Courts: Business Owners Have No Right to Conscience but Have the Right to Pester Gun Owners

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Here’s another absurdity that emanated from our lovely judicial oligarchy last week: A business owner has an inalienable right to ask customers if they own a firearm but that same business owner has no inalienable right not to involuntarily service an act that violates his conscience. Inalienable rights turned upside down? That’s par for the course among our lawyerly elite.

This perverse juxtaposition stems from a tale of two disparate state laws, two hypocritical rules of standing in the courts, and the appalling hypocrisy of fundamental rights and state powers.

Florida’s law to protect privacy of gun owners

There is no such thing as a judicial veto on legislation duly passed by a state legislature and signed into law by a governor. Even according to the left-wing conception of the federal judiciary, there is no power within the courts to literally rip a statute out of the books or veto a bill the way a governor can. What a court can do, however, is block implementation of a law for an individual with legitimate standing in federal court who has proven that a fundamental right (almost invariably a negative action) has been attacked by the law, that there is a tangible injury-in-fact, and that the court’s judgement would redress that grievance.

With this background in mind, we can now understand the absurdity of what went down in Florida last week with regard to gun owners and doctors, as juxtaposed to the Washington religious liberty case.

In 2011, the Florida legislature passed a law barring healthcare providers from asking patients whether they own a firearm unless the health care provider determines “in good faith” that such information is “relevant” to the care and safety of the patient or those around him. When viewed in a vacuum — divorced from the broader nanny-state regulatory regime — I personally don’t believe in putting such restrictions on doctors. But given that states regulate the bejesus out of the health care profession on aspects of their job that cut to the core of medical care, this is as benign as it gets. This is not a mandate that forces doctors to take a positive action against their beliefs, as is often the case. Instead, it merely places a negative on them inquiring about or documenting a patient’s gun ownership information, while offering them a good faith discretion to disregard the law.

This law does not prevent a doctor from mouthing off about his hatred for guns or lecturing the patient about gun safety. It is extremely narrow, especially when understanding the context of how states have regulated the core medical profession into the stone age to the point that there is so little innovation in the delivery of health care relative to other professions [and none of that gets struck down by the courts].

Nonetheless, in 2011 a group of doctors buttressed by the officious American Medical Association (AMA) sued the state in court and got a district court to issue an injunction against the law. The AMA, which in itself has been empowered by government to essentially serve as the gate-keepers for the medical profession [something I hope to address in a later piece on free market health care], are behind this agenda to harass patients who own guns. There is no burning groundswell from ordinary doctors to ask patients about their gun hobbies. After the law was later upheld by a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit in 2014, last week the full en banc panel ruled 10-1 that this law violates the First Amendment.

For the courts, First Amendment only gets in the way of conservative outcomes

This, folks, is why the courts will always be a one-way street and a dead-end for conservative policies. At the same time the Washington Supreme Court upheld a law forcing individuals with their private property to engage in involuntary servitude (positive governmental action taken against a negative inalienable right) for something that violates the conscience of every practitioner of a major religion, the 11th Circuit struck down a law that merely places a negative on one positive action of a business owner. The action has nothing to do with conscience nor does it have anything to do with their job (and if the physician felt it somehow related to the care of the patient, the law explicitly permits them to ask about it).

Moreover, how can someone obtain standing to sue against a law when there is no tangible injury-in-fact? This is exactly how the courts have become a de facto judicial veto on legislation, a power they manifestly don’t have. What if a state passed a law and told doctors they can do anything they want in their clinic (unlike the current nanny-state regime) except that they can’t ask patients if they believe in the tooth fairy? Is that a redressable grievance for the courts (“No, I can’t do my job if I can’t ask my patients that question!”)? Or would it simply be the courts acting like an executive’s political veto?

The answer is that such a law, as is the case with the gun privacy law, would fall into the category of what the great James Wilson, one of the crafters of Article III and one of the original Supreme Court justices, once said, “”[l]aws may be unjust, may be unwise, may be dangerous, may be destructive; and yet not be so unconstitutional as to justify the judges in refusing to give them effect.”

This law, which places no mandate on the physician, no categorical restriction, and no interference with any aspect of their medical care, is a political issue. The Left has used the boot of government, including their empowerment of the AMA, to promote an anti-gun agenda. Republicans have responded in kind by using the force of state law to protect gun owners. If we want to get government out of the way of placing both mandates and restrictions on doctors in ALL areas of policy, count me in. But how can a court say a doctor has an inalienable right to a positive action of asking a patient about an irrelevant topic, yet a business owner doesn’t have a negative inalienable right of conscience not to service an abortion or a gay wedding? Blue states are passing laws left and right forcing health care providers to actively educate patients about abortion services, yet the courts have no problem with those laws. Now they are telling us a state can’t place a negative on an irrelevant positive action?

Worse, in the case of Barronelle Stutzman, private consumers were able to get standing to sue against her florist business. Thus, the courts give standing to individuals to violate the inalienable rights of others. They have this exactly backwards. I have an inalienable right to run my business an accordance with my conscience, but I have no right to employment or patronage of your business. Then again, these are the same courts who say states can get standing to overturn federal immigration law on account of an affirmative right for foreign nationals to immigrate, but states cannot get standing to sue a president when he violates federal and state sovereignty by overturning immigration laws.

The bottom line is we are confronted with a federal judiciary that is outcomes-based in its “jurisprudence.” I could respect some conservatives on the 11th Circuit who felt that EVEN the Florida case was enough of a redressable violation of a fundamental right to warrant judicial review. Most certainly, they would then rule that a state has no right to ask medical professionals or other business owners to actively take actions that violate their conscience rights. But for the liberal judges to have it both ways in order to achieve any given liberal political outcome demonstrates why the entire concept of judicial review, which has morphed into judicial exclusivity, is a one-way street for conservatives. (For more from the author of “Courts: Business Owners Have No Right to Conscience but Have the Right to Pester Gun Owners” please click HERE)

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Stingray Technology Shows Ongoing Tension Between Privacy Rights and Safety

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Law enforcement is always looking for the best new technology to stay one step ahead of increasingly sophisticated criminal agents, not to mention terrorist sympathizers.

