Being a Believer in America has become a complicated business lately. I should probably clarify, I’m not speaking about just any sort of believer. After all, believing “there is no god but Allah” is not complicated. You’ll earn a scandalous amount of slack and dhimmitude from a general populace too credulous to believe your insincerity. And it’s not all that difficult being a believer in Scientology or the other cultish theologies either. If a doctrinal complication pops up, it’s easy enough to amend your “divine” revelation and carry on as if the golden plates had green-lighted caffeinated beverages from the beginning.

No, I’m speaking primarily of the complications involved in following one of the more orthodox faiths like Christianity, Catholicism, and Judaism. It seems the complication stems from an unprecedented number of non-believers opining about the dictates of our God and our faith. Anyone and everyone seems willing (and somehow qualified?) to open their mouths and reveal their biblical acumen, whether they’ve actually read a page from a Bible in their lifetime or not. True, we’ve always dealt with the Matthew 7 crowd, who learned one Bible verse and has been using it as a cudgel to defend their own iniquities ever since, but this is different.

We have Marxists in the Obama Administration telling us that Jesus was a refugee, in an effort to justify open immigration. There are Anarchists, squatting in tent cities, claiming that Jesus was part of the 99%. Nearly any Muslim you meet will be more than happy to explain to you that Christ was a prophet of Allah and was saved from the Crucifixion before He died on the cross. Celebrities of all stripes stand up to declare that there is no cognitive dissonance between their Christian beliefs and their support of the homosexual movement. Pastors and spokes-idiots from major Christian congregations have waved the rainbow flag, declaring that they “aren’t anointed” to speak on sin and that Jesus “never made a statement on homosexuality”. Well garsh, the Lord never made a statement on voter fraud or sex slavery either. Are you suggesting it’s time for Christians to embrace the rights of citizens to fraudulently vote as many times as they like, bringing along their indentured harem to help stuff the ballot box, Pastor?

Why all the biblical static? Why now? Christians have always been maligned for their abstinence from worldly indulgence. Why is there so much noise around the person of Christ and so much antagonism towards the historical Christian position? As with many of the flaws of our modern world, the most obvious answer is moral relativism. The more people are educated in our morally-bankrupt public schools, the more pervasive relativism becomes.

The Hegelian “synthesis”, which Francis Schaeffer warned about, has become pandemic. We no longer live in an antithetical world, where right and wrong are incompatible. Instead of thinking in terms of thesis/antithesis, the two are now combined into a synthesis, crowning error and hamstringing truth. This embrace of Hegelian philosophy means that incompatible beliefs can now be BFFs. This is how we can explain phenomena like Jews for Palestine, LGBT Christians, Materialist Philosophers, and Christian Anarchists. When truth can be whatever you decide to make it, don’t be surprised at what walks through the front door.

Another more culpable reason for the distillation and confusion of the Judeo-Christian moral ethic is the prevalence of Milksop Christianity. When we think about some of the boldest and most unabashed voices defending Christianity today, we think of the Duck Commander, Franklin Graham, and Clash Daily’s own Doug Giles to name a few. Yes, there are undoubtedly more, but not many. With all due respect to these brothers and sisters, their firm, biblical stance today wouldn’t have even moved the needle 100 years ago. We’ve become soft and afraid, so the bold seem a bit taller today than times past.

A majority of today’s believers are biblically illiterate, not being able to distinguish between Saul the son of Kish and Saul of Tarsus. As Pastor Smiley has said, “If Jesus were here today, he wouldn’t be riding around on a donkey. He’d be taking a plane, he’d be using the media.” Let that wisdom marinate for a few… But it goes deeper than biblical illiteracy, today’s church is pusillanimous. Being illiterate when it comes to God’s word is inexcusable for a Christian, but being illiterate and scared? Abhorrent.

Yes, we serve a God who advocated a gentle answer and a loving response to nearly every situation. We also serve a Lord who thrashed a crowd of people when His Father’s house was suffering materialist prostitution. We serve a God whose Justice is as fearsome as His mercy is awesome. Read about the character of God in the words of His anointed messengers: the books of the prophets and the Psalms. Jeremiah, Isaiah, and the rest are literal windows onto the visage of our God.

“Cursed is he who does the work of the Lord deceitfully,
And cursed is he who keeps back his sword from blood.

“Make him drunk,
Because he exalted himself against the Lord.
Moab shall wallow in his vomit,
And he shall also be in derision.

“And Moab shall be destroyed as a people,
Because he exalted himself against the Lord.”

~Jeremiah 48:10, 26-27. 42

This is the Lord we serve and this is the standard of justice to which we will be called to account. Instead of being frightened by the prospect of social disapprobation, we should fear the One who can sweep a nation away for the sin of self-exaltation. Instead of being shouted down by those still in rebellion to their Maker, we should be emboldened by our God, who, though terrible in His wrath, extended a tender hand of grace to each of us, while we were yet steeped in sin.

Stop propagating the synthesis of truth and error. Don’t allow a strident enemy of God to dictate how He will be portrayed. Too often, we become like David’s brothers, huddled in the tent, playing Parcheesi while we try to block out the slanders of Goliath. Let us instead gather our smooth stones from the river and stand implacably for our God, come what may.

During a 2009 interview on France’s Canal+TV channel that is just now being reported widely, President Barack Obama claimed that Americans needed to be better educated on Islam and that, if we compute the total number of Muslims in America, we would be one of the biggest Muslim countries in the world.

In stark contrast, and with reference to a number of President Obama’s recent comments, Rev. Franklin Graham claimed that the president “was ‘fundamentally mistaken’ about radical Islam . . . and argued that Islam ‘is a false religion’ and that ‘it is impossible for a false religion to be a true religion of peace.’”

Who’s right?

Let’s start with some simple math.

Recent surveys indicate that the Muslim population in America is slightly under one percent, so, to be generous, let’s use one percent as the figure, which would mean that roughly three million Americans are Muslim. (Oddly enough, the MuslimPopulation.com website claims that 2.11 percent of Americans are Muslims, supporting this with a reference to a Wikipedia article that puts the figure at 0.8 percent!)

According to President Obama, this figure of three million Muslims would make us “one of the biggest Muslim nations.”

Was he accurate? Not by a mile. Not by many, many miles. In fact, he was embarrassingly wrong and inaccurate.

Here’s the list of the top 10 countries with more Muslims than America (as of 2012, with figures rounded off): 1). Indonesia 209 million; 2). India 177 million; 3). Pakistan 167 million; 4). Bangladesh 134 million; 5). Nigeria 77 million; 6). Egypt 77 million; 7). Iran 74 million; 8). Turkey 71 million; 9). Algeria 35 million; 10). Morocco 32 million.

How big is America’s Muslim population looking right now? How does 3 million compare with 209 million of 177 million?

Uzbekistan, number 15 on the list, has 27 million Muslims; little Yemen, number 17, has 24 million; China, number 18, has 23 million, and Russia, number 21, has 16 million, more than 5 times our national total.

What was the president thinking?

In terms of world Islamic populations, America is about 38th on the list, meaning that we have one of the smaller Muslim populations worldwide, despite the size of our country.

The president’s error, then, would be akin to a stating that the United States was one of the world’s oldest civilizations. Not quite!

Seeing, then, that Mr. Obama was so grossly wrong in his assessment of our Muslim population (again, a matter of simple math), can he be trusted in his assessment of Islam in general?

Rev. Graham said, “I . . . believe our president is completely and fundamentally mistaken about the intolerant and violent nature of hardened Islamic followers.”

So who is more accurate when it comes to the nature of Islam itself?

Without a doubt, there are tens of millions of peace-loving Muslims worldwide, including many American Muslims.

And without a doubt, there are Muslim theologians and political leaders who deplore the actions of groups like ISIS and Boko Haram.

This means that we make a serious mistake when we demonize all Muslims and treat them as if they were murderous terrorists.

In that respect, yes, we need to be better educated regarding Islam. Absolutely.

At the same time, it cannot be denied that large Islamic countries like Pakistan and Iran mistreat and persecute Christians (especially those who convert from Islam), sometimes to the point of death; that countries like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan allow no true religious freedom for other faiths; and that there are a multiplicity of substantial terrorist groups using the Koran for justification, in glaring contrast with Christianity worldwide.

More importantly, even if 80-90 percent of Muslims are not radicals, this means absolutely nothing in terms of our recognition of the very real dangers posed by radical Islam. After all, what percentage of Germans were Nazis? If the large numbers don’t prevent the small numbers from taking murderous action, why does that matter?

And should we snivel at a figure of, at the very least, 150 million radical Muslims worldwide?

What our president should be doing is recognizing the tremendous dangers posed by radical Islam and making every effort to ensure that our nation is addressing these dangers both here and abroad. (This includes not calling blatant Islamic terror attacks “workplace violence.”)

To paraphrase what I’ve said before, while here in the West we are putting our heads in the sand, in other parts of the world, the heads of the victims of radical Islam are rolling in the sand.

This article was originally posted at the Townhall.com website.

The heavy hand of misused government power is getting heavier by the day.

