On Friday night, Stephanie Wilkinson, owner of the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, kicked out Sarah Huckabee Sanders and seven members of her family because Sanders works for the president. “Progressives”–once again demonstrating their inability to think analogically–believe this ill-treatment of Sanders and her family is analogous to the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.

Once more for the obtuse among us, Jack Phillips didn’t refuse to serve homosexuals or kick them out of his bakery. He refused to create and sell a product for a type of event that violates his deeply held religious convictions. He served homosexuals regularly. The Red Hen restaurant refused to serve any product to a particular person and her family.

The above title was used as a subheading in this article by Elizabeth Kantor at The Federalist: “Donald Trump Isn’t Fighting a Culture War but A Cultural Revolution.”

Underneath that subheading, Kantor writes:

[T]he genius and the miracle of America was that our identity as Americans was once inextricably tied to abstract principles about the rights of all human beings. To identify as an American was to believe in the Bill of Rights. To be an American patriot was to defend the God-given equality of all men as articulated in the Declaration of Independence.

The rights the American revolutionaries fought for were an inherent part of themselves, always referred to as “the rights of Englishmen.” It was identity politics, but fought for an identity bound up in natural rights, one that could eventually be adopted by every American of every national origin, ethnicity, and race.

That American identity is what the cultural revolutionaries are determined to replace with their very different identity politics.

Kantor asks two questions without answering them:

“Is there a way out of the newly gelling mutually hostile tribal identities that are replacing it? Can we ever climb back into an e pluribus unum identification with all Americans as members of one tribe?”

She closes with this: “[R]eforging that American identity seems to be what Trump is trying for: “We are all Americans first.”

Let’s look at two other articles where the writers partially answer Kantor’s question, expressing doubt that the Leftists’ use of identity politics can succeed. First, is Dr. Michael Brown, focusing on the identity of the hour, “transgenderism.”

In his article, “Why Transgender Activism Will Not Succeed in Changing America,” Brown writes:

Transgender activism will never succeed in reshaping our society for one simple reason: It is not natural. Biological differences are too deeply instilled in the human race. Male-female distinctives are too obvious and real. It is futile to declare war on gender.

It is one thing to be asked to empathize with those who struggle with gender identity confusion. It is another thing to declare that biological categories do not determine reality.

It is one thing to recognize that some people do not fall within the normal, male-female spectrum due to genetic abnormalities. It is another thing to claim that gender is whatever you perceive it to be.

After listing examples where people and organizations are sticking to common sense over this new identity of the day fad, Brown writes, “Will the whole world be turned upside down because of the confusion and sensitivities of less than 1 percent of the population?” “Watch and see,” he says, “The pushback against transgender activism will continue.”

Our last article is from Linda Harvey. In her post, “Is Gender Confusion Insanity Finally Beginning to Wane?,” she asks, “Do we dare hope that a new era of sanity is dawning?” Regarding the growing trend towards the reversal of sex “reassignment” surgery, Linda Harvey writes:

Such an option still offends many on the left, who dig in their heels and continue to push unisex bathroom laws and bans on therapy to overcome “transgender” delusions and same-sex attraction.

An increase in people seeking a return to their birth gender is reported in Europe. A renowned “sex change” surgeon in Serbia noted more requests for complicated and expensive reversal surgery.

A young boy in Australia recently received international publicity for wanting to be a boy. After several years of estrogen, he no longer wants to pretend to be a girl.

Why is this controversial? The default response of every human should be a longing to be that woman or man as nature intended.

Harvey asks another question: “Aren’t liberals supposed to be flexible?” “But a rigid adherence to identity politics,” Harvey notes, “ties the typical leftist in notes”:

Secretly, a social liberal is often a mess, exhausted from the convoluted mental and spiritual energy needed to reconcile the nonsense of pretense.

Ouch. Linda Harvey gives examples where Leftists are unwilling to give up on their goal of doing away with the reality of biological sex, but then writes:

And yet promising glimmers of truth keep emerging. In Miami-Dade County, a measure to prohibit counseling of minors to overcome same-sex attractions was just defeated after hard work by the Christian Family Coalition and other pro-family advocates.

. . .

This victory comes as good news after a long series of defeats for common sense on this issue. Numerous cities and states have passed laws limiting counseling for minors who want to embrace the natural design of their heterosexual bodies as male or female.

