ACLU state leader quits after daughters ‘frightened’ by biological males in restroom

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Thomas Lifson

Evidently, Maya Dillard Smith, interim director of the Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, has had an epiphany.  LifeSiteNews reports:

The African-American woman who leads a state chapter of the ACLU has resigned, citing her own daughters' "frightened" reaction to biological males using the women's restroom.

The organization's increasing focus on legislating the transgender lobby's concerns pushed [her] to tender her resignation.

"I have shared my personal experience of having taken my elementary school age daughters into a women's restroom when shortly after three transgender young adults, over six feet [tall] with deep voices, entered," she wrote.

"My children were visibly frightened, concerned about their safety and left asking lots of questions for which I, like many parents, was ill-prepared to answer," she continued.

A veil seems to have lifted from her eyes, allowing her to see:

In a statement, she said that the ACLU has become "a special interest organization that promotes not all, but certain progressive rights."

The "hierarchy of rights" the ACLU chooses to defend or ignore, she wrote, is "based on who is funding the organization's lobbying activities." She did not elaborate on the group's funding.

The classic definition of a neoconservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality. Dillard Smith may be seeing the ACLU with more clarity, but her process is still just beginning:

Dillard Smith is no conservative. She earned a degree in economics from Berkeley and a masters degree at Harvard, while working for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the California Supreme Court.

She is a 2003 graduate of the program Emerge America, which states its "goal is clear: to increase the number of Democratic women in public office."

But this self-described "progressive" who called herself "unapologetically black" cannot go along with the ACLU's transgender legal agenda.

She has a lot more to come. Paul Mirengoff of Powerline describes one reaction she is already getting:

A transgender activist - a biological male who goes by the name Cheryl Courtney-Evans - responded to Dillard Smith's resignation by calling her "lazy," "ill-educated," and a "b–ch" who needs to sit down and "STFU." No one who has seen LGBT activists in action will be surprised by this charming response.

Dillard Smith is responding to a biological imperative: the protection of her children. This is what pierced the veil of ideology that had blinded her to the realities obscured by the fine rhetoric and shiny ideals the ACLU purports to uphold. As the old greenie bumper sticker from the '70s put it, "Nature Bats Last."

The classic artistic depiction of a person caught up in a mental state that obscured the larger truths around him comes from Bridge on the River Kwai. I hope that Ms. Dillard Smith will watch it soon:

The transgender bathroom issue, flying in the face of biological reality and bullied through pressure from elites (see, for example, the corporations bullying North Carolina) is going to continue to open eyes.

Hat tip: Clarice Feldman

© 2011 AmericanThinker

Obama proposes expanding Social Security benefits while the program careens toward insolvency

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Rick Moran

For more than 20 years, the Government Accountability Office has been warningthat the varioius Social Security funds would go broke in a matter of decades unless something is done to shore up the program.

Unfortunately, there are limited options when trying to address this crisis. You can employ a combination of raising the retirement age and/or increase the FICA tax. Other than that, you're rearranging chairs on the deck of the Titanic.

But President Obama – who is fully aware of the threat of insolvency – is now proposing that Social Security benefits be increased and wants the "rich" to pay for it.

The smartest guy in the room, right?

Politico:

"And not only do we need to strengthen its long-term health, it's time we finally made Social Security more generous and increased its benefits so that today's retirees and future generations get the dignified retirement that they've earned," Obama said in an economic call to armsin Elkhart, Indiana. "We could start paying for it by asking the wealthiest Americans to contribute a little bit more."

The White House dismissed suggestions that Obama's statement marked any policy change.

"For many years - dating back to before he became president - President Obama has made clear that we need to strengthen Social Security," a White House official wrote in an email. "In his speech today, the president reiterated that as we ensure the program's solvency for generations to come, we should also enhance benefits so that Americans can retire with dignity."

But while Obama repeatedly called for ways to shore up the Social Security trust fund - including possibly taxing the rich - he said, as he ran for reelection in 2012, that he would not "slash benefits" or privatize the program.

