What Kind of Fraud to Expect This Election

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The United States “has a long and unfortunate history of ballot fraud,” the Heritage Foundation has said, in a 2008 report titled Democracy in Danger — and the fraud has gotten worse since then. As Indiana state police Superintendent Doug Carter told RTV6-TV last month, “There’s voter fraud and voter forgery in every state of America.”

Voter fraud almost always favors Democratic candidates and happens mostly in toss-up states — the states that actually determine presidential elections. There is now solid evidence that despite their claims of innocence, key Democrats are aware of the fraud.

For example, in a 2015 email revealed by Wikileaks, Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta expressed his concern about past voting fraud by Obama campaign supporters. Old friends of the Clintons “are reliving the 08 caucuses where they believe the Obama forces flooded the caucuses with ineligible voters.”

Conservative undercover journalist James O’Keefe and his Project Veritas has uncovered attempts by Democrats to commit voter fraud, much of which has gone ignored by the left-leaning mainstream media. For example, Project Veritas recently videotaped Democratic operatives Robert Creamer and Scott Foval discussing election fraud. Foval, the national field director for Americans United for Change, explained how voters outside of Wisconsin could be brought into the state, using cars with Wisconsin plates to avoid suspicion. “We’ve been bussing people in to deal with you [obscene description] for fifty years and we’re not going to stop now,” he said. Both have since lost their jobs.

Here’s a review of the various forms of election fraud to expect this election season, with examples from this and previous campaigns.

Voter Impersonation, Double Voting and Bribery

Dead voters may account for a large amount of voter fraud. In September, for example, a Young Democrat in Virginia attempted to register 19 dead people to vote through the organization HarrisonburgVotes. He was only caught when a clerk recognized the name of a deceased World War II veteran he had submitted. The group, which is headed by the chairman of the congressional district’s Democratic Committee, has fired the young man and taken down its website and social media accounts. “This is proof that voter fraud not only exists but is ongoing and is a threat to the integrity of our elections,” said William J. Howell (R-Stafford), speaker of the state’s House of Delegates.

Last month, three dead voters were found on the newly registered or re-registered voting list in Hamilton County, Ohio. They had been added after they had passed away.

Although much of the election fraud is taking place in swing states, fraud continues in states known for the worst election fraud. Chicago, infamous for its dead voters, continues to have the most egregious problems. CBS 2 discovered that “119 dead people have voted a total of 229 times in Chicago in the last decade.” Relatives report they can’t even get their deceased loved ones removed from voter rolls. One man told the station last month that he has asked multiple times to have his dead mother removed from voter registration. Even though she died in 1998, records show she voted in 2010.

In Indiana, officials are investigating hundreds of voter registrations that appear fraudulent. An organization called Indiana Voter Registration Project submitted the registrations, which contain “a combination of fake names, addresses and dates of birth with real information.” Hendricks County Clerk Debbie Hoskins caught the discrepancies and notified law enforcement. The faulty voter registrations have showed up in eight other Indiana counties. The spokeswoman for the organization is Christy Setzer, who has worked as a Democrat strategist for the presidential campaigns of Al Gore, Howard Dean and Chris Dodd.

Another technique, known as double voting or ballot stuffing, lets people vote twice.“You’d be surprised how often people double vote,” Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach told CBS 4 in Colorado. “Two of the cases are serial double voters. I think people discover they can get away with it and keep doing it.” Kobach says some of the voters cast ballots in both Colorado and Kansas, and believes 10,000 people are registered to vote in both states.

New Hampshire Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Sunnunu accused Democrats of arranging to have Massachusetts residents vote in New Hampshire this election. Massachusetts is solidly Democratic, while New Hampshire is divided between the two parties. New Hampshire is one of 13 states that allows voters to register on the day of the election.

And there’s simple bribery. Voters are rewarded for voting a certain way. In the past, homeless people were reportedly bribed with cigarettes. Kankakee County State Attorney Jamie Boyd is investigating reports that voters were bribed with gifts to vote for Democrats, including Clinton.

Fraud by Election Officials

This category includes officials throwing out ballots for illegitimate reasons and allowing ineligible voters to vote. In 2013, undercover New York City police officers showed up at 63 different precincts pretending to be prohibited voters, but in 61 precincts, or 97 percent of the time, they were allowed to vote (they voted for a dummy name to avoid influencing the election). The officers assumed the identities of dead people, voters who had moved, or felons.

Similarly, in the 2012 election, O’Keefe showed up to a New Hampshire polling place with some assistants, asking for ballots for 10 deceased voters. Their names had not yet been purged from the voting rolls, and poll workers handed them the ballots without asking for ID, a violation of state law.

A close friend who lives in Colorado volunteered in 2012 to serve as a “judge” inside a heavily Hispanic polling location, as the final arbiter when there were disputes over ballots and procedures. She told me she saw rampant fraud and nothing was done about it:

I had a guy from Mexico tell me proudly that he was here to vote. He boasted that he didn’t think he could vote because “he did not have the Papers” but “the Obama people said not to worry, just to show his Xcel energy bill.” Sure enough, he was registered!!

Democrats had gone door to door registering people within a week of the election, she said, leaving little time to verify their citizenship. On voting day, she said, she saw as many as 22 people in the same apartment registered to vote.

Many people were in the wrong precinct and were only 3 blocks away but if we gave them the option of going to their correct precinct, or filling out a provisional ballot, the two annoying lawyers from the Justice Department would immediately ask us why we didn’t allow that person to vote!! After realizing that I wasn’t accountable to them or even that I didn’t need to speak to them, I told them to leave me alone.

She called the Secretary of State’s office the next day but wasn’t allowed to speak to him. The aide who answered the phone “told me it didn’t mean that there was any fraud that had happened. … I thought I was doing something patriotic and noble but the fraud was going on right in front of me and there was not a thing I could do about it!! Very frustrating!”

Fraud by Government Officials

New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio’s new ID program is allowing massive voter fraud, said Manhattan Board of Elections Commissioner Alan Schulkin, in a Project Vertias video. By not requiring real ID, the Democrats are able to “bus people around to vote. … They put them in a bus and go poll site to poll site.”

The problem is so bad he preferred voter ID laws. “Anybody can go in there and say, ‘I am Joe Smith, I want an ID card,’” he explained. When they go to vote, “The law says you can’t ask for anything. Which they really should be able to do.”

In Missouri, Mayor Ted Hoskins of Berkeley, Mo., a Democrat, and his supporters are accused of requiring early ballot voters to submit their ballots in unsealed envelopes, which is contrary to law. Some residents say they were encouraged to fill out ballots and turn them over to Hoskins or one of his supporters. This could allow tampering of the ballots, so prosecutors and the FBI are currently investigating.

Eric Fey, Democratic director of the Election Board, said, “There were different colored inks and some where the ovals were filled in a very distinct fashion and some that were filled in a very different distinct fashion; things that you just don’t see on other ballots.” Fey said the results benefited Hoskins and his allies.

In 2012, Hoskins received the highest share of early ballots of any candidate, 36 percent. The next highest share among mayoral candidates was a mere 14 percent, and countywide, the share of early ballots averaged 8.6 percent. Hoskins defeated his opponent by 517 votes to 418.

