THE FOUNDATION

“All know and feel … the sacredness of the connection between husband and wife. All know that the sweetness of social intercourse, the harmony of society, the happiness of families, depend on that mutual partiality which they feel, or that delicate forbearance which they manifest towards each other.” —John Marshall, Sexton v. Wheaton, 1823

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

NPS Removes Battle Flag From Battlefield

The hive mind appears to be taking over. While we can at least understand the push to remove the Confederate flag from the South Carolina state capitol grounds, the rush to jerk it from all store shelves or any public view is astounding. From the “General Lee” of Dukes of Hazzard fame, to Apple pulling Civil War games from the App Store, to the National Cathedral removing stained glass over the mere presence of the Confederate flag, the reaction quickly became absurd. Now, the nation’s first National Military Park, Chickamauga, a park established in 1890 for reconciliation between veterans of the Confederate and Union forces after the War Between the States, has removed Confederate battle flags from its gift shops. Gettysburg has done so as well. Undoubtedly there was a memo from the National Park Service requiring this asinine measure — in order to propagate Obama’s race-bait narrative. It has been said that ignorance is bliss, but the fact is, ignorance is miserable.

Meanwhile, Obama no doubt will be promoting his race bait later today when delivering the eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who, again, supported the flying of the Confederate flag at the SC capitol. If black lives really matter, then why does Obama not deliver eulogies for the other 20 blacks murdered every day on average, most by other blacks? Simple: It doesn’t fit the race-bait narrative.

Finally, of course, the American flag flew over those 13 rebellious states before the Confederate battle flag was ever flown. Better get that American flag down next.

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Clinton Strings Along Investigators With Hidden Emails

We’re still trying to grasp all we don’t know about Hillary Clinton’s cannon of destroyed documentation. On Thursday, the State Department admitted that nine full emails and six partial emails that Clinton lackey Sidney Blumenthal handed over to the Select Committee on Benghazi were not in the reams of printed emails Clinton dumped on the department. Clinton had to have known this. Earlier this year, Clinton said she handed over all the emails regarding her tenure as secretary of state, though she admitted that she destroyed half of her emails because they were “private.” Clinton swears she told the truth, but it was not the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the events leading up to the day when jihadists killed four Americans in Benghazi. “This has implications far beyond Libya, Benghazi and our committee’s work,” Benghazi Committee Chair Trey Gowdy said. “This conclusively shows her email arrangement with herself, which was then vetted by her own lawyers, has resulted in an incomplete public record. … The revelation these messages were not originally produced to the State Department by Clinton is significant and troubling.” The emails show that Clinton was encouraging Blumenthal to send her intelligence reports on Benghazi, despite Clinton’s claim that the reports were unsolicited. So why is the State Department cooperating with the Benghazi investigation now? It’s very possible Hillary, Blumenthal and Co. are contriving these releases as a red herring designed to tie up Republican political capital on an issue that may be a nonstarter. Barack Obama did the same thing with his birth certificate.

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House Republicans Mull Impeachment of IRS Head

Last February, Barack Obama glibly claimed there was “not even a smidgen of corruption” at the IRS. A month later, at the height of the scandal over the IRS targeting conservative nonprofits, the agency destroyed 422 backup tapes that might have contained 24,000 of Lois Lerner’s emails. Here’s what the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee learned at their hearing yesterday: Yes, the IRS knew of significant gaps in the public record. Yes, Congress issued a preservation order and a subpoena. But still, records were destroyed. Furthermore, eight days after former chair of the House Ways and Means Committee David Camp sent a letter to the IRS in June 2011 inquiring about the targeting of Tea Party groups, Lerner’s hard drive somehow crashed. Tim Camus, the deputy inspector for investigations, calls the whole email-destroying frenzy an “unbelievable set of circumstances.” As for Republican lawmakers, they think the unbelievable set of circumstances is grounds for the impeachment of IRS commissioner John Koskinen. A Republican on the House Oversight committee told National Review, “We’ve briefed the leadership’s counsel, and I think that they’re open to it, but it’s the type of thing where this town is like, ‘oh, that’s not how we do things, it’s not really been used lately.’ But, quite frankly, we really haven’t had executive branch officials behave this way like we do now.”

