Have nothing to do with the [evil] things that people do, things that belong to the darkness. Instead, bring them out to the light... [For] when all things are brought out into the light, then their true nature is clearly revealed...

-Ephesians 5:11-13

Category Archives: Constitution

Washington State’s Law Banning “Conversion Therapy” Likely Headed to Supreme Court

Friday, 31 March 2023 12:52
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, March 31, 2023:  

When Brian Tingley, a Christian marriage and family counselor in Tacoma, Washington, learned that his state passed a law in 2018 banning him from advising his clients to affirm their biological sex, he knew he was in trouble.

During counseling sessions with people “confused” about their sex, he would clearly state his recommendations that they follow the Scriptures regarding sexual identity. In some cases, he would recommend something called “conversion therapy,” whereby an individual (perhaps born a biological female but thinking (or “identifying”) that she was a male) would work to reestablish belief in his or her biological sex.

As Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the public-interest law firm taking his case to the Supreme Court, noted, the Washington state law “put another person in the room” with Tingley:

Today, there’s a third person in the room.

 

It’s a representative of the state government.

 

Reluctantly, you start talking with your counselor. But every time the conversation turns to a particular topic, the representative interrupts, saying, “This conversation is prohibited!”…

 

This may seem like a radical hypothetical. But it is essentially what could happen under a new state law in Washington. The law permits the government to intrude on confidential counseling sessions and dictate what counselors and clients can discuss.

Under that law, counselors such as Tingley can’t talk about gender, sexual orientation, sexual behavior, or gender identity in any way that isn’t in line with the state’s views. And those views prohibit any suggestion that an individual might be a candidate for counseling supporting his biological sex and reversing the brainwashing the culture now forces onto citizens.

Representing Tingley, ADF filed suit in 2021, complaining that the state law violated both Tingley’s right to free speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and his freedom of religion.

A district court tossed Tingley’s complaint.

ADF appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel affirmed the lower court’s ruling.

ADF appealed again, asking for a full Ninth Circuit Court review. The court denied the appeal.

This week, ADF appealed the case to the Supreme Court. Based on a recent decision in a similar case, the Court is likely to decide in Tingley’s favor and toss Washington State’s ban.

As ADF wrote:

For government officials to insert themselves into confidential counseling sessions—and determine what goals counselors and their clients can pursue and what topics they can discuss—is a radical violation of both free speech and religious freedom.

 

It’s the client’s choice to pursue a specific goal through counseling, not the government’s.

 

Similarly, it’s up to counselors like Brian Tingley to determine how best to help their clients achieve their counseling goals during their sessions.

 

The government has no business telling counselors what topics they can and cannot discuss during these sessions.

The Ninth Circuit’s three-judge panel said that Washington state had the power to override Tingley’s First Amendment rights because his conversation fell under the guise of “professional conduct” that might involve “speech” and therefore could be restricted.

Unfortunately for the Ninth Circuit, and fortunately for Tingley, the Supreme Court has already seen through this façade and ruled that the First Amendment takes precedence. As one of the Ninth Circuit’s senior judges stated in the case (even though he wasn’t on the panel):

The panel here applied [a previous but no longer valid] precedent to conclude that Tingley’s talk therapy was conduct [and] not speech, thereby putting him at risk of professional discipline….

 

But the Supreme Court has already ruled: The First Amendment cannot be evaded by regulating speech “under the guise” of regulating conduct….

 

[In National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, or NIFLA, the Supreme Court] rejected recategorizing speech as professional conduct merely because it took place in a professional context.

The senior judge defended Tingley’s right under the First Amendment to enjoy his freedom of religion. He called out the two who ruled against the counselor:

While there is no longstanding tradition of regulating therapeutic speech, there IS a constitutional tradition relevant here: namely, that of protecting religious speech.

 

Unfortunately, the panel did not consider it.

The lone dissenter on the panel reminded the other two panel members of Tingley’s religious freedom guarantees under the First Amendment:

[W]e also cannot ignore that conversion therapy is often grounded in religious faith.

 

According to plaintiff Brian Tingley, a therapist licensed by the State of Washington, his practice of conversion therapy is an outgrowth of his religious beliefs and his understanding of Christian teachings. Tingley treats his clients from the perspective of a shared faith, which he says is conducive to establishing trust.

 

And as part of his therapeutic treatment, Tingley counsels his clients to live their lives in alignment with their religious beliefs and teachings.

He added:

It is a “bedrock principle” of the First Amendment that the government cannot limit speech “simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”

 

While I recognize that the speech here may be unpopular or even offensive to many Americans, it is in these cases that we must be most vigilant in adhering to constitutional principles.

 

Those principles require a heightened review of Tingley’s Free Speech claim.

 

It may be easier to dismiss this case under a deferential review to Washington’s law, but the Constitution commands otherwise.

If the high court takes Tingley’s case, it will hear arguments in the fall and rule on the matter next summer.

Queer School Board Ends Agreement With Arizona Christian University Over Its Christian Worldview

Monday, 27 March 2023 13:47
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, March 27, 2023:  

Following the unanimous decision by five school board members — three of whom claim to be LGBT — to end an agreement with Arizona Christian University (ACU) over its Christian theology, the public-interest law firm Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed suit. It claims religious discrimination against ACU, violating not only school policies but the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution as well.

For nearly 11 years ACU has had a friendly and supportive agreement with Arizona’s largest school district, the Washington Elementary School District, to provide the district with student-teachers to support it. In a time when finding teachers and support staff was increasingly difficult, Washington Elementary appreciated the free assistance from ACU students.

That “appreciation” evaporated overnight on February 23, when the five-member school board voted unanimously to end that agreement. It was a noisy event, with parents voicing their unhappiness with the decision.

ADF filed suit on behalf of ACU earlier this month, using the board members’ own words as recorded that night as proof of its deliberate and intentional violation of school board policy and guarantees of free speech and the equal protection clauses of the First Amendment.

The point person on the board who first discovered that ACU had values directly opposed to her own, Tamilia Valenzuela, calls herself a “bilingual, disabled, neurodivergent Queer Black Latina.” As the renewal of the long-standing agreement with ACU was being discussed, she opened the bidding with this:

[O]ur vision in Washington Elementary School District is committed to achieving excellence for every child, every day, every opportunity. Every child.

 

When I go to Arizona Christian University’s website, and I’m taking this directly from their website, “above all else be committed to Jesus Christ accomplishing His will in advancing His kingdom on Earth as in heaven.”

 

Part of their values, is “influence, engage and transform the culture with Truth by promoting the biblically informed values that are foundational to Western civilization, including the centrality of family, traditional sexual morality, and lifelong marriage between one man and one woman.” [Emphasis in the lawsuit.]

She posed this rhetorical question for her soul mates on the board:

I want to know how bringing people from an institution that is ingrained in their values . . . will . . . impact three of your board members who are a part of the LGBTQ community.

 

We have added our pronouns at the dais as a solidarity – let our LGBT community know, that we stand, in making sure that they feel protected.

 

Are we only performing performative solidarity, or are we going to dig deep, and actually look at the partnerships that we’re doing?

Those Christian “values” are obviously antithetical to those now making up the majority, if not all, of the school board in Washington Elementary School District. Valenzuela continued:

Because if we’re bringing people in whose mission [is to] “above all else . . . influence people to be biblically minded,” how does that hold space for people of other faiths[,] our members of the LGBT community[, or] people who think differently and do not have the same beliefs?

The ramparts must be defended! Biblical values are to be resoundingly rejected in favor of the values of the LGBT community that spring instead from the religion of humanism and reason alone:

At some point we need to get real with ourselves and take a look at who we’re making legal contracts with and the message that that is sending to our community.

 

Because that makes me feel like I could not be safe in this in this school district.

 

That makes other queer kids, who are already facing attack from our lawmakers that they could not be safe in this community.

 

So I really want us to think hard about who we’re partnering with deep dive and I want to ask the district, “is this school value aligned with what we’re trying to do and making sure that all of our students feel safe? [Emphasis added in the ADF brief; all errors in the original.]

Valenzuela was singing to the choir. Another defendant in the ADF lawsuit, board member and president Nikkie Gomez-Whaley, expressed her horror at how the ACU had infiltrated the school district with its Bible-thumping assistant teachers:

[W]hen I went and looked into not only [Arizona Christian’s] core values but then the statement of faith that they ask their students to sign and live by, what gave me pause was it’s not just teaching but it’s teaching as they say um, with a Biblical lens, with a proselytizing is embedded into how they teach, and um, you know, I just don’t believe that that belongs in schools and I would never want uh you know my son to talk about his two dads and be shamed by a teacher who believed a certain way and is at a school that demands that they uh, you know uh, teach through God’s . . . their biblical lens. [Emphasis added.]

Gomez-Whaley waxed positively breathless at the threat that the elementary kids under her management would face if the 11-year-old agreement with ACU were to be continued:

I do believe that we owe it to um especially all of our students when we’re working in equity but especially our LGBTQ students and staff who are under fire who are not protected um and who we have already pledged to support we cannot continue to align ourselves with organizations that starkly contrast our values . . . and say that we legitimately care about diversity equity and inclusion and that we legitimately care about all of our families.

 

We cannot justify. The ends does [sic] not justify the means, in my opinion.

In 11 years there has not been a single complaint about or a single violation of any agreement or rule by any of the ACU students offering to assist teachers in the district. Not one. In fact, nearly a dozen of them have later been offered positions as teachers by the school district!

But that doesn’t matter. To the queers that have somehow taken control of the Washington Elementary School District in Arizona, it’s all about removing biblical ideology and replacing it with their current brand of humanism.

ADF senior counsel David Cortman said:

By discriminating against Arizona Christian University and denying it an opportunity to participate in the student teacher program because of its religious status and beliefs, the school district is in blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution, not to mention state law that protects ACU’s religious freedom.

