Oregon Bakers’ Legal Battle Continues, as Same-Sex Couple Speaks Out

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Aaron and Melissa Klein, the Oregon bakers who refused to make a cake for the wedding of two women, filed new documents Thursday with the Oregon Court of Appeals in response to the same-sex couple’s arguments that the Kleins had no legal right to refuse them service.

“We are hopeful that these judges will understand that [Oregon officials] violated Aaron and Melissa’s rights, including rights of free speech and due process that judges tend to respect regardless of judicial philosophy,” Ken Klukowski, a lawyer for the bakers, said.

In the new brief, the Kleins’ lawyers challenge the argument that the government can force citizens to create art and engage in speech that goes against their religious beliefs.

“None of this would have happened had everyone simply lived in peace according to their own beliefs,” Klukowski, senior counsel for First Liberty Institute, a conservative legal group representing the Kleins, told The Daily Signal.

The Kleins initially filed their appeal in April, challenging the July 2015 decision by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries that they had discriminated against Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer, the lesbian couple who the Kleins declined to serve.

An administrative judge for the state agency ordered the Kleins to pay the Bowman-Cryers $135,000 for physical, emotional, and mental damages.

The Bowman-Cryers, responding to the appeal to Oregon’s second-highest court, argued the agency’s ruling should stand.

The Kleins’ new legal brief was the last step before both parties head to the appeals court for oral arguments.

The Kleins paid the ordered $135,000 in damages—plus interest—in December. The Bowman-Cryers have not received the money, which is being held in a separate account by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries until the appeals process plays out.

The dispute began in January 2013, when Aaron Klein told Rachel Cryer that the Kleins’ bakery, Sweet Cakes by Melissa, would not make the wedding cake after learning it was for two women.

The Kleins are Christians and say they believe marriage is the union of one man and one woman.

The Bowman-Cryers, now married, filed a complaint with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries under the state’s public accommodation law, which bans discrimination based on sexual orientation.

The Oregon agency pursued charges against the Kleins on behalf of the same-sex couple.

Up until recently, the Bowman-Cryers had not spoken publicly about their case, and declined multiple interview requests from The Daily Signal through their lawyers.

But on Tuesday, the couple broke their silence.

“In recent months we’ve decided to speak out for one primary reason,” Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer wrote in The Advocate, a publication focused on LGBT issues. “We don’t want any person or family to go what we’ve gone through. Every family deserves respect, dignity, and a life free from discrimination and harassment.”

The couple also shared why they got married:

Part of the reason we decided to get married in the first place was to provide stability for our daughters. Before we became engaged, we became foster parents for two very high-needs girls after their mother, a close friend of ours, died suddenly. Lizzy, now 9, has cerebral palsy, autism, and a chromosomal disorder that causes developmental delays. Anastasia, now 7, has Asperger’s and stopped speaking when her mother died.

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

For their part, Aaron and Melissa Klein chose to participate in some media interviews, including with The Daily Signal. The couple also launched a fundraising account that has brought in close to $500,000.

In their article, the Bowman-Cryers described the Kleins’ as “media darlings of the right wing.”

In interviews with The Daily Signal, Melissa Klein became emotional describing the hardships the family of seven also has faced because of the case, including closure of the bakery. (The Daily Signal documented some of the backlash here.)

Klukowski, the lawyer who represents the Kleins, said the couple “never wanted to have to go through this ordeal” and had sought only “to run their little bakery consistent with their Christian faith as their ministry to their neighborhood.”

He said in an email to The Daily Signal:

Leftist media outlets have grossly and irresponsibly exaggerated the amount the Kleins received when generous Americans heard that the Kleins’ business was being driven into the ground due to this case, and $135,000 from that generosity had to be turned over to the [Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries] to hold in escrow in order for this appeal to be pursued.

Aaron and Melissa continue to suffer from lack of good job opportunities, and lack of educational opportunities for their children, because of the government’s draconian pursuit of them and their family, aided by the relentless mocking and derision of liberal media outlets and intolerant activists, fueling ongoing hurtful attacks on their family.

Lawyers for the Kleins said the case likely will go on regardless of the decision by the Oregon Court of Appeals, perhaps all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. (For more from the author of “Oregon Bakers’ Legal Battle Continues, as Same-Sex Couple Speaks Out” please click HERE)

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Could Joe Miller Give Constitutional Conservatives a Choice Instead of an Echo in Alaska?

