveness.” But Trump’s administration has revealed that all the economists in the world, and all the informed advice they can muster, are no match for extemporaneous politicians and their lackeys.

Since Trump took power, he’s lead the charge on promoting baseless claims and crackpot theories about what makes an economy tick. Here are five of the strangest positions they’ve championed in front of a mic (or on Twitter).

1. Donald Trump celebrates trade wars, calls them easy to win, and says countries that don’t have steel aren’t countries.

Trump’s threat to slap a big tariff on steel imports, which on its face appears to apply to all countries but may ultimately be contained to only certain exporters if it ever comes to pass, appeared to be an example of the president creating policy on the fly. He unleashed a series of tweets on the morning of March 2.

Most economic observers dispute the president’s basic thesis that trade deficits are, on their own merits, harmful to any nation’s economy. But the uncertainty created by the blanket threat may be even more damaging to the global trading system, which is premised on more liberalized trade and negotiations to that end, not protectionist rhetoric that oversimplifies and misconstrues the consequences of trade deficits. Also at issue: the president’s contention that a country requires steel to be a country.

2. Donald Trump thinks a stock market boom pays off national debt.

COPY THE LINK BELOW AND PASTE TO YOUR BROWSER

https://x.com/JuddLegum/status/918281845275586560?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E918281845275586560%7Ctwgr%5E9165ba4713bbd86d46f430ac704ba4586d3a0cf6%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmacleans.ca%2Feconomy%2Feconomicanalysis%2Fthe-trump-administrations-five-dumbest-economic-theories%2F

On Oct. 11, 2017, the president conflated stock market growth with a reduction of the national debt. “We picked up $5.2 trillion just in the stock market … Maybe in a sense we’re reducing debt,” he claimed on Fox News. At the time, Wall Street was on a tear and the Dow Jones index had closed just shy of a record-high 23,000 points. What did that mean for the federal government’s debt load? Not much. As the U.S. Federal Reserve helpfully illustrates, national debt hit its own record high late last year—which isn’t surprising, since the debt has risen consistently for years. Trump, no stranger to debt in his previous life in business, may not spend a lot of time looking at charts.

 Donald Trump thinks he invented a common economic phrase he did not invent.

On May 4, 2017, Trump sat down with editors from the Economist. During that conversation, he claimed ownership of an economic turn of phrase—”priming the pump”—that predated his usage by at least 80 years.

“I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good,” he said. The New York Times fact-checked that claim, reminding readers that priming the pump, which means infusing economic stimulus into the economy to jumpstart growth, dates back to at least the Great Depression and is widely attributable to the economist John Maynard Keynes. Google Ngrams illustrates the dramatic degree to which “priming the pump” was a topic of conversation as the world battled economic depression all those years ago (though Trump’s use of the word did spike its proliferation last year).

4. Rick Perry thinks supply creates demand.

On July 6, 2017, as Energy Secretary Rick Perry toured a coal-fired power plant in West Virginia, he offered a lesson in Economics 101: “Here’s a little economics lesson: supply and demand. You put the supply out there and the demand will follow.”

Perry may have been defending a principle called Say’s law, the view that entrepreneurs who create things—i.e. increase supply—will generate enough spending—for example, through salaries paid to employees—to increase demand. The Economist largely defended the basic tenets of Say’s law last year. Then again, in 2015, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman dismissed the theory as “refuted three generations ago.” Krugman argues that low demand hits supply hard. In other words, “economies with persistently weak demand seem to suffer large declines in potential as well as actual output.”

Perry may be confident that increased coal production will find new customers, but he won’t find many of those new customers in the U.S., Canada or China. The International Energy Agency projects that global coal demand will increase marginally over the next five years, but that particular fossil fuel will see its share of global energy consumption shrink over the same period.

5. Mick Mulvaney is surprisingly honest about his own shallowness.

When the Trump administration was doing the math on its tax reform proposal, it looked to Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney to make sense of the numbers for reporters. As Vox explained, Mulvaney committed an egregious error that would make accountants groan, and former Treasury secretary Larry Summers called “a logical error of the kind that would justify failing a student in an introductory economics course.”

