“The science is settled.”
~Al Gore, creator of the internet

It’s becoming an incessant catchphrase. More and more frequently, this simple statement is used as conversational pepper-spray to discourage contention and dissuade any who would continue to press their objection to the status quo. Those foolhardy enough to persist in their dissent are often labeled science-deniers; which in today’s culture of scientism, is tantamount to being branded with the Scarlet Periodic Symbol and cast from the village.

We’re told that the science is settled on a myriad of issues. Settled science has definitively shown that sexuality is genetic and immutable…except when it isn’t. Closely related is the settled scientific fact that gender is a social construct and open for molding, changing, redefining, or even ignoring. The science around evolutionary theory and its ability to demonstrate that all living beings are descended from a common ancestor was settled long ago, so we’re told. Not yet settled is what this common ancestor might have been, where all of its fossils are located (also missing are the fossils of any of its tens of thousands of mutant descendants), or how genetic mistakes could proceed toward greater complexity when we observe the exact opposite progression in our day.

We’ve been assured that the science is quite settled regarding a fetus being merely a blob of cells, devoid of any nerve endings, personality, or consciousness; unless the pregnancy is desired, at which point the blob of cells somehow becomes a pre-born human, able to be named and celebrated. And of course, the science was long ago settled on the actuality of climate change (formerly global warming) being REAL, brought about by evil mankind and the flatulence of cows.

So we’ve heard that all of this science is settled and no longer open for discussion or scientific inquiry, but how exactly did this come to be? How does science become settled, after all? In a fascinating clip, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) recently engaged with the head of one of the largest and most influential environmentalist organizations during a hearing on Capitol Hill. If you haven’t watched the exchange, it’s well worth your time.

Aaron Mair, Sierra Club President, does a wonderful job of exposing precisely how bare the intellectual cupboards of settled Science really are. If the Science is definitively settled, it should be able to hold up under scrutiny and examination, yes? When Sen. Cruz brings up the fact that data transmitted via satellite shows that we are in a sustained period of no warming activity on Earth, Mr. Mair is so reluctant to countenance this fact that he refuses to even acknowledge the existence of the data, which has been widely-accepted by people on both sides of the issue.

Instead, Mair retreats behind a bulwark of scientific consensus, as if communal agreement could replace the veracity of empirical observation. Mair trots out a shop-worn mantra in which he affirms his solidarity with “97% of scientists” who agree that global warming is in fact occurring. He repeats it robotically for the rest of the dialogue, doing substantial damage to his position in his intransigence, but it does raise some interesting questions. Is he referring to 97% of all the scientists in the world? Turns out, he is not. The consensus to which he is referring was drawn from a 2-question online survey answered by slightly more than 3,000 scientists. That’s still a somewhat substantial group though, right? I mean, it’s nowhere near 97% of all the scientists in existence, as he tries to infer, but it’s nothing to sneeze at, as long as all of  these scientists are climatologists or have some climate-related specialty. But unfortunately, only 5% of these respondents are actual climate scientists, or so they self-report. Okay, not as impressive, but if 97% of all of the climate experts agree, that’s still something! Buuuuuut, the 97% number was taken from a subset of the subset who were (again self-reportedly) climate scientists and who had 50% of their work on climate change peer-reviewed….

So this subset of the subset ends up being a group of just 79 scientists.

The head of the Sierra Club rests his case for anthropogenic global warming on the online response of 79 (self-reporting) climate scientists.

Sounds preposterous, but this is apparently more than enough for the settlement of a scientific issue in our day. What typically happens is that a political agenda emerges which has to be foisted on the populace. It has to be foisted because it is usually against the best interests of the citizenry and serves to benefit a) the politicians foisting the issue, b) some special interest group who funded the politician’s campaign, or c) both. The politicians find a cause which will provide adequate emotional cover for their unpopular agenda and they ask the sheep to begin their incessant bleating: “4 miles-per-gallon GOOOD, 2 miles-per-gallon BAAAAAD.” The sheep commence immediately because, well they’re sheep and they do what they’re told. The emotional cause, and the political agenda which it conceals, are never logical or helpful, so any honest inquiry will be viewed as a threat. The easiest way to forestall investigation is to go on the offense, ergo if you question the settled science you are a modern-day Luddite who denies science itself.

