Senate Democrats Retreat, Allowing Spending Bill to Avert Government Shutdown

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Senate Democrats, digging in their heels Friday over health benefits for coal miners, threatened to shut down the government over the weekend for lack of a short-term spending agreement by a midnight deadline.

But Friday evening Democrats gave in, Politico reported, saying they would fight on in the New Year but not be held responsible for shutting down the government.

“We’re not going to shut down the government. We’re going to keep it open,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the incoming minority leader, said.

The House voted overwhelmingly Thursday, 326-96, to pass the stopgap spending bill to keep the government running through April 28, when Donald Trump will have been in the White House for more than three months.

In the Senate, however, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., led a fight to secure a one-year extension of health benefits for miners, rather than the four months provided by the short-term measure lawmakers call a continuing resolution.

“We need to bring attention to the people who have done the work. They’re forgotten heroes,” Manchin said at one point.

Manchin and other Democrats said they would vote against the short-term spending bill, Politico reported, but it was expected to clear the Senate late Friday night.

Manchin, reportedly under consideration for secretary of energy or another post in the Trump administration, postponed a scheduled Friday meeting with the president-elect until Monday.

The new fiscal year began Oct. 1, but both chambers in late September approved a resolution funding the government through Dec. 9 at the current $1.07 trillion level. That deal was set to expire at midnight as Friday became Saturday.

Generally, the short-term spending measure continues current funding while providing additional money for specific defense, disaster relief, and health care initiatives.

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team last month called for Congress to pass the stopgap spending measure until lawmakers could take up a longer-term bill in the weeks after Trump is sworn in as president Jan. 20.

Conservatives such as Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., argue that the continuing resolution practice should not be a standard mode of operation.

“Though this outcome was preferable to a larger, long-term spending bill, it is my sincere hope that our final vote of 2016 is not indicative of how we will operate in 2017,” Walker said in a prepared statement Thursday after the House vote.

Walker was one of 33 Republicans to vote no before the House adjourned and lawmakers went home for the Christmas holidays.

“This bill is a far cry from how our government should be funded and what priorities should be appropriated,” he said.

Conservatives especially focused on several key areas of policy, among them:

Anti-Terror Operations

The continuing resolution allocates $10.1 billion for what the Obama administration calls “overseas contingency operations,” a supplemental fund that provides money to the Pentagon and State Department related to fighting terrorism in the Middle East and elsewhere abroad.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.,chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the continuing resolution does not adequately support the needs of the military.

Those who supported a short-term spending bill are “harming the military and will do great damage to the military and our ability to defend the nation,” McCain told reporters last month.

21st Century Cures Act

The continuing resolution includes $872 million for the 21st Century Cures Act, designed to expedite the drug-approval procedures of the Food and Drug Administration.

It eventually would earmark “billions to the National Institutes of Health, in part to combat cancer and invest in precision medicine,” Politico reported.

Disaster Relief

The spending bill provides $4.1 billion in relief for disaster areas, including funding for repairs to U.S. Highway 34 in Colorado after a flood in 2013. It includes $170 million for Flint, Michigan, where a public health crisis continues following lead contamination of the city’s drinking water.

Mattis Waiver

The bill includes a waiver of existing law requiring that any member of the military must be retired for seven years before becoming secretary of defense.

This waiver is designed to allow Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, to be nominated and confirmed even though he has been retired for only three years.

Export-Import Bank

Notably, the continuing resolution did not contain a provision designed to prop up the Export-Import Bank, a significant victory for conservatives who want to pull the plug on the government bank that provides loans and loan guarantees for foreign buyers of U.S. goods.

Currently, only two of Ex-Im’s five board seats are filled and, because of the vacancies, the bank’s supporters wanted Congress to change the bank’s quorum rules. This would allow Ex-Im to again approve loans of more than $10 million.

Some lawmakers, including Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., a member of the House Financial Services Committee, said the move would be “completely inappropriate,” as one board member could be responsible for allocating millions of dollars in loans.

The use of a continuing resolution to keep the government running remains distasteful to many conservative lawmakers because they say it ignores problems that deserve immediate attention and action.

“A continuing resolution is nothing different than taking last year’s appropriations bills, just changing the date on it and moving it over to this year, so it doesn’t address the areas of overspending, it doesn’t surgically go in and be able to change things like an appropriations bill does,” Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said Thursday in an interview with C-SPAN.

Lankford said he believes the short-term spending bill is a vehicle for neglecting to solve inevitable problems.

“A continuing resolution, or a CR as it is often called here in D.C., just takes out [the spending level for] last year, [and] moves it over to this year, regardless of the things that have been discovered that were problems in the last year or regardless of new priorities that we may have for the coming year,” he said.

The office of Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., chairman of the House Budget Committee and Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, noted that Congress has failed to pass a budget in six of the past 10 years.

Aides to Price, who did not vote on the stopgap spending bill, tweeted out a chart reminding Americans that in 18 of the past 20 years, Congress relied on a yearlong continuing resolution or omnibus spending bill to fund the government rather than the regular appropriations process:

(For more from the author of “Senate Democrats Retreat, Allowing Spending Bill to Avert Government Shutdown” please click HERE)

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Ohio Takes Major Step to Protect Individual Rights, Due Process

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For Ohioans who put civil forfeiture reform on their holiday wish lists this year, Christmas came early.

