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« on: November 09, 2015, 06:49:18 PM » |
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The Patriot Post Digest 11-2-2015
From The Federalist Patriot
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Daily Digest
Nov. 2, 2015
THE FOUNDATION
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” —John Adams, 1770
TOP RIGHT HOOKS
Hey, Look — Boots on the Ground in Syria1
“I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria.” —Barack Obama, Sept. 10, 2013
Well, it seems Obama has crossed his own red line. “The White House has approved the deployment of small teams of U.S. special-operations forces to locations in northeastern Syria,” The Wall Street Journal reports2, “expanding America’s direct role on the ground in support of local fighters as they prepare for a new military campaign against Islamic State militants in their stronghold in Raqqa, officials said. The new deployment would amount to the first sustained U.S. ground presence in Syria.”
But don’t worry; Obama spokesman Josh Earnest insists, “These forces do not have a combat mission.” Would that be similar to the “not combat mission” that cost Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler his life3?
Just in the last month, Obama has announced that he will keep more troops in Afghanistan4, send troops to Iraq5 and establish a small presence in Syria. It’s hard to mistake the signs: Even he realizes his stubborn refusal to lead in the region has left nothing but chaos. Perhaps he also realized that leaving the job of Middle East stability to Russian President Vladimir Putin is a bad idea in need of hitting a reset button. And then there’s the political calculation of wanting to pass the reins to Hillary Clinton, who is responsible for at least some of the disaster in the Middle East. Obama recently explained, “Part of what we have to do here … is to try different things.” It sure seems like he’s just throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping some of it sticks. The trouble is, he’s putting American lives on the line for missions he clearly doesn’t believe in.
Also don’t miss the numerous BIG Lies6 Obama told about American involvement.
Publisher’s Note: Tailwinds to a Tennessee Statesman7
Fred Thompson was a self-made man, born of modest means, who excelled in his career as a lawyer, a type-cast actor and a reluctant politician. He died this weekend at age 73. He was a Patriot and a man of integrity, who gained the early respect of his peers both as minority counsel during the Senate Watergate investigation and his relentless pursuit of a corrupt Democratic Tennessee Governor, Ray Blanton. I first met Fred in 1993 when he was campaigning for the Senate seat vacated by Albert Gore after Bill Clinton’s election. I had the opportunity to write some white papers for Fred’s campaign on Second Amendment rights and other conservative topics. A statement from his family8 noted, “Fred stood on principle and common sense, and had a deep love for and connection with the people across Tennessee whom he had the privilege to serve in the United States Senate. … Fred was the same man on the floor of the Senate, the movie studio, or the town square of Lawrenceburg, his home.” Indeed he was. Fred was an inspirational supporter of The Patriot Post when we launched in 1996, and he offered this endorsement: “The Patriot Post’s message provides a critical touchstone for those inside the Beltway who have forgotten whom they serve.” Fred did not intend to serve more than one or two terms, but it was the death of his daughter Betsy in 2002 that really took the wind out of his political sails. In a personal note in 2003, Fred wrote, “Thanks to The Patriot Post for your considerable efforts to hold back the ‘Clintonistas’ while I was in the Senate.” As a lawyer, statesman, actor and fellow Tennessean9, he will be missed.
Newspaper Assumed Woman Used Gun to Maim and Kill10
An Oklahoma woman could be charged11 with four counts of second-degree murder for allegedly ramming her car into a crowd of people at the homecoming parade at Oklahoma State University. But a newspaper in another state mistakenly pinned the incident of mass death and injury on the Leftmedia’s favorite pariah — guns. “Shooter kills 4; 30 injured,” a daily newspaper in Michigan, the Traverse City Record-Eagle, wrote12 atop a wire story of the incident that ran in its Oct. 25 edition. “Because of a page designer’s error,” the paper posted on its website that afternoon13, “a misleading headline appeared on page 3A in Sunday’s Record-Eagle accompanying a story about a driver who struck and killed four people at the Oklahoma State University homecoming parade on Saturday.” This mistake seems to be in a similar vein to the infamous “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline that the Chicago Tribune14 ran on the eve of Truman’s victory in the 1948 elections. The paper must go out, and someone probably prepositioned a headline before the whole story came in. But the headline was never changed as the edition headed out to the press. It reveals the Leftmedia’s assumptions whenever a mass casualty incident occurs. Cars can kill too.
FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Religious Accommodation, or Political Favoritism?15
By Arnold Ahlert
For the Obama administration, some religious accommodations are, to borrow a phrase, “more equal than others.”
In Illinois, a jury awarded16 two Muslim truck drivers $240,000 in damages and back pay after their claims that being forced to transport alcohol constituted religious discrimination were upheld by U.S. District Court Judge James E. Shadid, a Barack Obama appointee. The Somalian Muslims, Mahad Abass Mohamed and Abdkiarim Hassan Bulshale, worked for the Star Transport trucking company based in Morton, Illinois, and were fired in 2009.
Shadid made his ruling in March, when Star Transport admitted liability. Yet the most telling element of the case was that both men were represented by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which took up17 the case in 2013. The EEOC asserted Star Transport had violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which requires accommodations for employees' religious convictions provided those accommodations do not present an “undue hardship.” The EEOC insisted its investigation revealed the trucking company “could have readily avoided assigning these employees to alcohol delivery without any undue hardship, but chose to force the issue despite the employees' Islamic religion.”
According to UCLA Law professor Eugene Volokh, the court explained18 the trucking company was able to “swap loads between drivers” on several occasions and conceded that it could have accommodated this request as well. Yet the company insisted it shouldn’t be held liable for punitive damages. “This concession was important, and if Star Transport had fought the case, and shown that such a swap would indeed be difficult … it should have won,” Volokh writes. “But when accommodating an employee just requires a bit of extra administrative hassle … the federal Civil Rights Act requires the employer to do this.”
The jury apparently agreed, taking only 45 minutes to deliver its verdict on Oct. 20. All well and good, save for a jarring note of boasting added by EEOC General Counsel David Lopez following the decision. “EEOC is proud to support the rights of workers to equal treatment in the workplace without having to sacrifice their religious beliefs or practices,” he said19. “This is fundamental to the American principles of religious freedom and tolerance.”
June Calhoun, one of the EEOC attorneys involved in the litigation, was even more ecstatic. “This is an awesome outcome,” she reveled. “Star Transport failed to provide any discrimination training to its human resources personnel, which led to catastrophic results for these employees. They suffered real injustice that needed to be addressed. By this verdict, the jury remedied the injustice by sending clear messages to Star Transport and other employers that they will be held accountable for their unlawful employment practices. Moreover, they signaled to Mr. Mohamed and Mr. Bulshale that religious freedom is a right for all.”
For the Left, however, “discrimination training” is a rather one-sided affair. Christians have certain beliefs with regard to same-sex marriage, yet when it comes to an accommodation for those beliefs Christians must accommodate homosexuals. Thus when Sweet Cakes bakery shop refused to bake a cake for a lesbian wedding, a ceremony owners Aaron and Melissa Klein insisted was a violation of their religious convictions, the Oregon commissioner of the Bureau of Labor and Industries ordered20 the couple to pay $135,000 in damages for emotional and mental suffering arising from the denial of service. By contrast, Azucar Bakery, a homosexual-run business in Denver, was exonerated21 by the Colorado Civil Rights Division for refusing to decorate a cake with biblical passages for William Jack, a Christian from Castle Rock who wanted those decorations to reflect the idea same-sex marriage was “un-biblical and inappropriate.” |
