You Could Not Take The 5th Without The 4th.The Unhinged.

http://dailycaller.com/2018/06/29/oddities-in-comey-informants-russian-collusion-evidence/
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In a few days we will celebrate another anniversary of the birth of America.  I though a little humor was appropriate because we have always been able to laugh at the stupidity of some who are free to speak their empty and/or confused minds.

Meanwhile, stop and think. - you could not take the 5th were it not for the 4th.

I hope the mass media continues to show the radical liberal nut cases who want open borders and free everything. It is critical Republicans and/or Trump supporters turn out and I know of no better way than to let them see who could win the next election and run the country.

No ICE, M 13 takes over the streets.  No police, more riots and destruction of private businesses.  Open borders and sanctuary cities, nothing left of our country as gangs take over the streets.  Raise taxes, businesses quit spending money for expansion because consumer confidence will sink as  unemployment soars.  Free healthcare, more doctors will retire, lines at hospitals will expand and health care will worsen. Free public higher education,  our education system will collapse.  De-fund the military,  China and Russia will applaud. Allow Iran and N Korea to go nuclear, bend over and kiss you ass.

Keep hating Trump because you lost an election and demonstrate your maturity and, while you are at it, light a firecracker, express profanities against the president, kneel should the flag comes by and show what true patriots are all about. (See 1, 1a and 1b below.)

Semper Fi!

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Spakovsky is a friend of John Fund. John has spoken for me.

More misplaced facts.(See 2 below.)
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More Non-PC humor: A man walks into a bar and sees a very attractive woman sitting by herself and asks, “May I buy you a cocktail?”

"No thank you," she replies, "alcohol is bad for my legs."

"Sorry to hear that.  Do they swell?"

"No, they spread.

And:

 Julie Andrews On Turning 79 :

To commemorate her birthday, actress/vocalist, Julie Andrewsmade a special appearance at Manhattan's Radio City Music Hall for a benefit of One of the musical numbers she performed was 'My Favorite Things' from the legendary movie 'Sound Of Music'.

Here are the lyrics she used:  (Sing It!)  - If you sing it, it is especially hysterical!!!

Botox and nose drops and needles for knitting,Walkers and handrails and new dental fittings,

Bundles of magazines tied up in string,

These are a few of my favorite things.

Cadillac's and cataracts, hearing aids and glasses,

Polident and Fixodent and false teeth in glasses,

Pacemakers, golf carts and porches with swings,

These are a few of my favorite things.

When the pipes leak, When the bones creak,

When the knees go bad,

I simply remember my favorite things,

And then I don't feel so bad.

Hot tea and crumpets and corn pads for bunions,

No spicy hot food or food cooked with onions,

Bathrobes and heating pads and hot meals they bring,

These are a few of my favorite things.

Back pain, confused brains and no need for sinnin',

Thin bones and fractures and hair that is thinnin',

And we won't mention our short shrunken frames,

When we remember our favorite things.

When the joints ache, When the hips break,

When the eyes grow dim,

Then I remember the great life I've had,

And then I don't feel so bad.

Ms. Andrews received a standing ovation from the crowd thatlasted over four minutes and repeated encores.

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 Dick

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1) Hillary Clinton – the 'human spittoon'

By Joan Swirsky

In Hillary's cringe-producing appearances over the past year and a half – since she lost the U.S. presidency in 2016 to Donald J. Trump – she has offered upward of 38 excuses to rationalize her loss, which Amanda Prestigiacomo has documented here exquisitely.

Among those excuses were sexism, the mainstream media, the electoral system, the Democratic National Committee, the Democrat Party, suburban women, stupid Americans, technology, deplorables, and, laughably, the claim that she was "too honest."
Oops...did I say 38 excuses? Make that 39! At a Shared Value Leadership Summit in New York City this past April, Hillary told the audience that she lost because she was a capitalist!

Right...and Donald Trump won because he's a Communist!

Oops...did I say 39 excuses? Here, lawyer and Fox News commentator Greg Jarrett lists 56 of Hillary's excuses...and counting!