As Saul Alinski once wrote, “Ridicule is man’s greatest weapon.”

One wonders what the infamous David Hume would’ve thought of this political strategy. According to the 18th century philosopher from Scotland, not even empirical knowledge and inductive reasoning are “settled,” so how much less settled is scientific observation based on this knowledge and reasoning? He argued that one could drop an apple from your hand 500 times, watching it fall and hit the ground each time, yet remain unable to definitively assert that it will not fall up the 501st time you drop it. His theory suggests that because we don’t completely understand the dynamics at work in the world around us, we cannot simply assume that because something has always done X that it will continue to do so tomorrow. If I see a fruit I’ve never tasted before, the only way I could know what it tastes like is to compare it to fruit which is similar in appearance and I’ve eaten. However, this assumes a correlation between fruit of similar appearance and this is not a definitive assumption. Short of being all-knowing, I have no way to know or predict anything with any certainty, Hume reasoned. To introduce Hume to the question at hand, actually settling the science would be predicated on Mr. Mair having acquired omniscience (something only our President would have the chutzpah to lay claim to).

Hume’s skepticism effectively crippled philosophy for quite a while and is just not actionable, so I don’t want to seem as if I agree with him or support his conclusions. But I do appreciate the question which he raises: upon what right can we claim to have arrived at a definitive scientific understanding? How have we gained an omniscient understanding of our planet and the climate, which would be necessary to suggest that any further inquiry is opposed to science itself? What key breakthrough or revolutionary research have we uncovered to justify the conviction that human sexuality is genetic and immutable? Ironically, an accidental repercussion of this position is that by ignoring the stringency of Hume and stating that the natural laws are immutable enough to end all further investigation, these ascientists are tacitly acknowledging an absolute order to the universe. In a sense, they are disavowing the spontaneous and capricious Mother Nature, who supposedly brought us the Universe, deviant sexuality, genetic mutation, et al, by random variation and chance.

Like most of the rhetorical positions taken by modern liberalism, anyone who holds the view that science is settled will soon find that he’s painted himself into a corner and the only method of extrication is a trail of gaudy footprints left behind as he is forced to trample over the intellectual paintjob which he gurgitated previously. In other words, a belief that the science has been settled on global warming, or any other issue, also requires belief in an absolute order in the universe which could underpin the immutable natural laws necessary to justify the end of further scientific inquiry. However much of modern liberal thought is founded on relativism and subjective morality, both of which are incompatible with a universe sustained by absolute forces.

So it turns out that the only thing settled is the fact that the hacks who peddle this catchphrase are charlatans running a shell game with our money. Call me a science-denier all you please, but I remain convinced that any legitimate, worthwhile science will stand up under scrutiny and that those who discourage honest inquiry are dealing from the bottom of the deck.

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By Charles Butts

A pro-life leader believes a letter from Planned Parenthood attacking The Center for Medical Progress proves the abortion giant is guilty of violating federal law.

The 11-page letter from Cecile Richards to members of Congress tries to explain away The Center’s secret videos of dealings between Planned Parenthood and organ procurement organizations to harvest aborted baby body parts.

But Judie Brown of the American Life League (ALL) tells OneNewsNow the letter actually admits the abortion giant is breaking the law, as the Planned Parenthood Federation president admits, among other things, that its affiliates have accepted payments ranging from $45 to $60 “per tissue specimen” from abortions.

“I think the letter was, [Richards] thought, written in such a way that it would defend and protect Planned Parenthood from any kind of assault, because the purpose of the letter was, of course, to attack The Center for Medical Progress,” Brown asserts. “But quite the opposite has occurred when you read the letter with a clear head.”

Brown points out that pro-lifers, including U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), have said all along the videos prove criminal wrongdoing.

“The whole purpose of The Center for Medical Progress’ campaign and all these videos has been focused on getting somebody to indict Planned Parenthood for committing crimes against humanity by the brutal way that they have not only taken the lives of preborn babies, but then made a profit on selling their body parts,” the ALL spokesperson notes.

She feels the public needs to continue pressuring Congress to take action.

“I am so proud of David Daleiden and all the people at The Center for Medical Progress, because they’ve given a face to this horrific practice, and they’ve given it a name — it’s murder,” the pro-lifer concludes.

