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: History

Politicians’ Canards Promoting Passage of Assault Weapons Ban

Monday, 08 August 2022 16:27
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, August 8, 2022:  

Hoping to ride the momentum from passage of the first major anti-gun legislation in 30 years — the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act — Joe Biden and various anti-gun politicians are pushing the Senate to pass another anti-gun House bill, this one banning all “assault” weapons.

And they’re using the same lies and exaggerations.

Said Biden in July:

Assault weapons need to be banned.

 

They were banned. I led the fight in 1994.

 

And then, under pressure from the NRA [National Rifle Association] and the gun manufacturers and others, that ban was lifted in 2004.

We won’t waste readers’ time correcting the errors in this statement, but instead will focus on what he said next:

In the 10 years it was law, mass shootings went down.

 

But after Republicans let the law expire in 2004 and those weapons were allowed to be sold again, mass shootings tripled.

 

Those are the facts.

This was echoed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “We know that an assault weapons ban can work because it has worked before.… we witnessed gun crime with assault weapons drop by up to 40 percent.”

Lawrence Keane, senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Federation, told The Epoch Times:

Supporters of the bans are calling their assertions “facts,” in an effort to mislead the public. Many of the Democratic Members of Congress were purposefully misleading in their assertions that the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban reduced crime.

 

This level of willful ignorance would be comical if … what they are trying to do wasn’t so blatantly unconstitutional.

John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, agreed: “The number of murders with rifles actually increased slightly when the ban went into effect.” He pointed out that the percentage of all firearm-related murders with any type of rifle was 4.8 percent prior to the ban, and remained essentially constant during the ban. After the ban expired in 2004, rifle homicides dropped to 3.6 percent of all gun-related homicides.

Reuters reported that Biden, Pelosi, and other opponents of the Second Amendment used a 2021 study from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine to promote the bill. When this writer attempted to obtain a copy of that study, however, he found that it was not readily available to the public.

However, in its summary review of the study the university provided this highly revealing disclaimer about the study’s results:

In conclusion, with a few exceptions, there is a surprisingly limited base of rigorous scientific evidence concerning the effects of many commonly discussed gun policies. This does not mean that these policies are ineffective; they might well be quite effective. Instead, it reflects shortcomings in the contributions that scientific study can currently offer to policy debates in these areas….

 

[N]one of the policies we examined would dramatically increase or decrease the stock of guns or gun ownership rates in ways that would produce more readily detectable effects on public safety, health, and industry outcomes.

 

The United States has a large stock of privately owned guns in circulation—estimated in 2014 to be somewhere between 200 million and 300 million firearms (Cook and Goss, 2014).

 

Laws designed to change who may buy new weapons, what weapons they may buy, or how gun sales occur will predictably have only a small effect on … homicides … which are affected much more by the existing stock of firearms.

Let’s recap: this study is one that House Speaker Pelosi and others used to promote the bill that is now headed to the Senate. But other studies are much clearer: The 10-year ban on semi-automatic rifles didn’t reduce gun violence by any scientifically measurable amount.

In fact, in 2013, after reviewing all the available data, FactCheck (funded by the left-wing Annenberg Foundation) noted that it is “premature to make definitive assessments of the ban’s impact on gun crime.”

Research done by Criminology & Public Policy in 2019 found that the ban “didn’t appear to have much of an effect on the number of mass shootings.” The group reported a year later, in January 2020, that such bans “do not seem associated with the incidence of fatal mass shootings.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said its own studies on the issue were “inconsistent” and concluded that “evidence was insufficient to determine the effectiveness of the 1994 ban.”

The Congressional Research Service concurred: “Public mass shootings account for few of the murders … related to firearms that occur annually in the United States.”

And so, when someone like Biden or Pelosi, or even hard-left Democratic Representative Lloyd Doggett representing Austin, Texas (who sports an “F” rating from the NRA), spouts off with something like this:

[Assault weapons are] easier for a teenager to get than to buy a beer. We’ve turned our churches, our schools, our shopping centers, our entertainment venues, almost any place into a battleground with one massacre after another…

then we know he’s making it up out of whole cloth, and he likely knows it. Such fabrications hide the true intent: these bills have nothing to do with gun control, but everything to do with people control.

Forbes notes that the most recent bill has little chance in the Senate, where Democrats would need 10 Republican defectors to gain the 60 votes needed for passage.

Christian Flag Will Fly Tomorrow in Boston

Tuesday, 02 August 2022 20:23
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, August 2, 2022:  

Following the unanimous Supreme Court ruling in Shurtleff v. City of Boston, Camp Constitution will fly its Christian flag on one of the three flagpoles outside Boston City Hall on Wednesday morning.

It will be the last time any such flag will fly there, as Boston has changed its rules, thanks to the Supreme Court decision.

The implications are immense, and reach further than many expected. The city declined Camp Constitution’s initial request five years ago for fear that it would somehow violate the faux “separation of church and state” mantra adopted by anti-Christian forces.

Simply put, the faux reasoning is based on a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to a religious group. There was no other basis for thinking that the Founders meant to keep Christianity from having an influence in American culture. There is no phrase “separation of church and state” in the Constitution, nor can it be found elsewhere in America’s founding documents.

The Supreme Court, however, ruled that Boston’s defense was faulty, and that the city violated Camp Constitution’s right to free speech when it denied its request to fly the Christian flag from that flagpole five years ago.

The ruling forced Boston to change its rules. It is also forcing numerous towns, cities, and municipalities to reconsider their own rules, in favor of free speech, and away from concerns over violating the nebulous but dangerous “separation of church and state” thought to be part of the Constitution.

Since 1971, the Supreme Court used something called the “Lemon Test” to handle the cases that came their way: the government (local, state, or federal) violated the Constitution unless it met the Lemon Test criteria:

  1. Did it have a secular, or non-religious, purpose?;
  2. Did it advance or inhibit a religion?;
  3. Did it promote an “extreme entanglement” with religion on the government’s part?

As Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in his concurrence in Shurtleff:

This dispute arose only because of a government official’s mistaken understanding of the Establishment Clause.

 

A Boston official believed that the City would violate the Establishment Clause if it allowed a religious flag to briefly fly outside of City Hall as part of the flag-raising program that the City had opened to the public.

 

So Boston granted requests to fly a variety of secular flags, but denied a request to fly a religious flag.

 

As this Court has repeatedly made clear, however, a government does not violate the Establishment Clause merely because it treats religious persons, organizations, and speech equally with secular persons, organizations, and speech in public programs, benefits, facilities, and the like.

 

On the contrary, a government violates the Constitution when (as here) it excludes religious persons, organizations, or speech because of religion from public programs, benefits, facilities, and the like.

 

Under the Constitution, a government may not treat religious persons, religious organizations, or religious speech as second-class.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, in his concurring opinion, made it even clearer:

Lemon sought to devise a one-size-fits-all test for resolving Establishment Clause disputes. That project bypassed any inquiry into the Clause’s original meaning. It ignored longstanding precedents. And instead of bringing clarity to the area, Lemon produced only chaos.

 

In time, this Court came to recognize these problems, abandoned Lemon, and returned to a more humble jurisprudence centered on the Constitution’s original meaning.

 

Yet in this case, the city chose to follow Lemon anyway. It proved a costly decision, and Boston’s travails supply a cautionary tale for other localities and lower courts.

The attack on Christianity continues, despite the high court’s shift to originalism. Wrote Gorsuch:

This is why some still invoke Lemon today. It reflects poorly on us all.

 

Through history, the suppression of unpopular religious speech and exercise has been among the favorite tools of petty tyrants.

 

Our forebears resolved that this Nation would be different. Here, they resolved, each individual would enjoy the right to make sense of his relationship with the divine, speak freely about man’s place in creation, and have his religious practices treated with respect.

The day governments in this country forage for ways to abandon these foundational promises is a dark day for the cause of individual freedom.

The high court has abandoned the Lemon test, to the benefit of all who cherish religious freedom. In recent cases it ruled that a football coach shouldn’t have lost his job merely because he prayed on the football field after a game. It also ruled that religious schools in Maine must be allowed to participate in the state’s voucher system.

The “separation of church and state” canard, promoted for so long by so many opposed to the impact Christianity has on American culture, is now on the wane at the highest court in the land.

And all because of its return to “originalism” — restoring the understanding of the Constitution as its writers originally intended. That’s what makes tomorrow’s flag raising in Boston so important.

Constitutionalist Judge Stands Up to Unconstitutional Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Thursday, 14 July 2022 14:08
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, July 14, 2022:  

A federal judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan wrote in a recent opinion that the illegitimate brainchild of far-left Senator Elizabeth Warren has been operating unconstitutionally since it was created back in 2009.

Called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the rogue agency created in response to the 2008 financial crisis has been writing its own rules, interpreting them, and then prosecuting any miscreants they can find based on those rules — all without executive or legislative oversight and just as Warren originally proposed back in 2007.

