Campus Crazies Cartoons

Oh, shut up: Let's prosecute criminal campus crazies

Ann Coulter

Ever tried dealing with a playground bully? What shuts him (or her, for our politically correct readers) up fastest? A bloody nose.
Bullies operate on the assumption that they are safe from retribution. When they find out that’s not true, they curdle like spoiled milk. Until then, their conduct can only spiral further out of control.
That’s what’s happening at colleges across America. Students who think they can dictate  what is said on their campus are shutting down any point of view they oppose. That’s not youthful indiscretion. It’s a crime. And the perpetrators should be prosecuted for it.
This week, the University of California at Berkeley – a communist commune that poses as a cathedral of learning – succeeded in getting conservative commentator Ann Coulter’s scheduled speech canceled. The university later suggested she give her speech on May 2 but she rejected that date.
The reason for the original cancellation: college administrators feared her presence might pose a security risk.
A risk to whom? Coulter? She can take care of herself. The students who, masked in balaclavas and paisley handkerchiefs, think the best way to express their opinion is to smash in windows and set fire to cars? They want their freedom of speech to be unabridged, including acts of violence. Coulter sets only verbal bonfires with her intentionally overheated rhetoric.
It’s time for college administrators and campus police to grow a pair, and prosecute students who engage in these antics. Shutting down free speech is a crime, as Jay Sekulow, the chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, knows.
”What’s going on with Ann Coulter is classic viewpoint discrimination,” Sekulow told me. “The Supreme Court has been consistent that viewpoint discrimination is a violation of free speech.  And that is illegal.”
So who needs to take action? “It’s the school’s job to prevent the protests from becoming violent,” Sekulow says. “Letting students create a hostile environment that shuts down free speech opens the school to lawsuits.”
So let’s stop worrying about the students’ rights and prosecute the criminals among them. Here’s how, according to Sekulow:
“In a public place, and that includes the campus, you’re allowed to videotape what the students are doing. From a criminal perspective, the campus police would have to bring the lawsuit against people who are rioting. Frankly, until now, what the campus police have been doing is nothing. And the result is that free speech is being shut down. This goes way beyond political correctness. This is criminal conduct.”
College life is a time for young people to be exposed to new ideas, to weigh them and decide what works for them as they form their adult personalities. The message today’s students are getting is: agree with me or keep your mouth shut. That’s not education. It’s tyranny.
John Moody is Executive Vice President, Executive Editor for Fox News. A former Rome bureau chief for Time magazine, he is the author of four books including "Pope John Paul II : Biography."

Arkansas judge barred from execution cases after death penalty protest

Murder cases taken away from anti-death penalty prosecutor

The Arkansas judge who blocked the state from carrying out multiple executions was barred late Monday from taking up any other capital punishment-related cases after he participated in an anti-death penalty demonstration by laying on a cot as though he were a death row inmate on a gurney about to be put to death.
Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen was referred to a disciplinary panel after his demonstration outside the governor’s mansion.
Griffen’s protests sparked outrage among capital punishment supporters as well as lawmakers who described his actions as judicial misconduct and potential grounds for removal from the bench.
"To protect the integrity of the judicial system this court has a duty to ensure that all are given a fair and impartial tribunal," the court said in its two-page order.
Justices also referred Griffen to the state Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission to consider whether he violated the code of conduct for judges.
In the past, Griffen has said he’s opposed to the death penalty but that his personal beliefs shouldn’t discredit or disqualify him from taking up cases involving capital punishment.
On Friday, Griffen granted a restraining order preventing Arkansas from using its supply of vecuronium bromide, one of three drugs it uses in executions, because the pharmaceutical company said the state misleadingly obtained the drug.
The Arkansas Supreme Court on Monday night granted the state's request to vacate Griffen's ruling, potentially clearing the way for the state to carry out its first execution in nearly 12 years.
The case involving the drug was reassigned to another judge shortly after the Supreme Court issued its order Monday disqualifying Griffen from cases about the death penalty or Arkansas’ execution protocol.
Lawmakers have suggested Griffen's actions may be grounds for the Arkansas House to begin impeachment proceedings, saying the demonstration and a blog post Griffen wrote on the death penalty last week may amount to "gross misconduct" under the state constitution.
The Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission confirmed Monday an investigation of Griffen is pending following the state Supreme Court referral.
Griffen, who served 12 years on the state appeals court, previously battled with the judicial discipline panel over remarks he made criticizing President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. The panel ultimately dropped its case against him.
Griffen testified before the state Legislature in 2015 against a religious objections measure that was criticized as anti-gay, and he regularly blogs about current events in posts that weave in Biblical passages. They include a post days before his ruling that criticized the execution push in Arkansas.
"While the world meditates about divine love, forgiveness, justice, and hope, Arkansas officials plan to commit a series of homicides," he wrote.
Griffen, 64, is a Baptist minister who was first elected as Pulaski County judge in 2010. He ran twice unsuccessfully for state Supreme Court — including a bid for chief justice in 2004. In his other state Supreme Court race in 2006, Griffen challenged his rival to a debate over the free-speech rights of judges.
Griffen said he wouldn't consider a person's participation in an anti-execution event enough, on its own, to warrant disqualifying a juror from a death penalty case. The question, he said, is whether the juror could set his or her personal views aside and follow the law.
"We do not require people to come into court with blank slates, either in their minds or their heart," he said Saturday.