However, it's unclear whether he has officially backed expanding benefits. In fact, in 2013, he endorsed a plan to change the way cost-of-living increases are measured for Social Security, to a formula known as "chained CPI," that would have slowed the growth of checks relative to inflation.

The proposal, an attempt to find compromise with Republicans, made liberals livid. They threatened to mount primary challenges against Democrats who signed on and delivered petitions with millions of signatures calling on him to drop the idea.

When the chained CPI idea disappeared from Obama's budget blueprint in 2014, progressives declared victory, and some say it has emboldened them in their more recent fight against a major Obama priority: the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

"If anyone has ever wondered what impact the grass-roots political revolution behind Bernie Sanders is having on the future of the Democratic Party, the sharp, populist progressive turn that President Obama made today on Social Security expansion should answer those questions," said Democracy for America chairman Jim Dean in a statement.

The trustees of Medicare and Social Security funds have estimated that the Disability Trust Fund will run out of money by this October. The president has proposed redirecting a small portion of the payroll tax to extend the life of the fund about 20 years. Congress has yet to act on the proposal.

As for the rest of Social Security, the GAO estimates that the program will go broke by 2034. Senator Orrin Hatch acknowledged the crisis and wants a bipartisan commission to recommend reforms.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah.), the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said the administration should bring together a bipartisan coalition to propose reforms to the entitlement programs.

"Sadly, we have yet to see such an effort," Hatch said in a statement. "The President simply advocates kicking the can down the road to confront the impending disability trust fund depletion, by taking funds out of the retirement trust fund, which, itself, is headed toward depletion.

In the end, the president is proposing putting a Band-Aid on a gaping wound.

The president's idea to increase benefits at a time when insolvency is staring Social Security in the face is something akin to a man running toward a gasoline dump with a lit match. It's a pander, of course, but a very effective one. Old people vote. And many of them are unaware of the perilous state of Social Security's finances. All they hear is more money in their checks. The president and the Democrats know this and will demagogue the issue for all it's worth.

© 2011 AmericanThinker

Is Reaganism Dead?

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Richard Winchester

The cry, "Reaganism is dead!" has been uttered several times during the presidential campaign in 2016. Two such examples will suffice. Eliana Johnson posted such an assessment on nationalreview.com on February 29th. Peter Wehner wrote the lead story which trumpeted that meme in Time on March 10th.

Although each mentioned several indicators of Reaganism's waning influence, Johnson and Wehner agreed that Donald Trump's apparent success in capturing the GOP's presidential nomination this year is the prime example of the Gipper's decline and fall. According to Wehner, Trump is "the antithesis of so much that Ronald Reagan stood for: intellectual depth and philosophical consistency, respect for ideas and elevated rhetoric, civility and personal grace." (I don't recall those adjectives being associated with Reagan by most in the chattering classes during the 1980s.) Johnson argued that some Republicans are wondering if Trump's popularity indicates Reaganism's three pillars -- "social conservatism, fiscal restraint, and a muscular internationalism"-- are no longer viable within the GOP, which may also be experiencing "a complete ideological crack-up."

It's not especially worrisome if someone on the political Left, or even some (many?) in the GOP establishment -- who've never cottoned to Reagan's brand of conservatism--bleat about Reaganism's demise. Those persons have always opposed Reaganism, and have touted any indication that it is declining.

When two conservatives espouse the same claim, however, one has to wonder what's going on.

Let's look at Reaganism's essential features. Then, we need to ascertain which of them has/have, in fact, become political liabilities that need(s) to be jettisoned in order to win elections.

The best way to grasp Reaganism's essential principles is to read the many speeches Ronald Reagan gave during his career, beginning with the "Time for Choosing" speech he gave on October 27, 1964 in behalf of Barry Goldwater's ill-fated presidential candidacy, and ending with his "Farewell" address to the nation on January 11, 1989, just days before his departure from the presidency.

