File this story in your now-bulging “Don’t Say You Weren’t Warned” folder.

Just three weeks ago, on September 19, 2019, the U.S. House Ways and Means Oversight subcommittee—chaired by John Lewis (D-GA) and composed of 7 Democrats and 4 Republicans—held a hearing portentously titled, “HOW THE TAX CODE SUBSIDIZES HATE.” Since conservative beliefs on sexuality are deemed “hateful” by regressives, such a subcommittee hearing should raise the alarm antennas of conservatives and libertarians concerned about assaults on the First Amendment by “progressive” thought police who roam the halls of Congress and the nooks, crannies, and interstices of social media.

What should also trouble them is that 3 of the 7 Democrats specifically mentioned or alluded to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as their source for identifying “hate groups.” (Full, shameless, and cheerful disclosure: the Illinois Family Institute (IFI) has been erroneously listed on the scandal-pocked SPLC’s “hate groups” list since shortly after I began writing for IFI in 2008.) Less than two hours after the beginning of the hearing, the Oversight subcommittee tweeted this:

“[H]omosexuality is a poor and dangerous choice, and has been proven to lead to a litany of health hazards to not only the individuals but also society as a whole,” The American Family Association, Tax Exempt Hate Group.

The first of the five witnesses to testify was busy-beaver homosexual activist Brandon Wolf, a “nationally-recognized advocate for LGBTQ issues” and  “Central Florida Development Officer and Media Relations Manager” for Equality Florida who survived the horrific Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida and said this:

[I]f you are not using everything at your disposal to snuff hate out, then you’re simply not doing enough. The time is now for us to fight harder, lead more courageously, and use everything we have to put an end to this cancer that is ravaging our communities…. Rather than use every tool at our disposal to combat hatred, we have chosen to subsidize it, embolden it…. Inaction in the face of hatred has consequences, and it’s high time that this Congress do something to protect those of us in the line of fire.

Wolf was urging Congress to use the IRS as a weapon to mow down moral views about homosexuality he hates and was doing so by deceitfully exploiting a tragedy that evidence suggests had nothing to do with “anti-gay” sentiment.

Journalist, constitutional lawyer, and (homosexual) co-founder of The Intercept Glenn Greenwald and co-author Murtaza Hussain published an article 18 months ago examining in detail the evidence for Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen’s motives:

Mateen went to Pulse only after having scouted other venues that night that were wholly unrelated to the LGBT community, only to find that they were too defended by armed guards and police, and ultimately chose Pulse only after a generic Google search for “Orlando nightclubs” — not “gay clubs” — produced Pulse as the first search result.

Several journalists closely covering the Mateen investigation have, for some time now, noted the complete absence of any evidence suggesting that Mateen knew that Pulse was a gay club or that targeting the LGBT community was part of his motive. 

…

By repeatedly emphasizing this anti-gay motive, U.S. media reports had the effect, if not the intent, of obscuring what appears to have been Mateen’s overriding, arguably exclusive motive: a desire for retribution and deterrence toward U.S. violence in Muslim countries.

…

Despite this mountain of evidence that strongly negates the original media-disseminated themes about Mateen’s life and his likely motive in targeting Pulse, the early myths remain lodged in the public mind and even in contemporary news reports. In part that’s because much of the evidence has remained under seal, in part because subsequent media debunking received a tiny fraction of the attention of the early, aggressively hyped inflammatory theories, and in part because there has been no political advantage to challenging the politically moving and useful narrative that the attack on Pulse was a hate crime against gay people.

Does anyone really believe full-time homosexual activist Wolf is unaware of this evidence?

Fortunately, one of the Republican members present at the hearing was Illinois’ own Darin Lahood (R-Peoria) who challenged references to the anti-Christian hate group, the SPLC:

[T]he IRS should not be used as a political tool to discriminate against organizations that differ in viewpoints…. We cannot use political disagreement as a metric to define hate speech or a hate group. This type of labeling can and has led to violent acts. I know my colleague just referenced the Southern Poverty Law Center. In 2012, an armed man named Floyd Lee Corkins walked into the Family Research Council Washington headquarters with the intent to shoot and kill as many of its employees as possible. He was apprehended, but not before wounding the non-profit’s business manager. Mr. Corkins later told the FBI that he had seen the nonprofit group listed as an anti-gay hate group on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website.