Originally posted at www.onenewsnow.com

Only six of 54 Republican members of the U.S. Senate signed a pro-traditional marriage legal brief to the U.S. Supreme Court that was submitted on Friday. USA Today noted, “By contrast, 44 Democratic senators and 167 Democratic House members filed a brief last month urging the court to approve same-sex marriage. The brief included the full House and Senate [Democratic] leadership teams.”

These developments strongly suggest that while the homosexual movement remains solidly in control of the Democratic Party, the tactics of harassment and intimidation that we saw wielded against the religious freedom bill in Indiana last week are taking their toll on the Republican Party as a whole.

In the Indiana case, a conservative Republican governor, Mike Pence, abandoned the fight for religious freedom in the face of homosexual and corporate pressure.

It appears that more and more elite or establishment Republicans are simply deciding to give up on the fight for traditional values and marriage.

While this may seem politically expedient, this dramatic move to the left by the GOP could result in millions of pro-family conservatives deciding to abandon the Republican Party in 2016, a critical election year.

USA Today also noted that “…while some members of the 2012 Republican National Convention platform committee filed a brief against gay marriage Friday, it notably did not include GOP Chairman Reince Priebus.”

The Republican senators signing the brief included:

• U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas
• U.S. Senator Steve Daines of Montana
• U.S. Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma
• U.S. Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma
• U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky
• U.S. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina

Fifty-one members of the House of Representatives signed the brief. But U.S. House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) name was not on it.

Taking the lead for traditional marriage in the House was U.S. Representative Tim Huelskamp (R-KS), who not only signed the pro-marriage brief but has also introduced U.S. House Joint Resolution 32, the Marriage Protection Amendment, to amend the United States Constitution to protect marriage, family and children by defining marriage as the union between one man and one woman. The resolution has 33 co-sponsors and has been referred for action to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary.

Huelskamp is the only Member of Congress who has authored one of the 30 state constitutional amendments that prohibits homosexual marriage and polygamous marriage. In 2005, when he was a state senator, 71 percent of Kansans voted for the state constitutional amendment that he authored.

In reintroducing the federal marriage amendment, Huelskamp said, “In June 2013 the Supreme Court struck down section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which had defined marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman, but upheld the right and responsibility of states to define marriage. Since then, though, numerous unelected lower court judges have construed the U.S. Constitution as suddenly demanding recognition of same sex ‘marriages,’ and they struck down state Marriage Amendments—including the Kansas Marriage Amendment—approved by tens of millions of voters and their elected representatives.”

However, on April 28 the U.S. Supreme Court will review the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which upholds marriage laws in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. A ruling is expected in June.

USA Today noted that scores of prominent Republicans last month joined a brief on the homosexual side filed by former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, a former lieutenant to Karl Rove who came out of the closet and announced in August of 2010 that he was a homosexual. He has since launched a “Project Right Side” to make the “conservative” case for gay marriage.

Big money Republican donors such as Paul Singer, David Koch, and Peter Thiel have either endorsed homosexual rights and same-sex marriage or funded the homosexual movement. Thiel is an open homosexual.

A libertarian group funded by the Koch brothers, the Cato Institute has been in the gay rights camp for many years and its chairman, Robert A. Levy, wrote a “moral and constitutional case for a right to gay marriage.”

Other signatories to the Mehlman brief included Governor Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, U.S. Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Mark Kirk of Illinois, and former presidential candidates Rudolph Giuliani and Jon Huntsman.

The signers of this brief at the U.S. Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage were described as “300 veteran Republican lawmakers, operatives and consultants.” Some two dozen or so had worked for Mitt Romney for president.

One of the signatories, Mason Fink, who was the finance director of the Mitt Romney for president campaign, has signed on with a super PAC promoting former Florida Republican governor Jeb Bush for president. In another move signaling his alignment with the homosexual movement, Bush has reportedly picked Tim Miller, “one of the most prominent gay Republicans in Washington politics,” as his communications director.

A far-left media outlet known as Buzzfeed has described Bush as “2016’s Gay-Friendly Republican,” and says he has “stocked his inner circle with advisers who are vocal proponents of gay rights.”

But some conservative Christians are fighting back against the homosexual movement.

