The looming threat of a Republican-led U.S. has sparked a movement among U.S. Senators from both sides of the aisle. Pro-pot federal lawmakers are currently pushing to get two pieces of cannabis banking legislation passed before year-end: the SAFE act and the HOPE act.

Don’t be fooled—this legislation isn’t providing safety or hope to anyone.

A bipartisan coalition, which includes U.S. Senate Banking Chairman Sherrod Brown (D-OH), U.S. Senators Steve Daines (R-MT) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) met with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) last week to discuss passing the SAFE Banking Act (S. 910) during the lame-duck session. The SAFE Act, which would make it easier for cannabis businesses to take out business loans and open bank accounts, has already bounced around in the house a good bit, but has stagnated in the U.S. Senate, unable to satisfy either conservatives or progressives.

The bill, however, may pick up steam, and seems likely to pass. Progressives have opposed the bill, calling the bill hypocritical: they are unwilling to support a bill that would benefit weed businesses while many people are still imprisoned for marijuana-related offenses. Apparently this blatant moral posturing has been compelling, as some Republicans have voiced their support of a companion bill, the HOPE Act.

The HOPE Act (H.R. 6129), introduced by U.S. Representatives David Joyce (R-OH) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), is an expungement bill. The bill offers federal grants to states to offset the administrative and financial burden of expunging cannabis offenses from criminals’ records. These bills come on the heels of a bill proposing the expansion of medical marijuana research, passed in the Senate by unanimous consent just last Wednesday.

It remains to be seen whether the HOPE Act is still a bridge too far for many Republicans (or their constituencies, at least). The SAFE Act does, however, appear to have significant Republican support, though many Democrats are opposed to it, believing that the bill doesn’t go far enough.

We’re all accustomed to this sort of thing from progressive legislators. Their only guiding principle seems to be the introduction of vice into society—weed bills like the SAFE Act and the HOPE Act are what we’ve come to expect from left-wing “Progressives.” However, we really ought to start questioning what the so-called conservatives representing us are really conserving. Since when is it a conservative value to promote business loans to cannabis shops? Since when is it a conservative value to undermine justice by expunging criminal records willy-nilly? And appeals to the virtues of free-market economics aren’t helpful here. Free markets in the promotion of public vice are hardly commendable.

H.L. Mencken said somewhere that electing upstanding citizens to government office is like staffing the brothels with virgins. This plays out before our very eyes time and again: our “conservatives” are elected on the basis of promises to promote family values, fight for law and order, and defend Constitutional rights. And time and again they inevitably are caught up in the promotion of legislation and causes fundamentally opposed to their pretended conservatism.

Of course, this is nothing new—politicians have been disappointing their constituents for as long as there have been governments. God even tells us that it is the nature of political officers to disappoint their people (1 Sam. 8:10-22). Fine, and c’est la vie. But let’s stop pretending that the “conservatives” in our government are actually conserving anything valuable. They’re just as caught up in the game as the progressives and are more than happy to promote vice as long as they think it will get them reelected.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to let your federal lawmakers that you do not want to help the drug cartels with their marijuana sales and businesses. As for the HOPE act, there is a process for expunging federal criminal records which should include the entire criminal record and history. As we know from a Cook County prosecutor, it takes criminal persistence to wind up in prison for violating marijuana laws, saying it “almost always takes at least five arrests for cannabis violations before jail or prison time is considered.

*Updated to include Joe Biden’s Friday comparison of Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley to Nazi Joseph Goebbels.

Another tempest is brewing in the Land of the Lost, formerly known as the Land of Lincoln. It all began when, in a speech to Moms for America, newly elected U.S. Representative Mary Miller quoted Hitler’s infamous assertion from Mein Kampf about the indoctrination of children. Miller said,

If we win a few elections, we’re still going to be losing unless we win the hearts and minds of our children. This is the battle. Hitler was right on one thing. He said, “Whoever has the youth has the future.”

The political world came unhinged.

In a D.C. minute, Illinois’ foolish Democrats (I know, I know, redundant) U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth and U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky—both on the wrong side of, well, everything—with unsheathed claws, pounced, calling for Miller’s resignation.

I forget, did Duckworth and Schakowsky call for the resignation of colleague Jim Clyburn when he first compared Donald Trump to Hitler in March 2019? Did they call for Clyburn’s resignation in March 2020 when for the second time he compared President Trump to Hitler and then for good measure compared Trump supporters to Germans under Hitler’s reign, saying this:

I used to wonder: How did the people of Germany allow Hitler to exist? But with each passing day, I’m beginning to understand how.

*Have Duckworth and Schakowsky yet called for unifier Joe Biden to resign as president for his despicable comparison on Friday, January 8 of Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley to Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels?

Did Duckworth and Schakowsky call for the resignation of Michigan Democrat, U.S. Representative Brenda Lawrence when in September 2020, she compared Trump to Hitler and his supporters to supporters of Hitler?

Did Duckworth and Schakowsky call for the resignation of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez when she called border detention facilities that Obama used to separate children from parents “concentration camps”?

In February 2020, did Duckworth and Schakowsky urge the firing of the history teacher in a government-subsidized school in Maryland “who showed a picture of Trump above pictures of a Nazi swastika and a flag of the Soviet Union” with captions that said ‘wants to round up a group of people and build a giant wall’ and ‘oh, THAT is why it sounds so familiar!’”

Lynn Sweet, longtime writer for the lying leftist rag the Chicago Sun-Times oddly and falsely described Miller’s comment as “praise of Hitler,” when all decent, fair, non-bigots understood Miller’s comment as criticism of Hitler and anyone else who seeks to inculcate children with evil ideas, as all tyrants do.

With his chest puffed up with the air of the self-righteous, busy beaver U.S. Representative from Illinois, Adam Kinzinger—a self-identifying Republican who is always eager to condemn conservatives—jumped aboard the smite Miller bandwagon, saying, “I outright condemn this garbage.” Yeah, that took courage.