Given the Obama Administration’s vast abuses of executive power, it’s not surprising that lesser lights are following the Chief Executive’s example and waging “lawfare” on their opponents.

In Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, a pastoral couple who own a wedding chapel are facing a 180-day jail term and a $1,000-per-day fine if they continue to refuse to “marry” homosexual couples. The city says the couple are violating the local anti-discrimination law, which includes “sexual orientation.” Religious freedom? Not so much.

In Houston, it probably seemed like a good idea to Mayor Annise D. Parker, an activist lesbian, for city attorneys to serve five pastors with subpoenas ordering them to turn over all sermons, e-mails, and other communications involving a petition drive against a transgender statute that she had championed.

After all, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, Cuba’s Raul Castro, and Argentina’s Cristina Kirchner routinely misuse the law to crack down on opponents.

Wait. This is America. This is Texas, land of the Alamo, where the U.S. Constitution is supposed to restrain would-be tyrants.

Faced with a hurricane of a backlash, the mayor backed off, sort of, reducing the demand to the content of sermons. Let me translate: “Here’s a gun to your head, pastor. Turn your remarks over – or else. By the way, God bless America.”

What should happen swiftly is her removal from office and civil damage lawsuits filed by the targeted pastors. Jesus said to turn the other cheek when faced with insult, but that does not mean stepping aside and allowing bullies to go on to their next victims. By standing up to anti-religious bigotry and unlawful lawfare, the pastors fight for all of us.

As Texas U.S. Senator Ted Cruz said recently, “Caesar has no jurisdiction over the pulpit, and when you subpoena one pastor, you subpoena every pastor.”

The mayor, who misused her power to block a referendum a few years ago that would have curbed the city’s lucrative use of red-light revenue cameras, is not exactly an outlier. Liberals across the land reflexively reach for the big gun or gavel when someone disagrees with their agendas. They live to use government power to force their morals, or lack thereof, on everyone else.

The targets include anyone standing in the way of their imagined utopia of pansexuaity, windmills, bureaucratic supremacy, political correctness and a cowed populace dependent on government handouts.

When judges overturn voter-approved state constitutional amendments protecting natural marriage in the law, they know full well that they’re unleashing the legal equivalent of the hounds of hell on millions of Americans who are punch-drunk from repeated outrages committed by judicial tyrants. Increasingly, people are asking what has happened to our self-governing republic and how do we get it back?

In Wisconsin, a vindictive, partisan state district attorney, John Chisholm, has engaged in lawfare to harass conservative groups working with Republican Gov. Scott Walker. Agents have raided people’s homes and offices, looking for evidence that groups violated campaign finance laws by advocating for policies favored by the governor. A court has since ruled against Mr. Chisholm and halted the witch hunt, but not before it had the intended effect: frightening away contributors to Mr. Walker and conservative groups while Mr. Walker faces a tough re-election against a public-union-backed Democrat.

The tactic is similar to the Internal Revenue Service’s well-documented harassment of Tea Party groups, such as multiple. punitive audits of True the Vote, its founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, and her family’s business, and piling on by other Obama-run federal agencies like OSHA.

Back in Texas, the Travis County prosecutor’s office got a grand jury to indict Republican Gov. Rick Perry on two felony counts in September because he vetoed funding for a statewide public integrity unit run by Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg. She had refused to step down after being convicted of drunk driving. The governor thought, not unreasonably, that this disqualified her as an “ethics” officer. The ludicrous charges against the governor will at some point be dismissed, but that doesn’t matter. The idea is to get the media to portray Mr. Perry, a possible Republican presidential candidate, as damaged goods.

The Travis County office is good at this. It’s the same unit that took out Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (TX) when hyper-partisan Democrat Ronnie Earle filed bogus money-laundering charges in 2005. Although Mr. DeLay finally was exonerated in September 2013, Earle’s use of lawfare removed one of the most effective Republican leaders and fundraisers for several years.

In Alaska, two partisan federal prosecutors withheld exonerating evidence and managed to get Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens convicted of making false statements about a home renovation just days before the 2008 election. This cost Mr. Stevens, who died in a plane crash in 2010, his long-held seat and elevated Mark Begich, who gave Democrats a filibuster-proof Senate through which Majority Leader Harry Reid rammed Obamacare.

This year, Mr. Begich’s re-election campaign, unaided by lawfare, is counting on the power of his main message: “Obama Who?”

Elections have consequences, and so should misuse of the legal system by unscrupulous politicians who wage lawfare.

This article was originally posted at the TownHall.com website.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently issued a report revealing that 1,036 plans in Obamacare (also known as the Affordable Care Act) health insurance exchanges are paying for elective abortions.  In other words, U.S. taxpayers are paying for surgical and chemical abortions under Obamacare.

The audit found that in five states all health insurance exchange plans included elective abortion coverage.  In another eight states, 95 to 100 percent of the plans paid for elective abortions.

President Barack Obama had  promised that no federal dollars would be used to underwrite abortion coverage.  He even issued an executive order to that effect to mollify opposition from within his own political party.

Yet the GAO report verifies what knowledgeable observers knew at the time.  The President’s executive order had no legal effect, because it conflicted with the law’s own provisions, which clearly authorized federal subsidies (called “affordability credits”) for abortion coverage.

The GAO audit also revealed that insurers are uniformly failing to collect an abortion surcharge that was required in every health insurance plan that included abortion coverage.  Under that provision, individuals were to be assessed a separate fee of $1 per month for abortion “services,” regardless of the age, gender, or ability to conceive of the insured.

U.S. Representative Randy Hultgren, a pro-life Republican from Illinois, reacted to this report by urging full transparency from the President and for the U.S. Senate to pass the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act (H.R. 7) which ensures the Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal tax dollars from paying for abortions, is implemented across the federal government.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed this legislation, which was introduced by U.S. Representative Christopher Smith (R-NJ).

H.R. 7 is co-sponsored by Illinois U.S. Representatives Rodney Davis (R-Champaign), Randy Hultgren (R-Geneva), Daniel Lipinski (D-Chicago), John Shimkus (R-Danville), Aaron Schock (R-Peoria), Peter Roskam (R-Wheaton), and Adam Kinzinger (R-Rockford).

This bill is currently before the U.S. Senate, where U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is unlikely to take it up for debate.

U.S. Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA) says that Americans should be outraged.  “Many of us argued at the time Obamacare passed that it would funnel taxpayer dollars to elective abortions.  This independent report validates our claims and proves that yet another Obamacare promise has been broken.”

Casey Mattox, Senior Counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), charges that the architects of Obamacare built a “purposely deceptive accounting scheme” into the Affordable Care Act.

“We were told we had to pass the bill to find out what was in it.  Now we know what exactly is in it:  corporate welfare for the Administration’s abortion industry cronies.”

Read more:  GAO Report Confirms Obamacare Subsidizes Abortion

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Let’s give President Barack Obama his due. Last week he announced his “It’s On Us” campaign to end sexual assault of women on college campuses. All decent people agree that the sexual assault of women is a cultural evil that we must continually work to expose and end.

While the cause of raising awareness in the hope of ending violence against women on campus is noble and critically important, Obama’s motives may be less noble and more self-serving. Cynical minds suspect this may be part of his get-out-the women-to-polling places campaign.

If that isn’t his motive, then why the deafening silence on the sexual assault of men in the military. GQ Magazine has a September article that is excruciatingly painful to read. Men tell their stories of brutal sexual assaults during their military service and the devastating life-altering aftermath.

They also share their frustration with the worse than inadequate response by the military bureaucracy, which is set-up to address sexual assaults on women but not men. The military is not adequately addressing this problem. Congress is not adequately addressing it. And President Obama certainly is not adequately addressing it, even as he addresses the sexual assault of women on campus.

Here are some stories of the stories profiled in the GQ article on an issue to which Obama could and should increase awareness (WARNING: graphic details):

• Kole Welsh, Army, 2002-07: I had actually let the assault go, because I didn’t want it to interfere with my career. I wanted to be an officer, and I just said, ‘Bad experience, won’t let that happen again.’ But there was some residual damage. A month and a half later, I was brought into a room with about nine officers and told, “You’ve tested positive [for HIV].” I was removed from the military and signed out within a day. It was a complete shock.

• Heath Phillips,Navy, 1988-89: The two main guys—their nickname was the Twin Towers. They held themselves like they were God and untouchable. They were both six feet five or above, 250 pounds. I weighed maybe 120 pounds soaking wet. As soon as the Twin Towers came near you, you instantly wanted to pee yourself.  The main attacks were at night. When you’re being dragged out of your bunk literally by your ear, you can’t fight, because they’re doing these funky things with your fingers, twisting them, and they’re ripping your mouth open, and then they got another guy that has his fingers in your nose or in your eyes to make you open your mouth. That’s what always used to bother me: I’m screaming, yelling, fighting, and nobody is even moving their curtains to look.  I went AWOL; I couldn’t take it no more. I tried hanging myself. I was living in the streets, and I got arrested shoplifting, and they sent me to the brig. Then I got sent back to the same berthing area, where they started terrorizing me again. The final straw was, I was taking a shower and these guys beat me up and raped me with a toilet brush. Medical told me I probably had a hemorrhoid. I went AWOL again, then turned myself in a couple of days later. Finally my executive officer came back [proposing] I take an other-than-honorable discharge.

