The Patriot Post Digest 3-31-2016

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The Patriot Post Digest 3-31-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

Mar. 31, 2016

THE FOUNDATION

“It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.” —Thomas Jefferson (1781)

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
North Carolina’s Bathroom Wars1

By Jordan Candler

The North Carolina legislature is under immense scrutiny for overruling a Charlotte city ordinance that, come April 1, would have forced businesses to give transgender people special admission privileges in selecting dressing and restroom facilities. Talk about an April Fools' joke.

Predictably, the Leftmedia’s bias is showing. According to CBS News2, “The law Republican Gov. Pat McCrory signed last week requires people to use multi-stall bathrooms that match their birth certificates at state agencies, schools and universities, even if that means forcing transgender people with heavy beards to use women’s rooms and putting people with feminine appearances in men’s rooms.” Quite frankly, this isn’t about placating the demands of “transgender people with heavy beards” or “people with feminine appearances.” It’s about protecting the wellbeing of otherwise healthy children. Besides, the law doesn’t say a man who undergoes surgery to remove his manhood can’t change his birth certificate.

That America is even having this debate is absurd, but even more fatuous is the angst it’s giving so-called LGBT pacifiers.

We begin with North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, who announced he intends not to honor the law and, in fact, to refuse to defend it against any challenge. According to Cooper, “Not only is this new law a national embarrassment, it will set North Carolina’s economy back if we don’t repeal it.”

That prompted Gov. McCrory to fire back, “When you are the state’s lawyer, you are a lawyer first and a politician second. Therefore, I encourage the Attorney General to reconsider his flawed logic. I am fulfilling my oath of office and we expect him to do the same.” He’s right. But just like the Obama Justice Department — which is constitutionally tasked with defending Rule of Law — declined to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, don’t expect much oath-keeping in the North Carolina AG’s office.

Meanwhile, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee have signed directives prohibiting government employees from visiting North Carolina on the taxpayers' dime. Cuomo declared, “As long as there is a law in North Carolina that creates the grounds for discrimination against LGBT people, I am barring non-essential state travel to that state.”

There are myriad issues at play here. Heritage Foundation’s Ryan Anderson calls the blowback “textbook cultural cronyism3” and explains that, under the bill’s terms, “private schools, restaurants, stores, and businesses are free to establish whatever bathroom policies they’d like, but that access to government bathrooms will be determined primarily by biological sex.” That’s hardly what we would call “unfair,” but it’s precisely why leftists are deliberately misrepresenting the law as discriminatory. In their minds, the only “fair” law is one that subordinates our natural rights to their agenda. Anderson goes on to make this astute observation:

The NBA has said North Carolina’s law might make it move the 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte. The NBA threat over the All-Star Game is particularly amusing. The NBA (and its sister organization, the WNBA) apparently think bathroom access shouldn’t be based on biology, but basketball leagues should. The NBA and WNBA, of course, are free to have gender-neutral basketball teams — and to have gender-neutral bathrooms at those games. That they are threatening the state to impose a policy that even they haven’t voluntarily adopted is the height of hypocrisy.

Giving further credence to one of the fundamental arguments conservatives have made against placating transgender individuals, Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins writes4: “Entire companies are threatening to pull out of the state because Governor McCrory refused to risk the safety of his entire state for less than one half of one percent of the country’s population. And, it turns out, he may have done more to protect the people who identify as transgendered than most liberals have. Just this week, a transgendered woman was raped in one of these new unisex bathrooms — at an LGBT landmark no less. At the Stonewall Inn in New York City, the liberals' monument to ‘tolerance,’ one of their own was attacked. Even here, at this bastion of sexual confusion, these policies are hurting the people they were designed to ‘help!’” Considering most students struggling with transgenderism eventually move on, the question has to be asked: What’s the objective? Perkins adds:

According to the American College of Pediatricians, the Left’s agenda is child abuse! The harms of this gender ideology, which the ACP lays out … in its statement of opposition, can destroy a person for life. What sends the wrong message are policies that try to keep children frozen in this fleeting phase of uncertainty. A full 98% of gender-confused boys and 88% of gender-confused girls “eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty.”