Voting Machine Fraud

Hackers told CBS how simple it is to hack electronic voting machines. For $15, a voter can buy a card that is capable of manipulating the machine — without ever leaving the voting booth. “I can insert it, and then it resets the card, and now I’m able to vote again,” said Brian Varner, a principle researcher at the computer security company Symantec.

Symantec Security Response director Kevin Haley said the machines can be hacked after all the votes have been cast. CBS reports that only 60 percent of states routinely conduct audits after elections by comparing paper trails. The swing states of Virginia and Pennsylvania don’t even collect paper records, so there is no way to conduct audits.

Several people in Texas reported that voting machines in multiple counties changed their votes from Trump to Clinton.

Filling Out Ballots for Others to “Assist” Them

The elderly are particularly susceptible to offers for assistance with voting, and so party hacks target nursing homes pretending to care about their right to vote — while really ensuring they vote Democrat. The Dallas Star-Telegram reports that Texans have “witnessed” more than one request for a mail-in ballot, which is against the law unless it involves immediate family members. “One apparently witnessed five applications from the same address, a nursing home or a retirement center,” the paper reports. The case has been turned over to investigators.

Texas Governor Greg Abbot is conducting an investigation into a “vote-harvesting scheme” in Tarrant County, expressing concern over as many as 20,000 suspicious looking early ballots. Crimes being investigated include “improperly serving as a witness for multiple voters, forgery and tampering with a governmental record, unlawful possession of a carrier envelope, and improper assistance.”

Throwing Out Ballots

Ballots can also be fraudulently lost. Election officials, party hacks and even Post Office employees can come across early ballots and dispose of them so the votes are never counted. For example, partisan groups frequently run “vote-by-mail” services, to aid voters with turning in their ballots. But it is all too easy to pretend to be a conservative organization, collect early ballots from Republicans, then trash them.

In Illinois, 1,500 applications for an early ballot were discovered languishing in a Post Office box, uncollected and not forwarded to the proper election authorities for processing, which would prevent those who applied from voting. Although it is not clear which third-party organization had asked for them, the elections clerk believes it was voter suppression.

The Washington Times reported in 2014 that unauthorized people were going door-to-door in Colorado collecting ballots from unsuspecting voters, who will never know if their ballots were ever delivered and counted.

The Depths of Voter Fraud

Election officials are quick to explain incidents of voter fraud as clerical errors that don’t happen very often. To admit election fraud is more rampant would make them look bad, resulting in voters voting them out of office.

Compounding the problem, election officials are frequently under attack for bogus accusations of election fraud. I was the elections attorney for Maricopa County Elections Department from 2005 to 2006, and to this day still see frivolous lawsuits filed against the department, costing taxpayers millions of dollars to defend. Because election fraud is a real problem, frivolous complaints get more attention than they should.

We may never know the depths of voter fraud. But as technology advances, with its correlating advances in investigative scrutiny such as by Project Veritas and Wikileaks, even eliminating voter ID laws may not be enough to hide Democrat fraud much longer. (For more from the author of “What Kind of Fraud to Expect This Election” please click HERE)

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Don’t Call Me Sexist Because I Won’t Vote for Hillary

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Eight years ago, and again four years ago, conservative white Americans were told that the reason we did not vote for Barack Obama was because we were racist. Now, conservative American men are being told that the reason we are not voting for Hillary Clinton is because we are sexist.

As reported in the Huffington Post,

President Barack Obama on Tuesday called on men to “look inside” themselves and think about bias if they have any doubt about voting for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

“To the guys out there, I want to be honest,” Obama told a crowd in Columbus, Ohio, at a Clinton campaign event. “You know, there’s a reason we haven’t had a woman president before.”

He added,

I want every man out there who’s voting to kinda look inside yourself and ask yourself, if you’re having problems with this stuff, how much of it is that we’re just not used to it? When a guy is ambitious and out in the public arena and working hard, well that’s okay. But when a woman suddenly does it, suddenly you’re all like, well, why’s she doing that?

Liberal film director Michael Moore was even more direct, stating, “It’s the muscle memory of 10,000 years that’s in our DNA where we’ve run the show forever. Next Tuesday possibly — hopefully — a woman is going to lead the most powerful country on Earth. In other words, the 10,000-year reign is over.”

Well, I’m sure there are some voters out there, both male and female, who don’t want a woman running our country, just as I’m sure there were some voters out there in the last two elections who didn’t want a black man running our country. But, speaking without shame or apology as a white American male, my issue is with Hillary Clinton’s policies and character, not her gender, just as my issues were with Barack Obama’s policies, not his skin color.

The truth be told, I wanted to be able to vote for our nation’s first black president but I could not.

And I would gladly vote for our nation’s first female president — hopefully, a modern-day version of a woman like Deborah who led the ancient nation of Israel, or another Golda Meir or Margaret Thatcher — if I could stand behind her policies and had confidence she could lead. At this very moment, had Carly Fiorina or Nikki Haley or Joni Ernst or any other solid conservative woman been running for president against a male liberal Democrat, I would vote for any of those women in a heartbeat, just as I would vote for Ben Carson or Tim Scott if either of these black leaders were running against a white liberal Democrat.

Again, that doesn’t mean that some people did not vote for Obama because he was black or that some people won’t vote for Hillary because she’s a woman. I don’t deny that for a moment.

But at the same time, there are some people who will not vote for Donald Trump because he’s a male and/or because he’s white. Yet it would be utterly ridiculous to state, “The reason a lot of you won’t vote for Trump is because he’s a white male.” That would be a gross exaggeration, totally overlooking Trump’s myriad flaws and shortcomings.

In the same way, it would be a gross exaggeration to say that the main reason a lot of people won’t vote for Hillary is because she’s a female, just as it would be a gross exaggeration to say that skin color was the main reason lots of Americans didn’t vote for Obama.

Over the last 8 years, I have heard from numerous African American callers who did not vote for Obama, and their reasons were identical to mine. And in recent months, I have heard from numerous female callers who will not vote for Hillary, and again, there reasons are identical to mine.

In fact, of all the people with whom I have discussed the elections in the last eight years, in public and in private, I have not met a single individual who voted against Obama because of his skin color or is voting against Hillary because of her gender. Not one.

Yet I have met many — and that is a very large “many” — who deplore their policies and therefore would not vote for them.

Why, then, cloud the issues with charges of racism and sexism? Or is that yet another ploy straight out of the liberal Democrat playbook? Why can’t the issues be the issues?

When I started my live, daily talk radio show a little over eight years ago, it was right during the presidential primaries, and I remember making my first on-the-air political comment, which was critical of something Senator McCain had said.

A day or two later, I took issue with Senator Obama, and then did so again a few days after that.

Immediately, I received a phone call from an African American listener who said to me, “Why do you always have to bring up race?” When I asked her what she meant, she replied, “All you do is bash Barack Obama.”

I explained to her that I had only differed with him on the air twice, but before that I had differed with John McCain. More importantly, I told her that I would gladly vote for Alan Keyes, a black leader who ran against Obama in Illinois, rather than Obama, because race was not the issue for me. I also said that I preferred Sarah Palin to Hillary Clinton, since my issue was not gender.