Among that Mt. Kilimanjaro of Hillary's excuses, Jarrett lists racism, misogyny, James Comey, the FBI, the Russians, Vladimir Putin, WikiLeaks, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Twitter, Netflix, Chief Justice John Roberts, and the Drudge Report.

You get the picture – a classic case of Hillary's pathological inability to look in the mirror!

Actually, the genuinely pitiful and self-deluding Hillary is so blind to her own behavior and so clueless about even the concept of accountability that she has spent her entire adult life not seeing what is obvious to literally everyone in the world!

Specifically, people don't like it when someone speaks one way and acts another. It is all well and good for this or that self-described feminist to talk about equality in the workplace, shared responsibility for raising children, and "woman power." But everyone knows the following:

• That Hillary's "workplace" experience was a direct result of her husband's position, first, as Governor of Arkansas, and second as President of the United States.
  
  
• That their shared responsibility for raising their only child Chelsea fell largely to nannies.
  
  
• That the woman power thing meant nothing in the face of decades she spent tolerating her husband's multiple affairs and humiliating abuse – while she vilified his victims!

Excuse No. 57 seems be that she was bullied in school...at least that's the tale of woe she chose to tell a class of eighth graders when she gave the commencement speech at a tony San Francisco private school just a week ago.

Can excuse No. 58 be that Eleanor Roosevelt told her during one of Hillary's famous séances that the election was rigged?

A SORDID HISTORY


Hill and Bill graduated from Yale Law School in 1973, married in 1975, and moved to Arkansas, where in pretty short order Bill won election as the Attorney General (1977-1979) and Governor of Arkansas (1979-1981 and 1983 to 1992).

During those years, Bill had a 12-year affair with singer and model Gennifer Flowers. Every day and every night of that affair, Bill was spitting in the face of his wife Hillary, the human spittoon.

A spittoon, by the way, is a receptacle for spit, largely obsolete today, except for the human variety, such as Hillary – the arch poster girl for literally more than four decades of non-stop abuse.

This is not an article about Bill Clinton's testosterone levels or irresistible compulsion to seduce women other than his wife, but rather about why any woman – particularly his wife – would withstand almost half a century of wiping saliva off her face and pretending that it's raindrops.

My personal observation is that Hillary somehow realized – probably as a young girl – that there was something about her, both her personality and her character, that was strangely unlikeable, even repellent and alienating. And that realization led her to conclude – accurately – that she could never actualize her far-left goals on her own without significant help from powerful men.

In 1973, fresh out of law school, she depended on a powerful man, Jerome Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, to appoint her to the prestigious position of investigator on the Watergate Committee to impeach or fire President Richard Nixon.

According to Zeifman, however, he had to fire Hillary for lack of ethics! "She was a liar, she was an unethical, dishonest lawyer [and] she conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality."

THE SALIVA TSUNAMI

As a result, Zeifman spat in Hillary's face...big time! But the very next year, she married Bill, ushering in a virtual lifetime of saliva!

Whatever Hillary claimed she was doing in Arkansas for women and children, it pales in comparison to the uncountable affairs her husband was having in plain sight, and the buckets of saliva she was wiping off her face every day and every night!

CNN, of all the leftist and Clinton-supporting TV outlets, catalogued these "alleged" affairs and "non-consensual encounters" in elaborate detail. The very short list of those affairs, both in the "Natural State" of Arkansas and in Washington, D.C., were:

• Gennifer Flowers: a 12-year affair.
  
  
• Dolly Kyle Browning: Clinton's high school friend who reported off-and-on sexual encounters from the mid-1970s through January 1992.
  
  
• Elizabeth Ward Gracen: Miss America of 1982.
  
  
• Sally Perdue: Miss Arkansas of 1958.
  
  
• Juanita Broaddrick, R.N.: Arkansas nursing home administrator who accused Clinton of rape in 1978.
  
  
• Paula Jones, who said Clinton propositioned and exposed himself to her in 1991 – he settled her lawsuit for $850,000.
  