In the pursuit of this goal, new surveillance equipment makes tracking actual criminal suspects easier and faster each year. Each advance in the field of surveillance stretches the boundaries of Fourth Amendment protections against undue search and seizure, creating grey areas where the legitimate pursuit of public safety may conflict with individuals’ immediate privacy and right to be presumed innocent. In these cases, there should be a robust public debate to decide where to set that line.

Enter the Stingray. Properly known as an international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) catcher, Stingray is the brand name of such a device that basically collects communications data over a wide area by tricking mobile devices into thinking that the Stingray is actually a cellphone tower. Stingrays can thus be used to track all nearby phones — and the creatures that carry them — in real time. Not only can this track your location, but it can also collect your metadata, such as what numbers are calling into the device. Furthermore, some Stingray devices appear to be able to collect actual content – i.e., your phone conversations, text messages, and the like.

Clearly this is powerful technology and was originally developed for military use overseas. However, the FBI began acquiring the devices for its agents as well as helping local and state law enforcement units acquire them, too.

It is not hard to imagine the legitimate usefulness of such a device in the case of an actual real-time crime investigation or a stakeout. However, the ability of these devices to track and intercept data from these devices en masse also raises due process concerns, especially if they are used for passive, ongoing surveillance. rather than targeted use at the behest of a court order.

Rather than have a debate over how these devices should be employed in public, a congressional inquiry released late in 2016 reveals that the FBI arranged for law enforcement to acquire these Stingray devices in secret. The FBI even conditioned the transfer of these devices on signing non-disclosure agreements — to the point of demanding that the departments using these devices refuse to acknowledge their existence in court!

As the Cato Institute’s Adam Bates documents in a major new study, many of the agencies that bought Stingrays did not have any formal guidelines for how to use them legally in the field until a series of leaks began tipping civil liberties activists to their existence. More disturbingly, there have been documented instances where law enforcement was forced to drop cases against a suspect to avoid revealing the evidence collected via Stingrays, and the FBI has even been caught directing police to invent alternate ways that Stingray data might have been collected constitutionally (a practice known as “parallel construction”).

Just as concerning is the acquisition and use of Stingrays by executive branch agencies outside of the FBI. The most ridiculous example pointed out by the Oversight report is the IRS, which owns two Stingray devices and admitted to using them in 37 investigations so far. Yep, the tax man can track you and listen to your phone calls. Interestingly, the IRS devices have thus far been used mostly in cases involving non-tax crimes, leading one to wonder why such investigations aren’t just being handed off to the FBI or other actual law enforcement bodies.

The combination of the massive potential for these devices to be used unconstitutionally to conduct mass surveillance, combined with the eyebrow-raising secrecy with which they have been acquired and used, merits congressional action.

It seems redundant to have to pass a federal law to specify that law enforcement needs to have a valid warrant to collect and use surveillance data against Americans in the U.S., but such is the state of the Fourth Amendment in the age of technology. Fortunately, a number of high-exposure uses of Stingrays, such as their use by the IRS and the revelation that the Baltimore police used airplane-borne cell tower simulators to monitor protest crowds, has ensured bipartisan interest in setting forth strong guidelines for their use.

It will be the task of lawmakers and civil liberties advocates to ensure that these guidelines are sufficient and that they do not continue to provide avenues for yet another form of legally justified, unconstitutional government mass surveillance. (For more from the author of “Stingray Technology Shows Ongoing Tension Between Privacy Rights and Safety” please click HERE)

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Yes, Childhood Sexual Abuse Often Does Contribute to Homosexuality

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What do Anderson Cooper, Don Lemon, George Takei and Milo Yiannopoulos have in common? They are all out and proud gay men, and they were all sexually abused as underage minors. Sadly, this is an extremely common occurrence, as there is frequently a connection between childhood sexual abuse and adult homosexuality.

To say such a thing, of course, is to invite a hailstorm of fierce criticism and ridicule: “You bigoted homophobe! These men were born gay, not made gay, and their sexuality is a gift from God, not the result of sexual abuse. Plus, there are plenty of gay men who were never abused and plenty of straight men who were abused as boys and never turned gay.”

Putting the name-calling aside, there is some truth to these statements.

Numbers Don’t Lie

Not all gay men were molested as boys (since there are multiple causes for homosexuality) and not all boys who are molested turn out gay (probably because they were less predisposed towards homosexuality). Still, it cannot be denied that a disproportionately high number of gay men were abused as boys, and that certainly contributed to their sexual and emotional development.

That’s why it was no surprise when Dr. Robert Epstein, the pro-gay editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, noted that gay readers who were upset with an ad that ran in his publication in 2002 sent him letters asserting “that gays have a right to be rude or abusive because they themselves have been abused” (this obviously included being sexually abused).

And that’s why it was no surprise when a 2009 report prepared for a bisexual health summit revealed that 74 percent of bisexuals had been sexually abused as children. (For other studies focusing specifically on the connection between childhood sexual abuse and homosexuality, see here.)

As for the notion that people are born gay, not only would that suggest that infants can relate to the concepts of sexual and romantic attraction (which they obviously cannot), but it would also ignore the fact that our upbringing and environment have profound effects on us. Why deny such an obvious reality?

It is well-known that the children of alcoholics have a much higher chance of becoming alcoholics than the general population, and this cannot be blamed on genetics alone. As stated by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, “Genes are not the only things children inherit from their parents. How parents act and how they treat each other and their children has an influence on children growing up in the family. These aspects of family life also affect the risk for alcoholism.”

