What King David Could Teach Donald Trump

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For many months now, critics of Donald Trump have asked his Christian supporters, “So, you heard about the latest scandal with your candidate? He’s a vulgar, immoral man. How can you possibly vote for him?” His supporters have responded: “Well, look at King David in the Bible. He committed adultery and murder, and God still used him. He was even called a man after God’s own heart! So, if God could use a man like David, he can certainly use Donald Trump.”

To be candid, comparing Trump to David is like comparing apples to Leer Jets — in other words, the two are so different that they’re not even in the same category — but that doesn’t mean that Trump could not learn a lot from David, especially at a time like this, when the Trump campaign is still reeling from the latest scandal, the video tape of Trump with Billy Bush.

But before I explain what David could teach Trump, let me emphasize how inapt the comparison is between them.

First, David was a man after God’s own heart, meaning, a man who loved the character of God and the ways of God and the Word of God, a man who sought to please God, a man who longed deeply for God. None of this, even faintly, can be said of Donald Trump — at least, to this point in his life.

Just consider these words of David, written in the Psalms and see if you can imagine Donald Trump speaking them sincerely, let alone writing them: “The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward” (Ps. 19:7-11).

Or how about these words? “Vindicate me, O LORD, for I have walked in my integrity, and I have trusted in the LORD without wavering. Prove me, O LORD, and try me; test my heart and my mind. For your steadfast love is before my eyes, and I walk in your faithfulness. I do not sit with men of falsehood, nor do I consort with hypocrites. I hate the assembly of evildoers, and I will not sit with the wicked. I wash my hands in innocence and go around your altar, O LORD, proclaiming thanksgiving aloud, and telling all your wondrous deeds” (Ps. 26:1-7).

Shall I quote hundreds of other verses like this, verses which Trump has likely not even read his entire life?

I join many others in praying that Donald Trump would become a man after God’s own heart, but to compare him to David is to miss the point badly.

Second, David’s sin with Bathsheba, committing adultery with this married woman and then having her husband, Uriah, killed, was an absolutely horrific act, one for which he paid dearly. In fact, you could argue that his life was never the same after his sin. But it was the exception to the rule of his life, which is why Scripture said that “. . . David did what was right in the eyes of the LORD and did not turn aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of his life, except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite” (1 Kings 15:5).

In the case of Trump, ungodly behavior has been the pattern of his life, the rule rather than the exception, something for which he was known and of which he was proud. Again, the comparison breaks down dramatically.

Third, when David was confronted with his sin, he pointed no fingers, offered no justification and did not seek to minimize his guilt. Instead, he confessed his sin in the most humble, broken and contrite terms, pleading for undeserved mercy.

And this is where King David could teach Donald Trump a valuable lesson.

When the video comments were released over the weekend, Trump immediately tweeted out an extremely tepid “apology,” minimizing his guilt, attacking Bill Clinton and apologizing “if anyone was offended.”

This was extremely disappointing, since what matters now is not what he said and did more than a decade ago — is anyone really surprised by that? — but rather how he responds today. That is ultimately how he be will judged and how his supporters will evaluate his character.

A few hours after his tweeted “apology,” he issued a more substantial apology on video, repudiating his 11-year-old comments but still pointing a finger at former president Bill Clinton.

I would encourage Mr. Trump to get on his knees, all alone, to take out his favorite Bible, and to read Psalm 51 out loud. (Remember: This is the man who said publicly that he didn’t feel the need to ask forgiveness.) Let him read these words of repentance written by David after he was confronted by the prophet Nathan about his adultery and murder.

David pointed the finger at himself alone, stating, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (Ps. 51:4), and he didn’t minimize his sin: “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me” (Ps. 51:3).

He also recognized how utterly polluting his sin was, pleading with God to cleanse him: “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! . . . Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (Ps. 51:2, 9-10).

Americans are a forgiving people, also tending to side with the victim, and given the media’s frenzied attacks on Trump now, he could easily be perceived as the victim rather than as the womanizing victimizer of the past — but only if he humbles himself deeply.

So here’s what he must do (maybe even in the debate tonight?). With heartfelt contrition, he must restate how utterly ashamed he is of his past transgressions, which he does not minimize or deny, he must say that he has asked God to forgive him, asked his family to forgive him and asked his supporters to forgive him.

Then he must reaffirm that although that is the man he once was — and he is ashamed of it — that is not the man he now is, as his family and friends can attest. And because he has done wrong in the past, he is the ideal person to do what is right in the future, having learned from his errors. He can be the poster boy of reformed behavior!

And he must do this without comparing his sins to the even worse sins of Bill Clinton and without, for the moment, talking about the campaign.

There will still be several weeks to promote his campaign agenda and, when he is criticized, to expose the media’s hypocrisy, covering for Bill Clinton (and Hillary Clinton) while crucifying him. But now, let him act in the spirit of Psalm 51. Whether he wins the election or not, he will be a better man for it, and the nation will be the better for it as well.

And David would surely tell him, “Whatever you do, don’t let pride dictate your actions. In this case, it could be the difference between the White House and a failed campaign, if not between life and death.” (For more from the author of “What King David Could Teach Donald Trump” please click HERE)

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Obama Administration Wants to Use Taxpayer Money to Settle Health Insurer Lawsuits. Here’s How a Republican Would Stop It.

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Republican Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah has mounted a campaign urging House Speaker Paul Ryan to initiate a lawsuit against the Obama administration over the potential use of a fund the Treasury Department oversees to pay federal legal claims to settle with insurance companies suing the government.

Stewart is circulating a letter to his Republican colleagues that would push Ryan to intervene to prevent the Obama administration from using the Judgment Fund, an indefinite appropriation created by Congress, to pay billions to insurers who are suing over Obamacare’s risk corridor program.

