The Patriot Post Digest 4-26-2017

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The Patriot Post Digest 4-26-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
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Mid-Day Digest

Apr. 26, 2017

IN TODAY’S EDITION

Trump gets blocked by a judge again, but the ruling isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
The Leftmedia’s epiphany — taxes and tariffs actually cost consumers money.
Leftists treat Science™ more like a religion than, well, science.
Daily Features: Top Headlines, Cartoons, Columnists and Short Cuts.

THE FOUNDATION

“The true key for the construction of everything doubtful in a law is the intention of the law-makers. This is most safely gathered from the words, but may be sought also in extraneous circumstances provided they do not contradict the express words of the law.” —Thomas Jefferson (1808.)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Obama Lackey Blocks Trump … or Does He?1

Just when you think judicial activism can’t get any more bizarre, in comes U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick. Yesterday, Judge Orrick — who, by the way, targeted the noble work2 of the pro-life group Center for Medical Progress and also helped funnel almost a quarter-million dollars to Barack Obama and his lemmings — issued a provisional injunction against defunding so-called sanctuary cities. For now, the ruling protects the nine lawless jurisdictions that are being threatened with imminent Justice Department sanctions3. But the details of the case and the court’s reasoning are almost surreal.

The injunction pertains to a January executive order (and this is the key). According to Judge Orrick, “The President has called it ‘a weapon’ to use against jurisdictions that disagree with his preferred policies of immigration enforcement, and his press secretary has reiterated that the President intends to ensure that ‘counties and other institutions that remain sanctuary cites don’t get federal government funding in compliance with the executive order.’ The Attorney General has warned that jurisdictions that do not comply with Section 1373 would suffer ‘withholding grants, termination of grants, and disbarment or ineligibility for future grants,’ and the ‘claw back’ of any funds previously awarded.”

But then Judge Orrick goes on to argue, “That said, this injunction does nothing more than implement the effect of the Government’s flawed interpretation of the Order. It does not affect the ability of the Attorney General or the Secretary to enforce existing conditions of federal grants or 8 U.S.C. 1373, nor does it impact the Secretary’s ability to develop regulations or other guidance defining what a sanctuary jurisdiction is or designating a jurisdiction as such. It does prohibit the Government from exercising 9(a) in a way that violates the Constitution.”

So the executive order is void, but Sessions is also being allowed to carry on. Huh? In essence, the judge wrongly contends that Trump intended to completely defund sanctuary cities. Legally, the defunding measures are relegated to three grants. So the question is: What was the administration’s motive? For the answer, let’s look at what Trump’s original executive order actually said: “The Attorney General and the Secretary, in their discretion and to the extent consistent with law, shall ensure that jurisdictions that willfully refuse to comply with 8 U.S.C. 1373 (sanctuary jurisdictions) are not eligible to receive Federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes by the Attorney General or the Secretary.” Notice the phrase “consistent with law.” The judge is inaccurately surmising things from Trump’s admittedly loose mouth despite what the text actually says.

To be fair, the executive order was unnecessary legally. Why executively execute something that’s already legal? The message it sent, on the other hand, was needed. On the flip side, the courts hijacked the order by pretending it’s something it’s clearly not. Politico called it “another high-profile blow to Trump’s efforts to use executive orders to carry out major policy moves.” Except it’s not. The Leftmedia is sensationalizing yesterday’s news even though it literally changes nothing. As David French put it4, “Trump isn’t blocked from enforcing existing law. He’s only blocked from engaging in illegal acts that the DOJ promised the court that it wasn’t considering. In other words, move along. There’s not much to see here.”

Unfortunately, extreme judicial activism and Leftmedia hyperbole will be the modus operandi for the next four years. On the positive side, it’s impossible to overstate just how important it was to get Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court. Because that’s ultimately where sanity will (we hope) prevail.

Wait, Tariffs Cost Consumers Money?5

When Democrats propose health insurance mandates, or a carbon tax, or a higher gas tax, or energy regulations, or a minimum wage hike, or a tax increase on “the wealthy” (i.e., small business owners), or any number of other burdensome costs on the economy, the Leftmedia can only coo about how fair and good those things are. But when Donald Trump slaps a tariff on Canadian lumber, the Leftmedia blares headlines about how much it’s going to cost American homebuilders — between $1,2006 and $3,0007 per house.

Now, to be clear, they’re not wrong about the cost, but these fair-weather free marketeers are profound hypocrites.

Whenever you tax or regulate something, and a tariff is a tax, the price of that thing goes up and the consumer pays more. This is economics 101. Yet leftists only see this when Trump’s at work.

So what’s going on here? First of all, Trump has long argued that NAFTA is a terrible trade deal for the U.S. and needs to be renegotiated. Without going through the whole history of that deal, suffice it to say that he has a point about other nations not always trading fairly — and there’s definitely a difference between free and fair. For example, Canada and Mexico both subsidize goods more than the U.S. does, which undercuts American producers.

