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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You know you’re living in the dark, deceitful, and depraved Upside Down when a U.S. Senator—a woman no less—says what inveterate liar Elizabeth Warren recently said:

Crisis pregnancy centers … are there to fool people who are looking for pregnancy termination help. … We need to shut them down here in Massachusetts, and we need to shut them down all around the country. You should not be able to torture a pregnant person like that.

Nope, crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) do not “exist to fool people who are looking for pregnancy termination help.” Crisis pregnancy centers exist to help women who believe the only one way to deal with a crisis pregnancy is to terminate the life of their child. Crisis pregnancy centers exist to shine light into the shadowy, deceptive “reproductive health services” propaganda leftists like Warren spew.

CPCs offer ultrasounds in order to provide women with objective, conclusive proof that a human is growing inside them—not a nothing as the left deceitfully suggests. Crisis pregnancy centers offer resources like diapers, maternity clothes, and parenting classes to help young mothers and fathers feel less overwhelmed.

It’s ironic that Warren—the fake Native American—would bring up fooling people. It’s doubly ironic that the fake Native American would bring up “fooling people” in the context of abortion.

The human slaughter lobby has made an art of trying to fool people. They used to call the human fetus “a blob of tissue” and a “clump of cells.” Well, to be fair, I suppose all humans at any stage of development, born or soon-to-be-born, could be deemed blobs of tissue or clumps of cells, but we human blobs and clumps are special kinds of blobs and clumps. And when each of us was in our mother’s wombs, we were blobs and clumps composed of rapidly dividing and differentiating cells with a complex design.

When the blobs and clumps tomfoolery was exposed and became unsustainable, the Warrens of the world began referring to human fetuses as tumor-analogues and parasites. Then leftists admitted that fetuses growing in women’s bodies are human, but they’re not—in the view of leftists—persons.

Deceivers like Warren are trying to fool people into believing that some people who become pregnant are not women, hence Warren’s deceitful term “pregnant person.” All pregnant persons are women. So committed to deception is Warren that she won’t admit that a human in a woman’s womb is a person but will pretend that some men are pregnant “persons.”

Warren tries to fool people when she refers to “pregnancy termination.” That, obviously, is a euphemism, for human termination—the leftist final solution to a crisis pregnancy.

Of Warren’s many grotesque deceptions, perhaps the worst is describing what takes place in a CPC as torturing pregnant persons. While Warren supports, celebrates, and promotes procedures that dismember the bodies and crush the skulls of tiny, innocent humans in their mothers’ wombs, she calls efforts to persuade mothers not to do this “torture.”

The social justice warrior and human rights activist Warren does what all cultural regressives do when faced with speech they hate: She has called for the cancellation of all CPCs in the entire country.

Not yet able to shut down all CPCs, ironist Warren and some U.S. Senate collaborators (Bob Menendez, Mazie Hirono, Brian Schatz, Cory Booker, Tina Smith, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Patty Murray, Jeff Merkley, Richard Blumenthal, Diane Feinstein, Ron Wyden, Kirsten Gillibrand, Ed Markey, and Mark Warner) have an interim plan. They have sponsored a bill to punish CPCs.

One of the ironic reasons they offer for the bill is that “CPCs target under-resourced neighborhoods and communities of color, including Black, Latino, Indigenous, Asian American, Pacific Islander, and immigrant communities.” The bill doesn’t, however, mention the reason CPCs are located in those neighborhoods. They are located there because Planned Parenthood clinics—founded by racist, eugenicist Margaret Sanger—has long targeted impoverished communities of color.

The bill, titled the “Stop Anti-Abortion Disinformation Act” (SAD Act) would “direct the Federal Trade Commission to prescribe rules prohibiting disinformation in the advertising of abortion services.”

The bill accuses CPCs of “routinely … disseminating inaccurate, misleading, and stigmatizing information about the risks of abortion and contraception, and using illegitimate or false citations to imply that deceptive claims are supported by legitimate medical sources.”

Maybe while they’re at it, the FTC could require abortion clinics to advertise that they routinely kill humans.

Elsewhere in the bill, Warren and her fellow abortion cheerleaders refer to the purported use of “misleading statements” by CPCs. Non-profit CPCs that are found to include “misleading” information—as defined by leftists—will be fined up to $100,000 or “50 percent of the revenues earned by the ultimate parent entity” of the non-profit charity.

Warren and her collaborators are trying to transform the FTC into their much longed-for Ministry of Truth/Disinformation Board.