Federal Judge Edith H. Jones, circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, wrote an opinion in Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. All American Check Cashing, Inc. intending to stop it in its tracks.

The CFPB charged All American with trying “to keep consumers from learning how much they would be charged to cash a check” along with other alleged violations of its self-written rules. Instead of folding and paying a fine, All American sued.

All American claimed that the CFPB is unconstitutional because it has no accountability. It claimed that it is, in effect, a rogue agency, violating the separation of powers doctrine intrinsic to the Constitution.

When a district court sided with the CFPB, All American appealed to the Fifth Circuit. Jones put the matter well:

[The] separation of powers [doctrine] is at the heart of our constitutional government in order to preserve the people’s liberty and the federal government’s accountability to the people….

 

Created in 2009, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is an administrative agency that was expressly designed to answer to neither of the politically accountable branches.

 

Unlike other agencies, Congress put the CFPB’s staggering amalgam of legislative, judicial, and executive power in the hands of a single Director serving a five-year term and removable by the President only for cause; and Congress insulated the agency from the ordinary congressional appropriations process….

 

I write to show that the CFPB’s budgetary independence is antithetical to the constitutional origins of the Appropriations Clause; contrary to the Constitution’s structural allocation of powers; unsupported by the funding structure of any previous federal agency; and indefensible by the CFPB.

It’s all about the money. The Founders deliberately and intentionally placed the “power of the purse” in the hands of the legislative branch of the federal government. If the executive branch wanted to spend some money it had to get permission from the legislative branch first.

Explained Jones:

All American argues that the CFPB’s budgetary independence contravenes the Constitution’s separation of powers by violating the principles enshrined in the Appropriations Clause.

 

All American emphasizes that the Framers, drawing from British experience, crafted the Appropriations Clause because they well understood the importance of exclusively vesting the legislative branch with the power of the purse as a check on the executive.

 

Congress ran afoul of that foundational principle “by abdicating its exclusive power of the purse and insulating the CFPB from congressional oversight with an unprecedented two layers of fiscal independence.”

She meant that by following Warren’s design Congress placed the CFPB outside of executive control, making it a part of the Federal Reserve and allowing the CFPB to access funds directly from the Fed whenever it “reasonably” needed them. The bureau with its 1,600 employees lives inside the Federal Reserve’s offices in Washington, D.C.

Jones said the insulation of the CFPB from executive or legislative oversight, constraint, or control, was a violation of the Founders’ intent:

It is not mere happenstance that Congress is the chief guardian of the purse strings. Drawing on the British experience, the Framers placed the national government’s fiscal powers in Congress’s hands to check the propensity for aggrandizement and consequent loss of liberty endemic to a powerful executive branch. The CFPB’s budgetary independence violates this essential maxim of separated powers….

 

Importantly, the CFPB’s funding structure is wholly unprecedented. No executive agency with broad legislative, adjudicative, and law-enforcement powers has ever enjoyed complete funding independence….

 

A feature so subversive to the Constitution’s separation of powers as the CFPB’s budgetary independence cannot withstand scrutiny.

She quoted from James Madison’s The Federalist, No. 51 to buttress her position:

The CFPB’s budgetary independence makes it unaccountable to Congress and the people.

 

An agency that wields vast amounts of executive, legislative, and adjudicatory power and is completely unaccountable to Congress is inimical to the Constitution’s structural checks and balances.

 

The Framers created a federal system and divided the national government’s power among three branches to disperse power and preserve individual liberty.

 

But a mere parchment barrier would not guarantee individual liberty.

 

To prevent the “gradual concentration of the several [governmental] powers in the same” branch, the Framers armed each one with “the necessary constitutional means, and personal motives, to resist encroachments of the others”; the idea being to let “[a]mbition … counteract ambition.”

That “ambition” Madison warned about has revealed itself in the person presently running the rogue agency, Rohit Chopra. In a recent speech Chopra said his agency, in addition to levying fines, would move to cap the size of growth of firms violating his rules; ban certain types of business product lines; require divestitures of certain product lines; put limitations on their ability to raise equity capital; and even revoke a company’s government-approved patents or registration.

Chopra has so overreached that even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has launched a campaign to rein him in. Said Neil Bradley, the Chamber’s chief policy officer,

Rohit Chopra has an outsized view of the CFPB’s role and the Director’s power. By willfully mischaracterizing the state of competition in the market Chopra is laying the groundwork to force the financial services sector to comport with his personal vision of the appropriate size of companies and what products and services should be offered and under what conditions. No previous CFPB Director has thought they had such power.

Exactly. Removing from sinful man the restraints that the Founders wisely placed has led to such overreach.

If the CFPB appeals to the Supreme Court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh et al. are waiting for them. In the fall of 2016, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the then-current director had overreached, with Judge Brett Kavanaugh, one of the three, writing:

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.

Kavanaugh went further, adding:

The independent agencies collectively constitute, in effect, a headless fourth branch of the U.S. Government…. Because of their massive power and the absence of Presidential supervision and direction, independent agencies pose a significant threat to individual liberty and to the constitutional system of separation of powers and checks and balances.

Now that a majority of justices on the Supreme Court are originalists like Jones, the CFPB would risk extinction if they appeal.

Judge Edith Jones concluded her opinion:

The CFPB’s double insulation from Article I appropriations oversight mocks the Constitution’s separation of powers by enabling an executive agency to live on its own in a kingly fashion.

 

The Framers warned that such an accumulation of powers in a single branch of government would inevitably lead to tyranny.

 

Accordingly, I would reject the CFPB’s novel funding mechanism as contravening the Constitution’s separation of powers.

 

And because the CFPB funds the instant prosecution using unconstitutional self-funding, I would dismiss the lawsuit.

Football Coach Has First Amendment Right to Pray, Rules the Supreme Court

Tuesday, 28 June 2022 17:18
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, June 28, 2022:  

In its ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District released on Monday, the Supreme Court not only upheld the First Amendment’s guarantee of the right to free speech and the exercise of religion, but it also challenged, for the first time, the canard that the Establishment Clause creates the illusion of “separation of church and state.”

Bremerton School District bought the canard and refused to renew football coach Joe Kennedy’s contract when he persisted in praying on the 50-yard line at the conclusion of each game. The district thought it was avoiding a lawsuit.

Instead it brought on an eight-year-long series of lawsuits that could have been avoided if the district had simply issued a statement that Kennedy wasn’t speaking for the school when he prayed.

Supreme Court Justice Neal Gorsuch reamed the district for not only punishing Kennedy by not renewing his contract, but for deliberately and intentionally making his religious expression its target.

Wrote Gorsuch:

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.

At issue was Kennedy’s kneeling and praying in public view after each game. This was, in the district’s view, a violation of the separation of church and state. Such view has been pushed for decades, using Thomas Jefferson’s private letter to the Danbury Baptists as the battering ram to remove all religious expression from the culture.

Gorsuch explained:

The contested exercise here does not involve leading prayers with the team; the District disciplined Mr. Kennedy only for his decision to persist in praying quietly without his students after three games in October 2015.

 

In forbidding Mr. Kennedy’s brief prayer, the District’s challenged policies were neither neutral nor generally applicable.

 

By its own admission, the District sought to restrict Mr. Kennedy’s actions at least in part because of their religious character.

 

Prohibiting a religious practice was thus the District’s unquestioned “object.”

Gorsuch concluded:

Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic.

 

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. [Emphasis added]

 

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.

Nowhere in the 75-page ruling does the phrase “separation of church and state” appear. But Rachel Laser, the president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which represented Bremerton, saw the threat clearly enough. In anticipation of the ruling Laser said:

[I]f we lose this case, it would be a radical departure from decades of well-established law protecting students’ religious freedom.

 

We think it would open the door that could be kicked in, in particular in this climate where there’s a real escalation in religious extremists across our country, to allow teachers and coaches to be able to pray again and pressure students to pray in school.

Without this writer commenting on her claim of the “real escalation of religious extremists” except to say that it is highly welcome and timely, Gorsuch answered her charge that those former freedoms to pray in school might be in jeopardy in future court rulings: “That the First Amendment doubly protects religious speech is no accident. It is the natural outgrowth of the framers’ distrust of government attempts to regulate religion and suppress dissent.”

As for Coach Kennedy, it has been a long and difficult eight years. But in his letter to Fox News, he wrote:

No one should be fired from their job just because [he or she] can be seen engaged in private prayer….

 

I hope [the ruling] means that our public school teachers and coaches don’t have to hide their faith from view….

 

Win or lose, when the whistle blows and everyone shakes hands, you’ll find me at the 50-yard line on a knee in private prayer.

