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Daily Digest for Tuesday March 11, 2014  THE FOUNDATION "The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it." --James Wilson, Of the Study of Law in the United States, 1790 TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS Warming All Night Now that the spring thaw is nearing, the global warming alarmists are coming out of hibernation. Several Democrat senators, in a transparent effort to divert attention away from ObamaCare, staged a slumber party Monday night to a call for heavy-handed government regulation to address climate change. "We can translate climate destruction into a positive," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT). The last time he "turned destruction into a positive," he was exploiting the murders at Sandy Hook to demand draconian gun control. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) insisted, "Climate change is real, it is caused by humans, and it is solvable." Somehow we don't think the solution is leaving the lights on all night in the Capitol. Reporter Quits CBS Over Bias CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson is calling it quits following months of contentious negotiations with the network, whose executives were becoming increasingly prejudiced against her work. Recall that Attkisson was virtually the only reporter in the mainstream media to investigate this administration's many scandals, most notably Fast & Furious and Benghazi. The veteran reporter has complained about CBS's liberal bias for some time now, while the network is accusing her of agenda-driven reporting. Leave it to the Leftmedia, who do their best to shield Obama from his many blunders, to accuse a single truth-seeking journalist of being biased. Food Stamp Trickery At least three states have found a way to circumvent efforts by Congress to make a relatively tiny reduction in the growth of runway food stamp spending in the recent farm bill. New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania discovered that if they spend a little more on home-heating assistance, it triggers additional automatic spending on food stamps. According to Fox News, "New York State reportedly raised home-heating spending by $6 million, resulting in an extra $500 million in federal food stamp money." The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program already reached nearly $80 billion last year, but leftists are bound and determined to keep that number growing. Lerner's Emails The IRS agreed to turn over all emails and documents from Lois Lerner, the former official at the center of the Tea Party targeting scandal. Twice now Lerner has appeared before Congress only to insist on her innocence and refuse to answer questions. So how much more will the additional documents reveal? We already know Lerner was instrumental in not only targeting conservative tax-exempt groups but also in seeking to codify that scrutiny. Can the IRS be trusted to turn over anything clearer or more incriminating than that? Snowden the Firefighter? NSA leaker Edward Snowden beamed in a transmission to the South by Southwest festival warning that the U.S. government is "setting fire to the future of the Internet" and calling on tech enthusiasts to be "firefighters." We certainly have our own issues with the NSA's sweeping surveillance, but it's ironic and laughable that he's issuing his warnings on Liberty from Russia, a nation that opposes it at every turn. We can perhaps thank him for shedding light on the NSA, but according to Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, "The vast majority of [the documents Snowden stole] were related to our military capabilities, operations, tactics, techniques and procedures." He says it "could cost billions of dollars" to repair the damage. For more, visit Right Hooks. Don't Miss Patriot Humor Here's yesterday's edition, Common Core Math Problems. If you'd like to receive Patriot Humor by email, update your subscription here. RIGHT ANALYSIS New York Mayor Takes From Children Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg may have taken aim at salt, soda, and smoking, but current Mayor Bill de Blasio is setting his crosshairs on the city's children. The mayor has revoked approval for three of the city's charter schools to use free space in a public school building, leaving nearly 200 students with nowhere to learn. If that's not bad enough, columnist Peggy Noonan writes, the mayor "has also cut and redirected the entire allotment for charter facility funding from the city's capital budge," providing stark evidence of his disregard for the 70,000 children, many from Hispanic and black families, who attend the city's charter schools. The problem isn't that the privately run schools are failing; it's that they're succeeding, and all sans the power-hungry teachers union that controls the city's public schools and, incidentally, supports de Blasio. Students at Success Academy, for example, routinely outperform the city average. Noonan notes, "Last year 82% of its students passed citywide math exams. Citywide the figure was 30%. These are schools that work. They are something to be proud of and encourage." Which is why a leftist like de Blasio can't abide them, primarily, he admits, because there is a "strong private-sector element" in