On the Edge of Our Seats for SCOTUS

The Foundation

"Without justice being freely, fully, and impartially administered, neither our persons, nor our rights, nor our property, can be protected." --Joseph Story

Political Futures

"Last Thursday was a bust, at least as far as the two most anticipated cases before the Supreme Court this term. [We got] a ruling on one of them this morning, the challenge to Arizona's SB1070 immigration-enforcement law. However, we [won't] see anything on ObamaCare until the last day of the session, on Thursday of this week. ... This may just extend the pain for Barack Obama ... as the problem for the White House is the bill's unpopularity regardless of whether the court overturns it in whole or in part this week. ... Looks like the key part of Arizona's SB1070 got upheld -- the part that required state and local law enforcement to check immigration status on detained individuals. Scalia wanted to uphold the entire law, but a couple of provisions did get struck down. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion. ... Basically, the Supreme Court decision on SB1070 will allow the stop-and-check provision to take effect, but leave open the possibility that a case showing actual harm could be used to challenge the law at a later date." --blogger Ed Morrissey

No Matter How the Court Rules...

Barack Obama personifies the greatest threat to our Liberty in more than a generation. No matter how the Supreme Court rules this week on his signature "achievement" -- ObamaCare -- we at The Patriot Post need your help on the front lines, because the battle will continue.

Please make a secure online donation to The Patriot Post's 2012 Independence Day Campaign today. If you prefer to support us by mail, please send your check with our printable donor form. We have just 9 days to raise the remaining $207,500 for our campaign. We're still a worrisome 30 percent behind where we need to be to make budget.

Thank you!
Nate Jackson
Managing Editor

The Gipper

"[L]et us go forward, determined to serve selflessly a vision of man with God, government for people, and humanity at peace. For it is now our task to tend and preserve, through the darkest and coldest nights, that 'sacred fire of liberty' that President Washington spoke of two centuries ago, a fire that tonight remains a beacon to all the oppressed of the world, shining forth from this kindly, pleasant, greening land we call America." --Ronald Reagan

Obama's Gay Friends Trash White House

Last week, Obama ordered military service branches to celebrate "Gay Pride" month. What we now know is that the same day he issued that order, Obama hosted the first ever "gay activist" reception at the White House.

Obama welcomed his guests promising to make good on their agenda: "We'll get there because of every man and woman and activist and ally who is moving us forward by the force of their moral arguments, but more importantly, by the force of their example."

Now, photos are emerging that were representative of the "moral example" set by his guests after some of the activists posted a few photos in public forums. Read the rest and comment.

Government

"According to the report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is part of the U.S. Department of Energy, Section 1503 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (aka the stimulus), the part that covers green energy projects got some $9 billion in stimulus cash for 2009-11 and created a whopping 910 direct jobs -- those involved in the ongoing operation of the wind and solar projects that were funded. Now, the report doesn't come right out and say this. You have to pick through it and look past the 'indirect' jobs said to have been created by the manufacture and installation of the bird-chopping wind turbines and water-cleansed solar panels. The administration has a most curious way of describing what a green job is, but if you count just the 'direct' jobs, it cost taxpayers $9.8 million to create each of those long-term jobs. Throw in the indirect jobs supporting the direct jobs estimate of 4,600 (we're confused too) and there are 5,510 total jobs (direct and indirect). Starting with the $9 billion in grants, the result to establish 5,510 jobs averages out to $1.63 million per job. ... While campaigning four years ago, Sen. Barack Obama promised that $150 billion in government spending on renewable energy projects would create 5 million green-collar jobs over 10 years. Near the end of this administration's first year in office, Vice President Joe Biden promised 722,000 green jobs would be generated by the stimulus. To this end, avowed Marxist and wealth redistribution advocate Van Jones was appointed as green jobs czar. The wealth redistribution part has gone very well. But where, gentlemen, are the jobs?" --Investor's Business Daily