In the same way, it is well-known that men who were abused as children are much more likely than the average population to abuse other children as adults. As summarized in a 2001 article in the British Journal of Psychology:

Among 747 males the risk of being a perpetrator was positively correlated with reported sexual abuse victim experiences … A high percentage of male subjects abused in childhood by a female relative became perpetrators. Having been a victim was a strong predictor of becoming a perpetrator, as was an index of parental loss in childhood.

But again, none of this should surprise us in the least, since the environment in which we are raised, especially if coupled with major, traumatic childhood experiences, has a profound effect on our ongoing mental and emotional and social development.

Society Ignores the Childhood Trauma of Many Gay Adults

Yet when it comes to homosexuality, it is taboo to connect childhood sexual abuse with subsequent gay identity since: 1) this would contradict the “born gay” myth; and 2) it would underscore the fact that homosexual attractions are not natural and positive.

As explained candidly by the lesbian feminist and academic Camille Paglia, “Every single gay person I know has some sort of drama going on, back in childhood. Something was happening that we’re not allowed to ask about anymore.” (She was speaking of bad relationships with parents as well as sexual abuse or other factors.)

In keeping with this, all the professional counselors I have spoken with (including trained pastors and psychologists or psychiatrists) have told me that the vast number of gays they have counseled were sexually abused as minors (some told me this was the case in every instance they encountered).

You might say, “But gays hardly have a monopoly on this. What about the problem of heterosexual schoolteachers having sex with their students, especially female teachers with male students?”

But you miss the point, since: 1) we all agree that this is terrible and abusive; and 2) most of us would agree that such relationships have the real potential of negatively affecting that child’s sexual and emotional development. Yet when it comes to gay men who were molested as boys, we’re told this did not contribute to their (homo)sexual development. More disturbingly, in gay circles, such relationships are often looked at as positive and nurturing, since, it is surmised, the boy was already aware of his same-sex attraction and the older man served as a mentor of sorts.

In Their Own Words

In the words of Harry Hay, the gay icon and founder of the American gay movement:

If the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what thirteen-, fourteen-, and fifteen-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world.

You can be assured that such relationships would often become sexual, thereby providing the entry point into the larger homosexual “lifestyle.” (For other quotes from Hay, see here.)

Similarly, the renowned gay activist Larry Kramer opined,

In those cases where children do have sex with their homosexual elders … I submit that often, very often, the child desires the activity, and perhaps even solicits it, either because of a natural curiosity … or because he or she is homosexual and innately knows it. … And unlike girls or women forced into rape or traumatized, most gay men have warm memories of their earliest and early sexual encounters; when we share these stories with each other, they are invariably positive ones.

That’s why “man-boy love” has been celebrated in homosexual culture through the centuries, that’s why there’s a page listing “Historical pederastic couples” on a gay Wikipedia site, and that’s why George Takei could speak glowingly of his first sexual encounter at the age of 13 (with a 19-year-old male camp counselor), at a time when he admits he didn’t know he was gay.

In this light, the outrageous statement by philosopher Michael Foucalt, arguing for lowering the age of consent, doesn’t sound as outrageous: “It is quite difficult to lay down barriers [particularly since] it could be that the child, with his own sexuality, may have desired the adult.”

Ah yes, it was the child asking for it again. This too is sickening beyond words.

The reality is that children, especially pre-teens and young teens, are tremendously impressionable and malleable, as confirmed by this account shared by a Christian family activist (reflecting on his pre-Christian youth):

When I was about 14 or 15, I spent an afternoon smoking pot with a ‘gay’ guy in his 20’s who explained that young people during puberty have a very fluid sexual identity and how easy it had been for him to turn young teen boys into sex partners … A confirming study I later saw said 25% of young teens suffer same-sex confusion but most grow out of it naturally by the end of adolescence.

Ex-gay Robert Lopez, raised by his mother and her lesbian partner, had this to say:

In a society soaked in porn where sexual orientation is discussed openly in front of small children, there will certainly be 12- and 13-year-olds who think they want sex and think they are ready for it. When we discuss ‘gay identity’ with 6th graders, which is very common, what are we discussing? We are talking about sexual acts. Perhaps people need to stand up and resist the Human Rights Campaign’s recent push to force such curricula on elementary and middle schools.

It is truly distasteful to speak of such things, but speak about them we must, given the ever-increasing scope of gay activism, especially in our children’s schools. And with the terribly painful issue of childhood sexual abuse coming to the fore in recent days, let’s use this as a teachable moment.

We can do this by: 1) being on the lookout for signs that our own children may have been abused; 2) refusing to allow our kids to be experimental pawns in the culture wars, because of which we strongly oppose sex-based LGBT curricula in the schools; and 3) no longer denying the common connection between childhood sexual abuse and adult homosexuality, thereby providing a path for healing and wholeness.

By doing these things, we will not only make this a teachable moment, we will make it a redemptive one. (For more from the author of “Yes, Childhood Sexual Abuse Often Does Contribute to Homosexuality” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Schools Are Teaching Islam but Banning Christianity: These Jersey Moms Want to Find out Why

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There’s a new trend in public school curriculum that, chances are, you know nothing about. If you think your kids are getting an unbiased education and that all forms of religion are left out of the classroom, think again. Your child, like many others, may be subjected to Islamic indoctrination. That’s exactly what’s happening in schools in New Jersey. But in one small town, two moms are fighting back.

‘No Bible in School’

It all started several years ago when Nancy Gayer’s middle-schooler put together a PowerPoint presentation about giving winter hats and gloves to children who couldn’t afford them. One slide of the presentation had a Bible verse: “Caring for the poor is lending to the Lord, and you will be well repaid.” (Prov. 19:17) The slide took all of 1.3 seconds, but that was enough to alarm the teacher, Nancy told The Stream in an interview. The teacher told the boy that his slide show belonged in Sunday School, not the classroom, and refused to allow him to present it to the class. She told Nancy that it was “proselytizing.” So Nancy went to the vice-principal. “He said, ‘No, no, no, no Bible in school. You cannot quote the Bible, it’s proselytizing.’” The superintendent said the same thing, but he also threatened to obtain legal advice. Nancy said she was intimidated by his threat and decided that she would let it go.

