The Patriot Post Digest 3-28-2016

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The Patriot Post Digest 3-28-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

Mar. 28, 2016

THE FOUNDATION

“A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks.” —Thomas Jefferson (1785)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Bureaucrats Strip Vets' Gun Rights1

Congressional lawmakers want answers. Senators Charles Grassley and Johnny Isakson sent a letter2 to the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs asking why the agency reports any veteran who is assigned a fiduciary trustee to the FBI as mentally defective, thus stripping the veteran of their right to keep and bear arms. So far, the VA has reported to the FBI 260,000 individuals — equivalent to a quarter of the number of people in Texas3 who have a license to carry. While all federal agencies are required to report “mentally defective” individuals to the FBI so they can be noted in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, the VA refers an astounding 99.3% of such cases. All other agencies account for just 0.7%. With ruthless “efficiency” like that coming from the same bureaucracy guilty of the wait-time scandal, does anyone suspect abuse of the system?

In a statement, Grassley said, “Our military heroes risked their lives to protect and defend this country and all that we stand for, including our most basic constitutional rights. Now the very agency created to serve them is jeopardizing their Second Amendment rights through an erroneous reading of gun regulations. The VA’s careless approach to our veterans' constitutional rights is disgraceful.”

No one wants someone with serious mental health issues to become a danger to themselves or others because they had access to firearms. But before basic constitutional rights are denied, the question is what constitutes mental illness? And who decides?

A bureaucracy with no due process is most certainly not the answer. Yet the gun-grabbing Obama administration wants to institute a similar policy as the VA within the Social Security Administration4. Our hope is that this new bureaucratic scheme won’t survive the increased scrutiny that was established through the Supreme Court’s Heller decision.

Mickey Mouse and the Pole Vaulters5

When priorities get out of whack and people lose sight of what really matters, military folks are fond of saying, “We’re pole vaulting over mouse turds.” While it significantly understates the severity of the consequences, the sentiment is appropriate for the Obama administration’s approach to national defense.

The Beltway PC police are hyper-vigilant and will spare no effort or expense for even a perceived threat to one of its protected classes. To wit, the secretary of the Navy has directed6 that all job titles be rendered gender-neutral. Heaven forbid that one of the females we’ve so recently empowered by sending them to the front lines pause during her assault up the cliffs of the next Normandy to consider whether she’s really up to it because her job description says “infantryman” instead of “infantry person.”

Meanwhile, instead of going to the firing range to hone their marksmanship skills, Marines are sitting through classes to eradicate “unconscious bias” that might lead them to think less of their female counterparts. That’s what passes for liberal logic. Despite “proven science” (and common sense) that indicates they are physiologically ill-suited, women will be forced into some of the most physically (and emotionally) demanding roles imaginable and declared equal warriors. But they’re apparently simultaneously delicate flowers who need protection from unspoken biases of which the alleged bias-holders are not even aware.

The administration expends considerably more ink and energy misleading its own citizens and devaluing the service of its military members than figuring out how to defeat a grave threat festering around the world. Were the consequences not so sobering, it would be ironic and moderately amusing that a Mickey Mouse administration chooses to focus on its own byproducts rather than the real challenges our nation faces.

Islamists Continue to Target Christians7

The true adherents to the Religion of Peace™ claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing8 that killed 72 and wounded 230 in a park in eastern Pakistan on Easter. The park was filled with Christian families celebrating the holiest day on the Christian calendar. The jihadist who belonged to Jamaat ul-Ahrar, a group that splintered from the Pakistani Taliban, deliberately detonated near women and children.

A spokesman for Jamaat ul-Ahrar said, “It was our people who attacked the Christians in Lahore, celebrating Easter. It’s our message to the government that we will carry out such attacks again until sharia [Islamic law] is imposed in the country.” As if families picnicking in a park celebrating life and hope were so abhorrent that they deserved horrific death. The Pakistani government vowed to stamp out not only the terrorist infrastructure, but the ideology. In response to the attack, it is hunting down the group that detonated the bomb. But that’s coming from the nation that for years was a safe haven for Osama bin Laden.

“Mass-casualty terrorism has become an almost daily occurrence, and there’s a danger that the world will become inured to it as a new normal,” wrote9 The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. “That is dangerous. A terror group that targets women and children without remorse wouldn’t hesitate to kill tens of thousands, even millions, if it can acquire the means.” That’s why a bombing a half-world away matters so much to us at home.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Peggy Noonan: Unite to Defeat Radical Jihadism10
James Wanliss: Things Worse Than Ignorance11
Jeff Jacoby: Mass Deportations Would Leave America Poorer12

For more, visit Right Opinion13.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Living With Terrorists and Their Sympathizers14

By Arnold Ahlert

The latest Islamist terror attack in Brussels15 reveals an uncomfortable reality European leaders don’t want to face: There are parallel societies living side by side in many EU nations. One embraces Western culture and traditions. The other thoroughly rejects them.