The lawsuit is asking the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona for relief, claiming that the actions by the queers on the school board “violated and continue to violate [ACU and its students’] constitutional rights to:

  • free exercise of religion;
  • equal protection;
  • free speech and expressive association;
  • be free from unconstitutional retaliation; [and]
  • be free from religious favoritism and entanglement.”

This represents in a microcosm the war between the secular state and Christ and His followers that is taking place elsewhere in the nation. It’s a war that began with His birth, and will continue until He comes again.

New York Agrees to Pay $250,000 in Legal Fees in Religious Discrimination Case

Thursday, 23 March 2023 15:32
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This article appeared online at  TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, March 23, 2023:

After attempting to force a Christian adoption agency in Syracuse, New York, to allow homosexuals to adopt babies in violation of its principles, the state has finally acquiesced and agreed to pay Alliance Defending Freedom $250,000 in legal fees for successfully defending the agency.

ADF Senior Counsel Roger Brooks summarized the case:

The state’s attempt to close New Hope [Family Services] violated its core rights protected by the First Amendment and needlessly reduced the number of agencies willing to help vulnerable children.

 

New Hope is a private religious ministry that doesn’t take a dime from the government. Further, New Hope’s faith-guided services don’t coerce anyone and do nothing to interfere with other adoption providers who have different beliefs about family and the best interests of children.

 

On behalf of the children waiting to be adopted and the prospective parents partnering with New Hope to provide loving and stable homes, we’re pleased to favorably settle this case and ensure the organization can continue its vital service to the Syracuse community.

A close look at the ruling reveals that part of the court’s decision was based on the state’s intentional targeting of New Hope for its biblical understanding of marriage.

For years the agency — New York’s Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) — had given New Hope consistently high marks for its services.

Until 2018, that is, when the agency turned against New Hope and gave them two options: 1) allow homosexuals to adopt their babies, or 2) close down.

That was unacceptable, and New Hope, with the legal assistance of the ADF, filed suit.

Lower courts ruled against New Hope, but the issue was finally resolved in its favor in 2020 in the Second Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.

The court understood the significance of the issue being raised:

What is the proper relationship between the First Amendment—specifically, its guarantees of free exercise of religion and free speech—and laws protecting against various forms of discrimination?

 

The question has arisen most recently when religious organizations, like Plaintiff here [i.e., New Hope Family Services], seek some exemption from laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, arguing that such laws compel them to speak and behave contrary to the dictates of their consciences.

 

The answer to this question—whether, in particular circumstances, anti-discrimination laws violate First Amendment rights—may profoundly affect our system of ordered liberty.

Its ruling in the case in favor of New Hope answered that question. It was helped by discovery of the extreme bias OCFS exhibited in its attack on New Hope.

Wrote the court:

Another matter bearing on religious hostility and making dismissal premature is the severity of OCFS’s actions in ordering New Hope’s closure.

 

It is plainly a serious step to order an authorized adoption agency such as New Hope—operating without complaint for 50 years, taking no government funding, successfully placing approximately 1,000 children, and with adoptions pending or being supervised—to close all its adoption operations.

 

All the more serious when, as just discussed, the agency has, for five years and without objection by OCFS, used recusal and referral to avoid rejecting applicants on the basis of its religious beliefs.

The court asked for the source of the authority the OCFS used in demanding either compliance with its edict or termination of the service, and questioned that authority:

In response to an inquiry from this court as to the source of its authority to order New Hope’s closure, OCFS cites N.Y. Soc. Serv. Law § 34(3)(e), which authorizes the agency to “enforce,” inter alia, laws and regulations pertaining to adoption.

 

But nothing in that section, or any other authority cited by OCFS, indicates the scope of the enforcement authority conferred by § 34(3)(e), specifically, whether OCFS’s enforcement authority is akin to that of police and prosecutors, who investigate and charge violators, or whether it also extends to judicial-like authority to prescribe the punishment for violations, specifically, the punishment of closure.

In other words, without authority, the agency assumed the power of judge, jury, and prosecutor against New Hope. The court saw through the agency’s plea that it was just following the law, and exposed the agency’s anti-Christian bias:

In sum, the pleadings, if accepted as true and viewed in the light most favorable to New Hope, do not permit [this] court to conclude as a matter of law that 18 NYCRR § 421.3(d), as promulgated and enforced by OCFS, was neutral and not based on some hostility to New Hope’s religious beliefs….

 

Viewed most favorably to New Hope, then, the pleadings suggest that OCFS is not seeking to avoid having New Hope’s views attributed to the State but, rather, is demanding that New Hope—in order to continue operating as an authorized adoption agency—express a State view with which it disagrees, i.e., that it can be in the best interests of a child to be adopted by an unmarried or same-sex couple….

 

To state the obvious, it is no small matter for the State to order the closure of a privately funded, religious adoption ministry that has, over 50 years of authorized operation, successfully placed approximately 1,000 children in adoptive homes, particularly when there is no suggestion that any placement was not in the best interests of the adopted child.

The court concluded:

(1) The pleadings, viewed in the light most favorable to plaintiff New Hope, state plausible claims under the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the Constitution. Among other things, the pleadings,

 

(a) raise a plausible suspicion that OCFS acted with hostility towards New Hope because of the latter’s religious beliefs, [and]

 

(b) plausibly allege that New Hope would be compelled to speak or associate in violation of those beliefs if the regulation in question were enforced.

Unfortunately, the state of New York continues to harass New Hope though another agency, its New York Division of Human Rights. In September, another federal court granted New Hope a temporary restraining order against that agency, which is harassing the adoption agency over the same issue.

The war against Christianity by the state will continue, as it has from the birth of the Savior.

ATF Arrogance on Display: Agency Issues Enforcement of Final Rule Even After Court Determines It’s Unlawful

Wednesday, 22 March 2023 21:09
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, March 22, 2023:  

On Tuesday, the rogue and unconstitutional Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) issued an announcement that it was going to strictly enforce its final rule against gun dealers, even for the most minor of infractions.

In his big-boy voice, anti-gun ATF Director Steven Dettelbach declared:

That means they [gun dealers] need to run background checks and sell guns with serial numbers. That is what the ghost gun rule is about.

 

Today’s advisory is simple. If you’re dealing [in] firearms — including items that can be readily converted to a working firearm — ATF is going to make sure that you are following the same laws as everyone else.

The problems with his pronouncement from on high are several: Dettelbach’s agency’s rules continue to change; their enforcement puts increasing pressure on law-abiding gun dealers; and, worst of all, the rule he is enforcing has already been declared beyond the agency’s purview and therefore is unlawful.

Dettelbach accuses gun dealers of trying to subvert the new rule against ghost guns — a rule that contravenes his agency’s long-standing opinion that the pieces and parts that might make up a “ghost gun” don’t, of themselves, make them a firearm. Now, apparently, they do.

Said Dettelbach:

Some suppliers of partially complete frames or receivers appear to be attempting to willfully circumvent the rule by (1) selling parts from the type of firearms parts kit covered by the final rule in separate transactions, or (2) coordinating with other distributors to sell, market or make available individual parts that, when put together, create a frame or receiver.

In determining whether a dealer has violated his now-unlawful rule, the agency will also violate the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech:

ATF will consider the seller’s marketing conduct and materials. This may include the seller providing information on how a partially complete frame or receiver may readily be converted to a firearm, serving essentially as instructions or a guide.

 

It may also include internet links to templates, jigs, molds, equipment, tools or other materials that enable ready completion or assembly of the unfinished frame or receiver into a firearm.

 

This is because such materials may affect how “readily” the part may be converted.

And the consequences if a law-abiding gun dealer happens to step, however briefly or unintentionally, outside the agency’s ever-changing edicts?

When a supplier in such a circumstance fails to comply with the GCA’s [the unconstitutional Gun Control Act of 1968] requirements, that may constitute a willful violation of the GCA. ATF considers such conduct, and all willful violations of the GCA, an investigative priority.

Under the ATF’s old rules, that “investigative priority” would usually result in a conversation with the dealer himself, and perhaps a warning. Now, though, there is no such warning, as more former gun dealers learned the hard way last year: the closures following those “investigations” set a record in 2022.

As for the court ruling that the ATF so willfully ignored, it involved the firearm-kit maker Defense Distributed, which has had a running battle with the ATF since the invention of 3-D printers. Last November, Judge Reed O’Connor of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas granted a preliminary injunction against the ATF’s enforcement of the final rule.

On March 2, after hearing more arguments from the ATF, he made his temporary injunction permanent:

This Court previously held that any injury to the Government’s general interest [i.e., that of the Biden administration and its anti-gun ATF] in law enforcement and public safety is appreciably undermined by the Court’s preliminary determination that the Final Rule is likely unlawful.

 

Once again, this reasoning is strengthened by the fact that the Government’s likely ultra vires [beyond its legal authority] enforcement efforts upset decades of ATF regulatory precedent against a public that has relied on that historic posture.

And so, in words that the ATF brazenly chose to ignore in its haste to shut off the legitimate flow of legally owned firearms to law-abiding citizens, Judge O’Connor wrote:

The court grants the motion … and ORDERS that Defendants and their officers, agents, servants, and employees are enjoined from implementing and enforcing against Defense Distributed and its customers….

Ten Republican Senators Offer a Bill to Codify Heller and Bruen Decisions Into Law

Friday, 17 March 2023 13:52
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, March 17, 2023:

At first blush, the bill (which has not yet been assigned a bill number) offered by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Tuesday to “codify” the Supreme Court’s decisions in Heller and Bruen into federal law should please law-abiding gun owners, who think they might be able to rest a little easier over threats to their rights to “keep and bear arms” as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Currently, those decisions only relate to the particular or instant cases and are not federal law. Only Congress can enact such laws, and that’s what Graham and the other nine Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee said they hope to accomplish. It would make it vastly more difficult for future Supreme Courts to overturn those two decisions if they were codified into law and not just precedents supporting future decisions.