Thankfully, over the years, my listeners have learned that I am anything but racist or sexist, and today, when a black caller implied that I was racist for taking issue with President Obama, other black listeners quickly weighed in, saying I was anything but racist and that they too didn’t vote for Obama. One of the callers actually said that the woman who implied that I was racist was guilty of racism, rather than me.

So let us not be distracted from what really matters, since the bottom line is simple: Racism and sexism certainly exist in America, from every perspective and among every people group, but racism and sexism are not the issue in this election. The issues are the issues, so let’s concentrate on them.

And if you tell me that I’m blinded my superior status as a white American male, I’ll encourage you to search your own heart. Perhaps the racism and sexism are on your end, not mine. (For more from the author of “Don’t Call Me Sexist Because I Won’t Vote for Hillary” please click HERE)

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Mystery Woman Huma Abedin: Wronged Wife or Stealth Islamist?

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One of the many bizarre and unsettling aspects of the prospect of Hillary Clinton as president is her close advisor Huma Abedin. It’s easy to get lost in the squalid and sordid details, so let’s get those out of the way right at the outset. The reason that Hillary Clinton is sinking in the polls right now — and even if she wins might need a pardon from Obama to stay out of prison — is that she seems to have broken the law and lied about it to Congress and the FBI, then tried to destroy the evidence.

Evidence of what? Of the fact that she’d been breaking State Department policy by hoarding classified official government emails on an insecure private server, created to let her evade Freedom of Information Act requests. (Iraq war hero General David Petraeus was threatened with prison for doing much less.) Reporters might have liked to inquire about the huge cash payments which Bill Clinton was raking in via the Clinton Foundation. Did they result in Hillary granting State Department access or favors to foreign governments (like the Russian or Saudi regimes) that coughed up the money? Last summer it seemed we might never know. Under pressure from the White House, and after a private tarmac meeting between Bill Clinton and the attorney general, the Justice Department pressured the FBI to stop the investigation into Clinton. But now that investigation has started up again, thanks to Huma Abedin. And her lousy taste in men.

Send Lawyers Guns and Money

You really should watch the hilarious documentary Weiner for the full story slow-motion train wreck, but it boils down to this: Huma’s now-estranged husband, former Congressman Anthony Wiener, is apparently addicted to sexting. Exposure of his behavior forced him out of Congress. He apologized, got forgiveness, and ran for mayor of New York City. Then it turned out he hadn’t stopped doing it. It seemed he was still sending naked selfies to strangers. He apologized again, but came in last in the mayoral race.

Now it emerges that Weiner can’t stop himself, and that one of his recent online “partners” was a 15-year-old girl. As the Daily Mail reports, citing Wikileaks documents, the Clinton campaign apparently knew as long ago as 2011 that Weiner was sexting with women under age 18, but took no action — such as, you know, calling the police. It is unclear whether Clinton’s team informed Abedin.

When Weiner’s online child molestation became public, the FBI had no choice but to look into that, and when they did — and perhaps when Weiner decided to cut a deal — they found on Weiner’s laptop hundreds of thousands of emails, including ones to and from Hillary Clinton dealing with State Department business. Which might be the very evidence which she’d thought safely destroyed. God is just, and he has a dark sense of humor.

Tammy Wynette, or Mata Hari?

But what about Huma? Ms. Abedin stood by her man through the first two scandals, but the third time crossed the line, and she moved out with their son. So she’s a tragic wronged wife, right? A bright-eyed, glamorous wunderkind child of immigrants, who married the wrong man and tried to save her marriage? Well, maybe. But there’s much more to the story.

America once believed that Huma’s mentor Hillary was precisely such a wounded but loyal wife. We have since learned — thanks to films such as Clinton, Inc. — that Hillary’s public willingness to back up her husband’s stories against one female accuser after another was part of a cynical political arrangement. She traded televised “forgiveness” for tangible political favors — such as the Democratic Party’s nomination for Senate in a state where she’d never lived, New York. What did Huma get in return for sticking with Anthony Weiner — a once up-and-coming, famously caustic far left-wing congressman from Brooklyn? We may never know.

What we do know of Huma Abedin — beyond the facts revealed in Weiner, such as that she won’t cook breakfast except in a $10,000 dress — can be listed as follows.

Huma Abedin defended Hillary Clinton’s use of the illegal private server against State Department officials who suggested otherwise — perhaps to keep secret the concrete paybacks in State Department policy for massive Clinton Foundation gifts from nations like Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Abedin was born in the U.S., but raised in Saudi Arabia from the age of 2 by hard-line Islamist parents.

Abedin’s first job, while still in college, was serving as Hillary Clinton’s White House intern in 1996. At the same time, she served as an editor of her family’s radical Islamic journal whose mission was to keep Muslims in non-Muslim countries from assimilating, or abandoning the puritanical Islamist faith preached in Saudi Arabia, whose royal family funded the journal.

The Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs was founded by her father, Syed Z. Abedin, who denounced the American system and wrote that the U.S. should have started paying tribute money to Muslims in 1801, rather than fight the Barbary Pirates. Huma served as an editor on the journal for 12 years.

The funding for this journal came from Saudi sheik Omar Naseef, whom the U.S State Department named as one of al Qaeda’s most generous supporters — and a backer of the hard-core pro-sharia Muslim World League, which shares a London office with Abedin’s family journal.

As editor, Abedin published articles penned by her mother that argued that women are to blame for most domestic violence, that Islamic law (sharia) is more just to women than Western law, and that the U.S. brought the 9/11 attacks upon itself. Abedin’s mother and brother still work at the journal.

As the video linked below documents, Huma Abedin served for three years on the Executive Board of George Washington University’s Muslim Students Association (MSA), which is linked closely to the Muslim Brotherhood, the international jihadist conspiracy that avowed in 2001 that its mission is a “grand jihad” devoted to “destroying Western Civilization from within.” How radical is the MSA? Two years after Abedin graduated, her chapter of the group invited Anwar al Awlaki to serve as official chaplain. He was later revealed as a member of al Qaeda, a man whom the New York Times called the “terrorist network’s leading English-language propagandist,” before he was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2011. He also served “as a hands-on trainer who taught recruits how to make bombs, gave them money for missions and offered suggestions about how to carry out suicide attacks.”

Counterjihad cited further Wikileaks information showing the deep financial debt which the Clinton campaign has incurred to radical Islamists:

Huma Abedin has never publicly renounced or condemned any of the views which she helped disseminate through her family’s journal — although Donald Trump was pressured to condemn the extremist Tweets of fringe supporters whom he has never met or been in any contact with. Since Abedin is Clinton’s closest advisor, and seen as a likely pick for White House Chief of Staff, these questions about her deep, lifelong connections to America’s most dangerous enemies must be answered. (For more from the author of “Mystery Woman Huma Abedin: Wronged Wife or Stealth Islamist?” please click HERE)

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To Those Christians (and Others) Who Can’t Vote for Trump or Clinton

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There’s a new bumper sticker that says, “I already hate our next president!”

Indeed, many folks can’t see enough good reasons to vote for either Trump or Clinton. While I don’t endorse candidates (because people then think you agree with everything the person says or does), I do endorse the ideas and policies that certain candidates advocate. With that in mind, there are actually several good reasons — maybe even thousands — to vote for or against one of them.

