What’s there to write about except the war that’s broken out in Israel? Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist organization, attacked southern Israel and of this writing, have launched 3,500 rockets, have infiltrated nearly 30 Israeli communities, have taken more than 100 hostages including the elderly, women and children, and have killed 1,100 in the terrorist attack.
There are reports that several Americans are among the dead and captured.
Israel responded by declaring war—not just an “operation”—and has vowed to crush Hamas. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving PM, called for a massive military response after the attack, which occurred 50 years to the week after the surprise attack on Yom Kippur in 1973.
Reports say that 450 Palestinians have been killed so far.
I am an unwavering supporter of Israel. I believe that God has a plan for the Jewish people, and that the hostility we see toward them today is a continuation of the hostility they’ve experienced since they were slaves in Egypt.
I also believe that there are innocents on both sides of the conflict. I don’t doubt that there are Palestinian families who wish for peace just as there are Jewish families who wish for peace. I encourage all of us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, that both Arabs and Jews would come to know the Lord Jesus Christ.
But I will denounce in no uncertain terms that Hamas is a barbaric entity that deserves to be completely annihilated. They may be fighting for what they believe in, but there is no place in a civilized world for such morally repugnant behavior.
Israel has every right to defend itself against this evil.
Palestinian terrorists are separating the women and children from the men.
The women and children are being driven off to other locations.
Let there be no doubt what these barbaric bas***** are doing.
Remember their names. Tamar, Yonatan and their children Shachar (6), Arbel (6), Omer (4) were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Nir Oz. An entire family vanished from the face of the earth. More than 700 Israelis were massacred by Hamas terrorists and the death… pic.twitter.com/Kdkf1mI6w8
Iran is undoubtedly behind the attacks; even Hamas has claimed Iran’s support for their war against Israel. We should cut off funding for Iran, for Palestinians, for any terrorist state or entity of any kind.
But what do our current leaders do? Fund Iran as they chant, “Death to America!”
Insanity.
Trump: America First
Biden: $6 billion to countries that chant Death to America
JUST IN: BLM/Antifa members in New York at today’s ‘All Out For Palestine’ demonstration in Times Square after Hamas launched terror arracks against Israelis chanting:
“There is only one solution, Intifada revolution!”
“Resistance is justified, when people are colonized!”
Just wait until our “diverse” citizens and guests start attacking those who support Israel. It’s going to happen.
While the U.S. is moving a carrier group to the eastern Mediterranean, we can hardly afford to enter a third World War. But it’s beginning to look a little dicey.
The last couple of days my rants have probably sounded like a guy who is despondent and without hope. If I’m being honest, there’s some truth in that assessment — I am greatly discouraged over the condition of the United States, and I am losing hope that there’s a chance to pull us out of the nosedive we’re in.
However.
I’ve written before that, ultimately, my hope in this life is not in politics, a president, a change in culture, or even in the people who populate these United States. My hope is in God, who measures out justice and retribution as he sees fit.
From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. —Acts 17:26
So while I’m not at all joyful and hopeful about the future of these United States, I do rest assured in the future because of the one who is sovereign over all.
Having said that, there are some interesting developments taking place in the last few weeks that ought to give us some hope that people are starting to wake up to the realities that are being forced on us by the ideological demagogues on the Left. Before I share those with you, however, I need to issue a LOUD DISCLAIMER SO THAT NO ONE MISSES IT: I DO NOT TAKE PLEASURE IN THE DEATH OF ANYONE.
Even God Himself takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (see Ezekiel 33:11).
I REPEAT: I DO NOT TAKE PLEASURE IN THE DEATH OF ANYONE.
I write that because I’m going to give you some examples of woke activists becoming victims of their own woke policies. And while I will be the first to shake my head with disbelief and say, “play stupid games, win stupid prizes,” in the end it’s a sad day when anyone loses their life for any reason, stupid or not.
Death is final. That life is over. It will never be repeated. It’s done. Extinguished. A terrible and sobering reality.
But sometimes people bring it on themselves; sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly.
EcoMap Technologies CEO Pava Marie LaPere, a self-described “anti-racist” and Black Lives Matter supporter who spoke out against the “criminalization of Black bodies,” was allegedly beaten to death in her own home in Baltimore on Monday by a black male who was released early from prison under the criminal justice reform policies she championed.
Video shows that the 26-year-old let her alleged assailant into the building because he pretended to be fumbling for his keys according to this report, which says,
So he was acting “as if he had forgotten his keys,” which convinced Johns Hopkins University graduate Pava LaPere to let the convicted sex offender — a fugitive suspect wanted on charges of rape, arson and attempted murder — into her building. Because it’s about a “building a deeply inclusive culture,” see? Virtue-signalling can get you killed.
So can naïveté, which plays into almost every one of these examples.
