The Patriot Post Digest 6-23-2016

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The Patriot Post Digest 6-23-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

Jun. 23, 2016

THE FOUNDATION

“The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of Man to alienate this gift, and voluntarily become a slave.” —Samuel Adams (1772)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Democrats Stage a ‘Sit-In’ to Deny Civil Rights1

The Second Amendment is, in our estimation, the First Civil Right2. In other words, the right of the people to keep and bear arms secures all other rights. So it’s quite ironic to see people who stood for civil rights 50 years ago now taking a seat to protest against civil rights. That was the scene in Congress Wednesday as several House Democrats literally sat on the floor and demanded a vote to pass gun control measures3. They propose to deny Second Amendment rights via trampling Fifth (and Sixth) Amendment Rights, and they claim the First Amendment as justification for the protest — all while singing the civil rights anthem “We Will Overcome.” Republicans responded by calling a recess and shutting off C-SPAN cameras.

The Leftmedia gleefully trumpeted the Democrats' “historic” moment, but we believe the word they’re looking for is “histrionic.”

Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) staged sit-ins for civil rights in the 1960s. But he’s completely blind to the irony of the present situation. Gun control began in the 1800s as a racist method of keeping guns out of the hands of blacks. You might even say those blacks were on government lists meant to deny their rights. Who else was on an FBI watch list? A gun-owning Martin Luther King Jr. Yet now a man who claims King’s legacy, and declares on his website4 that he is “one of the most courageous persons the Civil Rights Movement ever produced,” is using old methods to deny civil rights.

By the way, did we mention that Lewis himself was once erroneously on a terror watch list? As Stephen Kruiser ponders5, “Not only was he erroneously placed on the list, he couldn’t get himself off of it quickly. At the time, Lewis had been in Congress for 27 years. If he couldn’t get it cleared up quickly, what chance does an average citizen have?”

Back in January, Barack Obama likewise had the gall to claim King’s legacy — quoting the “fierce urgency of now” line — to pass gun control. Where was that “fierce urgency” when Democrats controlled the White House and all of Congress in 2009 and 2010? This is all exploitative politics for them, complete with immediate fundraising appeals based on the sit-in — because Democrats truly have no shame.

State Department Disabled Its Security for Clinton’s Email6

In 2010, the State Department had a problem. Emails that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her staff sent from her private email server were not getting through to the rest of the department operating on the official system. Trying to fix the problem, Ken LaVolpe, a senior technical official, informed State IT employees in December 2010, “This should trump all other activities.” Finally, the tech wizards hit upon a solution: They disabled the software7 installed on the government’s systems to prevent block phishing emails. Hackers and identity thieves use phishing emails to appear like they are from a trustworthy source to solicit sensitive information or place malware on someone’s computer. No wonder it was also blocking Clinton.

But disabling the software left a door open for Russian and Chinese hackers to breach the State Department system. And get in they did. Last year8 news broke that State Department IT was struggling to eradicate Russian hackers in its email system, hackers that were able to infiltrate the White House’s system as well. News at the time said the intrusion happened after Clinton left. Perhaps State Department IT reinstalled the phishing blocking software by then. If not, it was yet another vulnerability thanks to Clinton. Other vulnerabilities include Clinton discussing the names of CIA operatives and details about the Special Access Program on her unsecured server.

Meanwhile, in a deposition hearing Wednesday, Clinton’s own IT specialist Bryan Pagliano invoked the fifth9 over 125 times as he was questioned about Clinton’s email set up. Think the Clinton machine has something to hide?

Trump Shows Just How Hard He’ll Slam Clinton10

It was a pair of dueling speeches, really, attack and counter attack. On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton feebly struck11 at Donald Trump’s economic policies in an attempt to discredit the real estate mogul’s past experience. The next day, Donald Trump made a speech12 designed to take on Clinton’s experience as secretary of state, her “best” résumé item for the presidency. “The Hillary Clinton foreign policy has cost America thousands of lives and trillions of dollars — and unleashed ISIS across the world,” said the presumed GOP nominee. “No secretary of state has been more wrong, more often and in more places than Hillary Clinton. Her decisions spread death, destruction and terrorism everywhere she touched.”