So far, at least 10 members have signed on to his letter to Ryan.

“Such an egregious misuse of taxpayer funds is not only a violation of the law but also represents an institutional challenge to the legislative branch, and should be met with the fullest opposition from the House of Representatives,” the letter states. “If such a payment is not met with a challenge from Congress, there is no limit to any administration’s ability to decide which of its priorities it funds.”

AshLee Strong, spokeswoman for Ryan, said they are looking at options.

“By passing the [Sen. Marco] Rubio amendment, Congress has been clear that no taxpayer dollars are to go to failing insurance companies under Obamacare,” she said in an email to The Daily Signal.

Insurance companies filed lawsuits against the Department of Health and Human Services earlier this year over the risk corridor program, which was written into the Affordable Care Act and designed to provide insurers with stability during the first few years of the law’s implementation.

Under the risk corridor program, insurers that had excess profits paid into a fund operated by the federal government. Those that incurred excess losses received money from the fund.

Because many insurers experienced significant losses during the 2014 benefit year, insurance companies received just 12.6 percent of the payments they expected to receive from the risk corridor program and are now arguing they’re entitled to the remaining money.

The Obama administration has signaled it is open to discussing settlements with those companies, and if it decided to do so, it would tap into the Judgment Fund to pay out billions of dollars to insurers.

“They hoped this thing would slide under the radar and no one would notice,” Stewart told The Daily Signal. “The Judgment Fund has been abused in the past, but never anything like this, for heaven’s sake. It was a few $10 million a year that the Judgment Fund was paying out, not something more than $1 billion, which is what this administration is inviting the insurers to do: Sue us, and we’ll settle. We’ll settle before we leave office.”

“It’s crony capitalism at its worst,” he continued.

In his letter, Stewart urges Ryan to “initiate a civil action” on behalf of the lower chamber in federal court. Authority to do so, the letter states, would be granted under a House resolution passed in 2014.

That resolution authorized the cost-sharing reductions lawsuit filed against the Obama administration.

Because the House resolution approved the initiation of or intervention in any civil action “with respect to implementation of any provision” of Obamacare, legal experts told The Daily Signal in March that it gives Congress the authority to intervene in the risk corridor case.

Stewart said he prefers lawmakers find a “legislative fix” to prevent the Obama administration from using the Judgment Fund to settle with insurers in the risk corridor lawsuits when they return from an extended recess in November.

However, he views legal action as a “backstop” and said the White House has already found ways to ignore legislation passed by Congress regarding the risk corridor program.

“We thought we dealt with this legislatively already, and the language is very, very clear on this,” he said. “The administration continues to find creative ways to circumvent obvious legislative language.”

Late last month, the Justice Department filed motions to dismiss lawsuits filed by two insurers—Moda Health Plan and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina—on the grounds that there is no deadline by which risk corridor payments must be paid.

This contradicts statements from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and its top officials, which have said the government would explore the option to settle.

In addition to Stewart’s letter, which was first sent to GOP lawmakers Thursday, Republicans in both chambers have expressed concern about use of the Judgment Fund in additional letters to Sylvia Mathews Burwell, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services; Andy Slavitt, acting administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; and Loretta Lynch, U.S. attorney general.

More than 40 House members, Stewart included, sent Burwell a letter late last month warning that any attempt to settle with insurance companies through the Judgment Fund “will be met with the strictest scrutiny” from Congress.

Republican Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming, Mike Lee of Utah, Marco Rubio of Florida, and Ben Sasse of Nebraska sent a separate letter to Burwell, Slavitt and Lynch asking for additional information on whether the Obama administration plans to settle with insurers.

Before working at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Slavitt worked for OptumInsight/QSSI, the sister company of UnitedHealthcare and a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group.

UnitedHealthcare is the nation’s largest insurance company, and Slavitt received an ethics waiver from the White House in 2014 that allowed him to begin working on matters involving his former employer immediately.

Slavitt’s history with UnitedHealth Group is raising questions for Stewart.

“He shouldn’t be sitting in a position to make this decision,” Stewart said of Slavitt. “That’s an example of why my Republican colleagues and I hope others are going to be interested in this.”

“Once [Republicans are] aware of what CMS is recommending, that the administration is trying to sue and settle and do it very quickly with an enormous amount of money, when the obvious conflict between the person who’s advocating this and his own personal interest in the industry that he worked with, we’re going to have a lot of interest,” he continued.

Slavitt’s predecessor at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Marilyn Tavenner, left the Obama administration to lead America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group that represents insurance companies.

Stewart called the revolving door of administration officials to and from the insurance industry an example of crony capitalism.

“We’re seeing it here,” he said of the risk corridor lawsuit, “but it’s not the first time that we’ve seen it. The Affordable Care Act is rife with examples of this, and they do it at the expense of the American taxpayer.”

Insurance companies filed lawsuits earlier this year after learning they would receive a fraction of the money requested from the risk corridor program.

The shortfall in risk corridor payments was the result of an amendment added to 2015 and 2016 government spending bills prohibiting the administration from using taxpayer dollars to fund the payments requested by insurers through the program.

Because of those restrictions, insurance companies participating in Obamacare’s exchanges received a collective $2.5 billion less than originally anticipated. Many smaller insurers, including several of 23 consumer operated and oriented plans, or co-ops, closed their doors because of the lower-than-expected risk corridor payments.

After three separate insurers filed lawsuits, congressional Republicans began to issue warnings about the Obama administration using the Judgment Fund to settle with insurance companies.

