THE FOUNDATION

“If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security.” —Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1779

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Forget Congress, Obama’s Taking the Iran Deal to the UN

It took years to get other nations on board with sanctions against Iran, and Barack Obama has done his best to undo all that work — for nothing in return. Meanwhile, Congress tried to insert itself into the process, but all it got was an empty political victory. Congress now needs a two-thirds majority to disapprove of Obama’s bad deal. But it might not even matter, as Obama could essentially skip Congress altogether. CNS News reports, “Despite a legal obligation to allow Congress to review the Iran nuclear agreement for 60 days, the Obama administration will press ahead with a U.N. Security Council resolution enshrining the deal, likely within days.” According to Secretary of State John Kerry, implementation of the agreement will begin “within 90 days of the UN Security Council endorsing the deal.” Obama has worked his deal, declared it’s awesome, threatened to veto any congressional measure of disapproval, and wants to get on with securing the UN’s seal of approval for his legacy-building enterprise. And yet he had the temerity to say, “I welcome a robust debate in Congress on this issue and I welcome scrutiny of the details of this agreement.” As long as he can ignore the debate, that is.

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Sanctuary Cities Shield Thousands of Felonious Illegal Immigrants

The recent murder of Kathryn Steinle by felon and serial-deportee Fransisco Sanchez in San Francisco elucidated a little-known policy that allows illegal aliens to skirt immigration enforcement measures. Cities like San Francisco that adopt such policies typically don’t necessarily seek out undocumented immigrants, but they also don’t enforce deportation, which yields the same result. And it’s a much bigger problem than we’re led to believe. Citing a 2014 government report provided under a Freedom of Information Act request, Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, drops this bombshell revelation: “State and local sanctuary policies caused the release of more than 8,000 criminal alien offenders sought by ICE for deportation in 276 jurisdictions around the country over an eight-month period [January 1, 2014, to August 31, 2014], according to ICE records obtained by the Center for Immigration Studies in a FOIA request. Sixty-three percent of the individuals freed by local authorities had prior criminal histories or were labeled a public safety concern at the time of their release. Nearly 1,900 of the released offenders subsequently were arrested for another crime within that eight-month period. ICE arrested approximately 750 of the recidivists, but just over 1,000 (60 percent) remained at large.” These 8,000 criminal aliens — and thousands more since then — were allowed back onto our streets because one party cares more about votes than security. Americans like Kathryn Steinle shouldn’t pay the ultimate price for Democrats' vote-buying schemes.

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Is ‘Freddie Gray’ the Right Name for a Youth Center?

If black lives really matter — and they absolutely do — the black community should be making some different choices. Case in point from the Fox affiliate in Baltimore: “A new Baltimore youth center has been named in honor of Freddie Gray.” You’ll recall that Gray is the black man who was arrested and later died from a spinal injury he received while in a police van. As with the deaths of Michael Brown and, to a far lesser extent, Eric Garner, Gray’s death led to riots in Baltimore and charges against the arresting officers. So what will kids learn at the Freddie Gray Youth Empowerment Center? It will offer job and computer training along with year-round community programs and free meals. Those are honorable things, and we’re certainly glad to see the church community of Baltimore take the lead in helping kids. But Gray’s “martyrdom” as part of a leftist narrative of racist police doesn’t automatically make him a role model for Baltimore’s youth. We just pray these kids are able to free themselves from the all-too-typical inner city fate.

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Don’t Miss Alexander’s Column

Read Jade Helm 15 and the Conspiracy Theories, on Alex Jones and his reckless conspiratorial rhetoric about the Jade Helm military exercise.

If you’d like to receive Alexander’s Column by email, update your subscription here.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS

Obama’s Prison Reform: More Votes for Democrats

By Paul Albaugh

On the heels of commuting the sentences of 46 drug offenders on Monday, Barack Obama is pushing for sweeping reforms for the U.S prison system. During a speech before the NAACP on Tuesday, he outlined his three-pronged approach, stating that reform needs to happen “In the community, the courtroom and in the cell block.” And today he’ll become the first sitting president to visit a federal prison. The bad news is he won’t be staying there.

At the community level, Obama proposes diverting money saved through prison reform to education. If the money were to go to colleges, high schools or perhaps even middle schools, there might be some merit to his proposition. But he and the educrats in Washington want the money to be invested in pre-kindergarten, allegedly so crime can be stopped before it starts.

