Jeb Bush Likes $3 Gasoline

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Jeb Bush, Florida former governor and likely Presidential candidate, stated he would have favored an invasion and occupation of Iraq, even knowing that WMD were nonexistent. He did not say what was so important to invade and occupy Iraq at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars and thousand of deaths and tens of thousands of injuries.

The Bush family has been a loyal long-term member of the oil patch. Oil companies in 2002 had been frustrated with the price of oil, which hovered around $20/barrel for oil or $1/gallon for gasoline for many years. After the March 2003 invasion and occupation, the price of oil zoomed to around $100 per barrel for oil, or $3 per gallon for gasoline.

The only possible way for this dramatic turnaround was for a worldwide cartel of oil producing states (OPEC, including Iraq, and allies, including Russia) to take over and enforce its sales quotas. A cartel works only if all the members not exceed their sales quotas. There can be no “cheaters” who sell more oil than their quotas at a reduced price. For instance if a “cheater” can sell 6% more oil by reducing the price by 4%, it can profit by the added 2%.

The only power on earth that could enforce such a cartel quota system is the U.S. government. It appears the U.S. government is legally able to do so by occupying Iraq. We could find the cartel files in the occupation office in Iraq and possibly Washington D.C. These files should be opened for all to see.

President Obama could order the takedown of the cartel without ending the occupation of Iraq. He should do so ASAP. Oil prices will fall back to $20 per barrel, or $1 per gallon for gasoline. Hundreds of billions of dollars for savings for motorists, airlines, and government purchases of fuel.

Jeb Bush and the rest of the Bush family should be questioned on their support for the worldwide oil cartel. That was the key prize for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

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Faith Crimes: Christian Persecution in Obama’s America‏

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In a nation uniquely founded upon the Judeo/Christian ethic and “Freedom of Religion”, Americans have been witnessing committed Christians being persecuted in their own country. Over the last six-plus years, there have been rapidly expanding attempts to marginalize, demonize, and criminalize the free practice of the Christian faith in the US Armed Forces and in the United States in general. Why? Since the 1930s, the Christian religion has been viewed by the far left and Communists as the enemy that must be destroyed, and they are finally making progress toward their joint goal.

It actually started in the early nineteenth century when the far left, atheists, and Communists declared “moral authority dead”, and worked diligently to sabotage the family unit (the nation’s founding principles were supported by millions of religious family units), eliminate traditional marriage, and demonize core Christian religious beliefs. In the 1960s, the far left gained the support of birth control advocates, the proponents of the sexual revolution, and the support of radical gay rights advocates to help them marginalize Christian religious teachings that were providing the faith upon which family values rested. Despite the aggressiveness of the far left to sabotage family values and religious faith during a five decade period, Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George WH Bush, Bill Clinton, and George H. Bush used the moral authority of the US Presidency to beat back the attempt to break up the family unit, eliminate traditional marriages, and denigrate Christian religious teachings.

Unfortunately, the current occupant of the Oval Office has taken an opposite approach. He has empowered the far left, atheists, and Communists to the extent that they have finally achieved their 80-year goal of destabilizing, marginalizing, demonizing, and legally attacking their greatest enemy, the free exercise of the Christian faith by Americans. The far left, atheists, and Communists have been supported in their sabotage of the family unit and Christian values by not only the Obama administration, but also by the activist homosexual movement, representing less than 2 % of the population.

Now that activist judges are increasingly overturning laws passed by super-majorities of voters, the legal definition of marriage is rapidly changing in a number of states, and the floodgates have been opened, allowing the demonization of core Christian religious beliefs. Christians who don’t believe in what the 2% gay population in the nation believe in, are called bigots by the left-of-center liberal media establishment and by radical gay rights activists. The attempt to fundamentally transform the American family, as well as Christian beliefs, has taken on new speed and new dimensions, with the strong but stealthy support of the occupant in the Oval Office.

Assaults on Christian religious beliefs have been met with weak-kneed responses by religious leaders in the Protestant, Episcopalian, and Catholic denominations, and by the majority of members of Congress who have remained silent for over six years while the assault on Christian beliefs has gained momentum.

Obama, by forcing the US military to become the first major military force in the world to become openly homosexual, has negatively affected the morale, unit cohesiveness, and the “Combat Effectiveness” of the US Armed Forces. In just one year, 11,000 straight male members of the US military have been sexually assaulted by openly gay men who are now being recruited to join the US Armed Forces.

