God’s Relentless Pursuit: One Woman’s Journey From Darkness to Light

/0 Comments/in , /by

The story of Yvette Castillo is a testament of God’s love and pursuit of his children — even children who, like Yvette, have struggled with drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, abortions, suicidal thoughts and even a pact with the devil.

Lasting Pain and a Pact with the Devil

Yvette was 3 years old when she was molested. As Yvette tells her own story on YouTube, her alcoholic father and “disappointing” mother failed to protect her, and the act of selfishness that took her innocence set her up for a life of self-destruction, Yvette said in her testimony on YouTube.

One day, alone in her bedroom, Yvette invoked satanic power. “I said, ‘Give me the power to hurt everyone, to stop people from messing with me. … I didn’t know that I was making a pact with the devil. I knew who I was talking to, but I didn’t know how serious it was.”

Her life spiraled downhill from there. She began cutting, using drugs, fighting at school and disrespecting teachers. Given multiple opportunities to change, she refused each time. At 14 years old she gave birth to her first child — but being a new parent couldn’t change her. “Not even my child stopped me from doing bad things,” she says. “It was a force that had taken over me, and nobody could stop me.”

She became involved with an abusive boyfriend — and says she felt like she deserved every hit. She had two abortions; then one day her boyfriend kicked her out and she became homeless. Pregnant once again, Yvette continued to use drugs and drink alcohol. She ended up in a crack house where she was raped. “I was trusting the drugs instead of trusting God to make me happy. I thought it was an easier solution, but it wasn’t.”

No Heart

“I no longer had a heart,” she says. “I couldn’t love my kids, I couldn’t love myself. I was so drained.”

A new boyfriend accepted Christ and began attending church. He asked Yvette to go with him. For a while she went, but became disenchanted with “older Christians whose lives she thought didn’t align with Jesus’ teachings.” She left the church and Christianity — saying, “God I’m sorry, but this is not going to work.”

“Little did I know that this was the enemy messing with me. I ran from God for five years.”

Yvette returned to her partying ways, but soon experienced depression, anxiety and panic attacks. She began hearing voices. At one point she heard the devil laughing: “This is where I wanted you. We’re going to destroy you and your children.”

‘You and God are Good’

In this moment of desperation Yvette cried out to God. She returned to church, initially thinking she would just drop off her teenage daughter, who was also struggling. Convinced by friends to stay, Yvette ended up walking to the altar following the service for prayer. Out of the blue, the preacher came up to her and said, “God just wants you to know that you and Him are good. He doesn’t hold anything against you.”

Those words broke through the hardness of her heart and tears rolled down her face. “I felt so much lighter. It was crazy. Something awoke inside of me that God spoke to me and said, ‘I love you.’” She cried out, “I’m sorry God!”

But a real moment of surrender came on a Thursday morning as she walked in a park. After years of struggling with drugs and praying for deliverance, she felt the atmosphere change. “Something spoke to me: ‘Worship God. Lift up your hands and worship God.’ That voice kept coming and got so overwhelming.” She looked around and felt embarrassed, but did it anyway. “As soon as I lifted up my hands, something began to happen. I started to cry and couldn’t stop crying. I started feeling the presence of God, his holiness, his love, his mercy. It was like I wasn’t even at the park. I was in front of His throne. It was God.”

A New Creation

She says God’s forgiveness and mercy were beautiful to her then, that God truly made her into a new creation. “God told me: You are no longer bound to sin, to addiction, to anxiety. I have rescued you from darkness.” She envisioned Jesus descending and wrapping her in His robe. “When I saw that, I was in tears because I knew that God had made me clean,” she said, “It was such a beautiful experience.”

Yvette went home and threw out all of her drugs. She had no desire for them anymore — in fact, they made her nauseated. “Never am I going to put that inside of my body again. I’ve abused the temple of the Holy Spirit. God delivered me. God brought me back even stronger.”

“His grace … I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t deserve His love, I didn’t deserve His grace,” she says. “Even though I walked away from God, God loved me so much that He brought me back again.”

(For more from the author of “God’s Relentless Pursuit: One Woman’s Journey From Darkness to Light” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Court Strikes Down Transgender Mandate, Protecting Doctors, Children, and Hospitals

/0 Comments/in , /by

While family and friends were counting down to the new year, I was watching a different kind of countdown—whether doctors and health care providers would be forced to violate their medical judgment and provide procedures, including gender transition services and abortions, under a new government mandate.

The mandate is a 362-page regulation that claims to interpret part of the Affordable Care Act. It was issued in May 2016, and major portions of this mandate would have kicked in on Jan. 1.

Becket Law had asked a Texas court for an order protecting health care providers. It was less than nine hours to midnight when we heard the good news: A Texas court issued an injunction protecting doctors and the families they serve from the mandate.

The court ruling came after eight states, an association of almost 18,000 doctors, and a Catholic hospital system challenged a new federal regulation that requires doctors to perform gender transition procedures on children, even if the doctor believes the treatment could harm the child.

Doctors who followed the Hippocratic oath—the historic medical vow that doctors take to act in the best interest of their patients—would have faced severe consequences, including losing their jobs.

This is a commonsense ruling. The government has no business forcing private doctors to perform procedures on children that the government itself recognizes can be harmful and exempts its own doctors from performing. The ruling ensures that doctors’ best medical judgment will not be replaced with political agendas and bureaucratic interference.

The federal regulation applied to over 900,000 doctors—nearly every doctor in the U.S.—and would have cost health care providers and taxpayers nearly $1 billion.

