The Patriot Post Digest 4-3-2017

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The Patriot Post Digest 4-3-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

Apr. 3, 2017

IN TODAY’S EDITION

Attacking Pence for protecting his marriage is beyond out of touch.
HHS Secretary Price has a lot of leeway for undoing ObamaCare without repeal legislation.
What’s up with Nunes and Flynn? And why does it matter?
Daily Features: Top Headlines, Cartoons, Columnists and Short Cuts.

THE FOUNDATION

“Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.” —Samuel Adams (1775)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Attack Piece on VP Makes Media Look Silly1

Vice President Mike Pence is a man of deeply held Christian convictions, which makes him a target of the Left. Pence is also a man who understands both human nature and the world of politics. For the Leftmedia, Donald Trump is an easy target to criticize with his off-the-cuff and hyperbolically styled Twitter comments geared for reaching the common man, not the Beltway establishment. But for the Left, Pence proves to be an entirely different challenge.

Pence is both careful in his speech and actions. He is a committed conservative with a distinguished, scandal-free record. As a former U.S. congressman and governor of Indiana, he knows Washington well, from both the inside and the outside. Because of this, Pence arguably scares Democrats and the Leftmedia more than Trump does.

What does the Left do when its afraid? Like a cornered animal it attacks. On Friday, Vox published a story by Joanna Grossman accusing Pence of violating Title VII laws against sex discrimination. Grossman based her spurious allegation on Pence’s personal rule of not dining one-on-one with a woman who is not his wife. Stop the presses! Oh, the humanity! Sound the “scandal” alarm!

Or, to put it in The Babylon Bee’s satire parlance2, “Bill Clinton Calls Mike Pence’s Strict Marital Practices ‘Excessive.’”

Grossman, an employment lawyer, first misconstrued the vice president’s personal decisions as somehow being motivated by a desire to discriminate against women. Therefore, she declared it “illegal” and concluded with this convoluted statement: “We have a president who brags about grabbing women by the pussy — and a vice president who won’t even have dinner with them. These are two sides of the same coin, both reflecting the fundamentally unequal sphere working women inhabit because of male behavior.”

Call us crazy, but we’re pretty certain that the vast majority of married woman would not find it appropriate for their husbands to regularly dine out one-on-one with other woman. It’s not Pence who is out of touch with American values, it’s the Leftmedia.

HHS Sec Price: ‘I Can Still Work on ObamaCare Repeal’3

All hope isn’t lost for repealing ObamaCare, and in some ways, Congress won’t even be necessary. The Washington Post relays the relevant details4: “In his carefully calibrated testimony before House appropriators, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price made one thing clear Wednesday: The administration is still intent on dismantling parts of the Affordable Care Act even if Republicans lack the votes to rewrite it. Time and time again, Price invoked the pledge he has made repeatedly to lawmakers since President Trump selected him for his post. ‘What we’re committed to is making sure the American people have access to affordable coverage,’ he [said].”

Let’s break this down. Democrats left gaping holes in the so-called Affordable Care Act so big Price could drive a Mack truck through them. They did this by leaving a ton of the law’s implementation to the agency in charge of the particulars. As Price noted, “Fourteen hundred and forty-two times the ACA said ‘the secretary shall’ or ‘the secretary may.' ” That clearly gives Price great discretion in determining how ObamaCare actually works in practice. His guidelines will be almost entirely what is politically doable for the Trump administration.

One key thing Price may be working on is deciding what constitutes “essential benefits” in coverage. ObamaCare mandates include what must be covered by insurance, and Price can scale some of that back. Not forcing older couples to buy insurance with maternity coverage, for example, would help slow down the drastic increase in premium prices. The Trump administration refers to the regulatory changes as “Phase 2” of ObamaCare repeal. Let’s hope things move forward even while Congress is stuck in neutral.

Top Headlines5

McConnell vows Gorsuch will be confirmed this week, Schumer predicts he won’t get 60 votes. (Fox News6)

Trump makes little headway filling out Pentagon jobs. (The Hill7)

2,070 refugees arrived in U.S. in March, 54% drop from February’s 4,579. (CNS News8.)

Here’s a map of the sanctuary cities Jeff Sessions has threatened with funding losses. (Newsweek9)

California attempts “fake news” ban. (Heat Street10)

Political speeches at the Country Music Awards: Zero (LifeZette11)

Know your U.S. Constitution? More states look to teach it. (CNS News12)

The mainstream media gets “stand your ground” laws wrong — again. (National Review13)

Grandfather of teen killed in Oklahoma burglary14 says homeowner’s gun made for an “unfair” fight. (Independent Journal Review15)

U.S. college grads see slim-to-nothing wage gains since recession. But tuition keeps right on skyrocketing. (Bloomberg16)

Policy: How the GOP should regroup on health care. (Real Clear Health17)

Policy: A beginner’s guide to the Trump/Russia controversy. (National Review18.)

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report19.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Nunes, Flynn and the Swirling Russia Story20

By Todd Johnson

Watergate21. Deep Throat22. Those were just a couple of the loaded words thrown around in the media last week during the coverage of both Representative Devin Nunes, who is the chairman of the House intelligence committee investigating President Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, and Lieutenant General (Ret.) Mike Flynn, whose attorney asked the FBI23 and congressional investigators to provide criminal immunity to his client in exchange for testimony. However, in their rush to make a judgment on individual motives, much of the fourth estate missed the fact that the American government has a problem with safeguarding intelligence, as well as a perceived inability to avoid incidental collection on its citizens.

