THE FOUNDATION

“[T]he government must be a weak one indeed, if it should forget that the good of the whole can only be promoted by advancing the good of each of the parts or members which compose the whole.” —John Jay, Federalist No. 64, 1788

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Democrats Exploit Train Wreck to Derail Republicans

Regarding the Philadelphia train crash, the blood of the seven dead was not dry on the tracks before Democrats attempted to convert this tragedy into political capital. Congress was deliberating Amtrak funding and, in keeping with Rahm Emmanuel’s maxim to “never let a good crisis go to waste,” Democrats immediately asserted that the crash was related to an “infrastructure failure.” Obama’s White House mouthpiece Josh Earnest got in on the act, saying, “The president has been a leading advocate … for investing in our infrastructure.” He added, “Unfortunately, we have seen a concerted effort by Republicans for partisan reasons to step in front of those kinds of advancements.” According to investigators, the train was traveling over 100 mph, or twice the posted track speed. Notably, this was very similar to the crash in Spain last year, when another train was traveling into a leftward turn at twice the posted track speed. Fortunately, Republicans have not (yet) bowed to Demo tactics, and Amtrak, which is as inefficient and bankrupt as the Post Office, has not yet received even more taxpayer funds. Isn’t $1 billion a year enough?

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Congress Takes NSA Hot Potato

The NSA’s mass metadata collection efforts have come to a head. Last week, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the program violated the Patriot Act, despite the NSA claiming Section 215 authorized it. Indeed, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), primary author of the original Patriot Act, said, “That program is illegal and based on a blatant misinterpretation of the law.” But the law is up for renewal by June 1, so Congress has to act. The House on Wednesday voted 338-88 to pass the USA Freedom Act, which specifically ends bulk data collection. That sets up a fight with the Senate, where Republicans are more eager to actually authorize the NSA’s phone metadata program. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warned the House bill would put undue limits on intelligence collection and said the Senate won’t vote on it. House Speaker John Boehner promised not to let the Patriot Act expire because it’s “critically important to keep Americans safe.” But the fundamental debate is how much power the government needs to do that. How much Liberty do we give up for security?

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UVA Dean Sues Rolling Stone Over Rape Story

It’s devilishly hard for someone in America to successfully sue a publication for libel. Not only does the plaintiff have to convince the court that what was published was false and caused harm, but the plaintiff also has to prove that the publication acted with malicious intent. In response to Rolling Stone’s grossly irresponsible false report on a supposed rape on the University of Virginia campus, the college’s Associate Dean of Students Nicole Eramo filed a $7.5 million suit against the magazine and the author of the story, Sabrina Rubin Erdely. Based on the complaint, it appears Eramo has a case. She alleges Erdely never attempted to get documents that would have disproven “Jackie’s” story. And the reporter hid her work by using pseudonyms to describe people in the story she didn’t talk to and dismissed concerns by a Rolling Stone copy editor who wondered why Erdely didn’t talk to the accused. The complaint alleges even Jackie was uncomfortable with how the magazine portrayed Eramo. But Erdely was trying to fit this story into a template, the one she used in the past when writing about rape — a template that produced several factually challenged stories. As Jonah Goldberg wrote last month, journalistic ethics are “all based on a very simple rule: Tell the truth.” More…

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FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS

The Left’s Twisted Concern for Premature Black (Voter) Deaths

By Nate Jackson

“Blacks die sooner than whites. How many votes has this cost Democrats?” So headlined The Washington Post over the weekend. It’s not so much that black lives matter, you see, as blackvotes matter to Democrat politicians.

Writing in the Post, University of Massachusetts at Amherst Professor Dean Robinson takes a look at the research of Javier Rodriguez, Arline Geronimus, John Bound and Danny Dorling, four university professors who attempt to calculate how different election outcomes might have been if the voting-age blacks who died between 1970 and 2004 had lived and voted (Democrat).