One can also glean the essential principles of Reaganism by reading Steven Hayward's two-volume The Age of Reagan (2009, 2010), or Paul Kengor's four books published between 2005 and 2014, plus his forthcoming book on Reagan and the Cold War.

Students of Reaganism assert that it consisted of three major principles: limited government, a muscular foreign policy, and social conservatism. It is mistaken, however, to assert that Ronald Reagan stressed each equally.

(Kengor identified 11 Principles of a Reagan Conservative [2014], but I shall focus on just the three listed above to save space. Besides, several of Kengor's principles can be subsumed under the three stressed here. For example, "Faith," "Family," and "Sanctity and Dignity of Human Life" are components of social conservatism, just as "Freedom," "American Exceptionalism," "the Founders' Wisdom and Vision," "Lower Taxes," "Limited Government," and even "Belief in the Individual," are encapsulated by the notion of limited government. "Peace Through Strength" and "Anti-communism" fall under the rubric of a muscular foreign policy.)

Throughout his political career, and even before -- e.g., during his tenure as president of the Screen Actors' Guild -- Reagan was a dedicated anti-communist. As president, the Gipper espoused a muscular foreign policy, particularly following the feckless Jimmy Carter. Although not the only reason Reagan rebuilt the American military and made America great again, the driving force was his militant opposition to the Soviet Union and international communism.

Along with his reputation as an avid anti-communist, Reagan is also noted for his advocacy of limited government (which also entailed supporting reduced government spending). Once a liberal Democrat, Reagan grew increasingly disenchanted with Democrats' drift to the Left after World War II. Opposition to big government was a hallmark of Reagan's entire political career. Reagan was not anti-government per se, but he believed big government was antithetical to freedom and to the individual.

Reagan articulated his belief in limited government, along with lower taxes and less regulation, in numerous speeches. Perhaps his attachment to limited government was best illustrated in his First Inaugural Address on January 20, 1981. On that occasion, he uttered the famous line, "[i]n this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem."

The third pillar of Reaganism was social conservatism, which was manifest by his profound belief in God, opposition to cultural progressivism, belief that a strong, enduring two-parent family, consisting of a woman, a man, and children, was essential to civilization, and especially a powerful respect for the right to life.

Reagan did not pursue each pillar with equal intensity, and he did not have the same degree of success in attaining each component of Reaganism.

Reagan's greatest accomplishment, which was not finalized until after he had left the presidency, was the collapse of communism in 1989. He facilitated this by patient diplomacy and by a major buildup of American military strength. Reagan's commitment to the Strategic Defense Initiative, a.k.a. "Star Wars," was a major factor in the Cold War's end.

Reagan also experienced successes combating big government, especially in simplifying the tax code and lowering federal income tax rates. He also reduced the number of government regulations. Although he could not -- given the Democrats' continuing control of the House of Representatives, and eventually the Senate -- significantly reduce government's size, he did slow the rate of its growth.

Perhaps the pillar which saw the least emphasis in Reagan's presidency was social conservatism. Reagan was not able, as Robert Bork's fate in 1987 illustrated, to transform the Supreme Court sufficiently to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. Reagan also acquiesced in the Simpson-Mazzoli Act in 1986 that naturalized up to three million illegal aliens, without first ensuring border security.

Today, some believe the three pillars of Reaganism are either outdated or untenable. Progressives have so demonized all facets of social conservatism that Republicans are reluctant to campaign on them. Communism is gone, but even though despotism and terrorism are again on the march, the public seems unconcerned by the Obama administration's gutting of the U.S. military. Many Americans give lip service to some conservative principles, such as lower taxes, but appear to want more rather than less government. Bill Clinton's 1996 declaration that "the age of big government is over" was wrong.

Judged by Donald Trump's evidently unstoppable quest for the Republican Party's presidential nomination and by Hillary Clinton's all-but-inevitable success in the Democrat Party, Reaganism appears to be in serious disarray. No matter which one wins (or perhaps which loses less) in 2016, Reaganism will be in the political wilderness.