Also testifying was UCLA law professor, the libertarian-esque Eugene Volokh who argued that with only very narrow exceptions, all speech is protected by the First Amendment:

The Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear that tax exemptions can’t be denied based on the viewpoint that a group communicates…. The Court has also made equally clear that excluding speech that manifests or promotes “hate” is forbidden viewpoint discrimination…. The law may treat groups differently based on their actions, but not based on the views they express…. Groups may be denied tax exemptions for deliberately engaging in speech that falls within one of the few narrow exceptions to the First Amendment, such as true threats of criminal attack, or incitement intended to and likely to cause imminent criminal conduct. But “hate speech” writ large doesn’t fall within any such exceptions.

Our First Amendment rights will not long stand against the sexual appetites of the deviant who run amok among us. Neither our constitutionally protected religious free exercise rights, nor our speech rights, nor our assembly rights will be protected now that they have been subordinated to subjective and disordered sexual desires. And neither will our intrinsic privacy rights remain protected. Cultural critics warned about the dangers posed to this once-great Republic by 1. allowing the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to Guinea-worm their way into anti-discrimination policies and laws, and 2. the Obergefelle U.S. Supreme Court decision, which has been interpreted as legalizing same-sex marriage everywhere in the United States. But conservatives largely dismissed such warnings out of either a failure to think deeply about the implications of these changes or cowardice or both.

Leftists are turning—not turning right—turning against the U.S. Constitution, and slowly they’re coming, step by step, straight for the First Amendment.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your U.S. Representative to ask him/her to reject the SPLC’s definition of “hate groups,” which includes conservative and faith-based groups, such as IFI and AFA. Traditional Judeo-Christian teaching about human sexuality is neither “hateful” nor “vile.” Ask them to stand up for the First Amendment and protect religious liberty and speech rights by rejecting this effort to penalize so-called “hate” speech.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Slowly-Leftists-Turn-Step-By-Step.mp3

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NYT columnist says she was ‘curled up in a hallucinatory state’ for eight hours

Maureen Dowd of The New York Times has attracted attention with her column about eating a marijuana candy bar and remaining in “a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours,” as she began “panting” and becoming “paranoid.” Some commentators are laughing about it. Not so funny are the reports of deaths from ingesting marijuana that Dowd cites in her column about marijuana legalization in Colorado.

“In March,” she noted, “a 19-year-old Wyoming college student jumped off a Denver hotel balcony after eating a pot cookie with 65 milligrams of THC. In April, a Denver man ate pot-infused Karma Kandy and began talking like it was the end of the world, scaring his wife and three kids. Then he retrieved a handgun from a safe and killed his wife while she was on the phone with an emergency dispatcher.”

The Wyoming college student, 19-year-old Levy Thamba Pongi, was an exchange student from Congo. Richard Kirk is the Denver man who killed his wife, Khristine Kirk, with a gunshot to her head.

“Two Denver deaths tied to recreational marijuana use” was the headline over an Associated Press story. It didn’t take long for the claim that marijuana never killed anybody to be debunked.

Regarding her own experience with the drug, Dowd said, “As my paranoia deepened, I became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me.”

I discussed both of the deaths cited in the Dowd column in my May 1^st column, “Colombians Move into Colorado Marijuana Business.” On March 27th, we ran the column, “Media Continue Cover-up of Marijuana-induced Mental Illness.”

Nevertheless, the U.S. House of Representatives recently voted 219-189 to block Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) raids on so-called “medical marijuana” businesses. The Marijuana Policy Project reports that U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), its “longtime ally,” led the charge to protect the marijuana businesses in Colorado and other states. It passed mostly with liberal Democratic votes.

“Already in Colorado, there is evidence of Colombian cartel involvement in the legal medical marijuana industry,” notes the group called Smart Approaches to Marijuana, whose co-founder, drug policy expert Kevin A. Sabet, recently authored the book, Reefer Sanity: Seven Great Myths About Marijuana.

But now that liberal columnist Maureen Dowd has tackled the subject in a serious manner, connecting the dots between marijuana and mental problems, others in the media may follow suit and the rush to legalize the drug may encounter difficulties.

