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Patriot Headlines | Grassroots Commentary Daily Digest
February 23, 2016
THE FOUNDATION"The fundamental source of all your errors, sophisms and false reasonings is a total ignorance of the natural rights of mankind. Were you once to become acquainted with these, you could never entertain a thought, that all men are not, by nature, entitled to a parity of privileges." —Alexander Hamilton, 1775TOP RIGHT HOOKSDemocrat Double Standards
George W. Bush controlled the White House and Democrats controlled the upper chamber from 2001 to 2003. Bush nominated 32 judges during that time. Not one of them even made it to the Judiciary Committee for a hearing. In 2005, Democrats — including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton — filibustered the nomination of Samuel Alito. That same quintet is now leading the chorus calling for the Republican-controlled Senate to do its "constitutional duties" and rubber stamp whomever Obama nominates. When Bush had a year and six months left in his last term, Sen. Chuck Schumer said unless something extraordinary happened, the Senate shouldn't approve any Bush nominee. Going back to the last few weeks of George H.W Bush's administration, Biden said Bush shouldn't nominate anyone until after the 1992 presidential election was completed — the same thing Republicans are saying to Obama. But now that he's co-captain in the Oval Office, Biden conveniently insists that "lengthy speech on the Senate floor about a hypothetical vacancy on the Supreme Court" ... "is not an accurate description of my views on the subject." When members of the current administration occupied seats in the Senate, its views on the Senate's role in the nomination of a Supreme Court Justice was robust. After all, the Senate offers its consent and advice, per the Constitution. But the Democrats' interpretation of the Constitution changes with the political winds. Comment | Share FBI Had a Way to Circumvent Farook's PasscodeAmidst the FBI's demands that Apple create software to break the security the tech company engineered into the iPhone, the underreported fact is that the government bungled its initial attempts to access the cell phone the San Bernardino County Health Department gave to eventual terrorist Syed Farook. The first mistake was the county didn't set up the phone so that it had administrative access over the device. If it had taken that preemptive step, investigators could have easily gathered everything the phone could provide.The second mistake was hours after the shooting when San Bernardino, working with the FBI, reset the phone's iCloud password, allowing investigators to see the data the phone was automatically backing up to a remote location on Apple's servers. Problem was, the last time the phone updated to iCloud was on Oct. 19 — weeks before the Dec. 2 shooting. There was information still on the phone. Investigators [could have teased that information from the phone by turning on the phone's automatic updates, going to a location frequented by Farook and the device would have automatically sent information to iCloud. Voilà! With the recent information in the cloud, then investigators could have reset Farook's iCloud password. Instead, the government is trying to force Apple to destroy the security protocols it has built into its current devices because a series of government mistakes. "Do we have freedom of speech, or freedom to speak only what law-enforcement can monitor?" wrote National Review's Andrew McCarthy. "Does the Fourth Amendment guarantee freedom from unreasonable searches, or afford only whatever expectation of privacy the government, not the society, decides is reasonable — and cabined by what the government is technologically capable of searching?" What the FBI misses is that our rights are given by the Creator, not an incompetent mid-level bureaucrat. Comment | Share Who Loses VA Musical Chairs? Vets Do.Instead of firing misbehaving administrators, the Department of Veterans Affairs simply shuffled the bureaucrats off to another VA hospital in another state. After crunching the data, the Daily Caller found that almost 100 VA administrators worked in at least three states over the last eight years — often at the cost of pay bumps and hefty relocation fees. When it comes to doctors or pharmacists, some of whom ran afoul with disciplinary or licensing issues, the VA simply played bureaucratic musical chairs, shuffling about 600 VA employees across the country. "Whatever the reasons," wrote Luke Rosiak, investigative journalist for The Caller, "Secretary Bob McDonald, who promised a transformation of the VA when he took over in 2014, is trying to fix past mistakes by moving around the same people who oversaw them, not bringing in new leaders." Recently, the Deputy Secretary for the VA Sloan Gibson said he stood by his decision to fire a VA medical center director in Albany, despite the decision being reversed by the department's Merit Systems Protection Board. The bureaucracy in the state-run health care system is entrenched, protecting its own at the expense of those it is supposed to serve — veterans.Comment | Share Don't Miss Patriot HumorCheck out Obama's Ideal Court.If you'd like to receive Patriot Humor by email, update your subscription here. FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSISNevada's High Stakes CaucusBy Nate Jackson