As several commentators noted, this may very well be Trump’s best strategy to unite the Republican Party after the divisive primary: Focus the firepower on Clinton. Hot Air’s Allahpundit writes13, “If he had stuck to this message at his rallies and in his interviews over the last six weeks, there’d be no ‘Dump Trump’ contingent at the convention and his fundraising may well have taken off. Nothing unites the right, after all, like a forceful argument against the left.”

And there was plenty for Trump to slam — even without touching on the Clintons' personal lives. “Hillary Clinton has perfected the politics of personal profit and theft,” Trump said. He even found fault in her campaign slogan: “Her campaign slogan is, ‘I’m with her.’ You know what my response to that is? I’m with you: the American people.” By the time Trump is done with her, Clinton’s only accomplishment, if she’s elected, will be that she’s a woman. And as commentator David Limbaugh notes14, what accomplishment is that for the Left, which thinks gender is subject to change?

Don’t Miss Alexander’s Column

Read It’s the Terrorists, Stupid — Not the Weapons15, on how Obama and Clinton trade Islamic obfuscations to protect presidential bids.

If you’d like to receive Alexander’s Column by email, update your subscription here16.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Gary Bauer: The Left’s Assault on Our Values17
Cal Thomas: Character No Longer Counts18
Mark West: White-Out: Obama’s Response to Islamic Terrorism19

For more, visit Right Opinion20.

TOP HEADLINES

SCOTUS Blocks Obama Amnesty21
Justices Uphold Affirmative Action22
Freddie Gray Van Driver Not Guilty23
Europe Holds Breath as UK Votes on ‘Brexit’24

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report25

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Obey Obama’s Health Regime or Pay the Price26

By Louis DeBroux

“We have to pass the [ObamaCare] bill so that you can find out what is in it.” —former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 200927

Well, Democrats did indeed pass ObamaCare — on a party-line vote in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve, after months of threats, arm-twisting and open bribery. Over the last half decade or so we have found out what was in it. We now know that the “in it” amounted to a giant, teeming, fetid cauldron of government-mandated, top-down, force fed, command-and-control socialized medicine where government bureaucrats, rather than doctors and patients, get to decide what kind of treatment you get. In other words, exactly what we warned before Democrats even introduced it.

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The Patriot Post Digest 6-23-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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By every objective measure, ObamaCare has been an unmitigated (and predicted) disaster28. Contrary to Obama’s promises — “If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor” (a necessary lie29 according to ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber), or it would “bend the cost curve down,” or save the average family $2500 annually in health insurance premiums (ObamaCare costs have skyrocketed) — the reality is that his disastrous signature legislation has added trillions to the national debt, driven health care costs through the roof, made health care more unaffordable, and reduced access to doctors. More than half of the ObamaCare co-ops have gone bankrupt and failed, and the nation’s largest insurance providers are pulling out of ObamaCare.

On the bright side (if you are a fan of big government), ObamaCare has created jobs for thousands of government bureaucrats, empowered the IRS to intrude into the most intimate aspects of your life, and added tens of thousands of pages (more than 20,000 pages in just the first three years30 after passage) of new federal regulations, and placed the federal government in charge of your health care.

What could possibly go wrong?

Glad you asked! Because, as they say when hawking snake oil on the “As Seen On TV” commercials, “But wait; there’s MORE!” Now the government is once again trying to penalize every American who does not get on board with the Left’s idea of good health policy.

In 2012, liberals mocked Justice Antonin Scalia for bringing up broccoli during oral arguments in the lawsuit challenging the individual mandate (NFIB v. Sebelius). Justice Scalia noted that if the government’s argument regarding the legitimacy of the individual mandate could apply to health insurance, then surely the same argument could be applied to food, which is a more immediate need for every human than health insurance.