Last we checked, not many toddlers were thinking about using drugs, or committing other non-violent crimes. Humor aside, “Head Start,” the model for universal pre-k, has been shown to have virtually no benefit. Besides, is it really better to leave it up to the government rather than parents to teach their kids right and wrong? Certainly not, but Obama and his fellow progressives would like nothing more than to indoctrinate children at an even earlier age.

As for reforming prisons via the courtroom, Obama wants Congress to pass legislation this year that would lower long mandatory minimum sentences or get rid of them entirely. Additionally, he wants to invest in “prison alternatives, such as drug court programs and probation courts.” Reform in this area has the backing of many conservatives who believe that non-violent criminals such as drug users would be better off going through rehab programs than serving countless years in prison.

For reforming the cellblock, Obama wants to address the alleged overuse of solitary confinement, overcrowded prisons and gangs. According to The Hill, Obama also supports “banning a box on job applications for convicted felons and said those who have served time and paid their debts to society ‘should be able to vote.’” Ah, there it is — voting.

In other words, let’s make it illegal for businesses to not hire someone because they have checked a box indicating they are a felon. That might be discrimination. But let’s make it perfectly legal for that same person to be able to check the ballot box. Something of a double standard there, but what else can we expect from the minister of fairness? Just look at his track record of pushing policies that guarantee more votes for progressives.

The thing is, there’s actually plenty of bipartisan support in Congress for prison reform. On the same day Obama spoke to the NAACP, a Senate panel discussed ways to overhaul the criminal system, and conservative senators like Mike Lee, Rand Paul and John Cornyn are leading the charge.

According to the Edward M. Kennedy Institute, which hosted the panel, there are currently 2.2 million people in U.S. prisons, which is a 500% increase over the last 30 years. In addition, more than 60% of those incarcerated for nonviolent crimes are black and Hispanic men.

This may seem like a disproportionate number. According to Obama it proves our justice system is “not as fair as it should be.” Are there people behind bars that perhaps shouldn’t be? Sure, from all ethnicities. Are there people behind bars that are serving sentences that don’t match the crime they committed? Sure, from all ethnicities. Yet Obama claims more blacks and Hispanics than whites in prison can be due only to racism.

There may be some cases where this is true. However, he fails to mention in his narrative that many imprisoned blacks and Hispanics come from high-crime cities. Many come from broken homes, grow up on urban poverty plantations run by Democrats and turn to drugs and other crimes, both violent and nonviolent, because that is what they know.

By the way, what message is Obama sending to those breaking the current laws, even nonviolently? That they have the hope of getting out of jail early? If he commuted the sentences of these 46 individuals on Monday because there were errors in their sentencing, or they had been mistreated by a prosecutor, then his use of the presidential power of clemency may be understood. But that wasn’t the case; it was simply another abuse of power.

As Paul Robinson of The Wall Street Journal notes:

“Using clemency to override existing policy on criminal sentences sets a dangerous precedent. Imagine a president who uses clemency to mitigate the sentences of nonviolent white-collar criminals like Bernie Madoff, or police officers who use deadly force in the line of duty, or for defendants in stand-your-ground cases, or for those who shoot abortion doctors as a claimed ‘act of conscience.’ Will each new president drop or revise the clemency criteria of his predecessor, and substitute his own? This would short-circuit the checks and balances of our constitutional separation of powers and give unrestricted lawmaking power to the president.”

Do our prisons need reform? Absolutely, but not for all the reasons Obama puts forth. Furthermore, it’s appalling that this president has the time to not only commute the sentences of 46 drug offenders but to personally write them letters, yet he can’t be bothered to even mention the name of Kathryn Steinle, who was murdered by a repeatedly deported illegal alien, much less spend a few minutes writing a letter of condolence to her family. Oh wait, he supports sanctuary cities, which allow illegal immigrants to go unchecked. And what about the American hostages in Iran who are still there following Obama’s terrible deal? Politics trumped reason. And that’s what worries us about his ideas for prison reform.