In this case, Canadian lumber is subsidized, and it’s a dispute that has been ongoing since the early 1980s. Trump’s Commerce Department calculated its tariff rates on how much various Canadian lumber producers are subsidized. But the tariff also has to do with Canada’s own tariffs on imported dairy products, which the Trump administration argues particularly hurts Wisconsin dairy farmers. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said, “The Trump administration has been much more focused on enforcement than had been true previously.”

And whether it’s trade or immigration or foreign policy, Trump the dealmaker is all about sending signals that he means business. Yes, this lumber tariff will cost Americans money, and we’re not arguing in favor of tariffs. But Trump has set about to seek what he believes are fair trade terms. Don’t think Mexico and China aren’t also getting the message.

Top Headlines8

Trump foreign policy and national security policy in 100 Days. (The Daily Signal9)

Administration to propose large increase in deductions Americans can claim on their taxes. (The Washington Post10)

Married people pay most of the nation’s income tax. (Washington Examiner11)

Your taxes at work: Government employee salaries outpace private-sector salaries by double digits for similar work. (The Washington Free Beacon12)

While Congress stalls, conservatives are scoring big wins at the state level. (Washington Examiner13)

Anticipating a shift to the right in the courts, the NRA begins its attack on gun controls in California. (Los Angeles Times14)

ATF reverses controversial stance on shouldering AR-15 pistols. (The Washington Free Beacon15)

Most homicides in U.S. occurred in 5% of counties. (The Washington Times16)

Heritage Foundation flooded with protesters: “groups connected to George Soros.” (The Washington Times17)

Hump Day Humor: Merriam-Webster updates definition of “fascism” to “anything one disagrees with.” (The Babylon Bee18.)

Policy: The Obama administration’s Iran-deal duplicity. (National Review19)

Policy: North Korea is a problem, but China and Pakistan are just as harmful. (The Hill20)

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report21.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
The March for Science Fiction22

By Louis DeBroux

One of the asinine yet oft-repeated phrases in the modern progressive lexicon is “settled science,” an oxymoron that is the antithesis of the scientific method. The literal definition of the scientific method is “a method of procedure … consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.” Modification means alteration or change. Meaning that in science, many, many things are never “settled.”

Among the most well-known theories that have been debunked over time are that the world is flat, that the solar system is geocentric (it is heliocentric), that the physical world is made up of four elements (rather than more than a hundred currently known elements, including four new elements discovered just last year), and that atoms are the smallest units of matter. Each and every one of these was once universally accepted as infallible truth.

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The Patriot Post Digest 4-26-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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This makes the recent “March for Science” in Washington, DC, not only ludicrous, but an indictment of those marching while claiming to believe in science. It was not about science, but about publicly rebuking President Donald Trump23 behind the thin patina of ideology masquerading as science. The leftist mainstream media played its part well, praising the event while ignoring dissent from actual scientists24.

With scathing wit, Jeremy Faust, an emergency medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School, exposed the hypocrisy and lunacy of the march — in the lefty rag Slate25, no less. He observed, “Being ‘pro-science’ has become a bizarre cultural phenomenon in which liberals (and other members of the cultural elite) engage in public displays of self-reckoned intelligence as a kind of performance art, while demonstrating zero evidence to justify it.”

Instead of elevating the quality of, and respect for, actual science, says Faust, this march “revealed the glaring dissonance of opposing that trough of ignorance by instead accepting a cringe-worthy hive-mind mentality that celebrates Science as a vague but wonderful entity. … There was an uncomfortable dronelike fealty to the concept — an oxymoronic faith that information presented and packaged to us as Science need not be further scrutinized before being smugly celebrated en masse. That is not intellectually rigorous thought — instead, it’s another kind of religion.”

Indeed, progressive Democrats claim to be the “Party of Science” yet, mind-bogglingly argue that sex/gender is determined by how one “feels” rather than by DNA and plumbing. They accept man-made global warming (now known as “climate change” to free themselves of the pesky fact that the Earth stopped warming for nearly two decades) as inarguable fact. These are the same people who chain themselves to trees to protest the “destruction” of Mother Earth, but refuse to acknowledge that a baby in utero is a living human being.

In short, they are modern-day pagans26, worshipping “Gaia” while denying observable truths27 that conflict with their secular religion, and seeking punishment for the heretics who dare challenge their belief system with something so coarse, so crude and as unenlightened as mere facts.

The ultimate goal of the progressive religionists is to force compliance with their worldview, either through the coercive power of rigid, politically correct orthodoxy, or through punishment such as jail time28 for “climate change dissenters/deniers,” a position embraced by leftist celebrity and fake TV scientist29 Bill Nye “The Science Guy.”

