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

CNN Viewership Plummets Following Town Hall With Trump

Wednesday, 17 May 2023 14:46
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This article was first published at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, May 17, 2023:  

Following Donald Trump’s town hall at CNN on Wednesday night, CNN’s viewership dropped precipitously. Media website Mediaite+, which tracks such trends, reported the brutal news: On Friday, from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, CNN’s viewership averaged just 335,000 total viewers, falling below its rivals Fox News and MSNBC.

Most galling to the left-wing news outlet is that its viewership also dropped below that of newcomer conservative news outlet Newsmax.

The New York Post could hardly contain its excitement, reporting the bad news for its liberal rival:

Friday’s edition of the Cooper-hosted “AC360” at 8 p.m. drew 447,000 viewers, well below his usual average.

 

The ratings just kept getting worse throughout the night, with just 293,000 tuning in for “Whole Story with Anderson” at 9 p.m. and 263,000 for “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace” — the lowest-rated hour since the show launched on CNN in September….

The rolling catastrophe was not totally unexpected. In March, CNN reported that its viewership had dropped 61 percent year over year, and April also ended down for the news network.

The British liberal outlet Daily Mail piled on:

The cable channel was trounced by the conservative station [Newsmax] in every slot from 8pm to 11pm. Star anchor Anderson Cooper mustered just 447,000 viewers for his flagship 360 show – 20,000 less than Eric Bolling, formerly of Fox News.

 

Cooper’s new Friday night show at 9pm, The Whole Story With Anderson Cooper, fell even wider of the mark with 293,000 tuning in. That compares to 325,000 who watched Chris Plante, an ex-Pentagon Correspondent for CNN, on Newsmax.

 

In the 10pm slot, Chris Wallace – the Democrat-voting former Fox host – managed just 263,000 viewers compared to Greg Kelly who secured an audience of 278,000.

Justice may be slow, it is said, but it is sure. One of Donald Trump’s legacies, whether he ever sees the inside of the Oval Office again or not, is his exposure for even the most disinterested citizen of how the mainstream media, headlined by CNN, have been taken over by anti-American activists and have turned the once-honorable profession into a shill for communism and tyranny.

Sharyl Attkisson, the award-winning investigative journalist, started tracking the media’s lies in August 2016, in the run-up to the presidential election that surprisingly put Trump into the White House. Through March 2022, she had counted 156 provable lies, falsehoods, and deliberate and intentional misstatements made by the mainstream media, many of them from CNN.

Here are just a few examples:

September 5, 2017: CNN’s Chris Cillizza claimed that Trump had “lied” when stating that Trump Tower had been wiretapped. It was later learned that numerous wiretaps had indeed been conducted against Trump Tower;

 

May 16, 2018: CNN’s Oliver Darcy deceptively excerpted a Trump comment in a manner that made it seem as if the President had referred to immigrants or illegal immigrants generally as “animals.” But in fact, Trump was referring specifically to members of the murderous MS-13 criminal gang;

 

May 28, 2018: CNN’s Hadas Gold used her Twitter page to share a news story with photos of illegal-immigrant children in cages at U.S. detention facilities, as though the story and photos were about conditions under the Trump administration. But the article and photos were actually from 2014, when Barack Obama was president;

 

January 22, 2019: CNN was one of multiple news outlets that mischaracterized as aggressors a group of Trump-supporting Catholic teenagers from Kentucky at a pro-life rally in Washington, D.C.

It is remembered that Nick Sandmann, the target of vitriol by the mainstream media, sued the major news outlets, including CNN, for their role in promoting that last myth. His suit sought damages of $275 million from CNN, but rather than go to court and be further subjected to exposure of its bias during discovery, CNN decided instead to settle for an undisclosed but substantial sum.

In 2019, Cary Poarch, a CNN employee, offered his services to Project Veritas to go undercover to expose the outlet’s rampant bias. His exposures included a video clip exposing the extreme bias and hatred of Donald Trump by Jeff Zucker, the then-president of CNN. Said one of Zucker’s top people: “Jeff Zucker – basically president of CNN – has a personal vendetta against Trump. Your own biases are gonna be there. They’re going to seep into what you think, they’re gonna seep into what you say, so if Jeff Zucker like blatantly hates Trump, and he runs CNN (which he does) … it’s not gonna be positive for Trump. He hates him [Trump]. It’s gonna be negative!”

Long sowing the wind (and the airwaves) with its anti-Trump, anti-American vitriol, CNN is now reaping the whirlwind of slumping viewership. Viewers now know that when they watch CNN they are watching the Communist News Network, and are turning elsewhere — to get news instead of propaganda.

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“Two-gender T-Shirt” War Heats Up

Tuesday, 16 May 2023 12:50
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This article was first published by TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, May 16, 2023:  

The law firm representing 12-year-old Liam Morrison, the seventh-grader at Nichols Middle School (NMS) in Middleborough, Massachusetts, who wore a t-shirt back in March that offended someone, asked the school board nicely to let him keep his shirt on. The shirt said simply “There are only two Genders.”

