Written by Megan Basham

In September, Wheaton College dean Ed Stetzer interviewed National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins on his podcast, “Church Leadership” about why Christians who want to obey Christ’s command to love their neighbors should get the Covid vaccine and avoid indulging in misinformation.

For those not familiar with Stetzer, he’s not just a religious liberal arts professor and this wasn’t just another dime-a-dozen pastorly podcast. To name just a few of his past and present titles in the evangelical world, Stetzer is also the executive director of the Billy Graham Center and the editor-in-chief of Outreach media group. He was previously an editor at Christianity Today and an executive director at LifeWay, one of the largest religious publishers in the world. That’s to say nothing of the dozen-plus books on missions and church planting he’s authored.

Which is why, when Stetzer joined a line of renowned pastors and ministry leaders lending their platforms to Obama-appointee Collins, the collaboration was noteworthy.

During their discussion, Collins and Stetzer were hardly shy about the fact that they were asking ministers to act as the administration’s go-between with their congregants. “I want to exhort pastors once again to try to use your credibility with your flock to put forward the public health measures that we know can work,” Collins said. Stetzer replied that he sometimes hears from ministers who don’t feel comfortable preaching about Covid vaccines, and he advises them, in those cases, to simply promote the jab through social media.

“I just tell them, when you get vaccinated, post a picture and say, ‘So thankful I was able to get vaccinated,’” Stetzer said. “People need to see that it is the reasonable view.”

Their conversation also turned to the subject of masking children at school, with Collins noting that Christians, in particular, have been resistant to it. His view was firm—kids should be masked if they want to be in the classroom. To do anything else is to turn schools into super spreaders. Stetzer offered no pushback or follow-up questions based on views from other medical experts. He simply agreed.

The most crucial question Stetzer never asked Collins however, was why convincing church members to get vaccinated or disseminating certain administration talking points should be the business of pastors at all.

Christians and Conspiracy Theories

Stetzer’s efforts to help further the NIH’s preferred coronavirus narratives went beyond simply giving Collins a softball venue to rally pastors to his cause. He ended the podcast by announcing that the Billy Graham Center would be formally partnering with the Biden administration. Together with the NIH and the CDC it would launch a website, coronavirusandthechurch.com, to provide clergy Covid resources they could then convey to their congregations.

Much earlier in the pandemic, as an editor at evangelicalism’s flagship publication, Christianity Today (CT), Stetzer had also penned essays parroting Collins’ arguments on conspiracy theories. Among those he lambasted other believers for entertaining, the hypothesis that the coronavirus had leaked from a Wuhan lab. In a now deleted essay, preserved by Web Archive, Stetzer chided, “If you want to believe that some secret lab created this as a biological weapon, and now everyone is covering that up, I can’t stop you.”

It may seem strange, given the evidence now emerging of NIH-funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan, to hear a church leader instruct Christians to “repent” for the sin of discussing the plausible supposition that the virus had escaped from a Chinese laboratory. This is especially true as it doesn’t take any great level of spiritual discernment — just plain common sense — to look at the fact that Covid first emerged in a city with a virology institute that specializes in novel coronaviruses and realize it wasn’t an explanation that should be set aside too easily. But it appears Stetzer was simply following Collins’ lead.

Only two days before Stetzer published his essay, Collins participated in a livestream event, co-hosted by CT. The outlet introduced him as a “follower of Jesus, who affirms the sanctity of human life” despite the fact that Collins is on record stating he does not definitively believe, as most pro-lifers do, that life begins at conception, and his tenure at NIH has been marked by extreme anti-life, pro-LGBT policies. (More on this later).

But the pro-life Christian framing was sure to win Collins a hearing among an audience with deep religious convictions about the evil of abortion. Many likely felt reassured to hear that a likeminded medical expert was representing them in the administration.

During the panel interview, Collins continued to insist that the lab leak theory wasn’t just unlikely but qualified for the dreaded misinformation label. “If you were trying to design a more dangerous coronavirus,” he said, “you would never have designed this one … So I think one can say with great confidence that in this case the bioterrorist was nature … Humans did not make this one. Nature did.”

It was the same message his subordinate, Dr. Anthony Fauci, had been giving to secular news outlets, but Collins was specifically tapped to carry the message to the faithful. As Time Magazine reported in Feb. 2021, “While Fauci has been medicine’s public face, Collins has been hitting the faith-based circuit…and preaching science to believers.”

The editors, writers, and reporters at Christian organizations didn’t question Collins any more than their mainstream counterparts questioned Fauci.

Certainly The Gospel Coalition, a publication largely written for and by pastors, didn’t probe beyond the “facts” Collins’ offered or consider any conflicts of interest the NIH director might have had before publishing several essays that cited him as almost their lone source of information. As with CT, one article by Gospel Coalition editor Joe Carter linked the reasonable hypothesis that the virus might have been human-made with wilder QAnon fantasies. It then lectured readers that spreading such ideas would damage the church’s witness in the world.

Of course, Stetzer and The Gospel Coalition had no way of knowing at that point that Collins and Fauci had already heard from leading U.S. and British scientists who believed the virus had indeed escaped from a Chinese lab. Or that they believed it might be the product of gain-of-function engineering, possibly with funding from the NIH itself. Nor could they have predicted that emails between Collins and Fauci would later show the pair had a habit of turning to friendly media contacts (including, it seems, Christian media contacts) to discredit and suppress opinions they didn’t like, such as questioning Covid’s origins and the wisdom of masks and lockdowns.

What Stetzer and others did know was that one of the most powerful bureaucrats in the world was calling on evangelical leaders to be “ambassadors for truth.” And they were happy to answer that call.

The question was, just how truthful was Collins’ truth?

Evangelicals of a Feather

Stetzer, CT, and The Gospel Coalition were hardly alone in uncritically lending their sway over rank-and-file evangelicals to Collins. The list of Christian leaders who passed the NIH director their mics to preach messages about getting jabs, wearing masks, and accepting the official line on Covid is as long as it is esteemed.

One of the most noteworthy was the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), an organization funded by churches in the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S.

While a webinar featuring Collins and then-ERLC-head Russell Moore largely centered, again, on the importance of pastors convincing church members to get vaccinated, the discussion also moved on to the topic of masks. With Moore nodding along, Collins held up a basic, over-the-counter cloth square, “This is not a political statement,” he asserted. “This is not an invasion of your personal freedom…This is a life-saving medical device.”

Even in late 2020, the claim was highly debatable among medical experts. As hematologist-oncologist Vinay Prasad wrote in City Journal this month, public health officials like Collins have had a truth problem over the entire course of Covid, but especially when it comes to masks. “The only published cluster randomized trial of community cloth masking during Covid-19,” Prasad reported, “found that…cloth masks were no better than no masks at all.” [emphasis mine].

At this point, even the CDC is backing away from claims that cloth masks are worth much of anything.

Yet none of the Christian leaders platforming Collins evidently felt it was worth exploring a second opinion. And the list of pastors who were willing to take a bureaucrat’s word that matters that could have been left to Christian liberty were instead tests of one’s love for Jesus goes on.

Former megachurch pastor Tim Keller’s joint interview with Collins included a digression where the pair agreed that churches like John MacArthur’s, which continued to meet in-person despite Covid lockdowns, represented the “bad and ugly” of good, bad, and ugly Christian responses to the virus.

During Saddleback Pastor Rick Warren’s special broadcast with Collins on behalf of Health and Human Services, he mentioned that he and Collins first met when both were speakers for the billionaires and heads of state who gather annually in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. They reconnected recently, Warren revealed, at an “off-the-record” meeting between Collins and “key faith leaders.” Warren did not say, but one can make an educated guess as to who convened that meeting and for what purpose, given the striking similarity of Collins’ appearances alongside all these leading Christian lights.

