THE PATRIOT POST 09/02/2015

Right Analysis | Right Hooks | Right Opinion Patriot Headlines | Grassroots Commentary Daily Digest September 2, 2015    THE FOUNDATION "The essence of government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." —James Madison, speech in the Virginia constitutional convention, 1829 EDITOR'S NOTE Seventy years ago today, the Japanese surrendered to Allied Forces aboard the USS Missouri, officially ending World War II. Today is therefore known as “VJ Day.” On Aug. 6 and 9, respectively, the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Doing so killed as many as 250,000 Japanese, but it also prevented a likely invasion of the Japanese main island and thus saved hundreds of thousands of American lives. U.S. forces occupied Japan for another six-and-a-half years, which established Japan as a peaceful world player. Today is a reminder that tyranny must be defeated, not appeased, if Liberty is to flourish. Comment | Share TOP RIGHT HOOKS Email Document Dump Catches Clinton in Serious Lie Hillary Clinton has repeatedly claimed that she never sent classified emails over her private server. Oh, she might have received some that were unintentionally unmarked, but she claims she was clean as a freshly wiped email server. But in the newest round of Hillary's emails released Monday, the State Department, sure enough, redacted email after email from public view. The Clinton campaign responded with a memo claiming the emails where just a mildly interesting sideshow into the internal communications of a presidential cabinet member. The memo said of the classified portions, "This group of emails include 125 that have had portions classified after the fact, but as confirmed again by the State Department, nothing she sent or received was marked classified." But as The Federalist's Sean Davis reports, the State Department will declassify material 10 or 15 years after the material is either created or after it receives an after-the-fact classification. State chose to declassify this material from the time it was created. In other words, from the moment Clinton's fingers typed up an email and she hit send, the document should have been classified. But her material never went through the proper classification channels, making her argument now a pathetically circular one. Furthermore, she sent some of these emails to Clinton operative Sidney Blumenthal, a person outside the State Department. What's worse? Keep in mind that these are only the emails that survived Clinton's email purge. She knew exactly what she was doing. Comment | Share Blumenthal on Boehner: The Truth From the latest batch of Hillary Clinton's emails, one notable communiqué is from Sidney Blumenthal in response to the 2010 midterm elections, when Republicans retook the House. Blumenthal wrote to Clinton, "[House Speaker John] Boehner is despised by the younger, more conservative members of the House. ... He is louche, alcoholic, lazy, and without any commitment to any principle. ... He is not [Newt] Gingrich, the natural leader of a 'revolution,' riding the crest into power. He is careworn and threadbare, banal and hollow..." The unfortunate truth is that many conservatives would have agreed with Blumenthal in 2010 and many more would agree with him today. Boehner has been and remains a colossal failure as speaker of the House, despite the huge Republican victories in both the 2010 and 2014 midterms. Though there have been significant gains in conservative House ranks, Boehner has put up a gauntlet blocking the ascension of most of those genuine conservatives to positions of power in the House. We certainly agree with Blumenthal's assessment about his sobriety, too. In fact, we don't believe Boehner has been sober at a microphone for years. We've questioned House members close to Boehner, and they all make excuses for his slurred words and demeanor. Most suggest some variant of, "He is just exhausted." We believe, however, that Boehner's cadre of House confidants continue to prop him up, sober or not, because he is the House power broker and their meal ticket. Comment | Share Leading the GOP Field: Candidates With No Prior Office CNN has given Carly Fiorina the chance to appear on the stage at the Sept. 16 presidential primary debate after announcing a changed method for determining which candidates would be invited. Instead of picking the 10 candidates who performed best in the polls conducted from July 16 to Sept. 10, CNN will pick candidates who do well in polls conducted from Aug. 7 to Sept. 10. There haven't been as may polls during the late summer as CNN predicted, and some candidates who have been gaining popularity would not have made it onto the stage if CNN kept its metric unchanged. With Fiorina's rise after her stellar debate performance, and Ben Carson closing the gap with Donald Trump in the polls, the Republican field is currently led by three candidates who have never held elected office. It demonstrates that a sizable swath of grassroots conservatives are sick and tired of how the establishment GOP (looking at you, John Boehner) has run Washington. And who can blame them? The GOP in Congress caved to Barack Obama's demands at the beginning of the year when he sought funding for his executive orders on immigration. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refuses to consider defunding Planned Parenthood, despite the growing disgust over its baby-parts trafficking. The primary season is the time for the party to decide its agenda and leadership style. The status quo will no longer do, and CNN has done it's part to prevent its rules from rigging that discussion. Comment | Share FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS No One Out-Trumps Donald Trump By Jim Harrington What has Donald Trump's candidacy done for the GOP presidential race? Well, beyond creating a spectacle, he has affirmed the legitimate anger of many grassroots voters. And he's creating some awkward moments for the rest of the field. Attitude and not-of-the-establishment credibility are key to his rise, but immigration is perhaps the central issue. As if to highlight that fact, the murder of Kathryn Steinle by an illegal alien in the sanctuary city of San Francisco brought the issue into stark relief. Her family is now suing San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, the Bureau of Land Management, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Steinle's death is among the most noted such cases, but there are hundreds of other citizens across the country assaulted and murdered by illegals. And if people start suing sanctuary cities and winning, it's going to change policies. Which brings us to the GOP presidential race, and Republicans eager to sound as tough as Trump. On Sunday, The Hill reported, "Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is open to the idea of building a wall along America’s northern border with Canada." That story was repeated in news outlets throughout the world. But Walker didn't exactly say it. The truth is that his full statement was intentionally skewed by the Leftmedia. As the Washington Examiner explains, "Walker said in an interview ... on 'Meet the Press' that he believes the northern border poses a legitimate security issue. As Walker started to elaborate on these concerns, his interviewer, Chuck Todd, asked whether he supports building a wall on the Canadian border." Walker's reply was unclear due to crosstalk, but he said, "Some people have asked us about that in New Hampshire. They raised some very legitimate concerns, including some law enforcement folks. ... So that is a legitimate issue for us to look at." The "legitimate concerns" he meant were the ones he had mentioned moments earlier about the security of our borders in general. But suddenly — the Leftmedia tells us — he wants a wall on the northern border. No doubt Walker should have been clearer. And therein lies the problem with trying to out-Trump Donald Trump. The Leftmedia's just waiting to pounce on any "racist" or otherwise "offensive" comment from any Republican candidate. Still, despite the risks, other candidates do continue trying to outdo Trump. Gov. Chris Christie is another example, with his suggestion that he would track immigrants like FedEx does packages. “I’m going to have Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx, come work for the government for three months. Just come for three months to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and show these people,” he said at a town hall meeting. “You go online and at any moment FedEx can tell you where that package is,” he elaborated. “Yet we let people come into this country with visas, and the minute they come in we lose track of them.” It's true that people with visas come into this country and just disappear. We have no idea where they are, and, in fact, they make up a large portion of the illegal population. Christie says we need to send someone to immigrants with expiring visas and say, "Time to go." Nearly half a million people enter the U.S. on visas annually, but short of outfitting each with an ankle bracelet, how does Christie propose to find any given one? This is a free country; people move about freely, and these people in particular want to avoid being caught. More vexing, how can we track the hundreds of thousands who sneak into the country without visas each year? It's true that a significant number get into legal trouble, and they can be deported. But at least for now, they can easily get right back in. FedEx can only track packages it knows exist. After getting flack for his suggestion, Christie wanted to explain it, and Chris Wallace gave him the chance. His point is that private enterprise can do things better than government, which we all know is true. But the lesson for Walker, Christie and every other politician in the GOP field is that, because they don't have Trump's attitude and style — never mind that most of them are elected politicians and he's not — the reality-TV show "Keeping Up With Trump" is never going to play well for them. While Hillary Clinton went off the rails with her Republicans-are-Nazis comments about shipping illegals out of the country in boxcars, such rhetoric plays well among lefties. Rand Paul, likewise struggling to handle a Trump-induced drop in the