The letter from the Massachusetts Family Institute (MFS) reviewed the case law that favored the free speech rights of Liam for the board, just in case they weren’t aware of it, and then informed the board that “Liam intends to wear his shirt again on Friday, May 5. Now that NMS is on notice that hindering him from wearing the shirt is a violation of his constitutional rights, we trust that it will not interfere with Liam doing so again. If it does, it may be necessary to take legal action against the school district. Please confirm in writing at your earliest opportunity that Liam will be allowed to wear the shirt.”

Instead of complying with the letter from Samuel Whiting, staff attorney at MFS, the board enlisted the help of Stoneman, Chandler & Miller to defend its position. Stoneman, Chandler & Miller informed Liam and his attorneys that the school will continue to “prohibit the wearing of a T-shirt by Liam Morrison, or anyone else which is likely to be considered discriminatory, harassing and/or bullying to others including those who are gender non-conforming by suggesting that their sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression does not exist or is invalid.”

The attorneys from Stoneman, Chandler & Miller have a huge mountain to climb. First, public opinion continues to weigh heavily in Liam’s favor. The video of him addressing the school board on April 13 has now been viewed more than 13 million times.

Second, courts have ruled in favor of the First Amendment in numerous cases, including especially Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, decided in 1969. It has been used so often in First Amendment cases that it is now referred to as the “Tinker test.”

The “Tinker test” simply asks the questions, does the speech or expression of the student “materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school?” or might it “reasonably have led school authorities to forecast substantial disruption of or material interference with school activities?”

Liam answered that question himself in an interview with Fox News:

The reason that I wore it is because, well, everyone has a right to their opinions, and I want to be able to voice mine on a subject that a lot of people were talking about.

 

I definitely don’t like that they violated what is basically the first thing that the people who were in charge of America at the time stated we were allowed to do and nowadays it feels like that’s being taken away a lot, which is why some people choose to speak up about it. It’s not just me.

As the letter from MFI to the school board makes clear, Liam’s freedom of speech rights were violated:

On Tuesday, March 21, 2023, Liam wore a t-shirt to school that simply stated, “There are only two genders.” Liam had asked his parents to buy him this shirt because he opposes the idea that there are many (even infinite) genders, which he sees as radical and untrue.

 

He wore the shirt because he wanted to make a statement based on his deeply held personal and political beliefs regarding the unchangeable nature of gender as a binary of male and female.

 

Unfortunately, Liam was not allowed to express his beliefs. Instead, acting principal Heather Tucker removed him from gym class and met with him and a school counselor in a side room.

 

During that meeting, she told Liam that his shirt was inappropriate because it made other students upset. She asked him to change his shirt in order to return to class, but Liam expressed that he could not do so in good conscience.

Having reached this impasse, Liam’s father and stepmother came and picked him up. Liam missed the rest of his classes that day.

 

Liam’s attorneys reviewed the “Tinker test” for the edification of the school board and then quoted from another similar ruling that confirmed it: “Students do not have the right to be ‘upset’ when confronted with a viewpoint with which they disagree.”

They added:

Here, there is no doubt that the NMS administration and “several” students and staff did not like what Liam had to say. Indeed, NMS has made its position on gender ideology clear through the use of banners, flags, and curricula. Because Liam dissented from this orthodoxy, he was censored.

 

But NMS has not pointed to any evidence of substantial disruption that took place because of Liam’s shirt that would justify such an action; as the cases above make clear, apprehension that some students may be offended, even that they may feel personally attacked, is not enough.

 

Nor is there any evidence that other students’ rights were infringed — how could they have been, when Liam’s expression was passive and could easily be ignored or avoided?

 

Complaints by other students and staff that Liam’s shirt made them feel upset or uncomfortable simply do not come close to the level of disruption required to justify censoring speech….

 

It should be clear that the “hate speech” provision of NMS’s dress code is similarly facially unconstitutional and would be struck down if challenged in federal court.

 

By allowing speech that supports gender identity ideology, but forbidding speech that opposes it, NMS is unconstitutionally “picking and choosing” speech that it favors and disfavors.

 

Liam’s shirt did not in fact come close to expressing “hate speech” toward transgender-identifying students, but even had it done so, it could not be prohibited absent evidence of a material and substantial disruption to school operations.

In announcing that Liam’s lawyers were going to be filing suit against the school board in the very near future, Liam’s lawyer Sam Whiting told Fox News that Liam plans on “wearing something to school [on Friday] that will make a strong statement about censorship.”

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Christian Pollster Declares “Syncretism” the Enemy of Christianity

Friday, 12 May 2023 15:35
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This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, May 12, 2023:  

The latest release of data from the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University provided more proof to its director, George Barna, that the Christian foundation of America is melting away. It is giving way instead to “syncretism,” a mishmash of pieces and parts from other worldviews, including secular humanism, postmodernism, eastern mysticism, and Marxism.

In his study from a year ago, Barna’s data revealed that 88 percent of those he polled had adopted syncretism, while just 6 percent had what he calls a “biblical worldview.”

His release this week, tracking how the pandemic has affected people, revealed that each of the four demographical cohorts he tracks (Millennials: 25-39; GenXers: 40-57; Baby Boomers: 58-77; Elders: 78 and up) reacted negatively in various degrees to the Covid dictums imposed by various governments allegedly to mitigate its impact.

