Trump Calls for Defense Funding Boost to Give Military ‘the Tools They Need to Prevent War’

/0 Comments/in , /by

President Trump delivered an address aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford in Newport News, Virginia, Thursday afternoon, calling for a boost in defense spending to continue the United States’ military’s qualitative advantage.

The Ford is a state of the art aircraft carrier. It is the most expensive warship ever built, coming in at a price tag of just under $13 billion. The ship is almost ready for service and has not yet been officially delivered, but that could happen as soon as April. It is powered by two nuclear reactors, equipped with the latest advanced technologies, and can reach speeds of over 34 miles per hour.

“Wherever this ship flies her flag, she will be a symbol of US strength, made in America,” the president said from aboard the supercarrier.

“Our military requires sustained, stable funding to meet the growing needs placed in our defense,” Trump said in Newport News, adding that American fighter jets are “often more likely to be down for maintenance than to be up in the sky.”

“Our Navy is now the smallest it’s been since World War I. That’s a long time ago,” he commented.

Trump called for “modernized capabilities and greater force levels,” and an emphasis on cybersecurity improvements. “This great rebuilding effort will create many jobs throughout Virginia, and all across America,” the president added.

“America has always been the country that boldly leads the world into the future, and my budget will ensure we do so,” Trump concluded. American ships will sail the seas. American planes will soar the skies. American workers will build our fleets.”

The White House has recommended that Congress add $54 billion to the Defense Department budget, according to a draft proposal released Monday

“To keep America safe, we must provide the men and women of the United States military with the tools they need to prevent war — if they must — they have to fight and they only have to win,” the president said in his address to Congress Tuesday night.

Experts have evaluated that the United States military, at current readiness levels, would have difficulty engaging in more than one major conflict without sacrificing resources elsewhere

The Heritage Foundation’s 2017 Index of U.S. Military Strength found that “the consistent decline in funding and the consequent shrinking of the force over the past few years have placed it under significant pressure.”

Readiness levels are trending in the wrong direction, according to the Heritage analysis:

Essential maintenance continues to be deferred; the availability of fewer units for operational deployments increases the frequency and length of deployments; and old equipment is being extended while programmed replacements are either delayed or beset by developmental difficulties.

Moreover, the military index finds that the military has been forced to delay and/or cancel modernization efforts due to budgetary shortfalls. This hurts “America’s ability to shape conditions to its advantage by assuring allies and deterring competitors,” the analysis states.

“As currently postured, the U.S. military is only marginally able to meet the demands of defending America’s vital national interests,” a summary of the report concludes. (For more from the author of “Trump Calls for Defense Funding Boost to Give Military ‘the Tools They Need to Prevent War'” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Senate Confirms Retired Neurosurgeon Ben Carson as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development

/0 Comments/in , /by

The Senate confirmed retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson as the new secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in a 58-41 vote, primarily along party lines, Thursday.

Carson has said he will work to help underprivileged communities.

“I feel that I can make a significant contribution, particularly by strengthening communities that are most in need,” Carson said in December. “We have much work to do in enhancing every aspect of our nation and ensuring that our nation’s housing needs are met.”

Robert Rector, a senior research fellow in domestic policy studies at the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal that he is confident Carson will work to strengthen families.

“The major cause of child poverty in America is the collapse of the family in low-income communities,” Rector, an authority on poverty and welfare, said in a statement provided to The Daily Signal. “Dr. Carson can serve as a powerful spokesperson for the restoration of the family, the decrease in poverty, and the improvement of human well-being across the nation.”

Carson, who said he used to be a “flaming liberal,” is now an outspoken critic of government dependency.

During his confirmation hearings, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., asked Carson about the best way to help those on government assistance.

“What is the best possible thing we can do for somebody who is on government assistance?” Tillis asked.

“Get them off of it,” Carson replied.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., congratulated Carson on his confirmation and said that he and Carson would “work to get more Americans out of poverty and on the ladder of opportunity.”

Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., said Carson will “bring a fresh perspective to a government agency in desperate need of innovative change.”

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said he voted to confirm Carson because he believes Carson “understands that the housing and development needs facing West Virginia are different than those facing America’s urban communities,” and that he looks forward to collaborating with Carson to “improve the lives of West Virginians.”

The Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee unanimously voted to move Carson out of committee on Jan. 24, yet, despite the bipartisan support in the committee vote, Carson did face Democrat obstruction.

“[Democrats] are claiming they successfully delayed Carson, and that’s partially true,” Rachel Bovard, a former Senate aide and director of policy services at The Heritage Foundation, said in an email to The Daily Signal.

“They delayed him by forcing all post-cloture time to be run on every single nominee,” Bovard said. “Once cloture [a procedure to end debate] is invoked on a nominee, 30 hours of debate is required, unless both sides agree by unanimous consent to shorten it.”