Supreme Court Rules Maine’s Discrimination Against Religious Schools Unconstitutional

Wednesday, 22 June 2022 15:49
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, June 22, 2022: 

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that Maine’s practice of forbidding parents from choosing religious schooling for their children when paid for with public funds is unconstitutional. Wrote Chief Justice John Roberts for the majority:

Maine’s “nonsectarian” requirement for its otherwise generally available tuition assistance payments violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

 

Regardless of how the benefit and restriction are described, the program operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise.

Some 5,000 of Maine’s 180,000 school-age children live in areas where there is no public school. The state has for decades offered tuition assistance to them, allowing their parents to select a nearby school — school choice, in other words — for their kids.

For years, the state has prohibited those parents from selecting a school that teaches religious values. The parents of children discriminated against brought suit — Carson v. Makin — claiming discrimination under the First Amendment.

Having lost their case in lower courts, the parents appealed to the Supreme Court. It took the case, heard the oral arguments in January, and reversed lower courts in their ruling.

While this appears to be a minor skirmish in the war against religion, it is fraught with great significance in the overall battle. For years Thomas Jefferson’s infamous letter to the Danbury Baptists, in which he used the phrase “separation of church and state,” has been used as a hammer by atheists and socialists to discriminate against and ultimately abolish all religious influence in the culture.

In explaining the historic importance of a proper understanding of the Founding Fathers’ intentions, Wallbuilders’ David Barton noted, “The First Amendment was intended to keep government out of regulating religion, but it did not keep religion out of government or the public square.”

In the 6-3 decision Justice Sonia Sotomayor recognized immediately the threat of such high court decisions to remove that hammer from atheists and socialists, falsely claiming, “This Court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers sought to build.”

The Wall Street Journal decried the decision, recognizing that threat, referring to the decision as “the latest … by a conservative majority [who are] skeptical of precedents that draw a bright line between church and state.”

The Journal is referring to two recent high court decisions that reflect the Founders’ original intent, including Trinity Lutheran v. Comer and Espinoza v. Montana Dept. of Revenue.

In Trinity Lutheran, money granted by the state of Missouri for playground resurfacing excluded those owned or controlled by a church. Writing for the majority in that case, Chief Justice Roberts said:

The exclusion of Trinity Lutheran from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution … and cannot stand.

In Espinoza, Roberts wrote again for the majority:

A State need not subsidize private education. But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.

Jeffrey Toobin, CNN’s legal analyst, saw the mounting threat to the Left’s continuous and deliberate misinterpretation of Jefferson’s phrase, claiming on Twitter that “’Separation of church and state’ is a vanishing concept at the Supreme Court.”

The ACLU also recognized the continuing threat to the false narrative by declaring that “The Supreme Court’s decision today undermines our Constitution’s promise of separation between government and religion.”

Of course, as Barton pointed out, “The phrase ‘separation of Church and State’ cannot be found in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. In fact, it is not found in any of our nation’s founding documents.”

The most egregious attempt to reframe yesterday’s decision came from American Atheists’ attorney Geoffrey Blackwell:

With this decision, the Supreme Court has betrayed our nation’s founding principle that the government should not fund religion, including a religion like Christianity.

 

This court is destroying the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, which protects all Americans — especially atheists and members of minority religions.

Other officials with American Atheists expanded on what they perceived as a threat to the Founders’ intentions. Alison Gill, AA vice president, said:

The religious conservative majority on the Supreme Court is intent on placing the interests of Christians above all others, including individuals’ fundamental rights.

 

These justices will keep working at breakneck speed to undermine nondiscrimination protections, replace public education with a discriminatory religious “education,” and force Americans to fund conservative Christianity and other religions. This will harm countless Americans, especially children.

Of course, a proper reading of the Founders’ original intent reveals no such thing. But the rant from AA by its president, Nick Fish, continued the group’s fabrication:

Extremists are weakening our democracy. Calls to reform and expand the Court to limit the impact of its dangerous Christian nationalist wing will only grow louder, as the Supreme Court tries to establish what can only be described as a theocracy.

Fish did get one part correct:

Today’s decision is appalling, but it isn’t the first and it won’t be the last.

As the war against the nation’s culture includes an attack on its religious freedom, yesterday’s proper ruling in Carson v. Makin is comforting.

Sports Illustrated: SCOTUS Ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District Will Unleash “White Christian Nationalism”

Tuesday, 14 June 2022 14:39
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This article was published by TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, June 14, 2022:  

Days before the Supreme Court is likely to issue its ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, Sports Illustrated offered its criticism of it in advance. After reviewing “more than 1,000 pages of documents related to the lawsuit and [having] met several times … with [football coach Joseph] Kennedy and his legal team,” author Greg Bishop was ready to make his own ruling in the case: If the high court rules in favor of Kennedy, that ruling will be “a sledgehammer aimed at a bedrock of democracy: the separation of church and state.”

Even worse, such a decision will unleash a wave of “white Christian nationalism” on the nation. Wrote Bishop, “They believe America was created by a preeminence of people like themselves [“white Christian slavers”] and should always have laws in place that reflect America’s origins.”

He quoted Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which represents Bremerton: “That’s what this case is about.… [it’s] a movement that is so determined they are not willing to stop. They are willing to destroy our democracy to achieve their ends.”

She claims that those groups supporting Kennedy through amicus briefs represent a “who’s who of religious extremists in this country.”

It’s all part of a master plan, wrote Bishop, to “redefine church and state.” Previous court rulings prohibiting the teaching of creationism and prayer in schools are likely to be threatened as part of that master plan. Under recent rulings “God,” he complained, “can remain in the Pledge of Allegiance … the federal government can give money to faith-based schools, and … religious groups can discriminate based on their beliefs when hiring.”

“It’s really,” wrote Bishop, “whether church and state should be separated — and where that line of separation should be drawn. Or redrawn. Or removed.”

Kennedy himself is the unlikely “hero” in the drama. For seven years he coached Bremerton High School’s JV football team and helped with the varsity. For years he prayed by himself after each game on the 50-yard-line.

And for seven years, nobody minded. Nobody said anything. Nobody sued. Nobody even threatened to sue.

But when a school administrator paid a public compliment to how the coach was positively impacting the lives of his players, the school board told Kennedy to stop. When he didn’t, the board decided not to renew his contract.

In 2015, he sued to get his job back. That’s when First Liberty entered the fray. Since then, the lawsuit wended its way through the judicial system until it finally was taken on appeal by the Supreme Court in January.

Oral arguments were heard in April and the ruling is expected at any moment.

The ruling is likely to disappoint Bishop. The court has limited itself to answering just two questions:

(1) Whether a public-school employee who says a brief, quiet prayer by himself while at school and visible to students is engaged in government speech that lacks any First Amendment protection; and

(2) Whether, assuming that such religious expression is private and protected by the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses, the Establishment Clause nevertheless compels public schools to prohibit it.

The high court will not visit the issue of the alleged “separation of church and state.” David Barton, founder of Wallbuilders, clarifies that issue:

The early colonists who came to America … made sure that the government, or the State, could not control or limit religious beliefs or activities. This was their understanding of the separation of Church and State….

 

The phrase “separation of Church and State” cannot be found in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. In fact, it is not found in any of our nation’s founding documents. Related to government, the phrase first appeared in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut in 1801….

 

The Danbury Baptists wrote Thomas Jefferson expressing their concern that the government might try to regulate their religious expression. In response, Jefferson wrote his now famous letter, using the phrase “Separation of Church and State” to reassure the Danbury Baptists that the First Amendment prohibited the government from trying to control religious expression.

 

In short, the First Amendment was intended to keep government out of regulating religion, but it did not keep religion out of government or the public square.

That is what frightens Bishop and groups such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Supreme Court originalists may some day restore the original understanding of the relationship between church and state, demanding that tyrants and atheists cease using the government to regulate religion into oblivion via an intentional misreading of Jefferson’s phrase.

Exposing the Counterfeit Theology of Progressive Christianity

Thursday, 02 June 2022 14:30
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, June 2, 2022:  

Franklin Graham, President and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and of Samaritan’s Purse, took on the deceptive progressive theology posing as Christianity in an article published on Wednesday at Decision magazine. He called it “the Eternal Peril,” accurately portraying it as Satan’s lie dating from the serpent’s confrontation with Eve in the Garden of Eden.

The lie, he wrote, “has cropped up in the halls of seminaries, infiltrated the pulpits of thousands of churches, and been propagated by a godless liberal media. It is bent on casting doubt and undermining the foundational principles of God’s Word.”

The counterfeit theology attacks the basic foundational structure of Biblical Christianity at every point, seeking to destroy it and then replace it with a man-centered worldview. On gender identity, Graham writes:

Although Scripture clearly says that marriage is between one man and one woman, proponents of progressive Christianity twist and distort the truth of God’s Word on sexuality, focusing on such nonsensical trends as gender identity.

 

They deny God’s distinction of the sexes, and instead invent their own misguided standards, unguided by the Word of God.