While Warren blathers on about “reproductive rights,” she says nothing about the right of humans in the womb merely to exist. After all, no woman has to raise a child she finds inconvenient or burdensome, or a child who interferes with a mother’s plans for living an authentic life, or a child whose life the mother believes is unworthy of life.

In the conflict between a woman’s “reproductive rights” and a living human’s right to continued existence, it should be obvious that the right to exist is a right of a higher moral order. In fact, it’s the right upon which all other rights depend.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your U.S. Representative and Illinois’ U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to urge them to vote against S. 4469, the SAD Act. Pro-life crisis pregnancy centers help women through stressful, emotional trials. They not only provide free spiritual/emotional/health care for women, but food, clothes and whatever help is needed. Some CPCs help women find jobs, child care, provide living arrangements and vehicles. They do that so that women don’t feel forced by circumstances or abortion cheerleaders to abort a baby.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/SEN-Warren-Wants-to-Ban-All-Crisis-Pregnancy-Centers.mp3

One of the more grotesque demonstrations of leftist non-sense and hypocrisy was demonstrated a week ago following an episode of the wildly popular Disney show The Mandalorian when “Baby Yoda” eats the unfertilized eggs of a Frog Woman who is transporting her eggs to her husband so he can fertilize them thereby preventing their species’ imminent extinction. Fans of Baby Yoda freaked out, incensed at the lighthearted treatment of what they deemed genocide by the beloved Baby Yoda.

The moral incoherence and hypocrisy should be obvious. In the Upside Down where leftists live, when a human mother hires someone to dismember her own fertilized human egg—aka human fetus/embryo/baby—they demand that society affirm, celebrate, and shout the execution of those tiny humans. In fact, the voluntary dismemberment of fertilized human eggs at any gestational age is so morally innocuous and such an unmitigated public good that leftists think all Americans should pay for the executions of humans in utero.

In the Upside Down, the genocidal killing of all fertilized human eggs with Down Syndrome is at best morally neutral if not morally good, but the fictional devouring of unfertilized Frog Critters’ eggs is morally repugnant. Just wondering, if fertilized human eggs are parasites so devoid of personhood as to render them morally legitimate objects to kill, if it’s okay to dismember them because they’re imperfect non-persons, would there be anything wrong with eating their remains?

Leftists views on the slaughter of fertilized human eggs is just the most grotesque of their many morally incoherent views. Here are a few more:

• According to leftists, concerns of conservatives about possible 2020 election “irregularities”—including via computer malfeasance and malfunction—are evidence of paranoid conspiracy theories, but when leftists express such concerns, they’re sound, reasonable, and legitimate. In 2019, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden proposed an amendment titled “Protecting American Votes and Elections Act” to the “Help America Vote Act of 2002.” His proposed amendment was signed by 14 co-sponsors—all Democrats—including a who’s who of presidential wannabes: Richard Blumenthal, Edward Markey, Jeff Merkley, Tammy Duckworth, Brian Schatz, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Tammy Baldwin, Bernie Sanders, Maria Cantwell, Kamala Harris, Sherrod Brown, Michael Bennet, and Patty Murray. Wyden provided a summary of his amendment that includes the following:

Votes cast with paperless voting machines cannot be subjected to a manual recount, and so there is no way to determine the real election results if they are hacked. H.R. 1 …  mandates paper ballots.

In order to detect hacks, this bill requires election bodies to conduct audits of all federal elections, regardless of how close the election, by employing statistically rigorous “risk-limiting audits.”

There are currently no mandatory standards for election cybersecurity, which has resulted in some states operating election infrastructure that is needlessly vulnerable to hacking. The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) sets voluntary standards for voting machines, but states can and do ignore these standards. There are no standards at all for voter registration websites or other parts of our election infrastructure.

• Leftists heartily endorse bodily damage and disfigurement as sound “treatment” protocols for those who experience a mismatch between their internal feelings and their sexual embodiment as male or female, but bodily damage and disfigurement of those who experience a mismatch between their internal feelings and their whole or healthy bodies (i.e., those with Body Integrity Identity Disorder who identify as amputees or paraplegics) are considered barbaric and ethically prohibited.

• Leftists condemn conservatives as “science-deniers” for disagreeing with them on the degree to which climate change is caused by human action or on how to respond to climate change. At the same time, the purported science-worshippers claim that men can menstruate, become pregnant, and “chestfeed,” and they claim that the product of conception between two persons is not a person. Anyone who refuses to concede to such nonsense is mocked, reviled, de-platformed, and fired. Just ask Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling or Wall Street Journal writer and author of Irreversible Damage, Abigail Shrier.