Fast-forward to this year.

Memorizing the Quran for Homework

Nancy and Libby Hilsenrath’s boys are in the seventh grade at the same school. The moms were disturbed to learn that the boys were studying the doctrines and tenets of the Muslim faith, including the five pillars of Islam, and memorizing the teachings of the Quran for homework. One assignment required them to complete the sentence, “There is no God but Allah and Mohammad is his messenger.” Further, the boys were subjected to a 20-slide PowerPoint presentation about Islam, and two videos of a cartoon character teaching a non-Muslim friend about Islam.

“We are not anti-religion, we are not anti-Muslim, we are not bigoted people by any means,” said Nancy. “We care about people. But we care about the truth.” The moms just want equality in teaching religions. “If Islam is taught, teach Christianity, too. [My son] couldn’t even put a Bible verse in his presentation that was student-initiated. So they’re not only teaching Islam, but they’re not allowing students to be free in expressing their religious beliefs,” one said.

The school is also flouting its own written rules. Chatham School District Policy 2270 states in part:

The Board of Education directs that no religious belief or nonbelief shall be promoted in the regular curriculum or in district-sponsored courses, programs or activities, and none shall be disparaged.

The Islamic Core Curriculum of New Jersey

Libby addressed this concern at the Board of Education meeting, asking that the Board, the Policy Committee and the Curriculum Committee review this course to determine whether it was in line with school policy. She received a dismissive response by Superintendent Dr. Michael LaSusa:

I don’t think we’ll be eliminating the instruction in Islam because it is part of the New Jersey curriculum core content standards to teach students about the various religions of the world.

At the meeting, Dr. LaSusa offered to meet privately with anyone if they had more questions. But that didn’t happen. In fact, when the two moms requested a meeting with LaSusa, he responded that he would not be meeting with the women as their meeting would not be “productive.”

On Monday, the women were invited as guests to the Tucker Carlson Tonight show to discuss the issues with the school’s curriculum.

Although the superintendent didn’t show, he did provide the show’s producer with a statement. He said, in part:

The lessons on Islam that some of our parents have raised as an issue comprise approximately three days out of a 180-day school year. Further, in the scope of our full curriculum, content addressing Islam does not represent a disproportionate amount of time or resources.

“[My] question to him would be, ‘Do you spend three days on Christianity? Do you spend three days on Judaism? Do you spend three days on Buddhism? Do you spend three days on Taoism? Do you spend three days on Sikhism?’” said Libby. “It’s an absolutely backwards argument.”

Libby tried to find out from the K-12 Director of Social Studies curriculum whether other religions beside Islam were covered. She got a response she considers laughable. “I asked him, ‘Do you teach the Bible in your curriculum?’ and he said, ‘No, but here’s where they will encounter Christianity and Judaism,’ and he listed a bunch of things. The one that I remember off the top of my head is during one of the classes they watch a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., where he quotes Isaiah. His answers were absurd to me.”

A Vicious Backlash Against Parents

The women expected to get backlash from the school district. They didn’t expect the type of response they’ve received from the community. The women agree that of all the responses they’ve had, 99 percent has been negative. “They are mean, they are calling us names, they are calling us bigots and idiots,” said Nancy. “They have been so unkind with no facts at all.”

“The reception that we got from the Board of Education and from the superintendent in particular was dismissive,” said Libby. “And then, the reception we got from the public was just awful. And these are parents, these are adults. The same adults who say, ‘what example are you setting for your kids?’ Well, what example are you setting for your kids posting this horrible, horrible things on Facebook? What kind of example is that?”

How Long Will Public Schools Teach Islam?

For now, the women aren’t taking this to court, although that action hasn’t been ruled out. “Our plan is to go back to the next Board of Education meeting which is on March 6. We’ll ask the committees if they’re going to take it under consideration,” said Libby “…to hopefully affect change in the curriculum for the better.” Nancy added, “We’ve not been given the opportunity to address these things in a constructive, adult meeting. I think these are things that would benefit all students…. If they [the school board and principal] were more forthcoming, then the onus falls on the parent, ‘Okay, we put it out there and if you didn’t look at it, it’s on you.’ But it’s the opposite here.” (For more from the author of “Schools Are Teaching Islam but Banning Christianity: These Jersey Moms Want to Find out Why” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

No, a Study Did Not Show That Same-Sex “Marriage” Laws Reduce Teen Suicide Rates

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You probably saw the breathless reports suggesting, as CNN did, that “same-sex marriage may decrease teen suicide attempt rates, study says.” A yes, a study. A statistical study. That’s supposed to give it gravitas. In fact many, perhaps even most, statistical studies simply can’t be trusted. Certainly not this one.

The study in question is the peer-reviewed paper “Difference-in-Differences Analysis of the Association Between State Same-Sex Marriage Policies and Adolescent Suicide Attempts” by Julia Raifman, Ellen Moscoe, and S. Bryn Austin, in the once-prestigious journal JAMA Pediatrics.

This widely touted work purports to have discovered, using statistical methods, “that same-sex marriage policies were associated with a 7% reduction in the proportion of all high school students reporting a suicide attempt within the past year.” The authors say there is now “empirical evidence for an association between same-sex marriage policies and mental health outcomes.”

Association.

Think about what the authors are implying: that the mere presence of gmarriage — government-defined marriage, as opposed to marriage defined by reality — stops teens from reporting suicide attempts.