Once again, Warren and Collins spent their interview jointly lamenting the unlovingness of Christians who question the efficacy of masks, specifically framing it as a matter of obedience to Jesus. “Wearing a mask is the great commandment: love your neighbor as yourself,” the best-selling author of “The Purpose-Driven Life” declared, before going on to specifically argue that religious leaders have an obligation to convince religious people to accept the government’s narratives about Covid.

“Let me just say a word to the priests and pastors and rabbis and other faith leaders,” he said. “This is our job, to deal with these conspiracy issues and things like that…One of the responsibilities of faith leaders is to tell people to…trust the science. They’re not going to put out a vaccine that’s going to hurt people.”

Leaving aside for a moment the fact that government does have a record of putting out vaccines that “hurt people,” is it truly the pastor’s job to tell church members to “trust the science?” Is it a pastor’s job to slyly insult other pastors who chose to handle shutdowns differently, as Warren did when he quipped that his “ego doesn’t require” him to “have a live audience to speak to.”

And still the list goes on.

The same week MacArthur’s church was in the news for resisting California Governor Gavin Newsom orders to keep houses of worship closed, Collins participated in an interview with celebrated theologian N.T. Wright.

During a discussion where the NIH director once again trumpeted the efficacy of cloth masks, the pair warned against conspiracies, mocking “disturbing examples” of churches that continued meeting because they thought “the devil can’t get into my church” or “Jesus is my vaccine.” Lest anyone wonder whether Wright experienced some pause over lending his reputation as a deep Christian thinker to Caesar’s agent, the friends finished with a guitar duet.

Even hipster Christian publications like Relevant, whose readers have likely never heard of Collins, still looked to him as the foundation of their Covid reporting.

Throughout all of it, Collins brought the message to the faithful through their preachers and leaders: “God is calling [Christians] to do the right thing.”

And none of those leaders thought to question whether Collins’ “right thing” and God’s “right thing” must necessarily be the same thing.

Why not? As Warren said of Collins during their interview: “He’s a man you can trust.”

A Man You Can Trust

Perhaps the evangelical elites’ willingness to unhesitatingly credit Collins with unimpeachable honesty has something to do with his rather Mr. Rogers-like appearance and gentle demeanor. The establishment media has compared him to “The Simpson’s” character Ned Flanders, noting that he has a tendency to punctuate his soft speech with exclamations of “oh boy!” and “by golly!”

Going by his concrete record, however, he seems like a strange ambassador to spread the government’s Covid messaging to theologically conservative congregations. Other than his proclamations that he is, himself, a believer, the NIH director espouses nearly no public positions that would mark him out as any different from any extreme Left-wing bureaucrat.

He has not only defended experimentation on fetuses obtained by abortion, he has also directed record-level spending toward it. Among the priorities the NIH has funded under Collins — a University of Pittsburgh experiment that involved grafting infant scalps onto lab rats, as well as projects that relied on the harvested organs of aborted, full-term babies. Some doctors have even charged Collins with giving money to research that required extracting kidneys, ureters, and bladders from living infants.

He further has endorsed unrestricted funding of embryonic stem cell research, personally attending President Obama’s signing of an Executive Order to reverse a previous ban on such expenditures. When Nature magazine asked him about the Trump administration’s decision to shut down fetal cell research, Collins made it clear he disagreed, saying, “I think it’s widely known that the NIH tried to protect the continued use of human fetal tissue. But ultimately, the White House decided otherwise. And we had no choice but to stand down.”

Even when directly asked about how genetic testing has led to the increased killing of Down Syndrome babies in the womb, Collins deflected, telling Beliefnet, “I’m troubled [by] the applications of genetics that are currently possible are oftentimes in the prenatal arena…But, of course, in our current society, people are in a circumstance of being able to take advantage of those technologies.”

When it comes to pushing an agenda of racial quotas and partiality based on skin color, Collins is a member of the Left in good standing, speaking fluently of “structural racism” and “equity” rather than equality. He’s put his money (or, rather, taxpayer money) where his mouth is, implementing new policies that require scientists seeking NIH grants to pass diversity, equity, and inclusion tests in order to qualify.

To the most holy of progressive sacred cows — LGBTQ orthodoxy — Collins has been happy to genuflect. Having declared himself an “ally” of the gay and trans movements, he went on to say he “[applauds] the courage and resilience it takes for [LGBTQ] individuals to live openly and authentically” and is “committed to listening, respecting, and supporting [them]” as an “advocate.”

These are not just the empty words of a hapless Christian official saying what he must to survive in a hostile political atmosphere. Collins’ declaration of allyship is deeply reflected in his leadership.

Under his watch, the NIH launched a new initiative to specifically direct funding to “sexual and gender minorities.” On the ground, this has translated to awarding millions in grants to experimental transgender research on minors, like giving opposite-sex hormones to children as young as eight and mastectomies to girls as young as 13. Another project, awarded $8 million in grants, included recruiting teen boys to track their homosexual activities like “condomless anal sex” on an app without their parents’ consent.

Other than his assertions of his personal Christian faith, there is almost no public stance Collins has taken that would mark him out as someone of like mind with the everyday believers to whom he was appealing.

How did Collins overcome all this baggage to become the go-to expert for millions of Christians? With a little help from his friends, who were happy to stand as his character witnesses.

Keller, Warren, Wright, and Stetzer all publicly lauded him as a godly brother.  When presenting Collins to Southern Baptists, Moore gushed over him as the smartest man in a book club he attends that also includes, according to Time Magazine, such luminaries of the “Christiantelligentsia” as The Atlantic’s Pete Wehner and The New York Times’ David Brooks.

In October, even after Collins’ funding of the University of Pittsburgh research had become widely known, Moore continued to burnish his friend’s reputation, saying, “I admire greatly the wisdom, expertise, and, most of all, the Christian humility and grace of Francis Collins.” That same month, influential evangelical pundit David French deemed Collins a “national treasure” and his service in the NIH “faithful.” Former George W. Bush speechwriter and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson struck the most poetic tone in his effusive praise, claiming that Collins possesses a “restless genius [that] is other-centered” and is a “truth-seeker in the best sense.”

Except, apparently, when those others are aborted infants or gender-confused children and when that truth pertains to lab leaks or gain-of-function funding.

Since news began breaking months ago that Collins and Fauci intentionally used their media connections to conspire to suppress the lab-leak theory, none of the individuals or organizations in this story has corrected their records or asked Collins publicly about his previous statements. Nor have they circled back with him to inquire on record about revelations the NIH funded gain-of-function coronavirus research in Wuhan. They also haven’t questioned him on the increasing scientific consensus that cloth masks were never very useful.

The Daily Wire reached out to Stetzer, Keller, Wright, Warren, Moore, and French to ask if they have changed their views on Collins given recent revelations. None responded.

Francis Collins has been an especially successful envoy for the Biden administration, delivering messages to a mostly-Republican Christian populace who would otherwise be reluctant to hear them. In their presentation of Collins’ expertise, these pastors and leaders suggested that questioning his explanations as to the origins of the virus or the efficacy of masks was not simply a point of disagreement but sinful. This was a charge likely to have a great deal of impact on churchgoers who strive to live lives in accordance with godly standards. Perhaps no other argument could’ve been more persuasive to this demographic.

This does not mean these leaders necessarily knew that the information they were conveying to the broader Christian public could be false, but it does highlight the danger religious leaders face when they’re willing to become mouth organs of the government.

What we do know about Collins and his work with Fauci is that they have shown themselves willing to compromise transparency and truth for PR considerations. Thus, everything they have told the public about the vaccines may be accurate and their message a worthy one for Christians. But their credibility no longer carries much weight. It would’ve been better had the evangelical establishment never platformed Collins at all and shipwrecked their own reputations to showcase their lofty connections to him.

While these evangelical leaders were warning about conspiracy theories, Collins was waging a misinformation campaign himself — one these Christian megaphones helped further.