North Carolina got this one right, and other states should take note. The best way conservatives can respond is by emulating Gov. McCrory and forge ahead amid intense opposition — and there will be much of it from the Rainbow Mafia. As Anderson says, “What Americans need now is strong political leadership to stand up to the cronyist bullying and do what’s best for the American people.” That takes principled steadfastness. Are you listening, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal5?

Don’t Miss Alexander’s Column

Read Are America’s Best Days Ahead?6, on the right perspective on the future.

If you’d like to receive Alexander’s Column by email, update your subscription here7.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Victor Davis Hanson: Why Westerners Make Inviting Targets for Terrorists8
Larry Elder: Why the Anger? Obamanomics Has Failed9
George Will: Libya Debacle Undermines Clinton’s Foreign Policy Credential10

For more, visit Right Opinion11.

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

CA’s Minimum Wage Hike Will Harm the Poor12

Thanks to lobbying from unions and pressure from the Golden State’s leftist lawmakers, California will raise its minimum wage requirements until it hits $15-an-hour by 2022. The proponents of the policy argue that the workers at the low end of the pay scale deserve higher wages — a way to make a career of flipping burgers. After all, it’s the moral thing to do, right?

Not so fast. The Washington Examiner’s Jason Russell argues that California raising its minimum wage to double that of the federal level is the most immoral thing the state could do. “Consider three methods of reducing poverty: giving to charity, increasing taxes for welfare programs and hiking the minimum wage,” Russell wrote13, “Of the three, the minimum wage hike is the only one that primarily involves effectively making someone else pay more.”

Free-market think tank American Action Forum predicts14 a $15 minimum wage will destroy 700,000 jobs in California. Already, the minimum wage experiment has yielded bitter economic fruit for other regions that implemented the policy. Seattle, which is on its way to a $15 minimum wage, lost15 1,300 restaurant jobs from January to June 2015.

Businesses ordered by the government to pay more for employees become choosier in hiring help and slower to do so in general. The person who takes the order at a fast food joint? An automated ordering system will pay for itself, and take no sick days. The first people to be affected by raising the minimum wage are always workers with low skills, youth and racial minorities — the very people California’s bleeding heart “progressives” claim they’re trying to help. There’s no morality in that.

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The Patriot Post Digest 3-31-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Bogged Down in Water Regulation16

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday for a potentially landmark legal case limiting the reach of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and its zealous interpretation of the Clean Water Act. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes Co revolves around a peat farm operated by the Pierce family near the North Dakota-Minnesota state line. The Pierces drain bogs and scrape up the peat to sell to golf courses and football stadiums. As Kevin Pierce explained in a video17, laying down peat creates a cushion on swaths of grass that will experience heavy use. It also reduces the amount of water it takes to hydrate said grass.

When the company tried to use a property in nearby Minnesota for its peat-harvesting operation, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers swooped in. Bogs are wetlands, wetlands feed into navigable waterways, and therefore, the Pierce’s peat bog was under the corps' purview because it somehow affected the Red River, which lies 120 miles away. Sure, the Corps has jurisdiction over navigable waterways in the United States, but good luck piloting a boat through a peat bog. Recently, the Corps and the EPA tried to extend their power18 so that they control bodies of water as small as a ditch. The Pierces were yet another family affected by agency overreach.

But there was little19 they could do. They could cave to the Corps' demands, they could navigate the red tape and apply for a costly permit, or they could use the property anyway and risk major fines. The Pierces couldn’t take the Corps to court to challenge its determination, so the Supreme Court will decide whether the Corps is above legal challenge.

During the oral arguments, both liberal and conservative justices expressed skepticism20 over the Corps' arguments. For example, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg described the permitting process “arduous and very expensive.” The Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing the Pierces before SCOTUS, say the amicus briefs from think tanks, businesses — even 29 states — have joined the Pierces' petition to the Supreme Court, none in support of the Corps. It seems this part of the environmental regulatory deluge is coming to an end.