  
• Kathleen Willey (Democrat activist and White House volunteer who said that in 1993, Clinton grabbed and kissed her in the Oval Office's private study.
  
  
• Monica Lewinsky: White House intern whose affair with Clinton led to his impeachment.

In each and every instance of these extramarital encounters – which occupied many many hours of his days and nights – Bill Clinton was hawking large globs of saliva into Hillary's face. As if that were not enough humiliation, a 1995 biography "contained irrefutable evidence from one of their most trusted friends, Betsey Wright, who had been his chief of staff for seven years when he was the governor of Arkansas," that Arkansas state troopers helped to solicit women for Bill. Of course, the White House put pressure on Wright to deny her account and she issued a statement saying she had been "misinterpreted." But the author of the book insisted that he had cleared all the quotes with her in advance.

More telling is that in every single instance of Bill's purported affairs, what did Hillary do? She sided with her abuser and against his victims!

Was this dumb of Hillary? Pathetic? Cravenly political? Or, perversely, were Bill's infidelities a turn-on for Hillary?

Indeed, one can speculate about motives, but some motives are crystal clear, as Kathy Shelton can tell you. In 1975, when she was 12 years old, according to journalist Bre Payton, Kathy was brutally raped by 41-year-old Thomas Alfred Taylor. Unfortunately for Kathy, Hillary represented Taylor and told the jury that young Kathy essentially asked to be raped.

According to reporter Alana Goodman, Hillary knew – and laughed about the fact – that Taylor was guilty at the time, but "used a legal technicality to plead her client, who faced 30 years to life in prison, down to a lesser charge." She also laughed at the crime lab's accidental destruction of DNA evidence that tied Taylor to the crime.

Some advocate for women and children! Even before Bill's serial pattern of spitting in Hillary's face, she herself was spitting in the face of a preteen rape victim!

NEW NAME FOR AN OLD PATHOLOGY

Women who spend their lives taking abuse from men – like Hillary has – are not a new phenomenon. All over the world, there are women in relationships with or married to men who spank them, beat them up, chain them, walk them around like dogs on leashes, and yes, spit on them.

Given Hillary's lifetime of passively tolerating her husband's non-stop, in-her-face spitting and her habit of blaming the women he pursued, I think it's high time that the American Psychiatric Association considered including a new category in their bible of psychiatric disorders, the DSM – The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – much like NPD (narcissistic personality disorder), or BPD (borderline personality disorder), or ASPD (anti-social personality disorder).

The new category might be called HSTD – Hillary's Spit-Tolerating Disorder.

Then again, the DSM already includes Sexual Masochism Disorder, which is a condition in which women actually get aroused "in response to enduring moderate or extreme pain, suffering, or humiliation."

I could rest my case right here, but there might be another reason Hillary has long put up with an abusive husband.


THE ULTIMATE APHRODISIAC

Some women melt at the sight of an athlete. Others swoon at a guy who has M.D. or C.E.O. after his name. Yet others get stars in their eyes when they see a guy toting a big wad of cash.

But for other women, the biggest aphrodisiac of all is a guy they perceive as having power. Power in business, on Wall St., in philanthropy, in politics, in the mob. Guys who call the shots, who others genuflect before, who know what power is and how to use it.

I suspect that Hillary has always been a power junkie, and that she hoped her proximity to power would rub off on her.

But just like her cluelessness about losing the presidency to Donald J. Trump because of the 58-and-counting excuses she's been spouting to anyone who will listen, she was equally clueless about winning the New York Senate seat because of the immense and genuine power and influence of Bill Clinton, and about becoming Secretary of State under Barack Obama because of the same immense and genuine power and influence of Bill Clinton.

What Hillary never "got" is that power is not heritable, not transferable, not something you get by osmosis just because it happens to be your particular fetish.

Perhaps the most pitiable thing about Hillary – other than the criminal indictment that is likely down the road – is her almost childlike belief that if she weathered all the saliva that her husband and other powerful men spat in her face, she would somehow inherit their power.