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TODAY AT PATRIOTPOST.US

• ANALYSIS: The Gruesome Reality of the Abortion Industry
• Abortionists Say Procedure Doesn’t Hurt Women Emotionally
• Obama Scolds Brave Reporter
• Humor: Help a Brother Out
• Meme: ‘Extremist’

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

• Jonah Goldberg: Zero Tolerance for Confederate Flag, Nuance for Islamic Terror
• Veronique de Rugy: Growth and Fairness in a Clinton-Style Economy
• Victor Davis Hanson: Contrary to Progressive Belief, Human Nature Can’t Be Changed

For more, visit Right Opinion.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Jonah Goldberg: “Shortly after the shooting in Charleston, S.C., the New America think tank chummed the waters with a tendentious study insinuating that [Dylann] Roof and his ilk represented the real terror threat. ‘Homegrown Extremists Tied to Deadlier Toll Than Jihadists in U.S. Since 9/11,’ proclaimed a New York Times headline. Forty-eight Americans, including the nine killed in Charleston, have been killed by non-Islamist ‘terrorists,’ compared with a mere 26 by avowed jihadists. The study is a methodological mess, starting with the fact that it starts the clock immediately after 9/11, ignoring the 3,000 killed on that day. It counts dubious attacks as right-wing terror and ignores the fact that the U.S. has foiled and deterred numerous Islamist terror plots in the past decade. If you catch a bunch of rattlesnakes in your backyard before they bite and kill someone in your family, is that proof there is no threat from snakes? It would be an improvement if the left could stick to either of its double standards. Personally, I think fellow Americans … deserve some of the nuance and understanding so many reserve for Islam extremism. But if you’re going to take your zero tolerance for symbols of 19th century slavery so seriously, maybe you should show the same myopic zealotry with regard to the forces who are enslaving people right now.”

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SHORT CUTS

Insight: “Make men large and strong and tyranny will bankrupt itself in making shackles for them.” —Rev. Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)

Upright: “The government shouldn’t get in the way of innovation and progress; it should watch from the sidelines and be grateful that there are private actors who are willing to risk their own money and effort to produce the benefits government can never deliver.” —Veronique de Rugy

The purge continues: “Those guys need to go. They can be sand-blasted off, or somebody could carefully remove a slab of that and auction it off to the highest bidder.” —NAACP Atlanta branch President Richard Rose about the 90- by 190-foot carving of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis at Stone Mountain

Sickness: “What’s really horrific is women who are pregnant being forced to bear children against their will. That’s horrific.” —NYU professor Cristina Beltrán on the newest Planned Parenthood scandal

Demo-gogues: “I challenge those who are objecting to this [nuclear] agreement … to explain … why they’re right and people like Ernie Moniz, who is an MIT nuclear physicist and an expert in these issues, is wrong, why the rest of the world is wrong.” —Barack Obama

“Trust me”: “[I]f there is nuclear material [in Iran’s undeclared] site, high school physics will remind us that that leaves a trace. And so we’ll know that, in fact, there was a violation of the agreement.” —Barack Obama

Warnings: “We think [Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran] is not only a threat to [Israel]. We think this is a threat to [the U.S.] as well. Iran has killed more Americans than anyone other than al-Qaida. They’re going to get hundreds of billions of dollars to fuel their terror and military machine. … When Arabs and Israelis agree, it’s worth paying attention.” —Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Late-night humor: “The president of Iran prematurely announced the nuclear deal on Twitter … before it was official. Which isn’t that big a deal until you realize the guy who almost had nukes is known for accidentally hitting ‘Send.’” —Jimmy Fallon

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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.

THE FOUNDATION

“In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature.” —James Madison, Federalist No. 51, 1788

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Planned Parenthood Sells Baby Parts After Partial-Birth Abortions

Alternate Leftmedia headline: “Planned Parenthood targeted by undercover video.” That’s courtesy of CBS, which has a serious problem confusing the victims here. Just when you thought depravity couldn’t get any worse, along comes another surreptitious video of someone at Planned Parenthood discussing appallingly evil things. It will be the first of several videos taken and released by The Center for Medical Progress. In this one, Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical research, discusses with “buyers” the practice of essentially performing a partial-birth abortion followed by selling harvested organs. While sipping wine and eating salad, Nucatola boasts, “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver … so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.” What kind of depraved and despicable person talks like this about a baby? Note also the sick irony that, to Planned Parenthood, unborn babies aren’t human unless their organs are useful.