Since “Attorney General Sessions ended the Eric Holder/Obama imaginary application of Title VII sex discrimination law to those with gender confusion, Harvey writes, “Activist groups are expressing fury that their fascist fantasy is ending.” Ouch again.

Read more:  Series: Identity Politics & Paraphilias

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They claim creating an election integrity commission is a way to advance voter suppression.

Progressives are in an uproar over the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, and we have to ask why?

Why not look into ways to protect our elections from fraud?

Because to do so would advance “white supremacy,” according to Democratic U.S. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer of New York, who tweeted on Aug. 24, that “If the president wants to truly show that he rejects the discrimination agenda of the white supremacist movement, he will rescind the Executive Order that created this commission.”

Then, he warned, “And if the president does not act, the Congress should prohibit its operation through one of the must-pass legislative vehicles in September.”

Wow. So, the Democrats would shut down Congress in order to keep a blue-ribbon panel from studying the vulnerabilities of our election process? Mr. Schumer must truly fear this commission. He wants it to disband even before its second official meeting on Sept. 12 in New Hampshire.

“The Ku Klux Klan and its sympathizers at all levels of government denied black Americans the right to vote for decades,” Mr. Schumer continued in his tweet without a hint of irony. The Klan was the militant wing of the Democratic Party, which enforced Jim Crow laws against black people for 88 years. More on that later.

“Today, voting rights are once again under assault,” the senator bleated, er, tweeted. “The misguided Shelby County v. Holder Supreme Court decision gutted the Voting Rights Act, opening the door to the same voter suppression tactics that existed before the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965.” He means back when Democrats ran the show in the South.

Instead of Jim Crow, the Democrats rely today on the bureaucratic behemoth created under Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, which shattered the black family and still keeps blacks and other minorities beholden to the Democrats’ federal welfare plantation. They just have to keep promising more and more stuff to the Free Stuff Army. Who needs the Klan when you’ve got Uncle Sugar? But, what does chronic dependence do to people’s souls? Hey, don’t be getting all religious on me.

Mr. Schumer was not the first Democrat to cry that the sky would fall. Former Attorney General Eric Holder called the new commission “another frightening attempt to suppress the votes of certain Americans.” This kind of balderdash is not harmless. Commission members that I have talked to have reported harassment and even death threats.

Mr. Schumer equates any and all election integrity measures such as voter ID laws as brutal instruments designed to “suppress” the votes of minorities, the elderly and the young. In fact, minority voting has increased following passage of voter ID laws. Perhaps folks have more of an incentive to vote when they know their ballots will actually count.

Mr. Schumer contends that vote fraud is a myth cooked up to advance voter suppression.

This is a serious charge, and nobody knows better how to go about suppressing voters than the Democratic Party, which benefited from it for nearly nine decades with its Jim Crow system before congressional Republicans rammed through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

But back to the original question. Why not have a bipartisan panel of experts make sure that election officials are doing their jobs to ensure fairness and integrity? Indeed, if you think vote fraud poses no threat, why oppose a study that might prove your point? If the panel comes up empty, you get to crow. But if it exposes sloppy practices that enable fraudulent voting, shouldn’t you want to know that and clean up the mess?

Progressives crowed that some liberal state officials initially refused to provide voter data to the commission. But as of now, virtually all states are complying with the request, having been told by their attorneys that it is entirely lawful, especially since the data are already in the public realm and commercially available. What? You hadn’t heard from the media that the states are now cooperating?

Here’s one more thing to consider: All of the allegedly vulnerable identity groups: minorities, elderly, the young — strongly favor voter ID laws, since, like everyone else, they don’t want their votes stolen by someone casting a fraudulent ballot. Survey after survey shows it.

So, I think I know what’s behind the Democrats’ fear of the election integrity commission: They have already lost the argument over voter IDs. In its eventual report, the commission will be making the case for how to ensure accurate voter registration rolls. And, accurate voter rolls prevent vote fraud.

If that isn’t frightening to a liberal, nothing is.

This article was originally posted by The Washington Times.

Written by William Choslovsky

Imagine this: Upon taking his oath of office, President Donald Trump instructs his new attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to ignore civil rights laws.

How would that go over?

