Joe Miller Offers Chance to Replace Murkowski With ‘True Reform’ Liberty Advocate

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“Gun Owners of America Political Victory Fund is proud to endorse Joe Miller to represent the state of Alaska in the U.S. Senate,” an email from GOA announced Friday. “Joe Miller’s commitment to the right to keep and bear arms is unwavering … Unlike other candidates in this race, Joe Miller returned his GOA Candidate Questionnaire 100% in favor of your gun rights.”

The main “other candidate” to be concerned about is Republican Lisa Murkowski, recipient of a mediocre “C” rating from GOA based on performance in office. That assessment comes from a scorecard for votes and concludes Murkowski only agreed with GOA’s positions 69% of the time.

Among the reasons for Murkowski’s low score: She did not vote on a concealed carry reciprocity bill they supported. She voted for a bill that would “create an incremental path to citizenship for most illegal immigrants in the country.” She voted for an amendment that “would send a person to prison for 15 years for selling a gun to a veteran, without realizing that he was one of the 165,000 military veterans who was put into the NICS system for PTSD.” And she voted for cloture on the nomination of a rabidly anti-gun New York judge to the DC Court of Appeals.

Importantly, and of vital interest to all advocates of the right to keep and bear arms, Murkowski is rated “D” by immigration group Numbers USA, further compounded by failing marks on the all-important categories of “Oppose Amnesty … Limit Unnecessary Worker Visas [and] Reduce Total Immigration.” That’s of vital interest to defending the Second Amendment as evidenced by the Democrat Party’s, the Obama administration’s and the Hillary Clinton campaign’s push for a “pathway to citizenship.”

They know from all credible polls as well as real-world voting patterns — undeniably established in places like California — that adding millions of foreigners to the electorate will result in a Democrat supermajority that will then be able to enact all the “gun laws” Bloomberg and Feinstein want, and more. It will also ensure they can confirm federal judges to the lower courts and the Supreme Court to uphold those laws.

Joe Miller understands this, evidenced by Numbers USA giving him a perfect score and hailing him as a “true reform candidate” when he beat Murkowski in the Republican primary in 2010 (she went on to win through a write-in campaign).

This time around, Miller is running as a Libertarian Party candidate. While some may question how that comports with the national LP’s essentially open borders platform (one that will ensure a “progressive” political takeover via “birthright citizenship”), the Alaska LP requires no such culturally-suicidal commitment. (Read more from “Joe Miller Offers Chance to Replace Murkowski With ‘True Reform’ Liberty Advocate” HERE)

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Obama Is LITERALLY Sending Our Special Ops to Fight for ‘Moderates’ Who Want to Kill Us

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It never ends. Is it too much to ask that we don’t send our brave troops into aimless quagmires full of enemy forces fighting each other with no positive outcome that fulfills our interests? Can’t we just let our enemies fight each other?

When I warned several months ago that Obama was sending our special operators into a meat-grinder, this is exactly what I meant:

The U.S. has sent about 40 special-operations troops to work alongside Turkish forces to fight Islamic State in northern Syria, U.S. officials said.

It is the first time American special-operations forces are working with the Turkish military and moderate rebels in Syria, in a move seen by U.S. officials as a way to strengthen the relationship with an ally in the fight against Islamic State militants. [Wall Street Journal]

I guess after fighting for Iran in Iraq, including giving air cover for and sharing bases with some of the same Shia militias that blew up hundreds of U.S. soldiers, it should come as no surprise that we are now fighting for the greatest Sunni Islamist power in the region as well. After all, Recep Erdogen is the leading Muslim Brotherhood inspiration in the world.

However, as Patrick Poole reports at PJ Media, these same Turkish fighters attacked our special operators near Aleppo yesterday!

And what about the “moderate” Syrian rebels?

Patrick Poole has the full roundup of videos and pictures showing the Free Syrian Army combatants threatening to behead the U.S. soldiers that are helping them. Yes, these are the much-vaunted Syrian rebels we’ve been funding for the past few years.

Read Patrick’s full report here.

Some of these forces were affiliated with Ahrar-al-Sham, the al-Qaeda linked group that Obama has refused to designate as a terror group. As USA Today reported last week, “nearly all the U.S.-backed opposition groups are fighting alongside Nusra against the Syrian government.”

The concept of a moderate rebel in Syria was best expressed by terrorism expert Max Abrams on twitter:

Folks, how can Republicans in Congress allow this to continue for even one day, especially given the leverage they have with the budget bill and the defense authorization bill? Yet, sadly, there is not even a shred of debate over placing our troops in a meat-grinder on behalf of one terrorist faction in order to fight another. Amazingly, the only point of contention over the NDAA is whether to designate the Sage Grouse as an endangered species.

