Gannett in the throes of solo winging

Gannett, the parent company of the Arizona Republic newspaper, is winging it as a solo entity as of Monday.

The article in industry insider Poynter reports “19,600 employees of Gannett newspapers will be working for a new company — untethered from growing and prosperous television stations and digital ventures.”

It can’t get much worse for readers of the Arizona daily, expecting news and getting, instead, rehash under the not very clever heading “Week in Review.” Everything you’ve already read is served up again as appetizing as  cold porridge. Cronkite Journalism students write in trendy colloquialisms (“we reached out,” “she went missing,” “functionality“), and mismatched tenses. Editors are either on vacation or were laid off.

Poynter points out the New Gannett begins life with two clear challenges: Revenues, dragged down by weak print advertising, were off 9 percent in the first quarter, and the second quarter does not look much better.  Results have been similar at NewsQuest, the group of regional British papers Gannett owns, which was hit by a work stoppage in recent weeks to protest cuts.

If you’re looking for movie and restaurant reviews to sweeten the relentless liberalism, radical politics, amnesty push and  “gay” agenda  olio, the Periódico de la República de Arizona (Arizona Republic) is for you. Want unbiased news reports written in proper English? You’ll have to move on.

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SCOTUS: Citizenship no longer matters when voting

In deciding to deny the petition for certiorari in the key election case Kobach, et al. v. Election Assistance Commission, (background here) the United States Supreme Court has summarily decided that citizenship is of no consequence in voting in U.S. elections.

At issue was the question of whether Arizona and Kansas could require voters to prove their citizenship when registering to vote with what has become known as the “federal form.” The form pertains to state and federal elections. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach led the suit against the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), on an appeal of the Tenth U.S. Circuit Court decision.

Jeb! proves he’s politically tone deaf

Besides being an establishment backed RINO, Jeb! is also tone-deaf. Sunday, fearful about his prospects of coming in ahead of the Republican pack in the campaign donation department, Team Jeb! sent out two desperate calls for money before the FEC filing deadline for this quarter, which ends midnight Tuesday.

The first email solicitation was a colossal blunder. The subject line was “¡Todos por Jeb!” or “All for Jeb!” for English speakers. The message addressed in McCainese to “Friend,” was signed by Jeb’s Mexican-born and raised wife Columba, who stresses the importance of the “deadline.”

Within short order, that email was followed by another, also sporting the “Friend” salutation from George “P” Bush, the lawyer son of Jeb! and Columba — still quaintly using a last name —  who is laying his own political groundwork having been elected as the Texas Land Commissioner. “P” writes, “I know mom reached out, but I wanted to follow-up. Dad needs your help, no two ways about it. This is the first deadline of the campaign, and Dad is going to have to disclose just how many people are supporting his campaign — everyone will be watching,” implores “P.”

He says we must do our “duty to support Dad before this critical end-of-the-month deadline.”

Then comes the threat: ”There are only two outcomes when midnight Tuesday rolls around:

1. We’ll hit our goal and send the other campaigns a clear message of our strength. 
2. We’ll fail and send a message to Hillary that we’re not serious: that the path to the White House will be unobstructed.

Message to ”P”: At last count there were a dozen other Republicans besides your Dad who have thrown their hats in the ring. This is not a Jeb!/Hillary face-off.

Jeb! the third Bush presidential aspirant has marginalized himself with his support of Common Core and calling the illegal invasion “an act of love.“ He actually said the issue “shouldn’t rile people up.”  As if on cue, John McCain’s doppelganger Jeff Flake agreed with Jeb!, praising him for having “the guts to say it.” 

Even establishment Republicrat Karl Rove, who has taken his losing battle of bashing conservatives on the road, conceded that Jeb Bush was not artful (sly enough) in those remarks. 

We can do better. Jeb! is a Bush too far.

SCOTUS rules in two cases affecting Arizona

Liberals on SCOTUS thwarted in abolishing death penalty, rule against AZ legislature

Arizona’s application of lethal injection holds, based on today’s Supreme Court ruling in Glossip v. Gross, an Oklahoma case brought by inmates challenging the drug protocol. Lethal injection opponents cited an execution they referred to as “botched.”

The 5-4 decision, was supported by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito, who wrote the opinion.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor a death penalty opponent, theatrically stated that the use of the drug midazolam leaves the prisoners “exposed to what may well be the chemical equivalent of being burned at the stake.”  Sotomayor neglected to call attention to the victims of the criminals whose crimes were heinous enough to be worthy of the death penalty.