Congress grappling with shutdown threat as funding deadline zooms into view

Once again, Congress is staring at the edge of the abyss.
Lawmakers return to session next week with just four days to fund the government and avert a shutdown. The deadline is April 28.
The dynamics are different this time, compared with the 2013 meltdown. There’s a Republican House and Senate. This is the first government funding go-round with President Trump occupying the White House. No one is quite sure how the Trump administration will handle the negotiations or what are their untouchable requests. But there’s not a lot of time to figure this out. Some Republicans fret that House GOP leaders burned way too much time trying to rescue their stunted health care bill.
A lapse in government funding would represent the second major legislative failure by Trump and the Republican Congress. A shutdown, following the failure to repeal and replace ObamaCare, could prove politically catastrophic for the exclusive, governing party in Washington.
But here are the keys. First, funding the government could, yet again, hinge on ObamaCare. Secondly, while Republicans run Washington, Democrats hold many of the cards in this poker game.
The House GOP’s stumble to repeal and replace ObamaCare before the recess didn’t appear to have a direct connection to the pending government funding battle. But now it may. Just days ago, Trump declared he would yank subsidies known as “cost-sharing reductions,” or CSR’s, from ObamaCare programs. The government directs the CSR payments to insurers who grant coverage to low-income people. A dried-up subsidy could force insurers to drop ObamaCare and spike premiums for the poor.
Trump views the ObamaCare subsidies as leverage to force Democrats to the table on health care. Democrats contend the president is holding the health care assistance “hostage” and imperiling those who aren’t well off. Trump has engaged with few Democrats since taking office on addressing ObamaCare or funding the government. Those who lose coverage (many of whom backed the president last fall) will know precisely who forced them to lose coverage should Trump successfully strip the subsidy. Still, there’s no better place to withdraw the subsidies than in the upcoming spending bill. One would think the president would drop the CSR’s in this spending bill if he’s serious about the new policy.
But that is a poison pill. Republicans may love the idea. However, it torpedoes any notion that Democrats might support the spending package.
“The spending bill cannot be done by one party alone,” opined Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., before the recess. “These bills can’t pass without a reasonable number of Democratic supporters in the Senate.”
Therefore, is the president willing to stick to his guns on the ObamaCare subsidies or test the possibility of a government shutdown?
Blame the Democrats for this? Well, it’s hard to do that when Democrats don’t formally control any of the levers in Washington.
This is why it’s hard to make good on campaign promises. The rhetoric sure sounds lofty in the cornfields of Iowa and the snows of New Hampshire. But now?
Speaking of campaign promises, how’s funding for that wall going? It’s unclear if Trump will insist lawmakers attach money for the border wall to this upcoming spending package. But you can bet that Democrats will again bolt if that scenario comes to pass.
Wouldn’t the president latch money to construct the wall to this spending bill if he were serious about the project? But then again, Trump probably could get the wall and fail to keep the government open, too.
Plussing-up military dollars? Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., is clear the Pentagon needs a jump-start in funding. That’s something else on which Trump campaigned. But Congress operates under the Budget Control Act of 2011. That plan capped what’s called “discretionary” spending for years down that road and created “sequestration,” the budgetary phenomenon of arbitrarily limiting various spending pots regardless of need. Under the Budget Control Act, the “discretionary” spending ceiling (excluding entitlements like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security) for this cycle is $1.07 trillion. Pouring in additional money for the military (or, for that matter, the wall) busts those sequestration limits. Keep in mind that many fiscal conservatives in the House and Senate want to spend less overall. That’s one of the reasons Republicans need to lean on Democrats for votes to keep the lights on in Washington.
One of the best ways to determine the musculature of a policy is to calculate how much money Washington devotes to a given initiative.
How about stripping sanctuary cities of federal dollars? A good place to execute that policy would be a rider in this spending bill. Democrats would interpret such an approach as another poison pill and balk at voting for such a measure.
With the deep uncertainty over whether Congress can address all of this in such a short timeframe, there’s already discussion of punting and adopting a stopgap measure of a week or two.
But are these policy promises idle threats or does the president insist on Congress including such provisions in the spending bill? Does Trump concede on a few subjects and let Democrats score some wins? Do they fail to work any of this out and spark a government shutdown?
Congress completed much of the work on the spending bills behind the scenes over the past few months. Back in December, Democrats only wanted to fund the government through late March. Republicans demanded late April and prevailed. Never mind that House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., promised to abandon the now common practice of bundling together spending bills rather than advancing them individually. That approach could come later this year. But Congress certainly didn’t do any of that ahead of this spending deadline.
So something has to give. And yet again, Congress stares into the abyss.
Capitol Attitude is a weekly column written by members of the Fox News Capitol Hill team. Their articles take you inside the halls of Congress, and cover the spectrum of policy issues being introduced, debated and voted on there.