Can you imagine the massive vats of saliva Hillary would be receiving from dictators like Vladimir Putin (Russia) and Kim Jong-un (North Korea) and Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Turkey) and Bashar al-Assad (Syria) and Nicolás Madura (Venezuela) and Mahmoud Abbas (the PLO) if she were the leader of the free world?

This is a woman who will go down in history as the very embodiment of a spit receptacle – a veritable human spittoon. This is the woman who God, in his infinite wisdom and mercy, spared us from having as our president!

1a)Why Did DOJ And FBI Ignore Lack Of Evidence For Russiagate? They Fell In Love With Their Source

The information Christopher Ste

ele was providing so perfectly fit into a narrative of conspiracy that it was impossible to ignore, and almost too good to check.

By Jason Beale

It’s called “falling in love with your source.” I did it, my colleagues did it, intelligence professionals collectively do it, and none of us are ever the better for it.

Here’s how it happens, at least from the collector level. I spent 20 years in the U.S. Army as an interrogator and strategic debriefer, with most of my second decade of service spent in and around embassies in the Middle East. My job at the embassy was to debrief walk-in sources, defectors, visa applicants of particular interest who agreed to talk to me, and anyone else of interest to the intelligence community who popped up in the region and fell into my column as a debriefing subject.

I dealt with thousands of sources, most of whom occupied a brief hour or two of my time, and whose information met a standing need for basic intelligence on Iraq. 

Others, particularly walk-ins or defectors with potentially valuable information to share, took days or weeks to thoroughly and appropriately debrief. Their information was usually of much greater significance to the IC than the standard fare, and it made the work much more satisfying for the debriefer.

Engaging in an extended debriefing series with a source who knows information that could enhance or change our collective understanding of tier-one national intelligence requirements is heady. If doing a market-basket debrief of an Iraqi visa applicant was a mid-week Major League Baseball day game in July, conducting a series of debriefings on a troubled member of a terrorist cell, a regime-hating microbiologist, or a defecting government official was a World Series game.

To borrow from FBI agent Peter Strzok’s terminology, it mattered. Thousands of consumers watched closely, and it was an opportunity to excel.

This close attention meant that, unlike a less-important debriefing, you’d be receiving volumes of analysis and feedback almost in real time. If you published your report at the end of the day in the Middle East, the intelligence community (IC) would just be waking up, and would spend their day critiquing and analyzing the information you published. The results of their analysis greeted you when you logged on the next morning, and guided your next session, conducted while Washington slept.

It’s Hard to Manage This Attention Well

Professional interrogators and debriefers will tell you that a major challenge of their job is to remain agnostic about the information the source relays. Their job is to use whatever skills they have to determine if the source’s comportment is consistent with someone telling the truth, to recognize and counter attempts to evade or deflect questions, and to faithfully report all information collected, regardless of their personal opinion of its veracity.

They call it raw, unevaluated intelligence for a reason: the interrogator collects it, and the analysts assess its veracity. Whatever issues you may have with the source’s credibility are worked out in the room, through thorough, methodical questioning and unrelenting follow-up. While there’s little room on a standard Intelligence Information Report for editorializing, a responsible debriefer will notify headquarters of his or her opinion of the source’s veracity, and will note significant red flags and behavioral issues in the “Reporting Officer Comments” section of the report.

I say all of this to tell you that the worst possible scenario for a debriefer engaged in an extended series of interviews with a subject is to fall in love with the source. By “fall in love” I mean to allow your excitement at the possibility that what he is telling you is true to overcome your responsibility to recognize, counter, and report red flags and blinking lights that may suggest your source is being less than forthcoming, or even lying.

You don’t want this to be the case. The last thing you want to hear from analysts after a session in which you believed the source was telling you the truth was that he was lying to you, and, by the way, here’s the reporting that proves you were duped. It’s soul-crushing. You question your skills, you’re embarrassed to have vouched for the guy, and you wonder if you’ve lost your edge.

