ActRight

All are career foreign service officers who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

It is time for our society to acknowledge a sad truth: America is currently fighting its second Civil War.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright claimed Wednesday she would register herself a Muslim as an act of defiance against President Donald Trump's immigration plans. "I was raised Catholic,

Apparently after Shia LaBeouf just assaulted a Trump supporter he approaches the camera chanting "He will not divide us" and "all you need to do is act nice"...

Liberals and faux conservatives share the delusion that commerce “destroys” jobs.

In 2012 she insisted her home was "off-the-record" for visiting reporters, and now the Free Beacon reveals she didn't disclose a line of credit.

‘Good morning!” Each time we speak by phone, I hear this slightly amused and amusing lyrical greeting in Arthur’s distinctive, Jewish-Brooklyn accent. I have for 40 years, no less. So has everyone else who has ever dealt with Arthur Jay Finkelstein, simply the greatest and most controversial, the most ethical and most successful political consultant and pollster in the history of American politics. Those who matter in politics are familiar with Arthur, but no one beyond that; which is the way Arthur likes it. He’s never been the face of a wristwatch, but the gears would not run without him. While other consultants run to the spotlight, Arthur has always run away from it. “If you haven’t heard of him before, it’s because he made sure you didn’t,” he was once described in a profile in The Huffington Post. It continued: As CNN reported in 1996: “He is the stuff of Hollywood: A man who can topple even the most powerful foes, yet so secretive that few have ever seen him.” Finkelstein has been compared to criminal mastermind Kaiser Sose in The Usual Suspects, who lay so low that some doubted he really existed. CNN captioned its photo, “Only known photo of Arthur Finkelstein.” This after years in big-time politics. No other political consultant can make such a claim. Long before anyone else in the modern age, Arthur taught Republicans how to win. At one point in the early 1980s, maybe half of the GOP senators were Finkelstein clients and even more in the House. He was a modern Prometheus, bringing fire to Republicankind. He greets all alike — and they certainly are many — from the lowliest campaign aide to prime ministers and presidents. As always, Arthur is supremely confident, and yet often shy and self-effacing. Truth be told, he is also a soft touch. Once, when a losing campaign reneged on its pledge to pay for an airline ticket, one of Arthur’s “kids” called him, desperately broke. Arthur paid for the ticket. Such stories are legion. As I write this, I still can’t believe Arthur Finkelstein is ailing. Badly. It can’t be. Arthur has always been Arthur: a fun and principled conservative consultant to hundreds of campaigns, but he was much, much more than that. He quite literally changed our world. Arthur made a difference. He’s struggling through chemotherapy now, and as with everything in life, there is more than a particle of risk. Still, this is a tribute to our friend Arthur, not a eulogy. Not yet anyway. Early in our friendship, I asked him whether it was “Finkelsteen” or “Finkelstine” (with a long i), and Arthur characteristically replied, “If I was a poor Jew, it would be Finkelsteen, but since I am a rich Jew, it’s Finkelstine.” He’d plucked me out of a NCPAC (National Conservative Political Action Committee) campaign school in 1977, and we’ve been friends and he’s been my mentor ever since. He abhors being called Art, and those who don’t know him, when they make that mistake, will be met with that sardonic grin on his face. In the maturation of his libertarian philosophy, he had the best educator in the world while at Columbia, Ayn Rand, with whom he sometimes shared a college radio show. After graduating, he later cut his teeth in polling, working for the legendary Bud Lewis at NBC and later still for the famed Richard M. Scammon, who was the only pollster to predict the election of Harry Truman in 1948. Dick Scammon later served as director of the U.S. Census. What an early education: Rand, Lewis, and Scammon. Arthur later fell in with a group of New York City intellectual libertarians led by Rand and including Alan Greenspan, scion of New York’s café society. Arthur also worked on the 1972 Nixon reelection and afterward quipped that he was the highest-ranking member of