Monthly Archives: June 2022

More than half of U.S. Democrats believe that President Joe Bidens policies caused the nations record-high inflation.

A new poll from Issues & Insights and TIPP found that approximately 53 percent of blue voters blame Biden, his administration, and his agenda for Mays 8.6 percent year-over-year increase in essential goods and services costs that are plaguing Americans.

As a matter of fact, according to I&I, every race, age, income, and education group except for self-proclaimed liberals overwhelmingly felt Bidens policies caused the current inflation mess.

In general, 64 percent of American adults said they think Biden shoulders the responsibility for skyrocketing prices. Of that 64 percent, most (38 percent) said Biden is very responsible and 26 percent said the Democrat is somewhat responsible.

Only 8 percent of those surveyed said they believed Biden was not at all responsible for the countrys economic woes.

Despite Americans widespread belief that the nations money problems were caused by Biden, the White House refuses to take responsibility for them. Biden insists that Russias Vladimir Putin is to blame for record-high gas prices and rising costs in the U.S. but Americans arent buying it.

No matter how many times White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre lies that the economy is in a better place than it has been historically, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents know excessive federal spending and government-induced supply chain issues are only a recipe for economic disaster.

According to the same poll, approximately two-thirds of U.S. adults said they believed too much federal spending made inflation worse.

Americans disapproval of inflation doesnt bode well for Biden, whose overall average job approval rating currently sits at 39.7 percent. Nor does it bode well for Democrats going into midterms where a majority of Americans say their top voting priority will be the state of the economy.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

Follow this link:

Poll: Majority Of Democrats Say Runaway Inflation Is Biden's Fault - The Federalist

Younger readers probably wont comprehend how important magazines like Sports Illustrated were in pre-internet culture. Most sports news wasfound in local papers and in short segments at 10 p.m. on the nightly news. Sports Illustrated was oftenthough, periodically, competition would pop upthe sole venue in which a sports fan could find deeply reported, well-crafted features and profiles, not to mention often-remarkable photography (the swimsuit issues, naturally, sold best). The magazines circulation hit around 3.5 million in the mid-1980s, with another million copies being bought on newsstands.

In my late 20s, I brieflyworkedfor the company (well, the website, which was then called CNN/SI.comperhaps a portend of terrible things to come), where I occasionally interacted with one of my writing heroes, Frank Deford. What a dream it was. I would have done it for free. I guess I almost did.

Ive largely ignored the magazine for the past decade or so, not for any philosophical reasons or any animosity, but with all the choices it simply fell off my radar. But after running across an astoundingly nonsensical pieceheadlinedWhen Faith and Football Teamed Up Against American Democracy, Im glad I did.

Ostensibly, the feature is about Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, a SCOTUS case regarding a school district punishing a football coach named Joseph Kennedy for a 30-second silent prayer on the 50-yard line after every game. The pieces subhead describes the case as so:

The U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide the case of a football coach at a public high school who was told he wasnt allowed to pray on the field in front of players. The expected result is a win for the coachand the further erosion of the separation between church and state.

In frontof players? Can you imagine? How will our brittle democracy survive an open display of religiosity? Greg Bishop, who could easily have written this piece for The Nation, offers no explanation of how a prayer is eroding separation of Church and State. Even this atheist, after all, understands that the Establishment Clause doesnt ban praying in public placesnot in schools, and not even in Congress, where prayers are recited before every session.

Bishop anoints Rachel Laser of Americans United for Separation of Church and State his proxy, allowing her to frame the debate over Kennedy in the most preposterously hyperbolic, partisan terms imaginable, even though the only thing her organization excels at is losing cases. The bad-faith retelling of Kennedys story is crammed with partisan platitudes about democracy being under attack on issues like voting rights, LGBTQ rights, and the potential overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Now, its unimaginable that a major publication would allow areporter to throw around phrases like voting integrity, religious freedom, and protecting the life of the unbornwithout quotation marks intimating that the ideas arent realand thats probably always been the case. Though the piece brings upRoethree times, no one explains how a court (concerned solely with the constitutionality of laws) is undermining democratic institutions by giving abortion rights, unmentioned in the Constitution, back to voters. Washington State, home of Bremerton High School, sadly, will not be restricting abortion any time soon.

In any event, Bishop also uses appeals to authority, tapping independent scholars or legal experts who hold no vested interest in the outcomeone of the only names offered isconspiracy theoristLaurence Tribe. He warns readers about the nefarious, big-money forces propping up Kennedy. First Liberty($7,255,961in assets), writes Bishop, is a powerful Christian conservative law firm, part of apowerful right-wing machinepowerfulis the key word herewhile Americans United for Separation of Church and State($11,141,577in assets, not counting in-kind contributions from places like the Meredith Corporation, which has $6.727 billion in assets), are simply terrified and transported to an alternate universe of disinformation and propagandaand, in that world, even democracy is in danger.

Disinformation? Its all just progressive mad libs. Thats what happens when democracy is a euphemism for achieving political ends in whatever fashion happens to be convenient. Sometimes, when the numbers are there, it means crass majoritarianism and centralized federal power; and when the numbers arent there, it can mean compulsion or a court dictating rights by fiat.

In this case, a school district, not the coach, is attempting to limit speech. There is no prohibition on praying in public institutions. Such a prohibition has never existed. Any scholarand Bishop claims to have spoken to many for the piecewho claims that the Constitutions authors would have found the act of kneeling after a competition perilous to foundational American ideals is a complete fraud. Then again, When Faith and Football Teamed Up Against American Democracy is a microcosm of the incurious activism that dominates journalism these days. Its one thing to put up with relentless bias thats infected virtually every area of mainstream culture, but another to see once-respected magazines putting out such banal, predictable propaganda.

Excerpt from:

Sports Illustrated Is Now A Bullhorn For Attacks On The First Amendment - The Federalist

MATAMOROS, Mexico Its easy to find gut-wrenching stories at the border. Ask almost any migrant you meet in northern Mexico and youll hear about the violence and hardships they endured to get as far as they have.

