THE FOUNDATION

“In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” —Thomas Jefferson, fair copy of the drafts of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Say, That Gruber Guy Actually Did Work Closely With Obama

Remember Jonathan Gruber, the MIT professor who served as a key architect of ObamaCare? The one who mocked “the stupidity of the American voter” as he and his elitist buddies crammed the law down our throats? The one whose string of condescending remarks on ObamaCare’s deceptive core were caught on video and released to the public? Naturally, Barack Obama tried to throw Gruber under the bus once he had become politically inconvenient, dismissing him as “some adviser who never worked on our staff” and had little to do with crafting ObamaCare. But according to a series of emails sent from the House Oversight Committee to The Wall Street Journal, Gruber had quite a lot to do with ObamaCare after all. “His proximity to HHS and the White House was a whole lot tighter than they admitted,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), chairman of the House Oversight Committee. “There’s no doubt he was a much more integral part of this than they’ve said. He put up this facade he was an arm’s length away. It was a farce.” Indeed, Jeanne Lambrew, a top administration official at HHS, thanked Gruber for being an “integral part” in foisting ObamaCare on the nation. And Gruber was in contact with the highest level Obama advisers on the law, from Lawrence Summers to Peter Orszag to Jason Furman to Ezekiel Emanuel. This is simply more confirmation of ObamaCare’s foundation of lies. As if we needed any more proof.

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SCOTUS and the Raisin Hope for Property Rights

Marvin Horne of Fresno, California, has been vindicated. Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that if the Raisin Administrative Committee was going to take Horne’s raisins it needed to compensate the farmer. In Horne v. Department of Agriculture, Horne refused to give up his raisins to the Raisin Administrative Committee and the agency was fining him at the tune of $695,000. The committee is a New Deal-era program designed to control the supply of raisins so the prices remain artificially high. It would take a portion of farmers' grapes and either donate them to school lunch programs or sell them overseas. Farmers used to be compensated, but then the payout dwindled to nothing. The Ninth Circuit Court originally ruled in favor of the administrative committee, saying the Constitution’s Taking Clause only covered real estate, but Chief Justice John Roberts, writing the majority opinion, ruled, “Government has a categorical duty to pay just compensation when it takes your car, just as when it takes your home.” This ruling comes 10 years after the bungled SCOTUS ruling in Kelo v. New London, which said the city of New London could take the home of Susette Kelo and give her property to a private developer. Currently, Kelo’s pink home is demolished and the lot stands empty. While the raisin ruling is a step in the right direction, it will take years before the government fully moves past Kelo and respects the property of the citizens.

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Pentagon Ships Military Off to Battle ‘Climate Change’

In January 2012, Barack Obama said, “As we look beyond the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan … we’ll be able to ensure our security with smaller conventional ground forces.” In other words, even though America’s military is being downsized, our military prowess will remain untarnished. “[Y]es, our military will be leaner, but the world must know the United States is going to maintain our military superiority with armed forces that are agile, flexible and ready for the full range of contingencies and threats,” he explained. Who knew that meant documenting the effects of climate change — even as terrorism-fueled crises in the Middle East rage on? According to The Washington Times, “Though stretched thin by the aftermath of two wars and the current fight against the Islamic State, the Obama administration has enlisted the Pentagon to measure the shrinking ice in the Arctic in the latest example of the president’s climate agenda being extended to the military. A recent Government Accountability Office report examined the Defense Department’s role in the Arctic, which increasingly will include ‘monitoring the changing Arctic conditions,’ such as ice levels.” America’s retreat — not climate change, as this administration posits — facilitated the Islamic State’s rise. And pulling even more resources away from the real fight to wage war on a straw man isn’t going to make them go away.

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FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS

Charleston and the Confederate Flag Battle

By Nate Jackson

With every murderous rampage committed by a sociopath, the Left exploits the tragedy to push its agenda of taking Liberty from all of us. In recent years, that’s generally meant two things: gun control or racial grievance. The horrific murders of nine black Christians in Charleston by a white supremacist provided an opportunity to bring the two issues together.