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FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS

SCOTUS Endorses Same-Sex Marriage

By John J. Bastiat

Continuing to goose-step onward in its blitzkrieg against Rule of Law in America, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 today in favor of allowing homosexuals the “right” to marry. The ruling effectively invalidates bans on same-sex marriage remaining in 14 states and mandates that homosexuals can marry anywhere in the U.S. The importance of this ruling, especially for Christians, cannot be overstated. Nor can the damage done to the Third Pillar of Liberty.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion in the other three major homosexual-rights cases over the past 20 years, wrote the majority opinion. He was joined, of course, by the reliably liberal clown act that is the leftist side of the bench: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Rather than rehash the sordid trail of this abrogation of Rule of Law, we thought we’d let the dissenting justices (who wrote four separate dissents) address the issue themselves:

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote:

“Petitioners make strong arguments rooted in social policy and considerations of fairness. … But this Court is not a legislature. Whether same-sex marriage is a good idea should be of no concern to us. Under the Constitution, judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be.”

We do note here, however, the irony of Roberts' statement in light of yesterday’s atrociousObamaCare ruling.

Roberts continued, “Although the policy arguments for extending marriage to same-sex couples may be compelling, the legal arguments for requiring such an extension are not. The fundamental right to marry does not include a right to make a State change its definition of marriage. And a State’s decision to maintain the meaning of marriage that has persisted in every culture throughout human history can hardly be called irrational. In short, our Constitution does not enact any one theory of marriage. The people of a State are free to expand marriage to include same-sex couples, or to retain the historic definition.”

“But for those who believe in a government of laws, not of men, the majority’s approach is deeply disheartening.”

“Supporters of same-sex marriage have achieved considerable success persuading their fellow citizens — through the democratic process — to adopt their view. That ends today. Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law.”

“The majority’s decision is an act of will, not legal judgment. The right it announces has no basis in the Constitution or this Court’s precedent.”

Justice Antonin Scalia noted:

“This is a naked judicial claim to legislative — indeed, super-legislative — power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government.”

“So it is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage. It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me. Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court.”

“The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact — and the furthest extension one can even imagine — of the Court’s claimed power to create ‘liberties’ that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.”

“These [precedent] cases ask us to decide whether the Fourteenth Amendment contains a limitation that requires the States to license and recognize marriages between two people of the same sex. Does it remove that issue from the political process? Of course not. It would be surprising to find a prescription regarding marriage in the Federal Constitution since, as the author of today’s opinion reminded us only two years ago (in an opinion joined by the same Justices who join him today): ‘[R]egulation of domestic relations is an area that has long been regarded as a virtually exclusive province of the States.’”

“But the Court ends this debate, in an opinion lacking even a thin veneer of law. Buried beneath the mummeries and straining-to-be-memorable passages of the opinion is a candid and startling assertion: No matter what it was the People ratified, the Fourteenth Amendment protects those rights that the Judiciary, in its ‘reasoned judgment,’ thinks the Fourteenth Amendment ought to protect.”

“But what really astounds is the hubris reflected in today’s judicial Putsch. The five Justices who compose today’s majority are entirely comfortable concluding that every State violated the Constitution for all of the 135 years between the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification and Massachusetts' permitting of same-sex marriages in 2003.”

“They have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment a ‘fundamental right’ overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since. They see what lesser legal minds — minds like Thomas Cooley, John Marshall Harlan, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Learned Hand, Louis Brandeis, William Howard Taft, Benjamin Cardozo, Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, Robert Jackson, and Henry Friendly — could not.”

Justice Clarence Thomas explained:

“The Court’s decision today is at odds not only with the Constitution, but with the principles upon which our Nation was built. Since well before 1787, liberty has been understood as freedom from government action, not entitlement to government benefits.”

“Yet the majority invokes our Constitution in the name of a ‘liberty’ that the Framers would not have recognized, to the detriment of the liberty they sought to protect. Along the way, it rejects the idea — captured in our Declaration of Independence — that human dignity is innate and suggests instead that it comes from the Government. This distortion of our Constitution not only ignores the text, it inverts the relationship between the individual and the state in our Republic.”