While both candidates have undeniable character issues, please consider that you are not voting for just Trump or Clinton when you vote for president (for those thinking third party, I’ll get to that in a minute). In fact, if it helps you, don’t even think about voting for that person — think about voting for an administration and the platform behind that person.

You’re Really Voting for an Administration

When you vote for President, you are literally voting for thousands of people that come along with the top of the ticket and the party platform that they will implement. This year the party platforms are virtually opposites of one another and will take this country in radically different directions (click here for a succinct summary of the platforms in their own words). So our country’s future is not so much tied up in one person, but in the ideas that an administration of thousands will implement. That’s how our government works.

Here is how Mariam Bell — who has worked at all levels of government for over thirty years — puts it in a recent column: “We vote FOR the 4,000+ political appointees who will run all the agencies, departments and programs. We vote FOR the 3,000+ appointments to boards and commissions the next president will make. We vote FOR all those 300+ who will be appointed to the judiciary, including the Supreme Court — whose rulings will impact our country for the next fifty years, not just four. The next president will appoint a cabinet and has already selected a vice president.”

Ms. Bell rings a bell — a liberty bell. Most of the liberty-stifling and dangerous policies that have been imposed on America over the past eight years were put in place by unelected political appointees in direct opposition to the will of the people.

This long list of political appointee offenses includes: the corrupting politicization of the IRS and the Justice Department; taxpayer funding of the abortion-and-baby-parts-selling Planned Parenthood; turning the military into a sexual social experiment, even to the point of paying for transgender surgery; federally imposed same-sex marriage; fining religious people for refusing to participate in same-sex ceremonies; forcing nuns to pay for contraception and abortion; forcing public schools to allow boys into girls showers and restrooms; lax border security; failure to enforce immigration laws; pay-to-play at the State Department by a political appointee now running for President (who is again under investigation by the FBI), etc.

Want more of that? Vote for Hillary Clinton’s administration who will continue the march of the liberal elites. Want a change? Vote for Donald Trump’s administration who will go in a more constitutional direction.

You’d rather issue a protest to both candidates by voting third party? I understand the sentiment, but sentiment can’t change policies or save lives. Only voting for an administration that actually has a chance to win can. As Dennis Prager points out, Christians in the U.S. agreed to align with Stalin to defeat Hitler in WWII. If we had refused to work with the Soviet Union and instead elected to work with an impotent third party (like, say, Lichtenstein), we wouldn’t have stopped Hitler. (Prager is not implying that Trump is Stalin, or that Clinton is Hitler — only that if Christians could ally themselves with Stalin to defeat a more dangerous foe, Christians could support Trump to defeat Clinton and her policies.)

“More Important Matters of the Law”

What guidance does Jesus give us about politics? Some say, “Jesus wasn’t involved in politics.”

Nonsense. He spent much of his time on, and saved his harshest condemnation for, the Pharisees who were religious and political leaders in Israel. (As members of the Sanhedrin, they were some of Israel’s most prominent politicians.) Jesus excoriated them for tithing their spices but “neglecting the more important matters of the law — justice, mercy and faithfulness” (Matthew 23). In a reference to straining out debris from drinking water, Jesus charged them with a “straining out a gnat but swallowing a camel!”

What are “the more important matters of the law” today?

The primary responsibility for government is to protect innocent people from harm. That’s Paul’s very sensible claim in Romans 13, echoed by the Founders (James Madison said, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”). The second most important responsibility for government is to not do harm itself.

Practically, that means the government must first protect life because life is the most precious thing we have. Indeed, the right to life is the right to all other rights — if you don’t have life you don’t have anything. That’s why we have the military and police and laws to protect innocent people. It’s also why we should have laws to protect the unborn.

Second, the government must not hurt innocent people itself by advocating or promoting harmful policies (like the one’s I’ve listed above). Unfortunately, our government is not only neglecting its first responsibility to protect innocent life; it’s actually advocating the taking of innocent life by paying for it! It’s also stifling religious freedom by coercing religious people to pay for abortion and to participate in same-sex ceremonies. (We rightfully allow conscientious objectors to opt out of defending the country in war. Yet Mrs. Clinton has promised to use political will and the law to change our religious and moral beliefs. So she won’t allow conscientious objectors to opt of financing abortions or performing same sex ceremonies. Talk about straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!)

Voting by the Issues

If we are going to follow the teachings of Jesus and Paul — if life, justice, mercy and faithfulness are the most important matters of the law — then we should vote these issues above all others: life, national security, marriage, judges and religious freedom. Life and national security because they involve the protection of innocent people. Marriage because it involves the protection and well-being of children who deserve both a mom and a dad. Judges because they can do great justice or injustice on every issue. Religious freedom because innocent people and the gospel are harmed when faithfulness is outlawed.

In fact, without religious freedom our ability as Christians to accomplish our primary mission — to know God and to make him known — is severely hampered. If the government continues to move in the direction it’s been going, we soon won’t be able to preach the Gospel freely. If for no other reason, Christians have to be involved in politics to prevent the government from harming our ability to live how Jesus commanded us to live and to spread the good news we were put here to spread.

You say, “We can’t completely trust Trump to govern the right way.” You might be right. But the thousands in a Trump administration will certainly conserve more of our freedoms than the thousands in a Clinton administration who are promising to end them.

So you may already hate our next President no matter who that is. But one of them has virtually promised to lead an administration that will continue to fund the destruction of innocent human beings, open the borders, appoint liberal judges, and declare your religious beliefs and actions “hate.” There are thousands of reasons to cast an effectual vote against that — millions if you count those targeted for death. (For more from the author of “To Those Christians (and Others) Who Can’t Vote for Trump or Clinton” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Early Voting Is Fundamentally Unfair and Undermines Fair Elections

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Ever four years, the world of politics is completely consumed with Election Day. However, election days have, ironically, become somewhat anti-climactic events because they no longer exist as they have since our Founding. We now have “election month.”

With the revelation that the FBI is re-opening its investigation into Hillary’s emails and Trump on the rise because he is keeping his mouth shut, many are wondering if Trump could pull off a major come-from-behind victory. The problem is even if his positive trajectory continues through Election Day, it might already be too late for him. Hillary might have already banked an insurmountable lead prior to the authentic Election Day set by Congress since 1845. According to the New York Times, with eight days until official Election Day, over 22 million people had already voted early. Some estimate that two-thirds of voters in critical states such as Colorado, Florida, Nevada, and North Carolina will have cast ballots before Election Day.

Irrespective of one’s view of either candidate, this dynamic is fundamentally unfair. It’s akin to having the jury begin casting its vote while the evidence in the case is still being presented and before closing arguments.

Constitution and federal law

Clearly, our Founders never envisioned protracted voting periods for as long as 4-6 weeks when ballots were cast and the results of how many registrants voted would be shaping the momentum of the election.

When discussing the election of the president, Art. II §1 cl. 4 of the Constitution states: “The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.”

Although states were to have control over all the administrative aspects of voting and voter eligibility (which courts are now violating), Congress was granted the authority to set the national Election Day for president. In 1845, Congress designated that day as “the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.” In 1872, Congress enacted the same law governing elections to the U.S. House [2 U.S.C. § 7], and when the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified, Congress dictated that Senate elections should be held on the same day as well [2 U.S.C. § 1]. Congress never intended voting to begin more than a month before that day, as is practiced in many states.

