Frantic Murkowski Spokesman Contradicts Senator, Tells Alaska Press Pro-Abortion Senator “Remains Pro-Life”

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Citizens for Joe Miller Press Release
September 13, 2016, Anchorage, Alaska

Senator Lisa Murkowski, who has a long record of support for abortion “rights” and federal funding for Planned Parenthood, is apparently pushing the line that she is, and has been, a pro-life senator. Alaska Dispatch News reported on Monday that the Incumbent Senator’s spokesman said Murkowski “remains pro-life.”

“This is typical Murkowski, but a staggering assertion nonetheless,” said Joe Miller. “It’s a clear indication that the Murkowski campaign is in a panic over the loss of Republican support. But it also poignantly illustrates that Alaskans can’t trust anything she says. It’s all politics all the time. She has no principles.”

Early in her tenure in the US Senate, Murkowski voted for a Sense of the Senate Amendment that affirmed:

“It is the sense of the Senate that – (1) the decision of the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade was appropriate and secures an important constitutional right; and (2) such decision should not be overturned.”

Murkowski has consistently stood in opposition to Ronald Reagan’s “Mexico City Policy,” which bans taxpayer dollars from flowing to foreign non-governmental organizations that perform or promote abortion.

The Senator has also been a strong advocate for federal funding of the nation’s leading abortion provider, Planned Parenthood.

But that’s not all, she has even defended Roe v. Wade on the Alaskan airwaves and accused Republicans of a “War on Women.”

During the last session of Congress, Murkowski received an 80 percent rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America, while her Republican colleagues like Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and even Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., earned a 0 percent.

There’s a reason Alaska Right to Life declined to endorse Murkowski during her 2004 run against Tony Knowles, and has subsequently backed Joe Miller.

But now that she’s in a tough re-election fight she’s throwing her liberal allies under the bus, and trying to pull the wool over the eyes of pro-life Republicans. It’s not going to work.

Miller concluded, “Lisa Murkowski is a creature of Washington who governs one way and talks another. I think Alaskans are getting wise to the fact that she is playing both sides, but loyal to neither. As we saw in 2010, she’ll do or say anything she thinks will get her the desired political outcome – which is of course re-election.”

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 right to life, religious liberty, American sovereignty, and a strong national defense.

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Clinton: I Didn’t Think Pneumonia Diagnosis Would Be a Big Deal; Obama Senior Staffer Attacks

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Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton told CNN anchor Anderson Cooper on Monday night that she didn’t think that her pneumonia diagnosis would be a “big deal.”

Clinton nearly collapsed on Sunday as she was leaving a September 11 memorial event in New York City. Her campaign released a statement over an hour later saying that she was feeling overheated, but then her campaign later announced that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia two days earlier.

David Axelrod, chief strategist for Barack Obama’s two presidential campaigns, criticized Clinton on Monday on Twitter for her campaign not disclosing the diagnosis on Friday.

Cooper asked Clinton about Axelrod’s criticism and why she told Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) about her pneumonia on Sunday morning, but didn’t tell the press or public.

“Well, I just didn’t think it was going to be that big a deal. I know Chuck said today he didn’t tell anybody. It’s just the kind of thing that if it happens to you and you’re a busy, active person, you keep moving forward,” Clinton said. (Read more from “Clinton: I Didn’t Think Pneumonia Diagnosis Would Be a Big Deal” HERE)

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Alaska Republican Assembly Supporting Joe Miller for US Senate

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Citizens for Joe Miller Press Release
September 12, 2016, Anchorage, Alaska

Describing Incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski as “the most liberal Republican up for re-election,” and her record in the US Senate as one “laying siege on the Constitution,” the Alaska Republican Assembly has issued an unprecedented statement of support for Libertarian nominee Joe Miller.

“Under this unusual election circumstance, we feel that supporting the Republican Party Platform is our paramount mission, and therefore we will be supporting Joe Miller for U.S. Senate,” said President Daniel Hamm, further comparing Miller to Conservative stalwart Senators Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul.

“I want to thank the Alaska Republican Assembly for standing firm for principle over empty party rhetoric,” Miller responded. “The time for talk is past, our country will only be restored with bold action. I am proud to stand with these patriots.”

