Vaunce News

🔒
❌ About FreshRSS
There are new available articles, click to refresh the page.
Today — June 9th 2024Your RSS feeds
Before yesterdayYour RSS feeds

National Conservatism Conference Condemns Sentencing of Guest Speaker Steve Bannon

The organizers of an international conservative conference stand defiant after a court ordered one of its featured speakers—a former senior adviser to President Donald Trump—to begin serving prison time shortly before the conference starts in July. 

A federal judge ruled on Thursday that Steve Bannon must begin serving his sentence for contempt of Congress charges on July 1. Bannon’s conviction came in 2022 after a jury found him guilty of ignoring a subpoena from the House’s Democrat-led Jan. 6 committee

Bannon’s four-month stint behind bars is scheduled to begin just days before his appearance at the National Conservatism Conference, which starts on July 8 in Washington, D.C. The Edmund Burke Foundation, which manages the three-day event, called Bannon’s prosecution “lawfare,” a term that means legal warfare. 

“Steve Bannon has been one of the world’s leading nationalists for decades,” Saurabh Sharma, the foundation’s executive director, told The Daily Signal. “The global Left knows this and thinks it can silence him with endless lawfare. It is wrong. 

“His public witness has changed the course of nations, and we look forward to having him be an integral part of National Conservatism Conferences for years to come.”  

The foundation declined to comment on whether it plans to deliver Bannon’s speech on his behalf at the conference. 

The “War Room” podcast host is appealing his conviction.

The high-profile conference, also known as NatCon, “will feature over 100 of the most cutting-edge thinkers the national conservative movement has to offer,” according to Sharma. The lineup includes politicians from the U.S. and abroad, policy experts, religious leaders, commentators, and journalists such as The Daily Signal’s Mary Margaret Olohan

NatCon organizers say they are no strangers to government pushback against their movement. European authorities tried to shut down the conference in Brussels in April, sending police to block people from attending and stating publicly that “the far Right is not welcome.” A Belgian court order allowed the gathering to continue, however. 

“The crackdown demonstrated just what the ‘rule of law’ really means—or whom it serves,” Edmund Burke Foundation Chairman Yoram Hazony told The Daily Signal. “It was a preview of how law enforcement, which is intended to keep the public safe, can instead be deployed to shut down political opposition.” 

Hazony said, “If anyone still believes that conservatives were paranoid or indulging in conspiracy theories in terms of cancel culture targeting the political Right, the attempted shutdown of NatCon in Europe’s capital removed all doubt.” 

Sharma emphasized, however, “We will continue undeterred—the fate of independent nations hangs in the balance, and we will not be cowed by petty bureaucrats in Brussels or anywhere else.”

“The global Left knows that national conservatism is the greatest threat to [its] misrule,” he told The Daily Signal. “It is right.”

The post National Conservatism Conference Condemns Sentencing of Guest Speaker Steve Bannon appeared first on The Daily Signal.

To the Condescending Cranks Faking Outrage Over Upside-Down Flags

In our modern political dumpster fire, there has never been an art so refined and illustrious as pointless pearl-clutching. 

In this, the ninth year of 2016, most everyone is fairly desensitized to the political drama emanating from the Left’s ardent claims that any conservative policy or protest is an appeal to fascism as their own organizations and protesters set fire to cities (and sometimes themselves).

Republicans pass a bill banning sexually explicit content in public schools from kindergarten to third grade? Florida Democrats and media labeled it fascism.

A U.S. Supreme Court justice’s wife flies a Revolutionary War flag commissioned by George Washington? Salon’s senior writer described Justice Samuel Alito and his wife as “extremely invested in the semiotics of American fascism.”

The New Republic, The Guardian, taxpayer-funded PBS—any time a Republican so much as upholds parliamentary procedure, defends former President Donald Trump, or questions the surge of gang and cartel members amid waves of illegal immigrants—these outlets are ready in the wings to call any to the right of Chairman Mao a fascist.

The latest banner of fascism to be shouted down in a “Two Minutes Hate” session out of George Orwell’s “1984”: flying the flag of the United States upside down. The horror!

As ridiculous as it might sound—the group that has spent the past eight years defending those who burn, shred, and desecrate the U.S. flag is suddenly outraged over many in the nation who have flown the U.S. flag upside down in a symbol of distress over Trump’s political prosecution and conviction.

Many on the Left and precious few on the Right have taken to social media to lambast those who would fly the U.S. flag upside down as “disrespectful,” “treasonous,” and “idol-worshipers.”

