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

15 States Try to Rein In Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Wednesday, 18 January 2023 21:12
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, January 18, 2023:  

In the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010, creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Ever since then, victims of the CFPB have tried again and again to find a court that would shut it down.

A brainchild of far-left Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), CFPB was designed from the start to avoid constitutional limitations. It is housed inside the Eccles Building in Washington, D.C., along with the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. It isn’t funded by Congress, but by the Federal Reserve, and, although part of the Executive Branch, there is virtually no congressional or executive oversight of the agency.

It writes its own rules, finds who violates them, and then punishes them, sometimes with outrageous fines that threaten their very existence.

In a lawsuit filed by Connecticut attorney Kimberly Pisinski in July 2013, Pisinski alleged that the “CFPB’s structure insulates it from political accountability and internal checks and balances in violation of the United States Constitution. Unbridled from constitutionally-required accountability, CFPB has engaged in ultra vires [“beyond the powers”] and abusive practices, including attempts to regulate the practice of law … attempts to collect attorney-client protected material and overreaching demands for, and mining of, personal financial information of American citizens, which has prompted a Government Accountability Office investigation.”

Her case was dismissed by a D.C. federal court a few months later.

In Seila Law v. CFPB, filed in 2018, the sole proprietor for a law firm that got caught in the CFPB’s web filed suit against the agency. After losing appeal after appeal, the case finally went to the Supreme Court, which ruled in June 2020 that the agency could continue its unconstitutional operations.

This is the issue raised by Seila:

The appropriations issue that Seila Law noted has now come to a head. In [its decision] the Fifth Circuit correctly held that the CFPB’s unprecedented funding scheme impermissibly shifts Congress’s power of the purse to the Bureau.

 

But that decision is at odds with one from the D.C. Circuit, which saw no constitutional problem with “the CFPB’s budgetary set-up.”

 

So now much of the country’s financial industry sits in a state of regulatory limbo, wondering whether the CFPB can continue as a going concern without congressional intervention.

 

Meanwhile, the Bureau insists that it will “continue to carry out its vital work” without apparent change — even though a federal appellate court has told the Bureau it must change.

In Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. All American Check Cashing, Inc., another agency victim fought back and lost in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Fifteen states, including Texas, have filed a request with the Supreme Court that it take another look at the rogue agency. In their writ of certiorari, the states claim that since the agency is operating with funds from the Federal Reserve and not appropriated by Congress, as required under the Constitutions’ appropriations clause, it is operating illegally.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton joined the 15 states’ request:

The CFPB is a largely autonomous entity that has imposed a number of damaging regulations on American businesses.

 

While the CFPB’s constitutionality has been challenged on several fronts, the nature of this case revolves around the entity’s funding mechanism.

 

CFPB is not funded through the congressional appropriations process. Instead, it derives its funding from the Federal Reserve and may receive up to 12 percent of the Federal Reserve’s annual operating expenses, which amounts to several billion dollars.

 

This funding structure allows the CFPB to act as an unaccountable regulator in violation of the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution.

So, there it is: Warren’s totalitarian brainchild has virtually unlimited funding to wreak havoc on America’s financial industry, with no congressional oversight. It recombines the three elements of government that the Founders separated in order to keep that government from becoming tyrannical. Texas and the other states are hoping that this time is a charm — that the high court will take the case, uncover the agency’s unconstitutional structure and funding, and declare it illegal.

Keep Reading…

Report: To Stay Healthy and Live Longer, Go to Church

Tuesday, 17 January 2023 20:46
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, January 17, 2023:  

A new study released by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) shows that people who attend church regularly — who “participate in organized religious activities” — live longer.

The study follows one done by the National Academy of Science last year. At that moment in time, the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reported that life expectancy in the United States had dropped nearly three full years just since 2020. This “was the biggest two-decline in life expectancy since 1921-1923.”

In other words, instead of continuing to decline (life expectancy in 1900 was 46 years), mortality leveled off around 1990 and then began to climb.

Theorists, scientists, and actuaries call the upward bending mortality curve a result of “despair,” or “deaths of despair.” And the National Academy of Science study failed to uncover the reason why:

Every symptom of despair has been defined as a disorder or dysregulation within the individual.

 

This incorrectly frames the problem, forcing individuals to grapple on their own — by learning resilience, self-help, and so on.

 

It also emphasizes treatment by pharmacology, providing innumerable drugs for anxiety, depression, anger, psychosis, and obesity, plus new drugs to treat addictions to the old drugs. We cannot defeat despair solely with pills — to the contrary, pills will only deepen it.

But the study released by the NBER — “Opiates of the Masses? Deaths of Despair and the Decline of American Religion” — show that “the initial rise in deaths of despair [drug overdose, suicide, alcoholism] in the US were preceded by a large decline in organized religious participation.”

It added,

We know of no other cultural phenomenon involving such large, widespread changes in participation prior to the initial rise in US mortality, nor do we know of any other phenomenon that matches the seemingly idiosyncratic patterns observed for mortality.

