By Ken McIntyre

Editor’s note: So how did President Trump do in the big “60 Minutes” interview? You told us, plus a thing or two about our podcasts and issues we’ve covered lately. Drop us a line at [email protected]—Ken McIntyre

Dear Daily Signal: Frankly, I could think of better responses than President Trump’s on some of those issues, but in general I agree with him and think Lesley Stahl was disgraceful in the “60 Minutes” interview last Sunday night (“6 Big Moments in Trump-Stahl Rumble on ‘60 Minutes’”)

On the single issue of what Stahl called Obama’s “not enforcing” the law on the border, is that what we all support? Presidents who choose what laws to enforce and what to ignore?

Because that means the law is not the law any longer. That we are no longer a nation of law but of men, the exact opposite of Thomas Jefferson’s belief.

And that philosophy perfectly summed up Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder. They believe the law means what they want it to mean instead of what it says, and that can destroy everything this nation stands for and is why activist judges must be opposed.—Wayne Peterkin

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Wouldn’t we love to see President Trump interview Lesley Stahl, or any media loudmouth hack like Stahl? That would be prime time entertainment.—Redigo Gubernatio

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What Lesley Stahl has done is to reveal the adroitness of a president who is doing his job as it should be done—honestly.—Jerry Hewes

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I don’t know what to say about Lesley Stahl. Just looking at her and hearing her voice made me want to pull my hair out listening to that interview. I wanted to grab her through the screen and choke her. She is full of it. I’m speechless.—Delilah Fleharty

Just who the hell does Lesley Stahl think she is, demanding a “pledge” from the …read more

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By Jarrett Stepman

It’s no secret the mainstream media goes after President Donald Trump, but this time they’re going after his supporters. A staff writer at “The Atlantic” calls Trump supporters “cruel” saying “President Trump and his supporters find community by rejoicing in the suffering of those they hate and fear.”

Going after the president is one thing, but attacking his supporters is another. The Daily Signal recently traveled to Lebanon, Ohio to attend a Trump rally in Ohio and the people we encountered were far from “cruel.” Here’s their message to the mainstream media.

To get the latest in outrageous media bias, be sure to follow us on Facebook, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and send us your Media Misses to [email protected]

The post Media Misses: Reporters Call Trump Supporters ‘Cruel.’ They Respond. appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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By Fred Lucas

Feeling the political heat over separating families of illegal immigrants, President Donald Trump took executive action in June to scale back his “zero tolerance” policy for border crossers.

But under existing law, this had fairly predictable results, immigration experts said.

“Catch and release is not an official policy, but it is the default until we have better laws,” Chris Chmielenski, deputy director of Numbers USA, a research group that supports immigration restrictions, told The Daily Signal.

While curbing illegal immigration was Trump’s signature campaign issue, and the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security have increased enforcement, the problem of illegal border crossings has escalated again in recent months.

Experts say the Trump administration may have done everything possible through executive action, and must rely on Congress to close certain loopholes to better secure the border.

In lieu of consequences, the number of migrant parents illegally entering the United States escalated since Trump ended separation of children from parents at the border, The Washington Post reported this week.

The Border Patrol arrested 16,658 family members in September–the highest on record, the newspaper reported, citing unpublished Department of Homeland Security statistics.

Even before a large caravan began making its way through Central America toward the United States, large groups of 100 or more parents and children were crossing through Mexico into Arizona to make asylum claims.

Under the law, the U.S. is required to adjudicate asylum claims, and cannot detain children for more than 20 days. This can lead to freeing families into the interior of the country who may not show up for their hearing.

“The reason we have border surges is that when migrants get to the border they are either apprehended, but know when they get caught they will get released, or there just isn’t enough space to detain them,” Chmielenski …read more

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By Rob Bluey

Author and columnist David Harsayni joined the Oct. 15 Daily Signal podcast to discuss his new book “First Freedom: A Ride Through America’s Enduring History with the Gun.” This is a lightly edited transcript of that interview.

Rob Bluey: We’re here to talk about your book and America’s history with guns. What inspired you to write this book?