Settling with insurers would provide the White House with a way to give insurers their full risk corridor payments, effectively circumventing Congress. (For more from the author of “Obama Administration Wants to Use Taxpayer Money to Settle Health Insurer Lawsuits. Here’s How a Republican Would Stop It.” please click HERE)

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When Zombies, Aliens, and Felons Steal Our Votes

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People may expect zombies to be wandering the streets on Halloween, but they certainly don’t expect them to start casting ballots a week later. Yet in Colorado, dead voters’ ballots are cropping up in the vote counts.

CBS4, a Denver TV station, identified multiple cases of dead men and women in the state voting, with dozens of other deceased individuals still on the rolls. Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams confirmed these instances and both state and county investigations have been launched.

This comes on top of a report back in May by another CBS station in Los Angeles that found a similar problem in Southern California, with some zombie voters repeatedly voting from the grave years after they died.

While Colorado isn’t the only state dealing with an influx of ineligible voters, it’s unfortunately one of the few states trying to do something about it. A recent report by the Public Interest Legal Foundation and Virginia Voters Alliance lists thousands of noncitizens who were registered to vote and cast ballots in elections in Virginia and Pennsylvania.

The report analyzed data from just eight counties within Virginia. In these eight, the legal foundation found over 1,000 aliens who registered to vote illegally, with nearly 200 ballots cast from this group before they were removed from the rolls.

What’s perhaps most shocking about this is that the alien voters were only detected because when they renewed their driver’s licenses, they told the truth the second time when they admitted to the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles that they were not citizens. Thus, this report certainly only shows a fraction of the problem, while the true extent of ineligible noncitizen voters in Virginia has yet to be uncovered.

While this number may seem insignificant, recall that the 2013 Virginia attorney general’s race was decided by a margin of 165 votes, not to mention how the integrity of the voting process is compromised and the votes of legitimate voters are stolen when ineligible individuals are allowed to cast ballots.

While these aliens have been removed from the registration rolls, it seems no information about their illegal registration and voting has been turned over to law enforcement for investigation and prosecution.

Worse still, state election officials appointed by Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, have refused to provide information on their voting histories and have instructed other counties contacted by the Public Interest Legal Foundation not to provide information on aliens removed from the voter rolls. This gives the appearance of a blatant cover-up.

Instead of being outraged at this illegal behavior by noncitizens or outlining what steps would be taken by the state to prosecute them, McAuliffe instead accused the Public Interest Legal Foundation of prematurely casting doubt on election results: “When you can’t talk about issues and you have nothing to say to the American public about what you will do for them, you throw up issues that have no basis in substance at all.”

No substance? McAuliffe ignored the fact that all of these individuals who illegally registered and voted were removed from the voter rolls because election officials had all the “substance” they needed to prove they were ineligible noncitizens. The governor is ignoring instance after instance of possible felony voter fraud.

Unfortunately, this problem is not unique to Virginia. A similar report released by the legal foundation on Philadelphia shows that thousands of ineligible voters, both noncitizens and felons, registered to vote, stayed on the rolls, and cast ballots in the City of Brotherly Love.

Again, these instances were only found through individuals self-reporting their ineligibility or by chance, meaning they only cover a fraction of the problem, and again, Philadelphia election officials have done nothing to identify these ineligible voters.

Despite the fact that incarcerated felons are barred from voting, Philadelphia election officials refuse to remove felons from the voter rolls or even notate their records. They don’t even know who the felons are because they didn’t ask.

As the legal foundation’s report says, “City of Philadelphia election officials behave as if Pennsylvania law prohibiting certain felons from voting doesn’t even exist. This is rank lawlessness.” They also take no proactive steps to detect aliens who are illegally registered or voting.

The fact that there are so many felons and potential felons from Philadelphia in the state Legislature today or formerly might have something to do with Philadelphia’s lawless attitude. This was demonstrated at a hearing on Oct. 3 at the state Capitol where J. Christian Adams, president and general counsel of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, testified before the Pennsylvania House State Government Committee on the findings in the Philadelphia report.

One of the members of the committee is Vanessa Lowery Brown, D-Philadelphia, who is under indictment for taking bribes to vote against voter ID legislation. According to state grand jury testimony, she admitted her guilt and told undercover officers that she preferred her bribes to be delivered by check, not in cash.

Despite this admission to the grand jury and the fact that four other defendants facing similar charges have all pleaded guilty and a fifth pleaded no contest (all state legislators, too), Brown is claiming she was racially targeted by law enforcement. This claim has been vehemently denied by all of the law enforcement officials involved in the prosecution.

According to a source present at the hearing, Brown spent much of the Oct. 3 hearing disputing that prohibiting incarcerated felons from voting should be a concern even though it is the law of Pennsylvania. She complained that talking about the issue would deter felons from voting once they got out of prison. She said encouraging felons to vote when they leave prison should be more important than worrying about ballots being cast for or by them when they are in prison.

This caused state Rep. Jerry Knowles, R-Tamaqua, to explode even though he was sitting next to Brown on the dais: “My constituents don’t give a rip about whether a felon is discouraged from voting, I can tell you that much, they care about their vote not being canceled by an illegal vote. “

Another convicted felon (we are not making this up) who is a member of the House committee was also present at the hearing, although she got up at one point and left the hearing room. State Rep. Leslie Acosta, D-Philadelphia, pleaded guilty in March to a felony count of conspiring to commit money laundering, although that has not stopped her from running for re-election (or potentially voting in November). Only in Philadelphia.

Virginia, Philadelphia, and Colorado all highlight the security problems we have in our voter registration system that allow fraudulent and illegal votes to poison the integrity of the election process. They emphasize the need for officials to investigate, charge, and remove ineligible voters from the rolls, not ignore the problem and refuse to enforce the law against wrongdoers.