For the Record

"Saving the bankers requires kicking national sovereignty to the curb. And not just in Europe, where they at least they have the guts to bring it up. Right here in the United States as well, where the Fed can -- make that has -- operated with the kind of impunity that makes Congress, and in turn the Constitution, irrelevant. Thus it's no surprise that Ben Bernanke has extended Operation Twist, buying $267 billion of long-term government bonds in another effort to bring down borrowing costs. Just like Spain and Italy are trying to do. The Obama administration undoubtedly loves Operation Twist because, just like everything else the Fed does, it's designed to artificially prop up the stock market, which artificially props up Mr. Obama's re-election chances. What doesn't prop up Mr. Obama's re-election chances? Moody's downgrading 15 banks, the housing market hitting a 15-year low, US factory output growing at its slowest pace in 11 months, EU business activity shrinking for a fifth straight month, and Chinese manufacturing contracting for the eighth month in a row. And let's not forget unemployment that is 'officially' expected to remain above 8 percent right through November, even as most Americans know it's much higher than that, 'unofficially.' ... Perhaps the president can issue another executive order -- banning the release of economic data until after the election." --columnist Arnold Ahlert

Opinion in Brief

"Imagine: A Republican president submits to Congress a bill abolishing the capital gains tax. Congress rejects it. The president then orders the IRS to stop collecting capital gains taxes, and declares that anyone refusing to pay them will suffer no fine, no penalty, no sanction whatsoever. (Analogy first suggested by law professor John Yoo.) It would be a scandal, a constitutional crisis, a cause for impeachment. Why? Because unlike, for example, war powers, this is not an area of perpetual executive-legislative territorial contention. Nor is cap-gains, like the judicial status of unlawful enemy combatants, an area where the law is silent or ambiguous. Capital gains is straightforward tax law. Just as Obama's bombshell amnesty-by-fiat is a subversion of straightforward immigration law. It is shameful that Congressional Democrats should be applauding such a brazen end-run. Of course it's smart politics. It divides Republicans, rallies the Hispanic vote and pre-empts Marco Rubio's attempt to hammer out an acceptable legislative compromise. Very clever. But, by Obama's own admission, it is naked lawlessness." --columnist Charles Krauthammer

Essential Liberty

"If you don't like something or want to get something done, you don't let little things like the Constitution get in your way. For more than three years Emperor Obama has been behaving as if the separation of powers is a pesky fly to be swatted away whenever it becomes too annoying. If Congress doesn't pass the legislation he desires, he uses his executive powers and regulatory agencies to get his way. If he doesn't like a law or thinks it's unconstitutional, he tells his minions and bureaucrats not to enforce it. ... His latest edict came last week when he decided it would be nice to give about 1.4 million undocumented young immigrants temporary relief from deportation. ... Saving his royal butt from being tossed out of the White House was more important than the rule of law and constitutional niceties. This latest presidential power grab really wasn't about helping young Latinos or working toward a long-run solution to a tricky immigration problem. It was about getting more Latinos to reward him with their votes in November." --columnist Michael Reagan

Re: The Left

"There was no Department of Justice for nearly a century after the Constitution was adopted. And while the post of attorney general was established by the first Congress, it was conceived as a part-time position, with no staff, limited to providing legal advice to the president and representing the federal government in civil litigation. There was no thought that there would be a criminal law-enforcement mission for the central government, much less that the feds would regulate firearms (and do so by sending them to murderous foreign drug cartels). The Framers were quite clear that law enforcement would remain the exclusive province of the states. I rehearse all this history because I've always thought it very presumptuous of the Justice Department to claim a power to conceal information from Congress when it is completely dependent on Congress for its existence and its mission. Congress could repeal the Justice Department tomorrow. Congress writes the statutes that the Justice Department enforces, is the master of the Department's jurisdiction, and pays for everything the Department does -- without which budget the Justice Department could do nothing." --columnist Andrew C. McCarthy

