Obama Threatens to Veto Military Bill Because It Protects Religious Groups

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On D-Day, Franklin Roosevelt famously asked a country of many faiths to pray that God protect our troops as they “struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization” against tyranny.

Given our military’s tradition of defending religious liberty from attack, it is disappointing to see President Barack Obama threaten to veto the military’s main authorization bill if it contains protections for religious freedom.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is an annual bill that sets policies and budgets for our nation’s fighting forces and is currently being negotiated by both houses of Congress in conference before a final vote.

Included in the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act is an amendment offered by Rep. Steve Russell, R-Okla., that applies decades-old religious exemptions from Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) to federal grants and contracts.

The Russell Amendment is sound policy that will prevent the administration from stripping contracts and grants from faith-based social service providers whose internal staffing policies reflect their faith.

Jewish day schools and Catholic adoption centers, for example, are not liable under Title VII for being authentically Jewish or Catholic, and their staffing policies shouldn’t disqualify them from federal grants and contracts either.

But Obama’s veto threat is actually the strongest proof of why the Russell Amendment is needed. It shows that the president wants absolute freedom to discriminate against religious social service providers that interact with the government—all because many religious organizations won’t endorse the LGBT cause. Congress should say no to the president’s blatant attack on religious diversity.

Undermining Religious Liberty

For decades, the left has attempted to raise sexual orientation and gender identity to special protected status through Congress. Seeing little success using the democratic process, the Obama administration has instead turned to issuing various edicts that misinterpret existing civil rights protections to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

On July 21, 2014, Obama issued an executive order that unilaterally elevated sexual orientation and gender identity to special status for purposes of federal contracts.

As our colleague Ryan T. Anderson pointed out at the time, the order “disregards the consciences and liberties of people of goodwill who happen not to share the government’s opinions about issues of sexuality. All Americans should be free to contract with the government without penalty because of their reasonable beliefs about morally contentious issues.”

The executive order left in place the Title VII religious staffing exemption, and the Russell Amendment merely reaffirms this protection while clarifying that religious organizations have a right to employ people committed to authentically living in accordance with their faith tenets. In short, religious organizations are free to be religious organizations.

But Obama would interpret existing religious protections narrowly in order to make religious groups bend to the LGBT agenda. As seen in the administration’s education and health care mandates on gender identity, in practice, this means requiring employee bathrooms and showers meant for women be opened to biological men who self-identify as female regardless of people’s religious beliefs on the matter. The administration’s proven lack of respect for religious freedom when it comes to sexual orientation and gender identity policies is more than enough reason to keep the Russell Amendment.

Reaffirming Long-Standing Policy Is Apparently Unacceptable

Despite the Russell Amendment’s straightforwardness and precedent, 42 Senate Democrats have written to the Senate Armed Services Committee asking that the Russell Amendment be stripped from final National Defense Authorization Act language during conference negotiations.

The letter states that prospective employees should not be “disqualified from a taxpayer-funded job based on an individual’s religions.” Except that’s not how federal contracts typically work. Existing organizations bid for contracts to produce services or products based on their ability to deliver them, not to provide somebody “a taxpayer-funded job.”

The programs at issue are designed to help the needy in the most effective and efficient way possible, and faith-based organizations have proven that they are often the very best at providing these social services precisely because of their faith-based character.

But moreover, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act already specifically protects religious organizations’ ability to hire based on religion, so the burden is on the objectors to the Russell Amendment to prove why a system that has been affirmed by the Supreme Court and has served religious pluralism well for decades should now be stripped away when it comes to federal contracts.

Will Congress Hold the Line?

The Russell Amendment was included in the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act and passed by a comfortable margin (277 to 147) because it reflects the best of our traditions without taking away anything from anyone.

Congress should not let the president’s veto threat get in the way of passing sound policy, and the Russell Amendment is just that—a commonsense continuation of policy that has served our diverse society well since 1964. (For more from the author of “Obama Threatens to Veto Military Bill Because It Protects Religious Groups” please click HERE)

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Federal Judge Asks Why Obama Administration Isn’t Admitting Christian Syrian Refugees

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In an otherwise unremarkable opinion over the federal Freedom of Information Act, a federal appellate court judge has issued a sharp rejoinder to the Obama administration over an issue that has been discussed in the news—the almost complete lack of Syrian Christian refugees being brought over to the U.S.