When one considers the training and sacrifice it takes to become a special operator, it’s hard not to recoil with shock and outrage that their dedication is being sacrificed on the altar of Islamo-fascisim and America’s enemies. Does anyone in Congress care about their well-being, or if nothing else, about America’s time, treasure, and talent being utilized by our enemies?

At some point, the American people need to rise up and demand an end to this vicious cycle of dying on the sword of Islamism. There are undoubtedly certain military interventions that are in our strategic interests. But when there is no good outcome and multiple enemy factions fighting each other, can we just root for casualties and let Allah sort it out? (For more from the author of “Obama Is LITERALLY Sending Our Special Ops to Fight for ‘Moderates’ Who Want to Kill Us” please click HERE)

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Joe Miller Endorsed by Gun Owners of America

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Citizens for Joe Miller Press Release
September 17, 2016, Anchorage, Alaska

Gun Owners of America Political Victory Fund announced today that it has endorsed Libertarian nominee Joe Miller for United States Senate.

GOA Chairman Tim Macy said, “Gun Owners of America Political Victory Fund is proud to endorse Joe Miller to represent the state of Alaska in the U.S. Senate.

“Joe Miller’s commitment to the right to keep and bear arms is unwavering. An avid gun collector, Miller understands that the framers of the Constitution viewed private ownership of firearms not merely as a hunting or sporting issue, but chiefly as a safeguard of liberty.

“Unlike other candidates in this race, Joe Miller returned his GOA Candidate Questionnaire 100% in favor of your gun rights. And I’ve learned, after more than forty years of working in politics, to be very wary of candidates who refuse to come clean on a survey.

“This is why GOA-PVF stands strongly behind Joe Miller and encourages you to vote for him on November 8.”

“This is extraordinary news,” said Miller. “Gun Owners of America is a world-class organization, and I’m proud that they’ve made the commitment to join our coalition for liberty. I look forward to standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them to protect our 2nd Amendment rights in the days ahead.”

Joe Miller is a limited government Constitutionalist who believes government exists to protect our liberties, not to take them away. He supports free people, free markets, federalism, the Constitutional right to life, the 2nd Amendment, religious liberty, American sovereignty, and a strong national defense.

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Pornography: A Public Health Issue in a Digital Age

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Pornography is a widespread public health issue, according to social researchers, health experts and legal experts who spoke at an event hosted by The National Center on Sexual Exploitation at the U.S. Capitol regarding the effects of pornography on society, reported USA Today.

Ed Smart, father of Elizabeth Smart, who was abducted at age 14 from her home and held hostage for nine months while being raped and abused, spoke at the event as well about the connection between porn and sexual abuse. “Pornography provides a slippery slope to take the next step to abuse and exploitation,” he said. Each speaker in turn emphasized that “pornography is a public health issue,” citing cultural expectations and research.

The wide reach of the internet allows millions access to pornography, boasting more users than Netflix and YouTube, according to Gail Dines, founder and president of Culture Reframed, an organization dedicated to educating the public on the harmful effects of pornography. The sheer number of users demands that society treat pornography as a health issue. “You don’t solve these kinds of problems by pulling out the women from the river one at a time,” said MaryAnne Layden, Ph.D., the director of education at the Center for Cognitive Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania. “You have to go upstream and find who’s pushing them in.”

Pornography in a Digital Age

As technology progresses and it becomes easier to access information and images, pornography use has become much more frequent. A new study from Barna, commissioned by Josh McDowell Ministry, shows that technological advances have brought more viewers into the world of porn and that has made the industry much more successful. According to Barna:

Pornography is not new, but the digital age has made it more ubiquitous and accessible than ever before. The technological realities of smartphones and high-speed internet have fundamentally changed the landscape of pornography, and ushered it into the cultural mainstream where it enjoys increasingly widespread acceptance.

Youth’s Wider Acceptance of Pornography

Roxanne Stone, one of the lead analysts in the study, said that there are marked generational differences with behavior and attitudes toward porn. This means that as porn becomes more and more accessible, a moral ambiguity toward porn becomes evident — particularly for younger people.

“Teens and young adults are living in an environment where porn is more acceptable — and more ubiquitous than ever before,” she said. “As access to pornography has increased, the stigma toward it has seemingly decreased.”

The problem won’t be going away any time soon. A new report from Juniper Research says that by 2017, 250 million people will access adult content on their mobile devices as the devices become increasingly personal.

