Levin: Conservatism Can Never Be Dead – It’s a Way of Life

(And is also rooted in the personality)

Nationally syndicated radio talk show host Mark Levin passionately defended conservatism on Monday, referring to it as “a way of life” that “can never be dead” despite the attempts of the liberal media and some forces within the conservative movement.

“The lib media wants it that way,” said Mark Levin. “They want conservatism dead, but conservatism can never be dead. As long as there is a desire for liberty and individualism, as long as there’s a desire for faith, and there are believers, conservatism can’t go away.”

Below is a transcript of Levin’s comments from the show:

“I keep reading almost breathless and excited reporters writing that CPAC demonstrated that conservatism is no more. I also read it from people I’ve never heard of before on pseudo-conservative websites.

“Well that’s not the CPAC I was at. I can’t speak for the people who were speaking, but as I went around – and I spent about three hours there – and spoke with an enormous number of particularly young people. They’re wrong. They want Trump to succeed, and they endorse the conservative parts of his agenda. And they’re skeptical about the other parts of his agenda. And this is what you would expect from people who are conservative. And they also know the enemy, the left, is diabolical.

“But there seem to be efforts to redefine conservatism and conservative institutions by, among others, conservatives, who— It’s very strange. It just is. It’s very strange, at least, to me.

“Not by the lib media. The lib media wants it that way. They want conservatism dead, but conservatism can never be dead.

“As long as there is a desire for liberty and individualism, as long as there’s a desire for faith, and there are believers, conservatism can’t go away.

“As I said, it’s a way of life. Progressivism, Marxism, nationalism, populism, they’re not ways of life; they’re ideologies that require government to impose a will, somebody else’s will, on you. That’s not conservatism.”

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These Cases Prove the Left Is Wrong to Dismiss Voter Fraud

Voter fraud is back in the news, and liberals are not happy about it.

President Donald Trump has pledged that his administration will fully investigate voter fraud in U.S. elections and recently appointed Vice President Mike Pence to lead the charge.

This is a welcome development. Free and fair elections are the foundation of our political system. If Americans are to have faith in that system, they need to be able to say with confidence that the results of these contests accurately reflect the will of the people.

But for some, the integrity of the ballot box is less important than victory. These fraudsters and thieves are not above rigging elections and stealing votes to advance their careers and their causes.

And because few states have the policies needed to detect and prevent their fraud, there is little risk of being caught. In these situations, it is all too easy to thwart the will of voters.

Of course, there are many on the left who prefer to bury their head in the sand, insisting that voter fraud is a red herring meant only to justify acts of “voter suppression.” It makes for a powerful narrative, but liberals can hide from the facts for only so long.

We have developed and maintained The Heritage Foundation’s voter fraud database, listing confirmed cases of election fraud that have resulted in criminal convictions. Our records are the incontrovertible proof the left insists does not exist—and the database grows larger as new convictions roll in nearly every week.

Today, Heritage is adding 13 cases to our voter fraud database. As of this writing, we have documented 755 confirmed criminal convictions in 474 voter fraud cases from across the country.

Here are three of the newest cases from 2017.

Texas

Rosa Maria Ortega, a noncitizen, was found guilty on two counts of voting in the November 2012 general election and the 2014 Republican primary runoff. Ortega claimed she thought she was a citizen, and blamed her lack of education for the mix-up, but prosecutors pointed out that Ortega had previously indicated on a driver’s license application that she was a noncitizen.

A judge sentenced her to eight years’ imprisonment, after which she faces the possibility of deportation.

Virginia

Vafalay Massaquoi pleaded guilty to one count of falsifying voter registration applications and two counts of forging a public record. While working for New Virginia Majority, a liberal advocacy group, Massaquoi filed voter applications for completely made-up Alexandria residents. An Alexandria official noticed the voter applications were all filled out in the same handwriting and turned the documents over to the authorities.

Massaquoi was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for each count, to run concurrently, but his sentence will be suspended pending his good behavior. He was also ordered to perform 500 hours of community service.

Colorado

While working for Black Diamond Outreach, a Denver-based community outreach organization, Maureen Marie Moss forged 34 signatures on petitions she was circulating to get U.S. Senate candidate Jon Keyser on the ballot for the June 2016 primary.

Moss ultimately pleaded guilty to two counts, and was sentenced to four years’ probation on each count. She was also ordered to complete 250 hours of community service.

When it comes to election integrity, opponents of voter ID and other protective laws do not understand that absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence.