The study further reveals that those living in states in which people attend church on a regular basis — “participating” in religious services, or “religiosity” — live longer, while those living in more secular states tend to die sooner:

We also show that religiosity and the rate of deaths of despair are negatively correlated across states: states with high levels of religiosity have suffered less from mortality due to alcohol, suicides, or drug poisonings….

 

States that experienced large decreases in religiosity have had the largest gains in the rate of deaths of despair.

The authors state that it’s actual participation — regular church attendance — rather than religious beliefs that matter:

The impact that we witness seems to be driven by the decline in formal religious participation rather than in belief or personal activities like prayer.

 

These results underscore the importance of cultural institutions such as religious establishments in promoting well-being.

The results are counter to the widely promoted belief that capitalism’s “failure” — i.e., income inequality, social isolation, stagnant wages, runaway inflation, rising unemployment, etc., etc. — is the root cause of the 150,000 deaths of despair that occur every year.

Perhaps the study could be turned into a marketing campaign by churches suffering declining attendance: “Come to church, get saved, live longer!”

Keep Reading…

Delaware Gun Owners Sue State Over Magazine Ban

Monday, 16 January 2023 16:26
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 16, 2023:  

Two law-abiding gun owners, along with two pro-Second Amendment groups, filed suit last week in Delaware, challenging the state’s ban on “large capacity magazines.” The law being challenged was signed into law just seven days after the Supreme Court ruled in Bruen that such laws must now be justified by demonstrating that they are “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

The challenged law, SB 6, makes it a crime to purchase, receive, possess, transfer, sell, offer to sell, or manufacture any magazine that can hold more than 17 rounds of ammunition.

The founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation (one of the two groups contesting the law), Alan Gottlieb, said the new law “literally criminalizes one of the most common and important means by which Delaware citizens can exercise their right of self-defense. In effect, SB 6 makes self-defense a potential criminal act, and that must not be allowed to stand.”

Delaware, the home state of Joe Biden, is under the virtual control of the Democratic Party: The governor’s office, all statewide executive offices, large majorities in both state houses, and all seats for the state in the U.S. Congress are held by anti-gun Democrats. Predictably, rather than celebrate the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bruen, the party thumbed its nose at the decision, implementing (for the first time in the state’s history) a ban on so-called high-capacity magazines.

The law, which became effective the moment the state’s Democrat Governor John Carney signed it on June 30, immediately criminalized every law-abiding gun owner in the state who owns such a “large capacity” magazine. All such owners must immediately turn over to a law-enforcement agency the offending magazines or face criminal charges: for a first offense, a $100 fine; for a second offense, six months in jail and a $1,150 fine; for additional offenses, up to five years in jail.

The lawsuit used logic, common sense, historical tradition, and the language from both the Second and 14th Amendments to make its case against Kathy Jennings, the Democrat attorney general for the state:

  1. The AR-15 rifle, many of which come from the factory with magazines of 17 rounds or more, is owned by nearly 25 million Americans;
  2. There are, as a result, some 44 million AR-15s owned by those Americans;
  3. Those semi-automatic rifles “are very rarely used in the commission of crimes,” according to the lawsuit: “mass shootings represent an extremely small subset of all violent crime committed with a gun, and mass shootings involving firearms that feature magazines holding more than 17 rounds are an even smaller subset still”;
  4. There is “no convincing empirical evidence that a state magazine ban will have any impact at all on mass shootings”;
  5. There is “no historical tradition” for prohibiting the possession of such magazines … “indeed, until [this ban] was put in place, Delaware did not restrict possessing, purchasing, manufacturing, transferring, or selling standard capacity magazines, and no such laws existed anywhere in the United States before the 1990s”;
  6. “Firearms capable of firing multiple rounds without reloading were well known to the founding generation”; and
  7. Violent criminals “will not be meaningfully constrained by Delaware’s Ban … it will not be difficult for violent criminals to acquire them through illegal sales or importation despite Delaware’s Ban.”

Hopefully all of this will be persuasive to the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, where the suit was filed last week. But for the Democrats, such expressions of logic, common sense, and historical tradition, not to mention the aforementioned amendments to the U.S. Constitution, mean nothing.

Keep Reading…

Final ATF Rule Turns Pistols Into Rifles to Be Regulated Under National Firearms Act

Monday, 16 January 2023 16:23
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 16, 2023:  

Back in 2012, the ATF (the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) ruled that pistol stabilizing braces didn’t turn pistols into short-barreled rifles, and therefore they were exempt from inclusion under the 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA). The NFA is a national registry of certain firearms and accessories such as machine guns, suppressors, short-barreled rifles (barrel less than 16″) and short-barreled shotguns (barrel less than 18″). Possessing an NFA item without jumping through the proper hoops, including registration and the payment of a $200 fee for a “tax stamp,” is a felony subjecting one to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Many see the NFA as a precursor to a national registry of all privately owned firearms.