Before you yell, “But we are a nation of laws!” you can thank President Barack Obama and his prior Attorney General Eric Holder for magnifying this issue.

Basically, the Obama administration made it standard operating procedure to ignore laws they thought unfashionable or unworthy.

The best example of this is marijuana.

To be clear at the outset, I am neither pro-pot nor anti-pot. And, in fact, marijuana is not even the issue — rather, the Constitution is. Marijuana is just the symptom that exposes the problem.

As pieces of paper go, our Constitution has proved remarkably durable, as it has structured our democracy for more than two centuries.

Old news now, marijuana laws are sweeping the country. More than half the states, including Illinois, have legalized some form of marijuana use.

But there is one little problem. Long ago Congress passed a law making marijuana, in all forms, illegal. No exceptions. Whether wise or not, it is the law of the land, no different from the thousands of other federal laws on the books.

Given this conflict, the question arises, can state law really trump federal law? Is marijuana really “legal” in those states?

The short answer is “no,” it remains illegal under federal law.

The constitutional lesson is simple: federal law is top dog, and it trumps all conflicting state law.

If Congress says your toilet bowl can hold only 2 gallons of water, and Illinois passes a law saying it can hold 3 gallons, Congress wins, and your toilet will have only 2 gallons to flush with.

It is called the Supremacy Clause, and it is all you really need to know to be a constitutional scholar.

But amazingly, Holder — Obama’s first attorney general — directed the Department of Justice to ignore federal law. He instructed his deputies and the FBI not to investigate, arrest or prosecute marijuana growers and users in states where it was “legal.” In short, he told them to look the other way, the rule of law be damned.

Though this issue surfaces through pot, it is dangerous, even subversive, stuff — however well-intended.

As the nation’s top law enforcement officer, the attorney general’s duty is to enforce the law — whatever it may be — not to make law. In failing to do so, he violates his oath to uphold the Constitution.

At bottom, this is no different than a rogue local sheriff choosing to enforce some laws while turning his eye on others.

To be clear, our federal law banning marijuana might be terrible. But that issue is above the attorney general’s pay grade, as his job is to enforce — not make — the law.

And the irony in all this is that there is a simple fix.

If our nation’s pot laws are terrible, then Congress can, and should, amend the existing law. Heck, it could just repeal the law altogether. It could do so in five minutes, which the Constitution allows.

But the Constitution does not allow the attorney general to simply ignore otherwise valid federal law because he, or others, think the law unwise. That is what happens in banana republics where men, not laws, rule.

Long ago, President Abraham Lincoln said: “The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.”

And the issue — enforcing valid laws, even bad ones, until repealed — is not limited to marijuana.

The same analysis applies to other important issues of the day, including immigration laws and mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses. Good or bad, these laws should be enforced until properly repealed or ruled unconstitutional.

Obama, a constitutional scholar, understands this.

In fact, in 2014 when some liberal groups criticized him on immigration policy and called him the “deporter in chief,” he responded, “I cannot ignore those laws any more than I can ignore any of the other laws that are on the books. That’s why it’s important to get comprehensive immigration reform done.”

Yet when Congress failed to act on immigration reform, Obama tried to get his way through executive order.

“Executive order” is just a fancy way of sometimes ignoring the law.

To put things in perspective, once you start down this path, what if a state chose to legalize heroin? Or child pornography? Or better yet, it passed a law making federal taxes optional?

It is a slippery slope best avoided.

Importantly, this is not a screed against Democrats or Republicans. The Constitution is larger than both.

After all, if a Democrat today ignores pot laws, might a Republican tomorrow choose to ignore civil rights laws?

When you remove the politics, the issue and solution become clear: amend or repeal “bad” laws, but do not ignore them, as such is the beginning of chaos. Though some may scoff at these extreme examples, the underlying concept remains the same in each case: Our Constitution is supreme and must be respected.

William Choslovsky is a Chicago lawyer who appreciates selective enforcement of laws that might someday apply to him.

This article was originally posted at ChicagoTribune.com

When Loretta Lynch succeeded Eric Holder as U.S. attorney general a year ago, some harbored the tiniest hope that she wouldn’t be quite as radical.

After all, Mr. Holder had done his best to gin up racial resentment, dismiss a clear case of voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party, attack voter photo ID laws, refuse to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, threaten a congressman trying to get to the truth of the Fast and Furious Mexican gun-running scandal, and ignore the Internal Revenue Service’s mob-like persecution of conservative groups.

