The Patriot Post Digest 7-2-2015

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The Patriot Post Digest 7-2-2015
From The Federalist Patriot
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Daily Digest

Jul. 2, 2015

THE FOUNDATION

“Every prudent and cautious judge … will remember, that his duty and his business is, not to make the law, but to interpret and apply it.” —James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1791

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

June’s Job Gains Are Good, but the Devil’s in the Details1

The U.S. economy is like a car that won’t shift from second gear into third: It’s moving forward and that’s great, but we’re not on the road that brings 3% GDP growth. The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its June jobs report2 this morning and the economy did generally what economists predicted3 it would do. The economy added 223,000 jobs and the unemployment rate declined to 5.3%. The U-6 measure of labor underutilization dropped to 10.5%. But here comes the frustrating part. The percentage of Americans who are working declined by 0.3% to 62.6%, the lowest since 1977. In fact, 432,000 Americans left the workforce — about twice the number that joined last month. Additionally, wages didn’t rise from last month’s $24.95 average hourly wage. After a couple months in which wages increased, another bump in pay would have indicated that the U.S. economy was healthy. The kinds of jobs added in June were encouraging, as there were increases in architectural and engineering services, health care and computer systems design. Interestingly, BLS reports that the gains in the financial sector increased mostly around insurance carriers. “Commercial banking employment declined by 6,000,” the report read. “Employment in financial activities has grown by 159,000 over the year, with insurance accounting for about half of the gain.” While Americans have been buying more insurance, coerced or otherwise, fewer of them have been frequenting their local bank. Could this be a small sign of the decline of the middle class?

Editor’s Note

Tomorrow we will begin to celebrate Independence Day4 so there will not be a regular Digest. We’ll be back on Monday. God bless the USA!

Leftmedia: Say, There Are Too Many Guns Out There5

A new survey asserts that nearly a third of American adults own a gun. Who knew? Frankly, we wish that number were higher. But as it is, the study’s author and the Leftmedia couldn’t be more concerned. “Considering the presence of deeply rooted gun culture and the estimated number of guns in the U.S. to be 310 million, we (suspected) that social gun culture is associated with gun ownership,” said vexed lead author Bindu Kalesan of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York. The researchers' math depended on a 2013 online survey of 4,000 people from all 50 states and DC, so it’s hardly a conclusive measure. Undeterred, however, researchers and their accomplices in the press insist that more guns lead to more accidents, injuries and homicides. Lefty journalist Ed Kilgore, for one, is downright petrified, and he identifies the problem: conservatives. “There is something fundamentally disquieting about the fact that the Americans most likely to own guns are also the Americans most likely to embrace a political rationale for gun ownership and most likely to believe they’re getting outvoted by people who don’t share their values,” he frets6. “Somewhere in these overlapping circles is a hard core of dangerous folks who are being told constantly by Republican politicians that they are losing or have already lost their most fundamental rights. And this is why political extremism is a bad thing even if its devotees lose most elections.” That dreaded “gun culture” may concern leftists, but we prefer to call it Liberty.

Chick-fil-A Keeps Doing It Right7

It’s interesting that just days after the Supreme Court ruled8 same-sex marriage is a heretofore undiscovered constitutional right Chick-fil-A came out on top in a customer service satisfaction survey9. In fact, the Atlanta-based fast-food chain registered the highest score in the history of the survey. What does same-sex marriage have to do with fried chicken? Recall that, in 2012, the company became the Rainbow Mafia’s number one target10 after Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy voiced his support for biblical marriage. Leftists tried to organize a boycott, but it fell flat as a conservative counter-boycott gave franchises their longest lines ever as people flocked to grab a tasty sandwich on Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day. The lesson: Stand by solid principles and make a great product, and people will come. They’ll like it, too.

Don’t Miss Alexander’s Column

Read Independence Day and the Future of Liberty11, a tribute to our Patriot Founders and the Liberty they, and generations since, have fought to sustain.

If you’d like to receive Alexander’s Column by email, update your subscription here12.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Hillary’s Email Troubles Reach Beyond Benghazi13

By Dan Gilmore

The Left sees the issue of Hillary Clinton’s emails as a liability for the Right. If Republicans aren’t careful, that may prove true.

In March, Obama adviser David Axelrod tweeted14, “The email trap: If the Rs make HRC email an obsessive fixation, to the exclusion of larger concerns of people, they will pay a price. Again.”

Thanks, Axelrod. An enemy multiplies kisses. After all, there are concerns about the economy, ObamaCare, immigration and what to do with a Supreme Court bent on making this nation ruled by a five-vote majority of a nine-judge panel. But Hillary Clinton’s emails are the perfect profile of Machiavellian politics that she hopes lead to a Clinton White House 2.0.

On Tuesday, the State Department released 3,000 pages15 of Clinton’s email from her time as secretary of state. This release is simultaneously huge and insignificant. Finally, after years of failed requests via the Freedom of Information Act, journalists and the public can start reading the email exchange showing Clinton telling retired four-star general John Podesta16 to “please wear socks to bed to keep your feet warm.”

