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President Barack Obama on Thursday nominated Dana J. Boente to be the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Boente has been acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District since 2013 and previously served in that role from 2008-2009. Boente was in charge of the office during last year’s six-week corruption trial of former Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife, Maureen McDonnell, both of whom were convicted.

President Trump has defeated Democrats in the intelligence community (IC) who were leaking classified information to the press. Such leaks have been a problem for many presidents, but Trump is the first who took a proactive approach and set up a sting operation that identified the leakers. It’s highly illegal to leak classified information. It’s also illegal to PUBLISH this information, but Trump is too smart to try and prosecute reporters.

A review of Challenges to the American Founding: Slavery, Historicism, and Progressivism in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Ronald J. Pestritto and Thomas G. West The essays in this volume, the second in a planned trilogy, survey the principal currents of 19th-century American political thought. The book is divided into two main parts: those ideas emanating from proslavery thinkers before the Civil War and those from progressive and positivist thinkers after the war. The slavery advocates emphasize historically conditioned social hierarchy as a central element of their romantic rejection of egalitarian political principles. The post-war intellectuals emphasize radical egalitarianism based...

Last week, civil-rights leaders in America gathered in Atlanta to do a little friendly Bush bashing, issue some nasty statements about blacks who also happen to be conservative, and celebrate the 40th anniversary of the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The observance was rich with irony. It seems that today's "civil-rights leadership" is completely ignorant of the history of civil rights in this nation, standing with the wrong group of people on the issue, and making hateful statements toward those who truly have worked for genuine equality. But since Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are more concerned with...

When looking back at history, it is always important to attempt to put one self in the time frame being looked at. We must put issues and events in the context of their time or we risk not truly understanding the cause and effect of events. Our understanding of a particular time is skewed when merely looking back through 21st century eyes. Take for instance looking at the American colonialists and their rebellion against Great Britain. By today’s standards, on the surface, their ideas and attitudes concerning government, representation, liberty and individualism don’t sound all that radical. After all, most...

Public policy in this country is no longer premised on rational thought and educated public debate, it is increasingly being driven by fear, hysteria, ignorance, and media disinformation. Last winter, the U.S. was cold. Growing seasons are moving south. Orange groves in central Florida that used to be productive several decades ago, can no longer grow oranges because it's gotten too cold. Floridians complained that they couldn't remember a winter as cold as that just ending. Yet while they sat around their homes in sweaters, they earnestly discussed imminent world disaster from global warming. Fifteen hundred scientists, solely on the...

Many commentators on President Bush's second-term appointments have linked the nominations of Secretary Rice to her position at State, Paul Wolfowitz to the World Bank, and John Bolton to the United Nations as a troika making a particular statement. The Guardian, for example, published a column by Martin Jacques to this effect under the portentous heading "The neoconservative revolution." Certain of the mainstream media have suggested that by appointing officials who support his administration's policies, President Bush has demonstrated a troubling audacity. The Los Angeles Times thought it appropriate in this context to ask, in mulling over Wolfowitz's nomination, whether...

In the ‘70’s TV series Kung Fu, David Carradine’s Kwai Chang Caine, affectionately known as “Grasshopper”, is told by one of his masters that when he is so graceful that he can adroitly walk upon the rice paper without leaving a trace, his learning will be complete. He will then be ready to wander the world imbued with wisdom, powered spiritually, and armored impervious by the Shaolin arts. The more I read, hear and see of what emanates from the liberal MSM and the foreign press, the more I get the feeling that they demand of the United States a...

Radical animal-rights activists may be the last people you'd think would be planning school lessons for your children. Well, think again. Through its innocuous-sounding "educational" programming arm known as TeachKind, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has found a way to reach school children starting as young as kindergarten with its extremist agenda. The opportunity for PETA (search) to gets its message into the classroom has been paved, at least in part, by various laws on the books in at least 12 states mandating humane education in public schools — thus creating a demand for curricula centered on teaching...

False Security By William Voegeli Posted April 26, 2005 We know at least two things about the Democratic Party. First, it is preoccupied with economic inequality. Implying that the middle class had somehow vanished, Senator John Edwards campaigned for a year with a showcase speech about two Americas, "one for people who are set for life, [who] know their kids and their grandkids are going to be just fine; and then one for most Americans, people who live paycheck to paycheck." Second, it is unyielding in its defense of Social Security—a defense that rejects the idea of reducing by a...

Nobody here but us Christian extremists! By Steve Farrell web posted April 18, 2005 Let's stop pretending. There is no such thing as religious neutrality in the minds of those who support the secular, socialist state. They are at war with religion in general and Christianity in particular. They always have been. A fresh 'respectable' example: the openly hostile March 29th, New York Times oped, "What's Going On?" by Paul Krugman. In it Mr. Krugman shamefully compares white right-wing Christians to Islamic extremists for their contempt for democracy, their contempt for the rule of law, their budding thirst for blood,...