The government itself does not require its own military doctors to perform these procedures. It also does not require coverage of gender transition procedures in Medicare or Medicaid—even for adults—because the government medical experts that oversee those programs did not believe medical research demonstrates that gender reassignment surgery improves health outcomes, with some studies demonstrating that these procedures were in fact harmful.

But under the Department of Health and Human Services rule developed by political appointees, doctors citing the same evidence and using their best medical judgment in an individual case would have faced potential lawsuits or job loss.

A website about this court case provides leading research on the issue, including guidance the government itself relies on. This research shows that up to 94 percent of children with gender dysphoria will grow out of their dysphoria naturally and live healthy lives without the need for surgery or lifelong hormone regimens.

The government desperately wanted to avoid a court ruling on these facts, telling the Texas court that no injunction was needed. Instead, doctors should wait around to see if they got sued and then see whether the government would agree, based on the circumstances, that they were entitled to protection.

That argument was pretty rich coming from the Department of Health and Human Services, which has spent the last five years fighting lawsuits to limit conscience protections for groups like the Green family, who own Hobby Lobby, and the Little Sisters of the Poor.

In those cases and others, the government has been quick to argue for strict limits on protections like the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Church Amendment, which protects providers from having to perform abortions.

Never did the government claim that rulings on the contraceptive mandate should wait until someone brought a lawsuit and the government had time to weigh the issues and pick a side. The court didn’t buy that excuse, instead recognizing that the mandate would create immediate and irreparable harm to doctors nationwide.

This ruling is an across-the-board victory that will ensure that the deeply personal medical decision of a gender transition procedure remains between families and their doctors.

This case was brought jointly by Becket Law—which defended Franciscan Alliance, a religious hospital network sponsored by the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration, and the Christian Medical & Dental Associations—and by the Texas attorney general and the states of Texas, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Kentucky, Kansas, Louisiana, Arizona, and Mississippi. (For more from the author of “Court Strikes Down Transgender Mandate, Protecting Doctors, Children, and Hospitals” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Democrats Take Aim at Trump Nominees, Unlike Republicans’ Speedy OK of Obama Cabinet

/0 Comments/in , /by

Senate Democrats are mounting an aggressive effort to reject or delay President-elect Donald Trump’s choices for major Cabinet positions, in a reversal of the deference Republicans showed in speedily confirming President Barack Obama’s nominees eight years ago.

In January 2009, the Senate confirmed 10 of Obama’s Cabinet choices within his first week as president, nine of them by voice vote, in which senators’ yes and no votes aren’t recorded.

Now, though, the Senate’s top Democrat has put the chamber’s top Republican on notice that at least eight of Trump’s picks are in Democrats’ crosshairs, beginning with one of their own colleagues—Trump’s choice for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.

Others targeted are Trump’s picks for secretary of state, treasury, education, labor, and health and human services.

“Any attempt by Republicans to have a series of rushed, truncated hearings before Inauguration Day and before the Congress and public have adequate information on all of them is something Democrats will vehemently resist,” new Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Monday in a statement to The Washington Post.

“If Republicans think they can quickly jam through a whole slate of nominees without a fair hearing process, they’re sorely mistaken.”

In addition to Sessions, The Washington Post reported, those targeted by Democrats include Rex Tillerson, the Exxon Mobil CEO who is Trump’s choice for secretary of state, and Steve Mnuchin, the former Goldman Sachs executive who is Trump’s pick for treasury secretary.

Other Trump choices on the hit list, Democratic aides told the newspaper:

— Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., for secretary of health and human services.
— Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-N.C., for director of the Office of Management and Budget.
— Philanthropist and education activist Betsy DeVos for education secretary.
— Restaurant chain executive Andy Puzder for labor secretary.
— Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt for environmental protection administrator.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., answered the Democrats on Tuesday by releasing statistics and quotations he said illustrate how much deference Republicans gave to Obama’s nominees in 2009—and how much Schumer and other Democrats have said they respected such deference.

Why Democrats Have Few Options

Democrats don’t have the numbers to outright defeat Trump nominees, thanks to a procedural change they made when they last controlled the Senate.

Republicans need a simple majority of 51 votes to move to confirm the president’s Cabinet appointments, rather than the supermajority of 60 previously required, and they have 52 seats. In addition, incoming Vice President Mike Pence will have the power to break any tie votes.

Democrats’ requirement of only a simple majority to avoid a filibuster and put a confirmation to a floor vote, or advance other business, is known on Capitol Hill as “the nuclear option.”

“They have tied their own hands on this,” Heritage Foundation procedural expert Rachel Bovard said of the Democrats, “and because of ‘going nuclear,’ essentially they have put every … nominee at a 51-vote threshold and there’s 52 Republicans.”

Referring to Republican leadership and the Trump transition team, Bovard added in a phone interview with The Daily Signal:

So, if they can get every Republican on board for each nominee, which I think that they’ll be able to do, there’s not much that Senate Democrats can do against that. It’s completely their own fault.

Sixty votes still are required to end debate and proceed to a vote to confirm a nominee for the Supreme Court, though a simple majority is required to confirm.

Democrats controlled the Senate in 2009, and would for two years, but Republicans put up little or no resistance to the choices of a new Democrat president, Obama, for top executive branch offices.

Now that Republicans control the Senate, however, Democrats appear to be showing little such deference to a new Republican president’s picks to run major government departments.

‘A Longstanding Tradition’

Bovard, director of policy services at The Heritage Foundation, previously was policy director for the Senate Steering Committee and an aide to several Republican senators and House members.

She told The Daily Signal that Obama’s Cabinet nominees enjoyed an easy confirmation process because of the well-established tradition of senatorial respect for a president’s major appointees, who run executive branch departments as the president expects.