The video is all too clear, but that didn’t stop Planned Parenthood from complaining about being victimized by a “heavily edited, secretly recorded videotape that falsely portrays Planned Parenthood’s participation in tissue donation programs that support lifesaving scientific research.” They’re just trying to help, right? But considering Planned Parenthood gets half a billion dollars in taxpayer money every year, this deserves some serious investigation followed by defunding the abortion mill. Louisiana governor and presidential candidate Bobby Jindal has already ordered an investigation in his state. We’re with Michelle Malkin, who wonders, “When you’ve recovered from your nausea, ask yourselves this: What kind of country do we live in where law-abiding businesses are fined, threatened and demonized for refusing to bake gay wedding cakes, but barbaric baby butchers are hailed by feminists, Hollywood and a president who asked God to ‘bless’ them?”

God have mercy on this nation.

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Big Brother Trumps Little Sisters

Little Sisters of the Poor, a missions-based Catholic organization strongly opposed to ObamaCare’s contraception requirement, suffered a legal setback on Tuesday after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit refused to grant it an exemption. The court ruled, “Although we recognize and respect the sincerity of Plaintiff’s beliefs and arguments, we conclude the accommodation scheme relieves Plaintiffs of their obligations under the Mandate and does not substantially burden their religious exercise under RFRA [Religious Freedom Restoration Act] or infringe upon their First Amendment rights.” What’s baffling is how badly the opinion clashes with the Supreme Court’s Burwell v. Hobby Lobby ruling last year. In that case, the Court found that “HHS and the principal dissent [are] in effect tell[ing] the plaintiffs that their beliefs are flawed. For good reason, we have repeatedly refused to take such a step.”

Here’s the problem, as explained by University of Tennessee professor Glenn Reynolds: “The court seems to have no recognition of the fact that the Obama Administration’s regulatory ‘accommodation’ is a sleight of hand, allowing the insurer/third party administrator to move the contraceptive coverage ‘off the books’ and ‘pay’ for it themselves. But of course burdening the insurer/administrator in this fashion is merely a shell game, and the cost of contraceptive coverage is ultimately borne by the employer and individual beneficiaries. The coverage is not magically free, no matter how hard the Obama Administration tries to make it ‘look’ free via regulation.” This case may end up in the Supreme Court — something it could have prevented had its ruling in Hobby Lobby not been so limited.

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More Carry Permits, Fewer Murders

It’s long been a truism that more guns means less crime. That may seem like a paradox, but when criminals have to wonder if potential victims are armed, it decreases the likelihood they’ll commit a crime. Now, according to a new report set to be released by the Crime Prevention Research Center, we learn that murder rates have fallen at the same time concealed carry permits have skyrocketed. We don’t think that’s a coincidence. Since 2007, the number of people with concealed carry permits has nearly tripled — from 4.6 million to 12.8 million. And 2014 enjoyed a 15.4% increase over 2013 in permit applications, while seven states don’t even require a permit. According to The Washington Times, we can thank Barack Obama, in a manner of speaking: “Between 1999 to 2007, the number of permits increased by about 240,000 per year. But in the next four years, during Mr. Obama’s first term in the White House, the number of new permits issued jumped to 850,000 per year. From 2011 to 2013, the number increased by 1.5 million, rising to 1.7 million last year.” Meanwhile, both the murder rate and violent crime rate dropped 25%. That doesn’t in any way belittle the tragic loss of life caused by bad guys with guns, but the solution isn’t to take guns away from the law-abiding.

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FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS

Transgender Nation

By Nate Jackson

In December 2010, Barack Obama signed the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the Pentagon policy (signed by Bill Clinton) prohibiting open homosexuals from serving in the military. Stay tuned, because the next victory for the Rainbow Mafia will be the end of the ban on transsexuals among the ranks of America’s Armed Forces.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter released a statement on the policy Monday, saying, “The Defense Department’s current regulations regarding transgender service members are outdated and are causing uncertainty that distracts commanders from our core missions. At a time when our troops have learned from experience that the most important qualification for service members should be whether they’re able and willing to do their job, our officers and enlisted personnel are faced with certain rules that tell them the opposite. Moreover, we have transgender soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines — real, patriotic Americans — who I know are being hurt by an outdated, confusing, inconsistent approach that’s contrary to our value of service and individual merit.”

Not to paint with too broad a brush, but is that how Carter explains the traitorous actions of Pfc. Bradley Manning? He was convicted of espionage and is serving a 35-year sentence — as a “woman.”

According to UCLA’s Williams Institute, the military is full of transsexuals. Color us skeptical. Carter has ordered a review of the ban with the almost sure aim of eliminating it after six months, because, as he said, “[W]e must ensure that everyone who’s able and willing to serve has the full and equal opportunity to do so, and we must treat all our people with the dignity and respect they deserve.”

