Veteran Justice Department Officials Weigh Need for Special Prosecutor in Russia Probe

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President Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey gave more fodder to Democrats, many of whom were already calling for a special prosecutor to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Matthew Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa, is unsure this case measures up to past cases involving special prosecutors.

“Usually, there is some intractable conflict where the Justice Department is unable to do its job,” Whitaker, now the executive director for the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, a watchdog group, told The Daily Signal.

“It’s not so much about the level of evidence or the sensibilities of the case,” he continued. “It’s about the confidence in the system.”

In the past, administrations have named special prosecutors that could conduct an investigation independent of the Justice Department, which is part of the executive branch. This is usually the case when there is consensus that the Justice Department cannot objectively investigate a matter, or can’t assure public trust that the probe was done without bias.

Under President Bill Clinton, an independent counsel was named to investigate the Whitewater matter, which eventually led to the investigation of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. After President George W. Bush took office, and the independent counsel statute had expired, the administration named a special prosecutor to investigate the alleged leak of a CIA operative’s name.

Whitaker said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is highly respected. Rosenstein, who recommended to Trump that Comey be fired, will ultimately oversee any Justice Department probe into the Trump campaign and Russia because Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself from any investigation that could relate to the 2016 election.

However, Nick Akerman, a former Watergate prosecutor who worked for special prosecutors Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski, believes this case is ripe for an independent view.

“This is a classic example for the need of a special prosecutor,” Akerman, who later became the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, told The Daily Signal. “It’s extremely serious when there is Russian interference in an election and the possibility that one of the candidates was in cahoots with the Russians.”

Democrats and critics of the Trump administration allege that the firing came as a result of Comey stating the FBI is investigating potential Russian ties to the Trump campaign.

White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Wednesday that every investigation that was going on Monday is going on today.

“There is no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia,” Sanders told reporters.

While Sanders said the administration welcomes the investigation, she said a special prosecutor isn’t necessary because the House, the Senate, and the Justice Department are all separately investigating the matter.

When Trump met with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at the White House, a reporter asked, “Why did you fire Director Comey?”

Trump responded: “He wasn’t doing a good job. Very simply. He was not doing a good job.”

He was also asked if this affected his meeting Wednesday at the White House with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. He answered, “Not at all.”

During the press briefing, a reporter asked a question about Trump meeting with Kissinger and a Russian official at a time when Democrats are talking about Russian ties and making President Richard Nixon comparisons. Sanders said the two meetings were planned well in advance.

Previous administrations, including independent counsel Ken Starr during the Clinton administration and special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald during the George W. Bush administration, expanded their investigations beyond the original topic of inquiry.

Both former federal prosecutors say that doesn’t have to be the case.

“The more narrow, the better,” Akerman said. “The scope of this shouldn’t expand beyond possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.”

Whitaker said past precedents demonstrate why an administration would be concerned about naming a special prosecutor to any case.

“The investigations can go far afield if the prosecutor is outside the regular chain of command, so, that’s viewed as a risky proposition,” Whitaker said. “But the investigation can be narrowly focused.”

This isn’t a matter that needs an independent investigation if the FBI has the proper resources to look into the matter, said Ron Hosko, a former FBI assistant director.

“What would make me feel better is knowing that the FBI will get every tool they need to explore the scope of Russian interference,” Hosko, now the president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, told The Daily Signal. “I think Congress is a pile of politics and hypocrisy and is incapable of investigating this.” (For more from the author of “Veteran Justice Department Officials Weigh Need for Special Prosecutor in Russia Probe” please click HERE)

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Senate Confirms Trump’s Nominee to Lead Food and Drug Administration

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The Senate confirmed Dr. Scott Gottlieb to lead the Food and Drug Administration Tuesday, filling in the list of presidential appointments at the Department of Health and Human Services.

President Donald Trump’s nominee for commissioner of food and drugs was confirmed by a vote of 57-42.

As commissioner of the FDA, Gottlieb, a physician, will report to Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and oversee the regulatory and approval process for new drugs.

