The Patriot Post Digest 6-29-2016

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The Patriot Post Digest 6-29-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

Jun. 29, 2016

THE FOUNDATION

“I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty.” —Thomas Jefferson (1785)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Trump’s Smart Political Play on Trade1

The Republican Party has officially advocated free trade for years, including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and, albeit while less unified, the current Trans-Pacific Partnership2. That’s why it was rather jarring to see the party’s presumptive nominee throw that out the window in a major speech Tuesday. Donald Trump promised to exit NAFTA if it’s not renegotiated, and he likewise said he’d kill the TPP.

Trump’s position isn’t new and it isn’t surprising, especially given that Republican voters aren’t so keen3 on what free trade deals have done (real and perceived) to American manufacturing and jobs. The American middle class feels the squeeze, sees the shuttered factories and can’t find anything at Walmart made in America. Thus Trump’s position really resonates, whereas the traditional party position just seems out of touch — like everything else from the Beltway. “On trade, on immigration, on foreign policy, we are going to put America first again,” Trump said. Who could disagree with that?

Trump’s real political strategy is simple. Hillary Clinton once called the TPP “the gold standard” for trade deals. Now she opposes it. And while union bosses fell into line behind Clinton, her policies are an extension of Barack Obama’s, and those policies hurt American workers. So not only has Trump neutralized another issue4 Clinton might have used to attack him, he’s appealing across party lines in hopes of bringing in blue-collar workers to the GOP tent come November.

Jihad Guide Declares War on ‘Hate Crime’ Label5

The Islamic terror attack6 inside a homosexual nightclub in Orlando compelled a terrorism guide to offer some “clarifications” on proper jihad. The reason? The manufactured “hate crime” label is distracting from the Islamist mainspring.

According to The Foreign Desk7, the latest magazine, titled “Inspire Guide: Orlando Operation,” a publication of Al-Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), says that “most of the individuals present at pulse nightclub were Latino.” The group adds “it is better to avoid targeting places and crowds where minorities are generally found in America [because] the federal government will be the one taking full responsibility.” The solution is “targeting areas where the Anglo-Saxon community is generally concentrated.”

Attorney General Loretta Lynch recently stated of the Orlando attack, “This was clearly an act of terror and an act of hate.” That’s true. But it also leaves out the fact Islamists hate and aspire to slaughter the “infidel,” which literally defines anyone who rejects radical Islam. The Obama administration would rather play politics by suggesting the Orlando massacre was inspired by guns, homophobia and any other supposed right-wing issue. But terrorists are more than willing to adjust accordingly.

Speaking of terrorism, the Islamic State attacked the Istanbul airport Wednesday, killing at least 41 and wounding 239. Several observations: 1. Leftmedia reports indicate at least one of the three attackers used an automatic rifle, which, if true, is opposed to the semiautomatic used in Orlando. Conflating the two often serves the Left’s purposes. But the real carnage was inflicted with suicide vests. 2. Secretary of State John Kerry says the attack shows that the Islamic State is “desperate.” No, far from having ISIL “contained” as Kerry’s boss ridiculously asserted, it shows that its reach extends into Europe (yes, the Istanbul airport is in Europe — its third busiest — and Turkey is a NATO nation) and the U.S. 3. Unlike Orlando, there are no claims that Christian right-wingers bear responsibility. Yet.

U.S. Prosecutor: Insult Islam, Go to Jail8

Columnist Michelle Malkin recently reported9 on a disturbing case in Twin Falls, Idaho, in which three foreigners, all minors, allegedly violated a young disabled girl.

Not much is known about the case, and there is growing suspicion among Idaho residents that, because of the circumstances, Muslim sympathizers are attempting to bury the story. As such, Wendy J. Olson, whom Barack Obama picked as U.S. Attorney for the District of Idaho in 2010, threatened last week to use the justice system to quash whistleblowers. “The spread of false information or inflammatory or threatening statements about the perpetrators or the crime itself reduces public safety and may violate federal law,” she declared on Friday.

As Gary Bauer points out10, “While clearly high on the left’s wish list, there is no federal law under which someone can be prosecuted for ‘inflammatory statements.’ As one law professor explained in the Washington Post, Olson’s statement ‘looks like an attempt to chill constitutionally protected speech through the threat of federal prosecution.’”