Why they did it is a question only they can answer. Perhaps in their eagerness to promote vaccines, they weren’t willing to offer any pushback to Collins’ other claims. Certainly, the lure of respect in the halls of power has proved too great a siren call for many a man. Or perhaps it was simply that their friend, the NIH director, called on them for a favor. If so, a friend like Collins deserved much, much more scrutiny.

There’s an instructive moment at the end of Warren‘s interview with Collins. The pastor misquotes Proverbs 4, saying, “Get the facts at any price.”

That, of course, is not what the verse says. It says get wisdom at any price. And it was wisdom that was severely lacking when so many pastors and ministry heads recklessly turned over their platforms, influence, and credibility to a government official who had done little to demonstrate he deserved them.

This article was originally published by The Daily Wire, which is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. 

On February 12, 2021, two anonymous plaintiffs filed a class action complaint in Alabama Federal Court against pornographer MG Freesites, an international syndicated pornography corporation headquartered in the Republic of Cyprus and having organizations and doing business in at least 6 countries including the U.S. (as Mindgeek, USA, Inc., Delaware).

For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. ~Ephesians 5:12

Intentionally avoiding further promotion of Mindgeek’s evil operations, it is noted that Mindgeek owns and operates some of the most well-known and well-trafficked web-sites where illegal pornography, including some of the worst imaginable perversion, is provided for free, to everyone, everywhere, on the Internet.

In “Doe v. Mindgeek” (plaintiff’s identities protected by a pseudonym) two plaintiffs, representative of all similarly situated victims, now-adult women, who were under eighteen years of age at the time of filming, were drugged, raped and depicted in commercial sex acts and child pornography, which was then made available for viewing on websites owned, operated and controlled by defendant pornographers who exploited this unbelievably vile child sex abuse material for profit.

The conscience of our society is becoming more and more seared with respect to the horrible wickedness of pornography.

As a very sobering, and particularly educational for us who are parents, reminder of how serious this problem is, and our culture’s typical reaction, readers are encouraged to recall the impact of pornography on serial killer Ted Bundy as shown in Dr. James Dobson’s famous interview (1989).

It is a great providence therefore, that several federal laws have been passed in recent years to penalize wicked  businesses engaging in sex trafficking and child pornography.

Congress passed in 2000, re-authorized in 2003, and amended in 2008, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (“TVPRA”) penalizing the full range of human trafficking offenses, including the sex trafficking of children under the age of 18 or sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion.

This law:

• permits a party to bring a civil claim against perpetrators,
• and against a person who, although not the actual perpetrator of a violation, knowingly benefited from participating in a venture that it should have known was engaged in a violation,
• and makes it a crime to benefit financially or receive anything of value from participation in a venture which knowingly solicits by any means a person to engage in a commercial sex act,
• or that the person has not attained the age of 18 years old and will be caused to engage in a commercial sex act.
• eliminates the requirement of proof that a particular defendant knew a sex trafficking victim was a minor if the defendant had a reasonable opportunity to observe the minor.
• allows sex trafficking survivors to bring suit against anyone who benefits financially or receives anything of value from the violation.

The 2018 passage of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (“FOSTA”) and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (“SESTA”) clarified that these laws would be enforced against internet and web-based companies that advertise and profit from sex trafficking. The FOSTA/SESTA amendment to the Communications Decency Act (47 U.S.C. § 230) makes web-based companies liable regardless of whether the conduct occurred, before or after enactment.

These are great laws, providing significant criminal and civil liability to these businesses, but somebody has to go after them!

That is why it is very encouraging for this long overdue legal action to move forward. It is the very heart of justice in our American Republican self-government.

The complaint alleges that one prominent Mindgeek web-site uploads 18,000 videos daily, with an average length of approximately 11 minutes per video.  Mindgeek’s attempt to avoid publishing material in violation of these laws requires moderators to review approximately 1,100 minutes of video each hour.

The complaint further alleges that Mindgeek’s employees, knowing this to be an impossible task,  are even encouraged not to remove child pornography by its policy of paying annual bonuses based on the number of videos approved.

The complaint alleges that the images of plaintiffs continue to be displayed, despite being identified as minors and requests to remove them.

The suit requests injunctive or any other equitable relief to plaintiffs and requires the defendants to identify and remove child pornography and implement a very long list of corporate-wide policies and practices to prevent continued dissemination of child pornography or child sex trafficking.

The suit also requests all available damages, in favor of both plaintiffs and the entire class, including:

• compensatory and punitive damages,
• prejudgment interest, costs and attorneys’ fees,
• and restitution and disgorgement of all profits and unjust enrichment obtained as a result of defendants’ unlawful conduct.

It is easy to see that such an award could be enormous.

If successful, this case has the potential to severely harm this morally debased business through:

• Taking back large amounts of money gained from illegal activities,
• Eliciting enormous punitive damages for intentional bad behavior (readers may recall the Liebeck v. McDonald‘s coffee spill case, where actual damages of $200,000 were awarded, with $2.7 million dollars of punitive damages added for McDonald’s bad behavior), multiplied by thousands or millions of victims of sexual trafficking and child pornography,
• Ordering cumbersome, potentially business-threatening, policies and practices to actually prevent further violations, and
• Exposure to additional criminal action

The case looks very good from a legal perspective, satisfying all elements of the relevant laws.  These are excellent and world-class attorneys representing plaintiffs.  The judge is a George W. Bush appointee.  A success will open the door for similar lawsuits, and possible criminal action.

They dug a pit in my way, but they have fallen into it themselves.  ~Psalm 57:6b

In addition to winning the suit however, the most difficult obstacles to recovery and destruction of this evil business, will be identifying more class members, and the difficulty of enforcement of court sanctions against a largely foreign corporation.

Christians should continually pray for the attorneys and plaintiffs in this action, and also that the Lord would bring similar lawsuits to other pornographers.

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As expected, pundits on the left are in an uproar at the president’s claims that a doctor conspires with parents as to whether to execute their newborn baby. In Trump’s words (spoken at a recent rally in Green Bay), “The baby is born, the mother meets with the doctor, they take care of the baby, they wrap the baby beautifully. Then the doctor and mother determine whether or not they will execute the baby.”

In response, Rolling Stone senior writer Jamil Smith tweeted, “President Trump keeps telling the same lie about abortion doctors murdering healthy fetuses after delivery. This doesn’t happen. Yet he said it again last night. This is precisely the kind of hysteria that inspires people who murder doctors and patients.”

Julia Pulver, a former neonatal nurse, said this: “When a baby dies in the hospital, it is a very sad thing but it is not something that is ever chosen. It is a horrible situation thrust upon parents who want their baby, who have prepared for the baby, who have framed sonograms sitting on their desks.”

According to Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, “What Trump asserted, for the second time, is false, illegal, and simply not happening — nor would it happen.” She claimed that, “The president “not only straight-up lied but also vilified women, families, and doctors facing situations every single one of us prays we never encounter.”

And Huffington Post adds this: “The recent focus on the alleged horrors of late-term abortions is especially fact-free. Only 1.3 percent of abortions take place after 21 weeks, and experts say these involve pregnancies that endanger the mother (and by extension the baby) or severe fetal anomalies that are incompatible with life.”

Let’s address these claims one at a time.

First, President Trump said nothing about the baby being healthy (contra the tweet of Smith). Instead, he spoke about the very real situation in which a baby survives an abortion (or, presumably, is born with a life-threatening defect) and is allowed to die. That’s why Congress keeps trying to pass the Born Alive Protection Act.

In its current form, the bill reads, “To amend title 18, United States Code, to prohibit a health care practitioner from failing to exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion.”

This is a real bill designed to address real, life and death situations.

Not only so, but it was Virginia governor Ralph Northam who provided Trump with his main talking points about infanticide.