In our estimation, Trump continues to win for two reasons. First (and most important), as we've been saying all along, Trump's card is the ace of anger affirmation. He's tapping into an entirely justified swell of frustration among voters created by Barack Obama and left insufficiently addressed by the GOP establishment. Trump gives voice to politically incorrect things voters only wish they could say with impunity. He'll make great deals. He'll knock heads together. He'll upend Washington, DC. He'll make America great again. What's not to like? A lot, actually. A constantly self-contradicting narcissistic liberal with New York values is not the answer to our nation's questions or problems. And among numerous profanity-laden tirades, we've been told to "burn in hell with [our] 30 pieces of silver" for saying so. True story — that's an actual quote. What can we say? We're going to stand for our constitutional principles, even if people wish us eternal damnation for it. Second, Trump is leading because of the still-large and divided field of opponents. The GOP presidential race began with a staggering 17 candidates, and five yet remain. Only one of them gets 24/7 media coverage. Trump's appeal runs deep (though not wide), leaving the rest of the field to divide up two-thirds of the votes. Two-thirds wins unless it's divided. And boy are Trump's opponents divided. The latest spat involves one of Cruz's top aides posting a video of Rubio making comments about the Bible with a (deliberate) mis-transcription of his remarks at the bottom. The details of the embarrassing episode are hardly the point. It's the fact that the incessant fratricidal infighting has gotten this ridiculous. At this point, the infighting is self-perpetuating, and it leaves Kasich and Carson an opening to stay in the race when neither of them should. Cruz and Rubio are both outstanding conservatives, and if this cycle hadn't been turned on its head with Trump's antics, they might be jostling for first place, not second. Instead, they're only hurting each other, and the end result might be a party led by a man who thinks its last president was a war criminal. That may be what Republicans deserve, but our nation needs better. What are we fighting for? We ask that question in more than one sense — both "why" we're fighting and "what" we're aiming to achieve. Limited-government constitutional conservatism is the best — indeed, the only — way to make American great again. We must get back to being governed by Rule of Law, and thus enjoying the fruits of real Liberty. Rubio and Cruz are each able to carry that torch. Trump simply won't, no matter how many are willing to roll the dice on him. Unless the two senators pick up their game, Trump will continue to collect all the chips. Comment | Share
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OPINION IN BRIEFStephen Moore: "When I was a smart-aleck college student, I had a sign on my dorm-room door that read: 'Reality is for those who can't handle drugs.' Maybe the 2016 version should go like this: 'Bernie Sanders and socialism are for those who can't handle reality.' Socialism's comeback is mystifying to most clear-thinking people. Do people who support Sanders and socialism walk around with shutters over their eyes so they don't have to observe the reality of what is happening in the world around them? The remarkable thing about the rise of Bernie Sanders is that his popularity runs in the counter-direction to how socialism is actually working. ... Economic freedom is, of course, the opposite of socialism. Nations that are economically free have freer trade, smaller welfare states, lower taxes, a lighter hand with regulation, private ownership of the means of production and the rule of law. Countries that are economically free have five times the per capita average annual income ($55,000) of countries that are the least free ($9,000). Not only that, economic freedom is also highly correlated with better education, improved health and a cleaner environment. The poor do better in nations that are economically free and worse in Bernie Sanders land. In short, countries that are economically free are healthy, wealthy and wise. This reality seems to be lost on those high on the drug of socialism."Comment | Share SHORT CUTSInsight: "The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation." —Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924)Upright: "We have a constitutional guarantee against unreasonable searches — generally, searches without warrants based on probable cause. ... Our rights pre-exist and are independent of law enforcement's capacity to intrude on them. It is law enforcement's burden to evolve technological surveillance capabilities that can be deployed in a manner consistent with our rights; our rights are not burdened by the confines of law enforcement's capabilities. The point of the Constitution is to limit government's ability to intrude on liberty, not to limit the scope of liberty to government's capacity for intrusion." —Andrew McCarthy Belly laugh of the week: "Bernie Sanders won 47 percent on Saturday. I haven't seen the figure '47 percent' get this much bad press since Mitt Romney's comments to donors." —Jim Geraghty The BIG Lie: "I do not believe in regulation for regulation's sake, contrary to rumor. This idea that somehow I get a kick out of big government is just not the case." —Barack Obama Rules are for the little people: "[Hillary Clinton], a high ranking official who should know better, [was] completely given a pass, and almost an apologetic pass. So how should us regular citizens feel, especially with heightened concerns about national security?" —Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer jailed for exposing classified intel Village Idiots: "[Y]ou know that I know that you know that the system is rigged! For too long we've given our votes to corporate puppets. Sold the okie doke. ... That's why I am officially endorsing my brother, Bernie Sanders." —director Spike Lee ("It's the 75-year-old white man in Congress for 30 years who understands the hardships young blacks face today." —Stephen Miller) And last... "If Biden can get away with pointing to a comprehensive videotaped speech and saying 'I didn't say that' we really are in a post-factual age." —Charles C.W. Cooke 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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