Graham has unanimous support from the other nine Republican senators on the committee — Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and John Kennedy (R-La.) — as reflective of support for the Second Amendment and the Supreme Court’s decisions in those two landmark cases.

Said Graham:

I am very pleased that all Senate Judiciary Republicans are speaking with one voice when it comes to supporting the Second Amendment rights recognized by the Supreme Court in the Heller and Bruen decisions.

 

Now more than ever, it is important that Congress recognize and support that the Second Amendment is an individual right and that the right to bear arms to defend oneself is an integral part of American society.

The bill, the “Respect for the Second Amendment Act,” is barely six pages long and makes it clear that (if enacted into law) states or municipalities enacting laws that transgress the new norm — being “consistent with the United States’ historical tradition of firearm regulation” — would be in violation of those decisions now codified into law.

From the bill:

No person … may enforce … any … regulation that prohibits … the right of an individual to lawfully … possess, own, carry … a privately owned firearm or … ammunition unless the law … is consistent with the United States’ historical tradition of firearm regulation.

Infringements are enforceable by the U.S. attorney general, or in civil court by the individual citizen whose rights were infringed, with legal fees paid by the government entity issuing the regulation.

It’s pretty straightforward, according to the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) Brian Calabrese: “On behalf of our millions of members, we thank Senator Graham for sponsoring legislation to reinforce Bruen in federal law.”

For staffers at Gun Owners of America (GOA) and the National Association of Gun Rights (NAGR), however, the bill is greatly flawed. In a conversation with GOA’s director of federal affairs, Aidan Johnston, The New American was told that his group felt the bill didn’t go nearly far enough in protecting citizens’ Second Amendment rights. By referring only to decisions in Heller and Bruen, it fails to provide the actual text of the Second Amendment: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

By that standard, every law and every piece of legislation, including laws that created the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Gun Control Act of 1968, would be declared unconstitutional. By default, according to Johnston, Graham’s bill, if passed, would cement into place those egregious assaults on the Second Amendment.

In speaking with staffers at the NAGR, The New American learned that the group considers Graham’s bill as just “political cover,” with Graham hoping observers wouldn’t remember his often weak and inconsistent support of the Second Amendment. That goes as well for Cornyn, whose support for the Second Amendment has been very inconsistent during his time in Congress. NAGR said this makes the offering of the bill “highly suspect.”

In reality, the bill has little chance of being passed into law. As long as the Senate is controlled by communists masquerading as Democrats, Graham’s bill is DOA.

High-school Football Coach Joe Kennedy Gets His Job Back

Thursday, 16 March 2023 14:28
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, March 16, 2023:  

Joe Kennedy is now back as assistant varsity football coach for the Bremerton (Washington) High School Knights. After eight long years of litigation culminating in the Supreme Court ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District last summer, the school will pay Kennedy $5,304 to coach the team, and First Liberty Institute $1,775,000 in legal fees for defending him.

When asked how he felt about being back on the field after being fired for praying on the field after games had ended, he said “Overall, it’s been great. A lot of people have been praying for this for a long time, and I think America is ready to just enjoy the religious freedom once again.”

Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, agreed:

I am glad to hear that Joe Kennedy has finally been reinstated as a football coach at the Washington state high school he was dismissed from for praying in the field after games in 2015….

 

This is great news! I hope that Coach Kennedy will continue to kneel in prayer — on and off the field — and that his win will protect and encourage others in the same situation.

Missing from nearly all of the muted media coverage was the enormous victory his win signals: the obliteration of the myth of the “wall of separation of church and state” that those opposed to Christianity have erected since the founding of the Republic. That “wall” has been used to justify all manner of secular interference and intimidation over the right, guaranteed in the First Amendment, for citizens to enjoy worshiping without governmental interference.

As Supreme Court Justice Neal Gorsuch wrote for the 6-3 majority:

Both the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment protect expressions like Mr. Kennedy’s.… The Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligions views alike….

 

Here, a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a personal religious observance, based on a mistaken view that it has a duty to suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech.

 

The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination. Mr. Kennedy is entitled to summary judgment on his religious exercise and free speech claims.

Tim Greenwood of Tim Greenwood Ministries provided one of the clearest definitions of the Founders’ original intent on the matter more than 10 years ago:

The “wall” was understood as one-directional; its purpose was to protect the church from the state.

 

The world was not to corrupt the church; yet the church was free to teach the people Biblical values [without interference].

Instead, anti-Christian forces have for decades deliberately misread the Founders’ intentions, based on a private letter from Jefferson written 10 years after the Constitution was ratified, in order to justify its war against Christianity. Gorsuch made that point clear in his majority opinion:

The Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment protect an individual engaging in a personal religious observance from government reprisal; the Constitution neither mandates nor permits the government to suppress such religious expression.

 

When attorneys for the school tried to make the case for that so-called “wall of separation” which it said it was defending by firing Kennedy, Gorsuch clarified the issue:

 

In truth, there is no conflict between the constitutional commands before us. There is only the “mere shadow” of a conflict, a false choice premised on a misconstruction of the Establishment Clause.

 

And in no world may a government entity’s concerns about phantom constitutional violations justify actual violations of an individual’s First Amendment rights…

 

Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic — whether those expressions take place in a sanctuary or on a field, and whether they manifest through the spoken word or a bowed head. Here, a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a brief, quiet, personal religious observance doubly protected by the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment…

 

[T]he only meaningful justification the government offered for its reprisal rested on a mistaken view that it had a duty to ferret out and suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech.

 

The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination.

 

Mr. Kennedy is entitled to summary judgment on his First Amendment claims. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is Reversed.

This is the unheralded victory most of the media covering the matter have ignored: There is no “wall of separation of church and state” that keeps religious sentiments from influencing our secular and steadily darkening world.

Biden Unleashes Another Attack on the Second Amendment

Wednesday, 15 March 2023 12:35
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, March 15, 2023:  

While paying lip service to constitutional constraints, Joe Biden continued his administration’s attack on the Second Amendment. In his EO issued on Tuesday, he pushes the limits of power and he knows it: “It is the policy of my Administration,” said the White House press release, “[to] pursue every legally available … action to reduce gun violence.”

Even if his moves would provably reduce gun violence, they would still be unconstitutional under Article II, Section 1, Clause 1 of the Constitution: “The Executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America … he shall take care that the laws [passed by the legislative branch] be faithfully executed.” (Emphasis added.)

The occupant of the White House cannot, under the Constitution, create legislation. But that doesn’t deter Biden:

  1. He is asking the attorney general (AG), Merrick Garland, to “clarify [read: expand] the definition of who is engaged in the business of dealing in firearms, and thus required to become Federal firearms licensees (FFLs)….”;
  2. He is asking Garland and the secretaries of Defense(!), Homeland Security, Health and Human Services (including the surgeon general), and Education(!) to “encourage [read: expand] effective use of extreme risk protection orders (‘red flag’ laws)….”;
  3. He is asking his Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to determine “how gun manufacturers market firearms to minors [and] civilians, including through the use of military imagery”; and
  4. He is asking all major agencies in the executive branch to propose additional infringements of the Second Amendment “on how the Federal Government can better support the recovery, mental health, and other needs of survivors of gun violence, families of victims and survivors of gun violence, first responders to incidents of gun violence, and communities affected by gun violence.”

None of these moves will have any noticeable impact on “gun violence.” Expanding background checks wouldn’t have caught the 18-year-old shooter in Uvalde, Texas, because prior to the attack he had no criminal record and so wouldn’t have been flagged by the system.

The shooter who killed 11 people at a dance studio in Monterey Park, California, used a firearm that was banned in the state.

So-called red flag laws already infringe on the Fourth Amendment rights of citizens by denying them due process. And there’s precious little hard evidence to show that their enforcement has measurably reduced gun violence.

Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), took Biden to task over his latest effort to infringe on precious rights enjoyed by law-abiding gun owners — Biden’s primary target:

Joe Biden is trying to sell this new gun control scheme the way he’s always done, by promising less violent crime and safer neighborhoods, but this plan isn’t going to accomplish either goal, and he knows it.

 

This sleight-of-hand maneuver simply makes it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to purchase firearms, while creating the impression gun dealers are crooks and the industry is unregulated.

 

This is just another chapter in Joe Biden’s war on gun rights. It is a diversion to the Democrat failure to keep Americans safe from violent criminals who are released without bail and are free to prey on us all.

He added:

So, Biden wants the Defense Department to buy more guns; he will blame crime on gun dealers and tell gun makers how to market their products. But he won’t tell the Justice Department to crack down on recidivist criminals; he’s not asking the courts to lock up armed felons; and he’s continuing to treat the Second Amendment as a second-class right.

 

Biden has always had an anti-gun agenda and on this important constitutional issue, he has never let the courts, public opinion or the Bill of Rights get in his way.

This is textbook Joe Biden. Talk tough, mak

e it appear he’s doing something about crime when he really isn’t, and ultimately just continue penalizing law-abiding gun owners for crimes they didn’t commit.

 

The only people who will be any safer are the criminals who ignore gun control laws already.

Do note that a careful reading of the entire EO issued Tuesday reveals nothing about a tactic that actually would reduce gun violence committed by violent criminals: pressure Soros-backed state and local attorneys general to enforce existing laws to keep convicted felons off the streets.

Biden’s true agenda is revealed once again. His target isn’t the criminals committing the violence, but the law-abiding gun owners whose ownership of firearms prevents the federal government from becoming totally tyrannical.

Second Amendment Foundation Doubles Down on Opposition to NY Gun Law

Wednesday, 08 March 2023 14:54
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, March 8, 2023:  

Ever since the Supreme Court ruled against New York in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen – aka “Bruen” – last summer, anti-gun, anti-freedom, anti-Second Amendment politicians in Albany have attempted to cast new and clever ways to work around that decision.