Pornography, Christians and Pastors

Covenant Eyes, an internet accountability and filtering organization, put together a report based on their research in 2015. A 2014 survey showed that 79 percent of men ages 18-30 viewed pornography once a month; 67 percent of men ages 31-49 did so; and 49 percent of men ages 50-68 watched porn at least once a month. Women who viewed pornography once per month consisted of the following: 21 percent of 18-30-year-olds; 5 percent of 31-49-year-olds; and 0 percent of 50-68-year-olds.

The problem of porn isn’t simply a secular one. Barna’s 2014 report showed that of those surveyed, 64 percent of Christian men and 15 percent of Christian women viewed pornography at least once per month, while 37 percent of Christian men and 7 percent of Christian women viewed porn multiple times per week.

What’s more, pastors are just as likely to become involved with watching pornography as laity. Thirty-three percent of pastors said they had visited a pornographic website. Of those, 53 percent said they’d viewed it a few times in the past year and 18 percent of pastors said they visited pornographic sites from between “a couple of times a month” to “more than once a week.”

A 2000 survey showed that 51 percent of pastors struggle with the temptation of pornography, while 37 percent of pastors said viewing pornography was a “current struggle.” Perhaps tellingly, 75 percent of pastors surveyed said that they “do not make themselves accountable to anyone for their Internet use.”

Effects of Pornography on the Brain

In his article, “The Effects of Porn on the Male Brain,” brain researcher Dr. William M. Struthers notes that when men view pornography, it triggers “a cascade of neurological, chemical, and hormonal events,” which he likens to the “hit” of a drug. This in turn forms a neurological memory, “that will influence future processing and response to sexual cues,” said Struthers. “As this pathway becomes activated and traveled, it becomes a preferred route — a mental journey — that is regularly trod,” setting the stage for pornography addiction.

Dr. Jeffrey Satinov, former professor at Princeton in the Department of Politics, along with his colleagues, Dr. MaryAnne Layden and Dr. Judith Reisman, presented research to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation in 2004 in which he described the effects of pornography on the brain as comparable to hard street drugs. “Like any other addiction, the addiction is both to the delivery system itself — the pornography — and to the chemicals that the delivery system delivers … modern science allows us to understand that the underlying nature of an addiction to pornography is chemically nearly identical to a heroin addiction …” prompting the viewer to watch more and increasingly toxic pornography.

Reisman, president of The Institute for Media Education, reported to the Senate Committee that the effects of pornography on the human brain are far-reaching and long-term. “Thanks to the latest advances in neuroscience, we now know that emotionally arousing images imprint and alter the brain, triggering an instant, involuntary, but lasting, biochemical memory trail,” which, once established, are difficult or impossible to delete.

Damaging Effects of Pornography on the Psyche

Watching pornography goes beyond simply viewing images, or even creating new pathways in the brain, allowing addiction to take hold. Pornography harms the viewers psychologically as well, affecting not only their sexual performances but also how they view others.

Layden, in her presentation to the Committee, discussed the harmful effects of pornography on the viewer’s sexual performance:

I have … seen in my clinical experience that pornography damages the sexual performance of the viewers. Pornography viewers tend to have problems with premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction. Having spent so much time in unnatural sexual experiences with paper, celluloid and cyberspace, they seem to find it difficult to have sex with a real human being. Pornography is raising their expectation and demand for types and amounts of sexual experiences; at the same time it is reducing their ability to experience sex.

Pornography “affects not only how we form memories and make attachments but also how we understand sexuality and how we view each other,” according to Struthers. Rather than viewing each other as valuable people made in God’s image, those who watch pornography will view women as a disposable commodity. “Human beings become objects of consumption rather than individuals requiring dignity and in this process those involved in its production and its consumption are harmed,” he said. “This harm is not only sociological and psychological, but also spiritual.

Spiritual Effects of Porn

Pornography hijacks the body’s biological response that God intended to bond a man to his wife, said Struthers. The body’s reaction to sexual stimuli is intended to bind the man to the object he is focusing on, “in God’s plan, this would be his wife,” said Struthers. Watching pornography “corrupts and pollutes our brains as it attempts to make sense of humanity’s sexual nature.”

God’s directive on human sexuality is straightforward. When we follow God’s guidelines, we will begin to honor each other rather than consume one another. “By moving beyond the lie of pornography — that people are nothing more than sexual objects to be consumed — we can appreciate each other as brothers and sisters in Christ,” said Struthers. “We can begin to move beyond objectification and false intimacy to real relationships, which honor the dignity of each person.”

