The Foundation

“Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck.” –Thomas Jefferson

Editorial Exegesis

“Ever since Sept. 11, 2012, when Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in a terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, the Obama administration has done its best to confuse and conceal what actually happened. On Wednesday, when three career State Department officials testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Americans may finally start to get the real story. In the aftermath of the attack, the Obama administration tried to focus attention on a silly YouTube amateur video mocking Muhammad, which President Obama repeatedly mentioned during a speech to the United Nations. … Gregory Hicks, one of the witnesses scheduled to testify [today], is expected to drive home the point. Hicks, a 22-year Foreign Service veteran who was the deputy chief-of-mission at the U.S. Embassy, didn’t mince words when interviewed by House investigators, according to a transcript obtained by CBS News. ‘I think everybody in the mission thought it was a terrorist attack from the beginning,’ he said. According to CBS, Hicks also told investigators that ‘a team of Special Forces prepared to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi during the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks was forbidden from doing so by U.S. Special Operations Command Africa.’ … The committee will also hear testimony from Mark Thompson, acting deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism at the State Department, and Eric Nordstom, a diplomatic security officer and former regional security officer in Libya for the Department of State. The hearing comes on the heels of a report by House Republicans last month that contained evidence that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may have misrepresented events and her role in them while testifying under oath to Congress concerning requests for additional security in Benghazi. … Americans have endured eight months of purposeful opacity from Obama administration officials on Benghazi. [Today’s] hearing will likely bring some credible answers.” –The Washington Examiner

Upright

“September 11, 2012, was a profound moral failure. … If the most current reports can be believed, after depriving our men and women on the ground of the security they begged for, our leaders didn’t just stand by and watch as a tiny band of courageous but out-gunned Americans gave their last full measure of devotion to try to save an ambassador, save their fellow diplomats, and save themselves against an overwhelming terrorist force; those same leaders told potential rescuers to ‘stand down.’ This isn’t just a tactical failure, or a failure of process. It’s a failure of character, and if there is any honor left in Washington, those responsible should resign.” –National Review’s David French

“[Hillary] Clinton’s role in Benghazi is particularly damaging because it risks becoming the signature legacy of her tenure at the State Department. Despite racking up an exhaustive travel record, Clinton had few actual achievements to show for her four years as Secretary of State – a burden as she contemplates her 2016 ambitions.” –columnist Joel B. Pollak

“It’s this corrupt and vengeful White House that wields the sharpest axes and biggest grindstones. The casualty count in Obama’s war on whistleblowers is double-digit. ATF insiders who testified before Congress about Obama’s Fast and Furious gun-running nightmare faced systemic retaliation and harassment – both from government supervisors who openly declared witch hunts against them and from liberal media water-carriers. … No stone will be left unturned in the effort to slime, sully and squelch the Benghazi truth-tellers. Mark my words: This is how Obama’s thugs roll.” –columnist Michelle Malkin

Insight

“A tax supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.” –author Isabel Paterson (1886-1961)

“Our federal tax system is, in short, utterly impossible, utterly unjust and completely counterproductive, [it] reeks with injustice and is fundamentally un-American.” –President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)

Essential Liberty

“The Founders believed … that government’s job was to protect our most basic rights so that we could pursue the individual dreams and ambitions that truly make America great…. But collective action is the necessary precondition for greater rights, says Obama. Therefore, standing up to government means standing for tyranny itself. Said Obama, ‘Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems; some of these same voices also doing their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave and creative and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.’ But it is Obama who has said that the people cannot be trusted with self-rule of the most basic sort. We cannot be trusted to handle our own health insurance. We cannot be trusted to vote correctly on issues like same-sex marriage…. We cannot be trusted to educate our children, or to hire our workers, or to own weapons to protect ourselves, or even to feed ourselves. Administrative government … represents Obama’s version of ‘self-rule.’ Obama’s rhetoric here is more than perverse – it is supremely dangerous. … A people that does not fear government oppression is not a free people. It is a subject people.” –columnist Ben Shapiro

Demo-gogues

Nothing to see here: “Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems; some of these same voices also doing their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave and creative and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.” –Barack Obama

Look in the mirror: “One of the things that bothers me most about the new Republican Party is how down on America they are.” –Joe Biden

Exempting himself, of course: “[M]ost of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States. … So we’ll keep increasing the pressure on gun traffickers who bring illegal guns into Mexico.” –Barack Obama

Remedial history needed: “The Second Amendment is not an absolute right; it is not a God given right. It [has] always had conditions upon it just like the First Amendment has. And this idea that the Second Amendment was put in there in order to allow citizens to fight their government is insane.” –Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT)


Say what? “We need to educate law-abiding gun owners, like myself – people that might belong to the NRA. … This [background check] bill not only protects your Second Amendment but expands the Second Amendment.” –Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV)

Government growth unending: “Bottom line is that the right wing, and I say the Tea Party, has made deficit reduction the main priority – the main economic priority, and I will tell you point blank that I do not think it is.” –Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ)

Wrong on right: “[A]lthough health care was not listed per se in the Constitution, it should be a constitutional right. And if you read the words, or quote the words of the Declaration of Independence, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident,’ that we have certain inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, one might argue that education and health care fall into those provisions of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” –Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX)

