Daily Digest for Friday
November 7, 2014
THE FOUNDATION"On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves." --Joseph Warren, Boston Massacre Oration, 1775TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKSOctober Jobs Report Good but Not Good EnoughAnother decent jobs report is out for October. Reuters reports, "Employers added 214,000 new jobs to their payrolls last month, the Labor Department said on Friday. The unemployment rate fell [to 5.8 percent] from 5.9 percent, even as more people entered the labor force, a sign of strength in the jobs market." August and September numbers were also revised upward by 31,000. All isn't completely well, however. The Washington Post notes, "[W]orkers have been hampered by minimal wage increases, and some seven million Americans say they are looking for full-time work but have found only part-time jobs." The U-6 rate, which better accounts for such numbers, remains high at 11.5%, though it too dropped from September. In short, the numbers are good, but not nearly as robust as the economy needs to truly pull out of the Great Obama Stagnation.Comment | Share Conservatives Prepare for Immigration BattleAs Barack Obama readies his immigration order during the next two months, Republicans in Congress are working on a strategy to counter him. One conservative Senate staffer told The Daily Signal, "Voters don’t support amnesty and expanding DACA," referring to Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program delaying deportation for some children of illegals. "It’s one of the only issues that is at the cross section of the economy and national security. We should not run from it. We should embrace it." More important, perhaps, House Speaker John Boehner warned Obama about an executive amnesty, saying, "When you play with matches you take the risk of burning yourself and he is going to burn himself if he continues down this path." Republicans should focus on doing whatever it takes -- including defunding things -- to block Obama's attempt at mass amnesty.Comment | Share Court Upholds Traditional MarriageA federal appeals court upheld same-sex marriage bans in Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan and Tennessee Thursday, temporarily slowing the march towards same-sex marriage. Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in the ruling it was not the place of the courts to decide such an important social issue. What a novel concept. "When the courts do not let the people resolve new social issues like this one, they perpetuate the idea that the heroes in these change events are judges and lawyers," Sutton wrote. "Better in this instance, we think, to allow change through the customary political processes, in which the people, gay and straight alike, become the heroes of their own stories by meeting each other not as adversaries in a court system but as fellow citizens seeking to resolve a new social issue in a fair-minded way." Now with dissent in the lower courts, the Supreme Court will almost surely pick up the issue of same-sex marriage -- even though Ruth Bader Ginsberg said leftists should change society over time instead of all at once. More...Comment | Share Eric Holder Further Erodes Press FreedomsAttorney General Eric Holder's new guidelines over when to issue subpoenas threaten the independence and robustness of the press. "Instead of retaining straightforward language telling prosecutors not to 'impair the news-gathering function' from the previous set of guidelines," the New York Times editorial board wrote, "new wording unveiled with release of the overhauled guidelines in February calls for avoiding the issuance of subpoenas that 'might unreasonably impair ordinary news gathering.' The change by Mr. Holder and his aides could invite prosecutors in the future to claim that news gathering that entails the disclosure of classified information (as national security reporting typically does) is out of the 'ordinary' and, therefore, exempted from the guidelines." This is just the latest example of the executive branch -- especially the Department of Justice -- stifling oversight from Congress and the fourth estate. Wasn't the whole point of the First Amendment to avoid situations like this? More...Comment | Share From the 'Prediction Fails' FileIn his 2009 book, "40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation," Clinton campaign architect James Carville wrote this in the opening paragraph of the preface: "Every four years Americans hold a presidential election. Somebody wins and somebody loses. That's life. But 2008 was an anomaly. The election of President Barack Obama is about something far bigger than four or even eight years in the White House. Since 2004, Americans have been witnessing and participating in the emergence of a Democratic majority that will last not four but forty years. Republicans are going to keep getting spanked again and again for 40 more years because we're right and they're wrong, and Americans know it." Oops.Comment | Share For more, visit Right Hooks.