Alba Luz Perdomo, for example, fled Honduras with her husband and 13-year-old daughter after a gang killed her brother and threatened to kill them too. But that was just the beginning of their troubles.

They were forced to leave a farm where they had been working in the southern Mexican state of Tabasco by locals who told them foreigners werent welcome. In Monterrey, Perdomos daughter was nearly abducted by their landlord. They sought help from a man claiming to be a pastor in Matamoros, but who turned out to be a human trafficker and kept the family in his house for 20 days before they managed to escape.

Now theyre living in a migrant shelter in Matamoros, just across the river from Brownsville, Texas. But theyre afraid to leave the walled compound of the shelter because the local cartel keeps trying to recruit her husband. Perdomo says she doesnt want to cross the border illegally, but doesnt know what to do. Im asking God to do something, she says, because this is horrible.

Alba Luz Perdomo recounts her familys harrowing journey through Mexico to Matamoros.

Its impossible not to feel sympathy for this woman and her family. Their story is shockingly commonplace among migrants stuck in Mexican border towns like Matamoros and Reynosa, where I recently traveled with a pair of colleagues, Emily Jashinsky and David Agren, to better understand the ongoing border crisis. (Read part one of this series here.)

But too often, sympathetically conveying these stories many of which are impossible to verify is the extent of the medias coverage of the crisis. It makes for a compelling read and, especially when President Donald Trump was in office, a just-so morality tale complete with villains and victims and a heroic struggle for justice. For left-leaning reporters, it confirms all their prior assumptions about the anti-immigrant bigotry of Trump and his supporters, and the bravery and nobility of the migrants (and, by extension, of themselves).

Of course, such biased coverage has the effect of obscuring the causes of the crisis and clouding our understanding of how its playing out. But looking beyond the personal stories of hardship and suffering we usually see in the corporate press and beyond the outrage-driven coverage we often see in conservative media we can discern the outlines of an entire black market industry around illegal immigration thats been created and sustained by U.S. border policy, which cartels and smugglers are using to enrich themselves at the expense of migrants and the American people alike.

Consider the story of Ramon and his wife Veronica and their two-year-old daughter. They left Nicaragua, Ramon told us, because of poverty. We spoke to them on a recent weekday afternoon at the Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas, where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement drops off nearly everyone it discharges from federal custody in that area. They had just been released that morning along with about 70 others.

Their story, like many others on the border, is terrifying. When Ramon and Veronica and their daughter reached Reynosa, their bus was stopped at a cartel checkpoint and they were asked for a code. (When migrants pay off the cartel they get a code. Thats how the cartel keeps track of whos paid and who hasnt.)

They hadnt paid and didnt have a code, so the cartel kidnapped them and took them to a stash house with a bunch of other families. Ramon says the house had no water, no food, no electricity. They were held there 10 days, until family members back in Nicaragua were able to get together $3,000 (a thousand for each of them) and pay the cartel tax.

Veronica and Ramon and their daughter at the Respite Center In McAllen, Texas.

After they paid, they were taken over the river by boat, picked up by Border Patrol, and were released a few days later on humanitarian parole. In this case, they were released on parole through arelatively recent bureaucratic innovation designed to streamline the processing of illegal border-crossers and prevent overcrowding in federal detention centers.

They say they were only asked for the address and telephone number of their destination. ICE discharged them with a sheaf of documents that allows them to travel inside the United States which theyll need to do, because they were also given a date, 30 days out, to report to an ICE office in central Washington State, where theyre headed.

What they dont have is a court date or work permits. For whatever reason, their parole documents, which they showed us, did not include a work authorization number. This concerned them greatly, as it did most everyone we spoke with at the Respite Center who didnt have work authorization.

The irony is that Ramon and Veronica, if their story is true, might actually have a compelling case for political asylum. But they seemed far less concerned with filing an asylum claim than with getting a hold of work permits.

The two are in fact connected. If you successfully file an asylum claim, you also get authorization to work in the United States while the case runs its course, which, because immigration courts are so backlogged, now takesalmost five years. This is one reason so many illegal immigrants arrested after crossing the border are claiming asylum. Even if they have no chance in court, they can work in the United States in the meantime and send money to their families back home. For many migrants, thats the ultimate purpose of crossing the border in the first place.

But there are other ways to get authorization to work besides filing an asylum claim. We spoke to a group of Haitian men at the Respite Center who had all been released under a slightly different iteration of humanitarian parole. Their paperwork differed significantly from Ramon and Veronicas. Not only did these men have authorization to work, they had court dates for removal proceedings that were months away, some more than a year. A staff member at the Respite Center told me she had seen court dates for removal proceedings (not asylum hearings) as far out as 2026.

The bureaucratic morass these people are pulled into upon crossing the border is dizzying. Even for an American citizen and a native English speaker, its hard to follow. No wonder the reality of U.S. immigration policy gets distilled down to a few essentials on the south side of the Rio Grande.

What most migrants there believe is in fact the truth, more or less: if you can get across the Rio Grande, you will probably be allowed to stay. Under what conditions and for how long is not as important to them as crossing the border and getting released from U.S. custody, preferably with permission to work.

Because of this, smuggling networks and cartels are able to collect massive revenues from migrants, knowing that once inside the United States they will be able to earn far more than they could back home or in Mexico. Thats why, for example, the cartel that kidnapped Ramon and Veronica held them until family members back in Nicaragua came up with a cash payment of three thousand dollars.

Those family members no doubt went into debt with local loan sharks to come up with the money, as migrants families are often forced to do. But if Ramon and Veronica can get into the United States and start working, it will ultimately be worth it. For some migrants stuck in northern Mexico, failing to get into the United States isnt an option; if they dont get in and start working, their families back home will never be able to repay the loan sharks.

Haitian migrants wait near the international bridge in Matamoros to meet with immigration lawyers.

This is dynamic now all up and down the border. Indeed, its hard to overstate the extent to which illegal immigration has become an industrial-scale, international smuggling black market that operates according to these incentives.

In Matamoros, Pastor Abraham Barberi, who runs one of two migrant shelters in the city, told us that back in 2019, when some 3,000 migrants were concentrated in a sprawling encampment near the international bridge, the cartel came in and made every person there pay a tax. The cartel made a lot of money off that, Barberi told us. A lot of money.

