After an amicable start at his inauguration with his calls of coming together, President Biden along with President Trump's amicable farewell address one may think that maybe we can move past all the political animosity. Maybe we can work together with give and take to govern, but no, that was asking for too much.

Biden's initial executive orders were not a good sign. Generally, TCR does not approve of executive orders used to usurp Congress' role. Biden is going at it with extreme vigor to remake America in the left's vision.

Let's review some of the more onerous Biden executive orders which together will make it harder to do business in the U.S., creates other roadblocks to our recovery from Covid-19, recklessly opens the borders, and significantly impacts women's rights in a negative way.

First, stopping construction of the southern border wall and stopping all deportations for 100 days. These acts are invitations for a massive increase in illegal immigration. Already at least two caravans with upwards of ten thousand illegals are coming from Central America. Biden wants a path to citizenship for some 11-30 million illegals - the equivalent of amnesty. Not a sound immigration system.

Second, Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline against Canada's wishes and which is mostly complete, effectively killing thousands of good paying union jobs. The product the pipeline would carry will still come to us via trains, trucks and/or be sent to China via a pipeline to the west coast of Canada. So talk about saving the environment if XL canceled is a lot of hot air.

Third, rejoin the Paris climate accords, a treaty never passed by the U.S. Senate, which treats China as a developing country while putting onerous restrictions on the U.S. Rejoining the World Health Organization, which proved quite useless in the Covid pandemic without any concessions from the Chinese dominated group is an empty gesture.

Fourth, incredibly, President Biden opens the door to men in women's bathrooms and guts legal protections for women by denying female athletes fair competition in sports and allowing biological men to compete directly with women and threaten women's athletic scholarships. The American people overwhelmingly oppose allowing this. And so what if the hard won gains for women are sacrificed to the transsexual special interest group. Women's rights are yesterday's news.

And this is just the beginning.

The Democrats aren't done with persecuting President Trump. They claim his speech to the protesters in D.C. a few weeks ago incited violence. The speech was not perfect, but do you really believe he wanted violence? The speech also is one that the left-wing media is not playing for you!

The key paragraph follows:

"We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the capital building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."

So the Democrats in the House, all 100% of them vote articles of impeachment without hearings, without testimony and without due process to go forward in impeaching a President out of office. It says here that the result will not eliminate Trump from politics but make him a martyr. This will not bring us together, but will drive us further apart.

The battle in Russell v. Harris County, pending in U.S. District Court has been joined by District Attorney Kim Ogg, Attorney General Ken Paxton and the Harris County Republican delegation, led by Senator Paul Bettencourt, State Rep.'s Sam Harless, Dan Huberty, Briscoe Cain, Dennis Paul, Tom Oliverson, Jim Murphy, Lacey Hull and Valoree Swanson.

The legislators Friday filed an Amicus Curiae brief supporting common sense bail reform that also considers public safety. It is available at the following link for your consideration:
Amended Motion for Leave to File Amicus Curiae Brief.pdf

Those opposed are trying to make sure the court has all the facts. In addition, their involvement is to make sure County Judge Hidalgo and her co-conspirators are not allowed to just roll over to the jail break crowd pushing radical bail bond policies on Harris County, Texas.

This month Nancy Pelosi eagerly rushed to impeach President Trump. Time was short because he would only be in office a few more days. It was petty. Spite and malice are not a good look for the incoming administration. It sends a message to 74 million voters that spite and malice are now the political agenda of Washington. Reprisals are not merely on the horizon, they're currently underway.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton lost the election because of her malice. She has blamed everyone but herself. Let's be clear: the Deplorables speech cost her untold numbers of votes as she plainly signaled that, if elected president, she would use the power of government to treat large numbers of citizens with contempt. Rather than being an isolated incident of bitterness, the tag "deplorables" is now repeated among politicians as if hatred were a virtue signal. It has become shorthand for a set of standard slanders against their political opponents.

That malice continues in the coordinated campaign to have a protest-gone-bad declared an insurrection. There is talk of having MAGA -- which conducted peaceful gatherings throughout the 2020 campaign season -- declared a terrorist organization. MAGA's peaceful intention of making their voice heard on January 6 was sabotaged by a handful of people who were acting against the will of the group. Insisting that MAGA intended to overthrow the government is ludicrous; the accusation would be laughable if it weren't part of a clear tactical design to remove the first amendment right to peaceably assemble from millions of people who have a long history of peaceable assembly.

There is no doubt that the protest turned bad. That the bad actors should be held accountable, everyone agrees. But the double-standard is disturbing if no longer surprising. When the bad actors vote for Democrats, calls for accountability are countered with outrage, and the Democrats quickly pivot the narrative to vilify the people who want accountability. The bad actors from January 6 are acting against conservative principles, so no conservative outcry will support them. Yet it provides another clear example that infractions by Team Blue are given minimal attention, enabled -- or even encouraged -- by the government and their media allies, while those by Team Red are punished to the fullest extent of the law. The pattern of selectively applying the law makes a clear statement: Team Red does not have equal protection under the law. Again, it is the intentional policy of both government and media to treat Team Red with malice. It has created a hostile environment in which members of Team Red have been attacked in the streets -- on some occasions murdered -- for their political views, because the people in power have signaled that kind of behavior is not only acceptable but desirable.

