THE PATRIOT POST 01/14/2015

Daily Digest January 14, 2015    THE FOUNDATION "[T]he only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments." --Benjamin Rush, On the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, 1806 TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS Obama's Oil Boom? In advance of his State of the Union speech on Jan. 20, Barack Obama and his propaganda machine are in high gear, claiming credit for, among other things, lower fuel prices. Though Obama has erected an insurmountable gauntlet to oil and gas exploration leases, he recently claimed, "We're saving drivers about 70 cents a gallon at the pump." Really? Who is "we"? And this week, after reaffirming his commitment to veto the Keystone XL pipeline project, Obama had the unmitigated audacity to again claim credit for the additional drop in prices: "America is the number one producer of oil, the number one producer of gas. That's helping to save drivers about $1.10 a gallon at the pump over this time last year." Recall if you will that when Obama entered office, gasoline cost about $1.60 per gallon. In four short years, on top of the deepening Obama recession, his severe constriction on oil production increased the price to more than $4.00 a gallon. Ahead of the 2012 election, Obama declared, "We can't just drill our way to lower gas prices. ... [Republicans] are dusting off their three-point plan for $2 gas." Currently the average price for a gallon of gas is under $2 in 18 states. But for the record, oil production on government land is down 16% since 2009, while oil production on private land has increased 61%. Those gains are despite Obama's obstruction of oil exploration. Comment | Share Anti-Gunners Snipe at a Patriot "American Sniper," the film based on the true story of Navy sniper Chris Kyle and his book of the same name, hits theaters Thursday. Kyle served with the SEAL Team 3 Sniper Element Charlie platoon and was the most lethal sniper in U.S. history. He accumulated 160 confirmed kills and another 95 probables, and was known to his enemies as Al-Shaitan Ramad (The Devil of Ramadi). Though he survived numerous harrowing encounters in Iraq, sadly, he was killed by a vet suffering from PTSD here in the States. That story is, in part, why the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has provided a Facebook forum for anti-gun jackasses to swap spit over the movie and Kyle's death. "Good Riddance," jeered one. "What goes around comes around," derided another. Chris Walker, executive director of 2nd Vote, said, "Americans' voices don't end on Election Day, they continue with the dollars they spend every day. The companies and groups that are financially supporting outrageous comments like these need to explain why they continue to receive their support or risk a financial backlash as consumers might choose to take their money elsewhere." Indeed, such hateful sentiment deserves scorn of its own. Comment | Share Coming to a State Near You: The Gun Safety-ers Gun control should only mean hitting your target. So, facing numerous public debate defeats, gun grabbers have rebranded. They will target individual states and will refer to themselves as advocates of gun safety because it's such a cuddly term. Who could be against gun safety? Sure, we're all for gun safety: Always assume the gun is loaded, keep your finger off the trigger and never leave your firearms in a place where children could discover them -- especially if the child is 75, in Congress and wants to mess with your guns. But the "safety" for which gun grabbers advocate is the iron fist of the government deciding who deserves the right to bear arms. President of Everytown for Gun Safety John Feinblatt told The New York Times that gun grabbers looked to the success of leftist crusades like same-sex marriage for their new strategy. "The arc of the marriage-equality movement started in the federal government, and got them the Defense of Marriage Act," he said. "Then they went to the states and showed that if you can get the majority of the public on your side state by state, that will influence the courts and Congress in the end." Of course, same-sex marriage advocates more often than not won by going to activist judges first, only later winning public opinion through guilt and intimidation. Let's hope support for the Second Amendment is stronger than that. More... Comment | Share Goober Jimmy Carter Speaks About Charlie Hebdo Attack The goober farmer stumbled into the national spotlight to talk about the Charlie Hebdo attack by defending Barack Obama and blaming Israel. "I don't think there's any need for criticism," former president Jimmy Carter said of Obama's decision to skip going to Paris. "The president sometimes can't go where he'd prefer to go. He's just come back from vacation so I think he's probably got a lot on his desk." See? According to the least successful president in American history, the president's ways are higher than our ways. The next day, the