The Alaska Republican Assembly joins a growing list of Republicans who are joining the effort to retire liberal Senator Lisa Murkowski and send a strong Constitutionalist to confront the corruption of Washington.

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 right to life, religious liberty, American sovereignty, and a strong national defense.

Memo to the Washington Post: The Bible Does Reject ‘Transgender’ Behavior

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With the op-ed “Where in the Bible does it say you can’t be transgender? Nowhere” (Aug. 26), the Washington Post apparently feels no embarrassment from publishing such a poorly executed attempt at exegesis of the biblical text (this from 3 weeks ago; it’s hard to keep up with nonsense). I had already responded on Aug. 15 to a badly done New York Times op-ed that claimed that the Bible depicts God as transgendered and affirms gender fluidity. The WashPost op-ed arrives at a similar ideological objective (i.e., claiming that the Bible is not opposed to transgenderism) but from a different angle. Rather than make the case that the Bible endorses transgenderism it attempts to argue that “there is not a single verse in scripture that discusses transgender identities.”

The author is a certain Eliel Cruz who is identified as “a bisexual Christian writer” and “executive director of Faith in America” (a organization which, according to his bio, is “dedicated to ending religious based bigotry towards LGBT people”). I see no evidence that he has any academic expertise in the field of biblical studies (just the kind of person the Post is eager to get?). His three arguments are as follows.

Cross-Dressing or Transgenderism: What’s the Difference?

Cruz claims that the reference in Deuteronomy 22:5 women who wear men’s clothes and men who wear women’s clothes as “an abomination (abhorrent, detestable) to Yahweh your God” is about cross-dressing and not transgenderism.

In the ancient Near East, this is a distinction without much of a difference. Almost certainly at least some of these figures (probably most of the men) were connected with the indictment of the so-called qedeshim: literally, “cult figures” or self-named “sacred ones,” connected with idolatrous cult shrines (Deut 23:17-18). These men thought themselves possessed by an androgynous deity. As self-perceived women in male bodies they attempted to erase their masculine identity with feminine dress, manners, occupations, and sometimes even castration.

Comparable Mesopotamian figures were known as the assinu, kurgarru, and kulu’u. A later manifestation were the Greco-Roman figures known as the galli, connected with the Great Mother Cybele. In Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History (Judges thru 2 Kings) they were condemned for having committed an “abomination” (1 Kings 14:24; 15:12 22:46; 2 Kings 23:7). The biblical writers rejected any presumption that these birth-males were females.

Centuries later the apostle Paul referred to the malakoi (“soft men”; a Greek term, the Latin equivalent of which was molles), men who deliberately feminized themselves, sometimes to attract male sex partners, through dress, mannerisms, hairstyle, and at times even castration. This is a more generic term and necessitates no cultic connection (though in some cases there was such a connection). Paul listed such figures among those who, without repentance, would not inherit the kingdom of God.

Binary Significance

Cruz then claims that Genesis 1:27, “male and female he created them,” carries no binary implications. He cites the use of “and” in the phrase “the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1) and in the reference to God as “the alpha and the omega” (Rev 1:8) as including “everything in between.”

Yet the understanding of the phrase “male and female” as implying a sexual binary is all too obvious. In the few times that this exact phrase is used elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible it always indicates a sexual pair: Gen 5:2 (genealogy fulfilling command to “be fruitful and multiply,” similar to 1:27) and 6:19; 7:3, 9, 16 (animals going into the ark “two by two”).

According to Mark 10:5-9 (parallel in Matt 19:4-6), Jesus cited “male and female he created them” in Gen 1:27 alongside Gen 2:24 (“For this reason a man shall … be joined to his woman and the two shall become one flesh”) in order to establish a principle about duality of number in sexual relations. In short, Jesus predicated a limitation of two persons to a sexual union on the foundation of a divinely designed complementary sexual pair.

A century before Jesus the Jewish sectarian group known as the Essenes likewise applied the same principle from Gen 1:27, this time in connection with the duality of number in the Noah’s ark narrative (“two by two … male and female”), to reject polygamy among their adherents, calling the male-female requirement for sexual relations “the foundation of creation.” Jesus went further in applying the principle to a rejection of divorce/remarriage for any cause.

