The Patriot Post Digest 4-19-2016

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The Patriot Post Digest 4-19-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

Apr. 19, 2016

THE FOUNDATION

“Don’t fire unless fired upon. But if they want a war let it begin here.” —John Parker (1775)

PATRIOTS' DAY

Today is Patriots' Day, when we honor the anniversary of the opening salvo of the American Revolution. On this day in 1775, militia men under Captain John Parker in Lexington and under Major John Buttrick in Concord first engaged the British Red Coats. In so doing, our forefathers began the great campaign to reject tyranny and embrace the difficult toils of securing individual Liberty.

We invite you to read our brief recounting1 of that noble history.

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Hot Sauce Hillary2

What do you always carry in your bag, Hillary? So asked the radio hosts of a hip-hop radio station in New York just in time for today’s primary in the Empire State. “Hot sauce,” Totally Average Human Being Clinton answered. “Yeah.”

It was an obvious pander to black people thanks to a stereotype made famous by a recent Beyoncé song, and even the radio hosts couldn’t let it slide. “Now listen,” one of them replied, “I want you to know that people are going to see this and say, ‘She’s pandering to black people.’”

“Okay,” Clinton answered. “Is it workin'?”

To be fair, she’s actually telling the truth — at least about loving hot sauce. Hillary’s fondness for the condiment is well known and goes back at least to her days in the White House, where she stocked the pantry full of it. But she’s not even trying to hide her shameless pandering, and that’s not new either. One of the more infamous moments in her first presidential bid came in Selma, Alabama, when she drawled in a phony Southern accent only a New Yorker could summon, “I don’t feel no ways tired. I come too far from where I started from. Nobody told me that the road would be easy.” Fingernails on a chalkboard are more pleasant than actually dissonant dialect3.

But why should she bother trying to disguise her pandering? Blacks vote monolithically for Democrats despite what that party has done to — not for — them over the last 50 years. And Republicans don’t seem to care enough to try for their votes.

Taxpayer Assistance for Deportees4

A U.S. government agency gives out $50,000 a year to Salvadorians who were deported back to their country so they can start businesses there. Can anyone say government waste? As Fox News' James Rosen reports5, even the Small Business Administration doesn’t provide that kind of assistance. SBA only provides loan guarantees for entrepreneurs looking to start small businesses — the things that grow our economy, maybe even provide some jobs. However, the Inter-American Foundation, an independent agency founded to hand out aid to countries below our southern borders, distributes taxpayer cash to Salvadorians who were caught breaking our immigration laws. The thinking is that the seed money will encourage Salvadorians to start their own businesses, become established in their home country and never make the trek back to the States. It’s all well and good until the local cartel hits up those fledgling enterprises for protection money, or a deportee takes the cash and the business never materializes. This redistribution program was highlighted in Sen. Rand Paul’s recent report on government waste.

The news also comes just as IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told the Senate6 his agency doesn’t care if illegal aliens use borrowed or stolen Social Security numbers to pay taxes — as long as the tax revenue keeps flowing. The problem is that more tax revenue flows out than in because Democrats, Washington bureaucrats and all the other ‘crats want to normalize illegal immigrants to make anything short of amnesty politically impossible.

Nine Gitmo Prisoners Granted Refuge by Instigator of 9/117

The prisoner population at Guantanamo Bay was shrunk for the umpteenth time this weekend after nine Yemeni nationalists were transferred to Saudi Arabia to begin life anew. USA Today says “it was the first time the royal kingdom agreed to take in non-citizens from Guantanamo.” Just 80 detainees are all who now stand in the way of Barack Obama achieving his goal of shuttering the facility, and a quarter of them have arrangements to be transferred.

Obama has a well-documented history of recklessly freeing Gitmo prisoners, but this one is especially difficult to swallow. “The timing of this latest release is curious considering the recent uproar over the so-called 'secret 9/11 papers’ which … implicate Saudi officials in the 9/11 terror attacks,” notes Larry O'Connor8.