CNN, in an interview with Nye and an actual scientist, physicist William Happer of Princeton, inadvertently displayed the truth30 behind the march with a caption that read “March for Science: Scientists Rally for EPA, Govt Funding and More.” Climate change hysteria is a big business. If you are a scientist, you have access to billions of dollars in federal grants so long as you produce “research” that proves the claims of the alarmists. Politicians pushing climate hysteria can usurp tremendous power over the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the name of saving the world from cataclysmic disaster.

The reality is that “science,” across a broad spectrum of disciplines, is not nearly as “settled” as its advocates would have us believe. In fact, the most-repeated claims have a habit of turning out to be spectacularly wrong. For example, as we’ve noted previously31, leftist climate alarmists have been trying to scare us into giving up the abundant energy and higher standard of living that comes with industrialization. They warned that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years” (Harvard biologist George Wald, 1970), and that (due to scarce food supplies), “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years” (Paul Ehrlich, 1970), and that by 1980 “urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution.”

They are often insanely wrong32 in their predictions, and are so wedded to their ideology that they can’t even identify fake science33 even when it is specifically written to be obviously wrong. Time after time, robotically generated “gibberish papers” were accepted in supposedly peer-reviewed journals34.

As amusing as this can be, it’s actually dangerous. The beauty of science is that it is ruthless. It cares not for sex, race, education or socio-economic status. It cares only about replicable fact. But when science — actual science — is hijacked by partisans and ideologues, and propaganda is passed off as science, it undermines our faith in science, and therefore the truth.

And that is never a good thing.

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

The Barrier to the Border Wall35 — Democrats in Congress are threatening a shut down over the wall, so Republicans removed $1.5 billion in funding for it.
Energy Economy Challenges Elitist-Centralized Wealth36 — Middle America is experiencing an influx of cash flow, putting the elitist Northeast on notice.
Middlebury Coddles Its Intolerant Snowflakes37 — First rioters ousted Charles Murray. Now the school is defending their stupidity.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Star Parker: Lessons Unlearned From the ‘92 LA Riots38
Rebecca Hagelin: Killing Black Babies39
Walter Williams: Environmentalists Are Dead Wrong40
Jonah Goldberg: Immigration the Common Thread Between French, American Elections41

For more, visit Right Opinion42.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Star Parker: “This weekend marks 100 days of the Trump administration. This milestone also coincides with a very important anniversary. Twenty-five years ago, April 29, 1992, riots exploded in Los Angeles after four policemen were acquitted after being charged with the violent beating of Rodney King, caught on video for the entire nation to see. According to The Los Angeles Times, 63 lives were lost in the riots, with the estimated total economic cost pegged at $1 billion, with $735 million in property damage and 1,550 buildings destroyed or damaged. But this is more than a fact of national history for me. It is personal history. I was there. … It could not have been clearer to me back in 1992 that the flailing violence that destroyed Los Angeles would lead nowhere for blacks. It is equally clear to me today that the attitude among blacks that their futures lie with the responsibility and money of others will continue to lead nowhere. Despite a complicated and hard history, blacks need to trash the cynicism they harbor against this great nation, founded on the principles of freedom — a cynicism for which they are paying the greatest price. Only by embracing the principles of freedom and self-government can black Americans truly define a new path and participate in the American dream.”

SHORT CUTS

Insight: “Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority.” —William Howard Taft (1857-1930)

Judicial activism: “Only [Officer Chris] Thompson and [Richardo] Salazar-Limon know what happened on that overpass on October 29, 2010. It is possible that Salazar-Limon did something that Thompson reasonably found threatening; it is also possible that Thompson shot an unarmed man in the back without justification. … Our failure to correct the error made by the courts below leaves in place a judgment that accepts the word of one party over the word of another. It also continues a disturbing trend regarding the use of this Court’s resources.” —Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissent taking a not-so-subtle shot at SCOTUS’s past police rulings

Braying Jackass: “It’s my view that if the president stepped out of it, we could get a budget done by Friday.” —Chuck Schumer, to whom Nancy Pelosi responded, “Totally agree. We were on the path to get it done until he did intervene.”

Braying Jenny: “[Trump] did not promise [while campaigning] that he would take food out of the mouths of babies and seniors, [and take] education, clean air, clean water, scientific research off the table in a significant way in order for him to pay for his immoral, ineffective, unwise proposal of a wall.” —Nancy Pelosi

A novel idea: “Ann Coulter has just gotten a much bigger platform because someone tried to deny her a chance to speak. My view is: Let her speak, and just don’t show up. If you don’t like it, don’t show up.” —Sen. Elizabeth Warren

Facepalm: “I think what would motivate President Obama [to criticize Trump] is if we saw the federal government start to cross some clear red lines in terms of long-observed norms and values that, frankly, I think that we’ve started to take for granted.” —Josh Earnest

And last… “'I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street.’ —guy raking in $400,000 for speech43 to Wall Street bankers.” —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.