More than the neurological and biological responses to pornography, sin separates us from God (Romans 5:12). Everyone who sins is a slave to sin (John 8:34). But in rejecting sin, we become holy and reap eternal life (Romans 6:22).

Pornography Affects Everyone

Pornography is not only harmful to the viewer and the performer (who often has a drug or alcohol abuse problem, depression or other mental health disorder), but — perhaps not surprisingly — is also harmful to the spouses and the children of the viewer and performer. Spouses suffer from depression and low self-esteem, while children may begin to view all relationships as sexual, have a low self-esteem, have a greater likelihood of experimenting sexually at an earlier age and have an increased risk of pregnancy and STDs. The distorted beliefs about sex and sexuality are reinforced and modeled by the viewer parent.

What Now?

There is hope for those struggling with an addiction to pornography. Those who are successful in fighting the addiction are most often part of an accountability group, or have an accountability partner. Perry Noble, former pastor of NewSpring Church in Anderson, South Carolina, struggled with an addiction to pornography for years. Then he made himself accountable to another believer — something he suggests anyone with an addiction to pornography should do. “Ask for accountability,” he said. “I am challenging you to find someone who does not struggle with the problem … and ask them to get in your face.”

Traylor Lovvorn, author of an article titled, “Beyond the Checklist: Casting a Vision for Real Accountability,” said that, to be successful, accountability groups “…must be full of real, great, and hard-boiled sinners where our sinful, broken human condition is understood and the solution is not ‘trying harder’ but deeper surrender.”

There may be other steps to take for those struggling with the addiction. For Pastor Noble, it meant getting rid of the internet. “Jesus said if your right eye causes you to sin then gouge it out so I don’t think it is a stretch to say if your computer causes you to sin then get rid of it,” he said. “…For about five years, I did not have the internet in my house because I did not trust myself.”

If you are struggling with an addiction to porn, or for more information, visit XXXChurch, or find a Celebrate Recovery program in a church near you. (For more from the author of “Pornography: A Public Health Issue in a Digital Age” please click HERE)

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The Minor Candidates: The Green Jill Stein

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Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein previously ran for president in 2012, receiving 0.4 percent of the vote — her 470,000 votes only 64.4 million behind Barack Obama and more importantly, 800,000 behind her fellow third-party candidate, Libertarian Gary Johnson. But she did get seven times as many votes as the actress Roseanne Barr, who had wanted to be the Green Party candidate.

Stein and her husband are both physicians. She describes herself as an agnostic, although she attended a Reform Jewish synagogue while growing up. She is an activist on environmental issues, gaining national recognition in the late 1990s for protesting coal plants in Massachusetts, which she referred to as “The Filthy Five.” She has run for numerous political offices but never won any of them, except member of the Lexington (Massachusetts) Town Meeting.

Her running mate is human rights activist Ajamu Baraka, known for referring to NATO as “gangster states.” His website describes him as being “at the forefront of efforts to apply the international human rights framework to social justice advocacy in the U.S.” and as “a veteran grassroots organizer whose roots are in the Black Liberation Movement and anti-apartheid and Central American solidarity struggles.”

Stein’s Agenda

Stein’s agenda includes “an emergency Green New Deal,” calling climate change “the greatest threat to humanity in our history.” She wants to nationalize the Federal Reserve, increase mass transit, raise the minimum wage to $15 and legalize marijuana. Under her administration, housing will be “guaranteed,” Obamacare will be transformed into a single-payer system, college will be free, and all student loan debt cancelled.

She supports reparations for black Americans and has called for freeing police-killer Mumia Abu Jamal, a popular leftist cause. (She also calls for freeing Indian leader Leonard Pelltier, in prison for killing two FBI agents in 1975.) She opposes charter schools and computers in schools, believing that wireless internet damages children’s brains.

The Green Party candidate of course favors radical environmental policies; she wants to create 20 million green jobs to address the “national emergency” of climate change and for the U.S. to have 100 percent renewable energy by 2030.

To pay for her ambitious plans, Stein would raise taxes on the rich and cut defense spending by at least 50 percent.

Stein’s foreign policy is as radical as her domestic policy and openly anti-Israel. Her platform calls for losing all of 700+ foreign military bases and withdrawing all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. America “must take the lead in nuclear disarmament by itself starting to disarm.” The nation must also “End the destructive US economic and military intervention into the affairs of sovereign nations,” which, her platform argues, “serves the interests of multinational corporations and global capitalism over the interests of the vast majority of the citizens of those nations.”