Setting aside Godwin’s over-used law, I think it’s time for the faux-outrage from politicians about comparisons to Hitler or Nazism to stop. Both sides use such comparisons. Some comparisons are more apt than others. For example, the comparison of the Democrat view that defective humans are legitimate targets for government-sanctioned extermination to the Nazi view of “life unworthy of life” seems apt.

I’m climbing in bed with a strange fellow for a moment, the very liberal Michael Hiltzik, writer for the LA Times who in a July 2019 commentary challenged the leaders of the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s “unequivocal rejection” of any and all “efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary.”

While I disagree with Hiltzik’s apparent motive—that is, his desire for “progressives” to be free to compare Trump to Hitler—I agree with the view that the use of Holocaust analogies is not intrinsically sinful or off-limits.

Hiltzik explains his dissent from the Holocaust Museum’s absolute prohibition of the use of Holocaust analogies:

[T]he Holocaust Museum’s view of its mission as communicating the “history” of the Holocaust seems crabbed and narrow. Its real mission is to communicate the lesson that, unique as the Holocaust was in scale, the evil that brought it about lurks in the psyche of humans in groups, and may not be visible from the outset.

He goes on to cite Yale Holocaust historian Timothy Snyder who argues,

A monopoly on historical interpretation, claimed by a single institution, is a mark of authoritarianism … one of the dangers of placing a taboo on analogies … ensures that we never learn what we need to know.

Doesn’t that reflect the oft-cited view of philosopher George Santayana who famously warned, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”? Don’t we teach the evil events in history in part so that we recognize the shadows of those past events in current events? When we recognize those shadows—those contours—are we not to speak of them?

Don’t be naïve or gullible. Politicians don’t really take offense at the use of Nazi analogies. Political animals without principles—particularly animals who don’t believe in objective moral truth or the source of such truth—lack even a grounding for moral outrage. Like everything else within their grasp, their faux-outrage is a political tool for influencing people and winning power. Faux-outrage—fauxrage—emanates from whichever political side is being gored by the analogy.

Don’t fall for it. Don’t be intimidated by it. It’s a tall tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Freshman Rep. Mary Miller, a Christian, mother of seven, grandmother of 17, and farmer, under withering and indefensible attacks from around the country and next to no support from colleagues, has issued a gracious and humble apology for an alleged sin she did not commit:

Earlier this week, I spoke to a group of mothers about the importance of faith and guarding our youth from destructive influences. I sincerely apologize for any harm my words caused and regret using a reference to one of the most evil dictators in history to illustrate the dangers that outside influences can have on our youth. This dark history should never be repeated and parents should be proactive to instill what is good, true, right, and noble into their children’s hearts and minds. While some are trying to intentionally twist my words to mean something antithetical to my beliefs, let me be clear: I’m passionately pro-Israel and I will always be a strong advocate and ally of the Jewish community. I’ve been in discussion with Jewish leaders across the country and am grateful to them for their kindness and forthrightness.

Oh, btw, Hitler—the evil monster—was right on one thing: Whoever has the youth, has the future. As Christians seek to train up their children in the way they should go, they would do well to remember that supremely evil men understand the long-term effects of indoctrinating children. Hitler was not the first, nor will he be the last evil monster to pursue our youth. There are other monsters prowling around, seeking whom they will devour.

Listen to this article read by Laurie: 

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/MaryMiller.mp3

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Written by John A. Sparks

The idea of expanding the size of the U.S. Supreme Court, also known as “court packing,” has surfaced once again, as it did after the Brett Kavanaugh appointment. Often mentioned is a proposal by Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of University of California Berkeley’s Law School. He favors increasing the size of the court to 13 instead of its current nine. There are other calls for a larger court, such as those produced by organizations like “Take Back the Court” and “Demand Justice.” Of course, U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) simply demands: “Expand the court.”

Let’s start with the basics. The U.S. Constitution does not state a particular size for the U.S. Supreme Court. The number of justices are fixed by Congress. The initial size was set by the Judiciary Act of 1789, which was passed by both houses and signed into law by President George Washington. That act called for one chief justice and five associate justices—a total of six. The number has been changed a few times, but a later Judiciary Act (1869) set the total number at nine, where it has remained for over 150 years. Although there are other proposals circulating—rotating justices off the court and onto the U.S. Courts of Appeals and requiring mandatory retirement at a certain age—a change in the number of justices would be the only change which would clearly not require a constitutional amendment.

So, why change the size of the court? Is it really necessary?

One reason given by advocates of expansion is that the current configuration of nine justices does not give duly elected presidents sufficient opportunities to shape the court by their appointments. In theory, since a newly elected president can’t “clear the deck” and name an all new court, the president must wait for court retirements or deaths to occur. Until that happens, the president is unable to make a court appointment. In the case of President Trump, he had the rare occurrence of two deaths and a retirement during his first term.

However, such opportunities are not far from the norm. Remarkably, the facts show that with the exception of partial-term presidents (William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Andrew Johnson), virtually every U.S. president, beginning with George Washington and ending with Donald Trump, has been able to appoint at least one U.S. Supreme Court justice during his term of office, with Jimmy Carter being the only exception. In fact, the average number of appointments by each of our 45 presidents is approximately 2.6 appointments. Two-term presidents appoint on average 3.1 justices, if one excludes Franklin Roosevelt (8) and George Washington (11), who are “statistical outliers.”

Coming forward to the post WWII era, the 13 elected presidents—six Democrats and seven Republicans—have maintained an average similar to the historical average. Here are the number of appointments for each: Truman (4), Eisenhower (5), Kennedy (2), Johnson (2), Nixon (4), Ford (1), Carter (0), Reagan (3), George H.W. Bush (2), Clinton (2), George W. Bush (2), Obama (2), and Trump (3). The mean average per president for this period is 2.3 appointments. The statistics on appointments by sitting presidents seem to show that on average presidents have not been curtailed by the nine-justice configuration.