We certainly agree that all humans have inherent, God-given dignity and should be treated with respect, but that doesn’t mean celebration of such mental illness and sin. And make no mistake: This debate isn’t about dignity, and it’s most certainly not about what makes our military a more effective fighting force. It’s about making the normalization of homosexuality a matter of law in regard to Defense Department personnel, practices and policy.

Leftists are pushing hard to normalize dysfunction, not just in the military but all over.

Consider the case of Bruce Jenner, the former decathlon champion who decided he was really a woman trapped in a man’s body. Worse is the growing number of children whose parents enable rather than treat gender dysphoria — they help their children live the lie.

One of the primary jobs of parents is to mold their children into responsible members of society and to help them through personal struggles, not to encourage them to turn every fantasy into reality. Yet here we are, about to witness a “reality” show on TLC about Jazz Jennings, a 14-year-old Florida boy who has been “living as a female” since he wore a rainbow swimming suit at his five-year-old birthday party. Jennings was named one of Time magazine’s 25 most influential teenagers last year.

“Jazz may be known as an author and activist,” cooed TLC general manager Nancy Daniels, “but she’s first and foremost a teenage girl with a big, brave heart, living a remarkable life.” Does “she” have biological girl parts? No, but he plans to disfigure his body at age 18 and has been taking hormone blockers since age 11 to prevent nature from taking its course. Is TLC — not to mention his parents — aiding and abetting a serious mental disorder? Yes.

But he’s not alone in being a child victim. In June, NBC ran an exclusive interview with Liam, a 10-year-old boy who lives as a girl. His parents have already legally changed his name to Lia, and he will soon begin taking hormone blockers as Jazz does.

Also in June, The New York Times profiled Caden Boone, who underwent reassignment surgery in April and now goes by Kat, or Katherine, all because he was troubled and found “answers” on the Internet. The Times informs us that his “new vagina needs constant care or it will close off like a wound.” A wound indeed. How tragic.

In fact, tragic might undersell the trouble transgendered people face. In the same article, the Times also reports, “A large-scale Swedish study at the Karolinska Institute found that starting about a decade after gender reassignment surgery, transgender people were still more than 19 times as likely to die by suicide as the general population.”

If such statistics applied to guns, the Left would be pushing even harder for an outright ban. Instead, Oregon is allowing children as young as 15 to receive taxpayer-subsidized sex-change operations — without parental notification.

As we asked recently, how many children will end up making the worst decision of their entire lives because they have been marinated in a toxic environment at an age when they are utterly incapable of defending themselves against their progressive indoctrinators?

“At the heart of the problem is confusion over the nature of the transgendered,” writes Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital. “‘Sex change’ is biologically impossible. People who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or vice versa. Rather, they become feminized men or masculinized women. Claiming that this is a civil-rights matter and encouraging surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder.”

McHugh also says Bruce Jenner is one thing, but in these other cases “we’re talking about children with a future ahead of them.” One might call it child abuse.

This is the generation being raised to perhaps one day serve in the U.S. Armed Forces, which the Left has decided must be a reflection of our dysfunctional culture, not a capable protector of our Liberty. Indeed, no institution is safe from the Left’s social engineering.

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TODAY AT PATRIOTPOST.US

• ANALYSIS: Iran May Get Nukes but at Least Obama Has His Legacy
• Boy Scouts Preparing to Repeal Ban on Gay Leaders
• One-Third of VA’s Waiting Vets Have Died
• Meme: Democrats
• Meme: Missing Liberty

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

• Michelle Malkin: The Wine-Sipping Butchers of Planned Parenthood
• Tony Perkins: The Military’s Latest Trans Action
• Walter Williams: Historical Ignorance
• Star Parker: Liberals Will Fuel Racial Tensions Forever
• Ken Blackwell & Bob Morrison: Obama’s Vienna Concession: A Foreign Policy Disaster
• Arnold Ahlert: Disarming America
• Stephen Moore: Governments Keep Turning to Socialism