Democrats were able to successfully stall Carson’s vote for over a month by demanding every nominee meet the maximum 30 hours of debate before taking a full Senate vote, according to Bovard.

“The [Democrats] have effectively tied up the floor and slowed the pace of confirmations to a literal crawl. It’s actually quite an effective tactic by the [Democrats],” Bovard said.

Carson, according to ABC News, is the 17th of 22 of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet and Cabinet-level nominations to be confirmed by the Senate. (For more from the author of “Senate Confirms Retired Neurosurgeon Ben Carson as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

The Beastly Beauty of Disney’s ‘Gay Moment’ — and How We Should Respond

/0 Comments/in , /by

So Disney is going to have an “exclusively gay moment” in the live-action film version of Beauty and the Beast. It’s not going to be a big thing, just a moment in the action of LeFou the manservant. Something “nice.” Something very feelings-oriented.

That news follows close upon Disney Studios’ first animated same-sex kiss.

We’ve been talking about this behind the scenes here at The Stream. Al Perrotta, our managing editor, made this prediction by email:

Let’s not kid ourselves. The reason you put in a lighthearted, perhaps even obvious, gay attraction theme in Beauty and the Beast is to soften the ground so a Disney princess or heroine can be gay. That’s the goal. They’ll get away with it here because it’s likely to be humorous, over-the-top fun, and done with much skill. (The Modern Family lesson well applied. And the film’s director Bill Condon is no slouch.) But I guarantee Disney is eyeballing a feature with a gay lead.

He’s right. Modern Family presents gayness in such a pleasant and positive light, it’s done more for gay-rights activism than any gay op-ed or slogan has ever done.

Strategically Putting Christians In a Corner

Make no mistake, this was by strategic intention. Marshall Kirk and “Erastes Pill” (a pseudonym for Hunter Madsen) laid it out decades ago in a strategy document they called “The Overhauling of Straight America.” Written in 1987, it’s a disturbing paper yet still worth the read if you can stand it, for the insight it gives into decades of gay activism.

Kirk and Pill speak of opening up “a gateway into the private world of straights, through which a Trojan horse might be passed. As far as desensitization is concerned, the medium is the message — of normalcy. So far, gay Hollywood has provided our best covert weapon in the battle to desensitize the mainstream.”

It’s a strategy centered in positive imagery: “For openers, naturally, we must continue to encourage the appearance of favorable gay characters in films and TV shows,” they write. “The visual media, film and television, are plainly the most powerful image-makers in Western civilization.”

Their approach has been astonishingly effective. Consider the strategic savvy of what they’re setting up in Beauty and the Beast. If we say, “That’s wrong!” people will hear it as “That’s ugly” instead. Everything is happening on the level of images, remember.

So there’s no easy way for conservatives to object without looking ugly ourselves. They’ve put us in a corner. If we object, we lose now. If we don’t object, we lose later, when Disney plies gay princes and princesses upon us. Disney is the Beauty, critics are the Beast.

Overhauling Under Way

But how did that happen? How did we get that way? It comes out of “Overhauling Straight America.” Opponents “must be vilified,” say Kirk and Pill:

The public should be shown images of ranting homophobes. … Bigoted southern ministers drooling with hysterical hatred to a degree that looks both comical and deranged; menacing punks, thugs, and convicts speaking coolly about the “f*gs” they have killed or would like to kill; a tour of Nazi concentration camps where homosexuals were tortured and gassed.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? If you haven’t seen those precise images, still you know how neatly Christians have been maneuvered into the place of the “intolerant haters.” You could almost admire a strategy so effective, if it weren’t so dishonestly manipulative.

And that, fellow Christians, is the difficult strategic setup we’re dealing with. What’s our best response?

Fight Beastliness With Beauty

What we’ve been doing for the most part (and I include myself here) has been trying to make gays and gay activism appear the Beast. We have ground to stand on there, to be sure. Even their strategies are beastly.

But just as there are no fairy tales where the heroine turns ugly at the end, and “they all live happily ever after” (I don’t think even Shrek is an exception, though that’s another discussion), it’s hard to make people happy by exposing gay activism’s ugliness. From both a strategic and biblical perspective we’ll get much further by revealing the true beauty of the way of Jesus Christ.

We must be His Beauty in the world. We won’t be able to do that the way Disney does, with multi-million dollar budgets, decades of film experience and a distribution system to drool over. But we are not without resources of our own.

We have the beauty of Christian marriage. Couples who pray together have more loving unions and divorce less often. We have the beauty of Christian forgiveness. We have the beauty of the love of Christ, reaching out to neighbors, friends, and even enemies. We have the beauty of truth, openness, honesty, transparency and humility.

Personal Relationships and Public Conversations

I could go on. These things are best seen up close, not onscreen. We need to love our opponents. The closer we connect in real relationships with people who consider us beastly, the harder it will be for them to ignore the reality of Jesus Christ in our lives.