A brief to the court filed by Liberty Counsel notes that, in the past, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld marriage as “a foundational social institution that is necessarily defined as the union of one man and one woman.” It cites the case of Skinner v. Oklahoma, in which marriage was declared to be “fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race,” and Maynard v. Hill, in which marriage was declared “the foundation of the family and of society, without which there would be neither civilization nor progress.”

Liberty Counsel said the court is being asked to affirm a false notion of marriage based upon fraudulent data about homosexual activity in society. It said, “For the past 67 years, scholars, lawyers and judges have undertaken fundamental societal transformation by embracing Alfred Kinsey’s statistically and scientifically fraudulent ‘data’ derived from serial child rapists, sex offenders, prisoners, prostitutes, pedophiles and pederasts. Now these same change agents, still covering up the fraudulent nature of the Kinsey ‘data,’ want this Court to utilize it to demolish the cornerstone of society, natural marriage.”

The homosexual movement has long maintained that Kinsey validated changes in sexual behavior that were already taking place in society. In fact, however, the evidence uncovered by Dr. Judith Reisman shows that Kinsey deliberately exaggerated those changes in a fraudulent manner by using data from pedophiles and prisoners.

Commenting on the impact of the acceptance of the fraudulent Kinsey data, Accuracy in Media founder Reed Irvine noted, “Gradually over the years, acceptance of the Kinsey morality has grown to the point where premarital and extramarital sex raise no eyebrows, where, in some communities, out-of-wedlock births are in the majority, homosexuality is glorified and aggressively promoted in our schools and the last taboo—adults having sex with young children—is now under attack in some of our institutions of higher learning.”

The Mattachine Society, a gay rights organization started by communist Harry Hay in 1950, cited the flawed Kinsey data in an effort to convince the public that homosexual behavior was widespread in American society.

The book, Take Back! The Gay Person’s Guide to Media Action, said the Kinsey Report on male sexuality “paved the way for the first truly positive discussion of homosexuality in the mainstream media.”

Today, this same Kinsey data is being used to convince the Supreme Court to approve homosexual “marriage” as a constitutional right.

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

Written by Mark K. Lewis

CNN anchor Chris Cuomo recently declared: “Our rights do not come from God.” Then this week, Sen. Ted Cruz’s assertion that “our rights don’t come from man, they come from God Almighty” came under scrutiny when Meredith Shiner, a Yahoo reporter, tweeted: “Bizarre to talk about how rights are God-made and not man-made in your speech announcing a POTUS bid? When Constitution was man-made?”

I am astounded by how many people in this country (and particularly in the media) don’t believe the Declaration of Independence’s assertion that all men are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” The Declaration of Independence also refers to “The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Believing that our laws are God-given, and not man-made, has become something that secular liberals seem to take joy in openly mocking. As if there were something inherently funny or backwards about faith. As if there were something hollow and foolish about believing in God.

Obviously, I believe very strongly that the opposite is true.

This might sound like a pedantic point to make, but nearly all of our political discord comes down to fundamental differences in our worldviews. Two very good people can start out with two very different philosophies of life and inevitably come to two very different conclusions on a nearly innumerable amount of problems. Sometimes the consequences are profound. And that’s the case here. Rejection of this foundational principle of God-given law would inexorably lead someone to come to vastly different conclusions about any number of things compared to someone like me who embraces this premise. When liberals and conservatives differ over whether or not the state has the right to usurp this or that right, dig deep enough, and you will often find the root of the disagreement lies here.

I believe very strongly that our rights come from God. And I believe nearly as strongly that the implications of believing that our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are granted by the state are potentially catastrophic. Ideas have consequences, and while some might see quibbling over such esoteric and grandiose ideas to be a waste of time, the truth is that where one comes down on such fundamental questions will likely predetermine where one comes down on a wide range of modern-day “hot-button” issues. When you consider how much of the current political debate hinges on fights about individual liberty and the size and scope of government, this makes sense.

Set aside religion and consider this: If our fundamental rights are merely granted by the state, then they can be taken away by the state. What is more, the state would have no moral compunction not to rob us of our rights. The state is not particularly moral or special or better than people. The state is people. If they don’t have some larger, higher moral code that guides them, then assumptions about what constitutes the “good” are, at least to some degree, arbitrary. Absent an immutable standard, why wouldn’t the law of the jungle rule? In nature, predators prey on the weak. Can we honestly convince ourselves that people are better than that? Some are, sure. But many are not.