“Petitioners argue that by enshrining the traditional definition of marriage in their State Constitutions through voter-approved amendments, the States have put the issue ‘beyond the reach of the normal democratic process.’ But the result petitioners seek is far less democratic. They ask nine judges on this Court to enshrine their definition of marriage in the Federal Constitution and thus put it beyond the reach of the normal democratic process for the entire Nation.”

“The majority’s inversion of the original meaning of liberty will likely cause collateral damage to other aspects of our constitutional order that protect liberty.”

“Aside from undermining the political processes that protect our liberty, the majority’s decision threatens the religious liberty our Nation has long sought to protect.”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

The impact of this ruling will be felt far and wide. It won’t be simply Christian bakers, florists and photographers who are assaulted by the Rainbow Mafia for daring to have their own conscience. Christian churches, schools, agencies and so on will soon be in the crosshairs for opposing this heretofore undiscovered constitutional right. This is only the beginning.

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TODAY AT PATRIOTPOST.US

• ANALYSIS: Housing Discrimination, or Just Obama’s Economy?
• ANALYSIS: Iran Deal Is Nothing but Legacy for Obama, Kerry
• Krauthammer: Roberts Just Wants to Save the Court
• Will There Soon Be More American Hostages?
• Schumer: POTUS Hillary Will Create Carbon Tax
• Holder’s Idea of Terrorism Depends on the Perpetrator
• The Left Has Found Its 1 in 5 Rape Statistic
• The Dirty Little Secret Behind Obama’s Earth Day Lecture
• The UN Report On The Israel/Hamas Conflict Is Useless

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

• Tony Perkins: With Ruling, SCOTUS Poisons Burwell
• David Harsanyi: Supreme Court vs. Rule of Law
• Charles Krauthammer: On Lowering the Flag
• Jonah Goldberg: Liberals Are Playing a Racial Shell Game
• Mona Charen: Whitewashing the Democratic Party’s History

For more, visit Right Opinion.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Charles Krauthammer: “[T]here’s a deeper reason for this rush to banish Confederate symbols, to move them from the public square to the museum. The trigger was not just the massacre itself, but even more tellingly, the breathtaking display of nobility and spiritual generosity by the victims' relatives. Within 48 hours of the murder of their loved ones, they spoke of redemption and reconciliation and even forgiveness of the killer himself. It was an astonishingly moving expression of Christian charity. Such grace demands a response. In a fascinating dynamic, it created a feeling of moral obligation to reciprocate in some way. The flag was not material to the crime itself, but its connection to the underlying race history behind the crime suggested that its removal from the statehouse grounds — whatever the endlessly debated merits of the case — could serve as a reciprocal gesture of reconciliation. The result was a microcosm of — and a historical lesson in — the moral force of the original civil rights movement, whose genius was to understand the effect that combating evil with good, violence with grace would have on a fundamentally decent American nation. America was indeed moved. The result was the civil rights acts. The issue today is no longer legal equality. It is more a matter of sorting through historical memory. … Perhaps we can learn a lesson from Arlington National Cemetery, founded by the victorious Union to bury its dead. There you will find Section 16. It contains the remains of hundreds of Confederate soldiers grouped around a modest, moving monument to their devotion to ‘duty as they understood it’ — a gesture by the Union of soldierly respect, without any concession regarding the taintedness of their cause. Or shall we uproot them as well?”

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SHORT CUTS

Feel the burn: “Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.” —Justice Antonin Scalia in dissent in theObamaCare case

Another zinger: “Justice [Antonin] Scalia quips acidly that ‘we should start calling this law SCOTUScare,’ but the better term is RobertsCare. By volunteering as Nancy Pelosi’s copy editor, [John Roberts] is making her infamous line about passing the law to find out what’s in it even more true than she knew at the time.” —Wall Street Journal

Upright: “Here is John Roberts, chief oracle of the United States of America, from Thursday’s King v. Burwell decision: ‘Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them. If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter.’ … [I]magine for a moment if a Supreme Court justice argued that the Defense of Marriage Act was passed to improve marriage rather than destroy it so we must focus on the former rather than the latter and uphold any retroactive provisions the Bush administration cooked up to make that law work.” —David Harsanyi

Gloating: “After multiple challenges before the Supreme Court, the Affordable Care Act is here to stay.” —Barack Obama

The BIG Lie: “The Supreme Court ruled that the millions of Americans … be able to keep their affordable coverage.” —DNC Chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Unfortunately, as a taxpayer funding ObamaCare, YOU may not be able keep your plan or your doctor, and on average, YOUR family premiums are going up almost $3,000.)