According to Gothamist, as of December 30, 2022, possession of firearms by private citizens in the Empire State is prohibited in:

• Federal, state, and local government buildings;

• Health care facilities (including behavioral health and chemical dependency);

• Libraries, public playgrounds, public parks and zoos;

• Childcare facilities;

• Nursery schools, preschools and summer camps;

• Programs for people with developmental disabilities, addiction and mental illness;

• Homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters and emergency shelters;

• Programs funded by the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance;

• Schools and colleges;

• Public transportation, airports, train stations and bus terminals;

• Places with licenses for alcohol and cannabis consumption;

• Places of worship;

• Spaces where crowds gather for performances, entertainment, gaming or sports, including theaters, stadiums, conference centers and amusement parks;

• Polling places;

• Public sidewalks or other public areas that have been blocked off for a limited time or for special events;

• Protests; and

• Times Square.

And, just to make sure that law-abiding gun owners get the message, possession is also prohibited on private property unless the owner of that property has prominently posted permission to do so.

Back in September, Brett Christian, a law-abiding gun owner who also had a concealed-carry permit, filed suit, claiming that New York’s new law was unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge John L. Sinatra, a Trump appointee, shredded the attempt by lawyers for the state to justify the outrageous infringement of Christian’s rights in his decision:

[New York] argues that private property owners have always had the right to exclude others from their property and [therefore] may exclude those carrying concealed handguns. But that right has always been one belonging to the private property owner — not to the State….

 

Property owners indeed have the right to exclude. But the state may not unilaterally exercise that right and, thereby, interfere with the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens who seek to carry for self-defense outside of their own homes.

He issued a temporary restraining order (TRO). The state appealed. The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) entered with its plea to make the TRO permanent:

Following its loss in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, , the State of New York enacted a sweeping series of restrictions on the right to carry firearms that together rid the right to carry of much of its practical utility.

 

At issue in this appeal is one particularly pernicious part of the State’s law — the State’s decree that it is criminal to carry firearms on every parcel of private property throughout the State, including private property open to the public, absent the express consent of the owner or lessee of the property.

 

Far from being “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” New York’s Anti-Carry Default is unprecedented in the Nation’s 246-year history, and the district court properly ordered it preliminarily enjoined.

According to SAF, all private property (i.e., most of the state of New York) is now considered to be a “restricted location” under the new law, hence the name “Anti-Carry Default.”

Said Alan Gottlieb, the founder and executive VP of SAF, “The restriction is absurd. Brett Christian’s dilemma exemplifies the problem, and the very real threat of prosecution, all of our New York State members now face under this new law. Christian and others like him can’t even legally carry at a gas station or a hardware store.” Gottlieb continued,

The case for freedom from the latest attempt at infringing Second Amendment rights in New York was clearly spelled out in Christian’s November lawsuit:

 

The Supreme Court’s cases addressing the individual’s right to keep and bear arms — from Heller and McDonald to its June 2022 decision in Bruen – dictate that New York’s private property exclusion is equally unconstitutional.

 

Regulation in this area is permissible only if the government demonstrates that the current enactment is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of sufficiently analogous regulations.

 

… New York fails that test.

It cannot be reiterated too often: But for the appointment of constitutionalist judges such as Sinatra by Donald Trump, New York gun owners — nay, gun owners across the land — would see their precious Second Amendment rights abridged, denigrated, and denied. Thanks to Trump’s determination to nominate “originalists” to both the high court and inferior courts across the country, gun owners such as Brett Christian will retain their Second Amendment rights, even in the face of anti-gun, anti-freedom, anti-Second Amendment politicians infesting the legislatures of states such as New York.

For readers concerned about the other infringements in the new law as outlined above, nearly a dozen other lawsuits contesting them have already been filed, with similar outcomes expected.

NYC Mayor’s Faith Comments Elicit Protests From Atheists

Monday, 06 March 2023 15:09
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, March 6, 2023:  

When New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a self-professed Christian, expressed his faith last week, his remarks not only elicited praise from believers but criticism from those who don’t or refuse to believe.

Adams said:

Don’t tell me about no separation of church and state. State is the body. Church is the heart. You take the heart out of the body, the body dies.

 

I can’t separate my belief because I’m an elected official. When I walk, I walk with God. When I talk, I talk with God.

 

When I put policies in place, I put them in with a God-like approach to them. That’s who I am. And I was that when I was that third-grader, and I’m going to be that when I leave government.

 

I am still a child of God and will always be a child of God and I won’t apologize about being a child of God. It is not going to happen.

Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, responded, “The mayor is exactly right,” adding that, “Liberals have taken that establishment clause [in the First Amendment] and perverted into something our forefathers never intended. I believe much of the chaos we’re seeing in our country today results from trying to be good without God, and such a thing is totally impossible.”

Arielle Del Turco of the Family Research Council said that Adams’ comments do “not mean that the state must forcibly remove all signs of religion from schools or other public institutions.”

And yet that is exactly what has been happening ever since the Supreme Court ruled decades ago to remove prayer from public schools. Its decision was based on that dreadful and insidious “reading” about the “wall of separation between the church and state” that the Constitution allegedly erected.

Rob Boston, who edits Church & State magazine for Americans United for Separation of Church & State, offered to instruct the mayor in his misreading of the founders’ intentions: “Our offer to the mayor would be to meet with us, and we’d be happy to explain to him how separation of church and state protects his right to believe and the right of every one of his constituents and how we really can’t have a free nation without that principle.”

Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), a chapter of the ACLU, weighed in on the side of the myth about the wall of separation that has guided the group’s policies from the beginning:

We are a nation and a city of many faiths, and no faith. In order for any government to truly represent us, it must not favor any belief over another, including non-belief.

 

It is odd that Mayor Adams would need a refresher on the First Amendment. After all, he has sworn to uphold the Constitution more than once….

 

On matters of faith, the Mayor is entitled to his own beliefs. On the Constitution, he must uphold his oath.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) put in its own two cents:

Remarks you made at the New York Library interfaith prayer breakfast this morning [February 28] … evince a shocking hostility to a core principle of our secular republic: secular government….

 

FFRF works to defend the constitutional separation between state and church, and to educate about nontheism….

 

Mayor Adams, your remarks are disgraceful. Not only is New York City not a place where the mayor of New York must be a “servant of God,” but as mayor you are in fact a servant of the people. While as a private individual you are free to worship as you like, you are not free to use your secular office or its podium to promote those beliefs, while deriding your constitutional duties to keep religion out of government.

 

You took an oath of office “to support and defend” the U.S. Constitution, which is an entirely godless secular document. Your duty as an elected official is not to be “a servant of God” but to the Constitution and the people who it represents….

 

Attempting to impose your personal religious beliefs through your elected position is an insult to all New Yorkers, as well as to the core American value of separation of state and church.

The group couldn’t resist the opportunity to promote its own religious agenda:

The members of the Freedom From Religion Foundation believe that nothing fails like prayer. Prayer is the ultimate cop-out, the ultimate admission that the invoker is giving up, by transferring personal responsibility to an imaginary being.

And then the group demanded that Adams retract his comments:

We are asking you to publicly rescind your ill-advised remarks that the mayor of New York is officially a “servant of God,” which seemingly suggests a belief that you are anointed by God. After all, you have previously said that “God” told you to become mayor.

 

In the face of an active campaign by Christian nationalists to declare the United States a Christian nation, and undo many First Amendment protections, we consider these remarks insensitive and reckless.

In his own defense, Adams responded to reporters who questioned him about the separation issue:

I would not be the mayor of the City of New York if it wasn’t that God saw something in me. I am the most imperfect, most perfectly imperfect, human being.

 

This is a country where on our dollar bills we say, “In God We Trust.” The last thing I said when I was sworn in as the mayor, I said, “So help me God!” Every event that I start, I start with prayer….

 

I am so happy that there are a small number of people who are saying that “Eric’s belief in God, he should not be talking about it as the mayor.” No. As the major, I should be talking about my belief in God.

In reporting on the issue, Adam Carrington of the Washington Examiner made a good start: “The First Amendment does forbid Congress from making any law regarding an establishment of religion. It does not, however, require a total exclusion of religion from the public square, as [these groups] seem to believe these days.”

Professor Daniel Dreisbach at American University clarified the issue for all time back in 2006 in his “The Mythical ‘Wall of Separation’” published by the Heritage Foundation. Wrote Dreisbach:

This figure of speech … has become the sacred icon of a strict separation dogma that champions a secular polity in which religious influences are systematically and coercively stripped from public life….

 

The First Amendment … [is] entirely a check on civil government, specifically Congress….

 

The religious provisions were added to the Constitution [by the Bill of Rights] to protect religion and religious institutions from [the] corrupting interference by the federal government and not to protect the civil state from the influence of … religion.

 

The [myth of the] wall, however, is [being used as] a bilateral barrier that unavoidably restricts religion’s ability to influence public life; thus it necessarily and dangerously exceeds the limitations imposed by the First Amendment….

 

All too often the wall of separation is used to silence the church and to limit its reach into public life.… It is rarely used to restrain the civil state’s meddling in, and restraint of, the church.

That’s the core issue. The secular state cannot have its citizens bowing allegiance to anything other than, or higher than, the state itself. Any remarks by anyone, especially someone with the influence (and the character) of the mayor of the nation’s largest city to speak the truth about the matter, must be dampened, diluted, and ultimately erased from the public conversation.

Good for the mayor for not bowing the knee to the secular myth of “the separation of church and state” that is being used to extinguish religion from the public square.

Supreme Court to Take Another Swing at Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Tuesday, 28 February 2023 15:11
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, February 28, 2023:  

Like the Energizer Bunny, Senator Elizabeth Warren’s brainchild, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), “keeps going and going.” On Monday the Supreme Court announced it will take at the CFPB, this time looking at how it’s being illegally funded by the Federal Reserve.

The CFPB, created by language buried in the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 in response to the financial crisis of 2008, was designed by Senator Warren to avoid any manner of restraint: It would operate independently of Congress or the president, and would be funded by the Federal Reserve, where the agency’s 1,600 employees are located.