Gottlieb was a senior FDA administrator under former President George W. Bush, and has advised the Department of Health and Human Services on health IT policy. He has written extensively on drug and health reform topics for a variety of journals and newspapers, and practiced internal medicine for many years.

Like other Trump nominees, Gottlieb has criticized the agency he will now lead. He once decried the “harmful culture” as damaging to the agency’s core mission. (For more from the author of “Senate Confirms Trump’s Nominee to Lead Food and Drug Administration” please click HERE)

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Colossal Pedophile Ring Busted, 900 Arrests, 300 Kids Saved — Corporate Media Ignores It

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After a nearly two-year investigation, 870 suspected pedophiles have been arrested across the world, and least 259 sexually abused children have been identified in the wake of major underground online global pedophilia network being taken down, according to the FBI and European authorities.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Europol announced the arrests on Friday, only days after a court sentenced Florida-based Steven Chase, founder of the so-called Playpen pedophilia network, to 30 years in prison.

The arrest of Chase in December 2014 was the impetus for a global probe into the users of the members-only forum, which culminated in the nearly 900 arrests.

Unsurprisingly, this massive pedophile bust has failed to crack the pervasive US media censorship regime, as not a single mainstream corporate media source in the United States has reported on this story. Perhaps, within those 900 sickos, there are some folks who have enough power not to let their names out.

According to a report by German media conglomerate, Deutsche Welle:

Playpen was accessible in what is known as the “darknet,” where internet users can engage in illegal activities using encryption and anonymity software in an effort to hide their identities. The secret network allowed anonymous users to engage in a forum where they could share photos and videos showing the sexual abuse of children.

As part of its investigation, called “Operation Pacifier,” the FBI managed to use to malware to seize the Playpen website and server, which allowed authorities to track and identify Playpen users.

Law enforcement authorities then took over the network and operated the pedophile site for several weeks – technically making them facilitators of child pornography themselves — hacking and tracking users of the site by installing malware onto their computers.

And while virtually everyone applauds the arrest of pedophiles, civil libertarians have pushed back as to the legality and manner in which the FBI operated, rightly claiming that a single search warrant should not allow law enforcement to hack into and search over 1,000 computers, according to comments made by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) regarding “Operation Pacifier.”

“The warrant here did not identify any particular person to search or seize. Nor did it identify any specific user of the targeted website,” the EFF said. “It did not even attempt to describe any series or group of particular users.”

In a statement Friday, Steven Wilson, head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Center, said the case demonstrated how law enforcement needs to use such methods to fight criminals who can hide behind online anonymization and encryption programs.

“We need to balance the rights of victims versus the right to privacy,” he said. “If we operate by 19th century legal principles then we are unable to effectively tackle crime at the highest level.”

Essentially, Wilson is trying to claim there is virtue in giving up liberty for safety – a complete and utter fallacy of the highest order – but which underpins the rise of the ever-growing global police state that is built upon a framework of an unflinching military-intelligence-industrial complex with imperial ambitions.

Make no mistake that this is just the latest case to emerge in what is now being dubbed #PedoGate. #PedoGate refers to the increasingly common recognition of international pedophile rings, which has previously been steadfastly covered up by the Western fourth estate.

Speaking to the scope of the problem, after President Trump held a press conference in February, in which he detailed his plans to go after the victims of the “human trafficking epidemic,” former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney weighed in on the subject, noting that going after child predators will lead to the downfall of both Republicans and Democrats in the United States — as this problem goes all the way to the top.

As the Free Thought Project has consistently pointed out, pedophilia among the global power-elite is rampant.

In February, the Free Thought Project reported 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.

We previously reported on the high-profile elite pedophilia scandal that gripped the U.K. – with its thousands of victims – being unceremoniously swept under the rug, which is indicative of the scope and breadth of the actual problem. In fact, the problem is so rampant 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 the case of the U.K. Inquiry, historical abuse of thousands of children by politically connected elites, celebrities, and politicians was brought to light — with an official inquiry being started — only to have the inquiry “crumble” after heavy pressure was exerted by highly placed power brokers within the U.K. establishment.

