‘That Cop Who Died Today’ – This St. Louis Cop’s Gut-Wrenching Words Will Shatter You Heart

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St. Louis police officer Don Re has a blog on which he’s become known for his emotional and poignant writing.

Last year, his post on the “senseless” death of a child went viral. His website, “Don of all trades,” addresses issues like stop and frisk, to the relationship between police and the minority communities they serve, to personal stories about his life and family.

His most recent post offers thoughts on the death of a St. Louis-area police officer.

St. Louis County is mourning the loss of 33-year-old Officer Blake Snyder, who was killed early Thursday morning responding to a disturbance call in Green Park. Eighteen-year-old Trenton Forster has been charged with murder and armed criminal action for the shooting. Forster was critically injured by return fire from a backup officer, but is expected to survive.

Snyder leaves behind a wife, Elizabeth, and 2-year-old son. Officer Re posted some thoughts on the tragedy, and the challenges that face all police officers is worth everyone’s time to read.

Officers Re’s powerful blog entry, “That cop who died today,” is republished with permission below:

My coworker walked into my office and I told him, only half-jokingly, that if one more person pissed me off this morning, I was probably going to snap.

Some of the recruits had been pushing my buttons with their repeated mistakes and lack of attention to detail.

I was in a foul mood.

“You’re not going to like this then,” he continued.

“The cop shot this morning died.”

Just like it has for eighteen years now, those words hit me like an unexpected punch in the gut.

I knew about the shooting, but assumed or hoped that he would be okay.

Surely he’d recover with time, just like many other people who get shot do.

Nope.

Another police officer is dead.

A young man with a lot of life ahead of him is dead.

A young father is dead.

A young wife is a widow. She may spend days or weeks or months hoping it’s not true and that her young husband will be home soon.

A two year old will never toddle into his biological dad’s arms again or ever draw pictures of a police man and hand it to his daddy with pride.

“The cop shot this morning died.”

How many times can one hear those or similar words and still go on working as a police officer in spite of it?

Shortly after I heard the news, my own wife texted an emoji to my phone. It was the one where the face is blowing a heart shaped kiss.

Without words, I knew she knew, and that she was thinking about me. She was concerned for me and for her own kids.

We don’t have time for cops to be killed right now. We already have to rearrange our lives to accommodate the circus that is the second presidential debate in St. Louis, and now we have to prepare to bury a fellow officer.

Either event alone is difficult; their simultaneous occurrence is a mess.

Still, we will do it.

We will take care of these events because we must. Somebody has to.

County officers will work the debate alongside us City officers.

We will stand tall with black mourning bands on our badges, thinking about our lost comrade and our own determination to continue on with this fucking job. We will do it right in the face of people who hate Trump or Hillary or cops or just everything in general and who will take that hate out on the front line officers.

We’re easy targets.

We’re easy scapegoats for a system that many people don’t trust or like or respect anymore.

Hate that your taxes are too high?

Hate email scandals?

Hate billionaires who are going to build walls and deport immigrants?

Take it out on the police officers.

You’ll never get close enough to the people who truly cause your life misery, but we’re right here.

Spit in our faces.

Call our black officers vulgar, disgusting names.

Tell female officers you want to meet them off-duty and rape them.

Tell us you want us dead or that you’ll find us and do harm to our families.

This is what officers have to listen to during protests. Every time.

Pretend that we don’t hate email scandals or corrupt billionaires or have to pay taxes or face the same problems as every other schmuck does once we get home from work.

Pretend we’re not unique individuals who share your concerns and hopes for a better future.

We’ll be there for you anyway.

We’ll have our days off cancelled and our shifts lengthened so that everybody can enjoy their debate related shenanigans.

We do it so you can enjoy parades and fairs and professional sports events too.

It’s tiring sometimes, but we do it.

We do it even when we’re deflated by news that a local cop has died.

That somebody who was doing what you do every day has been murdered.

The silver lining is that I’m no longer angry and on the cusp of snapping.

Priorities.

I’m alive and my recruits are alive.

We’ll use this as a learning tool. Mistakes and lack of attention to detail when you’re out of the Academy can get you killed.

They need to know that.

They need to get that through their skulls.

My kids can still draw me pictures of police officers and hand them to me with pride.

My wife can still expect me to come home after a long shift.

My dogs will bark at me when I do come home, and I will be annoyed at them, but less so.

I’m thankful to have my health and my life.

My problems are irrelevant right now, because I wasn’t that cop who died today.

Visit Officer Re’s blog to read the amazing comments of support and camaraderie.

Our law enforcement officers risk their lives every day in service of people who don’t always know or understand (let alone appreciate) why they do what they do.

Police are people. They are important. They matter.

And they need our support.

Thank a police officer today. He/she might die for you. (For more from the author of “‘That Cop Who Died Today’ – This St. Louis Cop’s Gut-Wrenching Words Will Shatter You Heart” please click HERE)

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Arizona Just Can’t Get a Break: The Assault on Election Integrity Continues

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Poor Arizona. The Grand Canyon State can’t seem to get a break from the Ninth Circuit in protecting its sovereignty and the integrity of its elections.

As it relates to state voter integrity laws, it has come to the point where federal judges are declaring any form of electioneering pursued by George Soros to be mandated by law and/or the Constitution. States are being precluded from even regulating a specific administrative procedure for voting or registration or using common sense regulations to protect the franchise from fraud. The courts have declared the American voter in general, and non-whites in particular, to be impotent in their ability to register to vote and cast ballots without hand-holding and molly-coddling anomalous tactics promoted by the far-left.

