By Troy Worden

Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned Wednesday, creating a vacancy in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet and the opportunity to confirm a new leader at the Department of Justice.

The question facing Trump is whom he might pick as the next attorney general. The Heritage Foundation’s John Malcolm, vice president of the Institute for Constitutional Government and director of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, discussed the following dozen possible candidates for the position during recent TV interviews.

1. Pam Bondi

Bondi, 52, is Florida’s attorney general, a position she has held since 2011. Previously she served as an assistant state attorney. She was a part of a 2018 lawsuit by 19 states to overturn the Affordable Care Act and has also served as a Fox News co-host.

Malcolm called Bondi “terrific and outgoing,” “very, very bright,” and a “rather dynamic personality,” noting he thinks she served her state well and is often a speaker at conservative events.

“I have no doubt that she’d do an excellent job if she got the nod,” he added.

2. John Ratcliffe

Ratcliffe, 53, is the representative for Texas’ 4th Congressional District, a position he has held since 2014.

In 2004, former President George W. Bush appointed him to serve as the Justice Department’s chief of anti-terrorism and national security for the Eastern District of Texas.

3. Trey Gowdy

Malcolm said Gowdy “would receive a serious look” for the position of attorney general because he was the federal prosecutor in the District of South Carolina from 1994 to 2000 and was later the district attorney for the state’s 7th Judicial Circuit.

Gowdy, 54, currently serves as the representative for South Carolina’s 4th Congressional District and rose to national prominence for his role in leading the U.S. House select committee established by Republicans to investigate the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

In January, he …read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed

By Lee Edwards

It’s been nearly a quarter of a century since the passing of intellectual historian and “master of letters” Russell Kirk, but his influence, far from waning, seems to be increasing.

This year marks what would have been his 100th birthday, and there have been celebrations in Washington, D.C.; New York City; New Haven, Connecticut; and his hometown of Plymouth, Michigan, at which conservative leaders have acknowledged his signal contributions to the modern American conservative movement.

In 1950, the nation’s most prominent intellectuals, including the then-reigning liberal critic Lionel Trilling, proclaimed there was only one tradition in America—the liberal tradition. Trilling dismissed conservatism as a movement without ideas except for occasional “irritable mental gestures.”

When Kirk published his magisterial “The Conservative Mind” three years later, liberal jaws dropped and the stammering began.

They could not deny—and glowing reviews in The New York Times, Time, and elsewhere confirmed—that Kirk had written a superb history of a conservative tradition in America stretching back to John Adams and the founding and continuing into the 20th century with T. S. Eliot.

The preeminent historian George Nash has written that “The Conservative Mind” “decisively catalyzed a self-conscious, unabashedly conservative movement.” Henry Regnery, who published “The Conservative Mind” and other seminal conservative works, said that Kirk had given an “amorphous scattered opposition” to liberalism an identity.

In fact, Kirk gave the conservative movement its name.

In 1951, when William F. Buckley Jr. published his controversial best-seller “God and Man at Yale,” he described himself as an “individualist,” rejecting the label of “conservative.” However, when he launched his magazine “National Review” in 1955, two years after the appearance of “The Conservative Mind,” he identified National Review as a “conservative journal” and called himself a “conservative.”

We can be grateful to Kirk for “The Conservative Mind,” because otherwise, we might well be calling ourselves the “individualist movement,” …read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed

By Hans von Spakovsky

There is no question that Attorney General Jeff Sessions—who was fired Wednesday—had a rocky relationship with President Donald Trump, tied to Sessions’ recusal from the investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.

But Sessions’ firing on orders of Trump should not diminish the fact that Sessions’ very commendable leadership over the past two years has helped restore the integrity of the Justice Department and get it back in the business of enforcing the law.

As the 84th attorney general of the United States, Sessions renewed the Justice Department’s “emphasis on fighting violent crime, illegal immigration, and the drug epidemic,” according to former Attorney General Edwin Meese.