This was almost the exact same scenario as what took place in the United States in what became known as the Franklin child sex ring coverup — which involved high-level Republicans during the George H.W. Bush administration. Once the FBI took over the investigation from state authorities, 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.

While the story received a small measure of newspaper coverage, there was a complete blackout of the scandal by the mass media, thus most Americans have never heard about this scandal that reached all the way to the White House.

Domestically, there are relatively few high-level arrests, 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 about those in power abusing the most vulnerable among us.

For example, former U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, a known serial child rapist, was never charged for his numerous crimes against children, which the FBI knew about, and had evidence of, for over a decade.

According to FBI whistleblower and Newsbud Editor-in-Chief, Sibel Edmonds:

Since 1996 the FBI has had tons of information on Hastert which was gathered in Chicago by the FBI’s Chicago Field Office. The incriminating criminal evidence in those files range from bribery, extortion, fraud, money laundering and embezzlement, to sexual crimes against minors and participation in foreign-operated drug operations.

Since 1997 the FBI has had much hard evidence on Hastert gathered by the FBI’s Washington Field Office. The documented deeds range from espionage to foreign bribery.

But that’s not all. The FBI also has had hard data on Hastert’s sexual violations outside the United States. The involved countries include Vietnam, Thailand, Turkey and Morocco, among others. This also included sexual favors as means of foreign bribery. Interestingly, the CIA had been documenting those sexual activities for many years, and not only on Hastert but on many others; elected and appointed.

Edmonds has noted that the intelligence apparatus utilizes the damning information they maintain on these public officials’ pedophilic activities as a means controlling public policy decisions from the shadows. The fact that Hastert rose to Speaker of the House, when it his activities were well documented by the FBI and CIA highlights precisely to how intelligence services utilize total information awareness to influence and control elected officials.

Additionally, NSA whistleblower Russell Tice, who was a key source in the 2005 New York Times report, which blew the lid off the Bush administration’s use of warrantless wiretapping, has publicly confirmed the targeting – and blackmailing – of top government officials and military officers, including Supreme Court Justices, highly-ranked generals, Colin Powell and other State Department personnel.

In an appearance on Edmond’s Boiling Frogs Post blog, Tice stated that he held NSA wiretap orders targeting numerous members of the U.S. government, including one for a young senator from Illinois named Barack Obama.

In the summer of 2004, one of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with a forty-some-year-old senator from Illinois. You wouldn’t happen to know where that guy lives now would you? It’s a big White House in Washington D.C. That’s who the NSA went after. That’s the President of the United States now.

Tice added that he also saw orders to spy on Hillary Clinton, Senators John McCain and Diane Feinstein, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, Gen. David Petraeus, and a current Supreme Court Justice.

How much information on pedophilia and child pornography does the deep state have on all these politicians like they had on Hastert? Is it not possible, indeed, likely, that the shadow state maintains this information on individuals for the sole purpose of controlling them?

Make no mistake that illegal spying and wholesale collection of American data allows for that very control system whereby the elected officials, who appear to be in control of our state apparatus, are nothing more than a puppets who are blackmailed over their depraved pasts and bribed by the unelected power centers that pull the strings from the shadows. (For more from the author of “Colossal Pedophile Ring Busted, 900 Arrests, 300 Kids Saved — Corporate Media Ignores It” please click HERE)

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When Prosecutors Cheat Justice to Protect Aliens

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There’s an outrageous new phenomenon in the criminal justice system: local prosecutors giving special treatment to illegal (and legal) aliens.

Michael Daly graphically illustrates the problem of prosecutors failing to prosecute in his Daily Beast story about Abhishek Gattani, an alien computer industry executive in Silicon Valley. Despite repeated, iPhone-recorded domestic abuse of his wife, Gattani got a special deal from local prosecutors. Why? According to the prosecutor in the case, Steve Fein, it is because his boss, Santa Clara County district attorney Jeff Rosen, wants to ensure that Gattani doesn’t get deported because of his immigration status.