Without an absolute law that transcends the whims of man, the very concept of “rights” metastasizes into a definition having more to do with the current and often capricious preference of the majority. Oppressed minorities have long found comfort (and, in fact, seized the moral high ground) by pointing out that there is a greater law, a universal sense of right and wrong, that transcends the will of the majority.

The majority can be wrong. The majority can be in the wrong. History is littered with examples of the folly of man-made law, of man-made injustice. (This is not to say people haven’t done terrible things in the name of God — they have!)

Consider Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail“: “We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights,” he wrote. “To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.”

More and more, the secular left seems to want to entrust human law to always be just. That’s fine when it is. But what happens when it isn’t?

Originally published at TheWeek.com.

One month ago, headlines proclaimed, “Grandson of Billy Graham: The Pulpit is No Place to Speak on Social Issues.”

The headlines were in response to comments made by Tullian Tchividjian, Pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, during a panel discussion on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

Pastor Tchividjian had said, “I think, in my opinion, over the course of the last 20 or 30 years, evangelicalism, specifically their association with the religious right and conservative politics, has done more damage to the brand of Christianity than just about anything else.”

He added, “That’s not to say that Christian people don’t have opinions on social issues and we shouldn’t speak those opinions, but Sunday morning from behind the pulpit is not the place, in my opinion.”

To give this further context, he explained, “It’s not so much religion in the public sphere as much as religion in the pulpit, behind the pulpit, that’s my primary concern. As a preacher, my job when I stand up on Sunday mornings to preach is not first and foremost to address social ills or social problems or try to find social solutions. My job is to diagnose people’s problems and then announce God’s solution to their problems.”

Was Pastor Tchividjian right? Have we politicized the gospel from our pulpits? Have we mixed with the culture wars with the gospel?

On the one hand, he is absolutely right, and to the extent we have confused allegiance with the Republican or Democratic Party with allegiance to the kingdom of God, we have damaged the cause of Christ.

The gospel message is divisive enough already, proclaiming that salvation is found only through Jesus. Why make it even more divisive by identifying Jesus with partisan politics?

I’d much rather defend Jesus than defend Barack Obama or Sarah Palin or Joe Biden or Ted Cruz, although to be sure, I have far more in common with some of the names on this list than with others.

And because the Republican Party has stood much stronger on a number of key moral issues than has the Democratic Party (at least in terms of their respective platforms), and because movements like the Moral Majority were associated with Republican leaders, Pastor Tchividjian is right to speak of the damage done to the gospel by associating it with conservative politics. (I’m speaking broadly here, fully aware that there are many voters who claim the Democratic Party is the more caring and compassionate in terms of the needs of the poor, also drawing a large percentage of conservative Black voters.)

It is also very easy to get so focused on social issues that we take our eyes off of Jesus, as if our primary calling was to “reclaim America” or stop abortion or preserve marriage rather than our primary calling being to make disciples and glorify God.

On the other hand, Pastor Tchividjian is absolutely wrong, since there is no separation between the gospel and culture, between how we live in society and how we live in our private lives, between the lordship of Jesus inside the four walls of a church building and outside that building.

Joel McDurmon, a resident scholar at American Vision, addressed this mentality in his Introduction to the reprint of Alice M. Baldwin’s book, The New England Pulpit and the American Revolution. He spoke of those who would say, “Christians should not preach politics! We should preach the ‘Gospel’ only!”

He responded, “Of course, this assumes that the Great Commission applies only to the inner, private lives of people and the salvation of their souls for the next world alone. In short, it limits the definition of the Christian calling in such a way as to exclude its social aspects up front.”

Put another way, we are called to go make disciples, but how do disciples live? How do we function in the world – in our marriages, families, schools, and places of business? How do we live as salt and light in the society?

That’s why it was preachers of the gospel who were at the forefront of the American Revolution (as carefully documented by Baldwin), preachers of the gospel who were at the forefront of the abolition movement, and preachers of the gospel who were at the forefront of the Civil Rights movement.

Do you think that Dr. Martin Luther King thought to himself, “Well, I shouldn’t be mixing the gospel with social issues”?

