On Brexit, why are Americans so against democracy for Britain?

The resistance in America comes from the establishment left, that doesn't honor elections...

On Brexit, why are Americans so against democracy for Britain?
Brexit was voted on by U.K. citizens. We need to respect the voice of the people. 
John Phelan, Star Tribune 

Once, democracy was considered a good thing. People making decisions on political matters affecting them, peacefully at the ballot box, was celebrated.

During the Cold War, and in the hot war against the Nazis before that, the fact that we were democracies was one of the things that made “us” in the West (I’m an immigrant from Britain) better than “them.” When the Berlin Wall fell 30 years ago and communism collapsed, we in the West cheered when the long-oppressed peoples of Eastern Europe and even Russia itself went to the ballot box for the first time.

But times change, it seems (“Stakes are high in U.K.’s snap election,” Nov. 5). Recently, electorates have developed the habit of voting in ways that elite classes don’t like. Consequently, we’ve witnessed a strange phenomenon — an uprising of well-off, powerful elites against the average Joe and his use of pen and ballot paper. Brexit, and much reaction to it in America, is a classic case.

In Britain’s 2015 general election, David Cameron’s Conservatives were unexpectedly elected on a manifesto promising “a straight in-out referendum on our membership of the European Union by the end of 2017.” Parliament duly passed the European Union Referendum Act 2015, legislating for this referendum.

The government sent a leaflet to every home in Britain titled “Why the Government believes that voting to remain in the European Union is the best decision for the UK.” It read: “This is your decision. The Government will implement what you decide.”

The referendum was conducted June 23, 2016, asking the question: “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?” The options were: “Remain a member of the European Union” and “Leave the European Union.”

“Leave” won with 17.4 million votes — the most ever cast for anything in British history — 52% of those cast.

In the 2017 general election, 579 Conservative and Labour MPs — 89% of all those elected — were returned on manifestos explicitly committing them to honoring the result of the referendum. But, once back in Westminster, the promises made to the proles on the stump were discarded and Parliament has since done everything it can to veto the people’s vote of 2016.

The pro-E.U. Liberal Democrats, praised in the recent Star Tribune editorial “Stakes are high in U.K.’s snap elections” (Nov. 5), were the most brazen of all. They had spent years calling for such a referendum, indeed, such a commitment was in their manifestos for the 2010 and 2015 elections. In 2007, party leader Vince Cable wrote that they wanted to table a parliamentary motion calling “for a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union.” In 2008, they again called for a referendum and party leader Nick Clegg said, “Nobody in this country under the age of 51 has ever been asked that simple question. That includes half of all MPs. We’ve been signed up to Europe by default: two generations who have never had their say.”

Jo Swinson, who is now party leader (the Liberal Democrats have a penchant for regicide that would make a Roman emperor queasy), said that “the Liberal Democrats would like to have a referendum on the major issue of whether we are in or out of Europe.”

They got it. They lost it. And now they want to ignore it. Swinson has called for the referendum to be rerun, even while saying that she would ignore the result if “leave” won again. They do not see elections as opportunities for electorates to make decisions, but for electorates to OK decisions which have already been taken for them. And if they don’t, they can vote again until they do.

These people are neither very liberal nor particularly democratic.

The Star Tribune Editorial Board is right that there is much at stake in Britain’s election. This year marks the bicentenary of the Peterloo Massacre, in which yeomanry, police and soldiers attacked a Manchester demonstration demanding the vote for the working classes. Up to 700 people were injured, 18 were killed. The British people took a long and occasionally bloody road to secure their right, not only to vote, but to have that vote count. Among the journey’s highlights were the Peasant’s Revolt, the Civil War, the Chartist movement and the Suffragettes.

They have earned the right for their democratically expressed wishes to be acted upon, even when the Editorial Board thinks they are wrong.

John Phelan, a graduate of Birkbeck College, University of London, is an economist at the Center of the American Experiment.

