THE FOUNDATION

“[T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their, own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.” —Thomas Jefferson, letter to Abigail Adams, 1804

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Obama’s Iraq Strategy: Leave It for the Next Prez

“If [the Iraqis] are not willing to fight for the security of their country, we cannot do that for them,” Barack Obama declared again, though he reiterated his commitment to helping train Iraqi troops over a “multi-year” period. According to State Department official and Islamic State expert Brett McGurk, “It’s a three-year campaign to degrade the organization.” And as National Journal puts it, “Three years marked from mid-2014, of course, falls after Jan. 20, 2017, the date Obama leaves office. Translation: The strategy is to avoid sending ground troops for the remainder of his term. So stop asking.” Indeed, Obama campaigned in 2008 on ending the Iraq war. In 2011, having rejected the Bush strategy of establishing a status of forces agreement (SOFA) to secure our hard-won gains in Iraq and the region, Obama declared, “Everything Americans have done in Iraq, all the fighting, all the dying, the bleeding, the building and the training and the partnering, all of it has led to this moment of success. … We’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq.” And a narcissist can’t admit he’s wrong. He’s going to stubbornly stand pat, keep declaring victory, and leave the Islamic State for the next commander in chief to clean up.

Indeed, his spokesman Josh Earnest explicitly said just that: “In 2017, there will be a new commander in chief and someone else who will have a responsibility to evaluate the situation on the ground and determine what steps are necessary to continue to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL. That’s something that we’ll leave to the next president.” But what will the next 18 months bring?

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China Stole Data of Four Million

Now that the NSA is done scraping up the nation’s phone data, it should get on the task of protecting the U.S. from intrusions like the one that happened last December. U.S. investigators said that the personal data of four million current and former federal employees were stolen by hackers — most likely from China. While the Chinese Embassy in DC denied the allegation that the country was responsible for the intrusion, U.S. intelligence says the Chinese military is collecting a massive database on Americans, possibly as a way to find and recruit Americans as spies. “The breach is yet more evidence that Beijing sees the U.S. as an adversary and is unworried about any response aggression will elicit from the White House,” writes National Review’s Michael Auslin. “Whether it’s economic espionage, security challenges, or now hacking U.S. government websites, Beijing is testing, probing, and undermining America in any way that they can.” While the Obama administration’s Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal has some questions and drawbacks, a trade deal with the nations near China is a natural opportunity, a good first step, to diminish China’s influence in the Pacific. More…

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EPA Contradicts Ecofascists on Fracking

For years, environmentalists have seen hydraulic fracturing — also known as fracking — as an insidious threat. Energy companies have used the technique to reach oil and gas deposits previously out of reach of traditional extraction methods. It’s a big reason why the nation has surged forward as one of the top oil producers in the world. After spending years studying fracking’s effect on drinking water, the Environmental Protection Agency released a draft reportconcluding, “We did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States. … The number of identified cases [where fracking led to contamination], however, was small compared to the number of hydraulically fractured wells.” This is a fire hose of water on the ecofascists' heated rhetoric. Last year, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, listening to the fear mongering of environmentalists, used an executive order to ban fracking in The Empire State. “EPA’s conclusion really is remarkable,” writes The Wall Street Journal. “The agency has yearned for an excuse to take over fracking regulation from the states, which do the job well. So if there was so much as a sliver of evidence that fracking was dangerous, the EPA would have found it.” More…

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FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS

A Tale of Two Crooks and the IRS

By Robin Smith

With her roots in Roman mythology, Lady Justice represents morality and virtue through three symbols. First, she holds a set of scales in her left hand, to weigh evidence with reason and in light of the law. Second, she wields a double-edged sword in her right hand, representing the remedy impartially provided after the facts are laid bare before her. And third, she wears a blindfold, signifying that the law must be applied with objectivity and equality.

Yet too often politicians seek to lift this blindfold, wanting to redefine justice based on the year’s election cycle or to subvert it through delays, denials and tactics that advance their agenda.

Let’s examine two cases in which the Internal Revenue Service has been used as a tool for political revenge and harassment, and how they reflect an assault on justice that should offend all.