• Steve Stovey: As a man, I can’t perform the way I used to. I just feel damaged. All I remember, along with the pain, is the slapping sound of being raped. I try to make love to my wife, but I can’t—I’m triggered. I’m traumatized by that sound.

• Matthew Owen, Army, 1976-80: One night I was getting ready to go into my room in the barracks when a blanket was put over my head. I heard five different male voices, which I recognized, because I had heard these voices when they harassed me every day. They beat me down onto the floor and forced my legs open. Then they took the end of a broomstick and forced it into me again and again. Each time it felt like my insides were coming out. The blood was a blessing, because it seemed to lubricate the broomstick.

And here are some deeply troubling facts from the GQ article:

• More than half of the victims of sexual assault in the military are men.
• Every day 38 men are sexually assaulted in the military.
• When a man enlists in the military, his risk of being sexually assaulted increases ten-fold.
• In sheer numbers, more men experience Military Sexual Trauma (MST) than women. Almost 14,000 men were sexually assaulted in 2012 alone.
• Sexual assault on men results in a particularly toxic form of PTSD

Men are even less likely to report sexual assault than women (which points to the inherent differences between men and women). The reasons range include shame, fear of physical retaliation, professional ruin, and social stigma.”

Here are some excerpts from Obama’s speech that launched his campaign to raise awareness of campus sexual assault:

When they finally make it onto campus, only to be assaulted, that’s not just a nightmare for them and their families; it’s not just an affront to everything they’ve worked so hard to achieve—it is an affront to our basic humanity.  It insults our most basic values as individuals and families, and as a nation.  We are a nation that values liberty and equality and justice.

…

For anybody whose once-normal, everyday life was suddenly shattered by an act of sexual violence, the trauma, the terror can shadow you long after one horrible attack.  It lingers when you don’t know where to go or who to turn to….It’s a haunting presence when the very people entrusted with your welfare fail to protect you.

…

We still don’t condemn sexual assault as loudly as we should.  We make excuses.  We look the other way.

…

It is on all of us to reject the quiet tolerance of sexual assault and to refuse to accept what’s unacceptable.”

Perhaps Obama could speak these words to and about the young men who volunteer to serve America at great personal risk and sacrifice and who, like college co-eds, deserve to be protected from the shattering violence of sexual assaults.

While the government is cleaning up the Veterans Affairs mess, they should be cleaning up this mess, and Obama should be leading the effort even if it doesn’t garner Democrats a single vote.

Written by Dennis Prager

President Barack Obama declared in his recent address to the nation that “ISIL is not Islamic.”

But how does he know? On what basis did the president of the United States declare that a group of Muslims that calls itself the “Islamic State” is “not Islamic?”

Has he studied Islam and Islamic history and concluded that ISIL, Boko Haram, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, Jamaat-e-Islami, Lashkar-e-Taiba (the group that slaughtered 166 people in Mumbai, most especially guests at the Taj Hotel, and that tortured to death a rabbi and his wife), the various Palestinian terrorist groups (all of which have been Muslim, even though there are many Christian Palestinians), and the Muslim terror groups in Somalia, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere are also all “not Islamic?”

Has he concluded that the Muslim Brotherhood, which won Egypt’s most open election ever, is “not Islamic?”

And what about Saudi Arabia? Is that country “not Islamic” too?

Oh, and what about Iran? Also “not Islamic?”

Isn’t that a lot of Muslims, Muslim groups, and even nations — all of whom claim Islam as their religion — to dismiss as “not Islamic?”

To be fair: These baseless generalizations about what is and what is not Islamic started with Obama’s predecessor, President George W. Bush, who regularly announced that “Islam is a religion of peace.” And it is equally unlikely that his assertion came from a study of Islam and Islamic history.

The fact is that a study of Islamic history could not lead any fair-minded individual to conclude that all these Muslims and Islamic groups are “not Islamic.” Neither Islamic history, which, from its origins, offered vast numbers of people a choice between Islam and death, nor Islam as reflected in its greatest works would lead one to draw that conclusion.

Killing “unbelievers” has been part of — of course, not all of — Islam since its inception. Within ten years of Muhammad’s death, Muslims had conquered and violently converted whole peoples from Iran to Egypt and from Yemen to Syria. Muslims have offered conquered people death or conversion since that time.

The Hindu Kush, the vast, 500-mile-long, 150-mile-wide mountain range stretching from Afghanistan to Pakistan, was populated by Hindus until the Muslim invasions beginning around the year 1000. The Persian name Hindu Kush was proudly given by Muslims. It means “Hindu-killer.” At least 60 million Hindus were killed by Muslims during the thousand years of Muslim rule. Though virtually unknown, it may be the greatest mass murder in history next to Mao’s.

The groups named above are following some dictates of the Koran.

A few of many such examples:

“I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them” (8:12).

“When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. If they repent and take to prayer and render the alms levy, allow them to go their way. God is forgiving and merciful” (9:5).

“Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth” (9:29).

There is also a different admonition in the Koran: “In matters of faith there shall be no compulsion” (2:256).

So a Muslim can also cite the Koran if he wishes to allow non-Muslims to live in peace.

The problem is that Muslim theological tradition, affirmed by many scholars, holds that later revelation to Muhammad supersedes prior revelation (a doctrine known as “abrogation”). And the Koranic verses ordering Muslims to fight and slay non-believers came after those admonishing Muslims to live with non-believers in peace and without religious compulsion.

The problem is that Muslim history, in keeping with the doctrine of abrogation, has far more often practiced the violent admonitions.

The problem is that more than 600 years after Muhammad, Ibn Khaldun, the greatest Muslim writer who ever lived, explained why Islam is the superior religion in the most highly regarded Muslim work ever written, Muqaddimah, orIntroduction to History: “In the Muslim community, the holy war is religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.”

In other words, Ibn Khaldun boasts, whereas no other religion commands converting the world through force, Islam does. Was Ibn Khaldun also “not Islamic?” And so much for the president’s other claim that “no religion condones the killing of innocents.”

None of this justifies bigotry against Muslims. There are hundreds of millions of non-Islamist Muslims (an Islamist is a Muslim who seeks to impose sharia on others), including many “cultural” or secular Muslims. And individual Muslims are risking their lives every day to provide the intelligence needed to forestall terror attacks in America and elsewhere.

It is only a call to clarity amid the falsehoods coming from the president, the secretary of state, and especially the universities.

As the courageous Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born woman who leads a worldwide effort on behalf of Muslim women and for reforming Islam, asked in a speech at Yale University this month: If Islam is a religion of peace, why is there a sword on the Saudi flag?

If the president feels he has to obfuscate for the sake of gaining Muslim allies, so be it. But the rest of us don’t have to make believe what he said is true.

Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His most recent book is Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

This article was originally posted at the NationalReview.com website.

The politically correct or “progressive” crowd found a new target this week: outspoken Christian and Super Bowl-winning coach Tony Dungy.

When asked about “out and proud” football player Michael Sam, the former NFL coach said he would not have drafted Sam had he still been coaching. “I wouldn’t have [drafted] him,” said Dungy. “Not because I don’t believe Michael Sam should have a chance to play, but I wouldn’t want to deal with all of it.  It’s not going to be totally smooth … things will happen.”

For this comment, ESPN commentator Keith Olbermann named Dungy the “Worst Person in the World” on Monday night. Condemnations of Dungy came from all over.

This is where the “progressive” movement is. If you hold a view that is not in agreement with theirs, you are to be demonized by them, the progressives, who, ironically, don’t believe in demons.

Why do they do this? Because they, the progressives, consider themselves morally superior to those of us who hold traditional values even though, again, ironically, progressives don’t believe in moral values unless they define them. They moralize against those who promote morality.

The progressive movement is out to destroy our country as it has existed. It is against patriotism. It is against religion in general and is in particular hostile to evangelical Christianity and traditional Catholicism. It is against borders. It is against capitalism. Dare I go on? Sure, why not?

It is for high taxation and government control and regulation of almost everything. It wants people depending on government so they can be controlled. It believes government debt is good. It is against our constitutional Bill of Rights, in particular the First and Second Amendments. It is for abortion on demand even through nine months of pregnancy. It wants to downgrade the American military. It rejects the idea that Western civilization is superior to other civilizations. And it most certainly is for promoting the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender movement and punishing people who dare speak against it.

Basically, what I have just described is the platform of the modern-day Democratic Party and the philosophy/agenda of much of the New York/Washington, DC, liberal media, Hollywood and most university campuses. When Barack Obama said he wanted to “fundamentally transform” America, what he was saying to his fellow hardcore progressives was: “I’ve got the wrecking ball ready.”