Yesterday, the Ohio Legislature voted overwhelmingly to approve H.B. 347, a sweeping reform bill that will dramatically scale back the practice of seizing and forfeiting property absent a criminal conviction.

Civil forfeiture is the legal tool that enables law enforcement officers to seize property they suspect of having been involved in the commission of, or having been attained through, a crime.

But despite an alleged criminal act being the basis for a civil forfeiture, Ohio law does not require a property owner to be convicted of a crime before the state can confiscate his cash, car, or home.

Current Law in the Buckeye State

Rather, prosecutors need only prove by a preponderance of the evidence (i.e. that it is more likely true than not) that the property is forfeitable. A property owner must prove that he is innocent of any wrongdoing to win back his property. It’s a complete reversal of the presumption of innocence standard Americans are accustomed to in the criminal law.

Worse still, Ohio law allows between 90 and 100 percent of forfeiture revenues to flow directly back to the law enforcement agencies that executed the seizures, filling their coffers with money that can be spent with little political accountability. Between 2010 and 2012, Ohio’s police, sheriffs, and prosecutors generated at least $25.7 million through property seizures under state law.

Since 2012, Ohio law enforcement organizations have not been required to document their forfeiture activities. So, in the Buckeye State, law enforcement organizations can seize property, keep and spend the proceeds without oversight, and do not even have to advise lawmakers or the public of how much money they are making and spending.

Perhaps it is no surprise that police, sheriffs, and prosecutors’ groups have fought hard to prevent the measure from passing in the Senate.

The executive director of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association insisted that the Buckeye State’s forfeiture laws are “top-notch” and “chock-full of due process protections.”

Citizens Want Change

Everyday Ohioans see things differently. One recent poll showed that 81 percent of Buckeyes think that forfeiture policies need “major reforms.”

Evidently, the vast majority of the state’s citizens find a system that incentivizes property seizures—often based on little or no evidence of wrongdoing—and stacks the deck against innocent property owners to be anything but “chock-full of due process protections.”

One Ohio woman, Antoinette Lattimore, found this out the hard way. In 2013, she had $19,660 seized at the Dayton International Airport after a Dayton police officer searched her belongings and found she was traveling with the large sum of cash.

The officer found no drugs, but seized the full amount as illegal drug money. In reality, she was traveling to Tucson to purchase art pieces.

Lattimore hired an attorney, but eventually was worn down by the tortuous forfeiture system and accepted a “settlement”: The government kept nearly $9,000 of Lattimore’s money, despite never proving a link between the money and a crime. After attorney’s fees, Lattimore got to keep only $8,000.

The Legislature’s Reforms

H.B. 347 contains many reforms that will help to rebalance a skewed system and prevent abusive and baseless forfeitures like Lattimore’s.

If enacted, forfeitures of property valued at less than $25,000 will require a criminal conviction, and prosecutors will have to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence—a higher standard than the status quo—that the property’s owner “knew or had reasonable cause to believe” that the property facilitated or resulted from a criminal act.

They will also have to demonstrate that forfeiture of the facilitating property is proportionate to the underlying criminal offense.

Seized property valued at more than $25,000 can still be forfeited without a criminal conviction. Several states have adopted similar measures to preserve civil forfeiture as a tool to go after worst-of-the-worst offenders like drug kingpins, criminal organizations, and money launderers. That was the original, narrow, and noble goal of civil forfeiture when it was ramped up in the 1980s, but over time it has drifted from this limited purpose.

The bill also allows civil forfeitures without convictions in certain reasonable scenarios: if the accused dies, flees the jurisdiction or cannot be located, or if property is unclaimed.

The bill affords property owners the right to request a prompt post-seizure hearing, giving them the chance to quickly secure the return of wrongfully seized cash or property. It also mandates a pre-seizure hearing if state or local officials are targeting real property, an added layer of protection for instances where law enforcement targets someone’s home.

The bill also reins in Ohio’s use of the “equitable sharing” loophole, whereby state and local agencies partner with federal authorities to forfeit property using federal civil forfeiture laws. State agencies are then in line to receive up to 80 percent of the resulting proceeds.

Between 2000 and 2013, Ohio agencies netted $139 million in Department of Justice equitable sharing payments. None of this vast sum was subject to political oversight by state and local lawmakers.

H.B 347 prohibits the direct or indirect transfer or referral of any property worth less than $100,000 to federal law enforcement authorities, unless the transfer is for “federal criminal forfeiture proceedings.”

More Work Remains

While the bill preserves a monetary incentive for law enforcement under state law (90 percent of forfeiture proceeds will be returned to law enforcement agencies, with the remainder going to support community addiction service providers), it does place curbs on how these funds can be spent, including prioritizing victim restitution and removing a provision that allowed funds to be spent on “other law enforcement purposes.”

That nebulous catch-all category has allowed agencies in other states to use seized funds to cover everything from margarita machines to NBA tickets to “conferences” in Hawaii.

H.B. 347 does, however, include a worrisome provision that would allow the use of forfeiture funds to “pay the costs, including overtime costs, associated with all law enforcement task forces.”

Salaries of law enforcement officers should never be directly tied to the seizure of property. Linking job security and financial well-being to the forcible seizure of property is an invitation for abuse.

