The Patriot Post Digest 2-9-2017

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The Patriot Post Digest 2-9-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

Feb. 9, 2017

IN TODAY’S EDITION

A lying liar promises to vet Neil Gorsuch. That should go well.
Democrats are the true racists, as evidenced by the hateful slurs thrown at Tim Scott.
The judiciary is out of control, and it’s undermining our republic.
And more news, policy and opinion.

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Vetting Richard Blumenthal’s Background1

Judge Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, faces the usual hurdles for a Republican nominee and then some. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said of Gorsuch, “It is important that every aspect of his background be critically and closely scrutinized.” Fair enough, though we know what that usually means for Democrats — nasty personal destruction, complete with charges of racism, sexism, etc.

But it’s Blumenthal whose background deserves the scrutiny. He lied about his military service in Vietnam, and when his lies were exposed, he brazenly lied about the lies. “My intention has always been to be completely clear and accurate and straightforward,” he insisted in 20102, “out of respect to the veterans who served in Vietnam.” No such thing. Blumenthal repeatedly claimed to have “served in Vietnam” when in fact he received five deferments and never went further west than Washington state — to organize a Toys for Tots drive. But by all means, let’s trust him to vet Gorsuch’s background.

On a final note, Blumenthal met with Gorsuch and reported that the SCOTUS nominee objected to Donald Trump’s words about “so-called judges,” calling that characterization “demoralizing” and “disheartening.” Trump responded via Twitter, “Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who never fought in Vietnam when he said for years he had (major lie), now misrepresents what Judge Gorsuch told him?” By all accounts, Gorsuch did use those words (and rightly so), leaving an apparent contradiction between Trump’s tweet and reality. So once again, Trump has stepped in it3 with his Twitter account. He’s directly contradicted his nominee, which will come up again in confirmation hearings. Media-generated perception will be that Trump demands fealty from the judicial branch. Instead, the focus should be what Democrats do to destroy nominees.

Who Are the Radical Haters?4

In a 52-47 vote Wednesday, the Senate confirmed Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) as the new attorney general. The vote came after weeks of contentious debate in which Democrats accused Sessions of — what else? — racism. (A white Republican from Alabama. Isn’t it obvious?) Just one Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, broke ranks and voted with the Republican majority. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Cherokee Nation), who on Tuesday was silenced by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for continuing to impugn the character of a fellow senator after being warned to cease, publically blasted the vote. She went completely off the reservation when she tweeted, “If Jeff Sessions makes even the tiniest attempt to bring his racism, sexism & bigotry into @TheJusticeDept, he’ll hear from all of us. And you better believe every Senator who voted to put Jeff Sessions' radical hatred into @TheJusticeDept will hear from all of us, too.” Clearly, Warren didn’t get the message about impugning the character of a fellow senator.

Meanwhile, South Carolina’s black Republican senator, Tim Scott, gave a speech during which he read5 some of the disgusting hate mail he received for supporting Sessions. Perhaps most starkly, Scott noted that he “left out all the ones that used the n-word,” making his point that the so-called tolerance espoused by the Left is only tolerant of those who agree with them.

Scott is correct — leftists love to spout off about the need for tolerance, but all they truly desire is to silence those who oppose their “social justice” political agenda. Disagreement over policy is understandable, but alleging that your fellow senator’s motivation for disagreement is due to racism, sexism and bigotry is beyond the pale. Warren and her war-whooping sycophants need to look in the mirror and see who are the ones actually engaging in “radical hatred.”

Top Headlines6

Obama appointees flee Pentagon; Trump left with scores of vacancies to fill. (The Washington Times7)

More Americans trust Trump than the MSM. (Hot Air8.)

Deportation protests in Phoenix — Get Sheriff Joe back! (AZ Family9)

Democrats quickly build massive network to combat voter ID laws. (Washington Free Beacon10)

Having spent eight years decrying all political opposition as “obstruction,” Demos want obstructionism of Trump across the board. (Politico11)

Chicago schools send students home with letter condemning Republican governor. (Washington Free Beacon12)

Video exposes Planned Parenthood’s abortion quotas. (National Review13)

PC hits UVA and Charlottesville: City parks to be renamed, Lee statue to be removed. (The Daily Progress14)

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: “Significant environmental damage” from Dakota Pipeline protesters. (CNS News15)

Policy: Dakota Access Pipeline easement marks a new day for U.S. energy. (The Daily Signal16)

Policy: Myths about school choice and Betsy DeVos. (The Insider17)

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Undermining Our Republic, One Lawsuit After Another18

By Arnold Ahlert

In 1996, California voters approved19 a ballot initiative known as Proposition 209. It banned all preferential treatment based on race, ethnicity and gender in public education, employment and contracting. The decision was anathema to the progressive bean-counters and quota-mongers who did what progressives always do when the will of the people conflicts with their agenda: they found U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson, who issued a temporary restraining order preventing the law’s implantation. Henderson’s reasoning? Because the elimination of preferences disadvantaged women and racial minorities, it violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

Henderson’s affront to logic was eventually overturned20, but this saga illustrates two things that afflict the nation to this very day: Leftists remain utterly contemptuous of the democratic process when the results of that process conflict with their “enlightened” worldview; and far more important, Americans are increasingly inured to Abraham Lincoln’s warning21 that “if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court … the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.”

