The Foundation

“A fondness for power is implanted, in most men, and it is natural to abuse it, when acquired.” –Alexander Hamilton

Editorial Exegesis

“On the subject of [Obama’s] decision [Friday] to unilaterally enact sweeping changes to U.S. immigration policy on nothing but his own say-so, we would like to introduce Barack Obama to Barack Obama, who during a Univision interview just last year affirmed: ‘America is a nation of laws, which means I, as the president, am obligated to enforce the law. … There are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system that for me to simply through executive order ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as president.’ A little softness in the polls and one executive order later, the president has reversed himself. The president’s executive order will categorically prevent the deportation of certain illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children. It will also grant them work authorizations to which they would not otherwise be entitled under law. … The president’s executive order violates the constitutional separation of powers that defines the political architecture of our republic. If Congress allows this illegitimate executive order to stand, it will have in effect delegated its power to make law to the president. This executive order would, therefore, be entirely unacceptable even if it represented good policy. But it does not. … The amnesty proponents will of course point to any number of cases in which a young person is facing a painful situation through no fault of his own, and one would have to have a heart as hard as coffin nails not to sympathize, but the fact is that it was not the people of the United States who put these young people in legal jeopardy – it was their parents. Without first ensuring effective enforcement at the border and at the workplace, any step toward normalizing the status of those here in violation of the law invites more of the same abuse and disorder.” –National Review

Upright

“President Obama’s claim that he can refuse to deport 800,000 aliens here in the country illegally illustrates the unprecedented stretching of the Constitution and the rule of law. … [W]hat we have here is a president who is refusing to carry out federal law simply because he disagrees with Congress’s policy choices. That is an exercise of executive power that even the most stalwart defenders of an energetic executive – not to mention the Framers – cannot support.” –attorney John Yoo

“Make no mistake: this is classic sleight-of-hand, designed to get the country roiled up about something – make that anything – that will obscure the monumental failure best labeled Obamanomics. It is the proverbial boob bait for the masses, delivered by an administration that desperately needs Americans distracted away from the reality of a double-dip recession, record numbers of people on food stamps, millions of un- and under-employed workers, and no plan whatsoever for dealing with our impending fiscal Armageddon, other than blaming Republicans for their failures.” –columnist Arnold Ahlert

“Since Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party has given its presidential nomination four times to the Bush family. Other times, to Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney. Where’s the extremist in that lot?” –columnist George Will

“Remember when Obama declared that Americans had to pull together, because what united us was stronger than what divided us? Yeah, not so much. President Obama’s re-election campaign has been an exercise in fragmentation. Where the 2008 campaign was built thematically around the notion that a polarized electorate was bad for the country and that election of a third-way, multi-racial president could symbolically overcome our divisions once and for all, the 2012 campaign is built on precisely the opposite notion: Americans united in opposition to Obama’s agenda must be divided again. … Obama now realizes that he can’t win by uniting Americans. He can only win by dividing us.” –columnist Ben Shapiro

“When President Barack Obama announced his 2012 launch of ‘African Americans for Obama’, the silence was deafening. Should the same standards be applied to Obama as would be applied to Romney? The answer turns out to be no, because Obama is not held to the same standards as Romney. … Black people ought to be offended by the idea that we are held accountable to lower standards of conduct and achievement. White people ought to be ashamed for permitting and fostering racial double standards that have effects that are in some ways worse than the cruel racism of yesteryear.” –economist Walter E. Williams

We Have Some Catching Up to Do

The Patriot Post‘s Chronicle is a one-of-a-kind collection of the week’s best conservative analysis of hot-button issues as well as the most outrageous comments made by assorted leftists in politics, the media and culture. Our team works tirelessly to consolidate all this content into a quick-reading information buffet.

We depend on your support to keep this priceless resource coming every Wednesday, but unfortunately we’re about 50 percent behind where we need to be at this stage of the campaign – we have $230,000 yet to raise. Help us by making a secure online donation to The Patriot Post’s 2012 Independence Day Campaign. If you prefer to support us by mail, please use our printable donor form.

Thank you!
Nate Jackson
Managing Editor

Essential Liberty

“2012 may be miserable – but if it is, it won’t be because corporations spend on politics. … The very first amendment that the Founders chose to add to the Constitution couldn’t be more clear: 'Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech … .’ Yet most people support laws against political speech – when they don’t like the speakers. … But political (and religious) speech is exactly what the Founders were eager to protect when they wrote the First Amendment. … Don’t progressives realize that corporations (and unions, which also had their speech rights protected) are associations of individuals – individuals who have rights? … It is shameful that leftists let their hatred of corporations lead them to throw free speech under the bus. There is a smarter way to get corporate money out of politics: Shrink the state. If government has fewer favors to sell, citizens will spend less money trying to win them.” –columnist John Stossel

Insight

“The Party System was founded on one national notion of fair play. It was the notion that folly and futility should be fairly divided between both sides.” –British writer G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

The Demo-gogues

Fishing for votes: “This is not amnesty. This is not immunity. This is not a path to citizenship; it’s not a permanent fix. This is a temporary stopgap measure that lets us focus on resources wisely while giving a degree of relief and hope to talented, driven, patriotic young people. It is the right thing to do.” –Barack Obama

Best thing for his campaign: “Is this the right thing to do for the American people? I didn’t ask for an argument, I’m answering your question. It is the right thing to do for the American people.” –Barack Obama

