The Patriot Post Digest 2-23-2016

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The Patriot Post Digest 2-23-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
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Daily Digest

Feb. 23, 2016

THE FOUNDATION

“The fundamental source of all your errors, sophisms and false reasonings is a total ignorance of the natural rights of mankind. Were you once to become acquainted with these, you could never entertain a thought, that all men are not, by nature, entitled to a parity of privileges.” —Alexander Hamilton, 1775

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Democrat Double Standards1

To paraphrase William Shakespeare, the villany Democrats teach, Republicans will execute, and it shall go hard but they will better the instruction. It wasn’t so long ago that the power was flipped in the Senate.

George W. Bush controlled the White House and Democrats controlled the upper chamber from 2001 to 2003. Bush nominated 32 judges during that time. Not one of them2 even made it to the Judiciary Committee for a hearing. In 2005, Democrats — including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton — filibustered the nomination of Samuel Alito. That same quintet is now leading the chorus calling for the Republican-controlled Senate to do its “constitutional duties” and rubber stamp whomever Obama nominates.

When Bush had a year and six months left in his last term, Sen. Chuck Schumer said3 unless something extraordinary happened, the Senate shouldn’t approve any Bush nominee. Going back to the last few weeks of George H.W Bush’s administration, Biden4 said Bush shouldn’t nominate anyone until after the 1992 presidential election was completed — the same thing Republicans are saying to Obama. But now that he’s co-captain in the Oval Office, Biden conveniently insists5 that “lengthy speech on the Senate floor about a hypothetical vacancy on the Supreme Court” … “is not an accurate description of my views on the subject.”

When members of the current administration occupied seats in the Senate, its views on the Senate’s role in the nomination of a Supreme Court Justice6 was robust. After all, the Senate offers its consent and advice, per the Constitution. But the Democrats' interpretation of the Constitution changes with the political winds.

FBI Had a Way to Circumvent Farook’s Passcode7

Amidst the FBI’s demands that Apple create software to break the security the tech company engineered into the iPhone, the underreported fact is that the government bungled its initial attempts to access the cell phone the San Bernardino County Health Department gave to eventual terrorist Syed Farook. The first mistake was the county didn’t set up the phone8 so that it had administrative access over the device. If it had taken that preemptive step, investigators could have9 easily gathered everything the phone could provide.

The second mistake was hours after the shooting when San Bernardino, working with the FBI10, reset the phone’s iCloud password, allowing investigators to see the data the phone was automatically backing up to a remote location on Apple’s servers. Problem was, the last time the phone updated to iCloud was on Oct. 19 — weeks before the Dec. 2 shooting. There was information still on the phone. Investigators [could have teased that information from the phone by turning on the phone’s automatic updates, going to a location frequented by Farook and the device would have automatically sent information to iCloud. Voilà! With the recent information in the cloud, then investigators could have reset Farook’s iCloud password. Instead, the government is trying to force Apple to destroy the security protocols it has built into its current devices because a series of government mistakes.

“Do we have freedom of speech, or freedom to speak only what law-enforcement can monitor?” wrote11 National Review’s Andrew McCarthy. “Does the Fourth Amendment guarantee freedom from unreasonable searches, or afford only whatever expectation of privacy the government, not the society, decides is reasonable — and cabined by what the government is technologically capable of searching?” What the FBI misses is that our rights are given by the Creator, not an incompetent mid-level bureaucrat.

Who Loses VA Musical Chairs? Vets Do.12

Instead of firing misbehaving administrators, the Department of Veterans Affairs simply shuffled the bureaucrats off to another VA hospital in another state. After crunching the data, the Daily Caller13 found that almost 100 VA administrators worked in at least three states over the last eight years — often at the cost of pay bumps and hefty relocation fees. When it comes to doctors or pharmacists, some of whom ran afoul with disciplinary or licensing issues, the VA simply played bureaucratic musical chairs, shuffling about 600 VA employees across the country. “Whatever the reasons,” wrote Luke Rosiak, investigative journalist for The Caller, “Secretary Bob McDonald, who promised a transformation of the VA when he took over in 2014, is trying to fix past mistakes by moving around the same people who oversaw them, not bringing in new leaders.” Recently, the Deputy Secretary for the VA Sloan Gibson said he stood by his decision14 to fire a VA medical center director in Albany, despite the decision being reversed by the department’s Merit Systems Protection Board. The bureaucracy in the state-run health care system is entrenched, protecting its own at the expense of those it is supposed to serve — veterans.

Don’t Miss Patriot Humor

Check out Obama’s Ideal Court15.

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FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Nevada’s High Stakes Caucus17

By Nate Jackson

Today’s Nevada caucuses are likely to be a rough repeat of South Carolina’s primary Saturday. In a state famous for gambling, casino mogul Donald Trump will win, followed by Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz duking it out for second place. John Kasich and Ben Carson will follow with a distant fourth and fifth. Trump’s business connections to the state in addition to his overall draw are likely going to be too much for any of the competitors to overcome.

In our estimation, Trump continues to win for two reasons. First (and most important), as we’ve been saying all along, Trump’s card is the ace of anger affirmation18. He’s tapping into an entirely justified swell of frustration among voters created by Barack Obama and left insufficiently addressed by the GOP establishment. Trump gives voice to politically incorrect things voters only wish they could say with impunity. He’ll make great deals. He’ll knock heads together. He’ll upend Washington, DC. He’ll make America great again. What’s not to like?

A lot, actually. A constantly self-contradicting narcissistic liberal with New York values is not the answer19 to our nation’s questions or problems. And among numerous profanity-laden tirades, we’ve been told to “burn in hell with [our] 30 pieces of silver” for saying so. True story — that’s an actual quote. What can we say? We’re going to stand for our constitutional principles, even if people wish us eternal damnation for it.