The Obama administration had a very adversarial relationship with state and local law enforcement agencies, unfairly criticizing and taking actions against local police departments. It abused its authority far beyond the law in a way that hampered the ability of police officers to protect the public.

Sessions stopped this abuse and restored the cooperative and productive relationship the Justice Department had long had with law enforcement.

Sessions also put the power of the Justice Department behind the president’s promise to crack down on illegal immigration.

In addition, Sessions went after sanctuary cities that try to obstruct federal immigration law and successfully defended (all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court) the power of the president to safeguard the country from illegal immigrants seeking entry from terrorist safe havens.

On top of this, Sessions reinvigorated the Justice Department’s enforcement of our immigration laws. His particular emphasis on the dangers created by cities that provide sanctuaries for violent illegal immigrants was a change that should be welcomed by everyone—particularly the many American families that have been victimized by such violence.

One of the biggest scams of the Obama administration involved the Justice Department entering …read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed

By Will Racke

The sheriff’s deputy killed during a mass shooting at a bar in southern California “died a hero” trying to prevent the assailant from taking more lives, Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean said Thursday.

Sgt. Ron Helus, a 29-year veteran of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office, was killed late Wednesday when he responded to an active shooter at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, California.

Helus was shot multiple times by the gunman as he entered the bar with an officer from the California Highway Patrol, Dean told reporters during an emotional news conference. He later died at an area hospital, one of 12 total victims killed in the attack.

“Ron was a hardworking, dedicated sheriff’s sergeant,” Dean said. “He was totally committed, he gave his all and tonight, as I told his wife, he died a hero. He went into save lives, to save other people.”

VC Sheriff’s Sgt. Ron Helus was a firearms instructor for more than 25 years. “During my time on the SWAT team, I was an instructor for the basic and advanced SWAT schools … I have a significant amount of other professional firearms training.” (Ron Helus photo) pic.twitter.com/zzc3SNLstz

— S.B. News-Press (@sbnpnews) November 8, 2018

Helus, 54, lived in Moorpark, California, a town north of Thousand Oaks. He is survived by his son and wife, whom he was talking to on the phone just before responding to the shooting.

“He said, ‘Hun, I got to go. I love you. I gotta go on a call,’” Dean told the Los Angeles Times.

According to posts on his Facebook page, Helus was an avid fly angler and outdoorsman. Many of the publicly available pictures on his page show Helus and his son trout fishing and exploring California’s rugged backcountry.

A firearms expert …read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed

By Peter Hasson

Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and President Jay Wallace denounced a left-wing mob that showed up outside Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s house and tried to intimidate him into fleeing Washington, D.C.

“The incident that took place at Tucker’s home last night was reprehensible. The violent threats and intimidation tactics toward him and his family are completely unacceptable,” Scott and Wallace said in a statement released to The Daily Caller News Foundation on Thursday.

“We as a nation have become far too intolerant of different points of view. Recent events across our country clearly highlight the need for a more civil, respectful, and inclusive national conversation. Those of us in the media and in politics bear a special obligation to all Americans, to find common ground,” the Fox New executives added.

Carlson, a co-founder of The Daily Caller, was at the Fox News studio when the belligerent mob showed up at his family’s residence, posted pictures of his address online and ordered him to “leave town.”

His wife, Susie Carlson, was home alone and called police after members of the mob began banging on the front door. The couple has four children.

The group “Smash Racism DC” posted video footage to Twitter showing one of the mob’s ringleaders leading the crowd in chants of “Racist scumbag, leave town!” and “Tucker Carlson, we will fight! We know where you sleep at night!”

“No borders! No walls! No USA at all!” the left-wing protesters chanted in another video posted to Twitter.

The group also posted a picture of the sign with the Carlson family’s address on it to Twitter.

“Tucker Carlson, you cannot hide from the people you hurt with your rhetoric, your lies, and your hate,” the group wrote on Twitter, adding the hashtag “#KnockKnockTucker.”

Twitter later deleted the group’s tweets …read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed