By John Semmens — Semi-News — A Satirical Look at Recent News

In a move likely to prove even more futile than the repeated GOP Congress’ attempts to repeal Obamacare while Obama was president, Senate Democrats have introduced legislation that would negate Trump’s executive order to toughen up enforcement against those in the country illegally.

The bill’s sponsors, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev), Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill) and Sen. Mazie Hironio (Hawaii), characterized the proposed law as a measure “to keep immigrant families intact.” Speaking for the trio, Sen. Cortez Masto complained that “the assumption that a deportation program focused on removing those with criminal records is something no one could object to ignores the role that these individuals play in supporting their families. To Trump and the racists who support him, a man who steals is a ‘bad hombre.’ To the family he would leave behind if he is deported he is ‘Daddy.’ His absence will have devastating financial and emotional impacts on his woman and her children.”

Sen. Durbin voiced his anger that “Trump’s action would impose a high cost on a country that can ill afford it. Mexico already has a higher crime rate than we do. For us to deport criminals into their country is, for lack of a better word, criminal. Compared to Mexico, the United States has a shortage of crime. Social justice argues for redistributing some of their surplus to America. We can more easily bear the burden.”

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly called the proposed legislation “contrary the our nation’s health and safety. It’s not that we don’t have sympathy for the poor Mexicans, but the President has made it clear that our first duty is to American citizens. The notion that we should spare criminals from being deported because their crimes are necessary to support their families or because we have a relative ‘shortage’ of crime is, to my way of thinking, insane. These Senators ought to have their heads examined.”

In related bad news for these Democrats, a poll conducted by Secure America Now found that Trump’s deportation of illegal immigrants is supported by 59% of Hispanic voters and 53% of voters who cast ballots for Hillary Clinton last November. Durbin dismissed these findings as “obviously rigged. I’m willing to bet that none of the two million non-citizens who are registered to vote were included in the poll.”

PolitiFact Debunks Trump’s Uranium Claim

At his press conference this week President Donald Trump asserted that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “gave 20% of our uranium to Russia.” The self-described fact checking website PolitiFact quickly pronounced Trump’s statement as “mostly false.”

“First of all, Secretary Clinton did not act alone,” PolitiFact spokesman Nicholas Pecker pointed out. “She had the full backing of President Obama. Second, the deal was for 20% of the United States’ uranium production capacity. That’s a totally different thing. Finally, the uranium wasn’t given to Russia. Former President Bill Clinton got a $500,000 speaking fee and the Clinton Foundation got more than $100 million in donations.”

“The only thing Trump got right was the word ‘uranium,’” Pecker added. “His repeated assaults on the truth constitute a serious betrayal of the trust voters placed in his hands. This, alone, in my opinion, makes a pretty strong case for impeachment. When we add the other particulars—his blatant denigration of the news media, his unconstitutional attempt to ban Muslim terrorists from entering the country, and his dangerous deviation from policies put in place by his predecessor—I think it’s only a matter of time before Congress will be forced to take him down. That is, if the CIA doesn’t assassinate him first.”

In related news, fact-checkers at the Washington Post awarded former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani “two Pinocchios” for correctly pointing out that 93% of Black murder victims were killed by Black assailants. “For Giuliani to just throw out this one fact without also mentioning that 84% of White victims had White assailants is unconscionable,” the Post wrote. “And the fact that a Black child is far more likely to be killed by a Black gangster than a White police officer doesn’t ease the pain of that gangster’s parents when he is shot by the police. In our judgment, Giuliani’s true, but insensitive, statement warrants ‘two Pinocchios.’”

CNN Chief Boasts Daily “Two-Minute Hate” of Trump Boosts Morale

CNN president Jeff Zucker admitted that “having the President of the United States impugn our integrity at every opportunity has battered the psyches of many of our network’s employees. We are the ones who determine the facts. We are the ones who impugn the integrity of those who don’t advance the progressive agenda. Trump’s rejection of our traditional role is a reversal that has hit us hard.”

