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Nice city you got here, New York Assemblyman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn) seemed to be saying ominously. Shame if something were to happen to it. Last week, when Brooklyn DA Ken Thompson recommended…

Global warming alarmists have effectively sown fright but done a poor job of hiding their real motivation. Another reveals what’s driving the climate scare.

While speaking to a group of kids at Vashon High School in St. Louis, ET is confronted with a situation causing his speech to take an unexpected turn.

The Little Sisters of the Poor v. Burwell case case shows just how difficult it has become to protect religious liberty from overweening state power.

Some of Donald Trump’s allies in the conservative media have softened their support.

Occurred at San Francisco State University on 3/28/2016. /u/nicholas-silvera

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To prohibit any regulation, rule, guidance, recommendation, or policy issued after May 15, 2015, that limits the sale or donation of excess property of the Federal Government to State and local agencies for law enforcement activities, and for other purposes.

Donald Trump has come out forcefully in defense of his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who was charged with misdemeanor battery stemming from an incident involving reporter Michelle Fields.

Share on Facebook 1 1 SHARES There is a lot of talk lately about so-and-so being denied a spot at the convention or the convention being used to “steal” something from whoever, but of course it’s all bunk. There are rules set down, and they are set down for a reason, and if you can’t hack it then, well, you just can’t hack it pal. | Read More »

Trump acts like an 8-year-old boy, which is frightening in a man running to be leader of the free world.

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, arriving in Washington this week for President Obama’s nuclear-security summit, is America’s strongest ally in Asia — a region crucial to America’s future. Since taking office, Abe has pursued politically risky policies that have steadily bolstered not just Japan’s, but also America’s position in Asia. So he must be puzzled to find himself at the center of a U.S. political dispute. Battling for votes, the Trump presidential campaign suggests that Japan is an economic and military drain on the U.S. After criticizing China, the campaign smacks Japan. Such overheated rhetoric is as outdated as it is misguided. #ad#In the last few years, Abe has labored mightily to reinflate his currency, to restrain risky regional disputes that also endanger U.S. interests, to raise Japanese defense spending, to adopt new defense guidelines increasing Japan’s regional and global security burden, and to bend his country’s U.S.-inspired post-war constitution to enable Japan to defend U.S. ships and troops in the event of an attack. In the process, he has sought to jump-start Japan’s stalled national economy — the third largest in the world — and to push trade deals advancing Western resilience against China’s economic bullying. He has done all this even as China’s military probes Japan’s southern boundaries and northern Japan recovers from a tsunami-related nuclear-plant disaster. Instead of the Japan, Inc. that scared Congress and labor unions in the 1980s and 1990s and inspired fearmongering books like Clyde Prestowitz’s Trading Places, Japan now struggles with an economy that has persistently underperformed for two decades, ironically due to many of the same misguided Keynesian policies that President Obama has used to leave the U.S. economy stuck in low gear since the 2008 financial crisis. As an economic rival, Japan has been supplanted by a far more menacing competitor, namely China. Today’s leading economists, as well as Prestowitz’s newest book, Japan Restored, argue that Japan’s economic revival would help America and the world. Instead of being the fearsome economic predators of 1990s myth, Japanese companies like Honda, Nissan, and Toyota have opened auto plants in the U.S. that have created more than 1.3 million jobs through 2013, and have become innovative partners in new manufacturing areas like robotics. Even more important, as an economic rival, Japan has been supplanted by a far more menacing competitor, namely China. While some aspects of our trade deficit with Japan could stand some correcting, the deficit with China has ballooned to $365.7 billion, a new record. Chinese cyberattack and commercial cybertheft endanger both Japan and the United States. #share#Furthermore, unlike Japan in the 1980s and 1990s, China is also a threatening geopolitical competitor. China’s $1.4 trillion “One Belt, One Road” program for financing massive infrastructure projects — from harbors and high-speed trains to oil and natural-gas pipelines that will connect China with the rest of the world — aims to displace U.S. influence worldwide, not just in Asia. Its aggressive actions in the South and East China Seas threaten freedom of navigation and could recklessly spark armed conflict. Meanwhile, China has never applied its considerable leverage to reverse the irresponsible international misbehavior, provocative missile programs, and outrageous nuclear-proliferation activities of its client state, North Korea. Japan lies at the forefront of such challenges. So over the past decades it has spent billions annually — at times covering the majority of U.S. costs — to support U.S. bases in Japan, bases that are the bedrock of America’s position in Asia. Japan has sent ground troops to Iraq and contributed to Western efforts in Afghanistan, and it remains a foremost funder of international economic development. Japan has been the kind of powerful democratic ally, and Abe the kind of prime minister, that America has wanted and needed for a long time. But its current prime minister wants to do more to meet and to deter the challenges from China and North Korea and to be America’s true strategic partner in East Asia. Notably, he has steadily increased Japan’s defense budget — indeed, the defense budget for fiscal year 2016 will be Japan’s biggest since World War Two. In working for these changes, Abe specifically argued that Japan needed to be able to come to the aid of the U.S. in a conflict, and to provide real capabilities when it did. In connection with this week’s summit, Japan has sought to counter the threat of nuclear blackmail in Asia — a current focus given North Korea’s recent provocations. Japan may be America’s single most significant partner in deploying missile-defense systems, including co-development of the updated Aegis and SM3 anti-ballistic programs. For Japan, these have been historic steps. In short, Japan has been the kind of powerful democratic ally, and Abe the kind of prime minister, that America has wanted and needed for a long time to maintain peace and collective security in the region. #related#In 1951 General Douglas MacArthur returned from overseeing the occupation and transformation of Japan and told Congress, “Politically, economically, and socially Japan is now abreast of many free nations of the earth and . . . may be counted upon to wield a profoundly beneficial influence over the course of events in Asia.” After 70 years of uninterrupted responsible democratic governance, those words are even truer today than they were then. It’s not time to strain our ties to Japan, but to strengthen them. Japan-bashing, like 1980s boom-boxes and DeLoreans, should not be disinterred. All of Asia, including China, will be watching what our next president does to encourage Japan’s revival as a global economic engine — and its emergence as America’s steadfast military and strategic ally. — Arthur Herman is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, where Lewis Libby is a senior vice president. Mr. Herman is the author, among other works, of Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II. He can be reached on Twitter @ArthurLHerman.