the campaign not to be indicted. Arthur never puts on airs, is always found grinning, sometimes giggling, ideas constantly flowing. I have never heard him laugh out loud, but neither have I ever seen him lose his temper. I never heard him badmouth anyone, but you know who he likes and who he respects and who he does not, often dismissing them with a simple roll of his eyes. He loves the New York Yankees, steak and onion rings, his family including Donald, his campaign “kids,” Las Vegas, horse-betting, and winning campaigns, not necessarily in that order. Reagan Library director John Heubusch, himself once one of Arthur’s “kids,” praised his ability to read polls, spot trends, and “predict to a tenth of a point what the outcome of the election will be. . . . If he was only so good at reading race forms at Belmont.” But as with so many others, there was also personal warmth. Heubusch calls Arthur “a real humanitarian. A mentor par excellence.” Many others, including Arthur kids John and Jim McLaughlin, say the same or similar. Long before others went with the no-tie look, Arthur was always garbed in a frayed blue blazer and an untied tie dangled around his neck. You knew he was making sport of the establishment. Arthur is the anti–Mike Murphy, the anti–Republican establishment consultant. Long before others went with the no-tie look, Arthur was always garbed in chinos, a frayed blue blazer, a blue button-down shirt, and an untied tie, which had seen better days, dangled around his neck. You knew he was making sport of the establishment with his grunge, un-establishment look. Often, he sported a two-day growth — again, long before it became fashionable. Talk to a reporter or appear on cable television? Perish the thought! Arthur would sell his soul before going on Fox News or MSNBC, where most GOP consultants are found today. Arthur would rather work in the trenches and win a campaign than pose as a celebrity consultant, going on cable television and talking about winning campaigns. Prior to Karl Rove’s whiteboard Arthur was often seen taking a pencil from behind his ear to scratch out political theories, ad concepts, speech concepts, and other ideas on a yellow legal tablet. Long before people were talking about three-legged stools and other such tomfoolery, Arthur had developed the more thoughtful Six-Party Theory. This Six-Party Theory originated in the 1970s as a means to explain how Republicans could attract Democrats through conservative ideology and win a majority. Conservative Democrats were the key. Conservatives outnumbered liberals roughly two to one. The six parties broke down as: Moderate/Liberal Republicans, Conservative Republicans, Conservative Democratic Theocrats (mostly Southern and blue-collar), African-Americans/Hispanics, White Liberal Democratic McGovernites, and Moderate Democrats. When he explained it, it made perfect sense. His ability to condense a difficult theory into layman’s words was but one of the ways that he showed his genius. The grand old man of North Carolina politics, Tom Ellis, once quipped, “Just knock on his head and he’ll give you a great idea.” Arthur remains the standard by which all political consultants are measured or should be measured. For him, it was always about the cause of freedom, of personal dignity and privacy. He is gay, yet no one ever cared. He is married to Donald and no one cared. It was almost never about him. He was simply too interested in other things. He was a throwback, deeming winning and substance more important than style. He thought the candidate, not the consultant, should be the star. Sometimes he would look at GOP “strategists” on television, shake his head, and muse over what campaigns they had ever worked on. In this era of political dirty tricks, Arthur remains appalled at the thought that anyone would try to win illegitimately. For all his worldliness, he remains almost naïve and childlike about such things. Dirty tricks? I never knew a man more incapable of doing a dishonest or dishonorable thing. Dirty tricks? Arthur never understood that world, a world too familiar to too many GOP operatives. Title and access to power never interested him. In 1985, Lee Atwater tried to coax Finkelstein into a meeting with Vice President George H. W. Bush, hoping to enticing the plebeian New Yorker to support the country-club patrician. Arthur, afraid he might like Bush, declined the meeting. Arthur later tried to entice Jeane Kirkpatrick into the race, and few realize how close the U.N. ambassador came to running for