As Northam infamously said during a radio interview, “If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother. So I think this was really blown out of proportion.”

Yet the left rails on Trump for calling this out rather than on Northam for saying it.

To repeat: These things are really happening.

An official government document dated September 23, 2016, notes that, “In 2002, Congress responded by passing the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which was signed by President George W. Bush and is current federal law. This law recognized a child who is born alive after a failed abortion attempt, as a legal person under the laws of the United States. The legal definition of live birth includes any sign of life, such as breath, heartbeat, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles.

“Unfortunately, incidents involving born alive children being killed after an attempted abortion have continued after this law was passed. Infanticide is unacceptable in a civilized society, regardless of what one may think about abortion itself. It should be uncontroversial for the federal government to supplement current law with enforcement protections for born-alive children after attempted abortions. That is why Congress must pass the proposed legislation known as the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act (H.R. 3504/S. 2066).”

Trump is not lying. These things are happening. They may happen just as he described (with the baby being wrapped in a blanket) or they may not (perhaps the baby is left naked and crying on a table). But they are happening, nonetheless.

Yet, to repeat, there’s no outcry from the left about these horrors. The outcry is about the president drawing attention to the horrors.

As noted by Tony Perkins, “Liberals certainly thought infanticide was real enough in 2002, when protecting infants was so uncontroversial that it passed without a single Democratic opponent. Since then, the CDC’s data only confirms these atrocities — as do mountains of eyewitness testimony, grand jury reports, survivors’ own stories, and admissions by doctors like Northam himself!”

Second, what point is made by saying, “Only 1.3 percent of abortions take place after 21 weeks”? What if the sentence read, “Only 1.3 percent of abortions take place after birth”? Would that lessen the severity of the crime? We only kill a tiny percentage of babies once they’re born!

Let’s also put this in real-life numbers.

According to a just-released CDC report, in New York City in 2015, “the number of abortions at or after 21 weeks was 1,485 while the number of homicide victims was 352.”

Shall we celebrate the fact that this (allegedly) represents “only” 1.3 percent of abortions?

These, in short, are the facts: States like New York have passed laws allowing for abortions right up to the time of delivery. Infanticide is taking place. And in countries like the Netherlands, “650 babies a year [are] euthanized so that their parents don’t have to witness them struggle with disability or disease.”

In light of all this, I’m glad that President Trump continues to speak up. He is addressing something terribly evil, and it behooves every person of conscience to stand with him in standing for the rights of “the least of these.”

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.

Written by Walter E. Williams

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article was originally published at  the Creators Syndicate webpage.

Federal judges sit on the bench for life and can either uphold the law or rule like tyrants. This puts judicial appointments right near the top of the most important things a president can do.

The newest U.S. Supreme Court justice, Neil Gorsuch, has already shown what a difference a constitutionalist can make. But we need many more to counter the hundreds of Clinton, Obama and Jimmy Carter-appointed judges who issue zany rulings that override common sense and thwart democratically enacted popular will.

A case in point is U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, a 2010 Obama appointee. In March, he issued a temporary restraining order to keep Mississippi’s new, 15-week abortion ban from taking effect.

Judge Reeves buys into the “viability” definition of human life beginning at 23 weeks. By contrast, science has confirmed that from the moment of conception, an entirely unique human being with DNA from mother and father is alive and growing exponentially. By the eighth week, the baby has a beating heart, arms, legs, organs and human shape. The judge’s ruling implies that babies before the 23^rd week are something other than human, and so, practically speaking, ending their lives is no more consequential than getting rid of a mole or skin tag.

“If there is no viability the state has no real interest in telling a woman what to do with her body,” the judge said, deploying the abortion industry’s arbitrary rationale. 

In 2014, Judge Reeves struck down Mississippi’s marriage law, which voters had approved by 86 percent to 14 percent. Seeing nothing uniquely valuable in the male-female complementarity central to marriage, he likened resistance to racism. This would be news to black and Hispanic Mississippians who voted overwhelmingly to define marriage as between one man and one woman and reject any comparison to morally neutral racial characteristics.

Throughout his two terms, Barack Obama made good on his goal to stack the federal judiciary with leftwing ideologues like Judge Reeves. His 333 appointees (George W. Bush had 330, Bill Clinton 379 and Ronald Reagan 384), which included two U.S. Supreme Court justices, have been hard at work to “fundamentally transform” America.

One of the most dramatic turns was on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from nine federal district courts in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina and federal administrative agencies. In 2007, Republican appointees held a 7-5 majority. After six Obama appointments plus retirements, Democratic appointees now dominate 9-7 and have made their presence felt.

For example, in April 2016, a three-judge Fourth Circuit panel with two Obama appointees ruled 2 to 1 against school officials in Gloucester County, Va. that a girl identifying as a boy could use boys’ restrooms and the locker room.

Three months after the transgender ruling, a three-judge Fourth Circuit panel comprising two Obama appointees and a Clinton judge struck down North Carolina’s voter ID law on a 3-0 vote, accusing lawmakers of discriminatory intent. The Left has long argued absurdly that requiring voters to show some ID when voting is “racist.”

Another key Obama judicial takeover was at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, perhaps the second most influential court in the country because it hears cases involving federal power.

In 2008, conservatives had a 6-3 edge. Mr. Obama quickly made four appointments, flipping it to a 7-4 Democrat majority. In June 2016, an Obama appointee and a Clinton appointee on a three-judge D.C. appeals panel upheld the Federal Communications Commission’s power grab of the Internet in the name of “net neutrality.” The ruling was a reversal of the same court’s opinion in 2010, when it ruled unanimously that Congress never gave the FCC jurisdiction over the Internet.

The good news is that President Donald Trump understands the gravity of his opportunity. In 2017, he seated 12 appeals court judges, the most ever in the first year of a presidency. So far, he has seated 30 judges, including Justice Gorsuch, with 61 nominees in the pipeline, another 90 vacancies on top of that, and a likely U.S. Supreme Court appointment looming.

By all accounts, the newly robed Trump judges are restoring balance to the federal courts, which alarms Democrats like California U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who explained the stakes last December:

“The Supreme Court hears between 100 and 150 cases each year out of the more than 7,000 it’s asked to review. But in 2015 alone, more than 55,000 cases were filed in federal appeals courts. … In a way, circuit courts serve as the de facto Supreme Court to the vast majority of individuals who bring cases. They are the last word.”

When all is said and done, the last word on the Trump presidency may well be his counterrevolution to restore judicial integrity and the rule of law.

This article was originally published at Townhall.com

Well, it’s not breaking news, but it’s worth noting as President Donald Trump and Congress spar over spending that the national federal debt exceeds $20,000,000,000,000 and is rising by the minute.

We’re using zeroes here instead of spelling out “trillion” to help get across the enormity of this liability that we are piling onto our children and grandchildren.

Equally sobering is a visit to the USDebtclock.org, which tracks our rising debt at dizzying speed.  Introduced on Feb. 20, 1989 by New York real estate magnate Seymour Durst, the U.S. National Debt Clock began by reporting a national debt of “only” $2.7 trillion.

By 1991, it was ticking upward at $13,000 per second. “The amount began accumulating so fast that the last seven digits became totally illegible,” Time magazine reported.

The clock, which was mounted on a building near 42^nd Street in Manhattan, stopped in 1995 during a government shutdown (see, gridlock is good). That was the same year Mr. Durst died.  The clock got going again under his son Douglas, but broke in 1998 when its computers couldn’t handle the total of $5.5 trillion.

With new hardware, the clock continued to tick upward until September 7, 2000, when it actually began going backwards due to the wonderful fact that the national debt began decreasing.   If you’re a Democrat, you’re quick to credit the Clinton administration.  If you’re a Republican, you credit New Gingrich and the GOP Congress for slapping a lid on Clinton’s plans to spend us into oblivion.  Since deficit spending is catnip to Democrats, the second scenario makes the most sense to me.

