The Foundation

“In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.” –George Washington

Government & Politics

Reading the Tea Leaves

When we step back and view Tuesday’s tempest in a teapot, one common theme emerges: Voters rejected the status quo. Except in Arkansas and Iowa, they didn’t. Go figure. The Tea Party movement did flex its muscles a bit but suffered some defeats as well. So we emerge with little more than the usual muddied political picture and a lot of prognostication about what this means for November.

In California, Democrats retreaded old tires in Sen. Barbara Boxer, first elected in 1992, and former two-term Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown, first elected in 1974, to run for governor again. These two establishment relics will face two Silicon Valley millionaire Republicans – former eBay CEO Meg Whitman for governor and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina for Senate. Both ran on more or less conservative platforms, promising to tackle runaway government. In the We’re-Out-of-Golden State, their business experience could be an asset – if they stick to limited-government principles.

Incumbent Democrat Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas narrowly avoided becoming the third senator to lose a primary this year by defeating Lt. Gov. Bill Halter 52-48 in a runoff. Halter was backed heavily by Big Labor, while Lincoln, who was first sent to Washington a dozen years ago and boasted the backing of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, managed to paint the unions as Washington special interests. She’s right, of course, but talk about the pot and the kettle.

South Carolina saw perhaps the greatest conservative rebuke of big government incumbency. Six-term Republican Congressman Bob Inglis finally ran out of good will after supporting TARP and cap-n-tax legislation, as well as telling constituents to avoid watching Fox News’ Glenn Beck. Inglis managed just 28 percent of the vote, and faces a runoff on June 22 against Spartanburg County, SC, prosecutor Trey Gowdy, who built a large early lead and finished substantially ahead of Inglis, arguing that the latter was too moderate. Also, Tea Party-backed state legislator Nikki Haley vociferously denied allegations of marital infidelity and hauled in 49 percent of the vote in a crowded field for governor. She too faces a runoff against Rep. Gresham Barrett, though she likely will prevail.

Then there’s the curious case of South Carolina Democrat Senate candidate Alvin Greene. Somehow, he couldn’t afford an attorney in November to defend him against charges of showing obscene images to a University of South Carolina student but managed to plunk down the $10,400 filing fee to run for office four months later – and then won the primary. Some Democrats are wondering how he slipped through the cracks. Easy – he’s a Democrat.

Perhaps the biggest Tea Party victory came in Nevada, where former state legislator Sharron Angle rocketed from single-digit support to win the GOP nomination for Senate, defeating better known and better financed Republicans Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian. In November, Angle will face Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, one of the most unpopular politicians on any ballot this year. Reid immediately unleashed his multi-million dollar war chest with attack ads painting Angle as “extremist,” and indications are that he’s pleased by her victory. He is, however, trailing Angle by double digits in initial polls.

Democrats have controlled Congress for nearly four years and have enjoyed absolute power since Barack Obama strolled into office 17 months ago. During that time, they have run roughshod over the Constitution by piling up astronomical deficits, nationalizing financial institutions and other private businesses and ramming through a government takeover of the best health care system in the world – all while blaming their Republican predecessors for breaking the bank. Will voters rebuke them by handing control of Congress back to Republicans? Both houses seem potentially winnable, but the GOP will have to offer a better, more articulate alternative than just, “Hey, we’re not them.”

News From the Swamp: Senate Fails to Pass Limitations on EPA

The Senate took up the EPA Resolution of Disapproval introduced by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) this week, but it failed to pass Thursday night, 47-53. Six Democrats voted with Republicans: Evan Bayh (IN), Mary Landrieu (LA), Blanche Lincoln (AR), Ben Nelson (NE), Mark Pryor (AR) and Jay Rockefeller (WV).