president in 1988. She finally decided against it, although polling showed she could beat Bush in Iowa. But “she did what any woman would do,” Kirkpatrick quipped on a phone call that he later related to John McLaughlin. “Got her hair done and decided not to run.” During the Reagan presidency, Ed Meese, Jim Baker, and Mike Deaver each had his own favorite GOP pollster. For Ed, it was Dick Wirthlin; for Jim, Bob Teeter. For Mike, it was Arthur, but Mike never made a big move without Nancy Reagan’s approval. This meant that Mrs. Reagan liked Arthur too. Arthur knew he was good and he suffered no fools, especially with his less accomplished but more populous brethren, because he literally changed the world. Without Arthur Finkelstein, Ronald Reagan might never have become president of the United States. Can one man make a difference? You bet, and one need only look at the record for the historical proof. Without Arthur Finkelstein, Ronald Reagan might never have become president of the United States. In 1976, the Gipper challenged incumbent Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination but unexpectedly lost the first five primaries. Reeling, Reagan was heavily in debt. Everybody in the GOP establishment was calling on him to throw in the towel, except a small group of hardy conservatives, including Finkelstein. They made their last stand in North Carolina. Senator Jesse Helms and his aide Tom Ellis brought in Arthur to help on the desperate Reagan campaign there. They’d seen Finkelstein work miracles before, having steered Helms to a win in the Tar Heel State in 1972, at a time when Republicans in North Carolina were atypical. Arthur had burst onto the political scene in 1970, guiding Jim Buckley to an astonishing win in the New York Senate race, with Buckley running only on the Conservative line, beating two better-known candidates. Finkelstein scripted the Reagan effort, helped unearth the Panama Canal treaties as a sleeper issue, wrote the TV and radio spots, and had Helms’s young aide Carter Wrenn go out to county courthouses and — something unheard of in national politics at the time — cobble together a mailing list of 110,000 Republican primary voters in the state. Reagan, in one of the biggest upsets in American politics, won the North Carolina primary, re-energizing his campaign for the second half of the contest before the GOP convention in Kansas City. Reagan lost to Ford by the narrowest of delegate margins, 1,187 to 1,070. Ford had all the power of incumbency on his side, while Reagan had only himself and a handful of loyal conservatives such as Finkelstein. Though Reagan lost in Kansas City, he went on to win the hearts and minds of Republicans nationwide, winning the 1980 nomination and then beating Jimmy Carter in a historic landslide that changed the world. Without that win in North Carolina in 1976, none of that future Reagan history would have happened. By the way, Arthur later that year did the same in Texas, where Reagan trounced Ford, winning all 96 delegates. Finkelstein changed our world. About using D’Amato’s mother in a commercial, Finkelstein quipped to John McLaughlin, ‘We had to prove Alfonse had a mother.’ Arthur did all of Helms’s campaigns and created the permanent campaign before the phrase was coined, using Helms’s Congressional Club to boost the senator and bury his opponents. But he was never just an order-taker. He argued vociferously that Helms should stop his opposition to a federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. After one tussle, Arthur emerged and said to John McLaughlin, “Won’t budge. Thinks King was a Communist” — and then, in a burst of dark humor, told him, “You’ve really got to be an extremist and not want a day off.” In 1984, Helms was down by 30 points in the polls, but Arthur brought him back to win, defying the predictions of all. Arthur routinely won unwinnable races. In 1978, in New Hampshire, Arthur won the Senate race with a candidate who’d lived in the state less than four years. In 1980, one of his many victories included that of the contentious Al D’Amato in the Senate race in New York. About using D’Amato’s mother in a commercial, Finkelstein quipped to McLaughlin, “We had to prove Alfonse had a mother.” Still, there was a mutual fondness and respect. In 1996, Arthur handled the campaign of Bibi Netanyahu, the current prime minister of Israel. Again, history was made. Without the election of the “Israel Now and Forever” hardliner Netanyahu, would Israel even exist today? Just to prove that it was