Said Scalia, “Could you define the market — everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food, therefore, everybody is in the market; therefore, you can make people buy broccoli.” Solicitor General Donald Verrilli tried to dismiss the comparison as inaccurate, yet now we see Scalia was exactly right. For if the government controls health care, and therefore is responsible for health care costs, then it has an obligation to keep costs down, which it will accomplish by dictating the diet and exercise choices of every American, and do so in very unexpected, intrusive ways.

The EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) finalized31 last month new regulations for employers in an effort to get America’s tens of millions of employees to comply with the federal government’s vision of health — discounts for people joining “ubgone29.” Not only that, but you must share weight, blood pressures, illnesses and medical records. If you refuse, no discount for you — and, worse, your premiums will probably go up.

With ObamaCare, the federal government can now force Americans to buy a product (health insurance) whether they like it or not. It can compel Americans, under threat of a financial penalty, to follow its declared regime for diet and exercise. It has already disrupted employment dynamics through the individual and employer mandates, which has led to higher unemployment and more Americans forced to work part-time. And government has tried to force Christian-owned businesses to fund abortion, and Catholic nuns to provide birth control.

These are not the things that occur in a free country. These are the things that happen in countries where the people are slaves to their government. Yet the political Left assures us it knows better than we do what is good for us, and that their compulsion is for our own good.

Or, as C.S. Lewis perfectly describe such situations, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

The Leftist Education-Media Complex32
The Marines, Women and Standards33
Obama Admin to California: Fund the Abortion!34
FEMA: Federal Emergency Mismanagement Agency35
GOP’s ObamaCare Reform — The Incremental Approach36
White House Pushes Propaganda Through Play37

OPINION IN BRIEF

Gary Bauer: “California has mandated that all insurance policies must cover elective, surgical abortions as ‘basic health care.’ At least three churches filed a federal lawsuit against the mandate, which flies in the face of the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision. The churches also asked the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate whether the California mandate violated federal legislation, known as the Weldon Amendment, intended to protect rights of conscience. The Obama administration ruled [Tuesday] that church health insurance policies are not protected by the Weldon Amendment and, thus, churches can be forced to pay for elective abortions. It is hard to imagine a more outrageous and blatantly anti-First Amendment order than this. If the government can force churches to pay for abortions, it’s not far from ordering pastors to perform same-sex marriages.”

SHORT CUTS

Insight: “Only a large-scale popular movement toward decentralization and self-help can arrest the present tendency toward statism.” —Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

Upright: “What [Democrats] are actually demanding, in the form of a ‘no-buy’ list … is the abrogation of American citizens' Fifth Amendment rights in order to then strip them of their Second Amendment rights. Meanwhile, anyone who uses their First Amendment right to oppose this scheme is accused of wanting to sell guns to ISIS. … It would be difficult to think of a better demonstration of Democrats' wholehearted embrace of an ends-justify-the-means philosophy of governing.” —Ian Tuttle

The buck stops over there: “The decision to release the unredacted version of the [Omar Mateen 911] transcript … was made independently and entirely by the Department of Justice.” —Josh Earnest

Good question: “Just wondering: Why didn’t the Department of Justice redact the statements of Dylann Roof? He was quite clear about his motivations too.” —Mona Charen

Non Compos Mentis: “I am all about keeping guns away from dangerous people, but I feel like more of us should be pointing out that the most dangerous people with guns are cops and soldiers, and that the no-fly list and FBI anti-terror efforts are seriously corrupted by entrapment, racial profiling and Islamophobia.” —Durham City Councilwoman Jillian Johnson

Keen sense of the obvious: “It doesn’t appear that I’m going to be the nominee.” —Bernie Sanders

Braying Jenny: “You can see [the effects of climate change] every single day. You just need to get out of that telephone booth where other climate deniers hang out and open your eyes and see what’s happening.” —EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy

And Last: “In 1963, Martin Luther King was a gun owner on an FBI watchlist.” —David Burge

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.