The Patriot Post Digest 5-19-2016

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The Patriot Post Digest 5-19-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

May 19, 2016

THE FOUNDATION

“Judges, therefore, should be always men of learning and experience in the laws, of exemplary morals, great patience, calmness, coolness, and attention. Their minds should not be distracted with jarring interests; they should not be dependent upon any man, or body of men.” —John Adams (1776)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Facebook’s Been Targeting Conservative Individuals for Years

Facebook is in damage control following allegations that its curators purposely suppressed conservative opinion in the trending topics section. But another equally if not even more troubling issue the mainstream media is “overlooking” is that this isn’t Facebook’s first time censoring “unsavory” opinions.

For years now, individual conservatives have had their pages shut down for espousing the Right ideals. The Media Research Center chronicles numerous examples here, including anyone from the conservative group “Chicks on The Right” to the Center for Medical Progress to even “a Canadian page critical of Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.”

One of the victims happens to be Fox News commentator Todd Starnes, who writes about his being blacklisted from Facebook in 2013: “Facebook blocked my page and removed a message I had posted that invoked Paula Deen, the National Rifle Association and Jesus Christ. … Had I been reading Saul Alinsky’s ‘Rules For Radicals,’ wearing a Planned Parenthood ball cap and smoking a joint, Facebook would’ve left me alone.” He says his page is still “subjected to random censorship by the Facebook gods."


Facebook claims this is all just a misunderstanding and that it would never stoop to such a low. Indeed, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg met with 16 Republican pundits and politicians Wednesday to smooth things over. Yet the evidence suggests employees have been censoring conservatives for years. If media outlets were truly concerned about the implications, they’d include the years-long attack on conservative individuals in their coverage.

Lt. Gen. Boykin Fired for Free Speech

Lieutenant General William G. "Jerry” Boykin spent 13 years of his 36-year military career in Delta Force, two years as commander, and finished in 2007 as George W. Bush’s Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. Our publisher, Mark Alexander, knows Boykin personally and confirms he’s an outstanding patriot. Boykin’s not a fan of Barack Obama’s PC potty policies, saying on social media, “The first man who goes in the restroom with my daughter will not have to worry about surgery.”

He was subsequently fired by Hamden-Sydney College. Here’s his story, as told by Boykin himself:

    Hampden Sydney is the 10th oldest college in America and is one of the two Men’s colleges left in ‎America. Let me begin by saying that it is a fine school with some very good young men who give me hope for the future. There are also a few very good faculty members who I consider to be good friends and true patriots. They stood with me through this whole situation as the school made the decision to terminate me and I appreciate everything that these friends at the school did to try and help.

    The bottom line is that I oppose these so called “‎Bathroom” bills that let men go into women’s locker rooms, showers, and toilets and I have been very public about it. When I said in Orlando that “…the first man who goes in the restroom with my daughter will not have to worry about surgery”, the LGBT community once again came after me, claiming that I was calling for violence against ‎transgender people.

    Well, that is simply not the case and I have never called for violence against anyone. I was referring to perverts who will use these policies to get into locker rooms with girls and women, and I object to that. My statement was meant to be humor and not a call for violence, which everyone in my audience understood as humor.

    Nonetheless, I gave the LGBT community just what they needed to pressure the college leadership to terminate me and they did.

Such views will be silenced by the “tolerant” Left in their quest for total power.

TSA Stands for Terminally Slow Agency

Memorial Day weekend is coming, and with it the beginning of the summer travel season. And the Transportation Security Administration is the headache in your vacation plans. Recently, the screening lines in major airports have become unbearable. Some 4,000 passengers at Chicago O'Hare International Airport missed their flights because they were waiting for hours in TSA security lines. About 400 of them missed their flights in the last weekend alone. As every bureaucracy is wont to do when confronted with ineptitude, the TSA blames Congress' budget cuts. According to the TSA’s numbers, the number of TSA agents declined while passengers rose since 2011. Combined with a social media campaign, the pressure is on Congress to fix the problem.