Christians who, because of their core religious beliefs, do not believe in or support same sex marriage or abortion have been persecuted, demonized, and aggressively intimidated by radical gay activists who make repeated false claims of bigotry. Christian business owners, for simply refusing to support same sex marriages on religious grounds, have had radical gay rights activists attempt to criminalize them for their religious beliefs, and file destructive law suits against them. Of course, we haven’t seen these same radical gay rights activists have the courage to try to force Muslim business owners to support same sex marriages. Why? They realize there would be an explosion of open hostility in response.
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The following article entitled “Faith Crimes” goes into more detail about how Christians practicing their sincerely held religious beliefs are being persecuted in Obama’s America.

[Listen to this interview with the foregoing article’s author on The Joe Miller Show]

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FAITH CRIMES: How courageous Christians practicing their religion are being persecuted in Obama’s America

By WND. The rising persecution of Christians worldwide is, of course, one of today’s most heart-wrenching and consequential trends, with daily reports of Christian believers being murdered, tortured, kidnapped, raped or sold into slavery.

But there is another story of growing Christian persecution, which – if not as terrible in scale and severity – is even more inexplicable. That is the rapidly expanding marginalization, demonization and criminalization of the free practice of the Christian faith in the United States of America – a nation uniquely founded upon religious liberty. . .

While Christian persecution around the world is perpetrated primarily by Muslims and communists, in America the persecution is driven by a seemingly odd and improbable source: homosexuality, and the influential activist movement that has grown up around it.

Today, that movement has become the spear-tip with which the far left is finally achieving its longtime goal of attacking, intimidating – indeed, legally prohibiting – the free exercise of religion in America.

Legislation currently sweeping the country outlaws counseling help for minors who want to overcome unwanted same-sex attractions; decrees that boys and young men must be allowed to use girls’ restrooms and locker rooms if they claim to identify with the opposite sex (and vice versa); mandates pro-homosexual indoctrination of children as young as five; requires the integration of open homosexuals into the military; forces same-sex marriage on the nation; and, perhaps most disturbingly, criminalizes Christian businesspeople for simply opposing homosexuality or same-sex marriage on moral and religious grounds. Should the Supreme Court mandate homosexual marriage throughout the nation, say experts, the persecution will increase exponentially.

“Many thought same-sex marriage would be the crowning achievement of the gay rights juggernaut,” says Whistleblower Editor David Kupelian. “But then, suddenly, the focus shifted to ‘transgender rights,’ with Time magazine’s ‘Transgender Tipping Point’ issue announcing ‘America’s next civil rights frontier’ and Vice President Joe Biden declaring transgender discrimination ‘the civil rights issue of our time.'”

Adds Kupelian: “The secret of this never-ending, always-expanding revolutionary movement is that it has the full support of the far left. Not because the left particularly loves people who are homosexual, bisexual and transgender for themselves, but because finally the left has found its weapon, with which – as it has dreamed of doing for decades – it can effectively attack, marginalize, demonize and criminalize its greatest enemy: the Christian religion.” (Read more about Christian persecution in America HERE)

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The Top Vatican Science Officer Embraces Global Warming, Pro-Abortionists

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The Vatican has interested itself in global warming, going so far as to stage an invitation-only exhibition on the matter, and to release through the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences the curious document “Climate Change and The Common Good.” The document’s main author is the Chancellor of the Academies, Archbishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo.

His Excellency was criticized by many for the low-quality, error-laden science in this document, but he received the most heat for buddying up to abortion and “population control” enthusiasts like UN boss Ban Ki-moon and economist Jeffrey Sachs.

Evidently, these critiques stung. The Archbishop returned fire, accusing his detractors of acting on the orders of a cabal dedicated to destroying Science — a charge which found sympathetic ears. But he couldn’t quite escape the scandal caused by his purposely associating with, and giving political cover to, abortion and contraception advocates. More explanation was called for, so he gave it.

In an interview with Stefano Gennarini, Sánchez shot back with an odd claim he has made many times, that the “climate crisis leads to poverty and poverty leads to new forms of slavery and forced migration, and drugs, and all this can also lead to abortion.” Elsewhere, he included prostitution and “organ trafficking” as other results of global warming.

By any reckoning, this is an impressive list of evils. Yet what’s missing from his Excellency’s statements is any explanation of how exactly the slight increase in clement winter afternoons has caused abortion, prostitution and other grave human evils to increase.

Did the fraction of a degree uptick in temperature late last century make men more amorous? Perhaps the dearth of hurricanes and tornadoes — the “climate crisis” has pushed these way down — induced men to seek other excitement in their lives. Or again, maybe the minuscule accumulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide has shouldered aside oxygen, depriving our brains and lessening our capacity to reason.