Progressive Christianity rejects God’s plan and replaces it by affirming same-sex marriage. It accepts the use of pornography, one-night stands, and same-sex encounters — virtually any sexual activity as long as it reflects a “concern for each other’s flourishing,” according to promoter Nadia Bolz-Weber.

It accepts Satan’s assurance to Adam and Even in the garden:

“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” — Genesis 3:4-5

The fruit was enticing, the promise was enthralling, and the invitation to assert her own independence from God was overwhelming. Her sin was not in itself eating the fruit of the tree; it was her decision to deny God, His warning, and especially His sovereignty.

When she ate and didn’t immediately die, Adam fell for the lie as well, thus fatally infecting their progeny right up to the present day.

From there, Progressive Christianity goes downhill. The Bible isn’t the infallible Word of God, but merely an ancient travelogue, a wonderful work of literature that reflects only what people believed about Him when the words were written thousands of years ago.

It denies Genesis 1:1 (“In the beginning, God”) and replaces it with the lie of evolution. As progressive authors David Felten and Jeff Procter-Murphy wrote:

Far from being fallen creatures trying to return to a mythical Eden, human beings are emerging as a species from more primal and baser instincts to become more responsible and mature beings.

It denies the deity of Christ as the only son of God, and instead considers Him as just a good example to follow, more of a “big brother” than the Creator of the universe “Who made us, and not we ourselves.” (Psalm 100:3).

It denies the crucifixion’s purpose as the only possible redemption for sinners and instead declares that it reveals God as a monster inflicting unspeakable abuse on His own Son. It asks, as did one proponent: “Who originated the Cross? If God did, then we worship a cosmic abuser, who in Divine Wisdom created a means to torture human beings in the most painful and abhorrent manner.”

It reinterprets the resurrection (which it cannot deny) as an example “to show us,” writes believer Alisa Childers, “how to forgive our enemies by allowing Himself to be crucified by an angry mob.”

It denies the total depravity of man, ignoring Biblical revelations such as these:

  • Man’s heart is “deceitful and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9);
  • Man is “dead in transgressions” (Ephesians 2:5);
  • Man loves sin (John 3:19; John 8:34);
  • And therefore, he will not seek God (Romans 3:10-11);
  • Because he loves the darkness (John 3:19);
  • The depraved lifestyle embraced by Progressive Christianity reflects the gospel of Christ as foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:18);
  • Because it is unable to accept it (Romans 8:7).

The deception of Progressive Christianity is fueled by its attractiveness, seeming to many as an option to the true faith — more acceptable, more likeable, more palatable in an increasingly sinful and declining world. Progressive Christianity is, as Will Vining noted in The Christian Post, is “most deceiving when it looks and feels like the Truth.”

Graham ended his post with this reminder from the apostle Paul’s letter to his protégé, Timothy (2 Timothy 4:2-5):

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.

Liz Cheney Launches Reelection Campaign in the Face of Negative Polling

Monday, 30 May 2022 12:11
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, May 30, 2022:

Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney launched her reelection campaign on Thursday, the same day a pollster showed her down 30 points to her likely primary opponent, Harriet Hageman.

Her quest for a fourth term is likely to be her first step into political oblivion. The Republican primary is on August 16th and will for all intents and purposes end her political career. Even if Wyoming’s “open ballot” rules result in every Democrat in the state changing their party affiliation the day of the election so they can vote in the Republican primary, Cheney is history.

She knows this is the end and yet she insists on not leaving the scene without a noisy exit. Because of her vocal and strident defiance of Donald Trump, House Republicans ousted her from her role as conference chair in May 2021. Up until then she held the Number Three position behind the Republican Minority Leader (Kevin McCarthy) and Republican Minority Whip (Steve Scalise).

Six months later Wyoming’s Republican Party voted to no longer recognize her has a Republican. And yet she continues to campaign as a Republican, hoping, somehow, that enough Democrats and Independents will come to her aid in August to salvage what’s left of her political career.

The poll released on Thursday by the polling firm WPAi (conducted on behalf of the conservative Club for Growth) shows Hageman leading Cheney 56-26, a 30-point advantage for the challenger.

On Saturday former President Donald Trump put his endorsement of Hageman on display before a crowd of thousands in Casper:

Over the next six months the people of Wyoming are going to vote to dump your RINO congresswoman Liz Cheney, and you’re going to send the incredible Harriet Hageman to Congress.

He reminded the crowd that it was Cheney who, touting herself as a Republican, now serves as vice chair of the January 6 investigation committee alongside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Said Trump: “It’s time you finally had a representative who will put America First and who is looking to Make America Great Again.”

Trump called out Cheney for her betrayals:

Worse than the terrible Democrats are the backstabbing RINO Republicans that are helping them do their act. And there is no RINO in America who has thrown in her lot with the radical left more than Liz Cheney….

 

[Cheney is] a lapdog for Pelosi, and a human soundbite machine for CNN and MSNBC.

In her reelection launch video Cheney avoided naming Trump but instead focused on appealing to disaffected Republicans in Wyoming, along with Democrats and Independents:

As we work together to fight for Wyoming, and the issues that matter to us, there are some things you can count on. When I know something is wrong, I will say so. I won’t waver or back down. I won’t surrender to pressure or intimidation. I know where to draw the line.

She wisely avoided mentioning inflation, gas prices, or the Biden administration’s crimps on energy production. After all, Wyoming is the eighth largest energy producing state in the union.

And she just might be using the video to angle a position as a “respectable Republican voice” on one of the major media platforms like CNN, CNBC, or Fox News after she is removed from political life starting August 17.

Biden Disapproval Rating Hits 59 Percent

Friday, 27 May 2022 07:29
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, May 25, 2022:  

The latest poll results from Reuters/IPSO released on Tuesday show Joe Biden’s approval reaching new lows. The pollster reported his approval rating dropping to 36 percent, the lowest of his administration. His approval rating last week was at 42 percent.

Remarkable isn’t that Republicans can’t stand him (at 90-percent disapproval) but that Democrats are losing patience with their man. His approval rating among his loyalists dropped to 72 percent, down four points from the week before, and down nearly 20 points from the start of his term last January.

More remarkable is that the polling favored Democrats, with 456 being asked their opinion while just 358 Republicans were quizzed.

Conclusion: As bad as these results appear, in a fair poll Biden would likely fall closer to a 70-percent disapproval rating.

His cataclysmic collapse shows up in other pro-Dem polls as well. FiveThirtyEight reported a disapproval rating for the man at 54.4 percent on Thursday morning, while Quinnipiac University polls reported a Biden disapproval rating of 57 percent last week.

A day earlier, the AP/NORC Center poll reported a 61-percent disapproval rating for the man in the Oval Office while the NewsNation/Decision Desk HQ poll results released the same time showed a 57-percent disapproval rating.

Even CNN — formerly known as the “Clinton News Network” but now more accurately called the Communist News Network — had to report that their man in the White House is suffering a disapproval rating of 56 percent.

Gallup said the same thing, giving Biden a 54-percent thumbs down rating on Tuesday.

The question isn’t whether voters are giving him a failing rating no matter who asks the question or who answers. The question is, how is this likely to pan out in November?

Biden’s failing is beginning to move the numbers in favor of House Republicans. According to Roll Call, eight House races have moved toward the Republican candidate, even in so-called safe Democrat districts. They include California’s 47th District, Georgia’s 2nd District, Indiana’s 1st District, Nevada’s 1st, 3rd, and 4th Districts, Oregon’s 5th District, and Rhode Island’s 2nd District.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s razor-thin majority is most assuredly going to disappear in the coming November midterms. She has suggested that, at age 82 and after having been in the House since 1987, it’s time for her to retire. The midterm results will give her the excuse she has been waiting for.

 

Trump’s Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn Files $50 Million Damage Claim Against FBI, DOJ

Monday, 23 May 2022 15:29
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, May 23, 2022:  

Retired Gen. Michael Flynn, once briefly President Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor, quietly filed a damage claim against the Department of Justice, FBI, and other federal offices for $50 million in February.

Having heard nothing since, the three-star general exploded on “The Absolute Truth with Emerald Robinson” last week:

I have gone back into the Department of Justice to let them know, to put them on notice, that I am going to sue these people….

 

We are going after these people.

After being given a “pardon of innocence” by then-President Trump in November 2020, Flynn has spent his time speaking at various patriotic events and rallies, including Clay Clark’s “ReAwaken America Tour.”

Flynn’s attorney, Jesse Binnall, has also been busy, gathering and collating the evidence he needed to build Flynn’s case. Not only is the conspiracy against Flynn and Trump laid out in detail in the supplementary pages filed with the damage claim, but Binnall names the individuals who will likely be named in the subsequent lawsuit: FBI Director James Comey, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, CIA Director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and National Security Advisor Susan Rice. Also included in the conspiracy are FBI agents Peter Strzok and his lover, Lisa Page.