That’s exactly what it is, and it follows the Obama administration’s playbook. For example, on July 15, 2011, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation received the support of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in passing UN Resolution 16/18 to censor worldwide any speech perceived to be insulting to Islam. It’s part of the same strategy being utilized to penalize climate dissenters.

For what it’s worth, Olson later tried to walk back her incriminating remark, saying, “The statement was not intended to and does not threaten to arrest or prosecute anyone for First Amendment protected speech. I issued the statement because public officials in Twin Falls have received threats. Certain threatening or harassing communications may violate federal law and will be investigated.”

Regardless, Olson exposed a top priority of the Obama administration — using constitutionally protected “hate speech” as a means of regulating the First Amendment.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Walter Williams: Multiculturalism: A Failed Concept11
Star Parker: A Disastrous Court Decision on Abortion12
Michelle Malkin: Outsourcing Security Is Dumb and Deadly13
Scott Powell: Political Correctness Puts Americans in Grave Danger14

For more, visit Right Opinion15.

TOP HEADLINES

Jihad in Istanbul: At Least 41 Killed in Terrorist Attack16
Rolling Stone Wins Dismissal of Defamation Lawsuit Over Faux Rape Story17
Caving? North Carolina Looking to Amend Bathroom Bill18

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report19

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Why Benghazi Makes a Difference20

By Lewis Morris

The release of the final report21 from the House Select Committee on Benghazi spoke volumes about the lack of concern Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the rest of the administration have for American national security. The report, which was completed despite every effort of Obama’s White House and congressional Democrats, points out in no uncertain terms that the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three of his colleagues could have been prevented. But Obama’s craven political narrative was paramount, and Clinton now declares “it’s pretty clear it’s time to move on.” She has the White House to win, after all.

The report rightfully castigates the administration for failing to provide needed security for the American embassy in Libya despite the repeated reports from Benghazi about security threats in the area. Those security threats, by the way, were created by the Obama-Clinton policy of decapitating Libyan leadership and leaving a vacuum in its place.

What is worse, however, is the cover-up22 that Obama, Clinton and their cronies engaged in to protect their own skins.

The attack on the American facility in Benghazi was a political inconvenience for Obama, and it was treated as such. Taking place on September 11, 2012, in the midst of Obama’s re-election campaign, the terrorist attack proved false his narrative that al-Qaida had been “decimated.”

The administration was so invested in that story that they were caught flat-footed when emergency calls came from the Benghazi compound. Rep. Trey Gowdy, Chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, noted23, “At the time of the mortar attack, at 5:15 am, not a single wheel of a single U.S. military asset was headed towards Libya. So this was seven hours after the initial attack, and the world’s most powerful military can’t get a single wheel turning towards the region.”

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The Patriot Post Digest 6-29-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
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Instead of owning up to its intelligence failure and its inability to protect Americans in the field, Obama chose to blame the attack on a YouTube video. This claim, which Clinton trotted out on the night of the attack — after she had already told the Egyptian prime minister that it was al-Qaida.

Then-UN ambassador Susan Rice followed by trumpeting the video story in media interviews, but it quickly fell apart under scrutiny. But ever the team player, Rice stuck to the story, and she was later rewarded by being named National Security Advisor.

It’s virtually certain Rice was given her marching orders by Obama, though she was not given any intelligence information about the situation that preceded the attack or the details of what actually took place.

When that story came apart, and Clinton sat before Congress to explain, she literally shrugged and shouted at congressional Republicans, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”24

What Clinton knew or what she failed to understand about the developments in Libya in 2012 will likely be forever a point of speculation. Her private email server, which the State Department and the White House let her have despite numerous security questions, has been wiped clean of anything that would truly compromise her political future.

The Benghazi committee’s final report concludes25 that the administration was more concerned with Obama’s re-election campaign than protecting personnel in Libya and certainly more than admitting their mistakes after the fact.

The report states unequivocally, “What we did find was a tragic failure of leadership — in the run up to the attack and the night of — and an administration that, so blinded by politics and its desire to win an election, disregarded a basic duty of government: Tell the people the truth.”

There was no mention by American personnel in Libya about a video fomenting unrest, or of any protests related to it. What is noted in the final report, however, in voluminous detail, is the fact that the administration ignored calls for stepped up security in Benghazi and ignored concerns about increased unrest, again, fomenting in the wake of Obama and Clinton’s failed Libya policy.

Yet the Leftmedia has been triumphantly running headlines declaring26 “no new evidence of wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton.”

