The Patriot Post Digest 3-29-2018

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 3-29-2018
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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The Patriot Post® · Mid-Day Digest
Mar. 29, 2018 · https://patriotpost.us/digests/55049-mid-day-digest

IN TODAY’S EDITION

More evidence that Obama White House, FBI, CIA, Dems colluded over the Trump probe.
Anti-gun zealots may want to ban them, but they’re awfully ignorant of the facts.
“Toxic masculinity” is part of the leftist push to emasculate America’s men.
“Roseanne” debuted to big numbers because of politics, but caveat emptor.
The NFL fumbled again on social justice.
Brigitte Gabriel provides a helpful look at radical Islamic terrorism.
Plus our Daily Features: Top Headlines, Memes, Cartoons, Columnists and Short Cuts.

EDITOR’S NOTE

In lieu of our Friday editions, we will take the day to observe Good Friday ahead of Easter, which we fondly call Resurrection Day. We’ll be back with normal editions Monday.

THE FOUNDATION

“A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.” —Samuel Adams (1779)

IN BRIEF

New Evidence of Obama’s Deep-State Collusion?1

By Thomas Gallatin

New information has emerged from text messages between those two now-infamous FBI lovebirds, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, suggesting that former Obama White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, former Democrat Senate Leader Harry Reid (NV) and former CIA Director John Brennan were coordinating on the Donald Trump/Russia collusion conspiracy and subsequent FBI investigation.

A GOP congressional source explained2 to Fox News, “We are not making conclusions. What we are saying is that the timeline is concerning enough to warrant the appointment of an independent investigator to look at whether or not the Obama White House was involved” in the Trump/Russia investigation.

“These texts seem to show FBI officials were briefing the Obama WH on the early stages of the Trump campaign investigation in 2016. How much did the Obama WH know? Were they involved?” tweeted Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), who chairs the House Freedom Caucus.

Congressional investigators noted the CIA and FBI are supposed to be “independent agencies,” and “coordination between political actors at the White House and investigators would be inappropriate.” As we have long surmised3, Barack Obama’s DOJ was involved in both the effort to exonerate Hillary Clinton and apparently4 in crafting and pressing the whole Trump/Russia collusion conspiracy. Slowly, these deep-state actors’ names are rising to the surface.

Meanwhile, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz has announced that he will be opening up an investigation into allegations of possible abuse of the FISA court5 by FBI agents. While no specific reference was made to the FBI’s surveillance of members of Trump’s campaign team, the broader language hints that this is exactly what Horowitz will be investigating. However, the IG’s investigation will be limited in that he is able to subpoena only those who are currently employed by the government, which means that neither former FBI Director James Comey nor former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe will be forced to testify.

And speaking of Comey, the disgraced former FBI chief has been given top billing by CNN in an upcoming town hall event to launch his new book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies & Leadership. Clearly, Comey has no concerns about staking out an obvious political position. Or maybe Comey just wanted to ensure that he wouldn’t face any hardball questions over why he chose to exonerate Clinton6.

No Excuse for the Ignorance of Gun-Grabbers7

By Louis DeBroux

Unfortunately, one side in the gun debate is not just ignorant of basic facts8 but militantly and willfully so. In fact, many are just plain idiotic9.

Gun control advocates demand “commonsense” gun control measures, like expanding background checks, closing the “gun show loophole,” and banning “assault” weapons, machine guns and “high capacity” magazines. They claim it’s easier to buy a gun than to buy books, and anyone opposing their “commonsense” reforms must want children to die.

Setting aside momentarily the reprehensible charge that a disagreement on policy is evidence of a desire to see more dead children, these proposals are riddled with errors and logical fallacies10.

For example, though gun control advocates routinely refer to banning “assault” weapons, the truth is there are almost none in civilian possession. The U.S. Department of Defense defines assault weapons11 as “short, compact, selective-fire weapons.” In other words, a battlefield rifle capable of both semiautomatic (one round fired per trigger pull) and fully automatic (repeated fire with single trigger pull) fire. Fully automatic weapons (i.e., machine guns) have been banned for civilian use since the National Firearms Act of 1934.