Meanwhile the discussion must go on. Disney’s support for homosexuality is very public, so we have to respond in public. But we must be wise to the trap they’ve set for us. Someone commented regarding the cartoon kiss, “It’s official. Our society has gone to sh*t.” Someone else wrote, “You Liberals are disgusting creatures of perversion!!” That’s falling into the trap, and it’s no help at all. Language like that is just as ugly as what it’s objecting to.

No, in our public conversations we have to keep pointing back to the better way. We need to learn to paint the picture better, to show the truly beautiful way, the way of strong and lasting marriages that unite in godly love to build the next generation.

Because the way of Jesus Christ, which our culture has come to consider beastly, is really beautiful. The more people can see that with their own eyes, the more likely they’ll be to believe it. (For more from the author of “The Beastly Beauty of Disney’s ‘Gay Moment’ — and How We Should Respond” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Deployed US Navy Has a Pregnancy Problem, and It’s Getting Worse

/0 Comments/in , /by

A record 16 out of 100 Navy women are reassigned from ships to shore duty due to pregnancy, according to data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group.

That number is up 2 percent from 2015, representing hundreds more who have to cut their deployments short, taxing both their unit’s manpower, military budgets and combat readiness. Further, such increases cast a shadow over the lofty gender integration goals set by former President Barack Obama.

Overall, women unexpectedly leave their stations on Navy ships as much as 50 percent more frequently to return to land duty, according to documents obtained from the Navy. The statistics were compiled by the Navy Personnel Command at the request of TheDCNF, covering the period from January 2015 to September 2016.

The evacuation of pregnant women is costly for the Navy. Jude Eden, a nationally known author about women in the military who served in 2004 as a Marine deployed to Iraq, said a single transfer can cost the Navy up to $30,000 for each woman trained for a specific task, then evacuated from an active duty ship and sent to land. That figure translates into $115 million in expenses for 2016 alone . . .

“A pregnancy takes you out of action for about two years. And there’s no replacement,” said Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, a nonpartisan public policy organization. “So everybody else has to work all that harder,” adding that on small ships and on submarines, “you really have a potential crew disaster.” (Read more from “Deployed US Navy Has a Pregnancy Problem, and It’s Getting Worse” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Choice Is a Good Thing, Right, Liberals? Oh, Not on Schools?

/0 Comments/in , /by

Choice is a good thing, right, liberals? Not on schooling, you say? Betsy DeVos’s ideas for promoting school choice are disastrous?

That’s the new liberal position on choice, when it applies to schooling. Oh, they may say they’re worried about DeVos’s “inexperience” — but Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan didn’t have experience, either. They may believe that her policies that will — get this — “kill children,” in the literal, not figurative sense. They’ll say they’re offended that she’s sabotaging the public schools, as said so eloquently by Sen. Chuck Schumer:

The president’s decision to ask Betsy DeVos to run the Department of Education should offend every single American man, woman, and child who has benefited from the public education system in this country.

What About Public Education?

What about the public education system in this country? Fox News’ Andrew Campanella, in an attempt at peacemaking, maintained that, “The concept of school choice isn’t about elevating one choice above another, or about demonizing any schools as ‘failures.’ It’s about recognizing the individual needs of individual students, and pairing students with the schools that best meet their needs.”

That’s true. But school choice is also about calling out the public schools that are failures and giving desperate parents good alternatives.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 35 countries outrank our students in Math, 27 outrank our students in Science and 23 outrank our students in reading. The Nation’s Report Card found in 2015 that, by grade 12, only 25 percent of students were at or above proficiency level in Math, 22 percent were at or above proficiency in Science and 37 percent were at or above proficiency in reading. Certain students, such as African Americans in urban areas, fare much worse.

Maybe liberals believe all the things they’re saying about DeVos and school choice. There’s another reason they don’t want school choice: loss of control over funding. With school choice, education dollars will flow to private, charter or possibly even homeschools, diverted from funding pools within their grasp.

Jeffrey Dorfman explains in Forbes that teachers’ unions receive money for each child enrolled in public schools. “Opponents of school choice are not worried about children, either the ones who want to leave or the ones that would stay. They only care about the teachers’ job security. So remember, the debate about school choice isn’t about education quality, it is really about jobs and union dues.”

Competition — Not Just for Businesses

Students enrolled in alternative education based on school choice consistently outperform public school counterparts. But school choice improves the public schools as well by providing them with competition. Even their students benefit from school choice.

A 2016 University of Arkansas study found that school choice encouraged public schools within the district to compete with the alternative school to perform better. A separate 2016 study on school choice also found that competition drives performance:

Thirty of the 42 evaluations of the effects of school-choice competition on the performance of affected public schools report that the test scores of all or some public school students increase when schools are faced with competition.
School choice, however, isn’t just about the numbers. Charter, private, Christian and homeschools are in large part value-driven — that is to say, they strive to build character and purposed values in a core-values model over and above what a student would receive in public school. For example, if a student is late in a Colorado charter school, they are required to apologize to their classmates for the disruption and late start.