She has criticized the Israeli government for “apartheid, assassination, illegal settlements, blockades, building of nuclear bombs, indefinite detention, collective punishment, and defiance of international law.” She considers Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal and supports a boycott of Israel.

Stein’s Arrests, the Media’s Uninterest

A warrant was put out for her arrest on Wednesday by a North Dakota county court, after she spray-painted “I approve this message” on a bulldozer during a protest of the Dakota Access pipeline. Both Stein and her running mate face charges of criminal trespass and criminal mischief.

This isn’t the first time Stein has been arrested while running for president. In August 2012, she was arrested for participating in a sit-in in a bank to protest home foreclosures. A couple of months later she was arrested for trying to force her way into the presidential debate at Hofstra University, to protest being excluded from participating. And later that month, she was arrested for criminal trespass, trying to deliver food and supplies to environmental activists camped out in trees protesting the Keystone XL pipeline.

Despite having leftist positions close to many journalists’, Stein won’t be getting any help from the media. The left-leaning Washington Post’s coverage is typical, referring to Stein’s long-shot chance as “Jill Stein’s fairy-tale candidacy.” The staff editorialized that her “policy ideas are poorly formed and wildly impractical.” Similarly, The Los Angeles Times opined, ” Stein has few executable policy plans.” (For more from the author of “The Minor Candidates: The Green Jill Stein” please click HERE)

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How Obama and GOP Lawmakers Gave Liberals Control of the Courts

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Liberals have a plan to enact their radical agenda. The problem is that it bypasses Congress and voters. Here is why their strategy to pack the courts with activist judges could be one of the biggest threats to your liberties.

(For more from the author of “How Obama and GOP Lawmakers Gave Liberals Control of the Courts” please click HERE)

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Congress Is Set to Cave in to Higher Spending Again

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It’s an all too familiar sight: It’s the end of the fiscal year, and Congress is scrambling to keep the government open after it has shirked its responsibility to pass the requisite 12 appropriations bills all year.

The end of the fiscal year is when Congress tends to throw fiscal responsibility out the window in order to avoid taking tough votes, especially before an election—and this year is no exception.

In recent Congresses, an end of the fiscal year continuing resolution has become a routine maneuver to push back the spending debate until the holidays in December. That’s when Congress usually scrambles to come to an agreement before the deadline (positioned just as everyone wants to get home to their families), which characteristically takes the form of an immense spending package that blows through the discretionary spending caps Congress set in 2011.

Indeed, since 2013, this breakdown in the budget process has led to Congress busting through its budget caps by a total of $174 billion. That’s billions in spending that would not have happened if Congress had stuck to its normal appropriations process and abided by the caps it instituted under the Budget Control Act of 2011.

So even though Congress promised to return to “regular order” this year by passing all its spending bills before Sept. 30, it’s not surprising to find members in the same position as the past few years. President Barack Obama likewise deserves a great deal of the blame for threatening to veto any appropriations bill that does not bust the caps that he himself signed into law.

Though this year-end breakdown has become routine, Congress is in an even worse position this time around.

Some members have proposed a continuing resolution that would put the funding decisions in the hands of the next Congress, but the more likely result will be to punt the debate into the lame-duck period following the results of the election. Purposefully positioning important long-term decisions for this period is especially egregious, as members of Congress face little accountability during a lame-duck session. This has the potential to further undermine the trust that the public has bestowed on Congress.

Moreover, due to the various budget gimmicks employed in last year’s funding bill, just maintaining current spending levels in a clean continuing resolution would end up exceeding the amended fiscal year 2017 budget cap by $10 billion.

As Heritage Foundation scholar Paul Winfree commented, that means Congress has effectively set itself up for failure. By teeing up spending levels that exceed the already increased budget caps, lawmakers must either utilize more spending gimmicks—flying in the face of fiscal responsibility—or face a politically harsh across-the-board cut in spending. Given the choice between the two, it is probable that members will take the politically expedient route and simply elect to spend more.

Worst of all, by caving to higher spending levels for 2017, breaking the budget caps again in fiscal year 2018—which are set to $16 billion below current levels—almost becomes a foregone conclusion for the big spenders in Congress.

This sets up the next Congress to go back on its promise to rein in spending once again, erasing the one modicum of fiscal restraint imposed on spending during the Obama administration. Continuing this vicious cycle would squander the opportunity to return to normal order during the next presidency and Congress.

Is this the only way forward? Not at all. Congress has options to maintain integrity in the budget process. It should:

Avoid considering any funding bills during the lame-duck session. If Congress is unable to agree on funding measures for fiscal year 2017 prior to the election, a partial year appropriation to move the decision to the 115th Congress is the best option.