Donald Trump said he would select justices to the Supreme Court who would investigate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server as secretary of state.

According to AJAM's David Shuster, Hillary Clinton will be questioned by FBI Director James Comey in a matter of days. The outcome could end up changing the

He's making some people on the Hill happy. They aren't Republican.

Facebook Twitter Google+ Michelle Fields’s mother, Xiomara, is a Honduran-born activist who opposed Donald Trump long before her daughter’s alleged incident. The elder Fields runs a nonprofit for illegal immigrants in Los Angeles that receives a substantial portion of its funding from the U.S. and California tax payers. A 2014 posting on a forum for …

I agree with Quin Hillyer. Donald Trump’s comments on abortion — first advocating punishing women who abort then backtracking hours later — were indeed a “mess.” They played into the hands of abortion advocates in every way — helping caricature pro-lifers as “anti-woman” and raising the specter of back-alley abortions. So far, Trump’s pro-life conversion has mainly served to make Planned Parenthood look good (he can’t stop praising the nation’s largest abortion provider) and the pro-life movement look bad. He simply has no idea how to talk about arguably the most sensitive issue in politics.  Get ready for a slow-motion pro-life train wreck if Trump’s the nominee. Supporting life is about more than merely checking off a box. A Republican nominee faces far tougher questions about abortion than Democrats ever do. It’s unfair. It’s ridiculous. It’s also a foreseeable and predictable fact of life. Even serving temporarily as the nation’s most prominent pro-life advocate (or at least playing a pro-life advocate on television) would do immense damage to the cause. Hillary Clinton is a weather vane on many, many issues. On abortion, however, she is a rock-solid zealot, and she has her arguments down cold. The media backs her on this issue unconditionally. The thought that Trump may debate her on life should be chilling to every pro-life activist in America. He not only doesn’t know what he’s talking about, when push comes to shove, I daresay that he’s on her side.  