Most of the media reaction to Dowd, at least so far, has been amusement. On the NBC Today Show, the hosts joked and laughed about marijuana’s effects as the words, “All the pot fit to eat,” were featured on the TV screen. It was a play on words from the Times’ slogan, “All the news that’s fit to print.”

Dr. Christine Miller, who has written about the relationship between marijuana and mental illness, says, “What’s so funny about it? She [Dowd] was out of her mind.”

“I was saddened to see Matt Lauer and The Today Show crew make light of Maureen Dowd’s experience, particularly in view of the fact that the symptoms she experienced were not dissimilar to those that prompted the young college student to jump off a Denver hotel balcony after eating a pot-laced brownie,” Miller told AIM. “Matt or his co-hosts really should interview the Congolese family of that student, who must be devastated that their efforts to offer their young man a more promising future were dashed in such a manner. That would be a story worthy of our national attention.”

A powerful new book, A Voice out of Nowhere, takes the controversy to another level and may change some minds about marijuana being a so-called “soft” drug. It tells the true story of Bruce Blackman, a 22-year-old man who murdered six members of his family while under the influence of marijuana. Psychiatrists said Blackman’s marijuana addiction was a contributing factor in his psychotic break from reality and mass murder spree.

The author, Janice Holly Booth, predicts violence will increase as a result of legalization. “Once legally available, the temptation to try it is no longer tempered by concerns about breaking the law,” she says. “I think we’ll see an increase in the number of young people with as-yet undiagnosed mental illness using and abusing marijuana, and—unfortunately—a subsequent rise in violent crimes committed by them.”

Jack Healy, the Rocky Mountain correspondent for The New York Times, wrote a June 1 piece, “After 5 Months of Sales, Colorado Sees the Downside of a Legal High,” that looked at several problems caused by legalization.

But he also reported that violent crime was down. He said, “Marijuana supporters note that violent crimes in Denver—where the bulk of Colorado’s pot retailers are—are down so far this year. The number of robberies from January through April fell by 4.8 percent from the same time in 2013, and assaults were down by 3.7 percent. Over-all, crime in Denver is down by about 10 percent, though it is impossible to say whether changes to marijuana laws played any role in that decline.”

Miller believes the city of Denver is giving out misleading statistics to many news outlets, including the Times. She says there is a discrepancy in the data reported by the city and what is online from the police department.

Miller speculates that the city of Denver “wants to put its best foot forward now that the summer tourist season is just taking off.” Miller, who lives in Baltimore, Maryland, added, “It reminds me of how a certain mayor of Baltimore, Martin O’Malley, restructured the categories for reporting of murder rates here, showing a nice decline after he took office.” O’Malley went on to become governor.

“In fact,” Miller says about Denver, “overall crime has gone up. You will also see that crimes against persons have gone up 26.6 percent (particularly note the disorderly conduct arrests, up 10-fold and trespassing charges up 5-fold!). It is important to keep in mind that legalization of recreational marijuana possession and use was enacted on January 1, 2013, and murder rates jumped 50 percent during the first quarter of that year. Legalization of recreational sales was enacted January 1, 2014. If the murder rate and other violent crimes have fallen in the first quarter of 2014, they were falling from a higher point. Only more time will tell what the real trends will prove to be.”

The drug legalization movement has been mostly funded by “dark money” leftist billionaires such as George Soros. However, the libertarian Cato Institute has emerged as a big part of the campaign.

Jeffrey Miron of the Cato Institute thinks that marijuana is harmless and dismisses Kevin Sabet’s claim that people can become addicted to marijuana bysaying, “…who cares? Addiction is not, per se, a problem for society or an individual; just think about how many people are addicted to caffeine.”

The 2012 annual report of the Cato Institute (page 19) continues to show financial support from the Soros-funded Open Society Foundations, as well as the Marijuana Policy Project, BB&T, Facebook, Google and Whole Foods.

Interestingly, Cato once published a pro-drug legalization report by Glenn Greenwald, the columnist who would later became a mouthpiece for NSA leaker Edward Snowden. Cato has also distributed a podcast with Greenwald about his anti-NSA campaign.

Some of Cato’s more conservative funders may not be aware of how the organization got into bed with the Soros-funded left.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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