The Patriot Post Digest 9-17-2019

________________________________
The Patriot Post Digest 9-17-2019
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
_______________________________

The Patriot Post® · Mid-Day Digest

Sep. 17, 2019

https://patriotpost.us/digests/65525-mid-day-digest

THE FOUNDATION

“Congress shall make no law … prohibiting … the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” —First Amendment

https://patriotpost.us/fqd/65519-founders-quote-daily

IN TODAY’S EDITION

Memo to Warren: Corrupt lobbying is a result of Democrat policies.1
Impeachment is a desperate charade Democrats just won’t quit.2
Daily Features: More Analysis3, Columnists4, Headlines5, Opinion in Brief6, Short Cuts7, Memes8, and Cartoons9.

IN BRIEF

Warren’s Corrupt ‘Anti-Corruption’ Plan10

Elizabeth Warren, who corruptly exploited her own bogus claims11 of Native American heritage to advance her academic career, has a plan to eradicate corruption from Washington. You might say she wants to borrow a popular refrain to “drain the swamp.”

Warren laments12, “In 1958, the National Election Survey first asked Americans a simple question: Do you trust the government to do the right thing most of the time? That year, 73% of Americans said yes. In 2019, that number is just 17%. Five out of every six Americans do not trust their government to do the right thing. Why have so many people lost faith in government?”

The senator blames “right-wing politicians” for spending “a generation attacking the very idea of government,” before launching on her tired refrain about the “wealthy and the well-connected” — of which Warren herself is a prominent member13. But we can think of two answers to her question that are intimately related. The first is this admonition from Thomas Jefferson’s first inaugural address: “A wise and frugal government … shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

The second is that the warning issued by James Madison, author of the Constitution we celebrate today14, has come to pass: “The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.”

Why don’t Americans trust the government? Because it’s doing things poorly that it was never constitutionally empowered to do in the first place. Power, meet abuse. To say so is not “attacking government.” It’s advocating a limited and constitutional one.

Virtually the entire Democrat platform since, oh, about 1958 has been along the lines of the so-called “Great Society15” — unconstitutional and failed welfare programs that “take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned,” only to give it to someone who didn’t earn it. Of course, Democrats really began traveling down the “progressive” road with Woodrow Wilson’s income-tax-funded administrative state and stomped on the accelerator with Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” socialism16.

Naturally, Warren only doubles down on the Democrats’ top-down, government-control approach. Regulate this, outlaw that, tax the other thing. That’s why it’s almost comical that her plan echoes Barack Obama in its call for “big, structural change to fundamentally transform our government.” How is it fundamental change to do more of what government has spent the last century doing?

In all honesty, we do indeed need a fundamental transformation — one that returns the federal government to its proper, constitutionally limited role. That means things like prioritizing national defense while ceasing the income redistribution that consumes two-thirds of the $4 trillion budget and feeds the very lobbying problem Warren claims to want to eradicate. Warren and her fellow socialists demand even more redistribution programs that would only exacerbate the corruption they claim to want to solve.

But as a final thought, the Founders thought the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” (i.e., lobbying) was important enough to place in the First Amendment. Yes, lobbyists can be corrupt, but no more so than the politicians and unelected bureaucrats crafting reams of rules dictating everything from what kind of light bulb we use to how much water our toilets flush. Warren’s plan to gut the First Amendment simply because she doesn’t want to hear from lobbyists who oppose such things isn’t removing corruption; it’s adding tyranny.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/65517-warrens-corrupt-anti-corruption-plan

Desperate Dems Still Pushing Impeachment Charade17

President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Cory Lewandowski, is scheduled to appear today before the House Judiciary Committee as Democrats desperately struggle to breathe new life into their dubious impeachment gambit. However, as the Associated Press reports, “It’s unlikely that Democrats will get much new information. A devoted friend and supporter of the Republican president, Lewandowski isn’t expected to elaborate much beyond what he told [Robert] Mueller’s investigators last year. Mueller himself testified this summer, with no bombshells.”

House Democrats have been engaged in quite the game of semantics over the term “impeachment.” Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) has hedged on whether he’s actually engaging in an impeachment investigation. CNN’s Chris Cuomo recently asked Nadler if what he was doing might be called an “impeachment inquiry.” Nadler replied, “It is not necessarily called an impeachment inquiry. That’s a made-up term without legal significance.” But then Nadler immediately twisted back, “It is, however, what we are doing.” In other words, Nadler’s trying to hang the scandal of impeachment on Trump without actually initiating impeachment proceedings.

What Nadler is engaged in is a desperate attempt to keep the Democrats’ “Trump is a criminal” narrative alive. It’s why they continue their partisan witch hunt for a crime they have yet to find.

Over the weekend, former Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy responded to Nadler’s duplicitous explanation on impeachment by stating, “This has been a disaster from day one and I don’t expect that to change. … You talk about mishandling something from day one, Nadler has mishandled — I mean, if we are debating nomenclature between an impeachment inquiry and an impeachment investigation, they’ve already lost.”

Nonetheless, Nadler and company got some good news Monday when New York state prosecutors issued subpoenas for the last eight years of Trump’s tax returns18. This case is related to the Stormy Daniels fiasco, in which there are questions about whether Trump’s alleged hush-money payment broke campaign-finance laws. As we have warned19 in the past, this case could become problematic for Trump. In the meantime, this provides Nadler just the fuel he needs to convince his hard-left base that impeachment is a forgone conclusion, even when it isn’t.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/65520-desperate-dems-still-pushing-impeachment-charade