• Leftists claim that marriage has no connection to either sexual differentiation or reproductive potential. They vociferously claim that marriage is solely constituted by love, and that “love is love.” And yet most leftists don’t think two brothers in a consensual loving relationship should be able to legally marry.

• Leftists claim there’s no story behind or within Hunter Biden’s emails and texts that prove Joe Biden straight up lied to the American public, and yet they claimed there was a story of such magnitude and enormity within Christopher Steele’s imaginative “dossier,” that it necessitated 24-hour coverage for years.

• Leftists claim that eliminating the Electoral College and filibuster and packing the U.S. Supreme Court constitute necessary changes to enhance “democracy,” but implementing legal processes to ensure an election was fair undermines democracy.

• Every gathering of leftists, including mostly violent protests, a takeover of six city blocks, trips to hair salons (Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi), a post-election street celebration (Lori Lightfoot), a holiday boating excursion (attempted by husband of Michigan Governor Christine Whitmer), restaurant dining (California Governor Gavin Newsom, CNN narcissist Chris Cuomo), a funeral/Democrat campaign event (i.e., John Lewis’ faux-funeral) are COVID-immune and justifiable. But an Orthodox Jewish funeral, an entirely peaceful protest of draconian COVID restrictions, and a march in support of a transparent and fair election are denounced as super-spreader events.

• Serial killer of senior citizens, Andrew “Quietus” Cuomo, commands citizens to “admit” their “mistakes” and “shortcomings” with regard to how they responded to the Chinese Communist virus even as he refuses to apologize for his policies that killed scores of elderly.

• To leftists, social science is the god that determines all moral truth, and yet despite social science demonstrating repeatedly that children—especially boys—need fathers, the left refuses to discuss how fatherless families may be contributing to the anti-social behavior that is destroying our cities.

• Leftists claim to value free speech, religious liberty, inclusivity, diversity, tolerance, and unity while condemning not just the beliefs of those with whom they disagree, but also the persons themselves. Many leftists share an uncharitable, presumptuous, ugly, tyrannical, oppressive, and scary desire that those who believe homosexual acts are immoral, who believe marriage has an ontology, who believe biological sex is immutable and meaningful, and who believe bodily damage and disfigurement are improper treatment protocols for gender dysphoria should be unable to work anywhere in America.

To create the illusion that they’re not hypocrites and to defend their intolerance, exclusion, divisiveness, hatred of persons, book banning, speech suppression, demand for ideological uniformity, and efforts to circumscribe the  exercise of religion—which for Christians extends far outside the church walls—leftists resort to fallacious reasoning. The fallacies they employ are too numerous to list, but two of their faves are the ad hominem fallacy and the fallacy of circular reasoning.

Ad hominem is an informal fallacy in which an irrelevant personal attack replaces a logical argument. It proves nothing about the soundness, truth, or falsity of a claim. Instead it appeals to emotion and silences debate through intimidation.

The fallacy of circular reasoning occurs when the conclusion presumes the premise (i.e., the initial claim) is true without proving it true. So, for example, leftists–ignoring their purported commitment to the First Amendment–argue that homosexual acts are moral acts and, therefore, there is no need to tolerate the expression of dissenting views. But the intolerance they are trying to defend is based on the truth of their premise that homosexual acts are moral—a premise they simply assume without proving is true.

Here’s another: Leftists assert that marriage is constituted solely by subjective romantic and erotic feelings, and, therefore, the government has no reason not to recognize unions between two people of the same sex as marriages, because such couples can experience love and erotic desire. But the premise—i.e., that marriage is constituted solely by subjective romantic and erotic feelings—hasn’t been proved.

And here’s yet another claim about marriage based on circular reasoning: Leftists argue that the reason government is involved in marriage is to grant public legitimacy or provide “dignity” to erotic/romantic unions and, therefore, the government has an obligation to recognize homoerotic unions as marriages. The problem is that those who make this argument fail to prove their claim that the reason government is involved in marriage is to recognize, provide, or impart “dignity” to unions. Those who make this argument just assume their premise is true.

