The Patriot Post Digest 5-11-2016

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The Patriot Post Digest 5-11-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

May 11, 2016

THE FOUNDATION

“It is necessary for every American, with becoming energy to endeavor to stop the dissemination of principles evidently destructive of the cause for which they have bled.” —Mercy Warren (1805)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Clinton’s Weaknesses Manifest in West Virginia1

With Donald Trump now the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party, Hillary Clinton would like nothing better than to pivot from the primary race and face her fellow New York bigwig. But Bernie Sanders continues to nip hard at her heals. In the West Virginia primary on Tuesday, Sanders amassed 51.4% of the vote to Clinton’s 36%. She might have the plurality of delegates and the nomination mathematically in the bag, but for the frontrunner to lose state after state just as she’s supposed to unite the party doesn’t fit into the narrative she wants to portray.

Clinton lost West Virginia because of her stance on coal. She admitted2 in March her policies would seriously hurt coal country, saying, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” When those coal families went to the polls, they overwhelmingly supported Sanders, hoping to put Clinton out of business.

The bigger picture is that, despite not having a chance at winning the nomination, Sanders hangs on in the race because of his seemingly authentic persona, and his endless critique of big banks and the One Percent. That contrasts starkly with Clinton. Everything Clinton is, she says she’s against. Shadowy One-Percenters squirreling money in offshore accounts? One of Clinton’s top donors makes his living working in offshore banking3. The ability for the well connected to slip away from the consequences of breaking the law? Employees of the Justice Department — the department that will determine if she’s indicted for mishandling state secrets on an unsecure email server — donated4 $73,000 to her campaign.

Sanders' candidacy was meant to show that Hillary had to vanquish an opponent. But it was rigged from the get-go. For proof, just look at the vast majority of superdelegates — Democrat insiders — who support Clinton over Sanders. Yet the socialist candidate has his own strategy. He’ll still lose, but not before moving the once-noble Democrat Party5 to openly and unequivocally embrace socialism.

No Charges for Cadets Who Raised Fists in Photo6

The United States Military Academy at West Point concluded that the 16 black women who posed on the steps of the school’s ethics center with fists raised were recreating “old corps” photos, or the black-and-white photos of graduates past. The group was weeks away from graduating at West Point’s May 21 ceremony when the seemingly politically charged photo emerged. It looked as if the group was giving a nod to the Black Lives Matter movement, or recreating the symbol of the Black Panthers.

David French, constitutional lawyer and veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, writes7, “As a person who’s given multiple briefings on the do’s and don'ts of personal expression in uniform, I immediately knew two things — first, unless there is a highly implausible innocent explanation, these young women violated DoD directives, and — second – sympathetic leftists would be falling all over themselves to excuse their behavior. Senior leaders drill into recruits and cadets the notion that you simply don’t make partisan or nonpartisan political statements in uniform. It’s a bright-line rule.”

Regardless of what these cadets say about pop star Beyoncé — who raised her fist at the recent Super Bowl Halftime Show — or whether they thought it was a prank, making such a highly charged political statement while in uniform is a clear violation of the United States Code of Military Justice, and they should have been brought up on charges.

Students Kicked Out of College for Racial Hoax8

Two fewer students are enrolled at the University at Albany following an investigation of an attack earlier this year in which three young black women claimed they were racially targeted. Last week, the institution kicked out two of the girls and gave another a two-year suspension because, as it turns out, they are actually the ones at fault.

As Fox News recounts9, “The women, all 20 years old, claimed they were attacked early on the morning of Jan. 30 while riding a bus. They claimed they were called racial slurs and were physically attacked while bystanders looked on. Investigators say a review of multiple videos of the incident showed no evidence the women were victims of a crime or subjected to racial slurs. In fact, police said the women were the aggressors, assaulting a 19-year-old white woman.” Moreover, “The white men [they] claimed assaulted them were actually trying to break up the fight.”

But that’s not the least of their worries. The women who were expelled “were charged with misdemeanor assault and falsely reporting an incident,” while the other “was charged with misdemeanor assault,” according to Fox.