So Jesus clearly saw binary significance to the phrase “male and female.” His citation of Gen 2:24 confirms this, when he includes a reference to “the two” (man and woman) becoming “one flesh.” Mention of “the two” is missing from the Hebrew text of Gen 2:24 but all the other versions (Greek Septuagint translation, Aramaic Targums, Latin Vulgate, Samaritan Pentateuch) pick it up as obviously implied in the original.

Birth Sex, Gender and Intersex

Cruz also appeals to a distinction between birth sex and self-constructed “gender.” Yet he ignores the fact that biblical authors reject the idea that a self-constructed “gender” that differs from birth sex is in any sense true.

Cruz appeals to the “intersex” also, even though this is a separate issue from so-called “transgenderism.” The appeal to “intersex individuals” is akin to an appeal to conjoined twins as a basis for rejecting a standard of monogamy. It makes as a basis for imploding the entire standard an extraordinarily rare exception, where something goes developmentally wrong in nature’s processes (e.g., an inhibition of testosterone production or sensitivity, or an XXY in an essentially male child). The overwhelming percentage of the tiny subset of the population often categorized as “intersex” do not in fact straddle equally between two sexes but are marked predominantly as one sex or the other in terms of the possession (or lack) of a mostly functioning X chromosome.

When Jesus discusses briefly “eunuchs (eunouchoi) who were born so from the womb of their mother” (Matt 19:12) he rejects neither the binary male-female foundation for marriage nor the principle of duality of number secondarily derived from the foundation that he had just established (19:3-9). On the contrary, he presumes that if “born eunuchs” cannot enter the covenant of marriage as “men” they must remain celibate.

It is lamentable that the Washington Post is more interested in propaganda for the “transgender” cause than in credible scholarship. If they don’t like what the Judeo-Christian Scriptures have to say, then they should just say so rather than attempt to distort the witness of these texts in order to service their tainted ideological objectives. When the ends justify the means, all trust is lost in the integrity of the alleged journalism. (For more from the author of “Memo to the Washington Post: The Bible Does Reject ‘Transgender’ Behavior” please click HERE)

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‘Devout’ Catholic Tim Kaine Butchers the Bible to Embrace Gay Radicalism

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Speaking at the Human Rights Campaign’s annual Washington, DC dinner, Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Kaine butchered the Bible and made one of the most twisted arguments for same-sex “marriage” that you’ll ever hear. Yet the very article laying out his arguments described him as a “devout” Roman Catholic. How can this be?

Putting aside the obvious question of how Kaine could serve on a presidential ticket with the radically pro-abortion candidate Hillary Clinton — indeed, he has already been challenged for “saying he is both a ‘traditional Catholic’ and a strong supporter of abortion” — Kaine raised further eyebrows when suggesting that the Catholic Church could one day change its position on same-sex “marriage,” just as he has done.

In support of his viewpoint, he cited Pope Francis’s oft-quoted comment about gay Catholics (“Who am I to judge?”), failing to realize that the Pope was not sanctioning homosexual acts and relationships but rather saying, “If someone is same-sex attracted and wants to be part of the Church, who am I to judge?”

This is very different from saying, “If two men are in love and want to have a romantic and sexual relationship, who am I to judge?”

But I am not a Catholic, nor can I predict where the Roman Catholic Church will be in 5 or 50 years. What I can say with certainty is that Sen. Kaine’s use of Genesis 1 to buttress his support of LGBT activism amounts to scriptural malpractrice.

He said, “I think it’s going to change because my church also teaches me about a creator who, in the first chapter of Genesis, surveyed the entire world, including mankind, and said, ‘It is very good.’”

And, he added, “Who am I to challenge God for the beautiful diversity of the human family? I think we’re supposed to celebrate it, not challenge it.”

Seriously? Kaine is going to Genesis 1 to argue for same-sex “marriage,” along with the larger LGBT agenda?

Genesis 1 and the Natural Family

Allow me to give a helpful hint to the senator: Sir, although you will find no support for your position anywhere in the Bible, the worst place you can go to argue your case is Genesis.