For more, visit Right Opinion.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Walter Williams: “The victors of war write its history in order to cast themselves in the most favorable light. That explains the considerable historical ignorance about our war of 1861 and panic over the Confederate flag. To create better understanding, we have to start a bit before the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. … During the 1787 Constitutional Convention, a proposal was made that would allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. James Madison rejected it… The Constitution never would have been ratified if states thought they could not regain their sovereignty — in a word, secede. On March 2, 1861, after seven states seceded and two days before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, Sen. James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin proposed a constitutional amendment that read, ‘No state or any part thereof, heretofore admitted or hereafter admitted into the union, shall have the power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States.’ Several months earlier, Reps. Daniel E. Sickles of New York, Thomas B. Florence of Pennsylvania and Otis S. Ferry of Connecticut proposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit secession. Here’s a question for the reader: Would there have been any point to offering these amendments if secession were already unconstitutional? On the eve of the War of 1861, even unionist politicians saw secession as a right of states. … The War of 1861 brutally established that states could not secede. We are still living with its effects. Because states cannot secede, the federal government can run roughshod over the U.S. Constitution’s limitations of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. States have little or no response.”

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SHORT CUTS

Insight: “Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.” —Scottish author Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

Alpha Jackass: “The fact is that [Benjamin Netanyahu has] practically been making comments that are way over the top. … [The nuclear deal] is under attack by people who really don’t know the terms of the agreement, and they don’t offer an alternative. Their alternative is what, perpetual state of sanctions? Not going to happen.” —John Kerry

This just in: “I don’t understand [economics] very well.” —Pope Francis (Which is exactly why he shouldn’t be dictating environmental policy.)

Hot air: “As secretary of state, I logged tens of thousands of miles and twisted a lot of arms to build a global coalition to impose the most crippling sanctions in history [on Iran]. That unprecedented pressure delivered a blow to Iran’s economy and gave us leverage at the negotiating table, starting in Oman in 2012. I know from experience what it took to build a global effort to get this done; I know what it will take to rally our partners to enforce it.” —Hillary Clinton

And last… “Obama won’t be satisfied until our inspectors are told by Iran that there’s not a smidgen of enriched uranium around. The nuke deal is based on trusting untrustworthy leaders. And that goes for the Iranians too.” —Twitter satirist @weknowwhatsbest

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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.

THE FOUNDATION

“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.” —Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, 1776

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Iranian Nuclear Deal Isn’t Exactly Peace in Our Time

After two years in the works and numerous missed deadlines, the P5+1 — United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia and China — and the Islamic regime of Iran reached a formal nuclear agreement. But, as expected, the deal is “mutually beneficial” for all the wrong reasons: Obama can punt the issue to the next administration; meanwhile, Iran —which is expected to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons for a decade — will quietly continue its operations underground. The Washington Free Beacon reports, “In one of the most controversial concessions made by the Obama administration, a United Nations embargo on arms will also be lifted within around five years as part of the deal, according to multiple reports. A similar embargo on the construction of ballistic missiles, which could carry a nuclear payload, also will expire in around eight years under the deal. Initial readings of the deal also indicate that Iran will be given the right to veto so-called ‘anywhere, anytime’ inspections of Iranian nuclear sites.” Congress will have to give the deal the go-ahead, but that likelihood increased significantly thanks to the legislative compromise crafted by Sen. Bob Corker. As National Review’s Andrew McCarthyexplained, “[I]nstead of requiring the president to convince a two-thirds supermajority of the Senate to approve the Iran deal, it requires opponents to convince a two-thirds supermajority of the full Congress to defeat the deal.”

If Congress approves the deal — which it surely will — and Iran follows through on some preliminary conditions, the regime will be awarded $100 billion from frozen assets — something over which John Kerry appeared remorseful. “We realize how deeply the nuclear related sanctions affected the lives of Iranians,” he said. Adding insult to injury, according to The Wall Street Journal, sanctions relief “could help Iran’s economy to expand by 7% to 8% annually for years to come.” Leave it to Obama to stimulate Iran’s economy more than ours. Israel is understandably infuriated. “Iran is going to receive a sure path to nuclear weapons,” warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Many of the restrictions that were supposed to prevent it from getting there will be lifted. Iran will get a jackpot — a cash bonanza of hundreds of billions of dollars — which will enable it to continue to pursue its aggression and terror.” Still, that didn’t prevent the antagonizer in chief from taking a victory lap. “The United States, together with our international partners, has achieved something that decades of animosity has not,” Obama proclaimed, “a comprehensive, long-term deal with Iran that will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” In April, Mark Alexander explained that “the central issue is not whether Iran can be trusted, but that Obama can’t be trusted.” That’s what makes this deal so alarming and, indeed, dangerous.