A Worthwhile Step

Despite its shortcomings, innocent Ohioans will enjoy far greater protections against unjust property seizures with H.B. 347’s reforms than under current law. A bipartisan coalition of legislators, think tanks, and citizens deserves applause for getting civil forfeiture reform to the finish line.

In doing so, Ohio has proven once again that the objections of an entrenched law enforcement lobby can be overcome, that forfeiture reform can be achieved, and that public safety need not be compromised to protect the property rights of innocent Americans.

Ohio has just set the stage for forfeiture reform battles—and victories—throughout the country in 2017. (For more from the author of “Ohio Takes Major Step to Protect Individual Rights, Due Process” please click HERE)

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EPA Pick Scott Pruitt Shows Trump Is Serious About Shredding Obama’s Climate Change Regs

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President-elect Donald Trump is delivering on his campaign promise to reign in environmental regulations and bring coal miners back to work by selecting Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Pruitt’s nomination goes hand and hand with Trump’s energy policy that seeks to unleash domestic energy production by reducing regulations and expanding natural resource development.

The Oklahoma AG is a vocal critic of the EPA’s regulatory overreach and disagrees with the claim that global warming science is settled. Instead, he believes the relationship between man’s activities and global warming needs vigorous debate.

The selection of Pruitt should allay any fears that Trump was softening his stance on reversing President Obama’s climate change regulations by recently meeting with former Vice President Al Gore.

Key to Trump’s pledge to bring back coal mining jobs, Pruitt is a critic of EPA’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) rule which serves as the foundation of Obama’s climate change agenda.

The CPP seeks to cut carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants and it also serves as the regulation that would deliver the U.S emissions targets promised as part of the United Nations Climate Change Paris Agreement.

Pruitt strongly opposed the EPA’s plan to regulate carbon dioxide. He was one of the leaders of a state attorneys general coalition legal fight against the CPP that led to the Supreme Court decision to block the regulation.

The immediate fate of the CPP now rests at a lower court. Regardless of the pending decision, odds are the legality of the rule will be argued again before the Supreme Court.

As head of the EPA, Pruitt — if confirmed by the Senate — would be in a great position to undo or significantly alter the CPP. (For more from the author of “EPA Pick Scott Pruitt Shows Trump Is Serious About Shredding Obama’s Climate Change Regs” please click HERE)

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The GOP House Just Approved Tracking Devices for People with Disabilities

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The House passed a bill Thursday morning that empowers the Department of Justice to establish a system whereby people with autism, Alzheimer’s disease, and other mental impairments are equipped with tracking devices, in case they wander off. H.R. 4919 passed 346 to 66 under a suspension of the rules, meaning that no amendments to the bill could be offered.

Better known as Kevin and Avonte’s Law — named after two children with autism who wandered off and drowned — the bill allows for the DOJ to award $2 million in grants to help states in “designing, establishing, and operating locative tracking technology programs” for people with mental disabilities.

“This legislation will assist communities in receiving valuable education on how to prevent individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and children with autism from wandering, and to respond quickly and appropriately in cases in which they do,” said House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. (D, 64%), per the New York Daily News.

The bill has incited passion from autism and Alzheimer’s advocacy groups, as well as those who are concerned about civil liberties and government overreach. Last week, the bill was scheduled for a House Judiciary Committee markup, but was postponed.

As Conservative Review reported at the time, “Multiple sources on the Hill with knowledge of the situation said that the hearing was cancelled after several GOP committee members voiced concerns about how the language dealt with privacy and civil liberty issues.”

After the Judiciary Committee markup was cancelled, the language of Kevin and Avonte’s Law was changed, so that the tracking devices overseen by the DOJ were less permanent and invasive than the ones originally proposed.

The language change “is still not good enough,” Robert Romano, senior editor at Americans for Limited Government, stated in a press release Wednesday: “There shouldn’t be any bill, because there shouldn’t be a program no matter how well-intentioned overseen by the Attorney General electronically tracking people in this manner.”

Nevertheless, the bill was brought up for a quick vote on Thursday, the last day of the House’s lame-duck legislative session before the new year.

A House source told Conservative Review that, as of last week, an informal whip count of the Judiciary Committee found that a majority of members on the committee were opposed to the bill. It is extremely uncommon for a bill to bypass a committee markup in this way and be brought to the floor under suspension of the rules, the source stated. The bill may be brought up in the Senate for a vote in the next 24 hours, where it is expected to pass with ease and head to President Obama’s desk for signature.

Despite its swift passage through the House, concerns abound for this bill. Government-run tracking devices “would violate the Fourth Amendment as an unreasonable search. And it would violate the Fifth Amendment’s deprivation of liberty without due process,” says Romano, of the “human tracking device bill.”

“Autism,” “Alzheimer’s disease,” and “other developmental disabilities” are not defined in the bill, which prompts extra concern for individuals who may lie somewhere on the autism spectrum but are capable of making decisions for themselves.

Further, there are no assurances that a future attorney general couldn’t mandate the sharing of data obtained by DOJ devices between federal agencies and law enforcement, therefore opening the window for unprecedented domestic surveillance.

Rep. Goodlatte made assurances that the program was voluntary and that no data would be collected. But the government simply does not have a good track record and history, to say the least, when it comes to privacy matters.

For parents or caretakers concerned about the safety and location of their loved ones with developmental disabilities, there are non-invasive, private ways to track the whereabouts under medical supervision — when necessary.

