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Patriot Headlines | Grassroots Commentary Daily Digest
November 2, 2015
THE FOUNDATION"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." —John Adams, 1770TOP RIGHT HOOKSHey, Look — Boots on the Ground in Syria
Well, it seems Obama has crossed his own red line. "The White House has approved the deployment of small teams of U.S. special-operations forces to locations in northeastern Syria," The Wall Street Journal reports, "expanding America's direct role on the ground in support of local fighters as they prepare for a new military campaign against Islamic State militants in their stronghold in Raqqa, officials said. The new deployment would amount to the first sustained U.S. ground presence in Syria." But don't worry; Obama spokesman Josh Earnest insists, "These forces do not have a combat mission." Would that be similar to the "not combat mission" that cost Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler his life? Just in the last month, Obama has announced that he will keep more troops in Afghanistan, send troops to Iraq and establish a small presence in Syria. It's hard to mistake the signs: Even he realizes his stubborn refusal to lead in the region has left nothing but chaos. Perhaps he also realized that leaving the job of Middle East stability to Russian President Vladimir Putin is a bad idea in need of hitting a reset button. And then there's the political calculation of wanting to pass the reins to Hillary Clinton, who is responsible for at least some of the disaster in the Middle East. Obama recently explained, "Part of what we have to do here ... is to try different things." It sure seems like he's just throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping some of it sticks. The trouble is, he's putting American lives on the line for missions he clearly doesn't believe in. Also don't miss the numerous BIG Lies Obama told about American involvement.Comment | Share Publisher's Note: Tailwinds to a Tennessee StatesmanFred Thompson was a self-made man, born of modest means, who excelled in his career as a lawyer, a character actor and a reluctant politician. He died this weekend at age 73. He was a Patriot and a man of integrity, who gained the early respect of his peers both as minority counsel during the Senate Watergate investigation and his relentless pursuit of a corrupt Democratic Tennessee Governor, Ray Blanton. I first met Fred in 1993 when he was campaigning for the Senate seat vacated by Albert Gore after Bill Clinton's election. I had the opportunity to write some white papers for Fred's campaign on Second Amendment rights and other conservative topics. A statement from his family noted, "Fred stood on principle and common sense, and had a deep love for and connection with the people across Tennessee whom he had the privilege to serve in the United States Senate. ... Fred was the same man on the floor of the Senate, the movie studio, or the town square of Lawrenceburg, his home." Indeed he was. Fred was an inspirational supporter of The Patriot Post when we launched in 1996, and he offered this endorsement: "The Patriot Post's message provides a critical touchstone for those inside the Beltway who have forgotten whom they serve." Fred did not intend to serve more than one or two terms, but it was the death of his daughter Betsy in 2002 that really took the wind out of his political sails. In a personal note in 2003, Fred wrote, "Thanks to The Patriot Post for your considerable efforts to hold back the 'Clintonistas' while I was in the Senate." As a lawyer, statesman, actor and fellow Tennessean, he will be missed.Comment | Share Newspaper Assumed Woman Used Gun to Maim and KillAn Oklahoma woman could be charged with four counts of second-degree murder for allegedly ramming her car into a crowd of people at the homecoming parade at Oklahoma State University. But a newspaper in another state mistakenly pinned the incident of mass death and injury on the Leftmedia's favorite pariah — guns. "Shooter kills 4; 30 injured," a daily newspaper in Michigan, the Traverse City Record-Eagle, wrote atop a wire story of the incident that ran in its Oct. 25 edition. "Because of a page designer's error," the paper posted on its website that afternoon, "a misleading headline appeared on page 3A in Sunday's Record-Eagle accompanying a story about a driver who struck and killed four people at the Oklahoma State University homecoming parade on Saturday." This mistake seems to be in a similar vein to the infamous "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline that the Chicago Tribune ran on the eve of Truman's victory in the 1948 elections. The paper must go out, and someone probably prepositioned a headline before the whole story came in. But the headline was never changed as the edition headed out to the press. It reveals the Leftmedia's assumptions whenever a mass casualty incident occurs. Cars can kill too.Comment | Share FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSISReligious Accommodation, or Political Favoritism?By Arnold Ahlert