Mr. Holder also managed to sidestep or slow down any action regarding former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server, or the massive irregularities of the $2 billion Clinton Foundation, the golden cash cow of open graft by the Clintons and their cronies. Meanwhile, Mr. Holder staffed the Justice Department civil rights division with hard-core leftists, as amply documented in J. Christian Adams’ book “Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department.”

The partisan corruption under Mr. Holder was so patently obvious that his departure made some folks cautiously optimistic that Ms. Lynch would put “justice” back into the Justice Department.

No such luck. She’s not only buried that hope but driven a monster truck over it.

In February, for example, Ms. Lynch’s Justice Department sided with radical groups that sued to overturn requirements for proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in Alabama, Arizona, Georgia and Kansas. The DOJ attorneys’ conduct was so outrageous that it drew a rebuke from a federal judge.

Last Tuesday, the Justice Department revealed that it won’t seek the death penalty for terrorist suspect Abu Khattala if he’s convicted of orchestrating the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012 that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens.

This past week, Ms. Lynch outdid herself, proclaiming that forcing schools and cities to grant transgender males access to girls and women’s restrooms and locker rooms is right up there with the noble claims of the black civil rights movement. Seriously.

So, Ms. Lynch filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against North Carolina and its Republican governor, Pat McCrory. Their offense? Enacting and enforcing a “bathroom” law that requires people to use facilities that match their sex at birth. The state law came in response to the city of Charlotte’s wacky statute opening up all facilities based on feelings rather than objectively defined sex.

Immediately, many corporate America titans like PayPal, General Electric, Pepsi and Dow Chemical joined Hollywood leftist bullies, the NCAA, and even the National Basketball Association in threatening to boycott the state.

Citing the nation’s “founding ideals,” which now apparently include protecting the “right” of certain males to enter women’s restrooms, Ms. Lynch compared their plight to Jim Crow laws and school racial segregation. Anyone opposing the transgender agenda is by her definition a hater and a bigot.

In a spectacular case of reverse logic, she said, “None of us can stand by when a state is in the business of legislating identity and insists that a person pretend to be something they are not.”

Say what? Isn’t it the men who are pretending to be women and vice versa who are forcing the issue?

“If there is no more difference between men and women than there is between blacks and whites — as Ms. Lynch seems to think — then why not eliminate all single-sex restrooms, locker rooms and dressing rooms everywhere?” asks Illinois Family Institute writer Laurie Higgins, an astute critic of cultural trends. “Why not allow all men and all women to use the same restrooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms, showers and shelters? After all, blacks and whites do.”

The answer, of course, is that unlike skin color, the differences between male and female, rooted firmly in biology, including DNA, brain and body structure, are profound and meaningful. The distinction between male and female is at the heart of marriage, family life, morality and social order.

For Ms. Lynch to suggest that anyone who recognizes these differences and understands the need for privacy and modesty based on sex is a hateful bigot reveals her own contempt for nature and nature’s God, upon which the legitimacy of our laws rest, as stated in the Declaration of Independence.

Fortunately, Gov. McCrory and the legislature are standing firm, with Mr. McCrory and Republican General Assembly leaders filing countersuits in federal court over Lynch’s “baseless and blatant overreach” and “radical reinterpretation” of the Civil Rights Act.

Pundits who dismiss all this as a silly distraction miss the point. This is about far more than bathroom access. Beneath the economic wars, the left is using this issue as a spear point to test how far the average American can be pushed by government into relinquishing not only our God-given rights but our grasp of reality.

As the nation’s chief law enforcer, Loretta Lynch is putting the weight of the federal government against millions of Americans who just want to maintain some level of decency — and normalcy. God help us.

This article originally published on WashingtonTimes.com.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said “Every public official in our democracy is subject to the rule of law. No one is above the law. That applies to the president of the United States and that applies to the county clerk of Rowan County, Ky., as well.”

Really? That applies to the president? Well, did it apply to President Barack Obama when he instructed Attorney General Eric Holder to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which was the law of the land—a bipartisan law passed by huge majorities in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives and signed into law by Bill Clinton?