Bovard said of the traditional attitude of senators:

They may not agree with everything that the nominee says or does or pledges, but it has been a longstanding tradition particularly in the Senate just to say, ‘Look, the president has the right to pick his own people.’ That is sort of the underlying trend.

Obama’s immediate predecessors as president, Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton, also enjoyed relatively speedy Cabinet confirmations.

The Senate confirmed 11 of Bush’s Cabinet appointees in the first week of his first term; it confirmed 17 of Clinton’s nominees in the first week of his first term, according to Senate records.

Interestingly, the Senate used the voice vote more in confirming Obama’s initial Cabinet choices than it did in conforming Bush or Clinton nominees.

The Senate confirmed eight of Bush’s initial Cabinet picks by voice vote, and three of Clinton’s initial choices.

McConnell’s release of confirmation statistics for Obama includes a quote from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va.

“I think we owe deference to a president for choices to executive positions, and I think that that is a very important thing to grapple with,” Kaine said at a 2013 hearing held by the Armed Services Committee.

In November, the release from McConnell’s office reminded, Schumer suggested he would work with Republicans to get things done in Congress and avoid needless delays.

“We have a moral obligation, even beyond the economy and politics, to avoid gridlock and get the country to work again,” Schumer told Bloomberg. “We have to get things done.”

Senate Democrats can do little to derail Trump’s nominees, Bovard said, but they can use various procedural maneuvers to delay the process. Among them: failing to show up to a committee meeting so that a quorum is not present, and, on the Senate floor, prolonging debate for up to 30 additional hours.

‘Confident in the Nominees’

Conservatives in Congress appear eager to work with the department heads and other executive branch officials Trump has assembled, Bovard said.

“I think for the most part conservatives feel confident in the nominees that have been put forward. I think they are trying to give Trump’s Cabinet a chance,” she said. “They have not come out swinging in any direction except forward.”

This positive attitude is largely due to the stalwart conservative convictions of Trump’s picks, Bovard said, citing three:

Betsy DeVos is really well-known to conservatives for her work on school choice, Jeff Sessions has been a titan of the conservative movement for decades, even Ben Carson [Trump’s pick for secretary of housing and urban development] has been a longtime proponent of reforming HUD. So these people aren’t unknown to conservatives.

Questioning his honesty, the Democratic National Committee demanded on New Year’s Eve that Sessions recuse himself from the Senate vote to confirm him as attorney general. A hearing for Sessions before the Judiciary Committee is scheduled for Jan. 10, which is 10 days before Trump is sworn in as president.

The Democratic National Committee accused the Alabama senator of withholding information in filling out the screening questionnaire issued by the Senate Judiciary Committee. In a statement, Adam Hodge, DNC communications director, said:

Jeff Sessions has fiercely argued in the past that omitting information isn’t just wrong, that it may also be illegal. So what does he do once he’s nominated to be the attorney general? He omits information from his dark past, particularly when he was deemed too racist to be a federal judge.

Based on his own reasoning, and in keeping with Senate tradition, Sessions must recuse himself from voting on his own nomination.

Sarah Isgur Flores, a spokeswoman for Sessions in the confirmation process, says such attacks are unfounded.

“Sen. Sessions’ four-decade career in public service includes bipartisan victories on criminal justice issues with folks like Sens. [Edward] Kennedy and [Dick] Durbin,” Flores said, citing two Democrats in a written statement provided Tuesday to The Daily Signal. She added of Sessions:

He has bipartisan endorsements that include law enforcement, victim rights organizations, and African-American leaders because they understand he will refocus the Department of Justice on upholding the rule of law and ensuring public safety. The time for playing politics should have ended on Election Day.

A Question of ‘Previous Political Activity’

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, earlier said Sessions’ questionnaire was incomplete and asked Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, to postpone the Jan. 10 hearing to allow for more time to review the materials he submitted.

Grassley, in response, said Sessions has been upfront about his past, including old accusations, and that he submitted more material to supplement his answers. The committee chairman added that hearings would not be postponed.

Among her concerns, Feinstein said, is that Sessions, an early supporter of Trump for president, was not clear enough in explaining his involvement in “any political campaign.”

Grassley replied in a letter to Feinstein: “The question regarding previous political activity is of course designed to ascertain whether and how a nominee has been politically active. There can be no surprise that a sitting United States senator is politically active.”

Feinstein said another concern is that Sessions has not submitted the text of some speeches.

“Regarding the claim that several speeches were not included, of course you also know that we and our colleagues are frequently called upon to speak at a variety of constituent and other events,” Grassley replied. “Senator Sessions explained that he made his best effort to identify and locate copies of such remarks where available.”

The committee chairman added that Sessions produced all items requested in the questionnaire.

Grassley noted that past Cabinet nominees have not been able to provide transcripts for every speech they ever gave. And, he said, Obama’s first attorney general, Eric Holder, “supplemented his questionnaire materials several times.”

“In December 2008 alone, Attorney General Holder supplemented his questionnaire responses with more than 200 items of information,” Grassley said. (For more from the author of “Democrats Take Aim at Trump Nominees, Unlike Republicans’ Speedy OK of Obama Cabinet” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

New York Proposed Free College, but Not Everyone’s Buying It

/0 Comments/in , /by

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced an “aggressive” new plan to provide free college tuition to families earning up to $125,000 a year. Under the proposal, nearly a million families would qualify.

“We’re making college tuition-free for middle-class families,” Cuomo, a Democrat, said. “This is the most aggressive plan ever proposed.”

To participate, students are required to enroll full time at a state university of New York (SUNY) or city university of New York (CUNY) two- or four-year college.

Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity and a professor of economics at Ohio University, called the proposal “extortionately inappropriate.”

“You’re taking money from the general taxpaying public—including some low- and middle-income people—and redistributing that to a group that will probably include a very significant part of a somewhat more affluent population,” Vedder told The Daily Signal. “It’s certainly not a redistribution to the poor; it’s a redistribution to the middle class—and a fairly affluent middle class.”

Cuomo is billing the proposal as “the first of its kind in the nation.” But while the plan appears to be the most far-reaching, it’s not the first time states have leveraged tax dollars to pay for at least some of their students’ college tuition. Oregon, Tennessee, Georgia, Michigan, and Louisiana have all done so in various forms, but not all of those programs have proven sustainable.

Louisiana, said Norbert Michel, an expert in financial regulations at The Heritage Foundation, provides a case study for why free tuition is “bad public policy.”

“It simply is not true that ‘everyone’ must have a college education,” Michel told The Daily Signal. “Pretending otherwise devalues the college degree, and it isn’t really free. Someone always ends up paying more for a college education when we pretend it’s free because we transfer tax dollars over to universities.”

Under the Louisiana college scholarship program, called the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students (TOPS), any student earning a 2.5 GPA or above who scores at or above the state average on the ACT or SAT is eligible for money to cover the full tuition of any public university in the state, despite how much or little their family earns. Scholarships can also be applied to private schools, although they won’t cover the full cost.

Last March, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, said due to a historic budget shortfall, the state no longer had adequate money to fund the program. According to CNN, more than half of Louisiana State University’s 26,000 undergraduates receive state-funded scholarships, totaling “about $58 million.”

From 2000 to 2010, Louisiana saw a 20 percent spike in the number of high school students who headed to college in one year. But in the wake of the budget shortfall, thousands of students received notifications last year that the scholarship program would only cover 42 percent of tuition costs for the spring 2017 semester.

To address the costs of college affordability, Vedder of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity said he’d “do nothing.”

“I think we’re over-invested in higher education,” he said. “But if you’re going to do something—and maybe there’s a political case for doing something—I would reduce subsidies to the state universities that are already being given, and convert that money to vouchers and give it to the low-income students.”

Cuomo’s Excelsior Scholarship program aims to provide free tuition to students from middle-class families making up to $125,000 per year, which according to the governor, accounts for 80 percent of New York households. He estimates the plan will cost approximately $163 million per year.

In creating the plan, Cuomo took a page from Sen. Bernie Sanders’ playbook. Sanders, an independent from Vermont, appeared alongside the governor on Tuesday at LaGuardia Community College to announce the new proposal.

“If the United States is to succeed in a highly competitive global economy, we need the best-educated workforce in the world,” said Sanders, who campaigned on the issue of free tuition while running for president. “We must make public colleges and universities tuition-free for the middle-class and working families of our country.”

The program, called the Excelsior Scholarship, will be paid for “by leveraging New York State’s generous aid programs,” Cuomo’s press release reads. It adds:

Currently, the Tuition Assistance Program, or TAP, provides nearly $1 billion in grants to college students statewide and New York is one of only two states in the nation that offers this type of entitlement. Under the program, eligible students would still receive TAP and any applicable federal grants. Additional state funds would cover the remaining tuition costs for incoming or existing eligible students.

Average tuition costs for a bachelor’s degree fall between $6,000 and $7,000 at SUNY and CUNY.

Cuomo’s proposal still needs approval from the state Legislature. He and Sanders are hopeful if the measure passes, other states will follow.

“Mark my words,” Sanders said. “If New York state does it this year, state after state will follow.” (For more from the author of “New York Proposed Free College, but Not Everyone’s Buying It” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

When Energy Efficiency Rules Hurt the Public and the Environment

/0 Comments/in , /by

Over the last several years, an extreme and ideologically-driven environmental agenda has hijacked our national energy policy.

Whether its goal is to keep fossil fuels in the ground or to electrify America based on a naïve belief that all electricity will be renewable within 30 years, or some combination, this bias is what we now have come to expect from the Department of Energy and its Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy program.

The example I know well is its effort to increase the minimum energy efficiency for natural gas furnaces. The Department of Energy has ignored due process and subverted sound science to satisfy an ideological result that is not justified by the facts.

The American Public Gas Association was compelled by the Department of Energy’s bias to fund research to demonstrate the incredibly negative impact the proposed natural gas furnace regulation would have on American homeowners.

Approximately 56 million homes across the country are heated with natural gas furnaces because of their energy efficiency and cost benefits. As proposed, the department’s rule would incentivize homeowners to switch to less efficient home heating options, such as electric resistance, which would more than double their home heating cost and yield greater carbon dioxide emissions.

The American Public Gas Association’s technical analysis exposed even greater flaws within the Department of Energy’s rulemaking process and the economic model it depends upon to justify the purported benefits of new regulation.

Procedurally, the association has been forced to take the Department of Energy to court and file multiple complaints with its inspector general because of the arrogance of its bureaucrats.

When the department attempted to set a new efficiency standard via a direct final rule in 2011, it clearly failed to touch all the bases and make appropriate findings of consumer impacts. So the American Public Gas Association appealed and the rule was withdrawn three years later.

We believe the Department of Justice urged the Department of Energy to withdraw the rule because government attorneys did not want this particular matter to be the case of first impression on the final rule process when the government so clearly failed to address public comments opposing the rule.

In 2014, the Department of Energy published a proposed furnace rule (supplemented this year) that went far beyond the initial proposal. During these proceedings, the department twice issued extensions of deadlines after the deadline had passed.