The Arizona Legislature was dealt an unfortunate blow in the case Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission . At issue was whether an unelected “Independent” Commission should infringe on the Arizona Legislature’s ability to draw redistricting boundaries. The Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision sided with the appointed commission‘s authority. 

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote the opinion for the majority, in which Justice Anthony Kennedy joined with the liberals. Chief Justice John Roberts dissented, as did Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

In his dissent, Roberts said that majority’s position “has no basis in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution, and it contradicts precedents from both Congress and this Court.”

Governmental jumble as SCOTUS Justices legislate

Speculation on opinions pointless since liberal justices vote as a bloc

Americans, as young students have been taught that the U.S. Constitution provides a separation of powers via three distinct branches of government. The Legislative branch makes laws, the Executive branch carries them out, and the Judicial branch evaluates them.

Our Founders created a Constitution with an ingenious and intricate system of checks and balances to guard the people’s liberty against combinations of government power. It structured the Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary separate and wholly independent, yet coordinated for proper operation, with safeguards to prevent usurpations of power.

The Tenth Amendment clearly delineates the separation of powers —- creating a federal government with enumerated and limited powers, designed to keep government as close to the people as possible. 

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

James Madison stressed the necessity to reserve all possible authority in the states and people saying, “The powers delegated by the Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”

With these thoughts as background, take time today to enlighten yourself by reading Andrew C. McCarthy’s heard-hitting assessment of the past week’s U.S. Supreme Court actions. Then brace yourself for those still to come on Monday.

McCarthy’s insightful article, printed in National Review, is titled: “Let’s Drop the Charade: The Supreme Court Is a Political Branch, Not a Judicial One.”

Background: Arizona Senator John McCain voted to confirm liberals Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer to the Supreme Court. McCain and Kyl joined the group of 36 GOP senators and one Democrat in opposing Elena Kagan’s nomination to the high court. The Huffington Post has the statements each of the senators gave as their reason.

Blind rogue elephant makes deals with Obama, tramples Americans

Although former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) is at his best in this exposé on the House GOP sellout on immigration bills, the information he delivers is alarming.

Breitbart’s Big Government carries Tancredo’s warning about the House immigration bills slated to be debated on the House floor sometime after the July Fourth recess. Tancredo describes them as ranging from “deficient to disastrous,” with many “deeply flawed.”

He writes, ”Speaker Boehner and his team have no intention of allowing strong immigration enforcement bills to come to a vote on the House floor. The reasons for this continued stupidity are as transparent as they are onerous. The House Republican leadership continues to misread and misunderstand public opinion and the nation’s strong desire for both secure borders and interior enforcement.”

Tancredo notes there are “10,000 potential terrorists entering the country annually.” That’s the number of border crossers entering the United States each year from countries on the official government list of state sponsors of terrorism.

He concludes, “There are two serious obstacles to passing meaningful immigration bills out of the Republican-majority US House of Representatives. One is the duplicitous marauder who lives in the White House, and the other a blind rogue elephant on Capitol Hill.

Knowledge is power. We urge you to read “Tancredo: House GOP preparing to sell out on immigration bills.”

Then, first thing Monday morning, contact your Republican members of congress and let them know you’ve had enough. More than ever, in these perilous times, we deserve secure borders and actual enforcement.

SCOTUS redefines marriage

Marriage no longer a union of one man and one woman

Our Founders didn’t realize it when they wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights, but they guaranteed same-sex couples the “fundamental right” to marry.

In a  5-4 ruling in Obergefell v Hodges, the United States Supreme Court discovered the right of same-sex couples to marry falls under equal protection clause of 14th amendment.

Justice Antonin Scalia ridiculed his colleague Anthony Kennedy’s swing-vote interpretation, writing, “The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic. Of course the opinion’s showy profundities are often profoundly incoherent.”

Two years ago, Justice Kennedy joined the Court’s four decidedly liberal Justices to strike down a provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act that defined marriage, for purposes of over a thousand federal laws and programs, as a union between a man and a woman only. Today those same liberals, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor formed the majority with Kennedy.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas dissented.

Barack Obama joyously greeted the news by calling the court’s ruling a “victory for America.”

“This decision affirms what millions of Americans already believe in their hearts: When all Americans are treated as equal, we are all more free,” he said.

Read the June 26, 2015 Decision here.

Obamacare upheld: Justice Scalia redubs it SCOTUScare

Supreme Court takes massive swipe at freedom

States’ Rights took a massive hit as Chief Justice John Roberts again voted with his liberal colleagues in support of the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.