Did those who now oppose Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis‘ actions also oppose Attorney General Eric Holder’s refusal to defend the Defense of Marriage Act?

What about the refusal of Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez and state-attorney’s general in Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Virginia to defend DOMA?

What about the refusal of California Governor Jerry Brown’s and California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ refusals to defend Prop 8.

The Obergefelle decision, in which 5 unelected justices imposed same-sex faux-marriage on all of America, was as little grounded in the text and history of the Constitution as Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade. Does defying a lawless act constitute lawlessness?

Those who oppose Kim Davis’ actions ought to read Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in order to better understand when civil disobedience is justified:

One may well ask, “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: there are just laws, and there are unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “An unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law.

Despite what some conservatives argue, neither religious liberty nor civil disobedience is  reserved for just those employed in the private sector.

When Eric Holder announced that the Department of Justice would no longer defend the duly enacted DOMA law, he said, “decisions at any level not to defend individual laws must be exceedingly rare. They must be reserved only for exceptional – truly exceptional – circumstances.’”

My friends, such a time is this.

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In 1865, following the most costly war in America’s history, the 13th Amendment abolished the odious institution of slavery in the United States.

Why, then, is telecommunications giant Verizon providing an outlet for the products of the modern-day slavery of sex trafficking? The short answer is that it’s good for the bottom line.

Speaking of the bottom, that’s where you find libertine societies where the only considerations are whether something makes money or involves adult consent. Stripped of moral restraints, the marketplace eventually serves up child-themed pornography and sexually violent content.

Each year, Morality in Media, an anti-pornography group headed by former Justice Department attorney Patrick A. Trueman, releases a “Dirty Dozen List” of the leading facilitators of pornography. This year, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. tops the list.

“As the pandemic of harm from pornography grows, Holder gives criminal pornographers the green light to proceed by stopping all enforcement of federal obscenity laws,” Mr. Trueman explains.

The list, which is far from comprehensive, includes Facebook, for not enforcing its own standards, the local networking site Tumblr, Google, YouTube and PlayStation for its live, streamed pornography and sexually violent games.

It also includes Verizon, citing the obscene movies it sells through FIOS. You’d think that a company that portrays itself as the acme of excellence would be embarrassed. You’d be wrong, though.

Because of U.S. Supreme Court rulings, pornography is legal, but even the court drew a line at obscenity, which is not protected speech under the First Amendment. The reason that even corporate giants now peddle obscenity is that the Justice Department, beginning in the Clinton years, stopped enforcing the law.

Consequently, Verizon is taking pimp money for such movies as “I Banged My Stepdad” and “Mom, Daughter and Me.” These are actual titles.

Verizon’s associate director for advertising and content standards, John P. Artney, blithely dismissed Morality in Media’s concerns:

“The explosion in choice is a tremendous benefit to consumers, but not all consumers want to have access to all content for themselves and their families all of the time,” Mr. Artney responded in a statement. “Not all content is desirable to or appropriate for all consumers, however, and Verizon is proud to provide our customers with myriad tools to control the types of content that they and their families have access to through our service.”

Wow. That’s a relief. We sure don’t mind if the guy down the street in the raincoat is getting “benefit” from the kind of porn that perps act out when they victimize women and children. As long as we’re making “choice” the litmus test, shouldn’t people who want to raise their kids in a decent community have any choice?

Not to Verizon, or to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The liberal group has attacked obscenity laws for decades, and still defends possession of child pornography. On its Blog of Rights, the ACLU recently featured an article by Linda Chateauvert, author of the book “Sex Workers Unite: A History of the Movement from Stonewall to Slutwalk.” She begins: “Do sex workers have rights? Put another way, can whores, hustlers, strippers, streetwalkers and porn stars demand respect and justice?”

Well, yes. As human beings created in the image of God, they deserve respect and justice. However, that doesn’t mean that selling one’s body is a good thing. It also does not mean the victims have exercised free choice. Often, they are beaten and drugged to force them to “perform.” Sex trafficking of women and children is part of the worldwide modern slavery plague of human trafficking. It’s a pipeline to dependency on evil men who exploit the vulnerable. This now includes some Fortune 500 executives. Jesus famously rescued a woman caught in adultery who was to be stoned to death by a mob. He suggested that any man who has not sinned should cast the first stone. After all the men left, starting with the oldest, Jesus told the woman to “go and sin no more.” That’s the part that libertines leave out when they twist Jesus’ compassion into a free ticket to Sodom and Gomorrah.