It is in Genesis 1 that we see the importance of gender distinctions, as God creates humankind as male and female — not as male, female, and an infinite number of variations, including agender, bigender, and third gender, along with multi-gender options like ambigender, bigender, blurgender, collgender, conflictgender, cosmicgender, crystagender, deliciagender, duragender, demiflux, domgender, fissgender, gemelgender, gendercluster, genderfluid, gendersea, genderfuzz, genderfractal, genderspiral, genderswirl, gendervex, gyaragender, libragender, ogligender, pangender, polygender and trigender.

Is this what Kaine was referring when he spoke of “the beautiful diversity of the human family” that we should celebrate? Genesis 1 states the exact opposite.

It is also in Genesis 1 that God blesses His human creation with the words, “be fruitful and multiply,” and it is only heterosexuals, by design, who can do this. That’s why, to this moment, no homosexual couple has ever been blessed by God with the ability to procreate by themselves.

The Bible and the Natural Family

This sets the pattern for the rest of the Bible, where the only marital relationships blessed by God, without exception, are heterosexual, with the male and female being uniquely designed for one another biologically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Accordingly, it is based on Genesis 1 that Paul explains in Romans 1 that homosexual acts are contrary to nature — meaning, contrary to God’s intended, natural plan for men and women.

And it is based on Genesis 1 that Jesus explains in Matthew 19 that marriage, as intended by God from the beginning, is the lifelong union of a man and a woman.

Does Sen. Kaine now have insight into Genesis 1 that not only escaped his own Catholic Church, but Jesus and Paul as well?

The Fall of Man

As for Kaine’s argument that when the Creator “surveyed the entire world, including mankind [He] said, ‘It is very good’,” — meaning that homosexuality and bisexuality and more are all good — he seems to have forgotten that “very good” was God’s description of His creation before the fall, when sin entered the world.

After the fall, His assessment changed dramatically to this: “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5).

So much for the “very good” assessment applying to human nature today!

Porneia

As expressed by Jesus, “what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander” (Matthew 15:18-19).

And note carefully that the Greek word for sexual immorality, porneia, is used in the plural here, referring to all sexual acts outside of marriage, which Jesus defined as the union of one man and one woman (see Matthew 19:4-6).

So, the very thing that Sen. Kaine wants to celebrate, the very “diversity” that he claims God established in creation, is the precise opposite of what God intended for His creation, as stated clearly in Genesis 1 and reaffirmed throughout the rest of the Bible, from Moses to Jesus to Paul.

Mrs. Clinton’s running mate would do well to submit his thinking to the Scriptures rather than twisting the Scriptures to fit his thinking. It is the senator who must change, not the Word of God. (For more from the author of “‘Devout’ Catholic Tim Kaine Butchers the Bible to Embrace Gay Radicalism” please click HERE)

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Churches Could Be Forced to Comply With Transgender Law

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Churches in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts have grave concerns about a new anti-discrimination law that could force congregations to accommodate the transgender community – under the threat of fines and jail time.

The law, which goes into effect in October, does not specifically mention churches or other houses of worship. However, the attorney general, along with the government commission assigned to enforce the law, have a different point of view. Attorney General Maura Healey wrote that places of public accommodation include: “auditoriums, convention centers, lecture halls, houses of worship, and other places of public gathering.”

The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, the commission responsible for enforcing the anti-discrimination law, reinforced that interpretation in a document titled, “Gender Identity Guidance.”

“Even a church could be seen as a place of public accommodation if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the general public,” the document states. “All persons, regardless of gender identity, shall have the right to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities and privileges of any place of public accommodation.”

The Massachusetts Family Institute has launched a petition drive to repeal the law – warning that pastors and parishioners could find themselves in serious legal trouble.

“The law bootstraps the idea of gender identity onto existing Civil Rights laws,” MFI president Andrew Beckwith tells me. “Even having a sign in your church that says “This Bathroom is for Biological Women Only” could subject the pastor of the church to up to 30 days in jail.”

Beckwith said under the law, the sign would be treated the same as if it had said, “Whites Only.” He said the MFI reached out to the attorney general’s office for clarification on the law and they were instructed to “get an attorney.” “Churches are left not knowing whether it applies to them or not,” he said.

So who is going to be deciding what is and what is not a secular event?