Sexually, God made man for woman and woman for man. It’s obvious. It’s natural. Progressives can’t stand this. So they are always trying to equate homosexuality with heterosexuality or elevate homosexuality over heterosexuality. When someone like Dungy makes a comment that can in any way be seen as challenging this narrative, then progressives believe that person must be immediately discredited or publicly shamed – no matter the truth of what he is saying.

By the way, having been a sports reporter for a few years I’ve been in many football locker rooms where the players walk around naked or half-naked, changing clothes and going in and out of the showers. Putting a man like Sam, who says he is sexually attracted to men, in with all that beefcake seems unfair to the straight players and a distraction to Sam. Would you put a heterosexual man in the locker room/showers with all the female cheerleaders? Would you tell the girl cheerleaders who objected to this man being in the locker room that they needed to end their bigoted and sexist attitude and treat the man with respect?

Tony Dungy will probably survive being the “worst person in the world.” But the fact that he is in the crosshairs of the PC Gestapo over this comment is chilling to free speech and free thinking.

It’s ironic that the people who now scream the loudest about tolerance have become the least tolerant among us.

This article was originally posted at the OneNewsNow.com website.

Written by Ryan T. Anderson

Earlier today, President Barack Obama issued an executive order barring federal contractors from what it describes as “discrimination” on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Employers should respect the intrinsic dignity of all of their employees, but as I explain in greater detail at the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal, today’s executive order undermines our nation’s commitment to pluralism and religious liberty.

The order does not contain any religious-liberty protections — though it does leave in place an older federal regulation that permits religious organizations that favor employment of co-religionists to continue such practices. But there is no protection for organizations that hire based on mission — not on affiliation — to continue to do so. This in effect excludes taxpayers who hold conscientious beliefs about sexuality that run counter to Obama’s from being eligible for federal contracts funded with their own tax dollars:

Today’s order is problematic for four reasons, but there is at least one thing that can be done in response.

1. Today’s order undermines our nation’s commitment to reasonable pluralism and reasonable diversity, as it disregards the consciences and liberties of people of goodwill who happen not to share the government’s opinions about issues of sexuality. All Americans should be free to contract with the government without penalty because of their reasonable beliefs about morally contentious issues. The federal government should not use the tax code and government contracting to reshape civil society about controversial moral issues that have nothing to do with the federal contract at stake.

2. Today’s order treats conscientious judgments about behavior as if they were insidious acts of discrimination akin to racism or sexism. But sexual orientation and gender identity are not like race. Indeed, sexual orientation and gender identity are unclear, ambiguous terms. They can refer to voluntary behaviors as well as thoughts and inclinations, and it is reasonable for employers to make distinctions based on actions. By contrast, “race” and “sex” clearly refer to traits, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, these traits (unlike voluntary behaviors) do not affect fitness for any job.

3. Today’s executive order also does not contain a Bona Fide Occupational Qualification (BFOQ) exemption. BFOQs allow employers to make employment decisions so long as those decisions are honestly related to job qualifications. For example, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act contains a BFOQ that allows employers to take sex into account: hiring a female camp counselor at an all-girls sleep-away summer camp, for example, which might otherwise seem to be “sex discrimination.”

4. Today’s executive order is unnecessary. Voluntary market forces are already eliminating true discrimination, as making employment decisions based on non-relevant factors hurts one’s ability to compete. But the federal government should not penalize those contractors that do conscientiously judge sexual orientation or gender identity to be relevant to their mission and purpose.

5. In response to this executive order, Congress has an opportunity to protect religious liberty and the rights of conscience. Policy should prohibit the government from discriminating against any individual or group, whether nonprofit or for-profit, based on their beliefs that marriage is the union of a man and woman or that sexual relations are reserved for marriage. The government should be prohibited from discriminating against such groups or individuals in tax policy, employment, licensing, accreditation, or contracting. This is the policy approach proposed by the Marriage and Religious Freedom Act (H.R. 3133, S. 1808). 

Protecting religious liberty and the rights of conscience fosters a more diverse civil sphere. Indeed, tolerance is essential to promoting peaceful coexistence even amid disagreement.

This article was originally posted at the National Review Online website.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled today that the Christian-run Hobby Lobby doesn’t have to obey the HHS mandate that is a part of Obamacare that requires businesses to pay for abortion causing drugs in their employee health care plans.

The Obama administration was attempting to make Hobby Lobby and thousands of pro-life businesses and organizations comply with the HHS mandate that compels religious companies to pay for birth control and abortion-causing drugs for their employees. However, the U.S. Supreme Court today issued a favorable ruling in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., a landmark case addressing the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of business owners to operate their family companies without violating their deeply held religious convictions.

Writing for the 5-4 majority, Justice Samuel Alito handed down the decision for the high court, saying, “The Supreme Court holds government can’t require closely held corporations with religious owners to provide contraception coverage.”

“HHS’s contraception mandate substantially burdens the exercise of religion,” the decision reads, adding that the “decision concerns only the contraceptive mandate and should not be understood to mean that all insurance mandates.” The opinion said the “plain terms of Religious Freedom Restoration Act” are “perfectly clear.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion saying that government itself could provide the coverage for contraception and the abortion-causing drugs if a company declines to do so.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued a dissent that claims the decision is “of startling breadth,” a claim the majority denies. The major decision indicates it applies to the abortion mandate, not blood transfusions or other practices to which people may have religious objections.

The Hobby Lobby decision only applies to companies, including Conestoga Wood Specialties, which had a companion case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. Non-profit groups like Priests for Life and Little Sisters are still waiting for a ruling about their right to opt out of the mandate.

The Obama administration said it was confident it would prevail, saying, “We believe this requirement is lawful…and are confident the Supreme Court will agree.”

Responding to the decision, Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel David Cortman told LifeNews: “Americans don’t surrender their freedom by opening a family business. In its decision today, the Supreme Court affirmed that all Americans, including family business owners, must be free to live and work consistently with their beliefs without fear of punishment by the government. In a free and diverse society, we respect the freedom to live out our convictions. For the Hahns and the Greens, that means not being forced to participate in distributing potentially life-terminating drugs and devices.”

In July, a federal court granted Hobby Lobby a preliminary injunction against the HHS abortion-drug mandate. The injunction prevented the Obama administration from enforcing the mandate against the Christian company, but the Obama administration appealed that ruling. Hobby Lobby could have paid as much as $1.3 million each day in fines for refusing to pay for birth control or abortion-causing drugs under the mandate.

After the appeals court ruling, U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton issued a preliminary injunction and stayed the case until Oct. 1 to give the Obama administration time to appeal the decision.

In an opinion read from the bench, the court said, “There is a substantial public interest in ensuring that no individual or corporation has their legs cut out from under them while these difficult issues are resolved.”

A December 2013 Rasmussen Reports poll shows Americans disagree with forcing companies like Hobby Lobby to obey the mandate.

“Half of voters now oppose a government requirement that employers provide health insurance with free contraceptives for their female employees,” Rasmussen reports.

The poll found: “The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 38 percent of Likely U.S. Voters still believe businesses should be required by law to provide health insurance that covers all government-approved contraceptives for women without co-payments or other charges to the patient.

Fifty-one percent (51 percent) disagree and say employers should not be required to provide health insurance with this type of coverage. Eleven percent (11 percent) are not sure.”

Another recent poll found 59 percent of Americans disagree with the mandate.

The Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, grew their family business out of their garage. They now own stores in 41 states employing more than 16,000 full time employees. They have always operated their business according to their faith.

Kristina Arriaga, Executive Director of the Becket Fund, tells LifeNews, “In fact, the Greens pay salaries that start at twice the minimum wage and offer excellent benefits, as well as a healthcare package which includes almost all of the contraceptives now mandated by the Affordable Care Act. Their only objection is to 4 drugs and devices which, the government itself concedes, can terminate an embryo.”

“Their rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act should be protected by the government. Instead, the government has threatened them with fines and fought them all the way to the Supreme Court,” Arriaga added.

“The government has already exempted tens of millions of Americans from complying with the mandate that forces employers to provide certain specific drugs and devices. However, it refuses to accommodate the Green family because the Green family’s objections are religious.  We believe that the government’s position is not only extreme and unconstitutional; it presents a grave danger to our freedoms,” she continued.

“My family and I are encouraged that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide our case,” said Mr. Green, Hobby Lobby’s founder and CEO.  “This legal challenge has always remained about one thing and one thing only: the right of our family businesses to live out our sincere and deeply held religious convictions as guaranteed by the law and the Constitution. Business owners should not have to choose between violating their faith and violating the law.”

This article was originally posted at the LifeNews.com blog. 

Written by James Simpson

Once again, President Barack Obama is circumventing Congress and using the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and a compliant and corrupt media to push his radical agenda. This time it is to save the world from climate change, formerly known as global warming at a time when there was actual evidence that the average global temperature was increasing, however slightly. But that was nearly two decades ago. Let’s set the matter straight, shall we?

Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) is a colorless, odorless “greenhouse gas” which currently comprises 400 parts per million (ppm), that is 0.04 percent of all atmospheric gasses—an infinitesimal amount. CO₂concentration has increased by about 40 percent, or 120 ppm, (0.012 percent of atmospheric gasses) over the last 200 or so years. During that time, world mean temperature has increased by about 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit).