But This Happened with the FBI and Christopher Steele

The FBI fell in love with their source. The information Christopher Steele was providing so perfectly fit into a narrative of collusion and conspiracy by the Republican presidential candidate and his staff that it was impossible to ignore, and almost too good to check. They tried to check it—desperately, I would guess—yet, according to those who have read the four separate Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) packets on Carter Page, they were never able to verify the information he provided.

There are two paths available when facing this situation. You can either dump your source and alert the intelligence community of your inability to verify the source’s information, or you can ignore the flashing red lights and rationalize the inconsistencies.

This information made sense, after all. It was explosive, it was sensational, and it was damning. If it was true, the ramifications—to the election, to the Trump team, to the nation, and to the FBI—were mind-boggling. To again paraphrase Deputy Assistant Director Strzok, we’re talking impeachment here.

U.S. agencies chose the second path. The FBI and DoJ decided that their “love” for their source overcame their inability to validate his information, so they decided that vouching for the source would supersede their responsibility (and inability) to verify the information. “We couldn’t independently validate the information, but we can represent to you with confidence that our source has been, and is, credible. We therefore are certifying that the information in that dossier is credible.”

As I said, this never ends well. Those lights flash for a reason. Steele’s denial of interactions with the media; freely expressed hatred for the target of the dossier; admitted inclusion of unsolicited and uncorroborated information in the dossier; the prevalence of easily debunked allegations—professional intelligence collectors ignore flashing lights like these at their peril.

In this case, they ignored them at the peril of Page, an American citizen with alleged connections to shady Russian characters who may or may not have attempted to convince him to enter a collusive, cooperative relationship. According to every FISA expert available to our cable news networks, the FBI was obligated to provide only corroborated, validated information to the FISA court in seeking a probable cause ruling that this American citizen was an agent of a foreign power.

The Desire Was So Deep, It Led to Concealment

The FBI succeeded in obtaining that ruling—four times—using, as a central part of their case, the uncorroborated information provided by a source with whom they were deeply, hopelessly in love. They wanted to believe him, so they ignored his warts and imperfections. They wanted the judge to love him as much as they did, so they hid those warts and imperfections from the court.

Embarrassed about the true story of the circumstances of how they came to meet, they hid their initial interlocutor’s baggage in a vague, speculative word salad. They believed their relationship was too important to allow the dubious agenda of those who introduced them to tear them apart. They’d moved on from that and were in a good place. The judge didn’t need to be bothered with those messy details.

When they discovered Steele had been seeing someone else, that he was cheating on their relationship by entering a series of illicit liaisons with just about every national newspaper (and a number of government agencies) in town, they had no choice but to break it off. But they couldn’t quit him completely. While they eventually informed the judge when and why they’d parted ways, they failed to note that they continued to communicate through a friendly mediator. They still had issues to work through.

If You Can Only Trust Him Partly, It’s Time to Get Out

I’ve been burned by sources, multiple times, each of which has left a scar that reminded me to be more careful in assessing the intent of the next person sitting across the table, seeking my interest and approval. Each time it happened, the end came through the intervention of a concerned friend—an analyst at headquarters telling me that I was being taken for a ride, and showing me proof that I was either being lied to, or that the story I was being fed couldn’t be validated.

Not once did headquarters choose to ignore the blinking red lights and push on with the relationship, hoping that maybe something he was telling me was true. It never happened, and never should happen in a professional intelligence operation. It doesn’t matter that 10, 25, or 50 percent of the source’s information may be credible. It’s the remaining percentage of inaccurate information that defines the value of the relationship and requires an intervention. If you can only trust your partner 50 percent of the time, it’s time to get out of the relationship.

Unfortunately, as is often the case with affairs of the heart, when challenged by others on his indiscretions, the FBI chose to focus on Steele’s good side—the side that supported their suspicion that Trump and his associates were deeply involved in collusive relationships with Russian intelligence agents. They also hid his bad side—the side that would provoke a suitably informed judge contemplating secret action against an American citizen to ask more questions, or demand more proof, before granting the warrant to spy on Page.