Dezinformatsia

Civility: “Send the guilty monsters directly to Guantanamo Bay for all eternity and let them rot in their own mental squalor. No, no, no. Not the wannabe sick kid who blew up the Boston marathon or the freak that’s mailing ricin-laced letters to the president. I’m talking about the real terrorist threat here in America: the National Rifle Association.” –Aurora (Colorado) Sentinel editor Dave Perry

Speaking of “criminally insane”: “[T]his is the NRA’s America. Guns for everybody. Gun shows for anyone who wants to buy one. And ladies and gentlemen, that means anyone. Felons, criminally insane, wife beaters. … And this NRA creed … is the de facto platform of the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln. Guns killed Lincoln. Killed James Garfield. Killed McKinley. Killed – almost killed Ronald Reagan. All that’s forgiven now by the NRA-infested Republican Party.” –MSNBC’s Chris Matthews

“The answer to our immigration issue is open borders. … Tear down the fences. Rip up the red tape. … Open borders attacks the root cause of Muslim extremism. … It’s Muslim poverty that’s threatening our security, not our immigration system. Giving these men the chance to work here could diminish their poverty, their anger, and their misunderstanding of the U.S. before they’re even radicalized. … Open borders will improve the world.” –MSNBC’s Touré

More civility: “[Obama’s] opponents – you talk about taking them out to dinner, making nice with them – these people politically want to cut his heart out and throw his liver to the dogs. That does make it very, very difficult to come on nice to them.” –Dan Rather

Newspulper Headlines:

ObamaCare Must Cover Ambien: “Senator Calls on Interior Dept. Not to Use Drones to Count Sheep” –DailyCaller.com

Yet Somehow They Never Get Elected: “AP Exclusive: Calif. Spends Big on Anti-Psychotics” –Associated Press

Longest Books Ever Written: “Obama Fatigue” –Commentary website

Breaking News From Genesis 3:13, 16: “FBI Names 1st Woman on ‘Most Wanted’ List” –Associated Press

Bottom Story of the Day: “Obama Dares Graduates to Reject Cynical Voices” –Associated Press

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

Village Idiots

Demonize opponents: “[W]e have an obligation to tell each other and to try to convince people that if they’re going with the NRA they’re going against the lives of our children and of you and me.” –New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Nonsense: “Can we just get to, first of all, how ridiculous it is for people to think that the Second Amendment protects them from tyranny? … Thinking the Second Amendment can protect you from tyranny, it’s like thinking the First Amendment protects you from Thor. It’s ridiculous. It’s nonsensical.” –HBO’s Bill Maher

One man’s terrorist… “Six thousand a week [were] being killed [in Vietnam] and I destroyed some property. Show me the equivalence [to the Boston Marathon bombing]. … I’m against violence. To conflate a group of fundamentalist people [in Boston] who are nihilistic in some way with a group of people who spent their lives trying to oppose the murder of 6,000 people a week… There’s no equivalence [with Boston]. Property damage. That’s what we did.” –former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers (We don’t expect the Boston bomber to secure tenure at a major university, either, so there’s that difference.)

Exaggerations: “[NBA player Jason] Collins’ action will save lives. This is no exaggeration: Fully one third of suicides among teenagers occur because of their sexuality. Collins will truly affect lives, too. Millions of kids will see that it is OK to be gay. No need for shame, no need for embarrassment, no need for hiding.” –former tennis star Martina Navratilova

Hot air: “Our climate is changing, the weather is becoming more intense. It’s going to cost a lot of money and a lot of lives. The big issue [is] how do we adapt, because it doesn’t look like the people who are in charge are going to do what it takes to really slow down this climate change, so we are going to have to adapt. And adapting is going to be very, very expensive.” –Democrat California Gov. Jerry Brown, reacting to the state’s intense early start to the fire season

Short Cuts

“President Obama turned into Chip Diller. Who is Chip Diller? He is the college boy who keeps screaming, ‘Remain calm! All is well!,’ as the town of Faber collapses around him at the end of ‘National Lampoon’s Animal House.’ With his own administration saying chemical weapons have been used in Syria, a Democratic senator saying ObamaCare has become a ‘train wreck,’ and others worrying that the failure to neutralize the Tsarnaev brothers before the Boston massacre indicates a systemic failure in the nation’s homeland defense, Obama spent an hour in a press conference [last week] Chip-Dillering America.” –columnist John Podhoretz

“White House spokesman Jay Carney said in response to a question about the Benghazi attack that it ‘happened a long time ago.’ Yeah, sorta like that Bush administration Obama keeps blaming everything on.” –Fred Thompson

“Janet Napolitano was grilled in Congress after Homeland Security ignored warnings about Tamerlan Tsarnaev. It was all there. You might suspect a political asylum seeker is a foreign-trained terrorist if after he’s granted asylum, he goes back home for six months.” –comedian Argus Hamilton

“Over the weekend President Obama gave the commencement speech at Ohio State University. He said, ‘I dare you to do better’ – to which the students yelled back, ‘No, we dare YOU to do better. We need jobs!’” –comedian Jay Leno

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