This is the same Santa Clara County that sued the Trump administration and obtained a district court injunction to prevent the administration from enforcing its new rules that bar giving Justice Department and Homeland Security grants to sanctuary jurisdictions like Santa Clara County. Apparently, the county really wants to make sure that domestic abusers and other criminals stay in Santa Clara County rather than get sent back to their home countries.

Gattani was facing his second felony domestic violence charge. He was arrested the first time when a postman saw him punching his wife outside their home and called the police. More recently, his wife and victim, Neha Rastogi, actually recorded the audio of her beating on her iPhone.

It makes for painful listening. One can hear Gattani repeatedly calling his wife a “bitch” and repeatedly hitting her in the presence of their infant daughter. Rastogi also has a second recording, made a month later, in which Gattani tells her he would like to see her murdered.

Gattani pleaded “no contest” to the charge. Yet the prosecutor reduced the charge from felony assault to accessory after the fact, along with a misdemeanor charge of “offensive touching.” Fein tried to defend his actions by claiming that being an accessory after the fact was still a felony charge and therefore a fair resolution of the case. But because this is not a charge involving violence, it would no longer put Gattani at risk of being deported back to India. In fact, according to Fein, if Gattani carried out the very light terms of his sentence recommended by Fein – only 30 days in custody, served on weekends, and three years of probation, even the felony charge will get reduced to a misdemeanor with no objection from the prosecutor.

The Daily Beast reports that his victim is not at all happy about this “resolution.” Rastogi wonders how someone who is arrested for a crime can be charged with being an accessory after the fact without being charged with the crime itself. And she is particularly offended that being beaten was treated as only “offensive touching.” In her victim statement, she said she felt “FOOLED, disgraced and ridiculed as a victim.”

Prosecutors are charged with administering justice objectively and without bias. That includes taking into account the severity of the crime and the injuries suffered by a victim. Reducing the charges against a criminal because of who he is in society, as opposed to the exact circumstances surrounding the crime, is morally wrong and offensive to the rule of law.

We would all think it wrong if two criminals who committed the exact same crime and inflicted the exact same injuries were treated differently because one was a poor, working-class individual and another was a white-collar executive at a big company.

What is happening in Santa Clara is just as bad.

The county powers that be are giving a domestic abuser a break because he is not a citizen. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently criticized such behavior when it was reported that the acting district attorney in Brooklyn, New York, Eric Gonzalez, issued similar instructions to his prosecutors to avoid leveling charges that might lead to deportation. The chief deputy state’s attorney in Baltimore, Michael Schatzow, the Baltimore Sun reports, has also given such a directive to his prosecutors, telling them to think twice before they charge aliens with non-violent crimes in order to prevent “potential collateral consequences” – like deportation.

Sessions found it disturbing that prosecutors would “openly brag about not charging cases appropriately – giving special treatment to illegal aliens to ensure these criminal aliens aren’t deported from their communities.” Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., called it shameful that the Baltimore prosecutor “is unwilling to enforce the law against illegal aliens who commit crimes in the United States.”

These prosecutors are deliberately discriminating against American citizens. As Sessions said, they are “advertis[ing] that they will charge a criminal alien with a lesser offense than presumably they would charge a United States citizen. It baffles me.”

Unfortunately, these are not isolated incidents. A well-connected former career prosecutor recently told me that he has been hearing complaints from his prosecutor friends around the country. They have been prohibited from notifying federal immigration authorities about felons they are prosecuting who happen to be illegal immigrants, prohibited from speaking to the media about recidivist illegal immigrant felons, and in some cases prohibited from requesting immigration removal proceedings to commence against convicted felons who are in the country illegally.

The consequences of this kind of reckless behavior are all too predictable. Aliens will have criminal charges reduced or eliminated for purely political reasons. They will be let loose back into society even sooner, with the repeat offenders among them able to victimize even more residents of their community.

And that is all but guaranteed to happen. A 2011 GAO study reviewing the criminal histories of 251,000 criminal aliens in federal, state, and local prisons found they had been arrested nearly 1.7 million times – for close to three million criminal offenses.

