THE FOUNDATION
“[America’s] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.” –John Quincy Adams, Speech to the House of Representatives, 1821
TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS
Political Fight Over Ebola Quarantine
In the wake of the doctor in New York City testing positive for Ebola, the governors of New York and New Jersey imposed mandatory quarantine policies for health workers who had contact with Ebola patients. Facing public backlash coupled with pressure from the White House (because the quarantine “doesn’t comport with science”), however, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo backed off. Not surprisingly, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie held firm. Of course, the reason the governors placed strict requirements on those coming in from Ebola-plagued countries is not because of the threat of additional infections, which is minimal, but because the fear generated by all the media hype over Ebola can result in significant disruption. The new state measures are designed to negate that disruption. And, as The Wall Street Journal put it in an editorial, “[I]f it weren’t for the Administration’s incompetence in handling Ebola risks on U.S. soil, maybe the state leaders wouldn’t have felt they had to take matters into their own hands.”
Washington School Shooter Broke Law When Picking Up Gun
Like so many other school shootings that make national headlines, we don’t know why the shooter at the Marysville Washington High School killed two people and severely injured three more on Oct. 24. Also like other shootings, the killer turned his weapon on himself. We do know that when the 14-year-old picked up his father’s Beretta .40-caliber handgun, he broke the lawbecause it’s illegal for him to possess the gun and ammunition, carry the gun to school and, of course, open fire. As always, the Left’s pundits point to the gun and label it the source of all social ills. As Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw says, it took all of three minutes for a Huffington Post reporter to tweet, “By the way, there are two background check measures on the ballot in Washington this year.” What no one can understand is the freshman’s mental state, why the homecoming princedescended to murder. But one thing is clear: The gun didn’t make him do it. More…
You Didn’t Build That, Part II
At a Boston rally for Democrat gubernatorial candidate Martha Coakley, Hillary Clinton echoed Barack Obama’s famous “you didn’t build that” line in reference to businesses and jobs. Only she was perhaps even more explicit. “Don’t let anybody tell you that, uh, you know, it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs,” Clinton said. “You know that old theory, ‘trickle-down economics,’” she sneered. “That has been tried, that has failed. It has failed rather spectacularly.” For good measure, she added, “You know, one of the things my husband says when people say, ‘Well, what did you bring to Washington?’ [is], ‘Well, I brought arithmetic.’” Clinton is clearly trying to move left to head off a challenge from Elizabeth Warren. But it’s also interesting to note that her husband benefitted from what we call “Reaganomics” – supply and demand economics that gets government out of the way and lets people keep more of their hard-earned money. Reagan’s policies set off a two-decade economic boom. Clinton is suggesting we continue Obama’s policies of taxing and spending, and that’s hardly a reason to vote for her.
FEC to Study Regulating Political Speech on Internet
The liberals on the Federal Election Commission are eyeing political speech. First, they wanted to regulate books. Now, they want to go after the videos, blogs and websites of the Internet. Ann Ravel, vice chair of the FEC, announced that the commission will look into regulating the Internet because “a reexamination of the commission’s approach to the internet and other emerging technologies is long over due.” Ravel wants to go after a “loophole” exempting political groups who distribute political ads for free across the Internet, insisting these ads must be disclosed to the FEC. But Lee Goodman, the FEC chairman, says these proposed regulations could entangle news sites, blogs or web forums. The Internet has been to political speech like ridesharing service Uber has been to the taxi industry – disruptive to the heavily regulated systems of the past. Doesn’t the FEC have more important things to do, like discouraging voter fraud and ensuring the reliability of voting technology, than tampering with the freedom of speech? More…
Idaho Wedding Chapel Doesn’t Have to Perform Same-Sex Marriages
A city in Idaho decided the religious beliefs of business owners are enough to prevent the city from slapping a non-discrimination charge against the business. Last week, the owners of the Hitching Post, a wedding chapel in Coeur d'Alene, sued the city because they would have faced a misdemeanor charge if they refused to marry same-sex couples. “But now the city is backing off and has determined the Knapps can say no,” writes Scott Shackford at Reason Magazine. “Unfortunately the reason is not because a wedding ceremony is not a right and nobody of any race, sexual orientation, or religion should be able to demand that somebody must bless (in any definition of the word) their relationship. Rather, the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance doesn’t specify that a business has to be a non-profit in order to claim a religious-based exemption from the law.” The city, of course, danced a legal two-step to avoid litigation, so the problem of same-sex non-discrimination laws hunting those practicing religious freedom will still be decided.More…
For more, visit Right Hooks.
RIGHT ANALYSIS
‘Lone Wolf Attack’? Wrong!
By Mark Alexander
If they're alone, why are there so many?After the latest Islamist assault in New York, let us reiterate the proper interpretation of such attacks.
As noted in my recent column, Islamic Jihad – Target USA, the most likely near-term form of attack against military and civilian personnel on our turf will be similar to the conventional Islamist assaults in the Middle East – homicidal bombings or mass shootings. This type of attack is low tech but effective in terms of achieving instilling public fear with the long-term goal of extorting policy change. However, a note of caution about the predictable “analysis” that will follow these attacks. Government and media analysts alike will assert there is “no known connection between the assailant and Islamist terrorist groups.” That assertion is patently false.
Recall that in 2009, after Nidal Malik Hasan, yelling “Allahu Akbar,” killed 14 people (including an unborn child) and wounded 30 others at Ft. Hood, The New York Times opined: “[It is] important to avoid drawing prejudicial conclusions from the fact that Major Hasan is an American Muslim whose parents came from the Middle East. President Obama was right when he told Americans, ‘we don’t know all the answers yet’ and cautioned everyone against ‘jumping to conclusions.’”