Conversely, we have no sympathy today for the German pastors who stood idly by as Hitler rose to power and began to make his murderous goals known. Should they have simply focused on the personal problems of their congregants?

And when a young woman in one of our congregations is contemplating an abortion, is that a personal issue or a social issue? When parents are trying to understand how to respond to the announcement that their son is “marrying” another young man, is that a personal issue or a social issue? When kids come home from school with virtually pornographic sex-ed material, is that a personal issue or a social issue? When a family is falling apart under the duress of severe economic pressure, is that a personal issue or a social issue?

There is also the matter of perspective, as an inner city black pastor once said to me, “You’re trying to get prayer back in the schools. I’m trying to get education back in the schools.”
Is that a personal issue or a social issue?

Recently, Rev. Franklin Graham addressed the concern that “your father wouldn’t get onto these subjects,” as he spoke about the need to stand up against the rising tide of secularism in our country.

He responded, “Wait a second. My father, when he was going to school, they had a Bible in school,” he continued. “When he was going to school, they had the Ten Commandments on the wall. When he was going to school, you could pray in school, and the teachers would lead in those prayers.

“Our country has changed. And we’ve got to take a stand.”

He also said, “Now I’m not talking about Baptists or Republicans and the Tea Party. I have no confidence that any of these politicians or any party is going to turn this country around. The only hope for this country is for men and women of God to stand up and take a stand.”

He’s absolutely right, and it’s time we take our stand, not with hatred, rancor, or insult, and not in the name of a political leader or political party, but in the name of Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, and in the love and truth of God.

Let us go into the world and make disciples, and let us go out into the world and be disciples.

(We reached out to Pastor Tchividjian for interaction without success but would welcome dialogue on these issues.)

This article was originally posted at The Christian Post website.

This is simple common sense. By going to Iraq and Syria to join the Islamic State’s jihad, these Muslims have joined an entity that has declared war against the United States. They have committed treason. They have forfeited the rights and privileges of citizenship. But it will be interesting to see who opposes this, and on what grounds.

“Cruz Files Bill to Ban American Islamic State Fighters from Returning to U.S.,” by Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon, January 23, 2015 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) will file legislation on Friday to ban American citizens who fight alongside the Islamic State (IS) and other terror groups from returning to the United States, where they pose a significant terror threat, according to sources in the senator’s office.

Cruz, who first proposed the legislation last year, seeks to strip those Americans who travel abroad to fight with IS (also known as ISIL or ISIS) of their U.S. citizenship rights and stop them from coming back stateside.

The bill, known as the Expatriate Terrorist Act (E.T.A.), tightens and updates existing regulations by which a U.S. citizen effectively renounces his or her citizenship.

Cruz said that he is filing the bill partly in response to President Obama’s Tuesday State of the Union address, which he described as “detached from reality” on the foreign policy front.

“President Obama’s approach to foreign policy refuses to acknowledge the threats our enemies pose to our national security—it is detached from reality and making the world a more dangerous place,” said Cruz, who also is releasing a new video that takes aim at Obama for misleading the nation about these threats in his annual address.

Cruz said stripping American IS fighters of their citizenship is a step toward securing the country and restoring the country’s image.

“We’ve seen the grave consequence of the Obama-Clinton-Kerry foreign policy unravel with respect to Iran, Russia, and now Yemen,” Cruz said. “These consequences are not confined to faraway lands. They directly threaten America and our allies.”

“That is why this week, I am re-filing the Expatriate Terrorist Act, which prevents Americans who have fought abroad for designated terrorist groups from returning to the United States,” he said. “I look forward to working with senators on both sides of the aisle on this and additional measures to secure our nation and restore America’s leadership in the world.”…

Take ACTION: Click HERE to contact Illinois’ U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk to ask them to support S. 247, known as the Expatriate Terrorist Act.  American citizens who take an oath to a foreign terrorist organization should have their citizenship revoked.

Now that the heady rush of jubilation has faded from the election, it’s time to take stock of what we actually achieved. The numbers couldn’t be more forthright. It’s as if the American people interrupted the President to interject, “Now, let me be clear…” The 2014 election was an epic political repudiation of President Barack Obama, U.S. Senator Harry Reid, and the Progressive agenda in Washington.