Jamey Verrilli, co-founder of North Star Academy and Uncommon Schools, said that his charter school’s core values model is an integral part of the program. Uncommon Schools creates and runs urban charter public schools for low-income students. “You have to build a culture that’s going to enhance learning,” said Verrilli on a Fox News interview, “that’s going to strengthen core values, that’s going to build a sense of community for any child, particularly children in hard-pressed areas.” He added that the culture is a platform on which to build rigorous academics.

Support DeVos

Most of all, school choice is about empowering families to make the decision for themselves and taking back control over their children’s education. School choice allows students to attend the school of their family’s choosing, to excel in a school with high expectations and/or a core-values model and it propels public schools to think of these alternative schools as competition, pushing their programs to be better for students.

Amy Kelley, President of My School My Choice, a coalition of teachers, parents and non-public schools striving to give a voice to families for school choice, believes parents are in the best position to make the best educational decision for their children — not the government.

“A good education is important, it is the foundation of a successful future for our kids,” said Kelley. “So providing our children with an education in the learning environment where they can thrive is crucial. Finding that environment is not always as simple as sending your kid to the local public school building. But there is no one who can possibly determine the place where our children will learn better than us, the parents. We know our children the best and, we are the best advocates for them.” (For more from the author of “Choice Is a Good Thing, Right, Liberals? Oh, Not on Schools?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Conservative Leaders Call on Trump to Protect Religious Freedom

/0 Comments/in , /by

Conservative leaders are calling for President Donald Trump to move forward on an executive order to protect the exercise of religious beliefs by rolling back Obama-era regulations that targeted Catholic Charities, the Salvation Army, a military chaplain, Christian business owners, and others.

“The above individuals and groups, and many others like them, have either been punished by the government for their religious beliefs or are about to suffer under Obama-era anti-religious regulations,” wrote more than 150 conservative movement leaders to Trump in a letter on Wednesday.

“They need protections that you can grant through an executive order to prevent federal discrimination against them for acting in accordance with their beliefs,” the letter continues. “We urge you to take action to ensure their freedom to believe and live out those beliefs is protected from government punishment.”

The Daily Signal asked White House press secretary Sean Spicer about the pending executive order on Monday.

“I think we’ve discussed executive orders in the past, and for the most part we’re not going to get into discussing what may or may not come until we’re ready to announce it,” Spicer told The Daily Signal. “So I’m sure as we move forward we’ll have something.”

The White House did not immediately respond when asked about the letter Thursday.

The Council for National Policy, a conservative nonprofit, circulated the letter.

The signers included Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; Jenny Beth Martin, CEO and co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots; Morton Blackwell, president of the Leadership Institute; Colin Hanna, president of Let Freedom Ring; L. Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center; and Richard Viguerie, chairman of Conservative HQ.

Signers also include leaders at The Heritage Foundation, including former Ronald Reagan administration Attorney General Edwin Meese III and Becky Norton Dunlop, chairwoman of the Conservative Action Project and former Reagan White House adviser.

The letter goes on to cite numerous examples, such as federal grantees World Vision, the Salvation Army, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, and Samaritan’s Purse facing the choice of violating their faith or giving up federal grants.

The letter similarly cited the case of the Little Sisters of the Poor charity resisting the Obamacare mandate on contraception and abortion-inducing drugs.

The letter goes on to note: “Service members like Navy Chaplain Wes Modder have been disciplined for counseling according to their Christian beliefs about natural marriage.”

The Obama administration even took actions against religious freedom through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as the letter notes in one case, saying:

Under a policy issued by the Obama administration’s agriculture secretary, a [U.S. Department of Agriculture] official threatened to remove all USDA inspectors if West Michigan Beef Company owner Donald Vander Boon didn’t permanently refrain from placing in the company’s breakroom religious literature supporting marriage between one man and one woman that the department deemed ‘offensive.’ The Vander Boons were forced to choose between their religious beliefs and having their plant closed and their employees left jobless.

(For more from the author of “Conservative Leaders Call on Trump to Protect Religious Freedom” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Government Watchdog Questions Sessions’ Need for Recusal From Russian Probe

/0 Comments/in , /by

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Thursday he would recuse himself from any Justice Department investigation that relates to the 2016 presidential campaign.

“My staff recommended recusal. They said since I had involvement in this campaign, I should not be involved in any campaign investigation,” Sessions said at a press conference Thursday.

“I have studied the rules and considered the comments and evaluations,” Sessions said. “I believe those recommendations are right and just. Therefore, I have recused myself in the matters that deal with the [Donald] Trump campaign.”

Sessions said he did not meet with Russian operatives about the election.

