ActRight

McCain and Pence will meet, even as Trump refuses to endorse the Arizona senator.

You’ve seen the word “globalist” popping up around Trump fan sites all over the internet. It seems like some sort of slur, but you’re not sure what it means. Good news: you’re not the only one. Many of the people using the word “globalist” seem to be under the misimpression that opposing “globalism” involves reviving American authority, rejecting international institutions that remove American sovereignty. That’s not what Trump fans mean by “globalism.”

The extraordinary breach of political decorum came two weeks after a convention designed to showcase party unity.

Donald Trump’s public feud with the Khan family has drawn criticism from both Republicans and Democrats alike. There’s always been a staunch bipartisan consensus, or better yet unspoken code of honor, against throwing verbal daggers at the families of decorated war veterans. In more ways than one, Trump is an anomaly. On Monday, the Republican presidential nominee continued his uninterrupted vitriol against the Khans in an interview with a local Ohio television station.

"It’s time to move on from this charade..."

Frightened families in Melbourne's west have resorted to fortifying their homes against violent thieves less than a month after many residents started to arm themselves with bats.

An LAPD cop, falsely accused of racism and brutality, is being attacked an L.A. City agency for exposing the truth and defending himself, and now the City…

For the first time, three of the top four New York Times nonfiction best sellers are anti-Clinton books. Two new books jumped to the front of the all-important hardcover nonfiction list just this week: Armageddon, by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, and Hillary's America, by Dinesh D'Souza.

Following the receipt of a critical letter, NBC News has quietly edited the Internet edition of a segment that aired on the highly-rated “Today Show” in which anchor Andrea Mitchell claimed Juanita Broaddrick’s rape accusation against Bill Clinton had been “discredited.”

Ten libertarian and conservative legal experts weigh in. The answers may surprise you.

What is the campaign strategy for the two political parties? Clues can be had from the responses to a question I asked about a dozen dignitaries of each party at their conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia. What’s your best guess, I asked, emphasizing guess, of your nominee’s percentage of the popular vote in November 2016? I understood the responses, being on the record, were not entirely frank. Only two Republicans guessed Donald Trump would lose; only one Democrat said he was uncertain about the result. It would be churlish to hurl the responses of those who turned out to be less than prescient back at them in scorn. One thing the responses had in common is that they reflected pre-convention polling, which showed Hillary Clinton 3 to 5 points ahead. Democrats did not seem to be taking into account post-Republican Convention polling that showed the race essentially even. But otherwise they differed. Only two Republicans guessed that Trump would get more than 50 percent of the vote. Several made a point of saying that minor party candidates — Libertarian Gary Johnson, Green Jill Stein — would get a significant number of votes. Most Democrats did not take this prospect very seriously. Only two guessed that Clinton’s percentage would be under 49 percent. Most thought it would be 52 percent or higher — more than Barack Obama’s 51 percent in 2012. Acting national chairman Donna Brazile guessed that Clinton would win 303 electoral votes, which she would if she carried every Obama 2012 state except Florida. It may be natural for Republicans to consider more permutations and combinations than Democrats. Republicans have just been through a primary cycle in which conventional wisdom has been disrupted over and over. Democrats’ result was the one they expected all along. As is the result they seem to expect in November. They’ve internalized the analyses that claim that demographic change — increasing percentages of nonwhites, Millennials, single women in the electorate — have propelled them to something like permanent majority status. They understand that Donald Trump is running stronger than previous Republican nominees among non-college-educated white men, and their speakers made ritual obeisance to the meme that Democrats are better for the little guy. But the more prevalent appeal, delivered especially by Michael Bloomberg, is to whites with higher education who are already repelled by Trump. This amounts to augmenting their initial strategy of re-assembling the 2012 Obama 51 percent majority with what FiveThirtyEight proprietor Nate Silver calls a “1964 strategy,” arguing that the Republican nominee is unacceptable. The numbers look like they might add up — or not. But there are some imponderables. One is that the incumbent party is at a disadvantage when two-thirds of voters believe things are moving in the wrong direction. The Clinton convention was forced to claim that things are better than you think and even to take on the trappings of optimistic nationalism and, at some risk of boos from Bernie bros, add flags and generals in its third and fourth days. That risks being at odds with the middle of the electorate and its own left wing at the same time. The second is that the candidate promises economic growth with policies that have over the last seven years produced only sluggish growth — more sluggish than economists thought, it turns out, from GDP statistics released July 29. The 16 references to “growth” in the Bernie Sanders–influenced party platform refer mostly to policies helping one or more of the party’s favored splinter groups. There’s also a claim that higher taxes will stimulate growth and a promise of more infrastructure spending. But as Barack Obama grinningly observed, there are no shovel-ready projects. And if you want someone who will sweep aside environmental barriers and regulatory delays, you might well prefer Donald Trump. The third imponderable is something pollsters can’t reliably gauge: turnout. Even with Obama’s endorsement, Clinton is unlikely to equal the black turnout and Democratic percentages of 2008 and 2012. Hispanics have shown less enthusiasm for repudiating Trump than Democrats expected. Young voters, who dislike Trump but voted heavily for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries, may be hard to rally. Polling shows many under-35s who choose Clinton in a two-way race prefer Libertarian Gary Johnson or the Green party’s Jill Stein when given the option. That could swell the minor-party vote above the 1.0 to 1.8 percent they received in the last three elections. So which party has a winning strategy? Not clear. — Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner. © 2016 The Washington Examiner. Distributed by Creators.com.