According to Robinson, “Rodriguez and colleagues estimate that excess deaths among blacks totaled 2.7 million between 1970 and 2004, that 1.74 million would have been of voting age, and that 1 million would have voted in the 2004 election. Combining excess mortality with the consequences of felon disenfranchisement, they find that about 1 in 7 blacks (15 percent) did not have the opportunity to vote in 2004 for one of these two reasons.”

While the study authors conclude the 2004 presidential election would not have turned out different, they assert the “[o]utcomes of 7 senate and 11 gubernatorial races could have been reversed.”

Then Robinson lays out the familiar narrative about racial inequality. “Research has shown that blacks are not dying in excess because of differences in genetic endowment or health behavior,” he says. “Instead, health disparities reflect racial and class inequality and an accumulation of stressors, including segregation, discrimination, exposure to pollution and unequal access to health-care resources, to name a few.”

He didn’t get into the disparity in incarceration rates, but that’s been a bugaboo of the Left for years, too. Never mind that blacks commit crime at a rate far higher than other races, and that the overwhelming majority of crime is intra-racial, not interracial.

We certainly would not argue that there hasn’t been any racial inequality. Slavery was a horrific thing, and, ever since its end, the nation has endured 150 years of racial discrimination and bitterness.

But blacks have been a monolithic voting bloc for Democrats — the party of slavery and Jim Crow, by the way — for half a century. Particularly in cities like Baltimore, Chicago and Ferguson, to pick three at random, Democrats have been running the show for at least that long. And blacks in those cities remain mired in failing schools, poor housing and low-wage jobs.

Might there be not just correlation but causation?

Yet according to Political Research Quarterly, “Historical legacies provide deeply rooted ties between blacks and the Democratic Party. These ties may simply render it impossible for Republicans — black or otherwise — to move public opinion or mobilize among blacks.” Translation: Blacks aren’t going to vote GOP any time soon, no matter what.

Robinson concludes, “The tragic deaths of unarmed black men have again generated conversations about racial inequality in the United States.”

He neglects, of course, the thousands of tragic deaths of armed black men at the hands of other armed black men through gang violence in inner cities. This social breakdown and family collapse is largely the result of subsidizing fatherlessness through the Democrats' “Great Society,” which left blacks enslaved on urban poverty plantations.

Nor did Robinson mention that 37% of aborted babies are black. If blacks, at 12% of the population, accounted for a similar percentage of all abortions since Roe v. Wade in 1973 — not even as far back as the researchers go — that’s roughly 21 million people who never had a chance at life, never mind voting. Yet abortion is a sacred plank of the Democrat platform.

Do black lives matter only when taken by police officers?

The ugly truth is that Democrats need blacks to win elections, and this demographic decline is worrisome to leftist politicos. Perhaps that’s why they seek to flood the country with immigrants.

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TODAY AT PATRIOTPOST.US

• ANALYSIS: About That Decline in Christianity…
• Obama Puts America on Trial at the UN
• In Time for SCOTUS Ruling, ObamaCare Reforms Introduced
• EPA Looks to Hammer Nail Salons
• Commencement Lineup Illustrates Problem With Today’s Academia
• Voters Should Be More Concerned About Hillary’s Lies

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

• Tony Perkins: On Poverty, President Shows Poor Judgment
• Rebecca Hagelin & Kristin Carey: The Ascension
• Larry Elder: State Sen. Obama Had an Urban Agenda, and It Failed
• Victor Davis Hanson: The Forgotten Realities of World War II
• George Will: In Childhood, Risk Is Inherent

For more, visit Right Opinion.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Tony Perkins: “This President is accusing the church — the most effective social outreach program in the history of America — of ignoring the poor to fight a war on social issues that, oh by the way, he started? That’s not only ignorant of the church’s activities — it’s insulting. The religious community hasn’t ignored the poor. On the contrary, there’s no more generous segment of society than Christian conservatives and the ministries that their giving makes possible. … If the President cares more about poverty than his social agenda, why did he sacrifice a program for thousands of sex trafficking victims on the altar of his radical abortion policy? Or make allegiance to same-sex ‘marriage’ a condition of nonprofits' tax exemption? In the hostile environment created by this administration, Christians are spending precious time defending their faith, when they could be putting it in practice. Frankly, we’d love to focus on strengthening families and ending poverty — but the President won’t lay down his weapons of sexual radicalism long enough for us to try.”

