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Right Analysis | Right Hooks | Right Opinion
Patriot Headlines | Grassroots Commentary
Daily Digest
June 1, 2015 
THE FOUNDATION
"There is a rank due to the United States, among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness." —George Washington, Fifth Annual Message, 1793
EDITOR'S NOTE
Sometimes events remind us all that life is more than politics. The death of Beau Biden, son of Joe Biden, is one of those events. Beau had privately battled brain cancer for the last few years, but succumbed on Saturday. Beau, 46, was a major in the Delaware Army National Guard.
He served in Iraq and was awarded the Bronze Star. He was also attorney general in Delaware and once considered a potential governor. Beau leaves behind his wife, Hallie, and two children, Natalie and Hunter. Joe Biden is no stranger to tragedy, either. In 1972, he lost his first wife, Nelia, and 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, in a car accident. Biden's sons, Beau and Hunter, survived. Political differences aside, we in our humble shop offer our sincerest condolences to the Biden family.
TOP RIGHT HOOKS
If Barack Obama can't push gun control through the nation's lawmaking body, then he'll pile on the regulations. By November, the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are expected to finalize regulations that would restrict who is qualified to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
"The regulations range from new restrictions on high-powered pistols to gun storage requirements," The Hill reports. "Chief among them is a renewed effort to keep guns out of the hands of people who are mentally unstable or have been convicted of domestic abuse. … As proposed, the regulation makes it illegal for some who has been convicted of a misdemeanor domestic violence offense to own a gun."
The Left has been test firing these regulations since 1998, but it is revising the proposed regulation binge because of Sandy Hook and "public health." Furthermore, what constitutes domestic assault and mental illness is subject to social mores, and rights guaranteed by the Constitution are not tied to majority rule.
The Senate allowed the Patriot Act to expire Sunday after opposition, led by Rand Paul, derailed the efforts of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to renew the act and endorse the NSA's mass metadata collection efforts. The chamber did, however, vote 77-17 to take up the House-passed USA Freedom Act, which would revise the Patriot Act to specifically prohibit the NSA's domestic spying program — a program ruled illegal by a federal court.
Unfortunately, congressional efficiency being what it is, leadership waited too late to bring either bill up for debate, almost ensuring unnecessary drama. That means the good of the Patriot Act was thrown out with the bad. Yet as Reuters reports, "Intelligence experts say a lapse of only a few days would have little immediate effect. The government is allowed to continue collecting information related to any foreign intelligence investigation that began before the deadline." Fighting terrorists is critical, but collecting data from every American to create the proverbial haystack doesn't strike us as an efficient or trustworthy way to go about doing that. And it's time Congress took its national security responsibly more seriously than leaving important work to the last minute.
The symbolism was a bit off, or a telling example of what the future may hold if Martin O'Malley wins the White House. With the Baltimore skyline in the background, the former mayor of the city announced Saturday that he would seek the Democrat nomination for president. Between the idealistic socialist Bernie Sanders and the conniving politician Hillary Clinton, O'Malley doesn't seem to have much of a chance winning the Democrat Party's horse race.
Publisher of the Rothenberg and Gonzales Political Report, Stuart Rothenberg, told the Baltimore Sun, "The only way he's going to have a path, is if [Clinton] stumbles. Right now, it's not about O'Malley and I don't believe it ever will be about O'Malley." While we know Clinton's track record on foreign policy, we know O'Malley's track record on domestic issues through his leadership in Maryland. It was he that brought tough, zero-tolerance policing to Baltimore — the policing strategy that contributed to the riots that recently rocked the city.
Furthermore, it was the guitar-playing politician's progressive economic strategies as governor that drowned Maryland in taxes and waterlogged the state's economic engine. That economic policy caused Maryland to have the third slowest economic growth of all the states from 2011 to 2013, The Wall Street Journal reports — something the nation's economy cannot bear after years of implementing Obama's economic ideas.
FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
By Robin Smith
The left-wing ruling class in the District of Columbia continues its relentless fight against the God-given freedom recognized by the Second Amendment — the right to bear arms, the palladium of liberties. Of course, to the Left, the thought of a constitutional right that doesn't involve the redefinition of marriage or legalizing the dismemberment of a baby in the womb seems ludicrous.
This chapter in the ongoing saga revolves around a federal judge's ruling last July that overturned the city's 40-year ban on carrying firearms for self-defense. In response to the ruling, the leftist DC government designed a very restrictive right-to-carry permit process — one that approved as few applications as possible.
That, too, has been struck down in a federal decision joining the Supreme Court's 2008 Heller ruling that overturned the District of Columbia's complete ban on handgun ownership. Since that restoration of rights, over 3,000 handguns have been registered in DC, but only for use in protecting one's home.
The impact of crime upon citizens has made clear that law enforcement is only minutes away when seconds count. The necessity of armed self-defense is becoming more and more a reality in a world where abled-bodied thieves, emboldened by the Left, are confident that only criminals and those riding in squad cars have access to firearms.