Over in Philadelphia, Josh Kruger was a freelance journalist and advocate for gay rights, homeless people, and drug abusers.
Kruger, 39, was killed Monday after police say someone entered his home just before 1:30 a.m. and shot him multiple times at the base of his stairs. The shooter fled, police said, and Kruger ran outside seeking help. Officers found him collapsed on the sidewalk on the 2300 block of Watkins Street, and rushed him to Penn Presbyterian Hospital, where he died a short time later.
According to this report, “Kruger had a long history of downplaying violent crime in the city, often openly mocking those who expressed concerns about homicides in Philadelphia.”
Breaking: Leftist journalist and activist Josh Kruger @JoshKrugerPHL has been tragically shot dead at his Philadelphia home. Kruger has long downplayed gun violence in his city and publicly chastised others who spoke about it. pic.twitter.com/pcl5c4Z1Y8
Hostile condescension may make a person deaf to reason.
Enough of Baltimore and Philadelphia. What’s happening in New York?
A stabbing took place early Monday morning in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, claiming the life of poet and far-left activist Ryan Carson. The 32-year-old was walking down the sidewalk with his girlfriend when he was attacked by a stranger.
As usual, Andy Ngo digs up the truth:
Police sources told the New York Post that they've identified a person of interest in the murder of radical leftist activist Ryan Carson, who ran the alias account @ArtSchoolJock. The hoodie-wearing black male assailant reportedly works at a school in Clinton Hill,… pic.twitter.com/LeDz7suV9N
In a disturbing but not shocking move, Carson’s “loving” girlfriend, Claudia Morales, seen here wearing an Antifa “ACAB” shirt, (an anagram for “All Cops Are Bastards”) reportedly refused to give police a description of the man who killed her boyfriend. The revolution matters more.
That’s three people murdered in three different cities that have become dumpster fires because of the woke policies they supported.
In Minneapolis, Shivanthi Sathanandan survived a carjacking but is a victim of her own idiotic policies.
I could go all day.
Leftist activist & Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party chair Shivanthi Sathanandan was carjacked & beaten in front of her house leaving her with serious injuries
Sathanandan previously called for the abolishment of of her local police department pic.twitter.com/5ElAjUcGsE
Sathanandan is the leader of the Minnesota Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party and a big cheerleader for the “defund the police” crowd. Or she was until four lads with guns beat the potato salad out of her in her driveway as her two young kids screamed for help.
Unfortunately for those involved, actions do have consequences, and Mayor Muriel Bowser is learning that the hard way. Amidst a growing crime wave, including a car-jacking epidemic that victimized a U.S. Congressional member on Monday evening, the mayor of the nation’s capital is complaining that she can’t fill the ranks of her police department.
DC’s mayor says nation’s capital is up to 400 cops short and “we have policies that make it difficult to recruit new officers.”pic.twitter.com/Qz0hIrrrd3
“We have policies” is a passive phrase that eliminates personal responsibility. Just how is it that you “have policies that make it difficult to recruit new officers”?
Over in Chicago, IL, Gov. JB (for “Jelly Belly”) Pritzker has all but accused the Biden adminstration of ruining his city.
Absolutely amazing how quickly Democratic governors and mayors went from "The Statue of Liberty weeps at those who want to limit immigration — this is not who we are" to "Biden must do more to stop immigrants immediately!" as soon as it was their towns and state affected. https://t.co/uI0TcqHG7F
“Unfortunately, the welcome and aid Illinois has been providing to these asylum seekers has not been matched with support by the federal government. Most critically, the federal government’s lack of intervention and coordination at the border has created an untenable situation for Illinois.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York is similarly perturbed and said so.
The governor, up to her eyeballs in migrants, this week pointed the bony finger of blame at Biden administration border policies — and this was a very hopeful sign.
Could she be coming out of her coma?
Probably not.
For the governor then effectively endorsed the root cause of New York’s border-crosser crisis — Gotham’s completely insane, prohibitively expensive and totally unsustainable “right-to-shelter” policy.
You know, the one that says if you can make it to New York, you’ll have it made in New York — now and forever, no questions asked, until the tax base breaks.
To be sure, Hochul called out Washington’s abandonment of those states and localities shellacked by America’s shameful — and exceeding dangerous — border breakdown.
“This crisis originated with the federal government,” she quite correctly noted in an Albany speech Thursday, “and it must be resolved through the federal government.”
The problem, she said, is the border itself: As in, “It’s too open right now.”
Which it obviously is. The consequences — societal, fiscal and cultural — also are obvious, and becoming more so.
But Hochul’s candor — aimed squarely at Washington, and at Joe Biden in particular — clearly has had consequences too.
On Monday, she was warbling a different — far more deferential — tune. To wit:
“With respect to what was said about the border, I have called for a more thoughtful, balanced national immigration — federal — immigration policy.”
Translation: “Oops, I sure stepped in it this time. Please don’t hurt me.”