Consider the identical approaches of Richard Nixon and Barack Obama. One a Republican and the other a Democrat, both illustrate power’s ability to corrupt to the extreme, instituting a false democracy where disagreement and disloyalty are silenced by heavy-handed tactics.

Nixon’s legacy as the 37th president is often defined by his impeachment. Posterity’s view of Obama is still being penned, but both will be remembered for their unconstitutional misuse of government and for the tenured bureaucrats who willingly complied.

In the Articles of Impeachment adopted by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in 1974, most remember Article I, which declared Nixon “impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors” committed surrounding the break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel on June 17, 1972.

The charges leveled by Congress state, “Subsequent thereto, Richard M. Nixon, using the powers of his high office, engaged personally and through his close subordinates and agents, in a course of conduct or plan designed to delay, impede, and obstruct the investigation of such illegal entry; to cover up, conceal and protect those responsible; and to conceal the existence and scope of other unlawful covert activities.”

The break-in and burglary were indeed illegal and brought disgrace to the office of the president. But the obstruction, delays and attempts to conceal the covert activities all demonstrated an egregiously deliberate abuse of the power afforded the president of the United States.

Yet those same Articles of Impeachment issue a second damning charge, accusing Nixon of “using the powers of the office of President of the United States … in violation of his constitutional oath.” Nixon “repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens, impairing the due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful inquiries, or contravening the laws governing agencies of the executive branch and the purposed of these agencies.”

Specifically, Nixon, “acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavored to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service” information of citizens he had on his “enemies list” who he deemed politically dangerous to his ambitions.

Today’s ongoing IRS scandal involves conservative political groups whose applications for tax-exempt status were deliberately slowed. This similar flagrant abuse of authority commenced during Obama’s first term, helping him win a second, and it features the Nixonian ingredients of willing participants who delay, obstruct and lie to protect the crimes against innocent citizens.

Last week, Mary Howard, the head Freedom of Information Act officer at the IRS, testified to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that the agency set up a secret “special project team” comprised of “hundreds of attorneys,” including the IRS Chief Counsel (one of only two politically appointed positions at the IRS by the president himself). She said her “understanding was that it started soon after the request came from Congress and other investigators asking for documents around this whole issue,” which she surmised meant around spring 2013.

Not only were law-abiding citizens targeted by an agency of the U.S. government for their political and religious views, but Obama’s henchmen implemented a plan to cover up this activity and delay information from getting into the hands of investigators. Key to this malfeasance is IRS Chief Counsel William Wilkins — appointed by Obama — whose office has been directly connected in this harassment and abuse, which includes illegal requests and access to donor information.

Ironically, this unquestionable presidential corruption — the same as the misuse of power that ended in impeachment for Nixon — now leaves Republicans in fear of the political consequences for seeking justice. Democrats simply protect themselves through vindictive attacks and accusations of racism.

There was a day when the law was equally applied regardless of partisan stripe. And history has shown that both Republicans and Democrats can pursue justice for the honor and sake of our nation and Constitution. It’s only a matter of time before future generations declare Obama and his administration as lawless, dishonorable deceivers of the American public, corrupt for the sake of ambition and political power.

Justice may be blind, but she’s not stupid.

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TODAY AT PATRIOTPOST.US

• ANALYSIS: Mayhem Rules In St. Paul Schools
• Hawaii Dumps State ObamaCare Exchange
• NJ Woman Stabbed to Death While Waiting for Gun Permit
• NOAA Lies to Justify UN Climate Treaty
• Army Ranger Social Experiment Fails

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

• Tony Perkins: Air Force Pilots Policy Change on Transgenders
• John Goodman: How Much Does Paul Krugman Want to Tax LeBron James?
• Jeff Jacoby: The Case for Israel Is Rooted in More Than Security
• Stephen Moore: North Carolina Created Jobs and Surpluses Through Tax Cuts
• George Will: The Super PAC Minuet