RIGHT ANALYSISThe Price of Obama’s Retreat From Iraq
As Mark Alexander outlined in "Obama's Iraqi Makeover": "In 2008, Obama campaigned on 'ending the war in Iraq.'Meanwhile, Obama seeks help from Iran. The Wall Street Journal reports, “President Barack Obama secretly wrote Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the middle of last month and described a shared interest in fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, according to people briefed on the correspondence. The letter appeared aimed both at buttressing the Islamic State campaign and nudging Iran’s religious leader closer to a nuclear deal. Mr. Obama stressed to Mr. Khamenei that any cooperation on Islamic State was largely contingent on Iran reaching a comprehensive agreement with global powers on the future of Tehran’s nuclear program by a Nov. 24 diplomatic deadline, the same people say.” Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. Why would it yield to Obama on nuclear weapons or work to fight against the terrorists of ISIL? Obama’s foreign policy is an utter disaster, and that’s surely plain to the mullahs. And so we're back to square one. Predictably, Obama's "hope and change" strategy in the region left fertile ground for the resurgence of a far more dangerous incarnation of Muslim terrorism under the name Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, which has displaced al-Qa'ida as the dominant asymmetric threat to our national security. (Read in more detail, "The Rise of the Islamic State.") Comment | Share How Democrats Lost the 'War on Women'
But when their day of glory came, they went down to defeat, and went down hard. Not once, not twice, but in state after state across the nation where voters recognized the hyperbolic rhetoric as smoke and mirrors distracting from the absence of real policy proposals, and where they tired of seeing sensible discussions discarded in favor of a campaign-trail version of the Vagina Monologues. Democrats may have treated women voters as ignorant dupes, but it didn't work. Take Sandra Fluke, for example, the poster child for unbridled sex, whose core political ideology centers on the demand for government-provided contraception to support her sexual escapades. She gained national fame by testifying to Congress of the need for contraception she and other young women couldn't possibly pay for themselves (even for $9 a month at Walgreens). Fluke failed in her bid for California State Senate -- losing by more than 21 points. War on women? Voters didn’t buy it. Or consider progressive darling Wendy Davis, who famously filibustered in the Texas State House for the right to dismember unborn babies at the latest stages of pregnancy. Davis lost her bid for Texas governor by a whopping 21 points -- the worst showing for Democrats in a Texas gubernatorial race since 1998. What’s more, Davis couldn’t even win among women, losing by nine points among all women and 25 points among married women. War on women? Don't use that lie to mess with Texas. Then there was Colorado Sen. Mark Udall, who might as well have been a woman given his campaign was so focused on the "war on women" that the press dubbed him “Mark Uterus.” Even the reliably liberal Denver Post grew tired of Udall's single-issue campaign and instead endorsed his pro-life Republican opponent, Corey Gardner. Udall lost his Senate seat, winning only 52% of women voters among his typically Democrat-leaning constituency. War on women? Coloradans weren't that high. And that's not to delve into the details of the "war on women" candidates endorsed by sex-magazine Cosmopolitan. Of the 12 candidates backed by Cosmo (none of whom, incidentally, were Republican), only two won. Aside from Fluke and Davis, Tuesday's losers included Staci Appel (Iowa), Mary Burke (Wisconsin), Alison Lundergan Grimes (Kentucky), Michelle Nunn (Georgia), Amanda Renteria (California), and Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (New Hampshire). Might these losses actually suggest the war on women is real? Could these women’s gender have sunk them? Not so fast. Women actually did win on Election Night -- and win big. But many were women whose political aims extended beyond abortion and contraceptives to issues women -- and men -- actually care about: the economy, national security, federal spending and out-of-control debt. Rather than insulting women by insinuating their vote is based purely on particular feminine needs, the conservative women who ran and won actually believe females are capable of rising above their hormonal cycles to critically evaluate the issues facing our nation. Take Joni Ernst, for example. Forget an imaginary "war on women." This combat veteran actually fought in a real war -- Iraq. Now, she’s poised to become the first female senator from Iowa and the first female veteran in the Senate. War on women? Ernst was too busy vowing to make Washington’s big spenders squeal to claim imaginary oppression. Or take conservative Mia Love of Utah, who made history by becoming the first black Republican woman elected to the U.S. House. War on women? Only if you look at how women have suffered under Obama’s failed policies. Then there’s Elise Stefanik of New York, who at age 30 just became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. War on women? As an unashamed pro-life advocate, Stefanik was automatically disqualified from joining the ranks of the war’s self-declared victims. Speaking of abortion, the "war on women" mantra also failed on the ballot initiative level. Voters in Tennessee, for example, voted to amend the state's constitution to clarify that it does not require taxpayer funding for or guarantee any right to abortion. War on women? Only if you count the millions of unborn women who have been slaughtered in the name of "choice." As political analyst Charles Krauthammer so accurately noted, “I think this is the end of the ‘War on Women,’ and the Democrats have lost it.” Here’s the bottom line: Burdened by this administration’s policy disasters and absent any real plans to remedy the mess, Democrats sought to divert attention from their stunning failures by campaigning on a phony "war on women." But women didn’t buy it. Instead, it backfired, and backfired big. Comment | Share The Blacks Who Didn't Vote