Apparently, prosecutors in Santa Clara County, Baltimore, and Brooklyn want to make sure that this crime spree continues. (For more from the author of “When Prosecutors Cheat Justice to Protect Aliens” please click HERE)

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LA Times: Ignore Insurance Death Spiral, Trump Is Fearmongering

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The mainstream media continue to live in a fantasy world of its own making, where Obamacare works great and the evil Republicans, led by President Trump, are trying to take people’s health insurance away.

A Friday headline from Brian Bennett, reporting for the Los Angeles Times, reads “’Death spiral!’: Trump is stoking fear that the Obamacare markets will collapse if Congress doesn’t act.”

“Stoking fear,” eh? Last week, the president tweeted about Aetna’s exit of the Obamacare insurance markets, exclaiming “Death Spiral!”

“Many health care experts and industry officials believe the marketplaces need to be tweaked, and the withdrawal of insurers has left consumers in some parts of the country with few options,” Bennett reported, before denying that the “death spiral” exists.

“That said, health care experts have not seen signs of a so-called ‘death spiral’ for the exchanges, and have seen enrollment on the marketplaces remain relatively steady, even with recent premium hikes.”

So, according to the L.A. Times, Trump is fearmongering. But the truth is, the president has repeatedly claimed, correctly, that Obamacare is imploding; premiums continue to increase and individuals are unwilling to pay the higher prices, driving insurers out of the marketplace.

When United Health Care announced last year it would withdraw from the Obamacare exchanges, Conservative Review contributor Logan Albright explained how Obamacare has created the insurance death spiral Trump is talking about.

The death spiral works like this: When the pool of people who sign up for health insurance is older and sicker than insurance companies expect, costs end up being higher than projected. Companies have to raise their prices (premiums) in order to make a profit. Higher prices cause some people to drop their plans as being too expensive, and the people most likely to do this are the ones who need insurance the least. This makes the remaining pool still more costly than before, and the cycle begins again, until nobody can afford insurance anymore.

While Bennet writes that “health care experts have not seen signs” of the death spiral, in Maryland:

This Washington Post article by Carolyn Y. Johnson, published the same day as Bennet’s piece in the Times, quotes health care expert Chet Burrell, chief executive of CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield, stating that the Obamacare marketplaces “were in the early stages of a death spiral.”

“The head of the largest insurer in the Mid-Atlantic region warned Thursday that the Affordable Care Act marketplaces were in the early stages of a death spiral, a statement that came as the company announced its request for massive, double-digit premium increases for next year.” (Emphasis added)

CareFirst, which The Washington Post reports insures about 215,000 people thorough the Obamacare exchanges, has lost $600 million since entering the marketplaces four years ago. They are asking Obamacare regulators to approve a more than 50 percent premium rate hike in Maryland to cover their costs.

“What we’re seeing is greater sickness levels. The pool of beneficiaries is becoming sicker, in part because healthier people are not coming in at the same level we hoped,” said Burrell.

The explanation is straight from the definition of a death spiral. Obamacare’s insurance mandates and “consumer protection” regulations have driven up the cost of insurance plans, pricing healthy people out of the market. Without those people paying in to subsidize the sick, insurance costs must increase to make up the difference. The resulting higher premiums and deductibles price more people out of the market, and the cycle repeats ad nauseam.

“We were hoping for more stability. The factors that I have described to you today lead to instability and to a spiral, and we think we are in the beginning of that,” Burrell explained to the Post.

Obamacare is collapsing. Insurers in the health exchanges are indeed in a death spiral, and the president is telling the truth. The Los Angeles Times is being dishonest with the American people about the failure of Obamacare by accusing President Trump of “stoking fear.”

Campaigning against Obamacare’s visible failures has been a winnings strategy for Republicans in every election since the bill’s passage. Unfortunately, the Republican American Health Care Act, as passed by the House of Representatives, does not solve the problem.

“As a Marylander who know pays three times more for premiums in order to get less coverage and be subject to a $13,100 deductible, I can say this is an issue that fully resonates with residents of the state,” Conservative Review Senior Editor Daniel Horowitz said. “The problem is that Trump continues to promote a bill that accepts that premise of Obamacare that is causing these rising premiums.”