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Is there one constitutional conservative actually running in a statewide election, who can excite the grassroots? Thus far, almost every conservative running for Congress has lost, but Joe Miller is about to change the rules of the game by delivering some just desserts to RINO Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska (F, 20%) in Alaska.

Conservatives know they need a new party to represent them on the national scene, but for now it’s important just to elect individuals down ballot in individual states — on any party line that grants them legitimate ballot access. After Lisa Murkowski, the Queen of all RINOs, ran a successful write-in candidacy against the GOP nominee, Joe Miller, in 2010, wouldn’t it be poetic justice for Joe Miller to knock her off in a general election? While the tables are turned this time, and she is technically the GOP nominee, he will actually be on the ballot as a Libertarian, and didn’t lose to her in the primary.

In many respects, Lisa Murkowski is the ultimate Republican-in-name-only, but in another respect she epitomizes what the party has become. A party that stands for nothing but a less enthusiastic expression of the other side’s agenda. Murkowski has a 20% Liberty Score®, making a typical failing grade seem conservative! Here is what we wrote on her official CR Member Profile:

Murkowski is one of the most liberal Republicans in Congress and has moved even further to the left ever since winning re-election outside of the Republican party. Her votes align with liberals on spending, immigration, energy, subsidies, and foreign affairs. She is pro-choice and a member of “Republicans for Choice,” and has publicly stated her support for the federal funding of Planned Parenthood. She is also a supporter of same-sex marriage and has a mixed record on gun rights, even though she hails from a strong hunting state.

Over her Senate career, Murkowski has time and again provided Harry Reid a critical vote to achieve cloture on Democrat priorities. Even on basic Republican values, such as right to work and welfare reform, Murkowski has consistently voted with the Democrats.

Murkowski makes John McCain look conservative. In recent years she has voted to fund Obama’s amnesty, supported every radical Obama judicial and executive nominee, opposed school choice (while claiming to be “pro-choice”), and sided with Democrats on religious liberty to mandate that private companies fund abortifacients.

If this golden calf of supporting “the lesser of two evils” in a general election extends to this individual as well, count me out. As it is, the GOP Senate roster this year includes such luminaries as John McCain, R-Ariz. (F, 34%) Jonny Isakson, R-Ga. (F, 32%) Mark Kirk, R-Ill (F, 17%) Todd Young, R-Ind. (F, 53%) Rob Portman, R-Ohio (F, 49%) Kelly Ayotte, R, N.H. (F, 32%) and the transgender initiative-supporting Richard Burr, R-N.C. (F, 41%). Is there no floor to this failed binary approach, which has gotten us to where we are today? Imagine Democrats tolerating a slate of Senate candidates one year that is full of candidates exclusively in the mold of Zell Miller?

Thankfully, Alaska will actually get a choice, not an echo of the Democrat nominee. The nominee for the Libertarian Party in Alaska, Cean Stevens, stepped aside and the party selected Joe Miller to replace her on the statewide ballot for Senate in November. Unlike in other states, the Alaska Libertarian Party enjoys broad support, and coupled with Joe’s existing name ID, there is a chance for him to win a 4-person race. Democrats and Independents have had enough of Murkowski as well. Some of the more liberal ones will vote for a liberal independent candidate on the ballot, while others will vote for the Democrat nominee. Joe Miller has an excellent chance to pick up the independent-minded ones, along with conservative Republicans.

In a year when conservatives have failed to field a constitutionalist on the general election ballot in almost any state, here is one race where they can actually vote their conscience proudly. Joe is a strong liberty-minded candidate who also deeply cares about sovereignty, national security, religious liberty, a strong civil society, federalism, and has a profound understanding of the threat from civilization jihad. For those of you who are tired of banging your heads against the wall between the false choice of Chambercrats and “Alt-Right” nationalist/populists, we finally have a man on the field.

Miller recognizes that he made some novice campaign mistakes in 2010 when he was under fire from all sides in the general election. He bounced back in 2014, and with no outside help he came within a few points of winning against Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska F, 56%) who has disappointed conservatives on multiple fronts since defeating Democrat Mark Begich for the other Senate seat.

Constitutional conservatives are caught between a rock and a hard place with no political home and are out of options for this election cycle. However, our republic will not rise or fall on your vote for president alone, but whether you acquiesce to this corrupt system or take your own destiny into your hands. This is why we must look at an all-of-the-above approach on issues, strategies, and elections to advance our agenda. In the state of Alaska, that means looking at the Libertarian candidate, who is really a constitutional conservative, against a woman who calls herself a Republican, but is the furthest thing from it. This is a race that should unite both those who are somewhat excited or disappointed about the presidential nominee.