Having it Both Ways on "Values" By William Voegeli Posted April 14, 2005 Some assessments of Pope John Paul II have, inevitably, viewed him through a prism that breaks every source of light into the red and blue of states on the American electoral map. Consider a shrill column by Harold Meyerson in the Washington Post. John Paul was, he says, the "founding father" of "Orthodox International," the reactionary force that unites Muslims and Jews, Protestants and Catholics against "a common enemy"—"modernization and the demand for equality." Meyerson is particularly angry with the vast orthodox conspiracy for its "misogyny and...

My friend Ken Masugi disagrees with me and Ben Boychuk not on the principles of free society and constitutional government, but on the prudent defense of those principles today. In an earlier post I had suggested that it would be good if President Bush, given his popularity and the public platform available to him, would remind his fellow citizens, those serving in Congress as well as those not, that in America we have the rule of law -- that the fundamental law, the Constitution, serves as the authority for what government may and may not do. That after all has...

George Soros and how power beats money everytime By Michael Moriarty web posted April 4, 2005 As a graduate of the Ivy League's Dartmouth and a Fulbright Scholar in a Europe that was just waiting to Marx-up the crème de la crème of America's graduating classes, I can well understand why literati, such as Harvard's Norman Mailer -- "revolutionized" in his G.I. Bill of three years at the Sorbonne in Paris -- and other such hungry intellects can be "turned," as they say, into would-be Jean Genets. But a dyed-in-the-wool, honest-to-god billionaire capitalist immigrant from Hungary like George Soros? "What's...

The Next Domino April 8, 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- by Bruce Walker -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In a month, Americans will know whether or not conservatives have gained yet another important electoral victory in the world. While it is hard for any patriotic America to actually root against Tony Blair, the defeat of the Labour Party in the general election this May would be a wonderful boost for American long term goals. Michael Howard, the Jewish refugee from a Communist dictatorship, is the leader of the Conservative Party and would become the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, should the Tories win the general...

United Nations Law-of-the-Sea Treaty Threatens U.S. Sovereignty Written by Tom DeWeese Sunday, June 20, 2004 ~~o~~ Those driving the battle to entangle the United States in the United Nations’ Law-of-the-Sea Treaty (LOST) are fighting back, determined to paint any opponent as a radical who is out of touch with the way the world really works. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and his allies are mad because they had hoped to sneak LOST through the Senate before anyone noticed. Opponents to the treaty foiled that trick and blasted it to the nation. Americans rose up in protest and now...

LOST: A Trojan Horse on America's Shores by Oliver North Posted Apr 1, 2005 About 3,200 years ago, the defenders of Troy, a maritime power of the day, found a large wooden horse outside the walls of their city where their foes had been encamped. Taking this "peace offering" to be a tribute to Poseidon, the god of the seas, they dragged the horse into the city that had, until then, withstood everything their adversaries could throw against it. That night, as the people of Troy celebrated "peace," Greek warriors poured forth from the belly of the beast, opened the...

LOST at Sea By Doug Bandow Published 3/17/2005 12:09:55 AM Attention at Condoleezza Rice's confirmation hearing focused on Iraq, but that was not the only policy discussed. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) pressed the soon-to-be Secretary of State on the obscure but important Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). Ms. Rice responded that the President "certainly would like to see it pass as soon as possible." One of President Ronald Reagan's notable achievements was derailing the omnibus convention. But Secretary Rice argued that the treaty "serves our national security interests, serves our economic interests. We very much...

Mexico's Fox is Not Going to Force-Feed Us His Workers By Carol Devine-Molin March 21, 2005 Unfortunately, Mexico's President Vincente Fox continues to exhibit a contemptuous attitude toward American grassroots activism. Obviously, he doesn't grasp the nature of American democracy at work. Mexico's leader essentially wants President Bush to rein in groups such as the 950 member Minuteman Project that monitors the Arizona-Mexico border for individuals illegally entering our nation. Fox is even threatening to utilize the US and International Courts to stifle this activism that's perfectly legal. What chutzpa! Moreover, it's downright laughable that Fox avoids the term "illegal...

Sun, March 20, 2005 Latest word on political correctness By Ian Robinson Every time I think political correctness has gone as far as it can go, every time I look at something stupid and think: "Well. That's that, then. We're done. It's all over ..." That's when things get even weirder. I was there when the word "gay" got changed. Not that I blame anybody for that. As everybody got smarter, it became clear that the term "sodomite" wasn't particularly sensitive or kind, although personally, I thought what is now the gay community should have picked another term. "Gay" is...