Well, we do “know all the answers” now, and the conclusion is that these acts are directly tied to Islam. Yet the Obama administration and its media outlets insist the Ft. Hood attack, like the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, were not tied to established Islamic terrorist groups. They offer the same errant analysis of the 2009 murder of two American soldiers outside a military recruiting center in Little Rock, Arkansas, and conspiracies to detonate bombs in Times Square and the NYC subway system. The result is that Islamist ideology is allowed to propagate and flourish across our nation unabated.
However, 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. Fact is, American Islamists, such as Louis Farrakhan, Anwar al-Awlaki, Sheikh Ibrahim and other self-appointed clerics, have galvanized their following by preaching hatred for America. And other American Muslin leaders, who would like to be perceived as legitimate representatives of Islam, offer little condemnation of Islamic violence. Their silence is deafening.
Describing Islamist assailants as “lone wolf” actors or “radicalized” constitutes a lethal misunderstanding of the Jihadi threat. Describing their attacks as “criminal activity” or “workplace violence” is asinine.
The Real Racists Oppose Voter ID
There is no intellectually sound argument against having proper ID to vote – which is quite predictably why the American Left must resort to emotional demagoguery to fight it. Equally unsurprising, playing the race card is their most reliable vehicle for doing so. Yet stunning testimony against North Carolina’s election laws reveal that it is leftists themselves who are willing to disparage black Americans and Hispanics to pursue their agenda.
According to expert witnesses retained by the Justice Department (DOJ) and, yes, the NAACP, it is racist to assume minorities can be treated like everyone else – because they are “less sophisticated.”
Read the rest here.
A Tale of Excused Abuse at the IRS
As we consider the political and legal implications of the IRS’s targeting of Tea Party and Patriot groups, it’s worth taking a trip down memory lane. Watergate offers worthwhile comparisons.
Months of congressional hearings, investigations, resignations, firings and blatant lies ended with the U.S. House Judiciary Committee passing articles of impeachment, resulting in the first and only resignation of a U.S. president on Aug. 8, 1974. The American people watched despicable acts of political maneuvering, criminal activity and absolute corrupt leadership end with a bi-partisan show of rebuke and remedy.
Until recently, history would’ve likely reserved the caption “most corrupt U.S. president” for Richard Nixon. But Barack Obama seems determined to take over that mantle.
Read the rest here.
Obfuscation Reaches Fast and Furious Levels
Since the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in late 2010 showed that Operation Fast and Furious was far worse than completely botched, the Justice Department under Attorney General Eric Holder has been plotting to cover its tracks and limit the negative political ramifications. The “most transparent administration in history” has been so opaque that several people and groups, including former CBS reporter Sheryl Attkisson and Judicial Watch, have filed Freedom of Information Act requests for documents regarding the scandal just to get to the bottom of it.
Needless to say, the Holder Justice Department was not forthcoming with these documents.
Read the rest here.
For more, visit Right Analysis.
TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS
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OPINION IN BRIEF
The Gipper: “A friend of mine was asked to a costume ball a short time ago. He slapped some egg on his face and went as a liberal economist.”
Columnist Peggy Noonan: “We have criticized Republican lack of a higher meaning. Strangely absent this cycle are candidates who make us believe the one thing every American wants to believe, is desperate to believe: We can come back. America can pump out jobs again, boom again, be a beacon. Here’s the plan, here’s the policy, ‘Let’s do this thing.’ Republicans fail to connect their own dots. But Democrats this year – what a rhetorical, emotional and policy disaster. In ‘08 they were on fire with hope, in '12 they were keep the faith, stay the course. This year they are surly. They are unloving and unlovable. It’s race and gender politics, it’s wheelchairs, it’s endless defensiveness about voting for or with the president. Republicans may have failed to unite, but the Democrats divide. … On Nov. 5, Mr. Obama will have to say something that shows he gets it. That shows without saying that he’s humbled, that he isn’t living in a bubble. Here’s the problem. The qualities required of such a statement – humility, self-awareness, sensitivity to the public mood – are sort of the opposite of what the president brings to the table.”
Economist Larry Kudlow: “Let me weigh in on the first two bills that the GOP should put on Obama’s desk. The Republicans should start with energy by legislating a Keystone Pipeline Authorization Act … and include energy reforms that would open federal lands to development and drilling and remove all restrictions to energy exports. … Who loses? Our enemy Vladimir Putin and his client state Iran. And if Obama kowtows again to the left-wing enviros, so be it. It’s a 2016 GOP agenda item. Second would be a business tax-reform plan that would slash the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, stop the double taxation of foreign profits and allow small business S-corps (including unborn start-ups, which are America’s real job creators) to take advantage of the new lower corporate tax rate. … A new Republican Congress should message that they’re tired of obsessing about Obama’s mistakes. Everybody knows about those. The trick now is to focus on solutions. On change. On saying, 'We can do this. We can fix this.’”
Twitter satirist @weknowwhatsbest: “Hillary told a crowd, ‘Businesses and corporations don’t create jobs.’ She forgot to add, ‘…when Democrats control the economy.’”
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
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.
While he was early voting on Friday, a Douglasville, Georgia man says he was asked to remove a hat he wears everywhere, one that reads “NRA Instructor,” because poll workers said it was too closely associated with the Republican party.
Millions of students in public schools don’t understand fractions or pronouns at even a basic level but students in the oceanfront Boston suburb of Revere, Mass. are taking the time to learn all about Islam — in the most embarrassingly shallow and cheerleading way imaginable.
Your next representative in Congress could end up being, well, somebody like Mike Monroe, if something isn’t done about the electoral system, critics say.
Facing fierce resistance from the White House and medical experts to a strict new mandatory quarantine policy, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Sunday night that medical workers who had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa but did not show symptoms of the disease would be allowed to remain at home and would receive compensation for lost income.