In both cases, the American Public Gas Association had filed timely comments supported by extensive technical analysis in opposition to the rule when major proponents of the rule were yet to file. The association has filed a formal complaint with the Department of Energy’s inspector general and requested an investigation of this perversion of fair play.

On the substance, the American Public Gas Association’s work with the Gas Technology Institute has revealed how the Department of Energy and the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab have used nonpublic data, flawed consumer economic modeling, and unfounded economic justifications.

Over the years, its life cycle cost analysis has become absurdly complex and thus ripe for manipulation. We have seen the use of unjustifiable assumptions to obtain particular results to hide the true consumer costs of the proposed regulation.

Most importantly, the Department of Energy is ignoring the fact that natural gas is the most energy efficient and environmentally sound manner for the vast majority of Americans to heat their homes.

Technological advances are making natural gas residential furnaces more efficient, and the public is snapping them up when they save money. This is proof that the market is working.

Higher Efficiency Condensing Furnace Trends

Between 2006 and 2011, high efficiency condensing furnaces saw a slight artificial bump in sales due to government tax credits. But even with those tax credits, the market trends were not altered much. The use of such furnaces has been steadily rising since 1980, and it continues to rise after the artificial bump.

The upshot is clear. Consumers who benefit from a more expensive technology will purchase that technology—and in this case, it is a higher efficiency condensing natural gas furnace. People should drive markets, not the federal government.

The American Public Gas Association has been one of the leading opponents of the Department of Energy’s proposed furnace rule. This group represents municipally- and community-owned natural gas systems across the country.

These systems are owned and accountable to the citizens within their communities. Who is better equipped to make decisions that impact the lives of Americans, unelected Washington bureaucrats or the homeowners themselves?

The Department of Energy admitted its current proposal would negatively impact 20 percent of American homes. In addition, the overwhelming majority of people who would be hurt are low-income families.

Set aside the fact that the department freely acknowledges and accepts that its proposal would harm 1 in 5 families—its open willingness to do so is incredibly disturbing.

The American Public Gas Association is not opposed to energy efficiency. However, the Department of Energy’s proposed furnace rule will ultimately undermine efficiency goals while significantly increasing costs for American consumers. (For more from the author of “When Energy Efficiency Rules Hurt the Public and the Environment” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Conversion and Martyrdom: Two of Most Unreported Stories of 2016

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Two seismic events occurred in 2016 that the secular media largely missed.

The press’s failure to report them is caused by many things. Spiritual blindness. Disinterest. Ignorance of religious matters. Obstinate disregard for the reality that faith, not just economics or political power, animates human behavior, good and bad.

Here are the two stories that should arrest the attention of all Christians who are concerned with God’s work in the world:

Around the world, people are coming to know Jesus Christ through the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit.

Around the world, people who know Jesus Christ are being put to death for their love for him. Others are being tortured, imprisoned, driven from their homes, denied jobs, and otherwise treated cruelly.

The Spread of Faith

As to the first, in every region of the globe, the number of Christians is swelling. For example, in the Middle East, thousands of Muslims are coming to Christ. As reported by the respected anti-persecution ministry Open Doors,

The Islamic State has been filling the headlines for a long time and filling the hearts of many people in the Middle East with fear. But in the midst of all this, the church in the Middle East is showing the love of Christ to those who fled their homes. Muslims in the Middle East are turning to Jesus in unprecedented numbers.

In Iran,

Thousands of Christians are secretly worshiping in Iran as part of a house church movement in the country. The Iranian government considers Christianity a threat to Islam. However, Open Doors USA estimates that as many as 450,000 Christians are in Iran. Others estimate there are more than 1 million practicing Christians in the country.

In 2011, Pew Research published “Global Christianity — A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population.” A careful evaluation of the data led Pew to conclude that there are roughly 70 million Christians in China (around 60 million Protestants and the remainder Catholics). Some observers believe this number is significantly low.

However, according to Purdue University sociologist Fenggang Yang, “the number of Protestant Christians in China could reach 171 million by 2021 and 255 million by 2025 … it is possible that China could become the largest Protestant country by 2021 and the largest Christian country by 2025.”

The growth of the Christian faith is seen in Africa and the Asia-Pacific region broadly. Another of the Pew report’s findings speaks to this:

Christianity has grown enormously in sub-Saharan Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, where there were relatively few Christians at the beginning of the 20th century. The share of the population that is Christian in sub-Saharan Africa climbed from 9% in 1910 to 63% in 2010, while in the Asia-Pacific region it rose from 3% to 7%. Christianity today — unlike a century ago — is truly a global faith.

The Persecution of the Faithful

Yet with this ongoing and profoundly significant change in religious allegiance throughout the world, there is also a great deal of pain for followers of Jesus. Here are a few headlines that speak to this grim reality:

“Violent Persecution Set to Rise in 2017” — December 29, 2016

“Anti-Christian persecution: 90,000 killed in 2016” — December 26, 2016

“Chinese Communist Party readies crackdown on Christianity” — October 7, 2016

“ISIS Orders Its Franchises to Kill Christians” — August 14, 2016

“New Boko Haram leader vows to kill all Christians” — August 4, 2016

The list could go on and on.

House Speaker Paul Ryan has called President Obama’s record on protecting the persecuted “abysmal.” It is hard not to agree. After leaving the State Department’s key religious liberty post vacant for nearly two years, Mr. Obama appointed a motivational speaker with virtually no knowledge of international persecution issues to the role.

Although her successor, Rabbi David Saperstein, is widely hailed as an effective advocate for the persecuted, the fact remains that President Obama has shown a distinct disinterest in including religious liberty and anti-persecution efforts among his foreign policy priorities.

