The Patriot Post Digest 5-14-2015

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The Patriot Post Digest 5-14-2015
From The Federalist Patriot
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Daily Digest

May 14, 2015

THE FOUNDATION

“The government must be a weak one indeed, if it should forget that the good of the whole can only be promoted by advancing the good of each of the parts or members which compose the whole.” —John Jay, Federalist No. 64, 1788

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Democrats Exploit Train Wreck to Derail Republicans1

Regarding the Philadelphia train crash, the blood of the seven dead was not dry on the tracks before Democrats attempted to convert this tragedy into political capital. Congress was deliberating Amtrak funding and, in keeping with Rahm Emmanuel’s maxim to “never let a good crisis go to waste,” Democrats immediately asserted that the crash was related to an “infrastructure failure.” Obama’s White House mouthpiece Josh Earnest got in on the act, saying, “The president has been a leading advocate … for investing in our infrastructure.” He added, “Unfortunately, we have seen a concerted effort by Republicans for partisan reasons to step in front of those kinds of advancements.” According to investigators, the train was traveling over 100 mph, or twice the posted track speed. Notably, this was very similar to the crash in Spain last year, when another train was traveling into a leftward turn at twice the posted track speed. Fortunately, Republicans have not (yet) bowed to Demo tactics, and Amtrak, which is as inefficient and bankrupt as the Post Office, has not yet received even more taxpayer funds. Isn’t $1 billion a year enough?

Congress Takes NSA Hot Potato2

The NSA’s mass metadata collection3 efforts have come to a head. Last week, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the program violated the Patriot Act, despite the NSA claiming Section 215 authorized it. Indeed, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), primary author of the original Patriot Act, said, “That program is illegal and based on a blatant misinterpretation of the law.” But the law is up for renewal by June 1, so Congress has to act. The House on Wednesday voted 338-88 to pass the USA Freedom Act, which specifically ends bulk data collection. That sets up a fight with the Senate, where Republicans are more eager to actually authorize the NSA’s phone metadata program. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warned the House bill would put undue limits on intelligence collection and said the Senate won’t vote on it. House Speaker John Boehner promised not to let the Patriot Act expire because it’s “critically important to keep Americans safe.” But the fundamental debate is how much power the government needs to do that. How much Liberty do we give up for security?

UVA Dean Sues Rolling Stone Over Rape Story4

It’s devilishly hard for someone in America to successfully sue a publication for libel. Not only does the plaintiff have to convince the court that what was published was false and caused harm, but the plaintiff also has to prove that the publication acted with malicious intent. In response to Rolling Stone’s grossly irresponsible false report on a supposed rape on the University of Virginia campus, the college’s Associate Dean of Students Nicole Eramo filed a $7.5 million suit against the magazine and the author of the story, Sabrina Rubin Erdely. Based on the complaint5, it appears Eramo has a case. She alleges Erdely never attempted to get documents that would have disproven “Jackie’s” story. And the reporter hid her work by using pseudonyms to describe people in the story she didn’t talk to and dismissed concerns by a Rolling Stone copy editor who wondered why Erdely didn’t talk to the accused. The complaint alleges even Jackie was uncomfortable with how the magazine portrayed Eramo. But Erdely was trying to fit this story into a template, the one she used in the past when writing about rape — a template that produced several factually challenged stories. As Jonah Goldberg6 wrote last month, journalistic ethics are “all based on a very simple rule: Tell the truth.” More…7
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FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
The Left’s Twisted Concern for Premature Black (Voter) Deaths10

By Nate Jackson

“Blacks die sooner than whites. How many votes has this cost Democrats?” So headlined11 The Washington Post over the weekend. It’s not so much that black lives matter, you see, as black votes matter to Democrat politicians.

Writing in the Post, University of Massachusetts at Amherst Professor Dean Robinson takes a look at the research12 of Javier Rodriguez, Arline Geronimus, John Bound and Danny Dorling, four university professors who attempt to calculate how different election outcomes might have been if the voting-age blacks who died between 1970 and 2004 had lived and voted (Democrat).

According to Robinson, “Rodriguez and colleagues estimate that excess deaths among blacks totaled 2.7 million between 1970 and 2004, that 1.74 million would have been of voting age, and that 1 million would have voted in the 2004 election. Combining excess mortality with the consequences of felon disenfranchisement, they find that about 1 in 7 blacks (15 percent) did not have the opportunity to vote in 2004 for one of these two reasons.”

While the study authors conclude the 2004 presidential election would not have turned out different, they assert the “outcomes of 7 senate and 11 gubernatorial races could have been reversed.”

Then Robinson lays out the familiar narrative about racial inequality. “Research has shown that blacks are not dying in excess because of differences in genetic endowment or health behavior,” he says. “Instead, health disparities reflect racial and class inequality and an accumulation of stressors, including segregation, discrimination, exposure to pollution and unequal access to health-care resources, to name a few.”

He didn’t get into the disparity in incarceration rates, but that’s been a bugaboo of the Left for years, too. Never mind that blacks commit crime at a rate far higher than other races, and that the overwhelming majority of crime is intra-racial, not interracial.

We certainly would not argue that there hasn’t been any racial inequality. Slavery was a horrific thing, and, ever since its end, the nation has endured 150 years of racial discrimination and bitterness.

But blacks have been a monolithic voting bloc for Democrats — the party of slavery and Jim Crow, by the way — for half a century. Particularly in cities like Baltimore, Chicago and Ferguson, to pick three at random, Democrats have been running the show for at least that long. And blacks in those cities remain mired in failing schools, poor housing and low-wage jobs.

Might there be not just correlation but causation?

Yet according to13 Political Research Quarterly, “Historical legacies provide deeply rooted ties between blacks and the Democratic Party. These ties may simply render it impossible for Republicans — black or otherwise — to move public opinion or mobilize among blacks.” Translation: Blacks aren’t going to vote GOP any time soon, no matter what.