No matter how small the number, ineligible and zombie voters have no place in our voting rolls or ballot boxes. Until we take steps to improve the security and integrity of our election process, the problem will only grow. (For more from the author of “When Zombies, Aliens, and Felons Steal Our Votes” please click HERE)

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2016 Election Is a Referendum on Government Corruption

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There is a litmus test.

If you would like to know how a Hillary Clinton administration would operate, remind yourself of how her email scandal was handled, not just by Hillary and her aides, but by the Obama Department of Justice, the FBI and the Republicans in Congress — one might say they are all unindicted co-conspirators in a cover-up.

It is a scandal punctuated by government lying and stonewalling and a conspicuous absence of moral courage by those in a position to do the right thing.

Author of “Clinton Cash,” Peter Schweizer, said that this secrecy and financial scandal is unprecedented in terms of scale.

The efforts taken by the Clintons to avoid transparency by setting up a private server and the quantity of money flowing to them dwarfs any previous government scandal. During Hillary’s public service, about $250 million went to the Clintons directly and about $2 billion to the Clinton Foundation, an entity seemingly designed to intentionally evade the laws preventing foreign interests from influencing American politics and policy decisions.

If allowed to stand without accountability, the scandal will itself become a precedent for other greedy politicians to follow, essentially putting America up for sale to the highest international bidder.

According to reports, Hillary Clinton established her private email server on Jan. 13, 2009, eight days prior to her confirmation by the Senate as secretary of State. She later identified March 18, 2009, as the date she began using the private server.

Her use of a private nonsecure server for government business, including the exchange of classified material, remained known only to high officials in the Obama administration until after the Islamic terrorist attack on the U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.

As a consequence of that attack, the nonpartisan government accountability organization Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Department of State for Benghazi-related emails and other information on Nov. 7, 2012.

Sometime during the week ending on March 15, 2013, Romanian hacker Marcel Lehel Lazar, aka “Guccifer,” accessed the email account of Sidney Blumenthal, a Clinton confidant, indicating that Hillary had received sensitive, confidential information on what was later revealed to be the private server she improperly used for government business.

It was not the vigilance of government that uncovered Hillary’s private email server, but the intrusions of a computer hacker and the pressure brought to bear on the Obama administration’s Department of Justice and the FBI through ligation by Judicial Watch.

By March 2015, even the Hillary-friendly New York Times finally admitted that she did not have a government email address during her four-year tenure as secretary of State and she exclusively used a personal email account to conduct government business, a potential violation of the Federal Records Act.

And what about Congress?

As Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, has noted, Hillary testified in a congressional hearing that she turned over all her emails, a statement which we now know is false. In addition, emails were destroyed after Congress had subpoenaed them. Hillary could have been found in contempt of Congress or impeached, even now, because a federal official need not be in office to be impeached. Yet, rather than act, Congress chose to refer the matter of perjury to the Obama Department of Justice for criminal investigation knowing full well that nothing would be done.

The saddest casualty of the Hillary Clinton email scandal is the, perhaps, irreparable institutional damage done to the FBI by its director, James Comey. It is now clear that he never intended to conduct a proper investigation and, for purely political reasons, he was never going to recommend prosecution. In essence, Comey gave FBI blessing to a double standard of justice, one for powerful people like the Clintons and one for the rest of us.

Also, we have recently learned that the FBI is now in the business of destroying evidence.

Think about that.

The FBI destroyed evidence in a criminal investigation forever preventing the use of that evidence in any pending or future case.

As part of a “side agreement” brokered by the Department of Justice, Comey agreed to destroy the laptops of Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, after the two women were granted immunity.

Earlier, referring to Mills, who was Hillary’s chief of staff at the State Department, Comey stated in testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that “we have no evidence to establish that she committed a crime,” in relation to Hillary’s use of a personal email server.

If Comey did not believe Mills committed a crime, then why would she need immunity and why would the evidence need to be destroyed?

The exoneration of Hillary Clinton was an act of government malfeasance, a conscious choice favoring political expediency over the principle of “equal justice under law” in order to preserve a corrupt status quo. (For more from the author of “2016 Election Is a Referendum on Government Corruption” please click HERE)

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A Great Awakening or a Rude Awakening: What Will It Be?

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Isn’t it a shame that, at a time when America desperately needs to hear the prophetic voice of the church, what America hears instead is partisan politics in the name of Jesus?

Isn’t it a shame that, instead of the church leading the way and politicians following, it is politicians leading the way and Christian leaders following?

Of course, there are exceptions to what I’m saying — fine, godly, exceptions — but they are the distinct minority, since, the truth be told, we are guilty of putting our trust in political leaders more than in the power of the gospel.

For Too Long, We’ve Depended on Political ‘Saviors’

We still flock around presidential candidates as if they were savior figures, with some pastors proclaiming Hillary as “anointed” to lead and others proclaiming Trump as God’s man for the hour, as if these candidates had the power to bless or curse the nation, as if the church was beholden to them rather than them being beholden to the church.

Four years ago, in June, 2012, I wrote that the indifference of many conservative Christians towards Mitt Romney could be a positive if: “1) we don’t get caught up in the typical election year fever; 2) if we do vote for Romney, we do so remembering that he is not the answer; 3) we realize instead that the answer to America’s greatest problems is looking at us in the mirror if we align ourselves properly with God and with our neighbor.”

And I added, “Yes, Barack Hussein Obama has done great harm to our country, but he is not the primary cause of America’s current malaise, we are. And if we have messed things up, then by God’s grace, we can turn them around.”