“It shows religious tone deafness on the part of whoever is writing these regulations,” Beckwith said. “Any pastor I talk to is going to say their services and ministries and programs are open to the general public. That’s the whole point – to spread the Gospel and minister to the whole community.”

That’s a fact.

I’ve seen revival break out over the potato salad — during a dinner-on-the-grounds at a Baptist church in Mississippi.

Beckwith said he hopes churches will join their campaign to repeal the law — warning that “it’s going to have very real consequences on religious liberty.” “If the church doesn’t defend itself from these attacks on religious liberty, they are going to cease having the ability to make the pastoral decisions they need to be able to make,” he said.

I reached out to the Mass. Commission Against Discrimination and they told me Commissioner Sunila Thomas George said there’s really no need for alarm. “By and large, places of worship are not held to the Massachusetts Anti-Discrimination statutes that deal with places of public accommodation,” she said. “We are not by any means saying that the anti-discrimination laws absolutely apply to them.”

But, they could.

“There are circumstances where places of worship hold activities at their facilities or in their buildings that are purely secular events,” she said. Among the activities that the state considers secular are soup kitchens, day care, housing, and polling places. “In those circumstances, places of worship could be seen as open to the public,” Ms. George told me. “The operative word is ‘could.’”

So let’s use MCAD’s example of a church spaghetti supper. Under the state’s guidelines, that supper could fall under the anti-discrimination law.

I asked MCAD what the church would need to do to comply with the law.

“You would want to make sure that people are treated with regard to their gender identity and treated fairly and equitably,” Ms. George told me.

So what, specifically, does that mean?

“As long as people who are transitioning or who have transitioned are able to use a restroom they identity with, I think you are complying with the law,” she said. “You would want to make sure they are accommodated. In other words, churches that hold spaghetti suppers would have to let men who identify as women use the same bathrooms as the little Sunday school girls.

The Baptist Convention of New England is among the religious groups in the region opposing the law – warning that it’s an attack on the First Amendment. “Any attempt by a small vocal activist group to strip churches of that right should be vehemently opposed by all people,” executive director Terry Dorsett told Baptist Press. “If they can take a church’s right to practice their faith away, imagine what else they can do.”

For starters, they can tell good churchgoing folks what they can do with their spaghetti and meatballs. (For more from the author of “Churches Could Be Forced to Comply With Transgender Law” please click HERE)

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Government Watchdog: Obamacare Can’t Detect Fake Enrollees

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Republicans are slamming the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) lack of accountability in light of two new reports showing the health care law is vulnerable to fraud.

“This report unfortunately tells us more of what we already know — that the Obamacare federal exchanges have been riddled with problems since day one,” said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX) in a statement issued with several other GOP Committee Chairmen.

Brady and the other top GOP policymakers say they are concerned by the fact that undercover operations by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 2015 and 2016 got through the ACA’s fraud prevention measures. For its 2015 analysis, the federal investigative agency successfully used “fictitious applications for subsidized health plans” ten times, and was approved for Medicaid coverage in seven of eight other fake applications.

Four states were targeted for investigation — New Jersey, North Dakota, California and Kentucky.

The 2016 investigation found that in addition to approving eight fraudulent applications, four applications were approved despite lacking proof of eligibility from prior years’ investigations. The applications were submitted through federal exchanges in West Virginia and Virginia, and California’s state marketplace.

Federal and some state officials agreed to create systems for better oversight, according to the GAO.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said in a statement that “Continuing to leave taxpayers vulnerable, years after the system was implemented, is a disgraceful way for the administration to leave our healthcare system. That the administration has been aware of this since 2014, and has failed to employ proper safeguards, is just the latest incompetence in the health law’s implementation.”

The law has faced other criticisms of late, as insurers are pulling out of many states and a majority of state-run healthcare exchanges have collapsed. (For more from the author of “Government Watchdog: Obamacare Can’t Detect Fake Enrollees” please click HERE)

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Obama Eyes Hacking Threat as Rationale to ‘Protect’ Elections

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The federal government is mulling a decision to protect state election systems on par with national defense and the power grid, citing recent hacking efforts. But state officials and other critics worry this move, under the guise of thwarting cyberterrorists, would be a back-door means of nationalizing local election functions.

