Read what Shikha Dalmia, the pro-abortion atheist senior analyst for the Reason Foundation (who also happens to be a woman), said about the left’s apoplectic response to the “Hobby Lobby” decision:

The United States Supreme Court last week handed down two rulings that are a victory for the liberties of religion, speech, and association enshrined in the First Amendment. That ought to be cause for a double celebration. But instead, the rulings, issued on the narrowest possible grounds, constitute a victory so modest—and have elicited a response from the left so hysterical—that anyone serious about liberty can’t help but be a little depressed right now.

The case that has attracted disproportionate attention is informally known as Hobby Lobby, and it challenged Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate. This mandate requires all for-profit companies to provide all 20 forms of birth control approved by the FDA, including pills and “abortifacients,” even though they violate the Christian (Assembly of God, to be precise) convictions of the owners of Hobby Lobby, an arts and crafts chain, who were willing to cover “only” 16.

Let me be clear: I am not some super-religious, anti-abortion, party-line conservative. Quite the contrary: I am a political independent, an atheist, and a supporter of abortion rights. I believe that because the mother’s—and only the mother’s—life is implicated in childbirth, she ought to have the sole and unrestricted right to decide whether to get pregnant or proceed with a pregnancy.

That said, the right to birth control and abortion does not entitle women to force Hobby Lobby to pay for these things any more than Hobby Lobby’s religious liberties entitle it to force women to pay for its speaking-in-tongues gatherings.

Yet instead of simply affirming the owners of Hobby Lobby’s broad constitutional right not to be forced to violate their religious beliefs, the justices ruled in the company’s favor only because not doing so would have violated the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act.

All that the act requires is that before violating someone’s religious liberties, the government demonstrates that it had no other way to achieve its ends….

None of this, however, prevented the left from throwing a collective hissy-fit. Social media erupted into tiresome taunts of fascism. Ann Friedman called the ruling a “blow to reproductive rights” that made her want to issue “an outraged scream, sort of a combination groan-wail…while beating my fists against the desk on either side of my laptop.” (Hey Ann, be careful: A new laptop will cost you several years’ of contraceptive pills. Generic versions sell at Costco for $25 a month.)

According to one attorney, homosexual activists consider the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision granting religious rights to business owners a temporary stumbling block to their campaign.

Because of the ruling, some homosexual groups have withdrawn their support of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a measure that would provide special rights and protections for homosexuals, lesbians and transgenders in the workplace

Matt Barber, vice president of Liberty Counsel Action and founder of Barbwire.com, tells OneNewsNow it is because the bill provides broad language exempting religious employers.

“They will not support ENDA unless it forces churches and religious organizations, Christian organizations, to adopt the view that homosexual behavior, despite what the Bible says, is normal natural and good,” he reports.

So Barber suggests those activists do not feel the ENDA they previously supported was tough enough.

“Now for them to admit that they want all religious protections removed from ENDA shows that what this is really all about is criminalizing Christianity and doing away with freedom of religion,” the attorney points out.

When the activists do, in conjunction with liberals, develop language for new language to accomplish that, Barber is not sure “it will get any legs” in Congress.

In fact, a bill designed to provide special rights for homosexuals, lesbians and transgendered individuals has already been approved by the Senate, but House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) refuses to bring it up for a vote in that chamber.

As Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union have withdrawn support for ENDA because of the Hobby Lobby decision allowing business owners of faith to reject abortion causing drugs, Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition says there is “a complete freak-out by the gay, lesbian, transgender and left communities because they fear that what the court case has done will allow anybody with any religious objection to object to anything.”

But Lafferty warns that Christian business owners are not in the clear yet because additional efforts are under way to craft new language that does not include broad religious exemptions.

“They are opposed to religious exemptions,” she reiterates. “So here we have it; we’ve been talking about this problem that was brewing. It’s now here, and … those on the left are saying that Christians should be forced to comply. They want to force this down everybody’s throat.”

Still in the hopper are two executive orders proposed by President Obama. One would protect transgender federal workers, and the other would force government contractors to protect them.

This article was first published at the OneNewsNow.com website.

While reams have already been penned examining the implications of last week’s Hobby Lobby decision, most of what’s been written, particularly in the liberal press, has missed the point entirely.

Though I’m mildly pleased that the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is not quite ready to take gasoline to both the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), signed into law by Bill Clinton, a liberal, in 1993, I am alarmed, and so too should you be, that only 56 percent of our sitting SCOTUS justices are still willing to give the U.S. Constitution a modicum of the respect, recognition and compliance it not only deserves, but requires.

America was dragged before Emperor Obama’s counter-constitutional, secular-”progressive” firing squad and remarkably, miraculously, they missed.

But it’s a false sense of security. As we Christians and conservatives celebrate with chest bumps and high fives, we remain bound, gagged and blindfolded while these “progressive” fascists reload. The next volley of cultural Marxist lead is but moments away.

Tick, tick goes the judicial-supremacy time bomb.

I don’t mean to throw a wet blanket on the party. There is much to celebrate, and this ruling’s broader implications are profound indeed. The opinion simply doesn’t go far enough.

Yes, Hobby Lobby was, in part, about the non-negotiable fact that government cannot compel religious business owners of private, closely held corporations to be complicit in abortion homicide. It was also, tangentially, about the self-evident reality that women are not, never have been and never will be, entitled to expect Christian men, who are not their husbands, to pay for their birth control and abortion drugs so that they can have consequence-free sex or otherwise murder their pre-born babies.

Hobby Lobby was chiefly about one of our very first freedoms: religious liberty.

How is it that this was a 5-4 decision? Even an elementary understanding of American history and a cursory analysis of both our U.S. Constitution and RFRA establish that this opinion should have been roundly unanimous. The majority decision merely recognized, in the weakest of terms, Americans’ God-given, inalienable, constitutionally guaranteed right to religious free exercise (yes, even for those pesky Christian business owners).

Still, while lovers of freedom rejoice across the nation, the reality is that there are at least four domestic “enemies within” currently sitting on the highest bench in the land, not the least of whom is Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Ginsburg tells you everything you need to know about Ginsburg: “I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a Constitution in the year 2012,” she disgracefully vomited a couple years back in an interview about the fledgling Egyptian government. “I might look at the Constitution of South Africa. That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights. … It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done. Much more recent than the U.S. Constitution.”