Another argument made years ago is now resurfacing. It challenges the fundamental structure of American government. These supporters of change say that our current constitutional system of presidential nomination and senatorial confirmation is outmoded because it is anti-democratic, that it is not responsive enough to “the people.” They say the existing judicial processes of choosing justices are  “relics” from a political “ice age” that was “pre-democratic.”

True, the court and the way its members are chosen and serve is not democratic, if by that one means that “the people” choose the justices directly and can regularly remove them. The fundamental configuration of American government put in place by the Founders is what Aristotle called “mixed government,” that is a mixture of democratic and non-democratic forms. Members of the U.S. Supreme Court are chosen by the president, not elected by the people. The confirmation of the nominee is done by the U.S. Senate, where population does not determine political power because each state has the same number of votes. The term of service for a justice (and other federal judges) is for life. These are the only federal office holders with life-long tenure. Therefore, the justices are not reachable by “the people” in the same way that, for instance, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives is. The reason? The Founders wanted the judicial branch to be able to resist the fitful pressures of majorities and of the executive which would endanger the cardinal rights of citizens—life, liberty, property, religious expression, and speech.

However, this is not to say that the people have no voice in the shape the court takes. But that voice is a muted, indirect voice. It is expressed by choosing a president who then, through the rigorous filter of the U.S. Senate, appoints a justice upon a vacancy. The voice of the people, though restrained by the existing system with nine justices, has produced courts of differing political hues. One only must only compare the New Deal court with the Rehnquist court or the Warren court with the current Roberts court. However, those changes in emphasis and judicial philosophy come gradually, helping to guarantee a substantial degree of certainty and predictability which should be the hallmark of a court, the chief interpretative body in our constitutional republic.

What the proponents of expansion actually fear is candidly expressed by Chemerinsky. Expansion of the court “is the only way to keep there from being a very conservative court for the next 10-20 years.” Chemerinsky’s statement reveals that he is not really dissatisfied with the current size, structure, and process of judicial nomination. What he is unhappy about is that certain Republican presidential wins coupled with deaths and retirements by justices have produced a court with a conservative tilt. He fears a “long winter” of conservative opinions by the court and is unwilling to trust that future Democrat presidential wins, deaths, and retirements could just as well turn the court back in the liberal direction he desires while keeping the current process and size of the court.

Despite current polls which indicate that court packing would be viewed unfavorably by the electorate, the temptation to pack the court would be significant with a Democrat presidential win. Assuming an expansion of the court to 13 justices, the four new members of the court would presumably be liberal judges inclining the court in that direction. Regrettably, such an abrupt change in the size of the court based on a single presidential victory would diminish and eventually destroy respect for and confidence in the court. It would result in long-term damage to the court, which would be converted from a generally impartial deliberative body following the rule of law into a branch whose size could be altered in favor of either victorious political party in any given election.

Court packing is unnecessary and potentially destructive of the court’s dignity and high standing. It would undermine the delicate balance between the branches that the Founders labored to ensure.

This article was originally published by The Institute for Faith & Freedom.

Written by Peter Heck

How he managed to say it without choking on his own tongue I will never know. As President Trump began to dress down the hostile press that was attempting to use his Monday White House briefing to smear him as negligent, CNN cut away immediately to anchor John King who managed to prattle out these words without even a sniff of irony:

“To play a propaganda video at taxpayer expense in the White House briefing room is a new — you can insert your favorite word here – in this administration.”

For anyone at CNN to feign objection over “propaganda” is as convincing a testimony you will ever see to the staggering lack of self-awareness capable by seemingly coherent human beings.

This is, after all, the network of Jake Tapper, who just days ago allowed socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to repeat without correction the now widely debunked rumor that President Trump called coronavirus a hoax. Tapper actually defended his own silence saying that while he knew it was a lie, he let it slide by because President Trump lies about other things. Seriously:

I guess that’s the problem with a politician who lies so often; while I agree that Democrats are mischaracterizing what he said, what he did say was also false so it’s tough to justify taking the time for a fact check when it’s not taking a stand defining the truth.

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 22, 2020

Tapper also allowed Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi to accuse Trump of “fiddling” without ever holding her to account for “fiddling” herself when she single-handedly delayed the coronavirus relief bill for a week.

This is the network of Brian Stelter who anchors a program unironically called “Reliable Sources,” and utilizes that platform to peddle misinformation on behalf of the Democrat Party:

I RT’ed a former LA Times reporter who had tweeted pics that mistakenly ran on the ABC local news broadcast. When I found out the story was erroneous, I deleted the tweet. Gosh, Brian, why does your tweet omit the MSM error that started it? Or does CNN only exist to attack GOP? https://t.co/ehvPHPMrGh

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) April 13, 2020

It is also Stelter who turned disgraced lawyer and convicted felon Michael Avenatti into a mainstay on his program in order to attack Trump, and even encouraged the Stormy Daniels attorney to think about running for president himself. With Avenatti in jail now, Stelter fills his time regularly attempting “gotcha” moments with President Trump that end just about as well. Like this:

Admin officials "say the White House has made a deliberate political calculation that it will better serve Trump’s interest to put the onus on governors — rather than the federal government — to figure out how to move ahead."

Let that quote sink in… https://t.co/v2QVZBXslD

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) April 11, 2020

Yes, let it. Because there’s a name for the concept articulated in that quote, of course. It’s called “federalism,” the central pillar around which our constitutional order and system is constructed. Let the fact that CNN’s chief media corresponded didn’t realize that sink in for a minute.

Besides, it isn’t too difficult to figure out what Stelter and company would be saying if Trump had seized power and claimed emergency authority to dictate nationalized policies to “move ahead.”

