Columnist.
Political theater. That's the only way to describe [yesterday's] nomination by President Obama of D.C. Circuit Court's Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court. Senate Republicans have been clear both publicly and privately from day one that the American people deserved a voice in the lifetime appointment of the next Supreme Court justice. "Everybody knows any nominee submitted in the middle of this presidential campaign isn't getting confirmed," Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) reiterated. That's how the Democrats governed in the majority, and it's how the Republicans will continue to.
Unanimous votes are about as rare as balanced budgets in Washington, so when even House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) crosses the aisle to side with conservatives, the White House should sit up and take notice. [Monday], Pelosi and DNC Chair and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) were just two of the 164 Democrats who set aside their political differences and voted 393-0 to call the massacre of Middle East Christians "genocide."
President Obama keeps talking about "rising above ideology and partisanship." Maybe it's time he took his own advice. More than 200 Democrats and Republicans are cosponsoring a House resolution addressing an issue they shouldn't have to: the genocide in the Middle East. If the Obama administration were as "appalled," "horrified," and "concerned" about the annihilation of Christians as the White House says it is, U.S. Congressman Jeff Fortenberry (R-Nebr.) wouldn't have to take the unusual step of addressing the crisis before the president.
As the March 17 deadline mandated by Congress for the Obama State Department to determine whether a genocide has taken place under ISIS in the Middle East approaches, a new report by the Knights of Columbus and In Defense of Christians documents the how, why, what, when, and where of the genocide that is, in fact, occurring. The report was reportedly requested by senior State Department officials themselves, who asked for help in making the case that a genocide against Christians was occurring.
If you thought your doctor bills were getting bigger, you should see the federal government's! According to a troubling new report, Uncle Sam is deep in debt to the country's doctors and hospitals, thanks to a collapsed co-op system built into the president's health care law. "The co-ops were supposed to be the happy face of health care," the Washington Times explained, "user-friendly, non-corporate plans offered as a part of the Obamacare's exchanges, designed to convince consumers skeptical of major insurance companies that there was a real alternative for them in President Obama's signature health care law." When Democrats scraped their plans for a public option in Obamacare, these co-ops were the compromise between government-run health care and a single-payer system.
If there's anyone secretly cheering for Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Governor John Kasich (R-Ohio) to stay in the race, it is probably Donald Trump. While I certainly appreciate persistence and determination, there's no question that this morning's headlines would have been dramatically different had Rubio and Kasich exited the race. By all accounts, the two men at the bottom of the GOP ticket are what's keeping the billionaire afloat, splitting the ballots just enough to let Trump squeak by his biggest rival: Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
The Democrats' platform on abortion is sure easy to sum up: not safe, not rare — and always legal! If you tuned in to the Fox News [Monday] night for the Bernie Sanders-Hillary Clinton debate (and based on the ratings, you probably didn't), there couldn't have been a starker contrast with the GOP candidates, who are competing to make life a bigger priority in their campaigns. And based on the political landscape, it's no wonder. Apparently, the last seven years of President Obama's extreme policies have resulted in fundamental change — of people's minds!
If you thought predicting the weather was hard, try predicting the primaries! If anyone had a tougher Saturday than Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), it was probably political pollsters. Obviously, last week's GOP debate was a game-changer, and few knew how big of one until this weekend. After showing double-digit leads for Donald Trump in almost all of the four states up for grabs on Saturday, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) blew past projections and bested the front-runner in two (and possibly, three) states. When people say, "don't believe everything you read," it must apply double to pre-primary surveys!
For the nearly 17 million viewers tuning into [Thursday] night's GOP debate, being entertained wasn't a problem. Unfortunately, a good portion of the debate looked like a fight in the boys' locker room — not a conversation about America's future — as Donald Trump and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) went back and forth with jabs about their respective stature. It was a night to forget for Trump, who took a serious bruising for his endless contradictions on immigration, the war in Afghanistan, common core, Syrian refugees, and Obamacare.
After Super Tuesday, it was defensive Wednesday for abortion groups like Planned Parenthood. On one side of the street, the Supreme Court was debating common sense clinic regulations — and on the other, a panel of House members was getting to the bottom of Planned Parenthood's black market of baby body parts. Both events hold tremendous sway in the future of the abortion business, which has been under heavy scrutiny since last year when undercover videos caught the industry's own joking about the dark world of baby organ harvesting. "There is something going on," said Select Investigative Panel Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), "something that deserves investigating and that demands our best moral and ethical thinking."