Neither the Constitution nor Congress has granted the Department of Homeland Security the authority to provide special protection to locally administered election systems, said Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow in constitutional studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.

“States regulate elections, this is different from highways or communication systems that can be legitimately regulated by the commerce clause,” he told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “Where would they have the authority to do this?”

The commerce clause of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to regulate commerce between states and with other countries.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told state elections officials in August that he would consider designating election systems as “critical infrastructure” amid concerns that malevolent cyberagents could hack local election systems.

The FBI recently found that someone, possibly Russians, hacked voter registration information in both Arizona and Illinois. However, most security experts and elections officials contend that hacking actual voting machines is unlikely.

After 9/11, both the USA Patriot Act of 2001 and the Homeland Security Act of 2002 established definitions of critical infrastructure as “systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.”

A presidential directive from President George W. Bush in 2003, later superseded by one from President Barack Obama, elaborated on critical systems for maintaining the country.

The Department of Homeland Security designated 16 sectors of American society as critical infrastructure, including the energy sector, including the power grid; information technology, including maintaining the internet; and the the nation’s food and agriculture system.

But election problems would not prevent the country from functioning, said Brad Smith, a law professor at Capital University.

“It’s not really a catastrophe if we are down a couple of members of the House or the Senate. Even presidential races, [such as in] 2000, 1876, were resolved,” Smith told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “For people in Washington, it’s hard to accept that a delayed election result wouldn’t be like the power grid failing and people dying because they can’t get medical care, or the internet going down and no one can do business and access funds.”

A Department of Homeland Security spokesman said the agency doesn’t plan an announcement on whether it will designate election systems as critical infrastructure. The spokesman referred to comments Johnson made Thursday at an Atlantic forum, when he said:

It would be very difficult to alter the [vote] count, but we are concerned about bad cyberactors, general state actors, hacktivists, criminals that intrude into [the] internet presence of state election officials generally, and so, we’re offering assistance to these officials. … It does not mean a federal takeover of state election systems or state elections, or even national elections. We don’t have the authority to do that. What we can do in homeland security, in cybersecurity, is offer assistance when people ask for it.

Other state election officials concur that elections won’t likely be electronically rigged.

“It’s highly improbable at best that a national election could be hacked,” Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, president of the national group, said last month during a press conference. “First of all, there is no national system of elections. Our election system is extremely decentralized. It is run [individually] by all 50 states and within those states, the counties are really responsible.”

That virtue, Cato Institute’s Shapiro said, keeps American elections secure from hacking.

“There are 9,000 different election jurisdictions,” he said. “Voting machines are not connected to a network.”

Shapiro said he suspects the Obama administration has another motivation.

“Jeh Johnson floated this and senior administration officials don’t float things haphazardly,” Shapiro said in a phone interview with The Daily Signal. “This could be a way for the federal government to work around the Shelby County decision. It could be about cybersecurity, but also about [what the administration considers] protecting the right to vote.”

Shapiro was referring to the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Shelby County vs. Holder. That ruling came after the Justice Department took numerous actions to block state voter ID laws, such as requiring persons to show a driver’s license before they can vote.

The high court’s decision left in place bans on impediments to voting such as literacy tests. But it also determined some of the four-decade-old voting rights law—in which the federal government evaluated a state’s compliance based on minority voter turnout—is not applicable today.

Federal officials could try to use a critical infrastructure designation for election systems to try to convince Congress that elections should be centralized, said Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation who studies election issues. Von Spakovsky told The Daily Signal:

Homeland Security doesn’t have the legal authority to regulate whatever it designates as critical infrastructure, but it could be used as an excuse to say to local jurisdictions: You should do this or you shouldn’t do this. For a county election official to stand up to a U.S. Department of Homeland Security official and say no would be tough.

On Sept. 1, Investor’s Business Daily editorialized that such a designation by the federal government would be “nationalizing” elections:

This is not just a bad idea; it is dangerous. America’s polling functions have long been managed at the state and local level, to ensure that our mammoth federal government doesn’t get involved. It should stay that way. This government has stood by as an unprecedented series of cyberattacks have stolen our secrets and endangered our security. We should give them more power?

Letting our elephantine government get its giant proboscis under the tent flap for reasons of ‘national interest’ is opening up the possibility of political meddling in elections by government officials—either through actual intervention in the running and management of polling places, or by clever regulation that favors one party over another.