David Harsanyi: I grew up in an area in New York where most people didn’t have guns; perhaps criminals mostly had the guns. And my whole life—then moved later to Colorado—and my whole life I’ve been very curious about gun culture. So obviously I’m involved in the debate over the Second Amendment and the ideological aspects of it.

But I was interested more in the cultural aspect: Why do people treat guns the way they do? What’s unique about the American experience with the gun? So that’s what this book is about.

Ginny Montalbano: David, I want to ask you a very broad question. Could you explain to us, how are firearms linked to America’s rights?

Harsanyi: Well, in every way imaginable almost. First off, it’s important to know that as a philosophical matter, the right to bear arms—or to defend yourself, your property, your family—goes back farther in British law and history than the freedom of religion or freedom of speech, or anything like that. It’s one of the oldest rights.

So right away, the people who were coming here, from England at least, had that embedded in their thinking. And obviously that immediately became, as a practical matter, it became important in survival and in defending yourself from people who were already here, but also for hunting and defending yourself from the French or the Spanish or whoever else was around. So that’s the first thing. …read more

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By Nicolas Loris

What will it take to keep the planet habitable?

According to some eco-warriors, all that’s necessary is to end capitalism—the one economic system that has lifted billions from poverty and suffering.

The latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report led Eric Holthaus, a Grist writer, to tweet enthusiastically, “The world’s top scientists just gave rigorous backing to systematically dismantle capitalism as a key requirement to maintaining civilization and a habitable planet.”

The sentiment is not new. Three years ago, while pushing for the Paris Climate Accord, U.N. climate official Christiana Figueres described the strategy this way:

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”

To accomplish such a feat, the new report proposes an energy tax of epic proportions. It claims that, to keep warming in check, by 2030 we’ll need to impose a tax of between $135 and $5,500 on every ton of carbon emitted.

And that’s just for starters. By the end of the century, the authors say, we’ll have to jack the tax up to as much as $27,000 per ton.

How would that play out in the real world, where conventional carbon-emitting fuels currently generate about 80 percent of all energy consumed? Carbon taxes of the magnitude suggested in the report would bankrupt families and businesses and trigger a global economic disaster.

Using the same model as the federal government’s Energy Information Administration, Heritage Foundation analysts estimated the economic impacts of a $37 per ton carbon tax—less than a third of the panel’s lowest recommendation.

The model indicates that, at $37 per ton, the tax would reduce U.S. aggregate gross domestic product by more than $2.5 trillion …read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed

By Katrina Trinko

The federal government has done a 180 under the Trump administration, with agencies cutting regulations and giving states more power. And no one’s happier about that than Republican governors. Gov. Matt Bevin of Kentucky shares about his experience leading his state under President Barack Obama, and then President Donald Trump. Plus: In the age of #MeToo, Snow White is coming under new scrutiny.

We also cover these stories:

• Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calls for Saudi Arabia to have a few days to investigate what occurred to missing journalist.
• President Trump says if Mexico doesn’t stop the caravan of migrants, he “will call up the U.S. Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!”
• Former President Jimmy Carter said it was a “very serious mistake” to confirm Brett Kavanaugh.
• Kleenex is rebranding its “mansize” tissues after getting gender complaints from customers. The tissues thenceforth will be called “Kleenex Extra Large.”

The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [email protected]. Enjoy the show!

The post The Daily Signal Podcast: Gov. Matt Bevin on the Difference Trump Has Made appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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By Rob Bluey

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., spoke to The Daily Signal this week about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the left’s embrace of mob rule. He also addressed the disappearance of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi and Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test results. An edited transcript of the interview is below. Full audio of the interview is available on The Daily Signal Podcast.

Bluey: You are here at The Heritage Foundation’s President’s Club meeting to talk about Justice [Brett] Kavanaugh. During the Judiciary Committee hearings, you made some passionate remarks when he was defending himself. Many people felt he wasn’t afforded due process. He was presumed guilty. What prompted you to speak so passionately?