Anyway, that blessed period ended with the dot-com crash and the economic fallout from 9/11, and the Durst Organization cranked the clock back up in 2002.

By 2008, they had to revamp it yet again, adding a digit, because the Bush Administration had nearly doubled the debt to $10 trillion.  Over the next eight years, the Obama Administration’s annual deficits (with the Republican House’s complicity from 2011 on and the full GOP Congress from 2015 on) managed to double it again.  As of this week, the national debt is cruising beyond $20.6 trillion.

If we keep doubling this thing, it will eat every last penny earned by anyone within a fairly short period.  Ever hear about the grains of wheat on the chessboard, where you double the number on each square? Before you can say “compassionate conservatism,” the thing is out of control and into the zillions.

Except for diehard statists who can imagine no reason to limit the size of government, the good news is that there is a growing consensus that the government, especially in Washington, is too big.  Too complicated. Too powerful.  Too expensive.

The federal goliath has not just stretched its constitutional limits but has busted through them like an Abrams tank through linen.

Frank Zappa, the late rock star with an acerbic wit, once was asked what he thought of the federal government. “I think they’re trying to take over the country,” he said without an ounce of irony.

Like a giant vacuum cleaner on the Potomac River, Washington has sucked up treasure and authority from the rest of the nation and wants more.

President Trump is busily trimming back federal regulations and agency personnel, but it will take a lot to get us back to where we are a semblance of a constitutional republic with a limited government.

Meanwhile, the National Debt Clock keeps humming away near Times Square for anyone who wants to see why the debt for each individual taxpayer exceeds $170,000 and the total debt per family is upwards of $800,000.

The clock is right next to the entrance of an office of the Internal Revenue Service.  “We thought it was a fitting location,” Douglas Durst told Time magazine.

As tax season gets into high gear, it’s worth visiting the clock. It helps us understand why federal elections are slated as far from April 15 as possible.

This article was originally posted at Townhall.com

Written by Hans von Spakovsky

If you have no idea what happened at the second meeting of President Donald Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in New Hampshire on Sept. 12, I’m not surprised.

Though a horde of reporters attended the meeting, almost all of the media stories that emerged from it simply repeated the progressive left’s mantra that the commission is a “sham.”

Almost no one covered the substantive and very concerning testimony of 10 expert witnesses on the problems that exist in our voter registration and election system.

The witnesses included academics, election lawyers, state election officials, data analysts, software experts, and computer scientists.

The existing and potential problems they exposed would give any American with any common sense and any concern for our democratic process cause for alarm.

The first panel included Andrew Smith of the University of New Hampshire, Kimball Brace of Election Data Services Inc., and John Lott. They testified about historical election turnout statistics and the effects of election integrity issues on voter confidence.

Lott also testified that his statistical analyses show that contrary to the narrative myth pushed by some, voter ID does not depress voter turnout. In fact, there is some evidence that it may increase turnout because it increases public confidence in elections.

In a second panel, Donald Palmer, the former chief election official in two states—Florida and Virginia—testified about the problems that exist in state voter registration systems.

He made a series of recommendations to improve the accuracy of voter rolls, including working toward “interoperability” of state voter lists so that states “can identify and remove duplicate registration of citizens who are registered to vote in more than one state.”

Robert Popper, a former Justice Department lawyer now with Judicial Watch, testified about the failure of the Justice Department to enforce the provisions of the National Voter Registration Act that require states to maintain the accuracy of their voter lists.

He said there has been a “pervasive failure by state and county officials” to comply with the National Voter Registration Act, and complained about the under-enforcement of state laws against voter fraud.

Ken Block of Simpatico Software Systems gave a stunning report on the comparison that his company did of voter registration and voter history data from 21 states. He discussed how difficult and expensive it was to get voter data from many states—data that is supposed to be freely available to the public.

According to Block, “the variability in access, quality, cost, and data provided impedes the ability to examine voter activity between states.”

Yet using an extremely conservative matching formula that included name, birthdate, and Social Security number, Block found approximately 8,500 voters who voted in two different states in the November 2016 election, including 200 couples who voted illegally together. He estimated that “there would be 40,000 duplicate votes if data from every state were available.”

Of those duplicate voters, 2,200 cast a ballot in Florida—four times George W. Bush’s margin of victory in 2000. His analysis “indicates a high likelihood [of] voter fraud” and that there is “likely much more to be found.”

As a member of the commission, I testified about The Heritage Foundation’s election fraud database. That non-comprehensive database has 1,071 examples of proven incidents of fraud ranging from one illegal vote to hundreds. It includes 938 criminal convictions, 43 civil penalties, and miscellaneous other cases.

Heritage is about to add another 19 cases to the database. This is likely just the tip of the iceberg, since many cases are never prosecuted and there is no central source for information on election fraud.

The commission also heard about a report published by Shawn Jasper, the Republican speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives. That report stated that over 6,500 individuals in 2016 used an out-of-state driver’s license to take advantage of New Hampshire’s same-day registration law to register and vote on Election Day.

Despite a law that requires an individual with an out-of-state license to obtain a New Hampshire license within 60 days of establishing residency in the state, only 15.5 percent have done so.

Many have tried to explain this away be saying those voters must all have been college students living in New Hampshire. Perhaps that is true.

But it may also be true that voters from Massachusetts and other surrounding states decided to take advantage of New Hampshire’s law to cross the border and vote in a presidential and Senate race, which were decided by only 3,000 and 1,000 voters, respectively.

Of course, we won’t know the truth of what happened unless we do what should be done, and what the commission’s critics don’t want to be done: investigate these cases.

Finally, the commission heard from three computer experts—Andrew Appel of Princeton University, Ronald Rivest of MIT, and Harri Hursti of Nordic Innovation Labs. Their testimony about the ability of hackers to get into electronic voting equipment and just about every other device that uses the internet (and even those that don’t) was chilling.

As Appel stated, our challenge is to ensure that when voters go to the polls, they can “trust that their votes will be recorded accurately, counted accurately, and aggregated accurately.” He made a series of “technological and organization” recommendations for achieving that objective.

All in all, the Sept. 12 meeting, which was hosted by Bill Gardner, New Hampshire’s longtime Democratic secretary of state, was both informative and comprehensive. But anyone who didn’t attend would never know that based on the skimpy and biased coverage it received in the media.

The hearing is evidence of the good work the commission is already doing in bringing to light the problems we face in ensuring the integrity of our election process.

This article was originally posted at The Daily Signal.

The American Culture and Faith Institute (ACFI) released a fascinating survey recently revealing that 95 percent of “Spiritually Active, Governance Engaged Christian Conservatives” or “SAGE Cons” are not satisfied with the state of American culture today. While this finding may not be surprising, what may prove to be informative and encouraging is that 67 percent of these “SAGE Cons” desire to be more directly involved in “cultural transformation” here in the United States.

Today’s social media news-feeds show much conversation over current events, and inevitably, some discussions become heated and even hostile at times. With social media readily available, some people may wonder if political engagement online is productive—especially for those of us who desire to be a positive influence on the culture at large.  Unfortunately, I know some Christians who have fled social media precisely because they are unwilling to take a stand.  In effect, they are hiding their light under a bushel.

On one hand, we understand how easy it is to get fatigued. Pew Research Center released findings that show one third of social media users are “worn out” by political content. Fifty-nine percent of respondents in the Pew survey say that discussions with those in which they are in disagreement are “stressful and frustrating.”

Undeniably, social media is a vital tool if used properly and in moderation. However, we should also keep in mind there are many other ways we can effectively inspire “cultural transformation” in our state and nation.

How can we inspire “cultural transformation?”