The 54-year-old pastor has been working in Matamoros for more than 20 years, and personally knows many members of the cartel here, which he says controls everything here now, including the police and the municipal government. Even the predominantly Haitian migrant community, we were told, has been infiltrated by the cartel as a way of keeping track of newcomers. (As if to underscore the point, a few days after we left town the cartel imposed blockades along main roads in Matamoros and set fire to a bunch of vehicles, supposedly in retaliation for the arrest of a Gulf Cartel boss.)

They know youre here, Barberi tells us at one point, but quickly adds that were safe, not to worry. They wont bother you because they dont want trouble with the U.S. government, or any foreign governments. He says the cartel leaves him and his shelter alone, not just because they know hes doing good work but because hes not trying to profit off the migrants in his care.

If we were doing something illegal with the migrants, or we were charging them to stay here, collecting money, profiting from them, the cartel would be here in a heartbeat, he says, snapping his fingers for emphasis. They would want a part of it. But they know were not doing that. I have asked thecoyotes[smugglers] please, dont do business here, do it over there. And they respect that.

At the same time, Barberi adds, when the cartel-affiliated smugglers want customers, they know where to find them. In a sense, their business is right here. They dont have to go around looking for them.

Its not just cartels in border towns that see migrants as potential customers, its also Mexican officials in the countrys interior. Miguel, a Salvadoran taxi driver who came to Reynosa with his wife and three kids, relayed a common story we heard from others in the shelters: that on the bus ride north, when they reached Monterrey, uniformed and armed federal agents boarded the bus and asked everyone for their papers. Miguel and his family had none, so the agents demanded payment.

Variations of this story are common. Sometimes its not federal agents but state police or cartel gunmen. What emerges, though, is a picture of official corruption at every level of Mexican society that enables hundreds of thousands of migrants to transit through Mexico each month and arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border. Its a massive and lucrative business.

Every aspect of illegal immigration has been monetized, including information and often outright misinformation. Barberi told us he found out recently that his name, address, and phone number were being sold for a thousand dollars in Central and South America by people claiming that if migrants could just get to Barberis shelter in Matamoros, he would take them across the border.

Now, Barberi tells arriving migrants right away that no one at his shelter is going to take anyone across the border. Often, he says, they also think theres a list they can get on to get into the United States. Barberi tells them there is no list, it doesnt exist. He says he wishes the U.S. government would make a video explaining all this and post it to social media, to deter people from coming. He has repeatedly asked the U.S. consulate to do this, to no avail.

But even if such a video or PR campaign existed, it would be going up against the personal testimony of hundreds of thousands of people who are crossing the border illegally and being released into the United States every month. There is nothing the Biden administration can say, no message it can send, that refutes the tangible results of its policies: people are getting in, and they are staying.

The Respite Center where we met Ramon and Veronica only allows migrants to stay 24 hours. Hundreds of people churn through there every day. Even those like Ramon and Veronica, who said they had no money left to travel to Washington state, will soon move on, somehow. Veronica told us they were waiting to see what will happen, that a friend in Washington might loan them the money for airfare, and that throughout their ordeal, We have always trusted in an all-powerful God.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

See original here:

Border Dispatch, Part II: 'The Cartel Controls Everything Here Now' - The Federalist

Last week, the Jan. 6Committee featured video clips from former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr during its hearing on the violence that erupted at the capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. For the few Americans following the show trial, Barrs testimony seemed a denial by former President Donald Trumps top law enforcement officer of any legitimate basis to challenge the outcome of the November 2020 election.

To Democrats, this proved Trump sought to steal the White House from Biden via a coup. To Republicans, Barr revealed himself as a traitor uninterested in investigating voter fraud. Neither view is correct.

In his deposition, Barr testified about his disagreements with the then-president about claims of election fraud. Barr resigned as attorney general on December 14, 2020, in the aftermath of the November general election as Trump continued to dispute the outcome. The day he resigned, Barr explained, when he walked in to speak with the president,

[Trump] went off on a monologue saying that there was now definitive evidence involving fraud through the Dominion machines and a report had been prepared by a very reputable cybersecurity firm, which he identified as Allied Security Operations Group. And he held up the report and he had and then he asked that a copy of it be made for me. And while a copy was being made, he said, you know, This is absolute proof that the Dominion machines were rigged.

Barr testified to the committee that he had told the president theyve wasted a whole month on these claims on the Dominion voting machines and they were idiotic claims. There was absolutely zero basis for the allegations, Barr explained, yet people believed there was this systemic corruption in the system and that their votes didnt count and that these machines controlled by somebody else were actually determining it, which was complete nonsense.

Then-President Trump also raised what he called the big vote dump in Detroit, Barr explained, where people saw boxes coming into the counting station at all hours of the morning and so forth. Barr told the committee that he had explained to Trump that there were approximately 630 precincts in Detroit, and unlike elsewhere in the state, they centralize the counting process. So theyre not counted in each precinct, theyre moved to counting stations. And so a normal process would involve boxes coming in at all different hours. Barr said point blank, Theres no indication of fraud in Detroit.

The committee also heard testimony that Barr had directed B.J. Pak, the then-U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, to investigate a security tape from the State Farm Arena in Atlanta that Trump believed showed a suitcase of illegal ballots secreted beneath a table being pulled out after election workers had been sent home for the night. Pak explained they investigated the claims and that the longer segment on the video established the alleged black suitcase was actually an official lockbox where ballots were kept safe.

The bottom line, according to Barrs testimony, was that he had not seen any widespread election fraud that would question the outcome of the election, and that the stuff Trumps people were shoveling out to the public were bullsh-t. . . the claims of fraud were bullsh-t.

Claims of election fraud, however, represented but a portion of Trumps challenges to the November 2020 results. Also, that the above claims were bullsh-t says nothing about whether there were systemic violations of election law and illegal voting. Nor were those questions ones for the attorney general or the U.S. attorneys investigating allegations of fraud.