The slippery slope of Kevin and Avonte’s Law is frightening, as there is simply no need for the federal government to get involved. (For more from the author of “The GOP House Just Approved Tracking Devices for People with Disabilities” please click HERE)

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Trump Taps Open Borders Zealot to Head Department of Labor

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Amidst all of the political science theories analyzing the secret sauce for Trump’s victory, there is one factor we can say for certainly did not play a role in his victory. Nobody voted for him because they wanted him to be more like Bush on immigration. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Yet, that is exactly the sentiment expressed by Trump’s choice to head the Department of Labor, Andrew Puzder.

Puzder, the big restaurant mogul, is one of the most outspoken advocates for open borders in the business community and embodies everything the grassroots rejected in the elite mindset about immigration. Throughout his career, Puzder has parroted every straw-man, non-sequitur, and downright offensive talking point on immigration that we have heard from the elites all over Washington for years.

Here is a quick sample of Puzder’s ignorant open border talking points, each built upon a multitude of false premises:

Make the Gang of Eight great again

In 2013, Puzder praised the Gang of Eight bill, which was probably the worst piece of legislation introduced this decade after Obamacare. “A bill like the one before Congress could really be a benefit to the U.S. economy and it would be nice to participate in an economy that was constantly growing,” said Puzder at an open borders event in Washington.

Rather than learning the lessons of the rejected amnesty bill, Puzder wrote a patronizing column in the Wall Street Journal two years later, calling on Republicans to “end the drama” on immigration. Yes, as if we are the ones divorced from our history and tradition on immigration, not the Democrats. As the 2016 presidential primary began to heat up, Puzder advised that “every candidate should support a path to legal status — short of citizenship — for illegal immigrants willing to accept responsibility for their actions and take the consequences.”

Of course, it’s all about what to do for foreign nationals, not about putting American security, sovereignty, and fiscal interests first.

Make Bloomberg billionaires great again

That same year, Puzder signed a letter for a Bloomberg billionaire front group pushing Republicans to pass another amnesty bill. He joined a group of business moguls pushing the other candidates to follow in Jeb Bush’s footsteps: “People vote with their hearts… Our values indicate we should be the party of immigration reform,” Puzder said. “[Many undocumented immigrants] live in fear of being deported, losing what they’ve built and being separated from their families.”

Puzder also promoted endless low-skilled and high-skilled visas in the same op-ed: “The American Enterprise Institute found in 2011 that “temporary foreign workers — both skilled and less skilled — boost U.S. employment,” and that immigrants with advanced degrees working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields “boost employment for U.S. citizens.”

Then, in July of this year, after it was clear Trump would not follow in Jeb’s footsteps, Puzder wrote an op-ed together with Stephen Moore, in part, beseeching Trump to change his mind on immigration. They offered the classic false choice argument: “We believe that deporting 11 million people is unworkable, and we hope in the end Mr. Trump comes to this same conclusion. Deportation should be pursued only when an illegal immigrant has committed a felony or become a “public charge.”

Yes, in other words, send the message that anyone who comes here will never be deported. And history has shown that anyone who subscribes to this view will never deport those who are criminals and certainly not those who constitute a public charge either.

What happened to putting Americans first?

Every word of Puzder’s long record of advocacy for open borders stands in contrast to Trump’s intellectually clear immigration speech he delivered in Arizona in late August:

When politicians talk about immigration reform, they usually mean the following, amnesty, open borders, lower wages. Immigration reform should mean something else entirely. It should mean improvements to our laws and policies to make life better for American citizens.…

The truth is, the central issue is not the needs of the 11 million illegal immigrants… Anyone who tells you that the core issue is the needs of those living here illegally has simply spent too much time in Washington… There is only one core issue in the immigration debate, and that issue is the well-being of the American people.

I’m hearing some conservatives dismiss these concerns by noting that Puzder is rock-solid on labor regulations and is the right fit for the job of labor secretary. After all, he is not being chosen to head the Justice Department or Homeland Security. The problem with this assessment is that Puzder has been such a high-profile supporter of all of the people and issues driving the open borders lobby. Historically, the labor secretary has wielded an enormous influence on immigration policy because they oversee all of the guest worker programs.

But it’s not just about guest worker visas. Anyone who has followed the immigration issue understands that the entire cabal of open borders lobbyists — which is essentially everyone in power in business, law, politics, lobbying, academia, etc. (“masters of the universe,” as Sen. Sessions, R-Ala. (C, 78%) calls them) — has formed an ideological logrolling gravy train. Every facet of the immigration expansionist community will vouch for each sphere of open borders policy, even if it doesn’t directly affect them. In other words, the agriculture lobby doesn’t care about H1-b visas, but they will support them because they view any restriction as an eventual threat to their turf. Likewise, Silicon Valley doesn’t need a flood of refugees from Somalia, but will fight any efforts to shut down the program.

With this understanding in mind, picture how the entire gravy train will have one of their own in a strategic position relevant to immigration (although not the most important position). Puzder will serve as a countervailing force against any effort to clamp down on refugees, mass migration from the Third World, and the endless scams with visa programs that place big business instead of the people as a whole in charge of our sovereignty and future destiny.

