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Title: The Patriot Post Digest 6-1-2017 Post by: nChrist on June 02, 2017, 02:42:09 PM ________________________________________ The Patriot Post Digest 6-1-2017 From The Federalist Patriot Free Email Subscription (http://patriotpost.us/subscription/new) ________________________________________ Mid-Day Digest Jun. 1, 2017 IN TODAY’S EDITION Clinton’s list of election-loss scapegoats has grown to include “voter suppression.” Some key Obama administration officials have been subpoenaed over unmasking. The extent of Obama’s spying — and the Leftmedia’s obfuscation — is revealed. Daily Features: Top Headlines, Cartoons, Columnists and Short Cuts. THE FOUNDATION “The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men.” —Samuel Adams (1775) TOP RIGHT HOOKS Clinton Adds Voter Suppression to Election Loss Excuses1 “I take responsibility for every decision I made, but that’s not why I lost.” So began Hillary Clinton’s latest blame-game festivities. Everyone was culpable except her, including, as usual, James Comey2 and “1,000 Russian agents,” but also the DNC and “voter suppression.” For good measure, she even poo-poohed her email scandal. Again. “My email account was turned into the biggest scandal since Lord knows when,” Clinton complained. “This was the biggest nothing-burger ever.” Remember, her illegal server was designed specifically to conceal her communications3 and keep them from the public record. That gross deceit is anything but a “nothing-burger.” Of the DNC, Clinton whined, “I set up my campaign, and we have our own data operation. I get the nomination, so I’m now the nominee of the Democratic party. I inherit nothing from the Democratic party. I mean, it was bankrupt. It was on the verge of insolvency. Its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong. I had to inject money into it.” Fine thanks for a DNC that was guilty of actively working for her and against Bernie Sanders. Then she turned to supposed “voter suppression,” saying, “The AP did a really well-researched piece about voter suppression in Wisconsin, and they literally found people who showed up to vote and were turned away.” She also recently lamented to New York Magazine, “I would have won had I not been subjected to the unprecedented attacks by Comey and the Russians, aided and abetted by the suppression of the vote, particularly in Wisconsin.” She further warned, “Whoever comes next, this is not going to end. Republicans learned that if you suppress votes you win.” Thus, despite winning the popular vote, Clinton is peddling a new vast right-wing conspiracy: Republican voter ID laws and the like — or what Democrats refer to as “voter suppression” — in must-win states helped hijack the election, stealing from Clinton a coronation she wrongly assumed was predetermined. Of course, Clinton’s incorporating voter ID into her distortion-ridden cocktail of excuses is utter hubris. There is a reason identification is not only a requirement in some states but should be a prerequisite everywhere when electing leaders — because voter fraud is real. According to a new Public Interest Legal Foundation report4, “Virginia election officials quietly removed 5,556 voters for non-citizenship between 2011 and May 2017; 1,852 of those removed as noncitizens cast ballots.” This problem isn’t confined to Virginia, either. National Review’s John Fund writes5, “In 2014, three professors from two Virginia universities estimated, based on comprehensive survey data, that 6.4 percent of the nation’s non-citizen population voted illegally in the 2008 election, enough to have changed the outcome in some states. In 2008, more than 1,200 felons illegally cast votes in Minnesota’s ultra-close Senate race, in which Al Franken was ultimately declared the winner by 312 votes.” Yet it seems Hillary is content with consoling herself by blaming Comey, the Russians and now voter suppression for her poor campaign and woefully unlikable self. Obama Officials Subpoenaed in Unmasking Probe6 A new chapter has been opened in the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. On Wednesday, the House committee issued subpoenas to the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation demanding that they turn over all records related to the Obama administration’s “unmasking” of members of Donald Trump’s campaign team. The subpoenas named three Obama officials: former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, former CIA Director John Brennan and, interestingly, former UN Ambassador Samantha Power. While the subpoenaing of Rice and Brennan would be logical given their positions with respect to the intelligence community, the naming of Power is intriguingly odd. Why would an ambassador, whose job is diplomacy, demand the unmasking of U.S. citizens? This seems to be well outside her job description. As The Wall Street Journal explains, “Unmaskings are supposed to be rare, and if the mere ambassador to the UN could demand