The AR-15 (which stands for ArmaLite, not “assault rifle”) is the most popular rifle in America today. Though militaristic in appearance, it is a semiautomatic rifle, functionally no different than the millions of hunting rifles that gun-grabbers claim they have no desire to confiscate. In fact, it fires a smaller round than many hunting rifles. So why ban one gun that is functionally equivalent to another simply because it looks “scary”?

If you want to know more about America’s most popular rifle, visit assaultweapon.info12.

Regarding the other items, “high capacity” is really standard capacity, and there is no gun show loophole13. Even at gun shows, firearms dealers are required to perform background checks prior to sale, and they sure aren’t going to risk massive fines and imprisonment just to sell you a gun.

So as a practical matter, there is no logical reason to ban so-called “assault” weapons unless gun control proponents are also going to ban all semiautomatic weapons, including handguns, which they claim they are not trying to do.

While we don’t expect opponents of gun rights to be gun experts, we do expect them to have basic knowledge of the things they are trying to ban. The problem is that basic knowledge might change their minds, and they can’t have that.

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 3-29-2018
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Top Headlines14

Trump ousts Veterans Affairs chief Shulkin, nominates personal physician to replace him (The Washington Post2)

Report: VA missed background checks for thousands of employees (Military Times15)

Facebook to limit use of data brokers for ad targeting (Bloomberg16)

Supreme Court grapples with partisan gerrymandering once again with Maryland case (Roll Call17)

Kim Jong-un to meet South Korea’s president in historic summit set for April (CBS News18.)

NATO moves toward readying more troops to confront Russian threat (The Wall Street Journal19)

Netflix names Susan Rice, Benghazi storyteller, to board of directors (Hot Air20)

New report21 misleads on the health risks of abortion for women (National Review22)

Pro-life lawmakers lay groundwork for Roe challenge (The Hill23)

Humor: Mark Zuckerberg prepares for congressional testimony by poring over lawmakers’ personal data (The Onion24)

Policy: The White House needs better guidance on its new China trade policy (The Heritage Foundation25)

Policy: The solemn duty of government and the military (The Washington Times26)

For more of today’s news, visit Patriot Headline Report27.

FEATURED ANALYSIS
Toxic Progressivism Champions Toxic Masculinity28

By Arnold Ahlert

Seven states — California, Florida, Louisiana, Georgia, Montana, Oregon and Wisconsin — have laws in place requiring29 the chemical castration of men convicted of violent sex crimes. Oklahoma is attempting to become the eighth state to enact a similar measure. Time magazine characterizes these laws as “controversial” and Oklahoma’s ACLU chapter spokeswoman Allie Shinn insists such laws may violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition of “cruel and unusual” punishment. No doubt most progressives would heartily agree. Yet many of those same progressives support the symbolic castration of American males, promulgated as “toxic masculinity.”

Unsurprisingly, college campuses are leading the charge. “Duke University is famous for its science and engineering programs, as well as its dominance in college basketball,” Fox News reported30 in 2016. “Now, it may also become known as a great place for men to gather and contemplate why they’re such horrible people.”

The Campus Women’s Center launched the project, targeting “male identified” students and subjecting them to discussions about “male privilege, patriarchy, ‘the language of dominance,’ rape culture, pornography, machismo and other topics,” Fox adds.

The term “male identified” is a window into this poisonous mindset, one that first denies biological and chromosomal reality and then presumes that the default position for any man or boy who refuses to abide progressive assertions of gender “fluidity” is toxic.