“Our morale since that black day in November has been in the dumpster,” Zucker observed. “But we are turning it around. Thanks to a suggestion emailed to us by a viewer, we have instituted a daily ‘two-minute hate’ of Trump that has seemed to revive flagging spirits around the network. Wolf and Jake tell me it that it’s like a hit of crack that has helped restore their focus and given them the energy to persevere in our mission.”

“I don’t like to think of myself as someone who can hate another person,” CNN reporter Jake Tapper said. “It’s not a feeling I came close to experiencing in eight years of covering the Obama Administration. Not even the Republicans inspired such an intense animosity. They were powerless and cowed by the fear that a bad report from us could destroy their reputations. There was no need to hate them, but Trump, obviously, is different. The daily hate is energizing. My biggest regret is that we didn’t think of doing this before this monster was elected.”

In related news, veteran White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks April Ryan’s accusation that Trump adviser Omarosa Manigault intimidated her was quashed after Manigault revealed that “interactions with reporters are routinely recorded.” Ryan called the recording “an unfair tactic intended to abridge freedom of the press. It’s unconstitutional and freaking Nixonian. If this doesn’t persuade Congress to impeach the man I don’t know what will.”

US Economic Freedom Declined During Obama Presidency

The rank of the United States on the Heritage Foundation’s latest annual Index of Economic Freedom fell from 6^th to 17^th over the duration of the Obama Presidency. In 17^th place, the US is behind Lithuania, Luxembourg, Georgia, Taiwan, Chile, and the United Arab Emirates, among others.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX) said the decline “is embarrassing. We like to think of America as the land of the free, but when we see that we’ve dropped out of the top ten and are actually doing worse than some countries not normally considered havens for freedom, it’s clear that remedial action is required.”

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn) disagreed, “I don’t find it embarrassing in the least. For too long the United States has been mired in a surfeit of damaging economic freedom. This has enabled the US to hog resources and wealth that rightfully should be shared equally with all the people of the world. That we are on our way down from our previously lofty perch is something I find comforting. Ideally, we ought to be right in the middle with every other country. If we can reach an equilibrium where no one has more than he needs, the economic causes of strife and conflict will be eliminated. No one saw this more clearly than the Prophet Muhammed who gave us the prescription for world peace through submission to the will of Allah.”

In related news, David Duke, former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, endorsed Ellison for Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. “Keith Ellison, Sally Boynton Brown or Jehmu Greene would all be excellent choices—I really like Keith though, he knows the danger Jews represent and could be counted on to oppose their evil schemes against decent, God-fearing people.”

A Satirical Look at Recent News

John Semmens is a retired economist who has written a weekly political satire for The Arizona Conservative since 2005. He says working on his satires is one of the ways he tries to honor the liberties our Founding Fathers tried to protect.

Please do us a favor. If you use material created by The Arizona Conservative, give us credit and DO NOT change the context. Thank you.

By John Semmens — Semi-News — A Satirical Look at Recent News

This week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9^th Circuit upheld a lower court’s blockage of President Donald Trump’s Executive Order instituting temporary restraints on the entry of foreigners from seven countries currently embroiled in war and significant terrorist activity. Despite the existence of statutory authority enacted in 1952 expressly granting the president the power to issue such an Order, the Ninth Circuit judges ruled Trump’s actions void on the grounds that it violated the Constitution’s First Amendment clause barring the government from establishing a religion.

The Court’s decision honed in on the Executive Order’s language calling for barring “those who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred, including honor killings, other forms of violence against women, or the persecution of those who practice religions different from their own,” Judge Richard Clifton called it “constitutionally unacceptable. Inasmuch as the Muslim religion expressly authorizes honor killings, the subjugation of women, and the persecution of non-Muslims, the explicit inclusion in the Executive Order of these religious practices as grounds for barring entry to persons holding such beliefs forces us to negate it.”

Trump denounced the decision as “a terrible blow to the safety of this country and its citizens. The right not to be murdered or harmed by fanatics that spare no one from their depredations is a right that every citizen should expect his government to do its utmost to ensure. That this Court has gone outside the law to create fatuous objections on behalf of the interests of those with criminal intent is a terrible decision.”