Implications

If what these authors are eager to imply is true, it must have been that some teenagers before gmarriage reported trying to kill themselves because there was no such thing as gmarriage. Or it must be that some teenagers after gmarriage became the “law of the land” thought to themselves, “You know, I was going to report trying to kill myself. But now that Bert and Ernie can be gmarried, I won’t report it.” (Both could be true.)

About the number of teenagers who actually killed themselves because of the absence of gmarriage — or because of the presence of gmarriage — nobody knows. The study only relates how many kids self-reported suicide attempts. Since most of the kids giving answers were 15-16, it can’t have been because of actual forbidden gmarriage or marriage ceremonies that caused reporting suicide attempts (of course, there could have been a handful of child brides or grooms in the data).

This is among all teens, mind you, and not just the minority reporting same-sex attraction or other non-biologically oriented sexual desires. The authors claim the effect was greater in the sexual minority.

Weighted Realities

Forgive the dive into the details, but it’s necessary to see what’s really happening. Via a complicated massaging of numbers, the authors say that before gmarriage

a weighted 8.6% of all high school students and 28.5% of 231 413 students who identified as sexual minorities reported suicide attempts before implementation of same-sex marriage policies. Same-sex marriage policies were associated with a 0.6-percentage point…reduction in suicide attempts, representing a 7% relative reduction in the proportion of high school students attempting suicide owing to same-sex marriage implementation.

A weighted 8.6% to a weighted 8%, they say. This is a 7% reduction, all right, but a minor tweak in the actual weighted number. Thee numbers are weighted averages across several states and the result of a statistical model called a linear regression. The 0.6 drop is not observed, but is the output from a model.

What’s odd is that the authors report the rate for teens reporting non-traditional sexual desires (a modeled 4% drop from 28.5%), and also for all teens (that modeled 0.6% drop), a group which includes the sexual minority. But they don’t report numbers for normal teens (did this number increase?). This omission leads one to suspect the authors are fooling themselves. This is suggested in two ways.

Complication

The first is that these numbers are modeled averages across states. The numbers within states is anything but straightforward (the authors provide graphs). For instance, some states show reported suicide attempts increasing after gmarriage (New York, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, for example). The graphs also indicate a general decline in rates before gmarriage and continuing afterwards (see their Fig. 3). What makes this even more curious is that there are only a couple of years of data after gmarriage (there are many before), making comparisons more prone to error.

But those are all quibbles. Forget them if you like. The second reason is more to the point. The year each state imposed gmarriage was put into the authors’ model: this created a before and after period. The attempted suicide rates in the before period were caused by any number of things, but, the authors imply, some of the attempts were because of the lack of gmarriage.

In the after period, there were still myriad causes of suicide attempts, but one cause was removed (lack of gmarriage). Thus some kids who would have tried to unsuccessfully kill themselves did not try because of gmarriage access (but not for themselves, because they were too young).

Correlation is not Causation!

But — and this is a big but — since no questions about why kids tried to kill themselves were asked, the demarcation of before and after is entirely arbitrary. The year most cited for gmarriage was 2014. Thus not only could access to gmarriage by others (but not for themselves) be used, so could the Ebola epidemic becoming a global health crisis, which also happened in 2014, and which was one of the biggest news stories of the year, according to ABC.

Think: putting Ebola in the model works equally well with gmarriage to explain the data. So do the disasters of those crashing Malaysian airliners, or the fighting in Ukraine and Crimea. So does the 2014 Winter Olympics! And the death of sad-funny-man Robin Williams (all mentioned by ABC).

Or any of an uncountable number of events. The truth is the data do not say, and cannot say, what caused the observed changes. It is sloppy statistics — it is bad science, period — to suggest the one thing the authors thought of had to be the one and only cause of the changes.

It is made worse when this cause has so little bearing on the lives of the people purported to be affected. Fifteen and 16-year-olds do not often marry, and nobody has (yet?) heard of any same-sex “weddings” between teenagers.

And it grows worse yet again, when it is implied, as the authors do imply, that the increases after gmarriage in specific states were actually decreases — because the (modeled) mean across states decreased.

If suicide attempts increased in a state after gmarriage, as it did in several states, could it be that the presence of gmarriage is causing more kids to try and kill themselves?

If not, why not? (For more from the author of “No, a Study Did Not Show That Same-Sex “Marriage” Laws Reduce Teen Suicide Rates” please click HERE)

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U.S. Drops to Lowest Point Ever in Index of Economic Freedom. Can Trump Improve It?

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The U.S. has reached its lowest ranking ever in the Index of Economic Freedom, produced annually by the Heritage Foundation. The U.S. spent years in the top 10, but has been declining for years, and is now at number 17.

Hong Kong maintains the top spot, although the city-state is officially part of the Peoples’ Republic of China. Other countries that beat the U.S. include New Zealand, Switzerland, Australia, Canada (no. 7), and Chile. Last place (no. 180) goes, as usual, to North Korea. If you want to know how economic freedom and prosperity are related, just remember: booming, bustling Hong Kong is at the top, and unlit, starving North Korea is at the bottom.

The Index measures such things as the rule of law, size of government, regulatory efficiency, and openness of markets. It should be no surprise that these traits got worse during President Obama’s two terms in office.

Consider regulation. Since 2008, our economy has been burdened with more than 20,000 new regulations. This added some 572,000 pages to the Federal Register. You’ve probably read more about sluggish job growth, than about how regulations have contributed to it. Obama-era rules cost our economy almost a trillion dollars.

According to one study, there was a net increase of 421,000 new businesses from 1992 to 1996, and 405,000 from 2002-2006. In contrast, 2009, 2010, and 2011 “saw a net loss of new companies year-over-year — the first time in a generation.” Apparently if the government makes it harder to start new businesses and to hire new employees, there will fewer new companies and fewer new employees. Who’d have thunk it?

