The Patriot Post Digest 2-6-2017

________________________________________
The Patriot Post Digest 2-6-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
________________________________________

Mid-Day Digest

Feb. 6, 2017

IN TODAY’S EDITION

Trump’s actions have been pretty good, but his tweeting is unhelpful.
Nothing is unsullied by politics — including the Super Bowl.
The Left has grown increasingly bold in its fascism in the sphere of education.
And more news, policy and opinion.

THE FOUNDATION

“The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal Judiciary; an irresponsible body, (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow) working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one.” —Thomas Jefferson (1821)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Trump’s Twitter-Heel1

Challenges to Donald Trump’s executive order2 temporarily banning travel for people coming from seven nations have little legal support, irrespective of the recent actions by U.S. District Court Judge James Robart to block the order. The Justice Department has ably defended Trump’s EO, providing solid and substantive arguments based upon sound legal precedent — Trump’s actions were well within both constitutional parameters and the common practice of prior presidents. But honestly, that is not what all the fuss is about.

In reality, two battles are being waged. One is in the courts and the other is in that ever-shifting realm known as public opinion. The Leftmedia has long fought for control of the latter by appealing to people’s emotions rather than by presenting a rational argument. But the courts are supposed to be above this changing whim of public sentiment; in fact, they were designed to be as best as possible impervious to it, since it is the role of the courts to seek justice in an impartial manner.

In the area of public opinion, Trump has decided that it’s him versus the mainstream media. So, with typical reckless abandon, Trump swings out against his opponents in the public arena via his favorite tool of choice — Twitter. His tweets become points of contention in themselves, distracting from the cause at hand. On the one hand, many Americans appreciate his willingness to fight and they may even relish the manner in which he sticks it to the mainstream media, but on the other hand, some see the tone he’s setting as needlessly combative and self-defeating, and they’re left wondering how this rhetoric unifies a highly polarized nation.

Trump, unlike prior Republican presidents, is more than willing to jump into the fray. That’s good given how poorly the mainstream media has treated him and Republicans for years. However, his tweeting has proven more often to detract from rather than strengthen the argument. To be sure, Trump did not create the current over-politicized and polarized climate, but he has done nothing to combat it either. Trump’s policy decisions and choices have thus far been very good, but his tweeting ways have too often distracted from this fact.

Patriots Win, Moralizing Advertisers Lose3

Super Bowl LI (that’s 51 for you non-NFL/Roman numeral fans) featured all the elements of a public attention-grabber: a flashy young Atlanta Falcons team facing the New England Patriots' dynasty, a seemingly insurmountable halftime lead blown and the first overtime Super Bowl in NFL history. Oh, and politics. Yeah, in 2017 America nothing is unsullied by our true national pastime — political bickering.

First, we back up to last Friday before the game, when the Boston Globe found4 some Patriots fans to be feeling suddenly un-Patriot-ic. The Globe reported, “The ‘Make America Great Again’ hat that [quarterback Tom] Brady kept stationed in his locker for a time put some on edge, as did the letter of support [head coach Bill] Belichick wrote to Trump prior to the election. [Team owner Robert] Kraft, a longtime friend who credits the president with supporting him after the 2011 death of his wife, Myra, attended last month’s inauguration. The willingness of three prominent members of the organization to associate themselves with Trump — particularly in a state as blue as Massachusetts — has left some scratching their heads.” Conservatives, of course, are used to hearing public figures disagree and even viciously slam us. For those sheltered leftist souls in the deep-blue Bay State, however, these are uncharted waters. Maybe these “progressives” will cheer to know that tight end Martellus Bennett will boycott the White House ceremony celebrating the Patriots' win.

Second, we’ll note just what conservatives usually have to put up with: leftist lecturing. Many Americans watch the game for the ads. Audi hectored5 us about the phony gender wage gap6. But immigration was the dominant theme, with not one7, not two8 but three9 ads moralizing about the issue. We suspect most Americans vastly prefer to be entertained by humorous and silly commercials than ads designed to shame half the population. The same goes for the sport itself. We watch to see the clash of combatants on the gridiron, not the pouty nonsense of kneeling social justice warriors. Let’s make sports (and commercials) great again.