Ginsburg hates the America of our founding. She hates our constitution and, like all true “progressives,” endeavors to circumvent it at every turn.

And that’s the prism through which we must interpret the parade of hyperbolic horribles in her scathing Hobby Lobby dissent. She excoriated the constitutionalist majority for its ruling, calling it a “radical” decision “of startling breadth.” Still, when you cut through the alarmist tripe, she actually gets to the meat of the matter.

“In a decision of startling breadth,” she wrote, “the Court holds that commercial enterprises, including corporations, along with partnerships and sole proprietorships, can opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

Uh, yeah, and?

Here’s what Ginsburg actually meant: “I hate the First Amendment. It’s broad, inalienable, and I want to alienate it. Oh, and dead babies. Lots of dead babies.”

Ginsburg is right. This decision was “of startling breadth,” but only if you happen to be a secular elitist hell-bent on marginalizing Christians and wielding unchecked power over your fellow Americans.

Indeed, the secularist left’s utter meltdown over having but a small measure of control over others wrested away is highly instructive. Still, why would we expect lefties to understand the First Amendment when these Rhodes Scholars are calling a decision penned by Justice Samuel Alito “#ScaliaLaw” on Twitter?

In his concurring opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy, who more often than not gets it wrong, got one right:

In our constitutional tradition, freedom means that all persons have the right to believe or strive to believe in a divine creator and a divine law. For those who choose this course, free exercise is essential in preserving their own dignity and in striving for a self-definition shaped by their religious precepts. Free exercise in this sense implicates more than just freedom of belief. … It means, too, the right to express those beliefs and to establish one’s religious (or non-religious) self-definition in the political, civic, and economic life of our larger community.

Wow. And now for the pink elephant in the room: Although the Hobby Lobby decision did not directly address the raging cultural debate over counterfeit “gay marriage” and the irreconcilable friction this modern, sin-centric novelty has with the long-established and inalienable right to religious free exercise, it doesn’t take a Phi Beta Kappa to read between the lines and discover, as Ginsburg and Kennedy evidently agree, that the “startling breadth” of the decision most assuredly touches and concerns the debate head on. (And not in favor, I might add, of the homofascist “you-have-to-affirm-my-faux-marriage-or-go-to-jail” crowd.)

While Justice Kennedy is anything but predictable on these matters, this ruling makes it pretty clear that, as both the First Amendment and RFRA already assure, the Christian baker, photographer, florist or any other business owner, is protected from being forced, under penalty of law, into indentured servitude – from having to give their God-given time and talent to create goods or services that require they violate sincerely held religious beliefs.

In other words, both the First Amendment and RFRA trump any and all so-called “sexual orientation” laws. Or, as Ginsburg put it, private businesses “can opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

Darn skippy.

Furthermore, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act expressly protects religious free exercise while ignoring newfangled notions of “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.”

When religious belief comes into conflict with sexual identity politics, religious belief wins every time. Period.

Let me be clear so there’s no misunderstanding. I’m a Christian. If I’m a business owner and someone comes in requesting goods or services that would require me to violate my conscience – especially my biblically based, sincerely held religious beliefs – I will not, under any circumstances, provide those goods or services. This is my absolute, non-negotiable, constitutionally guaranteed right.

No debate. No question. No compromise.

The language of the Hobby Lobby decision simply acknowledges this reality.

On Monday at the Aspen Institute’s “Aspen Ideas Festival,” Hillary Clinton offered some ideas that could have floated right out of the pot-clouded mind of a Colorado stoner.

She discussed the recent U.S. Supreme Court Decision which held that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) exempts closely held companies from being compelled to violate their religious beliefs by providing abortifacients to their employees.

When a conservative makes an inartful or boneheaded statement, it’s trumpeted around the country by our unbiased “journalists” at CNN, MSNBC, and CNBC, and by the huffing and puffing posters at HuffPost. But when one of their own makes an utterly preposterous statement the sound of crickets chirping is deafening. And when the preposterous statement issues from their political high priestess, Hillary Clinton, you can almost see the glistening flop sweat as they try to figure out how to avoid addressing it.

Here’s what the Pythia Clinton prophesied in response to the recent Hobby Lobby decision:

Just think about this for a minute: It’s the first time that our court has said that a closely held corporation has the rights of a person when it comes to religious freedom, which means that the …corporation’s employers can impose their religious beliefs on their employees and, of course, denying women their right to contraception as part of their health care plan. I find it deeply disturbing that we’re going in that direction.

Part of the reason I was so adamant about including women and girls in our foreign policy, not as a luxury, but as a central issue is because they are often the canaries in the mine. You watch women and girls being deprived of their rights. Some of them never had them. Some of them lose them. And among those rights is control over their bodies, control over their own health care, control over the size of their families. And it is a disturbing trend that you see in a lot of societies that are very unstable, that are anti-democratic, that are, frankly, prone to extremism, where women and women’s bodies are used as the defining and unifying issue to bring together people—men—to get them to behave in ways that are disadvantageous to women, but which prop up them because of their religion, or sect, or tribe, or whatever.

So to introduce this element into our society—We’re always going to argue about abortion. It’s a hard choice and it’s controversial, and that’s why I’m pro-choice. I want people to be able to make their own choices.

And it’s very troubling that a sales clerk at Hobby Lobby who needs contraception, which is pretty expensive, is not going to get that service through her employer’s health care plan because her employer doesn’t think she should be using contraception.

I know it’s a spectrum, but all these decisions about women and women’s rights and women’s bodies and women’s roles are on that spectrum. Thankfully we’re far away from a lot of countries that don’t even issue birth certificates to girls because “they’re so worthless, why would we record their births.”

So, we’re very far from that, but, this kind of decision raises serious questions.

Say what?

Allow me to summarize the priestess’s overwrought—make that, bizarre–claim: The very narrow decision that permits Christian owners of businesses to act in accordance with their religious beliefs which prohibit the taking of innocent human life is akin to the actions of primitive, tribalistic, unstable, anti-democratic, extremist societies, in which men seek to use women’s bodies to prop themselves up. Further, this judicial decision butters up the slope which will send America hurtling toward a culture in which little girls are deemed so devoid of human worth as to be denied a birth certificate.

And this from the woman who supports the “right” to kill girls in utero. In Clinton’s twisted moral universe, denial of a birth certificate is a greater moral evil than denial of birth.

Clinton claims that abortion is a difficult, controversial issue on which individuals should have the right to  decide, except of course those Christians who decide they don’t want to subsidize it.

When the interviewer pointed out that the Supreme Court’s decision was based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act signed by her husband, Mrs. Clinton interrupted abruptly and defensively, explaining that RFRA was passed “because at that point there were real cases of discrimination against religious people.”

Yes, real cases, unlike the fake ones in which the government tries to compel Christians to subsidize the taking of innocent lives (or to use their labor in the service celebrations that God abhors.)

Why is Clinton not “very troubled” and “deeply disturbed” about the government compelling the owners of Hobby Lobby to facilitate the killing of innocents, an act which the God they serve forbids (Ex. 20:13)?

Clinton wrongly claims that a hypothetical Hobby Lobby employee will be denied contraception because “her employer doesn’t think she should be using contraception.” The employers’ thoughts about whether their employee should use contraception are completely irrelevant and were never part of the case. The case was about what the employers thought they should be compelled to provide to their employees.

Why did Clinton have nothing to say about the employers’ choice to spend their income in ways that are consonant with their beliefs, especially on an issue of such grave consequence? Even Clinton has acknowledged the grave implications of abortion when many years ago, she asserted that abortion should be rare (which raises the question, if incipient life is so devoid of personhood that it doesn’t deserve constitutional protection, why should it be rare?).

The demurral of owners of companies to pay for contraception does not rob women of their right to access it any more than the demurral of my employer to pay directly for my food robs me of the right to access it. People work in order to earn money to pay for the stuff they need and want. Employees have  a right and responsibility to set priorities and make spending choices in accordance with those priorities.

As to Clinton’s claim that contraceptives—and she must mean only the 4 types of contraceptives (out of 20) to which the Hobby Lobby owners objected—are “expensive,” here is what Planned Parenthood says:

The IUD is the most inexpensive long-term and reversible form of birth control you can get. Unlike other forms of birth control, the IUD only costs money in the beginning. The cost for the medical exam, the IUD, the insertion of the IUD, and follow-up visits to your health care provider can range from $500 to $1,000. That cost pays for protection that can last from 5 to 12 years, depending on which IUD you choose.

Worst case IUD scenario, it would cost $200 per year (less than $17 per month). Best case: $60 per year ($5 per month).

Plan B and Ella are two other forms of contraception that Hobby Lobby does not have to cover. These are more expensive than IUDs but they’re used only for emergency contraception—not for a woman’s regular mode of contraception, so if used properly, the annual cost would be insubstantial.

According to the Consumerist, the average American worker spends $20 per week on coffee and $37 per week on midday meals (rather than packing their lunches, which would cost about $15 per week). A Netflix subscription is $9 per month and the average monthly cost of an HBO subscription is $16. Without even looking at clothing, accessories, cosmetic, gift, travel, or dining out expenditures, I’ve just saved the average American $144 per month—more than enough to purchase Cadillac contraceptives.

And let’s not forget that women who want contraceptives have male sexual partners who have a far greater obligation to subsidize their partner’s contraceptives than do the owners of Hobby Lobby.

Maybe if the Clintons weren’t so broke, they could pay for the IUDs and Plan B and Ella prescriptions for those Hobby Lobby employees who want them.

Clinton frets about men using women to “define” and “unify” some societal constituency in order to achieve a cultural advantage. Can she with a straight face claim that Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and she are not “using women” to define and unify the Democratic Party in the service of their political advantage? Isn’t that just what these head-scratching and offensive comments from Clinton were intended to do?

Perhaps the reason for the cricket-chirping we hear from the direction of the “progressive” press is worse than merely a desire to protect Clinton’s presidential aspirations. Maybe “progressives” can’t even see how preposterous her comments are.

Help us be your voice for pro-family values! 

Following the recent Supreme Court decision in favor of the religious liberty of the owners of Hobby Lobby, there’s been a lot of handwringing, weeping, and gnashing of teeth over a mythical war on women that warrants a closer look.

Sandra Fluke has a right to eat. Her right to eat is even more fundamental than her right to contracept. She actually must eat.  Does her employer have an ethical or Constitutional obligation to pay directly for her food? And does her employer have an obligation to pay directly for whatever food she chooses to eat—even if that food is expensive and lethal?

This may shock those who believe that it takes a village to raise a child and to subsidize the frisky sexcapades of adult women, but Fluke’s employer has an ethical obligation only to pay her for services rendered. Fluke works; her employer compensates her with a paycheck. With her money, Fluke can make discretionary spending choices. If she can’t afford her first choice of contraceptive methods, she has several options:

• She can cancel her Netflix or HBO subscription in order to pay for her contraceptives.

• She can choose a less expensive contraceptive method (like condoms, which no one gets subsidized).

• She can try to compel her sexual partner to subsidize that for which she is trying to compel her employer to pay.

• Or (horror of horrors), she can forgo sex until such time as she can afford her contraceptive method of choice.

When did the right to access contraception transmogrify into the right to compel others to pay for it? Since when is it a “right” to compel a closely held company (or the government for that matter) to pay for one’s birth control?

The “empowered” Sandra Flukes of the world get the vapors at the mere thought of having to pay  for the costs of their own volitional sexual activity. Apparently, empowerment to them means having the power to compel others to pay for what they do in the privacy of their bedrooms out of which they want people to stay. 

Help us be your voice for pro-family values! 

Illinois faith-run businesses are celebrating the Supreme Court decision that allows for-profit organizations the ability to opt out of the HHS mandate which would force them to pay for insurance plans that offer abortion inducing drugs to their employees. The ruling also gives new light to the contraceptive mandate that has been enforced in Illinois State law.

Please watch the video below to see the next steps for protecting religious liberty in Illinois.

Please consider supporting our work of Illinois Family Institute.