As his administration draws to a close, the President did recently sign “an update of the 1998 bill that established a religious freedom office in the State Department and an independent watchdog panel, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).” Named the Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act in honor of its original author and leading champion for religious liberty around the world, former Congressman Frank Wolf, Christianity Today reports that the measure is designed to improve the federal government’s effectiveness in promoting religious liberty by:

“Requiring the ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom to report directly to the secretary of State;

“Establishing an ‘entities of particular concern’ category — a companion to the ‘countries of particular concern’ classification used for nearly 20 years by the State Department — for non-government actors, such as the Islamic State (IS) and the Nigerian terrorist organization Boko Haram.

“Instituting a ‘designated persons list’ for individuals who violate religious freedom and authorizing the president to issue sanctions against those who participate in persecution.”

The bill also “creates a list of overseas religious prisoners; mandates religious liberty training for all foreign service officers; (and) establishes a minimum number of full-time staff members in the State Department’s international religious freedom office.”

This is welcome news not only for the persecuted worldwide but also for our own foreign policy interests: By standing with the persecuted, America not only remains true to her own founding principles of religious liberty and human dignity but also lets the suffering know that they have a friend in the United States. This seed, once planted, will bear good fruit for American diplomacy in the future.

What the enemies of the Gospel don’t understand is that in another of God’s marvelous ironies, persecution only leads to an increase in people coming to Christ. As church father Tertullian said, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” May many of those enemies, in 2017, themselves become like Paul — once persecutors, now believers in the Risen Son. May we pray to that end, and never forget to pray and advocate for some of the very least of our — and Jesus’s — brethren. (For more from the author of “Conversion and Martyrdom: Two of Most Unreported Stories of 2016” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

The Most Baffling and Shameful Clinton Endorsement You’ll Read All Year

/0 Comments/in , , /by

In one of the most absurd media endorsement of recent years, the Guardian’s Nigerian edition has named 2016 Democratic presidential nominee as the “Person of the Year” for 2016. Have they really forgotten about her role in the rise of Boko Haram during her time at the U.S. State Department?

The paper’s write-up is just as dubious as the honor. Starting with the failed “Love trumps hate” slogan, the explanation quickly devolves into a praise-only, slathering, tongue bath devoid of any meaningful evaluation of the candidate’s numerous faults and failures. It references her “uncommon dignity” while making no reference to the fact that she referred to a sizable chunk of the American electorate as “a basket or deplorables” or had a complete meltdown in the middle of a public video conference address, which were just two examples of the uninspiring, poorly run campaign that lost the election to Donald Trump.

Conspicuously absent from — and most perplexing about — the POY title is that while it glances across Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, it says nothing about what her apparent cronyism in office did to Nigeria and the entire Lake Chad region. (There were similar instances throughout the rest of the continent, too, but I’m trying to stay focused here.)

As pointed out elsewhere on the site, as what has become the deadliest terror group on earth — Boko Haram — rose to prominence in the African nation’s northern region, Clinton and her subordinates did little more than twiddle their thumbs while the Clinton political machine made bank in foreign donations.

A two-part, investigative report from World Magazine published in July delves into the political wrangling that surrounded the years-long delay of Boko Haram’s designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, even after the administration obtained intelligence indicating Boko Haram’s ties to al Qaeda. Meanwhile, Clinton Foundation donors and others in the then-cabinet secretary’s political circle financially benefitted by making off with hefty political donations:

The Clintons’ long association with top suspect tycoons — and their refusal to answer questions about those associations—takes on greater significance considering the dramatic rise of Boko Haram violence while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. Did some Clinton donors stand to gain from the State Department not taking action against the Islamic terrorist group?

Perhaps the most prominent Nigerian with ties to the Clintons is Houston-based Kase Lawal. The founder of CAMAC Energy, an oil exploration and energy consortium, Lawal had a long history with Bill Clinton before becoming a “bundler” for Hillary’s 2008 presidential bid […]

Today the Houston oil exec — who retired in May as CEO but continues as chairman of the board of CAMAC, now called Erin Energy — tops the list of wealthiest Nigerians living in North America. His firm reports about $2.5 billion in annual revenue, making it one of the top private companies in the United States.

The delays even prompted a congressional probe into Clinton’s Nigeria ties in September.

After Clinton’s resignation from the foundation, many of the hostages may have come home, but Boko Haram is still operating in the jungles of the Lake Chad region. Terror attacks in the country have slowed since the bloody summer of 2015, but now the nation is staring down a jihadism-precipitated famine that threatens the lives of tens of thousands of children. In recent news, one of its leaders proclaimed in New Year’s Eve that “the battle is just beginning.”

The delays even prompted a congressional probe into Clinton’s Nigeria ties in September.

After Clinton’s resignation from the foundation, many of the hostages may have come home, but Boko Haram is still operating in the jungles of the Lake Chad region. Terror attacks in the country have slowed since the bloody summer of 2015, but now the nation is staring down a jihadism-precipitated famine that threatens the lives of tens of thousands of children. In recent news, one of its leaders proclaimed in New Year’s Eve that “the battle is just beginning.”

“[Clinton] ran a campaign of ideas for the future,” the Guardian piece reads. “But her opponent was and is a misogynist, a demagogue whose own ideas, to the extent that he had any, were warped, racist and downright insulting of our collective humanity.”

What about the humanity of those who have been blown to bits, kidnapped, displaced and starved by the terror organization she enabled? Not a drop of digital ‘ink’ to be found.