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County Clerk Refuses Marriage Licenses

In the days since five members of the Supreme Court endorsed redefining marriage, essentially creating a constitutional “right” to same-sex marriage out of thin air, the question has been what rights trump other rights when the inevitable conflict happens. Actually, it’s not so much a question as it is seeing where Christians are assaulted next. It isn’t just bakers, florists and photographers, but, among others, churches, religious schools and county clerks. In Kentucky, the question of religious liberty and marriage is back in court after Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis refused to comply with the SCOTUS ruling. In fact, Davis wouldn’t issue any marriage licenses. “It’s a deep-rooted conviction,” Davis said. “My conscience won’t allow me to do that. It goes against everything I hold dear — everything sacred in my life.” U.S. District Judge David L. Bunning heard arguments Monday. Several county clerks around the nation have resigned rather than violate their own beliefs, and others are pondering what moves to make. The root of the problem is that the “right” to same-sex marriage requires endorsement, whether or not it’s against conscience.

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NYC Gives Garner Family $5.9 Million

On July 17, 2014, several white New York City police officers, under the supervision of a black NYPD police sergeant named Kizzy Adoni, were involved in a takedown of a belligerent black man, Eric Garner, after he resisted arrest for selling “loose” cigarettes. One of the officers, Daniel Pantaleo, used a modified chokehold as part of the effort to get the 350lb Garner to the ground. That chokehold had been previously barred by NYPD policy because it caused prior injuries and deaths. Indeed, Garner died shortly after the takedown, though Pantaleo was not indicted. In part because the incident was caught on video it became a primary anecdote in the narrative aboutracist police enforcement. On Monday, New York City settled with Garner’s family for $5.9 million, just days before the anniversary of Garner’s death and the deadline for filing suit. The family had given notice of a $75 million suit, and the settlement is obviously the city’s effort to close the book on the story and to save taxpayers potentially many millions more dollars. The book isn’t closed across the country, however, as citizens and police departments grapple with what effective and proper law enforcement looks like in a very racially charged America.

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FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS

Hillary Blames Republicans for Obama’s Economy

By Nate Jackson

Hillary Clinton finally laid out a platform for her campaign Monday, focusing on her plan to solve America’s economic woes. Just kidding. She didn’t really propose anything new so much as complain about the state of an economy that “still isn’t delivering for most Americans,” while inciting a little class warfare along the way. Of course, she’s done quite alright for herself, thank you very much, but that’s beside the point, right?

“Previous generations of Americans built the greatest economy and strongest middle class the world has ever known on the promise of a basic bargain: If you work hard and do your part, you should be able to get ahead,” Hillary said. “But over the past several decades, that bargain has eroded. Our job is to make it strong again.”

That bargain has indeed eroded over the last six-plus years of Barack Obama’s “recovery” (eight years if we include Democrat control of Congress beginning in 2007), during which the government spent $1 trillion it didn’t have in “stimulus” money, took over the health insurance market, institutionalized “too big to fail” through financial regulations and raised taxes on small businesses. Those policies only served to harm the middle class by undermining job and wage growth.

Clinton launched an attack on potential Republican rival Jeb Bush. “Now, you may have heard Governor Bush say Americans just need to work longer hours,” she mocked. “Well, he must not have met very many American workers. Let him tell that to the nurse who stands on her feet all day, or the teacher who’s in that classroom or the trucker who drives all night. Let him tell that to the fast-food worker marching in the streets for better pay. They do not need a lecture. They need a raise.”

Bush’s “people need to work longer hours” remark was a perhaps inartful way of pointing out how badly Obama botched the economy. ObamaCare in particular hurt workers through its requirement that employers provide insurance to workers who put in more than 30 hours a week. For the part-time waitress or big box store worker, that means they can no longer get more than 29 hours — because mandating insurance doesn’t mean an employer can afford to provide it. And far too much of the job growth under Obama has been part-time work for people who want full-time jobs.

Indeed, as Bush later put it, “If we’re going to grow the economy, people need to stop being part-time workers. They need to have access to greater opportunities to work.”

In fact, Hillary herself complained that women need to work more. “The movement of women into the American workforce over the past 40 years was responsible for more than $3.5 trillion in economic growth,” she said. “But that progress has stalled.”