Using two dozen measures of beliefs and behaviors, Barna and his team discovered that Millennials “had the lowest score on all but four of [those measures],” showing that “they were the generation least closely connected to biblical Christianity.”

His data showed GenXers “moving away from biblical perspectives [and] behaviors.” Among Baby Boomers the results were scarcely any better, with the biblical worldview among Boomers dropping from 9 percent to 7 percent. That worldview among Elders slipped as well, from 9 percent before Covid to 8 percent afterwards.

Barna defines a biblical worldview as

  1. Believing God is the creator and eternal ruler of the world;
  2. Believing that everyone is a sinner in the eyes of God;
  3. Believing in God’s son Jesus Christ as the only means to salvation from God’s wrath that is otherwise due sinners;
  4. Believing that the Bible is God’s word;
  5. Believing His Word is absolute moral truth;
  6. Believing that His purpose for us consists of knowing, loving, and serving Him; and
  7. Believing that success in this life consists of consistent obedience to God.

Barna wrote that Millennials had largely bought the secular lie of “personal truth” rather than biblical truth, adding:

Millennials entered the pandemic era as the group least open to and engaged with Christianity—and they exited that era largely unchanged in that posture. It is not that Millennials are not spiritual people; they simply are not attuned to biblical beliefs and behaviors and remain the generation that is least impressed by Christianity.

Accordingly, just two out of every 50 Millennials hold Barna’s “biblical worldview.”

Such lack of belief during the pandemic didn’t serve them well, wrote Barna:

Related studies conducted by the Cultural Research Center during the pandemic suggest that the Millennials’ rejection of biblical Christianity did not serve them well. Three-quarters reported lacking purpose and meaning in life.

 

A large majority contended feeling bereft of deep, healthy interpersonal relationships. More than half reported being impaired by mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, fear, and suicidal thoughts.

The drift away from a biblical worldview was evident among GenXers as well, said Barna, with them “choosing to generally cut ties with churches and biblical content as they searched for life solutions in response to the COVID-19 crisis. They consciously chose to abandon their Christian moorings in favor of more self-centered life solutions.”

The Boomers, on the other hand, “moved in the opposite direction from Millennials and Xers over the course of the Covid-19 period,” with Boomers becoming “more in sync with biblical teachings.” Nevertheless, the percentage holding a biblical worldview dropped two percentage points.

The Elders largely held their ground, too, said Barna: “[They] clearly leaned upon their Christian faith as a primary coping mechanism.” But, their biblical worldview dropped a percentage point from pre-Covid.

Barna asked, “Where were the churches?” during the pandemic:

The last three years have been a time of high anxiety for tens of millions of adults. It was an ideal time for the Christian Church to provide wise guidance and emotional calm.

 

Unfortunately, most churches agreed to the government’s dictate that they close their doors and remain mostly silent. That left an unprepared populace to follow the primary form of leadership available to them: government perspectives and policies.

 

Obviously, that has not worked well, given how dissatisfied a large majority of the country is with the direction of the nation and the quality of post-COVID life.

In 2021, Barna revealed just how difficult it is in today’s world to capture and hold his biblical worldview:

Worldview seems to be caught more than it is taught in the United States.… It takes years of holistic teaching, integration of thought and behavior, and reinforcement of appropriate choices before someone is likely to develop a biblical worldview.

 

Knowing a few Bible verses, attending church services, and praying won’t get the job done.

 

Attending a Christian school that offers a chapel service and a Bible class won’t accomplish the task.

 

Going to church services that feature sermons drawn from biblical content is not sufficient to build a biblical worldview….

 

All of those are token efforts that have proven inadequate toward developing an integrated body of beliefs and behaviors that enable someone to think like Jesus so they can then live like Jesus.

There is some good news, however, as The New American recently reported. The Alpha Generation (ages 18-25) became more attuned to the spiritual during the Covid event, rather than less. In a study by Springtide Research Institute (SRI) that was covered by The Wall Street Journal last month, the Journal noted:

For many young people, the pandemic was the first crisis they faced. It affected everyone to some degree, from the loss of family and friends to uncertainty about jobs and daily life.

 

In many ways, it aged young Americans and they are now turning to the same comfort previous generations have turned to during tragedies for healing and comfort.

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Religion in America: More Good News

Thursday, 11 May 2023 13:55
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This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, May 11, 2023:  

According to the results of a survey of more than 1,700 Americans that was released on May 4, the National Day of Prayer, “there is more praying taking place than people expect.”

John Dye, executive director of Skylight, which commissioned the study conducted by City Square Associates, said the survey revealed that people “are frequently exploring their spiritual side and using prayer to work through adversity, finding meaning, and creating a connection with a Higher Power.”

The group learned that more than 60 percent of Americans pray regularly, and more than 80 percent of those believe their prayers are being answered. They pray an average of twice a day for 18 minutes, mostly by themselves. Many pray with family members and at formal religious worship services.

They pray ahead of a major trip or journey, during a major weather storm, before making a major financial decision, in advance of a job interview, before taking a test or an exam, or ahead of a presentation or a performance.

Another study, done by Springtide Research Institute (SRI), revealed that a third of 18- to 25-year-olds believe in a higher power, up from just 25 percent two years ago.