“These are serious matters!” the objection will run. And so they are. But mentioning something serious doesn’t make you a serious person. There must be more than moral dudgeon backing a claim as . . . grandiose as Sánchez’s, namely that global warming causes abortion. There must be evidence. Is there? The answer depends on how reliable global warming theory is.

Many have fallen prey to the unscientific belief that predictions of doom are proof the predictions are right, and that therefore the theory which generated the predictions must be correct. Otherwise intelligent people commit these blunders because of fear, or because they are in the grip of environmentalist ideology, or, in the worst cases, because it is politically convenient.

The predictions of doom have been consistent: temperature is promised to soar ever upwards. The theory is that small boosts in carbon dioxide (compared to the atmosphere as a whole), by way of feedback mechanisms too complicated to explain here, are responsible for the rise. The predictions are consistent, all right. Consistently poor. No, worse than poor. Rotten. For nearly two decades, climate models have predicted rising temperatures, but the reality has been that there is no such increase.

Since the climate is demonstrably not changing in the direction or rate predicted, how could this non-event be increasing the incidence of abortion, organ harvesting and slavery?

Let me pose another question. Which is more likely to lead to more abortions:

(A) Global warming, through a twisting, fanciful chain of causality, which anyway hasn’t even happened yet, or

(B) The bolstering of the rich, influential, abortion- and contraception-friendly United Nations and radical NGOs, who can now claim to enjoy “Vatican support”?

It is, or used to be, a fundamental principle of science that a theory was proved false when predictions made based on the theory were a bust. Even Einstein had to wait for Arthur Eddington to verify relativity’s predictions before scientists wholly backed the theory.

Sánchez was asked about this principle: “What do you answer to so called ‘climate skeptics’ who point to the lack of change in temperatures in the past 18 years and the difficulty in finding any definite correlation between human activity and large scale climate changes?”

His response was revealing: “I hope you are not [a skeptic] because then we would discover the true reason for these false accusations against us!”

Sánchez went on to hurl some false accusations of his own. He said climate change skeptics were all either members of the Tea Party or people with “incomes derived from oil.” Because, well, that would prove that everything they’re saying is false, wouldn’t it? Thank heavens no scientists who assert that man-made climate change is a crisis receive any income for their work, or support from billion-dollar foundations.

Archbishop Sánchez is keen on sustainability, which many take as a code word for population control. On this issue, he said that his Sustainable Development Goals didn’t “even mention abortion or population control. They speak of access to family planning and sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights.”

Everybody, even his Excellency, knows what such words are: dull euphemisms for population control and abortion. This is why he tried to deflect the moral implications of including these terms in Church documents by saying, “Some may even interpret [these terms] as Paul VI, in terms of responsible paternity and maternity.” If there is a polite, ecclesiastical way of saying “balderdash,” this is the place for it.

The Archbishop said that we “can rest assured that the two academies of which I am chancellor are against abortion and against population control simply because we follow the Magisterium of the Popes, on which we directly depend.” Okay, let’s accept that. Yet it is also true that Sánchez’s actions have lent political, cultural, and religious support to organizations which push, and push heavily, population control and the systematic killing of the unborn. They now can claim Vatican support for their agendas.

The Archbishop sought these worldly connections to give weight and prominence to his political programs. He ought to at least consider what is obvious to the rest of us: that his actions will foster the very evils he hopes to eliminate. (See “Vatican Science and Cheap Moralism on the Tiber”, originally posted HERE)

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Vietnam Hero: America’s Pathetic Leaders aren’t Worthy of Our Soldiers’ Sacrifices

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Photo Credit: WNDNavy Capt. Eugene “Red” McDaniel said it’s been some time since he “reached a point where I decided the leadership isn’t worthy of the sacrifices people are making for it.”

The establishment in Washington has been entrenched in a number of issues concerning the military of late, including trying to defend the huge losses in territory in the Middle East now being taken over by ISIS.

Much of that land had been bought with the blood of U.S. and coalition military members over the years of fighting tyrants and trying to establish a society based on freedom and rights.

The current administration’s focus on the military has seemed to be more on installing open homosexuality in the ranks and allowing women into tip-of-the-spear ground combat operations. . .