The conspiracy began “on or about July 2016,” says the claim, when “the FBI began to express disdain for candidate Donald J. Trump and began to consider ways in which it could hamper Donald Trump as candidate or as President, were he to win the 2016 election.”

The conspiracy grew to include the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the allegedly “independent” Special Counsel’s Office (SCO). It reached the top level of the Obama administration, with approval granted and aided by then-President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden.

Of all of President Trump’s appointees, Flynn was the most hated by the Obama White House . As the Associated Press reported, “Of all the [sic] Trump’s choices, White House officials said it was the selection of Flynn that felt like the most devastating blow, given the immense authority the national security adviser has over matters of war and peace.”

With White House approval and assistance, the conspiracy gained traction:

The Obama White House was in so much “despair” and so distraught by the “devastating blow” of Flynn’s selection as NSA that they calculatingly, and with actual malice and corrupt motives, conspired to and did use the tremendous power of their positions in the Executive Office of the President (and their influence of the DOJ and FBI) to personally oppress and harm Flynn.

 

The outrageous conduct they determined to take, along with the FBI and other allies in the Department of Justice, was executed knowingly, purposely, and in complete disregard of Flynn’s rights.

The Special Counsel’s Office initiated the attack on Flynn:

SCO initiated the prosecution despite knowing that Flynn had not made false statements, and it therefore had no reasonable belief that Flynn had committed the criminal offense and therefore no probable cause….

 

SCO knew that Flynn was innocent of any illegal contacts with any foreign power, and yet it commenced the prosecution of Flynn in accordance with its charter: to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The purpose was pure evil:

These federal employees and officials decided to try to prosecute and damage Flynn anyway, to destroy Flynn professionally, block him from holding a position of influence in the government, thwart President Trump, and potentially get Flynn to turn on Trump.

The SCO was the driving force behind the conspiracy:

The SCO willfully failed to disclose exculpatory evidence [that] includes, but is not limited to, the notes from Strzok and [FBI agent Joe] Pientka that show that the FBI believed that Flynn did not lie to them, and the notes describing the Oval Office meeting wherein Comey stated that Flynn’s calls with [Russian ambassador] Kislyak were “legit” and wherein Vice President Biden suggested using the Logan Act as a basis for prosecuting Flynn.

The SCO knew it was all a lie, and proceeded with the attack on Flynn anyway:

The SCO prosecuted Flynn despite knowing his factual and legal innocence and the abuse of process engaged in during the investigation and prosecution of Flynn, and the FBI continued investigating him even when it knew that he was not a Russian agent.

Flynn’s lawyer added to the damning case with this:

The FBI agents who interviewed Flynn knew that he did not intentionally make any false statements, and yet SCO charged him with intentionally making false statements during that very interview.

 

Further, the FBI certified that it did not believe Flynn was acting as an agent of Russia. Because the SCO prosecuted Flynn when it knew that he was innocent, the SCO had malicious intent.

It got worse: the forces against Flynn threatened his son unless he pleaded guilty:

Further, the SCO and FBI lied to the FISA court, proceeded with an investigation into Flynn’s supposed “Russian ties” when they knew he had none, and threatened his son, Michael Flynn, Jr., with prosecution unless he pled guilty to the §1001 offense [making a false statement].

 

All of these facts and others demonstrate that the SCO and FBI acted with malice in prosecuting Flynn.

The damage claim for $50 million concluded with this:

Flynn was the target of a politically motivated investigation and prosecution that had no merit when it began, no merit during its course, and no merit in the end when the charges were withdrawn by the DOJ and ultimately dismissed by the Court after Flynn received a full pardon.

 

During that meritless and unlawful investigation and prosecution, Flynn was falsely and maliciously painted by the conspirators as a traitor to his nation who acted in concert with a foreign power, and the SCO even threatened Flynn’s son with prosecution unless Flynn were to plead guilty.

 

The fact that it was orchestrated and carried out at the highest levels of the FBI, DOJ, and White House makes it all the more outrageous.

 

And the fact it was done intentionally, purposefully, and with reckless disregard for the rights of Flynn as the President’s highest ranking national security advisor, as a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General with 33 years of honorable military service to our country, as a citizen of the United States, and as a human being, makes the conduct despicable, even for partisan Washington standards.

Expect the lawsuit against these miscreants and traitors to drop shortly. The New American will continue to follow the story to keep its readers informed.

Liz Cheney Blames Trump and His Supporters for Buffalo Shooting

Thursday, 19 May 2022 16:13
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, May 19, 2022:  

Now that Buffalo shooter Patrick Gendron’s 180-page “manifesto” and his 678-page online diary are public knowledge, Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wy.) unashamedly used his crazed rantings as a tool to attack fellow Republicans, especially former President Donald Trump and his followers. She tweeted on Monday:

The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism. History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse. GOP leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.

When Trump learned of her tweet and learned further that she has rejected efforts by Democrats on her January 6 committee to broaden its investigation to include Capitol Hill security instead of focusing primarily on Trump’s alleged role in that incident, he called her “a crazed lunatic.” According to The Washington Post, he said, “From what people tell me, from what I hear from other congressmen, she’s like a crazed lunatic. She’s worse than anyone else. From what I’ve heard she’s worse than any Democrat.”

She may be crazy, but she’s not stupid. For years, Democrats have been rejoicing over the changing demographics in the United States that appear, on the surface at least, to favor the Democratic Party in future elections.

It’s known in some circles as the “Great Replacement,” a combination of mass immigration (both legal and illegal) and a decline in the birth rate among the white population, which is reducing the percentage of whites in the United States while increasing the percentage of non-whites.

It’s a phenomenon that left-wing Democrats have celebrated for years, as The New American has noted. As Julian Castro said in 2008 while mayor of San Antonio, “In a couple of presidential cycles … on election night, you’ll be announcing that we’re calling the 38 electoral votes of Texas for the Democratic nominee for president … because of the demographics.”

Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin remarked, “The demographics of America are not on the side of the Republican Party.” Senator Joe Biden said, “Folks like me … will be an absolute minority … fewer than 50% of the people in America … will be of White European stock. That’s not a bad thing.”

But when Republicans such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich or Representative Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) point this out, it’s a sign, according to Cheney, of “white supremacy” and “white nationalism,” and even “anti-semitism.”

Said Gingrich in August 2021:

I think what’s hard for most of us to accept is that the anti-American left would love to drown traditional classic Americans with as many people as they can who know nothing of American history, nothing of American tradition, nothing of rule of law, and I think that when you go and you look at the radical left this is their ideal model is to get rid of the rest of us because we believe in George Washington, we believe in the Constitution, and you see this behavior over and over again.

One of Elise Stefanik’s campaign ads said:

Radical Democrats are planning their most aggressive move yet: a PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION.

 

Their plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.

What’s “good for the goose” ought to be “good for the gander,” as the saying goes. But not for Cheney, who continues with her ongoing vendetta against the former president, using facts twisted to reflect badly on him and his followers.

Does Decline in Consumer Sentiment Portend a Recession?

Monday, 16 May 2022 14:17
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, May 16, 2022:  

According to a report released last week by the University of Michigan,

The University of Michigan consumer sentiment for the US fell to 59.1 in May of 2022, the lowest since August of 2011, from 65.2 in April and below market forecasts of 64, as Americans remained concerned over … inflation.

Behind the headline there was little good news:

The current economic conditions index fell to 63.6, the lowest in 13 years while the expectations gauge sank to 56.2 from 62.5….

 

To make things even worse, the index of buying conditions for durable goods, such as household appliances, fell to the lowest level since the survey began in 1978….

 

Consumers’ assessment of their current financial situation relative to a year ago is at its lowest reading since 2013, with 36% of consumers attributing their negative assessment to inflation.

Economic prognosticators make a handsome living explaining the continuing drop in consumer sentiment. Topping the list is rising prices, incorrectly but repeatedly called “inflation.” Rising prices is the result of the inflation of the currency and the Federal Reserve is responsible for that.

Regardless, consumers see the impact every day at the grocery store and the gas pump. Every day they see their paychecks purchasing less and less. And they’re mad at Joe Biden, pushing his job approval rate to ever lower lows.

There are plenty of other “causes,” including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the invasion of illegals across the nation’s southern border, China’s internal lockdowns disrupting the supply chain, and the Fed’s belated response to the rising prices that its policies have created.

The Fed is playing catch up. Initially Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said last fall that the rise in prices was “transitory.” Now, to quench the fire he started, he is raising interest rates under the assumption that a slower economy will force prices down. There is little talk of the Fed reducing the money supply, which is the only permanent solution.

The Fed’s recent 50 basis point (half of a percentage point) rise in the Fed Funds Rate is not only the largest single increase in 22 years, but Powell has promised a similar half-point rise in interest rates at each of the next two meetings of the Fed’s Board of Governors.

The trick is to avoid raising interest rates too far and too fast, forcing a contraction in economic output. Two quarters of negative growth is the classic definition of a recession.