And now, much too late—as in closing the barn door after the horse has bolted—Biden closes the barn door. Well, 20 miles of it, anyway. And he’s waiving 26 federal laws to do it.
“The Secretary of Homeland Security has determined, pursuant to law, that it is necessary to waive certain laws, regulations, and other legal requirements in order to ensure the expeditious construction of barriers and roads in the vicinity of the international land border in Starr County, Texas,” read the public notice produced by DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s office this week. The plan is to build at least 20 miles of new border barriers along the Rio Grande — an area Congress, in 2019, designated as a vital crossing point and appropriated $1.38 billion for the construction of a border wall to close.
The Biden White House is waiving no fewer than 26 federal laws — including the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act, among others — to construct the additional miles of wall with all due alacrity. Given the administration’s sensitivity to criticism from its left flank, this is not an initiative this White House would pursue if it had a choice. Moreover, the administration’s decision opens it up to the charge of hypocrisy, given the president’s categorical denunciation of the very concept of a border wall.
“It’s imperative that we secure our borders, but ‘build the wall’ is a slogan divorced from reality,” Biden wrote in a 2019 op-ed condemning the Trump White House’s “racist” policies toward the “Latinx” population. Building the wall, he wrote, was a waste of time and money. It would not “stop asylum seekers fleeing” north, nor would it reduce the undocumented population, “most of whom overstay legal visas.”
Delicious. Biden and the Dems are building a wall that they called racist, xenophobic and ineffective. Logically, that makes them racist, xenophobic and poor stewards.
Nah. That makes them hypocrites.
Scripture says that “a man reaps what he sows” (Gal. 6:7).
Lawmakers have voted to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., from his leadership role, the first time in the history of the House of Representatives that the chamber voted to boot a member from the top job.
Eight Republicans voted with every present Democrat to vacate the speaker’s chair. The final vote was 216 to 210 in favor of McCarthy’s ouster.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., introduced a measure against McCarthy known as a motion to vacate on Monday night, accusing him of breaking promises he made to win the speaker’s gavel in January.
Is this a good thing? I don’t really know.
On the one hand, we really don’t need the distraction and the chaos.
On the other hand, I like that Gaetz and the other GOP reps who joined him were willing to deal some tough love to the speaker. They accused him of breaking promises he made in January to become speaker after four days and 15 rounds of voting.
Eight Republicans — Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ken Buck of Colorado, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Eli Crane of Arizona, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Bob Good of Virginia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Matt Rosendale of Montana — banded together with a united Democrat conference to declare the office of speaker vacant by a vote of 216-210, removing McCarthy (R-Calif.) from power and thrusting the chamber into chaos as it faces a grinding process to pick his replacement.
The prospect of a revolt against McCarthy, 58, had been dangled for several months by Gaetz, his chief Republican antagonist.
Gaetz, 41, finally went ahead with the motion to vacate Monday night, after a weekend of stewing over the speaker’s decision to call up a stopgap spending bill to avoid a partial government shutdown — and rely on Democratic votes to get the measure through.
Gone, too, was the promise Mr. McCarthy had made in January to allow lawmakers 72 hours to review any legislation before it came to a vote. Instead, members were given about an hour to read and vote on a 71-page bill they had never seen before. And it would be considered under special rules that required a two-thirds majority for passage, meaning that it could not be approved without substantial Democratic support.
In the same fashion, Speaker McCarthy betrayed the conservative wing that allowed him to take power by depending on squish Republicans and a unanimous vote of his opposition to pass a 45-day clean continuing resolution keeping federal funding at its outrageously bloated fiscal 2023 levels.
Moreover, there is virtually no prospect of matters being different 40 days hence. As Freedom Caucus conservatives warned in signaling their opposition to yet another “CR,” the threat of a government shutdown will for the 27th year in a row put budget-cutters’ backs to the wall and raise, to the boiling point, pressures for another 12 months of unaccountable spending.
The author, Bob Maistros, goes on to write,
But just as important, reclaiming the power of the purse at any cost is vital to confronting straight-on the radical progressive and elitist cabal and avoiding the endless series of train wrecks toward which it has set America barreling.
Again, not just debt and economic crash. But also nonexistent borders driving down wages, straining resources, and fomenting a fentanyl death spiral. Breakdown of civil and social order, from fractured families to fertility collapse to gender-bending to lawless streets and subways, even as the justice system at every level is weaponized against political opponents.
Permanent blackouts, along with energy poverty and confiscation of essentials from guns to gas stoves to gas-powered cars. Social scoring and cancellation. All ultimately leading to a virtual prison state eliminating not just freedom of conscience but also commerce, enterprise, wealth creation, mobility, housing, self-defense, intimacy, family formation and expression – in exchange for apportioned messes of pottage from the all-powerful Nanny State.