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SHORT CUTS

On this date in history: The State of Israel is formally recognized in 1948.

Upright: “If all whites tomorrow were to move to Canada and Europe, tell me how it would affect the black on black crime rate, how would it affect the out-of-wedlock births, how would it affect the spread of AIDS. How would it affect those issues? What I’m saying to Black America [is that] we must stop victimization. We must stop complaining about what white folks have done to us in the past. … There’s nothing more lethal than a good excuse for failure — institutional racism, whatever that means.” —Center for Neighborhood Enterprise President Robert Woodson

Dezinformatsia: “The shock and tragedy of what happened in Philadelphia made a long-standing battle over Amtrak funding more raw and emotional. … Democrats had asked for $2.5 billion, Republicans actually approved a cut to $1.1 billion.” —NBC’s Kelly O'Donnell (“Maybe if the train had been weighed down with big piles of taxpayer money, it wouldn’t have been able to go so fast…” —National Review’s Jim Geraghty)

Non Compos Mentis: “The only one to fix the infrastructure of our country is me — roads, airports, bridges. I know how to build, pols only know how to talk! … TRAIN WRECK just the beginning. Our roads, airports, tunnels, bridges, electric grid — all falling apart. I can fix for 20% of pols, & better.” —Donald Trump on Twitter

Race bait: “If police were being killed with any type of routine sanction by the system or, worse off, being killed by the system, asking why people aren’t protesting their deaths would be an entirely fair and morally urgent question. But, of course, they’re not."—Adam Johnson in a Salon article titled, "Dear Facebook ‘friends’: No, we shouldn’t protest when police are killed”

And last… “Obama’s solution for the Baltimore rioters: ‘making investments so they can get the training they need to find jobs.’ Yes. For example, training them not to loot the businesses where the jobs are.” —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

“No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.” —James Madison, Federalist No. 10, 1787

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Democrats Undermine Obama’s Pacific Trade Deal Effort

Like it or not, Barack Obama’s trade deal is needed if the U.S. is going to maintain influence in the Pacific Rim as a counterweight to China. But the community organizer in chief can’t even muster the support of his own party. Obama attacked Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership, saying she’s wrong on the matter. The Wall Street Journal says Obama’s polarization tactics worked better when there was a Democrat majority in Congress. Now that the playing field has changed, he’s attacking his own party. As a result, Democrat lawmakers voted against their president Tuesday, refusing to fast-track the trade legislation.

Without the up-down, yes-no vote, the Obama administration has a more challenging task. Charles Krauthammer opined, “It would help if when the president says [Warren] is dead wrong, he would actually make a case to explain why, rather than say, ‘I would never sign a deal that’s not good for working Americans. Trust me.’ That’s what he does with Iran, that’s what he does with everything. … [O]n this, acting in the national interest as president, he knows that in the end free trade is a good idea. And this agreement, in particular, is extremely important geopolitically as a way to hold our Pacific Rim allies, who will be cut loose and will enter into China’s orbit if we don’t.” But Obama is such a narcissist, he can’t help but demean his own party. If that keeps up, then the last two years will quickly become a lame-duck presidency. More…

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How Hillary’s State Dept. Cleared Bill’s Speeches

“I gotta pay our bills,” Bill Clinton said recently when explaining his exorbitant speaking fees. Well, the Associated Press reports on the State Department’s enabling of Bill’s gravy train: “State Department officials gave speedy and sometimes only cursory consideration to potential conflicts of interest when approving former President Bill Clinton’s lucrative speeches to global companies and foreign governments during Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. … Again and again, the ethics office responsible for vetting his appearances hurriedly signed off on them, even in cases where questions had been raised about the behavior of organizations hiring Bill Clinton to appear. It approved at least 330 requests for the former president’s appearance at speeches, dinners and events. More than 220 of those were paid events that earned the familynearly $50 million [emphasis added].”