Blame game refrain: “I love listening to these guys give us lectures about debt and deficits. I inherited a trillion-dollar deficit. … This notion that somehow we caused the deficits is just wrong. It’s just not true. … If they start trying to give you a bunch of facts and figures suggesting that it’s true, what they’re not telling you is they baked all this stuff into the cake with those tax cuts and a prescription drug plan that they didn’t pay for and the wars.” –Barack Obama

Those nasty Republicans hate the world: “I think we are ironclad on the constitutionality of [ObamaCare]. We believe in the Constitution. We believe in judicial review. … But I think it’s also important for the public to know that obstruction is the agenda of the Republican party. If they win, that will be their agenda. They don’t believe in a government role, clean air, clean water. You name it.” –House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

Government solutions: “The argument that the jury is still out on climate change is a false and bogus argument. The jury is not out. In fact, the jury is in, the effects are obvious, they surround us every day, and we need to take action.” –Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

Dezinformatsia

This just in: “Mitt Romney is running the campaign he wants to run, which is just a referendum. ‘You’re not happy about the economy, this guy’s been there for four years, vote him out of office. You need an alternative.’ What the president’s got to do is say, ‘Hey, don’t forget about George W. Bush. Things got really, really bad under him.’” –NBC’s David Gregory (As if Obama hasn’t already loaded blame on Bush.)

Non Compos Mentis: “[Y]ou vote for [Romney] and [Romney] wouldn’t even let [Latinos] in his apartment. You know, I think that there’s a real feeling that, you know, there’s a, that it’s not about immigration or immigration reform or even border security, that there’s a racial component, that there’s a feeling that there’s this creepy black or brown invasion from the South.” –radio show host Geraldo Rivera on why Latinos will vote for Obama

Race bait: “It’s very, very difficult to place race outside of this context [referring to The Daily Caller’s Neil Munro interrupting Obama at a White House press conference]. … We haven’t seen anything like this before. … But you also have the promotions of the Tea Party, where they’re using racially-tinged imagery, and racially-tinged sort of statements to get their point across.” –Politico reporter Joe Williams

Bad memory: “[T]his is the first African-American president, and we’ve never had a white president been told by the opposing party to shut up in the middle of a major address to Congress. We’ve never had a president heckled so disrespectfully. We’ve never had this otherness afforded to any other president. And I think the right wing is going to have some explaining to do, because to me, it seems patently obvious.” –MSNBC contributor Julian Epstein, who was apparently asleep during every Republican presidency

“Many on the political right believe this president ought not to be there – they oppose him not for his polices [sic] and political view but for who he is, an African American! These people and perhaps even certain news organizations (certainly the right wing talkers like Limbaugh) encourage disrespect for this president.” –former ABC White House correspondent Sam Donaldson

Newspulper Headlines:

Longest Books Ever Written: “What the Beltway Gets Wrong About the Economy” –TheNation.com

Shortest Books Ever Written: “What Obama Can Say to Avoid Being a One-Term Wonder” –FoxNews.com

Feeding the Hungry in the Obama Era: “San Francisco to Unleash Puppies-for-Panhandlers Program” –Associated Press

White Trash: “Georgia Rejects KKK Adopt-a-Highway Bid to Pick Up Litter” –USA Today

News You Can Use: “Sleep Deprivation Does Not Mix Well With National Donut Day” –CapitolColumn.com

Bottom Story of the Day: “MSNBC Host ‘Hoping’ Blaming Bush Will Work” –Breitbart.com

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto)

Village Idiots

“Our attorneys – the homeland security attorneys – are absolutely confident [Obama’s immigration announcement] is within our authority, to use some discretion.” –Obama senior adviser David Plouffe

We owe the government? “We owe something to the government to grow up in this great country. I’m tired of hearing people in the private sector talk like they don’t owe the government anything. We do. This is a great country because we all pay into it. It’s about time we all pay into it. … If we paid the same amount of taxes we paid when Bill Clinton was president, I would be a happy guy, and the budget would be closer to balanced. You cannot give away money, whether you give it to rich or poor people. That’s what George Bush did – excuse me, trillions of dollars. You can’t do that.” –Howard Dean

More race bait: “[Rap] put Barack Obama in the presidency. You know, if it wasn’t for rap, white people wouldn’t have been so open to vote for somebody like Barack Obama,. … You know, there’s only 10 percent of black people in the United States. White people voted for Barack.” –rapper Ice-T

Godwin’s Law: “Republicans are behaving just like Hitler did.” –“Waiting to Exhale” author Terry McMillan

Short Cuts

“At a fundraiser in Maryland, President Obama said you could put Romney’s ‘campaign on a tweet and have some characters to spare.’ As opposed to Obama’s campaign, where there’s no character left at all.” –Fred Thompson

“Commerce Secretary John Bryson smashed his car into a Buick as the Buick was waiting for a train to go by. He got out and apologized, then smashed into the Buick again. President Obama called a press briefing Monday and said the Buick is doing just fine.” –comedian Argus Hamilton

“The Obama administration will now stop the deportation of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens and will also issue them work permits. This allows them to focus on what’s really important: illegally voting for Obama in November.” –NewsBusted’s Jodi Miller

“President Obama is going to let certain illegal immigrants stay in this country. But there is an age requirement. You have to be old enough to vote by November.” –comedian Jay Leno

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team