The economic beat down of the last several years likely soured blacks on reflexively voting Democrat. As The Wall Street Journal points out, "At the start of the President’s first term, the unemployment rate was 12.7% for blacks and 7.1% for whites. Four years later in January 2013 the numbers were 13.8% and 7%, respectively, which means that the black-white employment gap had widened. Today black unemployment is down to 11%, but it’s still more than double the white rate of 5.1%." Labor participation, poverty and median income are also comparatively worse for blacks under the first black president. It's no wonder Democrats were left spouting nothing but craven allusions to Jim Crow laws, Trayvon Martin and the Ferguson rioting. And it's no surprise the reaction in the black community was apathy. That apathy affected not only Congress, but at least one key gubernatorial race, too. In Maryland, Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, a black Army veteran, lost to Republican Larry Hogan. That was what many viewed as the night's biggest upset, particularly as Maryland has an extensive minority voting population in the city of Baltimore and the Washington suburbs of Prince George's County. Meanwhile, Republicans are beginning efforts to reach out to the black community -- something they should have been doing with far greater fervor for the last 50 years. The new efforts are timid and tentative, but they're already bearing fruit. From South Carolina, Sen. Tim Scott won his seat at the polls (he had been appointed by the governor in 2013 to replace Jim DeMint) to became the first black senator elected from the South since Reconstruction. And Mia Love will represent a Utah district as the first black female Republican to be elected to Congress. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored Perhaps that's because Scott speaks the truth: "Let's just ask ourselves, if we look back over history when Congress was controlled by the Democrats for 40 consecutive years, if we look at the result of that control, what has happened in black America? We saw greater poverty," the senator said. "The policies of the Left have not worked. ... [G]overnment is not the answer for progress." Rather, he said, it's thanks to "a good education" and "a strong work ethic." He concluded, "The key ... is individual freedom and economic opportunity." Bingo. One elected Republican investing his time in black neighborhoods is Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who has hosted informal events in several cities, including Atlanta, Detroit and Ferguson. Paul candidly admits that, in the black community at least, “The Republican Party brand sucks ... so people don’t want to be a Republican, and for 80 years African-Americans have had nothing to do with Republicans.” His “listening sessions,” however, expose interested minority voters to conservative solutions for fighting poverty, improving education and addressing the criminal justice system. While Paul is convinced the GOP has a “huge opportunity” among minority voters, he has warned that an overemphasis on voter ID laws is a "dumb idea." We disagree, though such laws ought to be clearly presented as preserving the sanctity of the ballot box, not as being designed to suppress minorities. And we appreciate Paul's efforts at minority outreach. Other Republicans should take note. If the Democrats ever do lose their monopoly on the black vote, it will become much harder for them to maintain the coalition that keeps them in power. Clearly, maintaining this coalition is paramount for Democrats, which is why they're pushing to grant citizenship rights to millions of illegal aliens to keep the spigot open on the supply of government-dependent voters. Liberty is colorblind, however, and that's the point Republicans need to get across. Comment | Share For more, visit Right Analysis.
TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS
 OPINION IN BRIEFBritish statesman Edmund Burke (1729-1797): "To govern according to the sense and agreement of the interests of the people is a great and glorious object of governance. This object cannot be obtained but through the medium of popular election, and popular election is a mighty evil."Columnist Charles Krauthammer: "[Obama] will try to regain control of the national agenda with executive amnesty for illegal immigrants. ... That would be naked impeachment bait. Don’t take it. Use the power of the purse to defund it. Pledge immediate repeal if Republicans take the White House in 2017. Denounce it as both unconstitutional and bad policy. But don’t let it overwhelm and overtake the GOP agenda. That’s exactly what Obama wants. It is his only way to regain the initiative. The 2014 election has given the GOP the rare opportunity to retroactively redeem its brand. ... Pass legislation. When Obama signs, you’ve shown seriousness and the ability to govern. When he vetoes, you’ve clarified the differences between party philosophies and prepared the ground for 2016. Tuesday’s victory was big. But it did nothing more than level the playing field and give you a shot. Take it." Comment | Share Columnist David Harsanyi: "If we’re to believe the media-authored account of the past six years, the GOP has made rigid obstructionism of Barack Obama’s policies its sole agendum. In victory and in concession speeches, candidates of both parties still claim that 'dysfunction' has been the biggest problem in Washington. Where exactly have Republicans suffered for their stubbornness? The reality is that Republicans have been generously rewarded for their tenacity in stopping post-Obamacare progressive policy. Since 2010, the Republicans have pulled together a historic string of victories -- with scores of seats changing hands in the House. If anything, what we learned is that politicians are far likelier to be penalized by the electorate for passing unworkable and overreaching legislation than they are for stopping it. ... The reality is that only one party was punished. American voters didn’t oust incumbents; they ousted Democrats." Comment | Share Comedian Seth Meyers: "Republicans won enough seats to gain a majority in the Senate and increase their majority in the House. For those Democratic candidates who wanted to distance yourselves from Obama, congratulations. You did."  Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis! 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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