Non Compos Mentis, part I: “For the second time, the Affordable Care Act has been upheld by the Supreme Court. … There wasn’t even a dissenting opinion, as I understand it. Or so far we haven’t seen it.” —Nancy Pelosi

Non Compos Mentis, part II: “The Supreme Court ruled against a Republican-led tax hike for 6.4 million Americans!” —Sen. Debbie Stabenow

And last… “At a fundraiser, President Obama complained that the public has ‘forgotten his successes.’ Forgotten? We’re still working on forgiving.” —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

“We must take human nature as we find it, perfection falls not to the share of mortals.” —George Washington, letter to John Jay, 1786

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Slain SC Pastor Teaches One Last Lesson

The murderer in Charleston almost didn’t commit his crime because the people of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church were so kind to him when he entered the building. And even after his grisly act, family members of the slain extended grace to him. Unfortunately, that’s not true of out-of-town rabble rousers who came Tuesday night to disturb the memorial. Protesters with bullhorns shouted, “Arm yourself or harm yourself,” and “Never forget, never forgive.” That, of course, is the antithesis of the Christian message. Church members and other locals discouraged the protesters, who eventually left. Meanwhile, the Left exploited the tragedy to take on the Confederate flag, demanding the one flying on the state capitol grounds be removed (never mind it was put there by Democrat Gov. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings in defiance of federal civil rights legislation). Many Republicans even joined in calling for the flag’s removal. But here’s an interesting fact you won’t see on the nightly news: Pastor Clementa Pinckney, who was killed in the attack, voted in 2000 as a South Carolina state senator in favor of the compromise that kept the flag on capitol grounds. That sends a pretty powerful message that he didn’t seem to think the Confederate flag was a symbol worth censoring.

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And don’t miss the fact that Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane Finally Got Those Duke Boys — no more “General Lee” Charger toys.

New Yorkers Say ‘No’ to SAFE Act

The New York State Police initially shot down inquiries into how many “assault weapons” have been registered with the state after its legislature enacted the SAFE Act in 2013, and we now have a pretty good idea why — because compliance is abysmal. On April 30, New York Supreme Court Judge Thomas McNamara ordered the State Police to disclose registration statistics. According to the figures, which were made public this week, just 23,847 gun owners have registered a total of 44,485 military-looking weapons. For perspective, that’s less than the 50,000 firearms registered under a similar law in Connecticut. Keep in mind, Connecticut has a population of 3.6 million, according to the Census Bureau. New York’s is 19.8 million. Just a small disparity. Keep in mind also that New Yorkers own somewhere around 1,000,000 of these so-called assault rifles, which would mean just 4% of eligible firearms have been registered. Leah Barrett, executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, tried to put a positive spin on the numbers, responding, “Tens of thousands of people have complied with the law. That’s important. It shouldn’t be overlooked.” What shouldn’t be overlooked either is that the overwhelming majority of New Yorkers are exercising civil disobedience by rejecting a blatantly unconstitutional law. And they aren’t afraid to be jailed for it, either.

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Pope’s Science Adviser’s Political Agenda Exposed

An old adage from the Gospel of Matthew warns, “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves” (7:15). Unfortunately, Pope Francis did just the opposite when writing the environmental portion of his encyclical. Microbiologist Hans Schellnhuber is a science adviser to the Vatican, and also a fraud. Schellnhuber is in fact a strong believer in the Gaia hypothesis — in a nutshell, the worship of Mother Earth. “When Francis' encyclical was leaked last week, we wondered if his position on the man-made global warming question was ‘a misuse of the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and the church at large,’” writes the Investor’s Business Daily editorial board. “Our conclusion has only been solidified by the revelation that the pope was in league with Schellnhuber. … From atheists to strong-arm redistributionists, this pope is unequally yoked with those who don’t share the tenets of his faith — but who are happy to use that faith to achieve their political aims. Yes, there’s truly something wrong here.”

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Don’t Miss Alexander’s Column

Read Clinton’s Benghazi Cover Up 3.0, on what you need to know about the three iterations of Clinton’s BIG Lie cover-up on Benghazi.