After employing fallacious circular reasoning and hurling ad hominem epithets at their opponents, leftists sanctimoniously wipe the dust off their dirty hands and assert that their hypocrisy isn’t really hypocrisy after all.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Ideological-Non-Sense-and-Hypocrisy-of-Leftists.mp3

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Written by Ryan T. Anderson

Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of gay marriage, a question arises: Should we protect the rights of Orthodox Jews, Roman Catholics, Evangelical Christians, Latter-Day Saints and Muslims who believe that marriage is a union of husband and wife? Two bills recently introduced in Congress show diverging answers. One seeks to promote tolerance and peaceful coexistence; the other adds fuel to a culture war by treating that traditional belief as racism.

Last week, U.S. Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., and U.S. Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.; Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.; and Cory Booker, D-N.J., introduced what they call the “Equality Act.” The legislation would add “sexual orientation and gender identity” to more or less every federal law that protects against racism.

Do we really need the federal government to coerce every last baker, florist and adoption agency to violate their beliefs about marriage? The market is already sorting these things out. The Human Rights Campaign reports, for example, that 88 percent of Fortune 500 companies voluntarily do not consider sexual orientation in employment decisions.

The bill also requires that biological males who identify as women be able to use women’s bathrooms and locker rooms. Shouldn’t these decisions be made closer to the ground? By parents, teachers, principals—not federal bureaucrats? Most outrageously, the bill specifies that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act cannot be used to defend people against its requirements. Rather, it treats decent people of faith as irrational bigots, simply for believing that we’re created male and female, and that male and female are created for each other in marriage.

Whether you agree with this belief or not, it’s easy to see that the “Equality Act” is bad public policy. It fuels the culture war rather than seeking peaceful coexistence.

As I argue in my new book, “Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom,” there is an alternative.

The First Amendment Defense Act would prevent the federal government from discriminating against citizens or organizations because they believe that marriage is the union of husband and wife. It would ensure that no federal agency will ever revoke non-profit tax-exempt status or deny grants, contracts, accreditation or licenses to individuals or institutions for following their belief that marriage is a union between a man and a woman.

This bill simply continues the practice of the United States for all of our history. It takes nothing away from anyone. It changes nothing. It protects pluralism amid disagreement.

And it is necessary. In the oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year, Justice Samuel Alito asked Solicitor General Donald Verrilli whether a school might lose its tax-exempt status because of its conviction that marriage is the union of husband and wife. Verrilli’s response was chilling: “It’s certainly going to be an issue. I—I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that, Justice Alito. It is—it is going to be an issue.”

This shouldn’t be an issue. Schools should be eligible for non-profit tax status, government contracts, student loans and other forms of support as long as they meet the relevant educational criteria.

As I explain in Truth Overruled, government policy should not trample on the consciences of citizens who dissent from official policies on sexuality. Government discrimination against social service providers who believe marriage is a male-female relationship undermines our nation’s commitment to reasonable pluralism and diversity. The First Amendment Defense Act would prevent this.

Predictably, the left has attacked this bill. The Sunday after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling, Mark Oppenheimer wrote a column for Time magazine headlined “Now’s the Time to End Tax Exemptions for Religious Institutions.” Oppenheimer, the New York Times’ religion columnist, argued: “Rather than try to rescue tax-exempt status for organizations that dissent from settled public policy on matters of race or sexuality, we need to take a more radical step. It’s time to abolish, or greatly diminish, their tax-exempt statuses.”

But it has long been understood that the power to tax is the power to destroy. Americans who believe that marriage is a union of husband and wife should be free to live and work in accord with their convictions.

When he “evolved” on the issue in 2012, President Barack Obama insisted that there were reasonable people of goodwill on both sides of the marriage debate. Supporters of marriage as the union of a man and a woman “are not coming at it from a mean-spirited perspective,” he insisted. “They’re coming at it because they care about families.”

He added that “a bunch of ’em are friends of mine … you know, people who I deeply respect.” But as the stories of bakers, florists, photographers and adoption agencies show, there’s good reason to worry about the government’s respect for the beliefs of all Americans.

America is in a time of transition. The court has redefined marriage, and beliefs about human sexuality are changing. Will the right to dissent be protected? Will our right to speak and act in accord with what Americans have always believed about marriage—that it’s a union of husband and wife—be tolerated?

Most Americans say yes, they want ours to be a tolerant, pluralistic nation. They want peaceful coexistence. We must work together to protect these cherished American values, despite the ideologues and activists who would sow disharmony by having the government coerce those with whom they disagree.

The First Amendment Defense Act is one way of achieving civil peace even amid disagreement. To protect pluralism and the rights of all Americans, liberals should forswear coercion and embrace tolerance.

Originally published in National Review Online.