Now, four years later, with even more stark choices than we had in 2012, will the church wake up and learn? Will we finally realize that we do not have a political savior? Will we finally realize that, as important as the office of the president is, the fate of the nation is dependent on the state of the church more than on the occupant of the White House?

Making the Church Our Priority

On the morning of Election Day, four years ago, I wrote (in the event that Romney was elected), “No more looking to the White House to transform America!”

How much more does this apply today?

“And,” I added on November 6, 2012, “what if Barack Obama is reelected? Then we would do well to avoid the trap of putting most of our energies into rebuking the president’s latest transgressions. Instead, we will have to focus our efforts like never before on fomenting a moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Come to think of it, that would be a sound course of action if Mitt Romney is our next president too …”

Unfortunately, many of us fell into the trap of spending much of the last four years bashing President Obama (who gave us many reasons to oppose his policies and words) and advocating for a conservative candidate to take his place, investing our energies and our passions and our finances in the heated political battle more than in the work of the gospel.

And while there is absolutely a place for our political involvement — I would even say that God has given us a stewardship to be involved politically here in America — our energies would have been much better spent in praying for revival, turning away from our own sin, reaching out to the lost, standing up for justice, and caring for the poor and needy.

Can we do all these things and get involved politically as well? Absolutely. But the question is one of priorities, of emphasis, of devotion, and it is all too easy for us to sell our souls to a political party or candidate, giving ourselves to their cause as if they were the hope of America.

Not so! There is only one hope for America, and He is not running for office.

All this being said, I actually see a silver lining in the 2016 presidential election.

What if Hillary? What if Trump?

If Hillary Clinton is elected, it could well be that our worst fears are realized and that she not only appoints disastrous judges to the courts but that she openly opposes our religious liberties, telling us that our pro-life, pro-marriage beliefs will have to change — or else.

If that’s the case, then I say bring the battle on. As distasteful as this prospect is and as painful as it could be for our kids and grandkids, it might just be the very thing that wakes up the still-sleeping church our nation.

Perhaps a Hillary victory will finally awaken us from our complacency and lethargy.

And if Donald Trump is elected, even if he appoints fine justices to the courts and stands up for our religious liberties, his flaws and shortcomings are so evident and he has been such a volatile and divisive candidate that it would be very hard to look to him as the savior of the nation.

A Trump presidency, therefore, would also be a call to prayer, a call for the church to rise up and make a difference, a call to make America great by making America dependent on the Lord.

The Church Has a Choice

The good news, then, is that having such unpopular candidates could be a blessing in disguise, forcing us to put our trust in God, not people.

The bad news is that if this election season doesn’t help us get our priorities right, almost nothing will — meaning, that we could be in for a very rude awakening.

So, what will it be, a great awakening or a rude awakening? The choice is ours to make. (For more from the author of “A Great Awakening or a Rude Awakening: What Will It Be?” please click HERE)

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Linking Hurricane Matthew to Climate Change Is Overblown Hype

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Hurricane Matthew is big, dangerous, and (if it makes landfall) something not seen in the continental United States for a decade. This, of course, means it will be linked to global warming.

There will be a lot of “scientists say we can expect,” but little actual data. That’s because the data show for the last 10 years we have had an unusual drought of landfalling major hurricanes (Category 3 and higher) on the continental U.S. That’s right, no major hurricanes have made landfall for over a decade. This is the longest such drought on record.

A lot of it is luck. There have been major hurricanes in the Atlantic whose paths have not taken them onshore. However, there has not been the steady increase in hurricane activity that the doom-and-gloomers predicted following a swarm of major hurricanes in 2005. Yes, there is a lot of change from year to year, but there is no worrisome trend.

In fact, taking a tally of the scariest hurricanes (Categories 4 and 5) indicates things were worse nearly a century ago. For the 44 years from 1926 to 1969, 14 of these most powerful storms made landfall, while the 46 years since then had only three.

Good luck will almost certainly run out and we will have years with multiple major hurricanes making landfall. If so, that is a return to normalcy, not a harbinger of impending climate doom. Since record-keeping began in the 1800s, the average annual landfall of major hurricanes is about two. However, it is far from constant as recent experience shows.

Further, a return to normalcy very likely will be associated with record levels of financial losses. This is due to the explosion of coastal development of recent decades. Again, it will not be due, as some will assert, to more frequent or more intense hurricanes.

The last decade has been a very mild one regarding major hurricanes hitting American shores. If Hurricane Matthew makes its expected landfall in the U.S. this week, the drought will be broken, but it won’t be a sign that we are headed to a man-made climate catastrophe. (For more from the author of “Linking Hurricane Matthew to Climate Change Is Overblown Hype” please click HERE)

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If We Reject Trump, We May Be Inviting Persecution

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Should Christians get behind Donald Trump?

As I’ve demonstrated here, on every criterion of politics, it seems to me that electing Donald Trump is less dangerous to the preaching of the gospel, the safety of Christian institutions from colleges down to the family, and the lives of unborn children. We don’t have to believe the claim that he’s even a “baby Christian” to recognize that this is true. Winston Churchill wasn’t any kind of Christian, but he defended our institutions and our freedoms, and that was all we needed. It is all the church ever needs. Given our own failure to evangelize the culture, it may be more than we deserve.

But aren’t Christians all about asking God for exactly that — more than we deserve? If it sounds like I’m saying that the election of Donald Trump might be a moment of unmerited grace for the United States of America. … Yes, given the only live alternative, that is exactly what I mean.