A half century after Phyllis Schlafly rallied for “a choice, not an echo” in American politics, we are stuck with faint echoes who can’t even hold the ground of the echoes of just one generation ago. It’s time we begin striving for better than the low expectation of voting for the evil of two lesser. On a national scale, that will have to wait until next cycle, but in Alaska the opportunity is right in front of us. (For more from the author of “Could Joe Miller Give Constitutional Conservatives a Choice Instead of an Echo in Alaska?” please click HERE)

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Has Trump Pulled Even With Hillary? Two Experts Weigh the Evidence

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If you’re a Donald Trump supporter, this week’s CNN poll showing him leading Hillary Clinton gave some joy. But if you’re a Clinton supporter, you just had to wait five minutes for another poll to show her with a six-point lead.

In keeping with a political season that’s kept professional politicos on their toes and found them often wrong, the polls have swung wildly between Trump and Clinton as they fight for the White House. When the best pollsters in the country disagree, how can people who aren’t in politics read the polls?

RCP v. Huffington

Yesterday, The Stream interviewed a top polling analyst and a professor of polling about how to read the wild swings in the polling. Both Sean Trende of RealClear Politics (RCP) and Philip Harold of Robert Morris University told The Stream that a poll’s accuracy depends on the way it collects its information — which is why different polls give different results, and confound pundits and other observers.

So is it safe to average out the polls to get the collective best guess, the way RCP does? The media frequently cite RCP’s poll averages, but Natalie Jackson of The Huffington Post (HuffPost) said there’s a problem with averaging the polls that way. “The HuffPost Pollster charts calculate trend lines rather than traditional arithmetic mean, so the numbers will differ from simple averages used by sites like RealClearPolitics,” she said. “The reason for this is that a simple average will be very susceptible to individual polls’ deviations — one outlier poll could pull the average in a completely different direction than the rest of the polls indicate.”

In deciding what counts as a real trend, HuffPost looks at the dates the different polls were conducted, the days between the polls and the difference in what they found. In general, Jackson said, 4 or 5 polls have to change within a week to change the HP results.

Jackson said that HuffPost’s way of reading the different polls avoids RCP‘s problem by requiring that the polls in general change before it revises the direction the collected results are moving. HuffPost “looks for trends in the polls and downplays data that deviates significantly from what most data show.” The technical term for their technique is “a Bayesian model called a Kalman filter,” a technique engineers developed to distinguish between actual “signals” (real data) and “noise.”

Jackson argues that polling averages that don’t take trends into account over-estimate temporary results. “Currently, we show a wider race between Trump and Clinton than simple averages because the trend has favored Clinton, and the polls showing Trump ahead — or within a couple of points — appear to be deviations from the trend for now. However, we do have the gap closing, since it’s become clear that Trump is gaining support.”

HuffPost‘s poll tracker finds Clinton’s lead is more than two points larger than RCP‘s 3.3 points.

RCP‘s Trende said that both approaches have advantages and disadvantages. The HuffPost method “does filter out short-term aberrations, but can make it slower to pick up ‘real’ shifts when we have infrequent polling.” Without what he called HuffPost’s “smoothing function,” he said, “there isn’t a lot of difference between their findings and ours.”

Misleading Assumptions

As the argument between Trende and Jackson shows, accurate polling is hard to do. Conservatives found this out the hard way in 2012.

As Hot Air blogger and Going Red author Ed Morrissey told The Stream earlier this year, conservative pollsters — and the Romney campaign’s pollsters as well — thought the electorate had changed and that the polls showing Obama’s comfortable lead were based on “an outdated model.”

“We weren’t trying to be dishonest, we weren’t lying about this, we were just really wrong in our assumptions,” he said. “We weren’t taking the time to find out who these voters were, where they were at, what Barack Obama was doing with his organizing and media strategy in 2012. And those errors compounded on each other to give a completely false impression of what we were going to see that night.”

The same problem affected pollsters in the 2016 presidential primaries. In the Democratic primary, no one gave Bernie Sanders a chance of winning as many votes as he did and staying in the race so long.

Likewise no one expected Donald Trump to do so well, much less win the nomination. As Harold told The Stream yesterday, “Trump won the Republican primaries by bringing in new voters to the ballot box. That makes it very, very difficult for pollsters, who are relying on the statistics from previous elections, to filter out those who do not plan to vote and to weigh their samples.”