The latest case involves a lawsuit against Arizona’s House Bill 2023, which prohibits third-party organizations from collecting absentee ballots and submitting them en masse to the board of elections in what is widely referred to as “ballot harvesting.” This was a reasonable exercise of a state’s near-plenary power over methods and procedures of elections to ensure there is no tampering or mass fraud. The law provides exemptions for family members, caregivers, or postal workers who can gather multiple ballots from individual early voters to submit to the polls. Thus, there is nobody who is being disenfranchised with no recourse to cast a ballot simply because a Soros-style community organizing group is prohibited from harvesting ballots.

It doesn’t take a genius to understand why ballot harvesting is a prima facie recipe for voter fraud. Unscrupulous community organizers can simply send in hundreds, if not thousands, of absentee ballots using known names and addresses. There is no way for election officials to verify the veracity of mail-in ballots, even in states with photo ID requirements for in-person voting. At present, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched the largest voter fraud investigation in the state’s history after concerns that thousands of signatures collected for mail-in ballots by third-party organizations didn’t match the known signatures of the names on the ballots.

Non-whites can’t vote without the assistance of a third-party?!

In come various Democrat groups and the Clinton campaign, suing Arizona for somehow disenfranchising voters [Feldman v. Arizona secretary of State’s Office]. Scandalously, they assert that this law is invidious and discriminates against non-white voters. Yes, as is the case with photo ID requirements, proof of citizenship, early voting, an option for straight-ticket voting, and placement of extra polling stations, non-white voters are evidently too dumb and impotent to properly register and cast ballots, even during the modern-era of mass communication and transportation — unless Democrats are allowed to work their magic.

This lawsuit was so outlandish that last month even the Obama-appointed district judge, Douglas L. Rayes, refused to issue an injunction against the law for this election, pending the outcome of litigation. He rightly observed that this law “simply regulates an administrative aspect of the electoral process,” over which states have full control unless Congress intervenes. And there is nothing in the Voting Rights Act that grants voters, particularly minorities, a right to have others deliver their absentee ballots to the polls. That is an administrative policy question left up to the states.

While the Ninth Circuit initially refused to overturn Judge Rayes by issuing a preliminary injunction against HB 2023, earlier this week they granted an expedited review of the case. During oral arguments on Wednesday, according to numerous media outlets at the hearing, the appellate judges clearly signaled their intention to tamper with the law.

Despite the law being in effect during the primaries and plaintiffs not being able to identify a single voter who couldn’t cast a ballot as a result of the law, Chief Appeals Court Judge Sidney Thomas seemed to agree with the Democrat position on disparate impact:

Judge Sidney Thomas said that ignores evidence that 14,000 people living on the 2.8 million acre Tohono O’odham reservation have no postal service

“That’s a significant barrier that’s different from the barrier that white citizens would have in Phoenix,’’ he said.

“There’s no comparative white group,’’ Thomas continued. “There’s no white reservation.’’

The judge also noted a similar situation in the largely Hispanic border community of San Luis. [Arizona Capital Times]

Appellate Judge Sandra Ikuta also expressed concerns that this law disenfranchised Latinos and Native Americans.

Taking discrimination accusations to a new low

Not only is disparate impact theory a complete distortion of the Voting Rights Act, it is offensive and simply wrong to assume that voter integrity laws target minorities. And in this case, such an accusation is particularly divorced from reality. As Arizona Assistant Attorney General Karen Hartman-Tellez pointed out, there are plenty of white rural communities that also lack postal service in secluded parts of the state. These are the comforts people who live in remote areas relinquish. There are many benefits to rural life too. The point is that convenience of delivering absentee ballots, as it relates to remote communities, is a political debate for a state legislature, as is the case for questions regarding easy access to other state services. It is absurd for a court to require acceptance of ballot harvesting as a matter of federal law.

What is doubly absurd here is that Democrats usually demand special treatment for urban voters, such as extra polling stations in big cities. In Wisconsin, they got a federal judge to require more early voting centers in urban areas “because not everyone can get downtown easily.” Now they have the nerve to assert that a law that would be more inconvenient for rural areas also disproportionality hurts minorities, even though nobody would deny that — aside from the Indian reservations — most rural communities are overwhelmingly white! As is always the case in outcomes-based jurisprudence, the liberal judges arrive at the desired conclusion using conflicting rationales. Either way, the result is always to bolster the Democrat GOTV operation. You will never find a judge requiring a state with only whites in rural areas to add extra polling stations or offer more days of early voting because they are more isolated.

In reality, this has nothing to do with Native American communities or the lack of postal service in some areas. Liberals are just using that example as the straw man for the lawsuit in order to get standing. The reality is that voter harvesting has been very successful in registering Democrat voters all over Arizona, including in urban areas that have easy access to mail and certainly don’t need assistance. There is nothing wrong with ballot harvesting that is not rooted in fraud, but Democrats are seeking to codify their political practices into law.

As I noted when discussing the North Carolina early voting case, one could conjure up a disparate impact theory to attack any law on the assumption that these administrative procedures will help or hurt one particular group based on their habits, culture, and location. But that doesn’t mean the law is discriminatory. If Republicans succeed in gaming out early voting on Saturdays at rural gun clubs the same way Democrats succeed in GOTV on Sunday with black churches, does that mean the state must provide early voting on Saturday? These are political questions that are decided by the party that wins the spoils of war in an election and controls the legislature, not the courts.

The long-term impacts of judicial supremacy, disparate impact, and absurd rules of standing on state election law

There are several systemic problems evidenced from the series of court cases on election integrity laws we’ve chronicled in this column over the past few months:

1. courts fail to recognize state control over election law;

2. they practically believe that anything short of hand delivering registration and ballots to every adult in the country is tantamount to disenfranchising voters and;

3. any method of voting or anomalous voting procedure that will increase minority turnout is required to be implemented. If nothing is done to stop this judicial cancer, conservatives will have a major problem winning close elections because these mandates prevent states from combating fraud.