This isn’t just an embarrassment for these young women, but also for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. In February, referring specifically to the University at Albany incident, Clinton tweeted, “There is no excuse for racism and violence on a college campus.” There is also no excuse for conjuring up lies. Is this what Obama means when he says blacks' success in life is based on luck10?

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Terence Jeffrey: Next: Will Court Redefine Man and Woman?11
Jonah Goldberg: Perry, Other Republicans Selling Their Souls to Trump12
Rich Lowry: Blowing Smoke on E-Cigs13

For more, visit Right Opinion14.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
America Owes No Apologies to Japan15

By Louis DeBroux

“There is a rank due to the United States, among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness,” George Washington declared in 1793. “If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war.”

It appears that Barack Obama wants to end his time in office in much the same way he began; by touring the world, highlighting and apologizing for America’s supposed sins, and minimizing or ignoring all the good we have done in the world.

He began his first term with an apology tour. On April 3, 2009, in Strasbourg, France, Obama declared, “In America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world. … There have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.” Three days later, in a speech to the Turkish Parliament, Obama doubled down, saying, “The United States is still working through some of our own darker periods in our history. … Our country still struggles with the legacies of slavery and segregation, the past treatment of Native Americans.” These would be just two of many apologies Obama would make for America in the years to come.

This month, Obama will become [the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima, Japan, since the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on it 70 years ago in a bid to bring World War II, the most deadly war in history, to an end.

Though the White House says that Obama will not be issuing a formal apology, and the Japanese prime minister says he will not be asking for one, the fact that Obama will be visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum, and calling for an end to nuclear weapons, certainly gives the feel of an unspoken mea culpa.

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The Patriot Post Digest 5-11-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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While all good and decent people should mourn the unnecessary loss of life anywhere and at any time, it is important to put the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in proper perspective. First of all, Japan initiated hostilities against the United States, a neutral nation, on December 7, 1941, when waves of bombers decimated the U.S. Pacific Fleet with a surprise attack on our base at Pearl Harbor, costing us thousands of lives and millions of dollars in ships and equipment.

The U.S. would then enter the war on the side of the Allied powers, and over the course of the next three years, almost half a million of our young men would lose their lives in the defense of Liberty against the forces of Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito.

Over the course of five weeks in February-March 1945, the U.S. would sustain nearly 7,000 casualties and more than 19,000 wounded in the Battle of Iwo Jima, a tiny but heavily fortified island held by the Japanese, with three airfields being used to attack U.S. Pacific Fleet forces. The Americans sought to take the island and use it as a staging area for an attack on the Japanese mainland, as well as denying the island to the Japanese as a launching point for attacks on American forces. This Battle of Iwo Jima was followed shortly after by the Battle of Okinawa, in which more than 20,000 Americans died, and more than 55,000 Americans were wounded. In the same battle, an estimated 110,000 Japanese were killed.

As historian Victor Davis Hanson recounts16, “Over the next three months, American attacks leveled huge swaths of urban Japan. U.S. planes dropped about 60 million leaflets on Japanese cities, telling citizens to evacuate and to call upon their leaders to cease the war. Japan still refused to surrender and upped its resistance with thousands of Kamikaze airstrikes. By the time of the atomic bombings, the U.S. Air Force was planning to transfer from Europe much of the idle British and American bombing fleet to join the B-29s in the Pacific.”

In short, it was clear that the Japanese were willing to fight until the last man, woman and child were dead.

Hanson offers further clarity, noting that, prior to the dropping of the atomic bombs, “Perhaps 5,000 Allied bombers would have saturated Japan with napalm,” at the cost of countless lives. We were also facing the prospect of invading mainland Japan, where more than a million Japanese soldiers and perhaps four million dug-in, well-prepared defenders would be awaiting our arrival. How many more lives would have been lost?