Barr made this point in his testimony when he explained that he had told Trump the department doesnt take sides in elections, and the department is not an extension of of [Trumps] legal team. And our role is to investigate fraud. Barrs testimony also made clear that the U.S. Department of Justice investigated claims of fraud, such as the supposed suitcase of ballots in Atlanta.

But what Barr didnt investigateand indeed shouldnt have investigatedwere the many violations of state election law highlighted by Trumps legal team in their lawsuits challenging the election results. For instance, in Georgia, the state election code requires residents to votein the county in which they reside, unless they changed their residence within 30 days of the election and outside of the 30-day grace period, if people vote in a county in which they no longer reside, their vote in that county would be illegal.

Trumps legal team obtained solid evidence that as many as 30,000 Georgia residents voted illegally in their prior county in 2020. Trump never had his day in court on this challenge, though, which theoretically could have resulted in Georgias election results tossed.

Thats not the business of the attorney general, however, so those Republicans seeing Barr as derelict misunderstand his role. Likewise, those Democrats championing Barrs words, believing it establishes a coup attempt by Trump, ignore that his testimony focused solely on election fraud.

The former attorney generals testimony concerning vote harvesting perfectly illustrates the misplaced role both the right and the left sought to ascribe to Barr. During last weeks Jan. 6 Committee hearing, Barr testified it was his opinion then and his opinion now that the election was not stolen by fraud. He added that he hadnt seen anything since the election that changed his mind on that, including the 2,000 Mulesmovie.

The 2,000 Mules movie, produced by Dinesh DSouza, includes information about an investigation by election integrity group True The Vote and features its founder Catherine Engelbrecht and its election intelligence analyst Gregg Phillips. DSouzas film explains True The Votes use of GPS surveillance geolocation data emitted by cellphones to help identify phones in key battleground states that made numerous trips to multiple election drop boxes and, in Georgia, to non-profits which the film does not identify. The movie also includes videos of persons placing multiple ballots into drop boxeswhich is illegal in some states, including Georgia, unless those ballots are for family members.

Barr told the committee that both he and the Georgia Bureau of Investigations were unimpressed with the use of cellphone geolocation data because, if you take 2 million cell phones and and figure out where they are physically in a big city like Atlanta or wherever, just by definition youre going to find many hundreds of them have passed by and spent time in the vicinity of these boxes.

The former attorney general added, though, that he held his fire on the photographic evidencebecause I thought, well, h-ll, if they have a lot of photographs of the same person dumping a lot of ballots in different boxes, you know, thats hard to explain. There was a little bit of photographic evidence from 2,000 Mules, Barr said, but he found it was lacking, and that it didnt establish widespread illegal harvesting.

In response to Barrs deposition testimony, the 2,000 Mules producer took to Twitter, challenging the former attorney general to a public debate. What do you say, Barr? DSouza tweeted. Do you dare back up your belly laughs with arguments that can withstand rebuttal and cross-examination? DSouza added in comments to The Epoch Times, The hearings are one-sided propaganda, not an attempt to get to the truth. The producer then invited people to view the evidence in 2,000 Mules and judge for themselves.

Some Republicans saw Barrs dig at DSouzas movie as proof the former attorney general was totally disinterested in election fraud, while Democrats framed Barrs comments as establishing Trumps attempt at a coup. Ignored by both sides, however, was what Barr said next:

The other thing is people dont understand is that its not clear that even if you can show harvesting that that changes the or the results of the election. The courts are not going to throw out votes and then figure out what votes were harvested and throw them out. Youd still the burden on the challenging party to show that illegal votes were cast, votes were the result of undue influence or bribes or there was really, you know, the person was non compos mentis. But absent that evidence, I just didnt see courts throwing out votes anyway.

With these few sentences Barr capsulized the disconnect between what many Trump voters believed the attorney general and federal prosecutors roles to be following the November 2020 election, and the reality that the Department of Justices focus rests on provable federal crimes. Barr tasked federal prosecutors with investigating allegations of widespread fraud, such as the manipulation of the Dominion voting machines and the supposed secreted suitcases of hidden ballots. U.S. attorney offices found the charges unfounded. And while ballot harvesting may be illegal under some states election codes, for the Department of Justice to get involved, more than that would be needed.

But even then, as Barr noted, that doesnt undo the election, or rendered Georgia, Michigan, or Pennsylvanias results void. Rather, courts hear and decide election challenges, and such challenges extend far beyond issues of election fraud. Therein is the reason Democrats parading of Barrs testimony is also misplaced.

While Barr could testify concerning the cases of voter fraud the Department of Justice investigated, in the aftermath of the November 2020 election the former attorney general did not scrutinize, nor should he have, violations of state election law or potential violations of the Equal Protection Clause caused by the states disparate standards applied during the election.

And Trumps legal team had solid evidence of systemic violations of the election code and the widespread counting of illegal votes, as well as potential Equal Protection violations. Further, in the case of Georgia, there were enough illegal votes cast to likely render the states election results void.

Attorney General Barr, however, lacked both the authority (and the tools) to render judgment on matters of state election law. His deposition testimony to the committee also suggests that matters of election law remain outside his wheelhouse, as a court need not identify the ballots illegally harvested or cast to rule the election results invalid, as Barr seemed to suggest. Rather, under Georgia election law, if the evidence established that there are more illegal or irregular votes than the margin of victory, the remedy is a new election.

In other words, for Georgias results to be undone, Trump only needed to establish there were 11,780 illegal votes; he did not need to identify the illegally cast ballots and establish they represented votes for Biden in sufficient numbers to render him the winner.

Thats why, in his widely misrepresented telephone call with the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffenperger, Trump said, All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes. Trumps legal team had found the votes, but the Georgia courts refused to timely consider Trumps challenges.

Likewise, many of the issues Trumps legal team raised after the general election and before the results were certified, remained unanswered until a year or more later, when state courts declared the procedures used in November 2020 illegal or unconstitutional.

Nothing Barr did or could have done could have altered the reality that there is insufficient time between the November election and the certification of the vote for states to do much more than a recount and audit, and the Department of Justice to conduct a high-level investigation of what would need to be widespread and obvious fraud to be caught in time to change the outcome of an election.