For more, visit Right Opinion.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Tony Perkins: “‘Gay Pride Month’ is just beginning — but we can’t say the same for the administration’s pandering. … [T]he Air Force is taking its radicalism to new heights — announcing that it was easing the discharge policy on transgenders in advance of the pride event [on] Tuesday. … Going where no branch has gone before, the Air Force will let high-ranking officials decide the fate of known transgenders in their ranks. … ‘There must be a commander determination that the condition interferes with duty requirements,’ the Air Force pointed out. In other words, branch leaders can opt to keep open transgenders in their units — despite the fact that it violates military policy and U.S. law. By putting the decision in commanders' laps, the entire process becomes more politicized — where before, it was a simple medical determination. … [T]ransgenderism is at its root a serious mental disorder (one classified as such — not just by Johns Hopkins — but the military’s own Defense Department!). If these men and women are confused about their gender, what’s to keep them from being confused about their mission? With the world falling to pieces and the margin of error so slight, can we really afford these distractions? By letting people create their own realities, Washington is losing its grip on its own.”

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SHORT CUTS

The Gipper: “Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, ‘What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.’ But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.”

Blame game: “I’m tired of funerals of babies, while [the] NRA, manufacturers, and [gun stores], run to the bank making profits from death. … At the end of the day you can argue with us [and] you can call us names, but you got to deal with God. And the blood of our children is on your hands. And you will pay for the murder of our children.” —Chicago “Reverend” and Obama buddy Michael Pfleger, who did not blame gang culture or the ones actually pulling the trigger

Village Idiots: “[The EPA] will stick with the [oil] industry till all our water is contaminated, our air polluted and climate change has made our planet unlivable. … What the EPA presented to the public [about fracking being harmless for drinking water] was PR, not science and proof of the widespread, systemic contamination of our regulatory bodies by the oil and gas industry.” —documentarian Josh Fox, who thinks the EPA isn’t ecofascist enough

Braying Jackass: “We have a democracy problem in this country. We have declining voter turnout. Secretary Clinton put forward [the] notion [that] we need a national strategy to energize voting again, to get people involved. Obviously, to address the many efforts made by Republicans to repress voter involvement. … Let’s face it, a lot of the people in the political class have tried to discourage voter involvement and a lot of incumbents prefer a very small electorate.” —New York Mayor Bill de Blasio

Friendly fire: “I think [the reason Hillary Clinton] is running so aggressively on policy is because she can’t really run on character.” —The Atlantic’s Molly Ball

“A new poll shows that 53% of Democrats think illegal immigrants should be allowed to vote. I’m guessing the other 47% think it should be a requirement.” —Fred Thompson

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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

“[O]f all the views of this law none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty. … History by apprising them of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views.” —Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14, 1781

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

U.S. Economy Prepares for Leisurely Summer Months

It’s summer, and college students are putting down their laptops and picking up temporary jobs. And a few days ago, the Commerce Department revised their estimate for the nation’s GDP; from January to March, the nation’s GDP output shrank by 0.7%. These events mean the May jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is a mixed bag. The headlining numbers look good. In May, the U.S. added 280,000 jobs and the unemployment rate has stayed essentially unchanged since January at 5.5%. The U6 unemployment rate, which also measures the people struggling through long-term unemployment and people stuck in part-time jobs, held at 10.8%. Wages rose, however, as hourly earnings rose eight cents so the average American worker is earning $24.96 an hour. With the numbers comes the greater chance that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates in September, reports CNBC. But much of the notable job gain comes just ahead of the summer months, a possible sign that Americans have more discretionary spending, notes Market Watch. Leisure and hospitality fields added 57,000 jobs last month, and another 29,000 jobs were added to the field of arts, entertainment and recreation. This raises questions about the kind of industry on which the nation is building the economy.