In late October 2014, DC politicos crafted a very narrow "may-issue" policy awarding carry permits on the basis that at least one of three conditions can be met: A) there's a clear and immediate threat to personal safety, B) the applicant works with enough physical currency or items of high value to create a substantiated risk of theft or harm, or C) the applicant cites responsibility for protecting a disabled family member. Further, the applicant must prove they've not suffered from mental illness within the last five years. And finally, they have to undergo 18 hours of certified training.
Once the applicant squeezes through the eye of that needle, further restrictions await: No personal weapon can be carried on public transportation, at schools, in any government buildings, bars, hospitals, stadiums, at any protests, or around the White House. An approved permit holder would also have to remain 1,000 feet from any U.S. or foreign dignitary.
By the way, 1,000 feet is more than the length of three football fields. Is anyone in DC that far from a "dignitary"?
As a result of this blatant attack on the constitutional rights of DC citizens, three applicants filed a lawsuit in federal court to combat the ruling. And they succeeded. In his 23-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Frederick J. Scullin Jr. wrote, "For all intents and purposes, this requirement makes it impossible for the overwhelming majority of law-abiding citizens to obtain licenses to carry handguns in public for self-defense, thereby depriving them of their Second Amendment right to bear arms."
Though the restrictions remain regarding places and proximities that permit holders may carry their weapons for self-defense, this new judgment provides some remedy for a city where almost the entire government, from the mayor to the city council to the attorney general, is vehemently anti-gun.
Following the reversal of the unconstitutional ban in late October 2014, the Metropolitan Police Department began accepting applications for carry permits. Of the 107 applications filed as of May 9, only 26 have been approved.
So, in addition to the 3,000 DC citizens who are officially allowed to have arms to protect their homes, there are a whopping 26 individuals who have a carry permit for personal self-defense. All else in DC is a "gun-free zone." Which means, of course, more guns are in the hands of criminals than with the law-abiding citizens denied their Second Amendment rights.
The 18th Century French political philosopher Montesquieu, known for his belief that free governments are dependent on fragile constitutional arrangements and freedom from tyrants, would sum up the DC denial of rights thusly: "There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice."
TODAY AT PATRIOTPOST.US
BEST OF RIGHT OPINION
For more, visit Right Opinion.
OPINION IN BRIEF
Jeff Jacoby: "What this country needs, says Bernie Sanders, is less deodorant. The 73-year-old senator from Vermont, now running for the Democratic presidential nomination, told CNBC's John Harwood in an interview on Tuesday that because American consumers can choose from so many brands of personal-care products, kids are going to bed with empty bellies. 'You don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country,' Sanders lamented. ...
On Wednesday ... the United Nations reported that hunger still afflicts about 795 million people around the globe, or about one out of every nine human beings. As great a challenge as that is, it represents an amazing decrease in the number of undernourished people over the past 25 years. Even though the world's population has grown by 1.9 billion since 1990, there are 216 million fewer men, women, and children threatened by hunger today than there were then. ...
[P]opulist rhetoric from a 'humorless aging hippie peacenik Socialist' (as Sanders was once described in a New York Times Magazine profile) doesn't fill empty food bowls. Market economies do. 'Markets that function well are important for promoting food security and nutrition,' the UN report says. 'Markets … ensure food availability.' From China to Tanzania, from North Korea to the Soviet Union, socialism over the past century condemned countless children — and their parents — to hunger, malnutrition, and famine. Deodorant never hurt a soul."
SHORT CUTS
The Gipper: "Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid."
Obama's America: "Powerful, wealthy special interests here at home have used our government to create, in our own country, an economy that is leaving a majority of our people behind. We are allowing our land of opportunity to become a land of inequality." —Democrat presidential candidate Martin O'Malley on why voters should keep Democrats in the White House
Dezinformatsia: "I don't know, maybe we were not skeptical enough [of then-presidential candidate Barack Obama]. It was a campaign. ... I think as journalists, basically, what we do is we watch the campaign and we report what the two sides are doing. I think it is the politicians who make the campaign." —CBS's Bob Schieffer ("It's unfortunate given Schieffer's retirement that he was unwilling to admit the role the media have in shaping a political campaign." —Newsbusters' Jeffrey Meyer)
Non Compos Mentis: "I have my disagreements, say, with President Obama, but President Obama has run an amazingly scandal-free administration, not only he himself, but the people around him. He's chosen people who have been pretty scandal-free." —New York Times' David Brooks
Village Idiot: "[T]he connection between climate change and human activity is at least as strong as cigarettes and cancer. And so, I just want everybody to keep this in mind: that it's very reasonable that the floods in Texas, the strengthening storms ... these things are a result of human activity making things worse." —Bill Nye the "Science" Guy
And last... "The New York Times ripped President Obama for inaction leading up to the fall of Ramadi. ISIS has set fire to Tikrit, they've set fire to Mosul and they've set fire to Ramadi. Saudi Arabia has just hired a New York ad agency to re-brand ISIS as Climate Change in an effort to get President Obama to declare war." —Argus Hamilton
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.
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