It’s even more chilling when we digest it from a historical perspective. Here’s Fox News analyst Ralph Peters writing in The New York Post9:

Firm figures are elusive, but estimates are that the Saudis fund up to 80% of American mosques, at least in part. And their goal is the same here as it is elsewhere in the world where Islam must compete with other religions: to prevent Muslims from integrating into the host society. … Consider how idiotic we’ve been, allowing Saudis to fund hate mosques and madrassas, to provide Jew-baiting texts and to do their best to bully American Muslims into conformity with their misogynistic, 500-lashes worldview. … Decades ago, the Saudi royal family realized it had a problem. Even its brutal practices weren’t strict enough for its home-grown zealots. So the king and his thousands of princes gave the budding terrorists money — and aimed them outside the kingdom. Osama bin Laden was just one extremist of thousands. The 9/11 hijackers were overwhelmingly Saudi. The roots of the jihadi movements tearing apart the Middle East today all lie deep in Wahhabism.

Some kind of “ally” we’ve got there. O'Connor adds, “The president’s priorities are clear: Empty Gitmo at all costs, even if it means handing terrorists over to a government that may have been complicit in the most devastating terror attacks in American history.” We’ve been duped — and not just by the Saudis.

Don’t Miss Patriot Humor

Check out Potty Talk10.

If you’d like to receive Patriot Humor by email, update your subscription here11.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Stephen Moore: Dig a Hole for U.S. Coal12
Thomas Sowell: Winners or Whiners?13
Cal Thomas: The Saudis Practice Mafia Tactics14

For more, visit Right Opinion15.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Justices Weigh Obama’s Kingly Decree16

By Paul Albaugh

On Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments over Barack Obama’s executive action on selective immigration enforcement. While many media outlets have portrayed this case as being primarily about immigration, the reality is that it has great implications for Rule of Law and the future of our republic.

In 2014, following a refusal from members of the House of Representatives to hold a vote on immigration reform legislation that was passed in the Senate, Obama decided to take matters into his own hands. Shocking we know, since Obama regularly criticized former President George W. Bush for his issuance of executive orders. More to the point, Obama had specifically said on numerous occasions that he did not have the power to do what he turned around and did anyway.

Obama told Univision in 2014, “I am president. I am not king.” He went on to add, “I can’t do these things just by myself. We have a system of government that requires the Congress to work with the executive branch to make it happen.” Oh, if only he would heed his own words.

But immigration reform (read: amnesty) was something Obama had promised during his re-election bid and he was going to pursue that political goal, with or without Congress.

________________________________________
The Patriot Post Digest 4-19-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
________________________________________

So when Congress didn’t go along with his agenda for amnesty, he insisted that he could simply act like the legislature and rewrite existing immigration law through executive fiat. For someone who so often claims to be a constitutional scholar, he certainly should have understood that the power of the pen has limits.

Those limits are specifically spelled out by the Framers of the Constitution in Article II. As The Wall Street Journal highlights17, “The executive shall — not "may” — execute Congress’s laws faithfully, in one of the Constitution’s most specific instructions.“ The Framers put this "take care clause” into the Constitution to prevent any president from acting like a king — something which Obama claims he isn’t all while his actions regularly indicate otherwise.

Obama’s executive action created two new programs18 for illegal immigrants. These new programs would shield approximately four million illegal immigrants from deportation and make them eligible to work. In other words, as the king hath spoken, so shall it be.

Fortunately, 26 states led by Texas filed a lawsuit (United States vs. Texas) against the Obama administration for acting without the consent of Congress.

By all indications Justice Anthony Kennedy supports the view of the states. “It’s as if … the president is setting the policy and the Congress is executing it,” he said. “That’s just upside down.”

Chief Justice John Roberts could be the deciding vote in this case — a 4-4 split would leave in place a lower court ruling against Obama. And Roberts appeared to doubt the administration’s arguments. He questioned Solicitor General Donald Verrilli and suggested that under the administration’s view of immigration law there are few limits to the president’s power. Roberts asked, “Under your argument, could the president grant deferred removal to every … unlawfully present alien in the United States right now?”

Verrilli responded, “Definitely not,” though it’s not clear what limitations on presidential power Obama will abide.

Of course, Justice Sonia Sotomayor chimed in with her two cents of nonsense. She noted that most of the immigrants who live here in the U.S. illegally “are here whether we want them or not.” So under her reasoning, the fact that they are here is sufficient cause to leave them be? To allow them to stay and work and receive copious amounts of federal aid and benefits6? Is this her interpretation of justice or law? Who would benefit from this? Certainly not the United States as a whole, certainly not our economy, and certainly not our nation’s security.