In Illinois, a jury awarded two Muslim truck drivers $240,000 in damages and back pay after their claims that being forced to transport alcohol constituted religious discrimination were upheld by U.S. District Court Judge James E. Shadid, a Barack Obama appointee. The Somalian Muslims, Mahad Abass Mohamed and Abdkiarim Hassan Bulshale, worked for the Star Transport trucking company based in Morton, Illinois, and were fired in 2009. Shadid made his ruling in March, when Star Transport admitted liability. Yet the most telling element of the case was that both men were represented by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which took up the case in 2013. The EEOC asserted Star Transport had violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which requires accommodations for employees’ religious convictions provided those accommodations do not present an "undue hardship.” The EEOC insisted its investigation revealed the trucking company “could have readily avoided assigning these employees to alcohol delivery without any undue hardship, but chose to force the issue despite the employees’ Islamic religion.” According to UCLA Law professor Eugene Volokh, the court explained the trucking company was able “swap loads between drivers” on several occasions and conceded that it could have accommodated this request as well. Yet the company insisted it shouldn’t be held liable for punitive damages. "This concession was important, and if Star Transport had fought the case, and shown that such a swap would indeed be difficult ... it should have won,” Volokh writes. "But when accommodating an employee just requires a bit of extra administrative hassle ... the federal Civil Rights Act requires the employer to do this.” The jury apparently agreed, taking only 45 minutes to deliver its verdict on Oct. 20. All well and good, save for a jarring note of boasting added by EEOC General Counsel David Lopez following the decision. "EEOC is proud to support the rights of workers to equal treatment in the workplace without having to sacrifice their religious beliefs or practices,” he said. "This is fundamental to the American principles of religious freedom and tolerance.” June Calhoun, one of the EEOC attorneys involved in the litigation, was even more ecstatic. “This is an awesome outcome,” she reveled. "Star Transport failed to provide any discrimination training to its human resources personnel, which led to catastrophic results for these employees. They suffered real injustice that needed to be addressed. By this verdict, the jury remedied the injustice by sending clear messages to Star Transport and other employers that they will be held accountable for their unlawful employment practices. Moreover, they signaled to Mr. Mohamed and Mr. Bulshale that religious freedom is a right for all.” For the Left, however, “discrimination training” is a rather one-sided affair. Christians have certain beliefs with regard to same-sex marriage, yet when it comes to an accommodation for those beliefs Christians must accommodate homosexuals. Thus when Sweet Cakes bakery shop refused to bake a cake for a lesbian wedding, a ceremony owners Aaron and Melissa Klein insisted was a violation of their religious convictions, the Oregon commissioner of the Bureau of Labor and Industries ordered the couple to pay $135,000 in damages for emotional and mental suffering arising from the denial of service. By contrast, Azucar Bakery, a homosexual-run business in Denver, was exonerated by the Colorado Civil Rights Division for refusing to decorate a cake with biblical passages for William Jack, a Christian from Castle Rock who wanted those decorations to reflect the idea same-sex marriage was "un-biblical and inappropriate.” Yet perhaps the key word in the case involving the Muslim truck drivers wasn’t “alcohol,” but “transport.” The Koran forbids the ingestion of “intoxicants,” with a number of hadiths (quotes from Muhammad) citing that reality. Yet one is left to wonder how the transportation of alcohol was conflated with its ingestion. Another Obama appointee, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, made a similar ruling in the case of 19-year-old Umme-Hani Khan, who alleged religious discrimination when Abercrombie & Fitch fired her for wearing a hijab to work at one of its stores. A&F had a policy against head covers of any kind for its employees, and once again, while the Koran urges Muslim women to dress "modestly,” the hijab is not required by Islamic code. It doesn’t take much of an imagination to guess where the Obama administration would come down if two Christian truck drivers refused to transport abortifacients to the nearest Planned Parenthood clinic. Until Judge Richard J. Leon of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled against it in September, the administration had insisted March for Life must provide the abortion-inducing drugs to employees through its health care plan — or face fines of $36,500 per worker per year. That followed a similar 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court in 2014 in favor of Christian-run Hobby Lobby. Nonetheless, seven other non-profit organizations are filing lawsuits in the hopes of a Supreme Court hearing with regard to the same issue. In other words, when it comes to Christians and their beliefs, the Obama administration seems quite determined to run roughshod over them, one lawsuit after another, even after the Supreme Court has clarified the issue. The American Left in general is no different. Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis was excoriated for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, with the prevailing idea she should find somewhere else to work if she couldn’t abide her job requirements. Those would be job requirements that were changed by the Supreme Court after Davis had been employed. It is highly unlikely the Muslim truck drivers were unaware the alcohol deliveries would be part of their job assignment, or that Khan was unaware of A&F’s policy. Regardless, Davis was jailed, Mohamed and Bulsahle won $240,000 and Khan awaits a trial for damages — even as the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that another Muslim woman, Samantha Elauf, was denied her right to religious accommodation by the same store chain for the same reason. Sadly, a growing contempt for Christian beliefs has never been more in vogue. At the same time, the oh-so tolerant and secular Left has a soft spot for Islam, a religion with a far less charitable approach to homosexuals and women in particular, and infidels in general, than anything Christianity espouses. It is a temporary alliance of convenience aimed at taking out those both groups see as a greater threat: conservatives in general, and Christians in particular, in the best “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” tradition. Last April, a video of Muslim bakers in Michigan refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding went viral, garnering 2.2 million viewers in only three days. No doubt some of the viewers wonder when the EEOC and the Obama administration will be filing suit. Chances are, they’ll be wondering forever. Comment | Share
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 OPINION IN BRIEFPeggy Noonan: "[Jeb Bush] was playing from an old playbook — he means to show people his heart, hopes to run joyously. But it’s 2015, we’re in crisis; they don’t care about your heart and joy, they care about your brains, guts and toughness. The expectations he faced were unrealistically high. He was painted as the front-runner. Reporters thought with his record, and a brother and father as president, he must be the front-runner, the kind of guy the GOP would fall in line for. But there’s no falling in line this year. He spent his first months staking out his position not as a creative, original chief executive of a major state — which he was — but as a pol raising shock-and-awe money and giving listless, unfocused interviews in which he slouched and shrugged. There was a sense he was waiting to be appreciated. I speak of his candidacy in the past tense, which is rude though I don’t mean it rudely. It’s just hard to see how this can work. By hard I mean, for me, impossible."Comment | Share SHORT CUTSThe Gipper: "Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefitting from their success — only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, progressive, and free. Trust the people."Twisted logic: "You’ve read one quote that, to be fair, is out of context. The situation that the president has described is a description of the kind of mission that our men and women will have in our counter-ISIL campaign.” —Josh Earnest, reacting to a reporter who highlighted Obama's vow not to put boots on the ground in Syria The BIG Lie: "[A]ll of the [CNBC's] subject matter was entirely appropriate. ... If you look at the questions only, there’s frankly not much of a difference between debates one, two or three, including Fox, which is of course the great oracle of the RNC." —CNN’s Michael Smerconish Alpha Jackass: "[Evolution] is a fact. ... You can't not believe it unless you're ignorant. ... [A]ll of the Republican candidates except one say they don't believe in evolution. I mean, that's a disgrace. But for a very eminent, distinguished doctor, as [Ben Carson] is, to say that, it’s even worse, because, of course, evolution is the bedrock of biology, and biology is the bedrock of medicine.” —Richard Dawkins Trashing the system from which he reaped: "Without a substantial carbon tax, there’s no incentive for innovators or plant buyers to switch. Since World War II, US-government R&D has defined the state of the art in almost every area. The private sector is in general inept. The climate problem has to be solved in the rich countries. China and the US and Europe have to solve CO2 emissions, and when they do, hopefully they’ll make it cheap enough for everyone else." —Bill Gates Farewell to an iconic Patriot: "[Fred Thompson] was one of the great gentlemen it has been my privilege to know. Fred would have been a great president because — and today’s candidates could take a lesson from this — he cared more about America than about being president. He was not the best candidate, but he would have been the best incumbent." —Andrew McCarthy And last... "New York City reports it's struggling to keep an increasing population of stray cats under control. That's a tough one. Have they tried cat-free zone signs?" —Fred Thompson 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. |
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