To advance this overthrow of democratic norms, the ruling cabal has blockaded every conceivable political, economic, social, cultural, and judicial avenue for reform. Including, yes, elections. After the certifiably unlawful tactics employed in the 2020 contest and the equally suspicious sputtering of the anticipated 2022 “Red Wave,” can anyone count on the 2024 vote to turn the tide?
Resistance must start someplace – and a good place to start is Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz’s maneuver to unceremoniously force McCarthy from power via a motion to vacate, rinsing and repeating if necessary until the desired effect is achieved.
Frankly, I like the pushback. Show a little life, a little bit of fight.
That’s what I think is good about this development. We need to have someone in the chair who will FIGHT the progressive regime, not go along with it.
Will it do any good? I’m not optimistic, but your guess is as good as mine.
We live in interesting times. Maybe Gaetz could be the next speaker.
I used to laugh at the idiocy of European countries allowing themselves to be overrun by foreigners. I’m not laughing anymore.
EAGLE PASS, Texas— Illegal migrants fist bumped and thanked Border Patrol agents for cutting through barbed wire that had been erected by Texas authorities to secure the border, the Daily Caller News Foundation observed Thursday in Eagle Pass, Texas.
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently instructed Texas authorities to place more wire along the Rio Grande River to address the influx of illegal crossings. Border Patrol agents cut through the wire to take into custody a group of migrants that had crossed the Rio Grande and arrived at the U.S. side of the river.
The migrants who crossed illegally Thursday thanked Border Patrol and the U.S. after they were let in.
What is happening?
Our “Border Patrol agents” are acting as doormen doormats for foreigners who have no business being in our country. It’s lawlessness. It’s anarchy. It’s self-destructive.
And it all starts at the top with the Resident and his evil puppet masters.
Did you know that there isn’t any money for border protection in the hastily-passed CR that Kevin McCarthy “””negotiated””” with the Democrats? Now we know why: the border patrol is facilitating the invasion. They don’t need any money for protection because “””protection””” is not what they’re doing. They’re freaking fist-bumping illegals, then taking them “into custody,” which means these foreign invaders soon be on busses to sanctuary cities all over the country.
Border Patrol cut open border fences. Now they’re fist-bumping the illegals.
The Border Patrol, which is the armed law enforcement division of U.S. Customs and Border Protection within the Department of Homeland Security, is only following orders. But those orders come from Alejandro N. Mayorkas, Secretary of Homeland Security.
And Secretary Mayorkas has no interest in defending our borders, even though THAT’S THE JOB.
America is in a death spiral, and we won’t pull out of it until we clear out all the anti-American, Marxist globalists like Alejandro.
That is, if there’s time. I’m beginning to think we don’t have time.
One way liberals are working to keep Trump off the ballot is through “a legal barrage against Trump that so far includes a total of 91 felony counts, every one of them politically motivated.”
That barrage includes the civil “fraud” trial in New York that started today. As Tucker explained:
In some, Trump stands accused of inflating the value of collateral used to secure loans, loans that he has already paid back with interest. In other words, there is no injured party in this case. The biggest banks in the world assessed the risk, and they made a profit…not a single person was defrauded. For this non-crime Trump and his children are in the process of losing their homes and their businesses.
Ep. 27 Donald Trump appeared in court today, but it wasn’t a legal proceeding. It was a grotesque parody of the system our ancestors created. Victor Davis Hanson explains. pic.twitter.com/KhTHateWCZ
As Tucker and VDH underscore, we’d better wake up to the fact that we are witnessing a revolution and be willing to fight for the survival of our country.
I’m reading “The Sumter Gambit” by Robert Spencer. His thesis is that the Left is trying in every way to provoke the Right into firing the first shots of a new civil war so that the government will have the pretext to impose martial law and crack down on anyone who doesn’t spout the official narrative.
Guess who that will be? MAGA, conservatives, and Christians.
As I’ve cautioned before (following Doug Wilson here and here), don’t take the bait.
I’m back! I’m back in the saddle again. I’m back! I’m back in the saddle again. — Aerosmith
Short post this morning.
My thanks to Bruce Gust for ably filling in for me over the last couple of weeks. Writing a daily blog takes effort and time, which are limited resources. When he contributes it means something else in his life has to be reprioritized.
I appreciate his focus on matters of faith and logically working through a worldview. I was particularly struck by this paragraph (in “The Real Contest”) that gets at the intersection of faith and politics:
The real contest today is not defined in the context of political parties. Rather, it’s a fight between a mindset that seeks to justify its morality by asking “Is it Constitutional?” as opposed to “Is it right?” It’s not whether or not you have the Constitutional right, it’s whether or not you are morally right in doing whatever it is that you’re attempting to justify.