them, what privacy protection was the Obama White House really offering U.S. citizens?” The temperature may be starting to rise for those former members of Obama’s White House. While the mainstream media has for months been pushing a narrative of a Trump-Russian collusion conspiracy — a narrative absent of any articulated or real crime — what has been largely ignored by the MSM is the actual criminal action of the leaking of classified information. The Obama administration has even admitted that it violated protection protocols in collecting intelligence on American citizens. Coupled with the number of unmasked members of Trump’s team, we’re seeing a better picture of an Obama administration deeply engaged in political spying7, which is a serious crime. If anyone was engaged in a Nixonian type of affair, all signs are pointing toward Obama not Trump. Top Headlines8 EPA halts Obama-era rule on methane pollution. (The Hill9) The EPA wrecked a Colorado river, then wreaked legal havoc on the affected landowners. (Washington Examiner10) New bill would eliminate ATF’s ability to ban ammo through reclassification. (The Washington Free Beacon11) U.S. allows 46,371 refugees in so far in FY 2017; up 19% in May. (CNS News12) Trump “self-help” infrastructure plan irks state, local leaders. (Bloomberg13) These tweets show how badly liberals melted down over an innocent presidential typo. (The Washington Free Beacon14) Trump administration moves to return Russian compounds in U.S. (The Daily Beast15) Prominent anti-Trump group has received more than $20 million in government grants. (The Washington Free Beacon16) This farmer won’t host same-sex weddings at his orchard. Now a city has banned him from its farmers market. (The Daily Signal17) Florida man jailed 180 days for not giving police his iPhone password. (Reason18.) Policy: By leaving Paris climate-change deal, Trump will do U.S. economy a ‘yuuuge’ favor. (Investor’s Business Daily19) Policy: In defense of 2 percent. (American Enterprise Institute20) For more, visit Patriot Headline Report21. Title: The Patriot Post Digest 6-1-2017 Post by: nChrist on June 02, 2017, 02:43:56 PM ________________________________________ The Patriot Post Digest 6-1-2017 From The Federalist Patriot Free Email Subscription (http://patriotpost.us/subscription/new) ________________________________________ FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS Narrative-Shaping Obscures Obama Administration’s Abuse of Power7 By Arnold Ahlert More than ever before, Americans are aware of media efforts to “shape the narrative” — which is most cases means filtering the truth through a progressive lens. On April 28, the New York Times published22 a story about abuses by the National Security Agency, noting it had “halted one of the most disputed practices of its warrantless surveillance program, ending a once-secret form of wiretapping that dates to the Bush administration’s post-Sept. 11 expansion of national security powers.” On May 24, Circa published the same information — with a decidedly different take. “The National Security Agency under former President Barack Obama routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall, according to once top-secret documents that chronicle some of the most serious constitutional abuses to date by the U.S. intelligence community,” it stated23. The Times story did not mention the Obama administration at all. It focused instead on the Bush administration’s creation of Stellarwind and its evolution from a program the Times characterized as one “based on a raw assertion of executive power to one rooted in congressional authorization and subject to the intelligence court’s review” — essentially implying that until the program was changed, the Bush administration was abusing power. The Times did a follow-up story24 on May 11. Again, no mention of the Obama administration, noting only that the FISA Court “was delaying its annual reauthorization because the N.S.A. had discovered widespread violations of a rule for how analysts could handle Americans' emails collected under the program.” The Times explains the Trump administration was working to stop the abuse, but again, the Times implies Americans may have to settle for less security in exchange for constitutional protections. Once again, Circa put the abuse of power issue in an entirely different perspective. “More than 5 percent, or one out of every 20 searches seeking upstream Internet data on Americans inside the NSA’s so-called Section 702 database violated the safeguards Obama and his intelligence chiefs vowed to follow in 2011,” it explains. Circa also explains that when Obama administration officials revealed the abuses at an Oct. 26, 2016 closed-door hearing before the FISA Court, the Court censured administration officials and noted that their refusal to disclose the extent of their violations constituted an “institutional lack of candor” resulting in a “very serious Fourth Amendment issue.” Moreover, the promise breached