McDaniel isn’t alone in his brutal analysis of the current American leadership. Richard Botkin, a veteran of the United States Marine Corps and author of “Ride the Thunder: A Vietnam War Story of Honor and Triumph,” told WND, “I whole-heartedly agree that the current leadership is unworthy of the men and women they supposedly lead.” (Read more from this story on America’s Pathetic Leaders HERE)

I’m a Veteran, and I Hate Happy Memorial Day, Here’s Why

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I have friends buried in a small corner of a rolling green field just down the road from the Pentagon. They’re permanently assigned to Section 60. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it’s 14 acres in the southeast corner of Arlington National Cemetery that serves as a burial ground for many military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are fresh graves there.

I spent my formative years in combat boots and all of my friends are in the military, were in the military, or married into the military. I have several friends buried at Arlington, and know of dozens more men and women interred in that hallowed ground . . .

I toyed with the idea of making the trip south from New York City this weekend to spend some time, reflect and sit quietly but decided against it. Some friend, huh?

I’m angry. I’ve come to realize people think Happy Memorial Day is the official start of summer. It’s grilled meat, super-duper discounts, a day (or two) off work, beer, potato salad and porches draped in bunting.

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Pope Appoints Radical Pro-Homosexual to Important Vatican Position; Conservative Catholics Appalled

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By Lisa Bourne. Pope Francis has appointed radically liberal, pro-homosexual Dominican Father Timothy Radcliffe as a consultor for the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. . .

Father Radcliffe, an Englishman, author and speaker, was Master of the Dominican order from 1992 to 2001, and is an outspoken proponent of homosexuality.

“We must accompany [gay people] as they discern what this means, letting our images be stretched open,” he said in a 2006 religious education lecture in Los Angeles. “This means watching ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ reading gay novels, living with our gay friends and listening with them as they listen to the Lord.”

In 2005, as the Vatican deliberated the admission of men with homosexual tendencies to study for the priesthood in the wake of the Church sex abuse scandal, Father Radcliffe said that homosexuality should not bar men from the priesthood, and rather, those who oppose it should be banned.

As a contributor to the 2013 Anglican Pilling Report on human sexual ethics Father Radcliffe said of homosexuality:

“How does all of this bear on the question of gay sexuality? We cannot begin with the question of whether it is permitted or forbidden! We must ask what it means, and how far it is Eucharistic. Certainly it can be generous, vulnerable, tender, mutual and non-violent. So in many ways, I would think that it can be expressive of Christ’s self-gift. We can also see how it can be expressive of mutual fidelity, a covenantal relationship in which two people bind themselves to each other for ever.
Father Radcliffe often celebrated Mass for the U.K. dissident group Soho Masses Pastoral Council (now renamed the LGBT Catholics Westminster Pastoral Council).” (Read more from “Pope Appoints Radical Pro-Homosexual to Important Vatican Position; Conservative Catholics Call it an “Absolutely Shocking Papal Appointment”” HERE)

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Pope’s Pronouncements Making Trouble for GOP Catholics

By Ben Schreckinger. Catholic Republicans are developing a pope problem. Earlier this month, Francis recognized Palestinian statehood. This summer, he’s going to issue an encyclical condemning environmental degradation. And in September, just as the GOP primary race heats up, Francis will travel to Washington to address Congress on climate change.

Francis may be popular with the general public, but key Republican primary constituencies — hawks, climate-change skeptics and religious conservatives, including some Catholics, are wary of the pope’s progressivism. Some, pronouncing themselves “Republicans first and Catholics second,” even say they would look askance at a candidate perceived to hew too closely to the bishop of Rome. This internal conflict flips a familiar script, in which Democrats like John Kerry and Joe Biden were labeled “cafeteria Catholics” when their stances on social issues like abortion and gay marriage differed from those of the church.

“In northwest Iowa, we are discussing this a great deal, and sometimes it’s hard for us to reconcile the pronouncements we read from the Holy Father with our conservative principles,” said Sam Clovis, a Catholic and political activist who’s run for U.S. Senate and state treasurer in Iowa.

Jeb Bush — who praised the pontiff in a commencement speech at Liberty University this month — could lose out in the Iowa caucus, said Clovis. “It’s going to cause a lot of problems for Jeb Bush, because Republicans are simply not going to take him seriously,” he said.

Bush declined to address whether his admiration for the pope might affect how religious conservatives view him. In his speech at Liberty he said, “I cannot think of any more subversive moral idea ever loosed on the world than ‘the last shall be first, and the first last.’ (Read more from “Pope’s Pronouncements Making Trouble for GOP Catholics” HERE)

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Homosexual Marriage Will Split the Catholic Church

By Damian Thompson. Homosexuality as an issue is a greater threat to the Catholic Church worldwide than the sex abuse scandals. Here’s why . . .

