THE FOUNDATION
"[T]he great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachment of the others." --James Madison, Federalist No. 51, 1788TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS
U.S. Captures Benghazi Suspect
When we first read the Washington Post headline, "U.S. captures Benghazi suspect in secret raid," we were confused. The videographer, whose video the White House blamed for sparking the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the Benghazi consulate, had already been arrested. Kidding aside, The Washington Post reports, "Ahmed Abu Khattala was captured Sunday near Benghazi by American troops, working alongside the FBI, following months of planning, and was now in U.S. custody 'in a secure location outside Libya.' ... President Obama said that 'with this operation, the United States has once again demonstrated that we will do whatever it takes to see that justice is done when people harm Americans.'" The FBI got one of its men -- after nearly two years hiding in plain sight -- but the White House still needs to explain how Benghazi was allowed to happen. More...Comment | Share
More IRS Emails 'Disappear'
Republicans aren't buying the IRS's claim that vital Lois Lerner emails were "lost" during a conveniently timed computer crash. However, the Obama administration apparently thinks you're that stupid -- and more. The AP reports, "On Tuesday, two key lawmakers said the IRS has also lost emails from six additional IRS workers whose computers crashed [emphasis added]. Among them was Nikole Flax, who was chief of staff to Lerner's boss, then-deputy commissioner Steven Miller." Say, six more workers, including another high-profile employee, experienced computer crashes around the same time -- all of which somehow mysteriously erased correspondences, never to be seen again? This despite a regulation requiring that such emails be printed and archived. Nothing to see here folks, move along. Writing in National Review, attorney David French responds, "The administration's misconduct and its cover-up are so brazen, so contemptuous of common sense and the truth, that they will -- once and for all -- put the media and the Left to the test: When it comes to this administration, does the rule of law matter at all? Does the truth matter at all? Or is it all about ideology now?" The answer to that has never been clearer. More...Comment | Share
Iran Is Not a Friend
To combat the advance of the ISIL, the United States has turned to the enemy of her enemy: Iran. The U.S. sent 275 troops to protect its embassy (a lesson learned from Benghazi?) and Iran deployed its Revolutionary Guard to fight the ISIL. The two countries spoke briefly and Obama officials hope the crisis will thaw their relationship, making the American mistake of forgetting wrongs quicker than the enemy. Yet Iran has responded coldly. In an editorial, The Wall Street Journal observed, "This outreach to Iran smacks mostly of strategic desperation. It is what an Administration does when it realizes its policy has failed and the damage to U.S. interests is becoming too obvious to hide from the American public. [Obama's] abdication on Syria created a mecca for jihadists and his total withdrawal from Iraq created a vacuum for regional sectarians and Iran to fill." In the Middle East game of cutthroat, Obama has put on a blindfold and stumbled right into the middle. More...Comment | Share
Pelosi on 'Disdain and Hate'
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) wrote a letter to San Francisco Catholic archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, insisting he skip a planned speech at a pro-marriage rally because the National Organization for Marriage promotes "disdain and hate towards LGBT persons." Pelosi is reportedly Catholic. Cordileone responded with a message for Pelosi and all Christians on the Left: "[I must] proclaim the truth -- the whole truth -- about the human person and God's will for our flourishing. I must do that in season and out of season, even when truths that it is my duty to uphold and teach are unpopular, including especially the truth about marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife." The March for Marriage, he added, is not "'anti-LGBT' (as some have described it). It is not anti-anyone or anti-anything. Rather, it is a pro-marriage March." He also pointed to the hypocrisy of Pelosi's side, which has promoted anything but tolerance for traditional values -- disdain and hate, if you will.Comment | Share
The Clinton Rule
During Bill Clinton's presidency, he and Hillary famously supported a high estate tax on inherited wealth -- which includes many a family-owned small business. The Clintons may have left the White House "dead broke," but today the fabulously wealthy pair are hypocritically seeking to minimize their own tax burden. Bloomberg reports, "To reduce the tax pinch, the Clintons are using financial planning strategies befitting the top 1 percent of U.S. households in wealth. These moves, common among multimillionaires, will help shield some of their estate from the tax that now tops out at 40 percent of assets upon death." What about the Left's sacred Buffett Rule? Why are the Clintons not paying their fair share? More...Comment | Share
For more, visit Right Hooks.
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Help Wanted!
Your Patriot Post team works tirelessly to promote Essential Liberty in every edition we publish. We do this by continually pointing to First Principles and viewing today's news and policy developments through that lens. No other conservative outlet offers this unique perspective from a constitutional viewpoint. Something else that sets us apart is that we are entirely supported by readers like you. We accept no advertising, and there are no parent organizations behind our operation -- we need your help to sustain us.If you're able, please make a donation to the Independence Day Campaign today. If you prefer to support us by mail, please send your check with our printable donation form.
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Nate Jackson
Managing Editor
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RIGHT ANALYSIS
Hillary Blames YouTube, Calls IRS 'Real Scandal' and Trashes Gun Owners
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Regarding the delayed-for-two-years capture of Ahmed Abu Khattala, who is believed to have been a perpetrator of the attack at Benghazi, she boasted, "What was made abundantly clear by this latest effort, is we have an unwavering commitment to go after anyone, no matter how long it takes, who is responsible for harming Americans." The shame is, in part because of her dereliction of duty, Americans were harmed in the first place. And not just harmed -- U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and three others were murdered.