Barack Obama, as usual, weighed in on both. He called for more gun control, and then he denounced the Confederate flag flying on the grounds of the South Carolina capitol as a racist symbol. It’s the latter that’s become a rallying point for leftists as well as Republicans eager to shed the racist label.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican, said Monday, “It’s time to move the flag from the Capitol grounds.” Sen. Lindsey Graham, a GOP presidential candidate, and Tim Scott, the first black Republican senator elected in the South since Reconstruction, likewise called for its removal. That provides political cover for state Republicans to vote to take it down.

Of course, given the prominence of South Carolina in the presidential primary season, the Leftmedia gleefully makes the Confederate flag an issue for Republicans every presidential cycle.

But that’s awfully odd since Democrats are the ones who raised it at the South Carolina capitol in 1962. Democrats are the party of Jim Crow and segregation — the ones in KKK robes who sullied the banner of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia with racial overtones.Democrats Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter campaigned with the flag before it was uncool to do so.Democrats push for an ever-higher minimum wage, which all too often leaves blacks unemployed and enslaved on the Left’s deliberately institutionalized urban poverty plantations.

Yet somehow the Confederate flag is a Republican problem.

Speaking of racism, know what else is racist? Gun control. It was originally conceived in the South to prevent blacks from owning firearms. Even now, proponents of gun control rarely lament the lives lost due to inner city gang violence.

Who else is racist? Barack Obama, whose roots of racial hatred run deep, and who stirs the pot by using the “n” word.

As for the flag itself, Leland Summers, head of the state’s chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, dismissed the Left’s complaint: “Do not associate the cowardly actions of a racist to our Confederate Banner. There is absolutely no link between The Charleston Massacre and The Confederate Memorial Banner. Don’t try to create one.”

He’s right in part, though it’s not that simple. It’s undeniable that the Confederate States propagated slavery — an institution Gen. Lee called “a great political and moral evil” — and that the Confederate flag in whatever form brings that to mind. The Union was hardly innocent in this regard, however. Abraham Lincoln harbored his own racism and favored solving slavery by sending blacks back to Africa. Yet no one seems to associate the American flag with such things.

Democrats made the Confederate banner a symbol of racism at KKK rallies, and now they have successfully turned a large portion of the populace against it. When a racist murderer used the Confederate battle flag as a background for his pictures, it only reinforced the link. Democrats fully intend to use the issue to rally blacks around Hillary Clinton, hoping “racist” Republicans would squirm to avoid calling for the flag’s removal. If South Carolina Republicans do remove it, the issue will be somewhat diffused — though nothing will ever be enough for the Left.

“I think compromising with the left on this issue is not worth it because the left is only politicizing this issue to advance their agenda,” wrote Red State’s Erick Erickson. “Once the flag is gone, the left will advance to the next issue then the next issue, etc. They won’t compromise. There is no compromise. There is only conversion or censorship with the left.”

For most of those who fly Lee’s banner today, they intend it as homage to the honorable part of their heritage. Certainly those of us at The Patriot Post with long family history in the South view it that way. The vast majority of Southerners did not own slaves and their descendants reject the idea that they (read: we) are to blame for that horrific institution. Yet the modern Left is intent on blaming all Southerners — especially Republicans — for slavery and all racism, which has in part served to make the flag a symbol of defiance akin to the Gadsden flag of the Tea Party.

That said, it’s perhaps too much to ask of our public-school educated population to think of history with such nuance and understanding. And it’s likely the only politically tenable and prudent move for Republicans to concede the point.