This morning, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) handed down a highly anticipated ruling that affirmed First Amendment  protections of religious liberty and freedom of conscience.  In this particular ruling it means that our government does not have the authority to force family businesses like Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Woods to provide abortifacient drugs and contraceptives in their health care plans.

The Illinois Family Institute celebrates this important decision in favor of religious liberty and freedom of conscience. The Court ruled that private companies cannot be forced to comply with onerous federal government mandates that violate their religious beliefs. 

Read or download the entire SCOTUS decision HERE.

No one in America should be forced to violate their deeply held beliefs in order to keep their jobs or run a business.  We should be free to live and work according to our religious beliefs, not the government’s religion.  To put it more bluntly, our government has no business compelling pro-life citizens to bow at the altar of Leftism.  It is a foundational principle on which this country was founded.

In a free, diverse and tolerant society, the government should respect the freedom of citizens to live out their convictions, not just in private but in the way citizens conduct their lives in public as well. 

It must be noted that this was a 5 to 4 vote on ideological lines, which means that barely a majority of the Justices understand that government shouldn’t suppress religious freedom.  On some level it is distressing to know that it took three years and millions of dollars of legal action to affirm what the First Amendment clearly states: that people have a right to live by the dictates of their faith. And in this case, the right not to partake in the destruction of an innocent human life.   While the victory is important and one for which we should be thankful, the fact is that we were within one vote of a significant loss of religious liberty for individuals who own their own business. Don’t misunderstand, I’m very grateful for this victory, but his vote was too close for comfort.

Key to the decision was the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).  This federal law does not give license to discrimination, as many on the Left have mistakenly claimed.  Today, the SCOTUS directly repudiated this false notion and specifically reiterated that RFRA provides no defense to discriminate in hiring. No federal or state RFRA has ever been used to discriminate against someone.  In fact, RFRA is actually about preventing discrimination against any American due to their religious beliefs.

Locally, reaction was swift and jubilant.   “I am proud that our Supreme Court has upheld the fundamental religious liberties of American citizens to engage in the free exercise of their religious beliefs, not only in their houses of worship, but also in their day to day lives, in business as well as at home,” said Thomas Brejcha, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Society.  “Our Justices have affirmed that Americans must not be compelled to put aside their religious beliefs and values as a pre-condition to their entering into the sphere of commerce and making a living for themselves and their families.”

“This ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby is a victory for all who cherish religious freedom,” said Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Pro-Life Action League and one of the national directors of the Stand Up for Religious Freedom rallies. “The movement that began with hundreds of protest rallies outside federal court buildings has just won a great victory inside the nation’s highest Court.”

Response from national organizations was no less enthusiastic.  Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council had this to say:

The Supreme Court has delivered one of the most significant victories for religious freedom in our generation. We are thankful the Supreme Court agreed that the government went too far by mandating that family businesses owners must violate their consciences under threat of crippling fines.

All Americans can be thankful that the Court reaffirmed that freedom of conscience is a long-held American tradition and that the government cannot impose a law on American men and women that forces them to violate their beliefs in order to hold a job, own a business, or purchase health insurance.

The unfair HHS mandate gave family businesses two non-choices: either violate your deeply held moral beliefs and comply by paying for drugs and services to which you object, or pay crippling fines of up to $100 per day, per employee, for non-compliance. This mandate threatened the jobs, livelihood and healthcare of millions of Americans and forced those who stood up for their conscience, like Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood, to either comply or be punished.

Thankfully, the threat the HHS mandate imposed on Americans has been deemed unlawful today as a violation of core religious freedom rights.  While we celebrate this landmark decision, it is our hope that lower courts will follow the Supreme Court’s lead and protect non-profits like Little Sisters of the Poor, Priests for Life, and Wheaton College from the unfair HHS Mandate.

Dr. Russell Moore of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission sums it up well, “Hobby Lobby [and Conestoga Wood Specialities] refused to render to Caesar what belongs to God: their consciences. The Supreme Court agreed.” 

Help us be your voice for pro-family values! 

This morning, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) handed down a highly anticipated ruling that affirmed First Amendment  protections of religious liberty and freedom of conscience.  In this particular ruling it means that our government does not have the authority to force family businesses like Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Woods to provide abortifacient drugs and contraceptives in their health care plans.

Please take a moment to pause and thank God for this common sense victory for freedom.  

No one in America should be forced to violate their deeply held beliefs in order to keep their jobs or run a business.  We should be free to live and work according to our religious beliefs, not the government’s religion.  To put it more bluntly, our government has no business compelling pro-life citizens to bow at the altar of Leftism.  It is a foundational principle on which this country was founded.

If you are able, please join pro-life, pro-family citizens for a VICTORY CELEBRATION today at noon at Chicago’s Federal Plaza. Here are all the details: 

     What: HOBBY LOBBY VICTORY RALLY

     When: Monday, June 30 at Noon

     Where: Federal Plaza – Adams and Dearborn Streets, Chicago

     Map: http://goo.gl/maps/KDnpv 

This rally is organized by our friends at the Pro-Life Action League.  Prayers and hymns of thanksgiving will be offered in addition to some special guest speakers about today’s ruling. Let’s CELEBRATE THIS VICTORY FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM together! 

Hope to see you there!

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled today that the Christian-run Hobby Lobby doesn’t have to obey the HHS mandate that is a part of Obamacare that requires businesses to pay for abortion causing drugs in their employee health care plans.

The Obama administration was attempting to make Hobby Lobby and thousands of pro-life businesses and organizations comply with the HHS mandate that compels religious companies to pay for birth control and abortion-causing drugs for their employees. However, the U.S. Supreme Court today issued a favorable ruling in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., a landmark case addressing the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of business owners to operate their family companies without violating their deeply held religious convictions.

Writing for the 5-4 majority, Justice Samuel Alito handed down the decision for the high court, saying, “The Supreme Court holds government can’t require closely held corporations with religious owners to provide contraception coverage.”

