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Patriot Headlines | Grassroots Commentary Daily Digest
April 6, 2015
THE FOUNDATION"[A]s a man, who is attached to a prostitute, is unfitted to choose or judge of a wife, so any prepossession in favor of a rotten constitution of government will disable us from discerning a good one." --Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKSPoor Jobs Report Shows Need for GOP AlternativeOver the long Easter weekend, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that job growth during March did not reach the 245,000 jobs economists predicted -- not even close. While the unemployment rate stayed flat at 5.5% and the U-6 measure of labor underutilization edged down to 10.9%, the U.S. economy added only 126,000 jobs in March. Furthermore, BLS revised its job numbers for January and February down 69,000. To put this in perspective, 150,000 jobs must be added per month to keep up with population growth. And there were two times as many unemployed people as people who got a job. Barack Obama's rosy rhetoric on his economic legacy has washed away with the snowmelt. Columnist George Will told Fox News, "If the workforce participation rate today were as high as it was on the day Barack Obama was inaugurated, the unemployment rate in this country would be 9.7%. We wouldn't be complaining about the bad recovery because we wouldn't call it a recovery." We've had years of this tepid economy. It's time for Republicans to champion an alternative. More...Comment | Share Indiana and Arkansas Concede to Politics in Religious Liberty FightState-level conservatives confronted with the sea of change that homosexual rights activists bring to society must choose between what is moral and what is political. Bowing to national pressure, the Indiana lawmaking machine weakened its Religious Freedom Restoration Act, essentially creating a protected class of "LGBT" people, writes Heritage Foundation's Ryan Anderson. Similarly, Arkansas weakened its RFRA bill Thursday. Matt Lewis writes in The Telegraph, "[W]hile conservatives tend to view this as nothing more than a power grab by gay rights activists, others truly view this as a great civil rights cause. In their minds, protections allowing a devout believer to decline to photograph a gay wedding would be tantamount to Jim Crow laws where African-Americans were turned away at lunch counters. While this analogy seems a stretch, the notion of comparing one's own cause to the civil rights struggle is some mighty high moral ground to seize -- and seize it they have." Due to leftists' successful and emotionally evocative rhetoric, Republicans are stuck. Should they once again concede ground as the Left labels them bigots? Or do they stand firm to fight for Liberty? Lawmakers made their choice plain.Comment | Share How to Make a Million Bucks Running an Indiana Pizza ParlorMaybe someone will blame this one on Hillary Clinton's vast right-wing conspiracy. After a reporter asked Indiana pizzeria Memories Pizza if it would cater a same-sex marriage ceremony, the mom-and-pop pizza pie factory said no, they wouldn't. Enraged that someone would dare utter a legitimate expression of religious conscience, leftists grabbed their pitchforks and torches to protest the restaurant into oblivion. In response, a producer from The Blaze set up a donation page on GoFundMe. The producer, Lawrence Jones, said, "The intent was to help the family stave off the burdensome cost of having the media parked out front, activists tearing them down, and no customers coming in. Our goal was simply to help take one thing off this family's plate as the strangers sought to destroy them." To date, the page brought $842,592 and the Left can only explain the phenomenon as some sort of conspiracy. The pizzeria knew it would make a killing by playing the controversy, they somehow reason. Or decent people, upset that the Left would go after anybody and everybody that disagrees with them, voted with their dollars, instead of staying silent. More...Comment | Share Rolling Stone Rolls Back It's False StoryRolling Stone published quite the blockbuster story last November about an awful gang rape at a University of Virginia frat house. The only trouble was the story was false. Police investigated and found no evidence to support the story. Now even the iconic music magazine is admitting the gig is up and formally retracting the story. Fox News reports that a "review, undertaken by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism at Rolling Stone's request, produced a 12,000-word report that documented lapses in standard journalistic procedure at every level of the magazine during the reporting and editing of the story." But other than the retraction, it'll be business as usual -- no one will be fired or even disciplined, and no changes will be made. Writer (it's hard to call her a reporter) Sabrina Erdely will even continue contributing after apologizing. When relaying a leftist narrative, sometimes a story is just too good to check, no matter what it does to the victims -- in this case, the falsely accused young men in the fraternity.Comment | Share NJ Gov. Chris Christie Pardons Mom Facing Stupid Gun ChargeEven though common sense prevailed when New Jersey dropped the prosecution of two individuals who ran afoul of its gun laws, the state's broken laws need a change. Shaneen Allen thought she was in the clear when she drove into New Jersey with her Pennsylvania-legal handgun. Instead, she faced years in a New Jersey jail. The state dropped the prosecution, but Allen still needed to attend a pre-trial intervention class. On Thursday, Governor Chris Christie pardoned Allen, and the move possibly sets a precedent for other out-of-state travelers caught in Jersey's gun laws. "It was quite a fight for her down there in Atlantic County, and it led to significant changes. Hundreds of folks were helped by her case," Allen's lawyer Evan Knappen said. "It's a little absurd to take someone who's a law-abiding citizen in their home state but then put them into a New Jersey state prison for a mandatory three- to five-year sentence and make them a felon." In February, the Garden State dropped the prosecution of Gordon van Gilder, a former teacher who was caught with -- the horrors! -- an antique flintlock pistol. Some in the state realize there is a problem. But the problem now is that citizens only rely on the state's benevolence, not a law that rules over everyone equally. More...Comment | Share For more, visit Right Hooks.
