The Patriot Post Digest 2-23-2017

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The Patriot Post Digest 2-23-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

Feb. 23, 2017

IN TODAY’S EDITION

The transgender bathroom decree is no more.
Fourth Circuit Court guts the Supreme Court’s Heller ruling.
Conservatives should be careful in choosing mascots. Here’s looking at Milo.
Daily Features: Top Headlines, Cartoons, Columnists and Short Cuts.

THE FOUNDATION

“Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.” —John Adams (1776)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Trump Rolls Back Obama’s Trans-formation1

On Wednesday, the Departments of Education and Justice jointly issued a directive rolling back Barack Obama’s order regarding Title IX2 interpretation of sex to include gender disorientation pathology3, er, “identity.” Obama’s controversial order demanded that all public schools provide “equal” access to restrooms and locker-room facilities comporting with an individual’s gender identity rather than their biological sex.

In rescinding the order, Donald Trump has taken the position that it’s a states' rights issue, and therefore should be left to individual states and school districts to decide. Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated, “The prior guidance documents did not contain sufficient legal analysis or explain how the interpretation was consistent with the language of Title IX. The Department of Education and the Department of Justice therefore have withdrawn the guidance.”

The Obama gender directive, issued in May 2016, was never fully implemented due to several law suits and a Texas federal judge’s temporary block last August. The state of Virginia’s case is scheduled to go before the Supreme Court, but Trump’s move has left many wondering if the Court will now dismiss it. If the Supreme Court should now decline the case, the problem would not go away, as the question of the legality of Obama’s interpretation would go unanswered. It would be good to have this issue decided one way or the other, not left for the next Democrat president to reverse Trump.

Obama sought to appease the Rainbow Mafia and build the “LGBT” constituency by using the full weight of the federal government to force conformity to and acceptance of a fringe minority issue. He got political credit win or lose. That’s evident by the Leftmedia coverage proclaiming that Trump is taking away “civil” rights. The truth of the matter is that he is simply bringing back some sorely needed sanity.

Fourth Circuit Rules Against Second Amendment4

If you’re a firm supporter of Second Amendment rights, then you may want to avoid living in Maryland. On Tuesday, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Maryland law banning so-called assault weapons5 and “high capacity” (read: standard capacity) magazines. The ruling reversed a lower court decision maintaining that the law violates the Second Amendment. The lower court was right.

In its ruling, the Fourth Circuit Court referenced District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the Supreme Court declared weapons that could be classified as “dangerous and unusual” do not fall under the protections of the Second Amendment. In other words, the Supreme Court ruled that fully automatic weapons fall outside the purview of the Second Amendment — or at least these firearms and magazines can be heavily regulated without running afoul of the Constitution. Never mind that the Armed Forces have never issued AR-15s.

For SCOTUS, the concern was primarily the function, not the form. The justices weighed it based on the type of firing system — semi-auto vs. fully automatic. The Fourth Circuit Courts deliberately conflated this distinction. If it looks like a military grade weapon, then it must be one, seems to have been the “logic” employed by the erudite Fourth Circuit judges. The Maryland law also bans folding stocks, flash suppressors and grenade/flare launchers — items that may make a rifle look menacing but do not make it functionally any more dangerous or unusual. Besides, if semiautomatic rifles are “unusual,” then we don’t know what constitutes “usual.” The AR-15 is the most popular rifle type in America.

Judge William Traxler wrote in his blistering dissent, “The majority has gone to greater lengths than any other court to eviscerate the constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms.” They did this by inventing a new test: whether a weapon is “most useful in military service.” We hope this case makes it to the Supreme Court so the justices can finish what they started with Heller — that is, protect the Second Amendment. Until then, Maryland can trample constitutional freedom, and appellate courts will be left to defiantly dismantle Heller one ruling at a time.

Top Headlines6

White House punts new travel order to next week. (The Hill7)

Demos protest Trump enforcing Clinton and Obama immigration policies. (Investor’s Business Daily8.)