Efforts to rein in the rogue bureau, or abolish it altogether, have failed. It continues to harass any private company of sufficient size to catch its attention: banks, credit unions, securities firms, payday lenders, mortgage-servicing companies, foreclosure-relief services, debt collectors, and others.

It violates the separation of powers doctrine upon which the American Republic is based. It writes its own rules, it enforces its own rules, and punishes those companies which it finds has violated those rules. And, as mentioned above, it gets its funding not from Congress, but from the Federal Reserve.

Sometimes the fines the CFPB levies are in the millions of dollars. In fact, the bureau boasted that it had “extracted nearly $12 billion” in fines and “refunds” from the financial services sector of the U.S. economy in its first six years of operation.

In 2013, the House Financial Services Committee criticized the bureau, citing its lack of transparency and accountability. A lawsuit filed that same year claimed that “CFPB’s structure insulates it from political accountability and internal checks and balances in violation of the United States Constitution.”

In 2016, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, while on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, wrote:

The director of the CFPB possesses more unilateral authority — that is, authority to take action on one’s own, subject to no check — than any single commissioner or board member in any other independent agency in the U.S. government.

 

The CFPB’s concentration of enormous executive power in a single, unaccountable, unchecked director not only departs from settled historical practice, but also poses a far greater risk of arbitrary decision-making and abuse of power, and a far greater threat to individual liberty, than does a multi-member independent agency.

And still the Bunny keeps going and going…

However, in October, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a lawsuit brought by the Community Financial Services Association of America (CFSAA) on behalf of its many members injured by the agency that its funding mechanism is unconstitutional. The appeal will be heard by the high court this fall, with its ruling expected in June 2024.

Noted Christian Vergonis, the lawyer for the CFSSA:

The CFPB’s self-funding mechanism lacks any contemporary or historical precedent, improperly shields the agency from congressional oversight and accountability, and unconstitutionally strips Congress of its power of the purse under the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution.

The law firm McGlinchy Stafford predicts a substantial disruption if the high court cuts the agency’s funding legs out from underneath it. It could not only end the agency’s operation altogether, but also render inoperative those rules and regulations it imposed while operating illegally. The firm said:

If all regulations that the CFPB has adopted for the last eleven years are thrown out, all that certainty and all those market expectations disappear and [would be] replaced by confusion and uncertainty.

The agency itself said such an outcome would create the proverbial “parade of horribles,” including “undermining any and all rules amended or promulgated by the CFPB, [and would call] into question any enforcement actions it has taken.”

That would be called freedom! The market would adjust quickly, breathing the clean air of liberty from oppression by a rogue agency bent on applying its own rules according to its own agenda without any oversight or limitation.

May the Supreme Court finally seize the opportunity to pull the plug on the CFPB!

Florida to Become 26th Permitless-carry State

Tuesday, 21 February 2023 14:57
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, February 21, 2023:  

Matching “permitless concealed carry” bills are progressing through Florida’s legislature. With Republican supermajorities in both the state House and Senate, passage into law with Governor Ron DeSantis’ signature is a foregone conclusion. This will make Florida the 26th state to remove the infringement of requiring a permit to carry a concealed firearm.

Celebrations, however, are muted. Nothing in either bill addresses Florida’s rule that prohibits open carrying of a firearm, even for those with permits. And that’s highly annoying to Second Amendment purists such as Dudley Brown, head of the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR). Back in late January, when the House bill was first introduced, Brown said:

While this bill does allow for most adults to carry a concealed handgun without a permit, we’d love to see it also include open carry as well.

 

Gov. Ron DeSantis is already on the record supporting Constitutional Carry and [with majority] Republican control [of] the state legislature — amending the legislation to include open carry would be an even greater win for the Constitutional Carry movement.

 

I hope the bill sponsors are willing to amend the bill and make it stronger.

They didn’t listen, and the bills are generating lackluster support from some Republicans and delighting anti-gun Democrats who have little chance to stall either bill due to those Republican supermajorities in both houses.

Constitutional Carry isn’t synonymous with “permitless” carry. Constitutional Carry is defined as the Second Amendment defines it: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Historians accede that, at the time the amendment was added to the Constitution, the Militia was a reference to able-bodied citizens in each state. Therefore, any requirement attached to the exercise of that right is an infringement.

As the NAGR explains:

Constitutional Carry is the basic principle that if you are legally eligible to possess a firearm, you should be able to carry that weapon, open or concealed, for self-defense without government permission.

Said Brown: “Florida is one of the most populous states in America and passing Constitutional Carry into law — especially a Constitutional Carry bill which applies to all law-abiding adults — would be a major victory for the gun rights movement nationwide.”

Once the new Florida bills are passed into law, Florida residents may carry concealed without first obtaining permission, or taking a gun class, or submitting to other infringements. But carrying a firearm openly comes with a $500 fine. And the bills also limit permitless concealed carry to citizens aged 21 and over, neatly prohibiting those aged 18 through 20 from enjoying the same rights.

One therefore must be careful when parsing the language of politicians such as Florida House Speaker Paul Renner when he announced that the bills were being introduced on January 30:

Florida led the nation in allowing for concealed carry, and that extends today as we remove the government permission slip to exercise a constitutional right.

The Florida Sheriffs Association and the Florida Police Chiefs are on board with the bills as written (and likely to be signed into law). Said Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, “This concealed carry permit requirement serves nothing for Florida, and the reason it serves nothing for Florida is because it has no bearing on who goes and buys a gun.”

The Senate version includes school-safety measures, such as expanding the school-guardian program to allow private school staff to be armed, in addition to public- and charter-school guardians.

Floridians who want to enjoy reciprocity rights in other states that don’t have permitless carry laws may still obtain a permit if they wish.

Rookie Cop Pressured to Resign Over Religious Beliefs

Friday, 17 February 2023 16:01
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, February 17, 2023:  

Everything was going swimmingly for rookie police officer Jacob Kersey during the first seven months working for the Port Wentworth Police Department in Georgia. At age 19, Kersey had been blogging about his faith in Christ for seven years.

On January 2 his blog about the institution of marriage caused someone from the LBGT community to complain. Here is Kersey’s offensive statement:

God designed marriage. Marriage refers to Christ and the church. That’s why there is no such thing as homosexual marriage.

That single complaint upended Kersey’s budding career and has set in motion the potential for legal action against the department by First Liberty, a public interest law firm specializing in such cases.

Kersey was asked to take down the “offensive” post. He refused. The situation escalated. Kersey wouldn’t back down. The department sent him a “a letter of notification” that its investigation into the complaint revealed nothing that violated any department regulation. But it warned:

However, the posts, podcasts, and so forth found and considered in our investigation [are] likely offensive to protected classes and could raise reasonable concerns regarding your objectivity in performance of your duties when a member … of the LGBTQ+ community is involved.

And then came the threat:

If any post on your social media platforms, or any other statement or action, renders you unable to perform, and to be seen as [un]able to perform your job in a fair and equitable manner, you could be terminated….

 

Officer Kersey, the intent of this notification and warning is to educate you on what will and will not be tolerated as an employee of this city.

Kersey resigned, leaving behind a trail of angst and disappointment. He told The Daily Signal, “Even though I resigned, it was made clear to me in the meetings by my command staff that if I was to go back to work, they could fire me at any time for any reason.… The only way that was possible is if I compromise my values, morals, and deeply held religious beliefs.”

In a podcast interview at The Daily Signal, Kersey expanded on his decision to resign rather than compromise:

I was growing a lot as I was learning [as an police officer] what it meant to serve. But at the end of the day, I realized that a job title isn’t everything to me.

 

And my religious beliefs, my Savior, Jesus Christ … I mean, my values are at the core of who I am. And I’m not willing to compromise those in order to keep a job title…

 

At the end of the day, I knew what I had to do. And I believe part of that was the Holy Spirit coming in and letting me know: “Hey, you have to do this.”

In that podcast at The Daily Signal Kersey expressed surprise and disappointment over his situation. After all, one of the top people in the department declared himself also to be a Christian. He said:

I thought that’s why we left England in the first place. We need to go back to our roots and really discover, what kind of people do we want to be. It’s one thing to champion these documents, but it’s another thing to actually say, “Hey, you know what? I personally, as a citizen of this nation, believe in the reason for our founding. And I’m going to stand for it and I’m going to uphold it in my own life.” And that’s what we absolutely have to do.

 

And so, I certainly hope that the … city of Port Wentworth and the Port Wentworth Police Department will come forward now and say, “Look, we apologize that this ever happened.” And that, “We’re going to ensure that this never happens to one of our officers again.”

First Liberty entered the picture earlier this week, sending a letter to both the mayor and the assistant police chief (the chief of police having suddenly resigned a few days earlier, but that’s another story):

This letter concerns the Department unconstitutionally forcing Mr. Kersey out of his job because of his deeply held religious beliefs….

 

Mr. Kersey realized that he faced a choice between compromising his deeply held religious beliefs or continuing as a police officer with the Department.

 

Forced to choose between his private religious speech [rights] and the job he loved, Mr. Kersey had no choice but to resign.

First Liberty quoted from numerous court decisions supporting the rights of others in similar situations, including this one: “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”

And then came the gentle nudge toward reasonableness in order for the city and its police department to avoid a lawsuit:

The Department violated the First Amendment’s Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses when it prohibited Mr. Kersey from expressing his sincere religious beliefs on his private social media accounts.

 

Putting Mr. Kersey to the choice of censoring his private religious speech or remaining employed as a police officer is an unconstitutional choice. (See Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer)

 

Requiring Mr. Kersey to censor his private, off-duty religious speech to remain employed as a police officer is an unconstitutional violation of Mr. Kersey’s rights under the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment.

 

The City of Port Wentworth and the Port Wentworth Police Department should issue a public statement committing to respect the First Amendment rights of its police officers and announce an official change of policy.