Is this the case? Are those who reacted to Trump’s felony convictions in New York City simply bowing at his feet in a brutal backstabbing of the United States? Is this heinous, unspeakable act the very hallmark of fascism and the alleged “cult of personality” that the Left has predicted for almost a century?

Of course not, and you know that.

We needn’t walk down the halls of easily accessible history to discern how this wrist-shattering pearl clutch is both hypocritical and ignorant. But we’ll do so, not out of necessity but because heaping good data en masse against poorly constructed arguments is entertaining.

First and foremost: Flying the flag of the United States upside down is not disrespectful, illegal, treasonous, or even unprecedented.

Although 4 U.S. Code § 8, commonly referred to as the “Flag Code,” isn’t legally enforceable (because U.S. citizens retain First Amendment rights to do with their own flags whatever they wish), flying the flag upside down under appropriate circumstances wouldn’t violate the law.

The law clearly states: “The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.” (The “union” refers to the patch of blue with 50 stars.)

Thousands in the U.S. have flown our flag upside down to express their “dire distress” in such instances over the past century.

Leftists consistently flew the U.S. flag upside down throughout Trump’s presidency to signal their deep disquiet and fear, from Washington state to Louisiana. Democrats in New Jersey resolutely flew the flag upside down in protest of Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. Some Republicans flew their flags upside down when Barack Obama was reelected in 2012.

The American flag has been flown upside down as “a tribute to veterans’ sacrifice,” and was one of the many symbols of protest against the Vietnam War used by leftist demonstrators in the 1960s.

The Flag Code doesn’t specify what “extreme danger to life or property” entails, nor does it restrict such interpretation to a physical danger or a political one. Might there be a situation today in which many Americans feel in deep distress over a perceived danger to the life and property of their republic?

Never before in American history has a former president, much less one running for office again, been charged and convicted in such a kangaroo-court fashion that even his political adversaries note the insanity of the circumstances.

In an extremely heated presidential election campaign, indicting one of the two frontrunners would be considered enough of an anathema—but the case of New York v. Trump was more than precarious, it was a circus. 

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, ran on the promise of doing anything he could to find something to indict Trump with. Outside his jurisdiction, Bragg used a federal election statute—which the Federal Election Commission already had stated Trump didn’t violate—as a convoluted lever to turn 34 counts of “falsifying business records,” misdemeanors that by this point were outside New York’s statute of limitations, into felonies.

As if that weren’t enough, Judge Juan Merchan refused to allow a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission to testify, refused to allow the defense to speak to the jury before deliberation, and informed jurors that to convict they didn’t have to reach a unanimous decision on what crime was committed.

Such actions by Merchan set a nation on fire even as trust in institutions already was wavering.

Elie Honig, a former federal and state prosecutor, wrote for New York magazine, an extremely liberal publication: “Prosecutors got Trump—but they contorted the law.” Honig pointed out that never before in U.S. history has there been a state prosecution using federal election law.

You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned Trump’s sex life, his character, or his business decisions—in fact, many of those expressing extreme distress at this forded Rubicon aren’t being protective of Trump like he was some kind of nonsensical religious idol. 

Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, and Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who have spent the past few years as Trump’s chief opposition within the GOP, both called this case and conviction despicable. 

When a reporter asks President Joe Biden whether he used this case to politically persecute Trump and he casts a wicked grin in her direction, how is the nation supposed to respond?

Reporter: "President Trump refers to himself as a political prisoner and blames you directly. What's your response to that, sir?"

Biden: *smiles*pic.twitter.com/CZY8JUMvKO

— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) May 31, 2024

Why is the left side of the aisle afforded the right to ride through towns and cities shouting about the impending doom of the republic like some bastardized caricature of Paul Revere, and the right side isn’t allowed to call out the very sham John Adams unpopularly fought in court to prevent?

Spare me your clutched pearls, neoconservatives. Your faux dignity and condescension at the concerns of Americans whose carcass of a justice system is paraded openly don’t move me. 

I don’t have to defend Trump’s personal life and sign onto a “cult of personality” to recognize that each of us has a right to be free from political persecution and election interference. 

Commentator Alyssa Farah’s silly claims that flying the flag upside down signals “selling out” are as pathetic and hypocritical as the rest of the cast of “The View” with whom she clucks and quacks about abortion rights, gun confiscation, and anti-Catholicism.

Whistling past the graveyard and sending a “strongly worded letter” have only mired us further in the muck of Third World antics.