The Heartland Alliance’s National Immigrant Justice Center, a progressive liberal advocacy organization “dedicated to ensuring human rights protections” for immigrants and asylum seekers—including apparently terrorists—filed a FOIA lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security.

The lawsuit claimed that DHS was refusing to release the identity of Tier III terrorist organizations, unlike the identities of what are defined as Tier I and Tier II terrorist groups that are publicly identified.

Tier III terrorist organizations “tend to be groups about which the U.S. government does not have good intelligence, making it essential that [DHS] be able to obtain information about them during screening interviews that are as focused and complete as possible.”

The government argued that Tier III terrorist organizations are exempt from disclosure under FOIA because it would disclose “techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations.”

Individuals in Tier III groups are more likely than other asylum seekers “to commit violent or otherwise unlawful acts.” The court accepted the government’s assertion that if immigrants become aware of the identity of these Tier III organizations, which the Heartland Alliance made clear it intended to publicize, then members of the groups would “have a very strong incentive to falsify or misrepresent ” their “encounters, activities, or associations” with the terrorist groups.

If the immigrants don’t know a terrorist organization they have been associated with has been identified by the government, they are “likely to be less guarded in answering questions about [their] activities or associations with the organization.”

All three members of the panel agreed that the FOIA exemption applied, particularly because the Heartland Alliance could not “explain what the government would gain by pretending that harmless organizations are actually terrorist groups.”

The Heartland Alliance also made it clear that “its goal in the litigation” was to “discredit” the government’s classification of terrorist organizations, according to the court. Both “the tone and content” of its briefs “signals its disbelief that the government has secrets worth keeping from asylum seekers and their helpers.”

However, in a spirited concurrence written by Judge Daniel Manion, the judge expressed his “concern about the apparent lack of Syrian Christians as a part of immigrants from that country.”

According to Manion, it is “well-documented” that the refugees are not representative of that “war-torn area of the world.” Ten percent of the Syrian population is Christian and “yet less than one-half of 1 percent of Syrian refugees admitted to the United States this year are Christian.”

President Barack Obama set a goal of resettling 10,000 Syrian refugees in the U.S., and by August that goal had already been exceeded. But of the “nearly 11,000 refugees admitted by mid-September, only 56 were Christian.”

Yet Christian Syrians have been one of the primary targets of the Islamic jihadists infesting Syria and butchering, murdering, and killing civilians. The Islamic State has made it clear that it is going after Christians because it intends to “conquer Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women.”

Thus, one would expect that Christian Syrians would represent a significant portion of the Syrians being accepted into the U.S. as refugees. But that hasn’t been the case, and, according to Manion, the Obama administration has no “good explanation for this perplexing discrepancy.” Thus, we “remain in the dark as a humanitarian catastrophe continues.”

This is also relevant to the complaints of various states about the Obama administration settling Syrian refugees in them without providing any information about the people arriving. As Manion points out, “the good people of this country routinely welcome immigrants from all over the world. But in a democracy, good data is critical to public debate about national immigration policy.”

The courts and the Obama administration “demand high evidentiary burdens for states seeking to keep their citizens safe, and then prevent the states from obtaining that evidence” on these refugees. That creates a catch-22 for state governments.

So while the administration brings Syrian refugees into the country by the thousands, it is concealing basic information about those refugees behind a wall of government secrecy. This, despite the fact that the Syrian refugee crisis has been the catalyst for the infiltration of terrorists into Western Europe.

Yet the administration refuses to tell the American public or the states how it is making its decisions on who it is accepting for resettlement in the U.S., or even what steps it is taking to ensure we don’t have the same infiltration here.

Or why, in a religious civil war where Christians are one of the main targets of the Islamic terrorists engaging in indiscriminate slaughter, it is bringing in almost none of those victims of one of the worst human rights atrocities of the new century. (For more from the author of “Federal Judge Asks Why Obama Administration Isn’t Admitting Christian Syrian Refugees” please click HERE)

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New Wikileaks Releases Show Clinton Staffers Worried About Her ‘Head’ in 2015

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Long before it became an issue in the 2016 campaign, the health of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton concerned two senior staffers, emails just released by Wikileaks reveal.

Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta asked in a September 26, 2015 e-mail, “How bad is her head?” The question was the only thing he asked campaign spokesperson Jennifer Palmieri in the message, which had the subject line, “Any sense of whether and when she wants to talk?”

Palmieri responded: “Don’t know. Huma left here about an hour ago. I just pinged again to ask about prep, haven’t heard back. She leaves at 6 pm for DC.”

That exchange was preceded by more than five months by an e-mail from close Clinton aide Huma Abedin. In a lengthy exchange about a Super PAC used by soon-to-be Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush and how the campaign should talk about “dark money in politics,” Abedin told Podesta, Palmieri, campaign manager Robby Mook and others, “She’s going to stick to notes a little closer this am, still not perfect in her head.”

Clinton’s only official event that day, according to the campaign’s website, was a roundtable event in New Hampshire.

It is unclear what spurred Abedin’s comment. She may have meant only that Clinton did not have had her notes memorized or was tired —or she may have been expressing a larger concern with Clinton’s health.

The health of both elderly candidates has been an undercurrent of the 2016 presidential season. Trump is 70, and has released relatively little information about his health. A year younger, Clinton has fallen on multiple occasions in the last seven years, including a very public collapse in September that her campaign attributed to pneumonia and exhaustion. Clinton also had a concussion in 2012, and broke fractured her arm in 2009.

Clinton has been targeted by Wikileaks for some time, including a release this week that showed her staffers were concerned that President Barack Obama may have lied when he said in early 2015 that he found out from the news that his former Secretary of State was improperly and illegally using a private server. Obama had exchanged e-mails with Clinton on the server before making the comments.

The Clinton campaign has steadfastly refused to address the information revealed by the many Wikileaks releases, declaring them untrustworthy because they were illegally procured and possibly tied to the Russian government. (For more from the author of “New Wikileaks Releases Show Clinton Staffers Worried About Her ‘Head’ in 2015” please click HERE)

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New Poll Shows Trump Cut Clinton’s Lead in Half in Just One Week

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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump grew up with a fellow New York City icon proclaiming that “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”

That adage of New York Yankees great Yogi Berra is ringing true on the presidential playing field as another poll shows that a late rally by Trump is bringing him closer to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

A Fox News poll released Wednesday showed that in one week, Trump sliced Clinton’s poll lead in half, as independent voters increasingly flock to the billionaire.

The Fox poll found Clinton leading Trump 44 percent to 41 percent, with 10 percent of the voters supporting another candidate and 4 percent undecided.

The 3 percent margin for Clinton represents a continued erosion of her lead, which was six points last week and seven points the week before.

In a head-to-head contest, Clinton leads Trump 49 percent to 44 percent. Clinton’s five-point lead is down from the seven-point lead she had a week ago.

Independents are changing the dynamics of the contest.

Trump leads Clinton among independent voters, 41 percent to 28 percent. That’s almost double the seven-point lead Trump held last week. Two weeks ago, each candidate had 35 percent of the vote from independents.

Independent voters also are a main source of support for third-party candidates. Fourteen percent support Libertarian Gary Johnson and 7 percent back Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

The poll also found that Trump’s supporters are more committed to their candidate than are Clinton backers, with 68 percent of Trump backers supporting him “strongly,” compared with 61 percent for Clinton.

“To be competitive, Trump needs to consolidate support among Republicans and carry independents,” Republican pollster Daron Shaw told Fox News. “That’s where he’s made in-roads in the last week, mostly by focusing his attention on the economy and Obamacare.”

Trump has focused his argument that voters have their only chance to defeat the “rigged” system by electing him.

“Remember folks, it’s a rigged system,” Trump said at a rally Friday. “That’s why you’ve got to get out and vote, you’ve got to watch. Because this system is totally rigged.”

“I believe we’re actually winning,” Trump said Tuesday in Florida. “It’s a rigged system.”