For more than 200 years, America’s laws reflected the biblically derived understanding of sex — that it belongs in marriage, and that outside that haven, it causes much grief. Family-centered, self-governing Americans created the freest and most prosperous nation in history.

Although sometimes it feels as if America suddenly got hit by a tsunami from hell, the wave got its start in an earthquake at Indiana University in the late 1940s. That’s when Alfred C. Kinsey launched his fraudulent sex studies of men and women and laid the “scientific” foundation for the sexual revolution that took off in the 1950s and rumbled through the drug-addled ‘60s. By the time it lurched into the ‘70s, the sexual revolution had conquered or wounded all institutions that transmit cultural values.

The sexual revolution, beloved of liberals who still think America is too prudish, has reduced our country to a land where a massive media company can wrap films like “Pigtail Teens Pounded” (a real title on Verizon) in the red, white and blue flag of consumer choice.

If we end up living in a land where shame has no place, we will be ashamed of where we live.

Verizon is a communications company. Eric Holder Jr. is attorney general. Maybe it’s time we communicated something about the new slavery to them.

This article was first published on the WashingtonTimes.com blog.

The “sweet” young man who killed two people, and then himself, in a Maryland shopping mall on January 25 was a pothead.

But the police revelation that the killer mentions “using marijuana” in a diary has been played down by the media, which in recent months have seemed almost ecstatic about the legalization of the drug in Colorado. President Obama, a one-time heavy user, recently called the drug safer than alcohol.

The link between marijuana and mental illness, documented in the medical literature, is not a popular subject for journalists who themselves may use pot and be reluctant to tell the truth about high potency marijuana and its powerful, psychoactive component.

Just after the murders, the killer, Darion Aguilar, was described in a Washington Post story as a “good kid” with no criminal record who was perceived as “harmless.” His mother called him a “gentle, sweet kid.”

But now the story has dramatically changed.

“Howard County police said on Twitter that Darion Aguilar wrote of using marijuana, expressed ‘thoughts of wanting to die’ and even said he was ‘ready to die,’” reported The Washington Post. But the marijuana reference was buried in the fifth paragraph, even though it helps explain why a “harmless” young man would turn into a psychotic monster.

The police Twitter account reported that Aguilar, in his writings, “indicates he thought he needed a mental health professional, but never told his family. He also mentions using marijuana.”

In Maryland, where the mall killings took place, the Marijuana Policy Project is pushing legal dope. State Senate President Thomas V. “Mike” Miller has endorsed legalization of marijuana and even remarked about taking a “toke” for a toothache.

Less than a week after Aguilar brought a shotgun into the shopping mall in Columbia, Maryland, state police arrested another doper, George Hong Sik Chin, as he threatened employees at the Tumi luggage store in Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Maryland. “Police searched his truck and found a small amount of marijuana and a pipe, and drug charges were pending,” The Baltimore Sun reported.

Police said he was wearing camouflage, acting disorderly, and threatening to kill employees of the luggage store. Another account said he was “babbling incoherently.”

Nevertheless, the Marijuana Policy Project, which conducts fundraisers at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles, posted five billboards surrounding the stadium that hosted the Super Bowl on Sunday, claiming that “marijuana is safer than both alcohol and playing professional football.” This claim echoes statements made by President Barack Obama, a one-time member of the “Choom Gang” in Hawaii, and a heavy user of marijuana.

U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), during a January 29 Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing of the Justice Department, questioned Attorney General Eric Holder about Obama’s recent statement to The New Yorker that marijuana isn’t more dangerous than alcohol:

Sessions: …did the President make or conduct any medical or scientific survey before he waltzed into The New Yorker and opined, contrary to the position of attorney generals and presidents universally prior to that? That marijuana is not as I’ve quoted him? Did he study any of this data before he made that statement?

Holder: Well, I don’t know, but I think, as I said…

Sessions: Did he consult with you before he made that statement?

Holder:  No, we didn’t talk about that.