Membership at the Christian streaming service PureFlix (an alternative to NetFlix) has more than doubled in the past two years. And the ripple effect of the Asbury Revival in February continues to resonate, now reaching more than 200 academic institutions.

Another hopeful survey came from the Cultural Research Center (CRC) at Arizona Christian University. Here is the center’s summary of those holding “the seven cornerstones of a biblical worldview”:

  1. Half of all adults believe in God as the Creator of all things, the sustainer of humankind and the universe; omnipotent; omniscient; omnipresent; loving; and just;
  2. One in every four Americans holds that all human beings are sinful;
  3. More than a third have accepted the free gift of forgiveness through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ;
  4. Nearly half hold that the Bible is the word of God and is true, reliable, and relevant;
  5. One out of four holds that absolute truth exists;
  6. More than a third view their purpose in life as knowing, loving, and serving the Creator with all of their heart, mind, soul, and strength; and
  7. A quarter believe that success on earth consists of obedience to God in thoughts, words, and actions.

Even more importantly, over the last two years those percentages have improved in four of those categories.

As George Barna, the director of research for the CRC, noted:

Embracing the seven cornerstones is not just about developing a biblical worldview for its own sake. A biblical worldview is imperative because it is the only pathway to being able to consistently think like Jesus so that we can then live like Him.

Finally, the results of last week’s secular survey done by TheEconomist/YouGov reveal that two-thirds of Americans consider that religion is “very important” or “somewhat important” in their lives. Almost a third attend religious services at least once a week, while four out of ten describe themselves as “born-again” or evangelical Christians. More than half pray at least a few times every week, with most of them praying “several times a day.”

All of which confirms that, despite the relentless communist attack on religion — and especially on Christianity — spanning many decades, there is an unmovable, unshakeable foundation that remains in place.

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George Santos Indicted on 13 Counts of Fraud, Money Laundering, and Other Crimes

Wednesday, 10 May 2023 13:46
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This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, May 10, 2023:  

The crimes of George Santos, the Republican who represents New York’s 3rd Congressional District, have been so vast, so public, and so damaging to so many people for so many years, that the Chuck Schumer-recommended (and Biden-nominated) Judge Breon Peace was forced to sort through them and decide which ones to charge him with.

He came up with 13: seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives.

Peace waxed eloquent over his indictment of Santos:

This indictment seeks to hold Santos accountable for various alleged fraudulent schemes and brazen misrepresentations. Taken together, the allegations in the indictment charge Santos with relying on repeated dishonesty and deception to ascend to the halls of Congress and enrich himself.

 

He used political contributions to line his pockets, unlawfully applied for unemployment benefits that should have gone to New Yorkers who had lost their jobs due to the pandemic, and lied to the House of Representatives.

And these are the results of just one of the many investigations into Santos that are ongoing. In addition to the one through Peace’s office in New York, there are those being conducted by the FBI, local and state authorities, and law enforcement in Brazil (where Santos is charged with check fraud but skipped town before he could face those charges).

There’s also a very belated and reluctant investigation by the House Ethics Committee, which in March announced its own inquiry into Santos’ sordid and provable background of fraud.

Knowledge of Santos’ propensity for lying to deceive goes back to 2019, when an intrepid reporter for Time magazine, Mark Chiusano, first decided to do his own investigation. However, it wasn’t until September 2022, just two months before the midterm elections, that The North Shore Leader (but not Time), a weekly with readers in Santos’ district, started raising questions about Santos and his long history of lies and deceit.

At the time, the editorial staff at the weekly said, “This newspaper would like to endorse a Republican for US Congress in NY3. But the GOP nominee – George Santos – is so bizarre, unprincipled and sketchy that we cannot.”

Only after Santos was elected did the trusty and true New York Times even bother to take a look. What the “paper of record” found in their investigation led to another article in The North Shore Leader: “The Leader Told You So: US Rep-Elect George Santos is a Fraud – and Wanted Criminal.”

When Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy was informed of Santos’ vast litany of misdeeds and criminal actions, he demurred. Because of the Republican Party’s slim majority after the election, he needed Santos’ vote in order to have any chance to pass legislation. The New York Post reported that a senior House Republican aide had told them that McCarthy and other party leaders were aware of Santos’ false biographical claims even before the election, but the Ethics Committee waited until March this year to finally make its move.

That committee would do well to hold off doing any investigative work until its members read Chiusano’s soon-to-be published book on Santos: The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos.

Santos’ misdeeds fill pages and pages of the usually-forgiving Wikipedia news aggregator. They include:

  1. Enjoying the life of a drag queen (a homosexual transvestite) in Brazil;
  2. Hastily leaving Brazil while a check-fraud case against him was pending;
  3. Working for a Ponzi scheme called Harbor City Capital that cost “investors” an estimated $17 million;
  4. Creating something called the Devolder Organization (Santos’ full name is George Anthony Devolder Santos), which he claimed managed some $80 million for investors. Dun & Bradstreet, on the other hand, estimated the company’s total annual revenue at less than $50,000;
  5. Working at a call center for the Dish Network, but managing somehow to loan his campaign more than $700,000 from “personal funds”;
  6. Claiming that while working at the call center he also worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs as an asset manager, though neither company has any record of him doing so;
  7. According to Mother Jones reporters in January this year, many contributions to Santos’ election campaign were made by fictitious donors, while others who did donate claimed the amounts they actually gave were far less than those his campaign reported;
  8. The many judgments against Santos over unpaid rents, and a long history of him being evicted over their nonpayment; and so on…

Santos denies everything — except this: He admits that he did fudge a little on his resume to make his candidacy look better than it really was while running for New York’s 3rd District.