One example was a speech to Barclays, the British bank that soon thereafter was fined $300 million for violating financial sanctions against Burma, Cuba, Iran, Libya and Sudan. And then there was the time Bill spoke to British-based HSBC, under investigation for — get this — money laundering. It’s no stretch to conclude that Hillary Clinton wasn’t about to use her authority at State to block Bill’s payday. They were “dead broke,” she told us, and that money was helping them just get by.

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Military Paid NFL to Honor the Troops

From 2011 to 2014, the Department of Defense paid 14 NFL teams $5.4 million to honor soldiers during games. That’s right: What we thought was a genuine display of patriotism, like Hometown Hero, only came about because the NFL (formerly a “nonprofit” — pfft) wanted more money and the U.S. military wanted advertisement. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who first drew attention to the practice, said, “They realize the public believes they’re doing it as a public service or a sense of patriotism. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth.” While the NFL is contemptible for trading salutes for cash, the U.S. military also shoulders some of the blame for manipulating special moments into theater to gain more recruits. What do the soldiers, some with injuries from war, who walked out onto the field in front of thousands think of the fact that they were used as pawns in a marketing campaign that earned a sports franchise millions?

Meanwhile, Sen. Harry Reid has bigger fish to fry. He took to the Senate floor to complain about the suspension of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady for knowing about improperly inflated footballs. “I find it stunning that the National Football League is more concerned about how much air is in a football than with a racist franchise name that denigrates Native Americans across the country.” If Reid were serious about his political charade, he’d just pay the Washington Redskins to change their name. With all this nonsense, maybe it’s time for the nation to return to America’s pastime — baseball. More…

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FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS

Social Insecurity: The Looming Crisis

By Jim Harrington

For years, actuaries, financial analysts and policy wonks have warned that Social Security is doomed to crash. Contrary to rosy predictions a decade ago that this popular government program has a funded lifetime of 33 more years and won’t sink into the red until 2017, Social Security actually went red in 2010 and will go broke in 2024.

In 1983, the Social Security trustees predicted that reforms would maintain the program’s solvency through 2048. Even they’ve changed their tune, though they won’t admit it’s as moribund as it actually is.

Since its inception, Social Security has promised each succeeding generation that there will be at least a minimum of money for them at retirement. All working people are taxed at the rate of 12.4% of each paycheck, with the promise of a return. (Yes, employers pay half, but they also pay employees less as a result. It still costs “X” to employ a person; whether 6.2% is earmarked for direct Social Security payments matters not.) But that money’s gone in an insolvent system.

When Franklin Roosevelt created Social Security, the ratio of taxpayers to beneficiaries was 42:1. Today that ratio has plummeted to numbers FDRs' “Brain Trust” never contemplated — it’s now a puny 3:1, and with 80 million Baby Boomers beginning to enter the system that ratio will only get worse. Social Security’s already running a $200 billion annual deficit with 60 million recipients, so it’s difficult to understand the trustees' optimism.

Researchers Gary King of Harvard and Samir Soneji and Konstantin Kashin of Dartmouth analyzed the Social Security Administration (SSA) trustees actuarial reports and conclude the program’s insolvency is near. Their research found little or no bias in the annual reporting between 1978 and 1999, but from 2000 onward the bias presenting the program positively has been increasing steadily.

King reports that the trustees use outdated modes in the analyses, comparing them to “steering by sextant and dead reckoning” rather than using “global-positioning-systems.” They “employ research methods that are antiquated and opaque compared with the statistics and open-source data analytics powering today’s successful scientific and business enterprises.”

Steve Goss, the chief actuary of the SSA, nevertheless enjoys widespread credibility. Supporters in the public, academic and private sectors use his analyses in their own work.

Barron’s Bill Alpert explains why: Goss says SSA actuaries “leave politics at the door when they prepare” reports, and argues that “forecast errors in the past decade might have resulted from the 2008 recession.” Besides political independence, Goss values consistency in the projections and looks askance at changing assumptions or methods.