I reserve the right to fly my flag upside down to signal my extreme distress at this danger to the life and property of the republic I love, and I’ll do so whenever I find it appropriate.

The post To the Condescending Cranks Faking Outrage Over Upside-Down Flags appeared first on The Daily Signal.

‘A Travesty of Justice’: House Speaker Dissects the Left’s ‘Lawfare’ Campaign Against Trump

The top House Republican is warning that the Democratic Party is trying to jail its chief political rival before November’s election.

Appearing with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Saturday morning’s episode of “This Week on the Hill,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., declared, “Donald Trump is being targeted because of who he is. If he was not running for president again, I don’t think you’d see any of this barrage of prosecutions, these local district attorneys and state attorneys who are after him … .”

Referring to the myriad state and federal indictments leveled against former President Donald Trump over the past 15 months, Johnson added, “They have targeted him because he is soon to be officially the nominee of the Republican Party for president, and this is their only way to stop him.”

“Everybody around the country can see this for what it is, anybody who looks at what is happening objectively has to reach the same conclusion. They are targeting him because of who he is,” Johnson explained.

He continued, “And the real threat to this … is it is the weaponization of our system of justice itself. … You have to understand this is something that would undermine a very foundational principle of our country. The people have to trust that the justice system is fair, that there really is equal justice under law. And if we don’t have that, we lose something very important to maintain a constitutional republic.”

Perkins added, “The former president says it’s not just about him, but it’s what he represents, the people that he represents, the fact that he has stood up to the Left, to the media. That’s the reason he is the target.”

Johnson agreed: “I think he symbolizes a pushing back against that federal corruption and the Deep State and the bureaucracy and all the things that frustrate the American people. They see in Donald Trump someone who is unafraid to sort of crash through those barriers in a certain respect.”

He further noted, “I think that’s why he is such a threat to them, and that’s why they pulled out all the stops.”

Over the course of 2023, four criminal indictments, amounting to a total of 88 felony charges, were issued against Trump. The first, consisting of New York state charges, alleged that the former president had falsified business records. That trial is currently underway in Manhattan.

The Department of Justice indicted Trump last June for allegedly illegally keeping classified documents pertaining to national security—after having left the White House in 2021. A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., then indicted Trump for allegedly attempting to “defraud the United States” by overturning the 2020 election results. Almost immediately afterward, Trump was indicted in Fulton County, Georgia, for alleged racketeering related to the 2020 election results.

“What they’re doing here really is a travesty of justice,” Johnson said of the Democrats’ campaign against Trump, which critics have characterized as “lawfare.”

“Very practically speaking, this was [Trump’s] fifth week of trial in Manhattan on this charge, a crime that they can’t even adequately define. Prosecutors passed on bringing these charges eight years ago. They did it now for political reasons, and they kept him off the campaign trail.”

Perkins noted that left-wing lawfare extends far beyond just Trump, pointing to the 57-month prison sentence handed down to pro-life activist Lauren Handy for blockading the entrance to a Washington, D.C., abortion facility in 2020.

Handy is reportedly the first person to be sentenced to prison under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, although the Biden administration’s Justice Department is actively prosecuting other pro-lifers, too. Johnson said that the Biden administration’s targeting of pro-lifers is an “instance of priorities being exactly in the wrong place.”

“They’re aggressively prosecuting people who are exercising their First Amendment freedom to talk about the sanctity of human life on a public sidewalk. And meanwhile, they catch and release dangerous criminals, persons who come across the border illegally, and people who are violent offenders multiple times over,” Johnson stated. “And yet they’re targeting people that have a different political viewpoint. I just think it’s such a blatant example of exactly what we’re talking about. And the people see this. They see a two-tiered system of justice, and that’s a real threat to us.”

“If you lose the rule of law, if you lose the foundational underpinnings of a constitutional republic, what you ultimately result with, again, is a return to tyranny, because the people who are in charge have abused their authority,” the speaker explained. “And we know that power corrupts, and as Lord Acton observed, absolute power corrupts absolutely. You have to have all these checks and balances. You have to have the separation of powers, and you have to have the maintenance of law and order.”

Recent polling suggests that a supermajority of Americans agree that the Biden administration is carrying out a lawfare campaign against the former president.

A March survey from McLaughlin and Associates found that nearly 70% of voters believe the slew of indictments against Trump are politically motivated, and almost 60% of voters (including close to 40% of Democrats) think [President Joe] Biden has played a role in the crusade against Trump. Additionally, 56% of voters (including a third of Democrats) said they believe that “Joe Biden wants to stop President Trump from winning the election by putting him in jail.”