addlepated ex-president blamed all attacks by violent Islamists on the Jews. Carter appeared on Jon Stewart's comedy news show to say, "Well, one of the origins for it is the Palestinian problem. And this aggravates people who are affiliated in any way with the Arab people who live in the West Bank and Gaza, what they are doing now -- what's being done to them." Two French Muslims attacked a French paper known for its blistering satire about any religion, including Jews, Christians and Muslims. And Carter says the attack has Israel written all over it? Comment | Share Even the King of England Had No Power to Suspend Laws Depending on who you ask, Barack Obama has done what King George III never did. Joel Gehrke writes at National Review, "[A]n expert at the Law Library of Congress -- a non-partisan branch of the Library of Congress that has advised Congress and the Supreme Court since 1832 -- tackled a slightly different question: What would George III do when faced with a law he didn't like? Not even the King of England at the time of the American Revolution had the authority to suspend laws unilaterally, the Law Library expert wrote in a memorandum to the Senate committee tasked with responding to President Obama's recent executive orders on the enforcement of immigration law." But yet, Obama claims he can unilaterally decide who his administration will deport and who will remain de facto citizens -- even if they came into this country illegally. Obama has become the king the Founders warned about. More... Comment | Share For more, visit Right Hooks. Share RIGHT ANALYSIS The West Isn't Really Standing With Charlie Hebdo The West certainly likes the idea of standing with the little paper that could. A week after jihadis murdered two cops and 10 employees of the French satire paper Charlie Hebdo, the streets of Paris thundered with the march of more than a million people supporting free speech and denouncing violent Islam -- among them France's François Hollande, Germany's Angela Merkel and Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu. Meanwhile, the paper whose staff was obliterated a week ago published another edition that hit the newspaper stands in Paris this morning, selling out in minutes. It seems the West will defend the right to state an opinion, no matter how unsettling or contrarian. (Well, unless you oppose any part of the Left's agenda.) But already the signs of cultural rot show through the narrative. People are standing with Charlie today (or as the French say, "Je suis Charlie"), while the institutions that claim to defend the ideal of free speech are falling away. This is a cultural double standard. The New York Times -- once a paper that fought with the U.S. government all the way to the courts over whether or not it could publish materials deemed classified by the government -- backed away from publishing the simple caricature of Muhammad because a group of radical Islamists might take their grievances to the court of violence and terror instead of public opinion. "There are times for self-restraint, but in the immediate wake of the most threatening assault on journalism in living memory, you would have served the cause of free expression best by engaging in it," Floyd Abrams wrote in a letter to the Times editor. Abrams was the lawyer who defended the Times during the Pentagon Papers trial. While the White House admitted it was a mistake for the president to skip the Paris march, Press Secretary Josh Earnest can't give a straight answer to reporters if Obama believes blasphemy is protected under the First Amendment. When asked if the White House gives its "absolute support" for the mockery of any world institution -- sacred cow or no -- Earnest replied, "There is nothing that the individuals at that satirical magazine did that justified in any way the kind of violence we saw in Paris last week. No. That is the most important principle that is at stake here. At the same time, it would not be the first time there was a discussion in this country about the responsibilities that go along with exercising the right to freedom of speech." So Earnest is only objecting to the level of violence against Charlie Hebdo? Would the White House condone a frivolous lawsuit to bully the paper into submission? Of course there are responsibilities that go along with the freedom of speech. But in the aftermath of a mass murder, the White House needs to reaffirm that free speech doesn't apply only to banal conversations, but also to speech that enrages and offends. Average Americans are just as petty and feckless as their leaders. Just last month, it was every citizen's patriotic duty to see the trash film "The Interview." This month, it's every red-blooded Westerner's assignment to share a picture of Muhammad that took a Frenchman no longer than five minutes to draw. It should go without saying that the freedom of speech applies to these works too, but we're also cognizant of the fact that much blood and ink has been spilt