“It was only fitting … that when police arrested the suspected terrorist Salah Abdeslam in the gritty Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels late last week, across town, European Union leaders were meeting at the plush EU Commission headquarters to discuss the immigration crisis that bedevils Europe,” writes16 Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez. “Fitting because the Molenbeek neighborhood represents the division and separation that exist in European society, and why there is a fear that migrants arriving in Europe in their hundreds of thousands could find in such places networks ready to radicalize those migrants.”

Could find? They already have. Salah Abdeslam, the alleged mastermind of last year’s carnage in Paris was traced back to Molenbeek, and angry local residents tossed bottles and rocks at police when they arrested the neighborhood’s “hero.” That outburst underscored17 another disturbing reality, as in local press reports stating the “whole neighborhood” knew where Abdeslam was hiding — and did absolutely nothing to help authorities find him.

Yet if truth be told, Belgian authorities shoulder a portion of the blame here. Last year, following the second attack in Paris, Jan Jambon, Belgium’s home affairs minister, warned that the government does not “have control of the situation in Molenbeek.” The Guardian referred18 to the neighborhood as “Europe’s jihadi central” because it is “the source of the highest concentration in Europe of jihadi foreign fighters going to fight in Syria and Iraq and returning battle-hardened and determined to take their fight to the capitals of Europe.”

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The Patriot Post Digest 3-28-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
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Even more infuriating, it has been for some time. There have been at least five terrorist attacks linked19 to Molenbeek, including the assassination of anti-Taliban leader Ahmad Shah Massoud in 2001, the Madrid train bombings in 2004, the 2014 attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels, the 2015 attack on the Kosher grocery in Paris following the Charlie Hebdo atrocity, and the 2015 Paris train attack thwarted by three Americans.

Yet Molenbeek is hardly an anomaly. Neighborhoods such as Ca n'Anglada in Barcelona, Spain, Marxloh and Neukölln in Germany, Seine-Saint-Denis and Clichy-sous-Bois in France and several enclaves in Britain are also afflicted by unassimilated Muslim ghettos. Communities best described — despite the predictable uproar from progressive denialists — as “no-go” zones. No-go zones where these unassimilated minority communities operate their own “justice” systems. Places where honor killings, domestic violence, sexual abuse of children and female genital mutilations occur without being reported to police.

Neighborhoods and enclaves that breed radical Islamic terror.

Brussels itself currently has a Muslim population of 300,000, and sociologist Felice Dassetto predicts20 they will comprise the majority of the city’s population by 2030. In 2012, two Muslim politicians won municipal elections based20 on campaign vows to implement Sharia law in Belgium. More than 500 jihadists from that nation, mostly Belgian nationals, are fighting21 for the Islamic State, 16% of Belgian Muslims believe terror is justified, and a whopping 65% support the imposition of Sharia law22.

And again, Belgium itself is not a statistical anomaly. Support23 for Sharia law in Austria, France, Germany, Holland and Sweden averages the same 65%, and 30-40% of British Muslims feel the same way.

The result? “ISIS organizers are simply plugging into standing extremist communities,” explains24 Heritage Foundation Vice President James Jay Carafano. “These networks are popping up all over the world … [but] by far the most concerning networks right now are in Western Europe.”

Frontpage Magazine’s Daniel Greenfield observes, Molenbeek is “just 12 minutes away from the European Parliament, 15 minutes away from the European Commission, 23 minutes away from NATO HQ and 22 minutes away from Brussels Airport,” meaning that “ISIS doesn’t have to invade Brussels. It just has to take a short drive.”

Such daunting reality prompts an essential question asked25 by American Enterprise Institute’s Gary J. Schmitt:

“Is this the new normal?”

That depends on whether one is referring to the EU’s feckless elites, who remain committed to open borders and mass immigration, or the EU people themselves, some of whom are voting in elections to reject such insanity.

Unsurprisingly, the EU’s ruling elites and their media enablers are “shocked” and “alarmed” by this turn of events. Those would be the same ruling elites who, much like their American counterparts, are wholly removed and/or protected from the possibly deadly results of their interminable infatuation with open borders and uncontrolled immigration.