Lindsey Graham: He was being humiliated. I voted for [Sonia] Sotomayor and [Elena] Kagan because I thought they were qualified. It used to be that way. [Former Sen.] Strom Thurmond voted for [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg. [Former Sen.] Fritz Hollings voted for [Antonin] Scalia. That’s the way it used to be, so obviously things have changed now.

What got me going so much is that I’ve known Brett for 20 years. We’re not close friends, but we’re friendly. I worked with him in the Bush White House. He’s the cream of the crop judicially. You want to reward President Trump when he makes a good decision. He could not have chosen better, and what I saw was an effort to humiliate a guy who didn’t deserve it. I can’t imagine me doing that to Sotomayor and Kagan.

What got me the most was, “If you’re really innocent, turn to Don McGahn and ask to continue the FBI investigation of your life, and keep ruining your own family.” Dr. [Christine Blasey] Ford was listened to respectfully. I think something happened to her, but I don’t think Kavanaugh had anything to do with it. …read more

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By Thomas Jipping

A common criticism of Supreme Court nominee (now Justice) Brett Kavanaugh was that he is “outside the judicial mainstream.”

While that epithet has a long history in judicial confirmation fights, no one really knows what it means. And if Kavanaugh’s approach to judging is outside the mainstream, America is really in trouble.

As an accusation against judicial nominees, this seems to have originated with President Ronald Reagan’s 1987 nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court.

Bork represented the view that the meaning of the Constitution and statutes does not change from the time they were originally enacted. Deciding cases requires a judge to determine that original meaning and apply it to the facts before him. Judges may not change the meaning of the law in order to make cases come out the way they want.

This is how America’s founders designed the judiciary to function. In 1795, the Supreme Court put it this way: “The Constitution is fixed and certain; it contains the permanent will of the people, and is the supreme law of the land.”

Thomas Jefferson described the role for the judiciary that the founders rejected. If judges controlled what the Constitution means, he wrote, it would be “a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.”

By the 1930s, however, Congress wanted much more power over the economy than the Constitution actually provided. President Franklin Roosevelt began replacing Supreme Court justices who saw the Constitution as “fixed and certain” with those who saw it as a “mere thing of wax.” As a result, the federal government grew much more powerful at the expense of the states, and the American people’s ability to decide how their country is run steadily diminished.

Reagan, who was elected in 1981, promised to reverse …read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed

By Video Team

This week, The Daily Signal presents a special edition of “On the Street.” We traveled to New Lebanon, Ohio, to attend a rally featuring President Donald Trump. While we were there, we talked with everyday Americans about the issues that matter and which of Trump’s accomplishments are most important to them.

“I like how he shows his faith,” one attendee told us. “I haven’t seen that in a leader in a very long time, but I love how he shows his faith and his love for God and his love for country.”

“He’s doing what he said he was going to do,” another supporter said. “Regardless, he’s trying to drain the swamp and that’s important. One thing he did, probably by getting elected, he showed us just how corrupt Washington was. I don’t think we knew that.”

We took our cameras “On the Street” to the Trump rally to find out this and more. Watch the whole video above.

The post On the Street: We Went to a Trump Rally. Here Are the Stories No One Tells. appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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By Katrina Trinko

When things got ugly for Brett Kavanaugh, Lindsey Graham was one of his most forceful defenders. The South Carolina senator sat down to share his thinking with our editor-in-chief, Rob Bluey. The interview took place at President’s Club, an annual gathering hosted by The Heritage Foundation—we’ll play it for you in this episode. Plus: We’ll take a look at trick-or-treating and how some localities are banning teenagers from participating.

We also cover these stories:

• The Trump administration announced it has saved $23 billion by cutting and modifying regulations in fiscal year 2018.
• Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke about the importance of entitlement reform.
• House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced her agenda if Democrats gain control of the House.
• Since President Donald Trump stopped separating families who arrive at the border, the number of adults with kids crossing the borders has skyrocketed.

The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [email protected]. Enjoy the show!

The post The Daily Signal Podcast: Sen. Lindsey Graham Speaks Out on ‘Character Assassination’ of Kavanaugh appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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