• The Magisterium of the Church has always condemned homosexual acts, though recently Rome has emphasised that the orientation itself is not sinful. Critics say that’s a bit like saying you can be left-handed so long as you don’t write with your left hand, but there you go.

• Many liberal bishops, however, have changed their minds on gay issues. First they said homosexuality was ‘a matter for the confessional’, which I’ve always thought was a slippery evasion, but civil unions were unthinkable. Now they say that civil unions are ‘acceptable’ – I’m quoting HE Cormac Card. Murphy O’Connor, former leader of the Church in England and Wales and said to be an intimate of the Pope, though he would no doubt deny it with his trademark aw-shucks modesty. Gay marriage, on the other hand, is part of the ‘greatest evil’ in our country, the breakdown of the family. That’s Cormac again. It is, I think, possible to oppose same-sex marriage on moral grounds without being convinced that it leads to family breakdown. But, as the great sociologist James Davison Hunter pointed out in his 1991 book Culture Wars, mainstream churches have rather given up on denouncing sin on the grounds that it imperils your immortal soul. That doesn’t play well on telly. Instead they’ll reach for a humanitarian argument – abortion, for example, causes depression in women who’ve had one. Or, in this case, gay marriage destroys families.

• In the West, practising Catholics – let alone lapsed ones – are strikingly more gay-friendly than they were even 10 years ago. To quote Pew Research, ‘among churchgoing Catholics of all ages – that is, those who attend Mass at least weekly – roughly twice as many say homosexuality should be accepted (60 per cent) as say it should be discouraged (31 per cent)’. Admittedly, practising Catholics have been merrily disregarding Catholic teaching on contraception for years, safe in the knowledge that no one has a clue whether they follow the rules. But – no offence – gay couples in church often stick out a mile. If they’re in a civil union, many priests will refuse to give the Communion – or, alternatively, make a big show of allowing it. So much depends on the parish. Indeed, attitudes towards gays have become an easy way of distinguishing conservative from liberal parishes, and of creating division in the first place.

• Liberal bishops and priests, even some cardinals, are beginning to change their tune on same-sex marriage. Here’s one reaction to Ireland’s gay vote: ‘I appreciate how gay and lesbian men and women feel on this day. That they feel this is something that is enriching the way they live. I think it is a social revolution.’ That was the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, an arch-liberal who wins applause in the Irish media by attacking old-style Catholic prelates (many of whom, conveniently, are deeply compromised by covering up child abuse). He’d ordain Graham Norton if it were not for the fact that, unusually, Norton is a Southern Irish Protestant. Martin followed his comment with some waffle about fresh ways of getting the Church’s message across but – as ever – he’d given the hacks their headline. Actually, though, Martin has a point. Why should the Catholic stance gay marriage be radically different from its attitude towards civil unions? Gay marriage doesn’t exist according to the Church. There are various answers to this but they’re not terribly convincing. . .

• But (see above) Catholics have a Magisterium whose teachings on homosexuality can’t be changed without the Church deciding that it has the authority to scrap them. At which point some traditional Catholics will up sticks to the modern equivalent of Avignon and we’ll have two popes. Or three, if dear Benedict XVI is still alive. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Is Fox News Bad for the Republican Party?

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And it came to pass that the earth turned and another campaign season spun into view and the liberal commentariat rose from its siesta to begin its usual moping about the perverse political powers wielded by the Fox News Channel.

This time, the sentinel waking the commentariat to the alleged Fox menace is not a liberal but a self-described conservative, Bruce Bartlett. Bartlett, a prolific writer on politics and economics who has worked for congressional Republicans (Ron Paul and Jack Kemp), Republican presidents, (Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush) and conservative and libertarian policy shops, broke with his party a decade ago when he leveled President George W. Bush as an opportunistic pork-barreller in his book Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. Bartlett recently added a media component to his critique in a paper titled “How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics,” which has heated the blood of liberals to the boiling point, including the Atlantic’s James Fallows and Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo, the Huffington Post and other outriders of liberalism.