That’s a tacit admission that the labor force participation rate has remained stuck at record lows during the “Obama Recovery.” An awful lot of Americans need to be working more than zero hours a week, but Clinton’s plan won’t make that happen.

She insists we can’t go back to the failed policies of the past while offering exactly that. Her great ideas include raising the minimum wage and increasing infrastructure spending, neither of which truly boosts the economy. The minimum wage demonstrably hurts it.

“For 35 years Republicans have argued that if we give more wealth to those at the top by cutting their taxes and letting big corporations write their own rules, it will trickle down … to everyone else,” she railed. “Yet every time they have a chance to try that approach, it explodes the national debt, concentrates wealth even more, and does practically nothing to help hardworking Americans. Twice now in the past 20 years a Democratic president has had to come in and clean up the mess left behind.”

That depends on the meaning of “clean up.” After Ronald Reagan’s policies kicked off 25 years of economic growth, Bill Clinton raised taxes and sowed the seeds of the 2008 economic collapse by applying affirmative action to the home-lending industry. That collapse was blamed on George W. Bush, and Obama’s “solutions” only perpetuated a stagnant economy.

More important, remember that “trickle down” is simply the Democrat pejorative for capitalism. Reaganomics, which Hillary specifically targets, meant that people keep more of their own money. Tax cuts are not “giving more wealth to those at the top,” as Hillary would like us to believe. When people keep their own money, they use it to grow the economy — even if they save that money. Government doesn’t grow the economy; it can only rearrange it with your money, picking winners and losers along the way.

Hillary says she wants to “build a growth and fairness economy,” but that won’t happen by blaming capitalism and advocating socialism.

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OPINION IN BRIEF

Thomas Sowell: “The black parishioners who expressed forgiveness toward the [Charleston] killer did more than most of us could do, and the whites who responded with solidarity did their part. Note how quickly this was done, by ordinary people of good will — black and white — without the ‘help’ of racial activists like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. Professional race hustlers have no incentive to see our current civil war end. They see in this shooting only an opportunity to escalate their demands. Now there are rumblings of demands that statues of Robert E. Lee and other Southern leaders be destroyed — and if that is done, it will only lead to new demands, perhaps to destroy the Jefferson Memorial because Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. And if that is done, no doubt there will be demands that the city of Washington be renamed, for the same reason. In short, there is no stopping point, just unending strife as far out as the eye can see. And just what will that accomplish? It could ultimately accomplish the killer’s dream of racial polarization and violence. Neither blacks nor whites will be better off if that happens. With all the very real problems in this society, can we really spare the time and the wasted energy of trying to refight a Civil War that ended before our great-grandparents were born? The past is irrevocable. We cannot change the smallest detail of what some people did to other people after both have gone to their graves. … We need a lot more serious thinking about the present and the future, and a lot less time and energy spent on the past.”

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SHORT CUTS

Insight: “The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs, is to be ruled by evil men.” —Plato (429-347 BC)

Non Compos Mentis: “Our economic goals have to be redistributing a significant amount of [wealth] back from the top one percent. Unchecked growth — especially when 99% of all new income goes to the top 1% — is absurd. Where we’ve got to move is not growth for the sake of growth, but we’ve got to move to a society that provides a high quality of life for all of our people.” —Bernie Sanders

Upright: “The dirty little secret, which would not be secret if liberals didn’t rewrite history, is that socialism, forced redistribution of income and assets, and pumping government money into the economy ostensibly to stimulate growth destroy not only liberty but also wealth. If they have any effect at all on making income more equitable, it is because they spread the misery and make all people — except perhaps the very wealthiest, ironically — poorer.” —David Limbaugh

Village Idiots: “I think the tough sell is going to be on the part of Republicans if they try to taint the [Iranian nuclear] deal. It’s going to be a tough sell to say that the United States should back away from an international agreement. … And it’s going to be a tough sell to say, ‘You know what, we should just foreclose the diplomatic option and only consider the military option before us.’” —Josh Earnest

The BIG Lie: “[B]ecause America negotiated from a position of strength and position we have stopped the spread of nuclear weapons into this region.” —Barack Obama (He’s lying, as Saudi Arabia will soon confirm.“ —Breitbart’s Joel Pollak)

And last… "Ironic that the guy who whined for years about inheriting a mess is leaving for his successor the stuff of nightmares. #Iran #ISIS #jobs #OPM” —Twitter satirist @hale_razor

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Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis!
Managing Editor Nate Jackson

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