no fluke, Arthur steered him to further victories. For the past 20 years, in addition to his work in the U.S., he has expanded his portfolio to include winning campaigns in Kosovo, Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Israel, where he guided Ariel Sharon to victory twice. I asked him what his greatest source of pride was, and his greatest disappointment. Without missing a beat, he said that writing the immortal words at the base of the 9/11 memorial in New York City gave him the greatest satisfaction: “To honor and remember those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001, and as a tribute to the enduring spirit of freedom.” To know Arthur is to know at heart he is a romantic. He has always seen campaigns and his life as an idealistic struggle for liberty against the dark forces of collectivism. His biggest disappointment was an obscure campaign in Massachusetts 40 years ago, because the candidate had a chance and was much like Arthur in his political outlook. He still laments that loss. Arthur is also the greatest collector and cultivator of political talent in the history of the GOP. Some of his “kids” over the years have included the aforementioned John McLaughlin, Jim McLaughlin, John Heubusch, and Carter Wrenn but also Mari Maseng Will, Charlie Black, Roger Stone, Tony Fabrizio, Zorine Bhappu Shirley, Gary Maloney, Alex Castellanos, Rick Reed, Kieran Mahoney, Barbara Fiala, Craig Engle, Frank Luntz, Jim Murphy, Beth Meyers, Larry Weitzner, Matt Brooks, Ari Fleischer, Terry Dolan, and Brent Bozell, to name just a few. There has always been a certain swagger among Arthur’s kids, as they knew and understood politics better than anyone else. At least they believed that. The few who traveled with Arthur became known as “Little Arthurs” It was all great fun, but it was also to a larger purpose. We believed we were saving Western civilization. Check that. We knew we were saving Western civilization. And we were fearless, as we’d been taught by Arthur. There was always an allure to being one of Arthur’s kids. His campaign operations have always been joyous affairs, part ideology, part road crew for the Grateful Dead. We were kids, oh, we were young kids. When other consultants shunted us aside, Arthur gave us a break, put us in positions of authority, and mentored us, all us — taught us, encouraged us, to be winners for a reason. A pebble drops in a pond, and the concentric circles go on forever. His loving and devoted brother, Ronnie, held it all together for so many years, keeping sanity and rationality part of the equation. Yet he never interfered with the many lost causes Arthur wanted to pursue. I was once tasked many years ago to go to Pimlico race track and get down a $2,000 bet for the Finklestein boys. The horse won and Ronnie was giddy, but also generous with me for getting to the track on time. Arthur is a non-practicing Jew, yet I somehow suspect he would have made a very good rabbi or pastor or priest or psychiatrist, given his spot-on and often compassionate advice. At least, he would have made a good act of it. But his real Walter Mitty fantasy is probably to manage the New York Yankees or own a casino. Still, he believes Thoreau’s admonition and warning: “The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.” And he happens to be not just good at national politics, but the best. Ever. Heubusch said it for all who have known him: “There has never been a more talented genius in the polling and political consulting business than Arthur Finkelstein.” “Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion,” Dolly Parton speaks softly in the movie Steel Magnolias. I understand the feeling. I am laughing at the many, many memories of Arthur, of the man who taught me so much, who introduced my wife Zorine and me 35 years ago, and who is now ailing. And there are tears. We who are Arthur’s kids, and many others, lament, even as Arthur remains indomitably optimistic against all odds. He’s not going gentle into that good night. “Applaud, my friends, the comedy is finished.” Beethoven’s aphorism notwithstanding, Arthur’s comedy is not over. Not yet, anyway. I can’t imagine a world without Arthur J. Finkelstein. We know few men who have lived a more honest existence, a more honorable existence, or who have had a greater impact on so many, so much, for so long and to such great good. Arthur was and is our North, our South, our East, and our West. Good luck and Godspeed, Arthur. — Craig Shirley is a Reagan biographer and presidential historian.

