The Patriot Post Digest 5-22-2017

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The Patriot Post Digest 5-22-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

May 22, 2017

IN TODAY’S EDITION

Trump brings “principled realism” to his first foreign trip and big speech in Riyadh.
Notre Dame students walk out on VP Pence before his address on free speech.
Federalism for immigration reform could bring all sorts of problems.
Daily Features: Top Headlines, Cartoons, Columnists and Short Cuts.

THE FOUNDATION

“I want an American character, that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves and not for others; this, in my judgment, is the only way to be respected abroad and happy at home.” —George Washington (1795)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Trump Impresses and Presses in Speech to Top Muslim Leaders1

Donald Trump delivered a powerful and well-received speech to the U.S.-Arab-Islamic summit in Riyadh on Sunday, in which he called for the Islamic world to commit itself to the fight to end “Islamic extremism.” Trump encouraged Muslim leaders to own the responsibility for defeating Islamic terrorism, stating, “America is prepared to stand with you — in pursuit of shared interests and common security. But the nations of the Middle East cannot wait for American power to crush this enemy for them. The nations of the Middle East will have to decide what kind of future they want for themselves, for their countries, and for their children. It is a choice between two futures — and it is a choice America cannot make for you.”

Trump briefly noted the epic humanitarian crisis2 (caused by the policies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, we’ll add), which has seen hundreds of thousands of refugees exiting the Middle East. But he also offered a vision of hope: “This region should not be a place from which refugees flee, but to which newcomers flock.”

He pointedly challenged the religious legitimacy of radical Islam, saying, “Every time a terrorist murders an innocent person, and falsely invokes the name of God, it should be an insult to every person of faith.” Trump continued, contending, “Terrorists do not worship God; they worship death.”

In a veiled but obvious rebuke of Obama’s failed Middle East policy, Trump pledged that the U.S. would adopted a foreign policy of “principled realism.” He elaborated, “We will make decisions based on real-world outcomes — not inflexible ideology. We will be guided by the lessons of experience — not the confines of rigid thinking. And, wherever possible, we will seek gradual reforms — not sudden intervention.” And later in his speech, Trump directly focused his sights on Iran, noting its current regime’s fueling and funding of terrorism. Saying that from Saudi Arabia was rather pointed.

Trump’s clear tone change from the previous eight years is welcome both for Americans frustrated with the U.S.’s lack of leadership in the region and for Middle Eastern leaders who were alarmed by Obama’s repeated concessions to Iran. Trump’s visit was more than mere words, as he also signed a joint arms agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia worth almost $110 billion. Next up: visiting Israel. On his first foreign trip, Trump is proving himself a capable statesman.

Students Walk Out on Pence’s Free Speech Address3

Vice President and former Indiana Gov. Mike Pence gave the commencement address at Notre Dame Sunday. And as planned, a few dozen students walked out of his speech — some reports say 150 participants, but only about half of those were students. In a graduation ceremony for 3,000, these rainbow-clad agitators certainly did not represent even a plurality, and notably, they were resoundingly booed as they exited.

A few observations:

Thank you for minimally disrupting the once-in-a-lifetime ceremony for others. At least you just left rather than heckle and boo as others of your ilk have done in other commencement ceremonies.

Employers, take note of those who walked out. They will be the dissenters, the whiners, the ones who demand more pay for no more work — those who are malcontents in the workplace because they’re malcontents in life. Conversely, what a fantastic opportunity for the young adults who are grounded and disciplined. You will be the leaders of America’s future. The others won’t be able to cope.

Ironically, the VP spoke about the “waning” free speech and civility on college and university campuses, where open debate and thought should be exalted, yet the indoctrination of the Left teaches that if you don’t agree, seek your #SafeSpace.

“If the emanations of free speech were charted on a map like infrared heat signatures, one would hope that universities would be the hottest places, red and purple with dispute not dark blue and white, frozen into cant, orthodoxy, and intellectual stasis,” Pence said. “Far too many campuses across America have become characterized by speech codes, safe zones, tone policing, administration sanctioned political correctness — all of which amounts to nothing less than suppression of the freedom of speech.”

In spite of the protest, Pence had warm words for the school he addressed: “Notre Dame is an exception, an island in a sea of conformity so far spared from the noxious wave that seems to be rushing over much of academia.” Let’s hope the graduates take that to heart. We know the protesters didn’t.

