THE PATRIOT POST 09/21/2015

Right Analysis | Right Hooks | Right Opinion Patriot Headlines | Grassroots Commentary Daily Digest September 21, 2015    THE FOUNDATION "We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth — and listen to the song of that syren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation?" —Patrick Henry, speech in the Virginia Convention, 1775 TOP RIGHT HOOKS 'Tolerant' U.S. Military Allowed Afghans to Rape Children A U.S. Sergeant interacts with Afghan children in 2012. Photo courtesy US Army Barack Obama recently nominated Eric Fanning, a civilian who is openly homosexual, to serve as secretary of the Army. That follows ending "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Two women recently graduated Ranger School, and there's a raging debate about women in combat roles. But while the administration is no doubt pleased with its tolerant and politically correct force, the military can't even uphold human rights. The U.S. military has been tolerating its Afghan allies sexually abusing young boys for years. The Afghan militia would go so far as to take young boys into U.S. bases to do "bacha bazi," literally translated as "boy play." Gregory Buckley Sr. told The New York Times that, before his son was killed in Afghanistan, the Marine would tell him he could hear the screams of the boys at night. Why didn't U.S. soldiers intervene and beat the pedophiles into a pulp? Because they were told the military's policy was to respect Afghan "culture." The military justified inaction because it was fighting the larger evil of the Taliban. Besides, it didn't want to alienate its molesting Afghan allies. Remember: This comes from an administration that advocates harsh responses in violation of due process for college students accused of date rape. The Times also reports that when Dan Quinn, a former Green Beret commander, threw an Afghan police commander to the ground over the rape of a boy in 2011, the military stripped him of his command. So while Obama makes the U.S. military a petri dish for "enlightened" progressive social experimentation, the whole idea of just war is called into question. What a legacy. Comment | Share GOP Frontrunners Stumble Over Obama's 'Faith' The three frontrunners in the GOP's presidential primary have never before held public office, which endears them to voters tired of Washington but is something that hasn't quite prepared them to do the rhetorical dance with media, public and other contenders. Donald Trump has risen in the polls because he hit hot issues in a braggadocio fashion. But he stumbled somewhat when, at a New Hampshire town hall event Thursday, he took a question from a man who claimed Barack Obama was Muslim and asked Trump, "When can we get rid [of Muslims]?" Trump didn't correct the man (Obama practices the religion of self), and Trump's omission created an outcry. To be clear, this is a drummed up controversy and Trump didn't need to correct the man. But as National Review's Jonah Goldberg writes, "If Trump were an experienced politician instead of an experienced entertainer, he would have instantly recognized the trap that the question posed and neutralized it, regardless of his 'moral obligations.'" The mud-wrestling match also got Ben Carson dirty. On Sunday, Carson weighed in on "Meet the Press" and said Islam is inconsistent with the Constitution. "I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation," Carson said. It's not enough to be right on the issues, to vow to clean out Washington. GOP candidates need to be nimble enough to engage the rollicking political debate known as the media circus. Comment | Share Hillary Can't Wait for Keystone? While serving as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton began the Obama administration's review process for the Keystone pipeline. During her campaign, she's used that process as an excuse to avoid taking a position on it. She says she "put together a very thorough, deliberative, evidence-based process to evaluate the environmental impact" of the proposed pipeline from Alberta to Nebraska. In July, she declared she would "refrain from commenting [on Keystone] because I had a leading role in getting that process started and we have to let it run its course." In fact, she went so far as to say, "If it's undecided when I become president, I will answer your question." Hillary 2016: You Just Wait. Well, so much for that — she's getting impatient. "I have been waiting for the administration to make a decision," she announced last week. "I thought I owed them that. I can't wait too much longer. I am putting the White House on notice. I am going to tell you what I think soon because I can't wait." Translation: She's not putting the White House on notice about anything but is instead feeling pressure from ecofascists to oppose the pipeline. Given the steady flow of her poll numbers in the wrong direction, she'll take anything as a boost. The Obama administration has been caught between the greenies on the one hand and unions who want the jobs the pipeline will create on the other. Few doubt that both Obama and Clinton oppose the pipeline — or it would have been approved already — but they can't bring themselves to anger the unions. Comment | Share FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS School Safety Equals Islamophobia? By Arnold Ahlert Digital clock, analog clock and Ahmed's clock If you’re a fan of media distortion, faux-Islamophobia, so-called "zero tolerance" policies and inconvenient reality, the self-constructed “clock” 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed recently brought to MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas, to show to an engineering teacher is right up your alley. The reason clock is in quotations is because the device Mohamed constructed bore no resemblance to anything most people would construe as a clock. As the above photo reveals, it was a compendium of wires and other electrical components built into a briefcase. When compared with a normal clock, one might be forgiven for a having certain level of apprehension regarding Mohamed’s invention. School officials certainly did. His English teacher confiscated it, and a few hours later the principal and school resource officer removed him from class and began questioning him. Shortly thereafter, he was taken to police headquarters in handcuffs and fingerprinted. He was subsequently released to his parents, and police said no charges would be filed. An overreaction? Compared to what? We live in an age when many schools have embraced a leftist-promulgated zero tolerance policy that often results in nonsensical punishment. Thus a six-year-old is suspended for bringing a toy gun to show-and-tell. Two five-year-olds are also suspended, one for making a Lego gun and another accused of making a “terroristic threat” — for talking about shooting a Hello Kitty bubble gun. There was also a seven-year-old suspended for chewing a Pop Tart into the shape of a gun, and a 16-year-old arrested and suspended for writing a story about killing a dinosaur with a gun. There are numerous other examples of equally inane overreactions that completely undermine the leftist meme that Mohamed was the victim of Islamophobia and/or bigotry. Those invested in that mindset will undoubtedly dismiss the assertion by police that Mohamed was “passive aggressive” during questioning, refusing to offer investigators “reasonable” answers about his intent. "We attempted to question the juvenile about what it was and he would simply only say it was a clock," said Irving Police spokesman James McLellan. "He didn't offer any explanation as to what it was for, why he created this device, why he brought it to school." The persistently aggrieved will probably feel the same way about school officials who defended their reaction. “The information that has been made public to this point has been very unbalanced,” said Independent School District spokeswoman Lesley Weaver. “We always ask our students and staff to immediately report if they observe any suspicious items or if they observe any suspicious behavior. We will always take necessary precautions to protect our students and keep our school community as safe as possible. That is our priority.” Those who think such priorities are misplaced might be surprised to know these priorities are in complete alignment with those of the Obama administration. “If you see something, say something” is a trademarked slogan of the Department of Homeland Security. DHS also urges Americans to report suspicious activity that includes the observation of “unusual items.” Furthermore, the leftist-promoted notion that school officials overreacted is also belied by the simplest of questions: What if it had been a bomb? In and age of worldwide terror and atrocities such as the Newtown massacre, is there anyone in America championing a less vigilant stance by school officials tasked with keeping children safe? Even Mohamed’s age is irrelevant. A 15-year-old blonde Danish girl has just been sentenced to nine years in prison for slaughtering her own mother after she watched Islamic State beheading videos. That would be the very same Islamic State militants who, as the Daily Mail puts it, "are turning children into an army of hundreds of murderous monsters willing to blow themselves up, die in battle and execute hostages for their twisted cause.” Unsurprisingly, the same Barack Obama who not only ignores the wanton slaughter perpetrated by the Islamic State, but completely denies its Islamic roots, has injected himself into this story, offering the teen an invitation to the White House via his @POTUS twitter account: "Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great.” Giving the real agenda away, Obama spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters his boss sees the case as a "teachable moment.” Earnest insisted, "This episode is a good illustration of how pernicious stereotypes can prevent even good-hearted people from doing good work." You know what’s even more pernicious? A president who never misses an opportunity to lecture Americans about their supposed shortcomings. A president with a highly selective sense of indignity, who can make a statement about Cambridge police “acting stupidly,” having a son who would “look like Trayvon,” or writing personal letters to 46 felons whose sentences he commuted — even as he has conspicuously ignored the family of Kate Steinle, who was murdered by an illegal alien in the sanctuary city of San Francisco. In short, unless a perceived outrage accrues to Obama's “transformational” agenda, it doesn’t exist. As for “teachable moments,” what we have here is the ultimate “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario. The same American leftists who insist this incident is all about Americans’ Islamic paranoia are the same people who excoriated the Bush administration for failing to “connect the dots” prior to the worst domestic attack in the nation’s history. And if the clock had been an actual bomb and exploded, and school officials subsequently admitted they had seen the device but did nothing about it — because they were afraid of being accused of precisely the same things they are being accused