Also, the spirit of the Constitution clearly dictates that Election Day should be uniform. Although the clause dictating that the “Day shall be the same throughout the United States” was referring to the day the electors choose the president, it was clearly understood as granting Congress the sole authority to set the uniform day for choosing the electors (what we regard as national Election Day).

The great constitutional historian, Justice Joseph Story, wrote that when Congress first designated the date for choosing the electors in 1792 (not just the date for the electors choosing the president), it was “[I]n pursuance of the authority given by this clause.”

When defending the election clause from those who felt it gave the federal government too much power, former North Carolina Governor Richard Dobbs Spaight gave a robust defense at the North Carolina ratification convention. From the context of his words, it is clear that the power granted to Congress and the desire for uniformity applied both to the day the people choose the electors and to the day the electors actually vote for president:

Mr. Spaight replied, that he was surprised that the gentleman objected to the power of Congress to determine the time of choosing the electors, and not to that of fixing the day of the election of the President; that the power in the one case could not possibly answer the purpose of uniformity without having it in the other; that the power, in both cases, could be exercised properly only by one general superintending power; that, if Congress had not this power, there would be no uniformity at all, and that a great deal of time would be taken up in order to agree upon the time.

While many delegates to various state conventions objected to any federal control of elections, it was very clear that the Constitution had indeed vested Congress with the power to create a single election day. Ever since the Presidential Election Day Act set that date as “the Tuesday after the first Monday in November,” it’s hard to see how a state holding multiple election days for in-person voting — without any excuse — is not a violation of this law, at least in spirit.

What is doubly ironic is that the federal courts have obliterated legitimate state control over methods and procedures of elections. Yet, when it comes to the actual date of the presidential election, which is fixed by Congress pursuant to the Constitution, the courts actually mandate that states have additional early voting. A backwards system indeed.

Rendering a Verdict before the Trial

Aside from the dubious constitutionality of early voting, the notion that, over the course of a volatile campaign, different people would vote at different times is absurd because there are so many events that could alter the public perception about a candidate. It makes sense that everyone should observe the same campaign for the same duration and render their verdict based on a uniform set of information only available once the entire campaign is completed. What if a major revelation comes to the forefront — either positive or negative — about a given candidate after ballots have already been cast?

In recent years, some states have gone as far as allowing early voting even before the presidential debates! Minnesota has been voting since September 23, prior to the first debate at Hofstra University. This is especially damaging for congressional races where challengers to incumbents are often lacking name recognition at this stage. Yet many people who would otherwise have an open mind voting for a known quantity will reflexively vote for the incumbent at this early stage.

Influencing the Outcome of Election Day

A quick glance at the congressional debates preceding passage of the election day law for presidents in 1845, and the election day for the House of Representatives in 1872, reveals that Congress clearly intended that states should have polls open only on the day prescribed in the statute. In 1871, Rep. Benjamin Butler (R-MA) spoke on the House floor about the need for a uniform voting day because otherwise “we may have a canvass going on all over the union at different times.” Butler’s concern was that it would give some states and political parties “an undue advantage.” He spoke of how the announcement of vote results in some states helped influence the momentum of the election.

While official election results are not announced to the public prior to Election Day, practically everything else — from turnout by party to demographics — is either announced or can be ascertained. It is now known who has voted on every block in every state with early voting. The New York Times has an entire blog page dedicated to influencing the momentum of this election by prejudging the results. And as Rep. Butler feared, this certainly is designed to benefit a political party, in this case, the Democrats. It’s no coincidence that the electoral map substantially shifted in favor of Democrats beginning in 2008 when early voting first became a significant factor. As has been the case over the past decade, preliminary estimates of early voting turnout show a significant advantage for Democrats. Ace reporter, Jon Ralston, predicts that based on early voting, Hillary has a near-insurmountable lead in the critical state of Nevada. And since the Democrat base is comprised of monolithic groups, they can harness their GOTV machine to completely influence the perception of an election long before Election Day. This is obviously not an excuse for Republicans lacking a decent ground game for early voting, but it doesn’t make the state laws fair or just.

In his “Commentaries on the Constitution,” Justice Story presciently observed that the need for a uniform day was “self evident”:

Every reason of public policy and convenience seems in favour of a fixed time of giving the electoral votes, and that it should be the same throughout the Union. Such a measure is calculated to repress political intrigues and speculations, by rendering a combination among the electoral colleges, as to their votes, if not utterly impracticable, at least very difficult; and thus secures the people against those ready expedients, which corruption never fails to employ to accomplish its designs.

It goes without saying that, aside from the aforementioned reasons to end early voting, holding the vote over a protracted period invites corruption and fraud. It gives “those ready expedients” (think Soros community organizing groups) ample time “to employ to accomplish its designs.”

Early Voting a killer for Insurgent Candidates in Primaries

Democrats will never agree to cede their advantage in early voting during general elections, but both parties should agree to reform the process for primaries, which affects both parties equally. Given that primaries are so heavily influenced by name recognition, new insurgent candidates — even the ones who are ultimately victorious — tend to surge in the final days of the election when there is the most intense coverage of the race. Unfortunately, states with early voting give incumbents and candidates with ubiquitous name ID an automatic advantage by allowing them to bank votes before enough voters know there is another viable candidate in the race.

Nowhere is early voting more deleterious and absurd than in presidential primaries. Unlike general elections which were designed to occur on the same date in each state, the whole point of the staggered primary process is to allow unknown candidates to gain momentum gradually instead of competing in a national primary day with few resources. Yet, with the advent of early voting, the momentum from a surprise upset win in an early state could be mitigated by the fact that so many “early” votes were already cast in the “later” states for the initial front-runner.

Moreover, in what is perhaps the inanest outcome of early voting, presidential primaries are extremely fluid with multiple candidates dropping out after performing poorly in earlier states, yet a number of voters in later states with early voting have already cast thousands of ballots for a candidate that is no longer in the race on election day. We saw this across the board in the GOP primary when Cruz was vying for a mano-a-mano fight against Trump (who had the universal name ID from day one), but for weeks after candidates dropped out so much of the anti-Trump vote was already wasted on Rubio or other candidates no longer in the race.

If nothing else, it would make sense for the parties to come together and get rid of early voting at least for the primary process. Sadly, the establishments of both parties love early voting precisely because it benefits incumbents.

The trend for early voting is only getting worse. Democrats are seeking to expand the days, hours, and locations of early voting at every turn. In the states where they are out of power, the courts have enacted their early voting agenda for them. With modern communication and transportation, it is easier than ever to register to vote and cast a ballot or request and send back an absentee ballot if one is unable to vote in person on Election Day. If a single Election Day was good enough for our first two centuries when it was harder to travel or communicate, it should certainly work for us today. (For more from the author of “Early Voting Is Fundamentally Unfair and Undermines Fair Elections” please click HERE)

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Republican-Appointed Supreme Court Justices May Disappoint, but Democratic Appointees Will Horrify

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One of the biggest reasons Christian conservatives are voting for Donald Trump is the make-up of the Supreme Court, and the reasoning is simple: If Hillary Clinton becomes president, she will nominate between two and four new justices, and that could have a disastrous effect on the nation for the next 20-40 years, threatening our fundamental liberties and making it virtually impossible to overturn Roe v. Wade for a generation or more.