It was a demonstration that all but the most white-eyed leftist loons in America are tired of Obama’s ineptitude, deliberate or otherwise. How amusing now to think about those talking heads on cable who tried to suggest that the Democrats might not lose the Senate, the day before America catapulted the Senate back to the Republicans in a resounding fashion.

But what has been achieved? What has our political support purchased? In a strange way, American voters are like folks on that Storage Wars show. Turn on any episode and you’ll see people bidding crazy amounts of money on a garage-worth of stuff they’ve only glimpsed from a distance. Could be treasure, could be rubbish. And just like those storage-capitalists, we don’t yet know what we just purchased.

In the majority of races, it would be very difficult to elucidate just what the Republican candidate ran on, since the only discernable plank in the 2014 GOP campaign strategy was “We’re not Obama”. It could be that we’ve only traded progressive Democrats for progressive Republicans. The reality is that the GOP has controlled arguably the most powerful organ in the Federal government for the past four years.

The power of the House of Representatives lies in the purse. It is through the House that all the rest of the government is funded, since all bills for raising revenue originate in the House (ala Article I, Section VII). Of course this is by design, providing one more check and balance to offset the potential overreach of a Federal leviathan. Whoever controls the House, controls the funding of the entire US Government.

And yet, this power was deliberately set aside by GOP leadership during one of the most egregious, tyrannical growths of Presidential power in American history. One could argue that there has never been a greater need for the House to check a runaway Executive branch and yet the Speaker of the House sat on his hands for four years. No, even worse, the Speaker told his enemies about his plans to sit on his hands before he did so. When U.S. House Speaker John Boehner communicated time and again that the power of the purse was off the table, he surrendered before the enemy even took the field.

Since Boehner took the Speaker’s gavel in 2010, Obama has:

• Implemented (and funded) Obamacare
• Directed his DOJ to blatantly flout federal law in cases involving DOMA
• Prevented the Congressional inquiry into the deliberate harassment of conservative organizations by the Internal Revenue Service
• Violated religious liberty of Americans via the contraception mandate
• Stonewalled Congressional investigators attempting to get to the bottom of the murder of American diplomats in Libya

And this is just the low-hanging fruit!

Obama’s abuse of presidential power has been beyond the wildest dreams of progressive radicals, yet Boehner’s House has achieved only one minor victory: Sequestration via a half-hearted government shutdown. Yet even Boehner himself admits that he had to be talked into it and was against the idea from the beginning.

New Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is at least as spineless as Boehner and coupled with the fact that these two men now control the entire Federal legislative machinery yet haven’t advanced the slightest hint of a conservative agenda over the past 4 years, can Americans have any hope in the success of a newly-elected conservative majority?

It is a question which is impossible to accurately answer at this juncture. Conservative politicians are not immune to legislating much differently than they campaigned. Given the number of Establishment-endorsed GOP candidates who won, I think there will be more than a fair number of newly-minted RINOs in D.C. come next year.

It remains to be seen how much of a seat at the table Boehner and McConnell will give any true conservative who shows up. Based solely on their actions over the past 4 years, chances are that McBoehnell will work behind the scenes to erode support for any kind of conservative resistance which forms in either house.

The encouraging thing is that there are several strong conservative voices headed to Washington next year. Folks like Ben Sasse in Nebraska, Joni Ernst in Iowa, and Tom Cotton in Arkansas should revitalize the efforts of U.S. Senators Mike Lee and Ted Cruz, men who have been holding the conservative line in the U.S. Senate. Similarly Dave Brat, Barry Loudermilk, Mia Love, John Ratcliffe, and Andy Mooney are headed to the an U.S. House in desperate need of articulate, impassioned, principled conservatives.

These Congressional rookies probably think they’ve finally emerged from the political fight of their lives, but they haven’t seen anything yet. If there’s one thing the heartless Republican establishment will attack, it’s an unapologetic conservative. They’ll keep their powder dry until they spot the opportunity to turn on a Tea Partier and then it’ll be open season. If these freshmen are smart, they’ll realize that power lies in numbers and the tighter formation they can maintain, the better.

There’s a reason why the Greek phalanx and the Roman testudo were such effective fighting formations. With any luck, organizations like the Tea Party Caucuses in both houses can form rank around these fledgling representatives until they get their sea legs and prepare to carry the fight to the enemies of Liberty, foreign or domestic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.”