What was the error? Mulvaney said the proposal, which would on its own add $1.3 trillion to the national debt, would cause enough economic growth to make the whole thing revenue-neutral and also eventually balance the budget. Most observers think it’s impossible for tax cuts to spur enough growth to achieve both those goals—but it’s hard to dig into Trump’s logic, because Mulvaney didn’t offer much. From Vox:

Mulvaney offered a baffling defense of this accounting strategy at his Monday briefing with reporters.

He explained that the budget assumes tax reform will be deficit-neutral because “it was in all honesty the most efficient way to look at it.” How so? Well, he explained, “if we said it’s going to add to the deficit, then we have to go into more detail than what’s in the summary right now, [and] if we say it’s going to reduce the deficit, we have to go into more detail than what’s in it right now. And we simply are not in a position to do that.”

So how was the tax plan going to achieve revenue neutrality? Because the administration said it would.

Honourable mention: Sarah Huckabee Sanders explains the U.S. tax system using a beer analogy.

COPY THE LINK BELOW AND PASTE TO YOUR BROWSER

https://youtu.be/c0g5T_MWWHA

During her daily press briefing on Oct. 30, 2017, press secretary Sanders explained the progressive U.S. tax code by comparing it to a hypothetical night at a D.C. bar, where 10 fictional journalists pay various proportions of the bill at the end of the night depending on their ability to pay. Her point was that the wealthiest reporter always pays the most; as the bar tab falls, the one-percenter journalist who gets the biggest break still pays more than anyone else—but gets an earful anyway.

Admitting the “silly” story was an “oversimplification,” Sanders used the analogy to deny claims that Trump’s tax reform plan would disproportionately benefit wealthy taxpayers. The Washington Post dug into the scenario and determined that Sanders wasn’t painting a full picture: the two richest journalists do pay more, but they also combine to earn more than half of all income—an important consideration in any conversation about tax rates.

 

 

Is it Time to Ignore the Judiciary?

posted by Clarice Feldman at American Thinker 

It seems clear to me that the broad scope and speed of the administration’s actions have knocked the sense out of the media, the Democrats, and, alas, the judiciary. They cannot seem to process the swift and expansive range of change without making themselves look ridiculous. 

The Press 

I could describe many examples, but the easiest and most complete is that of the alleged gang-banging, wife-beating, human trafficking Salvadoran citizen who illegally crossed our borders and resided here. You know who I mean -- the .”

So the nation is transfixed -- or at least Democrats and the news media -- by the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the “Maryland Man” who has suddenly topped “Minnesota Man” as the object of media obfuscation. He is the Salvadoran national the Trump Administration deported to El Salvador along with a bunch of Venezuelan gang members who curiously the left isn’t even trying to defend, even as the Biden Administration didn’t lift a finger against any of this gang. It’s almost as though the left and the media are using Garcia to distract from the fact that Trump did something that a large majority of American approve. Admitting gang members at the border? Who, us????

There are a lot of tangled arguments about Garcia’s legal status, and the Trump Administration’s handling of his deportation. Yet I recall a 1953 Supreme Court case, Shaughnessy v. US ex rel. Mezui (345 U.S. 206), which Walter Berns described in his fabulous first book, Freedom, Virtue, and the First Amendment: 

‘An alien resident of the United States for twenty-five years journeyed to Hungary to see his dying mother, leaving his wife in their home in Buffalo. After considerable difficulty he obtained a visa from the American Consul in Hungary and returned to the United States. He was refused permission to land for “security reasons.” The Attorney General refused to inform him of the evidence against him. England, France, and twelve South American countries refused to admit him; he could neither re-enter the United States nor go to any other country. He sought parole from Ellis Island by praying for a writ of habeas corpus. This was granted, but the government appealed to the Supreme Court, in a five-four decision, upheld the government. The man without a country returned to Ellis Island, perhaps for the rest of his like, without being told why he was a security risk. [Emphasis in original.]’