Invest in your family and close relationships. It was recently reported that Barbara Bush, daughter of President George W. Bush (43), spoke at a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood in Fort Worth Texas.  While we know former President Bush is pro-life, we also know how liberal his wife’s political views are. Evidently, Momma Bush did a better job passing down her worldview to her daughter than did Poppa Bush. What a missed opportunity!

Deuteronomy chapter six teaches us that we should intentionally and diligently teach our children and grandchildren a love of the Lord and His commandments.  We are to teach them so that they do not forget what God has done and so they will live according to His Word.

Investing in our families, churches, and even in our neighbors and neighborhoods is a great first step to inspire the “cultural transformation” that God desires.

Hold elected leaders accountable. It can be tempting to think that our civic duty ends the moment we cast our ballots; however, it is critical that we do more. Our elected leaders need to hear from us before they make important decisions regarding policy and law. In order to take part in informed conversation and correspondence with legislators and government officials, keep up-to-date on local news and be on the lookout for IFI action alerts that detail ways you can engage legislative leaders. The IFI Action Center lists current action items and provides a simple way for you to contact your elected officials.

Serve the community. There are many ways you can influence the culture as you serve in your community. If you have a heart for women facing unplanned pregnancies, search online for a pregnancy care center near your home. Perhaps you might consider helping in a soup kitchen or rescue mission. Often community centers need volunteers for ESL classes or after school tutoring. The local church also offers a multitude of areas in which you can serve and invest in the culture.

And of course, there is a desperate need for Christian citizens to serve in elected office. A favorite quote underscores this point powerfully:

“Public business, my son, must always be done by somebody… if wise men decline it, others will not; if honest men refuse it, others will not.”  ~John Adams

Have you ever wondered why we have so many foolish and dishonest lawmakers in office? It is because wise and honest citizens are not stepping up to fill these spots.  This void creates a vacuum which is filled too often with the lowest common denominator.  Many of us who are well-qualified for public service are wasting a valuable opportunity.  Consider this exhortation from our Founding Father:

“It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn.”  ~ George Washington

Civic engagement is an essential part of the Christian life and witness. If we neglect our civic responsibilities, our freedoms, including our civil right to shed the Light of Christ in our communities and throughout our nation, will be destroyed and the light of Christian witness will grow dim.

The situation we face is difficult, but we are not without hope! Let’s renew our efforts to engage the culture around us and also determine to be open to new ways of service that will effectively increase the well-being of our society.

IFI is partnering with pro-life advocates to put up pro-life billboards throughout the Chicago metro area with the simple and bold statement “Abortion Takes Human Life,“ but we need your financial partnership to make this a success.  Can you help with a tax-deductible donation to this campaign?

Read more HERE.

Recently, U.S. Secretary of Education John King, while speaking at a press conference, remarked that although some homeschool situations are just fine, in general, “Students who are homeschooled are not getting kind of the rapid instructional experience they would get in school.”

King also said that part of the school experience is learning how to deal with and build relationships with peers and teachers—implying that homeschoolers don’t get this kind of experience.

Now, before I go on, in the interest of full disclosure, I’ll tell you that my wife and I homeschool our three daughters. To be specific, we’re part of a community of homeschooling families with a hybrid model that shares resources and that journeys together. We think our daughters are receiving a first-rate education. I say that not just so you know I’ve got a horse in the race, but because my wife and I have personal experience. We know this world. We live in it.

But back to the Secretary’s comments. It’s not clear what he meant by “rapid instructional experience,” but that can mean a sort of checklist approach—plowing through the material, cramming for standardized tests, and hitting every mandated topic. In that sense, he’s right. Many homeschoolers don’t get “rapid instruction” of this sort, but that’s not really education in the first place.

But what has me most concerned about the Secretary’s remarks is the classic “we know better than you” attitude so endemic among governmental elites—whether it’s telling us what kind of healthcare we need, or how to teach our young ones about the most intimate of human relations.

Let me be clear: The federal government’s ever-growing reach into our children’s education is a bi-partisan effort. The Department of Education was established by Jimmy Carter. George W. Bush signed the disastrous “No Child Left Behind” initiative into law. And Common Core, which many argue will leave kids unprepared for college, has both Republican and Democratic support.

But if the federal government really does know best, how is it, as Lindsey Burke of The Daily Signal notes, that “just one-third of all eighth-graders in public schools can read proficiently”? How is it that “Roughly two out of 10 students don’t graduate high school at all, [and]the United States ranks in the middle of the pack on international assessments?”

And while we’re at it, can we address this idea that homeschooled children don’t socialize well? That’s just nonsense. Some struggle, of course, but so do some public schoolers. And what does it mean for a child to be normally socialized anyway? If it’s activities, homeschooling author Joe Kelly observed recently that “Many home-schoolers play on athletic teams…” And “they’re also interactive with students of different ages… [having] more opportunity to get out into the world and engage with adults and teens alike.”

Now, I’m not trying to hammer public education. I grew up in Northern Virginia, home of some of the finest public school systems in the country that turn out highly educated, well prepared young people. And Colorado Springs, where I live now, is full of great teachers, and innovative charter schools.

But none of that changes the statistics. According to the National Home Education Research Institute, homeschoolers typically “score 15 to 30 percentile points above public-school students on standardized academic achievement tests.” And they “score above average on achievement tests regardless of their parents’ level of formal education or their family’s household income.”

Homeschoolers are, according to U.S. News “ripe for college.” They receive an education tailored to their needs. And you know what? They’re well-socialized, too

Now am I saying you should homeschool your kids? Not necessarily. What I am saying is that you—not the Secretary of Education, the federal government, or anyone else—know what’s best for your children and your family.

We live in a nation where we are free to tailor our children’s education to their specific needs, whether that involves public, private, charter, or home schooling. Let’s be proactive in protecting and championing that freedom. For more information on homeschooling statistics, check out the links below.

Home-Schooled Teens Ripe for College
Kelsey Sheehy | USNews.com | June 1, 2012

Research Facts On Homeschooling
Brian D. Ray, Ph.D. | NHERI | March 23, 2016

What Obama’s Education Secretary Got Wrong About Homeschoolers
Lindsey Burke / The Daily Signal | September 21, 2016

This article was originally posted at BreakPoint.org

Many of us have wondered how long it would be before a prominent official proclaimed that rogue federal judges, like the proverbial emperor, have no clothes and thus no authority to make up laws.

That’s what Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore did this past week in a letter to Alabama Governor Robert Bentley, in which he began by asserting that “the recent ruling of Judge Callie Granade … has raised serious, legitimate concerns about the propriety of federal court jurisdiction over the Alabama Sanctity of Marriage Amendment.”

In 2006, Alabama voters approved the marriage measure by 81 percent to 19 percent. On January 23, Judge Granade, a George W. Bush appointee at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama, became the latest federal judge to join the lemming brigade and leap off the Cliffs of Insanity to find a previously unknown constitutional “right” to marriages lacking a bride or a groom.

She ruled that Alabama’s clear and timeless definition violated the 14thAmendment’s guarantee of equal protection and due process. Then she issued a two-week stay of her ruling, perhaps so that Alabamans can ponder their loss of meaningful citizenship in a self-governing republic.

When the 14th Amendment was ratified on July 9, 1868 to afford the nation’s freed slaves the protection of the law found in the Fifth Amendment, one can only imagine a typical discussion on the assembly floor of various statehouses, including Alabama’s:

“Tell me again why Rhett can’t marry Barney? I know that’s where the Founders were really going when they ratified the Bill of Rights in 1791. I say, it was quite clever of them to foresee using freed slaves someday as a pretext.”

In his letter, Judge Moore reminded the governor that, “As you know, nothing in the United States Constitution grants the federal government the authority to redefine the institution of marriage.”

After citing Alabama’s Constitution and court cases, Judge Moore quoted from the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Murphy v. Ramsey (1885) that required Utah to prohibit legalized polygamy in order to join the union. He wrote:

“Even the United States Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that the basic foundation of marriage and family upon which our Country rests is ‘the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization; the best guaranty of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement.’”