Global warming alarmists have used these observations to warn of future calamity. Many predict an increase in the frequency and intensity of storms, or other effects including “flooding, drought, erosion, turbidity, debris in reservoirs, nutrient and pollutant loading, and wildfires.” The National Wildlife Federation claims that “Global warming is making hot days hotter, rainfall and flooding heavier, hurricanes stronger and droughts more severe.” Don’t worry, though. Barack Obama promised to fix it all. Demonstrating early on his almost delusional arrogance, then-candidate Obama accepted his party’s 2008 presidential nomination claiming, “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal…”

In fact, weather has not become more intense. Despite severe tornado damage from recent storms, the number of tornadoes in the past year is the lowest since 1954, and there has been no discernible upward trend in recent years. Similarly, as of June 10^th, the U.S. has not experienced a category three or higher hurricane for 2,787 days—a record. Wildfires are at their lowest since 1985, and again, this is not an anomaly. There is no discernible trend.

But even respected journals like National Geographic are playing fast and loose with the facts. On its “Global Warming Fast Facts” page, NG claims “Polar bears and indigenous cultures are already suffering from the sea-ice loss.” But when you click through to the link, there is no mention of bears at all. Actually, Al Gore’s beloved bruins are doing just fine. A recent analysis found that since 2001, polar bear populations have increased, and that official estimates could have under-counted by as much as 9,000 animals. Canada has refused to put bears on their endangered species list despite pressure from U.S. environmental groups.

Global warming alarmists also keep insisting that there is a “consensus” that 97 percent of scientists believe man made global warming exists and is an existential threat. Even NASA gets into the act, claiming that “97% of climate scientists agree.” The media have uncritically shouted the 97 percent shibboleth to the four corners of the globe, viciously attacking anyone who has the temerity to question it. A Talking Points Memo post demanded that “climate change deniers” be executed. An Austrian university musicology professor (what are his qualifications?), who ironically claims to oppose the death penalty, echoed the call. He did later apologize for it, however.

Even former NASA climate guru James Hansen has said that oil executives should face criminal trials for spreading doubt about global warming. This is the same James Hansen caught in the “ClimateGate” scandal, where he and climate scientists of the UK’s East Anglia University Climate Research Unit deliberately manipulated world temperature data to support global warming claims. Most notoriously, Al Gore’s famous “hockey stick,” graph was found to be the result of a flawed study by Penn State University’s Michael Mann. No trials for Hansen, Mann or Gore yet, though.

Just like their other claims, the 97 percent figure has been widely debunked. Even the IPCC’s lead author, Dr. Richard Tol mocks the 97 percent figure. He states, “People who want to argue that climate researchers are secretive and incompetent only have to point to the 97 percent consensus paper.” He refers to a report authored by John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli and others that examined 11,944 “climate abstracts” in the scientific literature. But the authors of that study themselves found otherwise, noting that “66.4 percent of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6 percent endorsed AGW, 0.7 percent rejected AGW and 0.3 percent were uncertain about the cause of global warming.” In other words, examining the abstracts alone found only 32.6 percent supported the notion of man-caused global warming. The 97 percent figure was derived by comparing the 32.6 percent with those who rejected (0.7 percent) or were unsure (0.3 percent), and essentially ignoring the rest.

In another study, authors claimed to have surveyed over 10,000 “earth scientists,” finding again that 97 percent agreed. Upon closer inspection however, one discovers that less than a third actually responded and that the survey was further stratified to analyze “climatologists who are active publishers on climate change.” That subset yielded only 77 respondents, 75 of whom responded positively to the question, “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?” The 97 percent figure was thus based on only 77 people.

Meanwhile, a 2009 petition received over 31,000 signatures—more than any other petition on this subject—from physicists and physical chemists who agreed with the statement, “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of … carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”

Most of the alarmist crowd has a strong vested interest in hyping global warming because they are being showered with research dollars to prove it. But cooler heads have remained resolutely skeptical, and for good reason. It is difficult, for example, to reconcile a 2009 study which found that a reduction in atmospheric CO₂ levels to 760 ppm, 34 million years ago, caused Antarctica to freeze over, with the modern arguments that: 1) current CO₂ levels half that high are causing Arctic ice to melt; and 2) CO₂ levels are at record highs, which some claim to be the “maximum safe limit.” Maybe CO₂ killed the dinosaurs too?

Meanwhile, as shown in the chart above, the average global temperature has not risen in 17 years, even trending downward since 2002, while CO₂ continues to rise—a fact which directly contradicts climate alarmists’ stated claims. A September 2013 report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) struggled to hide this seeming anomaly, and the organization was pressured by the U.S., Germany and other countries to do so. MIT climate scientist Richard Lindzen characterized the IPCC report as “hilarious incoherence.” A 2012 study published in Nature magazine shows that global temperatures have not been historically high over the long term, even suggesting a downward trend.

Just for the sake of argument, however, we are going to completely ignore the foregoing and engage in a thought experiment. We will grant the left every single one of its assumptions. Nothing soothes lunatics more than to tell them they are “right,” so let’s suspend disbelief for a moment and pretend they are.

Let’s generously assume that all of the CO₂ increase since colonial times was caused by man’s activity, and that 80 percent of it occurred after 1900. That would mean that man’s activity since 1900 increased atmospheric CO₂ by 96 ppm; (120 ppm x 0.8). This represents 0.0096 percent of all atmospheric gasses. Let’s further assume the 1°C temperature increase was also solely caused by CO₂, and that 80 percent (0.8°C) of that 1-degree change occurred in the 20^th Century. (The actual temperature increase since 1900 is estimated to have been between 0.6 and 0.8°C.)

We will also generously assume that all along the U.S. has been responsible for 20 percent of these global emissions. This is somewhat more than our current contribution (16 percent in 2010, according to the Energy Department’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center.) If the 20 percent figure were accurate, however, it would mean that over the past 114 years, America has been responsible for an increase in atmospheric CO₂ of 19.2 ppm (96 ppm x 0.2). That’s 0.00192 percent of all atmospheric gasses. If the relationship between CO₂ and temperature holds, we would therefore be responsible for 20 percent of the 0.8°C increase in global temperature since 1900, which equates to 0.16°C (0.29°F).

So if we buy the Left’s argument entirely, the big, bad US of A, the imperialist destroyer of the global environment, promiscuously burning excessive carbon fuels to satisfy its gluttonous, ravenous, insatiable appetite for warmth, air conditioning and automatic dishwashers, has raised global temperatures over the last 100 years a whopping one third of one degree Fahrenheit.

But here is where it gets truly insane. The Obama administration and its allies are telling us that reducing CO₂ emissions from U.S. power plants by 30 percent will bring a cornucopia of benefits, and they are willing to destroy the entire coal industry and force other conventional energy sources onto life support to accomplish this. However, power plants targeted by this rule produce only 38 percent of total U.S. manmade CO₂, and half this target has already been met.

So in actuality, total U.S. CO₂ will be reduced by only 5.7 percent (1/2 x 0.3 x 0.38) under this rule. This translates to a mere 1.026 ppm (0.057 x 18 ppm) representing 0.0001026 percent of atmospheric CO₂, for a temperature reduction of—wait for it—0.00912°C (0.16°C x 0.057). Converting to Fahrenheit yields 0.01642°F. Another way of saying this is that, if we are to take the left’s argument at face value, the average world temperature would decline from its historic average of 54.8°F to 54.784°F. That is less than three one-hundredths of one degree.

Liberalism is a mental illness.

But even this doesn’t tell the whole story. Our example assumes that all the recent climate change is due to man’s production of carbon dioxide. There are many so-called greenhouse gasses, and CO₂ does not have the greatest impact; water vapor does. See the chart below.

Source: RealClimate.Org

Furthermore, temperature has been increasing and decreasing in regular cycles over the past two hundred years. According to Friends of Science, a non-profit group comprised of active and retired earth and atmospheric scientists, engineers, and other professionals, “The mild warming of 0.6 to 0.8 C over the 20th century is well within the natural variations recorded in the last millennium.”

The U.S. Energy Information Administration lists China as the largest coal producer and consumer in the world, producing almost as much coal as the rest of the world combined, and almost four times more than the U.S. In 2012, China consumed 49 percent of the world coal supply, compared to 11 percent by the U.S. Over the past 10 years, Chinese coal consumption has accounted for 83 percent of increased demand. Thus, it is not surprising that China is the world’s largest producer of anthropogenic CO₂, contributing 24.7 percent of the world’s total in 2010, the latest data available. This is 53 percent more than the U.S. produces, and China has no intention of slowing down. Current use and anticipated increases in carbon fuel use by China promises to swamp any decrease the U.S. is able to obtain.

In a Congressional hearing last September, EPA Director Gina McCarthy could not list a single effect EPA actions were having on any of 26 indicators of climate change, admitting, “It’s unlikely that any specific one step is going to be seen as having a visible impact on any those [indicators]—a visible change in any of those [indicators].” Her rationale was that it “positions the U.S. for leadership on this issue,” that could be used to prompt other nations to take action. But has the U.S. had any success influencing China on any front at all? How about Russia or India, who together produce 11 percent of worldwide emissions? The EPA acknowledges the rule will have no impact on atmospheric CO₂.