“The media isn’t just against me. They’re against all of you,” he later said in St Augustine. “They’re against what we represent.” (For more from the author of “New Poll Shows Trump Cut Clinton’s Lead in Half in Just One Week” please click HERE)

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Bill Clinton Reveals What He Wants to Be Called If Hillary Wins the White House

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Former President Bill Clinton is entertaining a new title he might be called if his wife wins the White House in two weeks.

During a campaign stop in Kinston, N.C., Tuesday afternoon, Clinton revealed what his preferred name would be.

“What I hope I’ll be is the first volunteer,” he told the Daily Mail. “I hope to be the best free labor she’s got.”

“I don’t care what they call me as long as she wins,” he added as he greeted supporters on a Kinston sidewalk.

The former president was on a two-day bus tour through eastern North Carolina.

During the campaign, Clinton and his wife, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, have toyed around with a couple of ideas for what his title would be. Since Clinton has an Irish heritage, “first laddie” was jokingly mentioned, as was “first dude.”

When Sarah Palin was governor of Alaska, her husband, Todd, preferred to be called the state’s “first dude.”

Hillary Clinton has stated she prefers the term “first gentleman.”

If the former president ends up being the “first volunteer,” his wife already has made it known he won’t be picking out the White House china pattern.

Clinton’s plans aren’t all that clear if his wife manages to win the White House. Over the past couple of months he has stated he will distance himself from the family’s charitable organization, the Clinton Foundation.

“While it would be presumptive to assume a victory in November, now that Hillary is her party’s nominee, it would be irresponsible not to plan for it,” he wrote in August.

Republican nominee Donald Trump has often referred to the Clinton Foundation as “criminal enterprise,” slamming the charity for accepting money from countries with severe human rights abuses.

“You talk about women and women’s rights?” Trump asked rhetorically during the third and final presidential debate, referring to contributions accepted by Clinton from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. “These are people that push gays off of buildings.” (For more from the author of “Bill Clinton Reveals What He Wants to Be Called If Hillary Wins the White House” please click HERE)

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Levin Smokes Lying Obama and His Highway Robbery Health Care Sham

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President Obama and his Obamacare “experts” have been lying to the American people all along about the destructive nature of their signature health care plan. Now, it is all unraveling right before our eyes.

“You like your Obamacare? Well, guess what, you’re stuck with it,” Levin quipped Wednesday night on his radio show before absolutely tearing into the sham health care plan. “This is highway robbery … the ONLY thing getting more powerful and richer is the federal government.”

You won’t want to miss this EPIC monologue:

“Ladies and gentlemen, for God’s sake, do you want more of this?!” (For more from the author of “Levin Smokes Lying Obama and His Highway Robbery Health Care Sham” please click HERE)

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In Desperate Push to Save Dying Obamacare, President Wants to Bail out Insurers

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The death knell for Obamacare has been rung. President Barack Obama’s own Department of Health and Human Services confirmed this week that Americans will experience double-digit premium hikes on their health care plans beginning Nov. 1. In fact, the average increase will be 25 percent.

And while costs are going up, choice is going down: 1 out of every 5 Americans will have only one health insurer to choose from. More costs, less choice—so much for the “affordable” part of the Affordable Care Act.

No doubt about it: Obamacare is dying. But don’t count on it going gently into that good night. Instead, count the billions of dollars Obamacare is trying to rob from the American taxpayer on its way to the grave.

As health policy expert Robert Moffit of The Heritage Foundation explained in a recent commentary, Obamacare is “like a patient suffering from multi-organ failure [and] … central planning is the disease.”

But instead of pulling the plug, Obama and the insurance companies want to put Obamacare on a costly life-support line of cash, all on the taxpayer’s dime.

One symptom of the central planning disease, and indicators of Obamacare’s death spiral, is that the insurance companies haven’t made money by offering qualified health plans on the Obamacare exchanges.

Instead, the insurance companies are losing money hand over fist, despite “risk mitigation” programs baked in by Obamacare architects to sweeten the deal for large insurance companies.

Now, the Obama administration is signaling it wants to find any way it can to funnel as much as $170 billion of taxpayer money to the insurance companies, in hopes of keeping the law alive.