Some government ethics experts contend the recusal wasn’t necessary—at least not from a probe of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

He should only recuse himself from an illegal leak investigation that he was a victim of, said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative government watchdog group.

“He should only recuse himself from the investigation of illegal leaks because it relates to him, he was a victim,” Fitton told The Daily Signal.

Fitton said a member of the Senate Armed Forces Committee meeting with a Russian ambassador seems rather routine. He said this is why he thinks it’s puzzling that even some Republican lawmakers are calling for Sessions to recuse himself in regard to investigating the alleged Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee communications.

“The real Russian scandal is that President Barack Obama’s team used the pretext of Russian interference in the election to justify wiretaps and illegal leaks of the Trump team, including a U.S. senator, now attorney general,” Fitton added. “The Russians’ interference in the elections is chasing unicorns, with these smoky allegations of collusion between the campaign and the Russian operatives, without evidence.”

Federal investigators reportedly examined communications between Sessions and Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak from last year.

The conversations between the then-Alabama senator and the Russian ambassador cast doubt about Sessions’ testimony during the Senate Judiciary confirmation hearings, when he said he didn’t talk to Russians as a Trump campaign surrogate. The FBI, CIA, National Security Agency, and the Treasury Department are reportedly involved in the investigation.

Sessions said he would send a written explanation of his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

During the press conference, Sessions said he was “taken aback” by the question at the Senate hearing about campaign surrogate discussions with Russians.

“In retrospect, I should have slowed down and said I did meet with one Russian official a couple of times,” Sessions said.

Sessions said the conversation with the official became testy, and that he turned down a lunch invitation. Sessions noted they disagreed on the issue of Ukraine.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other Democrats have called for Sessions to resign from office for what he told the committee.

Republican lawmakers such as Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, as well as GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Rob Portman of Ohio called for Sessions to recuse himself from the Russian investigation.

Fitton, of Judicial Watch, said Sessions would clearly have to recuse himself in a potential perjury investigation, but based on the questions and answers in the Judiciary hearing, it’s unlikely he could face a credible allegation.

Concurring with Fitton, it seems likely that Obama holdovers might be pushing these leaks to undermine the current administration, said Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department attorney in the George W. Bush administration, now a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

“As president, Obama was 100 percent political during his administration and hasn’t stopped,” von Spakovsky told The Daily Signal. “The Sessions meetings are much ado about nothing if you look at the questions and answer from the hearing.”

During the confirmation hearing, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., asked Sessions: “If there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?”

Sessions responded, “I’m not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn’t have—did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it.”

Separately, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., asked Sessions in a questionnaire: “Several of the president-elect’s nominees or senior advisers have Russian ties. Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after Election Day?”

Sessions responded: “No.”

Sessions talked to Kislyak once in his office, in a meeting that Sessions spokesman Sarah Flores told The Wall Street Journal was about diplomatic matters. Sessions also spoke to Kislyak at a Heritage Foundation event held in Cleveland during the Republican National Convention, where Sessions was the keynote speaker at luncheon that was part of the forum.

A statement from The Heritage Foundation explained that in coordination with the State Department and other groups, it held a forum titled “Global Partners in Diplomacy” in Cleveland in July 2016, which was an educational program for ambassadors invited by the State Department to observe the Republican National Convention.

Topics at the conference included various regional issues, national security and trade, among numerous others, with State Department officials present at all program events. About 100 individuals attended the luncheon event where Sessions spoke, according to The Heritage Foundation.

The State Department handled coordination for ambassadors and did not provide The Heritage Foundation with a list of ambassadors that attended.

Flores told The Wall Street Journal that Sessions, as a member of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, had more than 25 conversations with ambassadors last year, including those from Britain, South Korea, Japan, Poland, India, China, Canada, Australia, and Russia.

During his tour of the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier on Thursday, reporters asked President Donald Trump if he still had confidence in Sessions, he answered, “Total.”

When asked if Sessions should recuse himself, Trump responded, “I don’t think so.”

Trump also said that he wasn’t aware of Sessions speaking with a Russian ambassador, and when asked if Sessions testified truthfully to the Senate, Sessions said, “I think he probably did.” (For more from the author of “Government Watchdog Questions Sessions’ Need for Recusal From Russian Probe” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Bakers Accused of Homosexual Hate Get Emotional Day in Court

/0 Comments/in , /by

The ongoing battle between gay rights and religious liberty escalated Thursday as husband-and-wife bakers in Oregon appealed their case after being ordered to pay $135,000 in damages for declining to make a cake for a same-sex wedding.

“Everything up to this point has been administrative hearings,” Aaron Klein, co-owner with his wife Melissa of the since-closed bakery, told The Daily Signal afterward.

“Every time we tried to make a constitutional argument it was stomped on, because it was administrative law,” he said. “But now we’re finally in a courtroom where the Constitution and due process can be argued on a level we haven’t seen before. I’m looking forward to seeing the outcome.”