The Polls This Week

The objective versus subjective argument came up again this week with CNN’s poll that showed Trump in the lead. MSNBC determined that CNN oversampled lower-educated whites, and using 2012 voting data determined that the poll should have shown Clinton leading by four points. MSNBC assumed minorities will vote for Clinton at the same rates they backed Obama in 2012 and that lower-educated whites don’t come out in unforeseen numbers for Trump. The network could be right — but they could be wrong.

By the way: this article was drafted on September 6. Clinton had a 3.3-point lead, according to the RCP head-to-head matchup. Today, it’s just three points, according to RCP, (and just 2.1 points when the Libertarian and Green Party candidates are counted). HuffPost’s tracker likewise shows Clinton’s lead has shrunk. Who knows what it’ll look like tomorrow? (For more from the author of “Has Trump Pulled Even With Hillary? Two Experts Weigh the Evidence” please click HERE)

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A California University’s Troubling Ties to Terrorism

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San Francisco State University (SFSU), which has a well-deserved reputation as a breeding ground for anti-Israel radicalism, became national news in April. That’s when campus police stood by as a hate-Israel group, the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS), shouted down and disrupted a lecture by Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, prompting much criticism of SFSU’s president, Leslie Wong.

But there’s worse. As revealed by an investigation into SFSU by Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum, SFSU has partnered with a Palestinian university that’s a hotbed of radicalization.

What our investigation turned up:

SFSU signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with An-Najah University of Hebron in 2014 at the behest of Rabab Abdulhadi, director of SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative (AMED) and founding member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

Najah states on its website that the MOU was signed on September 10, 2014 and Abdulhadi sang its praises at an April 2015 reception:

“The memorandum of understanding that President Wong signed with An-Najah National University in Palestine … is the first time that we have any agreement with any university in the Arab or Muslim world and we are very excited about that.”

Wong also trumpeted the MOU at the 2015 reception, boasting of his role in helping bring it to fruition:

“When I returned from Palestine two years ago, I said I want to be one of the first major universities to sign an agreement with An-Najah or any of the other Palestinian universities, or any of the universities in the Arab world.”

Given this public preening, it is disturbing to learn that SFSU’s administration officially only corroborates the MOU indirectly on its website. Worse, in an arrogant disregard for the public’s right to know, Wong has refused to respond to repeated inquiries from Campus Watch about the agreement’s specific contents. What are the terms? The duration? The financial arrangements? And so forth.

This reticence may be due to Najah U being lauded by Hamas itself as a “greenhouse for martyrs.”

Matthew Levitt, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says it’s known for “terrorist recruitment, indoctrination and radicalization of students,” while the Anti-Defamation League reports that its student council “glorifies suicide bombings and propagandizes for jihad against Israel.”

For example, Najah student Maram Hassoneh was killed attempting her second knife attack on IDF soldiers in 2015. At the June 2014 graduation ceremony, students held up three fingers to represent Hamas’s kidnapping of three Israeli teens. On another occasion, Najah students constructed a gruesome replica of the 2001 suicide bombing in a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem.

Despite Najah’s notoriety as a repository for terrorism, Abdulhadi singled it out as a desirable partner for SFSU. Little wonder that, after pledging to set up a student exchange program with Najah in November 2015, she added this disclaimer:

“We do not want to … teach students how to grow up and build bombs and destroy other people.”

President Wong’s silence following repeated inquiries is unacceptable. Californian taxpayers fund SFSU and they have a right to know the details of and the implications of its MOU with Najah. To that end, Campus Watch has prepared a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to SFSU to make public the MOU.

Campus Watch also calls on the chancellor of the California State University, Timothy P. White, to investigate SFSU’s memorandum of understanding with Najah; and on the education committees of the California state legislature and U.S. Congress to hold hearings into this matter.

In a time of global jihad, the public deserves to know the full truth about one of its universities aligning itself with the enemy. (For more from the author of “A California University’s Troubling Ties to Terrorism” please click HERE)

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Obama Picks 1st Muslim to Sit on Federal Court

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Muslim-American groups are applauding President Barack Obama’s nomination of a Washington lawyer to serve in U.S. District Court — a move that could make him the first ever Muslim-American federal judge, according to advocates.