The resolution would have blocked the EPA from implementing cap-n-tax restrictions by bureaucratic fiat, thus retaining that power for Congress. Under the Congressional Review Act that was part of the “Contract with America,” Congress has the authority to veto any “major rule” by a regulatory agency within 60 days of its passage. Murkowski’s fellow Alaska senator, Mark Begich, a Democrat, opposed the measure because the EPA’s regulations put pressure on the Senate to pass cap-n-tax. “The danger if Murkowski were to become law,” said Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO), “is that there isn’t the immediate incentive to put a price on carbon.” The White House, knowing that great power was at stake, threatened to veto the resolution.

Earlier this year, Obama’s hard-left EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson declared carbon dioxide, which is required for all life on earth, a pollutant subject to their regulation. Of course, it did this based on junk science from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The EPA can therefore use its regulatory authority to intrude upon every area of our lives in implementing cap-n-tax restrictions – all without the vote of our elected representatives, who by defeating this measure abdicated their own constitutional authority. The regulations will go into effect in January.

From the Left: Kagan Hearings

Senate confirmation hearings are set to begin on June 28 for Elena Kagan, Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee. Kagan’s aspiration to be a justice on America’s highest court runs back as far as she or anyone who knows her can remember. With that single-minded goal, she’s left little public evidence as to her ideological leanings – lest her far-left views scuttle her nomination. There is evidence to be found, though, if conservatives dig deep and have time to review the material before Democrats move her nomination through the Senate.

The just-released 46,500 pages from the Clinton Library and from Justice Thurgood Marshall’s papers at the Library of Congress give us a sneak peek at the extent of Kagan’s liberalism. In numerous memos and internal comments, she has expressed support for late-term abortion, strict gun control laws, doctor-assisted patient suicide and same-sex marriage. Right now, the public doesn’t seem to have much of an opinion about Kagan, and that’s the way the White House wants it. When she makes her presence known on the Court, people will certainly receive an education.

PR Offensive for ObamaCare

Months after signing ObamaCare into law, the White House is working with a group of leftist supporters to craft a $125 million messaging campaign to sell it to the American public. The multi-trillion dollar monstrosity hasn’t exactly grown in popularity as the Obama-Pelosi-Reid triumvirate had hoped. In fact, a steadily growing majority of the public in poll after poll believes the bill should be repealed and replaced with something more cost effective and more private-sector oriented.

This new campaign will be run by the Health Information Center and feature input from former Sen. Tom Daschle, Ted Kennedy widow Victoria Kennedy, former White House Communications Director and Maoist wannabe Anita Dunn and a number of other left-luminaries and communications personnel. The cash to run the operation will come from unions, corporations and Democrat donors. (Of course, those special interests receive most of their money from government contracts, which means we are paying for this propaganda.) Obama’s team expects to be intimately involved, and the administration has a number of high-profile public events planned in the weeks leading up to the midterm elections. Whether this effort will actually stem the expected anti-Democrat tide sweeping the country is hard to say, but so far the more Americans have learned about ObamaCare, the more they dislike it. Keeping it in the public eye could end up backfiring badly for the White House. We can hope.

National Security

Flotillas to Head the Other Direction?

Is what’s good for the Israeli goose also good for the Turkish gander? We may soon find out. As detailed last week, the “international community” predictably condemned Israel after its soldiers defended themselves from iron pipe- and knife-wielding “peace activists” on board the Turkish-flagged, Gaza-bound, blockade-running “Love Boat.” This week, some creative Israeli thinkers sought to turn the tables on Turkey’s leaders to see if they truly care about “oppressed minorities” or are just hypocrites out to get Israel.

Several plans emerged for what are being called “reverse flotillas” that will highlight Turkey’s (and the world’s) “shameless hypocrisy.” The most ambitious flotilla, developed by Israel’s National Student Union, intends to sail to Turkey with humanitarian aid for the “oppressed people of Turkish Kurdistan” and the “Turkish Armenian minority.” National Students Union chairman Boaz Torporovsky said, “Turkey, which leads the campaign against Israel and makes all sorts of threats, is the same Turkey that carried out a holocaust and murdered an entire nation of Armenians and oppresses a minority larger than the Palestinians – the Kurds – who deserve a state, who have demanded a state for longer than the state of Israel has existed.” In a classic understatement, Torporovsky added, “It’s absurd that they always put the Israeli occupation in the headlines and don’t talk about extreme Islamic terror. There’s a lot of hypocrisy in the world.”

