The Patriot Post® · Wednesday Short Cuts

Insight: “To say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?” —Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859)

Observations: “Remember when liberals used to say they believed in privacy rights? Remember when they used to say, ‘Government should get out of the bedroom’? … This was their clarion call to promote unrestricted abortion and so forth, the use of condoms and just on and on and on. But apparently the federal government shouldn’t get out of our public bathrooms. … So radical is this pathetic administration, so dangerous, so diabolical that even our bathrooms aren’t safe.” —Mark Levin

For the record: “For more than 20 years, LGBT activists have sought to amend federal law through the so-called Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a bill that would essentially add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes within federal nondiscrimination law. For more than 20 years, LGBT activists have failed. ENDA hasn’t passed even when Democrats controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress.” —David French on the NC bathroom controversy

Non Compos Mentis: “[N]one of us can stand by when a state enters the business of legislating identity and insists that a person pretend to be something or someone that they are not.” —Attorney General Loretta Lynch

“If anybody knows anything about EPA and writing rules — we rock at it. We do them legally. We do them on the basis of sound science.” —EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy

Tax return evasion: “There’s nothing to learn from them.” —Donald Trump announcing he will NOT release his tax returns

And last… “The litmus test in the new Republican Party boils down to loyalty, not to a principle or conviction, but to a man: Trump. It’s a cult of personality, pure and simple.” —Jonah Goldberg