On Friday, Attorney General Merrick Garland signed a “final rule” stating that any firearm that uses a pistol brace will be “considered a ‘rifle’ or ‘firearm’ subject to regulation under the NFA.”

Garland rolled out the canard that the agency’s primary concern is public safety:

Keeping our communities safe from gun violence is among the Department’s highest priorities.

 

Almost a century ago, Congress determined that short-barreled rifles must be subject to heightened requirements. Today’s rule makes clear that firearm manufacturers, dealers, and individuals cannot evade these important public safety protections simply by adding accessories to pistols that transform them into short-barreled rifles.

To clarify: The ATF has little interest in keeping communities safe when it moves to disarm law-abiding citizens, or impose such onerous regulations that they effect the same end. Instead, it has from the beginning been a tool to enact gun control.

The National Firearms Act was passed in 1934 following Al Capone’s reign of terror in Chicago. While citizens were out of work and struggling just to keep food on the table during the Great Depression, the Roosevelt administration saw its chance to infringe on the Second Amendment. It passed muster with the Supreme Court, and has been a thorn in the side of law-abiding gun owners ever since.

A pistol-stabilizing brace is simply a device that, while similar in appearance to a rifle buttstock, is designed to be strapped on to the shooting arm of the user, allowing disabled people to more comfortably fire a rifle-style gun with one arm. Of course, it can also be used to shoulder-fire the weapon as a rifle. Since the ATF’s 2012 ruling that this device does not turn a firearm with a stabilizing brace and a barrel less than 16″ into a short-barreled rifle subject to the NFA, sales have skyrocketed. Estimates are that some 40 million such braces exist in the country.

That 2012 ruling has now been overturned.

ATF Director Steven Dettelbach, a hard-core anti-gun operative who previously served under Barack Obama as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, rejoiced in the rule change:

This rule enhances public safety and prevents people from circumventing the laws Congress passed almost a century ago.

 

Certain so-called stabilizing braces are designed to just attach to pistols, essentially converting them into short-barreled rifles to be fired from the shoulder.

 

Therefore, they must be treated in the same way under the [NFA] statute.

When the rule change was first proposed there was pushback — major pushback. There were nearly a quarter of a million negative public comments made on the ATF website. There is a bill called “Stop Harassing Owners of Rifles Today Act (SHORT Act) introduced by Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) that would remove short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and certain other weapons from the NFA.

Said Marshall, “My bill is the only way to ensure the Constitutional rights of gun owners are protected against the ATF’s reckless abuse of the NFA to justify its pistol brace rule.”

Marshall’s bill, of course, won’t see the light of day in the anti-gun, Democrat-controlled Senate.

There was also a letter from the Senate Republican Caucus to AG Garland demanding that he withdraw the rule:

The way the proposed rule is written makes clear that ATF intends to bring the most common uses of the most widely possessed stabilizing braces within the purview of the NFA. Doing so would turn millions of law-abiding Americans into criminals overnight, and would constitute the largest executive branch-imposed gun registration and confiscation scheme in American history.

Of course. That is the whole point. Garland, Dettelbach, and the agency ignored all of this pushback and moved ahead with their grievous infringement of the Second Amendment anyway.

Some can take heart over the decision last week by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Cargill v. Garland. An initial lawsuit against another ATF proposed rule change had been tossed at the district level. On appeal, a panel at the Fifth Circuit agreed. But an en banc rehearing at the First Circuit ruled against the lower court and the panel, stating,

a plain reading of the statutory language, paired with close consideration of the mechanics of a semi-automatic firearm, reveals that a bump stock is excluded from the technical definition of ‘machinegun’ set forth in the Gun Control Act and National Firearms Act.

A bump stock is not a pistol brace, but the breach by the infringement by the ATF is the same. From the Cargill ruling:

A bump stock is a firearm attachment that allows a shooter to harness the natural recoil of a semi-automatic weapon to quickly re-engage the trigger after firing, enabling him to shoot at an increased rate of speed.

 

When ATF first considered the type of bump stocks at issue here, it understood that they were not machineguns. ATF maintained this position for over a decade, issuing many interpretation letters to that effect to members of the public.

 

But ATF reversed its longstanding position in 2018, subjecting anyone who possessed a bump stock to criminal liability.

Michael Cargill gave up his bump stocks to the ATF and then sued the agency:

Appellant Michael Cargill surrendered several bump stocks to the Government following publication of the regulation at issue.

 

He now challenges the legality of that regulation, arguing that a bump stock does not fall within the definition of “machinegun” as set forth in federal law, and thus that ATF lacked the authority to issue a regulation purporting to define the term as such.

 

Cargill is correct. A plain reading of the statutory language, paired with close consideration of the mechanics of a semi-automatic firearm, reveals that a bump stock is excluded from the technical definition of “machinegun” set forth in the Gun Control Act and National Firearms Act….

 

The Final Rule promulgated by the ATF violates the APA [the federal statute that governs how federal agencies propose and establish rules such as this]. We therefore REVERSE the judgment of the district court and REMAND [return] with instructions to enter judgment for Cargill.