In court, an attorney for the Kleins again argued that designing and baking a cake to celebrate a same-sex marriage would violate the bakers’ Christian faith.

Both the Kleins and the same-sex couple who filed the original complaint against them were present inside the courtroom.

Afterward, while speaking to reporters, Melissa Klein had an emotional response.

“We lost everything,” she said. “I loved my shop, and losing it has been so hard for me and my family.”

In an exclusive telephone interview with The Daily Signal later, she added:

“That was a part of our life, and it was something that we thought was going to be passed down to our kids. It’s something that I miss every day still. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get over it because it was our second home.”

A three-judge panel of the Oregon Court of Appeals heard oral arguments from both sides, with questions focused on issues such as:

Does Oregon have a “compelling reason” to grant the Kleins a religious exemption from the state’s antidiscrimination law?

Does a cake count as artistic expression protected by the First Amendment, and how do you differentiate between what constitutes art and what doesn’t?

What was the particular message involved in designing and making a cake for a same-sex wedding, and how is it understood by an observer?

To what extent may an artist be compelled to do something?

How is sexual orientation different from race as a personal characteristic?

The Kleins used to run Sweet Cakes by Melissa, a family bakery they owned and operated in Gresham, Oregon. But after the Kleins declined in 2013 to make a cake for a same-sex couple’s wedding, citing their religious beliefs, they faced protests that eventually led them to shut down their bakery.

In July 2015, an administrative judge for the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries ruled that the Kleins had discriminated against a lesbian couple, Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer, on the basis of their sexual orientation. The judge ordered the Kleins to pay the $135,000 for physical, emotional, and mental damages.

Under Oregon law, it is illegal for businesses to refuse service based on a customer’s sexual orientation, as well as race, gender, and other characteristics.

The Kleins maintained that they did not discriminate, but only declined to make the cake because of their religious beliefs about marriage. Designing and baking a custom cake for a same-sex wedding, they said, would violate their Christian faith.

The Kleins appealed to the Oregon Court of Appeals on the basis of their constitutional rights to religious freedom, free speech, and due process.

The three appeals judges also pursued these lines of questioning:

Was the award of damages—the $135,000 the Kleins were ordered to pay—out of line with other cases before the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries?

Was it reasonable for that state agency to extend the damages through more than two years after the alleged discrimination actually occurred?

Did Bureau of Labor and Industries Commissioner Brad Avakian prejudge the case and in doing so strip the Kleins of their right to due process?

How is sexual orientation different from race as a personal characteristic?

Each side had equal time to make their case and the Kleins, as plaintiffs, got an additional five minutes for a rebuttal. The oral arguments were live-streamed, and may be watched in full here.

“The government should never force someone to violate their conscience or their beliefs,” Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of First Liberty Institute, a religious freedom group that represents the Kleins, said in a press statement, adding:

“In a diverse and pluralistic society, people of good will should be able to peacefully coexist with different beliefs. We hope the court will uphold the Kleins’ rights to free speech and religious liberty.”

But Charlie Burr, a spokesman for the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, whose lawyers represent the Bowman-Cryers, said:

“The facts of this case clearly demonstrate that the Kleins unlawfully discriminated against a same-sex couple when they refused service based on sexual orientation.”

Since the case began in 2013, the Kleins have argued the cards were stacked against them.

Lawyers for the Bureau of Labor and Industries pursued the charges against the Kleins on behalf of the lesbian couple, who went on to marry.

Avakian, the agency official, made multiple public comments criticizing them before any rulings, the Kleins said.

The administrative judge who issued the final ruling also is employed by the state agency.

Besides ordering the Kleins to pay $135,000, Avakian ordered the former bakery owners to “cease and desist” from speaking publicly about not wanting to bake cakes for same-sex weddings based on their Christian beliefs.

Both parties have said the case has taken a heavy toll on their families. Aaron and Melissa Klein, who have five children, say they continue to face hurtful attacks from liberal activists.

According to an article the Bowman-Cryers wrote for The Advocate, a publication focused on LGBT issues, they are foster parents for two “high-needs” girls.

“Part of the reason we decided to get married in the first place was to provide stability for our daughters,” they wrote, adding:

Before we became engaged, we became foster parents for two very high-needs girls after their mother, a close friend of ours, died suddenly. Lizzy, now 9, has cerebral palsy, autism, and a chromosomal disorder that causes developmental delays. Anastasia, now 7, has Asperger’s and stopped speaking when her mother died.

While the case wound its way through the courts, we won full adoptive custody of Lizzy and Anastasia, and they are the light of our lives.

The appeals judges are not expected to rule for several months. If they rule against the Kleins, the couple’s next step would be appealing to the Oregon Supreme Court. (For more from the author of “Bakers Accused of Homosexual Hate Get Emotional Day in Court” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Assisted Suicide Dehumanizes Suffering, Opponents Argue

/0 Comments/in , /by

Allowing physicians to help people kill themselves is a misguided “game-changer” in how society responds to suffering, a doctor who specializes in children’s medicine said during a Heritage Foundation event on assisted suicide.