If confirmed, Abid Riaz Qureshi would sit on the District of Columbia’s federal bench, the White House announced Tuesday. Qureshi, who graduated Harvard Law School in 1997, is a partner in the D.C. office of Latham & Watkins LLP, specializing in healthcare fraud, securities violations, and cases involving the False Claims Act, according to a White House statement.

“I am confident he will serve the American people with integrity and a steadfast commitment to justice,” Obama said.

Muslim-American organizations hailed the historic announcement.

“The nomination of Abid Qureshi to fill a seat on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia sends a message of inclusion that is welcomed by the American Muslim community and by all Americans who value diversity and mutual respect at a time when some seek division and discord,” Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights group, said in a statement.

(Read more from “Obama Picks 1st Muslim to Sit on Federal Court” HERE)

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Feds Running ‘Illegal’ Experiments on Humans

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been arguing for years that the presence of small particulates, things like diesel engine emissions and the smokestack vapor from coal-fired power plants, is killing Americans . . .

But now a team of scientists is calling for the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences to punish the “scientific misconduct” by the EPA in its research on the issue . . .

Officials with the Heartland Institute discussed the EPA’s new and troubling dilemma in an email.

“EPA has been sponsoring experiments on human subjects involving exposures to small particle air pollution that EPA has declared publicly and repeatedly to be toxic, lethal, and carcinogenic,” the organization said. “This creates a dilemma for EPA: Either it broke the law by sponsoring human experiments forbidden under law and medical ethics, or its repeated claims to Congress and the American people about the health threat of exposure to low levels of particulate matter were a lie.”

Several of the scientists and physicians from the institute, a national nonprofit headquartered in Arlington Heights, Illinois, and dedicated to discovering, developing and promoting free-market solutions to social and economic problems, recently addressed a NRC meeting on the issue. (Read more from “Feds Running ‘Illegal’ Experiments on Humans” HERE)

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House Overwhelmingly Passes Bill to End Obama Admin ‘Slush Fund’

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The House of Representatives passed legislation Wednesday which would block President Obama from funding favored political organizations through penalties levied against banks.

The final tally of votes for the “Stop Settlement Slush Funds Act of 2016” (H.R. 5063) was 241-174, with five Democrats joining with all the Republicans present to approve the measure.

As reported by Western Journalism, the Obama administration once again appears to be employing extra-constitutional ways to get around Congress and fund many of its favorite organizations, some of which are engaged in political activities.

After forcing multi-billion settlements with most of the major banks in the country over mortgage practices, the Justice Department offered them the option of paying back some or all of the amounts owed on a better than a two-for-one dollar basis by “donating” to approved organizations, rather than remitting all the money to the U.S. Treasury.

For example, Bank of America donated “$1.15 million to the National Urban League, which counts as if it were $2.6 million against the bank’s settlement. Similarly, $1.5 million to La Raza takes $3.5 million off the total amount of ‘consumer relief’ owed by the bank,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

“Many of these groups engage in voter registration, community organizing and lobbying on liberal policy priorities at every level of government,” the Journal noted. “They also provide grants to other liberal groups not eligible for payouts under the settlements. Thanks to the Obama administration, and the fungibility of money, the settlements’ beneficiaries can now devote hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to these activities.”

House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., introduced the Stop Settlement Slush Funds Act in April, which prevents government officials from enforcing settlements that funnel money to third parties.

“Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, the Constitution is clear: Congress shall have the power to appropriate,” said Goodlatte in a House Judiciary Committee press release on Wednesday following the bill’s passage.

“The practices discovered within the DOJ must be stopped. The passage of this bill by the House ensures the recovered funds are used to benefit direct victims and not special interests, and brings accountability to the Executive Branch as a whole.”

According to the House Judiciary release, “the DOJ has used mandatory donations to direct as much as $880 million dollars to activist groups.”

In a related issue, the Obama administration announced earlier this year it will hand out over $7 billion to health insurance companies from fees collected through the Affordable Care Act as a means of mitigating the disastrous financial impact the legislation is having on them.

The only problem is the law authorizes a fixed share of those collected fees to be used for that purpose and the rest is to go Treasury’s general funds. The administration has handed over all the funds collected without obtaining authorization from Congress. (For more from the author of “House Overwhelmingly Passes Bill to End Obama Admin ‘Slush Fund'” please click HERE)

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Obama Cancels Meeting After Philippines President Curses Him

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The president of the Philippines, who was scheduled to face criticism Tuesday from President Barack Obama for his controversial “war on drugs” that has resulted in open season on suspected drug dealers, on Monday lashed out at Obama and called him a “son of a whore.”