RIGHT ANALYSISGood News: Peace in Our Time!
Obama praised the “tough and principled diplomacy” practiced by U.S. negotiators led by Secretary of State John Kerry over the last 18 months. Apparently, “tough and principled” meant tossing overboard one negotiating position after another until Iran finally agreed to something. As The Washington Post pointed out, Obama went from “Iran must end its nuclear program and abide by UN resolutions” in 2012 to enshrining Iran’s right to become a threshold nuclear state and ditching the UN resolutions in 2015, leaving Iran never more than a year from being able to field a weapon. The community organizer in chief claimed this deal “will cut off every pathway Iran could take to develop a nuclear weapon.” Considering that this deal leaves every single Iranian nuclear facility and centrifuge intact and depends on Iranian honesty and goodwill to boot, we are not persuaded. At best -- at the very best -- this deal puts a speed bump on Iran’s road to a nuclear weapon. Obama insisted the deal would stop Iran from using the Arak heavy water reactor to produce plutonium by replacing the reactor core with a light water design. The details of this modification remain to be worked out, and it will take years to accomplish -- if Iran allows it to go forward at all. In the meantime, Iran is already demanding an immediate end to all sanctions. How to square these two widely divergent timelines? Obama didn't elaborate. Look for this to provide one of the earliest collisions between his vision and reality. Next, he claimed the deal will "shut down Iran's path to a bomb using enriched uranium." See our previous objection. Not a single Iranian facility is so much as shuttered, and not a single centrifuge is destroyed or shipped out of the country. Even the heavily fortified underground enrichment site at Fordow is merely converted to a “research center.” All reversible in short order at any time Iran chooses, and with Iran’s possession of a complete, industrial-scale nuclear fuel cycle now officially blessed by the United States and the UN. Obama swore the deal provides the “most robust and intrusive inspections and transparency ever” and that “if Iran cheats, we will know.” We refer him to Iran’s 2003 signing of the Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which also provided the most robust and intrusive inspections ever -- until Iran decided not to allow them. The new deal will put the Additional Protocol’s terms back in force, as well as requiring Iran to comply with inspections for “suspicious sites or allegations of a covert enrichment facility, conversion facility, centrifuge production facility, or yellowcake production facility anywhere in the country.” All dependent on the ability of the P5+1, including Iran’s friends China and Russia, to act as one and hold Iran’s feet to the fire on inspections. And if you don't like the deal, Obama says, ask yourself this question: "Do you really think that this verifiable deal ... is a worse option than the risk of another war in the Middle East?" Either my way or war, he says. Fortunately, members of the congressional leadership from both sides of the aisle are obviously not ready to accept Obama's version of reality. Elliot Engel (D-NY), the senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, warned, “We now need to take a close look at the details to determine if the compromises made are worth the dismantling of years of pressure built on Iran.” Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) declared, "The details deserve and must get a vote by the U.S. Congress. Until the full details are provided to Congress on June 30th, you can keep me in the 'highly skeptical' column." Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) noted, "[Thursday's] framework is far too vague for the U.S. to be immediately lifting sanctions. Without question, Tehran will consider [this] agreement, which allows it to keep its underground facilities intact, a huge victory." Also not ready to accept Obama's version of reality is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In a statement on Friday, Netanyahu affirmed the obvious: Lifting sanctions on Iran "would greatly bolster Iran's economy [and] give Iran ... tremendous means to propel its aggression and terrorism throughout the Middle East.” He added that the deal to allow Iran to keep its nuclear program could "very well spark a nuclear arms race ... and it would greatly increase the risks of terrible war." Speaking of that nuclear arms race, Saudi Arabia will somehow have to be convinced that Iran’s possession of a complete nuclear infrastructure does not threaten Riyadh. This will be a tough sell, because Saudi Arabia’s population is just as concentrated in a few major cities as is Israel’s, and Saudi Arabia does not have a missile defense system. Its only option for maintaining deterrent capability against a nuclear Iran would be to go nuclear itself. How these two mortal enemies might act once both have nuclear weapons is not pleasant to consider. All that said, we are