Democrats saw the Court’s decision differently. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) hailed it as “a first victory in our battle to take back our government from this un-American usurper. Trump’s notion that he can make America an arbiter of what is decent and abuse his power by trying to impose western values on foreigners as a condition of their entry into this country has been thwarted.”

James Clapper, former director of national intelligence under the Obama Administration, praised the Court for “saving America from the wrath of Islamic jihadis. Telling these extremists that their values are wrong and that they won’t be allowed into this country because of their beliefs runs contrary to the policy put in place by President Obama. He wisely recognized that criticizing these beliefs and using them as a factor in determining who we do and don’t allow in would only aggravate their anger and make them more intent on killing us. Leaving the borders open avoids provoking them and keeps the country safer.”

Warren Condemns Trump’s Deplorable Xenophobia

Seeking to gain a leg up on other potential Democratic Party aspirants for the 2020 nomination, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass) excoriated the Trump Administration’s “deplorable xenophobia in placing the interests of American citizens ahead of the interests of humanity.”

“Hillary warned us of the transcendent evil that Trump poses to the progressive values President Obama strove to embed in our government’s policies,” Warren screeched in her Senate tirade against the confirmation of Sen. Jeff Sessions as the new US Attorney General. “By confirming Sessions the Senate has embeded diametrically opposed values. Putting Americans ahead of immigrants is, as the US Ninth Circuit Court has ruled, unconstitutionally denies them their human right to seek sustenance wherever they might find it.”

Warren took offense that one of Sessions’ comments urging American corporations to hire Americans did not derail his confirmation. “I am ashamed that my GOP colleagues have elevated a racist to be the nation’s top law enforcement officer,” she said. “My only consolation is that the Republican Party will pay dearly at the polls when voters rise up to oust these moral cretins from power in the next election.”

CNN Journalist Objects to “Fake News” Label

CNN’s Chris Cuomo is attempting to make a case that labeling his reports as “fake news” is the equivalent of using racial epithets against a person.

“Calling someone the ‘n-word’ is pure bigotry,” Cuomo declared. “It takes a trivial difference in appearance as an excuse for name calling. Likewise, using discrepancies in what we report as evidence of ‘fake news’ blows a minor issue into an insensitive and hurtful remark. Both expressions ought to be banned from polite discourse.”

Cuomo brushed aside contentions that the two scenarios were, in fact, significantly different. “Some would argue that denigrating a person’s skin color—something over which the individual has no control—isn’t the same as denigrating a journalist for something he says. Well, I’m here to tell you that what we say on the air is entirely out of our control. We’re handed a script and face intense pressure to adhere to the prescribed narrative. To hold us responsible for what we say is totally unfair.”

“I could be fired for stepping out of line,” Cuomo maintained. “How is this significantly different from a slave obeying his master to escape being whipped or a Mexican keeping a low profile to avoid being deported?”

Ironically, Cuomo’s comments came after he interviewed Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn), long-time promoter of the fake story that he had served in Vietnam. Cuomo rebutted Trump’s castigation of him on this matter, asserting that “I did ask the Senator about his Vietnam service, but he modestly declined to discuss this ancient history in favor of focusing on Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch’s criticism of Trump’s unwarranted remarks about the judge who slapped down his Muslim ban.”

In related news, Sen. Blumenthal insisted that Gorsuch “must go through extreme vetting to make sure the nation isn’t embarrassed by elevating a poseur to an exalted position he doesn’t deserve.”

Muslim IT Guys Spied on Democrats

Three Muslim brothers who managed office IT for a number of Democratic legislators were fired this week for unauthorized access and distribution of confidential information. Abid, Imran, and Jamal Awan had been hired at $160,000 annual salaries to provide IT services for dozens of Democrats including former Democratic National Committee Chairman Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz of Florida. You may recall, that Wasserman-Schultz’s purloined emails played a role in embarrassing Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign last year.

Despite one of the brothers having a criminal record, eight Democratic members of the House (Andre Carson, Luis Guiterez, Jim Himes, Terri Sewell, Jackie Speier, Mike Quigley, Eric Swalwell, and, Patrick Murphy) signed a letter requesting the brothers be given access to classified information. Some of this information was illicitly transmitted to an external server in violation of government security protocols.