Make no mistake, we don’t need more countervailing forces on immigration. The inertia and political gravity on this issue is one-directional in Washington. Aside from Jeff Sessions, especially after passing over Kris Kobach as DHS secretary, there will be no strong force keeping Trump in line to begin with. He has already gone off message on the issue and has always been wobbly on visas. We certainly don’t need Michael Bloomberg in charge of the Labor Department. Conservatives in the Senate should get some answers from Puzder with regards to immigration before they vote to confirm him.

Immigration (along with Obamacare, of course) is the hill to die on in the Trump presidency. It’s no secret that a lot of free market conservatism will be sidelined during this administration and that conservatives will have to swallow a number of bitter pills. Many conservative Trump supporters have suggested all along that such concessions would be worth it as the price for finally getting immigration right. In that case, we better make sure of it, not simply hope for change. Otherwise, conservatives will be left with an empty bag of promises. (For more from the author of “Trump Taps Open Borders Zealot to Head Department of Labor” please click HERE)

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Christmas Miracle? Macy’s No Longer Funds Planned Parenthood

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Retail giant Macy’s is no longer providing financial support to Planned Parenthood, according to corporate watchdog 2ndVote.

“We’re constantly updating our research to portray companies in the fairest possible light,” said 2ndVote Executive Director Lance Wray in a statement sent to reporters on Thursday. “Last week, Macy’s confirmed with us that the company no longer gives Retail giant Macy’s is no longer providing financial support to Planned Parenthood, according to corporate watchdog 2ndVote.and no longer matches gifts to Planned Parenthood.”

Last year, Macy’s was one of 41 companies that supported Planned Parenthood, which conducts over 300,000 abortions per year. Corporate donors now number 36, according to the 2ndVote tracker, with AT&T, Coca-Cola, Ford and Xerox also refusing to back the abortion giant.

2ndVote Communications Director Robert Kuykendall told The Stream that “corporate contributions and issue advocacy are only possible because of the dollars spent by customers in the first place. We want companies to move back to neutral because that’s how conservatives can know their dollars won’t be funding causes and advocacy organizations they wouldn’t normally support on their own.”

In 2015, Macy’s told The Daily Signal that the company funded Planned Parenthood through an employee matching program. “Our company makes no direct donations to Planned Parenthood. In our Matching Gift program, we will match our employees’ donations to any 501c3 organization. We are a company of 160,000 people, and we do match a small handful of gifts each year to Planned Parenthood organizations given that they are 501c3.”

A Macy’s spokesperson did not respond to multiple efforts by The Stream to clarify why the company is no longer matching employee donations to Planned Parenthood. The company’s official 2ndVote ranking notes that Macy’s donates to The Salvation Army, which according to its official statement on abortion “accepts the moment of fertilisation as the start of human life.” The international aid organization opposes abortion in almost all circumstances. (For more from the author of “Christmas Miracle? Macy’s No Longer Funds Planned Parenthood” please click HERE)

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Excommunication and the Church: A Dose of Discipline with a Side of Grace

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I was 17 years old when I first witnessed an evangelical “excommunication.” It was disturbing, sad, frightening, unnerving — and necessary. Unfortunately, excommunication is often misunderstood, even by Vocabulary.com. The online guide claims that “excommunication is a formal way of describing what happens when someone gets kicked out of his or her church, for good.” It goes on to say:

Excommunication is really a kind of banishment, a punishment that’s handed out by a church when one of its members breaks some important church rule.

No, no and no. Merriam-Webster’s definition is much better. The dictionary discusses the rights of church membership that are affected, but also highlights that it’s “an exclusion from fellowship in a group or community.” That’s more like it. It’s exclusion, but not necessarily permanent.

Yes, We’re All Guilty

It’s an unfortunate reality and a consequence of our humanity that each of us sins. Some are just a little better at sinning with the noticeable stuff. In some cases, certainly not all, this warrants excommunication from the body of believers. In the case at my church, it was temporary. A married woman was in a relationship with another man and, although she cried profusely in front of the church body, she refused to end the relationship. So she was cut off from our body of believers temporarily. Call it grace, call it true repentance, call it church policy but she was allowed back into the church after some time. This after she and her husband divorced and she married the man with whom she’d had an extramarital relationship.

For whatever reason, the church felt at that time that she was repentant and eligible to commune with the body once again.

But We Can See You Better

Situations like these get ugly when the sinner is a high-profile Christian leader, as in the case of Tullian Tchividjian, former pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church and grandson of “America’s Pastor” Billy Graham. Following his confession to extramarital affairs and subsequent divorce, many Christian leaders have recently signed a statement saying that Tchividjian has “disqualified” himself “from any form of public vocational ministry.” Tchividjian resigned from Coral Ridge in 2015 and worked for a while at Willow Creek Church near Chicago in a non-ministry post but was fired when it was discovered that he’d had another inappropriate relationship. Tchividjian re-married last month.

While pastors and friends in church leadership continue to plead publicly with Tchividjian to “repent of his wickedness and demonstrate his repentance by submitting himself to the leadership of his church of membership, pursuing forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation with those whom he has sinned against,” Tchividjian told Christianity Today that he is doing just that. “Nothing grieves me more than the fact that people are suffering because of my sins, both in my past as well as in the present,” he stated. “I want to be perfectly clear that I take full responsibility for this.” He went on to say:

Please pray for those who are most deeply affected and please respect their privacy. … God knows how sorry I am for all the damage I’ve caused and the people who have been hurt. Please pray that the good work God has begun will be carried out to completion.