Another flotilla to Cyprus will “call for an end to the Turkish occupation” of the northern half of that island, while still others may meet any additional Gaza-bound blockade runners at sea in a dangerous attempt to show which really is the peaceful side.

While it remains to be seen if the Israeli groups can pull off any of these flotillas, as money and materiel are still needed, the reaction of the world community and media is predictable: They will either ignore the flotillas or attack them outright. Still, these plans are clever, and the eyes of some may be opened while the hypocrisy of others will be there for all to see.

In other news, Barack Obama announced a new $400 million aid package for the Palestinians. He described the situation in blockaded Gaza as “unsustainable” and called on both sides, again, to work together. That works only if both parties are interested, however, and the Palestinians, for the most part, clearly are not. And nothing says to an ally “We’re behind you” like a $400 million knife in their back.

On Cross-Examination

“At the New Republic, Leon Wieseltier writes that Israel has lost ‘the all-important war for symbols and meanings, to Hamas.’ Somehow, among all the wars and skirmishes and ambushes that define Israeli existence and threaten to erase the Jewish state, I find it hard to swallow Wieseltier’s post-modern competition ‘for symbols and meanings’ as ‘the all important war.’ Ethan Bronner writes, in the New York Times, ‘the world powers have grown increasingly disillusioned with the blockade, saying that it has created far too much suffering in Gaza and serves as a symbol not only of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians but of how the West is seen in relation to the Palestinians.’ You know what else the blockade serves as? A blockade. It separates Israel’s sworn enemies from those who would help them arm and kill Israelis. Oh, and by the way, as a blockade – and not a symbol – the blockade works.” –columnist Abe Greenwald

UN Levels (More) Sanctions on Iran

The UN Security Council on Wednesday passed Resolution 1929, the sixth dealing with Iran’s nuclear program and the fourth that levies sanctions on Iran. UNSCR 1929 stiffened the language used in previous resolutions regarding arms imports to Iran, replacing UNSCR 1747’s previous language that contained infinite wiggle room with the narrower language, “All states shall prevent the supply, sale or transfer” of arms. This change should provide the legal authority to stop ships or intercept aircraft attempting to deliver conventional arms to Iran, although the pending Russian sale of the SA-20 surface-to-air missile was grandfathered as the quid pro quo for Russia’s vote. UNSCR 1929 also increased existing sanctions on Iranian banking and made it illegal for Iran to “acquire an interest in any commercial activity in another state involving uranium mining, production or use of nuclear materials or technology.” Sound familiar? It’s an open secret that Iran has been seeking uranium in Africa – just as Iraq did prior to 2003.

However, UNSCR 1929 contains no sanctions on Iran’s imports of refined gasoline and no sanctions on Iranian oil exports. Also, several key banks were exempted, at China’s insistence, from the financial limitations imposed. Without any real teeth, UNSCR 1929 will have no more impact than its predecessors.

Even worse, Iran successfully split the vote in the UNSC at 12-2, with Brazil and Turkey voting against and Lebanon abstaining. While 12-2 may look impressive at first glance, consider that 20 percent of the UNSC’s 15 members refused to support the measure – even with the watered-down terms. In the previous five UNSCRs, involving 75 individual votes cast, there was one “No” and one “Abstain,” while the other 97 percent were “Yes” votes. Hezbollah’s minority presence in the Lebanese government made a “yes” vote from Beirut impossible, but Turkish and Brazilian support for Iran is a disaster. Turkey will be replaced at year’s end, but Lebanon and Brazil will remain UNSC members through the end of 2011. Predictably, the Leftmedia trumpeted these sanctions as an Obama victory. Don’t buy it.