“HHS’s contraception mandate substantially burdens the exercise of religion,” the decision reads, adding that the “decision concerns only the contraceptive mandate and should not be understood to mean that all insurance mandates.” The opinion said the “plain terms of Religious Freedom Restoration Act” are “perfectly clear.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion saying that government itself could provide the coverage for contraception and the abortion-causing drugs if a company declines to do so.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued a dissent that claims the decision is “of startling breadth,” a claim the majority denies. The major decision indicates it applies to the abortion mandate, not blood transfusions or other practices to which people may have religious objections.

The Hobby Lobby decision only applies to companies, including Conestoga Wood Specialties, which had a companion case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. Non-profit groups like Priests for Life and Little Sisters are still waiting for a ruling about their right to opt out of the mandate.

The Obama administration said it was confident it would prevail, saying, “We believe this requirement is lawful…and are confident the Supreme Court will agree.”

Responding to the decision, Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel David Cortman told LifeNews: “Americans don’t surrender their freedom by opening a family business. In its decision today, the Supreme Court affirmed that all Americans, including family business owners, must be free to live and work consistently with their beliefs without fear of punishment by the government. In a free and diverse society, we respect the freedom to live out our convictions. For the Hahns and the Greens, that means not being forced to participate in distributing potentially life-terminating drugs and devices.”

In July, a federal court granted Hobby Lobby a preliminary injunction against the HHS abortion-drug mandate. The injunction prevented the Obama administration from enforcing the mandate against the Christian company, but the Obama administration appealed that ruling. Hobby Lobby could have paid as much as $1.3 million each day in fines for refusing to pay for birth control or abortion-causing drugs under the mandate.

After the appeals court ruling, U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton issued a preliminary injunction and stayed the case until Oct. 1 to give the Obama administration time to appeal the decision.

In an opinion read from the bench, the court said, “There is a substantial public interest in ensuring that no individual or corporation has their legs cut out from under them while these difficult issues are resolved.”

A December 2013 Rasmussen Reports poll shows Americans disagree with forcing companies like Hobby Lobby to obey the mandate.

“Half of voters now oppose a government requirement that employers provide health insurance with free contraceptives for their female employees,” Rasmussen reports.

The poll found: “The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 38 percent of Likely U.S. Voters still believe businesses should be required by law to provide health insurance that covers all government-approved contraceptives for women without co-payments or other charges to the patient.

Fifty-one percent (51 percent) disagree and say employers should not be required to provide health insurance with this type of coverage. Eleven percent (11 percent) are not sure.”

Another recent poll found 59 percent of Americans disagree with the mandate.

The Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, grew their family business out of their garage. They now own stores in 41 states employing more than 16,000 full time employees. They have always operated their business according to their faith.

Kristina Arriaga, Executive Director of the Becket Fund, tells LifeNews, “In fact, the Greens pay salaries that start at twice the minimum wage and offer excellent benefits, as well as a healthcare package which includes almost all of the contraceptives now mandated by the Affordable Care Act. Their only objection is to 4 drugs and devices which, the government itself concedes, can terminate an embryo.”

“Their rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act should be protected by the government. Instead, the government has threatened them with fines and fought them all the way to the Supreme Court,” Arriaga added.

“The government has already exempted tens of millions of Americans from complying with the mandate that forces employers to provide certain specific drugs and devices. However, it refuses to accommodate the Green family because the Green family’s objections are religious.  We believe that the government’s position is not only extreme and unconstitutional; it presents a grave danger to our freedoms,” she continued.

“My family and I are encouraged that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide our case,” said Mr. Green, Hobby Lobby’s founder and CEO.  “This legal challenge has always remained about one thing and one thing only: the right of our family businesses to live out our sincere and deeply held religious convictions as guaranteed by the law and the Constitution. Business owners should not have to choose between violating their faith and violating the law.”

This article was originally posted at the LifeNews.com blog. 

Churches in Denmark are now compelled, by law, to host same-sex “weddings.”

America is next.

Tyranny’s appetite is insatiable. The secular-left’s hunger for power and control over its detractors can never be satisfied. To outwardly succumb and affirmatively capitulate to their pagan demands will never be enough.

Thought control is the goal.

Case in point: Remember Jack Phillips, the Christian baker in Colorado? He exercised his First Amendment religious rights and politely declined to bake a “wedding” cake for a homosexual civil union. Colorado’s “civil rights” Star Chamber recently ordered Mr. Phillips to deny his faith and bake these fake cakes, “shut down” or face prison.

He and his elderly mother (an employee) have additionally been “sentenced” to attend “sensitivity training” (read: re-education camp). There, some snot-nosed college grad with a degree in “feminist/gender studies,” or some other such nonsense, will endeavor to scrub all biblical notions of human sexuality and natural marriage from their minds, hearts and souls, reboot and upload Mozilla Moral Relativism 2.0.

As Mr. Phillips has indicated, he has no problem baking for homosexuals, but, as a Christian, he simply cannot and will not contribute his time and God-given gifts to bake a “wedding cake” that mocks and defiles God’s design for the immutable institution of legitimate marriage.

Nor would he bake for a white supremacist rally or any other similarly wicked event that likewise flouts biblical truth.

As a result, Phillips has said he will stop baking wedding cakes altogether.

I hope he’ll reconsider.

I hope that Mr. Phillips will bake on. I hope he’ll embrace the mantel of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and engage in civil disobedience. I hope he tells this “brood of vipers,” in a loving and Christian way, to get bent.

This is his Rosa Parks moment.

Then he should prayerfully consider attending the “sensitivity training” as a ministry opportunity and co-opt it for the glory of Christ. He should take it over with respectful questions and direct disagreement. He should refuse to waiver one iota on biblical truth and rebuke those who deny Christ and His truths.

He should educate the “educators” as well as everyone else in attendance.

That’s what it means to pick up your cross and follow Christ.

But that’s just some baker, right, pastors? Sure, it’s happening to photographers, florists, inn keepers and bakers, but at least the church is safe.

No chance.

This is the issue. For some reason the enemy has chosen sexual immorality and faux “marriage” as a hammer to bludgeon the church.

Denmark was the first nation to imagine same-sex “marriage” as a matter of law. It’s now one of the first to compel, under penalty of law, churches to desecrate holy ground by hosting these sin-centric, pagan spectacles.

Columnist and AFR Talk radio host Bryan Fischer reports, “Well, the day we prophesied has arrived. Churches in Denmark – and the U.S. will not be far behind – have been ORDERED to perform sodomy-based weddings whether they want to or not.