Bruce is right that the deeper question is “Is it right?” when defining morality. As Os Guiness points out, the constitution gives us only “parchment barriers” against tyranny and other abuse of power. What’s really needed is an ethical society that doesn’t need anything stronger. Unfortunately, the (mostly Christian) virtues needed for a thriving constitutional republic are nearly extinct, or only exist in pockets throughout the country.
I also appreciated the dialogue in the comments this week. Thanks Kevin McGarry for speaking up and offering a contrary perspective.
I have to admit that being away from the news and social media for almost two weeks was refreshing. I opened a couple of news apps while I was away and quickly closed them after reading a few of the headlines. We are a nation out of control.
It’s always the same stuff. The latest on Trump. The latest on Biden. A fight over the stopgap funding bill between the Rs and the Ds. A fight among the GOP to expel either Matt Gaetz or Kevin McCarthy because of broken promises. Some stupid fire alarm stunt in DC. The latest on Swift and Kelce, Brady and Kardashian, the transgender craze, the ongoing invasion of foreigners and the national debt reaching $33 trillion.
It never stops.
It was a relief to ignore the the chaos.
But we can’t ignore it forever. What is happening will eventually touch every one of us. We need to stay informed and alert. We need to prepare for the worst because that’s what those in power are planning — the worst.
One of the littles is getting married next week, so we’re off to prepare for and participate in the festivities. While I’m gone, my childhood friend, military veteran, author and brother in Christ, Bruce Gust, will handle the blogging duties here. I’m so grateful that he agrees to step in almost every time I need a sub.
If you haven’t ordered Bruce’s book, American Devotional Series: Part One: The Revolutionary War, let me encourage you to buy a copy. It’s an interesting and creative combination of American history and Christian devotional, putting the lie to the claim that “America was not a Christian nation” or that “the founders were not Christian men.” It’s true that not all of our founders were Christians, but many (if not a majority) were, and many of those who didn’t fully accept the Bible as true accepted the virtues of the Christian faith as necessary for a thriving nation.
I’ve read it and have benefitted from it.
Before I leave, I want to call your attention to an article by R. Albert Mohler Jr. over at World. It’s about Andy Stanley, the pastor of North Point Community Church in metro Atlanta, one of the most influential pastors in the United States, and his departure from a biblical Christianity.
It’s not like we have not seen this coming. Andy Stanley is set to host the “Unconditional Conference” at a campus of North Point Community Church in the metro Atlanta area in the coming days, and the website for the conference bills it as a “two-day premier event” especially designed for parents of LGBTQ+ children and ministry leaders. “You will be equipped, refreshed, and inspired as you hear from leading communicators on topics that speak to your heart, soul, and mind,” it promises. One statement stands out in the description: “No matter what theological stance you hold, we invite you to listen, reflect, and learn as we approach this topic from the quieter middle space.”
The promise of “the quieter middle space” might appear attractive, given the volatility of cultural discourse on LGBTQ+ issues, and a conference designed to help parents of LGBTQ+ children and ministry leaders work through these issues in clearly Biblical terms would be a welcome development. But the advertising for the Unconditional Conference indicates clearly that this event is designed as a platform for normalizing the LGBTQ+ revolution while claiming that the conference represents “the quieter middle space.” In truth, there is no “middle space” on these issues, and it is no longer plausible to claim that such middle space exists.
Two men who are married to other men will be speaking at the conference, as well as “David Gushee, a prominent intellectual who has been honest about his own change of mind on the moral status of LGBTQ+ behaviors and relationships. In the ‘definitive edition’ of his book Changing Our Mind, subtitled as a ‘Landmark Call for Inclusion of LGBT Christians,’ he traces his own pilgrimage to eager LGBTQ+ advocacy.”
The road to embracing LGBTQ+ conference speakers begins with subtley teaching people that LGBTQ+ people matter to God, then moving people to engage with them by accepting them where they’re at, then inviting them into the church to hear the gospel and to experience the love of the congregation.
That’s the core of the teaching: what’s important is that Christians “love” these people. Yes, we are called to love all people, no matter who they are. But we are not called to affirm sinful behavior, beliefs, or choices.
I’ve seen this at work in a large church that I attended for years, but eventually left as it became clear that the lead pastor was caving to the LGBTQ+ agenda. The congregation’s rally cry was “Love everyone always.” But what it led to was “Affirm everyone always.”
Andy Stanley, one of the most influential pastors in the United States, has been moving in this direction for years, often by suggestion and assertion but clouded by confusion and the deliberate avoidance of clarity. Back in 2018, he called for the church to be “unhitched” from the Old Testament, arguing that the Old Testament should not be understood as the “go-to source regarding any behavior in the church.” There goes “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (Leviticus 18:22). But, in truth, there goes the entire Old Testament. A few years before that, in a 2012 message Stanley seemed to argue that adultery is a sin but told of two men in a relationship with no suggestion that the same-sex coupling was forbidden by Scripture. When the message became controversial, Stanley did not clarify the situation at all. More recently, in another message Stanley dismissed Biblical texts against homosexual behavior as “clobber” verses and said, “If your theology gets in the way of ministry—like if there’s somebody you can’t minister to because of your theology—you have the wrong theology.”