Trouble at Arlington

“The Army has stripped its top two managers overseeing Arlington National Cemetery of their authority and appointed a new executive director after an internal investigation found that potentially hundreds of remains have been misidentified to misplaced,” Fox News reports. “[T]he cemetery’s superintendent, John Metzler, will be under supervision until he retires next month, and Metzler’s deputy, Thurman Higgenbotham, has been placed on administrative leave.” At least 211 remains have been identified as possibly mislabeled or misplaced, and there could be more. More than 300,000 soldiers and others have been buried at Arlington since the War Between the States, with an average of 30 funerals there each day.

Business & Economy

Regulatory Commissars: Kicking Tail and Taking Names

The Deepwater Horizon gusher in the Gulf is still dominating the news, and in the spirit of never letting a crisis go to waste, the administration has blocked all deepwater drilling and production for six months to give a presidential commission time to find someone else to blame. The administration promises, however, to move quickly to release new rules for work in shallow water. This moratorium likely will force most deepwater rigs into foreign waters, perhaps never to return. It could wipe out thousands of jobs and perhaps billions of dollars in economic activity, as well as threaten a major portion of the nation’s energy supply and the entire Gulf economy. To pour salt water into the wound, Obama expects BP to cover the wages of workers affected by his moratorium. An astounding 80 percent of the Gulf’s oil production comes from operations in waters deeper than 1,000 feet, and one-third of all U.S.-produced oil and gas comes from the Gulf.

To achieve his goal, Obama leaned on the experts. The Interior Department’s report on the spill claimed, “The recommendations contained in this report have been peer-reviewed by seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering.” Not so fast, say the seven experts. While they broadly agreed with the report, including a proposed suspension of new deep water permits, they later issued a scathing response to administration claims, saying that a “blanket moratorium … is not the answer. It will not measurably reduce risk further and it will have a lasting impact on the nation’s economy which may be greater than that of the oil spill.”

Hmm … didn’t this administration promise to “take the politics out of science”?

Obama also continues talking tough to at least look like he’s “doing something”: “I was down there a month ago,” he bragged, “before most of these talking heads were even paying attention to the Gulf. A month ago I was meeting with fishermen down there, standing in the rain, talking about what a potential crisis this could be.” So he was “standing in the rain and talking.” What leadership!

The erstwhile community organizer didn’t stop there. “I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar,” he said. “We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers so I know whose ass to kick.” What dignity!

The BIG Whiner

“This is not theater. … I don’t always have time to perform for the benefit of the cable shows.” –Barack Obama complaining about what a tough job he has – when he’s not partying, jetting, or golfing

Income Redistribution: Astronomical Debt

According to data released last week by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the annual federal deficit is poised to top $1 trillion by June 16. From Oct. 1, 2009, the start of the federal fiscal year, to May 31, 2010, Washington added an astounding $941 billion in new debt, representing an average borrowing rate of $3.9 billion per day. All told, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) projects the federal deficit this fiscal year will hit $1.55 trillion – the highest in dollar terms in U.S. history and more than triple 2008’s level.

Interestingly, as CNSNews reports, last year’s record $1.41 trillion deficit “was supposed to be an historical anomaly” due to the TARP bailout and the $787 billion stimu-less package (frightfully of which only 50 percent has actually been spent). Well, the one-year anomaly has now become a two-year “anomaly.”

Purportedly to help cut spending, the administration has requested 5 percent cuts in agency budgets. Only not really. The Washington Post notes that “[t]o encourage cooperation” among the agencies, Barack Obama wants to let them keep half the “savings” for, you guessed it, new spending. Kind of like refusing a cupcake and rewarding yourself with an éclair. To quote Thomas Jefferson, “The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

Census Bureau ‘Saves’ Money … By Spending It

While Barack Obama wants to incentivize budget cuts by authorizing new spending, the U.S. Census Bureau has concocted its own way to cut costs: over-hire. As CNSNews reports, the Census Bureau intentionally hired and trained more employees than needed, claiming this to be a “cost-saving measure.” In a memo to Census Bureau Director Robert Groves, Todd Zinser of the Commerce Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) wrote that in one case “many enumerator teams … [were] unnecessarily large – an average ratio of one enumerator for just seven homeless respondents.” Additionally, OIG “observed significant periods of enumerator inactivity at certain locations.” Far from cutting expenses, these scenarios actually “increased … direct labor and travel costs.” Shocking, we know.