It’s a massive document dump — 3,000 pages of Clinton scheduling meetings, replying to intelligence reports or firing off curt replies. Yet, it’s only a fraction of the 55,0000 pages of emails the State Department will release over the next few months. And it only happened because a federal judge ordered it after VICE News sued17.

When the State Department finishes, it will be January 2016 and well into presidential primary season — long enough to cause Hillary some heartburn, but also long enough to cause the public to tune out.

Unfortunately, Clinton’s lawyers got to the emails first. Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy, notes the emails were “heavily curated,” and so there’s a slim-to-none chance there will be “anything surprising or unexpected, let alone compromising.”

Yet these pages reveal yet again Hillary’s secrecy, dishonesty and incompetence. Here are three examples:

Sidney Blumenthal was more involved in her leadership than she previously disclosed. “Are you still awake?” Clinton wrote18 to Blumenthal in October 2009. “I will call if you are.” This email alone blows away Clinton’s claim that Blumenthal sent her only unsolicited and un-vetted19 intelligence reports about Libya. While not serving in any official capacity, Blumenthal was an influential figure in Clinton’s State Department. Blumenthal advised Clinton to stay mum on the issue of torture and he was an intermediary between Clinton and the Northern Ireland peace process. His involvement with Clinton’s leadership team is a lot like a private email server — secret, no accountability and something Clinton alone can control.

However convoluted the issue may seem, Hillary writhed away from transparency. Sending her lawyers to curate the emails? Printing out 55,000 pages of electronic communication and dumping it all on the State Department to re-digitize, vet and release? While Clinton may say she wants her emails out in the public, her actions don’t match what she’s saying. During their investigation into the Benghazi attack, the House Select Committee on Benghazi discovered that Blumenthal gave them 15 emails that were not in the pile Clinton handed to State. In other words, Clinton had been trimming emails that had to do with her involvement in Libya.

Hillary struggles with attending meetings and operating fax machines. Honest question here for the “most qualified candidate ever to run for president.” What is the prerequisite skills needed to become leader of the free world, commander in chief of America’s Armed Forces? In the world of management, politics and communication, you’d think sending a fax would be a necessary skill that’s been around, oh, since at least the ‘90s. But there’s Clinton in December 2009 emailing20 one of her staffers to ask about working the ol’ faxer. And this was the woman who managed to operate a home-brewed email account. Furthermore, Clinton once heard about a cabinet meeting through listening to the radio (just like Barack Obama learns about every scandal on the news). “Can I go?” she wrote. “If not, who are we sending?” These are mistakes you’d expect an intern to make. But by all means, let’s give her the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the nuclear launch codes.

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The Patriot Post Digest 7-2-2015
From The Federalist Patriot
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The issue running through all of this is Clinton’s culture of ignoring rules and oversight, dodging transparency. And the State Department is implicated in this. The public wouldn’t have known about Clinton’s secret email server if it wasn’t for the probing of the Benghazi committee.

The State Department has been dragging its feet since the committee asked for some of Clinton’s emails last November. By March, the committee had to release a subpoena.

During a press briefing June 26, State spokesman John Kirby told reporters, “We were in receipt of the email traffic that former Secretary Clinton provided, that she had gone through and decided were official in scope.”

He also explained that the department had an “original mandate,” which was to get the email communication regarding the Benghazi attack, then Clinton’s communication regarding Libya. But the record was incomplete, as at least 15 emails are missing from the State Department’s records. Still, State will do nothing, even knowing that its record-keeping rules may have been violated. Kirby said he knows of no investigation and that it’s “a matter between the select committee and former Secretary Clinton.”

The Left has been trying to make the Clinton emails and the original issue, the Benghazi attacks and cover-up21, as big a political trap as they can for the Republican Party. Clinton has already created an attack ad22 over it. And the ranking Democrat member of the Benghazi Committee has been saying weekly that the investigation is only a partisan attack, and that the Republican House is wasting taxpayer money.

Both her secret servers and her Benghazi cover-up are critically important and, we think, disqualify Clinton from the Oval Office. Unfortunately, Clinton and the Democrats may succeed in dragging things out so long that these stories really are “old news” and voters will care even less than they do now. People expect the Clintons to be corrupt23. So when corruption is exposed, they shrug and move on.