And just like that, the Republican presidential contest has veered into Todd Akin territory. In a taped Wisconsin townhall with MSNBC voters, set to air Wednesday evening, Donald Trump says that, if abortion becomes illegal in the United States, the mother involved should be subject “some form of punishment.” Here’s the video: Let me start here, for form’s sake: There is a valid philosophical question here. If you carry out the logic of the pro-life position, what should it entail, legally? As it happens, several leading abortion opponents addressed this question here at National Review in a 2007 symposium. If you’re looking for substantive considerations of this question, give it a read. But while people are sure to spill gallons of ink on that question, thanks to Trump, it’s irrelevant — because Trump doesn’t mean what he said. Donald Trump has no considered opinion about what should happen in the hypothetical situation in which abortion is completely outlawed. He’s never given it a moment’s thought. Read the transcript of his exchange with Matthews. He’s not substantively “right” or “wrong.” He’s utterly and completely incoherent. And it’s utterly and completely infuriating. In one minute and thirty-two seconds, Donald Trump has managed to apparently validate every far-flung accusation of retributive, bloodthirsty woman-hating that abortion opponents have tried to fend off for 40-plus years. In ninety seconds, Trump gave Democrats a political millstone that they will cinch around the neck of every pro-life politician for the rest of this election season. Planned Parenthood, NARAL, NOW, Emily’s List have all already issued breathless statements. Hillary Clinton has sent out a tweet with her personal “—H” signature. It doesn’t matter that, one hour later, Trump out-and-out reversed himself. They got their soundbite, and it will be played on loop, to the ululations and I-told-you-sos of Cecile Richards and Sally Kohn and the rest, for years. But is anyone surprised? This is what Trump does — and it’s the reason conservatives, real, genuine, sincere, life- and liberty-loving conservatives, should not simply be exasperated with Trump; they should be furious with him. They should be enraged with every single one of the endorsers who has facilitated this man’s rise. They should be incensed with every pundit and talking-head who has aided and abetted and excused him. Because this has been the pattern for months now. Donald Trump makes some idiotic comment about a subject he’s never considered — torture, Islam, the First Amendment, health care, women, &c. — and then real conservatives, who have actually rubbed two brain cells together thinking about these subjects, have to spend the next day, or week, or month, putting out the fire, assuring everyone that, no, conservatives don’t actually think like this. It’s exhausting, it’s absurd, and it should end. Donald Trump’s statements are not intended to be “true” or “false”; they’re not intended to represent what he actually believes, because he doesn’t believe anything. He doesn’t intend his proposals as serious ideas, to be debated and refined and maybe even executed. His utterances are placeholders. They’re strictly intended to fill space in this interview, or at that rally. Self-contradiction doesn’t matter. If one argument is blown up, he’ll switch to another. This is how a cult of personality works. The statements are irrelevant; the only thing that matters is the speaker. If Trump says the sky is orange, there’s no point trying to convince him it’s blue. So we should stop trying. Stop trying to convince Trump supporters that he’s contradicting himself. Stop trying to show that Trump’s solutions won’t work. Stop treating Trump’s policies as serious contributions to the hopper of policy ideas — because they’re not. It’s time for a blackout. We are at a point where the only appropriate response to Trump’s ramblings is ostracism. He’s not a reasonable person with whom you can have a rational discussion, and we should treat him accordingly. Whenever Donald Trump says anything — even if it has the patina of a reasonable, coherent thought — the response of every genuine right-winger should be: “I don’t care what Donald Trump says. He is an affront to rational thought and reasonable, thoughtful, humane discourse. I’m not going to waste time responding to any word that comes from his mouth. Period.” He — and every one of his bottom-feeding surrogates, and his media minions, and his army of Twitter eggs — should be ignored. They should be boxed out of public discourse, with prejudice. Donald Trump has done incalculable damage to virtually every cause for which the conservative moment has fought for the last 60 years. It’s not enough to say he’s wrong. He should be exiled from public life. The Left will never do that; Trump’s success is theirs. This must be the work of whatever conscientious conservatives remain, and it has to start now.

Thomas Sowell outlines common misconceptions about economics, race, and racism.

Jobs, families, incomes, and experience all sour the public on big government.

In the controversy surrounding that National Enquirer story alleging that Ted Cruz had extramarital affairs, plot either thickened or thinned Wednesday after...

Well this is rich. Harbinger of truth Dan Rather, the disgraced former CBS Evening News anchor was on MSNBC’s Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell Tuesday actually agreeing with President Obama’s critique of the media. Asked to comment on Obama’s statements, Rather blamed the major networks for not doing enough hard-hitting, investigative reporting that he said “we particularly need in this presidential election.”

Four early appointees say they'd scrap a convention rule that helps Trump.

CBS reports: JACKSON, Miss. (WJTV) – The Mississippi House wants to allow the state prisons to execute prisoners using a firing squad if officials decide lethal injection is too expensive or unavailable. Governor Phil Bryant voiced his support of the bill. “If the senate passes a firing squad bill, I’ll certainly sign it. My belief is we need to carry out a capital punishment that when the courts say that it’s necessary; and if it takes a firing squad we’ll do exactly that,” said Governor Bryant. Good for the Mississippi House. Not, of course, because I approve of the death penalty (I don’t), but because the arguments made against the use of firing squads are almost always either cowardly or cynical. When coming from pro-death-penalty types, they’re cowardly because they tend to be made by people who want the state to kill people but who don’t want to see what death looks like. That, after all, is what lethal injection is: A way of medicalizing executions so that those who endorse them do not have to face their violence. Coming from anti-death-penalty types, the rejection of firing squads tends to be made as part of an attempt to destroy capital punishment by undemocratic means. The real reason that many anti-death penalty campaigners are against alternative killing methods is that they’ve been fighting hard to get rid of the drugs that are necessary for lethal injections and they don’t want to see their efforts undermined by men with rifles. I am against the death penalty, but if we’re going to have it we should be honest about what we’re doing. If Mississippi is prepared to kill people who have erred beyond penal redemption, it should be prepared to do so without euphemism. Clearly, it is. That’s honest, at least.

It looks as though Hillary Clinton is giving up on Wisconsin, conceding it to rival Vermont Sen. Bernard Sanders, as she hunkers down in New York to prepare for a battle there.