“Physician-assisted suicide redefines the concept of a medical good as never before,” Dr. G. Kevin Donovan, professor and director of pediatrics at Georgetown University, told the audience for the panel discussion.

“For the first time, we will plan to end suffering by ending the life of the sufferer,” Donovan said.

The event Monday, which featured Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., a sponsor of legislation on the topic, focused on the societal dangers of physician-assisted suicide.

Ryan T. Anderson, a senior research fellow at Heritage, called the widespread legalization of the practice “a grave mistake.”

So far, five states plus the District of Columbia have legalized physician-assisted suicide. But, Anderson noted, 16 other states have introduced bills to allow it.

“Physician-assisted suicide comes with serious costs,” he said. “Too many people view it as purely a private matter between an autonomous adult who desires to die and another autonomous adult who can provide medical assistance to die.”

Anderson was host of the event along with Kathryn Jean Lopez, a senior fellow at National Review Institute.

Lankford said the issue is personal for him because someone in his own family could be targeted by proponents of assisted suicide. Their standard for proceeding, he noted, is a diagnosis that someone has six months or less to live.

“I have a very dear family member … given a diagnosis of six months to live in 1981, and she is still kicking and is still a pretty amazing lady,” Lankford said.

So the standard is presumptuous, the Oklahoma Republican said:

This belief that somehow medicine can look over the shoulders of someone and tell someone exactly how long they [will] live begs the reality of just everyday care for individuals and … quite frankly, for those of us who are followers of God, just the belief in what God can choose to do in the life of an individual and the dignity of that person.

Before the District’s physician-assisted suicide law went into effect Feb. 18, Lankford introduced a resolution attempting to halt its implementation.

Donovan also said it is impossible for his fellow doctors to be completely accurate in judging the lifespans of patients because it is not something they have been trained to do.

“There are at least a couple of things that doctors do not do well,” Donovan said. “And the first one is prognosticate the end of someone’s life because actually, we do not have much training in that and we do not have much data. Every patient is an individual.”

Also on the panel was Melissa Ortiz, the founder of Able Americans, an organization that seeks to give a voice to those with chronic illness and physical and mental disabilities. Ortiz said her husband’s own neurological disability helped convince her that society must reframe the discussion:

We have got to change the conversation from talking about ‘the elderly’ and ‘the disabled’ to talking about people who are elderly and people with disabilities. When you take away that little ‘the’ … they become individuals with stories. Putting the ‘the’ in front of it makes them objects and objectifies them; dare I say, it makes them subhuman.

Ortiz said she has experienced the reality of the “disabled” label.

“I cannot tell you the number of times that people have addressed [my husband] to ask what I would like,” she said. “And before that they would ask my mother or my friends, because I couldn’t possibly answer for myself because I am in a wheelchair.”

Ortiz said her family also was faced with a situation with a loved one where caring action made all the difference.

Her father-in-law battled prostate cancer, which spread to the bone, and did not have “great doctors,” she said:

I fired all the doctors and got him much better care … and he was with us for … 12 years after that. He would have missed knowing his only grandchild, and his only grandchild would have missed knowing him.

Suffering and illness, Ortiz said, can be a way to “walk in victory”:

Suffering, internal illness is not always about us as individuals, the person doing the suffering. It is about the people around us and learning to walk out that suffering, not looking for a way to get out, but looking for a way to walk in victory.

Kathleen Buckley Domingo, also on the panel and associate director for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles Life Ministry, said she is alarmed at how physician-assisted suicide has been handled in her state.

Physician-assisted suicide became legal in California on June 9, 2016.

“We do not know how many people have taken advantage of assisted suicide because we are not allowed to know how many people have taken advantage,” Domingo said. “There is no tracking system that is open to any kind of public scrutiny at all.”

Physician-assisted also includes a significant amount of unknowns, Domingo said.

“What happens if you change your mind? What happens if you change your mind and then become incompetent and someone else in the house still thinks it is a good idea? These are very real situations that real families in California are right now facing,” she said.

Supporters of physician-assisted suicide, including Compassion & Choices, an organization advocating its legalization across the nation, argue that terminally ill individuals should have the choice to “end their suffering if it becomes intolerable.”

Donovan said choosing death by opting for assisted suicide may be the least expensive path to take, but is dangerous for patients and physicians.