Adam Schiff's 'ham sandwich': Not an inquiry, just a show

Adam Schiff's 'ham sandwich': Not an inquiry, just a show
Andrew C. McCarthy, The Hill

The most familiar metaphor about criminal investigations is, of course, that a prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. Like all good metaphors, there’s enough exaggeration in it to make a strong impression. It resonates, though, because it conveys the entirely accurate sense that a grand jury is a one-sided affair. We’re wired to believe there are two sides — at least — to every story. That’s why the grand jury rubs us the wrong way.

And that’s why the impeachment show — not inquiry show — that Democrats are running should really rub us the wrong way. 

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and his House Intelligence Committee are taking the show public this week. The inquiry he’s been running is, he claims, analogous to a grand jury investigation: It’s a preliminary investigative stage before the inquiry’s transfer to the Judiciary Committee for the formal consideration of articles of impeachment.

Grand juries, however, never go public. And that is precise because they are intentionally one-sided. They are kept secret by law to avoid prejudicing the suspect.

Prejudice is exactly what Schiff is aiming for, however. The point is not impeachment; it is to wound President Trump politically.

To be clear, Schiff’s grand jury analogy is bogus. Congress is not a grand jury. Grand juries are designed to be at least somewhat objective — a body of impartial citizens who, by constitutional mandate, must be satisfied there is probable cause that a crime has been committed before the state is permitted to indict and try a citizen presumed to be innocent. In theory, the grand jury is there to protect the suspect from an overbearing prosecutor. Here, House Democrats are the overbearing prosecutor, not the protective grand jurors.

What is happening in the House is a political exercise. Schiff is a hyper-partisan. With the anti-Trump media leaving his absurd grand jury analogy unchallenged, he exploits it when it is useful, namely when telling Republicans they will not be permitted to call their witnesses, and he puts the analogy aside when it is not useful, namely, in convening one-sided public hearings.

As a matter of due process, Schiff’s made-for-TV spectacle is a bad joke. That was underscored this past weekend when (a) Democrats gave Republicans a ridiculously short deadline to propose their own witnesses, whom Chairman Schiff reserved the right to veto; (b) Republicans duly proposed witnesses on the issues of Democrats’ collusion with Ukraine in the 2016 election campaign and in possible corruption; and (c) Schiff, as predictably as sunrise, ruled the GOP’s witnesses irrelevant.

In point of fact, the witnesses that Republicans seek to call are entirely relevant to what would be at issue in an impeachment trial, to wit: Is any misconduct by the president alleged in an article of impeachment sufficiently egregious that he should be removed from power?

But, see, a grand jury is not a trial. 

The ham sandwich metaphor is apt because the grand jury protection, though constitutionally required, is modest. The grand jury is not the forum for trying the case. Its sole role is to determine whether the prosecutor has enough evidence — just probable cause at this early stage — to warrant filing a formal allegation (the indictment), which transfers the case to a judicial court for a full-blown trial at which the prosecutor must bear the much higher, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt burden of proof.

In the grand jury, the prosecutor is not required to tell the defendant’s side of the story. The law does not even call for the prosecutor to share with grand jurors exculpatory evidence in the government’s files. The only matter up for consideration is: Does the prosecutor have enough proof of misconduct to proceed to the real ballgame — the trial?

In our system, because of the dictates of fundamental fairness, it is at the trial that things go public. That is because, at the trial, the accused is armed with all the Constitution’s due process guarantees — the right to counsel, to confront witnesses, to call witnesses and present a defense, the presumption of innocence and the high burden of proof imposed on the prosecutor.

So here is what Schiff is being allowed to pull off. 

He is claiming, “I’m just like the grand jury,” in order to confine the hearings to witnesses who will be most damning in portraying an abuse of power by the president — the exploitation of his foreign affairs power to squeeze a foreign government into helping his 2020 political campaign by investigating a potential Democratic rival. The grand jury analogy is Schiff's rationale for excluding witnesses Republicans want to call — witnesses who could put the president’s demands in context by establishing that Democrats colluded with Ukrainian officials in connection with the 2016 campaign and that prominent Democrats, such as Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, corruptly cashed in on his father’s political influence over Ukraine’s government.