Before diving into the federal challenges with protecting classified information, it’s important to acknowledge up front that both Nunes’ and Flynn’s activities over the last few weeks have been at best, aleatory, and at worst, duplicitous. Nunes' statements have not been forthright and he hasn’t been upfront with his colleagues on the committee that he chairs. His tendency to obfuscate when asked probing questions24 has not only hurt his individual reputation but the institution in which he currently serves. He’s supposed to be leading the congressional investigation of Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, but is acting almost as a Trump surrogate.

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The Patriot Post Digest 4-3-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Flynn, unlike Nunes, has been off the public radar since he was fired25 from the National Security Advisor position by President Trump when it was leaked that Flynn lied to Vice President Mike Pence about contacts that he had with the Russian ambassador during the transition period. Flynn’s trustworthiness has continued to be questioned since his removal, most recently when it was discovered he failed to disclose payments from Russian related entities in 201526.

While both men’s objectionable behavior leaves much to be desired, the media are missing the more important story. Rather than focusing on Nunes' and Flynn’s transgressions, they should be devoting resources to why the federal government’s intelligence reports are being leaked and how information from foreign collection is being distributed through the White House.

The House Intelligence investigation into Russia’s attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election and whether there was inappropriate monitoring of the Trump campaign by Barack Obama’s administration marks an important inflection point in our nation’s history. It marks the first time in the 21st century that the federal legislative branch is devoting significant amounts of time and resources to determining whether a foreign adversary tried to influence a national election. But, more importantly, this could determine whether a sitting president’s administration leveraged information collected on U.S. citizens through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to adversely affect an incoming administration.

The FISA program has been around since 1978 and it has been amended over the years, most substantively in 200827. A significant section of FISA, Section 702, is set to expire by the end of the 201728 unless Congress takes action. A debate is starting to brew between staunch advocates of the program and those who feel it cuts at civil liberties. Backers in both the intelligence community and federal government laud FISA as an indispensable tool against those who would do harm to the United States. Proponents argue that this program has made the homeland more secure from attack, but at what cost?

Abuses have occurred, most recently in 2015, when members of Congress were caught up in the National Security Agency’s surveillance of Israeli government officials29 during the U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations. Last week, syndicated columnist Eli Lake noted30 that this experience enabled the Obama administration to “learn about the strategy of its domestic political opposition through legal wiretaps of a foreign head of state and his aides.”

Hence the reason why Nunes has tried to determine if the same thing happened to Trump and his associates during the transition period. Additionally, Nunes wants to ascertain who leaked Flynn’s name and the contents of his phone call to the Russian ambassador.

While Nunes insists he has seen evidence that the Obama administration surveilled31 Trump’s incoming administration, he hasn’t been able to back up his claims. Only time will tell what facts will be uncovered. That’s why it is imperative that Nunes and his colleagues be given the opportunity to explore all avenues to ascertain whether any criminal activity took place in the last days of Barack Obama’s presidency.

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

Criminalizing the Truth to Protect Cultural Degeneracy32 — Another Planned Parenthood video, while CA prosecutes the video maker.
How Socialism Ruined My Country33 — Brazilian journalist Felipe Moura Brasil sets the record straight.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Peggy Noonan: Mistakes, He’s Made a Few Too Many34
Hans von Spakovsky and Grant Strobl: Terry McAuliffe, Virginia’s Voter-Fraud Guru35
Burt Prelutsky: The Un-United States of America36

For more, visit Right Opinion37.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Hans von Spakovsky and Grant Strobl: “Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, the former head of the Democratic National Committee, is at it again, vetoing six bills aimed at preventing voter fraud and illegal voting. …McAuliffe is nothing if not consistent. He has vetoed every bill passed in the current legislative session that would improve the integrity of the state’s election process. In 2015 he vetoed House Bill 1315, which would have required county jury commissioners to send general registrars information on individuals who were disqualified to serve as jurors because they were not U.S. citizens, were no longer residents of Virginia, had been convicted of a felony, or had been adjudicated as incapacitated. There was no reason to veto this bill unless the governor wanted to make it easy for ineligible voters to continue to vote illegally and not get caught. Why has Governor McAuliffe vetoed every reasonable effort to ensure honest and fair elections in Virginia? Well, the overwhelming number of felons vote for Democrats. Non-citizens also favor Democrats over Republicans. Could it be that the governor believes that illegal voting benefits his political party? Yet surely no governor would be more concerned with his party’s success than with ensuring that every legal vote cast by an eligible American truly counts. Would he?”

SHORT CUTS

The Gipper: “Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

Alpha Jackass: “Republicans don’t give a s—t about people.” —DNC Chief Tom Perez

Braying Jackass: “I’m infuriated by President Trump’s bigotry. I’m enraged by his disregard for Americans' well-being. I’m livid that he spreads lie after lie. … Either we sit by and fume as President Trump destroys all we care about. Or we rise up, create a massive wave of support, and fight to take back our government.” —Keith Ellison

Braying Jenny: “I cannot support Judge Gorsuch because a study of his opinions reveal a rigid ideology that always puts the little guy under the boot of corporations. He is evasive, but his body of work isn’t. Whether it is a freezing truck driver or an autistic child, he has shown a stunning lack of humanity.” —Sen. Claire McCaskill

Dezinformatsiya: “Judge Gorsuch embraces a judicial philosophy that would do nothing less than undermine the structure of modern government.” —New York Times' Emily Bazelon and Eric Posner (Given the status of “modern government,” isn’t that a good thing?)

Demo-gogues: “Stop the sabotage… [Republicans] will try to defund the Affordable Care Act. That’s one way to sabotage it. They will try to not enforce the law in terms of the mandate and if you do those two things, if they did those two things, they would raise premiums about 30 to 35%.” —Nancy Pelosi

And last… “If the Senate needs an expert to speak at the hearings on meddling in another country’s elections, they should subpoena Barack Obama.” —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.