When asked where he goes from here, Kersey said:

My integrity and Christian beliefs are at the core of who I am, and I will not abandon them….

 

I [don’t’] want to be the man who sits passively by as the whole world, and my fellow countrymen, are deceived by the lies … happening in the culture.

Employers seeking to hire a fine young man can learn more about him and his beliefs at “The Jacob Kersey Program.”

Dianne Feinstein, Oldest Senator With Worst Voting Record, to Retire

Wednesday, 15 February 2023 17:00
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, February 15, 2023: 

A moment of confusion arose on Tuesday when California’s senior senator, Dianne Feinstein, said she hadn’t decided about whether to run for reelection in 2024, and then, when informed by one of her staff that her office had already made that announcement that she wouldn’t, she confirmed the fact.

One reporter witnessing her confusion wrote:

Asked by reporters about her announcement to resign, [Feinstein] says “If I haven’t made that decision, I haven’t released anything.” A staffer then told the senator that a statement had been released. Feinstein responded saying “I didn’t know they put it out.”

Another reporter confirmed Feinstein’s confusion:

Feinstein: I haven’t made that decision. I haven’t released anything.

 

Staffer: We put out the statement.

 

Feinstein: You put out the statement? I didn’t know they put it out.

After 30 years in the senate, at age 89, Feinstein is the oldest sitting U.S. senator and member of Congress, and has managed another record: the poorest voting record. According to The Freedom Index compiled by The New American, Feinstein’s “lifetime” average voting record, on a scale of 0 to 100, rates a 12. This reflects her utter disregard for the U.S. Constitution and her oath to support and defend it. In two terms, she scored just a three out of 100; in another two terms she scored a five; and in the latest Congress, the 117th, her voting record, compared to the Constitution, was a zero.

In the statement that Feinstein’s staff issued, she said:

I am announcing today [that] I will not run for reelection in 2024….

 

Each of us was sent here to solve problems. That’s what I’ve done for the last 30 years.

What’s she’s done over the last 30 years is toe the liberal/socialist/progressive party line to the detriment of America. Consider her comment on her failed attempt to pass a federal gun ban:

If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban [on firearms], picking up every one of them … “Mr. and Mrs. America, turn ‘em all in,” I would have done it.

She succeeded in passing the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons ban. And when it expired 10 years later (without proof that it had any salutary impact on gun violence) she tried to have it renewed.

On immigration she has long pushed for granting citizenship to illegals, even those convicted of horrific crimes — aggravated felonies, domestic violence, stalking, violation of protection orders, crimes against children, crimes relating to illegal possession of firearms.

On abortion she has repeatedly voted in favor of using taxpayer monies to fund abortions here and abroad. She voted against a ban on partial-birth/late term abortions. She supported fetal cell tissue research.

On energy development, she voted consistently against approving the Keystone XL Pipeline, delaying its construction until the primary contractor finally gave it up.

On federal spending, she repeatedly voted against a balanced budget amendment, preferring instead to fund all manner of unconstitutional programs.

On healthcare, she voted for ObamaCare, and against any suggestion of reining it in after it became operational. She voted for the Real ID Act, against an amendment declaring English to be the national language, and against the Defense of Marriage Act.

During Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Feinstein attacked her and implied her Catholic faith would negatively impact her rulings:

Why is it that so many of us on this [Democrat] side have this very uncomfortable feeling that dogma and law are two different things, and I think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma. The law is totally different. The conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you.

In another incident showing her perfidy, Feinstein withheld evidence that alleged that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had unspecified but untoward relations with an unnamed accuser 36 years earlier. She withheld it for six weeks, waiting for one week before the committee was to vote on his confirmation, hoping to derail his nomination.

Four far-left pols have leaped into the vacuum left by Feinstein’s exit: Adam Schiff (Freedom Index rating 16), Ro Khanna (FI rating 18), Barbara Lee (FI rating 27), and Katie Porter (FI rating 7).

At the moment, prognosticators are predicting Porter will win the prize for being the most liberal/communist/socialist/progressive candidate to replace Feinstein in 2024.

More Proof the FBI Is Being Weaponized Against American Citizens

Monday, 13 February 2023 21:03
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, February 13, 2023:  

On Thursday, former FBI agent Nicole Parker, an 11-year veteran of the agency before she quit four months ago, testified before the House Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government.

She quit because the agency has now become a weapon pointed at innocent Americans:

For me, distancing myself from egregious mistakes, immoral behavior, politically charged actions taken by a small but destructive few FBI employees became exhausting.… [I] no longer felt [that I was] the type of agent the FBI valued.

Her testimony came just a day after another former agent released a document that the Richmond, Virginia, office of the FBI had generated urging field agents to infiltrate the Catholic church looking for terrorists.

Kyle Seraphin, a former FBI special agent, federal whistleblower, and USAF veteran, posted a copy of the report dated January 23, 2023, regarding “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology.” The report referred to “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics” (RTCs) and expressed “high confidence” that agents can mitigate their terrorist objectives by infiltrating local Catholic churches.

And where did the FBI get such information? Wrote Seraphin:

The attached appendices refer to a number of articles and the out-of-FBI-policy Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) at the end of the document.

 

For example, Appendix D is a direct copy of the SPLC list of “Radical Traditional Catholicism Hate Groups,” including the web address accessed. The SPLC appears to be a source for the intelligence analyst’s beliefs that RTCs exist and that they are anti-Semitic. The SPLC description for this “hate group” states RTCs “may make up the largest single group of serious anti-semites in America.”

Seraphin didn’t spend any ink excoriating the SPLC for its anti-Christian, anti-traditional values or anti-American bias. He didn’t have to. Readers can go to DiscoverTheNetworks.org and find dozens of pages of examples of its bias, along with connections to 56 hard-core left-wing individuals intent on destroying American culture and turning the nation into a socialist nightmare.

All of which is well known to the FBI, which formally disassociated itself from the outfit back in 2014. But that hasn’t changed how propagandists at the top of the agency obtain their “information.”

Seraphin gives the agency just a tap on the wrist:

Poorly sourced and highly speculative intelligence products [such as this report] lead to opening badly articulated … investigations into Americans in violation of their God-given, First Amendment-protected civil liberties.

He’s right about one thing: the agency’s poor intelligence products can and will lead to grievous infringements of those rights unless the agency is reined in, reorganized, or eliminated altogether:

Opening the door to associating white supremacists with traditional religious practices based on common Christian positions on abortion and the LGBTQ political agendas is a dangerous step. Such investigations can easily lead to the same analysis of Radical Traditional Baptists, Radical Traditional Lutherans, and Radical Traditional Evangelicals. [Emphasis added.]

 

The FBI is forbidden from opening cases or publishing products based solely on First Amendment-protected activities. By tolerating the publishing of intelligence products as shoddy as this, they are crossing a line many Americans will find themselves on the wrong side of for the first time in history.

 

This is what a politicalized FBI looks like; it should not be tolerated if Americans expect to enjoy the protections of our Bill of Rights.

Another former FBI agent, this one the former chief of FBI intelligence, Kevin Brock, weighed in on the perfidy:

[The report] is lazy, it is absurdly speculative, it provides no evidence for its thesis, and it relies exclusively on sources known to be aligned with the political left, such as the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center, Salon, and the Atlantic, that have been known to be habitually critical of the Catholic Church. That’s not intelligence analysis. It’s parroting.

When the FBI discovered that Seraphin had leaked the incriminating report, it backtracked immediately, saying that it was only distributed in-house and not meant for public consumption, and that, once found out, the agency brass declared it inoperative. The walk-back language is remarkable for its dissemblance and deceit:

While our standard practice is to not comment on specific intelligence products, this particular field office product — disseminated only within the FBI — regarding racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism does not meet the exacting standards of the FBI….

 

The FBI is committed to sound analytic tradecraft and to investigating and preventing acts of violence and other crimes while upholding the constitutional rights of all Americans and will never conduct investigative activities or open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity.

Happily for the security of the American people, more than two dozen FBI whistleblowers have emerged in recent months alleging FBI bias in cases ranging from the Hunter Biden corruption scandal, to claims that parents attending school board meetings are terrorists, to faux claims surrounding President Trump and Russia.

Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.), a member of the House committee who heard Nicole Parker’s testimony last week, said that that testimony adds to the increasing body of evidence that the FBI has habitually and intentionally overstepped its bounds, engaging in promoting cancel culture, encouraging censorship on Twitter, treating parents at school board meetings as domestic terrorists, and on and on:

When the FBI is being tasked to go after parents who have expressed concerns at their local school boards about what their children are being taught, and labeled a domestic terrorist … that’s a problem.

 

When you have the FBI and the administration and agencies coordinating with Big Tech, essentially pressuring a private company to do their bidding in deplatforming, censoring, or silencing dissenting voices, that’s a problem….

Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and whistleblowers like Parker, Seraphin, and Brock are shining that light at the core of the problem: the very top brass at the FBI.

Twenty-five States Sue ATF Over Pistol-brace Rule

Friday, 10 February 2023 16:15
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, February 10, 2023:  

Resistance against the ATF’s pistol stabilizing brace rule continues to build. On Thursday, attorneys general from 25 states filed a lawsuit claiming that the agency’s new rule is unconstitutional and violated the principle of separation of powers that makes our federal government unique.

The lawsuit opened:

For more than a decade, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (“ATF”) authorized the public to use pistol stabilizing braces, a popular firearms accessory, without federal regulation.

 

During that time, ATF repeatedly issued letter rulings assuring manufacturers and the public that attaching a stabilizing brace would not alter the statutory or regulatory classification of a pistol or other firearm.

 

As a result, millions of Americans have for years lawfully purchased stabilizing braces and pistols equipped with stabilizing braces from authorized, legitimate manufacturers with ATF’s full knowledge and express approval.

Then the Biden administration intervened:

Then everything changed. Frustrated with congressional inaction, the President of the United States ordered ATF to abandon a decade of practice under an established statutory framework and “to treat pistols modified with stabilizing braces” as “subject to the National Firearms Act.”

