View online at: http://patriotpost.us/digests/22943 Right Analysis | Right Hooks | Right Opinion Patriot Headlines | Grassroots Commentary Daily Digest for Friday January 24, 2014    THE FOUNDATION "If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?" --John Adams, the Novanglus, 1775 TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS The NSA's Security Clearance Last year, Barack Obama tasked the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board with reviewing the NSA's mass surveillance programs for legality and effectiveness. Well, Thursday, the board said that the collection of all telephone records is illegal, useless and should be ended. "We have not identified a single instance involving a threat to the United States in which the telephone records program made a concrete difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation," said the report. Meanwhile, the Justice Department claims that USIS, the private contractor that conducts background checks for federal employees, including Edward Snowden, faked 665,000 checks -- or 40% -- since 2008. Maybe the NSA should narrow its focus to federal employees. Comment | Share Insurance Downgrade Moody's Investor Service has downgraded the entire health insurance industry from stable to negative. Guess what's to blame: ObamaCare. Moody's says, "a new development and a key factor for the change in outlook is the unstable and evolving regulatory environment under which the sector is operating." Unstable is putting it mildly given the waivers and unilateral changes made by the Obama administration. The ratings change was inevitable because ObamaCare was designed to yield the results it's getting. And it's just getting started. Comment | Share Wanted: Special Prosecutor The Obama Department of Justice has hired an Obama donor to investigate the Obama IRS over its political targeting of Obama's political opponents. Notice a theme? So does Sen. Ted Cruz, who wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder this week demanding a special prosecutor to do the investigating. "Two hundred fifty-three days have passed since both you and President Obama professed outrage at the IRS's wrongful conduct," Cruz wrote. "To date, no one has been indicted. And it has been reported that the FBI plans not to file any criminal charges." Cruz concluded, "This is a sad state of affairs. The widespread perception of partisan bias, of manifest conflict of interest, besmirches the reputation of the Department of Justice. And it undermines confidence in rule of law." Well, that is the primary plank in the Democrat platform. Comment | Share VA AG Is Law Unto Himself Virginia Democrat Attorney General has decided he will no longer defend state marriage law against those who would rewrite it to allow same-sex "marriage." "As attorney general," he said, "I cannot and will not defend laws that violate Virginians' rights. ... It's about what the law requires here, and we have concluded, I have concluded, that the law here is unconstitutional, and I think the Supreme Court ... would find the law unconstitutional." He -- the chief lawyer in Virginia -- has concluded that he will not uphold the law. Democrats are so blind in their pursuit of the leftist agenda that Rule of Law is merely an obstacle. Comment | Share Israel Foils Al-Qaida Attack Israel announced Wednesday that it had thwarted an "advanced" al-Qaida attack plan against the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv. Three Palestinian recruits tied to al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri were arrested for conspiring to perpetrate bombings, shootings and kidnappings, though the U.S. State Department has not verified Israel's claim. No surprise there, of course, given that Barack Obama assured us that al-Qaida was "decimated" before the 2012 presidential election and we have nothing more to worry about from what he now calls the al-Qaida "jayvee" squad. Move along. Comment | Share For more, visit Right Hooks. Share RIGHT ANALYSIS Message From the Left: If You Buy a Gun, You Will Kill Yourself Leave it to our "friends" on the Left to draw exactly the wrong conclusions from a given set of facts. Take gun control, for example. In Leftspeak, "gun control" -- harsh restrictions on gun ownership -- makes the world safe by removing guns "from our streets." However, notwithstanding the dirty little secret that the Entitlement Class currently controlling the levers of U.S. political power wants to disarm the public en route to its ultimate goal of statist tyranny, scholarly studies like those published in economist John Lott's book "More Guns, Less Crime" have conclusively shown that implementation of gun control laws is directly correlated -- and strongly, at that -- with violent crime rates. Further -- as the title of Lott's book also suggests -- per capita rates of gun ownership are inversely correlated, again strongly, with crime rates. As another data point: The NRA notes that gun ownership is at an all-time high at exactly the same time the nation's murder rate is approaching an all-time low. But never mind the facts. Leftists have never let those pesky things get in the way of a good yarn. Fortunately for them, the halls of Pollyanna-academia are filled with mush-heads who stand ready to "refute" these inconvenient truths. The latest effort was recently published in the otherwise-reputable Annals of Internal Medicine. Now why, one might ask, would a journal of internal medicine focus on a political issue like gun control? Great question; we can't answer it. The gist of the study is the "conclusive" finding that having a gun inside one's home makes one more likely to successfully attempt suicide. Of course, the authors of this brilliant study ask us to check our brains at the Left-think door before we critically examine their findings. As Jacob Sullum of Reason magazine notes, these researchers would like us to put aside the fact that someone contemplating suicide might actually have the malice aforethought to go out and buy a gun; or that "the same personality traits or circumstances that increase their risk of suicide also make gun ownership more attractive." Sullum further asks, "In how many cases, if any, did an abusive husband disarm his wife and use the gun she bought for self-defense against her? Were the people who committed suicide determined enough that if a gun had not been available they would have killed themselves anyway?" Who