Would that it were solely the Supreme Court. As usual, leftists were able to secure a ruling22 from federal district judge James Robart of Seattle restraining the Trump administration’s efforts to temporarily suspend visas for aliens “who cannot be realistically vetted for security risks because their native countries are either sponsors of anti-American terrorism … or have been left with dysfunctional or nonfunctional governments because of war,” as National Review aptly explains23.

This is judicial abuse, and nothing makes it clearer than Section 1182(f)24 of immigration law, granting the president the power to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”

That leftists have twisted Trump’s order into an attack on religion is unsurprising. It is even less surprising that a judge with a track record25 of left-leaning activism would oppose it.

But this is just the beginning of the Left’s effort to employ “useful” jurists willing to preserve their agenda, even if it thwarts the will of the electorate, a congressional majority and/or the Trump administration. Fred Lucas reports26 that there are more than a dozen lawsuits challenging Trump’s executive order, and they “largely stem from organizations bankrolled by billionaire leftist George Soros and Democratic state attorneys general” have been filed for exactly that reason.

The results of Robart’s injunction alone are as predictable as they are infuriating. “Lifting of Travel Ban Sets Off Rush to Reach U.S.,” proclaims27 a New York Times headline. The Times also refers to a “vigorous” vetting process that can take as long as two years.

Not exactly. “Because of a spike in Middle Eastern refugees needing placement, the Obama administration has decided to rush their vetting process to three months, from the original 18-24 months,” the Washington Times revealed28 — last April.

Americans should be clear about what is really happening here: progressives are once engaged in the process of finding judges willing to elevate the interests of aliens and their progressive enablers over Americans and national security.

________________________________________
The Patriot Post Digest 2-9-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Americans should also understand this particular battle is only the beginning of a war in which leftists will flood the courts with lawsuits aimed at undermining every facet of Trump’s agenda.

In what may have been one of his most misguided assumptions, Thomas Jefferson argued29 “for the permanency of the judicial offices” based on the idea that “few men in the society … have sufficient skill in the laws to qualify them for the stations of judges. And making the proper deductions for the ordinary depravity of human nature, the number must be still smaller of those who unite the requisite integrity with the requisite knowledge.”

The rise of moral relativism, essentially the idea that one man’s “depravity” is another man’s “lifestyle,” has given the nation a plethora of judges completely bereft of anything resembling the union of requisite integrity and requisite knowledge. Thus, for example, Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt is quite comfortable wearing30 her “pussy hat” while sitting on the bench. It’s apparently OK because her job is largely administrative, and her judicial powers are limited to conducting marriages and administrative hearings.

Yet the ultimate judicial divide in our nation is the chasm between judges who believe the Constitution means what it actually says, and those who believe it is a “living” document rife with “penumbras” or implied rights necessitating interpretation. For the latter group, it is completely irrelevant the Framers fought over every word contained in our founding document. Moreover, members of the liberal wing of the U.S. Supreme Court have expressed31 their comfort with using decisions produced by foreign and international courts to inform their rulings.

The concept known as judicial supremacy began with Marbury v. Madison32, the first time SCOTUS voided congressional legislation. It has now evolved to the point where Americans have been led to believe the Constitution “was deliberately framed in terms of heroic generalities precisely to give federal judges a wider scope for discretion,” as Stanford Law Professor Michael McConnell put it33.

Columnist Clarke D. Forsythe echoes Lincoln. “Judicial supremacy fundamentally contradicts self-government,” he writes.

Sadly, America’s governance is often determined by who sits on our courts rather than who sits in our legislatures. This makes the selection of judges far more critical than it should be, to the point where Harry Reid invoked the nuclear option to stack the DC Court of Appeals with Democrats. Thus, Democrat hysteria surrounding the elimination of the filibuster to ultimately appoint Neil Gorsuch34 to the seat vacated by Antonin Scalia rings exceedingly hollow.

Article III of the Constitution35 grants Congress to create — or eliminate — every federal court but SCOTUS, a power that could be used to rein in much judicial overreach. But if Congress did put the judges on notice that unconstitutional rulings might cost them their jobs, Americans' focus would be on our elected representatives when divisive political outcomes arose. “Can’t have that,” columnist Selwyn Duke writes36. “Federal judges don’t have to be reelected — congressmen do.”