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TODAY AT PATRIOTPOST.US

• ANALYSIS: CBO Discovers ObamaCare Costs a Lot of Money
• The Marine Hitchhikers
• American Giving Reaches New High
• Cruz Aims to Stop Immigration ‘Slush Fund’
• Humor: Hunting and Fishing

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

• Thomas Sowell: Hillary and History
• Arnold Ahlert Losing Faith
• Cal Thomas: Amazing Grace in Charleston

For more, visit Right Opinion.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Thomas Sowell: “The fact that many people are still prepared to vote for Hillary Clinton to be President of the United States, in times made incredibly dangerous by the foreign policy disasters on her watch as Secretary of State, raises painful questions about this country. A President of the United States — any president — has the lives of more than 300 million Americans in his or her hands, and the future of Western civilization. If the debacles and disasters of the Obama administration have still not demonstrated the irresponsibility of choosing a president on the basis of demographic characteristics, it is hard to imagine what could. With our enemies around the world arming while we are disarming, such self-indulgent choices for president can leave our children and grandchildren a future that will be grim, if not catastrophic.”

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SHORT CUTS

Insight: “I dread government in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in. In every age the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent.” —C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)

The BIG Lie: “We were able to bring to conclusion two long and costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and [Hillary Clinton] was very much involved in supporting those transitions.” —National Security Adviser and former Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice struggling to come up with an accomplishment of the Democrats' inevitable candidate (And never mind that Obama and Clinton lost the Iraq war.)

Demo-gogues: “Here in America, many people personally don’t know someone who is Muslim. They mostly hear about Muslims in the news — and that can obviously lead to a very distorted impression.” —Barack Obama

Non Compos Mentis: “What would I do with white people who use the N-word? Jail them.” —Piers Morgan

Village Idiots: “Too many black people are niggerized. I would say the first black president has become the first niggerized black president. A niggerized black person is a black person who is afraid and scared and intimidated when it comes to putting a spotlight on white supremacy and fighting against white supremacy.” —Princeton professor Cornel West

Alpha Jackass: “[O]ur nation is paying a high price for our devotion to guns and faith in their capacity to keep us safe. … Our nation is dying a violent death, and the National Rifle Association and other gun valorizing groups will be etched across the death certificate.” —Harvard University professor Jonathan L. Walton

And last…

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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

“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” —Thomas Paine, American Crisis, No. 1, 1776

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Obama’s New ‘Angry’ Standard for Owning Guns

As we have already noted here and here, Barack Obama wants you to believe that the horrific murders in Charleston last week happened because his gun control agenda has been thwarted. In a new interview — part of a comedian’s somehow appropriately titled podcast “WTF With Marc Maron” — Obama blamed the NRA. “Unfortunately, the grip of the NRA on Congress is extremely strong,” he said. “I don’t foresee any legislative action being taken by this Congress.” Fortunately, the Second Amendment, which the NRA defends, still holds sway with enough members of Congress to stop Obama’s agenda. Of course, he trotted out his usual trope about how he concedes “we have to be respectful” of the traditions of “hunting and sportsmanship around firearms,” neither of which have much to do with our rights. But his most worrisome statement was on the standards for background checks, which the Charleston murderer passed. Obama wants those background checks to be even tougher to pass. How tough? Obama asked, “The question is just, is there a way of accommodating that legitimate set of [hunting and sporting] traditions with some common-sense stuff that prevents a 21-year-old who’s angry about something — or confused about something, or is racist, or is deranged — from going into a gun store, and suddenly he’s packing and can do enormous harm?” So now the standard is whether someone is merely angry, confused or racist? Who gets to decide that? If it’s Obama, no Republican would ever be permitted to purchase a gun.

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In Charleston, Grace Broke Through

As Dylann Roof sat in the basement of Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church Wednesday evening, he almost didn’t go through with his plot. The church members were “so nice to him,” NBC News reports. But Roof was bent on carrying out his “mission.” In murdering nine people in cold blood, leaving one woman alive, he hoped to ignite a race war. It’s the sum of white supremacist philosophy: Sooner or later the races will descend into violence, and Roof wanted to be the spark. But instead of revenge, Roof was met with something else. In an unusual testimony during a bond hearing, the daughter of Ethel Lance, one of the victims, told Roof, “I forgive you. You took something really precious away from me. I will never talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you and have mercy on your soul. It hurts me, it hurts a lot of people but God forgive you and I forgive you.” One by one, the representatives of the victims came forward, forgiving Roof, asking him to give his life to Christ. On Sunday, Roof’s plans vaporized as white Christians prayed with black Christians and churches vowed to build relationships with one another. Truth and love transcend racial lines.