Nevertheless, if Reaganites also subscribe to the Gipper's infectious optimism, they may yet make America great again.

© 2011 AmericanThinker

Anchors Away -- Obama Sinks U.S. Navy

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Daniel John Sobieski

As China builds military bases on man-made islands in the South China Sea, the staggering decline in U.S. naval readiness was made clear when a group of Navy captains testified before an unusual joint hearing of the House Armed Services Committee's seapower and readiness subcommittees last week. It was made clear that President Ronald Reagan's 600-ship Navy is a distant memory as we return to the Jimmy Carter era of ships that can't sail and planes that can't fly for want of spare parts.

This sad state of affairs is accomplishing what the Japanese Imperial Navy could not -- defeat the U.S. Navy and leave the seas increasingly open to hostile adversaries and leaving us increasingly unable to come to the aid of our remaining allies. As the Navy captains testified:

"About every three months or so we would get a new schedule" for the submarine USS Albany, said Capt. Gregory McRae, deputy commander of Submarine Squadron Six. "Today, we are looking at a 43-month overhaul for a maintenance period that was supposed to last 28 months."

"Cannibalization" -- pulling scarce spare parts off one ship or plane to fix another about to deploy -- is now routine, the captains testified. For example, the USS Normandy has served as an organ donor for 13 different "mission critical" components over the last 45 days, crippling the anti-aircraft cruiser's radar. "I could not possibly surge right now" for an emergency deployment, testified Normandy skipper Capt. Scott Robertson.

Naval air forces are in similar straits. Four of the Navy's 10 carrier air wings are fully manned and equipped, but those four are the ones either deployed or about to deploy, said Capt. Randy Stearns. Getting one of the other six wings ready to go in an emergency would take six to 12 months, "three times as long" as when he was a young officer, Stearns said: "As of today, we don't have that surge capacity."

Carrier Air Wing One will not have the funds or parts to fly at all for four months, Stearns testified. That will save $9 million to $13 million in the short run, but they'll never get those months of training back, said Stearns. In the long term, "it's going to take me three times the amount and three times the cost to get them back up to speed."

Compounding this crisis is the Budget Control Act, "We've never caught up" on the maintenance and training cancelled in 2013, said Capt. Stearns. Last year's budget deal loosened the BCA caps for fiscal year 2016 but kept them $18 billion tighter for 2017.

While it has been the media-accepted talking point of the Obama administration that sequestration was a bipartisan readiness suicide pact forced on it by the Congress, Investor's Business Daily has pointed out that this myth has been demolished by reporter Bob Woodward of Watergate fame:

If President Obama has an enemies list, Bob Woodward is probably at the top of it. After all, it was Woodward who started the unraveling of the president's "sequestration apocalypse" mantra by confirming it was the White House's idea in the first place.

When President Obama said the "sequester is not something that I proposed," he lied. His then-OMB Director Jack Lew, recently confirmed as Treasury Secretary, and White House Legislative Affairs Director Rob Nabors pitched the idea to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who pushed it, according to Woodward's book, "The Price of Politics."

When Woodward called a senior White House official last week to tell him that, in a piece in that weekend's Washington Post, he would question President Obama's account of how sequestration came about, he said the Obama aide "yelled at me for about a half-hour," ending with the Nixonesque warning, "I think you will regret staking out that claim."

That official was Gene Sperling, a top economic aide.

Such willful neglect of the U.S. military by our commander-in-chief had geopolitical consequences. An editorial in the Global Times, a newspaper seen as a mouthpiece for hard-line nationalists in Beijing, warns of the consequences of resistance: "If the United States' bottom line is that China has to halt these activities, then a U.S. China war is inevitable in the South China Sea." As Investor's Business Daily has noted:

Beijing has long declared the South China Sea to be its territorial waters and has laid claim to two disputed chains: the Paracel Islands, about 200 miles from the coast of Vietnam, and the Spratly Islands in the southeastern part of the South China Sea. China's territorial ambitions include the Senkakus in the East China Sea, part of what Chinese military doctrine refers to as the "first island chain" that surrounds China.

