Presidential candidate Ben Carson was plunged into a controversy this week over comments he made in a television interview.   If all you saw were the media reports, you heard “Carson says a Muslim shouldn’t be President.”  Not surprisingly, that’s not what Carson said.  He was asked whether a President’s faith should matter.  He answered, “It depends what that faith is.  If it is consistent with America and the Constitution, no problem.”  Asked if Islam was consistent with the Constitution, he answered, “No.  I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.  I absolutely would not agree with that.”  All Hell promptly broke loose.  Carson was called a bigot.  The Council on American Islamic Relations (more about that group later), called for Carson to drop out as a presidential candidate.  Mindless liberals of all stripes, and their media lapdogs were offended.  Hillary Clinton was “appalled.”  But Carson was right.  Here’s why.

The detractors quoted Article 6 of the Constitution, part of which says, “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office of public trust under the United States.”  However, much as was the case in the birthright citizenship controversy, they left out half of the sentence; the most important half.  What Article 6 actually says is:  “The Senators and Representatives before mentioned (in Article 1), and the members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution: but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office of public trust under the United States.”  What that all means is, as long as an official swears or affirms that he or she will support the Constitution, his or her faith is not a bar to service.  Isn’t that what Ben Carson said?  A President must solemnly swear (or affirm) “I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”  That means that, if a would-be President’s faith prevents him from preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution, he can’t lead America.  Isn’t that what Ben Carson said?

Now let’s get to the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).  CAIR is the group that is stirring this pot.  A CAIR official called Carson’s remarks “the most anti-American statement I ever heard.” What a joke.  Outwardly, CAIR exists as an Islamic anti-discrimination group.  In reality, CAIR is a creation of the Muslim Brotherhood.  That group was created in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, who declared,  “It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations, and to extend its power to the entire planet.”  The Brotherhood supported Hitler during World War II.  Great guys, but that was a long time ago; maybe they’ve mellowed.  I’m afraid not.

CAIR is a front-group for the HAMAS terrorist organization, and has ties to the Holy Land Foundation, which was shut down by the government after 911, and whose founder went to prison.  CAIR was an unindicted co-conspirator in that case.  CAIR’s founder, Nihad Awad, the same guy who called Ben Carson anti-American, has said this, “Islam is not in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant.  Islam should become the only accepted religion on Earth.”  Such a belief is inconsistent with America and its Constitution.  If you don’t believe me, read the First Amendment.  Any presidential candidate who ascribes to such beliefs cannot swear to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and therefore, cannot be President.  To repeat, Ben Carson was right.

To sum up, CAIR is a corrupt organization dedicated to the destruction of the United States as a democratic society which protects the free exercise of religion.  That’s always been its goal.  What’s worse, however, is that the American Left welcomes any ally who criticizes a Conservative, even those, like CAIR, that would use our own Constitution to destroy the very freedoms it was enacted to protect.  We’d better wake up.

Pope Francis soon will arrive in North America.  Several observations are in order.  First of all, I don’t understand the reason for all the anticipated disruptions.  Francis is going to New York,  Philadelphia and Washington.  We are getting traffic gridlock alerts.  The City of Philadelphia is virtually shutting down; closing schools and businesses and restricting travel.  In 1995, we had a Pope visit Newark, New Jersey, a much smaller place than Philadelphia, and no such restrictions took place.

Part of the problem in New York is that the Pope is going to the opening of the United Nations.  You see, he’s going to confer with his socialist buddies from all over the world.   It’s probably why, before he gets to New York, he’s stopping in Cuba.  I guess he needs some tips from the Castro boys.

The Pope has a message for America.  He’s coming to talk us out of capitalism, and to convince us that progress is destroying the world.  He spelled it out in his Encyclical, Laudato si.   Man made climate change, you see.  Francis actually doesn’t perceive any benefit of capitalism.  He refers to “the myth of progress.”  He decries big business, which he says worships money and is turning the Earth into a pile of filth.  The Pope has a remedy though; he calls for a “bold cultural revolution.”  Mao tried that once.  It didn’t work. Francis calls for a drastic change in “lifestyle, production and consumption.” (He means for us).  He says, “We need to reject a magical conception of the market, which would suggest that the problems can be solved simply by an increase in the profits of companies or individuals.”  According to Francis, we shouldn’t use fossil fuels because they cause global warming.  31,000 scientists aren’t convinced, but the Pope knows better.  Companies shouldn’t make profits.  They should help the poor instead.  They need jobs.  What to do?  Industry needs to slow down.  Simple.  Less industry and more jobs.  And the Pope calls the markets magical?  Add to this the Pope’s call for all nations to throw open their borders to thousands of refugees.  After all, with the industries shut down it should be easy to care for them.  Maybe Francis will miracle up some loaves and fishes.

