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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.

THE FOUNDATION

“[N]o mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other.” —George Washington, draft of first Inaugural Address, 1789

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

State Department Refuses to Investigate Clinton

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And even though the smoke is billowing out of the Clinton Foundation, the State Department says it won’t dig further into Hillary Clinton’s actions as secretary of state. “The State Department has not and does not intend to initiate a formal review, or to make a retroactive judgment about items that were not submitted during Secretary Clinton’s tenure,” spokesman Jeff Rathke said. State has the most information on Clinton’s actions — more than Congress — because she dumped 30,000 of her emails on the department before wiping her private hard drive clean. But it refuses to look deeper or give the emails to someone who will.

It’s common sense to be suspicious of the Clinton Foundation, given the kinds of reports coming out about the “charity.” According to the book “Clinton Cash” by Peter Schweizer, at least four members of the Clinton Foundation board were charged with financial crimes, including fraud and bribery. As for the uranium deal the State Department approved under Clinton’s leadership (the one that gave Russia control over much of the U.S.’s uranium reserves) the Kazakh official who helped broker the deal is serving a 14-year sentence for making corrupt uranium deals with foreign governments. Furthermore, the Clinton Foundation is unlikely to disappear if Clinton becomes president. After all, what’s first swinger Bill to do?

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Six Baltimore Officers Fight Prosecution, Allege Overreach

The six Baltimore police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray filed a motion Friday to dismiss the charges. “Rarely in the history of any criminal case has a prosecutor so directly maintained so many conflicts of interest,” the motion read. “Rarer still are instances where such clear conflict exists and a prosecutor steadfastly refuses to recuse him or herself. … This motion is being filed at this junction because the Defendants have grave concerns about the charging decisions which will be made in the near future and their ability to receive due process of the law.”

When State Attorney Marilyn Mosby charged the officers with everything from false imprisonment to second degree depraved heart murder, she told the people protesting police brutality, “I heard your call.” In doing so, she implied that she ignored her duty to uphold the law in favor of mob “justice.” Furthermore, the conflicts of interest are thick and damning. First, Mosby is married to the city councilman who represents the district where Gray was arrested and where the rioting was the worst. Second, the attorney for the Gray family is considered a mentor to Mosby. The charges from Mosby’s office were slapped together and fired off in such a shoddy manner that Mosby mistakenly accused two people who only shared the names of two of the officers. More…

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Police Lives Matter

Sometimes cops protect and serve, and sometimes they need to be protected and served. A rookie Oklahoma City police officer found that to be true while pursuing a robbery suspect on foot. After becoming separated from his partner, Officer Adam Eller struggled with one of the suspects, who snatched Eller’s baton and beat him with it. An armed citizen came to the rescue, however, drawing his firearm, warning the assailant to stop, and holding him until police backup arrived. Eller likely owes his life to this good guy with a gun.

Two Hattiesburg, Mississippi, officers weren’t so fortunate. Officers Benjamin Deen, 34 with a wife and two kids, and Liquori Tate, a 25-year-old rookie, were conducting what they thought was a routine traffic stop when the vehicle occupants opened fire, wounding the officers. Both later died at a local hospital, the first deaths for the Hattiesburg Police in three decades.

We note these cases together for two reasons: First, the assailants in both cases were black, while two of the three officers were white. Profiling doesn’t happen without reason. Second, black lives matter, but so do police lives. Officers are human and capable of doing wrong, but they put their lives on the line for their communities, too.

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FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS

Destroying the Family to Achieve Utopia

By Arnold Ahlert

For decades, progressives have embraced radical egalitarianism, a concept demanding the elimination of all differences in sex, race and class, and all the “inequality” such differences inevitably produce. Freedom and individuality would be completely crushed in the attempt to equalize outcomes, irrespective of vast differences in talent, ambition, physical attributes, etc. But leftists consider that a reasonable tradeoff to achieve their dream socialist utopia. They completely ignore the historical wreckage and the millions of deaths that have accompanied every attempt to make such concepts as sloth and ambition, or talent and a lack thereof, completely interchangeable in every “workers' paradise” where it was attempted.

Enter the latest promoters of egalitarian insanity: University of Warwick professor Adam Swift and his partner, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Harry Brighouse. In an article published by the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC), Swift and Brighouse bemoan the inequality that arises from the difference between good parents and bad ones. In 2014, their musings produced a book, “Family Values: The Ethics of Family-Child Relationships,” in which the duo attempt toexplain “why a child’s interest in autonomy severely limits parents' right to shape their children’s values, and why parents have no fundamental right to confer wealth or advantage on their children.”

Speaking with the ABC, Swift reveals his infatuation with equality of outcome. “I had done some work on social mobility and the evidence is overwhelmingly that the reason why children born to different families have very different chances in life is because of what happens in those families,” he declares. He was especially concerned with unequal outcomes that attend families who live in better surroundings, whose children go to better schools, and whose parents get more involved with their children’s activities.

Swift’s solution to such an “intractable” problem? “One way philosophers might think about solving the social justice problem would be by simply abolishing the family,” he posits. “If the family is this source of unfairness in society then it looks plausible to think that if we abolished the family there would be a more level playing field.”

Perhaps the social justice problem might be better served by eliminating crackpot philosophers. Yet even Swift recognizes the impracticality of family elimination. “Nearly everyone who has thought about this would conclude that it is a really bad idea to be raised by state institutions, unless something has gone wrong,” he concedes. Nonetheless, he still feels compelled to single out certain “undesirable” variables that contribute to the disparities between families he and Brighouse find problematic. “Private schooling cannot be justified by appeal to these familial relationship goods,” Swift insists. “It’s just not the case that in order for a family to realize these intimate, loving, authoritative, affectionate, love-based relationships you need to be able to send your child to an elite private school.”