That premise is the continued demand for protective regulations for individuals with pre-existing conditions, community rating, and the insurance mandates from the federal government that micromanage what coverage insurance companies are permitted to offer to consumers. Those elements of Obamacare are preserved in the GOP reform bill, not repealed whole cloth as was promised.

“It takes talent, at a time when Obamacare is making families pay another mortgage, for Republicans to take the focus off the ills of Obamacare and transfer it to the ACHA,” Horowitz said.

“Yet, this is what happens when they focus on half-baked replace instead of repeal.” (For more from the author of “LA Times: Ignore Insurance Death Spiral, Trump Is Fearmongering” please click HERE)

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Trump OKs Arms for Syrian Kurds, Despite Turkish Objections

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The Trump administration announced Tuesday it will arm Syria’s Kurdish fighters “as necessary” to recapture the key Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa, despite intense opposition from NATO ally Turkey, which sees the Kurds as terrorists.

The decision is meant to accelerate the Raqqa operation but undermines the Turkish government’s view that the Syrian Kurdish group known as the YPG is an extension of a Kurdish terrorist organization that operates in Turkey. Washington is eager to retake Raqqa, arguing that it is a haven for IS operatives to plan attacks on the West.

Dana W. White, the Pentagon’s chief spokeswoman, said in a written statement that President Donald Trump authorized the arms Monday. His approval gives the Pentagon the go-ahead to “equip Kurdish elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces as necessary to ensure a clear victory over ISIS” in Raqqa, said White, who was traveling with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in Europe. (Read more from “Trump OKs Arms for Syrian Kurds, Despite Turkish Objections” HERE)

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California Moves to Allow Communists in Government Jobs

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California may soon allow Communists to serve in government, after passing legislation Monday that calls for the elimination of a provision blocking them from working in state jobs.

California lawmakers narrowly approved legislation to repeal portions of a 1953 law enacted at the height of McCarthyism. The bill, sponsored by San Francisco Bay Area Democratic Assemblyman Rob Bonta, would remove parts of the law that allow public employees to be fired for being a member of the Communist party.

“There is a clear and present danger, which the Legislature of the State of California finds is great and imminent,” the 1953 legislation reads. “Communist organizations in the State of California and their members will engage in concerted effort to hamper, restrict, interfere with, impede, or nullify the efforts of the State and the public agencies of the State.”

Under the new law, employees could still be fired for being members of an organization that knowingly advocates for overthrowing the government, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Bonta has argued that his bill simply updates an outdated provision. “It’s an old and archaic reference,” he said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “It’s really just a technical fix to remove that reference to a label that could be misused or abused, and frankly, has been in the past, in some of the darker chapters of our history in this country,” Bonta said. (Read more from “California Moves to Allow Communists in Government Jobs” HERE)

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US Wants Tally of Haitian Immigrants’ Crimes

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The Trump administration is taking the unusual step of hunting for evidence of crimes committed by Haitian immigrants as it decides whether to allow them to continue participating in a humanitarian program that has shielded tens of thousands from deportation since an earthquake destroyed much of their country.

The inquiries into the community’s criminal history were made in internal U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services emails obtained by The Associated Press. They show the agency’s newly appointed policy chief also wanted to know how many of the roughly 50,000 Haitians enrolled in the Temporary Protected Status program were taking advantage of public benefits, which they are not eligible to receive.

The emails don’t make clear if Haitian misdeeds will be used to determine whether they can remain in the United States. The program is intended to help people from places beset by war or disasters and, normally, the decision to extend it depends on whether conditions in the immigrants’ home country have improved enough for them to return. But emails suggest Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, who will make the decision, is looking at other criteria. (Read more from “US Wants Tally of Haitian Immigrants’ Crimes” HERE)

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Christian Governor in Jakarta Sentenced to Prison for Blasphemy Against Islam

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An Indonesian court sentenced the minority Christian governor of Jakarta to two years in prison on Tuesday for “blaspheming” the Quran, a jarring ruling that undermines the reputation of the world’s largest Muslim nation for practicing a moderate form of Islam.