Yet evidence accumulated since Biden was certified the winner of the 2020 election makes clear that in every swing state, systemic violations of the election code occurred. While moving to the widespread use of mail-in voting in the name of Covid-19 exacerbated the problems, post-election scrutiny of the last general election reveals that every defect in our electoral system identified in 2005 by the bipartisan Commission on Election Reform, co-chaired by Democrat Jimmy Carter and Republican Jim Baker, remains a problem today.

At the time, Carter and Baker warned in the commissions 100-plus page report that elections are the heart of democracy and if elections are defective, the entire democratic system is at risk. The commission added as a corollary to that first principle that confidence in elections matters equally, and in fact is central to our nations democracy.

So, when the Jan. 6 Committee show trial finally ends, Americans need to remember election integrity is not about Trump or Barr, nor Democrats or Republicans: It is about our country and her future. That future depends on a serious revamping of the American electoral systemand soon.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist's senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prizethe law schools highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

See more here:

Why Both Republicans And Democrats Are Wrong About Bill Barr - The Federalist

In its attempt to blame former President Donald Trump for the crimes committed on January 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol, House Democrats have spent the week focused on Trumps unsupported claims of widespread election fraud. The Jan. 6 select committee and the legacy media outlets promoting the show trial completely ignore, however, the verifiable evidence of systemic violations of election law, illegal voting, and the constitutionally deficient execution of the November 2020 electionincluding issues Trump challenged following the election.

Georgia provides a peach of an example. President Biden won Georgia and the states 16 electoral votes by a margin of 11,779 individual votes, but before the state certified the results of the November 2020 election, Trump challenged the outcome, raising several issues both in and out of court. Trump hammered accusations of fraud in Fulton County, claiming counterfeit ballots secreted in suitcases and vote-flipping by Dominion Voting Systems gave Biden the victory. But Trump also contested the Georgia results based on evidence indicating that tens of thousands of illegal votes were improperly counted.

While Trumps legal team argued illegal votes in some 30-plus categories were improperly included in the final election tally, violations of Section 21-2-218 of the Georgia election code alone closed the gap between the two presidential candidates. That section provides that state residents mustvotein the county in which they reside, unless they changed their residence within 30 days of the election and outside of the 30-day grace period, if people vote in a county in which they no longer reside, their vote in that county would be illegal.

Shortly after the November general election, Mark Davis, the president of Data Productions Inc. and an expert in voter data analytics and residency issues, compared voting records obtained from the Georgia secretary of states office with the National Change of Address (NCOA) database. After excluding individuals who moved within 30 days of the general election, Davis identified nearly 35,000 Georgia voters who indicated they had moved from one Georgia county to another, but then voted in the 2020 general election in the county from which they had moved.

Trump highlighted this evidence during a telephone conversation with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. His election lawyers, he said, noted from that data they have actually hard numbers of tens of thousands of votes that were counted illegally, and that with the margin of victory less than 12,000, that in and of itself is sufficient to change the results or place the outcome in doubt.

The lawyers explained that they would like to sit down with your office . . . if you are able to establish that our numbers are not accurate, then fine. While the secretary of states representative indicated he was happy to get with our lawyers and well set that up, Cleta Mitchell, one of Trumps election lawyers, told The Federalist that meeting never happened.

We had tried for weeks to get the secretary of state to sit down with us to review the data, Mitchell said, noting that Raffensperger just kept saying the Trump campaigns data was wrong and, We said, Show us, then, where it is wrong.

But instead of meeting, according to Mitchell, the day after their call with the secretary of states office, lawyers sent Trumps legal team a very nasty letter saying they wouldnt give us any data until we dismissed all pending litigation. Then, after Trumps team dismissed the lawsuit following Senate candidate Kelly Loefflers withdrawal of her objections to the Georgia electors and asked for the promised meeting to review the data, the secretary of states office withdrew the offer, Mitchell told The Federalist.

While Trumps legal team was unable to either present their evidence in court or secure a meeting with the Georgia secretary of states office tocompare the data, Davis continued to pursue out-of-county illegal voting. Last year, Davis told The Federalist that in May 2021, he obtained an updated voter database from the secretary of states office and compared that data to the NCOA information he had processed in November.

As I reported at the time: When Davis ran the data, he found that, of the approximately 35,000 Georgians who indicated they had moved from one county to another county more than 30 days before the November general election, as of May, more than 10,300 had updated their voter registration information, providing the secretary of state the exact address they had previously provided to the USPS. Those same 10,000-plus individuals all also cast ballots in the county in which they had previously lived.

Daviss follow-up analysis provided solid evidence that there were enough votes cast illegally in a county in which the citizens no longer resided to equal the margin separating Trump and Biden. And that was but one category of illegal votes identified by Trumps legal team.

Mitchell, now a senior legal fellow at the Conservative Partnership Institute, told The Federalist that in addition to the individuals who moved out of a county more than 30 days before the election and then voted illegally in their prior county, Trumps legal team identified an additional 30-plus categories of illegal votes that were wrongly included in the certified totals.

We never were able to present our evidence to the court, however, because the chief judge of Fulton County, Chris Brasher, failed to appoint a judge eligible to hear the election contest for a month, Mitchell said.

None of those 30-plus categories involved the Dominion Voting System, claims of counterfeit votes, or ballot harvesting, but concerned specific violations of the Georgia election code. And those numbers far exceeded Bidens 11,779-vote margin of victory.

Yet the January 6 Committee and their cohorts in the press cast all the challenges to the November 2020 tabulations as crazy conspiracy theories of fraud peddled by Trump to steal the election.

The same anti-Trump media lied about Trumps telephone call with Raffensperger, falsely telling the country that Trump had pressuredthe Georgia Secretary of States chief investigator Frances Watson to find the fraud, promising that she would soon be a national hero. But two months later, when the transcript of the call was released, it became clear that Trump was speaking of establishing there were 11,780 illegal votes from the various categories identified by his lawyers.