He has even greater disdain for … bedtime stories. “The evidence shows that the difference between those who get bedtime stories and those who don’t — the difference in their life chances — is bigger than the difference between those who get elite private schooling and those that don’t,” Swift complains. And while he remains adamant about the elimination of private schools, he realizes eliminating bedtime stories is a bridge too far, admitting, “We could prevent elite private schooling without any real hit to healthy family relationships, whereas if we say that you can’t read bedtime stories to your kids because it’s not fair that some kids get them and others don’t, then that would be too big a hit at the core of family life.”

Still he offers a caveat. “I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children,” he says, though he argues, “I think they should have that thought occasionally.” In other words, one should feel a certain amount of guilt for being a better parent than someone else.

What to make of such “forward” thinking? Reminding people what animates it — and why it is doomed to fail. The urge to make everyone equal in every way possible is nothing new, nor is the historical wreckage of gulags, re-education camps, purges and wholesale slaughter that has arisen out of every attempt to do so. Yet in their monumental hubris, progressives look at what inevitably produces the equality of misery, and reach only one conclusion: Such failure occurred because the wrong people were in charge.

And therein lies the ultimate contradiction: There is no such thing as radical egalitarianism with people in charge. Maintaining such a society would be impossible absent an army of enforcers cracking down on anyone daring to be better than anyone else. The egalitarians have always insisted such an army would be needed only on a temporary basis. But history has demonstratedthat an inner circle of party apparatchiks keeping everyone else in line has invariably rewarded itself quite richly for engaging in such “noble” efforts, even as they have never made the effort to disband.

And why is equality of misery inevitable? Because the elimination of incentives that produce inequality — of excellence — ensures everyone will do the barest minimum to maintain their place in the unalterable status quo required by their overlords.

“Swift and Brighouse are philosophically inching their way to a novel accommodation for a weathered institution ever more in need of a rationale for existing,” the ABC article states. No, they are not. They are attempting to undermine the foremost “weathered institution” that stands between Liberty and tyranny. And no amount of pseudo-intellectualism that attends such “inching” should obscure reality: These two and their philosophical soul mates are monsters.

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TODAY AT PATRIOTPOST.US

• ANALYSIS: For Economic Growth, It Matters Who Governs
• Americans Went Sideways From Left’s ObamaCare Plans
• The Insidious Fact About Chlorine Gas
• Saudis Announce Nuclear Intentions
• CO2 Hits ‘Milestone.’ So What?

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

• Jeff Jacoby: Gender Is No Credential for the White House
• Peggy Noonan: How the Clintons Get Away With It
• John Goodman: When Liberals Run Cities
• Ken Blackwell: Time for a Different Narrative on Iran
• Stephen Moore: State of the Planet: Better Than Ever
• Stephen Moore: The Death of the Green Energy Movement

For more, visit Right Opinion.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Jeff Jacoby: “There was a time when [Hillary] Clinton purported to reject … gender-based appeals. ‘I am not running as a woman,’ she told voters during her last campaign for president. Now she plays it up for all it’s worth. ‘Don’t you someday want to see a woman president of the United States of America?’ she pointedly asked attendees at an EMILY’s List gala. … Of all the qualifications to seek in a US president, few could be more irrelevant to the job than sex organs. Whether the leader of the free world is equipped with the anatomical parts of a male or of a female is of infinitely less significance than whether that leader is equipped with integrity and sound judgment, with respect for facts and loyalty to the Constitution. … Reducing an electoral choice to a physical characteristic trivializes self-government and the responsibilities of citizenship. Of course voters are free to cast ballots for any reason they like, including feel-good symbolism or sentimental tokenism. But no one should imagine that there is honor in voting for Clinton because she’s a woman. Wasn’t the whole point of feminism, after all, that woman are more than biology?”

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SHORT CUTS

Insight: “To be young in my generation was to feel that your future had been mortgaged out from under you, and that’s a tragic mistake we must never allow our leaders to make again.” —The Gipper

The BIG Lie: “We’ve got to be relentless in our efforts to support small businesses [that] are creating jobs and helping to grow the economy. And that’s been the purpose behind many of the policies I’ve fought for as president. I’ve cut taxes for small businesses more than a dozen times.” —Barack Obama, taking credit for someone else’s work again, despite raising taxes on small businesses in a big way

Race bait: “As potentially the first African-American first lady, I was also the focus of another set of questions and speculations, conversations sometimes rooted in the fears and misperceptions of others. … [F]eelings [of racial inferiority] are real. They’re rooted in decades of structural challenges that have made too many folks feel frustrated and invisible, and those feelings are playing out in communities like Baltimore and Ferguson and so many others across this country.” —Michelle Obama

Demo-gogues: “If elected president, I will have a litmus test in terms of my nominee to be a Supreme Court justice. That nominee will say that we are all going to overturn this disastrous Supreme Court decision on Citizens United, because that decision is undermining American democracy. I do not believe that billionaires should be able to buy politicians.” —Democrat presidential candidate Bernie Sanders

Non Compos Mentis: “This year, we will spend a collective $2.4 billion to buy Mom flowers. … But while giving flowers may seem like a good way to show how much you love your mom, it’s a terrible idea if you care about Mother Earth.” —The Washington Post’s Jennifer Grayson

Late-night humor: “According to a new poll, 48% of Americans believe that Hillary Clinton is honest and trustworthy. Then Hillary said, ‘Actually I just made that poll up.’” —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.