The Foundation

“[A] good moral character is the first essential in a man.” –George Washington

Chris Kyle, RIP

Former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, a Patriot from Texas and author of the outstanding book, “American Sniper,” was killed Saturday while assisting fellow veterans suffering from PTSD. Chris served with the SEAL Team 3 Sniper Element Charlie platoon, and was the most lethal sniper in U.S. history. He accumulated 160 confirmed kills and another 95 probables, and was known to his enemies as Al-Shaitan Ramad (The Devil of Ramadi).

During his four combat tours, Chris was shot twice and survived six IED explosions. His longest shot was taken in 2008 near Sadr City, where he neutralized an RPG-carrying insurgent at more than 2,000 meters with his Lapua Magnum .338 PGM. He left military service three years ago after earning two Silver Stars, five Bronze Stars with Valor, two Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals, and one Navy and Marine Corps Commendation. He has devoted much of the last three years to working with fellow vets suffering from PTSD.

Chris leaves behind his wife Taya, two children, and a long list of family and friends. Kyle was a tireless defender of Liberty and the Second Amendment, and he will be sorely missed.

Read more here.

Essential Liberty

“Chicago’s government, which is not normally known for elevated thinking, is feeling so morally upright and financially flush that it proposes to rise above the banal business of maximizing the value of its employees’ and retirees’ pension fund assets. Although seven funds have cumulative unfunded liabilities of $25 billion, Chicago will sacrifice the growth of those assets to the striking of a political pose so pure it is untainted by practicality. Emulating New York and California, two deep blue states with mammoth unfunded pension liabilities, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has hectored a $5 billion pension fund into divesting its holdings in companies that manufacture firearms. Now he is urging two large banks to deny financing to such companies ‘that profit from gun violence.’ TD Bank provides a $60 million credit line to Smith & Wesson, and Bank of America provides a $25 million line to Sturm, Ruger & Company. Chicago’s current and retired public employees might wish the city had invested more in both companies. Barack Obama, for whom Emanuel was chief of staff, has become a potent gun salesman because of suspicions that he wants to make gun ownership more difficult. Since he was inaugurated four years ago, there have been 65 million requests for background checks of gun purchasers. Four years ago, the price of Smith & Wesson stock was $2.45. Last week it was $8.76, up 258 percent. Four years ago, the price of Sturm Ruger stock was $6.46. Last week it was $51.09, up 691 percent. The Wall Street Journal reports that even before ‘a $1.2 billion balloon payment for pensions comes due’ in 2015, ‘Chicago’s pension funds, which are projected to run dry by the end of the decade, are scraping the bottoms of their barrels.’” –columnist George Will

Obama the Skeet Shooter

Over the weekend, in an effort to affirm that Barack “Skeeter” Obama really does support what he errantly insists is the Second Amendment’s “protection of the rights of hunters and sportsmen,” the White House PR cadres released a photo of Obama, purportedly, skeet shooting at Camp David. Mark Alexander consulted with one of the nation’s leading sport shotgun seller, whose opinion was affirmed by two national championship skeet and trap shooters, that the photograph “is not right.” For the full story on WHY the experts conclude the photo was altered, and, more importantly, why Skeeter’s propagandists want the photo to be perceived as a fake (a political diversion), link here.

The Right … to Keep and Bear Arms

Barack Obama and his NeoCom cadres aren’t letting up on their anti-gun agenda. We can’t let down our guard, either.

Please take a moment and join the 37,000 of your fellow Patriots who have pledged to support and defend our Constitution, including the Second Amendment. Share it with your family, friends and colleagues via social media and email, as well.

Sign the 2A pledge!

