View online at: http://patriotpost.us/digests/20260 Monday Digest September 23, 2013    THE FOUNDATION "Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel." --Patrick Henry CULTURE Second Amendment: Another Push for Gun Control Barack Obama once again stood on the caskets of innocent murder victims to call for gun control. His shamelessness knows no bounds. The president spoke at the memorial service for the 12 people killed in the Navy Yard shooting, and seized the opportunity to rail against those who defend Second Amendment rights by opposing his gun control agenda. "We cannot accept this," he declared, meaning the defeat of his agenda. "The politics are difficult, as we saw again this spring," Obama told the gathering. "And that's sometimes where the resignation comes from -- the sense that our politics are frozen and that nothing will change." But, he insisted, "We're going to have to change. We don't take the basic common sense actions to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people." Actually, Aaron Alexis passed a background check for buying a shotgun, just like Joe Biden told him to do, and another check for a security clearance. Clearly, background checks are not a panacea. We might also point out that Obama's hometown of Chicago just took over as murder capital of the nation. The Windy City has some of the nation's strictest gun control laws -- laws that don't curb gang violence on the Democrats' inner city poverty plantations. At the memorial service, Obama continued: "These families have endured a shattering tragedy. It ought to be a shock to us all. It ought to obsess us. It ought to lead to some sort of transformation." Indeed, he is obsessed -- obsessed with trampling the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens in response to the acts of evil men. Comment | Share GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS Defund, Repeal and Replace ObamaCare as it now stands House Republicans voted Friday on a continuing budget resolution to keep the government funded through Dec. 15. The big news, of course, is that the resolution also defunds ObamaCare, drawing battle lines with the Senate. The GOP was able to pass the resolution 230-189 (all but one Republican approved, and two Democrats joined the GOP), but its prospects in the Senate are dire, where Majority Leader Harry Reid threatened, "I want to be absolutely crystal clear: Any bill that defunds ObamaCare is dead. Dead." Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) promised to do "everything necessary and anything possible to defund ObamaCare," but theirs is likely an unwinnable battle. After all, since 2010, the House has voted 41 times to repeal, delay or defund ObamaCare, and 41 times the Democrat-controlled Senate has ignored or defeated those attempts. Their latest tactic may actually involve filibustering the bill defunding ObamaCare in order to defund ObamaCare. Last Wednesday, the Republican Study Committee also released its plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare: The American Health Care Reform Act. They even plan to allow Democrats to offer amendments. As Rep. Phil Roe (R-TN) put it, clearly referring to the way Democrats rammed through ObamaCare on a party-line vote in 2010, "You can't pass a bill that's entirely done by one party that affects every person in the country." Another favorable comparison to ObamaCare: The current law was 2,700 pages and has grown to stand 7 feet 3 inches, while the GOP alternative is less than 200 pages. Among its many goals are allowing the purchase of insurance across state lines, permitting businesses to pool together for better rates and increasing patient access to pricing. In other words, the focus is on bringing cost down rather than control up. Comment | Share Meanwhile, don't miss Mark Alexander's comprehensive recounting on ObamaCare. News From the Swamp: CBO Debt Report The Congressional Budget Office put a damper on Barack Obama's rosy fiscal forecast with a warning about the long-term U.S. budget outlook. Read more and comment here. ECONOMY Regulatory Commissars: EPA Issues Rules Two weeks ago we outlined what to expect when the Environmental Protection Agency was to present new climate regulation ordered by Barack Obama through executive power in June. The EPA's official report released Friday affirms our report: "[N]ew large natural gas-fired turbines would need to meet a limit of 1,000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour, while new small natural gas-fired turbines would need to meet a limit of 1,100 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour. New coal-fired units would need to meet a limit of 1,100 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour." The result will be intentionally disastrous for coal-powered plants that will now be forced to install costly carbon capture technology. "No coal-fired power plant has done that yet, in large part because of the cost," observes The Wall Street Journal. "And those plants that the EPA points to as potential models ... have received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants and tax credits." Imagine that: An expensive (and likely subpar) technology in need of a government subsidy. We have a good idea how this will turn out. Perhaps the most egregious comments come from EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. While testifying last week before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, McCarthy was asked what effect any of the EPA's 26 climate regulations have had on curbing global warming. "It's unlikely that any specific one step is going to be seen as having ... a visible change in any of those [indicators]," McCarthy admitted. So let's get this straight: An administration working to "save the planet" from "climate change" admits it's likely none of the regulations have done anything to actually curb warming. And yet, the answer is to instate more carbon rules. This administration will do whatever it takes to destroy the coal industry in service to its leftist ideology. Comment | Share NATIONAL SECURITY Syrian Chemical Weapons Check Bashar al-Assad The Syrian government began its (ahem) cooperation with the UN over its chemical weapons stockpiles, submitting the first report listing its stores. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which monitors compliance with the international ban on such weapons, "received an initial statement from Syria" Friday. According to The Washington Post, "The United States estimates that Syria has more than 1,000 metric tons of chemical toxins and blames the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the Aug. 21 attack, which U.S. officials say killed more than 1,400 people, including more than 400 children, in rebel-held or contested areas near the capital." Russia, on the other hand, still blames the rebels for perpetrating the attack to frame Assad. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin says he "can't say 100%" whether Syria will truly comply with the deal to turn over its chemical weapons. File that one under "keen sense of the obvious." Indeed, the Syrian regime has been busy moving its chemical weapons around for the last year -- ever since Barack Obama drew his "red line." One Obama administration official said, "What is unclear is whether they are moving them to consolidate the stockpile and then declare it, or are they moving it around to conceal it." Answering that would seem to be rather important. Comment | Share BRIEF OPINION Faith and Family Family Research Council's Tony Perkins: "Were it not for an ordinary man showing extraordinary courage, an activist bent on massacring an office of innocent people might have succeeded in silencing dozens of the FRC team -- forever. Thursday, that man, Floyd Lee Corkins II, was held accountable in a court of law for his premeditated act of violence. ... [T]he one man standing in the way of that carnage finally had an opportunity to look his assailant in the eye. Surrounded by his mom, girlfriend, and his FRC family, our friend and colleague Leo Johnson turned to Corkins and spoke the simple but powerful words of forgiveness. 'I do forgive you, but I will not forget. My family will not forget. Seek God. He saved my life and yours...' ... In an eerie twist, prosecutors showed that he had written his target list on a preprinted, 'With God all things are possible' notepad -- never knowing how true that statement would turn out to be. We can thank the Lord, and Leo, that of all the lone gunmen who've tried to take the lives of innocent Americans these last 24 months, FRC's was the only attack in which the shooter did not achieve his goal." Comment | Share The Gipper Ronald Reagan: "[T]he Marxist vision of man without God must eventually be seen as an empty and a false faith -- the second-oldest in the world -- first proclaimed in the Garden of Eden with whispered words of temptations: 'Ye shall be as gods.' ... This is the real task before us: to reassert our commitment as a nation to a law higher than our own, to renew our spiritual strength. Only by building a wall of such spiritual resolve can we, as a free people, hope to protect our own heritage and make it someday the birthright of all men." Comment | Share Political Futures Columnist Rich Galen: "I am ... not in favor of the U.S. Congress working a few days every month and claiming it cannot get to things like passing a single appropriation bill for the new fiscal year that begins on October first. ... I know what you're saying: Don't pay Members of the House or Senate until they get this done. The 27th Amendment to the Constitution reads: 'No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.' That Amendment was conceived to forbid Congress giving itself a raise without having to explain it to voters; but it works the other way, too: Congress' salary cannot be decreased without an intervening election. But, here's what we can do. Demand they stop traveling on our dime -- not just to the Paris Air Show, but home for a week long break out for ever two or three weeks that they work until they pass the appropriations bills and deal with the debt ceiling. And, we should demand that the President stay off the golf course and at least pretend to be interested in trying to help fix this horribly broken system. Chances of either one happening? Zero." For more, visit The Right Opinion. CHRONICLE QUOTES Editorial Exegesis The Wall Street Journal: "Far and away the biggest winner [since the 2008 financial crisis] is the government. This isn't the conventional view in media and politics, where the spin is that Wall Street has triumphed. This is politically convenient because it maintains Washington's self-serving fiction that the banks alone caused the crisis, and that after bailouts they have emerged richer and less regulated than ever. This leaves politicians free to bash the banks in perpetuity even as they constrain their business and fleece them at regular intervals. The truth is that across the U.S. economy the government has far more power than it did five years ago, especially in finance. The same politicians and regulators who pulled every lever they could to force capital into mortgage finance have not only escaped punishment for their role in the 2008 crisis. They've also awarded themselves more authority to allocate credit. ... [F]ive years after the panic we have a financial system that is more heavily regulated, and thus is less able to lend and innovate, yet is paradoxically no safer." Upright Columnist Star Parker: "Only in Washington is it considered abnormal and obstructionist for a member of Congress to ring the alarm about the loss of freedom in America, to take a stand to restore it, and suggest that Americans, particularly low-income Americans, should be able to decide what kind of school they send their child to and to keep and save more of their hard-earned income." Demo-gogues Rep. Alan Grayson: "We've had a government takeover of the bond market. Stealth socialism's been created. Government simply ends up owning more and more and more." Comment | Share Dezinformatsia PBS host Tavis Smiley: "When you can kill innocent children at Sandy Hook and there's no real gun control debate, those who we are supposed to protect, our babies, now you can fire indiscriminately on those who protect us, and nobody at this table believes that a real gun control debate is going to come out because all this other stuff is gonna push it to the side." Comment | Share From the 'Non Compos Mentis' File Nancy Pelosi: "[T]he cupboard is bare. There's no more cuts to make. It's really important that people understand that. We cannot have cuts just for the sake of cuts." Comment | Share This Week's 'Braying Jackass' Award Rep. Eric Swalwell: "I rise in strong opposition to this radical, right-wing effort to walk our economy off of a cliff and cause a government shutdown. I invite my colleagues on the other side to wake up from this radical, ideological wet dream and come back to reality." Comment | Share Short Cuts Comedian Jay Leno: "Pundits say President Obama is starting to lose support from his own Party. To give you an idea how bad it's gotten, today Jimmy Carter compared him to Jimmy Carter." Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis! Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team 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. *PUBLIUS* The Patriot Post is protected speech pursuant to the "unalienable rights" of all men, and the First (and Second) Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. In God we trust. Copyright © 2013 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved. REPRINTING, FORWARDING AND POSTING: Subscribers may reprint, forward or post original content from The Patriot Post, in whole or part, in accordance with our Terms of Use, with the following citation: "The Patriot Post (www.patriotpost.us/subscribe/ )" You have received this email because you are subscribed to The Patriot Post. To manage your subscription or to unsubscribe, link to http://patriotpost.us/manage/.