TWO migrants from Afghanistan have reportedly been arrested over the three-hour gang rape of a woman that was broadcast on Facebook Live. The two men, aged 18 and 20, who are both from Afghanistan,…

On Wednesday, Jan. 11, the 2017 Colorado State legislative session began in Denver and with it came a proposed draft bill from Rep. Jonathan Singer (D-Longmont). The bill would give jurisdictions the option to use approval voting methods in nonpartisan elections. This will be Singer’s third attempt to get such legislation passed. The concept is

Wednesday night was a major first for Donald Trump as ABC aired his very first interview as President of the United States. The interview questions ranged from immigration policy to what carpet he chose for the Oval Office (Ronald Reagan’s), but things got awkward for interviewer David Muir when he tried to stick Trump with questions about the Women’s March on Saturday, “Let me just ask you while we’re standing outside, could you hear the voices from the Women's March here in Washington.”

Donald Trump came to power just in time to prevent billionaire George Soros and Bill and Hillary Clinton from passing the TPP trade deal.

MILO criticized women who stood in solidarity with Linda Sarsour, joking "nothing says women’s rights like a Sharia law activist in a hijab."

President Trump ripped leaker Chelsea Manning as an “ungrateful TRAITOR” on Thursday after the ex-Army intelligence analyst penned a newspaper op-ed critical of former President Obama – the man who cut 28 years off Manning’s prison sentence.

Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet.

Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet.

As we pointed out throughout the months leading up to the election, crowd size matters.  President Trump was crushing Hillary Clinton in number of rallies and number of participants at his rallies?

Just secure the damn border!

When someone tells you that you're violating transgender rights on the grounds that you do…

Feds have launched an investigation into why the Department of Homeland Security hacked into the Georgia state governmental network, including its election system, The Daily Caller News Foundation'

A Crawford Central School Board member is facing backlash for trading insults on social media and posting critical comments about President Donald Trump, including using variations of the phrase "clean

After his fair lady writer Ashley Feinberg was owned by Ted Cruz twice, as delineated here, the editor of Deadspin, Tim Marchman, decided he would heroically play Sir Lancelot, snorting that guys who targeted Feinberg for reaction to being owned were wimps for going after her.

Tucker takes on professor who will give a lecture on the 2016 election next month and has boiled Trump's victory last November to simply white supremacy #Tucker