Afterward, U.S. officials announced that Obama no longer had any plans to meet with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte.

Duterte took office June 30 and promised a war on drugs that would wipe out drug dealing in the island nation. As a result, more than 2,000 suspected drug dealers have been killed, often without any form of judicial process.

“Double your efforts. Triple them, if need be. We will not stop until the last drug lord, the last financier, and the last pusher have surrendered or put behind bars — or below the ground, if they so wish,” Duterte said in July.

His tactics have raised eyebrows, and were expected to be a subject of conversation on Tuesday between Duterte and Obama at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations conference, which both are attending.

However, before he left Manila for Laos, where the conference is held, Duterte became enraged when a reporter asked him how he planned to explain the killings to Obama.

“Who does he think he is? I am no American puppet. I am a president of a sovereign state, and we have long ceased to be a colony. I do not have any master except the Filipino people, nobody but nobody,” he said.

“You must be respectful. Do not just throw questions. Putang ina I will swear at you in that forum,” he said, using the Tagalog phrase translated literally as “son of a whore” and colloquially as “son of a b—-.”

Duterte, whose combative and abrasive style has seen him curse out other world leaders including Pope Francis, suggested Obama has no right to ask about internal Philippine affairs.

“Who is he to confront me?” Duterte said, adding that the Philippines had not received an apology for misdeeds committed during the U.S. colonization of the Philippines.

He linked his current problems with American misdeeds dating back to the war fought at the turn of the 20th century against Moro insurgents on the southern Island of Mindanao.

“As a matter of fact, we inherited this problem from the United States,” he said. “Why? Because they invaded this country and made us their subjugated people. Everybody has a terrible record of extra-judicial killing. Why make an issue about fighting crime?”

He added: “Look at the human rights of America along that line. The way they treat the migrants there.”

Obama indicated during a news conference he was focused on whether any meeting would be productive.

“I always want to make sure if I’m having a meeting that it’s productive and we’re getting something done,” he said.

“If and when we have a meeting, this is something that is going to be brought up,” Obama said, referring to Duterte’s war on drug dealers. (For more from the author of “Obama Cancels Meeting After Philippines President Curses Him” please click HERE)

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CNN, Now the Censoring News Network

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For years now, CNN has been dubbed the Clinton News Network (a moniker disturbingly close to the truth) and even the Communist News Network (hyperbole, yes). But last week, CNN emerged as the Censoring News Network.

There are certainly some fine reporters at CNN who strive to be balanced and fair in their work, and when compared to Fox and MSNBC, there have been times when CNN appears to be less biased than their cable competitors. But as the presidential campaigns wear on, CNN’s pro-Hillary, anti-Trump reporting is becoming even more glaring, to the point of blatant censorship.

As an early endorser of Ted Cruz, I noticed CNN’s fairly obvious disdain for him during the Republican primaries, as a Trump or Hillary victory in one state would be described as very important or highly significant, while an even bigger Cruz victory in an equally important state would be reported flatly and without adjectives, as in, “Senator Cruz wins in Utah.”

But these were minor infractions and hardly amounted to censorship. Not even close.

Over at Fox, it has been impossible to miss the degree to which Sean Hannity and others have thrown themselves in with Trump, to the point that some shows resemble political infomercials rather than journalistic programming.

But again, this too does not amount to censorship.

But it is totally different when images are altered and words removed so as to withhold important information or give misleading impressions to the viewing audience. CNN was guilty of this twice in two days last week.

Blurring the Truth

On August 31, CNN’s Headline News (HLN) broadcast a report about Steven Eckel, a 53-year-old man who came to the rescue of a four-month-old girl whom he spotted left in a hot car in New Jersey. He smashed the window with a sledgehammer, probably saving the little girl’s life.

What could there be to censor?

Well this hero, who was being hailed for his actions by the media, was actually – hold your breath now – a supporter of Donald Trump. Worse still, he was wearing a t-shirt that said, “Trump 2016.”

How could a man like that do anything good and compassionate and praiseworthy? And how could CNN’s HLN feature a glowing report that made a Trump supporter look good?

When the report first aired on the 31st, the Trump 2016 logo was clearly seen.

“But,” the Daily Mail reports, “when it was shown again later the same day, producers decided to censor the front of his t-shirt,” blurring the words so they could not be seen.

How utterly outrageous.