For any news outlet based out of Nigeria — even if it is an affiliate of a European daily (though it might explain the detachment from reality) — to laud Clinton so one-sidedly while ignoring her role in Nigeria’s dismal and oft-ignored situation is at best baffling, and at worst downright shameful. (For more from the author of “The Most Baffling and Shameful Clinton Endorsement You’ll Read All Year” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Missouri Gun Owners Won Constitutional Carry. It’s Time to Take This Show NATIONAL

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Constitutional carry is officially legal in the state of Missouri, as a new law permitting legal gun owners to carry concealed firearms has gone into effect with the start of the new year.

The bill that was enacted into law, Senate Bill 656, allows individuals to carry hidden weapons anywhere they can carry weapons openly. Missouri joins 10 other states that allow concealed carry.

The bill’s sponsor, former Missouri Representative Eric Burlison, said that an American’s Second Amendment right to carry a firearm applies both in and outside of your pocket. “The same right you have to carry on the outside of your jacket or pocket, we want to extend that right to be able to carry on the inside of your jacket or pocket,” said Burlison, according to KY3.

Additionally, the new law creates a “stand your ground” right, which allows people to remain in any place they have a legal right to be in and defend themselves with their firearm if there is danger present. It also extends the “castle doctrine”— the right of a homeowner to use deadly force if confronted with a threat in their home — to invited guests, such as a babysitter.

The bill became law after a contentious legislative battle in 2016, in which state senate Republicans used an arcane parliamentary procedure to overturn Democratic Governor Jay Nixon’s veto. The state’s Republican majority has previously used the tactic, known as “calling the previous question,” to overcome Democratic filibusters and force votes on bills.

If only congressional Republicans had that same resolve in advancing their agenda under President Obama. However, there is a great opportunity to defend the Second Amendment under the administration of President-elect Trump.

“The Second Amendment guarantees a fundamental right that belongs to all law-abiding Americans,” reads President-elect Trump’s official policy position on the right to bear arms. “The Constitution doesn’t create that right — it ensures that the government can’t take it away. Our Founding Fathers knew, and our Supreme Court has upheld, that the Second Amendment’s purpose is to guarantee our right to defend ourselves and our families. This is about self-defense, plain and simple.”

The president-elect’s strong vocal support for the Second Amendment can be translated into national policy with the passage of national concealed carry reciprocity. Such a law would permit a Missouri resident who can legally carry a firearm in his state to carry his weapon legally in any state in the country.

Trump is in favor of such legislation, declaring: “A driver’s license works in every state, so it’s common sense that a concealed carry permit should work in every state. If we can do that for driving – which is a privilege, not a right – then surely we can do that for concealed carry, which is a right, not a privilege.”

With Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, will national concealed carry reciprocity become law?

Time will tell. And conservatives will exert pressure on Republicans in Congress to advance a conservative agenda. (For more from the author of “Missouri Gun Owners Won Constitutional Carry. It’s Time to Take This Show NATIONAL” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

The Numbers Don’t Lie: Trump Needs to Do Better by 2020

/0 Comments/in , /by

The year 2017 and the inauguration of a new president are upon us. And though the historic, stunning election of November 8, 2016 is behind us, it looks like the final data on what happened that day are very close to being at last finalized.

I’ve watched that data carefully on pretty much a daily basis since November 8, courtesy of the running tabulation collected by Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report, who has been the superb go-to source for people tracking this data. In the first two weeks after the election, Hillary Clinton’s popular vote lead over Donald Trump expanded somewhere in the range of 100,000-plus votes per day, which was shocking to behold. We have truly never seen anything like it.

Thus, while most pundits have moved beyond post-election analysis, I think it’s crucial to pause to revisit the numbers now that we have nearly finalized hard data. We can draw some fairly definitive conclusions.

So, looking at this from the winner’s perspective — that is, Donald Trump’s — let’s call this the good, the bad, and the ugly.

First, the good

Trump’s amazing win was an Electoral College triumph — the only victory that counts in winning a presidential election. It is striking just how narrowly Trump defeated Hillary in the crucial swing states that secured his win.

If the total percentage of victory in states like Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin were flipped by a mere one percent — or in some cases 0.2 percent — Hillary Clinton would have won them all, and thereby taken the overall election handily. Of course, they weren’t reversed. Trump flipped those states in ways that recent Republicans presidential nominees were unable to do. I wrote a piece on the eve of the 2012 election predicting that Mitt Romney would win Pennsylvania. Close, but no cigar. Trump, however, pulled it off — and it was a great accomplishment.

More good news from Trump on the swing states: As I looked closer at the 13 swing states, I see that Hillary did not reach 50 percent or more in a single swing state. That’s pretty significant. Trump did so in two of them, Iowa and Ohio, where he crushed her in both by margins of, respectively 9.4 percent and 8.1 percent. He got 51 percent in each, which was a major feat. Other swing states, like Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin were very tiny margins for him but major victories nonetheless. He also blew the Clinton campaign out in Indiana, a state that Barack Obama won in 2008.

And still more good news from Trump on the state data: It’s interesting how low Hillary’s percentages were in some states. She got under 40 percent in 18 states. She actually got less than 30 percent in six states (Idaho, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming). Trump earned less than 40 percent in 10 states and the District of Columbia. He didn’t get less than 30 percent in any states but almost did so in California, the most-populous state, where he was annihilated by Hillary, securing a mere 31.6 percent of the vote. And forget all that bunkum from Trump pom-pom boys about how their guy could compete in New York. He got his butt handed to him in New York with a mere 36.5 percent of the vote there.

Moreover, don’t make the mistake of over-inflating Trump’s seemingly sizable Electoral College vote over Hillary. The final tally was 306 to 232, which was good, but far from great. As Nate Silver pointed out in an enlightening historical analysis of Electoral College victories, Trump’s Electoral College margin was nice but well below average. Out of 54 presidential elections, his Electoral College margin ranks 44th.