“In medicine we know that what is permissible becomes habitual, and what is habitual becomes standard care, and what is [the] standard of care becomes obligatory,” Donovan said. “We will be changing the standards of care for all physicians and all patients by changing this law for society and the profession.” (For more from the author of “Assisted Suicide Dehumanizes Suffering, Opponents Argue” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Former Congresswoman: If Trump Investigates High-Level Pedophiles, It Will Go “All the Way to the Top,” Will Take Down Dems and Republicans

/0 Comments/in , , /by

If there is one thing that’s consistent about Donald Trump, it’s that he is horribly inconsistent. Whether it be flip-flopping on states’ rights for cannabis laws or praising NATO after promising to leave it, where Trump stands on the issues is a crap shoot. That being said, however, there is one issue on which Trump has remained steadfast, it is bipartisan, and everyone should agree on it — it’s time to stop human trafficking. And a former Democrat congresswoman from Georgia agrees.

It is important to note that human trafficking is not the same as working in the sex industry. Those who work in the sex trade, voluntarily, are not victims of human trafficking. However, they often find themselves victims of the government and the black market created by that government who pushes their line of work into dark alleys and shady places.

As corporate media writes off talk of ‘pizzagate’ as if it’s some tinfoil conspiracy theory that couldn’t possibly happen, recent busts of pedophilia rings are shattering their claims. In fact, after a massive bust in California, Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell says the arrests represent a “very sad commentary on the condition we’re dealing with.”

“Pretending this issue doesn’t exist only makes us more complicit in it,” newly elected San Diego City Attorney Mara Elliott said last month.

However, it appears that Donald Trump has decided that he won’t be party to those who deny the horrid reality that is the child sex trade.

Trump held a press conference last week in which he detailed his plans to go after the victims of the “human trafficking epidemic,” as he explained.

In most of these recent busts, however, many of those arrested were simply willing adults seeking a mutually beneficial arrangement for sex with another willing adult.

These facts do not belittle the necessity to go after child traffickers. However, it does show how much money is squandered enforcing the government’s version of morality on society. The funds allocated to go after the voluntary sex trade could help to expose the real monsters behind human trafficking.

Let there be no doubt, those who engage in the child sex trade are society’s most vile — and many times, the most elite.

Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney also agrees with Trump. However, she takes it a step further, noting that going after child predators will lead to the downfall of both Republicans and Democrats — as this problem goes all the way to the top.

For those who don’t remember McKinney, she is the Congresswoman who bravely questioned the elite — on the house floor — about their role in the child trafficking industry.

As the Free Thought Project has pointed out, pedophilia among the elite is rampant. The problem has gotten so bad in England that officials issued an order last month to stop naming streets and landmarks after local heroes and politicians because they could later be exposed as pedophiles.

In February, the Free Thought Project reported on the fact that the police chief recently came forward and confirmed that the former Prime Minister of England, Sir Edward Heath, had raped dozens of children. The department also noted how those within the government helped cover up these crimes.

In December, we reported on the massive child sex ring that was blown apart in Norway. That investigation quickly led to arrests of, “51 people, all men, (who) are so far involved in the case. 24 of them come from Hordaland and Sogn og Fjordane. 26 come from other areas of Norway, from Southeast to Finnmark in the north. Among the accused offenders, there is also one Swedish national. Two politicians, one Labor politician from Oslo and a former national Progress Party (FrP) politician from Eastern Norway are involved in the case.” One is also a kindergarten teacher, and four of the 51 arrested were perpetrators in the video evidence collected.

Domestically, these higher level arrests are few and far between as anytime ‘the elite’ are mentioned alongside the term ‘pedophile’, the Praetorian guard, aka the corporate media, shout down all those who dare pose any questions.

However, even though the media won’t report on it, these disgusting child predators are so vile they are hard to ignore.

In January, admitted child rapist and former speaker of the house who is currently in jail, Dennis Hastert came across our radar after he demanded one of the children he raped pay back the hush money given to him by Hastert — because he broke his silence about the rape.

When the victim, known only as ‘Individial A’, broke his silence, Hastert’s child rapes were exposed — resulting in the subsequent prosecution.

“To the extent any contract existed between plaintiff [Individual A] and defendant [Hastert], plaintiff breached that contract,” Hastert’s lawyers wrote.

“Plaintiff’s breach of conduct resulted in damages to defendant and plaintiff is accordingly required to return $1.7 million to defendant.”

Individual A did not go public with this information — he merely spoke to the FBI after the transactions were uncovered by investigators. However, this sicko couldn’t care less about airing this repugnant grievance in the public forum as it was almost entirely ignored by the media.

There was also another massive pedophilia scandal in the United States in what became known as the Franklin child sex ring coverup. Once the FBI took over the investigation from state authorities, however, it turned into a witch hunt to persecute the child victims – going so far as to charge them with perjury in a successful attempt to scare the other 70+ victims to recant their testimony regarding the child sex ring.

It appears, at least for the time being, that Donald Trump is aware of this problem and intends to take it head on. However, we will have to wait to see. (For more from the author of “Former Congresswoman: If Trump Goes After High-Level Pedophiles, It Will Take Down Dems and Republicans” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.