Goss cites as a cautionary tale the trustees' continuing to project long-term gains while productivity dropped during the 1980s. Then in 1995, the economy began a sharp climb. “[We] learned a lesson,” Goss said. “[M]aybe we should look at the long-term averages, not flip back and forth a lot based on very, very brief periods of recent experience.” One problem with that approach is that the U.S. is not your granddaddy’s country.

And Alpert notes another big problem for Goss: “[A] surprising number of past panelists complain that Goss has ignored their advice. A case in point is the way the actuaries predict death rates. Along with birth rates and immigration, death rates are a crucial consideration in projecting the future populations that will be paying into Social Security and drawing benefits. Since 1999, outside demographers on Social Security’s technical panels have unsuccessfully urged the actuaries to change their approach for predicting death rates. Goss' crew makes judgments about future death rates within each age group and sex from five separate causes, like heart disease, cancer, and violence — a process that obliges the actuaries to come up with 150 different parameters in a way that outside experts have never been able to plumb.”

Faulty methods distort projections for solvency.

Problems are many, solutions, few. The system has already raised the full eligibility age to 66, and soon, 67. That’s not enough. One suggestion: raise taxes (naturally). To maintain the promised benefits, former Bill Clinton adviser Bill Galston argues the payroll tax would have to rise from 12.4% to 15.9%. A middle-income family (about $50,000) would pay another $900 annually. Adding this to all other taxes they pay is unconscionable.

Republicans have promoted privatizing part of Social Security for more than 20 years. Were taxpayers allowed to invest their Social Security money in 401k’s, even a modest return would allow middle-income earners to retire on six-figure incomes. Social Security’s “return,” by comparison, is an obscene joke. It actually results in a loss due to the constant inflation of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Social Security is a Pony Express program in a smart phone world. It makes changes grudgingly and only long after they are obviously needed. And because it is the greatest Ponzi scheme of all time, some Americans will be hurt very badly. Yet this oft-repeated warning has never been heeded because government employees have their own pension system, and citizens only want what was promised to them — a retirement income. Anybody aiming to fix that, in the view of too many Americans, is merely trying to steal from them. In short, it’s an entrenched problem that will almost surely receive nothing but token Band-Aids as long as politicians can hold out.

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TODAY AT PATRIOTPOST.US

• ANALYSIS: What’s Worse Than Taxes? Regulation U.S.A.
• Reminder: North Korea Has Nuclear Ambitions, Too
• Intelligence Head ‘Forgot’ to Tell Congress About NSA Program
• Obama Hates on Democrats
• Republicans Join Legal Fight Over Obama’s Amnesty
• China Now Number One Crude Oil Importer

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

• Ben Shapiro: Shut Pam Geller Up, or We Will All Die
• Jonah Goldberg: Mark Halperin’s Biased Grilling of Ted Cruz
• Michelle Malkin: The Return of Obama’s Hoax-Spreading Bitter Half
• Jacob Sullum: Warrantless Snooping Goes Far Beyond NSA’s Phone-Record Dragnet
• Arnold Ahlert: Arab Leaders Revolt Against Iran Nuke Deal
• Terence Jeffrey: Einstein Memorial Refutes White House Environmentalist
• Walter Williams: Some Odds and Ends

For more, visit Right Opinion.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Ben Shapiro: “[Pamela] Geller, the narrative goes, should never have encouraged people to draw Muhammad because it was ‘provocative.’ To which the answer should be: So what? Women attending school in Afghanistan ‘provokes’ radical Muslims into throwing acid on their faces, but that does not mean that women should not go to school in Afghanistan or be condemned for doing so. … How do proponents of this victim/victimizer identity dichotomy determine who falls into which category? They simply look at the socioeconomic status of those involved and make a determination of who is worse off. Thus, black Baltimore rioters were not people acting without any sense of values, but rather victims provoked by injustice from a non-existent white power structure in Baltimore. Before a conflict has even begun, we know who deserves our sympathy. That calculus leads to more death, more destruction, more chaos. That death, destruction and chaos cannot be laid at the feet of Pamela Geller, but those who continue to perpetuate a narrative in which people who commit evil acts are victims, and those who are their victims are their provocateurs.”