The fact that minorities tend to vote Democrat doesn’t vest them with greater power or extra rights to mandate more voting procedures and conveniences any more than rural whites could demand more conveniences in voting because providing such service helps the Republican Party. Courts are adulterating the VRA and are taking the concept of disparate impact to such an absurd extreme that non-whites are now enjoying greater benefits simply because it helps the Democrat Party. To quote Thomas Sowell, “When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.”

This Arizona case also demonstrates how liberals only need to win at one level in order to enact their election agenda. While the district judge respected the balance of power, the Ninth Circuit is prepared to crush the state. In many instances the Supreme Court doesn’t grant cert to hear an appeal from the Ninth Circuit. In addition to general reforms of court jurisdiction, Congress would be wise to save Arizona from the clutches of the Ninth Circuit by placing it into a different appellate jurisdiction.

A statutory fix of laws such as the VRA and the Motor-Voter law won’t help because judges have shown that when they lack statutory “latitude” to enact their agenda, they have no compunction to enshrine early voting, ballot harvesting, etc. into the First, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.

We have a real constitutional crisis on our hands. When the far-left takes over the political institutions, there is recourse through elections. But when progressives take over the courts, redefine the Constitution, statutes, the contours of fundamental rights, and the balance of federalism as it relates to election law, we can’t even win elections anymore.

If Hillary ultimately wins this election, the states will have no choice but to ignore the courts as it relates to precedent, outside of the narrow ruling for a legitimate plaintiff suing for an authentic fundamental right. Whether they like it or not, state judges will have to follow the lead of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore in interpreting precedent of a decision in accordance with the Constitution and federal statute and not the Democrat Party platform. Otherwise, free and fair elections will be a thing of the past. (For more from the author of “Arizona Just Can’t Get a Break: The Assault on Election Integrity Continues” please click HERE)

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A President Hillary Clinton Must Be Impeached

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After reading a comprehensive roundup of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal by National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy, Conservative Review Editor-in-Chief Mark Levin declared on Facebook that, “A President Hillary Clinton must be impeached.” Levin went through the reasons why.

Levin is exactly right. McCarthy lays out why it would have been an easy prosecution for the Department of Justice, if they weren’t so politically motivated regarding the Democratic presidential nominee.

The question arose because the “(C)” designation — applicable to classified information at the confidential level — turned up in at least one of Clinton’s personal e-mails. Those would be the e-mails that, she repeatedly insisted, never, ever contained classified information. Or at least, that’s what she insisted until government agencies confessed that hundreds of the e-mails do contain classified information. Then Clinton’s “never, ever” tale morphed into the more narrowly tailored lie that there were no e-mails “marked classified.” Alas, that claim could not withstand examination of the e-mails, during which the “(C)” markings were found . . . whereupon the explanation underwent more, shall we say, refining. Thus the final, astonishing claim that she didn’t know what the markings meant, along with the laugh-out-loud whopper that maybe it was all about alphabetical order.

Yeah, that’s the ticket!

In case you’re keeping score: When a person being prosecuted for a crime changes her story multiple times, as if she were playing Twister (kids, ask your parents), the prosecutor gets to prove each of the evolving lies at the trial. As you’d imagine, juries grasp that the truth doesn’t need an editor. That’s why people whose explanations can’t keep up with the evidence are pretty much a lock to get convicted.

If Clinton wins the presidency next month, and the Electoral College confirms that result in December, impeachment is the only remedy left to bring Clinton to justice. But it would require the Congress to actually take its role under the Constitution seriously — something that, lately, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and House Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan have failed to do.

While impeachment is warranted, for Hillary Clinton’s crimes, the feckless leaders of the “opposition” will undoubtedly say that the “voters have spoken” that they knew about the illegality and elected Clinton anyway. This is why the nation is in need of a true opposition party.

Mark Levin has promised to expand upon his thinking on Monday’s LevinTV episode. (For more from the author of “A President Hillary Clinton Must Be Impeached” please click HERE)

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Pollster Tells America to Be Ready for a Shock on Election Day

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A lot of polls are going to be wrong come Election Day, according to pollster and analyst Pat Caddell who said Friday that America should be ready for a “shock.”

“Something is going on in this country in these polls,” Caddell said, assessing the differences among polls that show Trump with a narrow lead, Clinton with a narrow lead, or Clinton with a large lead. The most recent polls put Trump in the lead.

“All of the tracking polls keep holding at Trump being ahead,” he continued. “And then all of these other polls that are one-off polls, or whatever.”

Caddell said with so many polls, it was hard to know which were reliable.

“I don’t know how they’re doing some of these university polls. You just put the name of some university and apparently it becomes credible, whether they know what they’re doing, or not.”

“But in any event, polling is all over the place. Something isn’t adding up,” said Caddell.

To him, that means there is a trend going on that has not been fully captured in the polls.

“Something is going to happen here, I just sense it,” he said.

That something, he said, could be from Trump, who on Friday in North Carolina promised “Brexit times five.”

Either “Hillary will glide into the White House, or we’re headed for one of the greatest shocks in American politics. I think it’s a very close call. I think the shock potential is enormous,” he said.

Caddell is not alone. Veteran pollster John Zogby noted the immense strength of Trump’s support.

“I’ve been doing this a long, long time and these races go up and down and up and down,” Zogby said. “We still have 18 days to go, that means 18, maybe 36 news cycles as well.”

