The Patriot Post Digest 9-23-2016

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The Patriot Post Digest 9-23-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

Sep. 23, 2016

THE FOUNDATION

“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms … disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes… Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” —Cesare Beccaria

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

That Time Comedy Central Debunked Gun Free Zones1

Some number of Americans get their news from Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.” That makes one episode this week particularly interesting, and we hope viewers get the underlying message. After the terrorist attack in Minnesota over the weekend, a local ice cream shop owner put up a sign that read, “Muslims Get Out.” Trevor Noah, now the host of “The Daily Show,” used his opening monologue to lay into the business owner:

“This man genuinely thought people who go around blowing people up would be stopped by a sign? You realize you’re talking to terrorists, not vampires. They don’t need to be invited in, alright? Or maybe he’s onto something, because if you think about it, we’ve never tried that. We’ve never actually tried to repel terrorists with signs. Yeah, maybe that’s all the airports need is a sign that says, ‘No Terrorists,’ yes? Yeah, and then guys are going to be walking going, ‘Oh, I was going to blow up the airport, but the rules are rules and they said I can’t come in.’”

Obviously, the store owner didn’t intend to thwart a terrorist attack with a sign. But Second Amendment defenders should immediately recognize Noah’s logic. No “Gun Free Zone” sign has ever stopped a criminal. In fact, those signs merely indicate where a mass murderer would be unchallenged by an armed citizen. Every major mass shooting in recent years has occurred in a gun free zone. As Sean Davis notes, “Bad people who want to murder you don’t care about your stupid signs and stupid laws.”

On the flip side, as we also write today2, citizens exercising their Second Amendment rights can be one of the best deterrents and foils to terrorism. Fortunately, more Americans are realizing — Comedy Central’s efforts notwithstanding — that isn’t a joke.

Fast-Tracking Immigrants for Votes3

In light of the recent revelation that at least 858 individuals and maybe twice that many who had been slated for deportation were accidentally granted citizenship4, one would expect that the Department of Homeland Security would be working overtime to shore up its vetting process and do its due diligence to reassure Americans that it will work carefully to prevent such a blunder from happening again. The DHS is indeed working overtime — not to get all its paper finger print records digitalized, but to processes as many immigrant citizenship applications as possible before the election.

An email from a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services field office chief stated, “The Field Office due to the election year needs to process as many of the N-400 cases as possible between now and FY 2016.” The email continued by “encouraging” employees to take advantage of overtime opportunities in order to meet the processing goal. The level of disconnect is simply stunning. In a letter sent to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, Senators Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Charles Grassley (R-IA) stated, “Your department seems intent on approving as many naturalization cases as quickly as possible at a time when it should instead be putting on the brakes and reviewing past adjudications.”

The real problem is a mindset. Last week, one of Hillary Clinton’s campaign staffers sent around a tweet quoting Donald Trump: “No one has the right to immigrate to this country.” The staffer responded by writing, “We disagree,” and said that Trump would have kicked his family out for immigrating from Libya. Whether this ends up being Clinton’s official policy is almost irrelevant. This staffer revealed an attitude espoused by many on the Left: The U.S. has no right to reject or limit people from immigrating to America, whereas immigrants have an unfettered right to come here. This globalist, open-borders mindset is the main reason it has been so difficult to get Democrats on board with stopping illegal immigration. This fact is made even more obvious by their refusal to refer to illegal immigrants as “illegal,” preferring the moniker “undocumented” immigrant. The truth is, Trump is exactly right that any sovereign nation is obligated to its citizens to regulate immigration, whether this be through limits or prevention. No non-citizen has the right to demand the privilege of citizenship, and to claim that such rights exist is to do violence to the rights of actual citizens.

Texas Puts Refugee Program on Notice5

The Obama administration plans to resettle 110,000 refugees into the U.S.6 over the coming year, but Texas is having none of it. The Lone Star State, which saw an influx of some 7,000 refugees over the last 12 months, has announced plans7 to sever its participation in the Obama administration’s refugee program.