Fox News isn’t just bad for America, which is the usual liberal complaint. It’s also bad for the Republican Party, the still-conservative Bartlett holds, because it has stunted the GOP’s growth with a news agenda that ships “misinformation” to the party’s far-right base. This is the so-called Fox “echo chamber” effect you’ve read so much about in ThinkProgress, the New Republic, Slate, The Week, Nicholas Kristof’s column and the Atlantic. According to chamber theorists, Fox “breeds extremism” within the Republican Party by (1) convincing viewers to reject other news feeds as biased and (2) to partake only of Fox content and like-minded conservative radio fodder. The echo chamber, so the theory goes, has deluded the party into thinking that support for its radical-right views is greater than it really is. This, in turn, has convinced the party to run radical candidates who aren’t as electable as they seem to be. And all this extremism prevents the GOP’s presidential candidates from reaching centrist voters, who are essential for victory. (Read more from “Is Fox News Bad for the GOP?” HERE)

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What’s Wrong With Sex Ed in America?

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By now you’ve heard the news du jour that the heir to the throne of America’s biggest TV family molested his younger sisters and a family friend as a young teenager. The internet is predictably delighted, because nothing is more delicious to progressives than a stumbling, screwed-up Christian. Never mind that it happened over a decade ago and he has reportedly repented and reformed himself; because he and his family live a life of publicly-demonstrative faith, they must be stoned for their crimes.

The real victims in this whole disaster are, of course, his younger sisters and the girl who suffered his unwanted advances and touching, and his own children who are now going to grow up in a world where daddy’s dirty adolescent laundry will be forever enshrined online.

I am in no way excusing Josh Duggar for the abuse he committed against his own sisters. I know plenty of women who were once little girls who suffered molestation by family members, friends, and peers, and the healing can be the work of a lifetime. And sometimes it doesn’t come.

But I am a little confused as to why, in this sexually-permissive freewheeling society of excess we dwell in, it’s being treated as such bombshell.

If every boy I went to middle school with had his behavior from that time period made public, I can guarantee we would have a massive influx of registered sex offenders added to the roster, for one thing. . .

But sin is the damnedest thing, isn’t it? There’s no guarantee that, no matter the efforts you make as a parent, no matter the values you strive to instill in them, your kids aren’t going to turn out to be delinquents or criminals. Or at least screw up royally at some point.

But here’s my question. Why, in a culture pushing sex sex sex at younger and younger ages, passing out condoms and dental dams in 6th grade health class and schooling kindergarteners on proper masturbation techniques, is it shocking or disappointing when a kid goes ahead and acts on the information we’re saturating their developing brains in? (Read more from “What’s Wrong With Sex Ed in America?” HERE)

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Secularists are Ecstatic: American Christianity is Finally Dying!

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Much has been made of the recent Pew poll that highlights America’s religious landscape. What has drawn the most attention is the apparent decline of Christianity in the U.S. “The Christian share of the U.S. population is declining,” began the piece. Many liberals took gleeful notice. The Institute on Religion and Democracy’s Mark Tooley noted, “Secularists and their fellow travelers are ecstatic. The secular utopia about which John Lennon crooned is impending. Christianity is finally dying!”

Of course, this is far from the case, as Tooley later reveals. Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, points out that it’s not Christianity that’s dying, but rather “near Christianity” that is teetering. “Good riddance,” Moore concludes.

The denominations that have lost the most “near Christians” are Catholic and Mainline Protestant. According to the Washington Times, “for every person who joined the Roman Catholic Church, six others were departing.” Additionally, in the last 50 years, the proportion of Americans belonging to one of the “Seven Sisters of Mainline Protestantism” has plummeted from one in six to one in sixteen. . .

So . . . why have the Catholic Church and Mainline Protestantism seen such a collapse? Moore reveals the answer when he notes that, what the Pew poll really reveals is that we have “fewer incognito atheists” in America. “Those who don’t believe can say so — and still find spouses, get jobs, volunteer with the PTA, and even run for office. This is good news because the kind of ‘Christianity’ that is a means to an end — even if that end is ‘traditional family values’ — is what J. Gresham Machen rightly called ‘liberalism,’ and it is an entirely different religion from the apostolic faith handed down by Jesus Christ.”

. . .Don’t be surprised to see the decline of Christianity continue. As it becomes more difficult and dangerous to be a follower of Christ, more and more people are going to find the “wide road” described by Jesus quite appealing. This is especially the case when so-called “Christians” are pointing the way. (Read more from “Christianity is Finally Dying” HERE)

Redefining “Waters of the United States”: Is EPA Undermining Cooperative Federalism?