To acknowledge that they may have been wrong all along was all too hurtful. It would have reflected more on the FBI’s judgement than on Steele’s reporting. They couldn’t bring themselves to accept that it wasn’t him, it was us.

Jason Beale (a pseudonym) is a retired U.S. Army interrogator and strategic debriefer with 30 years experience in military and intelligence interrogation and human intelligence collection operations. He's on Twitter @jabeale.

1b) 
What Happened to the Intern Who Shouted Profanities at Trump

Fox News revealed this week the name of the person that shouted profanities at President Trump in the Capitol Rotunda — and what will happen to her internship.

The Congressional intern who hollered “Mr. President, f--- you!” across the Capitol Rotunda last week during a presidential visit has been identified.

Sources tell Fox News the woman in question is 21-year-old Caitlin Marriott, who is interning in the office of Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H.

Fox News is told she has not been terminated and will continue to work there through August.

Congressional authorities were finally able to identifiy Marriott and speak with her to determine if she posed a threat to the president, sources said. She raced from where she heckled Trump, forcing U.S. Capitol Police to put out a “be on the lookout” over their radios.

After deciding Marriott didn’t pose a threat to President Trump, authorities decided there was no other action they could take. However, Fox News was told that Marriott will be confined to her duties in Hassan’s office on the third floor of the Hart Senate office building and earned a week-long suspension. 

Read more at http://americanupdate.com/articles/here-s-what-happened-to-the-congressional-intern-that-shouted-f-you-at-trump#axZu2sIKlHFqROj8.99

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2)

Who’s Responsible for Separating Alien Kids From Their Parents? Many People, but Not Trump

By Hans von Spakovsky

Who truly is responsible for the 2,000 alien kids who, according to the Associated Press, recently have been separated from their detained illegal alien parents?

There is a lot of blame to share. That includes President Bill Clinton and the alien parents themselves, as well as the courts and immigration policies foolishly created by the Obama administration. The perverse incentives in those policies have endangered the lives and safety of children and helped fund the deadly Mexican drug cartels that run the trafficking networks on our southern border.

You would not know that based on the absurdly biased coverage and virulent protests that have occurred. The Trump administration is simply doing what it is constitutionally charged with doing—enforcing the law.

The president on Wednesday issued an executive order that directs the Department of Homeland Security to keep illegal alien families together “to the extent permitted by law.” That is the crux of the administration’s problem: the extent to which the government is permitted to keep families together while they await removal proceedings.

The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more >>

In 1997, the Clinton administration entered into a settlement agreement in Flores v. Reno, a lawsuit filed in federal court in California by pro-illegal immigration advocacy groups challenging the detention of juvenile aliens taken into custody by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The Clinton administration agreed to settle this litigation despite the fact the Supreme Court had upheld the Immigration and Naturalization Service regulation that provided for the release of minors only to their parents, close relatives, or legal guardians.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, the Flores agreement allows the agency to detain unaccompanied minors for only “20 days before releasing them to the Department of Health and Human Services which places the minors in foster or shelter situations until they locate a sponsor.”

But in a controversial decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, the most liberal in the country, has interpreted the settlement agreement to apply to “both minors who are accompanied and unaccompanied by their parents.”

In other words, it is the 9th Circuit’s misinterpretation of the Clinton administration’s settlement agreement that doesn’t allow juvenile aliens to stay with their parents who have been detained for unlawful entry into the country.

Of course, if those parents would simply agree to return to their home countries, they would be immediately reunited with their children. So those who come here illegally are themselves to blame for their children being assigned to foster care or to another family member or sponsor who may be in the country.

The executive order signed by President Donald Trump directs the attorney general to file a request with the federal court in the Flores case to modify the settlement agreement to allow the government “to detain alien families together throughout the pendency of criminal proceedings for improper entry or any removal or other immigration proceedings.”