Noting that “44 federal courts have imposed by judicial fiat same-sex marriages in 21 states of the Union, overturning the express will of the people in those states,” Moore went on to praise the Alabama Probate Judges Association, “which has advised probate judges to follow Alabama law in refusing to license marriages between two members of the same sex.”

Judge Moore knows a little about bucking the system. In 1995, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued to remove a wooden Ten Commandments plaque that he kept on his courtroom wall. They lost. In 2001, as Alabama’s Chief Justice, he had a large Ten Commandments monument installed in the Alabama Judicial Building in Montgomery. After he refused to enforce an order by a federal judge to remove the monument, he himself was removed from office in November 2003 by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary. He unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2006 and 2010, but was re-elected as Alabama Chief Justice in 2012.

If only for the purpose of confounding the media, which love to portray Alabama and the rest of the South as a hotbed of drooling, racist homophobes out of the film Deliverance, it would have been nice to see this kind of forthright courage coming out of a northern or western state.

After all, scenes of Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor’s men using fire hoses and nightsticks on peaceful demonstrators back in 1963 are as vivid as the latest civil rights documentary. And the movie Selma is a fresh reminder of the epic struggle to overcome resistance to integration.

Judge Moore risks being equated with Bull Connor, because that’s part of the left’s game plan of intimidation. But he’s a principled jurist who swore an oath to defend the Constitution, not to genuflect to lawless federal judges who are raining legal havoc on the nation. For all the moral-laden language they use, these emperors without clothes are hell-bent on casting aside the moral restraints that allow society to flourish.

Speaking of restraints, is anyone in authority going to suggest that Associate Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan, both of whom have actually officiated at same-sex ceremonies, recuse themselves from the monumental marriage case that the Court will hear this spring?

They’ve abandoned any pretext of objectivity and are practically daring someone to call them on it.

Congressional leaders? Presidential candidates? Chief Justice John Roberts? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

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

Every year in America, more than 18,000 perfectly healthy babies – developed enough to feel pain and, in many cases, survive outside the womb – are brutally killed in their mother’s wombs.

Eighteen thousand. 

Can you imagine the public outrage if 18,000 babies died every year from faulty baby formula or substandard infant car seats? Liability lawsuits would flood the court systems and manufacturing companies would shutdown in bankruptcy and disgrace.

These particular 18,000 babies have been growing for 20 weeks or more in their mother’s bodies.

“These are innocent and defenseless children who can not only feel pain, but who can survive outside of the womb in most cases, and who are torturously killed without even basic anesthesia. Many of them cry and scream as they die, but because it is amniotic fluid going over their vocal cords instead of air, we don’t hear them, ” U.S. Representative Trent Franks of Arizona told LifeSite News this week.

Eighteen thousand innocent babies.

Next Wednesday, 42 years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe vs Wade decision legalizing abortions for any reason up to the moment of birth, Franks and U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) will ask their Congressional colleagues in the U.S. House to vote on H.R. 36 – a federal measure to protect those 18,000 innocents from painful, violent deaths.

Franks and Blackburn expect to be joined by nearly 180 other House members who will co-sponsor the measure.

Five Illinois Congressmen have signed on thus far as co-sponsors, four Republicans: Randy Hultgren (Geneva), Peter Roskam (Barrington), Aaron Schock (Peoria) and John Shimkus (Effingham) and one Democrat: Dan Lipinski (Chicago).

Three Republican House members have yet to commit on the bill: Adam Kinzinger (Rockford) and newbies Mike Bost (Murphysboro) and Bob Dold (Mundelein).  Historically the remaining Democratic members of Illinois’ delegation have supported abortion advocates’ position.

Abortion defenders are holding the line against any restrictions whatsoever.  They deny the medical studies showing 20 week old preborn babies can feel pain.

“The studies are pretty clear — at 20 weeks, there is no indication that nerves are developed. Abortion is really rare past 20 weeks and is incurred because of a set of complex circumstances,” Jamila Perritt, MD, medical director of Planned Parenthood of Metro Washington, D.C., said at a press conference this week.

In response, numerous brain and nerve activity experts cite the need for prenatal surgeons to anesthetize their patients during in utero surgical procedures.

“To experience pain an intact system of pain transmission from the peripheral receptor to the cerebral cortex must be available. Peripheral receptors develop from the seventh gestational week,” Marc Van de Velde and Frederik De Buck wrote in, “Fetal and Maternal Analgesia/Anesthesia for Fetal Procedures”:

From 20 weeks’ gestation peripheral receptors are present on the whole body. From 13 weeks’ gestation the afferent system located in the substantia gelatinosa of the dorsal horn of the spinal cord starts developing. Development of afferent fibers connecting peripheral receptors with the dorsal horn starts at 8 weeks’ gestation. Spinothalamic connections start to develop from 14 weeks’ and are complete at 20 weeks’ gestation, whilst thalamocortical connections are present from 17 weeks’ and completely developed at 26–30 weeks’ gestation. From 16 weeks’ gestation pain transmission from a peripheral receptor to the cortex is possible and completely developed from 26 weeks’ gestation.

Numerous other doctors have filled in about prenatal infants’ pain capability and made their testimony available at www.doctorsonfetalpain.com.

Medical science is convincing the American public that preborn babies can indeed feel pain. In a March 2013 survey by The Polling Company, 64 percent of 1003 registered voters said they would support a law such as the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act prohibiting abortion after 20 weeks — when an unborn baby can feel pain — unless the life of the mother is in danger. Less than a third opposed such legislation.

It’s very likely Franks and Blackburn’s H.R. 36 will pass the U.S. House as the nation remembers the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe vs Wade decision.  It could also pass the U.S. Senate in the days after.

However, Congress.gov says the measure has less than a five percent chance to be implemented because it’s unlikely President Barack Obama, who hailed the practice of Partial Birth Abortion, would ever sign abortion restrictions into law.

And what about the chances of overriding an Obama veto?

“I’m told there is no way there are 60 votes to override a veto in the Senate,” said nationally-popular prolife blogger Jill Stanek.

So why try to so hard pass legislation that won’t become law?

“We just keep pushing, educating, making a big deal out of the humanity of preborn babies and pain,” Stanek said. “This will be similar to when [former President Bill] Clinton vetoed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban twice.”

The Partial Birth Abortion Ban was finally signed into law by President George W. Bush November 5, 2003 – nearly eight years after the first version was introduced.

H.R. 36 prohibits an abortion from being performed if the pain-capable child is 20 weeks or more, except when a mother’s life is endangered, or the pregnancy is the result of reported rape or incest.

How can anyone oppose saving those 18,000 innocent babies’ lives and protecting them from potential inhumane pain and suffering?

On the other hand, perhaps we should ask ourselves how we could ever explain to future generations how we didn’t even try.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to your U.S. Representative asking them to support H.R. 36, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. Or call the Capitol Switchboard to ask to be connected to your U.S. Representative’s office: 202-224-3121.

If you live outside of Illinois, Click HERE to send an email through the National Right To Life Committee’s web site.

The Truth Project

First Annual IFI Worldview Conference
featuring Dr. Del Tackett
April 10-11, 2015

CLICK HERE for Details

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.

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

President Barack Obama’s administration has announced that it won’t enforce money-laundering laws against banks doing business with marijuana stores, in a move designed to “facilitate illegal conduct,” says U.S. Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA)

The Obama administration calls it “Guidance to Financial Institutions on Marijuana Businesses.”

The Washington Post story about this development carried the innocuous headline, “Obama administration clears banks to accept funds from legal marijuana dealers,” when in fact the marijuana “business” is not “legal” under federal or international law.