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EPA Slaps New Regs on Vehicles

The Environmental Protection Agency is heating up. In late May the EPA took additional controlover America’s waterways. Last week it announced plans to regulate aircraft. This week it expanded its reach even further by slapping regulations on larger vehicles. “The Obama administration on Friday proposed tough new standards to reduce pollution from carbon-emitting trucks and vans, the latest move by President Barack Obama to address global warming,” the Associated Press reports. “The new rules … are designed to slash carbon dioxide emissions by 24 percent over the next 12 years while reducing oil consumption by up to 1.8 billion barrels over the lifetime of the vehicles sold under the rule. … The proposed standards would cover model years 2021-2027 and apply to semi-trucks, large pickup trucks and vans, and all types and sizes of buses and work trucks, officials said.” As if this latest power grab isn’t bad enough, the EPA is about to finalize its long-anticipated Clean Power Plan regulating carbon emissions from coal-fired plants. The sad irony is that it’s all being justified by junk science. More…

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Liberty Depends on You

The part you play in the ongoing battle for Liberty is significant. Without you — our faithful readers — what the editors and staff of The Patriot Post do would be impossible, as would keeping the flame of Liberty burning bright.

Unlike our government, we function on a budget. But The Patriot Post team depends on you to ensure that remains the case, and we humbly ask that you consider supporting our 2015 Independence Day Campaign today. Please keep in mind that, once again, we did not increase our budget this year.

Please, if you have the ability, take a moment to support us online today by making a contribution. If you prefer to support us by mail, please see our printable form for more information.

Thank you!

Nate Jackson
Managing Editor

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS

State Dept. Admits Obama’s Anti-Terror Polices Failed

By Nate Jackson

This just in from Barack Obama’s never-ending victory lap in the Long War: The State Department issued a notable report Friday indicating that terrorism is on the upswing around the world. Not only that, but Iran has a big hand in it. Clearly, Obama’s boasting in his own successful policies has been, to put it charitably, misplaced.

According to the State Department’s report, terror attacks spiked 35% between 2013 and 2014, while deaths from those attacks rose by a staggering 81%. State called the 2014 attacks “exceptionally lethal,” as 20 of them resulted in more than 100 deaths. Twenty-four Americans were among the nearly 33,000 victims of almost 13,500 attacks.

A major facet of the increase in attacks is that the Islamic State — previously known as the “JV team” — has, according to The Guardian, crippled al-Qaida from within while succeeding in procuring what State’s report called an “unprecedented seizure” of territory in Iraq and Syria. The report found, “The prominence of the threat once posed by core al Qaeda diminished in 2014. … AQ leadership also appeared to lose momentum as the self-styled leader of a global movement in the face of ISIL’s rapid expansion and proclamation of a Caliphate.”

Obama may claim to have “decimated” al-Qaida, but he has done so only by permitting the Islamic State to do it for him. That’s hardly what we’d call a model for success.

Much of the terrorism increase has happened in Iraq, where the Islamic State filled the vacuum left by Obama’s premature withdrawal of American forces. But Syria is also a serious problem, where the report notes that the number of foreign fighters swelling the ranks of the Islamic State “exceeded the rate of foreign fighters who traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen or Somalia at any point in the last 20 years.”

Finally, and perhaps of most concern going forward, is that the State Department acknowledges Iran’s major role in sponsoring the increase in terrorism — all while Secretary of State John Kerry negotiates lucrative sanctions relief as part of a lousy nuclear agreement with that nation.

“ISIL and AQ were far from the only serious threat that confronted the United States and its allies,” according to the report. “Iran continued to sponsor terrorist groups around the world, principally through its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF).”