The Washington Free Beacon explains that the reason has to do with a lack of safeguards8: “Texas officials drafted a plan that would require federal national security officials to provide assurances that none of the individuals being resettled pose a terror threat. The administration has declined to approve this plan.”

Gov. Greg Abbott says, “Despite multiple requests by the state of Texas, the federal government lacks the capability or the will to distinguish the dangerous from the harmless, and Texas will not be an accomplice to such dereliction of duty to the American people. Therefore, Texas will withdraw from the refugee resettlement program. I strongly urge the federal government to completely overhaul a broken and flawed refugee program that increasingly risks American lives.”

Abbott is right to be concerned. Around 30,000 migrants from terror hot spots managed to infiltrate the southern border9 last year. Barack Obama can insist, as he did this week, that “refugees are subject to more vigorous screening than the average tourist.” But why should we believe anything he says? Earlier this year, Hillary Clinton asserted, “I think we’ve done a really good job securing the border.”

How good? Well, a newly uncovered DHS memo10 says, “Refugee fraud is easy to commit, yet not easy to investigate.” In fact, “bad actors … have exploited this program.” You don’t say. Remember that next time Democrats say we have nothing to worry about.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

David Harsanyi: Hillary Clinton Would Rather Blame Free Speech Than Islam for Terrorism11
David Limbaugh: Clinton and Obama, First Heal Yourselves on Race12
Hans von Spakovsky & Jennifer Matthes: It’s Not Racist to Not Have Straight-Ticket Voting13

For more, visit Right Opinion14.

TOP HEADLINES

Charlotte Police Refuse to Release Shooting Video15
Tulsa Cop Charged With Manslaughter16
500 Million Yahoo Accounts Hacked17

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report18.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
The Islamic State’s Chemical Weapons19

Missteps and half-measures — the continuing story of Obama foreign policy.

By Michael Swartz

While the Leftmedia quit keeping a body count when Barack Obama became commander in chief, there’s still a war going on in Iraq between the ragtag dead-enders of the Islamic State and the Iraqi military, with American troops there supposedly in a supporting role that stays “one terrain feature” behind the front.

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The Patriot Post Digest 9-23-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Yet that isn’t stopping the Islamic State from trying to put our troops in harm’s way, as they regularly lob shells at American and Iraqi outposts. This isn’t surprising by itself, but the discovery of “a sulfur-mustard blister agent” within the explosive device20 certainly is. Regardless of the assurance that this device was “ineffective” and of “low purity,” it reminds us that the weapons of mass destruction we were told didn’t exist are still out there.

One of the multiple reasons why the U.S. removed Saddam Hussein from power was the knowledge that he had weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, he had used WMD in 1988 to kill 5,000 in the Kurdish city of Halabja. But the lack of reporting on the issue as the military operation progressed gave rise to the leftist mantra “Bush lied, people died” and other morale-busting bromides designed to dispirit the American people and remove Republicans from power. All the while, we in our humble shop were among the few who contended that the reason WMD weren’t found in Iraq was that they were spirited across the desert frontier21 that loosely divides Syria and Iraq — the same area that the Islamic State now occupies.

It was conceded in 2013 that Syria indeed had stockpiled chemical weapons — leading to the “red line” Barack Obama painted before saying he wasn’t serious about it22. One of those line-crossers was Vladimir Putin, who assured us Syria’s chemical arsenal would be destroyed23 after being transferred to the UN. But less than a year later, we learned that Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad may have pulled a fast one24 regarding those WMDs. And now we have reason to conclude that the rump Islamic State has acquired some amount of them to use in its effort to create a caliphate.

One shell does not a chemical warfare campaign make, but it adds another factor of risk for the thousands of American “boots on the ground” Obama promised wouldn’t need to be involved. And if military strategists have their way, another 500 troops will be sent25 in the next few weeks to assist in liberating the city of Mosul from the Islamic State, a battle that Iraqi leaders vowed would be fought before the end of the year. (By the way, why is it that we so often telegraph our military strategy to the enemy?) Naturally, the staging area for the Mosul attack, the Qayyarah airbase, is a convenient distance from a chemical factory that some worry may be intentionally destroyed by the Islamic State26 to kill anyone unfortunate enough to be downwind — in particular, American troops. (And remember, they weren’t supposed to be in Iraq anyway because the threat from radical Islam ended when U.S. Navy Seals dispatched Osama bin Laden — at least that’s what Obama would have us believe. Why else would Hillary Clinton have promised27, “We are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again and we are not putting ground troops into Syria”?)