Top Headlines10

The Democrat Party is basically on life support in these 10 states. (The Washington Post11)

Not helping the leftist narrative: Report says minimum wage hikes will lead to 1.8 million job losses. (Washington Free Beacon12)

Trump wisely estimates Obamacare replacement plan could take a year to formulate. (CBS News13)

Some IRS employees cheated on their taxes and yet the agency let most keep their jobs. (The Hill14)

Climate change whistleblower alleges NOAA manipulated data to hide global warming “pause.” (The Washington Times15)

Trump taps Mike Pence to lead panel investigating voter fraud. (Business Insider16)

Trump administration sanctions Iran over missile test. (Reason17)

Navy decommissions the USS Enterprise — the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. (Navy Times18.)

Trump administration backs off bid to reopen CIA “black sites.” (Reuters19)

In a comeback for the ages, Patriots beat Falcons in heart-pounding Super Bowl. (The Boston Globe20)

Policy: Don’t let the Democrats fool you about a 60-vote threshold for Supreme Court confirmations. (The Daily Signal21)

Policy: Voter registration requires reform. (Washington Examiner22)

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
An Increasingly Emboldened Fascist Left23

By Arnold Ahlert

“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed — if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth.” —George Orwell, “1984”

Woody Hart, a 70-year-old American history teacher at Suttle Middle School of the Folsom Cordova United School District, was recently “retired”24 by the Board of Education. His fatal “mistake” was hanging a Confederate flag on one side of his classroom — as part of a history lesson about the War Between the States. Apparently it didn’t matter that he also hung a Union flag on the other side of the classroom or, as Hart student Ana Kneisely told the local CBS affiliate, his presentation was typical of the way he taught, and that she felt “we were getting more involved than what our other classes did.”

All that mattered was the reality that Hart violated a politically correct taboo. The progressives who run the Rancho Cordova, California, school decided the Confederate flag should not be seen by students at all.

“We recognize that regardless of context, to many of our students, families, and staff, the Confederate flag is a racist symbol of hate,” the district declared25 (emphasis added) in a statement on its Facebook page.

The district also issued a warning. “Any employee who is found to engage in behavior that creates an unsafe environment for students will face full consequences, including the possibility of initiating termination proceedings.”

School superintendent Deborah Bettencourt added a large dollop of rank hypocrisy to the mix, laughably insisting Hart’s ouster did not mean the district was attempting to “limit the free speech of our teachers.” Rather, it was all about teachers adopting “culturally appropriate strategies” that mitigate the possibility of creating that “unsafe environment.”

“In hindsight, I shouldn’t have done it,” Hart said. “I thought about it, but then I thought, ‘Well, I’ve been doing this for 18 years.’” During those 18 years the American Left’s fascistic appetites have grown exponentially, and historical revisionism — or its censorship — has become normalized.

________________________________________
The Patriot Post Digest 2-6-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
________________________________________

The most damnable development nurtured by leftist-dominated school districts across the nation is the contemptible notion that the “right” not to be offended trumps the First Amendment. And as columnist Karol Markowicz explains26, the proper teaching of history becomes one of the primary casualties of progressive zealotry. “The Brooklyn teacher I spoke with says instructors balk when it comes to history: They don’t want to offend anyone.”

So what happens when teachers walk on historical eggshells? “A 2014 report by the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that an abysmal 18 percent of American high school kids were proficient in US history,” Markowicz states.

But that’s only half of the equation. As America is learning with increased frequency, there’s an unbroken line between high school students marinated in a toxic stew of historical ignorance and contempt for that which offends them, and college students willing to manifest this triumph of progressive indoctrination. “A new wave of international student activism has targeted names, mascots, statues and other symbols of historical figures at colleges and universities,” the New York Times reports27. “Activists argue that the symbols should be removed as offensive reminders of hatred and violence.”

In short, better to purge history than learn from it. That’s not activism. It’s fascism.

And campus fascists are no longer content with their roles as protesters determined to ban conservative speakers and their “hate speech” from college campuses. They’re becoming full-blown rioters, willing to engage in violence and destruction as they did28 at UC Berkeley, where “more than 100 armed individuals clad in ninja-like uniforms” showed up and threw Molotov cocktails and rocks at police officers, according to UC Berkeley Police Chief Margo Bennett. Rioters who also beat29 a man unconscious and vandalized30 more than a dozen businesses in the city’s downtown area and Telegraph corridor. Rioters willing to tear up the streets rather than allow Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos — referred to by the Associated Press as a “right-wing provocateur” — to speak on campus.

That would be the same AP, like so many other media sources, that referred to the genuine provocateurs as “protesters.” And, oh, by the way, the AP neglected to mention that Yiannopoulos is homosexual.