In announcing its decision, the five-judge panel said Gov. Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama was “convincingly proven guilty of blasphemy” and ordered his arrest. He was taken to Cipinang Prison in east Jakarta. At the court, supporters of the governor wept and hugged each other amid shouts of jubilation from members of conservative Islamic groups.

Photos quickly appeared online of Ahok, who still commands immense popularity in Jakarta, the capital, being warmly greeted by prison staff. Ahok said he would appeal, but it was unclear if he would be released once that process is underway. (Read more from “Christian Governor in Jakarta Sentenced to Prison for Blasphemy Against Islam” HERE)

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Study: Why Do People Attend Church

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Why do people attend church?

It’s a pretty straightforward question. But even among Christians — especially Christian leaders, writers and pundits who make a living commenting on such things — the answers are many and varied. People attend church because of culture and tradition, because of the music, because of a sense of community, because it’s the right thing to do, because of the children’s program, because of the hospitality and feeling of warmth and well-being.

The Gallup Organization decided to ask people who actually attend church why they attended, and the answers they got are helpful … sort of.

The Results are In

Gallup asked people if various aspects of worship were a “major factor,” a “minor factor,” or “not a factor” in their church attendance. About 76 percent of respondents said “sermons or talks that teach you more about scripture” was a major factor. If that’s all you knew about the survey, you might say that Bible-based expository preaching was the way to fill pews. Such a finding warms the hearts of the theologically conservative. And they would not be wrong. Lots of the largest churches in the country follow that strategy.

But, as they say in infomercials: “Wait, there’s more!”

Almost as many people — 75 percent — said “sermons or talks that help you connect religion to your own life” were a major factor. What does this mean? Are we talking about topical Bible studies? “How to have a better marriage”? “What the Bible says about money”? Or could we be straying even further away from expository preaching into Joel Osteen territory, into what Christian Smith has called “therapeutic moralistic deism”?

To complicate matters even further, children’s and teens’ programs were a major factor for 64 percent of respondents, and “community outreach and volunteer activities” mattered to 54 percent. Indeed, given the size of these numbers, it is likely that a significant number of people checked every box. All of these things were major factors.

Don’t Sweat the Music

So what is a pastor or other church leader to make of these numbers? First, repeat after me: “It’s not about the music.” Evangelicals have been engaged in “worship wars” for 40 years. The “traditional vs. contemporary” divide has consumed a lot of energy, but this survey suggests that it’s mostly an “inside baseball” squabble.

I’m not saying it’s not important. It’s really important. Music is didactic. That’s a fancy way of saying it teaches. Damon of Athens wrote more than 2000 years ago, “Give me the songs of a people, and I care not who writes its laws.” I would modify Damon: “Give me the songs of a church, and I care not who writes its doctrinal statement.”

So I’m not saying music is not important. I’m just saying the music is not generally a reason people come or do not come to your church. Use music that is biblical and authentic to your tradition of worship. Don’t worry about whether it will “attract a crowd” or not.

Walk the Walk

Secondly, faith without works is dead. Have you heard that before? Good. It’s biblical. But it is also what this survey is saying. People want sound preaching and opportunities for service. It’s not an “either/or.” It’s “both/and.” This is not a bad thing; it is a very good thing. Great churches provide opportunities for both growth and service, knowing that one feeds the other.

Finally, and like unto the second: It’s not one thing, it’s everything. In my private life, I don’t get to say, “I’m an unfaithful husband, but that’s okay because I’m a good provider for my family.” No, being a responsible husband, or wife, or parent, means mastering a number of skills, not all of them a natural part of one’s gifting.

So it is with church leaders, and churches. This reality can be overwhelming for pastors, but that’s because they try to do it all themselves rather than rely on another reality of the church: It is one body, but many members.

So this Gallup survey, while more suggestive than definitive, has much to teach us. Perhaps the most important lesson is this: There are no formulas. Some water. Some sow. But God brings the increase. (For more from the author of “Study: Why People Attend Church” please click HERE)

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