Now, for the bad and the ugly for Donald Trump

The sheer depth of Trump’s popular-vote loss to Hillary is literally unprecedented in how bad it is. It is a terrible defeat for a winning president, and Trump enthusiasts should not delude themselves otherwise. They ignore or dismiss it at their and his future political peril.

Looking again at the latest cumulative popular-vote tabulation, Hillary’s lead over Trump as I write is 2.865 million. Her popular-vote lead still might hit three million, but will probably come in just under that. Still, those who (going forward) write about it or casually remark on it will probably tend to round it up to three million.

How dreadful is this for Donald Trump? The previous record popular-vote loss for a winning president was George W. Bush losing by only 543,000 votes to Gore in 2000. Trump’s loss dwarfs that by over five-fold.

Even more alarming, Trump’s percentage loss is 46.1 percent vs. 48.2 percent for Hillary. It has continued to fall and still may slip under 46.0 percent.

The 46.1 percent figure gives Trump a lower percentage than not only Hillary, but also Obama in 2012 (51.1 percent) and 2008 (52.9 percent), Romney in 2012 (47.2 percent), Bush in 2004 (51.0 percent) and 2000 (47.9 percent), Kerry in 2004 (48.5 percent), and Gore in 2000 (48.4 percent).

For a while, I thought that Trump might get lower than who was 45.7 percent, but that probably will not happen. Of course, here as well, historians and pundits and others will round down Trump to 46 percent, just as they tend to round up McCain to 46 percent. It will then look like basically the same vote percentage for both.

(By the way, Michael Dukakis in 1988 got 45.6 percent of the vote, which likewise is usually rounded up to 46 percent by historians. And amazingly, with that Trump-like popular-vote percentage, Dukakis was obliterated in the Electoral College, 426 to 111.)

Some Trump enthusiasts will likely dismiss all of this shocking data by arguing that if we simply removed California, New York, and Illinois from Hillary’s vote totals, Trump would have won the popular vote. That’s just downright absurd. The same could have been said for Romney, for Bush in 2000, and maybe even for McCain, R-Ariz. (F, 32 percent) (I would need to do the math). It wouldn’t be fair to do that to Hillary’s vote total any more than it would be to remove Texas and the South from Trump’s vote total.

Trump also countered that he would have campaigned in places like California had the presidency depended not on the Electoral College but on the popular vote. Sure. But so would have Hillary. In fact, Hillary thus would have campaigned in Texas and the South as well.

This is an asinine argument. If a student of mine made this argument on an exam, I’d give him an “F.”

Look, Trump admirers, your guy got crushed in the popular vote in historically unprecedented fashion for a winning president. So be it. Accept that and move on. You’re far better off conceding your liabilities, so you can work to improve them next time around. Making false assumptions and excuses will be your political downfall. You were extremely fortunate you didn’t get burned by them in November 2016.

So, for Trump supporters who have been emailing me gloating about how brilliantly right they were, in defiance of the literal 90 percent-plus of polls that had him losing to Hillary (i.e., getting less votes), cut the nonsense. The polls were actually right. You were wrong. Be humble and be thankful, because you and your guy are extremely fortunate, even as (yes) his Electoral College triumph was a great achievement.

And here’s where your gloating can come back to bite you: If Trump gets 46.1 percent of the vote in 2020, he’ll be the first one-term president in a while, after three consecutive two-term presidents, and four of the last five.

Keep this recent but crucial historical fact in mind: Barack Obama in 2012 actually got fewer votes than he did in 2008. He got fewer popular votes, fewer Electoral College votes, fewer states, fewer counties, and a lower overall percentage vote. He still won, yes, but his margin of victory over McCain in 2008 had been very significant. He had room for error his second time around. Donald Trump does not.

Don’t gloat. Trump almost achieved the impossible: becoming the only Republican who could’ve lost to Hillary Clinton.

But let’s wrap up on a positive note, circling back to the good from November 2016: Donald Trump deserves tremendous kudos for squeaking out Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida, and for sizable margins in places like North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, and all-around for a solid Electoral College win. Those are the numbers that really count. And that is why we will watch Donald Trump rather than Hillary Clinton taking the oath of office in about three weeks. (For more from the author of “The Numbers Don’t Lie: Trump Needs to Do Better by 2020” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Think Amazon Echo, Other Home Smart Devices Won’t Disclose Private Conversations? Police Armed With Search Warrants Have Different Plans

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Amazon’s Echo and Echo Dot are in millions of homes now, with holiday sales more than quadrupling from 2015. Always listening for its wake word, the breakthrough smart speakers boast seven microphones waiting to take and record your commands.

Now, Arkansas police are hoping an Echo found at a murder scene in Bentonville can aid their investigation.

First reported by The Information, investigators filed search warrants to Amazon (see below), requesting any recordings between November 21 and November 22, 2015, from James A. Bates, who was charged with murder after a man was strangled in a hot tub.

While investigating, police noticed the Echo in the kitchen and pointed out that the music playing in the home could have been voice activated through the device. While the Echo records only after hearing the wake word, police are hoping that ambient noise or background chatter could have accidentally triggered the device, leading to some more clues.

Amazon stores all the voice recordings on its servers, in the hopes of using the data to improve its voice assistant services. While you can delete your personal voice data, there’s still no way to prevent any recordings from being saved on a server. (Read more from “Think Amazon Echo, Other Home Smart Devices Won’t Disclose Private Conversations? Police Armed With Search Warrants Have Different Plans” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.