Not surprisingly, Obama is capitalizing on the Bureau’s waste and overspending to tout economic recovery. He recently claimed that the 431,000 new jobs reported for May show “the economy is getting stronger by the day.” Never mind that 411,000 of those jobs are temporary and often unnecessary census workers.

To recap: Spend (taxpayer) money you don’t have to hire workers you don’t need to create jobs that won’t last, and then call it savings and growth. Change we can believe in, no?

Culture & Policy

The Hearse Comes for the Hearst Columnist

The end of an error. Thus we describe far-left field White House press corpse reporter Helen Thomas’s sudden “retirement.” The 89-year-old journalist found herself out in the cold after making incendiary comments about the state of Israel, as well as the Jewish people in general.

“Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine,” Thomas told rabbilive.com’s Rabbi David Nesenoff, “Remember, these people [the Palestinians] are occupied and it’s their land and it’s not Germany and it’s not Poland. … They should go home. … [To] Poland. Germany. And America and everywhere else.” To add insult to injury, she said this during a celebration of Jewish heritage at the White House.

When made public, her statement ignited fury across the political spectrum and ended Thomas’s 57-year career within a matter of days. She was dropped by her speakers’ bureau, and the Walt Whitman High School in DC withdrew her invitation to speak at commencement. Thomas immediately issued a woefully inadequate apology, trying to explain away her comments as her hope for peace in the Middle East. If that were the case, she would have said so to Rabbi Nesenoff, instead of making her bilious and blatantly anti-Semitic remarks.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs rushed to assure us that her statement does not reflect the feelings of the administration. Why, pray tell, would anyone assume that they did, unless the White House had already appeared to have anti-Israel leanings? Wethinks they doth protest too much.

Other liberals professed shock and outrage as only liberals trying to cover their backsides can. As Jonah Goldberg of National Review pointed out, these comments are nothing more than vintage Helen Thomas. Her biased journalism and “slimy” methods have been tolerated by the Left for decades. Only now, when there is absolutely no defense for her behavior, is she being called on the carpet and stripped of her special seat in the White House press room. “Suddenly,” Goldberg wrote, “all of these people and groups are stunned to discover that Helen Thomas is … Helen Thomas.”

Much has been made of the fact that Thomas became a successful journalist in a time when there were few women in the field. Indeed, she was the first female member of the National Press Club, the White House Correspondents Association and the Gridiron Club. Isn’t it a shame, some ask, that such a trailblazer for women’s rights has gone down in flames this way? The answer is no. What is a shame is to have had such a raging bigot championed by the Leftmedia for all of these years. Besides, there have been many trailblazing men who also have been toppled by one scandal. Welcome to equality, ladies.

On Cross-Examination

“To be fair, it is entirely possible that [Helen] Thomas was a great reporter in her prime, many decades ago, and that she outlasted not only her abilities but also the memory of them. There do seem to be people who still remember that there used to be people who remembered that she used to be good at what she did.” –Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto

Judicial Benchmarks: Kentucky Ruling on Ten Commandments

“A split federal appeals panel yesterday upheld a ban on including the Ten Commandments in displays that featured multiple religious and government documents at two southern Kentucky courthouses,” the Associated Press reports. “The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled 2-1 in American Civil Liberties Union v. McCreary County that the permanent injunction barring McCreary and Pulaski counties from posting the displays could remain in place.”

In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that such a ban is constitutional if the display has a predominantly religious purpose, but if documents such as the Ten Commandments were part of an educational or historical display, they are permissible. The Court then sent the case back to federal district court in Kentucky for further hearings.

Judge Eric Clay wrote, “The fact that Defendants seek to minimize the residue of religious purpose does not mean that Plaintiffs do not suffer continuing irreparable injury so long as the display remains on the walls of the county courthouses.” Irreparable injury? Seriously? This latest ruling, of course, comes out of the grossly misunderstood concept of separation of church and state. We expect nothing less from an activist judiciary.