Mexico says it will not help stop illegal immigration. (The Washington Times9)

Canada’s Trudeau: No, we won’t be stopping illegal border crossings, either. (Hot Air10)

Demo Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand says Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch will be confirmed. (Fox News11)

Bernie Sanders minions are taking over the Democrat Party. (The Wall Street Journal12)

F/A-18 Super Hornet pulls out of a sales stall thanks to Trump. (Bloomberg13)

Democrat governor: Cut taxpayer funding for public broadcasting to zero. (The Daily Signal14)

O'Keefe drops “bombshell” undercover footage from within CNN. (Zero Hedge15)

MSNBC’s Mike Brzezinski: Media’s job is to “control exactly what people think.” Houston, we have a problem. (Washington Free Beacon16)

New Hampshire enacts constitutional carry. (Washington Free Beacon17)

Policy: Federal court of appeals goes to war against the Second Amendment. (National Review18.)

Policy: The real nuclear news. (Real Clear Defense19)

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report20.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Conservatives, Choose Your Mascots Carefully21

By Allyne Caan

Americans often express frustration at the partisan gridlock in Washington: One party opposes the other party’s ideas not on merit but on political allegiance. Party trumps principle.

Unfortunately, even conservatives outside of DC are guilty of falling into a similar trap — not just the pitfall of rejecting something because leftists like it, but of embracing something simply because leftists oppose it.

Such is the problem represented by the Milo Yiannopoulos’s of the world.

Milo, a man who openly embraces gender disorientation pathology3, has made his reputation by being offensive. Until recently, he was a senior editor at Breitbart. As trendy-left site Vice notes22, “He’s built an entire career on claiming to be a ‘dangerous faggot,’ the supervillain of the internet, a man who says the things that people aren’t meant to say.” Not surprisingly, this approach has won him more enemies than we can count. Indeed, who can forget the recent violent protests at Berkeley23 after the college Republicans invited Milo to speak on campus?

Milo himself has claimed24, “All I care about is free speech and free expression. I want people to be able to be, do and say anything. These days … that’s a conservative issue.” It’s true that what he says is often compelling and right. So, as a result, he’s become a darling of many in the conservative — and so-called “conservative” — movement. After all, a gay Breitbart journalist who’s not afraid to outrage the Left must be on “our” side, right?

Not so fast.

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The Patriot Post Digest 2-23-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
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As Ben Shapiro notes25, Milo has used his free speech to, among other things, “characterize a Jewish BuzzFeed writer as ‘a typical example of a sort of thick-as-pig sh-t media Jew’” and to justify “anti-Semitic memes as playful trollery.” Milo is sometimes offensive just because.

And yet somehow Yiannopoulos secured an invitation to keynote this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), speaking on free speech, among other things. But CPAC uninvited him26 after a video surfaced appearing to show him defending pedophilia (sexual relations between men and boys) and crediting a Catholic priest for educating him in a specific sex act. Not long after being disinvited, Milo resigned from Breitbart.

Even after the video surfaced, some continued to defend him because, well, he’s for free speech and against political correctness. In other words, simply because the Left hates Milo, he must be our friend.

Such a standard is not fighting for conservative principles; it’s abdicating them.

As Shapiro writes27, “Unfortunately, many conservatives have embraced this sort of binary thinking: If it angers the Left, it must be virtuous. … That’s dangerous. It leads to supporting bad policies and bad men. The enemy of your enemy isn’t always your friend. Sometimes he’s your enemy. … It’s not good enough to just be opposed by the Left — you must actually oppose the Left. We must ask what someone is fighting against, not merely whom.”

If conservatives focus on the “whom” to the exclusion of the “what,” we lose our effectiveness, our moral high ground, and all too often, our honor.

Indeed, David French writes28, “People have deep and understandable affection for those they believe are effectively fighting for them. … That’s the source of the bond between Milo and his followers. He is ‘fearless.’ He ‘destroys’ feminists in the same way that John Oliver ‘destroys’ Fox News. Fight the enemy, and your fans will forgive a multitude of failures. Yet, these failures weaken the very thing we’re fighting for.”