When the rule was finally announced, however, the EPA claimed it would bring copious benefits. Most media outlets and leftwing organizations sang its praises. The Union of Concerned Scientists called it a “climate game changer.” They compared Director McCarthy to Thomas Jefferson “at the Dawn of America,” and the EPA rule with the Declaration of Independence.

Most media ignored the serious economic impacts this rule will likely create. The Heritage Foundation estimates a loss of over 500,000 jobs, a decline in average family income by $1,000 and a 20 percent increase in energy costs. The EPA acknowledged that electricity rates will rise, but if we can hold out until 2030, they assure us that prices will fall after that. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce claimed compliance costs for the new rule could exceed $50 billion per year. The Natural Resources Defense Council sides with EPA, claiming a maximum cost of $14.6 billion by 2020 with offsetting benefits between $37 and $60 billion. The liberal Brookings Institution, however, dismisses EPA’s claimed benefits as being exaggerated by as much as 15 times.

Other liberals acknowledge the scam but support it anyway. Former Canadian Environment Minister Christine Steward said, “No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits…climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.” For comparison, the most expensive EPA regulation to date addresses mercury and costs $9.6 billion per year. The carbon regulation will have a much broader impact on our economy.

Other countries are beginning to recognize the global warming lunacy for what it is: an opportunity for well-connected liberals to fleece their nations’ treasuries in the name of “saving the planet.” In my previous article, Germany’s energy chief, Stephan Kohler, was quoted as calling Germany’s Renewable Energy Act “sheer lunacy.” Newly elected Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott is now is cultivating an alliance with Canada, Britain, New Zealand and India in an effort to oppose Obama’s call for onerous carbon regulation.

The EPA rule is sheer lunacy.

This article was originally posted at the Accuracy in Media website.

Everyone else is excerpting it so I shouldn’t miss out. The title above belongs to an article in the Wall Street Journal written by former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney. Here is their subtitle: “Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.”

It’s protocol, and an act of class, for a president to keep quiet about the actions of his immediate successor. George W. Bush has been admirably silent, even as his eight years in office is trashed regularly by Obama. Bush’s VP, though, hasn’t felt the need to hold his tongue.

For many of us who have been fans of the senior Cheney since the 1980s — his honestly about the pathetic nature of the Obama Administration has been a source or consolation in an era when political guts seem in short supply.

While I recommend (for the sheer fun of it) that you take a few minutes to read the entire article (it’s not behind the WSJ paywall), here are a few excerpts for your reading pleasure. Here is how Dick and Liz open their piece:

As the terrorists of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) threaten Baghdad, thousands of slaughtered Iraqis in their wake, it is worth recalling a few of President Obama’s past statements about ISIS and al Qaeda. “If a J.V. team puts on Lakers’ uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant” (January 2014). “[C]ore al Qaeda is on its heels, has been decimated” (August 2013). “So, let there be no doubt: The tide of war is receding” (September 2011).

Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many. Too many times to count, Mr. Obama has told us he is “ending” the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—as though wishing made it so. His rhetoric has now come crashing into reality. Watching the black-clad ISIS jihadists take territory once secured by American blood is final proof, if any were needed, that America’s enemies are not “decimated.” They are emboldened and on the march.

…

On a trip to the Middle East this spring, we heard a constant refrain in capitals from the Persian Gulf to Israel, “Can you please explain what your president is doing?” “Why is he walking away?” “Why is he so blithely sacrificing the hard fought gains you secured in Iraq?” “Why is he abandoning your friends?” “Why is he doing deals with your enemies?”

In one Arab capital, a senior official pulled out a map of Syria and Iraq. Drawing an arc with his finger from Raqqa province in northern Syria to Anbar province in western Iraq, he said, “They will control this territory. Al Qaeda is building safe havens and training camps here. Don’t the Americans care?”

Here is how they close it:

American freedom will not be secured by empty threats, meaningless red lines, leading from behind, appeasing our enemies, abandoning our allies, or apologizing for our great nation—all hallmarks to date of the Obama doctrine. Our security, and the security of our friends around the world, can only be guaranteed with a fundamental reversal of the policies of the past six years.

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan said, “If history teaches anything, it teaches that simple-minded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly. It means the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom.” President Obama is on track to securing his legacy as the man who betrayed our past and squandered our freedom.

Read more: Wall Street Journal

It was an honest mistake. We’ve all been there. You call the IT department and get nothing but the run-around, right? All you want to do is get back into your Outlook, but no dice. This is the situation in which poor Lois Lerner found herself in 2011. Her computer crashed and she lost gobs of emails. Gone forever—apparently Lois didn’t have Carbonite. And wouldn’t you know it, none of the 67,000 unhelpful emails which the IRS has turned over to congressional investigators were lost! Only the ones which involve Lerner’s efforts to use the Internal Revenue Service to intimidate conservative groups were lost.

The additional wrinkle, which is just being discovered now by the Heritage Foundation and others, is that Lerner is only 1 of 6 IRS colleagues to suffer the exact same technological break-down. The IRS has known about this difficulty since February, but was somehow too busy to mention it until now.

Among those who suffered a technological failure was Nikole Flax; she served as former chief-of-staff to IRS Commissioner Steven Miller. Commissioner Miller was one of the IRS employees fired during the uncovering of the intimidation scandal. A cleverly-filed FOIA request has shown that Flax gave Lerner the approval to get together with DOJ officials, in order to explore criminal charges against conservative groups. The Congressional committee investigating the IRS scandal discovered last week that Lerner sent over 1 million pages of data to the FBI, including confidential taxpayer information. Not only was Lerner discriminating against conservative groups on their applications for tax-exemption, she planned to solicit the help of the Feds to pursue criminal charges against them.

Of course this is just an honest IT mistake, right? I mean, it could have happened to anyone. It’s got to be Murphy’s Law at work since the computers of 6 individuals (all affiliated with the current investigation) were affected. Coupled with the fact that the emails which were irretrievably lost just happened to be those which Congress was hoping to read, it seems pretty cut and dry to me. According to the new Minister of Disinformation, Josh Earnest, the idea that these emails were lost on purpose is “far fetched”. (Incidentally, when did WH Spokesmen begin adopting stage names?? Josh’s is particularly ironic.)

After 6 years of the Obama-ganda machine, a pattern has emerged. It always begins with some sort of scandal which gets uncovered; not by an actual media investigation, but by independent efforts on the part of a citizen journalist or a non-profit organization armed with a crafty FOIA request. The Administration then tries to ignore it for a couple of news cycles. If the story doesn’t go away, they craft an implausible story to explain what happened. The more implausible, the better. At this point, the lapdog media immediately begins peddling this explanation as completely credible; usually taking the opportunity to fill in any perceived gaps in the story which the Administration missed in its initial roll-out. If questions still persist, the questioner is either labeled a lunatic or a racist.

This is orchestrated in textbook Alinski fashion: a crazy explanation becomes the honest answer, an honest inquiry becomes a crazy explanation. George Orwell would have been drooling over such an ironic juxtaposition. The switcheroo works because it trades on the power of Ridicule, one of Alinski’s favorite tools. He discovered that people don’t like to be ridiculed. This is even more true today, when everyone is raised to abhor conflict and even the losing team gets a trophy. The weaker we become, as a society, the more power Alinskian tactics will hold.

Since most people today have a phobia of being ridiculed, they will accept an alternative to ridicule more readily than mockery, even if that alternative is a bald-faced lie. A surprising number of people would rather treat something outlandish as if it were plausible than to be branded a lunatic, even though they stand on a logical foundation. The only way to counteract this technique is to ignore the ridicule. A liar can’t redefine reality if his target refuses to give the redefinition any legitimacy. We have seen them use this game plan during the birth certificate controversy, the Tea Party-Congressional Black Caucus spat on the steps of the Capitol, Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the Trayvon Martin case, the Bergdahl Trade, and again with the IRS Scandal.

The fact that we don’t have citizens rioting in the streets is because they have been kept in check by the power of social ridicule…well, that and the militarized thugs in DHS who keep buying ammo by the truckload.

This article was first published at the ClashDaily.com website.

“For the foreseeable future,” says President Barack Obama, “the most direct threat to America at home and abroad remains terrorism.” Yet his remarks at the United States Military Academy Commencement Ceremony included no acknowledgement that NSA traitor Edward Snowden has made this kind of terrorism more likely. And there were no demands for Moscow to turn him over to U.S. authorities to face espionage charges.

Our intelligence experts are worried that more terrorism is being planned. S. Eugene Poteat, a retired senior CIA Scientific Intelligence Officer and the current President of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, tells the most recent edition of Homeland Security Today that “Terrorists will now find it easy to counter our intelligence capability, which was based on NSA’s metadata, so we can expect more terrorism in the U.S. in the future.”