Top Headlines4

Trump delays picking an FBI director. (Washington Examiner5)

Former FBI Director Comey will testify before Senate intel committee. (Hot Air6)

Two “big” Trump/Russia scoops — One is dubious; one is typical Trump. (National Review7)

Harvard agrees: Trump press coverage sets “new standard for negativity.” (The Washington Times8.)

“Clock boy” discrimination lawsuit dismissed by federal judge — and not a minute too soon. (CBS News9)

New Orleans PC crowd takes down historic statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. (NPR10)

EPA official invites left-wing environmental group to agency for talk on “science.” (The Daily Signal11)

States rein in cities raising minimum wage. (Washington Examiner12)

Curtain falls on final Ringling Bros. circus performance. (USA Today13)

Iran re-elects Rouhani as president. (The Daily Signal14)

Policy: Trump’s opportunity to reset Middle East relations. (Heritage Foundation15)

Policy: Good First Amendment news in Kentucky. (Washington Times16)

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report17.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Comprehensive Immigration Reform Subterfuge18

By Arnold Ahlert

A couple of politically tone-deaf GOP congressmen, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), have introduced19 the State-Sponsored Visa Pilot Program Act of 2017, a proposal aimed at allowing individual states to set up their own guest-worker programs. “My concept of border security includes a robust guest-worker program,” Johnson declared. “It’s going to be a whole lot easier to secure the border when you’re not having to clamp down on people coming here to seek the opportunities that America provides.”

While the federal government would still control the issuance of visas, states would be granted20 the discretion to admit guest workers for as long as three years, after which their visas could be renewed.

Johnson’s proposal allows each state to issue visas to as many as 5,000 workers, and draw from additional pool of 250,000 visas based on the state’s population relative to its percentage of the nation’s total population. The House version reduces those numbers to 2,500 and 125,000, respectively.

In addition, states could increase their caps by 10% in any year where 97% of their sponsored guest workers comply with their visa requirements and stay out of the black market. Any year a state missed that target would engender a 50% cap reduction. A state missing its target for four years would be suspended from the program for five years.

To make the proposal more palatable, participating workers would be barred from accessing welfare state benefits, such as ObamaCare or the Earned Income Tax Credit, and granting citizenship or permanent resident status to these workers would be prohibited. Workers would be able to change jobs, ostensibly as protection against possible abuse, but would be required to seek other employment only in the state that issued the visa, unless states formed “compacts” allowing workers multi-state employment access. Violators would lose their status and be subject to deportation.

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The Patriot Post Digest 5-22-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
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Unsurprisingly, champions of “comprehensive immigration reform” are extolling the proposal’s virtues. Columnist Shikha Dalmia hails21 the “great upside” of an approach that would “sidestep the messy politics in Washington that have long made sensible immigration reform well nigh impossible.” The libertarian Cato Institute’s David Bier applauds22 an approach in accordance “with America’s long tradition of federalism in almost every other policy area,” one that “has the potential to increase support for immigration across the country, allowing America to set aside harmful protectionism and move closer to an economically competitive system.”

At what price? We begin with the American Left’s dream of unassailable power, underscored by the reality that the 500,000 guest workers who could enter the country on renewable three-year visas — per year — would be allowed to bring with them their spouses and children who would not be counted as part of the cap. Under Johnson’s proposal, this would allow more than a million people to enter the country annually — a country in which more than half of illegal aliens overstayed their visas rather than crossed the border.

Enter birthright citizenship23. “As the law stands now, the hypothetical American-born child of state-based guest workers would be granted immediate U.S. citizenship and access to federal benefits,” National Review’s Fred Bauer explains24. “At the age of 21, a U.S. citizen can sponsor his or her parents to become permanent residents and, eventually, citizens.”

Add incrementalism to the mix. As Bauer warns, it wouldn’t be long before Democrats would demand that “guest workers and their families have access to at least some federal benefits, health care likely chief among them,” even as they would smear Republicans as cold-hearted and anti-immigrant for resisting.

Bauer further notes the horrendous “optics” ripe for leftist exploitation, including “tenements swollen with guest workers and their beleaguered families … and tearful U.S. citizens waving goodbye to their guest-worker parents, who have to leave the country because they’ve lost their jobs.” He also worries about the diminishment of civic health attached to a “large class of residents who are viewed purely as economic resources with no stake in American society.”

If that sounds familiar, it’s because America abided a similar arrangement once before — it was called slavery.