And like every leftist effort to promote their odious agenda, a full-scale, coordinated propaganda campaign is an essential part of the mix. “The term ‘toxic masculinity’ has crept into the lexicon in the past 12 months, having appeared in mainstream news articles, popular feminist blogs and, as of November, the crowd-sourced online repository of slang words, Urban Dictionary,” columnist Hayley Gleeson explained31 in 2017. “Generally used to denote how some aspects of masculinity — such as entitlement, homophobia and sexual aggressiveness — can harm women and families and cripple men’s own health, toxic masculinity, at its most extreme edges, has been linked with acts of violence like mass shootings and university campus sexual assault.”

Cue the tie to the Parkland shooting. “As I read about [the assailant’s] passion for guns, I was not surprised,” declares32 columnist Ziad Ahmed. “As an American teenage boy, the gross glorification of violence, weapons, and arms in our culture is not the least bit surprising. In fact, it’s deeply entrenched into the idea of American masculinity, beginning as early as in elementary school.”

Really? American masculinity per se is at best entitled, homophobic and aggressive, and at worst homicidal? Such pernicious garbage can only be asserted by one almost wholly ignorant of American history. Boys were once allowed to embrace their natural rambunctiousness, but that now constitutes “abnormal” behavior requiring life-altering drugs such as Ritalin and Adderall to treat the nearly one in five children between the ages of four and 17 — overwhelmingly boys — who have been diagnosed33 with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

As for guns, Spokane Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said it best: “When I was in high school, every one of those rigs in the high-school parking lot had a gun in the gun rack. Why? We went hunting on the way home. None of those guns ever walked into a school, none of those guns ever shot anybody. … Did the gun change or did you as a society change?”

Society has certainly cultivated an unprecedented level of hypocrisy. How many of the same celebrities who attended34 last weekend’s anti-gun fest35 have starred in movies or written songs that glorify violence36 — and have armed security protecting them?

Ironically, it’s most likely that the least hysterical progressive assertion about toxic masculinity is the one that is the most deleterious, as in the oft-stated feminist assertion that men are unnecessary37. In their book38, The Flipside of Feminism, authors Suzanne Venker and Phyllis Schlafly assert, “In the space of just a few decades American women have managed to demote men from respected providers and protectors to being unnecessary, irrelevant, and expendable.”

Unfortunately, more and more men are buying into that assertion. In 2016, NPR revealed39 more American men between the ages of 18 and 34 live with their parents than a spouse or partner, while the numbers for women are exactly reversed. In 2017, The Atlantic revealed40 that the 58%-42% ratio of men versus women attending college in the 1970s “has now almost exactly reversed.” A couple of weeks ago, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson illuminated41 an even deeper crisis, noting that men are dying younger, are fatter, kill themselves more often, and are imprisoned at far higher rates than women.

Government has aided and abetted the notion of expendability as well, and nothing did it better than Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” initiative42. Before the Great Society, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program was reserved for widows, as a means of funding once-married women who had lost the primary male supporter of the family. Johnson and Congress changed the qualifications, making any household where there was no male family head present eligible for taxpayer subsidies.

The resulting tsunami of men failing to take responsibility for their own children has become irrefutable. In 196543, 24% of black children and 3.1% of white children were born out of wedlock. By 2013, those numbers had skyrocketed44 to 72% and 29%, respectively.

“Males in particular have been neutered by the Entitlement Society and the Welfare State,” Forbes magazine asserted45 in 2015. “Groups which have the most contact with the welfare state, especially through various public assistance policies … have seen the greatest amount of male neutering,” the article adds.

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 3-29-2018
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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One might conclude such neutering is a bug in the system. That conclusion is naïve. Toxic masculinity, beta male-worship46 and the wholesale destruction of the nuclear family engendered by “unnecessary” men is a feature of the progressive project that is all about the acquisition and maintenance of government power by any means necessary, even if it includes tossing self-reliant men — a trait now deemed47 to be “associated with negative mental health outcomes” by the American Psychological Association — on the ash heap of history.