The fact is we had already found many more illegal votes than the margin (11,779), Mitchell told The Federalist, We didnt need to find anything. We already knew which votes were illegal and had been included in the certified total, the election lawyer said, stressing that, under Georgia law, if the evidence established that there are more illegal or irregular votes than the margin of victory, the remedy is a new election.

Last July, the secretary of states office confirmed to The Federalist that its investigation into the approximately 35,000 residents who moved from one county to another more than 30 days before the election remain[ed] ongoing. But follow-up outreaches to Raffensperger and key members of his staff inquiring on the status of the investigation went unanswered.

Meanwhile, the Jan. 6 Committee continues to spin challenges to the November 2020 election as concerning nothing but nonsensical claims of voter fraud. With the corrupt medias cooperation, the vast majority of Americans may never learn of the systemic violations of election law, illegal voting, and the disparate treatment of voters in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, the latter seen most clearly with the infiltration of funding from Mark Zuckerberg to targeted Democratic-heavy populations.

Heck, its unlikely most members of Congress know of these systemic problems with our electoral system. But with midterms around the corner and Democrats likely facing a bloodbath, dont be surprised if left-leaning politicians and their friends in the press discover substantial problems in about five months time.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist's senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prizethe law schools highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

Excerpt from:

Jan. 6 Committee Ignores Clear Evidence Of Broken Election Laws - The Federalist

A political tsunami is coming for Democrats. The resounding victory of Republican newcomer Mayra Flores in the special election for Texas 34th congressional district signals what most political pundits and election prognosticators already know: a red tidal wave will soon sweep away a Democrat Party in thrall to far-left radicals and progressive extremists.

However, as impressive as Flores seven-point victory was in the nations second-most heavily Hispanic congressional district a district which Joe Biden carried by four points the real impact will be felt in state legislatures.

What the red tsunami portends is not merely a coming Republican majority in Congress and state capitols, but a realignment that propels conservatives into power. All across the nation in one primary after another, conservative state legislative candidates are defeating milquetoast establishment and moderate candidates.

This is encouraging as it is in our home states where our freedoms and way of life will either be won or lost. The renewed focus on states from conservatives is a game-changing development. Indeed, the State Freedom Caucus Network was launched in December 2021 with this specific mission in mind: to create a bulwark outside Washington D.C. that will protect as many Americans as possible from both the neo-Marxist policies coming out of the modern Democrat Party and the fecklessness that is a hallmark of establishment elites in the Republican Party.

The strategy appears to be working.

For example, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds supported a slew of conservative challengers against liberal Republican incumbents beholden to teachers unions and antagonistic toward school choice. Six establishment incumbents in the Iowa State House lost to pro-parent conservative challengers with all but one of Reynolds endorsed candidates defeating their entrenched opponents.

This stands in stark contrast to South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a darling of the Washington elite, who conversely supported eleven moderate candidates. Incredibly, Noem even backed Democrats who recently switched parties against budding South Dakota Freedom Caucus members. Only four of her preferred legislators won their primaries.

For a sitting governor with a national profile, these results illustrate two realities: that Noem is fundamentally out of touch with her own electorate and that voters are backing candidates who will actually fight to preserve freedom.

In Georgia, members of the Georgia Freedom Caucus were targeted by establishment GOP forces seeking to rid themselves of meddlesome legislators with actual principles. David Ralston, the liberal Republican Speaker of the House, redrew district lines to punish conservative state legislators like Rep. Philip Singleton. While Singleton was forced to retire, Ralstons overall efforts largely backfired as voters propelled every other member of the Freedom Caucus to victory. They even tossed out Rep. Bonnie Rich, the loyal lieutenant who redrew district lines for Ralston to punish conservatives.

In South Carolina, thirteen out of the fourteen members of the South Carolina Freedom Caucus won their primaries while four establishment incumbents lost to freedom-minded conservative challengers. In Nevada, Freedom Caucus incumbents won all their races with only one that remains undecided.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Borgum spent over $1 million to back moderate or left-leaning Republican candidates. He suffered similar results as Noem with conservatives crushing their opponents in primaries across the state.

The undercurrents of the red wave are clear: voters are in full revolt against the cultural and economic progressivism that is ravaging families and threatening our ability to live free. Voters are equally tired of the Republicans who enable and empower radicalized Democrats to trample our rights with woke nonsense.

It is for this very moment that the State Freedom Caucus Network exists. The Network stands ready to support liberty-minded state lawmakers with the resources, policy knowledge, and procedural strategies they need to ensure the rights of their citizens are protected and the progressive policies crushing American households are dismantled.

Establishment Republicans push the oft-repeated talking points that only weak-kneed, or as they call them, moderate, GOP candidates are electable. This is, like most conventional wisdom, only conventional and not actually wise.

On the other hand, voters understand that the hour is late. Unchecked progressivism, which has fully captured Americas cultural and political institutions after a decades-long march, now threatens the very freedom that undergirds our republic. Conservative warriors are being summoned by citizens ready to fight for the things that they love.

The red conservative wave is indeed upon us and candidates who do not stand with the American people will be washed out to sea.

Andy Roth is the President of the State Freedom Caucus Network.

Read the original post:

The Red Wave Is Not Just Inevitable, It's Also Conservative - The Federalist

Even though inflation has reached 40-year highs, topping out at 8.6 percent for the month of May, some took minor solace in the fact that prices havent increased at the rates seen during the Jimmy Carter era. But one influential analyst thinks that solving skyrocketing prices will require nearly as much effortand quite possibly, economic painas breaking the back of inflation did during the 1970s and early 1980s.

Former Treasury Secretary and longtime Democrat Larry Summers recently co-authored an important paper analyzing long-term inflation trends and statistics. The paper demonstrates that changes to the way the federal government measures inflation via the Consumer Price Index since the Carter era understate the current scope of the problemand the challenge the Federal Reserve faces in getting inflation under control today.

Two changes to the inflation measureone a one-time methodological change, and the other a long-running trendexplain much of the apparent difference in CPI rates between the late 1970s and today. The first comes from a 1983 move by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to remove homeownership costs from the CPI measurement and replace them with a metric called owners equivalent rent.