Pro-Second Amendment groups are busy crafting a similar lawsuit, hoping that the precedent set by the Fifth Circuit (which encompasses Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas) will extend to pistol braces as well.

Keep Reading…

Dozens of Illinois Sheriffs Won’t Enforce New Gun Law

Friday, 13 January 2023 15:29
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, January 13, 2023:  

More than 80 Illinois county sheriffs are refusing to enforce the state’s new gun law banning the sale, purchase, or possession of so-called assault weapons. The new law also bans magazines with capacities exceeding 10 rounds for rifles and 15 founds for pistols. In addition, the new law, while grandfathering firearms owned prior to passage of the law, requires owners of the now-offending firearms to register them with the state police.

Whiteside County Sheriff John Booker says that the law “goes after the law-abiding citizen … [that’s] what we’re upset about.” Sheriffs in Greene, Macoupin, Monroe, and Madison counties won’t be enforcing the law either.

McHenry County Sheriff Robb Tadelman announced that “neither myself nor my office will be checking to ensure that lawful gun owners register their weapons with the state, nor will we be arresting … law-abiding individuals who have been charged solely with non-compliance with this act.”

Sheriffs in Kankakee, Boone, and Winnebago counties aren’t going to enforce it.

McDonough County Sheriff Nick Petitgout called the new law “a clear violation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”

Knox County Sheriff Jack Harlan issued a news release:

Part of my duties that I accepted upon being sworn into office was to protect the rights provided to all of us, in the Constitution. One of those enumerated rights is the right of the people to keep and bear arms, provided under the Second Amendment.

 

I, among many others, believe that [the new law] is a clear violation of the Second Amendment.

Edwards County Sheriff Darby Boewe posted a lengthy statement on Facebook:

Part of my duties that I accepted upon being sworn into office was to protect the rights provided to all of us, in the Constitution. One of those rights enumerated is the right of the people to KEEP and BEAR ARMS provided under the 2nd Amendment. The right to keep and bear arms for defense of life, liberty and property is regarded as an inalienable right by the people…

 

Therefore, as custodian of the jail and chief law enforcement officer for Edwards County, that neither myself or my office will be checking to ensure that lawful gun owners register their weapons with the state, nor will we be arresting or housing individuals that have been charged solely with non-compliance of this act.

Madison County Sheriff Jeff Conner went even further. In a joint statement with the county’s State Attorney Tom Haine, they wrote:

We feel the duty to clarify for our citizens the policy their Madison County law enforcement leaders will adopt with regard to this new situation….

 

As with any statute passed by the legislature and signed by the governor, it is presumed constitutional.

 

But we are acutely aware that this statute touches on fundamental constitutional issues and is in obvious tension with recent and binding Supreme Court precedent on the Second Amendment [i.e., New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen]. Among other things, it bans many of the most popular firearms in America, firearms that are currently in common use for lawful purposes and which law-abiding citizens have legally owned for many years.

 

Whatever the policy justification, such a ban is hard to square with the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Bruen, which stated simply: “the Second Amendment protects the possession and use of weapons that are ‘in common use at the time.’” Based on the analysis above, we expect a strong court challenge to HB 5471 in short order….

 

Therefore, pending further direction by the courts, the Madison County Sheriff’s Office will not expend its limited resources to check whether otherwise law-abiding gun owners have registered their weapons with the state, nor will the Madison County Sheriff’s Office be arresting or housing otherwise law-abiding individuals solely due to non-compliance with [the law].…

 

The citizens of Madison County can remain confident that their local law enforcement will not turn the criminal justice system against those acting within their clearly defined constitutional rights.

Without saying so directly, these Illinois county sheriffs are taking their roles as constitutional sheriffs seriously. Former Graham County, Arizona, Sheriff Richard Mack defined those roles:

“To keep the peace and to secure, defend and protect the people of this jurisdiction from threats to their liberties, their livelihoods, and the peaceable enjoyment of their property.

 

The nature of that solemn oath requires that the actions of the sheriff in the performance of his duty must conform to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of this State.

The State of Illinois, represented by Governor J.B. Pritzker, rejects the whole idea of constitutional sheriffs defending the rights of those who elected them. A Pritzker spokesman declared that, contrary to the opinions expressed by those 80-some sheriffs, “the assault weapons ban is the law of Illinois. The General Assembly passed the bill, and the governor signed it into law.… Sheriffs have a constitutional duty to uphold the laws of the state [and] not pick and choose which laws they support.”

Harold Krent, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law, agrees with Pritzker:

The General Assembly has decided [that the gun law] is constitutional. The [state’s] attorney general has decided it’s constitutional. I think it’s an incredible risk for sheriffs to say: “We’re not going to enforce a law” because that’s encouraging a lack of respect for the law.

Various pro-Second Amendment groups, including the Second Amendment Foundation, are filing suits against the law. They have not only the Bruen decision on their side, they also have the Supreme Court’s decision in Norton v. Shelby County, decided in 1886, on their side. In that case the high court ruled:

An unconstitutional statute is not a law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; it affords no protection; it creates no office; it is, in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed.