guardedly optimistic that this deal will be dragged down by its own weight. Its deficiencies are so numerous and obvious that only the legacy-seeking narcissist occupying the White House can say with a straight face that it's a good deal for the United States. The technical details to be worked out in just three months are monumental. Congress is skeptical and resentful of being shut out of the process for so long, and they must go along to relieve sanctions -- an unlikely proposition. Iran is sure to drag its feet, demand full sanctions relief up front, and generally follow its usual script of misbehavior, producing ample opportunities to blow up the deal. But in the meantime, with every day that Iran is allowed to enjoy this deal’s protection for its nuclear program, the day Iran becomes a nuclear weapons state grows nearer. And that would be the real legacy of this deal’s principal architect: Barack Obama. Comment | Share Hatchet Man Reid a Master of the BIG Lie
Neither did decency, which is the first casualty for a political party whose core philosophy begins and ends with a single idea: Advance the progressive agenda by any means necessary. Harry Reid's career as a hatchet man for the Left embodies that leftist malignancy. And if one thinks Reid is alone, think again. Read the rest here. Breaking: Presidential Candidates Raise Money
Not that the Post even alleges law-breaking. Indeed, the candidates are following the law. The Post just doesn't like it. Read the rest here. For more, visit Right Analysis.
TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS
 OPINION IN BRIEFThe Gipper: "Our friends in the other party will never forgive us for our success, and are doing everything in their power to rewrite history. Listening to the liberals, you'd think that the 1980's were the worst period since the Great Depression, filled with suffering and despair. I don't know about you, but I'm getting awfully tired of the whining voices from the White House these days. They're claiming there was a decade of greed and neglect, but you and I know better than that. We were there."Columnist Jonah Goldberg: "While Jim Crow laws obviously went beyond economics, they were in their origin and greatest effect about economics. Racist Southern Democrats understood that nothing threatens discrimination more than economic liberty. Restore to blacks their God-given right to control and sell the fruits of their own labor, and the market will make enforced bigotry expensive. Without Jim Crow, bigoted businesses would suffer in the marketplace. As [Thomas] Sowell said, 'Prejudice is free but discrimination has costs.' Comparing RFRA laws to Jim Crow laws turns all of this on its head. Jim Crow laws forced tolerant businesses to be intolerant of blacks. No one, anywhere, is suggesting that people who want to do business with same-sex couples should be barred from doing so. The argument is whether the government should force a few ardent Christians (or Jews or Muslims) to participate in a ceremony that violates their faith. In Indiana, the most vocal and arguably the most powerful voices against even the perception of anti-gay discrimination have come from the business community. And, one suspects, there are plenty of people in the wedding-planning industry eager for such business. We could impose a fine on recalcitrant religious wedding photographers. But the market already does that, every time they turn away paying customers." Comment | Share Columnist Linda Chavez: "Boy do I have a deal for you. Give me enough money to build a fancy new house, and I promise I won’t try to blow up yours. You can even check my basement to make sure I’m not stockpiling dynamite. Oh, and I promise I won’t try to buy any explosives from those shady characters I hang out with or hide what I already have in a storage unit somewhere else. Sound like a good bargain? Well, in simple terms, it pretty much describes the framework the Obama administration has signed on to in order to persuade Iran to give up its quest to build nuclear weapons. ... Obama seems to regard as a major achievement an agreement to reach an agreement, which is all this week’s deal is – a formal agreement won’t happen until June, if at all. Was ever an American president so deluded as to his accomplishments? His administration has so far botched everything it has touched when it comes to foreign affairs. Obama came into office promising to restore America’s reputation. Instead, he’s damaged it, perhaps irreparably for the near future." Comment | Share Humorist Frank Fleming: "Our civil rights are determined by whoever is best at bullying. ... They now say there are a number of different genders out there, but is it bigoted if I’m only attracted to one? ... When Jesus pointed to Adam and Eve (one man, one woman) as God’s model for marriage, was he being hateful? Would we put up with that now?" Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis! Managing Editor Nate Jackson 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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