I think that some Christian resistance to backing this candidate comes down to simple distaste — some of it justified. This is a man with multiple divorces, a flashy and hedonistic lifestyle, a penchant for juvenile insults — the list could go on and on. It can wear down the soul just to think about it, and that’s for a simple reason: It’s gossip. The sins of other people aren’t meant to be fodder for our spiritual reflection, though the devil tells us otherwise. The flaws that matter in a political leader are those that connect to his likely performance in office, compared to the real-world alternatives. When we say we prefer the hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, racist agnostic Winston Churchill, we mean compared to Adolf Hitler. It’s nonsense to line up every leader next to Jesus or even our ideal politician. I promise you, they will all fall far short.

Besides, there’s a long history of Christians humbly setting aside their craving for a fully admirable leader, in recognition of a stark reality: In a fallen world, we are subject to violence. Those we are called to protect, from our own children to those in the wombs of desperate strangers, demand that we find a way to defend them. If we look at the sword which God has left in our path, and sniff that it isn’t shiny enough or might be caked with mud, and leave the innocents to suffer — make no mistake, we will answer for it.

Do Not Put God to the Test

The early Church is a good guide for this. For centuries, Christians had suffered hideously — being hunted like animals by the Roman secret police, then rounded up and killed in gruesome ways in the Colosseum as public entertainment. Many thousands were skinned alive, hanged, burned, or torn apart by animals, to the cheers and jeers of the crowd. Many more renounced their faith to save their lives, then eked out stolen decades haunted by guilt — to face an uncertain fate on the day of judgment. We might like to pretend that we would act like heroes or martyrs, but most people don’t. It’s our job to avoid and help others avoid occasions of sin, such as this one. Jesus himself warned us not to put the Lord our God to the test.

As Philip Jenkins documented in his powerful, tragic The Lost History of Christianity, by the year 1000 the majority of Christians on earth lived in the Middle East and Asia. Yet within 200 years those churches had virtually disappeared, ground down by persecution. All that’s left of most of them are a few scattered ruins in deserts, and scraps of bibles found in the lavatories of mosques.

It can happen here. Hillary Clinton and the worldview she represents have promised to make it happen here. What else can you make of her speech to the United Nations, where she said that for women to enjoy their fundamental rights, guaranteed by the government, Christian beliefs on abortion would have to change?

Is that any different from Diocletian decreeing that we must worship the emperor? Obama’s number two lawyer already told the Supreme Court that churches which don’t perform same-sex marriages will have to face crippling taxes. We can’t say we haven’t been warned.

Constantine

When the pagan warlord Constantine came to power in 312, he rallied support from Christians by revoking their persecution. For the first time in hundreds of years, the church could operate in the open. Constantine himself remained religiously ambiguous, only accepting baptism on his deathbed — once he’d already committed the many sins he thought he would need to, to keep his throne. He saw one of his sons, Crispus, as a political rival and had him cruelly executed. He did not move to create an ideal Christian society; slavery remained perfectly legal. So did the exposure of unwanted infants. Constantine let passersby who rescued such infants claim them and sell them as slaves. The poor were taxed cruelly, and the sons of army veterans were forcibly conscripted as soldiers themselves.

Perfectionist Christians, who demanded the kingdom of heaven on earth, or felt a profound distaste for this ruthless autocrat, might have held themselves aloof and refused to work with Constantine — as one sect, the Donatists did. They scorned the prayers of “imperfect” Christians, and removed themselves to live in “pure” communities. But the vast majority of Christians, including the hundreds of bishops who had remained faithful under persecution, looked instead to Constantine with gratitude as a gift from a loving God. The early Christian poet Lactantius wrote this hymn of praise:

We should now give thanks to the Lord, Who has gathered together the flock that was devastated by ravening wolves, Who has exterminated the wild beasts which drove it from the pasture. Where is now the swarming multitude of our enemies, where the hangmen of Diocletian and Maximian? God has swept them from the earth; let us therefore celebrate His triumph with joy; let us observe the victory of the Lord with songs of praise, and honor Him with prayer day and night. …

Constantine’s Council Gave Us the Creed

The bishops were more than grateful. They were downright cooperative, allowing Constantine to summon a church council to resolve controversies over the divinity of Christ. He paid for the bishops’ travel and gave the keynote speech at the council’s opening — then used the force of law to enact its decisions. It was this council, held in Nicaea, that gave us the formula still recited by well over a billion Christians: the Nicene Creed.

Since the church is the means of salvation, its first duty, after faithfulness, is self-preservation. I cannot think of a less loving or less Christian thing to do than to willfully raise the risk of a persecution that might lead souls to hell. If we do that out of distaste, to keep our hands “clean,” or to keep up the federal funding for our favorite government program, we are failing as Christians. I for one don’t wish to hear on the Last Day these words: “I was persecuted, since you did not protect me.” (For more from the author of “If We Reject Trump, We May Be Inviting Persecution” please click HERE)

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Judge Moore Falls Victim to Culture of Beta Males Our Founders Failed to Envision

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Earth to conservative movement (what is left of it): there is a raging fire of judicial tyranny threatening to envelop the last vestiges of our Republic. Last week, an unelected tribunal in Alabama removed Chief Justice Roy Moore from office — who, by the way, was duly elected by the people of the state — for the remainder of his term. His crime? Following Alabama law and not redefining marriage, the building block of all civilization. Does anyone want to talk about it? Or have conservatives now accepted all forms of judicial tyranny as a given with no desire to even put up a fight or defend one of our own?

Most of the conservative media and talk radio has been ensnared into covering every salacious detail of this presidential election, which does not feature conservatism on the ballot. Those who spend every waking hour of their political career defending every comment or act of Donald Trump contend that it is vital to win this election at all costs because we will lose our country forever if he does not win. Yet, the country is already being immutably transformed before our very eyes. When the few people who actually fight the transformation need reinforcements, most in the conservative media are too busy focusing on the acceptable-weight standard of a Miss Universe contestant.