In the South China Sea, as of February, China had finished construction on no less than six different island reefs from which to project its power in the South China Sea. Included in its military effort is the construction of a 3,000 meters (9,842 feet) long runway on the artificially expanded Fiery Cross Reef as a base for Chinese fighter aircraft. According to Reuters,

China's creation of artificial islands in the South China Sea is happening so fast that Beijing will be able to extend the range of its navy, air force, coastguard and fishing fleets before long, much to the alarm of rival claimants to the contested waters.

Reclamation work is well advanced on six reefs in the Spratly archipelago, according to recently published satellite photographs and Philippine officials. In addition, Manila said this month that Chinese dredgers had started reclaiming a seventh.

Naval commanders are worried that our ability to respond to such threats has been severely compromised by an Obama administration more concerned about rising sea levels than rising threats on those seas. The Navy captain's Congressional testimony come after the Chinese announcement that it is building its second aircraft carrier to go along with a refurbished Soviet carrier, the Liaonng, commissioned by China in 2012 after extensive refitting of the 25-year-old vessel. As IBD has reported, the Liaoningis only the first step in the building of a blue-water navy capable of competing with our diminishing one, with Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, warning that the U.S. was losing its Pacific dominance to China:

China's Communist Party-affiliated newspaper, Global Times, gloated over Locklear's warning, noting his remarks in a story beneath the headline "U.S. losing grip on Pacific: PACOM."

In the Times story, Jin Canrong, a deputy dean of the School of International Studies at Renmin University of China, said the American admiral's comments recognize China as a rising military power. Indeed, it is. China has launched its first stealth drone, known as Sharp Sword, and is developing indigenous aircraft carriers. Its "two-ocean strategy" is based on the goal of building a fleet of five or six carrier battle groups.

China's first battle group, led by its first carrier, the Liaoning, recently conducted a monthlong exercise that saw the refurbished Soviet-built flattop and her escorts sail south to the waters near Taiwan. During the exercise, a Chinese warship nearly collided with the guided missile cruiser USS Cowpens, which was shadowing the battle group.

China is preparing for a naval confrontation with the United States. We may lose that confrontation in the South China Sea because the U.S. Navy is scavenging for spare parts.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor's Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications. 

© 2011 AmericanThinker

Will Trump (or GOP) Respond In Kind?

American Spectator - Thursday June 2, 2016

by David Hogberg

Not surprisingly, the fact that Donald Trump has not released his tax returns isn’t stopping Democrats. From Politico:

Trump is certainly wealthy. But in a campaign where the New Yorker has portrayed himself as the biggest, the richest, the classiest and the best at everything, disclosing that he is less rich than he lets on could be damaging. And it is a line of attack Democrats are already using and hope to pound away on until November….

The Clinton campaign wants to portray Trump’s business empire as a Potemkin village, showy on the surface, but with little underneath.

People familiar with the matter say Democrats have leading forensic accountants poring over all of Trump’s public records and disclosures with a plan to release whatever they find to support this narrative as the campaign shifts into general election mode this summer and fall.

“Some of the stuff is supposedly dynamite,” one senior Democratic operative with ties to the Clinton campaign said. “They are very confident about the opposition research. But I wouldn’t expect anything cataclysmic until the fall.”

Trump’s wealth is, of course, fair game in a presidential election.  (And even if it wasn’t, when has “fairness” ever been an impediment for a Clinton campaign?)

As someone who is considering voting for Trump, I’d like to know if his campaign will return fire by using the Clinton’s finances as ammo?  While “Crooked Hillary” is arguably great labeling, Trump will need a lot more than that to prevail against this bunch.  Fortunately, there is already a great place to start, namely, Peter Schweizer’s excellent book Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.  Trump’s staffers need to get a copy if they haven’t already.  And they need to prevail upon their boss to hire some forensic accountants too, in order to dig even deeper into the Clinton finances than Schweizer did.  Trump surely knows where to find some good beancounters.