Don’t Be a Stumbling Block

He said he is committed to the “painful and progressive process” of repentance. Yes, it’s painful, but oh-so-necessary, too. That’s because people, particularly those in high-profile positions of Christian leadership, have the capacity to harm the faith of others. My church failed to address the well-known sexual sin of my former fiancée. I struggled with my faith (and relationships) as a direct consequence of that for many years. Others undoubtedly did as well. Jesus knew this — about me and humans in general — and addressed it during a sermon at Capernaum:

Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. So watch yourselves (Luke 17:1-3).

Even more so, those in leadership will have to rise to a higher standard and will one day answer for their actions that caused others to fall: “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1).

Just Good Discipleship

Christianity Today’s Mark Galli wrote an insightful piece on church discipline last month, stating, “We do no one any favors if we ignore or downplay core beliefs.” His November 23 piece covered InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s decision to ask employees who disagreed with their theological commitments on human sexuality to resign. IVCF takes a traditionally orthodox theological stance on the issue of human sexuality. Galli said that this isn’t a “witch hunt,” or “purge,” but simply good discipleship. The church must hold high standards set not by an arbitrary panel of human leaders but by the Leader of the Church, Jesus Christ. It is “crucial to be clear about doctrinal and ethical standards,” said Galli, something that IVCF is doing. To do less than clearly state biblical orthodoxy and hold the Word of God up as the standard would be a tremendous disservice to believers as they live out their faith. Not only because the sinner continues in a pattern of sin and outside of the holy will of God, but also because his or her sin will cause others to stumble in their faith.

With Grace In Mind At All Times

On the other hand, the Church must allow for grace, forgiveness and true repentance. 9Marks.org asserts correctly that “discipline is everything the church does to help its members pursue holiness and fight sin.” Once sin has gained a foothold in someone’s life, the goal is to draw the person back to holiness, not to permanently bar them from church. “Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.” (2 Timothy 2:25-26)

While it may be necessary to bar someone from church fellowship for a time, the goal is always to bring them back to fullness with Christ through true repentance. No, it isn’t permanent; no, it isn’t banishment; and no, it isn’t about “some important church rule” that has been broken. It’s allowing the broken person to come to a place of repentance and acceptance of God’s forgiveness, which ideally the Church mirrors in her love for the sinner — just as Tchividjian says he has experienced, as he expressed in a Facebook post:

I could tell you a thousand stories of the ways God has sweetly met me very specifically in my darkest and most despairing moments, of which there have been many. Through many of you, God has met my guilt with his grace, my mess with his mercy, my sin with his salvation.

(For more from the author of “Excommunication and the Church: A Dose of Discipline with a Side of Grace” please click HERE)

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Stopping America’s Drug Epidemic

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This 2016 presidential race was a hard-fought campaign. President-elect Donald J. Trump campaigned on a bold and conservative platform of making our cities safe again. After decades of neglect, urban communities across America are in desperate need of repair.

With so many partisan political issues, there remain a select few issues that unite us rather than divide us. America is facing a tragic epidemic of drug-overdose deaths, and both Republicans and Democrats agree that it is time for action.

More than 21 million Americans above the age of 12 have been diagnosed with a substance abuse problem. In 2014, we saw watched 47,000 Americans die from drug overdoses, mostly due to abuse of heroin and other opiates. Ohio had the second-highest number of overdose-related deaths in the nation, with 79 people dying from opioid overdoses every day.

These tragic statistics do not include the many examples of people who hurt others while under the influence of drugs, the spread of diseases from shared needles, or the endless violence that is inherent to the criminal drug trade.

In rural, suburban and urban neighborhoods across Ohio, too many people suffering from chronic pain become addicted to prescribed drugs and turn to black market alternatives like heroin when obtaining new prescriptions becomes too difficult or costly. Heroin is cheap and available, despite the more than $500 the U.S. spends every second on the war on drugs. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has confirmed that Mexico is the primary supplier of heroin in the United States. These cartel traffickers are taking advantage of the Obama Administration’s failure to secure our Southern border.

And, if that wasn’t bad enough, outrageous federal loopholes currently allow manufacturers from China to shipping fentanyl, a deadly opioid which is stronger and cheaper than heroin, into our communities. Dealing with the opioid epidemic requires a diverse array of treatment strategies and options that must involve our criminal justice, law enforcement and public health systems. A multifaceted approach is required to address this issue, and it is imperative that we are making the right investments at every turn.

The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, sponsored by Ohio Senator Rob Portman recently passed with a bi-partisan vote of 92-2. The goal of this law is to shift focus away from fighting the drug war through mass incarceration, and built up America’s treatment capacity. It included, among other things, greater funding for law enforcement and treatment, and increased the patient cap on doctors prescribing buprenorphine, a bridge treatment which reduces withdrawal symptoms and cravings that too often drive addicts back to drug dealers.

Suboxone is Helpful, But Far From Ideal

In Ohio, a drug known as Suboxone is the state’s preferred buprenorphine treatment paid for by Medicaid. But it is far from an ideal medication. Suboxone comes in film strip form and is available in limited dosages, meaning physicians often have to prescribe higher doses than a patient actual needs. As a result, we are seeing patients to sell their excess strips on the black market for more than twice their value. Suboxone strips are also commonly smuggled into prisons and resold to inmates, compounding drug addiction problems in our prisons.