It’s not an identical case, but similar enough for judicial work. It seems to me the “risk” involved in the present case of “Maryland Man” MS-13 member Kilmar Abrego Garcia is at least as good as a Hungarian who had been living with a spouse for 25 years in Buffalo, though I suppose 25 Buffalo winters may be the equivalent of a Salvadoran prison. And let’s not forget that by the time of this 1953 decision, the Supreme Court was a completely New Deal Court, with all nine justices appointed by a Democratic president.

The Democrats

While the press ignored Garcia’s wife’s two restraining orders against him for beating her up, they concocted a sob story of a longtime U.S. (illegal) resident who is being separated from a loving wife and three (only two of whom are, it turns out, his) children. She began a GoFundMe page, which is apparently the way families of criminals and alleged criminals are rewarded by left-wingers and idiots.

Senator Chris Van Hollen, who, as a Democrat, naturally picks the wrong side of the issue, raced down, he said, to obtain Garcia’s release from El Salvador’s prison, and was photographed seated at a restaurant with Garcia and some margaritas. (Van Hollen claims the drinks were put there to embarrass him and he did not drink any, but he needn’t, because he and his party seem drunk to ordinary Americans. I asked X’s Grok to scan the research, and it reported back that about 23% of adult Americans have some form of mental illness. By last count, about 21% of Americans identify as Democrats. Coincidence?)

At the meeting, Garcia appeared to have been fairly treated, which is not remarkable. If you recall, the only reason he had not been deported years earlier was because he claimed he feared he’d be killed by rival gang members, and those members are now imprisoned. Indeed, he told ICE at the time of his deportation that he was not afraid to be deported there. 

The Courts

Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland ordered the administration to facilitate Garcia’s release from prison in El Salvador. The government admitted it erred in overlooking the hold on his deportation, a hold solely based on his demonstrated fear of inter-gang violence, which no longer exists. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the appeal. On April 10, the Supreme Court ordered the district court to clarify its order.

The rest of the District Court’s order remains in effect but requires clarification on remand. The order properly requires the Government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador. The intended scope of the term “effectuate” in the District Court’s order is, however, unclear, and may exceed the District Court’s authority. The District Court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs. For its part, the Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.

The judge does not appear to have done so. The Department of Justice says this is now a matter of international affairs, as to which the court lacks jurisdiction.

I agree with Bill Ackman, who tweeted:

Yet that’s the direction District of Columbia Court Judge James Boasberg seems to be headed, and unless the Supreme Court acts to stop this nonsensical reading of the Constitution, making of it a suicide pact destroying nationhood, we will be heading into a constitutional crisis forcing the president to do his duty to protect our borders or comply voluntarily with an overreaching judiciary. (Voluntarily, because the courts lack any enforcement mechanism.) 

The issue is clearest in a case involving Venezuela’s Tren de Arugua gang members. Earlier, Judge Boasberg ordered the Administration to stop deporting illegal aliens who were members of Tren de Aragua. The Supreme Court said that Boasberg lacked jurisdiction to hear the case and that individuals affected must file habeas corpus petitions in the place where they were located. The plaintiffs, or at least some of them, were in Texas, so they filed there, and their petitions were denied. They simultaneously filed appeals in the Fifth Circuit and back in the District of Columbia before Judge Boasberg. Odd? You bet.

Shipwrecked crew summed up the extent of the government’s obligations:

'AEA detainees must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the Act. The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.’ ‘Notice they are subject to removal.’ ‘Within a reasonable time and in such manner as will allow them to seek habeas relief.’ In the hearing today before Judge Boasberg the Govt described the written notices being given advising the possible deportees they are subject to removal. The Govt attorney said many habeas actions have been filed. Seems like the Govt has met its obligations. Those who have filed for habeas review will not be removed until those matters are resolved. For those who have not filed -- they could have as is evidenced by the fact that others have -- adios.

Kurt Schlichter commented:

... doesn’t have jurisdiction, and ask for relief there.