polls, thought one good Nazi allusion deserved another, so he's mocked his fellow candidates for supposedly one-upping each other to the point that they're saying, "I'll put them in camps." Of course, Republicans have been called Nazis so often that it's lost its bite. Clinton and Paul don't see the forest for the trees, however. Investor's Business Daily reports on its latest poll on illegal immigration. It asked "913 adults coast to coast if they 'support or oppose mandatory deportation of illegal immigrants..." Some 59% support deportation — and they support it across all income and educational levels, in both urban and rural areas, and across sex and age lines (with the exception of the 18-24 range). Assuming the poll is even reasonably accurate, its findings pose a significant challenge for the GOP — except for Trump. It's time for the party to rethink its immigration policy. Republican candidates don't need to beat Trump at his own game, but they can surely devise an immigration policy that's humane, equitable and upholds Rule of Law. It's important to get started before Trump takes all the cards. Comment | Share Share MORE ORIGINAL PERSPECTIVE ANALYSIS: GE Wants It Both Ways — Low Taxes and High Subsidies Were Babies Born Alive Before Being Sold? March for Life Free From HHS's Contraception Mandate Hillary's Brilliant Tax Plan ICE Rounds Up 244 Criminal Aliens Honolulu Destroys Unused Police Guns BEST OF RIGHT OPINION Ryan T. Anderson: Kentucky Clerk Not Issuing Gay Marriage Licenses Causes Uproar. North Carolina Shows Better Way. Jonah Goldberg: What the Other GOP Candidates Can Learn From Trump Walter Williams: Why Home Schooling? For more, visit Right Opinion. TOP HEADLINES Dow Nosedives 470 Points Tuesday Fifty-One Percent of Immigrants Are on Government Welfare Obama Just One Vote Short of Iran Victory OPINION IN BRIEF Ryan T. Anderson: "Kim Davis, the clerk for Rowan County, has a sincere religious belief that marriage is the union of husband and wife, and says she cannot in good faith issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple. As a result she stopped issuing marriage licenses to all couples... The result: no one could get a license in Rowan County. This created a problem. The citizens of Rowan County have a right to receive in a timely and efficient manner the various government provisions — including licenses — to which they are entitled. At the same time, the employees of Rowan County (including civil servants) have rights, including religious liberty rights, and they are entitled to religious accommodations. ... [T]here are ways in which public policy can create a win-win situation: where all eligible couples can receive a license and where as many employees as possible can be accommodated. North Carolina provides a great example. The state legislature earlier this year passed a law that protects magistrates who object to performing solemnizing ceremonies for same-sex marriages and clerks who object to issuing same-sex marriage licenses. It also makes clear that no one can be denied a marriage license, but magistrates or clerks could recuse themselves from the process behind the scenes should they have sincere objections to same-sex marriage. ... Religious objection is not a trump card, but employees' religious objections should be accommodated when possible." Comment | Share SHORT CUTS Insight: "Wars in old times were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is debt." —American poet Ezra Pound (1885-1972) Observations: "In 2014, [Jeb Bush] told people he would only run for president if he could do so 'joyfully.' The problem is that he’s good at telling but pretty bad at showing. To date, he’s displayed all the joy of a man waiting to get called for his colonoscopy." —Jonah Goldberg Village Idiots: "[Dan Rather] did get sabotaged. I always had trouble with [George W.] Bush being the president. I thought he was limited and unqualified." —Robert Redford Party of Science™: "If I Knew My Daughter Had Down Syndrome, I Would Have Aborted Her — All Women Should Have That Right" —a Yahoo! Parenting article by Hallie Levine For the record: "In the first year of his administration (December 29, 2009, to be exact), President Obama issued Executive Order 13526, entitled 'Classified National Security Information.' ... [T]he order makes clear that there is one category of information that is automatically deemed classified: information from foreign governments. ... [T]he emails [Hillary] Clinton sent, received and stored via her private server system were rife with information from foreign governments. This information was born classified. It makes no difference that these emails were not stamped 'top secret'; all national security officials with security clearances know that foreign government information is deemed classified and must be handled as such. Period." —Andrew McCarthy Late-night humor: "According to a new poll, Hillary Clinton has lost a third of her supporters in Iowa since May. There's still debate as to whether she lost them or just deleted them from her database." —Jimmy Fallon Comment | Share 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.