Tucker Carlson spoke to the “elemental biology” of men and women needing each other. Progressives speak to the necessity48 of completely eliminating the terms “men” and “women” in pursuit of a utopian society that is really about “tearing away the old in search of the new, evidence be damned,” as columnist Ben Shapiro asserts49.

Not evidence, Mr. Shapiro. Liberty.

Toxic masculinity? Toxic progressivism is more like it.

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

‘Roseanne’ Debuts to Big Ratings Because of Politics54 — But just because she’s a Trump supporter doesn’t mean the show’s message is conservative.
NFL Fumbles on National Anthem Again While Bowing to SJWs55 — Owners cater to social justice organizations while avoiding any rules aimed at anthem protests.
Brigitte Gabriel: A Voice Against Radical Islamic Terrorism56 — Her organization, ACT for America, provides a needed foundation for addressing the real threat.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Hans von Spakovsky: Did Facebook’s ‘Favors’ for the Obama Campaign Constitute a Violation of Federal Law?57
Larry Elder: Where’s the Common Sense in ‘Commonsense’ Gun Laws?58
Cal Thomas: John Bolton’s Enemies59
Jeff Jacoby: Registering to Vote Should Be Your Choice, Not the State’s60
Victor Davis Hanson: The Distortions of Our Unelected Officials61
For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion62.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Gary Bauer63: “A number of people have said to me, ‘There is no way the Second Amendment is going to be repealed.’ Really? I remember growing up when good people said, ‘They will never take prayer out of the schools. The country would never stand for it.’ I recall my father saying, ‘If someone doesn’t stand up for the Pledge, they would be run out of town.’ About 10 years ago, I recall pastors who told me to calm down about the idea of ‘men marrying other men.’ More recently, we all thought it was crazy that men would be allowed to use women’s restrooms. My friends, it CAN happen. Think about this: In 2016, we came very close to seeing our right to bear arms and religious liberty eroded significantly. If Hillary Clinton had received 77,000 more votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, she would be president today. The Supreme Court vacancy left by Antonin Scalia’s death would not have been filled by Neil Gorsuch but by another left-wing activist like Ruth Bader Ginsburg. As I [have] noted … the 2008 Heller decision, written by Justice Scalia, upholding the Second Amendment right to own a firearm was a 5-4 decision. Just one vote on the Supreme Court is all it would take to gut the Second Amendment. Elections have consequences.”

SHORT CUTS

Upright: “To make a man a protector is to give him purpose. To deny him the means of protecting his family is to undercut that purpose.” —David French

The BIG Lie: “The first amendment has restrictions. The second amendment has no restrictions. These weapons are not in the hands of ‘well-regulated’ militias. The changes the people are demanding do not desecrate the second amendment, they just make it a safe addition to our constitution.” —Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student and anti-gun grandstander Cameron Kasky on Twitter

Braying Jennies: “[EPA Chief Scott] Pruitt … said in an interview published in The Daily Caller last week that he would no longer allow64 the agency to use studies that include nonpublic scientific data to develop rules to safeguard public health and prevent pollution. … Don’t be fooled by this talk of transparency. He and some conservative members of Congress are setting up a nonexistent problem in order to prevent the E.P.A. from using the best available science.” —former EPA officials Gina McCarthy and Janet McCabe

Race bait: “[Republicans] want to change [the census] to count the number65 of U.S. citizens so that they can engage in very not subtle voter suppression. That is illegal and that is totally inconsistent with what the North Star of the census in Republican and Democratic administrations have been.” —DNC Chairman Tom Perez

Belly laugh of the week: “If I were gonna [run for president], I’d do it because I think I would have concluded that maybe I could unify the country.” —former Attorney General Eric Holder

And last… “We need a Disney princess who teaches basic statistical literacy to feminist writers.” —Ben Shapiro

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. We also humbly ask prayer for your Patriot team, that our mission would seed and encourage the spirit of Liberty in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis

Nate Jackson, Managing Editor
Mark Alexander, Publisher