Don’t count on any of the GOP organizations to do this.  Right now, they are going for the low-hanging fruit:

Hillary Clinton is facing a long summer of scrutiny over her emails and use of a private server during her tenure as secretary of State, the Republican National Committee (RNC) said Wednesday.

As news and criticism about the Democratic presidential front-runner’s personal email setup trickle out in the coming weeks, the Republican Party appears primed to pounce, it indicated in a memo released to the press.

To be fair, that is a serious weakness for Hillary, and the GOP is smart to keep it front and center.  But “email/top secret” probably isn’t as sexy as “money/corruption” in the public mind.

In short, if the Clinton campaign is going to claim that Trump plays fast and loose with his finances, Trump must be ready to fire back with claims that the Clintons play ever faster and looser with theirs.

UPDATE: It turns out the Trump campaign already has a copy of Schweizer’s book.  Good.

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Brad Thor Is Right: ‘Death To Tyrants’ Is As American As Apple Pie

The Federalist - Thursday June 2, 2016

by Robert Tracinski

On Glenn Beck’s radio show recently, Beck and thriller author Brad Thor discussed what would happen if Donald Trump becomes an authoritarian tyrant and can no longer be limited by Congress or the courts. Thor then proposed, “as a thriller writer,” a “hypothetical” scenario in which Trump would have to be removed from office.

I guarantee you, Glenn, that during his presidency, during his reign if you will—he is going to petition the American people to allow a temporary suspension of the Constitution so he can help America get back on its feet again. He is a danger to America, and I got to ask you a question, and this is serious and this could ring down incredible heat on me because I’m about to suggest something very bad. It is a hypothetical I am going to ask as a thriller writer.

With the feckless, spineless Congress we have, who will stand in the way of Donald Trump overstepping his constitutional authority as President? If Congress won’t remove him from office, what patriot will step up and do that if, if, he oversteps his mandate as president, his constitutionally granted authority, I should say, as president.

If he oversteps that, how do we get him out of office? And I don’t think there is a legal means available. I think it will be a terrible, terrible position the American people will be in to get Trump out of office because you won’t be able to do it through Congress.

Outraged Trump supporters petitioned Sirius XM radio to suspend Beck’s program, and Sirius caved in, saying that the comment “may be reasonably construed by some to have been advocating harm against an individual currently running for office.”

This is ridiculous. Thor is referring not to the present but to a hypothetical future in which President Trump suspends the Constitution and makes himself a dictator, causing someone to remove him from office through means that are “not legal.” That could certainly encompass some sort of bloodless revolution in which Trump is removed without violence.

Let’s grant that there’s a lot of question about whether this hypothetical case is really very likely. Glenn Beck has a certain history of becoming overly alarmed about these things—though Trumpkins demanding that his show be taken off the air makes him seem a lot less alarmist, doesn’t it? As much as I agree with Brad Thor about Trump, I could not “guarantee” you that he will try to suspend the Constitution. I think he will just casually ignore it and see how much the other branches of government let him get away with, which is pretty much what the current president is doing.

But that’s not really the issue at this point, nor is this really about Donald Trump any more. The issue is: is it acceptable for an American to call for a leader’s death if he becomes a dictator.

Well, if that’s an assassination threat, then I saw multiple assassination threats while driving around town this morning. They were openly and prominently displayed, and what’s more, they were officially sanctioned by our state government.

They looked like this:

This is, of course, the state flag of Virginia, which features the commonwealth’s official seal: the Roman goddess of virtue standing over the prostrate body of a defeated king, designated as a tyrant by the flail and chains still clutched in his dead hands. The motto below it is sic semper tyrannis: “thus always to tyrants.”

The men who came up with that weren’t kidding around. The seal was designed in 1776 by a four-man committee: Richard Henry Lee, George Mason, George Wythe, and Robert Carter Nicholas. Two of them, Lee and Wythe, were signers of the Declaration of Independence. The other two, Nicholas and Mason, were involved in drafting the Virginia Declaration of Rights, a precursor to the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. These were men who started and supported a war that killed many of the supporters of a despotic king.