The appellate court scotched Boasberg’s efforts, and he indicated he couldn’t give the plaintiffs the relief they requested. The plaintiffs were seeking an order requiring the government to provide 30 days’ notice for removal, among other things.

I certainly expected this fandango was over by now. Then, in the middle of Friday night, the Supreme Court issued a stay blocking the administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to carry out mass deportations of illegal aliens who are gang members. Justices Alito and Thomas dissented.

Just last week, the Supreme Court said virtually nothing the administration does under the Alien Enemies Act is subject to judicial review, so it’s puzzling what they intend to review. Or, as some have suggested, with Trump having overcome the media and administrative state’s resistance efforts, has the judiciary decided to step into the breach?

Democrats Have To Lie, The Truth Does Them No Favors

posted by Derek Hunter at Townhall 

What do Democrats have to offer Americans? I’ll save you the time to think about it for a second and tell you the answer is absolutely nothing. Not for Americans, anyway. For Illegal aliens, they will throw money to their lawyer friends to try to prevent you from being subjected to the laws of our country, and if you're a member of a violent gang, Democrats will lie down in front of a truck to insulate you from the consequences of your actions. 

Democrats will never admit this, naturally, but it is what they are doing. What they say is irrelevant – if their lips are moving, they are lying – what they do matters. And what they do is un-American. 

People like Jamie Raskin and Chris Van Hollen would happily step over a thousand bleeding wives and a million dead Americans to get a picture of them holding the hand of a gang member illegal alien in something that looks like an ad for Prison Grindr. It’s disgusting.

Have you noticed how not one Democrat has spoken publicly against this embrace of illegal aliens? Not one. Not even to say something as innocuous as “Maybe this isn’t the greatest strategic idea in the world”? 

They don’t care. Van Hollen wasted our tax money to fly to visit a domestic abuser in El Salvador and didn’t bother to ask him if he was a member of MS-13 or whether or not he hit his wife, as she swore in a police report. 

How disinterested in those things must you be to not even ask? The only conclusions that can be drawn are that he doesn’t care or he knows but doesn’t want confirmation. 

Some argue the wife is supporting her husband, so that likely means he didn’t really abuse her. Well, Nicole went back to OJ quite a few times, and abuse victims often find it difficult to leave abusers, especially when they have children together.

Right now, with him in prison in El Salvador, the wife is safer than she’s been in years. 

She’s also raking in a lot of money through left-wing fundraisers, as the “plight” of her tormenter is the latest cause for Democrats to throw money at. Sure, there’s that kid who stabbed that other kid in the heart, they’re also throwing money at, but some Democrats are a little hesitant to give to someone with a verified body count. A black eye or two on their wife is different, apparently. 

Why don’t they just tell the truth: that they want to keep every illegal alien here because they want to make them citizens eventually, but enjoy the cheap labor and wage-depressing side effects in the meantime? Telling the electorate that you hate them because they vote in a way that displeases you is not the key to electoral success, so they have to lie.

Even the most dedicated, generational Democrat voters would balk at checking the name of someone who publicly admits they don’t really care if you or someone you love is murdered by an illegal alien. Most people wouldn’t be happy if they found out the person they’re married to has another family…AND they love them more.

That’s what Democrats are doing to their base. They’d rather have the future possibility of voters than the current one because the current ones are slipping away. Democrats always play the long game, not the short game. They see the next move—the need to replace the voters whose destructive policies are causing them to lose—and are trying to cement new ones. 

Amnesty is their goal because they know it will lead to a loyal voting base, as dependence does. It’s gross, but not surprising. 

And they have to lie about it, just like they have to lie about everything. Democrats are evil, not stupid. They know what they’re doing; they just don’t want you to know what they’re doing. 

The truth does Democrats no favors, ever. The people who cheered solitary confinement for years for January 6th prisoners are demanding “due process” for people with no business being in this country. To hell with them. Vote them out, chase them out, make them choke on what they do by telling the world.

