The Foundation

“Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.” –James Madison

Essential Liberty

“[A] top IRS executive admitted Friday that, beginning in 2010, the agency had specifically targeted for possible audits conservative groups with the words ‘tea party’ or ‘patriot’ in their names. Then over the weekend, we learned that that the IRS also targeted groups that ‘criticize how the country is being run.’ In March 2012, then-IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman told Congress that the IRS was not targeting conservatives in any way, a claim contradicted by the Associated Press, which reported that senior IRS officials were notified about the targeting of conservative groups back in 2011. … Obama’s two biggest second term agenda items are: 1) the implementation of Obamacare, which will largely be done by the IRS and the Department of Health and Human Services; and 2) passage of immigration reform, which will require convincing conservatives that the federal government will implement border security after the 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the country are granted amnesty. Both items were a tough sell before last Friday. Now they are even tougher.” –Washington Examiner’s Conn Carroll

Political Futures

“On Friday, an Obama administration with an already appalling track record of scandals added an equally egregious revelation to the list. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) apologized for what they characterized as an ‘inappropriate’ targeting of tax-exempt conservative organizations, whose names included ‘Tea Party’ or ‘Patriot,’ during the 2012 election campaign. … In other words, the Obama administration has another burgeoning scandal on its hands. Yet if one couples the administration’s penchant for political calculation with a media determined to protect Obama and company at all costs, another scandal may be exactly what is needed right now. At the precise moment when the Benghazi atrocity is reaching critical mass, the public is forced to pay attention to yet another seeming abuse of power. As one scandal piles on top of another, including the green energy scandal, and the Fast and Furious gun running scandal, the White House intel leaks, the Benghazi coverup and now an abusive IRS – all of which have engendered stonewalling from the White House, as well as ongoing investigations – a pattern emerges. At this point, however, one can only hope the public has not reached ‘information overload’ and is not tuning events out on account of so much malfeasance occurring in such rapid succession. One can rest assured, the Obama administration is counting on this public uninterestedness. Obviously, such cynical calculations would have to be based on an almost unprecedented level of contempt for the public by the administration and its media water-carriers. There is little doubt that both the administration and the left-wing media establishment are more than up to the task.” –columnist Arnold Ahlert

Insight

“Legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways; hence, there are an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, bonuses, subsidies, incentives, the progressive income tax, free education, the right to employment, the right to profit, the right to wages, the right to relief, the right to the tools of production, interest free credit, etc., etc. And it the aggregate of all these plans, in respect to what they have in common, legal plunder, that goes under the name of socialism.” –French economist Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)

Government

“Hillary Clinton had denied ever seeing Ambassador Stevens’s warnings about deteriorating security in Libya on the grounds that ‘1.43 million cables come to my office’ – and she can’t be expected to see all of them, or any. … Are murdered ambassadors like those 1.43 million cables she doesn’t read? Just too many of them to keep track of? No. Only six had been killed in the history of the republic – seven, if you include Arnold Raphel, who perished in General Zia’s somewhat mysterious plane crash in Pakistan in 1988. … Hicks is now America’s head man in the country, and the cabinet secretary to whom he reports says, ‘Leave a message after the tone and I’ll get back to you before the end of the week.’ Just to underline the difference here: Libya’s head of government calls [whistleblower Gregory] Hicks, but nobody who matters in his own government can be bothered to. … A real government would be scrambling furiously to see what it could do to rescue its people. … Chris Stevens was the poster boy for Obama’s view of the Arab Spring; he agreed with the president on everything that mattered. The only difference is that he wasn’t in Vegas but out there on the front line, where Obama’s delusions meet reality. Stevens believed in those illusions enough to die for them. One cannot say the same about the hollow men and women in Washington who sent him out there unprotected, declined to lift a finger when he came under attack, and in the final indignity subordinated his sacrifice to their political needs by lying over his corpse.” –National Review’s Mark Steyn

Opinion in Brief

“Why couldn’t the administration tolerate the idea that Benghazi was a planned terrorist event? Because they didn’t want this attack dominating the headline with an election coming. It would open the administration to criticism of its intervention in Libya. … In the weeks and months after the attack White House spokesmen said they were investigating the story, an internal review was under way. When the story blew open again, last week, they said it was too far in the past: ‘Benghazi happened a long time ago.’ Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, really said that. Think of that. They can’t give answers when the story’s fresh because it just happened, they’re looking into it. Eight months later they don’t have anything to say because it all happened so long ago. Think of how low your opinion of the American people has to be to think you can get away, forever, with that. … It’s a prime example of the stupidity of all-politics-all-the-time. You make some bad moves for political reasons. And then you suffer politically because you made bad moves.” –columnist Peggy Noonan

Re: The Left

“In the wake of Benghazi, the country endured an intense debate over how much free speech we could afford because of the savage intolerance of rioters half a world away. Obama and Clinton fueled this debate by incessantly blaming the video – as if the First Amendment was the problem. Clinton and Obama both swore oaths to support and defend the Constitution. But after failing to support and defend Americans left to die, they blamed the Constitution for their failure. That’s what difference it makes.” –columnist Jonah Goldberg