Voter fraud often goes undetected for a multitude of reasons. Many states lack the policies and procedures needed to detect fraud, either as it occurs or after the election. Prosecutors, forced to work with limited resources, often do not prioritize these cases, particularly after an election has occurred.

The Heritage Foundation’s report, “Does Your Vote Count?,” outlines reforms that states should adopt—including requiring photo identification, proof of citizenship, and entering into interstate cross-check programs—that will preserve the sanctity of the ballot box and protect the right of all citizens to cast a ballot.

These policies will finally make it possible to reliably detect, deter, and penalize election crimes.

Every instance of voter fraud is a threat to a system that guarantees every American the right to vote, and to have that vote counted. It is time to get serious about the integrity of our elections.

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Democrats Hypocritical on Recusal

Newly installed Attorney General Jeff Sessions is being harshly castigated over conflict of interest allegations that link him to last year’s non-scandal Russia scandal. Unsurprisingly, those Democrats who aren’t calling for his immediate removal from office are urging Sessions to recuse himself from any investigations into Donald Trump’s links to Russia. And, to his credit, that’s just what Sessions did late yesterday. As the National Review editors write, “Government officials ought to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Given that that standard has been honored mainly in the breach over the past eight years — especially in the Justice Department — Sessions’s decision is a marked improvement on the conduct of his most recent predecessors.”

On that note, let’s step back and evaluate several conflicts of interest the Leftmedia sidestepped when Barack Obama was in power. Let’s start with Justice Elena Kagan. Before her promotion to the Supreme Court, Kagan served as Obama’s solicitor general. Her job was to convince the High Court on the legality of Obama’s agenda. After her ascension to the Supreme Court, however, Kagan refused to recuse herself from NFIB v. Sebelius, the contentious ObamaCare case. This is critical because, despite the administration’s assurances, she was clearly involved in defending the health care overhaul as solicitor general. That ruling, you’ll recall, was 5-4, and it had a far bigger impact than any meetings Sessions had with Russian officials.

Then there’s Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Despite being, as Daniel Horowitz wrote last year, “a long-time activist in open borders activism,” she ignored her own prejudice and voted in United States v. Texas. This case pertained to Obama’s Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) program, more accurately described as executive amnesty. The only good thing that can be said of this case is that the 4-4 tie (Justice Antonin Scalia died before the vote) didn’t change a lower court’s ruling. Regardless, if Democrats were truly concerned about impartiality, Sotomayor would have stepped aside.

And finally, recall the utter malfeasance of former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who masqueraded last summer’s private meeting with Bill Clinton as a happenstance that included friendly small talk and nothing more. Democrats actually expected Americans to believe the exchange had nothing to do with the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email. Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi even called the meeting “serendipitous.” Despite the obvious conflict of interest, Lynch ultimately refused to recuse herself.

These are just a few examples of non-recusals. Democrat shenanigans go far beyond this. Remember that Eric Holder’s DOJ targeted media outlets and trafficked guns to Mexico as part of an elaborate gun control agenda. Where was the Democrat opposition then? The most embarrassing of hypocrisy came from Sen. Claire McCaskill, who this week claimed on Twitter: “I’ve been on the Armed Services Com for 10 years. No call or meeting w/Russian ambassador. Ever.” Yet that very same Twitter feed reveals that in 2013 and 2015, respectively, she tweeted “Off to meeting w/Russian Ambassador,” and, “Today calls with British, Russian, and German Ambassadors re: Iran deal.” Moreover, some 30 Democrat senators met with the Russian ambassador in 2015 as Obama was hawking his nuclear deal with Iran.

But now, there’s blood in the water, and the Left is doing its best to exploit it. The reality is that the Sessions uproar is a political witch hunt. One that Democrats embark on while ignoring their own hypocrisy.

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Why is Obama using a spokesperson to deny wiretap? The non-denial denial

A spokesman for former President Obama issued a statement denying the former president or his White House ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower during the election.

The statement came from the former president’s current spokesman Kevin Lewis on Saturday afternoon, after President Donald Trump made the accusation in a tweetstorm that shifted the focus of the news day.

There are still questions such as, why didn’t the 44th president issue the statement himself but rather opted to have it done through a spokesman who signed his name to it?

And, was it actually a denial? Jon Favreau‏, a speechwriter who worked for former President Obama during his administration, warned the media, and fellow liberals, not to paint the statement as a denial that Trump Tower was wiretapped.  He is correct. Nowhere in the “denial” is any denial that the wiretap occurred or that the Obama administration knew of it.

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