THE FOUNDATION
"It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf." --Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, 1776TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS
209,000 July Jobs, Unemployment Increases
More mixed news on the jobs front: "The U.S. economy added 209,000 jobs in July, marking the sixth straight month of 200,000-plus gains for the first time since 1997," reports Market Watch. However, "The unemployment rate edged up to 6.2% from 6.1% ... as more people entered the labor force in search of work." Furthermore, "The labor-force participation rate climbed a tick to 62.9%, the first increase in four months," and May and June numbers were revised slightly upward. On the other hand, wages remained stagnant, as did the number of people out of work for at least six months or stuck in part-time jobs. The U-6 unemployment rate, which is a fuller measure, rose from 12.1% to 12.2%. While the overall picture isn't bleak, this still remains a needlessly weak recovery. More...Comment | Share
Obama 'Doing His Job Less Often Than Any President'
Republicans are foolish to sue the president, says DNC Chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Why? She says Obama is "doing his job less often and at a rate that is lower than any president since Grover Cleveland," of course! With friends like these... Hot Air's Noah Rothman observes, "[W]hat she is likely saying here is that Obama has issued fewer executive orders than did most of his predecessors. If that is an accurate interpretation, it is worth noting that Wasserman Schultz disturbingly equated the president issuing executive edicts with 'doing his job.'" The president's job isn't "taking executive actions to help people," as Obama put it. His job is to support and defend the Constitution and to faithfully execute the laws. On that count, yes, Wasserman Schultz is correct -- he's doing his job less often than any president.Comment | Share
Bill Clinton: 'I Nearly Got Bin Laden'
Bill Clinton was paid $150,000 to speak to 30 Australian businessmen and during the conversation, Clinton was asked about terrorism and some man in Afghanistan who was responsible for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and attacks on U.S. consulates in the Middle East. It was September 10, 2001. In a never-before-released tape, Clinton was recorded talking about Osama bin Laden, saying, "I nearly got him once. I nearly got him. And I could have killed him, but I would have to destroy a little town called Kandahar in Afghanistan and kill 300 innocent women and children, and then I would have been no better than him. And so I didn't do it." And this is where Clinton is wrong. Clinton had chance after chance to capture or kill bin Laden. Kandahar is one of the large cities in Afghanistan, and those 300 people where probably part of bin Laden's terrorist training camp. Ten hours later, on the morning of 9/11, 3,000 American civilians died by bin Laden's hand, bringing a war that cost thousands of American soldiers' lives. But eventually, America got her man. It was dereliction that Bill Clinton didn't. More...Comment | Share
Ginsburg Says SCOTUS Has 'Blind Spot'
The Supreme Court's first hip-hop artist, Notorious R.G.B., a.k.a. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, told Katie Couric more about her 35-page dissent in the Hobby Lobby ruling. "I certainly respect the belief of the Hobby Lobby owners," Ginsburg told Couric. "On the other hand," she doesn't, adding, "[T]hey have no constitutional right to foist that belief on the hundreds and hundreds of women" who work there. Religious liberty predates and supersedes any "right" to sex without consequences courtesy of free contraceptives (i.e., paid for by someone else). Perhaps Ginsburg's most revealing remark, however, was this: "I am ever hopeful that if the court has a blind spot today, its eyes will be open tomorrow." By "blind spot," it seems Ginsburg believes the five male justices in the majority are incapable of seeing how important contraception is to women. But she's merely trying to perpetuate the myth of the "war on women," and it's shameful a justice would so politicize a ruling. More...Comment | Share
EPA Listening to Your Concerns? Yeah, Right
The EPA isn't even pretending to listen to citizens' concerns over its proposed regulation of carbon dioxide emissions from evil coal plants (in America, not China, mind you) bent on destroying the planet. The EPA opened its public comment period about the reams of regulation, but it seems they closed the comment period before it even began. EPA chief Gina McCarthy wrote on the EPA blog, "We expect great feedback at these sessions. And unfortunately, we also expect a healthy dose of the same tired, false and worn out criticism that commonsense EPA action is bad for the economy." Silly us, thinking this country has a representative form of government. McCarthy continued, "These hearings are a critical opportunity for people to speak to their government directly. But to be clear: any comment we receive by October 16, no matter how we get it, will be equally accepted and analyzed." Except those that are "tired, false and worn out." More...Comment | Share
For more, visit Right Hooks.
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RIGHT ANALYSIS
Pre-Recess Immigration Scramble
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The delayed recess is little more than a political move to show Republicans are determined to get something done before Barack Obama issues an executive order after the recess -- or, more likely, during the recess. If the president grants amnesty to millions of illegals with a stroke of his pen, it would be an impeachable disregard for Rule of Law, but we've already covered what happens down that road.
Furthermore, regardless of what the House does, Harry Reid's Senate will do what they always do: Nothing. Indeed, the Senate will adjourn Friday without taking up anything the House might pass, while it failed to pass its own $2.7 billion bill. All that to say, if the House passes something, then what?
As we noted Wednesday, many House conservatives fed up with Obama’s illegal executive orders are disappointed the bill won’t include any attempt to dismember his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, a “memorandum” (i.e., diktat) from 2012 that ostensibly gives about 500,000 “qualified” 15-year-old aliens a period of two years to earn employment authorization to prevent their deportation. Reportedly, a separate measure to do that was watered down this week, which, according to Rep. John Fleming (R-LA), "shut off some yes votes."