This is not a misunderstanding. This is a trajectory that points to the Unconditional Conference and two speakers married to other men on the platform. This is a clear and tragic departure from Biblical Christianity.
As Christians, we have to be exceedingly careful where we draw lines. We don’t want to be legalistic, but we don’t want to err the other way by not calling sin what it is: sin.
Pray for Andy Stanley and North Point Community Church, that the Lord would call them back from error, if indeed the conference is affirming LGBTQ+ men and women as brothers and sisters in Christ.
I can hardly believe in three-and-half years of blogging about faith, culture and politics, I’ve never written about Constitution Day, which was yesterday.
Also known as Citizenship Day, Constitution Day is an American observance begun in 2005, honoring the day 39 delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the United States Constitution. This historic date was September 17, 1787, 236 years ago.
Another important figure in the creation of Constitution Day is Louise Leigh. Leigh, after taking a course in Constitutional History with the National Center for Constitutional Studies, was inspired to spread her newfound love of the Constitution throughout the country. In 1997, she founded a nonprofit organization called Constitution Day, Inc. to help encourage recognition of the importance of this national holiday.
Through her efforts, Constitution Day became an official holiday alongside Citizenship Day in 2004 when, with the help of support from Senator Robert Byrd, the “Constitution Day” amendment to the Omnibus Spending Bill passed. In May 2005, the United States Department of Education backed the law when it announced that it would apply to any school receiving federal funds of any kind.
What is unique about the U.S. Constitution is that it is the only law passed by the People, and legislatures are therefore under the oversight of the People. In other words, the governments of this land, whether federal or state, are answerable to the People through the Constitution. We, the People, have the right and responsibility to demand that our “rulers” honor its authority and do not transgress it, as they are more and more inclined to do.
But to do that we need to know what it says. Here are some facts about the Constitution to get you interested in learning more.
James Madison, America’s fourth President (1809-1817), made a major contribution to the ratification of the Constitution by writing The Federalist Papers, along with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. In later years, he was referred to as the “Father of the Constitution.”
The U.S. Constitution has 4,400 words. It is the oldest—and shortest—written Constitution of any major government in the world. (To be technically accurate, the Constitution contains 4,543 words, including the signatures, has four sheets, each 28-3/4 inches by 23-5/8 inches. It contains 7,591 words when including the 27 amendments.)
Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution.
There are 27 Amendments to the Constitution. The first ten are called The Bill of Rights and were ratified in 1791.
39 men signed the Constitution. The oldest was Ben Franklin, who was 81, physically frail, and entered the convention hall in a sedan chair borne by four prisoners from the Walnut Street jail in Philadelphia.
The youngest signer was Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey who was 26 years old.
George Washington and James Madison were the only presidents who signed the Constitution.
As Benjamin Franklin left the Pennsylvania State House after the final meeting of the Constitutional Convention on September 17, 1787, he was approached by the wife of the mayor of Philadelphia. She was curious as to what the new government would be. Franklin replied, “A republic, madam. If you can keep it.”
The word “democracy” does not appear in the Constitution.
If you’ve never commemorated Constitution Day, think about making an effort to understand the Constitution and then observing the day every September 17 by reading it.
In the wake of the censorship and “cancelling” that took place on social media platforms during the Trump presidency, one of the platforms that rose as a sanctuary for political writers and others was Substack.com. I haven’t (yet) decided to move Daily Broadside over to that space, but I do subscribe to a number of independent writers and podcasters. Many of them are able to survive in a hostile environment because they aren’t dependent on the biased whims of monopolies like Google or Twitter or Amazon, instead being financially supported by readers.
Today I want to simply offer related content from two Substacks to which I subscribe. The first is Don Surber, who offers his content for free, and to whom I strongly recommend you subscribe. In his latest essay, he writes,
Meanwhile, Biden went to India and made an ass of himself. First, he messed up the name of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, then he went to Vietnam and messed up an international press conference.
Earlier, he accused the crown prince of murder — and then asked for him to cut the price of oil. The prince almost laughed in his face. After 80-plus years of being a trusted ally, the House of Saud is aligning with Russia and Red China.
These mistakes are deliberate. Biden is weakening America and ending its post-USSR status as the world’s only superpower. The world tires of dealing with a bipolar America that one year is the leader of the free world and the next year a doddering old fool.
Trump held NATO accountable and forced our allies to live up to their commitments to spend money on their militaries. Biden made an Irish exit from Afghanistan without telling our allies. The Council on Foreign Relations cheered.