Some are blaming Wall Street, which has given up about a fifth of its value just since the first of the year. More than $7 trillion has evaporated from the stock market so far this year.

Others are saying that the decline on Wall Street is a predictor of a recession six months out.

Still others point to the recent “yield curve inversion,” that moment in time when short-term interest rates rise above long-term interest rates. The history is unhappy: That “inversion” has preceded every recession since 1955 — and giving only one “false positive” during that time — according to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

Another good living is made by those predicting just how far Wall Street will drop in the event of a recession. One firm doing just that is DataTrek, which is saying Wall Street could drop another 25 percent before finding a bottom. That would bring the Dow, currently trading at 32,200, down to 24,000. And the S&P 500 Index, currently at 4,000, would decline to 3,000.

One prognosticator with a remarkable record of calling tops and bottoms is Barry Ritholtz. His asset-management firm, Ritholtz Wealth Management LLC, has over $2.7 billion in assets under management. His blog, The Big Picture, generates half a million page views every month, and he is one of the few who saw the coming housing implosion and derivative mess long before his peers.

Today he is taking the long view. He wrote on Friday that there are many competing explanations for the selloff on Wall Street, including “inflation, war, rising Fed Fund rates, [the] end of cheap capital, [the] fall-off in liquidity, [the] impending recession, and political unrest.”

He thinks there is a simpler answer: a reversion to the mean. Wrote Ritholtz:

Over the past decade, we have enjoyed returns of above 14% per year … the past two years gained 20% and 28%….

 

Over longer periods of time, equity markets generate average returns of 8-9%….

 

Perhaps [the decline] is nothing more complex than mean reversion.

For the long haul, Ritholtz remains bullish:

This market could/should have another good 5-7 years in it (assuming random events do not mess it up).

 

That is how I have been seeing this market for a while: it is one part history, one part secular theory, [and] two parts wishful thinking.

Homeschooling Surge From Covid Is Permanent, Says AP

Tuesday, 19 April 2022 13:21
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, April 19, 2022: 

Following what the Associated Press (AP) said is “the most rapid rise in homeschooling the U.S. has ever seen,” homeschool parents “continue directing their children’s educations themselves.”

Prior to Covid, about three percent, or two million, young people were being homeschooled, according to the Census Bureau. That number tripled during the 2020-2021 school year, said AP, and fell off only slightly the next year.

The media outlet blamed the initial increase on the Covid shutdowns but had trouble dealing with the reasons homeschool parents are staying with the program. It gave three reasons: “health concerns, disagreement with school policies, and a desire to keep what has worked for their children.”

But, as Jazz Shaw, writing for Hot Air, explained, there is much more behind the move than just a “disagreement with school policies.” Parents, once forced to see exactly what their children were being taught in public schools, were aghast. Wrote Shaw:

I would imagine that a much bigger factor is the realization by many parents that too many public schools simply don’t do a very good job, despite the endless amounts of money that state and local governments flush into them. This is particularly true in more economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, where graduation and college acceptance rates remain unacceptably low.

 

On top of that, there is obviously a growing realization among parents that the nation’s public schools have largely turned from being centers of education to centers of indoctrination.

 

Doing away with honors programs (because they are supposedly racist) and adding in highly sexualized “gender awareness” programs isn’t helping matters either.

 

For every parent who learns that the school told their children “don’t tell your parents,” there are probably a dozen more families pulling the plug on public schooling.

 

And as an added bonus, children being educated at home don’t need to put on a d**n mask.

AP learned from the Census Bureau that black families have benefited the most from the surge in homeschooling: “The proportion of Black families homeschooling their children increased by five times, from 3.3% to 16.1% … while the proportion about doubled across other groups.”

Parents with children in public schools are learning the real purpose of public schools: socialization and integration. Said the late Horace Mann, a 19th-century politician known for his support for public schools, “Public Education is the cornerstone of our community and our democracy.” He knew, of course, that the Founders never intended to establish a democracy but took pains to avoid one by instituting a constitutional republic instead.

John Dewey, another educational “reformer” living at the same time as Mann, was more blatant about the real purpose of public schooling: “A socialized mind … is the method of social control.”

As Briana Brockbank wrote in Family Today:

Home education allows parents to adapt the curriculum to the student’s needs. Also, parents have a say in how the student will learn and what they will learn.

David Harper, principal of Freedom Project Academy, an affiliate of The John Birch Society, took it to another level. In a conversation with The New American, he said, “We teach our students how to think, not what to think.” He went on to say that his online program teaches students critical-thinking skills, how to defend positions, and how to present ideas, all based on a classical education model.

One parent’s testimony reveals just how effective Freedom Project is:

I would like to thank the faculty and staff of Freedom Project Academy for equipping my children with strong academic courses taught from a Christian worldview by teachers who integrated their faith in their teaching and their rapport with their students.

 

My daughter, a former FPA student, just graduated from Eastern Nazarene with a BS in Business and a minor in Biology. My son will graduate FPA this year and head to Florida Polytechnic University.

 

My deepest appreciation to everyone at FPA!

In the past two years, according to Harper, online enrollment at FPA has doubled, and enrollment for the 2022-2023 school year, which opened just two weeks ago, is ahead of schedule. For more information, go to https://fpeusa.org.

Georgia 25th State to Pass Constitutional Carry

Wednesday, 13 April 2022 16:09
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, April 13, 2022:  

When Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed into law Senate Bill 319 — aka the Georgia Constitutional Carry Act — on Tuesday, he said:

SB 319 makes sure that law-abiding Georgians … can protect themselves without having [to obtain] the permission of the state government.

 

The Constitution of the United States gives us that right, not the government….

 

People don’t have to carry if they don’t want to. But this is a constitutional authority that people have, and they certainly shouldn’t have [to get] a piece of paper from the government to be able to legally carry a firearm.

Kemp also signed into law Senate Bill 218 ensuring that citizens from other states who already have their concealed-carry licenses will also enjoy the same right in Georgia.

The law is effective immediately, and will save gun owners the $75 license fee and the ignominy of having to undergo a mental-health check as well as a background check. This has another advantage: No background check means no entry into the recently revealed national gun registry that the ATF has been keeping under wraps for years.

Georgia’s anti-gun politicians tried to block the bill by using old, outdated, and weak arguments. Democrat State Representative Kimberly Alexander intoned, “This legislation will … allow individuals with a criminal history who purchase a gun through a private sale to legally carry a hidden, loaded weapon in our communities.”

Alexander is correct: once an individual has paid his or her debt to society, their Second Amendment-protected right is restored. She is incorrect by intimating that they will cause an increase in gun violence upon their release, for at least two reasons: They may have reformed their behavior while incarcerated, and the new law would no doubt dampen any enthusiasm they have to return to their old ways simply because their search for a “soft target” — an unarmed citizen — is now going to be much more difficult.

Another anti-gun Democrat, State Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler, ranted:

The governor is signing away lives [with] this bill. It is a sad day in Georgia when we have to watch legislation enacted that we know will cause harm, as this will….

 

He wants more guns on the streets, and the shameful outcome of that is more gun violence.

Both complaints are without merit, and John Lott’s research has proved it. The founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center, Lott noted in an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Several dozen peer-reviewed academic studies show there’s no evidence of any uptick in gun crimes linked to concealed carry laws, and most show violent crime declines.

 

Research also shows that murder rates fall even more when states move to Constitutional Carry laws.

When Lowndes County, Georgia, Sheriff Ashley Paulk was asked about the impact SB 319 might have in his county, he responded:

I don’t expect that [it] will have a big impact around here. The criminals don’t care — they’re going to get their weapons anyway — and a law-abiding citizen with a weapon won’t make trouble.

Lott agrees: Firearms violations among police officers are extremely low, as would be expected. But among those “law-abiding citizens” who now are free to carry without first being forced to get permission, firearms violations are one-seventh — 2.4 per 100,000 versus 16.5 per 100,000 — that of the police.

The real change will be in the behavior of criminals already on the streets seeking soft targets. They are now facing an existential question in their line of work: Is my target armed, or should I find another less-risky means of gain?

With half the states in the union allowing their citizens the freedom to exercise their rights under the Second Amendment, just how long will it take for the others to grant the same freedoms to their citizens?

At the moment, Florida and Nebraska are on the verge of passing similar laws, with South Carolina right behind. This is allowing the Second Amendment to occupy the place the Founders of the Republic intended: the anchor securing the others in the Bill of Rights.

Cook Political Report: No “Red Tsunami,” Just a Strong Red Wave Coming in November

Tuesday, 05 April 2022 13:01
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, April 5, 2022:  

Predictions, forecasts, and guesses about the November midterms speak of a “red tsunami.” Amy Walter, editor of the highly regarded Cook Political Report, dampened some of that enthusiasm with her carefully reasoned article: Republicans are likely to flip between 15 and 25 seats in the House in November. Depending on who actually takes the oath of office in January 2023, at least the new Congress will have the ability to stop the madness.