In addition to their salaries, the brothers apparently supplemented their income by theft stemming from over-billing for computer equipment not delivered and services not performed. The trio’s high living also raised suspicions that classified information may have been traded for cash.

Rep. Carson (Indiana) argued that “the firing of these three men should close the book on this issue. We are the victims in this matter. It was our files that were invaded and surreptitiously distributed. It was our confidence that was betrayed. I think the loss of their lucrative jobs is an appropriate and sufficient punishment. There is no need to invest any more time and effort probing into a situation that is no longer relevant.”

In related news, Vincent Tolliver, a would-be contender for the currently vacant Chair of the Democratic National Committee, was disqualified by interim Chairwoman Donna Brazile. Tolliver’s offense: questioning whether rival contender Rep. Keith Ellison (Minn), who is Muslim, would be an appropriate leader. Specifically, Tolliver argued that Islamic doctrine justifying the execution of gays “seems to contradict our message of tolerance and inclusion.” Brazile justified her summary termination of Tolliver’s candidacy asserting that “attempting to impugn a fellow Democrat’s religious beliefs is intolerance that cannot be tolerated.”

Berkeley Student Paper Defends Violence to Suppress Freedom of Speech

In the wake of a riot causing $100,000 in property damage and preventing Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking on campus, the University of California at Berkeley’s student-run newspaper–The Daily Californian—published a series of five op eds against freedom of speech. The University which had gained a reputation as a bastion of free speech for its position in favor of speaking in opposition to the Vietnam War 40 years ago has morphed into an enemy of the concept of the discovery of truth through open debate by those with different opinions.

In one of the op eds, Nisa Dang contended that “free speech is a white man’s tool for oppressing the black race. Many of our students are uncomfortable or incapable of engaging in a war of words. Their interests are disparaged by systems that rule violence out-of-bounds as a valid mode of expression.” 

Illegal immigrant student Juan Prieto argued that “the riots actually increased the safety of the students by preventing the pernicious ideas of Yiannopoulos from inciting an even more violent reaction from those opposed to his views. And in the long-run, roughing up a few college Republicans now may deter them from trying to promote their anti-progressive views in the future.”

Neil Lawrence took pains to debunk university administration claims that the rioting was a “false flag” operation of right-wingers aimed at discrediting the school. “It was,” he asserted, “an authentic Black Lives Matter enterprise. Just because we wore masks to protect ourselves from prosecution doesn’t mean we should be robbed of the credit for this glorious and successful imposition of our will against a white man’s speech.”

Desmond Meagley used his op ed to bolster Lawrence’s view, insisting that “this was fundamentally of, by, and for the students of Berkeley and every other campus in the world. We claimed our right to control what we hear and to prevent the unwelcome attempt to insert alien concepts into the dialog. Progressive politics rule. We will not abide the invasion of nonconforming philosophies to pollute our environment.”

The four op eds praising the riot were “balanced” by one that rued the violence, but affirmed the position that “views like those of Yiannopoulos are illegitimate and cannot rightfully claim to be protected by the First Amendment. I’m glad that he was prevented from speaking. The rioting could have been averted if the Administration hadn’t granted him permission to come here. Future violence can be averted if they are more dutiful to their obligation to protect the students from threats originating from the presence of people like Yiannopoulos on campus.”

A Satirical Look at Recent News 

 

John Semmens is a retired economist who has written a weekly political satire for The Arizona Conservative since 2005. He says working on his satires is one of the ways he tries to honor the liberties our Founding Fathers tried to protect. 

 

Please do us a favor. If you use material created by The Arizona Conservative, give us credit and DO NOT change the context. Thank you.

 

 

 

By John Semmens — Semi-News — A Satirical Look at Recent News

While Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin expressed regret that “the anger of those opposed to allowing a hateful white nationalist may have been a little too exuberant, we must acknowledge their constitutional right to prevent the airing of unacceptable views on the University campus.”

Breitbart reporter Milo Yiannopoulos’ sold-out speech had to be canceled when 150 masked men went on a rampage blocking traffic, vandalizing the University, attacking police, and assaulting individuals who came to hear the speech.