This is the network of Don Lemon, an activist masquerading as a newsman who is so sharply partisan that long-time journos cringe at the damage he continues to do not only to CNN’s credibility, but the industry itself.

This is the network that breathlessly covered every potential angle of every perceived accusation against U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings, yet now remains the only major news organization that has not even mentioned the credible allegations of sexual misconduct leveled against presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden by one of his former employees.

This is the network that at the very same press briefing that John King couldn’t bear to air another second of, allowed a staffer manning the chyron machine to post these on-screen Democrat talking points with the apparent blessing of both editors and producers:

I’m almost impressed with how hard the CNN chyron writers of my former network effort to get their revulsion for Pres Trump just right!

I don’t miss it… pic.twitter.com/FLQr2Nwz8a

— Steve Cortes (@CortesSteve) April 14, 2020

Incredible. As in, lacking in all credibility.

After recently surviving a bout with COVID-19, CNN host Christopher Cuomo made some startling remarks, indicating that he was re-evaluating his career at the network. Among other things, Cuomo called out CNN for trafficking in “ridiculous things.”

He not wrong in that assessment, even though I’d choose a different, more precise term for what this low-rated televised rumor mill peddles: propaganda.

This article was originally published at Disrn.com.

Written by Jerry Newcombe

After President Donald Trump named Vice President Mike Pence last week to lead nation’s battle against the coronavirus, many in the media decried the choice because supposedly Mike Pence “doesn’t believe in science.” How could he? He’s a Christian. So the logic goes.

They mock along the lines of: Maybe he just wants to pray the virus away.

The late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel quipped, “Why is Mike Pence in charge? What is his plan to stop the virus, abstinence?”

Writing for mediaite.com (2/26/20), Reed Richardson noted,

“President Donald Trump’s decision to task Mike Pence with heading up the federal government’s coronavirus response triggered an immediate backlash as critics noted the vice president’s record of doubting scientific evidence and his role in exacerbating an HIV outbreak in Indiana while he was governor.”

Richardson argues that Pence allegedly did a poor job in quelling the HIV outbreak in Indiana because for two days, he cancelled a needle exchange program and supposedly during those two days, the HIV “infection rates exploded.” After praying about it, Pence relented. An explosion of new cases in just two days?

Meanwhile, Richardson has compiled many comments from those criticizing Trump’s choice of Pence for this fight. Included in the criticisms is that he doesn’t believe in “climate science.” Why should he? Man-made catastrophic climate change is a hoax.

Democrat presidential candidate Bernie Sanders tweeted against the choice of Pence: “Trump’s plan for the coronavirus so far:…Have VP Pence, who wanted to ‘pray away’ HIV epidemic, oversee the response…Disgusting.”

Another socialist, Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez commented:

“Mike Pence literally does not believe in science. It is utterly irresponsible to put him in charge of US coronavirus response as the world sits on the cusp of a pandemic.”

One critic tweeted:

“America is a driving force in fighting epidemics, and now the director of that fight is Mike Pence, a guy who’s [sic] scientific knowledge consists of how many times you have to pray before you’re cured of being gay.”

An M.D. remarked,

“Trump names Mike Pence as the Coronavirus Czar rather than CDC Director Robert Redfield or Surgeon General Jerome Adams. A physician should be in charge of the nation’s coronavirus response, not some dude who quarantines himself from other women when dining out.”

It seems like most of the criticisms are that Pence is unqualified to head up this task force because he is a devout Christian. Therefore, the same people who argue that a man can give birth  are pro-science, while because of his Christianity, Mike Pence is supposedly anti-science.

The canard that Christians are somehow anti-science is astounding. After all, Christian invented modern science. As the great astronomer Johannes Kepler put it, the scientist is a priest of the Most High God, “thinking His thoughts after Him.” A rational God had created a rational world, and it was the scientist’s job to try and discover God’s laws in nature.

The founder of every major branch of science was created by a Bible-believing Christian of one stripe or another. I highlighted this in a previous post. As the great evangelical thinker, Dr. Os Guinness, once told me, “Actually, many of the earliest, and some of the very greatest of scientists have been people of enormous faith.”

Daniel Lapin is an author and an orthodox Jewish rabbi. He once told me in an interview about the impact of Christianity on the world, “Sir Isaac Newton wrote far more on faith, theology and religion than he wrote on gravitation. And there is a reason for that. Once we are given a clue, wait a second, ‘In the beginning, God created heaven and earth,’ then that tells me that one way I can get to know God better is by studying heaven and earth. And that’s why, until relatively recently, all the great scientists were also great Christians.”

Lapin also said, “If you look at the last thousand years…ninety-eight percent of all the major technological scientific medical advances took place again, let’s face it, under Christendom: they were in Christian countries.”

As D. James Kennedy and I noted in our book, What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?: “Both Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) and J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) have stressed that modern science was born out of the Christian world view…..Whitehead [in his 1925 book, Science and the Modern World] said that Christianity is the mother of science because of ‘the medieval insistence on the rationality of God.’”

The arguments that Mike Pence is disqualified from serving as the top executive to fight the spread of this virus because of his Christian commitment makes no sense.

Pence has a good record of mobilizing people to work together for the common good—and to do so in a humble attitude of “servant leadership.”

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

On Friday July 12, pro-illegal immigration supporters protesting outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility pulled down the American flag and replaced it with the Mexican flag. Throughout America’s history, our flag has flown as a symbol of our foundational guiding principles. The American flag—like the flags of every country in the world—stands for its principles—not its flaws. There exists no flawless nation, state, or city because there exist no flawless humans. But there are countries whose guiding principles are nobler than others—countries in which liberty, equality, and justice are more passionately pursued and protected than in others. The United States stands at the pinnacle of such nations.

If national flags did represent a country’s flaws and failures rather than its guiding principles, surely the Mexican flag would stand for egregious institutional corruption and incompetence, making it inexplicable why anyone would replace the American flag with the Mexican flag.