The Fourth Century Catholic Bishop Tertollian once was asked how an educated man could accept the miraculous events described in the New Testament.  He answered, “I believe because it is absurd.”  Faith doesn’t need to make sense.  Neither, apparently, does the Pope’s vision of a world without technological progress, in which the poor shall know no want.

So Pope Francis, here is my Encyclical.  Let’s call it In Rerum Natura (On Reality).  The millions of destitute people who came to America with nothing, made new lives for themselves and saw their families thrive and prosper, were able to so because of industrial progress, not in spite of it.   Yes, America consumes more resources per capita than those in other countries.  That’s because America grows the food that feeds the world.  Yes, America produces lots of fossil fuels, and those fuels power our industries.  It’s a good thing too, because without American fuel and industry, Hitler would have turned the Vatican Museum into Herman Goering’s winter palace, and it there still was a Pope, his Encyclicals would be in German.  On climate change, the main CO2 producers are in China and India, and they don’t answer to the Pope.  On economics, even a Pope should understand that when industry slows down, poor people only get poorer.  No government ever made the poor comfortable by trying to bankrupt the wealthy.  The Pope is from Argentina.  He should remember that the Perons tried that, and failed.

In summation, maybe the Pope should put his own house in order.  He has a Church beset by child molesting priests.  He has a Church  in which most priests are senior citizens, and the remaining nuns are even older.  He has a Church with a serious attendance problem.  In short, we don’t need to have another misguided socialist come here to preach to Congress.  We already have Obama for that.

As I have written before, we live in an age where there is only one side to any issue.  According to the mindless liberal numb-skulls whose pronouncements pass for what used to be our national values, you either subscribe to the liberal orthodoxy, or you are denounced as an extremist, bigot, fascist, need I go on?  And so it is with the liberal take on the latest influx of Middle-Eastern refugees who are flooding Europe.  After all, these poor people are simply fleeing oppression in the Muslim world; civil war, poverty, religious persecution.  Those ills sadly do exist, and a lot of the refugees are simply looking for a better life.  So, who could be against that?  Oh, if real life was only as simple as  your average liberal.  Liberals follow a simple philosophy, which may be summed up as – The road to Utopia is paved with good intentions.  They don’t think, they feel, and if you feel for refugees, then whatever they want should be accepted.

Wrong.  What we have is a situation in which hoards of refugees are inundating European nations and overwhelming social services.  Last week, the Hungarian railway system had to be shut down due to thousands of refugees on the tracks.  Note I said “nations.”  The liberal “One World” crowd doesn’t believe in borders.  But, without borders there are no nations.  Liberals don’t grasp that concept.  In their world, when the refugees come in, in whatever number choose to show up,  the nation they arrive in is obligated to provide for them.  But, without defensible borders and control over its immigration policy, there will be no government to provide for them.  When the government breaks down there is no law and order, society falls apart and chaos reigns.  Isn’t that what these people are fleeing in the first place?

The second problem with the unrestricted admission of refugees is the troublesome reality that ISIS; remember them, they are the folks fomenting the civil wars and religious persecution that the refugees are fleeing; well, it seems they have let it be known that they are implanting terrorists among the refugees.  That gives them entree to the countries on their list for the worldwide Caliphate they are planning for us.  Why should Americans worry?  Well, our President, Il Duce Obama, has compassion, you see, so he is admitting, 10,000 or 70,000 or 100,000 Middle-Eastern “refugees.”  So the message from the crypto-terrorists is very simple, “Welcome us or you have no compassion.  We’re here.  Death to America!  Got you sucker!”

I wasn’t very good at Latin in high school, but I’m a lawyer, so what the hell?  The subject is is the unexpected popularity of Donald Trump.  Loosely translated (by Google), “unde venis et quo vadis?” means, “where did you come from and where are you going?”  We’ll take these questions one at a time.