Zogby noted the depth of support for Trump.

“You see still a very passionate Donald Trump support. I see three credible polls that are out there that show Donald Trump getting 85, 89 percent of Republican support, winning among whites, winning by double digits among men, leading in two of those polls tied in another,” Zogby said.

“For the umpteenth time, it’s way too early and we don’t know who’s going to vote,” he insisted. (For more from the author of “Pollster Tells America to Be Ready for a Shock on Election Day” please click HERE)

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Yazidi Children Screamed and Cried Outside the Door While ISIS Fighters Raped Their Mothers

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As the Islamic State continues its genocide of Yazidis and Christians in Syria and Iraq, a detailed report by the U.N.’s Human Rights Council reveals that Yazidi mothers and their children are brutally persecuted – mothers sold and re-sold as sex slaves, children murdered, and children traumatized from being forced to listen behind locked doors as their mothers are raped and beaten.

One Yazidi woman who was sold seven times to ISIS fighters said, “When he would force me into a room with him, I could hear my children screaming and crying outside the door. Once he became very angry. He beat and threatened to kill them. He forced two of them to stand outside barefoot in the snow until he finished with me.”

An ISIS fighter killed the children of a Yazidi woman who was sold three times as a sex slave. When she asked him, “What did you do to them?” he beat her and said, “They are kuffar [non-Muslim] children. It is good they are dead. Why are you crying for them?”

The U.N. report from June, They Came to Destroy: ISIS Crimes Against the Yazidis, explains the Islamic State’s attacks on Yazidi villages in Sinjar in August 2014 and the subsequent (and ongoing) genocidal actions taken by ISIS to destroy the Yazidi people.

The report is based on 45 interviews with survivors, religious leaders, doctors and journalists. An estimated 5,000 Yazidis have been killed, so far, by the Islamic State. “ISIS has sought to destroy the Yazidis through killings, sexual slavery, enslavement, torture and inhuman and degrading treatment and forcible transfer causing serious bodily and mental harm,” states the report. (Read more from “Yazidi Children Screamed and Cried Outside the Door While ISIS Fighters Raped Their Mothers” HERE)

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Secret Recording Shows Bill Clinton Admitting He Wishes He Slept With More Women

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A secretly recorded phone conversation from 1991 between former President Bill Clinton with his alleged former mistress Gennifer Flowers has been newly released to author and radio host, Aaron Klein.

The conversation took place two months after Clinton had announced his bid for the presidency. Flowers claims she was no longer romantically involved with Clinton at the time of their conversation and was dating another man.

In the conversation, Clinton discussed various women with which he had been accused of engaging in extramarital affairs.

Flowers: I talked to David Watkins. I have a little company with a guy named (name redacted) and (name redacted) called Concepts Plus, that does jingles…

Clinton: Yeah. Beautiful (name redacted).

Flowers: Yes, beautiful.

Clinton: The one I allegedly had an affair with?

Flowers: B.B., (name redacted), uh, anyway. Beautiful (name redacted)…anyway…

Clinton: The only time I ever saw her was at the inaugural. She was so good looking I wished it was true.

Flowers told Breitbart News how she felt during her conversation with Clinton.

“Because, you know, it wasn’t gross locker talk, but it was just kind of that tone. And it was irritating me because but not because it was making me jealous. It was just irritating me that he was doing it. Being disrespectful to her because, you know, she was a great person.”

At one point, Clinton joked that he once told Bill Simmons he wished he had slept with all the women that were mentioned.

Clinton: Bill Simmons read me the list. I said, “God, Bill, I kinda hate to deny that.”

Flowers: You know what I said? I said, “At least he’s an equal opportunity f—er!” (laughter)

Clinton: I’ve got good taste.

Flowers had already made parts of her recorded tape public back in the 1990s. She claimed she had a 12-year affair with the former president and told Klein Friday that her “heart sunk” when she realized that Clinton was going to stay married after she had already become pregnant with his baby.

Flowers claimed that Clinton personally paid her $200 to get an abortion, and described the process to Klein as “not only physically painful but it was very psychologically painful.”

“Understand that when these tapes were made from the very beginning Bill and I were no longer seeing each other,” Flowers told Breitbart. “And I felt like several times in those tapes he was trying to make me jealous because he was talking about other women. About being beautiful. And I clearly felt that he was trying to make me jealous. Because he had let me know that if I change my mind he was there.”

Flowers also commented on the section of the tape in which Clinton stated “I’ve got good taste,” which was his response to the list of five alleged mistresses.

“Well, if I hadn’t been recording him, I would have told him that he was a jackass,” she said. “That he could quit talking like that. You know, at that point, I didn’t want to make myself look bad, but had I been able to really talk freely, I would have said, ‘you can knock that off. It’s not funny.’”

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail in 2013, Flowers said she believed that she and Clinton would still be together today, were it not the birth of his daughter, Chelsea.

“We have some unresolved issues that it would be nice to sit down and talk about now. He was the love of my life and I was the love of his life and you don’t get over those things,” she said then.

The topic of infidelity has been a reoccurring theme during this general election. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has accused Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton of being an “enabler” during his slew of sexual crimes and infidelities.

In an interview with Fox News Channel’s Ainsley Earhardt on Monday, Melania Trump claimed that bringing up Clinton’s past affairs was reasonable because they have done it to her.

“So they — they’re asking for it?” Earhardt asked.

“They’re asking for it. They started,” she said. “They started from the — from the beginning of the campaign putting my — my picture from modeling days. That was my modeling days, and I’m proud what I did. I worked very hard.”

Several racy photos of Trump’s modeling days have been used as smear campaigns throughout the election. In March and July, photos of her nude where used in both newspapers and anti-Trump advertisements.