Cut programs, eliminate corporate welfare, and pursue policy riders to reduce nondefense discretionary spending and improve upon current policy. Heritage’s 110 recommendations for discretionary spending reforms are a good place to start.

Consider a continuing resolution that reduces nondefense discretionary spending across the board.

After years of shirking the budget process and disregarding its self-imposed fiscal controls, Congress has the opportunity to break the cycle. It should seize it instead of positioning the next Congress yet again to spend more than is necessary to fulfill the federal government’s essential responsibilities. (For more from the author of “Congress Is Set to Cave in to Higher Spending Again” please click HERE)

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Zika Funding Might Result in Raise for Planned Parenthood, Despite GOP-Controlled Congress

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Fears are mounting among some conservatives that under a Republican-controlled Congress, Planned Parenthood could soon be getting a raise.

“I hope that pro-lifers will wake up and realize that we have major issues when it comes to the U.S. Senate, when we have our ‘friends’ put us in very tough positions,” Tom McClusky, vice president of government affairs for the pro-life group March for Life Action, told The Daily Signal.

McClusky said he and other pro-life groups have been involved in ongoing discussions with House and Senate leadership regarding a government spending measure that is expected to include emergency funding for the Zika crisis. The concern, McClusky said, is the possibility that Planned Parenthood will get more government funding as a result of the Zika spending bill.

Republican leadership in the House and Senate have not yet released language detailing what the spending package will include, and thus far, they maintain that Planned Parenthood will not get more funding. Democrats, however, say they refuse to agree to any spending measure that bars Planned Parenthood or any of its affiliates from receiving funding.

Backdoor negotiations, McClusky said, don’t look good for pro-life groups.

“The most current language, we’re not happy with at all,” McClusky said. “There’s a number of things that Sen. [Mitch] McConnell has given his approval to that we disagree with—Zika being the major one.”

The Daily Signal reached out to McConnell’s office, but an aide said they are not commenting until the bill’s language has been released.

Conservatives are calling for a specific prohibition against Planned Parenthood and its affiliates from receiving Zika funds, which is precisely what Democrats say they’ll reject. Anything short of that, they say, will wind up landing the nation’s largest abortion provider more money.

“Planned Parenthood is like a pig searching for truffles,” McClusky said. “If [money] is there, they’re going to go searching it out.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2,920 Americans have been infected with Zika while traveling overseas, and 43 people have been infected locally in Florida.

In Puerto Rico, Zika infections are “increasing rapidly,” according to the CDC, with 17,315 locally acquired cases.

Zika is known to cause microcephaly in as many as 13 percent of infants. Microcephaly is a severe birth defect that results in a baby’s head to be unusually small and its brain to be underdeveloped.

Conservatives argue that it makes no sense to allocate Zika funds to Planned Parenthood, which operates only two branches in Puerto Rico that are only able to provide limited services. Instead, they argue Zika health-related funds should go to federally qualified health centers that are equipped to treat the virus and its effects on patients and children, both born and unborn. In Puerto Rico, there are 20 federally qualified health centers, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

According to CQ Roll Call, McConnell, R-Ky., the Senate majority leader, is planning a procedural vote on the spending measure for Monday.

If the measure doesn’t specifically prohibit Planned Parenthood from receiving funds, Rachel Bovard, director of policy services at The Heritage Foundation, said Republicans will ultimately “give Planned Parenthood a raise.”

“During this year’s reconciliation process, the Republican majority in both chambers made clear that their position was to defund Planned Parenthood entirely,” she said. “Now, in the [continuing resolution], congressional Republicans are looking to give Planned Parenthood a raise by giving them their annual appropriation in addition to money for Zika.” (For more from the author of “Zika Funding Might Result in Raise for Planned Parenthood, Despite GOP-Controlled Congress” please click HERE)

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Past Is Prologue: America Is More Like Soviet Russia Than You Might Expect

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Could America have its own version of a Russian Revolution? With Vladimir Putin’s modern-day authoritarian intelligence state inserting itself into the 2016 American presidential election, the question is more timely than you might think. More unsettling — putting aside Russia’s meddling in American affairs — is the argument that such an ideological revolution is already well underway.

A recent essay in The New Criterion by Gary Saul Morson illuminates this chilling thesis. As a professor of (among other weighty subjects) Russian literature and the history of ideas at Northwestern University, Morson is uniquely qualified to comment on the parallels between the two nations that previously represented opposing poles of political philosophy. In his piece titled “The house is on fire!” Morson explains how the Soviet Union’s bloody communist past has great bearing on America’s present and future.