(For more from the author of “Obama Eyes Hacking Threat as Rationale to ‘Protect’ Elections” please click HERE)

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This Senator Wants to Ban Doctors From Dismembering Unborn Babies in the Womb

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Sen. James Lankford introduced legislation last week that would ban late-term dismemberment abortion across the country, in efforts to build consensus and find common ground among Americans.

“There are a lot of arguments right now about life and about its role in American society,” Lankford told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Friday.

“Obviously, not all Americans agree on the issue of life and when life begins and abortion,” the Republican from Oklahoma said. “I have asked the question, ‘Can we at least agree on some basic thing?’”

A dismemberment abortion, one of the methods that can be used in a late-term abortion, should not be used, Lankford told The Daily Signal.

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., introduced identical legislation in the House last year.

The Dismemberment Abortion Ban Act defines a dismemberment abortion as an abortion that uses “clamps, grasping forceps, tongs, scissors or similar instruments” to “slice, crush or grasp a portion of the unborn child’s body in order to cut or rip it off or crush it,” with the purpose of causing death to the unborn child.

When a child is too large to suction, physicians “will actually go in and rip the child’s legs and arms off and pull it apart piece by piece and then will suck out each piece of the child,” Lankford said.

The senator says this is similar to partial-birth abortion where a physician kills the baby partway through delivery. Partial-birth abortions are banned in the United States.

“We have as a nation already said we don’t do partial-birth abortions, where we have this late-term procedure where they deliver the child partially and then kill it while it’s only partially in the womb,” Lankford said.

“We know now that children who are in the womb in late-term can feel pain,” he added. “At least we should agree that in the womb when a child can feel pain, we shouldn’t pull them apart limb by limb.”

A physician that knowingly ends the life of an unborn child through a dismemberment abortion would be subject to fines and imprisonment for up to two years, according to the bill.

A woman on whom an abortion has been performed in violation of the dismemberment ban could seek civil action, including seeking “objectively verifiable money damages for all injuries, psychological and physical, occasioned by the violation” and “statutory damages equal to three times the cost of the abortion.”

“I do pray, not only for those that are yet to be born, but I pray a lot for moms that have had an abortion and the grief that they experience based on that after the fact,” Lankford said. “I pray for those that actually perform abortions that they will at some point awaken to what’s happening right in front of them.”

The legislation’s ban excludes dismemberment abortions that are performed “to save the life of a mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself.”

Six states—Kansas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana—have taken similar action to ban dismemberment abortion.

Clearly this is an effort to take some of the tactics of the past—using very graphic descriptions and inflammatory language—to ban access to abortion,” Elizabeth Nash, the states issue manager at the Guttmacher Institute, told ThinkProgress in January 2015 in response to states introducing similar legislation on dismemberment abortion.

The Dismemberment Abortion Ban Act does not limit abortions that are performed by a method other than dismemberment.

In the House, the legislation was referred to the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice in October 2015. Twenty-four representatives currently co-sponsor the bill. Lankford introduced his identical bill Thursday in the Senate. The legislation was referred to the Judiciary Committee.

“Surely we can all agree that dismantling a child in the womb during a late-term abortion is inhumane and is not reflective of American values,” Lankford said in a prepared statement Thursday. (For more from the author of “This Senator Wants to Ban Doctors From Dismembering Unborn Babies in the Womb” please click HERE)

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PANIC: The Clinton Camp Freaks Out

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Even The Washington Post noted there were “no questions about her emails,” Topic A of the news cycle. Clinton’s reckless mishandling of classified material — reinforced by her 39 memory “lapses” in her FBI interview — should disqualify her from office. And Americans get it.

The media elites are in a panic. They witnessed the meltdown of their candidate in broad daylight and can feel that shiver up their spine — except that this time, it is not the delight of victory they are feeling, but the dread of defeat.

They watched her spar unsuccessfully over this issue with Clinton Global Initiative member and NBC morning news anchor Matt Lauer during Wednesday night’s national security forum, and blamed her poor performance on — Matt Lauer.