On the surface, it looks as if the November elections are the Republicans’ to lose: The National Republican Congressional Commission (NRCC) just expanded its list of “vulnerable,” winnable districts from 72 to 82. Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House after the 1994 “red tsunami” flipped 54 seats, recently predicted:

I believe an immediate, consistent, and effective Republican application of the lessons of 2021 could lead to a 40- to 70-seat gain in the House; at least a four-seat gain in the Senate; and gains in governorships, state legislatures, and local offices including school boards next year.

Republican pollster Bill McInturff, after reviewing a poll he conducted for NBC, concluded that the Democrats are “headed for a catastrophic election [in November].”

Walter’s reasoning:

In 2010, Republicans won the House vote by almost seven points, a 17-point improvement from their 2008 showing. They ended up winning a whopping 64 seats that year.

If that seven-point shift holds up, then it follows that, wrote Walter, “At a very crude level, we could say that it would shift the 2020 vote margin in every CD (congressional district by) about 7 points more Republican.”

There are 435 congressional districts. How many are in play? “Any district that Biden carried by less than 7 points would be in danger of flipping to the GOP.” That number, according to Walter, is just 21 congressional districts.

The good news is that Republicans already hold eight of those 21 districts. So, the contest will be decided in just 13 districts.

As Walter noted:

Every metric we use to analyze the political environment — the president’s approval rating, the mood of the electorate, the enthusiasm gap — all point to huge gains for the GOP this fall.

 

But those metrics are bumping up against an increasingly “sorted” House with few marginal seats and few incumbents sitting in the “wrong district.”

 

As such, the more likely scenario for this fall is a GOP gain in the 15-25 seat range.

Opinion pollster FiveThirtyEight agrees with Walter. In its own analysis, just 33 out of 435 House seats fall into its “highly competitive” category.

The first state primaries are 40 days away; the November midterm election is six months away. As former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson said, “A week is a long time in politics.”

That means that there’s still plenty of time for Republicans to blow an historic opportunity. And it’s also more than enough time for Biden and company to chip away at its dwindling Democrat base with its dangerous and treasonous buffoonery to make the Republican victory in the November elections even more historic than Gingrich or McInturff are predicting.

Indiana the 24th Constitutional-carry State. Three More States Right Behind

Monday, 04 April 2022 12:30
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, April 4, 2022:  

Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb signed into law on March 21 his state’s permitless carry bill that had passed both the state’s House and Senate overwhelmingly.

That makes 24. And the third state so far this year.

On March 10, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed a similar bill into law. This was followed by Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, who signed a constitutional-carry bill into law on March 14.

Georgia is next, as a similar bill passed both state houses last Friday and will arrive shortly on Governor Brian Kemp’s desk for signing.

Said Kemp earlier, “The Constitution should be our carry permit, and I look forward to signing a Constitutional Carry measure this year to enshrine hardworking Georgians’ ability to protect themselves and their families in Georgia law.”

National Rifle Association (NRA) Chairman Wayne LaPierre told Fox News:

The success of the carry movement in America cannot be denied at this point. When Gov. Brian Kemp signs this landmark legislation, half of America will protect the right to carry as an inherent and inalienable right.

Two more states — Florida and Nebraska — are on the brink of passing laws protecting their citizens’ right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment, without first having to get permission to do so.

South Carolina is right behind, with conservative, pro-constitutional Republican majorities in both state houses. Constitutional-carry bills failed to pass last year, but pressure is building on Governor Henry McMaster to urge the legislature to bring such a bill to his desk for signing.

Tennessee already has a “partial” constitutional carry law in place, but it only applies to handguns, and legislators in the Volunteer State are itching to amend it to include long guns. What’s in place, according to John Harris, executive director of the Tennessee Firearms Association, is “not real constitutional carry,” and his group is lobbying to expand the present law.

It should be noted that not a single state has repealed a constitutional-carry law, nor has there been a single move in any state to consider such a move.

It should also be noted that arguments against such laws consist primarily of worries that more firearms will mean more gun violence. But that has simply not been the case. According to the Crime Research Prevention Center (CRPC), firearms violations by police officers are very low — about 16.5 for every 100,000 police officers. For citizens who already have a permit, the rate is even lower: 2.4 per 100,000.

Further research by the CRPC reveals that gun violence drops as private gun ownership increases. As John Lott, founder of the CRPC, noted in an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Several dozen peer-reviewed academic studies show there’s no evidence of any uptick in gun crimes linked to concealed carry laws, and most show violent crime declines.

 

Research also shows that murder rates fall even more when states move to Constitutional Carry laws.

That makes sense, as the people who benefit the most from carrying a firearm are the most likely to be victims: They are “overwhelmingly,” wrote Lott, “poor Blacks who live in high-crime urban areas.”

As states increasingly remove infringements from the right to keep and bear arms, it becomes increasingly difficult for tyrants to turn the American Republic into a dictatorship. To succeed, they must first disarm every private owner of his firearms. At present, the momentum is heading in the other direction.

The Second Amendment was never about duck hunting. It was always about keeping the government in check.

A quote from Adolf Hitler bears repeating:

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms.

 

History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.

War in Ukraine Reminds Americans of Need for Second Amendment

Thursday, 31 March 2022 14:50
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, March 31, 2022:  

The day before the Russian invasion, Ukrainian citizens suffered under some of the most severe gun-ownership restrictions in the world: One had to be 21 to buy a shotgun and 25 to own a rifle. Handgun ownership was banned altogether.

A background check was required, along with a mental exam, the payment of a fee, taking a gun-safety class, and owning a government-certified gun safe for storage.

The process was designed to impede approval, which often took months and usually resulted in permission being denied.

That same day — February 23, 2022 — the Ukrainian parliament passed a law allowing Ukrainians to buy all the firearms they wanted. President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted:

We will give weapons to anyone who wants to defend the country. Be ready to support Ukraine in the squares of our cities.

It has been reported that between 10,000 and 25,000 fully automatic rifles were snapped up by Ukrainians that same day.

As English writer Samuel Johnson once famously said, “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” 

 

From the NRA’s institute for Legislative Action:

Anti-gun commentators — Joe Biden among them — often mock the idea that an armed populace poses any obstacle to a modern military force. But some are now singing a different tune, now that ordinary Ukrainians are taking up arms in response to [the] Russian invasion.

From the Firearms Policy Coalition:

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine unequivocally reinforces the importance of the right to keep and bear arms beyond defense against single attackers and reminds Americans that the Second Amendment is as relevant today as ever.

From Bearing Arms:

Better late than never. This is a “break glass in case of emergency” moment, which is why the country’s parliament is … willing to reverse decades of restrictions and allow citizens the ability to carry firearms.

From Gun Owners of America:

Severe gun control policies infringed on the right of Ukrainian citizens to keep and bear arms until the very moment a nuclear world superpower launched its ground invasion.

 

Now it’s up to the government to pass out as many fully automatic weapons as it can … [so] that civilians might successfully repel a Russian invasion.

From Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms:

While we’ve seen reports that the Ukraine Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) has voted to ease restrictions allowing civilians to carry arms outside their homes, in our country this has been the constitutional law of the land since our nation was founded.

 

The right of the people to keep and bear arms has protected this country since the beginning, and what is happening right now in Ukraine should be a lesson to all of those who push for citizen disarmament and a ban on private gun ownership how perilous that would be….

 

Our Second Amendment was enshrined in the Bill of Rights by men who had just fought a war for independence. They returned to their homes from battlefields, not from some deer hunting camp.

The right to keep and bear arms has never been about shooting ducks, but about protecting our right as citizens of the greatest nation on earth to defend our homes and families immediately against the kind of international outrage now unfolding in eastern Europe.

 

From John Lott, founder and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center:

A lot of these countries have laws left over from the Communist era when gun ownership was basically banned. In the Ukraine, less than 2 percent legally owned a gun until the invasion. Then 18,000 fully automatic rifles were handed out in one day.

Even the far-left media outlet Occupy Democrats reversed itself. It tweeted:

Ukraine’s Interior Minister announces that 10,000 automatic rifles have been handed out to the civilians of Kyiv as they prepare to fight tooth and nail to defend their homes against Putin’s invasions. RT (retweet) if you stand with the brave Ukrainian People!

Putin failed to learn a valuable lesson from another tyrant bent on enslaving people: Adolf Hitler. On the same that day France surrendered to his Nazi blitzkrieg, June 25, 1940, he ordered his generals to draw up a plan to invade and subjugate Switzerland. The plan, called Operation Tannenbaum, which called for 11 German divisions and 15 more Italian divisions — between 300,000 and 500,000 troops — was drawn up but never implemented. As Michael Peck, writing for The National Interest, explained why:

The Axis would have faced formidable opposition. As with Sweden, Swiss neutrality was an armed neutrality.… All Swiss men were liable for conscription, and all were issued with rifles that they kept at home in case of mobilization.