Morson, that perhaps rare, intellectually honest professor at a major American university, surveys communism’s past and reasonably suggests — with its millions of victims from the Soviet Union, China, and Ethiopia — that communism ought to be considered on par with Nazism in terms of its barbarism and our revulsion to it.

Yet curiously, Prof. Morson writes, likely alluding to his peers in the academy,

In intellectual circles … such comparisons taint not Communists, but the person who makes them.

This in spite of the ghoulish revelations from the Soviet archives – from Mitrokhin to Stalin – hiding in plain sight. Morson gives an example:

Our knowledge of Bolshevik horrors expanded dramatically when, after the fall of the Soviet Union, its archives were opened. Jonathan Brent and Yale University Press brought out volume after volume of chilling documents, but public opinion did not noticeably change. How many readers of The New York Times know about its role in covering up the worst of Stalin’s crimes and earning a Pulitzer Prize (still unreturned) for doing so?

I understand being so carried away by Communist ideals that one denies or justifies millions of deaths. What amazes me is that people and publications who have done so still feel entitled to criticize others from a position of moral superiority.

More on that Pulitzer story here and here.

The refusal to acknowledge communism’s history of genocide — and for the “lucky” ones starvation, misery, and the constant need to look over one’s shoulder — in particular among the nation’s progressive elite, has real consequences. As does the inability of said progressives to acknowledge a link between collectivist ideology and its dire consequences. To many such people, it is the intent of the ideas — using the state to “help others” and thus create a utopia — that matters, even if the ends prove cataclysmic.

Look no further than the viability of a Bernie Sanders presidency in the same country that several decades ago had supposedly vanquished communism for the corrosive effect of such an ethos. No, Bernie is not a communist in the sense of being a Bolshevik or Menshevik. But his ideas are based on the same socialist principles underlying those movements, and they are geared toward similarly disastrous ends. His ideological and political differences with the communists of yesteryear are a matter of degree, not kind.

The idea that wealth redistribution is moral, and that the provision of goods and services by the state is a legitimate function have tremendous sway in America.

And the pervasiveness of political correctness powerfully attests to the idea that the roots of communist ideology have insinuated themselves in the American mind, manifesting themselves in every aspect of our culture.

If there is an underlying subtext to Prof. Morson’s piece, that is the harrowing reality.

Consider several of the communist bigwigs that Prof. Morson quotes, and the relevance of their positions to our nation at present:

Delivering a toast on the twentieth anniversary of the Bolshevik seizure of power, Stalin declared: “We will destroy each and every enemy, even if he was an old Bolshevik; we will destroy all his kin, his family. We will mercilessly destroy anyone who, by his deeds or his thoughts — yes, his thoughts! — threatens the unity of the socialist state. To the complete destruction of all enemies, themselves and their kin!” … Georgy Arbatov, adviser to five general secretaries of the Soviet Communist Party, observed that “the main code of behavior” was “to be afraid of your own thoughts.”

In America we do not destroy political enemies by sending them to the gulag or grave by way of mysterious “accidents,” but we do so in more subtle, nuanced ways: Think of the IRS Scandal, selective enforcement of laws, harassment at the hands of federal agencies, etc.

But thought control — a.k.a., political correctness — is a much more powerful tool. It calls to mind a certain former secretary of state’s comment in front of the Organization of Islamic Conference on “combatting religious intolerance.” Then-Secretary Clinton spoke to a group of Sharia supremacists about the need for Western nations to use “some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming” to counter language offensive to Muslims.

A direct government threat may be happily distant for most Americans, but fear of social ostracism for holding beliefs conflicting with the prevailing progressive orthodoxy is ever-present. Who needs a formal, state-controlled cultural police force when people will self-censor lest they draw the ire of friends and colleagues?

Prof. Morson quotes Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka, a secret police force and precursor to the KGB used to purge (read: assassinate thousands of people) Russia of “enemies of the state” during the so-called Red Terror.

Dzerzhinsky wrote in a journal aptly titled, “Red Terror”:

We are not waging war against individual persons. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. During the investigation, do not look for evidence that the accused acted in deed or word against Soviet power. The first questions that you ought to put are: To what class does he belong? What is his origin? What is his education or profession? And it is these questions that ought to determine the fate of the accused.

True, the scale of violence in American class warfare is incomparable to that of the Soviet Union and China — rooted though it may be in the same Marxian philosophy and ethics and geared toward consolidating all manner of power in the hands of the state. Different cultures are different. But Dzerzhinsky’s questions are telling.