In other words, the administration wants to bail out insurance companies in order to bail out Obamacare.

So what exactly are these risk mitigation provisions, and how might they result in a taxpayer-funded bailout? If you’re in a hurry, you can watch this 2-minute video from The Daily Signal’s Melissa Quinn.

Got some more time? Read this detailed memo from Heritage Action for America, titled “How Congress Can Stop the Impending Obamacare Bailouts.”

But for situational awareness, the main three risk mitigation programs are called 1) cost-sharing subsidies, 2) the traditional reinsurance program, and 3) the risk corridors program.

Cost-sharing subsidies. They required insurers to artificially reduce deductibles and copays for low-income Obamacare enrollees. The administration was caught making illegal payments to the insurers to compensate for the discounts, essentially shelling out billions of dollars that weren’t authorized by Congress.

Thankfully for your wallet, a federal judge has put a pause on any more payments under this program.

The reinsurance program. It was a new tax on employer-provided health insurance, collected to create a pot of money to redistribute to insurance companies that lost profits from covering high-risk individuals. However, under this section of Obamacare, the Department of Health and Human Services also was required to make $5 billion in deposits into the Treasury and back to the taxpayers.

Want to guess how much HHS officials have paid so far? Zero. Why? Because they have broken the law by prioritizing payments to the insurance companies.

Which is why Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., and Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., have introduced the Taxpayers Before Insurers Act to force HHS to pay the American people back the $5 billion owed.

Getting Congress to prioritize the taxpayer over the insurance companies hasn’t made the insurance companies happy—especially when they want Congress to continue their gravy train past 2016.

As Ed Haislmaier, another health policy expert at The Heritage Foundation, writes in his appropriately headlined piece, “Grand Theft Health Insurance”:

Recently, the national Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association has been aggressively lobbying Congress to ignore the Obama administration’s illegal diversion of tax dollars into the pockets of—you guessed it—health insurers. … To be sure, it is the Obama administration, and not the insurers, who perpetrated this heist. But for the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association to now lobby Congress to keep getting the money puts them in the unseemly (to say the least) position of the guy caught with stolen merchandise demanding that he be allowed to keep his ill-gotten goods because he wasn’t the one who originally stole them.

The risk corridors program. It was supposed to create another temporary funding stream to transfer money from insurance companies that made profits to insurance companies that suffered losses from selling Obamacare plans.

The problem is that we’ve seen much higher losses than profits. So the insurance companies that feel stiffed have sued the Obama administration for the difference.

Sadly, the administration seems only too willing to find a way to get the insurers the money they want. Even if it means paying them through the legally questionable method of settling the lawsuits and making payments out of the “Judgment Fund”—something the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service says the administration doesn’t have the authority to do.

But when has lack of authority ever stopped Obama before? Especially when it comes to the law that bears his name.

That’s the bad news. The bailouts are coming and Congress must act to stop them. The good news is that, unsurprisingly, the American people really don’t like the government’s giving their money to insurance companies in an effort to prop up Obamacare.

According to market research conducted by American Perceptions Initiative, which is affiliated with The Heritage Foundation, the vast majority of Americans strongly opposes using taxpayer dollars to bail out Obamacare.

Fully 87 percent of those surveyed agreed when asked whether they agreed or disagreed with this statement: “If private insurance companies lose money selling health insurance under the Obamacare program, taxpayers should not have to bail them out to cover their losses.”

I repeat: 87 percent. That’s what’s known as a mandate. Which means members of Congress and their staff can have complete confidence that Americans support action to stop the impending bailouts.

Or, put another way, if congressional Republican leadership is looking for a unifying issue after the election, it isn’t going to be passing a new internet sales tax or a massive omnibus spending package (like last year). Stopping illegal payments to insurance companies would be a unifying issue.

What’s more, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office and Congressional Research Service also have thrown flags on the Obama administration’s play of paying insurers at the expense of taxpayers. Both found that the payments under the reinsurance program are illegal—just like they found using the Judgment Fund to make risk corridor payments would be illegal.