Asked by editor-at-large Timothy W. Coleman if Snowden received help from a foreign intelligence service, he commented, “[I] have no idea if he [Snowden] was already in Russia’s pocket, but I feel certain he is by now, and they will already have emptied his computers into theirs. The Chinese, I think, cleaned his clock also.” This was a reference to Snowden stopping in Hong Kong before going to Russia.

But some journalists, on the left and right, seem to think they know more than the experts, and that they are better equipped to judge.

Kirsten Powers is supposed to be one of the more level-headed liberals on the Fox News Channel. But her USA Today column on Wednesday praising Edward Snowden mouthpiece Glenn Greenwald is amateurish in its analysis of what happened in this case, and cavalier in dismissing the real possibility that American lives will be lost as a result of this anti-American intelligence operation.

“That Greenwald is not a member of the Washington insider club seems to be the real problem here,” she writes, in regard to some relatively mild criticism of Greenwald’s role. No, the real problem is that Greenwald’s role in publishing Snowden’s classified documents is a clear-cut violation of the Espionage Act. The former gay pornography executive deserves more, not less, media criticism.

Powers, whose bio says she graduated from the University of Maryland (but doesn’t say in what), doesn’t seem familiar with the law. She noted that NBC’s David Gregory asked Greenwald, “To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden…why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?” She then commented, “This accusation, dressed up as a question, was nonsensical. That it came from a fellow journalist was bizarre. How could reporting news be ‘aiding and abetting’? What crime could Greenwald possibly have committed?”

As we said at the time, “The question is entirely legitimate. Section 798 of the Espionage Act absolutely prohibits the publication of classified information in the area of communications intelligence. That would include programs of the National Security Agency (NSA).”

The “crimes” are clear to anyone who reviews the law. The fact that Greenwald has not been charged is more evidence that the Obama administration is not enforcing the law. This seems to be a habit of this administration.

Powers says journalists who criticize Greenwald “seem to labor under the delusion that it’s their job to protect the government.” No, the government, in this case, is the people who expect the laws to be enforced. Snowden was a government employee who stole the property of the government. That is why he has been charged with theft of government property, in addition to espionage.

She also turns her attention to Michael Kinsley’s observation that “There shouldn’t be a special class of people called ‘journalists’ with privileges like publishing secret government documents.” Powers comments, “Actually, there should be, and there is. Without that protection, The Times could not have published the Pentagon Papers. Take that protection away, and we have zero oversight of the government from outside forces.”

In this case, Powers is horribly confused. The “protection” was given to the paper to publish the documents without prior restraint. The charges against Daniel Ellsberg, who stole the Pentagon Papers and provided them to the Times, were pursued. However, they were eventually dismissed because of allegations of government misconduct.

Finally, Powers writes, “Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg noted that the friendly fire against Greenwald is unusual. Ellsberg told an interviewer last year that though he himself was an enemy of the government for leaking secrets during the Vietnam War, ‘journalists were not turning on journalists.’”

First, Ellsberg was not a journalist. Second, as noted, the legal issue was prior restraint, not prosecution of the leaker. In addition, the Pentagon Papers were a history of the Vietnam War, unrelated to ongoing intelligence and military operations. That makes the Snowden-Greenwald case far different.

Finally, it is not a case of journalists turning on other journalists to question their behavior and point out when they violate the law.

Powers called journalistic criticism of Greenwald “strange fury.” No, it’s strange to promote the view that Greenwald should be above criticism and that questions about his conduct are somehow out of bounds.

Even more bizarre than Powers was a column by Joseph Farah in WorldNetDaily saying that Snowden, living in Moscow, should be given a ticker tape parade in the U.S. and welcomed back as a whistleblower. This was strange because Farah’s publishing house, WND Books, released the blockbuster, Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism, which examines how the Soviet Union/Russia remains a major threat to the U.S. Its co-author, Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking Soviet bloc intelligence official ever to defect to the West, told AIM that Snowden’s arrival in Russia was “the result of a well-prepared Russian intelligence operation” against the United States and that his analysis of the evidence shows that Snowden “is an agent of the Russian foreign intelligence service.”

Farah claims ignorance about Snowden’s motivations, and doesn’t seem to care. He should have consulted the co-author of one of his books. The former spy chief of Romania clearly understands the KGB/FSB.

“Apparently Snowden is willing to face the consequences of his action—which also makes him a conscientious practitioner of civil disobedience in its highest form, just like Martin Luther King Jr.,” Farah writes, in another mind-boggling statement. He quickly goes on to say, “He is willing to face trial if there is a deal that allows him to serve only a modest prison sentence.” So he is NOT prepared to face the consequences after all.

In effect, he wants a form of immunity from prosecution, no matter how many Americans die as a result of his treason.

Rather than encourage this kind of thing, journalists should be asking why the Obama administration is not doing everything possible to get Snowden back on U.S. soil to face espionage charges. As for Greenwald, the law dictates that he should be facing a grand jury himself, rather than hawking a book and flaunting his anti-Americanism.

Contrary to what Powers says, it seems that Greenwald has been admitted to the Washington insider club.

This article was originally posted at the Accuracy in Media website.

George Soros has been blamed by the pro-Russia crowd for sparking the anti-communist revolution in Ukraine. That was never the case, since Soros funded a small and largely ineffective non-governmental organization in Ukraine, the Renaissance Foundation. Now, a major Soros-funded group has come out with its prescription for resolving the crisis—accepting Russia’s demand that the country stay out of NATO.

Soros, the political left’s leading “dark money” donor, has shown his true colors.

NATO is hardly the anti-communist alliance it once was, but it still remains the largest pro-American group of nations on earth. That’s why the Russians hate it so much.

Ahead of the scheduled elections on May 25, the International Crisis Group (ICG) has just released a report saying Ukrainian leaders should “declare that they do not desire NATO membership.” The ICG receives a significant amount of funding from Soros’s Open Society Institute, and Soros sits on its board.

This follows former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s statements on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” show on May 11, during which he argued that Putin should be accommodated in his drive to take over Ukraine. Kissinger said the West should agree to keep Ukraine out of NATO. Kissinger, whose firm does business in Russia, says Ukraine “will be free to participate in European economic relationships, but not join NATO.”

The global elites have clearly decided that Ukraine must be sacrificed in the name of protecting the big businesses investing in Putin’s Russia.

Not surprisingly, the ICG/Kissinger position is essentially the same as the one held by Russia. The Moscow-funded propaganda channel RT features Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as saying, “The seeds for the current crisis were sown in 2008 in April during the NATO summit in Bucharest, when NATO leaders stated in a declaration that Georgia and Ukraine would be in NATO.”

But the “seeds” never sprouted and Putin invaded Ukraine anyway.

It was in 2008 that Russia invaded Georgia, taking over two regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. NATO’s April 2008 Bucharest Summit had declared, “We agreed today that these countries [Georgia and Ukraine] will become members of NATO.”

Today, however, Georgia still remains an “aspirant” for NATO membership. While Ukraine was also a candidate to join NATO, this never took place, either, with the blame falling on both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations.

Republicans like to forget that Bush was fooled by Putin, saying about the Russian leader in 2001, “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialog. I was able to get a sense of his soul.”

Bush thought Putin would be an ally of the U.S. after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Based on what Soros, Kissinger and the others are saying, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and takeover of Crimea, and control over the Black Sea and its strategic waterways will be left in place. The pro-Russian website Global Research notes, “the union of Crimea with Russia redefines the geopolitical chessboard in the Black Sea Basin.”

The liberal betrayal of Ukraine is something to behold and has taken place in only a few months. “Ukraine is something of a miracle,” Soros declared in an April 7 column. “A group of unarmed citizens rose up and overwhelmed a police force with orders to shoot to kill them. We are witnessing the birth of a new nation, a new Ukraine—with a limitless future made possible by people willing to sacrifice their lives for their country.”

The rhetoric sounded good. But now, these citizens are supposed to abandon their anti-communist vision of being free of Soviet/Russian control. Perhaps the Russians will restore the Lenin statues that the Ukrainians have toppled in dozens of cities.

Raising the white flag of surrender, Soros told The New York Review of Books that Western leaders “cannot prevent or reverse the annexation of Crimea. They are bound to protest it, of course, because it violates the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 that guaranteed the territorial integrity of Ukraine, including Crimea, but they are not in a position to oppose it by military means.”

So Russia’s violation of international law should be excused. This seems like a strange position for the liberals to take, since they traditionally favor the power of global institutions to enforce international treaties.

What’s more, there’s no evidence that giving Crimea to Russia will end the Putin regime’s campaign to destabilize the rest of Ukraine.

“The United States and the West are not in a position to go to war over the crisis in Ukraine and Crimea, nor should they,” says the Soros-funded Center for American Progress. The best steps forward, the group argues, are “to diffuse the situation” and “proactively shape trends and expand possibilities.” This gibberish means doing nothing of a military nature.

Obama himself said recently that neither Ukraine nor Georgia “are currently on a path to NATO membership and there has not been any immediate plans for expansion of NATO’s membership.” This is appeasement of Russia, pure and simple.