Hot Air columnist Jazz Shaw focuses25 on security, warning that though the H-1B visa program is exploited by large companies to replace American workers with cheaper foreign counterparts, it’s also “one of the only ways to find out if someone is no longer complying with the rules or is in an overstay situation.” This proposal would engender “a red carpet invitation to abuse the visa system and disappear into the crowd.”

Regardless, Johnson remains wedded to the prevailing — and demonstrably26 false27 — assertions driving ideas like this. “We have a shortage of workers in all different areas of the economy,” he insists. “We need to recognize that a one-size-fits-all federal model for visas or guest workers doesn’t work.”

No, we need to recognize that, as is so often the case, government is determined to fix a problem on the wrong end. If there is a shortage of high-skill American workers in certain fields, it makes far more sense to reform a failing educational system that churns out Americans ill-equipped to compete in the 21st century economy.

As for the “jobs Americans refuse to do,” the notion that government would simultaneously underwrite millions of able-bodied dependents who refuse to work (or believe that certain work is “beneath them”) and the additional economic costs that attend themselves to accommodating millions of guest workers and their families is utterly absurd.

“I had thought that the current agenda for any sort of ‘immigration reform’ was pretty clear following the last election cycle,” Shaw writes. “There would be no discussions of amnesty or any other priorities of liberals and open borders advocates until the border was secure and progress was being made on getting at least the worst offending criminal illegal aliens out of the country. Apparently I was mistaken.”

Once again, the public’s foremost immigration concerns, as in national security and the Rule of Law, are being ignored by Republicans still pushing “comprehensive immigration reform” — by any subterfuge necessary.

They would like to pretend the 2016 election never happened. But it did. And they ignore its mandate at their own peril.

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

Miss USA and the Tolerant Feminists28 — As a beauty pageant winner found out, being a feminist apparently means conforming to one choice and redefining equality.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Kathryn Jean Lopez: Suicide Is Never Painless29
George Will: Federal Power Spins Its Ever-Growing Web30
Jeff Jacoby: Be Wary of a Trump Feeding Frenzy31

For more, visit Right Opinion32.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Burt Prelutsky33: “Rep. Maxine Waters dared to call Attorney General Jeff Sessions a racist because ‘he comes from a time and place where bigotry was acceptable.’ Such a remark is not merely stupid and an insult to the entire South, but coming from Waters, who has spent a third of her 78 years in Congress spouting the nastiest sort of racist rhetoric, it constitutes the last word in hypocrisy. This is a woman who insists that blacks, including those who committed murder during the Watts riots, are always innocent victims, and that the riots weren’t really riots, but a justifiable rebellion against white oppression. Someone should explain to her that a rebellion is when American patriots toss English tea overboard, not when thugs cart home stolen TVs, shoes, microwaves and cases of booze. Maxine Waters is the Left’s idea of a folk hero, but that should come as no surprise. After all, Senator Robert Byrd and Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, both former members of the Klan, wound up as liberal icons. Whether black or white, those on the Left have no problem clasping racists to their collective bosom, just so long as they’re Democrats.”

SHORT CUTS

The Gipper: “The taxpayer: That’s someone who works for the federal government but doesn’t have to take the civil service examination.”

Observations: “The progressives understand that most people have so little knowledge of what the Constitution actually says that, amidst all the chatter about a constitutional crisis, it would never occur to the voters to check out the actual document. Otherwise, they would understand that Trump was well within his presidential rights to fire the director of the FBI for any reason under the sun, including Comey’s excessive height. But, then, most Americans didn’t seem to know or care that Barack Obama spent eight years using the Constitution as his own personal roll of toilet paper.” —Burt Prelutsky

For the record: “What I have found appalling is the number of leaks that have taken place over the last several months. … The real damage to national security is the leaks. These individuals who still stay within the government and are leaking this stuff to the press need to be brought to task.” —former CIA Director John Brennan

Missed opportunity: “I never thought [Hillary Clinton] was a great candidate. I thought I was a great candidate.” —Joe Biden

Pure evilness: “If there’s anything we’ve learned from Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, The Avengers) over the years, it’s this — every single one of us has a hero inside; and it’s our responsibility to use our superpowers to slay.” —Planned Parenthood

And last… “Every time we see the words ‘former U.S. officials’ we should keep in mind there’s a good chance the source would be more accurately characterized as a ‘former Obama administration official.’ This doesn’t mean that former official is automatically lying, just that they have a particular agenda for leaking this information, and one that is being effectively withheld from readers.” —Jim Geraghty

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.