The new metric quantifies what homeowners would receive for their homes on the rental market. As one might expect, the metric closely tracks the rental market. (Rent is a separate component of the CPI.) Most importantly, shifting from homeownership costs to owners equivalent rent to calculate homeownership costs eliminated the direct effect of mortgage ratesand therefore interest rate policyon calculating the rate of inflation.

Prior to the 1983 methodological change, the very direct link between interest rates and the homeownership component of the CPI magnified the effects of efforts to combat inflation. Consider the two possible scenarios:

Summers and his co-authors argue that the interest rate CPI ratchet (my words, not theirs) of scenario one helped lead to the double-digit inflation rates of the late 1970s and early 1980s. While the 1983 change to the methodology means we will no longer see this ratchet in the monthly inflation statisticswhich explains why inflation hasnt risen above 10 percentit also means we wont benefit from the benefits of scenario two (i.e., a downward ratchet) once inflation starts to get under control.

Summers and company also note that, compared to past decades, a smaller portion of the Consumer Price Index consists of goods with volatile prices. This suggests that combating inflation will require a longer and more sustained effort.

For instance, in the early 1950s, food and clothing comprised roughly half of the total Consumer Price Index, as opposed to approximately 17 percent today. The shift means that more elements of the CPI come from sticky industries and sectorsones less amenable to sudden price shifts.

While a grocery store or clothing retailer changes its prices quite often, for instance, manufacturers of computers or other durable goods alter their prices less frequently. The fact that the latter types of sectors dominate the CPI compared to prior decades suggests that wringing inflation out of the economy will not happen overnight, nor very easily.

Summers famously predicted last February that inflation would accelerate if Democrats rammed through their $1.9 trillion stimulus legislation. Sure enough, it did. His newest analysis therefore bears watching, as does one ominous conclusion: that bringing inflation down to the Feds desired 2 percent level willrequire nearly the same amount of disinflation as achieved under [Federal Reserve] Chairman [Paul] Volcker.

Volcker, who served from 1979 to 1987, eventually tamed inflationbut not before having to raise interest rates as high as 20 percent, sparking the deep recession of the early 1980s. American families could face a reprise of these hardships in the coming months and years, thanks in no small part to the profligacy of both the Federal Reserve and spendthrift lawmakers over the last 70 years.

Continued here:

Study: Inflation Is Much Worse Than The Government Claims - The Federalist

By the way Chief Lee White of the Coeur dAlene Police Department is acting, youd swear he just prevented a mass shooting in a preschool using only psychic abilities and a roll of tape.

But thats not what White and his force did. Instead, on Saturday they arrested 31 guys who were found to be in possession of nothing other than a single smoke bomb and a plan to make noise throughout the city.

Each individual was charged with one misdemeanor, conspiracy to commit riot, based on the fact that the men involved were dressed in distinguished uniforms of khaki pants and blue t-shirts, plus some of them had shin guards and shields. There were no guns nor ammunition, but they did have some kind of document spelling out a plan to march in a line through a downtown park and agitate passersby.

The intent was to align in a column forming on the outside of the park, proceeding inward, until barriers to approach are met, according to The New York Times, and once an appropriate amount of confrontational dynamic has been established the column will disengage and head to Sherman [Ave.]. In other words: Show up, irritate pedestrians, and then leave.

Its certainly annoying and offensive, but since when did that require two press conferences from the police chief and fire-alarm coverage from The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and on and on?

Ah, thats because this wasnt just anybody. This wasnt Black Lives Matter or Antifa. It was the Patriot Front, a group made up of white nationalists. Thats why were supposed to believe this was so important. They were white racists and, as were told by the FBI and the media over and over again, thats the greatest threat to the country at the moment.

Its not because anyone was hurt or that there was even any evidence that there was a specific plan of assault. They had no weapons.

Admittedly, anything can be a weapon, but generally speaking, a shield is meant to defend, not attack. And Chief White said there were regular attendees walking around the [Pride] event with long guns and handguns and bear spray and all kinds of things like that. Thats perfectly legal for them to do in Idaho, but it was apparently the shields police were concerned with.

The police report from the arrest says that it was likely the intent of the group to incite physical confrontation and cause disorder, and use violence and/or the threat of violence to disturb the public peace.

Again, its not that thats not serious, but consider the hostage situation the entire nation faced (and continues to face) through the summer and fall of 2020 when violent Black Lives Matter riots were raging in every major city. Mostly peaceful, we were assured. In the case of Coeur dAlene, nothing happened, and in addition, White said plenty of activist groups were in the city at the same time, opposed to and in support of the Pride event, including the left-wing Antifa and the right-wing Panhandle Patriots.

A member of the Panhandle Patriots group is even on video ahead of time saying they planned to go head to head with the Pride organizers and attendees. Damn the repercussions, he said. Stand up, take it to the head, go to the fight.

Okay, so why was there a major arrest of an unaffiliated group that had nothing but a single smoke bomb? (Which, by the way, would have had minimal effect outdoors.)

White said his department is even working with the FBI on this matter involving misdemeanor charges. (Hmm where have we seen that before?)

This is an important story. Not because white nationalists are involved. But because for curious reasons, the FBI is.

Originally posted here:

The 'White Nationalists' At Idaho Pride Were The Least Armed That Day - The Federalist

Four Senate Democrats wrote a letter this week, detailing their demand for the Big Tech anti-trust bill thats been working its way through Congress over the past year. They want to help, they say; to clarify. They even included the text they want added to make it all better. The reality, however, is their effort is a poison pill and just the latest effort to kill the best chance to regulate Big Tech that Americas yet seen.

The bill the American Innovation and Choice Online Act would prevent what it calls self preferencing behavior among those tech companies so large and powerful that engaging in commerce requires engaging with them. Specifically: Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft.

Amazon, for instance, is infamous for requiring companies to turn over large amounts of data as a condition of selling on Amazon. Theyve been caught red-handed using that data to copy the most popular products, then making sure users see their knock-offs first. Under this bill, Amazon could not use its platforms market power to force that disclosure.