The Gipper

“[E]very American should read the Declaration of Independence before he reads the Constitution, and he will see that the Constitution aims at preventing a recurrence of the way George III’s government treated the colonies. The declaration states this plainly: ‘But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new Guards for their future security.’ There is no question that the first 10 amendments are a part of those ‘new guards’ for their future security. And one of the most basic of those guards is the right to keep and bear arms.” –Ronald Reagan

Reader Comments

“Regarding Mark Alexander’s essay, Obama/Feinstein: Obfuscation and Vilification, gun bans have been proven to not work by the government’s own studies. Expanded checks are code for registration, which in turn is code for confiscation, period. Any ground given in this battle will be wasted when they return under the call to ‘fix what they didn’t fix last time,’ and the killing will continue. Make no mistake, they will be back, because their ‘fixes’ are not intended to be fixes at all, but incremental emasculation of the 2nd Amendment. The Bill of Rights was written to protect personal rights against a tyrannical government, one that wanted to seize our weapons. I guess we’ve come full circle.” –Terrell in Weldon, Iowa

“We must all keep in mind and reiterate it to all who will listen that the 2nd Amendment is not and never has been about ‘hunting.’ It has always been about self defense and defense against tyranny.” –Bill in Golden, Texas

“Why not concentrate on the truth, namely the problem is not guns. It’s control of a non trustworthy government that is threatening our freedom. The Second Amendment was enacted for exactly the right to bear arms against a tyrannical government such as we have enfolding since Obama took office in 2009.” –Price in California

Boy Scout Update

Mark Alexander’s “Letter to an Eagle Scout” received broad support from Patriots across the nation last week. Mr. Alexander offered this postscript to that letter over the weekend:

By way of followup to my Letter to and Eagle Scout, if you are one of those who is “mixed” when it comes to opinions on the homosexual agenda, the strongest words against this BSA proposal would be Obama’s endorsement of it: “I think that, uh, you know, my attitude is, is that gays and lesbians should have, uh, access, and, and, opportunity, uh, the same way everybody else does, uh, in every institution and walk of life, and, um, you know, the, the scouts are a great institution, uh, that, are [sic], uh, promoting, uh, young people and exposing them to, uh, you know, opportunities, and, and, leadership, uh, that, you know, will serve people, uh, for the rest of their lives.” (For the record, the most distinct “poker tell” that betrays Obama’s efforts to deceive is his prolific use of “uh” when he is telling a lie that isn’t scripted from a teleprompter. Additionally, he was turning his head back and forth as to say “no” when answering “yes” to on this issue.)

After the national protest from BSA rank and file leaders and members, I would like to believe the BSA board will defeat the proposal to remove its proscription against avowed homosexuals. But then, as is often the case with national government, religious and civic “leadership,” most are insulated from the those they, ostensibly, serve. Consequently, too often their actions are wholly inconsistent with the positions of their constituents – on the arrogant assumption that they are much wiser than grassroots Americans. Thus, if the BSA board passes this measure, and straps the responsibility for enforcing this restriction on Councils nationwide, then every Council, chartering organization, Troop, sponsor, donor, and even Scout, will become subject to being labeled “bigots” by homosexual advocates in their Council area. Even if just one homosexual protests against a Council, that will be trumpeted in the local media, and the result will be a challenge to every organizational and support level of that Council.

For the record, over the past four years, Barack Obama has been signing Eagle certificates, even though for the first three of those four years he opposed homosexual marriage and open homosexual military service. Last year, Obama reversed his position on both counts. That leaves one to question from whom the BSA national board takes its orders. Some have suggested if the BSA board passes this measure to shift the burden to local Councils, Scouting as we know it will be gone in a decade. I must respectfully disagree – it will be gone in a year, not 10.

For the Record

“The January jobs report provides a sober reminder that the US labor market, while recovering, remains extraordinarily weak. The official unemployment rate ticked up to 7.9% as 157,000 net new jobs were created, according to the Labor Department. To provide some context, recall that back in January 2009 Team Obama economists Jared Bernstein and Christina Romer predicted the unemployment rate by 2013 would be closing in on 5%. … Indeed, if labor force participation were the same as when Obama took office, the unemployment rate would be 10.8%. As it is, the U-6 unemployment rate – which includes a) part-timers who want full-time work and b) the discouraged who want a job but haven’t searched for work in the prior month because they believe no jobs are available – remained at 14.4% for the third straight month. When might the economy return to the sort of unemployment rate we saw before the Great Recession, say, 4.5% or so? Let’s assume a) labor force participation regains half the ground it’s lost over the past four years, and b) job growth keeps turning in 2012-like performances. According to the Atlanta Fed’s job calculator it would take another eight years to get back to the unemployment nadir of the George W. Bush administration. And that’s assuming we don’t suffer another recession between now and then. No wonder the president doesn’t want to talk about jobs.” –AEI’s James Pethokoukis