“According to the London Telegraph, a new law passed by the Danish parliament ‘make(s) it mandatory for all churches to conduct gay marriages.’ No options, no exceptions, no choice. Homosexuals are to be married wherever they want, regardless of whose conscience is trampled and whose sanctuary is defiled in the process. …

“How long will it be before American churches will be ordered, as a condition of maintaining their tax-exempt status, to host same-sex ceremonies? How long will it be before American pastors are ordered to perform them?

“Unless America’s pastors rise up as one, now, that day will arrive like a thief in the night, a day when each pastor will be told that he must solemnize sodomy-based marriages in his church or his church’s 501(c)(3) status will be revoked. At that point, he and his church will effectively be out of business.”

Mr. Fischer is right. It’s a foregone conclusion. We are no longer a constitutional republic. American pastors, like bakers, florists, photographers and every other citizen, will be confronted with a choice: Obey God or obey man. Pastors will be compelled, under threat of imprisonment, to participate in these unholy pagan rituals.

Pastors, priests, you will then face three choices: 1) Surrender, disobey God’s law and obey man’s, 2) Stand firm, disobey man’s law and obey God’s, or 3) Use the opportunity to serve, speak truth in love and glorify Jesus.

I like No. 3.

When you men of the cloth are inevitably put to this test, I suggest you do the following. It will take great courage and the strength of the Holy Spirit.

“Preside” over the mock marriage and speak the following truths in love:

“Let us begin with a reading from God’s Holy Word, Matthew 19:4-5:

“As Christ said, ‘Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?’

“Do we dare call the living Christ a liar?

“I dare not!

“As it is written: ‘Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error (Romans 1:26).’

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here on this dark occasion because the government has threatened to imprison me otherwise. We are gathered here, presumably, to join ‘Party A’ and ‘Party B’ in ‘holy matrimony.’ I say ‘presumably’ because this cannot be. God’s infallible word calls this a farce and a lie. God’s Holy word calls this an abomination – a mortal sin.

“He loves you enough, ‘Party A’, ‘Party B’ – all who are gathered here today – to tell you the truth. I love you enough to tell you the truth.

“God warns, ‘Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.’ I will not call this evil good. You can persecute me, jail me or even kill me, but you cannot force me to deny Christ.

“I am a sinner and can cast no stone. Neither can I condemn you. But, as did Jesus, I can tell you this: ‘Go and sin no more.’”

“Repent, ask forgiveness and believe upon Jesus.

“Because your eternity depends on it.”

Then walk away and pray that these Holy Spirit-inspired words, these transcendent truths, pierce the hearts of those in attendance who labor under deception – who suffer under this “strong delusion.”

That’s what it means to pick up your cross and follow Christ.

It’s summer reading list time and if you’re like me, you’re careful in selecting titles because too often the time invested seems wasted — especially when afterwards you can’t remember anything you read. One unforgettable book that’s easy for me to recommend is Mark Steyn’s After America. Somehow, he managed to top its predecessor, which we reviewed last time.

Steyn quotes the late historian Samuel Huntington: “A nation is a fragile thing.” More Americans are waking up to that fact every day. They are also waking up to what Steyn writes here:

[W]e’re not facing ‘decline.’ We’re already in it. What comes next is the ‘fall’ – fast, sudden, off the cliff, if only because the Obama spending binge made what was vague and distant explicit and immediate.

I love this quote from Steyn:

When government spends on the scale Washington’s got used to, that’s not a spending crisis, it’s a moral one.

For all those who think we can divorce the social (moral) issues from the argument for limited government, let me quote Mark Steyn: “dream on.”

Steyn writes that ‘fiscal [only] conservatives’ often miss that “this isn’t a green-eye-shade issue”:

Increasing dependency, disincentivizing self-reliance, absolving the citizenry from responsibility for their actions: the multitrillion-dollar debt catastrophe is not the problem but merely the symptom. It’s not just about balancing the books, but about balancing the most basic impulses of society. These are structural and, ultimately, moral questions.

Steyn explains:

[S]ocial liberalism always ends up burying the fiscal conservatism. As Congressman Mike Pence put it, ‘To those who say we should simply focus on fiscal issues, I say you would not be able to print enough money in a thousand years to pay for the government you would need if the traditional family collapses.’

Those familiar with my writing on the topic of conservatives’ 30+ year failure in the information war will understand why I appreciate Mark Steyn writing this:

The United States has not just a ruling class, but a ruling monoculture. Its ‘truth’ and ‘facts’ and ‘science’ permeate not just government but the culture, the media, the institutions in which we educate our children, the language of public discourse, the very societal air we breathe. That’s the problem, and just pulling the lever for a guy with an R after his name every other November isn’t going to fix it.

If Hollywood’s liberal, if the newspapers are liberal, if the pop stars are liberal, if the grade schools are liberal, if the very language is liberal to the point where all the nice words have been co-opted as a painless liberal sedative, a Republican legislature isn’t going to be a shining city on a hill so much as one of those atolls in the Maldives being incrementally swallowed by Al Gore’s allegedly rising sea levels.

There are so many excellent points made within the pages of After America, but let me mention just two more things.

First, Steyn says that the presence of overly generous pensions and health care benefits for unionized government employees while so many others can’t afford to retire is “a recipe for civil war.” I couldn’t agree more. Public sector employees have been engaged in legalized theft from private sector employees for many years now and it’s only getting worse.

Second, despite Steyn’s exposition of the ugly realities of modern-day America, he writes that if we want a happy ending we’re going to have to make our own:

Liberty cannot survive if only a few are eternally vigilant. We need more people. We took our eyes off the colleges, and the high schools, and the grade schools, and these and many other institutions were coopted by forces deeply hostile to the American idea. So push back, beginning in kindergarten. Changing the culture (the schools, the churches, the movies, the TV shows) is more important than changing the politics.

An election is one Tuesday every other November. The culture is every day, every month, every year. Politicians are, for the most part, a craven, finger-pointing-in-the-windy bunch. Like Milton Friedman says, don’t wait for the right people to get elected; create the conditions whereby the wrong people are forced to do the right thing.