I’m not as sorry as the editors to see the Trans-Pacific Partnership laid to rest. Because I agree with our editorial on a number of points, and because I fear that what I dislike about TPP is actually appealing to President Trump (and likely to recur in any bilateral deals his administration strikes), it is worth adding a few thoughts of my own. 1. The manner in which the Obama administration went about negotiating TPP has been wrongly maligned, undoubtedly because of (and contributing to) the distaste in which international trade is held these days. I have negotiated about a million plea agreements, some of them quite complicated. Had they been negotiated out in the open, with running commentary on the possible terms by non-parties or agencies whose interests might be affected, they would never have been consummated. The moving parts of an international trade deal — even a bilateral one — make it infinitely more complex than a plea deal. While Congress has a critical constitutional role in reviewing international agreements, it is the president’s job to conduct international relations and make treaties. Eleven other countries cannot be expected to negotiate with 535 legislators plus the executive branch. Thus, the complaint about Obama’s having conducted secret negotiations with foreign governments in order to spring a damaging agreement on the United States was meritless in the case of TPP. (It is an apt complaint in the case of the Iran nuclear deal, which Obama never intended as a treaty.) While TPP could have been damaging, that is because of its terms, not the secrecy in which they were negotiated. The question was not whether Congress should have had the opportunity to review aspects of the deal while it was being negotiated. (Lawmakers did in fact have that opportunity, under conditions of confidentiality that were appropriate no matter how much Congress complained about them.) The question was whether Congress was given an opportunity for meaningful review after the agreement was finalized by the countries taking part. There is no doubt that legislators had that opportunity — and, indeed, that TPP could not have been imposed on the U.S. without their consent. 2. Which brings us to Trade-Promotion Authority — the “TPA” that, regrettably, was conflated with TPP in the public debate. I continue to believe that TPA, which obliges Congress to give the president an up-or-down vote without amendments after the president has negotiated an international agreement, not only makes eminent sense but is the best way to avoid bad international agreements. If you look at the recent history of treaties, you find that the Senate tends not to vote down bad agreements but to consent with caveats and reservations, basically saying, “We’re approving this, but X, Y, and Z provisions are not applicable, or are applicable only insofar as they do not conflict with the U.S. Constitution.” Sounds great, except then what I call “the international-law game” kicks in: Other countries, outfits such as the U.N., and international-law experts claim that the treaty as written (not as Congress thought it was modifying it) has transmogrified into binding international law. The State Department goes along. In the end, Congress would have been far better off rejecting the whole agreement because of the bad terms rather than consenting to it in the dubious belief that it was purging the bad terms. TPA essentially takes away the Senate’s option to delude itself into believing it can effectively modify bad agreements into good ones. It forces the Senate to vote the agreement up or down. That makes a no vote on a bad treaty more likely. Since I am in the camp that believes in preemptive opposition to international agreements unless they are obviously in America’s interest, I am in favor of anything that makes a “no” vote more likely. 3. It should be noted that, once he was determined to reject TPP, it was important for Trump to withdraw from it expressly. As I’ve recently explained, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties — which the State Department regards as binding international law in at least some respects, even though the United States has not ratified it — holds that once a country’s government signs an agreement (or otherwise conveys assent to it), that country is obliged not to take measures that would frustrate the agreement even if it has not been ratified. Consequently, when the United States rejects a treaty, it should formally withdraw any prior presidential signature or exhibition of assent to the treaty. 4. I am not persuaded by the argument that the decision not to proceed with TPP creates a void that will be filled by China. This seems to me an extension of the conventional wisdom that the carnage in Syria and the rise of ISIS resulted — at least in part — from American passivity that left a void in which bad actors flourished. I have always believed this is a fairy tale with respect to Syria, but a multilateral trade agreement does not, in any event, operate like a multilateral war. Trump is not abandoning the Pacific Rim; he is abandoning TPP. We will still have robust trade with the region. Whether the United States continues to be a central player there will depend on what actions the Trump administration takes in terms of confronting Chinese aggression and engaging with our allies and potential trade partners, either on a bilateral or a multilateral basis. I am not convinced that pulling out of TPP cedes America’s sphere of influence to Beijing. I agree it is something to be concerned about, I just don’t think abandoning TPP does it. 5. I am more troubled than the editors about the fact that TPP is a 5,554-page agreement. I do not dispute that trade agreements are complicated, but free trade — which simply involves removing impediments to the cross-border movement of goods — is not the reason they are complicated; protectionism is. True, TPP has many solid free-trade provisions, and potentially opens trade in markets that were not hospitable in the past. These benefits have to be balanced, though, with TPP’s considerable downsides, including its protectionist provisions. Ironically, many of those provisions must be appealing to the Trump administration, even though I find them objectionable. If, as it is promising to do, the administration does reengage in search of bilateral agreements, I imagine we will see many of the same protectionist terms — probably even more of them. In any event, my default position is that when binding law is memorialized in statutory schemes or multilateral agreements that span hundreds — or, in this case, thousands — of pages, no one is able to say with confidence what the law is. That is especially the case when, as with TPP, many particulars are ambiguous and will have to be sorted out in litigation and by rulings of an unaccountable international commission — on which more momentarily. That kind of law-making should be discouraged. 