But many of the biggest regulatory burdens under Obama were added before Republicans took control of Congress in November 2010. Why has the U.S. dropped below six other countries since just last year, when it came in 11th? Probably because the Index now includes government debts and deficits:

Large budget deficits and a high level of public debt, both now reflected in the Index methodology, have contributed to the continuing decline in America’s economic freedom. Having registered its lowest economic freedom score ever, the United States is no longer among the world’s 15 freest economies.

The anemic economic recovery since the great recession has been characterized by a lack of labor market dynamism and depressed levels of investment. The substantial expansion of government’s size and scope, increased regulatory and tax burdens, and the loss of confidence that has accompanied a growing perception of cronyism, elite privilege, and corruption have severely undermined America’s global competitiveness.

Much of the blame for this debt can be laid at the feet of President Obama. Total debt nearly doubled during his years in office, from $10.6 trillion in January 2009, to $19.7 trillion when he left. But the same could be said of President Bush, who also doubled the previous debt during his two terms. We seem to have a bipartisan trend on our hands.

At the current pace, we double our total debt every eight years. You don’t have to be a deficit hawk to know that this can’t go on forever. Eventually, the interest on the debt alone would consume all tax revenue. At that point, the government would have to start printing money to service the debt, which would destroy our currency’s value — as happened in Weimar Germany.

Will Trump Make the US Economy More or Less Free?

But will our economic freedom improve or decline under President Trump? The jury is still out on that one.

Trump’s early executive orders reducing environmental regulations, and his call for the abolition of two old regulations for each new one, are good news for economic freedom and growth. His appointment of Scott Pruitt to lead the EPA also shows that he takes seriously the drag that many regulations have on the economy.

Trump’s pledge to repeal and replace Obamacare was the centerpiece of his campaign. If Congress can give him a replacement that introduces real competition and market discipline into the health care market, this would not only improve health care but would free up a full 16 percent of the American economy.

The president decries government debt, and his pledge to freeze government hiring could make a small dent in that. If his other policies grow the economy overall, that would bring in more revenues, which could reduce deficits — as long as it doesn’t simply encourage Congress to spend more money. On the other hand, the president doesn’t seem keen on tackling entitlements — which is where much of the debt will come from in future years.

Trump’s threats to raise trade tariffs and abandon free trade are most worrisome of all. If he pursues policies that “save” a handful of jobs in one state or industry, but cause a net loss of jobs and productivity elsewhere to the economy, we could see the U.S. slip even farther down the Index of Economic Freedom.

Let’s hope President Trump’s protectionist rhetoric is just the opening gambit of a skilled negotiator, and not the hardened convictions of a president who thinks that, when it comes to trade, America can only win if someone else loses. (For more from the author of “U.S. Drops to Lowest Point Ever in Index of Economic Freedom. Can Trump Improve It?” please click HERE)

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Conservatives to Congress: Deliver on Obamacare Repeal and Replace Promise

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Conservatives and business leaders in the health care market have a message to Congress on Obamacare: Deliver on your promise to repeal the health care law and begin the process of returning to a health sector that can be “America’s greatest.”

During a panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, on Thursday, Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, told attendees to think of Obamacare’s repeal as a “down payment” that will allow Republicans to implement their own health care reforms in the future.

But first, Turner said Republicans need to take action to repeal the law using a fast-track budget tool called reconciliation.

“We have to do this,” she said. “We have to be get this out of here to be able to deliver on the repeal-and-replace pledge to the American people, and then to begin the process of truly returning to a health sector that can be America’s greatest health sector again.”

Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, Scott Flanders of eHealth, and Dale Bellis of Liberty HealthShare joined Turner on the health care panel at the annual event.

While Republicans campaigned since 2010 on repealing Obamacare, efforts to advance the legislation dismantling the law have slowed over the last few weeks.

The GOP-led Congress passed a bill using reconciliation to undo major provisions of the health care law in 2015. But President Barack Obama ultimately vetoed that legislation.

Now, conservatives in Congress are calling on their leaders to bring that same bill before members for another vote.

“It’s going to happen,” Burgess said of Obamacare’s repeal. “What [the 2015 bill] demonstrated to me was that if you got the right president in the White House, you could send that bill back down to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, and you could repeal large pieces of the Affordable Care Act.”

The 2015 reconciliation bill repealed Obamacare’s individual and employer mandates, Medicaid expansion, and subsidies. It also stripped the federal government of the authority to run the exchanges, and eliminated federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

Though that legislation passed both chambers of Congress, tensions have emerged among GOP lawmakers over which parts of the health care law to unwind.

Republicans are split over whether to leave the Medicaid expansion in place, while GOP leaders want to include parts of a replacement plan in the same legislation that will repeal the law—a strategy that some conservatives have derided.

But Burgess, who serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the 2015 reconciliation bill will serve as a “starting point” for Congress this year, with Republicans understanding that the repeal bill will be at least the same as that passed in 2015.

In addition to disagreement over whether to include parts of Obamacare’s replacement in the repeal bill, Republicans also split on whether to provide tax credits or tax deductions to consumers.

But Turner stressed that the process for replacing the law—what she said will become a “once-in-a-generation reform”—will be a lengthy one that requires thought, particularly since Republicans are starting not from a blank slate, but with an already changed health insurance market.

“It’s really what would we want if we were starting from the right kind of policy for the health sector? We are not starting there. We’re starting with Obamacare,” she said. “We’re starting with some number of millions of people … relying on Obamacare. You have to create a lifeboat for them, and structures that provide the kind of resources people need who don’t have means to purchase health insurance on their own so they can continue coverage.”

Like Republicans in Congress, President Donald Trump campaigned on repealing Obamacare.

During his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order addressing Obamacare and giving his federal agencies the discretion to no longer enforce the individual mandate.

And he’s repeatedly said that his new Health and Human Services secretary, Tom Price, will present a replacement plan before Congress.

But so far, no proposal has been presented.