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Michigan to Pass Red Flag Law

Tuesday, 09 May 2023 13:28
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, May 9, 2023:  

The red flag bill about to be signed into law by anti-gun Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer won’t become effective until next year. By that time, courts will likely have ruled such laws are unconstitutional.

In New York, anti-gun Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul sees the same handwriting on the wall and has issued a directive to the state police to ramp up use of the state’s red flag law before it is declared unconstitutional.

The Michigan red flag law has all the unconstitutional markings of others passed elsewhere: It would allow family members, law-enforcement officials, mental-health professionals, roommates, and former dating partners to blow the whistle on an individual they perceive might be a danger to himself or to others.

A judge has 24 hours to hear a complaint after it is filed. If he grants the motion to disarm the individual, he then must set a date no later than 14 days afterward for that individual to prove that he or she doesn’t pose the risk the complaint alleges. In other words, a defendant is guilty until he proves himself innocent, in direct contradiction to long-standing jurisprudence that one is innocent until or unless he is proven guilty.

In New York, Hochul’s haste in using the red flag law is explained by the fact that there have been two recent rulings in her state declaring the law unconstitutional. That’s the good news. The bad news is that until those two rulings are affirmed at the appellate level, she and the state police intend to use the law to unconstitutionally disarm those targeted.

The first ruling in New York occurred in December when a judge declared that “protections of due process, expert testimony, and representation by counsel, are neither present nor guaranteed” under the law. Judge Thomas Moran expanded:

This Court believes that, in its position as parens patrie [legal protector], a potentially mentally ill citizen should enjoy the rights and privileges as any person of this state. However, this is not the standard as employed with TERPO/ERPO determinations, as they deprive a citizen of New York of their constitutional rights.

 

This Court is not unmindful of the dangers firearms may pose when possessed in the hands of a person suffering a mental illness, harboring a criminal intent, or both. However, when viewed objectively, CPLR §63-a’s goal of removing weapons from the otherwise lawful possession of them by their owners, without adequate constitutional safeguards, cannot be condoned by this Court.

 

While some may advocate that “the ends justify the means” in support of §63-a, where those means violate a fundamental right under our Bill of Rights to achieve their ends, then the law, on its face, cannot stand.

 

Therefore, the “Temporary Extreme Risk Protection Order” (TERPO) and “Extreme Risk Protection Order” (ERPO) are deemed to be unconstitutional by this Court as CPLR Article 63-a is presently drafted.

 

It cannot be stated clearly enough that the Second Amendment is not a second class right, nor should it ever be treated as such.

In April another ruling declaring the state’s red flag law unconstitutional was issued by Judge Craig Brown. His ruling was much shorter but just as clear:

It is ORDERED, ADJUDGED and DECREED that [the red flag law] is hereby declared unconstitutional, the Temporary Extreme Risk Protection Order dated January 20,2023 is vacated, and the petition against respondent is dismissed.

Judge Brown explained:

Absent from New York’s Red Flag Law is any provision whatsoever requiring even a single medical or mental health expert opinion providing a basis for the order to be issued.

 

New York’s Red Flag Law, as currently written, lacks sufficient statutory guardrails to protect a citizen’s Second Amendment Constitutional right to bear arms.

He quoted from the Supreme Court’s ruling in McDonald to bolster his case:

“Second Amendment rights are no less fundamental than… Fourth Amendment rights (the right to liberty), and must be provided the same level of due process and equal protection.”…

 

[A]nything less … deprives a citizen of a fundamental right without due process of law.

More than 15,000 American citizens have had their Second and Fourth Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution gravely violated as their firearms have been removed under these red flag laws. The New York rulings are the first olives out of the bottle. The others will come more easily.

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Is Biden Too Old for Another Term?

Monday, 08 May 2023 14:50
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, May 8, 2023:  

Is Joe Biden too old for a second term as president? Many on the Left think so. The liberal and unrelentingly anti-Trump Vanity Fair thinks so: “The Question of Joe Biden’s Age: It’s a Legitimate Concern” headlines its article today. ABC News agrees, expressing “Broad Doubts About Biden’s Age and Acuity Spell Republican Opportunity in 2024.”

In a surprisingly candid assessment of Joe Biden, Vanity Fair writer Chris Smith pulled no punches:

When Joe Biden was a child there were only 48 states. He joined the Senate in 1973; 7 of his 99 colleagues from that year are still alive. At 80, he is older than roughly 96 percent of his fellow Americans.

Smith notes that focus groups often voluntarily note that Biden’s age is a primary concern. Democrats, according to Smith, suffer from “anxiety that he might not live to finish a second term … [but they] don’t have any other obviously stronger candidate[s].”

This puts Democrats gearing up for Biden’s second go at the White House in 2024 in a quandary: Should they ignore his age and continue to focus on “Orange Man Bad”? which is the strategy they claim led to the heavily contested 2020 election results. Or should they laugh it off?