Alternatively, if Mexico is superior to America in most ways, why aren’t Central American emigrants staying in Mexico?

It’s clear that the surge of immigrants applying for asylum are not really asylum-seekers. As a result of their own governments’ incompetence and corruption, impoverished Central Americans are coming to America for the prosperity immigrants throughout our history have seen and sought. They see and seek what Colin Kaepernick and Megan Rapinoe cannot see. They desperately desire entrance into the country Kaepernick and Rapinoe detest.

But they are abusing America’s generosity and exploiting the cheap political gamesmanship of conscience-less and incompetent congressmen and congresswomen in both parties whose deliberate inaction has created the conditions on the border that Leftists now blame on the Trump Administration.

The political Left’s sickening exploitation of the huddled masses beggars belief. Cultural regressives encourage hordes of suffering people to flood our border knowing full well the detention facilities cannot accommodate such numbers, and then Leftists use images and descriptions of these overwhelmed facilities to whip Americans into a frenzy of rage directed at ICE agents and Republicans.

No one better typifies the dishonest exploitation of immigrants than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) who in a congressional hearing tried to smear former acting ICE director Tom Homan by accusing him of heartlessly separating children from their parents—a practice started by the Obama Administration and ended by the Trump Administration in June 2018.

In response to AOC’s accusations, Homan responded that anyone who is arrested for committing a crime is separated from his or her children and that crossing the border anywhere except for ports of entry is a crime.

Later in a tweet AOC responded that “the [Trump] admin has practically closed ports to asylees” resulting in migrant “desperation” that leads them to do dangerous things like “what Oscar & Valeria (the father and daughter who drowned) did.”

Very cunning and morally repugnant tactical moves on AOC’s part. First, she encourages masses of migrants to flood our borders, thereby overwhelming detention facilities and resulting in far less than ideal conditions for detained immigrants. Then when the administration places restrictions on ports of entry—which would improve conditions in detention facilities—she criticizes the administration for its efforts and accuses it of causing the deaths of a father and daughter.

AOC’s ignorance and malfeasance was surpassed by that of U.S. Representative Jesus Garcia (D-Chicago), who, in an explosive hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives accused Homan of not caring about migrant children because they aren’t white.

Justifiably outraged, Homan responded in a riveting defense of himself and the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol in which he also pointed out the ethical implications of the failure to secure the border and identified the group responsible for the border debacle: Congress.

AOC and her allies—who assume no responsibility for the desperation migrants feel or for the detention facilities conditions—are committed to keeping the number of suffering illegals high in order to secure political power.

Ironically, cultural regressives like AOC in government, in the press, and in the streets who so passionately support illegal immigration benefit from the fertile anti-America soil in which so many young Americans have been grown like weeds: that is, government schools. And this anti-America indoctrination starts long before college.

Public schools, long-controlled by Leftists and Leftist organizations, are seed beds of hatred for America and have churned out America-hating, self-identifying “social justice warriors” who mete out injustice to all those who refuse to submit to their ideology.

Government schools advance “progressive” views of America under the banner of “teaching for social justice,” which shares some of the philosophical features of “Critical Pedagogy,” “Critical Race Theory,” and, within theological circles, “Black Liberation Theology.”

In broad outlines, “teaching for social justice” is essentially repackaged socialism with its focus on economic redistribution. Social justice theory emphasizes redistribution of wealth and values uniformity of economic and social position over liberty. That is, “social justice” disciples pursue the distinctly un-American goal of equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity. Social justice advocates seek to use the force of government to establish economic uniformity.

Social justice theory encourages people to view the world through the divisive lens of identity politics that demarcates groups according to which groups allegedly constitute the “oppressors” and which the “oppressed.” Those who are identified as the “oppressors” need not have committed any acts of actual persecution or oppression, nor feel any sense of superiority toward or dislike of the supposed “oppressed” class. The theory promotes the arguable idea that “institutional racism” and “systemic bias” as opposed to actual acts of mistreatment of individuals by other individuals, is the cause of differing lots in life.

Social justice grievance theory hyper-focuses on America’s mistakes and failings, while diminishing or ignoring the remarkable success America has achieved in integrating virtually every ethnic and racial group in the world and in enabling people to improve their lots in life through economic opportunity and American principles of liberty and equality.

Ironically, those who most hate America are those who most vigorously facilitate the illegal immigration of those who desperately want to live in America.

The ideological echo chamber that government schools are and foster is reflected in these words from Megan Rapinoe when asked about going to Washington D.C.:

We’ve always been interested in going to Washington…. So, yes to AOC, yes to Nancy Pelosi, yes to the bipartisan Congress, yes to Chuck Schumer, yes to anyone else… who… believes in the same things we believe in.

Perfect encapsulation of “progressivism’s” view of diversity and tolerance.

American stands for freedom, equality before the law, and justice. While it is profoundly good and noble to choose to tend to the needs of those less fortunate, which Americans—especially Christians—are known around the globe for doing generously, it is unjust of the government to compel Americans to pay, and pay, and pay for those who break our laws. America’s commitment to justice is inseparable from its commitment to law-keeping. If every citizen is permitted to decide which laws must be obeyed and which may be disobeyed, we are no longer a just country and perhaps not even a sovereign nation much longer.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/America-Hating-Social-Justice-Warriors.mp3

IFI Fall Banquet with Franklin Graham!
We are excited to announce that at this year’s IFI banquet, our keynote speaker will be none other than Rev. Franklin Graham, President & CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Christian evangelist & missionary. This year’s event will be at the Tinley Park Convention Center on Nov. 1st.

Learn more HERE.

Following the vote in Alabama to ban all abortions except in cases where pregnancies threaten the life of the mother, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC)—the ideological leader of depraved “progressives”—tweeted this:

Abortion bans aren’t just about controlling women’s bodies. They’re about controlling women’s sexuality. Owning women. From limiting birth control to banning comprehensive sex ed, US religious fundamentalists are working hard to outlaw sex that falls outside their theology.