It can only be surmised that Obama and Clinton hoped that when the 3:00 a.m. call came that Americans overseas were under attack that the whole thing would blow over. The president and his secretary of state hoped that the inconvenience of Americans under fire would not derail Obama’s chances for re-election, and that the timing of the attack would not refute the narrative that Obama had defeated Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.

Democrats released their own report27 Monday ahead of the official House report, and took several hundred pages to chastise House Republicans, Mitt Romney, and even Donald Trump for creating a so-called partisan witch-hunt to embarrass Obama and Clinton. Truth be told, those two have done that all on their own. The worst point of all is that four brave Americans died so that Obama and Clinton could protect the sham that is their political careers.

“A lot of people tell pollsters they don’t trust me,” Clinton admitted earlier this week. “I personally know I have work to do on this front.” As this damning report makes clear, she’s earned every ounce of that distrust.

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

Religious Liberty Denied, Supreme Court Shrugs28
No Religious Exception for Mississippi Clerks29
The Lie of ‘Safe, Legal and Rare’30
SCOTUS Is Right to Nullify McDonnell Conviction31

OPINION IN BRIEF

Star Parker: “Perhaps it is gruesome to say — but this is gruesome business — that if Justice Breyer had a daughter who was a victim of Kermit Gosnell, he would be far less cavalier in his conclusion [on abortion regulations]. Would he still believe that the conditions in Texas before the passage of H.B. 2 were just fine and that it was more important that droves of women could be assured of abortions with little effort or worry? … Since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, which somehow found a constitutional justification elucidating a woman’s right to destroy her unborn child at will, there have been almost 60 million unborn babies destroyed. What kind of mind would conclude that 60 million destroyed fetuses demonstrates the success of our constitution to ‘secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity?’ It is a total perversion of the purpose of society. Our constitution is supposed to be rooted in our Declaration of Independence, which declares our inalienable right to life. We now live in a culture that denies the priority of life and posterity and is about the convenience of the moment, meaninglessness, and death. Is it any wonder that terrorists, who put no value on life, don’t fear us and feel so free to attack us?”

SHORT CUTS

For the record: “Justices like Steven Breyer … claim that even [Kermit] Gosnell’s barbaric acts don’t justify laws like Texas’s. ‘Gosnell’s behavior was terribly wrong. But there is no reason to believe that an extra layer of regulation would have affected that behavior. Determined wrongdoers, already ignoring existing statues and safety measures, are unlikely to be convinced to adopt safe practices by a new overlay of regulations.’ How ironic, Carrie Severino points out! That’s the same argument conservatives make about gun control. Yet the liberal justices are so desperate to further their own policy agendas that they’ll not only ignore the court’s precedent but their own.” —Tony Perkins

Village Idiots: “I see absolutely no value to a judge of spending decades, years, months, weeks, day, hours, minutes, or seconds studying the Constitution, the history of its enactment, its amendments, and its implementation. … Eighteenth-century guys, however smart, could not foresee the culture, technology, etc., of the 21st century. Which means that the original Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the post–Civil War amendments (including the 14th), do not speak to today. … In short, let’s not let the dead bury the living.” —7th Circuit Court of Appeals judge Richard A. Posner

Shameless: “The Republicans on the House Benghazi Committee are finishing their work in the same, partisan way that we’ve seen from them since the beginning. … The Republican members are clearly seeking to avoid any fact-checking of their discredited, conspiracy theories. … This Committee’s chief goal is to politicize the deaths of four brave Americans in order to try to attack the Obama administration and hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign.” —Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon

Look who’s talking: “[Republicans] are cynically trying to capitalize on the death of four innocent Americans. The degree to which Republicans are willing to play politics with their death and this tragedy is astounding.” —Josh Earnest

That’ll teach ‘em! “The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms [yesterday’s] heinous terrorist attack at Istanbul’s Ataturk International Airport in Turkey, which appears to have killed and injured dozens.” —Josh Earnest

And last… “Leftist diversity advocates and multiculturalists are right to argue that people of all races, religions and cultures should be equal in the eyes of the law. But their argument borders on idiocy when they argue that one set of cultural values cannot be judged superior to another and that to do so is Eurocentrism. That’s unbridled nonsense. Ask a diversity/multiculturalism advocate: Is forcible female genital mutilation, as practiced in nearly 30 sub-Saharan African and Middle Eastern countries, a morally equivalent cultural value?” —Walter Williams

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.