Keep Reading…

DOA: Fair Tax Act to Abolish the IRS Has Zero Chance of Passage

Thursday, 12 January 2023 13:20
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, January 12, 2023:  

Tantalizing though it may sound, Rep. Buddy Carter’s (R-Ga.) bill to replace the IRS and the nation’s present convoluted and complex income-tax system with a simple flat-consumption tax has no chance of seeing the light of day in the new Congress.

It was one concession that now-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy was more than happy to give to those blocking his campaign. Efforts in past decades to pass a similar bill have been ignored, with no committee even looking at it and never passing it on for a floor vote.

The concept is elegant: In place of the IRS (and its 87,000 new agents), the Fair Tax Act would eliminate all taxes — federal, state, estate, capital gains, gift, and payroll — and replace them with a nationwide sales tax, a simple 23-percent sales tax on all goods and services purchased for personal consumption.

Carter made his pitch to his colleagues:

Instead of adding 87,000 new agents to weaponize the IRS against small business owners and middle America, this bill will eliminate the need for the department entirely by simplifying the tax code with provisions that work for the American people and encourage growth and innovation.

 

Armed, unelected bureaucrats should not have more power over your paycheck than you do.

His pitch so far has elicited the support of fewer than a dozen of his colleagues. One of them, Rep. Jeff Duncan (R) from South Carolina, gave his approval:

As a former small business owner, I understand the unnecessary burden our failing income tax system has on Americans.

 

The Fair Tax Act eliminates the tax code, replaces the income tax with a sales tax, and abolishes the abusive Internal Revenue Service.

 

If enacted, this will invigorate the American taxpayer and help more Americans achieve the American Dream.

Another Republican supporter, Rep. Bob Good of Virginia, added:

I support the Fair Tax because it simplifies our tax code.

 

This transforms the U.S. tax code from a mandatory, progressive, and convoluted system to a fully transparent and unbiased system which does away with the IRS as we know it.

 

It is good for our economy because it encourages work, savings, and investment. Thank you to my colleague Rep. Buddy Carter for leading this effort to simplify the system for American taxpayers.

Just in case Carter’s bill gains some traction, the Biden White House fired a warning shot:

With their first economic legislation of the new Congress, House Republicans are making clear that their top economic priority is to allow the rich and multi-billion-dollar corporations to skip out on their taxes, while making life harder for ordinary, middle-class families that pay the taxes they owe.

The chances that Carter’s bill won’t see the light of day is due to the present system’s ability to be manipulated by Congress to reward certain segments of the economy through tax incentives, credits, or welfare transfer payments from people who earned it to those who didn’t, for political purposes.

The root of the evil is the 16th Amendment: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”

This amendment passed muster at the Supreme Court in 1916, three years after its passage. Since then, it has allowed the Federal Reserve, also created in 1913, in conjunction with the U.S. Treasury, to fund both World Wars and create the largest welfare state in history.

Would a national sales tax do anything to reduce that welfare state? To be enforced, would not every transaction need to be monitored by the federal government so that “all goods and services purchased for personal consumption” could be effectively taxed?

Bad as it is, it’s perhaps best to keep the present system in place and let the utopian idea of a flat tax die a natural death in the 118th Congress.

Keep Reading…

The Rising Christian Influence in Hollywood

Wednesday, 11 January 2023 13:42
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, January 11, 2023:  

Jim Caviezel, the actor who portrayed Jesus Christ in Mel Gibson’s blockbuster film The Passion of the Christ (2004), said at the time “that accepting the titular role in [the film] all but assured the death of [my] Hollywood career.”

Since then, however, Caviezel’s career has enjoyed increasing success, starting with The Final Cut in 2004, and now his reprise as Jesus in Gibson’s Passion sequel, Resurrection, which has just started production.

Among the 16 films Caviezel has starred in since then are Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius; Déjà Vu; Outlander; Paul, Apostle of Christ; and Sound of Freedom.

Does this reflect a positive change in the Hollywood culture? Brent McCorkle, who directed the highly rated inspiring biographical drama Unconditional, thinks so:

Most of the people in the flyover states believe in God, and they have faith in Jesus.

 

There’s a lot of us [and] it’s an underserved market.

He added:

I think Hollywood is slowly waking up to that there’s kind of this sleeping giant out there, as far as this content could play for a lot of people.

 

And I really think we’re also coming into a place where people are going to be more receptive to faith-genre films that are well done.

McCorkle served as editor of Woodlawn (2015) and I Can Only Imagine (2018), which opened at No. 3 nationwide and remains the top-grossing film in the history of the film’s distributor, Roadside Attractions.

McCorkle is persuaded that the name of Christ is no longer a curse word in Hollywood, as A-list actors and directors are creating faith-based films to attract that “flyover” audience:

I think you’re going to see some really, really strong talented people who actually came up in Hollywood making more faith films, so they’re going to be excellent quality….