Ultimately, this is about women’s power. When women are in control of their sexuality, it threatens a core element underpinning right-wing ideology: patriarchy. It’s a brutal form of oppression to seize control of the 1 essential thing a person should command: their own body.

Let’s examine her ignorant claims one by one:

1.) AOC’s first sentence is almost right. Just delete the word “just,” and it reads right. Abortion bans aren’t about controlling women’s bodies. Abortion bans are about preventing women from hiring killers to destroy and dispose of the bodies of their offspring. It’s remarkable that “progressives”  continue to argue that abortion affects only women’s bodies, but then again “progressives” are the new science-deniers—you know, the ones who assert with straight faces that men can get pregnant (Wait, then abortion isn’t just a women’s issue, is it?).

2.) AOC claims that prohibiting the slaughter of the unborn constitutes “controlling women’s sexuality.” Most pregnancies result from freely chosen sexual activity, so women who absolutely don’t want to become pregnant can freely choose not to have sex. Those women who don’t want to raise a child that results from their freely chosen sexual activity are free to relinquish their unwanted or imperfect children to the care of others. Engaging in sex has never been dependent on the legal right to have others killed. Does AOC think bans on infanticide constitute controlling women’s sexuality? If not, why not? What’s the difference? What if after birth, the mother realizes she doesn’t want the child, or she can’t afford her, or what if her daughter is  imperfect? What if the mother doesn’t want her daughter to be raised by another family? Why shouldn’t she have the legal right to put her daughter down?

3.) Many conservatives believe that taxpayers have no moral obligation to pay for other people’s birth control. AOC thinks such conservative opposition to paying for other people’s birth control constitutes outlawing “sex that falls outside their theology.” Say whaat? If taxpayers don’t pay for AOC’s contraception, she thinks she can’t have sex? Wow, someone better tell her pronto that she can have sex of any kind she wants, and she can pay to prevent the babies that sometimes result from voluntary and normal sexual intercourse. The freedom to engage in normal sexual intercourse carries with it no obligation for others to pay to prevent pregnancy.

4.) AOC’s claim that the absence of a legal right to hire someone to kill one’s own offspring is analogous to being owned is beneath contempt. Perhaps AOC should spend more time reading about the enslavement of African Americans to better understand what being owned looks like.

5.) Someone should also clarify for AOC that conservatives don’t oppose “comprehensive sex ed” because they seek to “outlaw sex that falls outside their theology.” Conservatives oppose “comprehensive sex ed” because it’s not comprehensive and it’s not educational. It’s selective, ideologically biased, age-inappropriate, unsupported by hard science, and deviant.

6.) AOC is right on one point: Abortion is about women’s power—the power of the more developed and stronger over the less developed and weaker. It’s about the oppression of politically powerful women over the politically powerless not-yet-born.

7.) AOC tries nonsensically to link the fanatical desire of Leftist women to be legally free to have their children killed to “patriarchy,” thereby ignoring the countless women of all ages who oppose human slaughter. She also ignores the fact that every child a mother aborts has a father, some of whom have no choice in whether their child lives, some of whom mourn their child’s death, and some of whom are never told they had a child who was killed. Not much patriarchal power in those cases.

8.) With no apparent sense of the perverse irony in her statement, AOC asserts “It’s a brutal form of oppression to seize control of the 1 essential thing a person should command: their own body.” Yes, seizing control over someone else’s body is a brutal form of oppression, and control over one’s body is the most essential thing a person should command: Stopping the hearts of babies in the womb, crushing their skulls and sucking their brains out, dismembering their tiny bodies and selling their body parts is an incomprehensibly brutal form of oppression.

AOC’s words make me sick.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

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Have you given the IFA weekly podcast a listen yet? Illinois Family Spotlight highlights cultural and political issues of particular interest and relevance to Christian conservatives in Illinois. You can find Spotlight on podcast applications like Google Play Music, iTunes, SoundCloud, Pocket Casts, and Stitcher.  You can also listen to our podcasts HERE on our website.

Written by Taylor Lewis

Back in college, I participated in one of those summer-long, Koch-funded libertarian internship programs. During the final week of the program, clusters of us interns, fresh off working in the “real world” for two total months, were tasked with arguing an esoteric philosophical point of our choosing.

One group of impish participants decided to argue against having children.  The argument was fiendishly simple: the very act of existing invites pain, so it’s morally questionable to bring young ones into a world guaranteed to harm them.  With toothy grins, wrinkled slacks, and tousled hair, these students made their nihilistic argument, finely exercising their ability to, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

At the time, the arguers didn’t believe their own position.  The no-harm logic, while sound on the surface, meant human extinction when taken to its logical conclusion.

A mélange of college students hopped up on Leonard Read essays and overpriced beer understood the implications of eschewing childbirth.  But what’s Democrats’ excuse?

It turns out my puckish colleagues may have been prophets for the most visible newcomer in America’s liberal party.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the socialist and de facto Democratic leader, questions the wisdom of having kids.  During an Instagram livestream, the 29-year-old congresswoman explains, in her termagant, ditzo manner, that Millennials like her don’t want to bring children into a world where China and India are pushing the global temperature a jot or tittle higher.

“There’s scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult.  And it does lead young people to have a legitimate question: Is it OK to still have children?” she asked her legions of followers from her kitchen, wearing a beige turtleneck sweater to warm her body against one of the coldest winters in years.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez posits the same ethical challenge my fellow interns did years ago: is it morally kosher to have children if they will, someday, possibly suffer harm?

If you apply Ocasio-Cortez’s thinking to any time in human history absent the short time period of post-World War II to the present, it doesn’t stand up.  Until the mid-twentieth century, many children had to contend with high infant mortality rates, slavery, sexual exploitation, hard labor, and a myriad of untreatable diseases like polio and hemophilia.  What we think of as the relatively harmless lifestyle fit for children today — mandatory schooling through 18 years of age, widespread immunizations, Sesame Street — is so new to human existence that some grandparents alive today never experienced it.