So when it comes to the legality of bailing out Obamacare, the Obama administration is 0-3 against a federal judge and two of the government’s own watchdog agencies.

For Congress, the choice couldn’t be clearer: Protect Obamacare or protect the American people.

The only question left to answer is who Congress will side with. The rule of law and its constituents? Or the insurance companies and the president?

As brutal Obamacare premium hikes hit families again in less than a week, and we head into the dangerous waters of a lame-duck session of Congress after the election, it’s as good of time as any to remind Congress that the American people don’t plan on going gently into the night either.

Especially not while their tax dollars are at risk of being used to bail out Obamacare. (For more from the author of “In Desperate Push to Save Dying Obamacare, President Wants to Bail out Insurers” please click HERE)

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The Reason This Pastor Isn’t Handing Over His Sermon Transcripts to the Government

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A public health official who also is a lay minister says he will not turn over his sermons and related documents to the state of Georgia, which he contends fired him for what he preached from the pulpit of his church.

“My faith has fueled me,” Dr. Eric Walsh, who served as an associate pastor and still preaches, said at a press conference Wednesday at the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta. “I want to be able to protect the faith of others, so I really have no intention of turning over the sermons.”

Walsh, 45, accepted a job as district health director with Georgia’s Department of Public Health in May 2014. He expected to start work around the middle of June, according to his lawyers at First Liberty Institute.

But a week later, officials with the health agency requested copies of sermons Walsh had preached before congregations of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

After reviewing the contents of the sermons, the agency fired Walsh, according to First Liberty, a legal organization that defends religious freedom.

Walsh’s sermon topics include compassion for the poor, health, marriage, sexuality, world religions, science, and creationism, his lawyers say. In 2014, the Los Angeles Times noted a controversy over his sermons on homosexuality and evolution.

Walsh previously served as director of the Public Health Department in Pasadena, California, for four years. He has a medical degree and a doctorate of public health and is a former member of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.

As The Daily Signal previously reported, Georgia Department of Public Health spokeswoman Nancy Nydam said Walsh’s religious beliefs “had nothing to do with the decision to withdraw the [job] offer.” In an email to The Daily Signal, Nydam wrote:

During the background check process, DPH learned Dr. Walsh failed to disclose outside employment to his previous public health employer, which also was in violation of California law. Due to violation of both California state law and DPH policy, the offer to Dr. Walsh was rescinded. During his interview, Dr. Walsh disclosed his religious beliefs to DPH staff and indicated that he preached at his church in California. Dr. Walsh’s religious beliefs had nothing to do with the decision to withdraw the offer.

Walsh has said the situation was “devastating.”

“It has been and would be very difficult for me to work in public health based on the things that have transpired,” Walsh told The Daily Signal in a phone call Wednesday before his press conference.

On behalf of Walsh, First Liberty Institute and the Atlanta law firm of Parks, Chesin & Walbert sued the Georgia Department of Public Health in April for religious discrimination.

“What’s really shocking right now is the state of Georgia is requiring this pastor to turn over his sermon notes and transcripts,” Jeremy Dys, senior counsel for First Liberty Institute and counsel for Walsh, told The Daily Signal. “There’s no subject limitation. There’s no time limitations … every sermon he’s produced since he was about 18 would have to be turned over to the state of Georgia.”

In late September, the state of Georgia requested as part of the legal case that Walsh hand over copies of his sermon notes and transcripts, along with other documents related to his ministerial training, service as a pastor, and publication or postings of his sermons online.

“Any document that has a note or a transcript having to do with his sermons are required to be produced,” Dys told The Daily Signal. “That means that the notes he writes in the margins of his Bible—the Bible has to be produced now. Anything he’s written on his computer has to be turned over. … This is an incredible intrusion upon the sanctity of the pulpit.”

Walsh’s lawyer added:

I think every pastor, every rabbi, every church leader in the state of Georgia should be very concerned when their government is refusing to pass laws that would protect their religious liberty and now ransacking the pastor’s study to try to find information and evidence that they can use to justify their illegal behavior in firing Dr. Walsh. That’s wrong. It’s illegal.

A spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Public Health told The Daily Signal Wednesday the agency does not comment on pending litigation.