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SHORT CUTS

Insight: “He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice.” —Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Non Compos Mentis: “I think the effort to suggest that the poor are sponges, leeches, don’t want to work, are lazy, are undeserving got traction. And look, it’s still being propagated. I mean, I have to say that if you watch Fox News on a regular basis, it is a constant menu — they will find folks who make me mad. I don’t know where they find them. They’re all like, ‘I don’t want to work. I just want a free Obamaphone,’ or whatever.” —Barack Obama (“[H]e seems well-acquainted with what we do. I think Fox ought to run a full-page ad welcoming Obama into the viewership of the number one network. … Mr. President, if you’re watching us right now, you’ve got a tick. It can be cured.‘ —Charles Krauthammer)

Demo-gogues: "When I … make an argument about closing the carried interest loophole that exists whereby hedge fund managers are paying 15% on the fees and income that they collect, I’ve been called Hitler for doing this, or at least this is like Hitler going into Poland. That’s an actual quote from a hedge fund manager when I made that recommendation. The top 25 hedge fund managers made more than all the kindergarten teachers in the country. … There’s a fairness issue involved here.” —Barack Obama

Late-night humor: “The White House is testing out new spikes that would make it difficult to jump the fence. So if you’re wondering what kind of cutting-edge technology the Secret Service is using to protect the president, it’s spikes. I think someone saw an episode of 'Game of Thrones.’” —Seth Meyers

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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

“[T]he most productive system of finance will always be the least burdensome.” —James Madison, Federalist No. 35, 1788

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

DHS Secretaries Warn of Increased Jihadi Threat

How’s Barack Obama doing on the counterterrorism front? Not very good, according to his own DHS secretary. Jeh Johnson warned Sunday that the U.S. faces an increased threat from so-called “lone-wolf” terrorists, who he says could “strike at any moment.” He added, “We’re very definitely in a new environment, because of ISIL’s effective use of social media, the Internet, which has the ability to reach into the homeland and possibly inspire others. Because of the use of the Internet, we could have little or no notice in advance of an independent actor attempting to strike.” Tom Ridge, the first DHS secretary, agreed, saying, “The threats are much more serious and much more complicated than on Sept. 12, 2001.”

But it’s worth repeating what Mark Alexander wrote: “Describing Islamist assailants as ‘lone wolf’ actors or ‘radicalized’ constitutes a lethal misunderstanding of the Jihadi threat.” That’s because “these attacks and those to come were and will be directly tied to worldwide Jihad by way of the Qur'an, the foundational fabric linking all Islamist violence.” As long as Obama continues to be more concerned about the Crusades than radical Islamic terrorism, however, this threat won’t be effectively countered.

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Saudis Snub Obama Summit

What happens when a president holds a summit and no one comes? That wasn’t entirely the case with Barack Obama’s Middle East powwow at Camp David this week, but four of the six invited leaders declined to attend, including one particularly notable absence: New Saudi King Salman, who took power earlier this year. The New York Times reports, “Both countries insisted on Monday that the king’s absence was not a snub, even as it was hard to ignore four powerful factors that have led to rising tensions between the two nations: the administration’s pursuit of a nuclear accord with Iran, the rise of the Islamic State in the region, the regional unrest that came to be known as the Arab Spring and the transformation of world energy markets.” At least two of those things could be translated as Obama mucking things up with an ally, and the Times might add Obama’s Yemen “success” story to that list since the Saudis are trying to stop Iranian terrorist proxies there. His foolish nuclear deal with Iran even has the Saudis promising to pursue nuclear weapons themselves as a deterrent. Obama might be content with increasing Iranian hegemony in the Middle East, but the Saudis are not. And they know that as long as Obama is “leading from behind,” they’re on their own.