I also saw a lot of these on the road, which amount to the same thing:

When Americans of the Founding Era adopted the motto “liberty or death,” they didn’t just mean their own deaths. They intended for the other side to die, too. And they were not alone in that sentiment. As Thomas Jefferson famously declared, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

All of which is to say that “death to tyrants” is as American as apple pie. We are a country founded on the idea of the right to rebellion against a tyrannical government. Literally. It’s right there in the document that created our nation: “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security.”

So what’s disturbing about this case is not that someone expressed this sentiment on the radio. It’s that other people found it unacceptable and tried to shut it down.

The current era is a great reminder of how shallow many people’s dedication to principle really is—and how willing they are to drop their supposed principles if it involves turning against their guy. A lot of people who thought of themselves as conservatives and who may even have marched in Tea Party rallies a few years back are suddenly clutching their pearls at a sentiment they would have vigorously defended if it were aimed at Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. Did they think warnings against tyranny don’t apply to someone just because he’s their preferred strongman?

No, I’m not advocating killing anyone any time soon. (Secret Service, please take note.) This is still very much hypothetical. It’s like saying to someone, “If you break into my house at three o’clock in the morning while my kids are asleep in their beds, I will shoot you.” It assumes some drastic conditions that would make the threat justified.

As it is, we still have the ballot box and a platform to criticize our leaders, and the institutions built to protect us from tyranny have not entirely failed. But I do think it is salutary to send a message to all politicians in general that if you set yourself up as a tyrant, it is within our rights to take you down.

Follow Robert on Twitter.

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Clinton IT aide to plead Fifth in email case

Clinton IT aide to plead Fifth in email case
By Julian Hattem - 06-01-16 18:04 PM EDT

The man believed to have set up and maintained Hillary Clinton's private email server will assert his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and refuse to answer questions as part of an open records lawsuit against the State Department.

Bryan Pagliano will decline to answer questions from Judicial Watch, the conservative legal watchdog group, during a deposition scheduled for Monday, his lawyers wrote in a court filing on Wednesday afternoon.

The move forecloses the possibility that Pagliano would break his months of silence about the server issue, even as scrutiny has intensified on his role.

Pagliano's lawyers told Judicial Watch more than a week ago that he would not be answering any questions, they claimed in their filing on Wednesday, and asked that it drop its subpoena. The organization refused.

In the filing, Pagliano's lawyers tried to have a federal judge block Judicial Watch from recording his deposition, given his planned refusal to answer questions. The lawyers said that a written transcription of the proceedings should be enough to satisfy the public's interest.

"Given the constitutional implications, the absence of any proper purpose for video recording the deposition, and the considerable risk of abuse, the court should preclude Judicial Watch .... from creating an audiovisual recording of Mr. Pagliano's deposition," they wrote.

Videotaped depositions "pose a serious danger to deponents invoking the Fifth Amendment," the lawyers added, pointing to past court decisions warning that the video makes a good "soundbite."

According to the filing, Judicial Watch said it would oppose any such motion.

Questions about Pagliano's role in Clinton's bespoke email arrangement ramped up after he accepted a deal for immunity from the federal government as part of his cooperation with the FBI's ongoing investigation into Clinton's setup.

Yet very little is known about Pagliano and how he maintained the server at Clinton's New York home.

The IT expert has previously refused to answer questions on Capitol Hill, invoking his Fifth Amendment rights before the House Select Committee on Benghazi and rejecting requests from leaders of the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees to answer their questions.

Last month, the State Department said that it had lost the backup archive of Pagliano's emails from his time at the department. However, it had been able to cobble together some emails through the accounts of other officials.

Last month, a federal judge gave Judicial Watch the go-ahead to ask Pagliano questions under oath as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit connected to Clinton's emails, alongside key Clinton aides such as Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin.

Mills answered questions for roughly seven hours last Friday, during which she claimed never to have seen Pagliano interacting with Clinton or her senior aides.