Unfortunately, such societally suicidal nostrums are embraced by the Islamic State, which has trained 400 fighters to attack the EU in “waves.” That announcement occurred the same day it was revealed26 Belgian intelligence and security forces “had advance and precise intelligence warnings” regarding the airport and subway attacks. One day later, we learned that Belgian police spent27 only one hour over four days interrogating Abdeslam, because the terror mastermind had been shot in the leg during his capture and was “too tired” to talk following an operation on it.

“There is no way to sugarcoat it: the European continent, long considered one of the most prosperous, safe and multicultural regions of the world, is effectively a battlefield in the war against international terrorism,” writes28 the National Interest’s Daniel R. DePetris. Islamic international terrorism, Mr. DePetris. Terrorism that will be aided and abetted by allies in the EU’s parallel societies.

On a final note, Secretary of State John Kerry hypothesizes that the Islamic State “is resorting to actions outside the Middle East [because] its fantasy of a caliphate is collapsing before their [sic] eyes. Its territory is shrinking, its leaders are decimated, its revenue sources are dwindling, and its fighters are fleeing.” Dead wrong. The Islamic State isn’t attacking worldwide because the policies of Barack Obama and European leaders have been so successful, but because the West has been so utterly unable to deal with — or even identify — the real threat.

MORE ORIGINAL PERSPECTIVE

ANALYSIS: IRS Meets Some Justice29
After Saturday, Clinton’s Inevitability Shrunk30
Capitalism or Socialism?31
Republicans Against Free Trade?32
New Labor Dept. Rule Is a Double Standard33
Paul Ryan’s Confident America34
Detroit Charter Schools Bring Hope for City35

TOP HEADLINES

Obama May Grant Iran Access to U.S. Markets36
Syrian Troops Recapture Historic Palmyra37
Chicago Mayor Rejects Finalists for Police Chief38

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report39

OPINION IN BRIEF

Peggy Noonan: “When I think of the future I find myself going back to what I freely admit is a child’s math, a simple 10% rule. There are said to be 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. Most are and have been peaceful and peaceable, living their lives and, especially in America, taking an admirable role in the life of the nation. But this is a tense, fraught moment within the world of Islam, marked by disagreements on what Islam is and what its texts mean. With that context, the child’s math: Let’s say only 10% of the 1.6 billion harbor feelings of grievance toward ‘the West,’ or desire to expunge the infidel, or hope to re-establish the caliphate. That 10% is 160 million people. Let’s say of that group only 10% would be inclined toward jihad. That’s 16 million. Assume that of that group only 10% really means it — would really become jihadis or give them aid and sustenance. That’s 1.6 million. That is a lot of ferociousness in an age of increasingly available weapons, including the chemical, biological and nuclear sort. My math tells me it will be a long, hard fight. We will not be able to contain them, we will have to beat them. We must absorb that central fact, as Ronald Reagan once did with a different threat. Asked by his new national security adviser to state his exact strategic goals vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, Reagan: ‘We win, they lose.’ That’s where we are now. The ‘they’ is radical Islamic jihadism.”

SHORT CUTS

The Gipper: “Our friends in the other party will never forgive us for our success, and are doing everything in their power to rewrite history.”

For the record: “It’s rich seeing Obama attacking me when he just got back from going to a baseball game with the Castros… As the president noted, yes, my father was in prison and tortured in Cuba. So was my aunt. She was imprisoned and tortured by Castro’s goons in Cuba. … Obama and Hillary seemed more mad at me than they are at ISIS, than they are the terrorists who are murdering us.” —Ted Cruz

A broken clock is right twice a day: “As of 2015, the United Nations [Human] Rights Council had issued more official condemnations of Israel than the rest of the world’s nations combined. I wonder now that Europe has been attacked four times, I think, now in a little over a year … [if] maybe Europe will have a little more sympathy for what Israel goes through.” —Bill Maher

Village Idiots: “Everywhere I go, every leader I meet, they ask about what is happening in America. They cannot believe [what Republicans are saying about Muslims]. I think it is fair to say that they’re shocked. … Some of the questions, the way they’re posed to me, it’s clear to me that what’s happening is an embarrassment to our country.” —John Kerry

The BIG Lie: “The greater majority of domestic terrorist attacks are not by Muslims at all. They’re by people like Timothy McVeigh. And so, you know, we got to understand terrorism as a generalized threat, various ideologies that drive it.” —Rep. Keith Ellison

Last-night humor: “The State Department is having to hire more staffers to review all of the requests that are being filed for Hillary Clinton’s emails. Or as Hillary put it, ‘See, I’m creating jobs already. I told you!’” —Jimmy Fallon

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.