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« on: February 15, 2018, 07:01:01 PM » |
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The Patriot Post Digest 2-14-2018
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Patriot Post® · Mid-Day Digest
Feb. 14, 2018 · https://patriotpost.us/digests/54140-mid-day-digest
IN TODAY’S EDITION
There’s a big difference between DACA and DACA-plus.
The Education Department has flushed Obama’s potty policies for public schools.
Trump’s food stamp reform is a pretty good idea. Will Congress bite?
Solving infrastructure, Trump style.
Rob Porter’s a sleaze ball, the administration failed, and the Leftmedia is exploiting it.
More evidence the ethanol mandate hurts the economy.
Plus our Daily Features: Top Headlines, Memes, Cartoons, Columnists and Short Cuts.
THE FOUNDATION
“The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests.” —Alexander Hamilton (1788.)
FEATURED ANALYSIS
Democrats Overplay Their Hand With Extreme DACA Demands1
By Louis DeBroux
The current immigration debate is surreal, worthy of a chapter in a Lewis Carrol novel, where logic is turned upside down and words have no meaning whatsoever because they mean what their utterers want them to mean in that moment.
The current crisis du jour is the pending end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as “DACA,” through which Barack Obama granted protection against deportation for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens.
In 2010, with Democrats firmly in control of Congress, Obama faced immense pressure to push amnesty for millions of illegals. At first, Obama rightly recognized the limits of his power2, stating, “I am not king. I can’t do these things just by myself.” In March 2011, he reiterated that position, saying, “With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that’s just not the case.” In 2012, desperate for Hispanic voters to bail him out at the ballot box, Obama did an about-face and announced the implementation of the DACA program.
Of course, Democrats never allow the truth to ruin a political narrative, so despite Obama’s confession that DACA is unconstitutional, and despite the courts concurring, Democrats now claim President Donald Trump is a heartless racist for ending a program3 that Obama had no right to implement. And two activist judges have issued orders to block Trump’s move4.
In actuality, Trump is being far more compassionate than the law requires. In exchange for securing the border and ending chain migration and the visa lottery5, Trump is offering to grant not only amnesty but a path to citizenship for 1.8 million illegals — nearly three times more than signed up for Obama’s DACA program.
Such generosity has been met with extreme demands by Democrats6: amnesty without border security, and a continuation of chain migration, further exploding the number of illegals entering the U.S.
There is zero legal obligation for the U.S. to grant amnesty to any illegals, and even the claim of a moral obligation is tenuous at best. The blame lies solely with the parents of the illegals who were brought here as children in direct defiance of U.S. immigration laws.
Regardless, because Americans are a compassionate people, there is widespread agreement that those illegal alien children who are truly here through no fault of their own, and who have known no other country, should be allowed to stay. Even Numbers USA, which advocates for strict limits on immigration, supports giving the so-called “Dreamers” legal status.
It is important to delineate between the “Dreamers” under DACA and what might be called “DACA-plus7.” The DACA recipients took advantage of Obama’s (illegal) program and applied for the deferral, paid fees and were issued work permits that allowed them to be hired by American employers. There were about 800,000 who took advantage of the program, minus the approximately 110,000 who were deported for crimes, or failed to renew their green cards, or married U.S. citizens. These are the people Americans support allowing to stay.
Not good enough, say Democrats. They cynically shut down the government last month to pressure Republicans to capitulate to their demands to expand the amnesty pool to include illegals who came here late in their teens, who were not born here, and for whom America is not their only home. It was a showdown they lost8, but it was a revealing moment.
What is particularly galling to many Americans is to have their compassion rewarded with contempt and ingratitude. The job of the American government is first and foremost to protect the rights and interests of American citizens. As President Trump stated in his State of the Union Address9, “My duty, and the sacred duty of every elected official in this chamber, is to defend Americans, to protect their safety, their families, their communities, and their right to the American Dream. … Because Americans are dreamers, too.”
Democrats are overplaying their hand10, and it will come back to bite them. Nothing will erode the goodwill of the American people like being told that their kindness is not only owed to the illegals who broke our laws but that it is insufficient.
No other nation takes in as many immigrants as the United States. No other nation treats them as well as we do. Not only have we allowed them to stay, we have spent tens of billions of dollars11 feeding, housing and educating them.
Compare that to Mexico, home to many of these illegals. Mexico is in the process of a harsh crackdown on illegals coming up through Central America. In Mexico, instead of access to welfare programs and education, illegals are rounded up in police raids, imprisoned, beaten and often tortured12.
America’s current situation is untenable. Our immigration laws must be reformed to deal with those here and those who want to come here. But in doing so, Americans and their interests should come first. Not one single immigrant or illegal alien has a “right” to come to America. Those allowed to stay do so out of the kindness of the American people.
And limiting immigration to those who truly love America, who want to embrace our history and culture, who promise to obey our laws, and who will be a net gain for our country is not an unreasonable demand.
IN BRIEF
Flushing Obama’s Potty Policies13
By Nate Jackson
Stories of President Donald Trump’s administration undoing the bankrupt policies of Barack Obama’s White House are especially welcome news. The latest episode is the announcement from Betsy DeVos’s Department of Education that it will no longer intervene in kerfuffles over public school bathroom use on behalf of transgender individuals.
In May 2016, Obama’s school powder room police14 dictated that public schools must accommodate kids suffering from gender dysphoria — not by actually helping them, of course, but by forcing female students to share bathrooms and locker rooms with males claiming to be females. Federal funding always comes with strings attached. It was nothing less than part of a growing pattern of progressive child abuse15.
The law in question says simply, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” The key word is “sex.”
Education Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Hill explained, “Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, not gender identity. In the case of bathrooms, however, longstanding regulations provide that separating facilities on the basis of sex is not a form of discrimination prohibited by Title IX.” Indeed, words mean things16, and leftists’ constant redefinition of accepted terms is a big part of enacting their agenda. “Sex” does not mean gender “identity.”
Unfortunately, what was enacted by a pen and undone by a pen can be re-enacted with a pen by the next Democrat administration — at least until the courts weigh in, and at least one case is headed to the Supreme Court. Regardless, leftists will by no means concede defeat in the bathroom wars. For the moment, however, there is some semblance of common sense coming from the Department of Education.
Trump SNAPS to It With Reform Proposal17
By Jordan Candler
It goes without saying that every welfare and entitlement program demands a major overhaul. Constitutional issues aside, there simply isn’t enough money flowing into the Treasury to continue the status quo. More importantly, the way in which these programs are structured is broken and unsustainable. Consequently, this makes them highly vulnerable to abuse to varying degrees, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a.k.a. food stamps. |