of right now — is there any doubt what the reaction would be? The American Left's obsession with “social justice above all” is already undermining school safety, as the Obama administration has introduced a race-based “restorative justice” program in schools aimed at reducing suspensions for "students of color,” irrespective of the infractions they commit. The uptick in violence and other crimes in several school districts across the nation is as predictable as it is infuriating. It was best described by an unintentionally ironic Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who boasted that “young people are now taking control of the [school] environment” during a 2014 speech at Howard University. There is a sensible middle ground to be had between the twin inanities of social justice and zero tolerance. But it requires a level of common sense. Common sense that errs to the side of caution. In other words, it is far better to endure (and ultimately ignore) the slings and arrows of the perpetually offended than it is to bury murdered children. Those who wish to exploit this incident to satisfy their political agenda are free to do so. Yet reasonable Americans should be clear: Whatever that political agenda is, the safety of children in schools isn’t part of it. Comment | Share Share MORE ORIGINAL PERSPECTIVE ANALYSIS: Putin Fills Obama's Vacuum Senate Democrats Defeat McConnell's Iran Amendment Humor: Broken Promise Humor: Garbage BEST OF RIGHT OPINION John Goodman: The New Left: Envy, Resentment and Hate Scott Powell: The Quiet Counter-Revolution Gets Louder Jeff Jacoby: Opinion Polling's Heyday Has Come and Gone For more, visit Right Opinion. TOP HEADLINES U.S. Increases Syrian Refugee Intake by 40% Pope Francis Meets With Castros, Snubs Dissidents Student Punished for American Flag Shirt; Where's the Uproar From Muslim Sympathizers? For more, visit Patriot Headline Report OPINION IN BRIEF John Goodman: "Bernie Sanders is angry. Who is he angry at? Rich people. Why rich people? That’s not clear. At Liberty University, Sanders complained about a small number of people who have 'huge yachts, and jet planes and tens of billions' while others 'are struggling to feed their families.” In Madison, Wisconsin, Sanders called for a “political revolution against greed.' So what’s the connection between people who have 'tens of billions' and people who are 'struggling to feed their families'? For the most part it’s a positive one. In a capitalist system, people get rich by meeting other people’s needs. Because some people are rich, other people find it easier to feed their families. ... Behind the rhetoric on the left, there is one persistent theme, always implicit, never explicit. Leftist rhetoric is designed to encourage people to believe that the reason they are poor is because other people are rich. And this kind of rhetoric is not confined to politicians who know nothing of basic economics. Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs and other well-known economists are just as guilty. They invariably imply that 'all property is theft,' a staple of barn yard Marxism. Yet, on rigorous examination, this idea is silly. Most of the people on the Forbes 400 list are self-made or next generation of self-made billionaires. ... Like Jeremy Corbyn, the new Labour Party leader in Britain, Bernie Sanders is appealing to our worst instincts. His is not the message of compassion and love. His is the message of resentment, jealousy and hate." Comment | Share SHORT CUTS The Gipper: "If all of this seems like a great deal of trouble, think what's at stake. We are faced with the most evil enemy mankind has known in his long climb from the swamp to the stars. There can be no security anywhere in the free world if there is no fiscal and economic stability within the United States." For the record: "There are only 665 Planned Parenthood clinics in America, compared to 13,540 comprehensive health clinics. Defunding Planned Parenthood will in no way limit women’s access to health services. If, as Democrats falsely claim, the vast majority of women (especially women with low income) rely on Planned Parenthood for health care, then something must have gone terribly wrong with ObamaCare. Wasn’t that supposed to be their fix all?" —Tony Perkins Excusing evil: “Shame on Carly Fiorina and all the GOP candidates for attacking Planned Parenthood, which serves nearly 3 million Americans.” —Sen. Barbara Boxer (It also murders 327,000 of them every year.) Non Compos Mentis: "We asked our moms: 'Have you ever had an abortion?'" —feminist TV personality Lena Dunham (Aborted babies can't ask that question.) The BIG Lie: "I was right when I said on day one that, as soon as [Hillary Clinton] announced, [Republicans] would be going after her 24/7. ... [S]he has proven that she can stay tough through all this. And this e-mail thing is so much a baloney sandwich. I can’t even begin to tell you. ... If you look at her right now, still leading by a lot, compared to Jeb Bush, who has been knocked to the bottom, you see the reservoir of faith there is in Hillary." —Barbara Boxer Protests too much? "I am a real person." —Hillary Clinton Braying Jenny: “I cannot imagine anyone would be more of an outsider than the first woman president." —Hillary Clinton, who's been in politics her entire adult life Late-night humor: "Last [week's] debate at the Reagan Library was the most watched program in CNN history. CNN said they were thrilled with the ratings but even happier they could finally show a plane that wasn't missing." —Conan O'Brien 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.