Meanwhile, American taxpayers are sending financial assistance to Ukraine, in the form of around $1 billion in loan guarantees, which may inevitably flow back to Russia as payments for gas. The International Monetary Fund, partly financed by the U.S., is sending billions more.

The Ukraine aid bill passed the Senate by a voice vote, and the House by a 399-19 vote.

It’s important to support Ukraine, but not if the plan is to eventually give the Russians or their puppets control of the entire country.

The liberal betrayal is acute when it comes to Obama personally. In 2008, then-Senator Barack Obama co-sponsored (with then-Senator Hillary Clinton) a resolution urging Ukraine and Georgia admission to NATO. It unanimously passed the Senate. It was also co-sponsored by then-chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

Curiously, Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden has now been added to the board of Ukraine’s largest private gas producer, Burisma Holdings, as if this will help the country stave off Russian subversion and infiltration, or perhaps buy some goodwill in Washington. It is desperation on Ukraine’s part and alienates conservatives who wanted the country to be free.

“For more than half a century, NATO has remained a vital asset in our nation’s efforts to support democracy and stability in Europe and to defend our interests and values throughout the world,” Senator Obama said in 2008. “I welcome the desire of Ukraine and Georgia to seek closer ties with NATO, and I hope that NATO responds favorably to their requests, consistent with its criteria for membership. Whether Ukraine and Georgia ultimately join NATO will be a decision for the members of the Alliance and the citizens of those countries, after a period of open and democratic debate. But they should receive our help and encouragement as they continue to develop ties to Atlantic and European institutions.”

But now that Russia has seized parts of Ukraine, Obama has taken Ukraine’s NATO membership off the table, despite what the people in that country may decide in their own free elections. Obama’s true colors are showing, too. He never wanted Ukraine to be truly free and had no desire to confront Russia.

The Hunter Biden move suggests the Democrats are trying to exploit the worsening situation, in order to make some money before the Russians and their allies take over the whole country. The next step will be for Ukraine to hire K Street lobbying firms to make the most of the surrender and save some scraps for their own benefit.

In this context, the Russian front groups are moving forward with propaganda campaigns and even street protests, such as at the NATO summit on September 4-5in Wales. “NATO is the military alliance binding Europe to US foreign policy, a foreign policy post-Iraq increasingly unpopular around the world,” says the Stop the War Coalition. “It is also the military alliance currently occupying Afghanistan.”

Interestingly, these “Stop the War” left-wing protesters don’t want to stop Putin’s war on Ukraine.

As Ukraine fights for its life as an independent nation, NATO leaders will be meeting at the luxurious Celtic Manor Resort—a golf, spa and leisure hotel—to decide the next step to take in appeasing Putin.

Joe Iosbaker of the United National Antiwar Committee is also leading the charge against NATO, appearing on the Iranian-funded Press TV to argue that “In truth, the war moves by the U.S. and NATO in Eastern Europe, and the Black Sea, and the Baltic Sea, are bringing about a new Cold War.”

Iosbaker is an interesting character. The homes and offices of he and his wife Stephanie Weiner were raided because of suspicions that they were providing support to foreign terrorist organizations. Both of them have been associated with the Marxist-Leninist Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) and the Chicago New Party that included Barack Obama.

Which country is Putin’s next target? Writing in the British Spectator, Alex Massie says, “Putin’s behavior demonstrates that, if anything, the problem with NATO expansion is that perhaps it did not go far enough. What price the independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania if they were not now members of the western alliance? Even now their liberty is not guaranteed. It is not hard to see how Russian agitators could spark a contrived crisis in the Baltic states; not hard either to see how Putin might attack them again.”

Putin’s grand strategy, writes analyst Pawel Styrna, includes “rebuilding the empire.” As part of that, he says Putin’s goal is to reduce the influence of “Euro-Atlanticist” powers, i.e., the United States, Great Britain, and their allies. A “Eurasian empire,” centered around its Russian core, is the “engine” driving this “international anti-American coalition.”

In the face of the weak response to Russian aggression, can the destruction of NATO, a long-time Soviet goal, be far behind? If so, why should U.S. taxpayers finance Ukraine’s destruction with bailouts of a regime that will inevitably be transformed into a pawn of Putin’s geopolitical designs and future aggression?

This article was originally posted at the Accuracy in Media blog.

When Barack Obama said he would “fundamentally transform” the United States, few anticipated that the plan involved destroying the minds of young people through addictive substances. But after the expenditure of $250 million by Obama backer George Soros on behalf of the marijuana legalization movement, we are seeing the results, especially in Colorado. The new website www.legalizationviolations.org is documenting the fallout and the damage.

In addition to what is reported on this site, such as kids using, and even selling, marijuana, we have some other sensational cases in Colorado, such as a husband and father, Richard Kirk, who began hallucinating after eating a marijuana cookie, and shot and killed his wife.

In another case, a 19-year-old student jumped off a Denver hotel balcony to his death after eating a marijuana cookie. USA Today reported that Levi Thamba Pongi, a native of the Republic of Congo, ate the cookie and “exhibited hostile behavior” that included pulling things off walls and speaking erratically.

In addition to these deaths, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Denver has filed an indictment “alleging money laundering related to marijuana cultivation and distribution” in Colorado. The case involves money transfers from a Colombian bank, as well as violations of federal firearms laws.

In the face of the human deaths and destruction being wrought by marijuana legalization in Colorado, and the movement of the Colombian groups into the state, the Heritage Foundation took a stand this week in favor of “Reefer Sanity,” the name of a new book by drug policy expert Kevin A. Sabet.

Heritage featured Sabet giving a speech exposing the “seven great myths about marijuana” that have driven this unfolding disaster. Sabet co-founded SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana) with former Democratic U.S. Representative Patrick J. Kennedy (RI), in order to focus public attention on the harmful consequences of marijuana use and counteract the impact of the drug-friendly media. Writer David Frum is a member of the board.

One of Sabet’s slides advised people to “Follow the Money,” and named George Soros as the key money bags behind the growing number of states accepting legal marijuana. Sabet’s website included the figure of $250 million invested by Soros in the drug legalization movement. In addition, Peter Lewis gave $50 to $70 million to this movement, and John Sperling gave over $50 million.

As far back as 2004, in our article, “The Hidden Soros Agenda: Drugs, Money, the Media, and Political Power,” we noted the billionaire hedge-fund operator’s investment in a Colombian bank accused of drug-money laundering.

Calvina Fay of the Drug Free America Foundation described Soros as an “extremely evil person” because of his campaign to legalize dangerous mind-altering drugs.

Over a year ago, in our column, “A Kennedy Shocks the Pro-Dope Liberal Media,” we noted the potential impact that SAM could have on the “debate” over marijuana, such as it is in the liberal media.

Sabet, in his Heritage Foundation speech, did not directly address President Obama’s personal role in the unfolding debacle confronting our youth, except to say that using marijuana is clearly not a solution to a deteriorating economy that produces few jobs for young people.

Yet, the facts are that Obama was a member of the “Choom Gang,” a group of heavy marijuana smokers, when he was growing up in Hawaii. His childhood mentor, Communist Party operative Frank Marshall Davis, was also a pothead.

Although Sabet is pursuing a non-partisan approach to the disaster in order to appeal to Democrats, in an attempt to stop the deadly and dangerous drug legalization experiment, he is nevertheless giving the Soros-funded activists a case of nerves. His book features a quote from Ryan Grimm of the far-left Huffington Post, saying that backers of pot legalization should find Sabet “dangerous” because of his effectiveness.

The new website www.legalizationviolations.org is also a SAM project and is performing a useful function in publicizing cases in Colorado that are not getting national media attention.

Some headlines on the site from Colorado include:

• Denver emergency room doctor seeing more patients for marijuana edibles
• 4th Grader Tries To Sell Pot On Playground
• Kids caught distributing pot in school
• Colorado kids getting into parents’ pot-laced goodies
• 4 With Ties To Colorado Pot Accused Of Laundering

In regard to the latter, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has released its own statement on the case involving money being wired from bank accounts in Colombia to bank accounts in Colorado for the purchase of a “marijuana grow” facility.

The charges are big news in Colorado (see “Feds: Four men diverted Colombian cash to Colorado marijuana business” in the Denver Post). But it is truly a national story, showing that the Colombian drug traffickers are moving into Colorado to take advantage of the “legal” side of the marijuana business.

One of the myths Sabet addressed in his Heritage speech was the idea that marijuana is harmless. He noted its link to lower IQ and mental illness.

In a case out of Tennessee that did make some national news, a woman named Stephanie Hamman smoked the drug and drove her car into a church, where she stabbed her husband because he liked NASCAR. “I love to smoke it,” she said of marijuana. “Sometimes when I do, I start seeing things that others don’t. Isn’t God good? He told me this would happen, and just look, I am okay.”

“In court,” the local TV station reported, “guards walked Hamman in, her eyes were closed and she appeared to be talking to herself.” She is charged with attempted first-degree murder and felony vandalism.

This article was originally published at the Accuracy in Media website.