In his last two tweets before being banned from Twitter, President Trump expressed doubts about the election while clearly calling for peace, and said he would not attend the inauguration. Declaring these statements to be acts of incitement -- incendiary language that demands his forcible exclusion from public discourse -- is worse than dishonest, worse than spiteful. It's a strategic maneuver to lay groundwork to further silence Trump and his supporters, to justify effective censorship of honestly-held views about important questions.

Half the country is now watching as their civil liberties are no longer slowly eroding but are falling under fast-moving coordinated attacks. In this, many are forced to watch mutely from the sidelines by being aggressively excluded from social media, or seeing their advocates silenced. Let's not kid ourselves, we've been locked in our homes for nearly a year: being excluded from social media puts an end to both practical freedom of speech and practical freedom of the press for those 74 million people. The alternative to communicating on-line would be to peaceably assemble: yet there has been open discussion of having that civil right declared a crime for people who voted wrong.

If this is allowed to stand, democracy is only a name without a reality. Freedom for only half the citizens is tyranny by another name. It is mainly those on Team Blue who still have free speech and free press in a meaningful sense. There are a few people on Team Red who still have a public voice, but it may be only because they are not big enough fish to be silenced just yet. If we do not stop the attack on civil rights here and now, then malice and discrimination will continue to be the stance into the future and is likely to continue to worsen. This is a critical moment in history: Will Team Red have equal protection under the law? Will the government and media be allowed to continue to promote hatred, to advocate that millions be stripped of basic freedoms? Will malice become settled policy?

Until the malice stops, the calls for unity are not credible.

Our form of government is at a crossroads because people are now committed to a party ideology than united as one country with common goals and interests. What our elected officials and federal agency workers are doing is destructive and tearing our country and society apart. To allow the media and social media to censor political positions they disagree with and not be held accountable will lead to more destruction and goes against our democratic values and Constitution. So here are my solutions to this problem.

1) Term limits for all federally elected officials in Congress, a total of 3 terms (6 years) and can only serve as Speaker or Committee Chairperson for 4 years. For U.S. Senators, maximum 2 terms (12 years) and only serve as Majority Leader or Committee Chairperson for 4 years. Power leads to corruption.

2) Limit campaign funding and do away with all soft money political PAC's and limits on lobbying contributions. Also, limit all media and social media advertising and these companies must be neutral in advertising or immediately lose their license and legal liability protections.

3) Change the law that media and social media companies be liable under a standard of just a preponderance of the evidence such as negligence, including defamation. No more having a malice standard for public officials. Get rid of the Supreme Court decision of NY v. Sullivan, which protects these companies. They will be accountable if sued and subject to damages and loss of license.

4) Term limits on all federal judges including the Supreme Court, a maximum of 12 years on the bench or they are so empowered to lose their focus on society changes. It does not matter if they served on lower courts (District or Courts of Appeals) and promoted to Supreme Court, they can only serve a total of 12 years.

5) All federal employees after 10 years can be fired. No more civil service protections. POWER CORRUPTS. If the Democratic or Republican parties do not adopt these suggestions, then we need to form a new political party with this platform and support candidates who sign a pledge committed to these goals.

Without doing something drastic, our country will become a third-rate country with a divided society and doomed for failure. What has been done by our elected officials is disgraceful; impeaching an outgoing President, which I'm not sure the Constitution allows, since the 25th Amendment only refers to Presidents, not prior ones.

To allow the media and social media to show their bias and restrict political speech goes against our 1st Amendment rights of free speech, so these social media platforms need to either be neutral or broken up as the monopoly they have become. Same with our education institutions as without all views expressed, then how does our society learn and decide what to think about each position on an issue? If we want to create a society of one-sided thinking individuals then continue down this path, as it will destroy our country.

Gary Polland has recently undertaken the hosting duties on a new interview show, Tell It Like It Is. The show is available at American Star TV and at its YouTube Channel. New shows post Wednesdays. This week: An update on Covid and how to protect yourself and Brian Ettinger with an insiders view of Joe Biden.

Red, White, and Blue featuring TCR Editor Gary Polland on Fridays at 7:30 pm on Houston Public Media TV 8, replaying Saturday at 6:30 p.m. on Channel 8, Monday at 11:30 pm on Channel 8.2 and on the web at www.houstonpublicmedia.org.

Red, White & Blue, Like all business and education campuses, our show is off the air as we can't meet to tape. We hope to be back as soon as possible.

Gary Polland is a long-time conservative and Republican spokesman, fund-raiser, and leader who completed three terms as the Harris County Republican Chairman. During his three terms, Gary was described as the most successful county Chairman in America by Human Events - The National Conservative Weekly. He is in his twenty-sixth year of editing a newsletter dealing with key conservative and Republican issues. The last twenty years he has edited Texas Conservative Review. As a public service for the last 18 years, Gary has published election guides for the GOP primary, general elections and city elections, all with the purpose of assisting conservative candidates. Gary is also in his 21st year of co-hosting Red, White and Blue on Houston Public Media TV 8 PBS Houston, longest running political talk show in Texas history. Gary serves on the Board of Directors of American Values, a national pro-family, pro-faith, conservative organization supporting the unity of the American people around the vision of our founding fathers and dedicated to reminding the public of the conservative principles fundamental to the survival of our nation. Gary is a practicing attorney and strategic consultant. He can be reached at (713) 621-6335.