That would all be fine if Schiff would be consistent with his grand jury pretense and do all of this behind closed doors. Then, when we finally got to a public stage, the president and Republicans would have equal time and equal right to present their side of the case. But that is not what Schiff is doing. He is using his control over a kangaroo-court process to publicize his dark version of events and to muzzle the other side.

This is a deeply un-American process.

I am not a knee-jerk Trump partisan. I am open-minded that the president may have abused his power, as all presidents do from time to time. I have always thought his best defense is that, in the scheme of things, the abuse was inconsequential: The Ukrainians got their defense aid without having to commit to investigating the Bidens; the president was within his rights to ask for Kyiv’s help in examining Ukraine’s role in the Obama administration’s controversial Trump-Russia investigation; the Trump administration has provided lethal aid in supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression, which the Obama administration would not do.

All of that matters because, in an impeachment case, the issue is not merely whether the president abused his power but whether the abuse, on balance, was so egregious that the president should be removed from power.

Congress is supposed to explore both of those questions — was there an abuse, and how egregious was it? It should be doing so in the light of day: Both issues, in public, with full due process rights for the president.

Adam Schiff and the Democrats are not a grand jury. They should not have been permitted to take the process behind closed doors and make it one-sided. But if they are going to keep it one-sided, like a grand jury, they should stay behind closed doors the way a grand jury does.

If the case is going on national television, fundamental fairness dictates that it be the whole case. Otherwise, it’s just a show, produced and directed by partisan Democrats.

Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, a contributing editor at National Review, and a Fox News contributor. His latest book is “Ball of Collusion.” Follow him on Twitter @AndrewCMcCarthy.

Tomi Lahren: We can't save California if conservatives keep leaving

Tomi Lahren: We can't save California if conservatives keep leaving

After delivering a speech on "American values" at the Fox Nation's first-ever "Patriot Awards" on Wednesday, Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren urged on Thursday for conservatives to stay in California and fight for the state.

Joshua Nelson, Fox News


Following an appearance on Fox Nation's first-ever "Patriot Awards," where she delivered a powerful speech on American values, Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren stopped by “Fox & Friends” and urged conservatives to stay in California and fight for the state.

“Why did we stop trying in California? That’s why I’m there,” Lahren said Thursday.


“If we keep leaving, we’re not going to save it. I get why people leave but I would say to conservatives out there, please stick around, it’s worth fighting for, it’s a great state,” Lahren said.

Last month, a poll showed that half of California's registered voters – including 74 percent of conservatives – have considered leaving the state.

The poll, conducted by the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC-Berkeley, found 71 percent of residents considered leaving California due to the cost of housing. The poll also found that 84 percent cited the "political culture" and 76 percent identified high taxes as the biggest reason.

Republicans and conservatives were three times as likely to strongly consider leaving than Democrats and liberals, the study found.

Meanwhile, massive crowds of Fox News and Fox Nation fans lined up Wednesday outside the Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg, Fla., as ticket holders waited excitedly to take part in Fox Nation's "Patriot Awards."

The highly anticipated red carpet event featured a lineup dubbed the "Golden Globes of conservative media," as attendees were treated to a live "Final Thoughts" commentary by Lahren.

Lahren said there are many reasons people are leaving California, but high on the list is rising taxes, specifically to pay for illegal immigrants. She said many people wonder how Gov. Gavin Newsrom, a Democrat, got elected.

"Many people tell me, 'How did this guy get in there? He's destroying the state,'" she said, adding that the problems with homelessness in major California cities may cause more and more residents to "wake up" and support conservative policies.


Joshua Nelson is a freelance reporter for Fox News.