The Patriot Post Digest 6-23-2015

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The Patriot Post Digest 6-23-2015
From The Federalist Patriot
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Daily Digest

Jun. 23, 2015

THE FOUNDATION

“In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” —Thomas Jefferson, fair copy of the drafts of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Say, That Gruber Guy Actually Did Work Closely With Obama1

Remember Jonathan Gruber, the MIT professor who served as a key architect of ObamaCare? The one who mocked “the stupidity of the American voter2” as he and his elitist buddies crammed the law down our throats? The one whose string of condescending remarks3 on ObamaCare’s deceptive core were caught on video and released to the public? Naturally, Barack Obama tried to throw Gruber under the bus once he had become politically inconvenient, dismissing him as “some adviser who never worked on our staff” and had little to do with crafting ObamaCare. But according to a series of emails sent from the House Oversight Committee to The Wall Street Journal, Gruber had quite a lot to do with ObamaCare after all. “His proximity to HHS and the White House was a whole lot tighter than they admitted,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), chairman of the House Oversight Committee. “There’s no doubt he was a much more integral part of this than they’ve said. He put up this facade he was an arm’s length away. It was a farce.” Indeed, Jeanne Lambrew, a top administration official at HHS, thanked Gruber for being an “integral part” in foisting ObamaCare on the nation. And Gruber was in contact with the highest level Obama advisers on the law, from Lawrence Summers to Peter Orszag to Jason Furman to Ezekiel Emanuel. This is simply more confirmation of ObamaCare’s foundation of lies. As if we needed any more proof.

SCOTUS and the Raisin Hope for Property Rights4

Marvin Horne of Fresno, California, has been vindicated. Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that if the Raisin Administrative Committee was going to take Horne’s raisins it needed to compensate the farmer. In Horne v. Department of Agriculture5, Horne refused to give up his raisins to the Raisin Administrative Committee and the agency was fining him at the tune of $695,000. The committee is a New Deal-era program designed to control the supply of raisins so the prices remain artificially high. It would take a portion of farmers' grapes and either donate them to school lunch programs or sell them overseas. Farmers used to be compensated, but then the payout dwindled to nothing. The Ninth Circuit Court originally ruled in favor of the administrative committee, saying the Constitution’s Taking Clause only covered real estate6, but Chief Justice John Roberts, writing the majority opinion, ruled, “Government has a categorical duty to pay just compensation when it takes your car, just as when it takes your home.” This ruling comes 10 years after the bungled SCOTUS ruling in Kelo v. New London, which said the city of New London could take the home of Susette Kelo and give her property to a private developer. Currently, Kelo’s pink home is demolished and the lot stands empty7. While the raisin ruling is a step in the right direction, it will take years before the government fully moves past Kelo and respects the property of the citizens.

Pentagon Ships Military Off to Battle ‘Climate Change’8

In January 2012, Barack Obama said, “As we look beyond the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan … we’ll be able to ensure our security with smaller conventional ground forces.” In other words, even though America’s military is being downsized, our military prowess will remain untarnished. “Yes, our military will be leaner, but the world must know the United States is going to maintain our military superiority with armed forces that are agile, flexible and ready for the full range of contingencies and threats,” he explained. Who knew that meant documenting the effects of climate change — even as terrorism-fueled crises in the Middle East rage on? According to The Washington Times, “Though stretched thin by the aftermath of two wars and the current fight against the Islamic State, the Obama administration has enlisted the Pentagon to measure the shrinking ice in the Arctic in the latest example of the president’s climate agenda being extended to the military. A recent Government Accountability Office report examined the Defense Department’s role in the Arctic, which increasingly will include ‘monitoring the changing Arctic conditions,’ such as ice levels.” America’s retreat — not climate change, as this administration posits — facilitated the Islamic State’s rise. And pulling even more resources away from the real fight to wage war on a straw man isn’t going to make them go away.

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FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Charleston and the Confederate Flag Battle11

By Nate Jackson

With every murderous rampage committed by a sociopath, the Left exploits the tragedy to push its agenda of taking Liberty from all of us. In recent years, that’s generally meant two things: gun control or racial grievance. The horrific murders of nine black Christians in Charleston by a white supremacist provided an opportunity to bring the two issues together.

Barack Obama, as usual, weighed in on both. He called for more gun control12, and then he denounced the Confederate flag flying on the grounds of the South Carolina capitol as a racist symbol. It’s the latter that’s become a rallying point for leftists as well as Republicans eager to shed the racist label.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican, said Monday, “It’s time to move the flag from the Capitol grounds.” Sen. Lindsey Graham, a GOP presidential candidate, and Tim Scott, the first black Republican senator elected in the South since Reconstruction, likewise called for its removal. That provides political cover for state Republicans to vote to take it down.

Of course, given the prominence of South Carolina in the presidential primary season, the Leftmedia gleefully makes the Confederate flag an issue for Republicans every presidential cycle.

But that’s awfully odd since Democrats are the ones who raised it at the South Carolina capitol in 1962. Democrats are the party of Jim Crow and segregation — the ones in KKK robes who sullied the banner of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia with racial overtones. Democrats Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter campaigned with the flag13 before it was uncool to do so. Democrats push for an ever-higher minimum wage, which all too often leaves blacks unemployed and enslaved on the Left’s deliberately institutionalized urban poverty plantations14.

Yet somehow the Confederate flag is a Republican problem.

Speaking of racism, know what else is racist? Gun control. It was originally conceived in the South to prevent blacks from owning firearms. Even now, proponents of gun control rarely lament the lives lost due to inner city gang violence.

Who else is racist? Barack Obama, whose roots of racial hatred run deep15, and who stirs the pot by using the “n” word16.

As for the flag itself, Leland Summers, head of the state’s chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, dismissed the Left’s complaint: “Do not associate the cowardly actions of a racist to our Confederate Banner. There is absolutely no link between The Charleston Massacre and The Confederate Memorial Banner. Don’t try to create one.”