The Patriot Post Digest 7-9-2015

________________________________________
The Patriot Post Digest 7-9-2015
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
________________________________________

Daily Digest

Jul. 9, 2015

THE FOUNDATION

“No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty than that on which the objection is founded. The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” —James Madison, Federalist No. 47, 1788

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Political Winds Shift Against Obama’s Immigration Policies1

The death of Kathryn Steinle2 has galvanized the political opposition to Barack Obama’s non-enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws. Congressional Republicans are heavily criticizing the Obama administration’s tolerance of sanctuary cities that protect illegal aliens from deportation. In going after these “safe” havens, GOP lawmakers are going after the culture in the upper levels of the administration. In March, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Sarah Saldana was asked in congressional testimony if she would support a law requiring local governments to cooperate with ICE. “Thank you — amen,” was her reply. But she must have received a call from the White House, because the next day ICE released a statement3 “clarifying” her remarks to say she supported sanctuary cities.

Meanwhile, in the suit against the federal government over Obama’s executive actions on immigration, Judge Andrew Hanen ordered4 Obama’s bureaucrats to court Aug. 19. He wrote, “Each individual Defendant must attend and be prepared to show why he or she should not be held in contempt of Court. … The Government has conceded that it has directly violated this Court’s Order in its May 7, 2015 Advisory, yet, as of today, two months have passed since the Advisory and it has not remediated its own violative behavior.” Say, here’s a novel idea: What if there were sanctuary cities from the federal government?

Hillary: Check Your Subpoena Folder5

In her first interview on national television news since she announced her candidacy, Hillary Clinton told CNN6 Tuesday, “I think it’s kind of fun” that she’s releasing 50,000 pages of her emails. When interviewer Brianna Keilar pressed Clinton about Congress' subpoena of her emails, Clinton responded by attacking the reporter and catching herself before she gave us a really juicy quote: “You’re starting with so many assumptions that are — I’ve never had a subpoena. There is no — Again, let’s take a deep breath here. Everything I did was permitted by law and regulation” There are two lies right there. In response to the interview, Benghazi Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy wrote7, “She was personally subpoenaed the moment the Benghazi Committee became aware of her exclusive use of personal email and a server, and that the State department was not the custodian of her official record. For more than two years, Clinton never availed herself of the opportunity, even in response to a direct congressional inquiry, to inform the public of her unusual email arrangement designed to evade public transparency.” Either Clinton doesn’t care when she’s caught in a lie, or her web of lies have become so complex that she can’t keep her story straight anymore.

Racist Republicans Hate Children8

“GOP has knives out for school lunch rules,” headlines The Hill9. “First lady Michelle Obama’s signature school lunch regulations are … a pillar of the first lady’s initiative to curb childhood obesity in the United States,” The Hill informs us. And who could be against healthy kids? Or the first lady? Evil Republicans, that’s who. Never mind that top-down regulation virtually never works, or that kids universally hate the new lunches10 to the point that schools are dropping them and/or demanding changes. The bottom line is that the 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA) expires on Sept. 30, and Republicans are holding hearings to determine if it’s worth more than the $3 billion already spent to dump unwanted food in the trash. In 2014, Michelle lectured, “The last thing that we can afford to do right now is play politics with our kids' health.” But playing politics is the name of the game. The first lady — an honorary and not official position, by the way — can’t federalize school lunches and then insist it’s not political.

Don’t Miss Alexander’s Column

Read A ‘Gay Parody’ of Marine Sacrifice11, on how two pictures side by side speak a million words about “gay culture.”

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

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Welcome to Mr. Obama’s Neighborhood13

By Allyne Caan

Having spent years perfecting the art of inciting race warfare, Barack Obama and his administration released new housing rules that will define, qualify and categorize every community across the country by race, with the aim of forcing every neighborhood to comply with government race quotas.

It sounds ominous because it is. But it’s hardly surprising from the narcissist who pledged to “fundamentally transform” America.

Under the new Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule14 (AFFH), announced by Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Julian Castro this week, the federal government will amass and centralize nationwide public data on communities, including “patterns of integration and segregation, racially and ethically concentrated areas of poverty, disproportionate housing needs, and disparities in access to opportunity.” Big Brother doesn’t just want to look over your shoulder; he wants to move into your home.

HUD claims the rule will “equip communities that receive HUD funding with the data and tools that will help them to meet long-standing fair housing obligations.” In truth, however, AFFH is a stealth move to socially engineer every street in America and to force compliance with what Obama thinks communities should look like — namely, more “affordable” housing in affluent neighborhoods.

But as political analyst Marc Thiessen noted, “We believe in diversifying communities, too, as conservatives. The way you do that is through economic opportunity. … It’s not by building more affordable housing in the affluent communities. It’s by helping more Americans afford housing in affluent communities. And right now the problem is that people at the bottom of the Obama economy can’t get ahead.”

Still, Washington wants to take over local zoning authority to impose racial quotas on communities. And as Ethics and Public Policy Center Senior Fellow Stanley Kurtz warns15, “Once HUD gets its hooks into a municipality, no policy area is safe. Zoning, transportation, education, all of it risks slipping into the control of the federal government and the new, unelected regional bodies the feds will empower.”

Nevertheless, Liberty aside, The Washington Post’s Emily Badger heralded16 the new rules as a way to “repair the [Fair Housing Act’s] unfulfilled promise and promote the kind of racially integrated neighborhoods that have long eluded deeply segregated cities like Chicago and Baltimore.” Funny she mentions those particular cities. While she points to Chicago’s “decades” of segregation as evidence that AFFH is needed, Badger fails to note those same decades were spent under solely Democrat leadership. Similarly, Baltimore has been led by the Left since Lyndon Johnson was president. Coincidence? We think not.