by Obama precipitated a “three-fold increase in NSA data searches about Americans and a rise in the unmasking of U.S. person’s identities in intelligence reports.” And assertions by administration lackeys like Susan Rice, who insisted her efforts to unmask Americans were “legal,” were undercut by both the Court and the NSA’s internal watchdog who noted NSA analysts had been conducting such queries in violation of the FISA Amendments Act of 200825 “with much greater frequency than had been previously disclosed to the Court.” The second Times story did note the FISA Court had previously rebuked26 the NSA for its abuses in 2011. Yet incredibly, the Justice Department told presiding Judge John D. Bates the NSA “discovered” a program aimed exclusively at foreigners “had also been gathering domestic messages for three years.” An agency whose sole job is to discover threats to national security was incapable of discovering its own violations of the law? Section 70227 of the Act prohibits intentionally targeting Americans. The giant hole in the law? In the process of targeting foreigners with these warrantless searches, the NSA “incidentally” or “inadvertently” captures28 vast numbers of Americans' communications with those foreigners. And in 2011 — the same year the Obama administration promised to follow safeguards — the FISA Court granted the NSA “a new set of minimization procedures under which the government may use U.S. person identifiers” that were previously prohibited, Boston Review reported29 in 2013. The Review makes it clear reverse targeting, as in “the targeting of a U.S. person under the guise or pretext of targeting a foreigner,” is prohibited. Thus, Americans are supposed to believe the avalanche of leaks about Trump and his associates — courtesy of “current and former administration officials” willing to commit felonies to do so — arise strictly from incidental or inadvertent intel collection. In a Washington Post piece30 rightfully excoriating Fox News reporter James Rosen and several other conservative sites for both insisting Circa broke the story and that the Times and Post (which also covered31 it without mentioning the Obama administration) had blacked it out, the focus was once again shifted away from Obama administration abuses. Yet the Post was forced to note Circa’s piece “was part of a trio of stories that also included a look at the CIA’s approach to unmasking and the FBI’s sharing of data with third parties.” Those two stories are just as huge as the NSA piece. In one, Circa reveals32 Obama administration CIA Director John Brennan had “unmasked the identities of Americans” and that there is “growing evidence the agency he oversaw has become one of the largest consumers of unmasked intelligence about Americans even though its charter prohibits it from spying on U.S. citizens.” In the other, it revealed33 the FBI “illegally shared raw intelligence about Americans with unauthorized third parties and violated other constitutional privacy protections,” citing declassified government documents34 “that undercut the bureau’s public assurances about how carefully it handles warrantless spy data to avoid abuses or leaks.” Circa also reminds us former FBI Director James Comey “unequivocally told lawmakers his agency used sensitive espionage data gathered about Americans without a warrant only when it was ‘lawfully collected, carefully overseen and checked,’” before revealing that assertion is completely undermined by a declassified FISA Court ruling33 “listing hundreds of violations of the FBI’s privacy-protecting minimization rules that occurred on Comey’s watch.” Title: The Patriot Post Digest 6-1-2017 Post by: nChrist on June 02, 2017, 02:44:57 PM ________________________________________ The Patriot Post Digest 6-1-2017 From The Federalist Patriot Free Email Subscription (http://patriotpost.us/subscription/new) ________________________________________ Worse, the FISA Court was concerned the FBI is still engaged in similar abuses it has not yet reported. In addition, a timeline35 compiled by investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson amplifies the gross abuses of power perpetrated by the Obama administration beginning in April 2009. They include the IRS targeting of conservative PACs, the orchestrated disinformation campaigns associated with the Fast and Furious and Benghazi scandals, administration spying on AP reporters, the CIA’s improper access of Senate Intelligence Committee computers, and the collection of private communications by members of Congress — while spying on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Attkisson also reminds us that on January 12, 2017, Obama administration finalized new rules “allowing the NSA to spread certain intelligence to 16 other U.S. intel agencies without the normal privacy protections” and that on May 4, 2017, it was revealed the administration “vastly expanded its searches of the NSA database for Americans” — during an election year. Those are