A spokesman for HLN stated that the blurring was a mistake, explaining, “We blurred the logo and shouldn’t have; it was done in error.”

The obvious question is whose idea was it to blur the image?

Really now, what could possibly motivate someone to do such a thing other than extreme anti-Trump (and/or pro-Hillary) bias? On what grounds could anyone working in the HLN newsroom think that the “Trump 2016” logo should be obscured? Was it profane? Did it contain an offensive graphic? Was it giving out private information? No, no, and no.

And does any rational person think that if the hero had been wearing a “Hillary 2016” t-shirt that the pro-Hillary logo would have been blurred?

Crooked Reporting

Two days before that, on August 29th, CNN came under fire for omitting Trump’s trademark description of Hillary as “Crooked” when posting one of his tweets.

What they posted for their viewers was the actual image of a Trump tweet reading, “I think that both candidates, Hillary and myself, should release detailed medical records. I have no problem in doing so! Hillary?”

Again, the viewers saw what appeared to be an image of Trump’s tweet, which was then read on the air by the CNN anchor, Jim Sciutto. The actual tweet, however, in keeping with Trump’s custom, contained the “Crooked Hillary” moniker.

So, CNN not only had its host read the tweet sans the word “Crooked,” but they put an image on their screen sans “Crooked,” giving the misleading impression to the casual viewer that this was a copy of the tweet.

What kind of deceptive reporting is this? Is it anything less than censorship?

Personally, I’m not a fan of the “Crooked” epithet (although sadly, Mrs. Clinton seems to be knee-deep in corruption and lies), and if the CNN reporter chose to use a certain intonation to reflect his displeasure with it, that would be understandable.

But to alter the text, presumably because CNN deemed it offensive, and then to post a graphic with that altered text as if it were the original, is to engage in outright journalistic deception. This sounds like it could be taken right out of the pages of the old Communist Party playbook. North Korea would also be proud of reporting like this.

It is true that the following day, CNN reporters read the entire tweet, unedited, but that does not remove the offensive nature of what was done the day before.

So, from scrubbing a word to blurring a slogan, one being anti-Hillary and the other being pro-Trump, CNN is becoming the Censoring News Network.

To all people of influence and responsibility at CNN, I urge you to step higher, to report the news without censorship, and to do your best to become known for unbiased reporting. America desperately needs at least one station that will give it an honest shot. (For more from the author of “CNN, Now the Censoring News Network” please click HERE)

Watch a recent interview with the author below:

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Journalists Caught in the Crossfire of the Ukraine-Russia Conflict

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There is a memorial to murdered Ukrainian journalists on Khreshchatyk, Kyiv’s central boulevard.

It’s a simple, nondescript metal plaque flanked by flowers on the side of a building. Some of the names are faded now, worn down by the years and the elements.

The names date from 1992, the first year after Ukraine gained its independence from the Soviet Union, underscoring how the fall of communism 25 years ago did not portend a new era of vibrant democratic culture in Ukraine.

Ukraine has spent much of the past quarter century under oligarchic thug rule, in which free and objective journalism was often seen as a nuisance to be controlled and manipulated—and sometimes a threat worth eliminating—by those in power.

And this summer, more than two years after Ukrainians took to the streets to overthrow the regime of former pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, a string of violent incidents against journalists and media outlets has rocked Ukraine’s capital.

Journalists are caught in the crossfire of those wishing to control the country (both in Kyiv and in Moscow), as well as targets of simmering anti-Russian sentiments due to the ongoing war in the east.

Journalists of all leanings have been targeted this summer, including government corruption watchdogs and those accused of maintaining a pro-Russian bias.

On July 20, Pavlo Sheremet, a well-known journalist in Ukraine for the news agency Ukrainska Pravda, was killed in a brazen car bomb attack in central Kyiv. Ukrainian officials requested the assistance of U.S. FBI investigators, but a motive has not yet been determined and officials have not named any suspects.

“I think the final aim was to scare or to intimidate Ukrainian journalists apart from or simultaneously trying to further destabilize the situation in the country,” said Andriy Kulykov, chairman of Hromadske Radio, during a broadcast interview for the independent Ukrainian radio news outlet.

“I don’t see that Ukrainian investigative journalists are limited in their duties or became scared and abandoned their jobs after Sheremet’s murder,” said Viktor Kovalenko, a Ukrainian journalist and former journalism professor.