 

This “change,” the President said, would require an owner of a pistol equipped with a stabilizing brace to “pay a $200 fee and submit their name and other identifying information to the Justice Department” or face criminal penalties.

 

The President’s express aim was to act “without having to go through the Congress.”

This is how things get done in a dictatorship: The ruler makes the rules, decides who violates the rules, and then punishes the violator. With this rule change, Biden is on track.

Continues the lawsuit:

[T]he Rule in effect vests ATF with unbounded discretion.

 

And ATF has made clear exactly how it intends to exercise that  discretion, estimating that, under the Rule, 99% of pistols equipped with stabilizing braces will now be deemed subject to National Firearms Act (“NFA”) controls.

The number of firearms affected by the rule, were it allowed to stand, is between three and seven million according to the ATF. The Congressional Research Service, on the other hand, puts the number between 10 and 40 million. Regardless, the penalties for violating the NFA are harsh, both through fines and potential incarceration.

The lawsuit reviews the hypocrisy and the illegal intentions of the ATF:

The Rule … represents an abrupt reversal of ATF’s longstanding position that these items are not subject to NFA controls…

 

The agency charged with administering the NFA and GCA [Gun Control Act of 1968] believed for years that pistols equipped with stabilizing braces are not subject to heightened regulation, and now holds the opposite.

The states remind the court that President Biden acted as a dictator:

Without any legislative change, the President of the United States ordered ATF to abandon a decade of practice under an established statutory framework and “to treat pistols modified with stabilizing braces” as “subject to the National Firearms Act.”

The lawsuit also reminds the court that what Biden did in ordering the ATF to violate its own rulings in order to promote his anti-gun agenda violated the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

ATF’s Rule also construes the statute in a way that would raise grave constitutional doubts under the Second Amendment. With millions of stabilizing braces in circulation — even by ATF’s conservative estimate — braced weapons are plainly in “common use” and thus protected by the Second Amendment. (See New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen)

This is the primary obstacle that lawyers for the Department of Justice will have to overcome in defending this lawsuit. By its own admission, the ATF has clearly and repeatedly stated that pistol braces were in “common use” and thus fall inside the Bruen rule, i.e., the ATF must justify its incursion and infringement of the Second Amendment by demonstrating that it is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition. According to the high court in Bruen, “only then may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s ‘unqualified command.’”

West Virginia’s Attorney General Patrick Morrisey called out the ATF’s move:

Let’s call this what it is: an effort to undermine Americans’ Second Amendment right. This is an egregious final rule turning millions of common firearms accessories into “short-barreled rifles.” This is completely nonsensical regulation.

 

This is part of the continued attack by the Biden administration against lawful gun owners.

Morrisey added, “This is also another case of a federal agency not staying in its lane and doing the job the constitution clearly delegates to Congress—writing laws. The Separation of Powers clearly bars federal agencies from making new laws without Congressional directive.”

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita backed up Morrisey:

As long as I’m attorney general, we will never willingly cede Hoosiers’ cherished liberties to the whims of federal bureaucrats. This is a clear case of overreach by the executive branch, and we fully expect to prevail in this lawsuit.

 

By standing together, the individual states can stop the federal government from riding roughshod over our people’s freedoms.

 

Standing up to tyranny is a time-honored American tradition. It requires us not only to resist broad sweeping power grabs but also to combat the incremental chipping away of rights.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western Division of North Dakota. Readers, as well as lawyers for the DOJ, may expect additional lawsuits to be filed over the matter. In the meantime it is hoped that one of the courts will issue a temporary restraining order against the ATF’s enforcement of the new rule while the lawsuits are pending.

Bruen Decision Continues to Support Second Amendment Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Monday, 06 February 2023 13:45
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, February 6, 2023:  

A federal law preventing someone “subject to domestic violence orders” (DVOs) from possessing “a firearm or ammunition” was tossed by a federal court last Thursday. Prior to Bruen — New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen — a federal law prohibited those under DVOs from owning firearms.

But under Bruen the legal landscape shifted in favor of the Second Amendment, and the reverberations continue to be felt across the land. That would include California, one of the most anti-gun states in the union.

In United States of America v. Zackey Rahimi, the Department of Justice tried to find historical support for its DVO rule under the new Bruen ruling. That ruling now requires that governments attempting to restrict Second Amendment rights must show historical evidence that such laws may be justified today.

In the present case, the DOJ failed:

The question presented in this case is not whether prohibiting the possession of firearms by someone subject to a domestic violence restraining order is a laudable policy goal. The question is whether 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8) [the federal law] … is constitutional under the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution.

In the light of N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, … it is not.

The ruling by three members of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, two of whom were nominated by President Trump and the other by President Ronald Reagan, noted that Bruen, along with D.C. v. Heller, put the onus on states seeking to infringe Second Amendment rights to provide historical support for such infringements:

Enter Bruen. Expounding on Heller, the Supreme Court held that “[w]hen the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct.”

 

In that context, the Government bears the burden of “justify[ing] its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

 

Put another way, “the [G]overnment must affirmatively prove that its firearms regulation is part of the historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms.”

The “Government” — i.e., the federal government, represented by its Department of Justice — failed to prove it. Quoting from Bruen:

“When it comes to interpreting the Constitution, not all history is created equal. Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them.”

 

We thus afford greater weight to historical analogues more contemporaneous to the Second Amendment’s ratification.

The DOJ presented three such “historical references” to bolster its case in support of the federal law — and failed. Wrote the court: “We discuss in turn why each of these historical regulations falter.”

Prior to Bruen, the court had admitted that the federal law was constitutional: the ends (attempting to reduce gun violence by those under DVOs) justified the means (infringing on their rights). But Bruen now makes such laws unconstitutional:

Doubtless, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8) embodies salutary policy goals meant to protect vulnerable people in our society. Weighing those policy goals’ merits through the sort of means-end scrutiny our prior precedent indulged, we previously concluded that the societal benefits of § 922(g)(8) outweighed its burden on Rahimi’s Second Amendment rights.

 

But Bruen forecloses any such analysis in favor of a historical analogical inquiry into the scope of the allowable burden on the Second Amendment right.

 

Through that lens, we conclude that § 922(g)(8)’s ban on possession of firearms is an “outlier that our ancestors would never have accepted.”

 

Therefore, the statute is unconstitutional, and Rahimi’s conviction under that statute must be vacated.

Such adherence to the Second Amendment was met with derision and defiance in California. In a press release, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared:

A federal appeals court has ruled domestic abusers have the right to carry firearms. Where is the line? Who’s next?…

 

These three zealots [the three judges appointed by Trump and Reagan that made up the panel] are hellbent on a deranged vision of guns for all, leaving [the federal] government powerless to protect its people.

 

This is what the ultra-conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court wants….

 

Wake up, America — this assault on our safety will only accelerate.

Newsom’s state attorney general, Rob Bonta, defied the Circuit Court’s ruling:

This is a dangerous decision.… Californians should know that restraining orders, including Domestic Violence Restraining Orders, still prohibit the possession of firearms. These orders are an essential tool that remain in effect and may be requested at any time. I urge Californians to utilize these life-saving tools.

And Joe Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland is going to appeal the Fifth Circuit’s ruling:

Whether analyzed through the lens of Supreme Court precedent, or of the text, history, and tradition of the Second Amendment, that statute is constitutional….

 

Accordingly, the Department will seek further review of the Fifth Circuit’s contrary decision.

It cannot be emphasized too often: Bruen is directly attributable to Presidents Trump and Reagan, who nominated originalists to the Supreme Court. In fact, the author of Thursday’s Fifth Circuit’s decision, Judge Cory Wilson, was the 200th federal judge to be nominated by President Trump, and the sixth judge nominated by him to the Fifth Circuit.

ATF Rule on Pistol Braces Generating Major Pushback

Thursday, 02 February 2023 15:37
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, February 2, 2023:  

As expected, the ATF’s extraordinary overreach declaring that pistols with braces are now rifles to be registered under the 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA) is being met with outrage and lawsuits across the land.

The ATF — the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — knew it was coming and wrote the rule anyway. Anti-gun Attorney General Merrick Garland endorsed it, saying that “keeping our communities safe from gun violence is among the [Justice] Department’s highest priorities.”

This despite receiving nearly a quarter of a million negative comments from citizens during the open public-response period prior to the rule becoming effective. This despite a letter from the Senate Republican Caucus telling Garland that the new rule, if he signed it, “would turn millions of law-abiding Americans into criminals overnight, and would constitute the largest Executive branch-imposed gun registration and confiscation scheme in American history.”

Nevertheless, Garland signed the rule change, triggering numerous lawsuits and other forms of resistance.

The first lawsuit to be filed against the ATF came from the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, Inc. — Britto v. ATF — filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. It made it clear just how the ATF violated the law:

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (“ATF”) has issued a rule reclassifying pistols with stabilizing braces (which are designed and intended to be attached to the user’s forearm) as short-barreled rifles (which are, by contrast, designed and intended to be fired from the shoulder).

 

ATF made this change without legal authority and despite previously and repeatedly concluding just the opposite….

 

ATF’s actions are unlawful.

 

The new rule unlawfully usurps Congressional authority by significantly expanding the definition of “rifle” under federal law and, with it, imposes potential criminal liability on millions of Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights.

 

Such a dramatic seizure of legislative authority violates not only the Administrative Procedures Act, but the separation of powers … and the “fundamental right” to keep and bear arms.

The second lawsuit to be filed is Mock v. Garland, brought by the Firearms Policy Coalition and also presented to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. It not only challenges the ATF for violating the APA — the Administrative Procedures Act — and the Constitution, it also challenges, for the first time in decades, the constitutionality of the National Firearms Act of 1934 itself:

Even if the Final Rule does not violate the APA and is allowed to stand, the Agencies’ National Firearms Act (“NFA”) … laws, regulations, policies, and enforcement practices with respect to “braced pistols” that the Agencies’ [sic] have classified as “short-barreled rifles” violate the Second Amendment.