The Clintons appeared in January 1992 on 60 Minutes, where the former president denied a relationship with Flowers. He later admitted to one sexual encounter with Flowers in a 1998 deposition for the Paula Jones lawsuit — another woman he was accused of sexually harassing. (For more from the author of “Secret Recording Shows Bill Clinton Admitting He Wishes He Slept With More Women” please click HERE)

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Former DOJ Official: Allies of Obama ‘Don’t Face Justice’

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A former Department of Justice (DOJ) official says that “you don’t face justice” if you’re an ally of President Barack Obama’s.

“Look, if this was a tea party group coordinating with the Trump campaign to incite violence at Clinton real or NAACP events or whatever, we know exactly what would be happening,” J. Christian Adams told Fox News after the release of a Project Veritas video showing former Democratic operative Bob Creamer allegedly talking about inciting violence at GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s rallies. “This would be Justice Department fully investigating this for civil rights violations and all sorts of things.”

Adams, who is one of two DOJ officials to resign in protect after the Obama Administration did not press charges against the New Black Panthers over allegations of armed voter intimidation in 2008, continued:

This is a Justice Department and an FBI that is dolling out justice based on your politics. If you support Clinton, if you are Clinton, you can engage in all sorts of misbehavior without consequence. If you are the IRS commissioner or an attorney general who is held in criminal contempt, he would give you a pass. You don’t face justice under this administration.

Conservatives and the Trump campaign have touted two recent Project Veritas videos as evidence of both voter fraud and operative-incited violence at Trump rallies, and point to the resignation of Creamer and the firing of field operative Scott Foval from their respective Democratic-aligned groups. One target of the Veritas videos, however, is refusing to back down on what he says was a dishonest representation of his tactics to help minorities vote.

“In real life, I was explaining what the outcome of the presidential election will mean for the future of voter-ID laws, which have prevented thousands of Americans from voting; the role of civil disobedience in politics; and the role of activists in planning those protests,” wrote Dream Action Coalition co-director Cesar Vargas at the far-left publication The Nation. Creamer and Foval have also claimed innocence, as have the groups with which they were formerly affiliated.

Like Vargas, Think Progress and some other liberal publications noted a $10,000 donation to Project Veritas reported in disclosure forms provided to The Washington Post by Trump earlier this year. The donation took place in early 2015.

Adams’ reference to various past controversies involving includes the current U.S. Attorney General meeting with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, a week before the FBI declined to charge Hillary for breaking federal law. FBI Director James Comey said when announcing the decision that Hillary did break the law when using e-mails as U.S. Secretary of State, but as it wasn’t done on purpose, he wouldn’t charge her.

Likewise, Republicans in the House have accused IRS Commissioner John Koskinen of misleading Congress related to the IRS’ targeting of Tea Party groups leading up to the 2012 elections. Some Republicans are pushing for Koskinen to be impeached. And House Republicans held former Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt over his refusal to cooperate regarding the Obama administration’s gun operation Fast & Furious operation that ended in the loss of thousands of firearms to Mexican drug dealers, and the death of a U.S. border agent in addition to hundreds of Mexicans.

The Stream and other outlets have also contrasted the mild treatment of federal officials to pipeline protesters in North Dakota with the aggressive treatment given to ranchers in Oregon last year.

Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe has long been controversial in political circles. Credited for shutting down the activist group ACORN in 2008 after releasing videos allegedly showing members engaging in voter fraud, he was arrested in 2010 after impersonating a telephone repairman in an office of then-Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA). O’Keefe pled guilty to misdemeanor charges. Additionally, while some of his past videos have drawn resignations and been praised for drawing attention to underreported issues, TheBlaze’s Glenn Beck criticized an O’Keefe video going after NPR in 2011. Earlier this year, a sting attempt by O’Keefe fell flat when he forgot to hang up his phone after making a call to a targeted group. (For more from the author of “Former DOJ Official: Allies of Obama ‘Don’t Face Justice'” please click HERE)

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How Does the Church Reach Millennials? Hint: It’s Not Flashing Lights or Rock Band Worship

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Don’t lie to a Millennial. They will smell it a mile away.

At least that’s what the latest research from Barna and the Cornerstone Knowledge Network shows in a detailed report called “Making Space for Millennials.” The study explored key characteristics of people from 18-30 years old and discussed how churches can make room for their ideas and influence.

Millennials are leaving the church in large numbers: 70 percent of those raised in the church leave by the time they are in their 20s; one-third of those under 30 in the United States claim to have “no religion.” As more and more Millennials leave the church, ministry leaders are asking “why?” and “what can we do about it?”

Here’s what Millennials really want in a church.

Millennials Can Handle the Truth

Millennials want authenticity — a genuine Christianity and a legitimate worship experience. Taylor Snodgrass of the Church & Its 20-somethings has pointed out that if churches are not authentic, Millennials will leave. “Our generation has been advertised at our whole life, and even now on social media. Consequently, when a company isn’t being authentic with their story we can easily see through this. If the church isn’t giving you the whole story, if it’s sugarcoated and they’re trying to put on an act on stage, people in their 20s will see through this. This causes us to leave. We’re good at seeing when people are lying to us.”

Millennials are “not disillusioned with tradition; they are frustrated with slick or shallow expressions of religion,” says David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group and author of You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church…and Rethinking Faith. Millennials are tired of big box churches marketing entertainment to them rather than following Jesus. They want an authentic Christianity.

“Millennials are not looking for perfect people,” says Frank Powell. “Jesus already handled that. Millennials are looking for people to be real and honest about struggles and temptations.”