 

I think we’re at a time where we’re going to continue to see [faith-based films] get wider and bigger as a genre, and the stories get better, and the technicality of them continue to improve as more talent comes on board to the genre.

An increasing number of Hollywood celebrities won’t use the name of Jesus as a swear word but as an expression of their belief in Him as their Savior.

There’s Reese Witherspoon, whose career spans more than three decades and is unashamed of naming Christ as her Savior. There’s Justin Bieber, who posted last September, “I want to walk in the plans God has for me and not try to do it on my own … I’m grateful that I can walk with Jesus as He leads the way.”

And there’s Matthew McConaughey, whose faith was on display when he received an award as best actor in Dallas Buyers Club: “[He] graced my life with opportunities that I know are not of my hand or any other human hand.”

McCorkle is director of the upcoming film Jesus Revolution, due to open on February 24. It’s based on pastor Greg Laurie’s book of the same name recalling the Jesus movement in California during the 1970s.

Caviezel is reprising his role as Christ in Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ: Resurrection, which is currently under production, and says that “It’s going to be the biggest film in world history.”

That’s saying something, as Gibson’s first Passion film grossed more than $600 million worldwide, ranking it fifth in the world in the history of filmmaking.

Keep Reading…

New Jersey Judge Halts State’s New Gun-control Law, Dismantles State’s Arguments Supporting It

Tuesday, 10 January 2023 16:13
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, January 10, 2023:  

In her issuing of a temporary restraining order (TRO) against implementation of New Jersey’s attempt to nullify the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bruen, George W. Bush appointee U.S. District Court Judge Renee Marie Bumb took the defendants to the cleaners:

Plaintiffs [three New Jersey residents holding concealed carry permits, along with the Second Amendment Foundation and other pro-Second Amendment groups] have demonstrated a probability of success on the merits of their Second Amendment challenge to the relevant provisions of [the new law] which criminalizes carrying handguns in certain “sensitive places,” … public libraries or museums, bars, restaurants, and where alcohol is served, entertainment facilities, and private property, as well as [the law’s] ban on functional firearms in vehicles.

She invoked the new standard by which such laws are to be measured, according to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bruen:

The State may regulate conduct squarely protected by the Second Amendment only if supported by a historical tradition of firearm regulation.

 

Here, Plaintiffs have shown that Defendants will not be able to demonstrate a history of firearm regulation to support any of the challenged provisions.

 

The deprivation of Plaintiffs’ Second Amendment rights, as the holders of valid permits from the State to conceal carry handguns, constitutes irreparable injury, and neither the State nor the public has an interest in enforcing unconstitutional laws.

 

Accordingly, good cause exists, and the Court will grant the motion for temporary restraints.

As The New American previously noted, the new law that anti-gun Democrat New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed in December was “giving a raspberry to the high court.” The new law effectively turned the entire state into a “sensitive place” where no one could carry a firearm for self-defense.

In a work of surgical legal precision, Judge Bumb dissected and dismembered every attempt by attorneys trying to defend the law. The 60-page ruling is highly recommended reading to those in the freedom fight seeking an enjoyable break from the fight to see how she obliterates an enemy of the Second Amendment (the State of New Jersey).

Here are some select and especially relevant quotes from her order:

Plaintiffs decry the challenged legislation as declaring war on the Second Amendment because it essentially renders the entire State of New Jersey a “sensitive place” where firearms are prohibited.

 

[Plaintiffs have claimed that] New Jersey “has declared most of the State to be off limits to carry through the artifice of ‘sensitive places’”.

That “artifice” includes 25 categories of locations where it is a third-degree offense (punishable by imprisonment for up to five years) to “knowingly carry a firearm,” including schools, courthouses, childcare centers, nursing homes, polling places, government buildings, hospitals, bars and restaurants where alcohol is served, airports, parks, beaches, demonstrations, movie theaters, casinos, and other entertainment centers.

She quotes the new standard New Jersey must meet, from the Bruen decision:

When the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct.

 

The Government [in the Bruen case, the State of New York] must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition….

 

But expanding the category of “sensitive places” simply to all places of public congregation … defines the category of “sensitive places” far too broadly….

 

Put simply, there is no historical basis for New York to effectively declare the island of Manhattan a “sensitive place” simply because it is crowded….

Did New Jersey’s defense attorneys even come close to making a cogent defense of the intrusion under the new Bruen standard? She wrote: “The Court must answer two questions: one, does the Second Amendment’s plain text cover the challenged provision? And two, does historical evidence support the restriction?”

Her answer:

Plaintiffs have submitted sworn statements that the challenged regulations are so broad that they severely impact their ability to even leave their own home and property with their firearms, notwithstanding the fact that they were previously permitted by the State to freely do so, without fear of severe criminal penalty.

 

This has substantially impacted their ability to carry a handgun at all within the State.

She chose to include some especially juicy segments from the oral arguments attorneys for New Jersey tried to make in defending the new law.