Dozens of Republican primaries in recent years have pitted a conservative challenger against an establishment incumbent. But voters in Kansas’s first district tonight are witnessing a role reversal: The fire-breathing conservative-style candidate is not the challenger but the incumbent.  Representative Tim Huelskamp, a prominent member of the House Freedom Caucus, could lose his seat Tuesday in what has been a nail-biter of a primary to Roger Marshall, an obstetrician who has won the backing of a number of agricultural and business interests as well as outside groups looking to oust Huelskamp. It is a race that is hyper-focused on local issues, but that has also drawn national attention thanks to the millions of dollars it has sucked in from outside groups in what some see as the first major proxy battle between the Freedom Caucus and House speaker Paul Ryan. “It’s about insiders versus an outsider,” says Huelskamp in a Monday evening phone interview. “It’s about the Washington, D.C., establishment out after conservatives.” But it’s not that simple. The Kansas race has scrambled many of the normal alliances on the right: Ted Cruz has endorsed Huelskamp, even as the firm owned by his own campaign manager, Jeff Roe, works against the congressman. The Club for Growth, another Huelskamp backer, spent much of the primary season working arm in arm against Donald Trump with the megadonors Joe and Todd Ricketts; in Kansas the Club and the Ricketts are on opposite sides, with the Club working on Huelskamp’s behalf and the ESAFund, a super PAC funded by the Ricketts, working against him. How did this happen?    The seeds of this primary were sown in 2012 and 2013, when former House speaker John Boehner retaliated against Huelskamp for thwarting House leadership by tossing him from the Agriculture Committee. The loss of that post, a key one for Huelskamp’s district, which spans rural Kansas, has been a major flashpoint in this campaign. A number of major agricultural groups deserted Huelskamp this year because he lost the seat, and now each candidate insists he is more likely than the other to win a spot on the committee next year.     “I think I’ve got the votes to get back on the Agriculture Committee,” Huelskamp says. Politico reported in July that Huelskamp asked Speaker Ryan to make a public promise to put him back on the committee, but Ryan has declined to do anything to tip the scales in this race. In a statement provided to National Review, the Speaker was non-committal: “When I became Speaker, I told all of our members that we are starting fresh with a clean slate. And I’ve long thought Kansas should be represented on the House Committee on Agriculture. Tim Huelskamp has the kind of background that could serve the state well on the Ag Committee. These kinds of assignments ultimately will be decided by the Republican steering committee at the end of the year.” But the result is that some Kansans are skeptical that Huelskamp will ever regain the post. “I think that the fact that the Speaker hasn’t come out and said ‘I’m willing to put Tim back on the committee’ speaks volumes,” says Aaron Popelka, vice president of legal and government affairs of the Kansas Livestock Association. The loss of the seat has also been used to highlight what many characterize as Huelskamp’s personal prickliness, a difficulty working with his colleagues that some fault for his loss of the precious committee seat. “Tim has just kind of put himself in a position where he’s become irrelevant in Washington. He can’t seem to work with others whether in his party or out,” says Warren Parker, policy communications director for the Kansas Farm Bureau, which endorsed Marshall last month. Representatives and volunteers for the Kansas Livestock Association have been “disappointed” with their yearly meetings with Huelskamp in D.C., says Popelka. “Most of the conversation