RUTHFULLY YOURS

Maine, which once led the nation in dependence on government welfare, is taking yet another step forward to fix its welfare system.

After six years of tackling tough welfare problems, Maine’s governor, Paul LePage, recently introduced a bill to further overhaul taxpayer-funded benefits programs. The Welfare Reform for Increased Security and Employment (RISE) Act would reinvent Maine’s welfare system to put work first, protect benefits for the truly needy, and make welfare a temporary hand up, not a lifetime handout.

LePage is no stranger to poverty himself. One of 18 children, LePage fled home at eleven to escape an abusive father. He spent time living on the streets and in cars, working odd jobs, and learning English as a second language. LePage’s rise from the streets to the Blaine House taught him broad lessons that he has applied to Maine’s welfare programs.

Governor LePage learned firsthand that the way out of poverty is not government welfare but personal responsibility, employment, and community support.

Applying these lessons learned, LePage has transformed Maine into a national leader tackling the welfare-dependency crisis. In 2011, one out of three Mainers was on welfare, and Maine was leading the way in many measures of dependency; it ranked in the top six for percentage of the population on food stamps, cash welfare, and Medicaid enrollment.

Governor LePage and his health and human services commissioner, Mary Mayhew, implemented time limits, work requirements, and anti-fraud programs that have already moved tens of thousands of Mainers from welfare back into the work force, helping businesses grow.

Nearly 250,000 Mainers (out of a total population of about 1.3 million) were dependent on food stamps when LePage assumed office in 2011. By 2016, that number had dropped to 180,000. While other states are crashing headlong into budget crises caused by Medicaid expansion, Maine has transitioned more than 80,000 people out of Medicaid, refocusing the program on the truly needy — all while the uninsured rate has declined. Maine now has $1 billion in the bank and a 40-year low in unemployment.

Now LePage wants to make sure that this trend continues for generations to come. The RISE Act focuses on work and individual responsibility — the key to moving people out of poverty and onto a more secure path. When LePage required able-bodied adults on food stamps to work, train, or volunteer, their average income more than doubled in just one year. That higher income more than offset the food stamps they lost, leaving them better off. Employment increased, incomes rose, and poverty declined. The research is clear: Jobs do a much better job of putting food on the table than an EBT card does. The RISE Act, if passed, will make sure that this work requirement continues in Maine.

The Washington Post started a new anti-Trump firestorm late Monday when it reported that President Trump revealed highly classified information on terrorist threats from ISIS in Syria to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak. The Post’s sources, current and former U.S. officials, portrayed this as a major scandal that put sensitive intelligence sources and methods at risk.

The Post claims it did not reveal all the details of the disclosures from its sources because U.S. officials said this would “jeopardize important intelligence capabilities.”

Yes, there’s a scandal here. It concerns former and current U.S. officials leaking classified information to the press to undermine a U.S. president.

Did President Trump slip and accidently tell the Russians something classified? Other U.S. participants in the meeting denied this. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster told the press Monday evening: “I was in the room. It didn’t happen.”

But keep in mind U.S. officials unfamiliar with intelligence sometimes make such mistakes. For example, in 2014, the Obama White House accidently revealed the name of the CIA Station Chief in Afghanistan to the press. The Obama White House also reportedly revealed sensitive intelligence to the media concerning the Stuxnet virus to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program and details of the Usama bin Laden raid. Where was the outrage by the mainstream media and Congressional Democrats over these leaks?

Senator Dianne Feinstein accidently leaked classified sensitive information on drone strikes in 2009 during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. Nothing happened to her.

And of course there is Senator Patrick Leahy who deliberately leaked classified information to hurt President Reagan in 1987. As a result, he was thrown off the Senate Intelligence Committee and earned the nickname “Leaky Leahy.”

Furthermore, under U.S. law, the President of the United States is our nation’s ultimate classification authority. He can declassify information as he sees fit to conduct his national security policy.

The real scandal here concerns the current and former U.S. officials who spoke to the Washington Post to generate this story. We don’t know if these sources lied, misrepresented what went on in the Trump meeting with the Russians, or were second-guessing what Trump told them.

We do know that current U.S. officials – possibly with the NSC and intelligence agencies – originated this story and revealed highly classified intelligence to the Post as part of their leaks. They were joined by former U.S government officials who I assume worked for the CIA and the Obama NSC. These people committed felonies. They must be identified and prosecuted.

Thanks to the tenacity and persistence of two key legislators in the Arkansas state capitol, Arkansas has joined the growing ranks of states that have moved to protect their citizens and residents from foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines, including Shariah, in state courts.

Representative Brandt Smith and Senator John Cooper combined to author American Laws for American Courts legislation, similar to legislation that has passed previously in Tennessee, Louisiana, Arizona, Kansas, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Washington.

The U.S. Constitution especially under the Bill of Rights, the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution, has a unique set of rights that are truly unique around the world. Rights like Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom of Expression covered under the First Amendment, the Right to Bear Arms in the Second Amendment, Due Process, Equal Protection-all of these rights are uniquely American and are specified in our Constitution. Many foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines, including Sharia as just one example, as practiced around the world are in direct contravention of these rights. In fact, such rights do not exist in many foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines. When court cases arise in the United States involving foreign laws, there are inevitable conflicts with the U.S. Constitution.

The objectives and principals of American Laws for American Courts legislation are basically to ensure that a state court will not apply a foreign law or foreign legal doctrine if the application of that foreign law or foreign legal doctrine in the case at hand would result in the violation of any of the parties’ fundamental Constitutional Rights. American Laws for American Courts is not a blanket ban on foreign law. It is not even a ban on Sharia. It is a protection of individual fundamental Constitutional Rights. That is what American Laws for American Courts is all about.