If you’d like to receive Alexander’s Column by email, update your subscription here.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS

ObamaCare: SCOTUS Overrules Rule of Law

By Nate Jackson

Once again, politics trumps Rule of Law. The Supreme Court issued its ObamaCare subsidies ruling this morning, upholding the Obama administration’s lawless execution by a vote of 6-3.

We’ve noted the background on the subsidy issue numerous times, but the summary is this: The language of the law restricted subsidies to people purchasing health insurance on stateexchanges. When 34 states declined to serve as vassals of the federal government, Barack Obama decided to issue subsidies on the federal exchange as well. Some 27 states challenged that “interpretation” of the law.

Unfortunately, six black-robed despots agreed that lawlessness should stand.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, saying, “Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them. If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter.”

To do so, the Court decided that the law meant for the federal and state exchanges to be “equivalent” (even though it says no such thing) and, therefore, subsidies for both are intended by the law.

In fact, however, Democrats fully intended to limit the subsidies precisely in order to coerce states into setting up exchanges. ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber admitted as much in one of his infamous “speak-o’s.”

So this is yet another case in which SCOTUS made a decision based on what it deemed was “best for society” rather than rendering a ruling based on the law. Six million poor souls might have been kicked off the insurance rolls without a pleasing alternative to keep the taxpayer money flowing, you see, so the justices had to act. So they interpreted the law’s language to mean something it doesn’t mean and was never intended to mean. That kind of lawlessness is what got our country into its current mess in the first place.

And to think — then-Sen. Barack Obama voted against confirming John Roberts to the Court in 2005. Where would ObamaCare be without Roberts?

As National Review’s Quin Hillyer sums up, “With today’s Obamacare decision, John Roberts confirms that he has completely jettisoned all pretense of textualism. He is a results-oriented judge, period, ruling on big cases based on what he thinks the policy result should be or what the political stakes are for the court itself. He is a disgrace. That is all.”

We could almost — almost — understand Roberts' reasoning in the 2012 decision upholding the constitutional justification for ObamaCare itself, though his own rewrite of the law in order to do so was an appalling miscarriage of justice.

In that ruling, Roberts wrote, “Members of this Court are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”

But in this statutory case, the law’s language — and its intent — was clear. All Roberts and his five fellow travelers did today was “make policy judgments” and “protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”

With his usual flare, Justice Antonin Scalia eviscerated this bad ruling, writing, “Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is ‘established by the State.’”

He added, “Having transformed two major parts of the law, the Court today has turned its attention to a third. The Act that Congress passed makes tax credits available only on an ‘Exchange established by the State.’ This Court, however, concludes that this limitation would prevent the rest of the Act from working as well as hoped. So it rewrites the law to make tax credits available everywhere. We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.”

In the end, however, this outcome is good politically for Republicans — and, conversely, bad for Hillary Clinton. It takes subsidies off the table as a campaign issue, and it means Congress isn’t on the hook to “fix” the law. But a change is not off the table if we can elect a Republican president. The law can be altered after 2016. Then again, the likelihood of that also seems to diminish with each victory Obama wins.

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TODAY AT PATRIOTPOST.US

• ANALYSIS: Jindal’s Campaign Can Be a Rags-to-Riches Story or a Tragedy
• The Strategy Behind the Leftist Assault on Confederate Flag
• Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane Finally Got Those Duke Boys
• Leftist Feint Against ‘Right-Wing’ Terrorism
• A Gas Guzzler May Be Greener Than an Electric Car

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

• Ann Coulter: There’s a Reason We Mostly Hear About White ‘Micro-Aggressions’
• Larry Elder: The Meaning of Charleston
• Victor Davis Hanson: Why Greece Won’t Pay
• Veronique de Rugy: America’s Coming Transfer of Wealth
• Jim DeMint: Let the Subsidies Die