You wouldn’t be reading this column in the year 2019 had earlier generations become conditioned to Ocasio-Cortez’s paralyzing fear.  Yet the longue durée of human survival is increasingly forgotten by liberals who share a skeptical view of the future.  A duo of fretting Cassandras recently appeared on a BBC program touting something called “Birthstrike,” a movement to withhold the gift of life in service to apocalyptic prediction.

“The natural world is collapsing around us, and that’s actually happening right now.  And I’m so disappointed by the response by authorities to this crisis, and so freaked out by everything I’ve read that I’ve — I’ve basically last year I came to the decision that I couldn’t bring a child into that,” Blythe Pepino, founder of Birthstrike, explained to an audience currently experiencing a record-low birth rate.  Her partner in petrification, Alice Brown, concurs, ratcheting up the fear a notch: “We are destroying biodiversity so quickly that it threatens our food … the U.N. have said that can lead to the risk of our own extinction.”  Brown explains that her decision not to have children “has come from not wanting to pass that fear on to someone else.”

Petrifying everyone else with world-ending divinations is perfectly fine, apparently.

There’s a name for this swearing off procreation: anti-natalism.  The philosophy — if self-imposed genocide can be called a philosophy — is, at its core, a deadening of everything it means to be human.  It is both anti-life and misanthropic.  “Homo sapiens is the most destructive species, and vast amounts of this destruction are wreaked on other humans,” writes anti-natalist philosopher David Benatar.

How Benatar maintains the will to live with such a bleak view of himself isn’t addressed.  Like climate alarmists who pay thousands of dollars to travel around in carbon-emitting machines, Benatar doesn’t seem to take his own philosophy seriously.

The divide between anti-natalist liberals and conservatives is, as Russell Kirk said of all political problems, spiritual at heart.  Conservatives view life as intrinsically valuable — that all children are formed in the image of a loving God.  Even if a baby will one day grow to harm someone else, he is still not denied his inner worth.

Along with neoliberal types concerned that Africa’s high birth rate puts too much of a strain on economic resources, anti-natalists commit the dangerous fallacy of putting sublunary concerns above higher values.  The road to despotism is paved with such intentions.

Then again, maybe that was the point all along.

This article was originally published at AmericanThinker.com

Written by Peter Heck

I struggle to even make the effort to outline my opposition to the so-called “Green New Deal” because it seems flatly absurd that anyone could take it serious enough to justify my time spent.  Retrofitting every building in America, spending almost $100 trillion (an amount four times more than the current astronomical national debt), providing a job for every person that wants one and paying for those who don’t – these are the kinds of juvenile ideas that get laughed out of high school government classes.

But we live in unserious times and are led by unserious politicians in every corner.

I’m opposed to the Green New Deal economically – it isn’t feasible, and would go much further than merely crippling the American economy.  It would destroy it.

I’m opposed to the Green New Deal philosophically – the history of mankind demonstrates that progress is best achieved through man’s creativeness and ingenuity, rarely if ever through central planning and demands of a taskmaster (in this case, government).

But most significantly and seriously, I’m opposed to the Green New Deal morally.  The lawmakers who have proposed these policies, and the media who champion it are intentionally favoring the wealthy over the poor, the elite over the undistinguished, the powerful over the plain.

The immediate impacts of its implementation would be higher energy costs for every American household – costs that the wealthy can afford, but the poor can not endure.  This winter alone saw far too many low-income minorities living in the Northeast had to choose between heating their homes and buying groceries.  This isn’t because of scarcity.  It’s because lack of pipeline infrastructure has prevented ample natural gas – a resource that burns much cleaner than other fossil fuels – from being utilized in communities where it is most desperately needed.

Those truly concerned about the plight of the poor would act immediately to alleviate this energy poverty.  Instead, we see the introduction of the Green New Deal that would actually escalate such poverty dramatically.  It is morally offensive to ignore the pain that would be experienced by our country’s needy if the onerous and energy-depriving demands of this backwards policy were implemented.

Not only does the Green New Deal fail to propose energy sources to improve the lives of the poorest Americans (say like safe and reliable nuclear power which the Green New Deal foolishly abolishes), it doesn’t even propose energy sources to adequately replace what it would take away.  For instance,

As Sam Thernstrom of the Energy Innovation Reform Project points out, renewables get all the love, but they are simply incapable of meeting the energy demands of our whole economy. It’s not that the sun goes down at night and the wind doesn’t always blow. It’s that in some regions, the sun gets weak and the wind stops blowing for months at a time. Batteries are improving, but not fast enough to make an all-renewables power grid practical for some time.

Meanwhile, basic humanity should require us to think about the consequences of our actions outside our own borders.  It is the height of privilege and conceit to forbid policies that would lead to the industrialization of the third world.  That is precisely what the Green New Deal would accomplish.  By shuttering fossil fuel companies and strangling their expansion, Green New Dealers effectively lock the earth’s impoverished in squalor as they jet around the world in climate-controlled luxury vehicles to brag about their contributions to the environment.  Pretending they are solving an unrealized catastrophe, they callously perpetuate the one visited upon the third-world every day.

It is the grotesque exploitation of the neediest people of our world that should be first in our minds when rejecting this latest policy proposal of those who seek to expand their own power at the expense of the powerless.

This article was originally published at PeterHeck.com.

Learn More: Climate Change & The Christian [VIDEO]

U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Ny), the darling of the new socialist Democrats in this country, recently referred to the three branches of government. She said, they are the White House, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. House of Representatives. John Roberts, call your office.

Ocasio-Cortez is not alone in a great misunderstanding of our history. Many Americans have an abysmal knowledge of our history and some of the basics of American civics.