In the case King v. Burwell, Roberts writing the majority opinion stated, “Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them.”

Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee was the disappointing key vote to uphold the law in 2012. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who dissented in 2012, voted with the leftist majority today.

Justice Antonin Scalia, summarizing his dissent from the bench, correctly asserted, “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare,” using the acronym for the Supreme Court of the United States. Scalia accused his colleagues of twice stepping in to save the law from what he considered worthy challenges.

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas joined Scalia in the dissent, as they did in 2012. Joining Chief Justice John Roberts were the newly convinced Anthony Kennedy along with Associate Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.

 The Supreme Court Decision is available here.

Extremists incrementally transforming America

“We need to put the American flag down”

Few of us will forget the words uttered by presidential candidate Barack Obama days preceding the 2008 election. The foolish crowds, taught moral equivalency rather than American exceptionalism by liberal unionist teachers, cheered as he vowed,“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

Michelle Obama, who attended Princeton and Harvard Law School on scholarships, oddly acknowledged, “For the first time in my adult lifetime I’m really proud of my country.”  Not as widely publicized was this outlandish comment: “We are going to have to change our conversation; we’re going to have to change our traditions, our history; we’re going to have to move into a different place as a nation….and he (Barack Obama) is prepared t do it.“

The offensive comments maligning America taken in stride then, have now assumed a renewed fervor. Political correctness reigns to such an extent that when a psychotic 9^th grade dropout, citing a racist “manifesto” as his reason for mowing down nine black innocents in a South Carolina church Bible study group, people fall over themselves to jettison historic Civil War symbols that were an integral part of the landscape before his senseless massacre. Confederate flags have been removed from the shelves of major retailers.

Politicians and celebrities race to weigh in on the “vile” history of the flag, now vanishing from statehouses where it has flown in unity with Old Glory. Due to the despicable actions of a deranged 21-year-old, there are now efforts to dismantle statues depicting Civil War soldiers in parks and courthouse squares where many have stood for a century. The war between the states, where family loyalties were often divided, ended in 1865.   

Former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, a Democrat, is a lone voice as he encourages people to understand the “complicated history of the Civil War” as they call for the removal of the Confederate flag across the country. His statement can be read here.

What thinking Americans, seeing the national knee bent in supplication to political correctness, would have doubted that this demand would follow as hate monger and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan used the horrific slaughter to declare:

“I don’t know what the hell the fight is about over the Confederate flag. We need to put the American flag down. Because we’ve caught as much hell under that as the Confederate flag.”  His comments, made at a worship service,  were met with cheers and applause. He added, “Who are we fighting today? It’s the people that carry the American flag.”

Listen to the audio here, courtesy of WMAL.

A glimpse into the convoluted thinking at the AZ Republic

U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake has oddly found himself on both sides of the “political fallout” in the Charleston “church slayings.” That‘s according to the erratic Arizona Republic newspaper’s Page One, above-the-fold article. Flake was one of myriad national office holders and candidates who once accepted campaign donations from a man now identified as the founder of a white rights organization —- since being mentioned in the rabid ramblings of the cold-blooded murderer who slaughtered nine people in a prayer service last week.

Those who read this blog know we hold Flake and his mentor John McCain in low esteem. In that regard, we are not alone. The duo has the worst polling numbers in the country. But it is outside the realm of reasonableness to taint Flake with allegations of racism for accepting the contribution. His office issued a statement saying he would donate the money to a fund set up to aid the church. There’s a lot to dislike about the flaky Flake, but making this link is a stretch too far.

What we do find peculiar is this bizarre aid and comfort provided Flake in the same newspaper.  The brief piece referring to Flake’s “humane immigration reform” [read: amnesty] is written by none other than Phil Boas, director of the editorial department, who presides over the nearly daily decimation of his own wife’s father, Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Boas writes, “Flake has dedicated his career to pursuing humane immigration reform while challenging conservatives to update their views on the issue.” He also gives Flake bonus points for voting for the confirmation of the exceedingly problematic Loretta Lynch as U.S. Attorney General.

When it comes to racism and Flake, it’s his son Tanner who is the offender. In 2013 teenage Tanner was the subject of our post “Generational Flakes.” The younger Flake was exposed for his online spew of vile racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic slurs. BuzzFeed has more here. For his vulgar rants, there was no woodshed or even a pretense of one for the arrogant brat. Jeff Flake apologized for his son, teaching him that getting off easy is easy when your dad is a U. S. Senator.

That doesn’t make Jeff Flake a racist either. Just a self-absorbed flake who let an important teachable moment pass.