egregious abuses of power by the Obama administration, and the attempt by leftist outlets like the Times and the Post to downplay that reality is hardly accidental. Yet these revelations could represent one of the greatest assaults on our constitutional protections in American history — courtesy of an administration whose stated goal was to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” And all the narrative-shaping in the world cannot obscure it. MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST Social Justice and the War on Independent Thought36 — In contrast to what we are led to believe, social justice does not support true justice, freedom or equality. Supreme Court Overturns the ‘Provocation Doctrine’37 — SCOTUS rules that law enforcement officers have a right to self-defense, regardless of the situation’s cause. USAA’s Media Advertising Kerfuffle38 — The company reversed its decision to pull ads from Sean Hannity’s show — both decisions were a response to PR trouble. BEST OF RIGHT OPINION Victor Davis Hanson: The Old German Problem39 Cal Thomas: What Price Separation From Europe?40 Tony Perkins: Deadliest Cash: Planned Parenthood Reels in Record Profit41 For more, visit Right Opinion42. OPINION IN BRIEF Victor Davis Hanson: “Since 1989, Germany has worked hard on its post-unification image as a largely pacifistic country. It is eager to teach other nations how to conduct themselves peacefully and to pursue shared global goals such as reducing global warming or opening national borders to the world’s refugees. Implicit in Germany’s utopian message is that postmodern Germans know best what not to do — given their terrible 20th century past, with the aggressions of imperial Germany and later the savagery and Holocaust perpetuated by Hitler’s Third Reich. Yet being guilt-ridden does not equate to being humble (never a German strong suit). The same conceit of an ethnically, linguistically and culturally uniform state that drew Germany into conflict with the U.S. (whose late entry into both World War I and World War II helped ensure German defeats) has never quite disappeared. Instead, German condescension merely has been updated.” SHORT CUTS Insight: “As I have stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second Amendment freedoms, I’ve realized that firearms are not the only issue. No, it’s much, much bigger than that. I’ve come to understand that a cultural war is raging across our land, in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain acceptable thoughts and speech are mandated.” —Charlton Heston (1923-2008.) For the record: “It’s absurd it’s almost June, & we still have people from Obama era in decision-making positions throughout gov.” —Newt Gingrich via Twitter Braying Jackass I: “If Donald Trump pulls the United States out of the Paris Agreement he will be committing a traitorous act of war against the American people.” —billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer Braying Jackass II: “If this is true he will have the death of whole nations on his hands. People will be looking to the USA for retribution for what they loose [sic].” —actor Mark Ruffalo on Trump’s coming Paris decision Braying Jackass III: “Despicable. Praying this is another twisted trial balloon to see if enough people are willing to kill the planet for profit.” —actor Morgan Freeman on Trump’s coming Paris decision Tolerance: “You probably can’t tie [Donald Trump] directly to one particular act of violence. But to the wave of violence, yes, he bears responsibility. … I feel like much of what has happened with these hate crimes falls directly from who he is.” —Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) Collaboration: “More often than not you’re not meeting with [lobbyists] because of a check they wrote, but rather because you’re on the same team.” —Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) Non Compos Mentis: “When you have a communications team, they have to have that relationship with the president to understand how he communicates. Because he is the greatest communicator, as a president, we’ve ever had.” —former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski And last: “As long as we’re calling for investigations of any kook theory, how about an independent commission to investigate whether Sen. Chuck Schumer is a child molester? Schumer was Anthony Weiner’s mentor, which is already more evidence than the media have for their Russian collusion story. True, I don’t have proof that Schumer is a child molester, but I just started this investigation! Was there collusion between Schumer and Weiner in the selection of the underage girl Weiner sexted with? Neither man has yet issued a full and convincing denial.” —Ann Coulter Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis Managing Editor Nate Jackson Join us in daily prayer for our Patriots in uniform — Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen — standing in harm’s way in defense of Liberty, and for their families. |