“Conservatives need to fight,” French continues, “but we must fight with honor to advance honorable goals. Otherwise, the culture war will be fought over ruins, with cultural rubble the victor’s only spoils.”

Now, in an ironic twist, Robert Tracinski explains29, “Note how the people who allowed themselves to be driven by hate achieved the opposite of what they told themselves they wanted. They said they wanted to break the power of the left’s hair-trigger accusations of racism and sexism. By embracing this champion, though, they merely added fuel to those accusations.”

If conservatives' only hallmark is hatred from liberals, then we can claim no honor and deserve not the freedoms we champion. Being conservative means more than paying homage to someone the Left hates; it means actually standing for the principles — moral, social and economic — that have brought freedom to more people on earth than any other political or ideological system in world history.

Conservatives are the heirs of our nation’s Founding Fathers. We’re defenders of the flame of Liberty lit by that generation of American Patriots. It behooves us all to remember that.

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

Deep State vs. Free State30 — We essentially have two federal governments: representatives and bureaucrats.
Self-Styled Defenders of ‘Democracy’31 — The Washington Post thinks now is their time to stand.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Rich Lowry: What’s Happening in Sweden32
Victor Davis Hanson: The Labyrinth of Illegal Immigration33
Ryan Anderson: Trump Right to Fix Obama’s Unlawful Transgender School Policy34

For more, visit Right Opinion35.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Rich Lowry: “Sweden welcomed more than 160,000 asylum-seekers in 2015, and nearly 40,000 in October of that year alone. For a country of fewer than 10 million, this was almost equal to 2 percent of the population — in one year. … And the fiscal cost is high. According to Swedish economist Tino Sanandaji, the country spends 1.5 percent of its GDP on the asylum-seekers, more than on its defense budget. Sweden is spending twice of the entire budget of the United Nations High Commissioner responsible for refugees worldwide. Pressed for housing, Sweden has spent as much on sheltering 3,000 people in tents as it would cost to care for 100,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan. It is little wonder that Sweden, where so recently it was forbidden to question the openhanded orthodoxy on immigration, has now clamped down on its borders. Sweden is a unique case, but clearly one of the lessons of its recent experience is, Don’t try this at home.”

SHORT CUTS

Insight: “From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.” —Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992)

Federalism for the win: “While the Obama administration attempted to rewrite law to impose a federal ‘gender identity’ policy on the entire nation, the Trump administration is respecting federalism, local decision-making, and parental authority in education. For most Americans, concerns related to transgender students are a new reality. Rather than follow the Obama administration’s rush to impose a top-down solution on the entire country, the Trump administration is allowing the American people to have these conversations, consider all the relevant concerns, and make policies that will best serve all Americans. Good for them.” —Ryan T. Anderson

Braying Jenny: “I just think the American people had better understand what’s going on. [Team Trump] is a bunch of scumbags. That’s what they are. Who are all organized around making money.” —Rep. Maxine Waters

Dangerously inept: “I think that the dangerous, you know, edges here are that [Trump] is trying to undermine the media and trying to make up his own facts. And it could be that while unemployment and the economy worsens, he could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think. And that is our job.” —MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski (No, the media’s job is to be impartial, not partisan.)

Non Compos Mentis: “When Meryl [Streep] spoke [at the Golden Globes], everyone on that one side was [like], ‘Well, that’s elitist Hollywood speaking.’ Donald Trump has 22 acting credits in television… He collects $120,000 a year in his Screen Actors Guild pension fund. Uhh? He is a Hollywood elitist.” —George Clooney

And last… “Obama calls GOP ‘our enemies’ — meh. Hillary calls GOP my ‘enemies’ — meh. Trump calls MSM ‘enemy’ — UNPRECEDENTED ATTACKS AGAINST AMERICANS!” —Twitter satirist @hale_razor

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.