Of course, the administration’s critics know about this settlement and know it limits the ability of the administration to keep alien families together. The point of their propaganda war is to force the Trump administration to terminate its zero-tolerance policy of prosecuting all adult aliens for illegal entry, stop all detentions, and return to the “catch and release” policies of the prior administration.

The executive order did not indicate the president was in any way relaxing the zero-tolerance policy. Unfortunately, an unconfirmed news report the day after the executive order was signed cited a “senior U.S. Customs and Border Protection official” as claiming the Department of Homeland Security was “suspending prosecutions of adults who are members of family units until ICE can accelerate resource capability to allow us to maintain custody.”

If this is accurate, then many illegal aliens currently in detention will be released because of a lack of adequate family detention centers.

“Catch and release” was the policy of giving illegal aliens a court date and then releasing them, a practice which enables many of them to disappear into the vast interior of this country. Such a policy is not a viable option.

As Mark Metcalf, former immigration judge, points out, for example, after 9/11 the number of aliens who failed to show up for their immigration hearings reached 58 percent in 2005 and 2006. Over the past two decades, 37 percent of all illegal aliens released pending an immigration hearing fled and never showed up for trial.

The Obama administration provided a huge incentive for illegal aliens to smuggle children across the border, since a child acted as a get-out-of-jail-free card for avoiding detention and prosecution for the adult accompanying the child. As the Department of Homeland Security correctly says, this policy “incited smugglers to place children into the hands of adult strangers so they can pose as families and be released from immigration custody after crossing the border, creating another safety issue for these children.”

In 2013, a federal judge issued a searing indictment of the Obama administration’s policy of reuniting children with their illegal alien parents in the U.S. who had paid human traffickers to smuggle the children into the U.S. and taking no action against the parents.

As Judge Andrew Hanen said in a case against a human trafficker who was caught with a 10-year-old girl, the administration’s policy was to complete “the criminal mission of individuals who are violating the border security of the United States.” He called the policy “dangerous and unconscionable” because it encourages illegal aliens to place their “minor children in perilous situations subject to the whims of evil individuals.”

Hanen listed the crimes he had seen committed against illegal aliens by traffickers, including assault, rape, kidnapping, and murder, and catalogued the “violence, extortion, forced labor, sexual assault, or prostitution” to which the aliens were subjected. Funds paid to these human traffickers by illegal aliens directly fund dangerous drug cartels such as Mexico’s Los Zetas.

Another reason for the current separation problem is illegal aliens trying to take advantage of our generous asylum law. If an alien follows the law by presenting himself at a port of entry with his family and claiming asylum, then his claim will be reviewed and his family will stay together.

It is when aliens are caught illegally crossing the border and then claim asylum that they have put themselves into the situation of being prosecuted for illegal entry. They are then separated from their children because of the Clinton-era settlement.

Something else to keep in mind when it comes to the credibility—or lack of credibility—of many asylum claims these days is that many aliens pass through countries with their own asylum laws on their way here—including Mexico. If an alien doesn’t claim asylum before he gets to the U.S., that is a pretty good sign his reason for coming to the U.S. is more about economics than asylum.

This issue of alien children being separated from their parents who are being prosecuted for illegal entry also should be kept in perspective. Our justice system doesn’t refuse to arrest, prosecute, and jail citizens when they break the law because they happen to have children.

As Peter Kirsanow, a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, points out, a report from the Department of Health and Human Services shows that more than 20,000 children were placed in foster care in 2016 because of “Parent Incarceration.”

None of those protesting against the Trump administration seem concerned that 10 times more American children than the 2,000 alien children cited in the Associated Press report were separated from their parents in 2016 because of violations of the law by their parents.

As Kirsanow says, it is “regrettable” children are separated from their parents. But “people who cross the border illegally have committed a crime, and one of the consequences of being arrested and detained is, unfortunately, that their children cannot stay with them.”

It is not Trump who is responsible for this.

Hans von Spakovsky is an authority on a wide range of issues—including civil rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, immigration, the rule of law and government reform—as a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and manager of the think tank’s Election Law Reform Initiative. Read his research.

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