For more, visit Right Opinion.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Ann Coulter: “In a country of more than 300 million people, everything will happen eventually. That doesn’t make it a trend. Go up to any ordinary, sentient person and ask: Which race assaults the other race more? Remember the ‘knockout game’ — or as its devotees called it, ‘polar bear hunting’? Black teenagers would go looking for white people to knock unconscious with a single punch, videotape the attacks and post them online. The knockout game was a real trend — which the media denied was a trend. … According to a preposterously, laughably, ridiculously bogus report on ‘hate crimes’ produced by Eric Holder’s Justice Department, blacks are far more likely to be victims of hate crimes than whites are. It would be like a government report asserting that most rapes are committed by elderly white women. … In 2008, the most recent year for which such data seems to have been collected, FBI surveys show that, out of 520,161 interracial violent crimes, blacks committed 429,444 of them against whites, while whites committed 90,717 of them against blacks. In other words, blacks commit more than 80 percent of all interracial violent crime. … The Charleston attack was a hideous, sickening crime. But that’s why we should thank our lucky stars that it was so unusual. White-on-black violence is freakishly rare everywhere in America, except liberal imaginations.”

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SHORT CUTS

Upright: “[The Confederate] flag represents what the Left believes is the last remaining Republican electoral stronghold in terms of presidential politics and that would be the South. … [I]t’s not going to stop with the Confederate flag because it’s not about the Confederate flag. It is about destroying the South as a political force. … I’ll make another prediction to you: The next flag that will come under assault — and it will not be long — is the American flag.” —Rush Limbaugh

Non Compos Mentis: “We need to put the American flag down. Because we’ve caught as much hell under that as the Confederate flag.” —Nation of Islam leader and race-baiter Louis Farrakhan

Village Idiots: “If the Confederate flag is finally going to be consigned to museums as an ugly symbol of racism, what about the beloved film offering the most iconic glimpse of that flag in American culture? I’m talking, of course, about ‘Gone with the Wind’… [W]hat does it say about us as a nation if we continue to embrace a movie that, in the final analysis, stands for many of the same things as the Confederate flag that flutters so dramatically over the dead and wounded soldiers at the Atlanta train station just before the ‘GWTW’ intermission?” —New York Post film critic Lou Lumenick

Good question: “Where you been, Hillary? It’s been 10 months, girl!” —Robert Nettles, a longtime friend of Michael Brown, when Hillary Clinton finally showed up in Ferguson this week

The BIG Lie: “You’re in my house.” —Barack Obama to a heckler (No, Obama’s in our house.)

Sums up the Obama administration: “I don’t believe anyone is personally responsible.” —OPM Director Katherine Archuleta on the Chinese hack of federal data

And last… “A new report shows that 35% of Hillary Clinton’s Twitter followers are fake. Yet, most of them are registered to vote for her in Chicago.” —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

“[T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political foes — rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments.” —Alexander Hamilton, letter to James Bayard, 1802

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Database Hack at OPM Even Bigger Than Thought

The Office of Personnel Management has officially said only 4.2 million federal employees were affected by the database intrusion by China. But CNN is reporting that number is much, much higher, as the FBI Director told the Senate recently that an estimated 18 million Americans were affected. This number includes former and current government employees and even people who only applied for government work.

Let’s be clear: The Obama administration’s lack of leadership contributed to this intrusion and its lack of leadership will make the situation worse. In a June 17 press conference, Obama spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters that Obama is standing behind OPM Director Katherine Archuleta, who just happened to be National Political Director for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. “Director Archuleta, in one of her first priorities that she identified after taking that job, was to upgrade the OPM computer network, particularly their cyber defenses,” Earnest said. “And this is obviously an ongoing process, and the president does have confidence that she is the right person for the job.” Archuleta had a job, but she didn’t do the job. Now some of the most sensitive employee data in the nation is in Chinese hands.

Obama could have prevented the hack — or at least lessened the effect of the attack — by being a strong leader, making tough decisions, following through with his promises and nominating qualified leaders. But his character is only emboldening enemies.

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Here Come the Gun Control Crusaders After Charleston

Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) are at it again. After the Sandy Hook massacre, Toomey — a gun-owning, NRA A-rated politician — jumped on Barack Obama’s bandwagon and introduced legislation that would toughen the nation’s background check legislation. The bill was defeated 54-46 in 2013, but Manchin and Toomey told The Washington Post Tuesday night that they would like to revive the bill in response to the massacre in Charleston. Nothing like standing on the caskets of victims to advance a few extra yards in the political game. Toomey, when he appeared on MSNBC Wednesday morning, admitted the bill is mostly a crapshoot. “Honestly, I don’t want to build up any false expectations,” he said, “I’m not aware that we have the votes to do what Sen. Manchin and I attempted. Is it possible that some portion of that, some subset of what we focused on is possible? Honestly, probably not likely.” Still, it shows the tenacity of the forces driving gun control. Every time a front page blares that a crime was committed with a gun, there will be another call for gun restrictions. And the politicians will blow the dust off their tired gun control bills in hopes that maybe this atrocity will have the emotional clout to carry it through.