Trump will address a joint session of Congress next week, and Burgess had his own wishes for what he hopes the president will tell Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

“I would like for him to say very directly to us, to my leadership in the House, Republicans and Democrats, that ‘this is your job,’” Burgess said. “‘I want you to get it done.’ Simple as that.”

CPAC, the largest annual national gathering of conservative activists, runs from Wednesday to Saturday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington. (For more from the author of “Conservatives to Congress: Deliver on Obamacare Repeal and Replace Promise” please click HERE)

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Pence Vows to End ‘Obamacare Nightmare’

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Vice President Mike Pence attempted to assure conservative activists on Thursday that Obamacare is on its way out.

“Let me assure you,” Pence said at the annual Conservative Action Political Conference, or CPAC. “America’s Obamacare nightmare is about to end.”

As plans to repeal and replace Obamacare remain in limbo, Pence made the issue centerfold in his keynote address at CPAC, the largest annual gathering of conservatives. Pence promised to repeal Obamacare, “eliminating its mandates, its taxes, and its intrusion into your business and into your lives,” saying Obamacare would be “replaced with something that actually works.”

“Despite the best efforts of liberal activists in town halls around the country,” Pence added, “The American people know better. Obamacare has failed and Obamacare must go.”

“This failed law is crippling the American economy and crushing the American people.”

Adding fuel to the fire, Pence referred to the “promises liberals made about Obamacare” as “fake news.”

“Remember they told us the cost of insurance would go down. They told us if you liked your doctor, you could keep [him]. They told us if you liked your health plan, you could keep it.”

“Now we all know the truth. Today Americans are paying $3,000 more a year on average for their health insurance. Last year, premiums skyrocketed by a stunning 25 percent. Millions have lost their plans and lost their doctors. Higher costs. Fewer choices. Worse care. That’s Obamacare.”

He also said the Affordable Care Act was a “job killer.”

Discussing replacing Obamacare, Pence was dismissive of “all the fearmongering from the left,” and said there would be “an orderly transition to a better health care system that finally puts the American people first.”

He detailed what he and President Donald Trump would do to ensure all Americans had “access to quality and affordable health care insurance, which is why we’re designing a better law that lowers the cost of health insurance without growing the size of government.”

Pence continued:

We’re going to let Americans purchase health insurance across state lines, the way you buy your life insurance, the way you buy your car insurance.

We’re going to make sure that Americans with preexisting conditions have access to health insurance and the security they need, and we’re going to give states the freedom and flexibility to take care of the least fortunate in the best way that will work in their state and in their community.

It was Pence’s ninth time addressing CPAC, but his first time doing so as vice president. CPAC, the largest annual national gathering of conservative activists, runs from Wednesday to Saturday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington.

Pence spoke about Trump’s “historic” victory, noting he won 30 of 50 states, and saying that “the media, the elites, the insiders, everybody else who profits off preserving the status quo,” had “dismissed our president every step of the way.”

“In dismissing him, they also dismissed millions of the hard-working forgotten men and women who make this country great,” Pence said. “And worse yet, they’re still trying to dismiss him. They’re still trying to dismiss all of us.”

“What they should have learned on Election Day is this is not a government of the elites, by the media, or for the establishment. What Nov. 8th showed, even if they didn’t listen, is that this is still government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

But he also cautioned the “fight didn’t end” on Election Day, saying “the harder work, the most important work, now lies ahead.”

In addition to repealing and replacing Obamacare, Pence highlighted several additional top agenda items under the Trump administration. These included rescinding “unconstitutional executive orders signed by Barack Obama,” rolling back “job-killing regulations,” strengthening the military, and reducing taxes. He said under Trump, “no state will ever be forced to adopt the Common Core [standards],” and highlighted the administration’s approach to Israel, “our most cherished ally.”

“Israel’s fight is our fight. Her cause is our cause. Her values are our values.”

The vice president also highlighted the top figures in the Trump administration. Mentioning Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Housing secretary pick Ben Carson, Pence said “This is the A team.”

“President Trump has assembled the strongest conservative cabinet in my lifetime, bar none,” Pence said.

Pence told conservatives they have a “once in a lifetime opportunity” to accomplish this agenda. “My friends, this is our time. This is the chance we worked so long to see.”

In order to accomplish all this, Pence said, “We got to mobilize. We got to march forward as if it’s the most important time in the history of our movement, because it is.”

He called on young conservatives “use social media to fight back.”

And pray.

“More than anything,” Pence concluded, “Trump and I need your prayers.” (For more from the author of “Pence Vows to End ‘Obamacare Nightmare'” please click HERE)

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Why Trump’s Call to Investigate Vote Fraud Is Valid

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President Donald Trump recently called for an investigation into vote fraud. His press secretary Sean Spicer added: “This isn’t just about the 2016 election. This is about the integrity of our voting system.”

And there is a problem: Liberal activists have all too often rejected and fought against bipartisan efforts to fix these critical problems.

Trump detailed some of the problems in our voting system: “You have people that are registered who are dead, who are illegals, who are in two states. You have people registered in two states. … They vote twice.”

In 2014, President Barack Obama’s bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration called for voter list maintenance to improve the voter registration rolls. Yet liberals have regularly fought against efforts to clean up voter rolls.

The irony was that at the same time Obama’s lawyer, Bob Bauer, was leading the bipartisan commission, his own firm was suing the state of Virginia, calling the efforts to clean up voter rolls racist and purging.

It goes further. Obama nominated Myrna Perez to be on the Election Assistance Commission. Perez was an adamant opponent of voter list maintenance, declaring such efforts “purging.”

This is why it’s tough to even talk about vote fraud. Any efforts, even those with bipartisan support, are bitterly opposed by liberal activists.

Aside from the incendiary rhetoric, there are real challenges to maintaining clean voter registration rolls that liberals and conservatives need to work together to overcome.