That’s a great deal of work. The question is, will enough Americans step up and get in the fight?

Christ’s famous “render unto Caesar that which is Caesars’s and unto God that which is God’s” came out of the Pharisee’s attempt to pit Him against Rome.  Resistance to paying taxes was a punishable crime.  Christ’s words underscored the principle He had established in Creation of submission to authority, for all authority originated in Him.  His main point was that both government and God have spheres of authority to which we all must yield. 

We conservatives are constantly assailed for violating the so-called “separation of church and state” when we speak out or involve ourselves in issues such as welfare, abortion and same-sex marriage.  But, I would make one thing clear: those who throw up the “separation” argument know very well they are radically distorting it; but, regardless, be it known that when the government treads on God’s turf, we will not be silent.  If our government were occupying itself only with those things that are appropriate for civil authorities we conservatives would be relatively silent.  But, beginning decades ago politicians began breaking down the barrier between government business and religious/cultural business by intruding into the family, undermining this most fundamental building block of a civil society and destroying the lives of women and children. 

By providing economic resources, for example, from the public purse for single mothers without making distinctions between those who were genuinely victims of tragic circumstances and those who were making bad life choices the government gave de facto approval for immoral, sinful behavior.  These destructive government programs expanded wildly over the years to where tax payers are now supporting a host of immoral activities under the guise of “compassion.”  If I, as a father, did to my own children what our government has been doing to millions of poor children, I would not only be a failure as a father, I would be guilty of child abuse before God.  

The destruction that has been unleashed upon children in America, whether it be by our tolerating immoral behavior, abortion, no-fault divorce, the expansion of gambling, radical feminism or now, same-sex marriage, is beyond unconscionable and ought to be criminal.  We understand that there are difficult situations where solutions for those involved are elusive.  But, as someone has wisely stated, “hard cases make for bad laws.”  We are told that children are resilient, as if it is morally acceptable to injure them deeply so long as they recover, sometime.  But, we would never tolerate conduct of this nature toward ourselves!  Can you imagine the  wave of anger that would erupt if an investment company advertized that their careless loss of customers’ funds was acceptable because clients would likely recover most of their losses in a few years?  

It is clear that the Left, for all their talk of compassion, care mostly for the pleasures of the moment and buying political power.  The direction they have driven this nation, by the arts, government programs, and liberal religious institutions reveals that they are not victims of “unintended consequences.”  They simply don’t care what their actions do to others, even children!  It is no accident that while they speak of compassion, the real life consequence of their choices is a nation strewn with the carnage of broken families, emotionally scarred children, aborted babies, and a culture reeking of corruption and wickedness.  Good intentions never justify destructive policies.  

When Christ walked this earth He blessed the children and noted that any who offended them would be better off with a mill-stone hanged about their neck to be cast into the sea.  He spoke rhetorically, of course, but He was reaffirming Old Testament pronouncements of God’s personal love for children.  So long as American culture and government actively wage war on children, treading on these objects of God’s very personal love we Christian conservatives will not, and cannot, be silent.

Written by Eric Metaxas

To those of you who don’t think religious freedom is that important, I’ve got a message for you: It isn’t. It isn’t, that is, if you don’t care about any of your freedoms. 

In early May, I had the honor of delivering the commencement address at Hillsdale College in Michigan. National Review has described Hillsdale as a “citadel of American conservatism,” though the college wasn’t founded by conservatives in the modern American sense, but by Christians.

So I used the opportunity afforded me to speak about the link between faith and freedom.

I noted the “unprecedented threat” to religious freedom we currently face. The threat isn’t only to religious believers and their institutions—it threatens all of our liberties.  You cannot redefine religious freedom and compromise this liberty without calling the entire idea of self-government into question.

To understand why, it helps to remember that when the Founders prohibited the establishment of religion by the national government, they were not being anti-religion.

On the contrary, they wished to protect religion from all state intervention. Government had no business picking winners in the sphere of religion. It must stand back and let the people decide—let the free market of ideas do its work.

But there was more to religious freedom than the Establishment Clause. The Founders also enshrined a right to the free exercise of religion. The free exercise of religion goes beyond what happens on Sundays. It means allowing your beliefs to shape the way you live your life every day of the week.

The Founders knew that a robust exercise of religion was necessary for America to survive, that people exercising their religious convictions was vital to the success of this fragile experiment in liberty called America.

In his book, “A Free People’s Suicide,” my dear friend Os Guinness has written about what the Founders called the “Golden Triangle of Freedom.” Simply put, Freedom requires Virtue. Virtue requires Faith. And Faith requires Freedom.  And Freedom requires virtue and round and round it goes.

But why does freedom require virtue? Well, because American freedom means self-government. And how are the people to govern themselves if they have no virtue? If we have no virtue, won’t we just vote to line our own pockets and elect people who will give us what we want? Isn’t it obvious that the more virtuous a people is, the fewer policemen we need? The fewer prisons we’ll need to build?

John Adams famously said our government was not armed “with power sufficient to contend with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . .  Our Constitution,” he said, “was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Okay, so Freedom requires Virtue. But does Virtue require Religion? Well, not always. There are many people who are religious and corrupt, and many people who have no religion and are virtuous. But generally speaking, those who acknowledge a higher power and the laws of that higher power tend to be more virtuous than those who do not, or those who believe they can make whatever laws they like and who are beholden to no one.

The third leg of the triangle, Religion requires Freedom, is the simplest to understand.  We need only consider the Middle East or—God help them—North Korea.

Attempts to curtail the religious freedom that makes our freedoms possible is what Os rightly called “suicide.” And just as any decent person would try to dissuade someone from killing himself, Christians must oppose the current attempts to kill the source of their freedom.

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

To get your copy of Os Guinness’s tremendous book “A Free People’s Suicide,” please visit the BreakPoint.org online store.  And if you’d like to see a video of my speech at Hillsdale College or read the text of it, just come to my website, ericmetaxas.com. 

Written by Rev. Bob Vanden Bosch

The Private College Act, SB 2846 allows church-operated Bible colleges to grant religious degrees without being accredited by the Illinois Board of Higher Education. 