So with the belief that the threat from radical Islam has been magically minimized by those troops that aren’t supposed to be there, the Obama administration is now free in its waning days to deploy our military against an even graver threat: climate change.

Indeed, the idea to “prioritize climate threats”28 will now be a greater part of our overarching military strategy — because killing people and breaking things is so 1980s, we must instead use our military for social experimentation and fixing the climate.

In a nutshell, we have a commander in chief who cavalierly sends soldiers to the battlefield without a clear definition of victory or realistic rules of engagement, regards military strategy as an unnecessary evil, and doesn’t mind leaving erstwhile allies in the lurch because Mother Earth may or may not be one degree Celsius hotter at some unspecified time in the future. We’ve come a long way from the days of peace through strength.

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

The Second Amendment Solution to Terrorism2 — How gun rights help defend our country.
Prosecutorial Bias in Oregon Gun Case29 — An anti-gun activist pastor who broke the law is off the hook.
Obama’s Reg Zone30 — Recent report shows the cost of recent government regulations on taxpayers.
The Reason Some Won’t Watch the NFL This Season31 — The league has an infestation of anti-Americanism.

OPINION IN BRIEF

David Harsanyi: “You’ll remember when President Obama and Clinton blamed a promotional trailer for that obscure anti-Islam film rather than admitting that extremists used our liberalism as a pretext to gin up mobs across the Islamic world, and cover their coordinated attack on Americans. … Obama decided to, in essence, apologize for our obnoxious habit of allowing free expression: ‘Since our founding the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate religious beliefs of others.’ This is not only debatable but also completely irrelevant. The founders were concerned about religious liberty, not hurt feelings. Then again, Democrats generally have been more likely to blame Republicans — or the Second or Fifth Amendments — for terrorism than they have been to blame Islam. Sen. Chris Murphy is far more disturbed by the National Rifle Association than he is Islamism. This allows him to accuse Republicans of ‘selling weapons to ISIS,’ and Clinton to praise his efforts. This is just one way the left uses terrorism to chill speech.”

SHORT CUTS

Insight: “If a blending of individualism and of cooperative participation is a prerequisite to a democratic solution of the problems of a society of free men, it must also be noted that an atmosphere of freedom is required if these problems are to be met constructively and as they arise.” —Marshall Field (1835-1906)

Upright: “Journalists need a refresher course on the plain meaning of English words. Breaking windows, stealing cigarettes, Red Bull and drugs, attacking journalists and other innocent bystanders is not a protest. That is a riot. It has no relationship whatsoever to a black police officer shooting an armed black man. But most media continued to refer to the violence as ‘protests.’” —Gary Bauer

Change: “I long for the day when a majority of Americans and a substantial percentage of minorities finally decide that liberals will no longer get a pass from minorities because of their allegedly good intentions when decades of abominable results scream otherwise.” —David Limbaugh

Non Compos Mentis: “I think the most important part is the contrast in [Keith Scott] having a book versus a gun. But in my mind and in most of the [Charlotte] community’s mind, it really doesn’t matter if he had a gun.” —NAACP’s Corine Mack (A gun makes all the difference.)

Village Idiots: “It’s not only terrorists we need to be worried about. Terrorism is part of it, but gun violence kills 33,000 Americans a year.” —Hillary Clinton

Belly laugh of the week: “For all the challenges and threats we face as a nation … no threat is more terrifying in its global reach or more potentially destructive and destabilizing than climate change.” —Susan Rice and Brian Deese

Late-night humor: “House Speaker Paul Ryan was at the airport and didn’t recognize a three-year congresswoman from Massachusetts. And even asked her, ‘So what do you do?’ Ryan realized she was a congresswoman when she answered, ‘Nothing.’” —Jimmy Fallon

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.