Government

“The Bureau of Labor Statistics released jobs numbers for January Friday showing that nonfarm payroll employment increased by 157,000 and the unemployment rate rose to 7.9 percent. Lost in these headline numbers was another rise in the number of people not in the labor force. This number now stands at a staggering 89 million, up from 80.5 million when President Obama took office. This means that there are currently 8.5 million more Americans not in the labor force than just four years ago. Forget all the other numbers. This continued explosion of people not in the labor force should be tremendously concerning as it represents an obstacle for the government to ever balance the budget without drastically raising taxes on those still working.” –Newsbusters’ Noel Sheppard

Culture

“Fact usually triumphs over fiction – except on TV news. The major networks have been obsessed with Manti Te'o’s fantasy football story of a fictional girlfriend. But when 500,000 people showed up in Washington to speak out for the unborn, it was barely a footnote. ABC, CBS, and NBC devoted close to two-and-a-half hours (147 minutes and 43 seconds) to the Te'o fiasco and just 17 seconds to the Washington, D.C., March for Life. That’s 521 times more coverage for Te'o and a girlfriend who never even existed. … Between the threads of the Te'o story, one anchor, NBC’s Brian Williams devoted 17 seconds to the 40th March for Life last Friday, January 25, saying: ‘Back in this country, in Washington today, thousands of anti-abortion demonstrators marched to the steps of the Supreme Court, protesting the landmark decision that legalized abortion. Annual March for Life, as it’s called, this year, coincides with the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision.’ The networks have a history of bias concerning the March for Life. The lack of coverage of the march became even more impressive when half a million people attended.” –Media Research Center’s Katie Yoder

Political Futures

“As a member of the U.S. Senate [Chuck] Hagel voted against unilateral sanctions against Iran, and, according to the Associated Press, ‘co-authored [a study] last year that called for an 80 percent cut in U.S. nuclear weapons, and elimination of all nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles.’ … [Thursday] Chuck Hagel spent eight hours in a Senate Office building essentially denying everything he has written and/or said since before he campaigned with Barack Obama in 2008. … At one point he said he supports the concept of ‘containment’ when it comes to Iran getting nuclear weapons. That is most assuredly not the Administration’s position on Iran’s nukes. The position is denying Iran nuclear weapons, not containing them once Iran has them. According to numerous sources a staffer passed Hagel a note after which, having read it, Hagel said: ‘I misspoke and said I supported the president’s position on containment. If I said that, I meant to say we don’t have a position on containment.’ But, as the Chairman of the Committee, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), pointed out, ‘We do have a position on containment, and that is we do not favor containment. I just wanted to clarify the clarify.’ … With all that, I hope President Obama withdraws the Hagel nomination for Secretary of Defense. If [Thursday] was any test, he is simply not up to the job.” –columnist Rich Galen

The Last Word

“Americans tend to see federal and local governments differently. At the local level, people seem to have a better grasp that it’s their tax dollars at work. They are far more sensitive to tax increases and more easily outraged by spending boondoggles. … At the local level, this fact benefits Republicans, although state-level Democrats tend to be more fiscally responsible as well. … Meanwhile, what gets Republicans elected at the local level gets them in trouble at the federal level. Again, there are many reasons for this. But I think one of them is that we’ve come to see the federal government as some sort of mystical entity empowered to right all of the wrongs in society. If there’s a problem, there ‘should’ be a federal response, the costs or feasibility of that response be damned. While Romney’s infamous riff about the ‘47 percent’ was profoundly flawed, the simple reality is that millions of people who do, in fact, pay federal income taxes do not care about those tax dollars the same way they care about their local tax dollars. This is true of people who get more from the federal government than they pay in, but it’s also true for millions of affluent voters as well. … The challenge for Republicans is to convince the American people that the government isn’t magic, and that all of its money is your money, its debts your debts. I don’t think the GOP is doomed, but America might be if Americans remained unconvinced too much longer.” –columnist Jonah Goldberg

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