Faith and Family

"Do kids raised by same-sex couples turn out as well as those raised by parents of the opposite sex? ... 'Not a single study,' the American Psychological Association categorically declared in a 2005 brief, 'has found children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents.' But was that conclusion ... warranted? Loren Marks, a scholar at Louisiana State University, recently went back and reviewed the 59 studies on which the APA had relied. None of them, he writes in the July issue of the academic journal Social Science Research, 'compares a large, random, representative sample of lesbian or gay parents and their children with a large, random, representative sample of married parents and their children.' ... In the same issue of Social Science Research, University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus publishes the results of a large national study, based on interviews with a random sample of 15,000 young adults (aged 18 to 39) about their families, upbringing, and life experiences. Regnerus's bottom line: Children raised by their biological mother and father in stable families tended to turn out better than those whose parents had been in same-sex relationships. ... Children raised by one or more gay parents, Regnerus wrote in an essay on Slate, 'were more apt to report being unemployed, less healthy, more depressed.' They were also more likely to have experienced infidelity, trouble with the law, and sexual victimization." --columnist Jeff Jacoby

Culture

"So a feminist writes in the New York Times how we have to think more before we breed and lamenting how too many people end up with kids because they don't have enough abortions and stuff. But then I look to places where birth control has really taken root in Europe and Japan and they're below replacement rates on births and their countries are starting to die because of it. The whole point of being parents is putting someone else ahead of your own needs, but birth control is all about looking at your needs first before having kids. It seems like a great idea to wait until you're ready to have children, but there is no such things as a magical point when people are ready. And thus families are waiting longer to have children and having less -- or just looking at them as this avoidable inconvenience to one's lifestyle -- and that's how a society dies out. Maybe when to have children is just one of those things man's just not smart enough to figure out." --columnist Frank Fleming

Reader Comments

"Mark Alexander's observations regarding Obama's mandate for military 'Gay Pride' Celebrations are sad and difficult for me to read. I am retired after many years of service to God and our great country. But like millions of other vets, I experience a profound sense of loss given this administration's systematic degradation of our fine military institutions. Our nation seems to have lost its heart and its genuine pride -- not the false 'pride' under the rainbow of moral decay... When will we wake up to the reclaim 'Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness' based on the inalienable rights endowed by our Creator?" --Kevin in Colorado

"I have always been inspired by The Patriot Post's message for many years, but the photo image of two 'military men' embracing was highly offensive and objectionable. Please do not publish anything like that again and soil the best publication on the web. You can't talk about morality and religion on the one hand, and violate them with a photo like that on the other."

Editor's Reply: Of course that photo was objectionable -- as is the policy, so we drove the point home with words and imagery. Amazingly, there are some folks who consider themselves conservative and Christian, but are unable to distinguish between right and wrong on the "gay" issue. That photograph is the net result of Obama's mandate and sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. Our Patriot Post team is comprised of warriors, not pantywaists. There is a culture war well underway, and to defeat the enemy, you must know it. If you can't face your enemy and the ugliness it represents, then run and hide, because he will cut your head off.

"Regarding Friday's Digest, this past week has just proved how much the American people need to wake up and vote out Obama. He is doing everything he can to try and make himself more of a dictator than a elected head of government. I really wish Democrats would wake up and see that this man has lied to everyone, including his own party. We will be better off with Obama living as a private citizen than an elected government official." --Craig in Cleveland, TN

The Last Word

"So we learn that President Obama's description of substantive aspects of his grandfather's life are fictional, as are other details in his preferred narrative: an inspirational black girlfriend in college who turns out to be white; a close black friend in grade school who's actually Japanese and Native American, and not all that close; a 20-year pastor and mentor who, it turns out, is 'not the man I knew;' Bill Ayers is just 'some guy in the neighborhood.' The fantasies aren't confined to Obama's biography. He's the most fiscally prudent president of the last 50 years. The private sector is 'doing fine.' Guantanamo can be closed with the stroke of a pen. The 'most transparent administration in history' can invoke executive privilege and frustrate FOIA multiple requests. The unemployment rate will never rise above 8 percent if he spends $800 billion on shovel ready jobs that, admittedly, don't exist. Russia will cooperate in matters large and small upon mere presentment of a 'reset' button. Bows, apologies, and teleprompter speeches will prompt Middle Eastern despots to join hands with the West and skip merrily through the daisies. He will lower the oceans and heal the planet. And [NBC's] Andrea Mitchell would have voters believe that Mitt Romney's the one who's out of touch." --attorney Peter Kirsanow

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