Part of being an authentic Christian and living authentically is digging deeper — becoming the mature Christian who eats meat rather than drinks milk as described in Hebrews 5:12-14. And Millennials want that. Snodgrass says that Millennials want to be challenged to think about real-world issues. “We don’t just want to have easy topics each week. We want to dive into difficult-to-understand topics and passages and explore how they apply.”

Kayla Rush and Kyle Smith, authors of “What Millennials Need from the Church,” say that few have bothered to ask Millennials why they’re leaving the church, but being intellectually bored is part of the problem. “In our youth groups we were taught — exhorted, in fact — to want to go deeper, and we’re not getting that from grown-up church,” they said, adding that while churches seem to have a fear of questioning, “questioning is at the heart of education: it leads us into deeper knowledge, not unbelief. We need intellectual engagement.”

Give Me the Real Jesus

Drew Dyck, in his blog article “Millennials Need a Bigger God, Not a Hipper Pastor,” addresses the concerns over why many Millennials are disinterested in church:

Millennials have a dim view of church. They are highly skeptical of religion. Yet they are still thirsty for transcendence. But when we portray God as a cosmic buddy, we lose them (they have enough friends). When we tell them that God will give them a better marriage and family, it’s white noise (they’re delaying marriage and kids or forgoing them altogether). When we tell them they’re special, we’re merely echoing what educators, coaches, and parents have told them their whole lives. But when we present a ravishing vision of a loving and holy God, it just might get their attention and capture their hearts as well (Emphasis added).

Millennials need to experience the life-changing love of God through other people — and be able to give it as well. According to Powell, Millennials are optimistic about the culture because this is the “model of Jesus.” “He loves all types of people, does ministry in the city, and engages the culture,” said Powell. “To reach people today, the church must be immersed in the community for the glory of God.”

Connecting With God in the Worship Space — Keep it Simple

For Millennials, the worship experience begins at the door. Millennials want to know where to go and what is expected of them right away. “Visual clarity is huge,” said Snodgrass. “We walked into a few churches that didn’t have good signage, and we just wandered around. We weren’t sure where to go — and Millennials don’t want to ask. We just want to go in and experience the space without having to ask someone, especially if it’s our first time at church … the biggest thing is to create a welcoming space that isn’t confusing.”

While the research indicated that Millennials tend to want more traditional services, they want a space where they can feel comfortable — like Door of Hope in Portland, Oregon, said Snodgrass. Housed in an old church building without signage and just a stairway up to the sanctuary, the worship area held “rag-tag bunch of chairs set up everywhere and a drum set that had never been used, and people walking around with coffee. There were no pews.”

Research suggests that Millennials prefer more utilitarian spaces with landscape features. Nature helps Millennials connect with God, they said, and they also want a place to rest, rather than a church full of activities. “Our culture is highly fragmented and frenetic, and there are few places to take a breather and gain much-needed perspective,” Kinnaman said. “Ironically, most churches offer what they think people want: more to do, more to see. Yet that’s exactly the opposite of what many young adults crave when it comes to sacred space.”

According to Aspen Group architect Derek DeGroot, church architects are still exploring what a church built for non-activity would look like. Although busy church activities are meant to bring people to God and others, DeGroot said that “church buildings still need to be a place where people can experience Jesus’ invitation: ‘Come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’”

Some churches with younger parishioners have scrapped activities altogether. Pastor Tony Ranvestel at Clear River Church has a congregation largely composed of Millennials. “We call people to follow Jesus; that’s our primary activity,” Ranvestel said. “If you follow Jesus, this leads to serving and justice.” This method seems to be just what Millennials want: a simple, clear, authentic Christian message with no frills. Clear River Church is “unapologetically a place of worship, learning and experiencing community,” and Millennials there have found that it’s a different kind of place than they’ve found anywhere else.

One-on-One Relationships

Millennials crave relationships within the church. They do not want to be just a number. They don’t want to slip in after the music and out before the closing prayer. Millennials want a more individualized approach — and some churches are beginning to do just that. According to pastor and Christianity Today writer Karl Vaters, “By forcing us out of a group approach to church and into a more individualized way of seeing people, Millennials may be poised to bring about the biggest shift in the way churches do ministry since the Reformation.” The relational component of church, said Vaters, is more relevant than any program, method or musical style. The number one way to reach Millennials, he said, is through the church-as-relational-community model: love God and love others.

Ranvestel said Millennials are trying to figure out the purpose of their life. “We present this and try to show them the goodness of God, the goodness of being in community,” he said, “We’re heavy on person-to-person discipleship and believe this happens best in relationships,” adding that he talks to young people about how God’s principles apply to everyday situations.

The way to create a sense of community for Millennials is acknowledging them, greeting them, learning (and using) their names, and engaging them in conversations.

“[W]e’re raising a generation that’s rich in material goods, but poor in relationships,” said Vaters. “That’s the need we should be finding and fulfilling.”

Closing the Generation Gap: Guidance Through Mentorship

Unlike Generation X before them, Millennials want to make connections with and learn from older adults. Boomers (and Gen-Xers) used to say, “Don’t trust anyone over 30!” Vaters says that simply isn’t the case with Millennials. “[T]his generation is hungry for connection with the wisdom and friendship of previous generations.” Barna’s research indicated that young people who have an older mentor from their faith community are 59 percent more likely to stay in church than those who do not.

Founding partner of Cornerstone Knowledge Network Ed Bahler said that “Mentoring and discipling this next generation is everything,” especially if we wish to equip Millennials to lead the church in the coming years.