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

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Another Major Actor Breaks Hollywood Norms, Shows Support for Trump

Sarah Arnold reporting for Townhall 

Vince Vaughn became the latest Hollywood star to break with the liberal elite and show his support for President Donald Trump. The actor made headlines after attending a Good Friday prayer service with the president, a move that has drawn praise from conservatives. Vaughn’s decision to publicly stand with Trump only adds to the growing list of celebrities who are rejecting the left-wing narrative and embracing conservative values, signaling that the Hollywood left’s grip on the entertainment industry might be loosening. 

The White House shared a photo of Vince Vaughn and President Trump on its social media, captioning it “White House Crashers. " This is a playful nod to Vaughn’s role in the 2005 film Wedding Crashers, in which he and co-star Owen Wilson played two Washington, D.C., bachelors who crash weddings to meet women. 

Although Vaughn wasn’t listed on the president’s official schedule, he seemed to make a quick stop to visit Trump after attending the Good Friday prayer service at the United States Capitol. There, he also crossed paths with Rev. Patrick Mahoney, the director of the Christian Defense Coalition.

“I bumped into Vince Vaughn [sic] at our Good Friday service at the United States Capitol… He was here with his family. Such a friendly and warm person,” Mahoney said.

This isn’t the first time Vaughn has spoken out about his political views. In a 2013 interview with Politico Magazine, the actor identified as a conservative when asked about his political stance.

“I do, yeah,” Vaughn said at the time. “I’m very supportive of Ron Paul, but I’ve always been, you know, more conservative than not. I think that when you get older, you just get less trust in the government running anything. And that you start to realize when you really go back and look at the Constitution and the principles of liberty, the real purpose of government is to protect the individual’s right to sort of think and pursue what they have an interest in.” 

The actor spoke with Trump and First Lady Melania Trump at the 2020 College Football Playoff National Championship. 

Real Military Reform Begins Will Pete Hegseth be able to reverse our military’s decline?

Real Military Reform Begins Will Pete Hegseth be able to reverse our military’s decline?

Gary Anderson for American Spectator

Will Pete Hegseth be able to reverse our military’s decline? 

America’s military has been adrift for some time. President Donald Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, appears determined to set it back on the proper course. So far, he appears to be on track. He has largely deconstructed the corrosive DEI culture that has hindered both morale and recruiting. He is emphasizing lethality over bureaucracy and is moving to demand accountability for the debacle that was the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Perhaps most importantly, he is committed to rebuilding our defense industrial base, particularly in regard to shipbuilding, naval maintenance, and the production of sufficient ammunition to fight a prolonged major war. I have not seen such an uptick in morale among our uniformed service members since Caspar Weinberger became Ronald Reagan’s secretary of defense.

However, much remains to be done. There are four critical areas that must be addressed. Each of these was allowed to deteriorate during the Biden–Obama years. In his first term, Trump was unable to adequately address them due to incessant legal and social pressure from the Left. But he now appears to be ready to tackle these challenges through Hegseth.

Making the Navy and Marine Corps Great Again

The two services that have suffered the most from the Biden administration’s neglect are the Navy and Marines. The new secretary of the Navy designee has promised to go line by line over existing and future contracts to ensure that the waste and corruption of the past decade are eliminated, but the rot runs deeper than that. Until the military-industrial base is revitalized, shipbuilding and maintenance must be subject to innovative solutions, even if that means temporarily outsourcing them overseas.

First, the attack submarine fleet must be expanded to the point that it can simultaneously deter a war with China, maintain commitments to NATO, and ensure freedom of the seas in the Persian Gulf.

