The Patriot Post® · Friday Short Cuts

Insight: “Everybody is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.” —Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

For the record: “Candidates must shape policies that appeal to a broad range of people, not just coastal liberals or southern conservatives. Just how badly did Hillary Clinton fail in that regard? In a nation of 3,142 counties, parishes, and boroughs, Hillary Clinton won less than five hundred of them. The left’s interpretation of that loss is to attack Trump voters as bigots, racists and homophobes. But increasingly we are seeing true bigotry on the left. They are, on a near daily basis, affirming so many people’s votes for Donald Trump. —Erick Erickson

A bridge too far: "BuzzFeed can’t argue that the same-sex-marriage issue is ethically settled, because it isn’t for a sizable population of our country and our world. It is no longer okay — indeed, it never was — to write cutesy articles shaming religious people as homophobic for simply being one of the many millions of Americans in 2016 who attend a religious congregation that does not support same-sex marriage. That is not a good move for activism or journalism.” —homosexual Brandon Ambrosino in The Washington Post

Wishful thinking: “I thought I’d just come by and tell you how exhilarated I am by the strong vote that I have from my colleagues as we go forward. … This is so much bigger than politics. It’s about the character of America, the responsibility to the people, our obligation to our founders, our gratitude to our men and women in uniform and our respect for the aspirations of America’s children and our families.” —Nancy Pelosi

Braying Jackass: “I know that the president-elect has indicated that he deserves credit for … [the Carrier] announcement, and I guess what I would observe is that if he is successful in doing that 804 more times, then he will meet the record of manufacturing jobs that were created in the United States while President Obama was in office. There were 805,000 manufacturing jobs that weren’t just protected or saved, but actually created while President Obama was in office.” —Josh Earnest

And last… “The death of Fidel Castro reminds us that the respectable press, the ‘two-sources’ press, the press that enforces standards and performs reality checks and practices ‘shoe leather’ journalism and all that, has been peddling ‘fake news’ about Cuba and Castro for 60 years.” —Mona Charen