The monthly Harvard CAPS/Harris polls have found some shifting over the past few months on whether voters would still support Trump if he were convicted on various charges, with voters typically being split 50-50 with a slight advantage in Trump’s favor, but the latest poll’s findings demonstrated that the flurry of lawsuits against the former president isn’t helping Biden’s popularity.

Originally published at WashingtonStand.com

The post ‘A Travesty of Justice’: House Speaker Dissects the Left’s ‘Lawfare’ Campaign Against Trump appeared first on The Daily Signal.

D.C.'s Democrat Mayor Heading to Las Vegas on 'Economic Mission'

Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) is heading to Las Vegas for an "economic mission" after enjoying the Masters golf tournament in Georgia on the taxpayer's dime.

The post D.C.’s Democrat Mayor Heading to Las Vegas on ‘Economic Mission’ appeared first on Breitbart.

Dulis: NYT Suggests, Without Evidence, Justice Samuel Alito Sent 'Stop the Steal' Message Outside His Home

It's a dream scoop for the New York Times: Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito displayed a "Stop the Steal" symbol outside his house! Unfortunately for the Times and reporter Jodi Kantor, there isn't any real evidence for that headline -- only a heaping helping of BlueAnon fever-swamp paranoia.

The post Dulis: NYT Suggests, Without Evidence, Justice Samuel Alito Sent ‘Stop the Steal’ Message Outside His Home appeared first on Breitbart.

DC Holds Training Sessions for Noncitizens to Vote

An agency of the District of Columbia held a training session last month to teach illegal immigrants and other noncitizens how to vote, according to documents obtained by the watchdog group Judicial Watch. 

News of the training session held by the local government in the nation’s capital comes as House Republicans push a bill—with the backing of Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.—to require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote.

The D.C. Board of Elections conducted the April 10 event, called “Non-Citizen Voting Education Virtual Training.” 

Judicial Watch obtained 13 pages of the training session’s PowerPoint presentation through a request under the Freedom of Information Act. On one slide, the presentation says:

Non-U.S. citizen residents can vote in District elections for the offices of Mayor, Attorney General, Chairman or member(s) of the D.C. Council, member(s) of the State Board of Education, or Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner(s) Non-U.S. citizen residents cannot vote for Federal Offices.

The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project previously raised concerns about noncitizen voting in the District of Columbia. (Heritage established The Daily Signal in 2014.)

Washington, DC’s Voter Guide for Illegal Aliens is up! pic.twitter.com/COeIpOba5w

— Oversight Project (@OversightPR) May 1, 2024

The District of Columbia is joined by local governments in California, Maryland, and Vermont in allowing foreign citizens to vote in local elections. Federal law allows only U.S. citizens to vote in federal elections. 

State courts blocked New York City from allowing noncitizen voting there. 

“Illegal aliens and noncitizens should not vote in any elections,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “That Congress allows the votes of citizens to be legally stolen by illegal aliens in our nation’s capital is inexcusable.”

The District of Columbia amended its election code last year to allow noncitizens, including illegal immigrants, to vote for local D.C. offices. 

As noted in my book “The Myth of Voter Suppression,” Democrats long have sought to change election laws to gain a political advantage. These noncitizen voting laws mimic a tactic used by New York City’s legendary Tammany Hall and other political machines that controlled big city politics. 

The District’s presentation explains the qualifications for registering to vote when someone isn’t a U.S. citizen. 

“To register to vote in the District of Columbia as a non-citizen, you must: Be at least 17 years old and 18 years old by the next General Election; Maintain residency in the District of Columbia for at least 30 days prior to the election in which you intend to vote; Not claim voting residence or the right to vote in any state, territory, or country; Not been found by a court to be legally incompetent to vote,” the presentation says.

Neither the D.C. Board of Elections nor the office of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment on this report. 

The post DC Holds Training Sessions for Noncitizens to Vote appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Congresswoman demands answers over DC children’s hospital Youth Pride Clinic’s ‘life-altering gender procedures’

Congresswoman demands answers over DC children’s hospital Youth Pride Clinic’s ‘life-altering gender procedures’
It’s about time. There’s much work to do to start protecting children from a dangerous element of the trans community that has mutated into a cult, and is now inflicting grooming and mutilation upon children, allegedly without parental consent. 🚨BREAKING EXCLUSIVE REPORT🚨 .@ChildrensNatl admits in damning audio recording that they do “gender affirming” hysterectomies on […]
❌