Right behind these court filings is the assurance by the Arkansas Sheriffs’ Association (ASA) that its members won’t assist federal agents seeking to enforce this unconstitutional abridgement in their state.

In 2021, Arkansas, anticipating the coming tyranny by the ATF and the federal government, passed its nullification law, Act 1012, under which

All acts, laws, orders, rules, and regulations of the United States Government that were enacted on or after January 1, 2021, that infringe on the people’s right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution and Arkansas Constitution, Article 2, § 5, are invalid in this state, shall not be recognized by this state, are specifically rejected by this state, and shall be considered null and void and of no effect in this state.

Wrote the ASA’s director, Scott Bradley:

We do not support assisting the federal government in any way in the enforcing of this offensive affront to the rights of law-abiding citizens of the State of Arkansas.

 

Criminals don’t obey the law, and when rules like this are put in place, they seek only to criminalize otherwise law-abiding citizens.

The ATF is going to have some heavy lifting to do to overcome not only these lawsuits and citizens’ and sheriffs’ resistance, but legal precedents as well. There’s Cargill v. Garland, which ruled in a nearly identical case concerning the ATF in which the agency declared that bump stocks turned rifles into machine guns:

The definition of “machinegun” as set forth in the National Firearms Act [1934] and Gun Control Act [1968] does not apply to bump stocks.

And then there’s the Bruen decision — New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen — in which the Supreme Court ruled:

When the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct [here the right to bear arms], the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct.

 

The government [including the ATF] must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only then may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s “unqualified command.”

Although Cargill took five years to litigate, it is more than likely that one of the courts accepting these lawsuits will issue a temporary restraining order against the ATF while the issue is being heard.

Colorado Baker Targeted Again by Anti-Christian Left

Monday, 30 January 2023 12:38
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 30, 2023:  

In its ruling in another lawsuit against Colorado baker Jack Phillips, the Colorado Court of Appeals last Thursday said its decision wasn’t biased against him just because he is a Christian:

These proceedings were not marked by any hostility toward Masterpiece [his bakery design business] or Phillips, or by a desire to punish or target them based on their religious views.

Of course they weren’t. Ignore the fact that two of the three judges ruling unanimously against Phillips had been appointed by far-left Governor Jared Polis, who is “married” to a man, and the third by Governor John Hickenlooper who, while a senator, racked up a treasonous Freedom Index score of 5 out of 100. This reflects Hickenlooper’s complete and utter disregard for any constitutional limitations on governmental power, especially in the realm of free speech and the free exercise of religion.

The entire lawsuit was a setup from the beginning.

Following a modest victory for the baker in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (where the Supreme Court decided in June 2018 that the “civil rights” commission had so grievously expressed its anti-Christian and anti-religious zeal that they ruled, 7-2, against the commission and in favor of Phillips), a queer lawyer from Denver asked Phillips to make a cake celebrating his transition from a man to a woman. He wanted Phillips to create a custom-designed cake that would be pink (female) on the inside and (blue) male on the outside.

The call was made the very same day that the high court agreed to hear Phillips’ case. And just to make sure that Phillips — and every other Christian wishing to enjoy his First Amendment rights — got the message, the queer mouthpiece for the commission called back to ask Phillips to make another cake depicting Satan smoking marijuana. The man/woman interposer said he/she wanted to “correct the errors of [Phillips’] thinking.”

The attorney filed a complaint with the commission, which was prepared to go after Phillips again until the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) informed them that if they did, the ADF was prepared, once again, to defend Phillips.

When the commission decided to back away and settle (details undisclosed), the queer attorney filed suit in state court. The state court ruled against Phillips (surprise!), declaring that “the act of baking a pink cake with blue frosting does not constitute protected speech under the First Amendment.”

In its press release following the state court’s ruling against Phillips, the ADF announced that it will appeal once again to the high court. This time the high court will have a second chance to rule in favor of Phillips’ First Amendment right, which they avoided in their earlier ruling.

The ADF is also defending Denver business owner and website designer Lorie Smith, owner of 303 Creative, over the same issue. That issue, according to the ADF, is whether elected government officials or unelected bureaucrats, as is the case with Colorado’s civil rights commission, have the power to inhibit individuals’ God-given rights to worship Him as they so desire and run their businesses accordingly.

The ADF, with all due respect, misses the point. The anti-religion, anti-Christian Left doesn’t care whether Phillips makes a blue and pink cake, or whether Lorie Smith designs a website celebrating an event that violates her religious beliefs. What they do care deeply about is that the message is delivered: Thou shalt not express Christian beliefs in the public square. Anyone who does so will be subjected to the same torments of hell being visited upon Phillips and Smith.

Another Win for the Second Amendment, This Time in Tennessee

Thursday, 26 January 2023 14:05
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, January 26, 2023:  

When Tennessee legislators ended the requirement for most adults to get permission to carry a concealed handgun in 2021, they neatly excluded anyone between the ages of 18 and 21. Three such people, with the legal assistance of the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), filed suit.

Claiming their rights were being violated under the Supreme Court’s ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), they stated:

This is an action to uphold the right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. This right “guarantee(s) the individual right to possess and carry” firearms.

They further claimed their rights were being violated under the high court’s ruling in 2010’s McDonald v. City of Chicago, which confirmed that the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment are “among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty.”

The complaint argued that at 18 years of age a citizen of Tennessee is considered an adult “for almost all purposes … yet the state bans such persons from carrying a loaded handgun in public for self-defense.”

While never specifically mentioning the ruling by the high court in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, the complaint took special pains to remind the district court where the complaint was filed that any “government must … justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

Accordingly, the complaint explained:

Throughout American history, arms carrying was a right available to all peaceable citizens. Sometimes it was even a duty….

 

Moreover, young adults between 18 and 21 were fully protected by the Second Amendment at the time of its ratification. Hundreds of statutes from the colonial and founding eras not only permitted but required 18-to-20-year-olds to keep and bear arms.

The complaint alluded indirectly to the Bruen decision in its summary of the complaint against Tennessee:

Thus, these laws … prohibit Plaintiffs … from carrying loaded handguns in any place … in direct violation of the Second and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution under the authorities of Heller and McDonald and their progeny. [Emphasis added.]

These arguments were so persuasive that on January 23 attorneys for the state of Tennessee came to favorable terms with the plaintiffs and the court issued an “Agreed Order” restoring the rights that were violated and keeping the state from enforcing the unconstitutional law. The state must also start issuing concealed carry permits to those aged 18 to 21, and pay almost $50,000 in legal fees to the FPC.

The Agreed Order stated:

The Challenged Scheme regulating the possession and carrying of handguns that restricts individuals 18 years old to 20 years old from carrying handguns or obtaining permits to carry handguns on the basis of age alone violates the Second and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.

The takeaway here is the growing influence of the Bruen decision in restoring full constitutional rights to American citizens that have been deliberately eroded over time by anti-gun politicians and judges. As Jake Fogleman, writing for The Reload, noted: “The [agreed] order adds to the growing list of legal decisions finding special restrictions on the gun rights of otherwise law-abiding adults under 21 to violate the Second Amendment.”

In December the state of Texas withdrew its attempt to ban the carrying of handguns by adults under the age of 21, and in January an Illinois judge issued a temporary restraining order against the state’s ban on “assault weapons” and “high-capacity” magazines.

The Bruen decision is keeping the lawyers at the Firearms Policy Coalition very busy: They have filed suit in Oregon over its gun control law and in Delaware over its “assault weapons” ban, and are participating in more than 70 similar cases across the country.

All of this emanates from the actions of the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump, who kept his promise to nominate “originalists” to the Supreme Court. The reverberations flowing from his promise kept are continuing and accelerating in the long war against the private ownership of firearms in a constitutional republic.

WH Press Secretary Repeats Lie That the Clinton Assault Weapons Ban Reduced Gun Violence

Wednesday, 25 January 2023 20:58
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, January 25, 2023:  

Like clockwork following the California shootings, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre once again rolled out the canard that the Clinton-era assault weapons ban (the “Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act”) measurably reduced gun violence and therefore, by implication, it should be reinstated:

The last time we had an assault weapons ban on the books [1994-2003], thanks to the President [Biden was a senator then] and Senator [Dianne] Feinstein’s [D-Calif.] leadership, mass shootings actually went down.

She failed to note that the attackers in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay used pistols and not rifles to commit their mayhem.

Biden himself repeated the lie back in March 2021 following another mass shooting:

We can ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in this country once again.

 

I got that done when I was a senator. It passed. It was law for the longest time, and it brought down these mass killings. We should do it again.

In 2004 Christopher Koper, then a research criminologist at the University of Pennsylvania, issued his third and final report on the results of the ban on gun violence and mass shootings. The document, “Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003,” is available to the public and can be accessed here.

Said Koper:

We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence….

 

What we found in these studies was that the ban had mixed effects in reducing crimes with the banned weaponry … as a result, the ban did not appear to affect gun violence during the time it was in effect.

Koper warned that if the Clinton ban were reenacted, the reduction in gun violence would likely be too small to measure:

Should it be renewed, the ban might reduce gunshot victimizations. This effect is likely to be small at best and possibly too small for reliable measurement.

He concluded:

By most estimates, AWs [automatic weapons] were used in less than 6% of gun crimes even before the ban.

 

[Our research] suggests that the ban’s impact on gun violence is likely to be small.

Since Koper’s study was completed in 2004, any gradual reduction in gun violence that could be reliably traced to the ban’s impact would certainly have been noted in subsequent studies.

There have been none. But the lie that the ban reduced gun violence continues to be mouthed by politicians eager to remove firearms from private owners.

Many of the articles on Light from the Right first appeared on either The New American or the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor.
Copyright © 2021 Bob Adelmann