President Trump’s post-riot suggestion that “the suppression of free speech at a heavily-subsidized public university raises questions about the continued federal role in contributing to these subsidies” sparked the Mayor’s anger. “Mr. Trump’s perspective on freedom of speech is ignorantly one-sided,” he said. “Sure, he is all for the promulgation of Yiannopoulos’ twisted ideas, but what of the rights of those who don’t want to hear them? Shouldn’t the majority of the students’ preference to silence his hateful messenger rule the day?”

“Perhaps the biggest irony of the whole event is that Yiannopoulos is himself gay,” Arreguin observed. “He is a member of a group that the protesters were trying to support by shutting down his speech. He may be feeling aggrieved in the short run, but will benefit in the long run if the Trump tyranny is disrupted by the patriotic actions of those in the streets fighting for social justice. That is why I gave police the order to ‘stand down’ and let events take their natural course. A decision that I feel was vindicated by the absence of any fatalities and only a minimal $100,000 in property damage.”

A similar stance toward rioting was exhibited in Pakistan where Judge Chaudhry Muhammad Azam dismissed charges against 115 Muslim men accused of a rampage that burned the homes of 150 Christian families. “Given the unanimous testimony of the 115 accused that they did not commit a crime, I have no other option but to drop the charges,” Azam declared. “Under our law, the testimony of one Muslim is worth four times the testimony of an unbeliever. Since there weren’t enough survivors among the alleged victims to produce the requisite minimum of 460 witnesses to rebut the 115 true believers the case cannot go forward.”

In related news, a speaker at a Black Lives Matter rally against the Trump Administration drew wild cheers from the crowd when she suggested “we need to start killing people. Smashing windows and burning stuff is a good beginning, but white people won’t take us serious if we don’t kill some of them.”

NY Guv Wants Abortion Protected in State Constitution

Following the nomination of federal appellate court judge Neil Gorsuch for the US Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia last February, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) announced a move to amend his state’s constitution to make a woman’s right to an abortion “safe from judicial meddling by a Supreme Court packed with Trump appointees.”

“The right of a woman to choose to terminate a pregnancy that was granted by the Court in their historic Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 must be saved from being callously snatched away after 40 years of successful operation,” Cuomo said. “The right to choose is too precious for us to squander. Protecting this right is a core value of our resistance to Trump’s tyranny. Embedding this right in our state’s constitution is the only sure way of immunizing our state from one of the atrocities this evil man would inflict upon an innocent population.”

Amending the New York State Constitution is no easy task. It could be achieved by calling a state constitutional convention, but that would expose other clauses of the constitution to possible amendment. A more narrowly focused amendment dealing solely with abortion could be accomplished if two successively elected legislatures passed an identical amendment bill that would then be referred to the voters. The earliest this could all be completed is 2019.

Not only might the time-consuming amendment process be too late to head off any US Supreme Court action on the issue, it night be futile. The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision overrode numerous state laws on the ground that the US Constitution’s right to privacy took precedence over any state’s laws. A Court decision reversing Roe v. Wade could find ample justification within the US Constitution to override state laws or constitutions. For example, the victims of the abortion procedure are subjected to cruel punishment (death) without being found guilty of a crime. This would appear to violate both the Fifth and Eighth Amendments.

The complaint by Kim Atkins, board chair of Planned Parenthood Empire State Acts, “that such an action by the Supreme Court would violate states’ rights” bears an ironic similarity to arguments made by Sen. John Calhoun (D-SC) on behalf of the South’s “peculiar institution” of slavery in 1838 and Sen. William Fulbright (D-Ark) on behalf of segregation in 1964.

In related news, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) was apoplectic over the nomination of Judge Gorsuch for the Supreme Court calling him “a maniacal advocate for placing the rights of the unborn over those of women. Fetuses aren’t people until they’re born. Yet, this judge has a record of putting concerns for the rights of these creatures above those of the women forced to endure their invasion of her body. For the sake of humanity the Senate must not confirm such a monstrous person for our highest judicial tribunal.”