6. One of my principal objections to TPP is the extent to which it is not a trade agreement. You had to figure there were reasons why TPP was so strongly supported by transnational progressives in the Obama mold. Those reasons involve its global-governance components, which the international Left gives pride of place over the anti-trade misgivings of progressives in the Bernie Sanders mold. TPP’s promotion of the transnational-progressive agenda is not merely hortatory. There is, for example, a TPP chapter on labor. As a very useful summary of TPP from the Cato Institute relates, this section requires countries to adopt and maintain various labor rights, including minimum-wage regulations — notwithstanding our ongoing domestic debate over the harm minimum-wage laws do to entry-level workers. Another example: There is a chapter on the environment, which requires countries (among other things) to control substances that are said to deplete the ozone layer, promote corporate social responsibility, and continue “transitioning to a low-emissions economy.” (As the transies put it in Article 20.15: “The Parties acknowledge that transition to a low emissions economy requires collective action.”) As observed by Cato, which tepidly supports TPP as a net positive for free trade despite acknowledging many downsides, the environmental provisions “also reinforce the myth that trade harms the environment and that no cost is too high — even for developing countries — to mitigate threats and potential threats to environmental quality, even if the measure would provide only a marginal benefit.” These provisions, and many others like them, are hostile to free trade. That is, they make trade a mere pretext for promoting the pieties of the post-sovereign Left. Trade agreements should stick to trade. 7. TPP’s promotion of the transnational-progressive agenda is not merely hortatory. Chapter 27 would establish an oversight entity, the “Trans-Pacific Partnership Commission,” with sweeping powers. It would be composed of unelected bureaucrats appointed by member countries and given jurisdiction over “any matter relating to the implementation or operation of this agreement” — including amendments or modifications of the agreement; the issuance of interpretive guidance on what provisions of the agreement mean; the establishment of tribunals and rules of procedure for resolving TPP disputes; and even the admission of new member states to the agreement. That is to say, the Commission would be empowered to turn the TPP into something different — even drastically different — from the deal to which the United States agreed. It is true that, when it comes to any modifications or additions of new members, the agreement nods to the right of TPP countries to “complete their respective applicable legal procedures.” This means, at least in theory, that if drastic changes effectively transformed TPP into a different agreement, Congress could get to vote on it again. Nevertheless, even without such U.S. constitutional compliance, the changes would be deemed to “enter into force” if six TPP countries approved them. To be sure, a TPP country would have the option of disregarding the entry into force of a modification it had not approved, or of withdrawing from the agreement. That said, the Commission would still be wielding significant powers with no meaningful democratic accountability to the American people. Perhaps that would be sensible — at least arguably — if TPP were truly limited to international trade. But as we’ve seen, TPP would implicate matters well beyond the scope of trade — e.g., immigration, environmental, and labor policies. That is to say: Because TPP is such a vast proposition, the degree of self-governance the United States could potentially cede to an unaccountable international commission would be impossible to quantify. What principles would the Commission use to resolve disputes? The editors suggest that TPP would place “the United States and its humane democratic norms at the center of Pacific affairs.” I’m not so sure. TPP provides (in article 8.5) that “the Parties recognise the important role that international standards, guides, and recommendations can play in supporting greater regulatory alignment, good regulatory practice, and reducing unnecessary barriers to trade.” It elaborates that member countries must encourage the adoption of international standards, guidelines, and recommendations — not only at the central government level, but also at the level of “regional or local government bodies,” which in the case of our country means the states and municipalities. I do not doubt that the United States exerts significant influence over the development of international standards. But there is also significant resistance to — even animus toward — our country in many quarters. One need not buy into the conspiracy theories that TPP is a scheme to enmesh the United States in a European Union–style confederation in order to appreciate the potential perils for sovereignty. We have just witnessed eight years of Obama-administration collusion with multilateral foreign entities (the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Organization of American States, the European Union, the G-7, the United Nations and its Security Council, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, etc.) to ignore the Constitution, bypass Congress, and impose new arrangements and obligations on the United States under the guise of international law — on such matters as free speech, gun rights, environmental regulation, border enforcement, the Iran nuclear deal, immigration and refugee policy, and the Israeli–Palestinian standoff. The TPP Commission, armed with vague, broad jurisdiction and express American consent to promote international standards, would inevitably mean more of the same. The editors argue that the complexity inherent in multilateral international trade agreements is also a feature of the bilateral pacts preferred by the Trump administration. True enough, but bilateral agreements do not require the kind of extensive bureaucratic infrastructure that multilateral arrangements do. Such infrastructures are the foundation on which transnational progressives build their global-governance schemes. And it is that combination of sprawl and the lack of political accountability that tends to make international bureaucracies distant, inept, hyperpolitical, authoritarian, and corrupt. I do not see the benefits of TPP as worth the risks. — Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior policy fellow at the National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

The Secret Service in Irving, Texas, told The Gateway Pundit Wednesday evening the agency is “aware” of a video posted ...

January 25, 2017 - FULL INTERVIEW - President Trump in The White House - ABC with David Muir