The results of a recently-released survey (2/15/19) are not encouraging. The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation reports that, “in the highest-performing state, only 53 percent of the people were able to earn a passing grade for U.S. history. People in every other state failed; in the lowest-performing state, only 27 percent were able to pass.” [Emphasis theirs.]

The states that did the best were Vermont, Wyoming, and South Dakota. The states that did the worst were Louisiana, Kentucky, and Arkansas. When I first read that, I thought, “Then, what are those Vermonters doing, voting for U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders again and again?” As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

Some examples of the common ignorance of Americans uncovered by the survey:

• 57% did not know that Woodrow Wilson was the Commander in Chief during World War I.

• 85% could not identify the correct year the U.S. Constitution was written (1787).

• 75% could not identify how many amendments have been added to the document (27).

• 25% did not know that freedom of speech was guaranteed under the First Amendment.

The Foundation concluded: “[A] waning knowledge of American history may be one of the greatest educational challenges facing the U.S.”

This survey is consistent with other findings through the years. We have dumbed down our schools.

Our loss of the knowledge of basic history and civics is a tragedy. We suffer from what I call, American Amnesia. I even wrote a whole book about it. God is the source of our freedom, but we forget this to our peril. As John F. Kennedy put it, “[T]he rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.”

I once interviewed the late Mel and Norma Gabler of Longview, Texas, who reviewed textbooks, from a Christian and conservative perspective. They told me of a textbook which dedicated seven pages to Marilyn Monroe, but only a paragraph to George Washington—and in that paragraph it mentioned that he had false teeth.

Our young people today know more about the trivia of today’s celebrities than they do the men and women who sacrificed everything to bequeath our freedoms to us.

Karl Marx once said, “Take away a people’s roots, and they can easily be moved.” Dr. Peter Lillback, with whom I had the privilege to write a book on the faith of George Washington, said in his book on church/state relations, Wall of Misconception, “One of our great national dangers is ignorance of America’s profound legacy of freedom. I firmly believe that ignorance is a threat to freedom.”

Lillback compiled the following quotes on the link between education and freedom:

• Thomas Jefferson said, “A nation has never been ignorant and free; that has never been and will never be.”

• James Madison observed, “The diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty….It is universally admitted that a well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.”

• Samuel Adams pointed out the importance “of inculcating in the minds of the youth the fear and love of the Deity and universal philanthropy, and, in subordination to these great principles, the love of their country.” God and charity first, said the Lightning Rod of the American Revolution, country second.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, says the Bible, which was in the first 200 years of America the chief textbook in one way or another. That includes the small but powerful New England Primer, which trained whole generations in Christian theology (in the Calvinist tradition), while teaching them even the basics of reading and writing.

Even their ABC’s were based on Biblical truths. Says the New England Primer: “A, In Adam’s Fall, We Sinned All. B, Thy Life to Mend, the Bible Tend. C, Christ Crucif’ed, For Sinners Died,” and so on.

Back then, with a Bible-based education, literacy was so high that John Adams said that to find an illiterate man in New England was as rare as a comet. It is too bad that as a society we continue to forget God, and we continue to reap the consequences, including the loss of our history and heritage of liberty.

Why does this matter? George Orwell, a former British Marxist, told us why in his classic novel, 1984: “Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com

Written by Walter E. Williams

Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, seeking to represent New York’s 14th Congressional District, has called for the abolition of the Electoral College. Her argument came on the heels of the Senate’s confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. She was lamenting the fact that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, nominated by George W. Bush, and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, nominated by Donald Trump, were court appointments made by presidents who lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College vote.

Hillary Clinton has long been a critic of the Electoral College. Just recently, she wrote in The Atlantic, “You won’t be surprised to hear that I passionately believe it’s time to abolish the Electoral College.”

Subjecting presidential elections to the popular vote sounds eminently fair to Americans who have been miseducated by public schools and universities. Worse yet, the call to eliminate the Electoral College reflects an underlying contempt for our Constitution and its protections for personal liberty. Regarding miseducation, the founder of the Russian Communist Party, Vladimir Lenin, said, “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” His immediate successor, Josef Stalin, added, “Education is a weapon whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.”

A large part of Americans’ miseducation is the often heard claim that we are a democracy. The word “democracy” appears nowhere in the two most fundamental documents of our nation — the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. In fact, our Constitution — in Article 4, Section 4 — guarantees “to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” The Founding Fathers had utter contempt for democracy. James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, said that in a pure democracy, “there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual.”

At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Virginia Gov. Edmund Randolph said that “in tracing these evils to their origin, every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.” John Adams wrote: “Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide.” At the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton said: “We are now forming a republican government. Real liberty” is found not in “the extremes of democracy but in moderate governments. … If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy.”

For those too dense to understand these arguments, ask yourselves: Does the Pledge of Allegiance say “to the democracy for which it stands” or “to the republic for which it stands”? Did Julia Ward Howe make a mistake in titling her Civil War song “Battle Hymn of the Republic”? Should she have titled it “Battle Hymn of the Democracy”?

The Founders saw our nation as being composed of sovereign states that voluntarily sought to join a union under the condition that each state admitted would be coequal with every other state. The Electoral College method of choosing the president and vice president guarantees that each state, whether large or small in area or population, has some voice in selecting the nation’s leaders. Were we to choose the president and vice president under a popular vote, the outcome of presidential races would always be decided by a few highly populated states. They would be states such as California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois and Pennsylvania, which contain 134.3 million people, or 41 percent of our population. Presidential candidates could safely ignore the interests of the citizens of Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Delaware. Why? They have only 5.58 million Americans, or 1.7 percent of the U.S. population. We would no longer be a government “of the people”; instead, our government would be put in power by and accountable to the leaders and citizens of a few highly populated states.

Political satirist H.L. Mencken said, “The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.”

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

This article was originally published at  the Creators Syndicate webpage.