In a press release, Dys said it was “clear” the Georgia agency “fired Dr. Walsh over his religious beliefs, which is blatant religious discrimination.”

Also Wednesday, the Family Research Council, a Christian policy organization based in Washington, called on Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, a Republican, to “correct this egregious overreach of the state into church affairs.”

“This is something that I would have expected to see in a communist country, not America,” Tony Perkins, president of the council and an ordained pastor, said in a written statement. “The pulpit is to be governed only by the word of God. Government scrutiny of speech in the pulpit is unconstitutional, and unconscionable.” (For more from the author of “The Reason This Pastor Isn’t Handing Over His Sermon Transcripts to the Government” please click HERE)

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New Wikileaks Release Shows Obama Knew About Clinton Email Use, May Have Lied to Public

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More than 18 months ago, President Barack Obama said he learned of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s e-mail practices “the same time everybody else learned it, through news reports.”

Within hours, Clinton aide Cheryl Mills told campaign chairman John Podesta that “we need to clean this up — he has emails from her — they do not say state.gov.”

While it has been known for some time that Obama knew of Clinton’s use of a private e-mail and even corresponded with her on it, this is the first evidence that Democratic operatives were concerned that the president had lied to the public.

A White House spokesman denied Tuesday that Obama had been dishonest:

“What the president said was an entirely factual response,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters during gaggle in Los Angeles, where the president was attending fundraisers.

“I recognize that some of the president’s critics have attempted to construct some type of conspiracy about the communication between the president and the secretary of state,” Earnest continued. “But they’ve failed to put forward a conspiracy that withstands any scrutiny, so I guess they are back to recycling thoroughly debunked conspiracies.”

Shortly after Obama addressed the e-mail issue in March 2015, Earnest insisted that Obama was unaware that Clinton was engaged in practices that violate federal policy and law. Mills’ comment indicates that this may not be the case.

Earnest also reiterated the Democratic talking point about not trusting the veracity of the e-mail leak. “I can’t verify the integrity of these emails,” he said, describing the e-mails as “stolen” and released “to undermine our democracy.” (For more from the author of “New Wikileaks Release Shows Obama Knew About Clinton Email Use, May Have Lied to Public” please click HERE)

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Colin Powell Makes His Presidential Choice Official

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Former Secretary of State Colin Powell announced Tuesday that he will be supporting Hillary Clinton in November’s presidential election.

The retired four-star Army general and a Republican who served in the George W. Bush administration, made the announcement during a luncheon on New York’s Long Island.

According to Newsday reporter Robert Brodsky, Powell said Republican nominee Donald Trump “insults us every day” and is “selling people a bill of goods.”

Past correspondences reveal that Powell seemed to dislike Trump from the outset. In a leaked email, Powell referred to the Republican nominee as a “national disgrace” and “international pariah.” In a separate email, he claimed the birther movement was a “racist” conspiracy theory which Trump had no business propping up.

Clinton, too, has also given Powell a fair share of problems, particularly when it came to her comments that suggested Powell was the one who suggested she use of a private email server to conduct government business.

“I didn’t tell Hillary to have a private server at home, connected to the Clinton Foundation, two contractors, took away 60,000 emails, had her own domain,” Powell said in the emails leaked last month.

“I would rather not have to vote for her, although she is a friend I respect,” Powell wrote in another leaked email. “A 70-year person with a long track record, unbridled ambition, greedy, not transformational, with a husband still d—ing bimbos at home (according to the [New York Post]).”

“Everything HRC touches she kind of screws up with hubris,” he added.

Powell also referred to the investigations into Benghazi, Libya, as a “stupid witch hunt”

“Benghazi is a stupid witch hunt,” he wrote in an email. “Basic fault falls on a courageous ambassador who thoughts Libyans now love me and I am ok in this very vulnerable place.”

Other Bush administration veterans have crossed party lines to endorse Clinton, including former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, former President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board Chairman Brent Scowcroft, former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

During his endorsement, Powell claimed that Clinton will serve with distinction and cited her experience and stamina. (For more from the author of “Colin Powell Makes His Presidential Choice Official” please click HERE)

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