“I saw these people. They all looked very, almost paramilitary. They were not from the campus. I don’t want to say factually, but I’ve heard there was some relationship here between these people and the right-wing movement that is affiliated with Breitbart News,” said31 former Clinton administration Labor Secretary and current Berkeley professor Robert Reich during a CNN interview about the riots last Thursday.

In the real world it has been established32 that the George Soros-funded Alliance for Global Justice organized the violent outburst at UC Berkeley. Why were they determined to prevent Yiannopoulos from speaking? “He is consciously spearheading the Nazification of the American University,” the group declared33.

“The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party’s purity. … And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.” —Orwell, “1984”

The Alliance for Global Justice is similarly adept at moving the blowlamp from one object to the other, warning that “what happened at UC Berkeley is part of the kind of broad, powerful and meaningful protest which needs to continue on an unprecedented scale to OUST this regime from power.”

The seditious seeds the American Left has sown in public schools and on college campuses for decades are bearing fruit. An army of ignorant, arrogant protesters stands ready to violently censor all with which they disagree, even as they remain immune to the searing irony that they are exactly what they profess to despise. Former history teacher Woody Hart is the latest casualty of these fascists. He won’t be the last.

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

Let’s Get Government Out of Our Churches34 — Repealing the Johnson Amendment is a good first step.
GOP Addresses Bigotry Against Elderly Gun Owners35 — Republicans move to nullify another of Obama’s dubious gun grabs.
Economy Off to Good Start Under Trump36 — But it’s impossible to draw any conclusions yet.
Ronald Reagan’s Birthday37 — Marking the 106th anniversary of the Gipper’s birthday.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Rich Lowry: Gorsuch Is the Anti-Trump38
Peggy Noonan: In Trump’s Washington, Nothing Feels Stable39
Caleb Verbois: Fake News, Executive Orders and Immigration40
Thomas Sowell: Education at a Crossroads41

For more, visit Right Opinion42.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Rich Lowry: “If President Donald Trump is a budding authoritarian, as his critics allege, one of the safeguards is Judge Neil Gorsuch. For all that Trump has flouted norms and gotten off to an at-times amateurish start in the White House, his pick of Gorsuch was extremely normal and highly professional. The Gorsuch nomination is exactly what everyone should want from a President Trump, especially those who most fear and loathe him. Yet Trump’s fiercest opponents began denouncing Gorsuch immediately. This is the dilemma for Democrats: Either Trump is a threat to the republic because he doesn’t appreciate the Constitution and is bound to violate it with excessive assertions of executive power, or Gorsuch is a threat to the republic because he has an overly punctilious view of the Constitution that entails, among other things, a dim view of executive overreach. Both can’t be true. The knee-jerk opposition to Gorsuch is a sign that Democrats either haven’t thought through what they believe about Trump or are seriously conflicted. Do they want to throw out the rule book because Trump is a potential dictator, or do they want to play by the conventional rules stipulating that they should fight a constitutionalist jurist because he won’t impose their progressive social agenda from the bench?”

SHORT CUTS

The Gipper: “The people are watching and waiting. They don’t demand miracles. They do expect us to act. Let us act together.”

Upright: “American education is at a crossroads. If the teachers' unions and their allies can defeat the nomination of [Betsy] DeVos, and the Republicans substitute someone else more acceptable to the education establishment, a historic opportunity will be lost, and may never come again in this generation.” —Thomas Sowell

For the record: “If Trump wanted to ban Muslim immigration, there are an additional 46 Muslim-majority countries in the world that his order should apply to.” —Caleb Verbois

Can’t let it go: “I want to know what the Russians have on Donald Trump. I think we have to have an investigation by the FBI into his financials, personal and political connections to Russia and we want to see his tax returns so we can have truth in the relationship between [Vladimir] Putin, whom he admires, and Donald Trump.” —Nancy Pelosi, who refuses to heed Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s advice: “The excuses end now.”

Braying Jackass: “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but [Trump] is a fraud.” —Bernie Sanders (How interesting and ironic that an avowed socialist is throwing around accusations of fraud.)

Braying Jenny: “My greatest desire is to lead [Trump] right into impeachment.” —Sen. Maxine Waters

Non Compos Mentis: “[The Berkeley rioters] all looked very — almost paramilitary. They were not from the campus. … I don’t want to say factually, but I’ve heard that there was some relationship there between these people and the right-wing … movement that is affiliated with Breitbart News.” —Robert Reich

Late-night humor: “It was announced … that the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo will make all of its medals from recycled cellphones. Well, they’re going to make the Olympic torch out of a Samsung Galaxy.” —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.