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Gov’t Affirms Climate Change Is a Health Hazard

It seems that if we only figured out how to control the climate, humankind would figure out how to rid itself of all the ills plaguing us for the last few decades — or more, probably depending on who you ask. The Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change issued a report Monday claiming that climate change is nothing short of a “medical emergency,” according to the commission’s co-chair, Hugh Montgomery. “Although vector-borne diseases will expand their reach and death tolls, the indirect effects of climate change on water, food security, and extreme climatic events are likely to have the biggest effect on global health,” said the report’s executive summary. “A new advocacy and public health movement is needed urgently to bring together governments, international agencies, non-governmental organisations, communities, and academics from all disciplines to adapt to the effects of climate change on health.” First, climate change was going to hurt the polar bears, then drown Florida. Listen enough to government rhetoric and you’ll hear climate change being blamed for everything from a sluggish economy to the war in Syria. Indeed, it seems that the world’s politicians are promising too much as they push for doing something on climate change, telling us that if they could only control the planet and the people on it, then we’d have peace, security and happiness.

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Nate Jackson
Managing Editor

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS

After More Money and ‘Fixes,’ VA Gets Worse

By Paul Albaugh

For veterans seeking care from the Department of Veterans Affairs, let’s just say that this year isn’t going to be any better than the last. Despite all of the promises from Barack Obama, Congress and unelected bureaucrats that the government would “fix” the problems with the VA, little to nothing has been done. Unless you count making things worse.

About a year ago, news broke that veterans were dying while on secret VA waiting lists. Obama promised that his administration would fix the problems. We were told by incoming VA Secretary Robert McDonald that “he would fire over 1,000 VA employees over the wait time scandal.” Yet the fixes and firings didn’t happen. Nope, we were lied to again.

Perhaps the VA simply needed more money to operate more efficiently. In keeping with the status quo for every government agency that is failing, Congress pumped $16.3 billion into the VA to give it some help — that after its budget nearly tripled between 2000 and 2012. How’d that all work out? Fast forward to today, and the results are pathetic. In fact it’s worse now than it was a year ago.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is facing a new crisis. The number of veterans waiting one month or more for care is actually 50% higher than it was during last year’s problems, and the VA is also facing a nearly $3 billion budget shortfall.

To address this continuing crisis the VA is considering furloughs, hiring freezes and “significant moves” to close the budget shortfall. It’s also considering rationing Hepatitis C treatments, specifically for those who are in more advanced stages of illness or advanced dementia. How’s that for veteran care?

On a positive note, doctors and nurses within the VA have handled 2.7 million more appointments than in any previous year and sent an additional 900,000 patients to see physicians in the private sector. With these numbers, what’s the problem?

The VA has seen a massive increase in veterans seeking care, primarily aging Vietnam vets and those who have returned from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. With this increase in demand for care comes a need for more doctors and nurses to provide the treatment that our veterans deserve. But according to many experts there is a shortage of doctors and nurses. In addition there has also been an increase in the cost of drugs and medication, and the largest driver of costs has been from patients seeking medical attention from physicians in the private sector. Thanks, ObamaCare.

“Something has to give,” conceded VA Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson. “We can’t leave this as the status quo. We are not meeting the needs of veterans, and veterans are signaling that to us by coming in for additional care, and we can’t deliver as timely as we want to.”

Why not? The VA has more money and more people, yet we’re supposed to believe that still more money is the answer? No doubt most Americans would rather see their tax dollars go to fund the VA’s operations than to most any other federal project. But the problem isn’t the lack of money, it’s the ineptitude of bureaucrats who don’t know how to properly manage the money or personnel that they have.