American Laws for American Courts is necessary because we have seen over and over again cases involving foreign law and foreign legal doctrines appearing in U.S. Courts. Those who say that because we have Article VI of the U.S. Constitution we don’t need American Laws for American Courts are just ignorant about what is actually happening in our court systems. Article VI clearly is not protecting the fundamental Constitutional Rights of our citizens and residents in the United States against foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines. If it was, these cases wouldn’t be coming up and they are, by the dozens.

The need for an effective law preserving constitutional rights against the enforcement of unconstitutional foreign law is both real and urgent. The Center for Security Policy’s 2015 study, Shariah in American Courts: The Expanding Incursion of Islamic Law in the U.S. Legal System. The Center found 146 cases in 32 states in which a party to litigation attempted to have the matter resolved by applying shariah, rather than the statutes of the state in question. Included in this number were some appellate and several trial court cases in which the judges actually ruled for sharia over U.S. law.

Former government officials have been demanding anonymity from the Washington Post in order to discuss a meeting they did not attend at the White House. President Trump’s National Security Adviser, Gen. H.R. McMaster, who did attend the meeting, has been going on the record this week along with other attendees to knock down the resulting story. Yet much of the press still seems to credit the Post’s unnamed non-attendees.

Here’s the lede from the Post:

President Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting last week, according to current and former U.S. officials, who said Trump’s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.

On Monday evening Gen. McMaster said in response:

The story that came out tonight as reported is false. The President and the foreign minister reviewed a range of common threats to our two countries, including threats to civil aviation. At no time, at no time, were intelligence sources or methods discussed. And the president did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known. Two other senior officials who were present, including the Secretary of State, remember the meeting the same way and have said so. Their on-the-record accounts should outweigh those of anonymous sources. And I was in the room. It didn’t happen.

On Tuesday the national security adviser elaborated on his remarks and took questions from reporters. At his Tuesday appearance in the White House briefing room, Gen. McMaster called Mr. Trump’s discussion “wholly appropriate” and consistent with the normal sharing of information on terror threats that occurs in high-level meetings with representatives of foreign nations. He said he was not concerned by Mr. Trump’s disclosures and had not contacted any foreign governments about them.

The anonymous sources quoted by the Post, on the other hand, appear to have very deep concerns, and the Post says that some of them even know what was said at the meeting. But many of the story’s harshest critiques of the President come from people who were not only not at the meeting, but are no longer in government:

“It is all kind of shocking,” said a former senior U.S. official who is close to current administration officials. “Trump seems to be very reckless and doesn’t grasp the gravity of the things he’s dealing with, especially when it comes to intelligence and national security. And it’s all clouded because of this problem he has with Russia.”

Here’s another excerpt from the Post story specifically focused on the President’s discussion of a particular plot hatched by Islamic State:

“Everyone knows this stream is very sensitive, and the idea of sharing it at this level of granularity with the Russians is troubling,” said a former senior U.S. counterterrorism official who also worked closely with members of the Trump national security team. He and others spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the subject.

Now why are such subjects sensitive enough to require anonymity but not sensitive enough to avoid discussing with a Washington Post reporter? We normally think of current government employees needing to remain anonymous while leaking data to the press in order to keep their jobs, but it’s not immediately clear why all the former officials also deserve anonymity in this case. CONTINUE AT SITE

The state of the Trump Presidency has been perpetual turbulence, which seems to be how the principal likes it. The latest vortex is over Mr. Trump’s disclosure of sensitive intel to the Russians—and whatever the particulars of the incident, the danger is that Presidencies can withstand only so much turbulence before they come apart.

The Washington Post reported Monday night that in an Oval Office meeting last week Mr. Trump relayed high-level “code word” classified material obtained from an ally to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Cue another Washington meltdown. The President took to Twitter on Tuesday morning to defend himself, claiming an “absolute right” to disclose “facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety.”

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster put a finer point on it at a Tuesday press conference, though without denying key details. He said Mr. Trump’s disclosure was “wholly appropriate” and didn’t expose intelligence sources and methods.

Presidents sometimes share secrets with overseas leaders—even to adversaries such as the Soviets during the Cold War—if they conclude the benefits of showing what the U.S. knows will aid diplomacy or strategic interests. From media accounts and his tweets, Mr. Trump said something about Islamic State’s laptop bomb threat to airlines. He may well have been trying to convince the envoys of the menace ISIS poses to Russian lives and foreign-policy goals, like the Russian airliner that exploded over Sinai in 2015.

Then again, the Post story has Mr. Trump boasting about how great U.S. intelligence is and divulging the info on impulse to prove it. National security officials also asked the reporters to withhold specifics about the item in question, presumably because further disclosure could undermine efforts to counter the threat or endanger the lives of human assets.

Reports emerged on Tuesday that the ally that gathered the material is Israel, and the revelation could endanger this and other intelligence-sharing relationships. The Israelis may hold back if they think their dossiers will be laundered through the U.S. to the Russians and then get passed to their Iranian and Syrian clients, and other foreign services may lose confidence in the U.S.

Lt. Gen. McMaster said he disputed “the premise” of the Post story, which was that Mr. Trump had done something wrong or unbecoming. He confirmed that Mr. Trump made the decision ad hoc “in the context of the conversation,” not before the meeting. The problem is that even if the President’s conduct was “wholly appropriate,” the story’s premise is wholly plausible.