There’s no doubt that in my mind that undermining American strength is exactly what is intended. It started with Obama’s replacing hundreds of officers in the armed forces with handpicked replacements who have turned our military into a laughing stock. It continues with a lack of urgency for our Navy, whose number of ships are well behind China’s navy, the world’s largest. Add to that a cratering of recruitment numbers and the depletion of our strategic oil reserves by Brandon, and you have a serious problem of battle readiness on your hands.
You see, friends, Washington not only does not want to make America great again but DC denizens do not want the USA to be a superpower. They want Red China to be No. 1.
Consider Congress. Eric Swalwell had an affair with a Chinese spy. He did not lose his seat on the Committee on Homeland Security. Senator Dianne Feinstein’s chauffeur for two decades turned out to be a Chinese spy. She did not lose her seat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
When Obama told token Russian president Medvedev he would be more flexible in his second term, Republicans did nothing because they agreed. How ironic that in a debate, he mocked Romney’s anti-Russian rhetoric by saying, “the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”
Now all of Washington is anti-Russian as they shovel billions in unmarked bills to the Money Laundering Republic of Ukraine, where prosecutors who ask too many questions lose their job. Putin fires his prosecutors — with a cannon.
It’s almost impossible to believe that’s true, but consider the evidence. Now add what CDR Salamander says in the second Substack account I want to quote.
The Pacific is dominated by the tyranny of distance. Logistics, and specifically the ability to get fuel to forward deployed forces and keeping them in the fight, it one of the most critical parts of being able to reach across that vast water to project power. [The Navy’s underground Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility at Pearl Harbor] exists as a result of the hard lessons of the previous large war in the Pacific. Without its capacity – there is no substitution.
People forget that for much of the opening year+ of WWII, many of our battleships were not sent to the Southwest Pacific because we had yet to generate the capacity to transport the fuel to support them.
CDR Salamander is writing about a plan to close the Red Hill fuel depot while maintaining battle readiness. He calls this reassurance a lie and goes on to write,
At the opening of WW2, Hawaii held 4.5 million barrels. That is 189 million gallons.
Red Hills’ capacity was 250 million gallons.
Spin is one thing. Deflection is another thing. This is something altogether different.
I will remind everyone that the disaster at Red Hills derives from the same problem that begat the fires in Lahaina this summer. Anyone who has lived in Hawaii knows what it is and that this to true. The strategic stability of the entire nation in the Pacific is being sacrificed to avoid upsetting the system of political and union corruption, patronage, cronyism, and incompetence that characterizes the state, local, and federal civilian controlled projects in that one-party state.
We are tempting defeat in any war west of the International Date Line because we refuse to hold people accountable and speak truth to long standing problems that are, in the end, people based and politically centered.
Hawaii’s problem is now our military’s problem … but in some ways, it is the same problem.
A culture of petty lies with big consequences.
It’s almost impossible to imagine that anyone wants to degrade our ability to compete economically or militarily with China or any other large nation, but if you pay attention to what’s happening, it’s equally as difficult to imagine THAT’S NOT what is happening.
Hold onto your hats. It’s going to get worse — much worse — before it gets better.
The Biden White House sent a letter to its media allies Wednesday, directing them to intensify their “scrutiny” of House Republicans after Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced an impeachment inquiry into the Biden family’s influence-peddling operation.
“It’s time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies. Impeachment is grave, rare, and historic. The Constitution requires ‘treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors,” Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office, wrote in the letter to top U.S. news executives, according to CNN. “After nearly 9 months of investigating, House Republicans haven’t been able to turn up any evidence of the President doing anything wrong,” Sams added inaccurately.
If we had a truly free press, they’d tell the White House to go pound sand. But the White House knows who their allies are and isn’t afraid to use them. The MSM is simply a mouthpiece for the regime. As Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit often says, “Just think of the media as Democratic party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.”
CNN astonishingly not only reported on the directive from the administration, but then went on to actually do what the White House asked.
The White House sent a letter to top US news executives on Wednesday, urging them to intensify their scrutiny of House Republicans after Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, despite having found no evidence of a crime.
“It’s time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies,” Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office, wrote in the letter, which was first obtained by CNN.
The letter, which said an impeachment inquiry with no supporting evidence should “set off alarm bells for news organizations,” was sent to executives helming the nation’s largest news organizations, including CNN, The New York Times, Fox News, the Associated Press, CBS News, and others, a White House official familiar with the matter said.
So far, so good. But then, in the very next paragraphs,
The correspondence comes one day after McCarthy announced that he had directed three House committees to begin an impeachment inquiry into Biden. House Republicans, most of whom have denied that disgraced former President Donald Trump committed any wrongdoing, have long sought to baselessly portray Biden as a corrupt, crime-ridden politician engaged in sinister activities.
While news organizations have published innumerable fact checks on the matter, they have also often failed to robustly call out the mis- and disinformation peddled by Republicans in their coverage, frustrating officials in the Biden White House who believe that the news media should be doing more to dispel lies that saturate the public discourse, CNN wrote without evidence.