From railing against “millionaires and billionaires” of America’s most prominent political figures to the pervasive social justice warrior rhetoric on white privilege and the patriarchy, Dzerzhinsky’s premises are more apparent in American society than anyone might care to admit. And perhaps most stunning of all, we as a nation cannot see it and do not know it. This blindness, ignorance, or combination of both speaks to the effectiveness of a communism that we may have “vanquished” in a conventional sense – the Soviet Union fell, albeit without its murderous leaders ever being put on trial and punished for their crimes – but the ideas of which are powerful as ever.

Prof. Morson quotes Lenin, who said “Morality is entirely subordinated to the class struggle of the proletariat.” The means are what matters. Ends are irrelevant. The struggle is inherently moral. Get on the “right side of history.” This is how you get the Affordable Care Act the effects of which are diametrically opposed to its name.

Prof. Morson quotes Trotsky on the Communist Party:

Comrades, none of us wishes or is able to be right against his Party. The Party in the last analysis is always right, because the Party is the sole historical instrument given the proletariat for the solution of its basic problems … I know that one cannot be right against the party. It is only possible to be right with the Party and through the Party for history has not created other ways for the realization of what is right.

The progressivism that pervades our government, our media, and our schools — as well as the consequence of not adhering to such an ideology — testify to the power of The Party.

Prof. Morson continues:

Is it any wonder that those who reject human rights, treat people in terms of friendly or enemy groups, place no moral limit on action, and are certain that whatever they do is right should wind up committing colossal evil?

Although the Left in America would take issue with the idea that the violation of individual liberty represents a rejection of human rights, does any statement better describe the party of class warfare, Clintonian notions of right and wrong, and all manner of disasters from Obamacare to open borders and suicidal “Countering Violent Extremism”?

Prof. Morson concludes his piece on a sobering but well-taken note:

Perhaps my training as a Russian specialist distorts my judgment, but as I contemplate the ideas spreading from the academy through society, I fear, a century after the Russian Revolution, a tyranny greater than Stalin’s. Comrades, the house is on fire.

Bad ideas have bad consequences. (For more from the author of “Past Is Prologue: America Is More Like Soviet Russia Than You Might Expect” please click HERE)

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Transgender Engineering? Female Draft? No, Congress Is Focused On… Obscure Birds?

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Rather than address the laundry list of issues currently besetting President Obama’s military — including transgender engineering, the female draft, religious liberty for contractors and others — congressional Republicans have opted to punt on the play, while blaming a tiny wild bird.

Yes, this is a real thing … a real debate. House Republicans are more concerned about ensuring a bird isn’t considered endangered than they are about including women into the draft, funding for rebel groups that are actually harming the military, and military religious liberty issues.

And why? The efforts for inclusion of the sage grouse provision in the bill is due to concern that placing the bird on the endangered species list would negatively impact military training on western lands. The sage grouse is present in 11 western states and the population has plummeted in recent years. The President Obama refused to put the species on the endangered species list last year, and has since unveiled a conservation effort of the animal plummeted in recent years. Spearheaded by Rep. Bob Bishop, R-Utah (D, 67%), the House’s version of the NDAA currently lists this provision, while it is omitted in the Senate version of the bill.

This isn’t the first time the sage grouse has been problematic for the NDAA. Last fall, the House attempted to include the ban in the legislation, but it was eventually removed from the bill.

In response, Reps. Adam Smith, D-Texas, and Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz. (F, 30%), released letters from the Pentagon that have ensured that land-use plans intended to preserve the sage grouse will not significantly impact military training, operations, or readiness.

“These letters put to bed once and for all the silly speculation that a few birds could hamstring the greatest fighting force in the history of the world,” Grijalva said in a statement. “I hope these letters will sway the Members who may have been confused when voting for this harmful provision in last year’s defense bill.”

House Republicans have consistently refused to stand up for provisions in the NDAA that really matter — and now, it’s backfiring. As a result of this sage grouse incident, House and Senate Armed Services Committee leaders seem to have put the annual defense authorization bill on hold until after the November election, despite the fact both panels planned to finish talks about the legislation this week so the final measure could be addressed in the House and the Senate next week.

Meanwhile, it’s looking like the NDAA will be finalized during a lame-duck session, ostensibly because of the endangered status of a small bird. But those are congressional priorities for you, folks. (For more from the author of “Transgender Engineering? Female Draft? No, Congress Is Focused On… Obscure Birds?” please click HERE)

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