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Most Americans Want Income Redistribution

A recent poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS News finds that not only are Americans concerned with inequality but they want the government to go after the rich and redistribute their wealth. Paul wants the government to rob Peter. “The poll found that a strong majority say that wealth should be more evenly divided and that it is a problem that should be addressed urgently,” the Times reports. “Nearly six in 10 Americans said government should do more to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor, but they split sharply along partisan lines. Only one-third of Republicans supported a more active government role, versus eight in 10 of Democrats.” The report goes on to say inequality of wealth may become a prominent issue in the larger 2016 election. It’s a convenient narrative for Obama. His redistributionist policies — from an ill-conceived and ill-targeted “stimulus” to ObamaCare — have clearly stalled the nation’s economic engine, but he and his acolytes can simply continue to tell the poor and middle class that the deck is stacked against them. The Leftmedia, of course, dutifully parrots this false narrative, and the means to create wealth continue to languish.

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Protecting Nonprofits From SCOTUS Marriage Ruling

The Supreme Court is considering a case that would hand down the definition of marriage nationwide. As U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli told the court, the fact that some religious nonprofits will decide not to hire people due to their beliefs in same-sex marriage is “certainly going to be an issue.” In the possible fallout of the coming ruling, a Christian school could lose its nonprofit status if, say, it refused to hire an openly homosexual man. Rather than waiting for the Court’s decision, Sen. Mike Lee plans to introduce legislation that would protect religious nonprofits. “Discrimination by private parties against private parties — that’s one issue,” he said. “There is a different issue when the government is itself the discriminator. … That’s a problem and that’s what we’re trying to protect here.” The bill Lee would introduce is similar to the 2013 Marriage and Religious Freedom Act. While the courts have tended toward interpreting U.S. law broadly when it comes to religious liberty, the issue has become unnecessarily politicized in legislatures across the country. The First Amendment was drafted to ensure that diverse opinions were never driven from the public square. But that fundamental principle is at odds with the Left’s agenda. More…

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FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS

Inevitable Hillary Calls for Universal Vote

By Lewis Morris

The media and the Democrat establishment have done a fine job trying to convince the American people that Hillary Clinton is going to be the next president of the United States. We only need to sit back and accept it like we would the next sunrise. But all isn’t well with the Clinton brand these days. In fact, the case could be made that her road to the White House is not nearly as foregone a conclusion as we’ve been told.

The lengthy list of Clinton scandals hasn’t seemed to stop the Hillary machine just yet, but the Clinton Foundation’s numerous sketchy dealings are beginning to take their toll.

The latest chapter in the Clinton Slush Fund’s ongoing improprieties includes FIFA, the world soccer body whose executives appear to have been engaging in corrupt acts for two decades. It now turns out that Qatar, the host country for the lucrative World Cup in 2022, was a regular donor to the Clinton Foundation and was a sponsor of the 2013 Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting. By that point, there were widespread allegations that the country had bribed its way into hosting the 2022 tournament. There were also accusations that unsafe working conditions in the building of its soccer stadiums for the World Cup led to the deaths of numerous immigrant workers.

Donations to the Foundation from Qatar and FIFA had been ongoing since 2006 and continued through Hillary’s term as secretary of state. In public, Hillary was calling for a stronger stance against Middle Eastern regimes and Bill was decrying the abuse of migrant workers. In private, however, Qatar was donating between $1 million and $5 million to the Clintons.

Bill’s response to all this is to shrug and move on. He told attendees at a Foundation event in March, “My theory about all this is disclose everything and then let people make their judgments.”

Theory and practice are clearly two different things with the Clintons.

Take, for instance, Hillary’s stance against the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling. She claims to want open political discourse, but she is so staunchly opposed to open spending on political activity by corporations and independent groups that she vows to support only those Supreme Court nominees who are sworn to overturn Citizens United. In other words, a litmus test. And let’s not forget that the whole case was about a movie funded by political groups critical of Hillary. She’s all for free speech, so long as she approves of the speech.

Hillary’s assault on voter laws is also motivated by how it will benefit her campaign. She called Thursday for universal and automatic voter registration, a horrible idea to eliminate the most basic requirement of having to register to vote. It’s her plan to counter voter ID laws, which she complains are a nasty invention of Republicans who are “systematically and deliberately trying to stop millions of American citizens from voting.”

Democrats have long attacked voter ID laws, which, of course, are really in place to prevent fraud. But seeing as how Democrats have a tougher time winning elections legitimately, these laws are an impediment to their grand plan. Her strategy includes identifying sympathetic judges and jurisdictions to hear cases against voter ID laws in hopes of at least suspending those laws for the 2016 presidential race.