But the TSA hasn’t exactly been frugal with its resources. The agency recently spent $1.7 million on marketing, money on new uniforms and even a female hologram to manage passengers. This doesn’t sound like an agency that’s cutting costs to focus on its mission — a mission it’s performing poorly, by the way. Last year, a Department of Homeland Security audit found that the TSA could not detect threats 95% of the time. As Investor’s Business Daily rhetorically asks, “If a private company wasted billions of taxpayer dollars, hired workers who failed to do their job 95% of the time, and then forced people to wait in line for hours, how long do you think they’d be in business? So why is the TSA being treated any differently?” IBD adds, “It’s almost as if the nation’s airports have turned into mini-Soviet Unions, where instead of waiting for bread, people stand in line for hours to be poked and prodded.”

To better serve the American people, Congress should abolish the agency and re-outsource the security duties to private companies. No private company would be allowed to fail like this. Only the government is too big to fail.

Don’t Miss Alexander’s Column

Read Honoring Our Armed Forces?, on the Left’s Endless Assault on Patriots in Uniform.

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

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

    Veronique de Rugy: A Sneaky Corporate Welfare Balancing Act
    Victor Davis Hanson: Lack of American Commitment Makes This a Dangerous Time
    R. Emmett Tyrrell: A Movie for Clintonites

For more, visit Right Opinion.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
What to Make of Trump’s Justice League

By Nate Jackson

The 2016 election is a four- or maybe eight-year proposition. The Supreme Court, on the other hand, is a generational one. And that makes the stakes quite high in choosing a president, because the next one will pick as many as four new justices. No pressure.

We know Hillary Clinton will nominate only leftists to the bench, just as Barack Obama has. We also know that the Republican Senate is gambling by not confirming Merrick Garland, because if the GOP loses the chamber and Garland is not yet confirmed, Obama or Clinton may yank his nomination in favor of someone even further left.

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The Patriot Post Digest 5-19-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Which brings us to Donald Trump. The type of judges Trump would nominate has been the subject of question and speculation. Until now. On Wednesday, he took the unusual step of releasing a list of 11 solid conservatives he would consider nominating. It may go a long way toward uniting the party behind its presumptive nominee.

The list is as follows:

Third Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Thomas Hardiman
Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Raymond Kethledge
Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Diane Sykes
Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Steven Colloton
Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Raymond Gruender
Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals William H. Pryor
Colorado Supreme Court Justice Allison Eid
Michigan Supreme Court Associate Justice Joan Larsen
Minnesota Supreme Court Associate Justice David Stras
Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett
Utah Supreme Court Associate Justice Thomas Lee (brother of Sen. Mike Lee)

Legal scholar John Yoo writes, “Everyone on the list is an outstanding legal conservative. All are young, smart, and committed. They would excel in any comparison with anyone whom Hillary Clinton would appoint to the Supreme Court. Several of the possibilities, such as Tom Lee of Utah, Allison Eid of Colorado, and David Stras of Minnesota, are former law clerks of Justice Clarence Thomas, while others, such as Steve Colloton of Iowa and Joan Larsen of Michigan, clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia. They are joined by other well-known judicial conservatives, such as Diane Sykes, Don Willet, Ray Kethledge, and Bill Pryor.”

Most of these picks are from outside the Beltway or East Coast elite. Almost half are from state courts, which could help with the balance of power between state and federal governments. Lee and Sykes in particular are likely part of an effort to win over some of the #NeverTrump figures who follow Sen. Lee or Sykes' husband Charlie, a prominent Wisconsin talk-radio host. The list also closely resembles one made by The Heritage Foundation. All of this is evidence that Trump is aware of the need to please his right flank.

Notably, Sixth Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton and DC Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh were two prominent conservatives excluded from the list, perhaps because both rejected challenges to ObamaCare. If that’s the case, it’s encouraging. Some are making hay about the absence of Ted Cruz, too, but that’s a stretch. Cruz has repeatedly said he’s not interested, and Trump gains little by naming him.