“Marijuana trafficking is illegal under federal law, and it’s illegal for banks to deal with marijuana sale proceeds under federal law,” noted Grassley. “Only Congress can change these laws. The administration can’t change the law with a memo.”

He added, “This is just one more area in which the Obama Administration is undermining our system of checks and balances and the rule of law.”

Robert Charles, former Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, told Accuracy in Media that, despite the “guidance” from the Obama administration, banks will stay away from laundering marijuana money because of the fear of being sued. “The range of suits is enormous,” he said. “The guidelines do absolutely nothing. They protect no bank against anything. The DOJ won’t give any bank an assurance that it won’t be prosecuted under federal bank secrecy or anti-drug laws.”

Calvina L. Fay, executive director of the Drug Free America Foundation, told us, “This is yet one more example of the lawlessness of the Obama administration.  We all know that banks are federally regulated and that pot is still illegal at the federal level. This action will clearly put banks in jeopardy of violating regulations and will enable criminal activity to thrive.”

She added, “This action tells parents and grandparents that the government can no longer be counted on to do what it is intended to do: protect U.S. citizens from criminals who engage in drug trafficking, human trafficking, weapons trafficking, and other serious illegal activities that are inter-connected to the drug underworld. Rather, our government is now embracing this activity and enabling it.”

While most of the major media have been in support of what the Obama administration is doing to facilitate the spread of mind-altering drugs, some publications are sounding the alarm.

Whistleblower, a publication of WND.com, has published a special issue on the epidemic of drug use, legal and illegal, in American society. A piece by Art Moore titled, “Dude: Science contradicts Obama’s pot claims” refers to Obama as the “Choom Gang” president, a reference to his membership in a high school gang of heavy marijuana users, and notes that Obama’s claims about the relative harmlessness of pot are not sustained by the scientific evidence. Another article by Moore identifies Obama supporter George Soros, the hedge-fund billionaire, as the main force behind marijuana legalization.

Investigative reporter Michael P. Tremoglie says in an article on a site called Main St. that George Soros is only one of several big name CEOs and rich elites who are financing the marijuana movement. He also names:

• Google billionaire Paul Buchheit
• Facebook billionaire founders Sean Parker and Dustin Moskovitz
• PayPal founder Peter Thiel
• Peter Thiel, founder of Men’s Wearhouse
• John Sperling, chairman and CEO of the University of Phoenix
• Whole Foods founder John Mackey

A website called “Marijuana Majority” names dozens of other personalities backing the legalization of dope.

It appears, however, that some Republicans are moving in the direction of Obama’s soft-on-drugs policy.

Five days after the Maryland mall shootings, The Washington Times ran a front page story, “In the weeds: Paul, Christie, Perry open to softer pot laws ahead of 2016,” about possible Republican presidential candidates embracing the drug. It turned out that the Maryland mall shooter, who killed two people and then himself, was himself a pothead, and was possibly having a psychotic episode.

The Times said that U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) “has arguably been the most vocal on the subject, saying the federal government should leave the issue entirely to the states.” The Times also reported that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) has vowed to scrap the “failed war on drugs.”

But David Evans, the Executive Director of the Drug Free Projects Coalition and a special adviser to the Drug Free America Foundation, notes that during the George W. Bush administration marijuana use went down among young people by 25 percent. “If we had had a reduction in any other health problem in the U.S. of 25 percent, we would consider it an outstanding success,” he said. But marijuana use has been going up under the Obama administration.

Michele M. Leonhart, administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), declared in a statement issued last December that “Those who aspire to see their own or others’ children accomplish great things in life or who want to live in a nation of increasing prosperity should be very concerned about the increase in marijuana use by teenagers, including the fact that a staggering 12 percent of 13- and 14-year-olds are abusing the drug. The mixed messages being sent to America’s teens about the harmfulness and legality of using record-high-potency marijuana are obscuring kids’ awareness of the effects their use will have on them. America owes it to its children to give them the best possible start in life, so they and society are not hindered in the future.”

Her statement takes on even more significance now that Obama has disregarded the scientific evidence, declared the drug to be relatively harmless, and is encouraging banks to launder money from the marijuana traffickers.

Pro-marijuana groups are demanding that Obama fire Leonhart. But she continues to enforce the federal laws against marijuana as best she can. The DEA announced on January 27, 2014 that the owners of a “medical marijuana” dispensary in Bakersfield, California, had been charged with trafficking in both methamphetamine and marijuana.

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

Hypocrisy, thy name is liberalism. What a difference a few years makes.

Remember when “progressive” media types chided President George W. Bush till they were blue in the face for “going it alone” on Iraq? Well, apparently “going it alone” is totally cool if you have a “D” after your name.

David Corn, Washington bureau chief over at the uber-liberal Mother Jones magazine is disappointed that an increasingly imperialist President Barack Obama wasn’t imperialist enough during his recent State of the Union Address. He’s furious that our already chestless Commander-in-Hearing-Himself-Talk showed off his bona fides in weakness and “let the Republicans off easy.”

Wrote Corn:

Obama didn’t use this opportunity to focus on the reason he has to go it alone: Republicans hell-bent on disrupting the government and thwarting all the initiatives he deems necessary for the good of the nation. Even when he quasi-denounced the government shutdown, he did not name-check House Speaker John Boehner and his tea-party-driven comrades.

What? “All the initiatives” Obama “deems necessary”? “Go it alone”? Yeah, Josef Stalin – affectionately nicknamed “Uncle Joe” by Obama’s hero, FDR – had a lot of initiatives he “deemed necessary,” too. And like Obama, he also preferred the “go it alone” approach.

Seriously, has Mr. Corn never heard of the separation of powers? The president doesn’t get to just unilaterally “deem” laws into effect. He’s the chief executive, not the chief lawmaker. Neither should he be the chief lawbreaker.

Yet here we are and so he is.

More than any other president in American history (yes, Nixon included), Obama has done both – make the “law” and break the law. Just consider, for instance, his unprecedented, arbitrary, capricious and completely illegal “do-whatever-I-want-to-do” shredding of his signature dark comedy: Obamacare.

Get used to it. During last Tuesday’s SOTU Obama announced his intention to keep at it. In fact, he plans to ramp-up the lawlessness.

And why shouldn’t he? A gutless GOP establishment has let him get away with it at every turn. Corn was partly right. He was justified in taking a jab at the speaker of the House. On this we agree: House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) needs to be “checked,” just not for the reasons Corn supposes.

Even some liberals are waking up to the fact that, for the first time, America is living under – as U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) calls it – “the imperial presidency.” In a posting originally titled “Obama: Efforts to rein him in not serious,” the off-the-rails-liberal CNN.com took Obama to task for his autocratic misbehavior (CNN later changed the article title to “President Obama says he’s not recalibrating ambitions.” Amazing what an angry phone call from this White House can do to the Obama-natical state-run media).

Noted CNN:

Once, Barack Obama spoke of what he wanted for his presidency in terms of healing a nation divided. ‘This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal,’ he said.

Today, Obama is talking about executive orders and executive actions – with a pen or phone – if a divided Congress won’t or can’t act on an agenda he laid out this week in his State of the Union Address. …

Sen. Ted Cruz described the actions as ‘the imperial presidency,’” continued CNN, “and House Republicans have threatened to rein in the president’s use of executive actions.

‘I don’t think that’s very serious,’ Obama said. …

Right. Most despots don’t take “very serious” efforts to rein them in, particularly when their political opposition has shown neither the courage nor the inclination to do so.

David Corn disagrees. He thinks more despotism is just what the “progressive” doctor ordered. He ended his Mother Jones rant – all but calling the president a weenie: “Obama barely called out Republicans in this speech; he did not exploit this high-profile moment to confront the obstructionist opposition,” he complained.

Au contraire, my corny little friend. Barack Hussein Obama has stored up no short supply of exploitations. Most especially, he has exploited the very people he is sworn to serve.

“We the people.”