their funding. Worse, some of it comes from his favorite whipping boys -- wealthy Wall Street folks. Some charter school parents have filed lawsuits against the mayor, claiming violation of students' civil rights. Not to be outdone, extreme leftists are actually suing de Blasio for not shutting down even more schools. For his part, Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo is siding with the students, vowing, "We will save charter schools." A commendable stand but one the Left will fight. After all, nothing says "children first" like kicking kids out to the educational curb because their school doesn't bear the "government run, union-endorsed" seal of approval. Big Labor, Bad Losers  | | UAW President Bob King | If at first you don't succeed, blame Republicans and get your cronies in high places to let you try again. That seems to be the strategy of the United Auto Workers, a group that couldn't take the hint they weren't exactly welcome in the right-to-work state of Tennessee. After losing a 712-626 secret ballot vote at the Chattanooga Volkswagen plant, the UAW is appealing to the National Labor Relations Board on the grounds that statements by Republican legislators at both the state and federal levels gave the opposition an unfair advantage. Calling these tactics "a coordinated and widely-publicized coercive campaign," the union wants the results thrown out based on the Laboratory Conditions Doctrine adopted in a 1948 case, where the NLRB held that unionization votes have to be conducted as free from interference as possible. Translation: the union wants their shop floor propaganda to be accepted without question. The management in the Volkswagen plant was more than cooperative with the UAW, giving their plant allies easy access to workers while denying the same for anti-union workers. In a truly fair fight, the results may have been even more lopsided against the UAW. Oddly enough, in cases where Laboratory Conditions have come into play, the complaint was from the employer charging that the union was overly aggressive in its campaign, and in two recent cases ruled that union interference wasn't blatant enough to overturn an election in their favor. But since the shoe is now on the other foot, and knowing the current political composition of the NLRB, it's likely the UAW will receive its second try -- and maybe a third, fourth, fifth, and so on until they get the results they want. For more, visit Right Analysis. TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS For more, visit Right Opinion. 
OPINION IN BRIEF Columnist Arnold Ahlert: "When Gary Cohen, who will soon be leaving his job as the director of the main implementation office at the Health and Human Services Department, showed up at an insurance conference last Thursday, he touted the administration's updated enrollment figures of 4 million enrollees. Unfortunately for him he was asked a critical question: how many of the people who signed up for ObamaCare were previously uninsured? 'That's not a data point that we are really collecting in any sort of systematic way,' he responded. ... 4.7 million Americans had their 'bad apple' insurance plans cancelled. How many of them the administration is now promoting as new healthcare enrollees is not only impossible to determine, but as Gary Cohen reminds us, of no importance. In other words, we have a healthcare plan sold to Americans based entirely on the premise of reducing the number of uninsured -- by an administration that now professes to have no interest whatsoever in knowing whether or not they achieved their objective. Absolutely pathetic." Economist Thomas Sowell: "Not all charter schools are successful, of course, but the ones that are completely undermine the excuses for failure in the public school system as a whole. That is why teachers' unions hate them, as a threat not only to their members' jobs but a threat to the whole range of frauds and fetishes in the educational system. The autonomy of charter schools is also a threat to the powers that be, who want to impose their own vision on the schools, regardless of what the parents want. ... Charter schools take power from politicians and bureaucrats, letting parents decide where their children will go to school. That is obviously offensive to those on the left, who think that our betters should be making our decisions for us." Author and poet Peter McWilliams (1949-2000): "The purpose of education is to make the choices clear to people, not to make the choices for people." Columnist Burt Prelutsky: "[T]he NAACP continues to embarrass itself by calling itself the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, probably because if they changed it to African Americans, the group would be known, laughingly, as the NAAAA; and if they changed it to Blacks, it would be known as NAAB, which might be an embarrassing reminder that by the age of 23, 49% of black males have been arrested at least once." Comedian Conan O'Brien: "Because of Russia's actions in Ukraine, President Obama is threatening them with economic sanctions. Obama said if Russia doesn't pull out of Kiev we're not going to let them borrow any of the money that we borrowed from China." 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. |
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