 

For a nation of just four million people, the Swiss could have mustered an army as large as 850,000 strong. Largely mountainous Switzerland, where German tanks would have been useless, would have been a tough nut for blitzkrieg to crack.

Latest Polls Show Biden Increasingly Underwater

Monday, 28 March 2022 20:48
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, March 28, 2022:  

The results of two establishment polls released last week continue to confirm Americans’ increasing disapproval of Joe Biden. Even among Democrats, the polls reflect increasing disenchantment with their president.

The NBC News poll, taken between March 18 and March 22, reported that Biden’s approval rate has cratered to just 40 percent, the lowest of his time in office, and the lowest pollsters have recorded since 2014. Those polled indicated that they want Republicans to take control of Congress in the midterms by 46 percent to 44 percent. The last time that happened, in 2014, Republicans gained 13 seats in the House and flipped nine seats in the Senate.

Biden’s disapproval rating is now at 55 percent, close to one out of every six Americans.

On nearly every issue, Biden and company are underwater. More than seven out of 10 of those polled have “very little” or “just some” confidence in his ability to handle the Russian attack on Ukraine. That includes 43 percent of Democrats.

Among Biden’s strongest constituencies, his support has faded the most: Among women his support has cratered from 51 percent in January to 44 percent now. Among Hispanic voters, his support has dropped from 48 percent to 39 percent, and among independents, his support has all but disappeared, to 32 percent.

Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinions Strategy conducted the survey for NBC along with Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates. Upon reviewing the findings, McInturff concluded, “What this poll says is that Biden and [the] Democrats are headed for a catastrophic election [in November].”

The poll conducted for the Associated Press (AP) by the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research focused more on how Americans are viewing Biden’s handling, or mishandling, of the crisis in Europe. According to Hannah Fingerhut, writing for the AP, “Only about a quarter are very confident that [Biden] has the ability to handle a crisis, promote U.S. standing in the world, or effectively manage the U.S. military.”

In addition, those polled are increasingly nervous about direct American involvement in that crisis, with nearly half either “extremely” or “very” concerned about America being drawn into a war with Russia. And an increasing number are concerned that nuclear weapons will be used in such a war.

Drilling down into the survey: Just 25 percent of those polled think Biden can “effectively manage the military,” just 32 percent think that he “incorporates the advice of his advisors and experts in his decisions,” only 28 percent think that his decisions and actions “promote the U.S. standing in the world,” and scarcely 26 percent think he can “effectively handle a crisis.”

According to RealClear Politics, there has been little “bounce” for Biden as he has ramped up his war rhetoric. His approval rating briefly touched 45 percent earlier this month, but now rests about where it was before: at 41.1 percent approving and 53.2 disapproving — a negative spread of 12.1 points.

RCP also reports that barely a quarter of Americans think the country is “headed in the right direction,” while two out of three think the nation is on the “wrong track” under Biden.

These two polls were commissioned by the mainstream media, who have slavishly supported Biden from the beginning. The fact that the results cut across that support lends even more credibility to the proposition — and outlook — that the Democrats are, in the words of Republican pollster McInturff, “headed for a catastrophic election [in November].”

New York City’s Reinstated Neighborhood Safety Teams Already Making a Difference

Wednesday, 23 March 2022 21:04
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, March 23, 2022:  

Following some initial success by New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ newly resurrected Neighborhood Safety Teams (NSTs), he announced on Monday that he is rolling out a second wave. He called it “precision policing”: “This is what precision policing is all about.… There’s a clear message: do it right, don’t violate the liberties of people, but go after those guns and those who are the trigger pullers.”

Since the first wave of some 168 officers — in teams of six in each of 28 of the Big Apple’s 177 precincts — began surveilling on Monday, March 14, “we have made 31 arrests,” said the mayor, “and 10 guns [have been] removed from our streets.”

The second wave began on Monday, focusing on another five precincts in high-crime areas.

The city’s police commissioner, Keechant Sewell, who initially was skeptical of the move to reinstate the teams, seemed to be on board. She said, “These impressive results represent the next era of responsive, responsible crime fighting,” adding:

These teams are for gun violence. They’re there for criminal activity. But they look like police officers. They are not in plain clothes. The uniform clearly states on the back: NYPD Police.

Since the effort was suspended in June 2020 by then-Mayor Bill DeBlasio, crime has soared. So far this year there have been 284 people shot, compared to 215 shootings in the same period last year. Adams’ promise to rein in the violence was widely seen as a major factor in his election last November.

Adams’ initial success is being viewed by many as just the first step. Part of his plan is not only to reinvigorate the NSTs, but to work to appoint judges with a “demonstrated commitment to keeping violent criminals who use guns off New York City streets.”

The strategy is similar to the “stop, question, and frisk” policies instituted under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, except for the “frisk” part. The teams use a Terry Stop — based on a Supreme Court decision (Terry v. Ohio) that watered down the Fourth Amendment from “probable cause” to “reasonable suspicion.”

But that “reasonable suspicion” is enhanced using the latest technology, which allows NST officers to identify from a distance when an individual is carrying a firearm. In essence, that technology allows officers to conduct a “virtual” frisk without touching the individual.

It remains to be seen if the initial “success” can be maintained. Tiffany Caban, a Democrat on the city council, said, “Much of the Mayor’s plan is cause for deep concern … [that it’s] built on a foundation of surveillance and punishment, which are ineffective and dangerous.”

Supreme Court Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson Adopts “Originalist” Position on the Constitution

Tuesday, 22 March 2022 17:37
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, March 22, 2022: 

Joe Biden’s appointee to the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, knew she would be pressed hard for her views on the Constitution: Is it, in her opinion, a “living” document, subject to judicial “interpretation?” Or is it to be interpreted in light of what its authors intended at the time they wrote it?

So, she tried to head off the question by answering it in advance. In her opening statement to the Senate Judicial Committee as her confirmation hearing began on Monday, she said:

I decide cases from a neutral posture. I evaluate the facts, and I interpret and apply the law to the facts of the case before me, without fear or favor, consistent with my judicial oath.

If she is confirmed she will take this oath:

 I, Ketanji Brown Jackson, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.

 

So help me God.

On Tuesday, the second day of her confirmation hearing, Jackson reiterated her fealty to originalism:

The adherence to text is a constraint on my authority — trying to figure out what those words mean, as they were intended by the people who wrote them….

 

I’m not importing my personal views or policy preferences. The entire exercise is about trying to understand what those who created this policy or this law intended.

She expanded on her position by specifically rejecting the theory that the Constitution is a “living document” that must be adjusted to changing times and circumstances:

I do not believe that there is a living Constitution in the sense that it’s changing and it’s infused with my own policy perspective or the policy perspective of the day.

 

Instead, the Supreme Court has made clear when you’re interpreting the Constitution, you’re looking at the text at the time of the founding, and what the meaning was.

Perhaps this is a ploy, to disarm Senators ready to challenge her judicial philosophy. By answering the question before it is asked, it puts those Senators on the defensive. If they press the matter, Jackson is free to remind them that she already answered the question.

Is she really a conservative? A black conservative, in the mold of Justice Clarence Thomas? If so, then she will greatly disappoint the far-left liberal group Demand Justice, funded with dark money through the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which itself is funded in part by George Soros and his Open Society Foundations. It was Demand Justice that provided Jackson’s name to Joe Biden and pushed him to nominate her over another equally qualified but more moderate candidate, Michelle Childs.

Jackson provided a clue in her opening remarks on Monday. She looked back fondly on her days as a law clerk for liberal Justice Stephen Breyer:

On the day of his Supreme Court nomination, Justice Breyer said: “What is Law supposed to do, seen as a whole?

 

“It is supposed to allow all people — all people — to live together in a society, where they have so many different views, so many different needs, to live together in a way that is more harmonious, that is better, so that they can work productively together.”

By contrast, French political philosopher and economist Frédéric Bastiat, author of The Law, first published in 1850, wrote:

The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over all.

This should answer the question: Will Jackson, if confirmed, be another Stephen Breyer, as expected? Or will her term as justice on the high court surprise and anger those who thought she was in their liberal, “living constitution” camp?

One senator on the committee, Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), isn’t persuaded. She has hinted that she will grill Jackson about her real agenda and her real judicial philosophy:

I can only wonder: What’s your hidden agenda? Is it to let violent criminals, cop-killers and child predators back to the streets? Is it to restrict parental rights and expand government’s reach into our schools and our private family decisions?

 

Is it to support the radical left’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court?… Is it your personal hidden agenda to incorporate critical race theory into our legal system?

 

These are answers that the American people need to know.

Jackson’s confirmation hearing is likely to extend into the middle of April before the committee issues its vote to confirm, or not.

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