was about the process and how bad the leadership was treating him. And our guys’ issues they felt like just weren’t landing,” he says. Having lost his spot on the Agriculture Committee, Popelka says, Huelskamp wasn’t in a position to “advance those concerns” anyway. Huelskamp, for his part, shrugs his shoulders at the opposition he has evoked from such groups. “They’re part of this race, but they’re a very small part of the $2 million against me.” #share#Huelskamp and his allies say the race is John Boehner’s payback for the years Huelskamp spent working to thwart his agenda. “I think that if you could dust the campaign you’d see John Boehner’s fingerprints on it,” says Iowa representative Steve King, who stumped with Huelskamp last week. Huelskamp too describes the challenge as the “revenge” of the former House leadership. He alleges that some of the funding for his opponent comes from “Eric Cantor’s friends on Wall Street.” Boehner and Cantor are no longer in office, but Huelskamp attacks House leadership in a way that suggests he sees little difference between the new regime and the old. Leadership, Huelskamp says, without mentioning anyone in leadership by name, pledges to “stand with incumbents and that’s not been the case.” A Ryan aide disputes that characterization. “We support all our incumbents, including Tim Huelskamp,” the aide says. Ousting Huelskamp would illustrate that the threat of a primary challenge goes both ways; that it’s not just establishment-style Republicans who can be punished. But while Ryan is not taking any steps against dissenters within his conference, outside groups have shown no such qualms. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the ESAFund (formerly Ending Spending) have both spent against Huelskamp in Kansas. ESAFund president Brian Baker says this is about Huelskamp specifically, saying he “cares more about special-interest scorecards and large corporate lobbyists than the people who elected [him].” But ousting Huelskamp would illustrate that the threat of a primary challenge goes both ways; that it’s not just establishment-style Republicans who can be punished by their own party at the ballot box. The resulting message if Huelskamp were to lose, says former Virginia representative and National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Tom Davis, is that for members who vote against the Speaker, “there’s a price for that. They used to do this with impunity,” he says. Others say that the simplest explanation for Huelskamp’s troubles is that many people, quite simply, do not like him. Parker, of the Kansas Farm Bureau, notes that it’s not Freedom Caucus members writ large who lost their committee spots. “There are other members — very conservative members of the Freedom Caucus and others — that aren’t getting tossed off of two committees,” he says. “And so he’s just put himself into this position that people just look at him as someone they cannot work with, committee members do not want him on the committees, and he’s just made himself irrelevant.” #related#Representative Lynn Westmoreland, a member of the Steering Committee until January, says the committee declined Boehner’s request in 2015 to put Huelskamp back on the Agriculture Committee. “It was the only time I really saw the Speaker really not get what he wanted,” Westmoreland says. Tom Willis, an agribusinessman who has been involved in the efforts to oust Huelskamp both this year and in 2014 and appears in an ESAFund ad, says the congressman is prickly not just with other members of Congress. Willis says that Huelskamp threatened retaliation against him at a town hall in 2014 after he backed Huelskamp’s primary challenger that year. “I’m a Ronald Reagan guy. Personally, I never speak ill of another Republican,” says Willis. “But this is an exception.” — Alexis Levinson is National Review’s senior political reporter.