Underfunded and understaffed state election offices do not have the resources to review voter registration records and remove dead people and other ineligible voters. States do not share information to identify double registrations and potential double voting.

Lists of noncitizens excused from jury duty are not shared with secretaries of state to be removed from voter registration rolls. Significant advances are being made in this area through the use of technology, but much remains to be done. Bipartisan cooperation, not political bickering, is needed.

There may be no better example than the requirement for a photo ID. Voter ID is overwhelmingly supported by the public. A 2016 Gallup poll last August found that 80 percent of Americans, including 63 percent of Democrats, support the requirement that a person show a photo ID at the polls before voting.

A primary recommendation of the 2005 bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform (the “Carter-Baker Commission”) was to require voter ID. This commission was led by Jimmy Carter, former president and noted liberal, and James Baker, secretary of state under President George H.W. Bush.

Yet, liberals oppose any efforts to enact commonsense voter ID laws, opposing them in legislatures and in the courts. Voter ID laws, which protect the integrity of the vote and thus our democracy for all citizens, are called racist and mechanisms of voter suppression.

Liberals often make ludicrous, unsubstantiated claims about voter ID, such as claiming hundreds of thousands of voters would be disenfranchised by voter ID—claims that even sympathetic liberals and courts question as based on faulty statistics and methods.

Liberal activists unfortunately show by their actions they do not want to fix our electoral system despite strong public, bipartisan support for things like voter list maintenance and photo ID requirements.

Instead of accepting and supporting reforms that have public support, liberals open the door to more fraud by championing changes to the process like mandatory voter registration, all mail-in voting, same-day registration, no-excuse absentee voting, and not requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration.

These changes have not been shown to improve voter participation, engagement, or turnout, but instead strain local election resources and present more opportunities for ineligible people to register and cast fraudulent ballots.

Take the example of New Hampshire.

Democrat New Hampshire Secretary of State William Gardner supports a 30-day residency requirement to stop fraudulent, as he calls it, “drive-by voting,” in which people from out of state come to New Hampshire for a short period to vote on Election Day.

New Hampshire has same-day registration and no period of residency required before a person may register and vote. Yet a commonsense residency requirement has been passed for the past two years by the New Hampshire Legislature, which liberals in the Legislature opposed and then-Gov. Maggie Hassan vetoed each time.

Even Hillary Clinton recognized the problem, alleging that out-of-state voters led to her losing the 2016 New Hampshire presidential primary to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Gardner pledged to investigate.

One can only wonder how out-of-state voters affected the close 2016 presidential and senatorial election in New Hampshire, where Hassan defeated Sen. Kelly Ayotte by approximately 700 votes.

Significantly, data from the state election results published regarding the 2012 and 2014 general elections by the New Hampshire secretary of state demonstrate the margin of victory for the winning candidate in the races for governor, Senate, and president was less than the number of votes cast on Election Day by same-day registrants.

A few votes from out-of-state voters can literally change the winner of a race.

This begs the question: What are liberals trying to hide? Why not support Trump’s call for an investigation into vote fraud? Is it because they are concerned what would happen if they helped pass laws to protect the integrity of our elections?

It’s time to stop playing politics with election administration and start working together to fix our electoral system, which in turn protects our democracy and our republic. (For more from the author of ” Why Trump’s Call to Investigate Vote Fraud Is Valid” please click HERE)

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Climate Change ‘Lunacy’ Called a Gift to Conservatives

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For conservatives, the “lunacy,” “wrongness,” and “criminality” of climate change theories is the gift that keeps on giving, the executive editor of the London branch of Breitbart News Service said Thursday during a panel discussion at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Three major strands characterize the climate change movement, James Delingpole said during the CPAC panel, sponsored by E&E Legal Institute and titled “Fake Climate News Camouflaging an Anti-Capitalist Agenda.”

Delingpole identified these three strands as a sort of religious view that sees man “as a cancer and blight to the planet,” a “follow the money” component in which well-placed individuals “make money off scams” at public expense, and a political component that exists, he said, because “the left has always wanted to find scientific justification to tax and regulate us and control our lives.”

Joining Delingpole were Steve Milloy, a lawyer and author who founded the website JunkScience.com, and Tony Heller, who has written under the pseudonym Steven Goddard at the blog Real Science, which he founded. John Fund, a columnist for National Review, acted as moderator.

When he was on a panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival in 2008, Fund recalled, he noticed that activists there were substituting the words “climate change” for “global warming.”

He asked audience members to explain the change, and it turned out to be “a very uncomfortable question,” Fund said. “If you ask a question innocently enough, the truth comes out.”

Since the planet isn’t always warming, environmental activists found that they had more flexibility to advance their agenda under the more generic label of “climate change,” he said.

Looking to the future of energy policy, Thursday’s CPAC panelists said they found cause for encouragement with the Trump administration.

Milloy credited President Donald Trump for a professed willingness to “abolish the EPA” and for recognizing the Environmental Protection Agency has committed “regulatory overreach.” He said he anticipates the Trump administration will “turn loose the American energy industry.”

Environmental activists have made a concerted effort to circulate “fake climate news” in recent years, but the technique is not exactly new, Heller said.

The 1692 witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, may have been brought on in part by a spell of cold weather, he suggested.

Citizens blamed alleged witches for lower-than-average temperatures, according to some news reports.

Panelists also discussed the “climategate scandal” involving emails leaked to the internet from the University of East Anglia in Great Britain in 2009. The emails showed that some university researchers appeared willing to manipulate scientific data to exaggerate global warming.

Such manipulation of scientific data is often at the root of “fake news,” panelists agreed.

CPAC, the largest annual national gathering of conservative activists, runs from Wednesday to Saturday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington. (For more from the author of “Climate Change ‘Lunacy’ Called a Gift to Conservatives” please click HERE)

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