At issue was how a citizen carrying a firearm would know if a private landowner wouldn’t allow him onto his property before coming onto the property:

THE COURT: [D]oes the UPS man, woman, violate the law when he gets up to the front door and the owner says you should not have come on my property if you’re armed?

 

MS. CAI [attorney for New Jersey]: Yes. Yes.

 

THE COURT: But to make it liable for trespassing under New Jersey, it has to be known to the potential trespasser ahead of time before he or she can be charged with trespassing.

 

This law has no such provision. This law says you can walk down the winding driveway, get to the front door and the [armed] repairmen is told [by the owner you do not have consent and] have just now violated the law, I’m calling the police.

 

MS. CAI: And that’s exactly what the law provides…

Wrote Judge Bumb:

But here, by Defendant’s own admission, the wrongful conduct includes scenarios in which the permit holder does not know, or even know how to know, if he has the owner’s consent to carry until it is too late.

 

This, by definition, is the criminalization of an innocent act, to wit, the lawful possession of a firearm.

 

Stated differently, by removing any requirement of a permit holder’s [knowing he is breaking the law], the legislation punishes an individual for the exercise of his Second Amendment rights.

It gets better. Here is another interchange between Attorney Cai and the court. This time the issue is the new law prohibiting a gun owner from carrying a firearm in his vehicle unless it is locked up in the trunk:

THE COURT: And so the State envisions it that if someone with a concealed carry permit wakes up and plans his day, that … he puts the firearm in the trunk.

 

He goes to his cousin who doesn’t want firearms. He leaves it in the trunk.

 

He then goes to the local market that permits firearms. He goes and he gets it out of the trunk, puts it together in public view, citizens see.

 

Citizens are going to get alarmed. Perhaps he’s brandishing the weapon, one might argue.

 

And then [he] goes to the local market, then he comes back out, he then brandishes the weapon, one could argue, puts it into the trunk and goes to another establishment where he’s not quite sure, so he puts it in the trunk and then goes up, gets the expressed consent, yes, that’s fine, goes back to his trunk, gets the firearm, assembles the firearm and then goes about and reenters the property.

 

That’s how the State envisions the day in the life of a gun owner?

 

MS. CAI: That could be, Your Honor.

Judge Bumb concluded:

In the final analysis, at some point on the line, when a constitutional right becomes so burdensome or unwieldy to exercise, it is, in effect, no longer a constitutional right.

 

Plaintiffs have made a convincing case that this legislation has reached that point….

 

Plaintiffs’ right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense can be restored only be enjoining [prohibiting] implementation of the challenged provisions.

She was not done, however. One of the phony arguments attorneys for the state trotted out was that the presence of concealed carry owners in public places actually increased the likelihood of an incident of gun violence.

She had to ask attorney Cai for such proof:

Lastly, at oral argument, this Court specifically pressed the State whether it had empirical evidence to suggest that concealed carry permit holders are responsible for gun crimes or an increase in gun crimes in New Jersey, which they cite as justification for the law.

 

However, the State had no such evidence.

She ended with this:

Plaintiffs have demonstrated a probability of success on the merits of their Second Amendment challenge to the relevant provisions of [the new law] which criminalizes carrying handguns in certain “sensitive places.”…

 

The State may regulate conduct squarely protected by the Second Amendment only if supported by a historical tradition of firearm regulation.

 

Here, Plaintiffs have shown that Defendants will not be able to demonstrate a history of firearm regulation to support any of the challenged provisions.

 

The deprivation of Plaintiffs’ Second Amendment rights, as the holders of valid permits from the State to conceal carry handguns, constitutes irreparable injury, and neither the State nor the public has an interest in enforcing unconstitutional laws.

 

Accordingly, good cause exists, and the Court will grant the motion for temporary restraints.

Keep Reading…

Kevin McCarthy’s Concessions

Monday, 09 January 2023 14:24
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 9, 2023:  

In his acceptance speech just after midnight on Saturday, newly elected Speaker of the House Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) claimed that “my ultimate responsibility is not to my party, my conference, or even our Congress. My responsibility … is to our country.”

But without major concessions to rule changes that he originally opposed, McCarthy would not be holding the gavel.

McCarthy, with a Freedom Index rating of just 60 out of 100, began to sound like a Constitutionalist:

We commit to stop wasteful Washington spending, to lower the price of groceries … and stop the rising national debt.

 

We pledge to cut the regulatory burden, lower energy costs for families, and create good-paying jobs for workers by unleashing reliable, abundant, American-made energy.

And he got specific:

Our first bill will repeal funding for 87,000 new IRS agents, because the government should be here to help you, not go after you.

One could convincingly argue that, under the Constitution that McCarthy regularly flouts, the federal government is not “here to help you,” but to stay out of the way so people can help themselves.

Nevertheless, McCarthy went on:

We’re going to pass bills to fix the nation’s urgent challenges — from the wide-open southern border to America-Last energy policies to woke indoctrination in our schools.

He promised to create committees “to pursue the truth … no more one-sided inquiries.”