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On April 21, 2014, without formally consulting with the States, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) proposed to redefine the term “waters of the United States” for all Clean Water Act (CWA) programs. The proposed rule generated a purported 1,081,817 public comments. The comments of governors, attorneys general, and various state agencies and departments are nestled among over 1,055,000 mass mail comments, 11,800 generally non-substantive individual comments, 4,500 anonymous comments, and comments from a broad spectrum of businesses, industries, and environmental groups. As the State of Kansas declared, the States were “relegated to the status of interested party, indistinguishable from the myriad” of other commenters. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy recently stated to Congress that “[T]here is no question, I don’t think, that the docket will reflect that we have done significant outreach to the states on this. We have reached out to them through our regions, through headquarters, and we will continue that discussion.” Despite Administrator McCarthy’s assurances, many state comments in the docket describe almost no consultation with states prior to issuing the proposed definition, a rush to finalize the proposal, misleading and confusing outreach to the states after-the-fact and, as a result, a flawed rulemaking.

I. Congress Intended a Robust Clean Water Act Role for the States

The CWA and relevant Executive Orders describe a robust system of cooperative federalism. The CWA provides that it “is the policy of the Congress to recognize, preserve, and protect the primary responsibilities and rights of States to prevent, reduce, and eliminate pollution, to plan the development and use (including restoration, preservation, and enhancement) of land and water resources, and to consult with the Administrator in the exercise of his authority under this chapter.” The Act further provides that “Federal agencies shall co-operate with State and local agencies to develop comprehensive solutions to prevent, reduce and eliminate pollution in concert with programs for managing water resources.” Executive Order 13132 reinforces the need for state consultation for rulemakings that have federalism implications.

II. The Agencies Did Not Consult Prior to Proposing the Definition

Despite these requirements, consultation was “certainly lacking prior to the publication of the proposed rule.” The agencies did not believe that they needed to consult, certifying that the rule “will not have substantial direct effects on the states, on the relationship between the national government and the states, or on the distribution of power and responsibilities among the various levels of government.” Not surprisingly, most states do not agree with EPA. Oklahoma submitted a comment, for example, stating that EPA and the Corps “downplay the rule’s substantial effects on the relationship between the national government and states.” The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture stated that “[e]ven a cursory analysis indicates that the revised definition will have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities and on the States.” The New Mexico Environment Department noted that “the Agencies have failed to fully evaluate state and local level implementation” which “has direct impact on required staffing levels, legislative funding requests, and general agency planning.”

In other settings, EPA has offered even less convincing arguments for their failure to consult. Asked why EPA did not go to the states until after the fact, Administrator McCarthy responded that “These are issues that EPA and the States have been working on literally for decades . . .” This echoes what EPA officials have stated elsewhere. The Governor of Wyoming, for example, stated that “On September 12, 2014, Administrator McCarthy hosted a meeting in Washington, D.C. During that meeting, EPA staff acknowledged that little was done to solicit input from policy makers in state government on the proposed rule. The EPA indicated it viewed public comments related to previously proposed and withdrawn guidance documents as sufficient input to move forward.”

III. The Lack of Consultation Demonstrated a Rush to Finalize the Rule and Disadvantaged the States

In fact, many states implied that the agencies might have been in a hurry to propose and finalize the definition—leaving the states to suffer the consequences. Oklahoma stated that “there was no reason for EPA and the Corps to avoid formal and meaningful consultation with the states over the many years that have transpired since the agencies embarked upon this process.” The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection agreed stating that “[t]his is quite extraordinary, given that it is undertaking to entirely redefine the scope of a decades old enactment.” The lack of prior consultation resulted in insufficient time for states to “assess how the reach of proposed jurisdiction may change under state law” and “an inadequate period” for states “to develop comprehensive comments.” In doing so, the agencies “missed an opportunity to build consensus with the primary implementing entities and prevent controversy.” Failing to consult, EPA created “misunderstandings regarding the intent of the proposal [that] could have been avoided.” Instead, the rule resulted in “mass confusion among the very State partners that have worked with [the] Agencies for decades to accomplish all the water quality gains made thus far.” Worse still, in their rush the agencies finalized the proposed rule before finalizing the connectivity report, allowing “no ability for the public or other stakeholders to review and comment on” any changes. As a result, the state of Michigan, likely among others, suffered a “loss of confidence in the process and the legitimacy of the end result.”