over aesthetically bad work. A new poll asked Americans if it's ever okay to blaspheme another religion. The results were not good for the First Amendment, as just 37% of the respondents agreed that blasphemy is protected speech, while 32% said no, and 31% had no clue. So much for standing with Charlie. Conservative editor Rod Dreher says we only like the idea of standing with Charlie. "But what makes it kitschy is that we love thinking of ourselves standing in solidarity with the brave journalists against the Islamist killers," he writes. "When the principle of standing up for free speech might cost us something far, far less than our lives, most of us would fold. You didn't see liberals wearing 'I Am Brendan Eich' slogans; many on the Left think he got what he deserved, because blasphemers like him don't deserve a place in public life. Nor did you see conservatives brandishing 'I Am Brendan Eich' slogans, because they feared they might be next." This is why the narrative about the Charlie Hebdo is so powerful. As Dreher points out, the cartoonists there were not reporting fact when they were killed. They were making satire. Yet, after their office was firebombed in 2011, after their colleagues were killed last week, the survivors felt so strongly about their work that they once again picked up their pens. The world was watching. Normally, the paper prints 60,000 copies and sells half of them, but this edition would be printed three million times, translated into Spanish, English and Arabic, and distributed worldwide. The paper needed a remarkable cover. Cartoonist Renald "Luz" Luzier drew the front page of the newspaper reborn. In a press conference unveiling the drawing, he said, "We needed a front page that would make us laugh. ... I had Muhammad, he was holding a sign, 'Je suis Charlie,' and he was crying... And I wrote 'all is forgiven' above. And I cried. I drew and I cried and we had our f---ing homepage. I'm sorry, we drew him again." In an interview, Editor in Chief Gérard Biard explained the cartoon and the paper's position: "It is we who forgive, not Muhammad." Forgiveness is speech worth defending. Comment | Share For more, visit Right Analysis. TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS Ken Blackwell: France Needs a Second Amendment -- And So Do We! Arnold Ahlert: Cyber Insecurity Tony Perkins: NYT Promotes Purging of Christian Leaders Michelle Malkin: Hey, How's America's Rail Security Doing? Jonah Goldberg: The Problem With Romney Nostalgia For more, visit Right Opinion. OPINION IN BRIEF Harvard Professor Howard Mumford Jones (1892-1980): "Persecution is the first law of society because it is always easier to suppress criticism than to meet it." Columnist Ken Blackwell: "CBS News gave an early report on the terrorist attacks in Paris. It included this telling sentence: 'A reporter for Britain's Telegraph newspaper in Paris told Sky News that the first two officers to arrive, who were apparently unarmed, fled after seeing gunmen armed with automatic weapons and possibly a grenade launcher.' Every American, every citizen of a free country, needs to read, and re-read that sentence. Here is the answer of liberals and socialists to the problem of domestic security. Let the police do it. Let the state protect you. Give all weapons to the professionals who are trained and who can be trusted. ... When John Kerry arrives in Paris, he doubtless knows that France lacks a Second Amendment. But France has a National Anthem, the Marseillaise. And a memorable line in that stirring song is: Aux armes, concitoyens! To arms, Fellow Citizens! Now is the time to put self-defense on the international agenda. If your government does not believe in the right to keep and bear arms as a human right, then it probably doesn't believe in your right to life, either." Comment | Share Columnist Arnold Ahlert: "Yesterday, President Obama was poised to announce legislation that would shield companies from litigation if they shared computer data with the government in order to prevent cyber attacks. Opponents of the measure insist adequate safeguards are already in place. ... Does the CENTCOM hack justify the further expansion of the federal government's surveillance apparatus, or is it a conveniently exploitable moment? It would be far easier to determine the answer were it not for this president's extra-constitutional urges, and the reservoir of ill-will built up by an administration mired in numerous scandals. Unfortunately, the line between legitimate national security needs and America's devolution into a police state is getting increasingly blurred." Comment | Share Comedian Argus Hamilton: "Joe Biden flew to Brazil last week to try to mend relations with Brazil's government that's angry over NSA spying. He has a natural curiosity for the country. After Joe landed, he told reporters he was thrilled to be in the Amazon, because he always wanted to see where books come from." 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.