There are currently 31 states that have statutory language exempting religious colleges or Bible colleges from higher education licensing, certification, or the accreditation process. The statutes in those states that permit exemptions vary based on the following: 1). the types of institutions that qualify for an exemption, 2) the programs of study the institutions offer, 3) the degrees or diplomas conferred, and 4) the filing requirements. 

Illinois is one of only 19 states that do not have a statutory exemption from the higher education licensing process for religious colleges. Although Illinois grants an exemption for vocational schools, Bible colleges offer a wider array of courses and majors. While the state does allow Bible colleges to apply annually for an exemption which allows them to operate and give diplomas, it does not allow them to confer degrees. 

We do not believe it is appropriate for the state to determine what courses of study must be taken for those who are preparing for a vocation in a church ministry, or for the state to have to put its stamp of approval on the courses required for graduation.

The religious exemptions vary greatly by state, from Colorado, which allows all Bible colleges to confer degrees and grant diplomas, to Hawaii, which allows religious organizations to conduct schools with religious programs for the instruction of the institution’s members. 

Colorado, which is not a conservative state, has the broadest exemption. While that would be optimal, we have chosen the language of the California exemption, which allows nonprofit institutions owned, controlled, and operated by a bona fide church, religious denomination, or religious organization operating under the Religious Corporation Act, to be granted exemptions under certain conditions:

1) The education is limited to instruction in the principles of the church or religious organization.

2) The degree is limited to the completion of the course of education or honorary degrees and must be limited to the principles of the church or religious organization.

3) The degrees granted must reflect the religious nature of the course of study, such as “religious associate’s,” “religious bachelor’s,” “religious master’s,” or “religious doctorate’s.”

4) Institutions exempt under this section shall be required to annually file with the Board of Higher Education to demonstrate its continued status as a nonprofit religious corporation under the Religious Corporation Act. 

On April 8, the bill passed out of the Illinois Senate unanimously (55-0) with Illinois Senator Bill Haine (D-Alton) as its sponsor.  On May 13th, it passed out of the Illinois House Higher Education Committee meeting by a vote of 8-5 in spite of serious opposition by a variety of organizations. There were 22 witness slips filed in opposition to the bill, with only 1 witness slip in favor of it (ours).

Because of the strong opposition by the Board of Higher Education, Private College Association, community colleges, and some of the state universities, we will need strong support from grass roots for this bill to successfully pass out of the House of Representatives. 

Take ACTION:  Please click HERE to contact your state representative today to ask him or her to vote “Yes” on SB 2846. 

By Brian Muehlenberg

Every day we find the political ideology known as Islam wreaking havoc, chaos and bloodshed worldwide. The biggest threat to freedom and democracy today may well be coming from this archaic religion. Monitoring the various cases of creeping sharia and stealth jihad is now a full-time job.

Let me highlight three of the latest examples from around the globe. In Kenya another Islamist terror attack has taken place, this time with ten dead and many others wounded. The two explosions in Nairobi were not the first such attacks:

It was the deadliest terror attack since the Westgate Shopping Centre raid in September, when terrorists from al-Qaeda’s proxy in Somalia, al-Shabaab, killed 67 people. Friday’s attacks took place almost simultaneously in an area east of Nairobi’s central business district that serves as a major transport interchange for people heading to poorer suburban residential areas. One of the devices was detonated inside a public minibus taxi and the other beneath a clothes stall in the open-air market. “Many of the injured are bleeding profusely, we need a lot of blood,” said Simon Ithae, spokesman for the city’s largest hospital.

So many of these jihadist attacks have taken place of late that one website exists just to document all the carnage. Religionofpeace.com lists all the attacks which have occurred since the 9/11 horror: 22,959 attacks to be exact. Just the past month there have been 203 attacks in 23 countries, with 1571 people killed and 2452 critically wounded.

Another example of Islamic terror also comes from Africa, this time Sudan. It is a horrific but sadly all too common story of a Christian woman being targeted by Muslims for daring to exercise a bit of religious freedom. The shocking story goes like this:

A Sudanese judge sentenced a pregnant Christian woman to hang for apostasy after she refused to convert to Islam, despite appeals by Western embassies for compassion and respect for religious freedom. Born to a Muslim father, the woman was convicted under the Islamic sharia law that has been in force in Sudan since 1983 and outlaws conversions on pain of death.

Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag, 27, is eight months pregnant and married to a Christian national of South Sudan, human rights activists say. South Sudan which separated from Sudan in 2011, “We gave you three days to recant but you insist on not returning to Islam.

I sentence you to be hanged,” Judge Abbas Mohammed Al-Khalifa told the woman, addressing her by her father’s Muslim name, Adraf Al-Hadi Mohammed Abdullah. Khalifa also sentenced Ishag to 100 lashes for “adultery.” Under Sudan’s interpretation of sharia, a Muslim woman cannot marry a non-Muslim man and any such relationship is regarded as adulterous.

This is terrible, but it happens far too often in the Islamic world. And it is not just in Africa where we find creeping sharia. Consider the nation of France where it seems that Islam is well on the way to taking over the country. Plenty of other problems abound there:

More than 8,000,000 Muslims live in France, most of whom are French citizens, and the Muslim population in France continues to grow. France is now the main Muslim country in Europe. Successive French governments can decide to expel a Muslim preacher or a recruiter of jihadist fighters; they can deny visas, but they seem unable to do more.

Although the French government denies it, it seems clear that substantial ransoms were paid to Islamist groups for the release of French hostages: $28,000,000 to al Qaeda in Niger in October 2013 and $18,000,000 to Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant in Syria, on April 19.

And most folks there are very pessimistic about where this is all heading:

The number of Jews leaving France is steadily increasing. French people who have the financial means also leave the country. Most others expect the worst. Polls show that the French are now the most pessimistic people in Europe. They also show that more than 70% of the French are afraid of the rise of Islam in France: they expect that France will become a country under submission to Islam.

That is certainly a worry. So throughout the world, the fearful imprint of Islam is clearly being felt. Things certainly look rather bleak at the moment. Whether the West has the will to resist is just not at all certain. But it had better decide soon if it wants to continue to exist or not, before it is too late.

Orignally posted at Barbwire.com