knows? No one bothered to investigate these obvious questions. The problem is that no analysis beyond a first-order glance at the data was made during the study. The pre-biased authors had a conclusion in search of research data to support it, as is often the case with such "studies." Without knowing the details of each death, the study -- though full of facts -- is wholly worthless because so many other independent variables which bear directly on the results were not even considered, let alone evaluated. Not to worry, however: For the ideologically driven, facts that don't support the forgone conclusion may be readily discarded. However, in debunking the latest leftist gun-control tripe, let's not forget to keep our eye on the ball: At issue here is not "how safe" we feel with or without guns. The real issue is whether we, as U.S. citizens, have the right to keep and bear arms, as guaranteed by the Second Amendment -- period. The Constitution's answer is, "Yes." Setting aside the buffoonery that renders this study worthless, even if its claims were accurate, its findings would have no impact on our constitutional rights. Comment | Share Deciding Afghanistan The Pentagon recently presented Barack Obama with a plan to keep 10,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan after the NATO mission comes to a close at the end of 2014. According to military commanders, this residual force is the minimum amount necessary to train Afghan military personnel and protect U.S. diplomats and aid workers. Any troop level below that, and we might as well pull out entirely, says Gen. Joseph Dunford, the U.S. commander there. Even still, the Pentagon plan calls for a complete pullout regardless of security circumstances by 2017. This is a clever political tool that Obama can use to say that he ended America's war in Afghanistan as he leaves office. It also gives the Taliban a date for launching major operations to reclaim lost ground. There is a sad chance that history may be repeating itself. Obama stubbornly ended America's commitment in Iraq, and look how that turned out. The Syrian civil war has spilled over the border and sectarian violence that had been quelled by a strong U.S. troop presence has reignited. Moreover, al-Qaida has made a strong comeback in recent months, reclaiming territory in Anbar Province that many Americans gave their lives to liberate during the 2007 surge. Notwithstanding the mercurial whims of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has stymied a bilateral forces agreement while making deals with the Taliban, Obama should reject such a drastic reduction in America's 37,500-strong force. But he seems bent on laying claim to ending our involvement in Afghanistan like he did in Iraq, and leaving it to his successor to deal with the fallout when the cost of pacification will be higher than it ever would have been had we never left. Comment | Share For more, visit Right Analysis. TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS Linda Chavez: Economic Mobility Tied to Family Structure Tony Perkins: March Madness: Media Bias Snubs Pro-Lifers Jonah Goldberg: Gov't Overreliance: The Devil Is in the Details Thomas Sowell: Fact-Free Liberals: Part IV Joe Bastardi: Brewing the Perfect Cup of Climate Coffee For more, visit Right Opinion. OPINION IN BRIEF Columnist Charles Krauthammer: "Canada's foreign minister calmly but pointedly complained that the U.S. owes Canada a response on the Keystone XL pipeline. 'We can't continue in this state of limbo,' he sort of complained, in what for a placid, imperturbable Canadian passes for an explosion of volcanic rage. ... If Obama wants to cave to his environmental left, go ahead. But why keep Canada in limbo? It's a show of supreme and undeserved disrespect for yet another ally. ... The only rationale for denying the pipeline is political -- to appease Obama's more extreme environmentalists. For a president who claims not to be ideological, the irony is striking: Here is an easily available piece of infrastructure -- privately built, costing government not a penny, creating thousands of jobs and, yes, shovel ready -- and yet the president, who's been incessantly pushing new 'infrastructure' as a fundamental economic necessity, can't say yes." Comment | Share Columnist David Limbaugh: "It is sheer sophistry and misdirection to argue that abortion opponents are on a crusade against women's liberty. This formulation conveniently -- and repugnantly -- factors out of the equation the innocent child involved. ... No amount of rhetorical legalese on 'emanations' and 'penumbras' can pollute our common sense into believing that a woman has a right to terminate the life of an innocent child she is carrying as a matter of constitutional privacy. ... How could any human being believe that preserving legal protection for other human beings to terminate the lives of yet other human beings is giving them an 'opportunity to fill their dreams'? Are some people so dark-hearted that they consider killing babies an opportunity to fulfill dreams?" Comment | Share Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961): "Whenever justice is uncertain and police spying and terror are at work, human beings fall into isolation, which, of course, is the aim and purpose of the dictator state, since it is based on the greatest possible accumulation of depotentiated social units." Columnist Mona Charen: "'I came from a place of struggle,' insisted Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis.... One of Davis' struggles, apparently, is with the truth. ... She, and the press who lionize her, seem all too eager to suggest that she somehow did everything all by herself. This false heroic tale is a common trope on the left these days -- women doing it all by themselves. It's more than partisan hackery. It reinforces the very damaging notion that women don't need husbands. Many, many women are swallowing this propaganda and acting on it. They, their children and our society are suffering mightily as a result." Comedian Argus Hamilton: "French president Francois Hollande is coming to the White House with a new girlfriend next month. He left his common-law wife for a journalist, now he's leaving the journalist for an actress. At the White House official state dinner, he will receive the John F. Kennedy Award." 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 © 2014 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/.