Study Shows Islam a Major Motivation for Terrorists

A new study—Talking to Foreign Fighters: Insights into the Motivations for Hijrah to Syria and Iraq by University of Waterloo sociologist Lorne L. Dawson, and George Washington University Program on Extremism Fellow Amaranth Amarasingam—found that religion played the biggest role in spurring Muslims to join the jihad against unbelievers.

“In the liberal way of thinking religion can’t logically be a significant motivating factor for terrorist violence,” Dr. Dawson observed. “The instinct is to look for socio-economic reasons to explain behavior that makes no sense to secularists. But our findings rebut this premise. The individuals who have actually left western societies to join ISIS or al-Qaeda were generally from middle and upper socio-economic strata. The motives they cited for themselves were predominately religious in nature. In their view, proper observance required them to fight for Islam.”

A teary-eyed Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) called the findings “unhelpful in our struggle against the Trump Administration. A bunch of deranged Muslims professing religious inspiration as their incentive for attacking us contradicts the meme of Islam as a religion of peace and feeds right into Trump’s plan to erect barriers to Muslim entry to America. This study is out of step with all the other studies that have skirted the religious issue to focus on other factors behind the reasons for terrorism. Hopefully, it won’t get much attention in the media.”

DOE Nominee Attacked for Supporting Academic Freedom

Betsy DeVos, Trump’s nominee to head the US Depart6ment of Education, was assailed in Senate committee hearings for her past association with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). FIRE’s positions in opposition to school suppression of freedom of speech and in support of transparent due process procedures for school disciplinary actions drew harsh opposition from Sen. Bob Casey (D-Penn).

“FIRE has intruded on universities trying to police their own campuses to ferret out dangerous ideas and non-conforming attitudes,” the Senator complained. “School administrators endeavoring to shield not-yet-mature young minds from confusing and confounding influences are being harassed by FIRE’s attempt to inject First Amendment standards that school authorities have decided are inappropriate in the academic environment. Ms. DeVos needs to disassociate herself from this radical organization and join the mainstream if she wants us to entrust her with this powerful position of influence.”

Casey’s communications director, John Rizzo called FIRE’s push for due process “a step backward. Their insistence that a person accused of sexual improprieties by another student is somehow entitled to the same sort of Fifth Amendment protections afforded to the accused outside the cloistered confines of the academic community is frightening. It is the Senator’s position that requiring the accused to be apprised of the specific allegations against him and to have the right to confront his accuser or the witnesses against him would have a chilling effect on the willingness of victims to come forward. Allowing school officials to quietly expel or otherwise punish the accused enables important institutional objectives to be achieved with minimal fuss.”

Personal Income Growth in Obama Years Weakest in History

The year-to-year rate of growth in personal income in the United States was lower during President Obama’s recently completed two terms than at any other period recorded in this country’s history. In the last year of the Bush Administration the growth rate was 4.7%. In the last year of the Obama Administration the rate fell to 3.4%. This contrasted especially unfavorably to the average 9.5% annual increases during the Reagan years.

Ranking member of the House Energy & Commerce Committee Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) made an effort to defend the Obama record by pointing out that “when Reagan took office the growth rate was 10.8% and fell to 8.5% by his last year in office. This was a 2.3% drop. When Obama took office the rate was 4.7% and only fell to 3.4% by his last year. So, the decline in annual income growth of 1.3% during the Obama years was smaller than the 2.3% decline during the Reagan years.”

Of course, the actual level of income over the eight Reagan years rose by more than 100%. The actual level of income over the Obama years rose by a more modest 37%. Perhaps the divergent economic policies of low tax rates and less regulation of Reagan’s Administration compared to the higher tax rates and more regulation of the Obama Administration played a role.

A Satirical Look at Recent News 

John Semmens is a retired economist who has written a weekly political satire for The Arizona Conservative since 2005. He says working on his satires is one of the ways he tries to honor the liberties our Founding Fathers tried to protect. 

Please do us a favor. If you use material created by The Arizona Conservative, give us credit and DO NOT change the context. Thank you.

 

By John Semmens — Semi-News — A Satirical Look at Recent News

While Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin expressed regret that “the anger of those opposed to allowing a hateful white nationalist may have been a little too exuberant, we must acknowledge their constitutional right to prevent the airing of unacceptable views on the University campus.”