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Forget Taxes, Obama’s Regulations Are Strangling the Economy

The wild creation of regulations by the Obama administration has stalled economic growth and made the nation’s rulemaking the responsibility of unelected bureaucrats. Two reports released this week show the staggering extent of how debilitating these regulations are. Every year, the Competitive Enterprise Institute releases its report on the nation’s “Ten Thousand Commandments.” This year, Clyde Wayne Crews, the vice president for policy for CEI, reports that the regulatory burden averages out to $14,976 per American household. If America’s regulations were a country, it would have the 10th largest economy, beating out India. Barack Obama has tied the country in red tape because, while 224 laws were passed in 2014, the government plastered up 3,554 regulations. Furthermore, “A problem with cost-benefit analysis is that it relies primarily on agency self-reporting. Having agencies audit their own rules is like asking students to grade their own exams. Regulators are disinclined to emphasize when a rule’s benefits do not justify its costs,” CEI’s study says.

These regulations make the federal deficit unmanageable, and The Wall Street Journal pins the problem of America’s stalled economy on too much regulation in the system. Meanwhile, aHeritage Foundation study finds that Obama’s major regulations cost Americans $80 billion a year — and there’s more regs in the works, such as another redesign of the light bulb. To fix the problem, Congress needs to insist that it is the lawmaking body of the country, not nameless bureaucrats in the executive branch.

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FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS

The Trouble With the NSA’s Haystack

By Paul Albaugh

Terrorism has again become one of the foremost concerns for Americans today. People are generally worried about the increased jihadi threat and look to government to ensure safety and security. While the Constitution certainly empowers the federal government to provide for the common defense of our nation, including counterterrorism measures, what it should not do is infringe on the rights of American citizens — specifically, the Fourth Amendment.

Last week, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the National Security Agency’s massive telephone metadata collection efforts are not authorized by the Patriot Act. However, the court did not rule the NSA’s actions are unconstitutional and it did not issue an order for the NSA to stop its data collection because the Patriot Act’s Section 215, which the NSA cites as its authority, is set to expire June 1. In other words, Congress must act soon anyway, and a vote is expected by May 22.

That the NSA is collecting phone records on all Americans may not seem terribly important — especially the more the public becomes accustomed to the idea — but it’s a critical issue. Like so many other things during this administration’s tenure, it pertains to the very real potential, if not actual, abuse of power.

Recall that the Patriot Act was passed following the September 11 terrorist attacks. The law was sold as a necessary counterterrorism measure to provide for better security. By and large, the law is a good one, aimed in the right places. But as with so many other laws, sometimes the consequences are less freedom and more government overreach.

There has already been squabbling in Congress over the NSA’s data collection, and the Patriot Act debate is sure to resemble a hornet’s nest. It will also pit Republicans against each other.

Already, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who had hoped to avoid defending the NSA, announced his unwavering support for the Patriot Act. He touted Section 215 in particular as “an important tool to prevent the next terrorist attack.” He also said, “Section 215 helps us find a needle in the haystack. But under the USA Freedom Act [which ends bulk metadata collection], there might not be a haystack at all.” He is hoping for a short-term extension that will allow the Senate to negotiate reforms.

Joining McConnell will be several other Republicans, led by the “nobody out-hawks us” John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Graham is expected to announce his candidacy for president on June 1, and may very well use his support of the Patriot Act as a launch pad for his national-security-based campaign.

Meanwhile, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), another 2016 presidential candidate, staunchly opposes the NSA surveillance program. In fact, after the Second Circuit’s ruling, he declared, “Congress should immediately repeal the Patriot Act provisions and pass my Fourth Amendment Preservation and Protection Act.” He intends to mount a filibuster against reauthorizing the Patriot Act.

Paul won’t be alone, as other conservatives are likely to join the fight and at least one Democrat, Senator Ron Wyden from Oregon, has voiced opposition to the NSA surveillance program as well.

In 2013, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), chief author of the Patriot Act, explained the difference between the law itself and the NSA’s interpretation: “This is the difference between using a rifle shot to get the phone records of somebody that we have great suspicion is involved in terrorist activity [and] using a blunderbuss to grab the whole haystack and to try to find the needle in it.” His metaphor wasn’t the best, but he clearly never intended the NSA’s broad reading of Section 215.

After all, as Reason’s Jacob Sullum notes, “Usually when someone says a proposal is like looking for a needle in a haystack, he is not recommending it; he is suggesting the idea is misguided and bound to fail.”