From the ‘Non Compos Mentis’ File

Political correctness is a widely and deeply spread mental illness permeating our culture. Fox News reports on a small publishing company that is putting warning labels on some of its published materials, though this isn’t just any published materials.

Wilder Publications warns readers of its reprints of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, Common Sense, the Articles of Confederation, and the Federalist Papers, among others, that “This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today.”

The disclaimer goes on to tell parents that they “might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work.”

We might remind the folks at Wilder that the Constitution is an operable legal document (despite what the federal government does to it on a regular basis). You won’t find such warnings on our Essential Liberty Guide, but there should certainly be similar warnings on most legislation that comes from Washington.

Second Amendment: Cutting Crime the Old-Fashioned Way

There are few occasions when we can be cheerful about something Barack Obama helped to achieve, but here’s a rare case. Recently released FBI data showed that the number of murders nationwide dropped 7.2 percent between 2008 and 2009 to its lowest level in 45 years. Some would say it’s that hope ‘n’ change thing working out for us, but perhaps the real truth comes from another statistic: Nearly 2.5 million more people purchased firearms in the period from November 2008 to October 2009 than in the previous year. Perhaps the president should be named “Gun Salesman of the Year.” There’s no question that Obama’s political background – hailing from Chicago with one of the most draconian anti-gun cities in the nation – convinced people that they might just want to take advantage of their Second Amendment rights while they still can.

Those Chicago laws may soon be a thing of the past, though, as the Supreme Court decides on the McDonald v. City of Chicago case in the new few weeks. Perhaps that body will symbolically stick Chicago’s gun-grabbing laws, to paraphrase Mayor Richard Daley, “up the butt” of the anti-Second Amendment crowd and allow citizens there to reassert their rights.

Given the release of these statistics, Daley’s latest anti-gun rant is all the more ironic. “Criminals have far more access to guns today than in the history of this country, and that is frightening to America,” he lamented. “We have to do something about it. You cannot live in America as the Wild West.” (See above statistics, Richard.) He concluded, “Access to guns will destroy America faster than any other war.” Funny that America wouldn’t exist if the colonists hadn’t had guns.

To Keep and Bear Arms

John Lee had just parked at his apartment complex in Palmetto Bay, Florida, when he was approached by three men dressed in black. The suspects, in their late teens to mid-twenties, didn’t give Lee time to fulfill their demands before they opened fire on him, shooting him four times. Lee says, “The first bullet caught me in the hand and spun me around. I reached for [my gun]. I started firing my gun.” The three suspects then took off. Lee initially didn’t realize that he had also been struck in the abdomen; concerned only with his arm and hand wounds, he then looked down and saw two more bullet wounds. “If I hadn’t had my gun on me,” he said, “I wouldn’t be talking to you right now. They would have finished me off.”

And Last…

Did you know…? The Patriot Post‘s Digest represents a collaborative effort of more than 30 contributors and editors who bring their passion and expertise from all walks of life. Thursday and Friday in particular represent some pretty long days (and nights), as we refine our publication to ensure an accurate and penetrating analysis of the week’s news, policy and opinion. Indeed, this is what you, our readers, have come to expect over the last 14 years. While most volunteer their time and efforts and the rest receive only a meager salary (trust us!), we do have substantial overhead costs for technical service, office space, legal expenses and so forth.

If you find today’s Digest interesting, inspiring or informative, we humbly ask that you consider donating to The Patriot’s Annual Fund with a secure online donation. Or, if you prefer to support us by mail, please use our printable donor form.

Free bonus! For a donation of $26, we will send you a free copy of our popular Essential Liberty Guide, a vital resource containing the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, an inspiring historical introduction, and much more. For donations of $52 or more, you will receive four free copies, and for donations of $100 or more, you will receive 10 copies. (Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery.)

Thank you and God bless!

Nate Jackson
Managing Editor