In Columbus, Suboxone smuggling into the Franklin County Jail became such a problem that the facility had to ban all outside deliveries of underwear and socks, which were easily used to conceal film strips. And in Southwest Ohio, officials at the Warren and Lebanon Correctional Institutions report that they are seeing an influx in Suboxone smuggling and abuse in those facilities. Law enforcement in Ohio is already overwhelmed trying to fight the drug epidemic in our communities, and now a purported solution to the opiate epidemic is exacerbating the problem.

Notably, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and 35 other attorneys general have sued the makers of Suboxone. The bipartisan suit argues that an aggressive pricing scheme and monopolistic practices have delayed alternatives to keep prices artificially high. Not only have their actions been a burden on taxpayers, they have prevented other drug manufacturers from offering patients and Medicaid programs more efficient options with tailored dosage levels and larger barriers to diversion into prisons and black markets.

To be clear, ensuring access to MATs is important. When used properly, these treatments save lives. But in Ohio, almost all of Medicaid’s spending on these treatments is paying for Suboxone, when there are other effective options available. Limited taxpayer resources shouldn’t be paying for medications that are ultimately costing the state in other ways.

By adopting a multi-faceted approach to addressing the opioid epidemic — expanding access to treatments, stopping well-intentioned Medicaid policies that are making the drug epidemic worse, and stopping the trafficking of illegal drugs at the border and in our communities — Ohio and America can use these evidence-based policy changes to keep more people alive and stop the opioid crisis. (For more from the author of “Stopping America’s Drug Epidemic” please click HERE)

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Congress Isn’t Finished Investigating Planned Parenthood, Others in 2015 Videos

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Congress took significant steps forward last week in its continued efforts to hold Planned Parenthood and fetal tissue procurement companies accountable for the sale and trafficking of aborted fetal tissue.

The House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives has recommended a criminal investigation of Planned Parenthood of the Gulf Coast for potentially violating Texas and U.S. law in its sale of fetal tissue.

The panel also issued nine criminal and regulatory referrals for various abortion providers and tissue procurement companies located in Arkansas, California, Florida, and Ohio.

In 2015, the Center for Medical Progress released a series of undercover investigative videos revealing the disturbing practice of trafficking in aborted fetal body parts for profit.

Planned Parenthood and its various affiliates were exposed participating in the sale of aborted fetal remains to biologic companies—most notably, StemExpress.

The videos, which have been validated as authentic and free of manipulation by an independent forensic analysis, feature conversations in which representatives from Planned Parenthood and its affiliates discuss the type of fetal organs to be harvested and negotiate the price of selling them.

Lawmakers and the American public were justifiably shocked and disgusted by both the practice of selling human remains for profit and the graphic and often flippant nature of the conversations.

After publication of the videos and the ensuing public outcry, Congress established the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives to investigate the sale and trafficking of fetal organs and tissue by abortion providers. The House of Representatives recently voted to extend the work of this panel, which is chaired by Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.

Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, receives over $500 million in federal tax money each year, despite reporting over $700 million in nongovernmental revenue in its 2014-2015 annual report and being vastly outnumbered (20 to 1) by free or low-cost community health centers.

Since the fetal tissue scandal in 2015, efforts to channel taxpayer dollars away from Planned Parenthood to comprehensive health care facilities that do not perform abortions have gained considerable momentum—though the legislative goal has not yet been achieved.

Section 289g-2 of the U.S. Code was enacted to prevent people or organizations from profiting from the sale of fetal remains.

This law prohibits the sale of any human fetal tissue for valuable consideration if it affects interstate commerce. While reimbursements for costs associated with the donation of fetal tissue are permissible, profiting from such a sale is not.

When addressing the purpose of the fetal tissue law, the lead sponsor, Democrat Henry Waxman, commented, “It would be abhorrent to allow for the sale of fetal tissue and a market to be created for that sale.”

The Center for Medical Progress videos reveal multiple conversations regarding payments and other considerations to be received in exchange for fetal tissue. This included a revealing exchange with Melissa Farrell, director of research at Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast—the facility for which the select panel requested a criminal investigation.

In the video released in August 2015, Farrell discusses the fact that because the Houston-based abortion agency is such a “high-volume” abortion facility, it provides a significant amount of fetal tissue to various biologic companies.

Farrell went on to express concern about current fetal tissue laws and explained that the books could be altered to hide the financial benefit to Planned Parenthood. Additionally, Farrell discusses the willingness of abortion providers to “alter the process” to “obtain intact cadavers.”

The creation of a for-profit market for human remains is unethical and unconscionable. The American public has been rightly outraged by the pervasiveness of this practice, and is opposed to taxpayer dollars funding organizations that participate in such a market.

A survey conducted in August 2015 by The Heritage Foundation found that 78 percent of Americans believe that government should not fund organizations that harvest and sell fetal tissue from abortions.

Planned Parenthood’s 2014-2015 report noted an increase in the percentage of services associated with abortion, while the percentage of other medical services provided by the agency decreased.

Though the Hyde Amendment technically prohibits Planned Parenthood from using federal funds to pay for abortion, there exists no method of independent accountability ensuring federal funds are kept separate.

Planned Parenthood is left to police itself, an entirely ineffective safeguard. The disbursement of taxpayer dollars to abortion providers, no matter where spent, frees up other funds to be used for abortion-related services.