Breitbart reporter Milo Yiannopoulos’ sold-out speech had to be canceled when 150 masked men went on a rampage blocking traffic, vandalizing the University, attacking police, and assaulting individuals who came to hear the speech.

President Trump’s post-riot suggestion that “the suppression of free speech at a heavily-subsidized public university raises questions about the continued federal role in contributing to these subsidies” sparked the Mayor’s anger. “Mr. Trump’s perspective on freedom of speech is ignorantly one-sided,” he said. “Sure, he is all for the promulgation of Yiannopoulos’ twisted ideas, but what of the rights of those who don’t want to hear them? Shouldn’t the majority of the students’ preference to silence his hateful messenger rule the day?”

“Perhaps the biggest irony of the whole event is that Yiannopoulos is himself gay,” Arreguin observed. “He is a member of a group that the protesters were trying to support by shutting down his speech. He may be feeling aggrieved in the short run, but will benefit in the long run if the Trump tyranny is disrupted by the patriotic actions of those in the streets fighting for social justice. That is why I gave police the order to ‘stand down’ and let events take their natural course. A decision that I feel was vindicated by the absence of any fatalities and only a minimal $100,000 in property damage.”

A similar stance toward rioting was exhibited in Pakistan where Judge Chaudhry Muhammad Azam dismissed charges against 115 Muslim men accused of a rampage that burned the homes of 150 Christian families. “Given the unanimous testimony of the 115 accused that they did not commit a crime, I have no other option but to drop the charges,” Azam declared. “Under our law, the testimony of one Muslim is worth four times the testimony of an unbeliever. Since there weren’t enough survivors among the alleged victims to produce the requisite minimum of 460 witnesses to rebut the 115 true believers the case cannot go forward.”

In related news, a speaker at a Black Lives Matter rally against the Trump Administration drew wild cheers from the crowd when she suggested “we need to start killing people. Smashing windows and burning stuff is a good beginning, but white people won’t take us serious if we don’t kill some of them.”

NY Guv Wants Abortion Protected in State Constitution

Following the nomination of federal appellate court judge Neil Gorsuch for the US Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia last February, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) announced a move to amend his state’s constitution to make a woman’s right to an abortion “safe from judicial meddling by a Supreme Court packed with Trump appointees.”

“The right of a woman to choose to terminate a pregnancy that was granted by the Court in their historic Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 must be saved from being callously snatched away after 40 years of successful operation,” Cuomo said. “The right to choose is too precious for us to squander. Protecting this right is a core value of our resistance to Trump’s tyranny. Embedding this right in our state’s constitution is the only sure way of immunizing our state from one of the atrocities this evil man would inflict upon an innocent population.”

Amending the New York State Constitution is no easy task. It could be achieved by calling a state constitutional convention, but that would expose other clauses of the constitution to possible amendment. A more narrowly focused amendment dealing solely with abortion could be accomplished if two successively elected legislatures passed an identical amendment bill that would then be referred to the voters. The earliest this could all be completed is 2019.

Not only might the time-consuming amendment process be too late to head off any US Supreme Court action on the issue, it night be futile. The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision overrode numerous state laws on the ground that the US Constitution’s right to privacy took precedence over any state’s laws. A Court decision reversing Roe v. Wade could find ample justification within the US Constitution to override state laws or constitutions. For example, the victims of the abortion procedure are subjected to cruel punishment (death) without being found guilty of a crime. This would appear to violate both the Fifth and Eighth Amendments.

The complaint by Kim Atkins, board chair of Planned Parenthood Empire State Acts, “that such an action by the Supreme Court would violate states’ rights” bears an ironic similarity to arguments made by Sen. John Calhoun (D-SC) on behalf of the South’s “peculiar institution” of slavery in 1838 and Sen. William Fulbright (D-Ark) on behalf of segregation in 1964.

In related news, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) was apoplectic over the nomination of Judge Gorsuch for the Supreme Court calling him “a maniacal advocate for placing the rights of the unborn over those of women. Fetuses aren’t people until they’re born. Yet, this judge has a record of putting concerns for the rights of these creatures above those of the women forced to endure their invasion of her body. For the sake of humanity the Senate must not confirm such a monstrous person for our highest judicial tribunal.”