The answer is simple. The only segment of the population to benefit would be Democrats in office or those seeking office. That is Obama’s real immigration “reform” strategy.

As Mark Alexander explained19, “The Demo strategy is to craft that EO in such a way that Republicans can successfully chip away at it, primarily by defunding and de-authorizing key components of its implementation, as well as by issuing legal challenges. If the courts rule against Obama, which they most certainly should if they have any interest in preserving our Constitution, then the Democrats can assail Republicans as immigration obstructionist ahead of the 2016 election. Thus, Democrats will receive credit from both their legal and illegal Latino constituencies for, ostensibly, attempting to provide them with nine million Permanent Residency or Employment Authorization cards, while not offending their union constituents who oppose the flood of cheap labor.”

Should the High Court uphold the Rule of Law and declare that Obama’s action is indeed unconstitutional, then the imperial president will at least receive the political credit for trying. He will point out that it was Republicans' fault and he will continue to make promises all the way to the election in November with the attempt to secure enough votes for the next Democrat nominee. Stay tuned, because the future of our republic, our borders and our culture, may very well depend on the decision of eight Supreme Court Justices.

MORE ORIGINAL PERSPECTIVE

ANALYSIS: Who’s Responsible for Sandy Hook?20
UnitedHealth Announces Retreat From ObamaCare21
Where Are Trump’s Tax Returns?22
Gov’t Admits Violating Little Sisters' Religious Freedom23

TOP HEADLINES

Dozens Killed in Kabul Taliban Terrorist Attack24
200 More American Troops Deployed to Iraq25
Biden Slams Netanyahu Just Hours After Jerusalem Attacked26

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report27

OPINION IN BRIEF

Stephen Moore: “Leftists care more about the supposed rise of the oceans than the financial survival of the middle class. The industrial unions made a catastrophic decision to get in bed with these radicals, and now they — and all of us — are paying a heavy price. The latest evidence came last week when another coal giant in America, Peabody Energy Corp., filed for bankruptcy. This is the same fate suffered by Arch Coal Inc., Alpha Natural Resources Inc. and other coal producers that have filed for Chapter 11 protection from creditors. This isn’t a result of free-market creative destruction. This was a policy strategy by the White House and green groups. They wanted this to happen. … America is the Saudi Arabia of coal; we have an estimated 500 years' supply. So for economic and ecological reasons, we should want American coal to dominate the world market. But the environmentalists' rallying cry is: ‘Keep it in the ground.’ Do liberals care that the demise of coal could lead to major disruptions in America’s electric power supply? … Perhaps the millennials will realize their mistake when they won’t be able to power up their PlayStations, iPhones and laptops.”

SHORT CUTS

Insight: “The state is the great fiction by which everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else.” —Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)

For the record: “It is not Trump’s nomination until after he has earned it, under the rules that apply to all candidates. Nobody can ‘steal’ what was not his in the first place. The rules are the rules. As an old New York Yankees fan, I still have a painful memory of the 1960 World Series, where the Yankees scored 53 runs and the Pittsburgh Pirates scored 27. But the Pirates won the World Series, because the rules go by how many games were won, not how many runs were scored. … The time to change rules is before the game starts. If the current rules need changing, there will be four long years before the 2020 elections in which to try to create better rules. The 1960 Yankees never whined that the World Series had been ‘stolen’ from them. They were adults who knew the rules in advance.” —Thomas Sowell

Village Idiots: “It is an obscene amount of money. The Sanders campaign, when they talk about it, is absolutely right. It’s ridiculous that we should have this kind of money in politics. I agree completely.” —actor George Clooney on his own big-money fundraisers for Hillary Clinton (There’s an obscene amount of money in Hollywood.)

With friends like these… “I firmly believe that the actions that Israel’s government has taken over the past several years — the steady and systematic expansion of settlements, the legalization of outposts, land seizures — they’re moving us and more importantly they’re moving Israel in the wrong direction.” —Joe Biden

Non Compos Mentis: “A woman voting for Ted Cruz is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.” —Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards at a Hillary Clinton rally

And last… “Single greatest reform for limited government: Make Tax Day and Election Day the same day (plus get rid of withholding).” —Jonah Goldberg

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.