Where did Trump the presidential candidate come from?  More precisely, “what was it that made it possible for Donald Trump to be considered a legitimate candidate for President of the United States?”  This one’s easy.  We need look no further than the people running the Republican Party.  The Establishment.  That’s right, all the masterminds who keep pushing soft, moderate, constantly apologetic punching bags as our Republican presidential nominees.  Those same people who are appalled at Trump’s popularity.  Don’t like him?  Too bad.  You made him.  Trump the candidate is popular not because Trump the man  previously was highly regarded by the public.  Quite the opposite.  Not so long ago, Trump’s unfavorable rating was over 60%.  Since he announced his presidential campaign, his favorable rating is over 60%.  That’s right, it completely turned around.  And did Trump accomplish this by avoiding provocative statements, never taking a real stand and constantly apologizing, “if anyone was offended.”  Nooooooo!  Quite the opposite.  Trump actually tells anyone who will listen exactly what he thinks about any subject.  The experts can’t understand this.  They have repeatedly forecast Trump’s impending doom.  Wrong again.  You see, the experts evaluate Trump by their rules, but Trump doesn’t play by their rules.  Even a high moron should have figured out by now that the Establishment prescription for “acceptable” presidential candidates doesn’t produce Presidents, it produces good losers.  The experts evaluate Trump by their standard for politicians, but Trump doesn’t act like a politician.  And that’s the secret.  Trump is popular because he’s the anti-politician at a time when most people don’t trust politicians.  Not just Obama, with the “you can keep your doctor” crap.  But again, those same Republican establishment folks who told us they needed to run Congress, and then, they would stop Obama.  They would repeal Obamacare, and they would stop him from ignoring the Constitution.  We believed them.  We put them in power.  We expected them to keep their word.  They lied.  Obama is more dangerous than ever, and spending keeps going up.  We are mad as hell and we won’t believe the politicians a second time.  Enter Donald Trump.

Question two – where is Trump going?    I watched his campaign announcement in June and thought he was going nowhere.  I didn’t think then that he was serious.  Now,  I’m not sure.  I have been and continue to support Ted Cruz.  I too, thought the Trump novelty would wear off.  It hasn’t.  I’m not at all sure how a President Trump would fare when he had to govern.  On the other hand, I am intrigued by the prospect of a President who might destroy political correctness once and for all, and who would positively scare hell out of our enemies abroad.  What about the inevitable ads denouncing Trump for changing his position on issues?  Again, that is the orthodox attack on politicians.  Two things.  First, see above, he’s not a politician.  Secondly, what right do politicians, who promise one thing and do another, have to criticize Trump, who so far, hasn’t lied to anybody?

In the final analysis, I have no crystal ball.  I don’t know how this will end, but the Trump phenomenon proves what I have been saying for some time – 2016 presents a golden opportunity for the emergence of a conservative populist candidate.  Such a candidate can be nominated, and can be elected.

To all those “experts” who kept telling us that it was inevitable that Hillary would be the Democratic nominee and next President, “How do you like her now?”  Hillary’s favorable ratings keep going down, the fortunes of  the senile Marxist, Bernie Sanders, keep looking better, and even crazy old Joe Biden looks like a better bet than the previously inevitable President H. Clinton.  Was that President, or inmate?  Now, she’s under investigation by the FBI for violation of the Espionage Act.   General Petreus got convicted for sharing confidential information privately with his mistress.  Hillary had classified information on her private server, stored in a Colorado bathroom, and presumably available to any foreign hacker who bothered to look.  And does Hillary care?  What, me worry?  When a journalist dared to ask if she had “wiped” her server, Hillary feigned confusion and joked, “you mean like with a cloth?  And her apparent unconcern seems to be working.  A recent poll asked voters to describe Hillary in one word; the three most frequent answers were “liar,” “dishonest,” and “untrustworthy”  “Crook” also finished in the top ten.  It’s to the point that, whenever I see or hear Hillary, I think of Charles Laughton; and not just because of the physical resemblance.  In a great old movie, Witness for the Prosecution, Laughton played a barrister who cross-examined Marlena Dietrich.  Laughton recounts a litany of instances where Dietrich’s character failed to tell the truth, and concludes by asking, “Do you now confess yourself to be a continual and habitual liar?”  Good question.  What about that Hillary?  I was never worried that Hillary was unbeatable.  Now, I am worried she won’t be the nominee.