But it isn’t a one-way street. The church should be open to “reverse mentoring,” said Kinnaman. This means asking Millennials to share knowledge about how to “navigate life in this digital age,” and reciprocal sharing between generations. According to Bahler, “Ultimately,” the future of the church “rests on our ability to connect the generations.”

Millennial Role Play

Just as Millennials don’t want to take the back seat in church, they don’t want to take a back seat in participation, either. Vaters said the churches that are successfully reaching current generations are “doing ministry with active participants.” Millennials want to have a seat at the table and be involved in meaningful discussions. Shawn Williams, pastor at Community Christian Church-Yellow Box said Millennials want a role to play. “They don’t want to sit on the sidelines and observe. If they’re going to be part of a church, it must have value and meaning … If it doesn’t provide meaning and value to them, they won’t participate. They’ll go and find something that does have meaning and value.”

Millennials want to be taken seriously — and given real responsibility. Ed Cyzewski, in his article “‘How Do We Get Millennials to Attend Church?’ Why that is the wrong question,” said if church leaders don’t have Millennials’ input, they cannot know why they are leaving church. “We all have different suspicions about why millennials don’t find church relevant or don’t want to attend church. Some may say it’s because of Bible teaching or cultural compromise … Our suspicions and isolated observations mean very little in the grand scheme of things if young adults don’t have a respected place at the table as full members and leaders in training with voices that are valued and considered.”

Rush and Smith said that church leadership is dominated by their parents’ and grandparents’ generations — so they don’t have a voice in the church. “[Y]outh groups … give teenagers a voice. They speak their minds, they state their preferences, and they are heard. When we graduate and head out into the big bad world of grown-up church, this changes … we no longer have a pastor whose primary job is to listen to our needs and concerns as young people and respond. We have good ideas … but no one seems to care. … So we’re back to square one, having to work our way up through the ranks in hopes of maybe one day having our voices heard and being able to change the status quo … We need to be taken seriously.”

What Now?

It would seem that all of the effort put into large, elaborate, flashy and overdone churches has been all for naught. Millennials are the hippies of the Christian movement: they want simple and honest Christianity in a utilitarian but natural space where they can rest and connect with a very real and authentic God; they crave relationships and connections with older adults, drawing from their wisdom and insight; and they want a participatory experience where they have a seat at the table in shaping the church of the future — their church.

As Powell said, “Millennials want to go far and want their life to have meaning. In their minds this is not possible without deep, authentic, Christ-centered community.” Millennials can be encouraged to come back to church as ministry leaders seek to understand generational differences and what is meaningful to this demographic; not as a group of people, but as individuals; not as a person who warms a pew, but a person who warms a heart through a real relationship. (For more from the author of “How Does the Church Reach Millennials? Hint: It’s Not Flashing Lights or Rock Band Worship” please click HERE)

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Why I Will Vote for Donald Trump

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Before you applaud me for my integrity or condemn me for selling out, allow me to explain my decision to vote for Donald Trump on November 8.

First, I’m writing this because I have been asked incessantly for months how I would be voting, not because I think I’m someone special or that what I do should influence you.

Second, I’m not endorsing Donald Trump. In my mind, there’s a world of difference between endorsing a candidate and voting for a candidate.

Third, I respect those in the #NeverTrump camp and I share many of their concerns, including the possibility of his further vulgarizing and degrading the nation, the possibility of him deepening our ethnic and racial divides, and the possibility of him alienating our allies and unnecessarily provoking our enemies, just to name a few. Among the #NeverTrump voices I respect are columnists like David French and Ben Shapiro, bloggers like Matt Walsh, and evangelical leaders like Russell Moore and Beth Moore.

Fourth, I take strong exception to evangelicals who have fawned over Trump as if he were some kind of savior figure, supporting him as if he was Saint Donald. I also take issue with evangelical leaders who want us to minimize some of Trump’s failings, constantly saying, “Let him who is without sin cast the first one” (see John 8:7). This is not a question of condemning the man but rather a question of making a moral assessment as to his readiness to serve our nation.

Fifth, my decision to vote for Trump, barring something earth-shattering between now and November 8, is consistent with my position which has been: 1) During the primaries, I issued strong warnings against voting for Trump while we had other excellent choices. I did this in writing, on video and on the radio, but always stating that, if Trump won the nomination, I would reevaluate my position. 2) Once Trump became the Republican candidate, I wrote that I was rooting for him to take steps in the right direction and thereby win my vote. 3) I have stated repeatedly that under no circumstances would I vote for Hillary. (For two strong warnings about Hillary, see here and here.)

So, what has convinced me that I should now vote for Donald Trump?

First, I believe that he actually is serious about appointing pro-life, pro-Constitution Supreme Court justices. When he said during the last debate that, if you’re pro-life, you want to see Roe v. Wade overturned, and when he reiterated at his Gettysburg speech that he will be drawing from his list of 20 potential appointees, he helped me feel more confident that he would not suddenly flip-flop if elected.

Second, one reason I endorsed Sen. Cruz was because he took on the political establishment, both Democrat and Republican, to the point of calling it the Washington cartel. Trump is an absolute wrecking ball to the negative parts of the political system (although, unfortunately, he’s been a wrecking ball to some of the good parts of the system), so my vote for him is also a protest vote.

Third, I am voting for the Republican platform, not the Republican party, which means I’m in agreement with the platform while at the same time having very little confidence in the party as a whole.

Fourth, while I have always felt that the line, “We’re electing a president, not a pastor,” was overstated and superficial, if we rephrased it to say, “We’re electing a general to train hand-to-hand combat warriors, not a pastor,” it might have more relevance. In other words, we are not looking for Trump to be a moral reformer (even if he does appoint righteous judges), and, at this point, he certainly is anything but a moral example (although we pray he will be truly converted and become one). Rather, out of our choices for president, which are stark, we are voting for the one most likely to defeat Hillary and make some good decisions for the nation, not be the savior. And with things so messed up in America, the hand-to-hand combat analogy is closer to home.