So much for the small-penis theory. We’ve all heard that argument being made: “If you own a firearm,” the case runs, “it must be because you’re poorly endowed.” Guns, you see, are long and phallic — like portable, miniature Washington Monuments, there to be worn about the belt. In the 1960s, weak and diffident men would make up for their shortcomings by purchasing a Jaguar E-Type. Now they buy an AR-15. That must explain the buying spree of the last decade. A related case is made in concert: That guns are being snapped up by “scared white men” who are terrified that their privilege is being diminished. Sure, firearms owners tell pollsters that their purchases were driven by general interest or by terrorism or by a desire to defend themselves. But progressives know better than that, natch; they know that the real reason is race or gender or the panoply of isms. For years, white men have ruled the roost. But now women are doing better in college and the president is black. That must explain the surge. It doesn’t, of course. In fact, neither theory explains anything much at all — except, perhaps, the paucity of the gun-control movement’s brief. Indeed, to look at the most recently available statistics is to learn that gun ownership — and, indeed, the “bearing of arms” in general — is an increasingly diverse, rather than monochrome, thing. Over the last few years, the United States has seen the stirrings of a pro–Second Amendment rainbow coalition, comprised of all sorts and popping up in all places. Penises? Penises don’t enter into it, matey. RELATED: The Case for More Concealed Handguns As he does each year, John Lott Jr. has taken a good look at the government’s most recent concealed-carry numbers – and boy, are they interesting. As one might expect, concealed carry has grown dramatically in popularity over the last decade or so, and, as one might expect, that growth has coincided with a remarkable drop in crime. Between 2007 and 2015, Lott reports, the “murder rates fell from 5.6 to 4.7 (preliminary estimate) per 100,000,” while “violent crime fell by 18 percent.” Over the same period, “the percentage of adults with permits has soared by 190%.” Well, then. As for those “adults with permits” . . . well, they are most certainly not all old and white and male. On the contrary: Lott notes that in the “eight states where we have data by gender . . . since 2012 the number of permits has increased by 161% for women and by 85% for men.” Or, put another way, women are now obtaining carry permits at twice the rate of men. Is it penis envy, perhaps? #share#A similar dynamic has developed within minority communities — at least, it has in the one state that keeps data by race. “Texas,” Lott records, “provides detailed information on both race and gender from 1996 through 2014.” And that information shows that permitting has increased fastest for blacks, followed closely by Asians. While whites still hold the vast majority of permits, the number of black permit holders has grown more than twice as quickly as the number of white permit holders. Moreover: When permit data is broken down by race and gender, we find that rates of permit holding among American Indian, Asian, black, and white females all grew much faster than the rates for males in those racial groups. Concealed carry has increased most rapidly among black females. From 2000 to 2015, the rate of growth was 3.81 times faster than among white females. This is a complicated area, but it seems important to note that as the cost of obtaining a carry permit has dropped in Texas, the pool of carriers has become more diverse. “The growth in permit-holding by Asians, blacks, and American Indians,” writes Lott, “was by far the fastest after the minimum training requirements were reduced from 10 hours to four in 2013 . . . reducing the cost of obtaining permits seems to have had its biggest impact on minorities.” RELATED: The Bizarro Morality of America’s Gun-Control Debate And why wouldn’t it? As progressives routinely insist when the question is of voting or abortion, it is minorities, not rich white men, who are disproportionately affected by legal obstacles that are placed in their way. By reducing its mandatory training from ten to four hours, Texas has ensured both that its carry classes will be less expensive and that those who take them will need to take less time off work. The salutary result: That less “privileged” members of society are able take advantage of their constitutional rights. (One might expect to see a similar result if permitting fees were reduced across the board. New York City charges $429.75 for a carry permit; Idaho charges $20. In which place do we imagine it is easier for the poor to defend themselves?) Typically, this argument is met with what is little more than a primal scream: “But guns are dangerous and voting is not!” cry the naysayers. For now, I shall leave aside the obvious rejoinder, which is that this argument rests upon the presumption that the poor and the brown must be kept away from guns in the name of “public safety,” and I will instead point out that anybody who is worried about concealed carriers needs his ruddy head looked at. As Lott drily confirms, “concealed carry permit holders” are not only more law-abiding than the population at large, they “are even more law-abiding than police.” “Among police” in general, the FBI records, “firearms violations occur at a rate of 16.5 per 100,000 officers,” whereas “among permit holders in Florida and Texas, the rate is only 2.4 per 100,000” (and many of these “violations” are as innocuous as the permit holder’s forgetting to carry his permit on his person). This trend is borne out elsewhere. At times, watching the American gun debate can feel like attending the call-and-response segment of an especially dreary Anglican church service: “And on July 1st, Florida will issue forth carry permits.”“There will be blood in the streets.”“And there was no blood in the streets.”“There will be blood in the streets.”“As it was in the beginning, in the middle, and the end, there was no blood in the streets.”“Let us change tack: Peaceful as they may be, carriers are all white men.”“Carriers are not all white men.”“Twitter hear us: Carriers have small penises.” Etc. #related#At this rate, it will not be too long before the gun-controllers cry that concealed carriers may be impressively diverse, unusually peaceful, and continually growing in number, but they represent a serious problem to be solved because . . . well, because they just do. Progress, of a sort. — Charles C. W. Cooke is the editor of National Review Online.