Just kidding. I added that last part.
The report ends with this:
The Republican House-led investigations into Biden have yet to provide any direct evidence that the president financially benefited from Hunter Biden’s career overseas.
Just like the regime directed!
Yes, the White House is panicking, but they only have themselves to blame. As Victor Davis Hanson writes,
The Left is now suddenly voicing warnings that those who recently undermined the system could be targeted by their own legacies.
So, for example, now we read why impeachment is suddenly a dangerous gambit.
True, the Founders did not envision impeaching a first-term president the moment he lost his House majority. Nor did they imagine impeaching a president twice. And they certainly did not anticipate trying an ex-president in the Senate as a private citizen.
In modern times, the nation has not rushed to impeach a president without a special counsel investigation to determine whether the chief executive was guilty of “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
But thanks to the Democrats, recent impeachments now have destroyed all those guardrails. After all, Trump was impeached the first time on the fumes of an exhaustive but fruitless 22-month, $40 million special counsel investigation—one designed to find him guilty of Russian “collusion” and thus to be removed from office but found no actionable offenses at all.
Instead, dejected Democrats moved immediately for a second try. In September 2019 a few weeks after Trump had announced his 2020 reelection bid, the Democratic House began to impeach the president on the new grounds that he had talked to the President Zelensky of Ukraine and said he might delay offensive arms shipments—unless the Ukrainians could demonstrate that they had ended corruption and, in particular, were no longer influenced by the Biden family quid pro quo shakedowns.
Trump was proven right: the Biden family is not just corrupt, but, in particular, Joe Biden as head of the family and Vice President had intervened in the internal politics of an aid recipient, by threatening not to delay but rather to cancel outright all U.S. aid to Ukraine—unless it fired Viktor Shokin, a Ukrainian prosecutor.
They’re circling the wagons, including the ones carrying CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, The Washington Post, the New York Times, and all the other leftist mouthpieces.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) announced on Sept. 12 that the House will open an impeachment inquiry to investigate the possible involvement of President Joe Biden in the business dealings of his son Hunter Biden.
“House Republicans have uncovered serious and credible allegations into President Biden’s conduct. Taken together these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption,” Mr. McCarthy said.
“Today I am directing our house committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. This logical next step will give our committees, the full power to gather all the facts and answers for the American public,” Mr. McCarthy said.
Look, I’m no fan of the timing or sequence of this impeachment inquiry. It comes after two failed attempts to impeach and remove president-in-exile Donald J. Trump during his first term, led by the unhinged harridan Nancy Pelosi, which may have the appearance of retaliation and will undoubtably be framed that way by the Marxist press corps (see below what I found after writing that).
But those impeachment proceedings were fabricated with flimsy evidence. The Democrats, true to form, weaponized the tool of impeachment by stretching its definition to get rid of the only man to face down the Deep State and its hideous strength. We were warned that once the Democrats frivolized the impeachment process, it would be very difficult to return it to its original purpose and solemnity: to remove a president “from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
McCarthy’s decision represents a major reversal for the speaker after he told the conservative website Breitbart earlier this month that he wouldn’t open an impeachment inquiry without a vote of the full House. It comes as he doesn’t appear to have enough votes to proceed on the issue, facing skepticism from across the GOP spectrum due to the lack of evidence implicating the president in Hunter Biden’s transgressions.
It also marks a reversal for McCarthy from 2019, when he inveighed against Democrats for initiating an impeachment inquiry into then-President Donald Trump before a vote, questioning the legitimacy of such an investigation unless the House were to authorize it. House Democrats eventually voted to authorize it.
White House spokesman Ian Sams said in a statement that House Republicans have “turned up no evidence of wrongdoing” in nine months of investigating the president.
Rep. Scott Perry and company absolutely torched a “reporter” who wanted to know about the threat of impeachment “what evidence you have as opposed to allegations” and whether the inquiry is “about political revenge.”
“Ample predication.” You bet there is. As McCarthy said,
“Through our investigations, we have found that President Biden did lie to the American people about his own knowledge of his family’s foreign business dealings. Eyewitnesses have testified that the president joined on multiple phone calls and had multiple interactions, dinners resulted in cars and millions of dollars into his sons and his son’s business partners,” McCarthy said.
“We know that bank records show that nearly $20 million in payments were directed to the Biden family members and associates through various Shell companies. The Treasury Department alone has more than 150 transactions involving the Biden family. Another business associates that were flagged as suspicious activity by U.S. banks. Even a trusted FBI informant has alleged a bribe to the Biden family. Biden used his official office to coordinate with Hunter Biden’s business partners about Hunter’s role in Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company,” he continued.
And there are also rumors that a recording of the Resident exists that, when made public, will shut down any talk of a second term (and hopefully put him behind bars).