Additionally, there are not enough large-deck amphibious ships to provide a 24/7 Navy–Marine Corps presence in the world’s most likely trouble spots (the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, and the Indo-Pacific regions). The Marine Corps is equally responsible here, as it released the Navy from its commitment to maintain thirty-eight amphibious ships, reducing the number to thirty-one; this did not account for the chronic maintenance problems that now limit the Navy to twelve to thirteen operationally ready amphibious ships at any given time. A minimum of eighteen combat-ready amphibious ships are needed at all times — nine on station and nine working — to maintain the required 24/7 presence worldwide.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (Bill Wilson/The American Spectator)

The Marine Corps is a mess. The Biden administration allowed the last two Marine commandants to emasculate the Corps’ offensive warfighting capabilities in order to build a futile defensive maritime Maginot Line using nearly obsolete missiles that the other services already possess. This would all be based on islets and shoals in the South China Sea that no regional nation has granted us permission to use. To afford this travesty, the Marine Corps gave up tanks, heavy assault bridging capabilities, and wheeled artillery to the point that it could not meaningfully contribute to large-scale military operations.

The Marine Corps’ entire Force Design 2030 project, which aims to transform the branch “into a more agile, efficient, and technologically advanced force,” is based on questionable war games and shoddy analysis, much of which has been discredited by legitimate games conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies as well as the Marine Corps Times and the Wall Street Journal. Despite all this and the strong objections of virtually every former Marine Corps commandant, Generals David M. Berger and Eric M. Smith have repeatedly refused to revisit the flawed assumptions that underlie the concept. Unless Smith and the coterie of three-star generals who have enabled him are removed, the Marine Corps will degenerate from the world’s foremost maritime assault force into a bizarre combination of light infantry and coastal artillery.

Reforming the Goldwater–Nichols Act

The Goldwater–Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 has not aged well. Its original intent of improving joint warfighting capabilities has yielded unintended consequences. For instance, its requirement that any officer aspiring to flag and general officer rank (FOGO) complete a tour has led to a bloated system, with far more FOGOs and staffs, even as the number of troops in uniform has been reduced.

Military education has suffered as well. Our command and staff colleges should be the places where majors and their naval counterparts learn the real skills of high-level military tactics. Today, due to the military education reforms of Goldwater–Nichols, these schools are more concerned with granting second-rate political science master’s degrees. Additionally, our war colleges place greater emphasis on civil-military relations than on strategy and military history. 

Continuing Dominance of the Skies in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Since the Vietnam War, the United States has maintained uncontested dominance in airpower. However, that is now changing. While American aircraft and aviators outclassed our adversaries in Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom, advancements in unmanned aircraft and artificial intelligence are beginning to challenge that superiority. 

If we have learned anything from the Russo-Ukrainian War in the sky, it is that quantity has a quality of its own. In the immediate future, the side that can best integrate human decision-making with swarms of armed unmanned aerial systems and inexpensive “kamikaze” drones will control the air. This is a competition we cannot afford to lose. Currently, the Russians, Chinese, and even the Ukrainians are producing large quantities of relatively cheap, “good enough” drones — far outpacing our overly engineered and expensive systems. In World War II, large numbers of cheap, easily produced U.S. and Russian tanks overwhelmed the smaller numbers of technologically superior German Panzers. A similar dynamic threatens to play out in the sky today, but this time, we’re on the losing end. We must rethink the production of unmanned aerial systems and develop tactics to effectively take advantage of AI.

Making Our Pacific Strategy Viable Again

This is a political-military challenge. With the combination of their Belt and Road Initiative and coercive diplomacy, the Chinese are challenging us for control of the Indo-Pacific Region, and they are making significant inroads. They are constructing resort hotel complexes with adjoining airfields (some of which we built in World War II) in Micronesia and Melanesia that can quickly be converted to military purposes. In the strategically significant Solomons, the Chinese co-opted the corrupt and authoritarian government to serve their interests while the Biden administration slept.

The U.S. has slowly begun to recognize the issue, but our military and diplomatic influence in the region has been severely under-resourced. As previously mentioned, the naval presence in the region has been scaled back due to the shortage of Navy ships. This reduction has led to fewer goodwill civil-military projects that once helped sustain American dominance in the region.

It will take more than four years to repair the Biden administration’s neglect of the military, but Hegseth appears dedicated to stopping the downward spiral. If he succeeds, he will have done a great service to our nation.

Gary Anderson retired as the chief of staff of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab. He served as a special adviser to the deputy secretary of defense. He is an adjunct professor at George Washington University.