The four dissenting liberal senators like the worthy goal of the legislation, mind you; just not the little bit that might impede some of the most powerful companies in world history from censoring hate speech, disinformation and misinformation convenient catch-alls for nearly anything they dont like.

Although important, they write, competition policy goals should not override the ability of platforms to moderate content in good faith.

More to the point: These four senators appreciate that some smart Republicans have co-sponsored the bipartisan American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA); theyd just rather enjoy that support without any conservative or populist ideas along for the ride.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the lead Senate sponsor of the bill, has reportedly already promised Republicans will walk if the changes are made, and hes right: Populists and conservatives like Sens. Josh Hawley, Sen. Ted Cruz, and Rep. Matt Gaetz would flee. And make no mistake: Populists and conservatives defecting would not only kill the bill, it would kill any meaningful chance of reining in Silicon Valley for the next three years at least (and probably more).

Republicans are on the cusp of a giant electoral victory in November, but that doesnt mean conservatives and populists are on the cusp of any great policy victories. While the likely incoming speaker of the House has shown more awareness of the political moment than his Senate counterpart, the Californian politician is still far from hostile toward Big Tech or Big Business in general.

In a House and Senate run by Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell, Republican efforts to dismantle Big Tech will find even fewer GOP supporters than the ideologically diverse minority theyve assembled for the current effort.

Because even now, with cosponsors from Rep. Ken Buck to Gaetz, and from Hawley to Sen. Lindsay Graham, reformers need a lot of Democratic support.

Big Tech lobbyists are working hard to make the case to Republican members that leftist allies are proof of poison. But while its true its proof of compromise, the reality is both the left and rights bases are clamoring for action, and the American Innovation and Choice Online Act is the only game in town.

You can expect that Democratic support to evaporate overnight, however, if they lose the majority (which they will). Why? Simply put: They dont play like that. In the minority, their only goal will be to undermine the majoritys legitimacy; Republicans wont be able to pave a road or name a Post Office if it requires their support.

So yes: This is it. And thanks to the above, this is it, not only for this Congress, but for the next and likely the one after that.

There is reasonable resistance to the bill, of course. Senators like Mike Lee have expressed concern about its intrusion into the marketplace. Its a compromise, no doubt, but that is what the moment requires.

This isnt some boring squabble. In barrooms and boardrooms from D.C. to Oshkosh, activists on the right and left alike recognize Big Techs power is so large, it threatens our politics, markets, and civil society. Theres a fight coming, and this bill is the only viable fight coming for years.

Big Tech knows this: Every company targeted, save Microsoft, has dumped millions of dollars into lobbyists and ads opposing it. They say the bill poses a threat to their power and it does, because we know they pose a threat to us.

Washington works on momentum. People like to sign on to winning issues and are quick to defect from losing ones. But for both parties right now, reining in Big Tech is a winning issue.

These four Democrats? If Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer brings the American Innovation and Choice Online Act to the floor this summer (as hes promised), theyll likely fall in line. The alternative, they know, is a vote for Big Tech and no one wants to be seen doing that right now.

If they get their poison pill in there, however and the rare bipartisan coalition thats been assembled cracks Big Tech will win, and well all lose.

Here is the original post:

This Bill Is The Last Game In Town For Checking Big Tech's Power - The Federalist

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. So said Mark Twain, and so have felt countless sons. Well past twenty-one, I continue to be astonished at how much my old man has learned.

A memory illustrates. Early last year, I was driving home from Mass with my familyon Sunday morning. There the readings had included the Gospel of Lukes parable of the prodigal son. Its the tale of the headstrong son who demanded and squandered his inheritance and then begged for forgiveness, his older brother who never rebelled, and the father who loved them both.

I had always identified with the prodigal son, and figured everyone else did, too. This is partly due to my Irish heritage which, according to William Butler Yeats, means I have an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustains me through temporary periods of joy.

I said this to my wife, Devin, as we drove home from church. She said she understood the sentiment,but admitted at times feeling a certain kinship with the dutiful elder son.We clearly had interpreted the lesson differently, which surprised me. I decided to consult my father to break the tie.

I called him from the car, asking which character in the parable he identified with most. Easy, he answered. The father. Believing God alone had been, well, perpetually cast in that role, I never thought picking the father was an option. It seemed my dad, when faced with multiple-choice options (a) or (b), was puckishly choosing (c) as a write-in answer. Or so I thought.

Weeks later I shared the breezy exchange with Dr. William Muse of Knoxville, Tennessee.Muse, a contemporary of my father, is a dear friend whom I figured could use a smile. We were together in Dallas where he was tending to his daughter, Amanda, who was dying of cancer. Sad of heart but undaunted in his Catholic faith, he somehow found time to counsel me.

Read this, he said, pitching me Catholic priest and writer Henri Nouwens spiritual classic The Return of the Prodigal Son. Its a meditation inspired by the authors response to a reproduction of Rembrandts eponymous and hauntingly beautiful painting. How strange the book was there in Amandas bookcase, my own poor manstolle legeexperience.Your dad is not wrong. None of you are.

I devoured the book. It taught me that while we tend to be each actor prodigal son, elder son, even the father at different stages of life, we ultimatelyare called to progress tospiritual fatherhood. That is, were called to love one another exactly as the compassionate father did, with self-emptying hearts of mercy.

After all, neither the justice the prodigal son demanded nor the justice the elder son expected ultimately satisfies. Knowing this, the father gave his heirs freely and fully not the mere justice they sought but the far greater mercy they needed.

Justice may even the scales, but in mercy, the world is remade anew.As a broken world, so a penitent man.As we need merciful forgiveness, so must we grant it. As we are loved by God, so must we try to love one another. For nothing you have not given away, as C.S. Lewis wrote, will ever really be yours.

In other words, in the parable of the prodigal son we are, in fact, called to identify with the father, just like my old man said.

A Dutch painter inspired a fellow countryman priest centuries later, whose book helped a Tennessee doctor explain the true meaningof fatherhood to a North Carolina lawyer, but make no mistake. I was once again astonished at how much my old man had learned.

Mike Kerrigan is an attorney in Charlotte, N.C.

See the original post:

What I Learned From My Father About The Prodigal Son - The Federalist