As Mark Alexander suggested last year, perhaps Congress should consider another piece of legislation to improve services at the VA: Make the commander in chief and all of his cabinet level appointees get in line for VA medical services instead of the VIP medical treatment they now receive. Let’s add Congress to that list as well. Can anyone imagine our elected officials and their staff having to wait like veterans do for treatment? We doubt that this will happen anytime soon, but if it could, we bet there would likely be some significant, real changes to the VA.

Meanwhile, ObamaCare was passed to give all Americans access to medical care and is funded by taxpayers. Yet it is unaffordable, unsustainable and un-American. It’s certain that within a few years, as ObamaCare grows and takes deeper root, all Americans will be on waiting lists to receive care. There will be calls for reform, to pump more money and people into it. But these “reforms” won’t fix the problem, either — because the problem is federal bureaucrats who insist on spending more of our dollars to increase their power and take away freedom from individuals. Need proof? Just look at the VA.

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TODAY AT PATRIOTPOST.US

• ANALYSIS: GOP Infighting Strikes Again
• Clear the Shelves of Confederate Stuff to Make Way for Commies
• Congress Still Trading Blows Over Trade
• U.S. Facing Exponential Terror Threat
• Humor: Puppies

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

• Jonah Goldberg: In the South, Grace and Dignity After Charleston Church Shootings
• Star Parker: Government and Politics Won’t Solve Our Racial Problem
• Ben Shapiro: Confederate Flag Controversy a Complete Misdirect
• Walter Williams: You’re What You Say You Are
• Michelle Malkin: Holy Hypocrisy and Hot Air
• Tony Perkins: The Gen X Factor
• Arnold Ahlert: Importing a Potential Epidemic
• John Stossel: Mankiller Money?

For more, visit Right Opinion.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Jonah Goldberg: “If it were left to me, I would take the [Charleston Confederate] flag down (for the reasons South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley laid out Monday). But this kind of cheap moral preening is galling. Is it really too much for people to muster the moral imagination that the issue isn’t nearly as simple as that? A November poll of South Carolinians found that 61 percent of blacks wanted it down. That means nearly 4 in 10 blacks felt differently. Are they deluded? Are they the moral equivalent of self-loathing Jews, happy to live under a swastika? … If we’re going to offer ridiculous flag comparisons, a better one would be the Japanese imperial flag. After World War II, the U.S. banned it until 1949. Douglas MacArthur then opted to let a defeated, once-authoritarian society keep a few symbols of its past in order to build a better future. Can anyone argue that the South hasn’t done likewise? White Northern liberals explain how the South is an irredeemable cesspool of hate, while ignoring the fact that blacks are abandoning the Northern blue states in huge numbers to move to the South. Demographer Joel Kotkin found that 13 of the 15 best cities in the country for African-Americans to live in are now in the South. … No, the South isn’t perfect; name a region that is. But it does have good manners, which is why it routinely acts with more dignity — and in Charleston, with more grace — than its critics to the north.”

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SHORT CUTS

Insight: “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Can’t count very high: “[Barack Obama] has talked to more members than I can count, more senators than I can count.” —Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Trade Promotion Authority

Demo-gogues: “Well within our children’s lifetimes, on our current pace, the oceans go up maybe two, maybe three, maybe four feet.” —Barack Obama, who promised in 2008 that his election would stop the oceans rising

Braying Jenny: “[I]n any democracy, it’s not [skeptics] that carries [sic] the day. It is normal human beings that haven’t put their stake into politics above science. It’s normal human beings that want us to do the right thing, and we will if you help us.” —EPA Chief Gina McCarthy, who thinks you’re not normal

Alpha Jackass: “Our history of racialized violence means that everything white people have, they have in part because they are white. We have to disrupt that status quo. That’s what the president meant when he said that racism is part of our DNA. Our DNA has got to be changed.” —Georgetown University professor Paul Butler

Village Idiots: “I know it’s tempting to dismiss [the Charleston] tragedy as an isolated incident, to believe in today’s America that bigotry is largely behind us, that institutional racism no longer exists. But despite our best efforts and highest hopes, America’s long struggle with race is far from finished.” —Hillary Clinton

And last…

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Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis!
Managing Editor Nate Jackson

Join us in daily prayer for our Patriots in uniform — Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen — standing in harm’s way in defense of Liberty, and for their families.