On Monday, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, wiggling free just far enough from his grip on Donald Trump’s coattails to utter a mild criticism of his party’s nominee, criticized Trump for his comments regarding Gold Star father and mother Khizr Khan and his wife.

Lawmakers say pedophiles could use the game to "lure" victims

For the entirety of the primaries, Trump was short on solutions, although heavy on vague, empty promises and slogans he ripped off from the 80s. He had much ire for his Republican competitors for the nomination, but was oddly short on attacks against Democrats. Now, here we are, three months away from the general election. Trump has vanquished every legitimate, qualified candidate for the nomination, | Read More »

Paul Nehlen is just one of hundreds of candidates running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives this year, but the businessman and inventor is running as if he’s in a national race. In a way, he is. His Republican primary opponent, after all, is House Speaker Paul Ryan. And with the election […]

The Constitution does not ban vetting the religious beliefs of would-be immigrants to the United States.

Ahead of the second anniversary of the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, that touched off a wave of protests...

DHS is redesigning and extending Temporary Protected Status to thousands of Syrian nationals already residing in the United States.

Brandon took over the deputy director position of the agency in April 2015 following his predecessor's swift exit after his attempt to ban AR-15 ammunition failed spectacularly.

Khizr Khan, the Muslim Gold Star father that Democrats and their allies media wide have been using to hammer GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, has deleted his law firm’s website from the Internet.

WASHINGTON ? The CEO of the Democratic National Committee will resign Tuesday in the wake of the committee?s hacked email scandal. Amy Dacey is the highest-ranking official at the DNC t…

Media analyst Howard Kurtz on press coverage of Patricia Smith, mother of Sean Smith, and the Khan family, parents of Captain Khan. HOWARD KURTZ: Two parents, both touched by tragedy, gave impassioned speeches on big stages. Khizer Khan, a Muslim father whose soldier son was killed in Iraq denounced Donald Trump at the Democratic Convention. KHAN: Have you even read the United States Constitution? KURTZ: Patricia Smith, whose son was killed in Benghazi, denounced Hillary Clinton at the Republican Convention. SMITH: I blame Hillary Clinton personally for the death of my son. KURTZ: But only one of them drew enormous media attention. Khan's speech made the front page of The New York Times and he was invited on NBC's Meet the Press and CNN's State of the Union. KHAN: That's again, the height of ignorance on the part of a candidate for the highest office of this nation. KHAN: The way he showed disrespect towards the Gold Star mother of this country, that says it all. CHUCK TODD, NBC: Your wife? KHAN: My wife? KURTZ: He was referring to Trump's appearance on ABC's This Week. TRUMP: If you look at his wife, she was standing there, she had nothing to say. She probably -- maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say. KURTZ: The Washington Post said Ghazala Khan said she was too emotional to speak. Some analysts said Trump had escalated the controversy. JOE TRIPPI, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: This wouldn't be a big story if Trump hadn't stepped in it and gone after the family. KURTZ: But what about Patricia Smith? True, she castigated Clinton before in numerous interviews, but her speech was widely ignored and in some cases, attacked. KELLY RIDDELL, WASHINGTON TIMES: A GQ writer tweeted, 'I would like to beat her to death.' Later had to apologize for it. And MSNBC said she ruined the night and it's a gross accusation to bring up Benghazi. KURTZ: Clinton took a softer approach on FOX News Sunday. CLINTON: Chris, my heart goes out to both of them. I don't hold any ill feeling for someone who, in that moment, may not fully recall everything that was or wasn't said. KURTZ: And today, Khan was back on the TV circuit. He's ripping Trump for pushing a temporary ban on Muslim immigrants, which is unpopular with most of the media. Smith is personally blaming Clinton for Benghazi, which the media says is unfair, and that seems to show in the coverage.

Trump received five deferments that kept him from serving in Vietnam.