But are these concerns exaggerated?

Dr. Benjamin L. Corey, who blogs as a committed (and formerly fundamentalist) Christian, recently posted an article entitled, “The Christian Right’s False Hope In A Conservative SCOTUS,” in which he challenges the idea that “if we had a SCOTUS filled with justices largely appointed by Republicans, we wouldn’t have Roe v. Wade, right?”

Corey rightly observes that “it was a majority Republican appointed SCOTUS that legalized abortion in the first place,” noting that 5 of the 7 justices who voted for Roe were appointed by Republicans.

He writes, “Even in the time since Roe v Wade, we’ve had periods of Republican dominance of SCOTUS — at one point with 8 of the 9 justices were Republican! And yet, there have still been plenty of rulings that were objectionable to the right wing– including the upholding of Roe v. Wade.”

He continues, “So here’s my question: if legalized abortion was given to America by a Republican SCOTUS, and if it has been upheld by an almost unanimously Republican SCOTUS, why the heck is one of the major selling points of this election the idea that they’ll get more court picks so that they can finally overturn it?”

In fact, Harry Blackmun, who authored the majority verdict in Roe v. Wade, was a Nixon appointee who was expected to hold a conservative position on abortion. Instead, he became a passionate supporter of a woman’s “right” to have an abortion.

Is Corey, then, correct in reproving Christian conservatives who are trusting in Donald Trump to nominate good SCOTUS justices who will (hopefully) overturn Roe v. Wade and stand for our fundamental freedoms?

On the one hand, he is absolutely right in raising a cautionary flag, reminding us of how often we have been disappointed with either the justices appointed by a Republican president or, even more profoundly, with the decisions made by some Republican appointees.

After all, it was Justice Kennedy, appointed by Reagan, who was the notorious swing vote in the Obergefell v. Hodges decision that redefined marriage, writing the majority opinion.

And it was Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by George W. Bush, who was a strong, surprise vote in upholding Obamacare.

And so, we do well not to vote for Trump with naïve expectations, not only regarding the make-up of SCOTUS but for other reasons as well (although, as I have recently explained, I plan to vote for him). And we do well not to put our hope in the decisions that will be made by the Supreme Court, recognizing that the ultimate way America will be changed will be through the faithful witness and work of the church.

But there’s something important that Corey appears to have missed, which is this: While the votes of conservative-appointed SCOTUS justices sometimes disappoint conservatives, the votes of liberal-appointed SCOTUS justices rarely disappoint liberals.

In other words, a liberal-appointed justice is much more likely to be consistent in his or her rulings than will a conservative-appointed justice, one reason being that it appears that Republican presidents have sometimes appointed more middle of the road conservatives while Democrat presidents have appointed more radical liberals.

Just look at how Justices Kagan and Sotomayor, both appointed by Obama, and Justices Ginsburg and Breyer, both appointed by Bill Clinton, have voted on major cases, including Obergefell and Hobby Lobby. There were no surprises from any of them in these cases.

And ask yourself how some recent, critically important, 5-4 decisions would have turned out if there was a Clinton or Obama appointee voting rather than Justice Scalia (appointed by Reagan) or Justice Alito (appointed by George W. Bush) or Justice Thomas (appointed by George H. W. Bush; note also that Scalia, Alito, and Thomas have been quite consistent in their rulings).

Accordingly, while five out of the seven Republican-appointed justices disappointed their conservative constituents in Roe v. Wade, the two Democrat-appointed justices did not disappoint their constituents in voting in favor of Roe.

Not only so, but since 1973, the lines have been drawn much more clearly in the abortion debate and there are clearer litmus tests that can be used in appointing justices by either potential president.

And while I agree with Corey that there’s certainly no guarantee that Trump-appointed justices would even attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade, let alone succeed in doing it, there is a virtual guarantee that Hillary-appointed justices would rule against pro-life legislation and for pro-abortion legislation, not to mention ruling the wrong way on the many religious liberty cases that are expected to come before SCOTUS in the coming years, along with other cases involving the meaning of marriage, the right to bear arms, and more.

Just consider recent bills like California’s AB 1266, which could effectively shut down Christian colleges, or recent rulings like Ninth Circuit’s upholding of the California law that pro-life pregnancy centers refer clients to abortion clinics, and ask yourself how SCOTUS would rule with new Hillary appointees on board.

And what of the roughly 250, life-appointed, federal judges who the next president will nominate? Shall we factor that in as well?

In light of these realities, it does make good sense to vote for Trump and against Hillary, more with the certainty of the damage she will do rather than with the hope of the good that he will do.

Considering just how many close, monumentally important, rulings have come down in the last few years, the stakes really are quite high. (For more from the author of “Republican-Appointed Supreme Court Justices May Disappoint, but Democratic Appointees Will Horrify” please click HERE)

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Obama, Clinton, DOJ and the IRS: Are We More Corrupt Than Russia?

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Imagine this scenario if you will. The government decides to crack down on a shady internet company, subpoenaing all their computer data. Within minutes, at the direction of the CEO, one employee begins deleting thousands of documents while other employees begin to destroy their computers, cell phones, and tablets, using hammers and fists and feet. Then, when called on to testify for their actions, the CEO responds dozens of times with, “I don’t remember,” while the employees who deleted data and destroyed their hardware are granted immunity and/or plead the fifth. Then, when a government official is suspected of being in collusion with this shady company, that official also pleads the fifth.

“What corruption!” you say, and rightly so. “What an outrageous cover-up! Obviously, this company is going to get nailed to the wall by the law. Their actions and words testify loudly to their guilt.”

Of course, I fully agree, but what makes this scenario even more outrageous is that the players involved are a presidential candidate (and former Secretary of State), Hillary Clinton, a number of her key employees, the current Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, and possibly even the President of the United States, Barack Obama.

And let’s not forget the corrupt activities of the IRS, also in apparent collusion with the Obama administration. (Remember that this deleted email syndrome, along with the custom of pleading the fifth, goes back to Lois Lerner of IRS infamy, she who stonewalled conservative organizations seeking IRS approval.)

Here’s a brief summary of the most glaring examples of corruption and cover-up in the Obama-Hillary era (and I won’t even get into Benghazi here, since that would take us too far afield):

When Lois Lerner was ordered to produce her emails, somehow, they had gone missing — mysteriously scrubbed — and when called on to answer direct questions by Congress, she refused, pleading the fifth Amendment. She was even held in contempt of Congress.

Not to be outdone, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen (and Lois Lerner’s boss) was almost impeached by Congress for his misdeeds and non-cooperation (can one be impeached for arrogance?), and the evidence against the IRS continues to mount, all in apparent collusion with the Obama administration.

Moving on to Hillary Clinton, her “extremely careless” actions (to quote FBI Director James Comey) occurred while she was Secretary of State, and it was only after her emails were subpoenaed by the FBI that she deleted 33,000 of them. (She claims they were deleted previously, but the evidence contradicts that.) This alone is unimaginable.