The House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives is performing a valuable service to Americans in initiating criminal investigations into the practice of profiting from the sale of fetal remains. The American public has every right to know whether its hard-earned tax dollars are being spent on organizations involved in illegal and unethical behavior.

Considering Planned Parenthood’s involvement in the sale of fetal tissue, the decline of the provision of medical services outside abortion, and the inexcusable lack of accountability of federal funds received, a renewed push to stop federal funding of Planned Parenthood is in order.

The funds currently being received by the lucrative nonprofit would, no doubt, be better spent supporting community health centers that provide comprehensive care to families without offering abortion services. (For more from the author of “Congress Isn’t Finished Investigating Planned Parenthood, Others in 2015 Videos” please click HERE)

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Obama Political Appointees to Continue as Career Employees Under Trump

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After President Barack Obama exits office, at least 88 of his political appointees will likely remain working in the federal government under a Donald Trump administration, according to numbers from the Office of Personnel Management.

From Jan. 1, 2010, through Sept. 30, 2016, federal agencies selected 112 political appointees for career civil service jobs. Of those, the Office of Personnel Management approved 88 and rejected 24.

Unlike political appointees, federal workers in the civil service system are hired through a merit system, are difficult to fire, and carry over during administration changes, Republican or Democrat.

Political appointees are allowed to transition to career federal jobs, but under the law, they are supposed to go through the same merit-based selection process as other applicants.

“Selecting civil servants based on ideology instead of qualifications results in a less effective, more politicized bureaucracy,” Henry Kerner, assistant vice president of Cause of Action Institute, said in an email to The Daily Signal Tuesday. “Burrowing also provides the outgoing presidential administration the ability to reward its allies by stacking agencies with politically-aligned people who will be less inclined to help implement the new administration’s priorities.”

After an agency has hired a political appointment to a career position, the conversion has to face final approval by the Office of Personnel Management.

“Federal guidelines require agencies to seek approval from [the Office of Personnel Management] for such moves, but it’s unclear how often these rules are followed,” Kerner added.

Office of Personnel Management spokeswoman Laura Goulding said the number could be higher.

“It’s difficult to provide an accurate number of Obama administration employees who may be in the process of converting, since it changes by the day,” Goulding told The Daily Signal.

She added, “We don’t know how many political appointees apply for permanent federal positions; we just see the number of selectees. [The Office of Personnel Management] has checks and balances in place to ensure cases requiring pre-appointment review are submitted to OPM for approval.”

An Obama administration political employee, who converted earlier this year to a civil service job in the Department of Veterans Affairs, could be playing a role in the presidential transition.

This could at least violate the spirit of the policy on presidential transitions, which is supposed to minimize partisanship, according to the Cause of Action Institute, a conservative government watchdog group.

The organization is more broadly investigating how many political appointees are moving into career civil service positions, a practice known as “burrowing.” The watchdog has made a Freedom of Information Act request to both the Office of Personnel Management and the VA.

Obama appointed Gina Farrisee in September 2013 to serve in the political job of VA assistant human resources secretary. In May, she converted to the career civil service position of deputy chief of staff—a role she will continue in after Trump takes office.

Before serving in the VA, Farrisee was an Army veteran and was awarded several military decorations. She served as the commanding general of the U.S. human resources command at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

“According to information obtained by [Cause of Action] Institute, Gina Farrisee, the deputy chief of staff at VA, is apparently a key member of the VA White House transition team that is preparing the agency for the next administration,” wrote Lamar Echols, counsel for Cause of Action, in a FOIA request to the VA. “If true, this arrangement creates the appearance that the transition process will be managed by Obama administration political appointees because Ms. Farrisee was an Obama administration appointee until May 2016.”

That could be a problem because each federal agency is supposed to have two transition leaders, one from the political level and another from the career level.

“In this case, it appears a former political appointee will be playing the role of a nonpartisan career employee, an apparent conflict of interest,” Echols wrote.

Echols’ letter said this could also go against a May executive order by Obama, which said:

The peaceful transition of power has long been a hallmark of American democracy. It is the policy of the United States to undertake all reasonable efforts to ensure that presidential transitions are well-coordinated and effective, without regard to party affiliation.

The VA did not respond to phone and email inquiries from The Daily Signal as of post time to confirm whether Farrisee is part of the transition team.

Goulding, with the Office of Personnel Management, said, “We can’t confirm any specific members of transition teams; we don’t have that information.”

The Obama administration did not follow the rules to avoid political favoritism in hiring a quarter of all Obama administration political appointees into career civil service jobs, according to a Government Accountability Office report issued in September.

The report covered 30 federal agencies from Jan. 1, 2010, through Oct. 1, 2015. According to the report, agencies failed to get final Office of Personnel Management approval when hiring political appointees to career jobs.

“In those instances where the agency did not submit a request for pre-appointment review, [the Office of Personnel Management] informs the agencies in writing of the requirement to conduct a review of the selection post-appointment,” Goulding said, adding:

OPM also works with agencies to increase awareness and understanding of OPM policy in this area. In addition, we are required by law to report to Congress when those individuals who underwent a pre-appointment review were appointed to the career position.

(For more from the author of “Obama Political Appointees to Continue as Career Employees Under Trump” please click HERE)

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