Between the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, approximately 210,000 Japanese were killed. Yet despite those deaths, the defeated nations of WWII (Germany, Italy and Japan) would suffer far fewer casualties than the victors, even though they were the aggressors who sought the subjugation of their neighbors. Following the war, America, as we have done repeatedly, poured vast amounts of our national treasure into rebuilding the nations of our former enemies.

So before Obama offers any apologies for the U.S.’s past actions — or even appears to mourn those actions — he ought to be reminded that no nation in history has done more, and asked less in return, to defend the free nations of the world from those who would conquer us. The U.S. has borne a disproportionate share of the loss of blood and treasure needed to secure freedom, and whatever our shortcomings, we owe an apology to no one.

And if Obama truly wanted to rid the world of nuclear weapons, he should never have given more than $100 billion in released funds to Iran17, the world’s premier sponsor of global terrorism, and a nation in open pursuit of nuclear weapons capabilities. His foolish give-away to Iran has stoked fear in other Middle East nations at the thought of a nuclear Iran hegemon, and they are now pursuing their own nuclear weapons.

However warm and fuzzy the thoughts of a nuclear weapon-free world18 would be, it is not reality19, and we would be fools to disarm even as our most dangerous enemies pursue these weapons.

MORE ORIGINAL PERSPECTIVE

ANALYSIS: The Unraveling of Obama’s Iran Deal20
Suit and Counter-Suit Over North Carolina Bathroom Bill21
Sanders Would Need to Double the Debt to Fund Socialist Utopia22
Cities of All Sizes on the Hook for Sports Stadiums23
Government Causing Huge Increase in Housing Prices24

TOP HEADLINES

Facebook Manager in Charge of Trending Topics Is Max Clinton Donor25
Admin Paves Way to Bail Out ObamaCare Co-Ops26
U.S. Won’t Seek Death Penalty Against Benghazi Ringleader27

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report28

OPINION IN BRIEF

Terence Jeffrey: “Progressively, our nation is being ripped loose from its mooring in natural law. Forty-three years ago, seven members of the Supreme Court declared a ‘right’ to kill an unborn child. Since then, tens of millions of babies have been aborted. A year ago, five members of the Supreme Court declared a ‘right’ for two people of the same sex to marry. Were there such a right, which there is not, it would mean children do not have a right to a mother — or a father. Currently, an eight-member Supreme Court is weighing whether the government can force Christians to act against their faith and cooperate in the distribution of abortifacient drugs that take innocent lives. Thus, could the freedom of conscience be curtailed in the pursuit of further diminishing the right to life. If the case the Justice Department filed in North Carolina this week makes it to the Supreme Court, the underlying question before the court may be, as it is in the Justice Department’s complaint: What is a man and what is a woman? The laws of nature and nature’s God answered that question a long time ago. But President Obama’s Justice Department has a different opinion.”

SHORT CUTS

Insight: “To say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?” —Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859)

Observations: “Remember when liberals used to say they believed in privacy rights? Remember when they used to say, ‘Government should get out of the bedroom’? … This was their clarion call to promote unrestricted abortion and so forth, the use of condoms and just on and on and on. But apparently the federal government shouldn’t get out of our public bathrooms. … So radical is this pathetic administration, so dangerous, so diabolical that even our bathrooms aren’t safe.” —Mark Levin

For the record: “For more than 20 years, LGBT activists have sought to amend federal law through the so-called Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a bill that would essentially add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes within federal nondiscrimination law. For more than 20 years, LGBT activists have failed. ENDA hasn’t passed even when Democrats controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress.” —David French on the NC bathroom controversy

Non Compos Mentis: “None of us can stand by when a state enters the business of legislating identity and insists that a person pretend to be something or someone that they are not.” —Attorney General Loretta Lynch

“If anybody knows anything about EPA and writing rules — we rock at it. We do them legally. We do them on the basis of sound science.” —EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy

Tax return evasion: “There’s nothing to learn from them.” —Donald Trump announcing he will NOT release his tax returns29

And last… “The litmus test in the new Republican Party boils down to loyalty, not to a principle or conviction, but to a man: Trump. It’s a cult of personality, pure and simple.” —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.