Biden tried that approach at the recent White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. He reminded his champions in the media that he served in the Senate “for 270 years,” that he used to be three years older than his sister Valerie but now “has 20 years on her.” “I believe in the First Amendment [and] not just because my good friend Jimmy Madison wrote it,” brought laughter from the sycophants attending the dinner.

He rolled on:

Call me old. I call it being seasoned.

 

You say I am ancient. I say I’m wise.

 

You say I’m over the hill. Don Lemon [whose recent comments suggested that women over 40 might have seen their better days] would say, “That’s a man in his prime.”

Florida’s Republican Senator Rick Scott couldn’t resist the opportunity to point out the obvious: “Joe Biden is unwell. He’s unfit for office. He’s incoherent, incapacitated, and confused. He doesn’t know where he is half the time.”

YouTube hasn’t erased all of the videos showing Biden’s miscues and gaffes, with this one from Sky News Australia capturing more than a million and a half views.

Smith reminded his Vanity Fair readers that Democrats had to set up a basement studio in Biden’s Wilmington home “to minimize opportunities to look physically vulnerable.” They won’t have that option in 2024. Instead, they’ll have the task of “demonstrat[ing] Biden’s vitality without running the octogenarian candidate into the ground.”

Biden’s close friend Ed Rendell, former governor of Pennsylvania, told Smith that “he’d turn 86 in the fourth year of his second term [and that] every time I see him walk up the stairs to Air Force One, I shudder.”

It’s not just his age. It’s the enormous gap between him and the voters, many of them five or six decades younger than he is. How many of them, intones Smith, would “turn out [to vote for] a man older than many of their grandparents?”

Smith suggested that the only way Biden might win a second contest against Trump is to run as “the antidote to Trump,” which allegedly worked so well in 2020.

Strategies to ignore or humorously dismiss the “age” issue so far are failing. The latest poll from ABC News/Washington Post released on Sunday reveal that two-thirds of Americans think Biden is too old to run again, while reporting that his approval rating has just hit an all-time low, now at 36 percent.

ABC didn’t bother to hide the results of its poll:

Biden already is the nation’s oldest president. As mentioned, 68% see him as too old for another term…

 

Nearly half of Democrats — 48% — say Biden is too old for another term….

 

Many more independents — 75% — say this about Biden, versus 51% for Trump….

 

Beyond age alone are questions of mental acuity and physical health. Just 32% overall think Biden has the mental sharpness it takes to serve effectively as president, down steeply from 51% when he was running for president three years ago.

 

More — 54% — think Trump has the required mental sharpness, in his case up 8 points from three years ago. The gap is even wider in terms of having the physical health to serve effectively — just 33% think Biden has it, versus 64% for Trump.

Biden’s trouble appears across all demographic groups: Blacks, Hispanics, women, and moderates. In each group Biden’s support is melting like an ice cube in Scottsdale: down between 10 and 30 points or more in just the last two years.

In polls matching Biden against Trump and DeSantis in 2024, Biden is losing by six full percentage points.

Physically, Biden is fading. In December 2019, his doctor, Kevin O’Connor, reminded readers that in 1988 Biden suffered from not one but two “cerebral aneurysms” — a bulging of an artery in the brain which, if it ruptures, “quickly becomes life-threatening,” according to the Mayo Clinic.

He added that while they were repairing one of them, the operation “was complicated by [the discovery of a] deep vein thrombosis and a pulmonary embolism.” These are known as DVTs and blood clots.

At the time they also removed his prostate.

In his latest examination of Biden last November, Dr. O’Connor didn’t mention the incidents from 1988, but did point out what is obvious to even the most casual observer: Biden has a “stiffened gait” as “a result of degenerative (“wear and tear”) osteoarthritic changes of his spine.”

Biden is also suffering from “a mild peripheral neuropathy in both feet,” resulting from nerve damage that leads to pain during walking, and unsteadiness while standing.

Biden now takes two prescription drugs every day — Eliquis and Crestor — as well as Allegra and Pepcid. He uses a nasal spray as well for a sinus condition.

All in all, Biden’s life expectancy is to live to age 87, barring other plans from the Creator.

There is another option. Smith from Vanity Fair says it would be “reasonable” for him to quit while he’s ahead:

It would be entirely reasonable for Biden to decide he wants to go out on a high note and to announce that he’s changed his mind and that instead of jousting with Marjorie Taylor Greene until 2028 he will be spending his remaining years hanging out with his seven grandchildren.

One can hope.

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Soros-backed Prosecutor Resigns Before Being Fired

Friday, 05 May 2023 11:36
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, May 5, 2023:  

Protesting to the very end that the attacks on her as St. Louis Circuit attorney were politically and racially motivated, Kimberly Gardner finally caved. In her tweet on Thursday to the city’s residents who had endured nearly six years of rising crime due to her malfeasance, she attempted a classic misdirection:

Since day one of my tenure as Circuit Attorney, I have experienced attacks on my reforms, on my judgment, on my integrity, on my prosecutorial discretion, on my responsibility to direct the limited resources of this office and more.

 

Some of these attacks seem designed to stop the office from functioning, at the expense of public safety. We have experienced an onslaught of records requests that no office in the country could reasonably fulfill, along with attacks on our hard-working line attorneys designed to demoralize these public servants. There is no sign that the onslaught would stop for as long as I am in the office.