While we don’t like to see GOP infighting, at least they will be wrestling over an issue that pertains to the Constitution.

With all of the Obama administration’s scandals and abuse of power, why should Congress trust that the NSA surveillance program won’t be abused for political means? There is certainly a place for tough counterterrorism measures, but such sweeping collection of phone records when there is no relevance or reasonable grounds to believe a call is linked to terrorism is unwarranted, unconstitutional and unwanted by those of us who cherish Liberty. The Patriot Act has its place, but the balance between Liberty and security is paramount.

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TODAY AT PATRIOTPOST.US

• ANALYSIS: Pensions Remain Illinois' Ball and Chain
• Police Casualties Jump 89%
• Predictably, Hollywood Leftists Continue to Run Water
• Gitmo Changing Radio Station Because It Might Offend Castro
• ‘I Can’t Bake That Cake Because It Would Offend Muslims’

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

• Stephen Moore: How to Rescue Families Trapped in Violence, Despair and Joblessness
• Arnold Ahlert: Waiting for ISIS to Strike
• Ed Feulner: Ruled by Rules
• Michael Barone: Big Surprise in Britain

For more, visit Right Opinion.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Stephen Moore: “What can be done to rescue families trapped in an inner-city culture of violence, despair and joblessness? There are no easy answers, but down the road from Baltimore in Washington, D.C., an education program is giving children in poor neighborhoods a big lift up. The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which George W. Bush signed into law in 2004, has so far funded private school tuition for nearly 5,000 students, 95 percent of whom are African-American. … These families have now pulled together to brace for a David vs. Goliath fight to save the program. For the seventh straight year, President Obama has proposed eliminating this relatively tiny scholarship fund, which at $20 million accounts for a microscopic 0.0005 percent of the $4 trillion federal budget. … [W]hen the Opportunity Scholarship Program was created, the feds gave $20 million for the vouchers and an extra $20 million for the public schools. This meant more money for the public schools — and unionized teachers still opposed the program. … The left’s rote response to rotten schools is to call for more money, but the D.C. scholarship program shows that a quality education can be had for less money. … Democrats say they want to make the 2016 election about income inequality, but they stand united in opposition to one of the most effective ways of reducing the gap between rich and poor: better education.”

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SHORT CUTS

Insight: “Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.” —American writer Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988)

Upright: “Unfortunately, Eric Holder, the previous attorney general, had a war on police. He spent more time investigating police departments than he did investigating criminals.” —former NYPD Commissioner Howard Safir

Dezinformatsia: “Senator [Cruz], people are really interested in you and your identity. … Do you have a favorite Cuban food? Do you like Cuban music? Do you have a favorite Cuban singer? I wanted to give you the opportunity to welcome your colleague Senator Sanders to the race, and I’d like you to do it, if you would, en Español.” —Bloomberg News' Mark Halperin race baiting Ted Cruz (Halperin later reneged, claiming, “In no way was I asking Senator Cruz to ‘prove’ he was an ‘authentic’ Latino.”)

Demo-gogues: “We’re going to have to tackle climate change. We’ve got some folks in the center right now who think because we get a snowy day, they bring in snowballs into the chambers and think that’s science. I’m not a scientist, but I know a lot of scientists. I can understand science. And what the science says is that our planet is warming.” —Barack Obama (“After all, you hang out with scientists all day. You know… scientists like Bill Nye and Neil Tyson. Just because one is a washed up host of children’s shows and the other is a cosmologist who seems a bit out of his lane when speaks about climatology, don’t let that bother you.” —Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw)

Race bait: “The road ahead is not going to be easy. It never is, especially for folks like you and me… We’ve both felt the sting of those daily slights throughout our entire lives. The folks who crossed the street in fear of their safety. The clerk who kept a close eye on us in all those department stores. The people at formal events who assumed we were help.” —Michelle Obama

And last… “Hillary would be indicted already If the press used the same standard of circumstantial evidence against her it’s using against Tom Brady.” —Twitter satirist @hale_razor

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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.