Republicans float new ObamaCare replacement plan

House Republicans are shopping around a new ObamaCare replacement plan, amid pressure to deliver a legislative win as President Trump nears the end of his first 100 days.
“We have a good chance of getting it soon. I’d like to say next week, but I believe we will get it” eventually, Trump said Thursday at a White House press conference.
“We’re very close,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said a day earlier at an event in London.
Fox News is told they hope to have revised legislative text in the coming days, and lawmakers are set to discuss the proposal on a conference call this weekend. But it’s unclear when such a plan could hit the House floor or what level of support it might have – Congress is currently on recess, and lawmakers won’t return until next week.
Fox News is told that leaders have not yet tried tallying support for the document on Capitol Hill.
"The question is whether it can get 216 votes in the House and the answer isn't clear at this time,” a senior GOP aide said. “There is no legislative text and therefore no agreement to do a whip count on."
A White House source said they could potentially have a vote by the end of next week, though they put the chances at 50-50.
The failure in March to pass an earlier replacement bill for the Affordable Care Act, amid widespread criticism of the plan, marked a major setback for Trump’s early presidency. He has since turned his attention to foreign affairs – especially the Syrian crisis – but continues to press for a new health care plan, blaming a bloc of House conservatives for the March meltdown.
Complicating any renewed efforts, however, is next Friday’s deadline for Congress to pass a new budget measure. Congressional Republicans and the Trump administration likely will have to court Democrats to avoid this scenario. Further, the timetable is tight, with the House not set to return until Tuesday night.
Interestingly, the government shutdown drama and health care could be directly linked.
Just days ago, Trump declared he would yank subsidies known as “cost-sharing reductions” from ObamaCare programs. The government directs the CSR payments to insurers who grant coverage to low-income people. A dried-up subsidy could force insurers to drop ObamaCare and spike premiums for the poor.
Trump views the ObamaCare subsidies as leverage to force Democrats to the table on health care. Democrats contend the president is holding the health care assistance “hostage” and imperiling those who aren’t well off.
Trump said Thursday he wants to pass both a health care package and budget bill.
“The spending bill cannot be done by one party alone,” opined Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., before the recess. “These bills can’t pass without a reasonable number of Democratic supporters in the Senate.”