Those “attacks” began almost from the first day she took office in 2016. She revamped the rules under which her attorneys would bring cases to trial. She loaded them up with unbearable numbers, often exceeding 100 for each attorney in her office, resulting in delays averaging 340 days between charging and trial.

Within months she created an “exclusion list” of nearly 30 police officers, prohibiting them from filing charges with her office.

It didn’t take long for crime in St. Louis to rise. The 264 homicides the city reported in 2020 were more than 36 percent more than the year before. Property crime soared, and is now more than four times the national average, while the murder rate is eight times the national average.

Neighborhood Scout rates St. Louis as one of the most crime-ridden cities in the nation.

Her determination to undermine the rule of law in the name of equity finally resulted in Missouri’s Attorney General Andrew Bailey filing a petition to remove her from office. That petition was likely driven by the final straw: the maiming of a young woman by a criminal whom Gardner had let out on bond.

Bailey’s petition provided the details of the ghastly incident:

Janae Edmonson, a teenage athlete, was walking back to her hotel in downtown St. Louis on Saturday, February 18. Ms. Edmonson, who was in town for a volleyball tournament, had just verbally committed to play sports for a college in Tennessee.

 

As Ms. Edmonson and her family walked down the sidewalk, a speeding car driven by Daniel Riley crashed into another car and struck Ms. Edmonson, severing one of her legs and maiming the other.

 

Her father, thanks to his quick thinking and military service, applied two belts as tourniquets as he watched the life drain from her face.

 

Thankfully, Ms. Edmonson survived, although both of her legs were amputated.

Just who is Daniel Riley? Bailey explained:

Daniel Riley never should have been driving that car. In 2020, the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office charged Riley with First Degree Robbery and Armed Criminal Action for stealing a firearm from [a] victim at gunpoint.

 

The Circuit Attorney [Gardner] dismissed and refiled that case on July 18, 2022, but not before Riley — who was out on bond — earned 54 separate violations for failing to comply with the pre-trial bond conditions.

 

After the Circuit Attorney refiled the case, Riley earned 50 more violations. The Circuit Attorney never filed a motion to revoke Riley’s bond. [Emphasis in original.]

But her office had plenty of time to prosecute Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the couple who protected their property during the George Floyd riots by displaying their legally owned firearms. The judge in that case saw through Gardner’s real motives, writing that her attempt was “a criminal prosecution for political purposes.”

In her resignation tweet, Gardner expressed pride in her accomplishments: “Under my leadership … this office has made tremendous strides in redefining public safety.” She was correct about that. That “redefining” meant that her office dismissed nearly 12,000 criminal cases, including some involving first-degree murder.

Her resignation was met with a sigh of relief from many, including Representative Ann Wagner (R-Mo.), who tweeted, “She has presided over miscarriages of justice for years, hurting countless victims who put their trust in her and letting dangerous criminals escape the accountability they deserve. St. Louis will be better off without her.”

Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher, along with the House Speaker Pro Tem Mike Henderson and House Majority Floor Leader Jon Patterson, issued a joint statement:

We have achieved an important victory in restoring law and order in the City of St. Louis with this resignation. Addressing the violent crime crisis that has destabilized the St. Louis region has been one of our highest priorities this session, which has included holding the Circuit Attorney accountable for the willful neglect of her constitutional duties.

Even judges on the St. Louis Circuit Court were relieved at the news of her resignation: “We hope St. Louis’ next Circuit Attorney is successful in restoring stability to the Office and rebuilding its ranks with experienced prosecutors.”

State Attorney General Bailey can’t wait for Gardner’s reign of terror to end:

There is absolutely no reason for the circuit attorney to remain in office until June 1.

 

We remain undeterred with our legal quest to forcibly remove her from office. Every day she remains puts the city of St. Louis in more danger.

 

How many victims will there be between now and June 1? How many defendants will have their constitutional rights violated? How many cases will continue to go unprosecuted?

Missouri Governor Mike Parson will name Gardner’s replacement.

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White House Proclaims National Day of Prayer

Thursday, 04 May 2023 20:09
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, May 4, 2023:  

The occupant of the Oval Office, Joe Biden, managed in his proclamation of the National Day of Prayer to repeat the canard that the Founders created a “democracy” instead of a constitutional republic: “Throughout our history, prayer has empowered moral movements and fueled efforts to strengthen our democracy.… We are all bound together by our love of country and our belief in democracy.”

He severely limited using the Name of God, but thankfully didn’t reference his famous faux pas from three years ago while out campaigning. Readers remember how he stumbled through his speech:

We have to heal our division, repair our democracy, and above all it’s time for America to get back up on its feet and once again fight for the proposition that we hold these truths to be self-evident. Sounds corny, not a joke. Think about it. All men and women are created by … you know … the thing.

“The Thing,” Mr. Biden, is the King of the Universe Who, before the founding of the Republic, was revered in precursors to today’s celebration of Him. In 1775 the Continental Congress asked the Colonies to pray for wisdom in creating the Republic. In 1863 President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a day of “humiliation, fasting, and prayer.”