“On the contrary, I see that now they are turning their eyes inside media society to find out how deeply Kremlin’s manipulators infiltrated and rule it according to their infowar against Ukraine,” Kovalenko added. “This attention to ourselves will help in cleaning, rethinking of journalism standards, and with actual rebirth of Ukrainian journalism.”

On the same day as Sheremet’s assassination, a knife-wielding man attacked Maria Rydvan, 25, an editor for Forbes Ukraine, as she was walking in a central Kyiv park.

“In park for no apparent reason a man ran to me and stabbed me three times… It’s all very strange,” Rydvan wrote on her Facebook page.

On Aug. 28, Russian journalist Alexander Shchetinin was found dead on the balcony of his Kyiv apartment. He died due to what police said was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, according to Ukrainian news reports, and was discovered by friends who had come to celebrate his birthday.

Shchetinin renounced his Russian citizenship to be a Ukrainian citizen and founded the Kyiv-based New Region news agency.

Ukrainian officials are investigating Shchetinin’s death as a suicide. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, is pushing for his death to be “swiftly and thoroughly investigated.”

Without directly alleging that Shchetinin’s death was the result of foul play, Dunja Mijatovic, OSCE representative on freedom of the media, said Ukrainian officials should “improve the fragile situation regarding the safety of journalists and fully and effectively address the issue of impunity.”

Information Wars

On Sunday, the Kyiv offices of the TV news station Inter were set ablaze in an arson attack. Protesters had gathered outside the building to rally against the channel’s alleged pro-Russian bias, setting tires on fire and spray painting graffiti on the side of the building and on a fence hastily put up to keep them back.

One message read: “Inter—get out!” Another said: “Inter agents of Moscow.”

There were reports of minor injuries, but no deaths. Protesters barricaded Inter’s offices until Tuesday, when a deal was allegedly reached with the news agency, in which unspecified changes to Inter’s editorial policy were agreed upon.

“If the channel fails to observe the deal, the blockade will be resumed in a more radical way,” said Oleksiy Serdiuk, a protest leader, according to the Ukrainian news site Ukraine Today.

Many Ukrainians took to social media for a polarizing debate about the Inter incident.

Inter is commonly known among Ukrainians to harbor a pro-Russian bias, and after more than two years of war against pro-Russian separatists and Russian regulars in eastern Ukraine, and the murder of more than 100 protesters by the Yanukovych regime during the 2014 revolution, there is no love lost in Ukraine for those who promote Russian propaganda.

The arson attack against Inter on Sept. 4 was preceded by a Facebook post on Aug. 31 by Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, in which he pushed for the National Television and Radio Broadcasting Council and the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU (Ukraine’s equivalent of the FBI), to investigate Inter for “anti-Ukrainian” and “anti-state” propaganda.

Most Ukrainian officials condemned the Inter incident. Some also expressed concern about the perceived damage to Ukraine’s ongoing efforts to showcase the country’s progress toward a stable democracy worthy of deeper ties to the European Union and NATO.

“It’s clear that those who want to show a turbulent Ukraine suffering from destabilization and alike benefit from this,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman told Ukrainian media. “But it is important that the law enforcement system gives an adequate answer: who has done this, what was the aim, and, most important, those people should be punished.”

Kovalenko noted that the Kremlin exploits incidents like the Inter arson attack as part of an ongoing effort to destabilize Ukraine to undercut support from the U.S. and the EU.

“I treat an attack on Inter TV as another element of Kremlin’s infowar … and at the same time damage the reputation of the Ukrainian government abroad to force the West to weaken support in times of military aggression,” Kovalenko said. “Freedom of the press is a very sensitive value for Europe and the U.S., therefore, Moscow propagandists love to speculate on this to get the maximal level of media noise.”

The patience and resolve of the EU to maintain punitive economic sanctions on Moscow for its aggression in Ukraine will likely wear thin if Ukraine is perceived as slipping back into old authoritarian habits. And U.S. support for Ukraine—including military training programs and the delivery of limited nonlethal military hardware—could also dry up if Kyiv fails to show adequate progress in shoring up its democratic institutions.

“The whole world is watching you. That’s a fact,” U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said in an address to Ukraine’s parliament on Dec. 9. “They’re watching you because their hopes for your success as you fight both the unrelenting aggression of the Kremlin and the cancer of corruption will impact on them.”

Biden continued:

Ukraine’s moment. It may be your last moment. Please for the sake of the rest of us, selfishly on my part, don’t waste it. Seize the opportunity. Build a better future for the people of Ukraine.

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