Fifth, within the first few minutes of the last debate, the massive differences between Hillary and Trump were there for the world to see, she a pro-abortion radical and an extreme supporter of the LGBT agenda, and he unashamedly speaking out against late-term abortions and wanting to appoint justices who would defend our essential liberties. Since I have the opportunity to vote, I feel that I should vote for Trump.

Sixth, Trump continues to be drawn to conservative Christians, and not just ones who tickle his ears. One of my dear friends has spent hours with Trump and members of his family, and he has told me that in 55 years of ministry, no one has received him as openly and graciously as has Trump. Yet my friend continues to speak the truth to him in the clearest possible terms. While I am not one of those claiming that Trump is a born-again Christian (I see absolutely no evidence of this), the fact that he continues to listen to godly men and open the door to their counsel indicates that something positive could possibly be going on. It also indicates that these godly leaders might be a positive influence on him if he was elected president.

Seventh, although I’m quite aware that a president could do great harm or good to the nation, I’m far more concerned with what we as God’s people do with our own lives and witnesses, and for me, the state of the church of America is much more important than the state of the White House. In that context, I echo the words (and warning) of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.”

So, in sum: 1) my hope is in God, not Donald Trump, and I do recognize that either Hillary or Trump has the potential to do great harm to America; 2) my urgent call is for us as followers of Jesus to get our own act together so we can be the salt and light of the nation; 3) I will continue to urge all believers not to vote for Hillary Clinton, whose policies will certainly do us great harm; 4) ultimately, the most effective way to defeat Hillary is to vote for Trump, while also praying that God will use him for good, not for evil.

In the end, if he gets elected and fails miserably, I will be grieved but not devastated. If he does well, I will rejoice.

Either way, though, my vote is just that: a vote. My greater role is to live a life pleasing to God with the hope of advancing a gospel-based moral and cultural revolution. (For more from the author of “Why I Will Vote for Donald Trump” please click HERE)

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Wikileaks: Disney CEO Bob Iger, ABC News Have Cozy Relationship With Hillary Clinton and Her Campaign

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WikiLeaks emails revelations from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta show that not only is there a deep connection with the media — reporters, opinion writers, and news anchors — but it also reaches as high as the corporate executive suite.

Disney CEO Bob Iger appears in the latest round of released WikiLeaks emails, offering insight that those at the very top of the organization accept and encourage the pro-liberal bias at the company’s media division: ABC News.

Iger is a visible and active supporter of progressive politicians, thus sending a powerful message throughout the company about his political beliefs and — potentially — his expectations of news coverage. With the CEO investing significant amounts of his personal money in liberal politicians, it would likely be career-limiting to challenge his political investments. On the contrary, attacking conservatives could be the ticket to career advancement.

A long-time Hillary supporter, Iger appears in an email chain — subject: “Email from Steve Bing” — with Clinton campaign head John Podesta and Steve Bing and Andy Sowers from Shangri-LA business group.

The emails refer to Iger expressing an interest in taking an active role in the campaign stating, “”He wants to be helpful.” In a follow-up email months later, Bing mentioned that Iger had connected with Podesta and that those discussions had gone well, “[Iger’s] had a couple of good talks with you.”

At this point, we don’t know the outcome of Iger’s conversations with Podesta or what it meant to Clinton’s campaign, but we do know the Disney’s leader co-hosted a Beverly Hills fundraiser at billionaire Haim Saban’s home last August that carried a $100,000 cover charge for hosting couples.

According to a Washington Free Beacon story last year, “Disney CEO Bob Iger has given more than $400,000 to Democratic candidates (including Hillary Clinton) and campaign committees since 1999.”

Iger’s aggressive support of Democrats, in general, and Hillary Clinton, in particular, provides cover ABC News to be as biased as its left-wing heart desires.

Given the pro-Clinton bias at Disney and ABC, it’s not surprising that the Clinton campaign would target George Stephanopoulos with ideas to challenge “Clinton Cash” author Peter Schweizer. (The book describes how the Clintons built a personal fortune by leveraging their political influence.) WikiLeaks documents show a series of emails from Clinton staffers celebrating the April 2015 interview on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.” One Clinton team member, Jesse Ferguson, touts Stephanopoulos’ success in refuting Schweizer’s claims and takes credit for the group providing background to the host of “This Week.”

great work everyone. this interview is perfect. he lands nothing and everything is refuted (mostly based on our work)

In addition, Stephanopoulos did not disclose that he donated a total of $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation prior to the interview with Schweizer, even though the Foundation was the focal point of his book. Stephanopoulos merely issued a statement apologizing to ABC News and his viewers for not disclosing his donations to the Foundation. Predictably, ABC News backed Stephanopoulos, saying the failure to disclose his donations “was an honest mistake.”

Given Iger’s support of Clinton and that Stephanopoulos is the former communications director for President Bill Clinton, it was highly unlikely the host of “This Week” would get penalized for aggressively challenging Schweizer or for not disclosing his own donations to Hillary’s campaign.

It seems that Iger’s backing of Clinton virtually eliminates any penalties for its media unit’s employees who get caught playing footsie with team Clinton. And WikiLeaks shows that when it comes to Disney and ABC News, liberal media bias comes from the very top. (For more from the author of “Wikileaks: Disney CEO Bob Iger, ABC News Have Cozy Relationship With Hillary Clinton and Her Campaign” please click HERE)

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