Previous Republican picks have not always panned out. Ronald Reagan chose Anthony Kennedy (albeit after Senate Democrats outrageously smeared and defeated Robert Bork), George H.W. Bush picked David Souter, and George W. Bush gave us John Roberts, who saved ObamaCare twice. Democrat picks, on the other hand, never end up being more conservative, so we don’t need a list from Hillary.

If a President Trump were to nominate one good justice and three bad ones, to analogize with baseball, batting .250 is better than batting .000. But this also isn’t baseball.

Can Trump win in November? Indeed he can. It will be a difficult road, but we shouldn’t underestimate his support — especially against an incredibly weak Clinton. As far as this list of judicial picks, we should remember Trump’s flip-flopping record, general disinterest in the judiciary, and total disregard for the Constitution, and take this list with a truckload of salt. Still, if conservatives are convinced there’s even a slight chance Trump is playing it straight, this effort will only help him in November.

MORE ORIGINAL PERSPECTIVE

    ANALYSIS: Forcing Montana Taxpayers to Support Illegals
    13 Minutes of Hillary’s Lies
    Final Overtime Rule Is Shortsighted
    Cuomo: Of Course New York’s Corrupt!
    Iran Demands More Money From Obama
    Ben Rhodes' Iran Propaganda Possibly Broke Law
    Does Saudi Arabia Deserve America’s Friendship?

TOP HEADLINES

    Terrorism Feared in Egypt Flight Crash
    Judge Rules Citizenship Proof Not Required of Kansas Voters
    Five-Year-Old Suspended for Bringing Bubble Gun to School

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report

OPINION IN BRIEF

Veronique de Rugy: “Conveniently, Congress adopted an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 by Massachusetts Democrat Niki Tsongas to force the military to only buy shoes with every component made in the USA — a feature that only applies to New Balance. It’s a good deal for the administration, the company, its lobbyists and the members of Congress whose districts house the New Balance factories. It’s not good for taxpayers (the New Balance shoes are $30 more expensive than shoes currently available at troop stores), and it’s not good for new recruits, who went from being able to choose among 14 pairs of sneakers to being able to choose among three pairs and may see more foot injuries as a result. And that, my friend, is how interest groups are compelled to support things they don’t like. They get a government-granted privilege that cheats taxpayers and consumers — our troops, in this case.”

SHORT CUTS

Insight: “Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life that can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends.” —Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973)

Upright: “[Trump’s SCOTUS candidates] are quite sterling. … They are conservative and they are relatively young — so this is a future-looking list. The only caveat is … where Trump said his nominee will ‘most likely be from this list.’ Not ‘going to be,’ but ‘will most likely be.’ How do you interpret that? I don’t know. He always leaves himself wiggle room, he says he likes to have leverage. He keeps the leverage but he kindles a little bit of doubt.” —Charles Krauthammer

The BIG lie: “[The bathroom wars] is a confrontation that Republicans have sought out rather cynically, because they are seeking a political advantage. … They’d rather just cynically try to appeal to people’s fears in order to try and gin up political support for their campaigns.” —Josh Earnest

Keep dreaming: “We’re allowing a radical right-wing Republican Party to capture the majority of the votes of the working class in this country. I come from the working class of this country.” —Bernie Sanders

No wonder conservatives don’t trust GOP “leadership”: “I don’t anticipate a draft, but if you’re talking about registering for the Selective Service system, I think since women are serving in the military, they should be eligible to be in Selective Service themselves. … I personally think it would be appropriate for them to register just like men do.” —Mitch McConnell (“The man who dodged the draft is willing to send American daughters off the war against their will.” —Erick Erickson)

And last… “5-yr-old suspended for clear toy ‘gun’ that blows soap bubbles. Would’ve gotten White House invite if were a faux bomb clock.” —Twitter satirist @hale_razor

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.