When interviewed by the FBI about using a private server for government emails, she repeatedly stated that she didn’t remember certain critical details, pointing to a head injury as the cause. (Why plead the fifth when your memory fails you, perhaps legitimately?)

In June, when Bryan Pagliano, a former Hillary staffer involved with her emails, was deposed to testify by a conservative advocacy group, he pleaded the fifth no less than 125 times. (And this was after he had been granted immunity!)

In September, when Hillary staffers Paul Combetta and Bill Thornton appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to testify about their involvement in the email scandal, they too pleaded the fifth. (Why not? It seems to be the thing to do.)

As to the physical destruction of some of Hillary’s cell phones by her staff, “CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin was so surprised to learn that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s aides destroyed her phones with a hammer, she literally couldn’t believe it.” This is saying a lot when a CNN correspondent is shocked by the actions of the Clintons.

When Congressman Trey Gowdy questioned James Comey over his failure to indict Hillary over the email scandal, Comey’s answers only exposed the absurdity of his failure to indict. Is it any surprise that agents within the FBI were allegedly “disgusted” over Comey’s decision not to indict? (Could it be that Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch were not just talking about grandchildren when they held their famous, clandestine meeting on the plane?)

And speaking of Loretta Lynch, when called on this past week to testify about America’s secret (ransom?) payments to Iran, she refused to comply, also pleading the fifth. In response, senators Marco Rubio and Mike Pompeo stated, “As the United States’ chief law enforcement officer, it is outrageous that you would essentially plead the fifth and refuse to respond to inquiries.”

Finally, returning to our president, there is growing evidence that he was aware that Hillary was using a private email server for government correspondence and that he himself wrote to her using her private e-address.

It is, then, little wonder that only 26 percent of my Twitter followers who responded to a poll felt that we were “way better” than Russia when it came to “government corruption and media collusion,” while a whopping 74 percent of those responding felt that America was “about the same” as or “even worse” than Russia in these ways (respectively, 51 percent and 23 percent).

Of course, the vast majority of those responding to my poll have, presumably, never lived in Russia, so we really don’t know how valid their viewpoints are. But in light of the most recent, shocking email developments, virtually forcing James Comey to re-open his Hillary investigation just days before the election, one senses that we have only seen the tip of the iceberg — and what a filthy iceberg it is.

May God bring everything to light, and may He grant us mercy and repentance. The mess seems ready to hit the fan. (For more from the author of “Obama, Clinton, DOJ and the IRS: Are We More Corrupt Than Russia?” please click HERE)

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Hillary Clinton’s Continuing Email Saga Reminds Us That God Is God, and We Are Not

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While we await the political fallout of Friday’s bombshell that FBI director James Comey is re-opening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, there is an angle to this story that will likely be ignored. However, it is arguably the most important angle of them all.

God is God, and we are not.

He gives us rules for a reason, and there’s a reason why He calls them commandments and not mere suggestions. Regardless of what pretend “law” wayward human institutions may conjure, there really is only one law on this planet and it is His. And if we persist in breaking His law, it will ultimately break us.

This presidential election is a painful reminder of this truth. For it is being driven not by substantive issues that will really determine the future of our nation for the next four years, but by this very principle. Three men — Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and now Anthony Weiner — and their unrestrained sexual appetites are going to play the biggest roles in the outcome on November 8th. Not the candidates’ positions on real issues.

Because try as we might, and pretend as we so often do, the real issue has always been character. It counts most of all. Public policy doesn’t trump (no pun intended) personal integrity, despite all the sweet nothings we tell ourselves so we can justify wallowing in our sin all the more.

Whether it’s the predatory and/or boorish actions of Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, or now the tawdry creepiness of Anthony Weiner, exposing yourself to those you’re not married to at the time exposes you to more trouble than you can possibly imagine. As well as to those around you, and often at the least opportune times. Our sins have a way of finding us out.

This election is nothing more than that age-old story. Wars have been fought over the unrestrained sexual appetites of men. Like when a face once launched a thousand ships. Kingdoms have been threatened by the unrestrained sexual appetites of men, like we see with David and his son Solomon in the Bible. Families are often ended in this culture by the unrestrained sexual appetites of our men, which is constantly fed and fomented by the perpetual red light district that exists online.

Though we want to tell ourselves what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedrooms is nobody else’s business, or flaunt on a hot mic is just harmless “locker room talk,” the exact opposite is true. For now what Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Anthony Weiner were doing in these circumstances is everyone’s business.

It even impacts America’s ability to do business. Like when the stock market plunged in reaction to the news the FBI was re-opening the Clinton investigation thanks to Weiner’s sexting scandal. Weiner was too far gone to contemplate how he was endangering himself with his sins, let alone the amount of money lost in one day on Wall Street thanks to his lack of restraint.

Similarly, Bill Clinton never bothered to consider he could bring down his whole presidency for turning the word “humidor” into a verb with an intern in the White House. And it’s obvious Donald Trump’s entire life — from the divorces, to the bankruptcies, to the way he’s campaigned on the biggest stage of all — has been an exercise in escaping any accountability whatsoever.

Yet, here we are in the final days before another important election. Caught in the Bermuda Triangle of three men’s genitals, with literally the immediate future of the country at stake.

I say these provocative things not because I’m self-righteous, but because of my own lack of righteousness. Like so many of the men in my generation, I was literally discipled into and marinated by today’s porn chic that is all the rage. I know who Ron Jeremy is. Who John Holmes was. Who Jenna Jameson is. In fact, I’ve got carnal knowledge of all three, if you know what I mean. I wasn’t a virgin on my wedding night. My wife and I lived together before we were married, and we didn’t sleep in separate rooms.

In short, I did everything God said not to do. The only difference between me and these three men is the power they had at their disposal to act out in ways my limited means did not permit me to.

On second thought, there’s another difference between me and them. I agreed to let God go about changing my life, and consented to the painstaking work of transforming me into the person He made to be. Not the person my sin was turning me into.

That work is not complete yet by any means, and my flaws are still there. Sometimes I still succumb to them, too. However, I’m also not the same person I used to be by any means, either, as my wife will attest.

These three men need accountability for their actions, for sure, including being nowhere near the most powerful office in all the world in an ideal situation. Although at least one of them likely will be come January.

But even more than they need accountability, they need forgiveness. Not from us, but from God. The forgiveness they must seek for themselves. We should pray they will seek it, so they can learn as I have that mercy triumphs over judgment. That God’s grace doesn’t mean we escape accountability, but gives us the character to accept it and then the strength to overcome our weaknesses. To be better than we are, and we ever could be on our own.

Christian leaders like Billy Graham used to deliver this message to our politicians, which is why they were often friends to those in power regardless of party. Unfortunately, in this election, it seems as if Christian leaders have delivered every message but this one. How many Christian leaders do you believe are hoping to politically capitalize on the failings of these three men rather than do anything to help them sincerely repent and be truly restored?

That’s the real Gospel, not some seat at the table. Sadly, though, it is a Gospel mostly being silenced in exchange for the false gospel of partisanship. Which means we are likely to continue suffering as a result of the sins of our unrepentant politicians no matter who wins in November. (For more from the author of “Hillary Clinton’s Continuing Email Saga Reminds Us That God Is God, and We Are Not” please click HERE)

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As America Goes, so Goes the World

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I love traveling abroad, and since 1986, I have traveled outside the United States (primarily overseas) close to 200 times, including almost 50 trips to Asia and more than 70 trips to Europe.