Again, the short-term implications are clear. Progressives will employ every opportunity to use the judiciary as a bulwark against a president they despise, and an electorate that has decimated Democrat legislative power at both the federal and state level. Moreover, as SCOTUS made clear on rulings from Roe v. Wade to Obergefell v. Hodges, jurists will continue to “discover” laws that have “no basis in the Constitution,” as Chief Justice John Roberts characterized37 the latter decision in his dissent.

That would be the same Chief Justice Roberts who also “discovered”38 ObamaCare’s individual mandate — argued as such by the Obama administration itself — was actually a tax, making passage of the health care law possible. A law giving the federal government control over one-sixth of the nation’s economy.

Long term, Americans are facing the ever-increasing reality that “five lawyers can determine what law means for 320 million Americans,” Duke explains. That system of governance may be many things. A constitutional republic isn’t one of them.

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

Is Health Care a Right?39 — Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders duke it out over that very question.
The Great Blue State Exodus40 — Conservative states' lower taxes are proving to swell their populations.
NYC Demonizes ‘Stop and Frisk’ at Its Own Peril41 — The tactic has proven effective, but Democrats continue to marginalize it.
The Solution for Information Overload42 — The mainstream media and its downstream outlets have become masters in the practice of promoting “BS.”

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Tony Perkins: Libs to Trump: Keep Your Pause Off Us!43
Jonah Goldberg: The Right Can’t Defend Trump’s Behavior44
George Will: The North Korean Red Line45

For more, visit Right Opinion46.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Gary Bauer: “As we are constantly told, there is an epidemic of bullying in our schools. The Left is always lashing out against bullying, and who could possibly be for it? But the Left’s concern extends only to certain favored victims. … Students who support Donald Trump are being regularly bullied and attacked. A front page story in [yesterday’s] Washington Times cites multiple examples of students ‘mimicking violent adults.’ For example: 12 year-old Gavin Cortina was attacked on his school bus over his ‘Make America Great Again’ hat. California high school sophomore Jade Armenio had her earrings ripped out after posting her support of Donald Trump on Facebook. Connor Mullen, a high school sophomore in Maine, said, ‘I knew kids would pick on me about [my support for Trump] but when the adults [including a teacher] started doing it, I thought that was problematic. This is a school that preaches equality.’ As we saw at Berkeley, it is much worse on college campuses. In fact, at one Florida college, the ‘Knights for Socialism’ are holding ‘a series of self-defense clinics for anyone that wants to learn how to BASH THE FASH (Fascist)… This event is open to everyone and anyone, EXCEPT REPUBLICANS.’ Using force to intimidate political speech and opinions is the very definition of fascism.”

SHORT CUTS

Insight: “I think you’re tackling public expenditure from the wrong end, if I might say so. Why don’t you look at it as any housewife has to look at it? She has to look at her expenditure every week or every month, according to what she can afford to spend, and if she overspends one week or month, she’s got to economize the next. Now governments really ought to look at it from the viewpoint of ‘What can we afford to spend?’ They’ve already put up taxes, and yet the taxes they collect are not enough for the tremendous amount they’re spending. They’re having to borrow to a greater extent than ever before, and future generations will have to repay.” —Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013)

For the record: “It’s not surprising that Democrats have responded to the president’s executive order by declaring it racist, xenophobic, a sign of an imminent fascist takeover, etcetera. They find everything to be racist, xenophobic and a sign of an imminent fascist takeover.” —Jim Geraghty

Lessons in Trolling 101: “After the White House released a list of 78 terrorist attacks it considered to be ‘underreported’ on Monday, a host of journalists from David Ignatius to Anderson Cooper issued their fervent disagreement with that charge. … But … every article [that media] outlets published on the story … served only to keep the attacks fresh in people’s minds. In essence, the media’s efforts to undermine the White House’s claims fulfilled their ultimate goal of increasing coverage.” —Emily Jashinsky

The BIG lie: “[Trump is] going out there and saying: ‘This [travel ban] is keeping the American people safe.’ And that has a market! People think, ‘Oh yeah, well, we’re vetting people so that they don’t come in.’ No, that isn’t what this is. Of course we always subject anything to protect the American people to scrutiny to make sure it’s doing its job. That’s not what this is about. This is about a ban on Muslims that is unconstitutional and immoral and wrong. And the American people know it. And it isn’t making us safer, it’s making us less safe.” —Nancy Pelosi

And last… “A whistleblower47 says the only global warming occurring in the last 12 years was caused by the Obama administration cooking the (data) books.” —Twitter satirist @weknowwhatsbest

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.