Super Tuesday led to one thing: super turnout. While Democrats struggle to generate any real enthusiasm, the GOP is blowing past primary records in one state after another. In Virginia alone, Republicans cast more than one million votes — crushing the mark set in 2000 by more than 50 percent. The story was much the same in Tennessee, Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, and more. Experts say the GOP's intensity is at historic levels, and after seven years of Obama's lawlessness, they show no signs of letting up.
When voters headed to the polls Tuesday, they weren't just deciding Americans' fate — but the fate of hundreds of thousands of Christians around the world. As hostile as this administration has been to believers in the U.S., its overseas legacy is worse. Abandoned, displaced, and penniless, the Christians lucky enough to survive ISIS's rampage have fled to other countries, living in refugee camps where there is just as much uncertainty. Even there, jihadists disguised as refugees are "killing inside the camps, and they're buying and selling ladies and even girls," aid workers are reporting.
"This is not San Francisco," one man exclaimed. "This is Brevard County!" And thanks to hundreds of vocal parents and pastors in Florida, it'll stay that way. After a five-hour meeting at the Brevard County School District, the community broke into cheers and "amens" after winning a huge victory over political correctness. While the media hasn't exactly been eager to cover the story, moms and dads of Brevard County packed out last Tuesday's school board meeting to fight a proposal that would have added "gender identity" and "sexual orientation" to the district's anti-discrimination and "equal employment" policies.
The GOP debate stage was remarkably less crowded at the 10th than it was at the first — but the drama certainly didn't suffer for it. Less than a week before Super Tuesday — when voters in a dozen states will likely vote a couple more candidates off the island — the five men still standing did their best to make a lasting impression on voters. And they made an impression all right — as bitter antagonists so busy tearing each other down that they failed to focus on America's future.
If you like the President Obama's position on religious liberty, then Governor John Kasich (Ohio) is the candidate for you. At [Wednesday's] University of Virginia event, Kasich's remarks on the clash between sexual liberalism and personal freedom were so extreme that they could've been mistaken for the current administration's. In one of the more stunning moments of the Buckeye's campaign, Kasich took direct aim at people like Aaron and Melissa Klein, who were ordered to surrender their First Amendment rights as a "price of doing business."
There have been times over the last year and a half where voters probably wondered what they'd gotten out of a Republican Senate. This week, they know the answer: reassurance that GOP leaders won't allow a lame-duck president to stack the Court with liberal jurists. After taking some well-deserved flak for not using his majority more, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) may have just chosen the most important moment to do so.
The Supreme Court of the United States can be a somber place — but never more so than [Monday] when the justices reconvened for the first time without the late Antonin Scalia. Absent its largest personality, the Court struggled to adjust to two weeks of oral arguments without its longest-serving member. Black drapery still hangs over Scalia's empty chair, which is now the focal point — not just of the room — but of a fierce battle over the nomination process.
If there's one thing President Obama has done for evangelicals, it's motivate them. Frustrated by almost eight years of attacks on their faith and their values, America's Christians are fired up to make a difference in the 2016 election. And with record turnout numbers, they are. In South Carolina, conservative voting was up 12 points — shattering the marks set in 2012. In the southern states where the race rolls next, schools in Virginia and elsewhere are so concerned about the number of primary voters that they're canceling classes — a move usually reserved for the general election.
The fireworks over Justice Antonin Scalia's replacement have already started, but for the hundreds of people lined up at the Supreme Court, [Friday] was about one thing: honoring a man who can never be replaced. Under a flag-draped casket, a veteran of a different war now lays — a hero in the struggle to protect the world's longest-surviving Constitution, a fight to which Scalia gave 30 brave years. Through unimaginable changes to our culture, this legal warrior stood his ground, sometimes alone, for the charter he swore to defend.
The courts may have been a sleepy issue this time last week, but it's got the country's attention now. Last week, as I spoke to activists in South Carolina about the importance of the judicial branch in this presidential election, there was positive — but clearly intellectual — response. Now, in the six days since the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Americans are getting a front row seat to what may be the most intense congressional showdown in a generation: his replacement.