What has she learned? Well, not much. In fact, she's stubbornly sticking to her original talking points on the YouTube video. "This was the fog of war," she said. "You know, my own assessment careened from, you know, 'The video had something to do with it, the video had nothing to do with it. It may have affected some people, it didn't affect other people.' And I think the conclusion to draw -- because we were not just monitoring what was happening in Benghazi once it began to unfold, but remember we had a very dangerous assault on our embassy in Cairo that same day, which was clearly linked to that video. ... I think that the investigations that have been carried out basically conclude, 'We can't say that everybody was influenced and we can't say everybody wasn't,' but what the intelligence community said was 'spontaneous protests' and that is what, at the time, they thought."
In other words, she and the president were perfectly justified in continuing to blame the YouTube video long after that theory was utterly discredited. She alluded to the talking points, which remain one of the most serious questions about the episode. Barack Obama was re-elected in part on his narrative that al-Qaida had been "decimated" and admitting the attack was terrorism would have undermined that happy ending.
Still, she says, "We're doing the best we can to find out what happened." Despite numerous investigations, she added, "I'm still looking for answers." It's ironic she said this on the 20th anniversary of the low-speed chase involving O.J. Simpson. He's also still looking for the "real killer."
In other foreign policy news, she doubled down on her insistence that the five Taliban jihadis swapped for Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl pose no threat, though this time with a qualifier: "As long as they're in Qatar, they're not a threat to the United States." She added, "In Qatar, with an agreement that has been entered into, they are supposed to be constrained from what they can do, and certainly they are not supposed to be permitted to travel. In that situation, they are not a threat." Unfortunately, the five are reportedly free to move about the country and can leave altogether in a year. We have no doubt they are a threat.
Turning to a domestic scandal, Hillary admitted that the IRS Tea Party targeting is a big deal, contrary to Barack Obama's insistence that it's a "phony scandal" and there's not a "smidgeon of corruption" at the agency. "Well, I think any time the IRS is involved, for many people, it's a real scandal," Clinton said. "And I think, though, that there are some challenges that rightly need to be made to, uh, what is being said and I assume that the inquiry will continue. So, I don't have the details, but I think what President Obama means ... is there really wasn't a lot of, uh, you know, evidence that this was deliberate but that's why the investigation needs to continue." That's kind of hard to do now that the IRS insists that it's "lost" a bunch of relevant emails.
On the Second Amendment and the Left's various efforts to push gun control, she insisted banning semi-automatic rifles ("assault weapons") and standard-capacity magazines ("high-capacity" magazines) would protect students -- who are already in "gun-free zones" -- from "that very, very, very small group that is, unfortunately, prone to violence, and now with automatic weapons, uh, wreak so much more violence, uh, than they ever could before."
She declared, "We cannot let a minority of people -- and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people -- hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people."
This is perhaps one of the most dishonest and disgusting attacks on the Second Amendment we've seen, and that's saying something. First, there have been two -- count 'em, two -- murders committed with legally owned automatic weapons since they were first heavily regulated in 1934, and one of those was committed by a police officer. It's very difficult to purchase a Class 3 firearm. But gun control fanatics all too frequently (and deliberately?) confuse semi-automatic weapons, which fire one round per trigger pull, with automatic weapons, which can fire multiple rounds per trigger pull.
Second, Hillary seemingly contends that it is a "viewpoint," not an evil or deranged person, who "terrorizes the majority of people." King George couldn't have said it better himself. In one fell swoop, she'd take away not only the Second Amendment but the First Amendment that it secures.
It's clear that voters should make the Easy Choice and reject Hillary Clinton as anything more than a hypocritical and overpaid public speaker.
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Does the U.S. Have the World's Worst Health Care System?
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Read the rest here.
For more, visit Right Analysis.
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TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS
- Michelle Malkin: A Fed-Up Veteran Blasts the VA
- Jonah Goldberg: The IRS Email Scandal: Where's the Outrage?
- Terence Jeffrey: No Intervention in Iraqi Without Authorization
- Jacob Sullum: Ignorance Is Privacy
- Walter E. Williams: Slavery Reparations
OPINION IN BRIEF
American poet John Jay Chapman (1862-1933): "Attack another's rights and you destroy your own."Columnist Jonah Goldberg: "[The IRS scandal] is one of the great public relations turnaround stories of all time. Liberal groups successfully spun the incident as a well-intentioned mistake by a government agency trying to deal with a deluge of new applications from right-wing crazies let loose by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. The 'real' story was -- again -- Republican overreach. Never mind that there was no evidence for such an 'uptick' in applications -- Lerner's word. Indeed, evidence suggests that Lerner went looking for that evidence as an excuse for abuses she had already undertaken. So now the IRS claims that a computer crash has irrevocably erased pertinent emails (an excuse I will remember when I am audited). National Review's John Fund reports that the IRS manual says backups must exist. If emails -- which exist on servers, clouds and elsewhere -- can be destroyed this way, someone should tell the NSA that there's a cheaper way to encrypt data."
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Columnist Burt Prelutsky: "[T]he Liar-in-Chief claims that the GOP's refusal to raise the hourly minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 is one more example of Republicans waging war on the middle class. This twerp has spent so much time in the company of millionaires and billionaires that he actually confuses the middle with the bottom. While it is true that, thanks to his economic policies, a lot of people have seen the American Dream morph into the American Nightmare, even Obama should understand that the middle is not defined by those making between $15,000 and $20,000-a- year."
Comedian Jimmy Fallon: "Obama just had his annual physical, which showed that he's suffering some pain in his right foot. When asked why he doesn't get it treated, Obama said bitterly, 'It's not covered by ObamaCare.'"
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team
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.
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