IV. The Outreach After the Proposal was Misleading, Confusing, and Insufficient

Yet, Administrator McCarthy states that EPA has “reached out to [states] through our regions, through headquarters, and we will continue that discussion.” Apart from the fact that consultation described as “after the fact” cannot fulfill the agencies’ consultation requirement, the docket reflects a flawed outreach effort. First, “[i]ncluding the states with all other stakeholders and interested parties in the opportunity for public comment…is decidedly not the robust and meaningful[] state-federal ‘consult and cooperate’ partnership that Congress clearly had in mind.” Second, meaningful state engagement and consultation cannot be boiled down to a “series of meetings, speeches, and webinars seeking to explain the proposed rule and answer questions.” This is especially so given that at least some of these meetings were “not recorded, not for official comment, and only to provide information.” Third, meaningful state engagement and consultation cannot be met by stonewalling. Apparently, “agencies’ staff frequently answer[ed] questions with ‘We don’t know’ and ‘We’ll have to figure that out.’” Montana repeatedly reached out to the Corps for “a representative to discuss the agency’s view of any change in scope of jurisdiction under the rule” and was “met with one response, ‘we cannot discuss the USACE’s view of how the rule will be applied, please submit comments.’” On a related note, meaningful state consultation cannot occur when the Corps is either “silent” or completely absent from the rulemaking process. Finally, meaningful consultation cannot occur in a context where the agencies make the kinds of contradictory and misleading statements that would lead the Governor of Wyoming to declare:

Different messages for different audiences. It is one thing to propose a rule that is excessive, onerous, and in derogation of states; it is another entirely to assure the public that they have misunderstood the proposal and then saddle those same people with the burden of a rule the content and intent of which was misrepresented by the agencies.

V. The Faulty Consultation, Among other Deficiencies, Led to Widespread State Opposition and Significant Implementation Concerns

“Unfortunately, the lack of state engagement is evident.” This faulty process led to a flawed proposed rule that the majority of states directly oppose. Florida’s Attorney General describes the proposed definition as a “raw exercise of a general federal police power.” Many states documented significant “concerns related to the legal rationale for the proposal and implications of that rationale on state programs.” For example, the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources stated that the “rule has significant implications for federalism, affects the State’s traditional authority to regulate land and water use, impacts the federal-state framework under the Act, and is unlawful under the Act and the Constitution.” Practically, states were concerned that the proposed definition, inter alia:

· “changes [the] balance to lessen the burden on the federal government marginally, while creating significant additional unnecessary requirements for both state agencies and individual landowners”

· creates “the potential that the states will have to classify the uses of newly jurisdictional waters for application of State water quality standards”

· creates “the potential for a federal veto of State economic development projects” through federal permitting

· “will undoubtedly lead to increased litigation and burdensome resource constraints on our agencies”

· “potentially impacts the stability of Michigan’s wetland program,”

· “could significantly impact the administration of [clean water] programs,”

· “increases uncertainty for many landowners, advances a severe disconnect between permitting and water conservation, and dramatically underestimates the costs”

· “is counter to our statewide vision and current strategic plan of locally derived management”

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection concluded, “As might be expected with a centrally-dictated product that previously had not seen the light of day…the proposed definition presents severe problems in implementation.”

VI. Conclusion

The agencies, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and Congress are at a crossroads. The docket clearly and forcefully describes agency actions that “undermined the cooperative federalism at the heart of the CWA and ignored the substantial direct effects on state governments . . .” The agencies effectively “ignore[d] the role States play as co-regulators,” “encroach[ed] on . . . sovereignty,” and “undeniably excluded” the states’ “CWA co-regulating agencies.” Relegating states “to the status of interested party…dilute[d] their input on the repercussions and consequences of the proposed rule.” The proposed definition is under review by the OMB, and the agencies have indicated that the proposed definition will be finalized. Both the OMB and Congress have one last opportunity to send EPA back to the drawing board before the proposed definition is finalized. Perhaps one or the other will hear and act on the cry of states like Oklahoma that:

[T]he States and the Agencies could have been allies in the effort to clarify WOTUS jurisdiction to the benefit of all who implement the CWA’s many facets. As it stands now, we’ve lost faith in the process and believe that the myriad flaws and points of confusion cannot be resolved satisfactorily through a series of public comment period extensions. The kind of input that our agencies and other State co-regulators seek, not to mention deserve as a matter of mutual respect and as required by law, can only be accomplished through halting the current effort, rolling up our sleeves, and developing regulatory language through a meaningful exchange of ideas and drafts.

Such an approach could “lead to a more successful outcome than the protracted litigation that would result from adoption of the current rule.” After consultation, “the Agencies should propose a very different rule, which respects the States’ primary responsibility over the lands and waters within their borders and gives farmers, developers and homeowners clear guidance as to when the CWA’s requirements apply.” (See “Redefining “Waters of the United States”: Is EPA Undermining Cooperative Federalism?”, originally posted HERE)