Study Shows Islam a Major Motivation for Terrorists

A new study—Talking to Foreign Fighters: Insights into the Motivations for Hijrah to Syria and Iraq by University of Waterloo sociologist Lorne L. Dawson, and George Washington University Program on Extremism Fellow Amaranth Amarasingam—found that religion played the biggest role in spurring Muslims to join the jihad against unbelievers.

“In the liberal way of thinking religion can’t logically be a significant motivating factor for terrorist violence,” Dr. Dawson observed. “The instinct is to look for socio-economic reasons to explain behavior that makes no sense to secularists. But our findings rebut this premise. The individuals who have actually left western societies to join ISIS or al-Qaeda were generally from middle and upper socio-economic strata. The motives they cited for themselves were predominately religious in nature. In their view, proper observance required them to fight for Islam.”

A teary-eyed Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) called the findings “unhelpful in our struggle against the Trump Administration. A bunch of deranged Muslims professing religious inspiration as their incentive for attacking us contradicts the meme of Islam as a religion of peace and feeds right into Trump’s plan to erect barriers to Muslim entry to America. This study is out of step with all the other studies that have skirted the religious issue to focus on other factors behind the reasons for terrorism. Hopefully, it won’t get much attention in the media.”

DOE Nominee Attacked for Supporting Academic Freedom

Betsy DeVos, Trump’s nominee to head the US Depart6ment of Education, was assailed in Senate committee hearings for her past association with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). FIRE’s positions in opposition to school suppression of freedom of speech and in support of transparent due process procedures for school disciplinary actions drew harsh opposition from Sen. Bob Casey (D-Penn).

“FIRE has intruded on universities trying to police their own campuses to ferret out dangerous ideas and non-conforming attitudes,” the Senator complained. “School administrators endeavoring to shield not-yet-mature young minds from confusing and confounding influences are being harassed by FIRE’s attempt to inject First Amendment standards that school authorities have decided are inappropriate in the academic environment. Ms. DeVos needs to disassociate herself from this radical organization and join the mainstream if she wants us to entrust her with this powerful position of influence.”

Casey’s communications director, John Rizzo called FIRE’s push for due process “a step backward. Their insistence that a person accused of sexual improprieties by another student is somehow entitled to the same sort of Fifth Amendment protections afforded to the accused outside the cloistered confines of the academic community is frightening. It is the Senator’s position that requiring the accused to be apprised of the specific allegations against him and to have the right to confront his accuser or the witnesses against him would have a chilling effect on the willingness of victims to come forward. Allowing school officials to quietly expel or otherwise punish the accused enables important institutional objectives to be achieved with minimal fuss.”

Personal Income Growth in Obama Years Weakest in History

The year-to-year rate of growth in personal income in the United States was lower during President Obama’s recently completed two terms than at any other period recorded in this country’s history. In the last year of the Bush Administration the growth rate was 4.7%. In the last year of the Obama Administration the rate fell to 3.4%. This contrasted especially unfavorably to the average 9.5% annual increases during the Reagan years.

Ranking member of the House Energy & Commerce Committee Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) made an effort to defend the Obama record by pointing out that “when Reagan took office the growth rate was 10.8% and fell to 8.5% by his last year in office. This was a 2.3% drop. When Obama took office the rate was 4.7% and only fell to 3.4% by his last year. So, the decline in annual income growth of 1.3% during the Obama years was smaller than the 2.3% decline during the Reagan years.”

Of course, the actual level of income over the eight Reagan years rose by more than 100%. The actual level of income over the Obama years rose by a more modest 37%. Perhaps the divergent economic policies of low tax rates and less regulation of Reagan’s Administration compared to the higher tax rates and more regulation of the Obama Administration played a role.

A Satirical Look at Recent News 

John Semmens is a retired economist who has written a weekly political satire for The Arizona Conservative since 2005. He says working on his satires is one of the ways he tries to honor the liberties our Founding Fathers tried to protect. 

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