It doesn’t take a constitutional scholar to understand that our Founders could never have envisioned federal judges ordering states to redefine marriage and gender. However, they put a system of checks and balances in place which, in their estimation, would stave off usurpations of a much smaller magnitude they did foresee. Where they went wrong, however, was their inability to account for a culture of beta males in the states who would be obsequious to illegal, immoral, and tyrannical acts in the federal government, and worse, punish those who fight back against illegal power grabs.

But where are the patriots? Instead of defending every liberal utterance of national Republican leaders, why are they not standing with someone they can actually support with their conscience? And don’t tell me that the outcome of this case hinges on the presidential election. Marriage, religious liberty, and so many other foundational issues have already been ceded to the far-left of the judiciary, irrespective of who wins this election. The fact that Trump has said, so many times, that he will allow the foxes in the courts to decide the fate of the religious liberty hen-house demonstrates that we have already lost.

Anyone who has followed this column over the past year or has read “Stolen Sovereignty” understands that the crisis within the federal judiciary is much worse than even the languishing conservative movement makes it out to be. Yet, there appears to be no floor to the depths of post-constitutional Gomorrah to which it can stoop that would elicit a righteous and united response from even conservative states. Whether it’s criminalizing religion; redefining marriage and gender; nullifying property rights; requiring states to issue birth certificates and offer voter registration to non-citizens; or preventing states from combating voter fraud, states have been completely servile to the perverted whims of the unelected federal judges.

Where is the much-vaunted conservative media in making this an issue? It speaks volumes that we place all of our hopes, aspirations, energy, political capital, reputation, and self-respect into the severely flawed Republican leaders at the top instead of directly engaging on the issues that actually matter and for the people we can actually cleanly support. As a movement, we have acquiesced to illegal acts of usurpation from our politicians, particularly the unelected judiciary. Likewise, we have placed all our bets on winning national elections with flawed men.

As William Penn once wrote, “[T]hough good laws do well, good men do better; for good laws may want [lack] good men and be abolished or invaded by ill men; but good men will never want good laws nor suffer [allow] ill ones.” We don’t have good men at the top, but we have good men like Roy Moore who refuse to allow ill “laws” to stand, not that Anthony Kennedy even created a law with his absurd marriage ruling. So why won’t our movement rally behind a man that is actually standing in practice for everything we say we believe in theory? Or have we also subscribed to this nonsense that all tyranny from the federal judiciary must be fully applied in the states as “the law of the land”?

Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 33, even with regard to tyranny from the stronger federal legislature, that when it steps outside of the enumerated powers to crush the states, those acts are “merely acts of usurpation and will deserve to be treated as such.” Twenty years ago, before transgenderism and redefinition of marriage was in vogue, Robert Bork said, “[T]o the objection that a rejection of a court’s authority would be civil disobedience, the answer is that a court that issues orders without authority engages in an equally dangerous form of civil disobedience.”

Nobody imagined a state submitting to orders that were universally understood to be outside of the realm of federal control, especially when those edicts violated our history and tradition, and worse, punishing those who adhered to the most foundational state value.

Yet, now, even conservatives yawn when state officials are punished for not redefining marriage or when individuals are fined for not using their property or business to service an act contrary to their conscience. We legitimize the entire premise that such a ruling is lawfully binding on the states by promising to win elections with RINOs and appoint better judges.

Nobody explained the gravity of this judicial crisis confronting us, and the acquiescence of the people — even conservatives — to this foreign system of judicial supremacy in public policy better than Larry D. Kramer, former Dean of Stanford Law School, in his 2004 book on judicial supremacy:

Neither the Founding generation nor their children nor their children’s children, right on down to our grandparents’ generation, were so passive about their role as republican citizens. They would not have accepted-did not accept-being told that a lawyerly elite had charge of the Constitution, and they would have been incredulous if told (as we are often told today) that the main reason to worry about who becomes president is that the winner will control judicial appointments. Something would have gone terribly wrong, they believed, if an unelected judiciary were being given that kind of importance and deference. Perhaps such a country could still be called democratic, but it would no longer be the kind of democracy Americans had fought and died and struggled to create.

This statement stands as an open rebuke to those who accept the legitimacy of redefining of marriage and gender by the courts as a given, exclusively placing their hopes in new elections to “appoint better judges.”

Kramer then asks, “What changed to make this deprecated sentiment not just real, not just respectable, but apparently prevalent?”

I think we all know the answer: A culture of beta males works wonders in allowing the most debauched usurpations to prosper and those who bravely refuse to comply are condemned by polite society. (For more from the author of “Judge Moore Falls Victim to Culture of Beta Males Our Founders Failed to Envision” please click HERE)

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How to Ask a Question at the Next Presidential Debate

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In an effort to foster widespread participation for the upcoming presidential debate Sunday, one organization has created a website where any interested individual can submit questions.

PresidentialOpenQuestions.com, created by the Open Debate Coalition, is a site where anyone can submit a question for the presidential town hall debate hosted by CNN and ABC.

Created during the 2008 presidential election season, the Open Debate Coalition’s sole purpose, according to its website, is “to make debates more representative of the will of the people.”

PresidentialOpenQuestions.com is open to all who wish to submit a question to the candidates. The only requirement is that the candidates must not be named in the question and both candidates must be able to address the question.

“The whole genesis of the open debate format came from a group of bloggers and the realization that the media has a monopoly over the debate process,” Lilia Tamm Dixon, program director for the Open Debate Coalition, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.

Further inspiration for this initiative came when Facebook and YouTube began collecting questions online from viewers leading up to the debates as well as during the debate.

Dixon said that it was the group’s goal to build off what Facebook and YouTube had already started.