Though Iran is no friend of the Islamic State, its methods don’t differ all that much. “Tehran increased its assistance to Shiite militias fighting in Iraq and continued its long-standing military, intelligence and financial aid to Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s embattled government and Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad,” notes the Associated Press, which added, “While the 388-page [State Department] study said Iran has lived up to interim nuclear deals with world powers thus far, it gave no prediction about how an Iran flush with cash from a final agreement would behave.”

That’s reassuring.

But at least Obama’s worried about it, says White House spokesman Eric Schultz: America’s “grave concern about Iran’s support for terrorism remains unabated. That is all the more reason that we need to make sure they don’t obtain a nuclear weapon.”

If only Obama’s deal would in fact ensure that.

In short, all of Obama’s assurances that terrorists were defeated, decimated or otherwise diminished by his policies were bunk. His policies have failed, and the world is paying the steep price of his “leadership.”

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TODAY AT PATRIOTPOST.US

• ANALYSIS: Destroying Traditional Culture, One Child After Another
• ANALYSIS: A New $10 Bill to Become Reality
• A Confederacy of Dunces
• House Sends Fast-Track Trade Authority to Senate
• Brian Williams to Return — as Reporter at MSNBC

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

• John Goodman: Why Voters Vote
• Tony Perkins: The Hate of Ignorance
• George Will: Let Greece Go
• Peggy Noonan: Hillary Will Glide Above It All

For more, visit Right Opinion.

OPINION IN BRIEF

John Goodman: “The Republican Party has four factions, Matthew Dowd announced on This Week with George Stephanopoulos a few weeks ago. They are: the libertarians, the evangelicals, the Tea Party and the establishment. Notice that all four factions are defined by ideas. They are defined by how they think the world should be organized. Can you name the four idea factions that make up the Democratic Party? The problem is that the Democratic Party is not a party of ideas. It is a party of special interests and groups who respond to identity politics. When Clinton announced her candidacy, she carefully went down the list of groups she intended to target: women, minorities (read blacks), Hispanics, immigrants, the LGBT community (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender), etc. … Then of course there are the economic interests, including working women, minimum wage workers, teachers and members of just about every labor union in the country. In all cases the strategy is the same. Attached to every group there is a single issue or a set of issues that is vote-determining. Members of the group may disagree with the candidate on every other issue. But those disagreements don’t matter. Republicans never campaign this way. If they did, Republican voters wouldn’t vote for them.”

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SHORT CUTS

Insight: “Speech delivery counts for little on the world stage unless you have convictions, and, yes, the vision to see beyond the front row seats.” —The Gipper

The BIG Lie: “When I ran in 2008, I in fact did not say I would fix it. I said we could fix it. … If you’re dissatisfied that every few months we have a mass shooting in this country killing innocent people, then I need you to mobilize and organize a constituency that says this is not normal and we are going to change it.” —Barack Obama

Non Compos Mentis, part I: “If Congress had passed some common-sense gun safety reforms after Newtown … we wouldn’t have prevented every act of violence, or even most. We don’t know if it would have prevented what happened in Charleston. No reform can guarantee the elimination of violence. But we might still have some more Americans with us.” —Barack Obama

Non Compos Mentis, part II: “I cannot imagine the horror that could’ve occurred if people [in Charleston] were sitting around with concealed weapons, this thing started and you had a full-scale gunfight. You might not even have three survivors.” —Democrat strategist Bob Shrum

Demo-gogues: “Racism, we are not cured of it. And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say n—r in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination.” —Barack Obama

Village Idiots: “We have to use this most recent tragedy to keep us working on [gun control]. We have to do that. It is insane the number of guns and the ease of getting guns in America.” —Charleston mayor Joe Riley

Late-night humor: “Hillary Clinton signed a note … for a nine-year-old boy, explaining to his teacher that he was missing school to meet her. In exchange, the kid wrote Hillary a note saying his dog ate her emails.” —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.