Republicans should also amend the 2008 anti-trafficking law that allows minors from Central America to stay instead of being immediately deported as are minors from Mexico or Canada. The GOP bill doesn't do that. Worse, a Center for Immigration Studies analysis warns the House bill's security provisions are actually a “Trojan Horse permitting unaccompanied minors to ask for adjustment of status to lawful permanent residence.”
Political analyst Charles Krauthammer says it's "incomprehensible" that Republicans were unable to get their act together. He argued, "It is ridiculous to sue the president on a Wednesday because he oversteps the law, as he has done a dozen times, illegally and unconstitutionally, and then on a Thursday say that he should overstep the law, contradict the law that passed in 2008, and deal with this himself."
According to The Washington Post, "The congressional chaos ensured that President Obama’s administration will not have the resources necessary to stem the recent tide of tens of thousands of migrants from Central America, many of them children entering the United States alone, until mid-September at the earliest." We don't buy that for a minute. The president has the resources he needs to enforce immigration laws, but he has chosen not to stem the tide of illegals.
Immigration is shaping up to be the defining issue of the 2014 election -- more so than ObamaCare, the administration's numerous scandals, or any other issue. Voters don't believe Obama wants to do much about it, either. In fact, according to Rasmussen, "Voters think President Obama is doing a poor job handling the latest immigration crisis and believe he wants to let most of the new illegal immigrants stay here despite majority support for their quick deportation." Meanwhile, Republicans are infighting over tactics and seem incapable of crafting a coherent and winning strategy.
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Campus Life: Men as the Accused
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| Democrat senators with assault accusers |
To believe otherwise can get you into trouble. Washington Post columnist George Will found himself in hot water for challenging assumptions when citing evidence that, even with the under-reporting included, the assault rate is closer to one woman in 36. Will wasn't minimizing assault (and neither are we); he was simply noting it wasn't an epidemic.
Because this is the way things are done in America these days, it fell to Congress to "do something" about it. And they're giving it the old college try, though they're using the flawed and exaggerated statistics as justification, much like they did with sexual assault in the military earlier this year.
A bipartisan group of senators introduced the Campus Accountability and Safety Act (CASA), which promises more paperwork for campus administrators, more positions to fill as the bill mandates “confidential advisers” with whom victims can speak (the bill repeatedly uses the word "victim" rather than accuser), and further trampling of the due process rights of the accused. Of course, there are no advisers or support groups for accused young men, who are innocent until proven guilty but whose lives can be ruined by what they thought was a consensual if drunken romp. The purpose of the bill is to help colleges "rid their campuses of sexual predators," which portends a witch hunt.
Another problem with the bill is the requirement that colleges be annually surveyed on their progress in reporting and investigating sexual assaults on campus, with the results made public. While many colleges experience few such assaults per year, the pressure will be on them to bring cases forward regardless of the evidence -- and to seek convictions.
This whole process began when a Senate subcommittee released a report claiming 41% of institutions didn't conduct a single investigation of on-campus sexual assault over the last five years. That study, of course, flew in the face of the one-in-five conventional wisdom promulgated by such documents as a White House report earlier this year.
Yet if the rate is exaggerated due to easily manipulated questions favoring a certain result, and due to sampling of only large, urban college campuses like Ohio State, it's quite possible that many hundreds of smaller institutions may not have had a single case. Given the other concerns we're grappling with right now, a federal law dealing with campus sexual assault may not be the most pressing need.
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For more, visit Right Analysis.
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TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS
- Linda Chavez: Hamas' Propaganda Victory
- Charles Krauthammer: Kerry the Clueless
- Mona Charen: Driving Off a Cliff
- Michelle Malkin: The Environmental Corruption Agency
- Joe D'Aleo: Energy Trouble Ahead
OPINION IN BRIEF
French Algerian author Albert Camus (1913-1960): "It is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners."Columnist Charles Krauthammer: "Speaking of Hamas-run Gaza, [John] Kerry actually said in Paris: 'The Palestinians can't have a cease-fire in which they think the status quo is going to stay.' What must change? Gazans need 'goods that can come in and out ... a life that is free from the current restraints.' But the only reason for those 'restraints,' for goods unable to come in and out, is that for a decade Hamas has used this commerce to import and develop weapons for making war on Israel. Remember the complaints that the heartless Israelis were not allowing enough imports of concrete for schools and hospitals? Well, now we know where the concrete went -- into an astonishingly vast array of tunnels for infiltrating neighboring Israeli villages and killing civilians. Lifting the blockade would mean a flood of arms, rockets, missile parts and other implements of terror for Hamas. What is an American secretary of state doing asserting that Hamas cannot cease fire unless it gets that? Moreover, the fire from which Hamas will not cease consists of deliberate rocket attacks on Israeli cities -- by definition, a war crime."
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Columnist Mona Charen: "Does Obama imagine that a deal with Iran and loosening sanctions will further world peace? Just last week, his own administration acknowledged that Russia has been cheating on the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty -- since 1987! Does this revelation dim Obama's enthusiasm for arms treaties? Does it sober him up? Not a bit. Obama sent President Vladimir Putin a letter, outlining the cheating and -- wait for it -- conveying that the United States is prepared to engage in 'senior-level bilateral dialogue immediately.' Not a strong letter. Not even strong letter to follow. There is nothing to follow -- as the world -- and particularly Iran, knows so well."
Humorist Frank J. Fleming: "Can't another Navy SEAL punch Jesse Ventura in the face to make sure the story is true?"
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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