Interestingly enough, a recent Rasmussen poll shows that 76% of Americans — and 58% of Democrats — support voter ID laws. The Leftmedia predictably labels voter ID laws racist, thereby perpetuating the BIG lie. Yet the Rasmussen report demonstrates that the American public isn’t exactly buying what they’re being sold on this one.

In fact, the American public may not be buying what they’re being sold about Hillary Clinton in general. A recent CNN poll shows that Hillary is in free fall in a number of demographic categories. Her general favorability rating is at 46% for, 50% against. Among men, she has 38% favorability, with 58% not liking her. She has a 54% favorability with women, but a 59% unfavorable opinion among whites. Young people ages 18-34 give her a 55% favorability rating, but they’re traditionally the least informed and least active voting bloc. She’s trending poorly among most other age groups, with older people liking her least. And she also loses points among people in income groups above $50,000.

Meanwhile, her tone-deaf campaign marches merrily along, trampling on a previously scheduled youth event and blood drive to make way for a campaign event at New York City’s Roosevelt Island.

While the 2016 Democrat nomination appears to be earmarked for Hillary, perhaps her inevitable presidency isn’t quite so inevitable. It’s comforting to see after all this time that larger swaths of the electorate are finally getting to know the real Hillary.

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TODAY AT PATRIOTPOST.US

• ANALYSIS: Campus Sex: Soon a Thing of the Past?
• ANALYSIS: Facebook Threats Face Off Against Free Speech
• True U.S. Debt Tops $210 Trillion
• Hiding Something? Mosby Blocks Gray Autopsy
• George W. Bush Polling Higher Than Obama

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

• Jonah Goldberg: Left Plays Fast and Loose With Issue of Gender Identity
• L. Brent Bozell & Tim Graham: Bowing to the Big Lie of Bruce Jenner
• Mona Charen: Outflanking Democrats on College Costs
• David Harsanyi: Only Democrats Are to Blame for ObamaCare Chaos
• Michael Barone: Are We In for Another High-Crime Era?

For more, visit Right Opinion.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Jonah Goldberg: “[T]here’s something gloriously perverse in celebrating someone’s courage to boldly smash sexual categories and then, in the same breath, castigating them for reinforcing gender stereotypes. If men are to be free to become women, surely they get to decide what kind of women they want to be. The first word in Vanity Fair is, after all, ‘Vanity.’ The Sports Illustrated swimsuit models seem very happy to be paid lots of money to be objectified by the male gaze. Who am I to judge? … On most days of the week, liberals are fond of claiming that Republicans are ‘anti-science’ on everything from global warming to evolution. Well, last I checked, biology hadn’t been declared a branch of the humanities. Bruce Jenner was 65 years old when he decided to be a she, but that’s not why Caitlyn can’t have a baby. Figuratively speaking, removing the spigot won’t change the rest of the plumbing. That’s not patriarchal oppression talking. That’s science. And no matter how fluid gender may or may not be, the biological category of ‘female’ isn’t going away anytime soon.”

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SHORT CUTS

Insight: “A man does what he must — in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers — and this is the basis of all human morality.” —John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

Upright: “African-Americans have been loyal to the Democratic Party, but there is a group of African-Americans that feel like the Democratic Party has not been loyal to us. … We have a large, disproportionate number of people who are impoverished. We have a disproportionate number of people who are incarcerated, we have a disproportionate number of people who are unemployed, the educational system has totally failed, and all of this primarily has been under Democratic regimes in our neighborhoods. So, the question for me becomes, how can our neighborhoods be doing so awful and so bad when we’re so loyal to this party who is in power? It’s a matter of them taking complete advantage of our vote.” —Chicago pastor Corey Brooks

Village Idiots: “The recent publicity about mistreatment of black people in the judicial and police realm has been a reminder that the dreams of the civil rights movement have not been realized. Many Americans still have racist tendencies or feelings of superiority to people of color.” —Jimmy Carter

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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.