IRS Cannot Ensure the Safety of Taxpayer Data21

In a follow up security audit to determine how many improvements the Internal Revenue Service made to its data security, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded the IRS is “making progress.” Last year, the GAO recommended 70 changes to the tax collecting agency. “Financial and taxpayer data will remain unnecessarily vulnerable to inappropriate and undetected use, modification, or disclosure,” the GAO said. And while the IRS picks away at its vulnerabilities, the threat of tax refund fraud is increasing. In 2014, criminals pilfered $6.5 billion from taxpayers by filing false W-2s with the individuals' information. This year, the IRS predicts criminals will get away with $21 billion. Remember: The IRS has been taking a little from every paycheck year round. The refunds belong to the taxpayer.

“It goes without saying that if the IRS were a private business, its executives would either be in court or prison,” wrote22 Investor’s Business Daily. “But the White House can at least make fixing these glaring risks a priority. Until that happens, expect to hear more reports of IRS data breaches.”

Meanwhile, for more than 1,000 days23, the IRS has successfully avoided cooperating with investigations looking into its targeting of conservative nonprofits to aid Barack Obama’s re-election. The IRS needs reform in more ways than one.

MORE ORIGINAL PERSPECTIVE

ANALYSIS: Hillary’s Inbox Still Clogged by Email Scandal24
How to Really Damage the Pro-Life Movement25
Feds Welcome Back Civil Asset Forfeiture26
The Key to Understanding Socialism? Get a Job27

TOP HEADLINES

Slippery Slope: FBI to Hack iPhone in Arkansas Case28
Pentagon Confirms New North Korean ICBM29
Sanders May Be Left Off DC Ballot30

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report31

OPINION IN BRIEF

Victor Davis Hanson: “There are a number of reasons why jihadists prefer to target Westerners. The West is wealthy, sensual and liberal, and it offers the chance of global publicity to killers. … Many Westerners are more scared of being labeled as illiberal or nativist than they are of being unsafe. Islamic terrorists sense that Westerners are increasingly materialist rather than spiritual. Europeans in particular are becoming more secular. Their birthrates are declining. And they seem to believe more in satisfying their appetites than in finding transcendence through children and religion. As a result, jihadists trust that they can cull a handful of Westerners every few weeks from an otherwise indifferent herd. Their only challenge is to keep the harvest of Westerners down to a few dozen and not to get greedy in their bloodlust. Terrorists seem to believe that as long as they avoid another 9/11-like massacre, they can continue to take lives and insidiously weaken the West without awakening it from its morally indifferent slumber. And they may be right.”

SHORT CUTS

Bingo: “It wasn’t some Klan newsletter that first brought [Donald] Trump to our attention: It was Time and Esquire and Spy. The Westboro Baptist Church didn’t give him his own TV show: NBC did. And his boasts and lies weren’t posted on Breitbart, they were published by Random House. He was created by people who learned from Andy Warhol, not Jerry Falwell, who knew him from galas at the Met, not fundraisers at Karl Rove’s house, and his original audience was presented to him by Condé Nast, not Guns & Ammo. He owes his celebrity, his money, his arrogance, and his skill at drawing attention to those coastal cultural gatekeepers — presumably mostly liberal — who first elevated him out of general obscurity, making him famous and rewarding him (and, not at all incidentally, themselves) for his idiocies.” —Jim Lewis

Upright: “Hillary Clinton is a weather vane on many, many issues. On abortion, however, she is a rock-solid zealot, and she has her arguments down cold. The media backs her on this issue unconditionally. The thought that Trump may debate her on life should be chilling to every pro-life activist in America. He not only doesn’t know what he’s talking about, when push comes to shove, I daresay that he’s on her side.” —National Review’s David French

Alpha Jackass: “National Review is a dumpster fire of bigotry and lies. Some good people over there, but now an unrecognizable hate site.” —Breitbart’s John Nolte (Breitbart is a Trumpster fire of bigotry and lies. Some good people over there, but now a hate site that would be unrecognizable to its namesake, Andrew Breitbart.)

Stuck in an elitist bubble: “But is [ObamaCare] really a disaster? It just doesn’t feel like it is. I’ve not heard one story from a person I’ve heard — the word disaster is a strong word to use.” —Jimmy Kimmel to Ted Cruz

And last… “Barack Obama, who was never vetted by an adoring press, chastised the same press32 saying they need to hold our elected leaders to higher standards.” —Twitter satirist @weknowwhatsbest

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.