Reader Comments

“As an executive appointee with the Obama administration (yes, there are a few of us in DC who have retained our appointments even though we have now seen the light) I must say that nowhere have I seen analysis on Benghazi as good as Alexander’s Special Report. I might add, his assertions about both the DoS response to the attack, and the White House scrubbing of the talking points, are bold and accurate.” –Obama administration SES (Name Withheld on Request), Maryland

“From a retired Naval Aviator: Mark Alexander’s Friday Special Report on Benghazi is a powerful reminder of why I support The Patriot Post. When will the MSM actually do what they are supposed to do – investigate rather than politicize?” –Peter in Wodinville, Washington

“Tyranny? What Tyranny? was a fine essay, but I wish you had begun Barack Obama’s quote one sentence earlier. I found that sentence to be very interesting: ‘This country cannot accomplish great things if we pursue nothing greater than our own individual ambitions.’ More than anything else among all that blather, this seems to be the core of Obama’s philosophy. He thinks it is ‘the country’ which achieves things (great or otherwise), rather than the individuals who comprise it. He also clearly thinks that ‘the country’ is somehow separate from, and greater than, its people, and that our ‘individual ambitions’ are merely obstacles to its ‘success’ (as he would define it). He is, of course, wrong on all counts.” –Laird in South Carolina

The Gipper

“I’ve come to believe there is little, if any, honesty in the media, and ethic is a word they are totally unfamiliar with.” –Ronald Reagan

For the Record

“The president finds himself in a terrible dilemma with Syria – partly one of his own making, partly also due to the lose-lose nature of the Middle East. … He appreciates how Iraq imploded the second term of the George W. Bush presidency. Without that unpopular war, fierce antiwar critic but otherwise relatively unknown and untried Barack Obama might have never won the Democratic presidential primary. … Without a credible follow-up of using force, Obama’s once-soaring warnings have become stale and no longer earn any deterrence. Even a Nobel Peace Prize laureate can only so many times thunder about ‘red lines’ and ‘game changers.’ … In the end, we are left only with hope for change. Maybe Iran and North Korea will come to their senses and behave. Maybe Assad will finally fall. Maybe the Syrian insurgents will prove to be pro-American democrats after all. And maybe opportunistic senators and journalists will not play politics and one day abandon the very policies that they once urged their president to adopt. And then again, maybe not.” –historian Victor Davis Hanson

Faith and Family

“It is truly frightening to see the level to which political correctness has infected the minds of the American people, instilling in us fear to speak out against obvious lies and insane policies lest we be labeled as a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, xenophobe, or some other form of menace to civil society. … Each day, we are treated to more and more news stories in which truth is not only ignored, but actively shunned, with those proclaiming truth castigated and hunted down with verbal pitchforks by the angry liberals of the social and media elite. … These behaviors are destructive to society and to us as individuals. Just because we blithely ignore the truth does not mean that the consequences won’t find us. … For those of us who embrace biblical Christianity and traditional morality, we must be active defenders of that faith, and of our freedom to express it publicly and privately. We can and should treat those that disagree with us with dignity and respect, even as we challenge their erroneous positions. We can, as they say, disagree without being disagreeable. But a failure to defend these principles means capitulation and defeat without a fight, and all of the damaging consequences that go with it. If we fail to fight, we should not be surprised, nor complain, when the destruction arrives on our doorstep.” –PatriotPost Grassroots contributor Louis DeBroux

Culture

“What the elite teach is not only futile but counterproductive. For example, speaking standard English in an English-speaking country is critical for self-improvement. But that’s not the lesson from the nation’s multiculturalists, who call for the celebration of native languages and dialects. Sloppy-minded academics and assorted hustlers have taught that poor English, gangsta rap, men wearing pigtails and thug behavior should not be criticized but become a part of the celebration of diversity. Black people could benefit from an honest examination of the bill of goods they’ve been sold. Such an examination would not come from black politicians, civil rights leaders or the black and white liberal elite. Those people have benefited politically and financially from keeping black Americans in a constant state of grievance based on alleged racial discrimination. The long-term solution for the problems that many black Americans face begins with an absolute rejection of the self-serving agenda of hustlers and poverty pimps.” –economist Walter E. Williams

The Last Word

“So the State Department has asked the creator of the 3D gun design to remove the blueprint from his site. Because, you know, you can totally block people from downloading something – especially by drawing attention to it with a government crackdown. Smart move, people. Totally got all that toothpaste back in the tube. Love how our government is basically filled with Einsteins – no matter where you turn, there’s a bureaucrat with crazy hair and a mustache. Like Einstein. Well, 3D gun printing has been stopped now and forever. Anything else we should talk about? Benghazi? No? Hillary in 2016? Alright.” –humorist Frank J. Fleming

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