The Washington Post is now essentially an arm of the Democratic National Committee. It has done this with deep investigative dive into the penetralia of the Trump empire and no equivalent reporting about the Clinton emails, the Clinton Foundation’s corrupt pay-to-play scheme or the nonstop lies from Clinton herself.

NBC and CBS have jumped on the bandwagon, highlighting Clinton’s latest desperate claim that Trump is the favored candidate of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
American voters just aren’t that stupid, but these news organizations wouldn’t know anything about that. That’s why they are called the media elites.

On Thursday, The Washington Post editorial board took the occasion of Libertarian spoiler Gary JohnsonGary JohnsonThe media elites feel that shiver up the spine — and it’s not victory Fox Business host blames pot for Johnson’s Aleppo gaffe Schwarzenegger: Put Libertarians in debates MORE’s ignorance on the Syrian civil war as an opportunity to trash Trump.

“Gary Johnson’s Aleppo gaffe was bad. But Trump’s consistent ignorance is worse,” a lead editorial trumpeted.

The Post found Johnson, whom they called “clueless,” nevertheless to be “refreshing” when compared to Trump, “who in a televised national security forum Wednesday offered a staggering array of ignorant and mendacious assertions — and acknowledged no regrets about them.”

Let’s see. According to the Post, Trump repeated “his false claims to have opposed the U.S. interventions in Iraq and Libya.”

Really? The only time Trump ever said he might support a U.S. war in Iraq was with radio shock-jock Howard Stern in 2002. Here is how that exchange went:

“Are you for invading Iraq?” Stern asked. “Yeah [pause] … I guess so,” Trump replied.

Anyone who listens to the audio of that exchange will not recognize the bold colors of the Trump they know. Instead, they heard a man who clearly hadn’t given the Iraq war that much thought (after all, he was a private businessman at the time). Trump added, “You know, I wish the first time it was done correctly.”

Even so, that was enough for the Post, NBC News, and other media elites to say Trump “lied” when he said he opposed the 2003 Iraq War.

Not exactly a “gotcha” moment.

Then there’s this. Trump once again asserted in Wednesday night’s forum that the Bush administration should have left local Iraqis in charge of the country but kept control of “various sections where they have the oil.”

The Post sneered at “the jaw-dropping imbecility of this idea.” I guess they have forgotten the widespread media reporting in the run-up and aftermath of the 2003 Iraq war, claiming that President George W. Bush was waging a “war for oil.”

“No Blood for Oil,” protesters shouted, bursting into congressional hearings.

Post columnist Mary McGrory went further. “We’re starting a war not just for oil or for Ariel Sharon, but because we can win it.”

Of course, in Europe and the Arab world, “everyone knew” Iraq was a war for oil, Post columnist David Ignatius reminded readers at the time.

I can recall being invited to a French television debate in Paris on Oct. 25, 2004. I was the only Republican guest on a round table of Americans to discuss the 2004 presidential elections. Asked about the allegations that Iraq was a “war for oil,” I said, “Of course, it was.” I then added, “But it was a war for oil fought by [then French President Jacques] Chirac to preserve $100 billion in contracts for [French oil companies] Elf and Total.”

Trump went on to say that regardless of the decision over going to war, the United States should not have left Iraq precipitously, announcing that decision ahead of time so our enemies so hunker down and wait us out. “And the way they got out really caused ISIS, if you think about it,” Trump told Larry King on Russia Today (RT).

Predictably, the Post didn’t put that comment in context of Trump’s view of the 2003 war, but only reported it because he said it on RT.

I have already “fact-checked” Trump’s claim that Clinton and Obama were “founders of ISIS” and found it to be true not just because the precipitous U.S. withdrawal created a security vacuum for ISIS to exploit, but because it was the policy of the U.S. government at the time to reinforce and arm the groups that morphed into ISIS, as a now-declassified Defense Intelligence Agency report from August 2012 shows.

Of course, The Washington Post and the media elites dismissed Trump’s claim with a predictable sneer.

The American people have understood the media’s bold double-standard when it comes to the truth. Hillary Clinton’s pathological lying is okay, but anything they don’t like spoken by Trump is not.

Now the elite media is waking up to the fact that they no longer control the narrative, and they are in a panic. (For more from the author of “PANIC: The Clinton Camp Freaks Out” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.