The National Day of Prayer was created in 1952 by a joint resolution of the U.S. Congress, and signed into law by President Harry Truman. In 1988 President Ronald Reagan, along with both houses of Congress, made it an annual event.

Other national leaders, not infected with the self-righteousness of so many of the country’s elected leaders today, were far bolder in declaring the majesty of the Creator. Jim Daly, head of Focus on the Family, said: “In these tenuous and trying times, the very best thing we can do is bring our cares and concerns to God in prayer.”

Frank Gaffney, founder of the Center for Security Policy, said: “The National Day of Prayer is a reminder of the providential character of this nation’s founding. The only hope for its survival in this perilous moment is our people’s faith in Almighty God and our prayers for His continuing grace.”

David Jeremiah, senior pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church, added:

Our world is facing unprecedented uncertainty. Health, finances, politics — every aspect of life seems to be hanging in the balance. Yet there is one source of true hope and healing — and that is Almighty God.

Jeremiah quoted from 2 Chronicles 7:14:

He has promised, “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

“The Thing,” Mr. Biden, was well known and highly regarded by the Founders. They adopted something that overturned millennia of dictatorships, monarchies, and the resultant enslavement of mankind, declaring instead:

WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.

 

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.…

 

We, therefore, the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions … with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence … mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

It was Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, who said what more properly needed to be said on this National Day of Prayer:

We are thankful for the abundant blessings You have bestowed on America. Our forefathers looked to You as Protector, Provider, and the Promise of hope. But we have wandered far from that firm foundation. May we repent for turning our backs on Your faithfulness.

The broadcast of the event will air tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on a variety of platforms, including Pray.com, nationaldayofprayer.org, facebook.com/pray, and CBN.com. According to the Christian Post, the event is expected to reach 110 million households.

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IRS Data Show Democrat-run States Losing People and Their Wealth to Republican-run States

Wednesday, 03 May 2023 15:22
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, May 3, 2023:  

Walter Wriston, former chairman and CEO of Citicorp and considered by many to be the single-most influential commercial banker of his generation, famously said: “Capital goes where it’s welcome and stays where it’s well treated.”

The latest data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) — which tracks the migration of people through their income tax returns — proves it. Wirepoints, an independent research company in Illinois, parsed the IRS data and reported last Friday that the biggest losers of both people and wealth — “exit states” — were Illinois, New York, and California.

The biggest winners — which this writer calls “welcome states” — were Texas and Florida.

From Wirepoints:

Illinois, New York, and California continued their streak as the nation’s biggest losers of residents and their wealth to other states, according to a Wirepoints analysis of newly-released Internal Revenue Service migration data.

 

Texas and Florida continued to be the nation’s big winners.

 

The latest IRS state-by-state migration data is based on tax returns filed in 2020 and 2021, covering taxpayers (tax filers and their dependents) who moved from one state to another between 2019 and 2020.

Florida enjoyed the most from the “exit” states, gaining not only 256,000 new residents in 2021 but the $39 billion they reported (as adjusted gross incomes) on their tax returns.

Texas was second, adding 175,000 new residents who brought with them almost $11 billion.

California, on the other hand, lost 332,000 residents, who took with them more than $29 billion in incomes. New York came in at Loser Position No. 2 behind California, suffering an exit of 262,000 residents with reported incomes of $24.5 billion.

And Illinois came in third, losing 105,000 taxpayers along with their incomes of $10.9 billion.

Wirepoints, though trying to remain nonpolitical (“We try to stick to policy, facts and numbers, not politics”), nevertheless made it clear why the “exit” states are shrinking while the “welcome” states are growing:

The IRS data shows for yet another year Americans chose better managed, less expensive areas over larger, government-centric, high-cost cities and states.

 

And it provides a glimpse of a demographic future in which states that prioritize an affordable, less intrusive government will dominate those that over-tax and over-regulate the lives and businesses of their residents.

That second points bears elaboration: As the blue/liberal/Marxist-run states lose people, they lose their taxes and their political influence in elections as well. Texas and Florida are gaining representation in the House of Representatives, while Illinois, California, and New York are losing it. And those gains are being built on previous years’ gains, continuing a forward momentum that blue states are losing.

For instance, for the first time in 40 years total employment in Florida now exceeds that of New York. And Florida is now running a budget surplus of $22 billion, while California is suffering from a budget deficit of nearly $30 billion.

The analysis by Wirepoints on the latest data from the IRS comes on the heels of one the group did on data released by the Census Bureau last December:

The red states of Texas and Florida grew their populations by more than 400,000 in 2022. Their pro-growth, pro-business, pro-taxpayer policies remain a magnet for both Americans and foreigners alike.

 

In contrast, blue states New York, California, and Illinois each had their populations fall by 100,000 or more in 2022. Americans continue to flee those same three states, year after year.

Texas enjoyed the largest influx of individuals in 2022, growing by nearly half a million and making Texas the second state in the nation with a population of over 30 million people.

As noted, the impact of the great migration from “exit” states to “welcome” states isn’t just economic — it’s political. As the Wirepoints authors noted: “You can’t help but wonder what impact these population [changes] will have on the next presidential election — and what they mean for the prospects of the [states’] governors who end up running [in 2024].”

For Wriston, it’s confirmation: People and their money will move to where they are better treated, and will stay there.

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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