The rules will be voted on Monday night, and here are the key concessions McCarthy made in his ultimately successful quest to lead the House:

A Motion to Remove the Speaker

Originally McCarthy wanted the House Freedom Caucus — the small but determined group of Constitutionalists who held their ground — to agree that he could be removed only if half of the Republican Party members in the House agreed to it. The caucus members said no, demanding that McCarthy agree to the rule that just one member of the House could call for a vote to oust the speaker. McCarthy counter-offered five. The group said no. McCarthy finally agreed to one.

Give More Committee Seats to Freedom Caucus Members

House Freedom Caucus members will receive three of the nine seats on the powerful House Rules Committee, the committee that has a major influence on which bills may be brought to the floor for a vote.

No More Omnibus Spending bills

Instead of wrapping a multitude of bills into one massive pork-laden package like the $1.7 trillion bill just passed by the Democrats in December, individual spending bills will be presented separately for a vote. And House members will have 72 hours before voting, giving them time to read the bills.

Possible Spending Cuts

This rule would cap spending at the levels from two years ago, which would mean potential spending cuts to most government programs.

Restoring the Holman Rule

This will allow amendments to reduce lawmakers’ salaries, to fire federal employees, and to cut federal government programs.

Vote on the Texas Border Plan

The plan has four aims: to complete building the wall; to strengthen border enforcement; to enforce laws against illegals already inside the country; and to target the drug cartels and other criminal organizations enabling the invasion of illegals into the country.

Investigate the Weaponizing of Federal Agencies

McCarthy agreed to allow a Judiciary subcommittee to investigate, among other things, the Department of Justice’s raid on Trump’s Florida residence and its probe into his handling of “classified” documents.

One Freedom Caucus staffer exulted:

Any [rule] that limits the Speaker’s power is a step in the right direction. The Freedom Caucus is more relevant than ever, and McCarthy won’t be able to get anything done without our endorsement and support.

Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert, a member of the House Freedom Caucus with a Freedom Index rating of 93, celebrated:

House conservatives delivered a massive victory for the American people by fundamentally changing the way Congress will operate.

 

We changed the way bills will be passed. We changed the way the government will be funded. We changed the way committees will be formed. We secured votes on term limits, the fair tax, the Texas border plan, and so much more.

Perhaps the most significant of the rules, if passed by the House Monday night, is the one that threatens to oust Speaker McCarthy if he fails to live up to his end of the bargain.

Keep Reading…

ATF Keeping Permanent Records of Gun Owners

Friday, 06 January 2023 16:27
0 Comments

This article appeared online at  TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, January 6, 2023:  

The latest report from the FBI on its background checks reveals that Barack Obama is no longer “the best gun salesman in America,” as CNN’s Aaron Smith claimed back in 2016. At that time background checks had soared from 14 million in 2009 (Obama’s first year in office) to nearly 28 million in 2016 (his last year in office).

The title “best gun salesman in America” then fell to President Donald Trump: during his four years in office (2017 to 2020) background checks averaged nearly 30 million annually.

The mantle now rests on the shoulders of the present White House resident: in Biden’s first two years, background checks averaged more than 35 million a year.

This is no doubt partly due to concerns ordinary citizens have over protecting themselves from increasing gun violence, especially in cities and states run by anti-gun Democrats who have more concern for criminals than their victims.

And part is due to the virtual explosion in concealed carry permits, now estimated at more than 20 million. As more and more states are allowing concealed carry, the number of citizens applying for permits is increasing exponentially.

However, there is one number from the FBI report that is particularly unsettling: Since 1998, when the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) was launched to begin infringing on law-abiding citizens’ Second Amendment rights, there have been 443 million background checks!

How many of those background checks remain in the hands of the ATF — the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — in spite of laws prohibiting the government from keeping any such registry or database?

It turns out that there isn’t just one database keeping permanent records of gun owners applying for permission to purchase a firearm. There are five:

  • There is the Multiple Sale Reports database, a permanent registration database of all purchasers buying more than one firearm at a time. There are millions of permanent records here.
  • There is the Suspect Guns database, a permanent record of all firearms “suspected” of being used for criminal purposes.
  • There is the Traced Guns database, another permanent record, this one of all gun traces ordered by law enforcement across the country. There are millions of such traces in this database.
  • There is the Theft Guns database, a permanent record of firearms that are reported stolen to the ATF. This is in addition to similar database maintained by the FBI, which keeps its own registry of lost, stolen, or missing firearms.
  • And then there’s the Big One: the Out of Business Records database. When a gun dealer closes his business, all of his records are turned over to the ATF, including the hated Form 4473, which includes all the personal information the ATF would need to eventually find and confiscate those weapons from their rightful owners. The ATF reports that this is the largest database it has, with “several hundred million” records since the NICS was begun in 1998.

Millions of Americans think they are simply exercising their Second Amendment right by purchasing guns, while in fact they are giving their personal, private information to a government that increasingly reveals its intentions to one day confiscate them.

Keep Reading…

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