What sets the Open Debate Coalition apart from other sites or organizations that collect questions for presidential debates is the format in which the questions are presented.

“Instead of questions being submitted online via social media and then given to the moderator’s team to sort through, we collect all the questions and then give the raw data to the moderators,” Dixon said.

Dixon believes this format to be the most effective way for questions to actually make it to the moderator’s desk come debate night, as the Open Debate Coalition presents entirely nonpartisan, pure data to the news networks hosting the debate.

To submit a question, one must first choose from one of 10 categories—ranging from civil rights to foreign policy and military, to health and infrastructure and technology—and then write the question.

After the question is written, users are given an option to include any supporting text or a link to additional material. Questions can be up to 80 characters and supporting text up to 200.

Dixon told The Daily Signal that her organization purposely collects little demographic information in order to encourage as much involvement as possible.

“We try to keep demographic information low because the more feilds people have to fill out the less likely they are to participate in asking a question,” Dixon said. “The only thing we are tracking is geographic location.”

Users of the website can also vote for other questions so that common themes and policy issues can be easily identified and given a rank of importance, allowing the site’s viewers as well as the hosting networks to see the popularity of various themes and questions.

The state of health care is one popular topic, with some questions currently receiving over 16,000 votes.

“As many as 11 of the top 50 questions had to do with something health related, such as single-payer insurance and Obamacare,” Dixon said.

While the Open Debate Coalition won’t be hosting the debate on Sunday, ABC and CNN have agreed to receive the most popular 30 questions from the organization for consideration in the town hall segment of the debate. (For more from the author of “How to Ask a Question at the Next Presidential Debate” please click HERE)

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Yes, Vice Presidential Picks Do Matter

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It is often said that the vice president matters chiefly because he is “a heartbeat away from the presidency.” It is, of course, true. Historically, the VP has replaced a sitting president nine times (eight because of the death of the president, and one because of the resignation of the president). So around 20% — one out of five — of our 44 presidents came to hold that office because of succession. Therefore, it is important that a presidential candidate choose his running mate wisely.

But there is another, overlooked aspect of the importance of the vice president. It must not be forgotten that, as Aaron Mannes — scholar of the vice presidency — writes on his blog, many VPs “do have political ambitions and that their actions can be shaped with an eye to their own future candidacies.” (Remember Al Gore?)

Reviewing the 2000 book “Wreath Layer or Policy Player?: The Vice President’s Role in Foreign Affairs”, the published dissertation of bestselling Reagan biographer and Conservative Review commentator Paul Kengor, Mannes recounts an example used by Kengor:

[I]n 1983 VP Bush traveled to Europe to push for the deployment of Pershing missiles, which was running into domestic opposition in the potential host countries. By all accounts – both in the general press and from administration figures – Bush did a fine job, bolstering deployment supporters and responding to critics. On the other hand in 1986, Bush went to Saudi Arabia to encourage the Saudis to keep oil prices low, which was devastating the Soviet economy. Instead Bush told them the US needed price stability, the opposite message the Saudis had been getting from Reagan and his senior cabinet officers. Kengor hypothesizes that low oil prices were hurting the oil industry and the states where it is based and that Bush wanted their support for his own upcoming Presidential run.

Kengor came to the conclusion, Mannes writes, that

VPs at the end of their career may be better able to serve the President objectively and not seek to protect their future political careers. Since the publication of Kengor’s book the United States has seen two VPs who saw that position as the apex of their career – Cheney and Biden. In some respects Kengor’s observation seems correct – Cheney and Biden’s service (for better or worse) appears to be entirely focused on serving their President.

There is an even more dramatic example. During the Second World War, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was extremely ill. For most of the war, his VP was Henry Wallace — a diehard Soviet sympathizer. He thought Stalin was the champion and savior of the masses. At one point, in fact, he visited a Soviet work center and found it to be Heaven on earth (blissfully unaware that he was actually visiting one of Stalin’s Gulags). He would sneak all kinds of military secrets to Soviet intelligence. FDR removed him from his 1944 ticket and replaced him with Harry Truman — who would become President when FDR died in 1945. In 1948, Wallace would run for President as head of the Communist-controlled Progressive Party – specifically to derail Truman’s resistance to Soviet aggression.

Ann Coulter wrote about this in her 2003 book Treason:

Incredibly, if Roosevelt had died one year earlier, Stalin might have immediately gained control of the United States presidency, Treasury Department, and State Department. Soviet dupe Henry Wallace would have become president, and it is very possible that he would have made Soviet spy Harry Dexter White his Treasury secretary and Soviet spy Alger Hiss his secretary of state.

(Nowadays, of course, Ann doesn’t seem to mind Russian dupes and their Kremlin-stooge entourage — she even worked in the primaries to clear the field of conservatives who oppose the Evil Empire.)

Even without these counterfactuals, the death of FDR did change the way the vice presidency works. As Aaron Mannes writes in his review of Kengor’s “Wreath Layer or Policy Player?: The Vice President’s Role in Foreign Affairs”:

Kengor notes that one important factor in the increased foreign policy role of the vice president was the rocky succession by Truman after FDR died. Not only did Truman not know about the atom bomb project, he was also unfamiliar with FDR’s negotiations with Stalin about post-war Europe and had not even met the Secretary of State. Because of that instance, there have been many recommendations for expanding the vice president’s role in foreign policy.

Sometimes we are lucky to have great vice presidents. It is how the presidencies of Calvin Coolidge and Harry Truman came to be; men who would not have otherwise become president.

So yes, Americans should pay close attention to the VP debates. Despite the impression we often get, the VP does matter. (For more from the author of “Yes, Vice Presidential Picks Do Matter” please click HERE)

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