During these trips (all for ministry purposes), I’ve spoken thousands of times through translators, sometimes in exotic jungle areas where man-eating tigers have been on the loose, sometimes in massive stadiums, sometimes in majestic, old church buildings, sometimes in huts.

Who can describe the experience? The different sounds; the different cultures; the different tastes; the different clothes; the different languages; the different expressions — yet always the same love for the same God.

Last week, during the 17th annual missions conference for an organization I helped birth (called FIRE, an acronym for Fellowship for International Revival and Evangelism), I had a very intense experience during one of the night services.

We currently provide oversight for more than 150 individuals serving in about 25 different nations (mainly grads from our ministry school and their families), some of them involved in rescuing children sold into sex-slavery, some involved in caring for orphans, some involved in feeding programs for the needy, some providing education for the poorest of the poor, some starting their own ministry schools, some planting new churches in unreached regions — often in dangerous parts of the world, including right in the heart of the Islamic civil wars in the Middle East as well as very close to Boko Haram in Africa.

During our annual mission’s conference, many of our workers come back from these foreign nations and share their stories and we help them raise funds for their overseas projects.

On this particular night, Friday, October 21, as we sang and worshiped together, I was overwhelmed with God’s love for the nations, and I began to weep, my heart bursting with the desire to take the good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection to the ends of the earth. (As a Jewish believer in Jesus, I’m always thinking about my own people as well.)

But then the thought hit me: Then why have I and others spent so much time and energy fighting the culture wars in America? Why not give all my time and energy to reaching the nations?

Immediately, I knew the answer: As America goes, so goes the world.

You see, our nation has had an incredible, unprecedented impact on the world, both for good and for evil, and if America has a complete moral and cultural collapse, the ripple effect will be felt around the world. In the same way, if we lose our religious liberties — we who are known for the themes of freedom and independence — it will have a chilling effect all over the planet.

As we think of America’s positive contributions over the decades, just ask yourself where Europe would be today without American intervention in World War II, or consider what international healthcare would look like or what international disaster relief would look like if America wasn’t here. The loss would be felt deeply across the globe.

But there’s a negative side to our influence too, and over the years, as I have traveled overseas, I have watched with grief as the worst aspects of our culture — our narcissism; our carnality; our obsession with violent and sexual entertainment; our divorce culture; our LGBT activism — have spread through the nations.

On my first trip to Singapore in 2000, I was speaking with a Christian leader there who was bemoaning the rising divorce rate in his conservative Asian country.

I asked him, “Did American media have any influence on your culture?”

He replied, “Once MTV came in, it was all over.”

He was dead serious.

And over the last few years, as I have sat privately with government leaders in different countries, they have shared with me the pressure they are under from America — sometimes straight from the White House — to embrace the goals of LGBT activism, or else.

Professors have talked to me about American pressure put on their universities; businessmen have told me about the pressure put on their companies; elected officials have told me about heavy-handed calls from our government — and in each case, the message has been the same: You need to change your antiquated standards and embrace our enlightened standards if you want to be partners with us. Otherwise, you will pay a steep penalty.

In other cases, pressure is not the issue, seduction is — by which I mean the effect of our TV shows and movies on other nations, as the message of Hollywood and the morals of Hollywood infiltrate homes and hearts across the globe, especially among the younger generation: “This is how we want to be too!”

And so, on the one hand, we continue to stand for what is right in America because we love our country and we love the people of our country and we love what is best for our country and we love the great heritage of our country.

But we also stand for what is right in America — which means engaging in the so-called culture wars — because we love the nations of the world, and what happens in America most certainly does not stay in America.

That is a sobering thought.

What will America export in the next 10-20 years?

The answer to that question falls largely on us. (For more from the author of “As America Goes, so Goes the World” please click HERE)

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Liberals Should Apologize for Obamacare

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Obamacare must have been designed to fail. Even ideologically blind liberals wouldn’t design a program this bad without a secondary agenda. (Not coincidentally they are now floating the “public option” trial balloon.) And if it weren’t designed to fail, then when can conservatives expect an apology from liberals for the legislative disaster known as Obamacare?

I have more than a year of archived episodes of my podcast “Renegade Republican,” and a good number of them were spent warning listeners about the ongoing threats posed by Obamacare. I wish those predictions were fairy tales, but tragically, they are non-fiction. Sadly, I wasn’t the only one sounding the alarm about the coming Obamacare disaster. I say “sadly” because the warnings were pervasive.

If you turned on the radio, you heard conservative talk radio hosts warning about the metastasizing, legislative cancer known as Obamacare.

If you turned on the television, you saw a cavalcade of conservative talking heads warning about the coming Obamacare nuclear winter.

If you happened upon the podcasting arena, you heard numerous conservative podcasters warning about the hidden dangers embedded in the cryptic Obamacare legislation.

Even if you missed all of this but happened to search the Internet for articles about Obama’s signature legislation, you likely stumbled upon one of the thousands of pieces sounding the alarm about the approaching Obamacare asteroid.

But the mainstream media ignored us. They laughed us off as alarmist partisans hell-bent on influencing elections through hyperbolic alarmism, while the rest of the biased media insider class simply ignored us in the hopes we would all go away.

So when can we expect our apology from the liberals for their treatment of conservative Obamacare truth-tellers? I won’t hold my breath. But, as a reminder, we warned you about the following pitfalls which are now reality:

1. Skyrocketing premiums because of the expensive coverage mandated by Obamacare
Obamacare forces Americans to pay for health care insurance for services they either don’t want or don’t need. Where did the liberals think the money to pay for these additional services was going to come from? The tooth fairy? It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in economics to figure out that when you order Americans to buy insurance for health care services they don’t want, their premium costs are going to increase.

2. Increased usage of the emergency room as a primary health care provider because of Medicaid expansion
Again, it didn’t require a deep understanding of health care economics to predict that when you expand a government-run health care program to an entirely new block of recipients — at great cost to the taxpayer but little cost to the recipient — that they were going to use this “free” benefit at emergency rooms and other medical facilities.

3. Health insurance plan cancellations because of non-compliance with Obamacare red tape
Despite President Obama’s disingenuous pledge, “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” Obamacare forced health insurance companies to cancel policies by the millions because they didn’t comply with a series of new Obamacare restrictions and mandates.

4. Perverse economic incentives encouraged younger Americans to abandon the Obamacare exchanges
Not surprisingly, younger, generally healthier Americans — also the cohort least likely to be in a strong economic bargaining position because of their limited earning power and life experience —avoided buying the expensive health insurance product, which would have been a long-term drag on their finances and not a net benefit.

Knowing the far-left as I do, I’m betting that it will defend this legislative disaster until its last legislative breath. Liberals never apologize; they just run roughshod over the country and its constitutional restrictions and then blame the carnage on Republicans. This pattern continues because a compliant class of media sheep — led around by its herders in the liberal activist community and the liberal political class — never call out BS, even when BS was called a long time ago by conservatives sounding the Obamacare alarm. (For more from the author of “Liberals Should Apologize for Obamacare” please click HERE)

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