Sessions: Well, what about this study from the American Medical Association, October of 2013? ‘Heavy (inaudible) use in adolescents causes persistent impairments in neurocognitive performance and I.Q. And use is associated with increased rates of anxiety, mood and psychotic thought disorders,’ close quote. Or this report from Northwestern University in December—last December. Quote: ‘The study found that marijuana users have abnormal brain structure and poor memory, and that chronic marijuana use may lead to brain changes resembling schizophrenia. The study also reported that the younger the person starts using marijuana, the worst the effect.’ Would you dispute those reports?

Holder: I have not read the reports, but I don’t—if they are—if they are, in fact, from the AMA, I’m sure they are good reports. But that is exactly why one of our eight enforcement priorities is the prevention of marijuana to minors.

Sessions: Well, Lady Gaga said she’s addicted to it, and it is not harmless. She’s been addicted to it. Patrick Kennedy—former Congressman Kennedy—said the President is wrong on this subject. I just think it’s a huge issue. I hope that you will talk with the President—you’re close to him—and begin to push back—pull back from this position that I think is going to be adverse to the health of America.

Liberal commentators laughed at Senator Sessions’ reference to Lady Gaga being addicted to marijuana, but in fact she said she was “smoking up to 15-20 marijuana cigarettes a day,” allegedly to deal with various ailments.  She has been a longtime Obama supporter.

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

Many pro-family leaders are praising the GOP platform for its strong language in a variety of areas. For example, Phyliss Schlafly noted this week in an editorial in the Washington Times that the platform has the successful three-legged stool model that Ronald Reagan won with through strong national defense, economic conservatism and family values. 

One item responsible parents will appreciate is the replacement of language opposing child pornography with a broader call for the enforcement of all laws on obscenity. For years various coalitions have been calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to enforce obscenity laws passed by Congress and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Even when John Aschroft, someone whom I greatly admire, was U.S. Attorney General, his actions on this problem were not much better than that of the Clinton Administration under U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. (Not since Bush 41 has any Justice Department done much other than enforcement of child porn laws, although under the Bush 43 administration an increased emphasis on human trafficking began to appear, which is related to our pornographic culture.)

Placement of this broader call to action into the Republican Party platform may help achieve that much needed enforcement if U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is replaced by a different administration. 

A week ago, the Chicago Tribune celebrated — again — the passage of the civil union bill as well as Obama’s decision to order the Justice Department to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

On Feb. 23, 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that President Barack Obama has divined that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional and has ordered the Justice Department (DOJ) to cease defending it. President Obama ordered the DOJ to stop defending DOMA in court even though the DOJ is specifically charged with the responsibility of defending federal laws.

However did DOMA’s unconstitutionality escape the notice of the 85 senators and 342 representatives who voted for it in 1996? And however did its unconstitutionality escape the notice of the man who signed it into law: President Bill Clinton, attorney and Rhodes Scholar?

The intellectual vacuity of the Tribune’s position is best illustrated in the claim that “the sky didn’t fall” following the passage of the civil union bill. What they mean is that Illinois has seen no cultural cataclysm since the bill was signed into law. The Tribune? wins this sophistical skirmish: I will concede that the bill that was signed into law six weeks ago and doesn’t take effect until June has not resulted in climatic catastrophe.

It has, however, darkened the sky for Jim Walder, a bed and breakfast owner in Paxton, Illinois who is being sued by a homosexual couple for not renting his facility to them for their civil union and reception. (Read more about this HERE.) And it seriously threatens the religious liberty of Christian organizations that seek to live out the tenets of their faith. (Read more about this HERE.)

But most of the cultural damage will not be seen for years to come. Any thinking person understands that cultural change rarely happens instantaneously. For example, Stanley Kurtz has documented the destructive impact same-sex “marriage” has had on heterosexual marriage in Scandinavia — changes that did not appear in a period of weeks or even months.

The Tribune editorial board continues its assault on marriage without ever feeling the need to address the fundamental and fundamentally flawed analogy upon which the entire homosexuality-affirming movement, including the effort to radically transform marriage and family, is built. The entire house of cards is built on a specious comparison of race to homosexuality, and yet, I cannot recall reading a single editorial defending with evidence the ways in which race and homosexuality are ontologically analogous or equivalent.

I also can’t recall the Tribune editorial board wrestling intellectually with the fundamental question that Princeton Law Professor Robert George recently debated with homosexual journalist Kenji Yoshino, which is: What is marriage?