TODAY AT PATRIOTPOST.US

ANALYSIS: It May Be Too Late for Chris Christie24
A String of Church Arson? Now That’s a Stretch25
Even Fireworks Displays Are Bad For You26
Wealthy Bush Paid More in Taxes Than Even Wealthier Clinton27
Hillary’s Mansions28
Army Refuses to Dishonor Confederate Generals29

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Jim DeMint & Ryan Anderson: What Do We Do Now?30
Victor Davis Hanson: We Are All Californians Now31
Ann Coulter: Media Hide Facts, Call Everyone Else a Liar32
Arnold Ahlert: Congress' ObamaCare ‘Small Business’ Fraud33

For more, visit Right Opinion34.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Victor Davis Hanson: “California keeps reminding us what has gone astray with America in recent years. The state is in the midst of a crippling four-year-old drought. Yet California has built almost no major northern or central mountain reservoirs since the New Melones Dam of 1979. That added nearly 3 million acre-feet to the state’s storage reserves — a critical project that was almost canceled by endless environmental lawsuits and protests. Although California has almost doubled in population since the dam’s construction, its politicians apparently decided that completing more northern and Sierra Nevada water projects was passé. So the parched state now prays for rain and snow rather than building reservoirs to ensure that the next drought won’t shut down the state. Curiously, once infrastructure projects such as the New Melones Dam are finished, few seem to complain about the life-saving water they provide the public in times of existential drought. California has taught the nation its unique hypocrisy. We have stopped the Keystone pipeline for now, but if it gets built eventually, few consumers will complain that it transfers oil at a cheap cost and with greater safety. California has also schooled the nation on mutually exclusively goals. Its lax immigration policies have made for a rapidly expanding population, and yet it expects a sophisticated infrastructure that ensures plentiful, clean water — and dreams of a pristine, green, 19th century paradise in a depopulated state.”

SHORT CUTS

Insight: “The two highest achievements of the human mind are the twin concepts of ‘loyalty’ and ‘duty.’ Whenever these twin concepts fall into disrepute, get out of there fast! You may possibly save yourself, but it is too late to save that society. It is doomed.” —American writer Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988.)

Alpha Jackass: “There are those in politics who seek to demonize the opposition and polarize them. And it’s not helpful to the country.” —Howard Dean, former head of the party that specializes in demonization

Maybe the anti-Reagan: “Obama in many ways has helped start the same kind of political revolution that Reagan did.” —former campaign manager Jim Messina

Village Idiots: “We believe we’re making progress. We have our own sense of deadline.” —John Kerry on the Iran nuke deal

Dezinformatsia: “Although Frank J. Schwartz, a shark biologist with the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, says there’s too much natural variability in weather cycles to blame the recent shark attacks on global warming, Burgess says the link is plausible. ‘Clearly global climate change is a reality and it has resulted in warmer temperatures in certain places at certain times,’ says Burgess.” —National Geographic

Sounds suspicious: “Girl Scouts is for every girl, and every girl should have the opportunity to be a Girl Scout if she wants to.” —Megan Ferland, CEO of Girl Scouts of Western Washington, who claims she returned a $100,000 donation after the donor requested the check not be used to support “transgendered girls.” She then launched a crowd-funding campaign and raised $100K to replace that donation. (We would like to see the evidence such a check was ever received and the stipulation wording. Otherwise this sounds like a PR stunt to raise some money.)

“If emails show Hillary was dumbfounded by a fax machine, maybe we don’t want her having our nuclear launch codes.” —Twitter satirist @hale_razor

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.

Links

1 http://patriotpost.us/posts/36153
2 http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
3 http://blogs.wsj.com/briefly/2015/07/01/5-things-to-watch-in-the-june-jobs-report/
4 http://patriotpost.us/pages/312
5 http://patriotpost.us/posts/36138
6 http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2015_06/who_owns_most_of_the_guns_the056336.php
7 http://patriotpost.us/posts/36139
8 http://patriotpost.us/articles/36045
9 http://www.theacsi.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=147&catid=&Itemid=212&i=Limited-Service+Restaurants
10 http://patriotpost.us/alexander/14304
11 http://patriotpost.us/alexander/36131
12 http://patriotpost.us/manage/
13 http://patriotpost.us/articles/36155
14 https://twitter.com/davidaxelrod/status/575493788048588800?lang=en
15 http://foia.state.gov/search/results.aspx?collection=Clinton_Email
16 http://foia.state.gov/searchapp/DOCUMENTS/HRCAll_1_1-29_JuneWEB/1_5_9/DOC_0C05759773/C05759773.pdf
17 https://news.vice.com/article/heres-what-to-expect-from-the-first-batch-of-hillary-clintons-emails
18 http://foia.state.gov/searchapp/DOCUMENTS/HRCAll_1_1-29_JuneWEB/10_11_15_16/DOC_0C05760181/C05760181.pdf
19 http://patriotpost.us/articles/35312
20 http://foia.state.gov/searchapp/DOCUMENTS/HRCAll_1_1-29_JuneWEB/10_11_15_16/DOC_0C05762888/C05762888.pdf
21 http://patriotpost.us/alexander/35989
22 https://youtu.be/wyNc__o6smI
23 http://patriotpost.us/opinion/35089
24 http://patriotpost.us/articles/36150
25 http://patriotpost.us/posts/36134
26 http://patriotpost.us/posts/36135
27 http://patriotpost.us/posts/36136
28 http://patriotpost.us/posts/36133
29 http://patriotpost.us/posts/36132
30 http://patriotpost.us/opinion/36149
31 http://patriotpost.us/opinion/36137
32 http://patriotpost.us/opinion/36148
33 http://patriotpost.us/opinion/36147
34 http://patriotpost.us/opinion